What was this clansman searching for? In an instant he made it plain.
“Those who were also dropped there and survived—are there many such?”
I shook my head. “We saw only bones. I think that most of the Breakswords’ victims were flung from above, rather than lowered, as were we.”
“Zolan was lowered, then; so—those who had taken him did not want him quickly dead?” Fergal’s eyes held an almost feverish gleam.
“We have not asked him concerning his past. To us, he was a savior, protecting us from the monsters, for night-frights indeed walk by day in that place: the legends speak the truth. Zolan says that he is of the Dismals and we accept that.”
“And if he is not, does he have clan-kin above to rejoice if he returns?”
“Ask that of him. I am not his voice.”
At this terse answer, the Wild Cat appeared to make up his mind to tell me all. “Lady Drucilla, it is my mind that you company with our true king—Gerrit, who disappeared as a child long ago. A heavy hand is now needed, a ruler who is apart from all clan ties. Such a leader could free Gurlyon from the black Power that spins its evil webs in Kingsburke.”
I turned my head to face him squarly.
“Clansman, this is no affair of mine, or Father’s, or Alsonia’s. It is against that Darkness alone that we ride, since we are Scorpys and have birth-given Talents. We have always served the Light and now that Power calls.”
“These Talents, lady—are they a burden or a gift?”
I had no time to reply to that. A flash of red shot past my horse, sending it rearing, so that I had to summon all my skill to bring it under control again. The clansman had tried to catch my bridle, but my mount already answered to me again. Now I could spare attention for what had occurred. Climber had stopped where Tam and Zolan rode ahead. Now they also came to a halt.
A Send reached me: Tam’s. “Ambush ahead!”
Two snaplocks rode in holsters on either side of my saddle horn. I gathered the reins in my left hand and reached with the right for one of the pistols.
“Ambush!” I cried to the clansman. He did not reach for his huge sword but rather drew a double-barreled snaplock of his own from under his cloak.
This was level land, and much of it had been cleared. However, ahead of us the poorly surfaced road wound between two hills of some size. Fortifications, towers and walls, rose on both—the first defenses of Kingsburke. That an ambush could be set this close, under the very eyes of the garrison there, was an exceedingly bad sign.
Our father, together with Captain Tweder, came pounding back from the van, Mother so close behind that her mount was nearly nosing the tail of his. She beckoned to Tam and me and we saw Bina pushing up from the rear.
If an ambush had been laid, then where could it lie in concealment? I wondered. No thickets of brush or trees grew here, no walls except those ringing the forest above. The woods above—! Were the soldiers stationed there watching for our party particularly, or was Kingsburke now under siege, with armsmen posted in the forts and under command to destroy any who might come to the aid of the city?
Under Father’s orders we retreated, but carefully, facing always in the direction from which attack might come. Still no movement was to be seen about either of the watchtowers, nor along their walls. But more sinister yet was another absence: above those fortifications, no royal Standard flew. Who now held the King’s Towers?
Twenty-eight
Tamara
“A test,” Mother said.
The clan lord and his three lieutenants (Fergal was not counted among them, I noted) were frowning. Several shuffled their feet as if anxious to leave and pursue some other plan.
“A heavy and hard one,” Father returned.
What she outlined as our next move seemed only reasonable; even a wreaking with the aid of Power at such times had been rumored to have excellent results in the past. But the Gurlys had no tradition of Talent use and might find this nearly unbelievable.
The three of us, as well as Duty, and—somewhat to my surprise—a newcomer to the troop whom I did not know, were among those Mother had summoned. Then came Father and—Zolan as if he would try this game. I was still partnered by the man from the Dismals, though I was certain he had not been included in the chosen group.
Our snaplocks were returned to their holsters. The coming conflict would be a very different kind of battle—one in which, to judge by their growing scowls, the clansmen had no faith. I fastened the gem from the World Below to my head just above and between my eyes. It was already warming.
