“Sssaar—” His voice became a hiss worthy of one of the great reptiles of the Dismals.
The Frush must have been ready to spit out another flying thing, but none appeared; instead, the bulbous lips came together with an impotent smacking sound. Then the creature spoke, though its words themselves were spat:
“Get you—get you—promise to get you!”
The curse was as clear as any human could have uttered. Above the mouth, the eyes appeared ready to bulge entirely free of their sockets.
Zolan poked a single finger at those eyes, the one from which he had drawn the blood the night before. The Frush fought to free its head, so forcibly that the pillar rocked. The man from the Dismals stood unmoving, silent. At length the head slumped forward a fraction, and a loud, frenzied panting marked the end of the creature’s struggle. Zolan relaxed a bit, once more intent on Udo.
“Sar!” He repeated to the Chosen the same word he had used with the Frush.
Udo, in spite of his bonds, fought to move, to retreat from Zolan. His face was a dusky gray, and saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth.
Zolan spoke again a single word—“Talk!”
And talk the Chosen did.
Drucilla
THE DIFFERENCE WAS manifest now—the Zolan we had known in the Dismals had vanished, and in his place now walked this figure of Power. Did the woman of the Jugged Folk feed into him in some manner extra force to enhance the Talent that must be his birthright? Or did the strengthening come to him as it did to us: the more he called upon what lay within him, the stronger he became?
Bina caught my hand; our Talents united and held. Then we reached for Tam, to find her—Warded! This was something so out of our triple nature that it daunted us. The Power-stone in her hand—could that talisman have placed a barrier about her? No, we were Tamara, Sabina, and Drucilla of the Scorpys, and no breakage could cleave us one from the other—never!
For the moment we did not try again. My arm brushed against the Frush’s pillar. I felt its rage, then—I knew! This was what it wanted, that monster imprisoned in the stone: to separate us. Perhaps it had not tried to come at Udo’s call—this might have been its foul purpose all along.
“Bina!” I Sent in ever-growing fear, and once more met—Warding. I shook the arm I held. No one was watching us. Udo was the center of attention; he was spilling out much we had to know. But to me this was far more urgent. Wild Magic—we had ever been warned against contact with the Power no mortal could tame. Our people were too far removed from the early earth-bonded folk to understand it well.
“Bina! Tam!” I tried again. Then, in spite of knowing the importance of the interrogation she was absorbed in hearing, I silently cried, “Mother!”
She made no answer, though she turned her head and looked in my direction. Perhaps she had indeed sensed my cry for help, yet she gave no outer sign that she had done so.
Twenty-six
Sabina
Cilla’s eyes were wide, and her breathing quickened. Fear hung like an almost visible cloud about her. She clutched at me, her hold on my arm tightening until I could feel the cut of her nails as she drew closer. I might have offered the only safety in her world.
Those around us were so intent on their questioning of Udo that they paid no heed to us. Cilla’s voice came as a thin whisper, which I heard only because I centered wholly on her now.
“I cannot Send!”
Instantly I focused my inner strength and attempted a mental message, only to batter against an impenetrable barrier. No mind meeting was possible with Cilla. I next Sent an alarm to Tam, but was met again with utter, unbroken silence.
Somehow, without planning to do so, we had retreated from the group about the captive priest, though the stone holding the Frush was near, at arm’s reach.
The creature’s head was still bent forward. It might have been utterly cowed by Zolan’s handling, but I was aware that the closest eye, large and protruding, had swiveled in our direction. It knew, I was sure, what had happened to us.
Cilla straightened, though she still kept a hold on me. She too was now staring at the head in the stone.
“It acts.” She kept to a whisper.
Not being able to Send was for us to suddenly be reft of an eye, an ear, a limb—a maiming of mind far greater than the most grievous wound.
“Mother!” I thought-hailed with all my might. I faced her where she stood between Father and Zolan, her attention fixed on Udo.
