“I will.” Her fingers loosened, stretched taut. Her eyes sought the fire, wide, black. “I will,” she whispered. Then a knocking sounded at the door and Tam’s face changed.
“So soon? But I just came.”
She turned swiftly. “Oh, my Tam—not yet, surely—”
“I told you I could not stay long.” He stood up, sighing. “Sybel, when times are not so troubled, I will stay longer. I have your cloak in my saddlebag.” The knocking sounded again; he raised his voice. “I am coming! Sybel, talk to Maelga about what hurts you. She can cure everything.”
“Prince Tamlorn—”
“Coming!” He put his arm around her as they walked across the yard, the guard following after them silently. Ter Falcon came to land again on Tam’s shoulder. “Sybel, I will stay longer next time. It—I wish you would come to see me.”
“Perhaps I will.”
“Please come.” He unbuckled his saddlebag, and took out a soft, ivory cloak wound with whorls of blue thread. “This is for you.”
She touched it. “Oh, Tam, it is beautiful, so soft—”
“It is lined with ermine.” He put it in her arms. Then he kissed her quickly. “Please come. And talk to Maelga.”
She smiled. “I will, my Tam. Now, may I say one word to Ter?” Tam stood still a moment, and she looked from his gray, smiling eyes to Ter’s blue, piercing gaze.
Ter.
What is it, Ogam’s daughter? You are troubled.
Tam watched her, saw her face go still a moment, her eyes black, lightless, piercing back at Ter’s.
There is someone calling me to him. Stop him.
FIVE
She went to see Maelga that afternoon. The white doves roosted on Maelga’s rafters, and the raven came in and out through an open corner of window. The little house was thick with strange scents; Maelga bent murmuring over her cauldron, the steam of it loosening her white curls, plastering them glistening against her cheekbones. She did not look up as Sybel came in, so Sybel did not speak. She moved restlessly, opening and closing Maelga’s books, peering at her jars of nameless things, pacing back and forth in the middle of the room, frowning, until Maelga’s murmurings stopped abruptly, and she turned her head.
“My child,” she said in wonderment. “I am losing count of Things.”
“I am sorry,” Sybel said. Something she held, worrying with her fingers, snapped; she stared down at it, unseeing. Maelga dropped her spoon in the cauldron.
“My bone—”
“What bone?”
“The forefinger of a wizard’s right hand. It took me so many years to find one.”
Sybel blinked at the broken pieces in her hand. Then she said, “I will bring you bones, if you wish. I will bring you a grinning skull, if I can find the brain beheath it.”
Maelga’s eyes focused, sharp beneath her untidy curls. “What is it?”
She put the bone down, and her fingers closed tight on her arms. “I am being called. I do not know who is calling me, but I cannot close my mind to him. I am being searched and called surely and skillfully as I would call an animal. I am angry, but so is a fish angry, caught on a line, and so helpless.”
Maelga’s hands clasped, her rings sparkling. She sat down slowly in her rocking chair. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew you would get into trouble stealing those books.”
Sybel stopped midpace. “Do you think it is only that?” she said hopefully. Then she shook her head. “No. There is a more powerful mind than mine at work. That frightens me. If he knows I have his books, he does not have to trouble me so for them. Maelga, I do not know what to do. There is no place to hide. If anyone came to do me harm, my animals would fight for me, but there is no one to fight this.”
“Oh, dear,” Maelga said. “Oh, my dear.” She rocked a little, one hand straying through her curls. Then she stopped. “I can do one thing for you. I will send a raven with his black, searching eyes to peer into wizards’ windows.”
Sybel nodded. “I have sent Ter looking, too.” Then she sighed, covering her eyes with her open hands. “I am a fool. If he can call me, he can call Ter, too—”
“If he knows to call him.”
“Yes. He may not know Ter. But who? Who is it! I have seen little wizards in their cold towers with straw pallets and dusty books; I have seen greater ones in lords’ courts growing fat and pompous with riches. But I have seen no one that I ever thought to fear. I do not know why I am being called.” She stared helplessly at Maelga. “What possible reason could there be? I can do nothing for anyone that strong.”
“Is he so strong? Perhaps if you do not answer he will yield.”
“Perhaps… But Maelga, he has broken into my silence, and I cannot follow his call. I cannot find him anywhere, to put a name to him.” She resumed her restless pacing, arms folded, her hair drifting behind her like a white cloak. “I am so angry… but anger is of no use, and neither is fear. I do not know what to do—I can only hope he is not so strong he can take my name from me.”
“Is there a place you can go away to for a while?”
“Where? I could go beyond the borders of Eldwold, and he could still seek me out, bring me to him.” She sat down finally, despairingly, beside the fire. “Oh, Maelga,” she whispered, “I do not know what to do. If I only had the Liralen… I could fly away to the end of the world… to the edge of the stars…”
“Do not cry,” Maelga said anxiously. “You frighten me when you cry.”
“I am not crying. Tears are of no use. There is nothing for me but waiting.” She turned her head. “Maelga, if—if one day you cannot find me, and no one knows where I am, will you watch over my animals?”
Maelga rose, her hands splayed in her hair. “Oh, Sybel, it cannot come to that. My raven will find him. Ter will find him, and then I will make him such a thing that will dissolve the bones within his skin.”
“No, you must keep his finger bone…” She rested her cheek against the stones of the fireplace and stared into the flames, seeing nothing as they danced beneath the black cauldron. She sighed. “I will go and let you work. There is nothing you can do for me, and little I can do for myself. Perhaps Ter will find him before he finds me, and perhaps then I can do something.” She rose. Maelga watched her, the lines of her face puckering into worry.
“My white one, be careful,” she whispered.
“I will. I hope the one who is calling me has such a friend to give him that warning.”
She woke that night to the nudge in her mind, gentle as a fingertip stirring water. She sat straight in her bed, her eyes wide to the darkness, while above her the stars flung their icy patterns across the crystal dome. The nudge came again, an unbidden, formless thought, and she heard like a whisper in a motionless night, the faint, breathed call of her name.
Sybel.
A small cry broke from her in the darkness. She heard a movement by her bed; Gules’ golden eyes sparkled like cut stones.
What is it you fear, Ogam’s child?
I had a dream…
And the voice came again, a toneless murmur: Sybel.
She spent a day and a night in the domed room, neither eating nor sleeping, searching ancient books for the name of such a powerful wizard, but she found no hint of it. At dawn, she let the book fall limp in her hands and stared out at the clearing sky. A line of rose traced the rim of the world; white clouds, silver-rimmed, blazing, caught the sun’s rays, broke and scattered them over Fallow Field, over the Plain of Terbrec, across the walled city of Mondor, where they warmed the chill, dark walls and towers. She thought hopelessly of the Liralen with its bright, white wings, and called it a little, sending the call toward the white dawn world. The animals began to stir in the house. Then she heard Maelga’s voice, calling at her door.