Norton, Andre - The Crystal Gryphon

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Andre Norton - The Crystal Gryphon (1972)
(Scanned by: Kislany)
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Here Begins the Adventure of Kerovan, Sometime Lord-Heir in Ulusdale of
High Hallack.
I was one born accursed in two ways. Firstly, my father was Ulric, Lord
of Ulmsdale in the north. And of his stock there were told dire tales. My
grandfather, Ulm the Horn-Handed, he who led his people into this northside
dale and chartered the sea-rovers who founded Ulmsport, had looted one of the
places of the Old Ones, taking the treasure sealed within. All men knew that
this was no ordinary treasure, for it glowed in the dark. And after that
looting not only Ulm, but all those who had been with him on that fearsome
venture, were visited by a painful sickness of body from which most of them
died.
When I was born, my father was already in middle years. He had taken two
ladies before my mother and had of them children. But the children had been
either born dead or had quitted this world in their early years, sickly
creatures one and all. He had sworn, however, to get him a true heir, and so
he set aside his second lady in favor of my mother when it seemed as if he
would get no son of her.
My mother's lineage also laid me under a curse. She was the Lady
Tephana, daughter to Portal of Paltendale, which lies farther to the
northwest. There are those who even now make off-warding signs at dalesmen
from those parts, saying that, when our folk moved thither to settle, there
were still Old Ones, seeming like ourselves; and that our people - the
Borderers - entered into a blood-mixing with these, the offspring therefrom
being not altogether human.
Be that as it may, my father was desperate for an heir. And Tephana,
lately widowed, had borne already a goodly child who was now in his second
year - Hlymer. My father was willing to forego dowry, to close his ears to any
rumor of mixed blood, and to welcome the lady with full honor. By all accounts
I have heard, she was willing, even unto risking the curse laid on my father's
family by their treasure theft.
My birthing came too early and under strange circumstances, for my
mother was on her way to Gunnora's shrine to give offerings for a son and a
safe delivery. When she was yet a day's journey away, her pains came on her
very swiftly. There was no hall, not even a landsman's dwelling near enough,
and a mighty storm was brewing. Thus her women and guards took her for shelter
into a place they would have normally shunned, one of those strange and
awesome remains of the Old Ones, the people of uncanny power who held the
dales in the dim past before the first of our blood wandered up from the
south.
This building was in good repair, as is often true of the constructions
left by that unknown race. For the Old Ones seem to have used spells to bind
stones together in such a way that even time cannot devour them, and thus some
buildings look as if they were abandoned only yesterday. What purpose this one
might have served none could guess. But there were carvings of men and women,
or those who had such seeming, on the inner walls.
My mother's travail was hard, and her ladies feared that they might not
save her. After I was born they half-wished that they bad failed to, for
asking to look upon the babe, she saw me full and gave a great cry, losing her
senses and near her wits. She wandered in some mind maze for several weeks
thereafter.
I was not as other children. My feet were not with toes, like unto human
kind; rather they were small hoofs, split, covered with horn such as make up
the nails upon fingers. In my face my eyebrows slanted above eyes that were
the color of butter amber, the like of which are not seen in a human
countenance. Thus, all gazing upon me knew that, though I seemed far stronger
of wind and limb than my unfortunate half-brothers and sisters before me, in
me the curse had taken another turning. I did not sicken and die, but thrived
and grew.
But my mother would not look upon me, saying I was a demon changeling,
implanted in her womb by some evil spell. When those about her brought me
nigh, she became so disordered in her wits that they feared her state would be
permanent. Soon she declared she had no true child but Hlymer - and later my
sister Lisana, born a year after me, a fair little maid with no flaw. In her
my mother took much pleasure.
