Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

The castle gate was open. What waited within? Oddly enough he felt no evil here—no touch of the Dark—yet why was he then entrapped?

“Up to your old games, Elysha?” It was like a shout in his very ear. Past him strode Ibycus, his face twisted in anger.

“Games you taught me. Remember those fine days, my lord mage?” A voice as silver as the lines across the castle walls answered with a tinkle of amusement in that thought-send.

“Elysha—” the wrath in Ibycus’s voice was growing hotter.

“Elysha,” she interrupted him like an echo. “Always Elysha do this, Elysha do that. But in spite of you I learned, though you would never grant me mageship. Now, I think I will just play a game after all—with this youth. He has possibilities.”

In the open doorward stood a woman. Her hair was night-black and fell about her like a cloud. In her oval face her eyes were huge and deeply violet, and violet also were the thigh-length jerkin, the breeches, and the boots she wore. There were gleaming purple gems to fasten that jerkin, and more braceleted her wrists as she slowly raised her hands in a beckoning gesture to Firdun.

But Ibycus’s left arm came across the younger man’s body like an unmovable bar. The mage’s other hand, with the ring on the forefinger, pointed straight toward the woman.

There was a flash of light so brilliant that Firdun could not see for a moment or two. When he looked again…

The castle was gone. And the woman stood wearing a sly smile, her attention on the ring, which was blazing as violet as her eyes.

“You see, my dear and never forgotten lord, you have need for me and must bid me proper welcome, for it has been long. Now your own Power ties me, and you cannot deny it.”

Ibycus stood staring from the still-brilliant stone or the ring to her and then back again. She laughed as gayly as one of the maids at a harvest feasting.

“It can’t—I won’t—”

Firdun had never heard that note in Ibycus’s voice before, as if the ever controlled mage were being shaken out of his eternal calm.

“But it does, my dearest of friends,” her silver voice continued. “Your own tool now assures you of the fact that you cannot leave me this time. The Dark stirs and toward the end of containing it again we shall once more march together. Now, since you have set me roofless and homeless, let us go to whatever shelter you propose for this night.”

That bond which had drawn Firdun snapped. The woman out of the now-vanished castle turned her smile in his direction. It was now not sly and taunting, but quite open.

“One of the Gryphon breed. A good omen—you are Firdun of Landsil’s line. Ah, now, there was one who was always most courteous even when he denied you what you wished. So much lost, but then there is always more to be found, and some of it interesting. Since my dear master here”—she nodded toward Ibycus—“has not seen fit to introduce us properly… I am one of the secrets out of his past, Elysha, who fetched and carried and craved such crumbs of wisdom as he let fall for my taking. We parted somewhat stormily, I remember. However, I have made very good use of the days since, Ibycus, as you will come to see.”

She seemed to carry them along with her flow of words, marching forward as if she knew exactly where her goal lay, and somehow Firdun and the mage fell in behind her. Yet Firdun could actually feel the red rage which still cracked the elder’s ever-present armor.

It seemed to the young man that even the fire they had set at the heart of their camp blazed the higher as Elysha came into the circle of its light. Those about it halted in whatever they were doing to stare as they might at some night running thing from the outer dark. Still there was, he would swear, no taint in her in spite of Ibycus’s very apparent dislike for her company.

It was she who spoke first. “Since we are to be trail comrades in this matter, let us follow guesting custom. I cannot bless your roof, for you have none save the sky, but for those who stand here I wish all good fortune.”

Aylinn moved first. She had been holding a cup in her hands; now she came forward and offered it to the woman.

“Welcome you are…” she hesitated, as if trying to find words to fit this new form of formal greeting.

“I am Elysha, Moonmaid.” The purple gems about her wrists glistened as she accepted the cup and took the required first drink. “As to what I am—well, opinions on that differ. But you would not find that any barrier of Reeth’s truth would stand against me.”

Kethan had moved quickly up beside his foster sister. Elysha nodded to him.

“I have known your breed of old, and we were not unfriends. You are Kethan, and in you two bloods flow so that you are both more and less. But the skills you have are never to be thought the less.”

The three Kioga had drawn together and Firdun saw Guret’s hand was near the hilt of his sword.

“Kioga.” Elysha nodded. “Warriors and horsemasters. Not of this world in the beginning but bringing with them into it strong arms and shields for the Light. I remember Chief Ranfar. Now, there was a fighter! He went up against the Quagan and survived—though the Quagan did not.”

Firdun saw Guret’s amazement and the near openmouthed expression of the other two of his tribesmen.

But it would seem that Elysha now considered they were sufficiently well introduced, for the tone in her voice changed and there was a much sharper note in it.

“I have read the bowl, Ibycus. And I know what drives you and these stout hearts now. Yes, there were gates in plenty in this world. And if some be thrown open now, we shall be perhaps driven like a herd of sheep to slaughter. Also—some days ago another hunter came before you and he has a true guide. Ibycus, Ibycus, how could you of the first power allow Garth Howell to go its own foul way so long unchecked?”

Oddly enough, it was Kethan who caught her up with that statement. “One before us, Lady? Do you mean the mage from Garth Howell?”

“Who else? Well, he has perhaps two days’ journey time on you, but we shall use him in turn. For he knows, I believe, just where he is going and his trail will in turn become our guide.”

As encased as she had been in glamorie of her spells, that disappeared as she stood among them. Except for the richness of her clothing she seemed to be no different from Gillan or Eydryth—certainly less alien than Sylvya, who had always been a part of Fir-dun’s life. And it appeared that she expected to be accepted in that fashion even though Ibycus settled himself as far as he could from her as they shared out their evening rations.

At the moment their main concern, once their amazement at her coming subsided, was the next day’s trail. For one of the Kioga, scouting ahead, now asserted that half a day at their usual pacing would bring them over the Border and into the grasp of the rightly dreaded wildness of the Waste.

Though traders had reported that there were oases to be found, the sere, yellow land immediately facing them offered nothing that they knew of in the way of water or forage for their beasts. Two of the pack train carried as heavy burdens of food for their mounts as was possible.

However, they must find other sustenance as an aid. All of them had heard the rumors that the Waste had once been a rich and fair country until the wars of the mages had struck—in the latter days wantonly, for there were masters gone brain-sick who no longer tried to control their Powers.

Life did survive there. Not only the traders who brought back strange artifacts from time to time, but also weird forms, perhaps born of the very disaster as had riven the land.