How much of his threat was possible I did not know. But perhaps neither did Melusa. However, she made one more trial of us. This time she reached out her arms to Bartare and called, in a softened voice and one utterly beguiling; “Bartare, come to me!”
And the girl tried with all her might, throwing herself against that invisible barrier until she sank down, still feebly beating at it with bruised hands. Yet it held fast. And at last Melusa’s arms fell to her sides, and she spoke to Kosgro.
“If the protection holds against her – then she is useless to us. It seems that in some manner you have corrupted her. Therefore, she is yours. You ask for a gate – well enough, you shall have it – ”
“No!” Kosgro interrupted her with an authoritative note in his voice. “I did not ask for a gate. I asked for our gates – the one through which I entered and the one through which these others came. We will not have another strange world set before us but those which were our own before we were drawn here.”
How was he to make sure of that? We could be deceived even now. I wondered what safeguard we could summon against treachery.
“Your own gates? Very well.” That shadow smile I did not like grew stronger, and I liked it even less, for it made her beauty even more sinister. “You shall have what you ask for, though you may find that it shall profit you little and that even being Between is better.”
“By the Seven Names you will swear – by Archeron, by Balafmar, by – ”
Her face held lines of horror, and she raised her hand as if to hurl some ill fate at him.
“Do not sully those powers with your tongue. You are filth, muck, less than nothing! It is not allowed for such as you to call upon them! You have so profaned great things and deserve – ”
He silenced her for a moment, but no more, by raising the rod. “Filth am I, and muck, and such as dares not recite your names of power? Yet I hold this which is of a greater power, and I am neither blasted nor overborne in the doing of it. I have learned some of your secrets, Melusa. And such as I have learned, I have held against this hour when I might force one of you to do my bidding. Therefore, I say to you, swear by those names when you say you will return us to the worlds from whence we came.”
She had herself under control now, but red hate burned in her eyes. “I cannot return you to those worlds. I can but open the gates. The going through must be yours.”
“So be it. But first you swear.”
And she swore, though the names were sounds not clear to my hearing, but they seemed to satisfy Kosgro. When she was done, he nodded.
“Well enough. Now the gates, Melusa.”
I reached down and gave one hand to Oomark. He caught it in a tight grip. Then I went to Bartare. She tried to jerk away from me, but her strength was so spent that she could not resist my hold. I was determined that we three be so linked as to be together when we went back to where we belonged.
Then I looked at Kosgro. Now that the time had come when we would separate, I was confused and unhappy. There was so much I wanted to say but no time left in which to say it. Suddenly I did not want to go without him. Yet that was what he had asked, and by his choice I must abide.
He was still watching Melusa.
“We are ready, Lady.”
“Go then, and get what peace you can out of it!” she cried. She stamped her foot on the turf. From that impact a crack opened and spread with great speed, as if the mound were being riven apart to form a dark archway.
“Come on!” For the last time I would hear Kosgro say that. He marched into the dark, and reluctantly I followed, drawing the children with me.
17
We were caught in a darkness that was also movement. There was a sensation of being whirled this way and that. I was no longer conscious of my body, if I kept hold of the children, if I had been reduced to a wisp blown by some storm. Then the darkness was entire, and I was at rest.
Such contentment did not last. In me grew a nagging, urging me to effort. And that I could not escape, so I opened my eyes.
Here was no dark. Sun was warm, hot on me, blazing down to set me blinking, half-blinded – a natural, normal sun, what I had so long missed in that place of eternal mist.
I sat up to look around, to make sure I was back in a world like that of my birth. There was a stretch of sand on which I had lain, beyond red rocks among gray ones. Seeing those, I found memory stirred, a small prick of fear. Red rocks – ? There was a good reason to fear those.
Within touching distance lay a small body. It wore only rags of breeches, but it was human! No horns showed on the forehead, and its bare feet were feet, not hoofs! I gave a sigh of relief. Oomark was a boy again, not the changeling the other world had made him.
Oomark – But where was Bartare? Had she escaped me during the transition, remained in the gray land? I looked around. No – there lay a huddle of green, with thin, pale legs and arms outflung, as if she had not fallen there gently but had been carelessly tossed aside, a toy for which some giant child had no longer any desire.
It was to her I crawled first, turning her over, raising her in my arms, fearing in those first moments that she did not sleep but had left us forever. Her eyes were tightly closed under the black bar of eyebrow, and her face was pale, as if she had suffered some long and wasting illness. But she breathed evenly and lightly, as if she lay in normal sleep.
“Bartare!” I called her name softly, resting her head against my shoulder. “Bartare!”
She stirred. Her lips shaped words too low for me to hear. Then she opened her eyes arid looked into my face. For a moment I read no recognition in them, only hazy bewilderment. Then memory must have returned, for her face mirrored such desolation I thought no child could feel. She began to cry, not in noisy, protesting sobs, but with a depth of silent sorrow. So her tears gathered and ran down her cheeks, her mouth worked, and yet she made no. sound. The sight of that awoke all my sympathy. I held her even closer, rocking her back and forth, crooning with my lips close to her tumbled hair, trying to give her all the comfort she would accept from me.
“Kilda?” Oomark sat up and looked at us. There was a shadow of fear in his face. He crawled across the sand and gravel to my side and threw his arms about both me and his sister, burrowing as close to us as he could. We might have been the only point of safety in a hostile world. I loosened part of my hold on Bartare to put an arm about him also, holding them both.
“It is all right,” I repeated over and over, making singsong of the words. “It is all right. We are back, back where we belong.”
This was the place where our adventure had begun, the stretch of dried river valley with the sounding rocks that had opened the gate between worlds. How long had we been gone? Time measurement escaped me. I could only guess that it must add up to days, and we must have been the objects of a search. Perhaps such searchers were still about, and I could find them. My body ached with a depth of fatigue I did not remember ever having felt before. I looked to my feet wearing those crude sandals – the branch – For the first time I remembered the notus and looked to my belt, where I had made it fast before I had caught at the children by the symboled mound. But it was gone. However, my feet – they were my feet again with proper toes. So I must be all human once more, even as Oomark was.
“I’m hungry and cold. I want to go home!” Oomark cried.
“We shall, oh, we shall. Bartare, my dear, do you think you can walk a little? If we get back to the ranger station, we can get home quickly.”