“You have learned nothing?” Far ago now was that night we had wrought magic that Kaththea’s spirit messenger might cross time. “What happened? How and why have you come here?”
Kemoc answered first. “As to your first question, we have learned that trouble arises swiftly hereabouts. We left the islet because—” He hesitated, his eyes avoiding mine.
I gave him the rest: “Because you sought one whose folly had made him easy prey for the enemy? Is that not the right of it?”
And he respected me enough not to give any comforting lie.
“Yes. Kaththea—when we awoke, she knew, and through her did I also, that evil had come to you.”
Kaththea asked softly. “Had you not thrown open the gate to it when you used your gift in an ill fashion, even if the result was for our good? We knew not how you had been taken from us, only that this was so. And that we must find you.”
“But the Familiar—you needed to await its return.”
She smiled at my protest. “Not so. Where I am, there it will come—though that has not yet happened. We found your trail—or at least a trail of active evil. But where it led”—she shivered—“there we dared not follow—not without such safeguards for our inner selves that I did not have the knowledge to weave. Then those came a-hunting, and we ran before them. But this is a holy place in which that kind can not venture. So we took refuge here, only to discover that we had trapped ourselves, for they have woven their net outside and we are within two walls, one built by the enemy.”
Then she sighed and swayed so that I threw out an arm to support her. Her eyes closed and she leaned back against me as Kemoc made plain the rest of their plight.
“I do not suppose, brother, that you carry any food? It has been three days since we have eaten. There was dew on the stone this morning, enough to quench our thirst a little. But water in such small amounts does little for the filling of an empty belly!”
“I won in with this,” I touched the whip with my toe. “It can cut us a passage out—”
Kemoc shook his head. “We have not the strength nor the quickness for such a fight now. Also, they have a counterspell to strip Kaththea of all Power if she ventures forth.”
But I refused to accept that. “With Kaththea on Shabra, and you and I running—it is worth the try!” But I knew that he was right. Outside the protection of the circle stones we could not out-run and out-fight that pack, now padding, trotting, drifting about, waiting for us to try such desperate measures. In addition both Kemoc and Kaththea had said they were immured here by magic.
“Oh!” In my grasp Kaththea shuddered, shaking as she had on the night she had brought forth the Familiar. She opened her eyes and looked before her with a wide, unseeing stare.
“To the stone with her!” Kemoc cried. “It holds the most virtue in this place.”
There was a blanket on the stone, as if perhaps during the night they had rested there together. I swung her pitifully light body up to lie on that, and then scrambled to her side, pulling Kemoc after me. She still moaned a little, her hands moving restlessly back and forth, sometimes lifting up as if she sought to pluck something from the air.
The din which had followed my entrance into the circle had died away. Those creatures paraded in utter silence now, so that Kaththea’s small plaints could be heard.
One of those reaching hands caught at Kemoc’s scarred fingers, clasped and tightened. His thought sped to me and I took her other hand. We were linked now as we had been on that night.
Expectancy awoke in me. There was a glow in the air above the blue block. The glow grew brighter, formed an image, a winged wand, looking solid and distinct.
For a moment we saw it so, and then, as a dart, it dropped in a streak of white fire. Kaththea’s back arched and she gave a great cry, as her messenger returned to that which had given it birth. She was quiet but not silent—not to our minds—for as she learned so did we also, and for us rock, day and world vanished as that knowledge unfolded.
* * *
* * *
XIII
IT WAS A strange sight we had, operating on two levels. First it was as if we hung in the sky above this land as it had once been, all its fields, woods, streams and mountains spread below us. And it was a fair land then, holding no shadows, no spots of corruption. Also it was a well peopled land, with garths and manors serene and safe. There were three cities—no, four . . . for in the foothills of the mountains was a collection of tall towers apart in use and spirit from the rest. Men and women of the Old Race went about, content and untroubled.
Also there were others, partly of the Old Race, partly of a yet older stock. And these had gifts which led them to be revered. There was a golden light on this land and it drew us as if we rode at twilight through the wind and dark of a coming storm, to see before us the guest lights of a manor wherein dwelt the best of friends. Yes, it drew us, yet we could not accept what it promised, for between us lay the barrier of time.
Then that all-encompassing vision narrowed, and we watched the coming of change. There were Wise Women here, but they did not rule so autocratically as they did in Estcarp. For not only did the women of this land have the gift of Power—among them were men who could also walk with spirits.
How did the ill begin? With good intentions, not by any active evil. A handful of seekers after knowledge experimented with Powers they thought they understood. And their discoveries, feeding upon them in turn, altered subtly spirit, mind, and sometimes even body. Power for its results was what first they sought, but then, inevitably, it was Power for the sake of power alone. They did not accept gradual changes; they began to force them.
Years sped as might the moments of an hour. There was the rise of the brother-sisterhood, first secretly, then in the open, dedicated to experimentation, with volunteers, then with those forced to their purposes. Children, animals, things were born which were not as their parents had been. Some were harmless, even of great beauty and an aid to all. But that kind became fewer and fewer. At first those that were distorted, ill-conceived, were destroyed. Then it was proposed that they be kept, studied, examined. Later yet their makers released them, that they might be observed in freedom.
And, as the corruption spread and befouled those who dabbled in it, these monstrosities were used! Nor did the users and the makers any longer place bonds on the fashioning of such dark servants and weapons.
So began a struggle, to eclipse the fast fading brightness of the land. There was a party of the Old Race, as yet unshadowed by the evil flowering among their kind. At first they sounded war horns, gathering a host to put down the enemy. But they had waited far too long; they were as a dipper of water against the ocean. War brought them bitter defeat and the prospect of being utterly lost in the ocean of defilement which was turning their homeland into a morass wherein no decent thing might find existence.
There were leaders who argued that it was better to perish in war than to live under the hand of the enemy, taking with them all that they held dear, so that death would in fact be safety from that which threatened more than the body. And there were many who supported them in that. We watched households go into their manors, take comfort together, and then bring down upon themselves a blotting out by raw forces they deliberately summoned and did not try to control.
But others held to a faith that the end was not yet for them and their kind. Against the array of the Enemy they were a pitifully few in number. But among them were some wielders of the Power such as even their opponents might well fear. And these ordered an ingathering of those willing to try another road.
There was this about the Old Race: they were deeply rooted in their own country, drawing from the land a recharging of energy and life force. Never had they been wanderers, rovers, seekers of the physical unknown—though they moved afar in mind and spirit. And to leave the land was almost as hard as death. Still they were minded to try this. And they set out for the west and what might lie across the bordering mountains there.