Gryphon in Glory

13 Joisan

I squeezed closer to the opening in the window, leaned as far forward as I could to view the ribbon of white road that ran along the lowlands. From my vantage point, which was, of course, well removed, that highway appeared untouched by time. I expected to see riders—travelers along it. Save that, for the stretch I was able to view, it was bare of any traffic at all. Still the road itself was, in a manner, reassuring. If—or when—surely, it was when—I decided to leave this refuge and take up my journey again (though I had no idea in which direction I would go) that would be a guide.

Now I strove to study the slope descending to the plain across which that road so boldly ran. There were a number of upstanding outcrops of stone, which I believed marked other ruins, even more decayed by the action of time than that in which I stood. I wondered if this had been a fortress of greater extent than it first appeared. The narrow windows on this outer wall suggested that those who had built it might have had reason to fear some attack from the north. However, for me now, the road was more important than piles of old stone blocks.

I made the rounds of the three other sides of the tower, attempting to view more of the keep itself and its surroundings here on the upper ridge. On the courtyard side the vines had grown too thickly for me to break any peephole through. My attempts to do so brought shrill cries from the birds, a wild thrashing in the vines, so I left off such assault. To the east there was merely another drop—though this lay farther away. What lay below there showed a yellow patch, reminding me of the desert through which we had made our way into the Waste. To the west lay the long ridge, widening well out from the point on which the keep had been built. There were the remains of walled Fields, more shells of buildings, a portion of the orchard.

Sight of that brought back both hunger and thirst. I abandoned my exploration to seek out food and water. This morning, tracing the water from the spring for a short distance I came upon a stone walled pool. There I dared to slide out of mail and clothing, dipped myself, rubbing my body down with handfuls of grass to scrub me clean, then undertook to wash my hair which was still soil-clotted. Leaving it to hang free across my shoulders and wind-dry, I did such brushing and cleansing of my clothing as I could. The sun was caressingly warm on my bare body and I found myself humming, even as our keep maids had sung when they washed the linens along the water troughs.

I had drunk deeply. Now, pulling on, though I disliked their fustiness against my clean body, my breeches and jerkin, I tried to rebraid my hair, making sorry business of taming the still-damp strands. Even the bronze clip, which held the coils in place under my helm, was gone, and I tied it up as best I could with twisted bits of long, tough grass.

Then, my mail shirt slung in folds across my shoulder, I went hunting once more for the berry bushes. Only this time I had another find to chew on. There was a kind of water plant, the roots of which were crisp and sweet when washed clean. As I crunched away at those, I remembered—though it was dim—a part of a far different life, when such had been served in the summer at our high table in Ithdale. My aunt had also had a skillful hand in the making of sweets, and she had devised on her own a recipe for preserving these thin stalks, cut small, in a honey mixture for winter eating.

I looked down now at my berry-stained hands, at the mail, which lay in a coil of brilliant folds under the sun. Ithdale was so long ago, so far away, that my life there was more like the tale of a songsmith, nothing that had really happened to the Joisan who was here and now. Shrugging on the weight of mail, I went exploring farther into the orchard-garden. But I found no ripe tree fruit. There was a tangle of melon vines into which I dived eagerly and came up with two which were golden ready, small for lack of skillful cultivation—yet still to be prized. With those in hand I started back to the courtyard, which I now looked upon as my campsite.

There were furred things in the grass, which leaped or ran ahead of my passing, but I had no knife nor dart gun with which to hunt. In an odd way I could not bring myself to think of killing here—even for food. This must be a rich hunting ground for the cats—perhaps also for the bear—some of his kin were noted as relishing flesh as well as berries and such.

Juggling the melons I climbed over fallen stones and so entered the courtyard once more, planning to use the sharp edge of my belt buckle as a tool to slit the fruit. They might furnish both food and drink. The sun now beat so hot that my mail was a steadily irksome burden.

I had become so used to the loneliness of the keep since my awakening that I gave a start when I saw that both cats had returned, were lying lazily at their ease in the beam of a sun ray. The female licked at her paws, her eyes slitted against the light. Even as I came closer her mate rolled over, his paws in the air, wriggling his body back and forth against the warm stone as if he were relieving just such an itching as my own leather jerkin brought in a portion of my back that I could not reach.

