But what came in answer to my sister’s chant was no ground-twisting blow, no hallucination or illusion. It had no visible presence, no outward manifestation. It was—anger. Black, terrible anger—an emotion which was in itself a weapon to batter the mind, crush all identity beneath its icy weight.
Kyllan—Kemoc!
Sluggishly I answered that call to contact. We were not one, but three that had become one. Clumsily perhaps, not too smooth-fitting in our union, yet we were one—to stand against how many? But with that uniting came also Kaththea’s assurance. We did not need to attack; our only purpose was defense. If we could hold, and hold, and continue to hold, we had a chance of winning. It was like one of the wrestling bouts in the camps wherein a man sets the whole of his strength against that of another.
I lost all knowledge of myself, Kyllan Tregarth, Captain of Scouts, seated ahorse in the night in a fire scorched clearing. I was no one—only something. Then, through that which was iron endurance, came a message:
Relax.
Without question I obeyed. The answering pressure came down—flat, hard, crushing—
Unite—hold!
We almost failed. But as a wrestler could use an unorthodox move to unsteady his opponent, so had my sister chosen the time and the maneuver. We threw the enemy off balance, even as she had hoped. The crushing descent met once more a sturdy resistance. Its steady push broke a little, wavered. Then came battering blows, one after another, but even I could sense that each one was slower, less strong. At last they came no more.
We glanced from one to the other, again ourselves, three in three bodies, not one in a place where bodies were naught.
Kemoc spoke first: “For a space—”
Kaththea nodded. “For a space—and how long I do not know. But perhaps we have won enough time.”
True morning was graying the sky as we rode. But the Torgians were no longer fresh, and we dared not push the pace. We ate in the saddle, the journey bread of the army. And we did not talk much, saving all energy for what might lie ahead.
There were the eastern mountains making a great ridge against the sky, dark and threatening. And I knew that, miles distant though they were, these were the final wall between Estcarp and the unknown. What lay behind them? From all that Kemoc had learned in Lormt, there had once been some danger past all our present reckoning. Was he right—had the toll of years lessened that danger? Or were we riding from a peril we did know into danger we did not, and which would be even greater?
The day wore on. We kept to the cover of wasteland when we could. In our favor was the fact that here the farms were very few and far apart. Most of the ground was abandoned to second-growth woodlands. Fewer and fewer were the signs that man had ever planted his rule here.
Still the mountains loomed. Even though we plodded ever towards foothills we seemed to approach no closer. They might have been fixed on some huge platform which moved at a speed equal to ours always ahead. I waited throughout that whole day for another contest of wills, or some sign the hunt was up behind us. For I did not really believe that the Power was so exhausted they could not bring us up short and hold us captive while they sent their ministers to take us bodily prisoner.
Yet we rode untroubled. We halted to rest the horses, to take short naps with one always on watch, and we rode again. And we saw nothing save now and then a curious animal peering through some screen of bush. It was wrong, all wrong; every scout instinct belabored me with that. We would have trouble, we must have trouble—
“There may be this,” Kemoc cut into my thoughts, “—they do not realize that we are not blocked against the east, so they believe that we ride now into a trap without an exit—save back into their hands.”
That made sense. Yet I dared not wholly accept it. And, as we camped that night, without fire, on the bank of a rock-strewn, mountain-born stream, I still kept watch with the feeling that I would be easier in my mind if an attack did come.
“To think so, Kyllan”—that was Kaththea, gazing up at me from where she knelt at the streamside washing her face—“is to open you to attack. A man’s uncertainty is a lever they may use to overset him.”
“We cannot go without taking precautions,” I countered.
“Yes. And thus always they will have a small door open. But it is a door which we may not close—you are most right, brother. Tell me, where do you look for any true hiding place?”
With that she surprised me. What had she thought—that we had taken her from the Place only to ride blindly about the countryside with no foreplan?
Kaththea laughed. “No, Kyllan, I do not think so meanly of your intelligence. That you have a plan, I knew from the moment you called to me from outside the walls of the Place. I know it has something to do with these mountains we seek so wearily. But now is the time to tell the what and the why.”
“Kemoc has planned it, let him—”
She shook drops of water from her hands and wiped them on sun-dried grass from the stream bank. “Then Kemoc must tell me the whole.”
As we sat together, chewing on the sustaining but insipid food, he laid before her the whole story of what he had discovered at Lormt. She listened without question until had done, and then she nodded.
“I can give you this further proof of your mystery, brother. For the past hour, before we reached this spot, I was riding blind—”
“What do you mean?”
She met my eyes gravely. “Just what I said, Kyllan. I rode through a mist. Oh, it was broken now and then—I could make out a tree, a bush, rocks. But for the most part it was a fog.”
“But you said nothing!”
“No, because watching the two of you, I knew it must be some form of illusion which did not trouble you.” She wrapped the part of cake she still held in its protecting napkin and restored it to saddle bag. “And it was also not born of anything they had unleashed against us. You say we do not have this block about the east because we are of mixed heritage. That is good sense. But it would also seem that my witch training mayhap has produced a measure of it to confuse me. Perhaps had I taken the oath and become wholly one of them I could not pierce it at all.”
