Horn Crown (Witch World: High Hallack Series) (18 page)

The ground was rising again. Iynne took the slope easily, even leaping now and then across a pocket of earth to the top of a rock and then ahead. Over the crown of that hill she went as I ploughed doggedly after. When the other side of the ridge came into sight I nearly stopped short as I witnessed what awaited us a little below.

There was that dark-robed crone who had been working her spells in the Moon Shrine. She was partnered, not by any human kind. Rather one of the flying monsters such as I had fought by its lair stood on her left—this being a female and much taller than the crone, its wings fanning the air lazily, but its clawed feet firm planted on the ground. To her right was another figure—and at the sight of that I slowed pace.

It was both man and beast in an evil mixture of the worst of both. The body from the waist down was covered by a bristly pelt, the feet were hoofed like those of a bull. Huge and bulllike also was its masculine organ, so fully visible that it would seem it flaunted its sex, or was prepared to use it as a weapon of sorts.

Above the waist that bristle hair thinned, though it still grew thicker on chest and along the shoulders and upper arms. The arms themselves were overlong, its huge hands dangling low. But it was the head and face which had startled me into slowing pace.

There was a resemblance, a horrible and fearful resemblance to the face on my cup. That representation was noble; this was vile. A single being might have been split in two, all good in its nature to one side, the evil pulled to the other. This man-beast was the reverse of the Horn Lord—and he was not crowned. No entwined antlers rode on his thick tangle of curly hair.

His head was thrown back, and now he mouthed a roar which was part a beast's cry, part laughter of cruel triumph. While the crone by his side flung high her arms, her fingers moving like a weaver's shuttle. The winged woman thing smiled, her lips parting to show fang teeth.

Iynne, seeming to see no threat in those before her, was still running eagerly toward them, though she slowed when she nearly tripped over a stone set in the grass. I was too far away to reach her. Taking n chance I flung the cape after her, aiming as well as I could with that roll of the dank cloth.

It uncoiled in the air, and I saw that I had done better than I had hoped I might, for it whipped over her head, then dropped about her. She took only one more stride; then, blinded and startled, she fell sprawling, still well away from the waiting three. I spurted to her side as she still fought with the cloak.

The laughter of the beast-man died away. What rent the air—each word she uttered was like tearing open the very sky over us—was the chanting of the crone. She called on Powers, that much I knew.

The beast-man stood, grinning now, his wide fists resting on his hairy hips, about him all the confidence of a bully, a victor in many battles. His confidence was very sure and his eyes held a glint of red fire as if there were no natural orbs within those hollows, rather some other means of seeing the world and bending what he saw to his own purposes.

Back and forth the winged woman teetered, rising now so that only her toes were fast upon the ground, her wings beating with longer and stronger strokes. I felt she was about to launch herself straight at me and I drew steel.

Seeing the blade bare in my hand moved the beast-man to more open laughter. I had thrown my left arm about Iynne, held her as tightly as I could. If she went to them, if that hag laid hand upon her, I knew that she would be utterly lost, that this time no power I could summon would bring her free again. All that was still good, clean, and human in her would die and what was left was far better dead. Death itself might be the greatest gift I could give her now—when I sensed that they could take her at their pleasure. Better far to draw the edge of my blade across her throat—

“Do it, young fool!”

I saw the beast-man's flare of flame within his eye pits. “Give her to us in blood—we shall take her more gladly so.”

So their power could reach beyond clean and sudden death. That was a new and chilling thought. I kept glancing at him, though I willed myself not to. He was so like in part to the Horn-Crowned One, yet so dark and lost. It is human nature to be a mixture of good and bad—perhaps what was better in me had been drawn one way by that image in the cup. Now the lowest inclined to this being.

“True—you think straight and true, fool. You are mine, do I desire it so.” He gestured.

Fire burned in my loins. I was caught up in just such a wave of lust as I had been when the Presence of the Black Tower had faced me. To toss aside the cloak—to take this girl, I held to—! I clamped my hand so hard about the hilt of my sword that the guard brought sharp pain. It was that small pain which aroused me. I was able to tear my gaze loose from the hold of his stare.

