Part 6 (1/2)

”They find me quite as strange as you do.” His eyes held a cruel gleam of amus.e.m.e.nt ”Perhaps even stranger.”

The old man nodded. ”Gerrith said-”

”A wolfs-head, a landless man, a man without a tribe. I was raised by animals, Jerann. That is why I seem like one.” He lifted his head, looking northward. ”Earthmen killed them all. They would have killed me too, except for Ashton.”

Jerann glanced at Stark's face and s.h.i.+vered slightly. He did not speak again until, at the upper end of the valley, they reached the wise woman's grotto.

10.

Only Stark and Jerann turned aside. The cavalcade went on, moving at a steady walking pace that covered a surprising amount of ground without tiring the animals. Stark could catch up with them easily. He slid off the soft, wooly-haired hide of the saddle-pad and followed Jerann up a steep path that wound through a dark overhanging wood. Finally they came to a hillside where the naked rock jutted out, forming rough pillars on either side of a cave. A party of men on guard there rose from around their fire and spoke to Jerann. The wise woman was within, and safe.

Inside the cave mouth was an antechamber, where Stark supposed that folk must wait to hear the oracle. At the far end were heavy curtains of some purple stuff that looked as if it had done duty for many Gerriths, and there were solemn designs embroidered in black. All in all, not a cheerful room. And cold, with the dusty tomb-smell of places shut away forever from the sun.

A tall old woman parted the curtains and signed to them to enter. She wore a long gray gown and her face was all bony sternness. She looked at Stark as though she would tear him with her sharp gaze, rip away his flesh and see what was beneath it.

”My old mistress died because of you,” she said. ”I hope it was not for nothing.”

”So do I,” said Stark, and stepped past her into the inner room.

This was somewhat better. There were rugs and hangings to soften the stone, pierced lamps for light and a brazier for warmth. But it was still a cave, and Gerrith looked out of place in it with her youth and her golden coloring. She was made for sunlight.

She sat in a ma.s.sive chair behind a ma.s.sive table. A wide, shallow bowl of silver stood on the table, filled with clear water.

”The Water of Vision,” she said, and shook her head. ”It has given me nothing.” There were shadows around her eyes and her face was drawn, as though she had sat there all night. ”I never had my mother's gift. I never wanted it, though she told me it would come in its own time, whether I wanted it or not. My own gift is small and not to be ordered. It's worse than having none at all. Always before I was able to use the Crown, and I think something of my mother and all the other Gerriths down through the centuries-the name is a tradition with us, Stark-lived on in it and could speak through it. Now there is no Crown and, as Mordach said, no wise woman in Irnan.”

Stark took from his girdle an object wrapped in a bit of cloth and handed it to her.

”This is all that was left.”

She opened the wrapping. The little yellow skull grinned up at her. Her face changed. ”It is enough,” she said. She leaned over the bowl, holding the skull between her hands. The water rippled as though in a sudden wind, and then was still.

Stark and Jerann waited, silent. And it seemed to Stark that the clear water turned red and thick and that shapes moved in it, shapes that brought the hackles p.r.i.c.kling up at the back of his neck and stirred a small sound in his throat.

Gerrith looked up at him, startled. ”You saw?”

”Not really.” The water was clear again. ”What were they?”

”Whatever they are, they stand between you and the Citadel.” She stood up. ”And I must go with you.”

Jerann said, ”But Lady! You can't leave Irnan now ...”

”My work in Irnan is finished. I told you that. Now the Water of Vision has shown me where my path lies.”

”Has it shown you what the end of that path will be?”

”No. You must find your own strength and your own faith, Jerann.” She smiled at him, with genuine affection. ”You've never lacked for either. Go back to your people, and if you have time now and again, pray for us.”

She turned suddenly and laughed at Stark. ”Not so downcast, Dark Man. I'll not burden you with bowls and braziers and tripods. Only this.” She placed the little skull in a pouch at her girdle. ”And I can ride and shoot as well as any.” She called to the old woman and disappeared through the hangings into some inner chamber.