As for me, I was not housed at Ulmsdale Keep, but sent out at nurse to
one of the foresters. However, though my mother had so disowned me, my father
was moved, not by any affection - for that I was never shown by those closest
to me in blood - but rather by his pride of family, to see that my upbringing
was equal to my birth. He gave me the name of Kerovan, which was that of a
noted warrior of our House, and he saw that I was tutored in arms as became a
youngling of station and shield, sending to me one Jago, a keepless man of
good birth who had served my Lord as Master of Menie until he was disabled by
a bad fall in the mountains.
Jago was a master of the arts of war, not only with the lesser skills
that can be battered into any youngling with a strong body and keen eyes, but
also those more subtle matters that deal with the ordering of bodies of men
great and small. Crippled and tied to a way of living that was only a half-
life for a once-active man, he set his brain to labor as he had once ordered
his body. Always he searched for new lore of battle, and sometimes at night I
would watch him with a strip of smoothed bark before him, patiently setting
out in his labored and crooked script facts concerning the breaking of sieges,
the ordering of assaults, and the like, droning on to me the while,
emphasizing this point or that by a fierce dig into the bark with the knife he
used for a pen.
Jago was far more widely traveled than most dalesmen, who perhaps in a
whole lifetime know little beyond four or five dales outside their own
birthplace. He had been overseas in his first youth, traveling with the Sulcar
Traders, those dangerous sea-rovers, to such half-fabled lands as Karsten,
Alizon, and Estcarp - though of the latter nation he said little, appearing
uneasy when I besought him to tell of his travels in detail. All he would say
was that it was a land where witch spells and ensorcellment were as common as
corn in a field, and that all the women were witches and held themselves
better and apart from men, so that it was a place where one kept one's eyes to
oneself and walked very quietly and mum-tongued.
There was this which makes me remember Jago well and with gratitude. In
his eyes I was apparently like any other youngling, and not a young monster.
So when I was with him I could forget my differences from my fellows and rest
content. Thus Jago taught me the arts of war - or rather such as a dale heir
should know. For in those days we did not know the meaning of real war, giving
that name to our petty skirmishing between rival lords or against the Waste
outlaws. And of those we saw many in the long winters when starvation and ill
weather drove them against us to plunder our granaries and try to take our
warm halls and garths. War wore a far grimmer face in later years, and men got
full bellies of it. It was no longer a kind of game which was played by rules,
as one moves pieces back and forth across a board on a winter's eve.
But if Jago was my sword tutor, the Wiseman Riwal showed me there were
other paths of life in the world. It had always been held that only a woman
could learn the ways of healing and perform the spells my people draw upon in
their time of need in body and spirit. Thus Riwal was as strange to his
fellows as I. He had a great thirst for knowledge, which was in him as a
longing for bread might be in a starving man. At times he would go roving, not
only in the forest country, but beyond, into the Waste itself. When he
returned he would be burdened by a pack like any peddler who carried his own
stock in trade.
Being kin to the Head Forester, he had taken without formal leave one of
the cots nearby. This he made snug and tight by the work of his own hands,
setting above its door a mask carved of stone, not in the likeness of our
people. Men looked askance at Riwal, yes - but let any animal ail, or even a
man keep his bed in sickness that could not be named - then he was summoned.
About his cot grew all manner of herbs, some of those long-known to
every housewife in the dales. But others were brought from afar with masses of
soil bundled up about their roots, and he set them out with care. Everything
grew for Riwal, and the farmer who had a wish for the best of crops would go
cap in hand at sowing tune and ask the Wiseman to overlook his land and give
advice.
Not only did he bring green life, but he also drew that which wings over
our heads or pads on four feet. Birds and animals that were hurt or ailing
came to him of their own wills. Or else he would carry them to his place
gently and tend them until they were able once more to fend for themselves.
This was enough to set any man apart from his fellows. But it was also
well known that Riwal went to the places of the Old Ones, that he tried to
search out those secrets our blood had never known. And for that, men did fear
him. Yet it was that which drew me to him first.
I was as keen-eared as any child who knows that others talk about him
behind their hands. And I had heard the garbled stories of my birth, of that
curse which lay upon the blood of Ulm, together with the hint that neither was
my mother's house free of the taint of strange mixture. The proof of both was
perhaps in my flesh and bone. I had only to look in the mirror of Jago's
polished shield to see it for myself.
