The Jargoon Pard (Witch World Series (High Hallack Cycle)) (11 page)

“We must hurry. The Shadow is on the move!”

The part-buried man in me responded to the urge. I managed to waver to my feet. But my pard body was near spent. Somehow I staggered down to the water, felt that rise about my limbs, pasting my fur tight to skin. Again, his strength alone, pushing against me, brought me through the weak current, out onto the far bank.

There I sank down, utterly exhausted, though he nosed at me, trying to get me on my legs. Once more, I could hear a thud of hooves against the ground. The cat left my side, trotting purposefully toward the edge of the forest. Was the eagle-helmed rider returning, or was this indeed a hunter approaching, and my companion, having done his best for me, was prudently withdrawing?

At that moment neither guess mattered. I was far too spent to care. Apathetically I watched, unable to raise my head any to widen my field of vision. The cat had halted by the first tree, once more waiting.

From under the shade of branch and leaves moved a rider leading another horse by the reins. I knew her—the Moon Witch; though this time her white body was clothed in breeches, boots, shirt and jerkin of green and brown intermingled so that only when she had advanced fully into the open, could I see her clearly.

The cat reared up, setting his paws against her saddle blanket on either side of her leg, the mount showing no alarm at the beast's move but standing quietly. She leaned over a little so that they stared eye to eye, then she nodded.

From the breast of her jerkin she pulled some small object, which hung there on a chain. With this in her hand, as if it might be a weapon, she came purposely toward me, the cat trailing behind.

Before she reached my side, the girl slid from her light saddle, her mount standing quietly with the reins dropping to the ground. She came to me, swinging in her hand from its chain a round globe of crystal. Within it was imprisoned a sprig of some sort of vegetation, green and glowing.

The Moon Witch swung the chain to encircle my head as I raised it at her coming. Then the ball with its sprig of green came to rest just below my throat. I—

I was a man!

My fur was gone, my skin was visible, though I had not regained my belt. I was—back!

The shock of the transition without warning was so great, my world swung dizzily to and fro. I was aware of her hands on me, that I was being lifted, carried. I was laid across a saddle and caught my breath at the pain of the jolting, which each step of the horse caused me.

Someone mounted up, raised me, though his touch on my back nearly tore a scream from my dry throat. For this was a man, not my Moon Maid who tended me, though from whence he had suddenly appeared, I had no knowledge.

I had a blurred impression of a dark head bent over me, a thin face, well browned by sun and weather, above which the hair peaked sharply. His was a secret face, one to keep thoughts and words locked well within. Like the Tower woman, one might have judged the stranger in the flowering of youth, but the eyes, yellow as any cat's, were old—weary and old.

The eyes held mine. No mind-speech came to me, only a kind of force. It drove me steadily away from consciousness into a darkness where pain was gone and time no longer mattered.

Yet I was not entirely overborne by the stranger's will. As if I sensed from a very far distance, I knew we rode on and the forest held us again. I was convinced, as well, that the stranger who held me meant me no harm, rather good. Also that I must not trouble myself with such matters now—but withdraw, to regain my strength and will. The wonder of my change held—the Moon Maid's magic had wrought this. On my breast, I felt warmth spreading from the pendant she had put on me. That talisman I must hold to so I remain a man.

Of Those in the Tower and How I Chose Danger

I lay face down, my head turned to one side so that before my bemused eyes I saw only stone blocks of a wall. Across my back rested something cooling, soothing, drawing from my wounds the pain of the fire that had lain within the ragged furrows since I had won from the web trap. I heard voices behind me, not in my mind this time.

“The moly will lose its power soon. What then, my Lord?”

It was a woman who spoke so. A challenge hung in her tone.

“We must discover who he is, from whence he comes. I do not believe from the Gray Towers. Yet what other Werestrain walks this land? And he is not of the Shadow. If he rouses before the change, perhaps this we can learn—”

A man—he whom I remembered holding me before him as we rode from the river? But where did I lie? And who were they who had tended me? My passage from sleep to waking became complete as I felt that I must know answers to those questions.

I levered myself up a little on the bed and turned my head, to face those who stood beyond.

Yes, that was the man who had come to my rescue. The Moon Witch did not accompany him as I had hoped. Rather, there stood the woman of the herb garden who had driven me into exile. Why had she now given me both shelter and tending? I must be within the Star Tower, for I could see that the walls behind the two who were regarding me were oddly angled. The chamber must be shaped to fit into one of the points of the star.

“Who are you who have given me shelter?” I asked when neither of them spoke.

The woman came to my side. Her cool fingertips rested for a moment on my forehead. There was a faint perfume of spicy growing things coming from her hand, as if she had but lately been at labor in her garden.

“His fever is gone,” she said. Now she stripped the covering from my back, so I felt the small chill of air striking my shoulders and hips. Again, she touched here and there along what must have been the wounds the hawk had set upon me. “Healing well, the poison being stayed,” was her second verdict.

“You ask who we are.” She moved around into my full sight. “We are those who dwell apart, asking naught of any man save that we be left to follow our own ways.”

