by Andre Norton
A slight sound behind alerted her—one of the Hassitti come to ask again, as they had for hours, what she wished?
“A place for dreaming—”
Though it came by mind touch, that speech was not from any Hassitti. Kadiya looked back and would have arisen but Lamaril would not have it so. He waved her back to drop down beside her, his mail scraping the stone.
“Does it,” she asked a question which had been with her most of this day, “give you anger, sadness, to see Yatlan as it now is?”
When he did not answer she was abashed. Perhaps in her usual impetuous way she had invaded where she should never have stepped. In this dusk light she could not clearly see his face. This might well have been a place which he remembered with joy and pleasure.
“You see deep,” his message came at last. “These walls contain that which is like a dream wherein one returns to childhood, seeking all that which was warmth and goodness then. It is a shadow of something which was—But it is not well to allow shadows to curtain what now exists. I knew the Yatlan that was. This is a different Yatlan and one I must learn again … if we are given the time.”
“The mountains …” She dropped hand to sword hilt.
“The mountains await us,” he agreed. “Salin has spoken with others of her kind. The dreamer of the Hassitti has had some things to tell us. Yes, the Dark is returning to loose the old evil. And evil it was.”
“What must we do then?” She could understand a battle with men, with Skritek, such as they had faced during the invasion. Was this a time when she must summon Anigel and Haramis, and somehow have them reweld the talisman into one mighty weapon?
“They sleep. Five wait for the one who returns from Varm to awaken them fully. They are the lords of the Dark whom we could not slay at the ending. Thus we bound them—sealed them—with such forces as we believed could never be broken.”
“Until Orogastus troubled and meddled. But if you could not put an end to them once, how can we hope to do so now?” Kadiya asked.
“In slumber they are powerless. We must stop that messenger before he awakens them. But, King’s Daughter of another day, your part is already played—”
A small heat flared up within Kadiya. Was she now to be dismissed, like a child who had run some small errand but must not trouble her elders when they were about their more important business?
“This is indeed another day.” She tried to tamp down her quickness of temper, to impress upon him without any show of what she felt. “Some tens of days ago I gave Oath to serve the mires—both peoples and land. Those of my race do not usually know the swamp ways. But from a child this waterlogged land has drawn me. When I called the Nyssomu, the Uisgu also came battle ready—something they had never done for any of my blood, even Krain my father.
“What touches this land, what threatens this land is a matter for me, since this is my time. In this very garden was a weapon fitted to my hand.” She had drawn the sword, held it out. The eyes were fully open, though they shot forth no vengeful fire. Rather it was as if they were truly using sight, studying her, even Lamaril. “As long as this is mine, Lord Guardian, then what happens in any mire battle is of my concern.”
Again he was silent. Then he slowly nodded his head. “With your will so set, Kadiya, we cannot stand against you. But you do not know what lies ahead. There can be such a Power unleashed that would scorch your talisman into nothingness. We cannot be sure that even we can stand against what will happen if the sleepers are summoned into wake-fulness and armed by Varm.
“For long and long we have stepped out of time and been at peace. Though we have not forgotten old skills, still we have not put them to use. Weapons rust if they are not withdrawn from sheaths for the seasons. I would not have you believe that we are all powerful. In this time we can die as easily as one of your kind, or the little ones you term Oddlings.” He suddenly caught at her empty hand and drew it to his forearm. Beneath her fingers his flesh felt as her own—there was nothing of the smoothness of the stone about it.
An insect fluttered near, settled on one of his fingers. He uttered an exclamation and flicked it away.
“You see even the flying things can sting us as they do you. We are vulnerable.”
“But you are the Vanished Ones. This city was deserted and vine grown before my people came and we have been here more than six hundreds of full seasons. Yet you remember these streets and halls, you have walked them before.”
“Time rules here. It does not beyond the Gate. Though my people are long lived, they do come at last to an ending. Did not Binah die? She chose to remain in the hold of time, and time lay heavy and heavier upon her. Yes, when you brought our inner selves through the barrier and gave us bodies once again, then we became answerable to time, just as we are answerable to death—and to another kind of life.”
“So now we go to the mountains,” Kadiya said. That the Vanished Ones were immortal was a legend of the bards. Yet Lamaril said that they were answerable to death and time, and this they had chosen when they came for battle.
“At least we know the road even though we may not be sure what awaits us at the end of it. Kadiya, tell me of your people—you say you chose the mires for your own after the fall of this sorcerer Orogastus. When you did so, what life did you leave?”
It was true, she had chosen another life just as Lamaril and the others had chosen to return. She thought of the Citadel. Parts of life there she could remember as if they were bright flowers to catch the eye; others she shrank from recalling—those last hours of horror when Voltrik breached the walls and all which had been her safe and happy life had come to an end.
Now she drew upon those first memories: the life in the huge stronghold which must have also been built by those of Lamaril’s blood, of the midseason festival of the Three Moon Feast, the arrival of flotillas of traders’ boats bound upriver to Trevista, of hunting trips with Jagun, of the boring court ceremonies she had yawned her way through because she must.
