Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

There was a skittering sound, a fetid smell. The avian female had taken the mage’s place and was eying Firdun, turning her head from one side to another as if she could only view him exactly with one eye at a time.

“Prepare them.”

Hands caught in Firdun’s armpits and he was pulled up to his feet. He made himself as limp as possible so they dragged him across the black pavement to where a metal grill had been assembled and he was lifted and thrown down on this, fetters snapped to hold him fast.

Sacrifice—

The realization shook him fully awake. He had played his helpless captive game perhaps too long, but he had needed to find out why Garth Howell was on the move. That these gathered here had been responsible for the storm magic he did not believe; some of them seemed to have been completely cowed by it.

Now, he could call upon the Eyrie—but that would also put them in danger. He knew that his talent was great, but he had never been able to meld with the others in spite of all their struggles. They had finally accepted the verdict that he had some other part to play—but not as a sacrifice to the Dark!

They were pushing dried grass and straw under the grill on which he lay, methodically building a fire. He could not shout any spell aloud.

Clouds gathering, darkening, and those black birds of the Waste creature were flying back and forth. No, there were not clouds there—instead there were bags, gray bags beginning to bulge with moisture. In his mind ran the rain spell, but accented now—tending toward raising a cloudburst.

He could hear a stirring about him and firmly shut it out of his mind: clouds—water—water—clouds. There was a flare of flame darting up at his head, singeing his hair, nearly searing his eye. Clouds—and wings—wings were knives to cut those clouds and bring down the full deluge. The birds, screaming, flew hither and thither as if they no longer had any choice in the direction they would go.

Flame struck at his cheek; his clothes were smoldering.

CUT!

The birds made strange maneuvers among the clouds and it was indeed as if some great water bag had been slashed and its contents released. Water so thick one could not see through the slanting lines of rain struck full upon the platform. Firdun heard cries, but he concentrated on something else now. Fetters—the metal drew the rainwater; flecks of rust rose on them like seeds forced into growth. He exerted his talent strength and the metal snapped.

He was on his feet in one of the swift fighting movements he had learned from Jervon of the Eyrie. Around him armsmen, mages, were being beaten to the ground, actually pushed over the sides of the platform. For the fury of the rain drew with it now a fury of wind. He could not see the red-robed mage—all were only shapes in this storm from the heavens—but he did see that other bound figure, in fact he nearly fell across him. Pulling Hagar with him, he leaped from the edge of the pavement, allowed the now- slick, clayish sides of the crest to capture and carry them to the bottom.

Though two of the monster mounts of those from Garth Howell blundered past them through the curtain of the storm, Firdun made no attempt to catch at the dangling reins of either. Hagar stirred and somehow his rescuer was able to get the merchant on his feet. He tried feebly to struggle against the younger man’s hold but was unable to free himself.

Encased in the mud, which seemed to plaster tighter to their bodies rather than be washed away by the torrent, Firdun staggered in the only direction he could believe would put Dragon Crest behind him now. He could only hope that the fury of the storm was hitting his enemies as hard.

Because he needed some guide, he followed one of the runnels of water from the sides of the crest and hoped that would keep him from the defeat of moving in a circle.

His call upon the storm had drawn heavily on his Power and he wanted nothing more than to flop down in the mud underfoot and sleep. At least Hagar appeared to be recovering from his semiconscious state and kept his feet without so much support.

Though the continued fury of rain and the wind was high, Fir-dun started when his companion sounded a shrill whistle. He was about to clamp his hand over the trader’s mouth when shadows moved through the curtains of falling water and a moment later Sansah, his Kiogan mount, and a dull-coated and smaller dun came whickering toward them.

“Up with you!” Hagar shook himself and to Firdun’s amazement the remaining cords which embedded the man’s arms fell as if slashed and the trader was already pulling up into his travel-scored saddle. Firdun followed his example, but he did not have time to gather up Sansah’s reins before the Kioga stallion was matching, with a steady ground-covering lope, the trader, who now rode straight in the saddle as if his late captivity was only a dream.

They were certainly approaching the edge of the storm now. The punishing wind which had been at their backs since they left the crest, as if to urge them forward, died away and the rain was more that of any seasonal storm. Hagar seemed to know exactly where he was going, and Firdun was content for the time being to allow him leadership.

He was debating within himself whether to try to mind-touch anyone at the Eyrie when the trader brought his mount to a stop and waited for Firdun to join him. The rain was now a mere drizzle.

But Firdun was staring at the man wearing the torn and sodden garments of a Waste trader. As if to induce closer examination, the other threw back his leather-enforced hood.

“You are not Hagar!”

There was no resemblance now to the trader’s usual sun-browned and somewhat meager features in the face turned squarely toward him. This was… Firdun knew Power as it walked in a human envelope. He shared a home with an adept, and others who were not fully of mankind, save that they all held to a common goal. In his own veins coursed blood which in part had come from no human stock.

Like knows like—except that he was far from being the true match of this former fellow captive. As with all the Old Ones, the stranger did now show human signs of aging any more than might a man in the prime of life, but his eyes…

Firdun’s clay-fringed fingers arose as he sketched in the air between them a sign he had known since early childhood. The faint traces his gesture left in the air were swallowed up in a blaze of blue for an instant.

The stranger was smiling, a gentle smile such as a teacher might wear in favor of a pupil.

“No, I am not Hagar—though I borrowed his seeming for a space, even as you are going Kioga-clad, that I might ride relatively unnoted through a troubled land. Had it not been for that release of wild magic—” and now he was frowning—“by All the Most Ancient of Powers, what brought that upon us?—I would never have been reduced to be the one whom I seemed and so taken.”

“Where did that Power come from?” Firdun pushed. Surely this one who was greater than any he knew would have the answer to that. “Is it of the Dark?”

“Neither Light nor Dark—just Power unleashed for a space beyond all dealing with it. As from whence it came—that I do not know. Save it was not summoned within leagues of where we now are. Any of the talent who had their minds open must well have been blasted for a space.”

“Garth Howell—

“Ah, yes, Garth Howell. No, none such could be put to the boil there—though they have some new talent, it would seem, willing to play on the shadowed side, and pay blood price for learning. You are Firdun, son to the Gryphon line. I have been known by several names. Your rather will call me Neevor at our meeting—a meeting we must haste to now, for it would seem that events beyond our reckoning stand in the future.”