The Hands of Lyr (Five Senses Series Book 1) Read online

  THE HANDS OF LYR

  ANDRE NORTON

  The Hands of Lyr Copyright © 1995, 2000, 2016 Andre Norton

  eBook edition published 2016 by Worldbuilders Press, a service of the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency

  Cover art by Matt Forsyth

  SEARCHING

  In the heart of the stone came a nodule of light which seemed to grow like some noxious plant.

  Nosh screamed. One of those gathered there struck out at her cupped hands, the force of the blow sending the stone spinning out of her grasp.

  Nosh nursed her hands against her breast. Tears of pain squeezed from her now open eyes. She was aware dimly that Kryn had moved—it must have been his blow which had loosened her from that bondage. For that thing would have held her until its questing fastened directly upon her—that she knew. And she cowered, folding down in near a ball.

  Her voice shrilled into a shriek. “It seeks!”

  Recipient of the World Fantasy Convention’s Life Achievement Award

  ANDRE NORTON

  “A SUPERB STORYTELLER”

  The New York Times Book Review

  THE HANDS OF LYR

  “Norton once again creates

  a mystical yet credible world,

  inhabited by engaging protagonists,

  dastardly villains, and fetching creatures.”

  Hackensack Record

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  INTERLUDE

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  INTERLUDE

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  The Ryft was desolation, a seared scar rendered so by the brute force of men and the curse of Black power. Above, grey clouds roiled endlessly; any trace of sun, winning through by chance, brought neither warmth nor healing to barren earth long lost to life. The river which divided the Ryft into nearly equal parts was a sullen, twisting stream, its shores entangled now and then with skeletons of short-lived reeds.

  There remained still marks of what had existed here—tumbled foundation stones of once snug garths, small but prosperous manors. Dark splotches created memories of former orchards, the trees now only charred butts, long burned.

  To the north loomed the Heights of Askad, that pass cutting them showing like the slice left by a great war sword. Once the Great Highway had run there, but during the last frantic struggle between defender and invader the cliffs themselves had been summoned by shadowy and forbidden means to choke that passage, burying men and animals alike in rubble to close the way.

  Westward was a snarl of cliffs, clefts, caves, peaks—a wild and haunted country upon which man might never have set seal of ownership. To the east was another stretch of Heights, not so forbidding once on a time, but now displaying the stolidness of a keep wall—imprisoning the Ryft. Southward—yes, the remains of the old Highway wound there but the river was gulped down by a chasm and what lay beyond was desert without the water that had once meant sustenance for travelers.

  She had been waiting since before dawn, that bone thin woman in a much-mended robe as grey now with age and the grime, which not even the most strenuous attempts to cleanse it loosened, as the rocks among which she half sheltered.

  Wind crossed the Ryft, not bringing any scent of growing things, rather a faint taint of old death and forgotten fires. It stirred the flap of the hood which lay back across the watcher’s shoulders, pulled at the ragged wisps of grey hair which had been knife hacked short but which fringed in her grey-brown face until she lifted an impatient hand to push them away.

  No beauty in that face—the nose was the beak of a winged hunter, the eyes were deep set, the mouth a slit narrowed sternly to repress. Yet here was life alone in the Ryft—life and an impeccable purpose housed in one skeleton stick of a body.

  She faced north as she had been doing since the first lightening of dawn, searching with eyes still keen, also with that inner sense which perhaps was rusty from lack of use for so many years. Her mouth tightened even more. Yes! There could be no denying what was coming—after so long—so very long!

  Movement afar, some small dots of figures were emerging onto the black stretch of the Highway where it left the Pass of Askad behind. Not soldiers…

  She who had once been named Dreen, when there were those still living to call her so, twisted her hands in the braided rope which formed her girdle. Her pale tongue showed between her lips, moistening them. Ready…

  But, once that stumbling procession advanced farther down the Highway, she edged swiftly back into a crevice between two upstanding rocks. Having drawn up her hood and pressed herself against the stone which was the same color as her robe, she stood completely motionless, so was lost to any but the keenest and most searching sight.

  Nosh wavered forward step by stumbling step. Soon, she thought dimly, she was going to fall. And today there was no Ilda to urge her up. She gulped but she was too worn and wrung to cry. Her eyes were fixed, not upon the pair of children plodding hopelessly ahead, rather she saw what had broken her at their dawn rising—the blood, the dusty, matted strip of hair.

  Ilda must have crawled out of Nosh’s sleep-loosened embrace, slid from beneath the scrap of blanket they shared, venturing out of the campsite to relieve herself, for she had been ailing with cramps for the day. Then, when Nosh aroused at the sounds of sighs and moans of the awakening camp, to go a-hunting…The wakwolves had found this pitiful band of refugees easy prey, picking off a night’s rations at their desires.

