by Andre Norton
Above them all now the sword had taken on such firm substance that it looked—at least to her—to be a very solid object suspended in the air and of a length that only a man near the height of a foothill could have put hand to, had it indeed been a weapon to be used.
The Dark Lord laughed.
“It is too late, Gerik. As I told you once—though perhaps you did not believe me—those who take service with my lord (and by pledging your aid to me in certain matters, you did just that) are not released at their will. No, not until he has had his full usage of them! Try to retreat—if you can!”
The two men within Tirtha's range of vision looked a little pale beneath the dirt and the wind-browning of their faces. Both turned as one and used the spur. Their small horses bounded forward down the back trail. However, they had only gone a length or two before they slowed and cried out, as beasts do, in an extremity of terror.
Crouched in the grass confronting them was such a creature as Tirtha had never seen, though the thing she had faced in the mountains had been strange and evil enough. This was in its way worse, for it had nothing about it of any sane animal. Rather it was insectile, as if one of the harmless spiders, which wove morning webs in the meadows, had grown nearly pony size in an instant. The thing was furred with coarse, bright scarlet hair, thickening about the joints of its huge limbs into vast masses. Across its head was a row of pitless dark eyes above mandibles that clicked, while a thick green slime oozed from those threatening crunchers.
The riders were fighting their horses as the mounts whirled, dashed back past Tirtha, carrying their riders with them, away from that creature, which squatted and eyed the party with an intent glare.
“Yahhhhh!” It must have been Gerik himself, the man who had refused to be totally cowed by his employer, who bounded up. He had a heavy spear in his hand, holding it with the ease of one who had victoriously gone into battle many times before, and he must have had iron control over his wild-eyed and now screaming horse, for he was forcing it to carry him straight forward, the spear aiming directly at the monster crouching to close the back trail.
17
THE spider creature did not await Gerik's charge. Rather it leaped, apparently willing enough to spike its hairy body on a spear in order to reach its enemy. It was Gerik's horse that reared or dodged. The pony's mad fear gave it an agility never meant for such a stocky body. Losing footing the beast crashed side-wise, carrying the man down with it, but not before the spear pierced the thick abdomen of the monster.
Perhaps it was his example showing that the monster could be attacked or the compelling personality of the man who had led them, which now brought those who had first fled back into combat. They returned into Tirtha's line of vision, spurring toward that mass of animal, monster, and man interlocked on the ground, their swords out, flailing at the heaving red-haired form, slashing at any part of it they could touch.
The downed pony screamed as only an animal in dire pain and fear can do. There had been no cry from its rider. Perhaps the shock of that spill had made Gerik an easy prey to the creature. But the thing itself was in dire straits. Twice it strove to draw itself together for another leap. The dribble of poisonous stuff from its mouth parts ran in a thick green stream. It had lost two legs, hacked off by the frenzy of those who attacked it.
A sword thrust, well aimed, cut into one of those intelligent, malice-filled eyes. He who had been so lucky in that stroke tried again. A stream of the evil green slime sprayed outward, sending him back screaming, dropping his blade, tearing with both hands at the skin of his lower face. He began to run in circles, howling like an animal in its death throes.
Part blinded, lacking two limbs as it did, the spear driven far into its paunch, the thing managed to raise itself from the now silent yet still twitching body of the pony and swung to face its second attacker. One foreleg, armed with a vicious looking claw nearly as long as Tirtha's forearm, stabbed out at the fighter who backed, then stood his ground, aiming shearing strokes at the creature. His steel met the claw and rebounded. It would seem that this part was not so vulnerable. Once more that envenomed spray arched through the air from the monster's mouth.
The man leaped back, more lucky than his comrade, as the creature made a jerky move to follow. Then a head and arm, the upper portion of a body, arose from where the thing had squatted over its first prey. Gerik was on his knees. His two hands gripped the hilt of a sword, and he stabbed into the round body now half turned from him. If the claw had been armored well enough to turn away steel, the body of the thing was not so protected. That sword, driven by all the strength the man could summon, sank into the wide back, hilt-deep. There came a fountain gush of black liquid spurting up and over Gerik, who fell, hidden again from sight.
However, the monster did not swing about to savage him. It struggled still to reach the man who had struck it from the front—he retreating hastily. Until at last he broke, turned and ran, while the thing still attempted to leap after him.
At last it toppled, such limbs as remained intact no longer able to support its thick body. Still it was not defeated, for it continued to spray into the air that green slime. Where that fell on the ground, small tendrils of steam or smoke arose, while the air was filled with a vile odor.
It was then that the reins of the pony on which Tirtha was bound were seized, the animal pulled into jolting trot. They were on their way from that battlefield, giving no aid to the man who crawled upon the ground, his ruined face a mask of horror as his screaming became a thick bubbling in his throat. Nor was there sight again of Gerik. The other man who had fought the creature was running, crying out, following behind them. Yet the pony and he who led it gained more ground drawing away from the survivor.
