Andre Norton - Witch World High Halleck 5 - Zarsthor's Bane

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Zarsthor's Bane by Andre Norton
1
WAN SUNLIGHT touched the upper reaches of this unnamed western dale to which
Brixia's unguided wandering had brought her. It was far enough from the
ravaged
lands eastward to promise a breathing space of dubious safety—if one took
care.
Squatting on her heels, the girl grimaced at distant clouds to the east, a
hint
of worse weather to come. She drew the thin blade of her knife back and forth
across the sharpening stone, eyeing that silver of worn steel anxiously. It
had
been sharpened so many times and, though it had been well forged and strong,
its
making was in the past—the past she did not even try to remember nowadays.
She
had to be very careful, she knew, or that finger of metal might snap, leaving
her with no tool— nor weapon—at all.
Her hands were sunbrowned and scarred, the nails of her fingers broken,
rimmed
with a grime which even scrubbing with sand could not banish entirely. It was
very hard to think now that once all she had held was the spindle of a
spinner,
or the shuttle of a weaver, the needle of one who wrought pictures in colored
threads upon the thick stuff meant to cover the walls of a keep. Another girl
had known that living, soft and secure, in the High Hallack before the
invaders
came. Someone who had died during the time stretching behind her like a
corridor, the far end of which was so faint in her mind that she had
difficulty
remembering.
That Brixia had survived flight from that enemy besieged keep which had
always
been her home made her as tough and enduring as the metal she now held. She
had
learned that time meant one day to be faced from sunrise until she could find
some shelter in the coming of dark. There were no feast days, no naming of
one
month upon another—only times of heat, and times of cold when her very bones
ached and sometimes she coughed and knew the bite of the chill until she felt
she would never be warm again.
There was little spare flesh on her now; she was as lean and strong as a bow
cord. And near, in her own way, as deadly. That she had once gone in fine
wool,
with a necklet of amber, and the pale western gold in rings upon her
fingers—to
her that now seemed like a dream—a troublesome dream.
She had walked with fear until it had become a familiar friend, and, had it
been
banished from her side, she would have felt queerly naked and lost. There had
been times when she had nearly shut her eyes upon the rock walls of a cave,
or
upon the branches of some tree arched above her, ready to lose her stubborn
will
to endure, to accept death which followed her like a hound on the trail of a
fal-deer already wounded by the hunter.
Still there was within her that core of determination which was the heritage
of
her House—was she not of the blood of Torgus? And all in the south dales of
High
Hallack had known the Song of Torgus and his victory over the Power of Llan's
Stone. Torgus' House might not be great in lands or wealth, but in spirit and
strength it must be reckoned very high indeed.
She raised a hand to brush back a wandering strand of her sun-bleached hair,
sawn off raggedly at her neck level. Not for any skulker of the unsettled
lands
were the gold braided strands of a bower dweller. Now as she drew the knife
back
and forth across the stone she hummed the Challenge of Llan on so low a note
that none but her own ear might have picked up that thread of sound. There
were
none to hear—she had scouted this place well shortly after dawn. Unless one
counted as listener the black-plumaged bird which croaked menacingly from the
top of a nearby, winter-twisted tree.
"So—so—" she tested the keenness of the blade on that errant strand of hair
which kept fluttering down into her eyes. The sharpened steel sliced easily
through the strees, leaving a puff of severed hairs between her fingers. She
loosed her hold and the wind swept those from her. Then she knew a touch of
fear
again. Better—in this country unknown to her—that she had safely buried that
portion of herself. There were old tales—that powers beyond the reckoning of
her
own people could seize upon hair, nails, the spittle from one's mouth and use
such for the making of ill magic.
Save that there were none here, she thought, to be feared. Evidences there
were,
this close to the Waste, of those who had once held this country—the Old
Ones.
They had left monoliths of stone, strange places which beckoned or warned the
spirit.
But those were but the markers of long vanished power or powers. And those
who
had wrought with such were long since gone. The black bird, as if to deny
that,
cried again its harsh call.
