Part 9 (1/2)

”You will do as I say. Come to me-”

I could not fight that compulsion any more than I could have broken chains which might have been forged about my wrists or limbs. To her I went.

”Look you!” She waved a hand toward the skull with its blaze of inner fire. That was now brighter, harsher, alive!

Without my willing it my hands went forth and touched the temples of the skull, one on either side. Into me swept another will, imperious-overriding the last remnants of what I was. I was given my orders; I knew what must be done.

”So!” the woman laughed. ”We have chosen well, eh, Targi-” She spoke to the skull as if it were a living being. ”Now you”-contemptuously she looked at me-”go you about your task.”

Out from the pillars came scuttling shapes. Thas-the underground people, such as had already tried once to betray us. The leader of that band caught at my hand and I could not draw away. Under his urging I turned to the right.

We went through burrows; how many and where they ran, that I could not tell. All which burned within me, with near the same blaze which the skull had shown, was what I was to do. For it came to me that there were limitations on the woman and the skull. What meant so much to them they could not accomplish because these ways were forbidden them. Perhaps the pa.s.sage ran somewhere under the cliffs of the Valley and, even deep in the earth, the safety runes had a measure of power.

If so, such did not now work in my favor. I could pa.s.s this way easily enough, but I could not free myself from the tasks laid upon me.

The rest-it became disjointed, more like the broken episodes of a dream wherein one slides from one bit of action to the next without any logical connection. I remember mouthing words which someone else-either the woman or the skull had locked into my brain. And then- There was something wrong. I could feel the ensorcellment lock even tighter on me. But beneath that prisoning arose baffled rage. I had not completed my task-there had been unseen interference. The Thas surrounded me, pushed and pulled me along their black burrows. What happened after-I could never piece together.

But there came a time when I knew I moved above earth, I saw faces which I should remember, only the hold on my brain would not yet let me. Then- Then I came fully awake-or alive-once more. I stood in the open air and around me blew sweet wind, the chill of which I did not mind, because it carried the freshness of the world I knew. And there was Yonan, and with him another who wore strange armor and carried a great double-headed ax. There was also Tsali and then-up from the depth before us which must make the Valley -Dahaun came and with her Lord Kyllan, who was hand-fasted to her-others behind.

I cried out-this must be real-not another dream. But only when Dahaun took me into her arms was I sure of that.

Chapter Two.

The barrier against speech no longer held, and I told Dahaun freely what had been my dream. Though dream, it seemed, it was not. I had been drawn out of the safety of the Valley-and that by the betrayal of a part of my own wayward mind.

For they showed me a figure wrought of clay. And set to its rounded head were hairs from my own; about its form was wrapped a rag which I had once worn. And this I knew without telling was of the Old Evil. So had I been reached and worked upon by a greater force than we had suspected had yet striven to break our boundaries.

When I described the woman who abode with the skull, Dahaun frowned; still, there was puzzlement in her frown. She made me stay within her own quarters, taking care before she left me to use a wand, white and fresh-peeled, to draw around the cus.h.i.+ons on which I rested certain tokens confined by a circle. And, before she had done, the need to sleep had so weighted my eyelids that I drifted away. Though I struggled, for I feared above all to lose my will and thought and be drawn into dreams.

Dream again I did, and not happily. I was not now physically a part of that second visit to the hall of pillars and the skull as I had been the first time.

Yet I could see-I could hear.

There was a change in her who had woven that earlier spell, for I was as certain as if oath had been taken that it was the woman who had reached out to draw me to her through the runways of the Thas; I so much under her spell I did not know where I went.

She no longer showed the pride and arrogance which had clothed her better than the mist at our last meeting. And her beauty was marred, as if time had served her ill. But still she was one to be feared and I did not forget that. Though at this time she did not look in my direction nor show any sign that she knew of my presence there.

Rather she stood by the base on which the skull rested and her hands caressed the crystal of its fas.h.i.+oning. Those blazing lights had died, or been muted so that only a near-colorless fogging of the inner part remained.

I saw her mouth and lips move, believed that she chanted or spoke to the thing she fingered. There was a kind of pa.s.sion in her face which was greater than wrath-although that emotion underlaid the other. I could sense the forces she strove to bend, to break, to control by her will-and her frustration and despair that this she could not do.

