Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

“You company with Sulcars—with the slayers—and yet you expect anything save this from me!”

Audha’s voice arose to a shriek. Trusla gasped. The group had not been spread out, but rather gathered close to the girl they had discovered; thus the bubble which arose around them, though it crowded them even closer together, was not too large.

Both the captain and Simond cried out, and steel met that barely visible barrier. To no purpose. It might seem that they were contained in a vast cage of Var glass but one which did not yield to any assault from metal.

It was cold, suddenly far colder. That bubble could be of clear ice and now they would freeze.

Frost simply pointed her jewel at the half-visible expanse before her. The glittering encirclement of the gem gathered together and formed a rainbow-hued ray. It touched their temporary prison and that shattered, great pieces of the ice falling away. Odanki swung out his spear at one still-standing fragment and sent it after the rest.

“So you command the ice,” commented Frost. “Yes, that must be so, or we would not come upon you here. What else can you call upon, stranger?”

They came as if they had arisen out of the many crevices in the glaciers—such beasts as Trusla had never seen save for furs on a trader’s counter. There was a pack of short-legged but fast-moving, grizzle-coated things from which arose a stench to sicken one, at last one of the huge white wasbears, and some dark slinking forms which, though furred, seemed to writhe across the ice like serpents.

The shaman loosened one of her fringe feathers. Stymir had already shot an arrow, which went neatly home in the shoulder of the nearest wasbear but did not in any manner slow that creature in its steady advance.

Now Inquit shouldered past the captain and deliberately leaned over so that her feather was touching the ice under their feet. With the briskness of a hearthwife busy about her daily tasks, she swept that feather forward, eluding the hand with which the captain tried to stop her. So she swept, pacing forward. And on her fifth stride…

The pack of ravening animals was gone!

“It does little good,” she said complacently, straightening up and carefully inserting her feather back into whatever knot had held it previously, “to dream against dreamers.”

No emotion showed on Audha’s face. She was like one of those near-human-sized figures the landsmen put in their fields to keep birds from the early crops.

“Do we play games, stranger, or do we act as sisters in Power? What do you summon next—a glacier to sweep us away?” Once more Frost laughed.

“I summon… you!”

W—

From around them now whirled small chunks of ice, streamers of snow. Trusla caught at Simond, only to find him as unsteady as she. Yet they held together. The others they could see only as forms which appeared and disappeared as the very stuff on which they stood rose to gather them in.

There was no clear sight of what was happening. Trusla only knew that there was no longer any solid surface under her boots. Yet she was not falling, nor was Simond. At least, caught up in this maelstrom, they were still together. There was a terrifying sense of being in a place where there was nothing stable except the man she clung to. Then, with force enough to bring a cry out of her, she did strike a level surface which held steady and she heard Simond swear and kick out, fighting to get to his feet and take her with him.

The storm of snow and ice particles was settling and they could see again the rest of the party. Odanki was spitting strange words with as much force as Simond. He had to lean heavily on his spear to get to his feet. The venture had done little good for his healing wounds.

The rest looked wonderingly around. Perhaps the shaman and the witch and Kankil had been prepared in some way for this wild journey. However, to the rest it had been a use of Power and therefore as awful as it was effective.

Audha was certainly still with them—whether she remained possessed by their opponent or not. In fact, she was close to Frost, who was shaking herself as if to banish the gathered snow and ice from her furred garments.

This was certainly not the brink of the crevice where they had found the Sulcar girl. What faced them now was enough to keep them statue still, just looking for a moment or so.

For here was a mountain fortress, such as the Sulcars and Simond knew represented a bastion nearly untakeable by any mortal means. Flashes of colored light which matched the encirclement of Frost’s jewel played along the walls and appeared to leap from tower to tower. It was, Simond was certain, the hold of a ruler with unlimited means and perhaps unlimited manpower.

Still, because it did not resemble the stone he knew, he had a feeling, that it, too, was an exertion of Power alone.

There was an open doorway facing them in obvious invitation—too obvious. They did not stir from where the ice storm had deposited them. They did not—but Audha did.

She had been shoulder to shoulder with Frost when the storm had cleared. Now her hand shot forward, so swiftly they did not mark her action until too late.

Her fist grabbed about the jewel and she gave it such a vicious jerk as brought the witch forward and nearly to her knees. Then the chain must have snapped, for the jewel was free in Audha’s hold—blazing.

The Sulcar girl cried out, shook her hand, tried to rid herself of what she held. Apparently the jewel was also at battle now. However, she herself was snatched up bodily and taken from them, to be dropped, now wailing, at that open doorway. Yet—she still held the gem.

Frost started forward. She slipped and slid in a tangle to the feet of the shaman, who was quick to come to her aid. Now they were aware that between them and the castle was a stretch of glass-smooth ice.

Odanki pushed to the edge of that. Sitting down, he fastened the thongs with claws over his boots, while Trusla and Simond fought to bring Frost and Inquit back to stable footing. It would seem a nearly impossible task. The ice might have been coated in turn with wax or grease; it possessed just the right consistency to send them sprawling. They were panting when they finally pulled back to the small stretch where the storm had deposited them.

Audha had not moved from her place in the doorway. Why she had not gone on within, Trusla could not guess. But then Frost might have picked that thought out of the girl’s mind, for she said, “She will not take it within her sanctuary.”

“Just so, sister.” Inquit was soothing Kankil, who had found her slide on the ice somehow unusually unnerving. “It might well serve you as a key were it taken within. She will—”

“Hold it for ransom, perhaps.” Captain Stymir stood, hands on hips, his eyes narrowed as he studied the castle.

Odanki had tightened the last strap over his boot. With a look of confidence, he raised his unwounded leg and brought it down with a distinct stamp on the edge of that spread of ice—only to lose his balance and spin out, the claw strapped to his mittens and his boots making no impression on the slick surface, a cry of complete amazement bursting out of him. All his wriggling only took him farther from the shore until he was marooned near halfway between the party and the castle.

Trusla had never seen a witch without her jewel and it was very well known that that was the focus of her Power. If the dweller in the castle did summon Audha to her and take the gem, could it wrest control of Frost’s energies for her own use? The jewels were a secret and no one outside of the sisterhood knew just how great a weapon they were or what a witch deprived of one could do.

Trusla caught her lower lip between her teeth as she thought. Perhaps this was the time that her dream was brought into being. Simond was busy with the captain and Joul trying to throw a rope to the Latt hunter and draw him back. There was no one to stop her.