The witch spoke to Simon. “Shapes are not changed in truth, but an illusion is created to bemuse those who would track us down. Let me draw upon your power to swell my own. Now,” she glanced around and brought the small clay brazier to sit by the ax, puffing its coals into life, “we can do what is to be done. Make yourselves ready.”
Koris caught Simon by the arm. “Strip—to the skin—the power does not work otherwise!” He was shedding his own jerkin. And Simon obeyed orders, both of them aiding Vortgin.
Smoke curled up from the brazier, filling the room with a reddish mist in which Koris’ squat form, the fugitive’s muscular body were half hidden. “Take your stand upon the star points—one to each point,” came the witch’s order out of the murk. “But you, Simon—next to me.”
He followed that voice, losing Koris and the other man in the fog. A white arm came out to him, a hand reached for and enfolded his. He could see under his feet the lines of a star point.
Someone was singing—at a far distance. Simon was lost in a cloud where he floated without being. Yet at the same time he was warm—not outwardly, but inwardly. And that warmth floated from his body, down his right arm. Simon thought that if he could watch it he would be able to see that flow—blood-red, warm—being drained in a steady stream. Yet he saw nothing but the greyish mist, he only knew that his body still existed.
The singing grew louder. Once before he had heard such singing—then it had aroused his lusts, and urged him to satisfy appetites he had beaten under by force of will. Now it worked upon him in another way, and he no longer loathed it fiercely.
He had closed his eyes against the endless swirling of the mist, stood attuned to the singing so that each note throbbed within his body to be a part of him, made into flesh and bone from this time forth—yet also did that warm flood trickle out of him.
Then his hand fell limply back against his thigh. The drain had ceased and the singing was fading. Simon opened his eyes. Where the murk had been a solid wall it was now showing holes. And in one of them he caught sight of a brutish face, a beastly caricature of human. But in it sat Koris’ sardonic eyes. And a little beyond was another with disease-eaten skin and a flat lid where an eye had once been.
He wearing the Captain’s eyes glanced from Simon to his neighbor and grinned widely, displaying decayed and yellowed fangs. “A fair company we shall be!”
“Dress you!” snapped the witch from the disappearing murk. “This day you have come out of the stews of Kars to loot and kill. It is your kind who thrive upon hornings!”
They put on the gear they had brought into Kars, but not enough to go too well clad for the dregs of the city that they seemed. And Koris took up from the floor— not the Ax of Volt—but a rust incrusted pole set with hooks, the purpose of which Simon would rather not imagine.
There was no mirror to survey his new self, but he gathered that he was as disreputable as his companions.
He had been expecting changes in the witch and Briant also—but not what he saw. The woman of Estcarp was a crone with filthy ropes of grayish hair about her hunched shoulders, her features underlined with ancient evil. And the youngster was her opposite. Simon stared in pure amazement, for he fronted a girl being laced into the scarlet and gold gown discarded by the witch.
Just as Briant had been pallid and colorless, here was rich beauty, more than properly displayed since her tiring maid did not bother to pull tight breast laces. Instead the crone quirked a finger at Simon.
“This is your loot, bold fellow. Hoist the pretty on your shoulder, and if you grow tired of your burden—well, these other rogues will lend a hand. Play your part well.” She gave the seeming girl a shove between her shoulder blades which sent her stumbling into Simon’s arms. He caught her up neatly, swinging her across his shoulder, while the witch surveyed them with the eye of a stage manager and then gave a tug to strip the bodice yet farther from those smooth young shoulders.
Inwardly Simon was astonished at the completeness of the illusion. He had thought it would be for the eyes only, but he was very conscious that he held what was also feminine to the touch. And he had to keep reminding himself that it was indeed Briant he so bore out of the house.
They found Kars harbored many such bands as theirs that day. And the sights they had to witness, the aid they could not give, ate into them during that journey to the wharves. There was a watch at the gates right enough, but as Simon approached, with his now moaning victim slung over his shoulder, his raffish fellows slinking behind him, as if to welcome the leavings of his feast, the witch scuttled ahead with a bag. She tripped and fell so that the brilliant contents of her looter’s catchall rolled and spilled across the roadway.
Those on guard sprang into action, the officer kicking the crone out of his way. But one man had a slightly higher sense of duty, or perhaps he was more moved by Simon’s supposed choice of pillage. For he swung a pike down in front ofTregarth and grinned at him over that barrier.
“You’ve got you a soft armload there, fishguts. Too good for you. Let a better man sample her first!”
Koris’ pole with its rusty hooks snaked out, hooking his feet from under him. As he sprawled they darted through the gate and along the wharf, other guards in pursuit.
“In!” Briant was pulled out of Simon’s grasp, thrown out into the flood of the river, the Captain following in a cleancut dive to come up beside the draggling red and gold clad body. Vortgin took off at a stumbling run. But Simon, seeing that Koris had Briant’s hand, looked back for the witch.
There was a flurry down the wharf and a tangle of figures. Gun in hand he ran back, pausing for three snap shots, each taking out a man, dead or wounded. His rush brought him there in time to see that twisted gray-haired body lying still while a sword swung downward aimed at the scrawny throat.
Simon shot twice more. Then his fist struck flesh, crushed it against bone. Someone shrieked and fled as he scooped up the witch, finding her weight more than Briant’s. Bearing her over his shoulder he staggered to the nearest barge, his lungs laboring as he dodged among the piled cargo on its deck, heading for the far rail and open water.
The woman in his arms came to life suddenly, pushing against him as if he were indeed a captor she might fight. And that overbalanced Simon so that they went over together, tumbling to strike the river with a force he had not expected. Simon swallowed water, choked, and struck out instinctively, if clumsily.
His head broke the surface and he stared about him for the witch, to see a wrinkled arm, hampered by water soaked rags cutting in a swimmer’s stroke.
“Ho!”
The call came from a barge floating downstream and a rope flicked over its side. Simon and the witch gained the deck, only to have Koris wave them impatiently to the opposite rail into the river again, the craft serving as a screen between them and the city shore.
But here was a small boat with Vortgin sitting therein, Briant leaning over the side being actively sick into the water, while he clutched his red robe about him as if indeed he had been the victim of rapine. As they scrambled down to this refuge, Koris pushed them away from the barge, using the point of his hook spear.
“I thought you lost that at the gate!”
Koris’ ruffian face mirrored his astonishment at Simon’s comment. “This I would never lose! Well, we have us a breathing space. They will believe us hiding on the barge. At least so we can hope. But it would be wise to head to the other shore as soon as this has drifted far enough from the wharves.”
They agreed with the Captain’s suggestion, but the minutes during which they remained wedded to the barge were very long ones. Briant straightened at last, but he kept his face turned from them as if heartily ashamed of the guise he wore. And the witch sat in the bow surveying the far shore with searching intensity.
They were lucky in that night was closing in. And Vortgin knew the surrounding country well. He would be able to guide them inland across the fields, avoiding houses and farms, until they had put enough distance between them and Kars to feel reasonably safe.