Horn Crown (Witch World: High Hallack Series) (12 page)

Though there was dead wood tangled among the bushes and the trees which grew here and there, I set no fire to be a beacon. Rather I half sat, half lay, my back against the rock, staring out into the gathering shadows. As ever when I let down my guard there crept vividly into my mind the picture of that keep hall as I had seen it as a dream of that long ago feasting time. Why had they gone, those who had gathered there? What blight had fallen to leave their fine hall an empty ruin? I had seen no signs of war there. Had it been a plague, a threat from afar which was so potent as to send them into flight?

I started, gasped.

Had I heard that with my ears? No, that cry had been an invasion of my mind. I hunched forward on my knees, striving to draw from the fast coming night a clue as to who had so summoned help and where they, he, or it might be.

Again that plea shuddered through me. From behind—from the mist-veiled mountain! But who? I pulled around and up to my feet, staring up that wall of rock. There was a wink of light now visible in the night, though it was but a formless splotch through that mist. Fire? It did not have the color of true flames. A trap with that as bait? I could remember only too well those silver women and their wooing song among the rock circles.

For the third time came that frantic, wordless summons. Caution told me to remain where I was. But I could not shut out that plaint by covering my ears. It found its way to my very bones. Nor could I stand against it—for it seemed to me that strange though it came, it was a cry for help from one of my own kind— Gathea, Iynne—? It could be either or both, a power that had come to them out of this sorcerous country.

I left my frail suggestion of safety and began to climb. The wind came down slope, striking against me. On it was an odor—not a stench of evil nor yet the musky sweetness which I had associated with Gunnora, with the Moon Shrine, and its pallid flowering trees. This I could not put name to.

Though I knew that I was a fool to venture thus into the night, still I could do no less, but I could go with caution, and a wary eye and ear. So I did not hurry blindly, but set my feet as carefully as I could, waiting tensely between each step for another of those pleas to reach me.

The splotch of light held but there was nothing else now. Nothing unless one could give some name to that sensation of awaiting some significant action, some demand which grew stronger and stronger with every step I won up slope.

Luckily there were bushes here which I could grasp when the slope became steeper, using them to haul myself farther and higher. I reached the outer edges of the mist and that clung as a clammy cloak about my body, settling in drops of moisture on my face. Yet it had not put out that light in the center of its curtain.

I stopped short every few steps I won, to cast about. I was blind, but I was forcing my ears to serve me. There was a chill to this fog as if it were indeed sleet of late autumn instead of a normal mist. It seemed also to deaden sound for I heard nothing.

The light neither dwindled nor grew, but remained as a beacon—a beacon to summon—what? Me? I might well be only caught in the web meant for another. Yet I could not bring myself to turn aside, even now when that call no longer reached me.

Then—

Out of the very ground at my feet there arose a form near as light as that ghostly fog. It reared tall and I could not mistake that soft rumble of growl. A mountain cat—Gruu?

I paused again, hand reaching for sword hilt. This lurker was surely as large as Gruu, and, if it were a nocturnal hunter like many of its breed, then even steel and my best efforts might be very little to halt any attack.

Once more it growled, then it turned and was gone into the mist which swallowed it instantly. Gruu! Surely that had been Gruu or I would not have gone unchallenged. Which meant that Gathea was up there!

I made the rest of that climb in a scrambling run, wanting to call out her name, but fearing that if she were in trouble I would alert whatever held her captive or besieged. Again the white-silver cat awaited me as I plunged on into a circle of light.

That radiance arose and spread out from an object resting on bare rock—a ledge level enough to have been cut from the mountainside by purpose. I could not see what made its core. At that moment I was more intent upon the form which lay limply beside it, over which the cat crouched, using his rough tongue gently across a cheek.

Gathea it was. Something had dealt harshly with her. The stout trail clothing which she had worn was in tatters, so that her arms, showing the red marks of deep scratches, were bare near to the shoulder, and even her breeches were shredded into strips which were held together by knotting one rough length onto another.

Her hair was a wild tangle around her head, matted and twined with bits of stick and dead leaf. While her face was only skin laid thin across the bones, and her hands, bruised and scratched, were as skeletal as those claws of the winged thing I had fought.

