Andre Norton - Gryphon in Glory

“I believe,” she answered me then. Her hands fell to her sides. She stood straight, head up, her face sober, but with that heart-tearing look gone out of it. “I believe, yes. Only, I also believe that there is still my Lord Amber imprisoned somewhere inside of you, and he shall come to me again.”

Lord Amber? For a moment I was puzzled—until the cords of memory tightened. That was the name she had given me when I first found her in the wilderness, leading her people—when she had accepted me as one of the Old Ones, who had somehow been moved to come to their aid.

“You are him, and you are Kerovan,” she was continuing, “also you may be another. But in all of you I have found nothing that will send me from you. Nor can you do this—ever!”

There was no arguing with her. I must accept that her will was unbendable as the sword at my belt. I was afraid—for her. I wanted to ride—to run—but I must accept.

We prepared to spend the night at that campsite in spite of the evil thing that had materialized there. Before us lay the high-walled cut where the road ran on—already shadowed—and I had no desire to travel it in a time when the dusk was double thick. Once more, unable to really rest, I watched the footprints that appeared, clouded and then clear, as if many walked there, unseen, unheard in this world. Sleep was very far away. In fact I did not want to yield to it since dreams might lay in wait. I had had my fill of dreams.

Nor did it appear that Joisan wanted rest either. Instead, she sat beside me, also watching the road, one hand cupping the englobed gryphon tightly against her breast.

“They walk—” She broke the long silence between us in so soft a voice it was hardly above a whisper. “I wonder—are those unseen ones alive but ensorcelled, so that they must endlessly journey this road? Or are they but shadows out of the past whose memories linger so?”

I was surprised, though I should not have been, that she also was able to mark the slight dimming and brightening of those prints.

“I think,” she added, “that they go upon some mission—yet their time, their world is no longer ours. Kerovan”—she changed the subject so quickly that she startled me into answering as I had not meant to—“what of your dream? Was it perhaps of another world or time?”

“I do not know. I—” A hand might then have been slapped hard across my mouth, silencing me. I could not, even if I would, tell her of that dream. If dream it was.

“Kerovan!” Joisan’s hand caught now at my arm, though she had been careful not to touch me since I had closed my heart to her earlier. “Look!”

Farther along, within the walls of the cut, where the road lay like a white ribbon between two towering, blank walls—that was where she was pointing. Something else could be seen beside the night-induced shine of the symbols, the stars, and the flow of footprints.

Dark clots fell from the heights to strike upon the pavement, spread out in evil-appearing blots across its surface. I could think of nothing save the action of one of those war machines I had seen under construction in Imgry’s camp, designed to hurl rocks into the heart of an enemy advance.

There was, in turn, a rising shimmer of light from the road itself. The fall of stones (the sharp impact of which we could hear) and the earth continued. Was this some effort to bury the highway, seal off what protection existed along that moon-bright length?

I was on my feet, reaching down to draw Joisan up beside me.

“We must go—now!” If the road was sealed we were lost! Again knowledge that was not mine came alive in my mind as if it had been planted there to await this very happening.

She looked at me steadily and then nodded. “If this must be done—then let us to it. Leave the packs. I can ride the pony—you take Bural.”

We grabbed the closest of our supplies and water bottles, leaving the rest of the gear. As usual, neither animal showed any fear of the road—not at first. Ahead black masses heaped together, but they did not stay so for long. Rather the mounds melted, running off in besmirching rivulets. The very touch of the pavement appeared to transform solid into liquid and send it flowing.

“That smell—Thas!” Joisan cried.

I caught it, too, the same stench that had arisen from the churned earth back in the meadow trap, only stronger, more offensive. Now the mare threw up her head with a loud whinny, answered by the pony. They balked, so it was all I could do to force my mount forward. Joisan would not allow her smaller steed to hold back; I could hear her voice crooning encouragement.

The fallen earth was running in streams from the road’s surface as rain might be channeled from stone, while that stomach- turning stench grew the worse. I saw movement higher above, far up the sides of the cut walls, though I could not make out clearly the form of the creatures laboring so frenziedly there, attempting to wall us away from the mountain land. They did grow more visible as they dropped farther down in their endeavor to start landslides. Perhaps, as they appeared to be failing in their struggle to barricade the road, they were now determined to launch a personal attack—to catch us as they had netted Joisan—using the earth as best they could, since that was their tool of power.

The mare’s front hooves thudded into the first runnel of the black soil. She cried out as I had never heard one of her kind give voice before, gave a convulsive leap forward as if she had stepped into a mass of live coals. I heard a heavy sucking as her feet pulled free.

“Keep moving—fast!” I flung the order back at Joisan and drew my sword.

She did not need that command, for she was slappig the pony’s rump with one hand, flogging the small beast on. The black flood was thick around the feet of both animals, seeming to circle about as if it was trying, like a bog, to suck us down. Then I saw that the globed gryphon was waxing brighter and brighter. From it came a beam of bright light. Around my own wrist the band awoke to life in a circle of cold flame.

Joisan lifted the chain from around her neck and began to swing the globe. As it passed thus through the air the light blazed even higher and brighter. I watched the sticky black tide on the road curl back from that radiance, as living flesh might shrink from a threat of pain or dissolution.

My companion kneed her pony on, and the animal quieted, as did the mare, once that blaze swept briefly across her head. Now my lady Jed, and the black earth not only melted from her path, but those masses of earth and stone that were still falling were deflected, providing us with a narrow path of safety.

I could hear our attackers. Where before they had moved in silence, scuttling through the dark which was their cover, now they uttered guttural cries from the heights on either hand. Their shadowy forms scrambled and shifted, I was sure they had sent parties down both walls to intercept us. Only they could not, dared not, venture on the road itself.

Our two mounts were sweating; the rank animal smell cut off some of the stench of the Thas. The beasts tossed their heads, but they kept steadily on until we reached the far side of the earth slides.

The scrambling along the cliffs intensified. I braced myself for an attack, which might well come if they were desperate enough at our escape. Joisan actually then tossed the globe in the air as if it were a ball. By the wide sweep of its light I saw clearly, for an instant, a creature that threw a stubby arm across its eyes, squealed, and fled, clinging to the wall as it climbed, after the way of a lizard. Haired all over it was, and from the tangled mass that covered the lump of its head, pale disks, marking eyes, were turned in our direction before it gained the dark beyond the light’s reach.