My father nodded. “As ever, you put it clearly, my witch wife. Our first need is to cross this country to where we shall find friends. To be thought less than we are, not more, is a kind of defense in itself.”
They were logical, right. Yet as we started on in the first daylight, I had a feeling that I must now and then look behind me, almost as if some barely perceptible shadow crept behind, always fluttering into hiding just upon my turning so that I never saw it; only sensed it was there.
XVIII
We found no more sweet and sunlit spots such as the orchard; neither did we again chance upon a pool of vileness as the wood. Rather we journeyed over what might have been a land where man had never set foot before. A wild country, yet not too difficult to travel. And for two days we headed steadily west over this. Each night we listened also as Ayllia reported in whispers her account of that day’s traveling, as if she had walked with a knowing mind and open eyes scout-trained to see. Nor when I urged that she be blocked did my parents agree, for fear of rendering her so helpless that we could not transport her.
On the third day distant blue lines against the sky to the north and west broke into individual mountain peaks. And I was heartened, for by so much were we closer to a land I knew, at least in part. And perhaps I could, within this day’s journeying or tomorrow’s, pick out some landmark which would guide us into a land the Valley riders patrolled.
We surmounted a ridge at midday, to look down and away into a meadowland, though the grass was now a drab, winter-killed mat through which only a few spikes of early green stuff broke. But man had been here, for there were very old stone fences, so overborne by time that they were mere lines of tumbled rocks. Yet those lines in one direction marked out a road, and the road ended in piers water-washed by a languidly flowing river, some planted in the water, jagged stumps above its surface, and one on an island midway between the two shores.
But it was what occupied that island which froze us, startled and staring, on the ridge crest, until my father’s fiercely hissed warning sent us down flat, no longer to be noted against the sky. What we had chanced upon was a sharp skirmish between two bands of sworn enemies.
On this side of the stream reared, pawed, galloped up and down, black keplians—those monsters with the seeming of horses that served the Sarn Riders. The Sarns—I had thought them all dead in the defeat of Dinzil, but it would seem that enough had survived to make up this troop at least—were human appearing, their hooded cloaks flapping about them. Padding along the margin of the water were the Gray Ones, pointing their man-wolf muzzles into the air as they slavered and screeched their hatred. But, as ever, running water kept them both from full attack. Not so the others of that Shadow pack. From the air shrieked the rus, those birds of ill omen, flying with talon and beak ready to harry the party on the island. And I saw, too, the troubling of the water as rasti swam in waves of furred and vicious bodies, struggling out into the jumble of rocks which was the only defense the island party had.
And running water did not hold others of that foul regiment. Well above its surface floated a swirl of yellowish vapor which did not travel fast, yet made purposefully for the island. Only the sharp crackle of the energy whips of the Green Riders on the island kept all these at bay. Yet perhaps what the forces of the Shadow fought for was only to hold until support came, since we could see movement on the ground at the other side of the river, an ingathering of more of the Sarn Riders and the Gray Ones. Behind those something else moved with intent, but was so covered by a flickering of the air that I could not truly see it. I believed it, however, to be one of the strong evils.
Once Kemoc and I had been so besieged in a place of stones, with a monster force ringing us in. Then Kyllan and the Green People had broken through to our rescue. But here it would seem that some of the Green People themselves were at bay.
Kemoc! His name was on my lips but I did not cry it aloud, remembering that such a betrayal of my recognition might be caught by one of the Shadow and used as another weapon against the very one I would protect. Now I saw a boiling of water about the island and wondered if the Krogan, alienated as they had been, had also now come fully under the Dark Ones’ banner.
My father had been surveying the scene below with critical measurement. He spoke now.
“It would seem wise to provide some diversion. But these are not Kolder, nor men—”
My mother’s fingers moved in gestures I understood. She was not really counting those of the enemy between us and the river; rather she was in a manner testing them. Now she answered him.
“They do not suspect us, and among these there is knowledge of a sort, but they are not of the Masters, rather creatures born of meddling in pools of the Power. I do not know whether we will turn them by spelling, but one must try. An army . . . ?” And of those last two words she made a question.
“To begin with, yes,” he decided.
She brought out of the fore of her tunic some of the herbs which she had used to break the counter spell of the monster-seeming while my father and I clawed loose the earth of the ridge about us. Using spittle from our mouths, we made of it small balls, into which Jaelithe pressed some of the bits of dried leaf and broken stem. When she had done so, she set them out in a line before us.
“Name them!” she ordered.
And my father did so, staring long and hard at each one as he spoke. Some of the names he uttered were ones I had heard:
“Otkell, Brendan, Dermont, Osberic.”
And a great name that last was! Mangus Osberic had held Sulcar Keep and taken its walls and Kolder attackers with him when there was no hope of relief.
“Finnis . . .” On and on he spoke those names, some of Old Race Borderers, some of Sulcarmen, one or two of Falconers. And I knew that he so chose men who had stood beside him once, though now they were dead and so could not be harmed by our magic.
When he had done, and there were still some balls remaining, my mother took up the tale. The names she called sounded with a particular crackle in the air. Thus I knew she raised, not warriors, but Wise Women who had gone behind the final curtain.
She was done and a single ball remained unnamed. I was—possessed? No, not in reality, for another will did not enter into me to direct my hand or take over my brain, yet I did that which I had no forethought to do. My finger went out to the last ball and the name I gave it was not that of the dead, but of the living, and a name I would never have voiced had not that compulsion out of nowhere brought it to my lips.
“Hilarion!”
My mother sent a single direct and measuring glance. But she said naught, rather put then her force to the summoning, and my father and I joined with her. Then from the small seeds of soil, herbs and spittle, gathering form and solidity as they did rose, came the appearances of those named.
In that moment, they were so very real that even putting forth a hand one might feel firm flesh. And one could indeed die under the weapons they carried, ready for battle.
But that last seed, that which I had so intently named, did not bear fruit. And I had a fleeting wonder if it had been only my fear of him, perhaps a desire to think him dead and safely removed from us, which had led me to that act.
There was no time left for idle speculation as down from the ridge marched the army we had summoned, the warriors to the fore, behind them a half a dozen gray-robed women, each with her hands breast-high, holding so her witch jewel, in its way as great or greater a menace to the enemy that the steel the others bore.