High Sorcery Read Free Page B

will, she gave him no welcome. And she tossed another stone from hand to hand with the ease of one who had already scored with such a weapon.
    â€œWho are you?” she spoke aloud.
    â€œHe who followed you.” Craike fingered the bruise on his shoulder, not taking his eyes from hers.
    â€œYou are no Black Hood.” It was a statement, not a question. “But you, also, have been horned.” That was another statement.
    Craike nodded. In his own time and place he had indeed been “horned.”
    Just as her thrown stone had struck without warning, so came her second attack. There was a hiss. Within striking distance a snake flickered a forked tongue.
    Craike did not give ground. The snake head expanded, fur ran over it; there were legs, a plume of tail fluffed. A dog fox yapped once at the girl and vanished. Craike read her recoil, the first uncertainty.
    â€œYou have the power!”
    â€œI have power.” He corrected her.
    But her attention was no longer his. She was listening to something he could hear with neither ear nor mind. Then she ran to the edge of the mesa. He followed.
    On this side the country was more rolling, and across itnow came mounted men moving in and out of mist pools. They rode in silence, and over them was the same blanketing of thought as the girl had used.
    Craike glanced about. There were loose stones; and the girl had already proven her marksmanship with such. But they would be no answer to the weapons the others had. Flight was no solution either.
    The girl sobbed once, a broken cry so unlike the iron will she had shown that Craike started. She leaned perilously over the drop, staring down at the horsemen.
    Then her hands moved with desperate speed. She tore hairs from her head, twisted and snarled them between her fingers, breathed on them, looped them with a stone for weight, casting the tangled mass out to land before the riders.
    The mist curled and took on substance. Where there had been only rock there was now a thicket of thorn, so knotted that no flesh creature could push through it. The hunters paused, then they rode on again, but now they drove a reeling, naked man, a man kept going by a lashing whip whenever he faltered.
    Again the girl sobbed, burying her face in her hands. The wretched captive reached the thorn barrier. Under his touch it melted. He stood there, weaving drunkenly.
    A whip sang. He went to his knees under its cut; a trapped animal’s wail went on the wind. Slowly, with a blind seeking, his hands went out to small stones about him. He gathered them, spread them anew in patterns. The girl had raised her head, watching dry-eyed, but seething with hate and the need to strike back. But she did not move.
    Craike dared lay a hand on her narrow shoulder, feeling through her hair the chill of her skin, while the hair itself clung to his fingers as if it had the will to smother and imprison. He tried to pull her away, but he could not move her.
    The naked man crouched in the midst of his pattern, and now he chanted, a compelling call the girl could not withstand. She wrenched free of Craike’s hold. But as she went she spared a thought for the man who had tried to save her. She struck out, her fist landing on the stone bruise. Pain sent him reeling back as she went over to the rim of the mesa, her face a mask which no friend nor enemy might read. But there was no resignation in her eyes as she was forced to the meeting below.

    IV
    By the time Craike reached a vantage point the girl stood in the center of the stone ring. Outside crouched the man, his head on his knees. She looked down at him, no emotion showing on her wan face. Then she dropped her hand on his thatch of wild hair. He jerked under that touch as he had under the whip which had printed the scarlet weals across his back and loins. But he raised his head, and from his throat came a beast’s mournful howl. At her gesture he was quiet, edging closer to her as if seeking some