Lost Lands of Witch World (52 page)

He stood with his hands on his hips, and he was laughing—silently, his amusement a lash of contempt and scorn.

“Kemoc of Tregarth, one of the Three—I bid you welcome. Though it would seem that you have lost something, and gained something—not for the rest of your spirit, nor to delight the eyes of those—if there now are any—who look upon you with kindliness. Would you see what those would see? Behold!”

He clicked his lips and straightway there appeared before me a burnished surface on which was painfully clear what must be my reflection. But the shock was perhaps not what he had expected, since I had already known of my changed body. Perhaps my composure startled Dinzil a little, if he were still able to be touched by human emotions.

“They say,” he smiled again, “there are places where what a man sees is not his outer form, but the inner; the thing he himself has fashioned through the years by his ill desires, his hidden lusts, the evil he has thought on doing but not had the courage to act upon. Do you recognize your inner self now—when it is turned to outer—Kemoc Tregarth, renegade from overmountain?”

I was past such needling.

Kaththea! I thought that not at him, but as I had before, sending it seeking. Here, what showed as that thought was no longer a bright green flying thing, but rather a bird sore hurt, fluttering, trying to reach a goal, but hindered from it.

I saw Dinzil turn his head, follow it. There was startlement in his eyes for an instant. He swept up his hand in a forbidding gesture and the thought-bird vanished. Now he looked to me again and he was no longer amused.

“It seems that I have underrated you, my misshapen hero. I will admit, I wondered how you could come this road without misstepping somewhere along the way. So you still have the power to find Kaththea, have you?” He appeared to think for a moment and then brought his hands together in a sharp clap, laughing once more.

“Very well. I have weaknesses; one of them is for heroes. Such constancy and devotion must be rewarded. Also, it will be amusing to see if your tie is strong enough to really show you Kaththea.”

He said a
word
, raised both hands over his head and plunged them down. There was a whirling about me, with nothing to cling to—

We stood in the round chamber. On the floor lay the trapdoor I had pushed back. It was as it had been, save that all which had been ghostly was now solid. The tapestries on the wall were woven in time faded colors, but jewels and metallic threads gave them sparkling life. The chairs, a chest or two, were heavily carved and plainly old. Dinzil still fronted me and now he made mock reverence.

“Welcome, welcome. I would give you the guesting cup, my poor hero, but I fear what you would quaff from it in this place would be the death of you. And that is not my wish—not yet. But we tarry too long. You have not come aguesting—have you?—but to see another.”

He turned his head a little from me and I followed his glance. There was a small table and on either side of it stood a sconce as tall as a man, in which candies burned, with a mirror between. Before that mirror, as if someone sat there, a comb with a jeweled back moved slowly up and down, in the motions of one smoothing long, loose locks of hair. But that was all, just the moving comb.

I shuffled toward the mirror and table. My thought went out in a sharp call:

“Kaththea!”

Did she in truth sit there, unseen by me? Or was that moving comb but a trick Dinzil used for my torment?

In the glass I saw something. But it was my toad self pictured there, no reflection of the beauty which was my sister's.

The comb fell to the floor. There came out of nothingness such a scream of terror as I have never heard. Dinzil threw out his arms, folded them about something invisible to me.

Yet all of this could be his trickery and no truth.

“Kaththea!” Once more I called, mind to mind.

“Evil!” That was no answer, but a feeling of loathing strong as any physical blow, and following it,
words
, some of which I knew. She was using a spell. Dinzil did not trick me; no one but Kaththea could do this.

“Evil indeed, my love.” Dinzil spoke as one soothing a child. “This thing would have you believe it is Kemoc come seeking you. Hush; waste not your wisdom which cannot harm a thing of this place.”

“Kaththea!” To the mind call I added two
words
. If she was not entirely lost to all she had been, then those would assure her that nothing of the Shadow stood here, but one of the light.

