PART I: VENTURE OUT
OF SULCARKEEP

I

SIEGE PERILOUS

a      The rain was a slantwise curfain across the dingy
street, washing soot from city walls, the taste of it

|    metallic on the lips of the tall, thin man who walked
with a loping stride close to the buildings, watching the

|    mouths of doorways, the gaps of alleys with a narrow-

\    eyed intentness.

"I      Simon Tregarth had left the railroad station two—or
was it three hours ago? He had no reason to mark the
passing of time any longer. It had ceased to have any

^    meaning, and he had no destination. As the hunted, the
runner, the hider—no, he was not in hiding. He walked
in the open, alert, ready, his shoulders as straight, his
head as erect as ever.

In those first frantic days when he had retained a wisp
of hope, when he had used every scrap of animal
cunning, every trick and dodge he had learned, when he
had twisted and back-trailed, and befogged his tracks,
then he had been governed by hours and minutes, he
had run. Now he walked, and he would continue to
walk until the death lurking in one of those doorways,
in ambush in some alley would confront him. And even
then he would go down using his fangs. His right hand,
thrust deep into the soggy pocket of his top coat, ca-
ressed those fangs—smooth, sleek, deadly, a weapon




4             ANDRE NORTON

which fitted as neatly into his palm as if it were a part of
his finely trained body.

Tawdry red-and-yellow neon lights made wavering
patterns across the water-slick pavement; his acquain-
tance with this town was centered about a hotel or two
located at its center section, a handful of restaurants,
some stores, all a casual traveler learned in two visits
half a dozen years apart. And he was driven by the urge
to remain in the open, for he was convinced that the end
to the chase would come that night or early tomorrow.

Simon realized that he was tiring. No sleep, the need
for constant sentry—go. He slackened pace before a
lighted doorway, read the legend on the rain-limp awn-
ing above it. A doorman swung open the inner portal
and the man in the rain accepted the tacit invitation,
stepping into warmth and the fragrance of food.

The bad weather must have discouraged patrons.
Maybe that was why the headwaiter welcomed him so
quickly. Or perhaps the cut of the still presentable suit
protected from the damp by the coat he shed, his faint
but unmistakable natural arrogance—the mark left
upon a man who has commanded his kind and been
readily obeyed—insured for him the well-placed table
and the speedily attentive waiter.

Simon grinned wryly as his eye sped down the lines
of the menu, and there was a ghost of true humor in that
grin. The condemned man would eat a hearty meal
anyway. His reflection, distorted by the curving side of
the polished sugarbowl, smiled back at him. A long
face, fine-drawn, with lines at the corners of the eyes,
and deeper set brackets at the lips, a brown face, well-
weathered, but in its way an ageless face. It had looked
much the same at twenty-five, it would continue to look
so at sixty.

WITCH WORLD               5

Tregarth ate slowly, savoring each bite, letting the
comforting warmth of the room, of the carefully chosen
wine, relax his body if not mind and nerves. But that
relaxation nurtured no false courage. This was the end,
he knew it—had come to accept it.

"Pardon . . ."

The fork he had raised with its thick bite of steak
impaled did not pause before his lips. But in spite of
Simon's iron control a muscle twitched in his lower
eyelid. He chewed, and then he answered, his voice
even.

"Yes?"

The man standing politely at his table might be a
broker, a corporation lawyer, a doctor. He had a pro-
fessional air designed to inspire confidence in his fel-
lows. But he was not what Simon had expected at all,
he was too respectable, too polite and correct to be—
death! Though the organization had many servants in
widely separated fields.

"Colonel Simon Tregarth, I believe?"

Simon broke a muffin apart and buttered it. "Simon
Tregarth, but not 'Colonel'," he corrected, and then
added with a counterthrust on his own, "As you well
know."

The other seemed a little surprised, and then he
smiled, that smooth, soothing, professional smile.

"How maladroit of me, Tregarth. But let me say at
once—I am not a member of the organization. I am,
instead—if you wish it, of course—a friend of yours.
Permit me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Jorge Pet-
ronius. Very much at your service, may I add."

Simon blinked. He had thought the scrap of future
remaining to him well accounted for, but he had not
reckoned on this meeting. For the first time in bitter

6             ANDRE NORTON

days he felt, far inside him, the stir of something
remotely akin to hope.

It did not occur to him to doubt the identification
offered by this small man watching him narrowly now
through the curiously thick lenses, supported by such
heavy and broad black plastic frames that Petronius
appeared to wear the half-mask of eighteenth century
disguise. Dr. Jorge Petronius was very well known
throughout that half-world where Tregarth had lived for
several violent years. If you were "hot" and you were
also lucky enough to be in funds you went to Petronius.
Those who did were never found thereafter, either by
the law, or the vengeance of their fellows.

"Sammy is in town," that precise, slightly accented
voice continued.

Simon sipped appreciatively at his wine. "Sam-
my?" he matched the other's detachment. "I am flat-
tered."

"Oh, you have something of a reputation, Tregarth.
For you the organization unleashed their best hounds.
But after the efficient way you dealt with Kotchev and
Lampson, there remained only Sammy. However, he is
slightly different metal from the others. And you have,
if you will forgive my prying into your personal affairs,
been on the run for some time. A situation which does
not exactly strengthen the sword arm."

Simon laughed. He was enjoying this, the good food
and drink, even the sly needling of Dr. Jorge Pet-
ronius. But he did not lower his guard.

"So, my sword arm needs strengthening? Well, doc-
tor, what do you suggest as the remedy?"

"There is—my own."

Simon put down his wine glass. A red drop trickled
down its side to be absorbed by the cloth.

WITCH WORLD               7

"I have been told your services come high, Pet-
ronius .''

The small man shrugged. "Naturally. But in return I
can promise complete escape. Those who trust me
receive the worth of their dollars. I have had no com-
plaints."

"Unfortunately I am not one who can afford your
services."

"Your recent activities having so eaten into your
cash reserve? But, of course. However, you left San
Pedro with twenty thousand. You could not have com-
pletely exhausted such a sum in this short interval. And
if you meet Sammy what remains shall only be returned
toHanson."

Simon's lips tightened. For an instant he looked as
dangerous as he was, as Sammy would see him if they
had a fair, face-to-face meeting.

"Why hunt me up—and how?" he asked.

"Why?" Again Petronius shrugged. "That you
shall understand later. I am, in my way, a scientist, an
explorer, an experimenter. As for how I knew you were
in town and in need of my service—Tregarth, you
should be aware by now how rumor spreads. You are a
marked man and a dangerous one. Your coming and
going is noted. It is a pity for your sake that you are
honest."

Simon's right hand balled into a fist. "After my
activities of the past seven years you apply that label to
me?"

It was Petronius who laughed now, a small chuckle,
inviting the other to enjoy the humor of the situation.
"But honesty sometimes has very little to do with the
pronouncements of the law, Tregarth. If you had not
been an essentially honest man—as well as one with

8             ANDRE NORTON

ideals—you would never have stood up toHanson. It is
because you are what you are that I know you are ripe
for me. Shall we go?"

Somehow Simon found himself paying his check,
following Dr. JorgePetronius. A car waited at the curb,
but the doctor did not address its driver as the machine
carried them into the night and the rain.

"Simon Tregarth," Petronius' voice was as imper-
sonal now as if he recited data important only to him-
self. "Of Cornish descent. Enlisted in the U.S. Army
on March tenth, 1939. Promoted on the field from
sergeant to lieutenant, and climbed to rank of
Lieutenant-Colonel. Served in the occupation forces
until stripped of his commission and imprisoned for—
For what. Colonel? Ah, yes, for flagrant black market
dealing. Only, most unfortunately the brave colonel did
not know he had been drawn into a criminal deal until
too late. That was the point, was it not, Tregarth, which
put you on the other side of the law? Since you had been
given the name you thought you might as well play the
game.

"Since Berlin you have been busy in quite a few
dubious exploits, until you were unwise enough to
cross Hanson. Another affair into which you were
pushed unknowingly? You seem to be an unlucky man,
Tregarth. Let us hope that your fortunes change to-
night."

"Where are we going—to the docks?"
Again he heard that rich chuckle. "We head
downtown, but not to the harbor. My clients travel, but
not by sea, air, or land. How much do you know of the
traditions of your fatherland. Colonel?"

"Matacham, Pennsylvania has no traditions I ever
heard of—"

WITCH WORLD               9

"I am not concerned with a crude mining town on
this continent. I am speaking of Cornwall, which is
older than time—our time."

"My grandparents were Cornish. But I don't know
any more than that."

' 'Your family was of the pure blood, and Cornwall is
old, so very old. It is associated with Wales in legends.
Arthur was known there, and the Romans of Britain
huddled within its borders when the axes of the Saxons
swept them to limbo. Before the Romans there were
others, many, many others, some of them bearing with
them scraps of strange knowledge. You are going to
make me very happy, Tregarth." There was a pause as
if inviting comment; when Simon did not answer, the
other continued.

"I am about to introduce you to one of your native
traditions, Colonel. A most interesting experiment.
Ah, here we are!"

The car had stopped before the mouth of a dark alley.
Petronius opened the door.

"You now behold the single drawback of my estab-
lishment, Tregarth. This lane is too narrow to accom-
modate the car; we must walk."

For a moment Simon stared up the black mouth,
wondering if the doctor had brought him to some ap-
pointed slaughterhouse. Did Sammy wait here? But
Petronius had snapped on a torch and was waving its
beam ahead in invitation.

"Only a yard or two, I assure you. Just follow me."

The alley was indeed a short one and they came out
into an empty space between towering buildings.
Squatting in a hollow ringed about by these giants was a
small house.

' 'You see here an anachronism, Tregarth.'' The doc-

10 ANDRE NORTON

tor set a key in the door lock.' This is a late seventeenth
century farmhouse in the heart of a twentieth century
city. Because its title is in doubt, it exists, a very
substantial ghost of the past to haunt the present. Enter
please."

Later, as he steamed in front of an open fire, a
mixture his host had pressed upon him in his hand,
Simon thought that Petronius' description of a ghost
house was very apt. It needed only a steeple crowned
hat for the doctor's head, a sword at his side, to com-
plete the illusion that he had stepped from one era into
another.

"Where do I go from here?" he asked.

Petronius prodded the fire with a poker. "You shall
go at dawn, Colonel, free and clear, as I promise. As to
where," he smiled, "that we shall see."

"Why wait until dawn?"

As if being forced into telling more than he wished,
Petronius put down the poker and wiped his hands on a
handkerchief before he faced his client squarely.

"Because only at dawn does your door open—the
proper one for you. This is a story at which you may
scoff, Tregarth, until you see the proof before your
eyes. What do you know of menhirs?"

Simon felt absurdly pleased that he could supply an
answer the other obviously did not expect.

"They were stones—set in circles by prehistoric
men—Stonehenge.''

"Set up in circles, sometimes. But they had other
uses also." Petronius was all unsuppressed eagerness
now, begging for serious attention from his listener.
"There were certain stones of great power mentioned
in the old legends. The Lia Fail of the Tuatha De
Danann of Ireland. When the rightful king trod upon it,
it shouted aloud in his honor. It was the coronation

WITCH WORLD               11

stone of that race, one of their three great treasures.
And do not the kings of England to this day still cherish
the Stone of Scone beneath their throne?

"But in Cornwall there was another stone of
power—the Siege Perilous. It was one rumored to be
able to judge a man, determine his worth, and then
deliver him to his fate. Arthur was supposed to have
discovered its power through the Seer Merlin and in-
corporated it among the seats of the Round Table. Six
of his knights tried it—and disappeared. Then came
two who knew its secret and stayed: Percival and
Galahad."

"Look here." Simon was bitterly disappointed, the
more so because he had almost dared to hope again.
Petronius was cracked, there was no escape after all.
"Arthur and the Round Table—that's a fairy tale for
kids. You're talking as if—"

"As if it were true history?" Petronius caught him
up. "Ah, but who is to say what is history and what is
not? Every word of the past which comes to us is
colored and influenced by the learning, the prejudices,
even the physical condition of the historian who has
recorded it for later generations. Tradition fathers his-
tory and what is tradition but word of mouth? How
distorted may such accounts become in a single genera-
tion? You, yourself, had your entire life changed by
perjured testimony. Yet that testimony had been in-
serted in records, has now become history, untrue as it
is. How can anyone say that this story is legend but that
one a fact, and know that he is correct? History is made,
is recorded by human beings, and it is larded with all
the errors our species is subject to. There are scraps of
truth in legend and many lies in accepted history. I
know—for the Siege Perilous does exist!

"There are also theories of history alien to the con-

12 ANDRE NORTON

ventional ones we learn as children. Have you ever
heard of the alternate worlds which may stem from
momentous decisions? In one of those worlds, Colonel
Tregarth, perhaps you did not turn aside your eyes on
that night in Berlin. In another you did not meet with
me an hour ago, but went on to keep your rendezvous
with Sammy!"

The doctor rocked back and forth on his heels, as if
set teetering by the force of his words and belief. And in
spite of himself Simon caught a bit of that fiery en-
thusiasm.

"Which of these theories do you intend to apply to
my problem?"

Petronius laughed, once again at ease.' 'Just have the
patience to hear me out without believing that you are
listening to a madman, and I shall explain." He
glanced from the watch on his wrist to the wall clock
behind him. "We have some hours yet. So, it is like
this—"

As the little man began mouthing what sounded like
wild nonsense, Simon obediently listened. The
warmth, the drink, the chance to rest were payment
enough. He might have to leave to face Sammy later,
but that chance he pushed to the back of his mind as he
concentrated on what Petronius was saying.

The mellow chime of the ancient clock struck the
hour three times before the doctor was done. Tregarth
sighed, perhaps he had only been battered into submis-
sion by that flood of words, but if it were true—And
there was Petronius' reputation. Simon unbuttoned his
shirt and drew out his money belt.

"I know that Sacarsi and Wolverstein haven't been
heard of since they contacted you," he conceded.

"No, for they went through their doors; they found

WITCH WORLD

the worlds they had always unconsciously sought. It is
as I have told you. One takes his seat upon the Siege and
before him opens that existence in which his spirit, his
mind—his soul if you wish to call it that—is at home.
And he goes forth to seek his fortune there."

"Why haven't you tried it yourself?" That was to
Simon the weak point in the other's story. If Petronius
possessed the key to such a door, why had he not used it
himself?

"Why?" The doctor stared down at the two plump
hands resting on his knees. "Because there is no
return—and only a desperate man chooses an irrevoca-
ble future. In this world we always cling to the belief
that we can control our lives, make our own decisions.
But through there, we have made a choice which cannot
be cancelled. I use words, many words, but at this
moment I cannot seem to choose them rightly to ex-
press what I feel. There have been many Guardians of
the Siege—only a few of them have used it for them-
selves. Perhaps . . . some day . . .but as yet I have
not the courage."

"So you sell your services to the hunted? Well, that
is one way of making a living. A list of your clients
might make interesting reading."

"Correct! I have had some very famous men apply
for assistance. Especially at the close of the war. You
might not believe the identity of some who sought me
out then, after fortune's wheel spun against them."

Simon nodded. "There were'some. notable gaps in
the war criminal captures," he remarked. "And some
odd worlds your stone must have opened if your tale is
true." He arose and stretched. Then went to the table
and counted out the money he took from his belt. Old
bills, most of them, dirty, with a greasy film as if the

14

ANDRE NORTON

business they had been used for had translated some of
its slime to their creased surfaces. There remained in
his hand a single coin. Simon spun it in the air and let it
ring down on the polished wood. The engraved eagle
lay up. He looked at it for a moment and then picked it
up again.

"This I take."

"A luck piece?" The doctor was busy with the bills,
stacking them into a tidy pile. "By all means retain it
then; a man can never have too much luck. And now, I
dislike speeding the parting guest, but the power of the
Siege is limited. And the proper moment is all impor-
tant. This way, please."

He might have been ushering one into a dentist's
office, or to a board meeting, Simon thought. And
perhaps he was a fool to follow.

The rain had stopped, but it was still dark in the
square box of yard behind the old house. Petronius
pushed a switch and a light fanned out from the back
door. Three gray stones formed an arch which topped
Simon's head by a few scant inches. And before that
lay a fourth stone, as unpolished, unshaped and angular
as the others. Beyond that arch was a wooden fence,
high, unpainted, rotted with age, grimed with city dirt,
and a foot or two of sour slum soil, nothing else.

Simon stood for a long moment, inwardly sneering at
his half-belief of a few moments earlier. Now was the
time for Sammy to appear and Petronius to earn his real
fee.

But the doctor had taken his stand to one side of the
clock on the ground. He indicated it with a forefinger.

"The Siege Perilous. If you will just take your seat
there, Colonel—it is almost time."

A grin, without humor, to underline his own folly,

WITCH WORLD

twisted Simon's thin-lipped mouth, as he straddled the
stone and then stood for an instant partly under that arch
before he sat down. There was a rounded depression to
fit his hips. Curiously, with a sense of foreboding, he
put out his hands. Yes, there were two other, smaller
hollows to hold his palms, as Petronius had promised.

Nothing happened. The wooden fence, the strip of
musty earth remained. He was about to stand up
when—

"Now!" Petronius' voice fluted in a word which
was half call.

There was a swirling within the stone arch, a melt-
ing.

Simon looked out across a stretch of moorland which
lay under a gray dawn sky. A fresh wind laden with a
strange, invigorating scent fingered his hair. Some-
thing within him straightened like a leashed hound to
trace that wind to its source, run across that moorland.

"Your world, Colonel, and I wish you the be'st of
it!"

He nodded absently, no longer interested in the little
man who called to him. This might be an illusion, but it
drew him as nothing else ever had in his life. Without a
word of farewell Simon arose and strode beneath the
arch.

There was an instant of extreme panic—such fear as
he had never imagined could exist, worse than any
physical pain—as if the universe had been wrenched
brutally apart and he had been spilled out into an awful
nothingness. Then he sprawled face down on thick wiry
turf.




II

MOOR HUNT

The dawn light did not mean sun to come, for there was
a thick mist filling the air. Simon got to his feet and
glanced back over his shoulder/Two rough pillars of
reddish rock stood there, between them no city yard but
a stretch of the same gray-green moor running on and
on into a wall offog.Petronius had been right: this was
no world he knew.

He was shivering. Though he had brought his top
coat with him, he did not have his hat, and the moisture
plastered his hair to his skull, trickled from scalp to
neck and cheek. He needed shelter—some goal.
Slowly Simon made a complete turn. No building
showed within the rim of the horizon. With a shrug he
chose to walk straight away from the rock pillars; one
direction was as good as another.

As he plodded across the soggy turf the sky grew
lighter, the mist lifted, and the character of the land
changed slowly. There were more outcrops of the red
stone, the rolling ground held more sharp rises and
descents. Before him, how many miles away he could
not judge, a broken line cut the sky, suggesting heights
to come. And the meal he had treated himself to was
many hours in the past He twisted a leaf from a bush,
chewed it absently, finding the flavor pungent but not
unpleasant. Then he heard the noise of the hunt.
16

WITCH WORLD

A hom called in a series of ascending notes, to be
answered by a yapping and a single muffled shout.
Simon began to trot. When he came out on the lip of a
ravine he was certain that the clamor came from the
other side of that cut, and was heading in his direction.
With the caution of past commando training, he went to
earth between two boulders.

The woman was the first to break from the cover of
the scrub brush on the opposite bank. She sprinted, her
long legs holding to the steady, dogged pace of one who
has had a long chase behind, an even more distant goal
ahead. At the edge of the narrow valley she hesitated to
look back.

Against the grayish-green of the vegetation her slim
ivory body, hardly concealed by the tatters which were
her only covering, seemed to be spotlighted by the wan
light of the dawn. With an impatient gesture she pushed
back strands of her long black hair, ran her hands across
her face. Then she began to work her way along the
crest of the slope, hunting for a path down.

The horn pealed and the yapping answered it. She
started convulsively and Simon half arose out of his
hiding place as he suddenly realized that in that grim
hunt she must be the quarry.

He dropped to one knee again as she jerked one other
rags free from a thorn bush. The force of that impatient
tug sent her skidding over the rim. Even then she did
not scream, but her hands grabbed for a bush as she
went forward, and its branches held. As she struggled
for footing the hounds burst into view.

They were thin, white animals, their lanky bodies
turning with almost boneless fluidity as they came to
the edge of the valley wall. With sharp noses pointed
down at the woman, they gave triumphant tongue in
wailing howls.

18

ANDRE NORTON

The woman writhed, flinging out her legs in a fren-
zied fight to reach some toehold on a narrow ledge to
her right, a ledge which might afford her a path to the
valley floor. Perhaps she might have made it had the
hunters not arrived.

They were on horseback, and he who wore the horn
cord over his shoulder remained in the saddle, while his
companion dismounted and walked briskly to look
over, kicking and slapping the hounds from his path.
When he saw the woman his hand went to a holster at
his belt.

Seeing him in turn the woman stopped her vain
efforts to reach the ledge, hanging from her bush, her
blank face, impassive, up to his. He grinned as he
unsheathed his weapon, obviously savoring the
helplessness of his prey.

Then the slug from Simon's gun caught him dead
center. With a scream he tottered forward and fell into
the gully.

Before echo of shot and scream had died away, the
other huntsman took cover, which told Simon a little of
the caliber of those he faced. And the hounds went
mad, racing wildly up and down, filling the air with
their yapping.

But the woman made a last effort and found foothold
on the ledge. She sped down that path to the floor of the
gully, taking cover among the rocks and brush which
choked it. Simon saw a flash in the air. Point deep in the
earth, not two inches away from where he had crouched
to make his shot, a small dart quivered back and forth
and then stood still. The other hunter had given battle.

Ten years ago Simon had played such games almost
daily, relished them. And, he discovered, some actions
once learned by muscles and body are riot quickly
forgotten. He wriggled into denser cover to wait. The |

WITCH WORLD              19

hounds were tiring, several had flung themselves
down, to lie panting. It was now a matter of patience,
and Simon had that in abundance. He saw that tremor of
vegetation and fired for the second time—to be
answered by a cry.

A few moments later, alerted by a crackling of brush,
he crept to the edge of the valley, and so came face to
face with the woman. Those dark eyes, set at a provoca-
tive slant in her triangular face, searched his with a keen
intentness Simon found a little disconcerting. Then, as
his hand closed about her shoulder to draw her into
deeper cover, he gained a sharp impression of danger,
of a desperate need to keep moving across the moor.
There was only safety beyond the edge of the moor,
back in the direction from which he had come.

So strong was that warning that Simon found himself
crawling back among the rocks before getting to his feet
and running, matching his stride to hers, the yammer-
ing of the hounds growing fainter behind them.

Although she must have already been running for
weary miles, his companion held to a pace which he
had to stretch to match. At last they came to a place
where the moor began to give way to boggy ponds
edged with waist-high weeds. It was then that a down
wind brought them again the faint call of a horn. And at
that echo the woman laughed, glancing at Simon as if to
ask him to share some jest. She indicated the bog
patches with a gesture which suggested that here lay
their safety.

About a quarter of a mile before them a mist curled
and curdled, thickening, spreading to cut across their
path, and Simon studied it. In such a curtain they might
be safe, but also they might be lost. And, oddly
enough, that mist appeared to rise from a single source.

The woman raised her right arm. From a broad metal

20

ANDRE NORTON

band about her wrist shot a flash of light, aimed at the
mist. She waved with her other hand for him to be still,
and Simon squinted into that curtain, almost certain he
saw dark shapes moving about there.

A shout, the words of the cry incomprehensible, but
the tone of challenge unmistakable, came from ahead.
His companion answered that with a lilting sentence or
two. But when the reply came she staggered. Then she
drew herself together and looked to Simon, putting out
her hand in half-appeal. He caught it, enfolding it in his

own warm fist, guessing they must have been refused
aid.

"What now?" he asked. She might not be able to
understand the words but he was certain she knew their
meaning.

Delicately she licked a finger tip and held it into that
wind rising to whip her hair back from a face on which a
purple bruise swelled at jawline and dark shadows
deepened the hollows beneath her high cheekbones.
Then, still hand in hand with Simon, she pulled to the
left; wading out into evil-smelling pools where green
scum was broken by their passing and clung in slimy
patches to her legs and his sodden slacks.

So they made their way about the edge of the bog,
and that fog which sealed its interior traveled on a
parallel course with them, walling them out. Simon's
hunger was a gnawing ache, his soaked shoes rubbed
blisters on his feet. But the sounds of the horn were lost.
Perhaps their present path had baffled the hounds.

His guide fought her way through a reed thicket and
brought them out on a ridge of higher ground where
there was a road of sorts, hardened by usage, but no
wider than a footpath. With it to follow they made
better time.

WITCH WORLD               21

It must have been late afternoon, though in that gray
neutral light hours could not be marked, when the road
began to climb. Ahead were the escarpments of the red
rock, rising almost as a crudely constructed wall,
pierced by a gap which cradled the road.

They were almost to this barrier when their luck
failed. Out of the grass beside the trail burst a small
dark animal to run between the woman's feet, throwing
her off balance, sprawling on the beaten clay. She
uttered her first sound, a cry of pain, and caught at her
right ankle. Simon hastened to push her hands aside and
used knowledge learned on the battlefield to assess the
damage. Not a break, but under his manipulation she
caught her breath sharply, and it was plain she could not
go on. Then, once more, came the call of the horn.

"This tears it!" Simon said to himself rather than to
the woman. He ran ahead to the gap. The trace of road
wound on to a river in a plain, with no cover. Save for
the rock pinnacles which guarded the pass, there was no
other break in the flat surface of the ground for miles.
He turned to the escarpment and examined it with
attention. Dropping his coat, he kicked off his soggy
shoes and tested handholds. Seconds later he reached a
ledge which could be seen from road level only as a
shadow. But its width promised shelter and it would
have to do for their stand.

When Simon descended the woman came creeping
toward him on her hands and knees. With his strength
and determination added to hers they gained that shal-
low refuge, crouching so closely together in that pocket
of wind-worn rock that he could feel the warmth of her
hurried breath on his cheek as he turned his head to
watch their back trail.

Simon also became aware of her trembling, half-

22

ANDRE NORTON

clothed body as shudders shook her from head to foot m
when the wind licked at them. Clumsily he wrapped his |
coat, damp as it was, about her and saw her smile, m
though the natural curve of her lips was distorted by a
torn lip marked by a recent blow. She was not beautiful,
he decided; she was far too thin, too pale, too worn. In
fact, though her body was frankly revealed by the
disarray of her rags, he was conscious of no male
interest at all. And as that thought crossed his mind
Simon was also aware that she did in some way under-
stand his appraisal and that it amused her.

She hitched forward to the edge of the hollow so that
they were shoulder to shoulder, and now she pulled
back the sleeve of his coat, resting her wrist, with its
wide bracelet, on her knee. From time to time she
rubbed her fingers across an oval crystal set in that
band.

Through the keening of the wind they could hear the
horn, the reply of the hounds. Simon drew his auto-
matic. His companion's fingers flashed from the
bracelet to touch the weapon briefly, as if by that she
could divine the nature of the arm. Then she nodded as
those white dots which were hounds came from the
trees down the road. Four riders followed and Simon
studied them.

The open method of their approach argued that they
did not expect trouble. Perhaps they did not yet know
the fate of their two comrades by the ravine; they might
believe that they still trailed one fugitive instead of two.
He hoped that that was the truth.

Metal helmets with ragged crests covered their heads
and curious eye-pieces were snapped down to mask the
upper halves of their faces. They wore garments which
seemed to be both shirt and jacket laced from waist to

WITCH WORLD              23

throat. The belts about their waists were a good twenty
inches wide and supported bolstered sidearms, as well
as sheathed knives, and various pouches and accou-
terments he could not identify. Their breeches were
tight-fitting and their boots arose in high peaks on the
outside of the leg. The whole effect was a uniform one,
for all were cut alike of a blue-green stuff, and a
common symbol was on the right breast of the shirt
jackets.

The lean, snake-headed hounds swirled up the road
and dashed to the foot of the rock, some standing on
hindlegs to paw at the surface below the ledge. Simon,
remembering that silent dart, shot First.

With a cough the leader of the hunters reeled and
slipped from his saddle, his boot wedging in the stirrups
so that the racing horse jerked a limp body along the
road. There was a shout as Simon snapped a second
shot. A man caught at his arm as he took to cover, while
the horse, still dragging the dead man, bore through the
gap and down into the river plain.

The hounds ceased to cry. Panting, they flung them-
selves down at the foot of the pinnacle, their eyes like
sparks of yellow fire. Simon studied them with a grow-
ing discomfort. He knew war dogs, had seen them used
as camp guards. These were large beasts and they were
killers, that was to be read in their stance as they
watched and waited. He could pick them off one by
one, but he dared not waste his ammunition.

Although the day had been so lowering, he knew that
night would be worse with its full darkness, and it was
coming fast. The wind sweeping wetly from the bogs
was searching out their shelter with its chill.

Simon moved and one of the hounds jumped to alert,
putting its forepaws on the rock and lifting a moaning

24

ANDRE NORTON

howl of threat. Firm fingers closed about Simon's
upper arm, drawing him back, to his former position.
Again through touch he received a message. As hope-
less as their case appeared, the woman was not
daunted. He gathered that she was waiting for some-
thing.

Could they hope to climb to the top of the escarp-
ment? In the dusk he caught the shake of her unkempt
head as if she had read that thought.

Once again the hounds were quiet, lying at the foot of
the crag, their attention for the prey above.
Somewhere—Simon strained to see through the
dusk—somewhere their masters must be on the move,
planning to close in about the fugitives. He knew his
skill as a marksman, but conditions were now rapidly
changing to the others' favor.

He nursed the automatic tensely, alert to the slightest
sound. The woman stirred with a bitten-off exclama-
tion, a gasp of breath. He did not need the urgent tug at
his arm to make him look at her.

In the dusky quarter light a shadow moved up the end
of the ledge. And she snatched his gun, gaining it by
surprise, to bring down its butt with a vicious deadli-
ness upon that creeping thing.

There was a thin squeal cut sharply in the middle.
Simon grabbed the weapon and only when it was back
safely in his grasp, did he look at that broken backed,
squirming creature. Needle teeth, white and curved in a
flat head, a narrow head mounted on a furred body, red
eyes alive with something which startled him—
intelligence in an animal's skull! It was dying, but still
it wriggled to reach the woman, a faint hissing trilling
between those fangs, malignant purpose in every line of
its broken body.

With squeamish distaste Simon lashed out with his

WITCH WORLD              25

foot, catching the thing on its side, sending it over to
plop among the hounds.

He saw them scatter, separate and draw back as if he
had tossed a live grenade into the gathering. Above
their complaint he heard a more heartening sound, the
laughter of the woman beside him. And he saw her eyes
were alight with triumph. She nodded and laughed
again as he leaned forward to survey that pool of
shadow which now lapped about the base of the pinni-
cle, concealing the body of the thing.

Had it been another form of hunter loosed upon them
by the hidden men below? Yet the uneasiness, the swift
departure of the dogs that now milled yards away,
seemed to argue otherwise. If they coursed with the
dead creature it was not by choice. Accepting this as
just another of the mysteries he had walked into—of his
own free will—Simon prepared for a night on sentry-
go. If the silent attack of the small animal had been
some move on the part of the besiegers, they might now
come into the open to follow it up.

But, as the darkness thickened, there were no more
sounds from below which Simon could interpret as
attack. Again the hounds lay down in a half circle about
the foot of the pinnacle, dimly visible because of their
white hides. Once mor&Tregarth thought of climbing
to the top of the outcrop—they might even cross it if the
woman's lameness abated.

When it was almost totally dark she moved. Her
fingers rested for a moment on his wrist and then
slipped down to lay cool in his palm. Through his own
watchfulness, through his listening for any sound, a
picture formed in his mind. Knife—she wanted a knife!
He loosened her hold and took out his pen knife, to have
it snatched from him eagerly.

What followed Simon did not understand, but he had

26 ANDRE NORTON

sense enough not to interfere. The cloudy crystal strap-
ped to her wrist gave off a faint graveside radiance. By
that he watched the point of the knife stab into the ball
of her thumb. A drop of blood gathered on the skin, was
rubbed across the crystal, so for a moment the thick
liquid obscured the scrap of light.

Then up from that oval shone a brighter glow, a shaft
of flame. Again his companion laughed, the low
chuckle of satisfaction. Within seconds the crystal was
dim once again. She laid her hand across his gun and he
read in that gesture another message. The weapon was
no longer necessary, aid would come.

The swampland wind with its puffs of rottenness
moaned around and between the tongues of rock. She
was shivering again and he put his arm about her
hunched shoulders drawing her to him so that the
warmth of their bodies could be joined. Along the arch
of the sky flashed a jagged sword of purple lightning.

Ill

SIMON TAKES SERVICE

Another vivid bolt of lightning rent the sky, just above
the pinnacle. And that was the opening shot of such a
wild battle of sky, earth, wind and storm as Simon had
never seen before. He had crawled over battlefields
under the lash of manmade terrors of war, but this was
worse somehow—perhaps because he knew that there
was no control over those flashes, gusts, blasts.

The rock shook and pitched under them as they clung
as frightened little animals to each other, closing their
eyes to the shock of each strike. There was a continuous
roar of sound, not the normal rumble of thunder, but the
throb of a giant drum beaten to a rhythm which sang
angrily in one's blood and set the brain to spinning
dizzily. The woman's face was pressed tight against
him and Simon enfolded her shaking body as he would
the last promise of safety in a reeling world.

It went on and on, beat, crash, lick of light, beat,
wind—but as yet no rain. A tremor in the rock under
them began to echo the thud of the thunderblasts.

A final spectacular blast left Simon both deaf and
blind for a space. But as the seconds lengthened into
minutes and there was nothing more, when even the
wind appeared to have exhausted itself, sinking into
small, fitful puffs, he raised his head.

The stench of burned animal matter poisoned the air.
A wavering glow not too far away marked a brush fire.

27

28 ANDRE NORTON

But the blessed quiet held and the woman stirred in his
arms, pushing free. Once again he had an impression of
confidence, a confidence mixed with triumph, some
game had come to a victorious end and to the woman's
satisfaction.

He longed for a light with which to survey the scene
below. Had the hunter or hound survived the storm?
Orange-red light lapped out from the fire toward the
escarpment. Against the foot of the pinnacle lay a
tangle of stiff white bodies. There was a dead horse in
the road, a man's arm resting on its neck.

The woman pushed forward, searching with eager
eyes. Then, before Simon could stop her, she had
swung over the ledge and he followed, alert for attack,
but seeing only the bodies in the firelight.

Warmth of flame reached them and it was good. His
companion held out both arms to the glow. Simon
skirted the dead hounds, scorched and twisted by the
bolt which had killed them. He came to the dead horse
with the idea of taking its rider's weapons. Then he saw
the fingers in the animal's coarse mane move.

The hunter must be mortally injured, and certainly
Simon had little feeling for him since that harrying
chase across the moor and bog. But neither could he
leave a helpless man so trapped. He struggled with the
weight of the dead mount, got that broken body free
where the light of the fire could show him who and what
he had rescued.

Those strained, bloodstained, harshly marked fea-
tures held no sign of life, yet the broken chest rose and
fell laboriously and he moaned now and then. Simon
could not have named his race. The close-cropped hair
was very fair, silver-white almost. He had a boldly
hooked nose between wide cheek bones, an odd com-

WITCH WORLD

bination. And Simon guessed that he was young though
there was little of the unformed boy in that drawn face.

Still on its cord about his shoulder was a dented horn.
And the rich ornamentation of his habit, the gem-set
brooch at his throat, suggested that he was no common
soldier. Simon, unable to do anything for those exten-
sive hurts, turned his attention to the wide belt and its
arms.

The knife he tucked into his own belt. The strange
sidearm he took from its holster to examine carefully. It
had a barrel, and something which could only be a
trigger. But in his hand the balance felt wrong, the grip
awkwardly shaped. He pushed it inside his shirt.

He was about to loosen the next item, a narrow
cylinder, when a white hand flashed across his shoulder
and took it.

The hunter stirred as if that touch, rather than Si-
mon's handling, had reached his dazed brain. His eyes
opened, feral eyes, with a gleam of light within their
depths such as a beast's holds in the darkness. And
there was that in those eyes which made Simon recoil.

He had met men who were dangerous, men who
wanted his death and who would go about the business
of securing it with a businesslike dispatch. He had
stood face to face with men in whom some trait of
character worked upon him until he hated them on
sight. But never before had he seen any such emotion as
lay at the back of those shining green eyes in the
battered face of the hunter.

But Simon realized that those eyes were not turned
upon him. The woman stood there, a little crookedly
for she favored her injured ankle, turning over in her
hands the rod she had stripped from the hunter's belt.
Almost Simon expected to see in her expression some

30 ANDRE NORTON

answer to that burning, corrosive rage with which the
wounded man faced her.

She was watching the hunter steadily, without any
sign of emotion. The man's mouth worked, twisted. He
raised his head with a tortured, visible effort which
racked his whole body and spat at her. Then his head
cracked back against the roadway and he lay still as if
that last gesture of detestation had drained all his re-
serves of energy. And in the light of the now dying fire
his face went queerly slack, his mouth fell open. Simon
did not need to note the end of that laboring rise and fall
of the crushed chest to know that he was dead.

"Alizon—'' The woman shaped the word carefully,
looking to Simon and then to the body. Stopping she
indicated the emblem on the dead man's jacket. "Ali-
zon."

"Alizon," Simon echoed as he got to his feet, hav-
ing no desire to plunder farther.

Now she swung to face the gap through which the
road ran on into the river plain.

"Estcarp—" Once more that careful pronounce-
ment of a name, but her finger indicated the river plain.
"Estcarp." She repeated that, but now touched her
own breast.                                     '

And, as if by that name she had evoked an answer,
there was a shrilling pipe from the other side of the gap.
No demanding call such as the hunter's horns had
given, but rather a whistling such as a man might make
between his teeth as he waited for action. The woman
replied with a shouted sentence which was taken up by
the wind, echoed from the sides of the rock barrier.

Simon heard the thud of hooves, the jangle of metal i
against metal. But since his companion faced the gap
welcomingly, he was content to wait before going into

WITCH WORLD              31

action. Only his hand closed about the automatic in his
pocket and its blunt muzzle pointed to that space be-
tween the pinnacles.

They came one at a time, those horsemen. Skimming
between the peaks, the first two fanning out, weapons
ready. When they sighted the woman they called ea-
gerly; plainly they were friends. The fourth man rode
straight ahead to where Simon and the woman waited.
His mount was tall, heavy through the barrel as if the
animal had been selected to carry weight. But the figure
in the high peaked saddle was so short of stature Simon
thought him a young boy—until he swung to earth.

In the light of the fire his body glistened, and points
of glitter sparkled on helm, belt, throat and wrist. Short
he was, but his breadth of shoulder made that lack of
height the more apparent, for his arms and chest were
those intended for a man a third again his size. He wore
armor of some sort with the apparent texture of chain-
mail, yet it clothed him so snugly that it might have
been wrought of cloth, yielding to every movement of
his limbs with the pliability of woven stuff. His helmet
was crested with the representation of a bird, wings
outstretched. Or was it a real bird charmed to unnatural
immobility? For the eyes which glinted in its upheld
head appeared to watch Simon with a sullen ferocity.
The smooth metal cap on which it perched ended in a
kind of scarf of the mail, looped about the wearer's
neck and throat. He tugged at this impatiently as he
walked forward, freeing his face from its half veiling.
And Simon saw that he had not been so wrong in his
first guess after all. The hawk-helmed warrior was
young.

Young, yes, but also tough. His attention was di-
vided between the woman and Simon, and he asked her

32 ANDRE NORTON

a question as he surveyed Tregarth measuringly. She
answered with a rush of words, her hand sketching
some sign in the air between Simon and the warrior.
Seeing that, the newcomer touched his helm in what
was clearly a salute to the outlander. But it was the
womap who commanded the situation.

Pointing to the warrior she continued her language
lesson: "Koris."

It could be nothing but a personal name Simon de-
cided quickly. He jerked his thumb at his own chest:

"Tregarth, Simon Tregarth." He waited for her to
name herself.

But she only repeated what he had said. "Tregarth,
Simon Tregarth," as if to set the syllables deep in her
mind. When she did not answer otherwise he made his
own demand.

"Who?" he pointed straight at her.

The warrior Koris started, his hand going to the
sidearm at his belt. And the woman frowned, before her
expression became so remote and cold that Simon knew
he had blundered badly.

"Sorry," he spread his hands in gesture which he
hoped she would take for apology. In some way he had
offended, but it was through ignorance. And the
woman must have understood that, for she made some
explanation to the young officer, though he did not look
at Simon with any great friendliness during the hours
which followed.

Koris, showing a deference which did not match the
woman's ragged clothing, but did accord with her air of
command, mounted her behind him on the big black
horse. Simon rode behind one of the other guardsmen,
linking his fingers in the rider's belt and clinging tight,
as they headed back into the river plain at a pace which

WITCH WORLD               33

even the dark of the night did not keep from approach-
ing a gallop.

A long time later Simon lay still in a nest of bed
coverings and stared with unseeing eyes up at the curve
of the carved wood canopy overhead. Save for those
wide open eyes he might have been deemed as suddenly
asleep as he had been minutes earlier. But an old talent
for passing from sleep into instant alertness had not
been lost with his entrance into this new world. And
now he was busy sorting out impressions, classifying
knowledge, trying to add one fact to another to piece
together a concrete picture of what lay about him
beyond the confines of the massive bed, the stone walls
of the room.

Estcarp was more than the river plain; it was a series
efforts, stubborn defensive holds along a road marking
a frontier. Forts where they had changed horses, had
fed, and then swept on again, driven by some need for
haste Simon had not understood. And at last it was a
city of round towers, green-gray as the soil in which
they were rooted under the pale sun of a new day,
towers to guard, a wall to encircle, and then other
buildings of a tall, proud-walking race with dark eyes
and hair as black as his own, a race with the carriage of
rulers and an odd weight of years upon them.

But by the time they had entered that Estcarp Simon
had been so bemused by fatigue, so dulled by the
demands of his own aching body, that there were only
snatches of pictures to be remembered. And overlaying
them all the sensation of age, of a past so ancient that
the towers and the walls could have been part of the
mountain bones of this world. He had walked old cities
'n Europe, seen roadways which had known the tramp
of Roman legions. Yet the alien aura of age resting here

34 ANDRE NORTON

was far more overpowering, and Simon fought agains
it when he marshalled his facts.

He was quartered in the middle pile of the city, aj
massive stone structure which had both the solemnity1
of a temple and the safety-promise of a fort. He could
just barely remember the squat officer, Koris, bringing
him to this room, pointing to the bed. And then—
nothing.
' Or was it nothing?

Simon's brows drew together in a faint frown. Koris,
this room, the bed— Yet now as he stared up into the
mingled pattern of intricate carving arching over him,
he found things there which were familiar, oddly famil-
iar, as if the symbols woven back and forth had a
meaning which he would unravel at any moment now.

Estcarp—old, old, a country and a city, and a way of
life! Simon tensed. How had he known that? Yet it was
true, as real as the bed on which his saddle-sore body
rested, as the carvings over him. The woman who had
been hunted—she was of this race, of Estcarp—just as
the dead hunter by the barrier had been of another and
hostile people.

The Guardsmen in the frontier posts were all of the
same mold, tall, dark, aloof in manner. Only Koris,
with his misshapen body, had differed from the men he
led. Yet Koris' orders were obeyed; only the woman
who rode behind him had appeared to have more au-
thority.

Simon blinked, his hands moved beneath the covers,
and he sat up, his eyes on the curtains to his left. Soft as
it had been, he had caught that whisper of footfall, and
he was not surprised when the rings of the curtains
clicked, and the thick blue fabric parted, so that he
looked at the very man who had been in his thoughts.

WITCH WORLD              35

Freed of his armor Koris was even more of a physical
oddity. His too-wide shoulders, those dangling, over-
long arms overweighed the rest of him. He was not tall
and his narrow waist, his slender legs were doubly
small in contrast to the upper part of his body. But set
on those shoulders was the head of the man Koris might
have been had nature not played such a cruel trick.
Under a thick cap of wheat-yellow hair was the face of a
boy who had only recently come to manhood, but also
the face of one who had had no pleasure in that de-
velopment. Strikingly handsome, apart from those
shoulders, jarring with them, the head of a hero
partnered to the body of an ape!

Simon slid his legs down the mound of the high bed
and stood up, sorry at that moment that he must force
the other to look up to him. But Koris had moved back
with the quickness of a cat and perched on a broad stone
ledge running beneath a slit window, so that his eyes
were still on a level with Tregarth's. He gestured with a
grace foreign to his long arm to a nearby chest, indicat-
ing a pile of clothing there.

Those were not the tweeds he had crawled out of
before seeking bed, Simon noted. But he also saw
something else, a subtle reassurance of his present
status there. His automatic, the other contents of his
pocket, had been laid out with scrupulous neatness to
one side of that new clothing. He was no prisoner,
whatever other standing he might have in that hold.

He pulled on breeches of soft leather, resembling
those Koris now wore. Supple as a glove, they were
colored a dark blue. And with them were a pair of
calf-high boots of a silvery-gray substance he thought
might be reptile hide. Having dressed so far he turned to
the other and made gestures of washing.

36

ANDRE NORTON

For the first time a ghost of smile touched the
Guardsman's well-cut mouth and he pointed to an al-
cove. Medieval the hold of Estcarp might be superfi-
cially, Simon discovered, but the dwellers therein had
some modem views on sanitation. He found himself
introduced to water which flowed, warm, from a wall
pipe when a simple lever was turned, to a jar of cream,
faintly fragrant, which applied and then wiped off
erased all itch of beard. And with his discoveries came
a language lesson, until he had a growing vocabulary of
words Koris patiently repeated until Simon had them
right.

