Wizards’ Worlds (52 page)

The sun was well up when Jorik came in whistling from a dip in the river.

“This is a stout stronghold, Lord Ka-rak. And with the power aiding us to hold it,
we are not likely to be shaken out in a hurry. Doubly is that true if the Lady aids
us.”

Takya laughed. She sat in the shaft of light from one of the narrow windows, combing
her hair. Now she looked over her shoulder at them with something approaching a
pert archness. In that moment she was more akin to the women Craike had known in his
own world.

“Let us first see how the Lord Ka-rak proposes to defend us.” There was mockery in
that, enough to sting, as well as a demand that he make good his promise of the night
before.

But Craike was prepared. He discarded his staff for a hold on Jorik’s shoulder, while
Zackuth slogged behind. They climbed into the forest. Craike had never fashioned a
bow, and he did not doubt that his first attempts might be failures. But, as the three
made their slow progress, he explained what they must look for and the kind of weapon
he wanted to produce. They returned within the hour with an assortment of wood lengths
with which to experiment.

After noon Zackuth grew restless and went off, to come back with a deer, visibly proud
of his hunting skill. Craike saw bowstrings where the others saw meat and hide for
the refashioning of foot wear. For the rest of the day they worked with a will. It
was Takya, who had the skill necessary for the feathering of the arrows after Zackuth
netted two black river birds.

Four days later the tower community had taken on the aspect of a real stronghold.
Many of the fallen stones were back in the walls. The two upper rooms of the tower
had been explored, and a vast collection of ancient nests had been swept out. Takya
chose the topmost one for her own abode and, aided by her convalescing charge, the
boy Nickus, had carried armloads of sweet-scented grass up for both carpeting and
bedding. She did not appear to be inconvenienced by the bats that still entered at
dawn to chitter out again at dusk. And she crooned a welcome to the snowy owl that
refused to be dislodged from a favorite roost in the very darkest corner of the roof.

River travel had ceased. There were no new offerings on the rock. But Jorik and Zackuth
hunted. And Craike tended the smoking fires which cured the extra meat against coming
need, while he worked on the bows. Shortly
they had three finished and practiced along the terrace, using blunt arrows.

Jorik had a true marksman’s eye and took to the new weapon quickly, as did Nickus.
But Zackuth was more clumsy, and Craike’s stiff leg bothered him. Takya was easily
the best shot when she would consent to try. But while agreeing it was an excellent
weapon, she preferred her own type of warfare and would sit on the wall, braiding
and rebraiding her hair with flying fingers, to watch their shooting at marks and
applaud or jeer lightly at the results.

However, their respite was short. Craike had the first warning of trouble. He awoke
from a dream in which he had been back in the desert panting ahead of the mob. Awoke,
only to discover that some malign influence filled the tower. There was a compulsion
on him to get out, to flee into the forest.

He tested the silences about him tentatively. The oppression which had been in the
ancient fort at his first coming had not returned, that was not it. But what?

Someone moved restlessly in the dark.

“Lord Ka-rak?” Nickus’ voice was low and hoarse, as if he struggled to keep it under
control.

“What is it?”

“There is trouble—”

A bulk which could only belong to Jorik heaved up black against the faint light of
the doorway.

“The hunt is up,” he observed. “They move to shake us out of here like rats out of
a nest.”

“They did this before with you?” asked the Esper.

Jorik snorted. “Yes. It is their favorite move to battle. They would give us such
a horror of our tower that we will burst forth and scatter. Then they can cut us down
as they wish.”

But Craike could not isolate any thought beam carrying that night terror. It seeped
from the walls about them. He sent probes unsuccessfully. There was the pad of feet
on the stairs, and then he heard Takya call:

“Build up the fire, foolish ones. They may discover that they do not deal with those
who know nothing of them.”

Flame blossomed from the coals to light a circle of sober faces. Zackuth caressed
the spear lying across his knees, but Nickus and Jorik had eyes only for the witch
maid as she knelt by the fire, laying out some bundles of dried leaf and fern. Her
thoughts reached Craike.

