by Andre Norton
Gathea opened the second pocket of her wallet and brought forth a small bag fastened with a drawstring. Into the palm of one hand she cautiously sifted some of the contents with such care that she might be measuring sigils meaning great good or ill. Then, with a sudden toss, she threw what she held into the midst of the fire I had fed into a steady blaze. There was a puff of smoke—bright and searing blue—and with it a strong odor which was of some herb, though I was not schooled enough in such matters to be able to name it.
Having dropped the retied bag upon her knee, the girl leaned forward and, with small waves of her hand, sent that odorous smoke wafting first in one direction and then another, until it had blown, obedient to her coaxing, north, sough, east, and finally west. She had, as we searched for dead wood under the trees, stopped often to look upon bushes and trees still alive, and had finally cut from one shrub a length near as long as my sword. As I had gathered my spoil to put my spark snap to it she stripped the leaves from her trophy. Now she picked that bare wand up, to pass it back and forth through what smoke still lingered.
Having so held her switch into the vapor as long as it might be noticed at all, she got to her feet and began to move around the fire, marking out in the soil, for I had chosen a bare place near some rocks (perhaps the last remnant of the hard land through which we had come) on which to establish our camp. Gathea drew a circle and beyond and enclosing that, she made the sharp angles which formed a star. Into each point she shook a drop or two of blood from the butchered deer, adding a pinch more from her supplies, in the form of some withered bits of leaves. Having so wrought she returned and sat down across the fire, planting her wand upright like the pole of a lord's banner—save that no strip of emblazoned cloth fluttered from its tip.
I would ask no questions since it had been increasingly irksome that, each time I had done so after this journey of ours had begun, she had been condescending and spoke as if in her way she was far more learned than I could ever hope to be. Thus I accepted in silence that she had once more used some ritual of her craft to put safeguards about us, though it puzzled me, for, since we had come into this open and goodly green land, I had felt no alarms, rather that we trod in safety. This was to prove once more that I indeed walked blind among open pit-falls.
Night drew in as I watched the sun disappear behind that line of heights which was now even more manifest to the west—their upper crowns forming sharpened points against the sky.
Since Gathea remained silent, I did the same, though I was startled into an exclamation as Gruu sprang upon us-suddenly, seeming from out of nowhere, taking shelter also by the fire.
I had earlier cut and smoothed a number of spit sticks and on these I skewered sections of the meat, setting them so to roast at the fire's edge, the juices trickling down to bring small bursts from the flames. The smell of the roast was mouth-watering and I waited impatiently for the flesh to be seared enough for us to taste, tending my spits carefully to brown well on all sides. This was an old hunter's ploy taking me back to the days before the Gate—though my memory was misty.
At length I handed my companion one of the sticks with its sizzling burden and took another, swinging it a little in the air to cool it enough to mouth, though Gathea sat holding hers as if she had no great interest in it, after all.
I thought at first that she watched those singularly jagged looking mountains, and then I realized that her gaze was limited to a point nearer at hand. As far as I could see nothing moved out in that open valley since the deer had fled at Gruu's attack. Not even a bird crossed the night sky.
Still I would ask no questions, but ate stolidly, chewing the meat with that relish which comes best when one has not tasted such for too long a time. Gruu lay at ease on the other side of the fire, his eyes near closed, though he still licked now and then at one paw. If anything moved beyond he had no interest in it.
The dark came very quickly after the sun had vanished, that last striping of the sky overspread by dark clouds. I thought a storm might be on the way and wondered if we would not better search for cover—even so limited shelter as that stand of trees from which we had brought our wood. I was about to say that when I saw Gathea's whole body go tense. At the same time Gruu's head came up, his eyes went wide as he, too, stared outward—and westward—into the twilight.
There was no singing, no weaving of silver shadows this night. What came upon us did not entice, it hunted on soft feet—if it had feet at all—moving in over the open plain. Gruu's hair stiffened along his spine. He no longer lay at ease, but drew his limbs under him as if he prepared for a crouch to spring. His lips wrinkled but his snarl did not sound aloud.
I do not know what my companions saw, but in my eyes it was as if sections of the shadows split one from the other, fluttering, some even rising from the ground as if they leapt upward and landed on the earth again, unable to take to the air as they desired to do. They were only darker blots against the twilight, which came so quickly. However, it was plain that they came, in their queer leaping way, closer to our fire, and never had I felt so naked and defenseless.
In truth I had drawn my sword—though what use that might be against these formless, half-floating things, which appeared to well up from the grass-covered earth itself, might be I could not sensibly say. However, my action brought for the first time quiet words from my companion.
“Well done. Cold iron is sometimes a defense, even though one cannot use directly its point, or sharpened blade. I do not know what these are—save they are not of the Light—” And the way she said “Light” made me realize that what she spoke of was not a matter of seeing but of feeling—true as weighed against false.
Gathea reached out and laced fingers around the wand she had set in the earth, though she did not pull it free of the soil, rather waited, even as I did, holding my sword hilt. The dark looked very thick to me. I could no longer distinguish movement by eye. Only, in a queer way, new to me and frightening (had I allowed it to be so), I sensed that outside our star-girt circle there was that which paced menacingly, strove to press forward, and was denied.
