I squeezed against the wall, allowing her to pass me. She walked firmly, as if our long descent had in no way tired her, even though she also bore the unwieldy burden in her robe. As she pointed her wand nearly on a level before her, its dim light showed that we had come to a carven archway that might be the end of the passage.
Under it we passed and out into an area I thought must be very large, though a velvet darkness hung about us there, just beyond the arm’s-length reach of the wand, for its light penetrated no farther. My padded paws whispered on a floor, Ursilla’s footwear awoke an echo. Here we had no wall to guide us, yet Ursilla struck straight out into the dark as if she knew our path very well, could see our goal before us.
Here an oppressive sense of alienness was a burden to hang in the mind, to slow one’s thoughts. I labored under a weight of fatigue that grew with every step I advanced. Still I tried to probe it, though I knew not how to use the talent. There was no emanation of evil, nor of what we had come to think of as good. This was a Power place, yes, but of a kind that I had never approached or heard tell of—totally unlike any known in the upper world.
Again I was startled by the sound of Ursilla’s voice. This time she did not speak to me. She shaped odd, slurred, almost hissing sounds, which bore no relation to any words I knew. Nor were they a chant such as she had uttered on the stairs, but were uttered in a broken pattern, almost as if she spoke with one unseen, waited to be answered, then spoke again. There was no sound out of the dark to match what she said.
Instead, there came a chill wind that wreathed around our bodies, enwrapping us both as a giant, invisible hand might close upon us. The low wail of the wind was the voice of something that had never borne shape as we knew it.
There comes a point when one is dulled to fear. Or perhaps the place, with all its strangeness, laid some spell, so that fear could not break through to lodge in one’s mind. I did not fear, nor now was I curious. I accepted all that lay here as a part of its difference, which was not of my world.
Ursilla’s wand moved in her hand, back and forth, swinging from left to right. Now a brilliant fire shot from its point and touched something ahead that answered with a glow. Then there was an answering glow to the left, one to the right—an island of light lay before us.
So we came into a circle of radiance. For circle it was. Tall monoliths of rock formed the place. Each was carven into the likeness of a seated or enthroned being. Straightly their bodies sat on blocks of stone, facing inward—save that they had no faces!
Where features might have been wrought, there was naught but an oval globe. Globe, I say, because they were not stone; rather some other substance behind which light moved and wove patterns. From the globes the light of the place spread. Awakened by the beams of Ursilla’s wand, it lapped from one figure to the next, until all showed blind but brilliant countenances.
Above the globes were ornate headdresses, each varying in detail from the next. Their bodies were human in shape, but muffled in cloaks so that details were hidden. Each had stretched forth a hand (I say hand, yet the appendage was more like unto a claw so slender were the “fingers”). And the hands held objects, again each differing. Here was a ball incised with patterns, there a wand not too unlike those of the Wise Women, again there was a flower, with petals widespread. But the one that Ursilla faced had in its hand a man—small as a child’s plaything, drooping limply as if dead, or perhaps not yet called to life. The sight of the carved human struck through my dull acceptance of the place, disturbed whatever spell of lethargy had been laid upon me. For it suggested that men were but the playthings of the forces these faceless ones represented, and that hint of slavery aroused protest in me.
Ursilla knelt upon the floor. Not to do homage to the figure before her, rather to set out the bundles, flasks and boxes she had brought from her store. She seemed oblivious to the glowing nonfaces, though I was not. I liked them less and less.
In the very center of the circle was a brazier wrought also of the stone. Ashes, heaped within it, suggested that this was probably not the first time Ursilla might have used it for purposes of her own. That she played with something which was far better not to disturb was a belief now strengthening within me.
Not of the Shadow, not of the Power—what then composed the force lingering here? Something so old and elemental that it was beyond the boundaries of good or evil, existing first in a time when neither of them had been born to eternally war in the lands and hearts of men. To tap such a force—rash, indeed, would that be. Her own ambition had brought Ursilla to such a deed, which made my awe and dislike of her deepen to fear and hatred.
I wanted to be out and away. Still I was chained here as much as I was chained within the pard’s body. To one glowing globe, then to the next I raised my eyes, only to look quickly away again. The light patterns, forming and dissolving, the colors changing from one hue to the next with hypnotic speed—one might be caught and held by such.
As I nervously paced around the circle, avoiding Ursilla, busy as a housewife in setting out her plunder from the cupboard, I thought I could hear (not with my ears, but my mind as the Were had spoken to me) a distant whispering as yet not loud enough to be understood.
Ursilla made certain selections from her store, went to the brazier into which she dribbled handfuls of dried and crushed herbs with care, almost as if each broken leaf must be counted. When the last had fallen, the Wise Woman brushed her palms across her robe, then for the first time raised her head to regard me.
“What will be done shall be well done.” She spoke cryptically. “My Power guided me here many seasons ago. Then I searched out the most ancient of our rune rolls to read the riddle of this place. Before we were here—and we are old beyond the numbering of our years—others dwelt in Arvon. They served their own forces, wrought with Power such as we cannot imagine. Their time passed, but they left behind them wells of their force, strained and weakened, perhaps, but still greater than aught even the Voices or the Shadow can summon in the here and now.
“I have waited, I have learned—” Her voice swelled in a chant that was close to a cry of triumph. “I know what can be done here—if one uses the talent. Uses it as I shall use it!” I think she recited her own thoughts aloud, rather than spoke to impress me. Her face appeared lighted by an inner fire so that her skin held some of the glow of those featureless faces that ringed us in.
“We must wait now,” Ursilla continued. “This is not a thing easily done. The right hour must be set, those needful summoned to take part.”
She went from the brazier back to her supplies. Searching among them she found a bag and loosed its drawstring, to draw out a brown cake that she broke in two. As she munched on half of it, she threw the other section to me.
“Eat!” she commanded.
I wanted little to do with her, but that I must keep my strength of body brought me to obey. I crushed the cake in one bite and gulped it down. Though the stuff was tasteless to my pard’s reckoning, I knew the substance for journeycake, meant to sustain life for long periods of time when one did not have access to ordinary food.
“She will come soon.” Ursilla rubbed her hands together. “The sending laid upon her shall draw her. Then we shall make a beginning—and what an ending shall come of it!”
She laid her forehead on her knees as she sat at the foot of the one that held the man plaything. Perhaps she slept, perhaps she was entranced. I lay down as far from her as I could get. To venture into the dark was useless, I knew that as well as if she had told me so. This place would hold me until her spells permitted my going. Nor did I, at that moment, dare to try to separate man from beast. There was here too much the taint of the Older Things that I mistrusted as I had nothing before in my life.