I slept lightly so that, as the morning light found a thin way inward, I sat up, grimacing as I stretched against the stiffness of limbs. There had been no bed of grass this night and the saddlebag on which I had pillowed my head had not been the softest of supports.
There was a sound. I looked quickly to Kerovan. His hair lay dank on a sweated forehead, there was that in his face which made me gasp. His eyes were shut—a dream? But what manner of dream could bring such agony as now he showed?
Then that twisted expression smoothed away and his face held a curious unalive look. His features might have been chiseled from warm brown stone—lacking any spark of life. He was as a monument raised to honor some hero long since gone.
I had not seen him lie so for a long time—stripped of the defenses he used when he waked. He had been thus for the first two or three days when we had traveled out of the Waste on our way back from the battle with Rogear and that she-devil who might have given birth to my lord but was no mother. Then he had been weak and shaken from the ordeal of meeting those two Power to Power.
Now for the first lime I speculated about Neevor's words after that struggle. He had called my lord “kinsman” and had said that Kerovan had been someone else in part. Also I remembered how my lord had tossed a name at his mother as one might hurl a spear, and how she had been struck by the force of it.
What lay behind all this I could not know. Nor had Kerovan after that action ever spoken of it. The Wereriders had told him to find his kind. Perhaps that was what the two of us must now do.
The Dales—I shook my head determinedly. We had done our duty there. My people were as safe as I could make them, Kerovan had carried out Imgry’s orders. We were free of High Hal lack.
Then I realized the strangeness of that thought, for I am full Dales blood. Yet—I cupped the gryphon globe, pressed it tightly to me. All my life I had been told that it was a perilous thing for one of my heritage to have any dealings with the things of the Old Ones. I thought of my appeal to Elys—that she tutor me in use of a talent like unto that which she controlled. I had been wrong. She had known that and had evaded me. That was not the way for me. One could learn some things, yes—the wording of spells, the incantations necessary to build up within one's self the strength of the Power. But Power itself did not come so—it lay within.
The gryphon had served me in the dark when I needed it, only I had discovered its value and use for myself. I had willed it. What else might it do if I tried? I fingered it now and speculated.
I was not the same Joisan who had fled with her people out of Ithdale. What was I then? That I must discover for myself. Even as my lord must discover who he was and what he was. I accepted at last that the quest was for him at that moment the most important factor in his whole existence.
As this fell into place in my mind and I knew such understanding, Kerovan's eyes opened. However, that stony, locked-in look did not fade.
“A good day.” I summoned cheerfulness, making sure that I would not be turned aside by any coldness from him. “A smooth road lies yonder in the plains—and it will lead us . . .” I used some of the old morning greeting then, adding to it such words as favored our purposes.
He sat up, running fingers through his hair, so that the tumble of it stood nearly as erect as a cock comb. His eyes slid away, would not meet mine. I saw his lips thin and tighten, as if he faced up to some duty he disliked but could not avoid.
I longed to ask what was the matter, knew the greater wisdom lay in remaining silent, awaiting what he chose to tell me. Until he opened a door for me, I must not strive to reach the inner part, which I was sure was the real Kerovan—the one who hid himself with such desperation.
He arose without a word. Turning his back on me, he strode to the doorway, looked out into the courtyard, as if for some reason he did not want me to see his face. Or was it that he did not want to look upon mine?
“Will you take the mare, the pack pony, and ride? You need only head due east.” He said that with his back firmly to me.
Then he whirled about, as if he heard the scrape of an enemy's boot, was prepared to front the foe. That locked-in look was gone from his face. I read instead twisted pain there—a pain that brought me to my feet and a step or two toward him.
He flung out a hand to ward me off. In spite of my good resolution of holding to patience, I felt torment then.
“I—cannot—go.” The pause came between each word as if those were forced out of him, that the very shaping of them hurt.
