Lore of Witch World (Witch World Collection of Stories) (Witch World Series)

  “The world has changed

  since the Sulcar ruled the waves about the oceans. They were fighters and fighting men get killed. The Kolder they fought, and they blew up Sulcarkeep in that fighting, taking the enemy—but also too many of their own—on into the Great Secret. Karsten they fought, and they were at the taking of Gorm, aye. Then they patrolled against the sea wolves of Alizon.

  “Now if they take a ship out of the harbor they do it with others besides just their kin to raise sails and set the course.

  “Now, let us to business between us, girl. I have learned much about you. You have some of the Talents of the Wise Women. You yourself said it—if any can treat with those devil females of Usturt, it must be one such as you. The whole land is hard pressed now for any who hold even a scrap of the Power. .. “

  Also By Andre Norton

  Garan The Eternal

  Gryphon In Glory

  High Sorcery

  Horn Crown

  Iron Butterflies

  Merlin’s Mirror

  Moon Called

  Moon Mirror

  Octagon Magic

  Red Hart Magic

  Sargasso Of Space

  Snow Shadow

  Spell Of The Witch World

  Stand To Horse

  The Gate Of The Cat

  The Jargoon Pard

  The Prince Commands

  The Sword Is Drawn

  Trey Of Swords

  Velvet Shadows

  Wheel Of Stars

  Yurth Burden

  Zarsthor’s Bane

  Wizard Worlds

  * * *

  LORE

  OF

  THE

  WITCH

  WORLD

  * * *

  Andre Norton

  Premier Digital Publishing - Los Angeles

  COPYRIGHT ©, 1980, BY ANDRE NORTON.

  All Rights Reserved.

  eISBN: 978-1-937957-43-8

  Premier Digital Publishing

  www.PremierDigitalPublishing.com

  Follow us on Twitter @PDigitalPub

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  SPIDER SILK

  SAND SISTER

  FALCON BLOOD

  LEGACY FROM SORN FEN

  SWORD OF UNBELIEF

  THE TOADS OF GRIMMERDALE

  CHANGELING

  Introduction

  by C. J. Cherryh

  Writing an introduction for one of Andre Norton's books is rather like applying gilt to a lily, superfluity to be sure. When I was offered the chance to do it, I first thought it was impossible and then sat down to try, and then began to think of thousands of readers who would love to get a line in . . . to say some things that want saying; things I don't think can be said too often, ever.

  About the Witch World stories: For all of us who've ever created a world to dream about, for those of us who write and for those who keep theirs in their hearts . . . the Witch World stories hold a special place. It's a land, a world, a place of dark shadows and alien powers and human beings touched with strangeness, a place where men and women find extraordinary things within them, and match themselves against an environment at once marvelously detailed and full of mysteries. The Witch World is never explored. The smallest valley holds strange happenings and a past which reaches into things stranger still. The traveler finds the unexpected, the ancient, the bizarre at every turn. Nature is powerful here and those who open their hearts to it and to living things find themselves capable of marvels and involved in an old, old warfare. One meets old friends here, and hears of them; finds remnants of eldritch powers and visitants; finds . . . if one looks . . . ancient truths about courage and honesty and duty that involve the highborn and the ordinary, the young and the old, humans and the four-footed kind all in one fabric of magic and mystery.

  The Witch World both lies within a tradition and generates a tradition of its own. It comes of that mythic tradition out of which comes Homer's wine-dark and fantastically mapped Mediterranean, peopled with gods and strange powers, which other heroes went on to sail in their turn, because it was a Place and a Time which had to exist; and which made heroes out of men and women of unlikely sort, because they met the unknown with why? and what if? and why not? The Witch World is one of those places a reader lives in, and some of those readers have become writers, and writers who never quite forget their journey in that ever-surprising and yet strangely familiar terrain. A lot of us who create worlds, whether we write them or dream them secretly, owe a great deal to this place, for its completeness, its way of underlaying daily life with the fantastical, its way of seeing vast forces implicit in the smallest and humblest things.

  If the Witch World had never been written, so many other worlds would be the poorer.

  And that brings me to Andre Norton herself.

  There's been a great deal of fuss about women entering the science fiction field lately. Oh, no. Not lately. Andre Norton has been there, long before, doing things her way. I did some checking on publication dates and I was stunned to realize that Andre was publishing in this field the year this writer was a knobby-kneed kid in the third grade, struggling to get a bicycle home in what (to that third-grader) was the blizzard of the century . . . and I was too young to read the stories then, myself not one of the youngest of this crop who keeps getting asked about “women breaking into the field.” . . . Andre's been there, writing her stories.

