The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (20 page)

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.

Take me then, she said, and felt his lumbering movements in the cave. She bent down, held Gules Lyon’s mane, looked deep into his eyes.

“Gules,” she whispered, and felt his mind drift away from hers, leaving the memories of him like things shadowed in a dim room. She loosed him and he left her, running huge and silent across the Sirle fields. She turned to the Cat.

“Moriah.”

The great Cat slipped, shadow-dark, into the shadows, its green eyes winking back at the moon.

“Black Swan,” she whispered, and it rose above her, circling slow, the great span of its wings black against the moon, curving to a line of breathless wonder.

“Cyrin.”

The marble-tusked Boar stood a, moment before her. “The Riddle Master himself lost the key to his own riddles one day,” he said in his deep, reed-pure voice, “and he found it again at the bottom of his heart. Farewell, Sybel. The Lord of Dorn ran three times around the doorless walls of the house of the witch Enyth, and then walked into the wall and it vanished like a dream.”

“Farewell,” she whispered. He ran out of the open gate, moon-bright across the fields of sleeping men. She straightened, called Ter from his post beside the sleeping Tam in the stone walls of Mondor.

Ter. You are free.

No.

Ter. You are free to do as you will, to go from Tam or to stay with him, king’s bird. But one thing I ask of you. One thing for my sake. Do not touch Drede. He is mine and I choose to forget him.

But why, Ogam’s child? Where is your triumph?

Gone, in the night. I have awakened, alone and afraid.

Afraid?

Afraid, fearless one. You are free.

She whispered his name, and it fell without answer in the still night. She rose, mounted the green-winged Dragon. She rode high with him through the star-flecked night, high above the war fires of Sirle, of Mondor, to a high mountain and a white hall of silence, where she loosed the Dragon forever from her. She went into the doors of Myk’s cold, empty house and locked them behind her.

TWELVE

Seven days later the King of Eldwold rode with his guards up the winding path of Eld Mountain. He rode past the tiny house of the witch of Maelga, with the doves in its yard and the black raven on the worn stag’s antlers above the door. He stopped at the closed gates of the wizard’s white hall, and saw through them the motionless, tangled garden, the covering of pine needles across the stone path between the gate and the closed door. A breath of wind stirred pale strands of his hair across his face. He brushed them aside and dismounted. “Wait here for me.”

“Lord, she is dangerous—”

His face turned abruptly upward, the bones of it forming sharp beneath his skin. “She would never hurt me. Wait here.”

“Yes, Lord.”

He tried the iron railings of the gate with his hands, but they were shut fast. He stared at them a moment, his brows knit over his eyes. Then he wedged one foot into a high crevice in the stone wall, gripped the jutting stones with his hands, pulled himself up. Cloth of his black tunic ripped against a sharp finger of rock; he loosed self absently and found another foothold, and another, until his hands closed, splayed and bloodless, on the smooth molding of marble on top of the wall. He swung a leg over and dropped on his knees onto the soft earth below.

He rose and dusted his stockings. The wind fell, leaving the gardens silent. His eyes searched, narrowed, puzzled through the dark shadows of underleaves, through the smooth, sun-rich trunks of great pine, but no movement answered his moving eyes. He went down the walk slowly, and turned the door latch. He shook the door slightly, knocked on it. One of the guards called hopefully from beyond the gate,

“Perhaps, Lord, she is not there.”

He did not answer. The windows of the house stared blindly outward, like eyes without a flicker of thought behind them. He stepped back a little, his lips between his teeth. Then he bent swiftly and picked up a smooth stone beside the path. He tapped it gently against a diamond of thick glass in a window and it cracked into a web of a thousand lines, then fell showering to the inner floor. He picked out teeth of glass still clinging to the rim, then slid his arm through to the elbow and groped for the window latch.

“Lord, be careful!”

The window opened abruptly; he swung with it sideways against the white wall. He drew his arm back. Within, dust drifted in the placid sunlight to the floor. He blinked into the dimness, listening for any sound, but the rooms were still as though no one walked or breathed in them. He heaved himself up, his feet slipping against the smooth marble and brought a knee over the ledge.

“Sybel?”

