Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

Dawn light gave those gathered about him substance and he could read the concern on all their faces.

“I—” his voice sounded like the croak of some swamp-born thing. “It—it must have been a dream!”

Mouse was shaking her head slowly. “It was a sending, a true sending. Though why it came to you—” there was a shadow of surprise on her face now.

He could only remember for an instant his old pain. “True. I have no talent, halfling though I am.”

“We are what the Great Ones make of us,” she returned. “But speak now of this sending—for it was meant for us and we must know.”

Then Keris launched into a description of his vision, dream, sending, or whatever it might have been, and found that it was easy to remember the smallest details as he continued.

As he described the woman he had seen standing battle-ready against that which flowed in the Dark, Mouse nodded.

“So,” she said now, and her jewel glinted the brighter for a second, “now the Oldest Ones stir. Gunnora.” She bowed her head as if she were paying homage to some great one of her own craft. “From the world itself comes Her Power—when we evoked the changing of the mountains, so did we deal with Her. Our roads led to the same goal but have ever been apart. Say once more these words Her Voice spoke.”

Keris discovered that he could recall them now as easily as if he read them from a written page held before his eyes.

*Sardox!* It was the mind-voice of Jasta which cut through the end of that retelling. They all looked to the Renthan.

Jasta tossed his horned head high. *Each people,* he said, “have their memories. *We remember Sardox, for it was he who wrought until he brought forth the Sarn Riders, and worse. It was thought that he was snuffed out in the Great Battle. And now it seems he looks south.*

Keris was aware of a shifting among those who ringed him in. Trusted and tried as they were—yet no man of his time could imagine facing the wrath of those who had moved before the ancient First Breaking of the World.

“So”—the Lady Eleeri drew her herb-scented swab across his forehead for the last time—“we ride. And in the way Sebra has scouted.”

Vutch took his place with the pack ponies, though Keris had hoped that it was not apparent he found so difficult the everyday actions necessary for breaking camp. That he could hold to his seat on Jasta without faltering gave him something of encouragement and he was eager to leave what had become to him an ill-omened place. But Mouse’s mare matched pace with Jasta, and for that he was not so happy.

That he had been struck down by the Power of a known source lay deep in his mind, and he feared that memory now. Never would he forget that force which had pressed him, into the ground, held him captive while it reached for its more potent foe.

He tried to fix his mind more on that huge, hairy creature which companied with the priestess. It was totally unlike any he had ever seen in Escore, which was alive with oddities, for it was there that the most unscrupulous of the adepts had wrought that greatest evil of all, dabbling in the very stuff of life to form new species for their profit or pleasure. He knew well the earth-dwelling Fos, the water-needing Krogan, the Flannen. Jasta, good friend and comrade, was also of such begetting.

And there were the Gray Ones, the rasti, the Sarn, and now this last invisible thing which had brought to such a high pitch all the fear his own body could generate.

Perhaps the witch could read his mind, for it was as if she had followed his thoughts.

“This hairy one”—she might have now been speaking aloud her own thoughts—“its like is listed nowhere. Yet it is of the Light or it could not have so stood within the circle of Gunnora’s service. It may add much to our own knowledge when we meet with these other travelers.” She spoke confidently, as if she expected to come across them at the next curve of the passage.

They had not gone far down it, both falcons aloft, Shama himself playing advance scout, when the Lady Eleeri’s Theela stopped short, whether at her own wish or her rider’s, Keris could not tell. However, the Lady was leaning forward on the Keplian’s back staring at the rise of the canyon wall.

The sun did not strike directly into this cut and, as Sebra had observed, it gradually sloped upward, leaving the running stream an arm’s length below. Yet the daylight was clear enough to show that that greenish surface was not featureless stone.

Instead shadows flitted back and forth across it, though there was nothing to throw such patterns. Some were but abstract markings and others quite clearly were those of vegetation, with flying things winging from one curved branch to the next.

To Keris’s amazement, Mouse laughed. “A plaything, long since forgotten. Look you to those ledges across the stream. Are they not seats for those who would watch?”

“But for what purpose?” burst out the young man. The more he watched, the more aware he was that there was nothing offensive or evil—no peering forth of demon faces, no outward clutch of taloned paw.

“A play of learning, perhaps. Others may have had their Lormt. These do not threaten and for us they have little meaning, but they have meant much for others once on a time.”

What they meant now was an irritation, for one looking up at the play of shadows could pause, form a barrier for the next in line. Jasta and Theela both swore that to them the wall was clear, so that shifting maze was only visible to the human members of their party.

Still, in spite of all his efforts at ignoring the show to which there seemed no end, Keris found his eyes continually drawn back to the figures cavorting there. He was beginning to recognize some forms of birds, also what seemed to be flying lizards with wings which appeared nearly transparent within their ribbing. Then there was a large squatting plant which all the airborne flutterers seemed to widely avoid. And—

The screech of a falcon broke the fascination of his last stare as Swifttalon came to Vorick, settling on the saddle horn perch of the Falconer who was well in the lead.

The rider turned his head to relay the news his bird had brought. “There is an end to the canyon ahead but also a way out.”

And what a way it was, they discovered as they squeezed by a massive rock which had three-quarters closed the passage and came up to face what could only be a staircase. Gathering at its foot, they surveyed this new impediment. Humans might make that climb—even the Keplians and Jasta and the well-trained Torgians—but could they ever force the pack train upward? And what lay at its top?

Gruck seemed to have a natural sense of seeking out the best of trails. Though he had shouldered a pack which was growing steadily smaller, he also carried the girl. Destree, following in his footsteps, wondered at his continuing strength. Since they had turned abruptly south after that momentous meeting with Power such as she had no real words to describe, the Voice tried hard not to depend too heavily on her companion, to carry an extra share of this trek.

There was no map, no wavereader such as the Sulcar ships had to keep them on course—only this pressure to go forward. But of one thing Destree was sure—it was not fully by the order of that thing they had fronted; the Lady had also a hand in this.

Liara was their present problem. Since they had brought her out of the hands of that leader of the Gray Ones, she had been one empty of mind, one whose person lay deep chained within her body. Destree had clothed her as best she could from her own extra gear, but there were no boots to cover those very slender white feet.