  That skinned-knee kid with the pigtails didn't meet Andre Norton until 1977, although we'd corresponded a bit, because Andre out of the goodness of her heart did the introduction for my first book, which is one reason why I'd fight tigers to get the chance at this introduction. She asked me, me, the stranger from Oklahoma, to drop in on her to visit after Worldcon; and when that occasion turned into the chance for me to bring her the Gandalf Award she'd won from the World Convention for Life's Achievement in Fantasy—oh, I was delighted! For one thing, I figured that had to at least win me a welcome at the door. When I showed up at Andre's door and had a time to catch my breath I found myself with one of those people who do kindnesses as if it were nature's most logical process, who is on the side of good books and living things, who has the kind of definite ideas about what's right and what's just that might be expected of the creator of worlds where people stand by each other.

  I like Andre Norton. I knew that from the start.

  And when people sit down and start talking about how they got into this field in the first place, what writers were responsible for leading them deeper and deeper into that attitude we call sense of wonder, and which has to do with being really alive to this universe and all the possibilities of it—that most precious gift of learning how to see what we look at—Andre Norton's name is one that always comes to the front.

  What has Andre Norton done for this field? She's written for all ages; she's been the gateway through which so, so many of us have come into this field in the first place. She created women who did things, such as Jaelithe, and she sparked imagination in a host of young minds who had rarely seen such a thing; she created heroes who were more than strong, and touched the hearts of countless young people who could never be quite the same afterward. There's a special look that comes into the eyes of these folk when they talk about Andre Norton, and you know full well that she has a very special place in their hearts, forever; that Andre's books are the ones they're going to put into the hands of their own sons and daughters and say with that special, waited-for hope: “I
think you might like this. It's good.” There's hardly a gift one can give another so precious as something that wakes us to what we call sense of wonder. That's what Andre's work has done for so very many of us. She's special. She's one of those talents without which this field would be inestimably the poorer. She reminds me curiously enough of John Wayne: a quiet person with strong convictions, who never much goes with fads but does things her way, whose style is her own, and who has shot straight and told the truth and given a lot of readers, young and old, a marvelous sense of heroism possible in their own lives, because it's right there pointed out to us what great possibilities there are, what great hearts in unlikely frames, what grand adventures likely for those who see their world with sense of wonder!

  She writes. And the thing she does for this field has woven itself through so many lives that that influence keeps traveling. She's vexingly modest and deprecates such notions, but they're true, Andre! And I'm glad to have gotten the chance to say them. Thank you Andre, for being there, for making worlds, for opening up so much of wonder to us. . . . I get to say it; but I say it for so many others. Thank you.

  SPIDER SILK

  1

  The Big Storm in the Year of the Kobold came late, long past the month when such fury was to be expected. This was all part of that evil which the Guardians had drawn upon Estcarp when they summoned up their greatest power to blast and twist the mountain lands, seal off passes through which had come the invasion from Karsten.

  Rannock lay open to that storm. Only the warning dream-sending to the Wise Woman, Ingvarna, drew a portion of the women and children to the higher lands, there to watch with fear and trembling the sea's fierce assault upon the coast So high dashed those waves that water covered and boiled about the Serpent Teeth of the upper ledges. Only here, in pockets among the Tor rocks, could a fugitive crouch in almost mindless terror, awaiting the end.

  Of the fishing fleet which had set out yesterday morn, who had any hopes now of its return save perhaps a scattering of wreckage, playthings of the storm waves?

  There were left only a handful of old men and boys, and one or two such as Herdrek, the Twist-Leg, the village smith. For Rannock was as poor in men as it was in all else since the war years had ravaged Estcarp. To the north perched Alizon, a hawk ready to be unleashed upon its neighbor; from the south Karsten boiled and bubbled, if aught was still left alive beyond the wrecked mountain passages.

  Men who had marched with the Borderers under Lord Simon Tregarth or served beneath the Banners of the Witch Women of Es—where were they? Long since, their kin had given up any hope of their return. There had been no true peace in this land since old Nabor (who could count his years at more than a hundred) had been in his green youth.

  It was Nabor now who battled the strength of the wind to the Tor, dragged himself up to stand, hunched shoulder to shoulder, with Ingvarna. As she, he looked to the sea uneasily. That she expected still their own fleet he could not believe, foresighted as all knew her to be.

  Waves mounted, to pound giant fists against the rock. Nabor caught sight of a ship rising and falling near the Serpent's dread fangs. Then a huge swell whirled it over those sharp threats into the comparative calm beyond. Nabor sighed with the relief of a seaman who had witnessed a miracle, life won from the very teeth of rock death. Also, Rannock had the right of storm wrack. If that ship survived so far, its cargo was forfeit now to any who could bring it to shore. He half-turned to seek the shelter of the Tor hollows, rouse Herdrek and the others with this promise of fortune.

  However, Ingvarna turned her head. Through the drifts of rain her eyes held his. There was a warning in her steady gaze. “One comes—” He saw her lips shape the words but did not hear her voice them above the roar of wind and wave.

  At the same moment, there was such a crash as equaled the drum of thunder, the lash of lightning. The strange ship might have beaten the menace of the reef's fangs, but now had been driven halfway up the beach, where it was fast breaking up under the hammer blows of the surf.

  Herdrek stumped out to join them. “It is a raider,” he commented during a lull of the wind. “Perhaps one of the Sea Wolves of Alizon.” He spat at the wreck below.

