Now the archway leading to the courtyard of the larger building was an open gape. Suddenly her staff swung forward at knee level.
There was a flash of blue flame, a speeding of sparks both to right and left as she took a single step on into the courtyard.
“Here entered no darkness—” She spoke that sentence aloud as if it were a charm—or password—at the same time pushing back the hood that had concealed her face, so displaying a countenance like a statue meant to honor a Queen or Goddess long forgot. While the hair wound tightly about her head was silver, there were no marks of age on her, only that calm which comes to one who has seen much, weighed much, known the pull of duty.
“Come—” Her staff moved in a small beckoning.
The two who first advanced into the open moved warily and plainly showed that they were coming against their will. There was a boy, his bony frame loosely covered with a patchwork of badly cured skins cobbled together. Both his hands were so tight about the smaller end of a club that the knuckles showed, nearly piercing the skin. But the girl was not far behind him, and she weighed in her two hands a lump of stone, jagged and large enough to be a good threat.
There was also movement from the wall behind, wherein that gate was, though the traveler made no attempt to turn or even look over her shoulder. Another boy, near as thin as the taut bowstring arming the weapon he carried, and a girl, with a dagger in hand, sprang from some perch above. A second boy, also with bow in hand, joined them. The three sidled around the stranger, their weapons at ready, their faces showing that they were not ignorant of the lash of fear nor the use of the arms they carried.
Five—
“The others of you?” The traveler made a question of that.
Those arose out of hiding as if the fact that she asked drew them into sight. Two boys, twins, so alike that one might be the shadow of the other, each armed with a spear of wood, the points of which had been hardened by careful fire charring and rubbing. Another girl, who had no weapon, but carried a younger child balanced on her hip.
Nine. In so much—Yet this was not what she had expected. The traveler looked intently from one gaunt face to the next. No, not what she had expected. But in a time of need a weaver must make do with the best there is to hand.
It was the eldest of the boys, he who had leaped first from the wall, who gave challenge. He was of an age to have been a squire, and he wore a much too large and rusty coat of mail, a belt with an empty sword scabbard bound about it to hold it to his body.
“Who are you?” His demand was sharp and there were traces of the old high tongue in the inflection of his speech. “How came you here?”
“She came the sea path—” It was the girl who had lain in hiding with him on the upper wall who spoke then, and her dagger remained unsheathed. However, it was the younger one who carried the baby who spoke, her gaze holding full upon the traveler:
“Do you not see, Hurten, she is one of Them.”
They stood in a semicircle about the woman. She could taste fear, yes, but also with that something else, the grim determination that had brought them to this ancient refuge, kept them alive when others had died. They would be stout for the weaving, these nine threads distilled from a broken and ravaged land.
“I am a seeker,” the woman answered. “If I must answer to a name let it be Lethe.”
“One of Them,” repeated she who played nursemaid, stubbornly.
The boy Hurten laughed. “Alana, They are long gone. You see tales in all about you. Lethe—” He hesitated, and then with now more than a touch of the courtly tongue, “Lady, there is nothing here—” Still holding bow, he spread his hands wide apart, as if to encompass all that lay about him. “We mean no harm. We can spare you a place by a fire, a measure of food, a roof against the storm—little more. We have long been but wayfarers also.”
Lethe raised her head so that the folds of her hood slid even farther back.
“For your courtesy of roof and hearth, I give thanks. For the goodwill that prompted such offers, may that be returned to you a hundredfold.”
Alana had allowed the small boy in her arms to wriggle to the ground. Now, before she could seize him back in a protective hold, he trotted forward, one hand outstretched to catch full hold on Lethe’s cloak, supporting himself as he looked up into her face.
“Maman?” But even as he asked that his small face twisted and he let out a cry. “No—maman—no, maman!”
Alana swooped to catch him up again and Lethe spoke to her softly:
“This one is of your blood kin?”
The girl nodded. “Robar, my brother. He … doesn’t understand, Lady. We were with a pilgrim party. The demons caught us by a bridge. Maman, she told me to jump and she threw Robar down to me. We hid in the reeds—He—he didn’t see her again.”
“But you did?”
For a moment there was stark horror in Alana’s eyes. Her lips formed a word she did not appear to have the strength to voice. Lethe’s staff raised; the point of it touched ever so lightly on the little girl’s tangle of hair.
“Fade,” the woman said, “let memory fade, child. There will come a balancing in good time. Now,” she spoke to Hurten, “young sir, I am right ready to make acquaintance of this promised fire and roof of yours.”
It would seem that any suspicion they had held was already eased. The weapons were no longer tightly in hand, though the children still surrounded her in a body as she walked ahead, well knowing where she was bound, through the doorway that led into the great presence chamber.
Outside the day was fast darkening into twilight; herein there was light of a sort. Globes set in the walls gave off a faint glimmer as if that which energized them was close to the end of its power. What this dim radiance showed was shadow-cloaked decay.
Once there had been strips of weaving along the walls. Now there were webs of dwindling threads from which all but the faintest of patterns had been lost. There was a dais on which had stood an impressive line of chairs, tall-backed, carven. Most of those had been hacked apart and, as they passed, the children each went forward and picked up an armload of the broken wood, even small Robar taking up one chunk, as if this were a duty to which all of them were sworn.
They passed beyond a carven screen through another door and down a hall until they came into another chamber, which gave evidence of being a camping place. Here was a mighty cavern of a fireplace wherein was hung a pot nearly large enough to engulf Robar himself, and about it other tools of cookery.
A long table, some stools, had survived. Near the hearth to one side was a line of pallets fashioned from the remains of cloaks, patched with small skins, and apparently lumpily stuffed with what might be leaves or grass.
There was a fire on the hearth, and to that one of the twins added wood from the pile where they had dumped their loads, while the other stirred the sullen glow within to greater life.
Hurten, having rid himself of his load, turned, hesitated, and then said gruffly:
“We keep sentinel. It is my duty hour.” And was gone.
“There have been others—those you must watch for?” Lethe asked.
“None since the coming of Truas and Tristy.” The oldest girl nodded toward the twins. “They came over mountain three tens ago. But the demons had wrought evil down by the sea—earlier. There was a village there once.
“Yes,” Lethe agreed, “there was once a village.”
“It had been taken long ago,” the boy who had borne the club volunteered. “We—we are all from over mountain, Lusta and I—I’m Tyffan, Hilder’s son, of Fourth Bend. We were in the fields with Uncle Stansals. He bid us into th’ wood when there was smoke from th’village over hill. But”—the boy’s fists clenched and there was a grim set to his young jaw—“he did not come back. We had heard of th’ demons an’ what they did to villages, still we waited in hiding. No one came.”