Gryphon's Eyrie

1 Joisan

Our world…

I stood in the dimness of the lamplight, the newborn child in my arms, looking out across the lake to the east, and the coming dawn. A long night… my weary body cried out for rest, yet I felt no desire to brave the greying darkness and leave Utia’s house. The effort of climbing down the house-ladder to our tiny boat, tethered securely to a ring in one of the huge stone pillars thrusting up from the lake’s depth, was too much. I loosed one hand, still holding the child against my breast, as I pushed back a straying lock of hair.

A dawn wind arose, rippling across the lake, to send waves lapping about these age-old standing pillars which the quiet fisherfolk of Anakue had discovered untold years ago and put to use as supports for their water-protected homes.

My lord Kerovan and I had chanced upon many strange things both wondrous and terrible during our wanderings across this new world of ours—Arvon, the holder of secrets. The past troubled my mind as I watched the stars pale and dwindle in the east. From that east and north we had come, discovering a way down from those mountains now only a smudge of shadow against the sunrise-paling sky. I remembered that first morning after our struggle against the Dark Lord, Galkur, when we stood together on the slopes of those distant heights, looking out upon a land that seemed, after the frost-seared stretches of the Dales and the desolation of the Waste, to be a blurred tapestry of gold and scarlet, vivid against a backing of tall evergreen forests.

Then my lord and I had been near drunk with that beauty, feeling still the exultation of those who treasure life doubly because they have lately faced its ending. My mind filled with a heart-raising warmth, my cheeks flushed as I remembered well that first night together after our victory, when Kerovan became my lord in truth. Though the mountainside had been cold, our heat of body and spirit filled the world… our new world, this Arvon.

A fair land, truly, for the most part. Yet there were ancient pitfalls aplenty, to trap the unwary, that we had also learned during these past three years of wandering… of our wandering without end, for it seemed that nowhere was there a place we might claim for our own. Though we had found temporary dwellings among several peoples such as these simple, kindly fishers, always there was something within my lord which grew restless, pushing him on, so we would take to the road again.

The baby in my arms stirred, recalling me, with a start, to the here and now. He opened a tiny mouth in that reddened face, still molded by the stresses of birthing, to squeak, uttering a small mouse-sound.

Sun began to finger the lake, staining the water with crimson glory. I held the child up to the window so those rays might touch his thatch of dark hair. “Your first sunrise, small one. What do you think?” He blinked sleepily at me, unimpressed.

“Utia’s waking, Lady Joisan.” I turned, to see Zwyie,

Anakue’s Wisewoman, spooning a strengthening cordial between the exhausted mother’s pale lips.

“How does she now?” I returned to the woman’s side, touched fingertips to her throat. The pulse I found was still fast, but stronger.

“Better, I think. She lost much blood, but I think she’ll strengthen after a few days. Tis a good thing both of us were here, Lady, or we might have lost her.”

I nodded tiredly. The baby had been a breech delivery, and nigh a month too early. I had been hurriedly summoned from one of the net-tenders who had run a hook into his hand, to discover Zwyie trying to calm Utia so she might determine how the child lay. It had taken every bit of healcraft I had learned from my aunt, Dame Math, as well as lore I had gained during our roving, to sing the labor-wracked woman into a relaxed state. We had worked together the rest of the night, mixing herbs and cordials, chanting, calling upon Blessed Gunnora’s help to give her strength. And Gunnora had been with us, for both mother and child survived.

Utia’s eyes opened. She was too weak to speak, but I guessed her desire. “The babe is well, Utia.” I knelt on the woven rush floor covering, holding forth the child that she might see that tiny wrinkled face. “You and Raney have a fine son.”

The woman’s pale lips curved into a tender smile as, with an effort, she raised her hand to touch the fuzzy darkness of the baby’s hair. I bit my lip as I laid the child beside her. There was a hidden emotion here which wakened in me a strange longing, akin to pain. My arms now felt empty of something far greater than just the light weight of a babe.

“Leave them now to peace, Lady.” Zwyie was beside me, although I had not heard her come. “You, too, must rest, eat…”

Numbly I went to the table, swallowed a few mouthfuls. The full weight of this night’s work seemed to settle on me. It was all I could do not to slump and sleep, my head on the board.

