Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

He took a step backward. “Lady, I am no lore master—nor even of the Old Blood.”

“No, not of our Old Ones, but of others. You come from those who once sheltered under the wings of Volt, who was mighty as any adept. You say you have no talents, and perhaps by the measuring of others you do not. But you can remember—though the passages of long memory have never been opened for you. Therefore—you must remember. And if I cannot reach the end of this quest, you will share this memory and those with Power shall put it to use. Come.”

He had been slowly retreating, she following him step by step, and now they were behind a shelter of rocks, out of sight of the rest of the company. He tried to dodge, be free of what she would lay upon him, but he could not move.

Up came her hand holding her jewel. It did not blaze, but rather issued forth a soft, golden light. In him the fears which had stirred settled and were gone. Simond felt the touch of the jewel to his forehead between his eyes.

There was a strange sensation—as if he walked down a hall lined on either hand with doors, all closed. On them glimmered symbols which he felt, as he noted each, he should know, that they were a part of a past he could not quite understand.

Then he came to the final door, the one which ended the hallway. It did not open, but simply disappeared. Now he faced a great wall of the same soft gleaming color as had accompanied him on this journey. There was a sighing—like the soft slow beat of great wings.

On the wall a great clawed hand began to write. Each symbol it formed was in the precious blue which meant refuge from all which was of the Dark. Though Simond did not understand, he also knew that he would not forget those symbols. They would be a part of him until this life’s end.

Softness, like the tips of great feathers brushed against his cheek. He knew it for a blessing and a farewell. Simond blinked and Frost stood before him holding a gem once more turning gray.

“You remember?” Frost asked.

Immediately there flashed into his mind those symbols. He also knew, without being told, that though he did not know their meaning, he could, when there was need, voice each of them in turn.

Frost smiled. “Yes,” she said, “always when there is a need the Light will answer. Now—you would find your lady, and…” she hesitated, a slight frown now drawing her brows together, “there is need there, also. I cannot understand.” Now she was speaking more to herself than to him, and he was eager to be gone. “There is something calling—but if it is born of the Dark, it is of no evil we know.”

Simond was already on his way, Stymir behind him, and they followed the same trail which had been laid out for the women that morning. There was no sign of any troubling of the mud pool except for a stray geyser now and then well away from them. However, the stinking mud and seared ground growth remained as a warning.

The Estcarpian had served on scouting expeditions enough to pick up the signs of passing left by those they hunted—the more so since the women had taken no trouble to conceal their going. So he and the captain came to the stairway and started up.

They halted by the row of skulls, and Simond saw quickly the runes Inquit had uncovered.

“What is the meaning?” he demanded. There were too many mysteries in this place, and, even if this was a very old one, that did not render any message it held harmless.

The captain had gone down on one knee, the better to inspect the near-invisible lines, and then set to picking with his own knifepoint at those still hidden.

“This”—he used the knifepoint to indicate one of the runes—“is the old form used in the master scrolls for the Ruler of Storms. This”—he had selected another—“is a plea. It is Sulcar—but so old… I can give you no meaning for the rest.”

“Those are not Sulcar skulls.” Simond had been studying the row with their green gloss of what might be hair.

“No,” Stymir agreed at once. “And my people were never ones to take heads as battle trophies as some of the Dark-ruled barbarians do. But that my kin came this way I will swear.”

Simond had already placed his foot on the next step. “They went on—see, there is a scrape of boot edge. What brought Audha in this way?”

“What has brought all of us? We seek for the lost. What? An enemy, a gate, something which threatens us? Can it not be that that which we seek can use one of us to its own purposes?”

“She swore blood oath against that threat.” Simond tried to keep his voice level. “Do you mean that in doing so this wavereader opened herself to the very purpose of that which she hates?”

Once in the past he himself had been insidiously taken over, to be used for another’s bloodlust in sacrifice. It had been Trusla who had broken the bond he did not even realize held him, and brought him to freedom. So he well knew that such things could be.

“Who knows?” the captain replied.

They had reached the top of that very ancient stairway and were looking out now over the rough surface of the glacier toward those distant mountains. Simond’s frustration became anger. Trusla knew nothing of such lands, but Inquit was of the north and surely must be well aware of the perils of the way ahead.

However, a moment later he sighted dark dots moving steadily toward the mountains, though they went slowly and with caution. But the thought of a break in a snow arch, a fall into a tomb crevice, caught at Simond until he found it hard to breathe.

Three dots: two larger, one small. So they had not yet caught up with Audha. There were signs of a trail right enough, but that could have been left by those they themselves followed.

“It is the little one who leads,” Stymir pointed out. “Perhaps some talent of hers is what they depend upon as guide.”

Simond wanted nothing more at that moment than to seize upon Kankil and jerk her back, bring them all to camp once again. But the captain was right. There was a space between the shaman and her familiar and Trusla brought up the rear.

They had heard plenty of stories in Korinth and again in End of the World about the perils of the glaciers. Not only was the footing highly treacherous, but oftentimes glaciers provided lairs for the great wasbears, and to approach any such while its owner was in residence was to call upon death foolishly.

“How much farther?” Trusla brushed a string of hair back under the fur which framed her face within her hood. The bite of the cold after the warmth of the valley seemed doubly severe. She had tucked her hands into her armpits to warm them a fraction every time she and her companions halted. For their progress was not steady, since Kankil cast back and forth for the trail continually.

Where could Audha be bound? There was nothing but this everlasting ice, cold, and those stark mountains in the distance. Was she being called?

Knowing how her own Tor people could apply that compulsion on occasion, the thought had come to her much earlier in the day that that was what might have happened. She suggested it, and, to vanquish her one small hope, Inquit had agreed. Wisdom suggested that they turn back, yet Kankil chirped and clicked and the shaman followed. Glancing behind several times, Trusla was not sure she could find once more that stairway into this dreary country.

They came to the end as Kankil huddled on the edge of a great crevice which appeared to descend to the very depths of the earth. And there the trail ended.

Trusla looked down with a shudder and turned swiftly away. She could well envision what had happened. Audha, reaching this cutoff, yet still compelled to go forward, could have blindly marched over the lip of that break and lie so far below that no one would ever see her again.