by Andre Norton
Elias and his field partner nodded their heads; they were wearied to the point that not even anger could rouse them any longer. There seemed nothing to talk about save their situation; mostly, when they gathered at night, there was no talk at all. The women sat with their children in their arms or else with empty hands, for there was very little to be done, save to spend each waking hour from dawn to dusk with the men in the fields, giving all the encouragement they could to crops that were hopelessly stunted.
This day, the laborers had found another break in the hedge along the road, but one which had plainly not been made by human hands. A plant had grown without their noticing—sheltered by the briars and reaching long roots under their defenses—and had discharged a poison so that the wholesome vegetation withered and died.
Such was the plant’s tenacity that the field-workers had had to change partners several times as they had struggled with it. The result was that some now bore bandaged hands covering skin blistered by its acid sap.Yes, Sulerna thought dully, it could well be that Irasmus had no reason to destroy them himself. He had only to wait until the country the dunsfolk had served so long did it for him. Even their kin might bring fire at night and, using crude weapons, drag them down.
Tired—the girl was always tired. She knew, and could no longer refuse it, that often what was best for eating that day found its way into her bowl. Her hands supported her fast-growing belly, and the weight of it seemed to drag her ever forward. Ethera displayed a similar shape, but perhaps she was more strong of bone, for she did not appear to be so heavily freighted.
Both of them drank the brews Haraska and Larlarn prepared. Such potions did, indeed, relieve the aches in the back and the bouts of nausea that had earlier wracked them both but that had wrung Sulerna out into a week of near collapse.
What hurt Sulerna most, was that, when she took her place among the workmen in the fields or helped with a task that needed more than one pair of hands, the others held aloof.
Jacklyn avoided her as much as possible. He was no longer a heedless little boy, and, even as time had added inches to his height, so had lines graven themselves around his mouth and eyes such as should never mar the face of any youth. His aunt had spoken of this to Grandmam, and she had been honestly answered.
“He feels that he owes a kin debt, Sulerna, and at his age he knows not how to repay it. He will not talk to the oldfather, nor to his own father, and to speak to women is less possible, for he believes he has lost the right to approach them.”
The girl was truly roused, then, to think of somethingbeyond her own condition. “But no fault in this was his! How could Jacklyn stand against—against a man who had already knocked him senseless at the first blow? He carries no debt—”
“Save,” Haraska reminded her, “he was where he should not have been, and you were drawn after him. Do not try to argue with him, girl. Jacklyn may be only a youth in years, but it is a man’s pride that keeps him going through adversity. And he may yet have another—and braver—part to play.”
So the days passed leadenly. Sulerna tried to continue working with her needle, as did Ethera, on tiny clothing cut out of what material could be spared. Yet between them stood a wall, for her sister-in-law was free and happy—while she was chained by a Dark will. And now she had ill dreams, at times, to torment her at night.
Then one night she crept out by herself, urged by a call she could not understand, to the Moon’s shrine. There—under the waxing light—she lay down, and she dreamed.
Fire and darkness were all about her, and pain was within, but through it there came the Wind’s own command: Run! Run! And Sulerna could see the goal that had been set her: the edge of the Forest beyond. She thought she could not keep to her feet, such agony lanced through her, yet somehow, though the Breath of Life did not support her, she ran. She fell, just where the trees rose about her. Ahead, a tongue of green light stood upward. Then she was on her knees, while branches beat against her bare buttocks and the pangs continued to wrack her.
Where she sank to the ground at last she could nottell, save that about her was something of the White Lady who walked the skies. And she knew that all would be well for more than Sulerna alone, whose great fatigue would be gone forever.
There was another bearer of burdens in Styrmir—one whose patience grew thin as he sought along strange paths for that portal he must have.
The book with its bristle-hide cover was much in his hands, for most of that lore Irasmus had stolen from the Place of Learning was of neither use nor interest in a quest like this.
In those days, he lived for nights when the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed, darting livid fingers out of the air over the Forest and reaching for the valley. Strangely, however, when those flashes beat around the nearly barren land, it seemed that they were lessened, vanquished.
Irasmus was certainly not disturbed by such petty expressions of spite, as he deemed them. But the gobbes could not be urged out of shelter. He had, at present, no reason to see how far he was able to assert his authority over them. His trust in their attachment to him, though, was now always in question at the back of his mind.
During the storms he chose to ride toward the Forest. Like ashes swept aloft by the heat from a roaring fire, small flakes of power were borne by those tempests. Irasmus had early created a system within himself to draw in any power, making it his own—or so he believed.
To the Dark Lord, the howling of the Wind carried no message save, perhaps, for a frustration that he himselfwas not its prey. However, the Forest held a strange wildness.
Irasmus bit his lip as he rode. During the past summer, he had, with infinite care, fashioned another wand, and wore it belted on as a soldier would bear a sword.
But he did not draw the wand forth on these night rides. Instead, at intervals, he reined in his frightened horse and tried to draw a greater measure of power to himself by force of will, attempting to see into that dark mass which might hold—anything.