The morning sun was now well up, light shimmering brilliantly across the water. Through the door I could see all of Anakue plainly. Those pillars with their wooden houses atop, the spidery bridges linking one to the next… all but the one that stood a little apart. That house was reserved by custom for the Wisewoman of the village. Until my lord and I had come to Anakue—nearly a year past—Zwyie had lived there alone. She had given us lodging in her loft. Our chamber was small, but after months on the trail, living on the open land in all weathers, trading what skills we had between us for a night’s lodging here, a meal there, it had become the first real home I had known since the Hounds of Alizon had stormed Ithkrypt’s now-shattered walls. I had wistfully dreamed of perhaps building a house of our own on the lake’s shore, near the smokehouse where each day’s catch was brought for preserving. If only my lord…

“How does he, Lady Joisan?” Zwyie might well have followed my thoughts, though between us was no true mindspeech, such as my lord and I sometimes shared. Still, all those who work within the Craft are conscious of much that cannot be seen, touched, smelt, or tasted by ordinary senses. And Zwyie and I had become close—I thought of her perhaps as an older sister, though I had never had one…

I looked up to face her dark blue eyes, beautiful and long-lashed in an otherwise broad, plain countenance. “The… dreams come oftener these days. Then, when he wakes, he is… overcast… his features altered a fraction, as though another dwelt in him…”

“Shadowed? You mean the Dark?”

“I do not think so… No! He is not so cursed; but after these dreams, he will not speak aloud of what troubles him. His mind is closed to me also. Each time he awakes, he searches out his weapons to clean, oil, polish… as though what has plagued him during sleep can be met and conquered by steel.”

“Steel… cold iron is a defense against some forms of the Shadow. The land hereabouts harbors many who embrace the Dark. That is why Anakue stands surrounded by running water—which is also a defense, since evil cannot cross it.”

“That I well know. What I cling to is the talisman he wears—that wristband of the Old Ones. So far it does not warn. And my ring remains unchanged.” I looked down at the cat’s-head ring I had found in a manor once occupied by Old Ones—those, I was sure, of the Light. Rainbow prisms flashed across its surface, as the rose-gold color of it mirrored the newly risen sun.

“Look ever to the ring, Lady. As long as it holds life, all will be well, though you may have cause to fear that it is not so.”

The Wisewoman took from her belt a tiny pouch made of dried fish-skin, darkened with age. “I have not done this in long and long, but… reach within with your left forefinger; stir these.”

Wondering, I cautiously dipped the finger into the pouch, felt therein many tiny sharp objects. I stirred them, felt one prick my flesh, so withdrew my hand hurriedly. A red drop stood out clearly on my skin.

“Good, blood always strengthens the bespelling. Now…” Zwyie upended the bag on the tabletop. The contents scattered across the sanded surface. Peering closer, I saw tiny fishbones. The Wisewoman studied the wide-flung pattern, then spoke with a lilt close to a chant. Her voice was so low I had to strain my ears to hear.

“From the mountains a shadow reaches forth… fell dark, bound by a spell grown old. You shall journey, and you shall find, a home of ancient wisdom, a place of ancient evil… What are now two shall be three… and then six, to face that not of earth… Reach within, then without for strength…” Zwyie’s voice trailed away as she looked at me, her eyes once more direct. “Beware, Lady Joisan. Your future is indeed Shadowed, and I can see no more clearly. But this I know—you walk in step with great danger.”

“I shall, guard,” I told her, wishing almost that she had not done the foreseeing for me, though I knew she meant it well. Which is better, to be warned of danger and live conscious of its shadow, or walk blindly, content in the sun’s light while that lasts?

Behind us, the baby began to cry.

“Quiet, small one.” I went to pick up the child, cuddled him against my shoulder.

“Do you hold him, Lady Joisan. We shall bless him now.” Zwyie reached into her bag of simples and herbs, bringing out two sprigs of dried leaves. Lighting a white candle, she chanted softly as she passed these several times through the smoke. Then she nodded to me, and I laid the child down on the table, steadying him so he would not roll.

The Wisewoman brushed each of the tiny feet with the brittle sprigs of angelica and vervain, as together we recited the ritual words: “Gunnora, Lady who protects women, and the innocents born of women, guard this child. Let not his feet earn’ him near the Shadow, rather let him walk in the Light in all ways and times.”

I held up each of the little fists so she could touch them in turn with those protecting herbs. “Let also these hands work in the service of life and the Light.”

Lastly she brushed the child’s forehead. “Let his mind remain clean and untainted, grant him the strength of will to naysay any thought born of the Dark.” She paused, then both of us repeated in turn, “So may it be always by Thy will.”

