Wheel of Stars (16 page)

Another door, another hall, more half-opened doors here and there. Then a wall, paneled in heavily carved wood which had been painted, though the colors had worn away and still clung only in the curls of leaves, the entwining of boldly wrought stems. For it would seem that the artist had attempted on this one room side to create a section of heavy vine, stem, plant, beginning at the floor line and extending up to the ceiling.

So embossed was that design that one could hook fingers into it deeply in many places. Yet there were only two such places which counted, one the center of a half circle of leaves. Yes, as
she looked closer she saw there a small head, a laughing face with eyes which lived, pointed ears standing from among curls on the head. The whole was hardly larger than her thumb nail and yet perfect. And, not too far away, was a second twisted leaf, this one hiding the head of a stag—proud as that animal the huntress had ridden in the green world.

Press—she did not press with her hands—she only sent a thought hurling at the two points. There followed a shaking, a trembling, throughout the wall. The whole of the carvings there tingled with life, and would be free. Then the surface split along a line between head and stag, the vines and leaves so cleverly set that none of them were riven apart by the opening.

A door—so narrow that she might have to turn sidewise to pass it—Gwennan did not remember entering, she was just beyond. Here were steps even as there had been beneath the stone in the meadow. Save that they were not time touched, but straight and sharp edged, and she followed them downward again.

It was dark and still not dark to her sight which was of the inner not the outer world, while she passed far more swiftly than she could have done had she made that journey in body. It would seem as though she was seeking the center of the world, descending endlessly. To every action there comes an end. She was again before a door which swung open as had the one of the treasure house, yielding easily.

This room she had seen! This was what she had come to find—the heart of the Guardians’ life—or
the place of their deaths. Here were ranged those coffins, crystal deepening to opaque. Gwennan knew who lay in the first of that line. Lady Lyle rested as a smooth faced statue, the clouding of the crystal about her well begun.

There certainly could be no wakening for her, once she had entered this place and surrendered her body to the renewing. Gwennan looked upon her longingly for a moment or two—wishing that the process could be reversed, that the Lady might be summoned forth. No, it was the other coffin which she must see—that solid one at the far end of that line. Thought alone wafted her there, she stood beside it in an instant. Solid as any stone, no sign of the flaking or breaking of the outer shell, as she had witnessed when she watched from the seer's stool.

Did the renewal then sometimes fail, and that lay within that shell—was it indeed dead?

She stared down at that portion which was meant to cover the head. A skull beneath—or someone who had slumbered past the awakening time? Some very ancient mechanism could have at last come to a final halt.

It was then that she sighted what lay on the surface above what might have been the heart position of the sleeper. White as the encasing of the coffin, near invisible against it, only the longer she focused upon it the clearer the form of it became. A symbol—not unlike one of those two daggers which had lain crossed on the table in Lyle House—white like frosted ice and as deadly in its life-refusing chill. The one who should have arisen was so sealed within. Unless that evil thing be
raised the rightful guardian would remain a prisoner.

Tor—only Tor could have done this. Gwennan fastened her mind power upon that white, near invisible, knife—strove so to fling it aside, even as her will had freed the upper door. But she could move nothing. This was not a matter of will (or at least
her
will); she had not the strength of old Power in her. Neither could she reach forth a hand—for that essence of her which had made this journey had no hands to grasp and take. No—she must come here in body for there was no doubt that the only hand which would serve was hers.

She had been shown the way, the problem made plain to her. The rest depended upon her will, determination—and her courage! For that Tor would allow this threat to his power go unchallenged she did not believe. By her very act of learning this much, of coming here, she had bound herself to action. There could be no retreat.

Even as she accepted that, Gwennan was again before the globe in the warmth of her kitchen, trembling from the effort, too tired to move.

