Tuesday, January 12, 2021
The Gifts of Asti by Andre Norton
Original artwork from Project Gutenberg - public domain
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19029
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gifts of Asti, by Andre Alice Norton
* * * * *
THE GIFTS OF ASTI
ANDREW NORTH
She was the guardian of the worlds, but HER world was dead.
Even here, on the black terrace before the forgotten mountain retreat of
Asti, it was possible to smell the dank stench of burning Memphir, to
imagine that the dawn wind bore upward from the pillaged city the faint
tortured cries of those whom the barbarians of Klem hunted to their
prolonged death. Indeed it was time to leave–
Varta, last of the virgin Maidens of Asti, shivered. The scaled and
wattled creature who crouched beside her thigh turned his reptilian head
so that golden eyes met the aquamarine ones set slantingly at a faintly
provocative angle in her smooth ivory face.
“We go–?”
She nodded in answer to that unvoiced question Lur had sent into her
brain, and turned toward the dark cavern which was the mouth of Asti’s
last dwelling place. Once, more than a thousand years before when the
walls of Memphir were young, Asti had lived among men below. But in the
richness and softness which was trading Memphir, empire of empires, Asti
found no place. So He and those who served Him had withdrawn to this
mountain outcrop. And she, Varta, was the last, the very last to bow
knee at Asti’s shrine and raise her voice in the dawn hymn–for Lur, as
were all his race, was mute.
Even the loot of Memphir would not sate the shaggy headed warriors who
had stormed her gates this day. The stairway to Asti’s Temple was plain
enough to see and there would be those to essay the steep climb hoping
to find a treasure which did not exist. For Asti was an austere God,
delighting in plain walls and bare altars. His last priest had lain in
the grave niches these three years, there would be none to hold that
gate against intruders.
[Read more…]
Friday, January 1, 2021
The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains
Read “The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains” by Neil Gaiman online here.