I carried the child back to his mother. Utia roused, looking better for her short rest. “Utia”—I held the child before her after the custom of her people in which Zwyie had lessoned me—“this is your goodly son. Look upon him, name him, that he may have life well set before him.”

As her eyes fastened eagerly on her child, again that ache I could not rightly put name to welled within me. “His name is Acar,” she whispered.

I settled Acar safe beside his mother just as footsteps sounded on the dock ladder. Now came Utia’s husband, Raney, and her sister, Thalma. Since what both Utia and the babe now needed most was rest and the comfort and praise of her kin, Zwyie and I took our leave, Raney’s somewhat garbled thanks loudly following us.

The small boat bobbed as we clambered down and began to wield our paddles, sending the craft in the direction of the Wisewoman’s house. We sat side by side, silent in our weariness. But I remembered, with a chill not born of the morning air, Zwyie’s dire foretelling.

“I watched you hold the babe,” Zwyie said suddenly. “There is an emptiness within you, my lady, and that is not surprising. Come with me to Gunnora’s shrine tomorrow, ask her for a child.”

“That I cannot.” I kept my eyes steady on the approaching stone pillar supporting our temporary dwelling.

“Why?”

I discovered that I could not look directly at Zwyie. “It is… because of my lord.”

“Why, Joisan?” Her question rang like a challenge. “He is a man, that is plain to any with eyes to look. Surely his… differences are not such as to prevent him from—She broke off, plainly searching for suitable words, her own eyes suddenly downcast.

I smiled wryly at her. “No, that is not it at all, sister. My lord is indeed a man, and in spite of his… differences, as you term them, to me he is very good to look upon.” I took a deep breath as I dipped paddle into the grey-green water. “No, I speak of this troubling which has descended upon him at intervals during our wandering time in Arvon.

Now it has come to plague him again—more strongly than ever before. I am afraid, of what I cannot say…”

“This ‘troubling’ raises a barrier between you?”

“None of my building. Only Kerovan fears, that I know without his telling, and that fear drives him… apart.”

Zwyie gave me a sharp, knowing look. I realized that she understood that which I could not have put into frank speech—that my lord had not turned to me as a husband for more than a month now.

The familiar catch of sadness burned at the back of my throat. Every night he either feigned sleep or contrived, with ever-thinner excuses, to be elsewhere. I wanted to ask why, but my few attempts to approach the subject had brought only a painful silence, inner knowledge that my questions hurt him in a way unknown to me.

If only… I remembered the last time we had been heart to heart together, and my hands tightened on the grip-smoothed wood of the paddle.

I had awakened suddenly in the early morning to find him tossing in his sleep, his face marked with that disturbing “otherness” I was sure betokened sendings from elsewhere… but from whom… or what?

My heart beating frantically lest he not return from wherever that Other had taken his mind and spirit, I had shaken him into wakefulness in turn. His eyes—those eyes which had made me call him “Lord Amber” when first we met—opened, to focus on me.

“Kerovan?” I made a question of his name, because it seemed to me that strangeness still shadowed his features.

“My lady?” He smiled at me, and there was something in his smile setting my blood to racing. Never had he looked at me so… always he had been shy, diffident. Before our true marriage he had regarded all women with the suspicion that his mother’s cruel rejection and betrayal had forced on him. Try as I might to be close to him, in me always lay the hurting awareness that no matter what our physical nearness, some essential part of him remained aloof.

“Are you well?” I touched his arm, felt the warmth of his weather-browned skin, the soft down hair, was reassured by its solid reality.

In answer that arm encircled me, pulled me down to his waiting kiss, to acknowledge that this time no weight of past fear and anger welled between us—there was only love for each other, blazing and alive.

The boat bumped hard against the tiny dock built out from the house pillar, jarring me out of memories. Zwyie gathered up her bag of simples, and I made haste to do likewise. Weary beyond thought, I climbed the ladder-stairs behind her. Sitting down on the kitchen bench, we helped each other off with the high, tight-fitting, fish-scale boots. The women of Anakue, except for feast-days, went clothed the same as the men, since they shared the fishing.

Stocking-footed, I climbed to the loft my lord and I shared. He was abed, sleeping deeply. One glance told me the troubling was on him again. When I had first seen him I had thought him one of the Old Ones, those beings with a semblance of humankind—but who controlled Powers and forces we of the Dales could barely sense. Now, his dark hair further darkened by sweat, features thinned by daylight worry and night sendings, his resemblance to the faces pictured in some of the old shrines and temples was even more unmistakable. That long oval face, the pointed chin… even as I hesitated, half-afraid that, if I woke him, Kerovan as I knew him would be totally gone, he opened his eyes.

