Andre Norton - Gryphon in Glory

That whistle—and the things had answered it as hounds do their master’s call. It might well be that these creatures, who had tried to pull me down, had brought me here, were tools or servants of someone else, undoubtedly infinitely more dangerous. Why they had been called off when they need only have tired me out . . . Unless . . . I weighed the gryphon in my hand. If I only knew !

I leaned one shoulder against the wall, the globe cupped against me. My encounter by battle, brief as it had been, had left me with an aching arm and a body. I was surprised to find now, shaking as if I had lately crawled out of my bed after a long illness. I realized it had been a long time, or so a gnawing within me testified, since I had eaten. Water I had found—but food to strengthen me . . .? Where in this dark hole could I hope to discover that?

The wall seemed endless as I shuffled on, my pace very slow, for I also stopped every few steps to listen, always fearing that the dark-loving creatures might not come so boldly next time, rather would creep upon me stealthily. The globe gave off a warmth that battled the chill beginning to eat into me. I kept glancing down to reassure myself of the light—which had now faded to its first dim glow. The gryphon was once more visible, its sparks of eyes seemingly raised to meet mine. Suddenly I realized that I was whispering to it.

First just Kerovan’s name—which I said over and over in a sing-song as if it were a spell that could lift me through all care and danger. I tried to raise in my mind a picture of him as I had last seen him.

What followed was—no, I cannot ever find the words to describe what happened. It was as if some energy had hurled me back against the wall with a bruising force. I had—somehow I had—linked thought for an instant with my lord!

Frantically I stared down at the gryphon, fighting to hold onto that instant of communication—to know—to feel . . . I had not been alone. He . . . it had been as if he stood beside me. If I only could once more . . .!

“If I knew—if I only knew!” I cried desperately to the gryphon. The globe was a link, but chance only had made it, and now it was gone. That it was my own ignorance that stood in the way made my heart pound, brought tears of rage to my eyes.

Rage would not help. I did not need Elys to warn me against unshielded emotion . One commanded oneself before one learned to command Power. That was part of the long training she had spoken of—years spent in learning mastery, of how to nourish talent.

Will might control talent, but one had to center will, shut away all else, put all one’s energy into forming of one’s will a weapon as strong as steel. What could I do with my will? This was the hour in which I could bring it and me to a testing—a testing that could mean life or death.

As I stood there in the hall of the wereriders I could indeed feel the touch of danger—yet this was not a threat aimed at me. No, it was something inherent in that single word Herrel of the cat-shape had uttered, the word that had burst from him when I had described the mutilated body I had discovered in a dismal oasis of the Waste.

“Thas.” It was Lord Hyron who repeated that word now, and his voice was low, hardly above a whisper. I watched, for the second time, air begin to curdle about him. Whether he willed it or not this time, his shapechange had begun. Then, perhaps because he was able to control a near-compelling emotion, he was man again.

“Watch the ground,” he said to me with the force of one delivering a necessary warning. “For the earth itself is Thas land, and they have the rule of the under surface of it. They are no friend to any who can wear that without harm!” He pointed a long forefinger at the band about my wrist. “That they are now found near here—that means matters are on the move—matters that have long been dormant.”

He shook his head until his mane of hair near blinded him with its fringe across bright eyes.

“You are neither one thing nor the other, you who call yourself Kerovan. Learn what you are, and that speedily, or you shall be reduced to nothing at all—not even bones left to dry in desert air.”

Such was the farewell the lord of the Wereriders took of me, for I was not invited to be a guest under that bush roof. I had been offered no greeting cup when I came, no stirrup cup when I left. It was as if here I was less considered than even the most humble of landsmen. I did not allow my temper to take edge from that, for I was not wishful to remain longer in a place where I could never be sure which shape those about me wore was theirs in truth.

The sun was well west when I came forth into the clearing in which that half-living keep stood. None of the Wereriders had gathered to see me off. Only he who called himself Herrel followed me out, to mount again, and stood waiting to escort me from their holding. Perhaps in some way they were as suspicious of me as I was of them. My last sight of the keep showed me that the branches that clothed its upper stories were waving as energetically as if storm-tossed, while from them numerous small shapes sprang outward, heading in great racing leaps for the wood. Did they go to hunt by night, I wondered, as I trudged beside Herrel’s shadow-dappled mount? Or were they to form another part of my escort? I sensed in them a source of peril I did not understand, but thought it prudent that I be wary of them.

Once more we threaded that path through the wood. This time the gloom had deepened until now and then I stumbled, half-blinded by the dusk, though neither Herrel nor his mount had any difficulty in keeping the trail. It crossed my mind that those of the feline breed had excellent night sight, so that this man who could will to be a furred, fanged hunter on four paws might well share that sense.

I speculated, as we went in silence, as to how it might feel to be a shapechanger, to taste at desire another kind of life far divorced from that I myself awoke to each morning. Did the instincts and thoughts of a man remain alive in the mind of the beast, or were such dulled and forgotten after one endured the change? Was there in truth a real alteration of body, or was that only a forceful hallucination which the Weres were able to impress upon others? Had I indeed seen Hyron as an actual stallion ready to savage me. or just what I was meant to see?

So musing, I tried to recall such legends of the Weres as the Dalesmen knew. But all our stories were so old, so overlaid with the horror of people who had faced such a mixture of nature, that I really knew very little. I would have liked to have questioned Herrel—asked him what it meant to he two different natures fused into one. In my own way was I not this also? Did he ever consider himself so apart from normal mankind as to be cursed, walled off from any small pleasure of life? No—that burden would not touch one who walked among his own kin, who had the comradeship of those who shared his own talent, if one could call it that. Also I knew better than to ask such questions of a stranger.

Our winding path so disguised the length of the journey that I was not sure how close we were to the outermost part of the tree wall when there came a thin, high chittering from the left. It was the first sound other than the faint thud of hooves and the scarcely heard pad of my own feet to break the silence.

“Wait!” Herrel reined up.

I, who was behind him on the narrow path, obeyed his order. He leaned forward, his head turned a little toward the nearest of the tree branches.

Again, imperative, came that sound. I heard Herrel whistle—not that command note that he had used to stay the panic of my horses, but rather as if he summoned.