Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

“Only a great summoning can cleanse such a Dargh,” the witch replied. “You witnessed the erasure of something very old—that which set it was long gone. This lives and gathers. But it is only a servant, or so it would seem.”

The captain made a dry sound which was far from a laugh, if that was what he had intended.

“You give us faint encouragement, Lady Frost.”

“If what we are now seeking is indeed the gate through which your people came, Captain, why did they chance such a journey into the unknown? The Sulcars are spoken of as lovers of trade and gain and they have served not only themselves but also our world well by those very matters. But above all else, as a goad, there hangs fear.

“The best recorded entrance of a whole people uncovered so far at Lormt is that of the Dalefolk. Their wisefolk deliberately opened that door to escape some disaster so great that, lest some longing for a part of the past would move them to eventual return, they closed and sealed it behind them with the strongest Powers they could against any reopening. The Kioga—they fled a war and found a land they could make their own. And those others who through the years have come singly—such as Simon Tregarth—have been hunted by their kind and took a final chance for escape.

“Your legend of a northern gate through which you passed on ships—tell me, Captain, you have known it from childhood. Is it not deliberately obtuse? If those who come thus into our seas fled, then what did they flee? The wild Power loosed when the Mage-stone went from us was enough to arouse many sleeping things—and it has. The shadows that have driven the Latts from their home ranges with evil and deadly dreams—this affair of the Flying Cross-beak —does that not suggest that perhaps some lock your people put upon a gate is weakening, that something beyond is drawing to it, or perhaps experimenting with that of the Dark it can summon and control?”

Stymir had shifted a little in his chair. “And if we follow the hints of legend to this gate, Lady, and it opens—how do we battle?”

“They search now at Lormt, as you know, for the ultimate sealing of all gates. Hilarion remains and he is an adept such as could gather power into his hands and hurl it like lightning. Even we of the jewel”—she held hers close again—“who have been favored above most by the talent, cannot command such forces as an adept summons. But if his Powers, plus all we can feed him—and there are many talents, each with their own strength and virtue—fails, then there will be a sequel battle such as this world has not often seen.

“I cannot chart a sea path for you, Captain. That is the talent which is of your blood. What I can do is foretell any blight of the Dark which lies across our path. And at this time I see nothing which threatens save the weapons of nature herself.”

The captain reached within a coffer on the table which served him as a desk. He brought out a plaque of what looked to Simond like clear ice, yet in the warmth of the cabin it showed no signs of melting.

“Three years ago”—Stymir seemed reluctant to say anything, turning to plaque about in his callused hands—“I made the voyage to End of the World. It is never one popular with my people, but if a man succeeds, the return is great. Not only are there precious furs such as can be found in no other land, but when the ice streams run from beneath the glaciers still farther north, men seeking in their gravel beds find gold nuggets, as well as gems, held prisoner by the ice for seasons and released only by the chance of a melt.

“This is such a thing.” He laid the plaque on the table. “It is something not even our Storm Talkers can understand. Though it seems ice, it is not, nor is it glass, which would not have existed for a fraction of an hour candle in such a rough cradle. But from the north it came, and now… look into it, Lady, and tell us what can be seen.”

Simond had already noted a dark spot in the middle of the plaque, though all the rest of it was crystal clear. It appeared to him that as the witch leaned closer to view the find, that spot not only grew darker but larger. Also suddenly small sparks of light glittered at one end, coming alive as might stars in the southern nights.

“It is…” She had held her jewel pointed toward it and there was a flicker from those star points. “It is a ship—ice-trapped, yet not destroyed. And those stars…”

“If they are stars,” said the Captain, “then they are ones we do not know, we who use such light as part of our guiding. Nor is the ship like the one on which we now travel.”

Frost had taken a step away and now those others there drew closer to study the find in turn. Among them Odanki was the first to speak. As a rule he was silent in most company; Simond thought that he deliberately listened to gain knowledge of these strangers around him, jealously in turn guarding his own inner self as best he could.

“That is the Foot of Arska.” He did not quite touch finger to the plaque, but he indicated plainly the stars. “Not always is it so—for Arska walks the skies of the world and sometimes His tracks are different—but there is a long time between such differences. ”

“Yet you call the constellation by name, and we who travel the northern waters do not see them so.” The captain was frowning.

“To Arska there is no time as we know it,” the young Latt hunter responded calmly. “We, too, have our guide maps, and they are of the sky. Twice has Arska’s trail changed since our Rememberers kept records.”

Simond caught his breath. He had listened and read enough of the records at Lormt to know that mankind’s time was swallowed up when the stars appeared to move and that seasons beyond counting lay between such shiftings. How long must these Latt records run? It would seem that his unspoken question was already one to be voiced from Frost herself.

“Your shaman, hunter, has told us that you have no tradition of any gate—any offworld beginnings.”

He smiled with a flash of white teeth clear against his dark skin. “That is certainly the truth. Do you have a gate memory, Powerful One?”

She was frowning a little. “No,” she returned. “Nor do any of the true Old Race. It is our belief that we have been here always—and that there were no gates until the adepts created them as doors for learning or amusement.”

“So…” he faced her straightly. “Perhaps we are ‘Old Ones’ also, but of a different breed. Our Rememberers tell of the coming of these shipmen, and also of a war to the southward, when a people who were one with animals they called hounds strove to drive us north and out of the land which was once ours.”

Alizon, thought Simond. But by all they had learned from Kasarian in Lormt, it had been a good thousand years or more since the hounds had entered this world. So if the Latts had ever had such a gate, it lay so far back in time that it was truly lost.

“We were never a people great in numbers,” Odanki was continuing, “but we found a place we could make our own and Arska signed His judgment of us then in the skies. So”—he came back to the matter immediately at hand—“there are Arska prints and they shine upon a ship which you say, Captain, is not one of your kind.”

Simond could catch only a shortened sidewise view of that shadow at the heart of the plaque. Even he who was no seaman could make an outline of another type of vessel. This one had no masts; instead, in the center section of its deck, there was an erection like a tower standing to a goodly height.

Captain Stymir’s eyes had been fastened intently upon it as if the thing had more meaning than any of the questions and answers about him. Simond saw the captain’s features stiffen, his thin-lipped mouth straighten into a line. Did he indeed begin to recognize it?