Web of the Witch World - Andre Norton

Flicker again. Now the light was much dimmer. Simon whirled about the angle of the stair, his back to the wall, his dart gun ready. Four, six steps up and then the smooth forward run of a narrow corridor. At the top of those steps a barricade, stuff hastily dragged from rooms above. Was Fulk lying in wait to pick off the first to disturb that erection of stools and a table?

Somehow Simon was worried. Fulk’s actions were so contrary to all he had heard of the coast-lord. These were the moves of a man trying to buy time. Time for what? All Fulk’s forces were engaged below; he could not be attempting to assemble a relief. No, he was striving to get out himself! Why he was so certain of that Simon did not know, but he was convinced it was so.

Did Fulk know of an inner wall passage, was he hunting the exit now? No more sounds except that the muffled clamor from below lessened, the last of Fulk’s men must be cut down.

The blink, blink of the light grew feebler. Then he did hear a faint sound, and fighter’s instinct sent him scrambling down the stair angle. The white flash of an explosion! Simon, blinded by that glare, almost lost his footing. He rubbed his eyes.

Light, but no sound at all. Whatever force had been unleashed there was new to him. Now trails of smoke, acrid and throat rasping. Simon coughed, fought to see, but his eyes were still dazzled by the flash.

“Simon! What is here?”

Pound of feet on the stair. Simon caught a hazy glimpse of a winged helm.

“Fulk,” he answered. “Up there—but watch—”

“Fulk!” Koris’ long arm was out, solidly against the wall, supporting Simon. “But what does he up there?”

“What mischief he can, lord.” More steps on the stair and Ingvald’s voice to identify them.

“He is late to our meeting,” Koris commented.

“Do not rush in—” At last he was able to see again. But the light globe was now far sped. Simon slipped up on the landing, forestalling Koris. The flimsy barrier was gone. Some charred bits of wood, a drift of ash and stains on the wall marked its site.

No sound, no movement from the hall or from the doors opening into that way. Step by step Simon advanced. Then he heard a small scuffling from behind the first door. Before he could move the great ax of Volt swung down to hit that barrier. The door gave and they looked into a room, the window facing them was open, a trail of rope hung out of it, anchored within by the weight of a chest.

Koris laid the ax on the floor and set his hands to the rope. All the strength of his great shoulders and arms went into an upward pull as Simon and Ingvald moved to the window.

The night was dark, but not too shadowed to hide the scene below. That rope, meant to drop Fulk to a lower roof, was now ascending, even with Fulk’s weight upon it, past the point where the wrecker lord would dare leap free. Only—Simon saw the white oval which was Fulk’s face turned up to him. The dangling man, coming up to their waiting grasp through a series of pulls by Koris, deliberately loosened his hold on that line. He screamed aloud, a dreadful cry, as if he were protesting against his own action. Had he, until that last second, really believed he had a chance to land safely? But when he crashed down he lay there. An arm was lifted and fell again.

“He is still alive.” Simon reached for the rope. He did not understand the need which moved him now, but he must look upon Fulk’s face. “I must go down,” he added as the rope end whipped in the window and he sat about making it fast to his own waist.

“There is more in this than seems?” Koris asked.

“I believe so.”

“Then down with you. But take care, even a broken-backed serpent wears fangs in its jaws. And Fulk has no reason to let his enemies live after him.”

Simon scrambled through the window slit, swung out as they lowered him down. His feet touched the surface of the lower roof. As he threw off the loop, the rope whipped aloft, and he went to that crumpled figure.

His journey light showed the sprawled body clearly.

And, as Simon went down on his knee he saw that, in spite of his injuries, Fulk of Verlaine still lived. By some chance the wrecker lord’s head turned with infinite and painful effort so that the eyes could meet his gaze.

At that moment of meeting Simon’s breath expelled in a hiss. He wanted to cry aloud his repudiation of what he saw there. Pain, yes—and hate. And something which was beyond both pain and hate—an emotion which was not of mankind that Simon knew. He said it aloud:

“Kolder!”

This was Kolder, the alien menace in the face of a dying man. Yet Fulk was not one of the “possessed,” the walking dead men whom Kolder used to fight its battles, the captives sapped of soul, made to cup within their bodies some enlivening power which clean humanity shrank from. No, Simon had seen the “possessed.” This was something else again. Because what had been Fulk was not totally erased; that part which bore pain and hate was growing stronger, and that which was Kolder faded.

“Fulk!” Koris had dropped to the roof, come with a loping stride to join Simon. “I am Koris—”

Fulk’s mouth worked, twisted. “I die . . . so will you . . . bog-loper!”

Koris shrugged. “As will all men, Fulk.”

Simon leaned closer. “And as will those who are not men also!”

He could not be sure that that remnant of fading Kolder understood. Fulk’s mouth worked again, but this time all that burst from his lips was blood. He strove to raise his head higher, but it fell back, and then his eyes were blank of all life.

Simon looked across the body to Koris. “He was Kolder,” he said quietly.

“But no—not possessed!”

“No, but still Kolder.”

“And of this you are sure?”

“As sure as I am of my own mind and body. Kolder in some manner, but still Fulk also.”

“What then have we uncovered here?” Koris was already visualizing horrors beyond. “If they have other servants among us beside the possessed—”

“Just so,” Simon replied grimly. “I would say that the Guardians must know of this and that speedily!”

“But the Kolder can not take over any of the Old Race,” Koris observed.

“So we shall continue to hope. But Kolder was here, and may be elsewhere. The prisoners—”

Again Koris shrugged. “Of those there are not too many, perhaps a dozen after that last battle in the hall. And they are mainly men-at-arms. Would Kolder pick such for its servants, save as possessed? Fulk, yes—he would be an excellent piece on their playing board. But look you at these and then tell us—if you can.”

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.