Lost Lands of Witch World (48 page)

“What is it?” I demanded.

“Merfay,” she answered before her lips shaped soft twitterings, not akin to any speech I have ever heard. Nor did “Merfay” mean anything to me.

The invisible one swam forward again, splashing us with waves made in his passing. Orsya caught my hand once more.

“Come! Oh, this day we are favored! Kofi will lead us to a safe place.”

“Can you see him—her—it?” I asked.

Her eyes went wide in surprise. “You do not?”

“Nothing but water rippling as if something swims there.”

“But he is there—plain—”

Not to me. Nor have I ever heard of a Merfay.

Orsya shook her head. “They are like unto us in some instances, save smaller, and closer akin to the furred and finned ones than we. Mostly they dwell apart, not needing others. But Kofi—he is of like mind with me, one who explores beyond the haunts of his people. We have shared ventures in the past. He is not subject to the illusions, since his mind is so unique he cannot be so entrapped. He has roamed the water lands here for a space, watching to see what the enemies do. They are preparing for a great march of men, to the west—”

“The Valley!”

“Perhaps so. Yet, the hour has not yet come when they muster. They await some order or sending.”

I thought of Dinzil and what Loskeetha said he might do, now that Kaththea was within his hands. The need to seek the Dark Tower, even though that seeking might lead to disaster, boiled within me. So that I quickened pace, pulling Orsya after me by our hand clasp. While ahead of us that guide I could only trace by ripples swam steadily onward.

More and more vegetation grew about. Orsya plundered here and there,
finding more of those edible roots, cleaning them and storing them in her net bag. We munched some and they were better to me than the fish. Always the Merfay served as our scout. Once he (though it seemed odd to grant any identity to a wedge of ripples) made a wide detour about a block of stone which had fallen into the river. Orsya followed his lead, beckoning me well away from any contact with it.

As we passed, I saw that the stone had been dressed, and that once it might have been a pillar. There were others like it lying in confusion on the shore, as if they had been tumbled this way or that by some titanic blow of nature or man. They were not blue, as those in the haven experience had taught me to watch for, but rather a yellowish-gray, unpleasant to the eye.

“An ancient place of power,” Orsya explained. “But no power we would wish to raise.”

As we passed that place, I felt a clammy chill, or perhaps my imagination furnished that.

The brush became trees, weirdly leafed, resembling the blasted forests we had found on the Escore side of the churned mountains, where the witch power had set the ancient barrier between Estcarp, the refuge, and this country, the threat. Those leaves might have been living, still they had a skeleton look which made one think of ashes, of something long since dead and dry. The grass was a tall, sword-edged, spiky growth which could cut skin if one were unwary, and there were other nasty looking things which one certainly did not want to touch at all.

But among all this rank and poisoned vegetation, there were islets and ways which had normal-looking foliage growing. The unseen Kofi turned into a side stream, banked by such growth, leading to our left.

I was still hazy about directions. This territory beyond the Heights made one unsure of any north or south. But I thought now we might be heading once more east, so further and further into the unknown.

Splashing began ahead as the stream grew more shallow. It would seem Kofi now walked as we did. My boots were almost rotted on my feet, and I wondered at how I would replace them to go overland. Perhaps bindings cut from my jerkin would serve.

The trees here were of a species which grew thickly along waterways. They arched over our heads, meeting in a canopy which, while it did not shut out all light, kept away the sun. Within that tenting floated wisps of the haze I had seen from the survey point back in the hills.

“Good!” Orsya broke the quiet for the first time since we had left the main river. “Our thanks must be to Kofi.”

Her ejaculation appeared to be caused by the rise of a humpbacked hillock in the midst of the stream. It was, in spite of the brush growth rooted on it, too symmetrical to be a product of nature. My companion identified it.

“Aspt house, and very large. We shall find an entrance along the bank. The stream must have shrunk much since this was built and abandoned.”

A branch waved vigorously at the bank, not pulled by any wind. Orsya laughed.

