Witch World Part 15

The windows here were unsealed and light made fading patches on each landing. There were doors, too, but Simon opened none of them, because it seemed to him that around them that fearsome, stomach-churning smell was stronger.

Down one more flight, and into a hall which ended in a wide portal he thought must give on the street. Here Simon dared to explore and in a back room he found that leathery journey bread which was the main military ration of Estcarp, together with a pot of preserved fruit still good under its cap. The moldering remains of other provisions were evidence that no one had foraged here for a long time. Water trickled from a pipe to a drain and Simon drank before he wolfed down the food.

It was difficult to eat in spite of his hunger for that smell clung to everything. Although he had been only in this one building outside the citadel Simon suspected that his monstrous suspicion was the truth; save for the central building and its handful of inhabitants, Sippar was a city of the dead. The Kolder must have ruthlessly disposed of those of the conquered of no use to them. Not only slain them, but left them unburied in their own homes. As a warning against rebellion of the few remaining alive? Or merely because they did not care? It would appear that the last was the most likely, and that odd feeling of kins.h.i.+p he had for the flat-faced invaders died then and there.

Simon took with him all the bread he could find and a bottle filled with water. Curiously enough the door leading to the street was barred on the inside. Had those who had once lived here locked themselves in and committed ma.s.s suicide? Or had the same pressure methods driven them to their deaths as had been used to send him over the upper roof?

The street was as deserted as he had seen it from that same roof. But Simon kept close to one side, watching every shadowed doorway, the mouth of every cross lane. All doors were shut; nothing moved as he worked his way to the harbor.

He guessed that if he tried any of those doors he would find them barred against him, while within would lie only the dead. Had they perished soon after Gorm had welcomed Kolder to further the ambitions of Oma and her son? Or had that death come sometime later, during the years since Koris had fled to Estcarp and the island had been cut off from humankind? It would not matter to anyone save perhaps a historian.

This remained a city of the dead-the dead in body, and in the keep, the dead in spirit-with only the Kolder, who might well be dead in another fas.h.i.+on, keeping a pretense of life.

As he went Simon memorized route of street and house. Gorm could only be freed when the central keep was destroyed, he was certain of that. But it seemed to him that leaving this waste of empty buildings about their lair had been a bad mistake on the part of the Kolder. Unless they had some hidden defenses and alarms rigged in these blank walled houses, it might be no trick at all to bring a landing party ash.o.r.e and have them under cover.

There were those tales of Koris' concerning the spies Estcarp had sent to this island over the years. And the fact that the Captain himself had been unable to return because of some mysterious barrier. After his own experience with Kolder weapons Simon had an open mind. Only he had been able to break free, first in that headquarters room and secondly by the use of one of the planes. The mere fact that the Kolder had not tried to hunt him down was proof of a kind they must believe him finished for good.

But it was hard to think that someone or something did not keep watch in the silent city. So he kept to cover until he reached the wharves. There were s.h.i.+ps there, s.h.i.+ps battered by storms, some driven half ash.o.r.e, their rigging a rotting tangle, their sides scored and smashed in, some half waterlogged, with only their upper decks above the surface of the harbor. None of these had sailed for months, or years!

And the width of the bay lay between Simon and the mainland. If this dead port was Sippar, and he had no reason to believe that it was not, then he was now facing that long arm of land on which the invaders had built Yle, ending in the finger of which Sulcarkeep had been the nail. Since the fall of the traders' stronghold it was very probable that the Kolder forces now controlled that whole cape.

If he could find a manageable small craft and take to the sea, Simon would have to take the longer route eastward down the bottle-shaped bay to the mouth of the River Es and so to Estcarp. And he was plagued by the idea that time no longer fought upon his side.

He found his boat, a small sh.e.l.l stored in a warehouse. Though Simon was no sailor he took what precautions and made what tests he could to ensure its seaworthiness. And waited until full dark before he took oars, gritting his teeth against the pain of his bruises, as he pulled steadily, setting a crooked course among the rotting hulks of the Gormian fleet.