"Ha, black one," the girl broke off her hum to glance at the bird. "Be not so
bold. Would you take sword against Uta?" Sitting back on her heels, she
pursed
her lips to give a low but carrying whistle.
The bird squawked fiercely as if it well knew whom she so summoned. Then it
arose to swoop down slope, skimming only a little above the ground.
From the tussocks of green grass (there were no more sheep on these hills to
nibble it ground short) there arose a furred head. Lips drawn back, the cat
spat, eyes slitted in annoyance as the bird sheered off and was gone with a
last
croak of threat.
With the vast dignity of her kind the cat trotted on up to Brixia. The girl
raised a palm in greeting. They had been trail comrades and bed mates now for
a
long time and she was inwardly flattered that Uta had chosen to company her
so
during her aimless wanderings.
"Was the hunting good?" she asked the cat who had now seated herself an arm's
distance away to give close attention to the tongue washing of a back leg.
"Or
did the rats move on when there were no more people in that ruin to bring in
food for them to steal?" Talking with Uta gave her her only chance to use her
voice during this wary solitary wandering.
Settling back, Brixia surveyed the buildings below. Judging by the remains
this
had once been a well cultivated dale. The fortified manor with its adjacent
defense tower—though now roofless, bearing signs of fire on its crumbling
walls—must once have been snug enough. She could count twenty fieldmen's
cottages (mostly from the outlines of their walls alone for that was all
which
remained to be seen) plus a larger heap of tumbled stone which might have
been
an inn. A road made a ribbon along which those cottages had been strung. It
had
run, Brixia guessed, straight to the nearest river port. Any traders coming
into
these upper dales must have followed that way. In addition those strange and
only partly tolerated people who roamed the Waste, prospecting in the places
of
the Old Ones, would have found this a convenient market place for their
discoveries.
She did not know what name those who had lived here had given their
settlement.
Nor could she more than guess what had happened to turn it into the
wasteland.
The invaders who had ravaged all High Hallack during the war could not have
reached so inland a place. But the war itself had spawned evil which was
neither
invader nor Dale, but born of both.
During that time when the Dalesman's levies had been called elsewhere,
two-legged wolves—the outlaws of the Waste—pillaged and destroyed at will.
Brixia did not doubt that when she went poking below she would find
disturbing
evidence of how this settlement had died. It had been looted—perhaps even the
ruins combed more than once. She was not the only sulker in the wasteways.
Still
she could always hope that there remained something usable—if it were only a
battered mug.
Brixia wiped her hands across her thighs, noting with a small frown that the
stuff of her breeches was so thin over one knee that flesh showed palely
through. Long since she had put aside skirted robe for the greater ease of a
forest runner's wear. She kept her knife in her hand as she reached out for
her
other weapon, the stout hunting spear. Its point had been newly sharpened
also,
and she knew well how to use it.
Her pack she would leave here hidden in the brush. There was no need to
linger
long in the ruins, in fact perhaps she was wasting time to even explore. But
Uta
would have given her warning if anything larger than a rat or a meadow-leaper
laired there, and she could always hope for a find. Her spear had come out of
another just such blasted keep.
Though the dale, as far as she could see, seemed deserted, Brixia still moved
with caution. There might be unpleasant surprises in any unknown territory.
Her
life for the past three years taught her the very slim edge which lay between
life and death.
She closed her mind firmly on the past. It was weakening for the spirit to
try
and remember how it was once. To live for this day only was what kept one
sane
and alert. That she did live and had reached this place unharmed was, she
thought, a matter for self congratulation. The fact that once she had known
such
a keep as home, worn soft wool, fancifully woven and dyed, over her now
muscular
and famine thinned body, no longer mattered. Even the clothes she now had
were
looted—
Those breeches, worn so thin, were of coarse and harsh material, her jerkin
was
of leaper skin, cured crudely, then laced together by her own hands, the
shirt
under she had found in the pack of a dead Dalesman, she having come upon the
site of an outlaw ambush. The Dalesman had taken his enemies with him. She
wore
the shirt as she made herself believe as a gift of a brave man. Her feet were
bare, though she had a pair of wooden-soled sandals in her pack, ready for
the
harder trails. Her soles were tough and thick, the nails on her toes rough
and
broken.
