Five Senses Box Set

by Andre Norton

  Since Harwice—oh, there had been a trickle of others, both men and women, as the talent seemed unaware of gender when it made itself manifest. Some had been drawn to healing and, having learned all they could absorb, had gone out to restore such of the shrines as had crumbled nearly away. In only three courts, halfway across the world, were there still chapter houses which were listening, feeling, and dreamingposts, though those who served within them had little enough to communicate.

  At the sound of his name, Gifford came to attention with a start he trusted none had noticed. These few moments of withdrawal had, he hoped, given him strength to resist any force of the Dark that still lingered in that accursed, now-resealed cell below.

  Yost was watching him keenly, and the librarian-archivist saw that this was the time to make known to his fellows the breach in their defenses. He knew he was overfond of dressing any speech in a festival robe of words, so now he made an effort to tell his story as starkly as a sentry’s formal report. From somewhere to his right, he heard a breath deeply drawn, though there had been no ripple of movement in all that seated company.

  “So—Irasmus—” Yost was far from the oldest member of that assemblage, but the woman whose white hair was as neatly bound to her head as his waved free seldom raised her voice in council. However, it was to Dreamgate Yvori that the seers turned when they needed fragments of far-off history such as might take Gifford days to uncover, for all his excellent keeping of the files.

  “He is”—the aged sorceress’s speech still held steady against the flow of time—“of the House of Gorgaris through his mother’s inheritance, though it has been four generations since Gorgaris has been even faintly remembered. Irasmus came to us through the urging of Kristanis, presented as close kinsman to the Banner of the Red Boar. The Boar has ever stood on the right flank of any force that moved against the Dark; yet that, too, may also be forgotten today.”

  Yost leaned forward a little in his chair. “No one can question the path those of the Boar have always trodden. But in one of Gorgaris’s get—How came such a mixture of spirit?”

  Yvori spoke again. “How often it is seen that, the brighter the light in a man or his line, the deeper of dye is the darkness when they fall into evil! With time, all houses may sink into decay; and Gorgaris and his hero ilk are now long gone from any rulership.”

  “But if the idea of rulership has not gone from his line?” Gifford queried. “We might hold here a key to the knowledge we seek. Irasmus is gone—where?”

  The painter with the color-splashed cloak seemed genuinely interested for the first time. “When one would draw true strength, he had best look first to his masters, and then—to his roots.”

  Gifford tensed, his head turned a fraction so he could see again that banner which had enchanted him earlier in this day now overshadowed by horror. However, Harwice, who could translate beauty from dream to reality, had already advanced, not to precisely the hanging Gifford had admired but to one at its side.

  Harwice stared, and colors rose and flowed and solidified. The brotherhood were all used to the manifesting that followed his concentration—it was as though a slice of earth had been rendered immaterial enough to swim the air above, summoned to give up knowledge. There, unmistakably, appeared the vestiges of the old road the traders still cherished. What those in the chamber now saw distinctly was a party of plodding pack ponies and figures moving to keep them closely herded.

  The animals moved awkwardly and needed thatguidance, as it was plain they could no longer see where they were going. What were those creatures shambling about nearby to keep them in tight order? The loremaster wet suddenly dry lips with his tongue. Gobbes!—monster things never meant to scuttle under the light of day.

  All those horrors had eyeholed hoods pulled tightly over their heads to protect them from the fierce rays of the sun, which offered a serious threat. Among them rode an unhooded man, who guided with skill a bony horse. He never looked behind him at the motley crew, seeming very sure that none of them would stray from the direction he set. His thin, beak-nosed face carried a mocking smile which was close to a jeer.

  “The Claw—” someone among the viewers breathed, as if summoning a defense.

  “We have slept!” The archmage’s voice rang out until, Gifford thought, it might almost reach the ears of those on the road. “The years have tamed and drained us! That is a trader’s train—with certain embellishments, to be sure. But, brothers, do you see Master Pretus or one of his choosing among—those!” He nearly spat that last word.