The inertia which held her was broken—by a sound from outside. Not the screech of the hunting beast, but a clangor which startled her so she gasped. There was shouting, faint but increasing in strength. Again a siren which could only be the sheriff's car—

Gwennan stumbled to her feet—wavered to the window then realized that she could not see the outer road from the kitchen. She made her way down the hall, steadying herself with one hand against the wall to open the front door. There was a
confusion of passing vehicles, of the warning lights revolving on cars. Half of Waterbridge was coming up the road, headed past her house, on towards the narrower lane.

The sky was alight—not with dawn rays but rather the glow of a fire lying to the north. There was only one place which could show so easily here. That was not the sign of fire at any outlying fire—but rather at Lyle House itself!

Set by those candles left burning on the table in a house she had thought empty? But that was hours ago. However, the house's inner paneling was of wood—very old, oiled, polished into being good tinder. While the walls might not be breached for they were stone and very thick, the inner shell could easily be gutted.

She raced back, caught up the cloak, thrust her feet into her boots. There were people coming along on foot now in spite of the hour and the cold, she slipped out among them and heard their excited voices—telling of a phone call which had sounded an alarm, though no one was sure just who had called—of the destruction of the house unless help arrived in time.

Would Tor have done this to conceal the resting place of the Guardians? Gwennan believed that no true Lyle would be able to destroy their refuge, the place to which they had clung for centuries. But Tor was half-blood—the house could mean very little to him against what he thought he might gain from it. Had he been able to sense her own penetration by thought into the secret which lay beneath and so acted hastily but ruthlessly, before she could carry out that which she had just found
she must determine to do?

The fire engine—bought largely with Lyle money the girl remembered wryly, had reached the house, followed by the sheriff's car, by two truckloads of men who jumped out to mill around. The high snow might well be such an impediment to their efforts as could spell disaster.

Standing half open, the front door allowed a view of flame and smoke. There was no sign of the servants, were they trapped within? That appeared the opinion of those who had come to fight the fire. Two of the new heat suits were being donned, volunteers wearing them stamped on through the door under arch of water, from the pump truck, water which froze as it gathered around them.

Gwennan stared at the glare flickering behind the front windows. What treasures were being lost in there! If the house were consumed she might never perhaps find that inner doorway the globe had led her to.

There was shouting as the two men who entered returned supporting a third between them. He whom they had rescued was plainly unable to help himself as they bore him forward. While there was no mistaking the brilliant color of his hair, even though his head was turned away from her.

No matter who else might have been in the house, Tor Lyle had been caught and—Gwennan studied that limp form they settled on a stretcher. One drew a covering over him. Dead? No, they lifted him into the back of the sheriff’s car. He was bound for the station house where the medics would be able to call in a helicopter to take him on to the hospital in Fremont—if he still lived. The
way his body had sagged had made her wonder about that.

Gwennan felt only wonder at first, and then her feelings became stronger. She was inclined to believe that he might have brought about his own death, perhaps because of his hot ambition—that need to be in command of the Lyle secret. Tonight he had opened a gate for those creatures from other worlds, of that she was as certain as if she had watched him at such summoning, still to meet with death—no! There was another answer somehow—If his death was meant to be, Lady Lyle could have caused it herself. She who had once been the Voice was ruthless for the triumph of the Light as Gwennan herself could testify. To face, to remove, the menace Tor represented was for any Guardian an outright duty, nor would Saris Lyle flinch from carrying that through.

So no affection had bound the older woman to Tor—rather a need to work out a desired pattern. Time had failed the Lady, therefore she had done all she could to make sure that her mission might not also fail. She had suborned Gwennan, awakened, used her, to achieve what she herself might not do. Tor was not a thread to be pulled loose and tossed aside, he was still one who mattered to time's weaving.

Therefore if he were dead, there had been partial failure not a triumph for the Lady, unfinished action still remaining. Gwennan watched the firefighters, more intent upon her thoughts than their actions.

The glow behind the window now, certainly that was much lessened. Finally the men tramped out
pulling out smoldering tatters of cloth behind them to be tossed into snow banks. The acrid smell of smoke hung heavy. Gwennan heard the news passed along that the flame had been largely confined to drapery and a section of carpet. That the fire crew themselves were surprised that so little real damage had been done.

