Maclan Merven! Had I not been so swathed with bindings, I would have shivered. That name had been one of ill omen on the Borders these five years and more, ever since there had been a hanging and then a gallows-flit. Dead, they had said Maclan to be when they cut him down; but by some chance, after he had been borne away, he had come to life. It was well known that he had declared a blood feud against my father.

He unscrewed the flask and flicked some drops onto Tam's face.

"If it please you, sir," Tam croaked, "will you grant us water?"

Maclan swung the flask back and forth so low it almost touched her face.

"This has a price, you know. There be little water in this wilderness, and what we have we need keep for ourselves and our horses. Will you pay the price-?

"No one bargains without a price being stated. " Tam's voice was even.

"The price? Well, now." The Breaksword pulled at his well-trimmed beard while juggling the flask with his other hand, so that it slopped water even more-to no purpose except our torment.

"Hmmm... I would say a good tumble for you all; yet I am a man of my word. You are to be kept for him who has paid for it. But"-as though struck with a sudden inspiration, Maclan sat back and regarded his scuffed and muddy boots. "These need a brush-up, and other tasks can be found for a wench-or three."

"No!" Bina's voice rang out.

The renegade looked beyond Tam; then he leaned in my direction. "Still high-nosed, then, are you? So be it!"

He pounded the stopper into the flask and stood up.

Tam coughed from her dryness of throat, and I echoed her. Where did courage end and stupidity begin? Perhaps we were soon to discover. Meanwhile, both men moved off to our right, one towing the pony that had been my mount, until they pa.s.sed out of sight.

"Did you have a reason for that?" My indignant Send was aimed at Bina.

"I did indeed-give this gallowsmeat any chance, no matter how small, and your charity will buy you death!" her reply came swiftly. "It was he and the other Breakswords of Lammerside who took Neman's Tower."

The thought of that foul ma.s.sacre silenced even our mind-speech, though I could feel, as did Bina, Tam's surge of rage. She had helped to bring in two wounded children who had not died when the attackers had cut them down.

We were, however, given little time to wonder if our choice had been the wrong one. A shadow was creeping from a rocky crag that overlooked the camp, and we knew it must be not too far from sunset. A few moments after the outlaws had departed, we heard the yowl of a bush-cat. The feline signal was answered, full-throated, from the direction in which Maclan and his henchmen had gone, then followed by a thud of horse hooves and a confusion of raised voices.

"-dogs on the trail-" That phrase could be picked out of the jumble of speech.

So somebody had loosed sleuthhounds! Those animals were rightly famous in the border lands. All the beasts were trained trackers, and every pack also contained dogs that would attack on order.

"I tells you th' right o' it, Maclan." One of the mountain men had swung closer to where we lay, and we could hear his speech clearly. "That up-nosed Red won't be coming. He had a slam-bang fight with the chief before he rode out last night, and his father gave him what for like he were a jus'-breeched young'un. He got such a crack on the jaw that he spit teeth an' his face swelled up till he canna but croak. He ain't a-goin' anywhere for a few days-maybe a week. The chief has got 'im a mighty hard fist."

The group that had raised the cat-cry signal was in sight now. The leader of our captors turned out to be a youngster, hardly more than a boy, who wore Starkadder's badge on his sword-scarf.

"Red?" Maclan asked. "He sent any message?"

"Nay, no message. But you had need to know. Nigh a full troop was ready to ride afore I was outta sight o' the grounds. The tod was up and alight. And I marked Gurlys as was goin' to join the Southin's too-three clan flags did be up."

Maclan had halted. He kicked the ground in frustration, and a puff of dust arose.

"Give you thanks, Jib. So we must needs find our own way out now."

Once more ponies were brought, and we were again strapped in ignominious positions on their backs. Twilight was beginning to fall as we were borne away. I find it hard to remember that night; I did not dream but was simply swallowed up in a dark pocket in which painful aches and a pounding head were my lot to bear.

Sabina

I, Sabina, suffered enough that a croak, which was intended to be a full-throated scream, was forced out of me. My trailing hair, loosed earlier by Maclan, had become caught on bushes and was brutally yanked free by the man leading the pony.

