Golden Trillium

by Andre Norton

  The thing was marching, Skritek to either side but none, she noted, behind it, where on the ground it left patches of putrescence which might have oozed from its feet. These foul sluggish blotches seemed to take on monstrous life of their own, some uniting quickly and then flowing outward, seeking nourishment. There was a stiffness in its walk. As did Salin, it was using a staff, manifestly to keep itself upright. So might the long-dead walk from out a tomb, moved by some purpose which could not be denied.

  They had a last glimpse of the marcher and his escort. Then light flickered in the basin and Kadiya’s hand fell numbly to her side.

  13

  “Where does that thing go?” Kadiya asked aloud, of herself as much as of those with her.

  “We but follow a trail,” Jagun returned, “the death trail it leaves.”

  “A Vanished One.” Again the question formed in the girl’s mind. “How could a Vanished One become so?”

  “There were those who wove the Dark, even as their kin wove the light,” Jagun answered. “Out of such weaving came the Judgment which changed the world. This thing is from that time, it is loosed and moves again.”

  Kadiya shivered, her hand again to her sword. Did she feel warmth there? She turned it over. The light was gone from her amulet and her hand was a heavy weight which she had difficulty forcing to obey her will. Cautiously, in the dark which had fallen when the amulet light had died away, she slipped a finger across the bulbous shapes of the three eyes. They felt locked shut.

  “The forbidden Door is said to lie within this place of bitterness and death,” Salin’s thought came. “It can only be that this thing seeks.”

  “For what purpose?” Kadiya asked quickly.

  They were crowded so tightly into this slight shelter that she felt the wisewoman stir, her small arm brushing against Kadiya’s longer, mail-clad one.

  “Woman of Power, this thing which leaves so deadly a trail appears ill unto death—yet it seeks some aid. There may be a core of evil which will give it renewal. The oldest tales tell that when the Vanished Ones saw the destruction their own warring had brought upon the land they withdrew to another place in sorrow. There was a doorway into that place and there they entered.”

  “But if those of good will went so,” Kadiya countered, “why would something which is an embodiment of evil strive now to follow the same path?”

  “For healing perhaps,” the wisewoman said. “We cannot judge the thoughts of a Vanished One. We are wrought of their making, but it is not in us to guess what would move them or what Powers they hold.”

  Again Kadiya fingered the sword. This … this thing out of nowhere had poisoned wherever it passed. Even if it departed the land by some sorcery, the plague it had sown would spread, and though she had met and destroyed a very small part of that, she had not the Power to backtrail and burn out all which had been set alive.

  If she could catch up with this walking death before it gained any strength or renewal she might just have a chance to destroy the foulness at its very core. This would be no battle as she had known warfare when she went up against Voltrik, or even against the Skritek. Those enemies were flesh and blood and could be killed. Even in dying this walker might win, its contagion spread. Yet there was no other answer. As best she could she must follow it, strive to deal with it as she had with Voltrik’s general.

  Her helm scraped against one of the stones which walled them in as she raised her head. She could summon no army now; she could not even reach out to her sisters—to Haramis who was supposed to be watcher and Guardian of Ruwenda. This was her own task; this must have been the reason for her headlong journey from the Citadel. She had not been drawn so to relinquish the sword—no, rather to take it up again, against a far more sinister foe than any invader of her own species.

  “Jagun, Salin, Smail,” she said, with all the authority she might summon. “This I must do: strive to prevent the evil from reaching its goal. But I do not ask any of you to come with me.”

  “Farseer, this is an ancient evil and we are a people linked with the day which must have shaped it first. Do not say that you walk this trail alone!” There was sharpness in his tone, a sharpness she had never heard from Jagun except on two occasions in the past when he had believed that she had endangered herself foolishly.

  “King’s Daughter,” said Salin, “I chose to follow this trail even before we met you. I shall follow it to the end. The Power may not be as much mine as it is yours, but what I can summon I shall live to turn against this foul thing. Smail is of my blood and he is Oath-bound before the Elders to travel with me. We do not turn aside now.”

  Kadiya sighed. Jagun was tied to her by years of shared memories and a mutual respect for each other’s talents. He had become indeed her shield comrade and she would have felt inwardly bereft without him. The two Uisgu were not so attuned, but it was plain they had their own sense of duty.

  “Then we follow,” she said dully.

  Sleep was fitful. Kadiya was sure in the morning that she had dreamed. Though she carried into waking the feeling that those dreams had been ill, she could not remember them.

  Not only was there no rain this morning but a cloud-dulled sun shone as they left the rocks around Sal Tower. The signs of the path they were to follow were plain and they had to move with exasperating slowness to avoid the patches of spreading death, the putrid smell of which hung always about them.

  Perhaps due to an underpavement laid to prevent deep rooting, the heavy growth did not stand thick here but rather opened before them. They went alert to any sign of movement which might mean a viper. One they saw but it must have touched a place of plague for it lay dead, its body half rotted away.

  The openness narrowed again to a passage. Here were the remains of more pavement and it was easier to avoid the rot which could only attack some creeping vines and patches of fungi. Then, before them, stood a pole planted as firmly as it could be wedged between two blocks of stone.

