The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (11 page)

His words came whispered through his teeth. “Sybel, I dream of you at nights, and I wake alone and weep. It will be done swiftly, and then you will be with Tamlorn—”

“No—”

He loosed her, rising, his hands clenched. “It will be done!”

“So,” she whispered, trembling, her eyes dry, unseeing. “I am never to love again. That is harsh, considering that I am the first of three wizards to learn how. I would like to kill myself, but I will not be permitted to make even that small choice. I hope you pay this wizard well, because this deed is without price and without parallel.”

He stood a moment wordless before her. Then he turned, and she heard the whisper of his steps across the sheepskin, and then the beat of them down stone steps. The door closed, the bolt shot, and at the sound she gave a frightened, hopeless cry.

“Get up, Sybel.”

She rose unsteadily. Mithran went to the table, poured wine. He gave her a cup and sat down, sipping, watching her across the rim of his goblet.

“Sit down.”

She sat. She whispered into the cup, “Give me a few minutes of freedom.”

“To take yourself out of this world forever? No, you are too valuable.”

“Leave one small place for freedom in my mind.”

“To love?”

She lifted her eyes. “To hate,” she whispered. Her fingers circled the cup, kneading the wrought silver. “In that one small corner I could breed such a hate that would tear Eldwold apart stone by stone, and leave a wasteland for the Sirle Lords to bicker over for centuries. I would bring that King to his knees as he brought me to mine.”

The green eyes watched her, unwavering. “And what of me? Do you hate me?”

Her eyes moved lifeless to his face. “You are beneath hatred.”

He leaned forward, the ring on his finger flashing darkly. His mouth tightened suddenly. “He is a fool, that King. More so than most men. Did you know that you stole a book from me once?”

She blinked. “No. I would remember you.”

“The spell book of the wizard Firnan. You thought the room was empty. A lonely, cold room in a small lord’s court near Fyrbolg. I was there. I watched you enter, silently, as though the air had formed you. You looked through my books, took that one, and left so silently... and I watched that place in midair for hours after you went. I did not know your name. I did not know even if you belonged to Eldwold. I only knew that you came before me like the answer to a dream that I had not even dared dream... So I began to listen, to ask a question here and there, and I began to learn of you...”

She stared at him wonderingly. “But why did you call me for Drede?”

“It is he who told me at last who to call. You see, I am no fool. If I had come to you in your mountain house, you could have said yes to me as easily as no. Today, though, I think there is only one answer you will give me. I want you. If I must take you by force, I will, though with such a choice that you face today, I doubt that you will argue. I am powerful; my knowledge is inexhaustible. I have both loved and hated, but for years I have found nothing worth either loving or hating until I saw you. I can share thoughts, experiences with you as I can with no one else. I loved a woman once for her beauty. I never thought I might want to again. It is as though—as though you were made for me.”

She stared at him numbly. She began to tremble again; she held herself, her fingers tight, cold on her arms. He said,

“Drink.”

She drank wine. She leaned forward, dropped her head on her arms. Mithran watched her, motionless.

“Well?”

“This is my fault, a little,” she whispered. “Maelga warned me.”

“Look at me.”

She raised her head, her eyes wide, mute on his face. His thin brows flickered a little, drawing together. “Does it require such thought?”

“I am not even thinking. There is only emptiness.”

“Sybel. Choose.”

“I do not care. I do not care! You choose! If you want me, then keep me—if not, give me to Drede. What do you want me to do? Thank you for giving me a place in the wasteland of your heart? Drede at least I understand, but you—you are colder than I am.”

“Am I so?” he breathed. He checked himself, his thin mouth tightening again at the corners. “White bird, you know I will never give you to that King. Nor will I break your mind to suit either him or me.”

“You have already broken it!” she cried. “White bird—white falcon on a silver thread, to come when you call—I would fear you until I died, you have such power over my slightest thought. So I do not care now what you do to me. Do you want me to beg you to save me from Drede? I will go down on my knees to you for that, but I can never give you thanks for it if I am shackled to you.”

“You could not—try to love me?”

“I love no one! I will never love anyone! So Drede will have me helpless and smiling, or you will have me helpless and afraid—which do you prefer?”

