Authors: Andre Norton
I opened my eyes. There was no curtain of golden light enclosing me. Instead sunlight wrapped me round, so warmly that my mail shirt was an overheated burden, and my skin stung from a beginning burn. I sat up.
This was not the full light of day, through some opening overhead, that bathed me in heat. I did not still lie in the round of the circular chamber—I was in the open again!
Did I dream? I pinched my own flesh sharply between thumb and forefinger to test that—achieving
so pain
but
no change
in what I saw, No rock walls here, rather tufts of coarse-bladed grass and bushes. Not too far away a flock of birds weighed branches—as they pecked eagerly at a bountiful harvest of scarlet berries—so the whole growth, down to its roots, trembled and swung under their assault.
Very slowly, still afraid that I might break this spell—which was
certainly good
instead of ill—I
turned my
head. No, this was not deserted country. There were walls, or the remains of such. They stood at a little distance and it was plain they had been tumbled by time, their stone much overgrown with moss. One squat tower was actually topped by a small tree, which had rooted itself there to take the place of a keep lord's banner.
How had I come here?
Just at that
moment I did
not care. What drew me was the
harvest of berries. I knew their like. Had I not gathered such many times over—the excess being reduced to a thick jam for winter use? They had never looked so plump, so abundant in the Dales though. Now their sweet, yet slightly tart taste promised delight to my hot, dry mouth. I started for the bushes on my hands and knees, not sure I had strength enough to get to my feet.
The birds wheeled up and away, scolding angrily, as I began to raid their feeding place. I culled handfuls from the branches, crammed them into my mouth, their juice relieving my thirst, their substance my hunger. I ate without thought for anything else, without prudence. If this
were
a dream after all, it was the first one in which I had ever feasted with such satisfaction and delight.
After the first edge was off my thirst and hunger, I allowed myself time to survey my surroundings more closely. The bushes I attacked (I was raking berries from the third bush by this time) had been planted in order, in spite of their now sprawling growth, at what had once been equal distance from one another—a fact still visible.
Beyond stood several similar rows of trees. The closer I knew also as a fruit bearer, though what it now bore was just beginning to grow pink. This was another native of the Dales, which any keep-dweller, finding on his land, guarded and cherished.
So I was in what had manifestly once been a garden. Now I looked to the walls, the three-crowned tower—all were certainly part of a keep. Wonderingly (having eaten what was, for that moment, my fill), I pulled myself up, still caught by the puzzle of how I had come here.
When I had opened my eyes, I had been lying—right there!
There
was a slab of stone much moss-grown. As I made my way back to it I saw that some of the green cover had been scraped away, was now in ragged tatters. It looked as if, when I had landed—or somehow arrived there—I had done so with violence. Now I knelt and tore loose more of the moss. Deep-carved right under where my head had rested was the symbol of the ball with the outstretched wings.
Sitting back on my heels, I tried to think logically. I had fallen asleep, or been rendered unconscious, in the deep earth chamber, curled in the midst of a three dimensional representation of what was carved here. Later . . . how much later?
I looked up at the sky. By the sun's westering position, the time must not be too far from late afternoon. Of the same day? Another? Or a still longer period? There was no way of my knowing.
The fact remained that some agency had transferred me from the cavern into the open, saving my life in the process. I could not be sure whether that act had been deliberate on the part of an unknown intelligence, greater and more far-seeing than my own, or whether I had merely stumbled on a process that would have worked for anyone fortunate enough to follow the conditions set by an ancient spell.
I was inclined toward the latter theory, perhaps because that was the more comforting. To believe that I was under observation, being moved at the will of some Old One, was enough to raise my neck hair and bring shivers in spite of the drowsy heat.
Very well—and for now it did not matter how—I was out of the cave chamber. Only where might I be in relation to the place that had turned into an earth whirlpool? How far was I from my late companions? I was certain I had not been somehow wafted out of the Waste itself, and I was weaponless, alone, with no horse or provisions, in country I did not know, without a guide. A series of facts that were enough to make anyone quail. I had only my own wits to depend upon. Night was on its inevitable way and I had no wish to be caught in the open by any such things as might run these ridges or crawl across the land.
