Andre Norton - Ware Hawk

However, the monster did not swing about to savage him. It struggled still to reach the man who had struck it from the front—he retreating hastily. Until at last he broke, turned and ran, while the thing still attempted to leap after him.

At last it toppled, such limbs as remained intact no longer able to support its thick body. Still it was not defeated, for it continued to spray into the air that green slime. Where that fell on the ground, small tendrils of steam or smoke arose, while the air was filled with a vile odor.

It was then that the reins of the pony on which Tirtha was bound were seized, the animal pulled into jolting trot. They were on their way from that battlefield, giving no aid to the man who crawled upon the ground, his ruined face a mask of horror as his screaming became a thick bubbling in his throat. Nor was there sight again of Gerik. The other man who had fought the creature was running, crying out, following behind them. Yet the pony and he who led it gained more ground drawing away from the survivor.

Because of the jolting of the pony, Tirtha could no longer see the battlefield clearly. Nor did she know how many of their party were left. The Dark Lord in command certainly—perhaps he was the one who led her pony—and with him Alon, but were there more? The fact that their captors’ numbers had shrunk so drastically might have meant a chance for escape, had she not been in this dead body. However, Alon had perhaps a chance. She longed to contact him.

Pain awakened stronger in her. Perhaps that pain would overtake and hold her a prisoner in another way. Now, however, her mind cleared. Tirtha seemed to be pushed into thinking, to be far more aware of what lay about them, above them. Above them!

She strove to settle her bobbing head for a fraction of time to glance overhead. Yes, the sword was there. Perhaps that was what had kept the pony steady, kept it from running wildly from the monster. Had the blade also protected them from attack, or had that been the result of Gerik’s recklessly brave charge?

Tirtha fought hard to keep the gray length within sight. Yes, she had not been mistaken. There were symbols on the blade of that overshadowing weapon. Many of them appeared on the skin roll the dead man had carried. She recalled Alon thrusting it into the empty dart loop on the Falconer’s shoulder belt. If they had not despoiled the dead, these carrion hunters, then there it still remained. Even were it now within her hand, Tirtha would not have known how to make use of it.

They were passing from the open rolling lands now. She caught glimpses of hillocks rising like steps to greater heights on either side. There appeared no road, but she believed that they were following a trail well known to him in command.

Since she dared not try to reach Alon, and she must, as long as she could, remain master of her body (in which the pain was waking more and more with every swing that the swifter pace of the pony brought about), Tirtha set her mind on the shadow sword continuing to hang above them.

She was sure that this manifestation was not of the Dark, that it answered, in a manner not given to her to understand, the thing she carried. Was the sword a weapon of that woman who had come to view them in the hidden chamber?

Ninutra—though Tirtha did not shape that name with her lips or utter it aloud, yet she formed it slowly, letter by letter, in her mind with all the concentration of one following the intricate weaving of a spell. There were words that went with healing; many of them she knew and had used. Such words in themselves had no power, it was the intonation that counted, the fact that the same phrases had been thus employed for countless generations to build a channel for the healing to pass through, even as a mason built a hallway, choosing the best and strongest of the stones available for his task.

Names were power. There were the Great Names, which no one, without strong safeguards, dared to utter. If this was such a one—well, what had she to lose? Life meant very little now. If what she bore, beyond any will or desire of her own, was tied to one of those ominous names, that gave her a small fraction of right to attempt a summoning.

She closed her eyes. Tirtha’s heart jumped, and that she also felt. In so much had she gained control of her body. She could lift and lower two eyelids, sense the beating of her own heart!

Closing her eyes firmly again, she turned her sight determinedly inward and for the second time strove to build that name into something she could visualize.

First there were flames, like those that had burst from the corners of the hidden room. They flared in fierce warning. Warning! What did that matter to one like her, already doomed?

Ninutra!

Her will had wakened. If there abode somewhere a power that could be so summoned, then let it come! She was perhaps a plaything, a tool of forces she did not understand. Yet she was the Hawk—and there existed a bargain out of the past. Tirtha had a queer feeling, as if an inner part of her had swung then, quick as a flash of light, across a wide gulf measuring years of time, only to return again.

Ninutra!

It was not the impersonal woman’s face that formed or was borne through those flames which died, leaving a mind-picture, indistinct, yet still discernible. This was the countenance of someone not unlike herself—young, a woman, one of the Old Race. Still there was in her great strength, even though she might be but a voice, a channel, for a greater one.

Ninutra!

Behind the woman hung the outline of the shadow sword. Tirtha saw a hand appear also out of the haziness about that face. Fingers closed upon the sword hilt, brought the weapon to swing outward, so that its point was aimed as if ready for combat. There were two other figures moving, one advancing on either side, to stand with that woman. But of those Tirtha could see so little they were like pillars of smoke and mist.

This much she had learned—there were indeed those who could claim the shadow sword. Perhaps they might be, in their own way, favorably disposed toward her. Yet what lay ahead was of more importance than a single woman of the Old Race who had stood by the word of her blood to the end. For that end, when it came, was not concerned with Tirtha herself, but with greater matters.

The three in the mist vanished; not so the sword. It continued to fill Tirtha’s mind with its presence. Those symbols along its blade blazed with angry fire. From it she was drawing something—this much had been granted her—strength to hold firm against the pain of her body, that dead body which could no longer serve her. She would be sustained, for there was yet a need for her, and that she would have to accept.

Thus she lay within her vision, holding to it with all her will, striving to force out of it a barrier against her pain. She was never to know how long that vigil of hers lasted.

The sword began to fade, the symbols were gone, sinking into its more and more tenuous length. Tirtha looked upon empty darkness before she opened her eyes upon the outer world again.

She had indeed been deeply sunk inside herself, for she was no longer upon a pony. Instead she lay upon a flat, unmoving surface, a hard surface, as her body returning to half-life told her. There was light here, thin streamers reached like the flames of giant candles up into the sky. Also with that light was a chill, the miasma of evil. This place was of the Dark, no matter what light played on it and within it.

Beyond the upriding columns of light was a night sky. Tirtha saw the far wink of stars, yet between her and their glitter there was a wavering curtain, as if even clean starlight must be so veiled in this evil place. With a determination that drew upon every portion of the strength she hoped still abode within her, Tirtha strove to turn her head.