The travelers abandoned their packs, except for Lydryth’s harp, caching them in the branches of a beech tree on the edge of the meadow. As she helped to secure them aloft, Lydryth wondered silently whether such precautions were foolish. The chances were excellent that neither of them would ever return to claim their belongings.
When they had finished, she tied her staff atop the saddlebags, then drew her gryphon-headed sword from its place of concealment. Slowly, the songsmith held it out to her companion. “I want you to take it,” she said. “I cannot abandon my harp, but I will not burden Monso with the weight of both of them. Besides, you may need a weapon.”
He hesitated, then reached out, fingers tracing the golden gryphon that formed the hilt. The creature’s mouth gaped open, and in its jaws it grasped a heavy bluish crystal that served as a counterbalance. The creature’s blue quan-iron eyes seemed to regard them knowingly.
Alon’s fingers traced the sinuous body of the gryphon. Wrapped with silver wire to provide a secure grip, it formed the narrow portion of the hilt above the guard. Sliding his hand around the grip, the Adept hefted the sword, then swung it, hesitantly testing its balance.
Ripples of crimson ran down the blued steel as the setting sun’s rays reflected off the blade. A tentative smile curved Alon’s mouth as his sweeps and thrusts grew surer. “It has a sweet balance in my hand,” he said wonderingly. “Almost as if it is alive, and responsive to my wishes.”
“The best swords are forged so,” she told him. “I want you to carry it, Alon. It will serve you far better than that other,” she finished, a catch in her throat. Silently, she prayed to Gunnora that he would not have to use it. Alon was still far from being a swordsman, and the finest weapon in the world could not alter that.
He turned to regard her soberly, then shook his head and held out the sword. “My thanks, but I was planning on leaving my weapon with everything else,” he said. “One cannot run with a sword in its sheath to hamper one’s strides. And to catch Yachne, I must make all possible speed.” He shrugged ruefully. “It would be different if I were able to use it effectively.”
Lydryth gazed at him, pleading now. “We will rig a sling for it across your back, so you may carry it the way the Sulcar do their great broadswords,” she told him; then, taking his swordbelt, she demonstrated by buckling it around his shoulders. After sheathing her sword in his old scabbard, she fastened the weapon into place securely. “See? Balanced thus, the weight is not much,” she insisted.
Still he hesitated.
“Alon ...,” she whispered, holding his eyes with her own. “Carry it, please. Carry it, and remember everything that I have taught you.”
He smiled ruefully. “One lunge and two parries,” he observed dryly. “I am indeed ready to take on all comers.” Then, seeing the expression in her blue eyes, he nodded, sobering. “I will carry it, dear heart. And I will remember.”
Lydryth breathed a profound sigh of relief. She could not have said why this was so important to her; she only knew that it was. The songsmith was as sure of it as if she could scry the future, the way her foster-sister, Hyana, could.
Together they returned to Monso, who stood saddled and ready before the entrance to the Fane. Lydryth’s harp was wrapped in her stained, battered cloak and lashed to the back of the saddle. Songsmith and Adept had traded footgear, to better fit them for their appointed tasks. Lydryth now wore Alon’s high, scarred riding boots ... a trifle large, but she had padded the toes. The Adept had laced on a pair other old trail buskins, loose on her now from much walking.
“Here,” he said, pulling off his heavy leather jerkin, “you had best take this. It will protect you from underbrush.”
She donned the leather garment, then pulled on her gloves. Measuring the stirrups against her arm, she shortened them several notches. Monso turned his head to sniff at her curiously while the songsmith fastened one of the flasks filled with Neave’s springwater to the saddle. Lydryth patted the Keplian. “Now it will be just the two of us, son,” she murmured. “If you allow me to stay aboard.”
Finally, she thrust Dahaun’s small box into the pocket of Alon’s jerkin, fastening the flap down to secure it. “Ready,” she announced.
Silently, Alon offered her his cupped hands for a leg up. Quickly, before she could change her mind, Lydryth gathered the reins in her left hand, then put her left foot into Alon’s hands. A quick Roost ... she was up.
Monso snorted, pawed the ground restlessly as she gathered up the reins. “Twenty leagues, you said?” Alon asked, turning to regard the darkening east.
