Web of the Witch World - Andre Norton

Around, from below, from across the cut, Simon sensed that upsurge—an emotion in the air, dark and heavy. “They hate—” Jaelithe whispered. “How they hate!”

“They hate,” Aldis mimicked her tone. “But still they wait. They have learned to wait, for that is what they have lived to do.”

A second truck crawled out of nothingness. Now the invaders’ foot force was well down the old road. This second vehicle had a larger cabin on its body, the top of which was a transparent dome. And in that sat true Kolder, two of them—one wearing a metal cap.

The smoldering cloud of emotion was so strong now Simon expected it to rise as a visible fog. But still those in ambush made no move. A smaller party of possessed, marched stolidly along—labor ready for the need.

Then—nothing more.

“Now!”

Sound, lower than thunder but with a bestial hate which made it one with elements, which owed nothing to intelligence or human understanding. The fury which had been building boiled into action as the possessed shivered, jerked, fell.

There was not enough room in the cut for the trucks to turn. But the one bearing the Kolder officers reversed, crawled backward, so that the possessed who followed it were crushed and broken beneath its treads. Then the driver jerked and quivered in turn. He fell out of sight in the cabin, yet still the truck retreated, or strove to withdraw, though its backward run was now far more unsteady. At last it crashed into one of the piles of debris and slowly tilted, as the treads clawed vainly to keep it upright.

The Kolder wearing the cap had not moved, even his eyes remained closed. Perhaps it was his will which had kept the truck going, even protected him and his fellows now as neither seemed affected by the attack which withered and slew those about them.

His companion turned his head from side to side, studying the route. But no expression Simon could read crossed his white face.

“They have what they want now,” Aldis again with that tittering laugh. “They have caught a Master to give them a key to the gate.”

They had come out of hiding, those skeletons—the bait of the Kolders drawing them free of caution. Many of them were bare-handed as they swarmed about the truck, strove to climb to the bubble-topped cabin.

Mewling cries—half that company fell back, their bodies blackened, their limbs moving spasmodically. But still more gathered, not quite as unwary now. Until several came together, bearing with them a loop of metallic chain. Three flings before it fell into position about the bubble. Then fire ran around it in a spitting line. When that was pulled away and they climbed again, there was no trouble. The bubble shattered and they were at their prey.

Jaelithe covered her eyes. She had seen the sacking of cities and the things done in Karsten when the Old Race had been horned into outlawry. But this was something she could not watch.

“Only one—” Aldis babbled, “he must be saved for the key—they must have their key!”

The metal-capped Kolder hung limply in his captors’ clutches, his eyes still closed. The skeletons were gathering along the cut, to form up as a grotesque demon army behind that captive and those who held him. There were the alien rifles among them, but others had armed themselves with the weapons of the possessed. And their hate was still high and hot. Then, holding the Kolder to the fore, they marched, as if a forgotten training was revived in their union of purpose—for the gate.

Simon moved as the first of them stepped between the pillars and vanished. The Kolder—now these—what evil would be loosed in the world he had come to consider his own?

“Yes, oh, yes!” Jaelithe cried. “A wind, then a whirlwind—and we must face the storm!”

18 KOLDER BESIEGED

ONLY THE DEAD lay in the cut, that sense of alien presence had accompanied that sinister army through the gate. How many had been in that force? Fifty. A hundred? Simon had not counted them, but he believed not over a hundred. And what could so few do against the entrenched might beyond? This was not to be a matter of laying an ambush.

But the Kolder should be too occupied now to remember the fugitives, and this was the time to return with the force before them.

“We go back—”

Aldis gave one of those eerie, tittering laughs. She had crept away from them, was moving along the edge of the ravine, looking at them over her shoulder, a sly grin on her lips. Almost she was coming to resemble the skeletal inhabitants of this land. The last vestiges of beauty had been bleached from her.

“How will you go?” she called. “Door without key, door you cannot batter down. How do you go, mighty warrior and lady witch?”

She was running in a zigzag, fleetly, back into the waste.

“After her!” Jaelithe scrambled by him. “Do you not see? That talisman—it is the key—for her—for us!”

If she were right—Simon followed. Light as it was to carry, the alien rifle was an awkward burden as they smashed through brush. But he clung to it. In spite of the veil of vegetation growing over the debris of the buildings, the ruins were impressive. This had been, if not a city, a fort or settlement of some size. And the number of hiding places among the broken walls were beyond counting. As he and Jaelithe burst into an open space, Simon stopped her with an outthrust arm.

“Where?” He made the one word into a demand and saw her gaze about with dawning comprehension. “She might be within arm’s distance or well away, but where?” He hammered home the hopelessness of their unthinking pursuit. This warren of ruins was made for endless hide and seek.

