Kryn shifted his weight a little. “But if there is power against the Temple, against the king, is that what he fears?” He had never been one to linger in the halls and listen to the gossip concerning high personages, rather he had wanted the open about him and not the buzzing of such as always had much to say behind their hands.
“No. The king looks southward—or at least he reads many of the old chronicles. He does not realize that what he covets is already dead and gone. But his ambition rides him and perhaps there will come one who will feed him into war. It may be that Valcur wishes him to play out his dreams in such games but—remember Razkan?”
“But that one is long gone,” protested Hasper. “He withdrew overseas and no man has seen him. So they prate wildly about him as if he could blow mountains about with his very breath and stamp a city into dust.”
“In his time he did both,” answered Lord Jarth quietly.
Kryn was nodding. The very man he had buried this eve had been the first to really talk about Razkan and rather than vagueness of legend his stories had held the ring of truth. Ewen’s own grandfather had been one to see such a display of power in the last of the long war when Fire had descended from the sky to char the enemy into nothingness. A servant of Razkan had done that; and if a servant could perform such wonders—what of the master?
“Still—you read war in these,” he said to Jarth. The stones were yet warm but he could pick them up now to restore them to hiding.
“I think so. But the message remains unclear. What we can do is prepare to take any advantage offered us.”
And with that Kryn could agree.
CHAPTER 7
There was much to be done before the two left the forsaken shrine of Lyr. The books Nosh had dragged with her were hidden in a cranny of the wall just before the entrance to the crystal cavern, while the supplies she had also brought were divided into two smaller packs. They ate of the root powder cakes and each sipped sparingly at the water in the scaled pouches.
When they were done Dreen moved forward once more to stand before the pedestal of the shattered Hands. She began a chant, the words of which were beyond Nosh’s understanding—something very old from the morning hours of time itself.
To the girl the sullen gleam of the threatening globe above them was somehow forced back into its source and the glory of the crystals flared into higher and braver life. Then Dreen beckoned to her and, when she went obediently to the woman’s side, she saw ready in her hand that much-used blade which was the only steel she had seen in the Ryft.
Dreen caught at one of Nosh’s braids, loosing it from its cording, and sawed off a length of the girl’s dark hair. Her blunt, callused fingers, used to the small loom of weaving, to the plaiting of reed stems, were quick at work and soon she held a bag.
“This will hold what you carry and in a measure, as long as you wear it against your body, will keep that safe. Hide it well.”
Nosh slid the sliver of crystal into that silky bag and hung it between her small breasts by a length of hair she herself pulled from her own head. Once done she looked to Dreen for further orders.
The woman made a circle with her hand which indicated the floor about them and those drifts of crystal heaped and scattered there.
“Seek, Alnosha. In the old days much treasure was brought here to adorn the shrine. Not all which lies here is crystal—some of it is more.”
Nosh flexed her fingers. In the Ryft their sustenance depended upon their own physical efforts; in another place perhaps such finds as she could make might well mean success or failure, life or death.
She knelt to seek and she found. These were not the dull, unworked gems such as she had discovered among the river gravel. However, in their way they were as hidden, for their glory was masked by the crystals among which they lay. In the end she held out to Dreen a double handful, ranging in size from those a reed tip could cover to some as large as a fingernail. The woman shook them into a piece of her robe she had worried loose by the knife, and tucked the harvest into the slight blousing above her rope girdle.
“Well enough. But remember this, child: men—yes— and women, too, will kill for such a treasure. We must use it carefully, and, should you be left alone—”
“Where are you going then?” Nosh knew a flutter of fear.
“We do not choose our fates, save when we first set foot along chosen roads. I have seen many seasons, Alnosha, and you are young. It may be that I shall not be with you to the ending of this quest. If that be so— make sure you take this.” She patted her body where that hidden bag made a small lump. “But use what it holds with care. Now,”—she stooped and picked up the rope about her pack—“we make our start. If dreams are aright, those who have come seeking will not be satisfied in a hurry concerning our absence. Their master,”—she nodded to the globe overhead—“must indeed be astir.”
There was a second exit to the crystal chamber and through that Nosh followed Dreen. The way was narrow and a rough one, twice the woman needed to turn sideways to inch through a tight squeeze, and Nosh suffered scrapes on her arms which tore the stuff of her snakeskin, lizard hide, reed-woven clothing to leave smarting furrows on her flesh.
Then there was once again a dull light ahead and Dreen slowed.
“Here for the night,” she said. “There is a spring beyond and we can fill our water bags, for the march ahead will be a dry one. I know the way—for two days perhaps. Beyond that I have not ventured, and we must take our chances.”
There was a patch of green about the spring where water bubbled in a worn basin hardly bigger than the pot which had hung over Dreen’s house fire. Nosh with a quick, skilled hand, caught two of the legged fish. They might not offer more than a good bite apiece but every such addition to their supplies was to be prized. Nor did she shrink from eating her catch uncooked. There could be no fire here with the sky still light enough to show smoke against the clouds and be a signal to bring any watcher in.
