It must have been well past the mid-hour of the night when they at last approached the bush-veiled entrance into the old wood road. In this dark the forest was even more overpowering with its thick shadows, and for the past hour or so, Tirtha had kept doubly alert, striving to pick up any sense of being under observation, such as she had known when her vision had laid open this passage. She dared not, of course, probe too deeply, lest she rouse that which might, so far, have been unaware of their coming. It could well be an entity able to detect a farseer.
The boy in her hold had ridden passively enough, making no sound, during those hours when they had traveled so slowly and cautiously toward their goal. But as the Falconer headed his pony into that near-masked opening of the forest road, Alon stirred, his voice came as a whisper, hardly more than a breath.
“This is a place that lives. . . .”He spoke as one who did not quite understand or, if knowing, could not find proper words to make plain his warning.
Tirtha bent her head so that her lips could not be far from Alon's nearest ear:
“Are we watched?” Her whisper was as low as she could make it.
“I . . . I think not . . . not yet,” he returned.
Her own eyes swept from one side of the trail to the other, seeking that wisp of thing that had entwined itself among the trees during her vision of this place. That, she was certain, had been of the Dark, also of a nature far removed from a common existence with those who called themselves human. Let that come upon them in its own place and—she disciplined her thoughts, refused to allow fear to rise the higher.
Ahead, the Falconer was hardly to be seen. His bird had joined him at the wood's edge to ride now on the saddle perch. However, if Tirtha could not follow them directly with her own sight, it appeared that her present mount had no difficulty in keeping up with the lead pony, just as her own mare crowded in behind. The three beasts drew as close as they might in such a narrow way without being urged.
There was a glimmer of pallid, faint light on her right. Tirtha's heart beat faster for a succession of thumps until she located the source as one of those stones that marked the road they must travel, as her vision had shown her. She did not like that glow; it carried some of the pallid obscenity of the night fires given off by certain fungi she had seen—loathsome, evil-smelling growths, by tradition nourished by the bodies of unburied dead.
At least the rain was partially kept from them by the overhanging branches of the trees, so she could push back the hood of her cloak, affording her a clearer sight of the way. Then Alon moved in her hold. His hand closed about one of her arms tightly, before his grasp relaxed a trifle. She took that as a warning.
Yes!
What she had thought to face ever since they had headed into this shadowed forest was coming. As yet perhaps it had no more than vaguely sensed them, or, maybe it was only making sentry rounds. But Tirtha's skin crawled as she felt the deadly cold spreading before it. Like that monstrous thing which had sought mindlessly to get at her and the Falconer back in the mountains, so was this not of her world. The impact of it was like an open-handed blow.
Whether the Falconer had picked it up also, she could not tell. Yet here the trail widened out a fraction so that the Torgian, without her urging, matched pace with the pony. Thus she dared to loose part of her hold on Alon and put out her hand in turn to touch the man's arm.
He did not return her touch. Still Tirtha sensed, as she had never done before, that he realized what message she would send to alert him and that he was already aware of the prowler. They might still retreat, get out of this place overwhelmed by the shadow. Yet that would solve nothing, for the geas held fast for her, and this was the only road to what she sought.
Their mounts plodded ahead. There were more of those glimmering stones, some set sentrywise along the trail, others to be glimpsed back in the woods. Tirtha, tense in the saddle, sought with what skill was hers to pick up the skulker in that place of utter blackness.
It was like seeing a distant flicker, visible for one second, gone the next, only to show again. This did not register in her eyes, rather in her mind. Whatever creature skulked here was far removed from man or animal. She heard Alon draw a deep breath, a fraction later his whisper reached her again.
“Think of light—of good . . .” His words trailed away, leaving Tirtha for a second uncomprehending. Then she understood. Fear was so often the first weapon of Dark Ones. Perhaps the three of them could indeed draw a curtain between themselves and this thing by bringing to the fore of their minds all that was right and natural, good and clean, within their own world.