No talk pa.s.sed among our captors, but they kept steadily to a pace that was faster than we had held earlier. We moved ever upward, and now and then the lash of a cold wind struck. How long we traveled so through the dark, I never knew. With the blanket blindfold once more over my face, I should have had no way of seeing what lay around us, even if we had been moving by torchlight.

I held as long as I could to wilting hope, which had been briefly revived by the report that the Border had been aroused on our behalf. The horses, ridden by my father's escort, were superior to these ponies, and sleuth-hounds seldom lost the trail. But these Breakswords, who owed no allegiance to any clan chief, knew hidden ways to many strongholds; Maclan himself had been able to escape my father's well-trained men and raid during the past few years without even close pursuit. He had become, justly, something of a legend.

Soon the need for water had overpowered thought and sensation alike in my world. Never, through all those years when I had labored to hone my talent to the highest level, had I so battled with my own body, striving to set aside its demands and master such a craving. Thirst was my chief torment, but hunger shortly joined with it till both beasts claimed me as their prey and gnawed at my middle.

I did not try to Send, for I knew that my sisters suffered the same ills. In this hour, to invoke the unity we had shared for so many years would avail us nothing. Each of us alone must hold on to sanity and so to life. However, as I tried to repeat in my aching head one of the cantrips Duty had taught, my resolve faltered. For all my efforts, I could not put word to word, and what aid could an ancient wisewife's saying give us now? So I was swallowed by a dark which was more than just the night.

Then I caught a trickling sound-not for the ears to hear but for the mind. I had closed my eyes, but by some means I could still see. A crack of light opened in the dark about me, and its radiance grew broader and clearer with every thirst-savaged breath I drew until I felt I was lying in a bath of liquid sunlight. Then-oh, what a cruel mirage born of my body's need-the gold about me cooled to silver, and I rested in a stream of gently flowing water! Instinctively, I opened my mouth, and-yes, water, blessed true water, raised itself out of the flood about me, poured across and into my cracked and bleeding lips. I drank and drank.

Drucilla

Water! Tam lay beside me; her hands were unbound, and from each finger poured, impossibly but undeniably, a rill of water. I, Drucilla, drank deeply. For some reason, as the dryness vanished, I felt another need, not of my own but of my sister's. By mind-speech, I answered what seemed to be an unvoiced question. Then once more I scooped up and mouthed the living liquid.

Sabina

My face was awash-awash?. How? Whence came this water, that soothed not only the racking pain in my body but was as balm to my soul, as well? Swallow Swallow, I instructed myself, then try mind-touch then try mind-touch. But that outflung net caught no sister in its invisible weave. A little alarmed by this silence, for it was difficult for any of us to know who we were without our two counterpart/complements, I found myself shaping the words: I am Sabina of the Scorpys I am Sabina of the Scorpys.

Tamara

How long we traveled on after that strange dream sharing, I cannot tell. However, when it ended, my spirit seemed to withdraw from the body that was called Tamara and rested in a place that sheltered and strengthened like loving arms supporting me.

That refuge was irreparably shattered as my physical self was again dropped to the ground, this time onto a bed of small stones. The shock and pain of the fall pulled me back into my body and the mad, random place that my world had become.

"Bina? Cilla?" I Sent.

"Here," each answered in turn.

Then my feet were seized and, by them, I was dragged roughly over the ground. By the daylight that had, impossibly after a night of such strange doings, come again, I saw that Maclan stood above us. He held a knife in one hand, and now he stooped and grabbed up a handful of my hair as if to tear it from my scalp. Instead, he sawed the strand loose, and as he did so, he whistled.

I recognized the air; widely sung, it had not only a taunting tune but vicious words guaranteed to enrage the whole of any Border family.

"Th' Snake, he did take Ninen's Peel; With it hardly did he deal: Wives, maids, babes did swallow steel.

Snake? Nay, Dragon from the past- Of him no man will see the last!"

"Should I not take up the harp as a bard, my lady?" The Breaksword brushed my shorn hair across my face, grooming me as he preened himself. "And wait till you hear the next verse, which I have just composed! We do not hang you, you see-that is not the way of the Maclan. Your father set me in a lick-stone cell, and licking is how I gathered my water, see you-my tongue to cold, bare stone. I do not think you will have even that much where you go now. We deal with you as is custom, you see. They can hunt with hounds-bring their h.e.l.l-taught magic to search-it will not serve." I was puzzling over his words as he summoned his men once more.

