Warlock of the Witch World (15 page)

I swam for the beach. It presented to me such a promise of safety as I had not thought to find. As I waded out on it I saw that the light came from partly open shells which were in great clusters, rooted to the rocks under the surface.

“Quasfi,” Orsya identified them. “To be relished not only by Merfays; but the deeper dwellers are more tasty.”

She left in a dive which took her out of my sight. I stood dripping on that small patch of dry land and tried to learn more of this cavern. I could detect no sign of any intelligent remains here. Whatever Orsya promised to show me did not lie within my present range of vision.

The Krogan girl came out of the water, her hair plastered tight to her skull, her clothing as another skin on her body. She had a net bag in one hand—I was reminded of how she had carried one during our flight to the mountains—and from the bag glowed the light of the shellfish. But as she left the water it faded and by the time she joined me was almost gone.

In a very practical way she opened the shells with a knife she borrowed from me. A quick jab dispatched the creatures, and she offered one to me, its own outer covering serving as a plate.

Long ago I had learned that it was not good to be squeamish in such matters. When one was hungry, one ate, whatever one was lucky enough to find. The life of a Border scout did not provide dainty food, any more than it provided warm, soft beds, and uninterrupted sleep.

I ate. The meat was tough and one needed to chew it vigorously. The flavor was strange, not as satisfying as the taste of the roots. But neither was it too unpleasant, and looking at the wealth of quasfi beds about us, one could see starvation was no menace.

Orsya did not throw away the shells we emptied, but put them once more into her net, setting them therein with care, their inner surfaces pointing outward, small stones in the middle to keep them so. Having twisted, turned and repacked, she stood up.

“Are you ready?”

“Where do we go now?”

“Over there.” She pointed, but now I could not say whether our direction led north or south, east or west. Orsya waded into the water, having carefully made fast the net bag to her belt. As I followed more slowly I saw that once the bag dipped below the surface, it began to give out ghostly light as if the water had ignited the shells. We headed away from the beach. There were fewer of the quasfi beds now, more dark patches. But under us the bottom was shelving and shortly thereafter we waded, water waist-high. I judged, since I saw cavern walls looming out into the half gloom, that we were now in a rift, leading back into the cliffs.

As the water fell to our knees, Orsya unhooked the bag from her belt and dragged it along at the end of one of its tie cords, being careful to let it go under the surface so its light continued.

The rift widened out again. Once more I saw the glimmer of living quasfi beds. But—I stopped short, straining. Here were no rocky beaches providing the shellfish with housing space. Instead, they rooted on platforms on which towered, above the waterline, carved figures. These were set in two lines leading from where we stood to a bulk I could only half discern in the limited light.

Water lapped around their feet and lines of dead quasfi, their shells still cemented fast, strung about them, thigh-high, suggesting that in another time the statues had been even further submerged.

They were human of body, although some of the figures were so muffled in cloaks or long robes that their forms could only be guessed at.

Yes, human of body—but they had no faces! The heads set on those shoulders were blank of any carving, being only oval balls, though in each oval were deep eyepits, such eyepits as had marked the carving on the cliff outside.

“Come!” Still trailing her shell bag, Orsya moved forward down the avenue between those standing figures. She did not glance at them as she passed, but headed straight for the dark mass ahead.

But I had an odd feeling as I followed her that through each set of those eyepits, we were watched, remotely, detachedly, but still watched.

I stumbled, caught my balance and knew my feet were on underwater steps, which led up out of the flood. Before us was a wide platform and on it a building. So poor was the light that I could not be sure of its size. Darker gaps in its walls suggested windows and doors, but to explore it without proper lighting was folly. I said as much to Orysa. It was well out of the water and her quasfi shell lamp would not serve us here.

“No,” she agreed, “but wait and see.”

We stepped together from the top of that stair onto the platform. Once more I halted with a gasp of amazement.

