The Warding of Witch World

  Trusla was aware of a growling throat sound from the captain, yet not loud enough perhaps to be heard by the others.

  “So we make a truce—then you do as you came to do: destroy this trap which was sprung by some Power from your own brewing. What then of me?”

  Frost deliberately looked to Captain Stymir now. “Captain, ships and things of the sea are known to you. This gate is half open, for it holds something which exists now in two worlds. Can this ship be freed into its own place once more?”

  Trusla saw the woman clutch the ball of fire even closer to her. She was watching the captain as a huntress watches prey.

  “Lady, of Power such as yours I know nothing. The ship looks to be fully sheathed in ice. To free it might be a task beyond your strength.”

  Again the woman laughed. “A Sulcar who speaks the truth as he knows it—this is indeed a change in the way things be. Worry not about my sweet Storm Flitter. What you see is the time-dispelling casing I set upon her, even as I went myself into the deep sleep. Those who were my guard . . .” Her head bent as she looked at the ball she held. “When I awoke through the roar of that great wild Power of yours, the spells had faded and they were . . . gone. Happily so, for perhaps they returned, in spirit, home. I wove too well—though perhaps there was a reason for that also. Witch Woman”—she twirled the ball in her hands—“you have opened your mind to me. It is true as you think, we need no more gates, and perhaps it is also true that this one exists still because my ship is half-bottled in it. Can you swear to release it and me with your spelling?”

  “Who can swear certainly to anything of the Power?” Frost returned. “The gate I can close, once your ship is freed. But consider this, Sister in Power. You will be in your own world; however, as the shaman says, it has been long—the stars have changed.”

  The woman was smiling. “Let my future be my own. It is no concern of yours, Witch Woman. What I return to, if I can, will be mine to face. Perhaps I have even become a legend for the telling.”

  With one hand she slapped the side of the ball she held and that encirclement of color disappeared.

  “What of the Sulcar girl? What you have taken from her—is it gone forever, then?” Frost demanded.

  The woman shrugged. “They are a Powerless lot, save when they have weapons to hand. Who cares?”

  As one the captain and Joul moved forward and they were followed closely by the Latt and Simond.

  “But we do have weapons.” The captain’s voice was low, almost caressing, as if he held in his hand not a drawn sword but some well-loved thing.

  The woman seemed to consider him, her head a little to one side. “Fire and steel, yes. But I have this.” She had posed the fire ball on the palm of her hand as if she steadied it for tossing. Then she smiled. “And I would be quickly answered, would I not, you who deign to call me Sister in Power, with such fates as you could hope to bring upon me. This much I will promise. I do not know the full strength I have taken from this slut. But I know what can be returned, if and when matters go to my satisfaction.”

  As swiftly as she had appeared she was gone, and her going brought them to the edge of the gate to look down again at the ship in its clear ice envelope.

  “Can it be done?” the captain demanded of Frost.

  “We can only tell when we try. But note you cannot see the place in which that ship now rests. That is not any mist given off by the substances of this world.”

  It was true, the ship was plain enough to be seen half-caught in the ancient trap of the gate. But behind and around it was not really a mist but a fog, which, even as they watched, appeared to thicken and hide. What it covered, they could not see. If anything moved in it, they could not tell. It was . . . just as it had been for countless generations now. And no one suggested a climb down into that rolling grayness.

  Instead, left rather at a loss since their proposed partner in labor had chosen to disappear, they climbed down once more and Frost went to study the gate, Simond with her.

  “Hilarion did not foresee such as this,” she said. “I can strive to reach Es or Arvon. Still, the otherworld Power alive here may interfere with that.” She sighed. “It is difficult to depend upon another, and one who cannot be trusted.”

  “She may yet spring some trap?” Simond demanded, well aware that he might be the target. “Lady, let me be put under watch, for she may still think that I will serve her purpose. I ask of you, should I fail in such a testing, will you look to Trusla? Her people will have none of her because she saved my life, as you well know. She will need someone to stand beside her.”

  Frost had been bending her head a little forward, studying the jewel now resting on her palm. “I think this stranger will not trouble us so again, Simond. There was truth in what she said: if she believes we can offer her a return to her own world, then she will link Powers.”

  “But it has been so long.” Without them realizing it, Trusla had joined them. She could not bear now to have Simond too far away. “To return to a world one does not know, that has moved apart . . .”

  “There is this,” Frost said. “Simon Tregarth, when he sought the Port of Dead Ships and found the floating derelict which was from his own world, discovered that time was different between us. There was evidence on the ship that he had spent more years apart than he had reckoned. This Urseta Vat Yan could even possibly discover that such transition works in an opposite fashion. For no two Powers are alike—just as no world copies another to the last blade of grass.”

  “I hope”—Trusla had captured Simond’s hand and held it close—“that that is so for her.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Gate Fall and New Day’s Dawning, North

  T hey had seen no more of the woman who called herself Urseta Vat Yan. Frost spent much time pacing out a line which spanned those very ancient outlines of the now-ice-choked passage. She could not approach it too closely; the sluggish stream issued from its foot. Finally she appeared to have made up her mind on some point and summoned them to a meeting.