It was on the third such excursion that he brought himself to dare what he had long thought of but had not been able to force himself to try. He drew the wand, and the rain slid along it in a strangely thickened flow as if it had attracted the notice of the storm.
He waited until the dying away of the last bout of lightning. Then, as one might employ an outsized brush, he used the wand to draw in the air. Thus—and thus—and thus—
His mount had stopped its fidgeting and stood as still as a statue. Irasmus’s own body, however, was so tense with a mixture of boldness and fear that he felt nothing at that moment but the wand, keeping all his concentration on what that opened in his mind.
The answer he expected came only in part and raggedly, as if it lacked the force to manifest as he would have it: an anchorage to a source of power greater than he had ever hoped to contact. The wand wavered in his grip, and at last he either had to sheath it or drop it. But the last glimmer of power radiance was gone.
The mage sat hunched in his saddle. No, he dared not give way to disappointment—he still had his resources. The lightning cracked one last great bolt as if to strike him down; then it was gone, but it seemed for an instant to leave the faintest trace in the night, pointing in his direction.
It could well be a warning but, even more, it might just be the goad to his memory, the guide to his way of thought. Where could such a signal lead him?
The wizard’s horse came to shivering life under him, and he swung back toward the tower, unaware of a snap-light glow near the ground as he cantered past a thick clump of rusberries.
“He is gone.” The fury of the storm easily covered that whisper.
Five of them, stinking wet, were huddling together for meager protection from the rain. This was not too daring a meeting. It had been learned some time ago that, since the invasion of the Forest, the gobbes were no longer so brisk about their master’s business. Certainly the apparently mindless service rendered by the land grubbers might have led their overseers to b
elieve there was no reason that their charges need be watched too strictly. Not, however, that any of the Valley folk gathered there this night did not hold his or her life in both hands for such recklessness, as they well knew.
The meeting was not one of tightly bound kin from a single dun. As the farmsteads had been driven into the earth, so had their members’ identities themselves cracked and broken. Those who had once been looked upon with respect might no longer hold any positionsbut, rather, listen to the suggestions of herders or harvest hands. The scales which held the old life had become completely unbalanced.
“Why did he come?” The voice was that of a young woman. “Has he been hunting?”
“He would have those demons of his on our trail,” growled her neighbor in the darkened hollow which hid but did not shelter them.
“What he seeks lies in the Forest. He did not send those misbegotten monsters there—that we all know— but they have followed his will since then. The Forest—”
“The Forest”—this was a much older voice, that of a man who paused to vent a hacking cough before he could continue—“there dwells the Wind. Would you say that such a man-beast as he of the tower has dealings with the Great Breath?”
The Wind! Instinctively, from what had been learned in early childhood, their heads came up, hoping for that light touch on cheek or brow or the warm rapture of being, out of their many separate entities, gathered into a complete living whole.
But there came no Wind—only the slanting squalls of rain and the fury which raged over the Forest and was all too readily heard.
“Who called the Wind?” Once again the man with the cough posed a question. “Well you know who keeps green growth in their fields, food on their table. There has been no treading to the nothingness we know done to them!”
“If”—now the young woman spoke once more—“they have some pact with him, then why would he strike the maid Sulerna?”
There was a bark of harsh sound, very far from laughter. “Are you, indeed, a believer of that tale, sister? We all knew who led evil in upon us. And did not that same power take him up and make of him cupbearer and close servant? Yurgy is of their blood, and undoubtedly now also of the wizard’s. How do we know that that boy has not been many times a messenger, offering this term and that to tempt the folk of his foster dun? And who dares to swear that Sulerna did not look upon him warmly so that he acted as the Dark Ones always do?”
“None has seen him since,” suggested another male voice.
The cougher hacked again, then spat. “Perhaps he had served his turn and has been sent hence, even as were those gobbes. Motram, here, saw what became of them—”
“I saw.” The answer was stark, and the memory it evoked was enough to silence them for a moment.
Then another spoke. “This asking and not-answering does not get us to what has brought us here. Jadgon, why the summons?”
“Are we humans, or are we the spineless worms who bear allegiance to him? Winter lies before us! The last of the herds have been slaughtered, and three quarters of the smoked meat taken by the gobbes. The devils rake from our baskets the long roots and the ball ones, too, which are the best we can harvest now. The bushes have been stripped—once again, under the gobbes’ watch—and then the berry baskets have been taken. Even our dogs have been eaten by those horrors, and when has anyone seen a bird—save those raw-headed death eaters that serve him? We cannot live onthis sick soil and nothing else—unless we are worms, in very truth!”
A murmur of agreement rose from all around him.
“Do we then,” Jadgon pressed on, fired by the passion of youth and a just cause, “go up against him with such weapons as we can shape from flail or scythe?”
“You forget—the Forest.” The woman who spoke did so quietly, almost in reproof.
“What of the barrier there?” snapped one of her hearers.
“Garstra brought back a full branch of gold plums she found lying within her own land, as if borne there by no chance but on purpose. Little Zein came upon a pile of more cones than he could carry, though the other boys brought them all in. The gobbes entered the Forest to kill, but we have kept the old peace as best we can. Who knows what may have noticed that?”
