Wizards’ Worlds (27 page)

I almost could not believe our battle won. But before us, where we crouched together
on the wide seat of that throne, the last glimmer of light died. There was no gateway
now into elsewhere. Outside the outlaws of the Waste might be waiting, but we two
had battled something greater than any malice of theirs, and for the moment we were
content.

Sand Sister

T
HE
moment of birth came in the early dawning when the mists of Tormarsh night still
curled thick and rank about the walls of Kelva’s hall. This in itself was an ill thing,
for, as all well knew, a child who is to have the foresight and the forereach must
come into the world at that time: the last moment of one day and the first of the
next; while under a full moon of the Shining One is indeed the best time to welcome
a new Voice among the People.

Also this was no lusty child who entered the world crying a demand for life and the
fullness thereof. Rather the wrinkled skin on its undersized body was dusky, and it
lay across the two hands of the healer limply. Nor did it seek to draw a breath. But
because all children were necessary for the Torfolk and each new life was a barrier
against the twilight of their kind, they labored to save this one.

The healer set lips upon the cold flaccid ones of the baby and strove to breathe air
into its lungs. They warmed it and nursed it, until at last it cried feebly—not to
welcome life but to protest that it must receive it. At the sound of that cry Mafra’s
head inclined to one side as she listened to that plaint which was more like the cry
of a
luckless bird trapped in a net than that of any true child of Tor.

Though her eyes were long since blind to what the Folk could see, being covered with
a film which no light could hope now to pierce, Mafra had the other sight. When they
brought the child to her for the blessing of the Clan and House Mother, she did not
hold out her hands to receive the small body. Rather she shook her head and spoke:

“Not of the kindred is this one. The spirit who was chosen to fill this body came
not. What you have drawn to life in it is—”

She fell silent then. While the women who had brought the child drew away from the
Healer, now staring at the baby she held as if the wrap cloth of the clan birthing
enfolded some slimy thing out of the encroaching bogland.

Mafra turned her head slowly so that her blind eyes faced each for the space of a
breath.

“Let no one think of the Dark Death for this one.” She spoke sharply. “The body is
blood of our blood, bone of our bone. This much I also say to you: what now dwells
within that body we must bind to us, for there is a strength indwelling in it which
the child must learn to use for herself. Then when she uses it for those she favors
it will be both a mighty tool and a weapon.”

“But you have not named her, Clan Mother. How can she dwell in the clan house if she
bears not our name freely given?” ventured then the boldest of those who had faced
Mafra.

“It is not in my gift to name her,” Mafra said slowly. “Ask that of the Shining One.”

It was now morning and the mist was curtain heavy, blanking out the sky. However,
as if her very words had summoned the creature out of the air, there swooped across
the women there gathered one of the large, silver-gray moths that were dancers in
the night air. This settled for an instant on the wrapping of the child, fanning gently
its palm-wide wings. Thus the healer spoke:

“Tursla—” Which was a name of the Moth-maid in the very ancient song-tale of Tursla
and the Toad Devil. Thus it was that the child who-was-not-of-the-clan spirit was
given a name which was in itself uncanny and even a little tinged with ill-fortune.

Tursla lived among the Torpeople. After the fashion of their ways she who had borne
the child was never known to her as “mother,” for that was not the custom. Rather
all the children of one clan were held in love by the elders of their House and all
were equal. Since Mafra had spoken for her, and the Tormarsh itself had sent her a
name, there was no difference made between Tursla and the other children—who were
very few now.

For the Torfolk were very old indeed. They spoke in their Remember Chants of a day
when they had been near unthinking beasts (even less than some of the beasts of this
old land) and how Volt, The Old One (he who was not human at all but the last of a
much older and greater race than man dared to aspire to equal) had come to be their
guide and leader. For he was lonely and found in them some spark of near thought which
intrigued him so he would see what he might make of them.

Volt’s half-avian face still was one they carved on the guard totems set about the
fields of loquths and in their dwelling places. To his memory they offered the first
fruits of their fields, the claws and teeth of the dire wak-lizard, if they were lucky
enough to slay such. By Volt’s name they swore such oaths as they must say for weighty
reasons.

Thus Tursla grew in body, and in knowledge of Tormarsh. What lay across its borders
was of no consequence to the Torfolk, though there was land and sea and many strange
peoples beyond. Not as old naturally as Torfolk, nor with the same powers, for they
had not been blessed by Volt and his learning in the days their clans were first shaped.

But Tursla was different in that she dreamed. Even before she knew the words with
which she might tell those
dreams they caught her up and gave her another life. So that many times the worlds
which encased her periods of sleep were far more vivid and real than Tormarsh itself.

She discovered as she grew older that the telling of her dreams to those of her own
age made them uncomfortable and they left her much to herself. She was hurt, and then,
angered. Later, perhaps out of the dreams, there came to her a newer thought that
these were for her alone and could not be shared. This brought a measure of loneliness
until she discovered that Tormarsh itself (though it might not be the worlds through
which her dreams led her) was a place of mystery and delight.

Such opinion, however, could only be that of one who wore a Tor body and was reared
in a Tor Clan; for Tormarsh was a murky land in which there were great stretches of
noisome bog from which reared the twisted skeletons of long-dead trees—and those were
oftentimes leprous seeming with growths of slimy substances.

