“Come—” One of the guards beckoned to Kemoc and me. Dahaun and Kaththea had already disappeared behind a screen. We went in the opposite direction and came to a place where the floor was hollowed out in a pool. Its water was thick and red, and I recognized the scent of it. These far more liquid contents were akin to the healing mud of the basin. Eagerly I stripped, Kemoc following my example. Together we sank into the stuff which drew all aches and pains from us, leaving us languid.
Then we ate, drowsily, of substances set before us in polished wooden bowls. Finally, we slept, on couches of dried moss. And I dreamed.
Here again was a golden land, not this into which our rescuers had brought us, but that earlier and wider territory at which we had looked through the eyes of the Familiar. And there stood manors in that land which I knew with an intimacy which could belong only to one who had lived within their walls. I rode in company with other men, men who wore faces which I knew—Borderers from the Estcarp mountains, men of the Old Race with whom I had feasted in the rare intervals when there was no active war, and even men and women I had known at Etsford.
And, in the strange manner of dreaming when many things may be mingled, I was sure that the threats which had been with me since my birth did not hold here, but that once more our people were strong, able, unbeset by those who would drag them and their whole civilization down into the dust of ending.
But with me also was a shadowy memory of a great trial and war which lay behind, and which we had survived through struggle and many defeats, to this final victory. And that dark war had been worth all it had cost, for what we had come to hold.
Then I awoke, and lay blinking at dusky shadows over my head. Yet I carried with me something from that dream, an idea which held the improbability of most dream action, yet which was very real to me, as if in my sleep some geas past my avoiding had been laid on me. As perhaps it had, for in this land were there not forces at work past our divining? I was sure in that hour as to what I must do—as if it were all action past; already laid out in words on some scroll of history.
Kemoc still lay on the neighboring couch, his face clear and untroubled in his sleep. For a moment I envied him, for it seemed that he was under no compulsion such as now moved me. I did not wake him, but dressed in the fresh clothing my host or hostess had left, and went past the screen, into the main hall.
Four of the lizards sat about a flat stone, their slender claws moving about tiny carved objects, no doubt playing a game. Their heads all turned at my coming and they favored me with those unwinking stares of their kind. And two others also looked at me. I raised my hand in a small salute of greeting to her who sat cross-legged on a wide cushion, a cup by her hand on a low table.
“Kyllan of the House of Tregarth, out of Estcarp.” She made that both formal greeting and introduction. “Ethutur of the Green Silences.”
He who was with her got lightly to his feet. He was as tall as I, his dark eyes meeting mine on a level. He wore the jerkin and breeches like mine, but, as with Dahaun, he had gemmed wristlets and belt in addition. His horns were longer, more in evidence, than those of the guards who had ridden with us from the menhir ring, but save for those he might have been any man of the Old Race. As to his age, I could make no guess. For he might have had a few more years than I counted, but meeting his eyes and what lay behind them, that I doubted. Here was one who had all the unobtrusive authority of he who has commanded men—or forces—for years, who had made decisions and ordered them, or carried them out for himself, abiding by the result without complaint or excuse. This was a leader such as I had known in Koris of the Axe, or my father, little as I could remember of Simon Tregarth.
His eyes measured me in return. But I had stood for appraisement before, and this was not as important to me as that which had carried over from my dream.
Then his hands came out, palm up. Without knowing the why of that gesture, mine moved to them, palm down, our flesh so meeting. Between us passed something else, not as strong a contact as I had with Kemoc and Kaththea, but some of the union. And in that I knew he accepted me—to a point.
Dahaun gazed from one to the other of us; then she smiled. Whether that was in relief as to how our meeting had gone, I could not tell, but she motioned me to another cushion, and poured golden liquid from a flagon into a cup for me.
“Kaththea?” I asked before I drank.
“She sleeps. She will need rest, for more than her body is tired. She tells me that she did not accept the oath of the Witches, but certainly she cannot be less than they. She has the Right, the Will, and the Strength to be a Doer rather than a Seeker.”
“If she uses it rightly,” Ethutur said, speaking for the first time.
I gave him a level glance across the rim of my goblet. “She has never used it wrongly.”
Then he, too, smiled, and the lighting of his general somberness made him indeed a youth and not a war leader of too many strained years. “Never as you fear I meant,” he agreed. “But this is not your land—the currents here are very swift and deep, and can be disastrous. Your sister will be the first to admit, when she knows it all, that a new kind of discipline must be exercised. However . . .” He paused, and then smiled again. “You do not really realize what your coming means to us, do you? We have walked a very narrow path between utter dark on one hand, and chaos on the other. Now forces are loosed to nudge us into peril. Chance may dictate that such a move will bring us through to new beginnings—or it may be the end of us. We have been weighing one fortune against another this day, Kyllan. Here in this valley we have our safety, hard-won, nursed through centuries. We have our allies—none to be despised—but we are few in number. Perhaps the enemy is also limited, but those who now serve them as hands and feet muster the greater.”
“And what if your numbers were increased?”
He took up his cup from the table. “In what manner, friend? I tell you this, we do not recruit from other levels of existence! That was the root of all our present evils.”
“No. What if your recruits be men of the Old Race—already seasoned warriors—what then?”
Dahaun moved a little on her cushion. “Men can be swayed by the Powers here—and what men do you speak of? All dwelling in Escore made their choice long ago. The handful who chose to stand with us are already one, our blood long since mingled so there is no pure Old Race to be found.”
“Except in the west.”
Now I had their full attention, though their faces were impassive, their thoughts well hidden from me. Was I indeed bewitched that a dream could possess me after this fashion? Or had I been granted a small bit of foreknowledge as a promise—and bait?
“The west is closed.”
“Yet we three came that way.”
“You are not of the full blood either! Paths not closed to you might be closed to others.”
“With a guide to whom such paths were open a party could win in.”
“Why?” The one word from Ethutur was a bleak question.
“Listen—perhaps you do not know how it is there. We, too, have walked a narrow path such as yours . . .” Swiftly I told them of the twilight of Estcarp and what it would mean to all those who shared my blood.
“No!” Ethutur brought down his fist with such force on the top of the table that the goblets jumped. “We want no more Witches here! Magic will open doors to magic. We might as well cut our own throats and be done with it!”
“Who spoke of Witches?” I asked. “I would not seek out the Wise Ones—my life would be forfeit if I did so. But those who carry shields in Estcarp’s service are not always one in thought with the Council. Why should they be, in their hearts, when the Witches close so many doors?” And once again I laid facts before them. That marriages were few since women with the Power did not easily lay aside their gift, and births even fewer. That many men went without woman or homeplace for all of their lives, and that this was not a thing which made for contentment.