High Sorcery Read Free

lurked here, then only did his mind touch. What did he do now?
    His decision was made for him. He picked up a wave of panic again, spreading terror. But this was the fear of feathered and furred things. It came to him as ripples might run on a pool.
    Fire! He caught the thought distorted by bird and beast mind. The fire leaped from tree crown to tree crown, cutting a gash across the forest. Craike started on, taking the way west, away from the menace.
    Once he called out as a deer flashed by him, only to know in the same moment that this was no illusion but an animal. Small creatures tunneled through the grass. A dog fox trotted and spared him a measuring gaze from slit eyes. Birds whirred, and behind them was the scent of smoke.
    A mountain of flesh, muscle and fur snarled and reared to face him. But Craike had nothing to fear from any animal. He confronted the great red bear until it whined, shuffled its feet and plodded on. More and more creatures crossed his path or ran beside him for a space.
    It was their instinct which brought them, and Craike, to a river. Wolves, red deer, bears, great cats, foxes and all the rest came down to the saving water. A cat spat at the flood, but leaped in to swim. Craike lingered on the bank. The smoke was thicker and move animals broke from the wood to take to the water. But the doe—where was she?
    He probed, only to meet that blank. Then a spurt of flame ran up a dead sapling, advance scout of the furnace. He yelped as a floating cinder stung his skin and took to the water. But he did not cross; rather did he swim upstream, hoping to pass the flank of the fire and pick up the missing trail again.
    III
    Smoke cleared as Craike trod water. He was beyond the path of the fire, but not out of danger, for the current against which he had fought his way beat here through an archway of masonry. Flanking that arch were two squat towers. As an erection it was far more ambitious than anything he had seen during his brief glimpse of Sampur. Yet, as he eyed it more closely, he could see it was a ruin. There were gaps in the narrow span across the river, a green bush sprouted from the summit of the far tower.

    Craike came ashore, winning his way up the steep bank by handholds of vine and bush no alert castellan would have allowed to grow. As he reached a terrace of cobbles stippled with bunches of coarse grass, a sweetish scent of decay drew him around the base of the tower to look down at a broad ledge extending into the river. Piled on it were small baskets and bowls, some so rotted that only outlines were visible. Others were new and they all were filled with moldering foodstuffs. But those who left such offerings must have known that the tower was deserted.
    Puzzled, Craike went back to the building. The stone was undressed, yet the huge blocks which formed its base were fitted together with such precision that he suspected he could not force the thin blade of a pocket knife into any crack. There had been no effort at ornamentation, at any lightening of the impression of sullen, brute force.
    Wood, split and insect-bored, formed a door. As he put his hand to it Craike discovered the guardian the long-ago owners of the fortress had left in possession. His hands went to his head; the blow he felt might have been physical. Out of the stronghold before him came such a wave of utter terror and dark promise as to force him back, but no farther than the edge of the paved square about the building’s foundation.
    Grimly he faced that challenge, knowing it for stored emotion and not the weapon of an active will. He had his own defense against such a formless enemy. Breaking a dead branch from a bush, he twisted about it wisps of the sun-bleached grass until he had a torch of sorts. A piece of smoldering tinder blown from the fire gave him a light.
    Craike put his shoulder to the powdery remnants of the door, bursting it wide. Light against dark. What lurked there was nourished by dark, fed upon the