Storms of Victory (Witch World: The Turning)

  This was certainly part of the very deck on which we now sat. Tall figures moved at the edge of sight and then vanished. There was one who dropped down to sit even as Orsya now did well within Chief's range of sight so that she became clear to me. She certainly, for there was a wealth of loose hair, played with by the wind, and of a color which was indeed different from any I had seen, being far more red than Sulcar yellow. She had extraordinary eyes, huge and black, and one could not see into them. Then she raised a hand and brushed against those hidden eyes and the dark circles arose, she pushing up to her forehead what was like a mask under which her eyes were normal.

  She picked up from the boards beside her the same strip of cloth with which Orsya had been playing and with that bundled up her hair.

  I opened my eyes then and I reached out, catching the end of that scarf. Orsya must have guessed the importance of what I would do from my expression, for she let it free into my hold. Once again I could see that other woman. But there was something else—perhaps rising from the strip of cloth I held. I was suddenly aware of a compulsion. The woman I watched was on her feet. The laughing happiness which had been hers when first I had reached into the past was gone. I could see her mouth open as if she screamed, the lips shaping, an ugly gap.

  There were feet running past her. Now a darkness fell, though’ I also knew that that was no natural dimmig due to the time of day but something else. She stumbled a step forward, her hands outstretched as if she had had both of them caught up in some unseen grip. She tossed her head, the scarf slipped from her hair, those strange other mask eyes fell away also. She twisted and fought. Her fear was like a lash reaching through the unknown between us to strike at me also.

  Then there was a man beside her, his arm tightly holding her. I could see fear and concern in his eyes. Whatever possessed her had as yet made no assault on him. She got one hand free and struck at his face and head, her red pointed nails grooving deep scratches down his cheek. There came a second man and together they made her a prisoner. Only that which was her inner core—that—

  I broke the mind tie instantly. That could have been a bridge between the possessed one and me. She had fraction of gift, untrained, unguessed, and that had opened the way for that which had fallen upon her. They who held her were dragging her with them toward the passage which served the cabins.

  As suddenly as the attack had been made on her, so did it also snap free. But I knew it had discovered what it had sought, an instrument through which it might act.

  If this had indeed happened on board this alien ship, how much the quicker could it come and perhaps conquer those of us who were the greater gifted. It must be guarded against.

  I looked with the outer sight to Orsya and Kemoc and I could see that at least some of what I had seen and felt had been projected to them. My fingers were busy with the seashell-patterned stuff, rolling it tightly. Many things can serve as keys to that which we would have remain imprisoned. If this was such, it must be put where it could do no harm.

  “Give that here—” Kemoc reached for the scarf. He held the roll as gingerly as if it might be about to burst into flame, and then he wrapped it in the nearest possible covering, one of the charts he had brought to study. Could any of those, in turn, provide us with other entrances into the past and make understandable what had happened here?

  However, I was not about to suggest that. Let such decisions await the coming of the Lady Jaelithe. I could produce the sight but I was well aware that all the guards I knew against what might be aroused by tampering with the unknown were as a straw compared to the training of a true Witch.

  It was late afternoon when the falcon which served as our distance eyes brought news that the river-traveling party was within a short distance of the sea. At that time there was a brief conference as to the wisdom of remaining on board and bringing them hither or leaving a vessel on which certainly something uncanny had recently happened and prepare to establish a camp on shore.

  The only difficulty with such a decision as that being that the incoming tide had already swept far enough along to lap against the cliff foot and there was no vestige of beach where we might shelter.

  Then we could see figures on the move, not at the level of the sea but some way up the cliff itself, as if they followed a trail laid on a ledge we could not mark from the sea. Thus, using the boat which had brought us here, the Sulcars made two trips in and out and thus, returning both times crowded, the whole of our party was again assembled, this time on the unknown ship.

  We filled it past the point of comfort, but at least our refuge was better than trying to see the night out either in the fishing boat or on the cliff side. There was some stability under us, provisions, and the light of several lanterns, until Sigmun ordered those to be doused in order to save the oil which fueled them.

  Once more Lord Simon identified the charts. Though this ship was very different from that at Gorm, it was from his own world. Also, he explained, this craft, as well as sails, had the same kind of machine which would send it forward even if all wind failed. It was he who led a most systematic search of the cabins and that space where the wheel and the charts were.

  Lady Jaelithe came to me where I sat in a small corner of the deck though not alone. The cat, Chief, had curled himself beside me, his head resting upon my knee.

  “You searched—”

  “Until I knew what I might stir with such a reckless questing,” I returned.

  She seated herself opposite me as if we two were about to engage in bespelling, with perhaps a scrying bowl between us. The rain clouds of earlier hours had split and withdrawn to the north. There was a rising moon and it looked very bright and almost harsh as to light. To everything there is a twin—one light, the other dark. The moon is for the weaving of women spells, which we are born knowing if we have the gift. But there are also two moons and one can be pitiless. I felt that that which rose this night was one which might be named such. Even the light can be cruel upon occasion.

