Tales From High Hallack, Volume 2

by Andre Norton

  Yet I went to the door and set my hand upon a place where the ancient wood was rubbed smooth and bare by the countless fingers which had touched there before me. There was the clear sound of a chime and the door opened, though none stood within. However, there was light, soft and golden as always, and into my face puffed the air which was deep scented with all the odors of the harvest time.

  I came into the first room, laying my staff and my pouch of food upon the floor. Then, daring as I did only in time wherein my heart was sore, I brought forth the amulet and held it out so that which waited could know me for a daughter come for council. I went on into the inner shrine where shafts of light stood as towers on either side of a block of golden stone. In the center of that was a hollow which perhaps would hold as much liquid as I could scoop up in my two hands. By that hollow was a pitcher wrought of gold and bearing Gunnora’s pattern of harvest sheath bound with a cording of vine, the fruit ripe upon it—all winking in the light with the glory of gems.

  Going to that table I twice advanced my hand to that pitcher, twice withdrew it, as the force of what I would do brought with it fear. Yet I could not now turn aside. Thus on the third try I picked up that flagon and dribbled from it a clear bluish liquid which gathered into the pool. Just to the brim and no more was I careful to pour. Then I took from off my neck the chain of my amulet and that I laid by the pool. To me came words not of my choosing but as if something had stirred within me and spoke now through my lips.

  “Lady—this one asks with all humbleness—to know—”

  There was a swirl across the water which came of itself and not from any troubling of my doing. It grew dark—dark as a shadow of the midnight. Something moved through that darkness and then it cleared because a smoking torch shown within.

  There were two cloaked and hooded figures, very small as if I gazed at them from a far distance. One raised herself even as I watched and laid her body upon a stone. That stone had to it a reddish look almost as if it had once been dipped in blood.

  The other one therein the pool stepped forward and pulled at the first’s cloak. I saw the Lady Tephana, and I did not doubt that that other was Maug. From beneath her cloak Maug brought forth a short rod or wand, and holding this above her lady she drew it back and forth in patterns. Also I was sure that I saw come out of the dark where that torch did not light, faces and forms which appeared and disappeared so quickly I could not be sure of them. Yet I knew that they were wholly evil, so much so that I quaked with the dread of what I watched.

  Then the torch was gone, the water in the pool no longer murky, and somehow the bridle on my tongue was loosened once more and I cried aloud to the lights, the stone, the very walls: “What would you have me do, Great One? What evil is being wrought this night and where?”

  “When the moment comes you shall know—” Did that answer come out of the air itself, or was it in my head, a thought from another? I did not know, but I was also aware that there would be no other answer.

  That the Lady Tephana dealt with evil was plain. That I was to have a hand in some great matter, that was also clear to me. As I took up my amulet and put it about my throat once again it seemed to me that the ancient bit of carving had grown heavier and that I was ever aware of a kind of warmth which comes before a full fury of flame.

  I rested that night in the outer room of the shrine and I dreamed, that I knew. But on my waking I could not remember the stuff of my dream save there had been some great peril and there was a need to prevent some act—and that prevention was mine.

  I left upon the table in the outer room my offering: a ribbon of fine weaving ornamented with the best my needle. And with the sun’s rising I went from that shrine bearing not the comfort I had hoped but rather a sense of purpose I did not yet understand.

  The lady was already returned when I came back to the keep. And I heard that she had indeed visited the shrine and prayed the night through that she might give her new lord the gift he wished—a son of his body.

  Yet what shrine—not Gunnora’s. Though the two guards swore that they had stood their watch apart from that—no man going within that gate. Whoever she had sought it had not been The Lady, and had she set dreams upon the guards to hide that?

  I had chance to meet Maug that eve as I sought my own tower room, and it seemed to me that she hesitated as if she wished to speak with me and then thought the better of it. But I did not like the look which she gave me—as if she knew well that I had spied and how I had done so.