I braced myself to meet that yellow gaze; however, he spared not a glance for me. Swinging out of the bed with the fluid grace of a trained swordsman, he reached for his breeches, pulled them on, then his under-jerkin. All his movements were hasty, those of a guardsman summoned to a post. Moments later he threw back the lid of the chest where we kept our possessions and pulled on his padded shirt. Then, with a dull clink, his mail followed.

“Kerovan, what’s to do?” I crossed the loft as he tested the edge of his dagger on his thumb, nodding in satisfaction when a hairline streak of red welled. He paid me no mind—as if I had not spoken.

With an echoing clatter, our swords and swordbelts dropped in turn to the wooden floor. Then my own mail shirt was shaken free. “My lord!” I put hand to his shoulder, shook him. “What do you? There is no battle—”

He turned to me, eyes brightening. “Ah, Joisan! I was afraid I would have to send Zwyie to seek you out, and time is short. Here—” He thrust my mail at me, then piled padded undershirt, boots, and sword on top willy-nilly.

“Put them on!” he snapped, seeing my hesitation, then turned to dig out his backpack. Mine followed. Without another glance at me, he began filling them with the swift precision of one who has spent much of his life on the road.

“But Kerovan, why?” In spite of myself, anger sharpened my voice. I let the things he had piled in my arms slip to the floor.

“We’re leaving.” He glanced at me as though I were lackwitted. “We must go—today. Hurry.” He returned to his strapping of a pack.

“Why?”

He paid me no further heed. I watched him, realizing that if I did not prepare to accompany him, I might well be left behind. Once, before our struggle with Galkur, he had gone forth alone, not looking behind, driven by his fear of closeness with me. Now, again, something was goading him, and there was nothing in his mind but the urge to run from—or to—if.

Reluctantly I dressed in my trail clothing, leathern broaches and boots, padded undershirt, then my woolen shirt, and, finally, my mail. That last hung harsh and heavy on my shoulders, the feel of it recalling to me vividly fear, hunger, and cold, those ever-present companions during war. For the first time in long and long, I wondered briefly how fared that struggle between Hallack and the invaders from the eastern sea.

Long before I was finished, my lord had packed our few possessions, begun pacing impatiently. I heard the scrape and click of his hooves on the hard wooden rungs of the ladder as he descended. But I cast a last longing look at our “home,” as I twitched the bedcoverings smooth. Then, with a heart heavier than my mail, I followed him.

I could hear Zwyie from the kitchen. “What’s to do, Kerovan? Where is your lady?”

“Here,” I made answer. “We are leaving Anakue, Zwyie. Give our farewell and good wishing to all your people, if you will. Our thanks for all your kindnesses.”

Why? Her question echoed in my mind, but she did not voice it aloud. Behind Kerovan’s back I shrugged.

“Well, at least I can send you on your way with something in your bellies! You can surely stay that long, my lord!” At Zwyie’s sharp voice, my lord nodded. I felt shame for him a little, though I do not believe he truly realized his discourtesy, as she hustled briskly about, putting up a pack of smoked fish, joumeybread, and dried fruit.

Moments later she pushed the provisions into my pack, helping me slip the straps onto my shoulders. “Go with Gunnora’s Blessing and aid, my lady.” She pressed something into my hand. Looking down, I saw an amulet of Gunnora’s, the carven golden sheaf of grain entwined with a grapevine heavy with ripe fruit. Tears near blinded me as I fumbled the leathern thong that held it pendant over my head.

“Thank you, sister.” Between us I traced the symbol of blessing. Her eyes widened as my fingers left a faint trail of greenish-blue light to linger for a moment on the early morning air.

“You have learned much, my lady. Remember, trust that within you, rather than things as they outwardly seem. “Joisan!” Kerovan already stood within the boat, the breeze tug-Hint; impatiently at his hair as though it reflected the haste which drove him.

Silently I descended the house-ladder, took my seat. Our paddles slipped in unison into the water. The boat headed for the shore. Kerovan kept his face steadfastly set to the south and west, never looking back. It was as if to him the village—those who had welcomed us there—had ceased to exist.

But I watched over my shoulder Zwyie’s stocky figure dwindle and shrink, and discovered myself hard-pressed to hold back tears.