by Andre Norton
A snow cat crouched snarling, and the falconer, with some presence of mind, threw his lantern at that fearsome beast before he took to his heels, Joachim in great bounds behind. But, as the shouting falconer broke one way out of the door, Joachim streaked in the other, trying to reach the outer wall.
That was far too high to leap over, but he sped up the stairs leading to the narrow defense walk along its top. Men shouted, a torch was thrown, nearly striking him. Joachim leaped at a guard aiming a spear, knocked the man down, and was over him and on. But ahead more men were gathering, bending bows. He thought —
There was no cat on the wall — nothing! The men-at-arms hurried forward, thudding spear heads into every patch of shadow, unable to believe that the animal had vanished.
“Wizardry! Tell my lord quickly. There is wizardry here!”
Some stayed to patrol by twos and threes, no man wanting to walk alone in the dark with wizardry loose. The storm struck harder, water rushed over the wall. It washed with such force that it swept away a small gold ring no man had seen in that dusk, carrying it along a gutter, tumbling it out and down, to fall to the muddy earth of the inner garden where the Lady Juluya and her maids grew sweet herbs and flowers. There it lay under the drooping branches of a rain-heavy rose bush.
When the Lord Tanheff heard the report of the falconer and the wall guards, he agreed that it was plain the falcon had been enchanted, and this was some stroke of wizardry aimed at the keep. He then dispatched one of his heralds to ride night and day to demand help from the nearest reputable sorcerer, one to whom he had already paid a retaining fee as insurance against just such happenings. In the meantime he cautioned all to keep within the walls; the gates wore not to be opened for any cause until the herald returned.
Saystrap heard the morning rumors at the fair where men now looked suspiciously at their neighbors, bundling their goods away to be on the road again, though the fair was not officially over. With magic loose who knew where it would strike next? Better be safe, if flatter of purse. The lord had sent for a sorcerer — with magic opposed to magic anything might happen to innocent bystanders. Magic was no respecter of persons.
However, the wizard did not give up his plan for the Lady Juluya, it was such a good one. Common sense did not even now baffle his hopes. So he lurked in hiding and made this new plan and that, only to be forced to discard each after some study.
The Lady Juluya, walking in her scrap of garden, stooped to raise a rain-soaked rose and saw a glint in the mud. Curious, she dug, to uncover a ring which seemed to slip on her finger almost of its own accord.
“Wherever did you come from?” She held her hand into the watery sunshine of the morning, admiring the ring, more than a little pleased at her luck in finding it. Since all her maids denied its loss she finally decided that it must have lain buried for years until the heavy rain washed it free, and she could claim it for her own.
Two days passed, three, and still the herald did not return. The Lord Tanheff did not permit the keep gates to be opened. The fairground was deserted now. Saystrap, driven to a rough hiding place in the woods, gnawed his nails down to the quick. Only a fanatical stubbornness kept him lurking there.
None in the lady’s tower knew that when she took to her bed at night the ring grew loose and slipped from her finger, to become a mouse feasting on crumbs from her table. Joachim realized that this was a highly dangerous game he played. It would be much wiser to assume wings and feathers once more and be out of the castle with three or four good flaps of his wings. Yet he could not bring himself to leave.
The Lady Juluya was courted and flattered much, yet she was a girl of wit and good humor, wise enough to keep her head. She was both kind and courteous. Time and time again Joachim was tempted to take his true form and tell her his -story. But she was seldom alone, and when she was he could not bring himself to do it. Who was he — a loutish clod, so stupid and clumsy he could not even work in the fields nor speak plainly. At his mere appearance he was sure she would summon a guard immediately. And talk! — he could not tell them anything so they would understand.
After the first night he did not remain a mouse, but went out onto the balcony and became a man, squatting in the deepest pool of shadow. He thought about speech, and how hard it was for him to shape words to sound like those of others. So he practiced saying in whispers the strange sounds he had heard Saystrap mumble, tongue twisters though they were. He did not use them for the binding of spells, but merely to listen to his own voice. By daybreak he was certain, to his great joy, that he did speak more clearly than he ever had before.