They lay that night in the very small opening to the passage from the place of Lyr. Dreen had sat for a long time as full darkness closed in, her two hands clasped tightly at her breast enfolding the stone she wore there in its reed bag, her eyes closed. Yet Nosh was sure that she did not sleep.
Much the girl had learned from the onetime priestess, but not all Dreen knew or remembered. The woman might even now be rousing power which would aid them in their flight and Nosh drew away as far as she could from the other lest she disturb what might be a seeing trance.
Instead she felt for her own talisman and the warmth of it was a comfort, somehow soothing and finally banishing fear. She felt a growing desire to be away—out of the desolation of the Ryft—into a world where there were still growing things, and people. Though, memory warned her, the latter were to be feared more than any countryside.
There were streamers of pale dawn across the sky when she awoke from a sleep wherein she might have dreamed but if she had, she did not remember. Dreen’s hand lay on her shoulder.
“It is well that we go….”
Nosh sat up. “They come?”
“Not as yet. But they seek and they have one among them who is no common armsman. What power that one may evoke I cannot tell. However, last night he was mind searching and only Our Lady kept that threat from us.” Her hand went again to the stone she wore.
They ate very sparingly and, having drunk their fill, filled their water bags as full as they could. Dreen turned south along the thread of stream which runneled from the spring. It was colder here, and under the flint grey sky they moved closely together as if the very land was a threat they must face.
Only too soon their water guide was swallowed by a crevice. Now they faced a climb and Dreen moved along the base of that, studying the face of the barrier until she pointed to a rough space on the wall.
Nosh made certain her pack was well placed, even as Dreen was doing, and then she followed the woman’s example and climbed. To her surprise it was not quite the ordeal it h
ad seemed from below—there were niches in the rock as if they had been purposely cut there for the convenience of travelers. Then they reached a ledge which sloped upward to the left and offered the best footing they had seen that day.
Nosh took the opportunity for a quick look back over the path which they had come. She was not sure of the ability of the one Dreen had spoken of in warning. Could such a searcher indeed pluck out of the very air some trace of scent as might a wakwolf, or look upon a bare rock and know that a foot had trod there?
When they had reached the top of the height to which the ledge took them, they faced a different kind of country. There were broken rock spires aplenty immediately before, even as there had been in the Ryft, but beyond those there was a stretch of level land where she could sight moving dots, not keeping in a purposeful line as might a troop, but rather scattered and slow in their going.
“Armsmen?”
“No—those are laster-deer at graze. And to see them thus is a sign that there are no intruders near. They are careful as to sentry duty—the does have their outer beats along the edge of the herd. And they are not to be surprised when so in the open.”
Beyond that mountain meadow where the lasters fed was a dark tangle of trees reaching up and up along the side of a height taller than any Nosh remembered seeing. The dark green of that growth cast a shadow of color and reminded one that the Ryft’s fate had not been suffered elsewhere.
They descended cautiously among the outcrops of rock, knowing only too well how easy it was to take a misstep where small stones slid if weight was pressed on them. And beyond that grey wilderness there was a tangle of brush. For the first time there was sound. For busy at their harvesting of near-dried berries were flocks of birds, so unheeding of the travelers in their greediness that they did not take wing until Nosh plucked a taste from one of the thorned branches, and then they only scolded harshly.
Live birds were strange to Nosh. She had only seen their like pictured in one of the books which had been written about the life which had once swarmed in the Ryft. The colors of some of these busy feasters were dull for the most part but there were others which displayed bright splotches of hues from red through orange to yellow, through green to blue.
Dreen herself was busy pulling the fruit from the branches, thrusting handsful of it into their ration bags as well as into her own mouth. And Nosh quickly followed her example. But the bushes here were so matted that she could not win through them and they did their harvesting along the edge, still moving south.
Above the bird cries sounded a bellow, which came, Nosh was sure, from beyond the barrier of the growth.
“The laster have picked up our scent,” Dreen answered her unspoken question tranquilly. “And—since they move—they have some reason to be wary—as if hunted in their time.”
They came at last to the end of the berry patch and into the beginning of tree growth. Nosh breathed deeply of the fresh scent the breeze brought her. This was indeed like coming into another world.
Dreen halted not far into the woodland and stooped to pick up a length of young sapling brought down when one of the larger trees had crashed to earth ahead of them. It was a straight length, though knotted near one end with the stubs of branches. Dreen thudded the thicker end against the ground, then swung it up to balance as if she held an armsman’s spear.
For the first time since she had seen this strange alive land Nosh thought of perils other than those offered by the hunters of her own kind. Wakwolves—she swallowed. Against a wakwolf what good would that crude pole be? But the wolves were known to hunt mostly at night and, perhaps by nightfall, they themselves would have found shelter. She herself started looking at the downed branches which lay half-buried in the thick carpet of other seasons’ needles, but found none which suggested the possibility of being converted into a weapon, no matter how rough.
They won through the small wood and were now on the verge of the meadow. Nosh looked for the lasters but there were none to be seen. The valley was narrow at this end and the open space had assumed almost the sharpness of a sword point. However, southward it widened steadily and she thought that the heights which walled the level land there were some distance on—they even seemed to be masked in haze.
