Andre Norton - Gryphon in Glory

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?”

Now her ringed hand reached, found mine. I could not help myself, but locked fingers with hers. This was Joisan, she was here with me—safe—while outside the storm rolled on and did not reach us. I felt nothing of old Power stirring here. In spite of her story of the long ensorcelled room, there was only a warmth that came from the two of us and was not born of any spell.

During that night, as Joisan and I shared shelter in the ruined keep, I dreamed again—as strong a dream as the one that had shown me the sleeper days earlier. But this was not a dream filled with any light for me to see by—rather total dark (or else I was blind)—for I could perceive nothing. I only felt—or heard.

“You labor to no purpose.” A voice cut through that dark, the arrogance in it as sharp as any blow. “Our difference was settled long ago.”

“Difference?” The wry amusement which colored that answer was plain. Though the first voice had been heavy with Power, this second speaker was not impressed. “That is an odd way to describe what passed between us then, Galkur.”

I felt now a welling of anger warming fast to red rage, lapping about me in that sightless place as if to crisp me into ashes. The emotion swelled high—then vanished. I sensed that the being exuding that raw anger had it under control now, behind a wall that could not yield to any surprise assault.

“You play with words.” This time he—or it—sounded possessed by icy contempt—or was that would-be contempt?

I discovered then that, in some way strange to me, I was not listening entirely to words, rather striving to weigh emotions—for those were of the greater importance here.

“I play with nothing,” came again that lighter, amused voice, unruffled, betraying no more than surface interest in their exchange. “Most of all—not with men. They are very imperfect tools at the best. Have you not yet learned that, Galkur?”

“You name names!” The first voice snarled—like the snow cat I had seen Herrel become. Still I knew that these were not Weres, nor were they men.

“Why not? Do you now stoop to that small belief of men, that a name gives one Power over another? Ha, Galkur, I would not have believed you so diminished, even though the years have spun you far from what you were.”

“Time has spun me nowhere!” Once more the heat of fury blazed, died, as the speaker rapidly checked it. “I am still what I have always been—and shall continue to be!”