She found soft cloth to wash and bind the raw grooves cut in the other’s wrists. And from her stores of clothing offered a selection to the other.
At last the witch mastered her body to the point where she was able to cup her hands beneath her pointed chin. She allowed the jewel to fall from her lips into that hold. Manifestly she did not want Loyse to touch it, nor would the girl have done so for less than her freedom.
“This about my neck please.” For the first time the other spoke.
Loyse caught the jewel’s chain, pulled open the catch and fastened it again beneath the ragged ends of hair which must have been cut as hastily and as inexpertly as her own — and perhaps for the same reason.
“Thank you, lady of Verlaine. And now, if you please,” her voice was husky as if it rasped through a dry throat, “a drink of water.”
Loyse held the cup to the other’s mouth. “Thanks from you to me are hardly necessary,” she returned with what boldness she could muster. “It would appear that you carry with you a weapon as potent as any steel!”
Over the rim of the cup the witch’s eyes were smiling. Loyse, meeting that kindliness, lost some of her awe. But she was still young, awkward, unsure of herself, sensations she resented bitterly.
“It was a weapon I could not use until you distracted the attention of my would-be bedfellow, the noble Lord Commander. For it is one I dare not risk falling into other hands, even to save my own life. Enough of that—” She lifted her hands, examined the bandages about her wrists. Then she surveyed the disordered room, noting the shawl on the floor with its burden of sheared hair, the saddle bags on the coffer.
“It is not to your mind to travel to your bridegroom, my lady duchess?”
Perhaps it was the tone of her voice, perhaps it was her power compelling something within Loyse. But she answered directly with the truth.
“I am no duchess in Karsten, lady. Oh, they said the words over me this morning before Yvian’s lords, and afterwards they paid me homage on their knees.” She smiled faintly remembering what an ordeal that had been for Siric. “Yvian was none of my choosing. I welcome this wedding only to cover my escape.”
“Yet you came to my aid,” the other prompted, watching her with those great, dark eyes which measured until Loyse smarted under their gaze.
“Because I could not do otherwise!” she flared. “Something bound me here. Your sorcery, lady?”
“In a way, in a way. I appealed in my fashion to any within these walls who had the ability to hear me. It would appear that we share more than a common danger, lady of Verlaine, or,” she smiled openly now, “seeing that you have changed your guise for this outfaring, lord of Verlaine.”
“Call me Briant, a mercenary of blank shield,” Loyse supplied, having prepared for that days ago.
“And where do you go, Briant? To seek employment in Kars? Or in the north? There will be a demand for blank shields in the north.”
“Estcarp wars?”
“Say rather that war is carried to her. But that is another matter.” She stood up. “One which can be discussed at length once we are without these walls. For I am sure you know a road out.”
Loyse draped the saddle bags across her shoulder, drew the hood of her cloak over her uncrested helm. As she moved to turn off the light globes, the witch jerked at the shawl on the floor. Vexed at her own forgetfulness, the girl caught it and threw the strands of hair into the dying fire.
“That is well done,” the other commanded. “Leave nothing which could be used to draw you back — hair has power.” She glanced to the middle window.
“Does that give on the sea?”
“Yes.”
“Then lay a false trail, Briant. Let Loyse of Verlaine, die to cover it!”
It was the work of a moment to throw open that casement, to drop her fine bride robe just below. But it was the witch who bade her fasten a scrap of undergarment to the rough edge of the stone sill.
“With such an open door to face them,” she commanded,”I do not think they will seek too assiduously for other ways out of this chamber.”
Back they went through the mirror door, and now their path led down through the dark where Loyse urged that they hug the wall to the right and take the descent slowly. Under their hands that wall grew moist, and dank smells of the sea, tainted with an ancient rottenness, were thick in the air. Down and down, and now the murmur of the waves came faintly thrumming through the wall. Loyse counted step after step.
“Here! Now there is the passage leading to the strange place.”
“The strange place?”
“Yes, I do not like to linger there, but we shall have little choice. We must wait for the dawn light to guide us out.”
She crept on, fighting the building reluctance within her. Three times had she come that way in the past, and each time she had carried on this silent warfare with her own body as the field of battle. Again she knew that rise of brooding apprehension, that threat out of the dark promising more and worse than just bodily harm. But still she shuffled on, her fingers hooked in her companion’s belt, drawing her also.
Out of the blackness Loyse heard the heavy breathing, a catch of breath. And then the other spoke, in a faint whisper, as if there crouched near that which might overhear her words.
“This is a Place of Power.”
“It is a strange place,” Loyse repeated stubbornly. “I do not like it, but it holds our gate out of Verlaine.”
Though they could not see, they sensed they had come out of the passage into a wider area. Loyse caught a glimpse of a bright point of light overhead — the beacon of a star hung far above some rock crevice.
But now there was another faint gleam which brightened suddenly, as if some muffling curtain had been withdrawn. It moved through the air well above ground level — a round gray spot. Loyse heard a sing-song chant, words she did not know. And that sound reverbrated in the curiously charged air of the space. As the light grew stronger she knew that it came from the witch’s jewel.
Her skin tingled, the air about them was charged with energy. Loyse knew an avid hunger — for what she could not have told. In her other visits to this place, the girl had been afraid and had made herself linger to control that fear. Now she left fear behind, this new sensation was one she could not put name to.
The witch, revealed in the light of the gem on her breast, was swaying from side to side, her face set and rapt. The stream of words still poured from her lips — petition, argument, protective incantation — Loyse could not have said which. Only the girl knew that they were both caught up in a vast wave of some energizing substance drawn from the sand and rock under their feet, from the walls about them, something which had remained asleep through long centuries to come instantly awake and aware now.
Why? What? Slowly Loyse made a complete turn, staring out into the gloom she could not pierce by eyepower. What lurked just beyond the faint pool of light the jewel granted them?
“We must go!” That came urgently from the witch. Her dark eyes were widely open, her hand moved clumsily to Loyse. “I cannot control forces greater than my own! This place is old, also it is apart from human kind and from the powers we know. Gods were worshiped here once, such gods as altars have not been raised to these thousand years. And there is a residue of their old magic rising! Where is your outer gate? We must try it while yet we can.”
“The light of your jewel—” Loyse shut her own eyes, pulling forth her memory of this place, as earlier she had used her memory of the other wall-hidden ways. “There,” she opened them again and pointed ahead.
Step by step the witch moved in that direction and the light went with and around her as Loyse had hoped. Steps wide and roughly hewn, rounded by ages of time, loomed to their right. They led, Loyse knew, to a flat block with certain sinister grooves which lay directly under a break in the roof, so that at intervals light from the sun, or from the moon, bathed it in gold or silver.
Around that platform fashioned of broad steps, they crept on to the far wall. The light of the jewel caught the fall of earth which lay below Loyse’s gate. It would be risky to climb that tumble of stone and clay in this gloom, but she was impressed by the urgency of the witch.
The climb was as great a task as Loyse had feared. Though her companion made no complaint, she knew that to use those swollen hands must be torment. When and where she could the girl pushed and pulled the other, tensing together when the rubble shifted under their feet, threatening to plunge them both to the bottom once again. Then they were out, lying on coarse grass with the salt air about them, and a grayish glimmer in the sky
