Andre Norton - Three Against the Witch World

She was close now, and flowers bent their heads as the hem of her gray robe brushed them. But so had I heard the jingle of metal and the sound of footsteps that were not back in the woods. How could I provide a test which would prove this mirage or truth?

“Kemoc—” Again that half whisper. Yet I was here also. Always there had been that tighter bond between the two of them, yet now her eyes were only for him, she spoke only his name—she did not seem to see me. Why?

“Kaththea?” Suiting my own voice to her low tone, I made her name into a question.

Her eyes did not falter; she never looked to me nor seemed to know I was there. At that moment Kemoc twisted out of my grip, and his went out to catch hers, pulling her to him in a quick embrace. Over his shoulder her eyes looked into mine, still unseeing, and her lips curved in the same set smile.

My questioning had become certainty. If this was a woman and not hallucination, she was playing a game. Yet when we had sought my sister by mind she had been welcoming. And I could not believe that the emotion we had met in that brief contact had been a lie. Could one lie with thoughts? I was sure I could not, though what the Witches might be able to accomplish I had no idea.

“Come!” His arm about her waist Kemoc was pushing her before him toward the wall. I moved—this might be a mistake, but better to learn now when we could retrieve our errors.

“Kemoc, listen!” My grip on his shoulder was no light one this time, and I had the greater strength, which I was willing to use.

He struggled for his freedom, dropping his hold on the girl. And his anger was growing with a rapidity which was not normal.

“I do not think this is Kaththea.” I said slowly, with all the emphasis I could give to my words. And she just stood there, still smiling, her attention on him as if I were invisible.

“Kemoc—” His name with the same inflection, no word of protest to me.

“You are mad!” my brother’s face was white with anger. He was a man bewitched.

Bewitched! Could I reach him with sense now—in time? I brought his arm up behind his back in a lock and held him so, then pulled him around to face the smiling girl. So holding him in spite of his struggles, I spoke again into his ear.

“Look at her, man! Look at her very well!”

He could not free himself, and look he did. Slowly he stopped struggling, and I hoped my fight won. Kaththea, smiling, undisturbed, now and again uttering his name as if she had only that one word to speak.

“What—what is she?”

I loosed him when he asked that. He knew now, was ready to accept the truth. But what was the truth? At our discovery she had not vanished away as had the warriors. I touched her arm—that was flesh beneath my fingers, warm, apparently living. So real a hallucination was beyond any I had seen before.

“I do not know what she is—save she is not who we seek here.”

“If we had taken her and gone—” Kemoc paused.

“Yes. That would have served their purposes very well. But if this is counterfeit; where is the real?”

It was as if Kemoc had been shocked into inspired thinking by the closeness of his error.

“This—this one came from there.” He pointed to the doorway. “Thus in the opposite direction lies, I think, what we seek.”

He sounded too sure, yet I had no better reason or direction in which to look.

“Kemoc—” Her hands were out again. She was watching him and edging to the wall, subtly urging him to that way of escape.

He shivered, drew away. “Kyllan, hurry—we have to hurry!”

Turning his back on her, my brother ran towards the building, and I followed, fearing that any moment a cry of alarm would be voiced behind us, that the surrogate for our sister would utter a warning.

There was another door, and Kemoc, a little before me, put his hand to it. I expected bolts or bars and wondered how we could deal with such. But the panel swung inward readily enough and Kemoc peered into the dark.

“Hold to my belt,” he ordered. And there was such certainty in his voice that I obeyed. So linked, we moved into a dark which was complete.

Yet Kemoc walked with quick sure steps, as if he could see every foot of the way. My shoulder brushed against the side of another doorway. Kemoc turned to the left. I felt about with my other hand, touched a surface not too far away, and ran fingertips along it as we moved. A hallway, I thought.

Then Kemoc halted, turned sharply to the right, and there was the sound of another door opening. Sudden light, gray and dim, but light. We stood on the threshold of a small, cell-like room, I looking over Kemoc’s shoulder. On the edge of a narrow bed she sat, waiting for us.

There was none of the serene, smiling, untroubled beauty that the girl in the garden had worn.

Experience showed on this girl’s face also, but with it anxiety, strain, a wearing down of the body by the spirit. Beauty, too, but a beauty which was worn unconsciously and not as a weapon. Her lips parted, formed two names silently. Then Kaththea was on her feet, running to us, a hand for each.

“Haste, oh, haste!” Her voice was the thinnest of whispers. “We have so little time!”

This time there was no need for warning. I had Kaththea in my arms, no simulacrum of my sister. Then she crowded past us and took the lead back through the dark, drawing us with her at a run. We burst into the free night of the garden. I half expected Kaththea to meet her double, but there was no one there.

Back over the wall and into the wood we went, her frantic haste now spurring us. She held the long skirts of her robe high, dragging them with sharp jerks from the bushes where they appeared to catch and hold unnaturally. We strove not to use care now, only speed. And we were all gasping as we came out of the hollow to where our Torgians waited.

Just as we reached the saddles a deep boom welled from the building in the cup. It held a little of the earth-thunder we had heard during the mountain moving. Our horses screamed shrilly, as if they feared another such upheaval of their normal world. As we started off at a wild gallop I listened for any other sounds—shouts of some pursuit, another thunder roar. But there was nothing.

Not in the least reassured, I called to Kaththea:

“What will they send after us?”

Her hair whipped back, her face a white oval, she turned to answer me. “Not—warriors—” she gasped. “They have other servants—but tonight—they are limited.”

Even Torgians could not stand the pace we had set in fleeing the valley of the Place. I was aware that the horses were disturbed, and that this uneasiness was fast approaching panic. Yet the reason for that was not plain since we should be out of the influence of the Place by now. With all the talent I had I strove to quiet their minds, to bring them again to sane balance.

“Rein in!” I ordered. “They will run themselves blind—rein in!”

I had no fears for Kemoc’s horsemanship. But of Kaththea’s I was not so sure. While the Witches did not ignore the body in their training and exploration of the mind, I did not know how cloistered my sister had been during these past years, how able to control her mount.

The Torgians fought for the bits, strove to continue their headlong run, but between our strength on the reins, and my own efforts, they began to yield and we were slowing our pace when there was an ear-splitting squawl from before us. The cry of a snow cat, once heard, is never to be mistaken. They are the undisputed kings of the high valleys and the peaks. Though what one could be doing this far from its native hunting grounds I did not understand. Unless the orders which had brought us from the border lands had been accompanied by some unknown commands which had moved the animals also, spreading them into territory they had not known before.