Andre Norton seems to have really liked writing stories set in High Hallack and the Dales of the Witch World. Or maybe her fans really liked her to write them. Three are collected in this volume, two longer works, “Dragon Scale Silver” and “Amber Out of Quayth,” and one much shorter, “Dream Smith.”
They’re all pretty much the same story with some variation. Misfit protagonist learns to wield magic under influence of the long-vanished Old Ones, against a backdrop of the devastating war against the Hounds of Alizon. All three stories feature victims of the war and its aftermath, and all three protagonists have some form of magic.
In “Dragon Scale Silver,” a Witch of Estcarp and her male companion are rescued from shipwreck by villagers along the coast. The Witch sacrifices her life to produce two children, fraternal twins Elys and Elyn. Elys becomes a Wise Woman but is also trained in arms like a boy. Elyn, who has no magic and rejects it totally, becomes a war leader in the Dales. When he sets off to find his martial fortune, Elys conjures with a cup magically fashioned by her mother, to keep track of his life and safety. Eventually and inevitably, the cup warns that Elyn is in danger, and Elys sets off to save him.
She has a companion on the way, a wounded warrior who took refuge in the village. Jervon wants to go back to the war, and insists that she accept his company. This turns out to be a good idea, once she discovers that her brother is under the influence of an evil spell, a curse laid on the family of his fluffy little wife.
Elys saves her brother but receives precious little thanks for it. Elyn rejects magic completely, and his wife actively dislikes everything Elys stands for, from her masculine clothing to her magical heritage. Jervon however is wise and supportive, and they ride off together to fight for the Dales.
“Dream Smith” is the story of a smith who finds metal of the Old Ones and delegates one of his sons to forge it. The son, Collard (one of Norton’s less fortunate naming efforts, though far from the worst), is maimed in the resulting explosion and becomes a recluse, seen and cared for only by the local Wisewoman. He forges bits of the strange metal into wonderful works of art.
In the meantime, the lord’s daughter, who is frail and physically malformed, is dumped in the nearby castle by the lord’s greedy second wife, who wants her out of sight. When the lord dies before the wife can produce a new heir, it’s all too clear that the widow is going to murder the daughter and seize her inheritance.
In order to save the daughter, the Wisewoman and Collard conceive a magical plan. Collard, driven by dreams, builds a miniature hall with an image of the daughter in it, but with a straight and strong body. He finishes it just in time, and the magic takes the daughter away into the dream realm, where she can live side by side with a dream lord.
That lord is not, apparently, Collard. He’s sacrificed his art and his life to save her.
“Amber Out of Quayth” stars gawky young Ysmay, who ruled her family’s keep while the men were off fighting the wars. Now the war is over and her brother has come back with a greedy little wife, and Ysmay is left with nothing but whatever grudging charity the wife deigns to give her. She has only three things to her name: a garden she tends because no one else cares about it, an amber amulet of Gunnora that belonged to her mother and that she’s managed to hide from the grasping Annet, and the ruined remains of an amber mine that collapsed and cannot be reopened.
Then the fair comes to a nearby town, and Ysmay is allowed to accompany the her family. She knows it’s a plot to get her married off, even as poor as she is, but she’s not averse to the concept. Her life is miserable; whoever she’s married to, she’ll become the lady of the hall, and have at least some of her old freedom and responsibility back.
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Sure enough, there’s a mysterious amber merchant at the fair, with even more mysterious retainers, and he’s very much interested in her—and in the defunct amber mine, which he claims he can reopen. Hylle marries Ysmay and does indeed open the mine, recovers a few small lumps of amber, and immediately sweeps Ysmay off to his keep in Quayth.
This is a stronghold of the Old Ones, and it’s full of mystery and shadowy magic. Hylle never consummates his marriage with Ysmay—his arts forbid it, he tells her—and he leaves her to the care of one of his repulsive retainers, who is a seeress. Ysmay quickly gets to the heart of the mystery, finds a pair of Old Ones imprisoned in amber, discovers that Hylle needs the amber of her inheritance to strengthen his dark magic, and joins forces with the Old Ones to defeat him. Once she’s done so, she stays in Quayth as its lady, presumably with the male Old One at her side. It’s almost too subtle to see, but she really likes his looks, and the female Old One doesn’t appear to be interested in him, so it’s probably a given that they end up together.
As I read these stories, I kept thinking of the Norton’s own life and experience. The light, almost carefree voice of her earliest works, written in the Thirties, gave way after the Second World War to a completely different tone and emphasis. She became obsessed with apocalyptic disaster, worlds shattered by war, with refugees struggling to survive in the ruins. Often they’re damaged, sometimes physically, always psychologically. They seldom know why they do the things they do; they’re driven by forces beyond their control, compelled to wield weapons and perform functions imposed on them by often incomprehensible powers.
In Witch World especially, systemic misogyny is one of those irresistible forces. Women are each other’s worst enemies, stepmothers are always evil, and girls who are girly are petty and wicked. Sex is icky and deadly and destroys a woman’s powers. Motherhood is almost invariably a death sentence. Character after character is left alone, their mother dead either at their birth or not long after. Jaelithe the Witch is one of the only Norton mothers who not only survives but lives to fight for herself and her family.
