Five Senses Box Set

by Andre Norton

  Cerlyn sank down into the sour straw, feeling suddenly weak, for the buoying energy of this latest vision had vanished with the going of the light. Now, she supposed, all that remained was to wait for the dark mage to move; for it was by his actions that all within the range of his much-desired mastery would either be freed, or—But she refused to follow that fearful thought, which was a temptation to despair, born of the Dark to drain her confidence and, thus, her strength.

  The gobbes had again thrust Fogar into Irasmus’s chamber. Once more, the wizard had his hands curved about the globe the imp had fashioned—though this new sphere was smaller and more sullenly murky than the first—and he did not look up as the demons shambled out, leaving their charge behind. The apprentice could not be sure, even now, how keen was his master’s sight, for his eyes still bore that shuttered appearance they had shown since the explosion at the spiral. The boy, for his part, was scarcely anxious to attract the mage’s attention, remembering what he—or that shadow of the shadow lord in the other-time place—had warned him about tools which twice failed. In Irasmus’s view, Fogar thought grimly, he could certainly be deemed such a worthless—and dangerous—thing.

  Hunching before the table, the sorcerer had bent hishead to bring his eyes very close to the cloud-cored ball. Moisture trickled from beneath the outer edges of his lids, as though he were putting his physical sight to a tremendous strain. It looked very likely to the youth that the would-be power-summoner still suffered from some degree of blindness. Yet the Dark Lord’s injury, whatever it might be, apparently meant nothing to him as he stared into that sphere, for he plainly perceived therein something that was both a cause for fury—and for fear.

  Then he began to draw on the wood, inches from where the globe rested, a series of runes. Fogar was too far away to recognize any of them, but he somehow knew that Irasmus, concentrating all the talent he possessed, was reaching further than he ever had before, both down into himself and into—The Place Not Named. He next commenced muttering to himself, or perhaps only his lips moved, for no sound reached the youth.

  The actions of the mage absorbed Fogar’s attention fully at first, but gradually he became aware of power rising within himself. The gobbes had left him neither chained nor bound, and he suddenly recalled that they had seemed almost reluctant to touch him when they had dragged him from Cerlyn’s cell. Thus his hands were free, and now the tips of his fingers began to tingle, the itch rising up his palms to his wrists. He recognized it as the same feeling that had reached him from some of the stones during those hours he had labored to build the spiral. This sensation was not that born of the loathsome aura of those Dark-hearted discs he had handled but was, instead, a warm, invigorating flow of force—not strong, yet steady. The apprentice was sureit was not caused by his master’s activities but that, quite the contrary, it ran counter to them.

  Suddenly Irasmus jerked up his head, and his still-crooked forefinger froze, leaving a rune partway sketched. The darkness in the globe had thickened, but not enough to conceal the lines of red that had begun to form at its top and spread downward, evenly spaced, until they covered the upper half of the sphere with a glowing web.

  Now the wizard did look at Fogar, though his captive could not see even a suggestion of true eyes in the sockets turned toward him but only the emptiness of twin pits. His lips shaped a snarl, and the hand, which had rested nearest the globe, arose from the table, in the swift motion of one who hurled an object, straight at his student. The luminescent lines broke from the ball to cleave to Irasmus’s gray flesh, clinging so only for a moment, then spinning out through the air toward Fogar.

  The youth had no idea of proper defense. He could only raise both hands in front of him. It was at that moment, however, that the tingling faded, and he tasted defeat before he had ever had a chance to essay his strength. The blood-colored strands enlarged as they sped, assuming the likeness of a net. He tried to shift his feet, to turn, to run, only to find himself fast rooted until those filaments lashed themselves about him, their ends weaving over and around. When they touched their intended victim, he could no longer see them but only feel the bonds they now laid upon him.

  Irasmus’s predatory smile looked well sated. “You will keep, dirt spawn. You hold yet within yourself that which I would learn; however, if I do not—why, whowould be a more fit offering to the Great Dark One than his chosen son?”

