Wizards’ Worlds Read Online Free Page B

had been the intention.
    For a moment Hertha was startled at the grim march of her thoughts. Kuno—Kuno was
     her brother! Two years ago she could not have thought so of him or any man! Before the war nearer
     the Hold. But that was long before she set out for Landendale. Before she knew the
     world as it was and not as she had believed it.
    Hertha was glad she had been able to learn her lesson quickly. The thin-skinned maid
     she had once been could not have fronted Kuno, could not have taken this road—
    She felt the warmth of anger, a sullen glowing anger, heating as if she carried a
     small brazier of coals under her cloak’s edge. So she went on, setting her rough boots
     firmly to crunch across the drift edge. Nor did she turn to look back down at that
     stone-walled keep which had sheltered those of her blood for five generations. The
     sun was well westward, she must not linger on the trail. Few paths were broken now,
     times in number she must halt and use the spear to sound out the footing. But it was
     easy to keep in eye her landmarks of Mulma’s Needle and the Wyvern’s Wing.
    Hertha was sure Kuno expected her to return to accept his conditions. She smiled wryly.
     Kuno was so very certain of everything. And since he had beaten off the attack of
     a straggling band of the enemy trying to fight their way to the dubious safety of
     the coast, he had been insufferable.
    The Dales were free in truth. But for Kuno to act as if the victories hard-won there
     were his alone—! It had required all the might of High Hallack, together withstrange allies from the Waste, to break the invaders, to hunt and harry them to the
     sea from which they had come. And that had taken a score of years to do.
    Trewsdale had escaped, not because of any virtue, but by chance. But because fire
     and sword had not riven there was no reason to cry upon unbroken walls like gamecocks.
     Kuno had harried men already three-quarters beaten.
    She reached the divide, to plod steadily on. The wind had been at work here, and her
     path was free of snow. It was very old, that road, one of the reminders to be found
     all across the dale land that her own people were late comers. Who had cut these ways
     for their own treading?
    The well-weathered carvings at the foot of the Wyvern’s Wing could be seen easily
     now. So eroded they were by time that none could trace their meaning. But men—or intelligent
     beings—had shaped them to a purpose. And that task must have been long in the doing.
     Hertha reached out her mittened fingers to mark one of the now vague curves. She did
     not believe they had any virtue in themselves, though the field workers did. But they
     marked well her road.
    Downslope again from this point, and now the wind’s lash did not cut at her. Though
     again snow drifted. Two tens of days yet to the feast of Year Turn. This was the last
     of the Year of the Hornet, next lay the Year of the Unicorn, which was a more fortunate
     sign.
    With the increase of snow Hertha once more found the footing dangerous. The bits of
     broken crust worked in over the tops of her boots, even though she had drawn tight
     their top straps, melted clammily against her foot sacks. She plodded on as the track
     entered a fringe of scrub trees.
    Evergreens, the foliage was dark in the dwindling light. But they arose to roof over
     a road, keep off the drifts. And she came to a stream where ice had bridged from one
     stony bank to the other. There she turned east to gain Gunnora’s shrine.
    About its walls was a tangle of winter-killed garden. Itwas a low building, and an archway faced her. No gate or door barred that and she
     walked boldly in.
    Once inside the outer wall she could see windows—round like the eyes of some great
     feline regarding her sleepily—flanking a door by which hung a heavy bell-pull of wrought
     metal in the form of Gunnora’s symbol of a ripened grain stalk entwined with a fruit-laden
     vine.
    Hertha leaned her spear