Her hair sprung from her scalp in an unruly, wiry mass, for she had no comb
but
her fingers. Once it had been the color of apple-ale at its most potent,
sleek,
shining, braided. Now, bleached by the sun, it looked more like autumn-killed
grass. But she no longer possessed any pride in her person, only that she was
strong and clever enough to survive.
Uta, Brixia thought fleetingly, as she slipped from one stand of brush and
tree
to the next (ever alert to any warning, ear, eye or nose might give), was far
better named "lady" now. She was large for a house cat. But it might well be
that she had never warmed herself before any man-set fire—being feral from
birth. Only then her calm uniting with Brixia would be doubly strange.
Brixia had awakened from very uneasy slumber one night near a year gone, as
far
as she could reckon, though she kept no calendar, to discover Uta seated by
her
fire, the cat's eyes reflecting the light like large reddish coins in the
air.
Brixia had sheltered then in one of the moss-grown, roofless husks of some
building the Old Ones had left. She had discovered that those drifters she
must
name enemy had little liking for such relics. But there had been no harm in
this
one—just walls fast returning into the earth.
She had been a little wary of Uta at that first meeting. But, save that the
cat's unblinking stare made her feel that she was being in some way weighed
and
measured, there had been nothing remarkable about Uta. Her fur was a deep
gray,
darker on the head, paws and tail—with a blueish gleam when the sun touched
it.
And that fur was as thick and soft as some luxury cloth the traders had once
brought from overseas in the lost years before the invaders' war tore the
dales
from top to bottom, east to west, and broke life apart into shattered pieces
perhaps none of the survivors might ever gather together again.
In that dark face Uta's eyes were strange color, sometimes blue, sometimes
green, but always holding a red spark by night. And those were knowing eyes.
Sometimes, when they were turned on Brixia, the girl had been
uncomfortable—as
at their first meeting—as if, behind the slitted pupils was an intelligence
matching her own to study her in serene detachment.
Girl and cat, they now made their way to shrubs which formed an overgrown and
untidy hedge-wall about the larger ruin Brixia had guessed to be an inn.
Remains
of two walls stood, fire marked and crumbling, no higher than the girl's
shoulder. There was a cellar hole in the ground now near filled, and she had
no
mind to grub in that.
No—the best hunting ground was the lord's domain. Though that would have been
the first to be looted, of course. Still if the fire had gotten out of
control
before the looters had finished, then—
Brixia's head went up. Her nostrils expanded to catch that scent. In the
wilds
she depended upon scent as did any of the animals, and, though she did not
realize it, nor ever think about such things much, that sense was now far
keener
from constant use than it had been before war had made of her a rover.
Yes! Burning wood!
She dropped to hands and knees, crawled with a hunter's caution along the
side
of the inn, seeking a thinner place in that wall of brush which enclosed it.
At
length she lay flat, pushing forward the boar spear inch by inch, to lift
back
low-hanging branches and increase her field of vision.
Fire at this time of the year, when there had been no storm with lightning to
set a spark, could only mark a camp of humans, Which in this country usually
meant—outlaws. That some who had once lived here might have drifted back to
see
what could be salvaged— She considered that possibility and did not
altogether
dismiss it.
But even if the village Dalesmen had returned they could be her enemies now.
They need only catch sight of her for her to be their quarry. To their eyes
in
her present ragged state she was no different than the outlaws who had
despoiled
them before. They might well take her for the scout of another such band.
Though Brixia searched the scene before her with close attention she saw no
signs of any camp. The house was, she decided, too destroyed to provide
shelter.
However, the tower still stood, and, though its window slits were unshuttered
to
the wind and storms and must have been so for a long time, the rest presented
an
appearance of being less ill used.