  It was the woman Yvori who gave him an answer of a sort. “This noontide, we shall say power words for Master Pretus and those of his party, for I do not think any of them still walks his well-known road. Pretus was bound for the Court of Gris. A strong comrade of ours dwells there—Mage Rosamatter, who is not to be thought of lightly in the matter of talent.”

  “No—our renegade heads to Styrmir,” Yost said in a voice heavy-freighted with the emotions he must always control. “Gorgaris held sway there until theWind sweep. What better place could Irasmus now look for to plant roots?”

  The limner-of-dreams took one step to the right and now faced a second fabric panel—the one Gifford had renewed his spirit by watching earlier.

  Once again, they beheld the valley, peaceful with the spring, yet bursting with the force of new life. No clouds hung in the sky whose dullness might set a smudging finger on what lay before them. Only, to the far right of that view of the old road, there stood what looked like the jagged fang of some great beast but which was, in fact, a roofless half-ruined tower.

  “The Wind—” Those words came shakily, almost as if the speaker suggested something he knew held no truth.

  “Yes, the Wind,” Yost repeated, his eyes blazing, the faintest of flushes tinting his pale face. “It plays in Styrmir—but only the smallest part of it, and mat now and again. The Covenant did not altogether forbid its dance there; yet those who chose to hold that land were talent born, even though they have steadfastly refused to draw upon power. Doubtless there are dreamers among them, and the Covenant does not forbid warnings to be delivered to the innocent. But, more—?” He shook his head, and his upstanding white crest of hair licked the air. “What more can we do? We are sworn—”

  A chair scraped across the floor. One who had sat silently on the very edge of the company now stood straight and tall. Though he wore the livery of the place, there was a fraction of difference, as if he had been wont to go clad in another fashion.

  “Those unwitting folk will be gobbled up, even as averhawk snatches a lamb from the side of a shepherd’s hound. Send your dreams! These soft ones have been ten generations or more steeped in peace. Can you conjure the spirit that could make them erect a wall of defense about Styrmir? Our brother is right—the message gusts once borne by the Wind are all but gone. We are not the only ones held by oaths; what you see”—he gestured toward that view of the valley—“already bares its throat to the knife.

  “It remains that we were the ones who loosed Irasmus. How do you answer that?”

  The flush on the archmage’s cheeks deepened. “We seek now to find what was taken from the vault of Arbobis. You were once a man of war, Fanquer. What came of that long-ago conflict that none on the Path of Light wish even to name? Half a world and the life it contained scoured away! The Wind is bound, and so are we.”

  “There is this.” Oddly enough, it was Yvori who confronted the erstwhile soldier. “Does not the Covenant have an answer of its own?”

  Fanquer scowled. “Dreamer, look upon heaven—you shall see it become hell. Think of those fields you see after the hunger of the gobbes has been sated! As for the Covenant, the ones to loose the string of its binding must needs be those with their roots in a corner of the world the Dark once smirched. What have we here? Farmers and herdsmen! Save for one family line, the valley dwellers have deafened their inner ears to the talent as well as they could and abandoned all that might serve them now. Can
any of you promise me that some hero will rise to summon an army of Light?”

  Yost raised his hand, and the gesture was emphaticenough to bring the company to attention. “Irasmus rides, and with him goes the filth of the Dark. Just what damage can he do with his stolen learning, Gifford?”

  “No one can guess the reach of another’s full talent,” replied the loremaster bleakly. “That he brought gobbes to heel says he is far in advance of any novice—even of some journeymen and women who have served their time with us. What can we do? Will She Who Strides the Wind come at the call of any?”

  “Does that One now even take an interest in the things of this earth?” Fanquer added a more troubling question. “She viewed as an insult the plea we made once before that She lend her powers to the aid of the Light. Who of our blood has ventured to seek out any of Her servants in the Forest for twice a hundred years? And do not those of Styrmir come into this world having, from the very wombs of their mothers, a barrier set within them against any encroachment upon the place of trees?”