The officer's attitude was one of studied neutrality.
He neither made friendly overtures, save for his lan-
guage instructions, nor accepted Simon's attempts at
more personal conversation. In fact, as Tregarth pulled
on a garment intended to serve as both shirt and jacket,
Koris shifted halfway around on the window ledge to
stare out into the day sky.

Simon weighed the automatic in his hand. The Est-;

carpian officer appeared to be indifferent as to whether;

this stranger went armed or not. At length Tregarth
slipped it into his belt above his lean and now empty
middle, and signed that he was ready to go.

The room gave on a corridor and that, within a few
paces, upon a stair down. Simon's impression of im-
measurable age was confirmed by the hollows worn in
those same stone steps, a groove running along the left
wall where fingers must have passed for eons. Light
came palely from globes set far above their heads in
metal baskets, but the nature of that light remained a
mystery.

A wider hall lay at the foot and men passed there.
Some in the scaled mail were guards on duty, others

WITCH WORLD              37

had the easier dress Simon now wore. They saluted
Koris and eyed his companion with a somber curiosity
he found vaguely disconcerting, but none of them
spoke. Koris touched Tregarth's arm, motioned to a
curtained doorway, holding back a loop of the cloth in a
way which suggested an order.

Beyond stretched another hall. But here the bare
stone of the walls were covered with hangings bearing
the patterns of the same symbols he had seen on the bed
canopy, half familiar, half alien. A sentry stood to
attention at the far end of that way, raising the hilt of his
sword to his lips. Koris looped back a second curtain,
but this time he waved Simon by him.

The room seemed larger than it was because of the
vault of the ceiling which pointed up far overhead. Here
the light globes were stronger, and their beams, while
not reaching into those lofty shadows, did show clearly
the gathering below.

There were two women awaiting him—the first he
had seen within the pile of the keep. But he had to look a
second time to recognize in the one standing, her right
hand on the back of a tall chair which held her compan-
ion, the woman who had fled before the hunters of
Alizon. That hair which had hung in lank soaked strings
about her then was coiled rather severely into a silver
net, and she was covered primly from throat to ankle by
a robe of a similar misty color. Her only ornament was
an oval of the same cloudy crystal such as she had worn
then in a wrist band, but this hung from a chain so that
the stone rested between the small mounds of her
breasts.

"Simon Tregarth!" It was the seated woman who
summoned him, so his eyes passed to her, and he found
that he could not take them away again.

38 ANDRE NORTON

She had the same triangular face, the same seeking |
eyes, the same black coils of netted hair. But the power
which emanated from her was like a blow. He could not
have told her age, in some ways she might have seen the
first stones ofEstcarp laid one upon another. But to him
she seemed ageless. Her hand flashed up and she tossed
a ball toward him, a ball seemingly of the same cloudy
crystal as the gem she and her lieutenant wore as
jewels.

Simon caught it. Against his flesh it was not cold as
he had expected, but warm. And as he instinctively
cupped it in both hands, her own closed over her jewel,
a gesture echoed by her companion.

Tregarth could never afterwards explain, even to
himself, what followed. In some weird fashion he pic-
tured in his mind the series of actions which had
brought him to the world ofEstcarp, sensing as he did
so that those two silent women saw what he had seen
and in a measure shared his emotions. When he had
done that a current of information flowed in his direc-
tion.

He stood in the main fortress of a threatened, perhaps
a doomed land. The age-old land of Estcarp was
menaced from the north and from the south, and also
from the sea to the west. Only because they were the
heirs of age-old knowledge were the dark people of her
fields, her towns and cities, able to hold back the press.
Theirs might be a losing cause, but they would go down
fighting to the last blow of sword from the last living
Guardsman, the last blasting weapon man or woman
could lay hand upon.

And that same hunger which had drawn Simon under
the rough arch in Petronius' yard into this land, was
alive and avid in him once more. They made no appeal

WITCH WORLD              39

to him, their pride was unbending. But he gave his
allegiance to the woman who had questioned him,
chose sides in that moment with a rush of a boy's
openhearted enthusiasm. Without a spoken word pass-
ing between them, Simon took service in Estcarp.

IV

THE CALL OUT OF SULCARKEEP

Simon raised ^ heavy tankard to his lips. Over the rim
of the vessel he watched the scene alertly. On his first
acquaintance he had thought the people of Estcarp
somber ove^hadowed by a crushing weight of years,
the last remn31115 °^ a dying race who had forgotten all
but dreams o^he past. But during the past weeks he had
learned bit bY bit how surface and superficial that
judgment had been. Now in the mess of the Guards his
attention flic^1'^ from face to face, reappraising, not
for the first time, these men with whom he shared a
daily round ^ duties and leisure.

To be sure ^elr weapons were strange. He had had to
leam the swi^S °^ a ^ord for use in close melee, but
their dart gun5 were soough like his automatic to cause
him little trouble. He could never match Koris as a
warrior_his respect for that young man's skill was
unbounded. However Simon knew the tactics of other
armies other wars, well enough to make suggestions
even that a\o°f commander came to appreciate.

Simon had wondered how he would be received

among the G11^5—^^ a^ mev were '"^"S a stand
against high ^ds and ^° them any stranger might repre-
sent an enemy' a breach in the wall of defense. Only he
had not reckoC^ wlm the ways of Estcarp. Alone in the
nations of thi5 continent, Estcarp was willing to wel-

40

WITCH WORLD              41

come one coming with a story as wild as his own.
Because the power of that ancient holding was founded
upon—magic!

Tregarth rolled the wine about his tongue before he
swallowed, considering objectively the matter of
magic. That word could mean sleight-of-hand-tricks,
it could cover superstitious Mumbo-Jumbo—or it
could stand for something far more powerful. Will,
imagination and faith were the weapons of magic as
Estcarp used it. Of course, they had certain methods
of focusing or intensifying that will, imagination, and
faith. But the end result was that they were extremely
open-minded about things which could not be seen,
felt, or given visible existence.

And the hatred and fear of their neighbors was
founded upon just that basis—magic. To Alizon in the
north, Karsten in the south, the power of the Witches of
Estcarp was evil. "You shall not suffer a witch to
live." How many times had that been mouthed in his
own world as a curse against innocent and guilty alike,
and with far less cause.

For the matriarchate of Estcarp did have powers
beyond any human explanation, and they used them
ruthlessly when necessary. He had helped to bring a
witch out of Alizon where she had ventured to be eyes
and ears for her people.

A witch— Simon drank again. Not every woman of
Estcarp had the Power. It was a talent which skipped
willfully from family to family, generation to genera-
tion. Those who tested out as children were brought to
the central city for their schooling and became dedi-
cated to their order. Even their names were gone, for to
give another one's name was to give a part of one's
identity, so that thereafter the receiver had power over

42 ANDRE NORTON

the giver. Simon could understand now the enormity of
his request when he had asked the name of the woman
in whose company he had fled over the moor.

Also the Power was not steady. To use it past a
certain point wore hardly upon the witch. Nor could it ]
always be summoned at will. Sometimes it was apt to ]
fail at some crucial moment. So, in spite of her witches I
and her learnings, Estcarp had also her mail-clad i
Guards, her lines of forts along her borders, her swords
loose in many sheaths.

"Sa ..." The stool beside him was jerked back
from the table as a newcomer swung leg across to sit.
"It is hot for the season." A helm banged down on the
board and a long arm swept out to reach the jug of wine.

The hawk on the discarded helm stared at Simon
glassily, its beautifully wrought metallic plumage re-
sembling true feathers. Koris drank while questions
were shot at him from about the table, as men might aim
darts for more deadly purpose. There was discipline in
the forces of Estcarp but off duty there was no caste and
the men about that board were avid for news. Their
commander banged his tankard down with some force
and answered briskly:

"You'll hear the muster horn before the hour of gate |
closing, in my opinion. That was Magnis Osberic who
prayed safe passage from the west road. And he had a
tail in full war gear. It is to my mind that Gorm makes
trouble."

His words fell into a silence at the end. All of them,
now including Simon, knew what Gorm meant to the
Guards' Captain. For rightfully the lordship of Gorm
should have rested in Koris' powerful hands. His per-
sonal tragedy had not begun there, but it had ended on
that island when, wounded and alone, he had drifted
from its shore, face down in a leaking fishing boat.

WITCH WORLD

Hilder, Lord Defender of Gorm, had been storm-
stayed on those moors which were a no man's land
between Alizon and the plains of Estcarp. There, sepa-
rated from his men, he had fallen from a floundered
horse and broken an arm, to blunder on in a half daze of
pain and fever into the lands of the Tormen, that strange
race who held the bogs against all comers, allowing no
encroachment upon their soggy domain by any race or
man.

Why Hilder had not been slain or driven forth again
remained ever a mystery. But his story was untold
even after he returned to Gorm some months later,
healed again of body and bearing with him a new-made
wife. And the men of Gorm—more straightly, the
women of Gorm—would have none of that marriage,
whispering that it had been forced upon their lord in
return for his life. For the woman he had brought with
him was misshapen of body, stranger yet of mind,
being of the true blood of Tor. She bore him Koris in
due time, and then she was gone. Perhaps she died,
perhaps she fled again to her kin. Hilder must have
known, but he never spoke of her again, and Gorm
was so glad to be rid of such a liege lady that there
were no questions asked.

Only Koris remained, with the head of a Gorm noble
and the body of a bog loper, as he was never allowed to
forget. And in time when Hilder took a second wife,
Oma, the well-dowered daughter, of a far-sailing sea
master, Gorm again whispered and hoped. So they
were only too willing to accept the second son Uryan,
who, it was plain to see, had not a drop of suspect
outland blood in the veins of his straight young body.

In time Hilder died. But he was a long time in dying
and those who whispered had a chance to make ready
against that day. Those who thought to use Orna and

44 ANDRE NORTON

Uryan for their purposes were mistaken, for the Lady
Oma, of trading stock and shrewd, was no easily be- j
fooled female of the inner courts. Uryan was still a
child, and she would be his regent—though there were
those who would say no to that unless she made a
display of strength.

She was not a fool when she played one lord ofGorm
against another, weakening each and keeping her own
forces intact. But she was the worst befooled mortal in
the world when she turned elsewhere for support. For it
was Oma who brought black ruin to Gorm when she
secretly summoned the fleet of Kolder to back her rule.

Kolder lay over the rim of the sea world, just where
you could find only one man in ten thousand among the
seafarers who could tell you. For honest men, or human!
men, kept aloof from that grim port and did not tie at its^j
quays. It was accepted everywhere that those of KolderI
were not as other men, and it was damnation to have
any contact with them.

The death day of Hilder was followed by a night of
red terror. And only one ofKoris' superhuman strength
could have broken from the net cast for him. Then there
was only death, for when the Kolder came to Gorm,
Gorm ceased to be. If any now lived there who had
known life under Hilder, they had no hope. For Kolder
was now Gorm, yes, and more than just the island of
Gorm, for within the year stark towers had risen in
another place on the coast and a city called Yie had
come into being. Though no man of Estcarp went to
Yie—willingly.

This Yie lay like a spreading stain of foulness be-
tween Estcarp and their one strong ally to the west—
the sea wanderers of Sulcarkeep. These fighter-traders
who knew wild places and different lands had built their
stronghold by Estcarp favor on a finger of land which

WITCH WORLD              45

pointed into the sea, their road to encircle the world.
Master Traders were the seamen of Sulcarkeep, but
also they were fighting men who walked unchallenged
in a thousand ports. No trooper ofAlizon or shieldman
ofKarsten spoke to a Sulcarman except in a mild voice,
and they were esteemed as swordbrothers by the
Guardsmen of Estcarp.

"Magnis Osberic is not one to ride forth with the
summoning arrow unless he must have already manned
his walls," remarked Tunston, senior under officer
who kept the forces of Estcarp to the mark. He arose
and stretched. "We'd best see to our gear. If Sulcar-
keep cries aid, then we loosen swords."

Koris gave only a preoccupied nod to that. He had
dipped finger into his tankard and was drawing lines on
the scrubbed board before him, chewing absentmind-
ediy the while at a flat-sized hunk of brown bread.
Those lines made sense to Simon, looking over the
other's hunched shoulder, for they duplicated maps he
had seen in the muster room of the city keep.

That finger which ended with Sulcarkeep on its tip
formed one arm to encircle a wide bay, so that across
the expanse of water the city of the traders faced—
although many miles lay between them—Aliz, the
main port of Alizon. In the confines of the bay itself
was cupped the island of Gorm. And on that Koris
carefully made the dot to signify Sippar, the main city.

Strangely enough Yie did not lie on the bayside
section of the peninsula coast, but on the southwest
portion of the shoreline, facing the open sea. Then there
was a sweep of broken line southward, extending well
into the Duchy of Karsten, all rock cliff with no safe
anchorage for any ship. The bay of Gorm had been of
old Estcarp's best outlet to the western ocean.

The Guards' Captain studied his work for a long

46 ANDRE NORTON

instant or two and then with an impatient exclamation,
rubbed his hand across it, smearing the lines.

"There is only one road to Sulcarkeep?" asked Si-
mon. With Yie to the south and Gorm to the north,
parties from each Kolder post could easily slice in two
a peninsula road without greatly bestirring them-
selves.

Koris laughed. "There is one road, as old as the
ages. Our ancestors did not foresee Kolder in Gorm—
who in their sane minds could? To make safe that
road," he put his thumb on the dot he had made for
Sippar and pressed it against the age-hardened wood as
if he were remorselessly crushing an insect, "we would
have to do so here. You cure a disease by treating its
source, not the fever, the wasting which are the signs of
its residence in the body. And in this case," he looked
bleakly up at Tregarth, "we have no knowledge upon
which to work."

"A spy-"

Again the Guards' officer laughed. "Twenty men
have gone forth from Estcarp to Gorm. Men who suf-
fered shape-changing without knowing whether they
would ever again look upon their own faces in a mirror,
but suffering that gladly, men who were fortified with
every spell the learning here could summon for their
arming. And there has come back out of Sippar—
nothing! For these Kolder are not as other men and we
know nothing of their devices of detection, save that
they appear to be infallible. At last the Guardian for-
bade any further such ventures, since the drain of
Power was too great to have only failure always as an
answer. I, myself, have tried to go, but they had set a
boundary spell which I cannot break. To land on Gorm
would mean my death, and I can serve Estcarp better
alive. No, we shall not tear out this sore until Sippar

WITCH WORLD              47

falls, and not yet have we any hopes of bringing that
about."

"But if Sulcarkeep is threatened?"

Koris reached for his helm. "Then, friend Simon,
we ride! For this is the strangeness of the Kolder: when
they fight upon their own land or their own ships, the
victory is always theirs. But when they assail clean
territory where their shadow has not yet fallen, then
there is still a chance to blood them, to swing swords
which bite deep. And with the Sulcarmen the war
ravens feed well. I would mark my Kolders when and
while I can."

"I ride with you." That was a statement more than a
question. Simon had been content to wait, to learn. He
had set himself to school with the patience he had so
painfully learned in the past seven years, knowing that
until he mastered the skills which meant life or death
here he could not hope for independence. And once or
twice in the night watches he wondered whether the
vaunted Power of Estcarp had not been used to bring
about his acceptance of the status quo without question
or rebellion. If so, that spell was wearing thin now; he
was determined to see more of this world than just the
city, and he knew that either he rode now with the
Guard or he would go alone.

The Captain studied him. "We go for no quick
foray."

Simon remained seated, knowing the other's dislike
of being towered over and willing to propitiate him by
that costless courtesy.

"When have I seemed to you one who expects only
easy victories!" he got a caustic bite into that.

"See that you depend upon the darts then. As a
swordsman you are still scarcely better than a stall
keeper of Karsten!"

48

ANDRE NORTON

Simon did not fire at that jibe, knowing that it was
only too true. As a marksman with the dart guns he
could match the best in the hold and come off a shade
the winner. Wrestling and unarmed combat to which he
brought the tricks of Judo, had given him a reputation
with the men now reaching to the border forts. But in
sword use he was still hardly better than the gawky
recruits with only boy-down to be scrubbed from their
cheeks. And he swung a mace which Koris handled
with cat-ease as if it were a shoulder-breaking burden.

"Dart gun it is," he returned readily. "But still I
ride."

"So be it. But first we see whether or no any of us are
to take the road."

That was decided in the conclave into which the
officers under Koris, the witches on duty in the hold,
were summoned. Though Simon had no official stand-
ing in that company, he ventured to follow the Captain
and was not refused entrance, taking his place on the
ledge of one of the window embrasures to study the
company with speculation.

The Guardian who ruled the keep and Estcarp
beyond, the woman without a name who had ques-
tioned him on his first coming, presided. And behind
her chair stood that witch who had fled before the
hounds of Alizon. There were five more of the
covenanted ones, ageless—in a way sexless—but all
keen-eyed and watchful. He would far rather fight with
them behind him, than standing in opposition, Simon
decided. Never had he known any like them, or seen
such power of personality.

Yet facing them now was a man who tended to dwarf
his surroundings. In any other company he might well
have dominated the scene. The men of Estcarp were

WITCH WORLD              49

lean and tall, but this was a bronze bull of a man
beside whom they were boys not yet come to their full
growth. The armor plate which hooped his chest could
have furnished close to two shields for the Guard, his
shoulders and arms were a match for Koris' but the rest
of his body was in keeping.

His chin was shaven, but on his broad upper lip a
mustache bristled, stretching out across his weathered
cheeks. And eyebrows furnished a second bar of hair on
the upper part of his face. The helm on his head was
surmounted with the skillfully modeled head of a bear,
its muzzle wrinkled in a warning snarl. And a huge
bearhide, tanned and lined with saffron yellow cloth,
formed his cloak, gold-clawed forepaws clasped to-
gether under his square chin.

"We of Sulcarkeep keep traders' peace." Man-
ifestly he was trying to tutor his voice to a tone more in
keeping with the small chamber, but it boomed through
the room. ' 'And we keep it with our blades, if the need
arises. But against wizards of the night of what use is
good steel? I do not quarrel with the old learning," he
addressed the Guardian directly, as if they faced each
other across a trading counter. "To each man his own
gods and powers, and never has Estcarp pushed upon
others their own beliefs. But Kolder does not so. It laps
out and its enemies are gone! I tell you, lady, our world
dies, unless we rise to stem a tide together."

"And have you. Master Trader," asked the woman,
' 'ever seen a man born of woman who can control the
tides?"

"Control them, no, ride them, yes! That is my
magic." He thumped his corselet with a gesture which
might have been theatrical, save that for him it was
right. "But there is no riding with Kolder, and now

50 ANDRE NORTON

they plan to strike at Sulcarkeep! Let the stupid wits of
Alizon think to hold aloof, they shall be served in turn
as Gorm was. But Sulcarmen man their walls—they
fight! And when our port goes, those sea tides sweep
close to you, lady. Rumor says that you have the magic
of wind and storm, as well as those spells which twist a
man's shape and wits. Can your magic stand against
Kolder?"

Her hands went to the jewel on her breast and she
smoothed it.

"It is the truth I speak now, Magnis Osberic—I do
not know. Kolder is unknown, we have not been able to
breach its walls. For the rest—I agree. The time has
come when we must take a stand. Captain," she hailed
Koris, "what is your thought upon the matter?"

His handsome face did not lose its bitter shadow, but
his eyes were alight.

"I say that while we can use swords, then let us!
With your permission, Estcarp will ride to Sulcar-
keep."

"The swords of Estcarp shall ride, if that is your
decision, Captain, for yours is the way of arms and you
speak accordingly. But also shall that other Power ride
in company, so what force we have shall be given."

She made no summoning gesture, but the witch who
had spied in Alizon moved from behind the chair to
stand upon the Guardian's right hand. And her dark,
slanted eyes moved over the company until they found
Simon sitting apart. Had a shadow of a smile, gone in
an instant, spread from her eyes to her lips? He could
not have sworn to it, but he thought that was so. He did
not understand why, but in that moment Simon was
aware of a very fragile thread spun between them, and
he did not know whether he chafed against the thinnest
of bonds or not.

WITCH WORLD

When they rode out of the city in the midafternoon
Simon discovered by some chance his mount matched
pace with hers. As the men of the Guard she wore mail,
the scarfed helmet. There was no outward difference
between her and the rest, for a sword hung at her hip,
and the same sidearm at her belt as Simon carried.

"So, man of war from another world," her voice
was low and he thought it for his hearing alone, "we
travel the same train once again."

Something in her serene composure irked him. "Let
us hope this time to hunt instead of being hunted."

"To each his day," she sounded indifferent. "I was
betrayed in Alizon, and unarmed."

"And now you ride with sword and gun."

She glanced down at her own equipment and
laughed. "Yes, Simon Tregarth, with sword and
gun—and other things. But you are right in one
thought, we hasten to a dark meeting."

"Foretelling, lady?" His impatience ripened. For
that moment he was an unbeliever. It was far easier to
trust in steel which fitted into the hand than in hints,
looks, feelings.

"Foretelling, Simon." Her narrow eyes regarded
him still with that shadow smile somewhere in their
depths. "I am laying no geas, nor quest upon you,
outland man. But this I know: our two strands of life
stuff have been caught up together by the Hand of the
Over Guardian. What we wish and what will come of it
may be two very different things. This I shall say, not
only to you, but to all this company—beware the place
where rocks arch high and the scream of the sea eagle
sounds!"

Simon forced an answering smile. "Believe me,
lady, in this land I watch as if I had eyes set around my
head in a circlet. This is not my first raiding party."

52 ANDRE NORTON

"As has been known. Else you would not ride with
the Hawk,'' she pointed with a lift of her chin to Koris.
"Were you not of the proper metal he would have none
of you. Koris is a warrior bred, and a leader born—to
Estcarp's gain!"

"And you foresee this danger at Sulcarkeep?" he
pressed.

She shook her head. "You have heard how it is with
the Gift. Bits and patches are granted us—never the
whole pattern. But there are no city walls in my mind
picture. And I think it lies closer than the sea rim. Loose
your dart gun, Simon, or bare those knowledgeable
fists of yours.'' She was amused again, but her laughter
did not jeer—rather it was the open good humor of
comradeship. He knew that he must accept her on her
own proffered terms.

v

DEMON BATTLE

The troop from Estcarp pushed the pace but they had
still a day's journey before them when they rode out of
the last of the frontier posts and headed along the curve
of the seaport highway. They had changed mounts
regularly at the series of Guard installations and spent
the night at the last fort, keeping to a steady trot that ate
up the miles.

Although the Sulcarmen did not ride with the same
ease as the Guard, they clung grimly to saddles which
seemed too small for their bulk—Magnis Osberic not
being unique in his stature—and kept up, riding with
the fixed purpose of men to whom time itself was a
threatening enemy.

But the morning was bright, and patches of purple
flowering bush caught radiance from the sun. The air
carried the promise of salt waves ahead and Simon
knew a lift of heart which he had thought lost long ago.
He did not realize that he was humming until a familiar
husky voice cut from his left.

"Birds sing before the hawk strikes."

He met that mockery good-naturedly. "I refuse to
listen to the croaking of ill—it is too fine a day."

She plucked at the mail scarf wreathing her shoulders
and throat, as if its supple folds were a kind of
imprisonment. "The sea—it is in the wind here—"
Her gaze roamed ahead where the road rippled to the

53

54 ANDRE NORTON

horizon. "We have a portion of the sea in our veins,
we of Estcarp. That is why Sulcar blood can mingle
with ours, as it has oftimes. Someday I would take to
the sea as a venture. There is a pull in the very surge of
the waves as they retreat from the shore."

Her words were a singing murmur, but Simon was
suddenly alert, the tune he had hummed dried in his
throat. He might not have the gifts of the Estcarp
witches, but deep within him something crawled,
stirred into life, and before he reasoned it through, his
hand flashed up in a signal from his own past as he
reined in his horse.

"Yes!" Her hand was flung to echo his and the men
behind them halted. Koris' head whipped about: he
made his own signal and the whole company came to a
stop.

The Captain passed the lead momentarily toTunston
and rode back. They had their flankers out; nothing
could be charged to lack of vigilance.

"What is it?" Koris demanded.

"We are running into something." Simon surveyed
the terrain ahead, laying innocently open under the sun.
Nothing moved except a bird spiralling high. The wind
had died so that even its puffs did not disturb the
patches of brush. Yet he would stake all his experience
and judgment upon the fact that before them a trap was
waiting to snap jaws.

Koris' surprise was fleeting. He had already glanced
from Simon to the witch. She sat forward in the saddle,
her nostrils expanded as she breathed deeply. She
might have been trying the scent as does a hound.
Dropping the reins she moved her fingers in certain
signs, and then she nodded sharply with complete con-
viction.

WITCH WORLD               55

"He is right. There is a blank space ahead, one I can
not penetrate. It may be a force barrier—or hide an
attack."

' 'But how did he—the gift is not his!" Koris' protest
was quick and harsh. He flashed a glance at Simon
which the other could not read, but it was not of confi-
dence. Then he issued orders, spurring forward himself
to lead one of those circling sweeps which were in-
tended to draw an overanxious enemy into the open.

Simon drew his dart gun. How had he known—how
did he know they were advancing into danger? He had
had traces of such foreknowledge in the past—as on the
night he had met Petronius—but never had it been so
sharp and clear, with a strength which increased as he
rode.

The witch kept beside him, just behind the first line
of Guards, and now she chanted. From inside her mail
shirt she had brought out that clouded jewel which was
both a weapon and the badge of her calling. Then she
held it above her head at arm's length and cried aloud
some command which was not in the tongue Simon had
painstakingly learned.

There came into view a natural formation of rocks
pointing into the sky as fangs from some giant jawbone,
and the road ran between two which met in the
semblance of an arch. About the foot of the standing
stones was a mass of brush, dead and brown, or living
and green, to form a screen.

From the gem a spearpoint of light struck upon the
tallest of those toothstones, and from that juncture of
beam and rock spread a curling mist which thickened
into a cottony fog, blanketing out the pillars and the
vegetation.

Out of that clot of gray-white stuff burst the attack, a

56 ANDRE NORTON

wave of armed and armored men coming forward at a
run in utter silence. Their helms were head-enveloping
and visored, giving them the unearthly look of beaked
birds of prey. And the fact that they advanced without
any calls or orders along their ranks added to the weird-
ness of the sudden sortie.

"Sul . . . Sul . . .Sul. . .!" The sea rovers had
their swords out, and swung them in time to that thun-
derous shout as they drew into a line which sharpened
into a wedge, Magnis Osberic forming its point.

The Guard raised no shout, nor did Koris issue any
orders. But marksmen picked their men and shot,
swordsmen rode ahead, their blades ready. And they
had the advantage of being mounted, while the silent
enemy ran afoot.

Simon had studied the body armor of Estcarp and
knew where the weak points existed. Whether the same
was true of Kolder armor he could not tell. But he
aimed for the armpit of one man who was striking at the
first Guard to reach the cresting wave of the enemy
forces. The Kolder spun around and crashed, his
pointed visor digging into the earth.

"Sul ... Sul ... Sul .. .!" The war shouts of
the Sulcarmen were a surf roar as the two bands of
fighters met, mingled, and swirled in a vicious hand to
hand combat. In the first few moments of the melee
Simon was aware of nothing but his own part in the
affair, the necessity for finding a mark. And then he
began to note the quality of the men they battled.

For the Kolder force made no attempt at self-
preservation. Man after man went blindly to his death
because he did not turn from attack to defense in time.
There was no dodging, no raising of shields or blade to
ward off blows. The foot soldiers fought with a dull

WITCH WORLD              57

ferocity, but it was almost mechanical. Clockwork
toys, Simon thought, wound up and set marching.

Yet these were supposed to be the most formidable
foemen known to this world! And now they were being
cut down easily, as a child might push over a line of toy
soldiers.

Simon lowered his gun. Something within him re-
volted against picking off the blind fighters. He spurred
his mount to the right in time to see one of the beaked
heads turn in his direction. The Kolder came forward at
a brisk trot. But he did not engage Simon as the other
had expected. Instead he leaped tigerishly at the rider
just beyond—the witch.

Her mastery of her horse saved her from the full force
of that dash and her sword swung down. But the blow
was not clean, catching on the pointed visor of the
Kolder and so being deflected over his shoulder.

Blind as he might be in some respects the fellow was
well schooled in blade work. The blue length of steel in
his hand flashed in and out, in its passing sweeping
aside the witch's weapon, tearing it from her hand.
Then he cast aside his own weapon and his mail-backed
glove grabbed for her belt, tearing her from the saddle
in spite of her struggles, with an ease which Koris
might have displayed.

Simon was on him now and that curious fault which
was losing his comrades their battle possessed this
Kolder as well. The witch was fighting so desperately
in his hold that Simon dared not use his sword. He drew
his foot from the stirrups as he urged his horse closer,
and kicked out with all the force he could put behind
that blow.

The toe of his boot met the back of the Kolder's
round helmet, and me impact of that meeting numbed

58 ANDRE NORTON

Simon's foot. The man lost his balance and sprawled
forward, bearing the witch with him. Simon swung
from the saddle, stumbling, with fear that his jarred leg
would give under him. His groping hands slid over the
Kolder's plated shoulder, but he was able to pull the
fellow away from the gasping woman and send him
over on his back, where he lay beetle-wise, his hands
and legs still moving feebly, the blankness of his
beaked visor pointing up.

Shedding her mailed gloves the woman knelt by the
Kolder, busy with the buckles of his helm. Simon
caught at her shoulder.

"Mount!" He ordered, drawing his own horse for-
ward for her.

She shook her head, intent upon what she was doing.
The stubborn strap gave and she wrenched off the helm.
Simon did not know what he had expected to see. His
imagination, more vivid than he would admit, had
conjured up several mental pictures of the hated
aliens—but none of them matched this face.

"Herlwin!"

The hawk crown helmet of Koris cut between Simon
and that face as the Captain of the Guard knelt beside
the witch, his hands going out to the fallen man's
shoulders as if to draw him into the embrace of close
friends.

Eyes as green-blue as the Captain's, in a face as
regularly handsome, opened, but they did not focus
either on the man who called, or the other two bending
over him. It was the witch who loosened Koris' grip.
She cupped the man's chin, holding still his rolling
head, peering into those unseeing eyes. Then she
loosed him and pulled away, wiping her hands vigor-
ously on the coarse grass. Koris watched her.

WITCH WORLD

"Herlwin?" It was more a question addressed to the
witch than an appeal to the man in Kolder's trappings.

"Kill!" She ordered between set teeth. Koris' hand
went out to the sword he had dropped on the grass.

"You can't!" Simon protested. The fellow was
harmless now, knocked partly unconscious by the
blow. They could not just run him through in cold
blood. The woman's gaze crossed his, steel cold. Then
she pointed to that head, rolling back and forth again.

"Look, outworld man!" She jerked him down be-
side her.

With an odd reluctance Simon did as she had done,
took the man's head between his hands. And on that
moment of contact he nearly recoiled. There was no
human warmth in that flesh; it did not have the chill of
metal nor of stone, but of some unclean, flabby stuff,
firm as it looked to the eye. When he stared down into
those unblinking eyes, he sensed rather than saw a
complete nothingness which could not be the result of
any blow, no matter how hard or straightly delivered.
What lay there was not anything he had ever chanced
upon before—an insane man still has the cloak of
humanity, a mutilated or mangled body could awaken
pity to soften horror. Here was the negation of all which
was right, a thing so loathsomely apart from the world
that Simon could not believe it was meant to see sun or
walk upon wholesome earth.

As the witch had done before him, he scrubbed his
hands on the grass trying to rub from them the contami-
nation he felt. He scrambled to his feet and turned his
back as Koris swung the sword. Whatever the Captain
struck was dead already—long dead—and damned.

There were only dead men to mark the Kolder force,
and two slain Guardsmen, one Sulcar corpse being

60 ANDRE NORTON

lashed across his horse. The attack had been so strik-
ingly inept that Simon could only wonder why it had
been made. He fell in step with the Captain and dis-
covered that he was in search of knowledge.

"Unhelm them!" The order passed from one group
of Guardsmen to the next. And beneath each of those
beak helms they saw the same pale faces with heads of
cropped blond hair, those features which argued they
were akin to Koris.

"Midir!" he paused beside another body. A hand
twitched, there was the rattle of death in the man's
throat.' 'Kill!'' The Captain's order was dispassionate,
and it was obeyed with quick efficiency.

He looked upon every one of the fallen, and three
more times he ordered the death stroke. A small muscle
twitched at the comer of his well-cut mouth, and what
lay in his eyes was far from the nothingness which had
been mirrored in the enemies'. The Captain, having
made the rounds of the bodies, came back to Magnis
and the Witch.

"They are all ofGorm!"

"They were ofGorm," the woman corrected him.
"Gorm died when it opened its sea gates to Kolder.
Those who lie here are not the men you remember,
Koris. They have not been men for a long time—a long,
long time! They are hands and feet, fighting machines
to serve their masters, but true life they did not have.
When the Power drove them out of hiding they could
only obey the one order they had been given—find and
kill. Kolder can well use these things they have made to
fight for them, to wear down our strength before they
aim their greater blows."

That lip twitch pulled theCaptain's mouth into some-
thing which curved but in no way resembled a smile.

"So in a measure do they betray a weakness of their

WITCH WORLD              61

own. Can it be that they lack manpower?" Then he
corrected himself, slamming his sword back into its
sheath with a small rasp of sound. "But who knows
what lies in a Kolder mind—if they can do this, then
perhaps they have other surprises."

Simon was well in the van as they rode on from that
trampled strip of field where they had met the forces of
Kolder. He had not been able to aid in the final task the
witch urged on them, nor did he like to think now of
those bodies left headless. It was hard to accept what he
knew to be true.

"Dead men do not fight!" He did not realize he had
protested that aloud until Koris answered him.

"Herlwin was like one born in the sea. I have
watched him hunt the spear fish with only a knife for his
defense. Midir was a recruit in the bodyguard, still
stumbling over his feet when the assembly trumpet
blew on the day Kolder came to Gorm. Both of them I
knew well. Yet those things which lie behind us, they
were neither Herlwin nor Midir."

' 'A man is three things." It was the witch who spoke
now. "He is a body to act, a mind to think, a spirit to
feel. Or are men constructed differently in your world,
Simon? I can not think so, for you act, you think, and
you feel! Kill the body and you free the spirit; kill the
mind and ofttimes the body must live on in sorry bond-
age for a space, which is a thing to arouse man's
compassion. But kill the spirit and allow the body, and
perhaps the mind to live—'' her voice shook, "that is a
sin beyond all comprehension of our kind. And that is
what has happened to these men ofGorm. What walks
in their guise is not meant for earthbom life to see! Only
an unholy meddling with things utterly forbidden could
produce such a death."

"And you cry aloud the manner of our deaths, lady,

62 ANDRE NORTON

should Kolder come into Sulcarkeep as it did to
Gorm." The Master Trader pushed his heavy-boned
mount up level with them.

"We have bested them here, but what if they muster
legions of these half-dead to assault our walls? There
are only a few men within the keep, for this is the
trading season and nine-tenths of our ships are at sea.
We needs must spread thinly in the fortress. A man may
clip heads with a will, but his arm tires at the business.
And if the enemy keeps coming they can overwhelm us
by sheer weight of numbers. For they have no fear for
themselves and will go forward where one of us might
have a second thought, or a third!"

Neither Koris nor the witch had a ready answer for
that. Only Simon's first sight of the trading port, hours
later, was in a manner reassuring. Seamen though the
Sulcarmen might be by first choice, they were also
builders, using every natural advantage of the point
they had selected as an asset in the erection of the keep.
From the land side it was mainly wall with watch
towers and firing slits in plenty. And it was only when
Magnis Osberic escorted them within that they saw the
full strength of the place.

Two arms of rock curved out to the sea—a crab's
open claws—and between them was the harbor. But
each of those claws had been reinforced with blocks of
masonry, walls, watch points, miniature forts, con-
nected to the main body with a maze of underground
ways. Wherever possible the outer walls ran down
straight to the pound of the waves, providing no possi-
ble hold for climbers.

"It would seem," Simon commented, "that this
Sulcarkeep was built with the thought of war in mind."

Magnis Osberic laughed shortly. "Master Tregarth,

WITCH WORLD

63

the Peace of the Highways may hold for our blood
within Estcarp, and to a measure within Alizon and
Karsten—providing we clink gold in the hearing of the
right ears. But elsewhere in the world we show swords
along with our trade goods, and this is the heart of our
kingdom. Down in those warehouses lies our life
blood—for the goods that we barter is the flow of our
life. To loot Sulcarkeep is the dream of every lordling
and every pirate in this world!

' 'The Kolder may be the demon spawn rumor names
them, but they do not disdain the good things of this
earth. They would like to paddle their paws in our
takings as well as the next. That is why we also have a
last defense here—if Sulcarkeep falls her conquerors
will not profit!" He brought his big fist down upon the
parapet before them in a giant's crushing blow. "Sul-
carkeep was built in my great-grandfather's day to
provide all our race with a safe port in time of storm—
storm of war as well as storm of wind and wave. And it
would seem that we now need it."

"Three ships in the harbor," Koris had been count-
ing. "A cargo bottom and two armed runners."

"The cargo is for Karsten in the dawning. Since it
carries the Duke's bargainings it can go under his flag
and her crew need not stand to arms in the port faring,''
remarked Osberic.

" 'Tis tongued about that the Duke is to wed. But
there is a necklet of Samian fashioning lying in a chest
down there intended for the white neck of Aldis. It
would appear that Yvian may put the bracelet on some
other's wrist, but he intends not to wear it on his own."

The witch shrugged and Koris appeared far more
interested in the ships than in any gossip concerning the
neighboring court. "And the runners?" he prompted.

64 ANDRE NORTON

' 'Those remain for a space.'' The Master Trader was
evasive. "They shall patrol. I am better pleased to
know what approaches from the sea."

A bomber might reduce the outer shell of Sulcarkeep
to rubble in a run or two; heavy artillery could breach its
massive walls within hours, Simon decided, as he con-
tinued on the inspection round with Koris. But
there were a warren of passages and chambers in the
rock beneath the foundations of the buildings, some
giving on the sea—those having barred doors; unless
the Kolder had weapons beyond any arms he had seen
in this world, the traders would appear to be unneces-
sarily nervous. One could think that, until one remem-
bered the empty-eyed foemen from Gorm.

He also noted that while there were guardrooms in
plenty and well-filled racks of weapons, stands of the
heavy mace-axes, there were few men, widely spread
through those rooms, patrols stretched over area of
wall. Sulcarkeep was prepared to equip and house
thousands of men and a scant hundred or so stood to
arms there.

The three of them, Koris, the witch, and Simon drew
together on a sea tower where the evening wind strove
against their mail.

"I dare not strip Estcarp," Koris spoke angrily, as if
in reply to some argument neither of his companions
heard, "to center all our manpower here. Such foolish-
ness would be open invitation toAlizon or the Duchy to
invade north and south. Osberic has an outer shell
which I do not believe even the jaws of the Kolder can
crack, but the meat within it is missing. He waited too
long; with all his men in port he might hold, yes. With
only this handful, I doubt it."

"You doubt, Koris, but you will fight," the woman

WITCH WORLD              65

said. There was neither encouragement nor discour-
agement in her tone. "Because that is what must be
done. And it may well be that this hold will break the
Kolder's jaws. But Kolder does come—that Magnis
has foreseen truly."

The Captain looked at her eagerly. "You have a
foretelling for us, lady?"

She shook her head.' 'Expect nothing from me that I
can not give. Captain. When we rode into that ambush I
could see nothing but a blank ahead. By that very
negative sign I recognized the Kolder. But better than
that I cannot do. And you, Simon?"

He started. "I? But I have no pretense to your
Power—" he began and then added more honestly, "I
can say nothing—except as a soldier I think this is an
able fort, and now I feel as one trapped within it." He
had added that last almost without thinking, but he
knew it for the truth.

"But that we shall not say to Osberic," Koris de-
cided. Together they continued to watch the harbor as
the sun set, and more and more the city beneath lost the
form of a refuge and took on the outline of a cage.

VI

FOG DOOM

It began a little after midnight—that creeping line
across the sea, blotting out both stars and waves, send-
ing before it a chill which was bom of neither wind nor
rain, but which bit insidiously into a man's bones,
slimed his mail with oily beads, tasted salty and yet
faintly corrupt upon his lips.

The line of light globes which followed each curve of
the claw fortifications was caught. One by one those
pools of light were muffled into vague smears of yel-
low. To watch that creeping was to watch a world being
blotted out inch by inch, foot by foot.

Simon strode back and forth across the small sentry
platform on the central watch tower. Half the claw
fortifications were swallowed, lost. One of the slim
raiders in the harbor was sliced in two by that curtain. It
resembled no natural fog he had ever seen, unlike the
famous blackouts of London, the poisoned industrial
smogs of his own world. The way it crept in from the
west as a steady curtain suggested only one thing—a
screen behind which an attack might be gathering.

Deadened and hollow he caught the clamor of the
wall alarms, those brazen gongs stationed every so
many feet along the claws. Attack! He reached the door.
of the tower and met the witch.

"They're attacking!"

66

WITCH WORLD               67




"Not yet. Those are storm calls, to guide any ship
which might be seeking port."

"A Kolder ship!"

' 'Perhaps so. But you cannot overturn the customs of
centuries in an hour. In fog Sulcarkeep's gongs serve
seamen, only Osberic's orders can mute them."

"Then such fogs as this one are known?"

"Fogs are known. Such as this—that is another
matter."

She brushed past him to come out into the open,
facing seaward as he had done moments earlier, study-
ing the fast disappearing harbor.

"We of the Power have a certain measure of control
over the natural elements, though like all else that is
subject to failure or success beyond our forereckoning.
It is in the providence of any of my sisterhood to
produce a mist which will not only confuse the eyes of
the unwary, but also their minds—for a space. But this
is different."

"It is natural?" Simon persisted, sure somehow that
it was not. Though why he was so certain of that he
could not explain.

' 'When a potter creates a vase he lays clay upon the
wheel and molds it with the skill of his hands to match
the plan which is in his brain. Clay is a product of the
earth, but that which changes its shape is the product of
intelligence and training. It is in my mind that
someone—or something—has gathered up that which
is a part of the sea, of the air, and has molded it into
another shape to serve a purpose."

' 'And what do .you in return, lady?'' Koris had come
out behind them. He strode straight to the parapet and
slapped his hands down upon the water-pearled stone.
"We are like to be blind men in this!"

ANDRE NORTON

68

She did not look away from the fog, watching it with
the intentness of a laboratory assistant engaged in a
crucial experiment.

"Blindness they may seek, but blindness can enfold
two ways. If they will play at illusion—then let them be
countered with their own trick!"

"Fight fog with fog?" the Captain commanded.

' 'You do not fight one trick with the same. They are
calling upon air and water. Therefore we must use
water and air in return, but in another fashion." She
tapped her thumbnail against her teeth. "Yes, that
might be a confusing move," she murmured as she
swung around. "We must get down to the harbor level.
Ask of Magnis a supply of wood, dry chips will be
excellent. But, if he has them not, get knives that we
may cut them. Also some cloth. And bring it to the
center quay."

The choked clamor of the gongs echoed hollowly
across the heart of the harbor as the small knot of
Sulcarmen and Guards came out on the quay. An
armload of board lengths appeared and the witch took
the smallest. Her hands plied the knife clumsily as she
strove to whittle out the rude outline of a boat, pointed
at bow, rounded at stem. Simon took it from her,
peeling off the white strips easily, the others following
his example as the woman approved.

They had a fleet of ten, of twenty, of thirty chip
boats, palm-size, each fitted with a stick mast and a
cloth sail the witch tied into place. She went down on
her knees before that line, and, stooping very low, blew
carefully into each of the tiny sails, pressed her finger
for a moment on the prow of each of the whittled chips.

"Wind and water, wind and water," she
singsonged. "Wind to hasten, water to bear, sea to
carry, fog to ensnare!"

WITCH WORLD               69

Swiftly her hands moved, tossing one and another of
the crude representations of a sea fleet out into the water
of the harbor. The fog was almost upon them, but it was
still not too thick for Simon to miss an amazing sight.
The tiny boats had formed into a wedge shaped line
pointing straight for the now hidden sea. And, as the
first dipped across the line of the fog curtain it was no
hastily chipped toy, but a swift, gleaming ship, finer
than the slim raiders Osberic had displayed with pride.

The witch caught at Simon's dangling wrist to draw
herself to her feet again. "Do not believe all that you
see, out-world man. We deal in illusion, we of the
Power. But let us hope that this illusion will be as
effective as their fog, frightening off any invaders."

"They can't be real ships!" Stubbornly he protested
the evidence of his eyes.

"We depend too strongly upon our outer senses. If
one can befool the eyes, the fingers, the nose—then the
magic is concrete for a space. Tell me, Simon, should
you be planning to enter this harbor for attack and then
saw out of the fog about your ships a fleet you had not
suspected was there, would you not think twice of
offering battle? I have only tried to buy us time, for
illusion breaks when it is put to any real test. A Kolder
ship which would try to lock sides and board one of that
fleet could prove it to be what it is. But sometimes time
bought is a precious thing."

She was in a measure right At least, if the enemy had
planned to use the blanket of mist to cover an attack on
the harbor, they did not follow through. There was no
invasion alarm that night, neither was there any lifting
of the thick cover over the city as the hour of dawn
passed.

The masters of the three ships in the harbor waited
upon Osberic for orders, and he could give none, save

70 ANDRE NORTON

to wait out the life of the fog. Simon made the rounds of
the Guards in Koris' wake, and sometimes it was
necessary for one man to link fingers in the other's belt
lest they lose touch, upon the outer stations of the sea
wall. Orders were given that the gongs continue to beat
at regular intervals, not now for the protection of those
at sea, but merely that one sentry post keep in touch
with the next. And men turned strained, drawn faces,
half drew weapons as their reliefs came upon them,
until one shouted the pass word or some identification
ahead lest he be spitted upon the steel of a jumpy
outpost.

"At this rate," Tregarth commented as he side-
stepped one rush from a Sulcarman they came upon
suddenly, and so saved himself from a crippling blow,
if not worse, "they will not need to send any attack
force, for we shall be flying out upon each other. Let a
man seem to wear a beaked helm in this murk and he
will speedily be short a head."