Whoever sheltered here must be in the tower. She had no more than decided
that
when there was movement in the doorway and someone advanced into the open.
Brixia tensed.
A boy—undersized—his fair head near as unkempt as her own. But his clothing
was
whole and looked in good condition. That was dark green breeches, boots, and
his
jerkin was of metal rings sewed on to leather, provided with sleeves to his
wrists. He wore a sword belt and, in the scabbard, a blade with a plain hilt.
As she watched, he threw back his head, put his fingers to his lips and
whistled. Uta stirred, and then, before Brixia could stop her, the cat
flashed
out of hiding and sped into the courtyard before the keep, her tail banner
high.
But it was not she alone who answered that summons. A horse trotted from
around
the tower and came to the boy, dropping its head to butt against his chest,
while fingers scratched the root of its forelock caressingly.
Uta had come into full view of the boy and now she sat down, primly folding
her
tail end over her front paws; turning on him, Brixia was sure, that same
measuring gaze which she used with the girl from time to time. She, herself,
was
unwontedly irritated at the desertion of the cat. For so long Uta had been
her
only companion—Brixia had come to think of her as she might a comrade of her
own
species. Yet now the cat had gone from under her very hand to visit with the
stranger.
The girl's frown grew the sharper. There was nothing here for her—no chance
to
go searching for any useful loot. What remained, if anything did, would be
discovered by this intruder. Best slip away as soon as she might and leave
Uta
to her fate. After all it looked as if the cat wished to change her
allegiance.
The boy looked down at the cat. Now he loosed the horse and went to one knee,
his hand outstretched.
"Pretty Lady—" he spoke with the accent of the upper dales, and his words
were
startling to the listening girl. It had been so long since she had heard any
voice except her own.
"Come—Lady—"
"Jartar?"
She saw the boy's body stiffen as he glanced back over his shoulder at the
tower
door.
"Jartar—" That other voice was low and there was something in it— Brixia
crooked
her arm to rest her chin as she lay in hiding—even her breath slow and light.
Two of them—at least. She had better not try to move yet—even though she was
nearly sure that the craft she had learned by force of need was equal to
covering any retreat.
The boy stood up, went back in the tower. With a toss of its head the horse
ambled over the stone pavement, heading toward a good stand of grass. But Uta
trotted toward that same doorless opening in the stone.
Brixia felt a small warmth of anger within her. They had so much—clothing, a
sword, a horse—she had had nothing but Uta. Now it seemed she might even lose
the cat. This was the time to get away. Still she made no move to slip back
as
quietly as she had come.
She had been alone for so long. While she knew that safety now lay only in
loneliness, yet memory stirred. She watched the tower door with a certain
wistfulness. The boy had not looked formidable. He wore a sword—but who in
this
land did not carry such weapons as he could find? Of late there was no law,
no
might of Dale lord to offer protection. Safety one carried in one's own
hands,
in the strength and dexterity of one's body. However, though she had heard
only
one voice calling out of the tower, that had the deep tone of a man's, it did
not signify that there might not be more than one therein.
Prudence demanded that she creep away at once. Only—there was a need, born of
a
starvation of spirit, which was eating at her as might starvation of her
spare
body. She wanted to hear voices—see someone— Brixia had not known how deep
was
that desire until this moment.
Folly, Brixia told herself sternly. Yet she yielded to that folly, moment by
moment. One of those moments proved her withdrawal already too late.
Movement in the door. Uta, who had reached the edge of that, withdrew by a
graceful leap to the pavement without, sitting tail over paws again. Then the
boy issued forth, but this time he half supported a companion.
