Tales From High Hallack, Volume 3

by Andre Norton

  “This was in his hand when he was found?”

  “Oh, yes. The top of it was caught in one of those twists of vine on the headboard. He must have been looking at it when—when—” her voice dwindled.

  “Yes—when. Now I must tell you this, Mrs. Lawrence. In itself there is only a hint of darkness about the bed, in this cane. Together—together there could be a change. So—we shall see. I must spend the night here and, with what I know, try to find the core of this evil.”

  Louise protested at once and, more slowly, Marj Lawrence offered some token opposition which Ilse swept away. It was decided that she would return later and check into the disturbed room.

  “Tom wants to just shut it up,” Mrs. Lawrence said. “But it is better to know the truth, isn’t it?”

  “Evil is as a spot of rot upon an apple,” returned Ilse. “Unless it is cut away, it will spread. You do not want to merely lock the door upon something which may taint your whole house.”

  Louise continued to protest as they drove back to her home until Ilse said firmly: “I told you, my dear, those who are gifted must return what is asked of them. Now, if you really wish to be of service to me, let me ready myself for what is to be done.”

  She helped herself to the contents of various herb containers, many of them her own gifts to her hostess, and brewed a pot of a dark liquid which she strained and drank at intervals during the afternoon. She chose only a small portion of fruit for her supper before she refused Louise’s offer to accompany her back to Hex House. Marj Lawrence welcomed her eagerly.

  “We have no guests tonight, and Tom is at a lodge meeting. I’m all ready—”

  “No, Mrs. Lawrence,” Ilse spoke with authority which could not be questioned. “This I must do myself. If you wish, you may remain in the hallway, but otherwise it is not safe. This is a force which is malign—it has already killed.”

  She turned on the lamp by the bed, focusing it directly on the pillows where she folded back the quilt. On the sill of each window she placed a small packet. Then, from her overlarge tote, she brought out a pair of blue candles which she set in holders Marj Lawrence provided and placed on the dower chest at the foot of the bed.

  Having made a minute inspection of the now-bared sheets and pillows, Ilse lifted the cane which she rubbed for its full length with a rank smelling cloth. Now she again busied herself with the bedclothes. The pillows she put in a straight line lengthwise down the bed and then pulled the sheet up over them.

  The cane was laid carefully beside that semblance of a body. From the tote Ilse brought out a small tightly closed flask. She wet her fingertip with its contents and brushed across the top hump of pillow which might be a head.

  “By the White Way, The Light Way, the Right Way, here rests one Walden. So be it by all that stands against the Dark!”

  A snap of light switch and the only illumination now came from the candles. Yet it was enough to give full sight of what was happening.

  Ilse had withdrawn to stand at the foot of the bed squarely between the candles. She could only improvise, and she had. But now she centered all her inner consciousness on what lay before her. Almost in the subdued light it did seem a body rested there.

  She shut out the thought of time. Time was born from the acts of humankind—it might mean nothing to what lurked here. Lurked—yes. She was right—there was building that feeling of another presence, of age-tattered but still-strong emotions: fear, rage—hate?

  The cane sprang like a piece of iron seeking a strong magnet. Its head clicked against one of the knots in the headboard. Then—down that connecting rod speared a thrust of darkness—as thick as one of the wands from which it had been born.

  It struck against the top pillow and at the same time there belched forth a stench of old rottenness, a wave of unhuman menace beyond all bounds of sanity.

  Ilse’s lips moved in words as old as time’s meaning could be measured. With both her hands she raised the old christening flask to her teeth and worried out the stopper. Then, holding the bottle in a fierce grip of fingers laced tightly together, she threw its contents at the heaving mass on the bed.

  There came such a burst of flame, such a roaring in her head, as if not only in the room—such a scream of heart- piercing anger as made her sway with its force.

  That threshing on the bed stopped; the cane lay across the rounded covers. What had been here was gone.

  “What was it? Will—will it come again?” Marj Lawrence crouched by the door.

