Lost Lands of Witch World (38 page)

The wide grasslands and pleasant groves of the Valley gave way now to a landscape narrowing between slowly converging walls, wilder looking, with a
predominance of rocky outcrops. I thought that the Valley must dwindle to a point ahead. In that point, according to Dahaun's directions, lay a little used, climbing way which led to the place where Kaththea had gone, to find that which even the Lady of Green Silences held in awe.

To each his or her own magic, as Dahaun had once said to me. The Valley's was of growth and life from the soil, the Thas' was of things underground, and the Krogan's of the water. I gathered from Dahaun that the place Kaththea had sought was akin to the powers of the air.

The Witches of Estcarp could control wind and rain and tempests, after a fashion. Perhaps my sister planned to draw upon such arts now. Only, if she had gone there with such intent, she had not succeeded.

Shil slowed pace, single-footed warily through a narrow slit between towering walls. No longer was the sun with me, though it was still some hours from setting. But here twilight abode.

Finally the Renthan halted.

“So far—no farther,” came his thought.

A narrow path was before us, but I felt it, too . . . a distinct warn-off to the spirit. I dismounted and slung the strap of the supply bag across my shoulder.

“My thanks for your courtesy, swift-footed runner. Tell them all was well with me when we parted.”

His head was up; he was searching the walls above and beyond. In my sight they were sheer reaches of rock, no place on their surfaces to shelter any would-be ambusher. I had a strong feeling also that this place would not welcome such forces as we had beaten back from the Valley. Shil blew from his nostrils, pawed the ground.

“There is the taste, the smell, the feel, of power here.”

“But not of evil,” I answered him.

He lowered his head so his golden eyes met mine.

“Some powers are beyond our measurement—for good or ill. He who goes this road walks blindfolded in the senses we know.”

“I have no choice.”

Once again he blew and tossed his head. “Go in strength, watch well your footing, and keep always alert with eye and ear. . . . ”

He did not want to leave, but he could not pass some barrier there. Would it also stand against me? I went on with long strides, half expecting that I might find myself running into one of those force walls, such as had once been between us and the Secret Place where Kaththea was shut from the world. But there was nothing.

I looked back once and saw Shil still standing there, watching me. When I raised my hand in salute, once more he tossed his head in answer. Then I turned and kept my eyes only for the forward route, shutting out of mind what lay behind.

For a while the cut sloped gently upward and the footing was easy. Then
I came to the very tip point of that cut. The way was very narrow here. I could stretch forth my arms and have the fingers of each hand brush the walls. Before me was a stair. Plainly no act of nature, but the work of intelligence. On each of those steps were deep graven symbols. Some were of the protective kind of the Valley, but others were strange to me. I did not quite like setting bootsoles upon those marks, yet that I must do if I were to climb. So I went. Seven steps, a landing place the width of three steps, three steps, another such landing, then nine. . . . I could not see any natural reason for such an arrangement, unless the grouping had an occult meaning.

Gradually the stairway grew yet narrower, tapering from one landing to the next. When I was on the last flight there was barely room on each step for two feet set together. I found I made the climb one step at a time, placing my feet together before I raised one for the next step. There were thirteen in this last very narrow way. I found myself counting them under my breath as I went.

The symbols here were all strange: I discovered that I did not like to look at any of them very long. No trace of warning clung to them—I was sensitive enough to the evil of Escore to recognize that—rather it was as if they were never meant for eyes and brains such as mine to sight and understand.

I was tired, though I had not felt any fatigue when I had ridden down the Valley. This was a heaviness which weighted my limbs, made me gasp a little at each step, a need to rest between. My wound had healed fast and clean after Orsya's treatment. It was not that which affected me now, but rather an all-over heaviness of body, a corresponding darkness of spirit.

The stairs were behind me at last, and I stood on the top of the cliff wall of the Valley. Cut into the surface of the stone was a path. As the steps had narrowed little by little, this followed the opposite pattern: beginning no wider than that exit, spreading out, wedged-shaped, beyond to a place where stood a forest of pillars.

