Authors: Andre Norton
“This way.” The evil clung in that path also as did the spicy undercurrent. But she was careful not to be diverted by either—she sought and found Mahart’s own trace.
Nicolas matched her stride. He had the lantern, but some trick of adjusting its panels brought the light to a very thin beam. This he kept swinging slightly back and forth so that it would reveal the largest area that could be. But all they could see were the stone walls much like those of the other passages Willadene had traveled, not in secret.
She half expected Nicolas to question her, certainly about their way, but apparently he was willing to accept, at least for now, her decision. It was not until they reached a sharp turn in the way and scaling off there a second passage, that Nicolas went into action. He stooped to study the thick dust. It was well muddled here as if there had been a scuffle of some sort.
“There—?” He pointed to the side way.
Willadene stood, closed her eyes, tried to center all her energy on her sense of smell. The evil stench had thickened and it was near desperately hard for her to pierce that for her beckoning thread.
“No.”
His black clothing was now so well coated with dust that she could see him better. He had taken two side steps into the way he indicated and was flashing the lantern downward. Even from where she still stood she could see the disturbance of dust. There had certainly been recent passage along that way. But—
“No.” Resolutely she started forward on her own along the main passage. This slanted downward, and there was a damp which collected in the air. Willadene judged that he did not agree with her, but after a moment or so he followed.
There were no stairs here but a distinct downward slope.
Then the light from the lantern caught on a light patch on the wall. Nicolas swung the thin beam around and what she saw brought a gasp out of Willadene.
The stone of the wall had been hollowed here into a niche, one barely large enough to house what stood in it behind a netting of rusting metal bars. Those bones were so thin and delicate, the whole skeleton so short, that Willadene could only believe this ancient horror had had a child for its prey.
“Athgard!” Nicolas’s hand, protruding from the dusty black of his sleeve, looked as pale as the bones before them. “So this was his ending—”
Athgard? And who was or had been Athgard? Willadene swallowed and swallowed again, trying hard to see only bones against an ancient wall and not the fleeting vision in her mind of what had once housed those bones.
“Five hundred seasons—maybe more—” Nicolas’s finger was pointing now to the skull which, loosed from the spine, had fallen forward to rest against the metal of its imprisonment.
There was another look to that bone—a circlet of time-darkened metal. What had once been set to the fore of it had been pried away, leaving only twisted prongs they could barely see in this frail light.
“Athgard, son of Wisgard.” Nicolas’s palm straightened up in a kind of salute to the long dead. “So this is where the House of Gard came to in the end. But"—it would seem now that he was addressing the bones themselves—"rest in peace, knowing that those of Ishbi were brought down in their time—and bloodily—to the last remaining member of their house. Get we safely through this venture, and freedom will come also to the last of Gard and a place beneath the Star will be opened.”
“Ishbi—” All Willadene knew of the past was what she had picked up from hints found among Halwice’s meager library and that had been mainly only herbal lore.
“Ishbi!” There was a vicious twist to Nicolas’s mouth.
“ ’Twas all because of the King’s daughter—Nona. She drew men to be taken by her enchantments, one after another, all the lordlings and their households. There were others that she summoned and the Star was forgot, another power arose—one drinking blood.
“The last Duke of Gard was poisoned at his own table, his heir was gone—Nona’s Hag mistress ruled. But never are the scales weighing good and evil so badly balanced that they do not even out once again. It was from the same north that Vulsaden rode and with him those who had hatred for Nona’s beliefs bred into their bones.
“And in time she fell, for those of the Star called also upon greater powers. There came out of the skies an answer which rocked all the land. Vulsaden pulled together the survivors, and all who had been liege to Nona were hunted down to the death—though their Hag mistress was never found. So the House of Den ruled for two generations, and then the last Duke was sonless and his sister married into the House of Brie from which came a new line to the throne.”
Swiftly Willadene made the sign of the Star before the pitiful thing they had found. “Yet still we struggle—” she said.
“Just so. And in that we have a part. Do you swear, mistress, that this way is ours?”
She forced herself to turn away from the imprisoned bones, to forget what imagination made only too vivid for her.
“Yes—this is the way.”
It seemed to her, however, that the stench of evil which had struck at her so earlier had somehow slackened. Either that or she was getting used to the pollution. But she was certain that she still held to the thread which had led her this far, concentrating on it with all her power.