In the scrap of wood Saystrap had at last fastened upon a plan he thought would get him into the keep. If he could then be private with the lady only for a short space, he was certain he could bind her to his will and all would be as he wished. He had seen the herald ride forth and knew that it might not be too long before he would return with aid.
Though the gates were shut, birds flew over the wall. And pigeons made their nests in the towers and along the roofs.. On the fourth day Saystrap assumed a feathered form to join them.
They wheeled and circled, cooed, fluttered, peered in windows, preened on balconies and windowsills. In her garden the Lady Juluya shook out grain for them and Saystrap was quick to take advantage of such a summons, coming to earth before her.
There is this about wizardry: if you have dabbled even the nail tip of one finger in it, then you have gained knowledge beyond that of ordinary men. That ring which was Joachim recognized the pigeon that was Saystrap. At first he thought his master had come seeking him. Then he noted the wizard-pigeon ran a little this way, back that, and so was pacing out a spell pattern about the feet of the Lady Juluya.
Joachim did not know what would happen if Saystrap completed that magic, but he feared the worst. So he loosed his grip on the lady’s finger and spun out, to land across one of the lines the pigeon’s feet were marking so exactly.
Saystrap looked at the ring and knew it. He wanted none of Joachim, though he was shaken at meeting his stupid apprentice in such a guise. However, one thing at a time, and if this spell was now spoiled or hindered he might not have another chance. He could settle with Joachim later, after his purpose was accomplished. So, with a sharp peck of bill, he sent the ring flying.
Joachim spun behind the rose bush. Then he crept forth again, this time a velvet-footed torn cat. He pounced, and the wildly fluttering pigeon was between his jaws.
“Drop it — you cruel thing!” Lady Juluya struck at the cat. But, still gripping the pigeon, Joachim dodged and ran into the courtyard.
Then he found he held no pigeon, but a snarling dog twice his size broke from his grip. He leaped away from Saystrap to the top of a barrel and there grew wings, beak, and talons, once more a falcon, able to soar about the leaping, slavering hound so eager to reach him.
There was no dog, but a thing straight out of a nightmare, half scaled, with leathery wings more powerful than Joachim’s, and a lashing tail with a wicked spiked end. The creature spiraled up after the falcon into the sky.
He could perhaps outfly it if he headed for the open country. But he sensed that Saystrap was not intent upon herding an unwilling apprentice back to servitude. He was after the Lady Juluya, therefore there must be fight not flight.
From the monster came such a force of gathered power that Joachim weakened. His poor feat of wizardry was feeble opposed to Saystrap’s. With a last despairing beat of wings, he landed on the roof of Lady Juluya’s tower and found himself sliding down it, once more a man. While above him circled the griffon, seeming well content to let him fall to his death on the pavement below.
Joachim summoned power for one last thought.
He fell through the air a gray pebble. So small and dark a thing escaped Saystrap’s eyes. The pebble struck the pavement and rolled into a crack.
Saystrap meanwhile turned to bring victory out of defeat. He alighted in the courtyard and seized upon the Lady Juluya to
bear her away. The pebble rolled from hiding and Joachim stood there. Bare-handed, he threw himself at the monster. This time he shouted words clear and loud, the counterspell which returned Saystrap to his own proper form. Grappling with the wizard, he bore him to the ground, trying to gag him with one hand over his mouth that he might not utter any more spells.
At that moment the herald rode in upon them as they struggled, ringed around (at a safe distance) by the keep folk who were not afraid to be caught in the backlash of any spells from the tangle.
Lord Tanheff shouted an order from the door of the hall to where he had swept his daughter. The herald tossed at the fighters the contents of a box he had brought back with him (price: one ruby, two medium-sized topazes). There was a burst of light, a clap of thunder, and Joachim stumbled out of a puff of smoke groping his way blindly. A fat black spider sped in the opposite direction, only to be gobbled up by a rooster.
