Tales From High Hallack, Volume 1 Read online

  Tales from High Hallack

  The collected short stories of Andre Norton, book 1

  Premier Digital Publishing - Los Angeles

  Tales from High Hallack

  Copyright © 2013 Andre Norton Estate

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  eISBN: 978-1-62467-188-3

  Print ISBN: 978-1-62467-189-0

  Published by Premier Digital Publishing

  www.PremierDigitalPublishing.com

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  From the Sword of Unbelief

  Its weapon was terror, not any sword. As I stiffened and drew deeply upon my power, I realized it for what it was—a thoughtform born out of ancient fear and hatred. So did it continue to feed upon such emotions, drawing into it at each feeding a greater substance. My fear, my anger, must have both summoned and fed it. But it was real. That I could swear to, as much as if I laid hand upon that outstretched arm of bone. And Fallon’s wide-eyed terror was meat to it also. While it trailed behind it, like a cloak, a deep depression of the spirit.

  Fallon reared, screamed. That mount of bone opened wide its jaws in answer. I struggled with the panic-mad horse under me, glad for a moment that I had this to fight, for it awoke my mind from the blast of fear the spectre brought with it.

  For Bill Fawcett

  Contents

  Acknowledgments . . . Sue Stewart

  Introduction . . . Jody Lynn Nye

  The Last Spell . . .

  Sword of Unbelief . . .

  Earthborn: A Witch World Story . . .

  That Which Overfloweth . . .

  By A Hair . . .

  The Gifts of Asti . . .

  Falcon Blood . . .

  The Dowry of the Rag Picker’s Daughter . . .

  All Cats Are Gray . . .

  The Way Wind . . .

  Black Irish . . .

  The Boy and the Ogre . . .

  Through the Needle’s Eye . . .

  The Toymaker’s Snuffbox . . .

  Ully the Piper . . .

  Dream Smith . . .

  One Spell Wizard . . .

  London Bridge . . .

  Acknowledgments

  After Andre Norton moved into my Tennessee home in mid-2004, she often spoke of wanting all of her short stories gathered in a special collection . . . all in one place so she could have easy access to read them. Unfortunately, circumstances beyond our control got in the way of her dream while she was alive.

  Andre’s estate has come a long way. Lots of good things are happening with careful and strategic planning. I am pleased to finally make available to you, Andre’s special-edition short story collection. I never lost sight of my dear friend’s project; it was important that I followed through to make it happen.

  On behalf of Andre’s estate and myself, I extend heartfelt thanks to Jay Watts, who was so dedicated and loyal to our Lady. Jay put in countless hours gathering and copying her stories, which paved the way for this collection. This could not have happened without him. He also devoted a lot of effort to Andre’s estate-authorized website. Please show him your support by visiting that website at andre-norton-books.com.

  I would also like to thank Jody Lynn Nye, who happily accepted my request to write the introduction. Thanks to Jean Rabe, who lovingly agreed to edit these books. Thanks to Ethan Ellenberg, Evan Gregory, and Premier Digital Printing, all instrumental in getting Andre’s works into your hands.

  Above all of that—many, many thanks to Andre Norton, for sharing her stories with the world, and sharing a part of her life with me. Rest in peace, my dear friend.

  Sue Stewart, the Andre Norton Estate

  Introduction

  I wasn’t looking for Andre Norton when I found her.

  I’d just had a terrible shock, literarywise. I had asked a couple of my high school teachers, “What is this thing called science fiction?”

  In all kindness, they lent me books that they felt really represented the genre, a book each from Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury. With no disrespect meant to the grand masters themselves, those were not the books to hand to an impressionable and sensitive fourteen-year-old girl who was having personal issues. Those books were products of the Cold War era, during which everyone thought that nuclear war was imminent, and the Armageddon-heavy fiction reflected that bleak time. The writing was compelling, of course; full of futuristic ideas, yes; but in particular, early on in The Martian Chronicles, they blow up the Earth.

  That was a concept I was not prepared to handle. After all, I live here, and if my home was going to be destroyed with no possibility of survival, I had nowhere else to go. Reading those books terrified me. Our future was to be burned alive! I felt trapped. “If that is science fiction,” my past self said with the dogmatic conviction only possible in people that young, “I will never read it again.”

  Cue the cackling of the Fates.

  Being the kind of reader who must pass words before her eyes as many hours as possible during the day, I still needed books.

  I read The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia. I wanted more. So, I browsed through the three floors of my high school library, picking up things that looked interesting to me, careful to avoid anything that had a spaceship on the cover or anything science-y in the title. I read a good deal of nonfiction. I loved biographies, although they usually ended the same way, with the main character dying.

  The library was well-stocked with fantasies.

  In this way, I came to pick up a book that looked good to me: The Crystal Gryphon, by Andre Norton. Its cover featured a young woman, not much more than my age, and a young male whose pupils in his golden eyes were slitted horizontally. Good start.

