Storms of Victory (Witch World: The Turning)

  There was a bay spreading below us—for now we three were one. Far more sharp and clearly came the sight. In that bay were gathered a vast fleet of ships! But there Was no touch of life arising from those. We had only an instant of that view and then we snapped away. Even so we did not go so swiftly that I had not caught that warning. It was like a whiff of stench from some battlefield where all had perished and none remained alive to bury the dead. This was death itself, and not a clean one.

  We were—caught!

  I have seen nets spread for fish and the silver bodies leaping therein frantically and without hope. Somehow. I knew that-withdrawal could not come .without a struggle. I resisted, and just as I had been drawn to them so now did they swing with me. Now I was a spear point and they the shaft behind. Though I had never been so entangled before I instinctively fought to change what lay beneath me. Bit by bit, aided by surges of energy from the others, I slowed our flight inland. This compulsion was something such as I had not met before. The stench of evil was in it, but I could hot locate its source. That this was a device of the Dark I did not question, and to seek out its nature might well draw us farther into its hold. Instead I fought to mind-see the ship, the. cabin—

  With the farsight one is never aware of one's body—only of what one sees within. That in-seeing might be the only aid for us now. Ship—there was still the ship. Again the rocks and bay, now that swing of barren land; I strove to build instead the picture of the ship, of the cabin which reason told me still held that which was the flesh envelope from which I had ventured. For return I fought and with me those two others.

  A ship, yes—However, it swung in and out, alternating with sight of that country unknown. Perhaps I could not bring the whole ship into being, but the cabin was smaller and we had roots there. For wherever one has slept and lived, even for a short time, that site takes on a measure of one's person. On-such a link the farsight-can fasten for a guide.

  I built those wails, the narrow space between them. I saw Orsya, Kemoc, their linked hands—It was as if they had not quite realized what I could do but now understood. Once more they poured into me the force which they were capable Of raising. I had a body—I opened my eyes.

  Orsya leaned against Kemoc's shoulder, her eyes closed. There was limpness in her poise, which brought fear. Then Kemoc stirred; I heard his mind voice call:

  “Orsya!”

  He opened his eyes just as I stood away from the stool, before the Krogan girl. My hands were up on either side of her drooping head. With all the strength I had left I mind-sent-the picture of where we truly were. Yet she did not stir. Was she still caught in that Web of the Dark which had entangled us? Still in my back swing I had not felt any diminution of energy, and surely I would have known if we had left her alone!

  Kemoc pushed my hands away. His own went into place the same way. I knew that the tie between them was such that he could reach farther to draw her back. Also, was he not reputed to be indeed a warlock, one who dipped into ancient wisdom generally forgotten?

  His face was grim-set. Orsya fell back on the bunk as he withdrew support. Now he bent Over her still using that hold between them. All of a sudden she sighed. That sound gave me such relief I, too, felt weak and sagged back against the cabin wall. Her eyes opened and she looked up into his face.

  “It—it—waits—” Her voice was hardly more than the shadow of a whisper.

  Kemoc spoke nearly as softly in reply: “It is not here.” And, as softly as he as he spoke, there was still authority in his tone.

  However, it was toward me she looked and not to his face so close now to hers.

  “It hungers.”

  At that moment I knew the tightness of her choice of words. That strong pull was as much a part of hunger as the force radiated from the sea thing. But it was not a hunger of body—

  For the first time something which was not a conscious willing on my part twitched my thought aside, that was a path I must not follow. In that moment I also realized that, for once, fortune which was good not ill had worked through me for others.

  Orsya, her gaze still holding mine, nodded. “You do not know your strength, seer-sister.”

  “But do not try it too far!” Kemoc broke in upon-the two of us. “No more of—”

  “Such journeying?” I interrupted him. “Be sure that I will swear path to if you wish it. Though I believe that we three this hour have seen that which we seek—”

  “So be it,” Orsya returned. “That is a place of death.” She shivered, turning her face from both of us as she spoke.

  There was a rap on the door at my back. I looked to Kemoc and he nodded assent so I turned and slid aside the door of the cabin.

  Yakin, the mate, stood there.

  “Captain Sigmun wishes speech with you.” He did not look beyond me, but rather to me as if he brought an order. Because of the tone of voice he used when he said that I believed that it was. Though I was none of Sigmun's clan this was delivered as if I did owe allegiance to him.

  I stepped without, moving slowly, for again the toll that farseeing had taken had drained me. Also there was apprehension of a kind, for I was very sure that Sigmun would not look kindly on any use of talent by me. Had he in any way been aware of the far journey from which I had just returned?

  5

  Sigmun faced “me in-the narrow slip of cabin, the only private space afforded in a ship which was both a way of travel and also the permanent dwelling place of a clan. His eyes were the dark blue of the shadows one sees lie stretching out from snow dunes, and certainly there was, no lighting of grimness which held his features in a harsh set. However, he waved me to a small stool which was the only other seat in that blade-wide space.

  “There has been spelling!” he spoke abruptly. “We will have no more awaking of those from the depths.”

  “If spelling called such—and there Was no calling—then it was also spelling which sent it away,” I pointed out.

