On Wings of Magic
Witch World: The Turning
Book Three
Andre Norton with Patricia Mathews and Sasha Miller
The Chronicler
THERE are places in this ancient land of ours which are pleasant to the eye and yet are meant for traps for the unwary. Though Lormt (which I have come to see as my Great Hall, I, Duratan, who am kinless) is filled with knowledge gathered from years untold, still we who delve there also realize that there are secrets so well lost in the ages that they may never be made plain. Even if reference to them is found, it will not be well enough understood that its message can be clear to those for whom it might have the strongest meaning.
We live now in a time of ceaseless change, never knowing what the next day will bring. Once I was a fighting man who needed to come instantly alert to the blast of the war horn. Now I am again engaged in battles, but mostly far more subtle ones. Some are fought in a lamp-lighted room, upon a time-ridged table, my weapons not word nor dart-gun, but crumbling rolls of parchment and books so pressed by years their thick wooden or metal covers have glued their fragile pages together and it takes the lightest and most careful of handling to free them. Then, far too often, the near invisible lines on those pages are in some tongue foreign to that we know in this day, and so provide puzzles for even the scholars among us who have been the longest in the pursuit of such.
After the Turning of the southern mountains brought down two towers and some walls, opening thereby numerous secret rooms and crypts which held even more records, we were like to be swallowed by a sea of lore which we could not even list nor find places to store. What surprises might hide therein we could not even guess.
There were those who had their special subjects for which to search, but many among the oldest of the scholars simply became bewildered by this new wealth and could be found at times picking up a roll, a few minutes later abandoning it for a book or a scroll, and then sinking into a kind of daze as might a child who was faced by too great a supply of sweets on a feasting table.
However, there was danger and some of us knew that well. Nolar, who was witch talented but not trained, had testified to that when she had written her own account of the Stone of Konnard. That there were, in addition, other unchancy discoveries to be made was brought home to us in later times.
Yet the start of it all began with no stench of evil but rather a thing which had long provided a thorn to prick Nolar.
Spring came later for several years after the Turning, and our winters were longer. Lormt had changed in more than the sudden loss of towers and walls. The Witches had never had any interest in what was stored there, and, while they ruled Estcarp, few found, their way down the single road which linked our storehouse with the outer world.
We had a spread of small farmsteads without the walls but within a ring of forest which held us as a center. There were a few traders who sought us out to bring what we could not raise or make by our own hands. Otherwise what lay beyond our narrow boundaries took on shapes of legend and to most did not matter.
However, when the forest was storm-flattened at the Turning, the river Es thrown from its bed, our world whirled about us and changed. First came refugees—though none of those lingered. Then followed seekers of special knowledge. The long rule of the Witches broken, other changes arose. Escore had been opened—that age-old land from which we of the Old Race had come very long ago. There war raged between newly-awakened evil and those who stood for the Light. We heard reports no one would have given credence to in other years.
Yes, evil came, and twice near to Lormt. There was fighting of another sort and in that I had a part.
Kemoc Tregarth, who had proven the worth of what Lormt held, made calls upon our records. So did others who faced clearly the fact that the old way of life had vanished and new must be hammered out with all the skill a swordmaker expends upon a trusted blade. There was a coming and going, and more and more of those who saw that the sharing of knowledge was of great value at such a time were called upon for help and advice.
So it fell on Ouen, Nolar, and I, and sometimes Morfew, who was the most approachable of the older scholars, to handle the requests from abroad, to answer many concerning what might lie in the past.
At the same time we heard reports and rumors enough that for the first time Lormt was forced to look to defenders. Chaos brings to the fore masterless men who quickly may become outlaws. Also what had been loosed in Escore did not always stay within the boundaries of that land. I found myself again a leader of fighting men, with Derren of Karsten as my second, and a force of landbred boys and a few stragglers from the old Border companies to command. We sent out scouts and had sentry posts in the hills, though the severity of the winter season kept us mainly free from raids while it lasted in these new years.
I was returning from my first round of sentry posts for the spring when I came upon a cup of green in a bit of the forest which was of the old growth. There was such a fragrance on the air that I reined in my mountain pony and looked groundward. There grew a small clump of those flowers called Noon and Midnight by the shepherds and found only near Lormt, their shaded, nine-petaled heads nodding in the breeze. I slid from the saddle and limped to gather four of them, and those I guarded very carefully while I rode to Lormt, eager to give Nolar this token of spring.
She was with Morfew and her face was very pale except for that stain on her cheek which was her birthmark and for which she had been shunned by those too dense to see aught but that which did not truly cloak a very brave and gallant spirit.
