Five Senses Box Set

by Andre Norton

  Silent, though shouting questions in his mind, the youth did as he was bidden, setting a small cup—hardly larger than two thimbles together—on the table, then filling it to the brim from the bottle Irasmus had requested. He nearly choked as he replaced the stopper, so strong and acrid were the fumes that smote his nostrils from both flask and cup.

  “To me, sluggard!” The Dark Lord’s voice rose a tone higher in his annoyance. (But which Irasmus did Fogar face? Would the two time streams blend now?)

  The boy pushed the cup carefully forward until it rested between the sorcerer’s hands, which lay on the edge of the table, unconsciously curved toward each other as if to enclose the globe no longer there. But even this final touch was not to be the end of Fogar’s service.

  “Now.” The mage bent his head once, deeply, as he spoke the word, less (Fogar thought) in acknowledgment of himself than in a seldom-rendered obeisance to the Dark Powers. “Bring from the fourth shelf the volume bound in scaled skin—the Book of Azhur-ben-M’pal.”

  The youth now moved toward the chamber’s high bookshelves and took down the called-for tome. He had handled this book on numerous occasions, but an infinity of uses would never, he knew, accustom him to the disquieting way in which the volume seemed to fit itself into his hand. Hurriedly, for fear he would drop the thing, he bore it back to Irasmus.

  “Now you will display your learning, though you have ever been thick of wit. Look for the Third Saying of Elptus—and do not play the dolt with me, for you have conned that page often enough in the past, though that mutton brain of yours never let you guess the power of what you mouthed.”

  The youth set the book on the table, where it obliged him further by opening of its own accord precisely to the page the sorcerer had specified. Fogar tensed, then forced himself to relax. Should his master’s blindness be only a ruse whereby to test him, an expression that could be interpreted as reluctance to serve could earn him the living-death sentence meted out to the hapless gobbes.

  “Read!” Irasmus commanded.

  Fogar shaped words whose meaning he had never known. Now, however, they resounded so painfully in his ears that they pierced into his very brain.

  “Assua den ulit.” It seemed to him that the acid tang of the liquid in the cup leaped up into his nose, then hurled itself down his throat and into his lungs. Were these words, then, so deep-dark-drawn that honest air could not be used to move them into speech? “Salossa.” He nearly gasped aloud, so agonizingly did that sound stab his brain. (But now he knew the truth, having seen far deeper into arcane knowledge than Irasmus had ever expected him to do. His recollection of an earlier visit to this room had been the false one—this was the memory to be kept!)

  The Dark Lord’s hand moved with extreme care. When his fingers closed about the tiny vessel, he did not raise it to his lips (nor, for which Fogar thanked theWind, thrust it at him) but rather drew it, by minuscule measures, across the table until it occupied the space the murky ball had rested.

  “Revaer,” the boy finished, then began what appeared to be a new sentence. “Appolenecter!” Marginal notes on the page indicated that these syllables formed either a command or a name, and the apprentice uttered them accordingly.

  “Appolenecter!” he repeated. And, in that moment, he had a flash of intuition about what he was reading. This was a calling; however, it could only be for one of the very minor demons, for the high Lords of Power demanded more pomp and the blood payment of an animal sacrifice (or worse) before they would deign to answer.

  A stirring curdled the air, and, between Irasmus’s hands, a small rodlike pillar of black smoke, with a dull redness smoldering in its grim heart, arose from the surface of the table.

  Moments later, a thing—Fogar could put no more accurate name to it than that, though it made him think of the stone monsters who leered from the corners of the tower—sat there cross-legged. The being was equipped with ash-gray wings that it clapped together in greeting, perhaps, above its round, hairless head. Though as grotesque as the gobbes, it displayed none of the demons’ servility, but rather bore itself with easy assurance.

  A mouth that ran nearly from one earlobe to the other opened, and the sound that issued was a taunting chuckle. To Fogar’s surprise, the words it uttered were in the common speech of the Valley. Did the creaturedo so in order that he, too, would understand any answer it would give—or did it seek thereby to put Irasmus in his place?