There were the remnants of very ancient roads, which tied together in a network the
islands raised from these marshy lands, and age-old stone walls enclosed the fields
of the Torfolk, rearing also to form the clan halls. Always the mists gathered at
night and early morning and wreathed around the crumbling stones.

But to Tursla the mists were silver veiling, and in the many sounds of the hidden
boglands she could single out and name the cries of birds, the toads, frogs, and lizards,
though even those were not like their distant kin to be found other places.

Best of all she loved the moths which had given her her own name. She discovered they
were drawn to the scent of certain pale flowers which bloomed only at night. This
scent she came to love also and would place the blossoms in the silvery fluff of her
shoulder-length hair, weave garlands of them to wear about her neck. Also she learned
to dance, swaying as did the marsh reeds under the winds, and as she danced the moths
gathered about her, brushing
against her body, flying back and forth in their own measures about her upheld, outstretched
arms.

But this was not the way of the other Tormaidens, and when Tursla danced she did so
apart and for her own pleasure.

The years are all the same in Tormarsh and they pass with a slow and measured beat.
Nor do the Torfolk reckon them in any listing. For when Volt left his people they
no longer cared to reckon time. They knew that there was war and much trouble in the
outer world. Tursla had heard that before she had been born a war leader of that other
land had been brought into Tormarsh by treachery and had been taken away again by
his enemies with whom the Torfolk had made an uneasy and quickly broken pact.

Also there was still an older story—but that was whispered and could only be learned
if one plucked a hint there, added a word here. Even further back in time there had
been a man from outside whose ship had foundered on the strip of shore where Tormarsh
actually came down in a point to the sea. And there he had been found by one who was
a clan mother.

She had taken pity on the man who had been sore hurt and had, against all custom,
brought him to the healers. But the end to that had been sadness, for he had laid
a spell of caring on the First Maiden of that clan and she had chosen, against all
custom, to go forth with him when he was healed.

There had come a time when she returned—alone. Though to her clan she had said the
name of a child. Later she had died. Yet the name of the child remained in the chant
of the Rememberer. Now it was said that he, too, was a great warrior and a ruler in
a land no Torfolk would ever see.

Tursla often wondered about that story. To her it had more meaning (though why she
could not have said) than any of the other legends of her people. She wondered about
the ruler who was half Tor. Did he ever feel the pull of his
part blood? Did the moon at night and perhaps one of the lesser mists which might
lay in his land awake in him some dream as real as the strange ones which haunted
her? Sometimes she said his name as she danced.

“Koris! Koris!” She wondered if his mate among the stranger people held his heart
in truth and if so, what was she like? Did he feel divided in his heart as Tursla
did? She was by all the rights of blood fully of Tor and yet had this ache in her
spirit which would never be stilled and which waxed stronger with every year of her
life.

She grew out of childhood and she set herself obediently to the learning which she
should have. Her fingers were clever at the loom and her weaving was smooth, with
delicate pale patterns quite new among the Torfolk. Yet no one remarked upon any strangeness
in those designs and she had long since ceased to mention her dreams. Lately she had
indeed come to feel that there was a certain danger in allowing herself to become
too deeply immersed in such. For sometimes they filled her with an odd feeling that
if she was not careful she would lose herself in that other world, unable to return.

There was an urgency in those dreams, which plucked at her, wishing her to do this
or that. The Torfolk themselves had strange powers. Among them such talent was not
accounted in any way alien. Not all of them could use these—but that, too, was natural.
Was it not true that all had each his or her own gift? That one could work in wood,
another weave, a third prove a hunter or huntress skilled in tracking the quarry.
Just so could Mafra, or Elkin, or Unnanna, transport a thing here or there by will
alone. The range of such talents was limited, and the use of them drew upon the inner
strength of the user to a high degree so that they were not for common employment.

In her dreams lately Tursla had not roamed afar in those strange landscapes. Rather
she had come always to stand beside a pool of water, not murky or half overgrown
with reed and plant as were the pools of Tormarsh, but rather a clear green blue.

More important, what she had felt in each of those recurring dreams was that the reddish
sand which rimmed it around, as the old soft gold the Torfolk used would rim a gem,
had great meaning. It was the sand which drew her—always the sand.

Twice with the coming of the Shining One in full sighting, she had awakened suddenly,
not in Kelva’s House but in the open, awakened and was afraid, for she knew not how
she had come there. So mused that she might have wandered into one of the sucking
bogs and been trapped forever. She came to be afraid of the night and sleep, although
she did not share with any the burden she bore. It was as if one of the geas set by
Volt himself bound her thoughts, laid a silencing finger across her lips. She grew
unhappy and restless. The isle of the clan houses began to feel like a prison.

It was on the night of the highest and brightest coming of the Shining One that the
women of the Torfolk must gather and bathe in the radiance of the One’s lamp (for
so was the body quickened and made ready that children might come forth) and there
were too few children. But Tursla had never come to the Shining One’s place of blessing,
nor had this been urged upon her. This night when the others arose to go she stirred,
meaning to follow. But out of the darkness there came a quiet voice:

“Tursla—”

She turned and saw now that some of the light insects had crawled from their crevices
to form a circle on the wall, giving the light of their bodies to illuminate the woman
sitting on the bed place there. Tursla bowed her head even though that woman could
not see her.

“Clan Mother—I am here.”