“A march by?” Captain Tweder asked.
“The clansmen,” Mother replied.
The chief stared at her. Behind him, one of his men spat on the ground, his opinion of this uncanny business given wetly.
Perhaps because of the struggle with the Frush, the chief did not refuse. So march before us he and his men did, slowly, to enable us to survey them one by one. Then they moved away, leaving us, we hoped, with faces and forms safe listed in our memories.
The scout, left to watch the towers, returned with the information that nothing was yet to be seen about either fortification. His relief went forward to replace him there.
Mother looked to Zolan. “Do you understand what we would do?”
“Yes.” His reply was curt.
“Then,” she spoke to the rest of us, “let us begin.”
Thus, shaping with our combined Talents, we raised both a seeming troop of Alsonians and a gathering of Gurly clansmen to march along the road we had left. Stronger and more detailed the unpeople became as we enhanced the Sends that gave them substance. As the Lord Warden’s flag appeared to whip in the wind above their line, they took on the look of armsmen parading in review for a dignitary the queen would honor.
We braced ourselves against the steady drain of Power, but no member of the ghostly band we summoned showed any sign of weakening. On and on down the road they marched as we stood on a rise behind them.
Now fleshly clansmen of the North came into sight, dust rising about the feet of their small wiry horses. I realized that the road must be made to seem disturbed about the feet of our troop, as well, or this travesty would be quickly exposed for what it was. The Gurlys were noted for keen sight and ever-ready suspicion.
The warmth against my forehead approached the point of burning, but I needed all the help the jewel could give me. Abruptly the drain I had set myself to ignore lessened, and I knew at once what was to be done. Keeping my eyes on the marchers, I allowed myself to answer. My hand swung out to clasp another’s, one that bore hard and callused fingers. There was no need to turn my head and thus risk breaking control of the spirit-soldiers; I was well aware that I was now united with Zolan. My Power had touched his before but never so deeply; nevertheless, the gem I wore made this melding of Talents, though so dissimilar, easy.
A skirmishing party broke from the mimic troop, which had now arrived within arrow-shot of the towers. That move was born of Father’s knowledge of battle strategy. No move had yet been made by those who must wait in ambush, but I was sure that the report of our beast-scout had been true.
The soldiers forming the van slowed. Now a man spurred forward—again Father’s addition to the illusion we held with all our might. And that move set the fire to the fuse.
Not only did a shower of arrows skim down in a deadly cloud from archers rising above the walls, but more armsmen poured, seemingly out of the ground itself, to strike like a spear point at our troop!
I do not know how great an effort it was for the others to change the projections we controlled, but I funneled much of my energy into letting men and horses fall, pincushioned with arrows; then I had to hold them still in sight as dead on the ground.
Suddenly a new force entered the battle. From the tower on the rise that faced us burst—a monster. I had always shrunk in fear from the sight of the giant insects that rendered the Dismals so deadly. This creature seemed one of those, like to that flier set to feed
upon the spider in the nightmare skirmish we had witnessed. Borne upon huge beating wings, it rose aloft to swoop down upon the tangle of men and illusions below.
Now clansmen were running—not those shadows we strove to hold the seeming of but our enemy’s soldiers; they must have discovered that they aimed at illusions alone. The huge flier swung low, lower, and seized one of the fleeing troop.
Even at this remove from the struggle, I could hear his screams. If the flier was part of the ambush, having somehow been summoned from the Dismals, it was turning on those it was meant to serve. As suddenly as the thing struck, however, I understood. The winged monster was born from Zolan’s Power—and who better to produce such a menace?
Well into the air it had lifted when its prey twisted to fall free. The flier flapped low again, hunting for another victim. I could hear cries from the force drawn up behind us. Though they could not view the combat, they had been able to sight the creature and what it bore.
“Now!” Father’s hand swept down in the agreed-upon signal.
The flesh-and-blood troop, already in formation, moved out. Father mounted the horse brought to him by an armsman on the run and joined those already thundering along the road.
