Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

There was a cry from the lookout on the masthead. And it brought them all to the side of the deck. Then a sharp spate of orders sent the trained Sulcars to launch one of the smaller ship’s boats. Men swung down on ropes to man it and it pushed away from the Wave Cleaver .

Even Trusla could see their goal, a dark, strangely shaped thing which rode low in the waves, and toward that the ship’s boat flew with a flashing of oars.

It was too far away for those on the ship to see more than vague movements, but some of those suggested that bodies were being transferred from the derelict to their own craft. And the native boat was left behind as the ship’s boat came swiftly across the waves.

Those on board were ready and dropped slinglike nets, each of which was brought up with care to be swung over the rail. The stiff, contorted bodies—surely all were dead. But then a hand moved out to catch at the netting that held it and Trusla heard a small cheer from those ready to receive the lost.

They did not even unroll the net from about that one and Hansa gathered up the slender body and carried it as he might a child back to the great cabin. Trusla saw Inquit stand at the door, waving vigorously. But when the captain and some others of the crew would have followed, she slid the door shut in their faces with a determined shove.

The three others who had been lifted aboard were indeed dead. Under the captains tight-lipped orders they were straightened to lie on wide strips of sailcloth. Their frozen hands were somehow loosened enough to be brought to lay on their breasts, and into the loose hold of those hands was fitted the shaft of a boarding axe—the warrior’s key to the Last Gate.

Trusla turned away. These were not kin who lay here—but in final things all were kin. However, she felt as if she were intruding on something not meant for her eyes and sensed that Simond agreed. Together they went to the fore of the ship, where old Joul still sat in the wavereader’s perch.

“May the Fire Fangs of the Bosken avenge them.” He nearly made a song of the words, weaving back and forth in his narrow seat. “May I live to see Dargh be wiped from the living world. Lothar Longsword, Tortain Staymir, who stood at the last ingathering with pride of victor}’ over the greatest varse any man had ever harpooned before. Rogar—now, there was a man. Many a well-spun tale he had for shipmates when we drank together. He was at the fall of Sulcarkeep—one of the few who took to the message boats by the order of Osberic himself. The maid—she I do not know—but she has carved herself a part in the next bard-singing—and she shall have it, by the Breath of the Wave Driver Himself!”

He glanced around at the two who had ventured to come up behind him.

“We remember our kin gone before,” he said fiercely. “Though we cannot give these good shipmates land burial, the sea welcomes always the Sulcars. For we have made it our own. We build towns now—but once there was only the sea and it kept us for the time given us. It is only just that it receives us at the last.”

Receive the three it did. Sewn into their shrouds, and with Joul himself summoned to chant their deeds and kin names, and the captain to empty into the waves the farewell cup for their going. Wreathed with thick lengths of chain, they went down into waves, which seemed higher, stronger, as if eager to receive them.

But Audha was not among them. It seemed that whatever power the Latt shaman and the Estcarp witch could summon kept her back from that last journey.

In spite of Audha’s broken warning of what might lie ahead, the Wave Cleaver kept on course once they had picked up those in the skin boat. During the day Trusla made a visit to her cabin searching for that jar of sand she had found in the wharfside market. She did not try to free the wooden stopper but sat with it in her hands. As she turned it around and around in her fingers, the sorrow and some of the ever-present uneasiness was drawn out of her. Closing her eyes, she sought to summon every scrap of memory from a past that for a while she had struggled hard to forget.

Life in Tor Marsh was no easier for those who followed its boggy ways than it was for these Sulcars who depended upon what seemed to her an element which could become treacherous at any moment—the sea. But it was what one was bred to which seemed the lesser evil—if one could deem it so.

Among her kin she had been the lesser—the near outcast one. Only because Blind Mafra had spoken for her was she now here. She had never felt the rich warmth of kin approval. Among her kind there were no individual mothers, and she had no idea who had fathered her at the Moon Dancing. But this—once more she turned the jar and thought of what had freed her—this was as much a part of her as her lifeblood.

Now she did loosen the cap and very slowly put a finger within. Yes, it felt the same, she could not deny that. The soft powder enclosed her finger and clung. Trusla had no understanding of why she now did as she did, but she raised that coated finger to her lips and licked her flesh clean. There was a very faint taste—like that of Tor water—and a whiff of fragrance.

“Little sister…”

She heard that—or only hoped?

“You are more than you think. And you shall learn, ah, how you shall learn!”

“Xatol?” she said wonderingly, without opening her eyes. For she was seeing not the cramped cabin in which she sat, but rather the small strip of beach flowing with sand like this, and that sand rising to dance in the moonlight, to become one she yearned to join—to be one part of.

“Go to the one who is near the Great Sleep.” Yes, she was hearing that clearly. “Give her of your strength. Two Powers hold her in this world; let the third bind her safe herein.”

Trusla put the jar into hiding once again and then went directly to the great cabin. The door was slid shut, but she put out her hand as if she had been summoned from within and opened it far enough to slide through.

Undia no longer lay on the bench but was now on a mat of blankets on the floor, Audha so close beside her that they touched at shoulder, arm, and hip. Both of them had been stripped of clothing and that mist which Inquit had summoned still hung in the air. Kankil sat by their heads, a soft furred paw on each forehead. Her eyes were closed and there was a faint sound like a hum or a purr sounding from her.

Frost had settled cross-legged by their feet and her jewel flared and dimmed, flared to dim again as she pointed it to them.

Neither woman seemed to notice Trusla, but she went confidently forward to kneel beside the stranger out of the sea—Audha. She reached forward and placed her hand on the girl’s breast, chill as death under her touch.

Then she closed her eyes. Sand—a long stretch of sand—sand which arose about her, for this time she danced there, whirled and dipped, felt the caress of the powdery stuff against her skin. Now she deliberately did what she had never dared to do before. She called—not to summon but to demand—to raise Power which none of her kind had ever had, or so she believed.

The sand about her as she danced was warm, grew warmer, nearly flame-hot, and now she took command of it with all her strength, channeled it, sent that heat of life where it must go.

This was like no struggle she had known since the time she had fought to keep life in her when Simond broke the barrier that let them both through into the outer world. Somehow she held, and fed that heat of life—fed it with all the strength in her—to fight the chill, to banish the grasping fingers of death.

At last she sagged, crumpling backward to the floor. Dimly she heard a low moan and knew that she had won. Then there were arms about her settling her against a pillow. And mistily, as if she viewed it all still through a fall of sand, she saw Frost and Inquit busy wrapping the two girls with blankets. Making signs above them—the witch with her jewel and the shaman with her hands.