“Perhaps as much as twenty-five,” she admitted. “At the last of it I will have to leave the road and go cross-country over the Kioga lands. There is only one entrance to Landisl’s Valley.” He swung back to regard her earnestly, then put a hand atop her gloved ones as she held the reins. “At a steady gallop, you should be there by midnight,” he said. “If you do not let Monso out, you should be able to rein him where you wish to go, control his speed. But you know for yourself what can happen if he’s allowed to run all-out.”
She knew only too well. “I will be careful,” she assured him gravely. “Besides”-she forced a lighter tone-“this fellow is likely still tired from his race to the Fane today. Perhaps Neave’s water has had the same pacifying effect on him as it did on us. From now on, he’ll likely be as docile as a child’s palfrey, won’t you, Monso?” she asked, smoothing the restless Keplian’s mane.
Alon ignored her feeble attempt at humor, only stared up at her steadily. His hand as it rested atop hers tightened around her fingers until his grip was almost painful. “May the Amber Lady watch over you, my love,” he whispered. “I pray that we will see each other again. Until then ... fare you well.”
Lydryth’s heart was too full for words, and she knew better than to trust her voice. Instead she leaned down, and managed to drop a kiss on his temple before Monso, uneasy with his new rider, sidled away.
Alon turned, sword across his back, then waved to summon Steel Talon. “Be my guide, winged warrior!” he shouted, then began trotting downslope as the bird circled overhead.
Monso, left behind, arched his neck and crab-stepped. Taking a deep breath, the songsmith loosened the reins a notch ... then another. The Keplian paced forward, then he was trotting after his master, his strides lengthening.
Lydryth stood in her stirrups, her fingers working the reins, and through them the bit in the Keplian’s mouth ... squeeze, relax, squeeze, relax ...
Cautiously, she loosened rein another notch; then Monso was cantering downhill, passing Alon in two strides. As they reached the spot where they had left the road, Lydryth’s fingers tightened on the left rein as the muscles of her right leg squeezed her mount’s barrel. The Keplian obediently bore left, turning back onto the road.
She glanced up, once, just before a screen of brush blocked her view, to see Alon waving farewell as he reached the last of the downslope. Then the green branches eclipsed the Adept, and there was only the road, bare and red in the light of sunset, beckoning her east.
Still standing in her stirrups to keep her weight balanced over Monso’s shoulders, Lydryth let out another bit of rein, and then the stallion was galloping.
Galloping ... galloping ...
The surface beneath them was perfect for a running horse- not so hard-packed that it would cause splints or sole bruises, nor dry enough yet to raise a choking dust. Seeing the empty road before him, Monso tugged hopefully at the bit, but obeyed Lydryth’s hands when she held him back. The songsmith felt a sense of exultation fill her. To be in command of such speed, such power! It was a heady sensation as they glided along.
Twilight darkened around them, and still they encountered no one. Monso seemed content to gallop along at a speed most mortal steeds would have been hard-pressed to match.
Before long, Lydryth must needs summon her night vision, letting a thread of melody run through her mind. She hummed aloud, watching the landscape sharpen around her, saw one black ear turn back to catch her voice. She hummed louder, then found herself singing to the Keplian-a tune that, under the circumstances, seemed only too fitting:
Along the midnight road they ran Along the broad and gleaming span Five gallant steeds of noble pride, Not gold, but life, hung on their ride.
She continued through all of “Lord Faral’s Race,” while Monso kept one ear pricked back, as though enjoying the song.
Time passed... On a moonless night, such as this one was, it was hard to guess just how much, but Lydryth could now see farmlands and an occasional house as they flashed by. They had galloped into the more populated lands of Arvon.
Once they raced through a town, Monso’s shoes struck sparks from a cobbled street, and the sound of rapid hoofbeats doubled and redoubled as they echoed off the stone and timbered houses and shops. Hanging above the door of the townhall was a clan mantle; the songsmith’s enhanced vision saw that it was blue.
“We’re in Bluemantle lands, Monso,” she sang, ignoring the tavern door that was flung open behind her, the shouts of inquiry from startled villagers that quickly faded and were gone. “We’ve come at least ten leagues already. If we stay on this road, we’ll be crossing Redmantle lands soon. Are you wearied?”
The black half-bred snorted, almost as if in disdain at the idea. Lydryth laughed aloud, and they galloped on.
Farmlands stretched again to each side of them. A stone bridge flashed by beneath Monso’s hooves. Lydryth heard the chuckling lap of the water as it splashed the pilings, and ran a dry tongue across wind-chapped lips. For a moment she thought of halting, taking a breather, sipping some of the water from Neave’s spring, but she decided she could hold out a little longer.
