Wizards’ Worlds (49 page)

Tired as he was Craike could not sleep. There was the restless sensation of some demand
about to be made, some task waiting. From time to time he fed the fire. Towards morning
he dozed, to snap awake. A night creature drinking, a screech overhead. He heard the
flutter of wings echo hollowly through the tower.

Beyond—darkness—blank, that curious blank which had fallen between him and the girl.
Craike got to his feet eagerly. That blank could be traced.

Outside it was raining, and fog hung in murky bands among the river hollows. The blank
spot veered. Craike started after it. The tower pavement became a trace of old road
he followed, weaving through the fog.

There was the sour smell of old smoke. Charred wood, black muck clung to his feet.
But his guide point was now stationary as the ground rose, studded with outcrops of
rock. So Craike came to a mesa jutting up into a steel-gray sky.

He hitched his way up by way of a long-ago slide. The rain had stopped, but there
was no hint of sun. And he was unprepared for the greeting he met as he topped the
lip of a small plateau.

A violent blow on the shoulder whirled him halfway around, and only by a finger’s
width did he escape a fall. A cry echoed his, and the blank broke. She was there.

Moving slowly, using the same technique he knew to soothe frightened animals, Craike
raised himself again. The pain in his shoulder was sharp when he tried to put much
weight upon his left arm. But now he saw her clearly.

She sat cross-legged, a boulder at her back, her hair a rippling cloud of black through
which her hands and arms shown starkly white. She had the thin, three-cornered face
of a child who has known much harshness; there was no beauty there—the flesh had been
too much worn by spirit. Only her eyes, watchful-wary as those of a feline, considered
him bleakly. In spite of his beam of good will, she gave him no welcome. And she tossed
another stone from hand to hand with the ease of one who had already scored with such
a weapon.

“Who are you?” she spoke aloud.

“He who followed you,” Craike fingered the bruise wound on his shoulder, not taking
his eyes from hers.

“You are no Black Hood.” It was a statement not a question. “But you, also, have been
horned.” Another statement.

Craike nodded. In his own time and place he had indeed been “horned.”

Just as her thrown stone had struck without warning, so came her second attack. There
was a hiss. Within striking distance a snake flickered a forked tongue.

Craike did not give ground. The snake head expanded,
fur ran over it; there were legs, a plume of tail fluffed. A dog fox yapped once at
the girl and vanished. Craike read her recoil, the first faint uncertainty.

“You have the power!”

“I have power,” he corrected her.

But her attention was no longer his. She was listening to something he could hear
with neither ear nor mind. Then she ran to the edge of the mesa. He followed.

On this side the country was more rolling, and across it now came mounted men moving
in and out of mist pools. They rode in silence, and over them was the same blanketing
of thought as the girl had used.

Craike glanced about. There were loose stones, and the girl had already proven her
marksmanship with such. But they would be no answer to the weapons the others had.
Only flight was no solution either.

The girl sobbed once, a broken cry so unlike the iron will she had shown that Craike
started. She leaned perilously over the drop, staring down at the horsemen.

Then her hands moved with desperate speed. She tore hairs from her head, twisted and
snarled them between her fingers, breathed on them, looped them with a stone for weight,
casting the tangled mass out to land before the riders.

The mist curled, took on substance. Where there had been only rock there was now a
thicket of thorn, so knotted that no fleshed creature could push through it. The hunters
paused, then they rode on again, but now they drove a reeling, naked man, a man kept
going by a lashing whip whenever he faltered.

Again the girl sobbed, burying her face in her hands. The wretched captive reached
the thorn barrier. Under his touch it melted. He stood there, weaving drunkenly.

A whip sang. He went to his knees under its cut, a trapped animal’s wail on the wind.
Slowly, with a blind seeking, his hands went out to small stones about him. He gathered
them, spread them anew in patterns. The girl had
raised her head, watched dry-eyed, but seething with hate and the need to strike back.
But she did not move.