I went to Riwal, boldly perhaps in outward seeming, but with an inward
chill that, young as I was, I fought to master. He was on his knees setting
out some plants which had long, thin leaves sharply cut, like the heads of
boar spears. He did not look up as I came to him, but rather spoke as if I had
already spent the morning in his company.
"Dragon's Tongue, the Wisewomen call this." He had a soft voice with a
small tremor, not quite a stammer. "It is said to seek out the putrid matter
in unhealing wounds, even as a tongue might lick such hurts clean. We shall
see, we shall see. But it is not to speak of plants that you stand here,
Kerovan, is it, now?"
"It is not. Men say you know of the Old Ones."
He sat back on his heels to look me eye to eye.
"But not much. We can look and finger, search and study, but of their
powers - those we cannot net or trap. One can only hope to brush up a crumb
here and there, to speculate, to go on everseeking. They had vast knowledge -
of building, of creating, of living - beyond our ken. We do not even know why
they were near-gone from High Hallack when the first of our ancestors arrived.
We did not push them out - no, already their keeps and temples, their Places
of Power were emptied. Here and there, yes, a few lingered. And they may still
be found in the Waste and beyond the Waste in that land we have not entered.
But the most - they were gone, perhaps long before men, as we know them,
arrived. Still - to seek what may still lie here - it is enough to fill a
lifetime and yet not find a tenth of a tenth of it!"
In his sunbrowned face his eyes were alight with that same spark I had
seen in Jago's when he spoke of a trick of sword-flay or a clever ambush. Now
Riwal studied me in turn.
"What seek you of the Old Ones?" he asked.
"Knowledge," I answered. "Knowledge of why I am as I am - not man - yet
neither - " I hesitated, for my pride would not let me voice what I had heard
in whispers.
Riwal nodded. "Knowledge is what every man should seek, and knowledge of
himself most of all. But such knowledge I cannot give you. Come."
He arose and started toward his dwelling with his swinging, woodsman's
stride. Without further question I followed after. So I came into Riwal's
treasure house.
I could only stand just within the door and stare at what lay about me,
for never before had I seen such a crowding of things, each enough to catch
the eye and demand closer attention. For in baskets and nests were wild
animals, watching me with bright and wary eyes, yet seeming, in this place, to
feel such safety that they did not hide in fear. There were shelves in plenty
on the walls. And each length of roughly hewn, hardly smoothed board was
crammed with a burden of clay pots, bundles of herbs and roots, and bits and
fragments that could only have come from the places of the Old Ones.
There was a bed, and two stools were so crowded upon the hearth that
they sat nearly in the fire. The rest of the dwelling was more suited for
storage than for living. In the middle of the room Riwal stood with his fists
planted upon his hips, his head turning from side to side as if he tried to
sight some special thing among the wealth of objects.
I sniffed the air. There was a mingling of many odors. The aromatic
scent of herbs warred with the musky smell of animals and the suggestion of
cooking from a pot still hanging on the boil-chain in the fireplace. Yet it
was not in any way an unclean or disgusting smell.
"You seek the Old Ones - look you here, then!" Riwal gestured to one
shelf among the many.
I skirted two baskets with furry inhabitants and came closer to see what
he would show me. There I found set-out fragments, one or two being whole, of
small figures or masks - bits which in some instances Riwal had fitted
together to form broken but recognizable figures.
Whether these indeed represented various beings among the Old Ones, or
whether they had had life only in the imagination of their creators, no one
might know. But that they had beauty, even when they tended toward the
grotesque, I could see for myself.