Once we’re on Redmantle lands, she promised herself. The ford at the Deepwater. We’ll rest a few minutes there...
By now her legs were aching from standing in the stirrups. Lydryth eased herself down into the saddle, though still she leaned forward, trying to rest lightly on the Keplian’s back. They were galloping now toward what appeared to be a dark blot crouching over the road like some gigantic beast, ready to engulf them within its maw.
. Lydryth strained her night vision, made out trees. Of course, she remembered. The forest. We’ve reached the Bluemantle forest. We’re almost to the border of Redmantle lands...
As the Keplian galloped into the forest, they plunged into a dark so complete that even Lydryth’s night vision could scarcely pierce it. Monso snorted uneasily, slowing abruptly to an uncertain canter. Knowing that her mount’s eyes must be adjusting to the increased darkness within the forest, the songsmith did not urge him faster.
The darkness beneath the trees was cavelike, nearly complete. Lydryth concentrated harder, humming loudly, and made out the road stretching before them like a black satin ribbon laid across a black velvet gown. Monso’s strides steadied as the Keplian’s eyes also adjusted to the absence of light beneath the trees. They cantered on, not daring to go faster.
Lydryth crouched over Monso’s withers, shivering as a chill wind brushed the back other neck like a long-dead finger. The breeze came again, harder, colder, pushing at her back, tossing her hair.
The songsmith stiffened, her nostrils flaring. That wind bore with it an odor ... a rank, yet familiar, odor. Lydryth grimaced at the smell. Where had she scented its like before? She turned her head to glance behind her, seeking its source. A dank gust of wind struck her face like a foul breath.
Glowing spectrally with their own ghastly light, more than a score of web-riders were being borne along on that wind, heading straight for her and Monso!
The poisonous creatures were already so close that Lydryth could see their pincers. Their jaws dripped venom, spattering the surface of the barely seen road; gobs of sickly greenish light marked their path. Another blast of wind sent the webriders hurtling toward the songsmith and her mount. In a moment they would be upon them!
Lydryth leaned forward with a terrified gasp, feeling that unnatural wind push again at her back. “Go, boy!” she cried, slamming her heels into Monso’s sides. “Go!” She glanced back, glimpsed pincers only an arm’s length from her eyes. “Run!” she screamed, lashing the Keplian’s neck with the reins.
By that time Monso, too, had caught wind of their pursuers. The Keplian needed no further urging. Springing forward as though shot from a dart gun, he raced through the dark woods.
Darkness blurred in Lydryth’s sight. She struggled to keep her night vision, every moment fearing that her brains would be dashed out against some low-hanging limb. But she feared the fell creatures behind them more than she feared a clean death, so she made no effort to slow Monso, only flattened herself as best she could along the Keplian’s neck, clinging to his mane with both hands.
There were occasional gaps in the tree cover overhead now, and she could see a little better. Greatly daring, the songsmith glanced back, saw that they had gained on the web-riders. Still that unnatural gale assaulted her back.
Sorcery, she realized. That wind was sent, as were these creatures. By whom? Yachne? The Adepts at Garth Howell? There was no way to know. We are not racing the web-riders, she realized, we are racing the wind! And if that wind grows stronger ...
By now they were passing trees so rapidly that their trunks blurred, seeming as close together as fence posts, so fast was Monso running.
Without warning, they were out of the forest, plunging steeply downhill toward the starlit gleam of a river. The Deepwater! Lydryth realized. She struggled to keep her balance as the Keplian hurtled down the road. If he catches afoot and falls at this speed, I’ll be crushed beneath him, she thought.
Glancing back, she saw that the web-riders had scattered after leaving the narrow confines of the forest road. They were outdistancing the Shadow-creatures rapidly now.
Lydryth took hold of the Keplian’s mouth. “Monso ... easy, son ... we can slow a bit, now...”
Her pull on the stallion’s mouth went unanswered. The half-bred raced down the hillside toward the river with the rush of a stooping falcon. Lydryth begged, sang, pulled until her arms seemed to loosen in their sockets-to no avail.
She was still trying to slow the Keplian when Monso, running blindly, plunged full-force into the spring-swollen waters of the ford. The Keplian half-reared, trying to leap through the water. His struggles sent him plunging sideways, away from the stone-paved bottom of the ford, into deeper water. The river now rose belly-high on him. He staggered, trying to keep his footing on the slick, muddy bottom. Water washed up over his shoulders.