  The silver beam reached across the waves toward our new ship and that brightness resembled a claw waiting to hook about us. I was cold as if I sat full in the blast of a winter wind. And, at that moment, though my hand on one side touched soft, warm fur, and I looked to one far more versed in Power than I could hope to be, I was caught up in utter loneliness of spirit. It could be that one from the other time and place, whom I had watched struck by a fate I could not understand, trying in turn to meet familiar things here.

  Even voices which reached easily about us because of the crowding sounded far-off and the words which they carried had no meaning. That sensation of being isolated Increased. I began to breathe faster. This was being enclosed in thick glass into which even the needful air did not reach.

  “Destree!”

  My name sounded very faint—far away. Yet the knee of the Lady Jaelithe was close enough to brush against mine. I saw some movement in the half-light. I swayed a fraction as hands fastened to the fore of my shirt.

  Light, not that pallid moonglow, was warm and yellow as the rising sun. Warmth spread from the now free amulet to break that shell which had been about me, ever thickening. I gasped, drew full lungfuls of air, and was alert to my own time and place once more.

  The Lady Jaelithe's face was lighted by the flow piercing upward from her two hands held a little below my chin. I knew that what she so brought out of hiding was indeed Gunnora's amulet. Moonlight could call that power, even though it was of the sun also. But this time it spoke for another moon, a lightsome one, not a ghost light meant to only arouse the dead.

  My own thoughts surprised me. This strange otherness was new; at least it had never visited me before. Had I indeed retained from my seeking something of that horror which had apparently sent into madness the woman of the ship?

  I found myself spilling forth what had happened and I knew that Lady Jaelithe listened with all the strength of her art.

  “Not again!”

  I nodded, knowing we
ll what she meant. Not again was I to spread wide my gift without knowing what guards must be held. But I had a question:

  “What brought the madness?”

  “My lord has said that, those of his own world do not cherish the gifts. Those who are born with them are treated with disbelief. They have no discipline nor training to aid them in the proper use. We can believe that this woman whom you saw was one in which some of the Power slumbered. Perhaps she was entirely unaware that any fraction of gift was hers. Then there came a reaching—”

  “From where? And how?”

  “And why?” She added a question of her own to the two I had already asked. “We of this day do not understand the gates. We believe they were first wrought by those adepts who were seekers. Those of Escore who are closest to the old ways tell of wars and struggles and that there were summonings which brought into this world strange things. A number of the adepts opened such portals because they themselves would go a-exploring. Only their gates, once erected, remained sometimes traps.

  “My lord says that in his world there are disappearances which cannot be explained. That there is a section of the sea about which are legends of whole ships which vanish. His people also fly through the air—using ships made to cruise so—and those also are gone, nor can any trace of them be found later.

  “Thus there may well be a gate. For there is no other explanation which so fits the new facts we know. And if there is a gate in action which is great enough to draw in a ship, then the power which has fashioned it and which operated it is a mighty one. The Kolders found such a gate and they came through it, not singly as has happened with Simon and some others, but as an army riding moving fortresses able to bring down walls of a keep or even of a town.

  “We have seen the sea raised to a force to assault Varn even as those Kolder machines attacked in the past.”

  “Do we then face Kolder once more?” Almost I could be at ease if she said yes to that, for the evil one knows is far better than a brooding shadow one cannot pierce.

  “Simon thinks not. For in his time and world there was no Kolder. What we seek now is very different. But its strength is not to be questioned. I think, that the woman you saw felt that strength and was greatly afraid, as well she might be. It was perhaps the first breath of that which lies beyond the gate through which this ship came.”

  “And she, those sailing with her?”

  The Lady Jaelithe made a sign of protection with one hand.

  “That we do not know—yet.”

  Chief roused and moved his head between us. His eyes seemed to glow in the night. I was tempted to try a second time to reach the past through him but I knew the full folly of that.

  11

  In the end which was a beginning we did not sail south again with only one ship, or two—we were part of a motley fleet. The Far Rover, which had weathered the storm still afloat though lacking masts, could not take to the quest again, that was apparent. But those of Varn had been persuaded to trade for the more damaged Wave Skimmer five fishing boats. One of these Captain Sigmun, who now commanded by default the whole of the Sulcar contingent, sent north to ask for help in repairing the Far Rover and to convey also a plea for assistance for Varn.

  I think that the townspeople might have even hunted us out of their ruined city had it hot been for their seeress, she of the hidden face. She urged upon them in one meeting, which the five of us were ordered to attend, the consideration of the fact there could well be some agency, rather than the haphazard overspill of nature, behind all their city had suffered, and that if there was such a reason for the assault on Varn it should be learned and that speedily. It is always best to know as much of the enemy, before the onset of any engagement, which can be discovered.

  The Lady Jaelithe herself went a-seeking by mind and contacted the Lady Loyse by dream control. Though Koris's lady had no talent of her own she had been comrade to Jaelithe so long that there was a mind tie between them and one which could be exploited if the need was dire enough.

  Thus we could be sure that news of what had happened would reach Estcarp. Though, unless forces there could be talked into a perilous voyage, we could expect little in the way of immediate help. That we might abandon what we had planned never appeared to be in any mind.

