The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gifts of Asti, by Andre Alice Norton

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Title: The Gifts of Asti

Author: Andre Alice Norton

Release Date: August 11, 2006 [EBook #19029]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Notes:

This etext was produced from Fantasy Book Vol. 1, No. 3 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright
on this publication was renewed.

A number of typographical errors found in the original text have been
corrected in this version. A list of these errors is found at the end
of this book.

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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 So He and those who served Him had withdrawn to this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