Rok looked at Sybel, but her eyes were hidden, and her folded hands against her mouth. He said finally, “You and Ceneth will lead men of your own choice into the city. Ter will tell Sybel where Tam is, and she will tell Coren.”
“No,” Sybel said. Her hands dropped. “I will not go into Coren’s mind. When Ter flies out to you, you will know Tam is near. If his life is in danger, though, he will be taken by the Swan to Eld Mountain.”
“But if Drede hides him,” Ceneth said, “how will we know where to look for him? You could tell Coren—slip the knowledge in his mind—”
“No.”
Ceneth sighed. “Then tell me, and I will tell Coren. You have done so much mind work already that—”
“Ceneth,” Rok said wearily, “be quiet.”
“But I think—”
“Do you?” Coren said, and his question snapped in the air like breaking ice. Ceneth flushed under his gaze.
“I am quiet,” he breathed. “But I am wondering who exactly you are fighting in this war.”
Eorth’s broad hand dropped onto the table. “Ceneth, be quiet,” he begged. “I have forgotten half of what Rok has said already. If we are going to get this war off the table and into the field, you will all have to stop bickering.”
“That,” Bor grunted, “is the wisest thing you have ever said.”
Sybel closed her eyes with her fingers. “If Tam is in any great danger I will see to it you know. One thing I must warn you: you may see strange, wonderful beasts on the battlefield, if you are close-pressed with Drede’s men. Do not follow them. Oh, you have seen them here, but in the magic of their luring they grow oddly beautiful. I have told them to stay away from you, but warn your own men, or they may wake to themselves lost in some quiet forest.”
A sudden smile broke over Herne’s lean, restless face. “This will be a war for harpists to break their strings over for centuries.”
“Yes,” Eorth said, “but first I have to know again what was going on before the animals came in.”
Rok refilled his cup and began the weave again patiently.
Twilight closed over the hundred eyes of fires ringing the Sirle house. Sybel, leaving the rest of the planning to the warlords under Rok’s command, watched the fires’ patternless flickering from her high window. Coren came in eventually as the night deepened. She rested her face against the cold stones, listening to the sound of his undressing. She heard the rustle of cloth against cloth drawn back, the whisper of his breath across candle flame. She drew off her clothes, slipped into bed beside him. She lay awake, knowing from his restless breathing his own wakefulness. The night wind stirred between them, traced her cheek with a cold finger. She heard his breathing deepen finally; she lay awake long, watching the curve of his arm and side change and fall with his breathing in the faint moonlight. Then she turned away from him, one hand over her eyes, and thought of Drede lying awake among his own stones, watching the torch flame wash across his walls. Coren stirred, disturbing her thoughts. He quieted, then shifted again with a little, sharp cry. She felt then, in the quiet darkness, a shadow over her own thoughts, as though she were watched, secretly. She turned abruptly.
The Blammor stood over her. She had no time to cry out before the crystal eyes met hers, aloof as stars, and then the darkness overwhelmed her and she heard all around her the thick, imperative beat of her own heart. Visions ran through her mind, of a wizard lying broken on his rich skins, of the death faces of men through the ages meeting the core of their nightmares one final time in rooms without windows, between stone walls without passage. A wet air hovered with the darkness, carrying the cloying scent of pooled blood, of wet, rusted iron; she tasted dry, powdered dust, the withered leaves of dying trees, heard the faint, last cries like a dark wind from some ancient battlefield, of pain, of terror, of despair. And then her thoughts lifted away from her into some plane of terror she had never known, and she struggled blindly, drowning in it.
A vision hovered white as the Blammor’s eye somewhere beneath the terror. While a part of her cried helpless, voiceless against the welling darkness, a thought, trained, honed to a fine perception, detached itself, probed toward the misty image. It lay drifting at the bottom of her mind; she searched for it as though calling through the deepest places of Eldwold, and finally, beneath her mind’s eye, the image clarified and she found a moon-white bird with twisted trailing wings, lying broken, the curve of its smooth neck snapped back against itself.
She whispered, “No.” And then she found herself on the floor, her face against the stones, her breath coming in whimpering, shuddering gasps. She lifted her head, felt tears drying on her face in the cool air. Then she felt the darkness full around her of a looming Thing that watched, waited. She drew herself up, shaking, weak. She stepped toward Coren, but he lay a stranger, as though he were in a dream beyond her. She stood motionless, looking at him, until her trembling eased. And then soundlessly she dressed.
She made her way through the winding stone corridor, slipped like a shadow past the guarded hall, past the inner wall where the slow steps of men paced back and forth above her head. She opened the gate to the gardens, held it wide in the moonlight, and the whisperings came to her of animals wakened, moving toward her in the night. She saw the great shape of Gules Lyon first, and she reached out to him, clung to his mane.
What is it, White One?
I am going back to Eld Mountain. You are free.
Free?
The Black Cat Moriah brushed against her. She looked deep into the green eyes.
You must do what you will tomorrow. I ask nothing of you. Nothing. You are free.
But what of you, Sybel? What of Drede?
I cannot—there is a price for his death I cannot pay.
Sybel, said the flute-voiced Swan, free to fly the gray autumn sky once more? Free to taste the wind on the wing tip?
Yes.
But what of Tam?
I will ask nothing of you. Nothing. You must do as you will.
She touched Gyld’s mind, found him awake, with slow thoughts revolving in his mind of a wet-walled cave deep in a silent mountain, with a tiny stream in it that trickled across pieces of gold and pale bone.
You are free.
But what of Drede? Shall I slay him for you first?
I do not want to hear his name again! I do not care if he lives or dies, if he wins or loses this war—I do not care! You are free.
Free. The various voices brushed in her mind like the sounds of instruments.
Free from the winter… free to run gold as the sun beneath the desert sun’s eye.
Free to fly to the world’s edge on the rim of twilight.
Free to be stroked by fat-fingered kings in the Southern Deserts, to hear the whisperings of moon-eyed witches.
Free to dream in the silence of one treasure greater than them all.
Free, said the silver-bristled Boar. Answer me a riddle, Sybel. What has set you free?
She stared into his red eyes. You know. You know. My eyes turned inward and I looked. I am not free. I am small and frightened, and darkness runs at my heels, in my running, watches.
Sybel, said the Black Swan, I will take you to Eld Mountain. And then I will fly to the lakes beyond North Eldwold that lie like the scattered jewels of sleeping queens.
I will take you, Gyld said. And then I will wind my path again deep, deep into my sweet cave.