Lost Lands of Witch World (81 page)

We lost the crawler up a ridge, teetered there for a minute, and began a downward slip. I heard my father give a shouted exclamation and saw his hands move quickly on the controls. The screen showed us what lay ahead—one of those black ribbon roads. And we were sliding straight for it as my father fought to halt our precipitous descent.

He managed to turn the blunt nose of the vehicle sharply left so we skidded to a stop pointing in that direction parallel to the road. I heard what I was sure was his sigh of relief as we came to rest without touching the pavement.

“What now?” But he might be asking that of someone or something beyond our own company.

“That way!” Hilarion squirmed impatiently in his seat, pointing the wand directly across the highway.

My father laughed harshly. “That takes some considering. We cannot cross in this—not and want it to be of service thereafter.”

“Why?” Hilarion's impatience was stronger, as if, so close to the goal, he would not be gainsaid in making a straight line to reach it.

“Because that is no ordinary roadway,” my father returned. “It is rather a force broadcast meant to keep the tower transports in motion. This tank was never designed to touch it. I do not know what will happen if we crawl out upon it, but I do not think that it would survive such a journey.”

“Then what do we do? Seek a bridge?” demanded Hilarion.

“We have no promise any exists,” my father answered bleakly. “And to hunt a bypass or overpass may take us many leagues out of our way.” He turned away from the screen to look directly to the adept. “Have you any knowledge of how close you now are to the gate site?”

“Perhaps a league, or less. . . . ”

“There is a chance—” my father began hesitatingly, as if while he spoke he was measuring in his mind one ill against another and trying to assess which was the least. “We might perhaps use this tank as a bridge. But if it fails, and leaves us caught midway . . . ” Now he shook his head a little.

“I think, Simon,” my mother broke in, “that we have little choice. If we seek a way around there may be none, and we shall only be putting such a length of journey between us and the gate as will defeat us. If this half plan of yours has any merit at all, then we must prove it here and now.”

He did not answer her at once, but sat looking to the screen as one studying a weighty problem. Then he said, “I can promise you no better odds than if you throw the tip-cones with Lothur.”

My mother laughed. “Ah, but I have seen you do that very thing, Simon, and thereafter, having made your wager, take up two handfuls of round pieces from the board! Life is full of challenges and one may not sidestep even the worst of them, as we well know.”

“Very well. I do not know the nature of this force but I think that it flows as a current. We must set the controls and hope for the best.”

But there were more preparations for us to make. Under my father's orders, we climbed out of the crawler, taking Ayllia with us; and then we loaded into that small section where we had crouched as passengers, and into the seats in front, all the loose rocks we could gouge from the ground about us, setting such a weight in the interior as would give the vehicle some anchorage against any flow of force. My father brought forth the chain rope which had aided us out of the well. With that we made handholds on the flat roof of the crawler, taking with us what was left of our supplies and water. Once we were all atop, save for my father, he entered the cabin, crawling through the small space he had left for that purpose. Under us the machine came to life, edged back and around to once more face the road directly. It was partly upslope, tilted toward the black surface on which my father read such danger.

As it began to crawl and slide down again, my father swung out and up to join us. He had been right in his foreboding. As the heavy vehicle rammed out onto that surface it was struck with an impact like the anger of a mighty river current, half turned from its course.

Would it be entirely turned, bearing us, as helpless prisoners on and on to the towers this road served? Or would the power my father had activated win across for us? I lay grasping the rope until its links bit painfully into my flesh, while under me the machine trembled and fought. It traveled at an angle to the right, but it still had not been sucked into the complete turn which would mean disaster. I could not be sure that we were still making any progress toward the other side.

We had already been swept on, well away from the point where we had entered. And what would happen if one of the transports for the towers came down upon us? So vivid was the picture of that in my mind that I fought to blank it out, and so perhaps missed the turning point of our battle.

I was suddenly aware of the fact that my father was no longer stretched flat beside me, but was on his knees freeing the packs of supplies. With a quick toss he hurled them both to his left so that, raising my head, I saw them strike the ground beyond the road, on the side we wished to reach. Then his hand gripped my shoulder tightly.

“Loose your hold!” he ordered. “When I give the word—jump!”

I could see no hope of success. But this was a time when one must place faith in another, and I struggled with my fear long enough to indeed loose my frantic hold and rise to my knees, then, with my father's hand drawing me up, to my feet. I glanced around to see my mother and Hilarion also standing, Ayllia between them, stirring as if awaking.

“Jump!”

I forced my unwilling body to that effort, not daring to think of what my landing beyond might mean. But luckily I struck on the edge of a dune of ash-sand and, while I sank well into it, I was uninjured, able to struggle out, spitting the stuff from between my lips, smearing it out of my eyes and nostrils.

By the time I was free of it and able to see, I marked other dust-covered figures arising from similiar mounds. And, as I stumbled toward them, I discovered we were no worse off than bruises, choked throats and grit-tormented eyes.

But the tank had now been turned wholly about, caught tight in the mid-current, and was fast disappearing from our sight, whirling on to the distant goal of the towers.

We slipped and slid back through the dunes to find and dig out the supply packs. Then Hilarion took out the wand which he had stowed in his tunic for safekeeping. Once more he held it to his forehead.

“There!” He pointed into the very heart of the dune country.

Ayllia was walking, though it was needful to hold her by the hand, and I knew my mother had taken over her mind to some extent. This was a burden on Jaelithe, so that I straightaway joined with her in that needful action.

Footing in the shifting ash-sand was very bad. Sometimes we waded in the powdery stuff almost knee-deep. And the dunes all looked so much alike that without Hilarion's wand we might have been lost as soon as we left the side of the road, to wander heedlessly.

