Andre Norton - Warlock of the Witch World

Up the path came a figure: Small, yes, and hunched. But I did not feel about it as I had about those scuttling things of the dark, the Thas. This came very slowly, pausing now and then to eye me apprehensively. Fear—When it came to stand between two of the nearer star candles I could see it better. It was as gray as the moss of the trees, and its long hair could hardly be told from that growth. When it put up gnarled hands to part and brush aside that hair in order to view me the better, I saw a small wrinkled face with a flattened nose and large eyes fringed in lashes which grew bushy and thick. Once more it made that sweeping motion to send cascades of hair back over its shoulders and I saw it was female. The large breasts and protruding stomach were only part covered by a kind of net woven of moss. In that were caught some of the fragrant flowers in what seemed to me a pitiful attempt at adornment.

Then memory awoke in me and I remembered more childhood tales. This was a Mosswife, who, according to legend, crept despairingly about the haunts of man, trying ever to win some attention from the other race. A Mosswife, reported the stories of old, yearned to have her children nursed and fostered by human-kind. And if one would strike such a bargain, the Mosswife thereafter served him richly, giving secrets of hidden treasure and the like.

Legend reported them good, a shy people, meaning no ill, distressed when their uncouth appearance frightened or disgusted those they wanted to befriend or favor. How true was legend? It seemed I was to test that now.

The Mosswife advanced another hesitant step or two. She gave the appearance of age, but if that were so I could not tell. The memories I had of the tales always described them so. Also—that no Mossman had ever been sighted.

She stood and stared. I tried again to use mind touch, with no result. If it were she whom I had contacted earlier, she held her barrier against me now. But there flowed from her a kind of good will, a timid good will, as if she meant me no harm, but feared that I did not feel the same toward her.

I gave up trying to reach her by mind touch. Instead I spoke aloud, and into the tones of my voice I never tried harder to put that which would lead her to believe that I meant her no harm, that on the contrary I now looked to her for aid. Elsewhere in Escore we had discovered that the language of this land, though using different pronunciations and some archaic turns of speech, was still that of the Old Race, and we could be understood.

“Friend—” I schooled my voice to softness. “I am friend—friend to the Moss Folk.”

She searched me with her eyes, holding mine in a steady gaze.

How did the old saying go: “Whole friend, half-friend, unfriend.” Though I did not repeat that aloud, I was willing to accept from her the name of half-friend—if she did not think me unfriend.

I saw her puckered lips work as if she chewed upon the word before she spoke it aloud in turn.

“Friend—” Her voice was a whisper, not much louder than the wind whisper through the moss curtains.

Her stare still held me. Then, as a door opening, thought flowed into my mind.

“Who are you who follow a trail through the moss-land?”

“I am Kemoc Tregarth from over-mountain.” But the designation which might mean something to others of Escore, meant nothing to her. “From the Valley of Green Silences,” I added, and this did carry weight.

She mouthed a word again, and this time a flood of reassurance warmed me. For the word she said, though it was distorted by the sibilance of her whisper, was the badge of rightness in what might be a land of nameless evil—the ancient word of power:

“Euthayan.”

I answered it quickly, by lip, not mind, so that she could be sure that I was one who could say such and not be blasted in the saying.

Her hands moved from the hold they had kept upon the mantle of her moss hair. They waved gently, as the breeze stirred banners on the trees. Following the bidding of those gestures, the moss strands binding me to the tree stirred, fell apart, loosing me, until I sat in a nest of fibers.

“Come!”

She beckoned and I got to my feet. Then she drew back a step as if the fact I towered over her was daunting. But, drawing her hair about her as one might draw a cloak, she turned and went down that path of the star candles.

Shouldering my pack, I followed. The candles continued to light our way, though outside the borders of their dim light the night pressed in and I thought we must still be a ways from dawn. Now those woods lamps were farther and farther apart, and paler. I hastened so as not to lose my guide. For all her stumpy frame and withered looking legs, she threaded this way very swiftly.

Heavier and heavier hung the moss curtains. Sometimes they appeared almost solid between the trees, too thick to be stirred by any wind. I realized these took the form of walls, that I might be passing among dwellings. My guide put out her hands and parted the substance of one such wall, again beckoned me to pass her in that entrance.

I came into a space under a very large tree. Its scaled bole was the center support of the house. The moss curtains formed the walls, and a moss carpet grew underfoot. There were stars of light set flat against the tree trunk, wreathed around it from the ground up to the branching of the first limbs. The light they gave was near to that of a fire.

On the moss sat my—hostesses? judges? captors? I knew not what they were, save they were Mosswives, so resembling she who had brought me that I could believe them all of one sisterhood. She who was closest to the star studded tree gestured for me to sit. I put aside my pack and dropped, cross-legged.

Again there was a period of silent appraisal, just as there had been with my guide. Then she, whom I guessed was chief of that company, named first herself and then the others, in the formal manner followed by those country dwellers living far from the main life of Estcarp.

“Fuusu, Foruw, Frono, Fyngri, Fubbi—” Fubbi being she who had led me here.

“Kemoc Tregarth,” I answered, as was proper. Then I added, which was of the custom of Estcarp, but not might be so here:

“No threat from me to the House of Fuusu and her sister, clan, or rooftree, harvest, flocks—”

If they did not understand my good-wish, they did the will behind it. For Fuusu made another sign, and Foruw, who sat upon her right, produced a cup of wood and poured into it a darkish liquid from a stone bottle. She touched her lips briefly to one side of the cup and then held it out.

Though I remembered Dahaun’s injunction against drinking or eating in the wilds, I dared not refuse a sip from the guesting cup. I swallowed it a little fearfully. The stuff was sour and a little bitter. I was glad that I need not drink more of it. But I formally tipped the cup right and left, dribbled a few drops over its brim to the moss carpet, wishing thus luck on both house and land.

I put the cup down between us and waited politely for Fuusu to continue. I did not have to wait long.

“Where go you through the moss land, Kemoc Tregarth?” She stumbled a little over my name. “And why?”

“I seek one who has been taken from me, and the trail leads hither.”

“There have been those who came and went.”

“Went where?” I could not restrain my eagerness.

The Mosswife shook her head slowly. “Into hidden ways; they have set a blind spell on their going. None may follow.”

Blind spell? I did not know what she meant. But perhaps she could tell me more . . .

“There was a maiden with them?” I asked. Fuusu nodded to Fubbi. “Let her answer; she saw their passing.”

“There was a maiden, and others. A Great Dark One—”