Wizards’ Worlds (2 page)

Tanree sat back on her heels. What did she know about this fellow survivor? First
of all, the Falconers lived by harsh and narrow laws no other race would accept. Where
their original home had been no outsider knew. Generations ago something had set them
wandering, and then the tie with her own people had been formed. For the Falconers
had wanted passage out of the south from a land only Sulcar ships touched.

They had sought ship room for all of them, perhaps some two thousand—two-thirds of
those fighting men, each with a trained hawk. But it was their custom which made them
utterly strange. For, though they had women and children with them, yet there was
no clan or family feeling. To Falconers women were born for only one purpose: to bear
children. They were made to live in villages apart, visited once a year by men selected
by their officers. Such temporary unions were the only meetings between the sexes.

First they had gone to Estcarp, learning that the ancient land was hemmed in by enemies.
But there had been an unbreachable barrier to their taking service there.

For in ancient Estcarp the Witches ruled, and to them a race who so degraded their
females was cursed. Thus the Falconers had made their way into the no-man’s-land of
the southern mountains, building there their eyrie on the border between Estcarp and
Karsten. They had fought shoulder to shoulder with the Borderers of Estcarp in the
great war. But when, at last, a near exhausted Estcarp had faced the overpowering
might of Karsten, and the Witches concentrated all their power (many of them dying
from it)
to change the earth itself, the Falconers, warned in time, had reluctantly returned
to the lowlands.

Their numbers were few by then, and the men took service as fighters where they could.
For at the end of the great war, chaos and anarchy followed. Some men, nurtured all
their lives on fighting, became outlaws; so that, though in Estcarp itself some measure
of order prevailed, much of the rest of the continent was beset.

Tanree thought that this Falconer, lacking helm, mail shirt, weapons, resembled any
man of the Old Race. His dark hair looked black beneath the clinging sand, his skin
was paler than her own sun-browned flesh. He had a sharp nose, rather like the jutting
beak of his bird, and his eyes were green. For now they had opened to stare at her.
His frown grew more forbidding.

He tried to sit up, fell back, his mouth twisting in pain. Tanree was no reader of
thoughts, but she was sure his weakness before her was like a lash laid across his
face.

Once more he attempted to lever himself up, away from her. Tanree saw one arm lay
limp. She moved closer, sure of a broken bone.

“No! You—you female!” There was such a note of loathing in his voice that anger flared
in her in answer.

“As you wish—” She stood up, deliberately turned her back on him, moving away along
the narrow beach, half encircled by cliff and walls of water-torn, weed-festooned
rocks.

Here was the usual storm bounty brought ashore, wood—some new torn from the Kast-Boar,
some the wrack of earlier storms. She made herself concentrate on finding anything
which might be of use.

Where they might now be in relation to the lands she knew, Tanree had no idea. They
had been beaten so far south by the storm that surely they were no longer within the
boundaries of Karsten. And the unknown, in these days, was enough to make one wary.

There was a glint in a half ball of weed. Tanree leaped to jerk that away just as
the waves strove to carry it off. A knife—no, longer than just a knife—by some freak
driven point deep into a hunk of splintered wood. She had to exert some strength to
pull it out. No rust spotted the ten-inch blade yet.

Such a piece of good fortune! She sat her jaw firmly and faced around, striding back
to the Falconer. He had flung his sound arm across his eyes as if to shut out the
world. Beside him crouched the bird uttering small guttural cries. Tanree stood over
them both, knife in hand.

“Listen,” she said coldly. It was not in her to desert a helpless man no matter how
he might spurn her aid. “Listen, Falconer, think of me as you will. I offer no friendship
cup to you either. But the sea has spat us out, therefore this is not our hour to
seek the Final Gate. We cannot throw away our lives heedlessly. That being so—” she
knelt by him, reaching out also for a straight piece of drift lying near, “you will
accept from me the aid of what healcraft I know. Which,” she admitted frankly, “is
not much.”