"So I have thought," the Captain answered shortly.
"They play with illusion, too, born of our nerves and
fears. But what answer can we give except what we had
already done?"

"Anyone with good ears could pick up our pass
words." Simon determined to face the worst. "A
whole section of wall could fall to their control, post by
post."

"Can we even be sure that this is an attack?" coun-
ter-questioned the other bitterly. "Outworlder, if you
can give better orders here, then do so and I shall accept
them gladly! I am a man of war, and the ways of war I
know—or thought I knew—well. Also I believed that I
knew the ways of wizards, since I serve Estcarp with a
whole heart. But this is something I have never met
before; I can only do my best."

WITCH WORLD

71

"And never have I seen this manner of fighting
either," Simon admitted readily. "It would baffle any-
one . But this I think now—they will not come by sea."

"Because that is the way we look to have them creep
upon us?'' Koris caught him up quickly. "I do not think
that the keep can be assaulted from land. These searov-
ers have built shrewdly. It would need siege machinery
such as would take weeks to assemble."

"Sea and land—which leaves?"

' 'Earth and air,'' Koris replied.' 'Earth! Those under
passages!"

"But we cannot spread men too thinly to watch all
the underground ways."

Koris' sea-green eyes glowed with the same feral
battle light Simon had seen in them at their first meet-
ing.

"There is a watch which can be put upon them,
needing no men. A trick I know. Let us get to Magnis.''
He began to run, the point of his sheathed sword clink-
ing now and again against the stone walls as he rounded
the turns in the keep corridors.

Basins were lined up on a table, of all sizes and
several shapes, but they were uniformly of copper and
the balls Koris was carefully apportioning, one to a
bowl, were also of metal. One of the bowl and ball
combination, installed in the portion of wall overhang-
ing an underground way, would betray any attempt to
force the door far below by the oscilation of ball within
basin.

Earth was safeguarded as best they could. Which
left—the air. Was it because he was familiar with air
warfare that Simon found himself listening, watching,
at the cost of a crick in the neck, the murk encasing the
towers of the port? Yet a civilization which depended
"pon the relatively primitive dart guns, the sword, the

72 ANDRE NORTON

shield, and a mailed body for offense and defence—no
matter what subtle tricks of the mind they called in
bolstering aids—could not produce airborne attack as
well.

Thanks to Koris' device of the bowls they had a few
moments of warning when the Kolder thrust came. But
from all five points where the bowls had been placed
that alarm arose at nearly the same instant. The halls
leading to each doorway had been stuffed during fren-
zied hours of labor with all the burnable stuff in the
warehouses of the port. Mats of sheep wool and
cowhair soaked in oil and tar, which the shipwrights
used for the calking, were woven in around torn bales
of fine fabrics, bags of dried grain and seeds, and oil
and wine poured in rivulets to soak into these giant
plugs.

When the bowls warned, torches were applied and
other portals closed, sealing off from the central core
those flame-filled ways.

"Let them run their cold dog noses into that!" Mag-
nis Osberic thumped his war ax exultingly on the table
in the central hall of the main keep. For the first time
since the fog had imprisoned his domain the Master
Trader appeared to lose his air of harassment. As a
seafarer he hated and feared fog, be it born of nature or
the meddling of powers. With a chance for direct ac-
tion, he was all force and drive again.

"Ahhhhhh!" Across the hubbub in the hall that
scream cut like a sword slice. Torture of body was not
all of it, for only some supreme fear could have torn it
from a human throat.

Magnis, his bull's head lowering as if he would
charge the enemy, Koris, sword ready, a little crouched
so that his dwarfish body gathered strength from the

WITCH WORLD               73

earth, the rest of the men in that chamber were frozen
for a long second.

Perhaps because during all this period of waiting he
had been half expecting it, Simon identified the source
first, and sped for the stair which, three floors higher,
gave upon the sentry go of the roof.

He did not reach that level. Screams and cries from
above, the clash of metal against metal was warning
enough. Slowing his pace, Simon drew his gun. And it
was good he was cautious for he was midway to the
second level when a body rolled down, missing him by
a scant inch. It was a Sulcarman, his throat a ragged
wound still pumping blood to spatter wall and stair.
Simon looked up into a wild confusion.

Two Guardsmen and three of the seafarers still
fought, their backs against the wall on the landing of the
next level, keeping at bay invaders who attacked with
the single-minded ferocity their kin had displayed at the
road ambush. Simon snapped a shot, and then another.
But a wave of beaked helms poured unceasingly from
above. He could only guess that in some way the enemy
had come by air and now held the top floors of the
keep.

There was no time to speculate upon their method of
getting there—it was enough that they had managed to
break through. Two more of the seafarers, one of the
Guard were down. The dead and wounded, friends and
foe alike were disregarded by the beaked helms. Bodies
slipped downstairs—they could not be stopped there.
The plug must come below.

Simon leaped for the first landing, kicking open the
two doors fronting on it. The furniture favored by
Sulcar was heavy stuff. But the smaller pieces could be
moved. In that moment Simon summoned up strength

74 ANDRE NORTON

he did not know he possessed, jerking and pushing
articles out to choke the stairwell.

A beaked head faced him through the upraised legs
of a chair used to top his efforts, and a sword point
struck for his face. Simon crashed the chair over on that
helm. There was a smarting cut on his cheek but the
attacker was not a part of the barricade.

"Sul! Sul!"

Simon was elbowed to one side and he saw Magnis'
face, as red as its tawny bristle of mustache, loom up as
the trader chopped down, smashed up at the first wave
of invaders to reach the stair barrier and claw at the stuff
which formed it.

Aim, fire, aim again. Throw away an empty dart
clip, reload to fire anew. Straddle a Guardsman down
moaning, until the man could be dragged back into
whatever safety anyone could find in the keep now.
Fire—Fire!

Somehow Simon had come back into the hall, then
the party of which he was one were on another stair-
way, selling each flight dearly as they descended.
There was a thin smoke here—tendrils of fog? No, for
when it wreathed them its acrid bite stung nose and
throat setting them coughing. Aim—fire—grab dart
packs from the belt of a fallen Guardsman who could no
longer use any weapon.

The steps were behind now. Men shouted hoarsely,
and the smoke was worse. Simon smeared his hand
across his watering eyes and pulled at the throat scarf of
his helmet. His breath came in shallow gasps.

Blindly he followed after his companions. Doors of
five-inch thickness swung after them, were barred and
locked. One . . . two . . . three . . . four of such
barriers. Then they stumbled into a room facing an

WITCH WORLD              75

installation housed in a casing taller than the giant of a
man who leaned against it, dull-eyed. The Guardsmen
and the seafarers who had made it rimmed the room,
leaving the strange machine to the master of the city.

Magnis Osberic had lost his bear-crested helm, his
fur cloak was a tattered string trailing from one shoul-
der. His ax lay across the top of the casing, and from its
blade a red line dripped sluggishly to the stone pave-
ment. The ruddiness of his coloring had faded, leaving
his skin with a withered look. His eyes were wide,
staring at men and not seeing them—Simon guessed
that the man was in a state of shock.

"Gone!" He picked up the ax, slipped its long half
back and forth in his rope-caloused hand.' 'From the air
like winged demons! No man can fight against de-
mons." Then he laughed softly, warmly, as a man
might laugh when he took a willing woman into his
arms. "But there is also an answer to demons. Sulcar-
keep shall not serve that spawn for a nesting place!"

His bull head lowered for the charge once more,
swung slowly as he singled out the Estcarp men from
among his own followers. "You have fought well, you
of the witch blood. But this last is no doom laid upon
you. We shall loose the energy which feeds the city
powers and blast the port. Get you forth that you may
perhaps settle the accounting in a way those air-flying
wizards can understand. Be sure we shall take with us
such a number of them that they shall have thinned
ranks against that day! Go your way, witch men, and
leave us of Sulcarkeep to our final reckoning!"

Urged by his eyes and his voice, as if he had caught
each of them in a bear's grip and thrust them away from
him and his, the remnant of the Guard gathered to-
gether. Koris was still with them, his hawk helm lack-

76 ANDRE NORTON

ing a wing. And the witch, her face serene, but her lips
moving as she walked quietly across the chamber.
Twenty more men and Simon.

As one the Guards drew to attention, their stained
swords swinging up in salute to those they left. Magnis
grunted.

"Pretty, pretty, witchmen. But this is no time for
parade. Get out!"

They filed through a small door he indicated, Koris
through last to slam and bar it. At a dead run they took
that passage. Luckily there were globe lights set in the
roof at intervals and the floor was smooth, for the need
for haste burned in them.

The sound of sea and surf grew stronger and they
came out in a cave where small boats swung at anchor.

"Down!" Simon was pushed aboard with others,
and Koris' hand slapped between his shoulders, send-
ing him face down. Men landed on him and about him,
pinning him flat to the rocking bottom. There was the
slam of another door—or was it a deck shutting over
them? Light was gone and with it air. Simon lay quiet,
having no idea of what would happen next.

Under him the boat moved, men's bodies rolled, he
was kicked, prodded, and he buried his face in the
crook of his arm. The craft which held them swung
about and his stomach fought against that motion. He
had never been too good a sailor. Mainly occupied with
his fight against sickness, he was not prepared for a
blast which seemed to end the world with one blow of
sound and pressure.

They were still rolling in the waves, but when Simon
lifted his head he gulped clean air. He wriggled and
strove, paying no attention to the grunts and protests of
those about him. No more fog was his first dazed

WITCH WORLD               77

thought—and then—it was day! The sky, the sea about
them, the coast behind were clear and bright.

But when did the sun rise from the shore, leap up in
sky-touching flames from a land base? He had been
deafened by the blast, but not blinded. They were
heading out to sea, leaving the source of that heat and
light behind them.

One . . . two . . . three cockshells of boats he
counted. There were no sails, they must be motored in
some way. A man sat erect in the stem of theirs, his
shoulders identifying him. Koris held that tiller. They
were free of the inferno which had been the port of
Sulcarkeep, but where did they head?

Fog gone, and the fire on shore giving them light.
But the waves which swept them along were not born of
any calm sea. Perhaps the shock of that blast with
which Magnis had destroyed the keep had been com-
municated to the ocean. For a wind drove down upon
them as if a hand strove to press them beneath the
surface, and those on board the featherweight ships
began to realize that they had gained perhaps only a few
minutes of life rather than full escape.

PART II:

VENTURE OF VERLAINE

I

AX MARRIAGE

The sea was dull and gray, the color of an ax blade
which would never take on a sheen no matter how much
one polished, or a steel mirror misted by moisture one
could not rub away. And above it the sky was as flat,
until it was hard to distinguish the meeting line between
air and water.

Loyse huddled on the ledge beneath the arrow-split
window. She dreaded the depths, for this turret, bulg-
ing roundly from its parent wall, hung directly over the
wicked, surf-collared rocks of the shoreline, and she
had no head for heights. Yet she was often drawn to this
very seat because when one stared straight out into the
emptiness, which was seldom troubled save by a diving
bird, one could see freedom.

Her hands, long fingered, narrow of palm, pressed
flat against the stone on either side of the window as she
did lean forward an inch or so, making herself eye what
she feared, as she made herself do many things her
body, her mind shrank from. To be Fulk's daughter one
must grow an inner casing of ice and iron which no
blow to the flesh, no taunt to the spirit could crack. And
she had been intent upon that fashioning of an interior
citadel for more than half the years of her short life.

There had been many women at Verlaine, for Fulk
was a man of lusty appetite. And Loyse had watched

81




82 ANDRE NORTON

them come and go from her babyhood, cold-eyed and
measuring herself. To none had he given wifehood, by
none had he sired other offspring—which was Fulk's
great dissatisfaction and so far her own gain. For Ver-
laine was not Fulk's by blood, but by his one and only
marriage with her mother, and only as long as Loyse
lived could he continue to hold it and its rich rights of
pillage and wreckage, ashore and afield. There were
kinsmen of her mother's in Karsten who would be
quick enough to claim lordship here were she to die.

But, had Fulk sired a son by any of the willing—and
unwilling—women he had brought to the huge bed in
the lord's chamber, then he could have claimed more
than just his own life tenancy for the male heir under
the new laws of the Duke. By the old customs mother-
right was for inheritance; now one took a father's hold-
ing, and only in cases where there was no male heir did
the old law prevail.

Loyse cherished her tiny thread of power and safety,
held to it as her one hope. Let Fulk be chopped down in
one of his border raids, let him be sought out by some
vengeful male of a family despoiled, and she and Ver-
laine would be free together! Ah, then they would see
what a woman could do! They would leam that she had
not been moping in secret all these years as most of
them believed.

She drew back from the ledge, walked across the
room. It was chill with the breath of the sea, gloomy
with lack of sun. But she was used to cold and dusk,|
some of both were a fast part of her now.

Beyond the curtained bed she came to stand in front|
of a mirror. It was no soft lady's looking glass, but a
shield, diamond-shaped, polished through patient
hours until it gave back to the room a slightly distorted
reflection. And to stand so, facing squarely what it told

WITCH WORLD

83

her, was another part ofLoyse's strict self-dicipline.

She was small, but that was the only feminine
characteristic she shared with the blowsy women who
satisfied her father's men, or with the richer fare he kept
for his own enjoyment. Her body was as straight and
slender as a boy's, with only shadow curves to hint she
was not a lad. The hair which lay in braids across her
shoulders, and then fell below waist level, was thick
enough. But it was lank and of so pale a yellow that
except in direct sunlight it was white as a beldame's,
while lashes and brows of the same colorless tint made
her face seem strangely blank and without intelligence.
The skin pulled tightly across the fine bones of her face
and chest was smooth and also lacking in any real color.
Even the line of her lips was of the palest rose. She was
a bleached thing, grown in the dark, but a vitality
within her was as strong as the supple blade a wise
swordsman chooses over the heavier hacking weapon
of the inexperienced.

Suddenly her hands flew together, gripped tightly for
an instant. Then she as quickly snapped them apart and
to her sides, though under her hanging sleeves they
were still balled into fists, nails biting palms. Loyse did
not turn to the door, nor give any other outward hint that
she had heard that rattling of the latch. She knew just
how far she dared go in her subtle defiance of Fulk, and
from that limit she never retreated. Sometimes she
thought despairingly her father never recognized her
rebellion at all.

The door slammed back against the wall. Verlaine's
lord always treated any barrier as if he were storming an
enemy fortress. And he tramped in now with the tread
of a man who has just lifted the city keys from the sword
point of a vanquished commander.

If Loyse was the colorless creature of the dark, Fulk

84 ANDRE NORTON

was lord of sun and flamboyant light. His good body
was beginning to show traces of his rough living, but he
was still more than handsome, his red-gold head carried
with the arrogance of a prince, his well-cut features
only a little blurred. Most ofVerlaine worshipped their
lord. He had an openhanded if uneven generosity when
he was pleased, and his vices were all ones which his
men understood and shared.

Loyse caught his reflection in the mirror, brave,
bright, turning her even more into a night taper. But she
did not face about.

"Greetings, LordFulk." Her voice was toneless.

"LordFulk, is it? Is that the way you speak to your
father, wench? Come show a little more than ice in your
veins for once, girl!"

His hand slid under one of the braids on her shoulder,
and he forced her around, gripping with strength which
would leave her bruised for a week. He did it deliber-
ately, she knew, but she would give no sign of feeling.

"Here I come with news as would send any proper
wench leaping with joy, and you turn me that cold fish
face of yours with no pleasure," he contemplated jo-
vially. But that which looked out of his eyes was not
born of good humor.

"You have not yet voiced this news, my lord."

His fingers kneaded into her flesh as if seeking to
find and crush the bones hidden there.

"To be sure I have not! Yet it is news as will set any
maid's heart to pounding in her. Wedding and bedding,
my girl, wedding and bedding!"

Purposely Loyse chose, but with a fear she had not
known before, to misunderstand him.

"You take a lady for Verlaine, my lord? Fortune
grant you a fair face for such an occurrence."

WITCH WORLD               85




His grip on her did not loosen, and now he shook her,
with the outward appearance of one playfully ad-
monishing, but with a force which brought pain.

"You may be a wry-faced nothing of a woman, but
you are not stupid of wit, no matter how you may think
to befool others. You should be properly a female at
your age. At least you will now have a lord to make trial
of that. And I'd advise you not to play your tricks with
him. By all accounts he likes his bedfellows biddable!''

What she had long feared most had come upon her
and it brought with it a betrayal of feeling she could not
bite back in time.

"A wedding needs free consent—" She stopped
then, knowing shame for her momentary breaking.

He was laughing, relishing having torn that protest
out of her. His hand moved across her shoulder to vise
upon the back of her neck in a pinch which brought an
involuntary gasp out of her. Then, as one moves a
lifeless puppet, he whirled her about, pushing her face
toward the mirror shield, holding her helpless there
while he pelted her with words he believed would hurt
worse than any beating his hands could inflict.

"Look upon that curdled mass of nothing you call a
face! Do you think any man could set his lips to it
without closing his eyes and wishing himself
elsewhere? Be glad, wench, that you have something
besides your face and that bone of a body to lure a
suitor. You'll consent freely to anyone who'll take you.
And be glad you have a father who can make a bargain
as good as I have for you. Yes, girl, you'd better crawl
on those stiff knees of yours and thank any gods you
have that Fulk looks after his own."

His words were a mutter of thunder; she saw no
reflection in the mirror, save certain misty horrors of

86 ANDRE NORTON

her own imagining. Which one of the brutes who rode
in Fulk's train would she be thrown to—for some
advantage for his lord?

"Karsten himself—" There was a sort of wonder
underlying Fulk's rising exultation. "Karsten, mind
you, and this lump of unbaked dough squeaks of con-
sent! You are lacking in wits!" He released her with a
sudden push which sent her flying against the shield
and the metal rang against the wall. She fought for her
balance, kept her feet, and turned to face him.

"The Duke!" That she could not believe. Why
should the ruler of the duchy ask for the daughter of a
shore baron, old and proud as her maternal lineage
might be?

"Yes, the Duke!'' Fulk seated himself on the end of
the bed, swinging his booted feet. "Talk of fortune!
Some good providence winked at your birth, my girl.
Karsten's herald rode in this morning with an offer of
ax marriage for you."

"Why?"

Fulk's feet stopped moving. He did not scowl, but
his face was sober.

"There are a bristle of reasons like darts at his
back!" He held up his hands and began to tell off the
fingers of one with the forefinger of the other.

"Item: The Duke, for all his might, was a rider of
mercenaries before he set his seal on Karsten, and I
doubt if he can rightly name his dam, let alone his sire.
He crushed those of the lords who tried to face him
down. But that was a good half-score of years ago and
he no longer wants to ride in mail and smoke rebels out
of their castles. Having won his duchy he wishes now
some easy years in which to enjoy it. A wife taken from
the ranks of those he opposed is a gift offering for
peace. And while Verlaine may not be the richest hold

WITCH WORLD               87

in Karsten, yet the blood of its lords is very high—was
not that often made very plain to me when I came
a-wooing? And I was no blank shield, but the younger
son ofFarthom in the northern hills." His lips twisted
as if he remembered certain slights out of the past.

' 'And since you are the heiress of Verlaine you are
very suitable."

Loyse laughed. "It cannot be true, lord, that I am the
only marriageable maid of gentle birth in all Karsten.''

"How right. And he could do very well elsewhere.
But as I have said, my dearest of daughters, you have
certain other advantages. Verlaine is a coast holding
with age-old rights, and the Duke has ambitions which
run in more peaceful lines now than sword conquest.
What say you, Loyse, if there was to be a port here to
attract the northern trade?"

"And what would Sulcarkeep be doing while such a
port came into being? Those who swear by Sul are
jealous of their holdings."

' 'Those who swear by Sul may soon be able to swear
by nothing at all," he returned with a calm certainty
which carried a note of conviction. "They have
troublesome neighbors who are growing more trouble-
some yet. And Estcarp, where they might look for aid,
is a hollow shell eaten out by its preoccupation with
witchery. One push and the whole land will fall into the
filthy dust which should have buried it long
ago."

"So, for my blood and a plan for a port, Lord Yvian
offers marriage," she persisted, unable yet to believe
that this was true. "Yet is the mighty lord free to send
his ax hither for a wedding? I am a maid close kept in a
hold far from Kars, yet have I heard of a certain Aldis
who issues orders, to have them promptly obeyed by all
who wear the Duke's sign."

88 ANDRE NORTON

"Yvian will have Aldis, and, yes, half a hundred of
her ilk, and it is no concern of yours, girl. Give him a
son—if your thin blood can form a man, the which I 1
doubt! Give him a son and hold up yourhead at the high |
table, but trouble him not with any mewling calls upon
him for more than company courtesy. Be glad for your
honors and if you are wise you'll speak Aldis and the
others fair in their time. Yvian is not said to be a patient
or easily forgiving man." He slid down the slope of the
bed and stood up, ready to be gone. But before he went
he detached a small key from the chain at his belt and
tossed it to her.

"For all your ghost face, girl, you'll not go to your
wedding without your due or gauds. I'll send Bettris to
you; she has an eye for pretties and can help you pull out
enough for robes. And veils for your face, you'll need
them! And keep an eye to Bettris, don't let her take |
more than she can carry in her two hands—for her-
self."

Loyse caught up the key so eagerly that he laughed. ^
"So that much of you is female—you want gauds as,
much as any wench. Give us another storm or two and
we can make up what you drag out of the storehouse
anyway."

He strode out, leaving the door wide open. As Loyse |
followed him to shut it once again, she treasured that
key tight in her hand. For months, years, she had
schemed to get that same bit of metal into her holding.
Now she had been given it openly and none wouldg
dispute her rummaging for what she truly wanted in the
storehouse of Verlaine.

Rights of wreckage and plunder over wave and |
shore! Since Verlaine Keep had risen on the heights "
between two treacherous capes, the sea had brought its
lords a rich harvest. And the storehouse of the pile was

WITCH WORLD              89

indeed a treasure room, only opened upon its lord's
orders. Fulk must believe that he had far the best of the
bargain with Yvian to allow her unsupervised plunder-
ing there. For the company of Bettris she did not fear.
Fulk's latest bedfellow was as greedy as she was fair,
and she would not cast any eye on Loyse's choices,
given a chance to hunt on her own.

She tossed the key from right hand to left, and for the
first time a thin smile curved her pale lips. Well might
Fulk be surprised at her choices from the treasure of
Verlaine! Also he might be astounded at other things
she knew about these walls which he accepted as such
safe barriers. Her gaze flickered for a moment to the
one where the shield mirror hung.

There was a hurried rap at her door. Loyse smiled
again, this time with contempt. It had not taken Bettris
long to act upon Fulk's orders. But at least the woman
dared not intrude upon her lover's daughter uninvited.
Loyse went to the door.

"The Lord Fulk—" began the girl who stood with-
out, her plump beauty as full and vivid as Fulk's virili-
ty-

Loyse held up the key. "I have it." She named no
name, gave no title to the other, but glanced at those
well-rounded shoulders bursting out of the robe which
strained over every luxuriant curve the other adver-
tised. Behind Bettris were two of the serving men, a
chest between them. Loyse raised her eyebrows and the
other laughed nervously.

"Lord Fulk would have you select your bride-
clothes, lady. He said there was no need to be timid in
the storehouse."

"The Lord Fulk is generous," returned Loyse
tonelessly. "Shall we go?"

The women avoided the great hall and the outer

90 ANDRE NORTON

chambers of the hold, for the treasure room lay at the
foot of the tower in which were the private quarters of
the family. For that Loyse was glad; she kept well away
from the central life of her father's house. And when
they came at last to the door opened by the key she bore,
she was very pleased that only Bettris dared follow her
within. The serving men pushed the chest in after them
and left.

Three globes set in the ceiling gave light to show
chests and boxes, bales and bags. Bettris smoothed the
robe over her hips in the gesture of a keeper of a market
stall settling down to a spate of bargaining. Her dark
eyes darted from pile to pile, and Loyse, putting the key
into her belt purse, added fuel to that avid hunger.

"I do not think that the Lord Fulk would deny you
some selections for yourself. In fact he said as much to
me. But I would warn you to be discreet and not too
greedy."

Those plump hands fluttered from hips to full, only
half-covered breasts. Loyse crossed to a table cutting
down the center of the room, lifted the lid of a casket
resting there. Even she blinked at the massed wealth
within. She had not truly realized until that moment that
Verlaine's rapine over the years had yielded so well.
From a tangle of chains and necklets she freed a great
brooch, gaudy with red stones and much chasing, a
bauble not to her taste, but one which in a manner
matched the over-blown comeliness of her companion.

" Such a piece as this," she suggested and held it ou t.

Bettris' hands crooked to hold it, then she snatched
them back. The point of her tongue showed between
her wet red lips as she glanced from the brooch to Loyse
and back again. Conquering her repugnance, the girl
held the massive gem-set thing to the deep V-throat of

WITCH WORLD               91

the other's robe, mastering the impulse to jerk back
when she felt the softness of Bettris' flesh.

"It becomes you, take it!" In spite of her wish
Loyse' words were a sharp order. But the bait was
taken. With attention only for the gems, the woman
moved to the table, and Loyse was, for that moment
and perhaps others, free to do as she pleased.

She knew what to look for, but how it might be stored
she was unsure. Slowly the girl moved between piles of
goods. Some were stained with salt rime and from one
or two came a faint exotic scent. Having put a small
barrier of boxes between herself and Bettris, she
chanced upon a chest which looked promising.

Loyse's fragile appearance was deceiving. Just as
she had disciplined her emotions and her mind against
this day, so had she trained her body. The lid was
heavy, but she had it up. And knew by the smell of oil,
the sight of the discolored cloths on top, she was hot on
the scent. She pawed aside those cloths gingerly, fear-
ing to stain her hands and so reveal the nature of her
search. Then she lifted out a shirt of mail, holding it to
measure against her shoulders. Too large—perhaps she
could find nothing fitted to her slight frame.

She delved deeper. A second shirt—a third—this
must have been part of the stock in trade of a master
smith. At the bottom was one which must have been
made to order for the stripling son of some overlord.
For against her it needed very little change at all. The
rest were bundled back into the chest while she folded
her find as small as possible.

Bettris was trapped by the casket of jewels and Loyse
did not doubt that more than one piece from that coffer
was now hidden about her person. But it gave her a
chance to make her own raids, moving almost openly

92 ANDRE NORTON

now between the box she had brought with her and her
sources of supply, adding lengths of silk and velvet, a
cape of fur, as topping concealment.

To please Bettris and forestall suspicion, Loyse
chose from the jewelry also and then summoned the
men to carry the chest back to her chamber. She was
afraid Bettris might urge unpacking on her, but the
bribe had worked well, the woman was in a fever to
examine her own spoils privately and did not linger.

In a fury of speed, tempered by caution and the
precision of careful foreplanning, Loyse set to work.
Those hastily selected lengths of fabric, those packets
of lace and embroidery, were dumped on her bed. Then
she was on her knees clearing the coffer where her
present wardrobe lay. Some things were long ready,
fashioned long ago. But here were all the rest. With a
care she had not granted the fine stuffs Loyse placed
together the dower she intended to take from Verlaine,
on her back, in her purse, in the saddle bags which were
all she dared carry.

Mail shirt, leather underclothing, weapons, helm,
gold trade tokens, a handful of Jewels. Over those she
threw once more her own garments, patting them
smooth, with the care of a good housekeeper. She was
breathing a little fast, but she had the coffer closed and
was spreading out the other loot when she heard that
tread outside—Fulk returning for his key.

Impulsively she caught up a veil bordered in silver
thread, a dew hung cobweb of a thing, and pulled it
about her head and shoulders, seeing that it became her
vilely, but generous enough now that her purpose was
gained to allow her father his chance for a jeer or two.
With it on she stepped once more to pose before the
shield mirror.

II

SEA WRACK

The very circumstances which she hoped would set her
free worked against Loyse during the next few days.
For while Yvian of Karsten did not ride himself to
Verlaine either to inspect the bride he had bargained for
or the heritage which would come with her, he sent a
train proper enough to do her honor. And she was called
upon to be on show, so that underneath her outer shell
she seethed with impatience and growing desperation.

At last she pinned her hopes to the wedding feast, for
then, if ever, there would be muddled heads within the
keep. Fulk wanted to impress the Duke's lords with his
lavish open-handedness. He would produce the liquid
treasures of the hold and it would be her best chance to
follow her plans.

The storm struck first, such a wild blast of wind and
raging sea water as Loyse, familiar with that coast since
her birth, had never seen before. For the spray reached
high enough to spatter the windows of her tower room
with its salt foam. And Bettris, and the maid Fulk had
sent to help with the sewing of her robes, shivered and
shrank with each bat of the wind's fist ringing through
the stones of the walls.

Bettris stood up, a roll of r»"»       .

the floor h»- A- •       " ""c green sllk tumblmgt0
, ..vi uark eyes wide. Her fingers moved in the

sacred sign of her forgotten village childhood.
93

94 ANDRE NORTON

"Witch storm," her voice came small, overridden
by the scream of the gale until Loyse heard only a thin
whisper.

"This is not Estcarp," Loyse matched a length of
embroidery to satin and set even stitches. "We do not
have power over wind and wave. And Estcarp does not
move beyond her own borders. It is a storm, that is all.
And if you wish to please Lord Fulk you will not
tremble at sea storms for Veriaine knows them often.
How else," she paused to draw a new length of thread
through a needle-eye, "do you think our treasure is
gathered?"

Bettris turned on her, lips strained over her sharp
little teeth in a vixen's snarl. "I am coast born, I have
seen storms in plenty. Yes, I have coursed the shore |
with the gleaners afterwards. Which is more than you3
have ever deigned to do, my lady! But this is like no
storm I have seen or heard tell of in all my life! There is
evil in it, I tell you—great evil!"

"Evil for those who must trust to the waves." Loyse
put down her sewing. She crossed to the windows, but
there was nothing to be seen through the lace of spume
which blotted out the dark of the day.             |

The maid made no pretense at work. She was drawn|
in upon her self close to the hearth where sea coral|
burned fitfully, rocking back and forth, her handsl
pressed against her breast as if she would ease someJ
pain there. Loyse went to her. She had little of pity or|
interest in the wenches of the castle—from Bettris and.!
her countless predecessors to the slatterns in the
;-"^,^,-; ^ow against her own inclination she asked:;

1^.1 l^it^'J*. _  '-• •            —•< »                                                     ,-

"You ail, wenci'i"                 "^hadhpen
The girl was cleaner than most. PerriapS N"^ —     '

ordered to tidy herself before being sent hither. Now |

WITCH WORLD               95

the face she turned to Loyse drew the attention of Fulk's
daughter. This was no village girl, no peasant dragged
in to pleasure a retainer and then become a work
drudge. Her face was a mask of fear which had been so
long a part of her that it had shaped her as a potter
shapes clay. Yet under that something else struggled.

Bettris laughed shrilly. " 'Tis no pain in her belly
that eats at her, only memories. She was a sea wrack
herself once. Weren't you, slut!" Her soft leather shoe
struck the girl's haunch, nearly turning her into the fire.

"Leave her alone!" For the first time Loyse flashed
her hidden fire. She had always kept aloof from the
strand after a storm, since there was nothing she could
do to dispute Fulk's rule—or rather Fulk's license
there—she would not harrow herself with sights she
could not forget.

Bettris simpered uneasily. With Loyse she was un-
certain of her ground, so she did not rise to the chal-
lenge.

"Send the mewling idiot away. You will get no work
from her as long as the storm rages—nor afterwards for
a while. 'Tis a pity for she is clever with her needle, else
she would have been sent to fatten the shore eels long
ago."

Loyse went to the wide expanse of the bed where
much of her gear had been spread about. There was a
shawl there, plain in the welter of brilliant silks and fine
fabrics. Catching it up she took it .back to the fireside
and threw it about the shuddering maid. Disregarding
Bettris' amazement, Loyse dropped on her knees, put
her hands to cover those of the girl, and looking into
that drawn face, tried to will away from them both the
grisly customs of Veriaine which had warped them in
different ways.

ANDRE NORTON

96

Bettris pulled at her sleeve.

"How dare you?" Loyse blazed.

The other stood her ground, a sly grin now on her full
lips. "The hour grows late, lady. Would Lord Fulk take
it well that you nurse this slut when he meets with the
Duke's lords to sign the marriage contract? Shall I tell
him why you do not come?"

Loyse regarded her levelly. "I shall do my lord's
bidding in this, as in other things, wench. Do not think
to lesson me!"

She broke hold with the girl's hands reluctantly,,

saying:                                       .
"Stay here. No one shall come near you|

Understand—no one!"

Did the other understand? She was rocking back and

forth again, racked by old pain cut into her dulled mind

even after the scars had faded from her body.

"I do not need you to robe me," Loyse turned on

Bettris, and the other flushed. She could not face the

younger girl down and she knew it.

' 'You would be the better for some knowledge of the

kind of sorcery any woman knows, lady," she replied
sharply "I could show you how to make a man look at
you full faced as you pass. If you would but put a little
dark stain upon your brows and lashes, some of the rose
salve on your lips—"Her annoyance was forgotten, as
her creative instinct aroused. She surveyed Loyse criti-
cally and impersonally and the other found herself
listening in spite of her scorn for Bettris and all she
represented. "Yes, if you would listen to me, lady, you
could perhaps draw your lord's eyes away from that
Aldis long enough for him to see another face. There
are other ways, also, for the charming of a man." Her
tongue tip worked along her lips. "There is much I

WITCH WORLD

could teach you, lady, which would give you weapons
to use for yourself." She drew nearer, some of the
glitter of the storm flashing in her eyes.

"Yvian has bargained for me as I stand," Loyse
replied, rejecting Bettris' offer, all that Bettris stood
for,' 'and so must be satisfied with what he gets!'' And
that is more true than Bettris can guess, she added
silently.

The woman shrugged. "It is your life, lady. And
before you are out of it, you shall discover that you
cannot order it to your liking."

"Have I ever?" asked Loyse quietly. "Now go. As
you have said, it grows late and I have much to do."

She sat through the ceremonies of the contract sign-
ing with her usual calm acceptance. The men the Duke
had sent to fetch his bride to Kars were three very
different types, and she found it interesting to study
them.

Hunold was a comrade from Yvian's old mercenary
days. He had a reputation as a soldier which reached
even into such a backwater as Veriaine. Oddly enough
his appearance did not match either his occupation, nor
his reputation. Where Loyse had expected to see a man
such as her father's seneschal—though perhaps slicked
over with some polish—she found herself fronting a
silk clad, drawling, languid courtier, who might never
have felt the weight of mail on his back. His rounded
chin, long lashed eyes, smooth cheeks, gave him a
deceptive youth, as well as the seeming of untried
softness. And Loyse, trying to match the man to the
things she had heard concerning him, wondered and
was a little afraid.

Siric, who represented the Temple of Fortune, who
tomorrow would say the words while her hands rested

98 ANDRE NORTON

on the war ax, thus making her as much Yvian's as if he
clasped her in truth, was old. He had a red face and
there was a swelling blue vein in the middle of his low
forehead. As he listened or spoke in a soft mumble, he
munched continually on small sweetmeats from a com-
fit box his servant kept ever in reach, and his yellow
priest's robe strained over a paunch of notable dimen-
sions.

The Lord Duarte was of the old nobility. But in turn
he did not suit his role very well. Small and thin, with a
twitching tic which pulled at his lower lip, the harassed
air of a man constrained to some task he loathed, he
spoke only when an answer was demanded of him. And
alone of the three he paid some attention to Loyse. She
discovered him watching her broodingly, but there was
nothing in his manner which hinted of pity or promise
of aid. It was rather that she was the symbol of trouble
he would like to sweep from his path.

Loyse was grateful that custom allowed her to escape
that night's feasting. Tomorrow she must sit through
the start of the wedding banquet, but as soon as the wine
began to pass—yes—then! Holding to that thought she
hurried back to her room.

She had forgotten the sewing wench, and it was with
a start that she saw a figure outlined against the win-
dow. The wind was dying now as if the worst of the
storm had blown out. But there was another sound, the
keening of one who has been hopelessly bereaved. And
salt air bit at her from the opened pane.

Angry because of her own worries, tense over what:

was to come and to what she must nerve herself during |
the next twenty-four hours, Loyse sprang across the
room and seized me swinging window frame, pulling at
the girl that she might slam it shut. Though the wind
had ceased, the clouds were still slashed by lightning.

WITCH WORLD               99

And in one such revelation Loyse saw what the other
must have watched for long moments.

Driving in upon the waiting fangs of the cape were
ships: two . . . three of them. And such ships as
dwarfed the coastwise traders she had seen pulled to
their deaths there before by that treacherous on-shore
current which enriched and damned Verlaine. These
could only be part of a proud fleet of some great
seafaring lord. Yet in the continued flashes of light
which gave only seconds' viewing, Loyse could sight
no activity on board any of the vessels, no attempts
being made to ward off fate. They were ghost ships
sailing on to their deaths and apparently their crews did
not care.

The lights of the wreckers, of the shoreline scaven-
gers, were already moving in clusters from the high
gate of Verlaine. For a man on the spot might just
conceal some rich picking for himself in the general
confusion, though Fulk's weighty hand and a quick
noose for those caught had cut down such thievery to a
shadow. They would cast nets to bring in the flotsam,
turn to tasks they had long practice in. And for any who
went ashore still living! Loyse exerted her strength and
dragged the girl away, shut and barred the window.

But to her surprise the face the other now turned to
her was no longer troubled by ancient terrors. There
was intelligence in the depths of the girl's dark eyes,
excitement, a gathering strength..

She held her head slightly to one side as if she
listened for some sound she must sort out of the brazen
clamor of the storm. More and more it was apparent
that whatever had been her place in the world before the
sea brought her to Verlaine, she was no common sol-
dier's wench.

"That which has been long in the building," the

•if

100 ANDRE NORTON

girl's tone was remote, she spoke as if from the core of
some experience Loyse could never know. "Choose,
choose well. For this night is the fate of countries, as
well as that of men, to be made and unmade!"

"Who are you?" Loyse demanded as the girl con-
tinued to change before her eyes. She was no monster,
put on no shape of beast or bird as rumor whispered
could be done by the witches ofEstcarp.But that which
had lain dormant, wounded almost to death, within her
struggled once again for life, showed through her scar-
red body.

"Who am I? Nobody . . . nothing. But one comes
who is greater than the I who once lived. Choose well,
Loyse ofVerlaine—and live. Choose ill—and die, as I
have died, bit by bit, day by day."

"That fleet—" Loyse half turned to the windows.
Could it possibly be that some invader, reckless enough
to sacrifice his ships to win foothold on the cape and so
a path to Verlaine, sailed out there? That was a mad^
thought. The ships were doomed; few if any of their 3
crewmen could win the shore alive, and there they 'i|
would find the men of Verlaine had prepared the grim-
mest of welcomes.

"Fleet?" echoed the girl. "There is no fleet—only
life— or death. You have something of us within you,
Loyse. Prove yourself now and win!"

"Something of you? Who are you—or what?"

"I am nobody and nothing. Ask me rather what I |
was, Loyse of Verlaine, before your people pulled me
from the sea."

"What were you?" the other asked obediently as
might a child at an elder's command.

"I was one ofEstcarp, woman of the sea coast. Now
do you understand? Yes, I had the Power—until it was

WITCH WORLD              101

reft from me in the hall below us here, while men
laughed and cheered the deed. For the gift is ours—
sealed to our women—only while our bodies remain
inviolate. To Verlaine I was a female body and no
more. So I lost what made me live and breathe—I lost
myself.

"Can you understand what it means to lose your-
self?" She studied Loyse. "Yes, I almost believe that
you do, since you move now to protect what you have.
My gift is gone, crushed out as one crushes out the last
coal of an unwanted fire, but the ashes of it remains. So
do I now know that one greater than I had ever hoped to
be comes in on the drive of the storm. And she shall
determine more than one of our futures!"

' 'A witch!'' Loyse did not shrink; instead excitement
flared. The power of the women of Estcarp was legen-
dary. She had fed upon every tale which had come out
of the north concerning them and their gifts. And she
smarted now with the realization of opportunity lost.
Why had she not known of this woman before—learned
of her—

"Yes, a witch. So they name us when they under-
stand us but little. But do not think to have anything of
me now, Loyse. I am only the charred brands of a long
quenched fire. Bend your will and wit to aid the other
who comes."

"Will and wit!'' Loyse laughed harshly.' 'Wit I have
and will, but no power here, ever. Not one soldier will
obey me, nor stay his hand at my bidding. Better appeal
to Bettris. When my fatheris in humor with her, she has
some slight recognition from his people."

"You have only to seize opportunity when it
comes." The other allowed the shawl to slip from her
shoulders, folded it neatly, and laid it on the bed as she

102 ANDRE NORTON

passed it on her way to the door.' Take your opportun-
ity and use it well, Loyse of Verlaine. And tonight
sleep sound for your hour has not yet come."

She was out of the door before Loyse could move to|
stop her. And then the room was curiously empty, as if|
the girl had drawn after her some pulsing life which had^
watched and waited in shadowed comers.

Slowly Loyse put off her robe of ceremony, replaited
her hair by touch, rather than with the aid of the mirror.
Somehow she did not wish to look into that mirror now,
for a pricking thought that something else might stand j
behind to peer over her shoulder lurked in her mind.'
Many foul deeds had been done in the great hall of
Verlaine since Pulk became master there. But now she
believed that perhaps the one which would bring him to
judgment had been wrought with the woman ofEstcarp
for its victim.

And so intent was she upon her thoughts that she did
not remember this was her wedding eve. For the first
time since she had hidden them there, she did not bring
out the garments resting at the bottom of her chest, to
examine them and gloat over the promise they held.

Along the shore the wind whined, though it did not
toss the spray mountain high as it had earlier. And those
who sheltered, waiting for the harvest of waves and
rocks were eager. The fleet which had looked so fine-,
from the tower of Loyse's chamber, was even morel
imposing from the shore.

Hunold gripped his cloak tight at his throat and stared
through the gloom. No ships of Karsten were those, and
this wrecking could only serve the duchy. He was firm
in the private belief that they were about to witness the
last moments of an enemy raiding force. And it was
equally good that he could keep an eye uponFulk under

WITCH WORLD              103

these circumstances. Rumor had built very high the
harvest of plunder Verlaine took. And when Yvian
wedded that pale nothing of a wench, he could demand
an accounting of all treasure in his wife's name. Yes,
Fortune smiled when she set Hunold on the shore this
night to watch, and list, and gather a report for the
Duke.

Certain now that the doomed ships could not possi-
bly claw off the cape, the wreckers from the hold boldly
set out their lanterns along the strand. If fools from the
vessels tried to come ashore at those beacons, so much
the better, they would only save the plunderers the time
and bother of hunting them down.

So it was that those beams, reaching out over the
heaving of the waves, caught upon the first prow swing-
ing inward. It loomed high, buoyed up by the combers,
and there were shouts from the watchers, wagers hur-
riedly offered and accepted as to the place of its crash-
ing. High it lifted and then slammed forward, the rocks
under the forepart of its keel. Then—it was gone!

Those on the shore were men confronted by the
impossible. At first some of the more imaginative were
certain they sighted the wreckage of a broken-backed
ship, sure that it was tossing near to their nets. But there
was nothing but the froth of wind beaten water. No ship
nor wreckage.

None of them stirred. At that moment they were held
by their disbelief in the evidence of their own eyes.
Another of the proud ships was coming. This one
pointed to the patch of rock upon which Hunold stood
with Fulk as straightly as if some unseen helmsman set
that course. In it came stoutly. No men clung to its
rigging, no living thing could be sighted on deck.

Once again the waves raised up their burden to smash

104 ANDRE NORTON

the vessel down upon the teeth of the reef. And this time
it was so close to shore thatHunold thought a man could
leap to where he himself stood from the deserted deck.
Up and up the prow rose, its fantastically carved
figurehead showing open jaws to the sky. Then
down—the water swirling.

And it was gone!

Hunold threw out a hand, seized upon Fulk, only to
see in the shocked paleness of the other's face the same
incredulous terror. And when a third ship came in,
boring straight for the reef, the men of Verlaine fled,
some of them screaming in panic. Deserted lanterns lit
a shore where nets trailed into foaming water empty of
even one floating board.

Later a hand caught such a net, caught and held with
a grip which was a last desperate clutch for life. A body
rolled in the surf, but net held, and hand held. Then
there was a long crawl for shore, until a beaten, half-
dead swimmer lay prone on the sand and slept.

Ill

CAPTIVE WITCH

It was generally conceded among the commoners of
Verlaine that the vanishing fleet they had gathered to
plunder was an illusion sent by demons. And Fulk
could not have flogged any man to the strand side the
next morning. Nor did he try his leadership so high as to
give such an order.

The affair of the marriage must still be pushed before
any hint of this tale could get back to Kars and give a
legitimate reason for refusing the heiress of Verlaine.
To counter any superstitious fears which the three ducal
agents might harbor, Fulk reluctantly took them to the
treasurehouse, presenting each with a valuable
souvenir, setting aside a gem-set sword as a token of his
admiration for the Duke's battle prowess. But through-
out he sweated under his tunic, and fought in himself a
new tendency to inspect dark comers of staircase and
corridor a little too intently.

He also noted that none of his guests made an allu-
sion to the happenings on the reef, and wondered
whether that was a good or bad sign. It was not until
they were in his private council chamber an hour before
the wedding that Hunold took from the front of his
furred over robe a small object he set with some care
in a patch of watery sunlight from the largest window.

Siric pushed his paunch against his knees and puffed

105

106 ANDRE NORTON

once or twice as he leaned forward curiously to inspect
it.

'' What is this, Lord Commander? What is this? Have
you despoiled some village brat of his toy?"

Hunold balanced his find on the palm of his hand.
Clumsily fashioned as it was, the shape of the carved
chip was clear enough—that of a boat. And a broken
stick stood for a mast.