  Again I dreamed, and this time I remembered after I awoke, the moonlight still shone full upon my bed. I had been somewhere else. And the feeling of that carried so fully with me that for more than a quick breath or two I looked about my tower room expecting fully to see that other place—a long hall with tall pillars and in the distance a white light—a moon silver one toward which I was drawn. There at the heart of that lay what I sought, a chest of crystal in which lay—

  But the light burst forth as I tried to see who or what was within. Yet I knew that it was needful that I should do this.

  I put forth my hand into the blazing light. It did not sear my skin as I thought it might. Rather my flesh prickled and I felt that into it entered some power which it was needful that I retain—even though I was no wise woman nor one of the Old Ones.

  Now as my dream released me, I looked down at my hand and it appeared even in the full of the moonlight to have a broad band like unto a burnished ring encircling each of my fingers. Even as I watched in wonder, those faded from sight, but not from touch. I felt a constraint and weight on each as I moved them, curled and uncurled bone and flesh.

  As I lay back again upon my narrow bed, I rested that hand on my breast when it chanced to cup to my body the amulet of The Lady. And that warmed from the power, sending through me now a strength such as I had never before known. My mind shaped words and spun them into phrases, though they were strange to me and it was as if I were repeating a ritual which I did not understand but which had been so drilled into my memory.

  Nor did I sleep the rest of the night, though I lay quietly, wrapped rather in the warmth of what was now within me. And I strove to remember each small portion of the dream while I wondered at what had lain within the crystal chest and why some Great One made use of such a one as I.

  It was a strange day which followed. I was uneasy and could not sit still at my stitchery for long at a time, but paced now and then my chamber. When I went down into the kitchen I heard the snickering of the maids and saw them watching from the corners of their eyes now and then a tall figure tending a brew pot on the hearth.

  Maug, who seldom left her mistress’s chamber was there, and to that which bubbled before her she added now and then a pinch of this, a dried leaf of that. While the scent of it was rich but sickly, liken to the smell of meat which is near spoiled and yet covered with spices to hide its nastiness. While she measured and tended so she was humming—not any tune such as might be sung as one went about one’s work, but rather a mumble of sound which seemed to pierce into one’s head and yet carry no meaning. And I saw that those gathered there made a wide circle about her, even the cook, all powerful here, keeping a good distance.

  But not such a distance as I myself chose. For upon seeing her back I thrust under the edge of my upper jerkin my strangely weighted hand and ate bread and cheese awkwardly with my left. For that feeling of cold evil gathered about me and dulled all the pleasure one could take in this homey place.

  I hurried away from the kitchen as soon as I had choked down a few mouthfuls and came again into my chamber. For now there settled upon me a feverish need to be about a certain piece of work over which I had dawdled earlier. This was a scarf of that same brave color sun’s setting left upon the sky. This was to be patterned with birds the like of which I had never seen. However, Maug had brought to me two days earlier a picture of such, lined out on a thick shaving of wood. They shone bravely in shades of red, but where one might have set gold to give them ma
jesty, the pattern had black lines, providing them with feet, bills and crests of that murky hue. Nor did I like to work upon them, for I had a queer feeling now and then that when I finished a crested head it would turn a fraction and the eye I had set therein fastened upon me.

  I had never had such fancies before and I pushed these sternly out of mind. It also seemed, now that my hand was weighted by those rings I could not see, that the stitches I was setting precisely came very slowly into line. Yet also there was driving me this need to be done with the thing and have it off and away, back to she who would wear it. So doggedly did I labor that the sun was still above the hill crest when I set the last stitch, shaking out the folds to inspect them carefully, making sure that I had not skimped the pattern in any place. Then I folded it over my arm and took up also the pattern chip from which I had worked and went forth to deliver my handiwork.