There was a pulling about me, what the crone wove, that net of her sorceries, was closing about us both. I would go to death—if I was lucky. lynne to much worse.

Then that strength which had come to me among the barrows moved. I could accept or deny it. There would be only this one time of choice at last. If I accepted what it was I must do so fully. But I was a man. As a human I went my own way. To allow myself to become a tool of any power—good or evil—was I not then surrendering all that made me what I was?

Time—I wanted time! But there was no time left. I flung up my head, looked up into the dull cloudiness of the sky which closed us in as if we stood in a dungeon of a keep. Even all the land about us had taken a grim overcoating of gray which denied even the fresh green of the growth, all that I knew as life.

I moistened my lips with my tongue. For a moment more—just one moment—I held on to the Elron I knew—the Elron I had always been. Then I called: “Hi, Holla, Kurnous!”

It was like being caught up and twisted in a mighty hand, my blood sent to run in another fashion, my bones altered in a tortuous grip. I was filled with an overpowering sweep which shook me from side to side, as if buffeted by the greatest wind of any storm. Still I did not fall. There was a sharp, agonizing pain in my head. I could only think of a place with many doors long closed, all being battered inwards—or outwards—at once. So that which had been hidden behind them was freed and came flashing out.

What was I? I could not have said. I saw and heard things for which no man of my race had words, could have given name to. The tearing, the rending grew less. How long had it lasted? It had seemed to my tortured smaller self to have gone on for days out of time.

Then I was standing and Iynne crouched beside me, looking up at me with dazed eyes, a thread of spittle running from her slack, open mouth, while those other three still fronted me. Only, the winged one had lost her smile, the beast-man no longer laughed. Rather, he too, showed snags of teeth, and there was such fire blazing not only from his eyes, but the whole of him, as to set the grass about him blazing, save that it did not.

While she who Iynne called Raidhan stood with her hands upraised, yet her fingers had stopped their weaving, hung limply downward, as if all strength had been drawn out of them. What the three saw in me I could not tell. Only my heart warmed and leaped. I had thought that in this surrender I would lose all. Rather all had been drawn to me. I must make haste now, forget my wonderment at the richness I had been shown which had been locked within a child (for all men no matter what the tale of their years were children if they knew not their strength). There would be time now to savor all I had gained— later.

Once more I looked into the curtained sky and called:

“Holla, Kurnous!” Those talents which had been body bound linked within me, so more than my voice rolled across the land.

My answer came—the fluting of the horn—not in search, but in a peal of triumph, as if a quarry was not only sighted, but had been brought to bay. Though I was no questing hound, rather the sword of the hunter.

Then—

He came out of nowhere. No, not out of nowhere, but from the other place which marched beside this world, and which in time might become mine also. He was as tall as Garn, but his mail was a coat of shifting light which glowed about his body in green, and brown, and blue. I had been right—though the head on the cup was but a very dim imagining of what the Horn-Crowned Lord was—still his features were not too far from those of the beast-man. There were the Light and Dark. And I remembered in a flash then something Gathea had once said:

As above, so below. Each Power must have its light side and the dark—they were balanced. Save when that balance was disturbed and one grew the greater, then the fates—the need for all things being equal—took a hand. The righting of the balance might be bloody and dire, still it must come within all existing worlds.

The three before us gave no ground. Instead they began to swell, to take on stature, more and greater substance—striving to balance even now against the Horn-Crowned Hunter.

There was another disturbance of air.

Longing caught at me even to look upon her. Rich gold and amber light made her garment as she fronted the crone, her head high as a lady of power giving judgment. Yet—there was that in Raidhan which was a withered, far-off remnant of the same bountiful richness my amber lady wore as the body she had chosen now to assume.

A third coming—there was another winged one. But the brightness of this hurt the eyes. I could not look at her directly. The air raised by her wings blew against me, bringing the clear scent of small spring flowers, among last year's dead leaves.