Then she deliberately brought forth the horrors: the foul death dealt her father and his guards, her mother’s body hacked with swords and war axes, of the escape through those inner ways which had led down and down into the very heart of the earth.
“Of the rest I have spoken before,” she said at last. She found she was shivering, though the breeze in the garden was not chill. Did one ever wash blood out of memory?
Her hand was caught again, held not tightly but firmly with a warmth spreading through that contact which chased away the chill. Kadiya grasped at a thought, held it tightly as one might clasp a shield. With her two sisters she had a bond, yes, but a tenuous one—they were too unlike to do more than answer the call of shared blood.
With Jagun her tie had been that of battle comrade, but they were species alien to one another. That she could command his aid at all times, she knew, but she was suddenly aware now there was a void within her which had never opened even far enough for her to know it existed.
This one firm hand clasp was like the sword: a key, a key to feelings she had never owned to before.
No, she did not want to turn that key! The here and now was hers. She wanted no dreaming nor foreseeing. Kadiya withdrew from that hold almost roughly. She was quick with another question.
“The way to this mountain prison, it is far?”
“We cross the Golden Mire,” he returned. “There are foothills beyond, a fringe of them. The way was blocked, hidden as best we could devise in the old days. It is no easy road.”
Kadiya stood up abruptly. “Is any way within the mires an easy one? The rivers and streams can serve us but they do not run straight. Do we head for Mt. Brom or Gidris? Haramis is there. Her power—”
“No, we round the end of the Thorny Hell, strike then south through the country which is held by the Uisgu, and so to near that peak of Rotolo.”
“What of the Vispi? Their country lies there. Will they not also be alert to this danger?”
Lamaril shook his head.
“We think that the old barrier of silence holds. It would be to the advantage of Varm’s servant who goes to awaken his comrades to keep it so as a protection against his return. Salin has been seeking and the small dreamer of the Hassitti has also done what might be done to try and discover some troubling of the mountain lands. But all he can perceive are the fear and horror of the death spreading in the mires.
“Already the Uisgu are traveling south, seeking to flee beyond its greedy spread where it turns all the land into a thing of rottenness.”
“But you are sure of where this place of the sleepers lies?” She did not really know why she asked that question. Certainly he must be sure.
To her surprise he did not reply at once. “The land is changed,” he returned slowly. “We have two among us who have the farsight. What they see is a wasteland of plague and that must be pierced.”
Kadiya thought of her sword. Would what she could summon be enough to clean a path for them?
“Fire”—he might be reading her thoughts though she had not felt the mind touch—“will cleanse in part. That we can manage—if he who seeks the same place does not summon some other weapon.”
The Vanished Ones were all powerful; legends ingrained in her from childhood declared that was so. Yet his words were not calm reassurance; they left her with a prickling of doubt. Perhaps there was never any core of true safety one could seek—not this side of that door. However, this was her land and she was set to live in it.
Their party made an early start in the morning. To Kadiya’s vast surprise, there were six of the Hassitti waiting when they assembled. Their bedraggled remains of rich robes had been discarded, though some still wore bejeweled chains. Each had a pack. The two to the fore Kadiya recognized—Tostlet, the healer, and Quave, the dreamer.
They had arms of a sort—long knives, which, because of their diminutive size, would serve as swords, and rods with thongs waving from their tips, not unlike whips. Their use the girl could not guess.
That they had added themselves to the company, had been allowed to do so by the Sindona, was a primary puzzlement to her. Still Lamaril and the others appeared to take their presence as a matter of course.
They left the city through the gates which held illusion and cut out westward away from the Thorny Hell. Here there was a goodly amount of stable land and the bogs were not to be feared. Though Kadiya could follow mind send if it were directly beamed in her direction she could not follow that which was in use now—save to be aware that information passed continually among the Sindona and perhaps the Hassitti.
She kept pace not with the Guardians, but stubbornly kept to her own comrades—Jagun, Smail, and Salin, the latter holding to her walking staff though the speed Lamaril had set was not taxing as yet.
Jagun and Smail cut away from the main body first. Kadiya knew that the need for scouts sent the Oddlings ahead, even though none of the Sindona seemed aware of the necessity.
They were well away from Yatlan when an Oddling mind warning struck Kadiya and she hurried ahead to Lamaril.
“Skritek! A full raiding party, Jagun has crossed their tracks!”
One of those who followed the Commander had also turned to face the west. It was Lalan, the woman Kadiya knew, though her face was masked by the helm. Her pose was that of one picking up a windborne scent.
“A rear guard.” Her mind send was cast this time such that Kadiya could pick it up. “Varm’s creature is moving fast, and the scaled jaws are following to his command.”
“There are Uisgu,” Kadiya had a fresh send from Jagun. “They flee the rot. Smail goes to warn them.”
Lamaril only nodded abruptly but he lengthened stride. Now Kadiya, though she disliked it, fell back to help Salin—for, as willing as the wisewoman was, she could not hold to that pace.
As the two dropped back, the Hassitti closed in about them. Kadiya was sharply elbowed aside and looked down in surprise to see that Tostlet had come up beside the Uisgu woman to offer support.
