Andre Norton - Gryphon in Glory

For a moment I was at a loss. Then, thinking back, I could not remember having sighted, since we left the Dales, any wing- borne life. The Waste was indeed a barren land. Still—why Elys should now be seeking sight of birds puzzled me.

“In such a wood—yes, there should be birds,” she repeated; her frown grew heavier.

“But—I do not remember seeing any since we came out of the Dales.”

She gave an impatient shake of the head. “Perhaps over the desert—no—there would be few to wing there. But this is a wood, a place to harbor them well. There should be birds!” She spoke emphatically, her attitude one of foreboding. Then she glanced at me.

“You did not enter there after all.”

“Jervon was right—there was a barrier. As if a keep door was closed and no visitors welcomed.”

Her frown lightened a fraction. My answer might have supplied a part answer to her puzzle.

“There is a keep of sorts, I believe, in that wood. If that be so—then the land is closed, save when those who hold it wish otherwise, it will open to their desire only.”

I did not like the idea her words conjured in my mind. “But”—I spoke my thought aloud, trying to reassure myself, perhaps have Elys agree with some hope or comfort—“I cannot be sure that it was Kerovan who camped here, who was enticed within there . . .” Even as I spoke that denial I knew that any hope of it being so was folly.

“Enticed . . .” Elys repeated thoughtfully. “No. If he entered there he did so willingly. These are not of the ones who entice, they have no need to do so. They are—strong—”

“What do you know or guess?” I demanded eagerly. “Have you then found some trace—some clue . . .”

“I only feel,” she replied. “There is Power there, but I cannot say with any truth what it is. There is no sense of ill, but neither is there any of a force that is friendly, or beneficial. It is just—Power. “ She made a small gesture of bafflement with one of her hands. “But I wish that there were birds.”

“Why?” I still could not understand her preoccupation with them. Nor why the presence—or absence—of birds might be so important.

“Because”—again she sketched that gesture of helplessness—“they would be here if all was well, judged by our own world. Without them that wood must be very silent, a secret place—too secret . . .”

Jervon called and we turned toward the camp. But she had wrought upon my imagination. As I went I found myself straining to hear a bird call—one of those things I had taken so for granted in the world I had always known that I had not been aware of such until it was missing.

Back in the campsite I looked longingly at those other saddle bags, which had been left behind by the missing traveler. If I could only rummage through them, perhaps so discover for certain that they were Kerovan’s. Yet I could not bring myself to do that. I was sure, far too sure, that this was his camp—but a small hint of hope did remain battling within me and I feared to quench it and allow the dark suspicions that prowled among my thoughts entirely free.

As I sat beside the fire Jervon had kindled I still strained to listen, hoping for the comfort of the usual noises of the world. Even those made by the grazing horses, the thud of their hooves as they moved about was a reassurance. There was also the crackling of the fire . . .

Elys had been far too right. That wood was ominously silent. Not a leaf stirred, no branch swayed. The growth was rooted like a dark green trap, set to swallow up a reckless venturer at its own time and in its own way. Behind it, now cutting off the setting sun, bulked that dark line of heights. Perhaps they stood guard on the very end of the world. One could believe any weird fancy here.

I was too restless to sit still for long. Twice I sought the small rise where I had found Elys, ever watching the wood. Only the horses moved within the oddly marked square of pasture. When I looked back over my shoulder I saw that Jervon had taken out a whetstone, was using it on his sword balde, though he continually glanced up and around with a keen measuring look such as a scout would use in unknown and perhaps dangerous territory.

Elys remained by the fire. Her back was straight, her head up, but I could see even from my perch that her eyes were closed, and still she had the attitude of one listening intensely. It was said that the Wisewomen at times were able to detach a part of their inner sense, send it questing in search of what could not be seen, felt, or heard—by the body.

Where was Kerovan? Who had he gone to deal with inside that silent wood? Why had he been welcomed within and I refused entrance? Had he arranged a meeting with one who did sentry duty there?

I was so impatient for some news of him that I could have raged in my frustration. The sun was gone, the sky was beginning to dim—though bright colors still spanned the sky with broad bands of brilliant hue.

Twilight always came to the Waste as a time of brooding evil, or so I had found it in the past. The shadows of these trees lengthened across the open meadow, crept and crawled toward us. Even as there had been in that thick mist that enclosed the ruin where I had met with my present companions, so here now grew the feeling that something—or things—used those shadows for sinister purposes, and that a threat of peril hung here.

Yet the last thing I could have done—a thing I could not force myself to think of doing—was to get to horse and ride away. Slowly, with heavy feet and a feeling of growing chill within me, I left the rise to return to the fireside. As I went I shook my head against those irrational fears—but I was not able to so rid my mind’s sensing of that brooding, watching something . . .

Jervon had put aside his stone, sheathed his sword. The world was all the more quiet when the scraping of his whetstone ceased. He came to Elys, dropped on his knees behind her. His hands went out to rest, one on each of her shoulders.

I saw her quiver at his touch, as if he had drawn her back out of some trance. Her eyes opened, yet she did not turn her head toward him.

“There is trouble?” he asked softly. I was on my feet again, looking at once to the wood.

Her eyes, though they now opened, remained blank. She did not focus on anything before her. At last one of her hands arose to close about his where it lay on her right shoulder. Again she shivered.

“If I only knew more.” Her cry held passion, even a note of despair. “Yes, there is something—something wrong—wrong—or else so different from us that there is no understanding it!”

Startled, I wheeled to look at that wood, for I thought only of it. Was Kerovan returning, perhaps accompanied by whoever dwelt here? But surely Kerovan, for all that strangeness in him since he had summoned Power (in spite of himself when he fronted Rogear and the rest), was not so unhuman as to be what Elys apparently now sensed.

“Who comes from the wood?” I demanded of her, all my fears aroused.

“Not the wood.” There was still enough of the lingering after-sunset light to see clearly what she did. She pulled out of Jervon’s hold, set both hands palm down on the earth where there was a patch bare of grass, leaving only the naked soil. There she leaned forward, her weight upon her arms and hands, while there was very strong about her that air of listening, of a need for concentration.

So tense she was that I found myself also kneeling, watching her hands against the earth as if one could expect a sudden upheaval of the soil there.

“Under”—she spoke so softly that I barely caught her whisper—“under . . .” I was sure I saw her hands whiten across the knuckles as if she exerted her full strength to hold down a force under the ground that was struggling with a matching effort to win free.