Enchantress from the Stars

by Sylvia Engdahl

  “I cannot understand it,” muttered Terwyn. “We came straight through only this morning—”

  “We must expect,” Georyn told him, “to encounter things that we cannot understand. Undoubtedly we have been led to this place by design, and you know as well as I what is likely to befall us here.” And indeed, even as he spoke this foreboding was borne out. The brothers found themselves faced by a threat more dire than any they had anticipated, for this time there were two dark figures!

  The two stood side by side, silently, cutting off the only escape from the place. Their hoods covered their faces completely; no expression could be seen. The thought of one of them was as overpowering as before: You must give me the cups! But though the other communicated nothing, the menace of his presence was all the stronger for it; the brothers sensed some great, immeasurable strength there that was only awaiting the proper moment to assail them.

  Do not attempt to resist me! came the dark command. Until now I have been merciful and have not punished you for your defiance. But it will not be so if you refuse me for a third time! If I must take the cups by force, you will suffer for it.

  Both Georyn and Terwyn knew full well that although they were being tested, there might in truth be a dreadful penalty for failure. The Lady had, after all, given them clear warning that it was not a game. A means of defense against the fell magic had been provided them, but, Georyn thought, they had as yet no real idea as to the use of that means. For the Enchantress had mentioned a need for control over and above that which they had exerted when they repeated the charm under her guidance, and as to the nature of that control she had offered no clue.

  Yet he was sure that she had meant him to succeed in this, wanted him to succeed. So there was a way. If simply saying the magic words was not enough—and she had said that it was not—then the other thing would surely come to him, if he looked for it and did not lose courage.

  You have ten seconds, Georyn! After that, I will take the cup. Do not be foolish; do not seal your own doom! The Enchantress cannot help you now.

  “You cannot have the cup,” said Georyn aloud. And, holding his hands before him, he began to say the words of the charm in a firm tone.

  But still, inexorably, the cup was drawn from his fingers; more slowly than with the sword or the globe, but all too surely it was being taken from him after all! Desperately Georyn raised his voice, but while continuing to recite the spell he was thinking, “I must stop it! I must, for if I fail now she will no longer befriend me. She will teach me nothing further, and worse, I may never see her again.” For it was this, even more than his antagonist’s vengeance, that he truly feared. “Oh, Lady,” he cried silently, “what is it that is asked of me? Where must I search for the answer?”

  Then, even as hope was fading, it was as if there had indeed been an answer, though not from her. For Georyn found his mind filled with a glowing presence that was unlike anything he had ever felt or imagined. There were no soundless words such as had come to him from his assailant and once from the Enchantress herself; but somehow, from outside, had come knowledge. He could not interpret it; he could not put it into words of his own; but suddenly he knew how to control the spell. It was an indescribable thing, a thing like knowing how to lift one’s arm, which, if one had not been born knowing, would surely be difficult to learn. Yet this could be learned, he was learning, and he was aware, dimly, that the ability to accept such teaching depended upon the strength of one’s desire.

  Exultantly, he fixed his eyes upon the cup, and for an instant it wavered, so that if it had contained water, some would have sloshed over its rim. And then it froze! It hung motionless in the air before him, as it had under the control of the Enchantress; and Georyn knew that before, even while he spoke the charm himself, it had been under her control; but now he was holding it by his own will. He was master of the spell now, and the command of the weird enemy could have no effect upon him.

  That command had, rather, been turned upon Terwyn; the other cup was now being pulled toward the cloaked figures. Terwyn, his face contorted with helpless rage, repeated the words of the charm in a determined voice; but it was ineffective. Since Georyn’s mind was totally occupied with its strange new task, he could give his brother no aid; instinctively he knew that to relax his concentration for a single instant would be to break the spell. And in the end no aid was needed, for all at once Terwyn’s face took on a look of wonder as he too received the secret, knowing no more than did Georyn whence it had come.

  Then joyfully did both brothers step forward to reclaim the cups; and they felt a great relief, like a rest after some arduous labor, as they took those cups into their hands. But to their dismay the cloaked figures did not vanish into the Forest; instead they advanced threateningly.

  “If they want a fight,” cried Terwyn, “they shall have it, and I for one shall rejoice in the chance! We shall see who is to pay for resistance, now that we are no longer subject to their magic!”

  Georyn agreed heartily. Unarmed though he was, he was not in the mood to fear a fight; and if magic of some new variety was to be employed against him, he felt quite ready to face it. However, it did not come to that, for the two figures made no move to attack them. Rather, the one whose thought was unreadable threw back his hood, revealing, to the brothers’ astonishment, a familiar face. It was the Starwatcher himself!

  For a long moment, Georyn stared at him; then finally he went forward with the cup in his hands and held it out, saying, “I see that in spite of my resolve to keep this from you, I must now give it over after all.”

  “That is not necessary,” said the Starwatcher. “You and your brother may keep the cups, for you have proven yourselves fit holders of them. And besides, were you to give them to me, you would want some magical weapon in return.”