“We shall do well, Noble One,” the Hassitti’s assurance came swiftly. “Go you where the Power will be needed.”
Several of the Hassitti had put out a burst of speed, scuttling along at a rate which brought them along with Kadiya as she rejoined the head of their small force.
“Thus be it!” Lamaril drew from a sling at his side, where a sword might have ridden, a narrow rod. The tip of it appeared to quiver. Kadiya staggered. There was a driving pain behind her eyes. A hand reached forth from the Sindona she marched beside and lowered her helm, for bothered by the limited sight through the eye holes of the face mask, she had pushed it up on her head.
Instantly the pain was gone. She had drawn her sword and now she felt the growing heat of it in her hand. The eyes were open, and on impulse she held the blade a little higher as if those orbs could really see and thereby understand what was happening and what might be asked of them.
The Sindona broke the tight formation they had held since leaving Yatlan and moved out into a curving line which still advanced steadily, resembling the move of hunters driving game into the nets as Kadiya had seen Nyssomu do on a large island near Trevista.
All of them had rod in hand now, and, though Kadiya could no longer hear that stupefying sound, she was sure any not helm-protected were suffering. Yet it did not appear in any way to affect the Hassitti who still scrambled on, sometimes even threading ahead through the Sindona line.
They had almost reached a growth of brush, the first real obstruction they had come across after leaving Yatlan, when the branches began to writhe furiously. Out into the open staggered a Skritek. Greenish foam dripped from the corners of its open jaws. Its eyes gleamed red even as Kadiya had seen when the blood lust was raging in them.
However, if this one had ever been armed he had dropped his weapons. Instead both hands were pressed to the sides of his long jawed head which shook from side to side. His plunge out of the brush carried him to his knees and he seemed unable to rise again in spite of wild struggles.
Those eyes were pits of rage born in pain and Kadiya could feel the heat of the hatred he held for them. One of the Hassitti scuttled up toward the furious creature and Kadiya started forward, sure that a single snap of jaw would end that small life. Then Lalan’s arm dropped like a barrier before her.
The Hassitti had reached its goal. The whip-like weapon it carried fell in a vicious snap across the scaled features of the Skritek. The Drowner reared nearly to his feet, swinging out a clawed paw at his attacker. But the Hassitti was well away, watching as its enemy fell forward again, facedown, body twitching.
The Hassitti’s feet shuffled back and forth for an instant in what might have been a small dance of triumph. What blow that whip stroke had delivered Kadiya could not guess, but it was undoubtedly effective. None of the Sindona nor the Hassitti spared another glance at the Skritek as they moved on, though plainly the creature was not yet dead; Kadiya could see the body moving with labored breathing.
They were at the edge of the barrier of thick brush and there they halted for a moment. Lamaril snapped off a twig of the growth, rolled leaf and stem between his fingers, and then held up the mashed bit to the edge of his helm mask. He was plainly smelling that which he had harvested.
Dropping the mauled stem, he ran his finger slowly up the length of the rod weapon, a gesture which was copied by his followers. With their rods now outheld, they marched confidently on as if no barrier existed. Nor did it. Leaf, stem, heavy branch were … gone. The air about was filled with a green mist as heavy as a thick smoke. Kadiya waved her hand back and forth as she tramped immediately after Lamaril and felt dampness on her skin, saw it turn green as if from a stiff coating of Uisgu body paint.
The disappearance of the brush revealed five more Skritek, now rolling to the ground, their weapons laying useless. Once more the Hassitti, joined by two of its kind, went into action reducing the creatures to helplessness.
Only one did they have to pursue, for he was doggedly craw
ling, his head wagging from side to side while clacking his fangs together as if he were tearing apart some prey. Around his scaled throat was a chain of black metal from which hung small gray bones—finger bones. This Kadiya recognized as a hunter of skill, one who bore the right to leadership. He slewed around on the ground to face them.
His head went back and up, like that of a creature howling its anguish to the skies. Kadiya retreated a step. Just as that sound the Sindona had used as a weapon so did this screech strike—it was raw emotion, a hate so potent that it might have been poison spewed into her face.
Three of the Hassitti closed in upon him but they were showing more wariness. The Skritek leaned heavily on one arm, swept out with the other. His extended claws nearly scraped the plated breast of the nearest Hassitti. The other two sprang as Kadiya could not have thought possible, given their short legs and heavy bodies. Their whip weapons fell almost at the same moment across the head of their prey.
There came a last burst of overpowering rage—then nothing at all, though the still jerking body lay in their path and they had to detour around it.
20
They camped that night on solid land and Kadiya watched Lalan, her wand weapon pointing to the earth as she made a circuit of their dumped packs. A golden spark followed the drawing and Kadiya realized that they now had protection, an invisible sentry on guard.
Already the mountains showed a fanged fringe against the sky, and with them so close Kadiya made one more attempt to reach her sister. Salin and she sat on either side of the scrying bowl watching the dark mirror steadied there.
The girl linked hands with the Uisgu wisewoman willing the basin to show what she longed to see. At a sudden movement Kadiya leaned further forward.
Within the bowl, a shadow grew out of mists as white as the snow curtaining the high peaks.
