Wizards’ Worlds (57 page)

Thra pushed shut the door as rain slanted across the floor. The fire provided only
a palm-sized light, yet in the dusk the interior of the open armorie gave off a continuous
glow.

The cat had not moved, its head still pointed towards the door. While that feeling
that she awaited some portentous happening fed her uneasiness. To steady her thoughts,
her shaking hands, Thra dug the last of her trail rations from her pack. Two journey
cakes, now near stone hard, were there. She hammered a piece from the larger with
the pommel of her belt knife. Her other provision was a short stick of hard dried
meat, that she cut into thin slivers.

One of the clay pots from the shelf gave her a chance to crumble the cake and meat
into some water, forming a mess she hoped to find more palatable than it looked. Thra
spun out these preparations as long as she could, the cat paying no attention to her
actions.

The storm continued to loose its fury. Thra heard a distant sound which must have
marked the fall of another-of the giant trees. She crowded closer to the fire, holding
her sun-browned hands to the flames, though she shivered more from what she guessed
might happen than from any cold.

At last she drew both sword and knife and laid them close to hand, for the cat’s doorwise
stare added to her disquiet. Also she edged farther around that she, too, might watch
that portal. Once she arose and strove to move the armorie itself for a barrier, but
its weight was beyond her shifting.

She ate the unappetizing mush with her fingers, found it no worse than much of the
food she had eaten in the
immediate past. Putting the bowl to one side she sat waiting, her hands loosely clasped
about her knees. Unable to stand her own imaginings any longer she asked aloud:

“Who comes?”

For the first time the cat turned its eyes toward hers. “Long waited, perhaps come
at last. Take you that sword, two-legs?” Distinctly it nodded towards the weapon hanging
in the armorie.

“I hold by my own steel.” She dropped hand to her blade. “What or who comes? Tell
me, four-legs!”

The cat had turned its full attention to the armorie.

“There hangs power—”

“Still I hold by what I know!” Thra repeated. To be sitting thus, exchanging thoughts
with a cat—had some fell fever fallen on her when she entered this misbegotten woodland,
or was she indeed ensorceled? Patience she had learned in a hard school during the
past years and patience only might serve her now, until she discovered more.

That feeling of otherness which had been with her since she had come beneath these
trees was growing sharper even though the storm seemed to be retreating. The cat showed
no fear—perhaps that curiosity which men said was a strong trait in these beasts kept
it here to watch her blunder into some web unknown to her.

Thra might not be forest wise but she had stood sentry too many nights, every sense
alert, to be mistaken now. Something was outside. There came a snuffling, faint but
unmistakeable, as if the nose of some creature swept close along the bottom crack
of the door.

She arose, sword in hand, her dark brows ascowl as she edged over to set her back
to the armorie, ready to front whatever might force a way in. The lips in her gaunt
face flattened against her teeth as if she could snarl like her furred companion.
However the cat, itself, faced the door with no sign of anger or fear.

That snuffling ceased, but, as surely as if she could see
through the door, Thra believed the other still crouched there. As the cat, it waited.

“You speak of power,” she said, “Is it of claw and fang now out there?”

“Perhaps.” To her astonishment the cat leaped straight for the armorie, brushing past
her. Its teeth fastened upon the belt of fur, but all its energy could not pull that
free from the peg on which it hung.

Hardly knowing whether she was reckless and foolhardy, or doing what was only right
Thra braved the warning prickle in her hand and reached inside to slip free the strip.
It seemed to her that the fur arched upwards to meet her touch as might an animal
seeking a caress.

The belt fell, still tight-held by the cat, and that animal backed away from the cupboard
dragging it towards the door. Did it seek to deliver that prize to the lurker? With
a stride Thra gained the door, her sword pointed at the cat.

“I do not know what game you would play,” she said. “But here I am master—”

“You are but one sent.” Words near as sharp as her own blade cut into her mind. “There
is but one master!”