“By the heat of the True Flame!” His voice soared like a battle cry meant to rally a forlorn hope, “I must go—west!” His hands lifted to cover his face and, from behind that screen, came more words, muffled and with a chill of despair. “This may be a trap—I cannot save myself—but you—go you must!”
“Kerovan!” I used his name with authority, determined that he listen to me. “I, too, have a choice—” My control broke. I covered the distance between us and my fingers closed about his wrists. With a strength I did not know I possessed, I pulled his hands down, so I could look into his eyes.
His face was certainly alive now! There was a wry twist to his lips, his eyes blazed like pieces of amber in the full of the sun. I have seen flaming anger written on men's faces before, but this was a rage, controlled, still enough to shake me. However, I did not loose my hold on him. So we stood, linked by touch, though I knew at any moment he might fling me off.
“I ride with you.” I said levelly. “As has always been my choice. You could leave me here bound and captive, and in some way I would free myself to follow.”
“Don't you understand?” he demanded harshly. “I do not want you. You are nothing but a hindrance, I do not hold you by any duty. I have said that many limes over. I want no lady! Also—I am done with the Dales! Wholly done with you!”
Now that I observed him closely, I could detect that there was an oddness about him. He would not meet my eyes, and as emphatically as he spoke, there was a note in his voice as if he were saying words that were put into his mouth. This was not any Kerovan whom I had seen. I remembered the anguish of his sleeping face—and I drew a deep breath.
He did not hurt me with words that came that way, though he acted now as if even my person disgusted him—so that I might never hope to find with him what Elys had found with Jervon. Yes—this was what he was meant to do—meant to do! What spell had been laid upon him in his sleep? Now that I looked at him keenly, I could see that, though his eyes were turned in my direction, there was an odd, unfocused look to them as if he did not see me, or perhaps even know where he was and what he did.
Only I was no maid soft from keep living. I had thrown aside all that when I rode forth from Norsdale. I had learned—a little. I felt that something dire lay ahead—a battle perhaps, a bitter one. Still I could face that when it came. He might not drive me away with words.
“Well enough.” I spoke slowly now. “We are two people alone in a land that is not welcoming. Just as alone we shall go on to whatever lies ahead.”
He blinked as one who was only just waking. At the change in his face I dropped my hold on him. He shook his head as one shaking away some tenuous thing fallen across one's face.
“The rain has stopped. It is not a bad day . . .”
I stood confounded by the change in him. He might only now have come to the doorway. All those wild hurting words he had uttered might never have been voiced. Because I must have some explanation for this I dared to ask, “Have you dreamed again?”
“Dreamed?” he repeated as might one who had never heard that word before, or did not understand it. “Perhaps. When one sleeps, dreams come. I—I think"—he spoke hesitatingly as one who is a little dazed—"I am under command again—and this time none of Imgry's. It is better you do not ride with me.”
“You have often professed"—I pointed out carefully (I mistrusted his manner. Had the real Kerovan again been taken over by another in some fashion? I knew that I must be ver
y alert now)—"that you care enough for me not to want me to come to harm. I cannot ride alone here.” I stressed my helplessness—a helplessness I did not in the least feel. “Have I not already barely survived one of the Dark traps, and that by such good fortune as I may never hope to meet again?”
“You are free,” he said dully, all the fire and life seeping out of him, the shut-away look back again, as if he were encased by a barrier I could not pierce.
“But you are not? Remember, Kerovan, once I did not go free either. I was taken to serve the Dark. What did you then?”
He swung away from me as if he did not hear my words any more. Years of age might have settled on him. “You do not understand,” he mumbled.
I wanted to shake him, to tear out of him somehow what made him this way. At the same time I knew that such action would be no use. He had dropped down beside the pack he had lifted from the pony last night, was fumbling out the packet of food.
“They do not suspect—” He was speaking in a monotone and I shivered, realizing that he did not talk to me—he was lost somewhere and I had no way of drawing him forth from the shadows where he now wandered. “No. they do not know what they would rouse—those fools from overseas. Their attack on the Dales—but a ruse. He has summoned them.”