  They were children, all of them, stumbling in that lagging hopeless march. Once, Nosh could not remember now how long ago, they had been gathered together, given shelter of a sort, food—her stomach ached when she thought of food…She had met Ilda there and they had bonded, as did all the children sooner or later.

  Then the soldiers had come. There had been spears and swords and those who had striven to save the children were cut down. Like a herd of small animals their charges had been driven out, followed, killed if they lagged. She and Ilda had wondered often why they had not been slain at once like Haggeen and Farker and the rest of those who had tried to shelter them. But for some reason, known only to these who rode bony horses and wore rusted armor, they had been merely set in motion, sent marching south.

  For some reason, as unknown as that which started them on this cruel journey, their herders provided them with a small measure of meal, and they had caught rock lizards, torn lichens free from rocks to eat. Though some of those killed rather than assuaged the ever-present hunger.

  Three days ago they had reached a blockage of the Highway where a wall of fallen rock provided barrier. There their guard had halted but urged them on and because they had no other place to go, they did.

  Few of them were left; Nosh could not count the survivors. She did not even care. Ilda was gone and soon she, also, would feel teeth at her throat and know the death wh
ich comes to helpless prey.

  She became aware that there was no longer any struggle up and over rocks. Instead the Highway was clear and open and reached downward at a gentle slope. She had straggled even farther behind but that meant nothing to her now. She did not even know why she kept on, yet something in her gave her a whisper of strength and set her forward.

  Then she stepped upon a sharp edge of stone. Her ragged sandals had long since worn away and the sudden pain of that jerked her back into the here and now. There was water—a river ahead. The foremost of their small company had reached its banks. She dropped into the dust and rubbed her foot. Looking along the down-slope to that curl of water. She was thirsty.

  “Alnosha!”

  The child’s head jerked about. Had she heard that low call, or had she only thought it? No one had given her that name for a long, long time—how long she could not remember.

  “Alnosha!”

  Surely that call came from the rocks beside the Highway. But no one, not even Ilda, had known her as anything but Nosh.

  “I am”—some instinct of wariness made her answer—“Nosh.”

  The tall rock moved. No, it was a person, a woman in a long robe the same color as the stones.

  “You are Alnosha,” the woman said and knelt beside her; taking from a pouch at her belt a small greenish cake, she forced it into Nosh’s half-reluctant hand.

  “Eat, child.”

  The cake had an odd smell but Nosh crunched it between her teeth, tearing off a great mouthful as if she feared this treasure might be snatched from her. The woman had taken up the child’s foot and was touching with care the bruise rising from the stone.

  “No skin break, that is good. This land is poisoned; sometimes even the dust can bring death. But we do not need to linger here, Alnosha. There is already a place prepared for you.”

  Before the small girl could move, the woman, with strength one might have thought beyond her spare figure, swept her up and was carrying her.

  “They—the others—help for them?” Some dim memory, near leached out of her by the death march, made her remember the rest.

  “There are many fates spun by Lyr, little one. I have only knowledge of one; I can only offer aid at Her command. Those others must finish out their own life weaving as She has set it. For you, Alnosha, there is here a new pattern.”

  She wove a way among standing rocks until she came to a site where there had once been walls set and these had remained largely in place though they were stained by fire marks. There were still two stout rooms, remaining walled and roofed.

  Faint traces of paint could be seen in the curves of complicated carvings on those walls. There was a pallet made of woven reed mats against that wall which bore a curve of crystal, part of the rock itself. The woman placed Nosh on the pallet.

  She moved with her quick stride to a corner where there was a stone chest, shoving with her hand until its lid slid along and gave her an opening through which she brought out a packet of dried leaves.

  Nosh finished the cake, licking the last of the crumbs carefully from her dirty fingers. She did not ask for more—there had never been a second helping of any rations given her in the past.

  The woman crumbled one of the leaves from her bundle, rubbing it carefully between the palms of her hands as if those were millstones and she were grinding meal. Then she took the dusty fragments in one palm and reached for a gourd from which she dribbled water onto what she held to form a paste. Having mixed this to her satisfaction, she came back to Nosh.

  “Let us tend this, child.” Her fingers patted the paste over the bruise. Once done she sat back on her heels to meet the girl eye to eye.

  “I am Dreen,” she said. “In these years that is all the name I claim.”

  “You live here?” Nosh’s curiosity had awakened from the stupor of the early morning.

  “Here and abouts,” Dreen returned somewhat evasively. “And now you shall also, little one. For She has so decreed it.”

  “She?” questioned Nosh.

  Dreen’s stern mouth quirked as if she would smile and yet could not remember the way of it.

  “Our Lady Lyr, little Alnosha. But you will learn all about that in future. For now it is one thing at a time. Such as a good dollop of faxchon stew.”