“We must move or these undefended ones will be drawn out from here as nut meats are
picked free from the shell. Give me of your power—in this matter I must be the leader.”

Though he resented anew her calm assumption of authority, Craike also recognized in
it truth. But he shrank from the task she demanded of him. To have no control over
his own Esper arts, to allow her to use them to feed hers—it was a violation of a
kind, the very thing he had so feared in his own world that he had been willing to
kill himself to escape it. Yet now she asked it of him as one who had the right!

“Forced surrender is truly evil—but given freely in our defense this is different.”
Her thoughts swiftly answered his wave of repulsion.

The command to flee the tower was growing stronger. Nickus got to his feet as if dragged
up. Suddenly Zackuth made for the door, only to have Jorik reach forth a long arm
to trip him.

“You see,” Takya urged, “they are already half under the spell. Soon we shall not
be able to hold them, either by mind or body. And then they shall be wholly lost—for
ranked against us now is the high power of the Black Hoods.”

Craike watched the scuffle on the floor and then, still reluctant and inwardly shrinking,
he limped around the fire to her side, lying down at her gesture. She threw on the
fire two of her bundles of fern, and a thick, sweet smoke
curled out to engulf them. Nickus coughed, put his hands uncertainly to his head and
slumped, curling up as a tired child in deep slumber. And the struggle between Jorik
and his man subsided as the fumes reached them.

Takya’s hand was cool as it slipped beneath Craike’s jerkin, resting over his heart.
She was crooning some queer chant, and, though he fought to hold mind contact, there
was a veil between them as tangible to his inner senses as the fern smoke was to his
outer ones. For one wild second or two he seemed to see the tower room through her
eyes instead of his own, and then the room was gone. He sped bodiless across the night
world, casting forth as a hound on the trail.

All that had been solid in his normal sight was now without meaning. But he was able
to see the dark cloud of pressure closing in on the tower and trace that back to its
source, racing along the slender thread of its spinners.

There was another fire, and about it four of the Black Hoods. Here, too, was scented
smoke to free minds from bodies. The essence which was Craike prowled about that fire,
counting guardsmen who lay in slumber.

With an effort of will which drew heavily upon his strength, he concentrated on the
staff which lay before the leader of the company. Setting upon it his own commands.

It flipped up into the air, even as its master roused and clutched at it, falling
into the fire. There was a flash of blue light, a sound which Craike felt rather than
heard. The Hooded Ones were on their feet as their master stared straight across the
flames to Craike’s disembodied self. His was not an evil face, rather did it hold
elements of nobility. But the eyes were pitiless, and Craike knew that now it was
not only war to the death between them, but war beyond death itself. The Esper sensed
that this was the first time that other had known of his existence, had been able
to consider him as a factor in the tangled game.

There was a flash of lightning knowledge of each other,
and then Craike was again in the dark. He heard once more Takya’s crooning, was conscious
of her touch resting above the slow, pulsating beat of his heart.

“That was well done,” her thought welcomed him. “Now they must meet us face to face
in battle.”

“They will come.” He accepted the dire promise that Black Hood had made.

“They will come, but now we are more equal. And there is not the Rod of Power to fear.”

Craike tried to sit up and discovered that the weakness born of his wounds was nothing
to that which now held him.

Takya laughed with some of her old mockery. “Do you think you can make the Long Journey
and then romp about as a fawn, Ka-rak? Not three days on the field of battle can equal
this. Sleep now and gather again the inner power. The end of this venture is still
far from us.”

He could no longer see her face, the glimmer of her hair veiled it, and then that
shimmer reached his mind and shook him away from consciousness; and he slept.

It might have been early morning when he had made that strange visit to the camp of
the Black Hoods. By the measure of the sun across the floor it was late afternoon
when he lifted heavy eyelids again. Takya gazed down upon him. Her summons had brought
him back, just as her urging had sent him to sleep. He sat up with a smile, but she
did not return it.

“All is right?”