  “Dreams have no barriers,” the old sorceress responded. “Warnings can be sent—”

  There came a lightening on the faces of all those assembled, as if a measure of their burden had been lifted from them. Only the warrior laughed sourly. “Send your night messengers, if you will, but they are a feeble answer to what now descends upon Styrmir.”

  Fanquer was regarding the wall hanging with narrowed eyes. “Those complacent fools have no time left to beat reaping hooks into spears. This I say, and say it plainly: those of the Right Path will hold it against us that it was one claiming to be of our craft who now goes forth as a bringer of death. There remains only asingle clan that can be warned by a dream-sending, and they are not more than a handful with no Wind Caller among them. We must fight a battle lost before the banners meet upon the field where steel strikes steel!”

  Gifford’s eyebrows rose and his lips pursed before he answered. “You would have us on the move?”

  A stir rippled the ranks of the councillors, and a murmur of voices arose. The archmage brought them again to order with a gesture.

  “Nothing, Light Seekers, has ever been accomplished by arguments not founded on well-based facts. Shall we now propose to follow the custom once used before? Those who can”—he glanced first at Gifford, then at Yvori—“must look backward in time. You, Fanquer, should study well the Covenant, since words of yours were used to frame it. We all have our talents, and, by the will of Light over Dark, let us hasten to use them, for sometimes even a fraying thread may bring down an empire.”

  With that final admonition, the mages dispersed, save for Harwice, who still stood before the banner’s window into Styrmir. Suddenly, the scene of peace and plenty pictured there changed, darkening and closing in to show a road upon which dusk was descending curtainwise and where an ugly, monstrous crew padded purposefully forward. The artist raised his hand, but the archivist’s own fingers flashed out to imprison the other’s wrist.

  “Would you warn them?” he demanded sharply. “I tell you that he who can command gobbes cannot be turned from his chosen way except by a far greater spell!”

  Harwice glanced at the keeper of records, and a half smile gave a hint of satisfaction to his smooth and seemingly youthful face.

  “How well do you know what now lies in the outer world, Brother Gifford? How long has it been since you brushed the dust of moldering books and scrolls from your sleeves and ventured forth further than the outermost gardens? Not only the actions bred by mankind may change the paths of life; sometimes, as Mage Yost has said, a single worn thread can turn their course.

  “That one”—the dream painter waved at the image of Irasmus—“sniffs for power of a sort; but his nose has not yet sharpened into that of a hound! We shall call upon time, even if we cannot summon the Wind to stand as shield comrade.”

  Harwice reached into a pocket in his robe and brought out a tiny pot that fit easily on the palm of his hand. One stride brought him within reach of the wall hanging. He dipped his forefinger into the pot, to bring it forth colored dark green. At the same time, he began to hum. Gifford found himself caught up in that sound—a Wind song, though the scholars seldom heard such here.

  Quickly the finger moved and, at some distance before Irasmus and his train, there sprouted up a hedge, most branches of which were scarcely shorter than a belt knife and twice as sharp with thorns.

  Harwice thrust home his creation with the tip of his finger, and the last of the color bled from his flesh onto the fabric of the banner. He laughed softly. “Wind talent, Brother. Even if your dreamers cannot arouse Her,the use of green magic without Her choice will still give the alarm. And there is nothing in the Covenant to say that a man may not sound a warning horn when the Dark begins to waken.”

  5

  HARASKA STOPPED SUDDENLY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE homely task of kneading the bread dough. She stared down at the thick paste as though she had never seen its like before, and her tensely held body was stiff as a harvest corn dolly enlarged to human size.

  “Grandmam, those blue-winged thieves have taken more than half the fruit from the ground trees.” A high-pitched young voice announced the coming of a girl, who shook a basket which lacked several fingers’ depths of being full. She was trailed by two other children, each of whom wore a betraying mustache of berry juice.

