by Andre Norton
Zolan did not answer at once. I thought that he sought for the words he needed.
“Lady Sabina of the Scorpys, some things are not to be spoken. I will say this: after a fashion they have a part in Dismal life, even if they are only of hard-baked clay.”
“If I offend,” she said quickly, “grant me pardon.”
Ah, when a road is abruptly closed, it is generally because some secret must be sheltered. It would be best not to probe any further here.
“Of what manner is life above?” He changed the subject.
Could our host indeed be utterly ignorant of what chanced in Gurlyon?
We launched into history, spoke of wars, of rulers weak or forceful, recounting the unending torment of the Border and those living there. Though we did not interrupt each other, we all had our part in that telling. We had no reason to conceal from Zolan the tumult above. It was better that he should know that the upper world was a land of armed men ready for any foray.
Once he got up and went to the supplies, returning with a stoppered jug, four small bowls stacked together, and a box of dried fruit. We balanced the bowls, sipped at the liquid he had poured into them from the jug, and rested for a space.
“So.”He swallowed a mouthful of the wine and spoke. “It would seem that those above know no more of peace than we do here. This hermit who you say came to the king: what part does he play?”
We told him, Cilla dwelling on the rules Forfind had given his followers and how those were used against women. Bina added proof with a swift description of that Udo Chosen, his follower, who had so broken custom. I added the fact that Udo had demanded us from our captors to answer purposes of his own.
“The hermit is said to have come from this mountain land.” I delivered the most damning rumor last, watching Zolan closely as I did so. However, if he had known anything of that troublemaker, he did not show it. He made no comment concerning Udo Chosen. Instead he sat quietly, not looking to us three but rather somehow into the distance beyond us, as if occupied by thoughts of his own.
When no more questions were asked from either side, our host roused at last.
“You wish to return to that land, though it may be torn by battle?”
“It is our own,” I made reply. “We know its ways and can foresee many dangers, even as you can here. There we have purpose, as you have your duties in this land we call cursed.”
He was standing now. He still did not look to us but glanced again at those seated figures. “If it is indeed meant that you return, then a way will be opened.”
Though he had insisted that no way existed out of the Dismals, now he seemed to be suggesting that there was. I did not push the question, for it appeared that he had understood our position and was somewhat moved by it. We must let the matter rest for now.
Bina once again brought stream water for Climber and held the bowl while he lapped.
Sabina
I HAD TENDED animals before. Though this red furred beast bore no resemblance to the sleuthhounds, still he seemed to be answering well to the same care I would have given one of those if they were injured. Zolan had recognized my healing usages, and he undoubtedly stored the supplies I had studied over. I might learn some further ministrations, if he would teach, for new skills are often developed under different circumstances.
Such were my thoughts as I made Climber as comfortable as I could.
“You know varca and thorble, quant, sizzal?”
Looking up, I shook my head. “I might well know such, but not under the names you give them.”
I was all but certain he had touched my thoughts of a moment earlier. Dared I try an outright Send to make sure? No, I decided. There was no reason to let him learn any more of our Gift than he might already suspect. At the same time, I determined to indeed learn all I could without revealing too much in return.
Thus began our shaky partnership with this Lord of the Dismals. The three of us united quickly in agreement to the peace as well as we could.
Drucilla
CLIMBER HEALED SPEEDILY. Though we had no way in this mountain pocket of recognizing the passage of time, it was three sleeping-periods later that he found his feet and wavered unsteadily to stand by me, bumping his head against my shoulder. I snapped off a word, which would never have been uttered in my mother’s solar, as I dropped the needle and had to search for it by running my hands over the rock floor.
Having discovered that Zolan had a supply of cured skins available, with his consent I was endeavoring to add to our supply of clothing with better-fitting garments. I kept to the same general style: long breeches and laced jerkins. However, I found a pleasure of sorts in working the various skins and choosing the colors.
While I stitched, I raised my eyes now and then to the seated ones. Zolan had never given us any real accounting of them. But I had dreamed—a dream from which Tam had shaken me awake because of my cries against the evil that was a part of it.
I stood in another cave, the floor of which was thick with fragments of fire-bitten clay. Here stood broken seats, figures partly crushed, heads snapped off, barrel bodies opened. From those jug bodies had been shaken blackened bones and stark gray ashes. This had been a place of burial once; now it was a place of terror and darkness. The evil curdled the air about, lapping at me greedily; a Shadow entity slavered for feeding, but its hunger was frustrated.
At that point, Tam had become aware that I was threatened by a peril from beyond and had intervened with Power to awaken me.
Were those two on the shelf really hollow containers, filled with the remains of dwellers in the Dismals? Did not we of the South shape coffins of another kind, though we did not place them to oversee the daily activities of the living?
There was far too much of this place we did not know. I stuck the needle almost viciously through an odd piece of near-bluish scaled material I had found and was attempting to develop into a cloak; like the skin of a serpent, the hide would shed water. Such garments would be a necessity for future explorations, for rain was now falling heavily outside the cave. We daily visited that door on the world. Three times now we had faced downpours. These skyfalls did not appear to prevent Zolan from making what must be duty visits outside; however, he did have a cloak to cover most of him, tall as he was, of the same stuff I was working on.