  Sulcars are born with a need to explore. The speculation that the danger which had taken so many of their number and one of their ships might be a planned visitation of the Dark had only strengthened their stubbornness. In the past they had wrought, even to their own sorrow (as when Osberic sacrificed Sulcarkeep to break the power of the not-dead sent by the Kolder), to fight against what were often apparently overwhelming odds. I knew that many of them believed that, in spite of Tregarth assurances, we once more faced some manifestation of the Kolder evil.

  Sigmun put the situation into words when he bargained for the two largest of the fishing craft which could be repaired and made seaworthy once again:

  “If this be of the Dark, and it has that stench about it, then will you think to rest here safe if you make no move to attract attention to you? Have you already been safe? You have spoken of your fishers who have disappeared—you have seen the fury of the sea and other portents. The Dark has such powers as can rack a world apart. For Power is neither good nor evil itself, it is only to be used, and it is how it is used that is what in the end matters. The Witches of Estcarp brought such a wrenching to the mountains of Karsten—though it broke them. Think you burning a mountain is any less a deed than what we have experienced here?”

  One of the council muttered about Witches and Sigmun caught him up quickly.

  “It is not Estcarp which brought fire out of the sea and all the rest to fall upon you here. But I say this—if a gate does exist, and it seems that is true, it can well bring further disaster upon Varn. Think you that it might not happen again and again? We know that there is trouble in the south—you yourself have said that. It is that trouble which we seek. I have heard you say that trouble followed us hither as if it was a scout of the Dark—is that not so?” He paused to look from one of those gathered there to the next and the next, as if he were prepared to challenge an-adversary.

  “Very well,” he continued when there was muttering among them but no hearable answer. “Would you not rather we go forth into the very face of that which threatens so that it does not need to cast its lines hereabout to net us?”

  So we gained four fishing craft (counting the one we had used to reach the derelict) to form a fleet. The derelict itself had been very carefully examined and some repairs made. It had, in addition to the sail, that manner of propulsion akin to that of the ship we had left at Gorm. But Lord Simon, having inspected that, explained again that apparently the ship had continued under that—and not the battened-down sails—until all the food for the mechanism had been exhausted and the fittings were now useless. However, there were other things on board which were an aid, such as those boxes which could set clear courses, the provisions we had already discovered, and the like.

  There were records also and those Kemoc studied, the Lord Simon from time to time explaining this or that. The charts were a matter of envy to Sigmun, being much superior in every way to those known to him, but because they were of unknown territory those were no aid now.

  I did not try to “read” again. The Lady Jaelithe herself kept very close watch on the seeress from the Wave Skimmer, a woman of middle years who studied me with hot, angry eyes whenever I crossed her path. I know she might arouse such anger against me as would have put me in danger, but she feared the Lady Jaelithe and would not try to cross one who had been a Witch and was still rumored to hold Power in both hands.

  It was the Lady Jaelithe on our voyage back to Varn from the river bay who impressed upon me the dangers of interference with the unknown. Only that I knew and had already accepted. Captain Sigmun agreed that it was best not to bring the salvaged ship into port at the city, thinking that its presence there could well arouse more feeling against us
. It was the Sulcars who worked on the vessels, preparing them as best they could for the open sea. Their badly injured stayed in Varn and Sigmun gave up the whole of the Wave Skimmer, with the consent of what was left of her kin-crew, to the people of the town so that their guild of boat builders went to work replacing the fishing ships.

  Because she did have authority by the reason of her onetime office, the Lady Jaelithe seemed to have come into favor with the cowled spokeswoman of the council and, invited to share her quarters, took up residence in a suite of rooms within that impressive temple where we had faced the blind guardian of Varn. But the rest of us returned to the derelict and there did such labor as we could turn hand to. I was no stranger to Sulcar ship tasks and was more than willing to help. However, what Sigmun asked of the three of us—Kemoc, Orsya and me—was the clearing of the cabins below, to strip them of everything which might have been personal possessions of her vanished passengers and crew.

  Chief accompanied me on my work in one cabin, curling up on a bunk which more closely resembled a comfortable bed. I had found two bags or cases which I thought were for the carrying of clothes and it was into these that I folded and pushed all wearing apparel, also anything else which might have been personal belongings.

  The clothing, which resembled what I knew only superficially, was of unusual fabrics which I examined closely by eye but did not touch except with gloved fingers. I was not sure that I could indeed be pulled into “seeing” by touch alone, without clearing my mind, preparing myself to be receptive. However, I was taking no chances. When I had done the two bags were filled to overflowing. In fact it was necessary to obtain a length of rope to fasten one. For I had taken not only clothing and the like, but also bedcoverings which might have touched another's body.

  I thought I was finished as I stood looking about the stripped cabin. The bunk was bare to its mattress, even the small curtains meant to hide the ports had been taken down. I was about to pick up one of the bags by the twisted rope handle I had devised, when Chief uttered a sound which was not quite a mew but clearly intended to attract my attention. He was standing up on the bunk, his hind legs on its surface and his forepaws against the wall behind. Twice when he saw me watching he butted his head against that wall.