  “Yes, as you have promised us!” Terwyn said eagerly. “For have we not fulfilled our part of the bargain?”

  “You have fulfilled it admirably,” the Starwatcher told them. Then, impassively, he went on, “But though you have done so, there is no secret that I can now give you.”

  Terwyn began angrily, “You gave us your word!”

  “Wait!” Thus silencing his brother, Georyn met the Starwatcher’s gaze. “There is not,” he said with an awe even greater than that which he had felt in the presence of the Enchantress. “There is not, for we already have it!”

  “The secret that will overcome the Dragon?” Terwyn exclaimed. “How can that be?”

  Georyn turned to him. “The charm is not for cups alone,” he said wonderingly. “It is a general thing, a thing that could be extended past imagination—”

  The Starwatcher smiled. “Once again you step ahead of my anticipation, Georyn. You are too quick for me; I can keep nothing from you, not even to try your strength of purpose.”

  “You have been working with the Enchantress all along,” Georyn declared. “She chose us to challenge the Dragon when she first appeared to us—even before, perhaps; it was she who arranged that we should be given these tasks.”

  “Although that is not the precise truth,” answered the Starwatcher, “it is close enough, as close as you are likely to get. For we are, as you have guessed, in league; and you have been chosen to confront the Dragon. That, however, will be a more difficult task than you yet know, beside which the tests that you have undergone will be as nothing.”

  “With the Enchantress’s help, and yours, surely we need have no fear!” Terwyn burst out. But Georyn told him, “If there were naught to be feared, why then would she have gone to such lengths to test our courage? For she is gentle and good and would not play with us merely for her own amusement. Is that not so, sir?”

  “It is indeed so,” the Starwatcher said firmly. “In her goodness, you may have absolute trust; and you may be sure that I would never have sent you to her, were I not sure that she may have equal trust in yours.”

  As he spoke thus, there was a rustle of leaves behind them, and Georyn turned to see t
he Enchantress herself standing on the path, wrapped in a glimmering cloak; and in her hands she carried the tall silver jug that she had used before. And the brothers went to her and held forth their cups, and she filled them, not with water this time, but with a rosy liquid that seemed like to wine. Yet it too was magical, for when they drank of it they felt an icy prickle that was unlike the tang of any wine they had ever tasted. At this, Georyn knew a fleeting fear, wondering whether Terwyn might not have been right after all, for who could say what sorts of potions a witch might have to offer?

  But the Starwatcher took Terwyn’s cup, and drank also, there being not enough vessels for all. And Georyn gave his own cup to the Lady, so that she too might drink. As her hand closed upon it, their eyes met; and in that instant all doubt passed, for he saw into her heart and knew, with a certainty akin to his mysterious knowledge of the spell, that the feeling that now rose within him stirred also in her. Then great was Georyn’s happiness, and he was sure that whatever might betide in the end, he would ever rejoice in the wondrous chance that had come to him.

  THE AWAKENING

  What is it, I wonder, that makes two people suddenly become important to each other? So important that everything else around them just fades away? People have been wondering that since the beginning of time, I guess; to the Younglings it must be even more puzzling than it is to us. Mutual attraction, I suppose they call it. Perhaps, but it’s more than just physical attraction. It’s telepathy—not the controlled kind, not silent conversation, but the deep and wordless variety. Two minds touch, that’s all. Two minds that don’t have anything in common in the way of background, and then all of a sudden they have everything in common, because they’ve found that the essential, real things are for them the same.

  It was that way with Georyn and me. I suppose you’ll find it hard to imagine what I could see in him, a Youngling. Well, at first I was simply touched—touched by the fact that he was facing such fantastic odds with a naive but determined bravery, and even more by the longing I sensed, the groping for something above and beyond the life to which he had been born. But then, somehow, our relationship changed. Perhaps it was in the moment our eyes met over the cup, the night of that final test. Georyn was in high spirits then; the exhilaration of his triumph was in him and his mind had command of powers he’d never dreamed existed. It met mine with strength, not mere hope. And after that there was a current between us that we couldn’t have turned off if we had tried.

  I guess it happens to you only a few times in your life. Maybe only once; maybe, for some people, never at all. To me it wasn’t new; Evrek and I had it. We still do. Only with Evrek I was used to it. It’s more overwhelming when it first begins, I suppose: this link, this subconscious sharing between your mind and another person’s. Anyway, I was overwhelmed. I don’t really remember what day I first dared, in my private thoughts, of course, to call it love.

  Father brought the brothers back to the base camp with him for further training, and near my hut, under his direction, they built a small shelter of logs in which the three of them slept. Evrek didn’t come; not only was he spending a good deal of time observing the colonists, but he still had to appear nightly in the guise of a menace. “Georyn and Terwyn have to stay afraid of me,” he told me ruefully. “They’ve got to be given more skill, and we don’t dare to let them just practice on their own.”

  “I suppose not,” I agreed. “One failure could undo all we’ve accomplished.”