Lydryth felt the stallion’s hind feet slip out from under him; then Monso was falling. The black water rose up and engulfed horse and rider.
The songsmith kicked her feet loose from the stirrups as her mount rolled over, terrified lest she be dragged down beneath his body to drown. Her head went under as she flailed desperately. Choking and gasping, she swallowed and gagged on the cold water, but managed to fight her way back to the surface, then forced her arms to move, her legs to kick. Coughing, she trod water for a moment while she caught her breath, then she swam, feeling the current drag at her like a live thing. Lydryth blinked, vainly trying to shake the water from her eyes. Her night vision was gone, fled with her concentration on the melody.
Beside her, something large moved, snorted loudly. Monso! The Keplian had recovered himself and was striking out strongly for the opposite shore. Lydryth lunged toward him, felt something brush her hand, grabbed it, then realized that she had grasped one of the trailing reins.
Swiftly she pulled herself back to the stallion, hand over hand; then she was able to grasp the pommel of the saddle. Monso surged through the water, breasting the flood, towing the woman alongside him.
Lydryth knew that she would have only moments when the stallion struck solid footing to prevent him from breaking free and racing away from her into the night. Turning to glance back over her shoulder, she saw that the web-riders were no longer following. Their phosphorescent forms glimmered as they drifted aimlessly along the far bank of the Deepwater.
Of course, she thought. Like most creatures of the Shadow, they cannot cross running water.
Monso’s steadily stroking forefeet suddenly struck land, then the Keplian was surging forward, snorting, water cascading off his powerful body. Lydryth swung herself forward, both hands closing on the horse’s headstall and bit. “Monso, ho!” she commanded, leaning her full weight back, digging her heels into the mucky, reed-grown riverbank. “Ho, son!”
The half-bred shook his head, but after a moment he obeyed. Lydryth stumbled beside him as he struggled up, out of the water. The minstrel collapsed for a second on shore, pushing her soaked hair out of her eyes; then, wavering to her feet, she summoned up her night vision again, seeing with relief that her harp was still tied firmly in place. It would have to be dried carefully lest it warp. Then she scanned her surroundings for a place from which to mount.
The night wind cut through her sopping clothes like a sword blade as she stumbled along, making her shiver. Finding a small boulder with a flat top, Lydryth halted the trembling, sweating horse beside it. She stroked Monso, soothing him for a moment; then her foot found the stirrup and she swung back up, settling into the soaked saddle with an audible squish.
As she turned her mount and walked him up the bank, Lydryth felt exhaustion drag at her with a pull every bit as insistent as the Deepwater’s current. She patted her pocket, feeling the hard lump that was Dahaun’s box. Did the makeshift seal I placed on it hold? she wondered frantically. Or is Jervon’s cure now mingling with the mud on the bottom of the river? She was afraid to look, and could not have spared the time anyway. Biting her lip, the minstrel urged the Keplian forward.
For the next few minutes she trotted until she was sure of her path, then, cautiously, eased her mount into a canter again. The time they had lost at the ford gnawed at her... What if, even now, Yachne was setting her trap for Kerovan?
Lydryth let the soaked reins out a notch, until they were galloping again.
Redmantle lands. She knew the road well now, having accompanied her family to town many times as a girl. Only a league or so down this road, she would take a branching trail, then cut cross-country over Kioga territory.
Monso no longer needed to be held in, which worried Lydryth. She knew that swimming the Deepwater had taken a heavy toll of the stallion’s endurance, if her own weariness was any indication. She wondered whether they would make it the rest of the way to Kar Garudwyn.
At least the web-riders were well and truly gone. She risked a final glance behind, seeing only darkness. Would those who had set them on their trail send another menace? She had no way of knowing.
Some distance farther on, the songsmith slowed Monso to a canter, watching to her right as they splashed through a small stream. A moment later, she saw it-a faint trail leading away across a meadow. It might have almost been a game path, but Lydryth knew better. Reining right, she turned the Keplian onto it.
The Kioga were not a people to leave well-marked trails to their grazing grounds. Whenever trading parties ventured outside their territory, they used small, insignificant trails such as this one, careful not to allow them to become too well marked.
Lydryth galloped across the meadow, but when the trail began looping through a small wood, she needs must slow to a canter. As they came around a bend in the path, a puddle of darkness suddenly blocked their way.
