Warlock of the Witch World Read Free Page A

the Valley? I do not think this place goes undefended against any who walk cloaked in the Great Shadow.”
    But how wrong he was—though we were not aware of it then.
    What did I have to offer in proof of the rightness of my feeling? A look in a man’s eyes? That feeling alone—yet such emotions were also our defenses here.
    Kyllan nodded; his amazement was beginning to fade. But I closed my mind to him. I was like a child who has trustingly set hand to a coal, admiring its light without knowing of the danger. And then, burned, I regarded the world with newly awakened suspicion.
    “I am warned,” my brother assured me. But I felt he did not think it a true warning.
    That night they had a feast—although not a joyful one, since the reason for the gathering was so grave. But they held to the bonds of high ceremony; perhaps because in such forms there was a kind of security. I had not spoken with Kaththea as I wished; I had waited too long, shaken after my attempt with Kyllan. Now it rested as a burden on me that she sat beside Dinzil at the board and he smiled much upon her. She smiled or laughed in return when he spoke.
    “Are you always so silent, warrior with a stern face?”
    I turned to look at Dahaun, she who can change at will to seem any fair one a man holds in mind. Now she was raven of hair with a faint touch of rose in her ivory cheeks. But in the sunset her hair had been copper-gold, her skin golden also. What would it be like, I wondered, to be so many in one?
    “Do you dream now, Kemoc of the wise head?” she challenged and I came out of my bemusement.
    “No good dream if I do, Lady.”
    The light challenge vanished; her eyes dropped from mine to the cup she held in her two hands. She moved it slightly and the purple liquid within it flowed from side to side.
    “Look not in any foretelling mirror this night, Kemoc. Yet you have more than the shadow of a dream over you, to my thinking.”
    “I do.”
    Now why had I said that? Always had I kept my own counsel, or our own counsel, for we three-who-were-one shared. But was that still so? I looked again to my sister, who laughed with Dinzil, and to Kyllan, who was talking eagerly with Ethutur and Hervon as if he were a link between the two of them.
    “Branch, hold not to the leaves,” said Dahaun softly. “There comes a time when those must loose for the wind to bear them away. But new leaves grow in turn—”
    I caught her meaning and flushed. That she and Kyllan had an understanding between them I had known for weeks.
    Nor had it hurt me that this was so. That there might come a day when Kaththea would step into a road wherein she would walk with another, that I also accepted. I did not resent it that Kaththea laughed this night and was more maiden than witch and sister. But I resented whom she laughed with!
    “Kemoc—”
    I glanced again to Dahaun and found her staring at me.
    “Kemoc—what is it?”
    “Lady—” I held her eyes but I did not try to reach her mind. “Look well to your walls. I am afraid.”
    “Of Dinzil? That he may take from you that which you have cherished?”
    “Of Dinzil—what he may be.”
    She sipped from her cup, still watching me over its rim. “So, I shall look, warrior. I was ill-spoken, ill-thought, to put it to you as I did. This is no jealousy of close kin eating at you. You dislike him for himself. Why?”
    “I do not know—I only feel.”
    Dahaun put down her cup. “And feelings can speak more truthfully than tongues. Be certain I shall watch—in more ways than one.”
    “For that I thank you, Lady,” I said low-voiced.
    “Ride hence with foreboding this much lightened, Kemoc,” she replied. “And good luck ride with you, to right, to left, at your back—”
    “But not before?” I raised my own cup to salute her.
    “Ah, but you carry a sword before you, Kemoc.”
    Thus did Dahaun know what lay in my mind, and she believed. Yet still did I face the morning to come with a chill in me. For I was