"This, Reverend Voice," he returned softly, "is the
mighty ship, or one of the mighty ships, we saw come
in to their end just outside these walls last night. Yes, it
is a toy, but such a toy as we do not play with here-
abouts . And for the safety of Karsten I must ask of you,
LordFulk, what dealing do you have with that spawn of
the outer darkness—the witches of Estcarp?"

Fulk, stung, stared at the chip boat. His face paled,
and then grew dark as the blood tide arose. But he
fought furiously to control his temper. If he played ill
now he would lose the whole game.

"Would I have sent the gleaners to the reefs, pre-
pared to receive a chip fleet to loot it?" He managed a
reasonable counterfeit of serenity. "I take it that you
fished that from the sea this morning. Lord Comman-
der? But what leads you to believe that it was a part of
any Estcarp magic, or that the ships we saw were born
of such trickery?"

"This was plucked from the sand this morning,
yes," Hunold agreed. ' 'And I know of old the illusions
of the witches. To make it certain, we found something
else on the shore this morning, my men and I, and this is
a very great treasure, one to rival any you have shown
us as being wave-brought to your keep. Marc, Jothen!
He raised his voice and two of the Duke's shieldmen
came in, a roped prisoner between them, though they
seemed uneasy to handle that captive.

WITCH WORLD              107

"I give you part of the fleet," Hunold tossed the chip
to Fulk. "And now. Lord Fulk, I show you one who
had the making of it, if I mistake not, and I do not think
that I do!"

Fulk was used to salt-stained captives dragged from
the sea's maw and his dealing with such was swift,
designed mostly to one end. Also once before he had
handled, the self-same problem and handled it well.
Hunold might have shaken him for a space, only a very
small space. He was fully confident again.

"So," he settled back in his seat with the smile of
one watching the amusement of the less sophisticated,
"you have taken you a witch." Boldly he surveyed the
woman. She was a thin piece, but there was spirit in
her—she would furnish good sport. Perhaps Hunold
would like to undertake her taming. None of these
witches were ever beauties, and this one was as washed
out as if she had been fighting waves for a month. He
studied the clothing covering her straight limbs more
closely.

That was leather—garments such as one wore under
mail! She had gone armed then. Fulk stirred. A mail
clad witch and that phantom fleet! Was Estcarp on the
move and did that move head toward Veriaine? Estcarp
had several scores she might mark up against his hold,
though hitherto no northerner appeared to be aware of
his activities. Put that to the back of the mind to
be considered later; now one must think of Hunold
and what could be done to keep Karsten an
ally.

Carefully he avoided meeting the captive's eyes. But
he asserted a measure of his old superiority.

' 'Has it not yet come to common knowledge in Kars,
Lord Commander, that these witches may bend a man
to their will by the power of their eyes? I see your

ANDRE NORTON

108

shieldmen have taken no precautions against such an

attack."

"It would seem you know something of these

witches."

Careful now, thought Fulk. This Hunold did not
keep his place at Yvian's right hand through the weight
of his sword arm alone. He must not be provoked too
far, only shown that Verlaine was neither traitor nor

dolt.

"Estcarp has yielded tribute to our cape before."

Fulk smiled.

Hunold seeing that smile, shot an order at his men.
"You, Marc, your cloak over her head!"

The woman had not moved, nor had she uttered any
sound since they had brought her in. They might have
been dealing with a soulless, mindless body. Perhaps
she had been dazed by her close escape from the sea,
rendered only half-conscious by some blow from a reef
rock. However, none of the men within Verlaine would
relax vigilance because their prisoner did not scream,
or beg, or struggle uselessly. As the folds of the cloak
settled about her head and shoulders Fulk leaned for-
ward in his chair once more and spoke, his words aimed
at her rather than the men he seemed to address—
hoping to wring some response from her that he might
judge her state of awareness.

"Have they not told you either. Lord Commander,
how one disarms these witches? It is a very simple—
and sometimes enjoyable—process." Deliberately he
went into obscene detail.

Siric laughed, his hands curved to support his jerking
paunch. Hunold smiled.

"You of Verlaine do indeed have your more subtle
pleasures," he agreed.

WITCH WORLD              109

Only the Lord Duarte remained quiet, his eyes bent
upon the hands resting on his knees as he built and
felled towers with his fingers. A slow, red-brown flush
spread up his thin cheeks beneath the close-clipped old
man's beard.

There was no movement from the half-shrouded
figure, no sound of protest.

"Take her away," Fulk gave the order, a small test
of power. "Give her to the seneschal; he will keep her
safe against our further pleasure. For to all pleasures
there are a proper season." He was now all the courte-
ous host, secure in his position. "And now we have
before us our Lord Duke's pleasure—the claiming of
his bride."

Fulk waited. No one could have guessed the tension
with which he listened forHunold's next words. Until
Loyse stood before the altar in the seldom-used chapel,
her hands safely on the ax, the right words wheezed out
by Siric, Hunold could cry off in his master's name.
But once Loyse was Lady Duchess of Karsten, if only
in name, then Fulk was free to move along a path of his
own, one carefully foremapped and long anticipated.

"Yes, yes," Siric puffed and labored to his feet, his
attention hastening to pull out the folds of his overcape.
"The wedding—Must not keep the lady waiting, eh,
Lord Duarte—young blood, impatient blood. Come,
come, my lords—the wedding!" This was his part of
the venture and for once that young, ice-eyed upstart of
a soldier could have no leading role. Far more fit and
proper for Lord Duarte of the oldest noble line in
Karsten to bear the ax and stand proxy for their over-
lord. That had been his own wise suggestion, and
Yvian had thanked him for it warmly before they had
ridden out of Kars. Yes, Yvian would discover . . .




no

ANDRE NORTON WITCH WORLD

m

was discovering, that with the power of the Temple
Brotherhood and the support of the old families, he
would no longer have to listen to such rufflers as
Hunold. Let this marriage be solemnized andHunold's
sun would approach its setting!

It was cold. Loyse sped along the balcony of the
great hall which was the heart of the keep. She had
stood while the toasts were drunk, but she had not given
lip service to their pious sentiments for happiness in her
new life—happiness! Loyse had no conception of that.
She wanted only her freedom.

When she slammed her door behind her, put in place
the three bars which could withstand even a battering
ram, she went to work. Jewels were stripped from
throat, head, ear, finger, and thrown into a heap. Her
long furred robe kicked aside. Until at last she stood
before the mirror on a shawl, too excited to feel the cold
seeping from the walls about her, her unbraided hair
heavy on her shoulders, falling in a curtain cloak to her

bare flanks.

Lock by lock she slashed at it ruthlessly with her
shears, letting the long strands fall to the shawl. First to
neck length, and then more slowly and awkwardly, to
the cropped head one might naturally expect to see
beneath a mail coif and helm. The tricks she had dis-
dained to use at Bettris' urging, she applied with careful
concentration. A mixture of soot rubbed delicately into
her pale brows, more used upon her short, thick lashes.
She had been so intent upon the parts that she had not
considered the whole. Now, stepping back a little from
the shield mirror, she studied her reflection critically,
more than a little startled at what she saw.

Her spirits soared; she was almost sure she coul
tramp into the great hall below and have Fulk unable"




set name to her. The girl ran to the bed, began to dress
in each garment she had prepared so well. Her weapon
belt hitched smoothly around her waist and she was
reaching for the saddle bags. But her hand moved
slowly. Why was she so reluctant to see the last of
Verlaine? She had walked through the ceremonies of
the day hiding her purpose, holding it to her as a most
precious possession. And she knew very well that the
feast was the best screen she could hope to find to cover
her flight. Loyse doubted if any sentry within or with-
out the keep tonight would be overzealous on his guard
duty—in addition she had a secret exit.

Yet something held her there, wasting important
moments. And she had such a strong desire to return
to the balcony overlooking the hall, to spy upon the
feasters there, that she moved to the door without
conscious volition.

What had the wench said? Someone was coming in
on the wings of the storm—take your opportunity and
use it well, Loyse of Verlaine! Well, this was her
opportunity and she was prepared to use it with all the
wisdom her life in Fulk's house had forced her to
develop.

Yet when she moved it was not to her private ways,
of which Fulk and his men knew nothing, but to that
door. And even while she fought impulse and such
senseless recklessness, her hand slid back the bars and
she was in the hall, the heels of her boots clicking on the
steps which would take her to the balcony.

Just as the heat of the keep's heart did not appear to
rise to warm these upper regions, so did the noise below
make only a clamor in which no voice, no stave of
song, reached her as separate words. Men drank, they
ate, and soon they would think of other amusements.

112 ANDRE NORTON

Loyse shivered, yet she still lingered, her gaze for the
high table and those who sat there, as if it were neces-J
sary to keep some close check upon their movements. |

Siric, who in the chapel of Verlaine had actuallyj
achieved a short measure of dignity—or perhaps it wasi
his robes of office which had conferred that momentaryj
presence upon his bloated body—was all belly oncej
more, cramming into his mouth the contents of an|
endless line of dishes, though his tablemates had long|
since turned to their wine.                        |

Bettris, who had no right to any seat there until Loysej
had left—as well she knew—for Fulk capriciously in-"
sisted upon some observances of proper conduct, had ;

been watching for her chance. Now, bedecked with that
garish brooch from the treasure house, she leaned
against the carved arm of her lover's high seat ready for
his attention. But, Loyse noted, her awareness of the
whole scene heightened because she was a spectator
only, Bettris also gave a sidewise, calculating glance
now and again to Lord Commander Hunold. Just as she
allowed a curved and dimpled white shoulder, artfully
framed in the deep wine of her robe, to accent that
surreptitous bid for regard.

Lord Duarte sat huddled in upon himself, occupying
less than two-thirds of his chair of state, staring into a
goblet he held as if he read in its depths some message
he would rather not know. The plain lines of his plum
robe, the pinched meagerness of his old features, gave
him the aspect of a mendicant in that lavish assembly,
and he put on no pretense of one enjoying the fes-
tivities.

She must go—now! With leather and mail, and over
it all the cloak of a traveler, making her a dusky shadow
among many shadows past the discerning of wine-

WITCH WORLD              113

bleared eyes, she was safe for a space. And it was so
cold, colder than when the rime of winter patterned
walls, yet it was well into spring! Loyse took one step
and then another before that voiceless order which had
brought her there drove her back to the railing.

Hunold leaned forward to speak to her father. He was
a well-favored man; Bettris' interest was to be ex-
pected. His fox face with a fox brush of hair was as
vivid as Fulk's for virile coloring. He made a quick
gesture with his hands and Fulk voiced one of his great
roars of laughter, the faint echoes of it reaching to
Loyse's ears.

But there was a sudden sharp dismay on Bettris'
face. She caught at Fulk's oversleeve which lay across
the chair arm, and her lips shaped some words Loyse
could not guess. He did not even turn his head to look at
her. His hand flailed up in a cuff to sweep her from his
side, back from the table, so that she sprawled awk-
wardly into the dust behind their chairs.

Lord Duarte arose, putting down his goblet. His thin
white hands with their ropy blue veins pulled at the
wide fur collar of his robe, drawing it closer about his
throat, as if he alone in that company felt the same chill
which benumbed Loyse. He spoke slowly, and it was
clear that he made some protest. Also, from the way he
turned aside from the table, it was apparent that he did
not expect any polite reply or agreement from his com-
panions .

Hunold laughed and Fulk drummed his fist upon the
table in a signal to the wine steward, as the oldest of the
Duke's deputies made his way among the tables of the
lesser men on the floor below the dais to climb the stairs
leading to his own apartment.

There was a flurry at the outer door of the hall. Men

114 ANDRE NORTON

still fully armed and armored came in, and a path parted
before them, leading to the dais. Some of the clamor
died, fading as the guards tramped on, a prisoner in
their midst. To Loyse it appeared that they hustled
along a man, his hands bound behind his back. Though
why they had also chosen to hide his head in a bag so
that he staggered blindly in answer to their jerks at him, ^
she could not guess.

Fulk threw out his arm, clearing a stretch of table
between him andHunold, sending flying Duarte's gob-
let so that its dregs of contents splashed Siric, whose
hot protests neither man chose to heed. From a pocket
the Lord of Verlaine brought a pair of wager discs,
tossing them into the air and letting them spin on the
board before they flattened so their uppermost legend
might be read. He pushed them to Hunold, offering the
right of first throw.

The Lord Commander gathered them up, examined
them with a laughing remark, and then threw. Both
men's heads bent and then Fulk took them up in turn to
spin. Bettris, in spite of her rough rebuff, had crept
forward, her eyes as fixed upon the spinning discs as
were the men's. When they flattened, she resumed her
grasp on Fulk's chair, as if the result of that throw had
given her new courage, while Fulk laughed and made a
mock salute to his guest.

Hunold arose from his seat and moved about the end
of the table. Those about the prisoner widened their
circle as he came down to front the blinded captive. He
made no move to pull away the bag over the other's ^
head, but his fingers caught at the stained leather jerkin,
busy with the latches holding it. With a pull he ripped it
open to the waist and there was a shout from the
company.                                       :i

WITCH WORLD              115

The Lord Commander transferred his grip to the
captive woman's shoulder as he faced the grins of the
men. Then he displayed a strength surprising for his
spare figure, and swung her over his shoulder, starting
for the staircase. Fulk was not the only one to protest
missing the planned amusement, but Hunold shook his
head and went on.

Would Fulk follow? Loyse did not wait to see. How
could she stand against Fulk—even against Hunold?
And why out of all those who had been unwilling prey
of Fulk and his men in the past should Loyse be moved
to help this particular one? Though she fought against
the knowledge that she must take a hand in this, her feet
bore her on, constrained to act against her better judg-
ment.

She sped to her own chamber once more, finding it
far easier to run in her new guise than in the robes of her
sex. Once more the triple door bars thudded into place,
and she was shedding her cloak, paying no attention to
the reflection in the mirror of a slight youth in mail.
Then the reflection was distorted as the mirror became a
door.

Only dark lay beyond. Loyse must depend upon her
memory, upon the many explorations she had made
since three years before when she had chanced upon
this inner Verlaine which no one else within the pile
seemed to suspect.

Steps; she counted aloud as she raced down them.
One passage at the bottom, a sharp turn into a second.
She brushed her hand along the wall as a guide as she
hurried, trying to picture the proper ways to her goal.

Once more steps, upward this time. Then a round of
light on one wall, marking one of the spy holes—this
must give on an occupied room. Loyse stood on tiptoe

ANDRE NORTON

116

to peer within. Yes, this was one of the state bedcham-
bers.

LordDuarte, looking even more shrunken and with-
ered without his overrobe with its wide fur collar,
passed about the foot of the bed and stood before the
fire, his hands held out to the blaze, his small mouth
working as he chewed upon some bitter word or
thought he could not spit away.

Loyse went on. The next spyhole was dark, the room
where Siric was housed no doubt. She quickened pace
to reach the last where a second circle of gold showed
light. So sure was she of this that she fumbled for the
catch of the secret entrance without looking.

Mutterings—the sound of a scuffle. Loyse pushed
her full weight on the concealed spring. But here there
had been no careful oiling, no reason to keep it work-
able. It stuck. Loyse backed around and put her shoul-
der against it, bracing her hands flat against the wall on
the other side of the narrow passage and then exertinf"
her strength, saving herself from falling as it burst ope"
by catching at the edges of the opening.

She whirled about, her sword out with the snap i
one who had practiced in secret and steadily. Hunold's|
startled face fronted her from the bed where he fought
to pin down his writhing victim. With the quick recov-
ery and menace of a cat, he slid to the opposite side, I
abandoning his hold upon the woman, and sprang forJ
the weapon belt hanging on the back of the nearest
chair.                                           &

IV

THE INNER WAYS

Loyse had forgotten her new trappings and thatHunold
might see in her another male come to spoil his sport.
He had whipped out his dart gun, although she had
sword in hand, his move being against age-old custom.
But his aim wavered ever so slightly between the in-
vader and the woman on the bed, who, in spite of her
bound hands, was wriggling her way toward him
across the rumpled covers.

Moved by instinct more than plan, Loyse seized
upon the outer robe he had discarded and tossed it at
him, thus perhaps saving her life. For the thick cloth
folds deflected his aim and the dart quivered in the bed
post and not in her breast.

With a spate of oaths Hunold kicked at the tangle of
cloth and swung upon the woman. She made no move
to escape. Rather now she stood facing him with an odd
calm. Her lips parted and an oval object dropped from
between them, to swing on a short length of chain still
gripped in her teeth.

The Lord Commander did not'move. Instead his eyes
traveled from one side to the other beneath his half-
closed lids, following the slow pendulous passage of
that dull gem.

Loyse was around the foot of the bed now, only to
pause at a scene which might have been part of a

117

ANDRE NORTON

118

nightmare. The woman edged around, and Hunold, his
eyes fast on the gem at her chin level moved after her.
Now her bound arms were presented to Loyse, her body
formed a partial barrier between girl and man.

Hunold's eyes went left to right, and back, then, as
the jewel quieted, he stood very still. His mouth opened
slackly. There were beads of moisture forming along
the edge of his hair line.

That drive which had brought her there, moving her
about as a playing piece in some other's game, still held
Loyse. She drew the cutting edge of the sword across
the cords binding the women's wrists, sawing through
their cruel loops, freeing flesh which was ridged and
purple. And when the last bit fell away the woman's
arms dropped heavily to her sides as if they could not
obey her will.

Hunold moved at last. The hand which gripped the
dart gun circled, but slowly as if great pressure bent it.
His skin glistened with sweat, a pendulous drop
gathered upon his loose lower lip, spun a thread as it fell
to his heaving chest.

His eyes were alive, fiery with hate and rising panic.
Yet, still that hand continued to turn, and he could not
tear his gaze away from the dull jewel. His shoulder
quivered. Loyse across the few feet of space which
separated them could sense the agony of his fruitless
struggle. He no longer wanted to slay; he wanted only
escape. But for the Lord Commander of Kars there was

no escape.

The end of that barrel touched the soft, unweathered
white of his upper breast where his throat met the arch
of his chest. He was moaning, very faintly, as might a
trapped animal, before the trigger clicked.

Coughing out a spume of blood, released from the

WITCH WORLD              119

vise of will which had forced him to his death, Hunold
staggered forward. The woman slipped lithely aside,
pushing Loyse with her. He fell up against the bed and
collapsed half upon it, his head and shoulders down, his
knees upon the floor as one might kneel in petition, as
his hands tore spasmodically at the covers.

For the first time the woman looked directly at
Loyse. She made an effort to raise one of those puffed
and horribly swollen hands to her mouth, perhaps to
hold the stone. And when she could not, she sucked the
jewel back between her lips, nodding imperatively at
the opening in the wall.

Loyse was no longer so assured. All of her life she
had heard of the magic of Estcarp. But those had been
tales of far-off things which did not demand full belief
from the listener. The disappearance of the fleet along
the reef the night before had been described to her by
Bettris while she had been dressing for her bridal. But
she had been so absorbed by her plans and fears at that
moment that she had dismissed it all as a piece of great
exaggeration.

What she had seen here was something which tran-
scended all her ideas and she shrank from contact with
the witch, stumbling ahead into the cavity of the ways,
only wishing that she could or dared shut the other out
with a safe wall between them. But the woman came
readily after her with an agility which argued that she
still had reserves of energy in spite of the rough handl-
ing she had known.

Loyse had no desire to linger with Hunold's body.
Nor was she sure thatFulk, cheated of his sport, might
not burst in at any moment. But she snapped shut the
hidden panel with the greatest reluctance. And shivered
throughout her body as the other pawed at her with one

120 ANDRE NORTON

of those useless hands for a guide. She looped her
fingers in the belt which still held the witch's ripped
clothing to her body and drew her along.           I

They headed for her own chamber. There was so'
little dme left. If Fulk followed the Lordj
Commander—if Hunold's body servant chanced into
that room—or if for some reason her father would seek
her out—! She must be out of Veriaine before dawn,|
witch or no witch! And setting her mind firm upon that,
she towed the stranger along the dark ways.       I

Only, when she stood once more in the light, Loyse5
could not be as callous as her sense of urgency dictated.!
She found soft cloth to wash and bind the raw grooves
cut in the other's wrists. And from her stores of clothing
offered a selection to the other.

At last the witch mastered her body to the point
where she was able to cup her hands beneath her
pointed chin. She allowed the jewel to fall from her lips
into that hold. Manifestly she did not want Loyse to
touch it, nor would the girl have done so for less than
her freedom.

"This about my neck please." For the first time the
other spoke.

Loyse caught the jewel's chain, pulled open the
catch and fastened it again beneath the ragged ends of
hair which must have been cut as hastily and as inex-
pertly as her own—and perhaps for the same reason.

"Thank you, lady of Veriaine. And now, if you
please," her voice was husky as if it rasped through a
dry throat, "a drink of water."

Loyse held the cup to the other's mouth. "Thanks
from you to me are hardly necessary," she returned
with what boldness she could muster. "It would appear
that you carry with you a weapon as potent as any
steel!"

WITCH WORLD

Over the rim of the cup the witch's eyes were smil-
ing. Loyse, meeting that kindliness, lost some of her
awe. But she was still young, awkward, unsure of
herself, sensations she resented bitterly.

"It was a weapon I could not use until you distracted
the attention of my would-be bedfellow, the noble Lord
Commander. For it is one I dare not risk falling into
other hands, even to save my own life. Enough of
that—" She lifted her hands, examined the bandages
about her wrists. Then she surveyed the disordered
room, noting the shawl on the floor with its burden of
sheared hair, the saddle bags on the coffer.

"It is not to your mind to travel to your bridegroom,
my lady duchess?"

Perhaps it was the tone of her voice, perhaps it was
her power compelling something within Loyse. But she
answered directly with the truth.

"I am no duchess in Karsten, lady. Oh, they said the
words over me this morning before Yvian's lords, and
afterwards they paid me homage on their knees." She
smiled faintly remembering what an ordeal that had
been for Siric. "Yvian was none of my choosing. I
welcome this wedding only to cover my escape."

"Yet you came to my aid," the other prompted,
watching her with those great, dark eyes which mea-
sured until Loyse smarted under their gaze.

"Because I could not do otherwise!" she flared.
"Something bound me here. Your sorcery, lady?"

"In a way, in a way. I appealed in my fashion to any
within these walls who had the ability to hear me. It
would appear that we share more than a common
danger, lady of Veriaine, or," she smiled openly now,
"seeing that you have changed your guise for this
outfaring, lord of Veriaine."

"Call me Briant, a mercenary of blank shield,"

122 ANDRE NORTON

Loyse supplied, having prepared for that days ago.

"And where do you go, Briant? To seek employ-
ment in Kars? Or in the north? There will be a demand
for blank shields in the north."

"Estcarp wars?"

"Say rather that war is carried to her. But that is
another matter." She stood up. "One which can be
discussed at length once we are without these walls. For
I am sure you know a road out."

Loyse draped the saddle bags across her shoulder,
drew the hood of her cloak over her uncrested helm. As
she moved to turn off the light globes, the witch jerked
at the shawl on the floor. Vexed at her own forgetful-
ness, the girl caught it and threw the strands of hair into

the dying fire.

"That is well done," the other commanded. "Leave
nothing which could be used to draw you back—hair
has power." She glanced to the middle window.

"Does that give on the sea?"

"Yes."

"Then lay a false trail, Briant. Let Loyse ofVerlaine ,
die to cover it!"                                  ;

It was the work of a moment to throw open that ;

casement, to drop her fine bride robe just below. But it
was the witch who bade her fasten a scrap of undergar-
ment to the rough edge of the stone sill.

"With such open door to face them," she corn- ;

manded,' 'I do not think they will seek too assiduously \
for other ways out of this chamber."

Back they went through the mirror door, and now
their path led down through the dark where Loyse urged
that they hug the wall to the right and take the descent
slowly. Under their hands that wall grew moist, and
dank smells of the sea, tainted with an ancient rotten-


WITCH WORLD              123

ness, were thick in the air. Down and down, and now
the murmur of the waves came faintly thrumming
through the wall. Loyse counted step after step.

"Here! Now there is the passage leading to the
strange place."

"The strange place?"

"Yes, I do not like to linger there, but we shall have
little choice. We must wait for the dawn light to guide
us out."

She crept on, fighting the building reluctance within
her. Three times had she come that way in the past, and
each time she had carried on this silent warfare with her
own body as the field of battle. Again she knew that rise
of brooding apprehension, that threat out of the dark
promising more and worse than just bodily harm. But
still she shuffled on, her fingers hooked in her compan-
ion's belt, drawing her also.

Out of the blackness Loyse heard the heavy breath-
ing, a catch of breath. And then the other spoke, in a
faint whisper, as if there crouched near that which
might overhear her words.

"This is a Place of Power."

"It is a strange place," Loyse repeated stubbornly.
" I do not like it, but it holds our gate out of Verlaine.''

Though they could not see, they sensed they had
come out of the passage into a wider area. Loyse caught
a glimpse of a bright point of light overhead—the
beacon of a star hung far above some rock crevice.

But now there was another faint gleam which
brightened suddenly, as if some muffling curtain had
been withdrawn. It moved through the air well above
ground level—a round gray spot. Loyse heard a sing-
song chant, words she did not know. And that sound
^brated in the curiously charged air of the space. As

124 ANDRE NORTON

the light grew stronger she knew that it came from the
witch's jewel.

Her skin tingled, the air about them was charged with
energy. Loyse knew an avid hunger—for what she
could not have told. In her other visits to this place, the
girl had been afraid and had made herself linger to
control that fear. Now she left fear behind, this new
sensation was one she could not put name to.

The witch, revealed in the light of the gem on her
breast, was swaying from side to side, her face set and |
rapt. The stream of words still poured from her lips— I
petition, argument, protective incantation—Loyse i
could not have said which. Only the girl knew that they
were both caught up in a vast wave of some energizing
substance drawn from the sand and rock under their
feet, from the walls about them, something which had
remained asleep through long centuries to come in-
stantly awake and aware now.

Why? What? Slowly Loyse made a complete turn,
staring out into the gloom she could not pierce by
eyepower. What lurked just beyond the faint pool of
light the jewel granted them?




' 'We must go!'' That came urgently from the witch J
Her dark eyes were widely open, her hand movedl
clumsily to Loyse.' 'I cannot control forces greater than'
my own! This place is old, also it is apart from human
kind and from the powers we know. Gods were wor-
shiped here once, such gods as altars have not been
raised to these thousand years. And there is a residue of
their old magic rising! Where is your outer gate? We
must try it while yet we can."

"The light of your jewel—" Loyse shut her own
eyes, pulling forth her memory of this place, as earlier
she had used her memory of the other wall-hidden

WITCH WORLD              125

ways. "There," she opened them again and pointed
ahead.

Step by step the witch moved in that direction and the
light went with and around her as Loyse had hoped.
Steps wide and roughly hewn, rounded by ages of time,
loomed to their right. They led Loyse knew to a flat
block with certain sinister grooves which lay directly
under a break in the roof, so that at intervals light from
the sun, or from the moon, bathed it in gold or silver.

Around that platform fashioned of broad steps, they
crept on to the far wall. The light of the jewel caught the
fall of earth which lay below Loyse's gate. It would be
risky to climb that tumble of stone and clay in this
gloom, but she was impressed by the urgency of the
witch.

The climb was as great a task as Loyse had feared.
Though her companion made no complaint, she knew
that to use those swollen hands must be torment. When
and where she could the girl pushed and pulled the
other, tensing together when the rubble shifted under
their feet, threatening to plunge them both to the bottom
once again. Then they were out, lying on coarse grass
with the salt air about them, and a grayish glimmer in
the sky telling them that the night was almost gone.

"Sea or land?" asked the witch. "Do you seek a
boat along the shore, or do we trust to our two feet and
head into the hills?"

Loyse sat up. "Neither," she replied crisply. "This
lies at the end of the pastures between the hold and the
sea. At this season the extra mounts are turned loose to
range here until they are needed. And in a hut near the
gate is the horse gear of the rangers. But that may be
under guard."

The witch laughed. "One guard? Little enough to

126 ANDRE NORTON

stand between two determined women and their desire
this night, or rather this morning. Show me this hut
with the horse gear and I shall make you free of it with
no man the wiser thereafter."

They went across the end of the pasture. The horses,
Loyse knew, would be close to the hut where block salt
had been set out two days before the storm. The jewel
had gone dead when they had emerged from the cavern
and they had to pick their way carefully.

A lantern burned over the door of the hut and Loyse |
saw horses moving back and forth. The heavy war |
chargers bred to carry an armored man in battle did not |
interest her. But there were the rough coated, smaller
mounts kept for hunting in the hills, able to withstand
hardship and keep going far past the exhaustion point of ^
the costlier animals Fulk fancied for his own riding. |

Out into the circle of the lantern light moved two
such ponies—almost as if her thought had called them.
They seemed uneasy, tossing their heads until their
ragged manes flopped on their necks, but they came.
Loyse put down the saddle bags, whistling softly. To
her delight the small horses came on, snuffling to one
another, their forelocks looping over their eyes, with
shaggy patches of their winter coats making them look
dappled in the dim light.

If they would only prove tractable once she had the
gear! She circled about them slowly and approached the
hut. There was no sign of the guard. Could he have
deserted his post for the feasting? It would be his death
if Fulk discovered it.

Loyse pushed inward on the door and it creaked.
Then she was peering into a place which smelt of horses
and oiled leather, yes, and of the strong drink the
village people brewed of honey and herbs, which was •&
enough to make even Fulk blink into sleep at the third |

WITCH WORLD              127

tankard. A jug rolled on its side, away from the touch of
her boot, and sticky stuff dribbled sluggishly from its
mouth. The guardian of the pastures lay on a truss of
straw snoring lustily.

Two bridles, two of the riding pads used by hunters
and swift riding messengers. They were easy to lift
from pegs and ledge. Then she was back in the field and
the door pulled to behind her.

The horses remained docile as she bridled them and
slapped on the pads, cinching them as tightly as she
could. But when both women were mounted and on the
upper trail which was the only way out of Verlaine, her
companion asked for the second time:

"Where do you ride, blank shield?"

"The mountains." Most ofLoyse's concrete plans
had dealt only with the mechanics of her escape from
Verlaine. Beyond this point where she now rode,
equipped, mounted, she had foreseen little. To be free
and out of Verlaine had seemed so impossible a hap-
pening, so difficult an achievement that she had bent all
her wits to the solving of that, with little thought of
what would happen after she gained the mountain
trails.

"You say Estcarp wars?" She had never really
thought of venturing through the wild band of outlaw
territory between Verlaine and the southern border of
Estcarp, but with one of the witches of that land as a
riding companion it might now be the best choice of all.

"Yes, Estcarp wars, blank shield. But have you
thought of Kars, lady duchess? Would you look upon
your realm in secret and see what manner of a future
you have tossed away?

Loyse, startled, almost kneed her mount into a trot
unsafe for the way they threaded.

"Kars?" she repeated blankly.

128 ANDRE NORTON

Something in that worked in her mind. Yes, she had
no mind to be Yvian's lady duchess. But on the other
hand Kars was the center of the southern lands and she
might find a kinsman or two there if she needed help
later. In so large a city a blank shield with money in his
purse could lose himself. And should Fulk manage to
discover something of her trail he would not think to
search for her in Kars.

"Estcarp must wait yet awhile," the other was say-
ing .' Trouble stirs through the land. And I would know
more of it, and of those who do the stirring. Kars is a
starting point."

She had been managed; Loyse knew that, but there
was no feeling of outrage in her. It was rather that she
had at long last found the end of a tangled cord, one
which, if she dared to follow it through all its coils,
would bring her where she had always wanted to be.

"We shall ride to Kars," she consented quietly.

PART III:

VENTURE OF KARSTEN

I

THE HOLE OF VOLT

Five men lay on the wave-beaten sand of the tiny cup of
bay and one of them was dead, a great gash across his
head. It was a hot day and shafts of sun struck full on
their half-naked bodies. The smell of the sea and the
stink of rotting weeds combined with the heat in a tropic
exhalation.

Simon coughed, bracing his battered body up on his
elbows. He was one great bruise and he was very
nauseated. Slowly he crawled a little apart and was
thoroughly sick, though there was little enough to be
ejected from his shrunken stomach. The spasm shook
him into full consciousness, and, when he could control
his heaving, he sat up.

He could remember only parts of the immediate past.
Their flight from Sulcarkeep had begun the nightmare.
Magnis Osberic's destruction of the power projector,
that core of energy supplying light and heat to the port,
had not only blown up the small city but must have
added to the fury of the storm which followed. And in
that storm the small party of surviving Guards, trusting
to the escape craft, had been scattered without hope of
course keeping.

Three of those vessels had set out from the port, but
their period of keeping together had lasted hardly
beyond their last sight of the exploding city. And what

131

132 ANDRE NORTON

had ensued had been sheer terror, for the craft had been
whirled, pitched, and finally shattered on coastwise
rock teeth in a period of time which had ceased to be
marked in any orderly procession of hours and minutes.

Simon rushed his hands over his face. His lashes
were matted with a glue of salt water and caught to-
gether, making it hard to open his eyes. Four men
here— Then he sighted that half crushed head—three
men, maybe, and the dead.

On one side was the sea, quiet enough now, washing
the tangles of weed ripped loose and deposited on the
shore. Fronting the water was a cliff face, broken, with
handholds enough, Simon supposed. But he had not the
slightest desire to essay that climb, or to move, for that
matter. It was good just to sit and let the warmth of the
sun drive out the bitter cold of storm and water.

"Saaa . . ."

One of the other figures on the strand stirred. A long
arm swept the sand, pushing away a mass of weed. The
man coughed, retched, and raised his head, to stare
blearily about. Then the Captain ofEstcarp caught sight
of Simon and regarded him blankly, before his mouth
moved in an effort at a grin.

Koris hunched up, his over-heavy shoulders and
arms taking most of his weight as he crawled on hands
and knees to a clear space of water-flattened sand.

"It is said on Gorm," he spoke rustily, his voice
hardly more than a croak, "that a man born to feel the
weight of the headsman's ax on his neck does not
drown. And, since it has ofttimes been made clear to
me that the ax is my fate—see how the oldsters are
proven right once again!"

Painfully he moved on to the nearest of the still prone
men, and rolled the limp body over, exposing a face

WITCH WORLD

which was grey-white under its weathering. The
Guardsman's chest rose and fell with steady breath and
he appeared to have no injuries.

"Jivin," Koris supplied a name, "an excellent rid-
ing master." He added the last thoughtfully, and Simon
found himself laughing weakly, pressing his fists
against his flat middle where strained muscles protested
such usage.

"Naturally," he got out between those bursts of
half-hysterical mirth, "that is an employment most
needed now!"

But Koris had gone on to the next intact body.
"Tunston!"

Dimly Simon was glad of that. He had developed,
during his short period of life with the Guard in Estcarp,
a very hearty respect for that under officer. Making
himself move, he helped Koris draw the two still un-
conscious men above the noisome welter of tide drift.
Then clawed his way to his feet with the aid of the rock
wall.

'' Water—'' That sense of well-being which had held
him for a short space after his own awakening was
gone. Simon was thirsty, his whole body now one vast
longing for water, inside and out, to drink and to lave
the smarting salt from his tender skin.

Koris shuffled over to examine the wall. There were
only two ways out of the cup which held them. To
return to the sea and strive to swiro around the encirc-
ling arms of rocks, or to climb the cliff. And every
nerve within Simon revolted against any swimming,
or return to the water from which he had so miracu-
lously emerged.

"This is not too hard a path," Koris said. He was
frowning a little. "Almost could I believe that once

134 ANDRE NORTON

there were hand holds here and here." He stood on
tiptoe, flattened against the rock, his long arms
stretched full length over his head, his fingers fitting
into small openings in the cliff wall. Muscles roped an<)
knotted on his shoulders; he lifted one foot, inserted the
toe of a boot into a crevice and began to climb.

Giving a last glance at the beach and the two me
now well above the pull of the water, Simon followec
He discovered that the Captain was right. There wer
convenient hollows for fingers and toes, whether ma<
by nature or man, and they led him up after Koris toj
ledge some ten feet above the level of the beach.

There was no mistaking the artificial nature of that
ledge for the marks of the tools which had shaped it
were still visible. It slanted as a ramp, though steeply,
toward the cliff top. Not an easy path for a man with a
whirling head and a pair of weak and shaking legs, but
infinitely better than he had dared to hope for.

Koris spoke again. "Can you make it alone? I will
see if I can get the others moving."             f

Simon nodded, and then wished that he had not trie
that particular form of agreement. He hugged the wal
and waited for the world to stop an unpleasant sidewis
spiral. Setting his teeth, he took the upgrade. Most of
the journey he made on his hands and knees, until he
came out under a curving hollow of roof. Nursing raw
hands he peered into what could only be a cave. There
was no other way up from here, and they would have to
hope that the cave had another opening above.

"Simon!" The shout from below was demanding,
anxious.

He made himself crawl to the outer edge of the ledge
and look down.
Koris stood there below, his head thrown far back as

WITCH WORLD

135

he tried to see above. Tunston was on his feet, too,
supporting Jivin. At Simon's feeble wave they went
into action, somehow between them getting Jivin up the
first climb to the ledge.

Simon remained where he was. He had no desire to
enter the cave alone. And anyway his will appeared to
be drained out of him, just as his body was drained of
strength. But he had to back into it as Koris gained the
level and faced about to draw up Jivin.

"There is some trick to this place," the Captain
announced. "I could not see you from below until you
waved. Someone has gone to great trouble to hide his
doorway."

"Meaning this is highly important?" Simon waved
to the cave mouth. "I do not care if it is a treasure house
of kings as long as it gives us a chance of reaching
water!"

"Water!" Jivin echoed that feebly. "Water, Cap-
tain?" he appealed to Koris trustfully.

"Not yet, comrade. There is still a road to ride."

They discovered that Simon's chosen method of
hands and knees was necessary to enter the cave door.
And Koris barely scraped through, tearing skin on
shoulders and arms.

There was a passage beyond, but so little light
reached this point that they crept with their hands on the
walls, Simon tapping before him.

"Dead end!" His outstretched hands struck against
solid rock facing them. But he had given his verdict too
soon, for to his right was a faint glimmer of light and he
discovered that the way made a right-angled turn.

Here one could see a measure of footing and they
quickened pace. But disappointment waited at the end
°f the passage. For the light did not increase and when

1

136 ANDRE NORTON

they came out into an open space, it was into twilight
and not the bright sun of day.

The source of that light riveted Simon's attention and
pulled him out of his preoccupation with his own aches
and pains. Marching in a straight line across one wall
were a series of perfectly round windows, not unlike
ship's portholes. Why they had not sighted them from
the strand, for it was apparent that they must be in the
outer surface of the cliff, he could not understand. But
the substance which made them filtered the light in
cloudy beams.

There was light enough, however, to show them only
too clearly the single occupant of that stone chamber.
He sat at ease in a chair carved of the same stone as that
on which it was based, his arms resting upon its broad |
side supports, his head fallen forward on his breast as j
if he slept.                                       |

It was only when Jivin drew breath in a sound close
to a sob, that Simon guessed they stood in a tomb. And |
the dusty silence of the chamber closed about them, as j
if they had been shut into a coffer with no escape. |

Because he was awed and ill at ease, Simon moved |
purposefully forward to the two blocks on which the |
chair rested staring up in defiance at the one who sat|
there. There was a thick coating of dust on the chair, |
sifting over the sitter. Yet Tregarth could see that this |
man—chieftain, priest, or king, or whatever he had|
been in his day of life—was not allied by race to Estcarp I
or to Gorm,                                      |

His parchment skin was dark, smooth, as if the,
artistry of the embalmer had turned it to sleek wood.|
The features of the half hidden face were marked by|
great force and vigor with a sweeping beak of nosej
dominating all the rest. His chin was small, sharplyj

WITCH WORLD              137

pointed, and the closed eyes were deep set. It was like
seeing a humanoid creature whose far distant ancestors
had been not primates but avian.

To add to this illusion his clothing, under its film of
dust, was of some material which resembled feathers.
A belt bound his slim waist and resting across both
arms of his chair was an ax of such length of haft and
size that Simon almost doubted the sleeper could ever
have lifted it.

His hair had grown to a peak-crest, and binding it
into an upright plume, was a gem-set circlet. Rings
gleamed on those claw ringers resting on ax head and ax
haft. And about chair, occupant, and that war ax there
was such a suggestion of alien life as stopped Simon
short before the first step of the dais.

"Volt!" Jivin's cry was close to a scream. Then his
words became unintelligible to Simon as he gabbled
something in another tongue which might have been a
prayer.

"To think that legend is truth!" Koris had come to
stand beside Tregarth. His eyes were as brilliant as they
had been on the night they had fought their way out of
Sulcarkeep.

"Volt? Truth?" echoed Simon and the man from
Gorm answered impatiently.

"Volt of the Ax, Volt who throws thunders—Volt
who is now a bogey to frighten children out of naughti-
ness! Estcarp is old, her knowledge comes from the
days before man wrote his history, or whispered his
legends. But Volt is older than Estcarp! He is of those
who came before man, as man is today. And his kind
died before man armed himself with stick and stone to
strike back at the beasts. Only Volt lived on and knew
the first men and they knew him—and his ax! For Volt

138 ANDRE NORTON

in his loneliness took pity on man and with his ax hewed
for them a path to follow to knowledge and lordship
before he, too, went from among them.

"In some places they remembered Volt with
thanksgiving, though they fear him for being what they
could not understand. And in other places they hate
with a great hate, for the wisdom of Volt warred against
their deep desires. So do we remember Volt with
prayers and with cursings, and he is both god and
demon. Yet now we four can perceive that he was a
living creature, and so in that akin to ourselves. Though
perhaps one with other gifts according to the nature of
his race.

"Ha, Volt!" Koris flung his long arm up in a salute.
"I, Koris, who am Captain of Estcarp and its Guards,
give to you greetings, and the message that the world
has not changed greatly since you withdrew from it.
Still we war, and peace sits only lightly, save that now
our night may have come upon us out of Kolder. And,
since I stand weaponless by reason of the sea, I beg of
your arms! If by your favor we set our faces once more
against Kolder, may it be with your ax swinging in the
van!"

He climbed the first step, his hand went out confi-
dently. Simon heard a choked cry from Jivin, a hissed
breath from Tunston. But Koris was smiling as his
fingers closed about the ax haft, and he drew the
weapon carefully toward him. So alive did the seated
figure seem that Simon half expected the ring laden
claws to tighten, to snatch the giant's weapon back
from the man who begged it from him. But it came
easily, quickly into Koris' grasp, as if he who had held
it all these generations had not only released it willing-
ly, but had indeed pushed it to the Captain.

WITCH WORLD              139

Simon expected the haft to crumble into rottenness
when Koris drew it free. But the Captain swung it high,
bringing it down in a stroke which halted only an inch
or so above the stone of the step. In his hands the
weapon was a living thing, supple and beautiful as only
a fine arm could be.

"My gratitude for life. Volt!" he cried. "With thisi
shall carve out victories, for never before has such a
weapon come into my hands. I am Koris, once of
Gorm, Koris the ugly, the ill-fashioned. Yet, under
your good wishing, oh. Volt, shall I be Koris the
conqueror, and your name shall once more be great in
this land!"

Perhaps it was the very timber of his voice which
disturbed age-old currents of air; Simon held to that
small measure of rational explanation for what fol-
lowed. For the seated man, or man-like figure, ap-
peared to nod once, twice, as if agreeing to Koris'
exultant promises. Then that body, which had seemed
so solid only seconds before, changed in front of their
eyes, falling in upon itself.

Jivin buried his face in his hands and Simon bit back
an exclamation. Volt—if Volt it had really been—was
gone. There was dust in the chair and nothing else, save
the ax in Koris' grip. Tunston, that unimaginative man
spoke first, addressing his officer:

"His tour of duty was finished, Captain. Yours now
begins. It was well done, to claim his weapon. And I
think it shall bring us good fortune."

Koris was swinging the ax once more, making the
curved blade pass in the air in an expert's drill. Simon
turned away from the empty chair. Since his entrance
into this world he had witnessed the magic of the
witches and accepted it as part of this new life, now he




140 ANDRE NORTON

accepted this in turn. But even the acquiring of the
fabulous Ax of Volt would not bring them a drink of
water nor the food they must have, and he said as much.

' 'That is also the truth,'' Tunston agreed. "If there is
no other way out of here then we must return to the
shore and try elsewhere."

Only there was another way, for the wall behind the
great chair showed an archway choked with earth and
rubble. And they set to work digging that out with their
belt knives and their hands for tools. It was exhausting
work, even for men who came to it fresh. And only
Simon's new horror of the sea kept him at it. In the end
they cleared a short passage, only to front a door.

Once its substance may have been some strong na-
tive wood. But no rot had eaten at it, rather it had been
altered by the natural chemistry of the soil into a flint
hard surface. Koris waved them back.

"This is my work."

Once more the Ax of Volt went up. Simon almost
cried out, fearing to see the fine blade come to grief
against that surface. There was a clang, and again the
ax was raised, came down with full force of the Cap-
tain's mighty shoulders.

The door split, one part of it leaning outward. Koris
stood aside and the three of them worried at that break.^
Now the brightness of full day light struck them, and|
the freshness of a good breeze beat the mustiness of thej
chamber away.                                  I

They manhandled the remnants of the door to allow8
passage and broke through a screen of dried creepers
and brush out onto a hillside where the new grass of
spring showed in vivid patches and some small yellow
flowers bloomed like scattered goldpieces. They were
on the top of the cliff and the slope of this side went

WITCH WORLD              141

down to a stream. Without a word Simon stumbled
down to that which promised to lay the dust in his
throat, ease the torture of his salted skin.

He raised dripping head and shoulders from the
water some time later to find Koris missing. Though he
was sure that the Captain had followed them out of the
Hole of Volt.

' 'Koris?'' he asked Tunston. The other was rubbing
his face with handfuls of wet grass, sighing in content,
while Jivin lay on his back beside the stream, his eyes
closed.

