Free Gryphon in Glory by Andre Norton

not. There was the sweet corruption-smell of death here! The ground was disturbed, a pile of stones covering a narrow, filled-in depression.
    “An animal would not be buried.” Elys surveyed the stones. “But that space is too small to hold a man.”
    To my relief she was right, only a half-grown child could be in such a short grave. But a child—Kerovan could not have killed a child!
    Elys's eyes were closed, she swayed, Jervon was at her side instantly, his hand out to steady her. She shuddered before she looked at us again.
    “Not of our blood—it was not of our blood. Something strange—or perhaps not strange in this land. But whatever it was, it lived as a servant of the Dark.”
    I drew back involuntarily. The Dark—that signified the evil Powers and all who served them. Had Kerovan been attacked again by such force, which he spawned in the Waste?
    “Leave be!” Jervon's order came harshly. “There is no need to fear the dead, do not mind search for it. We must not meddle.” It was the first time he had spoken so, with such a show of authority.
    She turned away. “You are right. And this is truly dead—for many days I would say.”
    “Then Kerovan—” I stumbled over one of the rolling stones. He must not have been responsible for that death, though he could have buried the corpse. I held on to that belief as tightly as I could. I hoped that he had not fronted again—and alone—a dire danger of the Dark.
    “I do not believe,” Jervon continued, “that this is a place of good omen.”
    The three of us withdrew from that grave place, as far down the cut as we could, allowing our mounts, who showed no distaste for their surroundings, to graze through the hottest part of the day. When the sun was westering we started on.
    It was when we topped the far bank of that sinister hollow that what I had waited for so long happened. The gryphon flashed with more than the sun's reflection. At my cry the others drew rein, while I shifted in the saddle, this way and that, my attention close fixed upon the ball—until I thought I judged in what direction it flashed the brightest.
    My companions willingly granted me the lead and I pushed Bural at a faster gait to where a circle of pointed rocks rose abruptly from the sand-drifted ground. Lying to one side there was a mass of dry stuff, which had plainly been dug from the core of the rock huddle. Powdery, disintegrating wood mingled with remains of long-withered vegetation. Perched on the highest point of that moldering heap sat a grinning skull and I thought that I sighted other bits of brittle bones in the decayed mass.
    “Someone made camp here.” Jervon slipped from the saddle, went to peer within the circle of rocks. He stirred the dark heap a little with the toe of his boot. “This may once have been a nest lying within that.”
    “The nest of something large enough to hunt such prey?” Elys gestured toward the skull.
    Jervon stopped to view it the closer, though he did not touch it.
    “Very old, I think. Also what laired here once must have been gone for a long time,” came his verdict.
    I cupped the crystal between my palms. Now heat flared from it, startling me into a cry of pain. I let the globe fall, to swing at the end of its chain. Though I made no move of body it continued to move. In spite of my disgust and, yes, a growing fear, I, too, dismounted, advancing unwillingly toward the heap of debris, where that hollow-eyed skull rested—by chance or design.
    Then . . .
    There appeared in the dark eye hollows of the skull (I could not be so preyed upon by illusion even here) an answering fraction of light. My shaking hand was at my mouth, keeping back a cry of panic to which I refused voice.
    The crystal now lifted from its place on my breast, pointing outward, pulling the chain that supported it into a taut line, as if it strained for freedom. I had said it would be a guide, now it drew me toward that ancient, time-worn thing of bone.
    Unable to