Gryphon in Glory

8 Kerovan

As I stood there in the hall of the wereriders I could indeed feel the touch of danger—yet this was not a threat aimed at me. No, it was something inherent in that single word Herrel of the cat-shape had uttered, the word that had burst from him when I had described the mutilated body I had discovered in a dismal oasis of the Waste.

“Thas.” It was Lord Hyron who repeated that word now, and his voice was low, hardly above a whisper. I watched, for the second time, air begin to curdle about him. Whether he willed it or not this time, his shapechange had begun. Then, perhaps because he was able to control a near-compelling emotion, he was man again.

“Watch the ground,” he said to me with the force of one delivering a necessary warning. “For the earth itself is Thas land, and they have the rule of the under surface of it. They are no friend to any who can wear that without harm!” He pointed a long forefinger at the band about my wrist. “That they are now found near here—that means matters are on the move—matters that have long been dormant.”

He shook his head until his mane of hair near blinded him with its fringe across bright eyes.

“You are neither one thing nor the other, you who call yourself Kerovan. Learn what you are, and that speedily, or you shall be reduced to nothing at all—not even bones left to dry in desert air.”

Such was the farewell the lord of the Wereriders took of me, for I was not invited to be a guest under that bush roof. I had been offered no greeting cup when I came, no stirrup cup when I left. It was as if here I was less considered than even the most humble of landsmen. I did not allow my temper to take edge from that, for I was not wishful to remain longer in a place where I could never be sure which shape those about me wore was theirs in truth.

The sun was well west when I came forth into the clearing in which that half-living keep stood. None of the Wereriders had gathered to see me off. Only he who called himself Herrel followed me out, to mount again, and stood waiting to escort me from their holding. Perhaps in some way they were as suspicious of me as I was of them. My last sight of the keep showed me that the branches that clothed its upper stories were waving as energetically as if storm-tossed, while from them numerous small shapes sprang outward, heading in great racing leaps for the wood. Did they go to hunt by night, I wondered, as I trudged beside Herrel’s shadow-dappled mount? Or were they to form another part of my escort? I sensed in them a source of peril I did not understand, but thought it prudent that I be wary of them.

Once more we threaded that path through the wood. This time the gloom had deepened until now and then I stumbled, half-blinded by the dusk, though neither Herrel nor his mount had any difficulty in keeping the trail. It crossed my mind that those of the feline breed had excellent night sight, so that this man who could will to be a furred, fanged hunter on four paws might well share that sense.

I speculated, as we went in silence, as to how it might feel to be a shapechanger, to taste at desire another kind of life far divorced from that I myself awoke to each morning. Did the instincts and thoughts of a man remain alive in the mind of the beast, or were such dulled and forgotten after one endured the change? Was there in truth a real alteration of body, or was that only a forceful hallucination which the Weres were able to impress upon others? Had I indeed seen Hyron as an actual stallion ready to savage me. or just what I was meant to see?

So musing, I tried to recall such legends of the Weres as the Dalesmen knew. But all our stories were so old, so overlaid with the horror of people who had faced such a mixture of nature, that I really knew very little. I would have liked to have questioned Herrel—asked him what it meant to he two different natures fused into one. In my own way was I not this also? Did he ever consider himself so apart from normal mankind as to be cursed, walled off from any small pleasure of life? No—that burden would not touch one who walked among his own kin, who had the comradeship of those who shared his own talent, if one could call it that. Also I knew better than to ask such questions of a stranger.

Our winding path so disguised the length of the journey that I was not sure how close we were to the outermost part of the tree wall when there came a thin, high chittering from the left. It was the first sound other than the faint thud of hooves and the scarcely heard pad of my own feet to break the silence.

“Wait!” Herrel reined up.

I, who was behind him on the narrow path, obeyed his order. He leaned forward, his head turned a little toward the nearest of the tree branches.

Again, imperative, came that sound. I heard Herrel whistle—not that command note that he had used to stay the panic of my horses, but rather as if he summoned.

