Tarlach shivered and drew his cloak more tightly around himself.
“Enough of the wind seems to make it in.”
She smiled.
“Not in proportion to the whole. Look at how the branches are dancing in the top layers above us. Besides, you would gladly take a lot more cold than this and a soaking outside with it to what we would be enduring in here from the biting clouds if the air were still.”
“Biting clouds?”
“You must know them. Tiny, flying insects. They swarm by the thousands and ten thousands in dim places when there is little or no wind to keep them off.”
“I do indeed! We call them the bitter motes.”
The man shook his head ruefully.
“I remember one night—it was during my first service as a blank shield, too—my company was stationed in ambush awaiting an anticipated invasion of the holding to which we were bound. It was a hot, muggy evening in late summer without the barest breath of a breeze to stir the air… . “
“And the clouds were out?”
“Red raving, and we were under a command of total silence. We did not dare move so much as a hand to try to keep them off us, not that it would have done us much good.”
Una laughed sympathetically.
“You poor things! Did the invaders come?”
“Not at all. They arrived a month later by an entirely different route.”
She tried unsuccessfully to mask her smile.
“That must have been enough to make you consider seeking another lifeway.”
“Just about,” he admitted.
Another gust of wind reached them. Tarlach saw his companion shiver and burrow farther into her cloak. She straightened abruptly, with purpose, and his stomach muscles tightened. They had, come here seeking more than shelter.
“Where is your friend?”
“In her own place, of course. You did not think that she lives here? This is merely the spot where we normally meet since we both love it so.”
“How do you summon her?”
“It is not a summons really. Una is my friend, after all, not a servant. I just call to her with my mind, as she calls to me if she is the one to initiate the visit. Usually, I am the one to do it, for there is almost ho delay in her response, whereas I must ride far to reach the Bower.”
She stood up.
“I had best begin.”
“Aye.”
Una looked at him closely.
“Are you sure you will be all right?'’
“Aye!”
She cringed mentally. That question had been a mistake, but she knew enough about him to realize that he was definitely not happy about any of this.
That could not be helped. They would have settled nothing if they rode home again without having fulfilled their mission.
Closing her eyes, she set herself to issuing the call that would bring her friend to her.
Tarlach watched uneasily for several minutes He was beginning to feel relieved as time continued to flow by with no perceptible change occurring in their surroundings, but then Storm Challenger's warning hiss told him that it was only the weakness of his human senses which made it appear that all was still normal in the Bower.
For nearly a full minute longer, he could detect no difference, then the air before him began to shimmer, to stretch as it were, until he seemed to be looking into an inconceivably eerie passage.
A figure materialized at its farther end, indistinct at first but growing ever clearer as she approached, appearing rather to float than to physically walk. At last, all too soon for him, she stood before them, as real or seemingly real in the flesh as they were themselves.
The Falconer came to his feet in shock. His mind groped for and found Storm Challenger's, but the bird evinced only a surprise similar to his and the natural uncertainty engendered by this eldritch situation in which they found themselves. There was no fear on him and nothing at all of the anger all his kind instinctively displayed when confronted by any taint or work of the Shadow.
The newcomer was very alien, all the more distant despite and because of her beauty and the fact that she might almost have been human. Most frightening in his mind was her resemblance to Una of Seakeep. In face and form, they might almost seem one woman divided by some accursed enchantment, but closer observation revealed that the depth and breadth of a great ocean lay between them.
This being showed an uncommon stillness as well, but the calm in her expression was not that of one who accepted and had come to terms with a life that held its share of weight as well as joy and the ever-present potential to crush utterly. Hers was the empty peace of someone who had not been tested at all and who neither feared nor faced any threat of trial in a future maybe infinitely long.
The fair features were lovelier if anything than the human's but were somehow oddly chiseled, as if another race had a part in their fashioning.
The green eyes were at least alive, and if he could not fathom all that they held, he thought he could read something of the emotion flickering within them, a sadness and a hunger whose cause he wondered if any human might delve or comprehend.
That vanished in the moment of his identifying it, for her eyes, her whole face, lighted with pleasure when they rested on his Una. Whatever about his other doubts, that response told him that the bond between the two was quite real.
That, too, changed rapidly. The strange Una spotted him, and a veil dropped over her inner being.
She glanced inquisitively at the human woman.
“Sister?” Her voice was soft, like the Holdlady's but somewhat oddly though not unpleasantly pitched.
“This is the captain of the force who have come to help us. I thought it best that he meet with you to assure himself that we of Seakeepdale have no traffic with the Shadow.”
The magnificent eyes fixed on him.
“I hope your mind is now easy on that score, Captain, or that it soon will be. This Dale and its people have ever been free of taint, from its earliest history right through the present moment.” She smiled. “For my part, I love Seakeep as well and am grateful for this chance to give you my own thanks for your service.” She made no mention of the fact that he was patently a blank shield, well paid for that service, no more than Una had drawn his profession down during her introduction of him.
