Part 5 (2/2)

The Gray Ones made no sound. I set myself to exploring handholds to my left.

There were enough to give me easy pa.s.sage. Only moments later my feet found a firm surface and I could let go of those holds, turn to face outward.

”They are not silent hunters usually,” my companion continued his soundless communication. ”There are but five.” He mentioned that as if five of the Gray Ones meant nothing at all to armed men. At that I wondered, fleetingly.

I saw the betraying eyes below. They moved steadily along what must be the base of the cliff, perhaps the height of a man-a little more-until they were again beneath us. I drew Ice Tongue.

It was as if I had suddenly produced a torch, limited though that illumination was. And in my hand, the sword itself gave forth a sound so strange that had not my fingers clung to it willessly I might have dropped it.

The songsmiths who tell and retell our legends, keeping alive so much which is long since gone otherwise from the world of men, speak at times of ”singing swords,” marvelous blades which give forth a shrill song when they are battle-ready. But Ice Tongue-snarled! There was no other word to describe the sound it made.

And its snarl was echoed from below. A dark bulk sprang up toward us. Not a Gray One, for it showed no lighted eye discs.

Uruk moved and, in the light of my blade, I saw his ax descend into that black ma.s.s, heard a horrible howling as the creature, whatever it might be, fell back and away. Now the Gray Ones leaped up, as if maddened into stupidity by the wounding of their battle comrade. For our position above them gave us a superiority which no sane creature would have ignored.

Again Ice Tongue snarled as I cut down at a misshapen head, felt flesh give, bone shatter. They leaped to reach us as if they were frenzied, compelled to attack in spite of the fact that we could so well deal with them from where we stood.

Thus in the dark we slew and slew again. Screams and whimpers arose from below us. But we twain voiced no war cries. Nor did Ice Tongue ”speak” by my will or training, but as if it, itself, had such a hatred for those below that it must vent that in force.

At length, Uruk's thought came to me, ”Enough. They are dead.”

I leaned on the bared sword, searching for any telltale flash of luminous eye, listening for any sound. But the night was now both black and still. I felt myself weary, drained, as if Ice Tongue had drawn upon my very spirit.

”We must move,” Uruk added. And in me, too, a feeling of urgency warred with that weariness. ”Those here have their masters, who will soon know that they are dead.”

We followed the ledge on for a little and found at length that it narrowed so that we must descend once more. And, when, at last, the ground was under our feet, Uruk turned sharply away from the scene of our struggle.

”HaHarc-” he said. ”We are not yet masters of time.”

What he meant I did not yet guess, but I wiped Ice Tongue on a rough clump of gra.s.s and followed him, though I kept that blade bare and ready as I tramped along.

Chapter Three.

Though there was no moon and the stars were very far away, affording no light at all, yet we two strode through the night even as we had left the fire in the Valley, shoulder to shoulder. We might well be following some torch-illumined path. In me there was a certainty as if my mind saw instead of my eyes. Yet another part of me was ever on sentry duty against what might slink behind on our trail.

I had been tired when we had returned from the venture in the burrows of the Thas. My rest had been but a short one before we had been summoned to that council. Yet now I had no feeling of fatigue, only a burning desire to get ahead with what must be done. Though the nature of that act, whatever it might be, was still hidden from me.

Uruk did not break the silence between us, with either thought or speech. The Lady Dahaun had called him legend, but she had accepted him at once, which meant he was not of the Shadow. And he had known Tolar-yet I was afraid to try to recall any early tie between us. Yonan still flickered faintly within me, his fear enough to impose this last desperate restraint.

If evil did sniff behind us that night, it kept its distance well. Perhaps the slaughter we had wrought at the base of the cliff made the enemy wary. Or maybe they would entice us on in our folly well away from the Valley so that we would be easy meat for them. Dully, I wondered which of these guesses was nearest to the truth as I went, ever on guard.

That wan light of gray which is the first awakening of the morning rendered visible a wild, churned land. Some chaotic movement of the earth had had its way here. Uruk slowed. I saw his helmed head move right to left and back again, as if he sought a sign which was missing.

Now we must weave a path through a choking of brush and shrub which grew up about tumbles of dark blocks of stone. Still, when I surveyed this with half-closed, measuring eyes, I could see patterns-as if buildings of mist and fog spiraled upward from those battered remains, and roads opened for us.

Uruk paused. When I looked at him I saw his face set, his mouth grim-lipped. He searched the ruins ahead with a fierce, compelling stare as if he would tear out of them by the force of his will alone some mighty secret.

”HaHarc-” He did not use the mind touch, rather spoke aloud as if he could not quite believe in what he saw. Then he swung the ax, and there was rage in that swing as he brought the weapon down, to decapitate a thin bush. He might have been striking out against all the past with that useless blow.

For a long moment he stood, the withered leaves and branches he had cut still lying on the ground, the blade which had severed them pressing their wreckage into a drift of soil. Then he shook his head. Once more he stared about him intently and I sensed that he sought some landmark which was very needful for whatever he was to do here. But my battle with that other within me had begun once again, and I felt suddenly drained of strength, of any care concerning what might lie ahead.

Uruk moved forward, but hesitantly, not with the swift purpose he had shown before. It could be that, fronted by these ruins, he had lost some landmark which he needed. Still we wove a way among blocks, pus.h.i.+ng through the growth, though now I followed behind him.