From the branch toward which he had been looking sprang a small creature, certainly of the same species as those abiding in the roof of the Were keep. It balanced on the Were’s shoulder and gave a series of sharp squeaks, as if it spoke to him in its own tongue.

At last he held out his arm and the creature ran along it with the sureness it might have used on a stout branch, leaped out, vanishing in the walling mass of green. Herrel looked to me.

“Thas,” he said tersely.

“Here?” Though I still did not know the nature of that enemy, the reaction of the Weres earlier had made very plain this was a threat even they respected, not to be taken lightly.

“At your camp.” He prodded his mount from a walk to a trot, so that I must run to keep up. However, it was only a very short time before we burst free into the open land. There was more light here—much more, for the western sky was striped with color. Only, what I looked upon was such an area of disaster as made me think for a moment that I was the victim of hallucination.

The ground where I had made my camp was now a raw mass of new cut ruts and hollows, of great circular scare, laying bare piles of soil. Where my horses had grazed there were no animals, while from the broken ground there arose a stench of foul decay strong enough to make me gag.

Down on his knees in the midst of that churned and torn sod was a man in Dalesman’s armor hacking at the earth with heavy jabs of his sword, sending broken clods flying in all directions. At his side a woman, also wearing mail but without any helm on her dark head, used the edge of a small arm shield to aid in the frantic digging.

As we broke from the wood, and I ran toward that mass, she glanced up—then reached to catch the arm of the sword user. The man turned his head to note us, but he did not pause in his digging. It might have been that any halt in his labor could be, for some reason, fatal.

The woman arose to her feet, shaking free a scoopful of earth she held in the shield. There was light enough to see her face clearly, and I was startled, for there was that in it I recognized—though I could not have set name to her. I felt, as I had not ever before in my life, that her kind was kin—to me who had no kin. Was she another inhabitant of the Waste, but closer to man in heritage than Herrel and his kind?

She spoke as I came up to her, not to me, rather to the man still digging.

“There is no longer any use, Jervon. She is lost to us.”

She then turned to eye Herrel and to him also she spoke, sharply, as one who had the right to demand answers.

“Warrior, what manner of peril is it that can turn solid earth into a whirlpool and engulf a traveler so? Who casts such a Power spell and for what purpose?”

He continued to sit his mount, though he met her gaze squarely, a faint frown on his face.

“Thas,” he replied.

“And what are Thas—or could it be who?” she persisted, with the same tone of command.

“Deep earth dwellers. The inner parts of the ground are theirs. It is their given talent to command it to their desires when they wish. As to why they set such a trap here—” He shrugged. “The Waste holds divers species, we go our own ways, following the demands of our natures. Though this is the truth: it has not been known for many seasons that the Thas venture outward from the mountains where lie their chosen burrows. Though they may well have delved so without our knowing of it, they run their ways very deep. Also, we of the Waste meddle not among ourselves.” His answer was chill, as if he meant it as a reproof for her persistence, her open questioning of a matter he plainly thought was none of her concern.

She stepped across a deep rut, advanced closer to him. Her companion had arisen, his soil-encrusted sword still in hand. I had seen his like in the Dales, for he was plainly a man of that pure blood. Though he wore a helm, it carried no House badge. Still there was nothing about him that proclaimed “outlaw.”

“These burrows, which the Thas run for their purposes,” the woman continued, “how deeply may such lie and where?”

Herrel shrugged again. “Who knows? Or cares. We have never had any traffic with the earth-dwellers—their ways are not ours.”

“Nor do you want to meet them, I presume.” There was a note of challenge in that. She was using a tone sharp enough to bring blood to the cheeks of any fighting man. Certainly she stood in no awe of Herrel. If she knew what he was . . . I had a strong suspicion that she did. Perhaps she had had dealings with his kind before and knew best how to gain answers. “Why do they seek to entrap those who offer them no harm?”

“We do not know. Thas are Thas. But such as this”—he glanced down at the churned earth, what had been a camp and was now only a morass of disturbed soil—“I have not seen before. There is—” His frown grew deeper.

