by Andre Norton
The wall seemed endless as I shuffled on, my pace very slow, for I also stopped every few steps to listen, always fearing that the dark-loving creatures might not come so boldly next time, rather would creep upon me stealthily. The globe gave off a warmth that battled the chill beginning to eat into me. I kept glancing down to reassure myself of the light—which had now faded to its first dim glow. The gryphon was once more visible, its sparks of eyes seemingly raised to meet mine. Suddenly I realized that I was whispering to it.
First just Kerovan's name—which I said over and over in a sing-song as if it were a spell that could lift me through all care and danger. I tried to raise in my mind a picture of him as I had last seen him.
What followed was—no, I cannot ever find the words to describe what happened. It was as if some energy had hurled me back against the wall with a bruising force. I had—somehow I had—linked thought for an instant with my lord!
Frantically I stared down at the gryphon, fighting to hold onto that instant of communication—to know—to feel . . . I had not been alone. He . . . it had been as if he stood beside me. If I only could once more . . .!
“If I knew—if I only knew!” I cried desperately to the gryphon. The globe was a link, but chance only had made it, and now it was gone. That it was my own ignorance that stood in the way made my heart pound, brought tears of rage to my eyes.
Rage would not help. I did not need Elys to warn me against unshielded emotion. One commanded oneself before one learned to command Power. That was part of the long training she had spoken of—years spent in learning mastery, of how to nourish talent.
Will might control talent, but one had to center will, shut away all else, put all one's energy into forming of one's will a weapon as strong as steel. What could I do with my will? This was the hour in which I could bring it and me to a testing—a testing that could mean life or death.
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 dir
ections. 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 wo
uld 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.
