His head jerked upward, his eyes blazing into hers. He whirled away from her abruptly, and found as he turned the crystal-eyed Blammor behind him. He screamed once, and then the Blammor overwhelmed him like a mist that held him upright an instant, his arms outspread, fingers taut. Then he dropped. The Blammor said to Sybel,
Is there more?
She stared, trembling, at the wizard. Her hands fumbled at her robe, drawing the torn cloth together. No, she said. No more. And it faded. Beside the bed the Falcon Ter gave a fierce cry of rage. The wizard Mithran lay on his back, the bones crushed and broken in his face, his hands, his throat. Ter swooped downward, clung to the broken head, his talons piercing the open eyes.
“Ter,” Sybel breathed, and he came to her, perched on her chair. She stood, still trembling, and drew on her cloak. Ter’s voice floated into her mind; she felt him in his hot rage.
And Drede.
No.
Drede.
No. She went to the door, pulled the bolt with shaking hands. Drede is mine.
SEVEN
She rode home slowly through the snow, the Falcon circling above her head, sometimes soaring to heights where he looked to her like a faint dark star in the day sky, then dropping down to her, lightning swift. She spoke to no one, her eyes black, blind, and no one she passed stopped her. She reached the mountain path at twilight. Evening lay silvery against the snow; stars began their slow ascent over the great, dark head of Eld Mountain. The trees were motionless around her, stars caught in their snowy branches. Maelga’s house smoked small in the trees, its windows fire-bright. She rode to the yard. As she dismounted Maelga opened the door, stars flaming from her ringed fingers.
“Sybel,” she whispered. Sybel stared at her. Maelga came to her, sharp eyes peering, probing. She touched the still, white face. “Is it you?”
“The wizard is dead.”
“Dead! How? How, child? I never thought to see you again.”
“Rommalb“
Maelga’s hand went to her mouth. “You have taken that one, too?”
“Yes. And now the wizard Mithran lies crushed on the floor of his tower, and I think—I think not even his finger bone is whole.”
“Sybel—”
She shuddered suddenly, violently. “Let me come in. I need a place—a place to rest awhile.”
Maelga’s arm closed about her, drew her inside the warm house. Sybel sank down beside the fire, her eyes closing in weariness. She felt hands at the throat of her cloak and started.
“No—”
Maelga’s hands checked. She drew a slow breath. Then her fingers brushed lightly down Sybel’s cheek and she rose. Sybel untied her cloak, pushed it away from her.
“He tore my dress. Is Coren still at my house?”
“I will mend it for you. Coren is there. He came to me when he found you gone. He blamed himself for sleeping.”
“I am so glad he was asleep.” She was silent for a long time, staring into the fire. Maelga watched her, rocking silently while the night darkened around the house, and Sybel’s face grew shadowed beside the fire. Then Maelga said softly,
“Sybel, what are you thinking? What dark things?”
Sybel stirred. “Night dark,” she whispered. Then they heard footsteps in the yard, and the whinny of Coren’s horse. Sybel rose, the cloth parting over her white breasts. She opened the door, and Coren, one hand on the back of his horse, looked up to see her framed in the light. He went to her, drew her beneath his cloak, held her, his face hidden against her hair until she felt his tears against her cheek.
“I cried, too,” she whispered. “It hurt.”
“Sybel, you went from me like a dream, so silently, so irrevocably—I could not bear it, I could not bear it—”
“I am safe.”
“But how, Sybel? Who was it?”
“Come in. I will tell you.”
He sat with her beside Maelga’s fire, his fingers linked hard in hers as though he would never let her go. Maelga, moving softly as she heated a stew for them, cut bread, listened to Sybel’s quiet telling.
“It was the wizard Mithran. Have you heard his name?” she asked Coren, and he shook his head. “He saw me once long ago, when I stole a book from him. He—wanted me. He gave me no choice. I asked him for pity, but he had none. He had a very great mind, but it was without challenge, wearied with boredom, bitter deeds. I would have gone with him. I could never have fought him. I would always have been afraid of him. But he made a mistake. He forgot Rommalb. And that was the one name I remembered, when he lost control of himself and me. So he died there.”
“I am glad.”
“I am, too, except… he carried such great knowledge. I wish—I wish we had not met under such circumstances. He was more powerful even than Heald, and he might have taught me things.”
Coren stirred beside her. “You do not need such great power to keep your animals. What would you use it for?”
“Power breeds itself. I cannot stop wanting to know, to learn. But I could never have wanted to go with him. He—he did not love me.”
“It matters to you, then?”
“Yes.” She turned her head to meet his eyes. “It matters.”
She heard the long, shuddering draw of his breath. “I wanted to come to you, but I did not know where,” he whispered. “Even the snow had fallen to cover your path. I woke, and the fire was dead, and you were gone.”
“Coren, there is nothing you could have done for me. He would have had no mercy for you—he had none for me—and I would have had to watch. Then, there would have been no one to hold me when I returned.”
“Sybel—” He paused, choosing words. “You have my love. I would have given you my life. And now, I will give up for you another thing: all the weary years of my bitterness toward Drede. If you come with me to Sirle, no one will ever ask anything of you that you do not want to give. I never again want to feel your need of me and not know how to find you. I never want to wake again and find you gone.”
She was silent, looking at him, and for a moment he saw in her eyes a shadow of aloofness, of secrecy. Then it passed, and she lifted his hand to her mouth. “And I,” she whispered, “do not want to watch you ride to Sirle again without me.”
She left Eld Mountain with him the next morning to marry him in his family’s house. The long winter was melting to an end: they rode fur-cloaked beneath a sky brilliant with sunlight against the white snow. The Falcon Ter flew above them, black-winged against the sun. They rode past Mondor, across the wide Plain of Terbrec, and then through the forest lands of Sirle, where they spent one night in an outlying farm that was half fortress, the vanguard of Sirle. On the second morning they came to the heartlands of Sirle, the fields, the curve of the Slinoon River, and saw far away the walls and gray stone towers of the home of the Sirle Lords, smoke drifting from its chimneys. They stopped awhile to rest, dismounting. Coren took Sybel’s face between his gloved hands, looked into her black eyes.