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 boundaries? 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 why 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?”