Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

“You feel such interference even now?” Frost was fingering her jewel.

“Twice. I do not enter the deep dream, for I have not the Power to hold walls when my need is only to seek.”

“Perhaps we may have an aid for that,” the witch said crisply. “But that this thing stirs in the north, of that you are sure?”

The woman of the Latts was frowning a little. “Are you sure when your crystal clouds against your will, Woman of Power? All which is of the Light is aware when the Dark prowls. This began when there was a great beating of the Wide Wings—such as none have known before. A storm it was, and yet it was not. For the thing which struck upon us we have no words. And it was as if that summoned the Dark—which was eager to come.

“These good traders who had known our people for many seasons tell us to settle near—that together we shall fight evil. We are strong, we are ready. Yet how does one fight when one knows not the nature of the enemy? Now you from the south come and say that the Dark is moving upon our whole world and that you hunt the source to deal with it. You know not even the touch of the Great Cold. Even the strongest of our hunters do not venture into the ice palaces. Though there are those among us who have seen them from afar.

“The Dark can use the land itself to bring you death.”

“Yet still shall we search,” Simond’s voice came clearly. “Not only do some of us deal with Power, but there are those behind us who can work through us. This world has faced an ending drawn by Power before—and the Dark went down to defeat. If we die, it shall be still fighting.”

She measured him eye to eye. “Boasting I know—it is the way of hunters. But you are not boasting, young chieftain. What you say you truly believe. Well enough—if you would carry war to the enemy, go with the best of dreams.”

“Do more than dream for us.” Trusla sat straighten “You say your hunters know of the lands beyond. Can ships go there?”

Mangus was already shaking his head when the woman answered. “Not so, for the ice ever covered the sea. A ship seeking a hunting trail there would be crushed by the great mountains of floating ice.”

“Then if we must take to land”—Simond again took a part as if he knew what was in Trusla’s mind—“we shall need guides. Can we find such among your people?”

There had been no formality in his request, it was a straight question and she answered it as straightly. “It shall be put before our Speaking Fire. It will be by choice if any such go.”

He nodded. “As it should be.”

Frost fingered her jewel. “Messages have come from the south. I have told our sister”—she bowed her head slightly toward the Latt woman—“of Lormt and what we hope to find there. There is much to be shifted and considered, tested. Hilarion is the last of the adepts and his chosen knowledge was along a special path, but now he has turned to that which did not interest him before. He has managed to contact those of the Gryphon in Arvon with a warning—and they, too, report trouble already on the march there. Their party ventures westward into lands unknown. However, our tie with them was broken and we know not how matters go now with them.”

There was a small sound from Mangus as if he cleared his throat. He had set down his horn on a small side table and now produced a roll of map parchment.

“We are seafarers, as all know, though the records of Lormt have little for us. This”—he was unrolling the square he held—“is a combination of reports from those captains who in the past have ventured north to the farthest extent—which can only be done at the height of the warm season. Added…” he hesitated and glanced at the woman in green, “is what is remembered from very ancient times. We have only this that we are sure of: that our people are not of this world—a condition we share with other races here—and that we entered on board ships through a far northern gate.

“Since it may be that any gateway may be a danger, now it would seem we must return to our beginnings—if we can—and there see how it fares.”

“The moon hangs full tonight.” The woman in green reached out her hand and her attendant held up the small drum so that she could tap lightly on it with her fingers.

The sound might be slight, but Simond’s hand went to sword hilt, and Trusla caught breath in a small gasp. For it seemed that tapping somehow echoed oddly through their bodies.

“The drum will speak.” The woman withdrew her hand. Then Trusla blinked, seeing the witch jewel on Frost’s breast gleam with life for only an instant, while the shaman of the Latts held out both brown hands and drew patterns in the air.

“Old bones need rest.” The woman in green hauled herself up from her chair. “Do you,” she said, turning her full attention now on Trusla and Simond, “answer when the drum calls. What the sea accepts will be made plain.”

She shuffled off with her attendant, with no more of a farewell. But it seemed that neither Frost nor the woman of the Latts was prepared to break up their conference.

It was the witch who spoke first. “Those who have come from the south, sister, have been selected by the Power. The star light has touched Captain Stymir, and these two out of Estcarp. If any of your blood wish to try our trail, will they agree to such testing?”

Toward woman of the Latts she held out her hand and on its palm lay her jewel, dull gray and seeming without life. But, perhaps even to her own amazement, as she turned slightly toward the stranger, it broke forth with light as rainbowed as the strings of beads which made up part of the other’s clothing.

The slanted eyes narrowed. “I serve my people,” she said slowly. “It is laid upon me and my kind. Why does this Power thing of yours call me ?”

“I cannot tell,” Frost returned, “save it is not mine to command in this matter any more than it was when we stood in the great hall of Es Citadel and it chose from all the company there. Power calls to Power, and there is always the greater purpose.”

The woman’s hand twitched as if she would raise them to ward off some unwelcome thing. She raised her head higher and her lips pointed now, not toward the others, but to the fresh-set beams above them. From those lips poured sounds, as body-filling in their way as the tapping of the drum had been. Trusla saw not the room about her, but a stretch of sand, and the sand moved, arose, became—and then was not, though the single instant of sight had left a residue of new energy within her.

What Simond felt, she did not know; Mangus seemed only puzzled. But the witch jewel in Frost’s hold flashed again.

There had been a question asked, that much Trusla was as certain of as if she had heard the words. Now there was silence.

But only for a breath or two. Then from nowhere she could discern, came an ear-torturing roar such as might burst from the jaws of some beast mightier than they had ever seen.

The shaman seemed to huddle down into her chair, draw in upon herself. Yet she showed no sign of fear, only of one facing a burden which must be carried with care.

There followed a clatter of someone entering the room, armed and ready, an axe in hand as if some attack had already begun. Like the shaman, he was dressed in furred garments, but he wore no feathered cloak, instead three long black feathers pointed at an angle backward from a beaded band about his forehead and hair.

A thong of hide supported on his chest a rounded ball half black as the feathers, half gold. And the face he turned toward the southerners was grim as he bowed his head quickly to the shaman and asked something in his own tongue. He could not be much older than Simond, but he walked with the assurance of a well-tested armsman.