It was when he was well beyond those and had dared to step his small mast, that he met the Kolder defense head on. He saw or heard nothing as he fell to the bottom of the boat, his hands over his ears, his eyes closed against that raging tumult of silent sound and invisible light which beat outward from some point within his brain. He had thought his ordeal with the will pressure had made him aware of the Kolder power, but this scrambling of a man's brain was worse.

Was he only minutes within that cloud, or a day, or a year? Dazed and dumb, Simon could not have told. He lay in a boat which swung with the waves but obeyed sluggishly the wind touch on its sail. And behind him was Gorm, dead and dark in the moonlight.

Before dawn Simon was picked up by a coastal patrol boat from the Es, and by that time he had recovered his wits, though his mind felt as bruised as his boat. Riding relays of swift mounts he went on to Estcarp city.

Within the keep, in that same room where he had first met the Guardian, he joined a council of war, retelling his adventures within Gorm, his contacts with the Kolder to the officers of Estcarp, and those still-faced women who listened impa.s.sively. As he spoke he hunted for one among the witches, without finding her in that a.s.sembly.

When he had done, they asked few questions, allowing him to tell it in his own way, Koris tight-lipped and stone-featured as he described the city of the dead, then the Guardian beckoned forward one of the other women.

"Now, Simon Tregarth, do you take her hands, and then think upon this capped man, recall in your mind every detail of his dress and face," she ordered.

Though he could see no purpose in this, Simon obeyed. For one generally did obey, he thought wryly, the witches of Estcarp.

So he held those hands which were cool and dry in his, and he mentally pictured the gray robe, the odd face where the lower half did not match the upper, the metal cap, and the expression of power and then of bafflement which had been mirrored on those features when Simon had fought back. The hands slipped out of his and the Guardian spoke again: "You have seen, sister? You can fas.h.i.+on?"

"I have seen," the woman answered. "And what I have seen I can fas.h.i.+on. Since he used the power between them in the duel of wills the impression should be strong. Though," she looked down at her hands, moving each finger as if to exercise it in preparation for some task, "whether we can use such a device is another matter. It would have been better had blood flowed."

No one explained and Simon was not given time to ask questions for Koris claimed him as the council broke up, and marched him off to the barracks. Once within that same chamber he had had before they left for Sulcarkeep, Simon demanded of the Captain: "Where is the lady?" It was irritating not to be able to name her whom he knew; that peculiarity of the witches irked him more now than ever. But Koris caught his meaning.

"She is checking the border posts."

"But she is safe?"

Koris shrugged. "Are any of us safe, Simon? But be sure that the women of Power take no unnecessary risks. What they guard within them is not lightly spent." He had gone to the western window, his face turned into the light there, his eyes searching as if he willed to see more than the plain beyond the city. "So Gorm is dead." The words came heavily.

Simon pulled off his boots and stretched out on the bed. He was weary to every aching bone in his body.

"I told you what I saw and only what I saw. There is life walled into the center keep of Sippar. I found it nowhere else, but then I did not search far."

"Life? What sort of life?"

"Ask that of the Kolder, or perhaps the witches," returned Simon drowsily. "Neither are as you and I, and maybe they reckon life differently."

He was only half aware that the Captain had come away from the window, was standing over Simon so that his wide shoulders shut away the daylight.

"I am thinking, Simon Tregarth, that you are different too." Again the words were heavy, without any ring. "And seeing Gorm, how do you reckon its life-or death?"

"As vile," Simon mumbled. "But that shall also be judged in its own time," and wondered at his choice of words even as he fell asleep.

He slept, awoke to eat hugely, and slept again. No one demanded his attention nor did he rouse to what was going on in the keep of Estcarp. He might have been an animal laying up rest beneath his hide as the bear lays up fat against hibernation. When he awoke thoroughly once again it was alertly, eagerly, with a freshness he had not felt for so long, since before Berlin. Berlin-what-where was Berlin? His memories were curiously overlaid nowadays with new scenes.

And the one which returned to haunt him the most was that of the room of that secluded house in Kars where threadbare tapestries patterned the walls and a woman looked at him with wonder in her eyes as her hand shaped a glowing symbol in the air between them.