There were no more evil surprises along their way, though the narrow corridor they walked continued to slope downward. Now the dust was not so overpowering, for
there was moisture in the air, yet it was still thick enough underfoot to muffle their going.
Stench of another sort wafted to them once or twice as they passed slits set where the walls met the roofing over them.
“We are under the city,” Nicolas half whispered. “This way leads along the great sewer. Hold this—” He pushed the lantern toward her and she grasped it firmly. His hands were busy at his belt and then she saw that he had taken out of some hiding place among his clothing what looked not unlike a riding whip. With that in one hand and his bared knife in the other he started forward again.
“Slime eaters,” he said briefly, “though they mainly keep to the waterways.”
Moments later he pointed out disturbances in the damp dust which were undoubtedly tracks of some creature. But those were also overlaid with the marks of boots, proving her assertion that they did follow a recent trail.
There were runnels of water down the walls, seeping out of those high-placed openings, and the smell was near overpowering. There came a shrill squealing and Nicolas, with his shoulder, pushed her back against the opposite wall.
“Mistress,” he said and his voice was the steady one of an armsman going into a familiar battle, “have you anything in that charmed bag of yours which can be a defense—a quick one—there is’’—and he spoke now with a grim note of humor—"no pepper mill here.”
She counted over hurriedly in her mind all Halwice had furnished. There was one thing which at the time she had hardly believed necessary but now it might just work. Setting the lantern on the floor between her feet, she searched I until she found the proper pocket. Also the thin, greasy glove which was wrapped with it.
“It—they must be near. And do not let it touch you.”
The squealing had grown louder; now she caught movement in one of those wall slits. Holding her improvised
weapon carefully in her gloved right hand she swung up the lantern with the left, and now she could truly see the head of the thing working its way through the slit.
For one second she thought of Ssssaaa, for this creature seemed to have the same long and limber body and short legs. But it lacked the luxurious fur of the Chancellor’s pet, and the scent she picked up from it was that of filth and decay—its fur ragged in patches with sores showing greenish on the bared skin.
It fell with a plop to the pavement some distance away from them. Nicolas waited for an attack. His lash rose, whistled through the stale air, and wrapped its fore length around the beast, jerking its writhing body toward him where he stood with ready steel. Only Willadene moved first. She had taken a pinch of the powder she handled with such care and raising her hand to the level of her lips she gave a puff of all the breath she could summon.
Motes which seemed to spark as if they were born in a fire filled the air. She had aimed as well as she could and luckily Nicolas was still some distance from his intended prey.
The motes sifted down upon that scabby hide. A hideous scream seemed to fill the passage at a near ear-torturing level. Nicolas gave his lash a shake and the twisting, writhing thing, now looking like a coil of dull fire, struck the wall and rebounded a step or two but lay unmoving.
Only there was already another head showing aloft. It did not move swiftly as had its fellow, rather crouched, viewing—its long neck well stretched—that crisping body just below.
Its squeal became a screech but it ventured no farther. Nicolas spoke to the girl. “Can I draw this cord through what you hold?”
“Yes, but take care.” She had already opened the shutter of the lantern to give them more light to counter any attack, and now into the wider beam she held her gloved hand.
Nicolas peered closely at the powder resting on her flattened palm, and then swiftly and with the ease of one knowing well his tool, he pulled the lash through that small lump.
Just as when the motes had taken spark life in the air when Willadene had blown them free so now did the length of his lash glisten with pinpoints of fire.
With one lithe bound he crossed the passage and aimed that lash upward. It did not catch quite as true as had his first use of it, but it did flick deeply into the waving head above, and again that piercing scream sounded in their ears.
The creature did not fall on their side of the wall; it had been far enough back in the slit to retreat the other way. There were two more of those terrible screams while Nicolas stood on guard below. But no other head appeared.
After a long moment he looked to Willadene, holding the lash some distance from his body. Though most of the motes had disappeared there was still a tiny flash here and there.
“I do not think they will move on us again,” he said. “The one which fell back may well have carried the contagion to its fellows. How do I free my lash?”
Carefully the girl restored to her bag the pouch and what remained in it. Then she held out her gloved hand.
“Draw through this, slowly.”
When he had obeyed her order the lash was clear of any sign of spark—though there was a scatter of such on her glove. She hated to lose that protection but this was not time or place to go through the long procedure of cleaning it into safe use again. So she drew it off gingerly and dropped it on the muddy way, grinding it deeply into that thick surface with her boot.
