by Andre Norton
“Eye of sun.” Dreen let it fall to the tabletop. Then swiftly she arose and went to one of those stone storage chests, one she had never opened in Nosh’s presence. She brought out a bag of aged hide, dusty and flaking. And from it she poured a number of pieces of stone, some showing flecks of color, some as dull as the rock walls about them.
“Take them up,” she ordered Nosh. “Name what is here!”
Wonderingly the girl obeyed. And from somewhere she did not understand she named names—named them with the surety as if she actually saw what she examined:
“Sun eye, moon tear, sky skin.” One by one she set them in a row. “Another sky skin, two night drops, a moon tear, but it is flawed.” (What made her say that?)
“Sun eye of the day, another of the evening hour.” She had indeed named them all.
Dreen was staring at her and, without dropping that gaze, raised her right hand to the neck of the robe she wore. She drew out a thong of skin to which was attached a small woven net imprisoning something which gleamed and blinked even under this dull light.
The woman hesitated for a long moment and then she pulled the thong over her head and, cradling the net and contents in her hand, she held out her treasure to Nosh.
“Touch!” Her voice was a whisper.
Nosh obeyed. Then she gave a small cry. There was flame in that netted gem, enough to make her put her finger to her mouth as if she would lick-soothe a burn.
“I… there is no name…”
Dreen nodded. “Not easily found in this world now, child. You might deal in gems all life long and not handle such as this. This is star-bright, akin to something greater which has been long lost. But it is enough that you have the Hand gift. It will serve you well. For it has many sides—and you will come to learn them. You can tell false stones from the true, flawed from the flawless, and perhaps even it will be given to you to read the past of those of great note, which is a power in itself.”
“What—how can it serve us here and now?” asked Nosh slowly. She was no longer afraid, but rather beginning to wonder how any such gift might aid in some way to better their harsh life.
“For here and now you must use it for searching. Even as you have trained your eyes for the reading and your hands for writing, your tongue for speaking, so must you now make familiar to you this gift.”
Thus Nosh did search the gravel from time to time, for some short period each day, and the little pile of rough gems began to plump out a reed bag of her own. She especially occupied herself so during Dreen’s absences from their shelter.
Life in the Ryft followed a harsh pattern but Nosh had known little else for a long time and what she found here now was far better than what lay behind. She learned the trick of turning over the flat stones lapped by the dusky river water and clapping hand expertly over the wriggling creatures so exposed.
Certain of the dull dark reeds could be twisted out of the mud, washed, dried out by spreading thinly over the nearest level rock. Then their roots could be sawed off with a stone-bladed knife supplied by Dreen. Such roots, ground between stones, formed a coarse powder near enough to meal to be made into cakes and baked. While the stems, pounded against rocks, twisted and turned, split into ragged fiber threads for weaving.
There were plants to be found also. Dreen had showed her on the second day of her coming into the Ryft a patch of black soil which appeared to still hold some use for growing things and pointed out to her the sprouting leaves straggling there, herbs to be treasured.
Lizards and snakes were to be found among the crags but of these Dreen made careful choice. One could stone and skin, for example, a fat-bodied, many-legged thing which wore a sprinkling of yellow spots across its scaled skin. But the slender silver-scaled snake making its home within one of the rocky pockets was not to be disturbed.
One could seek out the horny-backed, rusty toad, but the frill-necked lizards which ran when disturbed on hind feet like a miniature person—those were to be spared.
At first Nosh thought that these taboos were born from the belief that the flesh of snake or lizard contained some poison. However, she came to realize quickly that there was another and perhaps greater reason for the immunity. The first time she saw Dreen, seated beside a rock, one of the silver snakes swaying before her, Nosh had grabbed at the weapon of her own devising, a leaf-shaped stone she had managed with much effort to secure with reed cords to a long dead branch pulled out of the sour soil. The branch she had tested for sturdiness and she was proud of her weapon-tool.
“Not so,” Dreen’s voice cut through the girl’s fear. “This one is not any threat to us. Behold!” She held out her hand and the snake, swaying yet closer, appeared to caress her hard flesh with its flicking tongue.
“So also is the zark—” The woman gestured to her right and there were three of the lizard things, standing upright but leaning a little back, so that their tails were supports to hold them erect. They might have drawn near in desire to confront Dreen for some reason.
The woman hissed, and in Nosh’s ears the sound was close to that made by the snake before her. Then, turning her head a little, she made somehow a clicking sound. At last she spoke in a very low voice:
“Sit still, child, let these learn you, for you will find times when they may be for you both weapon and guide.”
In spite of her inner shrinking Nosh slowly put the crude axe-club down and sat watching the snake. It had slewed around and was now facing in her direction, its pupilless eyes full upon her. Like a stream of clear water it uncoiled and flowed until it was before her even as it had been with Dreen.
“Put out your hand, Nosh.” Though the woman’s voice remained low, there was the snap of a command in it.
Nosh made herself obey. The snake had recoiled and began again the swaying of its head. She could mark the strong fangs in its mouth and she doubted that those were there for appearance only. Then—she felt the lightest of touch from the forked tongue.