Then there was that other moment when she stood sick at heart and curiously alone after she had made her sordid magic for Aldis, tarnis.h.i.+ng her gift for the good of her cause.

Now as Simon lay tingling with life in every nerve and cell of him, the ache of his bruises, the strain of his hunger and his striving gone out of him, he moved his right hand up until it lay over his heart. But beneath it now he did not feel the warmth of his own flesh; rather did he cradle in memory something else, as a singing which was no song drew from him, into the other hand he had grasped, a substance he did not know he possessed.

Over all else, the life in the border raiding parties, the experience of Kolder captivity, did those quiet and pa.s.sive scenes hold him now. Because, empty of physical action though they had been, they possessed for him a hidden excitement he shrank from defining or explaining too closely.

But he was summoned soon enough to attention.

During his sleep Estcarp had marshalled all its forces. Beacons on the heights had brought messengers from the mountains, from the Eyrie, from all those willing to stand against Gorm, and the doom Gorm promised. A half dozen Sulcar vessels, homeless, had made port in coves the Falconers charted, the families of their crews landed in safety, the s.h.i.+ps armed and ready for the thrust. For all were agreed that the war must be taken to Gorm before Gorm brought it to them.

There was a camp at the mouth of the Es, a tent set up in it on the very verge of the ocean. From its flap of door they could see the shadow of the island appearing as a bank of cloud upon the sea. And, waiting signal beyond that point where the broken ruins of their keep were sea-washed and desolate, hovered the s.h.i.+ps, packed with the Sulcar crew, Falconers, and border raiders.

But the barrier about Gorm must be broken first and that was in the hands of those who welded Estcarp's Power. So, not knowing why he was to be one of that company, Simon found himself seated at a table which might have been meant for a gaming board. Yet there was no surface of alternate colored blocks. Instead, before each seat there was a painted symbol. And the company who gathered was mixed, seemingly oddly chosen for the high command.

Simon found that his seat had been placed beside the Guardian's and the symbol there overlapped both places. It was a brown hawk with a gilded oval framing it, a small, three pointed cornet above the oval. On his left was a diamond of blue-green enclosing a fist holding an ax. And beyond that was a square of red encasing a horned fish.

To the right, beyond the Guardian, were two more symbols which he could not read without leaning forward. Two of the witches slipped into the seats before those and sat quietly, their hands palm down upon the painted marks. There was a stir to his left and he glanced up to know an odd lift of spirit as he met a level gaze which was more than mere recognition of his ident.i.ty. But she did not speak and he copied her silence. The sixth and last of their company was the lad Briant, pale-faced, staring down at the fish creature before him as if it lived and by the very intensity of his gaze he must hold it prisoner in that sea of scarlet.

The woman who had held Simon's hands as he thought of the man on Gorm came into the tent, two others with her, each of whom carried a small clay brazier from which came sweet smoke. These they placed on the edge of the board and the other woman set down her own burden, a wide basket. She threw aside its covering cloth to display a row of small images.

Taking up the first she went to stand before Briant.

Twice she pa.s.sed the figure she held through the smoke and then held it at eye level before the seated lad. It was a finely wrought manikin with red-gold hair and such a life-look that Simon believed it was meant to be the portrait of some living man.

"Fulk." The woman p.r.o.nounced the name and set the image down in the center of the scarlet square, full upon the painted fish. Briant could not pale, his transparent skin had always lacked color, but Simon saw him swallow convulsively before he answered. "Fulk of Verlaine."

The woman took a second figure from her basket, and, as she came now to Simon's neighbor, he could better judge the artistic triumph of her work. For she held between her hands, pa.s.sing it through the smoke, a perfect image of she who had asked for a charm to keep Yvian true.

"Aldis."

"Aldis of Kars," acknowledged the woman beside him as the tiny feet of the figure were planted on the fist with the ax.

"Sandar ofAlizon." A third figure for the position farthest to his right.

"Siric." A potbellied image in flowing robes for that other right-hand symbol.

Then she brought out the last of the manikins, studying it for a moment before she gave it to the smoke. When she came to stand before Simon and the Guardian she named no names but held it out for his inspection, for his recognition. And he stared down at the small copy of the capped leader in Gorm. To his recollection the resemblance was perfect.

