Warlock of the Witch World (17 page)

To our relief the waters did not reach higher than our breasts; and I wondered what the Thas would make of that bulk stopped in the tunnel when they blundered into it.

The waterway opened into a pool and there was the splash of a falls. Light, daylight, though grayed and dim from the distance, danced down to show us those falls, laced with foam, which cascaded from an opening far above.

THE SPRAY FROM the falls was a mist of rain over us. But at least we could see. I drew Orsya with me back against the wall farthest from the falls, from where I could see best those openings (there were three of them) above us.

It was clear we could not climb near the falls; the rock was too much under the blanket of spray. The second opening was no good to us either, for it was in the roof of the cavern and only a winged man could reach it. So I studied the third. It was a narrow slit, to the right of the falls, out of the direct force of the water for most of the climb.

But even if we could reach that opening to the outer world we did not know what awaited us on the far side, nor in what part of the country we would emerge. I said as much to Orsya, but she shook her head, “We are in the highlands. You still have the Dark Tower ahead.”

I could not see how she was so sure of our direction, but I did not argue about it.

“Can you climb?” Whether her webbed feet could find toeholds as easily as mine, I did not know.

“One does not know without trying,” she said.

As I feared, even here the stone was slick with water. We were beyond all but the edge of the constant dampening of the spray and the wall was rough enough to give us purchase for our hands and feet, bared to grip more firmly. However, it was not a progress to be hurried.

I went first, testing each hold before I risked setting weight upon it. Now and then I glanced back to be sure Orsya was following. She did not seem in any distress, though she moved deliberately. About two thirds of the way up I came across a fault in the rock, hidden from below, a small shelf which could hardly be termed a ledge, but which would give us a resting place, sorely needed after those hours of flight.

I lay down on the ledge and reached my hands to Orsya, helping her up and over beside me in that narrow space. But her head turned to a very narrow crevice in the wall at our backs, her nostrils expanding as she tested the air.

“Thas!”

“Here?” This shelf was no place on which to face a fight. Nor did I want to start to climb again and be attacked from below.

“Not now,” she reported after a moment. “But this crack leads to one of their burrows. We had better not linger.”

She was right. The entrance to a Thas run was no place in which to take our ease—especially not when a slight push could send us both over and down. I got to my feet, tried to forget the pain in my shoulders, the aching weariness of my arms. Behind lay the longest stretch. Keep my mind only on the few inches before me—the next hand hold—and then the one after that—

It was a slowly rising agony, that last part of the climb. My maimed hand was numb. I could watch it move and hold, but I could not feel the stone beneath the awkward fingers. Always with me was the fear that that grasp could slip.

But that was the hand which I at last pushed through the opening into the outer world. The light was not that of the sun and I wondered if we were coming out into a storm. But, as I struggled through, I discovered we were still at the bottom of a rift. The stream which made the falls in the cavern poured along there. The rest was only rock walls and sand. I turned to draw Orsya up beside me.

We were a wild looking pair, our clothing tattered, with raw red scraps of skin on our arms and legs, along with dark bruises, the grime of mud and other signs of our journey. But the sheer relief of getting out of those ways made me feel light of head and heart—though some of that might have been due to lack of food.

Orsya went to the edge of the stream, fell on her knees by it, staring into the water intently, as Loskeetha might have consulted her bowl of sand. Then she made a quick dart with one hand and brought it up clasped about a wriggling, fighting creature which was so long and slim of body it seemed more snake than fish. She knocked this against a rock and left it there, then made another grab. Hungry as I was, I could not find any appetite for her catch. But she gathered them together carefully and put them in the bag from which she dumped the quasfi shells.

We started along the cut, I on the narrow bank, Orsya in the stream. Twice more she made a raid into the flood swirling about her feet and added to her bag.

Twilight was dim about us as the ravine widened out and vegetation and grass began to show in ragged clumps. We drew away from the water a little and I found a place where a boulder and part of an ancient slide from the heights, together with the cliff wall, gave us a corner of protection. Orsya borrowed my knife to work upon the fish, while I piled stones to add to our shelter.

I did not relish the thought of raw fish, but when she handed me some, I accepted it and tried not to think what I was eating. It was not as unpleasant as I had expected and, while I would not choose to live upon such foodstuffs, I could chew and swallow my share.

It was already dark, but Orsya brought out the cone-rod, unwrapping Kaththea’s scarf. This she sat on the ground before us with much care.

When it stood point up to her satisfaction, she bent her head and breathed upon it. Then, with her hands she made certain signs, one or two of which I recognized, for I had seen Kaththea sketch their like. I knew better than to disturb her concentration at such a time. But I wondered what Orsya was, and if she were indeed the Krogan equivalent of a Wise Woman.

She sat back at last, rubbing her hands together as if they were either cold, or she would free them of something clinging to her skin.

“You may sleep without fear of surprise,” came her thought. “We have such a guardian as has not been known since my mother’s mother’s mother’s time.”

I longed to ask her what manner of magic she had wrought. But the first law of power is that explanations must not be asked for—if they are volunteered, well and good. And, since she did not tell me, I could only wonder. Yet I believed in her promise of safety. This was good, for I do not think I could have stood any watch that night, my fatigue of mind and body was as a burden heavy enough to push me to earth.

When I awoke Orsya was not curled in sleep, but rather sat, her hands arched over the cone-rod, not quite touching it, her position being that of one who warms herself at a fire. She must have heard me stir, for she gave a start as one awakened out of deep thought and turned her head to look at me.

Her hair, well dried now, was a silvery cloud about her head and shoulders. Somehow at this moment she looked more unhuman, more alien, than she had since our first meeting by the guest isle.

“I have been screeing . . . Eat.” She nodded at what rested just beyond my hand. “And listen!”

