Moon Called by Andre Norton Read Free Book Online Page A

tree outside their present cave. Her claws flickered as they moved to suggest others in hiding about that.
    “Noooo coomeee. Ssseettt waiiite—” Now she made her fingers walk across the ground. Those of one hand representing newcomers, while others fled. With the second group she made again the gesture of loosening her ankle—then she wilted dramatically to the ground, pantomiming one wounded and ill.
    Again Thora guessed. “Traders came along,found you. But why did the traders then leave you alone afterwards?”
    Malkin flipped up the edge of the cloak to display its embroidered symbols. She indicated one of the designs—that for the Hunter. Yes, a trader would know but little of the Mysteries, and he would be ready to abandon one who might be connected with a Power he did not understand.
    “Fammmiliarr—knoowww sooo—”
    Thora could readily understand that. If the men who found Malkin knew certain old tales, their reaction would be close to hers only moments earlier. They would have feared the furred one as they would any they deemed to be of the Dark. They would not kill her, for they would have reason to believe that they would then bring after them any spirit which was human-tied. So they simply left her to the spirits to live or die as those decreed. Yes, that all fitted well together. Though Thora still could not understand this use of familiars, for it was not a part of any ritual of which she had ever heard.
    Still this land was very wide. Even traders who traveled far did not know what might lie on the other side of the mountains which were yet some tens of days travel to the west. There might well be places where the LADY had taught her Chosen different ways of life and power—different, but not evil because of that difference. Malkin had clearly proven herselfto be of the Light by holding the moon gem.
    Which left the rest of the puzzle—what had happened to this Makil? If he were the man she had seen in the vision (and somehow she did not doubt that he was), he was also plainly one who held and used Power. Perhaps he could even stand before the Three-In-One as an equal, strange though that seemed. He was a Chosen, of that she was sure. And if those of the Dark were attempting to entrap him (as they seemed to have used Malkin to do) then that meant there was here some active struggle between the Dark and the Light—no symbolic one such as the ancient ritual told of—rather one with force and purpose. It was said that the Lady wove the lives of her people as if they were threads in cloth, twisting one strand with the other to form a design which only Her eyes might see. Thora shivered.
    Surely—surely she herself could not be a strand pulled loose from one portion of a pattern to be set elsewhere! She had thought that the raid which had set her wandering had been one of the chances of life. There were always a certain number of homesteads threatened or plundered when winters had been lean. Of late the sea wolves had ventured farther and farther westward: that the Craig dwellers had learned from the traders.
    They had raided so often along the shores that men no longer built there, but headed inland for peace. Such groups of refugees hadpassed at time through Craig lands—going farther west to claim unused valleys and build lost fortunes anew.
    Without their shore prey the raiders had taken to rivers—for they were always a water people. Also they could be sure that any good sized river would sooner or later have a settlement on its banks. So they had come by stealth and the Craigs had fallen. For raiders were warriors and those of the land, while they were skilled hunters, were not slayers of men.
    It had seemed ill-fortune and not by direct cause that she had so been set adrift. Now Thora was led to wonder. Her meeting with Malkin—the discovery of that underground storage place, the fact that among the old dead there had lain one who served Set’s Power—was all this part of a new