Craike dared lay a hand on her narrow shoulder, feeling through her hair the chill
of her skin, while the hair itself clung to his fingers as if it had the will to smother
and imprison. He tried to pull her away, but he could not move her.

The naked man crouched in the midst of his pattern, and now he chanted, a compelling
call the girl could not withstand. She wrenched free of Craike’s hold. But as she
went she spared a thought for the man who had tried to save her. She struck out, her
fist landing on the stone bruise. Pain sent him reeling back as she went over the
rim of the mesa, her face a mask which no friend nor enemy might read. But there was
no resignation in her eyes as she was forced to the meeting below.

B
Y
the time Craike reached a vantage point the girl stood in the center of the stone
ring. Outside crouched the man, his head on his knees. She looked down at him, no
emotion showing on her wan face. Then she dropped her hand on his thatch of wild hair.
He jerked under that touch as he had under the whip which had printed the scarlet
weals across his back and loins. But he raised his head, and from his throat came
a beast’s mournful howl. At her gesture he was quiet, edging closer to her as if seeking
some easement of his suffering.

The Black Hood drew in. Craike’s probe could make nothing of them. But they could
not hide their emotions as well as they concealed their thoughts. And the Esper recoiled
from the avid blood lust which lapped at the two by the cliff.

A semicircle of the black-jerkined retainers moved too. And the man who had led them
lay on the earth now,
moaning softly. But the girl faced them, head unbowed. Craike wanted to aid her. Had
he time to climb down the cliff? Clenching his teeth against the pain movement brought
to his shoulder, the Esper went back, holding a mind shield as a frail protection.

Directly before him now was one of the guards. His mount caught Craike’s scent, stirred
uneasily, until the quieting thought of the Esper held it steady. Craike had never
been forced into such action as he had these past few days; he had no real plan now,
it must depend upon chance and fortune.

As if the force of her enemies’ wills had slammed her back against the rock, the girl
was braced by the cliff wall, a black and white figure.

Mist swirled, took on half substance of a monstrous form, was swept away in an instant.
A clump of dried grass broke into flame, sending the ponies stamping and snorting.
It was gone, leaving a black smudge on the earth. Illusions, realities—Craike watched.
This was so far beyond his own experience that he could hardly comprehend the lightning
moves of mind against mind. But he sensed these others could beat down the girl’s
resistance at any moment they desired, that her last futile struggles were being relished
by those who decreed this as part of her punishment.

And Craike, who had believed that he could never hate more than he had when he had
been touched by the fawning “hound” of the mob, was filled with a rage tempered into
a chill of steel determination.

The girl went to her knees, still clutching her hair about her, facing her tormenters
with her still-held defiance. Now the man who had wrought the magic which had drawn
her there crawled, all humanity gone out of him, wriggling on his belly back to his
captors.

Two of the guards jerked him up. He hung limp in their hands, his mouth open in an
idiot’s grin. Callously, as he might tread upon a worm, the nearest Black Hood
waved a hand. A metal axe flashed, and there came the dull sound of cracking bone.
The guards pitched the body from them so that the bloodied head almost touched the
girl.

She writhed, a last frenzied attempt to break the force which pinned her. Without
haste the guards advanced. One caught at her hair, pulling it tautly from her head.

Craike shivered. The thrill of her agony reached him. This was what she feared most,
fought so long to prevent. If ever he must move now. And that part of his brain which
had been feverishly seeking a plan went into action.

Ponies pawed, reared, went wild with panic. One of the Black Hoods swung around to
face the terrorized animals. But his own mount struck out with teeth and hooves. Guardsmen
shouted, and above their cries arose the shrill squeals of the animals.

Craike stood his ground, keeping the ponies in terror-stricken revolt. The guard who
held the handful of hair slashed at the tress with his knife, severing it at a palm’s
distance away from her head. But in that same moment she moved. The knife leaped free
from the man’s grasp, while the severed hair twined itself about his hands, binding
them until the blade buried itself in his throat; and he went down.

