Crystal Gryphon Read Free Page B

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.

2
    Here Begins the Adventure of Joisan, Maid of Ithkrypt in Ithdale of High Hallack.
    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 wasmore occupied at the time with keeping to Dame Math's stem 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 merrimentlaid 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