Andre Norton - Gryphon in Glory

Since they had stopped and now were settling in a seated position, I felt slightly foolish to be holding bared steel and thrust my sword back into its sheath. Their behavior was certainly not that of ordinary animals. I reminded myself once again to expect anything in the Waste. Also they were certainly not as formidable as—

“Do not be too sure of that!”

The cats had not made a sound since their initial squalls. Nor were those words sounds. They had formed in my head, and came as a clear answer to a thought I had held! In spite of my belief that the Waste could hold any surprise, I found it startling now to have my mind invaded by a coherent message—and it must have originated from one of the animals, now regarding me round-eyed.

“What do you want of me?” I strove to form that as a mind-question and then discovered it was far easier to ask it aloud.

“Nothing.” The reply was both clear and curt.

“Nothing? But you cried—you came . . .”

The smaller of the cats, a female, turned her head a fraction to look back over her shoulder at the slope down which she and her mate had just descended.

“We want nothing. Wait—you shall learn who does.”

Wait? For whom? That the cats might be allied with some other Waste dweller was not out of reason. I glanced at my wrist band. The metal was still warm; however, the flame I thought I had seen in play was no longer there. I was sure that I had not received a warning of evil to come, rather it had been another message—perhaps a recognition of another Power.

I slipped from the saddle and stretched. That saddle was not an easy perch for my heavier body. Both the mare and the pony watched the cats, but I detected no sign of fear such as my desert mounts had displayed at the coming of the Wererider.

“How long must I wait?” I asked after a moment.

Now the other cat also turned his head to look up-slope. I saw there a wavering of brush, as if someone, or something, was fighting a path through tough growth. A figure burst into the open, running and dodging among piles of stone that marked old ruins. From this distance it appeared human enough. Though that also could mean nothing. It was well known that many of the Old Ones were human in appearance, enough so that they could couple successfully with Dale folk and produce offspring such as myself. Was it not true that my mother’s clan had been rumored to have had such ancestry, and it was not only her sorcery that had warped my body, but also her blood?

The runner sped from the last fringe of taller growth and sprinted now through the grass that grew tall enough to brush those flashing legs knee high. Sun glinted on mail. But above that—a tangle of long hair was bunched into ragged braids flopping across slender shoulders. A woman!

Elys? But how . . . ? That first explanation went in a flash. This hair was not the black strands of the wise warrior-woman. It held the deep red-brown of autumn leaves in the high country. Only one had such hair—only—

I was running too, not aware of it until my boot snagged on a grass-hidden root and I nearly sprawled full-length upon the ground. Then I heard my own voice cry, as loud as the screams of those black birds of ill-omen.

“Joisan!”

I squeezed closer to the opening in the window, leaned as far forward as I could to view the ribbon of white road that ran along the lowlands. From my vantage point, which was, of course, well removed, that highway appeared untouched by time. I expected to see riders—travelers along it. Save that, for the stretch I was able to view, it was bare of any traffic at all. Still the road itself was, in a manner, reassuring. If—or when—surely, it was when —I decided to leave this refuge and take up my journey again (though I had no idea in which direction I would go) that would be a guide.

Now I strove to study the slope descending to the plain across which that road so boldly ran. There were a number of upstanding outcrops of stone, which I believed marked other ruins, even more decayed by the action of time than that in which I stood. I wondered if this had been a fortress of greater extent than it first appeared. The narrow windows on this outer wall suggested that those who had built it might have had reason to fear some attack from the north. However, for me now, the road was more important than piles of old stone blocks.

I made the rounds of the three other sides of the tower, attempting to view more of the keep itself and its surroundings here on the upper ridge. On the courtyard side the vines had grown too thickly for me to break any peephole through. My attempts to do so brought shrill cries from the birds, a wild thrashing in the vines, so I left off such assault. To the east there was merely another drop—though this lay farther away. What lay below there showed a yellow patch, reminding me of the desert through which we had made our way into the Waste. To the west lay the long ridge, widening well out from the point on which the keep had been built. There were the remains of walled Fields, more shells of buildings, a portion of the orchard.

Sight of that brought back both hunger and thirst. I abandoned my exploration to seek out food and water. This morning, tracing the water from the spring for a short distance I came upon a stone walled pool. There I dared to slide out of mail and clothing, dipped myself, rubbing my body down with handfuls of grass to scrub me clean, then undertook to wash my hair which was still soil-clotted. Leaving it to hang free across my shoulders and wind-dry, I did such brushing and cleansing of my clothing as I could. The sun was caressingly warm on my bare body and I found myself humming, even as our keep maids had sung when they washed the linens along the water troughs.

I had drunk deeply. Now, pulling on, though I disliked their fustiness against my clean body, my breeches and jerkin, I tried to rebraid my hair, making sorry business of taming the still-damp strands. Even the bronze clip, which held the coils in place under my helm, was gone, and I tied it up as best I could with twisted bits of long, tough grass.

Then, my mail shirt slung in folds across my shoulder, I went hunting once more for the berry bushes. Only this time I had another find to chew on. There was a kind of water plant, the roots of which were crisp and sweet when washed clean. As I crunched away at those, I remembered—though it was dim—a part of a far different life, when such had been served in the summer at our high table in Ithdale. My aunt had also had a skillful hand in the making of sweets, and she had devised on her own a recipe for preserving these thin stalks, cut small, in a honey mixture for winter eating.

I looked down now at my berry-stained hands, at the mail, which lay in a coil of brilliant folds under the sun. Ithdale was so long ago, so far away, that my life there was more like the tale of a songsmith, nothing that had really happened to the Joisan who was here and now. Shrugging on the weight of mail, I went exploring farther into the orchard-garden. But I found no ripe tree fruit. There was a tangle of melon vines into which I dived eagerly and came up with two which were golden ready, small for lack of skillful cultivation—yet still to be prized. With those in hand I started back to the courtyard, which I now looked upon as my campsite.

There were furred things in the grass, which leaped or ran ahead of my passing, but I had no knife nor dart gun with which to hunt. In an odd way I could not bring myself to think of killing here—even for food. This must be a rich hunting ground for the cats—perhaps also for the bear—some of his kin were noted as relishing flesh as well as berries and such.