“Perhaps you wish to say that there is something new—an awakening somewhere in this land,” she answered him. “Shapechanger, have you been so long safe in the refuge of your kind that you do not sense a stir—or know that there is a new element ready to invade the Waste? Old things can be stirred into life by those having the proper key—and the power to turn such. If this is done wrongly, then all, no matter who or how they seek to stand aloof, can be drawn in—into a battle where forces, blindly awakened, cannot be easily controlled—or laid—again!”

Herrel had been studying her face. His mount moved restlessly, sidled away from her. I did not believe the Wererider had any fear of the woman, rather he was moved by an instinctive wariness, which was a part of his heritage.

“You have Power,” he observed. “Ask any questions of those or that which you can summon. We have no dealing with the Thas, nor”—now he looked from her directly at me—“do we want any with those who can awaken aught here. Carry no assurances of any aid now to your lord. Dalesman-by-half. If the Waste stirs we shall have other affairs to deal with.”

With no more words and no backward look, he sent his mount trotting for the wood, the horse’s hooves throwing up clods of the loose earth as he went.

It was my turn for questions. Who were these two, and what did they mean about another who had been trapped in the earth? Again it was the woman who spoke.

“You are Kerovan.” She did not ask, she named me as one she had known well.

Her familiar use of my name was disturbing. Had she and this fighting man been sent after me by Imgry (who was the type, I was sure, to always strive to make certain any plan by a double protection)? He could very well have caught within his search net this woman (I was sure she possessed the talents Herrel had i recognized by instinct) and dispatched her also, with the same orders he had given me.

“I am Kerovan,” I admitted, “and you?”

I waited for her to tell me of Imgry, but all she answered was, “I am Elys, and this is Jervon.”

The Dalesman only nodded. He stopped to catch up a tuft of grass and began wiping the soil from his blade.

“We came,” the woman continued deliberately, “with my Lady Joisan.”

I froze. Of all the explanations I had been prepared to hear that one was the most impossible. For a long breath I could not believe I had heard her aright. Joisan here? But—where—and why?

As I looked around wildly, Elys then added, “She was engulfed—in that . . .” To my growing horror she pointed to the hole where Jervon had been digging.

“You—you lie!” I was caught now in such bewilderment I could only deny and deny that such an impossibility could be so. This was trickery, the kind of trickery those of the Waste might use to entrap one. “Joisan is in Norsdale. I set her free—she is safe—she is . . .”

That which welled in me now was an anger deeper, a fear greater, than I thought any one could hold. Now I knew—fleetingly—why I had felt so cold. This was the fire that had been in me, that I had willed so fiercely into an inner prison.

Jervon strode toward me, his sword point rising, aimed at the small hollow left bare between my chin and my mail.

“My lady does not lie,” he said with dangerous softness. “The Lady Joisan was here and the whirlpool of the earth swallowed her down. She came out of her concern for one Kerovan, who, it would seem, lacks any concern for her.”

Madness . . . either they were—or I was—mad! Hallucination—could this be some spell born perhaps from that meeting in the Wereriders’ Hall? To have any dealings with those who possessed Power was always dangerous and tricky. This could be some subtle attempt to try and influence me by awaking emotions I dared not allow to trouble my mind—or my heart.

Save that now Elys told me in detail of how the two of them had met with Joisan in the Dales, and of her great desire to find me, of how they decided I might have gone into the Waste because of a scrying in which Joisan took part, of how they had come here to what they believed was my camp—and then of the attack . . .

This was all true! I could not deny it any longer, and at that moment I could have thrown back my head and howled like any winter-haunted wolf. That Joisan had followed me! She had no part in my life—just as I had no right in hers. I was bound to a dark past, perhaps a worse future. She must be free of me.

That she had been taken, buried, caught in an evil web of the Dark spawn because of her mistaken value of me—that I could not bear. Only I must—I had to accept the truth, hard as it was.

I crossed the ruts to the hole where Jervon had dug so fruitlessly and then I looked up from that shallow pit to ask just one question. Though I already knew what the answer must be and how I would stand condemned by it, in my own eyes, as long as I lived. “How long?”

