“You are free,” he said dully, all the fire and life seeping out of him, the shut-away look back again, as if he were encased by a barrier I could not pierce.
“But you are not? Remember, Kerovan, once I did not go free either. I was taken to serve the Dark. What did you then?”
He swung away from me as if he did not hear my words any more. Years of age might have settled on him. “You do not understand,” he mumbled.
I wanted to shake him, to tear out of him somehow what made him this way. At the same time I knew that such action would be no use. He had dropped down beside the pack he had lifted from the pony last night, was fumbling out the packet of food.
“They do not suspect—” He was speaking in a monotone and I shivered, realizing that he did not talk to me—he was lost somewhere and I had no way of drawing him forth from the shadows where he now wandered. “No. they do not know what they would rouse—those fools from overseas. Their attack on the Dales—but a ruse. He has summoned them.”
“Kerovan”—I knelt beside him to ask gently, “who is this he? Is he out of your dream?”
He shook his head. “I cannot tell. It is not ‘will not’ but ’cannot’. I was—No, I do not know where I was. But there is one who waits—and I must go.”
“So we ride.” I answered with all the courage I could summon. I felt almost as if I companied now with a dying man, one who moved and spoke, but whose inner part might be extinguished—or near that. I tried to remember the name he had called in that battle of Powers—but I could not. Perhaps it was the kind of name lips such as mine might not even shape.
I found this Joss of the Kerovan I knew far more fearsome than when he rode out of Norsdale. Had we shared more, had we known each other in a true uniting, perhaps he could not have been so easily enspelled. Yet I would not let him go. There must be some way I could bring to life again the real Kerovan.
Eating but little, I busied myself with the packets Elys had left among the pony’s gear. I had fresh underlinen at last, and a comb to put my hair in order. I longed for the weapons I had lost to the Thas. Kerovan had not asked that I return his knife so I slipped it into my own belt sheath.
Before we left I took the chance of gathering some more of the melons, adding them to our food supply. There was no sign of the cats.
Kerovan kept silence, one I did not try to break. Sometimes his eyes crossed me, but it was as if I were invisible. So we went forth from the ruins, leading our animals down to the highway. Kerovan insisted that I ride the mare, while he led the pony and walked beside me.
The wrack of the storm was visible in broken branches and sodden grass, but overhead the sun arose. While always the road bored on toward the heights, or as we discovered—through them!
The labor that had gone into the making of that cut, allowing forbidding walls to remain on either side, amazed me. This must have taken the work of years—or else was the result of potent magic, well beyond the comprehension of our breed. We stopped just before entering that cut to eat and drink, allowing the animals to graze.
Many times during our journey I had felt that, while Kerovan’s body strode beside me, the real man was gone. I was chilled, my hopes dwindled. If he was in the grip of an adept of the Old Ones, how could/free him?
As I used the knife to cut a melon he suddenly spoke. “You have not chosen well.”
“The choice was mine,” I returned shortly.
“Therefore the results shall be on your own—”
What harsh or bitter prophecy he might have added was never voiced. I saw his eyes go wide; his gaze shifted from me to a point beyond my shoulder. There was a strong sensation of cold—as if a wind blew over numbing ice—striking my upper back.
Kerovan was on his feet, that trance-like state broken. I saw, under the shadow of his helm, the same face he must have shown to any Hounds he met steel to steel.
That cold bored into me. This was no tangible weapon—yet it could kill. I threw myself to one side, rolled, and then levered my body up again. Kerovan stood, a little crouched, as if ready to spring. He had not, however, drawn sword. While what waited there just beyond the border of the road . . .
A woman, dark of hair, slender of body, her face contorted in a mask of hatred and despair, a demon’s countenance, was there. Though a breeze stirred the grass about her, her robe did not sway, nor did her veil move. I knew her . . . But she was dead! Consumed by her own foul magic.
The Lady Temphera, who had consorted with the Dark to produce a son, then failed when that son proved to be other than she had planned, stood watching us with the stark hatred of her last moments of life.
She was dead! I would not accept what I saw. This was some trickery.
Kerovan moved as I stumbled to my feet, held tightly to the gryphon. I refused to be frightened by a shadow out of the past.
There was no wand in her hand. No, that had been shattered with the core of her Power during that other meeting. Nor did she raise her hands in any gesture to summon forces. She only stood, staring at her repudiated son with those burning eyes. Not eyes—rather holes in a skull from which skin and flesh withered as I watched.
“Fool!” That was Kerovan who spoke. Once more his face was impassive. “Fool!” He held up his hand. On his wrist that band of blue blazed. A streamer of light shot toward the woman’s death head. The ray appeared to strike a barrier, spread out horizontally across it.
“Show yourself!” Kerovan’s lips drew back in a wolfs grin. He commanded as one very sure of himself and his own might.
The illusion (if it were that) moved. Swiftly the right arm swung up. She showed a clenched hand as the long sleeve fell away. Then she threw what she held. A flashing streak came through the air.
Straight for Kerovan’s head spun that missile. He moved as swiftly, his arm across his face. I heard a noise as loud as a thunder clap—saw a burst of radiance, so that I blinked and blinked to clear my sight.
Through a watery haze I watched the woman sway. The bale-fire hate, which burned in the eyeholes, spread, consumed, until the head of the apparition was a horrible, blackened mass. The blaze ate on down her body. She seemed to be trying to raise her hands in futile defense, the fingers left trails of black in the air. I wanted to close my eyes, still I could not.
“Is this the best you can send against me?” Kerovan’s voice swelled, carried, so that the walls of the cut ahead echoed it back to us. “To evoke the dead is a weakness.”
“Weakness—weakness . . .” echoed back.
The horror shriveled, grew smaller, was gone. Kerovan stood, stone-faced, to watch it be so consumed. When the last blackened shred vanished he turned to me.
“This is only the first sending. Perhaps the least of such, merely to test us, or as a warning.”
“It is—or was—a very impotent one.” I found my voice.
Kerovan shook his head. “We cannot be sure. We can never be sure of any Power . . .” He stroked the band on his wrist with his other hand. “I think that we shall never again walk, or lie, or rest easy in this land—never until we have a final meeting—”
“With Temphera? But she is dead—” “With another whose identity I do not know, who will use against me—and you because you are with me—all he can summon, perhaps to our ending.”
Still he did not look hopeless or even troubled, as he said that. Nor was his face again closed or bleak. A new life had appeared there. I sensed he was excited, had been stirred fully awake rather than alarmed by what had been meant as a dire warning.
16
Kerovan
When I fronted what had arisen, black and sear, out of the past I felt that time had turned upon itself. This was she who had given me birth but had never been a mother. Only now she stood alone, lacking Rogear with all his ill-used, half-learned Power. Also, that symbol of her authority, the wand, was gone, having been shattered into nothingness when we had fought out our struggle in the past. Still, my hand arose, as if my arm was weighted with a shield and not with the wrist band that had served me so well.