"He goes to do what is to be done for his man
below,'' Tunston answered remotely.' 'No Guardsman
must be left to wind and wave while his officer can
serve him otherwise."

Simon flushed. He had forgotten that battered body
on the beach. Though he was of the Guard ofEstcarp by
his own will, he did not yet feel at one with them.
Estcarp was too old, its men—and its witches—alien.
Yet what had Petronius promised when he offered the
escape? That the man who used it would be transported
to a world which his spirit desired. He was a soldier and
he had come into a world at war, yet it was not his way
of fighting, and he still felt the homeless stranger.

He was remembering the woman with whom he had
fled across the moors, unknowing then that she was a
witch of Estcarp and all that implied. There had been
times during that flight when they had had an unspoken
comradeship. But afterwards that, too, was gone.

She had been on one of those other ships when they
had broken out of Sulcarkeep. Had hers fared as badly
on the merciless sea? He stirred, pricked by something
he did not want to acknowledge, clinging fiercely to his
role of onlooker. Rolling over on the grass he pillowed

ANDRE NORTON

his head on his bent arm, relaxing by will as he ha
learned long ago, to sleep.

Simon awoke as quickly, senses alert. He could nc
have slept long for the sun was still fairly high. There
was the smell of cooking in the air. In the lee of a rock a
small fire burned where Tunston tended some small
fish spitted on sharp twigs. Koris, his ax his bedfellow,
slept, his boyish face showing more drawn and fined
down with fatigue then when he was conscious. Jivin
sprawled belly down beside the streamlet, fast proving
that he was more than a master of horsemanship, as his
hand emerged with another fish he had tickled into
capture.

Tunston raised an eyebrow as Simon came up.
"Take your pick," he indicated the fish. " 'Tis not
mess fare, but it will serve for now."

Simon had reached for the nearest when Tunston's
sudden tension brought his gaze to follow the other's.
Circling over their heads in wide, gliding sweeps was a
bird, black feathered for the most part save for a wide V
of white on the breast.

"Falcon!" Tunston breathed that word as if it sum-
med up a danger as great as a Kolder ambush.




II

FALCON'S EYRIE

The bird, with that art known to the predatory clans,
hung over them on outspread wings. Simon saw
enough of those bright red thongs or ribbons fluttering
from about its feet to guess that it was not a wild
creature.

"Captain!" Tunston edged over to shake Koris
awake, and the other sat up, rubbing his fists across his
eyes in a small boy gesture.

"Captain, the Falconers are out!"

Koris jerked his head sharply up and then got to his
feet, shading his eyes against the sun, to watch the slow
circles of the bird. He whistled a call which arose in
clear notes. Those lazy circles ceased and Simon
watched the miracle of speed and precision—the strike.
For the bird came in to settle upon the haft of Volt's ax
where the weapon lay half hidden in the grass of this
tiny meadow. The curved beak opened and it gave a
harsh cry.

The Captain knelt by the bird,. Very carefully he
picked up one of the trailing cords at its feet and a small
metal pendant flashed in the sun. This he studied.

"Nalin. He must be one of the sentries. Go, winged
warrior," Koris addressed the restless bird. "We be of
one breed with your master and there is peace between
us."

143

144 ANDRE NORTON

"A pity. Captain, that your words will not carry to
the ears of this Nalin," commented Tunston. "The
Falconers are apt to make sure of the borders first and
ask questions later, if any invaders are left alive to ask
them of."

"Just so, vagabond!"

The words came from immediately behind them.
Almost as one, they whirled, to see only rocks and
grass. Had it been the bird that spoke? Jivin eyed the
hawk doubtfully, but Simon refused to accept that piece
of magic or illusion. He fingered his only weapon, the
knife which had been in his belt when he had made the

shore.

Koris and Tunston showed no surprise. It was appa-
rent they had expected some such challenge. The Cap-
tain spoke to the air about them, distinctly and slowly,
as if his words must carry conviction to the unseen

listener.

"I am Koris, Captain of Estcarp, driven upon this

shore by storm. And these are of the Guards of Estcarp:

Tunston, who is officer of the Great Keep, Jivin, and
Simon Tregarth, an outlander who has taken service
under the Guardian. By the Oath of Sword and Shield,
Blood and Bread, I ask of you now the shelter given
when two war not upon each other, but live commonly
by the raised blade!"

The faint echo of his words rolled about them and
was gone. Then once more the bird gave its screechin
cry and arose. Tunston grinned wryly.

' 'Now I take it, we wait for either a guide or a dart i

the back!"

"From an invisible enemy?" asked Simon.
Koris shrugged. "To every commander his own

mysteries. And the Falconers have theirs in plenty. If




WITCH WORLD

145

they send the guide, we are indeed fortunate." He
sniffed. "And there is no need to go hungry while we
wait."

Simon gnawed at the fish, but he surveyed the small
meadow cut by the stream. His companions appeared to
be philosophical about the future, and he had no idea
how that trick with the voice had been worked. But he
had learned to use Koris as a measuring instrument
when in a new situation. If the Guard Captain was
willing to wait this out, then they might not have to face
a fight after all. But on the other hand he would like to
know more about his might-be hosts.
"Who are the Falconers?"
"As Volt," Koris' hand went to the ax, slipping in
caress down its handle, "they are legend and history,
but not so ancient.

"In the beginning they were mercenaries, come
overseas in Sulcar ships from a land where they lost
their holdings because of a barbarian invasion. For a
space they served with the traders as caravan guards
and marines. Sometimes they still hire out when in their
first youth. But the majority did not care for the sea;




they had a hunger for mountains eating into them, since
they were heights born. So they came to the Guardian at
Estcarp city and suggested a pact, offering to protect
the southern border of the land in return for the right to
settle in the mountains."

"There was wisdom in that!" Tunston broke in. "It
was a pity the Guardian could not agree."
"Why couldn't she?" Simon wanted to know.
Koris smiled grimly. "Have you not dwelt long
enough yet in Estcarp, Simon, not to know that it is a
matriarchate? For the Power which has held it safe lies
not first in the swords of its men, but in the hands of its




146 ANDRE NORTON

women. And the holder of Power are in truth all
women.

"On the other hand the Falconers have strange cus-
toms of their own, which are as dear to them as the
mores ofEstcarp are to the witches. They are a fighting;

order of males alone. Twice a year picked young men
are sent to their separate villages of women, there to
sire a new generation, as stallions are put out to pasture
with the mares. But of affection, or liking, of equality
between male and female, there is none recognized
among the Falconers. And they do not admit that a
woman exists save for the bearing of sons.         ]

"Thus they were to Estcarp savages whose corrupt |
way of life revolted the civilized, and the Guardian |
swore that were they to settle within the country with I
the consent of the witches the Power would be affronted
and depart. So were they told that not by the will of!
Estcarp could they hold her border. However they werej
granted leave to pass in peace through the country with
what supplies they needed, to seek the mountains 01
their own. If there they wished to carve out a holding
beyond the boundaries of Estcarp the witches woul(
wish them well and not raise swords against them. So i
has been for a hundred years or more."

"And I take it they were able to carve out then
holding?"

"So well," Tunston answered Simon's question
"that three times have they beaten into the earth the
hordes of Dukes of Karsten have sent against them. The
very land they have chosen fights upon their side."

"You say that Estcarp did not offer them friend-
ship," Simon pointed out. "What did it mean then
when you spoke of the Oath of Sword and Shield,
Blood and Bread? It sounded as if you did have some
kind of an understanding."

WITCH WORLD              147




Koris became very busy picking a small bone from
his fish. Then he smiled and Tunston laughed openly.
Only Jivin looked a little conscious, as if they spoke of
things it was better not to mention.

"The Falconers are men—"

"And the Guards ofEstcarp are also men?" Simon
ventured.

Koris' grin spread, though Jivin was frowning now.
"Do not misunderstand us, Simon. We have the
greatest reverence for the Women of Power. But it is in
the nature of their lives that they are apart from us, and
the things which may move us. For, as you know, the
Power departs from a witch if she becomes truly a
woman. Therefore they are doubly jealous of their
strength, having given up a part of their life to hold it.
Also they are proud that they are women. To them the
customs of the Falconers, which deny that pride as well
as the Power, reducing a female to a body without
intelligence or personality, are close to demon-
inspired.

' 'We may not agree with the Falconers' customs, but
as fighting men we Guards pay them respect, and when
we have met with them in the past there was no feud
between us. For the Guards ofEstcarp and the Falcon-
ers have no quarrel. And,'' he tossed aside the spit from
which he had worried the last bite offish, "the day may
be coming soon when the fact shall be an aid to us
all."

"That is true!" Tunston spoke eagerly. "Karsten
has waned upon them. And whether the Guardian wills
it or not, if Karsten marches upon Estcarp the Falconers
stand between. But we know that well and this past year
the Guardian turned her attention elsewhere when the
Big Snow struck and grain and cattle moved southward
to Falconer villages."

148 ANDRE NORTON

"There were women and children hungry in those
villages," Jivin said.

"Yes. But the supplies were ample and more than
villagers ate," countered Tunston.

"The Falcon!" Jivin jerked a thumb skywards, and
they saw that black and white bird sail through the air
over their campsite. It proved this time to be the fore-
scout of a small party of men who rode into view and sat
watching the Guards.

The horses they bestrode were akin to ponies,
rough-coated beasts that Simon judged were nimble
footed enough on the narrow trails of the heights. And
their saddles were simple pads. But each possessed a
forked horn on which perched at ease one of the fal-
cons, that of the leader offering a resting place to the
bird that had guided them.

As did the Guards and the man of Sulcarkeep, they
wore mail shirts and carried small, diamond-shaped
shields on their shoulders. But their helms were shaped
like the heads of the birds they trained. And, though he
knew that human eyes surveyed him from behind the
holes in those head coverings, Simon found the silent
regard of that exotic gear more than a little disquieting.

"I am Koris, serving Estcarp."

Koris, the great ax across his forearm, stood up to
face the silent four.

The man whose falcon had just returned to its perch
held up his empty sword hand palm out in a gesture as
universal and as old as time.

"Nalin of the outer heights," his voice rang hollow
in the helm-mask.

"Between us there is peace. The Lord of Wings
opens the Eyrie to the Captain of Estcarp."

Simon had doubts about those ponies carrying dou-




WITCH WORLD              149

ble. But when he mounted behind one of the Falconers
he discovered that the small animal was as sure-footed
on the slightest of trails as a burro and the addition of an
extra rider appeared to be no inconvenience.

The trails of the Falconer's territory were certainly
not laid to either entice or comfort the ordinary traveler.
Simon kept his eyes open only by force of will as they
footed along ledges and swung boots out over drops he
had no desire to measure.

Now and again one of the birds soared aloft and
ahead, questing out over the knife slash valleys which
were a feature of the region, returning in time to its
master. Simon longed to ask more concerning the curi-
ous arrangement between man and bird, for it seemed
that the feathered scouts must have a way of reporting.

The party came down from one slope onto a road
which was smooth as a highway. But they crossed that
and bored up into the wilderness once more. Simon
ventured to speak to the man behind whom he rode.

"I am new to this southern country—is that not a
way through the mountains?"

"It is one of the traders' roads. We keep it open for
them and so we both profit. You are this outlander,
then, who has taken service with the Guards?"

"lam."

' The Guards are no blank shields. And their Captain
rides to a fight and not from it. But it would seem that
the sea has used you ill."

"No man may command storms," Simon returned
evasively. "We live—for that we offer thanks."

"To that give thanks in addition that you were not
driven farther south. The wreckers of Verlaine haul
"luch from the sea. But they do not care for living men.
Soineday," his voice sharpened, "Verlaine may dis-

150 ANDRE NORTON

cover that none of her cliffs, nor her toothed reefs shall
shelter her. When the Duke sets his seal upon that place
then it will no longer be a small fire to plague travelers,
but rather a raging furnace!"

"Verlaine is of Karsten?" Simon asked. He was a
gatherer of facts where and when he could, adding them
piece by piece to his jigsaw of this world.

" Verlaine's daughter is to be wed to the Duke after
the custom of these foreigners. For they believe that
holding of land follows a female! Then by such a
crooked right the Duke will claim Verlaine for its rich
treasure seized out of storm seas, and perhaps enlarge
the trap for the taking of all coastwise ships. Of old we
have given our swords to the traders, though the sea is
not our chosen battlefield, so shall we perhaps be sum-
moned when Verlaine is cleansed."

"You reckon the men of Sulcarkeep among those
you would aid?"

The bird's head on the shoulders before him nodded
vigorously.' 'It was on Sulcar ships that we came out of
blood, death and fire overseas. Guardsman! Sulcar has
first claim upon us since that day.''

"It will no more!" Simon did not know why he said
that, and he regretted his loose tongue immediately.

"You bear some news, Guardsman? Our hawks
quest far, but not as far as the northern capes. What has
chanced to Sulcarkeep?"

Simon's hesitation was prolonged into no reply at all
as one of the falcons hung above them, calling loudly.

"Loose me and slide off!" his companion ordered
sharply. Simon obeyed, and the four Guardsmen were
left on the trail while the ponies forged ahead at a pacs
reckless for the country. Koris beckoned the others on.
"There is a sortie." He ran after the fast-

WITCH WORLD              151

disappearing ponies, the ax over his shoulder, his slen-
der legs carrying him at a muscle-straining trot which
Simon alone found it easy to equal.

There were shouts beyond and the telltale clash of
metal meeting metal.

"Karsten forces?" panted Simon as he drew abreast
of the Captain.

"I think not. There are outlaws in these wastes, and
Nalin says they grow bolder. To my mind it is but a
small part of all the rest. Alizon threatens to the north,
the Kolder moves in upon the west, the outlaw bands
grow restless, and Karsten stirs. Long have the wolves
and the night birds longed to pick the bones ofEstcarp.
Though they would eventually quarrel over those bones
among themselves. Some men live in the evening and
go down into darkness defending the remnants of that
they reverence."

"And this is the evening forEstcarp?" Simon found
breath to ask.

"Who can say? Ah—outlaws they are!"

They looked down now upon a trade road. And here
swirled a battle. The bird-helmeted horsemen dis-
mounted as the level ground was too limited to give
cavalry any advantage, to strike in as a well-trained
fighting unit, cutting down those who had been enticed
into the open. But there were snipers in hiding and they
took toll by dart of the Falconers.

Koris leaped from ledge to trail, coming down in a
pocket where two men crouched. Simon worked his
way along a thread of path to a point where, with a
well-aimed stone, he brought down one who was just
shooting into the melee. It took only a moment to strip
Aat body of gun and ammunition and turn the weapon
against the comrades of its former owner.

152

WITCH WORLD              153

ANDRE NORTON

Hawks flew screaming, stabbing at faces and eyes,
raking with savage claws. Simon fired, took aim and
fired again, marking his successes with dour satisfac*
tion. A fraction of the bitterness of their defeat at
Sulcarkeep oozed from him during those few wild
moments while there was still active resistance around

and below.

A squeal of horn cut the shrieks of the birds. Across
the valley a rag of flag was waved vigorously and those
of the outlaws who still kept their feet fell back, though
they did not break and run until they reached cover
where mounted men could not pursue. The day was
slipping fast into evening and a host of shadows swal-
lowed them up.

Hide from the men they might, but concealment
from the hawks was another matter. The birds swirled
over the rising ground, striking down, sometimes find-
ing a quarry as screams of pain testified. Simon saw
Koris on the road, ax still in hand, a dark stain on the
blade of that weapon. He was talking eagerly with a
Falconer, oblivious of those who walked from one
body to the next, sometimes making sure of its status
with a quick sword stroke. There was the same grim
finality to this engagement as there had been after the
ambush of those from Gorm. Simon busied himself
with the buckling on of his new arms belt, taking care
not to watch that particular activity.             |

The hawks were drifting back down the arch of tfte
evening sky, coming in answer to the whistles of their
masters. Two bodies in bird helms were lashed across
the pads of nervous ponies, and other men rode ban-
daged, supported by their fellows. But the toll among
the outlaw force had been far the greater.

Simon rode behind a Falconer again, not the s




man. And this one was not inclined to talk as he nursed
a slashed arm across his breast and swore softly at every
jolt.

Night came quickly in the mountains, the higher
peaks shutting out the sun, enclosing growing pools of
gloom. The track they took was a broader one and
smooth as a highway when compared to their earlier
trails. It brought them at last, up a stiff climb, to the
home the Falconers had made for themselves in their
exile. And it was such a keep as drew a whistle of
astonishment out of Simon.

He had been truly impressed by the ancient walls of
Estcarp with their air of having been wrought from the
bones of the earth in the days of its birth. And Sulcar-
keep , though it had been cloaked with the spume of that
unnatural fog, had been indeed a mighty work. But this
was a part of the cliffs, of the mountain. He could only
believe that the makers had chanced upon a peak where
there were a series of caves which had been enlarged
and worked. For the Eyrie was not a castle, but a
mountain itself converted into a fort.

They entered over a drawbridge spanning a chasm
luckily hidden in the twilight, a drawbridge giving
footing to only one horse at a time. Simon released his
indrawn breath only when the pony he bestrode in
company passed under the wicked points of a portculis
into a gaping cave. He aided the wounded Falconer to
the pavement and into the hands of one of his fellows,
and then looked about for the Guardsmen, sighting
Tunston's height and bare dark head before he saw the
others.

Koris pushed his way to them, Jivin at his heels. For
a space they seemed to be forgotten by their hosts.
Horses were led away, and each man took his falcon




ANDRE NORTON

154

upon a padded glove before going into another passage/*
But at last one of the bird heads swiveled in their
direction and a Falconer officer approached.

"The Lord of Wings would speak with you,
Guardsmen. Blood and Bread, Sword and Shield to our

service!"

Koris tossed his ax, caught it, and turned the blade

away from the other with ceremony. "Sword and
Shield, Blood and Bread, man of the hawks!"     '




III

A WITCH IN KARS

Simon sat up on the narrow bunk, knuckles pressed to
his aching head. He had been dreaming, a vivid and
terrifying dream of which he could recall only the
terror. And then he awakened to find himself in the
cell—like quarters of a Falconer with this fierce pain in
his head. But more urgent than the pain was a sense of
the need to obey some order—or was it to answer a
plea?

The ache faded, but the urgency did not and he could
not remain in bed. He dressed in the leather garments
his hosts had provided and went out, guessing that it
was close to morning.

They had been five days at the Eyrie and it was
Koris' intention to ride north soon, heading to Estcarp
through leagues of outlaw infested territory. Simon
knew that it was in the Captain's mind to bind the
Falconers to the cause of the northern nation. Once
back in the northern capital he would bring his influ-
ence to work upon the prejudices of the witches, so that
the tough fighting men of the 'bird helms might be
enlisted in Estcarp's struggle.

The fall of Sulcarkeep had aroused the dour men of
the mountains, and preparations for war buzzed in their
redoubt. In the lower reaches of the strange fortress
smiths toiled the night through and armorers wrought

155

156 ANDRE NORTON

cunningly, while a handful of technicians worked
those tiny beads strung on the hawk jesses througbi
which a high circling bird reported and recorded for his ;

master. The secret of those was the most guarded of
their nation, and Simon had only a hint that it was based
on some mechanical contrivance.

Tregarth had been often brought up short in his
estimation of these peoples by just some curious quirk
such as this. Men who fought with sword and shield
should not also produce intricate communication de-
vices. Such odd leaps and gaps in knowledge and,
equipment was baffling. He could far more readily
accept the "magic" of the witches than the eyes and
ears, and when necessary, voices which were falcoi

borne.                                          ,

The magic of the witches— Simon climbed stairs cut
in one of the mountain burrows, came out upon a
lookout post. There was no mist to mask a range of hills
visible in the light of early morning. By some feat of
engineering he could see straight through a far gap into
that open land which he knew to be Karsten.

Karsten! He was so intent upon that keyhole into die
duchy that he was not aware of the sentry on post there
until the man spoke:

"You have a message. Guardsman?"
A message? Those words triggered something in
Simon's mind. He experienced for an instant the return
of pain to press above his eyes, that conviction there
was something for him to do. This was foreknowledge
of a kind, but not such as he had known on the road to
Sulcarkeep. Now he was being summoned, not
warned. Koris and the Guardsmen would ride north if
they willed, but he must head south. Simon put down
his last guard against this insidious thing, allowed him-,
self to be swayed by it.                         ^




WITCH WORLD              157

"Has any news come'out of the south?" he de-
manded of the sentry.

"Ask that of the Lord of Wings, Guardsman." The
man was suspicious after the training of his kind.
Simon headed for the stairs.

"Be sure that I shall!"

Before he went to the Commander of the Falconers,
he tracked down the Captain, finding Koris busied with
preparations for taking the trail. He glanced up from his
saddlebags to Simon, and then his hands stopped
pulling at buckles and straps.

"What's to do?"

"Laugh if you will," Simon replied shortly. "My
road lies to the south."

Koris sat down on the edge of a table and swung one
booted foot slowly back and forth. "Why does Karsten
draw you?"

"That is just it!" Simon struggled to put into words
what compelled him against either inclination or sense.
He had never been an articulate man and he was discov-
ering it even harder here to explain himself. "I am
drawn—"

The swinging foot was still. In that handsome, bitter
face there was no readable expression. "Since
when—and how has it come upon you?" That demand
was quick and harsh, an officer desiring a report.

Simon spoke the truth.' "There was a dream and then
I awoke. When I looked just now through the gap into
Karsten I knew that my road leads there."

"And the dream?"

"It was of danger, more I cannot remember."

Koris drove one fist into the palm of the other. "So
be it! I wish you had more power or less. But if you are
drawn, we ride south."
We?"







158 ANDRE NORTON

"Tunston and Jivin shall carry our news to Estcarp |
The Kolder cannot cut through the barrier of the Power;

yet awhile. And Tunston can rally the Guard as well E
I. Look you, Simon, I am ofGorm and now it is Gon
which fights against the Guard, though it may be
Gorm which is dead and demon-inspired. I have serve
Estcarp to the best of my ability since the Guardial
gave me refuge, and I shall continue to serve her. But i
may be that the time has come that I can serve her bes
outside the ranks of her liege men instead of withh
them.

"How do I know . . ."his dark young eyes ha(
shadow smudges under them, tired eyes, worn with a;

fatigue which was not of body, "how do I know that^
through me because I am of Gorm danger cannot strike
at the very heart of Estcarp? We have seen what the
Kolder have done to living men whom I knew well,
what else that devil-haunted brood can accomplish
what man may tell? They flew through the air to take
Sulcarkeep."

"But that may be no fruit of magic," Simon cut in.
"In my own world air flight is a common mode of
travel. I wish I had had sight of how they came—it
could tell us much!"

Koris laughed wryly. "Doubtless we shall be given
numerous other occasions in the future to observe their
methods. I say this to you, Simon, if you are drawn
south, I believe it to be by intelligent purpose. And two
swords, or rather," he corrected himself with a little
smile, "one ax, and one dart gun, are of greater force
than one gun alone. The very fact of this summoning is
good hearing, for it must mean that she who went with
us to Sulcarkeep still lives and now moves to further our
cause."

WITCH WORLD

159

"But how do you know it is she, or why?" Such a
suspicion had been Simon's also, to have it confirmed
by Koris carried conviction.

' 'How? Why? Those who have the Power can send it
forth along certain lanes of mind, as these Falconers
dispatch their birds through the reaches of the air. And
if they meet any of their kind, then they call or warn. As
to why—it is in my mind, Simon, that she who sends
must be the lady you saved from the pack ofAlizon, for
she would be well able to communicate with one she
knows.

"You are not blood of our blood, bone of our bone,
Simon Tregarth, and it would seem in your world the
Power lies not only in the hands of women. Did you not
smell out that ambush on the shore road as well as any
witch might do? Yes, I shall ride into Karsten on no
more proof than you have given me at this hour, be-
cause I know the Power and because, Simon, I have
fought beside you. Let me give Tunston his instructions
and a message for the Guardian, and we shall go to cast
in troubled waters for important fish."

They rode south well equipped with mail and
weapons taken from vanquished enemies, blank shields
signifying that they were wandering mercenaries open
for hire. The Falconer border guard escorted them to
the edge of the mountains and the traders' road to Kars.

With no more than that tenuous feeling as a guide
Simon wondered at the wisdom of their venture. Only
the pull was still on him night and day, though he had
no more nightmares. And each morning found him
impatient to take the highway once more.

Karsten had villages in plenty, growing larger and
richer as the travelers penetrated into the black-earthed
bottom lands along the wide rivers. And there were

160 ANDRE NORTON

petty lordlings set up in fiefs who offered employment
to the two from the north. Though Koris laughed to
scorn the wages they suggested and thus increased the
respect with which he and his ax were regarded, Simon
said little, but was alert to everything about him, map-
ping the land in his head, and noting small customs and
laws of behavior, while, between times when they
journeyed alone, he pumped the Guard Captain for

information.

The Duchy had once been a territory sparsely held by
a race akin to the ancient blood of Estcarp. And now
and then a proud-held dark head, a pale face with
cleanly cut features, reminded Simon of the men of the
north.

' 'The curse of the Power finished them here,'' Koris
observed when Simon commented on this.

"The curse?"

The Captain shrugged.' 'It goes back to the nature of
the Power. Those who use it do not breed. And so each
year the women who will wed and bear grow fewer. A
marriageable maid of Estcarp may choose among ten
men, soon among twenty. Also there are childless

homes in plenty.

"So it was here. Thus when the sturdier barbarians
came overseas and settled along the coast they were not
actively opposed. More and more land came to their
hands. The old stock withdrew to the backlands. Then
warlords arose among the newcomers in the course of
time. So we have the Dukes, and this Duke last of
all—who was a common man of a hired shield com-
pany and climbed by his wits and the strength of his
sword arm to complete rule."

"And so will it go with Estcarp also?"
"Perhaps. Only there was a mingling of blood with
the Sulcarman, who, alone, it seems, can mate with




WITCH WORLD              161

Estcarp and have fruit of it. Thus in the north there was
a stirring of the old blood and a renewing of vigor.
However, Gorm may swallow us up before there has
been a proving of anything. How is it, Simon; does this
town we approach beckon you? It is Garthholm on the
river, and beyond it lies only Kars."

"Then we go to Kars," Simon answered wearily
after a long moment. "For the burden is still on me."

Under his plain helm Koris' brows rose. "Then it is
indeed laid upon us to walk softly and watch over our
shoulders the while. Though the blood of the Duke is
not high and he is eyed sidewise by the nobles, yet his
wits are far from blunt. There will be eyes and ears   |1
within Kars to mark the lowliest stranger and ques-
tions asked of blank shields. Especially if we do not
strive to enlist at once under his banner."

Simon gazed thoughtfully at the river barges swing-
ing at anchor by the town quay.

"But he would not be inclined to enlist a maimed
man. Also are there not doctors within Kars who would
treat one injured in battle? A man, say, who ailed from
a blow on the head so that his eyes no longer served him
well?"

' 'Such a one as would be brought by a comrade to see
the wise doctors of Kars?" chuckled Koris. "Yes, that
is a fine tale, Simon. And who is this injured warrior?''

"I think that role is mine. It would cover any awk-
ward mistakes which a keen witted eye-and-ear of the
Duke would note."

Koris nodded vigorously. "We sell these ponies
here. They label us too much as being from the moun-
teins, and in Karsten mountains are suspect. Passage
can be bought on one of the river boats. A good enough
Plan."

It was the Captain who carried out the bargaining

WITCH WORLD              163

over the ponies, and he was still counting the wedge-
shaped bits of metal which served as payment tokens in
the duchy as he joined Simon on the barge. Koris
grinned as he slapped the handful into his belt purse.

' 'I have trader blood and today I proved it," he said.
' 'Half again what I was prepared to take, enough to aid
in any palm-greasing when we come to Kars, should
that be needed. And provisions to keep us until that
hour." He dumped the bag he carried on board along
with the ax from which he had not been parted since he
took it from the hands of Volt.

There were two days of lazy current gliding on the
river. As it neared sunset on the second, and the walls
and towers of Kars stood out boldly not too far ahead,
Simon's hands went to his head. The pain once more
shot above his eyes with the intensity of a blow. Then it
was gone, leaving behind it a small vivid picture of an
ill-paved lane, a wall, and a door deep set therein. That
was their goal and it lay in Kars.

"This is it then, Simon?" TheCaptain's hand fell on
his shoulder.

"It is." Simon closed his eyes to the sunset colors
bending the river. Somewhere in that city he must find
the lane, the wall, the door, and meet with the one who
waited.

"A narrow lane, a wall, a door—"

Koris understood. "Little enough," he remarked.
His gaze was for the city, as if by the force of his will he
could hurl them across the space still separating the
barge from the waiting wharf.

Soon enough they came up the quay to the arch in the
city wall. Simon moved slowly in his chosen role,
trying to walk with the timidity of a man who could not
trust his sight. Yet his nerves were prickling, he was

certain that once within the city he could find the lane.
The thread which had drawn him across the duchy was
now a tight cord of direction.

Koris talked for them at the gate and his explanation
of Simon's disability, his plausible story—as well as a
gift passed under hand to the sergeant of the guard—got
them in. The Captain snorted as they passed down the
street and turned the corner.

"Were that man in Estcarp I'd have the sign off his
shield and his feet pointing on the road away before he
had time to name me his name! It has been said that the
Duke grows soft since he came into rule, but I would
not have believed it so."

"Every man is said to have his price," Simon re-
marked.

"True enough. But a wise officer knows the price of
the men under him and uses them accordingly. These
are mercenaries and can be bought in little things. But
perhaps if the code still prevails, they will stand firm in
battle for him who pays them. What is it?"

He asked that sharply for Simon had stopped, half
swung around.

"We head wrong. It is to the east."

Koris studied the street ahead. "There is an alley
four doors from here. You are sure?"

"I am sure."

Lest the sergeant of the gate be more astute than they
judged him, they went at a slow pace, Simon being
guided. The eastward alley led on into more streets.
Simon sheltered in a doorway while Koris sniffed their
back trail. In spite of his distinctive appearance the
Captain knew how to take cover, and he came flitting
back soon.

"If they have set any hound on us he is better than




164

WITCH WORLD

ANDRE NORTON

165

Estcarp's best, and that I do not believe. So now let us
get to earth before we are remarked to be remembered.
East still it is?"

The dull pain in Simon's head ebbed and flowed, he
could use it as a "hot" and "cold" guide in a strange
fashion. Then a particularly bad blast brought him to
the mouth of a curving lane and he stepped within. It
was walled with blank backs of buildings and what
windows looked out. on it were dark and curtained.

They quickened pace and Simon shot a glance at
each window as they passed, fearing to see a face there.
Then he saw it—the door of his vision. He was breath-
ing a little hard as he paused before it, not from the
exertion of pace, but rather from the turmoil inside him.
He raised his fist and rapped on the solid portal.

When there was no answer he was absurdly disap-
pointed. Then he pushed, to encounter a barrier which
must be backed with bars.

"You are sure this is it?" Koris prodded.
"Yes!" There was no outer latch, nothing he could
seize upon to force it open. Yet what he wanted, what
had brought him there, was on its other side.

Koris stepped back a pace or two, measuring the
height of the wall with his eye.

"Were it closer to dark we could mount this. But
such a move now might be noted."

Simon threw away caution and pounded, his assault
on the wood that of a drum. Koris caught at his arm.

' 'Would you rouse out the Duke's companies? Let us
lay up in a tavern and come back at nightfall."
"There is no need for that."
Koris' ax lifted from his shoulder. Simon's hand was
on his gun. The door showed a wedge of opening and

that low, characterless voice had come through it to
them.

A young man stood in that crevice between wood and
brick. He was much shorter than Simon, less in inches
even than Koris, and light of limb. The upper part of his
face was overhung with the visor of a battle helm, and
he wore mail without the badge of any lord.

From Simon he looked to the Captain, and the sight
of Koris appeared oddly to reassure him, for he stepped
back and motioned them within. They came into a
garden with brittle stalks of winter-killed flowers in
precise beds, past a dry fountain rimmed with the mark
of ancient scum where a stone bird with only half a beak
searched endlessly for a water reflection which no
longer existed.

Then another door into a house, and there the stream
of light was a banner of welcome. The young man
pushed before them, having sped from the barring of
the wall door. But another stood to bid them enter.

Simon had seen this woman in rags as she fled from a
pack of hunting hounds. And he had seen her in coun-
cil, wearing the sober robes of her chosen order. He had
ridden beside her when she went girt in mail with the
Guards. Now she wore scarlet and gold, with gems on
her fingers and a jeweled net coifing her short hair.

"Simon!" She did not hold out her hands to him,
offered no other greeting save the naming of his name,
yet he was warmed and at peace. "And Koris." She
voiced a gentle laughter which invited them both to
^are some private joke, and swept them the grand
surtsy of a court lady. "Have you come, lords, to
wnsult the Wise Woman of Kars?"

Koris grounded the half of his ax on the floor and




166            ANDRE NORTON

dropped the saddle bags which had been looped over J

his wide shoulder.                              |
"We have come at your bidding, or rather your|

bidding to Simon. And what we do here is for your|
saying. Though it is good to know that you are safe, ^

a Simon only nodded. Once again he could not find the |
proper words to express feelings he shrank from defin-a
ing too closely.

IV

LOVE POTION

Koris put down his goblet with a sigh.' 'First a bed such
as no barracks ever boasted and then two meals like
this. I have not tasted equal wine since I rode out of
Estcarp. Nor have I feasted in such good company."

The witch clapped her hands lightly. "Koris the
courtier! And Koris and Simon the patient. Neither of
you have yet asked what we do in Kars, though you
have been a night and part of a day under this roof."

"Under this roof," Simon repeated thoughtfully.
"Is this perchance the Estcarp embassy?"

She smiled. "Now that is clever of you, Simon. But,
no, we are not official. There is an Estcarp embassy in
Kars, housing a lord with impeccable background and
not a single smell of witchcraft about him. He dines
with the Duke upon formal occasions and provides a
splendid representation of respectability. This house is
located "in quite a different quarter. What we do
here—"

When she paused Koris asked lightly:

"I gather our aid is needed or Simon would not have
had that aching head of his. Do we kidnap Yvian for
your pleasure, or merely split a few skulls here and
there?"

The young man who moved quietly, spoke little, but
was always there, whom the witch named Briant and

167

168 ANDRE NORTON

yet had not explained to the Guardsmen, reached for a
dish of pastry balls. Stripped of the mail and helm he
had worn at their first meeting, he was a slender, almost
frail youngster, far too young to be well-schooled in the
use of the weapons he bore. Yet there was a firm set to
his mouth and chin, a steady purpose in his eyes which
argued that the woman from Estcarp had perhaps cho-
sen wisely in her recruiting after all.

"How, Briant," she said to him now, "shall they
bring us Yvian?" There was something approaching
mischief in that inquiry.

He shrugged as he bit into the pastry. "If you wish to
see him. I do not." And that faint emphasis on the "I"
was lost on neither of the men.

"No, it is not the Duke we plan to entertain. It is
another member of his household, the Lady Aldis."
Koris whistled. "Aldis! I would not think—"
"That we have any business with the Duke's leman?
Ah, you make the mistake of your sex there, Koris.
There is a reason I wish to know more of Aldis, and an
excellent one to urge her to come."
"Those being?" prompted Simon.
"Her power within the duchy is founded upon
Yvian's favor alone. While she holds him to her bed she
has what she wants most, not gauds and robes, but
influence. Men who wish to further some scheme must
seek out Aldis as a passage to the Duke's ear, even if
they are of the old nobility. As for women of rank—
Aldis has repaid heavily many old slights.

' 'When she first climbed to Yvian's notice the gauds
and glitter sufficed, but through the years her power has
come to mean more. Without that she is no better than a
wench in a dockside tavern, as well she knows.''

WITCH WORLD

169

"Does Yvian grow restive now?" Koris wanted to
know.

"Yvian has wed."

Simon watched the hand at the pastry dish. This time
it did not complete its mission, but went instead to the
goblet before Briant's plate.

"We heard talk in the mountains of the wedding of
Verlaine's heiress."

"Ax marriage," the witch explained. "He has not
seen his new bride yet."

"And the present lady fears a competition. Is the
lady of Verlaine then counted so beautiful?" Simon
asked idly but he caught a sudden swift glance from
Briant.

And it was the boy who answered. "She is not!"
There was a note in that hot denial which baffled Simon
with its bitter hurt. Who Briant was or where the witch
had found him, they had no idea, but perhaps the boy
had nursed a liking for the heiress and was disappointed
by his loss.

The witch laughed. "That, too, may be a matter of
opinion. But, yet, Simon, I think that Aldis does not lie
easy of nights since she heard the decree read forth in
Kars' market place—wondering how long Yvian will
continue to reach for her. In this state of mind she is
ripe for our purpose."

"I can see why the lady might seek aid," Simon
conceded, "but why yours?"

She was reproachful. "Though I do not go under my
^e colors as a Woman of Power out of Estcarp, I have
a small reputation in this city. It is not my first visit
here. Men and women, especially women, are ever
intrigued to hear of their futures. Two of Aldis' waiting

170 ANDRE NORTON

maids have come here in these past three days, arm
with false names and falser stories. When I named them
for what they are and told them a few facts, they went
scuttling back wry-faced to their mistress. She will
come soon enough, never fear."

"But why do you want her? If her influence witi
Yvian is on the wane—'' Koris shook his head. "I hav
never pretended to an understanding of women, bu
truly am I now in a maze. Gorm is our enemy—not
Karsten, at least, not actively."




"Gorm!" There was some emotion stirring behind
the smooth facade of her face. "Here also Gorm finds

roots."

"What!" Koris' hands slapped down hard on the
table between them. "How comes Gorm to the
duchy?"

"It is the other way around. Karsten goes to Gorm,
or a part of her manpower does.'' The witch, resting her
chin upon her clasped hands, her elbows on the board,
spoke earnestly.

' 'We saw at Sulcarkeep what the Kolder forces did to
the men of Gorm, using them for war weapons. But
. Gorm is only a small island and when she was overrun
many of her men must have died in battle before they
could be ... converted."

"That is true!" Koris' voice was savage. "They
could not have netted too many captives."

"Just so. And when Sulcarkeep fell Magnis Osberic
must have taken with him the major parts of the invad-
ing force with the destruction of the hold. In that he
served his people. Most of the trading fleet were at sea,
and it is the custom of the Sulcarmen to carry their
families with them on long voyages. Their haven on
this continent is gone, but their nation lives and they




WITCH WORLD

171

can build again. Only, can the Kolder so easily replace
the men they lost?"

"It must be that they lack manpower," Simon half
questioned, his mind busy with the possibilities that
suggested.

"Which may be true. Or for some other reason they
cannot or will not face us openly themselves. We know
so little concerning the Kolder, even when they squat
before our door. Now they are buying men."

"But slaves are chancy as fighting men," Simon
pointed out. "Put weapons in their hands and you ask
for revolt."

"Simon, Simon, have you forgotten what manner of
men we flushed from ambush on the sea road? Ask
yourself if they were ready for revolt. No, those who
inarch to Kolder war drums have no will left in them.
But this much is also true: for the past six months
galleys have come to an island lying off the sea-mouth
of Kars' river and prisoners from Karsten are transfer-
red to those ships. Some are from the prisons of the
Duke, other men are swept up on the streets and docks,
friendless men, or ones not to be missed.

"Such dealings cannot be kept secret forever. A
whisper here, a sentence there—piece by piece we have
gathered it. Men sold to the Kolder for Kolder pur-
poses. And if thus it happens in Karsten, why not in
Alizon? Now I can better understand why my mission
there failed and how I was so speedily uncovered. If the
Kolder have certain powers—as we believe that they
do—they could stalk me or any such as me, as the
hounds hunted us by scent on the moors.

"It is our belief now that the Kolder on Gorm is
gathering a force to the purpose of invading the main-
land. Perhaps on that day Karsten and Alizon shall both

ANDRE NORTON

discover that they provided the weapons for their own
defeat. That is why I deal with Aldis, we must know
more of this filthy traffic with Gorm and it could not
exist without the Duke's knowledge and consent."

Koris stirred restlessly. "Soldiers gossip also, lady.
A round of wine shops made by a blank shield with
tokens in his purse might bring us tidings in plenty."

She looked dubious. "Yvian is far from stupid. He
has his eyes and ears everywhere. Let one such as you
appear in the wine shops you mention,Captain, and he
shall hear of it."

Koris did not appear worried. "Did not Koris of
Gorm, a mercenary, lose his men and his reputation at
Sulcarkeep? Doubt not that I shall have a good story to
blat out if any should ask it of me. You," he nodded to
Simon, "had best lie close lest the tale we told to get
through the gates trips us up. But how about the young-
ling here?" He grinned at Briant.

Somewhat to Simon's surprise the generally sober-
faced youth smiled back timidly. Then he looked to the
witch as if for permission. And, equally to Simon's
astonishment, she gave it, with some of the same mis-
chief she had shown earlier.

"Briant is no ruffler of the barracks, Koris. But he
has been prisoned here long enough. And don't under-
rate his sword arm; I'll warrant he can and will amaze
you—in several ways!"

Koris laughed. "That I do not doubt at all, lady,
seeing that it is you who says it." He reached for the ax

by his chair.

"You'd best leave that pretty toy here," she warned.
"It, at least, will be remarked." She laid her hand on

the shaft.
It was as if her fingers were frozen there. And for the




WITCH WORLD              173

first time since their arrival Simon saw her shaken out
of her calm.

"What do you carry, Koris?" her voice was a little
shrill.

"Do you not know, lady? It came to me with the
good will of one who made it sing. And I guard it with
my life."

She snatched back her hand as if that touch had
seared flesh and bone.

"Willingly it came?"

Koris fired to that doubt. "About such a matter I
would speak only the truth. To me it came and only me
will it serve."

"Then more than ever do I say take it not into the
streets of Kars." That was half order, haif plea.

"Show me then a safe place in which to set it," he
countered, with openly displayed unwillingness.

She thought a moment, her finger rubbing at her
lower lip.' 'So be it. But later you must give me the full
tale, Captain. Bring it hither and I shall show you the
safest place in this house."

Simon and Briant trailed after them into another
room where the walls were hung with strips of a tapes-
try so ancient that only the vaguest hints of the original
designs could be surmised. One of these she bypassed
to come to a length of carved wall panel on which
fabulous beasts leered and snarled in high relief. She
pulled at this, to display a cupboard and Koris set the ax
far to its back.

Just as Simon had been aware of the past centuries
within Estcarp city, solid waves of time beating against
a man with all the pressure of ages, as he had also
known awe for the non-human in the Hole where Volt
had held silent court for dust and shadows, so here there

ANDRE NORTON

174

was also a kind of radiation from the walls, a tangible M
something in the air which made his skin creep.     'fa

Yet Koris was brisk about the business of storing his
treasure and the witch shut the cupboard as might a
housewife upon a broom. Briant had lingered in the
doorway, his usual impassive self. Why did Simon feel
this way? And he was so plagued by that that he stayed
when the others left, making himself walk slowly to the

center of the chamber.

There were only two pieces of furniture. One a
highbacked chair of black wood which might have
come from an audience hall. Facing it was a stool of the
same somber coloring. And on the floor between the
two an odd collection of articles Simon studied as if
trying to find in them the solution to his riddle.

First there was a small clay brazier in which might
bum a palm load of coals, no more. It stood on a
length of board, polished smooth. And with it was an
earthen bowl containing some gray-white meal, that
was flanked by a squat bottle. Two seats and that
strange collection of objects—yet there was something

else here also.
He did not hear the witch's return and was startled

out of his thoughts when she spoke.

"What are you, Simon?"

His eyes met hers.' 'You know. I told you the truth at
Estcarp. And you must have your own ways of testing

for falsehood."

"We have, and you spoke the truth. Yet I must ask

you again, Simon—what are you? On the sea road you
felt out that ambush before the Power warned me. Yet
you are a man!" For the first time her self-possession
was shaken. "You know what is done here—you feel
it!"




WITCH WORLD              175

"No. I only know that there is something here that I
can not see—yet it exists." He gave her the truth once
again.

"That is it!" She beat her fists together. "You
should not feel such things, and yet you do! I play a part
here. I do not always use the Power, that is, greater
power than my own experience in reading men and
women, in guessing shrewdly what lies within their
hearts or are their desires. Three quarters of my gift is
illusion; you have seen that at work. I summon no
demons, toll nothing here from another world by my
spells, which are said mainly to work upon the minds of
those who watch for wonders. Yet there is the Power
and sometimes it comes to my call. Then I can work
what are indeed wonders. I can smell out disaster,
though I may not always know what form it will take.
So much can I do—and that much is real! I swear to it
by my life!"

"That I believe," Simon returned. "For in my
world, too, there were things which could not be
explained with any sober logic."

"And you had your women to do such things?"

"No, it came to either sex there. I have had men
under my command who had foreknowledge of disas-
ter, of death, their own or others'. Also I have known
houses, old places, in which something lurked which
was not good to think about, something which could
not be seen or felt any more than we can now see or feel
what is with us here."

She watched him now with undisguised wonder.
Then her hand moved in the air, sketching between
them some sign. And that blazed for an instant in fire
hanging in space.

"You saw that?" Was that an accusation or trium-

ANDRE NORTON

176

phant recognition? He did not have time to discover
which, for, sounding through the house was the note of

a gong.

"Aldis! And she will have guards with her!" The
witch crossed the room to rip open that panel where
Koris had stored the ax. "In with you," she ordered.
"They will search the house as they always do, and it
would be better if they do not know of your presence.''

She allowed him no time for protest, and Simon
found himself cramped into space much too small.
Then the panel was slammed shut. Only it was more
spyhole than cupboard, he discovered. There were
openings among the carvings, which gave him air to
breath and sight of the room.

It had all been done so swiftly that he had been swept
along. Now he revolted and his hands went to that
panel, determined to be out. Only to discover, too late,
that there was no latch on his side and that he had been
neatly put into safe keeping, along with Volt's ax, until
the witch chose to have him out again.