Tarlach gave her salute, but he was glad to take refuge in his people's custom and make her no verbal reply. He was unsure of her, not of her allegiance to the Light, which both Storm Challenger and his own instinct affirmed, but of her purpose, and he did not know how much she might be able to read into the feelings behind any response he might make or what her reaction to his uncertainty would be.
He stepped back several paces into, the living tunnel, leaving the pair to speak together in privacy as would be expected of him. He was, after all, no more than Una's escort… .
He watched them from that vantage, fighting the urge to force his way back in there and thrust himself as a sword and shield between the Holdlady and her almost-image.
More than an image! His heart gave a vicious leap. By the Horned Lord! That one was something far more!
It was a battle after that to restrain himself during the eternal minutes which followed, but he knew if he intervened now, whatever hope he had of reasoning with the Daleswoman would probably be ended. He must hold his peace for the moment, unless the stranger made some open threat against which he might rightly act, though to what effect, he could not even begin to hazard.
At last, after what in actuality was only a very few minutes, it was over. The alien woman withdrew down her passage as she had come.
No sooner did Una stand alone once more and his comrade had confirmed that the gate was truly closed than the Falconer was at her side. He seized her hands.
“What does that one want of you?” he demanded harshly.
The Holdlady started to answer sharply, but then she saw the tightness of his lips and read that which burned in his eyes.
> “Nothing. She is my friend.”
“She is you!—Una, she is your own self, different, aye, but you in spite of that!”
She stared at him as if he had gone mad.
“We are not the same, hot in thought or totally in likings, and though we do look alike, I do not have quite her store of beauty. I know that is of no importance to your kind, but surely you must see it. The rest, you cannot know unless you accept my word, but that is before your own eyes.”
“I have admitted that you are not the same and praise the Horned Lord for that, but yet, you two are one. I cannot explain how or why, but it is so. As for your appearance, Una of Seakeep, you judge yourself ill. You are fairer in any man's eyes than that strange … thing could, ever be. You have shared human life. You are strong and weak, warm, because of that sharing …”
He stopped speaking. It was impossible to express concepts, to describe comprehensibly a situation so completely outside anything he had ever encountered or heard described before. He fully believed that even the Witches of Estcarp, with all their vaunted Power and learning, would have been utterly baffled by this, though for the first time in his life he heartily wished they had one of them here with them to help them front this mystery.
“Una, she is not of the Dark. I give you that, but still, I—I fear that she is trouble, and dire trouble, for you. Do nothing, grant her nothing, without careful and long thought lest you thereby take a step you might be powerless to retrace.”
6
Tarlach was in his usual place on the beach the following morning, standing in the shelter of a great rock. The sign of the previous day's storm was still on the sea, and he did not envy those manning the small boat far out in the bay whose antics he had been observing for some time with that part of his awareness not locked into his memory of that other Una.
He had been thoroughly surprised and much relieved by the Holdruler's response to his declaration. He had anticipated fury and well nigh a battle of wills with her—reason almost demanded it after so incredible a statement—but that had not occurred. Una had staunchly defended her friend, right enough, as he supposed was only to be expected, but once her initial astonishment had subsided, she had not set her back against him. She had neither condemned him nor dismissed his fears outright. Rather, with real humility, she had admitted that she herself had none of the answers necessary to refute him and no knowledge in the ways of the Old Ones. Given those limitations, she had acknowledged the wisdom of conducting herself with the circumspection he advised.
She had thanked him for his quickness of mind in detecting a potential for peril which neither she nor the two people she had most trusted in her life had even envisioned.
His head lowered. He had been so sensitive to that danger only because the strange Una was female and because she either possessed herself or could otherwise control enough Power to permit her to open a gate at will. How much credit did he deserve for that? He wondered what sort of response he would have made had their positions been reversed and the Daleswoman had found it needful to caution him in some relationship of his. To his shame, he knew full well that he would not have heard her with the same fairness and respect, that he probably would not have used her with courtesy at all, not even that which was her due as the one to whom his sword was bound.
His preoccupation was hot so deep that he failed to hear the welcoming call Storm Challenger reserved for his mate. He looked up as the falcon left his shoulder to join Sunbeam in the air above, and he raised his hand in greeting to Brennan.
The lieutenant acknowledged it.
“I knew I would find you in this place.”
His commander smiled.
“I am here often enough. I love to watch the way the bay changes with each new shading of light and hour.”
The other looked at him.
“You are very drawn to this Dale.”
Tarlach nodded.
“Seakeep has much to offer a man.” He sighed, his mood sobering. “I hope war does not come here. It deserves better than that.”
“I doubt it shall. There has been naught but peace since our arrival.”
“Aye, but it is during the autumn and winter storms that a black wrecker will be active, not now.”