The word hung in the sunlight with the golden, dancing specks of dust. He turned his body, swung from the window onto the floor. He rose and walked through the silence to the great domed room beyond and saw the moon-pure crystal of it arched pale above him. And then he saw beneath it, sitting in white silence, a woman with hair the color of sun-touched frost sitting still, as though cased in ice. Her black eyes were open, blind.

He went forward, his steps soundless on the thick fur. He knelt before her, looked into her eyes.

“Sybel?”

He touched her lightly, hesitantly, his brows crooked. The white face, the bones clear beneath it, seemed formed of stone, so still, so secret. The slender hands, the bones outlined at every curve and joint, folded motionless. He stared at her, his own hands moving flat, restless, up and down his thighs, and a little, incoherent sound came out of his throat. He drew breath again and shouted suddenly,

“Sybel!”

She started, stirred faintly, and a little color came into her face. Her eyes focused on his face, and he smiled, wordless with relief. She leaned forward, one hand moving slowly out of the sheath of her hair to touch him.

“Tam...”

He nodded jerkily. “Yes—” Her hand touched his mouth, wandered across one shoulder. Then it dropped. Her eyes dropped; she drew a long, endless breath. Her face bowed until he could scarcely see it. He reached out, drew her hair back.

“Sybel, please. Please. Do not go back where you were. Please. Talk to me. Say my name.”

She covered her eyes with her fingers. “Tam.”

“No. I am not Tam anymore. I am Tamlorn. Sybel, I am Tamlorn, King of Eldwold.”

She saw him then clearly, his hands gripping his bent knees, his pale hair neatly trimmed, capping his lean, brown face. She saw the tense set and play of his mouth, the shadows beneath his eyes and the bones beneath his skin. The rich black tunic he wore caught the color from his eyes, darkening them. She stirred, feeling stiffness in every joint and bone,

“Why did you bring me back?”

“Where did you go? Sybel, why? Why?”

“I had no place else to go.”

“Sybel, you are so thin. They said you were not in Sirle, and I had to find you, to ask you something. So I came here, and your gates were locked. So I climbed the wall, but your door was locked. So I broke a window and climbed in and found you, but I could not reach inside you. You sat so still, as though you were made of stone and your eyes stared at me without seeing. Sybel, why did you go? Was it—what my father did to you?”

“It was what I did to myself.”

His head moved briefly as if flicking away her answer. He reached out, touching her hair again, drawing with light, eager touches strand after strand of hair away from her face.

“My father told me what he did to you.”

“He told—”

“Yes. The night before the fighting started. He told—he told me. Sybel, he was so frightened of you, he—I did not even know him, those days before the war. Then, when he told me why, I understood.” He paused a moment, and a muscle beside his mouth jerked and was still. His eyes came back to her face. “Sybel, he said he came back to the tower to get you that day, and the door was wide open to the wizard’s room and he went in and you were gone and—the wizard lay dead on the floor with his eyes—torn and every bone in him broken. And then he began to be afraid. And then you married Coren of Sirle... He rarely spoke after that, except to give orders, to consult with people, He seldom spoke to me, but sometimes, when he sat alone in his rooms, with all the torches lit, just sitting, staring at nothing, I would go and sit with him, silently because I knew—I knew he wanted me with him. He would never speak to me, but sometimes he would put his hand on my hair, or my shoulder, for a moment, quietly. Sybel. I loved him. But somehow, when I heard what he had done to you, I was not surprised, because I knew that you were angry with him for something that was his fault. It was too late to be surprised. and that—that night he died.”

His hands dropped away from her. She watched his face, the color running again beneath her skin. “My Tam,” she said finally, “what did he die of?”

He drew a breath and looked at her. “Sybel, I know you did not kill that wizard. I do not know how he died, but I think—I think what killed him killed Drede.”

She shivered. “So,” she whispered, “it walked that night in more places than Coren’s house.”

“Who? Sybel, did you see it, too?” She did not answer; he shifted, his hands curved taut around his knees. His voice broke. “Sybel, please! I have to ask you. Drede lay on the floor and there was not a wound on him anywhere, but I saw the look on his face before they hid him from me. They said his heart failed, but I think he died of terror.”

A murmur came from her. She shifted, let her head fall on one raised knee. “My Tam, I am sorry.”

“Sybel, what did he see before he died? What killed him?”

