The Witches of Karres Read online

  "Ah, Your Wisdoms!" the officer greeted them respectfully as he approached. "You are unharmed, of course—but accept the Daal's profound apologies for this occurrence, extended for the moment through his unworthy servant. We learned of the plans these rascals were devising against you too late to spare you the annoyance of having to deal with them yourselves." He gave the partners a look of stern loathing. "I see you have been merciful—they live. But not for long, I feel! We captured the woman as she attempted to escape to the street. . . . Now if Your Wisdoms will permit me to speak to you privately while my men remove this scum from your presence—"

  * * *

  The captain found it difficult to get to sleep that night.

  The policeman, a Major something-or-other—he hadn't caught the name—had transmitted an invitation to them from the Daal to attend the judging of the villainous partners at the Daal's Little Court in the House of Thunders next day. He'd accepted. A groundcar would come by two hours after sunrise to take them there.

  Goth had explained the "Your Wisdoms" form of address after they returned to the house and switched on their spy-screen. "It's how they talk to a witch around here," she said, "when they want to be polite . . . and when they're supposed to know you're a witch."

  Apparently it was regarded as good policy on Uldune to be polite to witches of Karres. And the Daal evidently had intended to let them know in this roundabout way that he knew they were witches.

  He was only half right, of course . . . .

  Did Sedmon the Sixth have something else in mind with the invitation? Goth figured he did but she didn't feel it was anything to worry about. "The Daal wants to get along with Karres—"

  There shouldn't be any trouble with the overlord of Uldune in connection with the Sheewash Drive, of which he would hear from the prisoners tomorrow, if he didn't already know about it. But the captain's thoughts kept veering towards some probably very unpleasant aspects of their visit to the House of Thunders. He realized presently he was afraid to go to sleep because he probably would start dreaming about them.

  He raised his head suddenly from the pillow. There was shimmering motion in the dim-lit hall beyond the open door of the room, a blurred suggestion of a small figure beyond it. The shimmering came into the room, advanced towards the bed, blotting out the room behind it, moved along the bed, passed over the captain's head, and went on into the wall. The room had become visible again and Goth, in her white sleep-pants, was now perched on the foot of the bed, legs crossed, looking at him. She had their spy-proofing device in one hand.

  "What's the matter?" he asked.

  "You're worrying about that pig getting skinned!" Goth told him.

  "Hmm . . . Sunnat?"

  "Who else?"

  "Well, the others, too," said the captain. "It's a rather horrid practice, you know!"

  "Uh-huh. You needn't worry, though."

  "Why not?"

  "Sedmon isn't having anyone skinned tomorrow, if we don't say so."

  "Why should he care what we say?"

  "We're witches, Your Wisdom!" Goth said. She chuckled gently.

  "Well, but . . ."

  "Threbus and Toll know Sedmon, Captain. They visited his place four, five times before I was born. They told me about him. He's got a sort of skullcap he uses that keeps klatha waves out of his mind. You can bet he'll wear it tomorrow! But he still doesn't want trouble with witches. He knows too much about them."

  "That's why you got them to think I did those klatha tricks tonight?" the captain asked.

  "Sure. If they found out we got the Drive here, they better think we can keep it. Far as Sedmon is concerned, you're a witch now."

  "What kind of a fellow is he otherwise?" the captain asked. "I've heard stories . . ."

  "I can tell you stories about Sedmon you won't believe," Goth said. "But not tonight. Just one thing. If we're alone with him—not if someone else is around—and it looks as if he's starting to wonder again if you're a witch, call him 'Sedmon of the Six Lives.' He'll snap to it then."

  "Sedmon of the Six Lives, eh? What does that mean?"

  "Don't know," Goth said. She yawned. "Threbus can tell you when we see him. But it'll work."

  "I'll remember it," the captain said.

  "Going to do any more worrying?" Goth asked.

  "No. Night, witch!"

  "Night, Your Wisdom!" She slipped down from the bed, clicking off the spy screen, and was gone from the room.