  There was no lessening of his set jaw, of the bitter lines which bracketed his mouth. Now he brought his hand, fist tight, with force against his knee.

  “I will not have the Far Rover endangered!”

  “She was kept from danger, was she not? The water magic of the Krogans may be more powerful than we know.”

  He did hot answer that, only continued to stare, as if by his will alone he could bring out of me some oath which would reassure him. Inwardly I was wary. Sigmun had been in favor, of our present expedition. There had been certainly warning enough that this was no easy sail upon an unnaturally quiet ocean. This being so why had he now apparently changed?

  “Does that thing follow?” he demanded.

  That he would willingly ask the help of my farsight was so strange as to set me on guard. I answered him then with the truth:

  “Captain, my talent you hold in abhorrence, why do you now wish to use it?”

  “There is reason to consult any chart when one is sailing blind.”

  He meant it then. His fear for his ship had broken down, at least for now, that strong-held barrier which the Sulcars had always kept against me. Farsight could not bring any fate upon us as my foresight might; I could dare such a reading and not—

  Sigmun had turned to pick up an object from the floor. This he held into the light which came through the single port breaking the cabin wall. What he so displayed was a piece of wood about the length of my arm, splintered at either end. That it was part of that skiff which had taken the assault of the dweller in the deeps was plain

  “You read from-such as this.” There was no warmth in his voice, only urgency. Nor could I deny him after my one such seeking. Only I was already weary from the farsight. To use what little Strength I had gathered since that to a new test was perhaps futile.

  Reluctantly I took the broken length of wood in both my hands, resting it across my knees. Closing my eyes, I willed to see, to read—

  A murk closed about me. Through that was movement. I might have been entrapped in a
thick fog in which there was other life astir. Yet so concealing was that fog that I could not be sure of the nature of the things which flitted, only momentarily, close enough to catch my attention.

  Not fog—but water! I Was thought-deep in the sea and those which flickered in and out of my land-trained sight must be fish—sea creatures. There was a sudden flurry as a near cloud of swimmers-flashed past me. Fear lived in the fog, now.

  I had not seen enough of the monster who had hunted us to be sure of its shape, to be able thus to center my sight upon the object I hunted.

  This thing slid forward ponderously. I had seen many kinds of sea dwellers, some so very grotesque that they might have been fashioned by deliberate intention to frighten, but this held no echo of anything I had ever sighted before.

  Though it was hard in this murk to judge sizes I had the impression that the thing was near as long as the Far Rover. The body was scaled but those overlapping armor shields were large enough to $ye the appearance of being shell hard and solid. I had once seen a creature, brought from the north, which possessed a similar body but that had been quite minute compared to this. Though there was something of a fish about it, yet there was also that which was totally strange—no finned tail, no fins for side and back. Rather thick, taloned extremities protruded to make swimming movements. The head was near the same size as the body and most of that head was mouth which was widely agape now as it plowed forward after the fleeing fish. Though it seemed to labor at its swimming it closed upon that flight and snapped up mouthful after mouthful of prey so small in comparison with its bulk that it must near spend most of its lifetime eating merely to keep life within that hideous body.

  I dared to probe.

  I could not have uttered a cry, for the throat which should shape that, the lips which would utter it, were not there. Instead I cut the cord of the. “sight.” When I opened my eyes I was no longer in the murk of the deeps but still seated on a stool in the captain's cabin while he held me with that fierce, compelling stare.

  “You have seen it!” No question that, a Statement of fact which I could not deny. “Does it follow?”

  “There are no charts in the depths,” I returned, struggling to retain at least my surface confidence. “It is feeding—following schools of fish.”

  He was silent for a moment and then he nodded as in answer to some thought of his own. “But there is more, that is the truth, is it not? You found something other than a sea thing feeding on its natural food.”

  So I must have betrayed myself. How much dare I say to this man who had accepted me with nothing but distrust? He could well believe that I was attempting some trickery. Only those who have the talent themselves realize that that which one learns through it cannot be. assumed, it is always stark truth.

  “The thing is—was—a guardian. It has—by some means—perhaps the coming of boiling water from a volcano—been driven from its place and it is lost. But it is not native here. And it was set to a duty—”

  He did not smile at what he might deem foolishness, “instead he was frowning. Then he turned again and I saw behind him a small chest. This he drew across the planking which was between us and snapped up the lock, throwing back the lid. From the interior he pulled: out a roll of very ancient parchment, the edges of which were so tattered that they might be fringed. Closing the chest again he unrolled a small fraction of the scroll he held.

  The marks upon it were very faded. I had to lean well forward to see what had been so revealed. Though some of the lines were missing, and the whole needed several guesses to give it full body, I might have been looking at a very crude representation of the thing I had seen feeding.

  “This,” Captain Sigmun said, with something close to solemnity in his tone, “is Scalgah.”

  I stiffened. That he meant what he said—that the much-faded picture was intended to represent, a legendary monster so ancient that only a very few legends so much as mentioned it—I had to accept. I had heard enough from those who had visited Escore—that in that shadowed land many of the old legends did have actual life—so perhaps this was possible. Only Scalgah was not of Escore, nor even of the legends of the Old Ones.

