Andre Norton - Web of the Witch World

Loyse had already caught his meaning. “The road continues—” Her voice was lowered to a half whisper. And the way ahead did look rough and wild enough to promise that it was no main thoroughfare for those of Tor. They could only keep on it.

There were no more fields walled and planted. And even those scattered blocks of ruins disappeared. Only the fact that now and then they spotted a bare bit of pavement told them the road still existed.

But their earlier thirst was now more than discomfort, it was agony in mouth and throat. Simon saw Loyse waver, put his arm about her shoulders to steady her. They were both staggering when they reached the road’s end—a stone pier which extended into a hellish nightmare of quaking mud, slime and stench. Loyse gave a cry and turned her head against Simon as he wrenched them both back and away from that waiting gulf.

10 JAELITHE FOUND

“I CAN GO no farther . . .”

Simon kept Loyse on her feet with an effort; her stumbling had become a weaving he could barely support. The sight of the quagmire beyond the road’s end had sapped all her strength.

He was hardly in better case himself. The need for water, for food, racked him. And he had kept the girl on her feet only because he was sure that if they gave way now they might never be able to go on again.

Being so lightheaded Simon did not see the first of those balls which had plopped to the ancient roadway and burst to release a cloud of floury particles. But the second fell almost at their feet, and he had caution enough left to stagger back from it, dragging Loyse with him.

But they were ringed in, the dusty puffs rising and melting into a thin wall about them. Simon held Loyse against him, his dart gun ready. Only one could not fight a cloud rising sluggishly. And he had no doubt that this was a deliberate attack.

“What—?” Loyse’s voice was a hoarse croak.

“I don’t know!” Simon returned, but he knew enough not to try to cross the line of the cloud.

So far these flaky particles had not reached towards the two they confined. And they arose straight from the broken balls from which they had issued as if still attached to those sources. They were not so thick that Simon could not see beyond. Sooner or later someone would come to the sprung trap—then would be his turn. There was a full clip of the three-inch needle points in his dart gun.

Now the cloud began to move. Not in at them but around, speeding in that circling until Simon could no longer distinguish particles but saw only an opaque milky band.

“Simon. I think they are coming!” Loyse pulled a little away, her hand was on knife hilt.

“So do I.”

But they were to be given no chance at defense. There was another dull popping sound. A ball from which the circle would not let them retreat, fell, to break. From this came nothing they could see. Only they wilted, to lay still, their hands falling away from the weapons they never had a chance to use.

Simon was in a box and the air was driven from his lungs. He could not breathe—breathe! His whole body was one aching, fighting desire for breath again. Simon opened his eyes, choking, gasping in pungent fumes which arose from a saucer being held by his head. He jerked away from that torment and found he could breathe now, just as he could see.

A wan and murky light came from irregular clusters on the walls well above where he lay. Stone walls, and the damp and chill of them reached him. He looked to the one who held that saucer. In the pallid light perhaps details of features and clothing were not too clear, but he saw enough to startle him.

Simon lay on a bed for this other sat on a stool and so was at eye level. Small, but still large-boned enough to appear misshapen, too long arms, too short legs. The head, turned so that the eyes met his. Large, the hair a fine dark down, not like hair at all. And the features surprisingly regular, handsome in a forbidding way, as if the emotions behind them were not quite those of Simon’s kind.

The Torman arose. He was quite young, Simon thought; there was a lank youthfulness about his gangling body. He wore the breeches—leggings such as were common to Estcarp, but above them a mail jerkin made of palm-sized plates laid scallop fashion one over the other.

With one more measuring stare at Simon the boy crossed the room, moving with that feline grace which Simon had always found at odds with Koris’ squat frame. He called, but Simon heard no real words, only a kind of beeping such as some swamp amphibian might voice. Then he completely vanished from Simon’s sight.

Although the room had a tendency to swing and sway Simon sat up, steadying himself with his hands. His fingers moved across the bed coverings, a fabric fine and silky to the touch. Save for the bed, the stool on which the young Torman had sat, the room was empty.

It was low of ceiling, with the massive beam across its middle forming a deep ridge. The lights were clustered haphazardly about. Then Simon saw one of them move, leave a cluster of three and crawl slowly to join a singleton!

Though the stone walls were damp and chill, yet the swamp stench did not hang there. Simon got warily to his feet. The radiance of the crawling lights was dim, but he could see all four walls. And in none was there any opening. Where and how had the Torman left?

He was still bemused over that when, a second or so later, he heard a sound behind. To turn quickly almost made him lose his balance. Another figure stood on the far side of the bed, slighter, less ill-proportioned than the boy, but unmistakably of the same race.

She wore a robe which gleamed with small fiery glints, not from any embroidery or outer decorations, but from strands woven into the cloth itself. The down which had fitted the boy’s head in a close cap, reached to her shoulders as a fluffy, springing cloud, caught away from her face and eyes by silver clasps on the temples.

