Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

The woman, propped against a fluff of pillows, her badly swollen knee supported by a bolster, was gaunt. Her face appeared as if she were veiled by a webbing of tiny wrinkles. Her gray-white skin looked almost part of a mask, but her green eyes were sharp, clear, and took all attention from the rest of her.

“There is trouble?”

Liara laughed and shrugged. “When is there not in this world?

But this trouble…” Swiftly she told her nurse of the happenings in the banquet hall.

“My littermate plays some game of his own—courses his hounds on secret trails. I—” She reached forward and took Singala’s gnarled fingers into her own, warmer hands and held them close. “You have taught me much, very much. My dam’s littermate, the Baron Volorian, by some grace of fate saw something in me which made him treat me almost like one of his own whelps. I have been at his heels in the kennels, and always I listened and learned. Sin-gala, surely it must be true what was said tonight—those of our house have a strange blood strain. There is this also—I want the Key! It is mine to have for it passes by full honor to the First Female of the Krevanel pack, and that I am! I do not know where my other litter brother’s mate left it when she died. But I have a strange feeling”—she pressed her nurse’s hands even closer—“that in that key there lies something which is mine. And I shall ask Kasarian for it—nor can he by pack oath deny it!”

“Heart Whelp.” Singala might have been speaking as she did years ago when Liara came to her for the comfort or warmth of love. “Your litter brother’s mate never held the Key—for she was of another bloodline. It was laid away with your own dam’s betrothal jewels, which are yours alone.”

“Laid away—the treasure room! Did my dam not have a special casket with a double badge upon it? For she was truly of the house blood, being of the litter of Jaransican, who was of the west branch of Krevanel, now gone.” Liara’s eyes glistened. “So—we have double mage blood, Kasarian and I.”

She should feel fear, the proper revulsion of one who had been touched even so lightly by the evil of that magic which she had been brought up to abhor all her life. But she did not—rather she felt a queer excitement, as if she approached some door and would not find it barred, but swinging to her will.

“You have made me free of many secrets of this house, Singala Warm Heart, and so given me what may be greater than any heritage one can hold in two hands. A year ago I found another secret cabinet in the Lady chamber and in it what was left certain records. Time had eaten them, but there were bits left even I could puzzle out. Now you give me this—the knowledge that I may claim the Key.

“I fear for Kasarian. He says little, and never, of course, to me, save on matters to do with the hearth. But he is engaged in some secret dealings, of that I am sure. He disappears for times, some long, some short, when none can see him, and Gannard stays ever close to his chamber as if on guard. Three times has he summoned young Deverian to him, though heretofore he showed no interest in the whelps, save that they mind their tutor and cause no trouble. Tonight he brought Lord Sincarian here and quoted a bride offer—yet Sincarian is such a man as my brother in the past would put fang to the throat. Why does this happen? Why must a female never be told what threatens her hearthhold?”

Singala’s bluish lips shaped a tiny quirk of a smile. “Again questions, questions. But to these I have no answers. Nor”—she glanced away from the hold the girl’s eyes kept on her, along the length of her twisted, aching body—“am I now one who can search out news for you. And”—her smile was gone—“remember this, Heart’s Whelp. Trust is something which can never be sworn to.”

Liara nodded. Even if she had a littermate within the female quarters, she would not turn to her for aid—and never to one of the slave maids.

“I must think on this. Now, my dam by choice, get your rest. Gurtha will be stern with me when she brings your sleep drink.” She attempted to loosen her hold on Singala’s hands, but those crooked fingers now entrapped hers.

“Course with care. You are not of the pack—therefore if they learn this, the pack will pull you down. Oh, Heart Whelp, course with care!”

“As if I would do else. Now rest you, and be sure that I shall do nothing to arouse the pack.”

Back in her own chamber she summarily dismissed both maids, seated herself on a bench before her dressing table, and gazed into the mirror. By every sign she was truly of the pack—yet they hunted not by sight but by more subtle means, reacting speedily to such scent as might be given off by fear of even by some faint change of thought. She had watched Volorian’s prized breed too long not to know that. Through the centuries that their masters had concentrated on such breeding, perhaps some hound nature had become a part of these masters as well.

She had thought to approach Kasarian directly for an accounting. But one in her position did not do such—it was beyond all proper action and training. Her speech in the banquet hall tonight had been on the verge of lost propriety. He had given no sign of either approval or disapproval that she could now sort out of memory. But she half expected him to seek her out, either for a lashing by tongue or—or what?

Liara slipped a tress of her hair back and forth between her fingers. She had heard traders’ tales such as were common in the female quarters. Alizon was not the whole world. There were other lands beyond its borders and the women there had strange ways past all propriety. Others even than the thrice-damned witches went freely about.

There had been slaves brought back from raids on the overseas Dales, though she was too young to remember more than glimpses of the two women who had been part of one of her littermate’s loot. They died, and swiftly—one of them taking with her two of the guard before she was cut down, and the other under the lash. For they could not be broken to the ways of proper obedience.

Liara stirred and now her hands flew busily to her hair. She twisted it tightly, bringing out a net to confine it as close to her head as she might. She sped across the room and pressed her thumbs hard, one on the center of a flower carved on the tall head of the bed and one on the two embossed leaves below it.

There was no sound as the panel swung. She kept it well oiled and it had been more often in use these past days than before. There was a small chamber beyond and she felt for the top of the chest there, snapped a make-light to the wick of a lantern. Then she wrenched her house robe over her head and substituted the one-piece garment she had devised with Singalas help and sewn herself in secret. It had a hood which she pulled into place, leaving only a slit for her eyes.

The treasure chamber. She had made that part of her decision. She could have, of course, asked that her dam’s jewel case be brought to her, but somehow she wanted the Key in her own hands before anyone else knew it or even guessed that she would want it.

The hidden ways of the hold were a spider web. She kept carefully away from those she thought were known to Gannard or her littermate, as she made her way down and down, sometimes by stretches of ladders formed by finger- and toeholds only, to the lower depths. The lantern swung from a firm grasp on its cord, but its light was limited.

Two years ago during her night wanderings she had found the hidden entrance to the treasure room and now she searched once again for the proper turnings. At the time she had simply explored gingerly, afraid that there might be a hidden alarm which would betray her presence. But now she knew what she must look for. Threading a path between chests, storage boxes, even suits of armor glistening with gems as the lantern light touched them, she came to that table where she had noted a number of smaller coffers.