Because of the jolting of the pony, Tirtha could no longer see the battlefield clearly. Nor did she know how many of their party were left. The Dark Lord in command certainly—perhaps he was the one who led her pony—and with him Alon, but were there more? The fact that their captors’ numbers had shrunk so drastically might have meant a chance for escape, had she not been in this dead body. However, Alon had perhaps a chance. She longed to contact him.
Pain awakened stronger in her. Perhaps that pain would overtake and hold her a prisoner in another way. Now, however, her mind cleared. Tirtha seemed to be pushed into thinking, to be far more aware of what lay about them, above them. Above them!
She strove to settle her bobbing head for a fraction of time to glance overhead. Yes, the sword was there. Perhaps that was what had kept the pony steady, kept it from running wildly from the monster. Had the blade also protected them from attack, or had that been the result of Gerik's recklessly brave charge?
Tirtha fought hard to keep the gray length within sight. Yes, she had not been mistaken. There were symbols on the blade of that overshadowing weapon. Many of them appeared on the skin roll the dead man had carried. She recalled Alon thrusting it into the empty dart loop on the Falconer's shoulder belt. If they had not despoiled the dead, these carrion hunters, then there it still remained. Even were it now within her hand, Tirtha would not have known how to make use of it.
They were passing from the open rolling lands now. She caught glimpses of hillocks rising like steps to greater heights on either side. There appeared no road, but she believed that they were following a trail well known to him in command.
Since she dared not try to reach Alon, and she must, as long as she could, remain master of her body (in which the pain was waking more and more with every swing that the swifter pace of the pony brought about), Tirtha set her mind on the shadow sword continuing to hang above them.
She was sure that this manifestation was not of the Dark, that it answered, in a manner not given to her to understand, the thing she carried. Was the sword a weapon of that woman who had come to view them in the hidden chamber?
Ninutra—though Tirtha did not shape that name with her lips or utter it aloud, yet she formed it slowly, letter by letter, in her mind with a
ll the concentration of one following the intricate weaving of a spell. There were words that went with healing; many of them she knew and had used. Such words in themselves had no power, it was the intonation that counted, the fact that the same phrases had been thus employed for countless generations to build a channel for the healing to pass through, even as a mason built a hallway, choosing the best and strongest of the stones available for his task.
Names were power. There were the Great Names, which no one, without strong safeguards, dared to utter. If this was such a one—well, what had she to lose? Life meant very little now. If what she bore, beyond any will or desire of her own, was tied to one of those ominous names, that gave her a small fraction of right to attempt a summoning.
She closed her eyes. Tirtha's heart jumped, and that she also felt. In so much had she gained control of her body. She could lift and lower two eyelids, sense the beating of her own heart!
Closing her eyes firmly again, she turned her sight determinedly inward and for the second time strove to build that name into something she could visualize.
First there were flames, like those that had burst from the corners of the hidden room. They flared in fierce warning. Warning! What did that matter to one like her, already doomed?
Ninutra!”
Her will had wakened. If there abode somewhere a power that could be so summoned, then let it come! She was perhaps a plaything, a tool of forces she did not understand. Yet she was the Hawk—and there existed a bargain out of the past. Tirtha had a queer feeling, as if an inner part of her had swung then, quick as a flash of light, across a wide gulf measuring years of time, only to return again.
Ninutra!
It was not the impersonal woman's face that formed or was borne through those flames which died, leaving a mind-picture, indistinct, yet still discernible. This was the countenance of someone not unlike herself—young, a woman, one of the Old Race. Still there was in her great strength, even though she might be but a voice, a channel, for a greater one.
Ninutra!
Behind the woman hung the outline of the shadow sword. Tirtha saw a hand appear also out of the haziness about that face. Fingers closed upon the sword hilt, brought the weapon to swing outward, so that its point was aimed as if ready for combat. There were two other figures moving, one advancing on either side, to stand with that woman. But of those Tirtha could see so little they were like pillars of smoke and mist.
This much she had learned—there were indeed those who could claim the shadow sword. Perhaps they might be, in their own way, favorably disposed toward her. Yet what lay ahead was of more importance than a single woman of the Old Race who had stood by the word of her blood to the end. For that end, when it came, was not concerned with Tirtha herself, but with greater matters.
The three in the mist vanished; not so the sword. It continued to fill Tirtha's mind with its presence. Those symbols along its blade blazed with angry fire. From it she was drawing something—this much had been granted her—strength to hold firm against the pain of her body, that dead body which could no longer serve her. She would be sustained, for there was yet a need for her, and that she would have to accept.
Thus she lay within her vision, holding to it with all her will, striving to force out of it a barrier against her pain. She was never to know how long that vigil of hers lasted.
The sword began to fade, the symbols were gone, sinking into its more and more tenuous length. Tirtha looked upon empty darkness before she opened her eyes upon the outer world again.
She had indeed been deeply sunk inside herself, for she was no longer upon a pony. Instead she lay upon a flat, unmoving surface, a hard surface, as her body returning to half-life told her. There was light here, thin streamers reached like the flames of giant candles up into the sky. Also with that light was a chill, the miasma of evil. This place was of the Dark, no matter what light played on it and within it.
