Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

“Not xagoth-slog!” The voice now echoed anger of an insult. “I am…

This time the answer came one word at a time. The cone voice might be attempting to pick out of Audha’s own mind the proper words.

“Ship—wind power—all obey.”

“Officer—or perhaps even a shaman,” the Sulcar girl guessed. But what they hunted was evil. Was she now confronted by some creature of the full Dark who could strike with blasting energy?

“Lost—ship caught—in ice. I will Power to hold me safe until they come—my mates and young—to set me free. Ice holds—I sleep—long and long and long. Then comes a great wave of power—not Stiffli power”—Audha thought she got that word right this time—“but it broke apart all bonds laid to protect. I rise—still there is ice. And when I use the sight there is a ship—a ship of the killers. I have nothing—only the ice—and here the ice obeys my power. I send it to kill—

“To kill my ship, my shipmates!” Audha’s knife was free in her hand. But her arm would no longer obey her; it would not rise from her side. And how she could have slain the cone, she had no idea.

“Now others come. They hold Power known to this world.” The voice was continuing in spite of Audha’s rage, and she found herself forced to listen. “They will be drawn even as you were drawn, slog female, and I shall use their power to win free and back to the world which is mine.”

The girl was breaking through that which held her quiescent, usable to this thing.

“Be not so sure.” She found she was able to control her knife hand now, but still saw no way she could turn its point against this alien thing. “There are those in this world who can make mountains walk and can close such gates to other places with ease.” She built upon her bluff as speedily as she could.

“Yes.” To her astonishment the thing readily agreed to that. “But then I have… you!”

Against every fraction of will Audha could summon, the compulsion snapped down upon her again. She stood up, not by a willing of her own. The cone whirled so that its color flow gave her vertigo, and she closed her eyes.

“Come!”

Her body, her eyes, were no longer under her own command. She looked and saw that the whirling cone had somehow collapsed into a ball. It did not quite rest upon the rock, but rather floated purposefully forward. Then Audha discovered that she could do nothing but follow it.

Her body ached with fatigue and she was so hungry her stomach seemed shrunken into a tight knot, but still she followed, chained by that other’s will.

It wove a way among more and more of the rocky outcrops. At least it continued to project some of its saving warmth to keep her stumbling feet moving. Dark rocks.

Then—

Once more the ball was whirling. From its substance there spun a strip of near-invisible stuff—glass or clear ice—or some substance Audha had no knowledge of. It grew wider, and slanted upward, clearly visible among the rocks because of its continued play of color.

“Come!”

The order brought her forward in spite of all the force of her own will she raised to fight it. The girl felt her foot set on that half-seen way, her body tense with strain and the bite of fear.

It was lifting her up as easily as a leaf caught in a wind gust. She ached to hold still, afraid of losing her balance and railing to those rocks steadily growing smaller below her. Then she began to realize that she was encased in something as stiff as the ice from which she had come, as much a prisoner as any chains could bind her.

Dizzy, she closed her eyes—then opened them quickly again, fearing that she might miss some important change in this unbelievable transport.

Though she was well above the ground now, the rocks still loomed about her. And it seemed to her that they turned ugly, wind-worn faces to leer at her as she swung by them. She summoned what strength she had for a question.

“Where—?” but she got no further. Now that commanding force had even seized upon her tongue. She could see snow shifting from the breath of wind in the heights, yet that lash of cold did not reach her, even when they passed through what seemed a small blizzard.

This was indeed Power, and such as she had never heard described before. The length of light on which she was anchored swept around another tall spire of rock. They were heading straight for the mountainside, she thought sickly, foreseeing her helpless body dashed against that unyielding wall.

But no, there was an opening and the ball which provided her passage headed straight for that. They came under an arch of a snow bridge to voyage across a plateau, and on that stood…

Audha was so weakened by her ordeal that now she saw what she could not possibly believe. Yet, though she blinked and blinked again, and firmly told herself not to be captured by any glamorie, that continued to stand foresquare and the ball was starting an easy curve of descent to bring her to it.

The Sulcar girl had seen Es City, the oldest and greatest of the works of humankind (plus perhaps the talents of the adepts) on the eastern continent. She had walked the streets of all the major Dales ports. This… was far beyond the labors which had brought such into being.

It seemed to be fashioned of the same strange material as produced the cone ball, and the colors which played across it were even richer in hue. Yet there were towers which were not opaque but like glass or the clearest of ice. And, strangest of all, in spite of where it stood—in the midst of this most desolate and barren land—there was a space beyond its outer walls which was carpeted with green. She caught a glimpse of flowers among the low-growing plants.

The ball which had brought her was at ground level now, approaching the castle which towered over her. And the closer Audha was carried, the more differences she noted in its building compared with what she knew. The edges of roofs curled outward and slightly upward and here and there along them were what she first took to be the heads of sentries, small though they seemed to be.

Then she knew them for carvings of creatures which certainly looked humanoid, not monstrous, but who wore expressions of sadness and despair.

Only a very large carving placed over the main entrance lacked that doleful touch. It was the head of what could only be a woman, her hair free and loosed about as if the wind itself were caught in it. Human—and yet was it so?

The forehead was high and wide, with unusually thick brows over eyes. Then the head narrowed to a very pointed chin beneath a small mouth. The nose was low-bridged, nearly flat, and wide of nostril. As Audha stared up at that face there appeared sparks of orange, almost like the tips of flames, in those eyes only for an instant, and then her captor swept her on under the archway.

She was instantly aware of the warmth which closed about her, stronger than that given off even by the cone. They did not cross any courtyard but were instantly in a great hall.

But an empty one. Here was none of the coming and going of servants one saw even in a Dales hold. No guards stood by the four curtained doorways—two on either side—past which she was swept.

Nor was there any dais to lift above the general servants and guests the ruler of this place. Instead, as the hall came to a halt, she was left firm-footed on the floor by the disappearance of that trail which had carried her, to discover she was facing something with the appearance of a broad but clouded mirror. She could see something of her own body reflected there, but also there appeared, farther in, dark in which she could not even distinguish any true shape.

“You have a choice, female of this world,” the voice which had been in the cone again rang out. “I can set you—so—”