  Abruptly, as if Fogar had ceased to exist, the mage turned back to study the sphere and to trace occult symbols around it.

  The boy made no attempt, as yet, to struggle against the invisible netting that held him. He was becoming more convinced by the moment that he had not been brought to this chamber solely by the whim of his master but rather by the workings of some other Power for whom he had a mission to perform. A high, distant drone hummed in his head—speech? The sound of an animal? No—a summons to those with ears to hear. Fogar struggled to listen as he never had before.

  He did not even have to close his eyes to see two faces he had often glimpsed, though indistinctly, in the broken dreams that had so frustrated him. Now, however, those countenances were not misty and ill defined. Their eyes, in especial, were bright, so bright they transfixed his own with their beams. . . .

  Memory showed Fogar mind pictures of pages of Irasmus’s arcane texts he had once conned without understanding. The boy began to comprehend exactly what purpose drove his master now; and he perceived, as well, that through him two others were reading and learning in turn. Of them, however, he had no fear; for now he also knew this: he had been born with a gift that could always distinguish the Light from the Dark.

  As those pages fluttered by his inner sight, he, too, read—and understood. His body grew taut as he was made inexorably aware of the battle that must come soon—and the world-altering power of such a clash.

  At this realization, Fogar began to breathe in shortgasps. Irasmus’s ball-spun bonds were drawing tighter as if they would squeeze the life from him even as they forced him to yield up the modest knowledge he possessed.

  The boy ran a tongue tip over fear-dried lips. He could not speak aloud, for the web that cocooned him would not permit speech. However, he might—

  No words Fogar had ever learned could explain the instinct that led him to attempt what he now tried, but he read in the two intent faces before him an urging, a virtual commanding, that he do this thing. Then those twin watchers were gone. In their place was left the mind picture of a mighty tree, wide boled, thick leaved; and within him sounded, silent except to his own ears and every cell of his body, the singing of the Wind among its branches.

  The youth was now a part of that vast growth, for the Breath opened the way for him. Watching below those swaying branches—for his awareness radiated into them from the trunk of the tree like spokes from a central hub—he saw movement, a passing cavalcade of the inhabitants of the Green Realm.

  To its fore strode the great Forest beasts, marching nearly as one; behind them followed other creatures, even beings no thicker than shadows; and all were heading in one direction. At the head of the company, far more diminutive than those she led, danced a girl. She was girdled with trailing vines and crowned by a circlet of flowers, and about her played a glow of green light the color of new leaves.

  Only for an instant was Fogar able to hold that unity with the Forest, that vision of its children and their—guardian? goddess? That moment, however, was longenough for him to understand that he would not fight alone when the Dark and the Light crossed swords, for, though he did not know the ones he had just beheld, he would swear they were allies.

  “Sooo—” The apprentice was brought rudely back to the reality of the wizard’s chamber and his own immobility therein by Irasmus’s drawing out of that word. The master’s tone held not only satisfaction but triumph. “So shall it be!”

  He arose from his chair, stretching as might any man who has sat overlong; then he laughed openly and patted the tabletop not far from the globe (tho
ugh not, the boy observed, quite touching the thing). His mouth gaped in an undignified yawn, which he strove to stifle with one hand; with the other on the table, either to support or guide himself, he came to stand in front of his prisoner.

  “Demon’s Son!” Irasmus laughed again. “Well did I name you! I trust your illustrious father will find you a suitable gift.” His predatory smile was back—and hungry once more.

  Fogar nearly reeled, for, again, it was as if those cords that seemed to have melded themselves to his flesh were closing on his heart. Yet the Power that held him would not let him fall.

  “Young fool, you might have been among the great, had not the seeds of the Old Knowledge been brought to flower within you. Yet I must say you make a tidy package, and here you shall await your—delivery—at the meeting arranged.”

  With this final threat, Irasmus left the room, walking with such care that the boy was now sure the sorcerer had suffered some impairment to his sight. Theintended present from the lesser Dark Lord to the Greater, tied with a most unusual ribbon, was left where he had first been bound.

