by Andre Norton
Someone moved restlessly in the dark.
“Lord Ka-rak?” Nickus’ voice was low and hoarse, as if he struggled to keep it under control.
“What is it?”
“There is trouble—”
A bulk which could only belong to Jorik heaved up black against the faint light of the doorway.
“The hunt is up,” he observed. “They move to shake us out of here like rats out of a nest.”
“They did this before with you?” asked the Esper.
Jorik snorted. “Yes. It is their favorite move to battle. They would give us such a horror of our tower that we will burst forth and scatter. Then they can cut us down as they wish.”
But Craike could not isolate any thought beam carrying that night terror. It seeped from the walls about them. He sent probes unsuccessfully. There was the pad of feet on the stairs, and then he heard Takya call:
“Build up the fire, foolish ones. They may discover that they do not deal with those who know nothing of them.”
Flame blossomed from the coals to light a circle of sober faces. Zackuth caressed the spear lying across his knees, but Nickus and Jorik had eyes only for the witch maid as she knelt by the fire, laying out some bundles of dried leaf and fern. Her thoughts reached Craike.
“We must move or these undefended ones will be drawn out from here as nut meats are picked free from the shell. Give me of your power—in this matter I must be the leader.”
Though he resented anew her calm assumption of authority, Craike also recognized in it truth. But he shrank from the task she demanded of him. To have no control over his own Esper arts, to allow her to use them to feed hers—it was a violation of a kind, the very thing he had so feared in his own world that he had been willing to kill himself to escape it. Yet now she asked it of him as one who had the right!
“Forced surrender is truly evil—but given freely in our defense this is different.” Her thoughts swiftly answered his wave of repulsion.
The command to flee the tower was growing stronger. Nickus got to his feet as if dragged up. Suddenly Zackuth made for the door, only to have Jorik reach forth a long arm to trip him.
“You see,” Takya urged, “they are already half under the spell. Soon we shall not be able to hold them, either by mind or body. And then they shall be wholly lost—for ranked against us now is the high power of the Black Hoods.”
Craike watched the scuffle on the floor and then, still reluctant and inwardly shrinking, he limped around the fire to her side, lying down at her gesture. She threw on the fire two of her bundles of fern, and a thick, sweet smoke curled out to engulf them. Nickus coughed, put his hands uncertainly to his head and slumped, curling up as a tired child in deep slumber. And the struggle between Jorik and his man subsided as the fumes reached them.
Takya’s hand was cool as it slipped beneath Craike’s jerkin, resting over his heart. She was crooning some queer chant, and, though he fought to hold mind contact, there was a veil between them as tangible to his inner senses as the fern smoke was to his outer ones. For one wild second or two he seemed to see the tower room through her eyes instead of his own, and then the room was gone. He sped bodiless across the night world, casting forth as a hound on the trail.
All that had been solid in his normal sight was now without meaning. But he was able to see the dark cloud of pressure closing in on the tower and trace that back to its source, racing along the slender thread of its spinners.
There was another fire, and about it four of the Black Hoods. Here, too, was scented smoke to free minds from bodies. The essence which was Craike prowled about that fire, counting guardsmen who lay in slumber.
With an effort of will which drew heavily upon his strength, he concentrated on the staff which lay before the leader of the company. Setting upon it his own commands.
It flipped up into the air, even as its master roused and clutched at it, falling into the fire. There was a flash of blue light, a sound which Craike felt rather than heard. The Hooded Ones were on their feet as their master stared straight across the flames to Craike’s disembodied self. His was not an evil face, rather did it hold elements of nobility. But the eyes were pitiless, and Craike knew that now it was not only war to the death between them, but war beyond death itself. The Esper sensed that this was the first time that other had known of his existence, had been able to consider him as a factor in the tangled game.
There was a flash of lightning knowledge of each other, and then Craike was again in the dark. He heard once more Takya’s crooning, was conscious of her touch resting above the slow, pulsating beat of his heart.