The answer to a quest for shelter was, of course, the ruins. Perhaps beyond those broken walls I could find a hiding hole, a shelter until morning.
The wall nearest me had fallen in convenient gaps so I did not have to seek any gateway. Through one of the gaps I entered into a paved courtyard. Empty window spaces and three doorways (one fringed by the rotting remains of a wooden door) broke the inner walls. Darkish holes those were, from which I could be spied upon, though unable myself to sight any lurker. The place was alive with birds, and I remembered Elys's dissatisfaction with the wood because it had appeared to harbor no winged inhabitants.
Perhaps the berry feast enticed them. .Still, where the ivy grew on the wall of what might have once been the great hall of whatever lord ruled there, there was a constant fluttering among its vines, which suggested nests concealed there in goodly numbers.
I did not hear any pad of foot, any rustle of the drifts of last season's leaves that lay across the pavement, but, as I turned slowly, inspecting all I could see of the ruins, I found myself indeed under observation.
By the rotted door sat a cat—not such an animal as was esteemed in the Dales because of the slaughter it caused among rats and mice that feasted on stored grain. No, this was half again as large as one of those sleek-sided, striped tabbies. Also its fur was uniformly a yellow-brown and, between its eyes, boldly marked by a much darker growth of fur, was a V. Another such brand grew on the upper part of its lighter breast fur.
About an arm's distance from the first was a second of the same breed, slightly smaller, a little more lithe of body, but of the like uniform color of coat and markings. The birds appeared to pay no attention to these who might well be termed natural enemies, rather wheeled back and forth overhead, intent upon their own comings and goings.
The cats were not alone. Before a second door squatted a small bear, sitting up upon its haunches and rocking a little to and fro. Catching sight of that red brown form I stiffened. My hand reached by instinct for a weapon I no longer carried.
This was a very small specimen of bear, to be sure. But if it were a cub and its mother was nearby—then I could have walked into a trap even more cruel than the earth one I had managed to escape. I knew only too well hunters’ tales. Among the worst menaces to be found in the Dales were female bears who thought, or suspected, that their offspring might be endangered.
While both the cats surveyed me with that unwinking stare that their whole species turns upon my kind upon occasion—emphasizing the gulf between us (one I have always been certain they believe was set for
their
purposes)—the bear paid me only fleeting attention. It snapped at a fly. then set to scratching vigorously with one long clawed paw at its own rounded paunch. I found that somewhat disarming and dared to expel the breath I had been holding, without knowing it, ever since I had caught sight of the creature.
I had been far too cautious to try to move—now I dared edge backward toward the gap that had given me entry into this too-well-occupied courtyard. Clearly, as an intruder, I was better away. And I hoped with all my heart that I would be allowed my retreat.
“A female—very young—and very stupid . . .”
I stopped short to stare. No one had
said
that! Only the cries and twitterings of the birds could be heard. No one had
spoken
. Then—how had I heard, and who had dismissed me so summarily? For I was certain that those words had concerned me. I fumbled with the buckle of my belt, ready once again to use it weapon wise as I had against the creatures in the dark. Only—who was the enemy here?
“To be young is a state through which all pass. And this one is not truly stupid—I think—only untaught. Which is another matter altogether.
I turned a gasp into a gulp. My hair had worked loose of its braiding since I no longer had a helm to hold it in place. I reached up with my left hand to brush away a straying lock that I might keep close attention upon those three—two cats, large, a bear, undersized. There was. I would take heart oath on that, no other life here—save the birds. And those I discounted at once.
The smaller of the cats arose leisurely and approached me. I stood my ground, even dropping my hand from the belt buckle. It advanced until it was just beyond reaching distance from me. settled again into the same dignified stance as its companion held, tail tip curled decorously over the front paws. Those unblinking yellow eyes were lifted to mine, caught—and held—my gaze. Now I knew!
“Who—what are you?” I had to moisten my lips with my tongue and use effort to ask that question. My voice echoed back from the open eyes of the windows and sounded far too small and tremulous in my own ears.