  * * *

  Impressive as the House of Thunders looked from a distance, it became apparent, as the military groundcar carrying Goth and the captain approached it up winding mountain roads, that its exterior was as weather-beaten and neglected as the streets of the old quarter of Zergandol. The Daal's penuriousness was proverbial on Uldune. Evidently it extended even to keeping up the appearance of the mighty edifice which was the central seat of his government.

  The section of the structure through which they presently were escorted was battered, but filled with not particularly unobtrusive guards. Several openings and hallways revealed the metallic gleam of heavy armament, obviously in excellent repair. Dilapidated the House of Thunders might look, the captain thought, but for the practical purpose of planetary defense it should still be a fortress to be reckoned with. The escorting officers paused presently before an open door, bowed the visitors through it and drew the door quietly shut behind them.

  This was a windowless room, well furnished, its walls concealed by the heavy ornamental hangings of another period. Sedmon stood here waiting for them. The captain saw a lean, middle-aged man, dark-skinned, with steady, watchful eyes. Uldune's lord wore a long black robe and a helmet-like cap of velvet green which covered half his forehead and enclosed his skull to the nape of his neck. The last must be the anti-klatha device Goth had mentioned.

  He greeted them cordially, using the names with which they had been supplied by his Office of Identities, apologized for the outrage attempted against them by Sunnat, Bazim & Filish.

  "My first impulse," he said, "was to have those wretches put to death without an hour's delay!"

  "Well," said the captain uncomfortably, quickly blotting out another mental vision of the Daal's executioners peeling wicked Sunnat's skin from her squirming body, "it may not be necessary to be quite so severe with them!"

  Sedmon nodded. "You are generous! But that was to be expected. In fact, in the cases of Bazim and Filish Your Wisdom appears to have inflicted on the spot the punishment you regarded as suitable to their offense—"

  "It was what they deserved," the captain agreed.

  The Daal coughed. "Also," he said, "I have considered that Bazim and Filish are, when in their senses, most valuable subjects. They claim they acted as they did solely out of their great fear of Sunnat's anger. If it is your wish then, I shall release them to conclude the work on your ship, as stipulated by contract—with this condition. They may not receive one Imperial mael from you in payment! Everything shall be done at their expense. Further, my inspectors will be looking over their shoulders; and if they, or you, should find cause for the slightest complaint, there will be additional penalties, and far more drastic ones. . . . Does this meet with Your Wisdoms' approval?"

  The captain cleared his throat, assured him it did.

  "There remains the matter of Sunnat," the Daal resumed. "Your testimony against her is not required—her partners' separate statements have made it clear enough that she was the instigator of the plot. However, it would be well if Your Wisdoms would accompany me to the Little Court now to see that the judgment rendered against this pernicious woman is also in accordance with your wishes . . ."

  A handful of minor officials were arranged about the mirrored expanse of the Daal's Little Court when they entered. Sedmon seated himself, and the visitors were shown to chairs at the side of the bench. A moment later two soldiers brought Sunnat in through a side door. She started violently when she caught sight of the captain and Goth and avoided looking in their direction a
gain. Sunnat had clearly had a very bad night! Her face was strained and drawn; her reddened eyes flickered nervously as they glanced about. But frightened as she must be, she soon showed she was still trying to squirm out of the situation.

  "Lies, all lies, Your Highness!" she exclaimed tearfully but with a defiant toss of her head. "Never—never!—would I have wished Their Wisdoms harm—or dared consider doing them harm if I hadn't been forced to what I did by the cruel threats of Bazim and Filish. They—"

  It got her nowhere. The Daal pointed out quietly it was clear she hadn't realized with whom she was dealing when she turned on Captain Aron and his niece. Malice and greed had motivated her. It was well known that her partners were fully under her sway. Justice could not be delayed by such arguments.

  No mention was made by either side of the mysterious spacedrive Sunnat had tried to get in her possession. It seemed she had been warned against saying anything about that in court.

  Sunnat was weeping wildly at that point. Sedmon glanced over at the captain, then looked steadily at Goth.