He did not move that arm hiding his eyes. But neither did he try now to evade as she
slashed open the sleeve of his tunic and the padded lining beneath to bare his arm.
There was no gentleness in this—to prolong handling would only cause greater pain.
He uttered no sound as she set the break (thank the Power it was a simple one) and
lashed his forearm against the wood with strips slashed from his own clothing. Only
when she had finished did he look to her.

“How bad?”

“A clean break,” she assured him. “But—” she frowned at the cliff, “how you can climb
from here one-handed—”

He struggled to sit up; she knew better than to offer support. With his good arm as
a brace, he was high enough to gaze at the cliff and then the sea. He shrugged.

“No matter—”

“It matters!” Tanree flared. She could not yet see a way out of this pocket, not for
them both. But she would not surrender to imprisonment by rock or wave.

She fingered the dagger-knife and turned once more to examine the cliffs. To venture
back into the water would only sweep them against the reef. But the surface of the
wall behind them was pitted and worn enough to offer toe and hand holds. She paced
along the short beach, inspecting that surface. Sulcarfolk had good heads for heights,
and the Falconers were mountaineers. It was a pity this one could not sprout wings
like his comrade in arms.

Wings! She tapped her teeth with the point of the knife. An idea flitted to her mind
and she pinned it fast.

Now she returned to the man quickly.

“This bird of yours—” she pointed to the red-eyed hawk at his shoulder, “what powers
does it have?”

“Powers!” he repeated and for the first time showed surprise. “What do you mean?”

She was impatient. “They
have
powers; all know that. Are they not your eyes and ears, scouts for you? What else
can they do beside that, and fight in battle?”

“What have you in mind?” he countered.

“There are spires of rock up there.” Tanree indicated the top of the cliff. “Your
bird has already been aloft. I saw him kill a gull and feast upon it while above.”

“So there are rock spires and—”

“Just this, bird warrior,” she dropped on her heels again. “No rope can be tougher
than loops of some of this weed. If you had the aid of a rope to steady you, could
you climb?”

He looked at her for an instant as if she had lost even that small store of wit his
people credited to females. Then his eyes narrowed as he gazed once more, measuringly,
at the cliff.

“I would not have to ask that of any of
my
clan,” she told him deliberately. “Such a feat would be play as our children delight
in.”

The red stain of anger arose on his pale face.

“How would you get the rope up there?” He had not lashed out in fury to answer her
taunt as she had half expected.

“If your bird can carry up a finer strand, loop that about one of the spires there,
then a thicker rope can be drawn in its wake and that double rope looped for your
ladder. I would climb and do it myself, but we must go together since you have the
use of but one hand.”

She thought he might refuse. But instead he turned his head and uttered a crooning
sound to the bird.

“We can but try,” he said a moment later.

The seaweed yielded to her knife and, though he could use but the one hand, the Falconer
helped twist and hold strands to her order as she fashioned her ropes. At last she
had the first thin cord, one end safe knotted to a heavier one, the other in her hands.

Again the Falconer made his bird sounds and the hawk seized upon the thin cord at
near mid-point. With swift, sure beat of wings it soared up, as Tanree played out
the cord swiftly hoping she had judged the length aright.

Now the bird spiralled down and the cord was suddenly loose in Tanree’s grasp. Slowly
and steadily she began to pull, bring upward from the sand the heavier strand to dangle
along the cliff wall.

One moment at a time, think only that, Tanree warned herself as they began their ordeal.
The heavier part of the rope was twisted around her companion, made as fast as she
could set it. His right arm was splinted, but his fingers were as swift to seek out
holds as hers. He had kicked off his boots and slung those about his neck, leaving
his toes bare.

Tanree made her way beside him, within touching distance, one glance for the cliff
face, a second for the man. They were aided unexpectedly when they came upon a ledge,
not to be seen from below. There they crouched together, breathing heavily. Tanree
estimated they had
covered two thirds of their journey but the Falconer’s face was wet with sweat which
trickled down, to drip from his chin.