She strove to build up a mind picture of the fields of Estcarp where she had labored only last harvest-time, swinging a sickle with the skill she had learned, gathering to her armloads of sun-warmed, fragrant grain. Here were the brilliant eyes of the field flowers making splotches of color—scarlet, yellow, against the gold. Sun lay warm on her shoulders, and there was still the taste upon her lips of apple squeezings which a serving maid had brought in leathern bottles to satisfy the thirst of the reapers.
Sun, color, the gold of grain ripe and ready for the harvest. There was the piper who sat cross-legged on the wall toward which the harvesters were working their way, and the trilling of his instrument roused hearty voices into song. She could feel the sun, taste the apple juice, hear the pipe song even here in the dark. Nor dared she break the web she so strove to weave, though the temptation to do so pressed ever on her.
The trail that had been so narrow at the entrance widened out. Now and then a hoofbeat raised an echo of sound, as if, under the blanket of last season's leaves, there lay an ancient pavement.
So they came into what was a clearing, though ragged-walled, with an outgrowth of brush seeking to reclaim it. Those unhealthy stones were hereabouts in thick company, a number of them set on end to the north to form a rude barrier. But it was what lay in the very center of that way which held them where they were on the edge of this opening.
Lying crosswise on a patch of bared stone were two staffs or wands—wood that had been stripped of bark and shone bone white. Between them, positioned with care to form two sides of four squares, were skulls. These were old, greenish, as if overgrown in part by some vile lichen, and each had been braced to lie face up, the eyepits, the gaping jaws turned toward the sky.
Skulls, yes, but of no normal living thing Tirtha knew. The general shape was human in part, save there were heavy ridges of bone above the eye sockets. It was the jaws and lower sections that were the strangest—long cruel teeth sprouted still from the bone there, teeth that must have protruded far out and down from the flesh that had once lipped the mouths. Also there was a forethrust of the jaw line itself which hinted at a muzzle.
Like the thing on the mountain. Tirtha's memory flashed the picture of it as she looked upon this carefully wrought warning, if warning it was.
She was aware of movement to her right. The Falconer was no longer sitting quiet in his saddle. A flash of light through the air . . . Into that display of wood and bone whirled something that came to life in the night with a flare like that of a torch hurled into dry brush.
Point down it struck, straight into the crossing of the staffs, metal biting into the wood. From that point of contact there burst a true flame which ran out along the lengths of the staffs, bringing light to bathe them all.
Was it only a sorcerous illusion, or did those greened skulls open yet wider their fanged jaws as the flames reached out eagerly to lick across each they passed? Had she heard a wailing afar in the distance, or if not in earthly distance in another place? Had that fire, which looked to be here and now, touched also into a world that lay beyond one of the fabled gates? Tirtha only knew that she felt—heard, sensed, she was not sure which—a moment of torment, and then a wink out of a life or lives which had no being in this time and place.
The skulls took fire, each exploding with a burst of sound that she heard. Already the staffs were but lines of ash lai
d upon the ground. The Falconer urged his pony on, leaned from the saddle to hook his claw about the hilt of the dagger knife which he had so thrown, drawing it out of the ashes that the hooves of his mount had stirred into nothingness.
“Well done.” Alon's voice came, not in the faint whisper he had used since they had entered the wood, but as if there was nothing to fear now.
“How”—Tirtha ran her tongue across her lower lip—“how did you know?”
This was witchery, and he had always turned from it, shunned it as she would a manifestation of the Dark. Yet she had seen him now take on the practice of a Warlock.
Alon came to sudden life in her arms, plunging against her lax hold and so leaping forward to the ground.
“’Ware!” The alarm came out of him in a child's voice. Still there was a man's urgency in that cry.
Tirtha swept back the folds of her cloak. The Torgian had moved up beside the Falconer's pony, and the mare crowded in against the two of them. Alon reached up and caught a handful of the coarse mane of that smaller beast, drew himself up on the riding pad. The falcon mantled, screamed a challenge.