Because, as our feet touched pavement, there came a glow from it, thin, hardly better than the radiance from the shells, but enough to make us sure of our footing.

“It is some magic of this place,” Orsya told me. “Stoop—place your hands upon the stone.”

I did as she bade, as she herself was doing. From the point where my flesh touched that stone (or was it stone?—the surface texture did not feel like it) light gleamed forth even brighter.

“Take off your boots!” She was hopping on one foot, pulling off her own tight foot covering. “It seems to kindle greater from the touch of skin upon it.”

I was reluctant to follow her example, but when she went on confidently and then looked back in some surprise, I pulled off my light boots to carry them in one hand. She was right; as our bare feet crossed that smooth surface, the glow heightened, until we could really see something of the dark structure before us.

There were no panes in those windows; the doorway was a wide open portal. I wished that I had the sword I had dropped back by the river. Orsya had returned my knife to me and there was a good eight inches of well-tried blade, but in such a place imagination is quick to paint perils which could not be faced by so small a weapon.

I saw no carvings, no embellishments about the door-post, nothing to break the severe look of the walls, save the stark openings of the windows. But, as we ventured inside, the light which followed the pacing of our feet, flared up to twice the brilliance. The room in which we stood was bare. Fronting us was a long wall, and set into that were ten openings. They had doors shut tight, nor could I see any latch, any way of opening them. Orsya crossed to the one directly facing us and put her hand against it, to find it immovable.

“I did not come so far before,” she said. “There was an old warn-spell then—today it was gone.”

“A warn-spell!” I was angered at the danger into which she had brought us. “And we come here without weapons—”

“A warn-spell, very old,” she returned. “It was one which answered to our protective words, not to theirs.”

I must accept her explanation. But there was one way to test it. From left to right I looked along that row of closed doors. Then I spoke two words I had learned in Lormt.

THEY WERE NOT Great Words, such as I had used when the power had answered me, but they would test and protect the tester.

As they echoed along that narrow room where we stood, the light under our feet blazed so high my eyes were dazzled for a moment and I heard Orsya cry out softly. Then followed on the roll of those words a crackling, a splintering, low and far off thunder. And in that new light I saw the door to which my companion had set her hands was now riven, falling apart in flakes. Orsya leaped back as they struck and crumbled into powdery debris.

Only that one door had been so affected. It was as if Orsya’s touch had channeled whatever power the words had into striking there. I thought, though I could not be sure, for it all happened so quickly, that the breakage had come from the very point where her fingers rested.

Now came an answer—not such a one as had before, but a kind of chanting. It was quickly ended, and of it I understood not a word.

“What . . . ?”

Orsya shook her head. “I do not know, though it is very old. Some of the sounds—” She shook her head again. “No, I do not know. It was a guard set, I believe, to answer such a coming as ours. What was opened to us, we need not now fear.”

I did not share her certainty about that. I would have held her back as she went confidently through that door, but I was too far from her and she eluded my grasp easily. There was nothing left to do but follow.

The light enveloped us with a cloud of radiance, and was reflected by a blaze of glitter.

This was a square room, in its center a two step dais on which stood a high-backed, wide-armed chair: the chair had an occupant. Memory stirred in me. That tale of how my father and Koris and the other survivors of shipwreck had found, high in a Karsten cliff, the hollowed tomb of the legended Volt, who had been seated so in a chair, his great ax across his knees. Koris had dared to claim that ax. After his taking of it, the remains of Volt had vanished into dust, as if he had waited only for the coming of some warrior bold enough, strong enough to wield a weapon which was forged not for human hands but for one deemed a half-god.

But this was no time-dried body which faced us. What it was I could not say, for I could not see it. A blue light veiled what rested in that chair so one was aware only of a form somewhere within. But it was not alive. This I knew was a tomb, even as Volt’s rock hole had been.

