Gryphon in Glory (Witch World (High Hallack Series)) Page 18

  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!

  Kerovan

  THAT JOISAN WAS HERE BESIDE THE WHITE HIGHWAY OF THE OLD ones—not trapped in dark and danger—was the only thought that filled my mind. Then she was in my arms, and I held her with such a grip as would keep her sale against the worst the Dark might send against us—so would I keep her as long as my strength lasted.

  She was crying, her face wet with tears, as her hands closed on my shoulders in a grasp I could feel even through my mail. I forgot all the thoughts that had ridden me through long hard days, as i bent my head to find her lips, tasting the salt of her tears. A fire arose and raged through me as we so clung, forgetting all else but each other.

  Only such moments cannot last. I loosed her a little, remembering who I was and why this great joy might not continue for me. This was a time when once more I must don inner armor, not for my protection, but hers.

  If my hold loosened, hers did not. She only pushed back a fraction so that she might look directly into my face as her sobs came as ragged and uneven breaths.

  “Kerovan—truly Kerovan . . .” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper.

  Kerovan—my name completed the breaking of the spell. I moved to put her away from me but she would not let me. Rather she shook her head from side to side as might a child who refuses to give up something upon which she has set her heart's desire.

  “No, you shall not leave me again! You were here—now you try to go—but you shall not!”

  I was here? What did she mean? Then the warmth still consuming me made that plain. The husk that had been Kerovan now held life. All my good intentions, my knowing this was wrong, that I was tainted—they were threatened by that warmth, by her words . . .

  Setting my teeth I raised my hands to her wrists. By main strength I must break her hold, push her away from me. Still she shook her head. Now she also writhed in my hold, fought me as if she had been one of the tawny cats.

  “No!” Her denial arose louder. “Do you not understand? You shall never be free of me—you cannot. We—we must be—”

  Her voice faltered. I do not know what expression my face wore, but hers became one of growing despair. Then her shoulders slumped, her hands went limp in my grasp. It was she who edged away.

  “Let me go,” she said in a low voice. “I shall not trouble you so again. I thought that . . .” Her voice trailed off; she raised one hand to smear it across her cheeks. Then she flung back her head, tossing her disordered hair out of her eyes, away from her face.

  I could not answer, it took all my resolution to curb the rebellious desire within me. I could only stand—alone. Her chin lifted, strength of purpose shone from her eyes. There was that in her carriage, her voice—such will and self-confidence—which would provide a safeguard as strong as the armor and leather she wore.

  “I have no pride,” she said, even when every inch of her taut, straight body, proclaimed her right to that. “I listen to your voice saying, ‘You are not my lady, I have no wish to be your lord'—but I cannot accept those words as a woman should. So I come after you because—only with you, Kerovan, am I a person in whom I can believe. Therefore, if you deny me again, and ride on for whatever mission Imgry has set you—and how is it that such as he dares say ‘do this and do that’ to you—I shall follow. Even if you are sworn to his service.”

  As she studied me through slightly narrowed eyes, I could not even yet find the power of tongue to answer her. If I could not command my inner self, how then could I man my defenses against her? Not with this wild mutiny growing within me.

  I shook my head, glad in a small way to be able to answer a lesser question.

  “I swore no oath.” I found those words easily enough. “I came at my own will. Had it not been my choice I would not have ridden forth.”

  Perhaps then, because I was so glad to find an excuse not to meet her p
ersonal challenge. I spoke of my mission—of what Imgry had learned about Alizon's search for a “power.”

  To my relief she listened with growing interest.

  “And what success have you had in marshalling any of the Waste?”

  I told her of the Wereriders.

  “So—and now whom do you seek?” she asked.

  J drew a ragged breath and shook my head. Instead I told her of my return to my camp, of the devastation I found there. At my mention of Elys and Jervon, she put out her hands, catching at my arm.

  “Then they live—were left above ground! I thought—I hoped— that might be so.”

  I had a question of my own. “Where were you?”

  She moved back a little, her hands busy now with her hair. For the first lime I became aware of a rising wind, the fact that the sun had gone behind clouds. She frowned at the sky.