Nothing—silence—loss—
“Tam!” Surely some vestige of our birth-bond remained to Talenttouch, but again—emptiness.
“Duty—” I tried my last recourse. Duty had once seemed all-knowing, and she had been the one to keep us ever busied with learning and exercising our Gift. “Duty!” Had I done as I wished, I would have screamed her name.
The Wisewife stood a little apart and did not appear as interested in the questioning as the others. Instead she was staring at the head on the stone. Her lips moved constantly, and I was sure she was bespelling the Wild One with all her strength.
Cilla broke away from me, moving with purpose, her target the stone. As she approached that plinth, the Frush lifted its head to face her. The thick, puffy lips shaped a grin.
My sister had been the one of us three who most disliked any dispute. Now her face was set in an expressionless mask. She raised her right hand, fingers wrapped about the hilt of a knife. A blade, for this sort of work? One could not fight sorcery with a mundane weapon! Then I remembered: the Wild Magic had its own laws. For some attacks, the very touch of iron was enough to defeat the purpose. I drew my dagger, a woman’s constant companion in this dire country. It was not only the best that could be shaped by Father’s smith, a master of his craft, but into it were bound certain Powers of our own.
What progressed with the prisoner and those around him vanished from my mind as I matched step with Cilla. She now stood before the head—and its mouth no longer grinned. My sister had become a stranger. The closed mask did not alter as she held her dagger higher.
“Iron, cold iron,” she intoned. The phrase might have come from a bardic lay. If a stone head could flinch without a body of flesh to support it, that of the Frush did so now.
“Eyes for seeing,” Cilla continued in that same emotionless voice. She advanced the point of the blade slowly. The head twisted, but found no escape.
Then I was seized by the shoulder, pushed aside so brusquely that I might have fallen, had not another steadied me. Zolan caught Cilla’s arm even as she prepared to strike the Frush’s right eye.
She snarled like a sleuthhound and hissed not unlike Climber, without looking at the one who tried to stop her. Lightning quick, she used a trick of arms taught us long ago, switching the dagger to her left hand.
However, Zolan was able to move more quickly, and his hand came down edgewise on her wrist with a force hard enough that we could hear the sound made by the blow. Dropping the weapon, she gave a cry of rage and whirled about to try to vent her anger on him, but he held her fast.
My rage flamed to match hers, when I heard the Frush give a snorting laugh.
“What chances?” Mother closed up beside Zolan.
Cilla answered. The white mask of her face now flushed red. I had never seen her is such a rage.
“This thing from the depths”—she nodded toward the Frush—“has used its tricks on us. We are now mind-mute!” Her elbow drove into Zolan’s stomach and he rocked back with a hissing breath. “They fear iron, these Wild Ones—do not all the old legends tell us that? Let it feel the kiss of iron, then, until it thinks better of such fiendish games!”
Zolan actually laid hands on her again and shook her.
“Would you finish us all?” he demanded.
Suddenly I felt a sensation of force bearing down on my head, a weight so painful that I also dropped my weapon, to clutch my skull in both hands. I clamped my jaws to silence a gasp of agony. Had that crushing pressure been a Send? If
so—
“I told you—” Cilla’s voice grew more shrill. “I am locked out—or in, Bina is also, and maybe Tam—”
“It is so.” Tam cut in from beside me now.
“What games are played here?” Father’s voice was harsh.
“No game.” Mother was the first to answer. “It is true; our daughters are thought-blocked.”
Father turned to Zolan. “You controlled this creature, or made it seem that you did. How is it that he could build such a barrier?” His face became a mask, as Cilla’s had, and he regarded the man from the Dismals as if they two were alone in the world. However, Mother moved up beside him.
“Iron,” she said slowly. “Duty—”
“Milady,” Duty answered briskly.
“What says Malichor Sum Magnia concerning iron?”
“That the Wild Ones cannot abide it,” replied the Wisewife promptly. “When we of the Upper World first laid hands upon the metal, wrought and wielded it for a weapon, those of the Deep Forests and Outer Lands fled.”