“That was well done,” her thought welcomed him. “Now they must meet us face to face in battle.”
“They will come.” He accepted the dire promise that Black Hood had made.
“They will come, but now we are more equal. And there is not the Rod of Power to fear.”
Craike tried to sit up and discovered that the weakness born of his wounds was nothing to that which now held him.
Takya laughed with some of her old mockery. “Do you think you can make the Long Journey and then romp about as a fawn, Ka-rak? Not three days on the field of battle can equal this. Sleep now and gather again the inner power. The end of this venture is still far from us.”
He could no longer see her face, the glimmer of her hair veiled it, and then that shimmer reached his mind and shook him away from consciousness; and he slept.
It might have been early morning when he had made that strange visit to the camp of the Black Hoods. By the measure of the sun across the floor it was late afternoon when he lifted heavy eyelids again. Takya gazed down upon him. Her summons had brought him back, just as her urging had sent him to sleep. He sat up with a smile, but she did not return it.
“All is right?”
“We have time to make ready before we are put to the test. Your mountain captain is not new to this game. Matters of open warfare he understands well, and he and his men have prepared a rude welcome for those who come. And,” her faint smile deepened. “I, too, have done my poor best. Come and see.”
He limped out on the terrace and for a moment was startled. Illusion, yes, but some of it was real.
Jorik laughed at the expression on Craike’s face, inviting the Esper with a wave of the hand to inspect the force he captained. For there were bowmen in plenty, standing sentinel on the upper walls, arch, and tower, walking beats on the twin buildings across the river. And it took Craike a few seconds to sort out the ones he knew from those who served Takya’s purposes. But the real had been as well posted as their illusionary companions. Nickus, for his superior accuracy with the new weapon, held a vantage point on the wall, and Zackuth was on the river arch where his arrows needed only a short range to be effective.
“Look below,” Jorik urged, “and see what shall trip them up until we can pin them.”
Again Craike blinked. The illusion was one he had seen before, but that had been a hurried erection on the part of a desperate girl; this was better contrived. For all the ways leading to the river towers were cloaked with a tangled mass of thorn trees, the spiked branches interlocking into a wall no sword, no spear could hope to pierce. It might be an illusion, but it would require a weighty counterspell on the part of the Hooded Ones to clear it.
“She takes some twigs Nickus finds, and a hair, and winds them together, then buried all under a stone. After she sings over it—and we have this!” Jorik babbled. “She is worth twenty hands—no, twice twenty hands, or fighting men, is the Lady Takya! Lord Ka-rak, I say that there is a new day coming for this land when such as you two stand up against the Hooded Ones.”
“Aaaay—” The warning was soft but clear, half whistle, half call, issuing from Nickus’ lofty post. “They come!”
“So do they!” That was a sharp echo from Zackuth. “And down river as well.”
“For which we have an answer.” Jorik was undisturbed.
Those in the tower held their fir
e. To the confident attackers it was as such warfare had always been for them. If half their company was temporarily halted by the spiny maze, the river party had only to land on the offering rock and fight their way in, their efforts reinforced by the arts of their Masters.
But, as their dugout nosed in, bow cords sang. There was a voiceless scream which tore through Craike’s head as the hooded man in its bow clutched at the shaft protruding from his throat and fell forward into the river. Two more of the crew followed him, and the rest stopped paddling, dismayed. The current pulled them on under the arch, and Zackuth dropped a rock to good purpose. It carried one of the guardsmen down with it as it hit the craft squarely. The dugout turned over, spilling all the rest into the water.
Zackuth laughed; Jorik roared.
“Now they learn what manner of blood letting lies before them!” he cried so that his words must have reached the ears of the besiegers. “Let us see how eagerly they come to such feasting.”
