Horn Crown (Witch World: High Hallack Series)

by Norton, Andre

  “Gunnora?”

  I said her name aloud. The sound of it carried emptily down the hall. There was not even an echo in return. Then I pushed the cup aside impatiently, laid my head forward on my folded arms, my cheek pressed against the runes, knowing, without being so assured, that these would not work for me again.

  Three days I stayed in the keep, sleeping before its hearth, sitting now and then in the high seat of honor trying to recall every small moment of that time when I had been allowed to look into the past. I had never had a woman, though I had heard in many tales of Garn’s meiny much concerning such experience. It was our birthright that this need did not come in early youth. For that reason perhaps our families were small and it was easier for clan lords to make marriages to their own advantages and that of their heirs.

  Now I was ridden by new dreams, and, knowing that I must go unfulfilled, I fought to turn my mind to other matters. Hunt I did, and managed to snare creatures coming to feed upon the grain. That, too, I harvested in a rude fashon, ground awkwardly between stones, and sifted into gritty meal to store in the box Zabina had used for journey bread. The meat I took I smoked as best I could, preparing supplies for when I moved on. For I knew I must leave this place, even though part of me wanted to linger—to try again to master the runes.

  I desired nothing so much in my whole life as to join the feasting again, this time for good. Save that I understood that even with the aid of sorcery I could not so bridge time. During those days I thought very little of my quest for Iynne, my hunt for Gathea. Both seemed far away, as if a curtain had fallen over that part of my past, severing me from life before, from the person I had once been

  On the fourth morning, however, I roused, knowing, as well as if my amber lady had ordered it, that it was time for me to go. I could moon no longer over what might have been. Though I held very little by her promise that I would be eased of my hunger by any now living. She was too vivid, too much within my thoughts.

  Reluctantly I left the keep soon after dawn. West must be my way still. However, after I was well beyond that deserted keep, I suddenly changed. I might have been caught in a feverish sleep and was now healed of my distemper. Again that old urgency came to life—the need for finding some clue as to where Garn’s daughter had gone, and where Gathea had also vanished.

  Once more land was wild and held no trace of any former dwelling, not even a road before me. I took as a guide a sighting on one peak of the continuing heights, one which resembled a sword blade pointing upward into the sky. Toward that I made my way with such caution as I could summon, for now that I was away from the deserted keep I was unsure of every standing stone, every cluster of brush which might conceal an ambush. Yet there were only birds high against the sky, and the ground under my feet bore no sign of track. This might be a world free of any life save that which grew rooted or winged.

  On the second day I came to the first slope of the peak toward which I had marched. There was food of a sort to ration that I had roughly smoked or brought with me from the forgotten fields. I had come through a patch of bushes heavy with berries which I had found both food and drink. Gathea’s wallet I had not opened, still I bore it with me as if I were to meet her within each hour that passed. My own grew much leaner.

  Haze gathered about the peak, not far from sundown. The mist descended like a slowly lowered curtain, wiping the heights from sight as it fell. With that in view I decided to camp for the night and not attempt to win beyond until I had the aid of the morning’s sun.

  Thus I searched for shelter until I chanced upon a pocket among rocks where I could crowd in, my back well protected as I faced outward. Nights in this eerie land were periods of endurance which I faced unhappily. Though I had heard nothing during the past ones since I left the keep to suggest that any hunters prowled. Still I slept in snatches and it seemed that my body ached for a chance to rest the full night through with no care for any sentry duty.

  Though there was dead wood tangled among the bushes and the trees which grew here and there, I set no fire to be a beacon. Rather I half sat, half lay, my back against the rock, staring out into the gathering shadows. As ever when I let down my guard there crept vividly into my mind the picture of that keep hall as I had seen it as a dream of that long ago feasting time. Why had they gone, those who had gathered there? What blight had fallen to leave their fine hall an empty ruin? I had seen no signs of war there. Had it been a plague, a threat from afar which was so potent as to send them into flight?

  I started, gasped.

  Had I heard that with my ears? No, that cry had been an invasion of my mind. I hunched forward on my knees, striving to draw from the fast coming night a clue as to who had so summoned help and where they, he, or it might be.

  Again that plea shuddered through me. From behind—from the mist-veiled mountain! But who? I pulled around and up to my feet, staring up that wall of rock. There was a wink of light now visible in the night, though it was but a formless splotch through that mist. Fire? It did not have the color of true flames. A trap with that as bait? I could remember only too well those silver women and their wooing song among the rock circles.

  For the third time came that frantic, wordless summons. Caution told me to remain where I was. But I could not shut out that plaint by covering my ears. It found its way to my very bones. Nor could I stand against it—for it seemed to me that strange though it came, it was a cry for help from one of my own kind— Gathea, Iynne—? It could be either or both, a power that had come to them out of this sorcerous country.

  I left my frail suggestion of safety and began to climb. The wind came down slope, striking against me. On it was an odor—not a stench of evil nor yet the musky sweetness which I had associated with Gunnora, with the Moon Shrine, and its pallid flowering trees. This I could not put name to.

