“You are of Estcarp.” A statement and yet a question as if, looking upon him, the woman doubted that.
“I serve the Guardians. But I am not of the Old Blood.” His appearance, Simon decided, was what puzzled her.
“Of Estcarp.” Now it was a statement. “Tell me, witch warrior, who commands in Estcarp—you?”
“No. I am Border Warder of the south. Koris of Gorm is marshal and seneschal.”
“Koris of Gorm. And what manner of man is Koris of Gorm?”
“A mighty warrior, a good friend, a keeper of oaths, and one who has been hurt from his birth.” From whence had come those words for his use? They were not phrased to match his thinking, yet what he had said was the truth.
“And how came the Lord of Gorm to serve the witches?”
“Because he was never truly lord of Gorm. When his father died his stepmother called in Kolder to establish the rule for her own son. And Koris, escaping Kolder, came to Estcarp. He wishes not Gorm, for Gorm under Kolder died, and he was never happy there.”
“Never happy there—But why was he not happy? Hilder was a kindly man and a good one.”
“But those of his following would never let Koris forget he was—strange . . .” Simon hesitated, striving to choose the right words. Koris’ mother had come from Tormarsh. This woman could even be kin to the seneschal.
“Yes.” She did not add to that but asked a very different question. “This maid who was taken with you, what is she to you?”
“A friend—one who has been with me in battle. And she is betrothed to Koris who seeks her now!” If there was any advantage to be gained from the thread of connection between the seneschal and the marsh people, then Loyse must have it.
“Yet they say she is duchess in Karsten. And there is war between the witches and those of Karsten.”
It would seem that Tormarsh, for all its taboo-locked borders, still heard the news from outside the swamp.
“The story is long—”
“There is time,” she told him flatly, “for the telling of it. And I would hear.”
There was a definite order in that. Simon began, cutting the tale to bare outline, but telling of the ax marriage made for Loyse in Verlaine’s towers and all that happened thereafter. But when he spoke of the ship-wreck on the coast and how he, Koris, and two survivors of the Guard had climbed to discover themselves in the long-lost tomb of Volt, where Koris had boldly claimed Volt’s ax from the hands of the mummified dead, the Torwoman halted him abruptly, made him go into details. She questioned and requestioned him on small points, such as the words, as well as he could remember, that Koris had used when he asked the ax of Volt, and how that ax had been taken easily, with the long dead body crumbling into dust once the shaft had been withdrawn from the claw hands.
“Volt’s ax—he bears Volt’s ax!” she said when he was done. “This must be thought upon.”
Simon expelled his breath in a gasp. She was gone—as if she had never stood there, solid body on solid pavement. He took two strides to the same spot where she had been standing only an instant earlier, drove his boot down in a stamp which proved the footing as solid as it looked. But—she was gone!
Hallucination? Had she ever been here at all? Or was this one of those mind-twisting tricks such as the witches played? Shape-changing—that was as eerie in its way as this instant vanishing. So this could be another form of magic, with its own rules, simple enough when one was trained by those rules. And not only the Torwoman practiced it, for the boy had winked out in just the same way. But to those who did not know the trick, this room or others like it would continue to be prison cells.
Simon returned to the bed. The tray with its beaker and plate still rested there. That much was real. And the fact that his hunger and thirst was gone, that he felt strong and able again—that was no hallucination.
He had been captured and imprisoned. But he had also been fed, and so far he had not been threatened. His dart gun was gone, but he had expected to be disarmed. What did these marsh dwellers want? He and Loyse had come into their territory by accident. He knew that they resented all trespassing bitterly, but were they fanatical enough on that subject to hold the innocent equally guilty with any determined invader?
Did they close their borders to everyone? Simon remembered Aldis, her hands tight upon the Kolder talisman, so deeply sunk in her voiceless call for aid that she was unaware of action about her. She must have expected such aid—so Kolder crawled somewhere in Tormarsh as evilly as the lizard thing had crawled upon the flyer.
Kolder. To those of witch blood Kolder was a void, noticeable in its presence because of that void. In the times past he, too, had known Kolder by sensing it—not as a void but as a waiting menace. Could he pick up the canker now the same way?
Simon set the tray on the stool, stretched himself once more on the bed, closed his eyes, and set his will free. He had always had this gift of foreseeing, in part a limping gift, not to be disciplined into any real service. But he was sure that since he had come to Estcarp that gift had grown, strengthened. Jaelithe—the twist of pain which always came now with the thought of Jaelithe. She had used the symbols of power between them twice and those had glowed in answer. So that she had hailed him as one of her kind, then . . .
Now, though he intended to go hunting for the cancer of Kolder, rather did his mind return again and again to Jaelithe, to pictures of her. First, as he had seen her fleeing in rags with the hounds of Alizon baying on her trail, then as she had ridden in mail and war helm to Sulcarkeep when Kolder had made its first foul move in the present war. Jaelithe, kneeling on the quay of that fortress, breathing witchery into the scraps of sail for the vessels they had hastily whittled from wood, tossing those crude ships into the sea, so that a mighty fleet moved out through the cloaking mist to confound the enemy. Jaelithe acting as a sorceress and reader of fortunes, brewer of love potions in Kars, when her summoning had brought him across many miles to her aid. Jaelithe, shape-changed into a hideous hag and riding in company over the border to rouse Estcarp for war.
Jaelithe in Gorm, telling him in her own way that that way was also his from then on. Jaelithe in his arms, being one with him in a way no other woman had ever been before, or would ever be again. Jaelithe excited, bright-eyed, that last morning, in the belief that her witchcraft had not gone from her at all, but that she was all she had been. Jaelithe—gone from him as if she used the traveling magic of these Torfolk.
Jaelithe! Simon did not cry that aloud, but inside of him it was one great shout of longing. Jaelithe!
“Simon!”
His eyes snapped open, he was staring up into the gloom, for the crawling lights had returned to their scattered clusters along the walls.
No, that had not come in any audible voice. Breathing fast, he closed his eyes again. “Jaelithe?”
“Simon.” Firm, assured, as she had ever been.
“You are here?” He thought that, trying to shape the words clearly in his mind as a man might fumble about in a foreign tongue of which he knew little.
“No—in body—no.”
“You are here!” he replied with a conviction he could not explain.
“In a way, Simon—because you are—I am. Tell me, Simon, where are you?”
“Somewhere within Tormarsh.”
“So much is already known, since we are aware that your flyer dropped there. But, you are no longer Kolder ruled.”
“Fulk’s belt—one of the bosses on it—their planting.”
“Yes, it opened a gate for them. But you were never so much theirs that we could not alter their spell a little. That is why you did not fly seaward at their bidding, but inland. Tormarsh is no ally of ours, but perhaps there is better chance to treat with Tormarsh than Kolder.”