Andre Norton - Witch World

“Then more than ever do I say take it not into the streets of Kars.” That was half order, haif plea.

“Show me then a safe place in which to set it,” he countered, with openly displayed unwillingness.

She thought a moment, her finger rubbing at her lower lip.”So be it. But later you must give me the full tale, Captain. Bring it hither and I shall show you the safest place in this house.”

Simon and Briant trailed after them into another room where the walls were hung with strips of a tapestry so ancient that only the vaguest hints of the original designs could be surmised. One of these she bypassed to come to a length of carved wall panel on which fabulous beasts leered and snarled in high relief. She pulled at this, to display a cupboard and Koris set the ax far to its back.

Just as Simon had been aware of the past centuries within Estcarp city, solid waves of time beating against a man with all the pressure of ages, as he had also known awe for the non-human in the Hole where Volt had held silent court for dust and shadows, so here there was also a kind of radiation from the walls, a tangible something in the air which made his skin creep.

Yet Koris was brisk about the business of storing his treasure and the witch shut the cupboard as might a housewife upon a broom. Briant had lingered in the doorway, his usual impassive self. Why did Simon feel this way? And he was so plagued by that that he stayed when the others left, making himself walk slowly to the center of the chamber.

There were only two pieces of furniture. One a highbacked chair of black wood which might have come from an audience hall. Facing it was a stool of the same somber coloring. And on the floor between the two an odd collection of articles Simon studied as if trying to find in them the solution to his riddle.

First there was a small clay brazier in which might burn a palm load of coals, no more. It stood on a length of board, polished smooth. And with it was an earthen bowl containing some gray-white meal, that was flanked by a squat bottle. Two seats and that strange collection of objects — yet there was something else here also.

He did not hear the witch’s return and was startled out of his thoughts when she spoke.

“What are you, Simon?”

His eyes met hers.”You know. I told you the truth at Estcarp. And you must have your own ways of testing for falsehood.”

“We have, and you spoke the truth. Yet I must ask you again, Simon — what are you? On the sea road you felt out that ambush before the Power warned me. Yet you are a man!” For the first time her self-possession was shaken. “You know what is done here — you feel it!”

“No. I only know that there is something here that I can not see — yet it exists.” He gave her the truth once again.

“That is it!” She beat her fists together. “You should not feel such things, and yet you do! I play a part here. I do not always use the Power, that is, greater power than my own experience in reading men and women, in guessing shrewdly what lies within their hearts or are their desires. Three quarters of my gift is illusion; you have seen that at work. I summon no demons, toll nothing here from another world by my spells, which are said mainly to work upon the minds of those who watch for wonders. Yet there is the Power and sometimes it comes to my call. Then I can work what are indeed wonders. I can smell out disaster, though I may not always know what form it will take. So much can I do — and that much is real! I swear to it by my life!”

“That I believe,” Simon returned. “For in my world, too, there were things which could not be explained with any sober logic.”

“And you had your women to do such things?”

“No, it came to either sex there. I have had men under my command who had foreknowledge of disaster, of death, their own or others’. Also I have known houses, old places, in which something lurked which was not good to think about, something which could not be seen or felt any more than we can now see or feel what is with us here.”

She watched him now with undisguised wonder. Then her hand moved in the air, sketching between them some sign. And that blazed for an instant in fire hanging in space.

“You saw that?” Was that an accusation or triumphant recognition? He did not have time to discover which, for, sounding through the house was the note of a gong.

“Aldis! And she will have guards with her!” The witch crossed the room to rip open that panel where Koris had stored the ax. “In with you,” she ordered. “They will search the house as they always do, and it would be better if they do not know of your presence.”

She allowed him no time for protest, and Simon found himself cramped into space much too small. Then the panel was slammed shut. Only it was more spyhole than cupboard, he discovered. There were openings among the carvings, which gave him air to breath and sight of the room.

It had all been done so swiftly that he had been swept along. Now he revolted and his hands went to that panel, determined to be out. Only to discover, too late, that there was no latch on his side and that he had been neatly put into safe keeping, along with Volt’s ax, until the witch chose to have him out again.

His irritation rising, Simon pressed his forehead against the carven screen to gain as full sight as he could of the room. And he kept very still as the woman from Estcarp reentered, to be pushed aside by two soldiers who strode briskly about, flipping aside strips of tapestry.

The witch was laughing as she watched them. Then she spoke over her shoulder to one still lingering on the other side of the threshold:

“It seems that one’s word is not accepted in Kars. Yet when has this house and those under its roof even been associated with ill dealings? Your hounds may find some dust, a spider web, or two — I confess that I am not a notable housewife, but naught else, lady. And they waste our time with their searching.”

There was a faint jeer in that, enough to flick one on the raw. Simon appreciated her skill with words. She spoke as an adult humoring children, a little impatient to be about more important business. And subtly she invited that unseen other to join her in adulthood.

“Halsfric! Donnar!”

The men snapped to attention.

“Prowl through the rest of this burrow if you will, but leave us in private!”

They stood aside nimbly at the door as another woman came in. The witch closed the portal behind them before she turned to the newcomer, who dropped her hooded cloak to let it lie in a saffron pool on the floor.

“Welcome, Lady Aldis.”

“Time is wasting, woman, as you pointed out.” The words were harsh, but the voice in which they were spoken surrounded that bruskness with layers of velvet. Such a voice could well twist a man to her will through hearing it alone.

And the Duke’s mistress had the form, not of the tavern wench to which the witch had compared her, over-ripe and full-curved, but of a young girl not fully awakened to her own potentialities, with small high breasts modestly covered, yet perfectly revealed by the fabric of her robe. A woman of contradictions — wanton and cool at one and the same time. Simon, studying her, could well understand how she had managed to hold sway over a proved lecher as long and successfully as she had.

“You told Firtha—” again that sharp note swathed in velvet.

“I told your Firtha just what I could do and what was necessary for the doing,” the witch was as brisk as her client. “Does the bargain suit you?”

“It will suit me when it is proved successful and not before. Give me that which makes me secure in Kars and then claim your pay.”

“You have a strange way of bargaining, lady. The advantages are all yours.”