Lost Lands of Witch World (64 page)

When the mother had gone carrying the child, the seeress sighed, leaning back against the padded rest she now used all the time to support her skeletal frame.

“It is well. You are worthy to be called ‘daughter.' ”

At that moment her approval meant much to me, for I respected her knowledge. We were neither friends nor unfriends, but more like two chips hewn from the same tree whirling together in a pool to float side by side; there was too wide a span of years, experience, strange knowledge separating us for there to be more than need, respect, and agreement to bind us.

“I am old,” she continued. “If I looked into that”—she gestured at the globe which ever sat at her right hand, and which she now never used. “If I looked into that I would see naught but the final curtain.” She fell silent but I was held to her side by a strong feeling that there was more she must say and that it was of great importance to me. Then she raised her hand a little, signing with her fingers toward the doorway of our hut, and even that slight effort seemed to exhaust her.

“Look—beneath the mat—”

It was a dark mat, not fashioned of woven strips of hide and fur as were the others in the hut, but rather of some fiber. And it was very old. Now at her bidding I went to lift it, to look upon the underside, which I did not remember having seen before.

“Your—hand—above—it—” Her mind words were as whispers, fading.

I turned it all the way over and held my hand above its surface. Straightaway there was a glowing of lines there and runes came into being. Then I knew what bonds she had laid upon me, not by my will, but by hers. For this was a spell which would only affect those in tune to such mysteries. It would tie me to her and this way of life. And in me resentment was then born.

She hitched herself higher on the rest; her hands lay on the ground on either side of her body.

“My people—they need—” Was that an explanation, even the beginning of a plea? I thought so. But they were not
my
people; I had not accepted them ever. I had not tried to escape because she had offered me the regaining of my lost knowledge. But let her indeed pass behind the final curtain and I would be gone.

She read my thoughts easily. In our relationship I could not shut her out. Now she shook her head in a slow, wavering movement.

“No,” she denied my plan, elusive as it was. “They need you—”

“I am not their seeress,” I countered quickly.

“You—will—be—”

I could not argue with her then, she was so shrunken, so fallen in upon her wisp of body, as if even that slight clash of wills between us had drained her almost to death.

I was suddenly alarmed and called Atorthi. We gave her what restoratives there were, but there comes a time when such can no longer keep a struggling spirit within worn-out clothing of flesh and bone.

She lived yet, but only as an anchor to her spirit, which pulled impatiently at this useless tie with the world, eager to be free and gone.

And through all the rest of that day and the next so did she lie. There was naught Atorthi and Visma could do to arouse her. Nor could I reach her via the power any more to know that she still had a faint tie with earth and us. And when I looked outside the tent-hut I saw that all the clan was sitting in silence, their eyes fixed upon the door.

At the midnight hour there was a sudden surge of life, as a high tide might flood a bay. I felt once more her command in my head as her eyes opened and she looked at us with intelligence and the need to bend us to her desires.

“Ifeng!”

I went to the doorway to signal to the chieftain who sat between two of the fires they had built as men erect defenses against that which prowls the dark. If not eagerly he came, neither did he linger.

Visma and Atorthi had braced her higher on the backrest so she almost sat upright with some of her old vigor. Now her right hand gestured me to come to her—Visma withdrawing to give me room. I knelt beside her and took her cold claw, the fingers closing about mine in a tight and painful spasm, but her mind no longer touched mine. She held to me but she looked to Ifeng.

He had knelt, a respectful distance from her. Then she began to speak aloud, and her voice, too, was strong as it might once have been when she yet kept age and eventual dissolution at a goodly distance.

“Ifeng, son of Tren, son of Kain, son of Jupa, son of Iweret, son of Stoll, son of Kjol, whose father Uppon was my first consort, the time has come that I step behind the final curtain and go from you.”

He gave a low cry, but her hand raised, as the grip of the other on mine tightened yet more, and she held out both to him, drawing my hand with hers.

Now he put forth both his hands to her and I saw there was not so much personal sorrow to read on his face, but fear such as might be felt by a child threatened with desertion by an adult whose presence means security against the terrors of the dark and unknown.

Under Utta's grip my hand was brought to his and she dropped it between his palms where he closed upon it with a hold harsh enough to make me cry out, had I not steeled myself against such a display.

“I have done for you the best I might,” she said and the gutturals of this language I had learned were as harsh in my ears as his grip. “I have raised up one to
serve you as I have”—she made a mighty struggle to complete that, the effort bringing her forward from the rest, wavering weakly from side to side—“done!” She got the last word out in a cry of triumph as if it were a war shout to be uttered into the very face of death. And then she fell back, and that last thin thread holding her to us was broken forever.

U
tta's burial was a matter of high ceremony for the Vupsalls. I had never witnessed such before and I was astounded by their preparations: there was such ritual as one would not associate with a wandering clan of barbarians, but rather a civilization very old and pattern-set by years. Perhaps it was the last vestige of some age-old act which was all they had brought with them from a beginning now so hidden in the foggy past they could not remember it.

She was dressed by Atorthi and Visma in the best her traveling boxes had to offer, and then her wisp of body was bound round and round with strips of dampened hide which were allowed to shrink and encase her withered flesh and small bones for eternity. Meanwhile the men of the tribe went south for almost a day's journey and there set about digging a pit which was fully as large when they had done as the interior of the tent in which she had spent her last days. To that pit the tent was taken, along with sleds full of loose rocks, all to be set up again.

I tried to watch for my chance of escape during all this, but the magic Utta had laid upon me held and I had not enough power to defeat the runes I had so unknowingly set foot on when I crossed into her tent. Let me try to venture beyond the boundaries of the camp alone and there came upon me such a compulsion to return as I could not fight, not unless I gave my full will and purpose to it, which a fugitive could not do.