“Assuming one is operating in this area at all. We have seen nothing to suggest that there is, no more than there has been any trouble with this Lord Ogin. We have not had so much as a sight of him.”
“You knew it would probably be thus through the summer months,” the captain replied in surprise. “As for the Lord of Ravenfield, he would logically remain quiet for a while and then begin pressing his suit with the Holdlady anew using other tactics.”
“Aye, there is the Holdruler.—You were long in the returning yesterday.”
Tarlach stiffened.
“What do you say?”
“Nothing.”
“The storm caught us, and we took refuge against it, then had a long wait before it blew over.” There was a sharpness in his tone which was rarely loosed on any of his own. “Do you imagine I would violate one to whom I am oath-bound, by violence Or through seduction?”
“Seduction can be a mare's weapon.”
The captain's hand struck the hilt of his blade.
“I would kill any other for that,” he snarled.
Brennan stepped back a pace. He did not need the suddenly alerted falcons now swooping very close to the two men to tell him the depth of his friend's anger. Most righteous anger. He had done him ill in speaking as he had for no better reason than his annoyance over his commander's disappearance the previous day.
“Pardon craved, Comrade. It is just that more than one of us bad begun to grow uneasy by the timë you returned. You had given no one word of your plains, and we did not even know where to begin seeking you.”
Tarlach’s outrage cooled.
“That was foolishly done,” he admitted. “In truth, I had allowed our employer to provoke my temper and acted under its lash.” He shrugged. “That is done. Our purpose was sound. She gave me report of a place of Power, and I went to examine it, using her as my guide.”
“What! I thought Seakeepdale held no such canker.”
“The activity is intermittent.”
“Tainted?”
“Neither Storm Challenger nor I detected any sign of that.”
The Falconer leader found himself reluctant to reveal what had happened in the Bower. It was too strange for him to offer either explanation or assurance, and yet he felt to the depth of his being that the woman from beyond the gate represented no threat to anyone but the Holdlady of Seakeepdale. On the other hand, Una's position would of a certainty be compromised in his comrades’ eyes if the story became known.
That must be avoided. She was already somewhat suspect, apparently, or Brennan's impatience would not have been expressed in the terms he had used just now, and the company was growing restless under the lack of real work and the seeming absence of the threat Una had described as her reason for hiring blank shields. Technically, that should not matter. They were sworn to give a twelve-months’ service here, but the fact that they were bound to a woman might put stress on the strength of that oath in the minds of some, and he did not want to face the task of imposing obedience and discipline on any of his warriors. This was too good a unit to be so weakened.
Fortunately, his lieutenant seemed to accept his appraisal as he had spoken it, and to help forestall any further questioning, Tarlach turned his head to the sea, once more fixing his attention on the small vessel tossing on the still-angry water.
She was much nearer now, and he frowned as he continued to study her.
“Brennan, you had more time at sea than I. What do you make of that boat? I have been watching her on and off for about half an hour. Sometimes she travels fast, sometimes slow, as if with the wind, and occasionally she turns broadside to the waves as she is doing now, although she always eventually heads into them again.”
The second man
watched her closely for some minutes.
“She is probably sound enough, but I do not like the look of her. She is not moving right, as if she were only partially under control at times.”
Brennan's head snapped up.
“She is in trouble! See, she is flashing something white, a sark perhaps.”
“Rouse the Dalesfolk! They have probably seen her as well, but we cannot chance that they have not. I shall keep watch on her here.”
Brennan nodded and raced for the nearest of the cottages, but he had not gone ten yards before he saw several girls and a couple of youths running like young coursing hounds down the beach toward the moored boats. Knowing matters to be in good hands, he returned to his commander after raising his hand to the Dalespeople to acknowledge their control of the emergency.
The strange vessel was soon taken in tow and brought ashore.
The three men aboard her, all well known to the Seakeep people, were tired but sound. They reported that they had been fishing off their own shore when their radder had struck a submerged rock they admitted they should have avoided easily had overconfidence in the face of a too familiar danger not made them careless. They had rigged another rudder with their spare oar but had drifted out of their Dale's waters by then and had made for here with the intention of putting into Seakeep's harbor to properly complete their repairs.
When the sea had proven a little too rough for their makeshift rudder, however, they had grown afraid and had begun signaling for help. There were few other landing places beyond this point besides Ravenfield's single small beach, and all three readily confessed their unwillingness to venture into that territory, which had always been known as a dangerous coast and had gained an even worse name for wrecks and lost ships in recent years.
Tarlach's eyes met his lieutenant's as die eldest of the fishermen, he who was telling the tale of his vessel's adventures, made that last statement.
Brennan nodded. That was the sign the Falconers needed. There was no doubting the sincerity of the seamen's fear, their acceptance and avoidance of a locally acknowledged peril, and there would be no further thought of leaving Seakeep before the term of their service ended.