  Lady Tephana had been given the west tower for her own biding place, and I hurried along the outer defense wall rather than take the longer way of descent to the courtyard and up again. There were no sentries about since Ulmsdale, to our knowledge, had no enemies to try our strength. I saw a wink of light from a window ahead where that portion of the keep was in the beginning of twilight.

  I raised a hand to knock, but instantly, as if she had foreseen my coming, Maug opened the door and beckoned me within. So I entered the scented warmth of the inner chamber where the lord’s new lady sat before a mirror gazing steadily into it, not seeming in pleasure at her own features, but as if she saw there something of vast importance. Such strange fancies did fill my mind that day.

  “Ylas.” She said my name without turning. “Lay it about me—carefully now!” Her voice was sharp as if the placing of the scarf were some weighty matter which occupied all her thought for the moment.

  I had expected Maug to take the wispy stuff from me, but now I obediently laid the picture from which I had worked down on a table nearby and shook out the scarf, letting it fall gently even as she said, about her shoulders. There was a movement to one side and I caught a glimpse of Maug taking up the wooden plaque I had put down and tossing it into a brazier.

  But what was much more important to me was that as soon as I arranged the scarf to the Lady Tephana’s liking those weights on my fingers vanished, and it was only when I backed away a step or so that the sensation returned again.

  The lady gathered up the scarf, wrapping it tighter about her with small quick tugs which again made those ill-omened birds seem to move. But the color became her darkness very well and she appeared in that moment more beautiful than I had ever thought. Now she smiled into the mirror and laughed.

  “You have done well, Ylas. My lord will be pleased. We shall deal together again, you and I.”

  That sounded with too much emphasis, as if it was more than work with the needle she had in mind. However, I somehow found the words to say that I was glad to have pleased her. She dismissed me with a wave of her hand, and Maug moved in with a comb to deal with her long locks which were as black as the bills and legs of those uncanny birds.

  So it was that they were both occupied as I turned to go. Only my eyes lit upon what sat on the edge of the table—a small tray of copper well burnished bearing a goblet of gold. And from that stemmed cup, which was fancifully wrought with strange faces of beasts such as no man has seen, there came a whiff of the scent given off by the mixture Maug had been a-brewing earlier that day.

  My hand jerked out as if fingers had closed about my wrist to twist it so that my fingers fluttered over the brim. And—I was aware of that as much as if I had seen it happen—from those fingers had slid those rings of power. There was a moment’s troubling of the substance in the cup.

  Then I knew fear such as I had never felt before in my life, maimed and kinless though I was. And I sped from that chamber out into the rising night wind on the wall, to hasten back into my own small room.

  What sorcery had made me a part of it, I could not know. But that I had been used for another’s purpose as one might use a goose wing to sweep an ashy hearthstone, that was a truth I did not deny. Thus I ran then until I was within my own room, the door closed tight behind me, both of my hands to my mouth where my breath came fast. My heart pounded and I gasped, at last sinking upon my bed, rubbing that ringless hand with my other one, for it seemed that with the going of those invisible rings my flesh was icy cold and must be brought back to warmth again.

  I did not dream that night, nor the next, though I dreaded what sleep might bring me. Nor were there any more strange happenings to make me wish I had some safe person in whom I might confide. However, as the days passed dully one upon another I did not forget, and often, when I was sewing, I would stop and look upon my hand, spreading wide fingers, striving to understand what had happened to me on that one day.

  It was not long until we heard that our lord’s hopes had again risen—that the Lady Tephana was quick with child. As a favor to her he had brought her son Hylmer to the Keep and made much of him. He was a child in which there was little to admire or please, being large for his age and swift to tattle or hinder one. But in my own place I saw little of him, and I heard that my lord took pleasure in noting his sturdy health, foreseeing that as a promise for his own coming heir.

  He also urged upon the Lady Tephana the calling of one of the wise women from a neighboring Dale, one who was reputed to be a Handmaid to Gunnora. However, his lady refused, saying that Maug had been at her own birthing and knew more than any strange woman, no matter how high the art she claimed. Had she not successfully seen Tephana through the first birth of her son and as all living might now see—was he not a sturdy manchild?

