The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

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.”

“You locked yourself in. But anyone who really wanted to could get in. Sybel, I think we should go to Maelga’s house and let her fix us some supper.”

A smile touched her face, smoothing the sharp lines of it. “I think you are wise, my Tam. I have lost everything, and you are a young King in a perilous position, whose valuable advisers and counselors are running in circles after wondrous animals in dark forests, and I do not know what tomorrow will bring either one of us, but today I am hungry and I think we must be fed.”

They went, the silvery-haired wizard woman and the boy king, through the tall whispering trees and above them as they walked, the mists rolled again over the white face of Eld Mountain, hiding its bare, terrible peak. Maelga welcomed them, laughing and crying over them, and twisting her curls into wild tufts on her head, and they stayed late with her until the dusk drifted like smoke between the trees and the moon moved through the stars above Eldwold like a silver ship without a mast.

Tam went home finally with his weary guards, and Sybel sat quietly at Maelga’s hearth, a cup of hot wine in her hand, her eyes still, looking inward. Maelga rocked in her chair, the rings on her hands catching light from seven candles as they moved back and forth on the arms of the chair. She said finally,

“Such a still land it is without its warlords… so confused and childlike. And the Sirle ladies sleep alone tonight, and the children sleep fatherless. Will they come back?”

“I do not know,” Sybel murmured. “I do not know anymore the minds of those great beasts. I cannot care. It seems I have heard a dream, except that—no dream could hurt so deeply or be so endless. Maelga, I am like weary earth after the killing, hardening winter… I do not know if anything green and living will grow from me again…”

“Be gentle with yourself, my white one. Come with me tomorrow through the forest; we will gather black mushrooms and herbs that, crushed against the fingers, give a magic smell. You will feel the sun on your hair and the rich earth beneath your feet, and the fresh winds scented with the spice of snow from the hidden places on Eld Mountain. Be patient, as you must always be patient with new pale seeds buried in the dark ground. When you are stronger, you can begin to think again. But now is the time to feel.”

Day and night slid together in a timeless quiet she did not measure until one day she woke to the motionless splash of light on her floor, the voiceless stones rising about her, and a little seed of restlessness woke with her. She wandered through the still house, the empty gardens, stopping at the edge of the swan lake to watch the wild birds feed in it. She circled the lake and went to Gyld’s cave where in her mind’s eye she saw him lying curled once more in the darkness, his mind-voice whispering into hers. The wet stones surrounded an emptiness that had no voice; she turned away from the silence, went back into the vagrant autumn winds that made their own bright paths across the mountain, leaving her behind.

She went back to the house, sat in the domed room. She began to search again, calling through Eldwold and beyond Eldwold for the Liralen. The hours passed; night winked above her dome, and she sat lost in her calling, feeling the power stir and strengthen in her mind. Near dawn, when the moon had set and the stars had begun to fray in the sky, she woke out of her calling, rose stiffly. She opened the door, stood at the threshold smelling the wet earth and the quiet trees scented and damp in the early morning. Then she saw beyond her open gates Coren dismount, lead his horse into her yard.

She straightened, her throat suddenly dry. He stopped when he saw her, his eyes still, waiting. She drew a breath and found her voice.

“Coren. I was calling the Liralen.”

“You called me.” He paused, still waiting, and she said,

“Please—come in.”

He put his horse in the side room, and came to join her beside her cold hearth. She lit candles in the dimness; the light between them traced the bones and hollows of his face. Memories began to stir in her; she looked away from him quickly.

“Are you hungry? You must have been riding all night. Or did you stay last night at Mondor?”

“No. I left Sirle yesterday afternoon.” His gaze, insistent on her face, forced her eyes upward finally, to meet his. His voice lost a little of its aloofness. “You are so thin. What have you been doing?”

“I do not know. Little things, I think—sewing, gardening, looking for herbs with Maelga… Then, yesterday, for the first time I began to hear how silent my house is, how empty. And so I began to call again. I did—I did not mean to disturb you.”

