Wizards’ Worlds (65 page)

I realized that we two had been alone. The others of our company must have gone on
when I had been seized by the need to hunt out the dismal, shadowed tent. Which was
good—for the moment, I could have made no real explanation of why I had done what
I did.

Ort met me at the edge of our stand, his head forward, voicing that anxious, half-growling
sound he always used when I left him. Sighting what accompanied us, he snarled, lifting
lip to show gleaming teeth, his claws well extended as he brought up both paws in
the familiar stance of challenge. Before I could send a mind-message, his growl, which
had risen to a battle cry, was cut off short. I saw his nostrils expand, though since
we had left that foul tent I had not been aware of any odor from the creature.

Now Ort fell back, not as one afraid, rather as one puzzled, confronted by a mystery.
I picked up the bewilderment which dampened his anger, confused him to a point I had
never witnessed before.

“Brother-Kin,” I mind-reached him. Though the muffled monster betrayed no sign of
anger, I wanted no trouble. Ort had never been jealous of any of my team. He knew
well that he was my seconding, that between the two of us there was a close bond which
no other could hope to break. “Brother-Kin, this is one who . . .” I hesitated and
then plunged on, because I was as sure as if it had been told me that I spoke the
truth. “Has been ill-used—”

Ort shuffled his huge hind paws; his eyes were still on the creature as now Wowern
caught his cloak by the edge and whipped it away from that ugly body, plainly revealed
in the torchlight.

The monster made no sound, but its bright eyes were fast on Ort. I saw my Brother-Kin
blink.

“Sister . . .” There was an oddness in Ort’s sending. “This one—” His thought closed
down so that I caught nothing more for a long moment. Then he came into my mind more
clearly. “This one is welcome.”

The stranger might be welcome to Ort, but with Garner and the rest of the clan it
was a different matter. I was told that I had far overstepped the bonds of permissiveness,
taking upon myself rights none had dared before. I think that Garner would have speedily
dispatched my monster to his former master and cage, save that Feeta, who had been
silently staring at my purchase, broke into his tirade. The rest of the clan had also
been facing me accusingly, as if, for the first time in my life, they judged me no
Kin at all.

“Look to Ort,” Feeta’s voice arose, “to Ily, Somsa—” She pointed to each of the Second-Kin
as she spoke.

We stood in that lesser tent where our smaller team-mates were caged, or leashed,
according to fair custom. What she made us aware of was the silence of all those four-footed
ones, the fact that they regarded the newcomer round-eyed—and that they had broken
mind-link with us.

Garner paused in mid-word, to stare from one to another of those seconding our teams.
I felt his thought, striving to establish linkage. The flush of anger faded from his
face. In its place came a shadow of concern, which deepened as he beat against stubbornly
held barriers.

Feeta took a short pace forward, raising her right hand so that her forefinger touched
the forehead of the monster
at a point between its brilliant eyes. Then she spoke to me alone, as if all there
were only the three of us—healer, monster, and I.

“Kara . . .”

I knew what she summoned me to do. In spite of the deep respect and obedience she
could always claim from me, I wanted to refuse. Such a choice was denied me. Was it
the power of those green eyes that drew me, or the weight of Feeta’s will down-beating
mine? I could not have said as I went to her, taking her place as she moved aside.
My hand came up that my finger, in turn, filled the place where hers had touched.

There was a sick whirling, almost as if the world about me was rent by forces beyond
my reckoning. Also, I sensed once more that overshadow of faint memory out of nowhere.
This was like being caught in a vast, sticky web—utterly foul, utterly evil, threatening
every clean and decent thought and impulse. Entrapped I was, and there could be no
loosing of that bond. No! There was also resistance, near beaten under, still not
destroyed.

The net was not mine. That much I learned in a breath or two of time. Just as that
stubborn, near despairing resistance was not born from any strength within
me!

Danger—a murky vision of thick darkness, within which crawled unseen perils all so
obscenely alien to my kind as to make the very imagining of them fearsome. Danger—a
tool, a weapon launched, set to strike—but a tool that could turn in the user’s hand,
a weapon whose edge might well cut the wielder.