Night had come while I climbed and, though I wanted to go on, the weariness was now so heavy upon me I could pull myself no farther than to where I could rest my length in a slot of the road, wrapped in my cloak. So I slept, with no drowsy fall into slumber, but a swift extinction of consciousness. Had I wished, I could not have fought that sleep.

I awoke as swiftly, sat up stiffly, to flex my arms and legs. Dawn light struck here. I ate sparingly from the food Dahaun had packed for me, drank a mouthful of water from my bottle. I must guard well those supplies, she had warned me. For, in troubled lands where the Shadow reached, a man might be brought under evil influences should he eat of what he found growing ripe and ready to his plucking.

Once more I walked that wedge road. The pillars did not appear to be set in any order, nor did they carry any marks of tooling. They might rather have been the boles of petrified frees from which crowns and branches had long since been chipped away. So strong did this feeling of being in a stone forest grow, that
I kept glancing from side to side to see if those missing branches might still lie on the surface between the boles. But the rock was bare. As the wind arose and blew among those standing stones, I could plainly hear the sound present in a grove when a stout breeze sets leaves to rustling. I shut my eyes once and knew that I stood in a grove; yet when I opened them to look, I only gazed upon stone.

The rustling of the unseen wood grew louder, though the push of air against me was no more. There began a wailing, a keening, which were the cries of all the bereft of the world wailing their dead. That, too, died away, and then there was
sound
—words I thought—in no tongue known to me or any man of my kind. I did not
answer
, as had that Other I had provoked in the lowlands. No, these sounds were uttered in a space which might touch upon that in which I moved, but was not mine.

The very feeling of that awesome otherness was such that I did fall, or rather was crushed, to my knees, unable to even think of where that might be—or what lips uttered those
words
.

There followed silence as sharp as if a door had been shut, no wind, no wailing, only silence. I got to my feet and began to run on. So I came into an open space where the road ended, and I stood staring about me.

Stone and rock . . . Across that rock a splash of color, I went to that. It lay in a loose coil as if dropped only a moment earlier. I picked up a scarf, loose, silken, its fine threads catching on my scarred fingers' rough skin. It was green-blue, such a scarf as the women of the Valley wore about their shoulders in the evening. Kaththea had worn a like one when she had laughed with Dinzil at the feasting.

“Kaththea!” I felt it was wrong to raise my voice in that place, but I dared the mind call, as I stood running the soft length back and forth in my hands. “Kaththea! Where are you?”

Silence . . . that dead and awesome silence which had fallen in this place since the closing of the door. To my mind not the faintest answer, though I went seeking.

I coiled the scarf into a small handful and stowed it inside my jerkin to lie against my breast. It had been Kaththea's I was sure. Thus, perhaps, I could use it for a linkage, since a possession can be a draw point.

But where had she gone from here? Not back into the Valley . . . and the road to this haunted place ended here. If she had gone on, it was among those stone trees and there I would follow.

The road had been a sure guide, but once I left it behind and threaded a way among the standing stones, I found I had entered a maze. There was no point ahead I could fix upon as a goal, and, as I twisted and turned, I found myself heading back into the open space where I had found the scarf. On the second such return, I sat down.

That there was a spell set here I no longer doubted. It was meant to confuse mind and eye. To counter it, I closed my eyes upon those bewildering ranks of
trees and concentrated on the days I had spent in Lormt. It had been so accepted that no male could use witch power, that no guardian-ship had been put on the records. It was true that most were written in such allegorical style, with so many obscure references to matters unknown, that those not carefully schooled in witch training could make little or nothing of them. At the time I had been searching there, my one desire was to find a refuge for us, and so I had paid little attention to other secrets.

But some of what I had pushed aside along the way lingered in mind. I had the words which had brought the
answer;
those I had no intention of trying again. Now I must bring to my need other knowledge.

There was a chance. I forced a picture from memory. A page of parchment covered with crabbed, archaic writing. Of the handful of words I had been able to read, perhaps a few would serve. How much power did I have in me? Was I one who had inherited the ability of my father to overstep the boundaries of my sex and be more gifted than other males of the Old Race?