The tray she held she put down on the bed for lack of table. Then only did she look at Simon.

“Eat!” It was an order, not an invitation.

Simon sat down again, pulling the tray to him, but still more interested in the woman than what rested on its surface. The paleness of the light could be deceiving but he thought that she was not young. Though there was no outward signs of age such as might appear among his own kind. It was rather an invisible aura which was hers—maturity, wisdom, and also—authority! Whoever she might be, she was a woman of consequence.

He took both hands to raise the beaker of liquid to his lips. It was without any ornament, that wide-mouthed cup, and he thought it was of wood. But its satiny surface and beautiful polish made it a thing of beauty.

The contents were water, but water in which something had been mixed. This was not ale or wine, but an herb drink. At first the taste was bitter, but then that sharp difference vanished and Simon drank eagerly, relishing it the more with every mouthful he sipped.

On a plate of the same shining, polished wood were cubes of a solid, cheese-seeming substance. As the drink, they had a wry taste upon the first bite, and grew more savory later. All the time Simon ate the woman stood watching him. Yet there was an aloofness about her; she was doing her duty by feeding one whom she found unacceptable. And Simon began to prickle under that realization.

He finished the last cube and then, his faintness gone, he got to his feet, favored the silent watcher with much the same bow as he would have used to greet one of the Guardians.

“My thanks to you, lady.”

She made no move to pick up the tray but came forward, around the end of the bed, so that a large cluster of the crawling lights revealed her more clearly. Then Simon saw that the lights were indeed crawling, breaking up their scattered companies to gather along the beam overhead.

“You are of Estcarp.” A statement and yet a question as if, looking upon him, the woman doubted that.

“I serve the Guardians. But I am not of the Old Blood.” His appearance, Simon decided, was what puzzled her.

“Of Estcarp.” Now it was a statement. “Tell me, witch warrior, who commands in Estcarp—you?”

“No. I am Border Warder of the south. Koris of Gorm is marshal and seneschal.”

“Koris of Gorm. And what manner of man is Koris of Gorm?”

“A mighty warrior, a good friend, a keeper of oaths, and one who has been hurt from his birth.” From whence had come those words for his use? They were not phrased to match his thinking, yet what he had said was the truth.

“And how came the Lord of Gorm to serve the witches?”

“Because he was never truly lord of Gorm. When his father died his stepmother called in Kolder to establish the rule for her own son. And Koris, escaping Kolder, came to Estcarp. He wishes not Gorm, for Gorm under Kolder died, and he was never happy there.”

“Never happy there—But why was he not happy? Hilder was a kindly man and a good one.”

“But those of his following would never let Koris forget he was—strange . . .” Simon hesitated, striving to choose the right words. Koris’ mother had come from Tormarsh. This woman could even be kin to the seneschal.

“Yes.” She did not add to that but asked a very different question. “This maid who was taken with you, what is she to you?”

“A friend—one who has been with me in battle. And she is betrothed to Koris who seeks her now!” If there was any advantage to be gained from the thread of connection between the seneschal and the marsh people, then Loyse must have it.

“Yet they say she is duchess in Karsten. And there is war between the witches and those of Karsten.”

It would seem that Tormarsh, for all its taboo-locked borders, still heard the news from outside the swamp.

“The story is long—”

“There is time,” she told him flatly, “for the telling of it. And I would hear.”

There was a definite order in that. Simon began, cutting the tale to bare outline, but telling of the ax marriage made for Loyse in Verlaine’s towers and all that happened thereafter. But when he spoke of the ship-wreck on the coast and how he, Koris, and two survivors of the Guard had climbed to discover themselves in the long-lost tomb of Volt, where Koris had boldly claimed Volt’s ax from the hands of the mummified dead, the Torwoman halted him abruptly, made him go into details. She questioned and requestioned him on small points, such as the words, as well as he could remember, that Koris had used when he asked the ax of Volt, and how that ax had been taken easily, with the long dead body crumbling into dust once the shaft had been withdrawn from the claw hands.

“Volt’s ax—he bears Volt’s ax!” she said when he was done. “This must be thought upon.”

Simon expelled his breath in a gasp. She was gone—as if she had never stood there, solid body on solid pavement. He took two strides to the same spot where she had been standing only an instant earlier, drove his boot down in a stamp which proved the footing as solid as it looked. But—she was gone!

Hallucination? Had she ever been here at all? Or was this one of those mind-twisting tricks such as the witches played? Shape-changing—that was as eerie in its way as this instant vanishing. So this could be another form of magic, with its own rules, simple enough when one was trained by those rules. And not only the Torwoman practiced it, for the boy had winked out in just the same way. But to those who did not know the trick, this room or others like it would continue to be prison cells.