  “There is a storm coming. You can feel it in the air. Up there"—she pointed to the rough, steep slope—"there is shelter— come!”

  I could find no reason to refuse. Leading the mare and the pony. I followed her. For the first time I remembered the cats. There was no sign of them now.

  The ascent was not an easy one, and above the clouds grew ever thicker and darker. As we rounded the side of a wall and entered into a courtyard the first drops of rain began to fall. Lashes of lightning cracked across the sky to the west. The roll of thunder was heavier than the nimble of Alizon war machines crowding through the throat of some narrow dale.

  I loosed the pack pony and the mare from their burdens, Joisan stooped to catch up a share of the bags and packs, helping to draw these into a dark chilly hall. She caught at a smaller pack from the pony.

  “Elys's thought—I am glad of this. But where is she? And Jervon? Did you send them away—or did they deem me dead and . . .”

  “It was when we came to that road. Only this morning she said that they would travel no farther—for some reason that was forbidden. A Wisewoman who carries a sword is a thing I had never heard of. She cannot be of the Dales—'’

  “If it were meant that they should not come, she would know, of course. No, she is not of the Dales—nor the Waste either— her parents came from a wreck on the coast. And, though she was born here, her blood is strange.”

  Gloom of near-night darkness came quickly with the rush of rain outside. Her face was only a blur to me.

  “She has power,” Joisan was continuing. “And Jervon"—for a moment she paused, then continued in an even tone—"he accepts her for what she is. He is not the less in her eyes, nor she the greater in his. They are two halves well-fitted together to form something stronger than either, This may not happen easy or often, but when it does . . . Ah. then it is as if both have found a treasure—a treasure beyond dreams of other men!”

  There was a ring of something close to defiance in her tone. I knew I must not confront her again on this subject, which lay heavy in both our minds. Instead I asked once more what had happened after the earth swallowed her.

  So I heard the strange tale of her being caught in thick dark and hunted through that dark by the Thas. Also of how the gryphon had been her salvation.

  “I do not know just how it was awakened to my aid. Somehow the strength of my will, my need, brought it to life. It was the light that showed me the door into a place—a very strange place.”

  She spoke then of a chamber wherein lay a maze of low waHs, of how she had won to the center of that having perceived a pattern. In the middle she had taken refuge and fallen asleep—or into the web of another sorcery—and had awakened outside this keep.

  “There was fruit and water here . . .” Before I could move she dashed out again into the courtyard, returned near as swiftly, laughing and shaking raindrops from her hair, bringing with her a melon, which she dumped on the floor between us.

  “Give me your knife. Mine—all my weapons—were taken from me in the dark.” Joisan plucked my knife from the belt sheath to slash open the melon. She pressed half of it into my hands.

  The fruit was sweet, filled with juice—better than I could ever remember eating—bringing comfort to my mouth and throat. I produced in turn a cake of journey bread which we also shared—Joisan having gone to wash her hands in the fall of water beyond the door, shaking them as dry as she could.

  “There are more of these—and berries, water plants—I did not go hungry once I reached here.”

  “And the cats?”

  Joisan had settled herself cross-legged beside me, well within touching distance, only her hands lay loosely together on one knee. She made no move to reach out to me.

  “Yes, the cats. You may not believe this, Kerovan, but those two are not animals as we know them. They understand one's thoughts and speech and mind-speak in return. There is—was, for I have not seen him since my first coming—also a small bear who can do likewise. The cats told me to wait, that one was coming. I climbed the tower and saw the road. But I wonder . . .” I saw her lift one hand now and regard it closely. Then she held out that hand to me and asked a question.

  “Kerovan, you have been much more up and down the Dales than I. Have you seen the like of this before?”

  I could see, even through the storm gloom, that there was a ring on one finger of the hand she had raised. Though I did not want—feared now—any touch contact with her, I did take that hand in mine and brought it closer that I might see the ring.

