“Who-,” she began; then she broke off, her gaze holding Alon’s. “Why, it is my young charge, all grown up,” she said after a moment, then smiled in a fashion that made Lydryth put hand to the hilt of the sword resting within her quarterstaff.
“Young Alon, well-met, well-met indeed! I was planning to seek you out, though perhaps not so soon. There are others I must visit first, before I will be ready to take on one who apprenticed with Hilarion.”
“You know-” Alon broke off even before Lydryth could nudge him to silence. Power this woman might have, knowledge, also, no doubt, but they did not need to give her aught that she did not already know.
“Oh, I know… I know much, my fine young Adept. Much more than I did even a half-hour ago, as you no doubt witnessed. How did you happen by, Alon? Chance? That seems unlikely. Well, perhaps you were drawn by my spelling. After all, Power does call to Power, does it not?”
Alon remained silent, and the witch, for the first time, turned her attention to Lydryth. “And who is your fair companion, Alon? Your bride? Or is she something less… formal, perhaps? Your leman?”
The songsmith had heard battle-taunts before, and did not allow her face to change at Yachne’s insult, but Alon stepped forward with an angry imprecation. “No, Alon,” Lydryth said, softly, catching his arm, “that’s what she wants.”
“Perceptive girl,” the witch said, amused. There was a wild glitter in her eyes that Lydryth thought was not wholly due to the purple glow from her side of the crystal. The younger woman swallowed, suddenly more frightened than she had been all night. “And what symbol it is that you bear on that staff of yours?” Yachne asked, her eyes narrowing with speculation. A moment later, she gave a shout of laughter. “Oh, very good! Very good indeed! The gryphon-lord! Landisl’s vessel, Kerovan himself, gave that to you, did he not? Perhaps . . . yes, I shall visit him next!”
“Visit him for what?” Lydryth demanded, mostly to stall for time, for she had a sick feeling that she already knew whereof the witch spoke.
“I must visit them all, my dear,” Yachne said, in a mockconfiding tone. “All the abominations, all the unnatural creatures that possess Power without any right to it. Males!” She spat. “They hold my sisters in bondage, subject to their disgusting lusts, their violence and greed. There are enough males with undeserved Power to make me the most powerful sorcer- ess this world has ever seen. Lord Kerovan, that disgusting half-blooded monster, shall indeed be next. . . .”
A face appeared before them, one that Lydryth knew well, black-haired, with amber eyes that were slitted of pupil, like unto a goat’s. “And also his son, Firdun.” The image in the crystal altered to that of Lydryth’s foster-brother. “He is young, but they told me that he will be one of the Seven, so he must be taken care of. . . .”
“Who is ‘they’? And what are ‘the Seven’?” Alon broke in, sharply, but Yachne ignored him. Her eyes were half-closed as she dreamily regarded the images she was conjuring. “And of course I must not forget Simon Tregarth, and his unnatural whelps….” Three strongly marked faces, one older, the next two so alike in age and feature they could only be brothers, appeared in turn.
“And then you, my dear young Alon, I am afraid that you must be next. …” Alon’s own features glimmered before them. “I will be quick, my dear, so fear not. You will not suffer, that I promise. And if you wish, I shall let you remain alive, so you can be with your young lady, here.” She smiled at him gently. “Perhaps you could take up farming, since you will no longer be fitted for a life as a sorcerer!”
“You’re mad,” Alon said softly, and, for the first time since they had met, Lydryth heard fear in his voice.
“Certainly not!” she glared at him, shaken out of her reverie. “I have thought it through most carefully. The strongest of the abominations is Hilarion himself, and I shall need all of your combined Power before I can best him.”
A last image formed on the crystal surface, that of a man who was still barely past youth in feature, but whose eyes bore the wisdom-much of it sad-of ages past.
“Yachne,” Alon said, and Lydryth could tell that he was fighting to keep his voice even, “where did you leam that spell? When I knew you-before-you did not possess such abilities.”
She smiled at him. “My abilities were not something you could measure, my dear. But you have the right of it… I did not know this spell until they taught it to me.” “Who?” he prodded.
But abruptly her urge to confide vanished, and she shook her head, her eyes as bright and cunning as those of a rasti run mad. “No, I think not, young Alon. That you must discover for yourself-if you dare. And now-” Her hand moved quickly over the surface of the crystal, and she chanted softly beneath her breath. “-I bid you farewell. . . .”
As the last syllable left her lips, she strode toward them. Lydryth gasped with terror. Fighting she knew, either with fists or steel, but Yachne was something far outside her experience, and instinct made her recoil. She ducked behind Alon, despising herself for such cowardice but unable to control her reaction.
When she dared to look again, expecting to find the witch before them on the ledge, there was only the view of the empty stone cave. “But. . . where did she go?” she asked, in blank astonishment. “I thought she would step through and be here.”
“She activated her side of the crystal,” Alon said absently, standing before the mirrored surface and studying it, head tilted to one side. “She went through it, to somewhere else. Probably to seek out this Kerovan she spoke of.”
“Kerovan! No … oh, no!” Lydryth buried her face in her hands, trying by force of will to control her panic. Finally she was able to raise her head and say, tersely, “Do you remember my telling you of the lord and lady who raised me after my mother vanished and my father was mind-blasted? That was Lord Kerovan and his lady, Joisan! Alon, we must stop Yachne!”
“If she has all of Dinzil’s abilities, she will make a formidable opponent,” he said bleakly.
“Who is-or, rather, was-this Dinzil?”
“The strongest of the Dark Adepts from the days when Escore lay under the lash of the Shadow,” he told her. “He kidnapped and nearly seduced Kaththea, my foster-mother, when she was but a maid. Seduced her, not in body, but in mind, so she turned from her family, and the Light, to the Darkness. It was only by the courage of her brother, Kemoc, who dared to enter the Dark Tower and seek her out, that she was saved. Dinzil disappeared after his forces were defeated. We always suspected that he had passed through some Gate of his own devising.”
“Until Yachne summoned him.”
“Yes. This Kerovan, he is a sorcerer also?”
“Kerovan has, in the past, wielded the magic of the ancient gryphon-lord, Landisi,” Lydryth said. “But he cannot rely upon Landisl’s Power. He has abilities of his own, true, but whether they would prove enough to best one like Yachne…” She shuddered. “She is mad, Alon.”
“Yes.”
“If we cannot stop her, we must at least warn Kerovan of his danger!”
“I agree,” Alon said. “But for us to essay this Gate will take some doing. I have never opened one before.”
“Did Hilarion teach you to do so?”
“He taught me the principles involved. But he warned me against such an action, reminding me of the time that he opened a Gate, entered another world, then found himself trapped and enslaved for thousands of our years.”
Lydryth remembered that Alon had mentioned such before, and bit her lip. “But to be able to step from one place to another-one land to another, in a single heartbeat-we must chance it! We have no hope of catching her, else.”
“I know,” he said heavily. “Let me study how this can be accomplished, while you pack our gear and prepare as hearty as a meal as possible. Using the Power drains the energy . . . food will offset that loss by a small measure.”
Lydryth nodded, and, in the grey light of predawn, went to do as he bade. She found that she was too upset to have much appetite, but forced herself to eat, not knowing when they would have the chance again. Alon chewed and swallowed mechanically, never taking his eyes from the portal, occasionally muttering snatches of arcane words beneath his breath, as if trying them out.
“Lydryth,” he said, as the sun’s rising flushed the snowcapped peaks that towered above them to the east with crimson, “lend me that talisman you bear, please.”