We continued to feed our mock army, though we would not be able to do so much longer. The pain that had arisen to beat in my temples was shared, I knew, by all the rest of our company.
Still the flier swooped, this time at the walls of the tower where the archers were stationed. More soldiers attempted to flee; two fell over the edge of the parapet to the ground below.
Our living troops and the Gurly clansmen were closing fast. At last Mother gave the signal releasing us from the strain of holding the illusion. I wilted to the ground. With the end of my need for keeping our phantasms intact, I was as empty as a spirits-crock after a feasting. It was too much effort to keep my eyes open, almost too much to keep breathing.
Drucilla
NIGHT SKY CURVED over me. The stars framed there were very bright—brighter, I thought bemusedly, than I had ever seen them before.
“Cilla!”
Now I saw no stars but rather a dim face that could be my own in a mirror.
“Bina?”
She was tugging at me, and I obeyed by sitting up. I sensed others stirring about me. I shook my head—what had happened? My whole body ached, and it took a great effort for me to move.
“Come.” Again Bina pulled at me.
Come—where? And why?
“You must get to a horse,” she continued as I yielded to her, somehow standing again. I heard a snorting nearby and smelled horses, yes.
Not really understanding how I got there, I found myself in a saddle. My mount bore both bridle and reins, but it now moved under the control of someone walking by its head. All I could do was to cling to its coarse mane and strive to keep myself upright. Luckily we were advancing at little more than a walk.
Though the main focus of my attention was our dreamlike progress, memory began to stir. The bushy-bearded face of a Gurly kept forming in front of my own as if he strode backward before me. Then I saw a man with a scar-twisted lip, and beside him a boy with a straggle of face hair. Northerners, all of them.
My grip on the mane tightened as realization dawned. Those three—they were Patterns! To create the form of something living or unliving, one must first fashion a Pattern; that was a task I had performed many times over. As if a door had been flung open in my mind, I remembered: we had Patterned a war-troop of our own folk, and a riding of Gurly clansmen. That act must have been a success, or surely we would not now be free.
“Bina?” There was no need for whispering as I had just done—or was there?
It was not my sister who answered but the one who led my horse.
“The Lady Sabina, milady, has gone to see the squire, who is hurt.”
“And you are—?” I prompted.
“Ison of Scorpy-Alt, out of the Southern Isles,” the man answered. “I have come into the company of the Lord Warden with a message from the queen, and I am to ride with his troop for a space.”
I sat up a little straighter and loosed my right-handed hold in the dark to reach the nearer snaplock, which a brush with my knee told me was slung at the saddle horn. A sect of Clan Scorpy dwelt in the Sea Islands, right enough; however, neither Father nor Mother had mentioned this distant kinsman. I had dealt with illusion this day to such a point that I was suspicious.
Then I remembered how we had gathered our own living band before engaging the enemy—if one might call dispatching shadows launching weapons. A stranger had been with us—young, he was, and wearing the buff coat and breastplate of a trooper. On sudden impulse, I loosed a Send, then grabbed again at my horsehair anchor as I nearly reeled off my mount.
“You—Read?”
I trembled as an answer was returned—not with the clarity of one from my sisters or Mother, but still plain.
“I Read, yes. I have the Talent.”
Very seldom was Reading a masculine gift. Our father had it in part, and it was said that his brother who died of the wasting illness had been Gifted with even more.
“I am your cousin—son to Magus Scorpy—”
Magus had been Father’s other brother. He had chosen to serve Alsonia at sea and had died at the moment of victory in the great engagement with sea-slavers in the Southern waters.
“Welcome, Kinsman.” I spoke aloud, too drained to maintain mind-link. “Tell me, how went the battle?”
I heard a chuckle out of the dark rising above the sound of horse hooves and the thud of marching feet.
“I believe they are running still. That dragon certainly shook them in their boots!”