“What if it gets worse for you?” I blurted out my growing concern.
“Then you shall lead me,” she returned tranquilly. “If it is some long ago induced blank-out, I do not believe it will last—except over the barrier itself, through the mountains. But now I also agree with you, Kemoc. They will relax their hunt, for they will confidently believe that we shall be turned back. They do not realize that at least two of us can go clearsighted into their nothingness!”
I could not share her confidence completely, but also I had learned as a Borderer that worry over what might be never added a single second to a man’s life, nor changed his future for well or ill. I had not encountered Kaththea’s mist, nor had Kemoc. And her explanation for that was reasonable. But could we continue to be so free? Trailing over mountain tracks with impaired vision was a desperate thing.
Kemoc asked a question forming in my own mind. “This mist—of what manner is it? And you say . . . not complete?”
Kaththea shook her head. “No, and sometimes I think it is a matter of will. If I fasten on something which is only a shadow and sharpen my will, I see it the clearer. But that requires a concentration which might work against us.”
“How so?” I demanded.
“Because I must listen—”
“Listen?” My head came up and now I strained to hear too.
“Not with ears,” she replied quickly, “but with the inner hearing. They are not moving against us now; they are content to wait. But will they remain so the farther we go eastward, when they at last know that we are not contained by their long set boundries? Do not think they will ever give up.”
“Has there ever before been one who refused witchhood, I wonder?” Kemoc asked musingly. “The Council must be as startled by your flight as if one of the stones of Es City spoke out against them. But w
hy should they wish to keep you against your will?”
“It is simple enough—I am not of their same pattern. At first they did not push too hard to have me because of that very thing. There were those in the Council who believed I would be a disrupting influence should they strive to make me one with them. Then, as the menace of Karsten grew worse, they were ready to grasp at any promise, no matter how small, of adding in some way to the sum total of the Power. Thus, they would have me to study, to see if through me any new gates might be opened, that the basic amount of their long treasured force be increased. But as long as I would not take the oath, become one with them in a surrendering of self, they could not use me as they wished. Yet I could not delay such a step too long. There was this—” She paused, her eyes dropped to the hands which had rested lazily in her lap. Now those long fingers curled, came together as if protecting something in their cupped palms. “I wanted—some of what they had to offer, that I wanted! Every part of me thirsted for their knowledge, for I knew that I could work wonders also. Then would come to me the thought that if I chose their path, so must I cut away part of my life. Do you think that one who has been three can happily be alone? Thus I turned and dodged, would not answer when they asked of me this thing. And at last came the time when they would risk all against Karsten.
“They spoke plainly to me—to use the Power in a unification of all their selves meant an ending for some. Many would die, did die, burnt out by making of themselves vessels to hold the energy until it could be aimed and loosed. They had to have replacements and no longer would the choice be left to me. And now, with their ranks so depleted, neither will they allow me to go, if they can prevent it. Also—” Now she raised her eyes to look at us directly. “They will deal with you, the both of you, ruthlessly. They always secretly mistrusted and feared our father; I learned that when I was first among them. It is not natural, according to their belief, that a man should hold even a small portion of the Power. And they more than mistrusted our mother for the talent that she built with our father’s aid when by all rights she should have lost her witchship in lying with a man. This they considered an abomination, a thing against all nature. They know you have some gift. After this past night and day, they will be even more certain of that—with good cause to dislike what they have learned. No normal man could have entered the Place, and he certainly could not have won free of it again. Of course, their safeguards there were depleted, yet they were such as would have been death to any male fully of the Old Race. Thus—you are not to be trusted, you are a menace, to be removed!”
“Kaththea, who was the girl, the one in the garden?” Kemoc asked suddenly.
“Girl?”
“You and yet not you,” he answered. “I believed in her—would have taken her and gone. Kyllan would not let me. Why?” He turned now to me. “What was it that made you suspect her?”
“No more than a feeling at first. Then—she was like one made for a purpose. She fastened upon you, as if she wished to hold you—”
“She looked like me?” Kaththea asked.
“Very much, save she was too serene. She smiled always. She lacked”—and I knew I had hit upon the truth—“she lacked humanity.”
“A simulacrum! Then they did expect you, or some attempt to reach me! But it takes long and long to make one of those. I wonder which one of the novices it really was?”
“Shape changing?” Kemoc said.
“Yes. But more intricate, since she was designed to deceive such as you, who had mind contact—or did they know that much of us? Yes, they must have! Oh, that proves it—they must be very sure now that you are the enemy. And I wonder how much longer we have before they realize we are not in any trap, and so move after us?”
To that question we had no answer. But it left us with little peace of mind. The stream tinkled and burbled through the dark, and we could hear the sound of the hobbled Torgians at graze. And we set up watches turn and turn about.