“So,” Dreen’s words came almost as a croon, “now you are known and you must learn what this tie will mean for you, but that learning comes from within you.”
She looked again to the waiting lizards and clicked. The foremost of the three leaped from its stand. As the snake flowed away to make room the frilled one had squatted before the girl.
“Again—your hand—” Dreen ordered.
She did not feel quite the same shrinking this time. There was something about this zark (as Dreen had named it) which interested her, but did not raise her fear. She held out her hand and watched in something close to awe as that head bent so that the creature seemed to sniff at her knuckles.
Dreen appeared to relax a fraction, and nodded as if she answered some question which had not been voiced. She might have been giving a signal for the snake; the lizards were gone with flashing suddenness.
Thereafter during the days when she went hunting Nosh was often aware that she was under observation and would look up to see one of those scaled heads peeping over a rock or around some time-hardened chunk of half-burned wood.
But it was not only the seeking of food—though that was of first importance—which occupied Dreen and Nosh during those days. Though the land about them was so definitely dead, there were storms at intervals which whirled the dust of the long-uncultivated fields into fogs and kept them both under cover. And when that happened Dreen would light one of the bowl lamps—striking flint to the worn knife blade to induce a spark onto the reed fiber wick floating in a cupful of fish oil.
Then the books were brought out and lesson time began. At first Nosh could see no reason for this—and her old fears returned that the ability to read might bring her to death were it known. But at length a long-sleeping part of her mind stirred and she began to look forward to the acquiring of these new skills. For she not only learned to read, but also to write. And not only in one language, for Dreen insisted that it was well to be able upon occasion to greet strangers in their own tongues—though what strangers
might come here she never made clear.
From time to time ever since Nosh’s coming the woman had taken a ration cake and had gone off for the day, making it plain that she was about some business which did not concern the girl. At first at each of these disappearances Nosh had known fear, feeling that perhaps Dreen had deserted her and the small safety she had known here would be lost. But when the woman returned on the morning of the day after she had left each time, Nosh relaxed and accepted these departures and returns as a part of Ryft life.
Each time she had returned Dreen had brought supplies (sometimes she had also a small pouch of salt) with her, and always a reed basket filled with rich black earth, and they had spent the next few days enlarging and enriching the garden of herbs. All the time they so worked together the woman had played instructress, drilling Nosh thoroughly in the use of each plant they so carefully tended until the girl could recite from memory much herbal lore. That this patch would and did grow plants which withered in the rest of the Ryft was just one of the many puzzles Nosh could find no answer for and gave up seeking.
Each time Dreen left she headed to the west and that mingling of jagged rocks which repelled all thought of journeying there, though it would seem that she knew well where she would go and what she was to do there.
Nosh spent those days alone in ways of her own. It was her pride to be able to greet Dreen on her return with some surprise—such as a new supply of dried fish, some pages of one of the books mastered, a piece of knotless weaving. They had sparse garments. Dreen’s robe was patched with both pieces of reed cloth and even bits of toad skin. Nosh, whose single garment when she came here was already too small, had fashioned a kilt of reed cloth and a cape of strips of snakeskin, both of which gave her body the freedom of movement she needed for all her tasks.
Now when Dreen left, the girl put in time at the riverbank, not only harvesting reeds when in season but in sifting the gravel, testing her gift over and over again. Sometimes when she held a find between her palms pressed close together and closed her eyes to concentrate upon that which she held, she felt that it was not the crude and dull lifeless thing she had found, rather she saw a mental picture of the stone cut, polished, and in all its glory. She made a few attempts to rough-polish some of her finds, but without success.
Meanwhile she wondered now and then what was happening in the world beyond the barriers containing the Ryft. She never tried to force memory upon herself. But sometimes she speculated that perhaps all the world without knew only death and that she and Dreen were the last of their race yet living.
When that dark thought entered her mind she went to the rocks and gave the clicking call Dreen had taught her. It was difficult to know one zark from another but over the change of seasons she had come to distinguish two—and they appeared to be always the first to answer her summons. One was a shade taller than its fellow and there was a small pucker in its frill as if it had once suffered some hurt which had healed awry. The other always clicked to her loudly as if glad at her summons. She named them—the large Tarm, and other Wasin. The memory she had so long suppressed supplied those names as if once they had had meaning for her. And Nosh was sure that the creatures knew their names when she uttered them.
It was at such a meeting that life changed for the second time for Nosh. Tarm was on the top of a tall pinnacle of rock and now he appeared to be staring north along the pan of the forgotten highway. He clicked loudly and emphatically and Nosh got to her feet, only to dodge down again at once.
There was movement along the same pass trail the children had followed that time seasons past. More refugees? But wariness was deep set in Nosh. She slipped between the rocks, keeping well to cover and moving to a point from which she could see more clearly.
CHAPTER 4
The wind had a cut to it, a promise of the stark cold season to come. Kryn drew tighter the cumbersome hide coat, a size or so too large for him, which he kept on by an arrangement of strings and his sword belt. It smelled vilely of the lorshog pens where its previous owner must have spent some lengthy time in those days before Kryn had lifted it from a hook in the empty stable.