“Dragon?” I was momentarily bewildered. “Oh, the winged one—Zolan must have woven that illusion. Such horrors are to be found in the Dismals, as we can testify. Then those who lay in wait for us were all defeated?”
“It would seem so. Our people hold both towers now. The Gurlys who were taken report that much trouble is afoot in Kingsburke. My Lord Warden is questioning them.”
Ison continued with the news. A number of the soldiers from both towers had fled. Several bodies had been left behind to mark their encounter with an enemy who had never been truly there; some of the clansmen appeared to have died from sheer fear. The right-hand tower would shelter our family with more than half of our troop as a garrison, while the Northern clansmen held the other.
“It is plain,” my escort concluded, “that the Gurlys do not find themselves wishing to be too near to us. And perhaps the Lord Warden is just as well satisfied to have it so.”
The night seemed very long. Much as I wanted to know more about this newfound cousin, I found it a strain to talk; I think I dozed at times. Ison seemed content to lead the horse. If he had lent Talent energy to our deception, then apparently he had not been as drained by the effort as we.
I roused at the blast of a snaplock out in the night, swiftly followed by a Send:
“Lady Drucilla!” Reins slapped across my wrists and, without completely realizing what I did, I clutched at them. “Can you manage?”
A shout—another. A second pistol shot—this one louder. Instinctively I took control of my mount.
“Yes,” I Sent back, then felt, rather than saw, Cousin Ison move away.
Tamara
I STILL WORE the gem from the ruins bound to my forehead as we rode through the night. It had been the surge of heat from the stone that had fully aroused me. Then came the flash of a snaplock cutting the dark before me, bringing my hand to grip a similar weapon. A second shot followed. I was riding in company, but I could distinguish neither the nature of my companions nor the source of the pistol report.
“Aahh!”
The new noise was not a cry of pain but the cry of defiance a warrior might give when an expected action was to hand. Now, too, there came light of a sort, neither hot torch nor cooler moonlight. A globe of yellow, a sickly hue, appeared close to the ground, a litt
le to one side of the track along which we rode.
Globe? No, the sphere was fast assuming a different form, lengthening into a shaft like a spear held upright. Changing again, it shaped itself swiftly into the likeness of an armsman, though not as tall as most in the troop. The soldier-image stood unmoving as we advanced towards it.
Whoever rode matching pace with my mount pushed ahead and away from me. Against the unhealthy glow, he was only a shadow. Then a shout broke the night again, and my companion dropped to the ground before the light.
“Vos!” A word, this time, but who of the troop had half screamed it I could not have said. Someone barked an order, and the sounds of hooves ceased. I had already brought my horse to a halt.
Power was in play here, but not mine nor my sisters’, and certainly not Mother’s or Duty’s. This Talent was Zolan’s, for, as much as by his voice, I could now identify his distinctive Gift in action.
The evilly glowing form did not match him in either height or human features. Instead, Zolan now faced one of the squarish Jug bodies, but with visible features on the ball head. However, that shape was continuing to change, becoming less squat and thick-limbed.
At the same time, I was aware that I had been netted in just such ensorcellement as we had ourselves used earlier. This apparition had no real substance! As I drew nearer, a second sharp thrust of light came, not shooting from the thing before Zolan but springing from my gem.
The beam struck over Zolan’s shoulder straight at his challenger. The stranger threw up arms far too long to match its stature and began to beat at the air before the man from the Dismals. The shadow-creature was trying to reach our companion, but however madly its long and massive arms battered, they were rebuffed by a shield they could not breach.
The Jug-warrior crouched and hurled itself at Zolan, only to rebound. I could now see the features on the head ball clearly: eyes that were dark pits holding a yellow spark in their depths, a nose as sharp as a bill of a raptor above a parody of human lips that moved, dribbling dark moisture. As if unconsciously obeying an order, I swung my head in the thing’s direction. The gem with its radiance moved in answer, to center upon the middle of the alien face.