  From whence the Sulcars had originally come no one knew now, even our bards and seers could not tell. Only there was with us the belief that we, too, had won through a gate, in so far a past that the stones of Es had not been yet cut or laid when we came. Why we came, that we did not know either. Those of High Hallack say they were hunted by enemies through the gate which brought them to the Dales. The Kolders warred, one part against the other, and forced their own gate that they might plunder what was waiting on our side to furnish them with the means of setting up a world empire of their own.

  However, the majority of those who are recorded to be dwellers from Outside arrive one or two, or perhaps a small clan, together. Even as had Lord Simon in his time.

  Sulcar legend did not say that we were hunted. Maybe we came by chance or for the adventure of seeking the new. However, there was no return and that was made certain by the appearance of guardians. Those who listened to the oldest songs knew naming those:

  “Theffan, Laqit, Scalgah—'’ I found myself reciting those names—all reverences had long since fled that rhyming now. It was a game song for children—used to “count out” this one and that from a dancing ring.

  I saw Sigmun nod and then he rolled up that ancient record to replace it in the chest.

  “So now we go to the gate? I ventured, although I knew that he could only equal my own guessing.

  “Perhaps. I would like to know if Theffan and Laqit also exist.”

  “Water and fire, earth and air,” I repeated. “In the heart of death is the core of life. He who holds the—”

  I had gotten just so far in that other ancient saying when his hand shot forward and closed upon my wrist in a crushing grip. “How know you that?” He spoke between set teeth as does a man before he bears steel.

  “I—I do not know!” Yes, those words had risen easily in me. However, when they had first become a part of my memories I could not tell now. I had long been a wanderer. The Dales I knew, and the Waste, and even part of Arvon. I had guested in halls, and slept under stars when other wanderers came together around a camp fire to Seek out for a space the companionship of kind, for that we would hunger no matter how lone our lives. I had listened to the tales of merchants and, yes, hid even served for a single voyage now and then aboard a Sulcar vessel when the ship clan did not know my story. I had talked and I had listened, and, though my years were hot yet many, I remembered more than perhaps even the hard-faced man I now faced, whose laced fingers brought twisting pain to my wrist.

  I could not understand why a scrap of ritual had struck him so profoundly. His other hand arose a little and his forefinger moved in the air as if he wrote there some message which only the initiated could read. I then knew what I had done. In some way I had used words which were the pass sign for one of the Kin-by-Sword. companies among our people. Though such a one as I was barred from any these.

  “I do not know where I first heard that, Captain. I claim no fellowship which is false.” My other hand sought that amulet hidden beneath my worn shirt. Who was I indeed who could claim common blood, kin bond with any? Yet Gunnora had not refused me this sign of hers.

  Did he believe me? I was not sure. But he released his hold on me and snapped the lock on the chest before he pushed it back into the shadows from which he had drawn it.

  “You would be wise,” his voice was very sharp and cold, “not to repeat that again. If it was mouthed in your hearing at one time that was, in itself, a call for discipline. So you say Scalgah—but does he follow?”

  “That I cannot say, Captain. The farsight does not measure—” Then I remembered the board J still held—it had not been altogether by the farsight that I had viewed those murky depths. I laid my hand palm down upon it but I did not seek.

  “I can only watch through this,’’ I told him.
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  “Let it be so,” he said curtly and I read in that tone that I was dismissed, so arose from my stool, the broken board in my hold.

  Nor did he call again upon any gift of mine. Also, after speaking with Orsya and Kemoc, I did not seek again on my own. They were deeply interested in my report that the creature of the depths resembled one of legend, however, and told me of those other survivals of what had once been termed myth yet lived on in Escore.

  Orsya's need for water was answered ingeniously by two of the Sulcar women, who brought forth a length of stout canvas earned to repair storm-torn sails. This they sewed at either end with their stoutest of waxed thread. Then we caulked it on the inside with tar, working until we had a crude trough as long as Orsya's body. Water drawn from the sea filled it at intervals and the Krogan lay within that, renewing herself as she must for life itself.

  The days were fair and the wind was steady from the north. It seemed to me, who had long ago come to question any singular run of good fortune, that we were a little too favored. It might well be that the Dark forces were playing with us, as, according to legends, they had in the past, waiting to deliver some blow when it would be the hardest for us to stand defense against it.

  We did not seek with farsight again. But Kemoc spoke often of the lore he had learned at Lormt. Though then he had gone for one purpose only, to search those incredibly ancient records in order to discover a place where he, his sister, and his brother might take refuge from the anger of the Council, there were other records stored there. He shook his head now over the fact that none of our party had sent for information there concerning the far south. It might be a case such as Escore where a part of our world had been walled away for protection. We could well have been better prepared had we known what lay perhaps forgotten in this time.

  Now he asked of me every scrap of knowledge I had before he went to Captain Sigmun. Upon demand he was shown the full of that roll of learning. However, the runes, worn away by the years, were in another tongue and Kemoc could learn little from it. He asked once if I might hold it and so go far-seeking in the past but received such a decided “No” that I think he was astonished. As for me, I kept out of the captain's path as best I might so we had ho more talk together.