by Andre Norton
The gibbering of the gobbes fought the song of the Wind until the thing before the sorcerer held up a hand as though hushing—children?
“Irasmus!” It was the Nether Being who spoke—and not merely spoke, but nearly whooped with laughter. “So you still believe you can call up one of the Dread Lords? Stupid, you are, as well as blind! He whom you would have stand before you is no longer concerned with this world. Why should He be, when He holds half a hundred such poor pickings in Hishand?” The creature thrust forth a taloned paw in cup shape, then lifted it to its maw, showing how its own master—and, doubtless, itself as well—could scoop up all before it, suck the life juice out of them, and toss their husks away.
“Vastor!” The wizard still stood tall and defiant. “We have dealt together before. Only look upon these I have to offer now”—he indicated his two captives—“are they not far sweeter morsels, truly fit to your tooth?”
The Being snorted, a sound Cerlyn thought was meant either for mirth—or mockery.
“Last time you set my table,” it replied, “the ‘morsels’ were two merchants with no talent—a meager meal, indeed, and hardly an even exchange for what you asked from me.” The Thing turned its head a fraction to regard the gobbes. Most of those creatures had fallen to their knees and were holding out misshapen hands toward Vastor. As the great ghoul’s eyes swept over them, they raised a long, low wail.
Again the newcomer laughed. “It would seem that my dear offspring find but scant good in your service, little man. And if you cannot persuade my get to serve you as you wish, how dared you believe that one of the Great Dark Lords would come at a crook of your finger?
“You would give me these”—a flick of talon acknowledged the offering of Fogar and the girl, who now stood together, his arm still about her waist. “You would need to have one of the Great Ones of the Light pinioned here to bring Him whom you just invoked! Well, perhaps for a brief time, they can serve me—if you will bargain again—”
The fearful moaning of the gobbes arose higher; itwas plain that such a transaction was one they wanted none of. Their sire made a warning gesture, and their voices fell silent. Now Vastor’s burning gaze began to survey his two tidbits more closely, critically.
Cerlyn felt Fogar’s inner excitement. What, she wondered, would he do if that Thing, so much greater than the gobbes, did accept the proffered sacrifice? Suddenly she mind-spoke, clearly and loudly, at a range only the Wind could give her.
“Our weapons, together—” She shifted position a little. What “weapon” her companion might actually bear she could not guess, but she was aware that he had come here armed in some fashion.
Cerlyn balanced that bowl of green which was and yet was not on her two hands, well within the boy’s reach. In turn, his right hand moved, lifting into the weird light of the cup a smoothed round of rock on which blazed a coating of colored sparks. Bringing the stone down swiftly, he thrust one end into her bowl.
At the same instant, in from beyond the circle shot a swift spear of green light, more vivid and visible than the hue of the girl’s half-unseen cuplet. Once more Falice cried aloud, “Ayyheee!”—
—to have her call met and melt into a similar invocation, then mingle with the sudden Wind that whipped up from that meeting of bowl and rock.
Irasmus backed away, half turning his back upon the monster that had come to his summoning. His eyes were mere slits, as if he must strain to the utmost to see.
“Take them!” he almost shrieked. “Are they not ripe with talent you can savor?”
His servants, meanwhile, had edged away from the two captives, some of them crawling almost on theirbellies in an effort to wind around the three and reach the dimensional opening before their fearsome father. One of the demons screeched aloud a command or battle cry in his own tongue and, catching up a length of the prisoners’ discarded chains from the ground, swung it like a lash.
Beyond the edge of the unlight cast by the Great Ghoul, and behind the Forest people and Falice, the Valley folk, who had once bent beneath other lashes wielded by the gobbes, began to circle. Their wheeling movement drew and strengthened the Wind. However, its full force did not reach those within the circle. What they felt was a breeze, not a blast.
The sorcerer’s features were twisted into a mask nearly as monstrous as the face of any of his servant fiends.
He shouted: “Blood and power—blood and power! Yours—for the taking!”