Well pleased now that they had someone reasonably normal in appearance to blame for all the commotion, the men-at-arms seized Joachim. When he tried to use his spell he found it did not work. Then the Lady Juluya called imperiously:
“Let him alone!” she ordered. “It was he who attacked the monster on my behalf. Let him tell us who and what he is —”
Let him tell, thought Joachim in despair, but I cannot do that. He looked dejectedly at the Lady Juluya watching him so eagerly, and knew that he must at least try. As he ran his tongue over his lips she prompted him encouragingly:
“Tell us first who you are.”
“Joachim,” he croaked miserably.
“You are a wizard?”
He shook his head. “Never more than a very small part of one, my lady.” So eager was he to let her know the truth of it all, that he forgot his stumbling tongue, all else but the tale he had to tell. He told it in a flow of words all could understand.
When he was done, she clapped her hands together and cried: “A fine, brave tale. I claim you equal to such acts. Wizard, half-wizard, third or fourth part of a wizard that you may be, you are surely a man to be reckoned with, Joachim. I would like to know you better.”
He smiled a little timidly. But inwardly he vowed, though he might be finished with wizardry, any one the Lady Juluya claimed to be a man had a right to pride. Fortune had served him well this time. If he meddled in magic concerns again it might not continue to do so.
In that he was a wise man — as he later had chance to prove on numerous occasions. Joachim, his foot firmly planted on the road to success in that hour, never turned back nor faltered.
But the rooster had a severe pain in its middle and was forced to disgorge the spider. How damaged it was by that abrupt meeting with the irony of Fate no man knew thereafter, for Saystrap disappeared.
* * *
LEGACY FROM SORN FEN
* * *
By the western wall of Klavenport on the Sea of Autumn Mists — but you do not want a bard’s beginning to my tale, Goodmen? Well enough, I have no speak-harp to twang at all the proper times. And this is not altogether a tale for lords-in-their-halls. Though the beginning did lie in Klavenport right enough.
It began with one Higbold. It was after the Invaders’ War and those were times when small men, if they had their wits sharpened, could rise in the world — swiftly, if fortune favored them. Which is a bard’s way of saying they knew when to use the knife point, when to swear falsely, when to put hands on what was not rightfully theirs.
Higbold had his rats running to his whistle, and then his hounds to his horn. Finally no one spoke (save behind a shielding hand, glancing now and then over his shoulder) about his beginnings. He settled in the Gate Keep of Klavenport, took command there, married a wife who was hall- born (there were such to be given to landless and shieldless men then, their kin so harried by war, or dead in it, that they wait gladly to any one who offered a roof over their heads, meat in the dish, and mead in the cup before them). Higbold’s lady was no more nor less than her sisters in following expediency.
Save that from the harsh days before her marriage she held memories. Perhaps it was those which made her face down Higbold himself in offering charity to those begging from door to door.
Among those came Caleb. He lacked an eye and walked with a lurch which nigh spilled him sprawling every time he took a full stride. What age he was no one could say; cruel mauling puts years on a man.
It might have been that the Lady Isbel knew him from the old days, but if so neither spoke of that. He became one of the household, working mainly in the small walled garden. They say that he was one with the power of growing things, that herbs stood straight and sweet-smelling for him, flowers bloomed richly under his tending.
Higbold had nothing to interest him in the garden. Save that now and then he met someone there where they could stand well in the open, walls too often having ears. For Higbold’s ambition did not end in the keepership of the Klavenport Gate. Ah, no, such a man’s ambition never ceases to grow. But you can gain only so much by showing a doubled fist, or a bared sword. After a certain point you must accomplish your means more subtly, by influencing men’s minds, not the enslavement of their bodies. Higbold studied well.
