Warlock

by Andre Norton

  "Shann—what is it?" Charis longed for light enough to see his face. When she had nursed those struck down by the white plague on Demeter, she had known this same sick fear, this same courage sapping frustration. What could she do, what could anyone do? She drew him toward her so that his head rested in her lap, tried to hold him still. But just as he had been apathetic and robot-like before, so now he was restless. His head turned back and forth as that horrible gasping racked him.

  "Rrrruuuu." Out of nowhere Tsstu came, a shadow. The curl-cat was on Lantee's chest, crouched low, clinging with claws when Charis tried to push her away. Then a growl and Taggi burst around the stones Charis had set up, came to nuzzle against Lantee's twisted body as if, with Tsstu, he strove to hold the sufferer still. Need—it was a cloud about the four of them—the blind call for help which Lantee did not have to put into words for Charis to feel, the concern of the animals, her own helplessness. This was a crisis point, she realized that. The Survey man was fighting a battle, and if he lost—?

  "What can I do?" she cried aloud. This was not an affair of the body—she had delved deeply enough into the Wyvern Power to know that—but of mind, of—of identity.

  Will—that was the springboard of Wyvern power. They willed what they wished, and it was! She was willing now—willing Lantee to . . .

  Dark and cold and that which was nothing once again, this was the space into which her desire to help was drawing her, a space which was utterly alien to her kind. Dark—cold. But now— Two small lights, flickering, then growing stronger, though the dark and cold fought to extinguish them; two lights which drew closer to her and grew and grew. She did not reach out her hands to take up those lights, but they came as if she had called. And then Charis was aware that there was a third light, and she furnished the energy on which it fed.

  Three lights joined to speed through that dark in search. No thought, no speech among them; just the compulsion to answer a calling need. For the dark and cold were all-encompassing, a sea of black having no shore, no islands.

  Island? Faint, so faint, a glimmer showed on the sea. They spun together, those three lights, and struck down to the small spark gleaming in that encroaching and swallowing dark. Now there was a fourth light like an ash-encrusted coal in a near-dead fire. Together the three aimed at that fire, but there was no touching it: They had not the power to strike through, and the fire was near extinction.

  Then the light which was fed by Charis's energy and will soared, drawing also that which was the animals'. She reached out, not with a physical arm or hand but with an extension of her inner force, and touched one of her companion lights.

  It snapped toward her. She was rent, to writhe in pain as emotions which were alien warred against that which was Charis alone—wild, raw emotions which boiled and frothed, which dashed her in and about. But she fought back, strove to master and won to an uneasy stability. And then she reached out again and drew to her the second spark.

  Once again she was in tumult, and even greater was the fight she had to wage for supremacy. But the urgency which had drawn all three, the need to go to the dying fire, laid upon them now the need for acting as one. And when Charis called upon that need, they obeyed.

  Down to that glimmer which was now far spent sped a bolt of flaming force raised to the highest possible pitch. That broke through, pierced to the heart of the fire.

  Turmoil for a space. Then it was as if Charis raced wildly down a corridor into which emptied many doors. From behind each of these came people and things she did not know, who grasped at her, tried to shout messages in her ears, impress upon her their importance, until Charis was deafened, driven close to the edge of sanity. To that corridor she could see no end.

  The voices screamed, but through them came other sounds—a growling, a squalling—equal to the voices, demanding attention in their turn. Charis could not run much farther . . .

  Silence, abrupt, complete—and in its way terrifying, too. Then—light. And she had a body again. Aware first of that, Charis ran a hand down that body in wonder and thankfulness. She looked about her. Under her sandaled feet was sand, silver sand. But this was not the shore of the sea. In fact, vision in any direction was not clear, for there was a mist which moved in spirals and billows, a mist of green, the same green as the tunic she wore.

  The mist curled, writhed, held a darker core. She saw movement in that core, as if an arm had drawn aside a curtain.

  "Lantee!"

  He stood there, facing her. But it was no longer the shell of a man she saw. There was life and awareness back in his body and mind. He held out his hand to her.

  "Dream . . . ?"

  Was it all a dream? She had known such clarity of vision before in the dream Otherwhere of the Wyverns.

  "I don't know," she answered his half-question.

  "You came—you!" There was a kind of wondering recognition in his voice which she understood. They had been together in that place where their kind was not. The four fires, joined together, had now broken the bonds which had held him in a place their species should never know.

  "Yes." Lantee nodded even though Charis had put none of that into words. "You and Taggi and Tsstu. Together you came, and together we broke out."

  "But this?" Charis gazed about at the green mist. "Where is this?"

  "The Cavern of the Veil—of illusions. But this I believe is a dream. Still they strive to keep us that much in bonds."

  "For dreams there are answers." Charis went down on her knees and smoothed the sand. With one finger tip she traced her design. It was not clear in the powdery stuff, but there was enough, she hoped, to serve her purpose. Then she looked at Lantee.

  "Come." Charis held out her hand. "Think of a half-cave—" swiftly she described the place they had been in at night "—and keep hold. We must try to return."

