Andre Norton: Year Of The Unicorn

Andre Norton ~ Year Of The Unicorn (Witch World 3)
From: Orb Books

How does one know coming good from coming ill? There are those times in life when one welcomes any change, believing that nothing can be such ashes in the mouth, such dryness of days as the never altering flood of time in a small community where the outside world lies ever beyond the gates locked and barred against all change. From the bell tower of Abbey Norstead – and how many years had sped since a bell had pealed from there? – one could see the unending rippling of the Dales, on and on to the blue-gray of Fast Ridge. On bright days, when the sun drove away the mist curtain, the darkened fringe of the forest cloaking Falthingdale broke the moss carpet to the west, and the harsh, sky-clutching claws of Falcon-Fist made a sharp point to draw the eyes eastward. But otherwise there were just the Dales with their age-old shutting out of man and his affairs. They had lain so before his coming; they would remain so at his going. But as yet he had a part in them, and here in Norsdale it would seem that quiet land had conquered the natural restlessness of the breed of mankind, slowing all life force to the pace of the everlasting hills.
Andre Norton ~ Year Of The Unicorn

Nothing makes me happier than to read these words from the first book of Andre Norton’s High Hallack Cycle now in eBook form. This has got to be my number one favorite comfort read. We will meet Gillan in The Year of the Unicorn as she prepares the herbs necessary to aid her into secretly becoming a member of the 12 and one high-born maids promised as wives to the Were Riders of Arvon. Then that memorable cloak scene where she chooses Herrel…

There was one cloak lying well away from the rest, almost to the hedge which set the boundary of the dell. The runes did not run on it as an uninterrupted edging, but rather were broken apart. For a moment I strove to see it enchanted – green – or blue – or something of them both – and on it a winged form wrought in crystals. But that glimpse was gone so quickly that I could not have sworn to it a moment later. I was drawn to it – at least it drew my eyes more than the others. And I must make a choice at once, lest I be suspect – though why I thought that I could not tell.

So I crossed dead and frozen ground, and I picked up the cloak, holding it before me as I went on, through the bare bushes and the chill of the mist, leaving yet perhaps a half score cloaks still lying there, their spells fled, their color vanished.

I heard voices in the mist, carefree laughter, joyful sounds. But I saw no one and when I tried to follow any of the sounds, I could not be sure of my direction. In the filmy entrapment my uneasiness grew and all the dark of dread rumor whispered in memory. The cloak between my hands was heavy, lined with white-gray fur which was harsh to my skin. Also I was chilled, and my borrowed finery dew-wet, little protection against the mist.

A darkness within that cloud, a figure coming towards me. In that moment it was as if I were being stalked, cunningly and with no hope of escape.

Shape changers, that was the cry in one’s ears when the Were Riders were named. Man – or beast – or both? What did I face now – a darkish shadow – but it walked on two feet as a man. Did a beast’s head rest upon it’s shoulders? Whatever my companions had met with in that disguising fog, they had not feared, or voices would not continue to rise with so happy a ring, even though the words they spoke I could not distinguish.

I halted, holding still the cloak which grew ever heavier in my hands, dragging them down with it’s weight. Man, yes, the outline of the head was human, not that of a shaggy beast. And still I had clear sight, for the gray-brown cloak I held proved that.

A last whip of the fog between us was sundered and I looked upon this stranger from another breed who had come a-hunting me. He was tall, though not of the inches of a hill warrior, and slim as any untried boy on his first foraging would be slim. Smooth of face as a boy, also.Yet the green eyes beneath slanting brows were not boy’s eyes, but weary and old, still ageless also.

Those brows slanting upward, made the eyes in turn appear angle-set in a face with a sharply pointed chin, and were matched in outline by his thick black hair which was peaked on his forehead. He was neither handsome nor unhandsome by human standard, merely very different.

Though his head was bare of war-helm he wore a byrnie of chain-link, supple by his easy movements within it’s casing. This reached to midthigh and beneath it breeches, close fitting, of furred hide, a silvery fur shorter in the hair than the pelt which had taken my fancy at the tent though still of the same nature. His feet were booted, but also in furred leather, their color being a shade or two darker than his breeks. About his slender waist was a belt of some soft material, fastened by a large clasp in which were set odd milky gems.

Thus did I face for the first time Herrel of the Were Riders, whose cast cloak I had gathered to me, though not through the same weave spell as intended.
Andre Norton ~ Year Of The Unicorn

Pure poetry! I tell you. It is a bit whack though choosing your future husband from his skills at textile art there.

This was the third book set in the Witch World series and published in 1965 but Andre decided to tell a different story this time. Not that I don’t like the stories she told about Simon Tregarth and his family and how he discovered love and honor in a strange new world and in a war not his own.

I am just much more drawn to the stories Andre chose to tell about High Hallack and people she wrote about risking everything even in a time of peace to find their place in the world on their own terms. People who would choose exile in the waste rather than feel stuck living a life planned out and controlled by someone else.

Grade A writing and a nicely told story even if you will never find a kiss between the couples in the typical Andre Norton book. *sigh* Oh well, nothing is perfect.

You Kindle people out there can grab this story in The Gates to Witch World packaged with the first two Andre Norton Witch World novels for $9.99 while any of you non-Kindle Fictionwise loving people will have to shell out $27.95?? JESUS CHRIST! What the hell are these publishers thinking? Have their brains turned to mush? That is three times the price it should be.

All I can say is with price differences like that. The Amazon Kindle is becoming a great buy for the price conscious eBook Reader and traditional dead tree publishers are solely to blame for this.

Tags: Andre Norton, Fantasy, Grade A, Orb Books, Straight Romance