High Sorcery Read Free Page A

night fears of his species.
    The round room was bare except for some crumbling sticks of wood, a series of steps jutting out from the wall to curve about and vanish above. Craike made no move toward further exploration, holding up the torch, seeking to see the real, not the threat of this place.
    Those who had built it possessed Esper talents, and they had used that power for twisted purposes. He read terror and despair trapped here by the castellans’ art, and horror, an abiding fog of what his race considered evil.
    Tentatively Craike began to fight. With the torch he brought light and heat into the dark and cold. Now hestruggled to offer peace. Just as he had pictured a girl in flight in place of the doe, so did he now force upon those invisible clouds of stored suffering calm and hope. The gray window slits in the stone were uncurtained to the streaming sunlight.
    Those who had set that guardian had not intended it to hold against an Esper. Once he began the task, Craike found the opposition melting. The terror seeped as if it sank into the floor wave by wave. He stood in a room which smelt of damp and, more faintly, of the rotting food piled below its window slits; but now it was only an empty shell.
    Craike was tired, drained by his effort; and he was puzzled. Why had he fought for this? Of what importance to him was the cleansing of a ruined tower?
    Though to stay here had certain advantages. It had been erected to control river traffic. Though that did not matter for the present; just now he needed food more.
    He went back to the rock of offerings, treading a wary path through the disintegrating stuff. Close to the edge he came upon a clay bowl containing coarsely ground grain and, beside it, a basket of wilted leaves filled with overripe berries. He ate in gulps.
    Grass made him a matted bed in the tower, and he kindled the fire. As he squatted before its flames, he sent out a questing thought. A big cat drank from the river. Craike shuddered away from that contact with blood lust. A night-hunting bird provided a trace of awareness. There were small rovers and hunters, but nothing human.
    Tired though he was, Craike could not sleep. There was the restless sensation of some demand about to be made, some task waiting. From time to time he fed the fire. Toward morning he dozed, to snap awake. A night creature drinking and a screech overhead. He heard the flutter of wings echo hollowly through the tower.
    Beyond was that curious blank which had fallen between him and the girl. Craike got to his feet eagerly. That blank could be traced.
    Outside it was raining, and fog hung in murky bands among the river hollows. The blank spot veered. Craike started after it. The tower pavement became a trace of old road he followed, weaving through the fog.
    There was the sour smell of old smoke. Charred wood, black muck clung to his feet. But his guide point was nowstationary as the ground rose, studded with outcrops of rock. So Craike came to a mesa jutting up into a steel gray sky.
    He hitched his way up by way of a long-ago slide. The rain had stopped, but there was no hint of sun. He was unprepared for the greeting he met as he topped the lip of a small plateau.
    A violent blow on the shoulder whirled him halfway around, and only by a finger’s width did he escape a fall. A cry echoed his, and the blank broke. She was there.
    Moving slowly, using the same technique he knew to sooth frightened animals, Craike raised himself again. The pain in his shoulder was sharp when he tried to put much weight upon his left arm. But now he saw her clearly.
    She sat cross-legged, a boulder at her back, her hair a rippling cloud of black through which her hands and arms shown starkly white. She had the thin, three-cornered face of a child who has known much harshness. There was no beauty there; the flesh had been too much worn by spirit. Only her eyes, watchful-wary as those of a feline, considered him bleakly. In spite of his beam of good