Her hand closed convulsively as if she could still grip the. haft of that weapon. But what she held was the bud. And it moved! As her fingers spread flat, the flower began to open.
The dull brown outer husks split. From the heart within came that glow which had lightened her path, heartened her, during her journey through the night in the Waste.
Powers and powers, she thought frantically. Now her other hand went to that box Uta had entrusted to her, closed on it where it lay within her shirt.
Marbon stirred. His face was no longer that of the man she knew—slack or conscious either one. Could it be possible that features could writhe in that intolerable fashion—resettle into an entirely different countenance? Even if this change was only illusion, it was surely never meant for any one sane to witness. She was icy cold, now filled with such terror that she could not will herself to the slightest movement towards escape, even though Dwed now left the door open for her going.
The man fronting her flung high his arms. His face turned up to the twining, squirming snakes of fog above them. He called:
“Jartar—sle—frawa—ti!”
The mist whirled in a pattern which made one dizzy to watch. Brixia, now that Marbon’s gaze no longer held and commanded hers, closed her eyes lest she lose her senses watching the vortex of the fog. Then the fragrance of the flower wafted upward to clear her head.
What he might have called on she could not guess. But—something answered. It was here—with her—for, though she did not open her eyes to look, she was sure this new presence loomed near her—reached out—
Box and flower—she did not know why the two came together in her mind and that combination seemed right—needful. Flower and box—Do not look! What is here had come to cloud her thoughts, lessen what she might do to defend herself. There was a tugging which she must not yield to.
Once more the cry arose from her, the appeal to the only thing which seemed to promise safety in this shifting and alien world.
“Green mother, what must I do? This is no magic of my own—in these ways am I lost!”
Did she in truth cry that aloud, or was it only thought so intense that it seemed open speech, a plea made perhaps fruitlessly to a power she could not understand? Who were the gods—those great sources of power who were reputed to use men and women as tools and weapons? And did those so used have any defenses at all? Was this struggle now centering on her as battle between one alien power and another?
Open!
An order—delivered by whom—or what? The thing Marbon had summoned? If so she was indeed in danger. Brixia still kept her eyes tightly closed, tried to do the same for her mind. As the mist had made a prisoner of Dwed, so did the will she sensed strive to enmesh her—not in body but in mind.
“By what I hold,” Brixia cried aloud, “let me stand fast!”
Box and flower—
Her hands moved, bringing together the two objects she held. She could not be sure whether she acted by the commands of the Light, or the Dark. But it was done. And at the same moment she opened her eyes.
There was—
She was not in the mist curtained room of the pillar, rather she stood before the high seat in the feast hall of a keep. There were torches blazing high in the rings fastened to the stone of the walls. A cloth woven of many colors, each hue fading or deepening into the next, lay down the center of the board. And on that cloth were drinking horns of gleaming crystal, of the righ green of malachite, the warm red-brown of camelian, such a display as only the greatest of the dale lords might hope to equal.
Before each place was a platter of silver. And there were many dishes and bowls set out—some bearing patterned edges, or set with the wink of gems.
At first Brixia thought that she stood in a deserted hall and then she discovered that there was indeed a company there, but those who sat to feast were but the faintest of shadows, mere wisps so tenuous that she could not be sure which was man and which woman. It was as if that which was inert could be clearly seen, but life to her eyes was that of those shades which some dalespeople said clung to old, ill-omened places and were inimical to the living out of jealousy and despair at their own unhappy state.
Brixia cried out. She swayed, fought to move from where she stood directly before the high seat where he or she who ruled this shadow company might mark her presence in a moment. But she could not flee, no, she was fast held to face what might come.
A black flash—if light could be dark instead of white, slashed between her and the high seat, as a sword might swing to set a barrier of moving steel. Crooked and controlled, a will which was not wholly evil, yet carried with it the stigmata of the dark, was like a blow as it strove to seize upon her. It flailed at her like a harshly laid on lash. And now it seemed that the ghost shape in the high seat did indeed turn upon her visible eyes of red flame.
The shadow deepened even as Marbon’s features had appeared to move and change, grew to be more substance. It seemed to the girl that what crouched now in that high backed chair was no noble lord such as might rule this hall. Rather that which leered at her with those flame eyes, which might have been wrought from the coals of hell itself, was an outlaw, foul, the very worst of the brutes she had in the past fled, or hidden from, knowing well what would happen to her were she to fall into their hands.
Gone!
Crouched on the high seat now was a toad thing from the Waste—obscenely bloated, its toothed jaws agape, its clawed paws outstretched. A giant among its kind, fully as large and menacing as the outlaw shape it had replaced. It gabbled in distorted speech:
“Bane—the Bane!”
Box and flower—
Brixia came aware that she was pressing both of these with bruising force against her breast. Box and flower—
The toad thing winked out. Now it was the bird-woman. Her cruel bill clicked, she held high her arm wings, the talons crooked, and it would seem she was on the very point of hurling herself into the air, launching an attack on Brixia.
Illusions? The girl could not be sure. For as each appeared it was as solid, seemingly as substantial as the seat in which it sat or squatted. Box and flower—
Now—now it was Dwed! Still enwrapped in the mist he lay limply rather than sat in the high seat. All was hidden save a portion of his face. He raised his head weakly, looked at her with eyes which were dulled with horror and yet held in them a desperate plea:
“Bane—” The single word was a tortured whisper which echoed hollowly all through that hall.
Then—he was gone. In his place Uta—Uta firmly visible but in the grip of a monster shadow thing, twisting, fighting vainly to free herself ever as the misshapen paws netted tight about her furred throat to squeeze all life from her.
“Bane!” the cat squawked.
As had the others Uta vanished. For a long moment the high seat seemed empty. Then—no more shadow—here was a man as visible and as real as Marbon had been when he fronted her in the bubble room.
He wore mail, not the silken robe of a feaster, and a helmet overshadowed his face.
“Marbon!” Brixia near spoke that name aloud and then she saw that this was not the stricken Lord of Eggarsdale, though there was surely some close kin line linking them one to the other. But on this man’s face a harsh and arrogant pride had set an unbreakable seal. And there was a twist about his lips as if he bit upon something sour and unpalatable which poisoned any pleasure of this feasting.
Like their lord the others ranged there became the clearer. Nor were they all, Brixia realized with a shiver, of the human kind. There was a lady robed in the green of new spring leaves who sat upon the right hand of the lord. But her flowing hair was as delicately and freshly green as the gown which she wore, and her face, beautiful as it was, was not that of a human woman. On the other seat, to the lord’s left, a cat’s head arose not so far above the level of the table. In color it might have been Uta but Brixia believed, could she see it better, this strange feline would have been half again as large.