  It was surmounted by a skull—and not an ancient one, for there were ragged scraps of flesh still clinging to the bone. On the supporting rock there was a wide smear of blood, now a lure for insects and flying things.

  Skritek markings. Kadiya had seen such before. So did the saurians declare boundaries or set trail signs. A line of rocks behind this pole marked the wall of some long vanished building. They scrambled over to face water once again, a narrow tongue of it looping out of a lake of some size. Plain to see on the lake’s edge was a stinking mass of what had once been water reed now brought down by the plague’s touch—a clear sign that their quarry must have taken to the water here.

  If there had been transportation waiting for that other party there was none for them. Jagun swung down to the water’s edge well away from the tainted reed bank. Reversing his spear he used the point to dig into the reed screen. His vigorous thrusts brought out of hiding a form of craft Kadiya had never seen before.

  Unlike the well-fashioned skiffs built by the Oddlings, this was a lumpy platform of heavy branches interwoven as tightly as the thorn brush walls. In fact as it came into open view through the hunter’s urgings, the girl could see that it was fashioned from just such branches, interlocking thorns helping to keep it together. But those spikes which would have pointed upward and outward had been broken off and a matting of reeds plastered with mud covered it.

  The lumpy raft looked far from journey worthy, and Kadiya wondered if they dared trust it. Yet having freed it from hiding, Jagun boldly sprung out on it, balancing himself against the sudden sway and dip, then sank his spear into the bottom mulch to anchor it while he jerked his head in a gesture for them to join him.

  It was a craft far from comfortable or safe. They had to arrange themselves and their packs in the middle to balance it before Jagun and Smail used poles which had been half hidden in the mud to work them away from shore and toward the wider part of the lake.

  As on each previous morning since beginning their journey, they took the precaution of
greasing their skins against insect attacks. Here there seemed to be a new type of flying bloodsucker which was not banished by the usual method, yet they dared not move to beat them off because of the precarious state of their transport. Kadiya tried to be as stoic as possible against these pest attacks even as she felt and saw spots of blood on her hands, and felt those which must now speckle her face.

  Their craft moved on with Jagun and Smail working hard to keep them parallel with the left bank. She set herself to watch for any sign of the rot there, to betray the passing of the one they hunted. As they went, the brush gave way to much taller vegetation which might have been called trees, save that they had not one trunk but several.

  These trunks joined with drooping branches and reached out over the water to form crooked arches. At intervals they saw a stirring in the water beneath the widest of those which suggested that life lurked there. However, so far those spaces were, Kadiya deemed, too narrow to conceal any Skritek hunter.

  Because they had encountered no guards Kadiya believed that the Skritek felt safe enough within their own territory not to take the precaution of placing a sentinel rear guard.

  Continually tormented by the bloodsuckers, they pushed slowly on. So far there had been no sighting of any plague spot on the bank. Then Kadiya was suddenly deterred from her restrained slapping by a surge of warmth, stronger than the steaminess which appeared to issue from the dark lake through which they poled.

  Though it had been inert since she had used it for the scrying, her amulet was again showing life. Cautiously she drew it out from beneath her mail shirt. The imprisoned trillium appeared almost alive as the amber glowed around it. Was it again a guide? It was tuned to Power and if there was some source of Power ahead now the amulet could well be answering.

  She drew the attention of her companions to what she held and then edged a little along the center portion of the rude raft, aiming the amulet at the left-hand bank. For, if she turned it ahead or in the opposite direction, it immediately dimmed.

  Here taller and taller branches swung out over the water. The arches formed by the roots were now nearly high enough for their heads to clear, though Jagun kept the craft well away from any such experiment.

  No sign of the plague, but all at once the amulet moved in Kadiya’s hold, and had she not instinctively tightened her grip it might even have leaped from her grasp.

  “That way!” Kadiya pointed straight at one of those root arches, a tall and very thick one. The growth which it supported must have been very old.

  Jagun alertly swung their raft left and a moment later they were under the shadow of the arch. Nor was there any sign of bank ahead. Rather they viewed more of the arching roots, forming a crooked roofing which led into true darkness. They might be entering some stream emptying into the lake at this point though Kadiya could detect no current pulling at the raft.

  She stared ahead seeking the betraying slime patches. However, if those they followed had come this way that seeder of foulness had not touched anything which could carry the blight.

  Now they passed under a fourth arch. With each the light had dimmed more, for overhead the tree growth had closed in to form a real roof, keeping out the wan daylight. There was the smell of muck and rank vegetation here but none of the putrid whiffs which had alerted them to danger before.

  Jagun took to the fore of the raft, using the pole with the dexterity of long practice while Smail moved with care to the other side, bending and raising his own pole in unison with the hunter.

  Somewhere ahead there must be a source of Power, of that Kadiya was sure. But for good or ill? The amulet would react to a strong emanation of evil as well as to the good which had fashioned it as a protection and guide.

  At least its growing blaze gave them a spark of light as their unsteady voyage continued. About them, as it had in the thorn-thicket tunnel, the walls were closing in. However, it was not until later that Kadiya, having turned the amulet a bit, saw a fraction of one of those walls. Wall it was—ancient stone, dripping now with rank green water weed.