Seeing them thus taking their ease I paused, feeling very much the intruder—an uninvited guest. The female blinked at me, took no other notice, but continued to curl her tongue about a paw. However, the male sat up and shook himself vigorously.

I stood there, melons in my hand, facing them both uncertainly. Surely this was the strangest confrontation that could occur even in this land. Then I rallied and found myself voicing the guest greeting of my own people. These were not animals—but much more . . .

“For the welcome of the gate”—I found myself speaking aloud, and my gratitude did actually stir—“my thanks. For the feasting on the board”—(though that was my own gleaning and whether the cats could be thought to have ownership over the garden was a point to be questioned, though I certainly would not do so)—“my pleasure and my good wishes. To the Lord of this roof, fair fortune.”

“Lord of this roof?” The repetition of my own words sprang into answer within my head. If such a manner of communication could express amusement that was what was plain to me now. “A pretty speech, woman of the Dales. So that is how you speak among your kind. Now let me but think a little . . . ah, yes. ‘To the Farer on far roads the welcome of this roof, and may fortune favor your wandering.”

That was one version of the Dale welcome for a guest unknown personally to any lord. That this cat would quote the exact formal words was again startling. How did an inhabitant of the Waste learn our polite courtesy? However, the cat was continuing.

“You did well to listen to us—and remain here.” Now the light note had vanished from the mind-speech. Nor was I entirely surprised at the rest of what he said now.

“There has been a new stirring—”

When he added nothing to that, I moved forward to settle crosslegged on the heap of wilting grass that had been my bed (after all, he had given the guest greeting). Placing the melons on the stone before me (food was not my main interest now), I had a question ready.

“What manner of stirring? The Thas?” Since that or those had been the one menace I had met so far, my mind turned immediately in that direction. For a moment the fear that had been part of the dark and the stench awoke in me. My imagination painted a picture of tumbling walls (even such as these which had so long withstood the hammering of time), the ancient keep caught in a churning of the earth, all of it and us, too, sucked under.

“Perhaps Thas, among others.” The cat did not shrug as might a man, but some inflection of his reply signaled such a gesture. “No, not as you think now—here. Old as are the protection spells laid on Carfallin they still hold, and shall for perhaps many seasons yet. However, last night had its riders, its searchers, its seekers. Things are awake, watching, to prowl and sniff and hunt. Though as yet they are not sure of what they seek or how the hunt will begin.”

“You believe that my coming has done this? But if the Thas had already burrowed their underground ways into the land—that was surely done well before my arrival,” I protested. I deemed it certainly unfair to lay upon me the rousing up of Dark Forces, when I had not called on any Power except to save my own life. Nor had I used it, save only in the battle in the darkness, against any inhabitant of the Waste.

The Thas had fled the light, yes but I did not think that they had suffered any real hurt from its beams. No—I refused to have such burden as this laid upon me.

However, even as a man might do, this time the cat shook his sleek head from side to side.

“Even with that”—a lift of his muzzle indicated the gryphon lying on my breast—“some stir now which could not be called into action by such a talisman alone. Forces are on the move, we do not know why—as yet. It is only that all that move are of the Dark. Long ago boundaries were set, locks were made, spells were cast. Within stated ways Light and Dark could come and I go, always apart. Now there is a straining of those containing spells, a touch here, a thrust there—a testing to see if they still hold. The reason for this . . . who can tell?”

“The Dales have been invaded.” I seized upon that one fact—though why the inhabitants of the Waste should take that into account I did not understand. There was no doubt that they had defenses that no such invaders could pierce. They need only call upon perhaps the least of these, then return safely thereafter to their old ways of life. “I know nothing of how the war there goes now, save that the fighting so far has not favored my people. The Hounds of Alizon range far, they have more men, better weapons. Could this war now have lapped into your country?”

The female curled a scornful lip. “Men only—they hold or call no Power. Our land would not stir awake for the likes of them! The least of us could send them fleeing at will, or kill without much effort. No, what stirs is rooted in the past, has been long asleep, now it awakens. Those who rouse are not yet fully awake, or you and every living thing, between the Mountains of Arvon and the sea would know it. However, they turn and move in their sleep, and their enfolding dreams have come to an end. It may well be that the cycle of slumber has finished. We—those of our kind—never knew the appointed time of awakening. Such will cause a mighty change . . .”

She gave a last lick to her paw before folding it under her.