  It was in the eighth month after the lady had given her joyful news that once more I dreamed. Again I was in that hall where lay the chest of clouded light. I stood by it and, at an order I did not hear nor fully comprehend, I stretched both hands into its gleam.

  This time I brought back no rings from that meeting. Rather did I have always with me the sensation that over each finger, across each palm, was drawn taut the thinnest and finest of gauzy cloth. At first I hesitated to take up my needle again lest in some manner that coating I bore would be loosened upon the cloth to betray me to those to whom I was naught but a maimed one dwelling apart. But when I tried, that did not happen, and it was the very day I discovered that with growing confidence that Maug summoned me to the Lady Tephana.

  She was lying back upon cushions, her swollen belly now giving her no ease. But by her was a pile of cloth—pieces of two colors—one shining white which was usual for the receiving cloth which was any babe’s first garment in the world, and the other of a filmy red.

  “Ylas, once more the best of your needle skill is needed,” she told me, stroking with both her hands the burden beneath her flesh. “Make a birthing cloth which will be the finest ever seen in this or any other Dale. And with this,” she put forward one hand to touch the red length, “you shall skillfully line with certain patterns Maug shall give you. For it is the custom of my House to so ask the protection of High Powers, that the sons we bear shall be straight and strong of body and fair of countenance.”

  Nor could I say no for in me arose that compulsion which had moved me before. I accepted the cloth and the piece of painted parchment which Maug had ready. Thus burdened, I returned to my chamber. I say burdened, for that I was. The parchment which I had not yet unfolded to look upon I could not carry easily. Light and thin it seemed, still it weighed as if it were a block of sword steel.

  I threw it on the table in my chamber with the feeling that I had handled filth. Even yet I did not open it, but rather sat for a space nursing one hand within the other, feeling still upon the both of them that coating as if I went gloved. At length I brought out my threads and the packet which held my needles. And I laid the cloth out, finding it twice as long as was the custom, guessing then that it was to be folded about the red stuff so that would pass unseen.

  It was when I at last made myse
lf unfold the parchment that the full blow of unknown power struck at me. That feeling of handling filth was strong. It seemed to me that I breathed in rank odor as I leaned closer, holding a lamp to see. For though it was day without, here the shadows crept from the corners and there was a murk like drifting smoke to hide those lines of red and direst black.

  That this was a thing of the Dark I now had no doubt, and I wondered that they had so revealed their purposes even to me who had no place among the Keep folk. It was as if they thought of me as someone beneath their need to consider.

  But that I would stitch such with any needle unto a birthing cloth! What did they think of me—or (and cold spread through me) did they also have a plan in which I would be silenced once my work was done?

  I have since many times thought that I was controlled by one greater than myself, and that Maug or perhaps even the Lady Tephana had taken care to bespell me into this labor and were not aware that I had not fallen helpless into their trap.

  Now I pushed the parchment back into its folds and sat on my stool considering for a long moment what I would do. That I must stitch the red cloth between the layers of white was plain, for when I experimented, putting one over the other, there was a rosy sheen to the upper layer. But that I would use the symbols of the dark—NO!

  Then I marked out for myself with a charred end of ash (which in itself was a powerful talisman against all evil) two other patterns. There was that borne by the amulet of Gunnora and the other—why, the gryphon which was my lord’s own sign and under the banner of which we lived.

  Looking upon these I set about with my stitchery and my needle flew with such speed and ease that it might have wrought of itself without my urging. The length had room only for four symbols, the two repeated, but they grew out of my best work and I wrought them in silver thread—moonglow such as is blessed by The Lady in her own shrine. Then quickly I laid the cloth within the other and sealed the sides with stitches so small that my eyes should have ached when I made them—yet I suffered neither that nor any fatigue as I worked, upheld by an inner strength which was new to me.