“Mine?” The ghoul’s disbelief was evident. “But you did not summon me. You impudently—and imprudently—sought to raise one of the Great Old Ones! If you cannot control your own spells, how can I know this is not a trap?”
Moisture—red moisture—had gathered in the corners of the mage’s eyes, and bloody droplets now trickled down his skull-tight cheeks. To all who beheld him, his struggle was plain to read.
“You wish more of my little ones?” Vastor gestured with a casual paw at the groveling gobbes. From close to the ground, where those miniatures of his awesome self were abasing themselves, rose a piteous whine, as the creatures protested his disposal of their persons.
Irasmus held out his hand, on which the black-heartedball still rested at eye level. That taunting question from a being so much less than the One he had summoned awoke in him a rage great enough that his body shook with the effort to contain its force. His mouth opened, and he stuttered out a Word that rang like a thunderclap through the close air.
Falice was keeping a careful eye upon the demons. Most of them lay still now, their warty hands pressed over their outsized ears. Their sire, however, remained calm enough, viewing the Dark Lord’s performance with the air of one enjoying a show in which he had no part. The wizard spluttered and started to shake as he called up from their depths all the power he had gathered and guarded so jealously—the talent he had leached from those he considered helpless.
Now Falice could, with the aid of the Wind, see the two sacrifices standing shoulder to shoulder. Fogar grasped one end of the sparkling stone as he might a dagger; and, though its moon shape was awkward, he had no difficulty in aiming it toward the sorcerer. Cerlyn still held the half-seen cup; but, even as the Forest girl watched, the apprentice’s fellow prisoner suddenly clapped her hands together, and the phantom bowl vanished, to be marked now only by specks of green light that floated out over the gobbes.
Whether or not those sparks had any power in themselves, they appeared to move with purpose toward the cowering ghoul brood. Three of the creatures tried to throw themselves backward, and there was a rise and fall of the relentless Sasqua clubs. At this skirmish, the Wind began to whirl in near-shrieking gusts about the circle. Under the goad of that Voice they feared even more than they once had their master’s, the demonsdrew together, crouched, and made a rash at the three standing before their true lord, Vastor. Their crook-fingered claws could close on neither Fogar nor Cerlyn but only slash the air impotently.
Then they aimed for Irasmus. Struggling to see more clearly, he held the globe as a man benighted might raise a lantern; but the first of the rabble he had called out of the Dark years ago were upon him.
Vastor stood watching, fairly licking his thick lips. Irasmus had offered him a banquet, and here was a most appealing appetizer, which his children—who had always had the lamentable habit of playing with food—must not be allowed to damage. The ghoul squalled forth a single word: “Bring!”
And bring the mage they did, “serving” their false master for the last time. The sheer weight of their foul bodies carried him off his feet and bore him to Vastor, who put out a casual hand and clutched him by the throat. The gobbes’ sire gave a vigorous shake, and the wizard went limp. The dusky sphere spun out of his hand, but it did not go far; for those light flecks from Cerlyn’s cup, aided by a second shaft of green radiance that shot toward the ball from behind the group, caught, held, and crashed that window on hell all in a moment.
Taking advantage of the confusion, the demons had worked their way arou
nd behind their true lord and there seemed to regain courage once more. The stench of evil was chokingly heavy.
Still grasping the lax body of Irasmus, which looked somehow shrunken as if much of the life force had gone out of it in its owner’s last desperate dredging-up of his power, the Great Ghoul now began a leisurelyinspection of Fogar and Cerlyn. He swung his first trophy to and fro as he did idly, as a child might swing a puppet, but his calculating attention was fully focused on the two young people. A purplish tongue emerged from his massive jaws, long as a snake, and its tip wriggled as a true serpent would test for scent.
“This presumptuous one”—the monster again shook the limp body of the sorcerer— “had the truth of the matter, in part. You are a fit sacrifice, though perhaps not strong enough in the power to tempt the Great One this offal wished to woo. No, you are more to my strength—”
Abruptly Vastor’s eyes narrowed to slits, and he started in such astonishment that he nearly dropped his trophy. The demon had to shake his head from side to side to make sure he really saw what he thought he did.