His irritation rising, Simon pressed his forehead
against the carven screen to gain as full sight as he
could of the room. And he kept very still as the
woman from Estcarp reentered, to be pushed aside by
two soldiers who strode briskly about, flipping aside

strips of tapestry.

The witch was laughing as she watched them. Then
she spoke over her shoulder to one still lingering on the

other side of the threshold:

"It seems that one's word is not accepted in Kars.
Yet when has this house and those under its roof even
been associated with ill dealings? Your hounds may
find some dust, a spider web, or two—I confess that I
am not a notable housewife, but naught else, lady. And
they waste our time with their searching."




WITCH WORLD

177

There was a faint jeer in that, enough to flick one on
the raw. Simon appreciated her skill with words. She
spoke as an adult humoring children, a little impatient
to be about more important business. And subtly she
invited that unseen other to join her in adulthood.

"Halsfric! Donnar!"

The men snapped to attention.

"Prowl through the rest of this burrow if you will,
but leave us in private!"

They stood aside nimbly at the door as another
woman came in. The witch closed the portal behind
them before she turned to the newcomer, who dropped
her hooded cloak to let it lie in a saffron pool on the
floor.

"Welcome, Lady Aldis."

' 'Time is wasting, woman, as you pointed out." The
words were harsh, but the voice in which they were
spoken surrounded that bruskness with layers of velvet.
Such a voice could well twist a man to her will through
hearing it alone.

And the Duke's mistress had the form, not of the
tavern wench to which the witch had compared her,
over-ripe and full-curved, but of a young girl not fully
awakened to her own potentialities, with small high
breasts modestly covered, yet perfectly revealed by the
fabric of her robe. A woman of contradictions—
wanton and cool at one and the same time. Simon,
studying her, could well understand how she had man-
aged to hold sway over a proved lecher as long and
successfully as she had.

"You told Firtha—" again that sharp note swathed
in velvet.

"I told your Firtha just what I could do and what was
necessary for the doing," the witch was as brisk as her
client. "Does the bargain suit you?"

178 ANDRE NORTON

"It will suit me when it is proved successful and not
before. Give me that which makes me secure in Kars
and then claim your pay."

"You have a strange way of bargaining, lady. The
advantages are all yours."

Aldis smiled. "Ah, but if you have the power you
claim. Wise Woman, then you can blast as well as aid
and I shall be easy meat for you. Tell me what I must do
and be quick; I can trust those two outside only because
I hold both their lives with my tongue. But there are
other eyes and tongues in this city!"

"Give me your hand." The woman from Estcarp
picked up the tiny bowl of meal. As Aldis extended her
beringed hand, the other stabbed it with a needle drawn
from her clothing, letting a drop or two of blood fall
into the bowl. She added more moisture from the bot-
tle, mixing it into a batter. And coaxed the charcoal in

the tiny stove to a blaze.

"Sit down." She pointed to the stool. When the
other was seated, she slapped the board across her
knees, putting the stove upon it.

"Think on the one you want, keep him only in your

mind, lady."

The batter of that cake was spread out above that
handful of fire and the woman from Estcarp began to
sing. Strangely enough that something which had so
alerted Simon moments earlier, which had thickened
and curdled about them in that second when she had
traced the fiery sign in the air, was now ebbing from the

room.

But in its way her singing wove a spell of its own,
changing thought images, evoking another kind of re-
sponse. Simon, realizing it for what it was, for what it
could do, after an incredulous second or two, bit hard




WITCH WORLD

179

upon his lower lip. This—coming from the woman he
thought he was beginning to know. Fit magic for Aldis
and her like; for the cool cleanliness of Estcarp, no!
And it was beginning to work upon him also. Simon
screwed his fingers into his ears to close out that sultry
heat which seeped from words in the air to the racing
blood in his own body.

He took away that defense only when he saw the
witch's lips ceased to move. Aldis' face was a delicate
pink, her parted lips moist, her eyes fixed before her
unseeingly, until the witch lifted from her knees the
board and brazier. The woman from Estcarp took up the
cake, crumbled it into a square of white cloth and held it
out to her client.

' 'A pinch of this added to his food or drink." The life
had gone from the witch's voice; she spoke as one
drugged with fatigue.

Aldis whipped the package from her, thrust it into the
breast of her gown. "Be sure I shall use it rightly!" She
caught up her cloak, already on her way to the door. "I
shall let you know how I fare."

"I shall know, lady, I shall know."

Aldis was gone and the witch stood, one hand on the
back of the chair as if she needed its support. Her
expression was one of weary distaste with a faint trace

of shame, as if she had used ill means to gain a good
end.

v

THREE TIMES HORNED

Koris' hands moved in steady rhythm, polishing the ax
blade with slow strokes of a silken cloth. He had re-
claimed his treasure the minute he returned, and now,
perched on a window ledge, with it resting upon his

knees, he talked.

". . .he burst in as if the Kolder were breathing
upon his back and blurted it out to the sergeant who
spewed up half the wine I had paid for and was like to
choke loose his guts, while this fellow pawed at him
and yammered about it. I'd stake a week's looting of
Kars that there is a kernel of truth in it somewhere,
though the story's a muddle."

Simon was watching the other two in that room. He
did not expect the witch to reveal either surprise or the
fact that she might already have heard such a tale.
However, the youngster she had produced out of
nowhere might be less well schooled, and his attitude
proved Simon right. Briant was too well controlled.
One better trained in the game of concealment would

have displayed surprise.

"I take it," Simon cut through the Captain's report,
"that such a story is not a muddle to you, lady." The
wariness which had become a part of his relationship
with her since that scene with Aldis hours earlier was
the shield he raised against her. She might sense its
presence, but she made no effort to break through it.

180




WITCH WORLD

181

"Hunold is truly dead," her words were flat. "And
he died in Verlaine. Also is the Lady Loyse gone from
the earth. That much did your man have true, Cap-
tain," she spoke to Koris rather than to Simon. "That
both these happenings were the result of an Estcarp raid
is, of course, nonsense."

"That I knew, lady. It is not our manner of fighting.
But is this story a cover for something else? We have
asked no questions of you, but did the remainder of the
Guards come ashore on the Verlaine reefs?"

She shook her head. "To the extent of my know-
ledge, Captain, you and those who were saved with you
are the only survivors out of Sulcarkeep."

"Yet a report such as this will spread and be an
excuse for an attack on Estcarp." Koris was frowning
now. "Hunold stood high in Yvian's favor. I do not
think the Duke will take his death calmly, especially if
some mystery surrounds it."

"Fulk!" The name exploded out of Briant as if it
were a dart shot from his side arm. "This isFulk's way
out!" His pale face had expression enough now. "But
he would have to deal with Siric and Lord Duarte, too! I
think that Fulk has been very busy. That shieldman had
so many details of a raid, that he must have been
acquainted with a direct report."

"A messenger from the sea just landed. I heard him
babble that much," Koris supplied.

"From the sea!" The witch was on her feet, her
scarlet and gold draperies stirring about her. "Fulk of
Verlaine cannot be termed in any way a simpleton, but
Aere is a swiftness of move here, a taking advantage of
every chance happening which smacks of something
more than just Fulk's desire to protect himself against
Yvian's vengeance!"

ANDRE NORTON

182

There was a stormy darkness in her eyes as she
regarded all three of them coldly. She might almost
have been numbering them among hostile elements.
"This I do not like. Oh, some tale from Verlaine might
have been expected; Fulk needed a story to throw into
Yvian's teeth lest the stones of his towers be rained
down about his own ears. And he is perfectly capable of
spitting both Siric and Durate to give added cre-
dence and cover his tracks. But the moves come too
swiftly, too well fitting into a pattern! I would have

sworn—"

She strode up and down the chamber, her scarlet
skirts swirling about her. "We are mistresses of illu-
sion, but I will take oath before the Power of Estcarp
that that storm was no illusion! Unless the Kolder have
mastered the forces of nature—'' Now she stood very
still, and her hands flew to her mouth as if to trap words
already spoken. "If the Kolder have mastered—" her
voice came as a whisper. "I can not believe that we
have been moved hither and yon at their bidding! That I
dare not believe! Yet—" She whirled about and came

directly to Simon.

"Briant I know, and what he does and why, all thati
know. And Koris I know, and what drives him and
why. But you—man out of the mists of Tor, I do not
know. If you are more than you seem, then perhaps we
have brought our own doom upon us."

Koris stopped polishing the ax blade. The cloth fell
to the floor as his hands closed about the haft.' 'He was
accepted by the Guardian," he said neutrally, but his
attention centered upon Simon with the impersonal
appraisal of a duelist moving forward to meet a chal-
lenge.

"Yes!" The woman from Estcarp agreed to that.




WITCH WORLD

183

' 'And it is impossible that what Kolder holds to its core
cannot be uncovered by our methods. They could cloak
it, but the very blankness of that cloak would make it
suspect! There is one test yet." She plucked at the
throat fastening of her robe and drew forth the dull
jewel she had worn out of Estcarp. For a long moment
she held it in her hands, gazing down into its heart, and
then she slipped the chain from about her neck and held
it out to Simon. "Take it!" she ordered.

Koris cried out and scrambled off the ledge. But
Simon took it into his hand. At first touch the thing was
as smooth and cold as any polished gem, then it began
to warm, adding to that heat with every second. Yet the
head did not bum, it had no effect upon his flesh. Only
the stone itself came to life; trails of opalescent fire
crawled across its surface.

"I knew!" Her husky half-whisper filled the room.
"No, not Kolder! Not Kolder; Kolder could not hold
without harm, fire the Power and take no hurt! Wel-
come, brother in power!'' Again she sketched a symbol
in the air which glowed as brightly as the gem before it
faded. Then she took the stone from his hold and
restored it to its hiding place beneath her robe.

"He is a man\ Shape changing could not work so,
nor is it possible to befool us in the barracks where he
has lived," Koris spoke first. "And how does a man
hold the Power?"

"He is a man out of our time and space. What
chances in other worlds we cannot say. Now I will
swear that he is not Kolder. So perhaps he is that which
Kolder must face in the final battle. But now we
must ..."

Their preoccupation was sharply broken by the burr
of a signal in the wall. Alert, Simon and Koris looked to

184 ANDRE NORTON

the witch. Briant drew his gun. "The wall gate," he

said.

"Yet it is the right signal, though the wrong time.
Answer it, but be prepared."

He was already half out of the room. Koris and
Simon sped after him to the garden door. As they
reached outside, free from the deadening thickness of
the walls of that unusual house, they heard a clamor
from the town. Simon was plagued by a wisp of
memory. There was a note in that far-off shouting
which he had surely heard before. Koris looked star-
tled.

"That is a mob! The snarl of a hunting mob."

And Simon, remembering a red horror out of his own
past, nodded briskly. He poised the dart gun to wel-
come whoever stood without the wall gate.

There was no mistaking the race of the man who
stumbled in to them. A bloody gash could not disguise
Estcarp features. He fell forward and Koris caught him
about the body. Then they were all nearly rocked from
their feet as a blast of sound and displaced air beat in on
them and the very ground moved under them.

The man in Koris' hold moved, smiled, tried to
speak. Deafened momentarily they could not hear.
Briant slammed shut the gate and set its locking bars.
Together Simon and the Captain half carried, half sup-
ported the fugitive into the house.

He recovered enough to sketch a salute to the witch
as they brought him to her. She measured some bluish
liquid into a cup and held it to his lips as he drank.

"Lord Vortimer?"

He leaned back in the chair into which they had
lowered him. "You just heard his passing, lady—in
that thunder clap! With him went all of our blood




WITCH WORLD

185

fortunate to reach the embassy in time. For the rest—
they are being hunted in the streets. Yvian has ordered
the three times homing for all of Estcarp or of the old
blood! He is like a man gone mad!"

"This too?" She pressed her hands tight against her
temples as if she might so ease some almost intolerable
pain. "We have no time, no time at all?"

"Vortimer sent me to warn you. Do you choose to
follow him along the same path, lady?"

"Not yet."

"Those who have been homed can be cut down
without question wherever they are found. And in Kars
today the cutting down does not come swiftly as a clean
death," he warned dispassionately. "I do not know
what hopes you may have of the Lady Aldis—"

The witch laughed.' 'Aldis is no hope at all, Vortgin.
Five of us . . ." She turned the cup around and around
in her fingers and then looked directly to Simon.
"More depends upon this than just our lives alone.
There are those in the outer parts of Karsten of the old
blood, who, warned, might safely get through the
mountains to Estcarp, and so swell our ranks. Also
what we have learned here, patchy though it is, must be
taken back. I could not hope to summon power
enough—you will have to aid me, brother!"

"But I don't know how—I have no use of power,"
he protested.

"You can back me. It is our only hope."
Koris came away from the window where he had
been peering into the garden.
"Shape changing?"

"It is the only way. And how long will it hold?'' she
shrugged.

^origin ran his tongue across his lips. "Set me




ANDRE NORTON

186

outside this cursed city and I'll rouse your countryside:

for you. I have kin in the backlands who'll move on my

word!"

' 'Come!'' She led the way to that tapestried room o\

magic. But just inside the door Koris halted.

"What I have been given I bear with me. Put on me
no shape in which I cannot handle the gift of Volt."

"I would call you lack-wilted," she flared back, "if
I did not know the worth of that biter of yours. But it is
not of human make and so may change shape also in
illusion. We can only try. Now let us make ready,

quickly!"

She pulled a strip of carpet from the floor as Simon
and Koris shoved the chair and stool, bore the other
things to the other end of the room. Stooping she traced
lines with the jewel of power and those lines glowed
faintly in the form of a five pointed star. A little de-
fiantly Koris dropped his ax in the center of that. |

The witch spoke to Simon. "Shapes are not changed
in truth, but an illusion is created to bemuse those who
would track us down. Let me draw upon your power to
swell my own. Now," she glanced around and brought
the small clay brazier to sit by the ax, puffing its coals
into life, "we can do what is to be done. Make your-
selves ready."

Koris caught Simon by the arm. "Strip—to the
skin—the power does not work otherwise!" He was
shedding his own jerkin. And Simon obeyed orders,
both of them aiding Vortgin.

Smoke curled up from the brazier, filling the room
with a reddish mist in which Koris' squat form, the
fugitive's muscular body were half hidden.       I

"Take your stand upon the star points—one to each
point," came the witch's order out of the murk. "But
you, Simon—next to me."

WITCH WORLD              187

He followed that voice, losing Koris and the other
man in the fog. A white arm came out to him, a hand
reached for and enfolded his. He could see under his
feet the lines of a star point.

Someone was singing—at a far distance. Simon was
lost in a cloud where he floated without being. Yet at
the same time he was warm—not outwardly, but in-
wardly. And that warmth floated from his body, down
his right arm. Simon thought that if he could watch it he
would be able to see that flow—blood red, warm—
being drained in a steady stream. Yet he saw nothing
but the greyish mist, he only knew that his body still
existed.

The singing grew louder. Once before he had heard
such singing—then it had aroused his lusts, and urged
him to satisfy appetites he had beaten under by force of
will. Now it worked upon him in another way, and he
no longer loathed it fiercely.

He had closed his eyes against the endless swirling of
the mist, stood attuned to the singing so that each note
throbbed within his body to be a part of him, made into
flesh and bone from this time forth—yet also did that
warm flood trickle out of him.

Then his hand fell limply back against his thigh. The
drain had ceased and the singing was fading. Simon
opened his eyes. Where the murk had been a solid wall
it was now showing holes. And in one of them he
caught sight of a brutish face, a beastly caricature of
human. But in it sat Koris' sardonic eyes. And a little
beyond was another with disease-eaten skin and a flat
lid where an eye had once been.

He wearing the Captain's eyes glanced from Simon
to his neighbor and grinned widely, displaying decayed
and yellowed fangs. "A fair company we shall be!"

' 'Dress you!'' snapped the witch from the disappear-




ANDRE NORTON

188

ing murk.' "This day you have come out of the stews of
Kars to loot and kill. It is your kind who thrive upon

homings!"
They put on the gear they had brought into Kars, but

not enough to go too well clad for the dregs of the city
that they seemed. And Koris took up from the floor—-
not the Ax of Volt—but a rust incrusted pole set with
hooks, the purpose of which Simon would rather not

imagine.

There was no mirror to survey his new self, but he
gathered that he was as disreputable as his companions.
He had been expecting changes in the witch and Briant
also—but not what he saw. The woman of Estcarp was
a crone with filthy ropes of grayish hair about her
hunched shoulders, her features underlined with an-
cient evil. And the youngster was her opposite. Simon
stared in pure amazement, for he fronted a girl being
laced into the scarlet and gold gown discarded by the

witch.

Just as Briant had been pallid and colorless, here was
rich beauty, more than properly displayed since her
tiring maid did not bother to pull tight breast laces.
Instead the crone quirked a finger at Simon.

"This is your loot, bold fellow. Hoist the pretty on
your shoulder, an if you grow tired of your burden-
well, these other rogues will lend a hand. Play your part
well." She gave the seeming girl a shove between her
shoulder blades which sent her stumbling into Simon's
arms. He caught her up neatly, swinging her across his
shoulder, while the witch surveyed them with the eye of
a stage manager and then gave a tug to strip the bodice
yet farther from those smooth young shoulders.

Inwardly Simon was astonished at the completeness ^
of the illusion. He had thought it would be for the eyes




WITCH WORLD              189

only, but he was very conscious that he held what was
also feminine to the touch. And he had to keep remind-
ing himself that it was indeed Briant he so bore out of
the house.

They found Kars harbored many such bands as theirs
that day. And the sights they had to witness, the aid
they could not give, ate into them during that journey to
the wharves. There was a watch at the gates right
enough, but as Simon approached, with his now moan-
ing victim slung over his shoulder, his raffish fellows
slinking behind him, as if to welcome the leavings of
his feast, the witch scuttled ahead with a bag. She
tripped and fell so that the brilliant contents of her
looter's catchall rolled and spilled across the roadway.

Those on guard sprang into action, the officer kick-
ing the crone out of his way. But one man had a slightly
higher sense of duty, or perhaps he was more moved by
Simon's supposed choice of pillage. For he swung a
pike down in front ofTregarth and grinned at him over
that barrier.

"You've got you a soft armload there, fishguts. Too
good for you. Let a better man sample her first!"

Koris' pole with its rusty hooks snaked out, hooking
his feet from under him. As he sprawled they darted
through the gate and along the wharf, other guards in
pursuit.

"In!" Briant was pulled out of Simon's grasp,
thrown out into the flood of the river, the Captain
following in a cleancut dive to come up beside the
draggling red and gold clad body. Vortgin took off at a
stumbling run. But Simon, seeing that Koris had Briant
t6 hand, looked back for the witch.

There was a flurry down the wharf and a tangle of
"gures. Gun in hand he ran back, pausing for three snap

ANDRE NORTON

190

shots, each taking out a man, dead or wounded. His
rush brought him there in time to see that twisted
gray-haired body lying still while a sword swung
downward aimed at the scrawny throat.

Simon shot twice more. Then his fist struck flesh,
crushed it against bone. Someone shrieked and fled as
he scooped up the witch, finding her weight more than
Briant's. Bearing her over his shoulder he staggered to
the nearest barge, his lungs laboring as he dodged
among the piled cargo on its deck, heading for the far

rail and open water.

The woman in his arms came to life suddenly, push-
ing against him as if he were indeed a captor she might
fight. And that overbalanced Simon so that they went
over together, tumbling to strike the river with a force
he had not expected. Simon swallowed water, choked,
and struck out instinctively, if clumsily.

His head broke the surface and he stared about him
for the witch, to see a wrinkled arm, hampered by water
soaked rags cutting in a swimmer's stroke.

"Ho!"

The call came from a barge floating downstream and
a rope flicked over its side. Simon and the witch gained
the deck, only to have Koris wave them impatiently to
the opposite rail into the river again, the craft serving as
a screen between them and the city shore.

But here a small boat with Vortgin sitting therein,
Briant leaning over the side being actively sick into the
water, while he clutched his red robe about him as if
indeed he had been the victim of rapine. As they scram-
bled down to this refuge, Koris pushed them away from
the barge, using the point of his hook spear.

"I thought you lost that at the gate!"

Koris' ruffian face mirrored his astonishment at Si-




WITCH WORLD

191

mon's comment. "This I would never lose! Well, we
have us a breathing space. They will believe us hiding
on the barge. At least so we can hope. But it would be
wise to head to the other shore as soon as this has drifted
far enough from the wharves."

They agreed with the Captain's suggestion, but the
minutes during which they remained wedded to the
barge were very long ones. Briant straightened at last,
but he kept his face turned from them as if heartily
ashamed of the guise he wore. And the witch sat in the
bow surveying the far shore with searching intensity.

They were lucky in that night was closing in. And
Vortgin knew the surrounding country well. He would
be able to guide them inland across the fields, avoiding
houses and farms, until they had put enough distance
between them and Kars to feel reasonably safe.

"Thrice horned—yes, that sentence he can enforce
in Kars. For the city is his. But the old lords have ties
with us, and where they lack such ties or sympathy,
they may be moved by jealousy ofYvian.They may not
actively aid us, but neither will they help the Duke's
men cut us down. It will be largely a matter of their
closing their eyes and ears, hearing and seeing
naught."

"Yes, Karsten is now closed to us," the witch
agreed with Vortgin. "And I would say to all of the old
race that they should flee borderward, not leaving es-
cape until too late. Perhaps the Falconers will aid in this
matter. Aie . . . aie . . . our night comes!"

But Simon knew that she did not mean the physical
"ight closing about their own small party.

VI

FALSE HAWK

They lay behind the winter pressed stack in the field,
Simon, Koris, and Vortgin, wisps of the dank straw
pulled over their bodies, watching what went on at the
crossroads hamlet beyond. There were the brilliant
blue-green surcoats of the Duke's men, four of them,
well mounted for hard and far riding, and a fringe of the
dull-robed villagers. With some ceremony the leader of
the small force out of Kars brought his horse beneath
the Pole of Proclamation and put a hom to his lips, its
silver plating catching fire from the morning sun.   »

"One . . . two . . . three ..." Koris counted™
those blasts aloud. They heard them clearly, all thr
countryside must have heard them, although what th
Duke's men said to the assembly afterwards the:

caught only as a mumble.

Koris looked to Vortgin. "They spread it fasi
enough. You'd best be on your way, if any of your kir

is to be warned at all."

Vortgin thrust his belt dagger deep into the earth o
the field as if he were planting it in one of the blu'
coated riders. "I'll need more than my two legs."

"Just so. And there is what we all seek." Kori
jerked a thumb at the ducal party.

"Beyond the bridge the road takes a cut through
small woods," Simon thought aloud.

192

WITCH WORLD

193

Koris' pseudo-face expressed malicious apprecia-
tion of that hint. "They'll soon be through with the
chatter. We'd best move."

They crawled away from their vantage point, crossed
the river ford, and found the woods track. The roads
leading north were not well kept. Yvian's rule in this
district had been covertly opposed by noble and com-
moner alike. Away from the main highways all pas-
sages tended to be only rough tracks.

On either side banks rose, brush and grass covered. It
was not a safe place for any wayfarer, doubly suspect
for anyone in the Duke's livery.

Simon settled into concealment on one side of that
cut, Koris chose a stand closer to the river, prepared to
head off any retreat. And Vortgin was across from
Simon. They had only to wait.

The leader of the messengers was no fool. One of his
. men rode ahead, studying every bush the wind stirred,
every clump of suspiciously tall grass. He passed be-
tween the hidden men and trotted on. After him came
the one who bore the hom, and a companion, while the
fourth man brought up the rear.

Simon shot as the rearguard drew level with his
position. But the man who fell from the expertly aimed
dart was the lead scout.

The leader swung his mount around with the skill of
an expert horseman, only to see the rearguard collapse
from his saddle coughing blood."

"Sul. . .Sul. . .Sul!" The battle cry Simon had
last heard in the doomed seaport rose shrilly. A dart
creased Simon's shoulder, ripping leather and burning
skin-—the leader must have cat's eyes.

The remaining shieldman tried to back his leader in
Aat attack, until Vortgin arose out of hiding and threw

ANDRE NORTON

194

the dagger he had played with. The weapon whirled end
over end until its heady knob struck the back of the
other's head at the base of his skull and he wenlj
down without a protesting sound.

Hooves pawed the air over Simon's head. Then thq
horse overbalanced and crashed back, pinning his ndeij
under him. Koris sprang out of hiding and the hooked
pole battered down upon the feebly struggling man.

They set to work to strip the riders, secure their
mounts. Luckily the horse which had fallen, struggled
to its feet, frightened and blowing but without any great
injury. The bodies were dragged out of sight into the
brush and the mail shirts, the helmets and the extra
weapons were bound on the saddles before the horses
were led to the deserted sheep fold where the fugitives

had sheltered.

There the men walked into a hot quarrel. The with-
ered crone, the dark beauty in rent gold and scarlet
fronted each other hot-eyed. But their raised voices fell
silent as Simon came through a gap in the rotting fence.
Neither spoke until they brought up the horses and their
burdens. Then the girl in red gave a little cry and
pounced upon one of those bundles of leather and mail.
"I want my own shape—and now!" She spat at the

witch.

Simon could understand that. At Briant's age a role

as he had been forced to assume would be more galling
than slavery. And none of them could wish to keep on
wearing the decidedly unattractive envelopes the
woman from Estcarp had spun for them, even though
they had been so delivered out of Kars.

"Fair enough," he endorsed that. "Can we change
by our—or rather your will, lady? Or is there a time
period on this shape business?"

WITCH WORLD              195

Through her tangle of rough locks the witch
frowned. "Why waste the time? And we are not yet out
of the reach of Yvian's messengers—though appa-
rently you have dealt with some of them." She picked
up one of the surcoats as if to measure it against her own
bent person.

Briant glowered, gathering an armload of male cloth-
ing to him. The pouting lips of his girl's face set
stubbornly. "I go away from here as myself, or I don't
go at all!" he announced and Simon believed him.

The woman from Estcarp gave in. From beneath her
ragged bodice she pulled a bag and shook it at Briant.
' 'Off with you to the stream then. Wash with a handful
of this for your soaping. But be careful of it, for this
supply must serve us all."

Briant snatched the bag, and, with the clothing, he
gathered up his full skirts to scuttle away as if he feared
his new possessions might be torn from him.

"What about the rest of us?" Simon demanded in-
dignantly, ready to take off after the runaway.

Koris secured the horses to the moldering fence.
His villainous face could not look anything but hide-
ous, but somehow he managed to suggest honest
amusement in his laughter. "Let the cub get rid of his
trappings in peace, Simon. After all, he hasn't pro-
tested before. And those skirts must have irked him."

"Skirts?" echoed Vortgin in some surprise.
"But ..."

"Simon is not of the old race." The witch combed
her hair with her long nails.' 'He is new to our ways and
shape changing. You are right, Koris," she glanced
oddly at the Captain, "Briant can be left to make his
transformation in peace."

The garments looted from the Duke's unfortunate

196           ANDRE NORTON




messengers hung loosely on the young warrior who ;

returned at a far bolder gait from the stream. He tossed a
ball of red stuff to the back of the shelter and stamped
earth over it with an energy which approached attack as
Simon and the rest went to the water.

Koris rubbed and laved his rusty hooked pole before
he dipped his body, and continued to hold the Ax of
Volt as he scrubbed himself. They made a choice from .
the tumbled clothing, Koris again assuming the mail I
shirt he had worn out of Kars since no other would fit
him. But he shrugged one of the surcoats over it, a;

precaution followed by both his companions.

Simon handed the bag to the witch when they re-
turned and she nursed it for a moment in one hand, then
restored it to its former hiding place. "You are a brave a;

company of warriors. Me, I am your prisoner. With ^
your hoods and your helms Estcarp does not show so
strong in you. Vortgin, you alone have the print of the
old race. But were I to be seen in my true face I would
damn you utterly. I shall wait before I break this

shape."

So it was that they rode out of that hiding place, four
men in the Duke's colors and the crone perched behinds
Briant. The horses were fresh, but they held the pace toj
a comfortable trot as they worked a path across thej
country, avoiding the open roads until they reached a|
point where Vortgin must turn east.

"North along the trade roads," the witch leaned
from her seat behind Briant to urge.' 'If we can alert the
Falconers they should see fugitives safely through the
mountains. Tell your people to leave their gear and
bring with them only their weapons and food, what may
be carried on pack animals. And may the Power ride
with you, Vortgin, for those you can urge into Estcar"
will be blood for our veins!"

WITCH WORLD

197

Koris pulled the horn strap from his shoulder and
passed it over.' 'This may be your passport if you flush
any of Yvian's forces before you get into the back
country. Luck be yours, brother, and seek out the
Guards in the North. There is a shield in their armory to
fit your shoulder!"

Vortgin saluted and kicked his horse into a flurry of
speed eastward.

"And now?" the witch asked Koris.

"The Falconers."

She cackled. "You forget. Captain, old and
shriveled as I seem, with all the juices age-sucked from
me, still am I female and the hold of the hawk men is
barred to me. Set Briant and me across the border and
then seek out your women-hating bird men. Rouse
them up as best you may. For a border abristle with
sword points will give Yvian something else to think
about. And if they can afford our cousins safe passage,
they will put us deep in their debt. Only," she plucked
at the surcoat on Briant's shoulders, "I would say to
you throw these name signs of a lord you do not serve
away, or you may find yourself pinned to some moun-
tain tree before you have time to make your true nature
known."

Simon was not surprised this time to find they were
being observed by a hawk, nor did he think it odd to
hear Koris address the bird clearly, giving their true
identies and explaining their business in the foothills.
He covered the back trail while the Captain took the
lead, the witch and Briant riding between them. They
had parted with Vortgin in midafternoon and it was
now close to sunset, their only food during the day the
rations found in the saddlebags of the captured horses.

Now Koris pulled up until the others joined him.
While the Captain spoke he still faced into the rising

198 ANDRE NORTON

mountains and it seemed to Simon as if he had lost a
little of his robust confidence.

"This I do not like. That message must have been
relayed by the bird's communicator, and the frontier
guards could not have been too far away. They should
have met us before now. When we were in the Eyrie
they were eager enough to promote a common cause
with Estcarp."

Simon eyed the slopes ahead uneasily. "I do not take
a trail such as this in the dark without a guide. If you
say, Captain, that they are not following custom, then
that is all the more reason for staying clear of their
territory. I would say camp at the first likely spot."

It was Briant who broke in then, his head up, his
attention for the bird wheeling overhead.

"That one does not fly right!" The youngster, drop-
ping the reins of his horse, held his hands together to
mimic the wings of a bird. "A true bird goes so—and a
falcon so—many times have I watched them. But this
one, see—flap, flap, flap—it is not right!"

They were all watching the circling bird now. To
Simon's eyes it was the same sort of black and white
feathered sentry as had found them outside the Hole of
Volt, as he has seen on the saddle perches of the
Falconers. However he would be the first to admit that
he knew nothing of birds.

"Can you whistle it down?" he asked Koris.

The Captain's lips pursed and clear notes rang on the
air.

At that same moment Simon's dart gun went up.
Koris turned with a cry and struck at Simon's arm, but
the shot had already been fired. They saw the dart
strike, piercing just the point of the white Vee upon the
bird's breast. But there was no faltering in its flight, no
sign that it had taken any hurt from the bolt.




WITCH WORLD

199

"I told you it is no bird!" cried Briant. "Magic!"

They all looked to the witch for an explanation, but
her attention was riveted on that bird, the dart still
protruding from its body, as it made low lazy circles
overhead.

"No magic of the Powers." That answer seemed
forced out of her against her will. "What this is, I
cannot tell you. But it does not live as we know life.''

"Kolder!" Koris spat.

She shook her head slowly. "If it is Kolder, it is not
nature-tampering as it was with the men ofGorm. What
it is I cannot tell."

"We'll have to get it down. It is lower since that dart
struck it; perhaps the weight pulls it." Simon said,
"Let me have your cloak," he added to the witch,
dismounting.

She handed him that ragged garment and looping it
over his arm Simon began to climb the wall beside the
narrow track they had followed to this place. He hoped
that the bird would remain where it was, content to fly
above them. And he was sure it drew nearer earth with
every circle.

Simon waited, flipping the cloak out a little. He
flung it, and the bird flew unwarily into the improvised
net. When Simon tried to draw it back the captive fell
free, to fly blindly on and smash head first against the
rock wall.

Tregarth leaped down to scoop up what lay on the
ground. Real feathers right enough—but under them!
He gave a whistle almost as clear and carrying as Koris'
bird summons, for entangled in the folds of torn skin
and broken feathers was a mass of delicate metal fil-
ings, tiny wheels and wires, and what could only be a
motor of strange design. Holding it in his two hands he
went back to the horses.




ANDRE NORTON

200

"Are you sure the Falconers use only real hawks?"
he asked of the Captain.

"Those hawks are sacred to them." Koris poked a
finger into the mess Simon held, his face blank with
amazement. "I do not think that this thing is any of
their fashioning, for to them the birds are their power
and they would not counterfeit that lest it either turn
upon them or depart utterly."

' 'Yet someone or something has tossed into the air of
these mountains hawks which are made, not hatched,"

Simon pointed out.

The witch leaned closer, reaching out a finger to
touch as Koris had done. Then her eyes raised to Si-
mon's and there was a question in them, a shadow of

concern.

"Outworld—" she spoke hardly above a whisper.
"This is not bred of our magic, or of the magic of our
time and space. Alien, Simon, alien ..."

Briant interrupted her with a cry and pointing a
finger. A second black and white shape was over their
heads, swooping lower. Simon's free hand went to the
gun, but the boy reached down from his saddle to strike
at Tregarth's wrist and spoil his aim.
"That is a real bird!"

Koris whistled and the hawk obeyed that summons in
the clean strike of its breed, settling on a rock crown,
the tip of the same pinnacle against which the counter-
feit had dashed itself to wreckage.

"Koris of Estcarp," the Captain spoke to it, "butlet
him who flies you come swiftly, winged brother, for
there is ill here and perhaps worse to come!'' He waved
his hand and the falcon took once more to the air, to

head straight for the peaks.

Simon put the other thing into one of his saddle bags-


WITCH WORLD

201

In the Eyrie he had been intrigued by the communica-
tion devices which the true falcons bore. A machine so
delicate and so advanced in technical ability was out of
place in the feudal fortress of its users. And what of the
artificial lighting and heating systems of Estcarp, or the
buildings of the Sulcarkeep, of that energy source Os-
beric had blown up to finish the port? Were all these
vestiges of an earlier civilization which had vanished
leaving only traces of its inventions behind? Or—were
they grafts upon this world from some other source?
Simon's eyes may have been on the trail they rode but
his wits were tumbling the problem elsewhere.

Koris had spoken of Volt's non-human race preced-
ing mankind here. Were these remnants of theirs? Or
had the Falconers, the mariners of Sulcarkeep, learned
what they wished, what served their purposes best from
someone, or something else, perhaps overseas? He
wanted a chance to examine the wreckage of the false
hawk, to try and assess from it if he could the type of
mind, or training, which could create such an object.

The Falconers emerged from the mountain slopes as
if they had stepped from the folds of the ground. And
they waited for the party from Kars to approach, neither
denying them passage, nor welcoming them.

"Faltjar of the southern gate," Koris identified their
leader. He swept his own helm from his head to display
his face plainly in the fading light. "I am Koris of
Estcarp, and I ride with Simon of the Guards."

"Also with a female!" The return was cold and the
Falcon on Faltjar's saddle perch shook its wings and
screamed.

"A lady of Estcarp whom I must put safely beyond
"ie mountains,'' corrected the Captain in a tone as cold
and with the sharpness of a rebuke. "We make no claim




ANDRE NORTON

202

upon you for shelter, but there is news which your Lord
of Wings should hear."

"A way through the mountains you may have,
Guard ofEstcarp. And the news you may give to me; it
shall be retold to the Lord of Wings before moonrise.
But in your hail you spoke of ill here and worse to
follow. That I must know, for it is my duty to man the
southern slopes. Does Karsten send forth her men?"

"Karsten has thrice horned all of the old race and
they flee for their lives. But also there is something
else. Simon, show him the false hawk."

Simon was reluctant. He did not want to yield up that
machine until he had more time to examine it. The
mountaineer looked upon the broken bird he took from
the saddlebag, smoothing a wing with one finger,
touching an open eye of crystal, pulling aside a shred of
feathered skin to see the metal beneath.

' 'This flew?'' he demanded at last, as if he could not
believe in what he saw and felt.

' 'It flew as one of your birds, and kept watch upon us
after the fashion of your scouts and messengers."

Faltjar drew his forefinger caressingly down the head
of his own bird as if to assure himself that it was a living

creature and not such a copy.

"Truly this is a great ill. You must speak yourself
with the Lord of Wings!" Clearly he was torn between
the age-old customs of his people and the necessity for
immediate action. "If you did not have the female—the
lady," he corrected with an effort, "but she may not

enter the Eyrie."

The witch spoke. "Let me camp with Briant, and
you ride to the Eyrie, Captain. Though I say to you,
bird man, the day comes soon when we must throw
aside many old customs, both we of Estcarp and you ot

WITCH WORLD

203

the mountains, for it is better to be alive and able to
fight, than to be bound by the chains of prejudice and
dead! There is a riving of the border before us such as
this land has never seen. And all men of good will must
stand together."

He did not look at her, nor answer, though he half
sketched a salute, giving the impression that that was a
vast concession. And then his hawk took to the air with
a cry, and Faltjar spoke directly to Koris.

' "The camp shall be made in a safe place. Then, let us
ride!"

PART IV: VENTURE OF GORM

205

I

THE RIVING OF THE BORDER

A column of smoke penciled into the air, broken by
puffs as more combustible materials caught. Simon
reined up on the rise to gaze back at the site of another
disaster for the Karsten forces, another victory for his
own small, hard-riding, tough-punching troop. How
long their luck would hold, none of them could guess.
But as long as it did, they would continue to blast into
the plains, covering up the escape lines of those set-
faced, dark-haired people from the outlands who came
in family groups, in well armed and equipped bodies,
or singly at a weaving pace dictated by wounds and
exhaustion. Vortgin had done his work well. The old
race, or what was left of it, was withdrawing over a
border the Falconers kept open, into Estcarp.

Men without responsibilities for families or clans,
men who had excellent cause to want to meet Karsten
levies with naked blades, stayed in the mountains,
providing a growing force to be led by Koris and
Simon. Then by Simon alone, as the Captain of the
Guard was summoned north to Estcarp to recommand
there.

This was guerilla warfare as Simon had learned it in
another time and land, doubly effective this time be-
cause the men under him knew the country as those sent
gainst them did not. For Tregarth discovered that these

207

208 ANDRE NORTON

silent, somber men who rode at his back had a queer
affinity with the land itself and with the beasts and the
birds. Perhaps they were not served as the Falconers
were by their trained hawks, but he had seen odd things
happen, such as a herd of deer move to muddle horse
tracks, crows betray a Karsten ambush. Now he lis-
tened, believed, and consulted with his sergeants be-
fore any strike.

The old race were not bred to war, though they
handled sword and gun expertly. But with them it was a
disagreeable task to be quickly done and forgotten.
They killed cleanly with dispatch and they were incap-
able of such beastliness as the parties from the moun-
tains had come upon where fugitives had been cut off
and captured.

It was once when Simon left such a site, white,
controlling his sickness by will power alone, that he
was startled by a comment from the set-faced young
man who had been his lieutenant on that foray.

"They do not do this of their own planning."

"I have seen such things before," Simon returned,
"and that was also done by human beings to human
beings."

The other who had held his own lands in the back
country and had escaped with his bare life from that
holding some thirty days earlier, shook his head.

"Yvian is a soldier, a mercenary. War is his trade.
But to kill in such ways is to sow black hate against a
future reaping. And Yvian is lord in this land; he would
not willingly rip apart his own holding and bring it to
ruin—he is too keen-witted a man. He would not give
orders for the doing of such deeds."

"Yet we have seen more than one such sight. They
could not all be the work of only one band commanded
by a sadist, or even two such."

WITCH WORLD

209

"True. That is why I think we now fight men who are
possessed."

Possessed! The old meaning of that term in his own
world came to Simon—possession by demons. Well,
that a man could believe having seen what they had
been forced to look upon. Possessed by demons—or—
the memory of the Sulcarkeep road flooded into his
mind; possessed by a demon—or emptied of a soul!
Kolder again?

From then on, much as it revolted him, Simon kept
records of such finds, though never was he able to catch
the perpetrators at their grisly work. He longed to
consult with the witch, only she had gone north with
Briant and the first wave of fugitives.

He launched through the network of guerrilla bands a
request for information. And at nights, in one tempor-
ary headquarters after another, he pieced together bits
and patches. There was very little concrete evidence,
but Simon became convinced that certain commanders
among the Karsten forces did not operate according to
their former ways, and that the Duke's army had been
infiltrated.by an alien group.

Aliens! As always that puzzle of inequality of skills
contir'ied to plague him. Questioning of his refugees
told him that the energy machines which they had
always known had come from "overseas" ages past:

"overseas", energy machines brought by the Sulcar
traders, adapted by the old race for heat and light, the
Falconers also from "Overseas" with their amazing
communicators borne by their hawks. And the source
of the Kolder was also "overseas"—a vague term—a
common source for all?

What he could leam he dispatched by messenger to
Estcarp, asking for anything the witches might have to
tell in return. The only thing he was sure of was that as




ANDRE NORTON

210

long as his own force was recruited from those of
old race, he had no need to fear infiltration himself, pi
that quality which gave them kinship with the land ai
the wild things granted them in addition the ability to
smell out the alien.

Three more false hawks had been detected in the
mountains. But all had been destroyed in their capture
and Simon had only broken bits to examine. Where
they came from and for what purpose they had been
loosed was a part of all the other mystery.

Ingvald, the Karstenian lieutenant, pushed up beside
him now to look down upon the scene of destruction

they had left.

"The main party with the booty is well along the hill
track. Captain. We have plundered to some purpose
this time, and with that fire laid to cross our trail, they
will not even know how much has come into our hands!
There are four cases of darts as well as the food."

"Too much to supply a flying column." Simon
frowned, his mind snapping back to the business at
hand. "It would seem that Yvian hopes to make a
central post somewhere hereabouts and base his foray
parties there. He may be planning to move a large force

borderwards."

"I do not understand it," Ingvald said slowly.

"Why did this all blow up so suddenly out of nothing?
We are not—were not—blood brothers of the coastwise
people. They drove us inland when they came from the
sea. But for ten generations we have been at peace with
them, each going our way and not troubling the other.
We of the old race are not inclined to war and there was
no reason for this sudden attack upon us. Yet when it
came it moved in such a way as we may only believe
that it had long been planned."

WITCH WORLD              211

"But, not, perhaps, by Yvian.'' Simon set his horse
to a trot matched by Ingvald's mount so they rode knee
to knee. "I want a prisoner, Ingvald, a prisoner of such
a one as has been amusing himself in those ways we
saw in the farm meadow of the fork roads!"

A spark gleamed deep in the dark eyes meeting his.
"If such a one is ever taken. Captain, he shall be
brought to you."

"Alive and able to talk!" Simon cautioned.

"Alive and able to speak," agreed the other. "For it
is in our minds too, that things can be learned from one
of that sort. Only never do we find them, only their
handiwork. And I think that that is left deliberately as a
threat and a warning."

"There is a puzzle in this," Simon was thinking
aloud, playing once more with his ever-present prob-
lem. "It would seem that someone believes we can be
beaten into submission by brutality. And that someone
or something does not understand that a man can be
fired to just the opposite by those methods. Or," he
added after a moment's pause, "could this be done
deliberately to goad us into turning our full fury against
Yvian and Karsten, to get the border aflame and all
Estcarp engaged there, then to strike elsewhere?"

"Perhaps a little of both," Ingvald suggested. "I
know, Captain, that you have been seeking for another
presence in the Karsten forces, and I have heard of what
was found at Sulcarkeep and the rumors of man-selling
to Gorm. We are safe in this much: no one who is not
truly human can come among us without our
knowledge—just as we have always known that you are
not of our world."

Simon started, but turned to see the other smiling
quietly.

i

ANDRE NORTON

212

"Yes, Outlander, your tale spread—but after we
knew you were not of us—though in some strange way
your own akin to our blood. No, the Kolder cannot
sneak into our councils so easily. Nor can the enemy
venture among the Falconers, for the hawks would

betray them."

Simon was caught by that. "How so?"

"A bird or an animal can sense that kind of alien
quicker than even one who has the Power. And those
like now to the men of Gorm would find both bird and
beast against them. So the Hawks of the Eyrie serve
their trainers doubly and make safe the mountains."

But before the day was behind them Simon was to
leam that that vaunted safety of the mountains was only|
as strong as those frail bird bodies. They were examin-1
ing the supplies looted from the train and Simon set:?
aside a portion intended for the Eyrie, when he hearc
the hail of a camp sentry and the answer of a Falconer.
Welcoming the chance to let the latter transport the
hawkmen's share and so save his men a trip, Simon
came forward eagerly.

The rider had not followed custom. His bird-hea<
helm was closed as if he rode among strangers. It was
not that alone which stopped Simon before he gave
greeting. The men of his band were alert, drawing in il
a circle. Simon felt it, too, that prickle of awaking
surmise, just as he had known it before.

Without stopping to reason, he hurled himself at th<
silent rider and his hands caught at the other's weapol
belt. Simon knew fleeting wonder that the hawl
perched on the saddle horn did not rouse as he attacke<
its master. His lunge caught the Falconer by surprise
and the fellow had no time to draw his arms. But hi
made a quick recovery, slumping his whole weight 01

WITCH WORLD

213

Simon, bearing him under him to the ground, where
mailed gloved hands tore for Tregarth's throat.

It was like tangling with a steel-muscled, iron-
fleshed thing, and within seconds Simon knew that he
had attempted the impossible—what was encased in the
Falconer's covering could not be subdued with bare
hands. Only he was not alone; other hands plucked that
fighter off him, held the man pinned to the ground,
though the stranger struggled wildly.