One could have no fear, no feeling of morbidity about that mist in the chair. Rather there was a kind of welcome . . . I was startled when my thoughts read my feelings so. “Who . . . ?” Orsya took another step forward, a second, a third; now she was very close to the foot of the dais, staring up at that column of mist.

“Someone,” the words came out of nowhere into my mind, surely Orsya had not sent them, “who means us no harm.” About the dais were piled small chests. Some of these had rotted and burst. From them trickled such treasures as I had never seen gathered in one place before. But my eyes came quickly to the first step where there lay by itself, very plain in that light, a sword.

My hand went out of itself, fingers flexing, reaching for the hilt. The blade did not have the blue cast of fine steel, but rather a golden glow—or perhaps that was only the reflection of the light in the room. Its hilt appeared to be cut from a single piece of yellow quartz in which small sparks of red, gold, and blue like unto the mist flashed, died, and flashed again. It was slightly longer, I thought, than the weapons I knew. But it showed no signs of any eating by time.

I wanted it more than anything I had ever wanted in my life before. That desire was as sharp in me as physical hunger, as the need for drink in a desert.

Had Koris felt this when he looked upon Volt’s ax? If he had I did not wonder that he set hand to it. But Volt had not denied him in that taking. Would I—did I dare—to do the same here?

To rob the dead—that is a dire thing. Yet Koris had asked of Volt his ax and taken it, and thereafter wrought great things for his chosen people, using that weapon.

To take up a dead man’s sword, that was to take to one a measure of him who had first carried it. The Sulcar believed that in the heat of battle a man using a dead man’s sword can be possessed by the ghost, inspired either to such deeds as he would not dare alone, or driven to his fate if the ghost proved vengeful and jealous. Yet still Sulcarmen have been known to plunder tombs for none other than swords of story and fame: Not in Estcarp, but in the northlands where once they had their home ports before they made their alliance with the Wise Women. They sang sagas of the deeds of such men and such swords.

I tried to fight that eating desire to take into my hand that hilt of gold. But there are some hungers which are greater than any reason, even for such as I who have tried all my life to put thought before action. And this time temptation won.

So I brushed past Orsya and went down on one knee. But the hand I put out to clasp that hilt was not the left, rather the maimed right: It went so naturally. Those fingers which could still move closed about the haft. Yet, even as they did, for the last time prudence warned. I broke that queer eyelock which riveted my attention to the sword, looked up into the blue mist.

Within it was a core, a dim seen figure; that it did exist there was all of which I was sure. Koris had taken Volt’s ax, but boldly, as a gift, not as one who plundered. Could I do less here and now?

I drew back my hand, though it was hard to break that hold, as if my fingers, against my will, decided to keep what they had grasped. Though I did not rise to my feet, I spoke aloud to what the mist cloaked.

“I am Kemoc Tregarth out of Estcarp, over-mountain. I seek that which has been unlawfully taken; I have lost my sword in honorable battle. Do I go forth from here empty-handed, then already is my cause part lost. I claim no hero’s name nor fame. But I can say these words and not be blasted—”

Those words from Lormt, which had opened to us this doorway, once again I spoke. But this time in no challenge or as a war cry, but rather as identification, so that this throne, and its occupant, would know that I was not of the Shadow, but of those who raised shield against the Dark.

I do not know what I expected to follow my speaking. Anything might happen. That which sat within the blue might rise and welcome me, or strike me down. But there was nothing, no blaze of heightened radiance, not even an echo.

So I felt a little foolish. But not so much so that I did not hesitate to raise the hand, which had been curved about the hilt, to he or she who sat above, in the same salute I would have given a war leader.

Then I picked up the sword. It was not time-marked. No rust pits marred its surface. Its point and edge were as sharp and clean as a man might wish. Again my scarred and stiffened hand closed about the hilt with an ease I had not known since the healing of that old wound.

I got to my feet and fumbled in my jerkin to bring out the scarf, now wet and like a string. This I looped to make an improvised baldric, since it would not fit into the empty scabbard at my belt.