Moriah screamed again, flat-eared, crouched at Coren’s feet, and the blades jumped, winking. One of the guards drew his sword back suddenly. Sybel’s flat voice froze the drive of it toward Moriah.
“If you do that, I will kill you.”
The guard stared at her still, black eyes, sweat breaking out on his face. “Lady, we will take the Prince and go. I swear it. But how—what guarantee do we have that we will walk alive out of your house, if we let Coren go? What is the surety for our lives?”
Tam’s eyes rested a moment speculatively on Coren’s face. He came forward and knelt at Coren’s feet beneath the swords, and put his arms around Moriah. “I am. Now let him go.”
The swords wavered, winking in the firelight, fell. Coren’s breath rose soundlessly and fell.
“Thank you.”
Tam looked up at him, stroking Moriah’s head. “Think of it as a gift from Drede to Sirle.” He rose and said to the guards, “I will come home now. But no one of you is to stay here after me, or follow Sybel and Coren when they leave. No one.”
“Prince Tamlorn—we saw nothing of Sybel or Coren.”
Tam sighed. “My horse is in the shed—the gray. Get him.”
They left quickly, followed by the soft whisperings of Lyon, Boar and Cat. Tam went to Sybel, and she held him a moment, his face hidden in her hair.
“My Tam, you are growing as fearless and wise as Ter.”
He drew away from her a little. “No. I am shaking.” He smiled at her, and she kissed him quickly. He turned and hugged Gules Lyon tightly, then rose to the sound of hoofbeats at the door.
“Prince Tamlorn,” Coren said soberly, “I am very grateful. And I think this gift will be a great embarrassment to the Lord of Sirle.”
“I hope he is pleased,” Tam said softly. “Good-bye, Sybel. I do not know when I will see you again.”
“Good-bye, my Tam.”
From a window, she watched him mount; Ter circling above his head, watched his straight figure swallowed by a crowd of dark-cloaked men with their fiery stars, until they had disappeared through the trees. Then she turned and went to Coren, put her arms around him, her face against his breast.
“They might have killed you before I even knew they were in my house, in spite of all my powers. Then what would Rok have said?”
He lifted her face with his hands, a smile creasing his eyes. “That I should not have to depend on my wife to save my skin.”
She touched his throat. “You are bleeding.”
“I know. You are shaking.”
“I know.”
“Sybel. Could you have killed that guard? He believed you could, and I was not sure, then, myself.”
“I do not know. But if he had killed Moriah, I would have found out.” She sighed. “I am glad he did not, for his sake and mine. Coren, I do not think we should stay here long. I do not trust those guards. Let us pack the books and leave.”
Coren nodded. He picked up a chair that had overturned, found his sword in a corner and sheathed it.
Gules Lyon lay muttering softly by the fire. Moriah prowled back and forth in front of the door. Sybel dropped a soothing hand on the flat, black head. She looked around vaguely at the house and found a strange emptiness that seemed to lie beneath the cool white stones. She said slowly,
“It seems no longer my house… It seems to be waiting for another wizard, like Myk or Ogam, to begin his work here in this white silence…”
“Perhaps someone will come.” He unfolded the big, tough grain sacks they had brought to pack the books in, and added wryly, “I hope he will have gentler memories of it than I ever will.”
“I hope so, too.” She gave him a tight parting hug, then went out to speak with Gyld and the Black Swan while he packed. The late afternoon turned from gold to silver, and then to ash gray. Coren finished before she returned; he went into the yard, calling her name in the wind. She came to him finally from the trees.
“I was with Gyld. I told him there would be a place for him at Sirle, and he told me he would bring his gold.”
“Oh, no. I can see a glittering trail of ancient coin from here to Rok’s doorstep.”
“Coren, I told him we would see to it somehow… he will have to fly by night, when we are ready for him. I hope he does not frighten all of Rok’s livestock.” She glanced up at the night-scented, ashen sky, and the green-black shapes of trees. “It is getting late. What should we do? I do not think we should even stay at Maelga’s house.”
“No. Drede would not mind risking a war by killing me if he could trap you, take you to Mondor. If he wants that, they will return tonight to look for us.”
“Then what should we do?”
“I have been thinking about that.”
“The horses are tired. We cannot go far on them.”
“I know.”
“Well, what have you been thinking about that has put the smile in your voice?”
“Gyld.”
She stared at him. “Gyld? Do you mean—ride him?”
He nodded. “Why not? You could pretend he is the Liralen. Surely he is strong enough.”
“But—what would Rok say?”
“What would any man say if a dragon landed in his courtyard? Sybel, we cannot ride the horses far, and this mountain is no safe place for us tonight, wherever we are on it. You can loose the horses, call them back to Sirle when they are rested.”
“But there is no place to put Gyld in Sirle.”
“I will think of a place. And if I cannot, you can send him back here. Would he be willing?”
She nodded dazedly. “Oh, yes; he loves to fly. But Coren, Rok—”
“Rok would rather see us alive on Gyld than dead on Eld Mountain. If we make a slow journey back with these books, we may be followed. So let us sail home through the sky on Gyld. Sybel, there must be a silence deeper than the silence of Eld between those stars; shall we go listen to it? Come. We will throw all the stars into Sirle, then go and dance on the moon.”
A smile, faint and faraway, crept onto her face. “I always wanted to fly…”
“So. If you cannot fly the Liralen, then make a fiery night flight on Gyld.”
She called Gyld from his winter cave, and he came to her, soaring slowly above the trees, a great, dark shape against the stars. She looked deep into his green eyes.
Can you carry a man, a woman and two sacks of books on your back?
She felt a tremor of joy in his mind like a flame springing alive.
Forever.
He waited patiently while Coren secured the books on his back, wound with lengths of rope around the base of his thick neck and wings. He heaved himself up, so Coren could pass and repass the rope beneath him, and his eyes glowed like jewels in the night, and his scales winked, gold-rimmed. Coren placed Sybel between the two bags of books and sat in front of her, holding onto the rope at Gyld’s neck. He turned to look at her.
“Are you comfortable?”
She nodded and caught Gyld’s mind. Do the ropes bind you anywhere?
No.
Then go.
The great wings unfurled, black against the stars. The huge bulk lifted slowly, incredibly, away from the cold earth, through the wind-torn, whispering trees. Above the winds struck full force, billowing their cloaks, pushing against them, and they felt the immense play of muscle beneath them and the strain of wing against wind. Then came the full, smooth, joyous soar, a drowning in wind and space, a spiraling descent into darkness that flung them both beyond fear, beyond hope, beyond anything but the sudden surge of laughter that the wind tore from Coren’s mouth. Then they rose again, level with the stars, the great wings pulsing, beating a path through the darkness. The full moon, ice-white, soared with them, round and wondering as the single waking eye of a starry beast of darkness. The ghost of Eld Mountain dwindled behind them; the great peak huddled, asleep and dreaming, behind its mists. The land was black beneath them, but for faint specks of light that here and there flamed in a second plane of stars. The winds dropped past Mondor, quieted, until they melted through a silence, a cool, blue-black night that was the motionless night of dreams, dimensionless, star-touched, eternal. And at last they saw in the heart of darkness beneath them the glittering torch-lit rooms of the house of the Lord of Sirle.