Orsya found food for us, things which she routed from under stream rocks and which I crammed hastily into my mouth and tried neither to think on or taste, as I manfully chewed and swallowed. We kept to the stream which luckily ran in the right direction. Shortly before sundown Orsya pointed to a vee of ripples.
“Kofi?”
“No, but another of his people. Perhaps he has news for us.”
She trilled and twittered as she had with Kofi, and then turned to me with a slight frown.
“The forces of the Shadow are spread widely between us and the Valley. They await some word for attack.”
“Can we pass them?”
“I do not know. You swim, but not well enough to take the deep ways.”
“If I have to, then I shall. Show them to me,” I told her grimly.
She seemed very doubtful. But after further twitter speech with the Merfay, she shrugged. “If it must be, it must—”
But we were not to reach her “deep ways.” From nowhere, there converged on us shortly after what looked to be, by the troubling of the water, a large school of Merfays. They treaded water about Orsya. I heard their small cries which must have been delivered with great vigor to reach my ears.
“What is it?”
“My people are coming—”
“They have joined the Shadow, then?”
“No. They still believe they can make peace and go their own way, if they pay a price to those they fear the most. That price is you and I. They know we travel the river and their magic I cannot hope to elude.”
“You can hide. Surely the Merfays will show you where. I can take to the land again.” I was impatient to get on. There was an urgency which burned me as a fever.
Orsya did not appear to hear me. She had turned back to those splashes and ripples and was once more twittering. “Come—” She moved downstream, the invisible Merfays, judging by the disturbance, falling in on either hand as an escort.
“But why? You said—”
“Not far. There is a side way, partly underground . . .”
“Through the tomb caverns ?”
“Perhaps it is an outer section of those. But not the portion we saw before. It is one my people do not know.”
We did not go much further before the Merfay ripples darted ahead; Orsya paused and held out her hand to grasp that beastly paw which now marked me.
“They go to mislead the others. My people do not know this country and they will come slowly. Also they will listen to the Merfays. Now—we go this way!”
She dropped her hold and used that hand to sweep aside some bushes which trailed in great drooping fronds, the tips floating in the water. Behind that screen was another waterway, shallow as a brook, running through a narrow slit.
Part of that way we went on hands and knees, hidden by the walls of the slit. By luck it was largely overgrown with the trailing branched bushes and, while sometimes those lashed at us stingingly, we could make our way under them. The brook ended in a pool and Orsya halted there.
“The entrance is below; we must dive for it.”
“How long underwater?”
“Long for you, but it is the only way.”
I made the sword fast to me. Then I pulled off that warm jacket Kaththea had spun out of reeds and illusion. I rolled it into a ball and thrust beneath the roots of one of the bushes, only to see it dissolve into a frayed bunch of yellowed reeds. I filled my lungs and dived.
Once more that nightmare, wherein I pinned my hopes on Orsya’s guiding touch on my shoulder, to steer me. I had reached the point where my lungs were bursting when my head broke water and I could breathe again. There was dark, but out of it came Orsya’s touch and voice.
“Thus—” She urged me forward and I swung clumsily, the weight of the sword pulling me down. It is hard to judge distances in the dark and I do not know how long we swam. But I was tiring as we came out, as if through a door, into a gray place and saw in the wall not too far above our heads crevices through which the light came.
Those were not difficult to reach, and then we were out among rocks, looking down at the last of the sunlight on a plain. There mustered an army. It would seem that our side path had led us directly to the enemy.
I did not recognize the land beyond. If this was before one of the ramparts of the Valley, it was a section I did not know. I said as much to Orsya.
“I do not think they move against the Valley yet. Look—”
My gaze followed the pointing of her finger. To our right and not too far away was a ledge and on that stood a group of people. I caught a glimpse of a green swathed head.
“Kaththea!”
“And Dinzil.” Orsya indicated a cloaked man, looming tall beside my sister. “There is also one of the Captains of the Sarn Riders, and others who must be of note. And—do you not feel it, Kemoc? They dabble in power.”
She was right. There was a tingling in the air, a tension, a kind of ingathering of force. I had felt it once before, on that night when the Wise Women of Estcarp had made ready their blow of doom against the army of Karsten coming through the southern mountains. It sucked at one’s life forces, gathered, gathered . . .
“They will try such a blow, and then, with those of the Valley still reeling under it, move in.”
But I did not need Orsya’s explanation. I had guessed it for myself. Worst of all—I caught one strong element in that brewing of evil. Kaththea was mind calling—not me, but Kyllan! She was now so utterly of the Shadow that she turned that which was born in us to summon my brother, to use him as a key to the Valley.
Then I knew the true meaning of Loskeetha’s fates, that Kaththea was indeed better dead. And that it was laid upon me to kill her. If she could use such calling, then could I also.
“Stay you here!” I ordered Orsya, and I began to creep along the heights so I could find a place above and behind that ledge. It did not take me long to reach it. I think they were so oblivious of anything besides what they did that they would not have seen me had I marched down to them.
I found a place where I could stand in the open. Then I drew the sword and pointed its tip at my sister. All the wisdom I knew went into the call I sent in one lightning thrust.
She swayed, her hands to her swathed head. Then she turned and began to run across the ledge, scramble up to me. They were still so intent upon their convergence of wills and forces that they did not understand for a moment, long enough for her to start the climb. Then Dinzil followed her. She could not reach me; she would not have time. So I did what I had seen myself once do in Loskeetha’s sand bowl; I hurled the sword at her, willing her death.
It turned in the air and its hilt struck between her eyes. She dropped and would have fallen back to the ledge, but her body caught against a point of rock and lay there, the sword in the earth, standing upright.
Dinzil, seeing her fall, halted. He looked up at me and began to laugh; it was the laughter I had heard from Kaththea, only more lost and evil. He raised his hand to me in salute as one salutes a clever bit of weapon-play.
But I was already sliding down beside Kaththea. I took up the sword and then her also, setting her body back in the slit between spur and cliff.
“The hero,” he called. “Too little, too late, warrior from over-mountain!”
He made a gesture and suddenly the sword slipped from my grip. Nor could I make that misshapen paw grasp it again.
“And now harmless—” he laughed. He stood there, laughing with the rest of that company of the Shadow gathering behind him, watching me with their eyes or whatever organs served them for sight. These might not be of the Great Ones of evil, but they did now strive to reach such heights. I think even the Witches of Estcarp would not have willingly matched strength with them.
“You have found one talisman.” Dinzil glanced to the sword. “If you had only known how to use it, you would have done better, my young friend. Now—”
What he meant for me I do not know. But that it was wholly of the dark I understood. Even death does not close some doors. But there was a slide of earth and small stones as Orsya came down in my wake. She held her right hand against her breast, and in it, point out, was the unicorn horn.