There was no answer. Still I was sure I had not been mistaken. The speaker had been this animal—or the larger one behind it. One had commented disparagingly upon me, the other had replied with more tolerance. And I had caught that speech in—my mind!
Kerovan
I
WAS BUSIED WITH MY THOUGHTS, MAKING MY DECISION AS JERVON
and I worked together without words, hobbling the horses after they drank, leaving them to graze through the night. When the moon arose I stood watching it, remembering the silver of the cup—a cup that could have been carved from that pure disk. Tonight the stars also seemed unusually bright, gems flashing in the cloudless sky.
Beyond the valley of the stream the land lay open, save for dark clumps of trees or brush here and there. I was used to the Dales with their protecting ridges. Now, having on impulse climbed to the edge of the river cut, I stood watching shadows grow darker until each and every one of those growths appeared lapped in a pool of dark. The sky was alight, fresh and open—but this land was secret, it held no easy road for such as us.
A rising night wind blew against me. I had taken off my helm so that the wind tugged at my hair, dried the sweat that had gathered under the band of my headgear, cooled me—perhaps too much. Silver and black was all this land—silver above, black below. It was that darker part that held us.
Inside me something awoke, stirred as if from a long sleep, then was gone before I could seize upon it. Memory? No. I had ranged the Waste twice before, yes. But never in this direction. It was not possible for me to recognize the land before me. Yet . . .
I shook my head firmly against such fancies. What I needed was clear-cut purpose, a centering in on what was the most important thing in the world—to find Joisan. Though how . . . Reluctantly I returned to our fireless camp where the others had settled. I came to stand before the two of them.
“She must be found,” I
said
bleakly. “Since my own horses are gone, I shall of a necessity take hers.”
“We ride with the morning,” Jervon answered me as one who stated the obvious.
“Go with safety. Bear with you my heart thanks that you have served my lady.”
“You do not understand.” Elys's voice came through the night that veiled her face. “We ride
with
you.”
For a moment I tensed, so filled was I with the guilt I had drawn about me like a cloak. Since it was because of me Joisan had come here at her great peril, what pan of any rescue venture belonged to these two? I was willing only to welcome anger—and to turn it against others since I burned with it myself.
Then the Wisewoman added: “Her way was our way—of free choice. We are not about to turn from it, now that it has brought this upon her. If you choose not to ride in our company, that is for you to decide. Still we shall go.”
How had Joisan so tied these two to her? Or—suspicion crawled where anger had opened a way—were they indeed Imgry's eyes ready to turn me from my road when they had the chance? Well enough. I could watch and wait, be all fair words and thanks, and still keep my own path. Unless . . .
This Elys had the Power, and through that might be a way to my lady. I could not disdain any chance, however small, of a guide.
“You speak,” I said, “as if you have a road in mind. But how can that be?” Something of eagerness broke the right cover I tried to force on my feelings. Had I been jealous in part because these two had been my lady's friends when I had left her without any outward show of feeling? I clenched my hands at my sides until my nails cut into the softer flesh of my palms.
“I know nothing of Thas—save they are of the earth. But . .
I remembered! By the Warmth of the Flame and the Flash of Gonder's Spell Sword, in that moment I remembered!
“The mountains! The Werelord said their dens were known to be among the mountains!” I swung about, but even the brightness of the moon could not show me now these distant ridges against the far sky.
“The mountains it is then,” Jervon said, much as one speaks of riding to a market to price wool, though I was sure he was not as pragmatic as he sounded.
This was a time when I could not, for Joisan's sake, push aside any suggestion of aid. I must accept what was offered and be grateful—honestly grateful—that it was given.
I had thought that I could not sleep, that I must lie and remember too much—and fear far more. However, sometimes the body defeats the mind and brings it under domination. I found that my eyelids grew heavy and . . .
No—I did not dream. Or if I did . . . But I did not! It was no dream—nor was it any sorcery summoned up by Elys in some mistaken hope perhaps of lightening my inner burden. I was sitting up, my hands half raised to my head. There was the moon and the stars, and around me the dark. I could hear the rasping sound made by a grazing horse not too far away.