There was a winged figure of a woman, alas lacking a head; and a man of
humanoid proportions, save that from the forehead curled two curved horns. Yet
the face below was noble, serene, as if he were a great lord by right of his
spirit. There was a figure with webbed feet and hands, plainly meant to
suggest a water dweller; and a small one of another woman, or at least a
female, with long hair covering most of her body like a cloak. These Riwal had
managed to restore in part. The rest were fragments: a head, crowned but
noseless, the eyes empty pits; a delicate hand that bore an intricate ring of
metal on both thumb and forefinger, those rings seemingly a part now of the
hand, whose substance was not stone but a material I did not know.
I did not touch; I merely stood and looked. And in me was born a longing
to know more of these people. I could understand the never-ending hunger that
kept Riwal searching, his patient attempts to restore the broken bits he found
that he might see, guess, but perhaps never know.
So Riwal also became my teacher. I went with him to those places shunned
by others, to search, to speculate; always hoping that some find might be a
key that would open to us the doors of the past, or at least give us a small
glimpse into it.
My father made visits to me month by month, and when I was in my tenth
year, he spoke to me with authority. It was plain he was in some uneasiness of
spirit when he did so. But I was not amazed that he was so open with me, for
always he had treated me, not as a child, but as one who had good
understanding. Now he was very sober, impressing me that this was of import.
"You are the only living son of my body," he began, almost as if he
found it difficult to choose the words he must use. "By all the right of
custom you shall sit in the High Seat at Ulmskeep after me." He paused then,
so long I ventured to break into his musing, which I knew covered a troubled
mind.
"There are those who see it differently." I did not make that a
question, for I knew it to be a statement of fact.
He frowned. "Who has been saying so to you?"
"None. This I have guessed for myself."
His frown grew. "You have guessed the truth. I took Hlymer under my
protection, as was fitting when his mother became Lady in Ulm. He has no right
to be shield-raised to the High Seat at my death. That is for you. But they
press me now to hand-fast Lisana with Rogear, who is cousin-kin to you."
I was quick enough to understand what he would tell me and yet loath to
hear it. But I did not hesitate to bring it into the open myself.
"Thus Rogear might claim Ulmsdale by wife-right."
My father's hand went to his sword hilt and clenched there. He rose to
his feet and strode back and forth, setting his feet heavily on the earth as
if he needed some firm stance against attack.
"It is against custom, but they assault my ears with it day upon day,
until I am well-nigh deafened beneath my own roof!"
I knew, with bitterness, that his "they" must be mainly that mother who
would not call me son. But of that I did not speak.
He continued. "Therefore I make a marriage for you, Kerovan, an heir's
marriage so that all men can see that I do not intend any such offense against
you, but give you all right of blood and clan. This tenth day Nolon rides to
Ithkrypt, carrying the proxy axe for your wedding. They tell me that the maid
Joisan is a likely lass, lacking two years of your age, which is fitting.
Safe-married, you cannot be set aside - though your bride will not come to you
until perhaps the Year of the Fire Troll."
I counted in my mind - eight years then. I was well content. For
marriage had no meaning for me then, save that my father deemed it of such
importance. I wondered, but somehow I did not dare at that moment to ask,
whether he would tell this Joisan, or her kinsmen who were arranging our
match, what manner of lord she would meet on her true bride-day that I was
what I was. Inside I shrank, even in thought, from that meeting. But to a boy
of my years that fatal day seemed very far away, and perhaps something might
happen to make sure it would never occur.
I did not see Nolon set forth to play my role in axe marriage, for he
rode out of Ulmkeep where I did not go. It was only two months later that my
father came to me looking less unhappy, to tell me that Nolon had returned,
and that I was indeed safely wed to a maid I had never seen, and probably
would not see for at least eight more years.
I did not, thereafter, think much of the fact that I had a lady, being
well-occupied with my studies and even more with the quests on which I went
with Riwal. Though I was under the guardianship of Jago, he made no protest
when I spent time with Riwal. Between those two came to be an odd
companionship, in spite of their being so dissimilar in thought and deed.
