“You—you are Kemoc?”
It was she who broke the spell with a tentative, uneasy question.
“I am Kemoc.” I acknowledged that, but no more.
* * *
* * *
XVI
“IF YOU BE KEMOC”—there was rising tension in her thought—“then this is no land for you! Get you forth before ill comes. You do not know what happens to those who do not have the proper safeguards. I have seen—monstrous things!”
She had seen what Dinzil had taken good care to show her.
“Dinzil!” Her thoughts rang even louder. “Dinzil will protect you; use the counterspells—”
So was she caught in his net that she turned instantly to him when there was need for aid.
“I have come for you, Kaththea.” I told her the simple truth. If she had not gone too far down that road on which he had set her feet, then I might reach her, even as the memories I had spun had drawn her.
“But why?” There was a simplicity in that question which was not of the sister I had known. She had never been one to lean upon another, but held to her own mind. This was a different Kaththea.
I tried to make my thoughts simple, to keep her holding that slender tie between us: “Did you believe that we would let you go, uncaring what chanced with you?”
“But you knew!” her retort was swift. “You knew that I had gone to a place of power, to learn that which would make us all safe against the Shadow. And I am learning, Kemoc, much more than the Wise Women ever dreamed of. They are really small-minded, timid. They but peer through doors which they dare not enter. I marvel that we are in any awe of them.”
“There is knowledge and knowledge. You yourself said that once upon a time, Kaththea. Some can pass through man and come into flower—some men cannot hold, unless they change.”
“Men, yes!” she caught me up. “But I am of the Witches of Estcarp, who are adepts. What man cannot hope to do, we can! And when I have garnered what I came here to find, then I shall return and you will rejoice at what I bring with me.”
Loskeetha’s third picture. Suddenly that was vivid in my mind and I saw it as sharply as it had appeared in the sand bowl. There rode the hosts of the Shadow and among them Kaththea, hurling her bolts of force against us, her kin.
“No!” Kaththea’s cry of denial was sharp. “That is a weaving of evil, not a true foretelling. You have been deceived; you believe that I—one of the Three—could do so? Dinzil has said—”
She hesitated and I prompted her. “Dinzel has said—what?”
But she did not answer at once, and when she did there was in her reply a coolness, such as had been in her in the Valley.
“You wish me to have no true friends, but to keep me to yourself. Kyllan, he is larger of heart; he knows we shall still be united, even though we walk apart. But you will not admit it; you would prison me in bonds of your choosing.”
“This Dinzil has said, and you believe?” He had been wily, but what else might I have expected? This was an argument my own actions to free her would bolster past my being able to refute.
“You do not like Dinzil. He has other unfriends. He did not need to tell me this; I had already seen it in you, in others of the Valley. Yet now he strives to gather such power as will deliver all of them. Do they believe they can turn sword steel and a few mutterings of lesser learning against the Great Ones whom rebellion in Escore now rouse? It takes forces beyond most men’s knowledge to face those.”
“Dinzil can summon such forces, control them?”
“With my aid, yes!” There was an arrogance, a pride in that which might have had roots in the confidence of the Kaththea I had known, but which had grown to turn her into a stranger.
“Go back, Kemoc. I know you love me, though that love is a thing of fetters for me. Because you came in love, I wish you well. Dinzil will see that you return to the world suited to you. Tell them there that we come with such powers behind us that the Shadow, seeing what marches with us, shall be routed before the first blow is struck.”
I shut my mind to her words, to this Kaththea who was the monster Dinzil had shown me. Deliberately and with all the energy I could summon, I thought again of the Kaththea I had known and loved, who had been a part of me—
“Kemoc!” The arrogance had gone out of that cry; it was one of pain. “Kemoc, what would you do? Stop, stop! You lay your fetters on me again and it takes strength, such strength to break them. That strength I must save for the tasks set me here.”
I thought. Kaththea who was young of heart, clean of heart, happy, danced in a green meadow and charmed birds out of the sky to come to her singing . . . Kaththea, laughing, put up her hand to break off a dripping icicle from the eave edge and suck it, while before her the land was frost and snow, yet gem-beautiful under a winter sun. She took the icicle from her lips to trill a call, to be answered by the snow hawk . . . Kaththea diving cleanly into the river flood to swim with us, but forgetting all contests when she found a watercub tangled in a reed bed, freeing the captive tenderly . . . Kaththea in the firelight, sitting between us, listening to Anghart’s tales . . .
“Stop!” Weaker that plea. I pushed it from me, concentrated on the pictures, on my touch upon the two talismen I trusted in this place which Dinzil believed he ruled.
Kaththea running lightly between us to the harvest field where we worked under the sun with all the manor folk to bind the grain. Kaththea chosen to take the Feast bowl to greet passing strangers that day, to gather the Earth-tithe after the old custom, bringing it back jingling and ringing, laughing at her success because a whole troop of Borderers had passed and each had tossed a coin into it.
But never Kaththea in use of her power—never that! For to be Kaththea of the power was to open the door to this Kaththea of the here and now, whom I did not know, whom I feared.
“Kemoc—Kemoc, where are you?”
For a second or two I thought that was the cry of the Kaththea of my memories; for it was young, and strangely uncertain, almost lost.
I opened my eyes and looked about me. Where was I? In some place Dinzil deemed safe keeping. But now my confidence rose. I might have little on which to base that confidence. But when a man reaches a point which seems to have no future at all, then he can make a firm stand. In such stands are weak causes sometimes won, simply because there is nothing left to fear.
“Kemoc, please—where are you?”
“With you, soon,” I made answer. I did not know if I spoke the truth.
I struggled to my feet, held the sword. “Kaththea!” Once more I sent the winged thought. It flew to the wall immediately before me, was gone. I walked to the wall.
Stone, solid under my touch. But still my confidence held. I set the sword point to the stone, and once more made my reckless magic. For I combined the word “Sytry” which was the sword key with the phrases out of Lormt.
The hilt in my paw burned. But in spite of the pain I held it steady. The point chewed at a line between two of those blocks. Began to chew, that is, but as I continued to recite those names the stone itself yielded to my weapon, which cut as it had cleared my path through the mud pit. I came out of the prison where Dinzil had put me, and once more I stood in the underground chamber from which raised the stair into the Dark Tower.
Once more I climbed, coming into the first chamber. But now the furnishings were more substantial, less ghosts of themselves. When I put out a paw to touch one I almost dropped the sword. Had I put forth a paw—or a man’s hand? Now I could see fingers! Then once more they were hidden in monster flesh—to appear again—back and forth.
I was shaken. The creature Dinzil had shown me and said was Kaththea on this plane—woman’s head and hands combined with loathsome body. She had used her hands, her head, to work forces here. He had said—when she was all human seeming again—then she would be completely sealed to his purposes. Now—I brought forth my other hand to look upon it. Yes, there, too, was a flow from hand to paw. Still the paw had greater substance; the hand was but a ghost.