“It is still our way?” Nicolas questioned a few moments later when they came to two dark arches on the opposite side from that wall which gave upon the sewer.
Willadene had stopped short. There had come out of
the further of those two doors that exultation of odor which had struck her back in Mahart’s chamber. There was certainly the unmistakably clean and enticing smell of fern—but with it the warning stench. She drew a deep breath, then fumbled for her amulet and sniffed it deeply in hopes of clearing her head. The thread which was Mahart—no, it did not lead this way. But there was something which did make some use of that passage—something which was wholly evil!
Once more she raised her head high as if she could so outreach that stench. Mahart—she must be right! Evil held here but that which signaled the High Lady was still straight ahead.
How long they had been in this warren of passages and darkness she had no way of telling. She saw Nicolas take a small disk from his belt pouch and hold it close to the lantern whose beam they had again reduced to a slit.
“We are very near to the walls—the walls of the city itself,” he reported quietly.
There was no slope downward this time; rather they came to a flight of stairs leading up and they climbed cautiously, listening for any sound.
Their ascent ended on a small landing and they faced a door. It was latched on this side, but could it also be on the opposite?
Nicolas lifted the small bar and silently set it to one side. He placed his palm against the wood and, knife in hand, exerted just enough pressure to open the door a crack and thus assure them that they were not locked in.
Willadene caught suddenly at his arm, drawing his body closer to hers so that she could whisper in his ear.
“This is the Wanderers Inn—or rather its cellar. Never in my life can I forget that!”
Cold, she was so cold—and her mouth felt as if she had had ashes forced down her gullet. Mahart tried to summon up energy enough to raise even a finger. Dark—her face was nearly covered with a nasty-smelling slimed rag.
She was so thirsty she could have croaked aloud for water, but even that was denied her. The cold flowed about her like fingers of wind tearing at her.
Outside—surely she was outside, beyond the maze of ways they had dragged her like a horse pack.
Ishbi—he said it—
Somehow those words had penetrated through the torments of her inert body to reach her mind.
“Sling her over the pack mare an’ let’s get a-goin’, then.”
She had been lifted with no gentleness and then had landed hard, facedown across some kind of a frame. However, that maneuver had in a fraction served her a little. The cover on her head had caught on some projection and been jerked free. Those who had left her ignominiously slung over a pack animal had not seemed to notice.
The daylight had hurt her eyes. And all she could see was one horse leg lifting up and plopping down again as
she was carried jokingly forward. But there had been no cobbles under that hoof, and the wind which still ruffled across her body, lashed as it now was like a deer carcass, had carried no city taint. They were certainly out of Kronengred.
She had heard voices, but now the words did not hold in her mind but faded in and out—and she had slipped again into the waiting darkness.
Mahart flinched from a dash of water in her face. She could blurrily see figures moving about her. One knelt and now caught fingers in her matted hair, pulling up her head and bruising her lips by the force with which he pressed a cup against them.
“Grissand damn you fools!
She
wants her alive—not dead— One cannot bargain with nothing! Get a cloak about her and have some of that stew ready— If she does not make it to Ishbi you’ll soon find out who will answer for it!”
He let her drink and then held the cup away, though she protested weakly. Someone she could not see dropped folds of a traveling cloak about her, and she realized that her night robe was near a tattered net now.
They had propped her up, maybe with the pack saddle at her back, and, as the water revived her, she could see more of this company. He with the water bag filled the cup again and held it for her.
“Sip only, or it will come up as fast as it went down!” he warned her.
Though he wore a mail shirt under a quilted leather jerkin and a bowl-smooth helm he was certainly not of the guards she knew. A bush of yellowish beard sprouted wirily from his chin, and above his thick-lipped mouth his nose was dented as if it had been broken in some long ago encounter. There was certainly no sign of compassion in his eyes, the lid of one drawn crooked by a scar. She might have been some animal he tended under orders.
There were at least three others who passed back and forth about what appeared to be a temporary campsite.
Over a fire a pot was heating and she could hear the stamping of horses not too far away.
“Got a fancy for her, Rufus? She ain’t much of an armload. But it ain’t every Tenth as can say he’s had him a High Lady for bedding—”
Suddenly her mouth was dry again, her eyes intent on that face not so far from hers. The man who had come up behind him was much younger, with a sharp set of features as might suit a rat. He wore no armor but rather a travel-stained and smudged set of livery— Blue—silver—
Without a word the man by her side set down the cup and arose with agile ease to backhand the boy, who uttered a loud cry of pain and rage.