He sat silently a moment, a finger moving up and down his cup, while she watched him, her hands tight on the arms of her chair. He said softly, his words measured to the slow movement of his hand, “You will not always fear me, Sybel. I will show you ancient arts and spells even you have never dreamed of learning. I will give you wondrous things: the purple jewel the shape of an eye made by the witch woman Catha that sees into locked doors and boxes; the cloak made of the skins of the blue mountain cats of Lomar, soft as the whisper of breath, warm as the touch of a mouth...I will give you the locked, bound books of the wizard Erden, never opened since his death three centuries ago, and I will tell you how to open them...” His words formed like dreams in her mind; she felt herself lulled, her mind eased, darkened. “I will capture for you the winged gazelle of the Southern Deserts, with eyes like the luminous night... You will sleep in white wool and purple silk, and wear jewels the color of stars with red and blue fire in their midst...” As from far away she saw him rise slowly, shadow-silent, come toward her, his voice low, weaving visions for her that formed and rested in her numbed mind. She felt his fingers straying through her hair. “I will give you the silver-stringed harp of the Lord Thrace of Tol, that plays at command, sings lost tales of dead, glorious kings...” His breath whispered against her face. A cry rose in her somewhere, faint as a child’s cry in the night that faded, lost. She felt his hands at her throat, saw the silver circle of her brooch wink and tremble in the light. “I will give you the Cup of Fortune that was thrown by the Prince Verne into the Lost Lake because it foretold his death by water...” She felt cloth gathered, tense, in his fingers, heard the hiss of it, torn. She heard the breath shake, faintly between his lips. “I will give you all the treasures of the world, and all its secrets... Sybel, my white bird...” His head dropped. His lips touched her throat, brushed downward. And then she felt that in his quickening lust for one brief moment he lost her, and she whispered one word without hope, almost without thought.

His head jerked upward, his eyes blazing into hers. He whirled away from her abruptly, and found as he turned the crystal-eyed Blammor behind him. He screamed once, and then the Blammor overwhelmed him like a mist that held him upright an instant, his arms outspread, fingers taut. Then he dropped. The Blammor said to Sybel,

Is there more?

She stared, trembling, at the wizard. Her hands fumbled at her robe, drawing the torn cloth together.
No
, she said.
No more.
And it faded. Beside the bed the Falcon Ter gave a fierce cry of rage. The wizard Mithran lay on his back, the bones crushed and broken in his face, his hands, his throat. Ter swooped downward, clung to the broken head, his talons piercing the open eyes.

“Ter,” Sybel breathed, and he came to her, perched on her chair. She stood, still trembling, and drew on her cloak. Ter’s voice floated into her mind; she felt him in his hot rage.

And Drede.

No.

Drede.

No.
She went to the door, pulled the bolt with shaking hands.
Drede is mine.

SEVEN

She rode home slowly through the snow, the Falcon circling above her head, sometimes soaring to heights where he looked to her like a faint dark star in the day sky, then dropping down to her, lightning swift. She spoke to no one, her eyes black, blind, and no one she passed stopped her. She reached the mountain path at twilight. Evening lay silvery against the snow; stars began their slow ascent over the great, dark head of Eld Mountain. The trees were motionless around her, stars caught in their snowy branches. Maelga’s house smoked small in the trees, its windows fire-bright. She rode to the yard. As she dismounted Maelga opened the door, stars flaming from her ringed fingers.

“Sybel,” she whispered. Sybel stared at her. Maelga came to her, sharp eyes peering, probing. She touched the still, white face. “Is it you?”

“The wizard is dead.”

“Dead! How? How, child? I never thought to see you again.”

“Rommalb“

Maelga’s hand went to her mouth. “You have taken that one, too?”

“Yes. And now the wizard Mithran lies crushed on the floor of his tower, and I think—I think not even his finger bone is whole.”

“Sybel—”

She shuddered suddenly, violently. “Let me come in. I need a place—a place to rest awhile.”

Maelga’s arm closed about her, drew her inside the warm house. Sybel sank down beside the fire, her eyes closing in weariness. She felt hands at the throat of her cloak and started.

“No—”

Maelga’s hands checked. She drew a slow breath. Then her fingers brushed lightly down Sybel’s cheek and she rose. Sybel untied her cloak, pushed it away from her.

“He tore my dress. Is Coren still at my house?”

“I will mend it for you. Coren is there. He came to me when he found you gone. He blamed himself for sleeping.”

“I am so glad he was asleep.” She was silent for a long time, staring into the fire. Maelga watched her, rocking silently while the night darkened around the house, and Sybel’s face grew shadowed beside the fire. Then Maelga said softly,

“Sybel, what are you thinking? What dark things?”