One of the Black Hoods was also finished, tramped into a feebly squirming thing by
the ponies. Then from the ground burst a sheet of flame which split into balls, drifting
through the air or rolling along the earth.

The Esper wet his lips—that was not his doing! He did not have to feed the panic of
the animals now; they were truly mad. The girl was on her feet. Before his thought
could reach her she was gone, swallowed up in a mist which arose to blanket the fire
balls. Once more she cut their contact; there was a blank void where she had been.

Now the fog thickened. Through it came one of the ponies, foam dripping from its blunt
muzzle. It bore down on Craike, eyes gleaming red through a tangled forelock. With
a scream it reared.

Craike’s hand grabbed a handful of mane as he leaped, avoiding teeth and hooves. Then,
somehow, he gained the pad saddle, locking his fingers in the coarse hair, striving
to hold his seat against the bucking enraged beast. It broke into a run, and the Esper
plastered himself to the heaving body. For the moment he made no attempt at mind control.

Behind, the Black Hoods came out of their stunned bewilderment. They were questing
feverishly, and he had to concentrate on holding his shield against them. A pony fleeing
in terror would not excite them; a pony under control would provide them with a target.

Later he could circle about and try to pick up the trail of the witch girl. Flushed
with success, Craike was sure he could provide her with a rear guard no Black Hood
could pass.

The fog was thick, and the pace of the pony began to slacken. Once or twice it bucked
half-heartedly, giving up when it could not dislodge its rider. Craike drew his fingers
in slow, soothing sweeps down the sweating curve of its neck.

There were no more trees about, and the unshod hooves pounded on sand. They were in
a dried water course, and Craike did not try to turn from that path. Then his luck
ran out.

What he had ignorantly supposed to be a rock ahead, heaved up seven feet or more.
A red mouth opened in a great roar. He had believed the bear he had seen fleeing the
fire to be a giant, but this one was a nightmare monster.

The pony screamed with an almost human note of despair and whirled. Craike gripped
the mane again and tried to mind control the bear. But his surprise had lasted seconds
too long. A vast clawed paw struck, ripping across pony hide and human thigh. Then
Craike could only cling to the running mount.

How long he was able to keep his seat he never knew.
Then he slipped; there was a throb of pain as he struck the ground, to be followed
by blackness.

It was dusk when he opened his eyes, fighting agony in his head, his leg. But later
there was moonlight. And that silver-white spotlighted a waiting shape. Green slits
of eyes regarded him remotely. Dizzily he made contact.

A wolf—hungry—yet with a wariness which recognized in the prone man an enemy. Craike
fought for control. The wolf whined, then it arose, its prick ears sharp cut in the
moonlight, its nose questing for the scent of other, less disturbing prey, and it
was gone.

Craike edged up against a boulder and sorted out sounds. The rush of water. He moved
a paper-dry tongue over cracked lips. Water to drink—to wash his wounds— water!

With a groan Craike worked his way to his feet, holding fast to the top of the rock
when his torn leg threatened to buckle under him. The same inner drive which had kept
him going through the desert brought him down to the river.

By sunrise he was seeking a shelter, wanting to lie up, as might the wolf, in some
secret cave until his wounds healed. All chance of finding the witch girl was lost.
But as he crawled along the shingle, leaning on a staff he had found in drift wood,
he kept alert for any trace of the Black Hoods.

It was midmorning on the second day that his snail’s progress brought him to the river
towers. And it took another hour for him to reach the terrace. Gaunt and worn, his
empty stomach complaining, he wanted nothing more than to sink down in the nest of
grass he had gathered and cease to struggle.

Perhaps he might have done so had not a click-clack of sound from the river put him
on the defensive, his staff now a club. But these were not Black Hoods. Farmers, local
men bound for the market of Sampur with products of
their fields. They had paused, were making a choice among the least appetizing of
their wares for a tribute to be offered to the tower demon.

Craike hitched stiffly to a point where he could witness that sacrifice. But when
he assessed the contents of their dugout, the heaping basket piled between the paddlers,
his hunger took command.