Gryphon in Glory (16 page)

He did not hurt me with words that came that way, though he acted now as if even my person disgusted him—so that I might never hope to find with him what Elys had found with Jervon. Yes—this was what he was meant to do—meant to do! What spell had been laid upon him in his sleep? Now that I looked at him keenly, I could see that, though his eyes were turned in my direction, there was an odd, unfocused look to them as if he did not see me, or perhaps even know where he was and what he did.

Only I was no maid soft from keep living. I had thrown aside all that when I rode forth from Norsdale. I had learned—a little. I felt that something dire lay ahead—a battle perhaps, a bitter one. Still I could face that when it came. He might not drive me away with words.

“Well enough.” I spoke slowly now. “We are two people alone in a land that is not welcoming. Just as alone we shall go on to whatever lies ahead.”

He blinked as one who was only just waking. At the change in his face I dropped my hold on him. He shook his head as one shaking away some tenuous thing fallen across one's face.

“The rain has stopped. It is not a bad day . . .”

I stood confounded by the change in him. He might only now have come to the doorway. All those wild hurting words he had uttered might never have been voiced. Because I must have some explanation for this I dared to ask, “Have you dreamed again?”

“Dreamed?” he repeated as might one who had never heard that word before, or did not understand it. “Perhaps. When one sleeps, dreams come. I—I think"—he spoke hesitatingly as one who is a little dazed—"I am under command again—and this time none of Imgry's. It is better you do not ride with me.”

“You have often professed"—I pointed out carefully (I mistrusted his manner. Had the real Kerovan again been taken over by another in some fashion? I knew that I must be very alert now)—"that you care enough for me not to want me to come to harm. I cannot ride alone here.” I stressed my helplessness—a helplessness I did not in the least feel. “Have I not already barely survived one of the Dark traps, and that by such good fortune as I may never hope to meet again?”

“You are free,” he said dully, all the fire and life seeping out of him, the shut-away look back again, as if he were encased by a barrier I could not pierce.

“But you are not? Remember, Kerovan, once I did not go free either. I was taken to serve the Dark. What did you then?”

He swung away from me as if he did not hear my words any more. Years of age might have settled on him. “You do not understand,” he mumbled.

I wanted to shake him, to tear out of him somehow what made him this way. At the same time I knew that such action would be no use. He had dropped down beside the pack he had lifted from the pony last night, was
fumbling out
the packet of
food.

“They do not suspect—” He was speaking in a monotone and I shivered, realizing that he did not talk to me—he was lost somewhere and I had no way of drawing him forth from the shadows where he now wandered. “No. they do not know
what
they would rouse—those fools from overseas. Their attack on the Dales—but a ruse. He has summoned them.”

“Kerovan"—I knelt beside him to ask gently, “who is this
he?
Is he out of your dream?”

He shook his head. “I cannot tell. It is not ‘will not’ but
’cannot’.
I was— No, I do not know where I was. But there is one who waits—and I must go.”

“So we ride.” I answered with all the courage I could summon. I felt almost as if I companied now with a dying man, one who moved and spoke, but whose inner part might be extinguished—or near that. I tried to remember the name he had called in that battle of Powers—but I could not. Perhaps it was the kind
of
name lips such as mine might not even shape.

I found this Joss of the Kerovan I knew far more fearsome than when he rode out of Norsdale. Had we shared more, had we known each other in a true uniting, perhaps he could not have been so easily enspelled. Yet I would not let him go. There must be some way I could bring to life again the real Kerovan.

Eating but little, I busied myself with the packets Elys had left among the pony's gear. I had fresh underlinen at last, and a comb to put my hair in order. I longed for the weapons I had lost to the Thas. Kerovan had not asked that I return his knife so I slipped it into my
own
belt sheath.

Before we left I took the chance of gathering some more of the melons, adding them to our food supply. There was no sign of the cats.

Kerovan kept silence, one I did not try to break. Sometimes his eyes crossed me, but it was as if I were invisible. So we went forth from the ruins, leading our animals down to the highway. Kerovan insisted that I ride the mare, while he led the pony and walked beside me.

The wrack of the storm was visible in broken branches and sodden grass, but overhead the sun arose. While always the road bored on toward the heights, or as we discovered—
through
them!

The labor that had gone into the making of that cut, allowing forbidding walls to remain on either side, amazed me. This must have taken the work of years—or else was the result of potent magic, well beyond the comprehension of our breed. We stopped just before entering that cut to eat and drink, allowing the animals to graze.

Many times during our journey I had felt that, while Kerovan's body strode beside me, the real man was gone. I was chilled, my hopes dwindled. If he was in the grip of an adept of the Old Ones, how could/free him?

As I used the knife to cut a melon he suddenly spoke. “You have not chosen well.”