It seemed to crouch before them, making the songsmith wonder for a moment whether it was some kind of wild beast. But no, it was only a washed-out gully filled with debris from the spring floods. Bending low on the Keplian’s neck, the bard gave her mount free rein, urging him on.
Monso soared into the air, clearing the entire gap. For a moment Lydryth felt as though they were flying; then the Keplian’s forehooves came back to earth with scarcely a jar.
“Good boy!” she cried, shakily. Alon trained him well, she thought, steadying him and increasing speed to a hand-gallop. She was fighting her own exhaustion and chill, now, and the continual drain of using her newfound Power to see in the darkness was wearing her down even faster than the exertion of the ride.
Twice more they leaped trees that had fallen across the path-the first was low, scarcely more than thigh-high had Lydryth been standing. The second came as they rounded a last turn on the woodland trail. At first it seemed to her aching eyes naught more than a small tree resting in a patch of shadow from the woods.
But, just as they drew too close to safely halt, the songsmith realized to her horror that her magically enhanced night vision had played tricks upon her. What she had taken for shadow was substance, and the tree trunk now looming before them would have been chin-high on even a tall man!
All Lydryth’s instincts screamed out for her to sit back and drag the Keplian to a halt, but she realized immediately that it was too late. The stallion was headed straight for the tree, too fast to stop without crashing into the obstacle. Stifling a scream, Lydryth closed her legs on his sides, bent low over the black neck, and shut her eyes. The Keplian’s leap as he soared into the air nearly unseated her.
Lydryth held her breath, expecting any moment to feel Monso smash into the trunk. But somehow, the stallion cleared it, though she heard bark scrape beneath them. They hung in midair for what seemed forever; then they were over, and falling ... falling. Horse and rider landed hard and off-balance-but safe.
As the stallion recovered his stride, breathing now in hard, panting gasps, the minstrel clutched him around the neck, nearly sobbing with relief. “Thank you ... thank you, Monso ... ,” she stammered.
A short distance later, they left the last of the trees to pound across a long, gradually sloping field. Monso’s breathing was now labored. They had nearly reached the opposite side of the field when the challenge that Lydryth had been anticipating ever since they had turned off the road rang out. “You! Rider! Halt! You are on Kioga land! Halt and identify yourself and your business here!”
Knowing that the sentry was armed with a wickedly barbed lance, Lydryth sat back in the saddle, reining Monso to a quick halt. For once, the stallion seemed to welcome the chance to stand still and regain his wind.
After a moment, Monso’s breathing eased; then, scenting the Kioga mount, the Keplian rumbled a deep challenge. The songsmith heard the mortal horse whicker with fear as it approached. Her night vision made out the shadow blot of a rider mounted upon a grey mare; then the Kioga tribesman lit a torch. Lydryth shielded her eyes from the sudden, dazzling light.
“It is I, Lydryth, Jervon’s daughter,” she called. “Who of the Kioga rides on sentry-go tonight?”
“Lydryth?” The tribesman’s voice was sharp with suspicion. “If you are the Lady Lydryth, prove it. Tell me your dun gelding’s name.”
She laughed wearily, at last recognizing the speaker’s weather-beaten, mustached features as her eyes adjusted to the light. “My mare is a red chestnut, Guret, as you well know. Her name is Vyar.”
“Lydryth!” Guret gasped. “What are you doing here? You left so long ago! And now to return in the middle of the night...” He urged his grey closer, controlling her with firm legs, forcing her to hold steady despite her fear of Monso. “And astride such a mount! Wherever did you get him?”
The songsmith sighed, shaking her head. “It is a very long story, my friend, one that I have not time to tell. Let me only say that Lord Kerovan is in grave danger, and I ride to warn him. As soon as my warning is delivered, I, and possibly others from Kar Garudwyn, will ride forth from the valley this same night. I left a friend behind, possibly in great danger, to ride here tonight. I must return to aid him.”
“A ... friend,” Guret said, evidently catching some inflection in Lydryth’s voice that she had not been aware of herself.
“He is the one who bred and trained Monso, here,” she said, stroking the panting Keplian’s foam-drenched neck.
“Then he must be a master horseman,” the Kioga man said. “To capture and train a Keplian.”
“I will tell you the entire story-or Alon will-as soon as may be,” Lydryth promised, “but not now. Guret, I have ridden across nigh half of Arvon tonight. I must make it to Kar Garudwyn as soon as possible!”