Over the cleared earth of the circle came flitting a newcomer, a third human to stand with the other two. As if the Wind itself had borne her here to stand beside Cerlyn and Fogar, the girl moved with feet hardly touching the ground. The perfume of her garment of vines interwoven with flowers cut across the charnel reek of the Nether Ones like a breath of spring. Now Fogar stood flanked by the two maidens, one of the Valley and the other of the Forest, and something inside him said that this was right and proper. Kin the trio were, and as kin they should—and would—stand against their common enemy.
Irasmus chose that moment to wriggle feebly; and Vastor, with careless force, threw the mage behind him. The slack-muscled body did not touch the ground but simply vanished, as if it had fallen through a—door?
The ghoul parted his lips hungrily again. “Three of you—more sweets for the feasting.” He raised a paw to reach out for Cerlyn, who stood the closest. “Perhaps that sniveling fool was not so wrong, after all. A master is needed here, and”—the thing jerked its head in the direction the sorcerer had vanished—“the gate has been well opened.”
The gobbes were on their feet again, massing at their sire’s back and screeching a phrase in their own tongue over and over again like a slogan to underscore his speech.
Fogar swung Cerlyn closer and a little behind him. One could not stifle all fear of the Dark—one could only hope to stand firmly against it. His right arm went back and, with all the precision he could manage, he hurled that piece of star-studded stone.
His aim was good—the missile struck against Vastor’s wide chest. The rock did no visible damage and left no sign of any wound, but the Dark One gave forth a great roar. However, he did not spring to attack, as Fogar had expected, but rather retreated a step.
Meanwhile, Falice had brought her branch to the fore, and she now sent it whistling through the air in a whiplike slash. Cerlyn, watching that flashing arc of green, sensed that that wand was slicing into strips some unseen ward. However, the onlookers were able to watch the Forest girl’s actions for only a moment—because the Wind returned.
Yes, it came—this time not to shield, not to save, but as a battle weapon, once more well-nigh the Fist of Death it had been before its binding by the Covenant. Odors of rock, tree, earth—all the myriad scents of daily life filled the surrounding air. Hansa’s fosterdaughter dropped her wand at last. She had opened the way, and the Light must meet the Dark, as was always destined to be.
The Dark, in its turn, was rising; coils of oily vapor already hid the gobbes. Vastor had retreated to the place where he had first appeared and was half crouching there, snarling. As the greasy fog wreathed about him, at his feet, where Fogar’s stone had come to rest, silver flame sprouted up in licking tongues.
Not even the roar of the Wind could drown out the ghoul’s single cry of frustrated evil rage. The creature blazed in the heart of that white light for an instant like a lightning-struck tree, and then he was gone.
The Wind swirled around the circle, and now the three who were cloaked by it could hear sounds like an army of voices raised in a song of triumph—such music as lightened even the true night, which was all that lay now about the beings gathered here. The door Irasmus had opened was closed, locked—perhaps even destroyed forever.
The remnants of the people of Styrmir came forward with dancing steps, weaving in and out among the Forest’s folk—neither fear nor awe stayed them in their desire to reach the trio who still stood in the circle’s core, now linked by hands as well as minds. For that which the Valley dwellers had abandoned in the past had not forsaken them, or at least not those three. Ears never opened to the mysteries and marvels of the Speech of the World knew, in that moment, the Hearing to which their forefathers and mothers had had the right. And yet, though they had advanced so eagerly, they still did not quite dare to approach Fogar, Cerlyn, or Falice.
Were their labors ended? Fogar wondered. But, even as he framed the question, the Wind gave him the answer: a new era and world must be born here, in this very place where he had been ruthlessly seized from his mother’s womb.
Then he heard speech which was not borne by the Breath but rather framed by human lips. “I, too, entered life on that night, brother,” said Falice, as her hand touched his shoulder. The all-holding memory of the Wind confirmed her words. She was, indeed, blood of his blood; closer kin none could know.
