Three Hands for Scorpio (16 page)

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Authors: Andre Norton

BOOK: Three Hands for Scorpio
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T
hree strides I took through that once-Warded doorway. Around me the light from the gem formed a dense haze. In the beginning I could not see far beyond its limits, just enough to assure me I was no longer in a hall but rather in a chamber of some size. Something of the rage that had been fed to me earlier in the place of destruction stirred. This was an effort on the part of the unknown Power, I believed, to make me feel inferior. For every trial I had passed, another would rise.
I halted, encased in my cocoon of light. I waited.
“Lady Tamara—” No Send, but rather a voice. And one I knew. Had
Zolan
been the one playing this game?
I did not answer, nor did I try to find him by the Talent. However, I was almost instantly sure of something—he was not alone. The other presence could only be sensed. Still I waited.
“Sorceress—” Still his voice but, again, another's words.
I returned no sign that they had been heard; instead, I raised the gem to my lips. I did not think the words but spoke them as if they were for the talisman and none other.
“Heart and hand
At Thy command,
Raise my sword
Of tongue, not steel.
In Thy shrine I bend the knee.”
Though I spoke hardly above the faintest of whispers, my chant sounded as clear as if I sang it from a mountaintop. The haze was no longer quiescent. It moved as might a breeze-borne mist, reaching farther out, then thinning ever more until it was gone.
Facing me was a dais of stone centered by two benches twin to those supporting the jar people. One was occupied by another jar figure whose ball-prison showed no sign of life, yet vitality was there. To the right stood Zolan.
I gave no greeting, merely stared at the jug coffin on the bench.
Climber, his rich coat shining like a jewel (though I could see no source of luminesce save the talisman), flowed about the dais to stand beside the Protector. He turned great golden eyes upon me.
“Sorceress.” A Send, that, yet none of Zolan's projecting.
For a moment I thought I could see features form in scant lines on the ball-head.
“I am no sorceress,” I returned, keeping my voice as barren of feeling as I could. “I am of the House of Scorpy and am Talented as their women are.”
Ball Head considered my answer; then she surprised me utterly with a second mind-message.
“In the Name of Varch, Keeper of the Gate—begone!”
That order held no meaning for me, though the name she called upon stabbed like a dagger-thrust of Darkness. Zolan stirred, looking to the enthroned one as if he would protest.
I offered no attack in return for, above all, I needed to
know
, to assess what had entrapped me.
Another period of silence ensued; then came yet a third Send. I was instantly on guard. The message was foreign to what I knew and trusted. It did not translate into words but strove to place me again under compulsion.
I moved the gem from my lips to my forehead. All my life I had been aware of those points of my person upon which a Ward must be locked.
The protection I wore had been battered and thinned by whatever Maclan had used to take me, but it was still in place. Now it swelled, strengthened, and I was shielded as if by a battle lord's body-armor.
The Send was ended. After a moment, Zolan moved a step or two away from the dais and turned fully to face me, his hands up a little as if he protested.
“Pharsali means no harm.” He spoke soothingly as he might to a child. “Great evil has been done here. Those of your kind ravaged, killed. And before that—” He glanced over his shoulder to the seated figure as if asking permission.
“Before that,” he began again, “Another made a pact with the Dark, which threatens not only Those Waiting but your own kin.”
He paused for an answer.
“I am listening,” I replied tersely.
So he served as a voice for the faceless thing baked of clay, and listen I did.
What I heard then was as mystifying as a tale translated from a strange tongue, dealing with a life whose like was hard for my breed to imagine. Still, that the account was accepted as truth by both Pharsali and Zolan I understood. The truth—as they knew it.
So long ago that my people had not yet come into this land—so far back, indeed, that they even preceded the small dark ones who came before us—this race, who carefully preserved their remains in creations of their hands, traveled by some unexplained means hither. When I learned this, I wondered whether they might have come from one of the other layers of existence, which we of the Power are aware of but do not try to visit.