"Gorm!" He acknowledged it, though he could not give the Kolder a better name. And she placed it carefully on the brown and gold hawk.

GAME OF POWER.

Five images set out upon the symbols of their lands, five perfect representations of living men and woman. But why and for what purpose? Simon looked right again. The tiny feet of the Aldis manikin were now encircled by the hands of the witch, those of the Fulk figure by Briant's. Both were regarding their charges with absorption, on Briant's part uneasy.

Simon's attention swung back to the figure before him. Dim memories of old tales flickered through his mind. Did they now stick pins in these replicas and expect their originals to suffer and die?

The Guardian reached for his hand, caught it in the same grip he had known in Kars during the shape changing. At the same time she fitted her other hand in a half circle about the base of the capped figure. He put his to match so that now they touched finger tips and wrists enclosing the Kolder.

"Think now upon this one between whom and you has been the trial of power, or the tie of blood. Put from your mind all else but this one whom you must reach and bend, bend to our use. For we win the Game of Power upon this board in this hour-or it-and we-fail for this time and place!"

Simon's eyes were on that capped figure. He did not know if he could turn them away if he wished. He supposed that he had been brought into this curious procedure because he alone of those of Estcarp had seen this officer of Gorm.

The tiny face, half shadowed by the metal cap, grew larger, life size. He was fronting it across s.p.a.ce as he had fronted it across that room in the heart of Sippar.

Again the eyes were closed, the man was about his mysterious business. Simon continued to study him, and then he knew that all the antagonism he had known for the Kolder, all the hate born in him by what he had found in that city, by their treatment of their captives, was drawing together in his mind, as a man might shape a weapon of small pieces fitted together into one formidable arm.

Simon was no longer in that tent where sea winds stirred and sand gritted on a brown painted hawk. Instead he stood before that man of the Kolder in the heart of Sippar, willing him to open his closed eyes, to look upon him, Simon Tregarth, to stand to battle in a way not of bodies, but of wills and minds.

Those eyes did open and he stared into their dark pupils, saw lids raise higher as if in recognition, of knowledge of the menace which was using him as a gathering point, a caldron in which every terror and threat could be brought to a culminating boil.

Eyes held eyes. Simon's impressions of the flat features, of the face, of the metal cap above it, of everything but those eyes, went, bit by bit. As he had sensed the flow of power out of his hand into the witch's in Kars, so did he know that which boiled within him was being steadily fed by more heat than his own emotions could engender, that he was a gun to propel a fatal dart.

At first the Kolder had stood against him with confidence; now he was seeking his freedom from that eye-to-eye tie, mind-to-mind bond, knowing too late that he was caught in a trap. But the jaws had closed and struggle as he might the man in Gorm could not loosen what he had accepted in an arrogant belief in his own form of magic.

Within Simon there was a sharp release of all the tension. And it shot from him to that other. Eyes were fear-submerged by panic, panic gave way to abject terror, which burned in and in until there was nothing left for it to feed upon. Simon did not have to be told that what he faced now was a husk which would do his bidding as those husks of Gorm did the bidding of their owners.

He gave his orders. The Guardian's power fed his; she watched and waited, ready to aid, but making no suggestions. Simon was certain of his enemy's obedience as he was of the life burning in him. That which controlled Gorm would be crippled, the barrier would go down, as long as this tool worked unhindered by his fellows. Estcarp now had a robot ally within the fortress.

Simon lifted his head, opened his eyes, and saw the painted board where his fingers still clasped the Guardian's about the feet of the small figure. But that manikin was no longer perfect. Within the hollow of the metal cap the head was a shapeless blob of melted wax.

The Guardian loosened her clasp, drew back her hand to lie limp. Simon turned his head, saw on his left a strained and blanched face, eyes dark smudged, as she who had centered the power upon Aldis fell back in her seat. And the lady before her was also head ravaged.

That image named for Fulk of Verlaine lay flat and Briant was huddled in upon himself, his face hidden in his hands, his lank, colorless hair sweat-plastered to his skull.

