Hyron must have read my thought for he answered it.
He flees from that deed he did here—
But he freed me! He could have served me no better—
Who is Gillan?—The question seemed meaningless.
I am Gillan!—Of that I had no doubts.
To him Gillan lies dead, by his hand.—
No!—So plain was it all to me that I could not readily believe Herrel had not also seen the truth.
Yes. Come, we can not long hold open the way between the worlds.—
And Herrel?—
Again the stallion tossed his head.—He chose to tread this road, knowing well the danger. Upon him be his own fate—
“No!” This time I spoke aloud, sending echoes buzzing. “No, and no, and no! Herrel comes forth.”
You also choose your path, witch—
You are oath-bound to aid us.—
There comes an end to all oaths. You have now your other self, as Herrel won it for you. Even our united strength can not hold this opening long. Come back to life, or go into nothingness in time and space.—
He had given me the choice. I was not oath-bound to any course. Save that I knew this, in this moment I could not take the steps which would win me safety, that there was that in me which refused what I could not share. I eyed the shadowy Hyron as I answered:
Hold as you can. Mayhap I will also find that which is another part of Gillan, or her life, as I did not know it until now.—
Now the shadow horse stood still, and those golden eyes which were the most alive part of him studied me.
Your choice, witch. Do not ask for a second one.—
Knowing you, I do not.—I retorted, and in me again stirred that anger which had sent me at the sulking things.
Hyron’s shadow form flickered, was gone. I stood where I was. With that other Gillan I had had a bond, so deep a bond, to guide me. With Herrel—what did link me to Herrel? A sense of gratitude, of shared danger, of dependence (as much as I had ever depended upon another)? None of those were deep enough to form a leading tie.
Hyron had asked me—who is Gillan? And I had answered him out of triumph, pride and knowledge—I am Gillan. But only because Herrel’s sword had made it so could I say that.
Now I must ask myself—who is Herrel—what is he—to me.
I thought of our first meeting in the bridal dell when he had come to me in the mist because I had chosen his cloak out of those lying on the velvet sward. Taller than I, very slender, a boy’s smooth face, holding eyes as old as the hills of High Hallack—that was the first Herrel. Then the feline, lying in relaxed slumber on a moonlit bed, awaking to the peril of sorcery as a net spread about us both—the second Herrel. Again the cat, crouched, eager for battle, sliding down and away to hunt those of Alizon—and he who had returned in man-form from that fight to stand with me against the anger of the Were Riders.
Another Herrel who had wooed me, to whom I did not yield, and a Herrel who had sprung at me in blood-lust. The Herrel I had seen appealing to forces and powers for my healing while the Werefires blazed about me and I lay covered with a blanket of flowers. A Herrel who had ridden with me through the day, who had waited for moonrise, telling me of his land and his loneliness—
A Herrel who was shadow fighting embodied evil to win me time—and who thought he had slain a shadow because reality lay dead—
Who is Herrel—all these and more. That was the truth stripped of all illusion, that of his people, that of my own pride. Who is Herrel? He is another part of me, as Gillan was a part. And without him, do I go bereft and lacking all my days!
Thus—as I sought Gillan—yes! This was the right way, the only way! As I sought the Gillan sorcery had made, so must I seek the Herrel which had made himself a thing which could walk this land. Again I put forth my quest call—
I came out from the gate of that place of yellow light. Must I return to the ghost-wood? Or plunge farther into this world without sun or moon, change in time?
Herrel?—
No answer, but a sense of drawing, of that I was sure. Not back to the wood, forward, bending on it all my powers of concentration.
Something scuttled in the rocks before me. A master with more spider hounds baying on Herrel’s trail? That trail, so faint for me, might be plain for their sniffing. Still it must be mine also, if I would win to my desire.
If this world did not have a night and day according to the pattern I had always known, it would seem it had changes in weather of a sort. There was a wind rising about me, but, I noted, it blew neither hot nor cold, merely as a wind which brushed my body, tugged at my hair. And I stopped to pull that to the back of my head, fastened it there with a length of grass plucked from a tussock. That mist which had dogged my path across the bog-valley and the plain withdrew, or else the wind tattered it into nothingness.
I was on a hillside, and ahead climbed other hills, up to massive mountains which were threatening purple against a sky never plain to see. Around the heads of the mountains crackled swords and spears of lightning fire and there was a rumbling—to be felt rather than heard.
The storm, if storm this was, had not yet hit the hills about me. I climbed among the rocks, which were broken and twisted, taking on all manner of evil shapes, suggesting they hid greater horrors, lurking to spring, rend and tear. I reached the top of the rise. Still that thread, thin as any spider’s weaving, led me on. I looked down into a dusky dip. There was a trickle of liquid running there and from it arose hazy smoke, while it was as dull red as dying coals.
Along its bank a figure moved. It did not walk straight, but wove a staggering path from side to side, sometimes falling, but ever pulling up again to struggle on.
“Herrel!” Hunters to be roused or no, I cried that aloud, throwing myself at the down slope.
The stumbling one halted, but he did not turn. Then he went on at a hobbling run, reaching out to grab at holds to pull himself along. I lost my footing and fell, rolling down to come up against an earth embedded rock. I put my hand to my spinning head, blinked at stones and earth which were no longer steady. “Ssssss—”
The thing had scrambled to the top of a boulder facing me, hunkered there, slavering so that the spittle dripped thickly from its almost lipless mouth. Lipless that mouth might be, but it was well equipped with pointed fangs. Above was a slit which must serve it for nose, and then very large eyes, lacking pupils, flat and dull. But that they could well see me I did not doubt.
Its skull was round and hairless, the ears slits like unto its nose. But the worst was its monstrous resemblance to man—though no man could be as this horror. With skeleton fingers to its mouth it produced a kind of whistling, very high and shrill, hurting my ears. And it was answered. I was hemmed in by the hunters I had driven from Herrel. But that they would flee a second time from anger—that was too much to hope. Nor could I summon that super-human rage to serve me.
“Herrel!” The moment that cry left my lips I repented it. What magic could he summon to our salvation? I would merely draw him back into the worst of traps. The thing on the rock turned its head from side to side. It sat on all fours like an animal, raising one hand now and then to its mouth. Slowly I got to my feet, waiting for it to spring. Another round head came into view, a third, a fourth—How soon would they pull me down? I stopped and caught up a stone. They carried no weapons I could see, and perhaps I could give some account of myself. At the same time all that was sane in me, all the heritage of my own world, shuddered at the thought of any close contact with these nightmare things. The first of the creatures lifted its head high, opened wide its jaws and squalled.
Pride is a great deceiver. We who choose to walk apart from our fellows wear it, not as a cloak, but as an enshelling armour. I who had asked nothing from my fellows—or thought I asked nothing—in that moment I was stripped of a pride which broke and fell from me, leaving me naked and alone. I faced not death as I knew it, as I had felt it in this world, but something infinitely beyond human death, which we have been told is in reality a beginning. From this there would be no issue save a blackness it is not given my kind to face with a mind untouched by madness.