He nodded. “I will help you. Lady. But stay only a moment.” One-handed, he pulled the gaudily embroidered blanket he wore as a protection against the night’s chill over his head, shaking his long, dark braids to free them. “Here, wear this. You look like a half-drowned yearling,” he said, extending the blanket.
Gratefully, the songsmith slipped it over her head, relishing the heat of Guret’s body still trapped within its warm folds. The Kioga man jerked a thumb behind him. “You ride. Lady. I will call another for sentry duty, then go down-valley myself to catch up the castlefolk’s mounts and have them saddled and ready.”
She flashed him a grateful smile. “Bring Vyar, too,” she said; “This fellow deserves to rest for some time. I thank you for your aid, Guret.”
Lydryth urged Monso onward. The stallion stumbled as he obeyed, and Guret gave her mount a measuring glance. “Will he make it? Do you want to take Takala here, in his stead?”
“No, Guret.” She patted Monso’s shoulder. “Even exhausted, this one could outrun your mare. Every moment counts. Thank you again for your help.”
He raised the nickering torch in salute as she turned and left him.
Once past the circle cast by Guret’s light, Lydryth was hard-pressed to regain her night-sight. She relied mostly on Monso’s eyes to pick his way uphill at a slow canter.
Long minutes later, the songsmith caught sight of a familiar landmark-a huge granite outcropping. She slowed Monso to a walk, following the bulge of the gigantic thrust of rock. When it split in twain to become a narrow pass, she turned down it. Midway down that dark throat, two pillars of quaniron stood, topped with winged globes.
The entrance to the valley. She was almost home.
With a gasp of thankfulness that sounded perilously akin to a sob of weariness, the songsmith urged Monso toward the entrance. The land beyond was filled with a swirling mist, part of the spell-laid protection that encompassed the valley where Landisi, the powerful gryphon-being, had once made his ancient home.
But as Monso tried to step past that barrier, the Keplian halted, tossing his head snorting. He sidled away, much as he had at the entrance to the Fane of Neave. ,.
Of course, Lydryth thought. The wards on the valley. Monso is part Shadow-creature, so he may not pass them...
But if she had to abandon the Keplian and run the rest of the way, it would take her an hour or more to reach the castle on the mountainside! Lydryth stared determinedly at the barrier, reaching within herself for the Power Alon had assured her she bore. She began to sing, raising her voice in a wordless appeal, concentrating on an image in her mind of portals giving way before them, allowing them free entrance.
Her voice filled the narrow cut, and, slowly the winged globes began to pulse in time to the rise and fall other melody. Holding firm the image in her mind of portals opening, Lydryth urged Monso forward again.
Slowly, now favoring the foreleg the web-riders had injured, the Keplian walked between the pillars.
The glamourie that always surrounded one who rode into the valley began to make swirling images before Lydryth’s eyes, but she continued to sing as she urged Monso forward, and a few strides farther on, it abruptly vanished. Lydryth looked to her right, and saw, glowing blue against the darkness, near the summit of the mountain, the spires of Kar Garudwyn-a name which meant, in the Old Tongue, “High Castle of the Gryphon.”
Home. Her heart leaped within her.
“Just a little farther, Monso. Then you can rest,” she muttered, stroking the Keplian. Summoning the dregs of her energy, she began to hum, and her night vision slowly crept back. As soon as she could see the path before her, Lydryth chirruped to Monso, then, when he did not respond, used her bootheels to goad the stallion into a canter.
She kept her legs and heels in his sides until the Keplian had increased speed to a hand-gallop along the trail. She felt ashamed doing it, knowing that she was abusing an animal that had already given his all, an animal now on the verge of total exhaustion and collapse, but they still had more than a league to go.
I’m tired, too, son, Lydryth thought, patting the Keplian’s neck. “Come on, you can do it,” she whispered, thinking it would be such a relief to stop ... just to fall out of the saddle and lie on the ground and sleep ... sleep...
Kerovan’s image filled her mind, making her stiffen her shoulders. Just a little farther ...
The Keplian’s strides now were labored; his breath rasped loud in her ears. He was clearly favoring his injured foreleg. Biting her lip, the songsmith forced him onward, slapping the reins lightly against his neck.
Her night-sight was gone; the darkness blurred around her.
Lydryth swayed in the saddle, then forced herself to grip the pommel. Where was she? How far had she come?