As the years passed, that stiffness which had come from my tutor's old
hurt grew worse, and he found it difficult to face me in open contest with
sword or axe. But with the crossbow he was still a skilled marksman. And his
reading of maps, his discussion of this or that battle plan, continued. Though
I saw little use then for such matters in my own life, I paid him dutiful
attention, and that was to be my salvation later.
But Riwal did not appear to age at all, and as long stride still carried
him far distances without thing. I learned early to match his energy. And,
while my knowledge of plants was never as great as his, yet I found a kinship
with birds and animals. I ceased to hunt for sport. And I took pleasure in the
fact that his wild ones did not fear me. Best of all, however, were our visits
to the places of the Old Ones. Riwal prospected further and further over the
borders of the Waste, seeking ever to find something intact from the ancient
days. His greatest hope, as he confided in me, was to discover some book roll
or rune record.
When I suggested that the reading of such could well be beyond his
skill, for surely the Old Ones had not our tongue, he nodded in agreement.
Still I felt he opposed that thought, sure that if he did find such, the Power
itself would aid him to understand it.
It was in the Year of the Spitting Toad that I had been wed. As I came
closer to manhood, the thought of that distant lady began now and then to
trouble me oddly. There were two lads near my years in the foresters' hold,
but from the first they had not been playmates, or later companions. Not only
did rank separate us, but they had made me aware, from the beginning of my
consciousness of the world about me, that my non-human appearance cut me off
from easy friendships. I had given my friendship to only two men - Jago, old
enough to be my father, and Riwal, who could have been an older brother (and
how I sometimes wished that was the truth!).
But those forester lads went now to the autumn fair with lass-ribbons
tied to the upper latches of their jerkins, whispering and laughing about the
adventures those led them to. This brought to me the first strong foreboding
that when it did at last come tune to claim the Lady Joisan in person, she
might find me as ill a sight as had my mother. What would happen when my wife
came to Ulmsdale and I must go to bide with her? If she turned from me in open
loathing?
Nightmares began to haunt my sleep, and Riwal at last spoke to me with
the bluntness he could use upon occasion. When he demanded what ill thought
rode me, I told him the truth, hoping against hope that he would speedily
assure me that I saw monsters where there were only shadows, and that I had
nothing to fear - though my good sense and experience argued on the side of
disaster.
But he did not give me that reassurance. Instead he was silent for a
space, looking down at his hands, which had been busied fitting together some
of his image fragments, but now rested quiet on the table.
"There has ever been truth between us, Kerovan," he said at last "To me
who knows you well - above all others would I choose to walk in your company.
But how can I promise you that this will turn to happiness? I can only wish
you peace and - " he hesitated. "Once I walked a path that I thought might end
in hand-fasting and I was happy for a little. But while you bear your
differences to others openly, I bear mine within. Still, there they be. And
the one with whom I would have shared Cup and Flame - she saw those
differences, and they made her uneasy."
"But you were not already wed," I ventured, when he fell silent.
"No, I was not. And I had something else."
"That being?" I was quick to ask.
"This!" he spread out his hands in a gesture to encompass all that was
about him under that roof.
"Then I shall have this also," I said. Marry I had, for the sake of
custom and my father's peace of mind. What I had seen and heard of marriages
among the dale lords did not set happiness high. Heirs and lords married to
increase their holdings by a maid's dowry, to get a new heir for the line. If
inclination and liking came afterward, that was happiness, but it certainly
did not always follow so.
"Perhaps you can," Riwal nodded. "There is something I have long thought
on. Perhaps this is the time to do it."
"Follow the Road!" I was on my feet, as eager as if he meant to set out
upon that beckoning mystery this very moment For a mystery it was, and beckon
it did.
We had come across it on our last venture into the Waste, a road of such
building as put any dale's effort to shame, making our roads seem like rough
tracks fit only for beasts. The end of the road we had chanced upon was just
that, a sharp chopping-off of that carefully laid pavement, with nothing about
the end to explain the why-for. The mystery began nearly on our doorstep, for
that end point was less than a half day's journey from Riwal's cot. The road
ran on back into the Waste, wide, straight, only a little cloaked here and
there by the drift of windborne soil. To find its other end was a project we
had indeed long held in mind. The suggestion that we set out on this journey
quite pushed from my mind the thought of Joisan. She was just a name anyway,
and any meeting between us was still years ahead, while the following of the
road was here and now!