Sybel stirred. “Night dark,” she whispered. Then they heard footsteps in the yard, and the whinny of Coren’s horse. Sybel rose, the cloth parting over her white breasts. She opened the door, and Coren, one hand on the back of his horse, looked up to see her framed in the light. He went to her, drew her beneath his cloak, held her, his face hidden against her hair until she felt his tears against her cheek.

“I cried, too,” she whispered. “It hurt.”

“Sybel, you went from me like a dream, so silently, so irrevocably—I could not bear it, I could not bear it—”

“I am safe.”

“But how, Sybel? Who was it?”

“Come in. I will tell you.”

He sat with her beside Maelga’s fire, his fingers linked hard in hers as though he would never let her go. Maelga, moving softly as she heated a stew for them, cut bread, listened to Sybel’s quiet telling.

“It was the wizard Mithran. Have you heard his name?” she asked Coren, and he shook his head. “He saw me once long ago, when I stole a book from him. He—wanted me. He gave me no choice. I asked him for pity, but he had none. He had a very great mind, but it was without challenge, wearied with boredom, bitter deeds. I would have gone with him. I could never have fought him. I would always have been afraid of him. But he made a mistake. He forgot Rommalb. And that was the one name I remembered, when he lost control of himself and me. So he died there.”

“I am glad.”

“I am, too, except... he carried such great knowledge. I wish—I wish we had not met under such circumstances. He was more powerful even than Heald, and he might have taught me things.”

Coren stirred beside her. “You do not need such great power to keep your animals. What would you use it for?”

“Power breeds itself. I cannot stop wanting to know, to learn. But I could never have wanted to go with him. He—he did not love me.”

“It matters to you, then?”

“Yes.” She turned her head to meet his eyes. “It matters.”

She heard the long, shuddering draw of his breath. “I wanted to come to you, but I did not know where,” he whispered. “Even the snow had fallen to cover your path. I woke, and the fire was dead, and you were gone.”

“Coren, there is nothing you could have done for me. He would have had no mercy for you—he had none for me—and I would have had to watch. Then, there would have been no one to hold me when I returned.”

“Sybel—” He paused, choosing words. “You have my love. I would have given you my life. And now, I will give up for you another thing: all the weary years of my bitterness toward Drede. If you come with me to Sirle, no one will ever ask anything of you that you do not want to give. I never again want to feel your need of me and not know how to find you. I never want to wake again and find you gone.”

She was silent, looking at him, and for a moment he saw in her eyes a shadow of aloofness, of secrecy. Then it passed, and she lifted his hand to her mouth. “And I,” she whispered, “do not want to watch you ride to Sirle again without me.”

She left Eld Mountain with him the next morning to marry him in his family’s house. The long winter was melting to an end: they rode fur-cloaked beneath a sky brilliant with sunlight against the white snow. The Falcon Ter flew above them, black-winged against the sun. They rode past Mondor, across the wide Plain of Terbrec, and then through the forest lands of Sirle, where they spent one night in an outlying farm that was half fortress, the vanguard of Sirle. On the second morning they came to the heartlands of Sirle, the fields, the curve of the Slinoon River, and saw far away the walls and gray stone towers of the home of the Sirle Lords, smoke drifting from its chimneys. They stopped awhile to rest, dismounting. Coren took Sybel’s face between his gloved hands, looked into her black eyes.

“Are you happy?” he asked, and his joy bloomed like a flower to her smile. He kissed her eyes closed, murmuring, “Blacker than the fire-white jewel of King Pwill: the eye in the pommel of his sword that turned black at his death—”

“Coren!”

He loosed her, laughing. The fiery snow winked to the edge of the world; nothing moved in it but the breaths of their horses and the slow smoke of the far Sirle house. Sybel gazed at it, her eyes narrowed a little against the light.

“That will be my home... It will be strange, living on flat land, and among people. I am not used to people. It is such a great, gray house. What are in the towers along the wall?”

“Guardrooms, supplies, weapons in case of attack, siege. The Sirle family has never lived quietly among its neighbors. But we were humbled at Terbrec, and now we talk a good deal and do little.”

“What are your brothers like? Are they all like you?”

“How, like me?”

“Gentle, kind, wise..:’

“Am I those things?” he said wonderingly. “I have killed, I have hated, I have lain awake at nights dreaming bitter dreams...”

“I have seen great evil, and there is none of it in you.” She smiled up at him, but the words shook, in spite of herself, on her mouth. He touched her hair beneath her hood, smoothing it.