"It is done." The silence was first broken by the Guardian. "What the Power can do, it has done. And this day we have wrought as mightily as ever did the blood of Estcarp! Now it is given to fire and sword, wind and wave, to serve us if they will, and if men will use them!" Her voice was a thin thread of exhaustion.

She was answered by one who moved to the board to stand before her, accompanied by the faint clink of metal against metal which marked a man in full war gear. Koris carried on his hip the hawk crested helm; now he raised the Ax of Volt.

"Be sure, lady, that there are men to use each and every weapon Fortune grants us. The beacons are lighted, our armies and the s.h.i.+ps move."

Simon, though the earth under his feet had a tendency to sway when he planted his feet upon it and levered himself up, arose. She who had sat on his left moved quickly. Her hand went out, but it did not touch his before it fell back upon the board once more. Nor did she put into words that denial he could read in every tense line of her body.

"The war, now completed according to your Power," he spoke to her as if they were alone, "is of the fas.h.i.+on of Estcarp. But I am not of Estcarp, and there remains this other war which is of my own kind of power. I have played your game to your willing, lady; now I seek to play to mine!"

As he rounded the table to join the Captain, another arose and stood hesitating, one hand on the table to steady him. Briant regarded the image before him and his face was bleak, for the figure, though fallen, was intact.

"I never claimed the Power," he said dully in his soft voice. "And in this warfare it would seem I have been a failure. Perhaps it will not be so with sword and s.h.i.+eld!"

Koris stirred as if he would protest. But the witch who had been in Kars spoke swiftly: "There is a free choice here for all who ride or sail under Estcarp's banner. Let none gainsay that choice."

The Guardian nodded agreement. So the three of them went out from the tent on the sea sh.o.r.e: Koris, vibrant, alive, his handsome head erect on his grotesque shoulders, his nostrils swelling as if he scented more than sea salt in the air; Simon, moving more slowly, feeling a fatigue new to his overdriven body, but also buoyed by a determination to see this venture to its end; and Briant, settling his helm over his fair head, coiling the metal ring scarf about his throat, his eyes straight ahead as if he were driven, or pulled, by something far greater than his own will.

The Captain turned to the other two as they reached the boats waiting to pull out to the s.h.i.+ps. "You come with me on the flags.h.i.+p, for you, Simon, must serve as a guide, and you-" he looked to Briant and hesitated. But the youngster, with a lift of chin and stare of eye which was a challenge, met that appraisal defiantly.

Simon sensed something crosswise between the two which was of their own concern as he waited for Koris to meet that unvoiced defiance. "You, Briant, will put yourself among my s.h.i.+eld men and you will stay with them!"

"And I, Briant," the other answered with something approaching impudence, "shall stay at your back, Captain of Estcarp, when there is good cause to do so. But I fight with my own sword and wield my own s.h.i.+eld in this or any other battle!"

For a moment it seemed that Koris might dispute that, but they were hailed from the boats. And when they splashed through the surf to board, Simon noted that the younger man took good care to keep as far from his commander as the small craft allowed.

The s.h.i.+p which was to spearhead the Estcarp attack was a fis.h.i.+ng vessel and the Guards were jammed aboard her almost shoulder to shoulder. The other mismatched transports fell in behind her as they took to the bay waters.

They were close enough to see the fleet rotting in Gorm harbor when the hail from the Sulcar vessels crossed the water and the trading s.h.i.+ps with their mixed cargo of Falconers, Karsten refugees, and Sulcar survivors rounded a headland to draw in from the sea side.

Simon had no idea of where he had crossed the barrier on his flight from Gorm, and he might be leading this ma.s.sed invasion straight into disaster. They could only hope that the Game of Power had softened up the defense in their favor.

Tregarth stood at the prow of the fis.h.i.+ng smack, watching the harbor of the dead city, waiting for the first hint of the barrier. Or would one of those metal s.h.i.+ps, protected past any hope of attack from Estcarp, strike at them now?

Wind filled their sails, and, overladen as the s.h.i.+ps were, they cut the waves, keeping station as if drilled. A hulk from the harbor, still carrying enough rags aloft to catch the wind, its anchor ropes broken, drifted across their course, a wide collar of green weed lying under the water line to slow it.