“We see, Kofi. Thanks to you again,” and then she twittered.

There was a hole there. I pulled out a tangle of roots and some stones before we could crawl within, to find ourselves in a very darkish chamber like the one where Orsya had tended my wound. Luckily there were holes in the roof, where portions of the covering had fallen away, so that I was not moving blind. Our guide had led us well; we could not have found a more snug or safe place in which to spend the fast approaching night.

A small pattering noise drew my attention to the opposite side of the chamber. Nothing—or did Kofi now share our quarters?

“Right!” Orsya answered my thoughts. “I wonder . . . yes, let us try.”

She edged around behind me and leaned forward to place her two hands on my forehead just above my eyes. “Watch,” she ordered, “and tell me if you now see aught.”

I blinked and then blinked again. A wisp of mist against the dusk? No, it was not the floating mist which had found its way inside, rather it was a shape taking form. So, I saw Kofi.

He was small, about as tall as my mid-thigh. Unlike the aspts, he was humanoid in form. That is, he had four limbs, of which the upper two appeared to function as arms. He was like, yet unlike, the lizard folk of the Valley. Though his skin was scaled, his feet and hands were webbed as Orsya's, the webs extending close to the tips of the digits. His head was round, and seemed to have very little neck. Front and back his body was covered by a shell which was shaped in a wedge, wide at the top, narrowing to a point between his legs. When I turned my attention on him, his head snapped down into the shoulder part of that shield, so that only the snout and two eyes could be seen.

“Kofi.” Orsya took away her hand and there was nothing to be seen.

I put out my right hand in the universal peace sign, holding it palm up and empty. For want of better reassurance to this strange water person I gave the formal greeting of the overmountain men.

“To Kofi of the river, greeting and peace from Kemoc Tregarth.”

There was another faint sound. Then, for an instant, on the thick scar of my wound ridge I felt a delicate touch, as if one of those webbed hands had rested there in acknowledgment of understanding that I meant well and was no unfriend.

Orsya opened her net and divided the roots she had harvested along the river, setting aside a half dozen of them. We ate, but Kofi did not share; I asked why.

“He has gone hunting. He will hunt for more than that to fill his middle, for he will bring us news of aught which comes near this clean place.”

She gathered up the roots she had put aside and said: “Put these in your belt pouch, Kemoc. They will furnish food when you may need it. This is truly a land where you must heed Dahaun's warning, and eat not, even when it might seem that you look upon food you know well. Now, let us rest. With the morning may come great demands upon us.”

Whether Kofi came back to share our shelter, I do not know. But this night I did not sleep sound. There was an abiding sense of something lurking just beyond the borders of what I could see. Whether it was aware of me and waiting to attack, of that I was not sure. In fact, perhaps I would have been less uneasy had I been certain
that
was so.

Orsya appeared no better at resting than I. I heard her stirring about. Then I saw a faint white spark and guessed that she had once more set up the cone-rod and with it wrought such protective magic as she knew.

We were both up and eager to go when the first gray of dawn lit up the deserted house. She had once more wound Kaththea's scarf about the horn, and she tried to impart to that tie with my sister some virtue of her talisman.

“Kofi?” I looked to her for enlightenment.

“Waits us outside.”

We came into a thick mist curtain. There was a splash in the reeds and Orsya turned her head to twitter. She listened and then looked to me.

“The Tower lies ahead. But you must leave the waterways to reach it and Kofi says it is spell-guarded. Most of the garrison who were once there have been sent away, and it is no longer warrior held, but protected in other ways. We can go with you to the beginning of the climb, but beyond that . . . ” She shook her head. “Land for the Merfays is less hospitable even than it is for me. Without water I am only a burden. But what I can give you, I shall.”

Once more the unseen Merfay splashed ahead of us. The mist was so thick that we were only shadows to one another as we moved. But the stream made a road we could not wander from. However, if this fog continued to hold elsewhere I did not see how I could find the Tower.

