Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

“Vastar…” Elysha stooped to pick up one of the bits which lay on the very lip of the crack. “Or do you say that is wrong, Lord Mage?” She glanced with that usual shadow of a sly smile at Ibycus.

To the others the word she uttered had no meaning until suddenly Aylinn gave a little cry and moved back.

“Were those who wrought with the star metal to build?”

Elysha nodded. “And it would also seem that they dabbled in the matter of gates, if your guide shines true, Ibycus.”

He did not look at any of them but stood staring down at the bristling flooring of the crack. It was plain by the continued glow of his ring that some source of Power was there.

“Ropes!” he burst forth suddenly. “Will your horses,” he demanded of the Kioga, “stand and take the weight of a man descending by saddle rope?”

Guret edged closer to the lip of the crack. “If we can find a place where the ropes do not rub against those.” He jabbed a finger at the outcroppings of metal.

“Then let us find such.” Since Elysha had joined them, Ibycus’s temper was no longer even. And he seemed to have set himself a little apart from the rest of them.

Firdun was moving slowly along the edge, measuring the sharp drop below each stride of earth he covered. “Here!”

There was indeed a limited stretch of the thick-backed clay which had only a small sprinkling of encrustation. Anyone descending there would land not at the highest point of the metal pile beneath but at the opposite end from where they now stood.

Kethan pulled himself away from the company and then walked two-legged once more to join them. As a pard he could not help; this was a man’s job.

Then they discovered that Ibycus was set that he and he alone might make that descent. And his icy-voiced orders underlined that, for this, the others would be of little use.

Four of the Kioga mounts were in place and a coil from the packs had been made fast with the skill the nomad horsemen knew well.

Ibycus set a loop of the rope about his middle and edged over the cliff, facing inward toward the clay wall. It would seem that the ruggedness of the side, steep and straight as it was, was an aid rather than a hindrance. Firdun continued to eye narrowly the mass below. In his mind it bore too close a resemblance to a pit trap with sharpened poles at its bottom.

The mage moved quickly as if he had indulged in this form of exercise many times before. However, as his boots crushed down on the uneven flooring, he staggered and caught at the rope, holding fast in order to retain his balance. Slowly he turned toward the mound of metal pieces, several taller than himself. Their colors appeared to grow brighter as he turned. The beam from his ring had shifted and was playing over that rugged mass.

Firdun tensed under the spurt of invisible Power which shot upward. Aylinn swung her moonflower rod, Kethan snarled, while the Kioga uttered cries of astonishment in their own tongue.

For the uneven crown of that metal mound was shifting. Chunks broke off and rolled. While several seemed to aim straight for Ibycus, he did not move and at the last minute they tumbled either right or left to avoid him.

One of the watchers moved swiftly. Elysha held out her two arms, the color of her wide amethyst bracelets nearly as ablaze as the colors rising below.

“We take no treasure, you of Vastar, forgers of stars and dealers with the deep veins of the earth. Your day is past; the long sleep is upon you. Know that for the truth!” she cried aloud.

And she was answered. Not by the mage below nor any of the others, but seemingly from those ruins upon ruins heaped by ancient disaster. It came as a moaning, like the wind of a rising storm, though over their heads no clouds gathered.

The shuddering of the mound of scrap continued. Pieces appeared to raise from their long-held beds to whirl and fall outward.

So far none had struck directly at Ibycus, but such chance might not continue. Firdun half turned to Guret to give the order to draw the mage up out of range.

“You are gone—into the ashes of time,” Elysha’s voice continued to ring out. “Each age has its proper lives—and then those fade.”

From the top of the mass arose now a single piece. Like the bits which formed it, it was a stepped pyramid, but this unjoined to any other, standing alone, and the color of yellow tinting sharply into red played across it.

Nor did it stop in its expansion. Now they could see that it was supported on square pillars, growing ever taller until it was like a roof set on four supports.

“Ibycus,” Elysha shouted to the mage. “By the Power of the Great Lords, the Forgotten Kings, and That Which Once Walked the Far Mountains—do what you must do!”

He had not needed that arousal to action. The ringed hand swung high and was brought down from right to left, and then from left to right, leaving visible in the air a plain-cut cross of shimmering blue—a blue which approached the violet of high and purest power.

The cross tilted in the air, spinning around, its speed ever increasing, until those waiting could not distinguish its separate arms. Sidewise so it flew at the columns supporting the pyramid.

Over their heads the sky darkened, and that wailing moan grew loud enough to force them to hold their hands over their tormented ears. But the wheel of light held steady and it cut as easily as the sharpest-edged knife through a mass of clay.

The upheld pyramid—Firdun caught at his sword hilt. He heard the snarl of Kethan now at his side. Had there been, in that last instant before the thing crashed back into the mass of metal from which it had arose, a pair of eyes —blistering fiery eyes? Or perhaps that was only some quirk of his own imagining.

What was happening below was quick to erase that from memory. Ibycus no longer stood firm. His body was sprawled among the sharp-edged pieces of rock, and those were still shifting. Nor did they any longer avoid him. Rather they struck hard enough to make his still form quiver.

“Up—up—!” both Guret and Firdun cried at the same time. Kethan reached out to grab the taut rope where it lay across the edge and Firdun joined him as the Kioga urged their horses back from the crack.

“Wait!” Aylinn was beside her foster brother. “You will rip him to shreds against those rocks he cannot avoid.”

She reached out with her moonstaff and shook it vigorously. There was a white, sparkling dust from the hearts of the flowers, which sank close about Ibycus. The mage might now lie in the cocoon of some great insect. Yet the dust did not yield to any projection as they carefully raised him from the floor of the crack.

Though the mound had moved, it had not disappeared, only seemed to settle more deeply into the clay. Its colors were fading, dulling. Then they had the mage over and with them again.

He still lay limp, his eyes closed, and on his outflung hand the ring was dull and dead. But Aylinn brought out her healer’s bag, and Elysha moved to take the injured man’s head on her lap.

Aylinn, with Kethan’s aid, managed to get a potion from a flask down his throat. “His Power is drained,” said the moonmaid. “He needs to rest until strength comes to him.”

Firdun looked around at the sere wilderness. “Where can he recover here?” He knew from his own uses of the talent the draining of strength it demanded. And, from all he had seen, Ibycus had just faced something which was so encased in some ancient sorcery as to threaten life itself.

Aylinn was speaking now to Guret. “Can we sling some way for carrying him between two of the horses? They are well trained and perhaps, coming from a wandering people, you have seen used so before.”

“Yes, Lady, this can be done,” he confidently assured her.