“Do not pin your hopes on Wind swings now! We are lost to the Wind. Or”—and now this voice came close to the snarl of one of the long-lost dogs—“perhaps it is one more pleasure of the Dark One to tempt us. No, we keep to our plans.”
“But who will be holding MidWinter this year?” questioned the woman who had spoken of the Forest.
The one afflicted with the cough gave his harsh bark. “Who? Why, them as had a harvest—that’s your answer, Rasmine. And all know who that may be!”
“They had to kill most of their herds—”
“Smoked the meat, they did, though—and I didn’t see none of it going to the Tower as tribute, neither! They picked their fruit clean, and be sure that’s well put away, too. The wheat fared not so well—but they’ve had a harvest, yes, they have. And ‘tis onlyright that they share it with their neighbors, all square and proper. Or maybe we can move them, like, to just give us the whole. Now, spread the word—we’ve plans to be made!” And the disposed scattered to carry the word.
16
THOUGH THE PLACE OF LEARNING WAS WROUGHT OF very ancient stone, and, outside on the mountain peaks, winter raged, there was always warmth in the rooms most used, just as provisions seemed to ever be stretched so that no one went underfed from the table. Yet this stronghold was not the serene place for study and service of the Light that it had been built to be those nigh-uncountable centuries ago.
Certainly there was no peace for those who went about their tasks with determined energy. From novice to archmage, the brothers were still searching, but their seeking now lay in a different direction.
Gifford had lost more weight, and his once well-fitted clothing was belted in in rolls and creases about him. He had also developed a nervous habit with his right hand when he sat, as if he were quickly turning the pages of an unseen book.
“They move.” The terse statement was made by Fanquer, who had seemed, during these past months, to become once more the fighting man he had been in his far-off youth—even though he wore no mail nor belted on any sword.
“Yes.” That single monosyllable came from Arch-mage Yost, who had appeared to take on something of the stiff negativity of a phantom.
Gifford lifted his head. The seeds of tears were planted in his eyes, and he did not try to look straight upon any now gathered there.
“No choice.” The old archivist’s voice was as broken as if he stood by the death stone of all he had cherished most. “He has tried—through the Night Steps—to invade us three times. Now he returns to his earliest plan, which was hardly more than an idle fancy when first he thought of it. It must have come home to him that Styrmir, in the end, may answer only to those of its oldest breed. Thus, he has determined to have one such to stand at his right hand.”
“Only there shall be two,” corrected the woman Yvori. “I say to you now, sisters and brothers in the Light, that if one of the twain be taken by Irasmus, the second must go free—and that means only to the Forest.”
Harwice was pacing back and forth along the wide stone hearth. “The Forest may not welcome—”
“Painter,” Yvori interrupted him with a smile, “do not let your fears color you a picture of the future in the somber tones of the storm cloud, without a thread of gold from the returning sun! We of this place have pursued the nurturing of our talents through instruction.However, there are those, and always have been, who are born with the gifts we must strive hard to develop. I say this: the time of death and blight has run too long. We were told by Her Who Calls the Wind that only a people can produce those of their own kind to save them. Now the day arrives when Irasmus will act—but we, also, shall be ready. We cannot save the boy child—the dark mage has woven his web too well. But for a girl child, there is the Moon Gift.”
Gifford’s sorrow still filled his eyes. “Sister, it is well understood that, at times, your own powers wax in a different fashion from that which is taught here. What do you plan?”
She who was known as the Dreamgate, did not answer him—rather, she asked him a question. “Can dreaming still reach into that place?”
The loremaster lifted his hands in a gesture of despair. “I have tried—”
“You have tried, but what we would do is of women’s secrets, and for that I call upon my sisters here.” Four of the cloaked figures moved silently forward. “When the time comes, Gifford, you shall dream, for that is your talent, but power shall be added. It would seem, from what we have heard, that these poor wretches of the Valley plan a Mid Winter feast. Irasmus allows this because he is aware that, at such a time, the remnants of the Valley folk’s powers are stronger, and he can milk them for himself. Now he wants all the power he can summon; also, his slaves have played into his hands—”
“You mean this plan of theirs to sack Firthdun during the feasting?” Fanquer asked. “Irasmus wouldallow that—yes, I can see why. For, with them under his hand at last, he can get this unfortunate whom he will fashion into being his shadow and his lesser self.”
“They move in two days’ time.” Yost broke his silence.
“And together we shall be ready to do what must be done,” returned Yvori calmly. “Remember you: two deaths will pay, but that which is so dearly bought shall be hallowed by the Light.”
Thus the scholars agreed, prepared—and waited.
The Wind had not yet driven snow to blanket the countryside, yet the frozen earth mounted a chill assault against all who moved. And tonight there were many who tramped stolidly across the ravaged and befrosted land. Man, woman, and child, each carried armloads of wood and baskets of now-edible dried grass. This year, they bore no sheaves of wheat, nor any other stuff which had once represented Styrmir’s wealth. But what they could bring, they did.
