Andre Norton - Three Against the Witch World

“Greetings, sword brother.” The words came out of me unthinkingly.

It whistled back, an odd noise to issue from that scaled throat. Then it was gone, a green-gold streak heading up and over the rim of the saucer.

Oddly enough its coming and going allayed my first dismay at finding myself a prisoner. The lizard had certainly not meant me harm and neither, I was certain, had those who had left me here. That was apparent by my own present feeling of well-being, and by the actions of the sorely hurt snow cat. This was a place of healing to which an animal would drag itself if it could. And those virtues had been applied to me . . . by whom? The lizard, the furred ones . . . the wraith . . . yes, surely the wraith!

Though I could not smell sorcery as Kaththea could, I was sure no evil abode here—that it was an oasis of some Power. And I was alive only because I had been brought into its beneficent influence. Now I knew by a tingling of my skin, a prickling of my scalp, a little like that excitement which eats one before the order to advance comes, that there was something on the way.

Several of the lizards sped down the saucer side, and behind them, at a less frantic pace, came two of the furred beasts, their hides also of a blue-green shade. Their narrow heads and plumed tails were those of a tree-dwelling animal I knew, but they were much larger than their brothers of Estcarp.

Behind this advance guard and out-scouts she came, walking with a lithesome stride. Her dark hair hung loose about her shoulders—but was it dark? Did it glint with a red hue? Or was it light and fair? To me it seemed all that at one and the same time. She wore a tunic of green-blue close-fitting her body, leaving arms and legs bare. And this garment was girdled by a broad belt of green-blue gems set thickly in pale gold, flexible to her movements. About each slender wrist was a wide band of the same gems, and she carried by a shoulder strap a quiver of arrows, all tipped with blue-green feathers, and a bow of the pale gold color.

One could be far more certain of her garments than of her, since, though I struggled to focus on her face and that floating cloud of hair, I could not be sure of what I saw, that some haze of change did not ever hold between us. Even as she knelt beside me that disorientation held.

“Who are you?” I asked that baldly, for my inability to see her clearly irked me.

Amazingly, I heard her laugh. Her hand touched my cheek, moved to my forehead, and under that touch my vision cleared. I saw her face—or one face—sharply and distinctly.

The features of the Old Race are never to be mistaken: the delicate bones, the pointed chin, the small mouth, larger eyes, arched brows. And she possessed these, making such beauty as to awe a man. But there was also about her a modification which hinted at the unhuman as I knew human. That did not matter—not in the least did it matter.

A warrior knows women. I was no Falconer to foreswear such companionship. But it is also true that some appetites run less deeply with the Old Race. Perhaps the very ancientness of their blood and the fact that the witch gift has set a wedge between male and female makes this so. I had never looked upon any woman whom I wanted for more than a passing hour of pleasure such as the Free Companions of the Sulcar give, finding equal enjoyment of such play. But it was no passing desire which awoke in me as I gazed at that face. No, this was something different, a heightening of the excitement which had built in me as I had sensed her coming, a thing I had never known before.

She laughed and then fell sober once again, her eyes holding mine in a look which was not quite the communication I wished.

“Rather—who are you?” Her demand was swift, almost roughly spoken.

“Kyllan of the House of Tregarth, out of Estcarp,” I replied formally, as I might on delivering a challenge. What was it between us? I could not quite understand. “And you?” For the second time I asked, and now my tone pressed for her reply.

“I have many names, Kyllan of the House of Tregarth, out of Estcarp.” She was mocking me, but I did not accept that mockery.

“Tell me one, or two, or all.”

“You are a brave man,” her silken mockery continued. “In my own time and place. I am not one to be lightly named.”

“Nor will I do it lightly.” From whence had come this word play new to me?

She was silent. Her fingers twitched as if she would lift them from my forehead. And that I feared, lest my clear sight of her be so spoiled.

“I am Dahaun, also am I Morquant, and some say Lady of the Green—”

“—Silences,” I finished for her as she paused. Legend—no! She was alive; I felt the pressure and coolness of her flesh against mine.

“So you know me after all, Kyllan of the House of Tregarth.”

“I have heard the old legends—”

“Legends?” Laughter bubbled once again from her. “But a legend is a tale which may or may not hold a core of truth. I dwell in the here and now. Estcarp—and where is Estcarp, bold warrior, that you know of Dahaun as a legend?”

“To the west, over the mountains—”

She snatched her hand away, as if the touch burnt her fingertips. Once more distortion made her waver in my sight.

“Am I suddenly made so into a monster?” I asked of the silence fallen between us.

“I do not know—are you?” Then her hand was back, and once more she was clear to see. “No, you are not—though what you are I do not know either. That Which Dwells Apart strove to take you with the Keplian, but you were not swallowed up. You fought in a way new to me, stranger. And then I read you for a force of good, not ill. Yet the mountains and what lie behind them are a barrier through which only ill may seep—or so say our legends. Why did you come, Kyllan of the House of Tregarth, out of Estcarp?”

I had no wish to dissemble with her: between us must be only the truth as well as I could give it.

“For refuge.”

“And what do you flee, stranger? What ill have you wrought behind you that you must run from wrath?”

“The ill of not being as our fellows—”

“Yes, you are not one but three—and yet, also one. . . .”

Her words aroused memory. “Kaththea! Kemoc? What—?”

“What has happened to them since you would go ariding the Keplian, thus foolishly surrendering yourself to the very power you would fight? They have taken their own road, Kyllan. This sister of yours has done that which has troubled the land. We do not easily take Witches to our bosoms here, warrior. In the past that served us ill. Were she older in magic, then she would not have been so eager to trouble dark pools which should be left undisturbed in the shadows. So far she has not met that which she cannot face with her own shield and armor. But that state of affairs will not last long—not here in Escore.”

“But you are a Wise One.” I was as certain of that as if I saw the Witch Jewel on her breast, yet I also knew that she was not of the same breed as the rulers of Estcarp.

“There are many kinds of wisdom, as you well know already. Long ago, roads branched here in Escore, and we Green People chose to walk in different ways. Some led us very far apart from one another. But also through the years we learned to balance good against ill, so that there was no inequality to draw new witchcraft in. To do so, even on the side of good, will evoke change, and change may awaken things which have long slumbered, to the ill of all. This has your sister done—as an unthinking child might smite the surface of a pool with a stick, sending ripples running, annoying some monster at ease in the depths. Yet. . .” She pursed her lips as if about to give judgment, and in that small movement lost more of the strangeness which separated us, so that I saw her as a girl, like Kaththea. “Yet, we can not deny to her the right of what she has done; we only wish she had done it elsewhere!” Again Dahaun smiled. “Now, Kyllan of Tregarth, we have immediate things to see to.”