Jerann looked at Stark. There did not seem to be anything to say. They nodded to each other and Jerann left. Stark waited, scowling at the placid water in the silver bowl and cursing wise women. Whatever it was he had glimpsed there, he would as soon not have seen until the time came.

In a short time Gerrith returned, wearing tunic and riding cloak. She and Stark went together out of the cave and down the steep path, and the old woman stood in the cave entrance and watched them with eyes like cold steel daggers. Stark was glad when the trees hid them from her sight. At the foot of the path a gnarled old man had brought Gerrith's mount, with a sack of provisions tied to the saddle pad. She thanked him and bade him goodbye, and they rode away.

They came up with the party around noon, when Old Sun threw rusty shadows under the bellies of the beasts. Halk shrugged when he saw Gerrith.

”We shall have all the bogles on our side now,” he said, and his mouth twisted in what might pa.s.s for a smile. ”At least we see that the wise woman has enough faith in her mother's prophecy to put herself in danger.”

They moved steadily toward the Barrens, following the Lamp of the North.

At first the road ran between mountains. There were peel-towers on the ridges, falling down, and ruins of fortified villages stuck to the cliffs like wasps' nests. But the mountains were still inhabited. For three days a band of very s.h.a.ggy people followed them, going along their own secret trails parallel to the road. They carried crude weapons and ran with a curious loping stride, bent forward from the waist.

”One of the Wild Bands,” Gerrith said. ”They have no law at all except that of blind survival. They even come as far as Irnan sometimes. The Wandsmen hate them because they kill Wandsmen and Farers as readily as they kill us.”

The Izvandian escort was too strong to be attacked, and there were no stragglers. At night, beyond the meager fires, Stark could hear stealthy rustlings, and several times the Izvandian sentries loosed arrows at things creeping toward the picket lines. They killed one of the intruders and Stark looked at the body in the light of morning. His nose wrinkled. ”Why do they want to survive?” he wondered.

Halk said, ”The vermin are leaving it. Stand back.”

They left the heap of bones unburied on the stony ground.

The mountains dwindled away into hills covered with a dark, stunted scrub. Beyond them the land flattened out to the horizon, a treeless immensity of white and gray-green, a spongy mossiness flecked with a million icy ponds. The wind blew, sometimes hard, sometimes harder. Old Sun grew more feeble by the day. The Irnanese were stoical, riding the cold hours uncomplaining, wrapped in frosty cloaks. The Izvandians were comfortable and gay. This was their own, their native land.

Stark rode often beside Kazimni.

”In the days when Old Sun was young,” Kazimni would say, and spin out one of the thousand or so legends he seemed to have at his fingertips, all of warmth and richness and the fatness of the land. The men of those days had been giants, the women beautiful and willing beyond belief. Warriors had magic weapons that killed from afar; fishermen had magic boats that sailed the skies. ”Now it is as you see it,” he would finish. ”But we survive. We are strong. We are happy.”

”Good,” said Stark on one occasion. ”I congratulate you. And where is this place they call Worldheart?”

Kazimni shrugged. ”North.”

”That's all you know?”

”Yes. If it exists at all.”

”You sound as if you don't believe in the Lords Protector.”

Kazimni's wolf-face expressed aristocratic scorn. ”We do not require them. It makes little difference whether we believe in them or not.”

”Yet you sell your swords to the Wandsmen.”

”Gold is gold, and the Wandsmen have more of it than most. We do not have to like them, or follow their religion. We're free men. All the People of the Barrens are free. Not all of us are good. Some do business with the Wandsmen, some do not. Some trade with the city-states; some trade with each other; some do not trade at all but live by rapine. Some are mad. Quite mad. But free. There are no Farers here, and we can defend ourselves. The Wandsmen have found poor pickings among us. They let us alone.”

”I see,” said Stark, and rode for a time in silence. ”Something lives in that place by Worldheart,” he said at last. ”Something not human, and yet not quite animal.”

Kazimni gave a sidelong glance out of his tilted yellow eyes. ”How do you know that?”