She drew her worn sword. They had somehow gotten into a defense position, the three of them facing outward, the rumps of their mounts pressed together, each fronting a separate portion of the wood about them. Was the destruction of the warning—or the spell—leading to outright attack?
They came out from the strange stones afoot, shadows flitting from shadows. Smaller than men, yes, and carrying with them a stench that Tirtha had come to associate with creatures of the Dark. She saw flames of eyes turned toward her, yet it would appear that, though they now ringed in the three, they were not ready for an outright attack. Instead they fell into a shuffling circle around about the riders, staying out of range of steel.
The Falconer had his dart gun. Tirtha wondered why he did not put it to use, pick off some of those moving creatures. The targets they provided were not so difficult that his aim could not have removed them as they passed him in that circling.
Her sword was little enough defense, yet she slipped from her belt sheath her hunting knife, reached out to press it into Alon's hand. It was all she had in the way of an extra weapon.
From her left there was a glow. The weapon of power which the Falconer had retrieved before the emergence of these night crawlers was ablaze. She could not see that he had armed himself otherwise. Perhaps he had come to depend upon this strange arm more than he did on the weapons he had always known.
Their shaggy attackers—if attackers these were indeed—made no sound save by the shuffling of their feet as they kept their circle moving. Though they stood upright and had only four limbs, they were certainly not of her race, nor of any that approached the human blood. They wore no clothing. The glow from the weapon revealed, as they passed, squat bodies covered with a thick growth of such coarse hair or bristles that they might have had fine roots instead of natural strands sprouting forth. The round heads were marked by no visible features, save eyes that were pits of red fire, and were set directly on their wide shoulders. Their overlong upper limbs dangled so that their claws nearly brushed the ground, though they held themselves upright as they scuttled about.
The circle which they wove was not an even one. They pressed closer toward Tirtha and Alon, kept a farther distance from the Falconer. In him they might believe that they had a more formidable opponent. Why they did not launch their attack puzzled Tirtha. She began to believe they were only a delaying device, and the real strength of those who held the wood as their domain had yet to show itself.
For the second time, the falcon screamed. Those of the haired things nearest it at the time wavered. It would appear that they liked that sound no better than the sight of the sword-knife which blazed ever higher with its own light.
Just as silently and swiftly as the beast things had appeared from the stones there emerged another. This was no hair-coated shuffler. Instead he strode into the foreground, the shamblers breaking their circle to let him enter, before resetting their ring.
Tirtha surveyed him steadily. He was truly human in the size and proportion of his limbs and body, and he wore mail, leggings and boots, and a helm. At first glance he could have been any border rover or perhaps an outlaw more cunning and with better luck at looting than most.
Unlike the Falconer's helm, this one's helmet did not hide the features of the wearer, nor did he have looped about his throat twin veils of silken-fine chain mail which afforded battle protection for the men of Estcarp.
His features were well cut, regular, and of the cast of the Old Race, though the eyes by which he regarded the three were not normal. Rather they held a tinge of red like those of the shambling creatures he commanded. Though he wore a sword, as well as a dagger, he advanced empty-handed, the long fingers of his hands oddly pale in the half-light. There was no badge on the breast of his mail coat. However, on the center ridge of his helm was fastened a carefully wrought, hideous creature which might be a snake with stumpy legs, or a lizard of misshapen form. This had specks of gems for eyes—sparks that caught the light strongly to reflect it with unusual power.
He did not speak, rather examined one after another. When that level and measuring gaze traveled over Tirtha she was hard put to hold herself steady. Accompanying it was a lapping, a pulling at her mind, an attempt to empty her of all she thought or was or would be and do. She resisted, experiencing a recoil of surprise as if he had not thought to feel any resistance.
