Andre Norton - Horn Crown

Gathea pulled the wand from the earth with one easy movement. She dropped the far tip to point to the star angle directly before her where she had sprinkled the blood and placed the broken bits of dead leaf of herbage. At the same time she spoke, not to me, but commandingly, in words I could not understand.

There was movement from the spot to which she had pointed. It seemed to me that the ground itself began to spin, shooting upward part of its substance. As she began to sing, louder and faster, so did the whirling become a twirl of movement, a pillar of flying dust particles growing solid.

Then there crouched in the point of the star a figure which in a crude way was human. At least it had two legs, two arms, a trunk of body, a round ball of head perched thereupon, though it was such a thing as a child might fashion out of mud in play, crudely done. When it stood erect, Gathea brought down her wand in a sharp slap against the earth and uttered a single loud cry.

That thing which had come out of the ground ambled forward, stumping on feet which were clumsy and ill shaped. However, it was able to keep erect and move with more speed than I would have believed that such an ill-wrought body could show.

“Quick!” Gathea looked now to me for the first time. “Your knife—cold steel—to secure the doorway—” Her wand twitched across the ground to indicate where that must go.

I unsheathed my knife. Still keeping my other hand fast on sword hilt, I tossed the shorter blade as if I played some scoring game. It thudded true and stood quivering, hilt uppermost, set well into the earth at the very spot which that shambling figure had just left to go into the dark.

Gathea now seemed to listen—and I did likewise, finding myself even keeping my own breathing as noiseless and shallow as I could so that I might hear better. No night bird called; there was nothing to trouble the silence beyond our circle. But I sensed that that which had earlier tried our defenses was gone—if only for a space.

The girl did not relax. Taking my cue from her, I did not either. The cat at last gave a sigh and blinked. But if Gruu was satisfied my companion was not.

“Not yet—” It was as if she admonished herself, refused the comfort of believing that her sorcery was successful.

“What you made—” I felt that I could go no longer without asking at least some of the questions nagging at me—“did it lead away what waited out there?”

She nodded. “For a while it may play the quarry for those—but it may not last long. Listen!”

Perhaps this was what she had been waiting for. There rang through the night, echoing as if we were in some great cavern and not under a cloud-filled sky, a cry, a wailing, so filled with malice and the promise of evil anger to come, as to bring me to my feet, sword point out, ready to fight, though I could not see what enemy had sounded that call of fury.

“Do not, for your life,” the girl said, “go beyond the circle. It will return—and fooled once, it will be twice as ireful.”

“What is it?” I demanded.

“Not a thing which can be brought down by that,” she nodded to my sword, “though steel is rightfully its bane. But only as a defense not a weapon for use. I do not think that it can be sent on a second fruitless hunt. As to what it truly is—I cannot put any name to it. I did not even know it might come. My precautions were taken because this is a strange land and we had spilled blood. Blood is life—it draws the Dark Ones where they are to be found.”

“You used it to seal us in.”

“As I said, blood is life, from it can be conjured counterfeits, though those would not move or have being in the day. They, too, draw from the dark. Now—”

Her wand came up once more, pointing even as did my sword. Those things which prowled were back, weaving back and forth where we could not see—only feel them. Twice claw-hands swung in at the edge of the star point where my dagger stood, only to jerk back again. But they could not pass and I felt raised against me the growing heat of an anger as hot in my mind as the fire was upon my body. That emotion pressed, sought, battled to reach us with a dark and ugly hunger flowing as a high warning of what we might expect should it win inward.

Gruu arose, threw up his head, and gave such a roar as made my head ring. I thought at first it was an echo of his cry I heard, until it was repeated from afar. Then I could not mistake the ring of it as it sounded a second time. I had heard such before but never as full toned and holding the notes so strongly. So did any lord’s marshal sound his warn horn at the edge of a neighbor’s land!

Out in that blackest of the night there was another now—and he sent forth his challenge.

For the third time that horn rang. I believed I could hear, under the edge of its echoing, another sound which was between a bay and a squawl—certainly made by animal. Gruu answered fiercely. He patted first one clawed paw against the earth and then the other, as if he were leashed and wished for release—to be freed to attack in the dark. Gathea took a step forward to rest her hand on the beast’s head. He looked up at her, showing his tongue between his openly displayed teeth in a dire grin.

Though the horn did not sound again, I saw a flash of light through the night, and heard a crackle as if someone had harnessed the power of lightning itself, had fashioned it into a weapon. The dark was so thick that flash came and went before I could catch any sight of what lay about. The flash hit again, and again, as the clamor of what might be a hunting pack drew closer.

I could not see, but I could sense. Whatever had besieged us was now at the back of the circle, cowering with us between it and what coursed through the night, using a weapon of flame, urging forward some hunting “hounds.” So it continued to cower until Gathea took a hand. She faced about. Her wand arose once again as with its tip she wrote upon the air.

Symbols appeared, curved up and down—green those were—and yet blue—as water mingles such shades along the shore of the sea. Out spun the signs, not fading, rather flying as might small birds released to be free. They gathered outside our defense lines to hang in the air.

There was no audible snarl of rage but a sense of burning anger strove to strike us. Then that was gone, as suddenly as if a door had opened and closed. That which had striven to reach us was now shut away from our world.

We heard a rushing in the night which sounded as if a company had divided, one part going to the north, one the south of our defense. Then that, too, was swallowed by silence. I felt an emptiness, through which one could hear the clear, clean rustle of wind across the stand of grass but nothing else. Gruu settled down—this time dropping his head to rest upon one curve of leg. Gathea, her wand still in hand, curled beside him, leaving to me the other side of the fire. The girl pillowed her head on the cat’s shoulder, her eyes closed as if she—and we— had nothing more to fear. Still I sat, reliving all that had happened this night. It seemed to me that when I had staggered out of Garn’s dale—no, even before that, when I had first looked upon the Moon Shrine—my life had be gun to change; I was no longer the same Elron who had ridden through the Gate, liegeman to a clan lord, knowing nothing much beyond the duties of my place and the security of my standing with my fellows.

I should have been stricken more deeply by Lord Garn’s blow, which had not only marked my body but had cut me off from all the clan. Now that act appeared of little consequence. I had come not only into a country that those of my blood had no knowledge of, but there was a part of me which said: See, I am kinless, yet I am not a nothing; I have walked with danger and faced squarely that beyond reckoning.