  Though I knew that I was a fool to venture thus into the night, still I could do no less, but I could go with caution, and a wary eye and ear. So I did not hurry blindly, but set my feet as carefully as I could, waiting tensely between each step for another of those pleas to reach me.

  The splotch of light held but there was nothing else now. Nothing unless one could give some name to that sensation of awaiting some significant action, some demand which grew stronger and stronger with every step I won up slope.

  Luckily there were bushes here which I could grasp when the slope became steeper, using them to haul myself farther and higher. I reached the outer edges of the mist and that clung as a clammy cloak about my body, settling in drops of moisture on my face. Yet it had not put out that light in the center of its curtain.

  I stopped short every few steps I won, to cast about. I was blind, but I was forcing my ears to serve me. There was a chill to this fog as if it were indeed sleet of late autumn instead of a normal mist. It seemed also to deaden sound for I heard nothing.

  The light neither dwindled nor grew, but remained as a beacon—a beacon to summon—what? Me? I might well be only caught in the web meant for another. Yet I could not bring myself to turn aside, even now when that call no longer reached me.

  Then—

  Out of the very ground at my feet there arose a form near as light as that ghostly fog. It reared tall and I could not mistake that soft rumble of growl. A mountain cat—Gruu?

  I paused again, hand reaching for sword hilt. This lurker was surely as large as Gruu, and, if it were a nocturnal hunter like many of its breed, then even steel and my best efforts might be very little to halt any attack.

  Once more it growled, then it turned and was gone into the mist which swallowed it instantly. Gruu! Surely that had been Gruu or I would not have gone unchallenged. Which meant that Gathea was up there!

  I made the rest of that climb in a scrambling run, wanting to call out her name, but fearing that if she were in trouble I would alert whatever held her captive or besieged. Again the white-silver cat awaited me as I plunged on into a circle of light.

  That radiance arose and spread
out from an object resting on bare rock—a ledge level enough to have been cut from the mountainside by purpose. I could not see what made its core. At that moment I was more intent upon the form which lay limply beside it, over which the cat crouched, using his rough tongue gently across a cheek.

  Gathea it was. Something had dealt harshly with her. The stout trail clothing which she had worn was in tatters, so that her arms, showing the red marks of deep scratches, were bare near to the shoulder, and even her breeches were shredded into strips which were held together by knotting one rough length onto another.

  Her hair was a wild tangle around her head, matted and twined with bits of stick and dead leaf. While her face was only skin laid thin across the bones, and her hands, bruised and scratched, were as skeletal as those claws of the winged thing I had fought.

  I knelt beside her, my fingers seeking out the pulse of life, for so limply did she sprawl that I thought perhaps what I had caught had been her death cry, and that she was gone before I had reached her. Gruu drew back a little and let me to her, but his green eyes were steady on me, as if he would challenge my tending.

  She was alive, yes, but I believed that her heart fluttered weakly and that she perhaps had come near to death. I needed my supplies. There was water, and that I dripped first upon her face and then, steadying her head against my body, I forced the edge of the small pannikin I carried between her lips and trickled what I could into her mouth. Looking about that eerie pillar of light I could see no sign of supplies, but remembering Zabina’s instructions I crumbled some dried leaves into the pannikin and swirled water about with them. The aroma which came from the mixture was fresh, pungent, with a clearing rush of sharp scent. Again I steadied her against my body and was able to get a mouthful of the herb liquid then another into her. Her eyes opened and she looked up at me.

  There was no recognition in her gaze; she was one who saw into other worlds, beyond me, through me— Still I got her to drink all of the restorative, then I crumbled a handful of coarsely ground grain into more water—making a lumpy gruel which, using a small horn spoon, I got into her and which she did chew and swallow. Yet never did she seem to see me, or even appear to realize that someone tended her.

  For the first time I raided the wallet which had been hers. In one box I discovered more salve which, working as gently as I could, having lain her down by the light, I anointed the worst of the blood-encrusted scratches so deeply lacing her arms and legs.

  Gruu watched me intently as ever. Before I was quite done, he arose and faced outward into the night, his head up, as if he either listened or scented some peril. Restlessly he began to pace back and forth, keeping, I noted, between the two of us and the mist curtain which hedged in the small clear pocket about the flame.

  Then he voiced one of those roars with which he had challenged the creatures of the night. Before I could move, he leaped out to vanish into the fog. I could hear the sounds of a mighty struggle, grunts, shrill cries, which certainly had never broken from Gruu’s furred throat, last of all a gurgling.

  I stood over Gathea, my sword out and ready. Yet nothing came through the mist until Gruu himself paced back. There was a dark spattering down his chest, and more blood dripping from his large fangs. He sat now, unconcerned, by the light and started to clean his coat of those traces of battle, licking and then hissing with disgust. I at last took that folded bandage I had carried with me and wet it with my water.

  Approaching the cat I ventured to wash the worst of the thick clotting from his ruff where a long trickle had matted deeply into his fur. He suffered me to do this, and I did not wonder at his disgust at his own attempt to clean himself, for what I sponged off did not seem like true blood, was instead a thicker, noisome stuff with so foul a smell that I nearly had to hold my nose as I ministered to him.