  The stone was an irregularly shaped gem of some kind. And, oddly enough, once I had taken her hand in mine it became more visible, so that I could see the hue of the stone (if stone it truly was). It was unlike any color I had seen—both rose and yellow—the colors melting into one another.

  “Kerovan!”

  I did not need that alerting cry of my name. I had taken her hand in my right one. On my wrist, the band half-hidden by the drooping of the mail shirt was bright and clear, shining so that its light reached the strange ring and seemed to feed the gem. Thus its own glow grew the greater.

  Joisan freed herself from the hold I had unintentionally tightened, brought her hand and the ring up breast high so that the gem near-touched the crystal gryphon. But there was no reaction from that talisman and Power-holder.

  She put up the fingers of her other hand as if she would catch at the gem-set hoop, tear it off, and then she stopped.

  “It contains no harm, I think . . .” she said slowly. “Perhaps you cannot see it clearly. But the stone itself is shaped in the form of a cat's head, though it was not cut so by men. The cats—”

  “You are sure they are real?”

  “Not hallucinations? You saw them for yourself—they are as real as this!” She held out her hand once again. “Did you believe them illusions when they stopped you on the road?”

  “No.” I was sure—whatever those two beasts might be, whomever they might serve (if servants they were)—I was certain they were real. I had been led to this place for a purpose even as Elys had suggested. I wanted to banish that conclusion, but I could not.

  “Where did you gel that?”

  She told me of her explorations of the ruined keep in which we now sheltered, of a barred door—barred on the outside— where within until she had, as she said, “let the years in,” there had existed a reminder of the past in furnishings. And of how all had vanished into dust before her eyes, leaving only the ring in a pool of sunlight.

  It was such a tale as a songsmith might devise, but I believed every word of it.

  “I have never seen its like . . .” I began slowly. “This"—I fingered the wrist band—"suggests it has some tie with Power.”

  “There are many things in the Waste—is that not what our legends always say? Somehow I think that this was meant—” She glanced at me—or at least she turned her head a fraction in my direction though it was too dark to see her expression. “Was meant,” she repeated, “to be found when the door was opened. But why such a spell was ever laid and its meaning . . .”

  “It is not of the Dark.
”

  “I know,” she agreed simply, her hand once more caressing the gryphon at her breast. “This would have warned me. It is very beautiful—and strange—and the way that it came . . . I feel it is a gift.”

  There was a hint of defiance in her tone as if she believed that I would urge her to throw the ring from her. But that was not in my thoughts. There had been so little of beauty for Joisan since she and her people had fled Ithdale—and perhaps even during the years before. I had been able to give her no bride gift except the gryphon—and that too had come by chance out of the Waste. I wished for a moment of sorrow that the ring had been my gift, also—a thing for her to cherish.

  I had searched blindly for Joisan and I had found her—no thanks to any real effort of my own. Such fortune was only barely possible. That I had been helped, or guided, in the right direction by some other intelligence—that explanation seemed to me a little more credible. That was a bitter conclusion and one I did not want to accept. I . . . perhaps we . . . were caught up in—in whose web . . . and why?

  That we must remain together from now on I must also probably accept, for I was now without any guide to take us out of the Waste and I could not let her go alone—in fact I knew she would not.

  Which meant I must speedily regain my inner armor, make myself believe that any close feeling between us was wrong, that if I yielded now—the easy choice—it would be worse for her.

  I remained wary of even the smallest hint of surrender to that other self. I had fought so hard to contain my desires, my longings. Even now that struggle rose anew in me and I ached throughout my body for Joisan to come into my arms once more.

  By her own efforts, and with no help from me, she had escaped worse danger than I had faced for a long time. I did not want to think ahead—that we two might be led into new perils. As my thoughts so twisted and curled, and I forced them into hard conclusions, she spoke again.

  “This is not a place of peace, such as one finds even in the Dales. I was in one of those once, Kerovan—the night Toross brought me out of the invaders’ hands at the taking of Ithdale. That was a place of wonder . . . and he died there. So I have always known in my heart that he rests easy. This does not hold anything except many years of time's dust. Still we are safe here—as the cats promised. Do you not also feel that is so?”