I knelt beside her, my fingers seeking out the pulse of life, for so limply did she sprawl that I thought perhaps what I had caught had been her death cry, and that she was gone before I had reached her. Gruu drew back a little and let me to her, but his green eyes were steady on me, as if he would challenge my tending.

She was alive, yes, but I believed that her heart fluttered weakly and that she perhaps had come near to death. I needed my supplies. There was water, and that I dripped first upon her face and then, steadying her head against my body, I forced the edge of the small pannikin I carried between her lips and trickled what I could into her mouth. Looking about that eerie pillar of light I could see no sign of supplies, but remembering Zabina’s instructions I crumbled some dried leaves into the pannikin and swirled water about with them. The aroma which came from the mixture was fresh, pungent, with a clearing rush of sharp scent. Again I steadied her against my body and was able to get a mouthful of the herb liquid then another into her. Her eyes opened and she looked up at me.

There was no recognition in her gaze; she was one who saw into other worlds, beyond me, through me— Still I got her to drink all of the restorative, then I crumbled a handful of coarsely ground grain into more water—making a lumpy gruel which, using a small horn spoon, I got into her and which she did chew and swallow. Yet never did she seem to see
me,
or even appear to realize that someone tended her.

For the first time I raided the wallet which had been hers. In one box I discovered more salve which, working as gently as I could, having lain her down by the light, I anointed the worst of the blood-encrusted scratches so deeply lacing her arms and legs.

Gruu watched me intently as ever. Before I was quite done, he arose and faced outward into the night, his head up, as if he either listened or scented some peril. Restlessly he began to pace back and forth, keeping, I noted, between the two of us and the mist curtain which hedged in the small clear pocket about the flame.

Then he voiced one of those roars with which he had challenged the creatures of the night. Before I could move, he leaped out to vanish into the fog. I could hear the sounds of a mighty struggle, grunts, shrill cries, which certainly had never broken from Gruu’s furred throat, last of all a gurgling.

I stood over Gathea, my sword out and ready. Yet nothing came through the mist until Gruu himself paced back. There was a dark spattering down his chest, and more blood dripping from his large fangs. He sat now, unconcerned, by the light and started to clean his coat of those traces of battle, licking and then hissing with disgust. I at last took that folded bandage I had carried with me and wet it with my water.

Approaching the cat I ventured to wash the worst of the thick clotting from his ruff where a long trickle had matted deeply into his fur. He suffered me to do this, and I did not wonder at his disgust at his own attempt to clean himself, for what I sponged off did not seem like true blood, was instead a thicker, noisome stuff with so foul a smell that I nearly had to hold my nose as I ministered to him.

Gathea did not regain full consciousness—at least she still did not appear to note that I was with her. However, I was able to get more of the grain gruel into her, spoonful by spoonful, and I made certain that her many scratches, though deep and red and angry-looking, were not real wounds. How she had won this far without supplies and what was the nature of the light which glowed by us remained mysteries. I began to believe that she had collapsed from sheer lack of food and exhaustion. Yet that strange summons which had brought me to her had been of such a nature that must have been more than just weakness of body to make her cry for aid.

With Gruu as sentry I felt more at ease than I had since I had left the keep. The cat lay now by the fire, licking his paws, seemingly wrapped in his own concerns. Yet I was sure he could be trusted.

I made the girl as comfortable as I could, her own wallet for a pillow, spreading over her the travel cloak I had kept as a roll across my shoulder. Shaking the water bottle beside my ear I guessed I had used its contents freely and I must find a mountain spring by morning—perhaps Gruu could help.

Stretching out an arm’s distance away from Gathea I allowed fatigue to claim me. The light still burned as high as ever, but it did not dazzle the eyes. There was a softness in its gleam which did not shine too strongly.

I was in the light, the very core of it. There I awaited an unfamiliar intelligence. First it challenged me; there came an abrupt demand—unvoiced. From whence had I come and what would I do? At that there flashed into my mind in answer (though that was not of my calling) the symbol my amber lady had worn, the sheath entwined with fruitful vine.

