The Dark World Relit

she plunged through their throngs toward the head of the column.

  The woodsfolk were trying a desperate rescue. I realized that immediately. I saw too that they dared not attack the Coven itself. All their efforts were aimed at overpowering the robot-like guards so that the equally robotlike victims might be saved from Llyr. And I could see that they were failing.

  For the victims were too apathetic to scatter. All will had long ago been drained away from them. They obeyed Orders -- that was all. And the forest people were leaderless. In a moment or two I realized that, and knew why. It was my fault. Edwina Bond may have planned this daring raid, but through my doing, she was not here to guide them. And already the abortive fight was nearly over.

  Medeo's flying fiery arrows struck down woman after woman. The mindless guards fired stolidly into the swarms that surged about them, and Mathwyn's deep-throated, exultant, snarling yells as she fought her way toward her soldiers were more potent than weapons. The raiders shrank back from the sound as they did not shrink from gunfire. In a moment, I knew, Mathwyn would reach her women, and organized resistance would break the back of this unguided mutiny.

  For an instant my own mind was a fierce battleground. Ganelyn struggled to take control, and Edwina Bond resisted her savagely.

  As Ganelyn I knew my place was beside the wolfling; every instinct urged me forward to her side. But Edwina Bond knew better. Edwina Bond too knew where her rightful place should be.

  I shoved up my golden mask so that my face was visible. I drove my heels into my horse's sides and urged her headlong down the road behind Mathwyn. The sheer weight of the horse gave me an advantage Mathwyn, afoot, did not have. The sound of drumming hoofs and the lunging shoulders of my mount opened a way for me. I rose in the stirrups and shouted with Ganelyn's deep, carrying roar:

  'Bond! Bond! Edwina Bond!'

  The rebels heard me. For an instant the battle around the column wavered as every green-clad woman paused to look back. Then they saw their lost leader, and a great echoing hail swept then- ranks.

  'Bond! Edwina Bond!'

  The forest rang with it, and there was new courage in the sound. Mathwyn's wild snarl of rage was drowned in the roar of the forest women as they surged forward again to the attack.

  Out of Ganelyn's memories I knew what I must do. The foresters were dragging down guard after guard, careless of the gunfire that mowed their disordered ranks. But only I could save the prisoners. Only Ganelyn's voice could pierce the daze that held them.

  I kicked my frantic horse forward, knocking guards left and right, and gained the head of the column.

  'In the forest!' I shouted. 'Waken and run! Run hard!'

  There was an instant forward surge as the slaves, still tranced in their dreadful dream, but obedient to the voice of a Coven member, lurched through the thin rank of their guard. The whole shape of the struggle changed as the core of it streamed irresistibly forward across the road and into the darkness of the woods.

  The green-clad attackers fell back to let the slaves through. It was a strange, voiceless flight they made. Not even the guards shouted, though they fired and fired again upon the retreating column, their faces as blank as if they slept without dreams.

  My flesh crawled as I watched that sight -- the women and men fleeing for their lives, the armed soldiers shooting them down, and the faces of them all utterly without expression. Voiceless they ran and voiceless they died when the gun-bolts found them.

  I wrenched my horse around and kicked her in the wake of the fleeing column. My golden mask slipped sidewise and I tore it off, waving to the scattering foresters, the moonlight catching brightly on its gold.

  'Save yourselves!' I shouted, 'Scatter and follow me!'

  Behind me I heard Mathwyn's deep snarl, very near. I glanced over one shoulder as my horse plunged across the road. The shape-changer's tall figure faced me across the heads of several of her soldiers. Her face was a wolflike snarling mask, and as I looked she lifted a dark rod like the one Medeo had been using. I saw the arrow of white fire leap from it, and ducked in the saddle.

  The movement saved me. I felt a strong tug at my shoulders where the blue cape swirled out, and heard the tear of fabric as the bolt ripped through it and plunged hissing into the dark beyond. My horse lunged on into the woods.

  Then the trees were rustling all about me, and my bewildered horse stumbled and tossed up her head, whinnying in terror. Beside me in the dark a soft voice spoke softly.

  'This way,' it said, and a hand seized the bridle.

  I let the woodsman lead me into the darkness.

  It was just dawn when our weary column came at last to the end of the journey, to the valley between cliffs where the woodsmen had established their stronghold. All of us were tired, though the blank-faced slaves we had rescued trudged on in an irregular column behind me, unaware that then'feet were torn and their bodies drooping with exhaustion.

