The Tritonian Ring and Other Pasudian Tales Read Free Page A

with Vakar (whose disposition it was to take a gloomy view of things) arguing against Kuros while the other two remained mute. Kuros began to press the king:
     
                  "You agree, don't you, Father?"
     
                  Zhabutir the Indecisive smiled weakly. "I know not... I cannot decide ... What thinks Master Ryn?"
     
                  "Sir?" said the magician. "Before sending my opinions forth across the chasm of surmise, I« prefer to wait until they're provided with a more solid bridge of fact. With your permission I'll call upon witch Gra for counsel."
     
                  "That old puzzel!" cried Kuros. "We should have hanged her ... "
     
                  Ryn began his preparations. From his bag he produced a small bronze tripod which he unfolded and set over the guttering fire. The fire threw a streamer of smoke at him as if to keep him off, but at the mutter of a cantrip it drew in upon itself. At the first syllable the wolfhound jumped up, gave a faint howl, and trotted out with its tail between its legs, its claws clicking on the stone.
     
                  Ryn poked the fire and added sticks until it blazed up again. With a piece of charcoal he drew a circle around the hearth and added lines and glyphs whose meaning Vakar did not know. Ryn rose to his feet and prowled around the room extinguishing the wobbling flames in the little oil-lamps. His hunched shadow reminded Vakar of that of a great scuttling spider—for all that Vakar esteemed the man had tutored him as a boy. Ryn then went back to the hearth and into the miniature cauldron at the apex of the tripod he sprinkled powders whose smell made the others cough.
     
                  He resumed his stool facing the fire and spoke in a language so ancient that even the scholarly Vakar (who could read over a thousand pictographs) could not understand a word, all the while moving his hands in stiffly geometrical gestures.
     
                  Vakar told himself that it was mere illusion that the room became even darker. A plume of smoke arose from the cauldron, and although the wind still sent drafts whistling through the chamber, the air within the circle seemed quite still. For instead of diffusing and dispersing as it rose, the column of smoke held together and twined itself snake-like into knots at the top of the column. Vakar (who would have nourished magical ambitions himself but for his peculiar disability) held his breath, his heart pounding.
     
                  The smoke thickened and solidified and became a simulacrum of a tall heavy woman clad in a wolf-skin tied over one shoulder and belted around her thick waist with a thong. She was seated, half-turned so that she seemed to be looking past the four men without seeing them. In one hand she clutched a bone from which she was gnawing the meat. Vakar realized that it was not the woman herself, for the substance of which she was made was still smoky-gray in the semi-darkness and he could see the tripod and the fire beneath it through her massive legs and feet.
     
                  "Gra!" called Ryn.
     
                  The woman stopped gnawing and looked at the men. She tossed the bone aside, and as it left her hand it vanished. She wiped her fingers on the wolf-hide and scratched under her exposed breast. Her voice came in a far-off whisper:
     
                  "What wish the lords of Lorsk with me?"
     
                  Ryn said: "Word has come of threatening movements by the Gorgons. We are divided as to what to do. Advise us."
     
                  The witch stared at the ground in front of her so long that Kuros squirmed and muttered until Ryn hissed him to silence. At last Gra spoke:
     
                  "Send Prince Vakar to seek the thing the gods most fear."
     
                  "Is that