Simon, rubbing his scratched throat, got to his
knees.

"Unhelm!" He gasped the order, and Ingvald
worked at the helm straps, jerking them free at last.

They gathered around the men who held the captive
down, for his struggles did not stop. The Falconers
were an inbred race with a dominate physical type—
reddish hair and brown-yellow eyes like their feathered
servants. By his looks this was a true man of the breed.
Yet Simon and every man in that clearing knew that
what they held was no normal member of the mountain
country.

"Rope him tight!" Simon ordered. "I think, Ing-
vald, we have found what we have been wishing
for." He went over to the horse which had carried the
pseudo-hawkman into their camp. The animal's hide
glistened with sweat, threads of foam spun at the bit
hooks; it might have been ridden in a grueling race.
And its eyes were wild, showing rims of white. But
when Simon reached for the reins it did not try to
escape, standing with a drooping head as great shud-
ders moved its sweat-soaked skin.

The hawk had remained quiet, no flap of wings or
hissing beak to warn Simon off. He reached up and
plucked the bird from its perch, and the minute his

214 ANDRE NORTON

fingers closed upon that body he knew he did not hold a
living creature.

With it in his hand he turned to his lieutenant. ' 'Ing- !,
vald, send Lathor, Kara," he named the two most
accomplished scouts in his command. "Let them ride
to the Eyrie. We must know how far the rot has spread.
If they find no damage done there, let them give warn-
ing. For proof of their tale," he stooped to pick up the
bird helm of their prisoner, "let them take this. I
believe it is of Falconer making, yet," he walked over
to the bound man, still silent, still watching them with
eyes of mad hate,' 'I cannot quite believe that this is one
of them."

"We do not take him also?" asked Kam, "or the

bird?"

"No, we open no doors which are not already
breached. We need safe disposal for this one for a
space."

' 'The cave by the waterfall, Captain.'' Waldis, a boy
of Ingvald's homestead who had tracked his master to
the mountains, spoke up. "One sentry at the entrance
can keep it safe and none know of it save us."

"Good enough. You will see to it, Ingvald."

"And you. Captain?"

"I am going to backtrail this one. It may be that he
did ride from the Eyrie. If that is true, the sooner we
know the worst the better."

"I do not think so. Captain. At least if he did, it was
not by any straight trail. We are well to the westward of
the hold. And he entered from the path leading to the
sea. Santu," he spoke to one who had helped to rope
the prisoner, "do you go and take outpost on this trail
and send in Caluf who first challenged him."

Simon threw the saddle on his own horse, and added

.?,i

WITCH WORLD

215

a bag with rations. On top he thrust in the dummy
falcon. Whether this was one of the counterfeit flying
things, he could not tell as yet, but it was the first intact
one they had. He finished just as Caluf ran in.

"You are sure he came from the west?" Simon
pressed the question.

"I will swear it on the Stone of Engis if you wish,
Captain. The hawkmen do not care greatly for the sea,
though they serve the traders at times as marines. And I
did not know they patrolled the shore cliffs. But he rode
straight between those notched rocks which give upon
the way to the cove we mapped five days ago, and he
moved as one who knew the trail well."

Simon was more than a little disturbed. The cove of
their recent discovery had been a ray of hope for the
establishment of better communication with the north.
It was not endangered by reefs and shoals such as
fanged too much of the coastline and Simon had plan-
ned for the use of small vessels to harbor there, trans-
porting north refugees, and returning with supplies and
arms for the border fighters. If that cove was in enemy
hands he wanted to know it, and at once.

As he left the clearing, with Caluf and another riding
behind him, Simon's mind was again working on two
levels. He noted the country about him with an alert
survey for landmarks and natural features which might
be used in future defensive or offensive action. But
beneath that surface activity he was pushing under the
constant preoccupation with safety, food, shelter—the
job at hand—his own private concerns.

Once, in prison, he had had time to explore the
depths within himself. And the paths he had hewn had
been bleak, freezing him into a remoteness of spirit
which had never thawed since that day. The give and

ANDRE NORTON

216

take of barracks life, of companionship in field service
he could assume as a cover, but nothing ate below that
cover—or he had not allowed it to.

Fear he understood. But that was a transitory emo-
tion which usually spurred him into action of one sort or
another. In Kars he had been attracted in another way,
and had fought free. Once he had believed that when he
tookPetronius' gate he would be a complete man again.
But so far that was not true. Ingvald had spoken of
demon possession, but what if a man did not possess

himself?

He was always a man standing apart watching
another occupied with the business of living. Alien—
these men he led knew it in him. Was he another of the
odd mistaken pieces strewn about this world, pieces
which did not fit, one with the machines out of their
time and the riddle of the Kolder? He sensed that he was
on the brink of some discovery, one which would mean
much to not only himself but to the cause he had

chosen.

Then that second, prying, sfand-aside self was
banished by the Captain of raiders as Simon caught
sight of a branch of a tree, warped by mountain storms,
as yet lacking leaves. It was stark against the afternoon
sky and the burden it bore, dangling in small, neatly
fashioned loops, was starker yet.

He spurred ahead and sat gazing up at the three small
bodies swaying in the breeze, the gaping beaks, the
glazed eyes, the dangling, crooked claws still bearing
their bracelets of scarlet jesses and small, silvery discs.
Three of the true falcons, their necks wrung, left to be
found by the next traveler along the way.
"Why?" Caluf asked.
"A warning, maybe, or something more." Simon

WITCH WORLD              217

dismounted and tossed his reins to the other. "Wait
here. If I am not back within a reasonable time, return
to Ingvald and report. Do not follow, we cannot afford
to waste men uselessly."

Both men protested, but Simon silenced them with a
decisive order before he entered the brush. There was
evidence in plenty of those who had been there, broken
twigs, scraps of boots on moss, a piece of torn jess
strap. He was moving closer to the shore; the sound of
the surf could be heard, and what he sought had cer-
tainly come from the cove.

Simon had been over that path twice, and he set
himself to recall a mental picture of the country. Unfor-
tunately the small valley which gave on the shore was
lacking in cover. And the crags on either side were as
bald. He would have to try one of those, which meant a
roundabout route and some tough climbing. Doggedly
he got to it.

As he had crept up to Volt's Hole so did he travel
now, crevice, ledge, hand and foothold. Then he
crawled on his belly to the edge and looked down into
the cove.

Simon had expected many things—a bare strip of
sand with no sign of any invasion, a party from
Karsten, an anchored ship. But what he saw was very
different. At first he thought of the illusions of
Estcarp—could what lay below be projected from his
own mind, some old memory brought to life for his
bafflement? Then a closer inspection of that sharp,
clean curve of metal told him that, while it bore some
faint resemblance to craft he had known, this was as
different from any thing in his previous experience as
the counterfeit hawk was from the real.

The thing was clearly a sea-going craft, though it had

ANDRE NORTON

218

no sign of any superstructure, mast, or method of
propulsion. Sharply pointed both fore and aft, it was
shaped as might be a cross section, taken length-wise,
of a torpedo. There was an opening on its flat upper
surface and men stood by that, three of them. The
outline of their heads against the silver sheen of the ship
were those of the Falconer bird helms. But Simon was
equally sure no true Falconers wore them.

Once again the eternal mystery of this land, for the
traders' ships at Sulcarkeep had been masted vessels of
a nonmechanical civilization; this ship could be taken
out of the future of his own world! How could two so
widely differing levels of civilization exist side by side?
Were the Kolder responsible here also? Alien, alien—
once more he was on the very verge of un-
derstanding—of guessing—

And for that instant he relaxed his vigilance. Only a
stout helm plundered from Karsten stores saved his life.
The blow which struck at him out of nowhere dazed
Simon. He smelled wet feathers, something else—half
blinded and dizzy he tried to rise—to be struck again.
This time he saw the enemy wing out to sea. A falcon,
but true or false? That question he carried with him into
the black cloud which swallowed him up.

II

TRIBUTE TO GORM

The throbbing beat of a pain drum filled his skull,
shaking on through his body. At first, Simon, returning
reluctantly to consciousness, could only summon
strength enough to endure that punishment. Then he
knew that the beat was not only inside him, but without
also. That on which he lay shook with a steady
rhythmic pound. He was trapped in the black heart of a
tom-tom.

When he opened his eyes, there was no light, and
when he tried to move Simon speedily discovered that
his wrists and ankles were lashed.

The sensation of being enclosed in a coffin became
so overpowering that he had to clamp teeth on lips to
prevent crying out. And he was so busy fighting his
own private war against the unknown, that it was min-
utes before he realized that wherever he might be, he
was not alone in captive misery.

To his right someone moaned faintly now and again.
On his left another retched in abject sickness, adding a
new stench to the thick atmosphere of their confine-
ment. Simon, oddly reassured by those sounds, un-
promising as they were, called out:

"Who lies there? And where are we; does anyone
know?"

The moaning ended in a quick catch of breath. But

219

ANDRE NORTON

220

the man who was sick either could not control his
pangs, or did not understand.

"Who are you?" That came in a weak trail of
whisper from his right.

"One from the mountains. And you? Is this some

Karsten prison?"

"Better that it were, mountain man! I have lain in the
dungeons of Karsten. Yes, I have been in the question
room of such a one. But better there than here."

Simon was busy sorting out recent memories. He had
climbed to a cliff top to spy upon a cove. There had
been that strange vessel in harbor there, then attack
from a bird which might not have been a bird at all!
Now it added up to only one answer—he lay in the very

ship he had seen!

"Are we in the hands of the man-buyers out of

Gorm?" he asked.

"Just so, mountain man. You were not with us when
those devils ofYvian's following gave us to the Kolder.
Are you one of the Falconers they snared later?''

"Falconers! Ho, men of the Winged Ones!" Simon
raised his voice, heard it echo hollowly back from
unseen walls.' 'How many of you lie here? I, whom am
of the raiders, ask it!"

"Three of us, raider. Though Faltjar was borne
hither limp as a death-stricken man, and we do not

know if yet he lives."

"Faltjar! The guard of the southern passes! How was

he taken—and you?"

"We heard of a cove where ships dared land and
there was a messenger from Estcarp saying that perhaps
supplies might be sent to us by sea if such could be
found. So the Lord of Wings ordered us to explore. And
we were struck down by hawks as we rode. Though




WITCH WORLD

221

they were not our hawks who battled for us. Then we
awoke on shore, stripped of our mail and weapons, and
they brought us aboard this craft which has no like in
the world. I say that, who am Tandis and served five
years as a marine to Sulcarmen. Many ports have I seen
and more ships than a man can count in a week of steady
marking, yet none kin to this one."

"It is born of the witchery of Kolder,'' whispered the
weak voice on Simon's right. "They came, but how
can a man reckon time when he is enclosed in the dark
without end? Is it night or day, this day or that? I lay in
Kars prison because I offered refuge to a woman and
child of the old race when the Horning went forth. They
took all of us who were young from that prison and
brought us to a delta island. There we were examined.''

"By whom?" Simon asked eagerly. Here was some
one who might have seen the mysterious Kolder, from
whom he might be able to get some positive informa-
tion concerning them.

"That I cannot remember." The voice was the
merest thread of sound now and Simon edged himself
as far as he could in his bonds to catch it at all. "They
work some magic, these men from Gorm, so that one's
head spins around, spilling all thoughts out of it. It is
said that they are demons of the great cold from the end
of the world, and that I can believe!

"And you. Falconer, did you look upon those who
took you?"

"Yes, but you will have little aid from what I saw,
raider. For those who brought us here were Karsten
men, mere husks without proper wits—hands and
strong backs for their owners. And those owners al-
ready wore the trappings they had taken from our
backs, the better to befool our friends."

ANDRE NORTON

222

"One of them was taken in his turn," Simon told
him. "For that be thankful, hawkman, for perhaps a
part of the unraveling of this coil may lie with him."
Only then did he wonder if there were ears in those
walls to listen to the helpless captives. But if there
were, perhaps that one scrap of knowledge would serve
to spread uneasiness among their captors.

There were ten Karsten men within that prison hold,
all taken from jails, all caught up for some offense or
other against the Duke. And to them had been added the
three Falconers captured in the cove. The majority of
the prisoners appeared to be semi-conscious or in a
dazed condition. If able to recall any of the events
leading up to their present captivity, such recollections
ended with their arrival at the island beyond Kars, or on
the beach of the cove.

As Simon persisted in his questioning however, a ;

certain uniformity, if not of background, then of of- ;

fenses against the Duke and temperament among these I
prisoners began to emerge. They were all men of some |
initiative, who had had a certain amount of military |
training, ranging from the Falconers who lived in a
monastic military barracks for life and whose occupa-
tion was frankly fighting, to his first informant from
Kars, a small landowner in the outlands who com-
manded a body of militia. In age they were from their
late teens to their early thirties, and, in spite of some
rough handling in the Duke's dungeons, they were all
able-bodied. Two were of the minor nobility with some
schooling. They were the youngest of the lot, brothers
picked up by Yvian's forces on the same charge of
aiding one of the old race who had been so summarily

outlawed.
None of those here were of that race, and everyone |

WITCH WORLD

223

declared that in all parts of the duchy men, women and
children of that blood had been put to death upon
capture.

It was one of the young nobles, drawn by Simon's
patient questioning from his absorption with his still
unconscious brother, who provided the first bit of fact
for the outworld man to chew upon.

"That guard who beat down Gamit, for which may
the Rats of More forever gnaw him night and day, told
them not to bring Renston also. We were blood brothers
by the bread from the days we first strapped on swords,
and we went to take him food and weapons that he
might try for the border. They tracked us down and took
us, though we left three of them with holes in their hides
and no breath in their bodies! When one of the scum the
Duke's men had with him would have bound Renston
too, he told it was no use, for there was no price for
those of the old blood and the men buyers would not
take them.

"The fellow whined that Renston was as young and
strong as we and that he ought to sell as well. But the
Duke's man said the old race broke but they would not
bend; then he ran Renston through with his own
sword."

"Broke but would not bend," Simon repeated
slowly.

"The old race were once one with the witchfolk of
Estcarp," the noble added. "Perchance these devils of
Gorm cannot eat them up as easily as they can those of
another blood."

"There is this," the man beside Simon added in his
half-whisper, "why did Yvian turn so quickly on the
old race? They have left us alone, unless we sought
them out. And those of us who companied with them

224 ANDRE NORTON

found them far from evil, for all their old knowledge
and strange ways. Is Yvian under orders to do as he did?
And who gives such orders and why? Could it be, my
brothers in misfortune, that the presence of those others
among us was in some manner a barrier against Gorm
and all its evil, so that they had to be routed out that
Gorm may spread?"

Shrewd enough, and close to Simon's own path of
thought. He would have questioned still further but,
through the soft moans and wordless complaints of
those still only half conscious, he heard a steady hiss-
ing, a sound he strove hard to identify. The thick odors
of the place would make a man gag, and they provided a
good cover for a danger he recognized too late—the
entrance of vapor into the chamber with a limited air
supply.

Men choken and coughed, fought for air with
strangling agony and then went inert. Only one thought
kept Simon steady: the enemy would not have gone to
the trouble of loading fourteen men in their ship merely
to gas them to death. So Simon alone of that miserable
company did not fight the gas, but breathed slowly,
with dim memories of the dentist's chair in his own
world.

"... gabble . . . gabble . . . gabble . . ."
Words which were no words, only a confused sound
made by a highpitched voice—carrying with them the
snap of an imperative order. Simon did not stir. As
awareness of his surroundings returned, an inborn in-
stinct for self-preservation kept him quiet.

"... gabble . . . gabble . . . gabble . . ."

The pain in his head was only a very dull ache. He
was sure he was no longer on the ship; what he lay upon
did not throb, nor move. But he had been stripped of his
clothing and the place in which he lay was chill.

WITCH WORLD             225

He who spoke was moving away now; the gabble
retreated without an answer. But so clearly had the tone
been one of an order that Simon dared not move lest he
betray himself to some silent subordinate.

Twice, deliberately, he counted to a hundred, hear-
ing no sound during that exercise. Simon lifted his
eyelids and then lowered them again quickly against a
stab of blazing light. Little by little his field of vision,
limited as it was, cleared. What he saw in that narrow
range was almost as confounding as had been his first
glimpse of the strange ship.

His acquaintance with laboratories had been small,
but certainly the rack of tubes, the bottles and beakers
on shelves directly before him could be found only in a
place of that nature.

Was he alone? And for what purpose had he been
brought here? He studied, inch by inch, all he could
see. Clearly he was not lying at floor level. The surface
under him was hard—was he on a table?

Slowly he began to turn his head, convinced that
caution was very necessary. Now he was able to see an
expanse of wall, bare, gray, with a line at the very
end of his field of vision which might make a
door.

So much for that side of die room. Now the other.
Once more he turned his head and discovered new
wonders. Five more bodies, bare as his own, were laid
out, each on a table. All five were either dead or
unconscious, and he was inclined to believe the latter
was true.

But there was someone else there. The tall thin figure
stood with his back to Simon, working over the first
man in line. Since a gray robe, belted in at the waist
covered all of his, her, or its body, and a cap of the same
stuff hid the head, Simon had no idea of race or type of

ANDRE NORTON

226

creature who busied himself with quiet efficiency |

there.                                           |
A rack bearing various bottles with dangling tubes |

was rolled over the first man. Needles in those tubes|
were inserted into veins, a circular cap of metal was|
fitted over the unresisting head. Simon, with a swift jolt|
of pure fear, guessed that he was watching the death of§J
a man. Not the death of a body, but that death which?3
would reduce the body to such a thing as he had seen||
slain on the road to Sulcarkeep and had helped to slay4
himself in defense of that keep!

And he also determined that it was not going to be
done to him! He tested hand and arm, foot and leg,
moving slowly, his only luck being that he was the last
in that line and not the first. He was stiff enough, but he
was in full control of his muscles.

That gray attendant had processed his first man. He
was moving a second rack forward over the next.
Simon sat up. For a second or two his head whirled, and
he gripped the table on which he had lain, prayerfully
glad it had neither creaked nor squeaked under his
change of position.

The business at the other end of the room was a
complicated one, and occupied the full attention of the
worker. Feeling that the table might tip under him,
Simon swung his feet to the floor, breathing strongly
again only when they were firmly planted on the

smooth cold pavement.

He surveyed his nearest neighbor, hoping for some
sign that he too, was rousing. But the boy, for he was
only a youngster, lay limp with closed eyes, his chest
rising and falling at unusually slow intervals.

Simon stepped away from the table toward that set of
shelves. There alone could he find a weapon. Escape

WITCH WORLD              227

from here, if he could win the door unhindered, was too
chancy a risk until he knew more of his surroundings.
And neither could he face the fact that in running he
would abandon five other men to death—or worse than
death alone.

He chose his weapon, a flask half filled with yellow
liquid. It seemed glass but was heavy for that sub-
stance. The slender neck above the bulbous body gave a
good handhold, and Simon moved lightly around the
line of tables to the one where the attendant worked.

His bare feet made no sound on the material on the
flooring as he came up behind the unsuspecting worker.
The bottle arose with the force of Simon's outrage in
the swing, crashing upon the back of that gray-capped
head.

There was no cry from the figure who crumpled
forward, dragging with it the wired metal cap it had
been about to fit on the head of the waiting victim.
Simon had reached for the fallen man's throat before he
saw the flatness on the back of the head through which
dark blood welled. He heaved the body over and pulled
it free of the aisle between tables to look down upon the
face of one he was sure was a Kolder.

What he had been building up in his imagination was
far more startling than the truth. This was a man, at
least in face, very like a great many other men Simon
had known. He had rather flat features with a wide
expanse of cheekbone on either side of a nose too close
to bndgeless, and his chin was too small and narrow to
match the width of the upper half of his face. But he was
no alien demon to the eye, whatever he might house
within his doomed skull.

Simon located the fastenings of the gray robe and
pulled it off. Though he shrank from touching the mess

•22S ANDRE NORTON

in the cap, he made himself take that also. There was a
runnel of water in a sink at the other end of the room and
there he dropped the head gear for cleansing. Under the
robe the man wore a tightfitting garment with no fasten-
ings nor openings Simon could discover, so in the end
he had to content himself with the robe for his sole
clothing.

There was nothing he could do for the two men the
attendant had already made fast to the racks, for the
complicated nature of the machines was beyond his
solving. But he went from one man to the next of the
other three and tried to arouse them, finding that, too,
impossible. They had the appearance of men deeply
drugged, and he understood even less how he had come
to escape their common fate, if these were his fellow
prisoners from the ship.

Disappointed, Simon went to the door. The closed
slab had no latch or knob he could see, but experimenta-
tion proved that it slid back into the right-hand wall and
he looked out upon a corridor walled, ceilinged, and
paved in the same monotone of gray which was in use in
the laboratory. As far as Simon could see it was de-
serted, though there were other doors opening off its
length. He made for the nearest of these.

Inching it open with the same caution with which he
had made his first moves upon regaining his senses, he
looked in upon a cache of men the Kolder had brought
toGorm, if this was Gorm. Lying in rows were at least
twenty bodies, these still clothed. There were no signs
of consciousness in any, though Simon examined them
all hurriedly. Perhaps he could still gain a respite for
those in the laboratory. Hoping so, he dragged the three
back and laid them out with their fellows.

Visiting the laboratory for the last time Simon rum-
maged for arms, coming up with a kit of surgical

WITCH WORLD

229

knives, the longest of which he took. He cut away the
rest of the clothing from the body of the man he had
killed and laid him out on one of the tables in such a way
that the battered head was concealed from the doorway.
Had he known any method of locking that door he
would have used it.

With the knife in the belt of his stolen robe, Simon
washed out the cap and gingerly pulled it on, wet as it
was. Doubtless there were a hundred deadly weapons
in the various jars, bottles, and tubes about him, only he
could not tell one from the others. For the time being he
would have to depend upon his fists and his knife to
remain free.

Simon went back to the corridor, closing the door
behind him. How long would the worker he had killed
be left undisturbed? Was he supervised by someone due
to return shortly, or did Simon have a better allowance
of time?

Two of the doors in the corridor would not yield to
his push. But where the hall came to a dead end he
found a third a little way open and slipped into what
could only be living quarters.

The furniture was severe, functional, but the two
chairs and the box bed were more comfortable than they
looked. And another piece which might be either a desk
or a table drew him. His puzzlement was a driving force
for his mind refused to connect the place in which he
stood with the same world which had produced
Estcarp, the Eyrie and crooked-laned Kars. One was of
the past; this was of the future.

He could not open the compartments of the desk,
though there was a sunken pit at the top of each in which
a finger tip could be handily inserted. Baffled, he sat
back on his heels after trying the last.

There were compartments in the walls also, at least

ANDRE NORTON

230

the same type of finger hole could be seen there. But
they, too, were locked. His jaw set stubbornly as he
thought of trying his knife as a prying lever.

Then he spun around, back against the wall, staring
into a room still empty of all but that severely lined
furniture. Because out of the very empty air before him
came a voice, speaking a language he could not under-
stand, but by the inflection asking a question to which it
demanded an immediate answer.

Ill

GRAY FANE

Was he under observation? Or merely listening to
something akin to a public address system? Once
Simon had assured himself that he was alone in the
room, he listened closely to words he could not under-
stand and must interpret by inflection alone. The
speaker repeated himself—at least Simon was con-
vinced he recognized several sounds. And did that
repetition mean that he was seen?

How soon before an investigation would be launched
by the unseen speaker? Immediately, when no reply
was made? It was clearly a warning to be on his way,
but which way? Simon went back into the corridor.

Since this end of the passage was a blank wall he
must try the other, repassing the other doors. But there
again he met with unbroken gray surface. With
memories of the hallucinations ofEstcarp, Simon ran
his hands across that blank expanse. But if there was
any opening there it was concealed by more than eye-
confusing skill. His conviction—that the Kolder, who
or whatever they might be, were of a different breed
altogether from the witches, achieving their magic ac-
cording to another pattern—became fixed. They based

their action on skills without, rather than a Power
within.

To the men of Estcarp much of the technical know-
231

ANDRE NORTON

232

ledge of his own world would have ranked as magic.
And perhaps alone among the Guards ofEstcarp at this
moment was Simon fitted to rationalize and partly
understand what lay here in Gorm, better prepared to
face those who used machines and the science of
machines than any witch who could call a fleet up out of

wooden ships.

He crept along the hallway, running his hands along
first one wall and then the other, seeking any irregular-
ity which might be a clue to an exit. Or did that door lie
within one of the rooms? His luck certainly could not

hold much longer.

Again from the air overhead came a ringing com-
mand in the strange tongue, the vehemence of which
could not be denied. Simon, sensing danger, froze
where he was, half expecting to be engulfed by a
trapdoor or trapped in some suddenly materializing net.
In that moment he discovered his exit, but not in the
way he had hoped, as on the other side of the corridor a
portion of the wall slipped back to show lighted space
beyond. Simon pulled the knife from his belt and faced

that space, ready for an attack.

The silence was broken again by that bark of disem-
bodied voice; he thought that perhaps his real status had
not yet been suspected by the masters of this place.
Perhaps, if they did see him, the robe and cap he wore
tagged him as one of their own who was acting oddly
and had been ordered to report elsewhere.

Deeming it best to act in his chosen role as long as he
could, Simon approached that new door with more
outward assurance and less commando caution. He
nearly panicked, however, when the door closed be-
hind him and he discovered that he was neatly inipns^
oned in a box. It was not until he brushed against one ot

WITCH WORLD

233




the walls and felt through it that faint vibration, that he
guessed he was in an elevator, a discovery which for
some reason steadied him. More and more he accepted
the belief that the Kolder represented a form of civiliza-
tion close to that he had known in his own world. It was
far more steadying to the nerves to be ascending or
descending to a showdown with the enemy in an
elevator than to stand, for example, in a mist-filled
room and watch a friend turn to a hideous stranger in a
matter of moments.

Yet, in spite of that feeling of faint familiarity with
all this, Simon had no ease, no relaxation of a certain
inward chill. He could accept the products of Kolder
hands as normal, but he could not accept the atmos-
phere of this place as anything but alien. And not only
alien, for that which is strange need not necessarily be a
menace, but in some manner this place was utterly
opposed to him and his kind. No, not alien, one part of
him decided during that swift journey to wherever the
Kolder waited, but unhuman, whereas the witches of

Estcarp were human, no matter whatever else they
might also be.

The thrumming in the wall ceased. Simon stood
away from it, unsure as to where the door would open.
His certainty that it would open did not waver and was
justified a moment later.

This time there were sounds outside, a muted hum-
ming, the snap of distant voices. He emerged warily to
stand in a small alcove apart from a room. Partial
recognition outweighed strangeness for him once
again. A wide expanse of one wall was laid out as a vast
"ap. The trailing, deeply indented shorelines, the
molded mountain areas he had seen before. Set here
and there upon the chart were tiny pinpoints of light in

ANDRE NORTON

234

various colors. Those along the shore about the van-
ished hold of Sulcar and the bay in which Gorm lay
were a dusky violet, while those which pricked on the
plains of Estcarp were yellow, the ones in Karsten

green, and those of Alizon red.

A table, running the full length of that map, stood
below it, bearing at spaced intervals machines which
clattered now and then, or flashed small signal lights.
And seated between each two of such machines, with
their backs toward him, their attention all for the de-
vices they tended, were others wearing the gray robes

and caps.
A little apart was a second table, or outsized desk,

with three more of the Kolder. The center one of this
trio wore a metal cap on his head from which wires and
spider-thread cables ran to a board behind him. His face
was without expression, his eyes were closed. How-
ever, he was not asleep for, from time to time, his
fingers moved with swift flicks of the tips across a panel
of buttons and levers set in the surface before him.
Simon's impression of being in a central control of
some concentrated effort grew with the seconds he was

left to view the scene undisturbed.

The words which were barked at him this time did
not come from the air, but from the man on the left of
that capped figure. He gazed at Simon, his flat face
with its overspread of upper features, displaying first
impatience and then the growing realization that Simon

was not one of his own kind.

Simon sprang. He could not hope to reach that end
table, but one of those who tended the machines before
the map was in his range. And he brought his hand edge
down in a blow which might have cracked backbone,
but instead rendered the victim unconscious. Holding

WITCH WORLD              235

the limp body as a shield, Simon backed to the wall of
the other doorway, hoping to win to that exit.

To his amazement the man who had first marked his
arrival there made no move to obstruct him, physically.
He merely repeated slowly and deliberately in the lan-
guage of the continental natives:

' 'You will return to your unit. You will report to your
unit control."

As Simon continued his crabwise advance upon the
door, one of the men who had been a neighbor of his
captive returned an astounded face from Tregarth to the
men at the end table, then back to Simon. The rest of his
fellows looked up from their machines with the same
surprise as their officer got to his feet. It was clear they
had expected only instant and complete obedience from
Simon.

"You will return to your unit! At once!"

Simon laughed. And the result of his response was
startling indeed. The Kolder, with the exception of the
capped man who took no notice of anything, were all on
their feet. Those of the center table still looked to their
two superiors at the end of the room as if awaiting
orders. And Simon thought that if he had shrieked in
agony they would not have been so amazed—his reac-
tion to their orders had completely baffled them.

The man who had given that command, dropped his
hand on the shoulder of his capped companion, giving
him a gentle shake, a gesture which even in its restraint
expressed utmost alarm: So summoned to attention, the
capped man opened his eyes and looked about impa-
tiently, then in obvious amazement. He stared at Simon
as if sighting at a mark.

What came was no physical attack, but a blow of
force, unseen, not to be defined by the untutored out-

ANDRE NORTON

236

worlder. But a blow which held Simon pinned breath-
less to the wall unable to move.

The body he had been using as a shield slid out of his
heavy-weighted arms to sprawl on the floor, and even
the rise and fall of Simon's chest as he breathed became
a labor to which he had to give thought and effort. Let
him stay where he was, under the pressure of that
invisible crushing hand, and he would not continue to
live. His encounters with the Power of Estcarp had
sharpened his wits. He thought that what trapped him
now was not born of the body, but of the mind, and so it
could only be countered by the mind in turn.

His only taste of such power had been through the
methods of Estcarp and he had not been trained to use
it. But setting up within him what strength of will he
could muster, Simon concentrated on raising an arm
which moved so sluggishly he was afraid he was

doomed to failure.

Now that one palm was resting flat against the wall
where the energy held him, he brought up the other.
With complaining muscles as well as will of mind, he
strove to push himself out and away. Did he detect a
shade of surprise on the broad face below the cap?

What Simon did next had the backing of no con-
scious reasoning. It was certainly not by his will that his
right hand moved up level with his heart and his fingers
traced a design in the air between him and that capped

master of force.

It was the third time he had seen that design. Before
the hand which had drawn it was one of Estcarp, and the
lines had burned fire bright for only an instant.

Now it flashed again, but in a sputtering white. And
at that moment he could move! The pressure had les-
sened. Simon ran for the door, making good a momen-
tary escape into the unknown territory beyond.

WITCH WORLD

237

But it was only momentary. For here he faced armed
men. There was no mistaking that rapt concentration in
the eyes turned to him as he erupted into the corridor
where they were on duty. These were the slaves of the
Kolder, and only by killing could he win through.

They drew in with the silent, deadly promise of their
kind, their very silence heavy with menace. Simon
chose quickly and darted to meet them. He skidded to
the right and tackled the man next to the wall about the
shins, bringing him down in such a way as to guard his
own back.

The smooth flooring of the passage was an unex-
pected aid. The impact of Simon's tackle carried both
past the man's two companions. Simon stabbed up with
his knife and felt the sear of a blade across his own ribs
under his arms. Coughing, the guard rolled away, and
Simon snatched the dart gun from his belt.

He shot the first of the others just in time and the
stroke of the sword aimed for his neck sank instead into
the wounded man. That brought him a precious second
to sight on the third and last of the enemy.

Adding two more dart guns to his weapons he went
on. Luckily this hall ended in no concealed doors but a
stair, cut of stone and winding up against a wall also of
stone, both of them in contrast to the smooth gray
surfacing of the passages and rooms through which he
had already come.

His bare feet gritted on that stone as they took the
steps. At a higher level he came out in a passage akin to
those he had seen in the hold of Estcarp. However
functional-futuristic the inner core of this place might
be, its husk was native to the buildings he knew.

Simon took cover twice, his gun ready, as detach-
ments of the Kolder-changed natives passed him. He
could not judge whether a general alarm had been

ANDRE NORTON

238

given, or whether they were merely engaged in some
routine patrol, for they kept to a steady trot and did not

search any side ways.

Time in these corridors where there was no change of
light had no meaning. Simon did not know whether it
was day or night, or how long he had been within the
fortress of the Kolder. But he was keenly conscious of
hunger and thirst, of the cold which pierced the single!
garment he wore, of the discomfort of bare feet when^
one had always gone shod.                       a|

If he only had some idea of the inner plan of the maze
through which he was trying to escape. Was he on
Gorm? Or in that mysterious city of Yie which the
Kolder had founded on the mainland coast? In some
more hidden headquarters of the invaders? That it was
an important headquarters he was certain.

Both a desire for a temporary hiding place and the
need for supplies brought him to explore the rooms on
this upper level. Here were none of the furnishings he
had seen below. The carved wooden chests, the chairs,
the tables were all of native work. And in some of the
chambers there were signs of hurried departure or
search, now overlaid with dust as if the rooms had been

deserted for a long time.

It was in such a one that Simon found clothing which
fitted after a fashion. But he still lacked mail or any
other weapons than those he had taken from the fighters
in the hall. He craved food more than anything else and
began to wonder if he must return to the dangerous

lower levels to find it.

Though he was considering descent Simon con-
tinued to follow up any ramp or set of steps he chanced
upon. And he saw that in this sprawling pile all the
windows had been battened tight so that only artificial




WITCH WORLD              239

light made visible his surroundings, the light being
dimmer in ratio to the distance he put between him and
the quarters of the Kolder.

A last and very narrow flight of stairs showed more
use and Simon kept one of the guns ready as he climbed
to a door above. That swung easily under his hand, and
he looked out upon a flat rooftop. Over a portion of this
a second sheltering awning had been erected and lined
up under which were objects which did not astonish
Simon after what he had seen below. Their stubby
wings were thrust back sharply from their blunt noses
and none could carry more than a pilot and perhaps two
passengers, but they were surely aircraft. The mystery
of how Sulcarkeep had been taken was solved, provid-
ing the enemy had a fleet of those to hand.

Now they presented Simon with a way of escape if he
had no other chance. But escape from where? Watching
that improvised hangar for any sign of a guard, Simon
stole to the nearest edge of the roof, hoping to see
something in the way of a landmark to give him a clue
to his whereabouts.

For a moment he wondered if he could be back in a
restored Sulcarkeep. For what was spread below was a
harbor, with anchored ships and rows of buildings set
along streets which marched to the wharves and the
water. But the plan of this city was different from the
town of the traders. It was larger and where the Sulcar-
men had had their warehouses with fewer living quar-
ters, these streets reversed that process. Though it was
midday by the sun there was no life in those streets, no
sign that any of the houses were inhabited. Yet neither
did they show those signs of decay and nature's en-
croachment which would mark complete desertion.
Since the architecture resembled that of Karsten and

ANDRE NORTON

240

Estcarp with only minor differences, this could not be
that Yie erected by the Kolder. Which meant that he
must be now on Gorm—maybe in Sippar—that center
of the canker which the Estcarp forces had never been

able to pierce!

If that city below was as lifeless as it appeared, it

should be easy enough for him to get to the harbor and
locate some means of boat transportation to the eastern
continent. However with the building below him so
well sealed to the outer world, perhaps this roof was the
only exit, and he had better explore its outlets.

The pile on which he stood was the highest building
in the whole small city; perhaps it was the ancient castle
where those of Koris' clan had ruled. If the Captain
were only with him now the problem might be
simplified by half. Simon toured three sides and dis-
covered that there were no other roofs abutting on this
one, that a street or streets, fronted each side.

Reluctantly he came to the shelter which housed the
planes. To trust to a machine he did not know how to
pilot was foolhardy. But that was no reason not to
inspect one. Simon had grown bolder since he had gone
unchallenged this long. However he took precautions
against surprise. Wedged into the latch of thereof door,
the knife locked it to all but a battering down.

He returned to the plane nearest him. It moved into
the open under his pushing, proving to be a light craft,
easily handled. He pulled up a panel in its stub nose and
inspected the motor within. It was unlike any he had
seen before, and he was neither engineer nor mechanic.
But he had confidence enough in the efficiency of those
below to believe that it could fly—if he were able to

control it.

Before he explored farther Simon examined the four

WITCH WORLD              241

other machines, using the butt of one of the dart guns to
smash at their motors. If he did have to trust to the air he
did not want to be the target for an attack-chase.

It was when he raised his improvised hammer for the
last time that the enemy struck. There had been no
battering at the wedged door, no thunder of guard feet
on the stairs. Again it was the silent push of that
invisible force. It did not strive to hold him helpless this
dme, but to draw him to its source. Simon caught at the
disabled plane for an anchor. Instead he drew it after
him out into the open—he could not halt his march
down the roof.

And it was not taking him back to the door! With a
stab of panic Simon realized now that his destination
was not the dubious future of the levels below, but the
quick death which awaited a plunge from the roof!

With all his will he fought, his reluctant steps taken
one at a time, with periods of agonizing struggle be-
tween. He tried again the trick of the symbol in the air
which had served him before. Perhaps because he was
not now fronting the person of his enemy it gave him no
relief.

He could slow that advance, put off for seconds,
minutes, the inevitable end. A try for the doorway
failed; it had been a desperate hope that the other might
take his action for a gesture of surrender. But now
Simon knew they wanted him safely dead. The decision
he would have made had he commanded here.

There was the plane he had meant to use in a last bid.
Well, now there was no other escape! And it was
between him and the roof edge towards which he was
urged.

It was such a little chance, but he had no other.
Simon yielded two steps to the pressure, he gave

ANDRE NORTON

242

another quickly as if his strength were waning. A
third—his hand was on the opening to the pilot's com-
partment. Making the supreme effort in this weird
battle he threw himself within.

The pull brought him against the far wall and the
light craft rocked under his scrambling. He stared at
what must be the instrument board. There was a lever
up at the end of a narrow slot, and it was the only object
which seemed to be movable. With a petition to other
Powers than those ofEstcarp, Simon managed to raise a
heavy hand and pull that down its waiting slot.

IV

CITY OF DEAD MEN

He had perhaps childishly expected to be whisked aloft,
but the machine ran straight forward, gathering speed.
Its nose plowed across the low parapet with force
enough to somersault the whole plane over. Simon
knew he was falling, not free as his tormenter had
intended, but encased in the cabin.

There was another swift moment of awareness that
that fall was not straight down, that he was descending
at an angle. Hopelessly, he jerked once more at that
lever, pulling it halfway up the slot.

Then there was a crash, followed by nothing but
blackness without sight, sound, or feeling.

A spark of red-amber watched him speculatively out
of the black. It was matched by a faint repetitive
sound—the tick of a watch, the drip of water? And
thirdly there was the smell. It was that latter which
prodded Simon into action. For it was a sweetish
stench, thick and sickening in his nostrils and throat, a
stench of old corruption and death.

He was sitting up, he discovered, and there was a
faint light to show the wreckage which held him in that
position. But the hounding pressure which had battered
him on the upper roof was gone; he was free to move if
he could, to think.

Save for some painfully bruised areas, he had appar-
ently survived the crash without injury. The machine

243

ANDRE NORTON

244

must have cushioned the shock of landing. And that red
eye out of the dark was a light on the board of the lever.

The drip was close by.

So was the smell. Simon shifted in his seat and
pushed. There was a rasp of metal scraping metal and a
large section of cabin broke away. Simon crawled
painfully out of his cage. Overhead was a hole framed
with jagged ends of timbers. As he watched, another
piece of roofing gave way and struck on the already
battered machine. The plane must have fallen on the
roof of one of the neighboring buildings and broken
through that surface. How he had escaped with life and
reasonably sound limbs was one of the strange quirks of

fate.
He must have been unconscious for some time as the

sky was the palid shade of evening. And his hunger and
thirst were steady pains. He must have food and water.

But why had not the enemy located him before this?
Certainly anyone on the other roof could have spotted
the end of his abortive flight. Unless—suppose they did
not know of his try with the plane—suppose they only
traced him by some form of mental contact. Then they ;

would only know that he had gone over the parapet, that l
his fall had ended in a blackout which to them might |
have registered as his death. If that were true then he ^
was indeed free, if still within the city of Sippar!    >

First, to find food and drink, and then discover where ^
he was in relation to the rest of the port.           :;

Simon found a doorway, one which gave again on;|
stairs leading downward toward the street level, as he jj
had hoped. The air here was stale, heavily tainted with
that odor. He could identify it now and it made him
hesitate—disliking what must lie below to raise such a

stench.

But down was the only way out, so down he must go.

WITCH WORLD

245

The windows here were unsealed and light made fading
patches on each landing. There were doors, too, but
Simon opened none of them, because it seemed to him
that around them that fearsome, stomach-churning
smell was stronger.

Down one more flight, and into a hall which ended in
a wide portal he thought must give on the street. Here
Simon dared to explore and in a back room he found
that leathery journey bread which was the main military
ration ofEstcarp, together with a pot of preserved fruit
still good under its cap. The moldering remains of other
provisions were evidence that no one had foraged here
for a long time. Water trickled from a pipe to a drain
and Simon drank before he wolfed down the food.

It was difficult to eat in spite of his hunger for that
smell clung to everything. Although he had been only
in this one building outside the citadel Simon suspected
that his monstrous suspicion was the truth; save for the
central building and its handful of inhabitants, Sippar
was a city of the dead. The Kolder must have ruthlessly
disposed of those of the conquered of no use to them.
Not only slain them, but left them unburied in their own
homes. As a warning against rebellion of the few re-
maining alive? Or merely because they did not care? It
would appear that the last was the most likely, and that
odd feeling of kinship he had for the flat-faced invaders
died then and there.

Simon took with him all the bread he could find and a
bottle filled with water. Curiously enough the door
leading to the street was barred on the inside. Had those
who had once lived here locked themselves in and
committed mass suicide? Or had the same pressure
methods driven them to their deaths as had been used to
send him over the upper roof?

The street was as deserted as he had seen it from that

ANDRE NORTON

246

same roof. But Simon kept close to one side, watching
every shadowed doorway, the mouth of every cross
lane. All doors were shut; nothing moved as he worked

his way to the harbor.

He guessed that if he tried any of those doors he
would find them barred against him, while within
would lie only the dead. Had they perished soon after
Gorm had welcomed Kolder to further the ambitions of
Oma and her son? Or had that death come sometime
later, during the years since Koris had fled to Estcarp
and the island had been cut off from humankind? It
would not matter to anyone save perhaps a historian.
This remained a city of the dead—the dead in body, and
in the keep, the dead in spirit—with only the Kolder,
who might well be dead in another fashion, keeping a

pretense of life.

As he went Simon memorized route of street and
house. Gorm could only be freed when the central keep
was destroyed, he was certain of that. But it seemed to
him that leaving this waste of empty buildings about
their lair had been a bad mistake on the part of the
Kolder. Unless they had some hidden defenses and
alarms rigged in these blank walled houses, it might be
no trick at all to bring a landing party ashore and have

them under cover.

There were those tales of Koris' concerning the spies
Estcarp had sent to this island over the years. And the
fact that the Captain himself had been unable to return
because of some mysterious barrier. After his own
experience with Kolder weapons Simon had an open
mind. Only he had been able to break free, first in that
headquarters room and secondly by the use of one of the
planes. The mere fact that the Kolder had not tried to
hunt him down was proof of a kind they must believe
him finished for good.

WITCH WORLD

247

But it was hard to think that someone or something
did not keep watch in the silent city. So he kept to cover
until he reached the wharves. There were ships there,
ships battered by storms, some driven half ashore, their
rigging a rotting tangle, their sides scored and smashed
in, some half waterlogged, with only their upper decks
above the surface of the harbor. None of these had
sailed for months, or years!

And the width of the bay lay between Simon and the
mainland. If this dead port was Sippar, and he had no
reason to believe that it was not, then he was now facing
that long arm of land on which the invaders had built
Yie, ending in the finger of which Sulcarkeep had been
the nail. Since the fall of the traders' stronghold it was
very probable that the Kolder forces now controlled
that whole cape.

If he could find a manageable small craft and take to
the sea, Simon would have to take the longer route
eastward down the bottle-shaped bay to the mouth of
the River Es and so to Estcarp. And he was plagued by
the idea that time no longer fought upon his side.

He found his boat, a small shell stored in a
warehouse. Though Simon was no sailor he took what
precautions and made what tests he could to ensure its
seaworthiness. And waited until full dark before he
took oars, gritting his teeth against the pain of his
bruises, as he pulled steadily, setting a crooked course
among the rotting hulks of the Gormian fleet.

It was when he was well beyond those and had dared
to step his small mast, that he met the Kolder defense
head on. He saw or heard nothing as he fell to the
bottom of the boat, his hands over his ears, his eyes
closed against that raging tumult of silent sound and
invisible light which beat outward from some point
within his brain. He had thought his ordeal with the will

ANDRE NORTON

248

pressure had made him aware of the Kolder power, but
this scrambling of a man's brain was worse.

Was he only minutes within that cloud, or a day, or a
year? Dazed and dumb, Simon could not have told. He
lay in a boat which swung with the waves but obeyed
sluggishly the wind touch on its sail. And behind him
was Gorm, dead and dark in the moonlight.

Before dawn Simon was picked up by a coastal patrol
boat from the Es, and by that time he had recovered his
wits, though his mind felt as bruised as his boat. Rid-
ing relays of swift mounts he went on to Estcarp

city.

Within the keep, in that same room where he had first
met the Guardian, he joined a council of war» retelling
his adventures within Gorm, his contacts with the Kol-
der to the officers of Estcarp, and those still-faced
women who listened impassively. As he spoke he
hunted for one among the witches, without finding her

in that assembly.