“Let us get to it!” he broke the silence between them, inching up to his feet again,
his sound arm a brace against the wall.

“Wait!”

Tanree drew away, was already climbing. “Let me get aloft now. And do you keep well
hold of the rope.”

He protested but she did not listen, any more than she paid attention to the pain
in her fingers. But, when she pulled herself over the lip of the height, she lay for
a moment, her breath coming in deep, rib-shaking sobs. She wanted to do no more than
lie where she was, for it seemed that strength drained steadily from her as blood
flowing from an open wound.

Instead she got to her knees and crawled to that outcrop of higher rock around which
the noose of the weed rope strained and frayed. She set her teeth grimly, laid hold
of the taut strand they had woven. Then she called, her voice sounding in her own
ears as high as the scream of the hawk that now hovered overhead.

“Come!”

She drew upon the rope with muscles tested and trained to handle ships’ cordage, felt
a responding jerk. He was indeed climbing. Bit by bit the rope passed between her
torn palms.

Then she saw his hand rise, grope inward over the cliff edge. Tanree made a last great
effort, heaving with a reviving force she had not believed she could summon, falling
backward, but still keeping a grasp on the rope.

The girl was dizzy and spent, aware only for a moment or two that the rope was loose
in her hands. Had—had he fallen? Tanree smeared the back of her fist across her eyes
to clear them from a mist.

No, he lay head pointing toward her, though his feet still projected over the cliff.
He must be drawn away from
that, even as she had brought him earlier out of the grasp of the sea. Only now she
could not summon up the strength to move.

Once more the falcon descended, to perch beside its master’s head. Three times it
screamed harshly. He was moving, drawing himself along on his belly away from the
danger point, by himself.

Seeing that, Tanree clawed her way to her feet, leaning back against one of the rocky
spires, needing its support. For it seemed that the rock under her feet was like the
deck of the Kast-Boar, rising and falling, so she needs must summon sea-legs to deal
with its swing.

On crawled the Falconer. Then he, too, used his good arm for a brace and raised himself,
his head coming high enough to look around. That he was valiantly fighting to get
to his feet she was sure. A second later his eyes went wide as they swept past her
to rest upon something at her own back.

Tanree’s hand curved about the hilt of the dagger. She pushed against the rock which
had supported her, but she could not stand away from it as yet.

Then she, too, saw—

These spires and outcrops of rock were not the work of nature after all. Stones were
purposefully piled upon huge stones. There were archways, farther back what looked
like an intact wall—somber, without a break until, farther above her head than the
cliff had earlier reached, there showed openings, thin and narrow as a giant axe might
have cleft. They had climbed into some ruin.

A thrust of ice chill struck Tanree. The world she had known had many such ancient
places and most were ill-omened, perilous for travelers. This was an old, old land
and there had been countless races rise to rule and disappear once more into dust.
Not all of those peoples had been human, as Tanree reckoned it. The Sulcar knew many
such remained, and wisely avoided them—unless fortified by some power spell set by
a Wise One.

“Salzarat!”

The surprise on the Falconer’s face had become something else as Tanree turned her
head to stare. What was that faint expression? Awe—or fear? But that he knew this
place, she had no doubt.

He made an effort, pulling himself up to his feet, though he clung for support to
a jumble of blocks even as she did.

“Salzarat—” His voice was the hiss of a warning serpent, or that of a disturbed war
bird.

Once more Tanree glanced from him to the ruins. Perhaps a lighting of the leaden clouds
overhead was revealing. She saw—saw enough to make her gasp.

That farther wall, the one which appeared more intact, took on new contours. She could
trace—

Was it illusion, or some cunning art practiced by the unknowns who had laid those
stones? There was no wall; it was the head of a giant falcon, the fierce eyes marked
by slitted holes above an outthrust beak.

While the beak—

That closed on a mass which was too worn to do more than hint that it might once have
been intended to represent a man.

The more Tanree studied the stone head, the plainer it grew. It was reaching out—out—ready
to drop the prey it had already taken, to snap at her . . . .