  Sulerna of Firthdun had nearly reached the table when she realized that all was certainly not well with Haraska. Her grandmother’s hands were still deep in the dough she had been vigorously pummeling, but she was staring straight ahead. Staring? No, not quite that,for her yellow-green eyes were almost half closed, as if she longed for sleep.

  “Grandmam!” Sulerna called urgently, but she knew better than to touch the well-loved elder of the clan. The younger woman turned to her nephew and his sister, who had edged backward toward the door, the small girl pulling on the wide sleeve of the boy’s work smock. Yes, it was also so—Cathrina, being female, would be first to catch the faint touch of—Only this was not any vagrant breeze skipping out for the forest.

  “Get you Mam and Grandsire!” Sulerna ordered Cathrina. The girl dropped her basket on the table and ran to obey.

  Sulerna now moved to stand directly in her grandmother’s line of sight, but still the elder made no stir. Chilled, the young woman shivered and gave a quick glance into each corner of the kitchen, which was the heart of the clan; but there was nothing. The Wind she would have been able to detect herself—though her talent was not as great as some—but this had nothing to do with the Forest or such encounters as she had known before, of that she was sure.

  “Now, now—what’s to do, girl?” Fatha, her mother, a freshly pulled carrot in one earthy hand and impatience plain on her face, came in the door. Behind her, supported on the two sticks he had spent most of the winter carving to his liking, stumped Firthdun’s present master, her grandfather. Sulerna could only point to Haraska, for she had certainly never witnessed such behavior from her bustling and ever-efficient grandmam before.

  “Ach!” The carrot struck the floor as Fatha grippedher father’s arm, nearly oversetting him. “Girl”—she swung next upon Sulerna—“open the cupboard bed. Cathrina, run for Mistress Larlarn! Father—?” Some of the authority went out of her voice as she looked now to the dunmaster.

  “It is so.” The old man might have been answering some unasked question. “Do what is necessary.” He made no attempt to approach his statue-frozen wife but dropped onto the settle by the low fire, his eyes fastened on her.

  “Sulerna!” The snap in her mother’s voice brought the girl into action. “Free her hands from the dough, but gently; she must not yet be roused.”

  While Sulerna obeyed, her mother went to a nearby cupboard and, from its topmost shelf, brought out a small bottle. Its top was sealed with thick wax, and this she attacked swiftly.

  It was very quiet in the kitchen now—the girl could hear her grandmother’s heavy breathing, as if
the old woman strove to climb a hill in a battering wind. She helped her mother to support Haraska to the cupboard bed. The bottle had been given to the old man, and he was carefully shaking a drift of what looked to be leaves long dried to powder onto the blade of a small fire shovel.

  They made no attempt to undress Haraska but settled her onto the bedding, drawing up over her the patchwork quilt which was usually kept rolled at the bottom of the bed. To Sulerna, that quilt had always seemed strange, for she could make no sense of its patterns.

  Then a newcomer entered—Mistress Larlarn who, of all the clan, had the final word on illnesses. Shecame leaning forward a little, with one gnarled hand on Cathrina’s shoulder, as if the child now aided her as Grandsire’s sticks served him.

  However, in spite of her need of assistance—for she did require such—the old healer crossed the kitchen quickly. She surveyed Haraska for a long moment before she spoke in that soft voice which always sounded to Sulerna like the Wind sighing.

  “This one obeys a dream-call—yes. Such a summons comes not by day unless the need is great. Light the strengthfire.”

  Grandsire had thrust the small shovel closer to the hearth, and now there curled out smoke. It bore both the rich aroma of leaves being burnt in the fall and the faint perfume of wildflowers ablow in the spring, but it also held a third attar which seemed to be the breath of the Wind itself which none could ever set name to.

  As Grandsire released it to her, the girl accepted the shovel and returned with it and its burden to the cupboard bed. There Larlarn received the smoking implement and began passing it up and down over the inert woman, head to foot and foot to head, while her lips moved in words never spoken aloud in the company of the uninitiated.