7
Tirtha enfolded herself in her cloak, having refused any more food, since what she desired was better accomplished fasting. Had she followed the proper ritual, she would have fasted for a full day while clearing her surface mind of all thought. Now she must take the Falconer into her confidence—what she practiced was the “witchery” he distrusted, but there was a need for it. Tirtha used flat and decisive words to settle the matter. After all he was an oathed shield man; thus what she did, unless it threatened them both, was beyond his questioning.
Already Tirtha floated in and out, half aware of their bare camp, half into gray nothingness. Then she slid entirely into the gray, like a feather or leaf tossed by air, without substance and with no control, though she tried firmly to keep her purpose to the fore of her mind.
No Hawkholme lay before her this time, though she emerged from nothingness into sharpening clarity. Before her, smoke trailed upward in rank, standing amid trampled earth beds of heat-withered or broken plants. She recognized some of those as sources of balms she well knew. Whoever had dwelt here had cultivated the gifts of earth.
The rankness of spilled blood was foul through the acrid stench of fire. There was another odor also—a sickening one. For a moment or two she thought perhaps this was Hawkholme after all, that she viewed it after the vengeance of Yvian’s attack.
Only this was surely much smaller, even though she had never been granted a complete vision of Hawkholme in its full pride. No, this was not the remains of any great hall or lord’s hold, rather more the garth of a small landholder.
A hound sprawled on the crushed herbs. A ragged wound had ripped its side to bare the white arch of its rib cage. Beyond the dead beast lay another body, small, crumpled together, as if flung contemptuously aside. Because Tirtha knew that she was being shown all this for a reason of importance, she willed herself to approach the dead.
A child lay face down, her unbound dark hair swirled, mercifully hiding her features, but there was no mistaking the brutal usage which had been given that fragile broken body—discarded in death as a worthless bit of refuse. In Tirtha awoke a flame of deadly anger. She had seen much in past years of pain, death, and hardship; she had believed herself immune to easily-aroused feeling. Now some part of her, long hidden and buried, was aroused to life.
This dead child, she knew—perhaps by virtue of the drug that had awakened her talent to its utmost—had not been the only one slain. Within the fired building lay others, as hardly treated, as ruthlessly used and slain. There had been those here who had played with their victims, relishing the cruelty they employed—who might call themselves men but were no different within (save perhaps less strong and powerful) than the beast thing she and the Falconer had killed in the mountains.
Why vision had summoned her here, Tirtha could not tell. She strove to master her anger, to loose herself, that she might be guided into learning what meaning this held for her. For she did not believe that the single purpose was to warn her. There was another and far more powerful reason to summon her for a viewing of murder and ravishment.
She moved, not by her own volition, but as if she rode a mount she could not control. Past the burned-out house that compulsion carried her, on into a stonewalled field where a stand of young grain lay beaten into pulp in ragged paths as if riders had crossed and recrossed it. Riders—hunters.
That impression of a deadly hunt struck her full on. She could view those tracks and visualize the action that had taken place here. What prey had they ridden down?
The need that drew her, now drove her toward a pile of stones at one corner. A break in the wall about to be mended—those stones were piled ready to hand. Behind them, crouched in so narrow a space that Tirtha would not believe any body could exist there, was another child. Dead?
No! This one lived—with a mind filled by overwhelming horror and terror. The one in hiding had been driven near to the point of complete withdrawal and denial of life by what had happened, but there was still a faint spark of identity remaining.
Tirtha had asked guidance for her own purposes. It would seem that the knowledge she had sought was not of importance to whatever force she had so hazily called upon—but this was. She had been summoned, she was being used, and to the demand there could be no denial.
She opened her eyes upon the night, their handcup of fire, the Falconer seated cross-legged beside it. In his hands was the dagger-sword, its pommel beaming with a fierce, demanding light, his head downbent as he stared at the now living gem, bemused.
Out of her vision, she had brought urgency.
“We must go!”
His head jerked as if she had startled him out of a vision of his own. Tirtha was already on her feet, hurrying toward the picketed ponies. A full moon above provided brilliance stronger than she had ever seen, the better for the task that must be done.
“What is it?” Her companion was at her heels, his weapon in sheath.
Tirtha pivoted slowly, struggling to pick up the trace which must exist. Time might be against her. No! This duty was a part of her, as compelling as that other search had been through all the years, only much more immediate.
Fire! That smoke they had witnessed from the pass! That must be the place! She was suddenly certain.
“A garth they burned.” She spoke out of her vision, not caring if he could not follow her thoughts. “It is there!”
Swiftly she loosed the mare, girthed on saddle pad. He did not question her, only followed her example, and the falcon on the saddle perch, mantled, raising wings, then took to the air, up and out into the dark. Perhaps the man had dispatched it without audible command.
They angled toward the west, yet farther south. Where the land opened, they went to a fast trot. As they rode, Tirtha gave a terse account of what she had envisioned. The Falconer listened without question; when she had done he made comment. “Raiders or some lordling’s men who had reason to loot. This is a riven land.” There was harsh distaste in his voice. For all their somber reclusiveness and their well-tested fighting ability, those of his race did not kill wantonly, nor ever amuse themselves with such nastiness as she knew had blasted the garth. Falconers dealt clean death when and if that were necessary, risking always their own lives in the doing. But for the rest, no man could ever declare that they were merciless barbarians, no matter how much the Witches of Estcarp disliked their private customs.
Down from the night sky spiraled the falcon, alighting on the saddle perch to face the man. Tirtha heard what sounded like sharp clicks of its beak. The Falconer turned his head.
“It is as you saw—the burning, the dead. There is no one there.”
She shook her head determinedly. “Not at the house, in the field. They hunted but they did not find. There is still life. If there is not”—she hesitated—“then I think it would be given me to know that there was no reason for us to go on.”
He said nothing. Perhaps he thought that as a shield man there was no reason for him to contradict her. Still she believed that he thought her wrong—that only the dead awaited them.
It was graying for dawn when they picked up the odor of the burning and that sweet stench of death which was a part of it. Then they came to the edge of open land, and she saw before her a wall of logs deep set to make a barrier. This had not been a part of her vision; but just ahead of them a gate swung loose as if, for all their guard, those who dwelt here had relaxed vigilance for some reason, allowing entrance to the very wolves they prepared to defy.
Tirtha’s mare snorted and shook her head vigorously, not liking the smell. But she did not resist when Tirtha urged her on, and with the Torgian trailing behind them on a lead rope, the two rode into this once guarded place.