  Once they were so assembled, she singled out Audha, touched the girl’s forehead, and repeated, as she might a ritual, the name they had heard days earlier:

  “Urseta Vat Yan!”

  Names had Power. Perhaps the alien from the otherworld had held Frost’s talent so low that she had not believed the witch could so compel her.

  But now that shimmer of rainbow across the ice spread upward. Once more they saw the stranger as she wished them to behold her, whether it was in her natural body or not.

  She did not hold her ball of fire this time. It hung above her head, and the warmth from it even they could feel. But her green eyes were hard, and as the warmth of the ball, so could her anger be sensed by all of them.

  “What would you, Witch Woman?” she demanded.

  “What we have spoken of, Urseta Vat Yan—the end of what we have come to do.”

  Trusla saw a forked point of tongue show and sweep over the other’s lower lip.

  “You would bring down your gate—and crush my ship. So much for all your brave words of mutual understanding.”

  “No.” Frost showed a patience Trusla had not expected. “We shall force the gate to close, yes. But can you loose your ship on the same signal? This is an act which, to my knowledge, has never been tried before. And this also will I tell you—those who lock the gate may not survive.”

  She was facing the woman very straightly, gray eyes locked to the pupilless green. The ball of flame spun suddenly, and short tongues of flame fringed it around. Once more Trusla saw that double point of tongue show for an instant.

  Then Frost’s words struck home to Trusla herself. The witch had chosen Simond to share her task—that might mean she was about to kill him! No—and no!

  She discovered that she could not utter that scream of denial aloud, nor could she move to wind arms about him, hold him safe. Power held them fast to the will of those other two. Even Inquit stood silent, her cloak tightly about her
as if it were a shield against forces they could feel rising now.

  The green eyes appeared to flicker rather than blink. Now the woman reached upward and caught the ball, holding it to her even as Frost held her jewel.

  “Such payment . . .” she said slowly.

  Frost’s face was still serene. “Such payment—if it is asked of us—we shall give willingly. However, this, too, I must make clear to you if you choose your own path. Time has sped—you may be returning to a far different world than you left.”

  “A different world, a kin-gone world,” the woman repeated slowly. “Yet if that means years will drop upon me even as the snow whirls in this barren place, still I will be . . . home.”

  She tossed the ball from one hand to the other and the colors in it flamed so high she might have been holding a portion of sun far warmer than this country had ever seen. Then she turned partially away.

  “My Power is not of your world. If you loose what you can command at the same moment, perhaps neither of us shall profit.”

  “Agreed.” Frost’s voice was still calm and untroubled. “You uncase your ship first and then we shall tackle the gate.”

  Still the woman hesitated—and then gave a toss of her head which sent her spark-laden hair streaming into the air.

  “So be it—and how better a time than now, Witch Woman?”

  Frost looked to Simond. Quietly, as they had been speaking, he had been unbuckling, unlacing, dropping to the ground the mail, the weapons of which he had always been so proud. Those who dealt with the greater Power did not bring steel to such a meeting. He stood at that moment in his fur underjerkin, even his belt knife out of its sheath.

  Trusla swayed. In spite of all her efforts, she could not go to him. But he turned to face her.

  “Heart’s core for me”—he spoke as if the two of them stood alone and there were none else to hear—“much have you given me. Now give me the last gift of all—your courage.”

  She saw him only through a glaze of tears. Without Simond, what would she be? But what she saw in his face brought a whisper of answer which it seemed the restraining Power would allow her now:

  “You have all of me—forever.”

  She had to crouch there, for her legs refused to support her any longer, and she watched him go, shoulder to shoulder with Frost, who had also shed the bulk of her outergarments. They had fit Odanki’s claws and were once more climbing. There was a brilliant flash of flame and the alien was already above them, perched on the middle of the faintly defined archway.

  Trusla, pain binding her as with chains, had to watch Simond, now but a small dark figure, cross that arch—move out on the other side away from her and beyond the gate boundaries. If she could only stand with him there!

  Urseta Vat Yan, tossing her ball from hand to hand as one about to play some childish game, disappeared toward the far end of the archway. They could no longer see her—only the sparks of her constantly turbulent hair.

  Then a hand fell on Trusla’s shoulder, and she smelled that spicy scent which clung ever to the feather cloak of the shaman.

  A quill the other held swept the ice and snow before where she huddled and the girl saw, as through a window—or into a mirror. There was the thick curtain of cloud, with only visible the protruding stern of the alien ship. But that was brightly lit now, for standing on the deck was Urseta, and she hurled the ball into the air. Faint and far away Trusla caught her call. Along one side of the ship rolled the ball, and then along the other, and the ice was gone as if it were mist puffed away.

  Then once more the instrument of Power returned to Urseta and she stood looking upward, even though Trusla doubted she could see the other two at the gate—certainly not any of them waiting below.

  However, her voice came clearly enough, ringing in their heads.

  “I cannot leave any anchorage here now. Take what is of your world and time!” The ball broke into halves, each of which became a small ball in turn. One she threw into the air with all her might, and the other she hurled with even greater force straight before her to where the other half of her ship was still imprisoned.