Our captors worked quickly after that. We were dragged forth again and pushed onto a flat surface; then that platform was raised into the air. Pinioned as we were, we could see but a braiding of taut-drawn rope above. Now our temporary floor swung outward, dipping a little so that I feared we would be rolled from the rimless support it offered.

Down-they were lowering us down somewhere, and we could be sure that whatever waited us below would be no better than what we had left behind.

Six.

Tamara

The support on which we rested was swinging as a brisk wind pushed at it. We had not been secured in any way onto this platform, and the possibility was very real that we might roll off before we ever reached the goal our captors had selected.

Even as I strove to brace myself against such a fate, it came upon me. I spun over, and then I was falling, falling until the blanket-roll that bound me thudded home onto another surface with force enough to drive the breath out of me. I choked out a scream, only to suffer a second hard blow from above as a weight covered my body. Then darkness took me.

Sabina

We had been swinging-how? why? And who-who was I? At least that knowledge returned: I was Sabina. Then I was falling, to strike a surface that moved under me. I heard a choked cry, sounding as from a far distance. Once more I lay still, on my side this time. Summoning what small strength I still possessed, I mind-Sent: "Tam-Cilla!"

"Yes-" That was Cilla, I knew, for the variations of mental "speech" can be as individual as voices.

"Tam!" I called silently again. She had always been the strongest, the most a.s.sured of us three. However, she had borne the brunt of Maclan's attention at the last...

Before I could thought-call a third time, my body was jerked upward by my bound feet to hang, in painful movement, upside down. The pulls continued, growing ever more vicious. I realized I must have become entangled in a rope fastened to the platform we had ridden.

A final yank, followed by further shaking; then I was free and thudding downward. My cheek scoured across a rough surface-blanket?

"Cilla? Tam-Tam-?" I Sent desperately.

"Yes." Again Cilla answered instantly. "Tam is close beside you-I can see her! But-is that blood on her face? Tam!" Cilla's own message entwined with mine.

I could neither lift my head nor change position, so I could see no more than the band of darkening sky above. Then came movement against that backdrop-a square object was swinging on ropes, describing a series of irregular lifts and drops, but rising ever higher. The platform that had brought us here was returning aloft.

After I reported the departure of the flooring-square, I strove, in fashion of an eyeless worm, to edge myself backward, hoping to meet with a rocky outcrop against which I could wriggle sufficiently upright to see something of our surroundings.

Almost as if some power had read my purpose and was moved to answer an unvoiced plea, I b.u.mped against a hard surface, nearly as wide as my shoulders, so that I was heartened to struggle onward-or at least upward. Perhaps if I continued rubbing against the unyielding support, I could hatch myself from the coc.o.o.n of rope-wound blanket. And there was a sloping shape to what I pushed against! I added another bruise to my tally, but I fought on. Then my head and shoulders reached high enough so that I could at last see.

Tam lay farthest from the wall down which we had been lowered. Her eyes were closed, and a wild lock of new-cropped hair had been glued to her forehead and right cheek by blood. Still farther from me, Cilla lay flat with her head free of wrapping.

"This-" Her lips moved now, to loose a voice that was thin and strained. "This-is-the-Dismals." She paused between each word, as though she brought the sentence forth with immense effort.

Dismals-what did she mean? The dark state of spirit to which we had been reduced?

Suddenly my memory sharpened. Those reports we had researched while alone at Grosper had mentioned a country-within-a-country in which the creatures were so terrifying that it might be the place to which all the horrors that populated men's nightmares retreated during the day. But surely that was a legend, like some imaginary monster a nurse might use to frighten an ill-behaved child: "Do such-and-so, and you will go to the Dismals."

A land that lay below the surface of the world known to man, an enclave only able to be entered by ropes, though no one in his-or her-proper senses would choose to do so. Cradled by the Yakin Mountains, the Dismals was rumored to have been delved by the Servants of the Dark, the monster-kin. No man knew its extent because no would-be explorer had ever returned.

Tam sighed, and her eyes opened. She shifted her head toward Cilla.

"What's to be done?" Her voice was hardly above a whisper.

