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Journals by EmailMendrion the Seer and Siggorund the warrior descended Gryphon Mountain’s west slope, leaving the ruined castle behind. Mendrion quickly became impressed with his silent companion. Siggorund foraged for roots and fruit, and he trapped a rabbit. Later, he trapped a deer.
They had nearly reached the bottom of the slope, the first leg of Mendrion’s journey almost over, when Siggorund left him to further forage and help replenish their supplies. As he walked alone, the Seer saw the glow of firelight below. As twilight was approaching, he thought to secure lodging for himself and Siggorund. He soon came upon a small cottage that looked like nothing more than a large, overturned bird’s nest with a roof of shingles. A large pile of uncut wood stood to one side, but from the look of the ax buried in a nearby stump, the woodcutter had been absent for at least several years.
Wary, Mendrion crossed the grassless area fronting the place and knocked on the door. A woman’s voice yelled, “What do you want?”
“Lodging for me and my companion, good woman,” Mendrion replied.
The door opened less than a foot, and a stooped old woman in a shabby robe peered at him. “Who’s your invisible friend?” She hitched up her rope belt.
“He’ll be coming soon,” the Seer said. “He’s gathering some food. If you like, we can contribute something to your meal.” He gestured toward the bubbling pot in the fireplace behind her.
She grunted. “Well, that’s fine and all, but I can’t offer anything in the way of lodging. I’ve barely room to turn around in here. What brings you to my door, anyway? This is hardly the beaten path.”
Having not decided what to tell people when they asked this, Mendrion said, “My name is Mendrion. I am sent by Terla to visit the inhabitants of the Mountain.” It was true enough.
“Ah, Terla. If she sent you … Very well, come in, come in.” She pushed the door open, and he slipped past her. The woman closed the door behind him.
She hadn’t been exaggerating about the space. Any surface, including the floor, was nearly covered with books, earthenware, loose parchment and scrolls, bolts of cloth, and assorted other items. “Please, sit down,” the woman said, removing a stack of books from a faded red velvet chair. Mendrion took it.
“May I ask your name?” he said.
“Syrid,” she answered. She moved to the fireplace to tend to the pot. Steam erupted from its contents as Syrid lifted the lid with a cloth and began to stir. “Strange for Terla to send you, you know. She usually would do such a thing herself.” She cast a sideways glance at Mendrion. “Did she send you for something in particular?”
Mendrion grew uncomfortable with her somewhat direct questioning, and the heat from the pot seemed to flood his face. For a few moments, the only sound in the chamber came from Syrid’s ladle hitting the sides of the pot. Terla had warned him not to volunteer his new position, but here there seemed nothing for it, and likely no harm would come from it.
“I am here to take her place,” he said slowly. “The Mountain is letting her go.”
“Ah,” Syrid replied. She lifted the ladle to her lips and slurped at the soup. “Hmmm, needs a little something else.” She rummaged around in a cabinet, took out a small pouch, and threw a pinch from it into the pot. “There,” she said. Syrid ladled some soup into a bowl and gave it to Mendrion with a spoon.
“Thank you,” he told her. She watched as he spooned the first few bites. Suddenly his stomach burned, but the sensation turned to a sense of deadening that moved outward to his limbs. His vision clouded. “What are you doing …?” he gasped. “I mean you no harm.”
“No, neither do I mean you harm. But you have something I want.”
Mendrion gripped the chair’s armrests and tried to stand. However, something held him in the chair as surely as if he were chained to it. And it wasn’t whatever Syrid had fed him.
“You won’t be going anywhere until you comply,” Syrid said, her voice gone hard. “That chair won’t let you go until I tell you that you can leave. A useful piece of magic, that is.” She leaned close. “Give me the Gryphon’s Claw.”
Mendrion shook his head slowly. “No, I won’t.” He felt any further resistance to be beyond his strength.
“Then I’ll take it,” Syrid spat. She leaned toward him and grasped his satchel. Mendrion tried to grapple with her, to force away her arms, but his muscles failed him. Syrid hadn’t to look long before she found the Claw. She stood holding it with both hands, a gleam in her dark eyes.
Rubbing his eyes and forehead, Mendrion fought to move. He fought to think. What would he do without the Gryphon’s Claw? Without it, he was no Seer. He was completely at Syrid’s mercy; if she decided to slay him, he would be unable to stop her. He didn’t completely believe that she wouldn’t harm him.
Syrid gazed at the Claw and moved to the center of the chamber. “Now,” she hissed. “you will give me what I ask. Show me…” The sharpness abruptly left her countenance, and her mouth quivered. “Show me why my son had to die!”
The old woman thrust the Claw upward. Mendrion watched through the haze in his vision. To his view, the Claw didn’t respond.