  “It was the murderous will of one who had black knowledge and sought to use it in revenge. Rueben Straus made these: the bed for his sister’s wedding, the cane perhaps for her gift to her lover. But since Rueben had some glimmer of mistrust in him, he put in also a demand for justice if there was any sorrow for the one he loved. Instead of gifts these became curses. Mark Walden could indeed have been blood-related to Gyles, or else perhaps he only shared some deviousness of spirit. So Rueben’s hate made a trap . . .”

  “But—but it is gone?”

  “I only banished this manifestation.” Ilse was very tired. “Fire cleanses best. You must see that this bed, the cane, are burned and the ashes well scattered. This doorway must be so closed.”

  “Yes, oh, yes!”

  Ilse, looking at the other woman’s drawn and haggard face, believed her.

  Root and Branch

  Shall Change

  Merlin (1999) DAW

  THE character of Merlin is a very complicated one, entwined in such a weaving of various legends that the searcher can find many Merlins, each alike in some manner of power, yet unlike in the use of it. In one of the sage’s guises, he uttered dire prophecies of the wild wrath of both elements and stars, foretelling that, in the future, the earth would exact from humankind payment for its befouling.

  With Arthur, Merlin failed, and we are given several reasons for that failure. In some accounts, it is hinted that he was too impatient in striving to bring about what was necessary to achieve ends foreseen along one future path, and thus his power turned against him.

  Was Nimuë, his disciple and comfort, in truth a traitoress and one who chose a dark path? We cannot be sure of the wisdom of accepting such a direct answer as legend has presented. Certainly, though, she was the woman with whom Merlin could share his dreams and desires, and the mage—in all accounts—stood alone until her coming.

  Yes, they list—the seekers-of-legends—a number of Merlins, sometimes sundered by centuries of time. Perhaps, then, the prophecies uttered by one of these wizards of the past may also lie ahead. We are told that Arthur was, and is, the Once and Future King; surely, then, Merlin is the Once and Future Master of Powers.

  Thus there might come a time when such a tale as this could shape itself into reality.

  How fares a survivor whose world has collapsed, leaving no firm refuge or retreat?

  First came the dreams—wisps of action in which I was caught, but which I could not understand. Yet, in a way, such visions were better than waking; and with each dreaming, reality also became stronger. I awoke to find myself talking to the air about me, not only arguing with one I could not see, but repeating strange words and phrases. Strange, yes, and yet—once they had a strong meaning.

  After a space, when I awoke from one of the dreams, I could not put a clear name even to myself. I was no longer Ninan Tregarn, once teacher to the young in a dull gray city where the debris which humans had made cluttered the breast of the long-suffering earth. You see, I would tell myself unhappily, you now stand apart, having left the company of your own kind.

  The visions had begun even before the breaking of the peace of the world. True, men had troubled their own peace for generations, but now earth and sky, sea and stars, left their appointed patterns and changed, sweeping away most of the humans who had failed.

  The meteor showers, the tumult of the oceans, those dark shadows across the moon, the fatal plagues—HE had foretold them in his time.

  His time! But Time
folds upon itself when Nature strives to throw away a past. Could there begin anew anything—anything?

  It was cold, and it had hailed, battering my half-starved body. The ragged blanket I drew around me now as a shawl was heavy with damp. Only a small spark of defiance had kept me moving the past few days.

  But, for the first time, my need was clear. I was no longer Ninan—no, I was again that other who had once gathered to her all she could hungrily grasp. Then there had been a parting, and thereafter ill repute had been cast upon me. Through the centuries, I was remembered as a traitor, a woman who had brought about the death of the only one who had ever tutored and—yes—cherished her.

  However, Time was not finished with either of us, nor was the earth ready to take us into itself, to part flesh from bone, from—soul? Spirit was a gift, a loan from Her who rode the heavens at this hour, and it was surely She who sent me stumbling on my way.