My unseen challenger was startled, so much that mind picture alone might have struck a telling blow. Yet there was nothing in me which wanted battle between us. I felt no enmity toward that which had so peremptorily demanded my right to be where I was. This ability to build in such detail a mind picture was new to me, yet it seemed right. No longer was my vision only the pendant, that altered, to become a true sheaf of harvest, the fruit wound around the stock possessing real life, so that I could have reached forth a hand to pluck each globe from the burdened vine. Though I could not see her, I believed that behind me at that moment stood my lady of the keep. Though I longed mightily to look and see if that were so, still I could not turn my head.

That which the fire in the mist represented gave way. An impatient arrogance which had filled it when it would not only weigh me, but would judge me to my fate, faded. Instead there was a questioning—tinged with astonishment—not because of me but for the coming of her who was so standing to sponsor my actions.

I felt forces sweep around me, through me. Questions were raised and answered, and I understood nothing. Save that, in some manner, I had been made free of a road, though the power behind the fire was still resentful and grudging. Then I was given, at last, the boon of deep sleep which my aching body craved.

12.

I looked up into an unclouded sky, pulled out of a sleep so deep that my body felt stiff as if I had lain so for a toll of seasons upon seasons. That which had drawn me into wakefulness continued.

Speech clear and strong, then a period of silence, as if the speaker waited for an answer. Followed by speech once again. The strange words singsonged with that rhythm our clan bards used upon formal occasions when either House history or some fragment of the Laws were recited. However, I could not understand one of those fluting sounds which must be words.

I turned my head. Gathea no longer lay as I had left her, but sat cross-legged in sunlight. It was she who spoke, addressing those unknown words to the air, though even Gruu had vanished leaving only emptiness.

A fever may plunge anyone into a condition of seeing, speaking or acting so. That was my first thought, that she was held in a strong delusion. Nor did she turn her head when I sat up abruptly. Was she fevered indeed or trapped in some new witchery?

Before her, as she sat so, was that which must have provided the guide fire of last night. As I looked upon it I wanted to scramble up, away, drag her with me—if I could. For there, wedged between rocks holding it upright, was what could only be a portion of the wand she had fashioned under my own eyes from a tree limb.

A third of it was gone. Even as I looked another small section broke away—became a fluff of ash carried off by a puff of breeze. There was no other fuel—nothing save that fire-eaten rod.

Still Gathea sat and spoke, waited for an answer I could not hear, then spoke again. At times during those waiting intervals, she nodded as if what she alone heard made excellent sense. Once or twice she frowned, seemingly in concentration, as she strove better to understand an admonition or advice. So real were these actions that I could well begin to believe the fault lay within
me
, that I was deaf. Just as that speaker remained invisible to my eyes.

Though I wanted to reach out to her, my hand was stayed by a strong impression that this indeed was no illusion. Or if so, it was mine not hers. At last she gave a sigh and the angle of her head changed. She might now be gazing up to someone who had been seated on a level with her, but had now arisen. One of her hands lifted in a small gesture of farewell. Still her eyes followed the invisible one who left us.

Only then was I able to move. When I caught her lightly by the arm, she started in real surprise. However the eyes she turned to me were knowing—they saw me, knew me.

“Gathea—” I spoke her name.

Her frown became a battle flag of rising anger as she jerked back.

“You have no right spying—” she flared.

That impatient gesture she had made to free herself from my hold sent my wallet swinging. The clasp, never strong since my battle with the winged creature, burst open, and there fell out, to roll across the ground, that cup of Horn-Crowned man which I had brought out of the deserted keep; from its interior in turn the gem-leaf of the tree woman since I had put these two marvels in keeping together.

Gathea’s eyes dropped from me to that cup which came to rest against her own boot, the horned head uppermost, to the leaf bright in the sun. They widened into a stare of sheer astonishment, then centered upon that head as if it were alive.

She retreated farther, still staring at the cup as I reclaimed the leaf. I saw the tip of her tongue appear between her lips to moisten the lower one. There was no anger in her face now. What I read there was surely the beginning of fear. In a voice hardly above a whisper she asked:

“Where did you find these?”

“They were gifts,” I answered deliberately. “The cup given me by a great lady who read for me something of the future.”

Gathea did not raise her gaze from the cup. Beneath the sun-browning of her face a pallor spread.

“She had a name—this giver of cups?” That whispered question was even thinner. Her unease was plain by the way she turned swiftly to seize upon what was left of her wand, holding that as a man might hold a sword when fronted by an enemy.