Empty stable—he had been too late—by how much—an hour or so? A day? The guards and the priests had swept the small manor bare. He had hoped that it, being the farthest out of the House holdings, and a meager one compared with the riches of several keeps and manors, would be the last to be visited by Temple greed and he would find there both a mount trained to mountain roving and supplies.
Now Kryn still chewed on a half-rotted apple gleaned from the orchard, grimacing at its taste. But the fruit was something with which to fill his aching belly. He had eaten the last of the food Smarle had given him a day ago.
He had crept upon this small hold of High Skies, refusing to drop any of his wariness, as might one of the outlaw raiders. Well, was that not what he had become— an outlaw and a raider—if he would keep life in his body?
No villager, no landkeeper, would give him aid or shelter. The fact that High Skies was deserted was proof enough that the message of the downfall of his House had spread nearly to the borders of this land. Before him were only the Heights and those were fabled sources of death and destruction—and had been ever since High King Trustan had fallen in the Battle of Twin Forks and left his weak-willed son slave to the Temple, whether he wore their collar or not, to claim the throne.
Masterless men—armsbearers whose lords had been slain or given in tamely to Valcur’s sort—landsmen who had seen their fields put to the torch at harvest season, their sturdy garths plundered and wrecked, yes, and those others also who had blood on their hands from murderous crimes of the private sort—those were to be found above and beyond.
Kryn had had the garth under survey for near half a day and had not seen even a course-hound move, a fowl flutter in the muddied courtyard. Surely there was no one left and he could see no reason that there would be any guard in hiding. Or did Valcur suspect that he would head hither? His choice of life was well-known—there had been many sneers about one who willingly followed the ways of the hills in preference to that of the arms court and the banquet hall.
Trap—no trap? Kryn brought from his belt pouch a copper targuin, a third of his non-inheritance. He gave it a short spin and marked the features of High King Bancus staring up at him. So, there was no reason why he should not try his fate. To take the upper trails with as little as he carried now was little better than choosing to set his bootknife to his throat and being done with all of it.
But he had waited until the sun was down behind the mountains and he slipped from shadow to shadow with all the expertise he could summon. The silence of the garth was daunting. This was a place he had left only little more than a ten-day ago alive and ready to welcome any traveler. Of course those he left here were now swept away—slaves even as their former lord. The recently garnered harvest would have been transferred to the stores of the Temple, as would all the animals. Everything of value would have been claimed and would be carefully audited.
He had reached the lane which led to the foredoor. As he expected the lane was deeply rutted by the wheels of wagons. Still he halted to listen with a hunter’s trained ear for any sound from the cluster of buildings.
Wind in the trees that framed the ground before the house was bringing down already some of the leaves slain by the chill. Kryn flitted on and then saw that the door was barred with broad bands of red cloth set crosswise and centered with a large gob of wax imprinted with the Temple insignia. Such a warnoff would send any casual comer on his way careful of no intrusion.
To break that would only be a betrayal of the presence of one who did not bow to Valcur. But also that marking meant that the Temple’s forces had not made a clean sweep of what the house contained.
Kryn moved around the side. The window slits were likewise so barred. But there were secrets at every garth since the days of the Blancanter raiding forces, and perhaps the Templers had not thought of that.
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br /> Kryn dropped to his hands and knees and felt along the stones set to form the foundation. He counted, pushed, and faced a dark cavity into which he swung, dropping to the cellar hole beneath. He smelled the heavy fumes of new wine and of ale, enough that one might become drunk on them alone, and his feet splashed in a pool which spread from one cask to the next. They had beaten in the heads of those…
Not a Templer trick, they would have wanted to save this. But old Harkvan—he was of a temper to destroy what he could manage, to save it from the robed thieves.
Kryn swished through the riverlets of drink and found the crude ladder leading up to the house. There was light here for the trapdoor was wedged partly open—wedged by a…
For a moment Kryn clung tightly to the ladder and swallowed.
A limp hand dangled down toward him. And he thought he could put name to the face pinned in the crack of the door in spite of bloodstains now veiling it.
Harkvan himself.
Kryn climbed, somehow pushing the body away, to stand in the flag-paved kitchen. There was more blood by the door and a second crumpled body. Kryn made himself cross the big room. Wasver, Harkvan’s trusted horse trainer, a great slash across his middle letting out a twist of guts. Above the smell of the spilled wine and ale from below arose the stench of death.
Somehow Kryn found himself able to do what was to be done. Harkvan lay at rest, his servant beside him. But nothing could erase the pain and rage which death had set on their features.
Harkvan—he had not been ready to kneel with a slave rope about his throat—not he! Kryn rubbed his hand across his eyes and wished for a raw moment that it was Harkvan’s blood in his own veins.
Searching, Kryn found what was to him a treasure. Knowing the old garthmaster’s habits, he looked about in a certain cupboard craftily concealed, and discovered what he had hardly dared to hope for—a bow well seasoned and with a packet of strings, a quiver of arrows fletched by Harkvan’s own patient and knowing fingers. There was a blade, also, set in a plain scabbard. Not as long nor heavy as Bringhope, closer to an oversized knife.