“Show me!” Syrid cried, shaking the talisman before her. “Why did that wretch lead him to his doom? He had only given her his heart!” Still nothing.
Syrid shrieked, a piercing and at the same time guttural sound. One hand squeezed the Claw until the knuckles were white and the tendons stood out. Then she dropped it and sank to her knees. Her hands covered her face, and sobs shook her shoulders.
To Mendrion’s surprise, his senses began to return. Syrid must not have used much of the ingredient that numbed him, or its potency was low. Either way, his mind started to race. “Your son,” he said. “What happened to him?”
The woman lowered her hands and glared at him. “He was led to his death by the woman he loved. He warned her not to cross Durgul’s bridge, and when she did, he followed. And the troll cast him into the chasm!”
“Annfalys,” Mendrion said.
“Yes, Annfalys,” Syrid repeated. “And I gave her what she deserved.”
“What did you do?” the Seer asked. “You transformed her into a hawk? But she is still at the bridge …”
“That is the curse I placed upon her,” Syrid explained, rising. “To spend the rest of her days lying to men and leading them to Durgul’s Bridge. To never have a life like that which she took from my son.”
Mendrion nearly called her crazy, but he stopped himself. He was already subject to her whims, and commenting on her mental state would only worsen the situation. Obviously, she had made some hasty choices in her grief.
“But shouldn’t the target of your anger be the troll? It is he who slew your son, not Annfalys.”
Syrid turned and paced slowly to the other end of the chamber. “Please lift the curse,” Mendrion continued. “I met Annfalys and nearly met my death because of your curse on her. But she defended me. When she became a hawk, she turned and fought against Durgul so he would stop his attempts to cast me from the bridge.”
“So she saved you, but not my son, did she?” Syrid hissed, the wrath returning to her face.
“The blame lies with Durgul, not with Annfalys,” Mendrion repeated. “She made a mistake, but Durgul is the one who delivered the killing stroke, so to speak.” Running out of things to say to persuade her, Mendrion feared she would force him to try to learn from the Gryphon’s Claw something that it probably would not show him, which would increase her sorrow and anger.
He thought of the woodpile outside and the unused woodsman’s axe. Her son’s axe.
“Syrid,” Mendrion said in as tender a tone as he could manage, “your woodpile is yet large. The work is undone. Allow me to ready it for your fireplace. I give you my word as a servant of Gryphon Mountain that I will not leave until the task is finished.”
She frowned at him briefly, but again her expression softened. She waved her hand and murmured, “Yes. Yes.”
Mendrion felt the chair’s grip on him release, and he rose. He said, “I’ll take this back, if you have no objection,” and picked up the Gryphon’s Claw. Syrid barely watched him, her eyes wistfully directed to one side. “I imagine the axe will need sharpening. Do you have a whetstone?”
Syrid pointed him to a small shed on the premises. He found the whetstone and sharpened the axe blade. With sleeves rolled up, Mendrion took a length of wood and began to cut.
And that’s how Siggorund found him. When Mendrion explained the situation, the warrior located a second axe in the shed and joined him. They chopped wood through most of the night and resumed in the morning.
Finally, that afternoon, they finished the task and stretched a length of old canvas over the pile. Syrid greeted them at her door and said, “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Annfalys—” Mendrion began.
Syrid held up a hand. “Already done. She is free. She may never realize what happened to her, but if you ever meet her again … tell her I regret my hasty actions.”
“Of course,” the Seer promised. “I’m glad we could come to an agreement.”
“You are both welcome here should you come this way again,” Syrid said.
“Thank you. I hope only that you will offer me a different chair,” Mendrion said. Syrid huffed a brief laugh, the quickest of smiles crossing her wrinkled face.
“Very well, Seer,” she replied with a nod.
As Mendrion and Siggorund walked away from the old woman’s hut, the Seer glanced over his shoulder. Syrid stood on the threshold, staring at the pile of freshly cut wood. Mendrion guessed he would return this way sometime during his life on Gryphon Mountain, and given his first visit to Syrid’s hut, he felt unsure how comfortable he would be about that. He put his hand inside his satchel to reassure himself that the Gryphon’s Claw lay safely inside it. Syrid’s attempt to use the talisman had showed him something about it: Either it wouldn’t work if taken from him, or it worked for no one but the Seer. He was inclined to believe the latter.
He also decided that it was safer to keep Siggorund with him for the rest of his journey. With the warrior’s silent but reassuring presence at his side, Mendrion began his climb of the Mountain’s north face.
This tale is #5 in “The Coming of the Seer,” the story of how Mendrion becomes Seer of Gryphon Mountain. Read the beginning of the story, “The Seer of Gryphon Mountain.” The next tale is “Silent Gryphons.”
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