  Gathea did not regain full consciousness—at least she still did not appear to note that I was with her. However, I was able to get more of the grain gruel into her, spoonful by spoonful, and I made certain that her many scratches, though deep and red and angry-looking, were not real wounds. How she had won this far without supplies and what was the nature of the light which glowed by us remained mysteries. I began to believe that she had collapsed from sheer lack of food and exhaustion. Yet that strange summons which had brought me to her had been of such a nature that must have been more than just weakness of body to make her cry for aid.

  With Gruu as sentry I felt more at ease than I had since I had left the keep. The cat lay now by the fire, licking his paws, seemingly wrapped in his own concerns. Yet I was sure he could be trusted.

  I made the girl as comfortable as I could, her own wallet for a pillow, spreading over her the travel cloak I had kept as a roll across my shoulder. Shaking the water bottle beside my ear I guessed I had used its contents freely and I must find a mountain spring by morning—perhaps Gruu could help.

  Stretching out an arm’s distance away from Gathea I allowed fatigue to claim me. The light still burned as high as ever, but it did not dazzle the eyes. There was a softness in its gleam which did not shine too strongly.

  I was in the light, the very core of it. There I awaited an unfamiliar intelligence. First it challenged me; there came an abrupt demand—unvoiced. From whence had I come and what would I do? At that there flashed into my mind in answer (though that was not of my calling) the symbol my amber lady had worn, the sheath entwined with fruitful vine.

  My unseen challenger was startled, so much that mind picture alone might have struck a telling blow. Yet there was nothing in me which wanted battle between us. I felt no enmity toward that which had so peremptorily demanded my right to be where I was. This ability to build in such detail a mind picture was new to me, yet it seemed right. No longer was my vision only the pendant, that altered, to become a true sheaf of harvest, the fruit wound around the stock possessing real life, so that I could have reached forth a hand to pluck each globe from the burdened vine. Though I could not see her, I believed that behind me at that moment stood my lady of the keep. Though I longed mightily to look and see if that were so, still I could not turn my head.

  That which the fire in the mist represented gave way. An impatient arrogance which had filled it when it would not only weigh me, but would judge me to my fate, faded. Instead there was a questioning—tinged with astonishment—not because of me but for the coming of her who was so standing to sponsor my actions.

  I felt forces sweep around me, through me. Questions were raised and answered, and I understood nothing. Save that, in some manner, I had been made free of a road, though the power behind the fire was still resentful and grudging. Then I was given, at last, the boon of deep sleep which my aching body craved.

  12.

  * * *

  * * *

  I looked up into an unclouded sky, pulled out of a sleep so deep that my body felt stiff as if I had lain so for a toll of seasons upon seasons. That which had drawn me into wakefulness continued.

  Speech clear and strong, then a period of silence, as if the speaker waited for an answer. Followed by speech once again. The strange words singsonged with that rhythm our clan bards used upon formal occasions when either House history or some fragment of the Laws were recited. However, I could not understand one of those fluting sounds which must be words.

  I turned my head. Gathea no longer lay as I had left her, but sat cross-legged in sunlight. It was she who spoke, addressing those unknown words to the air, though even Gruu had vanished leaving only emptiness.

  A fever may plunge anyone into a condition of seeing, speaking or acting so. That was my first thought, that she was held in a strong delusion. Nor did she turn her head when I sat up abruptly. Was she fevered indeed or trapped in some new witchery?

  Before her, as she sat so, was that which must have provided the guide fire of last night. As I looked upon it I wanted to scramble up, away, drag her with me—if I could. For there, wedged between rocks holding it upright, was what could only be a portion o
f the wand she had fashioned under my own eyes from a tree limb.

  A third of it was gone. Even as I looked another small section broke away—became a fluff of ash carried off by a puff of breeze. There was no other fuel—nothing save that fire-eaten rod.

  Still Gathea sat and spoke, waited for an answer I could not hear, then spoke again. At times during those waiting intervals, she nodded as if what she alone heard made excellent sense. Once or twice she frowned, seemingly in concentration, as she strove better to understand an admonition or advice. So real were these actions that I could well begin to believe the fault lay within me, that I was deaf. Just as that speaker remained invisible to my eyes.

  Though I wanted to reach out to her, my hand was stayed by a strong impression that this indeed was no illusion. Or if so, it was mine not hers. At last she gave a sigh and the angle of her head changed. She might now be gazing up to someone who had been seated on a level with her, but had now arisen. One of her hands lifted in a small gesture of farewell. Still her eyes followed the invisible one who left us.

  Only then was I able to move. When I caught her lightly by the arm, she started in real surprise. However the eyes she turned to me were knowing—they saw me, knew me.

  “Gathea—” I spoke her name.

  Her frown became a battle flag of rising anger as she jerked back.

  “You have no right spying—” she flared.

  That impatient gesture she had made to free herself from my hold sent my wallet swinging. The clasp, never strong since my battle with the winged creature, burst open, and there fell out, to roll across the ground, that cup of Horn-Crowned man which I had brought out of the deserted keep; from its interior in turn the gem-leaf of the tree woman since I had put these two marvels in keeping together.