The Jar Folk were in flight from enemies of their own kind, for there was a system of belief rising among them that many of the people, including those who came to dwell in the Dismals, thought to be evil. At the death of their physical forms, their personalities could continue to exist; among them, however, had been born a cult teaching that, if they wished, they might take over another body. At least one subject race was available that could be used to supply new vessels of life.
Thus arose conflict and the dispersal of many of their clans or nations. How this particular group had come to the Dismals was not revealed.
Once in this below-the-surface world, they discovered that theirs had been a bad choice. Fatal plagues struck, and thus was created the company of Seated Ones. However, the portions of being that were their
essences remained. They strove to enhance their Power until they were able to venture out in spirit to explore, to learn. With this mode of existence most were content. Centuries passed, and the Jar People watched with interest as the native life of the upper world changed. They themselves continued to live by their oaths, observing only, and taking no hand in affairs not their own.
Until—Zolan, before my eyes, cringed as though a feeling of guilt had dealt him a pang.
Until our host's own arrival, an event whose occurrence he could not recall. His memory ran no further back than his being in this same cave while Pharsali had soothed him and taught him how to survive, for he had been a small child.
All the alien folk, but especially the Jar female, had instructed as well as guided him. But Tharn—Zolan nodded toward the empty bench that shared the dais with that of the round-headed one. He stopped short, and his hands clenched, then opened again.
Tharn, who was co-leader of the Jar People, made an evil choice. When Zolan became a young man, Tharn decided that he himself would leave the Dismals and visit the outer world. He tried to force his spirit into the boy's body and was defeated; however, neither could he be destroyed, and save for setting fresh Wards upon him, his own folk could not control him. His will was strong; he waited.
Then his questing spirit discovered another Uplander, a near-insane hermit. By dreams, the Jar leader drew the man to him and transferred into his chosen vessel before the others could prevent it.
At that time, Pharsali had joined temporarily with Zolan to spy out some disturbances in the far reaches of the Dismals where an entrance might exist that those above could use to descend—an event the Jar People had long feared as they had watched the actions of the natives. However, their ability to explore in spirit-essence was sharply limited. Pharsali, whose power was equal to Tharn's, could range no farther than the rest. The body carrying Tharn soon passed out of reach.
Before the twisted leader, in the body of the hermit, had departed, he had destroyed those of the outer cave, thereby making sure that he need no longer fear their interference. For, evicted from their “bodies,” they had no power to oppose him.
Thus Zolan had become Pharsali's only hope of preventing an evil fate
for those above. The destroyed jars I had seen held only a portion of the group that had immigrated to our world. And among the others waited those who shared Tharn's desire for a new body and a life in the upper lands. Though Zolan was wholly of Pharsali's training, even he could not be dispatched above to follow the Dark Mage, since Tharn's far greater Power could find him only too easily.
Now my thoughts struck through to Pharsali. I was aware of the touch of the alien female, but it did not threaten.
“This hermit—Tharn, as you name him—has won the interest of the king, is a member of the court. He has gathered more than one kind of Power to wield.”
The Protector and Pharsali were both silent for a long moment. At last came a Send from the Jar woman, not any communication from Zolan.
“We sensed you and yours early when you were brought here as captives. We knew that you were unlike those who came seeking treasure; Tharn sent one party to so indulge its greed, but the land itself rose in defense.”
“Thus,” my Send interrupted her, “we were brought here by
your
will! You also made sure that we were removed from the aid coming after us.”
“You would have died!” Zolan broke in heatedly. “That offspring of a vorpe had a dagger ready for your throats and would have wielded it, had it not been suggested to him by Power that he entrust you instead into the—care—of this land.”
I licked my lips. So we
had
been a part of another's schemes all along. I no longer doubted at all that the favor of our fortune rested with the Ball Head. Nor could I deny that Maclan would have found it far less trouble to have us dead. But worse fates existed than death. I thought that I could guess what was coming next.
“You want my body, so you can hunt down this traitor of yours!”
Ball Head remained silent, but I had aroused Zolan to action. He moved between me and the creature on the dais as if to protect her from me. Even as I had felt that emotion in the cave of breakage, so now I could sense rage rising in him, tightly controlled but growing ever stronger as his eyes met mine.
