Free Greyfax Grimwald by Niel Hancock Page A

away from the fallen hall, he added, “Let’s move from here. It makes my heart too heavy to see it.”
    And Dwarf moved off toward the great tall shadows of the forest, away from Tubal Hall and its ruins, away from the River. That crossing seemed miles away, and buried with time, and Otter and Bear followed along after, single file, their hearts saddened yet determined.

    At sunset, the three comrades halted at the top of a long green ridge sprinkled with mulberry thickets and great, tall oaks that towered above the mossy floor below. There was almost no light left, but the tail of the sun’s eye covered the valley below them in an orange fire, setting the swift stream there aflame with changing light. And far off, near where the hills covered the last light in a deep black blanket, a rainbow glistened and danced above a small waterfall that flamed from the darkness into the last veil of the crimson day, fading quickly over the woods and dis tant mountains, and they watched long as at last, like a quiet flow of deep, blue-black water, night came softly down. Stars appeared, flickering on as dark un veiled its curling robes, first two or three, then the sky was filled with their distant lamps, lighting their way almost as surely as if it were midmorning, and the three friends walked onward into the deep smell of wood and stream, and a wind came gently up from the mountains, bringing new hope, and a new home.
    They built no fire that night, for it was warm, and they lay down to sleep close together, speaking their goodnights in low, tired voices, and the valley, sens ing its new inhabitants, smiled in a renewed flow of pine scent and flowers, and lulled them quickly to a deep, peaceful sleep.
    Otter listened to the laughing voice of the stream calling, but he was too weary to heed it, so he played and swam in his dreaming mind. Bear sat down to a table filled with ten huge kegs of new honey from a secret sweet gum tree, and Dwarf, mind filled with sorrow and past, at last gave up and heard the deep voices of the oaks calling out to each other and the rocks chuckling and rumbling deep in their gray beards, and at last, he, too, dreamed, or dreamed he dreamed, of the morrow, when he could start his new dwelling, and do whatever else he knew must be done.
    As the dawn lightened the chambers of night, the new morning brought the beauty of Dwarf’s new home to him in the first yellow gleam of sun, winking over the farhills. His limbs were strengthened and his mind at ease as he hurried to wake Otter and Bear to see this first sunrise in a place where they would long and safety dwell.

In
Lorini’s
Halls

    I n the time it took Froghorn, elder of Fairingay, to reach the halls of Lorini, golden lady of the Light, aster of Dorini, Dark Queen of the World Between Time, many months, as counted in the world of ordinary men, passed. The swiftness of Pe’lon was great, and no lapse occurred from the moment Froghorn left Greyfax until he was standing in the great white-towered courtyards of Cypher, where many-colored trees of all kinds bloomed in forever spring and all things never withered or grew old as long as they stayed within the mystical realm of Lorini’s powers. She had dwelled many lifetimes here, lighting the four borders of Atlanton Earth against the darkness of Dorini. In Origin, the many-petaled Lotus world, she kept her court, until Suneater and Fireslayer had escaped their prisons and devoured the light, leaving all that world frozen by the cold ice night of Dorini’s dominion. When Lor ini fled to Maldan, she was closely pursued by those great beasts, and before she could move against them, they had brought the darkness into that world, too.
    After Melodias, of the Circle, and other powerful Masters took up the fray, many long years of weary straggle followed, but the Dark Queen and all her servants were imprisoned in the World Before Time and safely contained there with the help of the White Light of the Star Keeper,