I sensed the creature's dislike of the scents rising from the bruised herbs below. She longed to retreat, but the mental picture of rich feasting I forced upon her held her suspended. A second lurking spider dropped from her dust-coated den—then a third.
"Ah." Laidan arose and rubbed her hands together, freeing them of the last fragment of leaf and stem. "We are ready, little sister. There need only go forth the summons—the sacrifice will be accepted—and you shall he welcomed as one of us—"
"And if I choose not?" I no longer watched the spiders lest Laidan look aloft and see them too.
"You have no choice," she told me. "You have no defense against what I shall call, and it will possess you—for a space. When it withdraws, you shall be its, and then"—she gestured with one hand to indicate all which lay within the room—"you shall learn willingly. There is that in you which shall open doors for us. Think you that we could have summoned you else wise? And"—now she eyed me oddly—"I think that you even long for this deep within you. You are of our kind, little sister, one who would mold instead of be molded. And that is a truth you cannot deny."
"I am not of the Shadow," I returned stubbornly.
She shrugged. "What is Shadow, what is Light? You have heard only one story, and that told by our enemies. There is much to be learned. Shall we shut doors and lock them upon that learning merely because of some fear of what lies beyond? There is only one true thing to desire—and that is Power! All else is swallowed up by time, broken and forgotten. Nothing within one lasts as long as the will to Power. You shall see, yes, and you shall rejoice in that—that you are one of those into which such Power may be poured, even as winter wine is poured into a waiting flask."
There was something in her words which did find a part of me receptive. Just as I had doubted myself when the Lady Chriswitha had talked with me, so did that doubt grow now in me. I wanted—I wanted to learn what I might do were I to use my talent to the full! I wanted—Power!
Still—another part of me arose to do battle now. Power—it could twist and mar, it could defeat its user, too. It—
The foremost of the spiders hung now above Tsali. I saw the bright eyes in his Lizard skull had moved from me to that dangling creature, marking too her sisters unreeling their threads to descend.
Laidan had come to stand with me within the star. Now she raised a small black wand she had brought from beneath her mist draperies. She pointed it from one candle to the next, and each started aflame with an oily, scarlet light. While she chanted as she moved.
Within me a sickness arose, so I crouched a little, my hands pressed against my middle. Whatever there was of my species which could be aroused by her sorcery was in such revolt that it tore at my body. And my own resolve strengthened.
Even as Laidan summoned that which she would force to obey her, so did I fix my will upon the spiders from above. I still did not know what I might do with them as weapons, but they were all I had. And I had learned enough from the Lady Dahaun to know that in such sorceries the balance was very delicate and easily disturbed. Laidan had enclosed both the circle and the star in which we stood with her precautions, but she had not thought of what might lie overhead.
The candles gave forth what was to me a disgusting smell. However, I saw Laidan breathing deeply between the words she still mouthed as if, from their scent, she garnered some needful food or energy. Then—
In the circle the air moved. But into that maelstrom there dropped the first spider from aloft. There was a swirling—I saw Laidan start, her chant faltered. A second spider, a third, disappeared into that misty column. Laidan started back—her hand raised to her mouth, for the first time shaken by what she witnessed—or felt—
I might not be as receptive as the sorceress, but I was aware of a vast troubling. Something which had been summoned—it had recoiled; it was angry. And—it was gone!
Laidan gave a cry, her hands arose to her ears as if to shut out some intolerable sound. Though I was aware of nothing, except that withdrawal. Then she, too, vanished—winked out instantly.
The flames of the candles were extinguished, leaving the room in near darkness. I was—free—
In a moment I crossed the star, grabbed from the table a stout-bladed knife and went to Tsali, slashing at his bonds. There was no longer any mental barrier between us. But something else weighed on the spirit in this chamber of the place Laidan had named Zephar.
Tsali stood, his clawed hand closed tightly about my wrist.
"Come—!" He scuttled for the stair, drawing me after him.
There followed a blurring of the walls, of all the things in that room, as if stout stone were melting, flowing away into nothingness. I thought I felt the steps of that stairway crumble and tremble under my weight. And I guess whatever illusion Laidan had set there was now disappearing, and that we might even be either trapped between times or perhaps buried under blocks of stone which the ages between would tumble from their settings.
At last, panting, we stood in the open, with around us only moss-grown and broken stones, a corner of what might once have been an outer wall. Tsali did not relax the hold he had kept on my wrist. His head darted from side to side with a speed my own species could never have equaled as he stood tensely, in such a position of instant alert that I knew that we were far from safe.
"Laidan?" I aimed a single thought at his mind.
"Is not gone—yet—" he confirmed my own fear. "She fled into her own corner of nothingness lest that which she had summoned turn upon her. But there she nurses her hate—which will grow the greater when she learns what has happened elsewhere. And because she has linked with you—then you can furnish her a door through time once more."
"What has happened elsewhere?" I seized upon that part of his warning.
"He whom she would have awakened is at last truly dead. The youth you call Yonan and Uruk of the Ax have wrought their own kind of magic. But in so much will Laidan's hate now be the greater. Though I think she dare not try anything as yet. That recoil of spell drove her too far from us. Only not yet are we finished with her."
He led the way, still keeping hold on me, out of that shell of ancient ruin. Now autumn-withered grass brushed thigh-high about me, near waist-high for him.
"What—why did the spiders—" I began. For though those spinners had done my will and had apparently broken Laidan's sorcery, I did not understand how such a thing could be.
"The balance of all spells," Tsali returned, still more than half of his attention given to what lay about us, even though the last of the tumbled blocks now lay behind, "rests very delicately. What Laidan summoned demanded a blood price—and what she had ready for it." He thought-sent matter-of-factly, as if he had not been that same price. "But when other life came into it, then it was confused, angry—believing that Laidan had sought to engage its aid with so poor an offering. Those which are truly of the Shadow trust no one. Some spells they are forced to obey, but if any bargain is not kept scrupulously, then they are freed from their obedience. Three spiders did not equal one Tsali—" There was wry humor in that which brought a smile to my own lips in spite of that lowering feeling of being naked of defense in a threatening world which had and did burden me as we went.
"Where are we?" I asked. Was this my own time? And could we win back to the Valley?
"To each question," my companion picked up those thoughts very quickly, "I cannot give full answer. But we must go with all caution. Laidan will have a chance to replenish her powers. When she finds that Targi is no more"—his scaled head shook from side to side—"then she will not be appeased except by a full letting of blood. Since she perhaps cannot get at those who killed that which was Targi, she shall be the more bitter against us—"