“Evil!” Again that blast against me. Stronger this time. But not buttressed with any word of power. “Send it hence, Dinzil!” that voice which was my sister's cried out of empty air. “Send it hence! To look upon it chills my heart!”

“So be it, my love!” He loosed his hold on that invisible body and then raised his hands once more and spoke a
word
. We whirled, to come again into the room furnished in mist.

“She has chosen, has she not, my hero? Let me show you something.”

Once more he brought out of nothingness that mirror. But this time it did not reflect me, or the room. There was a thing—female—akin to the monstrous weeper. That is, part of it was. But on the twisted shoulders of that foul body sat my sister's head; over those shoulders and sagging breasts flowed her hair. Her hands were not paws but white and human.

“This is Kaththea as she now is.”

My hate for him was a poison rising in my throat. He must have known, for his hand moved and I was planted to the floor as if roots sealed my paws to the stone.

“You see in me one who can vanquish the dangers of this place. I am Dinzil; I remain Dinzil. Slowly Kaththea is learning. When she is wholly as I am, then will she be wholly Kaththea here as well as in your own world—outwardly. She learns well and fast. All women shrink from the monstrous. I let her see a little of her present self—not telling her, of course, that she was the one upon whose form she looked, but letting her think that that is what might happen unless she speedily puts to use the safeguards I could teach her. Since then she has been most biddable. No, you are more than I thought you, Kemoc Tregarth. I had believed that most of the power was your sister's. However, one must not lightly toss aside any potential weapon without considering carefully the possibilities for future use. So—we shall put you in safe keeping until I can make a decision.”

Once more his signs and the warping. Then I was in a stone-walled cell, where only the yellowish aura given off by my body provided the light. The walls about me looked solid, with no break in them. I crouched down in the middle of that small, cold space and tried to think.

Hero—Dinzil had been derisive when he named me that, and rightly so. I had done naught to defend myself, to reach Kaththea, save what my enemy had
forced upon me. The battle had been no battle at all, but a pitifully inept encounter which had gone exactly as Dinzil wished.

But to con the unhappy past was no good stepping-stone to any future. That Dinzil had powers I had known since I had begun this so far ineffective quest. On my side were only the facts that I had won to the Tower, which he had not expected, that I still had the sword. Ha—I held the sword across my knees. Had Dinzil let me keep that weapon because he scorned the use of steel, or had he seen it at all?

That speculation lingered. Suppose to Dinzil the sword had been as invisible as Kaththea had been to me! Why? Or why had I not tested it upon him when we met? It was, looking back, as if I had been in bonds of a kind, unable to raise hand against him.

The Tower was his fortress. It could have safeguards in plenty, none of which were wrought of stone, steel, or even things visible. I could have been subject to them from the time I entered the mound door.

I had not once thought of using the sword, not until this moment when Dinzil must believe me safely caged. The sword had picked away the support of the gem stone wall. Could it do as well against the stones of my present prison?

Once free—if I were still in the tower—what could I do? Kaththea had fled from me to Dinzil. She had not accepted my call of identity. And she was already under the change Dinzil had set upon her. That thing he had showed me—now I wished it was wholly monster, knowing what the changes meant.

Kaththea had knowledge out of Estcarp. But much of the lore of the Wise Women could be only used by a virgin. They had held it against my mother that she had managed to retain her power even after she had wedded my father. Dinzil could not make her wholly his without destroying her usefulness.

Dear one
—the words he had used to soothe her. . . . My rage was choking; my paw closed tight upon the sword hilt. Then the other arose to touch the band of light which had been Kaththea's, on which Orsya had set magic of her own.

That had been woman's magic also. It had served me, but from the outside, not the in. What had Orsya said?
Seek with the heart
—

The heart . . . What had I used to set the scarf seeking? Not Kaththea as she was but as she had been, before any magic save that which was born in us—which we used as naturally as we breathed, slept, walked, talked—was known to us.