What did reach us first was a kind of hunger backed by confidence, as if what slunk beyond was as competent as Gruu in bringing down whatever it had cornered. Then impatience followed, as it met a resistance it could not master—surprise, growing anger that anything dared to stand against it. I knew it was there, I could have turned my head at any moment to face it, as it—or them—made the round of our protected campsite. Still I had no idea what form these besiegers took, nor how dangerous they might be.
Once more I was startled, as, into the outer edge of the firelight there flashed for an instant a hand—or was it a claw?—withered, yellowish flesh stretched tightly across bone. It could have been either, as I sighted it only for an instant before it jerked back. The sight of it aroused all my instinctive fear for, unlike the silvery singers of the night before, this clearly advertised its evil by its very look.
Gathea pulled the wand from the earth with one easy movement. She dropped the far tip to point to the star angle directly before her where she had sprinkled the blood and placed the broken bits of dead leaf of herbage. At the same time she spoke, not to me, but commandingly, in words I could not understand.
There was movement from the spot to which she had pointed. It seemed to me that the ground itself began to spin, shooting upward part of its substance. As she began to sing, louder and faster, so did the whirling become a twirl of movement, a pillar of flying dust particles growing solid.
Then there crouched in the point of the star a figure which in a crude way was human. At least it had two legs, two arms, a trunk of body, a round ball of head perched thereupon, though it was such a thing as a child might fashion out of mud in play, crudely done. When it stood erect, Gathea brought down her wand in a sharp slap against the earth and uttered a single loud cry.
That thing which had come out of the ground ambled forward, stumping on feet which were clumsy and ill shaped.
However, it was able to keep erect and move with more speed than I would have believed that such an ill-wrought body could show.
“Quick!” Gathea looked now to me for the first time. “Your knife—cold steel—to secure the doorway—” Her wand twitched across the ground to indicate where that must go.
I unsheathed my knife. Still keeping my other hand fast on sword hilt, I tossed the shorter blade as if I played some scoring game. It thudded true and stood quivering, hilt uppermost, set well into the earth at the very spot which that shambling figure had just left to go into the dark.
Gathea now seemed to listen—and I did likewise, finding myself even keeping my own breathing as noiseless and shallow as I could so that I might hear better. No night bird called; there was nothing to trouble the silence beyond our circle. But I sensed that that which had earlier tried our defenses was gone—if only for a space.
The girl did not relax. Taking my cue from her, I did not either. The cat at last gave a sigh and blinked. But if Gruu was satisfied my companion was not.
“Not yet—” It was as if she admonished herself, refused the comfort of believing that her sorcery was successful.
“What you made—” I felt that I could go no longer without asking at least some of the questions nagging at me—"did it lead away what waited out there?”
She nodded. “For a while it may play the quarry for those—but it may not last long. Listen!”
Perhaps this was what she had been waiting for. There rang through the night, echoing as if we were in some great cavern and not under a cloud-filled sky, a cry, a wailing, so filled with malice and the promise of evil anger to come, as to bring me to my feet, sword point out, ready to fight, though I could not see what enemy had sounded that call of fury.
“Do not, for your life,” the girl said, “go beyond the circle. It will return—and fooled once, it will be twice as ireful.”
“What is it?” I demanded.
“Not a thing which can be brought down by that,” she nodded to my sword, “though steel is rightfully its bane. But only as a defense not a weapon for use. I do not think that it can be sent on a second fruitless hunt. As to what it truly is—I cannot put any name to it. I did not even know it might come. My precautions were taken because this is a strange land and we had spilled blood. Blood is life—it draws the Dark Ones where they are to be found.”
“You used it to seal us in.”
“As I said, blood is life, from it can be conjured counterfeits, though those would not move or have being in the day. They, too, draw from the dark. Now—”
Her wand came up once more, pointing even as did my sword. Those things which prowled were back, weaving back and forth where we could not see—only feel them. Twice claw-hands swung in at the edge of the star point where my dagger stood, only to jerk back again. But they could not pass and I felt raised against me the growing heat of an anger as hot in my mind as the fire was upon my body. That emotion pressed, sought, battled to reach us with a dark and ugly hunger flowing as a high warning of what we might expect should it win inward.
Gruu arose, threw up his head, and gave such a roar as made my head ring. I thought at first it was an echo of his cry I heard, until it was repeated from afar. Then I could not mistake the ring of it as it sounded a second time. I had heard such before but never as full toned and holding the notes so strongly. So did any lord's marshal sound his warn horn at the edge of a neighbor's land!
Out in that blackest of the night there was another now—and he sent forth his challenge.
8.
* * *
* * *
For the third time that horn rang. I believed I could hear, under the edge of its echoing, another sound which was between a bay and a squawl—certainly made by animal. Gruu answered fiercely. He patted first one clawed paw against the earth and then the other, as if he were leashed and wished for release—to be freed to attack in the dark. Gathea took a step forward to rest her hand on the beast's head. He looked up at her, showing his tongue between his openly displayed teeth in a dire grin.