  However, though the master might believe so, he was not this time abandoning a helpless prisoner. Deliberately, Fogar closed his eyes. He did not try to summon from memory those dream faces but instead concentrated with all the energy he could bring to bear on that vision of the Windtossed tree. It was—must be—a guide. Even as he had blended his awareness with that of the Forest patriarch, so had the Wind once merged with all the life of this land, its very Breath. So it would be again! he thought with the forcefulness of a vow. What aid he, captive as he was in this web of sorcery, might bring to the fulfillment of that oath, Fogar did not know, yet swear he did.

  Holding that image of the Wind-made-visible, the Breath-stirred tree, as clearly in his mind as he could, the youth began to trace the lacing of those invisible bonds and try to loosen them. As he did so, that droning hum that had heralded the vision thrummed once more in his ears, growing steadily deeper and stronger, until he knew that he would never again be without its song.

  It was done. Gifford let his head fall forward to rest between his hands. As far as those in the Place of Learning could reach, it was done.

  “The boy is more than we believed.” Yost sounded almost awed. “Irasmus shaped him—or strove to—but the strength of spirit that was his birthright would not let him yield to the Dark.” Then, feeling like a tactician shifting his skill at strategy from a field where victoryseemed sure to one on which battle was yet to be joined (and where, what was more, the very identity of the enemy was in doubt), the archmage addressed the other matter that had long perplexed the scholars. “Loremaster, perhaps He whom the dark mage strives to summon is not any of Those we guessed; for the Light has revealed that none within the First Hierarchy of the Dark have been on the move.”

  “Whether that be truth or not,” the archivist replied in a voice ragged with fatigue, “our hell-bent one will use the door-opening spell. The burden of battle will rest most with those two of the Old Blood who are his captives and upon her whom the Wind Wakener has chosen. To us is left only the watching. We can interfere no further, for by the Covenant these three are in the right: they strive to defend what is their Spirit-given own.”

  Overcome by exhaustion, the archivist slumped forward, his head dropping onto the crossed arms which rested on his ever-overflowing desk, and was asleep. His superior, nearly as weary, did not rise from his chair. This would be the reckoning; for the mortals upon whom they had gifted powers now stood at the crossroads of destiny and would have to set foot down either the Path of Light or the Path of Darkness.

  However, thought Yost as his own eyelids began to droop, even if the Light prevailed in the coming conflict, the mages themselves would have a heavy price to pay for the lapse in vigilance that had allowed evil to creep in among them. It had fed at their board, lain in their beds, and—worst of all—taken their learning, which was intended to heal, and turned it to the hurt of the world. The old innocence had been violatedbeyond return or repair, and Valarian, so long wrapped in the soft robe of peace, must now resume its war gear and mount stronger wards and guards. Such suspicion would be torment to live with, a bird of ill omen croaking from the battlements at all hours of the day and night. The archmage breathed a sigh from his heart for all that had been lost as he slipped into sleep.

  26

  FALICE STOOD BEFORE THE STONE. THE TIME, TO judge by the slant of what little sunlight could reach this glade, was at least midday, and she had slept only a short while after her vicarious visit to the tower. Yet she felt neither fatigue nor—oddly enough—either hunger or thirst. It was rather as if, during that brief rest, she had been fed in body and spirit and thereby renewed—no, more than renewed, reborn in some strange way.

  As the Forest girl had arisen from her nest at the base of the monolith, she had unconsciously closed her fingers around and brought up a straight stick. This object was not brittle or brown like a dead branch but supple as a living tree limb; and it bore a green cast on its surface. As Falice turned it wonderingly to and fro in the light, she noticed that it seemed to drink in the rays that touched it, becoming a more intense green, like a young plant thirsting for the golden rain of thesun. When an especially bright shaft of sunlight struck the branch, so vivid was the answering flare of color that she seemed to hold a spindle of green fire. The wand was a gift—yes, she was sure of that—but from whom? She might never know, but she was certain of something else: this was a symbol of the power of the Light, as well as a weapon she must be prepared to use against the Dark.

