Free Gryphon in Glory by Andre Norton Page A

control the gryphon, I knelt, my hands going out, in spite of my efforts not to move. I was not going to touch that dry and years-leached bone—I was not!
    The crystal became a ball of sparkling light, so bright I could no longer look directly at it. While to my ears, or perhaps within my head, came a very faint sound, like a far-off solemn chanting, such as might mark some ceremony. I wanted to put my hands over my ears and run as far as I could from that skull.
    No skull—no! Air curdled about the yellowish bone, took on visible substance, building up a thin and unsubstantial vision of a face, a head. The eyes, the sharply jutting nose—so pointed that it might be likened to a bird's beak—overhanging a small chin, obliquely set eyes . . . No human face!
    There was an urgency in the light-sparked eyes, a demand made upon me—but one I could not interpret. There had been something lost, which must be found. There was danger to be faced—there was—
    The wisp of face vanished. While the bone it had built itself upon—I gasped! That, too, was crumbling into ashy powder. I cried out, “What is it that you would have me do? What do you want?”
    The chant of that far-off ritual ceased, the terrible demand faded. Now the englobed gryphon lost its blaze of light, fell to rest again near my heart. Of the skull nothing remained.
    “It wanted . . .” I stammered, turning to my companions, but I had no real explanation for them.
    Jervon's face was impassive, Elys stared beyond me into that hollow among the rocks from which the skull and the rest had been cleared.
    “There was something there!” I was obsessed with what I had seen. But had they also shared my vision?
    “One who dies during some task laid upon him for good or ill,” Elys said slowly, “clings to a shadow of life, unwilling to depart to new roads until that task is fulfilled. I think that such a shadow clung here. It is now gone—for good or ill.”
    “But it did not tell me what it wanted!” I found I could accept her words, accept them so completely that now I wished the skull back that I might again demand of whatever shadow was tied to it what I must do and where. For now I bore a burden also—though that might be an illusion only I could perceive.
    “There will come a time when you shall know.” Elys did not say that as one promises enlightenment to calm a bewildered child, rather as one who is sure of the truth.
    I rose to my feet, my hand moved, as it so often did for reassurance, toward the gryphon. Then I jerked my fingers away before they could close about the globe. I wanted to rid myself of the thing! That is, one part of me did, while, deeper in me, arose an excitement that demanded that I yield to an unknown force, that I throw aside all those old fears and wariness of my people and go forth—to grasp . . . as yet I did not know what.
    We did not linger long at that strange nesting place but went on, and soon there came a welcome change in the land. The arid desert gave way to growing things.
    An arrow shot by Jervon brought down a creature not unlike the deer of the Dales. Thus we ate fresh meat and were able to drink the water we found in a much more wholesome oasis. Here were the signs of older camps and we believed we had chanced upon one of the regular rest sites of either scavengers or outlaws. Since the grazing was good we decided to remain there while Jervon once more went out scouting.
    I was certain in my own mind that Kerovan had sheltered among the rocks, also that he had been in the narrow valley earlier. Inwardly I was discouraged. There was no trail to be followed through this wilderness and I could neither guess his destination nor direction. The gryphon—no, since its actions with the skull, even that I distrusted.
    Though I tried talking with Elys, her answers were so random that I began to believe she either had thought better of her agreement to aid me, or that the episode of the skull had sent her into deep