“Her name was Gunnora,” I replied. Some trait in me was satisfied by seeing her so shaken. As if, in her present state, I could reach her—whereas before she had been far removed from me in spirit, even though she was only a hand’s distance away in body.

Once more her tongue crossed her lips. Now she glanced from the cup to me. There was a beginning of calculation in that look, or so I read it. She might earlier have dismissed me with little concern. Now I had taken on a new value.

“What is her sign?” That was no whisper. She rapped the question out as if she had a right to demand a quick answer.

“A sheath of grain bound by a fruited vine.” I never would forget anything which was of that lady who had sat beside me in another time, and perhaps even another and stranger world.

Gathea nodded. “That is so, but—” she shook her head like one who is at a loss. Then she raised her eyes full to mine. There was that in them which searched, yet was still rooted in unbelief. “Why—why did
she
give this to you? And where did you find her? There was no” shrine—” The hand holding the wand arose to her breast as if she hugged, like a shield, that reduced symbol of her own dealing with the unknown.

“I found her in no shrine,” I repeated, picking up cup and leaf, putting one within the other again. “There was a keep, old and deserted. Through some power I feasted there with those who once held this land. My amber lady was one of them, but she alone knew me for what I was, and gave me this.”

“But she did not tell you—” Gathea’s eyes narrowed. Her awe and wariness were fast fading. If I had been of importance to her moments earlier, I was now losing that standing. “No, it would seem she did not. Still you have the cup, even if you do not know how to use it—and that has meaning in itself.”

I was irked by her swift return to her usual assurance, to that domination she had held, or sought to hold, over me since we had come into this western land.

“She gave me one other thing,” I said. “Which I am to use in the proper time—”

Gathea’s gaze traveled on to the wallet into which I was fitting the cup once again. It was my turn to shake my head.

“No, it is not the leaf—though that I had also of a lady who had power of her own. You have your secrets, these I hold as mine.” Nor did I ever then intend to tell her of that kiss and what my amber lady had said concerning it. I was no wooer of this witch maid. Whatever dream might have sprung, or would spring, from out of my memory I would not share that! Instead I moved on to make my own demands:

“What have you learned concerning Iynne or your moon magic dealing? With whom did you speak just now?”

Gathea gave a slight movement of the shoulders which was not quite a shrug.

“What I seek—” she began, but I interrupted her with new confidence:

“What
we
seek. I will find my lord’s daughter if it can be done in this land of many surprises and mixed magic. Have you any word from your invisible friend as to where our path must run?”

I was sure that she wanted to deny me, to turn and walk away. Yet I was as certain that she could no longer treat me so. I might not know what power issued from the goblet which I carried, but the fact that it was mine at all plainly made her reluctantly consider me as a trail companion she could not ruthlessly leave behind.

“Past the mountains beyond—”

I looked deliberately at the heights before us, my head moving so I could view those lying to the south on to the ones rising in the north.

“A wide land for searching,” I commented. “Surely you are able to narrow our wandering better than that!”

For a long moment I believed she was going to refuse. Her frown was back, and she held the wand almost as if she would like to lay it across my face. Such a rush of anger reached me that it was as if the blow had truly been dealt. A moment later wonder started in me that I had been able to sense so clearly her emotions. Though acts of anger such as Garn’s blow (which had made me as nothing among my own kind), were open, still I had never before felt within me anything like this understanding of another.

I unslung the second wallet—her own—which I had curried for so long, held it out to her.

“Yours. You will find all untouched within. The strap has been mended.”

My action appeared to distract her anger for a moment. Gathea took the wallet, holding it almost as if she had never seen it before. A deep score was cut across its surface where one of the talons of the winged creature had slashed.

“That was done by a flying thing.” I made my voice casual.

“Flying thing—the Varks! You have fought with a vark!”

“After a fashion. Though I wonder if they can be truly killed, at least they take a deal of killing if they are.” I recalled that severed hand which had crept toward me like some monster possessing separate life of its own. “It would seem you have learned more of this land since we parted. Enough at least that you can give name to that—and what else?”

Once more her face was unreadable. “Enough.”