Though the horn did not sound again, I saw a flash of light through the night, and heard a crackle as if someone had harnessed the power of lightning itself, had fashioned it into a weapon. The dark was so thick that flash came and went before I could catch any sight of what lay about. The flash hit again, and again, as the clamor of what might be a hunting pack drew closer.
I could not see, but I could sense. Whatever had besieged us was now at the back of the circle, cowering with us between it and what coursed through the night, using a weapon of flame, urging forward some hunting “hounds.” So it continued to cower until Gathea took a hand. She faced about. Her wand arose once again as with its tip she wrote upon the air.
Symbols appeared, curved up and down—green those were—and yet blue—as water mingles such shades along the shore of the sea. Out spun the signs, not fading, rather flying as might small birds released to be free. They gathered outside our defense lines to hang in the air.
There was no audible snarl of rage but a sense of burning anger strove to strike us. Then that was gone, as suddenly as if a door had opened and closed. That which had striven to reach us was now shut away from our world.
We heard a rushing in the night which sounded as if a company had divided, one part going to the north, one the south of our defense. Then that, too, was swallowed by silence. I felt an emptiness, through which one could hear the clear, clean rustle of wind across the stand of grass but nothing else. Gruu settled down—this time dropping his head to rest upon one curve of leg. Gathea, her wand still in hand, curled beside him, leaving to me the other side of the fire. The girl pillowed her head on the cat's shoulder, her eyes closed as if she—and we— had nothing more to fear. Still I sat, reliving all that had happened this night. It seemed to me that when I had staggered out of Garn's dale—no, even before that, when I had first looked upon the Moon Shrine—my life had be gun to change; I was no longer the same Elron who had ridden through the Gate, liegeman to a clan lord, knowing nothing much beyond the duties of my place and the security of my standing with my fellows.
I should have been stricken more deeply by Lord Garn's blow, which had not only marked my body but had cut me off from all the clan. Now that act appeared of little consequence. I had come not only into a country that those of my blood had no knowledge of, but there was a part of me which said: See, I am kinless, yet I am not a nothing; I have walked with danger and faced squarely that beyond reckoning.
Yet no skill of mine had saved us. That, too, I must face. Gathea's talent had come again and again to stand between both of us and disaster. Such an admission was not a pleasant thing—or an easy one—for me to face honestly.
Perhaps my discomfort arose because I was used only to the women of the keeps—the clan maidens whose skills were in the ways of common living which I knew instinctively that Gathea scorned. She was unlike any maid I had ever known, as I had realized since our first meeting by the sea. One could not say to her: This is not your battle, let me stand forth to defend you as is the rightful custom. I knew a kind of shame because I knew I did not want to grant all due her or admit that in our journey so far she had borne the brunt of action.
Gathea's desire to reach the west, the hint that she had given me that Iynne had somehow intervened between her and what was rightfully hers, power connected with the Moon Shrine, that I now accepted. Much in this land one must accept blindly, even though it was beyond all man's experience, perhaps even a Bard's tale.
I wondered what hunter had moved in the dark out there to bring us aid. Had he answered Gathea's summons? Or was he already a field seeking that evil which had crawled about our camp? Man, I felt, he was not. Why did I even think “he,” save that my training said that the chase as well as battle were for my sex alone? He or it—
Such things I thought—or tried to arrange in some pattern—as I fed the fire, though I had to let it die a little for lack of fuel. I kept
watch because those thoughts so troubled me, and I played ever with the hilt of my sword, for the solid feel of that gave me a sense of linkage to that other me who had been so sure and certain, before this land of many mysteries had engulfed our people. How much time passed I do not know. The sky remained heavily clouded, though no rain fell nor storm arose. There was not even one of those strange stars to be sighted. We had our small fire and the circle. Beyond that lay a thick darkness without a break—curtaining us securely in.
I heard a soft sound and glanced at the girl and the cat. Grm's eyes were open, regarding me in his searching, weighing manner. Then he blinked, turned to look once more into the dark. Thus it came to me that the beast was signaling in his own manner that he would now take sentry duty, leaving me to rest.
So I stretched out, though I kept my sword bared, the hilt under my hand, using twists of grass which we had brought for kindling for a pillow. The bandages I had worn over my wound seemed tight and the skin beneath them itched. Sleep came in spite of that minor discomfort. I awoke as if I had been called. Yet I did not know who did the summoning, for Gathea still lay with her head pillowed against Gruu, and the beast's eyes were open, watching. Our fire had burned away, but its light was no longer needed. The lighter gray of predawn let me see, as I sat up, what lay immediately about.
There was movement out there in the grass, grazing animals. The deer made lighter patches against the growth on which they fed. Farther yet from them larger beasts also fed, none approaching us. I got to my feet, sheathing my sword. Curiosity now stirred in me. I wanted to see what tracks whatever had besieged us might have left, so I might guess at its nature. Also—I wanted to know if the hunter in turn had left any readable sign of his passing.
I went to that star point where my belt knife still stood and pulled it free, wiping the blade on a wisp of grass before returning it to the sheath at my side. Then I stepped out boldly beyond the protection Gathea had woven, to look around.