She sighed. “Tam, that wizard, and that King, and I all saw the same thing. Those two are dead, but I am alive, though I have been so far from myself I did not think anything would bring me back. I have been beyond the rim of my mind. It is a kind of running away. I cannot tell you what that Thing is; I only know that when Drede looked at it, he saw what was in himself and that destroyed him. I know that because I nearly destroyed myself.”

He was silent a moment, struggling. He said finally, “But you had a right to be angry.”

“Yes. But not to hurt those I love, or myself.” She reached out, touched his face gently. “It is so good to hear you say my name again. I thought—I was certain you would be angry with me for what I have done to you.”

“You did nothing.”

“I put you like a defenseless pawn in the hands of Sirle. That my running could not stop.”

He shook his head slightly, bewilderedly. “Sybel, I am not in Rok’s hands. I have a few advisers, but there is no regent. Drede’s cousin Margor was to rule until I turned sixteen if Drede died, but he disappeared. So did my father’s warlords. So did Horst of Hilt, Derth of Niccon, his brother and their warlords. So did the six of Sirle and their warlords—”

She reached out to him, her lips parted. “Tam, what happened to them? Were they killed in battle?”

“Sybel, you know what happened. You must know. In the camp above Mondor where my father would have been, it was Gules who came and the few that saw him who did not follow him came back without words in them to describe the gold of him and his mane like thread upon thread of silk and his eyes that flashed like the sun. There was a harpist-warrior who made a song already of the sight of Gules bounding before twenty unarmed warlords across the Slinoon River, just as the dawn sun rose—and I have heard a song of Moriah who came to my Uncle Sehan’s camp in West Hilt, and how a song came from her sweeter than a woman’s singing from a velvet-curtained window—Sybel, you knew!”

“No. No, I did not know.” She rose suddenly, her hands against her mouth. “I set them free that night.”

He stared up at her incredulously. “Why?”

“Because—I had betrayed them. And what song has come out of Sirle? One of Cyrin?”

He nodded. “They say the six brothers of Sirle and their warlords went boar hunting in Mirkon Forest instead of to battle. And Gyld—he terrified everyone. Some battles started between Horst’s men and my uncle’s in Hilt, and Gyld swept through them and there were men with broken backs and others burned. And everyone ran. I never saw Gyld breathe fire before. He flew over Mondor, and the boats that were coming into the city—there were only a handful that came without orders, wanting to loot Drede’s house, and Gyld set fire to their boats and they swam ashore—those who had no heavy armor. And the people in the city stayed indoors for fear of Gyld, and I stayed guarded until I whispered to Ter that I wanted to go out and he drove the guards away for me. So I saw Gyld flying gold-green above Mondor, and then Ter flew away and my Aunt Illa sent people to get me. And in Niccon, the Lord of Niccon laid down his sword and so did his friend Thone of Perl, and his warlords in council with him and they followed the song of a Swan that the Niccon harpists say was like the murmur of love on a warm summer day when the bees are singing... Sybel, you did not—you did not tell them to do that?”

“I set them free to do as they willed... My Tam, I would have played a terrible game with you; making a shadow king of you ruled by Sirle...” She drew her hands wearily over her face. “I do not know what you have brought me back to. My animals are gone, I have lost Coren, I have lost myself—but still, the sound of your voice and your smile are good to know again...”

Tam rose. He put his arms around her tightly, his cheek against her hair. “Sybel, I need you still. I need to know you are here. I have many people who know my name, but only one or two or three that know who it belongs to. You did not do any terrible thing to me—and even if you had, I would still have loved you because I need to love you.”

“My Tam, you are a child—” she whispered. He drew back, and she took his face between her hands. He smiled a little, quiet smile that touched his gray eyes like sun through a mist.

“Yes. So do not go away again. I lost Drede, and I do not want to lose you, too. I am a child because I did not care what either of you did, only that I loved you.”

He loosed her. The late sun spilled through the dome, turned the white fur fiery at their feet. “Sybel, you are so thin. I think you should eat something.”

“You are thin, too, my Tam. You have been troubled.”

“Yes. But also, I am growing.” He led her out of the domed room to the hearth. She sat down in a chair before the empty grate; he balanced on the arm of the other chair, looking down at her. “Does Maelga know you are here?”

“I do not know. If she came, I did not hear her.”