Enough? Well, I would push her no more now. Instead I continued briskly:

“Where do we head across these mountains? Still due west?”

Gathea gave a low whistle and Gruu slipped into place between us as if she would go only so under his escort. She looked sullen, and, had I had my will I would have turned on my heel and left her then and there. Only she was my guide to Iynne. And, for my own inner honor, I must do what I could for one who carried the blood of my own House—since in part it was my carelessness which had led my lord’s daughter into danger in the beginning.

We climbed in silence, Gruu in the lead, as if the great cat knew exactly what path to take, though I could detect no sign that there had ever been a way here which had been followed by more than perhaps his own kind. The mist had cleared entirely. I could look back upon the land below, stretching out even to the edge where the deserted keep stood. I wondered if Gathea had passed through there; if so what had been her experiences, though I was in no mind to ask her. She had raised a firm barrier between us, and, for now, I was content to have that so.

Steep as the slope was it did not tax us as that first height on which I had found the lair of the Vark. Now and again I did glance up into the sky to see if we might be observed by such an enemy. However the day was bright and clear and nothing moved above.

We did not try to scale the sharp set peak, rather Gruu brought us in a way around it, through a crevice so narrow at times that we had to turn sideways to win beyond. Then once more—at nooning I judged by the sun’s height—we came out upon another ledge able to look down and out upon a new land.

What lay behind us was a mixture of desert and wilderness, a harsh and desolate country. What lay ahead was richly green. There was no mistaking the distant glimpses of what could only be towers, the slim white markings of roads. Gathea stood surveying this before glancing at me over her shoulder.

“This is guarded land—”

I grasped her meaning. She was declaring that she alone might have the power to continue. Well, that I would test when the time came, though the rich look of that territory ahead suggested that if Iynne had, in some way, found a refuge here she might well be in better case than I had feared.

Now my companion swung farther around. “Do you not understand?” Her tone held a hiss like the sound Gruu might make in warning to any who thought to take a liberty with him. “You are not prepared, there are barriers here you cannot hope to cross!”

“But ones which will fall easily before you? Perhaps manned by the invisible?”

She tapped the wand she had clung to during all our climb against the flattened palm of her other hand. Her gesture was one of impatience and irritation. Then, seeming to come to some decision, she added:

“You cannot begin to understand. It would take years—long seasons of time for you to unlock the doors between you and the proper knowledge. I have been schooled from childhood. Also I was born of stock which had held certain powers from generation to generation. I am a woman and these powers are entrusted alone to those who can stand under the moon and sing down the Great Lady! You are—you have nothing!”

I thought of Gunnora, of my amber lady, and of the cup which plumped the wallet hanging from my shoulder and my jeweled leaf. Thus I did not accept the belief that only a woman might be akin to what ruled here.

“You think of steel—of a sword—” Gathea continued so swiftly one word near broke on the next. “This place has weapons you cannot begin even to dream of. I tell you there is no place for you! Nor can I aid you. All my strength I shall need for myself—to carry through what I must do. Your kin-lady took from me what was mine, what I have birthright to! I shall get it back!”

Her eyes were as fierce as those of an untamed hawk. I saw that she gripped that wand so tightly her knuckles stood out in pallid knobs.

“There is a time for swords, also for other weapons. I have not said that I do not believe in your powers—or in the strangeness of this land. I have had my own contact with that.” My hand went then not to sword hilt but to the bulge in my wallet.

She laughed. There was scorn in the sound. “Yes, the cup of the Horn-Crowned One, but you do not even know the true meaning of that. By ancient tradition he who wears the Horn Crown holds power only for a season or so, then his blood, his flesh, go to enrich the fields, to be a fair offering to the lady—”

“To Gunnora?” I asked and did not believe her.

Gathea stared. “You—you—” It was as if so many words boiled in her throat that they choked her into silence. Then she turned, began to descend with such reckless speed that I hurried to catch up as well as I could, lest she slip to end on rocks below. While Gruu flashed past me, crowding in ahead of her at last, to stand rock still keeping her where she was until I joined them.

“Shall we go,” I asked her, “together?”

I knew that she longed to deny me, to continue that headlong dash as she had done when she had lost me before the crossing of the other range, save that the cat would not move and she had no room to push past his bulk.