  There was a fire burning in one corner of the room set on a well-built hearth and from a kettle slung over the low flame there came a smell which made Nosh swallow. Dreen used a ladle to fill a bowl carved from stone, but so well that its sides appeared no thicker than might those of an earthenware pot. Its rim gleamed with a ring of silver and there were more of the worn carvings over its outside.

  Nosh took it carefully in both hands. The heat of it felt comforting. She could guess it was still too hot to mouth but she turned it around and around, striving so to cool it until she dared attempt to try the contents.

  Like the warmth on her hands, so did the thick substance in her mouth, sliding down her throat, bring a new feeling she could not yet put name to and which was like a blanket about her shoulders against the chill thrust of the wind.

  She gulped it all, for the portion was small, and then, without any manners, polished the interior with her tongue, striving not to miss the last possible taste.

  Dreen had left her eating and was moving about. She had returned the bundle of soothing herb leaves to the chest, closed it, and now she had gone to the opposite side of the room. Here a ledgelike slab, apparently hewn also of stone, jutted out of the wall, supported on the outer corners by pillar legs of rock. Arranged along the back of this table were a number of thick books, their outer covers much worn, so that the leather that covered the thin sections of protecting wood was scuffed and torn in places.

  Books—Nosh knew what they were. Once—yes, once she had seen some like those. They were—they were being thrown into a great fire. And there were soldiers there and—and one in red and black….

  Her breath caught as that memory stirred. Books— many soldiers came and others—and they—killed.

  First the books and then the round-faced man in the ink-splattered green robe. His features made for gentleness and laughter, now a mask of terror. They had…thrown him also. She had tried to scream and a hand had closed over her mouth, cruelly gagging her as she was wrenched away into darkness.

  When that darkness had lifted she had been in the half-roofed hut with Ilda and she had fought memory, living only for the hour that was now, looking no day ahead and no day back.

  “They burn books,” she said. Dreen should be warned; the woman had been good to her. Maybe she did not know what horrors followed possessing books.

  Dreen, standing by the table, her hand outstretched to take one of those volumes, looked over her shoulder at Nosh.

  “Yes. Books are knowledge, child, the distilling of knowledge from many minds and times. If they can be destroyed, then much that should be known is lost. Yes, those with whom you have been burn books.”

  “They can come here…” Nosh tried to make her warning clearer.

  “They will have no reason. All who dwelt here are now dead. I do not think we shall see invaders again. He who sent them has done the worst that his power would allow him to accomplish. These books remain and you, Alnosha, shall learn of them—for it cannot be otherwise. I dreamed the reaching dream, and you came even as I saw you would do.”

  And thus it was that Nosh began indeed a new weaving and there came a second life into the Ryft. Hard as their existence was, she grew and learned—and not the least—discovered her gift.

  CHAPTER 2

  In spite of all the lamps in the wall brackets, the torch standards, the great hall below was murky and the coils of throat-drying incense smoke gathered in a fog-cloud. Kryn kept the moistened cloth tight in his left hand, using it at closer and closer intervals to mask his mouth and nose, his only weapon against some whooping sneeze which might or might not catch the attention of someone in that crowd around the altar below.

  H
e had inched out on this beam two hours since, using the one chance when the priests were at their evening meal and so the guardianship of the inner shrine was but a formality. After all, who dared the wrath of the Voice of Zellon to invade the sanctuary in such a heretical fashion?

  The weight of the novice’s robe, which he had used all his cunning born of the teaching of woodcraft hunting to snag from a hook, wrapped him too snugly—it was hot here but he dared not make any move to relieve the ache of joints. His perch already made his head swim and he fought to keep under the sour sickness which surged upward from his belly into the back of his raw throat.

  Sick—yes, he was sick—ill from more than just the heavy taint of the incense, the heat, the height from which he must look down at the shame of his House. His House—on his lean boy’s face his lips drew back to show teeth as might those of a threatened wakwolf cub.

  Would they never be done with that harsh chant which punished the ears? Yes, they were giving this occasion all the ceremony they could think to summon. It was not every day that the Voice could bring down one of the remaining High Houses. This was a triumph for Valcur indeed, one he would want to draw out to the fullest extent. Back, row on row, in the hall, their attention all for the altar, were those he would bend to his will.

  Kryn blinked as he noted the blue tabards of Zine, the black and green of Goran, the rust red of Jaspar. Let them watch—were they too blind to understand that what was to happen to Qunion now would not long be withheld from encompassing them in turn?

  There—there—he forced his eyes to center on that fourth patch of color—rich brown of his own wearing. He swallowed quickly and wiped the cloth across his smarting eyes as well as his tingling nose. Kryn had no wish to see THOSE any better.

  The chanting halted on a sharp upward note. That miter-crowned and awesomely robed figure moved out to stand before the altar. He turned, with great ceremony, to salute the altar itself—there was no embodiment of statue or symbol here—the All Knowing and All Being was not to be so reduced in the eyes of His servants.