There was about her such an air of command as I had seen in the Witches of Estcarp, and automatically I obeyed. Screeing? The term was new to me, but I though she meant foreseeing, after Loskeetha’s pattern, and I wanted no more of that.

Orsya read my thoughts and shook her head. “I deal not with futures, possibly or impossible, but with dangers which walk this land. There is much abroad here—”

I glanced from her to the wider stretch of valley. There was nothing I could see except scanty growths of brush and the stream.

“The eyes of the head cannot be trusted here,” she answered my thought once more. “Whatever you see, look twice, and thrice, and with the mind also.”

“Illusions?” I guessed.

Orsya nodded. “Illusions. They are deft at weaving such, these who deal in the powers of the Shadow. Look now.” She placed her right hand so that the point of the cone must touch the palm, then she leaned forward to touch my forehead.

I blinked, startled.

A rock not too far away was no longer a thing of rugged stone, but rather of warty gray hide, of large, questing eyes, of claws to tear.

“Look now upon your sword,” Orsya’s thought commanded.

I must have unconsciously reached for its hilt when I sighted the rock-monster. Along its blade red runes glowed; they might have been written in freshly shed blood. But they were in no language I knew.

“Illusion? Or is it really there? And, if it is, why does it not attack?”

“Because we have also a protection of illusion about us.”

She raised her hand from the cone and I saw only a rock. “How long we can maintain our cover and—” She hesitated and then continued, “there is also this. We can go together only while we travel by water. I can not take wholly to land. Thus the last part of the journey will be yours.”

“None of it need be yours,” I told her swiftly. “You have the means to make yourself safe. Stay here—” I could not say “stay here until I return,” for I was sure that returning was not one of the things I could read into any future. This quest was mine alone and Orsya need not bear any of its burdens.

It was as if she neither heard my words, nor read them in my mind. Instead she had gone back to studying the cone-rod.

“The sword will warn you. It is not in my power to read its history, for it is of war and warriors. My gifts lie with the waters and, a little, of the earth across which they run. But there are tales which travel from one people to another across this riven land of ours. A blood runs on that blade when evil is nearby, as you have seen. Therefore, when we must part, you must use it as a touchstone to try the truth of what you see: the fair, the safe, those may seem foul or dangerous. The seeming foul may be harmless. Do not trust your unaided sight. Now, it is day—let us go.”

“That thing out there—” I stood up, sword in hand, half expecting to see the rock turn into a monster ready to charge.

“It is a guardian, I think.” Orsya was rewinding the cone in Kaththea’s scarf. “Give me your hand, and walk softly with me in the stream. It may be able to sense that we pass, but it will not see us.”

I kept my eyes upon that rock—fearing that the illusion might hold so that I would still be seeing it while what it covered was stalking us.

“Think not of it,” she ordered. “And no more mind touch—such creatures cannot read it, but they are alerted by its use.”

Hand in hand we hurried down to the stream and stepped into the water. As we had in the tunnels, we waded in a current which flowed with some power, and which reached our knees. I held the sword before me, watching the bared blade. The runes blazed as we passed the rock, and then they began to fade.

The second time that warning showed we were well out in the canyon valley. But this time the danger was visible: small, scuttling things moving around the open end of a cut in the cliff—Thas!

They were bringing forth baskets of earth and rocks, dumping it in piles, running back again in a fury of work. I felt Orsya’s hand tighten about mine, read the wave of disgust which filled her.

We rounded a curve in the canyon and saw another portion of Thas labor. They were building a road with earth and rocks, angling it up along the side of the cliff.

Among them were man-like figures wearing saffron yellow cloaks, and those carried staffs, but wore no swords. They were plainly in charge of the operation, ordering the Thas here and there, consulting maps or rolls of instructions. The reason for the labor was a mystery to me, but that it had great importance to the enemy was clear.

Orsya raised her fingers to her lips in warning, having dropped my hand for an instant. Then she snatched my fingers up again as if even so small a break between us might be disastrous. Silence, she had cautioned, and I gathered that stood for mind touch also.

Some distance away, more Thas worked along the river, some piling rock out in the stream bed, though they entered water with very visible reluctance and had to be constantly urged to it by two of the saffron robes who kept constant watch over their activities. How we were going to pass them if we kept to the water I did not see.

With my sword blade I motioned left. Orsya studied the ground there and then nodded. It seemed to me that our splashing progress out of the stream would surely alert the workers. But we gained the far bank unobserved.

I guessed that Orsya had by some means rendered us invisible to those workers. The illusion had protected us—so far. But I breathed more freely when we were in cover in broken country. The footing was less smooth, but this type of lurking was familiar to me. Threading in and out among the rocks and brush, we worked our way safely past the activity by the river. I wished I could learn the reason for it. That it meant no good to us I could guess.

“Listen; I will climb . . . see what lies ahead.”

“Take care. When we are apart, the illusion does not cloak you.”

“This is a game not unknown to me,” I returned with confidence.

Orsya pushed back between two rocks, crouching down. I fastened the sword to my belt and began to climb behind a chimney, which was weather sculptured almost free of the cliff wall. I had nearly reached the perch I had selected when there was a whistling screech behind. Had that attacker not so made clear its intentions, I would have been easy prey. But at that cry I pushed away. My spine and shoulders were now firm against the parent cliff, so narrow was this portion of the break through which I crawled, though my feet were still in place on the chimney. I freed the sword as death on wings hurtled down at me.

It made one pass over the top of the chimney, screeching, and the wind of its wing flapping nearly upset my precarious balance. Then it circled and came back, landing on top of the chimney, striking down at me with a murderous beak. It had a long neck which was very supple. The head was small, and seemed mostly to be that beak, with eyes to guide its attack.