And yet, in every Norton novel, no matter how dark, there’s hope. The protagonist finds their way through. Learns to use magic, or lets themself be used to save the world. Discovers who they are, finds their powers, finds a partner to share their future. The war ends, the enemy is defeated.
Whatever the price, the protagonist believes it’s worth it. There’s light ahead—or as one of Norton’s titles has it, there’s No Night Without Stars.
I’ll be rereading that one soon. In the meantime, I’m staying in the Witch World for a little while longer, and moving on from these collected stories to The Warding of Witch World.
Judith Tarr’s first novel, The Isle of Glass, appeared in 1985. Since then she’s written novels and shorter works of historical fiction and historical fantasy and epic fantasy and space opera and contemporary fantasy, many of which have been reborn as ebooks. She has written a primer for writers: Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting It Right. She has won the Crawford Award, and been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award. She lives in Arizona with an assortment of cats, a blue-eyed dog, and a herd of Lipizzan horses.
Dragon Scale Silver debuts Elys & Jervon who later befriend Joisan & Kerovan in Gryphon in Glory and Gryphon’s Eyrie. This was published the same year as The Crystal Gryphon and takes place over the same time period… however, Andre seems to have forgotten that when Jervon first meets Elys he tells her the Were Riders have just joined the war here. That causes a problem with them meeting Kerovan right at the time when he approaches the Were Riders to ask them to join the war in Gryphin in Glory. On the Witch World Wiki, I suggested that there was time travel involved because they appear in a short story called Sword of Unbelief, published (in Lore of the Witch World) between this and Gryphon in Glory (where they fought an ancient god in The Waste that takes place in the aftermath of the Invasion of High Hallack). It’s possible the god flung them back in time, where they got to meet Joisan & Kerovan right before the meeting with the Were Riders in Gryphon in Glory. Lore of the Witch World is definitely worth checking out for more Witch World goodness including a story about Koris & Loyse’s son.
How odd, I always thought the smith became the lord in the dream hall and they got their happily ever after together. You might want to reread that ending again…?
In Amber out of Quayth, I always read it that the Lady & Lord were a couple, Hylle was the Lord’s (jealous twin?) brother, and they accepted Ysmay as family (by marriage), to became apprentice to the lady in healing arts and magic.
No Night Without Stars takes place roughly around the same time as Star Man’s Son – 2250 AD, possibly slightly before. Another strong female co-lead character story.
@1 Thank you for reposting your comment! It’s really helpful for setting the stories in the larger context.
You’re welcome! I’m just a big geek for continuity stuff and Andre’s stories since I was a kid.
I see you’re going to tackle The Warding of Witch World after No Night? There is a whole cast of characters there that appeared in the co-authored novels, as well as plot points that are dependant on them too. You may need at least a primer of what happened since Gate of the Cat in those books to figure out what the heck is happening in Warding and who the heck all these people are! Andre finally got the room to write a longer story and wow, it’s a beast.
@3 You’ve been a great help for keeping track of this very prolific author.
Warding is the next one I tackle. It’s the thickest Norton book in the stack by far, so I’m braced for a whole lotta words. I believe I shall read it as one who has not read most of the collaborations but does have a basic knowledge of the world, and see how I get on. If the book is in conversation with her superfans but not with the less dedicated reader, well, that’s an authorial decision.
She invited me to become one of her collaborators. I did a novella for one of her collections, but declined to do more, as I was solidly booked with solo projects at the time. She had a whole stable of writers whom she encouraged and shared her worlds with. So generous, and so devoted to the cause of paying forward.
I will be curious to see if the thing I did that she declared would be canon shows up in the book.
An awful lot of wicked wives taking brothers away from their sisters and displacing women from their homes. Not that that didn’t happen in Real Life but still…
Dream Smith sounds a little ableist doesn’t it? I’d like a story where the handicapped daughter is backed because everybody admired her father and slowly wins respect and loyalty for herself because there’s nothing wrong with her spirit or her character.
Actually… you may want to check out Flight of Vengeance – Falcon Hope (Witch World: The Turning Book 2, second story, by P. M. Griffin) first. The characters from Falcon Law, (the Witch World story written by our esteemed reviewer, in the Four from the Witch World anthology, for those readers not in the know. Hunt it down & read it, it’s good!) gets a call-out in that story! Though Falcon Hope takes place around the same time as Falcon Blood and therefore sometime before your story (but written after). Sadly Andre was juggling so much in Warding that your story doesn’t get a mention. Still, having it acknowledged by one of her major collaborators is pretty good too… As a further caveat, Falcon Hope is the second half of the story begun in Witch World: The Turning Book 1- Storms of Victory – Seakeep (also by PM Griffin). Andre wrote the first story in Storms of Victory- Port of Dead Ships. It’s a solo novel length story. Might be worth checking out first… ;)
Now that I think of it, the short story you wrote your sequel to (Falcon Blood) is in the Lore of the Witch World collection. Just sayin’… ;)
@5 I wanted the non-ableist version, too. It would have been more interesting.
@6 I think I should keep to the schedule for now, read Warding as is, and accumulate the other volumes for later. I have a stack to get through, from all worlds and genres. I’ll put those on the list.