“As above, so below,” I said softly. There was movement beside me. Iynne pulled upward, her hand groping out as if she sought some support. I took her fingers into mine. They were cold and she was shivering as one who stood beset by high drifts of winter's snow

18.

Thus they fronted each other—Light and Dark. Though Iynne and I were not part of this meeting, I understood, through that path to the past which had opened within my mind, that this was no new struggle. In this haunted land there had long been a swing of the balance, favoring now the Light, again the Dark; and I knew that the coming of my own people might well set it once more atilt and so bring forth such warfare as man of the kin could not conceive.

Gunnora—her spell held for me; I would ever, I realized, cleave to that which she ruled—for she had brought part of me alive. Part of me—the rest—that was liege to Kurnous, the Horn-Crowned Lord. I was sworn to him by my own desire, and did not regret that choice. In him there appeared that quality which I had seen in the Bard Ouse, opener of gates, and in the Sword Brothers. At that moment I began to wonder if all our journey had honestly been a matter of choice, or had we, in some manner, been summoned into this world, that we might supply the opportunity to rebalance again the immortal scales.

How did the gifts and talents of these who confronted each other appear? Did they indeed need others, outside their own kin and kind, outside their knowledge, to bring about the proper time and place, the action for rebalancing? This was largely a forsaken land; had the numbers of the Old Ones become so few that now they would struggle against each other for possession of those of our own blood?

As I thought this there was speech between them. I put my arm about Iynne, for she had half fallen against me as if her legs could no longer support her; her strength might have been sucked away to feed the greedy need for power that abided here. Raidhan's bony arms dropped to her sides, hidden in the black sleeves of her robe. The winged woman's grimace became more pronounced. She spat and the spittle landed close to the feet of the shining figure who was her opposite—whose brilliance was too much for mortal eyes to pierce.

“It is again the hour—”

Did that ring in my ears or, rather, did the words marshal within my head? Kurnous spoke as he moved a pace toward the beast-man. “You have challenged, Cuntif—so I answer. Your gate is not about to open again!”

His opponent snarled. “But
you
have opened gates in plenty, wearer of horns. Now you bring others into the game—was that not forbidden of old?” He pointed directly at me. “Because the blood has grown thin, the heroes have all died, you summon these lesser ones and strive to fashion new liegemen. That is against the Oath—”

“Against the oath? When you would have made use of him—or your companion would have. Who summoned him with the
cup
—to put that to a foul purpose? We shall have no devil child born in Arvon!” It was Gunnora who spoke before her tall companion. “And you, Raidhan— your trap is sprung, your victim has been brought forth out of that bondage of deceit you wove. She is still a maid, in spite of your enchantments, and no vessel for evil.”

From the shining one came lilting notes, like the clear song of a bird—a wondrous trilling which made the heart glad to her. She, who was the gross parody of that presence, hunched her shoulders, allowed the tips of her wings to trail among the tall growing grass.

“Yes, the gates have opened,” the Horn-Crowned Lord said calmly. “When there comes a time for the shifting of forces, then we must summon those who can be aroused. From these so called there may be a new beginning. We have been long alone in a deserted land. Not all can we deal with—but there is always fertile ground waiting for the right seed. They shall be given their choice, and that shall be freely made, as is the right of all living things.”

“That girl has chosen!” Raidhan pointed a bone-thin finger at Iynne.

I tightened my grip more on Garn's daughter. She was not going to that infamous three.

“Not freely, not with true understanding,” countered Gunnora. “Do you think I do not know how you entrapped her? She has not within her that spark which should have flared of itself for a real choice. Look you, is that not so?” She turned a little toward the two of us and held out her hand.

I felt such a hot desire that I thought I might sway as I stood. But Iynne cried out as one stricken by a sharp blow, slipped about in my hold, to press her face against my shoulder. She might be turning from a sight she could not bear to look upon.

“You would have used her—not by her true choice!” There was pity in Gunnora's eyes. “You would have brought about the Great Secret coupling between your evil forces and an empty one—debased that which is of the Light!”