“Of a certainty her way has been hard, and when she came here she was hardly more than a child. Also she has listened too much to the Lady Nareth and that one—” I heard the sting in Nolar's voice as I entered Morfew's study “—has ever kept herself apart. There is good in Arona and a quick cleverness, also a love for what she does. I have long hoped that those prejudices born and fostered in her, the bitterness which has ridden her these past years, could be assuaged. Me, I think, she might trust if she would let herself. Mainly, I suppose, because I am a woman. There are few enough of us here. That is why she has listened to Nareth. I cannot think why a girl of Arona's intelligence would put up with the arrogance of that one. And now that Nareth is so old— Well, I shall make one more attempt, but if she takes on Nareth's airs and graces—”
“I believe, my daughter, that Arona is one who has not been able to fit herself to change. She sees that as an enemy. There are many others within these walls not unlike her in that. Still, she likes you. I have seen her watch you at one of our common meetings and there is plainly a struggle within her,” Morfew said slowly.
“Does anyone else keep back knowledge, closed against the use of others?” Nolar retorted. “I am about to speak to her again—if she says once more that she will not share what she knows with me—because I am one with Duratan—!” Nolar's fist struck hard upon the table so that the inkwell before Morfew gave a little jump.
“What is this of Duratan?” I laid hand upon her shoulder and reached around to hold the flowers before her.
For a moment she stared at those, and then she laughed, but also shook her head.
“Do not try, Duratan, to make me see this other than what it is, a waste. Arona has so much to offer, not only of herself, for she was born to the task of recording, saving the past, but she has also the records of one Falconer village and legends which may open many closed doors. You know what might well have aided the Mountain Hawk!” She gave a little sigh. “I have that which I should be doing myself but I shall try again, put to the test that she does have some trust in me. Now that the Lady Nareth cannot m
ake trouble, there may be a chance.”
Two days later she came to me and her eyes were bright with triumph.
“It is done! Arona will allow me to view her treasures if I promise to do so only with her. So I must vanish for a space into that women's world, and during my absence you will have a chance to learn my value by missing me.”
She smiled and put two fingers to her lips, then those to mine, and left, leaving the scent of Noon and Midnight behind her.
WE, THE WOMEN
by
Patricia Mathews
One
A Lady Scholar at Lormt
A solitary mounted figure plodded down the mountain trail, brown cloak and hood blending with the brownish-grey mule, one more shadow on a tan hillside. The mule's worn leather saddlebags were just large enough to hold a few necessities and a change of clothing; four long leather cylinders strapped alongside the saddle gave the impression that the rider might also be an archer—or a messenger.
The scholar's apprentice guarding the entrance to Lormt knew the cylinders for scroll cases. The mule's saddleblanket, though worn and faded, was a work of art—an original Jommy Einason, or Nolar missed her guess. The lean trousered figure who dismounted at the gates and looked around directly was no peasant boy, but a young woman with the sharp features and hot coloring of the Falconer breed.
Nolar's whole body trembled within her skin from fear and from anger, for her Falconer stepmother had loathed her birth-marked face. But this woman of the same race merely looked at Nolar with relief and said, “Good afternoon, sister. Arona Bethiahsdaughter of Riveredge Village. May I see a scholar? Not a he-scholar, if you please—if that's possible.”
“Nolar of Meroney,” the young student answered, taken aback. Her mind raced over the female scholars at Lormt. Dame Rhianne had always welcomed a new girl, but she was old, and dreamed in the sun. Nolar knew a few student-assistants, and there were some older women who were little more. Only one name remained; with a sigh, Nolar called out and a young boy appeared. “Visitor to see the Scholar Lady Nareth, if she will,” Nolar said briefly.
The boy stared frankly at Arona and asked, “Falconer lady?”
“Was,” Arona said curtly. “The old ways are gone forever. I could not endure that.” She was speaking to Nolar directly now, the boy dismissed and forgotten. “Nor would I have our story lost and hidden through rarilh.”
Nolar turned, puzzled; Arona smiled briefly. “Deliberately failing to record and tell the tale, from malice. He-scribes have strange notions on what is important and what is not.” Her eyes searched Nolar's face and she said bluntly, “Do you fear me, that you look so grimly at me?”
Nolar blushed. “I beg your pardon, Lady. I … my father's wife was of your people. She… .”
Arona's eyebrows raised. “Do I know her name and clan?” she asked, and then put a few brief questions to the girl; then the Falconer woman whistled. “An aunt of Lennis the Miller! An angry and stiffnecked clan, those of the mill. Mine, now, is said to be bitterly proud and disastrously impulsive; the Mari Anghard are known even to outsiders, at least by reputation.”
Now Nolar whistled a bit. “The Anghard? She who was nursemaid to the three Witch children?”
Arona smiled in truth now, and her whole face lightened. “The very one.” She took cloths and a currycomb from her pack, and began to groom her mule as she spoke, looking around for water. The creature was already nibbling at what grass there was by the gate. Then she laughed. “I had a mule named for me once by Cousin Jommy, though he thinks I don't know it, for I can be stubborn.”
They talked earnestly and happily together, until at long last the boy returned.
“You're to follow me, Mistress Arona,” he announced. She did so, leading the mule until they came to the stables and left the beast to Lormt's care.
The Scholar Lady Nareth was past her middle years, with dusty brown hair and piercing grey eyes. “Sit down, my girl,” she ordered, indicating wine on a side table. Arona sipped it gratefully. “I understand you have some scrolls for me. Do you know what they contain?”