“Joisan!” I scrambled up, blundered forward a step or two—my hands outstretched to grasp something—someone—who was not there. “Joisan . . .”
She had been there, or here—or , . .
I rubbed my forehead dazedly. Out of the dark I heard movement, whirled about. “Joisan!”
“No.”
A single word of denial. One that I was hot to dispute.
“I—I saw her.” I stammered. “She was here, I tell you!”
“He is ensorcelled?” It was Jervon's deep voice in the night. Then came an answer from the Wisewoman.
“He could not be—not with such a safeguard as he wears.”
There was a glitter of ice blue, the band on my wrist. Of course it had not been sorcery! I had seen Joisan—she had stood with bared head, her hair clotted with earth, smears of it across her face. There had been wonder in her eyes and between us—the gryphon! I had seen her.
I must have repeated that, for Elys replied to words I did not remember uttering.
“A true sending. It was surely a true sending,”
A sending! I shook my head, tried to believe that my sight of her had been more than a willed vision. But once more logic awakened in me. I dropped down on the ground, clasped my head between my hands—then changed and held the wrist with its band flat against my forehead. I closed my eyes and tried with all the force I could summon, all the will I knew, to reach out—to touch—to see . . . Only there was no answer—nothing but the moon above and the black land below.
A hand rested on my shoulder. I strove to shake it off but the clasp clung.
“Let be!” Elys spoke with authority. “This is no land in which to open any gates. Let be—I do not think you are an utter fool!”
Did I indeed feel in that moment, even as she spoke, that something—a faint trace—a sensation that my frantic searching had touched what should not be disturbed except by fools? I could not tell—though I shivered as I might have had a breath of winter wind swept across the gully and wrapped itself about my shoulders in a lash-cut. I dropped my hand, stared hard-eyed into the dark, knowing that my chance was gone and I would have no value to Joisan should I now—as Elys had pointed out—play the fool.
Perhaps I had never before been driven so . . . unless it was when I had trailed Rogear into the Waste. The ferment within me urged me on and on during the next two days. Had I traveled alone I might neither have eaten nor slept—until I fell from the saddle of a horse ridden near to death. Still it seemed that the heights toward which we headed never drew any closer. My worst fear rode with me, that suspicion that perhaps we had chosen wrongly, that we were not heading toward my lady, but away.
Was it that constant nag of fear that brought back the dreams? I never returned in sleep to that place where the gryphon-man lay. Mostly I was in the company of those whose faces I could not clearly see, whose murmuring voices I did not understand, yet in me strained the need to both see and hear. From such dreams I awoke as weak in body as if I had run for a day, sweat heavy and sticky on my body.
I did not tell my companions of these dreams. In fact I spoke very little. Still striving to free my mind from a prison of dark thoughts, I made myself watch both of them. I asked no questions concerning their past, though such questions began to crowd my mind.
Elys was a Wisewoman, more than that—for she wore the mail of a warrior with practiced ease and I saw that a sword was as familiar to her as it was to anyone who was trained in such usage for many years. Thus she was a strange puzzle—for Wisewomen and weapons have never consorted together from all I had ever heard.
By her appearance she was not of Dalesblood; perhaps her talent therefore was the stronger. Yet her tie with Jervon was very close and easy, acceptable to both. Jervon, though he was plainly of keep-kin, had no visible taint of the Old Ones—and I did not believe he was one who bore my own curse. Together they traveled without many words between them, but I was more and more aware that theirs was so strong a bond that at times it seemed as if one could read the mind of the other.
It was Jervon who interested me the most. All Dalespeople accepted Wisewomen—after a fashion. Those are born of our own blood with a talent they enlarge by learning. A girl with such a gift apprenticed herself early to one well practiced in herb lore, in minor Power control. She was thus set apart from childhood, knowing thereafter no kin-tie, even among those of her birth family, making no marriage, rearing no child, unless she in turn took an apprentice. Her knowledge was her whole life.
A Wisewoman's arts are of healing and peace. None goes armed, none speaks of battle as Elys had made mention of skirmishes and alerts, inquiring of me how went Imgry's training of the new forces. She was two things—each opposed to the other. How could this be?
