The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (19 page)

“Why are you not at supper?”

“I could not eat.” She watched him pour wine. “Where did you go?”

“To Mirkon Forest. I sat tossing a stone in my hand and learned nothing at all from it. Wine?”

“Please.”

He brought her a cup, sat beside her on the window seat. She watched him drink; his face was quiet, colorless in the candlelight. He lowered his cup and touched a fold of the cloak.

“There are still things I am unsure of, in this war of yours and Rok’s. You must have brought the Lord of Niccon here, too—he never would have come otherwise.”

“Yes.” Something leaped then in her throat; she swallowed dryly. “And—there is something else, in the way of truth, that I must tell you.”

He looked at her, his eyes apprehensive, but he said only, “Tell me.”

“You saw—you might have guessed that day Derth came, what we were doing—you questioned Rok after he had lied to you about Eorth riding Gyld, and—I saw the doubt in your eyes when you looked at me.”

“I do not remember.”

“You do not remember because I—made you forget.”

“You what?”

“I went into your mind. I found those memories and took them and then it was as though it never happened.” He was still then, his breath still. “I told you so—so that you will know that it happened once, and will never happen again.”

“I see,” he whispered. He lifted the cup to his mouth; it shook slightly in his hand. He placed it on the stones between them. “I never thought you would do that to me. I never thought you would want to.”

“That—that is why I came running to you, crying. Because I had done that thing to you that Drede and Mithran would have done to me. I was afraid then of myself. But when you took me in your arms and held me, I felt—if you loved me, I could not be what I glimpsed myself to be. But now, I have no one to tell me not to be afraid. What do you see now, when you look at me?”

“Something of a stranger in your dark eyes.” He leaned forward; she felt his forgers lightly touch her face, as he said with a wistfulness that ached in her, “Where is the woman who lay so quietly in my arms that night on Eld Mountain?”

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “I am sorry I married you.”

His hand closed, dropped on the stones. “I was afraid of hearing that.” His eyes closed. “So what shall I do now? I cannot stop loving you.”

“Coren, I do not want you to. Only—I will hurt you as I will hurt Tam. And I think when this is done, neither of you will forgive me.”

“Tam. What is to become of him in your plans? That child of yours who loved red foxes.”

“We are going to make a king of him, ruled by the Sirle Lords. And one day he will look at me and see a stranger, too.”

“And Drede. Sybel, what are you planning to do with him?”

“I will deal with whatever is left of him afterward. I do not care about his death, only about his life, and he is so frightened now of me that he is nearly mad—” She checked, looking up at him as he rose, his eyes wide, incredulous.

“Sybel, how can you—how can you drive him and me mad so coldly—”

“I am not cold! You have hated, yourself—you told me! How did your blood run, Coren? thick and hot in your heart? How did you hate? Did you nurse revenge from a tiny, moon-pale seedling in the night places in your heart, watch it grow and flower and bear dark fruit that hung ripe-ripe for the plucking? It becomes a great, twisted thing of dark leaves and thick, winding vines that chokes and withers whatever good things grow in your heart; it feeds on all the hatred your heart can bear— That is what is in me, Coren. Not all the wondrous joy and love of you can wither that night plant in me. I have plotted revenge from the night I came out to you at Maelga’s house with my torn dress open so that you could look at me and want me as Mithran wanted me—”

She heard the sharp hiss of breath between his teeth. Then he struck her, a sudden, open-handed blow across the mouth that shocked her silent.

“I was no more than that to you! No more than Mithran!”

She lifted her fingers to her face. “No one has ever hit me before,” she said. He stared down at her stillness and an incoherent keen broke from him.

“You do not even care. Oh, White Lady, now what shall I do?” he whispered. “I do not know what to do.”

He turned from her blindly; she saw his hands grope over the door, open it. She dropped her head on her knees, hiding her face in the folds of his cloak, but she saw his agony even behind the darkness of her closed eyes.

She finished the cloak for him, the deep blue cloth blazoned with the snow-white falcon of the Sirle Lords, and word came from Niccon on the day she finished it that the boats were finished and had been sent down-river from a branch of the Slinoon that fed from the Lake of the Lost King on the northern borders of Niccon. Rok called his brothers to the house, and Sybel sat with them, listening quietly beside Coren.

“We will meet Derth of Niccon in two days at the point where Edge River meets the Slinoon,” Rok said. “Horst of Hilt will meet us at Mondor, coming from the east. He will have to break through the forces of the men on his land who are fighting for Drede, so Eorth and Bor, you will lead half of our men to close in behind those forces, crush them between you and Horst’s army. We will occupy Drede at Mondor; his army is guarding the Slinoon up from the city a little. We will drive him back toward Mondor. Ceneth, you and Herne will lead the men downriver, into the city to take Drede’s stronghold, and to—” He paused at a movement from Coren.

“Let me go instead of Herne.”

“I want you with me.”

“I want,” Coren said, “to go instead of Herne. Herne is a great fighter, but he does not think. I think. And walking alive into the heart of Drede’s city will require thought.”

Rok sighed. “It is a gift,” he said bluntly, “to Sybel. You will go with me.”

“I will go with Ceneth or not at all. I am thinking of Tamlorn. What is to stop some great warrior, hot with bloodletting, from taking the life of one defenseless boy whose crime it was to be Drede’s son?”

“Ter will be with him,” Sybel said. He turned to her, and she saw again, as she had been seeing through the past days, the clear line of bone beneath the skin of his face, the curved lines beneath his eyes.

