Web of the Witch World - Andre Norton

Loyse was dazed. Aldis had thrown the knife which had wounded the duke, and his bodyguard were striving to force their way into his chambers. Why and why and why? Because she could read no meaning into any of this, she did not resist again as Aldis dragged her to the door. The Karstenian’s whole body expressed the need for haste, the unease. And to know that Aldis shared fear made it worse for Loyse. To know the enemy was one thing, to be totally caught up in chaos was infinitely worse.

They were in a small hall and the shouting below was louder. Aldis pulled her on into the facing chamber. Long windows opened upon a balcony and Loyse caught glimpses of luxurious furnishings. This must be Aldis’ own room. But the other did not pause. Onto the balcony they went and there faced a plank set across to a neighboring balcony on the opposite wall. Aldis pushed Loyse against the railing.

“Up!” she ordered tersely, “and walk!”

“I cannot!” The plank hung over nothingness. Loyse dared not look down, but she sensed a long drop.

Aldis regarded her for a long moment and then brought her hand up to her breast. She gripped a brooch there as if gaining by that touch additional strength to rule Loyse by her will.

“Walk!” she snapped again.

And Loyse discovered that it was as it had been with Berthora, she was not in command of her body any more. Instead, that which was she appeared to withdraw into some far place from which that identity watched herself climb to the plank and walk across the drop to the other balcony. And there she remained, still in that spell, while Aldis followed. The Karstenian pushed aside their frail bridge so that it fell out and down, closing the passage behind them.

She, did not touch Loyse again, there was no need to. For the girl could not throw off the bonds that held her to Aldis’ desire. They went together through another room and then into a wider chamber. A wounded man crawled there on his hands and knees. But, his head hanging, he did not see them as Aldis swept her captive on, both of them running now.

Loyse saw other wounded and dead, even the swirl of small fighting groups, but none took any notice of the two women. What had happened? Estcarp? Koris, Simon—had they come for her? But all those they saw locked in combat were Karsten badges, as if the forces of the duke had split in civil war.

They reached the vast kitchens, to find those deserted, though meat crackled on the spits, pots boiled and pans held contents which were burning. And from there they came through a small courtyard into a garden of sorts with straight rows of vegetables and some trees already heavy with fruit.

Aldis pulled the long skirt of her outer robe up over her forearm as she ran. Once she stopped when a tree branch caught in her jeweled hair net, to break it, but a portion of the twig still stuck out of the net. That she had a definite goal in mind Loyse was sure, but what it might be she did not know until they were splashing among reeds at the borders of a stream. There was a skiff there and Aldis motioned to it.

“Get in, lie down!”

Loyse could only obey, the wash of water wetting through her breeches, over the tops of her boots. Aldis scrambled in and the skiff rocked with her movements as she huddled beside Loyse, pulling over the both of them a musty smelling strip of woven rushes. Moments later Loyse felt the boat move ahead, they were being pulled along by the current, probably toward the river dividing Kars.

The smell of the matting was faintly sickening, and the water washing in the bottom of the boat had a swamp stench to it. Loyse longed to lift her head and breathe clean air again. But there was no disobeying Aldis’ orders. Her mind might rage, but her body obeyed.

As the skiff bobbed on Loyse heard sounds which meant they had reached the river. Now where was Aldis going? When she had ridden with Berthora she had accepted all their actions as right and normal, had been so ensorcelled that she had not feared or understood what she was doing. But this time she knew that she was under a spell which would make her do just as Aldis wished. But why—why for everything which had happened to her?

“Why?” Aldis’ voice soft close to her ear. “You ask why? But now you are duchess, my lady, all this city, all the countryside beyond is yours! Can you understand what that means, my little nothing out of nowhere at all?”

Loyse tried, she tried very hard to understand but she could not.

There came a hail and Aldis sat up, the matting falling away so that the river air was on them. The rounded side of a ship rose not too far away, and Aldis was reaching for a rope tossed to them from that vessel.

7 THE HIGH WALLS OF YLE

SIMON SAT in the bowed window, his back to the room and those it held. But he could hear—the panther-pacing of Koris, the men reporting, receiving orders, departing again. This was the nerve center of the Estcarpian invasion force and beyond was the city they had taken in an audacious leap and so precariously held. That they continued to so hold it was rank folly, but whether Koris could be made to accept that truth Simon had some doubts. If the seneschal’s present mood continued he might try pulling apart the very stones of the buildings, searching for what he would not admit was gone.

Could he blame Koris for this present single-mindedness which was like to imperil their whole cause? Objectively, yes. A half year ago Simon would have witnessed but not understood the torment which tore the younger man now. But since then he had taken to himself his own demons. Perhaps he did not snarl and pace, pounce upon all comers with a demand for news.

