Andre Norton - Ware Hawk

Pain answered, but pain was not important; she was mistress of her body, of its pain. She threw pain from her as she would throw some evil thing that unwittingly crawled upon her. Then Tirtha discovered that indeed she could shift her head a fraction, see a little of what lay to her left, enough to know she was not alone.

The light came from pillars of what might have been ice, congealed through centuries of freezing. Deep within them lurked shadow cores. Between her and the deadly cold of the nearest pillar was Alon.

He sat, his legs stretched before him, a loop of rope about his ankles. His arms had been drawn cruelly together behind his back and there lashed. With upheld head he stared straight ahead, wearing the blind look of one so overcome by fate that nothing mattered any longer.

“Alon!”

He did not look to her, the trance which held him did not break. Had he retreated into nothingness? No, something assured her that was not so.

“Alon!” The effort to get out that single word for the second time was almost more than Tirtha could rise to.

There was a flicker of expression across his face. Yet he remained so caught in misery he could not be reached. For a long moment she watched him, unable to summon again such strength as those two attempts to reach him had demanded.

“He is gone, he has left us—with the Dark…” Those words came from between lips that hardly moved. But in her was a quickening of spirit. Alon wore only the outer mask of shock and despair—within he was still alert!

“This is a place of Dark. He believed us safe-caged here—” Alon was continuing. “Do not summon. The one who rules here will know it.”

Do not summon? Had Alon somehow been aware of her earlier struggle? No, do not even think of that within this place! Caution flashed instantly across Tirtha’s mind. There was a Power that made of this a prison—she had no knowledge of its range—but apparently he who had brought them here trusted in its strength of guardianship.

Alon still stared into nothingness, but now Tirtha saw that, for all the cruel straining put upon his arms where they were so lashed behind him, his hands were moving. His fingers did not try to reach the knotting of those cords—that would be physically impossible, bound as he was. Rather, to her wonder, he was smoothing the coils as he might have smoothed or patted the hide of an animal. What he so played with was not woven rope, she noted, her full attention drawn by Alon’s actions, but a long strip of braided hide.

What the boy sought to do Tirtha could not understand, but his motions were purposeful, so she did not try again to distract his attention, only watched his struggle to pat, stroke, and fondle what bound him, always giving otherwise the appearance of one completely cowed.

Realizing suddenly that her very attention on the boy might attract whatever held grim rulership here, she strove to lock it out of her mind and was about to follow a second line of defense by closing her eyes so she could be sure she would not turn her head again. Then came a sudden flicker at the joining of those punishing cords.

Tirtha watched what she thought at first must indeed be an illusion, deceptive, meant to tantalize, to bring false hope. If it were illusion, it was a remarkably exact one. The hide loops, which Alon had rubbed and caressed with his fingertips, moved of themselves. They might have been sleek creatures of the serpent family that had curled into awkward (for them) tangles and were now loosening themselves at their own whim.

Tirtha saw the constricting knots unfasten, allowing the rest of the cords to slide at apparently no other will than a desire within their own blind lengths. They wriggled across the boy’s body, slipped away. His arms, ridged by brutal welts, fell forward. Tirtha could well imagine the torment the sudden release of such binding brought him. Yet one hand lying half across his thigh was twitching, and he leaned forward, to bring its fingertips against the second drawing of cords about his ankles.

Once more he began that rubbing, that caressing; Tirtha watched his face intently. He retained his un-revealing mask. One glancing at him would say he was under such complete control as vicious handling and fear could force on a young child. There was no movement of his lips—he could not be reciting any spell or words of power.

Yet again he succeeded, as the second loop slackened, drew itself out of the tightly drawn knots, and he was free. He made no further move as yet, simply sat loose of bonds. Then she saw his chest arch in a deep breath and his hands come together, as he deliberately rubbed ridged wrists and the grooves on his arms with a dogged determination.

Was there other restraint laid on the boy besides the cords from which he had just released himself? Or could Alon now get beyond these lighted pillars? She could do, say nothing, only watch and wait.

However, it would seem that whatever talent the boy had brought to his freeing had not been exhausted. He continued to sit rubbing his wrists, staring ahead. Save that now there was a quality in that stare which was not one of resignation or retreat. Tirtha’s own senses heightened little by little. That she lay in a place which was wholly inimical to her and all her kind, which generated within it a chill she could feel faintly as her body slowly awoke, she had accepted. Yet there was something else beyond—

Alon changed position for the first time, drawing his feet under him, so that he now squatted on his heels. He made no move toward Tirtha, appearing to be still locked in that stare. Yet there was a subtle change, a kind of alertness, as might be sensed in one awaiting a signal.

Tirtha longed to be able to change the position of her own head enough to follow the direction of the boy’s continued line of gaze. Only she could not. Alon had stopped rubbing his bruised wrists and arms; now he put out his hands and drew to him those lengths of cords he had in some manner made his servants. He stretched them out side by side. At her present angle, Tirtha could not see what he was doing; she could only speculate.

Once more his hands moved. He was again using his fingers, presumably passing them along the cords. These movements were more emphatic, swifter. She watched as best she might, and at the same time she grew to sense, more and more, that outside the ghastly candle pillars of this cage there was another entity at watch. The miasma of evil which encased this place was like a wall. If a would-be rescuer prowled there, the girl could not know, nor dared she strive to learn.

Alon raised a hand slowly, the fingers moving as if he beckoned. A dark shape obeyed his summons, lifting to follow. Serpent? No, the thing was too thin, it lacked any swell of head she could see, having only a questing tip. The cord! It was taking on a form of pseudo-life, or else Alon had wrought from it an hallucination!

As the boy spread both hands outward in a vast sweep, the cord end remained aloft, stretching up near as high as his own head from the pavement. It swayed back and forth. His hands met palm to palm and then pushed apart. The tip of the cord swung away from him, flung itself toward the line of pillars, then fell completely out of Tirtha’s line of vision. Alon’s hands continued to move. Not in the wide sweeps he had first used, rather up and down in small motions, as if, though they were flattened out palm down, still he had grasp of an invisible line that fed along the ground. He had risen to his knees, his back straight, so concentrating on what he did that the aura of his intense effort reached her.

All Alon’s strength was centered on this. She remembered how once she had asked of him and of Nirel that they lend their energy to support her in farseeing. Could she, in some manner, now back Alon in a like fashion? There was the pain ever pushing against what barriers she had set her inner will to hold. Were she to release that will, strive to add its force to what the boy needed, those barriers could well fall entirely.