  She felt his grip tense and harden, his stronger fingers cramping hers until her flesh numbed. And then she centered all of her mind on the picture of the ledge cave and the pattern . . .

  Charis was stiff and cold, her arm ached, her hand was numb. Behind her was a rock wall, over her head an extension of it, and from before her a breath of sun heat. There was a sigh and she glanced down.

  Lantee lay there, curled up awkwardly, his head in her lap, his hand clutching hers in that numbing grip. His face was drawn and haggard, as if he had aged planet years since she had seen him last. But the slack blankness which had been so terrifying was gone. He stirred and opened his eyes, first bewildered, but then knowing, recognizing her.

  He raised his head.

  "Dream!"

  "Maybe. But we are back—here." Charis freed her hand from his hold and spread her cramped fingers. With her other hand she patted the nearest stone in her improvised wall to assure herself of its reality.

  Lantee sat up and rubbed his hand across his eyes. But Charis remembered.

  "Tsstu! Taggi!"

  There was no sign of either animal. A small nagging fear began to nibble at her mind. They—they were those other lights. And she had lost them; they had not been in the place of green mist. Were they lost forever?

  Lantee stirred. "They were with you—there?" It was not a question but a statement. He crawled out from under the ledge, whistled a clear rising note or two. Then he stooped and held out his hand again to draw her up beside him.

  "Tsstu!" aloud she called the curl-cat.

  Faint—very faint—an answer! Tsstu had not been abandoned in that place. But where was she?

  "Taggi is alive!" Lantee's smile was real. "And he answered me. It was different, that answer, from what it has ever been before, more as if we spoke."

  "To have been there—might not that bring a change in us all?"

  For a moment he was silent and then he nodded. "You mean because we were all one for a space? Yes, perhaps that cannot be ever put aside."

  She had a spinning vision of that race down the endless corridor with its opening doors and the shouting figures emerging from them. Had
those represented Lantee's memories, Lantee's thoughts? Not again did she want to face that!

  "No," he agreed without need of speech from her, "not again. But there was then the need—"

  "More than one kind of need." Charis shied away from any more mention of that mingling. "There's more trouble than Wyvern dreaming for us to consider now." She told him of what she had learned.

  Lantee's mouth thinned into a straight line, his jaw thrust forward a little. "Thorvald was with them or at least at the Citadel when we found that spear. They may have put him away as they did me. Now they can move against all off-worlders without interference. We have a com-tech at the base, and a Patrol scout may have set down since I left—one was almost due. If that ship had not come in, Thorvald would have recalled me when he left. Two, maybe three, men were there and none of them armored against Wyvern control. We've been very cautious about trying to expand the base because we did want to maintain good relations. These Jacks have blown the whole plan! You say they have some Wyvern warriors helping them? I wonder how they worked that. From all we've been able to learn, and that's very little, the witches have a firm control over their males. That has always been one of the problems; makes it almost impossible for them to conceive of cooperation with us."

  "The Jacks must have something to nullify the Power," Charis commented.

  "That's all we need," he said bitterly. "But if they can nullify the Power, then how can the witches go up against them?"

  "The Wyverns seem very sure of themselves." Charis had her own first doubts. With the assembly arrayed against her back at the Citadel, she had accepted their warning; her respect for their Power had not been shaken until this moment. But Lantee was right. If the invaders were able to nullify the Power to the extent of releasing the males who had always been under domination, then could the witches hope to battle the strangers themselves?

  "No," Lantee continued, "they're very sure of themselves because they've never before come up against anything which threatened their hold on their people and their way of life. Perhaps they can't even conceive of the Power's being broken. We had hoped to make them understand eventually that there were other kinds of power, but we have not had time. To them this is a threat, right enough, but not the supreme threat I believe it is."

  "Their power has been broken," Charis said quietly.

  "With a nullifier, yes. How soon do you suppose the truth of that will get through to them?"

  "But we did not need this machine or whatever the Jacks have. We broke it—the four of us!"

  Lantee stared at her. Then he threw back his head and laughed, not loudly but with the ring of real amusement.

  "You are right. And what will our witches say to this, I wonder? Or do they already know? Yes, you freed me from whatever prison they consigned me to. And it was a prison!" His smile vanished, the drawn lines in his face sharpened. "So—their power can be broken or circumvented in more ways than one. But I do not think that even that information will deter them from making the first move. And they must be stopped." He hesitated and then added in a rush of words, "I am not arguing that they should take the interference of the Jacks and not fight back. By their way of thinking their way of life is threatened. But if these witches go ahead as they plan and try to wipe us all off Warlock, supposing they are able to fight the Jack weapon or weapons, then they will have written the end to their own story themselves.

  "For if this band of Jacks has come up with a nullifier to defeat the Power, others can, too. It will just be a matter of time until the Wyverns are under off-world control. And that mustn't happen!"

  "You say that?" Charis asked curiously. "You?"

  "Does that surprise you? Yes, they have worked on me and this was not the first time. But I, too, have shared their dreaming. And because I did and Thorvald did, we were that much closer to bridging the gap between us. We must be changed in part when we are touched by the Power. But though they may have to bend to weather a new wind—which will be very hard for them—they must not be swept away. Now—" he looked about him as if he could summon a copter out of the air "—we have to be on the move."