A tall man, at least beside the boy he seemed tall. He walked oddly,
shambling,
his head bent forward as if he stared at the ground as he came. His arms
swung
loosely from his shoulders and, though, like the boy he wore mail (his being
a
well-made shirt of it—not crude ring and leather stuff), his belt scabbard
held
no sword. He was wide of shoulder, narrow of waist and hip. His hair had been
cropped, but not too recently, for it curled behind his ears and down a
little
on his neck, swept back from his sun browned forehead. That hair was very
dark,
and so were his brows which slanted upwards at the far corners. There was a
cast
to his features which Brixia's troubled memory noted. Once, a long time ago,
she
had seen such a man—
There had been a story about him—she groped for the first time in many
months,
deliberately stirring up memory she had sought to deaden. Yes! What had they
said in whispers about that other man—a lord from the west who had spent a
single night in the keep, sitting at meat in the high seat of an honored
guest
at her father's right hand? He was—half blood! Triumphantly her rusty memory
produced the term she wanted—one of those the Dales folk looked upon askance
but
trod softly about—one whose fathers had wed strange ladies—people of the Old
Ones—most of whom had long ago left High Hallack, fading away toward the
north
or west where no sensible man would want to follow. There were always
whispers
about the half-blood—they were said to have powers which only they
understood.
But her father had welcomed that lord in open friendship and had seemed
honored
that he stayed beneath their roof.
Now she saw that there was a difference between that man in her blurred
memory
and this one who came from the ruined tower. He did not raise his head to
look
about him as he advanced a few steps, but halted to stand quietly, still
staring
at the pavement. There was a curious emptiness in his face. He had no sign of
beard (perhaps that also was a mark of his ancestry) and his mouth opened
slackly, though his chin was well set. If it had not been for that emptiness
mirrored in his lack of all expression he might have been considered a
well-favored man.
The boy held him by the arm, drew him along, the man obeying docilely and
never
looking up. Bringing him to where there was a tumble of stones, his companion
gently forced him to be seated there.
"It is a fair morning—" To Brixia's hearing the boy's voice was strained, the
words tumbled out too fast, sounded too loud. "We are home at Eggarsdale, my
lord, truly at Eggarsdale—" The boy glanced about him, glancing up and around
as
if he sought some aid.
"Jartar—" For the first time the man spoke. His head came up, though there
was
no change in the dull cast of his face as he called that word aloud.' 'Jartar—
"Jartar is—gone, my lord." The boy caught at the man's chin, strove to bring
the
slanted eyes up to meet his own. Though the man's head moved unresistingly in
that hold, Brixia could see there was no change, no lightening of the
deadness
in that set stare.
"We are home, ,my lord!" The boy's hands went to the man's shoulders, shook
him.
The body in that hold yielded limply to the force of his shaking. Still the
man
did not resist, nor show that he recognized either boy, words, or the place
in
which he sat. With a sigh his young companion stepped back, again looking
about
the courtyard as if to summon up some aid which would break what lay upon his
lord like a spell.
Then he knelt, took the man's hands in his, held them tightly against his
breast.
"My lord," Brixia thought he used a vast effort to keep his voice even, "this
is
Eggarsdale." He formed each word slowly and distinctly, speaking as he might
to
one who was deaf but might hear a little if one took good care. "You are in
your
own place, my lord. We are safe, my lord. Your own safe place, you are home."
Uta arose, stretched, moved lightfooted across the pavement towards man and
boy.
Coming to the right side of the man she reared, setting her forepaws on his
thigh to look up at him.
For the first time there was a change in that face so lacking in any sign of
intelligence or emotion. The man's head turned slowly. He might have been
righting against an obstructing force in order to move at all. But he did not
face the cat. The boy's visible surprise became demanding concentration,
including both cat and man in the intentness of his gaze.
His lord's lips worked. The man might be fighting to produce words which he
was
unable to speak. For a long moment he continued so. Then he lost that measure
of
faint attention, if attention it had been. Once more his face emptied, was
the
mirror of a ruined mind, as broken as the remnants of what the boy had called
his home.
Uta dropped from her place at his knee, eyed the down winging of a butterfly,
to
bound away after that with playfulness she seldom displayed. The boy loosened
the man's hands, sprang after the cat, but she skimmed neatly between his
reaching hands, slipped away between two stones.