“It will not be well to be one such as you if and when the day of true awakening comes,” she commented (with something of relish, I thought resentfully). “Unless, of course, you can learn a bit—and have not only courage, but also the will to survive.”

I refused to give any ground to her. Though I had no intention of claiming any talent I did not possess, still I looked at her straightly as I answered.

“We all must learn many things during our lifetimes. If there is that which I must do—then I am ready to do it.” (I thought of my plea to Elys and of how that had come to nothing in truth because the Thas trap had put an end to it. On the other hand I had learned through that. I remembered only too easily the burden of concentrating my will on the gryphon.) “As for courage and will—we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust that there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead.”

I had suddenly a flash memory of my aunt—had that phrase sounded as if said in her very voice? A little so, I thought. Once the pronouncements of Dame Math had been the laws of the world to me. I brushed back the hair that I could only secure in such an untidy fashion and perhaps I sighed.

“There is another of your blood coming.” The male broke through the silence that had fallen upon us. “He may even be the one you have sought. This one, at least, dares to ride the white road. No rune or spell set there has turned him back, though these forbade the way to others in his company. He comes now with one purpose in his mind—or so he believes. I think that he is to be fitted to another.”

The melons rolled away as I got to my feet in an instant.

“Kerovan! But how do you know?” Then I had second thoughts. There could well be others of human kind in this land—scavengers, outlaws and the like. I could not count that this was indeed Kerovan.

My demand was met by a second silence. I waited for a painful moment or two, then was forced to accept the fact that these two furred ones would keep their own council. To strive to force any more information out of them, when they did not choose to give it, would lessen me in there opinion. It is very odd to feel that one is an impulsive child in the sight of such as these. My first reaction was anger. Still, I suspected that anger itself, within the bonds of the Waste, might be a most dangerous emotion unless controlled and used only at one’s desire, as a weapon—a feat I was certain I could not accomplish. Though the control part—that I must learn.

If this promised traveler was Kerovan on his way here, what mattered most was that I be prepared to meet him—to withstand his anger. If, indeed, he felt enough within that shell he had built about him to know hot human anger any longer. I must think carefully, plan alternate moves, each depending upon his attitude when we met. That we must resolve our difficulties—that was far more important to me now than any waking sleepers or stirring of long-dormant forces in the Waste.

I sat down on my heap of grass and worked to enwrap my eagerness, control a heart that had begun to beat faster, to appear as outwardly serene as the cats. Reaching for the nearest melon, I began the awkward business of sawing away at its rind with the sharpest edge of the belt buckle, thinking while I worked that it would be well when I had eaten this piece of fruit (not because I now really wanted or needed it, but because the very act of leisurely feasting would be the beginning of my prized control) that I search the rest of the ruins where I had not ventured earlier. There might just be in that supposedly barren interior something I could use as a weapon.

The melon was just at the proper stage of ripeness and I did feast on its rosy, juicy interior, inelegantly, having to spit out seeds into my hand and make a small heap of them to one side. Shining black they were. When i had been very small I had been given a coarse needle and a length of stout linen thread and had spent the whole of an absorbed morning making myself a brave necklace of just such seeds, which Harta the cook had saved for me.

Harta—she had not been one of those who had come together with us in the hills after the escape from Ithdale. So many had been lost! I wondered if some intelligence somewhere decided who would win through, who would never be seen again—or were their lives a blind gamble of fate?

I went to wash my face and hands at the spring, wipe them on sunwarmed grass, paying no attention—outwardly—to the cats who had apparently both gone to sleep in the sun. With a little more confidence than I had had to stiffen me during my first visit to the keep, I once more entered the great hall with those strange cat-shaped benches. This time I did not head for the corner tower—rather I took the other direction.

There, in the deepest gloom of this chamber, I found a huge fireplace, darkened on hearth and up the cavern of an interior with the signs of smoke and soot. Its presence suggested that the builders here had been at least human enough to need heat in the chill of winter and that the Waste was no more hospitable at that season than the seaward-reaching Dales.

On the wide and heavy overmantel, where a lord of the Dales would have had carven the badge of his house, there was a symbol deep wrought—one I had seen before. It was of the circular body with widespread wings. Save that here it was dull and time-stained, hardly to be distinguished in the poor light. On either side of it was set, on guard, the figure of a cat.