I was answerable to none but Jago for my actions. And this was the time
of year when he made his annual trip to Ulmskeep, where he kept festival with
old comrades-in-arms and reported to my father. Thus I was free to follow my
own wishes, which in this case meant the road.
Here Begins the Adventure of Joisan. Maid of Ithkrypt in Ithdale of High
Halilack.
I, Joisan of Ithkrypt, was wed at harvest time in the Year of the
Spitting Toad. By rights that was not considered a year for new beginnings;
but my uncle, Lord Cyart, had the stars read three times by Dame Lorlias of
Norstead Abbey (she who was so learned in such matters that men and women
traveled weary leagues to consult her), and her report was that my wedding was
written as a thing needful to my own fortune. Not that I was aware of much
more than the stir the question caused, for I was thereupon the center of long
and tiring ceremonies that brought me close to tears for the very tiredness
they laid upon me.
When one has no more than eight years, it is hard to judge what occupies
most the thoughts and plans of those in the adult world. I can remember my
wedding now mostly as a bright picture in which I had a part I could not
understand.
I remember wearing a tabard stiff with gold-thread stitchery that caught
up a pattern of fresh-water pearls (for which the streams of Ithdale are
rightly famous). But I was more occupied at the time with keeping to Dame
Math's stern warning that I must not spot or wrinkle my finery; that I must be
prudent at the feast table lest I spill and so mar the handiwork of long and
patient hours. The robe beneath was blue, which did not please me over-much as
it is a color I do not fancy, liking better the dark, rich shades such as hue
the autumn leaves. But blue is for a maiden bride, so it was mine to wear.
My new lord was not present to drink the Life Cup and light the House
Candle with me hand to hand. In his place stood a man (seeming ancient to me,
for his close-cropped beard was frost-rimmed with silver), as stern as my
uncle in his look. His hand, I remember, bore a scar across the knuckles that
had left a raised banding of flesh of which I was acutely aware as he clasped
my fingers in the ceremony. And in the other hand he held a massive war axe
that signified my true lord who was about to twine my destiny with his-though
that lord was at least a half-dozen years or more away from being able to
raise that axe.
"Lord Kerovan and Lady Joisan!" the guests shouted our names together,
the men unsheathing their knives of ceremony so that the torchlight flashed
upon the blades, vowing to uphold the truth of this marriage in the future, by
virtue of those same blades, if need be. My head had begun to ache with the
noise, and my excitement at being allowed to attend a real feast was fast
ebbing.
The elderly Lord Nolon, who stood proxy at the wedding, shared a plate
with me politely throughout the feast But, though he asked me with ceremony
before making a choice from all offered platters, I was in too much awe of him
to say "no" to what I liked not, and his choices were mainly of that nature.
So I nibbled at what my taste rebelled against and longed for it to come to an
end.
It did, much later, when the women with great merriment laid me, wearing
only my fine night shift, in the great, curtained bed. And the men, headed by
my uncle, brought in that awesome axe and bedded it beside me as if it were
indeed my lord. That was my wedding, though afterward it did not seem too
strange, just one of those things difficult for a child to understand,
something to be dismissed to the back of one's mind.
Only that axe, which was my partner in place of a flesh-and-blood
bridegroom, was a stark prophecy of what was to come - not only to me but to
all the country that was my home: High Hallack of the many dales.
After the departure of Lord Nolon, life soon returned to what I had
always known, for by custom I would continue to dwell under my birthroof until
I was of a suitable age for my lord to claim me.