Young Lyle, the story went, had collapsed from smoke inhalation after fighting the blaze on his own. There had been no one else in the house.

So far Gwennan had gone unrecognized in the crowd. People were still straggling out from town. The fire must have roused all of White-bridge. She had seen enough, wanting to get away—to think, perhaps to call once more upon the globe. Tor was for a space removed from the board on which he would play his game. Now might be her only chance.

She slipped away among the brush of the shrubs which helped conceal most of Lyle House from the road. They would surely leave a guard on the house. What she must do—if she could—would be secret.

What she could do—

Suddenly realizing that her time might be very short before she might be seen, or precautions taken to lock up the house beyond her penetration, Gwennan pushed through the shrubbery, heading towards the back of the house, away from the lights and confusion of the trucks and people in the fore yard. She had never explored the grounds here, nor was she sure that she could
discover any unguarded entrance to the side or back of the house. The absence of the servants continued to present a question. Had Tor sent them away? Or had they refused to serve a master they believed in a false position? Gwennan was not even sure how many of them there had ever been. The woman who had been the lady's soft-footed attendant, a man who had tended the door, been seen in the yard at intervals—another older woman who waited on the table for their dining—those were all she personally knew.

Though the snow was not drifted here, a thickened growth about both the side walls of the house and a series of shrubs and hedges of bare branches acted with the persistence of a maze to keep her from a straight path. Gwennan was continually having to turn right or left to avoid some such obstruction, many looming well above her head.

She had made some progress when once more the cry of the flying thing shook her. Instinct took over, forcing her back against one of the lengths of hedge. The tall, overhanging branches here would, she hoped with a fast-beating heart, conceal her.

That stench of an Outworld thing enveloped her. She heard the beat of what could only be wide wings. More than half of her screamed silently to run—to get away from this place. Tor had set his own guards! Against the monsters of his pack—what weapon had she? The flyer might not be able to reach her in this entanglement of shrubbery—but there were other hunters out this night—and perhaps that impatient cry from overhead summoned those!

Would the house itself provide any defense, be a refuge? How could it? Even in the most sacred temple of Ortha's time, the beasts from outside had prowled—prowled to slay.

Yet the house, its thick walls, seemed to be the only refuge she dared hope to gain. She was somehow very certain that what was alive in the night wanted no dealings with the others. No,
she
was the intended prey—Tor's prey!

The girl dared not move into the open, so she caught at handsful of the icy coated branches to draw herself along, support her over the roughness of ground she could hardly see. Thus Gwennan reached the back of Lyle House, saw a wall forming a barrier, then a door. Shrubs grew close enough that she could follow under their overhang so that moments of being in the open, vulnerable, were very few. Success depended now on whether that door was barred. If she reached it and could not win through—

Gwennan ran clumsily for the wall gate. There was no latch, no handle. While above she heard the beat of the wings—the foulness wafted by these made her choke and gag. She threw out both hands, beat upon that resistant surface.

The pendant swung loose from her half opened parka. A thread of light shot from the crescent moon on its top, not a full ray such as the dial might have offered, yet visible enough as it struck on the door.

Oddly enough it slanted downward of its own accord, though she had not attempted to aim the ray, that finger wide beam found to enter a hole in the dark old wood.

Gwennan dared not look up over her shoulder.
That which swooped upon her out of the night was monstrous. She need not actually sight it to know that. It flew silently, avidly. Were beak and talons already reaching for her? The door swung back to allow Gwennan to throw herself inside, catching at the stout slab with both hands. She slammed it shut, to stand gasping for breath—her fear and the terrible fetor mingling, to leave her so shaky she doubted for a fraction of time her ability to move.

There came a shriek filled with hate and rage—rising until the high whistle of it was a pain in her head, passing at last beyond audible range. Something heavy slammed against the wall and there were sounds as if great claws strove to rend the thick wood of the door, the stone of the wall, into splinters and rubble.

