Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

“We do not know how much Garth Howell’s plans suffered when you called down those nature forces upon them, Firdun, but I will not believe that they have been greatly overborne by the loss of a couple of sacrifices. That they are willing to spill blood is a dire warning, and we must set up guards against them.”

Neevor looked along the line, though his gaze did not reach Fir-dun at the end—it could not. “Those of the Gryphon have been foretold. Now I say unto you, make secure all your defenses, and at the same time seek new ways to bend your talents. Those of Reeth will come and others, and in the end you will make a stout stand.”

But would it be enough to hold—to reduce Garth Howell to what it had been for years: a place of knowledge? Firdun remembered too well that handsome face turning evil eyes upon him and the thickness of Power which clothed the mage tighter even than his red robe.

Broken strings trailed from the hand harp and Aylinn rubbed the cramping fingers of one hand against the other. She was not even sure that she was in the same room, for this one was a mass of debris, smashed bottles, broken jars, and a cough-inducing smell where one of the braziers had fallen and was bringing to sparking flames twisted lines of drying herbs.

Her head ached and she felt as if she had been picked up and tossed aside by some force who had no possible kinship with human life. As she looked around at the wild destruction of months of work, she felt first the heat of anger, then the deadening force of frustration. For there was certainly nothing she could blame for this sudden chaos. Unleashed Power of an extent she would not have been able to imagine had it not struck before her. Who? Where?

“Aylinn—Aylinn, are you all right?”

The girl looked now to the doorway. Kethan, her foster brother, seemed to sway a little as he stood there. There was a cut over one of his gold-brown eyes which had begun to dribble blood in a crooked path down his face.

She pressed her hands against the moonsign on her breast from which she was never separated. Somehow she managed to free her wits from that maddening whirl which had struck without warning.

“What? Who?” she asked.

Kethan took a step within the triangular room of the Star Tower to plant his shoulders against the wall as if he still needed some support.

“Wild magic,” he answered her hoarsely. “No control!”

“Aylinn! Kethan!” The woman who pushed in to face them both gave one look at what lay before her. Both of her hands flew to her lips as if to stifle some moan of loss.

Aylinn got unsteadily to her feet. “I—I was just trying to harp and then—Who has done this?”

“It had no imprint of our knowing.” The man whose hands fell on the woman’s shoulders to steady her spoke with a voice which was hardly far above a snarl. “And it was not centered upon us. Were that so, Reeth, I think, would have ceased to be.” For a moment the outline of his body wavered in their sight; it might be that a great snow leopard stood hind-legged half embracing their mother. But Herrel of the Weres brought his rage swiftly under control.

Kethan picked up a small bowl which had miraculously survived being pitched halfway across the room. “Wild magic,” he said slowly. “Could this”—he made a small gesture to indicate the room—“have been… called?”

“Gillan?” Herrel looked to his lady.

The shock of loss was beginning to lighten a little from her face. “It is true that Power attracts Power. But all here is of Green Magic, born of the earth, and such should not draw such destruction.”

She stooped and began to gather together the lines of drying herbs, pulling them with a quick jerk away from where some of the brittle leaves had begun to smolder. Aylinn quickly laid aside the ruined harp and began to start the cleanup of that debris-covered floor from her side of the room. Kethan stepped past her to return a now-empty case of shelves to its place against the wall. But Herrel was prowling back and forth, in and out of the door, his soft-footed strides like those of a caged beast.

Each in that room controlled his or her own form of power and was fairly sure of its limits. But as far as Herrel knew they had no enemies. True, he had left the Werebrothers when he had gone with Gillan, whom they deemed “witch” in their foolish ignorance.

But when they had been led to Reeth—for both of them would always be sure that was what had brought them, a purpose which they did not yet understand—his power took another turn, one meant to foster life instead of fanged death. And Gillan seemed to become more and more before his eyes one of the fabled Green Ladies who had once walked the Great Wood of Arvon.

Aylinn, who was daughter and yet not daughter, being foisted unknowingly upon them at her birthing, turned easily to the Moon Magic and had twice gone to shrines apart to study. But the were line held in Kethan—though he had been stolen to be raised as a keep lord—and when the time came he had found his way to his parents through a peril so ancient it might have existed even before the Old Ones walked the land.

But what they held, they held in prudence and for good—to heal, to grow with the Light. Reeth itself had not only welcomed them but held them in a strange kinship of learning as the years had passed. Perhaps they had grown too trusting, believing that the outer world fared as well as they did. Herrel snarled. Once he had been a fighter both with sword and claw. If the Dark arose again, he could bring back memories of those old skills.

It took them three days of labor to clear Gillan’s cabinet of lost harvests and reset the shelves. It was too late in the year to replace some that were gone. And it would take several growth seasons to replace what had been lost.

Herrel and Kethan took turns to roam on were nights, always seeking some answer as to what threatened. They made contact with those of the Gray Tower, Hyron, Herrel’s sire, himself seeking them out but with no addition to the guesses which they all voiced from time to time.

Doggedly they spent their days wood-seeking with Gillan and Aylinn for what rarities they might find growing. And Gillan combed her garden, only to sort leaves, stems, and flowers with sighs.

However, they were gathered together in the growing gloom of night when the first of their answers came. They had not lit the lamps, for there was a full moon tonight and Aylinn sat in the outer door, her head back, her slim young body nearly bare to its coming rays.

There was a curdling of light on the nearest path of the herb garden. Its appearance brought them all to their feet. Yet none of their many safeguards had reacted to it. Therefore, perhaps, they could safely think of it as a thing of the Light.

Now Kethan could distinguish the outline of a form within it, seeming to draw the light and so solidify. But only the face at last looked out at them.

“Ibycus!” Kethan could never forget the one who had given him his pard belt, made him free to be what he was: a were of weres, and perhaps more after he passed through the ordeal set by his enemies.

The face in the mist smiled, the outline of the head nodded.

“Greetings to the kin of Reeth.” The voice was almost as musical as the tones Aylinn had been once able to draw from her ruined harp.

Herrel took a step forward. “I take it, Ancient One, that there is trouble.”

Ibycus gave a soft chuckle. “Straight to the point as always, Herrel. Nor is our world ever free of trouble. As yet we know not what we face—save it has set astir much we hoped would continue to sleep. There was magic—in the far east—

“The Dales?” questioned Gillan. She had spent what had then seemed long dull seasons there, but there were those who had been kind and she wished no ill for them.