Cilla continued to watch the Frush. “’Twould seem,” she said between clenched teeth, “that they did not flee far enough!”
Mother looked directly at Zolan though she said nothing, unless she used Send between them alone. Father nodded; then he moved so quickly and skillfully that he had Zolan’s hands pinioned behind his back before he could react.
Zolan was helpless in that grip and, after a moment ceased to struggle. Still he gave warning.
“Think well of what you would do! Milady Sorceress, Lord Warden, would you throw open a gate to a Power you have no hope of controlling?”
Once more I saw the oily, thick-lipped grin on the face of the Frush.
I reached within myself, tried to summon Power as I had in the Dismals—hands out, fingers flexed. A warmth began to rise, yes, but not as strongly as before. I might have returned to the days of my early childhood when I first understood that I possessed Powers and must learn how to control them.
“This Frush,” Mother said, “is, or was, blood-bound to your service. Is it by your will then, that our daughters are parted each from her sisters?”
“You have heard, milady,” the man from the Dismals responded, “what this Udo has spilled forth. Blood-binding, as powerful as that may be, cannot hold entirely against a great Power of the Dark. This Old One”—he nodded toward the Frush—“was without doubt already bonded to him of the Jar Folk I was sent to hunt. When Udo came hither, unknowing that we had already tapped Earth Power, he tried to summoned a creature he believed in his own master’s employ. This one came to serve as best it could.”
“And,” Mother spoke clearly, “such service seemed to be whatever might be done to weaken us most.”
Father released his hold on Zolan. “Duty?” Even as we had earlier, the Lord Warden now called upon her.
The Wisewife moved to the pillar encasing the Frush; then she stooped and caught up the dagger Cilla had been forced to drop. This she held high before the Earth Child. Its head came up, yellow eyes following the rise of the blade. Zolan stirred as if to stop her, but Father dropped hand to his shoulder and held him fast.
Duty did not aim the sharp point at the face as Cilia had done; rather, she tapped the stone with it, immediately under the chin of the Frush. A squall burst from its mouth. The greenish teeth it showed gnashed in fear and rage.
“You of the Old Ones,” Duty addressed the creature, “do what must be done—break the spell!” Leaning a little forward she no longer tapped but drew the dagger point down the stone.
“Yaaaough!” A second screech. The stone rocked but did not fall.
“No!” Zolan’s cry was almost as loud as the Frush’s. “He is a focus—a focus only.”
Duty did not turn her head, but the hand holding the dagger lowered.
“Land and sea,
False and true,
Sun and moon,
Fire and water.”
With each word, she signed the air with a key gesture to Power. Once more the knife fell to the ground. Her hands now arose breast high, the fingers pointing outward. Her lips moved soundlessly, for the force she called upon now must not be named aloud.
From the top of the pillar a blue line of fire ascended and formed a circle, and that ring of radiance, with the plinth at its core, began to descend. The Frush ground the back of its head against the stone as it strove to see. The light did not pass over it; instead, it circled three times about the pillar just above the Earth-Born’s head, then halted to form a band of blue about the gray rise of the stone. The head twitched and fought at what held it, and greenish matter oozed from the eyes to run down the hairy cheeks as though the creature shed tears.
Finally Duty turned to face Father and Mother.
“It is true. The Frush is merely a bow, serving to loose the arrow of another.”
Cilla made again for the pillar, her hand balled into a fist. She was sobbing with fury, a feeling I shared, for our hearts could touch even if our minds might not.
This time it was Duty who stopped her, by turning around and flicking a finger in the air. The blue circle puffed into a mist, and that cloud, in turn, also descended.
“To your own place, go!” ordered the Wisewife.
The mist vanished, and so did the head.
