“Men are strange in the city. I do not understand loving and hating, only being and knowing. But now I must learn how to love this child.” She paused a moment, her ivory brows crooked a little. “I think I do love him. He is soft, and he fits so into my arms, and if Coren of Sirle came for him again, it would be hard to give him up.”
“So.”
“So, what?”
“So it is Drede’s child. I have been hearing about that from my birds.”
“Coren said it is Norrel’s child.”
The thin lips smiled. “I do not think so. I think he is the son of Drede the King. There is a raven at the King’s palace whose eyes never close…”
Sybel stared at her, lips parted. She drew a slow breath. “I do not understand such things. But he is mine now to love. It is very strange. I have had my animals for sixteen years, and this child for one night; and if I had to choose one thing from all of them, I am not sure that I would not choose this thing, so helpless and stupid as he is. Perhaps because the animals could go and require nothing from anyone, but my Tam requires everything from me.”
The woman watched her, rocking back and forth in her chair, rings flashing on her still hands, fire-flecked.
“You are a strange child… so fearless and so powerful to hold such great, lordly beasts. I wonder you are not lonely sometimes.”
“Why should I be? I have many things to talk to. My father never spoke much—I learned silence from him, silence of the mind that is like clear, still water, in which nothing is hidden. That is the first thing he taught me, for if you cannot be so silent, you will not hear the answer when you call. I was trying to call the Liralen, last night when Coren came.”
“Liralen…” The old woman’s face softened until it seemed dreaming and young beneath her curls. “The pennant-winged, moon-colored Liralen… Oh, child, when you capture it finally, let me see it.”
“I will. But it is very hard to find, especially when people interrupt me with babies. My father fed me goat’s milk, but Tam does not seem to like it.”
The old woman sighed. “I wish I could feed him, but a cow would be more useful, unless I find some mountain woman to nurse him.”
“He is mine,” Sybel said. “I do not want some other woman to begin to love him.”
“Of course, child, but— Will you let me love him, just a little? It has been so long since I have had children to love. I will steal a cow from someone, leave a jewel in its place.”
“I can call a cow.”
“No, child, if anyone is a thief it must be me. You must think of yourself, of what would happen if people suspected you of calling away their animals.”
“I am not afraid of people. They are fools.”
“Oh, child; but they can be so powerful in their loving and hating. Did your father, when he talked to you, give you a name?”
“I am Sybel. But you did not have to ask me that.”
The gray eyes curved faintly. “Oh, yes, my birds are everywhere… But there is a difference in a name spoken of, and a name given at last by the bearer. You know that. My name is Maelga. And the child’s name? Will you give me that as a gift?”
Sybel smiled. “Yes. I would like you to have his name. It is Tamlorn.” She looked down at him, her ivory hair tickling the small, plump face. “Tamlorn. My Tam,” she whispered, and Tamlorn laughed.
So Maelga stole a cow and left a jeweled ring in its place, and for months afterward people left their barn doors open hopefully. Tam grew strong, pale-haired and gray-eyed, and he laughed and shouted through the still white halls, and teased the patient animals and fed them. Years passed, and he became lean and brown, and explored the Mountain with shepherd boys, climbing through the mists, searching deep caves, bringing home red foxes, birds and strange herbs for Maelga. Sybel continued her long search for the Liralen, calling nights, disappearing for days at a time and returning with old, jeweled books with iron locks that might hold its name. Maelga chided her for stealing, and she would reply absently,
“From little wizardlings, who do not know how to use them. I must have that Liralen. It is my obsession.”
“One day,” Maelga said, “you will mistake a great wizard for a little wizardling.”
“So? I am great, too. And I must have the Liralen.”
One evening, twelve years after Coren had brought Tamlorn to her, Sybel went to the cold, deep cave Myk had built for Gyld the Dragon. It lay behind a ribbon of water, and trees about it grew huge and still as pillars vaulting a chamber of silence. She stepped over three rocks to the falls, then slipped behind it, the water running across her face like tears. Within, the cave was dark and wet as the heart of a mountain; Gyld’s green eyes glowed in it like jewels. The great, folded bulk of him formed a shadow against the deeper shadow. Sybel stood still before him, like a slender pale flame in the dark. She looked into the unblinking eyes.
Yes?
Thoughts rose slow and formless as a dark bubble in the Dragon’s mind, and opened to the dry, parchment rustle of his voice. It has been a thousand years since I fell asleep over the gold I gathered from Prince Sirkel, and fell asleep watching his open eyes and his blood trickle slowly over coin piece and coin piece and gather in the hollow neck of a cup. His voice whispered away. There was silence while another bubble formed and broke. I dream of that gold, and wake to see it, and it is not here… I wake to cold stone. Give me leave to gather it once more.
Sybel was silent as a stone rising from stone. She said, You will fly, and men will see you and remember your deeds with terror. They will come to destroy my house and they will see gold burning in the sun, and nothing, nothing will turn them back from my house.
No, said Gyld. I will go by night and gather it in secret, and if any man watches, I will slay in secret.
Then, said Sybel, they would come and kill us both.
No man can kill me.
What of me? And Tam? No.
The great bulk stirred, amorphous, and she felt the warm sigh of his breath.
I was old and forgotten when the Master woke me by name in the hollow veins of Eld, and brought me out of my dreaming with his song of my deeds… It was pleasant to be sung of once more… It is pleasant to be named by you, but I must have my sweet gold…
Quick and turning as a snake his thoughts fled away from her, slipping down, down through caverns of his mind to the dark maze of it. Swift as water draining into earth, stealthy as man burying man beneath moonlight, he carried his name down to the forgetting regions where he was nameless even to himself, but she was there before him, waiting behind the last door of his mind. She stood among the half fragments of his memories of slayings, lustings and half-eaten meals and said,
If you want this so badly, I will think of a way. Do nothing, but be patient. I will think.
His breath came once more, and his thoughts welled once more to the dark cave. Do this one thing for me, and I will be patient.
She stepped out of the cave, water shining in her hair, and breathed deeply of the cool night air. She thought of the Dragon in flight, smooth flame in motion, and of the deep, peaceful pools of the Black Swan’s eyes, and the memory of the Dragon’s ground mind with the broken embers of his passions faded deep into her own. Then she heard a rustling behind her in the dark, still earth, sensed a watching.
“Tam? Maelga?”
But no voice, no mind answered. The black trees rose like monoliths, blocking the stars. The rustling faded like the breath of wind into silence. She turned again toward the house, a line between her white brows.