When he had done, they asked few questions, allow-
ing him to tell it in his own way, Koris tight-lipped and
stone-featured as he described the city of the dead, the
Guardian beckoned forward one of the other women.

"Now, Simon Tregarth, do you take her hands, and
then think upon this capped man, recall in your mind
every detail of his dress and face," she ordered.

Though he could see no purpose in this, Simon
obeyed. For one generally did obey, he thought wryly,

the witches of Estcarp.

So he held those hands which were cool and dry in

his, and he mentally pictured the gray robe, the odd
face where the lower half did not match the upper, the
metal cap, and the expression of power and then of
bafflement which had been mirrored on those features

WITCH WORLD

249

when Simon had fought back. The hands slipped out of
his and the Guardian spoke again:

"You have seen, sister? You can fashion?"

"I have seen," the woman answered. "And what I
have seen I can fashion. Since he used the power
between them in the duel of wills the impression should
be strong. Though," she looked down at her hands,
moving each finger as if to exercise it in preparation for
some task, "whether we can use such a device is
another matter. It would have been better had blood
flowed."

No one explained and Simon was not given time to
ask questions for Koris claimed him as the council
broke up, and marched him off to the barracks. Once
within that same chamber he had had before they left
for Sulcarkeep, Simon demanded of the Captain:

"Where is the lady?" It was irritating not to be able
to name her whom he knew; that peculiarity of the
witches irked him more now than ever. But Koris
caught his meaning.

"She is checking the border posts."

"But she is safe?"

Koris shrugged. "Are any of us safe, Simon? But be
sure that the women of Power take no unnecessary
risks. What they guard within them is not lightly
spent." He had gone to the western window, his face
turned into the light there, his eyes searching as if he
willed to see more than the plain beyond the city. "So
Gorm is dead." The words came heavily.

Simon pulled off his boots and stretched out on the
bed. He was weary to every aching bone in his body.

' 'I told you what I saw and only what I saw. There is
life walled into the center keep of Sippar. I found it
nowhere else, but then I did not search far."

ANDRE NORTON

250

"Life? What sort of life?"

"Ask that of the Kolder, or perhaps the witches,"
returned Simon drowsily. "Neither are as you and I,
and maybe they reckon life differently."

He was only half aware that the Captain had come
away from the window, was standing over Simon so
that his wide shoulders shut away the daylight.

' 'I am thinking, Simon Tregarth, that you are differ-
ent too." Again the words were heavy, without any
ring. "And seeing Gorm, how do you reckon its life—

or death?"

"As vile," Simon mumbled. "But that shall also be
judged in its own time," and wondered at his choice of
words even as he fell asleep.

He slept, awoke to eat hugely, and slept again. No
one demanded his attention nor did he rouse to what
was going on in the keep of Estcarp. He might have
been an animal laying up rest beneath his hide as the
bear lays up fat against hibernation. When he awoke
thoroughly once again it was alertly, eagerly, with a
freshness he had not felt for so long, since before
Berlin. Berlin—what—where was Berlin? His
memories were curiously overlaid nowadays with new

scenes.
And the one which returned to haunt him the most

was that of the room of that secluded house in Kars   j
where threadbare tapestries patterned the walls and a   <
woman looked at him with wonder in her eyes as her
hand shaped a glowing symbol in the air between them.   '
Then there was that other moment when she stood sick
at heart and curiously alone after she had made her   j
sordid magic for Aldis, tarnishing her gift for the good   •

of her cause.
Now as Simon lay tingling with life in every nerve   ,

WITCH WORLD

251

and cell of him, the ache of his bruises, the strain of his
hunger and his striving gone out of him, he moved his
right hand up until it lay over his heart. But beneath it
now he did not feel the warmth of his own flesh; rather
did he cradle in memory something else, as a singing
which was no song drew from him, into the other hand
he had grasped, a substance he did not know he pos-
sessed.

Over all else, the life in the border raiding parties, the
experience of Kolder captivity, did those quiet and
passive scenes hold him now. Because, empty of phys-
ical action though they had been, they possessed for
him a hidden excitement he shrank from defining or
explaining too closely.

But he was summoned soon enough to attention.
During his sleep Estcarp had marshalled all its forces.
Beacons on the heights had brought messengers from
the mountains, from the Eyrie, from all those willing to
stand against Gorm, and the doom Gorm promised. A
half dozen Sulcar vessels, homeless, had made port in
coves the Falconers charted, the families of their crews
landed in safety, the ships armed and ready for the
thrust. For all were agreed that the war must be taken to
Gorm before Gorm brought it to them.

There was a camp at the mouth of the Es, a tent set up
in it on the very verge of the ocean. From its flap of door
they could see the shadow of the island appearing as a
bank of cloud upon the sea. And, waiting signal beyond
that point where the broken ruins of their keep were
sea-washed and desolate, hovered the ships, packed
with the Sulcar crew, Falconers, and border raiders.

But the barrier about Gorm must be broken first and
that was in the hands of those who welded Estcarp's
Power. So, not knowing why he was to be one of that

ANDRE NORTON

252

company, Simon found himself seated at a table which
might have been meant for a gaming board. Yet there
was no surface of alternate colored blocks. Instead,
before each seat there was a painted symbol. And the
company who gathered was mixed, seemingly oddly
chosen for the high command.

Simon found that his seat had been placed beside the
Guardian's and the symbol there overlapped both
places. It was a brown hawk with a gilded oval framing
it, a small, three pointed cornet above the oval. On his
left was a diamond of blue-green enclosing a fist hold-
ing an ax. And beyond that was a square of red encasing

a horned fish.

To the right, beyond the Guardian, were two more
symbols which he could not read without leaning for-
ward. Two of the witches slipped into the seats before
those and sat quietly, their hands palm down upon the
painted marks. There was a stir to his left and he
glanced up to know an odd lift of spirit as he met a level
gaze which was more than mere recognition of his
identity. But she did not speak and he copied her
silence. The sixth and last of their company was the lad
Briant, pale-faced, staring down at the fish creature
before him as if it lived and by the very intensity of his
gaze he must hold it prisoner in that sea of scarlet.

The woman who had held Simon's hands as he
thought of the man on Gorm came into the tent, two
others with her, each of whom carried a small clay
brazier from which came sweet smoke. These they
placed on the edge of the board and the other woman set
down her own burden, a wide basket. She threw aside
its covering cloth to display a row of small images.

Taking up the first she went to stand before Briant.
Twice she passed the figure she held through the smoke

WITCH WORLD

253

and then held it at eye level before the seated lad. It was
a finely wrought manikin with red-gold hair and such a
life-look that Simon believed it was meant to be the
portrait of some living man.

"Fulk." The woman pronounced the name and set
the image down in the center of the scarlet square, full
upon the painted fish. Briant could not pale, his trans-
parent skin had always lacked color, but Simon saw
him swallow convulsively before he answered.
"Fulk of Verlaine."

The woman took a second figure from her basket,
and, as she came now to Simon's neighbor, he could  s
better judge the artistic triumph of her work. For she  i
held between her hands, passing it through the smoke, a
perfect image of she who had asked for a charm to keep
Yvian true.
"Aldis."

"Aldis of Kars," acknowledged the woman beside
him as the tiny feet of the figure were planted on the fist
with the ax.

"Sandar ofAlizon." A third figure for the position
farthest to his right.

"Siric.'' A potbellied image in flowing robes for that
other right-hand symbol.

Then she brought out the last of the manikins, study-
ing it for a moment before she gave it to the smoke.
When she came to stand before Simon and the Guardian
she named no names but held,it out for his inspection,
for his recognition. And he stared down at the small
copy of the capped leader in Gorm. To his recollection
the resemblance was perfect.

"Gorm!" He acknowledged it, though he could not
give the Kolder a better name. And she placed it care-
ftilly on the brown and gold hawk.

v

GAME OF POWER

Five images set out upon the symbols of their lands,
five perfect representations of living men and woman.
But why and for what purpose? Simon looked right
again. The tiny feet of the Aldis manikin were now
encircled by the hands of the witch, those of the Fulk
figure by Briant's. Both were regarding their charges
with absorption, on Briant's part uneasy.

Simon's attention swung back to the figure before
him. Dim memories of old tales flickered through his
mind. Did they now stick pins in these replicas and
expect their originals to suffer and die?

The Guardian reached for his hand, caught it in the
same grip he had known in Kars during the shape
changing. At the same time she fitted her other hand in
a half circle about the base of the capped figure. He put
his to match so that now they touched finger tips and

wrists enclosing the Kolder.

"Think now upon this one between whom and you
has been the trial of power, or the tie of blood. Put from
your mind all else but this one whom you must reach
and bend, bend to our use. For we win the Game of
Power upon this board in this hour—or it—and we—

fail for this time and place!"

Simon's eyes were on that capped figure. He did not
know if he could turn them away if he wished. He

254

WITCH WORLD              255

supposed that he had been brought into this curious
procedure because he alone of those ofEstcarp had seen
this officer ofGorm.

The tiny face, half shadowed by the metal cap, grew
larger, life size. He was fronting it across space as he
had fronted it across that room in the heart of Sippar.

Again the eyes were closed, the man was about his
mysterious business. Simon continued to study him,
and then he knew that all the antagonism he had known
for the Kolder, all the hate born in him by what he had
found in that city, by their treatment of their captives,
was drawing together in his mind, as a man might shape
a weapon of small pieces fitted together into one for-
midable arm.

Simon was no longer in that tent where sea winds
stirred and sand gritted on a brown painted hawk.
Instead he stood before that man of the Kolder in the
heart of Sippar, willing him to open his closed eyes, to
look upon him, Simon Tregarth, to stand to battle in a
way not of bodies, but of wills and minds.

Those eyes did open and he stared into their dark
pupils, saw lids raise higher as if in recognition, of
knowledge of the menace which was using him as a
gathering point, a caldron in which every terror and
threat could be brought to a culminating boil.

Eyes held eyes. Simon's impressions of the flat fea-
tures, of the face, of the metal cap above it, of every-
thing but those eyes, went, bit by bit. As he had sensed
the flow of power out of his hand into the witch's in
Kars, so did he know that which boiled within him was
being steadily fed by more heat than his own emotions
could engender, that he was a gun to propel a fatal dart.

At first the Kolder had stood against him with confi-
dence; now he was seeking his freedom from that

ANDRE NORTON

256

eye-to-eye tie, mind-to-mind bond, knowing too late
that he was caught in a trap. But the jaws had closed and
struggle as he might the man in Gorm could not loosen
what he had accepted in an arrogant belief in his own

form of magic.

Within Simon there was a sharp release of. all the
tension. And it shot from him to that other. Eyes were
fear-submerged by panic, panic gave way to abject
terror, which burned in and in until there was nothing
left for it to feed upon. Simon did not have to be told
that what he faced now was a husk which would do his
bidding as those husks of Gorm did the bidding of their

owners.
He gave his orders. The Guardian's power fed his;

she watched and waited, ready to aid, but making no
suggestions. Simon was certain of his enemy's obedi-
ence as he was of the life burning in him. That which
controlled Gorm would be crippled, the barrier would
go down, as long as this tool worked unhindered by his
fellows. Estcarp now had a robot ally within the for-
tress.

Simon lifted his head, opened his eyes, and saw the
painted board where his fingers still clasped the Guar-
dian's about the feet of the small figure. But that mani-
kin was no longer perfect. Within the hollow of the
metal cap the head was a shapeless blob of melted wax.

The Guardian loosened her clasp, drew back her
hand to lie limp. Simon turned his head, saw on his left
a strained and blanched face, eyes dark smudged, as
she who had centered the power upon Aldis fell back in
her seat. And the lady before her was also head rav-
aged.

That image named for Fulk of Verlaine lay flat and
Briant was huddled in upon himself, his face hidden in

WITCH WORLD             257

his hands, his lank, colorless hair sweat-plastered to his
skull.

"It is done." The silence was first broken by the
Guardian. "What the Power can do, it has done. And
this day we have wrought as mightily as ever did the
blood of Estcarp! Now it is given to fire and sword,
wind and wave, to serve us if they will, and if men will
use them!'' Her voice was a thin thread of exhaustion.

She was answered by one who moved to the board to
stand before her, accompanied by the faint clink of
metal against metal which marked a man in full war
gear. Koris carried on his hip the hawk crested helm;

now he raised the Ax of Volt.

"Be sure, lady, that there are men to use each and
every weapon Fortune grants us. The beacons are
lighted, our armies and the ships move."

Simon, though the earth under his feet had a ten-
dency to sway when he planted his feet upon it and
levered himself up, arose. She who had sat on his left
moved quickly. Her hand went out, but it did not touch
his before it fell back upon the board once more. Nor
did she put into words that denial he could read in every
tense line of her body.

"The war, now completed according to your
Power," he spoke to her as if they were alone, "is of
the fashion of Estcarp. But I am not of Estcarp, and
there remains this other war which is of my own kind of
power. I have played your game to your willing, lady;

now I seek to play to mine!"

As he rounded the table to join the Captain, another
arose and stood hesitating, one hand on the table to
steady him. Briant regarded the image before him and
his face was bleak, for the figure, though fallen, was
intact.

ANDRE NORTON

258

"I never claimed the Power," he said dully in his
soft voice. "And in this warfare it would seem I have
been a failure. Perhaps it will not be so with sword and

shield!"

Koris stirred as if he would protest. But the witch

who had been in Kars spoke swiftly:

"There is a free choice here for all who ride or sail
under Estcarp's banner. Let none gainsay that choice.''

The Guardian nodded agreement. So the three of
them went out from the tent on the sea shore: Koris,
vibrant, alive, his handsome head erect on his gro-
tesque shoulders, his nostrils swelling as if he scented
more than sea salt in the air; Simon, moving more
slowly, feeling a fatigue new to his overdriven body,
but also buoyed by a determination to see this venture to
its end; and Briant, settling his helm over his fair head,
coiling the metal ring scarf about his throat, his eyes
straight ahead as if he were driven, or pulled, by some-
thing far greater than his own will.

The Captain turned to the other two as they reached
the boats waiting to pull out to the ships. "You come
with me on the flagship, for you, Simon, must serve as
a guide, and you—'' he looked to Briant and hesitated.
But the youngster, with a lift of chin and stare of eye
which was a challenge, met that appraisal defiantly.
Simon sensed something crosswise between the two
which was of their own concern as he waited for Koris

to meet that unvoiced defiance.

"You, Briant, will put yourself among my shield

men and you will stay with them!"

' 'And I, Briant," the other answered with something
approaching impudence, "shall stay at your back, Cap-
tain of Estcarp, when there is good cause to do so. But I
fight with my own sword and wield my own shield in
this or any other battle!"

WITCH WORLD             259

For a moment it seemed that Koris might dispute
that, but they were hailed from the boats. And when
they splashed through the surf to board, Simon noted
that the younger man took good care to keep as far from
his commander as the small craft allowed.

The ship which was to spearhead the Estcarp attack
was a fishing vessel and the Guards were jammed
aboard her almost shoulder to shoulder. The other
mismatched transports fell in behind her as they took to
the bay waters.

They were close enough to see the fleet rotting in
Gorm harbor when the hail from the Sulcar vessels
crossed the water and the trading ships with their mixed
cargo of Falconers, Karsten refugees, and Sulcar sur-
vivors rounded a headland to draw in from the sea side.

Simon had no idea of where he had crossed the
barrier on his flight from Gorm, and he might be lead-
ing this massed invasion straight into disaster. They
could only hope that the Game of Power had softened
up the defense in their favor.

Tregarth stood at the prow of the fishing smack,
watching the harbor of the dead city, waiting for the
first hint of the barrier. Or would one of those metal
ships, protected past any hope of attack from Estcarp,
strike at them now?

Wind filled their sails, and, overladen as the ships
were, they cut the waves, keeping station as if drilled.
A hulk from the harbor, still carrying enough rags aloft
to catch the wind, its anchor ropes broken, drifted
across their course, a wide collar of green weed lying
under the water line to slow it.

On its deck there was no sign of life as it bore on its
wallowing way. From a Sulcar ship arched a ball, rising
lazily into the air, dropping down to smash upon the
deck of the derelict. Out of that ragged hole in the

ANDRE NORTON

260

planking came red tongues of clean flame, feasting
avidly on the tinder dry fittings, so the ship, burning,

drifted on to sea.

Simon grinned at Koris, a brittle excitement eating at
him. He could be sure now that they were past the first

danger point.

"We have overrun your barrier?"

"Unless they have moved it closer to land, yes!"

Koris rested his chin on the head of Volt's Ax as he
surveyed the dark fingers of wharves before what had
once been a flourishing city. He was grinning too, as a
wolf shows its fangs before the first slash of the fight.

' 'It would appear that this time the Power worked,"
he commented. "Now let us be about our part of the

business."

Simon knew a twinge of caution. "Do not under-
estimate them. We have but passed the first of their
defenses, perhaps their weakest." His first elation was
gone as quickly as it had come. There were swords,
axes, dart guns about him. But in the heart of the Kolder
keep was a science centuries ahead of such
weapons—which might at any moment produce some
nasty surprise.

As they came farther into the harbor, faced now by
the need for finding passage to the wharves in and
among the vessels moldering at anchor, there continued
to be no sign of any life in Sippar. Only some of the
brooding and forbidding silence of the dead city fell
upon the invaders, dampening their ardor, taking a
slight edge off their enthusiasm and their feeling of
triumph at having passed the barrier.

Koris sensed that. Working his way back through the
mass of men waiting to be landed, he found the captain
of the ship and urged a quick thrust at the shore. Only to
be reminded tartly that while the Captain of Estcarp's

WITCH WORLD

261

Guard might be all powerful on land, he should leave
the sea to those who knew it, and that the master of this
particular ship had no intention of fouling his vessel
with any of the hulks before them.

Simon continued to eye the shoreline, studying the
mouth of each empty street, glancing now and then
aloft to that blind hulk which was the heart of Sippar in
more ways than one. He could not have said just what
he feared—a flight of planes, an army emerging from
the streets to the quays. To be met by nothing at all was
more disconcerting than to face the high odds of Kolder
weapons carried by hordes of their slaves. This was too
easy, and he could not find full faith in the Game of
Power; some core of him refused to believe that be-
cause a small image had ended with a melted head, they
had defeated all that lay in Gorm.

They made the shore without incident, those of Sul-
car landing farther down the coast to cut off any rein-
forcements which might be drawn from other points on
the island. They scouted up the streets and lanes down
which Simon had come days earlier, trying locked
doors, investigating dark corners. But as far as they
could discover nothing lived nor moved within the husk
ofGorm's capital.

And they were well up to the center hold when the
first resistance came, not from the air, nor from any
invisible wave, but on foot with weapons in hand as the
men of this world had fought for generations.

Suddenly the streets were peopled with fighters who
moved swiftly, but without sound, who voiced no bat-
tle cries, but came forward steadily with deadly pur-
poses. Some wore the battle dress of Sulcarmen, some
of Karsten, and Simon saw among them a few of the
bird helms of Falconers.

That silent rush was made by men who were not only

ANDRE NORTON

262

expendable, but who had no thought of self-protection,
just as those in the road ambush had fought. And their
first fury carried them into the invasion force with the
impact of a tank into a company of infantrymen. Simon
went to his old game of sniping, but Koris charged with
the Ax of Volt, a whirling, darting engine of death, to
clear a path through the enemy lines, and another back

again.

The slaves of the Kolder were no mean opponents,
but they lacked the spark of intelligence which would
have brought them together to re-form, to use to better
advantage their numbers. They knew only that they
must attack while any strength was left in them, while
they still kept on their feet. And so they did, with the
insane persistence of the mindless. It was sheer butch-
ery which turned even the veteran Guardsmen sick
while they strove to defend themselves and to gain

ground.
Volt's Ax no longer shone bright, but, stained as it

was, Koris tossed it in the air as a signal for the ad-
vance. His men closed ranks leaving behind them a
street which was no longer empty, though it was with-
out life.

' 'That was to delay us." Simon joined the Captain.

" So do I think. What do we expect now? Death from
the air such as they used at Sulcarkeep?" Koris looked
into the sky, the roofs above them gaining his wary

attention.
It was those same roofs which suggested another

plan to his companion.

' 'I do not think you will be able to break into the hold
at ground level," he began and heard the soft rumble of
laughter from within the Captain's helm.

' 'Not so. I know ways herein which perhaps even the
Kolder have not nosed out. This was my burrow once.''

WITCH WORLD

263

"But I have also a plan," Simon cut in. "There are
ropes in plenty on the ships, and grappling hooks. Let
one party take to the roofs, while you search out your
burrows, and perhaps we can close jaws upon them
from two sides."

"Fair enough!" Koris conceded. "Do you try the
sky ways since you have traveled them before. Choose
your men, but do not take above twenty."

Twice more they were attacked by those silent par-
ties of living-dead, and each time more of their own
men were left as toll when the last of the Kolder-owned
were cut down. In the end the Estcarp forces parted
ways. Simon and some twenty of the Guard broke in a
door and climbed through the miasma of old death to a
roof. Tregarth's sense of direction had not betrayed
him; the neighboring roof showed a ragged hole, the
mark of his landing in the plane.

He stood aside for the sailors who cast their grapples
to the parapet of that other roof above their heads and
across an expanse of street. Men tied their swords to
them, made sure of the safety of their weapon belts,
eyed that double line across nothingness with determi-
nation . Simon had recruited none who could not claim a
good head for heights. But now when he faced the test
he had more doubts than hopes.

He made that first ascent, the tough rope scraping his
palms as he climbed, putting a strain on his shoulders
he believed from moment to moment he could not
endure.

The nightmare ended sometime. He uncoiled a third
rope from about his waist, and tossed its weighted end
back to the next man in line, taking a turn with the other
end around one of the pillars supporting the hangar and
80 helping to draw him up.

Those planes he had disabled stood where he had left

ANDRE NORTON

264

them, but open motor panels and scattered tools tes-
tified to work upon them. Why the job had not been
finished was another mystery. Simon told off four men
to guard the roof and the rope way, and with the rest
began the invasion of the regions below.

The same silence which had held elsewhere in the
town was thick here. They passed along corridors,
down stairs, by shut doors, with only the faint sound of
their own quiet tread to be heard. Was the hold de-
serted?

On they went into the heart of the blind, sealed

building, expecting at any moment to encounter one of
the bands of the possessed. The degree of light grew
stronger; there was an undefinable change in the air
which suggested that if these levels were deserted now

it had not long been so.

Simon's party came to the last flight of stone steps
which he remembered so well. At the bottom that stone
would be coated with the gray walling of the Kolders.
He leaned out over the well, listening. Far, far below
there was a sound at last, as regular in its thump, thump
as the beat of his own heart.

VI

THE CLEANSING OF GORM

' 'Captain,'' Tunston had moved up to join him, "what
do we meet below?"

"Your foreseeing in that is as good as mine," Simon
answered half absently, for it was in that moment that
he realized he did not sense any danger to come at all,
even in this strange place of death and half life. Yet
there was something below, or they would not hear
that.

He led the way, his gun ready, taking those steps
cautiously, but at a fast pace. There were closed doors
which were locked against their efforts to open them,
until they came into the chamber of the wall map.

Here that beat arose from the floor under their feet,
was drummed out by the walls, to fill their ears and
their bodies with its slow rhythm.

The lights on the map were dead. There remained no
line of machines on the table, tended by gray-robed
men, though metal fastenings, a trailing wire or two
marked where they had rested. But at that upper table
there still sat a capped figure, his eyes closed, im-
mobile, just as Simon had seen him on his first visit to
this place.

At first Simon believed the man dead. He walked to
the table watching the seated Kolder alertly. To his best
knowledge this was the same man whom he had tried to

265

ANDRE NORTON

266

visualize for the artist ofEstcarp. And he was fleetingly
pleased at the accuracy of his memory.

Only—Simon halted. This man was not dead,
though those eyes were closed, the body motionless.
One hand lay upon the control plate set in the table top 9
and Simon had just seen a fingertip press a button there. |

Tregarth leaped. He had an instant in which to see |
those eyes open, the face beneath the metal twist in ^
anger—and perhaps fear. Then his own hands closed
upon the wire which led from the cap the other wore to
the board in the wall behind. He ripped, bringing loose
several of those slender cables. Someone cried out a
warning and he saw a barreled weapon swing into line
with his body as the Kolder went into action.

Only because that cap and its trailing veil of wire
interfered with the free action of he who wore it was
Simon to continue to live. He slapped out with his dart
gun across the flat face with its snarling mouth which
uttered no sound, its stark and hating eyes. The blow
broke skin, brought blood welling from cheek and
nose. Simon caught the other's wrist, twisting it so that
a thin film of vapor spurted up into the vault of the
ceiling, and not into his own face.

They crashed back into the chair from which the
Kolder had risen. There was a sharp snap, fire flashed
across Simon's neck and shoulder. A scream, muted
and suppressed rang in his ears. The face beneath its
sweep of blood was contorted with agony, yet still the
Kolder fought on with steel-muscled strength.

Those eyes, larger, and larger, filling the hall—
Simon was falling forward into those eyes. Then there
were no more eyes, just a weird fog-streaked window
into another place—perhaps another time. Between
pillars burst a company of men, gray robed, riding in

WITCH WORLD

267

machines strange to him. They were firing behind them
as they came, unmistakably some remnant of a broken
force on the run and hardly pressed.

In a narrow column they struggled on, and with them
he endured desperation and such a cold fury as he had
not known existed as an emotion to wrack mind and
heart. The Gate—once through the gate—then they
would have the time: time to rebuild, to take, to be what
they had the will and force to be. A broken empire and a
ravaged world lay behind them—before them a fresh
world for the taking.

The beset fugitives were swept away. He saw only
one pallid face flushed red about a wound where his
first blow had landed. Clinging about them both was
the smell of scorching cloth and flesh. How long had
that vision of the valley lasted—it could not have been a
full second! He was still fighting, exerting pressure so
that he might crack the other's wrist against the chair.
Twice he struck it so, and then the fingers relaxed and
the vapor gun fell out of their grip.

For the first time since that one scream the Kolder
made a sound, a broken whimpering which sickened
Simon. A second fading vision of those fleeing men—a
moment of passionate regret which was like a blow to
the man who involuntarily shared it. They thrashed
across the floor to bring the Kolder up against a spitting
wire. Simon slammed the other's metal cap hard
against the floor. For the last time a fragment of recog-
nition reached from the man to him and in that scrap of
tune he knew—perhaps not what the Kolder were—but
from whence they had come. Then there was nothing at

all, and Simon pulled away from the flaccid body to sit
up.

Tunston stooped and tried to pull the cap from the

268 ANDRE NORTON

head which rolled limply on the gray-robed shoulders.
They were all a little daunted when it became apparent
that that cap was no cap at all, but seemingly a perma-
nent part of the body it crowned.

Simon got to his feet. "Leave it!" he bade the
Guard. "But make sure none touch those wires."

It was then that he was aware that that throb in wall
and floor, that feeling of life was gone, leaving behind
it a curious void. The Kolder of the cap might himself
have been the heart, which, ceasing to beat, had killed
the citadel as surely as his race had killed Sippar.

Simon made for the alcove where the elevator had
been. Had all power ceased so that there was no way to
reach the lower levels? But the door of the small cell
was open. He gave command here to Tunston, and
taking two of the Guardsmen with him, pushed the door
shut.

Again luck appeared to be with those out of Estcarp,
for the closing of the panel put into action the
mechanism of the lift. Simon expected to front the level
of the laboratory when that door opened once again.
Only, when the cage came to a stop, he faced some-
thing so far removed from his expectations that for a
moment he stood staring, while both of the men with
him exclaimed in surprise.

They were on the shore of an underground harbor,
strongly smelling of the sea and of something else. The
lighting which had prevailed elsewhere in the pile was
centered upon a runway washed by the water on both
sides, pointing straight out into a bowl of gloom and
dark. And on that quay were the tumbled bodies of
men, men such as themselves with no gray robes
among them.

Where the living dead who had met them in the street

WITCH WORLD             269

battles had gone armed and fully clad, these were either
naked or wore only the tattered rags of old garments
about their bodies, as if a need for clothing had no
longer concerned them for a long time.

Some had crumpled beside small trucks on which
boxes and containers were still heaped. Others lay in
line as if they had been marching in ranks when struck
down. Simon walked forward and stooped to peer at the
nearest. It was clear that the man was truly dead, had
been so for a day at least.

Gingerly, avoiding the heaped bodies, the three from
Estcarp made their way to the end of the quay, finding
nowhere among the dead any armed as fighting men.
And none were of Estcarp blood. If these had been the
slaves of the Kolder, they were all of other races.

' 'Here, Captain.'' One of the Guards lagging behind
Simon had halted beside a body and was looking at it in
wonder. "Here is such a man as I have never seen
before. Look at the color of his skin, his hair; he is not
from these lands!"

The unfortunate Kolder slave lay on his back as if in
sleep. But his skin, totally exposed save for a draggle of
rag about his hips, was a red-brown, and his hair was
tightly curled to his scalp. It was plain that the Kolder
had cast their man nets in far regions.

Without knowing why, Simon walked clear to the
end of that wharf. Either Gorm had originally been
erected over a huge underground cavern, or the invad-
ers had blasted this out to serve their own purposes,
purposes Simon could only believe were connected
with the ship on which he had been a prisoner. Was this
the secluded dock of the Kolder fleet?

"Captain!" The other Guard had tramped a little
ahead, uninterested in the bodies among which he

ANDRE NORTON

270

threaded a fastidious path. Now he stood on the end of
that tongue of stone beckoning Simon forward.

There was a stirring of the waters; waves lapped
higher on the wharf, forcing all three men to retreat.
Even in that limited light they could see something

large rising to the surface.

"Down!" Simon snapped the command. They did
not have time to return to the lift; their best hope was to
play one with the bodies about them.

They lay together, Simon pillowing his head on his
arm, his gun ready, watching the turmoil. Water spilled
from the bulk of the thing. Now he could make out the
sharp bow with its matching needle stem. His guess had
been right: this was one of the Kolder ships come to

harbor.
He wondered if his own breathing sounded as loud as

that of his men beside him did to him. They were more
fully clothed than the dead about them; could sharp
eyes pick out the gleam of their mail and nail them with
some Kolder weapon before they could move in de-
fense?

Only that silver ship, having once surfaced, made no

other move at all, rolling in the waves within the cavern
as if it were as dead as the bodies. Simon watched it
narrowly and then started, as the man beside him whis-
pered and touched his officer's arm.

But Simon did not need that admonition to watch.
He, too, had sighted that second boiling upheaval of
waves. In those the first ship was pushed toward the
quay. It was plain now that she answered no helm.
Hardly daring to believe that the vessel was unmanned,
they still kept in hiding. It was only when the third ship
bobbed into sight and sent the other two whirling with
the force of its emergence, that Simon accepted the

WITCH WORLD              271

evidence and got to his feet. Those ships were either
unmanned or totally disabled. They drifted without
guidance, two coming together with a crash.

No openings showed on their decks, no indications
that they carried crews and passengers. The story that
the quay told was different, however. It suggested a
hasty loading of vessels, intended to attack, or to make
a withdrawal from Gorm. And had only an attack been
the purpose would the slaves have been killed?

To board one of those floating silver splinters with-
out preparation would be folly. But it would be best to
keep an eye upon them. The three went back to the cage
which had brought them there. One of the ships struck
against the wharf, sheered it off, and wallowed away.

"Will you remain here?" He asked a question of his
men rather than gave an order. The Guard of Estcarp
should be inured to strange sights, but this was no place
to station an unwilling man.

"Those ships—we should learn their secrets," one
of the men returned. "But I do not think they will sail
out from here again. Captain."

Simon accepted that oblique dissent. Together they
left the underground harbor to the derelicts and the
dead. Before they took off in the cage, Simon in-
spected its interior for controls. He wanted to reach
some level where he might contact Koris' party, not
return to the hall of the map once again.

Unfortunately the walls of that box were bare of any
aid to direction. Disappointed they closed the door
behind them waiting to be returned aloft. As the vibra-
tion in the wall testified to their movement, Simon
recalled vividly the corridor of the laboratory and
wished he could reach it.

The cage came to a stop, the door slid back, and the

ANDRE NORTON

272

three within found themselves looking into the startled
faces of other men, armed and alert. Only those few
seconds of amazement saved both parties from a fatal
mistake, for one of the group without called Simon's
name and he saw Briant.

Then a figure not to be mistaken for any but Koris

shouldered by the others.

"Where do you spring from?" he demanded. "The

wall itself?"
Simon knew this corridor where the Estcarp force

was gathered: the place he had been thinking of. But
why had the cage brought him here as if in answer to his

wish alone? His wish!

"You have found the laboratory?"

"We have found many things, few of which make
any sense. But not yet have we found any Kolder! And

you?"

"One of the Kolder and he is now dead—or perhaps

all of them!" Simon thought of the ships below and
what they might hold in their interiors. "I do not
believe that we have to fear meeting them here now."

Through the hours which followed Simon was
proved a true prophet. Save for the one man in the metal
cap, there was no other of the unknown race to be
discovered within Gorm. And of those who had served
the Kolder there were only dead men left. Found, those
were in squads, in companies, or by twos and threes in
the corridors and rooms of the keep. All lay as they had
dropped, as if what had kept them operating as men had
suddenly been withdrawn and they had fallen into the
nothingness which should have been theirs earlier, the
peace which their masters had denied them.

The Guards found other prisoners in the room
beyond the laboratory, among them some who had

WITCH WORLD              273

shared captivity with Simon. These awoke sluggishly
from their drugged sleep, unable to remember anything
after they had been gassed, but thanking such gods as
each owned that they had been brought to Gorm too late
to follow the sorry path of the others the Kolder had
engulfed.

Koris and Simon guided Sulcar seamen to the under-
ground harbor, and in a small boat, explored the
cavern. They found only rock wall. The entrance to the
pool must lie under surface, and they believed it had
been closed to the escape of the derelict ships.

"If he who wore the cap controlled it all," surmised
Koris, "then his death must have sealed them in. Also,
since he is the one you battled from afar through the
Power, he might have already been giving muddled
orders to lead to confusion here."

"Perhaps," Simon agreed absently. He was think-
ing of what he had learned from that other in his last few
seconds of life. If the rest of the Kolder force were
sealed into those ships, then indeed Estcarp had good
reason to rejoice.

They got a line to one of the vessels and brought it
alongside the wharf. But the fastenings of the hatch
baffled them and Koris and Simon left the Sulcarmen to
puzzle it out, returning to the keep.

"This is another of their magics." Koris slid the
door of the lift closed behind them. "But seemingly
one the capped man did not control, seeing as how we
can use it now."

"You can control this as well as he ever did," Simon
leaned back against wall, weariness washing over him.
Their victory was inconclusive; he had an inkling of the
chase yet before him, but would those of Estcarp be-
lieve what he had to tell them now? ' "Think upon the

ANDRE NORTON

274

corridor where you met me, picture it in your mind."
"So?" Koris pulled off his helm; now he set his
shoulders against the opposite wall and closed his eyes

in concentration.

The door opened. They looked out upon the labora-
tory corridor and Koris laughed with a boy's amuse-
ment at an exciting toy.

"This magic I can work also, I, Koris, the Ugly. It
would seem that among the Kolder the Power was not

limited only to women."

Simon closed the door once again, pictured in his
mind the upper chamber of the wall map. Only when
they reached that did he answer his companion's obser-
vation.

"Perhaps that is what we now have to fear from the
Kolder, Captain. They had their own form of power,
and you have seen how they used it. This Gorm may
now be a treasure house of their knowledge."

Koris threw his helm on the table below the map, and
leaning on his ax regarded Simon levelly.

"It is a treasure house you warn against looting?"

He picked that out quickly.

"I don't know," Simon dropped heavily into one of
the chairs, and resting his head on his fists, stared down
at the surface on which his elbows were planted.' 'I am
no scientist, no master of this kind of magic. The
Sulcarmen will be tempted by those ships, Estcarp by

what else lies here."

"Tempted?" Someone had echoed that word and
both men looked around. Simon got to his feet as he
saw who seated herself quietly a little from them,
Briant beside her as if playing her shieldman.

She was helmed and in mail, but Simon knew that
she could disguise herself with shape-changing and still
he would know her always.

WITCH WORLD

275

"Tempted," again she repeated. "Well do you
choose that word, Simon. Yes, we of Estcarp shall be
tempted; that is why I am here. There are two edges to
this blade and we may cut outselves on either if we do
not take care. Should we turn aside from this strange
knowledge, destroy all we have found, we may be
making ourselves safe, or we may be foolishly opening
a way for a second Kolder attack, for one cannot build a
defense unless he has a clear understanding of the
weapons to be used against him."

"Of the Kolder," Simon spoke slowly, heavily,
"you will not have to fear too much. There was but a
small company of them in the beginning. If any escaped
here, then they can be hunted back to their source and
that source closed."

"Closed?" Koris made a question of that.

"In the last struggle with their leader he revealed
their secret."

"That they are not native to this world?"

Simon's head swung around. Had she picked that out
of his mind, or was that some information she had not
seen fit to supply before?

"You knew?"

' 'I am not a reader of minds, Simon. But we have not
known it long. Yes, they came to us—as you came—
but, I think, from other motives."

"They were fugitives, fleeing disaster, a disaster of
their own making, having set their own place aflame
behind them. I do not think that they dared to leave their
door open behind them, but that we must make sure of.
The more pressing problem is what lies here."

' 'And you think that if we take their knowledge to us
the evil which lies in it may corrupt. I wonder. Estcarp
has lived long secure in its own Power."

"Lady, no matter what decision is made, I do not

ANDRE NORTON

276

think that Estcarp shall remain the same. She must
either come fully into the main stream of active life, or
she must be content to withdraw wholly from it into
stagnation, which is a form of death."

It was as if they two talked alone and neither Briant
nor Koris had a part in the future they discussed. She
met him mind to mind with an equality he had not
sensed in any other woman before.

"You speak the truth, Simon. Perhaps the ancient
solidity of my people must break. There shall be those
who will wish for life and a new world, and those who
shall shrink from any change from the ways which
mean security. But that struggle still lies in the future.
And it is only a growth of this war. What would you say
should be done with Gorm?"

He smiled wearily. "I am a man of action. Out of
here I shall go to hunt down that gate which the Kolder
used and see that it is rendered harmless. Give me
orders, lady, and they shall be carried out. But for the
time being I would seal this place until a decision can be
made. There may be an attempt on the part of others to
take away what lies here."

' 'Yes. Karsten, Alizon, both would relish the looting
of Sippar." She nodded briskly. Her hand was at the
breast of her mail shirt and she drew it away with the
jewel of power in it.

' 'This is my authority. Captain," she spoke to Koris.
"Let it be as Simon has said. Let this storehouse of
strange knowledge be sealed, and let the rest of Gorm
be cleansed for a garrison, until such time as we can
decide the future of what lies here." She smiled at the
young officer. "I leave it in your command, Lord
Defender of Gorm."

VII

A VENTURE OF NEW BEGINNINGS

A dusky red spread slowly up from the collar of Koris'
mail shirt, reaching the line of his fair hair. Then he
answered and the bitter lines about his well-cut mouth
were deep, adding years to his young face.

"Are you forgetting, lady," he brought the blade of
Volt's Ax down flatwise on the table with a clang,
"that long ago Koris the Misshapen was driven from
these shores?"

"And what happened to Gorm thereafter, and to
those who did that driving?" she asked quietly. "Have
any said 'misshapen Captain of Estcarp'?"

His hand tightened on the haft of his weapon until the
knuckles were white and sharp. "Find another Lord
Defender for Gorm, lady. I swore by Noman that I
would not return here. To me this is a doubly haunted
place. I think that Estcarp has had no reason to com-
plain of her Captain; also I do not believe this war
already won."

"He is right, you know," Simon cut in. "The Kol-
der may be few, most of them may be trapped in those
ships below. But we must trace them back to their gate
and make sure that they do not consolidate shattered
forces to launch a second bid for rulership. What about
Yie? And do they have a garrison in Sulcarkeep? How
deeply are they involved in Karsten and Alizon? We

277

ANDRE NORTON

278

may be at the beginning of a long war instead of

grasping victory."

"Very well," she stroked the jewel she held. "Since

you have such definite ideas, become governor here,

Simon."
Koris spoke swiftly before Tregarth could answer.

' To me that is a plan to which I agree. HoldGorm with
my blessing, Simon, and do not think that I shall ever
rise in the name of my heritage to take it from you."

But Simon was shaking his head. "I am a soldier.
And I am from another world. Let dog eat dog as the
saying goes—the Kolder trail is mine." He touched his
head; if he closed his eyes now he knew he would see
not darkness but a narrow valley through which angry

men fought a rearguard action.

"Do you venture into Yie and Sulcarkeep and no

farther?" Briant broke silence for the first time.
"Where would you have us go?" Koris asked.
"Karsten!" If Simon had ever thought the youth

colorless and lacking in personality he was to doubt his

appraisal at that moment.

"And what lies in Karsten which is of such moment
to us?'' Koris' voice held an almost bantering note. Yet
there was something else beneath the surface of that
tone which Simon heard but could not identify. There
was a game here afoot, but he did not know its purpose

or rules.

"Yvian!" The name was flung at the Captain like a

battle challenge and Briant eyed Koris as if waiting to
see him pick it up. Simon glanced from one young man
to the other. As it had been earlier when he and the
witch had talked across the board, so was it now: these
two fenced without thought of their audience.

WITCH WORLD              279

For the second time red tinged Koris' cheeks, then
ebbed, leaving his face white and set, that of a man
committed to some struggle he hated but dared not
shirk. For the first time he left the Ax of Volt lying
forgotten on the table as he came swiftly about the end
of the board, moving with that lithe grace which always
contrasted with his ill-formed body.

Briant, a queer expression of mingled defiance and
hope giving life to his features, waited for his coming,
stood still as the Captain's hands fell on his shoulders in
a grip which could not have been anything but bruising.

"This is what you want?" the words came from
Koris as if jerked one by one by torture.

At the last moment perhaps Briant tried to evade. ' 'I
want my freedom," he replied in a low voice.

Those punishing hands fell away. Koris laughed
with such raking bitterness that Simon protested in-
wardly against the hurt that sound betrayed.

"Be sure, in time, it shall be yours!" The Captain
would have stepped away if Briant had not seized in
turn upon Koris' upper arms with the same urgency of
hold the other had shown earlier.

"I want my freedom only that I may make a choice
elsewhere. And I have decided upon that choice—do
you doubt that? Or is it again that there is an Aldis who
has the power I cannot reach for?"

Aldis? A glimmering of what might be the truth
struck Simon.

Koris' fingers were under Briant's chin, turning the
thin young face up to his. This once was the Captain
able to look down and not up at a companion.

"You believe in sword thrust for sword thrust, do
you not?" he commented. "So Yvian has his Aldis; let

ANDRE NORTON

280

them have the good of each other while they may. But I
think that Yvian has made a very ill choice of it. And
since one ax made a marriage, another may undo it!"
"Marriage in the gabble gabble of Siric only,"
flashed Briant, still a little defiant, but not struggling in

the Captain's new hold.

"Need you have told me that," Koris was smiling.

"Lady of Verlaine?"

"LoyseofVerlaineisdead!" Briant repeated. "You
get no such heritage with me, Captain."

A tiny frown line appeared between Koris' brows.
"That you need not have said either. Rather is it that
such as I am must buy a wife with gauds and lands. And
never afterwards be sure of the bargain."

Her hand whipped from his arm to his mouth, silenc-
ing him. And there was red anger in both her eyes and
her voice when she replied:

"Koris, Captain of Estcarp need never speak so of
himself, least of all to a woman such as I, without
inheritance of lands or beauty!"

Simon moved, knowing that neither were aware of
the other two in that room. He touched the witch of
Estcarp gently on the shoulder and smiled down at her.

"Let us leave them to fight their own battle," he

whispered.

She was laughing silently after her fashion. "This
talk of mutual unworthiness will speedily be a step to no
talking at all and so to a firm settlement of two fu-
tures."

' 'I take it that she is the missing heiress of Verlaine,

wedded by proxy to Duke Yvian?"

"She is. By her aid alone I came scatheless out of
Verlaine, I being captive there for a space. Fulk is not a
pleasant enemy."

WITCH WORLD

281

Afire to every shade of her voice, Simon's smile
became grim.

"I think that Fulk and his wreckers shall be taught a
lesson in the near future; it will curb their high spirits,''
he commented, knowing well her way of understate-
ment. It was enough for him that she admitted she owed
her escape from Verlaine to the girl across the room.
For a woman of the Power such an admission hinted of
danger indeed. He had a sudden overwhelming desire
to take one of the Sulcar ships, man it with his mountain
fighters, and sail southward.

"Doubtless he shall," she agreed to his statement
concerning Fulk with her usual tranquillity. "As you
have said, we are still in the midst of a war, and not
victors at the end of one. Verlaine and Karsten, too,
shall be attended to in their proper seasons. Simon, my
name is Jaelithe."

It came so abruptly, that for a full moment he did not
understand her meaning. And then, knowing the
Estcarpian custom, of the rules which had bound her so
long, he drew a deep breath of wonder at that complete
surrender: her name, that most personal possession in
the realm of the Power, which must never be yielded
lest one yield with it one's own identity to another!

As Koris' ax lay on the table, so she had left her jewel
behind her when she had moved apart with Simon. For
the first time he realized that fact also. She had deliber-
ately disarmed herself, put aside all her weapons and
defenses, given into his hands what she believed was
the ordering of her life. What such a surrender had
meant to her he could guess, but only dimly—and that
he knew also, awed. He felt as stripped of all talents
and ability, as misshapen, as Koris deemed himself.

Yet he moved forward and his arms went out to draw

282            ANDRE NORTON

her to him. As he bent his head to hers, searching for
waiting lips, Simon sensed that for the first time the
pattern had changed indeed. Now he was a part of a
growing design, his life to be woven fast with hers, into
the way of this world's. And there would be no break-
ing it for the remainder of his days. Nor would he ever
wish to.