“Stow it, trash,” remarked the soldier. “Got that stew ready, Jonas?”
Another young man with a small bowl dipped and brought it half full. Steam filled that air and just as thirst had earlier held her captive now so did hunger arise in her hollow middle.
Mahart discovered that her hands, her arms would now obey her. If she had been roped those bonds had been removed, if something else had held her it had faded.
She held out her shaking hands to cup the bowl.
“It’s hot,” Yellow Beard said. “Take it easy.” Now he turned on the others who had gathered around the fire and were waiting for their own shares. “You listen and you listen good. We has our orders. Want to argue them out with
her
?”
There was a murmur from the young man he had buffeted. “I be for Wyche—”
Yellow Beard laughed harshly. “Now, I’ll just make believe, ’cause you’re young an’ green, as how I did not hear that. Your Wyche may be a strutful man in town—but only ’cause
she
wills it so for now. An’ to get on
her
I wrong side—” He paused. “Now that is something as I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy! We has these orders: to take this wench to Ishbi and turn her over to the
guard—no more no less. An’ she had better be alive when we do that turnin’.”
Having so made plain their orders, he came back to Mahart.
“Now, you.
She
wants you—that’s enough for me. Can you stick on a horse? Riding like a pack won’t do you much good.”
“I can ride.” She could not be sure of that, but if there was any way she could escape the trials just past she would will herself to the greatest effort she could summon. She made her first move by levering her shoulders away from the support, bracing her arms on either side of her body.
The world slung around. Mahart bit her lip until all settled down. Certainly she was far from all she had ever known. There were trees towering around this small glade and a sense that her kind did not belong here. She watched those by the fire. There were five of them, including Yellow Beard who was clearly in command. She had recognized now the livery worn by the youngest man—Saylana’s. This “She” Yellow Beard kept mentioning—the High Lady Saylana?—somehow it was near impossible to think of her as being associated in any way (in spite of all the strangest rumors) with these outcasts.
Ishbi—the name continued to haunt her— From her reading in the past— Ishbi—
Only there was something more important now—the journey which apparently still lay ahead of her. That there would be any reason or hope for appealing to her captors she quickly put aside. She must school herself to patience and watch for any act or chance that might work in her favor.
Luckily they lingered for some time over their meal. Unfortunately, they did not appear to be too talkative a lot and she could not hope for answers to the questions which she tried to push to one side.
However, when they were ready to move on Yellow Beard ordered a pack frame to be left and a blanket placed instead on the back of a head-hanging horse, the lead rope
of which he took into his own charge, drawing her up beside his own mount, the others behind them.
Mahart held her cloak as closely as she could about her, not only for protection against the wandering breezes but also because she realized that it was now nearly the only garment she possessed.
They went at a steady pace but not a swift one, and twice they halted while one or other of the party detoured to one side to inspect the trunk of a tree, as if they so followed some mark, for it was very apparent they were not on any used trail.
At last the countryside about them began to change. There were fewer of the tall trees and more brush, the thicker patches of which they had to avoid. But there were also outcroppings of rocks. These bore no resemblance to the stones of Kronengred, for those were dull gray while these had a greenish cast and were also veined with wider stripes of the same color but of a darker shade.
Some arose like miniature cliffs walling them in at times, and there was life here—lizardlike creatures who clung head downward to the stones and seemed to watch them intently with beady eyes, as if they were fully aware their territory was under invasion. There were birds that wheeled and soared overhead also, sometimes swooping so close to the earth as if to alight on a rock outcrop—though they never did.
Mahart’s body ached from head to foot. They had stiff leather bottles of water hung from their saddles, and from time to time Yellow Beard offered her a drink from his.
She judged by the light that sunset was close, and yet they made no move toward setting up camp. How long had it been since she had lain herself down on her own bed in Kronengred? She had no way of knowing.
At last the passage ahead began to narrow, those standing crags drawing in closer together until they seemed to form two walls between which their party rode. However, here there was a change in those rocks. The deeper-colored
veins did not ran smoothly but bore deep incisions here and there, almost as if they were meant for inscriptions.
Then came one space where the dark-green vein was near as wide as the rock which bore it and that had surely been worked upon by some intelligence, for Mahart found herself staring at a face.