I could not really touch the scarf which was now only a band of light. But I put my toad paw firmly into the glow, kept the other on the sword hilt. I began to make magic—not Dinzil's, not any of this land, nor of Escore, but of the past. I sent back my mind, far, far back, to the first memory which had been mine, and Kyllan's and Kaththea's. We were on a furry rug before a fire which sent sparks flying upward now and then.

Anghart, who had been our foster mother, spun and the thread came smoothly
between her fingers, her skillful everybusy fingers. Kaththea's thought reached me—

“There is a fairy wood, and there are fairy birds in the trees
—”

Looking into the fire, I saw it as she did.

Then Kyllan thought:
“Here comes our father riding with his men.”

And flames rode manwise on some mountain horses.

“Mountains beyond
—” That had been my addition, little guessing then how mountains beyond would change our lives. No, do not think of what happened later. Keep memory clean and clear!

Anghart had looked down on us; very big Anghart had seemed then.

“So quiet; so quiet. Listen; I will tell you of the hoarfrost spirit and how Samsaw tricked it—”

But we had not been quiet; we had been talking to one another in our own way. Even then we knew that that was something those about us did not do and we kept it for our secret.

Memory after memory I pulled from my mind, trying to recall each small detail to make a vivid picture. Once we rode in the spring fields. Kyllan broke a branch from the Tansen tree, and its white flowers with their pink centers gave forth the sweetest fragrance. I had caught up flowering grass and made of it a crown. We had put them, crown on head, scepter in hand, on Kaththea, and told her she was like unto the Lady Bruthe, who was so fair that even the flowers blushed that they could not but equal her.

“I remember
—
”

It had stolen so into my thought weaving that at first I was not aware. Then I took tight rein upon my emotions. Immediately I summoned up another memory and another. She who had been so drawn now joined with me. Together we knitted a tapestry of how it had been with us. I did not venture to approach her along that line of memory, only bind her tighter to me in the sharing.

“You—you are Kemoc?”

It was she who broke the spell with a tentative, uneasy question.

“I am Kemoc.” I acknowledged that, but not more.

I
f you be Kemoc”—there was rising tension in her thought—“then this is no land for you! Get you forth before ill comes. You do not know what happens to those who do not have the proper safeguards. I have seen—monstrous things!”

She had seen what Dinzil had taken good care to show her. “Dinzil!” Her thoughts ran even louder. “Dinzil will protect you; use the counterspells—”

So was she caught in his net that she turned instantly to him when there was need for aid.

“I have come for you, Kaththea.” I told her the simple truth. If she had not gone too far down that road on which he had set her feet, then I might reach her, even as the memories I had spun had drawn her.

“But why?” There was a simplicity in that question which was not of the sister I had known. She had never been one to lean upon another, but held to her own mind. This was a different Kaththea.

I tried to make my thoughts simple, to keep her holding that slender tie between us: “Did you believe that we would let you go, uncaring what chanced with you?”

“But you knew!” her retort was swift. “You knew that I had gone to a place of power, to learn that which would make us all safe against the Shadow. And I am learning, Kemoc, much more than the Wise Women ever dreamed of. They are really small-minded, timid. They but peer through doors which they dare not enter. I marvel that we are in any awe of them.”

“There is knowledge and knowledge. You yourself said that once upon a time, Kaththea. Some can pass through man and come into flower—some men cannot hold, unless they change.”

“Men, yes!” she caught me up. “But I am of the Witches of Estcarp, who are adepts. What man cannot hope to do we can! And when I have garnered what I came here to find, then I shall return and you will rejoice at what I bring with me.”

Loskeetha's third picture. Suddenly that was vivid in my mind and I saw it as sharply as it had appeared in the sand bowl. There rode the hosts of the Shadow and among them Kaththea, hurling her bolts of force against us, her kin.

“No!” Kaththea's cry of denial was sharp. “That is a weaving of evil, not a true foretelling. You have been deceived; you believe that I—one of the Three—could do so? Dinzil has said—”