She could have easily spitted the animal, or kicked it aside. There was no good reason
to let it outside to what waited. Save within her brute force still did not entirely
rule. So she slipped along the wall to be shelted from the door as it opened and then
pushed to let in a burst of rain-sweet wind.

From without sounded a strange cry, one which sent a chill along her half-crouched
back. Thra wanted badly to see what stood there in the storm dark but she did not
move, only gripped her sword the more fiercely.

As if that sound was a summons, trailing still the belt from its jaws, the cat sprang
into the dark. Thra waited tensely. The light from the fire was small help and the
edge of the door a screen.

Someone stepped within. She could strike now and
make sure. Even as that thought came to her the cat flashed once more into the full
warmth of the fire, shaking itself vigorously.

Wet leather, her nose wrinkled at that acrid scent, also a strange musky odor as if
he who wore such garments had lived unclean for a long time. For this was a man, not
topping her in height more than an inch or so. He might be facing the cat and the
fire, but Thra was sure he was well aware of just where she stood.

Aware but not alarmed. That realization awoke in her a spark of anger. Woman she might
be, and wanderer without a following, but she was still a force to be reckoned with—as
he would discover!

His arms hung loosely by his sides, there was no sword, not even the gleam of a knife
hilt at his belt. As her own, his clothing was leather but worse worn. On the shoulders
tatters had peeled away, as they had also about his legs and thighs. His feet were
bare, splotched with mud which he tracked on the floor.

Around his slender waist was the belt—its length of silky fur in contrast to the rest
of him. For his hair was a tangle of greasy strings knotted with dried leaves and
small twigs—he might have rooted in a thicket for weeks on end.

Thra fought to bring up her sword, aiming its point between those rack-thin shoulders.
She had seen before men sunk to this extremity of neglect—many in the south. They
could not be trusted, nor could one call them beasts, for beasts were far more cleanly
and merciful than such.

Still, though Thra was sure he knew she menaced him, he did not turn his head, rather
dropped to his bony knees before the fire, raising both palms to the heat. She had
a confused memory of how men had once knelt so in places of worship. Did this refuse
then worship fire—or only what it signified—shelter, food, warmth—plunder?

That he continued to ignore her meant one of two things—that he was not alone, but
the forerunner of a
party of like outcasts—or he possessed some means of defense which did not depend
upon weapons.

Those outstretched hands, was there something odd about the nails—were they not unusually
long and sharp? Thra wanted him to turn his head so that she might clearly see his
features—human—or strange?

The cat settled on the hearth, its back to the fire, tail curled over forepaws. Thra
could wait no longer, her voice was unnaturally loud in the room.

“Who are you?” She was not sure of her question until she had voiced that demand.

He glanced back over his shoulder at last, showing her three-quarters of his face.
She had expected to see a tangle of beard as wild as the crop on his head but his
cheeks were smooth as a boy’s, though weather-browned to a dark shade. There was an
oddity about his features. Perhaps it lay in the slantwise set of his brows, the narrow,
forward thrust of his chin. His frowsy hair grew downward in a peak between his eyes
to nearly meet the brows.

Those eyes—green or yellow—or a mixture of both? Thra had never seen their like in
the face of any man of Greer. While his mouth looked too wide, his lips very dark
red and glistening. Small points of teeth showed against those, almost as if he had
fangs sprouting from his jaws.

Yet for all its alienness it was not a face to disgust one, nor did it bear the signs
of degradation or idiotic mindlessness which she had expected to see. When he spoke
his voice was not only low-pitched but calm, even gentle:

“You have my thanks, Lady of Lanlat—”

Her sword quivered in her hold. Who in this northern land could still call her by
that name? Was he some other refugee? Had she once met him long ago at some feastings?
No, once met this man could never be forgot.

“There is no more Lanlat—” she returned harshly. “But I have asked—who are you?”

His hands moved in a vague gesture she could not understand. “I do not know—”

Some drifter from a lost battle? She had heard of men head wounded so they could not
remember, but were afterwards like new-born children, having to learn again how to
live.

“How came you here?”

At least he should be able to answer that, unless his wits were so disordered that
even recent events were lost to him.