Once more she looked to the crone. “Three we are, nothing in the Lore binding can make it otherwise. But also we are pledged, you, I, Dians, to keep the faith—or there will be a reckoning.”

“Once before,” Kurnous took up that attack of words, “there was the strife of Light and Dark—there followed death, in spite of deeds for good. Harm and destruction rent wide this land and we were near spent—near banished because of it. Freedom of choice must remain.”

“I have my place, my power, you cannot deny me!” flared the beast-man.

“Have I denied that? Freedom of choice. Those you can openly win—they shall be your liegemen, for there shall be that within them which can only answer to
your
call. These two have chosen—”

“
She
has not! You yourself have said it!” Raidhan snarled at Gunnora.

“In her way she has. She is not of those who can be touched because their minds closed to us. Ensorcellment is forbidden; those who come wish it more than their other lives. Call her now without those spells!” ordered Gunnora.

The crone's expression was as thunderous as the heaviest of storms. I saw her sleeves flutter as if her arms moved, but she made no ritual gesture. Perhaps she was forced to accept the truth of what my amber lady said.

“You see?” There was an odd note in Gunnora's voice—could it have been a tinge of
pity
? Did she feel a little warmth for this twisted, wasted, ugly female creature? “What was done, must now be undone— Now!”

There was a force about her, a deepening of the warm gold light which I saw outline her figure. A point of this swept out like a well-aimed dart. I saw the crone stumble back a step. Her face was truly venomous. Her mouth twisted as if she wished to spit poison in return.

Then her shoulders drooped. If she could have taken on a heavier burden of years, she would have done so at that moment. Her hands arose, jerkily. I could sense her own will fighting a stronger force she could not withstand. This was not Gunnora's doing—the division lay within herself, bringing her back into balance against all her Rival for more power of her own.

She spoke, four words—those rumbled, thundered. I fell as if both earth and sky answered with a shifting, as if two worlds overlapped for the space of a breath. Then we were once more in a single time and place.

I held—nothing! Iynne was gone, leaving empty space between my arm and my body. Then I cried out and Gunnora looked to me quickly.

“Have no fear for her, she has been returned to her own people. Nor will she remember. That she does not carry within her a dread child which would have been a bane for all of us—that is because you stood firm. Be glad!”

“You have not won!” The beast-man roared, his voice promising blood and savage death. “This is not the end—”

Kurnous shook his crowned head. “Neither of us can ever win. You will continue to try through the years to gain your will, but there will, in turn, always be one to stand against you—the balance will remain.”

“Not forever!” The beast-man swung his arm across his body in a furious gesture of repudiation.

He was gone!

The crone showed a straggle of yellow teeth in a sneer. “Not forever,” she repeated in turn. Her black sleeves whipped about her body as if there were a wind blowing, though I did not feel it, and it did not even ruffle the grass where she stood. Enwrapped in the blackness which covered her spare body, she dwindled until she was like a sere leaf which that wind carried away with it into nothingness.

Now the winged woman gave a harsh cry, unfurled her pinions, and leaped high into the air. Then she too sped away across the sky, the shining one flying after her.

The other two turned to face me fully. Enough remained in me of the earlier, more youthful, unfinished Elron so that I asked:

“The Dark is then loosed to work its way here? What then, will be the fate of the clansmen?”

“No land is all light without dark. For if there is no dark how could the light be judged and desired?” Kurnous asked in turn. “As it has been said—this is a near-empty land. There will be born among those who came with you some who are open to us—light and dark. Choices will be fully theirs. Others shall remain unknowing, for they will be of another kind and not seekers—”

I thought now of the presence in the Black Tower and it seemed to me that good might well be termed evil if such was allowed to have its way with its foul lures—without hindrance of those who might help.

“Not without hindrance—”

I began to believe that there was no need of speech between us. This was the lord I had chosen indeed and by that choice I would live from this hour on. Still there might come times when I would be troubled, when it would seem that good could do much and yet did not.