  Ingvarna was already scrambling over the rocks toward the shore, as if what lay there were of vast importance. Herdrek shouted after her a warning, but she did not even turn her head. With a curse at the folly of females, which a second later he devoutly hoped the Wise Woman had not been able to pick out of the air, the smith followed her, two of the lads venturing in his wake.

  At least when they reached the shore level, the worst of the storm was spent. Waves drew a torn seaweed veil around the broken vessel. Herdrek made fast a rope about his waist, gave dire warnings to his followers to keep a tight hold upon it. Then he ventured into the surf, using that cordage from wind-rent sails, hanging in loops down the shattered sides, to climb aboard.

  There was a hatch well tamped down, roped shut. He drew belt knife to slash the fastening.

  “Ho!” His voice rolled hollowly into the dark beneath him. “Anyone below?”

  A thin cry answered, one which might issue from the throat of a seabird such as already coasted over the subsiding surface of the sea on hunt for the bounty of the storm. Yet he thought not Gingerly, favoring his stiff leg, the smith lowered himself into the stinking hold. What he found there made him retch, and then heated in him dull anger against those who had mastered this vessel. She had been a slaver, such as Rannock's men had heard tell of—dealing in live cargo.

  Of that cargo, only one survived. Her, Herdrek carried gently from the horror of that prison. A little maid, her small arms no more than skin slipped glovelike on bones, her eyes great, gray and blankly open. Ingvarna took the strange child from the smith as one who had the authority of clan and home hearth, wrapping the little one's thin, shivering body in her own warm cloak.

  From whence Dairine came those of Rannock never learned. That slavers raided far was no secret. Also, the villagers soon discovered the child was blind. Ingvarna, though she was a Wise One, greatly learned in herbs and spells, the setting of bones, the curing of wounds, shook her head sadly over that discovery, saying mat the child's blindness came from no hurt of body. Rather, she must have looked upon some things so horrible that thereafter her mind closed and refused all sight.

  Though she might have been six or seven winters old, yet speech also seemed riven from her, and only fear was left to be her portion. The women of Rannock would have tried to comfort her. but secretly in their hearts they were willing that she bide with Ingvarna, who treated her oddly, they thought For the Wise Woman did not strive to make life easier in any way for the child. Rather, from the first, Ingvarna treated the sea waif not as one maimed in body, and perhaps in mind, but rather as she might some daughter of the village whom she had chosen to be her apprentice in the harsh school of her own learning.

  These years were bleak for Rannock. Full half the fleet did not return from out of the maw of that storm. Nor did any of the coastwise traders come. The following winter was a lean one. But in those dark days, Dairine showed first her skill. Her eyes might not see what her fingers wrought, yet the could mend fishing nets with such cleverness that even the experienced women marveled.

  And in the following spring, when the villagers husked the loquth balls to free their seeds for new plantings, Dairine busied herself with the silken inner fibers, twisting and turning those. Ingvarna had Herdrek make a small spindle and showed the child how this tool might be best put to work.

  Good use did Dairine make of it, too. Her small, birdclaw fingers drew out finer thread than any had achieved before, freer from knotting than any the villagers had seen. Yet never seemed she satisfied, but strove ever to make her spinning still finer, more smooth.

  The Wise Woman continued her fosterling's education in other ways, teaching her to use her fingers, her nose, in the herb garden. Dairine learnt easily the spelling which was part of a Wise Woman's knowledge. She
absorbed that very quickly, yet always there was about her an impatience. When she made mistakes, then her anger against herself was great The greatest when she tried to explain some tool or need which she seemed unable to describe but for which she evinced a need.

  Ingvarna spoke to Herdrek (who was now village elder), saying that perhaps the craft of the Wise Woman might aid in regaining a portion of Dairine's lost memory. When he demanded why she had not voiced such a matter before, Ingvarna answered gravely: “This child is not blood of our blood, and she was captive to the sea wolves. Have we the right to recall to her past horrors? Perhaps Gunnore, who watches over all womankind, has taken away her memory of the past in pity. If so—”

  He bit his thumb, watching Dairine as she paced back and forth before the loom which he had caused to be set up for her, now and then halting to slap her hand upon the frame in frustration. It seemed as if she longed to force the heavy wood into another pattern which would serve her better.

  “I think that she grows more and more unhappy,” he agreed slowly. “At first she seemed content. Now there are times when she acts as a snow cat encaged against her will. I do not like to see her so.”

  The Wise Woman nodded. “Well enough. In my mind this is a right choice.”

  Ingvarna went to the girl, taking both her hands, drawing her around so that she might look driectly into those blind eyes. At Ingvarna's touch, Dairine stood still. “Leave us!” the Wise Woman commanded the smith.

  Early that evening as Herdrek stood at his forge Dairine walked into the light of his fire. She came to him unhesitatingly. So acute was her hearing that she often startled the villagers by her recognition of another presence. Now she held out her hands to him as she might to a father she loved. And he knew all was well.