  “Thought you were a Third-Degree Master, did you?” the gargoyle jeered at the sorcerer. “Able to call up one of the Great Greats? Foolish man! Do you truly believe that, because you have harnessed a people to your will, you can now speak face-to-face with”—the imp touched a horned forehead with a taloned paw in a gesture of evident reverence—“Zaasbeen?”

  Irasmus’s hand balled into a fist. “Silence, nightling, or you will discover that I have claws longer than yours! Perhaps you would care to be pinned here for my pleasure?” Smiling meaningfully and raising the forefingers of both hands, the Dark Lord described in the still-hovering cloud two circles and connected them by a line. The resultant image, which hovered for a few seconds, glowing red, unmistakably suggested a pair of shackles.

  The creature was no longer grinning, and, when it spoke again, its voice was sullen. “Truth comes hard to your kind—yet still it exists. You have been challenged, yes, but not seriously enough—”

  “Challenged?” Irasmus said so softly that he was half whispering, and it was to himself that he spoke. “Who has challenged me? Those of the order are held by the bones of the Covenant, even as is the Power from the Forest—”

  “But with proper help,” chirped the small demon, “you seek now to invade that country—to pry at the very door of the Wind! Threaten as you like, rash mortal—the pits are already dug that will entrap your feet,for the talent of the Forest is many times greater than that which you have already encountered.”

  “I want but one truth from you, misbegotten imp,” the Dark Lord ground out between clenched teeth. “Where lies my weakness?”

  The fiendling’s head turned a fraction, allowing its gaze to flit over Fogar. The boy felt sure it was about to start spouting something that could prove very dangerous to him, and his fear returned. Fortunately, the thing, for reasons of its own, thought better of its impulse. Grinning again, it turned back to Irasmus, and its purple tongue thrust forth at the wizard in a rude gesture.

  “Look to—what lies behind you, mortal, for there lie the roots of what will grow into a mighty hedge of menace that will march toward you like those upa plants you sought to seed.

  “Oh, by the way”—the imp cocked its head on one side and assumed a politely conversational tone—“have you had any message from Yost lately?” It might have been inquiring about the weather.

  A flush rose to stain Irasmus’s thin cheeks. “The Covenant binds—” he began.

  “So it does,” the creature interrupted, “but it binds you, too. Ha! ha! Now let us to business.” The thing straightened a long neck and shrugged stone-colored shoulders as if impatient for this interview to be concluded. “You have one request—state it. There is that”—its wide nostrils expanded in distaste—“about this den of yours that does not encourage long visits.”

  If the small demon had hoped by that taunt to sting Irasmus into a rash reply, it failed. Instead, the magepushed the cup wordlessly toward his guest. The creature sniffed; then it smirked again.

  “Do not treat your toys so carelessly next time, wizard, for we do not have them in abundance.” Reaching forward, it closed tiny fingers about the vessel and, tilting the cup forward, spilled the contents onto the table-top. Both the sense-smiting odor and an oily smoke arose.

  The little fiend scooped up the stuff as if it were clay. Rolling this substance between its hands, it set the resultant mass back on the table. With a blow from its fist, it struck the upper end. The lump spun madly about, then took on a spherical shape.

  The imp laughed for the las
t time. “Make the most of this, man, for you shall not get another, no matter whom you cry to. And I wouldn’t be too quick, now, to call upon any from Beyond, if I were you!” With that, the imp vanished, as swiftly as it had come.

  24

  EVER SINCE THE SORCERER HAD BEEN LED BACK TO the tower by his apprentice, the gobbes had jabbered among themselves. In one of their rare cooperative efforts not brought about by Irasmus’s whip or words, they drove the slaves back to the pen, even though it was long till night. Then, once the bar was slammed into place at the stockade gate, the creatures gathered in a group, muttering fearfully, their attention fixed on the tower. Within their prison, the human slaves also joined together, the men and boys encircling the women in a vain attempt to convey a promise of protection to those who were wailing for vanished children.