  The story, one of the first I had ever read written in first person, sounded like a grand tale of high fantasy. I was sucked in immediately by Norton’s writing. She drew pictures in my mind of a hardscrabble, ancient landscape, with feuds, fears, and magic. The narrator, Kerovan himself, with his hooved feet and goat’s eyes, was descended from the Old Ones who had once populated High Hallack. I was too inexperienced to pick up on the clues that would have told me what I was dealing with. So it was not really until close to the end, when Kerovan and his lady Joisan came upon a metal contraption that said “Hot” on one side and “Cold” on the other that I realized that this was yet another piece of post-apocalyptic fiction set on Earth. The difference was that humanity, however altered, had survived. I had been tricked into reading a piece of science fiction, and I liked it.

  From then on, Andre Norton’s books became my safe place.

  With her to retreat to, I ventured forth into other SF writer’s realms, always knowing that if they scared me too much, I could go back again to her. But she gave me confidence in the genre. Not every book or story pictured a bleak and terrible future. In fact, there were broad, exciting ideas aplenty to discover and ponder. I have always been grateful to Norton for giving me that second chance. Think of how much I would have missed, if I had not found her in my library!

  Apart from that aha! moment, I just plain enjoyed Norton’s writing. I cared deeply for her characters. Many of them were as young as I was, bu
t they fought to survive, always coming up with ingenious ways to defeat the menace they faced. Where they had no allies, they stood fast. Norton provided many of them with lovers, rescuers, mentors, and friends, just as well drawn, and just as interesting to know.

  Images and moments, described so vividly that I felt them, have ingrained themselves in my memory from each of the books I read. I was delighted to learn how many books there were yet to read. Like anyone else who has been frustrated to fall for an author who wrote just a few books, or perhaps only one book of note, I was so pleased to find a writer who had produced so much literature that I could wallow in it.

  Since there was no biography at the end of The Crystal Gryphon, it wasn’t until later that I discovered that Andre was Alice Andre Norton. As an aspiring writer myself, I always looked for role models.

  To find a woman writing science fiction with such skill and style was a joy. Her heroines never waited limply for someone to save them. She could have coined the term “self-rescuing princess.” Just reading her work taught me a great deal about my chosen craft.

  Norton blazed a trail that I followed humbly. To this day, every time I read something of hers, I learn something new. I am as freshly impressed and surprised as was that girl in her high school library long ago.

  If this is your first experience with Andre Norton, you’re in for a treat. Her short fiction appeared in magazines, many of which have long crumbled to yellowed fragments, (damn that acid-treated paper!), or in out-of-print anthologies. Jean Rabe and Sue Stewart have put together these collections so Norton-lovers have those lost pieces all together at their fingertips.

  Enjoy them! I certainly will.

  Jody Lynn Nye

  www.jodynye.com

  The Last Spell

  Ancient Enchantresses (1995) DAW

  She had somehow gotten him here—to this, his own well-guarded shrine where the ancient wisdom had been so many times called upon. Some of its power must cling to these rough rock walls. How long had it been—two days, three—she could not remember with any certainty. Her mind had been too occupied with hope and what she could recall of the knowledge which had been his gift to her.

  They had this place as their goal when the first pangs struck him and he had near fallen from his mount. Only his iron will had kept him in the saddle. And they had both known at once what darkness had struck at him. Her lips thinned over her teeth in a vixen’s snarl, as the she fox might lift lip to show teeth when her den and cubs were in danger.

  She had brought him here, and by the time they had stumbled within he was nearly past her handling. He was a tall man and though not full-fleshed, she was well overtopped by him. Since that coming she had fought—by the Lady—how she had fought!

  It was twilight dim in the cave except where a spear thrust of sunlight struck through a high wall crevice to reveal clearly the bed and that wasted figure lying under the covers. So quiet now. The watcher edged her stool closer. Fear arose in her, making her firmly call upon the controls she had learned so well.

  The air was thick with scents of herbs—herbs steeped, herbs charred, herbs crushed by impatient hands. And there was sound as ever present as those odors. Breathing, slow, which seemed now and then to pause. Then she who crouched on the stool would lean yet farther over that shrouded body, listening with a catch of her own breath.

  Not yet—not yet was her battle lost! He must not leave for whatever waited outside, even though she knew—the hurt deep in her—that might be his choice. The last spell—she must have the last, otherwise all she had labored for was nothing more than a broken sword left lying on a field of dire defeat, useless even as a trophy.

  Her eyes smarted. She rubbed at them impatiently, fearful of losing some small sign. Now she leaned still farther over—his breathing sounded more regular. Would there be another short period when he would rouse—would know her—be able to listen and respond?

  She slipped her arm under the folded cloth which served him as a pillow. His gray head rolled a little toward her. By the Lady, he was old—old!