  That new-old part of me, which was growing stronger with every breath I drew, was my guide now. My head was no longer bowed; instead, I listened, perceiving something not heard as sound but rather felt as an inner trembling of the body.

  The forest my budding other self remembered—that was long gone, swallowed up by the lava-tide of relentless human expansion. Nonetheless, as I moved ahead, trees rose about me, tenuous shadows of themselves at first, then strong, sturdy growths, complete. And that trembling within grew ever stronger, urging me on.

  Suddenly I no longer moved alone, for there came another, well-shrouded in a tattered robe. Memory stirred. In the days just behind me, some had arisen who had, in their anger and fear, sought stern gods, turning fiercely against all who did not believe as they had come to do. This man was one of their Speakers. His face was as gaunt as if the flesh had already departed from the sharp bones, and it seemed to me that his eyes were mere pits of fire in a skull.

  He raised his hand high, pointing toward me, and I could see that his taloned fingers held a curved carving like unto the bowl of a bell; this object he also swung, yet there was no clapper within its throat. Nonetheless, I knew that the unheard sound which had drawn me hither issued from that tongueless bell.

  “Well do you ring! Wait you upon an answer?” I asked, realizing as I did so that I spoke a language long dead to men, yet to me strongly alive.

  “No answer,” the ringer grated a harsh reply. “Get you hence, woman of ill fortune, betrayer, thief of power never meant to be given to any female!”

  Suddenly it seemed that he spoke in jest, for the way of his imagined god had never held any truth for me. I found laughter I had not known for many days upon my lips as I moved determinedly toward him.

  The Speaker wore a mask of sheer horror now, as though his features in their warpings and wrinkles pictured all the evils his beliefs held that womankind had brought upon the world. “Begone—into darkness, begone!” he spat.

  Fearsome the man might be, but he was only a final adversary, worn out by centuries of waiting. Knowing what must be done, I put forth my hand and snatched the bell from his grasp.

  It was as if I had plunged fingers and palm into a cold that ate. Then the ice became fire, as violent in its burning as the meteors which the death-days had spilled upon the earth. Still, I held to the bowl; and for the first time I dared to summon, from those memories that had only recently regranted me the ancient tongue, a lilting song of Power. Once I had been taught to guard so, and now I stood, battle-engaged, once more.

  The one who faced me gave a sharp cry, spittle bursting from between the stretch of his thin lips. He strove hard, and the pressure of his will was nearly enough to silence my own call for strength. Tearing through the air with his claw-fingers, striving to regain what he had lost, he tottered forward as though about to throw himself full upon me and snuff out my life with the weight of his body.

  But what he had held was now mine. I raised the bell high, and it moved smoothly and well. As before, no sound for the ear issued from its empty half-round, yet that trembling which reached into the body grew and grew.

  He whom I had so confronted—false priest of a human-created god—began to darken, seeming to draw upon shadows in an attempt to rebuild himself. Such, however, was not to be his fate, for darkness instead swallowed him, and he was gone.

  A glow brightened within the walls of the enringing trees, as though the orb that is Her own hung there now, and the silent song of the bell drew me on until I came to the foot of a jumble of rock such as could be found in many places since the shaking of the earth some seasons past.

  Once, I well remembered, a proud rise of stone had stood there—a haven-fortress which he whom I now sought had made his place of peace and study. Within had been stored and safeguarded ancient slabs of stone patterned over with symbols of power; books so great and weighty as to need both hands to shift them; flasks; coffers. And I had known them, too, drawing knowledge and skills from that which they held.

  Now only a shapeless mass of rubble was to be seen; however, I would not accept that I had been brought here only to confront a sterile and futile ending. At first I thought to lay aside the bell and strive to remove the pile of rock piece by piece, using my hands. Then I noticed that, when I fronted the heap directly, the tremors I felt inside my body seemed also to resound in some fashion within its substance. Shivering free from their resting places, the stones rolled down the mound by the force of no touch save the call of the tongueless bell.