Jaelithe raised her hands and cupped them over her eyes, standing very still while her breathing quieted. Simon did not quite know what she would do, but in confidence he waited. She pivoted, part way around, and then dropped her hands to point.

“Thus!”

“How do—?”

“How do I know? By what is not there—Kolder barrier—and she wears the Kolder talisman.”

A thin clue—there could be other Kolder traces in this land. But it was the only one they had. Simon nodded and accepted her guidance. It was a crooked path Jaelithe set them, and it bored on into the mass of ruins away from the cleft. Simon marked a back trail as they went, blazing growths, or scratching stones. But the time this chase was taking he regretted.

They came out on a large paved space, ringed by buildings in a better state of repair than those nearer the cut. There was a different look to these structures—not quite the sealed appearance of the Kolder holds, yet with some of their stark rigidity of design. Grace and beauty in the sense his world knew them, Jaelithe’s people held, were totally foreign to the minds which had conceived and built these. And any one of them might provide Aldis with numerous hiding places.

“Where?” Simon asked.

Jaelithe put her hand on the top of a low wall which ran about that open space. Her breath came fast and the dark finger marks of fatigue under her eyes were plain.

They had drunk their fill of rain water in the storm, but there had been no food for a long time. Simon doubted if they could hold this pace much longer. And now Jaelithe shook her head slowly.

“I do . . . not . . . know. It has gone from me—” Her hurried breaths were close to sobs. Simon caught her, drew her against him, and she came willingly as if very grateful for his strength, his touch which held comfort.

“Listen,” he spoke softly, “do you think you could sing her out, as you did in those in ambush?”

“We must. We must!” Her voice was a husky whisper with an element of hysteria in it.

“And we can! Remember once—back in Kars when there was need of shape-changing and you said that you would call upon me for that which you needed to make the ceremony a swift one? Now it will be the same: call upon me for what you need.”

She turned in his arms, though she did not step away from him, only faced outward. And her fingers grasped his in a grip which tightened with her need for the effort. Once more she began to sing that song of invocation which started as a hum and rose higher. And Simon felt, as he had on that day in Kars, that flowing from him, down his arms, through his hands, into her, draining him so he used iron will to stand unmoving.

All this world became one with that sing-song, so that he did not see the drab stones about him, nor the patches of encroaching vegetation—only a kind of silvery sheen which was within him and without him at once and the same time. But there was no time either; only this—this—this—

Then that chant which beat in his veins died, and he saw again this deserted city. There was movement, something in the shadows. Coming into the open, crawling . . . Aldis crawling. She did not try to get to her feet, instead she collapsed and lay still. Jaelithe released her hold on Simon.

“She is dead—“

Simon hurried to turn over the limp body. Blood, his hands were wet with it, yet there was more flowing, so much more. Her wan face was untouched but below, the wound flowed blood.

And torn flesh was one with torn robe where she had worn the Kolder talisman. Jaelithe cried out. But Simon caught at one of the bruised hands which was a fist tightened in death to still protect. He worked the rigid fingers until he released what they had gripped to the end of reason and life. Whatever had striven to tear from Aldis the Kolder device had not succeeded in winning its desire. She had lost her life in that battle, but not what she had fought to retain. He held the talisman.

“Come.” Simon stood up, his eyes searching the windows, the doors, for any sign of the one or ones Aldis had met here.

Jaelithe stooped and pulled a fold of the torn robe across the body, veiling the ravaged face and the wound on the breast. Then she made a sign in the air above its quietness.

They worked their way back to the cut at the best pace they could muster. Simon watched the back trail, unable to believe that they would not be stalked by whatever had killed Aldis. Had the possession of the Kolder talisman brought on that assault? He believed that it had, and that it might draw the same fate after them. The possessed dead lay in the broken road. There was no sign that anyone had passed this way since they had left hours earlier. Only the shadows were longer, the signs of approaching night clear.

They climbed down into the cut and stood on the cracked surface of the road where the wrecked crawler slewed to close it off. There were the pillars marking the gate, the dusk making the green somber streaks.

Simon raised his hand, the palm cupping the Kolder talisman, and Jaelithe set her hands on his shoulders, keeping such contact with them as they approached the gate.

Would the talisman take them past? They had been three together when they had made the other crossing. And the skeleton army had needed the Kolder to see them through. Simon walked on.

He did not know what to expect, but he was not surprised when the object in his hand grew cold and colder—this was akin to the Kolder barrier against mind reaching. But Aldis had not been Kolder by blood and it worked for her.

Another step and they were both between those wall strips. Once more the shaking, wrenching sense of being whirled into a nothingness which was highly inimical to their kind—then through it. Simon staggered forward. He was on his hands and knees on rock still warm from the sun of a baking day, Jaelithe beside him.