I brought out that scarf I had carried. Now I began to knead and roll it between my fingers, twisting it slowly and with care into a cord. So soft was the material it was like a ribbon. Then I knotted the two ends and laid it down before me, so that what I had was a circle, very vivid against the stone.

Fixing my full attention on it as it lay there, I brought my will into use. I had no training in such matters. All I possessed was a memory of some lines on parchment, a driving need for success, and a will which might or might not be equal to the demand I made upon it.

Kaththea . . . in my mind I built the picture of Kaththea, perhaps not just as she was in life, but as she was to me. I concentrated upon that picture for a long time, trying to see her standing within that green circle. Then—now would come the test of what I knew, or what I might be.

I moved my hands slowly and I said aloud three words.

Hardly daring to breathe I watched and waited. The blue-green circlet trembled . . . one side across. Now it was a hoop balanced on its edge. It began to roll slowly, away from the open, out among the topless, branchless stone trees. I followed it, holding to the hope that I had now a guide.

B
ack and forth the hoop wove a path through the stone wood, and many times was I sure it turned upon itself to lead me in circles. Yet it was my only hope for passing through this ensorceled place. Sometimes I faced the now beaming sun, and then I would remember the old warnings: when a man's shadow lay behind him, so that he could not set eye upon it—that was the time when evil might creep upon him unawares. But, although this place was alien to
me, I did not think of it as evil, rather as a barrier, set up to warn off or mislead those who had no kinship with it. We came at last to the other side of that pillared land and the hoop rolled into the open. It wobbled from side to side as if the energy which sustained it was failing. Yet still it rolled, and the path it followed was straight ahead; now there was no chiseled road, only rough rock worked by time and storms.

To the very end of this plateau the loop brought me before it collapsed, no longer anything but a silken cord. If what powers I had sought to fasten upon it had worked, then Kaththea had come this way. But why? And—how?

I picked up the scarf and once more folded it small, to put in my jerkin, as I moved along the edge of a drop, looking down. There was no visible means of descent; the break was sharp and deep.

When I was sure of that I retraced my steps to examine intently the spot where my hoop guide had fallen. The sun, though westering now, showed me scars on the rock. Something had rested there, under weight. I glanced to the opposite side of the chasm. There was a level space; there could have been a bridge across. But if so, that was gone. I rubbed my thigh where the wound was now but a memory and tried to measure by eye the distance between my stand and the other edge.

Only a desperate man would consider such a leap. But now, ridden by my fears, I was a desperate man. I drew my sword and tied it to the supply bag. By the strap I whirled this around my head twice and let it fly. I heard the clang of the blade against the rock, saw it come to rest a foot or so in from the lip of that other rim.

Next I shed my boots, to make them another bundle with my belt buckled about them, and flung them across that gulf. Under my bare feet the rock was warmed by the sun. I paced back toward the edge of the stone forest, though I did not venture in among those boles. Then I put my energy and determination to the test, racing for the edge of the cliff, arching out in a leap, not daring to let myself believe that I would do anything but land safely on the other side.

I sprawled forward, struck painfully, bruising my body with such force that I feared I might have broken bones. I lay there, the breath driven out of me, gasping, before I realized, with a leap of inner exultation, that I had indeed crossed. But I was sore, when I moved to sit up and look about me. I went limpingly when I once more drew on my boots and shouldered my pack.

The marks which had guided me on the other side were sharper to read here; there were scratches as if something had been dragged along the rock. For want of better track I followed those, to find, wedged in behind some rocks, my bridge; a thing made of three logs bound together with hide thongs. The fact that it had been hidden suggested that its makers thought to use it again and I wondered. Would they so have a secret way of reaching the Valley? And would it be in the best interests of those I had left behind to destroy the bridge here and now.
But how? I did not have the strength to maneuver it back and send it rolling into the gulf. To set it afire . . . that was beyond me. Also I doubted if those we feared could move easily through that stone wood.