“I did not mean to be disturbed. When I woke that morning and found you gone, I did not think I would ever hear your voice tugging at me again. My brothers were angry with me for quarreling with you; they said that was why you left: because I was being unreasonable.”

“That was not why I ran.”

“I know.”

Her hands closed on the arms of her chair. She whispered, her eyes wide on his face, “What do you know?”

He looked away from her then, to the empty hearth. “I guessed,” he said wearily. “Not that morning, but later, in the slow, quiet days while I waited for my brothers to return. I heard reports of Drede’s strange, sudden death, of the warlords of Eldwold vanishing on their way to war. The land was buzzing of impossible things: of bright animals, ancient names, half-forgotten tales. The war had been taken away from us as easily as you take a game from a child. I remembered then the riddle Cyrin gave you the day he came to Sirle. It was the same riddle he gave to me before I saw Rommalb. I should have warned you, but I did not think then that there was any need for you to be afraid. And, remembering that, I knew what must have happened to you. You would not have given up that war for me, or for Tamlorn, or for anyone you loved. You would have had what you wanted, except you made one mistake: holding Rommalb, you neglected to give it what it required of you.”

She was silent a long moment. Then she whispered, her face lowered, half-hidden from him, “You are wise, Coren. I gave up everything in return for my life, and then I ran. I ran in my mind past the borders of it, because I had nowhere else to go. Tam came to find me. He woke me. If he had not came—I do not know what would have happened to me.” She lifted her head, looked at him as he stared, his face closed from her, into the hearth. She said wistfully, “If you are still angry with me, why did you come? You did not have to answer my lonely voice. I did not expect to see you again.”

He stirred. “I did not expect to come. But how could I know you were here in this empty house without Tam, or your animals, or even me, and not come? You did not need me before, and I do not know if you want me now, but I heard you and I had to come.”

Her brows drew together. She said softly, a little puzzledly, “If you heard the voice in me that calls you without my knowing, then you must know I need you.”

“You have told me you needed me before; it is easy to say. But that night, when Rommalb came to you in the darkness—you did not even need me then to hold you, as you held me once on this hearth, before you even loved me.”

She gazed at him, her lips parted. She smiled suddenly, and realized then how long it had been since she had laughed. She hid the smile like a precious secret, her head bent, and said gravely, “I wanted to wake you, but you seemed so far from me—”

“That is easy to say, too. You did not need me when Mithran called you, or when you plotted your revenge with Rok, or even when Rommalb threatened your life. You go your own way always, and I never know what you are thinking, what you are going to do. And now you are laughing at me. I did not come all this way from Sirle to have you laugh at me.”

She shook her hair back, the blood bright in her face. She slipped her hand over his and felt his fingers turn to close automatically around it. “I am sorry. But Coren, that is what I need you for now. I have fought for myself—and fought myself. But there is no joy in that. It is only when I am with you that I know, deep in me, how to laugh, and there is no one, no one who can teach me that but you.”

He gazed at her, his mouth crooked in the beginnings of a reluctant smile. “Is that all you need me for?”

She shook her head, the laughter fading. “No,” she whispered. “I need you to forgive me. And then perhaps I can begin to forgive myself. There is no one but you who can do that either.”

She heard the draw of his breath. “Sybel, I almost could not do that. I carried anger and pain like a stone in me: anger with you and Rok and even Drede, even after he died, because you had thought more about him those days than me. Then one night I saw my face in a dream: a dark, sour face with no love, no laughter in it, and I woke in the dark with my heart pounding against my ribs, because it was not my face but Drede’s.”

“No—you will never look like Drede.”

“Drede was young once, and he loved a woman. She hurt him and he never forgave her, so he died frightened and alone. It frightened me that I could so easily make that same mistake with you. Sybel, will you forgive me?”

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.”