Even now he came splashing along the water trail to struggle out of the straps that kept a bag safely on his shoulders. Climber limped slowly over to join him and thrust a nose into the bulging top of the bag.
“Lady Sabina!” He looked at me.
I shook my head. It seemed odd to me that he was unable to tell the three of us apart. However, he had never attempted to probe, so he might not even desire to identify us closely.
“She has washed bedding. You will find her and Tamara by the fire-hole drying it.”
“Later, then.” He had dug into the bag to produce a packet bound up in a piece of netting, which he laid to one side. Then came something larger, wadded in a large leaf. Climber inspected it and uttered a sound rather like the beginning of a purr.
“Later,” Zolan promised the beast. Next to appear was a roll of clothlike stuff, and with it in hand, he approached me.
“What think you of this?” His question held a note of boyish pride. My father’s youngest squire had spoken so on the famous day of the Wiltson Hunt when luck had stood beside him and he had brought down a prize boar. Tweaking the roll, Zolan shook the contents free and held what he had to show, shoulder high, to cascade down to his soggy boots.
Fluttering out in the air was a square of—could it be lace?—of a size to cover a large table. I put aside my task and scrambled up to study it closer, reaching out fingers to touch and snatching them back again as speedily when I identified the material.
“Web—it is spiderweb!”
He nodded, again with that air of pride. “One as perfect as this,” he declared, satisfaction filling his voice, “is seldom found!”
I glanced t
o his hands. He was holding the gauzy weaving by the upper corners, but it did not seem to be clinging to his fingers. If that had been wrought as a trap, as most webs were, the lines should have been sticky to effectively imprison any creature blundering into it. Surely this must have been woven by that green bag-horror we had fought, or at least one of its kin!
“Does it not stick?” I pointed to his hands, but he was actually pleating the web. No, it did not adhere, either to his flesh or its own substance where line touched line.
“Not after it is laid overnight in rain-wet sorchti leaves. Here, see for yourself.” He had rerolled the filmy fiber and now tossed it to me.
Without wanting to, I caught it, finding it soft as the finest Falligan lace from Isci Port overseas. I shook the web-cloth out a little and deliberately tried to tear at one of the threads. There was no give, neither was there any parting of its fibers.
What would the court ladies—even Her Majesty—give for such veiling! I, who loved new fabrics, was quickly won. For a fleeting second or two, I held a mind-picture of a booth merchant showing such to a gathering mob.
“That is true—weaving like this might well start another war!” Once more Zolan responded to an idea that had not been spoken aloud. “I have found and preserved parts of these webs, but even I have not before seen one entire. This is the trap set in the treetops by the gorm—the bag-thing you saw die on the riverbank. Gorms can catch creatures as large as Climber and others that dwell aloft. The females are the spinners, and among those they would entrap are the much smaller males.”
I did not ask the reason why they would entrap those of their own species, for I thought I knew. The way of some of our own spiders must be followed by these noisome giants: to mate with, then destroy, any unfortunate male driven by nature to seek them out.
Folding the web with care, I put it down beside my work, to catch up a piece of the bluish, scaled stuff. “No web is this, nor skin nor fur of a beast—how got you it?”
He had been lightening his bag by emptying it of more leaf-wrapped contents, but he glanced up to see what I held. For a moment he stood very still, staring at the strip.
“That is belly skin of gars—a young one. A gars …” Now his eyes turned to me as if he wanted very much to know my reaction to what he would say. “A gars,” he began again, “is a water dweller by day and a shore hunter by night, for it produces limbs along its undersurface to aid it on land. Full-grown, its length is near that of the second shelf there—” He was pointing to the one on which much of the supplies were piled. Truly the Dismals held monsters! He must have slain this creature also—or had he, as with the web, come upon a body which had already been torn apart? I suddenly had no wish to return to my sewing.
He approached closer to my workplace. “This is also gars.” He was holding now a similar scaled skin; however, the new hide was not blue-silver but rather a brilliant purple, in color like to a court robe. “This was taken from a much older male.”
Dropping what he held, he groped for another scrap, then—“Wait!” He interrupted himself, sitting back on his heels. “You have the skill; perhaps you can put to good use another treasure!”
At once our host was off, heading to the other end of the cave, but he did not get as far as the fire-pit before he sought the wall to his left. How he used his hands there I could not see clearly, but he lifted out a section of what had seemed solid stone to draw forth from the opening behind it a sagging length, again wrapped in dark leaves. This he handled with a more delicate touch than he had even given the web.
It was rather an unwieldy armful, and Zolan had to struggle to keep it from dragging along the rock under foot. Then he unrolled it. I looked—and was ensorcelled as I had never been, even with the intricately woven silk from across the sea.
Color played over its surface, muted or shiningly alive. I knelt and ran my hands across the soft, unusually patterned surface. Not skin, feathers, or scales—it was more like thickly rooted fur with an upstanding nap. The background was a purplish gray, the hue of sky darkened by an approaching storm. Against this background gleamed what looked like eyes of a silvery hue, which carried a near-metallic sheen. Its texture was such as to cause one to desire to continue smoothing it without stop. I looked to Zolan for explanation.