“The choice was mine,” I returned shortly.

‘'Therefore the results shall be on your own—'’

What harsh or bitter prophecy he might have added was never voiced. I saw his eyes go wide; his gaze shifted from me to a point beyond my shoulder. There was a strong sensation of cold—as if a wind blew over numbing ice—striking my upper back.

Kerovan was on his feet, that trance-like state broken. I saw, under the shadow of his helm, the same face he must have shown to any Hounds he met steel to steel.

That cold bored into me. This was no tangible weapon—yet it could kill. I threw myself to one side, rolled, and then levered my body up again. Kerovan stood, a little crouched, as if ready to spring. He had not, however, drawn sword. While what waited there just beyond the border of the road . . .

A woman, dark of hair, slender of body, her face contorted in a mask of hatred and despair, a demon's countenance, was there. Though a breeze stirred the grass about her, her robe did not sway, nor did her veil move. I knew her . . . But she was dead! Consumed by her own foul magic.

The Lady Temphera, who had consorted with the Dark to produce a son, then failed when that son proved to be other than she had planned, stood watching us with the stark hatred
of
her last moments of life.

She was dead! I would not accept what I saw. This was some trickery.

Kerovan
moved as I stumbled to my feet, held tightly to the gryphon. I refused to be frightened by a shadow out of the past.

There was no wand in her hand. No, that had been shattered with the core of her Power during that other meeting. Nor did she raise her hands in any gesture to summon forces. She only stood, staring at her repudiated son with those burning eyes. Not eyes—rather holes in a skull from which skin and flesh withered as I watched.

“Fool!” That was Kerovan who spoke. Once more his face was impassive. “Fool!” He held up his hand. On his wrist that band of blue blazed. A streamer of light shot toward the woman's death head. The ray appeared to strike a barrier, spread out horizontally across it.

“Show yourself!” Kerovan's lips drew back in a wolfs grin. He commanded as one very sure of himself and his own might.

The illusion (if it were that) moved. Swiftly the right arm swung up. She showed a clenched hand as the long sleeve fell away. Then she threw what she held. A flashing streak came through the air.

Straight for Kerovan's head spun that missile. He moved as swiftly, his arm across his face. I heard a noise as loud as a thunder clap—saw a burst of radiance, so that I blinked and blinked to clear my sight.

Through a watery haze I watched the woman sway. The bale-fire hate, which burned in the eyeholes, spread, consumed, until the head of the apparition was a horrible, blackened mass. The blaze ate on down her body. She seemed to be trying to raise her hands in futile defense, the fingers left trails of black in the air. I wanted to close my eyes, still I could not.

“Is this the best you can send against me?” Kerovan's voice swelled, carried, so that the walls of the cut ahead echoed it back to us. “To evoke the dead is a weakness.”

“Weakness—weakness . . .” echoed back.

The horror shriveled, grew smaller, was gone. Kerovan stood, stone-faced, to watch it be so consumed. When the last blackened shred vanished he turned to me.

“This is only the first sending. Perhaps the least of such, merely to test us, or as a warning.”

“It is—or was—a very impotent one.” I found my voice.

Kerovan shook his head. “We cannot be sure. We can never be sure of any Power . . .” He stroked the band on his wrist with his other hand. “I think that we shall never again walk, or lie, or rest easy in this land—never until we have a final meeting—”

“With Temphera? But she is dead—” “With another whose identity I do not know, who will use against me—and you because you are with me—all he can summon, perhaps to our ending.”

Still he did not look hopeless or even troubled, as he said that. Nor was his face again closed or bleak. A new life had appeared there. I sensed he was excited, had been stirred fully awake rather than alarmed by what had been meant as a dire warning.

Kerovan

W
HEN
I
FRONTED WHAT HAD ARISEN, BLACK AND SEAR, OUT OF THE
past I felt that time had turned upon itself. This was she who had given me birth but had never been a mother. Only now she stood alone, lacking Rogear with all his ill-used, half-learned Power. Also, that symbol of her authority, the wand, was gone, having been shattered into nothingness when we had fought out our struggle in the past. Still, my hand arose, as if my arm was weighted with a shield and not with the wrist band that had served me so well.

Words came to me, not so much my own thoughts, as they were those of that other who was rousing now, once more within me, a presence—an essence—I feared. Still I could not wall out that intruder any more than all our struggles had served to keep Alizon's Hounds from baying across the Dales.

Even while I spoke those words, as if I were trained in sorcery, I turned my will upon the band, calling for a force that lay within it. I did not consciously understand what I said, what I did, only that this was the way I must meet this—this thing. For that it was a dead woman restored to malicious life—that I did not quite believe.

A spear of light answered my plea, struck at the head of the illusion, met a shield of such strength that it could not break it, ran across the shield seeking a way through, to consume the dead-alive.