It was of natural size and that of a woman, though there was no indication of any hair framing it. The features were clear-cut. It was beautiful in its perfection—but the perfection itself— Mahart shivered. She had heard them say that the Herbmistress’s apprentice could actually smell evil—well, now she was sure she saw it!
There was movement from beyond that face. A mail-clad form, wearing a very strange helm which completely hid all features, stood in the way before them.
Yellow Beard twitched the lead rein of Mahart’s horse, drawing aside so the animal could pass his own mount.
“This is the one,” he said.
That helm-masked figure reached forward and took the lead rein. There was no answer, merely that jerk on the rein which brought the horse on. But neither Yellow Beard nor any of the others accompanied her. Ishbi—had they at last reached their goal? She had passed that face; had she been any taller she might have brushed against it. And her flesh tingled at that thought. No, it was not Saylana who brooded over the way which led ahead—but someone greater and far more powerful.
Willadene kept her grip on Nicolas, straining to hear any sound emerge from the opposite reach of this cavern where the stairs to the upper floor lay. The fact that there was a lantern set on top of a barrel by the foot of those was warning that someone either was here or intended to shortly return.
Nicolas edged a little to the right where he could get a better sight of those stairs. Save for a distant drip-drip of water there was no sound to be heard.
Suddenly Willadene caught that—the thread of scent which had drawn her along. With all the care at separating one odor from another she could summon, she drew in two deep breaths.
Yes, it was certainly stronger here, as if Mahart had been some time in this place. Either that or—Willadene swung a little away from the stairs. Her fingers were claw sharp in Nicolas’s flesh now. He did not try to shake her off but followed as she went—not toward the steps and the light, but back into the gloom of the huge cellars she had never explored in those days when it had often been her task to hunt some dust-ridged bottle from one of the tottering shelves.
Around two of those shelf towers she pushed a way. Then the beam of their own lantern caught on something and she grabbed up a tatter of cloth, still white enough to be easily spied in this gloom.
The stuff was silk, soft between her fingers, and she did not really need to raise it to her nostrils to know that it was a piece of Mahart’s body linen—her night shift doubtless—which had entrapped her scent so deeply.
The rag had protruded from what looked like solid wall. She could hardly even see the crack from which she had freed it. Nicolas deliberately shifted the shades of the lantern, using the light as he might a sword blade to draw some pattern.
“
Ssssaaa
—” He uttered a hissing noise not unlike that which Vazul’s creature might sound. “Hold—so—” He thrust the lantern into Willadene’s hands, and she watched his gray-dusted hands run fingertips back and forth across the wall—first up and then down from the place where she had found the rag.
“Here!” She concentrated in answer to his urgency, holding the lantern beam on the end of one block of stone which seemed to her eyes to be no different from its fellow. Nicolas had knife in hand now and he seemed able to insert the slender point into a pattern of invisible slits.
Noiselessly a narrow door opened, showing another dark way into which the lantern’s beam seemed swallowed up. Nicolas turned to her.
“This way?” She did not need that rag, though she stuffed it in her jerkin to preserve the faint person-scent. Now she nodded in answer to his question.
He was muttering to himself, and from one or two words she caught she knew he was cursing—but who or what was the object of that anger she had no idea. At least the way was straight, and oddly enough the thick dust they had found in the other passages did not seem to lie here. Their lantern beam flitted across a pile of tree-knot torches, as if this was a much-used path.
It continued straight, though twice there were other openings, but the clue she followed lay in neither direction. However, they were in sight of a third when they saw dim light ahead and a rumble of voices distorted by the passage.
Nicolas whirled her into that side passage. He pushed shut the slide on the lantern, and they huddled shoulder to shoulder waiting.
“Got the city hummin’,” commented one voice. “Tell you it weren’t no good that that head-chopping Prince of theirs weren’t taken. That demon-birthed Vazul will somehow git him into it and not like was planned, neither.”
There was a rough laugh in answer and now the light was plain enough that Willadene could see the two of them.
That
fat lump of spoiled lard. She might not know Nicolas’s more colorful estimate of their situation, but she had her own words for what she found nauseous.
That was Wyche bellowing along. “Let ’em turn the city top to bottom.” He spat loudly at the near wall. “They ain’t goin’ to find th’ wench—an’ without a-knowin’ who has hands on her they ain’t goin’ to push too hard. The High Lady now, she has an eye for the Prince—like as not she’ll make a full meal o’ him afore he knows which side is up.”