Free Magic in Ithkar by Andre Norton, Robert Adams (ed.) Page B

about with curiosity and a regrettable smugness.
    She saw a few high ladies with long silk dresses trimmed with fur, jeweled headdresses, and gauzy veils that obscured very little of what they covered. But most pilgrims wore coarse somber robes with only a worn bit of rope as a girdle. Many of them had an exhausted, emaciated look, as if they’d walked barefoot across half the world to get here. Some were simply slogging forward, saving the dregs of their energy to get them to their goal; others had a glowing exaltation and were chanting, the various chants so mixed Jezeri couldn’t make out the words. She rubbed absently at the back of her neck, stiffened as she realized what she was doing.
    Her shadow was back. Calm now. Unhurried. Sure of her. She could feel him so strongly it was like a club whammed against her head. Mama, oh, Mama, why didn’t I do what you told me? She shook herself calmer and and began to wriggle between clumps of pilgrims, trying to put more space between her and her shadow, looking anxiously about for a fair-ward. All back haunting the drinkshops, she thought bitterly. Tanu had gone silent, scrunched low in the pocket, his small black hands gripping the cloth of her tunic so tightly she could feel the ache in her own hands. She pushed harder against the bodies blocking her way, ignoring muttered irritation and scolds, brushing off hands that caught at her. If she could get to the temple, if she could just get there ... He wouldn’t dare try anything under the eyes of the priests. . . . Old ’Un warned her against going near them, but he hadn’t known—
    A thread of music, soft, tiny, like the singing of the wind. It began weaving in and out of the scattered chanting. A nothing. A bit of wind. But her feet stopped moving. A woman behind her bumped into her, hissed disapproval at her, and waddled around her. She struggled. Her legs were frozen. The music built a wall between her and the priests ahead.
    She broke a foot free. She couldn’t go forward, but she could edge herself sideways. She began stumbling across the lines of pilgrims, relieved that she could move. That relief went quickly as she realized she was being herded. Again herded. She opened her mouth to scream, to bring the fair-wards or the priests to her if she couldn’t go to them.
    The music added a harsh trill and her throat closed up.
    As she knocked into people, flailed her arms, tried to close numb hands on robes, arms, whatever she touched slipping away from her, she saw people drawing away from her, faces shocked, disapproving, dismayed, fearful. They thought she was a twitcher throwing a fit. She understood that after a while, tried to plead for help with her eyes, her groping hands, but they all were deaf to these.
    She staggered sideways until she was off the Pilgrim Way and back under the trees of the temple gardens, tearing through bushes, stumbling through wind-whipped shadow.
    When the music began forcing her toward the water, her surge of panic wore off and she felt Tanu’s fearful grip on her tunic loosen. The piper was somewhere behind her, but he was as silent as one of those shadows. Though she could hear the squeak of the grass under her boot soles, the creak and rasp of the dirt, she couldn’t hear him at all. He’s a hunter, yes, he has to be, she thought. She won a step closer to the palings, grinned fiercely into the darkness, and began pushing against the lock the music had on her body, working her way closer and closer to the pales. The fair sounds and the flicker of its lights teased at her. She tried a sudden jerk for freedom, but he reeled her back. A darkness ahead. The old warehouse. She tried to ease her head around so she could see him, but her neck muscles were as stiff as frozen ropes. She set herself to wait while she slogged along as slowly as she could. She was no tame prey like some of her female cousins, helpless and scary and as easy to do down as a woolie’s calf. As she touched the