It seemed we had escaped some grave danger only to fall into another. There were sudden shouts from the river bank and I looked hastily around. The fishermen had dropped their net, were splashing toward us, steel in hand.
“Link!” My mother’s command rang in my head. “Link—hallucinate!”
I do not know what manner of picture she had selected to give us cover, but what came out of our joining of Power was indeed enough to stop the tribesmen short in midstream, set their women and children screaming and running. Before my eyes, and I was one who was giving Power to raise that guise, my two conscious companions became monsters. Such was their being that I knew these mental pictures had not taken shape by any will of ours. Nor did I doubt that I, myself, must equal them in horror. Of us all only Ayllia, lying as if dead under my father’s hands, remained in human seeming.
There was a sudden faltering, lasting only for a breath, in my mother. Her astonishment must have been equal to my own. She stood erect on two misshapen clawed feet, great taloned paws swaying menacingly, her demon’s mask of a face turned upon those in the stream. And from her throat came a roar which was enough to crush eardrums.
Seeing her, the tribesmen broke and ran after their womenfolk. And we were left, trying to avoid viewing one another.
“Break.” My father pulled himself to his feet, stooped to swing Ayllia up over a horn-plated shoulder. “We have served our purpose—so break.”
Break the illusion? But we had instinctively tried that as soon as the tribesmen ran. However, though we no longer fed the hallucination, it remained in force. The monster who had been Jaelithe turned slowly to stare at the hideous wood.
“It would seem,” she mouthed between thick purple lips, “that we have wrought our spell too close to that which could twist and turn it to unsightly purpose. We did not achieve invisibility but went far too far in the opposite direction. Also, I do not see the means of breaking this yet—”
And in me then arose a sharp sword of fear to cut and thrust, so that I shivered and quailed. For once before I had worn the stigmata of the Shadow, and so harsh had been that burden that it had driven me to things I hated to remember. Kemoc, by his own blood, shed in mercy, had won me back then to human kind. But at first I had known terror and self-disgust. Were we doomed again to carry such befoulment?
“Let there be a time for shedding later,” my father agreed. “I think we are better off the farther we get from this growing cesspool of vileness.”
We trailed him down to the river wherein he boldly splashed. I thought that for now we need not fear the return of the tribe. The water rose about us, and in a way that was reassuring, as it is one of the fundamentals of the Power as opposed to the Shadow, that running water can, in itself, be used as a barrier to evil. I almost expected my monster-seeming to vanish as that current washed strongly about my warted and scaled skin. But it did not and we came ashore unopposed in the half-set camp of the tribe.
Seeing some of their packs lying there I became practical and went hunting, finding and filling a sack with what dried foodstuffs were spilled out and around. But my mother passed me, her horned and horrible head down and bent as if she sniffed a trail. At last her taloned paws rent open a tightly lashed basket, turning out dried herbs, which her long and filthy nails sorted until she scooped up a scant handful of twigs and leaves, dried and brittle.
We lingered no longer at the river, but turned westward again. Now my father did not scout ahead, relying on his monster-seeming to be a defense, carrying Ayllia, while we flanked him on either side. A strange and forbidding company we must have made if any of the tribe lurked in hiding to watch our going. I doubted that for even the great hounds had caught the contagion of their masters’ panic and had joined in the rout.
“When it is safe”—my mother’s words were almost as distorted as the new mouth which formed them—“I think that I have that which will return us to ourselves again.”
“Good enough,” was Simon’s answer. “But let us have more distance traveled behind us first.”
On this side of the river the country opened out into a meadowlands. Perhaps these had once been farms, though we came across no signs of walling or any hint of buildings.
But my belief that man had once lived here in peace and plenty was affirmed when we came to lines of trees. These were not the twisted, evil things of that terrible wood, but were flushed with the petals of early flowering, and they formed an orchard which had been planted so.
Some were dead, split by storm, battered by the years. But enough still flowered as a promise that life did continue. And life did, for birds nested among them in such numbers as to surprise, unless they depended upon early fruit to sustain them.
Just as that other wood had been a plague spot of evil, so here was a kind of benediction, as if this had been a source of good. I could smell the scent of herbs, faint but unmistakable. Whoever had once planted or tended this orchard had also set out here those growing things which were for healing and good. There were no blue stones of security set up, only a peace and wholesomeness to be felt.
And there we took our rest. While Ayllia slept, my mother brought out the cup made as clasped hands. Holding it in her talons, she turned her head slowly from side to side, until as one who sees a guide point directly ahead, she went down one of the lines of trees until she came to a dip in the ground. I went after her, drawn by the same elusive scent.
A spring bubbled in a basin which my two arms might have encircled. About it stood the first tender growing green ringed by small yellow flowers—those which in my childhood we had called “stareyes” and which are very frail and last but a day, but are the first blooms of spring.
My mother knelt and filled the cup half full from the spring. Carrying it with care, she returned to our temporary camp under the trees.
“A fire?” she asked my father.
His horned and fanged head swung from side to side. “Is it necessary?”
“Yes.”
“So be it.”
I was already gathering from under the dead trees their long shed branches, choosing those I knew would give forth sweet-smelling smoke, dry enough to burn quickly and brightly.
My father laid a small fire with care, and once done he put spark from his lighter box to it. At my mother’s nod I fed to the rising flames some of those herbs she had taken from the tribe’s packets.
Jaelithe leaned above the fire, holding the cup in her two hands. Now she stared into its depths. I saw the water it held cloud, darken, then serve as a background to throw into bright relief a picture. It was my father who stood in the depths of that cup, not as the monster who tended the fire, but as the man. I realized what we must do and joined my will to hers. Even so it was a struggle. Slowly that picture in the cup changed. It grew misshapen, monstrous, as we watched and willed. Finally it was completely the thing which had led us across the river.
When that was so my mother blew into the cup so that the picture was broken and only water remained, as clear as it had been at her first dipping. But when we raised our heads and tried to straighten the cramp in our shoulders, my father was again the man.
Then my mother passed the cup, not to me, but to my father. Though she looked at me somewhat ruefully, if such an expression could be read on the twisted countenance which was now hers, and she gave me an explanation: “He who is closest—”
I was already nodding. She was right—to my father would the mind picture be the sharpest now.