However their cases differed in this much: Koris had been bereft by the enemy of what he had come to treasure most; Jaelithe had gone from Simon by her own will, gone and not returned. And by that he was forced to gauge the depth of the rift which had opened between them. Would she have been content had she not awakened to that shadow of power days ago? Or had that return in part of what she had once had brought home to her the loss as she had not realized it, even when she surrendered her jewel upon their marriage? Simon fought his own thoughts, strove to batter them away and consider the problem at hand—that Kars was theirs for a space, that Yvian lay dead, and that Loyse was gone, and no man they had captured knew the manner of her going.

Estcarp and Kars—the problem to hand—and Koris not able to think straight while in his present mood. Simon came away from the window, to step in the path of Koris’ pacing and catch the other’s arm.

“She is not here. So we look elsewhere. But we do not lose our heads.” Simon put snap in that with a purpose, trying to make his voice serve as might a slap across the face of a man caught in hysterical shock.

Koris blinked, broke Simon’s hold with a roll of shoulder. But he had stopped pacing, he was listening.

“If she had run—” he began.

“Then perhaps she would have been seen,” Simon agreed. “Think now: why would she have been taken? We come to this place and find that mischief was made among the duke’s men. And that purpose could have been the death of Yvian or—”

“Some other reason.” The voice made them both turn to face the witch who had ridden in with the Borderers. “For another reason,” she continued, almost as if she were clearing her thoughts by putting them into words.

“Do you not see, my lord captains, with Duke Yvian dead, his duchess has some claim to Karsten, especially since Loyse is of the old nobility and those clans would rally behind her. They would put her in rule so that they might use her as a shadow screen to cover their own power. This was all done by purpose, but whose purpose? Who is missing—from among the slain, from your prisoners? It would be better not to ask who is dead and why, but who is gone, and the why of that?”

Simon nodded. Good sense—bring Loyse to Kars, confirm her before the duchy as Yvian’s consort—with Yvian, perhaps, knowing only a portion of that and believing that portion to be his own plan—and then, dispose of Yvian, use Loyse as a puppet to establish another rule. But which one of the nobles had so devious a mind, such a smoothly running organization as to make it work? As far as Borderer intelligence knew and that was, or Simon had thought it was, very thorough, there was none among the five or six leading families who had either the courage or the ability to set such a complicated plot in action. Yvian would not have trusted any of the once powerful clans to the point that any of their members could have operated so freely within his citadel. And Simon said as much.

“Fulk was not wholly Fulk,” the witch replied. “There may be those here who are not wholly what they seem!”

“Kolder!” Koris pounded the fist of one hand into the open palm of the other. “Always Kolder!”

“Yes,” Simon replied wearily. “We could not believe that they would give up the struggle with the fall of Sippar, could we? Manpower—or its lack—did we not long ago think that perhaps their greatest weakness? It may be that they can no longer process their possessed armies—at least not here—that what we captured at Gorm has seriously weakened them. If that be so, they may have decided to substitute quality for quantity in their forces, taking over key men—”

“And women!” Koris interrupted him. “There is one whom we should have found here that we have not seen— Aldis!”

The witch was frowning. “Aldis answered to the sending in the Battle of Power before the assault on Gorm. It may be that thereafter she had no place in Kars.”

“There’s one way to find out!” Simon strode to where Ingvald sat at a table recording data on a small voice machine the Falconers had brought, a refinement of those carried by their hawks on aerial scouts.

“What mention has there been of the Lady Aldis?”

Ingvald half smiled. “More than a little. Three times those messages which set these wolves at each other’s throats were delivered by that lady. And she, being who she was in Yvian’s confidence, they took her words as sober truth. Whatever coil was woven here that one had a hand deep in its spinning.”

The witch had followed Simon across the chamber and now she rubbed her hands together, between their palms the smoky gem of her profession.

“I would see the private chamber of this woman,” she said abruptly.

They went in a body—the witch, Simon, Koris, and Ingvald. It was a dainty bower and a rich one, opening from the same upper hall as that room in which they had discovered the dying Yvian. At the room’s end long windows opened upon a balcony and the wind stirred the silken curtains of the bed, fluttered a lace scarf drifting from a chest. There was a musky scent which sickened Simon and he went to the open windows.

The witch, her gem still tight between her palms, walked about the room, her hands well out from her at breast level. What she was doing Simon could not guess, but that it had serious meaning he knew. Those hands passed over the bed, down its full length, swept across the two chests, the mirrored toilet table with its assortment of small boxes and vials carved from polished stones. Then, in mid-passage over that array, the clasped hands hesitated, poised hawk fashion, and came down in a swoop, though nothing lay below that Simon could see.