“Do you want me with Rok?”

She shook her head, her hands folded tight on the table. “Do what you must. But is it Tam you want to save? Or do you want to challenge death, ask it a riddle?”

She saw his teeth come together in his closed mouth. “You have a third eye, Sybel. But the pride in me will not let me stay behind with Rok. If I meet Drede and give you his head on my sword point, will that satisfy you?”

Her voice shook. “No.”

“What gift will, then?”

“Coren, let it be,” Ceneth murmured. “You may hate us all, but we have a battle before us, and whether you fight for us or against us or not at all, make the choice and keep it.”

“Oh, I will fight with you,” Coren said. “But I will not stay safe with Rok while you and Herne whet your swords on Drede’s hearthstones.” He turned back to Rok. “There is a young boy I know who once ran barefoot on Eld Mountain, and who will lose his father in this war, who will see his father’s guards slain before his eyes, who will have only a Falcon at his side that cannot tell him he will live to be King of Eldwold. He gave me my life once. Let me spare him some terror. Let me do at least that for him.”

Rok looked at Sybel, but her eyes were hidden, and her folded hands against her mouth. He said finally, “You and Ceneth will lead men of your own choice into the city. Ter will tell Sybel where Tam is, and she will tell Coren.”

“No,” Sybel said. Her hands dropped. “I will not go into Coren’s mind. When Ter flies out to you, you will know Tam is near. If his life is in danger, though, he will be taken by the Swan to Eld Mountain.”

“But if Drede hides him,” Ceneth said, “how will we know where to look for him? You could tell Coren—slip the knowledge in his mind—”

“No.”

Ceneth sighed. “Then tell me, and I will tell Coren. You have done so much mind work already that—”

“Ceneth,” Rok said wearily, “be quiet.”

“But I think—”

“Do you?” Coren said, and his question snapped in the air like breaking ice. Ceneth flushed under his gaze.

“I am quiet,” he breathed. “But I am wondering who exactly you are fighting in this war.”

Eorth’s broad hand dropped onto the table. “Ceneth, be quiet,” he begged. “I have forgotten half of what Rok has said already. If we are going to get this war off the table and into the field, you will all have to stop bickering.”

“That,” Bor grunted, “is the wisest thing you have ever said.”

Sybel closed her eyes with her fingers. “If Tam is in any great danger I will see to it you know. One thing I must warn you: you may see strange, wonderful beasts on the battlefield, if you are close-pressed with Drede’s men. Do not follow them. Oh, you have seen them here, but in the magic of their luring they grow oddly beautiful. I have told them to stay away from you, but warn your own men, or they may wake to themselves lost in some quiet forest.”

A sudden smile broke over Herne’s lean, restless face. “This will be a war for harpists to break their strings over for centuries.”

“Yes,” Eorth said, “but first I have to know again what was going on before the animals came in.”

Rok refilled his cup and began the weave again patiently.

Twilight closed over the hundred eyes of fires ringing the Sirle house. Sybel, leaving the rest of the planning to the warlords under Rok’s command, watched the fires’ patternless flickering from her high window. Coren came in eventually as the night deepened. She rested her face against the cold stones, listening to the sound of his undressing. She heard the rustle of cloth against cloth drawn back, the whisper of his breath across candle flame. She drew off her clothes, slipped into bed beside him. She lay awake, knowing from his restless breathing his own wakefulness. The night wind stirred between them, traced her cheek with a cold finger. She heard his breathing deepen finally; she lay awake long, watching the curve of his arm and side change and fall with his breathing in the faint moonlight. Then she turned away from him, one hand over her eyes, and thought of Drede lying awake among his own stones, watching the torch flame wash across his walls. Coren stirred, disturbing her thoughts. He quieted, then shifted again with a little, sharp cry. She felt then, in the quiet darkness, a shadow over her own thoughts, as though she were watched, secretly. She turned abruptly.

The Blammor stood over her. She had no time to cry out before the crystal eyes met hers, aloof as stars, and then the darkness overwhelmed her and she heard all around her the thick, imperative beat of her own heart. Visions ran through her mind, of a wizard lying broken on his rich skins, of the death faces of men through the ages meeting the core of their nightmares one final time in rooms without windows, between stone walls without passage. A wet air hovered with the darkness, carrying the cloying scent of pooled blood, of wet, rusted iron; she tasted dry, powdered dust, the withered leaves of dying trees, heard the faint, last cries like a dark wind from some ancient battlefield, of pain, of terror, of despair. And then her thoughts lifted away from her into some plane of terror she had never known, and she struggled blindly, drowning in it.

A vision hovered white as the Blammor’s eye somewhere beneath the terror. While a part of her cried helpless, voiceless against the welling darkness, a thought, trained, honed to a fine perception, detached itself, probed toward the misty image. It lay drifting at the bottom of her mind; she searched for it as though calling through the deepest places of Eldwold, and finally, beneath her mind’s eye, the image clarified and she found a moon-white bird with twisted trailing wings, lying broken, the curve of its smooth neck snapped back against itself.

She whispered, “No.” And then she found herself on the floor, her face against the stones, her breath coming in whimpering, shuddering gasps. She lifted her head, felt tears drying on her face in the cool air. Then she felt the darkness full around her of a looming Thing that watched, waited. She drew herself up, shaking, weak. She stepped toward Coren, but he lay a stranger, as though he were in a dream beyond her. She stood motionless, looking at him, until her trembling eased. And then soundlessly she dressed.