  "Since the criminal's most serious offense was against the Young Wisdom," he said, "it seems fitting that the Young Wisdom should now decide what her punishment should be."

  The Little Court became quiet. Goth remained seated for a moment, then stood up.

  "It would be even more fitting, Sedmon," somebody beside the captain said, "if the Young Wisdom herself administered the punishment . . . ."

  He started. The words had come from Goth—but that had not been Goth's voice! Everybody in the Little Court was staring silently at her. Then the Daal nodded.

  "It shall be as Your Wisdom said . . . ."

  Goth moved away from the captain, stopped a few yards from Sunnat. He couldn't see her face. But the air tingled with eeriness and he knew klatha was welling into the room. He had a glimpse of the Daal's face, tense and watchful; of Sunnat's, dazed with fear.

  "Look in the mirror, Sunnat of Uldune!"

  It wasn't her voice! What was happening? His skin shuddered and from moment to moment, now his vision seemed to blur, then clear again. The voice continued low, mellow, but somehow it was filling the room. Not Goth's voice but he felt he'd heard it before somewhere, sometime, and should know it. And his mind strained to understand what it said but seemed constantly to miss the significance of each word by the fraction of a second, as the quiet sentences rolled on with a weight of silent thunder in them. Sunnat faced one of the great mirrors in the room; he saw her back rigid and straight and thought she was frozen, unable to move. Sedmon's lean hands were clamped together, unconsciously knotting and twisting as he stared.

  The voice rose on an admonitory note, ended abruptly in sharp command. It couldn't, the captain realized, actually have been speaking for more than twenty seconds. But it had seemed much longer. There was silence for an instant now. Then Sunnat screamed.

  One couldn't blame her, he thought. Staring into the mirror, Sunnat had seen what everyone else in the Little Court could see by looking at her. Set on her shoulders instead of her own head was the bristled, red-eyed head of a wild pig, ugly jaws gaping and working, as screams continued to pour from them. There was a medley of frightened voices. The Daal shouted a command at Sunnat's white-faced guards, and the two grasped the writhing figure by the arms, hustled it from the Little Court. As they passed through the side door, it seemed to the captain that Sunnat's wails had begun to resemble a pig's frightened squealing much more than the cries of a young woman in terrible distress . . . .

  * * *

  "Toll!" the captain told Goth, rather shakily. "You were talking in Toll's voice! Your mother's voice!"

  "Well, not really," Goth said. They were alone for the moment, in a small room of the House of Thunders, to which they had been conducted by a stunned looking official after the Daal, rather abruptly, concluded judicial proceedings in the Little Court following the Young Wisdom's demonstration. Sedmon was to rejoin them here in a few minutes—the captain guessed the Daal had felt it necessary to get settled down a little first. Their spy-screen snapped on the instant the room's door closed on the official, who seemed glad to be on his way.

  "It's pretty much like Toll's voice," she agreed. "That was my Toll pattern."

  "Your what?"

  Goth rubbed her nose tip. "Guess I can tell you," she decided. "You won't get it all, though. I don't either . . . ."

  Her Toll pattern was a klatha learning device. In fact, a nonmaterial partial replica of the personality of an adult witch whose basic individuality was similar to that of the witch child given the device. In this case, Toll's. "It's sort of with me in there," Goth said, tapping the side of her head. "Don't notice it much but it's helping. Now here—Sedmon was checking on how good I was. Don't know why exactly. I figured I ought to get fancy to show him but wasn't sure what I wanted to do. So the Toll pattern took over. It knew what to do. See?"

  "Hmm . . . not entirely."

  Goth pushed herself up on the edge of a gleaming, blue table and looked at him, dangling her legs. "Course you don't," she said. She considered. "Pattern can't do just anything. It has to be something I can almost do already so it only has to show me. Else it'd get me messed up, like I told you."

  "Meaning you're almost able to plant a pig's head on somebody if you feel like it?" the captain asked.

  "Wasn't a pig's head."

  "Pretty good imitation then!"

  "Bend light, bend color." Goth shrugged. "That's all. They'll stay that way as long as you want. When Sunnat puts her hands up to feel, she'll know she's got her own head. But she's going to look part pig for a time."