The morning came and this one was clear and bright for Kemoc and me—though Kaththea admitted that the fog was heavy for her, and that she had a disturbing disorientation when we began our ride into the foothills. At last she begged us to tie her to her saddle and lead her mount as the overwhelming desire to turn back was growing so strong she feared she could not control it.
We, too, had a measure of unease. There was a distortion of sight at times which was like that we had experienced looking down into the valley of the Place. And the sensation of moving into some dark and unpleasant surprise was haunting, but not to the point that it had any effect upon our determination.
But we did as Kaththea asked and at intervals she struggled against the ties we put on her, once crying out that directly before us was sudden death in the form of a deep chasm—though that was not true. Finally she shut her eyes and had us lay a bandage over them, saying that once shut into her own mind in that fashion, she was better able to combat the waves of panic.
The faint trace of road had long since vanished. We went by the easiest riding we could pick through true wilderness. I had lived much among mountains, but the weirdly broken ways we now followed were strange to nature, and I thought I knew the reason. Just as the mountains of the south had been toppled and turned, so, too, had these heights.
It was evening of the second day since we had left the streamside when we reached the end of open ways. Before us now lay heights a determined man might climb on foot, but not on horseback. We faced that fact bleakly.
“Why do you stop?” Kaththea wanted to know.
“The way runs out; there is only climbing ahead.”
“Wait!” She leaned down from her saddle. “Loose my hands!”
There was such urgency in that that Kemoc hastened to obey. As if she could see in spite of the blindfold, her fingers moved surely out, touched his brows, slid down to the eyes he blinked shut. For a long moment she held them so before she spoke:
“Turn, face where we must go.”
With her touch still on his closed eyes, my brother moved his head slowly to the left, facing the cliff face.
“Yes, oh, yes! Thus I can see it!” There was excitement and relief in Kaththea’s voice. “This is the way we must go, then?”
But how could we? Kemoc and I could have done it, though I wondered about his maimed hand. But to take Kaththea bound and blindfolded—that was impossible.
“I do not think you need to take me so,” she answered my silent doubts. “Leave me thus for tonight, let me gather all my powers, and then, with the dawn—let us try. There will be an end to the block, of that I am sure.”
But her certainty was not mine. Perhaps with the dawn, instead of climbing, we would have to backtrack, to seek out another way up through the tortured debris of this ancient battlefield.
VI
Icould not sleep, though there was need for it in my body—to which my mind would not yield. Finally I slipped from my blanket and went to where Kemoc sat sentry.
“Nothing,” he answered my question before it was voiced. “Perhaps we are so far into the debatable land we need not fear pursuit.”
“I wish I knew at whose boundary we are,” I said. And my eyes were for the heights that we must dare tomorrow.
“Friend or enemy?” In the moonlight his hand moved so there was a glint of light from the grip of the dart gun lying unholstered on his knee.
“And that—” I gestured to the weapon. “We have but two extra belts of darts. Steel may have to serve us in the end.”
Kemoc flexed his hand and those stiff fingers did not curl with their fellows. “If you are thinking of this, brother, do not underrate me. I have learned other things besides the lore of Lormt. If a man determines enough he can change one hand for the other. Tomorrow I will belt on a blade for the left hand.”
“I have the feeling that what we win beyond will be sword-taken.”
“In that you may be very right. But better land sword-taken than what lies behind us now.”
I gaz
ed about. The moon was bright, so bright it seemed uncannily so. We were in a valley between two ridges. And Kemoc had his post on a ledge a little more than a man’s height above the valley floor. Yet here our sight was restricted as to what lay above us, or farther down the cut of our back trail. And this blindness worried me.
“I want to see from up there,” I told him.
In the brightness of the moon I did not fear trouble, the slope being rough enough to afford good hand and toe holds. Once on the crest I looked to the west. We had been climbing all day as we worked our way through the foothills. The tree growth was sparse now and I had a clear sight. With the long seeing lenses from my service belt I searched our back trail.
They were distant, those pricks of light in the night. No effort had been taken to conceal them; rather they had been lit to let us know we were awaited. I counted some twenty fires and smiled wryly. So much did those who sent those waiting sentries respect the three of us. Judging by Borderer practices there must be well over a hundred men so encamped, waiting. How many of them were those with whom Kemoc and I had ridden? Were any drawn from my own small command? Freed from the necessity of southward patrols they could be used thus.
But we were not yet in a trap. I pivoted to study the cliff wall which now fronted us. As far as the glass advanced my own sight north and south there appeared no easier way up. And would those others, back there, remain at the line they had drawn, or come after us?
I dropped to Kemoc’s perch.
“So they are there. . . . ”
Mind contact passed news swiftly.
“I make it at least a full field company, if we go by fire count. Maybe more.”
“It would seem there is a vow we shall be taken. But I doubt if they will sniff this far in after us.”
“I could sight no better climbing place.”
There was no need to put the rest of my worry into words: he shared it fully already. But now he gave me a short reply.