Dreen stepped boldly into the open, her sapling pole in her hand. There was a weaving of the autumn-browned grass, a scuttling and a squeaking which brought Nosh to a wary halt. Dreen regarded the girl over her shoulder with one of her faint smiles.
“There are dwellers in the grass, child. They mean us no harm even as we offer none to them.”
The nature of most of those dwellers Nosh did not know but there were two birds who arose almost clumsily from the waves of growth, to fly a short space north, and subside, hidden by the meadow’s cover once again. Overhead there were flyers also—one which sailed close on wide wings. Another of the grass-dwelling birds arose and that hunter from the skies swooped and made a clean catch, carrying its prey aloft as it winged directly to the heights.
The ease of that hunt was so swift and quick that Nosh stared wide-eyed.
“A rathhawk,” Dreen identified the hunter. “They seldom miss their strikes. That was a female, her young may still be a-nest though it is late for them to linger so.”
Nosh dared now to bring her earlier fear into the open. To see that one skillful hunter about her business was enough to remind the girl unpleasantly of another.
“Wakwolves…” She did not quite make a question of that.
“Perhaps. But in a land as rich in prey as this one we need not fear them to sniff our trail. They turn upon our kind only in times of starvation. Those which hunted along your path into the Ryft were caught in a country where there was very little left save the rock snakes and the zark—neither of which could make more than a mouthful.”
Which was a little heartening, Nosh found. They came to a grazed spot where the lasters had taken their fill and insects buzzed up from piles of fresh dung which the travelers avoided. Thus they came to that other massing of trees which marched from the meadow skyway upslope.
There they found a stream flowing so clear that Nosh was able to see the scuttling of the rock hiders at its bottom. And she went to work speedily to entrap as many of those that she could while Dreen, having shed her pack to lie beside the girl’s, started back into the meadow, making slow sweeps of her hand to part the grass, now and then plucking up a small plant which she added to a growing bundle.
When she returned Nosh had a goodly catch laid out on a rock surface. There was sun here—it had just won from behind a cloud which might be the ragged fringe of those cloaking the Ryft—and the warmth of that on her shoulders felt good and soothing.
Dreen took out her knife and sawed free the roots of the plants she had garnered. Then setting some stones together and bringing a handful of driftwood to be broken into small bits, she lit a handsbreadth of fire. Nosh strung her catch on a piece of the drift and set it within the heat of the fire while Dreen washed the soil from the plant roots which were thick and bulbous, and pushed them into the full grasp of the flame, which she proceeded to feed into higher force.
There was little smoke, for the wood was very dry and the heat was comforting. Still Nosh was wary. Where they had taken their place was on the stream bank and there were trees and brush about. In fact the tree branches reached out to break into near invisible ribbons the smoke which did arise. Yet she was still uneasy. Dreen’s early speech concerning that hunter on their trail who had certain powers was not one to make one content in a strange country.
However, the answer to their fire when it came was not what she expected. She had been eating hungrily of one of the tubers which roasting had reduced to a sweetish mealy state when Dreen’s head went up, and, to the girl’s surprise, the woman’s lips shaped a sound Nosh had never heard before—a whistle almost birdlike in its trills. At the same time her hand fell on Nosh’s arm as if to restrain and reassure the girl.
Out of the tree
s across the stream there advanced men. Nosh’s hand flew to the talisman of Lyr, though at that moment she was certain it could bring them little aid. Dreen made no move to pick up her spear club. Instead she remained sitting calmly where she was, as the leader of those who had come out of hiding splashed across the shallow stream to join them.
CHAPTER 8
The outlaws went on short rations during the fourth of the cold months. For all their struggles to amass supplies there were limits as to what they could garner. Also those trains of the Templers largely vanished when the last of the harvest had been plundered from the forfeited estates near the Heights. But lean bellies were not new to those of the band—and neither was hard labor, as Kryn discovered during the months when spring first touched the mountain uplands.
There was no division now between lord and armsman as to labor. Kryn drove a pair of field varges, taken the season before from a deserted fief and carefully tended during the cold, to plow a field as if he had been born to the soil, and then took his turn to break up the muddy clods of soil for the sowing of upland millet.
It was backbreaking, exhausting labor, but as Jarth had made clear to them all, if they were to continue to exist, they must be able to depend upon more than raiding plunder or the hunt for their supplies. The snows had shut off the scraps of news gained during scouting, so they could only guess what might be happening in the lowlands—and their speculations were usually on the dark side.
Yet there were none among them, hall born or commoner, who were ready to argue that they move out away from the headquarters they had established on the fringe of what had once been their homeland. If any of the speculation which had been aroused by the only half-read warning of Gromize’s stones was being answered by action to the east, they had no way of knowing. Though there was often talk around the fire at night of what the High King might or might not do, whether the Voice might be urging a crusade of sorts. The shadow which might dwell behind both king and priest they did not discuss; their knowledge was too limited.