Also, how could Jervon, who lacked any pretense of talent, accept her so wholly, feeling none of the aversion that was bred into all Dalesmen—that wariness, the latent fear of the unknown raised by the constant awareness that we dwelt in a land which was not truly our own?
This alliance of theirs—my thoughts returned ever to the strangeness of it—was by Dale standards unexplainable. Jervon was neither servant nor guard, that I had learned early during this endless ride west. They were equals in spite of their differences. Could one take two such opposing people—as one would take two different metals—and forge from their uniting a third stronger, more powerful than either alone?
Jervon accepted Elys for what she was. Could anyone so accept—
me
, in the same fashion?
They both spoke of Joisan, not as if they wished to add to my burden, but naturally, as if she had been brought into that shared companionship of theirs. There came a time (did my face so reveal my inner struggles) that Elys broke the silence in which I rode with an abrupt comment.
“She wished for more.”
Anger touched me, and then bewilderment. More of what? Lands? Heritage? For both of us those had been swept away by the fortunes of the war. I had given her her full freedom—I held her by no promise. What then was “more"?
If this clear-eyed warrior woman could indeed reach into the turmoil of my thoughts, did she not realize that I knew Joisan was something apart, precious—something I could not bind to me. Being what I was I would ask nothing. Not all were as accepting as she—as Jervon . . .
“Men fear that which has no substance, better they should look with clear eyes, open minds,” Elys continued. “Joisan told me of your heritage, that you deemed it a dire thing you cannot escape. But have you not already faced it in part—faced and defeated it?”
“I did not defeat it, Lady,” I flared up in answer. “What I wrought was against enemies—enemies who had taken my lady to bend to their will. Nor did I alone do that thing. There was another Power that took a hand—which used me as one uses a sword. Am I then to be commended? Because I am what I am, I was only a doorway . . .”
Memory moved. Who—what—had I been at that moment when a Power that certainly I had not summoned had turned against Rogear and my mother? I had not been Kerovan then, but another—another who was greater, stronger, whole in spirit— everything I was not, as I knew when he had withdrawn, and had never been nor could hope to be.
“Be not so swift to deny,” she countered. “There are often skills that lie sleeping within one until destiny—and need—awakens and draws them forth. You think meanly of yourself and"—there was a note in her tone that brought a flush to my cheek, a hot retort to my lips though I did not so interrupt her—"perhaps you find that to so think is a protection, a ward against doing what you were born to do. One cannot stand in the end against one's fate.”
To that I made no answer seeing that if I spoke now what I deemed to be the truth she might only say again that I hid behind an excuse, as she had just accused me of doing. Nor did I find that I liked either of these two the more (for I brooded upon my conviction that they found in me perhaps not the monster the Dales would name me, but someone so poor-spirited that I was not of the breed to have honestly earned Joisan's regard). Perhaps I should have been glad of that verdict, seeing that it would afford me an added excuse to hold aloof—when and if my lady was safely found. Only, contrarily, its affect upon me now was to arouse a determination to prove that I was not less than Jervon in my ability to accept. Though the acceptance would never be mine—it was Joisan's.
On the second day the country began to change—even as desert had given way earlier to grassland—though the hills still seemed farther away. While we did not see again any such silent and thick wood as the Wereriders’ sanctuary, there were more trees. Also, we forded one good-sized river, making our way across on the remains of a stone bridge, enough of which still stood above water to give us dry footing.
Hereabouts were signs that this land had once been under cultivation, perhaps very fertile. There were fallow fields walled with stones set skillfully in place, and twice we sighted towers standing as watch points. We made no attempt to explore these, for their surroundings suggested that they had been long abandoned, and there was a fever burning, in me at least, to keep pushing on.
In midafternoon of the second day we came near a third such tower, only this was surrounded by a clump of dark trees (most of which were unseasonably bare of leaf, but with branches so matted and entwined as to form another kind of defense). The baud on my wrist warmed. I pulled back my mail sleeve to see it emitting blue sparks, visible even in the sunlight. Elys reined up, watched that tower as one looked upon a defended enemy position. She had caught her lower lip between her teeth and a frown of concentration drew her brows closer together.