“Behind the ancient, thick walls of Rok’s house not even a king could find you against your will. Come. My brothers are rough-voiced, battle-scarred, impulsive and foolish, like me, but there is joy in their houses, and they will welcome you simply because I love you.”

They rode slowly through the hard, dormant fields, where patches of black, plowed earth thrust upward against the melting snow. They followed a road that wound along the Slinoon River, leading to the threshold of the Lord of Sirle. A young boy with a bow in the empty fields saw them coming: he shouted something that hung in a flash of white breath in the air. And then he ran before them toward the house, the hood bouncing back from his black hair.

“That was Arn,” Coren said. “Ceneth’s son.”

“Are there many children?”

He nodded. “Ceneth has two small daughters, too. Rok’s oldest son, Don, is fifteen, a bloodthirsty boy, restless for his first battle. Rok has four younger children. Eorth’s wife just had their first son, Eorthling. Herne and Bor have their homes and families in the northern parts of Sirle. And we will have children, you and I, little wizardlings to fill that house.”

She nodded absently. Ahead of them, through the open gates, she saw people moving across the snow-patched ground. Water from the Slinoon, trained out of its course, flowed in front of the gates, out toward the fields. In the yard beyond, horses stood saddled, waiting; fire from a smithy within the walls billowed suddenly, died. Am ran across the drawbridge, vanished within the walls. A few minutes later a man followed him out, stood watching them come.

“Rok.”

They joined him at the bridge. He caught Coren’s reins, looking up at Sybel, and Coren dismounted. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, with a mane of pale gold hair and a line-scarred face imperturbable as his eyes. His voice, coming out of the deep well of his chest, was unexpectedly mild.

“I expected you home from Hilt four days ago. I was beginning to worry. But now, I see I did not have to.” He moved to Sybel’s side, took her hand. “You are Sybel.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we fought at Terbrec for a woman with a face like yours. You are very welcome to Sirle.”

She smiled, looking down into his eyes, seeing in them despite their calmness a faint, hot edge of triumph. “And you, as Coren says, are the Lion of Sirle. I am grateful for your kind welcome, since I have come so unexpectedly.”

“I have learned to expect unexpected things from Coren.”

“Rok,” Coren said quietly. “We have come to be married here. Sybel has come here as my wife.” Rok’s eyes fell, hidden a moment, then lifted again, gold-brown, smiling. “I see. How did you talk her into that?”

“It was not very easy. But I had to do it.” He lifted his arms, swung Sybel to the ground. Arn returned to take their horses, staring curiously at Sybel. A tall, red-haired woman followed him out, her thick braids twined among the rich green-and-gold folds of her dress. Coren said, “Lynette, this is—”

“I know, I know.” She hugged him, laughing. “Do you think I do not recognize that ivory hair or those eyes? This is Sybel, and you are going to be married. So this is what you have been plotting while we were worrying.”

“I do not know why you were worrying. Sybel, this is Rok’s wife, Lynette.”

“Going off to some place to daydream is one thing,” Lynette said, dropping a kiss on Sybel’s cheek. “But going to Hilt and not coming back is quite another. Sybel, you look very tired. It must be hard journeying in this cold.”

Coren slipped an arm around her. She leaned against him, thoughtless a moment, the fur on his cloak cold, smooth against her face, while he said, “She has been troubled, these past days. Is there a quiet corner in this house where she can rest?”

Sybel straightened. “No, Coren, it is good to hear so many pleasant voices. And I have not met all your brothers or the children.”

Lynette laughed. “You will. Come. You can rest in my room, while chambers are prepared for you and Coren.”

They crossed the bridge, Arn following behind with the horses, and the bustle in the outer yard stopped while they passed. A smaller gateway led to the inner yard, a square court with trees standing leafless, etching a fretwork of shadows on the snow. A man opened the double doors of the hall, came down the steps to them. His hair was vivid black against the sky; his eyes laughed at Coren, green as stones.

“Arn came babbling of your return, so I thought perhaps you had disturbed some mysterious wizard in your wanderings who sent you home with two heads.”

“See how they laugh at me,” Coren said to Sybel. “No, Ceneth. The wizard herself came home with me. Now you will have some respect for my comings and goings.”

“So. You are the wizard woman of Eld Mountain.” His bright eyes appraised her, smiling, speculative, like Rok’s. “We have heard much of you from Coren. He has not stopped talking about you since he came home scarred from battle with your dragon.”