I saw her turn into the specter of death. Her hands moved jerkily then as if cords were fastened to her wrists pulling them this way and that. To no purpose, for she had not been aided by any fear from me—she who was the embodiment (or meant to be) of horror and disgust. Without any emotion from us to strengthen her, she was burning away. Her old hate once more consumed her utterly. Who had striven to use her thus—and why?

Foul black trails in the air streamed from those hands. But they faltered, could not Finish any symbol they so fought to form. I felt a contempt within me. If this was a show of Dark Power it was a paltry one. Surely no real adept had brought such a champion into our struggle.

Was the illusion then indeed Temphera herself, a long-lasting residue of evil once more provided with visible form because her strong hatred of me had survived even death itself? Perhaps in the Waste even so flawed a talent as hers could do this when signs and portents were right.

Only—she failed. Death ate her up a second time, perhaps firing her own hate to such a heat that it was able to consume her. She was gone. I watched for a long moment after her semblance had crumbled into ash, half expecting a second attempt. If this was some work of that Galkur—yet surely such as he could have provided a much stronger threat.

Joisan's voice startled me. During those moments when I had confronted hatred come alive I had forgotten her.

“She was an illusion—was she not an illusion, Kerovan? She—I know she is dead!”

Had I been quicker-witted, less still caught up in what had happened, I might have answered more prudently, rather than with what might well have been the truth.

“She hated me very much. Perhaps—in this country of Power—some portion of her did live on and when it gathered strength enough—”

“Can it be true that hate lives past death?” I saw Joisan shiver as she stared now at me.

The shell that had encased me since my dream of the night had cracked, fallen away when I had roused to do battle. I went to her and took her into my arms. They played with us, these holders of Power. Now I wanted nothing of them—neither aid nor attack. What I desired was to fight against them—all of them! There was only one way to do that, I now sensed.
I must
keep myself part of the real world—be Kerovan. Joisan was my anchor. My anchor? That sounded as if the poison of Power had already touched me, that I had begun to look upon her as an object to be used for my own purposes.

Joisan was real. She was love, not hate, though I could not release any answering emotion that I could believe was truly love. I was not using Joisan—I would not! But, even as I so argued and doubted within myself, I held her tighter.

Her body fitted itself to mine as if two halves had been joined to form—at last—a whole. I kissed her for the second time since I had known her, had come to realize the depth of her courage and spirit. She herself was the truest and finest thing a man might ever discover in a world full of deceit, mystery, and the darkness of evil.

We clung together, and now I was glad that my mother's rage had sought us out. For this joining was surely stronger than any intrigue of the Waste.

A lock of her hair fell free across her face and I kissed
that
also, gently, aware of a fragrance that clung to it as if she had worn a garland of sweet-scented flowers until their life had become a part of her. Her hands lay again on my shoulders, feather light, still I could feel the dear pressure of them through both mail and leather—and so I always would.

“Kerovan"—she was a little breathless—"if it takes foul illusion to so bring you to me, then may we be often so assailed!”

Once more I set my lips to hers, hoping that she could not read me. For only a few moments snatched out of time I had been a man—a whole man. Now that other compulsion—though I tried to fight it—settled about me once more, with an even tighter grip. I kissed her . . . but the feeling had gone.

She set her hands swiftly against my chest and pushed herself free for I had at once relinquished my hold. When she looked at me, there was desolation in her eyes and her hurt reached me even though I was fast losing the sense of feeling. I could no longer respond as I longed—yes!—as I longed, even under the spell, to do.

“You—you have left me again.” Her voice was very low and uneven as if she were close to tears, save that pride stiffened her. “Why do you so? What is there in me to which you cannot warm?” She wrung her scratched and sun-browned hands together with a gesture of one who is pushed close to the edge of endurance. The rosy hue of her ring—even it appeared to be touched with gray at this moment.

I swung around, no longer any more able to look upon her standing there—the brightness of her look, the beauty of her eyes, her face. That other inside me was fighting hard to stay alive—fighting with a strength that would have rocked my very body from side to side had I given way to it. Only for him there was no hope. I was bound to a future I did not understand or desire, into which perhaps not even Joisan, for all her greatness of heart, could follow me.

“The fault lies not in you—never in you,” I got out harshly. “Never believe that it is
you
who have failed.” To allow her to think that was a cruelty I could not bear. “It is mine—a curse laid upon me. Believe that, it is true, believe it!”

Once more I made myself face her. I wanted to lay hands upon her shoulders, to shake her until she promised me she would do as I asked. This was the stark truth—that I had nothing to give her, and I would not take and take until she was as ashy as the ring upon her hand—a love token I had not been able to give her. She
must
understand!

“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.