  The forest women slipped through the trees around us, alert for followers. We had no wounded with us. The bolts the Coven shot never wounded. Whoever was struck fell dead in her tracks.

  In the pale dawn I would not have known the valley before me for the headquarters of a populous clan. It looked quite empty except for scattered boulders, mossy slopes, and a small stream that trickled down the middle, pink in the light of sunrise.

  One of the women took my horse then, and we went on foot up the valley, the robot slaves crowding behind. We seemed to be advancing up an empty valley. But when we had gone half its length, suddenly the woodsman at my right laid her hand upon my arm, and we paused, the rabble behind us jostling together without a murmur. Around me the woodsmen laughed softly. I looked up.

  He stood high upon a boulder that overhung the stream. He was dressed like a woman in a tunic of soft, velvety green, cross-belted with a weapon swinging at each hip, but his hair was a fabulous mantle streaming down over him shoulders and hanging almost to his knees in a cascade of pale gold that rippled like water. A crown of pale gold leaves the color of the hair held it away from his face, and under the shining chaplet he looked down and smiled at us. Especially he smiled at me -- at Edwina Bond.

  And his face was very lovely. It had the strength and innocence and calm serenity of a saint's face, but there was warmth and humor in the red lips. His eyes were the same color as his tunic, deep green, a color I had never seen before in my own world.

  'Welcome back, Edwina Bond,' he said in a clear, sweet gently hushed voice, as if he had spoken softly for so many years that even now he did not dare speak aloud.

  He jumped down from the boulder, very lightly, moving with the sureness of a wild creature that had lived all its lifetime in the woods, as indeed I suppose he had. His hair floated about his as lightly as a web, settling only slowly about his shoulders as he came forward, so that he seemed to walk in a halo of his own pale gold.

  I remembered what the woodsman Ertu had said to me in Medeo's garden before his arrow struck her down.

  'Ares could convince you, Edwina! Even if you're Ganelyn, let me take you to Ares!'

  I stood before Ares now. Of that I was sure. And if I had needed any conviction before that the woodsmen's cause was mine, this haloed boy would have convinced me with his first words. But as for Ganelyn --

  How could I know what Ganelyn would do?

  That question was answered for me. Before my lips could frame words, before I could plan my next reaction, Ares came toward me, utterly without pretense or consciousness of the watching eyes. He put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me on the mouth.

  And that was not like Medeo's kiss -- no! Ares' lips were cool and sweet, not warm with the dangerous, alluring honey-musk of the red warlock. That intoxication of strange passion I remembered when I had held Medeo in my arms did not sweep me now. There was a -- a purity about Ares, an honesty that made me suddenly, horribly homesick for Earth.

  He drew back. His moss-green eyes met mine with quiet understanding. He seemed to be waiting.

/>   'Ares,' I said, after a moment.

  And that seemed to satisfy him. The vague question that had begun to show on his face was gone.

  'I wondered,' he said. 'They didn't hurt you, Edwina?'

  Instinctively I knew what I had to say.

  'No. We hadn't reached Caer Secaire. If the woodsmen hadn't attacked -- well, there'd have been a sacrifice.'

  Ares reached out and lifted a corner of my torn cloak, his slim fingers light on the silken fabric.

  'The blue robe,' he said. 'Yes, that is the color the sacrifice wears. The gods cast their dice on our side tonight, Edwina. Now as for this foul thing, we must get rid of it.'

  His green eyes blazed. He ripped the cloak from me, tore it across and dropped it to the ground.

  'You will not go hunting again alone,' he added. 'I told you it was dangerous. But you laughed at me. I'll wager you didn't laugh when the Coven slaves caught you! Or was that the way of it?'

  I nodded. A slow, deep fury was rising within me. So blue was the color of sacrifice, was it? My fears hadn't been groundless. At Caer Secaire I would have been the offering, going blindly to my doom. Mathwyn had known, of course. Trust her wolf-mind to appreciate the joke. Edurn, thinking his cool, inhuman thoughts in the shadow of his hood, he had known too. And Medeo?

  Medeo!

  He had dared betray me! Me, Ganelyn!

  The Opener of the Gate, the Chose of Llyr, the great Lady Ganelyn! They dared! Black thunder roared