Andre Norton - Web of the Witch World

“You believe in what you say, lady,” Stymir conceded. “The Kolder base—” With his finger tip he traced a design on the table board between them. “The Kolder base!”

But when he raised his eyes again to meet hers there was a wariness in them.

“There are tales among us—that the Kolder have a way of distorting minds and so sending those who were once our friends, even our cup-comrades, to lead us into their traps.”

Jaelithe nodded. “That is indeed the truth, Captain, and you do well to think about such a risk. But, I am of the Old Race, and I have been a witch. You know that the Kolder taint cannot touch any of my kind.”

“Have been a witch—” He caught and held to that.

“And why am I not one now?” She brought herself to answer that, though the need for doing so rasped her raw. “Because I am now wife to him who is March Warder of Estcarp. Have you not heard of the outlander who helped lead the storming of Sippar—Simon Tregarth?”

“Him!” There was wonder in the captain now. “Aye, we have heard of him. Then you, lady, rode to Sulcarkeep for its last battle. Aye, you have met Kolder and you know Kolder! Tell me what you now devise.”

Jaelithe began her tale, the one she had set in mind before this meeting. When she had done the captain’s amazement was marked.

“And you think this we can do, lady?”

“I go myself to its doing.”

“To find the Kolder base—to lead in a fleet upon the finding. Aye, such a feat as that the bards would sing for a hundred hundred years to come! This is a mighty business, lady. But where is the fleet?”

“The fleet follows, but only one ship may lead. We do not know what devices these Kolder have in their below-water ship, how well they may be able to track anything on the surface. One ship above, not too close—that they might not suspect. A fleet could have but one meaning for them, and then, would they knowingly lead us to their den?”

Captain Stymir nodded. “Clearly thought, my lady. So then how do we bring in the fleet?”

Jaelithe lifted her hand to the cage. “Thus. This one has been trained by the Falconers to return whence it came, bearing any message. I have already conferred with those in authority. The fleet will assemble, cruise out to sea. When the message comes, why—then they will move in. But this is a matter of time. If the under-seas ship issues from the marsh river and has too great a lead, then I am not sure we can contact my lord, captive in it.”

“This river, draining from Tormarsh . . .” It was plain that the captain was trying to align points along the shore to make a picture he knew. “I would guess it to be the Enkere—to the north. We could pose as a raider on the course to Alizon and so reach that spot without raising any undue interest.”

“And may we sail soon?”

“Now if you wish, lady. The supplies are aboard, the crew gathered. We were off to Alizon today.”

“This voyage may be longer; your supplies for coast raiding are limited.”

“True. But there is the Sword Bride in from the south; she carries supplies for the army. We may trans-ship from her if you have the authority. And that will take but a small measure of time.”

“I have the authority. Let us be about it!”

The Guardians might not believe that she would retain this power of hers, but they had granted her backing for now. Jaelithe frowned. To have to use one of the Seakeep witches to transmit that request and her message had been galling, but she was willing to face any rebuff to gain her ends. And she had proved, when she had used the falcon and her new perception to confuse Simon in the flyer, that she did have something they could not dismiss as useless. Kolder would only die when its heart was blasted. And if she and Simon, working together, could find that heart, then all witchdom would back them to the limit.

Captain Stymir was as good as his boast. It still lacked several hours of nightfall when his Wave Cleaver skimmed out of the harbor, heading towards the black blot of Gorm and so beyond for the open sea. She had chosen better than she knew, Jaelithe decided, when she had picked Stymir from the four captains in the harbor. His ship was small, but she was swift, a cruiser rather than one of the wider-bottomed merchant carriers.

“You have been an opener of ways, Captain?” she asked as they stood together by the great rudder sweep.

“Aye, lady. It was my thought to try for the far north—had this war with Kolder not broken on our heads. There is a village I have visited—odd people, small, dark, with a click-click speech of their own we cannot rightly twist tongue around. But they offer such furs as I have seen nowhere else—only a few of them. Silver those furs, long of hair, but very soft. When we asked whence they came, this click-click speech folk said that they are brought once a year by a caravan of wild men from the north. They have other wares, too. Look you—”

He slipped from his wrist a band of metal and offered it to her. Jaelithe turned the ring about in her fingers. Gold, but a paler gold than she had ever seen before. Old, very old, and there was a design, so worn that it was merely curves and hollows. Yet there was sophistication, a degree of art in that worn design which did not say primitive but hinted of civilization—only what civilization?

“This I traded for two years ago in that village, and all they could tell me was that it came from the north with the wild men. Look you, here and here.” He touched with finger tip two points on the band, “That is a star—very much worn away and yet a star. And on the very, very old things of my people there are sometimes such stars—”

“Another trader of your people ages ago who made a voyage there and returned not?”

“Perhaps. But there is also another thought. For we have bard songs, also very old, of whence we first came—and that there was cold and snow, and much battling with monsters of the dark.”

Jaelithe thought of how Simon had come to Estcarp, and of that gate in another place through which the Kolder had issued to trouble them. These Sulcarmen, always restless, ever at sea, taking their families with them on such voyages as if they might not return. Only in the times of outright war were Sulcar ships other than floating villages. Had they, too, come through a gate which kept them searching with some hidden instinct to find again? She gave the band back to Stymir.

“A quest of value, Captain. May there be long years for each of us for the questing we hold in our hearts.”

“Well spoken, lady. Now we are approaching the mouth of the Enkere. Do you wish to hunt in your own way for the Kolder water sulker?”

“I do.”

She lay on the bunk in the small cabin to which the captain had shown her. It was hot and close and the mail shirt constricted her breathing. But Jaelithe strove to set aside all outward things, to build in her mind the picture of Simon. There were many Simons and all had depth of meaning for her, but it was necessary to forge those into one upon which to center her call.

But—no answer . . . She had been so sure of instant contact that that silence was like an unexpected blow. Jaelithe opened her eyes and gazed up at the roofing of the ship’s timbers so close above her head. The Wave Cleaver was truly cleaving waves and the motion about her—perhaps that was what broke the contact or kept her from completing it.

“Simon!” Her call searched, demanded. She had had long years of training as a witch, to center and aim her power through that jewel which was the badge of her office. Was this fumbling now because she must do it all without a tool, with the skepticism of those she had long revered eating at her confidence?