  Memory broke through her absorption—a man in the full of his strength, a man who drew all eyes when he strode in company, who had sought out a girl-child braiding buttercups into a wreath beside the mirroring lake. The summer sun had lain warm on her hair, as brightly yellow as the flowers she twisted to suit her will.

  Even as she had reflected the sun, so had that stranger cloaked himself in a kind of shadow. Still she had no warning of any ill intent when she looked upon his straight body, his ordered hair, the subtle richness of his cloak. However, he had been a stranger—and when her eyes had been caught and held by his, she had been slightly troubled.

  This man, who had said he was sworn in service to a great lord and knew the court, had somehow changed her life even with his first greeting. He had settled himself on the ground a little away from her, but he had continued to talk or, rather, to subtly question. He had drawn from her much more than she had learned from him.

  The hair against her arm, now wet with death sweat, had not been ash colored then but black, with a gloss under the sun’s touch. And from the beginning his gray eyes had held a fire such as she had never seen in another’s.

  Though how limited had been her chance of knowledge of the outer world, cloistered and curtained as she had been in the Lady’s lake hall. King’s daughter she might once have been, but when her father impatiently brought her to the refuge, honoring as he said a promise to his wife lately dead, she became no more, no less, than any new sister in learning. There was no hint of rank or old blood among them.

  Having chanced upon her that day, the stranger had not left her. Oh, no. He had schemed and sworn oaths until she was bonded to him as pupil to teacher, for he had revealed himself at last to her guardians as Merlin, he who stood in the High King’s shadow but whose own shadow lay over king and land alike.

  She knew the rules of the Old Learning—it passed from man to woman, woman to man. Thus he had awakened her quick interest, fed her hopes, brought to life ambition, held before her promises which had finally led them to this place, this hour of fast speeding time.

  Quick of mind, swift of hand, she had served him very willingly. In his own place she had read lore supposedly long lost to the world, the lore of the drowned western lands. She had watched while he wrought with forces strong enough to claw them both into shreds had he not known the bindings.

  Ah, yes, she had learned, drinking in what he offered as water sinks into sand, always eager for more and more. While he tantalized her with hints and half promises of greater power to come.

  She knew what others had whispered behind their hands at the court when she had journeyed there with him at the High King’s asking—that she warmed his bed and fed his man’s appetites. But that was not so, for such lusts were no part of the kind of bond which tied them. Other men there had eyed her and had striven to make her aware of their interest. But to her they meant nothing. She was too thirsty for what her service would bring her in the end.

  In the end! The girl who was Nimuë, King’s daughter, seer’s chosen vessel of knowledge, stared down now at the man half resting against her shoulder. He had sworn to her that time itself could be tamed, brought to a halt even as one would break an unridden mount. Time was the last of the great talents to be mastered. And here and now time was her enemy—as if it were a being that sensed what she wished to do.

  “Lord!” Her voice was imperative as she thought she saw that twitch of the eyelids which signaled another small moment of consciousness, of being aware of where he was and why. Surely hate for the one who had set this doom on him must burn hot enough to give him strength—Morgause—King’s sister, Queen now to stern Lot, Mistress of dark weavings.

  That one had broken the pattern Merlin had woven for the safety of Britain, enticing the young High King to her bed, he unknowing of their shared parentage. Thus that one—Nimuë’s lips moved now as if she gathered moisture to spit—had thought to hold
Arthur under her rule in secret because she carried and birthed a child of forbidden union—an act which could blacken his name among all men.

  But Morgause had failed in her schemes, even as Merlin had failed in his plans partly because of her. When he had earlier tossed and turned here on this bed, he had often muttered in delirium, reckoning up all that had gone awry.

  To bring Arthur to birth Merlin had wrought one of the first high magics, delivering the Lady Ygraine to Uther Pendragon who wore, through Merlin’s powers, the seeming of her rightful Lord, Galoris. So it had been set by the ancient rule which was older even than Britain itself—that a woman of the noble blood of the Drowned Lands was to lie with Pendragon, born of the very stuff of Britain, and so bring forth in secret a son to hold fast the old order against the chaos of the new. But death had spread a red hand across that planning—Galoris’ death, which had set the first besmirching of the bright future Merlin strove to bring.

  And Arthur himself had failed him then—twice—once when he fell victim to Morgause and again when he had chosen Guinevere, the wrong wife.

  Nimuë frowned at the thought of Guinevere—the beautiful, the light of mind, the traitor at heart. Perhaps even yet Merlin’s cause could be served if someone kept close guard on Guinevere. While Merlin was still at court that one had feared him. Without him—was that one reason for what Morgause had done? For truly it was her poison which ate at him now.

  Some said the Queen was barren, for she had not quickened though the High King showed her all favor and shared her bed. But others looked from Arthur to Morgause and spoke of a sin which could smite a man so. Perhaps it was both—who knew what moved the Great Powers to grant or deny?

  The man Nimuë half supported sighed as if he shared that dread thought of hers. His eyes opened and for a moment he again showed that strength which had drawn her to him from the beginning.