Andre Norton - Warlock of the Witch World

“Please, lord, where do we ride?” Her voice was a clear pipe.

“To where the lady leads us.” I gave her the truth. “This is her country and she knows it well. I am Kemoc Tregarth, and who are you?”

“Loelle, of the House of Mohakar, Lord Kemoc. Why do those birds fly with the lady? Ah, that is no bird, it—it is a little man!”

One of the Flannan beat wings, hovering shoulder high beside Dahaun, while she turned her head to look at him.

“A Flannan, Loelle. Have you not heard tales of them?”

I felt her grip grow tighter. “But those—those are tales, Lord Kemoc! Nurse Grenwel said they were but stories, not the truth!”

“In Escore, Loelle, many old stories are true. Now, hold tight—“

We had come to a level space and the Renthan burst into speed to shame any horse out of Estcarp, Dahaun setting the pace. That brooding menace I had felt in the foothills was almost tangible as the clouds gathered, twilight dark, over us.

Through that gloom were glimmers of light, reminding me of the ghostly “candles” we had seen on tree and bush that night when the Witches of Estcarp had readied their power for the mountain twisting. Pale, hardly to be distinguished from the general gloom, these clung to a rock, a bush, a twisted tree. Looking upon them, I knew that I did not want to see them any closer.

Once more the land began to rise, and on the crown of a small hill stood some stones. Not gray, but blue in hue, and they glowed. Once before had we refuged with such stones, when Kaththea and I had fled after Kyllan had disappeared, taking sanctuary in a place where a great altar of such blue had been our guard.

To this place Dahaun brought us. This was no standing circle of pillars about an altar stone, but rather scattered blocks, as if a building, once there, had been shattered into rubble. But the blue glow welcomed us and we slid down from the Renthan with a sense of freedom from that which had followed us from the mountain’s foot.

Dahaun broke a branch from a bush which grew among the stones, and, holding that in her hand, she walked down the hill, to beat the leafy end against the ground. So she encircled the entire hill, appearing to draw some unseen protective barrier about it. Then, as she came back to us, she stopped now and again to pull leaves and twigs from plants.

When the Green Lady was back among us she had her cloak gathered to form a shallow bag and in that was her herb harvest. There had been a fire kindled in a sheltered spot between two stones and she stood by that, tossing into it first a pinch of this, and then three or four leaves of that. Smoke puffed out, bringing an aromatic scent. This Dahaun fanned so that it wreathed among our company.

As the smoke cleared and I could see better again, I noted the darkness had grown. In that unnatural twilight the “candles” were brighter. But the light burning in them did not spread far. It also seemed to me that there was movement beyond the hill, a stirring which could only be half seen, to vanish if one looked straightly at the suspected spot.

“Against what do we bare swords here, Kemoc?” It was Rothorf of Dolmain who came up beside me as I watched that interweaving which seemed so sinister.

“Strange things.” I gave him the best answer that I could. He was one of the half-blood ones found among the Borderers. His mother had been of the Karsten refuges. Rescued by Sulcar seamen, she had later married into that seaborne race. But it was a mixture which had not proved too happy. When her sea lord had fallen in one of the raids along the coast of Alizor, she had returned to her own people. Her son had the frame of the bull-shouldered sea rovers and their fair hair, so that always among the Old Race he was marked. Inwardly he was of his mother’s people, having no wish for the sea, but a love for the hills. Thus he had come to the Borderers and we had been blooded together in a raid before we were truly men.

“It is true then; this is a land bewitched.” He asked no question, but made an observation.

“Yes. But once it was a fair land. By our efforts it may so be again. Yet it will be a long time—”

“Before we cleanse it?” he finished for me. “What manner of enemy do we front?” There was a briskness in that which returned me to the old days when Rothorf had looked upon maps in the hills and then waited for the orders to move out.

Uneasiness moved in me. These old comrades (drawn from a war, it was true, but a war which seemed simple beside the complexities which faced us here), would they be as children blundering among the dangers they could not foresee? What had we done to them? Kyllan, when he had returned from that geas sending into Estcarp, had reasoned so: that he was drawing after him those of his blood, perhaps untimely to their deaths. Now I knew what he had felt then.

“All manner, Rothorf, and some of which we have no knowledge.” I spoke then of the Gray Ones and the Rasti, but also of such deceits as the Keplian-stallion which had nearly borne Kyllan to his death, and of the traps which awaited the over-curious and under-cautious. He listened to me gravely, not questioning anything I said, though much of it must have sounded wild.

“A place where legends walk,” he commented at last. “It would seem we should search our memories of childhood tales to be warned. How far is it to this safe Valley of the Green Folk?”

“Another day’s journey. We muster there.”

“To attack where?”

I shook my head. “That we do not know. They still wish to bring to our warn-horn any uncommitted forces left.”

We posted guards as the night drew in, the clouds bringing it early to us. No rain fell from them, though they looked heavy-bellied, as if they carried pent within them some tempest. I saw flashes of light about the hills, as bright and crackling as the force whips of the Green People, but knew them to be lightning, foretelling the storm which sullenly refused to break.

Kyllan was no more inclined to sleep than I and we paced around the ruins among which our people sheltered as if we walked sentry beats on the walls of Es City, constantly alert to the least suspicion of change beyond the perimeter Dahaun had drawn.

The Lady of Green Silences remained by the fire, having about her all the women and children, creating for them a pocket of safe feeling in which we caught glimpses of smiling faces and from which we heard soft laughter. I saw Loelle on Dahaun’s lap, staring up into her face and listening to what she said as a thirsty child might drink crystal water from a bubbling spring.

There was such a spring among the ruins, fed into a very old and silted basin. It might have been the remains of a fountain which no longer proudly played, defeated by time.

We had shared out journey rations earlier. At last those about the fire rolled in cloaks and slept. Still the storm did not break, yet the threat held above us. Godgar tramped to where I stood behind an earth-buried rock staring down the slope. The gray candles grew more confusing to the eyes and I tried not to look at them. Yet still they drew my attention, and I found myself engaged in a small struggle not to stare at them.

“There is something brewing this night,” Hervon’s man told me, his voice harsh and heavy. “It is not the storm. This place may be good for defense, but I do not like to be driven to making a defense.”

“Neither could we ride on through the dark, not in this country,” I answered.

“That is so. There is something . . . Come you here with me and see.”

I followed him to that basin where the spring bubbled. Going down on one knee, he gestured to the far side of that pool. There was enough light from the fire to show stones set there, as if at one time the basin had been broken at that point and then hurriedly built up again with rocks conveniently at hand. That they had served the purpose well was manifest in that there was no seepage from that place. But why this should so interest Godgar, I had no idea and looked to him questioningly.