Andre Norton - Three Against the Witch World

If the mountain had seemed dead, a lifeless world in daytime, that was not true at night. There was the wail of a snow cat that had missed its kill, and a hooting from the air over the choked valley.

But nothing came near us as we dozed, awoke to listen, and then slept again through a night which also was different this side of the mountain—one far too long.

IN THE EARLY morning we ate the last crumbs of journey bread, and discovered there were only a few sips of water left in the saddle bottles we had filled at the streamside. Kemoc shook his bag over his hand.

“It would seem we now have another very good reason to push on,” he remarked.

I ran my tongue over my lip and tried to think back to the last really filling meal I had eaten. That was hard doing, for I had lived more or less on emergency rations since Kemoc’s summons had taken me from camp. We had seen no trace of game—yet a snow cat had yowled in the night and one of those hunters would not be prowling a prey-less land. I visualized a prong-buck steak or even a grass burrower, sizzling on a spit over a fire. And that provided me impetus to approach the verge and survey the springy bough road we must travel.

We made what precautions we could, using the rope once again to unite us, so that a slip need not be fatal. But it was not with any great confidence that any of us faced that crossing. We could not aim straight for the other rim, but had to angle down the length of the branch-filled cut in order to keep moving east to the presumed lowlands. The mist still clung there and we could only hope that there were lowlands to be found.

I had always held that I had a good head for heights, but in my mountaineering I had trod on solid stone and earth, not on a footing which swayed and dipped, giving to my weight with every step. And I was almost a few feet out on that surface when I discovered, almost to my undoing, that this weird valley had inhabitants.

There was a sharp chattering cry; and from the upthrust branch tip, to which I had just reached a hand for a supporting grip, burst a thing which swooped on skin wings and skittered ahead to disappear again into the masking foliage.

Kaththea gave a startled cry and I found my hold on the branch very necessary, for I was almost unbalanced by my start. So our advance became even more slow.

Three times more we sent flitters flying from our path. Once we needed to make an exhausting detour when we sighted another and more frightening inhabitant of this tree top maze, a scaled thing which watched us unblinkingly, a narrow forked tongue flickering from its green lips—for it was colored much like the silver-green of the leaves among which it lay. It was not a serpent, for it had small limbs and clawed feet with which to cling, yet it was elongated of body, and its whole appearance was malefic. Nor did it fear us in the least.

All time has an end. Sweating, weary from tension to the point of swimming heads and shaking bodies, we made the last step from the quivering boughs to the solid rock of the valley rim. Kaththea dropped to the ground, panting. All of us bore raw scratches and the red marks left by lashing branches. While our field uniforms were sturdy enough to withstand hard usage, Kaththea’s robe was torn in many places, and there were bits of broken twig snarled in hair ends which had escaped from the kerchief into which she had knotted them before beginning that journey.

“I would seem to be one of the Moss Ones,” she commented with a small slightly uncertain smile.

I looked back at the way we had come. “This is proper country for such,” I said idly. Then silence drew my attention back to my companions. Both of them were staring at me with an intensity which had no connection with what I had just said, or so I thought, but as if I had uttered some profound fact.

“Moss Ones,” Kaththea repeated.

“The Krogan, the Thas, the People of Green Silences, the Flannan,” Kemoc added.

“But those are legend—tales to amuse children, to frighten the naughty, or to amuse,” I protested.

“They are those who are foreign to Estcarp,” Kaththea pointed out “What of Volt? He, too, was dismissed as legend until Koris and our father found his Hole and him waiting. And did not Koris bring forth from there that great axe, which was only legend too? And the sea serpent of Sulcar song—not even the most learned ever said that that was only fantasy.”

“But women of moss who seek a human mother to nurse their children and who pay in pale gold and good fortune, beings who fly on wings and torment those who strive to learn their secrets, creatures who dwell blindly underground and are to be feared lest they draw a man after them into eternal darkness, and people akin to trees with powers over all growth . . .” I recalled scraps and bits of those tales, told to amuse with laughter, or bring delightful shivers up the back of those who listened to terror while sitting snug and secure by a winter fire in a strongly held manor.

“Those stories are as old as Estcarp,” Kemoc said, “and perhaps they reach beyond Estcarp . . . to some other place.”

“We have enough to face without evoking phantoms,” I snapped. “Do not put one behind each bush for us now.”

Yet one could not stifle the working of imagination and this was the type of land which could give rise to such legends. Always, too, there was the reality of Volt which my father had helped to prove. And, as we advanced, my mind kept returning to shift old memories for descriptions of those fantastic beings in the stories.

We were definitely on a down slope, though the broken character of the land continued. Now our greatest need was for water. Though the vegetation grew heavily hereabouts, we came across no stream nor spring, and the growing heat of the day added to our discomfort. The mist still clung, and thus at times we could see only a short distance ahead. And that mist had a steamy quality, making us long to throw aside our helms and mail which weighed so heavy.

I do not know just when I became aware that we were not alone in that steam-wreathed wildness. Perhaps fatigue and the need for water had dulled my scouting sense. But it grew on me that we were under observation. And so sure was I of that, that I waved my companions to cover in the thicket and drew my dart gun as I studied the half concealed landscape.

“It is there . . . somewhere.” Kemoc had his weapon in hand also.

Kaththea sat with closed eyes, her lips parted a little, her whole attitude one of listening, perhaps not with the ears, but with a deeper sense.

“I cannot touch it,” she said in a whisper. “There is no contact—”

“Now it is gone!” I was as sure of that as if I had seen the lurker flitting away as the skinned flapped things had done in the tree valley. I beckoned them on, having now only the desire to put distance between us and whatever had skulked in our wake.

As we moved into yet lower land the mist disappeared. Here the trees and high brush gave way to wide, open glades. Many of these were carpeted by thick, springy growth of gray moss. And I had a faint distaste for walking on it, though it cushioned the step and made the going more comfortable.

Bird calls sounded, and we saw small creatures in the moss lands. There was a chance for hunting now, but water remained our major desire. Then we came upon our first trace of man—a crumbling wall, more than half buried or tumbled from its estate as boundary for a field. The growth it guarded was tall grass, but here and there showed the yellow-ripe head of a grain stalk, wizened and small, reverting to the wild grass from which it had evolved. Once this had been a farm.

We took one side of that wall for a guide and so came into the open. The heat of the sun added to our distress but a farm meant water somewhere near. Kaththea stumbled and caught at the wall.