“Kerovan"—I knelt beside him to ask gently, “who is this he? Is he out of your dream?”
He shook his head. “I cannot tell. It is not ‘will not’ but ’cannot’. I was— No, I do not know where I was. But there is one who waits—and I must go.”
“So we ride.” I answered with all the courage I could summon. I felt almost as if I companied now with a dying man, one who moved and spoke, but whose inner part might be extinguished—or near that. I tried to remember the name he had called in that battle of Powers—but I could not. Perhaps it was the kind of name lips such as mine might not even shape.
I found this Joss of the Kerovan I knew far more fearsome than when he rode out of Norsdale. Had we shared more, had we known each other in a true uniting, perhaps he could not have been so easily enspelled. Yet I would not let him go. There must be some way I could bring to life again the real Kerovan.
Eating but little, I busied myself with the packets Elys had left among the pony's gear. I had fresh underlinen at last, and a comb to put my hair in order. I longed for the weapons I had lost to the Thas. Kerovan had not asked that I return his knife so I slipped it into my own belt sheath.
Before we left I took the chance of gathering some more of the melons, adding them to our food supply. There was no sign of the cats.
Kerovan kept silence, one I did not try to break. Sometimes his eyes crossed me, but it was as if I were invisible. So we went forth from the ruins, leading our animals down to the highway. Kerovan insisted that I ride the mare, while he led the pony and walked beside me.
The wrack of the storm was visible in broken branches and sodden grass, but overhead the sun arose. While always the road bored on toward the heights, or as we discovered—through them!
The labor that had gone into the making of that cut, allowing forbidding walls to remain on either side, amazed me. This must have taken the work of years—or else was the result of potent magic, well beyond the comprehension of our breed. We stopped just before entering that cut to eat and drink, allowing the animals to graze.
Many times during our journey I had felt that, while Kerovan's body strode beside me, the real man was gone. I was chilled, my hopes dwindled. If he was in the grip of an adept of the Old Ones, how could/free him?
As I used the knife to cut a melon he suddenly spoke. “You have not chosen well.”
“The choice was mine,” I returned shortly.
‘'Therefore the results shall be on your own—'’
What harsh or bitter prophecy he might have added was never voiced. I saw his eyes go wide; his gaze shifted from me to a point beyond my shoulder. There was a strong sensation of cold—as if a wind blew over numbing ice—striking my upper back.
Kerovan was on his feet, that trance-like state broken. I saw, under the shadow of his helm, the same face he must have shown to any Hounds he met steel to steel.
That cold bored into me. This was no tangible weapon—yet it could kill. I threw myself to one side, rolled, and then levered my body up again. Kerovan stood, a little crouched, as if ready to spring. He had not, however, drawn sword. While what waited there just beyond the border of the road . . .
A woman, dark of hair, slender of body, her face contorted in a mask of hatred and despair, a demon's countenance, was there. Though a breeze stirred the grass about her, her robe did not sway, nor did her veil move. I knew her . . . But she was dead! Consumed by her own foul magic.
The Lady Temphera, who had consorted with the Dark to produce a son, then failed when that son proved to be other than she had planned, stood watching us with the stark hatred of her last moments of life.
She was dead! I would not accept what I saw. This was some trickery.
Kerovan moved as I stumbled to my feet, held tightly to the gryphon. I refused to be frightened by a shadow out of the past.
There was no wand in her hand. No, that had been shattered with the core of her Power during that other meeting. Nor did she raise her hands in any gesture to summon forces. She only stood, staring at her repudiated son with those burning eyes. Not eyes—rather holes in a skull from which skin and flesh withered as I watched.
“Fool!” That was Kerovan who spoke. Once more his face was impassive. “Fool!” He held up his hand. On his wrist that band of blue blazed. A streamer of light shot toward the woman's death head. The ray appeared to strike a barrier, spread out horizontally across it.