  The amulet caught a glint of eyes. A length of the moss wavered, broke from a tuft and dropped into the water. So this place had its inhabitants also.

  There was silence except for the sound of the poles being drawn forth and then reset to push on. Then Kadiya heard an exclamation from Jagun, saw in the glimmer of the amulet a sudden flurry as he drove his pole in with greater force to end their advance and anchor them in this underground streamway.

  Kadiya pulled up to her knees and held her hand forward, reaching across the hunter’s shoulder with that faint source of light. There was indeed a barrier before them—and such a one as perhaps was proper to see in eerie and forgotten places.

  She had seen the intricate webs of the roxlin once or twice in the outer regions of the Golden Mire. But those had been small, the work of spider creatures no larger than her thumb tip. This web, as perfectly structured, filled the whole expanse before them from one dank wall to the other, from water’s edge up into the gloom overhead to a point they could not see in this dark.

  Nor were they thin threads which formed the perfect circle. The strands looked as thick as the cords on travel boots. And they were matted, some places in thick layers, with the bodies of unlucky insects—and other creatures. In one place was a lizard as green as the growth around them, surely one of the things she had seen take to the water. Its body was no light one, yet its weight hardly bent the cords which bound it.

  The roxlin were avoided. While they could not suck the life from large prey, their bite was a danger, able to cause a wound very hard to heal. A roxlin of the size to have woven this would be a formidable opponent.

  With one hand on Jagun’s shoulder to steady herself as the raft rocked alarmingly under her feet, Kadiya held the amulet above her head. Neither wall showed any signs of a hiding place for a large creature. The Weaver could only be concealed somewhere aloft. But the amulet’s light held as high as she dared reach picked up nothing. To touch that web would perhaps bring the roxlin into view eager to inspect its captured prey.

  An attack from above would be perilous, perched as they were on such a frail footing.

  Kadiya, still holding the amulet aloft, transferred it from right hand to left. Then she drew the sword. Under her fingers the eyes seemed shut, yet here no spear nor dart would do the job needed.

  “Give me room,” she ordered softly, fearing voice sound alone might bring an attack.

  Jagun drew to one side and a little back so Kadiya could inch forward, at once feeling the raft answer ominously to the shifting of her weight. She must be swift before it dipped too far. Having only two hands she would not be able to save herself if that happened.

  Then an arm closed about her waist, steadying her. Jagun, though he still kept tight grip on the anchoring pole, was lending her what assistance he could.

  Quickly Kadiya aimed a sword swing at the web. Though her blade lacked the point it did not go without an edge and that caught, for only a fraction of time, before it cut through the web. A second such swing and a third followed though she was tensely aware that any moment there might come an attack from the roxlin.

  The rounded circles were in tatters, trailing into the water where swirlings suggested that something was waiting to feed upon the feast bound to the stickiness of the broken threads.

  Kadiya was astounded that there had been no answer from the creature whose work she was now destroying with all the vigor she dared. That the trap had been deserted was hard to believe. Yet the more damage she wreaked upon that barrier the more she began to think it true.

  The light from the amulet now showed a jagged hole, fully large enough for them to use. But suppose the maker was craftily waiting for their craft to pass beneath it before it made its move?

  “Do we try now?” She depended upon Jagun’s hunter’s training, willing to leave the decision to him.

  “Make ready!”

  She dropped down into the sam
e position she had held before, aware of Salin’s fast breathing at her shoulder. She held ready the sword.

  Jagun urged his pole free, reaching out to plant it ahead, and the raft rocked, shipping a little water as Smail copied his swing. They moved forward at what Kadiya guessed was the best speed he could summon. Involuntarily the girl hunched her shoulders as they passed under the remnants of the web, still not believing that they would avoid reprisal from the Weaver.

  Jagun’s and Smail’s concentrated efforts had them beyond the web in only breaths of time. She heard Salin give a small whistling sound and realized that the wisewoman must have been sharing her fears.

  “There is this,” Jagun commented as their voyage continued. “We can now be sure that those we hunt did not come this way.”

  Was that good or bad, Kadiya wondered. Had the amulet, answering to some other ancient emanation, drawn them away from the trail they should have followed?

  Again she swung the amulet from side to side and caught glimpses of only stone walls, slimed and dark. Then suddenly the raft grated on an obstacle in the water.

  Once more Kadiya steadied herself and swung the amulet forward, this time by its chain so that the limited light might reach farther.

  Rising out of the water before them was an incline of the same stone as the walls. It was plain that they had come to the end of the streambed way. Smail crowded by her and echoed Jagun’s leap to that solid landing place, uniting with the hunter in pulling their transportation further up on the shelfing stone.

  Kadiya was quick to scramble out and push ahead. A moment later the amulet light caught the first of a flight of steps leading upward. There was no smell of the plague here.

  She turned to help work the raft out of the water enough so that it might not be swept away. Then she shouldered her pack as Jagun and Smail took up theirs. Salin, leaning on her staff, was not far behind as they turned to that stairway. Here Kadiya took the lead as the light of the amulet was all they had as an aid.