Then she stooped to set her lips to the fleshless mouth of the crystal. She did that as I believed a woman would greet a lover, the one who was the center of her life. And her arms went around the pillar so that the ”face” of that grinning thing pressed tightly against her ruby-tipped b.r.e.a.s.t.s. There was something so shameless in that gesture that I felt revulsion. But I could not flee, for that which had drawn me here still held-dream though it was.

She turned her head suddenly, as her eyes sought me. Perhaps she now knew that some portion of me had been drawn once more into her net. I saw exultation blaze high in those eyes.

”So-the spell holds yet, does it, younger sister? I have wrought better than I hoped.”

Her hands arose in the air to trace lines I did not understand. Straightaway that which was me was locked fast. Now she came away from the skull, and so vibrant was the Dark Power in her that her hair stirred of itself, arose in a great flaming nebula about her head, more startling than any crown a queen might wear. Her lips were slightly parted, their burning redness like a gathering of blood on her ghostly fair skin.

She came one step and then two; her hands reached out for me, that triumph swelling in her and about her like some robe of ceremony.

”There is yet time-with an able tool-” I think her thought was more her own than sent to me. ”Aye, Targi,” she glanced back for a breath at the skull, ”we are not yet lost!”

But if she had some plan it had failed her. For in that instant the spell broke, the woman and the skull she tended so pa.s.sionately vanished. I opened my eyes again upon the hall of Dahaun to see the Lady of Green Silences standing at my feet. While over me she shook a handful of near-withered herbs, leaves of which broke off at the vigor of her gestures, s.h.i.+fting down to lie on my body. I sniffed Illbane, that very old cure for the ills of the spirit; with it langlon, the tri-leafed, which clears the senses, recalls a wandering mind.

Only I knew what had happened, and I cowered on my bed of hides and springy dried gra.s.ses. Tears which were born both of fear and the sense of my own helplessness filled my eyes, to spill down my cheeks.

Dahaun, though she looked grave enough, reached out and caught my hand even when I would shrink from her, knowing now that some part of me had been attuned to the Shadow and that I was held by all which had and was most evil in this land.

”You dreamed- ” she said, and she did not use mind touch but rather spoke as she would to a small child who awakes terrified from a nightmare.

”She-I was drawn again-” I mumbled. ”She can draw me to her will-”

”The same woman-?”

”The same woman, the skull, the place of pillars. It was as it was before.”

Dahaun leaned forward, her eyes holding mine locked in a gaze I could not break, for all my feeling of guilt and trouble.

”Think, Crytha, was it exactly the same?”

There was some reason for her questioning. I dropped my guard and drew upon memory, so that in my mind hers could see also what I had witnessed. Though I began to fear for her, lest some of the taint sleep with the knowledge, to infect her also.

She sat down cross-legged by my bed place. Crus.h.i.+ng the last of the Illbane between her hands, she leaned forward, to touch those now deeply scented fingers to my temples.

”Think-see!” she commanded with a.s.surance.

So I relived in memory, as best I could, what I had seen in the dream.

When I had done she clasped her hands before her.

”Laidan-” She spoke a single name. ”And-Targi-”

”Who is Laidan?” I ventured at last.

”One who mixed-or mixes, since it seems that she must still live in some burrow of hiding-the worst of two races within her. Laidan was of the People by her mother's right-her father-” Dahaun shrugged. ”There were many tales in the time of her bid to rule as to whom he might be-though he was not one of us. It is most commonly accepted that she was sired by one of the Hill Lords who accepted the rule of the Shadow-willingly. Laidan-and Targi-” she repeated thoughtfully.

”Well, for that combination there may be an answer. Those who went forth last night (if they can do as Uruk believes) perhaps can make sure Targi shall no longer be a factor in any campaign. But Laidan they would not have met in that past-for at the battle time she was elsewhere, very much engaged.”

”The battle?” To me she spoke in riddles. After a long measuring look at me she did not answer that half-question. Rather she spoke about what seemed the most urgent to me now.

”It would seem that Laidan, and that which she has so long guarded, have set part seal on you, Crytha. How this may be I cannot understand. But the roots of it all may lie in the far past. However-if she can compel you to come to her-even through dreaming-”