Beyond the valley of the stream the land lay open, save for dark clumps of trees or brush here and there. I was used to the Dales with their protecting ridges. Now, having on impulse climbed to the edge of the river cut, I stood watching shadows grow darker until each and every one of those growths appeared lapped in a pool of dark. The sky was alight, fresh and open—but this land was secret, it held no easy road for such as us.
A rising night wind blew against me. I had taken off my helm so that the wind tugged at my hair, dried the sweat that had gathered under the band of my headgear, cooled me—perhaps too much. Silver and black was all this land—silver above, black below. It was that darker part that held us.
Inside me something awoke, stirred as if from a long sleep, then was gone before I could seize upon it. Memory? No. I had ranged the Waste twice before, yes. But never in this direction. It was not possible for me to recognize the land before me. Yet . . .
I shook my head firmly against such fancies. What I needed was clear-cut purpose, a centering in on what was the most important thing in the world—to find Joisan. Though how . . . Reluctantly I returned to our fireless camp where the others had settled. I came to stand before the two of them.
“She must be found,” I said bleakly. “Since my own horses are gone, I shall of a necessity take hers.”
“We ride with the morning,” Jervon answered me as one who stated the obvious.
“Go with safety. Bear with you my heart thanks that you have served my lady.”
“You do not understand.” Elys’s voice came through the night that veiled her face. “We ride with you.”
For a moment I tensed, so filled was I with the guilt I had drawn about me like a cloak. Since it was because of me Joisan had come here at her great peril, what pan of any rescue venture belonged to these two? I was willing only to welcome anger—and to turn it against others since I burned with it myself.
Then the Wisewoman added: “Her way was our way—of free choice. We are not about to turn from it, now that it has brought this upon her. If you choose not to ride in our company, that is for you to decide. Still we shall go.”
How had Joisan so tied these two to her? Or—suspicion crawled where anger had opened a way—were they indeed Imgry’s eyes ready to turn me from my road when they had the chance? Well enough. I could watch and wait, be all fair words and thanks, and still keep my own path. Unless . . .
This Elys had the Power, and through that might be a way to my lady. I could not disdain any chance, however small, of a guide.
“You speak,” I said, “as if you have a road in mind. But how can that be?” Something of eagerness broke the right cover I tried to force on my feelings. Had I been jealous in part because these two had been my lady’s friends when I had left her without any outward show of feeling? I clenched my hands at my sides until my nails cut into the softer flesh of my palms.
“I know nothing of Thas—save they are of the earth. But . .
I remembered! By the Warmth of the Flame and the Flash of Gonder’s Spell Sword, in that moment I remembered!
“The mountains! The Werelord said their dens were known to be among the mountains!” I swung about, but even the brightness of the moon could not show me now these distant ridges against the far sky.
“The mountains it is then,” Jervon said, much as one speaks of riding to a market to price wool, though I was sure he was not as pragmatic as he sounded.
This was a time when I could not, for Joisan’s sake, push aside any suggestion of aid. I must accept what was offered and be grateful—honestly grateful—that it was given.
I had thought that I could not sleep, that I must lie and remember too much—and fear far more. However, sometimes the body defeats the mind and brings it under domination. I found that my eyelids grew heavy and . . .
No—I did not dream. Or if I did . . . But I did not! It was no dream—nor was it any sorcery summoned up by Elys in some mistaken hope perhaps of lightening my inner burden. I was sitting up, my hands half raised to my head. There was the moon and the stars, and around me the dark. I could hear the rasping sound made by a grazing horse not too far away.
“Joisan!” I scrambled up, blundered forward a step or two—my hands outstretched to grasp something—someone—who was not there. “Joisan . . .”
She had been there, or here—or , . .
I rubbed my forehead dazedly. Out of the dark I heard movement, whirled about. “Joisan!”
“No.”
A single word of denial. One that I was hot to dispute.
“I—I saw her.” I stammered. “She was here, I tell you!”
“He is ensorcelled?” It was Jervon’s deep voice in the night. Then came an answer from the Wisewoman.
“He could not be—not with such a safeguard as he wears.”
There was a glitter of ice blue, the band on my wrist. Of course it had not been sorcery! I had seen Joisan—she had stood with bared head, her hair clotted with earth, smears of it across her face. There had been wonder in her eyes and between us—the gryphon! I had seen her.
I must have repeated that, for Elys replied to words I did not remember uttering.
“A true sending. It was surely a true sending,”
A sending! I shook my head, tried to believe that my sight of her had been more than a willed vision. But once more logic awakened in me. I dropped down on the ground, clasped my head between my hands—then changed and held the wrist with its band flat against my forehead. I closed my eyes and tried with all the force I could summon, all the will I knew, to reach out—to touch—to see . . . Only there was no answer—nothing but the moon above and the black land below.
A hand rested on my shoulder. I strove to shake it off but the clasp clung.
“Let be!” Elys spoke with authority. “This is no land in which to open any gates. Let be—I do not think you are an utter fool!”
Did I indeed feel in that moment, even as she spoke, that something—a faint trace—a sensation that my frantic searching had touched what should not be disturbed except by fools? I could not tell—though I shivered as I might have had a breath of winter wind swept across the gully and wrapped itself about my shoulders in a lash-cut. I dropped my hand, stared hard-eyed into the dark, knowing that my chance was gone and I would have no value to Joisan should I now—as Elys had pointed out—play the fool.
Perhaps I had never before been driven so . . . unless it was when I had trailed Rogear into the Waste. The ferment within me urged me on and on during the next two days. Had I traveled alone I might neither have eaten nor slept—until I fell from the saddle of a horse ridden near to death. Still it seemed that the heights toward which we headed never drew any closer. My worst fear rode with me, that suspicion that perhaps we had chosen wrongly, that we were not heading toward my lady, but away.
Was it that constant nag of fear that brought back the dreams? I never returned in sleep to that place where the gryphon-man lay. Mostly I was in the company of those whose faces I could not clearly see, whose murmuring voices I did not understand, yet in me strained the need to both see and hear. From such dreams I awoke as weak in body as if I had run for a day, sweat heavy and sticky on my body.
I did not tell my companions of these dreams. In fact I spoke very little. Still striving to free my mind from a prison of dark thoughts, I made myself watch both of them. I asked no questions concerning their past, though such questions began to crowd my mind.
Elys was a Wisewoman, more than that—for she wore the mail of a warrior with practiced ease and I saw that a sword was as familiar to her as it was to anyone who was trained in such usage for many years. Thus she was a strange puzzle—for Wisewomen and weapons have never consorted together from all I had ever heard.