Gwennan waited. That thing need only rise to wing again—take off and coast easily across the wall. Yet it continued instead with blind fury to attack at ground level. She looked to the dark bulk of the house. This was a courtyard such as she had seen pictured as part of very old buildings overseas.

The house formed one side of a square. That wall through which she had come was a short one, joining, not too much farther on, two one-story buildings which formed a corner, and were attached in turn to another and much larger two-story, box-like structure. In this dim light the girl could only see the general pattern, for there were no lights within. Another low building made up a section of the square on that side, the roof of that glittering a little—save in one place the structure
divided on the lowest floor to form a wide gateway arched above.

The house was what mattered. Gwennan, hearing the continued fury of that creature who fought to reach her, ran toward that. She must find an entrance. There was no snow on the pavement here; efforts must have been made to keep it clear. At least she need not fear any ice patches to bring her down.

Windows formed dark squares at intervals along the side. Unlike those at the front of the house these were heavily shuttered, and she did not doubt that those shutters were barred within. However, there was also the door she sought, as solid and forbidding as all she had earlier encountered. When she stood before it she saw that this also had no latch, no visible hand hold. The pendant—?

However, when she raised that this time no pencil thin beam answered. Gwennan bit her lip. The thing outside had not abandoned its assault. Sooner or later wood and stone
must
give way under that fierce attack. Then—

She heard something now—a low growling, not the shrilling of the flyer's voice. Another of the night hunters must have closed in. The house door—! Gwennan beat on it with both hands before she could regain control, sheer panic rising in her. To try to take refuge in any of those other buildings around her she sensed would be fatal. Only within the house where Power had gathered could she hope for any safety.

At last, because she was no longer able to think of anything else, she stooped to set the horn tips
of that moon carving into which was indeed a wider hole than that one on the gate. They slipped in as easily as if that opening had been contrived to contain them, and Gwennan, as she might have done with her own house key, gave a turn. The pendant obeyed—and the door opened!

She was through it in an instant—into a hall thick with acrid smoke. Once more she slammed a portal tightly behind her, to stand listening in the dark, reaching out tentatively with that newly revealed sense of her—striving so to pick up any suggestion that there remained life under this roof.

If she only had a flashlight! This part of the house was unknown territory, but she believed that there was no one here. She could hear some distant sounds which suggested that there was activity towards the front—that the firemen or the sheriff's deputy were still in possession of the building.

Using her hand along the wall for a guide, Gwennan crept forward. What she sought lay beyond these service quarters, and it would depend upon continued presence of those others whether or when she could reach her goal. Her fingers slipped from the stone walls (there were no wooden panels here) across what could only be a closed door.

The thought of locating a source of light made her try that. It opened easily enough. Not only opened, but there
was
a gleam of light which startled her into immobility. Before her stretched a huge room possessing all the furnishings and characteristics of those great kitchens
which had been scenes of activity two centuries or more before her own birthdate.

The large fireplace, in which nested the source of the light, a fire hardly more than the ember stage, was equipped with a spit, dangling hooked chains to support pots, a side oven of brick. Nowhere was there any sign of a modern stove. But by the dying fire Gwennan sighted a candle on a table, a ruffle of melted wax still about its wick. It was only a moment's work to light that from the dying fire.

The walls were pegged and on those pegs rested pots and pans of metal, brightly burnished. Not only must this antique kitchen have still been in general use, but also most carefully kept. Yet there was about it now an aura of desertion, as if those who had lived and worked there were gone.

Candle in hand, Gwennan slipped back to the hall. However, instead of going forward, she returned to the door by which she entered, pressing herself against it tensely to listen. There was nothing to be heard. If the creatures had at last won inside the courtyard, the thickness of these walls deadened any warning. Not knowing how much time she might still have, she hurried now, trying to pass as noiselessly as possible.

There was another half open door where the smell of smoke was even more pronounced. From beyond Gwennan caught the murmur of voices. Then the sound of a starting engine, a crunching of the truck in the outside snow followed. The siren of the sheriff's car clamored. Gwennan wondered if they had been alerted to the monster
pack. Surely the screams of the Flying thing had not gone unheard.

