Andre Norton - Ware Hawk

“Time not wasted,” he reassured her. “It is best to have those well ahead. We shall take the trail tonight. I would not cross the open in the day. And there may be something of a storm later to give us cover.” To her eyes, he seemed his old self, impersonal and intent on what he conceived his duties. She was well content to have it so. Her own shell of independence seemed to her at this moment a cloak she did not want to discard.

The night was moonless, cloaked by clouds from which fell a drizzle, searching out every opening in their clothing. Tirtha had insisted on mounting the Torgian, bringing Alon with her under what protection her cloak could afford. They kept as much as they could to ways that trees overhung, giving them whatever shelter possible. Wind Warrior reported at dusk that those they trailed had taken to the woods and that they had left no sentry or spy behind.

The three still had no assurance that they were not seen, or sensed, and what lay ahead might not lead to an ambush. Thus they moved slowly, the Falconer as scout. He fell quickly into a pattern that Tirtha was sure he had long ago often followed.

It must have been well past the mid-hour of the night when they at last approached the bush-veiled entrance into the old wood road. In this dark the forest was even more overpowering with its thick shadows, and for the past hour or so, Tirtha had kept doubly alert, striving to pick up any sense of being under observation, such as she had known when her vision had laid open this passage. She dared not, of course, probe too deeply, lest she rouse that which might, so far, have been unaware of their coming. It could well be an entity able to detect a farseer.

The boy in her hold had ridden passively enough, making no sound, during those hours when they had traveled so slowly and cautiously toward their goal. But as the Falconer headed his pony into that near-masked opening of the forest road, Alon stirred, his voice came as a whisper, hardly more than a breath.

“This is a place that lives…” He spoke as one who did not quite understand or, if knowing, could not find proper words to make plain his warning.

Tirtha bent her head so that her lips could not be far from Alon’s nearest ear:

“Are we watched?” Her whisper was as low as she could make it.

“I… I think not… not yet,” he returned.

Her own eyes swept from one side of the trail to the other, seeking that wisp of thing that had entwined itself among the trees during her vision of this place. That, she was certain, had been of the Dark, also of a nature far removed from a common existence with those who called themselves human. Let that come upon them in its own place and—she disciplined her thoughts, refused to allow fear to rise the higher.

Ahead, the Falconer was hardly to be seen. His bird had joined him at the wood’s edge to ride now on the saddle perch. However, if Tirtha could not follow them directly with her own sight, it appeared that her present mount had no difficulty in keeping up with the lead pony, just as her own mare crowded in behind. The three beasts drew as close as they might in such a narrow way without being urged.

There was a glimmer of pallid, faint light on her right. Tirtha’s heart beat faster for a succession of thumps until she located the source as one of those stones that marked the road they must travel, as her vision had shown her. She did not like that glow; it carried some of the pallid obscenity of the night fires given off by certain fungi she had seen—loathsome, evil-smelling growths, by tradition nourished by the bodies of unburied dead.

At least the rain was partially kept from them by the overhanging branches of the trees, so she could push back the hood of her cloak, affording her a clearer sight of the way. Then Alon moved in her hold. His hand closed about one of her arms tightly, before his grasp relaxed a trifle. She took that as a warning.

Yes!

What she had thought to face ever since they had headed into this shadowed forest was coming. As yet perhaps it had no more than vaguely sensed them, or maybe it was only making sentry rounds. But Tirtha’s skin crawled as she felt the deadly cold spreading before it. Like that monstrous thing which had sought mindlessly to get at her and the Falconer back in the mountains, so was this not of her world. The impact of it was like an open-handed blow.

Whether the Falconer had picked it up also, she could not tell. Yet here the trail widened out a fraction so that the Torgian, without her urging, matched pace with the pony. Thus she dared to loose part of her hold on Alon and put out her hand in turn to touch the man’s arm.

He did not return her touch. Still Tirtha sensed, as she had never done before, that he realized what message she would send to alert him and that he was already aware of the prowler. They might still retreat, get out of this place overwhelmed by the shadow. Yet that would solve nothing, for the geas held fast for her, and this was the only road to what she sought.

Their mounts plodded ahead. There were more of those glimmering stones, some set sentry wise along the trail, others to be glimpsed back in the woods. Tirtha, tense in the saddle, sought with what skill was hers to pick up the skulker in that place of utter blackness.

It was like seeing a distant flicker, visible for one second, gone the next, only to show again. This did not register in her eyes, rather in her mind. Whatever creature skulked here was far removed from man or animal. She heard Alon draw a deep breath, a fraction later his whisper reached her again.

“Think of light—of good…” His words trailed away, leaving Tirtha for a second uncomprehending. Then she understood. Fear was so often the first weapon of Dark Ones. Perhaps the three of them could indeed draw a curtain between themselves and this thing by bringing to the fore of their minds all that was right and natural, good and clean, within their own world.

She strove to build up a mind picture of the fields of Estcarp where she had labored only last harvest-time, swinging a sickle with the skill she had learned, gathering to her armloads of sun-warmed, fragrant grain. Here were the brilliant eyes of the field flowers making splotches of color—scarlet, yellow, against the gold. Sun lay warm on her shoulders, and there was still the taste upon her lips of apple squeezings which a serving maid had brought in leathern bottles to satisfy the thirst of the reapers.

Sun, color, the gold of grain ripe and ready for the harvest. There was the piper who sat cross-legged on the wall toward which the harvesters were working their way, and the trilling of his instrument roused hearty voices into song. She could feel the sun, taste the apple juice, hear the pipe song even here in the dark. Nor dared she break the web she so strove to weave, though the temptation to do so pressed ever on her.

The trail that had been so narrow at the entrance widened out. Now and then a hoofbeat raised an echo of sound, as if, under the blanket of last season’s leaves, there lay an ancient pavement.

So they came into what was a clearing, though ragged-walled, with an outgrowth of brush seeking to reclaim it. Those unhealthy stones were hereabouts in thick company, a number of them set on end to the north to form a rude barrier. But it was what lay in the very center of that way which held them where they were on the edge of this opening.

Lying crosswise on a patch of bared stone were two staffs or wands—wood that had been stripped of bark and shone bone white. Between them, positioned with care to form two sides of four squares, were skulls. These were old, greenish, as if overgrown in part by some vile lichen, and each had been braced to lie face up, the eyepits, the gaping jaws turned toward the sky.