“You are a true child of Sirle, to think every danger can be frightened away by an unsheathed sword. I thought you were wise, but you are stupid. Did you go to battle at Terbrec against Drede with a spell book in your hands? Well, then what good will it do you to meet a wizard in battle with a sword than can be turned against you with one word? When that wizard melts your sword into a pool at your feet, what will you do next?”
He was wordless, his mouth tight. Then suddenly, he shrugged. “I am stupid to argue with you. Unless you can pick me up and throw me out, Sybel, here I stay. You may ignore me and walk over my feet, and refuse to feed me, but when you go I will follow you, and I will do my best to kill anything that harms you.”
She rose. She looked down at him, her black eyes distant, quiet, and as he met her eyes, he heard the faint stirrings about him of waking beasts. “There is a way,” she said, “to send you back to Sirle reluctant, but alive.”
Gules Lyon, yawning, its eyes of luminous gold, moved soundless as a shadow from the domed room, milled a circle around Coren, brushing restlessly against him. In the kitchen, Moriah, wakened, murmured a deep-throated song that had no words, melted leisurely toward them. Coren, his eyes on the still black eyes, saw them go momentarily lightless, and heard, in the soundless night, the slow pulse of great winds sucking against the air. He straightened, reached out to Sybel, his hand warm on her wrist, and her thoughts came back to him. He met her gaze, held it while the soft snort of Boar and suck of Dragon wing wove a frail web of sound burst by the Cat’s sudden, full-throated scream of warning. Then he tugged at her a little, as though shaking her out of a dream.
“Sybel. Are you trying to make me afraid? Why do you not just go into my mind, as you went into Drede’s mind, and send me quietly without my knowledge, back to Sirle? I could not argue with that.”
She stared at him a moment without answering. Then her face twisted, and she broke away from him. He rose quickly, caught her, and she dropped her face into her hands. “I cannot,” she whispered. “I want to, but I cannot.”
“Then what? If you set these animals at me, I will fight them, and they will be hurt, and so will I. And then we will both be angry with each other for letting such a thing happen. Sybel, it would be better for both of us, you and I, if you simply let me care about you. Let me keep my foolish watch here—care enough for me to let me do that. It is the only thing I can do. Please. You owe me some kindness.”
She dropped her hands. The long fall of her hair hid her face; he could not see it in her silence. Then she shook it back, looked up at him, her eyes quiet, weary with waiting.
“I want you to go. For your sake I would tie you to Gyld and send you to Sirle, to Rok’s doorstep. But for my sake, there is no place I want you but here. Will you go?”
“Of course not.” He drew her close to him until her head dropped forward onto his breast, and he smiled vaguely at Gules Lyon, his lips brushing the top of her hair. She whispered against him,
“I am selfish. But Coren, this one thing I know, and I will tell you now: where I am going, in the end, I will go alone.”
She lay awake that night with Gules Lyon at the foot of her bed, and Moriah at her doorway, and the great, cold worlds of fire splayed silent above her head. She felt the steady pulse of the call in her mind, rippling through the silence, through the opened doors and corridors of it, moving downward, steadily, strongly, to the deep places where she kept the clear, cold knowledge of herself in her ground mind. The call moved inevitably toward that place, while her own powers ebbed away, her thoughts lay useless, unformed in her mind. Finally, there was nothing in her but that call, numbing her will, turning the white still house unfamiliar to her until it seemed the shadow of a dream. The deep, secret places of her mind lay open, unprotected; her power was measured, her name taken, all that her name meant: all experience, all instinct, all thought and power was measured and learned.
She rose at a command that was scarcely more than a word, and dressed so softly that cloth barely whispered against cloth. A great, gold Lyon lay sleeping in the moonlight; a black Cat, nameless, stretched like a shadow across the threshold. She looked at them, found no names in her mind to wake them, for their names lay like jewels in a deep mountain, hidden from her mind’s eye. She stepped over the sleeping Cat so gently its eyes did not flicker. In the room beyond, a red-haired man sat before a green flame, his eyes closed, his hands open, limp. She moved past him silent as a breath in the still room, past the silver-bristled Boar asleep at his feet.
The door clicked softly, closing, and Coren started awake. He looked around, blinking. A twig snapped in the fire and he leaned back again, watching the dark room where Sybel slept guarded by Gules and Moriah. And as he watched, Sybel led his horse silently through the snow, out of her gates. She mounted and rode it bareback down the long, fire-white mountain path, past Maelga’s sleeping house, down toward the dark, towered city of Mondor.
SIX
She climbed the winding steps of a high tower on the north wall of the city. They spiraled into shadow above her, below her; her own shadow, shaped by torchlight, loomed before her up the worn stones. At the end a light limned a closed door. She gripped the heavy iron ring of its latch and opened it.
“Come in, Sybel.”
She walked into a round room. A canopy of woven stars glittered brilliant, motionless above her head; white wool and linen etched with ancient tales in rich threads hung from the walls, breathed gently over the high, thin windows. She stepped on soft sheepskin, ankle-deep, that lay the length of the room. A warm fire glowed in the middle of the room. Before it stood a tall man in a robe of black velvet with a silver belt of linked moons at his hips. He stood silently, watching her. His face was lean, hawk-lined, with no hint of feeling but for a single brief line curving faint beside a corner of his mouth. His eyes were cool, deep-shadowed green.
“Give me your name.”
“Sybel.”
At the word the invisible thread of the call that had shadowed her mind broke, and she stood free, blinking in the room. She shivered a little, her eyes moving dark over the walls. The green eyes watched her, unmoved.
“Come to the fire. You have had a cold journey in the snow.” He held out his hand, lean-boned, long-fingered, with a single jeweled ring on his forefinger the color of his eyes. “Come,” he said again, insistently, and she moved to the firebed slowly, unclasped her wet cloak.
“Who are you? What do you want with me?”
“My name now is Mithran. I have called myself many things through the years. I have served princes in outlandish courts in many worlds; I serve them quietly and well—if they are powerful. If they are not, I use them for my own purposes.”
Her eyes moved, black, to his face. “Who do you serve now?” she whispered. The line trembled, gossamer-faint, at the corner of his mouth.
“Until this moment I have been in service. But now, I think I might serve myself.”
“Whose service?”
“A man who at once fears you and wants you.”
Her lips parted. The breath hissed through them, startled. “Drede?”
“You are surprised. Why? You called him twice from his house, so skillfully he did not know what impulse moved him. He is fighting for his power in Eldwold, and the only weapon he has is his young son against the six sons of Sirle.
“I told him I would not meddle in their affairs! Why does he think I would go against him, the father of Tam?”
“Why not, when a red-haired Sirle lordling courts you with his sweet words? You have raised Tamlorn, but you have your own life to lead. You are powerful and—beautiful as a rich line of poetry from an ancient, jewel-bound book. How can Drede be sure that an impulse will not move you to Coren?”