Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

“The castle?” Trusla did not want to think more of Audha. To be a body without an innermost dwelling was to attract the worst of the Dark, though she knew that both Frost and Inquit would do what they could to protect Audha from that last outrage.

“Is gone. Look,” Simond said in her ear. He shifted around, drawing her with him so they stared across that expanse which had been glass smooth. It was broken and creviced now, fragments of ice forming barriers. Where those towers had stood, the colors racing over them, there stood now rock, black crags. Yet just at the point where that open gate had beckoned them in, there was a deep and dark hole, some passage or cave cut out of that rocky core.

“Glamorie?” She would not have been surprised if Frost had answered her yes. Trusla knew well that a master or mistress of the Power could create a whole city by choice, though such creations never lasted for any length of time.

“In its way. Except…” Frost was twisting the links of her broken chain apart, striving to rejoin them to hold the jewel once more. There was a raw red line on the small portion of her neck Trusla could see within the thick fur framing her face and edging her hood. “Except,” she repeated, having completed her task to her satisfaction, “that which held the castle still sits in waiting there.”

Captain Stymir came up behind them. “No place to strive to twist someone out as one pries a mussel from its shell, unless we know more.”

“No,” Frost agreed. “We do not enter that web. But I think that she who shelters there now has something to consider.”

“To fight on enemy territory when one knows nothing of the odds,” Simond commented, “has never availed any attacker much in the end.”

“To fight…” Now it was the shaman who joined them. Audha lay on a padding of cloaks. Curled very close beside her, Kankil stroked the girl’s blank face gently with one hand. “To fight is not always the answer.”

“You have shown that one how foolish it is to stand against your Power.” Odanki limped up. He was gazing proudly at the shaman. “Set the dream demons on her—they will twist her!” His hands moved as if he held a length of hide between them and were indeed twisting it.

“None of us knows the extent of the other’s Powers,” Frost returned. “Also, there is this. By the virtue of the talent I cannot truly read this one is of the Dark as we know it. Perhaps it is entrapped.”

“Entrapped?” the captain nearly exploded.

“Captain,” Frost asked, “what is that dim legend that your people entered into this world through a gate? What do we now hunt but that same gate? Perhaps something else has also been caught so—an alien to this world, a world which she has found barren and forbidding. Your people were free when your ships plowed into our sea—as dangerous as that is in this north. For someone who had no ship—no—”

“The ship in the plaque!” Stymir interrupted, and jerked that out of hiding. When he held it out into the wan light of day, they could see the change.

The black blot in the center was indeed in outline something akin to a ship, but far different than those the Sulcars sailed. It was long and narrow, and, where a midmast should be, there was a single tall and wide wedge, too solid-looking to be classed a sail. There was only one figure on the deck and that, as far as they could see, was a lump which had some of the attributes of the thing they had seen frozen in the ice.

“That thing—that thing could do this?” The captain’s arm swung out in the direction of the shattered castle.

“No—it was a servant of some kind,” Frost said slowly, “and that ship was close on the Sulcars as they fled. They gained freedom—perhaps this ship did not.”

“If we only knew more…” Trusla did not mean that as a complaint.

“But we do not!” the captain returned savagely, swinging the plaque wide in his hand as if he would hurl it from him.

“It is as one weaves a feather robe,” Inquit commented. “One studies the pattern and one places a quill there and quill here to make the proper pattern. But she who abides within there”—the shaman nodded toward the cave entrance—“is the only one who perhaps knows that pattern. And if our efforts continue to counter her, what may she send against us? She has tried us three times—three failures—and such as she does not take kindly to that.”

“Therefore”—Frost’s hand was again upon her jewel—“we seek her out. And we may still have a guide.” Abruptly she left their company and went to where Audha lay, Kankil still curled beside her, crooning in her ear softly and patting her cheek.

Trusla would have thought the girl asleep or unconscious, but her eyes were open, staring up into the sky where already the night was clouding in.

Frost knelt and touched the Sulcar girl with the same gentleness that Kankil used. She sat so, linked by her fingers on the other’s forehead, pushing back the heavily furred edge of Audha’s hood. Her own face smoothed, her eyes closed. She was seeking, the Estcarpian girl was sure, for some spark of life or thought upon which she could seize as a bond to draw the other back to them.

“We wait, we eat,” Inquit announced. “We ready ourselves. For it is not to stand upon ice and await the will of another that we have come here.”

Eat they did, very sparingly of their provisions. Trusla sucked a long splinter of ice Simond handed her, gaining from its melting the water her body must have. Yet as they made what preparations they could, all their eyes kept returning to that waiting cavern which grew ever darker.

It was Kankil who managed to get some food into Audha, pressing tiny bits of journey cake into the girl’s mouth and then smoothing her throat as if to urge her to swallow.

“She is not mindless.” Frost held her share of cake in one hand while the other hovered over her jewel. “It is as if she has fled into a very deep part within her, and there locked in that which she has always been. When we move—she will come. The little one”—she indicated Kankil—“will be her guide.”

Frost and Inquit stepped out with a confidence Trusla was certainly far from feeling. However, she matched strides with Simond and that was easeful in itself. Behind them Audha moved, her right hand tightly held by Kankil, whose chirping rose and fell as if she were singing some ritual to keep her charge on her feet.

Then came the Sulcars and Odanki, all ready with weapons, even though it was in their minds that battle steel had no power here.

The dark of the cave mouth closed about them. But if their enemy meant to keep them so blinded, that ploy failed from the first, for Frost’s jewel gave forth a thin gray light.

That did not reach far, but it was enough to show sure footage ahead. However, they were not far into the opening before they were fronted by something new. Even as the towers and walls of the ice palace had failed to hold, now they could see the broken remains of another barrier, the sharp points left in what might be a frame, warning them away.

It gave steel its chance, for the men came to the fore to break and beat to shards all which threatened them. Now Audha first showed signs of true life.

“She—the shadow one—this was her abiding place.” The words came loudly and the Sulcar girl balked when Kankil attempted to urge her on. At last it was the shaman who took strong hold of Audha’s upper arm, drawing her along with due care to keep away from the splinters.

That they were indeed in a place which was of a different nature they realized as they gathered in a group on the other side of that broken barrier. For the cold which had struck at them so long was gone.