For the third time, the falcon screamed. The man stood halfway between Tirtha and the Falconer, his attention having passed on to the latter. What would he meet there? Was the Falconer also inwardly armed, or did he lack her own protections? Yet the weapon was his, and no one of a lesser breed could have it fit his hand so well.
Still silent, the man from the forest took another stride to the left until he fronted Alon with his compelling gaze. Tirtha twisted about in the Torgian's saddle to witness that meeting. There had been no change of expression on the stranger's face, in fact no expression at all. For all his partaking of any of the emotions of the living, he might well have been one of the infamous dead-alive from which the Kolder had fashioned their armies. Yet this one was very much of a power, and what dwelt within that outer covering of mankind was to be distrusted, perhaps even rightly feared.
He gave the boy only one long, searching stare. Then once more his attention shifted to Tirtha herself, and for the first time he spoke:
“Welcome, Lady, to that which is rightfully yours.” His voice was surprisingly gentle and courteous in tone. He might have been greeting a guest at the door of a holding, the plate with bread, salt and water held ready for the sealing of the guesting bond.
She found her own voice, glad for the breaking of the silence that had covered much.
“I make no claims on this land,” she returned. “This is no rule hold of mine.”
“It is of the Hawk that was,” he returned. “Though the years have dealt hardly with it of late. And do you not”—he made a light gesture with one hand to the sword she had bared—“carry the Hawk's weapon by right of blood?”
How he knew this (had he picked it out of her mind though she thought she was closed to his probe?) was a blow, but Tirtha believed that she had not allowed him to guess he scored against her.
“Hawkholme lies beyond. I make no claims, wood lord. If the years have wrought a difference, then let it so abide. Rule you as you will.”
To her amazement he bowed gracefully with the ease of one who had been born to sit in a hall's high seat.
“You are gracious, Lady, and generous,” though if she was not mistaken there was clearly a note of mockery in that. “To give freely what cannot be held might seem to some to be a superfluity. I do not believe you deal in such. You seek Hawkholme, but you are not alone in that. I think”—for the first time there was a curve of his well-cut lips as if he smiled—“that it might be amusing to see how you will deal with them.”
r /> “And who are they?” the Falconer demanded.
The stranger's smile grew a fraction wider. He shook his head.
“Such a valiant company.” His mockery was at last open and it had that in it which stung, though Tirtha had long ago schooled herself against any serious acceptance of her quest. “Such a very valiant company! And who can say whether the Greater Powers may not be amused enough to allow you, in your time, some advantage. I think I shall step aside, since you, Lady, have been so gracious as to invest me in my rulership, and allow this game to be played to the end without me. It”—now he glanced at Alon and his smile faded a fraction—“might have certain aspects that do not appear openly at present. So . . .” he swept her a second bow, then gestured. The haired things broke their circle, opening a way before Tirtha, who faced that gap in the wood where the path led on again. “Pass, Lady. And when you come into your full inheritance, remember that what you have surrendered was by your choice, and you have made a bargain. . . .”
“I have not!” she caught him up. “There is no oath-swearing between us, forest lord. No oath-taking nor giving. I have said only I do not want what you have claimed. What I seek lies elsewhere. But you are not sworn to me, nor am I turf-enfiefed to you!”
He nodded. “Cautious, yes. As well might you be, Lady. I will concede that we are not oath-bound. I owe no shield service and come not before your high seat.”
“Be it so.” She said the old words denying fiefship with emphasis. No pact with the Dark. Perhaps in even accepting this much from him, she was making a mistake. But it was true—even if all Hawkholme hailed her as liege lady, which she did not expect—she wanted no rulership over this dire wood.
“Yet”—the Falconer urged his pony a step or so closer to the stranger. He had not sheathed the weapon of power, and in what appeared a half-involuntary motion, the man from the forest raised his hand as if to shield his eyes from the shine of the weapon. “Yet, still you have not answered me. Who are they with whom we shall deal?”