“See yuh—” That was the sheriff. And he did not sound as if he had been alarmed by any manifestation out of the night. Instead he was tramping heavy-footed down the hall nearby—searching the house a second time? Gwennan shielded her candle with her hand as she glanced around. Were the night monsters only made known to those they hunted? she wondered for a moment.

A hiding place? There could be a hundred such here and she would never find them! But
she
must not be found! The kitchen?

The girl sped to that very wide fireplace. It possessed such a width of hearth. The fire, which by its present remains had not been large, had also smoldered well down, so that Gwennan was able to edge into a cavern meant to accommodate full logs. Pressed back against one wall perhaps she might pass unseen. Reluctantly the girl blew out her candle, entered the gaping mouth of what seemed to her a small, sooty room. Flattening herself as best she could against the ancient bricks with a fleeting wish she might indeed be swallowed up by them, she wondered how visible she might be.

Steps sounded loud on the uncarpeted floor outside the door she had left ajar. Then the flash of a strong hand light aimed into the room, making a full sweep of the kitchen. Gwennan clung tighter to what was certainly no true refuge as the light passed across the mouth of the fireplace. She expected the beam to center on her, to
hear a demand to come out—to be forced to explain—

However, her simple maneuver worked. The circle of light slipped on leaving her undiscovered. Finally the door closed with a snap. Gwennan let out her breath in a little gasp, emerged to pick up her candle, relight it. She need only wait a short time longer, she was sure. After a search of the house there might be a guard left outside but it would be the duty for such a one to remain close to his car radio to catch any signal.

Now—to find the room she had seen in the vision the globe had given her! That chamber could not be a part of the serving quarters—though she believed not too far beyond. Back once more in the hall, Gwennan moved only a few steps at a time—listening to other sequences of sounds—closing doors, a footfall here and there where there was a bare flooring.

She counted to a hundred, once, again, and again, growing more impatient with every tally. At last she heard the firm slam of what could only be that massive front door. Now she hurried through into the main hall. With the flame shielded as best she could against drafts, she at length flung open a door to discover the room she sought.

This
was
it! Though by the very poor light Gwennan carried, that deeply carven wall was a mass of shadows. She tried to recall just where she stood in her vision. There were so many curled leaves, such a confusing massing of those and the entwined vines. At length she had to hold
her candle within almost touching distance of the panels and peer very closely indeed. The face—that was it! Now for the stag—but once she had the one in line the other was not difficult to find.

Placing the candle on the floor between her feet, Gwennan set a thumb hard on both of those minute carvings, pressing inward with all her might.

For a long moment she thought that she had failed—unless the globe vision had taunted her with a hallucination, for nothing at all happened. There was no appreciable give to the two knots of carving on which she concentrated all the strength she could summon.

Then came a sound—not unlike a long drawn out sigh. Her hands slid apart, being carried by the carved portions she still pressed. Immediately before her opened that parting of the pattern in the wall. The aperture appeared so narrow that she wondered if she could squeeze through and her passage was something of a task, muffled as her body was by heavy clothing.

Candle once more in hand, she stood at the top of that flight of stairs. Before she began the descent, Gwennan dragged off her scarf, wadded that into a roll, which she planted between the leaves of the concealed door, for she noted no latch on the inner side. The wool resisted the closing of the panel, leaving a strip into which she could get her finger. That seemed her best precaution against being sealed in.

This stairway was in far better shape than that beneath the stone. She was able to move faster without having to watch for any broken steps. So Gwennan came at last into that room of the
coffins. For a moment she paused beside that of Lady Lyle. The serene beauty of the face, which was still to be clearly seen, mocked her. Such perfect rest—and all this trouble left behind for Gwennan to deal with. Nor could the girl ever be truly sure that any decision she might make was the right one. Why had she been pressed into service? And who was the rightful guardian, the one whose power Tor so coveted that he had used forbidden methods to obtain it?