  Huge furred forms were squatting on their heels with the patience of those other Forest giants, the trees, about her. The glade could hold only a few of the creatures’ massive bodies, and the company stretched back and away behind the curtains of the branches. The human girl was seeing gathered here more Sasqua than she had ever dreamed existed. As she stood, holding the branch radiating its green glow, their clubs struck the ground until the earth throbbed like a mighty heart, and the Wind arose to whistle around the Stone, passing in its path across her shoulders to form an invisible cloak.

  Falice could think of but one reason for such an assembly, and she asked the Breath to carry her question to her foster sisters and brothers: “Does the Evil Lord move?”

  It was Hansa, appearing almost immediately before her, who answered with Wind touch.

  “He moves, yes, because fear drives him. He does not wish to lose all he has gathered, so he will strive to draw more strength to himself—from the lightless land. We are the Forest Born, and it has been given to us to bear the Wind through those walls and wards the Dark One has set. But it is you, my heart’s cubling, who are to lead; for you are of the Valley, and his barrierswere not reared to repel your kind. Following you, we shall feed our gifts to the strengthening of your talent—you, who now hold a thing of power that will open the path for us all.

  “And these”—the Forest’s daughter waved a generous hand, and small pale faces, belonging to the children who had been rescued, popped up here and there, looking like sudden mushrooms sprouting from the dark loam of Sasqua fur about them—“these little ones shall seek out their kin. They, too, are now the children of the Wind, and they can carry much of its power back to their own people, breathing its life into what talent remains among them.”

  Thus they went forth, slipping between the trees Sasqua fashion, in no straight line. It was well into the afternoon when they reached that torn-up stretch of tillage where the youngsters had labored to seed the hell-rooted plants. Even in so short a time, one noisome knob of stalk had appeared, but this was promptly crushed by club blows.

  Out into the dead Valley of Styrmir strode Falice. She felt resistance for a moment, as if she had come up against an invisible wall. Like a warrior hacking his way through the press of the enemy, the girl used the branch wand she carried to slash the air up, down, and across, calling the Wind with confidence as she did so. From the blighted
land about them came the faintest of answers, which grew in strength as those from the Forest moved forward.

  Now the youngsters, their bodies wreathed with vines and flowers, raced ahead of her, their goal the distant staked walls which contained the slave huts. Movement already showed among the hovels, as theValley folk hastened forth to meet their children and—a blessing even more unlooked for—the Wind, and to be refreshed and replenished, even as the drought-cracked countryside around them swallowed thirstily what it had so long been denied. Of the gobbes there was no sign, and the people were taking advantage of their overseers’ absence to arm themselves, albeit crudely, with the same tools they had been forced to use in labor.

  The tower, however, still stood, a black curse shouted into a sky which was, for the first time in the living memory of many thereunder, beginning to clear. Around the fortress wheeled the wizard’s pet carrion birds, screeching loudly. A sudden commotion below made them break their circling pattern to string out behind the band of demons that now emerged in tight formation from the gate. The creatures prodded along two prisoners in their midst, but even from a distance Falice could see that the pair held their heads high as they were driven and seemed to wear their chains as threads to be broken. At the head of this macabre march rode Irasmus on his rawboned mount, cherishing close to his breast that second murky globe.

  The Forest’s fosterling quickened pace, and her furred brothers pounded behind her. She knew what the sorcerer was planning to do now: he intended to spend blood from his captives to tempt the appetite of the Great Dark One he wished to summon. And his choice for that abominable ritual was the very ground of the Midwinter Feasting where, so long ago, those of Firthdun had been slain by their own kin.

  None of the troop from the tower either turned head or appeared in any other way to note the coming of theForest army. Nor did the Wind now blow before Falice and her foster folk but rather ensphered them, bearing them forward within itself like reflections on a bubble and evidently thus offering concealment.