  “The Forest beasts—they stole ’em!” The woman who cried out was rocking back and forth in an age-old expression of grief. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, but, though the eyes from which those had fallen were still brimming, they no longer showed the flatdullness set there by her hard and wanhope life. “They have taken my Solvage, my little Lenny—”

  As the grieving mother lapsed into sobbing, another of the women spoke. Her lank hair hung about a face touched by a frost of premature age. “The Forest . . .” she said slowly, then halted and began again. “Kin of the duns, have none of you dreamed?” She twisted her body about, trying to catch the eyes of everyone assembled there.

  “Dreams mean nothing,” sneered one of the men.

  The woman swung to face him squarely. “So, Numor—you have dreamed!”

  The farmer scowled, then shrugged. “What mean sleep seeings that come in bits and pieces but can never be drawn together when one wakes? Yes, Alantra”—he raised both hands to fend off an interruption—“I know the old tales that dreams were once speech, and learning, and freedom. But they were brought by the Wind—and does that still blow here, I ask you?”

  “But you have dreamed,” insisted Alantra. “And you, Ganda”—here she bespoke a third woman—“you were kin, though by a lesser bloodline, to Widow Larlarn.”

  Ganda seemed to draw in upon herself, hunching her shoulders as if she were being accused of some fault with punishing wrath to follow. Yet Alantra did not have long to wait for her answer. “So little have we become”—Ganda’s voice was a whip of scorn—“that there remains but one of the Old Blood—”

  “True!” broke in Numor triumphantly, as though Ganda’s words had proved his point. “And where lies she now, Alantra? In the very hands of that devil in the tower! Oh, we all heard the talk from old Haraska andLarlarn about the girl’s talent. Talent—pain!” He spat the word, then spat in truth. “Any talent we ever had has long since been leached out of us—”

  Destin, an older man, interrupted. “You bewail bitterly enough the loss of those who could speak so the Wind would listen. Yet who”—he stabbed out an accusing finger—“is the one with the blood of the Firthdun on his hands? Who was it, Numor, who raised his voice to say, ‘Our neighbors prosper while we wither,’ and ‘Sharing of goods must be equal’?”

  The farmer’s scowl grew deeper. “You swung a well-sharpened scythe that night also, Destin!”

  The older man nodded solemnly. “Yes, I also have my blood debt to be paid. But”—he squared his shoulders, accepting his folly and fate, and the years seemed to weigh less heavily on him for the taking up of that burden—“I shall pay it like a man, as I would advise you to do. If we have signed our death writ by slaying those very folk who might have saved us, then we must either save ourselves or die trying!”

  At those words, another mother raised a bleary-eyed face to the speaker and seized a fold of his ragged tabard as though clutching at hope. “But the children”—she looked about her wildly, as if by the very force of her will she could summon a missing small one to her—“must they, will they, too—”

  The answer that came was far from the one the beseeching woman was seeking; even more startling was its deliverer.

  “Dream,” said Antha, the mother who had first mourned. Her quavering voice firmed to a tone of near command as she realized the wisdom of her own words. “Dream, I tell you! For it is in our dreams, brokenthough they may be, that help lies—for both ourselves and our little ones. Now is the time for us to use what is left of our gifts, for the Dark One has had one of his own spells turn against him. Have we not seen this and felt the power that was loosed, though it did not blot us out? He has sucked us, over the years, yet he had still not might enough to achieve what he would!

  “Also”—Antha brushed sodden locks from her tear-trenched face and actually smiled—“the Forest has not moved against us to slay. You, Evlyn—you were close to the master when he and his pack returned. Did they wear any sign of the death of others upon them?”

  A murmur of beginning excitement ran through the group.

  “The gobbe work driver was not with them,” the young man, Evlyn, answered. “No sense can be made of their gabble, but they were angry—and what would fan their wrath higher than to have prey slip through their paws? The children had been sent almost to the verge of the Forest, the closest any of us have ventured since”—he bit his lip, as if he must speak in blood the next words—“that night of madness that set the stain of kin slaying upon us all.

