Andre Norton - Gryphon's Eyrie

“Aye,” said Guret. “As it stands, this place is not for the clumsy… or the very young.”

“Which, fortunately, none of us is,” I said. At my words, I caught a swift glance exchanged between them, Guret’s holding amusement, Joisan’s a warning. I frowned, wondering what secret they shared, when Joisan spoke:

“Strange that the wind does not reach in here to touch us, in spite of these openings. Also, with walls of stone, I would expect to feel chilled with the onset of night—as I would have, if I stood within Keep walls in High Hallack. Yet I do not.”

Guret looked around, again more than a little uneasy. “Witchery…”

We continued to make our way down that hall (which proved shorter, somehow, to our feet than it had been to our eyes), passing through the portal at its end. We found ourselves in a large three-sided courtyard, facing the eastern heights. The jagged peaks were dimly visible through the ever-present narrow arches that framed the dark mountain night, a night which was pushed back as we entered by the glow of those strange globes. To the north and south lay arched entrances leading to other parts of the Keep. In the center of the courtyard was a fountain, its water cascading and swirling into a strange, half-familiar shape. Moving closer, I realized the flood sheeted and poured from a crystalline figure, so cunningly wrought that it was hard to divine which parts of the creature were water and which were solid.

“It is the figure of the gryphon…” Joisan breathed beside me, her hand going to her breast where the tiny image of Telpher, Landisl’s gryphon, had lain ’prisoned for all those years. The globe had long since been shattered; her fingers encountered only the weight of Gunnora’s amulet. “ ‘Tis passing beautiful, Kerovan… making me remember so much. Has this been so all these years, or did it spring to life again just before we came?”

There was no way of answering her—as usual, my knowledge or memory remained capricious. We stood watching the flow and play of the water, until Guret broke the silence.

“Shall we bed down here, m’lord Kerovan? With the water to hand, it appears the best place.”

“That seems good,” I made answer, wandering over to look at a huge bowl wrought from stone which rested near the easternmost arches. Blackened traces of fire still showed within it. “Look. We wilt be able to cook here.”

“It is perfect,” Joisan agreed, before splashing water from the fountain over her face. I joined her, dipping hand into that basin, finding the water refreshingly cool. The runoff spilled into a second pool before disappearing—I wondered if its source was some mountain spring, but the liquid did not hold that bone-shrinking chill usually found in such.

We drank, then ate hungrily of the rations we had brought. Tomorrow, if we were to stay here—and, frankly, such was the peace that I felt in Kar Garudwyn, I could imagine no reason to leave—we would have to forage in the fields and forests. Also hunt, though my mind shied from the thought of so disturbing the valley below.

Joisan must have been mindsharing, for her next words echoed my thoughts. “We have food left to last us but one more day…” She took another piece of journeybread, broke it, frugally stowing the remaining portion back in the pack. I must have shown my surprise as she chewed so eagerly on the tough, sustaining food, for she added, “I cannot remember when I have been so hungry. It must be the mountain air. And, of course, we did not pause at midday.”

“You are right, now that I think of it. Today,” I confessed, and felt some guilt at my blindness, “until we came into sight of this place, all passed in a haze for me. Though I pushed you hard, my lady, I did not know what lay at the end of our trail until I gazed upon Kar Garudwyn. Then it was as if this had always been there in my mind, waiting, its image behind my eyelids when I closed them…”

We talked but little more, soon rolling into our blankets, drowsy with long riding and perhaps some strain of self-discovery. The globes on the wall shone steadily. I lay watching their reflection on the sheets of water in the fountain, wishing I knew some way to lessen their glow lest they disturb my lady. My mind wandered… I heard Joisan’s soft breathing from the pallet next to mine, Guret’s some distance away.

My eyes widened. The lights were dimming! As though my thought had reached into stone and metal, they banked to a soft red glow. Dimly, overhead, I could now make out the stars before moonrise. Somehow this small example of sorcery, more than any other that had already evidenced itself, made me aware of how attuned this place was to my mind… my spirit.

My old fear of Power returned to tense my body. I forced myself to relax, allowing that peace to wrap around me as a cloak against a winter wind. Power, as Joisan had shown me that night so long ago, could be used for comfort and protection, as well as by the Shadow for evil. Perhaps I would grow used to that part of me in time. Time … how long had Kar Garudwyn waited? Perhaps here, time was measured differently… My thoughts jumbled, then stilled, as I sank down into sleep.

I awoke clear-headed for the first time in three days, stretching luxuriantly in the wash of sunlight from the east. Guret, I saw, was already up, his fingers busy rubbing clean the headstall of Vengi’s hackamore. Joisan lay still in deep sleep, her face in shadow. Sitting up, I made to block those early rays that she might slumber a few minutes longer. Those dark marks beneath her eyes last night had troubled me. Now, at long last, perhaps we could rest, spend time simply being . Today we would explore the citadel further, find rooms, begin to claim this strange place, adapt it to our use.

I gazed off across the morning-revealed heights, seeing the topmost portion of the other mountain nearly at eye level—though at a considerable distance—from the arched windows on the eastern side of the courtyard. Purple mist veiled that shorn-off peak, seeming to coil snake-fashion among those faraway, tumbled boulders. I tried in vain to follow the lines of those ancient stones, hoping to ascertain whether they were naturally placed or else marked a way of the Old Ones. I could not be sure… there was an odd distortion when I studied any one part of the mountaintop plateau, almost like the glamourie Joisan and Guret had described yesterday when they attempted to ride past the winged globes guarding the valley entrance.

Sunlight strengthened, brightened. Rising, I sought the windows opposite the entrance that I might see more clearly.

Kar Garudwyn, the full light of the sun made clear, actually rested upon the lesser of the twin mountain peaks. Between the two lay only a torturous trail that swooped down from the rear of this citadel, then climbed jaggedly up again, so rocky a way to look as though best traveled only by those tiny, narrow-hoofed deer that forage on the lichens and mosses growing at higher altitudes.

There was a movement beside me. Joisan, her hair loosed and tumbled from its neat braids, her eyes wide as they looked out upon that twin, somewhat higher, peak, clutched my arm. “ ‘Tis the same… the very same…” she murmured. “But Car Re Dogan is no more…”

“Car Re Dogan?” For some reason that name, though I was certain I had never heard it before, held a certain haunting familiarity. “Where—or what—is that, Joisan?”

She started, her fingers tightened on me. I guessed that she was unaware she had spoken aloud. Her eyes met mine, dropped abruptly. “I… have dreamed, too, Kerovan. Even as you saw the object of your dreams when we looked up at this place yesterday evening, so with the morning’s light, I see mine.”