Free Wizards’ Worlds by Andre Norton Page B

witness her triumph. Her triumph? Hertha crouched
     against the rock watching that weird battle—sword point swinging with such painful
     slowness, but ever just reaching the right point in time so that the blue hand did
     not close. The man was moving so slowly, why could the Toads not beat him by a swift
     dart past his guard? Unless their formation of the hand, their use of it was as great
     an effort for them as his defense seemed to be for him.
    “The sword!” That demand in her mind hurt.
    Hertha did not stir. “I cannot!” Did she cry that aloud, whisper it, or only think
     it? She was not sure. Nor why she could not carry through to the end that which had
     brought her here—that she did not understand either.
    Dark—and her hands were bound. There were men struggling. One went down with an arrow
     through him. Then cries of triumph. Someone came to her through shadows. She could
     see only mail—a sword—
    Then she was pinned down by a heavy hand. She heard laughter, evil laughter which
     scorched her, though her bodyshivered as the last of her clothing was ripped away. Once more—
    No! She would not remember it all! She would not! They could not make her—but they
     did. Then she was back in the here and now. And she saw Trystan fighting his stumbling,
     hopeless battle, knew him again for what he was.
    “The sword—take from him the sword!”
    Hertha lurched to her feet. The sword—she must get the sword. Then he, too, would
     learn what it meant to be helpless and shamed and—and what? Dead? Did the Toads intend
     to kill him?
    “Will you kill him?” she asked them. She had never foreseen the reckoning to be like
     this.
    “The sword!”
    They did not answer, merely spurred her to their will. Death? No, she was certain
     they did not mean his death, at least not death such as her kind knew it. And—but—
    “The sword!”
    In her mind that order was a painful lash, meant to send her unthinking to their service.
     But it acted otherwise, alerting her to a new sense of peril. She had evoked that
     which had no common meeting with her kind. Now she realized she had loosed that which
     not even the most powerful man or woman she knew might meddle with. Trystan could
     deserve the worst she was able to pull upon him. But that must be the worst by men’s
     standards—not this!
    Her left hand went to the bag of Gunnora’s herbs where it rested between her swelling
     breasts. Her right groped on the ground, closed about a stone. Since she touched the
     herb bag that voice was no longer a pain in her head. It faded like a far-off calling.
     She readied the stone—
    Trystan watched that swinging hand. His sword arm ached up into his shoulder. He was
     sure every moment he would lose control. Hertha bent, tore at the lacing of her bodice
     so that the herb bag swung free. Fiercely she rubbedit back and forth on the stone. What so pitiful an effort might do—
    She threw it through the murky air, struck against that blue hand. It changed direction,
     made a dart past Trystan. Knowing that this might be his one chance, Trystan brought
     down the sword with all the force he could muster on the tentacle which supported
     the hand.
    The blade passed through as if what he saw had no substance, had been woven of his
     own fears. There was a burst of pallid light. Then the lumpish hand and that which
     supported it were gone.
    In the same moment he discovered he could move, and staggered back. And a hand fell
     upon his arm, jerking him in the same direction. He flailed out wildly at what could
     only be an enemy’s hold, broke it. There was a cry and he turned his head.
    A dark huddle lay at the foot of the stone door frame. Trystan advanced the sword
     point, ready, as strength flowed once more into him, to meet this new attack. The
     bundle moved a white hand clutched at the pillar, pulled.
    His bemused mind cleared. This was a woman! Not only that, but what had passed him
     through the air had not been