Andre Norton - Zarsthor's Bane

“Pretty Lady—” he spoke with the accent of the upper dales, and his words were startling to the listening girl. It had been so long since she had heard any voice except her own.

“Come—Lady—”

“Jartar?”

She saw the boy’s body stiffen as he glanced back over his shoulder at the tower door.

“Jartar—” That other voice was low and there was something in it—Brixia crooked her arm to rest her chin as she lay in hiding—even her breath slow and light.

Two of them—at least. She had better not try to move yet—even though she was nearly sure that the craft she had learned by force of need was equal to covering any retreat.

The boy stood up, went back in the tower. With a toss of its head the horse ambled over the stone pavement, heading toward a good stand of grass. But Uta trotted toward that same doorless opening in the stone.

Brixia felt a small warmth of anger within her. They had so much—clothing, a sword, a horse—she had had nothing but Uta. Now it seemed she might even lose the cat. This was the time to get away. Still she made no move to slip back as quietly as she had come.

She had been alone for so long. While she knew that safety now lay only in loneliness, yet memory stirred. She watched the tower door with a certain wistfulness. The boy had not looked formidable. He wore a sword—but who in this land did not carry such weapons as he could find? Of late there was no law, no might of Dale lord to offer protection. Safety one carried in one’s own hands, in the strength and dexterity of one’s body. However, though she had heard only one voice calling out of the tower, that had the deep tone of a man’s, it did not signify that there might not be more than one therein.

Prudence demanded that she creep away at once. Only—there was a need, born of a starvation of spirit, which was eating at her as might starvation of her spare body. She wanted to hear voices—see someone—Brixia had not known how deep was that desire until this moment.

Folly, Brixia told herself sternly. Yet she yielded to that folly, moment by moment. One of those moments proved her withdrawal already too late.

Movement in the door. Uta, who had reached the edge of that, withdrew by a graceful leap to the pavement without, sitting tail over paws again. Then the boy issued forth, but this time he half supported a companion.

A tall man, at least beside the boy he seemed tall. He walked oddly, shambling, his head bent forward as if he stared at the ground as he came. His arms swung loosely from his shoulders and, though, like the boy he wore mail (his being a well-made shirt of it—not crude ring and leather stuff), his belt scabbard held no sword. He was wide of shoulder, narrow of waist and hip. His hair had been cropped, but not too recently, for it curled behind his ears and down a little on his neck, swept back from his sun browned forehead. That hair was very dark, and so were his brows which slanted upwards at the far corners. There was a cast to his features which Brixia’s troubled memory noted. Once, a long time ago, she had seen such a man—

There had been a story about him—she groped for the first time in many months, deliberately stirring up memory she had sought to deaden. Yes! What had they said in whispers about that other man—a lord from the west who had spent a single night in the keep, sitting at meat in the high seat of an honored guest at her father’s right hand? He was—half blood! Triumphantly her rusty memory produced the term she wanted—one of those the Dales folk looked upon askance but trod softly about—one whose fathers had wed strange ladies—people of the Old Ones—most of whom had long ago left High Hallack, fading away toward the north or west where no sensible man would want to follow. There were always whispers about the half-blood—they were said to have powers which only they understood. But her father had welcomed that lord in open friendship and had seemed honored that he stayed beneath their roof.

Now she saw that there was a difference between that man in her blurred memory and this one who came from the ruined tower. He did not raise his head to look about him as he advanced a few steps, but halted to stand quietly, still staring at the pavement. There was a curious emptiness in his face. He had no sign of beard (perhaps that also was a mark of his ancestry) and his mouth opened slackly, though his chin was well set. If it had not been for that emptiness mirrored in his lack of all expression he might have been considered a well-favored man.

The boy held him by the arm, drew him along, the man obeying docilely and never looking up. Bringing him to where there was a tumble of stones, his companion gently forced him to be seated there.

“It is a fair morning—” To Brixia’s hearing the boy’s voice was strained, the words tumbled out too fast, sounded too loud. “We are home at Eggarsdale, my lord, truly at Eggarsdale—” The boy glanced about him, glancing up and around as if he sought some aid.

“Jartar—” For the first time the man spoke. His head came up, though there was no change in the dull cast of his face as he called that word aloud. “Jartar—”

“Jartar is—gone, my lord.” The boy caught at the man’s chin, strove to bring the slanted eyes up to meet his own. Though the man’s head moved unresistingly in that hold, Brixia could see there was no change, no lightening of the deadness in that set stare.

“We are home, ,my lord!” The boy’s hands went to the man’s shoulders, shook him.

The body in that hold yielded limply to the force of his shaking. Still the man did not resist, nor show that he recognized either boy, words, or the place in which he sat. With a sigh his young companion stepped back, again looking about the courtyard as if to summon up some aid which would break what lay upon his lord like a spell.

Then he knelt, took the man’s hands in his, held them tightly against his breast.

“My lord,” Brixia thought he used a vast effort to keep his voice even, “this is Eggarsdale.” He formed each word slowly and distinctly, speaking as he might to one who was deaf but might hear a little if one took good care. “You are in your own place, my lord. We are safe, my lord. Your own safe place, you are home.”

Uta arose, stretched, moved lightfooted across the pavement towards man and boy. Coming to the right side of the man she reared, setting her forepaws on his thigh to look up at him.

For the first time there was a change in that face so lacking in any sign of intelligence or emotion. The man’s head turned slowly. He might have been righting against an obstructing force in order to move at all. But he did not face the cat. The boy’s visible surprise became demanding concentration, including both cat and man in the intentness of his gaze.

His lord’s lips worked. The man might be fighting to produce words which he was unable to speak. For a long moment he continued so. Then he lost that measure of faint attention, if attention it had been. Once more his face emptied, was the mirror of a ruined mind, as broken as the remnants of what the boy had called his home.

Uta dropped from her place at his knee, eyed the down winging of a butterfly, to bound away after that with playfulness she seldom displayed. The boy loosened the man’s hands, sprang after the cat, but she skimmed neatly between his reaching hands, slipped away between two stones.

“Puss—puss!” He dodged around the stones, hunting and calling frenziedly, as if to regain sight of the cat were the most important thing in the world.

Brixia smiled wryly. She could have told him his efforts were in vain. Uta went her own way. The cat must have been curious about the people in the tower. Now that the curiosity was satisfied they might never see her again.