“It is a quillian wing,” he answered my unspoken question. “The air at night provides the hunting range. This is only part of a pinion.”
Whatever its nature, the quillian, I knew, could not be a bird, for this substance had no kinship with feathers. Another giant insect of sorts?
Though the Lord of the Dismals had this wealth of wonders for me—and it made me start to plan what might be done to display each beauty to best advantage—so did he later empty out seeds, flower, roots, chunks of sap gum and other such products of his land before Sabina. He explained what plant or tree bore each specimen as he laid it out, also making clear what value it held for the harvester. As Sabina listened closely, so did we.
“You name this marsh lily.” Bina looked down at the broad petals, white with green veins, of a bruised flower resting on her palm.
“Yes, wet your fingers; take a petal in this manner.”He pulled at the blossom until, with her aid in holding it, he had it free. Dipping his prize in Climber’s water bowl, he rubbed it vigorously until lather appeared and spread. At the same time, a fragrance arose. Soap, then, of a sort—and I, for one, was going to take advantage of that as soon as possible!
Tamara
I WATCHED ZOLAN put forth effort to teach and entertain us. The more we could learn, the better. I could well understand how he managed to entrance Cilla and Bina by his display of what most appealed to their Talents.
But did this sweet coating conceal a bitterness waiting beneath? He had spoken of taking us exploring. The rain had given an excuse to postpone that promise. Did he, or whoever stood behind him—for I was sure that one Power did so—think to lull us in this manner into an acceptance of our lot, at least for a while?
I thought of the dream that had set Cilla crying out in small gasps before I had managed to rouse her. In those few moments, as I brought her back to consciousness, I had shared a small fraction of her ordeal. That cave of the disturbed dead—surely that must lie somewhere along the cliff walls. A people had been deeply offended against by what had happened there, for death should be treated with solemn dignity.
Had it been Breakswords such as Maclan, come treasure hunting, who had caused that destruction, mistaking the coffins of another race for vessels of wealth? Like it or not, we three were of the grave violators’ kin. Hostages or scapegoats—to either role we would surely answer at some future time.
Twelve
Tamara
The rain stopped at last, but not before that part of the stream running through the cave had overflowed its banks. We waded out now, with coolish water rising from knee to waist level. One advantage of our scaled clothing was that water did not penetrate it. The pack bags with which Zolan equipped us were of the same material, keeping dry the supplies whose usage he explained as he packed his own before us.
We emerged into the same pale sunlight we had earlier seen. The air about us felt dank with moisture, and strange scents wove through it. Climber still limped a little but he had sharply refused to be left behind.
Our way ran for only a short distance in the stream; then our guide waved left, using a staff he had brought to aid in climbing the bank. The water was well up to its edge, and reeds marked it with their green tips.
Accustomed as I was to rough travel, for at times I had played squire for my father, I did not see any possible break in the green forest wall. Insects danced in the turgid air around us—not the monsters we had seen, nor those Zolan had described, yet larger than the familiar ones of the outer world. However, because we had rubbed our bodies and sleeked our hair with potions Zolan offered us for protection, those would-be suckers and biters dove determinedly toward us, yet did not attack.
Agai
n Zolan used his staff, pushing aside a thick curtain of interlocked vines to uncover a narrow path burrowing into the forest. Onto that we threaded in single file.
Climber brought up the end of our party directly behind me. I found myself playing rear guard. Looking and listening, I tried to set into memory all that might be of importance. Twice Zolan halted to point out perils. One was a cluster of scarlet flowers, its hue so brilliant that fire might be ablaze at the heart of each trumpet-shaped blossom. These grew at the very end of a vine that, for the rest of its length as far as could be seen, was bare.
As Zolan held his staff near, the ropelike growth swung forward. For a moment or two, the flowers clamped like mouths on the wood shaft, then dropped off while the vine lashed about in frenzy. On the long rod, oily moisture beaded in patches, and the wood beneath was turning yellow. He plunged the staff again and again into masses of leaves to cleanse it.
His second enemy waited at the edge of the path, which deviated to avoid the crumbling bole of a giant tree. There, growing from the rot of the wood, were what might be thick fingers of many hands, scattered in patches. Once more we stopped and he waved us back a little but not so far that we could not see his staff again in use.
Under the blows he rained on the closest cluster of finger-things, a yellowish dust spewed forth. Perhaps the current dankness of the air was what settled it quickly. The small cloud did not spread far, but coated the wood where it fell with a yellow slime, while we caught a whiff of a strong stench.
Though we went ever on guard, there were no further perils-in-wait as we proceeded. The path we followed began to rise. The tangled wall of vine dipped on either side.
My soft boot skidded a little and, regaining my balance quickly, I stooped to look. My foot had struck against something very solid, and it was all that had saved me from a fall. When the muck of fallen leaves had been scraped away, I sighted stone set flat. Having armed myself, soon after we quitted the stream, with a rough staff of my own, I dug farther to discover not just one stone block but another joined to it—and another.
