Witch World Part 17

"I don't know," Simon dropped heavily into one of the chairs, and resting his head on his fists, stared down at the surface on which his elbows were planted."I am no scientist, no master of this kind of magic. The Sulcarmen will be tempted by those ships, Estcarp by what else lies here."

"Tempted?" Someone had echoed that word and both men looked around. Simon got to his feet as he saw who seated herself quietly a little from them, Briant beside her as if playing her shieldman.

She was helmed and in mail, but Simon knew that she could disguise herself with shape-changing and still he would know her always.

"Tempted," again she repeated. "Well do you choose that word, Simon. Yes, we of Estcarp shall be tempted; that is why I am here. There are two edges to this blade and we may cut outselves on either if we do not take care. Should we turn aside from this strange knowledge, destroy all we have found, we may be making ourselves safe, or we may be foolishly opening a way for a second Kolder attack, for one cannot build a defense unless he has a clear understanding of the weapons to be used against him."

"Of the Kolder," Simon spoke slowly, heavily, "you will not have to fear too much. There was but a small company of them in the beginning. If any escaped here, then they can be hunted back to their source and that source closed."

"Closed?" Koris made a question of that.

"In the last struggle with their leader he revealed their secret."

"That they are not native to this world?"

Simon's head swung around. Had she picked that out of his mind, or was that some information she had not seen fit to supply before?

"You knew?"

"I am not a reader of minds, Simon. But we have not known it long. Yes, they came to us-as you came-but, I think, from other motives."

"They were fugitives, fleeing disaster, a disaster of their own making, having set their own place aflame behind them. I do not think that they dared to leave their door open behind them, but that we must make sure of. The more pressing problem is what lies here."

"And you think that if we take their knowledge to us the evil which lies in it may corrupt. I wonder. Estcarp has lived long secure in its own Power."

"Lady, no matter what decision is made, I do not think that Estcarp shall remain the same. She must either come fully into the main stream of active life, or she must be content to withdraw wholly from it into stagnation, which is a form of death."

It was as if they two talked alone and neither Briant nor Koris had a part in the future they discussed. She met him mind to mind with an equality he had not sensed in any other woman before.

"You speak the truth, Simon. Perhaps the ancient solidity of my people must break. There shall be those who will wish for life and a new world, and those who shall shrink from any change from the ways which mean security. But that struggle still lies in the future. And it is only a growth of this war. What would you say should be done with Gorm?"

He smiled wearily. "I am a man of action. Out of here I shall go to hunt down that gate which the Kolder used and see that it is rendered harmless. Give me orders, lady, and they shall be carried out. But for the time being I would seal this place until a decision can be made. There may be an attempt on the part of others to take away what lies here."

"Yes. Karsten, Alizon, both would relish the looting of Sippar." She nodded briskly. Her hand was at the breast of her mail shirt and she drew it away with the jewel of power in it.

"This is my authority. Captain," she spoke to Koris. "Let it be as Simon has said. Let this storehouse of strange knowledge be sealed, and let the rest of Gorm be cleansed for a garrison, until such time as we can decide the future of what lies here." She smiled at the young officer. "I leave it in your command, Lord Defender of Gorm."

A VENTURE OF NEW BEGINNINGS.

A dusky red spread slowly up from the collar of Koris' mail shirt, reaching the line of his fair hair. Then he answered and the bitter lines about his well-cut mouth were deep, adding years to his young face.

"Are you forgetting, lady," he brought the blade of Volt's Ax down flatwise on the table with a clang, "that long ago Koris the Misshapen was driven from these sh.o.r.es?"

"And what happened to Gorm thereafter, and to those who did that driving?" she asked quietly. "Have any said 'misshapen Captain of Estcarp'?"

His hand tightened on the haft of his weapon until the knuckles were white and sharp. "Find another Lord Defender for Gorm, lady. I swore by Noman that I would not return here. To me this is a doubly haunted place. I think that Estcarp has had no reason to complain of her Captain; also I do not believe this war already won."

"He is right, you know," Simon cut in. "The Kolder may be few, most of them may be trapped in those ships below. But we must trace them back to their gate and make sure that they do not consolidate shattered forces to launch a second bid for rulership. What about Yle? And do they have a garrison in Sulcarkeep? How deeply are they involved in Karsten and Alizon? We may be at the beginning of a long war instead of grasping victory."

"Very well," she stroked the jewel she held. "Since you have such definite ideas, become governor here, Simon."

Koris spoke swiftly before Tregarth could answer.

"To me that is a plan to which I agree. Hold Gorm with my blessing, Simon, and do not think that I shall ever rise in the name of my heritage to take it from you."

But Simon was shaking his head. "I am a soldier. And I am from another world. Let dog eat dog as the saying goes-the Kolder trail is mine." He touched his head; if he closed his eyes now he knew he would see not darkness but a narrow valley through which angry men fought a rearguard action.

"Do you venture into Yle and Sulcarkeep and no farther?" Briant broke silence for the first time.

"Where would you have us go?" Koris asked.