Elys had followed me. Now her fingers just touched my arm. I did not deserve any sympathy, but I was still too frozen without, too a-fire within, to reject her out of hand.

“I do not believe she is truly buried.”

I glanced at her, turned my eyes once more to the earth. There was no use in her trying to reassure me thus. Joisan was gone into the Dark. I was just beginning to realize what a loss was mine. I had believed when I rode out of Norsdale that I had armored myself, that I accepted in full the bitterness of what my life would be from that day forward. Now I knew that I had not sensed even a hundredth part of what fate had brought to burden me as long as I walked the earth that had taken her.

Now Elys’s fingers tightened their grip. She gave a tug, which brought me to look at her again.

“She is not dead.” Her words were quiet but delivered with conviction, a conviction I could not accept, caught as I was in my inner hell.

“Lady”—I spoke in the same quiet tone also, with a remnant of the old great hall courtesy—“you well know there is no way she could be buried so and still live.”

“We shall see—and I promise you this shall be true seeing.”

She made a summoning gesture with her other hand. Jervon had already gone to where a saddlebag lay half-hidden in up-thrown soil. From that he brought her a wrapped bundle.

Twilight was now upon us, but when Elys let fall the wrapping there appeared a concentration of what light was left, centering on the thing she uncovered, a silver cup that shone with a moon’s full light, as if the moon’s beams themselves had been forged into it,

I watched, dull-eyed, as she mixed pinches of dried herbs, which she took from small bags carried in her belt pouch, shifting them into a very small measure of water Jervon poured from a saddle bottle. I saw her lips move soundlessly as she twirled the cup. Then she held it out to me.

Against my will I accepted it. Not that I denied she could use some talent to so summon sight of Joisan, but because I was so sure of, and so feared, what I might see. On my wrist blazed the band, rising to a glow that matched that of the cup—no warning there—could it be a promise? I would not allow myself to believe that.

Holding the moon between my hands I looked down—into its hollow bowl.

As I had expected—darkness. No! The liquid within had taken on life of its own, swirled, though I held the cup steady. Now it climbed the wall of the hollow, filling it to the brim. Still I stared at a surface that remained dark. Then . . .

A glow—so faint—still it held steady there. Perhaps the urgency of my fear and desire gave power to my sight at that moment when I longed so, needed this so much. There—there was the gryphon! The small beast was alive with light, and behind it—I fought against the dark, I tried to compel greater sight with my will. I must see! Slowly, very slowly, I did. There was only a shadow of a face, but the eyes were open, it was the face of the living—Joisan!

Hallucination, meant to deceive?

No! Somehow I was certain that the gryphon, that my wrist band, would not allow a false vision. I saw Joisan alive. She was not dead, crushed in the earth. But where was she—and how might I find her?

The liquid began to subside, fall back in the hollow. I cried out, “No! I must see—learn where she is.”

Too late, as one part of my mind was forced to accept. Now there was only a small portion at the very bottom of the cup. The vision was lost.

Elys took the cup out of my now shaking hands. I looked to her as I had not done for a long time to anyone—with pleading—for she was my only link with Joisan.

“Where? And how may I come to her?” My tongue seemed thick, swollen, so I could hardly mouth those questions.

With the tutored prudence of a Wisewoman, she went from me to pour away the liquid—not upon the churned soil, but beyond, where the ground was still undisturbed, gesturing with her other hand. Only when she had done with such ritual did she again face me.

“One is only shown what the Power can produce at that moment. And,” she looked about her somberly, “we have used the talent in a place that has been disturbed by that which is certainly not friendly to us, which may not be of the Light at all. It is best now for us to push on—away from all influences that may arise here.”

“But where is Joisan?” I did not move from where I stood in the deep ruts of the freshly turned ground.

Jervon was at work, pulling some pack bags out of the dirt. Those I had brought had completely disappeared, but apparently others, carried by their party, had been so near the edge of the disturbance as to escape burial. There was no sign of the horses.