  "Can't quite imagine you doing one of those incantations by yourself! That was impressive."

  "Incant . . . oh, that! You don't need all that," Goth told him. "Toll pattern did it to scare everybody. Especially Sedmon."

  "It worked, I think." He studied her curiously. "So when will you start bending light?"

  Goth's face took on a bemused expression. There was a blur. Then a small round pig's head squinted at him from above her jacket collar, smirking unpleasantly.

  "Oink!" it said in Goth's voice.

  "Cut it out!" said the captain, startled.

  The head blurred again, became Goth's. She grinned. "Told you I just had to be shown!"

  "I believe you now. How long will Sunnat be stuck with the one she's got?"

  "Didn't you hear what the pattern told her?"

  He shook his head. "I heard it—it seemed to mean something. But somehow I wasn't really understanding a word. And I don't think anyone else there was."

  "Sunnat understood it," Goth said. "It was talking to her. . . . She's got to quit wanting to do things like burning people and scaring people, like that fat old Bazim. The less she wants that, the less she'll look like a pig. She works at it, she could look pretty much like she was in about a month. And . . ."

  Goth turned her head. There'd been a knock at the door. She put her hand in her pocket, snapped off the spy-screen, slid down from the table. The captain went over to the door to let in the Daal of Uldune.

  * * *

  "There are matters of such grave potential significance," the Daal said vaguely, "that it is difficult—extremely difficult—to decide to whom one may unburden oneself concerning them. I . . ."

  His voice trailed off, not for the first time in this conversation. His gaze shifted across the shining blue table to the captain, to Goth—back to the captain. He shook his head again, bit at a knuckle with an expression of worried irritability.

  The captain studied him with some puzzlement. Sedmon seemed itching to tell them something but unable to make up his mind to do it. What was the problem? He'd implied he had information of great importance to Karres. If so, they'd better get it.

  The Daal glanced at Goth again, speculatively. "Perhaps Your Wisdom understands," he murmured.

  "Uh-huh," said Goth brightly, in her little-girl voice.

  He'd tell Goth if they were alone? The captain cons
idered. There hadn't been many "Your Wisdoms" coming his way since that business in the Little Court! Possibly Sedmon had done some private reevaluating of the events in Sunnat's underground dungeon last night. It would take—as, in fact, it had taken—only one genuine witch on the team to account for that.

  Not so good, perhaps. . . . He considered again.

  "I really think," he heard himself say pleasantly, "it might be best if you did unburden yourself to us, Sedmon of the Six Lives."

  The Daal's eyes flickered.

  "So!" It was a small hiss. "I suspected . . . but it was a difficult thing to believe, even of such as you. Well, we all have our secrets, and our reasons for them . . . ." He stood up. "Come with me then—Captain Aron and Dani! You should know better what to make of what I have here than I do."

  The captain hoped they would. He certainly did not know what to make of Sedmon the Sixth, and of the Six Lives, at the moment! But he seemed to have said the right thing at the right time, at that—

  Sedmon led them swiftly, the hem of his black gown flapping about his heels, through a series of narrow passages and up stairways into another section of the House of Thunders. They met no one on the way. Three times the Daal stopped to unlock heavy doors with keys produced from a fold in the gown, locked them again behind them. He did not speak at all until they turned at last into a blind passage which showed only one door and that near the far end. There he slowed.

  "Half the problem is here," he said, addressing them equally as they came up to the door. "When you've seen it, I'll tell you what else I know—which is little enough. There'll be another thing to show you later in another place."

  He unlocked and opened the door. The room beyond was long and low, showed no furnishings. But something like a heavy, slowly rippling iron-gray curtain screened the far end.

  "A guard field," said the Daal sourly. "I've done everything possible to keep the matter quiet. In that I think I've been successful. It was all I could do until I came in contact with a competent member of your people." He gave them a sideways glance. "No doubt you have your own problems—but for weeks I've been unable to learn where somebody who could act for Karres might be found!"