The valley which had held HaHarc was narrow at its entrance. I could mark in the growing light that it had been closed here by a wall or fortification running from one side of the heights to the other. Though the stones of that building were so cast about that it would appear the land itself had shaken off that bondage, as indeed it must have done.

Past that point, the way before us widened and those structures which had been divorced from the walls showed taller, less tumbled. The stone was darkly weathered. Still here and there, even in the gray of early dawn, I could sight remnants of carving. Sometimes I had to close my eyes for a breath or two because I could also see the mist curdle, raise, bring back ghostly shadows of what must have been.

We stumbled upon a street, still paved, though drifted with soil which had given rootage to gra.s.s, some small bushes. This ran straight into the heart of the destroyed fortress city. For I knew without being told that before its destruction HaHarc had indeed been both. Like the Green Valley, in its day it had stood as a stout oasis of safety against the Shadow.

On Uruk tramped, now facing straight ahead, as if he had at last found the landmark he sought. Thus we came at length upon an open s.p.a.ce where the ruins walled in a circling of stone blocks, tilted and fissured now. At regular intervals about this had been set up, on the inner side of that circle, monoliths, carved with runes, headed by time-eroded heads; some of men and some of beasts, strange, and yet menacing-but in their way no more menacing than those creatures of intelligence who comaraded the People of Green Silences.

Some had fallen outward, to shatter on the pavement. But others leaned this way or that, still on their bases. And two or three stood firmly upright. Within the guardians.h.i.+p of these there was another building, which, in spite of its now much broken and fallen walls, I think had been tower-tall. And the stone of its making was different from that I had seen elsewhere in the ruins-for it was that dull blue which marked those islands of safety throughout Escore, the blue we had been taught to watch for during any foraying as a possible place of defense.

Once more Uruk stopped, this time facing a gateway in the tower. Had there ever been any barrier of a door there, that was long since gone. I could see through the opening into a dim chamber, wherein blocks fallen from the higher stories were piled untidily.

”Tower of Iuchar- ” Again he spoke aloud and his voice, though he had not raised it, echoed oddly back, ”Iuchar, Iuchar.”

My other memory struggled for freedom. Iuchar-I had known- A man-tall as Uruk-yet not one I had seen in the body, no. Rather he was-what? A ghost which could be summoned at will to hearten people, who in the later days of HaHarc needed strongly some such symbol to rea.s.sure them in a war they sensed was already near lost? Iuchar of HaHarc. Once he had lived-for very long had he been dead-dead!

I denied Iuchar, for all his tower. Uruk, leaning a little on his ax, turned his head toward me. I saw his eyes beneath the rim of his dragon-crested helm. They held a somber anger.

”Iuchar-” he repeated the name once more, to be echoed. He might so have been uttering a warning to me.

Then he raised the ax in formal salute to that travesty of a tower. And I found myself willed by that other to draw Ice Tongue also, and give with it a gesture toward the open doorway.

Uruk went forward, and I followed. We pa.s.sed beneath that wide portal. And I saw on the walls without the traces of flame, as if Iuchar's tower had once been the heart of some great conflagration. But within- I halted just beyond the portal. In my hands Ice Tongue blazed, and there was an answering fire running along the double blades of Uruk's ax. There was an energy in this place, a flow of some kind of Power which made the skin tingle, the mind wince and try to escape its probing. However badly time and disaster had treated HaHarc, in this, its very heart, the Light held, fiercely demanding. Bringing with it a fear which was not born of the Shadow, but rather a foretaste of some great demand upon courage and spirit, from which he who was merely human must flinch.

But there was no evading that demand. My hands shook and Ice Tongue quivered from that shaking. But I did not drop the sword, that I could not have done.

Uruk had moved on until he stood in the very center of that circular chamber, and now he turned and beckoned to me.

Unhappily, but realizing that I could not resist what had lain here so long waiting, I took three or four long strides to join him. No earth had drifted here, the stone under our boots was clean; for those rocks which had fallen from above lay close to the walls. It might have been that the force which flung here determined to keep the core of its hold clear. Now I saw that the pavement was crossed and recrossed by lines, into which some dust had s.h.i.+fted, so that the pattern they fas.h.i.+oned was not to be too clearly defined.

Uruk took his ax, and, going down on one knee, he used one of the blades with infinite care, sc.r.a.ping away that s.h.i.+fting of ancient dust, to make plain that we stood within a star. While again moved by the stirring of that other will which had become an inner part of me, I used the tip of Ice Tongue in a like manner, bringing into clarity certain runes and symbols, all different, which had been wrought near each of the points of that star. Two I recognized; those the Valley used for its safeguarding; the others-I could have opened Tolar's memory perhaps, but stubbornly I resisted.

While always about us, pressing in upon mind and will, was that sense of waiting Power. Had any of it drained during the ages of HaHarc's loss? It did not seem so to me. Rather I thought that it had stored energy, waiting impatiently for the release we were bringing, if unwillingly on my part.

His task done, Uruk arose and gestured again to me.

”The fires-”

I knew what he meant, though the logic of Yonan denied that this could be done-even while the sword of Tolar moved to do it.

I pa.s.sed slowly around within the star, reaching out with Ice Tongue. And with that ice-turned-uncanny-metal I touched the tip of each point of the star set in the rock. From that touch sprouted fire-a fire unfed by any lamp, or even any fuel, burning upward unnaturally out of the blue rock itself.

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