I did not quite understand it. But her certainty again raised my hopes. What Ursilla could do I dreaded because it was unknown. However, the confidence of my companion suggested that perhaps this time the Wise Woman would meet opponents she could not so easily defeat.
We were running now, I with the pard’s leaps, as the strength of the bond jerked me on and on, Aylinn lightly, as she might have done across some woodland glade in utter freedom.
Thus we came to the figures. But there were others among them—Maughus! How had he won to this place? And the Lady Eldris! My cousin and my grandam stood statue-still. They might have been carven from the same stone as the seated ones. There was no sword in Maughus’s hand, though one lay bare-bladed at his feet.
His face was a mask in which fear and anger were intermingled. But the one my grandam wore was of fear alone, though, when her eyes shifted now and then toward my mother, hatred shone there also.
Ursilla waited for us, her wand of Power outstretched as a fisherman might hold a pole by which he has hooked a catch he now draws to shore. Aylinn no longer moved beside me. When I glanced back, I saw her face in the light from the glowing globe-visages of the surrounding figures. It was serene, but set—another mask, save that this reflected no emotion, and her eyes were alive.
Her flower-enwreathed wand lay across her arm as if it were indeed only a sheaf of long-stemmed blooms she had gathered along the way. If Ursilla believed that the Moon Witch was truly part of her catch, she might well be surprised.
“Welcome, Kethan.” Ursilla broke the silence of those within the circle. “You have done well—”
“And you—” She turned her glance from me to survey Aylinn from head to foot, then back again. There was startlement, quickly veiled in her eyes. Whatever she had expected, it was not to be confronted by the Moon Witch.
“So—” Her voice was a hiss as her wand moved, flicking back and forth as might a swordsman’s blade before he engaged. Sparks flew from the rod as it swung. Then I saw Aylinn smile, not in victory, or in mockery, but openly, as a child would do.
“You have called, Wise Woman. I have come. What would you have of me?”
My mother wavered from where she stood on the other side of the brazier—her face mirrored open amazement.
“Who—are—you?” She breathed as might a nearly spent runner and pressed her hands against her breast as if to ease the pain.
“I am she who the Wise Woman has summoned,” Aylinn returned.
The eyes of all were centered on her. Her bearing was as proud as my mother’s when she was wrapped in her finest feasting robes.
“No!” The Lady Heroise retreated step by step as Aylinn advanced. My mother might be facing some wraith of the Shadow, which had intruded in this place. Her astonishment had changed to what was manifestly fear. Now, with a visible effort, she turned her gaze from Aylinn to Ursilla. Her voice rose shrilly. “You have brought the wrong—”
“Not so!” Ursilla interrupted. She lowered her wand, though still held it with the point toward Aylinn, who did not seem to notice it at all.
“The spell does not fail, not with the force of the ancients behind it,” the Wise Woman continued. “Which means—”
My mother lurched forward as one so stricken she could not keep her feet without support. Her groping hand fell upon Ursilla’s shoulder.
“This cannot be!” Her protest now was near a scream.
“Do you think I know not our Clan blood? We have no talent beyond the lesser. This is one possessing Power!” I listened completely bewildered. There was something between my mother and the Wise Woman, something that made my mother completely oblivious of all else.
“You did not ask concerning the father.” Ursilla’s thin lips stretched in a grin akin to the grimace of a fleshless skull. “Did you know his blood-kin?”
My mother dropped her grasp on Ursilla and cowered away. She beat her rolled fists together. “No! What did you then summon to my bed? What have I bred?”
Ursilla laughed, the same terrible laughter I had heard when she promised to make Maughus rue his violence,
“Seemingly better than you thought, my Lady. As for the breed of your mate—you did not care. It was the child who mattered.” Now the hand that did not hold the wand made a sign in the air, which flamed orange.
Bewildered, I looked from one to the other. The secret they had held between them so long was first understood by Maughus. His body rocked a little as if he tried to move and could not. But there was a wild light of triumph on his face.
“So—that was what you wrought!” he spat at the two before him. “Now it comes clear to me. You went to Gunnora to bear your heir, my Lady. There all your charms failed you, for you bore a daughter instead of a son! Where got you then this Shadow-bred mongrel?” He looked to me with a death wish in his eyes.
In that moment, he had ripped wide open all the past, made many things clear to me. Yes, I could see plainly what had chanced—that the Lady Heroise and Ursilla, their ambitious plans ruined by the birth of a daughter instead of a son, could be tempted to exchange children. If Ursilla had now laid a spell to bring the missing daughter hither (and that I could believe), then Aylinn was that daughter. But who was I?
“Be silent!” Ursilla swung around, pointed the tip of her wand at Maughus. His jaws clamped shut, his face reddened with anger, yet he could not utter another word.
“We have lost nothing,” Ursilla stated firmly. “Why think you I have called—her?” She gestured toward Aylinn. “As long as she exists she is a threat. The more so, I now reckon, because she is what she is. Therefore, we shall rid ourselves of the threat. And”—she laughed that vile laugh—“in the ridding, we shall bind to us your dutiful son by such ties as he can never break and rid ourselves also of this loud-tongued fool.” It was at Maughus that she nodded then.
My mother shrank yet farther away. She watched Ursilla with the look of one held entranced. But the Lady Eldris screamed, her voice awakening strange and spine-chilling echoes from out of the earth.
Ursilla reached within the inner pocket of her skirt. When she withdrew her hand, I saw what she held, all coiled together—the belt that anchored me to her will. She shook it loose. Where the hawk had torn it asunder it was mended.
In that moment, before she turned upon me the full force of her command, I made my move. Man—man! My will caught and held upon that one desire. All the energy I summoned, all I could find in either man or pard, that did I draw upon.
I stood Kethan. The beast was gone.
Again the Lady Eldris screamed. This time Lady Heroise echoed her cry. Beyond Ursilla I saw Aylinn give a small nod. She held her beflowered rod in my direction. Through that, I believed, had come an additional surge of energy to my aid.
Ursilla did not seem disconcerted by my transformation. She might even have been expecting some such move on my behalf. This made me wary. I stooped, caught up the sword that had fallen at Maughus’s feet. He himself was fighting whatever force held him, but his fight was in vain.
Ursilla raised her wand. I wondered if I could knock it from her hand with the length of steel I now held. Iron is a remedy against some forms of sorcery. Though would Ursilla have allowed me to arm myself so had she had any fear of that? I thought not.
However, she did not aim the wand at me, but again at the brazier. For the first time I noticed that it was once more filled and ready to be fired. A beam struck into its contents, smoke began to rise and this time, with it, flame tongues.
The Wise Woman again laughed. “Well armed you are now, Kethan, for what must be done. This is no place of the Shadow as we know it in these lesser days. But there are forces that will gather here to drink new-spilled blood. And, having so been fed, they will then be amiable to command—for a space. Therefore—they shall have their feast!”