  "I don't think they will allow us to return to the Citadel," Charis demurred.

  "No, if they are working up to some stroke against off-worlders, they will have all the screens up about their prime base. Our own headquarters is the only place. From there we can signal for help. And if time is good to us, we can handle the Jacks before they do. But where we are now and how far from the base—" Lantee shook his head.

  "Do you have your disk?" he added a moment later.

  "No. But I don't need it." Just how true that was, Charis could not be sure. She had won off the rock island and out of the place of green mist without it, however. "But I've never seen your base."

  "If I described it, as you did this rock hole for me, would that serve?"

  "I don't know. The cavern was a dream, I think."

  "And our bodies remained here as anchors to draw us back? That could well be. But there's no harm in trying."

  The hour must have been close to midday; the sun was burning hot on the baked section of rock. And, as Lantee had pointed out, they were lost as far as landmarks were concerned. His suggestion was as good as any. Charis looked about for a patch of earth and a stone or stick to scratch with. But there was neither.

  "I must have something which will make a mark."

  "A mark?" Lantee echoed as he, too, surveyed their general surroundings. Then he gave an exclamation and snapped open a belt pocket to bring out the small aid kit. From its contents he selected a slender pencil which Charis recognized as sterile paint, made to cleanse and heal small wounds. It was of a greasy consistency. She tried it on the rock. The mark was faint but she could see it.

  "Now," Lantee sat on his heels beside her, "we'll aim for a place I know about a half mile from the base."

  "Why not the base itself?"

  "Because there may be a reception waiting there that we wouldn't care to meet. I want to do some scouting before I walk into what might be real trouble."

  He was right, of course. Either the Wyverns might already have made their move—for how could Charis guess how much time had actually passed since she had been wafted from the assembly to the island—or the Jacks, learning the undermanned status of the only legal hold on Warlock, had taken it over to save themselves from off-world interference.

  "Right here—there's a lake shaped so." Lantee had taken the sterile stick from her and was drawing. "Then trees, a line of them standing this way. The rest is meadow land. We should be at this end of the lake."

  It was hard to translate those marks into a real picture and Charis began to shake her head. Suddenly her companion leaned forward and laid his palms flat against her forehead just above her eyes.

  XII

  What Charis saw was indistinct and fuzzy, not as clean-cut as a picture she recalled from her own memory, but perhaps enough for concentration. Only, with that fogged picture came other things; that corridor with the doors was beginning to take form behind the wood and lake. Charis struck Lantee's hand away and stared at him, breathing hard, trying to read an answering awareness in his eyes.

  "We'll have to remember the dangers of that." Lantee spoke first.

  "Not again! Never again!" Charis heard her voice grow shrill.

  But already he was nodding in reply. "No, not again. But did you see enough of the other?"

  "I hope so." She took the stick from him and chose a flat rock surface on which to sketch the Power design. It was when she was putting in the ovals Tsstu had remembered for her that Charis paused.

  "Tsstu! I cannot leave her behind. And Taggi—"

  She closed her eyes and sent out that silent call. "Tsstu, come! Come now!"

  Touch! There came an overlapping of thought waves as fuzzy as the picture Lantee had beamed to her. And—refusal! Decided refusal—an abrupt breaking of contact. Why?

  "There is no use," she heard Lantee say as she opened he
r eyes again.

  "You reached Taggi." It was not a question.

  "I reached him in a different way than I ever have before. He would not listen. He was occupied—"

  "Occupied?" Charis wondered at his word choice. "Hunting?"

  "I don't think so. He was exploring, trying something new which interested him so greatly he would not come."

  "But they are here, back with us, not in Otherwhere?" Her relief was threatened by that recurring fear.

  "I don't know where they are. But Taggi has no fear; he is only curious, very curious. And Tsstu?"

  "She broke contact. But—yes—I think she had no fear either."

  "We shall have to leave now!" Lantee continued.

  If they could, Charis amended silently. She took his hand once more. "Think of your lake," she ordered and concentrated on the faint pattern on the rock.

  Cool breeze—the murmur of it through leaves. The direct baking of the sun had been modified by a weaving of branches, and just before her was the shimmer of lake surface.

  "We made it!" The tight grasp on her hand was gone. Lantee surveyed the site with a wary measuring, his nostrils slightly dilated as if, like Taggi, he could pick up and classify some alien scent.

  There was a path along the lake shore, defined well enough to be clearly visible. Otherwise the place was as deserted as if no off-worlder had ever been there before.

  "This way!" Lantee motioned her south, away from the thread of path. His voice was close to a whisper, as if he suspected they were scouting enemy-held territory.

  "There's a hill in this direction and from it we can get a good look at the base."

  "But why—?" Charis began and was favored with an impatient frown from her companion.

  "If there's any move being made, either by the Jacks or the witches, the first strike will be at the base. With Thorvald and me out of the way, the witches may be able to put Hantin, or any other off-worlder, right under control. And the Jacks could overrun the whole place easily, make a surprise attack and write off the base just as they wrote off the trading post."