Once again, as in that place, the heat of his anger appeared subject to the Jar woman. She might have curbed a hound slavering for a kill.
“Not so!”
The Send was not abrasive, as it might have been, yet it still gave me an
odd feeling of guilt, and I hurried to strengthen my anger by remembering all that had occurred to us since we had come into the Dismals. I no longer needed evidence—I knew. We had been tried as a warrior tries an unknown blade before going into battle, a rider puts a horse through paces before adding it to his stable.
“Do we have a choice?” I had followed that thought to the final question.
“Wait to see what we shall ask of you. You have declared that you three are daughters of a leader of forces above. Should he not be warned?”
This Pharsali was clever to tug the thread of feeling that awakened our sense of duty. If all I had heard here was the truth—and the Talent judged it so—then, indeed, the Lord Warden must learn what the Dark threatened.
“Can you open the way out for us?”
Ball Head did not nod, but in a way I half thought I saw that movement from the faceless female.
“For you—and for him.” There was no pointing at Zolan, yet plainly he was the one she meant.
Now he spun halfway around, his body stiffly tense, to face her fully. I sensed no eagerness in him for such a venture but felt, instead, a speedy denial.
Ignoring him, she continued. “Our fosterling now needs those who will care for him in your world, even as we have tended him in this. You will be his guides, as he has led you in this place of our exile.”
She spoke the bald truth. Should Zolan appear in the land above without any companion or aid, he could well be deemed defective in mind, or even demonic in those places where Tharn now wore a stolen body.
“I would see my sisters,” I Sent back. “I do not speak alone.” However, my mind was already busy trying to look ahead at what might await us in our own level of the world.
BINA WAS GOING to do it! I bit at my knuckles as I watched her. So many times I had observed her busied so, ready to hand her this or that ingredient as she asked for it. But this—this mass of green and red, which had grown out of the earth I had drawn upon—this was a thing of death, a growth no healer should touch.
I glanced from Bina to the wall, grayish in the moonlight. Tam—Tam had passed through that barrier as if it did not exist.
Tam—?
I Sent, to be met with a silence much deeper than any my sister had ever raised. Tam possessed, Tam held by the conniving of an unknown Other! I realized that a little of what peril the future held was a loss of our sister. The rending away of an arm or leg would be far less crippling to us.
Bina straightened, her hands now holding a sap-wet mass of flower and stem crushed together. For a moment she simply sat looking at the wall. Then she raised her right hand to her lips and mouthed a small amount, at the same time silently holding out the mess to me.
I shrank from what I must do. But without Tam, without Bina, I would be as lost, as lifeless, as a leaf whirled away by an autumn wind.
Scooping out a laden fingerful of the mixture, I chewed it hesitantly. The taste was sharp as relish used on the meat of midwinter to cover evidence of age, but it was not unpleasant. I swallowed.
I kept my eyes on the cliff while Bina and I knit threads of Power together. Never had it come so easily without effort. That facility gave me a heady feeling—why had I hesitated? This Power—to hold it—to make it work for my purpose—this was always
meant to be!
Suddenly we were standing before the face of the cliff—I was not aware that I had even risen. Power—Bina was one with me, and I did not hold back. Now the entwined cord of our Talent, throbbing in rhythm with the beating of my heart, was hurled at the rock to cling and crawl, a visibly gleaming thread against what seemed solid stone.
This was what I was intended for. Why had I been denied such inner strength? That rock—one moment it was intact, the next it had vanished. A portal, filled with darkness that appeared to churn, waited before us. We took the way that had opened before us.
No light shone here. We went forward with care, my left hand in Bina's right, our unengaged fingers slipping along each wall. The faint radiance from outside lasted no more than four or five paces. No sound broke the silence.
“No.” Bina stopped, held me anchored. I could feel each of her motions now by the smallest displacement of air. Our senses were keener, clearer.
Then Bina lifted up a questing hand, and a short burst of blue radiance broke forth. From her fingertips the light spread until she might have been holding five short candles.

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