Tamara
MY HAND CLUTCHED the hair-bag as I watched Duty banish the Frush. Cilla was weeping openly now. We might be no longer thought-tied, but I could sense that her tears came from rage, not fear or self-pity. I shared, too, her revulsion for being in a world void of our sisterly mind-speech, if we could not break the barriers dividing us from each other.
Duty came away from the stone and beckoned me. Together, we returned to where Udo still rolled, frantically trying to free himself while attention was off him. His head was as high as he could raise it. When he sighted us, his grimace of anger and terror broke for a moment, and he laughed.
“So, hag,” he yelled between bursts of raucous mirth, “you’ve met a master!”
“Who is that master?” I dared to raise my voice.
His head turned a fraction, but before he could answer—if he would have done so—Zolan appeared at his other side.
“Tharn.” It was the man from the Dismals who replied.
Now Udo’s head turned violently in his direction and his eyes narrowed. Though he had been driven to answer all of Father’s and Mother’s questions, much of his rebellious spirit now appeared to be returning.
“If you know, whelp of Pharsali, then why ask?”
But Duty now took a hand. She leaned far over until she forced him to look her straight in the eye.
Even through my mind-barrier I could feel the force she used and I knew that Mother also fed it. Suddenly the false priest’s face went slack, his mouth fell open and his eyes rolled up to show only the whites, as his head thudded back to the ground. Without looking up, Duty gestured to me.
“The stone from the Cursed Land,” she ordered.
I went to stand beside her. She looked up.
“Battle is coming—”
Did I hear her say that, or was the thought mine alone? I looked to the captive. He shriveled, his grayish skin taking on a warm hue like wellbaked clay. In the wink of an eye, he became She who dwelt in a jug hidden in a cave leagues away: The matriarch of the Jar People.
“Let me in!” Her silent demand was sharp as a blow.
I obeyed—at that moment I could not do otherwise. However, she did not replace my spirit in my body, as she said Tharn had done with the hermit—I could still feel the rasp of the hair-bag against my skin as I loosed its strings and took the gem into my hands. I knew its warmth; now it blazed.
Compelled by that alien will, my hand stretched out directly above Udo’s head. And abruptly what lay within those fingers that I moved back and forth in a small circle was no longer my gem but a small pointed ball such as served to head some of those intact jugs I had seen.
I met with instant opposition
; my fingers twitched. I strove to summon Power and could not. The sweep halted, and my hand’s direction reversed as if I must uncoil all the rings I had already sketched on the air. Out of nowhere came a weightless spear of—smoke? shadow?—like a long black finger. It touched upon the back of my hand, and I was released to begin the circling once more.
Dimly aware that Pharsali’s fingers held my own, feeling a pain as though those ghostly digits were claws, I continued.
The end came, suddenly as the snapping of a twig. Light, golden light flared up. I swayed, enfeebled as one long bound would be when her bindings were suddenly cut.
When I could see again, my own fingers, holding merely the gem, rested quietly on my knee. Clinging to the back of my hand appeared to be the mysterious wand I had seen Zolan use, but even as I glimpsed it, that weapon of Power vanished.
No one, fleshed or unfleshed, gave orders now; however, I was sure what must be done. I raised the gem and pressed it for a long moment to my forehead between my eyes, knowing that it could serve as the key to unlock my prison. Swiftly I was on my feet.
Even as I had made the gesture on myself, I repeated it on Cilla, then Bina. We three might have been completely alone, I was so focused on them.
“Free!” The Send united from both of them was a soundless shout.
We gathered in a threefold embrace. But as we emerged from a place of seeming deathly cold into warm life again, another in the camp passed indeed into the Endless Night.
“He is dead.” Duty stood by Udo.
“He was possessed by an eating Power.” Zolan’s hand was empty, his talisman once more in hiding.
“And we,” Mother said, “have thrown down a gauntlet. Perhaps too soon.”
At Duty’s suggestion the body of the Gray Robe was carried well away from the standing stones before the armsmen buried it. We had planned to make an early start, but it was well past noon as we broke our fast before proceeding on.