“Did I not say that this, and your heart”—Orsya held up an end of the scarf—“would be your guide? Wait and see before you despair.”

Loskeetha's prophecies of death and disaster at the Tower . . . Perhaps I had escaped the third fate of the Valley meeting, but there remained the other two.

“No!” Orsya's thought struck sharply, to clash with those in my head. “Believe that you have no foreseen future, that you can control fate. Listen; if all else fails, and it seems that you have indeed to face what Loskeetha read in her sand, then—use the
words
which brought that
answer
. You can do no worse ill than Loskeetha showed you, and you may break fate by matching one power against another. It is a fearsome thing, but in times of great peril men will call upon any weapon.”

The mist-filled world through which we moved held no sense of time. It was day because of the light, but how long since we had left our night's lodging, I could not tell. I was aware that the stream grew shallow, and that more and more reefs of rock broke it.

Orsya halted on one of these. “This is our parting place, Kemoc. Now—”

Slowly she unwound the scarf from the horn. Her mind was abruptly closed to me, but I think she was rapt for those moments in her own use of power, pouring into the scarf what she could to strengthen the tie between it and she who had once worn it. For a very long time it lay across her knees, with her hands—still holding the horn, as one might cup a lighted candle—resting on the bedraggled green stuff. Orsya's lips moved; she might have been chanting, without voicing aloud the words.

Then she made a scooping motion with the horn, caught its tip under the fabric and so flipped it over to me.

“What I can do, I have done. Think on your Kaththea, and see what comes of it. Remember, it must be the Kaththea with whom you were the most closely tied, even if she lives now only in the past.”

I took up the length which was no longer whole, nor as bright in color as it had been when I had found it in the stone forest. I gathered it tightly in my closed fists while I did as she bade, or tried to.

How far back was the Kaththea with whom Kyllan and I had been truly one? Not in the Valley, nor during our journey into Escore, nor in those years when she had been in the Secret Place of the Wise Women, while Kyllan and I had plied our sword trade on the borders. So year by year I slipped back in time until I came to those days when we had been at Etsford, children still, when my mother had come riding with a stricken heart because Simon Tregarth, her lord, had vanished, no man knowing where, save that the sea had taken him.

Then we had been indeed one. I dragged from that well of memory the Kaththea I had known in those days before the discipline of the Wise Women had tried to mold her into their accepted image.

How true was my remembering I did not know, but that it was the way she seemed to me then, of that I was sure. I built her picture in my mind as vividly as I could. That was Kaththea who was the third part of something greater than any one of us. Kaththea to whom I was tied past any breaking of bonds.

Then the silken stuff I prisoned in my hand seemed to fight against the pressure of my fingers. I released it and a green rope coiled upward, swung down to the ground. This time it did not form a loop, but writhed as might a snake across the rock.

So intent was I upon following it that it was not until later I realized I had said no farewell to Orsya, nor was I even sure I could find again that reef-ridge in the stream where I had left her. But I knew without being told that if I allowed other
thoughts to distract me from the remembered image of Kaththea I would lose this guide.

I climbed the bank, giving my green ribbon full attention. Above the cut of the stream the mist thinned. For a space there was good and wholesome foliage about me, as there had been all along the waterway. But that began to grow sparser. Then came herbage of another kind which had the noxious look of evil growth. I had taken time by the stream to reinforce my boots with strips cut from my jerkin, and now my upper body was bare to the chill which lingered over the land.

On wriggled the scarf and I followed. The ground rose steadily, but as yet the slope was not difficult to breast. I kept the sword in my hand, looking now and then to it for the glowing of the danger runes.

Orsya had masked us in illusion. That would not hold for me alone. But as yet the land seemed deserted; that in itself struck me as strange and sinister, as if I walked now into a trap, my way made easy until the lock of the cage clicked behind me.

Up and up, and colder the air I shivered in. Kaththea . . . I sought Kaththea. She was to me as a missing arm, a part lopped off to leave me crippled.