Andre Norton - Horn Crown

Gathea took a step forward.

“No!” I raised my voice, tried to leap over the rim, to forestall her before she ventured onto the pavement.

I tried to leap, only to sprawl backward in a tumble of limbs and body, the crossbow flying away, myself kicking to regain my balance as might a beetle which has been turned on its back.

I scrambled to my knees, flung out an arm ahead. I might have driven my fist against a wall of the same rock as lay all about. There was a barrier there—one I could neither see nor force. Now I used the fingertips of both hands, feeling up and up until I stood once more. Both my hands ran across something—something which held me out yet appeared to have let Gathea past.

When I looked down I saw her standing just on the edge of the square. To her right was lifted on the pillar that dark disc, to her left one of brilliant blue. Her eyes were still fixed in that stare and I watched her lips again move in soundless speech.

Slowly she went down to her knees, her hands sweeping out, her head bowed forward, as if she paid the most formal of homage to some great lord. Petals still drifted through the air; several fell to lie upon her head.

Her hands moved once more as she gently swept some of those which lay upon the pavement, gathering them into the hollow of her right palm. Once more her head lifted so I could see her face. Her eyes were closed and she had a listening look as if she heard some message of import which she must remember and deliver to another.

Again she bowed, but this time she held against her heart the palmful of petals. Then she arose, and, at the same time that she turned away, like one who had completed a task, the surface against which my hands had been pressed vanished.

I pushed again farther on—to encounter nothing. Still I did not leap down into the dell as I had planned to do. Here, that would have seemed more than discourtesy—an outrage of a sort. I shook my head, trying to free it of such fancies. Only I knew that these were no fancies, that what I thought was real. I dared not intrude upon the Moon Shrine, though there was no threat of evil, merely the realization that it was not for such as me. Tramping in, I would break some beautiful thing which was precious beyond my imagining.

Now I lingered for Gathea to rejoin me and it was not until she was some distance away that I understood she was headed south. Apparently she had no intention of sharing a path any farther. The cat followed her for a space, while I stood and watched her, uncertain of what to do or say.

Then that silver body again flashed up into the air in a graceful leap as the cat left her, heading westward and south, apparently seeking its own way along the rim of the other dale. I remained alone as Gathea walked steadily forward, and not once did she look back or speak any farewell.

When I finally realized that she was on her way back to her mistress I started my patrol once more. How much of what had happened would I report? Never before had I thought to conceal from Garn any part of what I had seen. Only this time I had a feeling that what I had just witnessed had not only been no business of mine, but also it was not for Garn’s prying. For he might possibly order perhaps even the destruction of the Moon Shrine (yes, that crossed my mind). He detested, I well knew by now, all elements of the unknown that could not be met by physical force, and he would be angry that Gathea had manifestly found something here of power. I had, too. That invisible wall which had held for awhile was certainly no dream.

The birds, yes, of those I would tell him. For it might be as Gathea had warned, those could turn against us and our animals. So we would have to be forewarned and forearmed against that danger.

Thus was carefully building up my report as I made my way back down to the dale. At the same time I also longed to know what had been present in the moon shrine Gathea had paid homage to—and what other things might be found in this land—of good or ill—if one was free to go seeking such.

Though I was first to meet the hostility of the birds, I was not the last. As we cut deeper into the wood, brought out more trimmed trees to be used for the building of a long hall to shelter our small clan for at least a season, the birds gathered more thickly about the scene of our labors. Then the children who had the herding of our few sheep raised shouts of alarm, and went in, flailing with staffs, to keep deadly beaks from six newborn lambs upon whose lives depended much future promise.

Finally Garn had to withdraw men from necessary labor to use hunters’ bows and keep watch with the herd. The birds appeared to have uncanny skill in avoiding even the best of our marksmen. Thus tempers grew ragged, Garn’s cold displeasure ever present, as what had seemed a petty thing grew into a constant threat.

It was not until we had thinned the trees which were the strongest and the most likely to serve as good building material that we found at last what was perhaps the reason for that baffling attack. For when one morning a giant fell beneath our axes it took with it a mass of creeper already well in leaf, flattened thick brush, to show us that the Moon Shrine was not after all the only relic of the Old Ones in our chosen dale.

Again pillars stood, having avoided the flattening of whatever had screened them, as if they had power to hold away the tree. There were seven of these, near the height of Garn himself, placed closely together so that perhaps only a hand might be slipped between the column of one and the next.

Unlike the rocks of the ridges which formed our boundaries these were of a dull yellow stone, oddly un-pleasing to the eye. Also their surfaces had a smooth look in spite of what must have been long exposure to plants, wind and rain, reminding one of a foul mud frozen into shape. Each of them bore, halfway down one side, an incised panel on which was carved a single symbol, all differing one from the other.

When our clearing exposed these to the sun there was an instant boiling up of the birds whose cries and circling of the workers were so threatening that Garn gave an order to fall back, leaving our laboriously axed tree lying where it had fallen for the time being.

Luckily, as we thought then, the birds kept up their clamor, their low flights, only for a short time. Then they flocked together, winging their way west, paying no more attention to what had been wrought. Nor did they return. Thus after three days of freedom from their noisome company Garn ordered the tree to be brought out by the aid of our horses. He did not need to warn any against going near those pillars, nor did we cut any more in that direction. We all by now disliked the sight of such relics.

The heavy work of plowing the first fields was complete, our carefully hoarded seed sown. Still we, fieldmen and kin alike, were not easy in our minds until the first sprouts showed, proving that what we had brought with us had indeed taken root in this alien soil. Now, sparing disasters only too well known to those who till the fields, we would not lack for a crop this season, small though that might be.

Some of the women, under the eye of Fastafsa, the Lady Iynne’s old nurse, now keeper of the house for Garn, sought out other growing things. There were berries beginning to ripen, and certain herbs which the women recognized as stuff fit for the pot. Those stars over our heads might be strange, but this country seemed in some ways like the land from which we had come.

We had the walls of the hall raised -- not of stone, rather logs dressed to the best of our ability. This first shelter was one long building, which was partitioned to serve the families of the clan: a wide central space where we might eat together as did all kin and clan, at high and low tables. There were wide fireplaces at either end of the building and a third at the side of the hall, these cunningly constructed by Stigg’s orders fom specially selected stones taken from the stream bottom where water had washed them smooth. When the roof of poles, cut and well fastened to three long central beams, supported within by firm pillars, was complete, we had a small feasting to celebrate the completion of our first shelter. Stigg’s youngest son was chosen to climb and fasten to the roof peak that bunch of lucky herbs the women had prepared.