  “You, Numor, have said that the Wind does not blow here. That may be so, since we raised our hands against one another; yet does that mean It breathes no more in any place? Whence came It of old, say the stories? From the Forest! Maybe, then, if our little ones reached the Green Country, they have found there a power that will welcome and ward them. At least they are free of this prison!

  “Yes.” Evlyn, like Destin, now stood up straighter asif reclaiming a role in his clan too long forgotten. “Antha is right. I will say it to all of you. I, too, have dreamed. Broken visions can be pieced together, if the dreamers work one with others, and perhaps each of us has some part of knowledge to be fitted to another. Think you of those scrapwork covers our women made in the duns. None of their cloth bits alone had value, but set edge to edge, they made a thing of use and beauty.

  “Surely some of us remember the old dream summonings, however vaguely; so let us throw open our minds and call—now, tonight! The master believes us fully drained, and, besides, he will be busy striving to recover what he has lost. What is more, that ball, through which he could spy out every part of our world, and that wand, with which he could blast us with his dark lightnings, are gone—at least for a time.”

  Agreeing with these words, those of the scattered homesteads drew together, moving toward one another. Thus, all who were left of Styrmir’s people sought sleep that night with every group of kinfolk linked by touch of mind with their own blood; while some of the women also held their arms as if encircling small persons not with them in the body. As they began to shape their quilt, albeit of dreams, they felt like a family huddled beneath such a coverlet, united in comfort shared despite a world grown cold.

  This was a night of the full moon. It shone on the Stone which, under its beams, was now afire with more of the rainbow-hued sparks than Falice had ever seen. So, she thought, remembering, she belonged to the Stone; for Hansa had found her here—Hansa, the nurturingone who, when death had striven to take her into its arms, had caught the girl up into her own. Thus the Sasqua female had sustained her life, and was that not what made a mother? Yet—those delicate bones to which Falice had paid proper respect were those of her mother of the body.

  Pensively, she went to stand at the head of that hidden resting place. What had she been like, that other life giver? And why—here came a Wind question, blown into her mind—why did the boy who answered Irasmus’s orders look like her? Was he kin? Perhaps, then, there were some among the children now sleeping in Sasqua nests who were also of her blood. She knew so little; she would learn more.

  Raw force had been unleashed in the world this day. It had been triggered by an a
ct of evil, she knew; however, it was also true that the use of talent draws power, both of Dark and Light. Certainly it had not been Falice’s imagination that she had, since that outpouring of might, sensed more purpose in the Wind’s song or been urged here this night.

  To make use of the Stone was why she had been summoned—she knew that as surely as if the Breath now shouted it aloud. Once again she closed in on the monolith, putting out her hands as if to reach through its surface to touch those visions drawn from another time and place.

  The window hole was open, and the girl could see through. She supposed that, as usual, she would have to wait for its choice of scene, for she had never had the power to decide what was to be viewed. Or—did she? Deciding to essay a trial, she concentrated on theface of that male who puzzled her so—the one she could never quite forget.

  Falice felt a flash of triumph as she found herself looking at precisely whom she wished to see. There was the young man, but he seemed drained of all energy and appeared to keep to his feet only because several of those warty monsters were giving him rough support as they dragged him down a flight of stairs. The creature to the fore of the group carried something that held light, dim but sufficient to show that the steps ended at an opening.

  A maw of blackness gaped beyond and, into that, the horrors threw their captive. Despite the dark, by the power of the monolith Falice was able to see that the prisoner was not alone in this hole. Against the wall huddled a girl who was chained to a bolt in the stone. She was certainly of the same race as the boy and the Forest’s foster daughter, though ill kempt and emaciated. However, though her posture bespoke wariness, she did not hunch herself into the slaves’ habitual cringe. Far otherwise—her eyes seemed to send out very faint rays of light, and her whole bearing spoke unmistakably to Falice of power.