"Puss—puss!" He dodged around the stones, hunting and calling frenziedly, as
if
to regain sight of the cat were the most important thing in the world.
Brixia smiled wryly. She could have told him his efforts were in vain. Uta
went
her own way. The cat must have been curious about the people in the tower.
Now
that the curiosity was satisfied they might never see her again.
"Puss!" the boy pounded with his fist on top of part of the tumbled wall.
"Puss!
I—he knew, for a minute—by the Fangs of Oxtor, he knew!" He threw back his
head
and cried that last aloud like a battle shout. "Puss—he knew—you must come
again—you must!"
Though he said that with all the intensity of a wise-woman evoking one of the
Powers, he had no answer. Brixia realized what the boy wanted. That faint
interest of the man in the curious cat must mean a great deal to his
companion.
Maybe it was the first response his lord had shown to anything since wound or
illness had reduced him to this husk. So the boy wanted Uta to hand as a hope—
Brixia stirred a little. So engrossed was that other in his own web of hopes
and
fears, she felt that he might rise to her feet and walk away in the open,
without his noting her. And she should withdraw—only now a curiosity perhaps
akin to Uta's kept her where she was. Though her wariness had eased a
little—she
saw in these two no immediate open threat to herself.
"Puss—" the boy's voice died away almost despairingly.
The man shifted a little and, as the boy turned towards him, he raised his
head.
There was no change on his dead face, but he began to sing as a songsmith
might
voice a song for a hall feast.
"Down came the Power
By Eldor cast-
Fierce pride,
Strength meant to last.
Out of the dark
At his call
Came that to make him
Lord of all.
But Zarsthor bared the Sword of Mind
Raised Will's shield,
Vowed by Death, heat and heart,
Not to Yield.
Star Bane blazed,
Grim and bright
Darkness triumphed
Over Light,
Zarsthor's land fallow lies,
His fields stark bare.
None may guess in aftertime
Who held Lordship there.
Thus by the shame of
Eldor's pride
Death and ruin came to ride.
The stars have swung—
Is the time ripe
To face once more
the force of night?
Who dares come in dark and shame
To test the force of Zarsthor's Bane?"
The poor verse might limp, sounding little better than the untutored riddling
of
an unlettered landman, yet there was something in his singing which made
Brixia
shiver. Zarsthor's Bane she had never heard of. However nearly every dale had
its own legends and stories. Some never spread beyond the hills which
encircled
that particular holding. The boy halted. His incredulous expression once more
became one of excited hope.
"Lord Marbon!"
Only his joyous hail had just the opposite effect. The man's vacant face once
more turned downward. However, now his hands moved restlessly, plucking at
the
breast of his mail shirt.
"Lord Marbon!" the boy repeated.
The man's head turned a little to the right, as one who listened.
"Jartar—?"
"NO!" the boy's hands clenched into fists. "Jartar is dead. He has been dead
and
rotting this twelfth month and more! He is dead, dead, dead—do you hear me!
He
is dead!"
The last word echoed bleakly through the ruins.
2
IT WAS UTA who broke the silence following the dying away of that resounding
and
despairing word. The cat crouched to face that portion of the hedge behind
which
Brixia flattened in hiding. From her furred throat sounded what was near the
scream of a a tormented woman. Brixia had heard such a shriek before—it was
Uta's challenge. But that it was aimed at her came as a shock.
The boy whirled, his hand slapping down on the hilt of his sword in instant
reaction. There was no chance now for Brixia to slip away—she had waited far
too
long. While to continue to lie here only to be routed out of hiding like the
cowardly skulker they might well deem her— No! That she would not wait for.
She arose, pushed through a thin place in that hedging, to advance into the
open, her spear ready in her hand. Since there was no arrow on any bow string
to
provide menace, she believed her spear was fair answer to the other's sword.
Uta had faced about after that betrayal, staring round-eyed at the boy. His
face
was taut, wary. Now his sword was out of the scabbard.
"Who are you?" There was wariness in his sharp demand also.
Her name would mean nothing to him. During the past months of solitary
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