Andre Norton - Witch World - Three Against The Witch World

Three Against the Witch World

A Witch World Novel by Andre Norton

Version 1.0

I

I AM NO song-smith to forge a blade of chant to

send men roaring into battle, as the bards of the

Sulcar ships do when those sea-serpents nose into

enemy ports. Nor can I use words with care as men

carve out stones for the building of a strong,

years-standing keep wall, that those generations

following many wonder at their industry and skill.

Yet when a man passes through great times, or

faces action such as few dream on, there awakes

within him the desire to set down, even limpingly,

his part in those acts so that those who come after

him to warm his high seat, lift his sword, light the

fire on his hearth, may better understand what he

and his fellows wrought that they might do these

same things after the passing of time.

Thus do I write out the truth of the Three against

Estcarp, and what chanced when they ventured to

break a spell which had lain more than a thousand

years on the Old Race, to darken minds and blot

out the past. Three of us in the beginning, only

three, Kyllan, Kemoc, and Kaththea. We were not

fully of the Old Race, and in that lay both our

sorrow and our salvation. From the hours of our

birth we were set apart, for we were the House of

Tregarth.

Our mother was the Lady Jaelithe who had been

a Woman of Power, one of the Witches, able to

summon, send and use forces beyond common

reckoning. But it was also true that, contrary to all

former knowledge, though she lay with our father,

the Lord Warder Simon, and brought forth us three

in a single birth, yet she lost not that gift which

cannot be measured by sight nor touch.

And, though the Council never returned to her

her Jewel, forfeited at the hour of her marriage, yet

they were also forced to admit that she was still a

Witch, though not one of their fellowship.

And he who was our father was also not to be

measured by any of the age-old laws and customs.

For he was out of another age and time, entering

into Estcarp by one of the Gates. In his world he

had been a warrior, one giving orders to be obeyed

by other men. But he fell into a trap of ill fortune,

and those who were his enemies sniffed at his heels

in such numbers that he could not stand and meet

them blade to blade. Thus he was hunted until he

found the Gate and came into Estcarp, and so also

into the war against the Kolder.

But by him and my mother there came also the

end of Kolder. And the House of Tregarth thereaf-

ter had no little honor. For Simon and the Lady

Jaelithe went up against the Kolder in their own

secret place, and closed their Gate through which

the scourge had come upon us. And of this there

has already been sung many songs.

But though the Kolder evil was gone, the stain

lingered and Estcarp continued to gasp for life as

her enemies, ringing her about, nibbled eternally

at her tattered borders. This was a twilight world,

for which would come no morning, and we were

born into the dusk of life.

Our triple birth was without precedent among

the Old Race. When our mother was brought to

bed on the last day of the dying year, she sang

warrior spells, determined that that one who

would enter into life would be a fighter such as was

needed in this dark hour. Thus came I, crying as if

already all the sorrows of a dim and forbidding

future shadowed me.

Yet my mother's labor was not at an end. And

there was such concern for her that I was hurriedly

tended and put to one side. Her travail continued

through the hours, until it would seem that she and

that other life, still within her, would depart

through the last gate of all.

Then there came a stranger of the Ward Keep, a

woman walking on her own two dusty feet. In the

courtyard she lifted up her voice, saying she was

one sent and that her mission lay with the Lady

Jaelithe. By that time so great was my father's fear

that he ordered her brought in.

From under her cloak she drew a sword, the

blade of it bright in the light, a glittering, icy thing,

cold with the burden of killing metal. Holding this

before my mother's eyes, she began to chant, and

from that moment it was as if all the anxious ones

gathered in that chamber were bound with ties

they could not break. But the Lady Jaelithe rose

out of the sea of pain and haunted dreams which

held her, and she too gave voice. Wild raving they

thought those words of hers as she said:

"Warrior, sage, witch—three—one—I will

this! Each a gift. Together—one and great—apart

far less!"

And in the second hour of the new year there

came forth my brother, and then my sister, close

together as if they were linked by a tie. But so great

was my mother's exhaustion that her life was

feared for. The woman who had made the birth

magic put aside the sword quickly and took up the

children as if that was her full right—and, because

of my mother's collapse, none disputed her.

Thus Anghart of the Falconer village became

our nurse and foster mother and had the first shap-

ing of us in this world. She was an exile from her

people, since she had revolted against their harsh

code and departed by night from their woman vil-

lage. For the Falconers, those strange fighting

men, had their own customs, unnatural in the eyes

of the Old Race whose women hold great power

and authority. So repugnant were these customs to

the Witches of Estcarp that they had refused the

Falconers settlement land when they had come,

centuries earlier, from over seas. Thus now the

Hold of the Falconers was in the high mountains, a

no-man's land border country between Estcarp

and Karsten.