Beyond the upriding columns of light was a night sky. Tirtha saw the far wink of stars, yet between her and their glitter there was a wavering curtain, as if even clean starlight must be so veiled in this evil place. With a determination that drew upon every portion of the strength she hoped still abode within her, Tirtha strove to turn her head.
Pain answered, but pain was not important; she was mistress of her body, of its pain. She threw pain from her as she would throw some evil thing that unwittingly crawled upon her. Then Tirtha discovered that indeed she could shift her head a fraction, see a little of what lay to her left, enough to know she was not alone.
The light came from pillars of what might have been ice, congealed through centuries of freezing. Deep within them lurked shadow cores. Between her and the deadly cold of the nearest pillar was Alon.
He sat, his legs stretched before him, a loop of rope about his ankles. His arms had been drawn cruelly together behind his back and there lashed. With upheld head he stared straight ahead, wearing the blind look of one so overcome by fate that nothing mattered any longer.
“Alon!”
He did not look to her, the trance which held him did not break. Had he retreated into nothingness? No, something assured her that was not so.
“Alon!” The effort to get out that single word for the second time was almost more than Tirtha could rise to.
There was a flicker of expression across his face. Yet he remained so caught in misery he could not be reached. For a long moment she watched him, unable to summon again such strength as those two attempts to reach him had demanded.
“He is gone, he has left us—with the Dark . . .” Those words came from between lips that hardly moved. But in her was a quickening of spirit. Alon wore only the outer mask of shock and despair—within he was still alert!
“This is a place of Dark. He believed us safe-caged here. . . .” Alon was continuing. “Do not summon. The one who rules here will know it.”
Do not summon? Had Alon somehow been aware of her earlier struggle? No, do not even think of that within this place! Caution flashed instantly across Tirtha's mind. There was a Power that made of this a prison—she had no knowledge of its range—but apparently he who had brought them here trusted in its strength of guardianship.
Alon still stared into nothingness, but now Tirtha saw that, for all the cruel straining put upon his arms where they were so lashed behind him, his hands were moving. His fingers did not try to reach the knotting of those cords—that would be physically impossible, bound as he was. Rather, to her wonder, he was smoothing the coils as he might have smoothed or patted the hide of an animal. What he so played with was not woven rope, she noted, her full attention drawn by Alon's actions, but a long strip of braided hide.
What the boy sought to do Tirtha could not understand, but his motions were purposeful, so she did not try again to distract his attention, only watched his struggle to pat, stroke, and fondle what bound him, always giving otherwise the appearance of one completely cowed.
Realizing suddenly that her very attention on the boy might attract whatever held grim rulership here, she strove to lock it out of her mind and was about to follow a second line of defense by closing her eyes so she could be sure she would not turn her head again. Then came a sudden flicker at the joining of those punishing cords.
Tirtha watched what she thought at first must indeed be an illusion, deceptive, meant to tantalize, to bring false hope. If it were illusion, it was a remarkably exact one. The hide loops, which Alon had rubbed and caressed with his fingertips, moved of themselves. They might have been sleek creatures of the serpent family that had curled into awkward (for them) tangles and were now loosening themselves at their own whim.
Tirtha saw the constricting knots unfasten, allowing the rest of the cords to slide at apparently no other will than a desire within their own blind lengths. They wriggled across the boy's body, slipped away. His arms, ridged by brutal welts, fell forward. Tirtha could well imagine the torment the sudden release of such binding brought him. Yet one hand lying half acro
ss his thigh was twitching, and he leaned forward, to bring its fingertips against the second drawing of cords about his ankles.
Once more he began that rubbing, that caressing; Tirtha watched his face intently. He retained his unrevealing mask. One glancing at him would say he was under such complete control as vicious handling and fear could force on a young child. There was no movement of his lips—he could not be reciting any spell or words of power.
Yet again he succeeded, as the second loop slackened, drew itself out of the tightly drawn knots, and he was free. He made no further move as yet, simply sat loose of bonds. Then she saw his chest arch in a deep breath and his hands come together, as he deliberately rubbed ridged wrists and the grooves on his arms with a dogged determination.
Was there other restraint laid on the boy besides the cords from which he had just released himself? Or could Alon now get beyond these lighted pillars? She could do, say nothing, only watch and wait.
However, it would seem that whatever talent the boy had brought to his freeing had not been exhausted. He continued to sit rubbing his wrists, staring ahead. Save that now there was a quality in that stare which was not one of resignation or retreat. Tirtha's own senses heightened little by little. That she lay in a place which was wholly inimical to her and all her kind, which generated within it a chill she could feel faintly as her body slowly awoke, she had accepted. Yet there was something else beyond. . . .
Alon changed position for the first time, drawing his feet under him, so that he now squatted on his heels. He made no move toward Tirtha, appearing to be still locked in that stare. Yet there was a subtle change, a kind of alertness, as might be sensed in one awaiting a signal.
Tirtha longed to be able to change the position of her own head enough to follow the direction of the boy's continued line of gaze. Only she could not. Alon had stopped rubbing his bruised wrists and arms; now he put out his hands and drew to him those lengths of cords he had in some manner made his servants. He stretched them out side by side. At her present angle, Tirtha could not see what he was doing; she could only speculate.