Stung, Arona answered coolly, “I wrote or copied most of them. I was the scribe in our village until the elders decided to preserve the peace by giving the post to a refugee boy. We are of the Falconer Women's village by the river, under the crag; this is the account of our lives.”
Nareth studied her, then held out one well-groomed hand for a scroll. She unrolled it, frowned, and said, “You say nothing of life in the Eyries here, nor anything else concerning Falconers; yet you are of their blood. Of course, they keep their women apart.”
Truly annoyed now, Arona said, “We saw very little of them, thank the Goddess. This is the account of our lives, not theirs. We do have lives, and kindred, and songs, stories, and a long history. Very little concerns those things men think important, such as wars and battles; this is why I would rather not see a he-scholar.”
Nareth's eyes flashed grey in her cool, pale face. “Calm yourself! And tell me what wisdom is in these scrolls that merits your long journey to Lormt. You do realize we do not trouble ourselves with such records as what Falconer's woman gave him a son when, or how many measures of grain were issued to each woman at harvest time, or that one pulled the other's hair over her man's favors or her allowance or her ribbons.”
Arona's lips were white now, and her hot Falconer eyes blazed. In a thin voice she said, “We bore no sons to any man. We bore our children to our own names, and saw the boys stolen from us as soon as they could walk or before. We were given nothing. All we had or did, we devised with our own hands and minds. We saw much of it destroyed time after time as the Falconers in their madness raged among us.”
She lifted her chin. Proudly she said, “Our tales go back over twenty generations of women, to the Far Shore, when we were queens in our own lands, and prospered. Only an invasion of armed men in overwhelming numbers put an end to that. Uprooted in a strange land, alone, with nothing, with our own men turned against us and blaming us for their military failures, we built and survived and endured, and still prospered. But I see not even Lormt cares to hear that! Your pardon, scholar's handmaiden. I should have known.” And to her complete horror, the Falconer girl broke down, in tears.
Lady Nareth, on the verge of having the girl expelled for her extraordinary rudeness, did not. Behind the veil of her grey eyes was a scholar's mind, logical, unemotional, detached. “You are overwrought and overworn,” she said with the same detachment. “I will forgive that outburst. You may guest in the wing used by our maidens and she-scholars; there is food in the refectory. I will read these scrolls and assess their worth myself; then I will speak to you again. I warn you, there are to be no more hysterics in my presence; we are scholars first, here, not women.”
Arona looked up; Lady Nareth nodded sharply. “Thank you, my girl. You are dismissed.”
As Arona went in search of her quarters, and food, Lady Nareth thought with regret of her own mentress, Scholar Rhianne. Rhianne had taken every stray female chick under her wing, not as a mother, but as if they were younger versions of herself. She protected them fiercely, and grieved when they—like Nareth—left her to deal with the more important scrolls and scholars.
Nareth's disciples were all boys. She had little but contempt for the average girl. Most of them were weak, fuzzy-minded if not mindless, subservient, and sly. Or they were strident and rude, forever in hysterics about some imagined slight. Every year there were some—the little sluts—who dared accuse this master or that of scandalous conduct towards them, and had to be turned out of the community.
It was plain that she and Arona would be crossing swords every day the Falconeress was at Lormt. Yet, Nareth's duty to the community forced her to read the scrolls, and therefore Arona must stay until she did. With a dire vision of a firebrand being touched to a keg of old oil, Nareth opened the first scroll. On top of it was a letter, to her (though not by name), from Arona, in a fine square hand. Intrigued, Nareth
began to read.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
All accounts of Falconer life deal with the men and birds in their high mountain eyries. For the rest, it is said, “They keep their women in villages apart. They also keep their dogs in kennels, their horses in stables, and their sons in nurseries.” Does nobody find anything lacking in this statement?
I, Arona Bethiahsdaughter of the Foxlady Clan, a woman of the Falconers, have come to complete that record. From time immemorial, since the days the Sulcar mercenaries set us down on your shores and before, we have had a life, a tradition, a culture of our own. We had our songs, our stories, our teachers, and our scribes, of which I was one.
We fell, not from force nor under oppression, but from peace and under freedom. Perhaps, if this is so, it is time we did, but I cannot help but mourn the life I was reared to. In many ways it was a good life: proud, self-sufficient, and but for the Falconer visits and their grim aftermath, free. Here, then, before our tale is lost and our lives go down to dust, is our story.
Arona, Chronicler
Two
The Falcon Cries at Night
Falcon Moon, a little past full, rose huge and red above the treetops to the east. To the west, Falcon Crag glowered in the blood-splashed grey of sunset. The women of Riveredge Village whispered together in tense little groups from which the children were excluded, glancing up at the crag as if afraid of being seen, then down again.
Where were the Falconers? The first full moon of fall always brought the strange, masked madmen to take the boy babies away, and to start daughters growing in the villagers. Elders and children peered restlessly out of their hiding places in the caves, ready to bolt and run again. Those volunteers of childbearing age whose names had been drawn in the summer lottery drew their Visit veils about them and dug in the trailhead gardens in swift, jerky motions, saying almost nothing.