Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

“Ware!”

Simond’s arms about her waist swung her back, with himself, to avoid a team of sweating men linked together by a log slung in a series of rope loops.

All those so busy around her were so very big. They towered above her, even above Simond, who partly shared her Tor blood. She had found it difficult to adjust to life on board the ship, not that she allowed anyone to guess that.

“In here.” Simond was now urging her along one of the muddy plank walks toward a large house which looked finished, even though the scent of freshly cut wood met them at the wide-open door. As they entered, Trusla hoped they were not breaking any custom.

“Ha, welcome. Come in, come in! Bertel, the guesting horns for our friends!”

To Trusla’s ears that came as a roar. She had to bend her head well back to see the grinning face of her host. Even among his own kind Mangus Shieldarm was reckoned tall.

She found herself installed in a chair which was certainly older than the walls about her, its hide-cushioned seat well worn, and her feet did not quite touch the floor over which were scattered rugs of fur as well as the woven kind she was used to.

A tall girl with long blond braids was at her side before she was securely seated, a drinking horn in one hand and the guesting plate of bread and salt in the other. Trusla accepted the horn and a piece of the bread dipped in salt and spoke in as easy a voice as she could summon.

“Fair fortune to this house and all who shelter here. May your hunters be skilled, your crops ripen well, and your ships return safely to port.”

She did not dare glance at Simond to see if she had learned that correctly from his coaching. The girl was handing another horn and the bread dish to him now.

“And may your voyage, my Lady, my Lord, be easy and your search trail open and free.” Mangus drank deeply from the horn he himself held.

“Now…” He waved and Bertel disappeared. “There is news! All-Knowing One”—he raised his voice to a near shout again—“they have arrived and wait.”

A curtain woven in strange and colorful patterns was swept to one side at his hail and a woman entered, a little ahead of her companions. Perhaps she had once stood nearly as tall as Mangus, but now she walked slowly, her back rounded so she had to peer up to see them. Most of her thin white hair was covered with a blue-green hood—the color of the sea at its calmest—and a large part of her body was concealed by a cloak matching it.

A step or so behind her was another woman, much younger, wearing the usual jerkin, shirt, and breeches of the Sulcars but with a scarf of the green-blue crossing from right shoulder to left hip. She carried (as if it were something most precious) a small drum, a hint of great age about its scuffed surface.

Just behind these two came Frost, the witch out of Estcarp assigned to their mission. She was young and though Trusla had been wary of her at first (the witches of Estcarp having had an awesome reputation in the past), Trusla had come to like listening to her explanations of things strange to the Tor girl.

The fourth and last of the party was strange enough to center all their attention once they sighted her. Beside the somber gray robe of the witch she was a blaze of color. Trusla could not guess her age or even her race—she was certainly not Sulcar, nor like any of Estcarp.

From her shoulders drooped a cape of feathers which she did not wear closely held as did the old woman. They were brilliantly black and white, set in patterns, and the cloak was loose enough to show that under it she wore a thigh-length garment of shining white fur, sleek and edged at the throat with fluffy down. Her feet and legs were covered with boots up to the thigh, seeming to offer the advantage of both shoes and trousers. As far up as her knees these were closely bound to the leg with narrow ribbonlike strings on which were strung large beads in a multitude of brilliant crystallike colors.

Her black hair was looped up and clubbed at the nape of her neck with more of the beaded strings. Against the white of the jerkin her skin looked dark and her eyes had a curious upward slant at the corners. She walked as one with authority, but what Trusla noted, with an odd feeling of kinship, was that she, too, was short, towered over by both Frost and the Sulcars.

“Here be those out of Estcarp, All-Knowing One.” Mangus himself placed a chair for the oldest woman, and her attendant took her place behind her, while Mangus seated Frost and the stranger.

“This is the Lady Trusla out of Tor,” Mangus was continuing, “and Lord Simond, son to Marshal Koris.”

The woman in green favored each of them with a measuring stare, which Trusla met firmly. Of old she had dealings with priestesses and gave formal honor to their calling, whether they would be friends or not.

“The Lady is known to you all.” The witch inclined her head in a short nod. “And this is the Winged One of the Latts.” Trusla thought he looked a little uncertainly toward the woman in fur and feathers.

She did not nod, but she eyed Trusla and Simond and then smiled, remaining silent.

“Your mission is well known,” Mangus began, reaching for his drinking horn as if to sustain himself, and then pushing it away. “All we know about the sea lanes to the north, and the legends thereof, has already been given you.

“As you know, we are establishing Korinth as a meeting port for our ships in the north trade. A moon ago we became hosts for others. Winged One, these have been sent by the Great Powers of the south to deal with what may be the very root of your own trouble. Let them hear what has befallen your people.”

There was a long pause. She might either have been assembling her words or still be weighing the purposes of those about to hear them, but at last she spoke, using the trade language, but so accented Trusla and Simond had to listen very carefully and could not be sure they always understood. There had been no attempt at mind-send and it was not for them to initiate it.

“We live… north.” She made a small sweeping gesture with one hand. “Hunt—the wasbear fears our spears and arrows as do the shadow hounds and the furred mountains.”

There was pride in her voice and when she spoke of the bears she had stroked the fur of her jerkin.

“Always there is fear.” She was picking her words slowly. “But most fears we have always lived with and they are a part of us—they are like the great snows, the bitter winters—our life. Now comes something else.”

She stirred in her seat, edging forward on the cushion which was nearly too wide for her. “All peoples have their powers. You of Estcarp”—she nodded to Frost—“can summon that which is greater than any living being. You”—now she spoke to the woman in green—“can drum up or lay a storm, speak over great distances, doubtless do other things to make one marvel.

“We Latts… dream.” She seemed a little uncomfortable, as if she doubted their belief. “Dreams find us game to be hunted, those who have lost their trail, foretell the worst of the storms. They can tell us how to heal the sick, the wounded, how to deal with others—others save the Dark!” Now her voice rose sharply and Trusla saw Simond tense, even as she was doing.

“This Dark is not known to us before, nor have we any kin song about it save one—and that allies an ancient evil with the north. By this legend we know that we have been driven once before—southward.

“Now it whispers in our dreams, it taints the flow of truth—our hunters are sent on the wrong trails. There have been deaths which should not have come. So we gather what we have and we come south, hoping to reach beyond the hand of the Dark. This land is fairer, but it is not ours. Also if the dream goes deep, as it should for the Power to rise, the shadow lurks and we must withdraw.”