There were drifts of dried leaves, powdering into dust, on the hearth, but any remains of a welcoming fire long gone. I remained there for a moment, then let my eyes range about the room, trying to imagine how it had once been—who had held high feast days here, if such were known to these people who had drawn their stools and chairs closer to the flames in winter. What stories had their songsmiths wrought to keep their minds encased in wonder? Had they had songsmiths to take their heroes’ acts and make them live in song and tale?

I raised my hand high, striving to touch the symbol, and discovered that even when I stood on tiptoe it was still above my reach. At first I had thought it near invisible against the dull stone in which it was carved. Now . . . I blinked, rubbed the back of my hand across my eyes. The cats . . . they were far more easy to study—there was a glint of fire in their wide-open, staring eyes.

Was it some illusion of the dusk caught within this room, or could it be that one of those heads was slightly larger, heavier of jowl, than the other? I looked from left to right and back again, began to believe that my guess was correct. The cat heads were not in duplicate, but individual. Also I believed I had seen them before, mounted on living, breathing bodies, lying at sleepy ease out in the courtyard. Some worker in stone long ago had caught both male and female; the same animals? Even with all the tricks and talents of the Waste I could hardly accept that the two I saw outside had been those whose portraits were sculptured here. Time might stretch long for the Old Ones (and were any Old Ones animals?), but surely not to that extent. If these were not the portraits of the same cats, they must be distant forefather and foremother and the strain had held true.

I stepped into the cavernous mouth of the fireplace, kicking at the leaves, hoping against hope to turn up some piece of the metal, the fire dogs that had once supported the burning wood, some other fragment that would be promising. There was nothing left.

To my right a doorway in the inner wall led to whatever survived at the other end of the building. Deserting the fireplace with its knowing guard cats, I passed through that. The hall beyond was wide enough to be a gallery and here lay the first signs of furnishing I had seen, other than the stone cat benches. All I wanted!

With a cry, I sped forward, to snatch at the black-tarnished hilt of a sword. Only to find that what I held when I pulled it from out the litter on the floor was a jagged stub. I tried it against one finger, the metal flaked away thinly. There were other weapons lying along the wall as if they had fallen from stone pegs, which were still set there. Nothing had survived that could be used. At last in my disappointment I sent the stuff flying, with a kick that shattered it even more into a dust of rust.

There was another square room beyond, a second stair like unto the one I had found in the outlook tower. I judged that this must serve the second tower I had noted earlier—the one that supported a living tree in place of the lord’s banner. The steps appeared secure enough, as long as one crowded against the wall on the left, so I climbd.

On the second floor there was another doorway, as well as the continuation of the steps leading upward, and I judged that the doorless opening gave upon rooms that must have been built above the arms gallery. I took that way now in turn.

Another hall here but a very much narrower one, hardly more than a passage where perhaps two of my own girth could walk abreast, and, to my left, three doorways.

There had been doors here also—two of them, like the one in the courtyard, showed rotted bits of wood, the fallen debris, that had once formed barriers. But the one in the middle . . .

The wood of that looked firm and whole. I could detect no crack brought about by time, no skim of rust upon the metal fittings. There was a locking bar across it—from the outside! Had I come across such precaution on the lower floor, or in whatever cellars might be found in this place (I had no desire to go prying into such as those), I would have said this was a prison. It was perhaps a “safe” chamber such as some lords had for the protection of their more valuable belongings when they were from home, save that the bar lacked any of the ponderous locking devices usually in use on such.

I went forward very slowly to touch the wood above that bar, half expecting to have it crumble. Against the pressure of my hand as I applied more strength, it had a very solid feeling. There was no one to forbid me to draw that bar, and the shaft itself looked as if it lay lightly in the two loops through which it rested. At last, after some hesitation (I must not surrender to any fear), I knew I had to learn why one door in all the deep remained in the same condition it must have been when the building was at its most complete, the bar still sturdy, while elsewhere armor and weapons flaked away to the touch. There are many legends of how curiosity brought into peril those of the Dales who were unable to resist mysteries left by the Old Ones. At that moment I could understand the need that had driven those unfortunates, for I was under just such a compulsion to draw the bar that I could no longer fight it. Draw I did.

