Her dismissal was so abrupt as to make me angry. But such words and actions were only a scratch across my pride. In truth, I was well pleased to be out of the hot, perfumed room, my treasure looped about my arm. As I returned to my own quarters, I ran my fingers continually across the fur, reveling in touching such silky warmth. Also, I did not put it away in my coffer as I laid aside my festival clothing, but had the overpowering fancy to fasten it about my bare waist under my jerkin. To me there was no strangeness in what I did. There it felt right. It seemed needful that I wear it so.
That night when I sought my bed I did not lay it aside, but kept it on. Again, it was a night when I could not sleep. Gazing from the window into the dark was not enough. Rather, as the full moon rose, I knew that I must be out—free—away from this pile of time-pitted stone.
Though I had never done so before, I pulled on breeches and boots, taking time for neither shirt nor jerkin. I slipped out of the Tower, through the Gate that in this time of peace had no sentry on duty. Once in the open, I began to run. There was a headiness and wildness in me that possessed by body, urged me on and on.
I crossed fields to enter the screen of bushes forming the outer fringe of the woodlands. There I kept along the banks of a stream, so that the moon-dappled waters sang at my side, until I at last reached a glade where there was the full silver of the moon and a pool reflecting it. There I ripped off my clothing and leaped into the shallow water, cupping it in my hands and splashing it up over me. The belt formed a darker line about my body, while the gem of the pard’s head took fire from the moon in a way I had never seen any gem burn before. It blazed up, more and more. I was caught in a fiery cloud. There was nothing now but the wildness alive in me, the flashing of the pard’s snarling head before my dazzled eyes.
5
Of the Warning from Ursilla and the Cloud Over Arvon
When I awoke with the coming of morning, birds twittered in the trees above me. The fire of the moon had left the pool, though a dwindling silver disk still rode in the west. I blinked and blinked again, bemused at what lay about me, for in my mind there was a memory—a memory of wild, exultant life enclosed within the night. I had seen more, heard more, scented more of a strange world, vividly alive, than I ever had in my life before. This was the freedom that something long buried inside me craved. To return to the Keep was like forcing myself back into a cage, yet I had no alternative.
Some instinct also warned me that, were my night’s adventure known, I would be prevented from repeating it. I must regain my own chamber unseen. I sat up quickly, reached for the breeches and boots, which lay an arm’s distance away, to pull them over my dew-moist skin. The belt about me now was just a belt. Even the gem buckle appeared duller, as if half-consumed by the fire that had blazed under the moon’s touch. Still I ran my hands lovingly along the furred loop where it cinched about my middle.
The hour was still very early. I hoped to reach my chamber before there was any stir in the Keep. Again, some caution I did not understand led me to take a way along which there was cover. Thus I skulked, in the fashion of a scout approaching some enemy camp. I reached the Gate and slipped through to run for the Tower door. In doing so, I must pass the entrance of the Tower wherein the ladies dwelt. Someone moved out from the arch’s shadow there to front me.
Ursilla!
There was no avoiding a meeting with her. She had turned to face me and her hand beckoned, drawing me to the arched doorway as she retreated into that more private place.
When she did not speak, I fidgeted from foot to foot. Then she pointed to the belt where it showed against my skin, only half-concealed since I was not wearing a jerkin.
“Where got you that?” Her voice was a harsh whisper, meant to compel the truth from me.
Again by instinct my hands were at my middle, cupping over the gemmed buckle. I had a queer feeling that I was threatened. Also, I was angry with myself for being so submissive to her, Wise Woman or not.
“It was a gift,” I returned with scant courtesy. “The Lady Eldris and Thaney gave it into my hands as a betrothal pledge.”
Ursilla’s features sharpened, her lips pulled away a little from her teeth. Just so had I seen one of the great hounds snarl in soundless rage.
“Give it to me!” Her fingers stretched out, curling to resemble talons, as if she would tear it from my body. “Give it to me!”
By the very force of her emotion, she released me from the spell of obedience she had cast.
“No!” I denied her with a single word. Then turned and ran, unmindful now of anyone sighting me. It was not until I reached my own chamber and stood there, panting, that I regained control over the panic that had taken me out of Ursilla’s reach. I dropped down on the edge of my narrow bed and tried to sort out my own mixture of emotions to learn, if I could, what had brought me racing here like a frightened child.
The sense of freedom with which I had awakened had gone. In its place arose a frustration, mingled with fear. I was in a cage—and Ursilla threatened to keep me therein. She would see that I did not repeat this night. I was aware of that as if it were written in flaming runes upon the wall before me. The belt!
I unhooked the buckle, held the gem head on a level with my eyes, examined it closely. Yes, in the day, it was dimmer. But there was no way Ursilla would get this from me—no way! It was truly mine in a manner that nothing had ever belonged to me before. I had known it instantly when I first saw it laid out among Ibycus’s treasures. That the belt had been used by the Lady Eldris for her own purposes, intended to bind me to those purposes, mattered nothing. All that did was that I could now fasten it about my body. This I again did, checking the buckle well to be sure it was surely closed.
Ursilla might be mistress of potent spells, but get this from me she could not. I do not know why I was so certain of that fact, only that I was.
However, I was not to escape the Wise Woman so easily. It was midafternoon when the message came. I had been at swordplay with Pergvin and had won from that expert a certain measure of approbation. Since he was always more critical than commending, I felt new triumph. Perhaps that sense of being more alive, which I believed the belt afforded me, would now work to give me prestige among my fellows. So I was in a good-humored mood, which was not even dashed by a peremptory summons to my mother’s bower.
As I crossed the courtyard I was sure that this must be some ploy of Ursilla’s and that within the influence of the rooms where she had her own center of Power, it behooved me to go very warily indeed. Only I was no longer a small boy to be ordered about; at this moment, I felt all man grown, the master of my own destiny and life.
There was no sign of either the Lady Eldris or Thaney as I passed by their chambers, ascending to the floor where my mother ruled, with Ursilla ever at her shoulder. The cloying scents were gone as I climbed. Also, the room into which the waiting maid ushered me had no enwrapment of tapestry about its walls. Rather, it possessed uncovered windows through which came the light of day and the smell of the drying hay on the fields below.
Still there was richness here, also. My mother’s chair-of-state was as highbacked, as well cushioned, with its red mantle of House draped across it, as that of the Lady Eldris. And, in place of the tapestries, the harsh stone of the walls framed strips of parchment on which were painted uncanny-looking birds and beasts quite unlike those I had ever seen, the colors brightly laid on to make their scales, feathers, claws, horns and the like, brilliant and as near glittering as gems.
My mother sat with a lap table before her on which was spread just another such painted strip, where, within dark outlines, she was pointing a brush with care, filling it with small flecks of scarlet, and then, taking up a second brush, outlining each of these with a speck or two of gilding. She did not raise her head at my entrance, nor bid me any welcome.