“I have always been—” His voice trailed away as he continued to regard her with a
kind of eager curiosity. In his clear eyes she could detect nothing of a sleeping
mind but rather eager intelligence.

Her sword point touched the pounded earth of the floor. In spite of his foul clothing,
wild appearance, he had such a quiet air of certainty that he could be one wearing
a disguise.

His hands had gone now to his belt where he ran fingers back and forth across the
sleek fur as one might caress a beloved animal—or reassure himself that a treasure
long denied, long lost, had been safely returned.

“Always been?” Doggedly she kept to her point.

He nodded. An errant lock of hair fell across his face and he brushed it aside. Not
soon enough. Thra held her breath for an instant. Just so—her eyes flickered to the
door of the armorie and away again. No—this was no refugee from her own land. He was—she
moved her shoulders along the wall, setting more of a distance between them.

“
What
are you?” Her voice was a whisper. Still, among the wild thoughts now churning in
her mind, there was no fear—rather wonder. This surely—grown somewhat older—was the
youth of the carving—the one who had fled the hunters.

“Why do you ask that?” It was his voice which rang loud and sharp. “When you already
know—if you allow yourself to face the truth.” His head inclined the slightest toward
the open armorie door.

Thra moistened lips with tongue tip. “I have seen that,” she, too, indicated the door.
“You are like the hunted one. But—”

He raised hands from his belt, flexed his fingers full in the subdued glow of the
fire. Those were claws with wet earth clinging to them, not overlong human nails.

“You have heard of my kind?”

Thra could not answer at once. What were old legends compared with this? Though the
forest had such an ill name her mind refused to connect such tales with this slender
young man. Legend suggested that such as he were a dark menace of sorcery, yet in
her there was no shrinking. She had met many of her own kind who carried with them
a far greater stench of pure evil.

His lips drew back so those fang-sharp teeth showed clearly as he stood there straight
and tall, as one facing an enemy about to make an assault on a poorly defended last
redoubt.

“I am
were.
”
He might have been shouting a battle slogan against all the world which she represented.

Silence, one so deep that she heard a leaf flutter across the floor inward from the
open door. Once more his tongue swept across his lips. He looked almost sly—dangerous.
Still in her she felt no menace and she held his gaze locked to hers.

“Do you not understand, Lady Thra? Or are our kind not known in the south for the
dreaded thrice-damned stock we are? Do you lack cursed forests there?”

Her sword point scratched a half-remembered protective pattern on the well-packed
earth. But what had such to do with turning aside the possible wrath of one who claimed
his blood?

“You put your trust in steel?” Those slanting brows near vanished beneath the fringe
of rough hair. “Ah, but steel, no matter how cunningly forged, cannot harm
us.
Though hounds may chase to pull us down, yet no true arrow nor spear can kill. We
can feel pain but not death—save
by silver. Silver or,” his hands quivered, “fire.”

“Yet you warm yourself by that,” Thra returned. “Is this not your home? Yet you bring
your enemy fire into it.”

His wide mouth stretched in a wry smile.

“You see me in a guise wherein fire is servant not master. Ah, Grimclaw,” he addressed
the cat, “who have you summoned here? A lady who shows no fear, does not tremble nor
look upon me as if I differed from those of her own kind, one who walks—”

“Two-legged?” Thra interrupted. “How is it that you greet me by my name, stranger?
I am new come into these lands, only this day into your forest.” She still held the
thought that he might be one who had lost his wits from some battle injury.

“This is my talent—” Even as the cat had before him, he projected his unspoken answer
into her mind.

That her thoughts could be so invaded was, to her, a kind of ravishment, such a blow
as she had never taken before. She stiffened against showing outwardly her repugnance
but rage rose icily within her.

He no longer even looked in her direction, instead he moved a little closer to the
armorie, gazing intently at the sword still hanging there. But, if that weapon was
his as the belt seemed to be, he made no attempt to arm himself with it. Perhaps he
had run four-legged so long that he clung to fangs and claws as his proper weapons.