“Power—it rests upon the balance of power,” Kurnous continued. “Do you not understand that whoever gathers too much power, be it of the Light or the Dark, tips the scales and only chaos will fill the land? We learned that lesson long ago—and found it hard learning. This land was once great and strong until the balance was upset. Rebuilding will take very long—and many times that will seem beyond the strength of those who attempt it. They will try—for in your people lie the seeds. You will grow beyond your own belief that such can be achieved.”

Some part of me knew the truth of his speech. Yet human impatience remained.

“My lady Iynne is truly safe?”

“She will awake in the same place from which she was taken. Raidhan laid there a snare at the coming of your people. But her purpose was defeated because when she summoned the cup, you, who had set your mark already upon it, came also. For this lifetime it is yours,” Gunnora said. There was a difference about her. That overwhelming impact which she had on me appeared to have ebbed. I could look upon her and feel content, happy in a way I had not known before, but that fiery longing no longer moved me. I saw her smile.

“Not now—that is a hunger you shall know, yes, but in the proper time and with the proper one who will share it.”

“Gathea—and Gruu?”

There was no smile on Kurnous's face. Rather he looked at me as if surveying a liegeman about to go into battle, to make sure that his man was properly armed, well prepared.

“The cup is yours, the rest must lie with you. Again free choices—for you both. Do you choose to face a trial knowing that may be denied? Or do you accept what will come—good or ill.”

I did not understand what he would tell me. But I had an answer for what I wanted most myself.

“Gathea—Gruu—they may need me. I would go to them.”

“Very well, so you have chosen. Go then and do what your heart tells you to do!”

It was no whirlwind which bore me away, nor any wings set on my shoulders. Rather there came a moment of dark when I believed I was back with the Presence—in that place where no light ever reached. Then came light—moonlight once more, as if the day were left behind.

Before me was a Moon Shrine. Not that of the dales, nor that sinister place in which Raidhan an had tried to muster her helpers for foul witchery. This had a brightness of pure light—perhaps another part of the balance—standing to equal that other shrine where Iynne had waited defoulment and death of spirit.

She whom I sought was before the altar stone, and her body was silver white, for she had thrown aside all clothing, bathing in the radiance, drawing to her the power alive in this place. In the air above the altar stone hung a column of brilliance, veiling a figure I could hardly see.

Arms upheld, Gathea worshipped, her eyes closed, yearning open and avid in her face. My fingers went to buckles, to latchings. I put from me, first the trappings of war and death, and then all else so that I, too, had only the light, the light and the cup, and with it, as memory stirred and impulse ordered, that leaf of the forest woman.

As I moved to the shrine the light gathered thick before me. I felt it resist me, that resistance also attacking my mind—offering a sharp protest, a denial of what I carried, of what I would do. There arose out of the light, where he had been lying across the space between the two pillars before me, the silver body of Gruu. His lips wrinkled back in a soundless snarl of warning.

Then his eyes, as brilliant as any gems in that strong light, rested on the cup, before again meeting mine. Out of what had awakened in me I spoke to him mind to mind, reassuring that cat, who was more than cat, his place in my life which would be ours for the future.

“This is my right—and her choice.”

So Gruu moved aside and I entered into the Moon Shrine.

So much power! It beat against me, I could feel the cool pressure of it against my skin. My flesh prickled as if tormented by thorns. I felt an urge to hurl myself forth, but I took one step and then the next. The cup I held at the height of my heart, the leaf warm in my other hand.

Gathea turned suddenly, as if some warning or uneasiness had struck through the serene sorcery which filled this place. I saw her eyes widen. She raised a hand to ward me off.

But I knew what was to be done, I had made my choice—hers lay yet before her. I dropped the leaf into the hollow of the cup. It lay solid for only a second or two, then it melted, swirling down and then up, to near fill the cup—the bounty of nature herself summoned to bless this hour.

As a liegeman might do in high ceremony before his lady I went down on one knee. Was there a slight feeling of pressure on my head? Light indeed—yet I was ready for the crown—though that would not be of my summoning.

Gathea pointed a finger at me.