There was no welcome in her face, nor was there outright rejection either. She might be waiting for me to take some action, speak some word, on which she could base her judgment of whether I was friend or foe. Yet, for all her reserve of emotion, I knew I could never name her enemy. There was that about her which argued that she abhorred the Shadow in all its ways.

“And who are you?” It was the man who came a stride forward to stand beside her.

“I am—was—Kethan—heir to Car Do Prawn of the Redmantle Keep. What I am now—I do not know.”

I was sure I had seen a fleeting change of expression on his face when I named myself. Had Maughus's hunters spread so far the news of my escape that it had reached this quiet place? Still I could not accept that this man or woman would yield to any pressure from such as Maughus. For they had about them both, like a cloak about the body in the months of cold, an elusive suggestion of Power. I could feel of them partly as I did toward UrsilJa, that they saw and did things beyond the talent of mankind.

“Car Do Prawn,” repeated the man. “Lord Erach rules there, but if you are heir—” He gazed at me interrogatively.

“I am son to the Lady Heroise, his sister.”

“That is a clear human line,” the man continued. “How came you then under the Were spell? Was it laid upon you?”

“By my folly, as Ursilla and my mother said, because of the belt—”

“Let him tell his story later.” The woman interrupted me. “I think it is time for the cordial. He must be strengthened or the moly will fail the sooner.”

I did not understand her meaning. However, when the man aided me to sit up and she brought me a cup of steaming liquid, I obediently emptied that even though the taste was bitter. As I so drank, another came into the chamber.

My Moon Witch! Again she wore the riding garb wherein I had seen her by the river. Behind her trailed two tawny shapes that I knew for wild cats half-grown. That any could tame them was a mystery, for such beasts are noted for their fierce natures. Yet, they rubbed about her ankles lovingly, hindered her so in walking that she must pick up the bolder, holding it within the crook of her arm, fondling its ears.

“There is a pied hawk in the air,” she said. “It has four times circled the garden. I do not think it hunts—but rather watches.”

“So—” The woman nodded, then looked to me.

“The wounds you bear, Clansman. They were scored by a hawk's talons. What enemy have you?”

“One only with the Power—the Wise Woman, Ursilla,” I mumbled. The girl had been so intent upon her message that she had not looked to me. Now she turned full gaze in my direction. Within me another magic worked, one that bore no kinship with the Power.

I had seen her first in the majesty of one who speaks with what is greater than any of our species, robed herself with the Power. And then again I had seen her through feverish eyes by the river. Three times—still within me it was as if I had known her all my life. Or else had been aware there was such a one in the world and had unconsciously sought her. Yet she looked upon me with indifference. The cub she fondled might be of far greater importance to her.

“The Wise Woman Ursilla—She dwells at Car Do Prawn?” the man asked.

“Since my mother returned from Garth Howel. I do not—” I hesitated. To reveal myself so much less a master of my own destiny in the eyes of the Moon Maid, that was a hard thing. Yet there could only be truth with these three—that I knew.

“Ursilla is not fully my enemy. She would have me do her will. Therefore—her creature (I am sure it was
her
hawk) took the belt. Now she perhaps seeks me again.”

“Tell me more of this belt,” the man ordered with some of the same authority in his voice as Pergvin used when instructing me in arms.

So I told my tale, of the gift of the belt, the transformation that it wrought in me, of how Maughus had used that to force my flight from the Keep, and the later attack of the hawk.

“Thus without the belt, you believe that you cannot return to man form?” the man asked when I had done.

“I thought not—until now. But—what did you do for me, Lady,” I dared to ask the girl directly, “that made me a man once more?”

She pointed and I looked down to where there swung against my bare breast the small ball of crystal, within it the sprig of green, which to my eyes now did not seem so perfect, having a slightly withered appearance.

“Moly,” the Moon Witch replied. “The herb that can counteract any spell, until it dies. But when it dies,” she shrugged, “you will return to the pard, unless you learn better what can be done.”

It seemed to me that there was a kind of contempt in her gaze, as if I showed such stupidity in my past actions that I was hardly worth any tending. My feeling for her recoiled a little, to be tinged in turn with anger. Who was she to judge me so?

The man paid no attention to her, rather he gave me an order.

“Put forth your hand!”

When I had done so, he cupped his under mine, raising my palm closer to study the lines that met and crossed there. I saw again his faint change of expression.

“It is not the belt that wrought your change.” His words were blunt. “That only provided a key to open the door. Unfortunately, because it was the key, your guess that this Wise Woman can use it to control you now is the truth. And also—if the belt is destroyed—”

“I will be only pard?” I demanded when he hesitated.

“As it now stands, yes,” he admitted.

“And if Maughus gains the belt—then that is what he will do—destroy it!” The strength that had come back into my body made me want to leap from the bed, return forthwith to the Keep. If I fronted Maughus as a man I could challenge him and—But what had the maid said concerning this moly? I peered intently into the globe. There was no mistaking that the sprig within was dying.

“Can I get another?” I held up the globe to demand of the three.

The woman shook her head. “Only once can the spell work for the same person.”