“Lord—” This was another voice, timid but managing to speak. One of the men of Styrmir took a small step forward. “What is your will, you of the Light?”
It was Cerlyn who answered then. “Take again your land, clan kin, for this awakened earth shall bear fruit once more, as of old. Rebuild what was torn and destroyed. Let in the Light, and never fail to remember that you yourselves are the lamps in its shrine; therefore, keep the shrine in repair and the lamps well trimmed. Forgetting was the sin of our people, and we must remain ever alert and ready to maintain and defend what we have come to hold anew.”
While the girl from the Valley had been speaking, the daughter of the Forest had drawn away from those other two. The light of the moon, which had just emerged from a shadowing bank of cloud, seemed to wrap itself about her as a cloak, and then the Wind also drew in upon her.
“Sister—” Fogar extended a hand warmly in her direction, but Falice eluded him.
“Kin I am, yet not of the duns,” she replied sadly, “for my path is laid by the Wind, and I must follow it.”She gazed intently upon him while she spoke, as though she would etch into memory every line of his face, so like hers and yet unlike, shaped by a life she sensed she would never know. She felt the wetness of tears on her own cheeks as she did so, shed for that blood binding her heart had leaped to acknowledge and that, no sooner than found, was about to be lost.
“Walk well with the Wind,” she managed to say, speaking now to both her brother and Cerlyn, “for it has broken all barriers this night, and henceforth we shall no longer be Valley and Forest, but one body given life by its Breath.”
“Please—stay—” Cerlyn made the last plea. But Falice dared not allow herself another moment in this place, lest her strength waver as she went forth to the fate decreed for her by the Great Powers.
Then, as she had come to join them, borne by the Wind and bearing the power of her talent, so did she leave. Even the kin in fur, whom she had led, could only sense the swiftness of her passing. The wand had fallen from her grasp, for she suspected—her belief growing stronger every moment—what destiny awaited her; and that being so, she needed no weapon beyond her own self. What work was set for her, she was not yet sure, though perhaps her future would prove as demanding as this confrontation had been.
Falice did not even appear to be running any longer—the Wind bore her, softly cradled, at a speed that outran any living thing from either Valley or Forest. The moonlight showed her the Green Realm ahead, and its trees parted in answer to the force that carri
ed her.
Then a tall white glow rose before her: the Stone.Those sparks that played across its surface grew larger as the girl entered the glade; and now they whirled more riotously than she had ever seen them move, in a glory of light that outshone even the moon above.
She had been gently lowered to stand just in front of the glittering pillar, facing the window hole. Like the rest of the monolith, that opening was brightly lit, yet it was not now, she felt, for her use as a viewing place. The light that filled it was green, and it spilled forth and ran down over the flashing rock face to form what was at first the mere outline of a figure and then the full impression of a woman’s form.
Out from the surface that Being stepped. Her features were hidden, as always, by a veil of mist, but Her arms were opened wide. Even as Falice had, years before, embraced the Stone itself, so was she wafted forward into that hold which matched body to body. The two made one melted, melded, and reformed. Once more the Green Lady stood in the Forest; now, however, She wore a face.
Falice-Theeossa was filled with such power and purpose as she had not known even when she entered the battle with Vastor. Her arms were still outheld to enring the Forest Guardian, but that One had chosen. The girl’s hands dropped down to smooth her slender body, and she saw that the soft greenish radiance of the Ever-Living seemed to cling to her more closely than moss could clothe the trunk of a tree.
So—this was to be her path. She who had been born and fostered here was truly of the Forest now, and her future would be to serve, watch, and ward, upheld by a Spirit which seemed too potent to be housed in any frail mortal form. But she was yet, in a way, human,and thus kin to those of the dun of Firth she had never known. So the Power of the Forest was wedded to that of the Valley, and all the land would be one. Still a single tear was wet on her cheek, for with any gain, no matter how great, there was always a matching loss; and she now could never again be the innocent maid who had run free through this realm, for she had bound to it forever.