Perhaps it was the bar alone that, by some trick of its makers, had kept the door intact. For, as I pulled it to one side, and the door itself began to swing slowly toward me, cracks appeared in its surface, ran with a speed I could follow by my eyes, over the wood. There was a grating, a puff of stale air blown outward. The door slipped drunkenly on one hinge as the other snapped with sound sharp enough to make me start.

Half open, the door was fast falling into the same sorry condition as its two neighbors to the right and left. Pieces of the wood broke, crumbled in dusty puffs as they hit the stone pavement.

I shrank as that disintegration began, but now that it appeared to cease, with a last clatter, as the bar finally fell and snapped in two, I made myself edge forward to look into the room beyond.

I had only a moment or so to see—to look upon what had been sealed from time until I rashly had let in the years, and age itself wrecked, with fury, whatever the spell (I was sure I had broken a spell) had protected.

This room had not been bare. There were tapestries on the wall, and, though I saw their splendor only for two or three of the breaths I had drawn in wonder, they were so rich I could not believe that any human hand or hands had been able to stitch such. There was a bed, with a tall canopy, the posts of which were seated cats, each taller than myself. On the bed lay rich coverings of a tawny yellow like the fur of the cats, which grayed into ash brown, then were gone, as were the coverings on the floor. A table had stood against one wall and on it a mirror, its carved frame topped by a cat’s head. On that table were boxes—whose richness I had very little time to see, other things gone fast to dust before I could identify them.

Were there chairs, stools, a tall, upright wardrobe chest such as might hold gowns any keep lady would find herself hot with desire even to hold? I am sure there were. I am certain I can remember having a hasty glimpse of such. I had not stepped across the threshold; I only stood and watched a glory that made me ache for its beauty become suddenly nothing. Windows were revealed now as the curtains that had been drawn across them withered away far faster even than a delicate flower can wither if it is left in the full light of the sun, having been idly plucked for no real purpose.

The light from those windows streamed in (there appeared to be no curtaining vine outside here). In its beans, the dust motes dance a thousand fold. Then . . . there was nothing—just nothing at all . . .

No, that was not true.

In the midst of one of those shining panels of sunlight there was a gleam, something that appeared to catch the sun and then reflect it forth again, not in a hard glitter but in a soft glow. I hesitated to cross that chamber. Only, just as I had been unable to resist opening the spell-locked door, so I could not now stop myself.

The dust was very thick. I coughed, waved my hands before my face, strove to clear the air that I might breathe long enough to reach what lay in the mote-clogged sunbeam. When my boot toe near-nudged it, I stooped to pick up a ring.

Unlike the rest of the metal in the room it had not flaked into nothingness. The band felt as firm as if it had been fashioned only yesterday. But the setting was unlike any stone I had ever seen in my life. We of the Dales are poor in precious things. We have a little gold, washed out of streams, we have amber, which is greatly prized. A few of the very wealthy lords may have for their wearing at high feast days some colored gems from overseas. But those are mainly small, polished but uncut. I held now something far different from those.

The stone (if stone it was) was near the size of my thumb, though the hoop which held it was small, clearly meant for a woman’s wearing. This gem or stone had not been cut, nor did it need to be polished. For it had been fashioned by some freakish twist of nature herself into the semblance of a cat’s head and the surface was neither pink, nor yellow, but a fusing of the two with an iridescent cast to the surface, over which rainbow lights slipped as I turned it this way and that. I slipped the band over my finger. It was as if it clung there, made for no other’s wearing—also it felt as if it were in its rightful place at long last.

Moving closer to the window I turned my hand this way and that, marveling at such a thing showing against the brownness of my skin where the scratches of berry briars drew many rough lines. I did not know what it was but—it was mine! I was sure of that as if the ring had been slipped solemnly on that finger in some formal gifting. Once more I turned it again for the sun to catch it fair, then I heard . . .

A yowling arose, so sharp and clear it could have come from immediately below my window. I was looking out, down the slope toward the road. Both the cats were leaping from stone to stone, winding about bushes, disappearing, as they made their way through the jumble of ruins and stone that lay there below.

Beyond . . . there was a rider on the road! A rider! I saw sun flare in bluish gleam, small and far away—a mailed rider. He whom the cats had said would come? Kerovan?

Forgetting everything but what had drawn me for so many days, t turned and ran, dust rising up above me in a cloud that set me choking and gasping, but still I ran. I must know who rode the white highway. I could guess, I could hope—but I must know!