“What threatens us?” I demanded aloud, even as I also hurled that thoughtwise, threading
it into that wattled head through my touch.

I felt Feeta catch my free hand, hold it in a tight grip between both of hers. From
the creature came a pulsating flow—sometimes sharp and clear, sometimes fading, as
if the one who sent it must fight for every fraction of warning.

Evil, dark, strong, rising like a wave—There lurked
within that darkness the beautiful face of the pendant. It leered, slavered, anticipated—was
arrogantly sure of victory. I heard a gasp from Feeta—a single word of recognition.

“Thotharn!”

Her naming made my vision steady, become clearer. Names are potent things, and to
call them aloud, our wise people tell us, can act as a focus point for power.

Thotharn I might not know, though of him I had heard, uneasy whispering for the most
part, passed from one traveler to another as veiled warnings. There were the Three
Lordly Ones upon whose threshold Ithkar stood, there were other presences within our
world which my kind recognized and paid homage to—did not
we
look to the All Mother? But Thotharn was the dark, all that man feared the most,
shifting westward from swamplands into which no man, save he be outlawed and damned,
dared stray.

It is an old, old land—the swamp country. We who tread the roads collect tales upon
tales. It is said there was once a mighty nation in the east—greater than any existing
today, when small lordlings hold their own patches of land jealously and fight short,
bitter wars over the ownership of a field or some inflated pride. The north was ravaged
when I was a small child, by the rise of a conqueror who sought to bring diverse holdings
under one rule. But he was slain, and his patchwork of a kingdom died with him, by
blood and iron.

Only in the east was no tale of a lordling with ambition. No—there was far more, a
rulership that impressed itself on all the land and under which men lived in a measure
of peace, no lord daring then to raise sword against his neighbor. There came an end,
and tradition said this end was born of evil, nourished in evil, dying evilly, even
before the Three Lordly Ones came to us. With the breaking of this power the land
fell into the depths of night for a space. All manner of foulness raved and ravaged
unchecked. Was Thotharn a part of that? Who knows now?
But in these past few years rumor spread again his name—first in whispers, and then
openly.

Thotharn’s priests walked our roads. They did not preach aloud, as did the friars
or the wise ones who serve All Mother, striving thus to better the lives of listeners.
Nor did they shut themselves into a single temple pile and impress their weight of
service demands as did those who outwardly acclaim the Three Lordly Ones. They simply
walked, and were . . . while from them spread an unease and then a drawing—

From the creature I touched flared red rage, strong enough to burn my mind. Thotharn—yes!
That name awakened this emotion. But it was
against
the dread lord of shadows that that blaze was aroused. Whatever this creature might
be, he was no hand of the east.

No hand. It caught at my turn of thought, seized upon it, hurled it back to me, changed
after a fashion. Obey the will of Thotharn—no, not that, ever! When I acknowledged
that fraction of half appeal, that need to make clear what lay inside the other’s
brain and heart, there was a swell of triumph through the sending—a quick flare like
a shout of “Yes, yes!”

I spoke aloud again. Perhaps some part of me wanted to do so, that I make very sure
of what I learned.

“They believe you serve them? . . .”

Again a burst of agreement. There is this about mind-send: a man may cloak his values
and his desires when he uses words, but there can be no hiding of the truth while
sending. Any barrier becomes in itself a warning and injects suspicion. That this
hideous thing out of the swampland could hide from me in thought was not to be believed.
But, knowing this, why then would any follower of Thotharn—such as the robed merchant
must surely be—thrust upon a Quintka possessing sending powers a creature so easily
read?

That thought, also, was picked up. The churning within the other became chaotic in
eagerness to answer.
Thoughts were so intermingled, came so swiftly, that I could not sort one from the
other. I heard far off, as if she were now removed from me, though still our hands
were locked, a gasped moan from Feeta. I guessed that it was only our linkage, her
power and mine together, that made this exchange possible at all.