  By the moon’s silvery light, near the crest of the hillock so swiftly dislodging itself, a dark spot could now be seen—an opening made larger by the fall of every rock. In a few moments I faced a door, and then the stones ceased to tremble and tumble.

  It was small, that entryway, and I had to stoop to enter. Before me was only all-swallowing darkness, but, taking one cautious step after another, I went forward.

  The radiance of the forest-filtered moon seemed to rest fingers of light upon my shoulders and to make clear what lay before me. I saw shelves deep-carven into the walls of what had once been a cave and, upon those, the heaped remains of weapons of his kind, long since come to dust. All that lived now was the knowledge which was a part of me and which had been summoned from the past.

  Against the far wall lay what seemed part of a great log. I stood gazing at the vast trunk, and tears filled my eyes once more, even as they had nearly overcome me when I had last paused in that spot to take a silent farewell.

  I had come so far to do what must now be done, yet somehow I could not make the final gesture. Here—even in this very place—I had stood, tricking my love for his own sake, in the hope of saving him by defeating Time itself.

  Time . . . yes, that had passed, and I had been caught up in a chain of many lives. I was a seeress, a dreaded woman of strange knowledge, whose body had been given to the fire by those who had feared her. Then, as the Old Beliefs had failed, so I, too, had faded, losing those abilities. I had toiled in fields, and—equally a slave—in the machine-filled pens of later ages. And never had love warmed me, for I had betrayed it, seeking in my pride to master death. Despite all such strivings, I had died, more often than I had any wish to remember—and lived again, in each new form withdrawing farther from that which I had been.

  Yet I had been brought here and my memory reawakened; and that She had some use for me I was certain. Had I not come across a starved and dying land, living on what roots I could find, and pushing forward always against great weariness to crouch now in this place of sorrow?

  Now I put aside the bell, for this spell I would break was one of my own setting in the long ago. Leaning forward and placing my hands flat on that seeming length of log, I called up the binding as it had been laid. For even as the ensorcellment was wrought, so it must be rescinded word by word, gesture by gesture—a thing which I alone could do. I began with great care, lest my tongue twist and give some fatally-wrong accent to a word. Gradually, with increasing confidence, I ordered the phrases, remembering the swing of the chant, the proper movement o
f the hands. Thus, and thus, and thus—

  I had stepped out of time as humankind knew it. My body swaying to the rhythm of the incantation, I became only a voice, fueled by what was left of my strength. As was required in such a casting, I now closed my eyes upon that which lay before me; rather, I built and held to a mind-picture of what it was needful to bring forth by my wreaking here.

  The flow of words slowed. I reached once more for the bell, and its weight seemed to draw my hand toward that tree-not-tree which had been shaped and set here to guard a most precious spirit. In answer to the bell’s call, like the stones that had sealed the mouth of the cave, the illusion of bark covering began to slough away; and with the fall of each flake, a portion of my remaining inner power was lost, as well.

  My last bespelling, this enchantment had once been. Now it was finished yet again, and I felt nearly as spent as I had with its making. The vibration from the bell died as I crouched down to see what I had uncovered, not truly sure that my will could be undone as it had been done. There was not now any threat from Morgause raised against him, such as had lent me strength beyond the might of mortals to send my teacher beyond her grasp. That jealous queen had had her day and place, as well as her hatred, which had been so strong it had led her to a murderous act. No, here there was only myself, and—

  Light arose from the interior of the loglike coffin. The radiance blazed, and I held out my hands to it as one coming in from bitter cold would seek a beckoning fire.

  I looked, and gave a little cry; then I stared fully down at what lay there. It had been majestic age I had sealed so against death in that far-off time; but—

  —here lay a child. The hair, to be sure, was still silver, but the locks were vibrant with young life. The features likewise were as yet untroubled by time’s passing. I had left an oldster, one who had lived longer in the world than many of his kin-blood; but it was certain that I now looked upon a youth of middle years.