During the four days of preparation I was left to myself in a new tent set a little apart. Perhaps the tribe expected me to make some magic beneficial to their purpose, for they did not urge me to help with the labors for Utta, for which I was thankful.

On the second day two of the traveling cases were brought by women and left just within my tent. When I explored these I found that one contained bundles and bags of herbs, most of which I identified as those used for healing, or to induce hallucinatory dreams. In the other was Utta's crystal, her brazier, a wand of polished white bone, and two book rolls encased in tubes of metal, pitted and eroded by time.

The latter I seized upon eagerly, but at first I could not master their opening. They were carved with symbols, some of which I knew, though they had slight differences from the ones I had seen many times before. On the ends of each
were deeply set a single design or pattern. The markings seemed to have been less affected by time than the cases. There were fine twists of rune lettering—but I could not read it—surrounding as a border a small but very distinct picture of a sword crossed by a rod of power. Hitherto I had never seen two such symbols in close combination, for among the Wise Women the rod was the sign of the sorceress, the sword that of the warrior, and such were considered unseemly in contact, one female, the other male.

By very close study I finally found the faint cleavage mark which was the opening of the cases, and by much labor sprung their very stiff catches. But my disappointment was great to discover, though the rolls inside were intact, that I could read neither. Their runes might be the personal jotting of some adept who had devised a code for the better keeping of secrets.

At the beginning and end of each roll the crossed sword and rod were clearly drawn in colors: the sword red, the rod green touched with gold. This at least reassured me that what I held was not of the Shadow, for green and gold were of the light, not the dark.

The drawing surprised me, for here, as was not so apparent in the pattern on the cases, the sword was laid over the rod, as if suggesting that action was the first interest of the user, to be backed, not led, by the Power. And printed with a broad pen beneath it were letters which did make sense—or at least they formed themselves into a readable name, though whether of a people, a place, or a person, I did not know. I repeated it aloud several times to see if by such sounding I could awake a spark of memory.

“Hilarion.”

It meant nothing, and I had never heard Utta mention it. But then she had told me very little of her past; she had concentrated instead on my learning what she had to teach. Baffled, I rewound the rolls, slipped them once more into the cases.

For a space I sat with my two hands pressed to the surface of the crystal, hoping against hope that I would feel it warm beneath my palms, glow, become a mirror to show me what I would know. But it did not, and that, too, I returned to the chest with the wand which I knew better than to touch, since such rods of power answer only she who fashioned it for service.

On the fifth day two women came to my tent; not waiting for permission, they boldly entered. Between them they bore a heavy jug of steaming water, together with a bathing basin. A third followed them, garments laid across her arm, a tray with several small pots and boxes on it in her hands.

While the two who carried the basin and jug were commoners, she with the robes and tray of cosmetics was Ifeng's newest wife, Ayllia. She was very young, hardly more than out of childhood, but she carried herself with stiff arrogance, thrusting forward her small breasts thickly coated with paint. She had chosen so to depict two scarlet blooms, her nipples at their centers glistening as if tiny
shards of gemstone were mixed with the pigment. It was a very garish display, more barbaric than those worn by the others.

Her glance at me was sharp, surely more unfriendly than any I had met since Utta had taken me as her pupil and companion. Ayllia's lips pushed forward in what was close to a pout as she swept me with a long, measuring stare which was wholly hostile.

“It is time.” She broke the silence first and I think she liked me even the less that she must do that and that I had asked no questions. “We take the old one to her time house; we do her honor—”

Since I did not know their customs, I judged it best to follow their lead. So I allowed them to bathe me in the water, to which they added a handful of moss which expanded in the moisture to be used as a sponge. It gave off a faint odor, not unpleasant but strange.

For the first time I was not given the breeches of hide and fur which were the common wear, but the garments Ayllia brought, a long and wide skirt of a material very old, I thought, but preserved by metal threads woven into it in a pattern of fronds or lacy leaves. These threads were tarnished so that the design was now a very faint shadow, to be seen only by looking carefully. In color it was dark blue, and it had a border of the same metal thread, a palm's width deep, which weighed it down, swinging about my ankles.

Under Ayllia's orders they painted my breasts, not with flowers, but with radiations of glitter pigment. They did not add to my clothing any of the necklaces which she and the other women wore; instead a veil was draped from the crown of my head, a netting of the tarnished metal thread. Once I was so clad Ayllia waved me out of the hut, taking her place behind me.

The tribe was drawn up in a procession headed by a sled. This was not drawn by dogs—the four which had served Utta walked on leashes held by tribesmen—but carried shoulder high. And in that lay, covered with choice skin robes, the body of their seeress. Directly behind that was a gap into which Ifeng's gestures urged me. Once I had obeyed, Visma and Atorthi fell in, one to my right, one to my left. They were newly clad and painted, but when I looked from one to the other, thinking to say some small word, not of comfort, perhaps—who could comfort their loss?—but of fellowship, they did not answer my glances, for each had her eyes fixed upon the sled and its burden. And each carried in her two hands, held high against her breast, a stone cup which I had not seen before. Dark liquid frothed and bubbled in the cups as if troubled by internal fire.

Behind us came Ifeng and the more important hunters and warriors. Then the women and children, so that we moved out and toward the grave in a line of the whole tribe. Once beyond the steaming pools and river of the valley it was cold and there was snow underfoot. I shivered within my ancient robe, but those walking beside me, half naked as in their tents, gave no sign of discomfort.

We came at last to the side of the excavation. And those bearing the sled went down a side ramp of earth to the tent set up below, coming from that empty-handed. Once they had returned Visma and Atorthi raised their bubbling cups and drank as women who thirsted for a long time and were now given the sweetest of water. Still carrying the now empty cups they went hand in hand down to the tent and we saw them no more.