8
IT was plain that the Black Hoods held their rulership by more practical virtues than just courage. Having witnessed the smashing disaster of the river attack, they made no further move. Night was coming, and Craike watched them withdraw downstream with no elation. Nor did Jorik retain his cheerfulness.
“Now they will try something else. And since we did not fall easily into their jaws, it will be harder to face. I do not like it that we must so face it during the hours of dark.”
“There will be no dark,” Takya countered. One slim finger pointed at a corner of the terrace, and up into the gathering dusk leaped a pencil of clear light. Slowly she turned and brought to life other torches on the roof of the tower over the river, on the arch spanning the water, on the parapet— And in that radiance nothing could move unseen.
“So!” Her fingers snapped, and the beacons vanished. “When they are needed, we shall have them.”
Jorik blinked. “Well enough, Lady. But honest fire is also good, and it provides warmth for a man’s heart as well as light for his eyes.”
She smiled as a mother might smile at a child. “Build your fire, Captain of Swords. But we shall have ample warning when the enemy comes.” She called. A silent winged thing floated down and alighted on the arm she held out to invite it. The white owl, its eyes seeming to observe them all with intelligence, snapped its wicked beak as Takya stared back at it. Then with a flap of wings, it went.
“From us they may hide their thoughts and movements. But they can not close the sky to those things whose natural home it is. Be sure we shall know, and speedily, when they move against us.”
They did not leave their posts however. And Zackuth readied for action by laying up pieces of rubble which might serve as well as his first lucky shot.
It was a long night, wearing on the tempers of all but Takya. Time and time again Craike tried to probe the dark. But a blank wall was all he met. Whatever moves the Black Hoods considered, they were protected by an able barrier.
Jorik took to pacing back and forth on the terrace, five strides one way, six the other, and he brought down his bow with a little click on the time-worn stones each time he turned.
“They are as busy hatching trouble as a forest owl is in hatching an egg! But what kind of trouble?”
Craike had schooled himself into an outward patience. “For the learning of what we shall have to wait. But why do they delay—?”
Why did they? The more on edge he and his handful of defenders became, the easier meat they were. And he had not doubt that the Black Hoods were fertile in surprise. Though, judging by what Takya and Jorik reported, they were not accustomed to such determined and resourceful opposition to their wills. Such opposition would only firm their desire to wipe out the rebels.
“They move,” Takya’s witch fires leaped from every point she had earlier indicated. In that light she sped across the terrace to stand close to Jorik and Craike, close to the parapet wall. “This is the lowest hour of the night when the blood runs slow and resistance is at its depth. So they choose to move—”
Jorik snapped his bow cord, and the thin twang was a harp’s note in the silence. But Takya shook her head.
“Only the Hooded Ones come, and they are well armored. See!” She jumped to the parapet and clapped her hands.
The witch light shown down on four standing within the thorn barrier, staring up from under the shadow of their hoods. An arrow sang, but it never reached its mark. Still feet away from the leader’s breast it fell to the earth.
But Jorik refused to accept defeat. With all the force of his arm he sent a second shaft after the first. And it, too, landed at the feet of the silent four. Craike grasped at Takya, but she eluded him, moving to call down to the Hooded Ones:
“What would you, men of power—a truce?”
“Daughter of evil, you are not alone. Let us speak with your lord.”
She laughed, shaking out her unbound hair, rippling it through her fingers, gloatingly. “Does this show that I have taken a lord, men of power? Takya is herself, without division, still. Let that hope die from your hearts. I ask you again, what is it you wish—a truce?”
“Set forth your lord, with him we will bargain.”
She smoothed back her hair impatiently. “I have no lord, I and my power are intact. Try me and see, Tousuth. Yes, I know you Tousuth, the Master, and Salsbal, Bulan, Yily—” she told them off with a pointed finger, a child counting out in some game.
Jorik stirred and drew in a sharp breath, and the men below shifted position. Craike caught thoughts—to use a man’s name in the presence of hostile powers, that was magic indeed.
