“Such happened to me,” Yonan agreed. “For a space we have believed that we have beaten back the shadow and that it sulks in its own fastnesses. But you have told us of a Sam Rider who has dared to come this near to the Valley and deal death to one who should have been mightier than he—”
“Roylane?”
It seemed to Kelsie that he winced as she repeated that name.
“A witch has no name. To give one’s name among them gives them power over another. Yet she said her name to you and her stone came with the cat. Thus another change—”
Now she looked at him squarely, catching his eyes and holding them in a way she had never tried with anyone before—as if she could compel him to answer even against his will.
“What do you think I am?”
It was a matter of four or five slow breaths before he answered and then he said:
“You were summoned—the Lady Dahaun had the foreseeing of that. And none can come so unless there is a geas laid upon them—”
“A geas?” she demanded.
“A fated journey or deed against which nothing nor no one can stand. Yes, we knew that one would come—and perhaps they did also or a Sarn Rider would not have dared the inner hills. What your geas is—that you will discover for yourself, Lady—”
“You are right about that,” she returned grimly, forced against her will into at least half belief.
5
Kelsie arose abruptly, turning to the rock in which those weird spirals and indentations were plain as the sun moved.
“I know nothing of this… this geas—
He shrugged. “Sometimes that is so and you will find that it leads you only after many days—But where it points, there you shall go.”
“You speak as if you know something of such things beside just idle tales.”
Yonan again looked at her with the shadow smile. “Now that is also the truth. It once fell upon me—this need for doing an action which I did not plan and—”
Whatever he might have added came to nothing, for one of the lizard folk flashed into sight among the rocks. Yonan was instantly on his feet, staring upward at that green-gold scaled body as it descended the Valley wall with a speed which made Kelsie gasp so near was it to a downward plunge. The girl saw that while using all four limbs for his quick drop the sentry carried in addition something in his mouth, an untidy bunch much the same as the cloth in which Yonan had brought the cub and she wondered if another was to be added to Swiftfoot’s family.
Once the lizard reached relatively level ground where the two stood he spat forth what he carried and it slammed against the stone of the carving. There came a tingling sound and then a puff of black smoke accompanied by a foul odor. Yonan exclaimed, drew sword while the lizard man stood, panting to one side, his golden, black slitted eyes on the man.
The tip of the sword caught in the covering of that untidy package, flipped part of the covering up and back. The smoke had disappeared but the odor was stronger, seeming to poison the very air about them.
Under the flap of the material Yonan had lifted there lay a short rod, perhaps the length of one of the lizard man’s long-lingered hands. It was a murky grayish color and there was a knob at either end. Plainly it was hollow and a smoky substance within appeared to swirl and billow as if it fought for freedom.
Moving with what appeared exaggerated care Yonan rolled it out of the cloth. By the expression on his face he was as puzzled as the girl as to what this might be. Though she knew from her instant reaction to it that she would not have laid her bare hand upon that artifact, even had she been offered free passage back through the gate. Her quick, nauseated reaction puzzled as well as alarmed her.
There was something like a far off fluttering of speech within her head and then the lizard was gone, running at top speed toward the houses closer to the river, leaving his find under the sword point of Yonan.
Tsali goes for help—” the young man said. “He must have found this in the rocks above on the very rim of the Valley.”
“Look!” Kelsie may not have wanted to touch the stone but she clutched in her growing uneasiness at Yonan’s arm.
For that thing on the ground was moving!
Not from any stirring of the sword point. In fact it looked as if it were somehow veering left to escape touch with the steel. As if it were a sentient creature with a will to escape—escape or attack?
This was near to the same anger she had felt when the Witch Woman had turned against her. There was a will here, somehow clipped within, or acting from a distance without, upon that rod. It had turned enough now to be wholly clear of the cloth and she saw that the knob end coming around to face them was fashioned in the likeness of a head—a grotesque travesty of a human head in which eye slits boiled with the same evil yellow fire she had seen in pits of the hounds’ narrow skulls.
To her surprise Yonan reversed his sword in one swift movement and held toward that rolling thing the hilt instead of the point. There came a blaze of blue haze from the pommel of the weapon. It touched the rolling rod and—
That solid looking thing quivered as if it were indeed endowed with life. Also it would appear that Yonan’s quick action baffled it though it raised the head end a fraction and wavered for an instant back and forth.
“What is it?” demanded Kelsie. “Is it alive?”
“I have never seen its like before,” returned her companion. “But it is of the Dark—the Deepest Shadow perhaps.”
Before the words were barely out of his mouth there came a yowl of rage. One she had certainly heard before. Around the rock padded the cat, dragging behind it something which flashed with fiery light. The chain of the witch’s jewel dripped from between those cruel fangs and the gem itself boiled and throbbed as if it, too, had a new kind of life within. The cat made a wide circle about that which still quivered and fought for its freedom where Yonan held it in balk.
Padding straight to Kelsie, Swiftfoot dropped the chain of the jewel over the toe of her soft boot and, looking up into the girl’s face, gave a second demanding yowl.
The girl bent and scrabbled for the chain which had fallen into the gravel and arose with the sparkling gem twirled only inches from her hand, nearly crying out from the heat the thing was generating.
Now the rod went into a frenzy, rolling back and forth, hut Yonan was watchful and his sword hilt blocked any swing right or left which might take it even temporarily out of the ward that weapon kept upon it.
“Fool!”
It was the Witch Woman’s biting voice which led Kelsie to glance back over her shoulder. Her skirt caught up with both hands, the woman out of Estcarp was actually running, outpacing in this instant Dahaun and behind her two others, one in the mail of the Old Race, the other, whipstock steady, a girl of the Valley. But before the three of them came Tsali with a whir of speed.
“Fool!” The witch was panting a little but she arrived first and had strength enough left to swipe outward at Kelsie’s hand, as if she would wrest the jewel stone from her then and there. “Would you burn out the last of life—”
“Or the first,” Dahaun’s voice was much more collected. “What mischief has Tsali discovered within our borders?” She came closer to that trembling, fighting rod, dropping down to view the thing the closer. They were all silent now waiting for her to judge. But at last she shook her head.
“Never has the Valley had its ancient safeguards broken. Yet Tsali found this rolling between rocks and about to fall into the spring, perhaps to let the water hide and bring it down. It is not of the Sam, nor the gray ones, and certainly not of the Thas—or if so it is something they have never turned against us before. This is very old—and—”