Keris backed away and bowed. “Lady, your pardon.”
To his mind witches were mature women, and from his first meeting he had wondered why this diminutive girl, hardly more than a child, had been included in the company sent from the Place of Wisdom.
“She is hiding—the Alizondern.” Even her voice still held a childish ring.
Hiding—spying! His revulsion arose swiftly.
The witch shook her head vigorously. “She is not our enemy—though so she has been counted. She watches—not spies. For this is the only way she can learn what we are, what we do. Her people know nothing of trust. Theirs is a hard, dark life and from their birthing they believe fate hangs over them. But this Liara—the older blood is stronger in her than she knows. The Lady Jaelithe perhaps can aid her—for she has also a part to play. Come.”
The witch girl led him toward the side of the hall where the discarded desks had been piled as safely as possible. Someone moved there, shrinking back but unable to get beyond his sight.
Keris moistened his lips. He certainly could not speak the devilish language of Liara’s kind. But she had picked up a few words—at least names.
“Lady Mereth—she—wants—you—” he spoke a little loudly as he might to one deaf.
Slowly the girl advanced from her hiding place. She was wearing the breeches, skirt, jerkin, and boots which were the garb of many of the women in the room, and her hair, so intensely white that it seemed to shine like a lamp glow, was tightly braided. By such dress she could be any of the Escore women at work on the map. But her heritage was plain in her pale face: that shining hair, and her slanted green eyes, with features narrow and sharp. Alizonderns were half hound according to legend, and Keris thought at that moment that they might indeed be were, able to shape-change and run with their packs.
Liara still felt that she was caught in some foul dream. This place… where had Kasarian thrust her in his hate for her—for she was sure only hate had made him send her so? Only that old totterer Morfew spoke her tongue. But his explanation of what had happened was so beyond comprehension that she did not believe it. All this talk of posterns and gates—
She looked at these strangers facing her now. The girl—Liara swallowed and swallowed again—the girl was a witch! Centuries of hatred and mistrust lay between them.
The young man—Morfew had told her he was a halfling, part human only, though he looked to be the same as any of the guardsmen passing now and then on errands. He wore a sword and another long holster weapon, which was common, but she wondered for a scornful moment whether all the Green Valley men such as he could stand up against Kasarian, or even of her littermates guards.
“Lady—Mereth—” he repeated. There was a beginning scowl on his face. She braced herself. Let him try to lay hand on her. These witch people were careless. She had three knives on her, carefully bestowed in hiding but able to be quickly drawn.
However, the name he mentioned was one of the few she really knew, and the witch had already turned and was going away. Liara stepped forward, but kept a careful distance from her guide.
They made their way to the table. There waited Mereth, that strange woman who could not speak but who had written such unbelievable things in proper Alizondern tongue on her slate. She claimed acquaintance with Kasarian, saying even that she had visited Krevanel. She had mentioned things which seemed to prove such a visit, and firmly stated that Kasarian was an ally in what went on here.
Liara came to her side, closer to that upright figure in the chair than she liked, but occupying the only open space. The lady was watching her closely, seeming to try to read with her very eyes any thought Liara might hold.
“I—came.” Let this female of the Dales tell her what was wanted, and quickly.
Lady Mereth nodded. Then her fingers moved nimbly over her writing slate and she held that out for Liara to read.
“Do you understand what we do here, Lady Liara? What your brother learned before you?”
“I have heard what has been told me,” she answered shortly. “There are gates, such traps as the one my littermate forced me into. These you labor to find and mark so.” She pointed to the long map.
Lady Mereth was writing again. “But to you this is a story, yes?”
Liara hesitated for a moment and then shook her head. She had been considering every aspect of the stories told her by Morfew (traitor Alizondern that he was) and this Mereth. Now she had a thought of what really could be behind such meddling. There might be a gate in Alizon, through which an army could be transported into the very heart of her homeland, there to wreak vengeance for what the hound masters had done in the Dales. Long had the witches been their enemies, and there were witches in this very hall here and now.
“I believe that you hunt gates.” Again her answer was abrupt.
Once more Mereth’s chalk was busy. “We hunt for portals through which the Dark can come to us, not ones to suffer us to travel into the unknown. You believe we threaten Alizon. Not so, but your home may also be threatened by just such a danger as we seek. We labor on two things, Lady Liara. First to find such gates, second to discover that which will lock them against all future opening.
“To do this”—she had wiped away the earlier lines and was writing swiftly again—“we must go into parts of our world of which we know nothing—where even Sulcars and traders have forged no trails. Girl, you have that in your blood which is mine also.”
Liara had heard that, too, what Kasarian had been told: that Elsenor, the mage who was their own distant foresire, had come out of time to father this woman, Mereth. All which she had always believed was under threat, and so was she—perhaps.
“I am of the House Line of Krevanel.” Her chin went up and she faced this chairbound woman proudly. “I am of Alizon. Anyone within this hall”—she made a gesture with her left hand, keeping her right carefully close to the hiding place of her longest knife—“would gladly see my blood on his or her steel.”
Mereth was writing again. “No one denies that your people are hated. But your brother learned that with a common goal even enemies swear battle oaths.” Her chalk paused and now her stare at Liara was even more penetrating.
“You are not altogether ignorant. I have enough of the talent to know—this—
The hand holding the chalk flashed upward, as if, leaving the slate, Mereth would now draw upon the air itself. And draw she did—a complicated design. White it was at first, as white as Liara’s hair, then deepening into a blue which drew the girl past understanding to put out her own hand.
The design curled, wavered, flipped, to encircle her wrist. She would have cried out, but it was as if Mereth’s own dumbness that moment became hers and she could only stare from the woman to that strange coil which did not quite touch her own flesh but whirled thrice and then was gone.
It was Keris’s turn to start and his hand went to sword hilt in unconscious reaction to an act which bore the force of true power. As strange as the truce with the Keplians, now of the Light, who companioned with the Lady Eleeri and her lord, so was such an acceptance of this female from Alizon. Mage blood—yes, he knew that story. It was widespread in Lormt and he knew that it had been passed along deliberately so that Liara might find acceptance among age-old enemies of her kind.
Only… there was no misinterpreting what he had just seen. This Liara was not only accepted by the Light; she also was gifted as well. He knew that old twinge of jealousy. To be a halfling and ungifted, while this open enemy was granted such a Power…