What was said and done in the garden one night in early midsummer was never known. But Higbold had a witness he did not learn about until too late. Only servants gossip as always about their masters, and there is a rumor that Caleb went to the Lady Isbel to talk privately. Then he took his small bundle of worldly goods and went forth, not only from the gate keep, but out of Klavenport as well, heading west on the highway.
Near the port there had been repairing, rebuilding, and the marks of the Invaders’ War had faded from the land. But Caleb did not keep long to the highway. He was a prudent man, and knew that roads made for swift travel can lead hunters on a man’s tracks.
Cross-country was hard, doubly so for his twisted body. He came to the fringes of the Fen of Sorn. Ah, I see you shake your heads and draw faces at that! Rightly do you so, Goodmen, rightly. We all know that there are parts of High Hallack which belong to the Old Ones, where men with sense in their thick skulls do not walk.
But it was there Caleb found that others had been before him. They were herdsmen who had been driving the wild hill cattle (those which ranged free during the war) to market. Something had frightened the beasts and sent them running. Now the herders, half-mad with the thought of losing all reward of their hard labor, tracked them into the fen.
However, in so doing, they came upon something else. No, I shall not try to describe what they started out of its lair. You all know that there are secrets upon secrets in places like the fen. Enough to say that this had the appearance of a woman, enough to incite the lust of the drovers who had been kept long from the lifting of any skirt. Having cornered the creature, they .were having their sport.
Caleb had not left Klavenport unarmed. In spite of his twisted body he was an expert with crossbow. Now he again proved his skill. Twice he fired and men howled like beasts — or worse than beasts seeing what they had been doing — beasts do not so use their females.
Caleb shouted as if he were leading a group of men-at- arms. The herders floundered away. Then he went down to what they had left broken behind them.
No man knows what happened thereafter, for Caleb spoke of it to no one. But in time he went on alone, though his face was white and his work-hardened hands shook.
He did not venture into the fen, but traveled, almost as one with a set purpose, along its edge. Two nights did he camp so. What he did and with whom he spoke, why those came — who can tell? But on the morning of the third day he turned his back on Sorn Fen and started toward the highway.
It was odd but as he walked his lurching skip-step was not so evident, as if, with every stride he took, his twisted body seemed straighter. By the night of the fourth day he walked near as well as any man who was tired and footsore might. It was then that he came to the burned-out shell of the Inn of the Forks.
Once th
at had been a prosperous house. Much silver had spun across its tables into the hands of the keeper and his family. It was built at a spot where two roads, one angling north, one south, met, to continue thereon into Klavenport. But the day of its glory passed before the Battle of Falcon Cut. For five winter seasons or more its charred timbers had been a dismal monument to the ravages of war, offering no cheer for the traveler.
Now Caleb stood looking at its sad state and —
Believe this or not as you will, Goodmen. But suddenly here was no burned-out ruin. Rather stood an inn. Caleb, showing no surprise, crossed the road to enter. Enter it as master, for as such he was hailed by those about their business within its courtyard.
Now there were more travelers up and down the western roads, for this was the season of trade with Klavenport. So it was not long before the tale of the restored inn reached the city. There were those unable to believe such a report, who rode out, curious, to prove it true.
They found it much as the earlier inn had been. Though those who had known it before the war claimed there were certain differences. However, when they were challenged to name these, they were vague. But all united in the information that Caleb was host there and that he had changed with the coming of prosperity, for prosperous he certainly now was.
Higbold heard those reports. He did not frown, but he rubbed his forefinger back and forth under his thick lower lip. Which was a habit of his when he thought deeply, considering this point and that. Then he summoned to him a flaunty, saucy piece in skirts. She had long thrown herself in his direction whenever she could. It was common knowledge that, while Higbold had indeed bedded his lady in the early days of their marriage, to make sure that none could break the tie binding them, he was no longer to be found in her chamber, taking his pleasures elsewhere. Though as yet with none under his own roof.