“We have time to make ready before we are put to the test. Your mountain captain is
not new to this game. Matters of open warfare he understands well, and he and his
men have prepared a rude welcome for those who come. And,” her faint smile deepened.
“I, too, have done my poor best. Come and see.”

He limped out on the terrace and for a moment was startled. Illusion, yes, but some
of it was real.

Jorik laughed at the expression on Craike’s face, inviting the Esper with a wave of
the hand to inspect the force he captained. For there were bowmen in plenty, standing
sentinel on the upper walls, arch, and tower, walking beats on the twin buildings
across the river. And it took Craike a few seconds to sort out the ones he knew from
those who served Takya’s purposes. But the real had been as well posted as their illusionary
companions. Nickus, for his superior accuracy with the new weapon, held a vantage
point on the wall, and Zackuth was on the river arch where his arrows needed only
a short range to be effective.

“Look below,” Jorik urged, “and see what shall trip them up until we can pin them.”

Again Craike blinked. The illusion was one he had seen before, but that had been a
hurried erection on the part of a desperate girl; this was better contrived. For all
the ways leading to the river towers were cloaked with a tangled mass of thorn trees,
the spiked branches interlocking into a wall no sword, no spear could hope to pierce.
It might be an illusion, but it would require a weighty counterspell on the part of
the Hooded Ones to clear it.

“She takes some twigs Nickus finds, and a hair, and winds them together, then buried
all under a stone. After she sings over it—and we have this!” Jorik babbled. “She
is worth twenty hands—no, twice twenty hands, or fighting men, is the Lady Takya!
Lord Ka-rak, I say that there is a new day coming for this land when such as you two
stand up against the Hooded Ones.”

“Aaaay—” The warning was soft but clear, half whistle, half call, issuing from Nickus’
lofty post. “They come!”

“So do they!” That was a sharp echo from Zackuth. “And down river as well.”

“For which we have an answer.” Jorik was undisturbed.

Those in the tower held their fire. To the confident
attackers it was as such warfare had always been for them. If half their company was
temporarily halted by the spiny maze, the river party had only to land on the offering
rock and fight their way in, their efforts reinforced by the arts of their Masters.

But, as their dugout nosed in, bow cords sang. There was a voiceless scream which
tore through Craike’s head as the hooded man in its bow clutched at the shaft protruding
from his throat and fell forward into the river. Two more of the crew followed him,
and the rest stopped paddling, dismayed. The current pulled them on under the arch,
and Zackuth dropped a rock to good purpose. It carried one of the guardsmen down with
it as it hit the craft squarely. The dugout turned over, spilling all the rest into
the water.

Zackuth laughed; Jorik roared.

“Now they learn what manner of blood letting lies before them!” he cried so that his
words must have reached the ears of the besiegers. “Let us see how eagerly they come
to such feasting.”

I
T
was plain that the Black Hoods held their rulership by more practical virtues than
just courage. Having witnessed the smashing disaster of the river attack, they made
no further move. Night was coming, and Craike watched them withdraw downstream with
no elation. Nor did Jorik retain his cheerfulness.

“Now they will try something else. And since we did not fall easily into their jaws,
it will be harder to face. I do not like it that we must so face it during the hours
of dark.”

“There will be no dark,” Takya countered. One slim finger pointed at a corner of the
terrace, and up into the gathering dusk leaped a pencil of clear light. Slowly she
turned and brought to life other torches on the roof of the tower over the river,
on the arch spanning the water, on the
parapet— And in that radiance nothing could move unseen.

“So!” Her fingers snapped, and the beacons vanished. “When they are needed, we shall
have them.”

Jorik blinked. “Well enough, Lady. But honest fire is also good, and it provides warmth
for a man’s heart as well as light for his eyes.”

She smiled as a mother might smile at a child. “Build your fire, Captain of Swords.
But we shall have ample warning when the enemy comes.” She called. A silent winged
thing floated down and alighted on the arm she held out to invite it. The white owl,
its eyes seeming to observe them all with intelligence, snapped its wicked beak as
Takya stared back at it. Then with a flap of wings, it went.