Among this people the males dwelt apart, living

only for war and raiding, having more affection

and kinship with their scout hawks then they did

with their women. The latter were quartered in

valley villages, to which certain selected men went

at seasons to establish that their race did not die

out. But upon the birth of children there was a

ruthless judging, and Anghart's newly born son

had been slain, since he had a crippled foot. So she

came to the South Keep, but why she chose that

day and hour, and seemed to have foreknowledge

of our mother's need, she never said. Nor did any

choose to ask her, for to most in the Keep she

turned a grim, closed face.

But to us she was warmth, and love, and the

mother the Lady Jaelithe could not be. Since from

the hour of the last birth my mother sank into a

trance of sorts and thus she lay day after day,

eating when food was put in her mouth, aware of

nothing about her. And this passed for several

months. My father appealed to the Witches, but in

return he received only a cold message—that

Jaelithe had seen fit to follow her own path always,

and that they did not meddle in the matters of fate,

nor could they reach one who had gone long and

far down an alien way.

Upon this saying my father grew silent and grim

in his turn. He led his Borderers out on wild

forays, showing a love of steel play and bloodlet-

ting new to him. And they said to him that he was

willfully seeking yet another road and that led to

the Black Gate. Of us he took no note, save to ask

from time to time how we fared—absently, as if

our welfare was that of strangers, no real concern

to him.

It was heading into another year when the Lady

Jaelithe at last roused. Then she was still weak and

slipped easily into sleep when overtired. Also she

seemed shadowed, as if some unhappiness she

could not name haunted her mind. At length this

wore away and there was a lightsome time, if brief,

when the Seneschal Koris and his wife, the Lady

Loyse, came to South Keep at the waning of the

year to make merry, since the almost ceaseless

war had been brought to an uneasy truce and for

the first time in years there was no flame nor fast

riding along either border, neither north to face the

wolves of Alizon nor south where the anarchy in

Karsten was a constant boil and bubble of raid and

counter-raid.

But that was only a short breathing space. For it

was four months into the new year when the threat

of Pagar came into being. Karsten had been a wide

battle field for many lords and would-be rulers

since Duke Yvian had been killed during the Kol-

der war. To that wracked duchy the Lady Loyse

had a claim. Wedded by force—axe marriage—to

the Duke, she had never ruled. But on his death

she might have raised his standard. However,

there was no tie between her and a country in

which she had suffered much. Loving Koris, she

had thankfully tossed away any rights over

Karsten. And the policy of Estcarp, to hold and

maintain the old kingdom, not to carry war to its

neighbors, suited her well. Also Koris and Simon,

both bolstering as well as they could the dwindling

might of the Old Race, saw no advantage in em-

broilment aboard, but much gain in the anarchy

which would keep one of their enemies employed

elsewhere.

Now what they had forseen came to pass. Start-

ing as a small holder in the far south, Pagar of Geen

began to gather followers and establish himself,

first as a lord of two southern provinces, then

acclaimed by the men of the city of Kars of their

own free will, the ruined merchants there willing to

declare for any one likely to reestablish peace. By

the end of our birth year Pagar was strong enough

to risk battle against a confederation of rivals. And

four months later he was proclaimed Duke, even

along the border.

He came to rule in a country devastated by the

worst sort of war, a civil struggle. His followers

were a motley and hard-to-control crew. Many

were mercenaries, and the loot which had drawn

them under his banner must now be replaced by

wages or they would go elsewhere to plunder.

Thus Pagar did as my father and Koris had ex-

pected: he looked outside his borders for a cause

to unite his followers and provide the means for

rebuilding his duchy. And where he looked was

north. Estcarp had always been feared. Yvian,

under the suggestion of the Kolder, had outlawed

and massacred those of the Old Race who had

founded Karsten in days so far distant that no man

could name the date. They had died—hard—or

they had fled, across the mountains to their kin. And

behind they left a burden of guilt and fear. None in

Karsten ever really believed that Estcarp would

not some day move to avenge those deaths. Now

Pagar need only play slightly on that emotion and

he had a crusade to occupy his fighters and unite

the duchy firmly behind him.

Still, Estcarp was a formidable foe and one

Pagar desired to test somewhat before he com-

mitted himself. Not only were the Old Race dour

and respected fighting men, but the Witches of

Estcarp used the Power in ways no outsider could

understand, and which were the more dreaded for

that very reason. In addition there was a firm and

unbreakable alliance between Estcarp and the

Sulcarmen—those dreaded sea rovers who al-

ready had raided Alizon into a truce and a sullen

licking of sore wounds. They were as ready to turn

their serpent ships southward and bite along

Karsten's open coast line, and that would arouse

the merchants of Kars to rebellion.

So Pagar had to prepare his holy war quietly.