There were some small changes. On high feast days I sat at the left hand
of my uncle and was addressed ceremoniously by my new title of Lady of
Ulmsdale. My feast-day tabard also no longer bore only one House symbol, but
two, being divided in the center vertically with a ribbon of gold. To the
left, the leaping Gryphon of Ulmsdale was worked in beads that glittered like
gems. On the right was the familiar Broken Sword of Harb, that mighty warrior
who had founded our line in High Hallack and given all his kin fame thereafter
when he had defeated the dread Demon of Irr Waste with a broken blade.
On my name-day, or as near to that as travel conditions permitted, would
come some gift sent by my Lord Kerovan, together with proper greetings. But
Kerovan himself was never real to me.
Also, since my uncle's lady was dead, he looked to his sister Dame Math
for the chatelaine's duties in Ithkrypt. She took over the ordering of my
days, to secret sighs and stifled rebellion on my part. This and this and this
must be learned, that I be a credit to my upbringing when I indeed went to
order my lord's household. And those tasks, which grew with my years, induced
in me sometimes a desire never to hear of Ulmsdale or its heir; a longing in
all my being to be unwed and free. But from Dame Math and her sense of duty I
had no escape.
I could not remember my uncle's lady at all. For some reason, though he
lacked an heir, he made no move through the years to wed again. Perhaps, I
sometimes thought even he dared not think of lessening in any part Dame Math's
authority. That she was an able chatelaine, bringing peace and comfort to all
she had dominion over, could not be denied. She kept those about her in quiet,
sobriety and good order.
In her long-ago youth (it was almost impossible to think of Dame Math as
ever being a maid!) she had been axe-wed in the same fashion as I to a lord of
the south. But before he could claim her, the news came that he had died of a
wasting fever. Whether she thereafter regretted her loss, no one ever knew.
After the interval of mourning she retired to the House of Dames at Norstead,
an establishment much-revered for the learning and piety of its ladies. But
the death of her brother's lady had occurred before she took vows of perpetual
residence, and she had returned to the mistress's role at Ithkrypt. She wore
ever the sober robe of Dame, and twice a year journeyed to Norsdale for a
period of retreat. As I grew older, she took me with her.
My uncle's heir was still undecided, since he had made no binding
declaration. He had a younger sister also - one Islaugha, who had married and
had both son and daughter. But since that son was heir to his father's
holding, he was provided for.
I was the daughter of his younger half-brother, but not being male, I
could not inherit save by direct decree. My dowry was such to attract a
husband, and my uncle, should he wish, had also the right - no, even duty, to
name that husband heir, but only when he declared it so would it be binding.
I think Dame Math would have liked to see me in the House of Dames, had
the marriage with Kerovan not been made. And it is the truth that I did find
my visits there pleasant. I was born with an inquiring mind and somehow
attracted the notice of Past-Abbess Malwinna. She was very old, but very, very
wise. Having talked with me several times, she directed that I be given the
right to study in the library of the House. The stories of the past which had
always enchanted me were as nothing to the rolls of chronicles and travels,
dale histories, and the like, that were on the shelves and in the storage
boxes in that room.
But what held me most were the references to the Old Ones, those who had
ruled this land before the first of the dalesmen came north. I knew well that
such accounts as I found were not only fragmentary, but perhaps also
distorted, for the larger numbers of the Old Ones had already withdrawn before
our forefathers arrived. Those our ancestors had contact with were lesser
beings, or perhaps only shadows, left as one would discard a threadbare cloak.
Some were evil as we judged evil, in that they were enemies to humankind
- like the demon Harb had slain. There were still places that were filled with
dark enchantment, so that any venturing unwisely into such could be enwebbed.
摘要：

AndreNorton-TheCrystalGryphon(1972)(Scannedby:Kislany)-----------------------------------HereBeginstheAdventureofKerovan,SometimeLord-HeirinUlusdaleofHighHallack.Iwasonebornaccursedintwoways.Firstly,myfatherwasUlric,LordofUlmsdaleinthenorth.Andofhisstockthereweretolddiretales.Mygrandfather,UlmtheHor...

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