Andre Norton - The Jargoon Pard

I unhooked the buckle, held the gem head on a level with my eyes, examined it closely. Yes, in the day, it was dimmer. But there was no way Ursilla would get this from me—no way! It was truly mine in a manner that nothing had ever belonged to me before. I had known it instantly when I first saw it laid out among Ibycus’s treasures. That the belt had been used by the Lady Eldris for her own purposes, intended to bind me to those purposes, mattered nothing. All that did was that I could now fasten it about my body. This I again did, checking the buckle well to be sure it was surely closed.

Ursilla might be mistress of potent spells, but get this from me she could not. I do not know why I was so certain of that fact, only that I was.

However, I was not to escape the Wise Woman so easily. It was midafternoon when the message came. I had been at swordplay with Pergvin and had won from that expert a certain measure of approbation. Since he was always more critical than commending, I felt new triumph. Perhaps that sense of being more alive, which I believed the belt afforded me, would now work to give me prestige among my fellows. So I was in a good-humored mood, which was not even dashed by a peremptory summons to my mother’s bower.

As I crossed the courtyard I was sure that this must be some ploy of Ursilla’s and that within the influence of the rooms where she had her own center of Power, it behooved me to go very warily indeed. Only I was no longer a small boy to be ordered about; at this moment, I felt all man grown, the master of my own destiny and life.

There was no sign of either the Lady Eldris or Thaney as I passed by their chambers, ascending to the floor where my mother ruled, with Ursilla ever at her shoulder. The cloying scents were gone as I climbed. Also, the room into which the waiting maid ushered me had no enwrapment of tapestry about its walls. Rather, it possessed uncovered windows through which came the light of day and the smell of the drying hay on the fields below.

Still there was richness here, also. My mother’s chair-of-state was as highbacked, as well cushioned, with its red mantle of House draped across it, as that of the Lady Eldris. And, in place of the tapestries, the harsh stone of the walls framed strips of parchment on which were painted uncanny-looking birds and beasts quite unlike those I had ever seen, the colors brightly laid on to make their scales, feathers, claws, horns and the like, brilliant and as near glittering as gems.

My mother sat with a lap table before her on which was spread just another such painted strip, where, within dark outlines, she was pointing a brush with care, filling it with small flecks of scarlet, and then, taking up a second brush, outlining each of these with a speck or two of gilding. She did not raise her head at my entrance, nor bid me any welcome.

I was used of old to such treatment, since she would not take her eyes from her labor until she had completed the particular portion of the picture she worked upon. That she was alone surprised me, for I expected Ursilla to be present, yet of the Wise Woman there was no sign.

The Lady Heroise placed the two brushes in a narrow tray upon her table and pushed it away from her. She surveyed me, coldly and critically.

“You are a fool!” She spoke at last.

Since that reception also I had had before, it raised no resentment in me, only a desire to have her come more quickly to the point and explain in just what fashion I was foolish.

“You have let them bring you to heel as if you were any hound from my Lord’s pack,” she continued coldly. “Why I should have a son so wit-lacking that he cannot even see when he is being leashed to another’s purpose—She shrugged. “What is done—at least it can be undone.”

Still I waited. It pleased her to approach the subject in this involved fashion. When I was a child such maneuvers had some influence on me, so that I grew uneasy the longer she was inclined not to state my fault directly. Now, after years of this, I was able to curb any emotion her words aroused until she reached the heart of the matter.

“The Lady Eldris is—” she began and then hesitated. I had early learned that between her and her mother there was no love and very little liking, though when they met, their formal manners were well controlled, and they displayed the united front that custom demanded of them. That my mother had replaced the Lady Eldris as mistress here was sure and established, but I had never, through the years, caught any hint that this state of affairs caused any resentment. It was rather as if her mother had been content to relinquish the cares and duties of chatelaine to her daughter.

“You have been caught in her net,” the Lady Heroise now stated firmly. “If you do not break that influence early—” Again she hesitated. Then, at length, she apparently decided upon the blunt truth. “The belt is cursed.”

That she believed what she said, I had no doubt. But that Ursilla had put that thought into her mind I was also certain.

“In what manner?” For the first time I broke silence with that question.

“It is a thing of the Wererace. Ursilla knew it for that when first she saw it. That the Lady Eldris must also have known it is our misfortune. For she saw in it a chance to get what has long been her will.”

“That being?” I asked again. In my early dealings with my mother, I had been very manageable. Now for the first time in my life, I could think my own thoughts and be myself. Perhaps this was because it was less than a full day’s time since I had tasted freedom such as I had never known before.

“To bring Maughus to the heirship.” Again my mother stated simply what must long have lain at the core of a silent struggle of will. “She gives to you this cursed thing in such a manner that it cannot be refused, setting upon it the symbol of betrothal. Already the belt has begun its work—Where ran you last night and in what form, Kethan?” She leaned forward, and her eyes seemed to blaze as they stared at me, in a lesser blaze perhaps, but not unlike the glitter the moon had drawn from my belt. “I slept beside a woodland stream. I ran nowhere. And I am no shape-changer, my Lady.”

This was the result of Ursilla’s meddling. At that moment, however, another face flashed into my mind, that of the shrewd, pleasant, trader. What had he said to me at our private meeting? “Be guided by what you most desire and not the demands others would lay upon you. You shall be given a gift, cherish it.” Now I added my answer, a question: “How knew the Lady Eldris that her gift carried this Power?”

There was more than annoyance in my mother’s face. There was a flash of pure anger.

“From the trader, how else? Ursilla scented Power in him. He can only be one of those set to stir up mischief and strife. In other days there were such, traveling among our people, striving to influence them this way or that. Ursilla has read the stars. They are not well positioned for Car Do Prawn, perhaps even for this land.”

“You say that the Lady Eldris favors Maughus, that I know. But custom is custom. She cannot pass over the fact that I was born your son, thus am heir.” I was feeling my way cautiously, again as might a scout in forbidden territory, but here I must deal with words and not patches of shielding shadow among fields.

“Fool!” My mother arose to her feet, giving an impatient shove to the table that sent one paintpot to smash upon the stone. She paid no attention to the breakage. “A shape-changer is always vulnerable. Unless he is a trained Were, he has no control over such changes. Do you think that any within Car Do Prawn would accept your lordship if they knew that was your failing? It was tried here once before. There was an heir true born before Erach, of a different father. He was half Were, and when that was known, his mother, all within these walls, exiled him. You are not even half Were. Wear the cursed belt and you will not be able to control shape-changing. One moment a man—the next an animal! Do you think Thaney—any maid would wed with you? You would be hunted out from these walls. And—the longer you cling to that thing of horror—the deeper will become its hold on you! Give it to me!”