Border raiding began that summer, but never in

such strength that the Falconers and the Borderers

my father commanded could not easily control.

Yet many small raids, even though easily beaten

back, can gnaw at the warding forces. A few men

lost here, one or two there—the sum mounts and is

a steady drain. As my father early knew.

Estcarp's answer was loosing of the Sulcar

fleets. And that did give Pagar to think. Hostovrul

gathered twenty ships, rode out a storm by spec-

tacular seamanship, and broke the river patrol, to

raid into Kars itself, with such success that he left

the new Duke unsteady for another full year. And

then there was an insurrection in the south from

whence Pagar had come, led by his own half-

brother, to keep the Duke further engaged. Thus

three years, maybe more, were won from the

threat of chaos, and the twilight of Estcarp did not

slide into night as quickly as the Old Race had

feared.

During these years of maneuvering the three of

us were taken from the fortress of our birth—but

not to Es, for both our father and mother held aloof

from the city where the Council reigned. The Lady

Loyse established a home in a small manor-garth

of Etsford, and welcomed us into her household.

Anghart was still the center of our lives, and she

made an acceptable alliance with the mistress of

Etsford based on mutual regard and respect. For

the Lady Loyse had adventured, disguised as a

blank shield mercenary, into the heart of enemy

territory when she and my mother had been ranged

against all the might of Kars and Duke Yvian.

Upon her long delayed recovery the Lady

Jaelithe assumed once more her duties with my

father as vice-warder. Together they had control of

the Power, not after the same fashion as the

Witches, but in another way. And I know now that

the Witches were both jealous and suspicious of

the gift so shared, though it was used only for the

good of the Old Race and Estcarp. The Wise Ones

found such talent unnatural in a man and secretly

always reckoned my mother the less because of

her uniting with Simon. At this time the Council

appeared to have no interest in us children. In fact

their attitude might be more termed a deliberate

ignoring of our existence. Kaththea was not sub-

jected to examination for inherited Power talent as

were all girls of the Old Race before they were six.

I do not remember my mother much from those

years. She would descend upon the manor, trailed

by fighters from the Border forces—of much

greater interest to me, for my first crawl across the

floor took me to lay a baby's hand on the polished

hilt of a sword. Her visits were very few, my

father's even less; they could not often be spared

from the patrol along the south border. We turned

to Anghart for all answers to childish problems,

and held the Lady Loyse in affection. To our

mother was given respect and awe, and our father

had much the same recognition. He was not a man

who was easy with children, I believe, and perhaps

he unconsciously held against us the suffering our

birth had caused his wife who was the one person

he held extremely dear.

If we did not have a closeknit relationship with

our parents, we made up for that with a tight bond

among the three of us. Yet in nature we were dif-

ferent. As my mother had wished, I was first a

warrior, that being my approach to life. Kemoc

was a thinker—presented with any problem his

was not the response of outright and immediate

action, but rather a considered examination and

inquiry into its nature. Very early he began his

questions, and when he found no one could give

him all the answers he wished, he strove to dis-

cover the learning which would.

Kaththea felt the deeper. She had a great one-

ness, not the countryside. Oftentimes her instinct

topped my force of action or Kemoc's considered

reasoning.

I cannot remember the first time we realized that

we, too, possessed a gift of the Power. We need not

be together, or even miles close, to be in com-

munication. And when the need was we seemed a

single person—I the arms for action, Kemoc the

brain, Kaththea the heart and controlled emotion.

But some wariness kept us from revealing this to

those about us. Though I do not doubt that Ang-

hart was well aware of our so-knitted strength.

We were about six when Kemoc and I were

given small, specially forged swords, dart guns

suited to our child hands, and began the profession

of arms which all of the Old Race must follow

during this eventide. Our tutor was a Sulcarman,

crippled in a sea fight, sent by our father to give us

the best training possible. He was a master of most

weapons, was Otkell, having been one of Hostov-

rul's officers during the raid on Kars. Though

neither of us took to the use of the axe, to Otkell's

disappointment, both Kemoc and I learned other

weapon play with a rapidity which pleased our

instructor; and he was not in any way easy with us.

It was during the summer of our twelfth year

that we rode on our first foray. By that time Pagar

had reduced his unruly duchy to order and was

prepared once more to try his luck north. The

Sulcar fleet was raiding Alizon, his agents must

have reported that. So he sent flying columns

north through the mountains, in simultaneous

clawing attacks at five different places.

The Falconers took out one of these, the Bor-

derers 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 war-

ship was in position at the river's mouth to cut then

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 re-

fused 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 mo-

ment 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 whitefaced 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 swal-

lowed 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 in-

tent. And that intentness was no longer concen-

trated 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, be-

tween 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.

Andre Norton - Witch World - Three Against The Witch World

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