  There was a bursting apart—sight, sound, feeling were all a part of it. Trusla heard the roll of those other two voices speaking words which had not been voiced for centuries. Through suddenly dimmed eyes she tried to see Simond, but there was descending on them something else. Faded as if its journey through the air had nearly dimmed its Power came the fireball. It struck full upon the head of Audha, who had stood forgotten among them, gripped in the dazed state which mainly held her.

  Trusla had just time to see the rainbow fire compass the Sulcar girl before she heard that other sound: the roar of rock and ice, shattering under the hammer of true Power, the cliffs shuddering and scaling off great chunks.

  “Simond!” She covered her face with her hands. Maybe if fortune favored her one of those great slabs would find her.

  It would seem that the roaring of the broken gate would never stop. Snow half buried them, and Trusla dimly felt pain as a razor-edged splinter cut along her arm, slitting the fur and hide as if it were a knife.

  The silence in the end was as overpowering in its way as had been the noise of the destruction. Somehow Trusla forced herself to look up—

  Up at what? Where there had stood a wall barrier was a jumble of broken slabs, some seeming as great in size as a Sulcar ship.

  Ship? Half-dazedly she tried to center her eyes on where that ship had once been caught. Did it lay crushed under this pounding, or had the woman indeed made her return?

  “Lady Trusla!” Someone was tugging at her, striving to pull her free of the ice which half covered her. Bleared of eye, she looked up into the face of Audha.

  There was spirit behind those eyes again, concern in the Sulcar girl’s expression. Truly what Urseta had taken she had, at that last moment, returned. Faintly Trusla was happy—faintly—for nothing mattered now that Simond was not here.

  There came the sound of rushing water and she could hear calling in the distance, though that meant nothing to her now. That stream which had edged from under the gate was now a river, shearing off pieces of ice which bumped along in what seemed a strong current whirling eastward.

  “Aaaaheee, ahhheee!” That cry broke through the confusion in her head. She was dimly aware of Audha digging swiftly about her, dragging her out of the mass of snow which half covered her. Not too far away Kankil was also digging, throwing a storm of snow and bits of ice into the air as she screamed over and over again that ear-piercing cry.

  Odanki suddenly towered over the shaman’s small familiar and his big hands added to the welter of snow they were throwing into the air. Then the hunter stopped and, using both hands, pulled the shaman out.

  However, even before she was raised to more than her knees, she was pointing to one side, crying in her own tongue nearly as loud as Kankil. The captain, staggering a little, came up. One arm hung limp and Joul was close to give him a hand.

  But at the shaman’s insistence not only did the Sulcar man leave the captain, but Audha also moved to aid. Trusla remained dully where she was, watching them, as might a detached dreamer, work to bring out Frost.

  At first she thought that the witch was dead, struck down by the very Power she had summoned. Then the girl was aware that the jewel on the other’s breast was showing a spark of fire.

  Only . . . Trusla tried to get to her feet, and when she discovered she could not make it, she started on hands and knees to the river. If Simond’s side of the gate had collapsed even as Frost’s—and it looked as if it had—then he lay buried across that barrier of rushing water. The longer he remained below any heap of snow and splintered ice, the sooner the last flickers of life would be frozen out of him. That he was not yet dead Trusla could believe. Surely that shutting off of warmth and good, of her very heart hold, would be sensed by her.

  She paid no attention to those behind her, pausing for a breath or so now and then to watch that other shore,
see some small splotch of hide clothing perhaps among the everlasting blue-white of the snow. Then she was at the water’s edge and that was a perilous perch, but the danger meant nothing to her now.

  The ice was still breaking off in pieces, to be rolled over in the water, carried away. And she knew this much of this land: to throw herself into that frantic stream and hope to reach the other shore was merely to reach out for death. Though in the end that is what she might well do.

  She was dimly aware of someone who was standing now beside where she crouched in despair. The softness of a feather brushed against her and then a small warm body, almost like a brazier of coals, hurled itself upon her.

  Inquit—Kankil. Of what matter their coming? There was nothing which would bridge that waterway—and no sign beyond of where to hunt.

  “Little sister.” The Latt woman’s hand rested softly on her head. “He is not dead.”

  Trusla shrugged. What matter? He would soon be so. She looked into nothingness and knew its bite.

  Kankil was patting her face with soft paw-hands, crooning with a rumbling purr which reached into Trusla’s own body but did not soften the growing bleakness there.

  “What can be done?” It took a moment or so for Trusla to realize that the shaman was not speaking to her but to Odanki, who had come up on her other side.

  “To cross in this flood—Voice of Arska, that is impossible for anyone, for we cannot grow wings and fly.”

  Trusla started up, dislodging Kankil from her lap with a sharp shove. She was on her feet, teetering on the very edge of the water, only half aware that a firm hold had fastened on the back of her belt.

  But she had not been mistaken! Surely, by the Greatest of Powers, her eyes had not played her false now. That dark arm seemingly grown out of the very earth was showing clear against the snow. A moment or so later there was a cascade of chunks, then head, another arm, shoulders appeared!