She smiled, his face blurred under her eyes. “For what? There is nothing.”
“For being afraid to tell you that I love you. For being afraid to ask you to come back to Sirle with me.”
Her head bowed, her fingers so tight in his hand that she felt the lock of their bones. “I am afraid, too, of myself. But Coren, I do not want to stay here and watch you go away from me. I need you. I need to love you. Please ask me to come with you. Please.”
“Will you come?”
“Oh, yes. Yes. Thank you.”
He reached out with his free hand, turned her face upward. “Sybel, do not cry. Please.”
“I cannot help it.”
“You are making me cry.”
“I cannot help that either. Coren, I have not laughed or cried for so long, and today, before the sun has even risen, with you I have done both.”
He pulled her toward him. They slid to the floor, and the candle, knocked over, extinguished itself against the stone in the first ray of sunlight. She hid her face against him, feeling, as she wept, his hands smoothing her hair, cupping her face as he whispered broken, soothing words. Then for a long time they were wordless, until the light, tracing a fine web through Coren’s hair, fell on Sybel’s eyes and she opened them, blinking. She stirred, stiff, and Coren loosed her reluctantly. She smiled, looking into his tired, bloodless face, her own eyes lined with weariness.
“Are you hungry?”
He nodded, smiling. “I will cook something for us. Sybel, it is so strange to come here and not see Cyrin looking at me out of his red eyes, or Gules Lyon melting around a corner.”
“Tam said he heard a song about you and Cyrin, and your brothers.”
He laughed, a touch of color in his face. “I heard it, too. Oh, Sybel, think of six grown men, twice as many seasoned warlords and an odd number of messengers and armor-bearers gathered in the dawn to overthrow a King and suddenly, without a second thought, riding after a great Boar with marble tusks gleaming like quarter-moons, and bristles like silver sparks, who beckoned with his eyes full of some secret knowledge so that we followed like a group of beardless boys following the beckoning of a street-woman’s eyes. Harpists will sing of us for centuries, and we will lie burning in our graves. I woke to myself in Mirkon Forest and saw a chain of riders disappearing into the trees after a moon-colored Boar, and I realized suddenly who that Boar was. So I went home and five women met me at the door weeping, and not one of them for me. They said the Sirle army was bewildered, leaderless, and messengers had been pounding at their doors all morning, demanding to know what to do. Then we began to hear tales of Cat and Swan and Dragon from all over Eldwold. My brothers began to straggle home after seven days and for once in his life Eorth had no words in him. And Rok—the Lion of Sirle aged ten years on that ride. He still has not been able to speak of it. It was like a dream; the endless ride, the great, elusive Boar always just ahead, just ahead… Sybel, I woke to myself and I was bone-hungry and whipped by branches and so weary I wanted to, cry, and my horse had not even raised a sweat…” He shook his head. “You can weave your life so long—only so long, and then a thing in the world out of your control will tug at one vital thread and leave you patternless and subdued.”
“I know. When I let those great animals go I did not dream they would do that one last thing for me. I miss them.
“Perhaps they will return to you someday, missing the sound of your voice speaking their names. By then we will have a houseful of wizardlings to care for them like Tam did.” He got up stiffly from the cold stones, helped her rise. She stood close to him, looking around at her empty house.
“Yes. I need a child now that Tam is no longer a child. Coren…”
“What?”
’Please—I do not want to spend another night in this house. I know you are tired, and so is your horse, but—will you take me home now?”
His arms circled her. “My White Lady,” he whispered. “I have waited so long for you to want to come to me, White one, my Liralen…”
“Am I that to you?” she said wonderingly. “I have given you as much trouble as that white bird is giving me. I have been so close to you and yet so far…” Her voice drifted away; she was silent, listening to the pattern of her words. Coren looked down at her.
“What are you thinking?”
She murmured vaguely. Old memories blossomed, faded in her mind, of her first callings of the Liralen, of Mithran’s words, of the last dream of it, where it lay broken in the depths of her mind. She drew a sharp breath, pulling away from Coren.
“Sybel— What?”
“I know—” Her hand closed tightly around his arm; she pulled him to her threshold. He followed, bewildered, looked over her head into the empty yard. Then she said, her voice taut, unfamiliar, “Blammor,” and his face jerked back to her.
“What are you doing?” he breathed. The Blammor came to them, the mist of a shadow between the great pines, its moon-colored, sightless eyes white as the snow-buried peak of Eld. Sybel looked into its eyes, gathering her thoughts, but before she could speak to it, the dark lines of it grew mist-colored, molding a form. The fluid crystal of its eyes melted downward, curving into white, clean lines: a long, flute-slender neck, a white curve of breast like a snow-touched hill, a broad sweep of snowy back, and long, trailing, pennant-shaped wings that brushed the soft ground like trains of finest wool. A sound broke sharply from Coren. The great bird looked down at them, taller than either of them, gentle and beautiful, and its eyes, the Blammor’s, were moon-clear. Sybel touched her eyes, feeling the fire burning dry at the back of them. She opened her mind to the bird, and tales murmured beneath its thoughts, ancient and precious as the thin tapestries on the walls of a king’s house.
Give me your name.
You have it.
“Liralen,” Coren whispered. “The Liralen. Sybel, how did you know? How did you know?”
She reached out to touch it, the feathers strong yet sleek beneath her hand. Tears ran down her face; she brushed them absently. “You gave me a key, when you called me that. I knew then it must be something close to me, yet far… and then I remembered that when I called the Liralen so long ago, the Blammor came and told me itself it was not uncalled. And the night it came to me and I nearly died of terror like Drede, I saw deep in me the Liralen dead, and I did not want it dead—that saved my life, because in my sorrow for it I forgot to be afraid. And somehow, the Blammor—the Liralen—knew even better than I how much it meant to me. That is why Mithran could never take it: he knew that he would have to take the Blammor, and that he could never do.”
The Liralen’s voice drifted into her mind. You are growing wise, Sybel. I came long ago, but you could not see me. I was always here.
I know.
How may I serve you?
She looked deep into its eyes. Her hand at rest in Coren’s gentle hold, she said softly,
“Please take us home.”