I crossed the disturbed ground directly to Elys, determined to have from her any hint that would aid me to find my lady.

She did not look up, rather busied herself with the rewrapping of the cup. I could already guess her answer. There are limits to all talents. Perhaps hers had been reached when she had shown me that Joisan had survived. In what direction Joisan had vanished, except down, or what further peril threatened her—those one could only imagine. I strove, with all the force of will I could summon, to keep certain dire mind-pictures out of my thoughts.

Jervon had piled up what he had salvaged. Now, facing east, he put two fingers to his lips and whistled. The sound carried as clearly as had those notes Herrel had used to quiet my horses. Elys, the wrapped cup cradled against her in one arm, now raised her right hand in a summoning gesture.

I turned to look in that direction. Twilight was fast upon us now and I saw nothing. Then, pushing through a rim of brush, a horse trotted, to stop short, snort, and plant its hooves hard in the ground, expressing plainly a refusal to advance any nearer that evil-smelling spread of torn earth.

Jervon, voicing those sounds an expert horseman uses to soothe an excited and frightened beast, advanced slowly toward the animal. Twice it snorted, the whites of its eyes showing, once half wheeling as if to make off again. However, some strong tie between rider and mount held fast, so that the Dalesman was able to lay hand flat against the sweating neck. The horse, after one more toss of head, nosed against the man’s shoulder, allowing him to comb its mane with his fingers.

Elys followed him, still making beckoning gestures. Before she reached her companion, a second horse appeared at a slow and reluctant pace. Thus they summoned to them two that were excellent mounts of the type used and cherished by the fighters of the Dales. After them trailed another, a smaller mare of mountain breed, and lastly a pack pony. Of my own desert mounts there was no trace. Probably suited to this land, they had joyfully taken their freedom once they had fled. I divined that, by long association, these two who had companioned Joisan in her search had established close communication with their own horses—and perhaps those in turn had influenced the mare Joisan had ridden. For I recognized it to be one of the sort commonly seen in Norsdale. I had no hope that my own would ever appear.

Because at the moment I did not know what lay before me now, I went to where Jervon and Elys were stroking the sweating, still-frightened horses, using soft words of reassurance. The man glanced at me.

“Elys is right—we had best move on. Even these know better than to stay where the Dark has been at work.”

We brought saddles and packs and made ready, though the dark was gathering fast. Then, on Joisan’s mare, I swung out across the open land, away from the forest of the Weres, the place where Joisan had last been. I did not want to leave, but neither could I linger on there. If I only had some clue. . . . My hands tightened on the reins and my wrist band seemed to flare with a last flicker of light.

Though the dusk became thicker, Jervon, who had drawn up beside me, leading the pack horse, did not pause. Then Elys came even with him, so we three rode abreast into the night.

Both their mounts suddenly whinnied and broke into a trot, my mare following. It was so we reached a waterway, cut deeply into the surface of the plain. The water which had worn that gully was now but a small stream running through a narrow middle channel. However, the banks, down which our horses half slid when we allowed them their heads, gave one a sense of protection. We made camp there as the full dark closed in. For want of any better hope I had come this far—what I would do next I had no idea.

There crossed my mind what I had said to Hyron, that I would ride north and west in quest of my own kind (if any such existed). That declaration had small meaning now. Once before I had sought Joisan across this same imperiled country—when she had been taken by my enemies. I knew without any question that now I must seek her a second time—save that I had no trail to follow.

If you traced the tangle of our lives back to its beginning, where did the interlocking of our fates begin—that interlocking which had now endangered her twice over? Was it because she had been axe-wedded to me in both our childhoods—or because I had given her the gryphon and so made her of importance to Rogear? Had my life not touched hers with these dangers she would have never fallen to this last peril.

If she had not believed that she had a duty to me, because she was my lady (even though I had fully released her from her vows), she would never have followed me into this new danger. Therefore mine was the fault, and if she could be saved, I must do it. At the moment I know that this stood above any task Imgry had set on me. What did I care for the Dales, even in their death throes, when Joisan was lost in some web of the Dark?