There were scraps of information—that the robed one of Thotharn knew of the Quintka,
had marked them because of their far traveling, the fact that they were readily welcome
in lords’ keeps, even the temples—that the people who gathered for our showings were
many in all parts of the land. Where a wandering priest or priestess of suspect learning
could not freely go, one linked with us might penetrate. However, the swamplanders
did not truly know the Quintka. They accepted us as trainers of beasts, not realizing
that, to us in our own circles, there was no Kin and beast—two things forever separated—rather
there was Kin and Second-Kin linked by bonds they did not dream existed.

This one had been prepared (the plan had been a long time in the making—and it was
their first such) to be sent out as a link between their great ones, who did not leave
the swamp, and the world they coveted so strongly. The first—there would be others.
The robed one I had dealt with—I learned in that half-broken communication with my
purchase—had believed
I
was under the influence of Thotharn’s subtle scents and pressures when I bought it—that
when I left, already I was a part, too!

“Why do you betray so easily your masters?” I strove to find some flaw in this flood
of explanation. “You were made for what you do, yet now you freely tell us that you
are a thing designed to be all treachery and betrayal—”

“Made!” Again a flare of intense anger—so painfully projected into my mind that I
flinched and near dropped my finger contact. “Made!”

In that bitter repetition I understood. This thing, in spite of all its grotesque
ugliness, was near mad from the
usage it had received. It had lain under Thotharn’s yoke without hope—now it took
the first opportunity to strike back, even though any blow it might deliver could
not be a direct one. Perhaps it also had not realized the Quintka had their own defenses.

It was even as I caught this that there dropped a sudden curtain of silence. But not
before, it seemed to me, a whiff of foul air blew between me and this purchase of
mine. The green eyes half closed, then opened fully. In them I read appeal—an agony
of appeal.

Feeta loosed her grip, caught at my wrist, jerking me back from that touch which had
brought us such knowledge.

“What is it?” I rounded upon her.

“
They
are questing—they might learn,” she half spat at me. Never had I seen her so aroused.
“Is that not so? Blink your eyes if I speak the truth!” She spoke directly to the
creature.

Lids fell over those green eyes, rested so for a breath as if to make very sure that
we would understand, then arose again.

I heard a swift, deep-drawn breath from Garner where he stood, feet a little apart,
as one about to face an enemy charge. Feeta spoke without turning her eyes from the
swamp thing.

“You mind-heard?”

Garner bared his teeth as Ort might do. “I heard. So these crawlers in the muck would
think to so use
us!
”

“To plan is not to do.” I did not know from whence those words came to me but I spoke
them, before I addressed the swamp dweller.

“These you serve, do they have a way of setting a watch upon you? Blink in answer!”

Again, deliberately those eyes closed and reopened.

“Do they know of our linkage? Blink twice if this is not so.” I waited, cold gathering
within me, fearing one
answer, but hoping for another. That came—two measured blinks.

“So . . .” Garner expelled breath in a mighty puff. He dropped a hand on Feeta’s shoulder
and drew her to him. The tie between them was so old and deep that I did not wonder
he had been able to link with her during that exchange. “Now what do we do?”

I had one answer, though whether he would accept it or not I could not tell. “To return
this would arouse their suspicions, lead them to other plans.”

He snorted. “Think you that I do not understand that?” He regarded the creature measuringly.
Then he made his decision.

“This one is yours, Kara. Upon you rests the burden.”

Which, of course, was only fair.

Garner and the others left me with the self-confessed spy of evil. Only Second-Kin—Ort,
the rest of the beasts—remained. They continued to watch the stranger with unrelenting
stares.

We had no cage large enough to accommodate the being, and somehow it did not seem
fitting to set a rope loop about its neck, tether it with the four-footed ones. Where
was I to keep it? Soon would come time for the night shows, and it should be under
cover before our patrons came to look at the animals as was the regular custom.

Ort answered the problem with action that surprised me greatly. He padded to the baskets
of act trappings set along one side of the tent, came back to me, a wadding of cloth
in his forepaws. I shook out a cape with a hood, old and worn, which had been used
to top and protect the stored “costumes” our teams wore. It was a human garment and
the folds appeared adequate to cover the creature.