Sun was a thick bar across the table. Simon fought the need for sleep, finding in his smoldering anger a good weapon in his struggle. He knew her, this gray-robed woman with her hair netted severely back from her rather harsh features, the cloudy jewel, which was her badge of office and sword of war, resting on her breast, her hands folded precisely before her. Knew her, though he could not give her a name—for no witch within Estcarp had a name. One’s name was one’s most private possession. Give that too lightly to the play of many tongues and one had delivered one’s innermost citadel into possible enemy hands.
“This then is your only word?” He did not try to modify his hardness of voice as he demanded that.
She did not smile, no expression troubled her calm gaze. “Not my word, March Warder, nor the word of any one of us, but the law by which we live. Jaelithe—” Simon thought he detected a hint of distaste in her voice as she spoke that name—”made her choice. There is no returning.”
“And if the power has not departed from her, what then? You cannot say that it is so by merely speaking words!”
She did not shrug, but something in her pose gave him the feeling that she had so dismissed his speech and his anger. “When one has held a thing, used it, then its shadow may linger with one for awhile, even though the center core of it be lost. Perhaps she can do things which are small shadows of what once she could work. But she cannot reclaim her jewel and be again one of our company. However, I think, March Warder, you did not summon a witch here merely to protest such a decision—which is none of your concern.” It snapped down, that unbreakable barrier between the witches and those outside that bond. Simon took tight rein on his temper. Because, of course, she was right. This was no time to fight Jaelithe’s battle, this was a time when a plan must move ahead.
He spoke crisply, explaining what must be done. The witch nodded.
“Shape-changing—for who among you?”
“Me, Ingvald, Koris and ten men of the Borderers.”
“I must see those who you would counterfeit.” She arose from her chair. “You have them ready?”
“Their bodies—”
She displayed no change of countenance at that information, only stood waiting for him to lead the way. They had laid them out at the far end of the hall, ten men selected from among the slain, led by the broken-nosed, scarred leader of the last defense who wore the insignia of an officer. And, a little apart, Fulk.
The witch paused by each in that line, staring intently into the pale faces, fitting them into her memory, with every mark of identification. This was her particular skill, and while any of her sisterhood could practice shape-changing upon the need, only one expert in the process could attempt such with the actual features of a man. instead of just a general disguise.
When she came to Fulk her survey was much longer as she stooped low, her eyes searching his face. From that lengthy examination, she turned to Simon.
“Lord, you are very right. There was more in this man than his own mind, soul, thoughts. Kolder—” The last word was a whisper, a husky sound. “And being Kolder, dare you take his place?”
“Our scheme depends upon Fulk entering Kars,” Simon returned. “And I am not Kolder—”
“As any other who might be Kolder would detect,” she warned.
“That I must risk.”
“So be it. Bring your men for the changing. Seven and three. And send all others from the hall, there must be no disturbing this.”
He nodded. This was not the first time he had known shape-changing, but then it had been a hurried grasping for quick disguise to get them out of Kars. Now he would be Fulk and that was a different thing altogether.
As Simon summoned his volunteers, the witch was busied with her own preparations, drawing on the stone flooring of the hall two five-pointed stars, one overlapping in part the other. In the center of each she placed a brazier from the small chest her Sulcar escort had carried in for her. And now she was carefully measuring various powders from an array of small tubes and vials, mixing them together in two heaps on squares of fine silk which had lines and patterns woven into their substances.
They could not strip the bodies, lest the stains and rents betray them. But there was plenty more clothing within the castle, and they would use the weapons, belts, and any personal ornaments the dead had worn, to finish off the picture they must present. This was heaped together waiting the end of the ceremony.
The witch cast her squares of silk into the braziers and began a low chant. Smoke arose to hide the men who had stripped and were now standing, one on each star point. The smoke mist was thick, wreathing each man so that he could not believe that there was anything outside the soft envelope about him. And the chanting filled the whole world, as if all time and space trembled and writhed with the rise and fall of words none of them could understand.
As slowly as it had come the smoke mist ebbed, reluctantly withdrawing its folds, returning once again to the braziers from which it had issued. And the aromatic scent which had been a part of it left Simon lightheaded, more than a little divorced from reality. Then he felt the chill air on his skin, looked down at a body strange to him, a heavier body with the slight beginning of a paunch, a feathering of red-gold hair growing on its skin. He was Fulk.
Koris—or at least the man who moved from Koris’ starpoint—was shorter—they had selected their counterparts from men not too afar from their own physical characteristics; but he lacked the seneschal’s abnormal breadth of shoulder, his long dangling arms. An old sword slash lifted his upper lip in a wolfish snarl, enough to show a toothprint white and sharp. Ingvald had lost his comparative youth and had fingers of gray in his hair, a seamed face marked by many years of evil and reckless living.
They dressed in clothing from the castle chests, slipped on rings, neck chains, and buckled tight the weapons of dead men.
“Lord!” One of the men hailed Simon. “Behind you—it fell from Fulk’s sword belt. There.”
His pointing finger indicated the gleam of metal.
Simon picked up a boss. The metal was neither gold nor silver, but had a greenish cast and it was formed in the pattern of an interwoven knot of many twists and turns. Simon searched along the belt and found the hooks where it once must have been fastened, snapped it back into place. There must be no change in Fulk’s appearance, even by so small an item.
The witch was returning her braziers to the chest. She looked up as he came to her, studying him narrowly, as an artist might critically regard a finished work.
“I wish you well, March Warder,” she told him. “The Power be with you in full measure.”
“For those good wishings we thank you, lady. It is in my mind that we shall need all such in this venture.”
She nodded. Koris called from the door. “The tide changes, Simon, it is time we sail.”
5 RED MORNING
“SIGNAL FLAGS!” One of the knot of men at the prow of the coaster, now being worked by sweeps up the golden river in the early morning, nodded to the flutter of colored strips from a pole on the bank beside the first wharf of Kars.
He who wore a surcoat gaudily emblazoned with a fish, horns on snout and sloping, scaled head against a crimson square, stirred, his hand going to his belt.
“Expected?” He made an important question of that one word.
His companion smiled. “For what we seem, yes. But that is as it should be. It remains to be seen now whether Yvian is ready to welcome his father-in-law per ax with kindness or the sword. We walk into the serpent’s open mouth, and that can snap shut before our reinforcements arrive.”