  There was an awkward pause. For Evrek too this was a painful subject; he did not enjoy the role he was required to play. But we both knew it was necessary, so he tried to treat it lightly. “By the way,” he teased, “whatever possessed you to teach them the words to the Academy anthem for a magic spell?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I could have taught them to count from one to twenty or made up a bunch of nonsense syllables; but since neither they nor the invaders have ever heard our language, it can’t possibly reveal anything. And they’re bound to get it garbled.”

  “Georyn didn’t have it garbled last night. It was all I could do to keep a straight face when he started intoning the words!”

  “Well, you can’t say they weren’t appropriate ones.”

  “You’re an incurable romantic, Elana. What if they teach it to their descendants? The next field team through here is going to get a shock!”

  “So I’ll put it in my report. What would you have taught them?”

  “Never mind!”

  It was true enough that while the brothers no longer needed to be as stirred up emotionally as they’d been for the initial breakthrough, they still had to feel something in order to get reliable results from the “spell.” So we made them continue to meet Evrek at night, in the “enchanted” forest. And now they were required to go separately, and to wrest objects from Evrek’s possession as well as to keep him from getting what they themselves carried. This was far harder on Evrek than on them. Of the three of us, he alone was barred from meeting the Andrecians as friends; he had to hide all sympathy, even in thought, and deliberately make them hate him. That’s a difficult assignment, certainly not the kind you normally draw on your first field mission. Evrek carried it off, but he found it a pretty miserable business.

  Though Georyn and Terwyn didn’t suffer in the same way, it wasn’t pleasant for them, either. They knew we were staging the eerie encounters, of course, but they were still unsophisticated enough to enter into the spirit of the thing. Fear of the supernatural dies hard, and they were more than half convinced that only their “counterspell” was keeping their adversary from wreaking dire vengeance upon them.

  But if the nights were grim, the days were unexpectedly serene and shining. I shall always remember those days as a sort of bright glade amid the dark woods of our desperate venture. Whenever I think of Andrecia, I’ll see in my mind the fresh greenness, the unspoiled beauty of its springtime, and I’ll relive the hours Georyn and I spent beside the river, with the pale Andrecian sun streaming down through the trees, talking or simply sitting silent, content with the joy of each other’s presence.

  We both knew, of course, that there was no future in it. What’s more, we were aware that for there to be anything more than friendship between us would be absolutely unthinkable. Georyn, for his part, treated me with a respect bordering on reverence; he never so much as touched my hand. More than once I found myself wishing that he didn’t place me on quite such a high pedestal. Yet it was evident enough that although he took an avid interest in anything I said to him, conversation was not his only reason for seeking my company.

  As for me, on one hand I was appalled at what I might be doing to him. What right have I, I kept thinking, to open a door through which he will never be allowed to walk? But on the other, I stopped looking ahead and just gave in to the happiness of our shared thought. People who love each other can no more keep from communicating than from breathing, particularly if they are accustomed to doing it on the telepathic level. Naturally, I had picked up some of the Andrecian language by this time and I often used it, but for us the spoken words were still more or less superficial.

  I didn’t see Evrek often, and I must admit that I didn’t devote a great deal of thought to him. Evrek and I had always taken each other for granted, I guess; ours was hardly the romantic sort of love, and because it was on such a different plane from the thing I felt for Georyn, I never thought about it in a comparative way. It never even struck me as strange that, worried as I was about Evrek’s safety, I scarcely missed him from day to day, whereas if Georyn disappeared for an hour or two, I was lonely. I’m thankful now, of course, that Evrek was not there to see what was happening. I suppose he would have seen, and that would have been just awful, all the way around.

  The thought of our mission was something I kept pushing into the furthest corner of my mind; and when that thought did intrude, it was fear for Evrek and for Georyn that disturbed me. I didn’t anticipate any more rude awakenings for myself.
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br />   I was still determined to visit the local village. Father didn’t want me to; he’d already said so once, and when I brought it up again he was more explicit. “I’d rather you didn’t, Elana,” he said. “It’s not so much a matter of the physical danger as of the fact that you’re not ready to understand all of what you might see there.”

  “But wouldn’t I learn a lot? I mean, to be here and pass up the opportunity to study this planet’s culture—”

  “I’m afraid you’d learn some things that you’re better off not knowing for the time being. Youngling worlds are unlike ours in more ways than one. There are certain aspects of human nature to which you haven’t ever been exposed, Elana, aspects that our civilization has outgrown. A fully trained agent is prepared. You’ll get some courses later on that will equip you to deal with what you’re inevitably going to run into; but you won’t enjoy them. Don’t rush that sort of awareness on a mission that doesn’t demand it.”

  Father is an awfully good psychologist, and ordinarily he is expert in managing people, so it’s hard to believe that he failed to foresee how I’d react. But, of course, after that kind of buildup, I was more anxious to see the village than ever, as who wouldn’t be? Perhaps underneath he did feel that the time had come for me to learn the less palatable facts of Youngling life and was trying to give me fair warning, but somehow I don’t think so. I think it’s more likely that it was a matter of principle. Father would never order anybody to shy away from reality; he believes too strongly that that’s an area in which one must proceed at one’s own risk.