"Karsten!" If Simon had ever thought the youth colorless and lacking in personality he was to doubt his appraisal at that moment.

"And what lies in Karsten which is of such moment to us?" Koris' voice held an almost bantering note. Yet there was something else beneath the surface of that tone which Simon heard but could not identify. There was a game here afoot, but he did not know its purpose or rules.

"Yvian!" The name was flung at the Captain like a battle challenge and Briant eyed Koris as if waiting to see him pick it up. Simon glanced from one young man to the other. As it had been earlier when he and the witch had talked across the board, so was it now: these two fenced without thought of their audience.

For the second time red tinged Koris' cheeks, then ebbed, leaving his face white and set, that of a man committed to some struggle he hated but dared not shirk. For the first time he left the Ax of Volt lying forgotten on the table as he came swiftly about the end of the board, moving with that lithe grace which always contrasted with his ill-formed body.

Briant, a queer expression of mingled defiance and hope giving life to his features, waited for his coming, stood still as the Captain's hands fell on his shoulders in a grip which could not have been anything but bruising.

"This is what you want?" the words came from Koris as if jerked one by one by torture.

At the last moment perhaps Briant tried to evade. "I want my freedom," he replied in a low voice.

Those punishing hands fell away. Koris laughed with such raking bitterness that Simon protested inwardly against the hurt that sound betrayed.

"Be sure, in time, it shall be yours!" The Captain would have stepped away if Briant had not seized in turn upon Koris' upper arms with the same urgency of hold the other had shown earlier.

"I want my freedom only that I may make a choice elsewhere. And I have decided upon that choice-do you doubt that? Or is it again that there is an Aldis who has the power I cannot reach for?"

Aldis? A glimmering of what might be the truth struck Simon.

Koris' fingers were under Briant's chin, turning the thin young face up to his. This once was the Captain able to look down and not up at a companion.

"You believe in sword thrust for sword thrust, do you not?" he commented. "So Yvian has his Aldis; let them have the good of each other while they may. But I think that Yvian has made a very ill choice of it. And since one ax made a marriage, another may undo it!"

"Marriage in the gabble gabble of Siric only," flashed Briant, still a little defiant, but not struggling in the Captain's new hold.

"Need you have told me that," Koris was smiling. "Lady of Verlaine?"

"Loyse of Verlaine is dead!" Briant repeated. "You get no such heritage with me, Captain."

A tiny frown line appeared between Koris' brows. "That you need not have said either. Rather is it that such as I am must buy a wife with gauds and lands. And never afterwards be sure of the bargain."

Her hand whipped from his arm to his mouth, silencing him. And there was red anger in both her eyes and her voice when she replied: "Koris, Captain of Estcarp need never speak so of himself, least of all to a woman such as I, without inheritance of lands or beauty!"

Simon moved, knowing that neither were aware of the other two in that room. He touched the witch of Estcarp gently on the shoulder and smiled down at her.

"Let us leave them to fight their own battle," he whispered.

She was laughing silently after her fashion. "This talk of mutual unworthiness will speedily be a step to no talking at all and so to a firm settlement of two futures."

"I take it that she is the missing heiress of Verlaine, wedded by proxy to Duke Yvian?"

"She is. By her aid alone I came scatheless out of Verlaine, I being captive there for a s.p.a.ce. Fulk is not a pleasant enemy."

Afire to every shade of her voice, Simon's smile became grim.

"I think that Fulk and his wreckers shall be taught a lesson in the near future; it will curb their high spirits," he commented, knowing well her way of understatement. It was enough for him that she admitted she owed her escape from Verlaine to the girl across the room. For a woman of the Power such an admission hinted of danger indeed. He had a sudden overwhelming desire to take one of the Sulcar ships, man it with his mountain fighters, and sail southward.

"Doubtless he shall," she agreed to his statement concerning Fulk with her usual tranquillity. "As you have said, we are still in the midst of a war, and not victors at the end of one. Verlaine and Karsten, too, shall be attended to in their proper seasons. Simon, my name is Jaelithe."

It came so abruptly, that for a full moment he did not understand her meaning. And then, knowing the Estcarpian custom, of the rules which had bound her so long, he drew a deep breath of wonder at that complete surrender: her name, that most personal possession in the realm of the Power, which must never be yielded lest one yield with it one's own ident.i.ty to another!

As Koris' ax lay on the table, so she had left her jewel behind her when she had moved apart with Simon. For the first time he realized that fact also. She had deliberately disarmed herself, put aside all her weapons and defenses, given into his hands what she believed was the ordering of her life. What such a surrender had meant to her he could guess, but only dimly-and that he knew also, awed. He felt as stripped of all talents and ability, as misshapen, as Koris deemed himself.

Yet he moved forward and his arms went out to draw her to him. As he bent his head to hers, searching for waiting lips, Simon sensed that for the first time the pattern had changed indeed. Now he was a part of a growing design, his life to be woven fast with hers, into the way of this world's. And there would be no breaking it for the remainder of his days. Nor would he ever wish to.