Facing her stood the smoke-blackened ruins she had seen, the trampled garden. The fire had burned itself out. She could sight the dead hound, the other pitiful body beyond. The dead did not need them now; the living did.
Tirtha pulled rein, sending the mare circling to the left, away from the destroyed house. Yes, there was the stone wall—high here, built as part of that protection which had proved so futile. Another gate stood open as she pressed on into the field where signs of the chase were so deep printed.
Straight across pounded the mare at a harder pace than Tirtha had pushed her before. While they were still some distance from that neat pile of rocks, Tirtha pulled up, slid from her riding pad, and ran, throwing her cloak back across her shoulders lest it impede her speed.
As she went she mind-sought. Life essence—yes! They were still in time! She reached the neat pile of stones, looked around it. There was nothing wedged there! Tirtha swayed, so dismayed by the evidence of her eyes that she could almost believe she was again not here in body, but rather caught up still in sleep-vision.
Once more she sought mind touch. There was life essence, faint, wavering as if almost drained away—yet still here! Only she saw emptiness. Tirtha pulled away some of the stones—letting them thud outward into the field. Then she knelt to stretch forth both hands. Where her eyes could see nothing her hands felt what her vision had told her was there—a small body huddled into such confined space it would seem that there was no room for breath to enter the lungs of the compressed form she could feel.
She spoke over her shoulder to the Falconer as he joined her.
“Can you see…?” she began.
His bird helm, easy to mark in this growing half-light, turned from side to side in denial.
“Then come here.” She reached out, caught his hand, pulled it and him closer, dragging him down so that his fingers might tell him the truth. He jerked back, freeing himself from her grasp, and she could tell that he was aware of the same mystery.
“There—it is there, though we cannot see it!” She was triumphant.
“Witchery!” She heard the word as a half-whisper. Still he loosened stones with his claw, hurling them afar with his hand. Now the falcon perched on the wall to watch them, leaning forward to peer into the small space they uncovered, much as it had looked upon the knife-sword it had led her companion to find.
Slowly, carefully, Tirtha ran her hands along that body they were freeing though they could not see it. This was another thing she had read of in Lormt—the strength of a hallucination whereby one could hide safe from danger, though in the accounts she knew, such had consisted mainly of form-changing. To achieve complete invisibility was another matter of which she had not heard. Still, anything was possible with the Power. Who had hidden the child here so successfully?
By those marks in the field the hunters had pursued prey back and forth, played with a victim after a brutal and beastly fashion, prolonging the terrible fear of the one who had fled. A woman carrying a child—who had had something of the Talent brought perhaps to the highest level because of her fear for her own blood, who had managed to so conceal son or daughter and then had herself fallen prey to ravishers and murderers?
All Tirtha knew of such matters had firmly stated that any building of illusion was a weighty exercise, for which one needed time and knowledge of complicated ritual. Certainly there had been no such time granted the hunted here.
Cautiously, with the utmost care, because she could only use her hands to aid, Tirtha drew out the small body, held it against her so she felt the weight of an invisible head against her shoulder. The flesh she touched was very cold, and she quickly drew the edge of her cloak around it, the bulging of the material proving that indeed she held substance, not shadow. With fingertips she sought to examine the face, feeling against her own flesh a faint surge of breath, just as a faltering rhythm of heartbeat could be distinguished. How they might aid a child who remained invisible, she had no idea.
There was a sound from the falcon. The man’s head whipped around, his helm tilted as he looked up at the bird and listened to the sounds uttered by the feathered scout. Then he turned to Tirtha, where she still knelt, cradling the child.
“The Brother can see it,” he said quietly. “What witchery holds for us does not curtain his eyes. He says that it is not wounded, but in deep hiding within itself, that there is great fear in it.”
Tirtha remembered other lore. Deep fear, terror could strike so into a mind that there would come afterwards no reawakening of intelligence. Had this small one retreated so far that they could not draw it back? She had some healing knowledge, that was so, but nothing to handle such a problem. In Estcarp this victim could be taken to one of the hospices set up by the Wise Women to be treated by those specially trained to seek out the inner essence of the mind, draw it carefully back once more. Even those trained to do so had failures when a case was too severe. She had nothing save the belief that she would not have envisioned the plight of the one she held unless that vision meant she could aid.
They could not remain here. The raiders had gone, yes, but that did not mean that their own small party might not be sighted. There was nowhere she might deliver what she held into safety; she must take the fear-bound child with her. For all her cultivated hardness, Tirtha recognized that truth.
The Falconer dropped his hand to the butt of his dart gun. Now the bird took off in the sky. Tirtha’s uneasiness at remaining was obviously shared.
“There is no place for…” She indicated what she held. “We must take it with us.”
She half expected a protest. Falconers knew nothing of children. They did not even own those they fathered. In their villages of women, men impregnated selected females, perhaps several of them, within a stated time, but they were never true fathers. When they were six, the male children went into the Eyrie, or they had in the old days—to be housed apart, trained by selected fighters who were old or maimed and unable to serve in the field. They had no true childhood, and it would seem that the custom served their way of life adequately. To be saddled not only with a child, but one invisible and perhaps catatonic, would be an experience none of his kind had faced before.
Yet he made no comment, only went for Tirtha’s mare, bringing the pony to her. She loosed the throat latch of her cloak, wrapped its folds about the limp body of the child. She passed the bundle to the Falconer, mounted to accept it back. Then, with nearly the same speed with which they had come, they re-crossed the field to pass by the ruins. To bury the dead—she nearly checked her horse by that other small body, then realized that her first charge was the child she carried and that their own safety might depend upon a swift withdrawal.
Back they rode into the forested hills; again the Falconer led. They went more slowly, while he took the precautions of the hunted, dismounting at times to draw a leafed branch over ground where they had left too plainly marked a trail, winding a way that took every advantage of the nature of the country and any cover offered.
The falcon made periodic flights, reporting back at intervals. Though the man did not translate for her any messages it brought, Tirtha guessed that they were in no immediate danger from any other travelers in this land.
In her hold the child lay unmoving, inert. She tried at intervals to break through the mind barrier terror had set, longing fiercely to know more, have the ability to help. There was, she feared, a very good chance that if the conscious mind was lost forever, the will to live might follow. Death would then ensue. Such an end might be merciful, but she knew she would fight for this life with all her strength.