“Show yourself!” Kerovan's lips drew back in a wolfs grin. He commanded as one very sure of himself and his own might.
The illusion (if it were that) moved. Swiftly the right arm swung up. She showed a clenched hand as the long sleeve fell away. Then she threw what she held. A flashing streak came through the air.
Straight for Kerovan's head spun that missile. He moved as swiftly, his arm across his face. I heard a noise as loud as a thunder clap—saw a burst of radiance, so that I blinked and blinked to clear my sight.
Through a watery haze I watched the woman sway. The bale-fire hate, which burned in the eyeholes, spread, consumed, until the head of the apparition was a horrible, blackened mass. The blaze ate on down her body. She seemed to be trying to raise her hands in futile defense, the fingers left trails of black in the air. I wanted to close my eyes, still I could not.
“Is this the best you can send against me?” Kerovan's voice swelled, carried, so that the walls of the cut ahead echoed it back to us. “To evoke the dead is a weakness.”
“Weakness—weakness . . .” echoed back.
The horror shriveled, grew smaller, was gone. Kerovan stood, stone-faced, to watch it be so consumed. When the last blackened shred vanished he turned to me.
“This is only the first sending. Perhaps the least of such, merely to test us, or as a warning.”
“It is—or was—a very impotent one.” I found my voice.
Kerovan shook his head. “We cannot be sure. We can never be sure of any Power . . .” He stroked the band on his wrist with his other hand. “I think that we shall never again walk, or lie, or rest easy in this land—never until we have a final meeting—”
“With Temphera? But she is dead—” “With another whose identity I do not know, who will use against me—and you because you are with me—all he can summon, perhaps to our ending.”
Still he did not look hopeless or even troubled, as he said that. Nor was his face again closed or bleak. A new life had appeared there. I sensed he was excited, had been stirred fully awake rather than alarmed by what had been meant as a dire warning.
Kerovan
WHEN I FRONTED WHAT HAD ARISEN, BLACK AND SEAR, OUT OF THE past I felt that time had turned upon itself. This was she who had given me birth but had never been a mother. Only now s
he stood alone, lacking Rogear with all his ill-used, half-learned Power. Also, that symbol of her authority, the wand, was gone, having been shattered into nothingness when we had fought out our struggle in the past. Still, my hand arose, as if my arm was weighted with a shield and not with the wrist band that had served me so well.
Words came to me, not so much my own thoughts, as they were those of that other who was rousing now, once more within me, a presence—an essence—I feared. Still I could not wall out that intruder any more than all our struggles had served to keep Alizon's Hounds from baying across the Dales.
Even while I spoke those words, as if I were trained in sorcery, I turned my will upon the band, calling for a force that lay within it. I did not consciously understand what I said, what I did, only that this was the way I must meet this—this thing. For that it was a dead woman restored to malicious life—that I did not quite believe.
A spear of light answered my plea, struck at the head of the illusion, met a shield of such strength that it could not break it, ran across the shield seeking a way through, to consume the dead-alive.
I saw her turn into the specter of death. Her hands moved jerkily then as if cords were fastened to her wrists pulling them this way and that. To no purpose, for she had not been aided by any fear from me—she who was the embodiment (or meant to be) of horror and disgust. Without any emotion from us to strengthen her, she was burning away. Her old hate once more consumed her utterly. Who had striven to use her thus—and why?
Foul black trails in the air streamed from those hands. But they faltered, could not Finish any symbol they so fought to form. I felt a contempt within me. If this was a show of Dark Power it was a paltry one. Surely no real adept had brought such a champion into our struggle.
Was the illusion then indeed Temphera herself, a long-lasting residue of evil once more provided with visible form because her strong hatred of me had survived even death itself? Perhaps in the Waste even so flawed a talent as hers could do this when signs and portents were right.