Before either of us could answer her, a rattle of pebbles cascaded down behind me. Both Tam and Cilla looked at once to me-or what was happening at my back. I feared that, if I tried to turn and see for myself, I might lose what small advantage I had gained through my efforts.

Nonetheless, I swung my head around as far as I could, just in time to catch sight of a flow of red fur that poured itself toward us like living fire. Its owner advanced as far as my feet, then sat up, as might a cat, on its haunches. But this creature was no cat, nor was it like to any other beast I had ever seen, even among the varieties in the queen's animal-park, which was one of the great sights of the capital.

However, I still thought cat cat when I looked at the head, save the ears were not pointed but rounded. And certainly this was larger by far than any sharer-of-the-house among our people. The form possessed longer lines than seemed natural, but the tail was the most striking feature, being fully the length of the beast's body. when I looked at the head, save the ears were not pointed but rounded. And certainly this was larger by far than any sharer-of-the-house among our people. The form possessed longer lines than seemed natural, but the tail was the most striking feature, being fully the length of the beast's body.

It opened its jaws wide now, and the teeth exposed were all pointed as if for tearing. This display concluded, it swiped its whiskers with a forepaw, arose, and trotted leisurely toward Tam.

"No!" I screamed, hopeless, helpless to protect her. The cat-thing was plainly carnivorous and was antic.i.p.ating my sister as a meal it would not have to stalk.

Cilla's shriek joined mine. Tam was staring, with a certain fatality, straight at the beast. The fanged head lowered toward hers; then an elongated tongue swept out to wash my sister's face. The taste of fresh blood must surely arouse it to kill- Cilla was struggling to heave herself up, but her frantic efforts only rolled her back and forth. I worked my own shoulders higher on my support. Suddenly I felt a loosing of one of the ropes about my breast. I channeled all my strength into forcing my arms away from my body, but no feeling answered in them. Being so bound for so long might have leached all life from my muscles, leaving them powerless.

The red-furred monster had finished its predinner dainty from Tam's face. I caught the edge of what she was trying in a final attempt at defense. She was striving to use Send-not to us, but to the animal crouching beside her. Was that possible?

I stopped my physical exertions and aimed my spirit-energy to feed hers. We had done this once or twice, experimented with projecting Power, but never for any reason. We had had that purpose now! that purpose now!

At first, no joining occurred. For a moment, I feared that I might even have weakened Tam's Talent by my interference. But, even as I tried to feed Tam's strength, so I was fed-by Cilla! We were well linked; I had anch.o.r.ed true with Cilla's Send, and the two of us touched and held with Tam. So firmly were we bound that, when a wave of another type of Power unexpectedly washed over us, we three felt the alien surge of force as one. Then, like a stream of water, pure and heady as if leaping from a spring in the high mountains, the alien Talent flowed into ours fully!

My earlier struggles had given me a chance to see Tam more clearly. The animal had settled back on its haunches again, seeming to study our sister closely. It appeared that what we had striven to do had been pointless, for the beast was making no movement to withdraw.

That fearsomely fanged head lowered again. This time, though, it did not aim at Tam's face, but rather at her breast. I saw it lunge forward and waited, shivering, for the first of my sister's screams. My Send quivered and nearly broke; then the new Power caught it up, melded once more with ours, and held. My terror began to drain away. Was the force I had summoned-all I could raise-feeding now upon that fear?

The animal's head came up with an effort. Between its jaws dangled a strip of cloth; perhaps it preferred its prey with flesh bared for easier fanging.

Where I leaned among the rocks, I rubbed my shoulders back and forth, though I dared not concentrate too much upon such efforts, lest my part of the mind-thread snap. There seemed no danger of that, however-indeed, it felt to me stronger than I had ever known it to be. None of us had such Talent as this, even though our Gifts had been enlarged by years of practice. Who-or what-had enhanced the force we could wield, we had no way of telling.

Tam and Cilla had always claimed that I was one who mistrusted new things and always sought for an explanation of how they worked. Only my Talent for healing had I accepted without demanding proof of this and that. In this hour, however, I knew I dared not question but must simply lend all strength I could to keep our mind-link intact.

The animal continued to tear at Tam's bindings. My own were loosening also, but far from swiftly enough. Now hanging from the beast's jaws was a frayed ribbon of white; the blanket having been pierced, what the creature now mouthed was a portion of her bed robe.