But all at once I saw something tall and firm loom up and I recognized it as one of the metal pillars which I had seen when we entered through the gate. With that in sight part of my fears were lost. Only, would Hilarion really
know
when we reached the proper spot? There had been no marking on this side that I had been able to perceive.

However, our guide appeared to have no doubts at all. He led us in a twisting hard-to-travel path, but always he came back to the way the wand pointed. At last we stood at the base of another of those pitted pillars. I could not be sure, for there was a terrible sameness to this country, but I thought that we had indeed reached the place we had first entered.

“Here.” Hilarion was certain. He faced what seemed to me merely air full of dust (for a breeze had arisen to blow up whirls of acrid powder).

“No marker,” commented my father. But my mother, shielding her eyes with her hands half cupped about them, stared as intently ahead as the adept.

“There is something there,” she conceded, “A troubling—”

Hilarion might not have heard her. He was using the wand in quick strokes, as an artist might paint a scene with a brush, moving it up and down and around, to outline a portal.

And in its track the dust in the wind (or was it dust? I could not be sure) left faint lines in the air following the path of the wand tip. This outlined an oblong which was center crossed by two lines each of which ran from the two upper corners to the two lower ones. In the four spaces thus quartered off the wand tip was now setting symbols. Two of these I knew—or at least I knew ones like them, as if those I learned had somewhat changed shape in time.

The others were new however, as was the last, drawn larger to cross all the rest. When Hilarion dropped his wand we could see what he had wrought, misty and faint, yet remaining steadfast in spite of the rising wind and swirling sand.

Now he began again, retracing each and every part of that airborne drawing. This time that wispy series of lines glowed with color, green first, darkening into vivid blue—so that once again I saw the “safe” color I had known in Escore. But that color did not hold and before he had quite completed the entire pattern the first of it was fading, as a dying fire leaves gray-coated coals behind.

I saw his face and there was a grimness about it, a set to his mouth as you may see on a man facing odds which will try him to the dregs of his strength. Once
more he began the tracing, with the color responding to the passing of his wand. A second time it faded into ashiness.

Then my mother moved. To me she held out one hand, to my father the other. So linked physically we linked minds also. And that energy which was born of our linking she sent to Hilarion so that he glanced at her once, startled, I think, and then raised the wand for the third time and began again that intricate tracery of line and symbol.

I could feel the pull upon my power, yet I held steady and gave of it as my mother demanded. This time I saw that there was no fading, the green-blue held, glowing the brighter. When Hilarion once more lowered his wand it was a brilliant, pulsating thing hanging in the air a foot or so above the sand. Around it the wind no longer blew, though elsewhere it spread a murky, dust-filled veil.

For a moment Hilarion surveyed his creation critically, I thought, as if he must make sure it was what he wanted, having no flaw. Then he took two steps forward, saying as he went, though he did not look back at us: “We must go—now!”

We broke linkage and my mother and I snatched up our packs, while my father gathered up Ayllia. Hilarion put wand tip to the midpoint of those crossed lines on the door, as one would set a key in a lock. And it opened—I saw him disappear through. I followed, my mother on my heels, my father behind us. Again was that terrible wrenching of space and time, and then I rolled across the hard stone of pavement and sat up, blinking with pain from a knock of my head against some immovable object.

I was resting with my back against the chair which had dominated the hall of the citadel. And the glow of the gate was the only bright thing in that room where time had gathered as a dusk.

Someone near me stirred; I turned my head a little. Hilarion stood there, his wand in his hands. But he was not looking toward the gate through which we had just come, rather from one side of the long hall to the other. I do not know what he had expected to see there, perhaps some multitude of guards or servitors, or members of his household. But what or who he missed, that emptiness had come as a shock.

His hand went to his forehead and he swayed a little. Then be began to walk away from the chair, back into the hall along the wall, walking as someone who must speedily find that which he sought or else face true fear.

As he went so I felt a lightening of my inner unease, for it was plain he had no thought of us now—he was caught in his own concerns. And what better chance would we have for a parting of the ways?

So, in spite of the wave of dizziness which made me sway and clutch at the arm of the chair, I somehow got to my feet, looking around eagerly for the rest of our party. My father was already standing, Ayllia lying before him. He stepped
over her body to join hands with my mother, pulled her up to stand with his arms about her, the two of them so knit together that they might indeed be one body and spirit.

Something in the way they stood there, so enclosed for this moment in a world of their own, gave me pause. A chill wind blew for a single instant out of time, to make me shiver. I wondered what it would be like to have such a oneness with another. Kyllan—perhaps this is what he knew with Dahaun, and this was what Kemoc had found with Orsya. Had I unconsciously reached for it when I went to Dinzil, to discover in the end that what
he
wanted was not me, Kaththea the maid, but rather Kaththea the witch, to lend her power to his reaching ambition? And I also learned, looking upon those two and the world they held about them, that I was not enough of a witch to put the Power above all else. Yet that might well be all which lay before me in this life.

There was no time for such seeking and searching of thought and spirit. We needed to be aware of the here and now, and take precautions accordingly. I stood away from the supporting chair to waver over to my parents.

P
lease—” I felt shy, an intruder, as I spoke softly, for I feared that my words might resound through that hall, perhaps awaken Hilarion from his preoccupation and bring him back too soon.

My mother turned her head to look at me. Perhaps there was that in my expression which held a warning, for I saw a new alertness in her eyes.

“You are afraid. Of what, my daughter?”

“Of Hilarion.” I gave her the truth. Now I had my father's full attention as well. Though he still had his arm about my mother's shoulders his other hand went to his belt as if seeking a weapon hilt.

“Listen.” I spoke in whispers, not daring to use mind touch—such might be as a gong in a place so steeped in sorcery.