The Falconers took out one of these, the Borderers two more. But the remaining two bands made their way into valley land which the enemy had never reached before. Cut off from any retreat they fought like wild beasts, intent on inflicting all the damage they could before they were dragged down.
So it was that a handful of these madmen reached Es River and captured a boat, putting her crew to the sword. They came downstream with some cunning, perhaps in a very vain hope of reaching the sea. But the hunt was up and a warship was in position at the river’s mouth to cut them off.
They beached their stolen boat not five miles from Etsford and the whole of the manpower from the farms around turned out in a hunt. Otkell refused to take us along, an order we took in ill part.
But the small force he led was not an hour gone when Kaththea intercepted a message. It came so sharply into her mind that she held her head and cried out as she stood between us on the watch walk of the center tower. It was a Witch sending, not aimed at a girl child a few miles away, but for one of the trained Old Race. And a portion of its demand for speedy aid reached us in turn through our sister.
We did not question the rightness of our answer as we rode forth, having to take our horses by stealth. And there was no leaving Kaththea behind—not only was she our directional guide, but we three had become a larger one in that moment on the tower walk.
Three children rode out of Etsford. But we were not ordinary children as we worked our way across country and approached a place where the wild wolves from Karsten had holed up with a captive for bargaining. Battle fortune does exist. We say this captain or that is a “lucky” man, for he loses few men, and is to be found at the right place at the right moment. Some of this is strategy and skill, intelligence and training serving as extra weapons. But other men equally well trained and endowed are never so favored by seeming chance. Battle fortune rode with us that day. For we found the wolves’ den, and we picked off the guards there—five of them, all trained and desperate fighters—so that a woman, bloodstained, bound, yet proud and unbending, came out alive.
Her gray robe we knew. But her searching stare, her compelling measurement made us uneasy, and in some manner broke the oneness of our tie. Then I realized that she had dismissed Kemoc and me, and her attention was focused on Kaththea, and by that direct study we were all threatened. And, young as I was, I knew we had no defense against this peril.
Otkell did not allow our breech of discipline to pass, in spite of our success. Kemoc and I bore body smarts which lasted a few days. But we were glad because the Witch was swiftly gone out of our lives again, having spent but a single night at Etsford.
It was only much later, when we had lost the first battle of our personal struggle, that we learned what had followed upon that visit—that the Witches had ordered Kaththea to their testing and that our parents had refused, and that the Council had had to accept that refusal for a time. Though they were not in any way defeated by it. For the Witches never believed in hasty action and were willing to make time their ally.
Time was to serve them so. Simon Tregarth put to sea two years later on a Sulcar ship, his purpose an inspection of certain islands reported newly fortified in a strange way by Alizon. There was a hint of possible Kolder revival there. Neither he nor his ship were heard from again.
Since we had known so little of our father, his loss made small change in our lives—until our mother came to Etsford. This time it was not for a short visit: she came with her personal escort to stay.
She spoke little, looked out overmuch—not on the country, but to that which we could not see.
For some months she shut herself up for hours at a time in one of the tower rooms, accompanied by the Lady Loyse. And from such periods the Lady Loyse would emerge white-faced and stumbling, as if she had been drained of vital energy, while my mother grew thinner, her features sharper, her gaze more abstracted.
Then one day she summoned the three of us into the tower room. There was a gloom in that place, even though three windows were open on a fine summer day. She gestured with a fingertip and curtains fell over two of those windows, as if the fabric obeyed her will, leaving open only that to the north. With a fingertip again she traced certain dimly-seen lines on the floor and they flared into flickering life, making a design. Then, without a word, she motioned us to stand on portions of that pattern while she tossed dried herbs on a small brazier. Smoke curled up and around to hide us each from the other. But in that moment we were instantly one again, as we had ever been when threatened.
Then—it is hard to set this into words that can be understood by those who have not experienced it—we were aimed, sent, as one might shoot a dart or strike with a sword. And in that shooting I lost all sense of time, or distance, or identity. There was a purpose and a will and in that I was swallowed up beyond any protesting.
Afterwards we stood again in that room, facing our mother—no longer a woman abstracted and remote, but alive. She held out her hands to us, and there were tears running down her sunken cheeks.
“As we gave you life,” she said, “so have you returned that gift, oh, my children!”
She took a small vial from the table and threw its contents upon the now dying coals in the brazier.
There was a flash of fire and in that moved—things. But the nature of them, or what they did, I could not say. They were gone again and I was blinking, no longer a part, but myself alone.
Now my mother no longer smiled, but was intent. And that intentness was no longer concentrated upon her own concerns, but upon the three of us.
“Thus it must be: I go my way, and you take another road. What I can do, I shall—believe that, my children! It is not the fault of any of us that our destiny is so riven apart. I am going to seek your father—for he still lives—elsewhere. You have another fate before you. Use what is bred in you and it shall be a sword which never breaks nor fails, a shield which will ever cover you. Perhaps, in the end, we shall find our separate roads are one after all. Which would be good fortune past all telling!”
* * *
* * *
II
IT WAS THUS that our mother rode out of our lives on a hot midsummer morning when the dust rose in yellow puffs under the hooves of the mounts and the sky was cloudless. We watched her go from the walk on the tower. Twice she looked back and up, and the last time she raised her hand in a warrior’s salute—to which Kemoc and I made fitting return in formal fashion, the brilliant sun mirroring on the blades of our drawn swords. But Kaththea, between us, shivered as if chill fingers of an out-season wind touched her. And Kemoc’s left hand sought hers, to cover it where fingers gripped the parapet.
“I saw him,” she said, “when she drew upon us in the search—I saw him—all alone—there were rocks, tall rocks and curling water—” This time her shudder shook her whole thin frame.
“Where?” Kemoc demanded.
Our sister shook her head. “I cannot tell, but it was far—and more than distance of land and sea lies between.”
“Not enough to keep her from the searching,” I said as I sheathed my sword. There was a sense of loss in me, but who can measure the loss of what one has never had? My mother and father dwelt inwardly together in a world they had made their own, unlike most other husbands and wives I had noted. To them that world was complete and all others were interlopers. There was no Power, good or evil, which could hold the Lady Jaelithe from her present quest as long as breath was in her. And had we offered aid in her search, she would have put us aside.
“We are together.” Kemoc had picked my thought out of my skull, as was common with us.
“For how long?” Again Kaththea shivered and we turned quickly to her, my hand again to weapon hilt, Kemoc’s on her shoulder.