“Takya!” It was a reptile’s hiss.
Again she laughed. “Ah, but the first naming was mine, Tousuth. Did you believe me so poor and power lost that I would obey you tamely? I did not at the horning, why should I now when I stand free of you? Before you had to use Takyi to capture me. But Takyi is gone into the far darkness, and over me now you can lay no such net! Also I have summoned one beside me—” Her hand closed on Craike’s arm, drawing him forward.
He faced the impact of those eyes meeting them squarely. Raising his hand he told them off as the girl had done:
“Tousuth, Master of women baiters, Salsbal, Bulan, Yily, the wolves who slink behind him. I am here, what would you have of me?”
But they were silent, and he could feel them searching him out, making thrusts against his mind shield, learning in their turn that he was of their kind; he was Esper born.
“What would you have?” he repeated more loudly. “If you do not wish to treat—then leave the night undisturbed for honest men’s sleep.”
“Changeling!” It was Tousuth who spat that. It was his turn to point a finger and chant a sentence or two, his men watching him with confidence.
But Craike, remembering that other scene before Sampur, was trying a wild experiment of his own. He concentrated upon the man Takya had named Yily. Black cloak, black hood making a vulture’s shadow against the rock. Vulture—vulture!
He did not know that he had pointed to his chosen victim, nor that he was repeating that word aloud in the same intonation as Tousuth’s chant. “Vulture!”
Cool hand closed about his other wrist, and from that contact power flowed to join his. It was pointed, launched—
“Vulture!”
A black bird flapped and screamed, arose on beating wings to fly at him, raw red head outstretched, beak agape. There was the twang of a bow cord. A scream of agony and despair and a black-cloaked man writhed out his life on the slope by the thorn thicket.
“Good!” Takya cried, “That was well done, Ka-rak, very well done! But you can not use that weapon a second time.”
Craike was filled with a wild elation, and he did not listen to her. his finger already indicated Bulan and he was chanting: “Dog—”
But to no purpose. The Black Hood did not drop to all fours, he remained human; and Craike’s voice faded. Takya spoke in swift whisper:
“They
are warned, you can never march against them twice by the same path. Only because they were unprepared did you succeed. Ho, Tousuth,” she called, “do you now believe that we are well armed? Speak with a true tongue and say what you want of us.”
“Yes,” Jorik boomed, “you can not take us, Master of power. Go your way, and we shall go ours—”
“There can not be two powers in any land, as you should know, Jorik of the Eagles’ towers, who tried once before to prove that and suffered thereby. There must be a victor here—and to the vanquished—naught!”
Craike could see the logic in that. But the Master was continuing: “As to what we want here—it is a decision. Match your power against ours, changeling. And since you have not taken the witch, use her also if you wish. In the end it will come to the same thing, for both of you must be rendered helpless.”
“Here and now?” asked Craike.
“Dawn comes, it will soon be another day. By sun or shadow, we care not in such a battle.”
The elation of his quick success in that first try was gone. Craike fingered the bow he had not yet used. He shrank inwardly from the contest the other proposed, he was too uncertain of his powers. One victory had come from too little knowledge. Takya’s hand curled about his stiff fingers once again. The impish mockery was back in her voice, ruffling his temper, irritating him into defiance.
“Show them what you can do, Lord Ka-rak, you who can master illusions.”
He glanced down at her, and the sight of that cropped lock of hair at her temple gave him an odd confidence. Neither was Takya as all-powerful as she would have him believe.
“I accept your challenge,” he called. “Let it be here and now.”
“WE accept your challenge!” Takya’s flash of annoyance, her quick correction, pleased him. Before the echo of her words died away she hurled her first attack.
Witch fire leaped down slope to ring in the three men, playing briefly along the body of the dead Yily. It flickered up and down about their feet and legs so they stood washed in pallid flame. While about their heads darted winged shapes which might have been owls or other night hunters.