“Meanwhile—” The girl still stroked the cub she held. The other had reared up to paw at her breeches. “The hawk flies overhead. Maybe so some other shall learn who shelters here—”

“Not so—yet.” The woman contradicted her. “I have set the spell—”

“It is not working,” the girl returned flatly. With that report, she startled both her companions.

The woman hurried from the room, the girl after her. I looked to the man for an explanation, to find that he was studying me.

“A spell-tie then,” he said slowly.

“What mean you?”

“Just this—you are tied to the belt. And the belt lies beyond these walls, in the hands of one with Power.”

“So—as long as I am here,” I caught his meaning, “I am a breech in your defenses—?”

“For now it does not matter.” He shrugged as if it really did not. “Tell me more of this wandering trader of yours, this Ibycus. What manner of man was he?”

“My mother said he was more than he seemed. She believed he confided in the Lady Eldris the secret of the belt so she could use it against me. I—I also thought he wore trading for a cloak.”

“If this be so—why then did you accept the belt?”

“Because—once I looked upon it I desired it so greatly I could not help myself.” I told him the truth, even though it might well name me a weakling, easily defeated by my own desires. I did not know why I wished so to stand well in the regard of this stranger. From the first, he had had to save me from the results of my own folly.

That all” three of the dwellers within the Star Tower regarded me as a lesser being, whose concerns made them impatient, I guessed. The assessment made me wish for some way in which I could prove to them that I was not the nothing of their accounting.

“The belt—” I put now into words what I had felt. “It made me—free—”

“Still, now it has bound you,” he pointed out. “And for such binding there is only one remedy.”

“That being?” To get the belt back from Ursilla? To win my own form again and destroy it? I pelted him with questions.

“The belt is the key, you must learn to use it.”

“How?” I demanded.

“The answer lies within yourself, and only you can seek it.” His answer was ambiguous. “But of this I am sure. Car Do Prawn holds great danger for you.”

“If I would get the belt, then I must return there,” I said slowly. “And if the gift of moly does not hold long enough—” I drew a deep breath as I surveyed the withered sprig within the globe, “then it is as a pard I must go.”

His steady gaze met mine. There was that in his yellow eyes which—

“You are the snow cat!”

He neither nodded nor spoke his affirmation of my discovery. But I knew that was true.

“But—” I glanced down at the belt about his jerkin. Its strap was the common one of tanned leather that any man would wear. “You have no belt.” I made a statement of that, not a question. “Then how—?”

Now he did shake his head. A rule of the Power stood between us, I understood, just as I began to know why these three had not named names in my hearing. The oldest rule of all is: a name is not to be given to a stranger, lest he make use of it in some ensorcellment. That I had anything to fear from the Star Tower, I was sure was not so. But that those within it would not give me shelter to their own peril, that I thought was also true.

“The Shadow gathers strength.” He broke the silence between us with words that had no immediate meaning for me. “Those who have taken the Darker Way awake, prepare to fare forth once more. I have a question concerning this Ibycus, the trader. You felt nothing in him of the Dark?”

I shook my head. “Rather, he seemed otherwise. Almost I wondered if he was some messenger or scout for the Voices.”

“The Voices, now there is a thought that bears shifting.” His hand lay on the hilt of his long hunter's knife, drawing it a fraction from the sheath, then sending the blade thudding back into hiding once again. “Perhaps there approaches a time when once more we of Arvon must choose sides. Short indeed has been our peace.”

There was a set to his lips, his weary eyes were now half-veiled beneath their lids. In this moment, the illusion of youth that he wore so well slipped a little and I thought he had perhaps seen long years of time in Arvon.

“And,” he swung about to face me squarely, “to play small games with the Power in such a time is to invite peril beyond reckoning. I do not like it that winged eyes, which might be servant to your Wise Woman, circle now above this Tower!”

There was determination in that, a threat if I wished to read it so. Without any farewell, he went out—while I still sat upon the bed, holding in my hand the moly that had given me respite from the curse, wondering how much longer the respite might last.

After the man had left, I glanced about me, more interested now in the room than I had been when those three were in it. The odd shape, with one wall striking out in a point to help fashion the star space, made it strange. The walls were unbroken by any pictures or hangings such as the Keep chambers had. There was the bed upon which I lay, a narrow, shelflike affair. Against one wall a chest, richly carven, against the facing wall a small table on which rested a jug and washing basin. Poor looking indeed.

Yet herein I felt a kind of oneness such as I had never experienced in the Keep. There were signs of age about the walls, even as that which clung like moldering tapestry to the walls of Car Do Prawn. But here was not an age that made me feel the insignificant intruder, rather, in a strange way, one with all about me.

That I should have this sensation, in a place where manifestly I was not welcome, was strange. I had no training in the Power, no talent for it. And this was clearly an abode, even a fortress, steeped in the forces that very few of us can understand. Why then did I feel as if I never wanted to leave the Tower?

I got to my feet. Strength flowed back. I could bend and twist my body, as I did in test, and feel no pain from my back. When I quested with my fingers as best I might, crooked my neck as far as I could, to see my wounds, they showed pink, coated with new skin, well along to complete healing. So healed, I had no right to call for any more shelter. The hawk above was a warning of that. I wanted to bring no ill upon the ones who had succored me, even though they considered me unworthy.