There! Off to her right... the entrance to the ramp that led up the mountainside! To one who had not lived here all her life, it would seem naught but a sheer wall of rock, but Kerovan had long ago adjusted the spell that held it concealed so that his foster-daughter could come and go as she pleased.
Crouching low on the Keplian’s back, she turned him toward that opening in the mountainside, then lashed down hard with the reins, driving him forward and upward with her seat, heels and voice. “Almost there, Monso!” she gasped. “Go, boy! For Alon!”
The Keplian’s steel-shod hooves clattered against the stone as they entered the stone tunnel that slanted up, round and round, leading to Kar Garudwyn. The walls and ceiling glowed faintly blue, as did all the stone from which the mountain citadel was constructed.
There was barely enough room within the ramped tunnel for the Keplian and his rider. Lydryth had to lie flat along his neck, and even then her shoulders and head brushed the stone walls and ceiling. Several times she bumped hard against the unyielding rock as the stallion turned and twisted, head ducked low, sides heaving like a smith’s bellows, climbing ... climbing.
“Almost there ...,” Lydryth whispered, though no sound escaped her dry lips. “Almost there, Monso ... keep going!”
Somehow, the Keplian climbed.
When horse and rider finally scrambled out of the enclosed rampway they were faced with the lighted glory that had been Landisl’s ancient citadel. Kar Garudwyn was a towering structure with tall, strangely twisted spires and multitudes of narrow, arched windows and doorways. A muted blue light emanated from those openings.
Halting Monso on the stone-paved walkway, the songsmith took a deep breath, then shouted: “Rouse you! Kerovan! Joisan! Sylvya! There is danger! Wake!”
Her family must have realized as soon as someone entered the rampway that a newcomer was on the way, for she had scarcely finished her first summons before two fully-dressed figures appeared in the huge arched doorway.
Joisan and, at her side, Kerovan!
Lydryth felt a vast relief sweep her as she saw her fosterfather unharmed. A moment later Firdun-He’s grown so tall! she thought distractedly-then his sister, Hyana, appeared. Lastly, Sylvya was there. The halfling woman had a cap of downy feathers instead of hair, and round eyes much larger than any of full humankind heritage.
“Lydryth!” Joisan exclaimed, starting down the steps toward her foster-daughter. “My dear, what-“
Kerovan’s lady halted and broke off as Monso swayed, then groaned loudly. The Keplian’s head dropped forward until his nose touched the stones beneath his forefeet. His agonized, rasping breaths suddenly filled the night.
Before his dazed rider could leap off, the stallion quivered like an arrow driven deep into a target; then slowly, ponderously, his legs buckled and he sank down on his knees. Lydryth barely managed to get her right leg out of the way as the Keplian rolled over on his left side, then lay unmoving.
Slowly, stumbling, the songsmith stepped over and away from the still black form, its legs stiffly outthrust; then she gazed up at her family, tears streaming down her face. “I’ve killed him,” she said, in a voice that even she could barely hear. “Oh, Alon ... I’m so sorry. Monso ... so sorry ...”
“Lydryth ...” Joisan was hastening down the steps toward her, arms held out.
The minstrel drew herself up, forced herself to speak clearly, despite the roaring sound that still made even her own voice difficult to hear. “I came to warn you. Kerovan ... you are in great danger. It is the sorceress Yachne. She has great Power, and she plans to steal yours. She will try to take you with her spell... tonight. You must protect yourself. You must...”
Lydryth’s words faltered, then trailed off. At first she thought the ground was moving beneath her; then she realized that it was she who was swaying back and forth. She tried to stiffen her knees, but she could not feel her legs. A high, thin note reverberated in her ears. Accompanying that monotonous shrilling was a wave of blackness even darker and colder than the depths of the Deepwater. The darkness rose up around her, drowning her, pulling her down.
Before her stunned family could reach her, Lydryth crumpled to the pavement beside Monso.
“Lydryth.” A voice reached her ears ... a familiar voice. “Lydryth ... ,” it called again. “Sister, awaken, please...” Fingers stroked her aching head, easing the pain behind her temples. She was resting on something soft and warm. “Here,” the voice said. “Some water ... drink. Sister.”
Cool liquid in her mouth, trickling down her throat, easing the dryness. The songsmith swallowed eagerly, then opened her eyes to see Hyana’s face hovering above hers.
“Lydryth ... Sister, how do you feel?” she asked, concerned. Hyana resembled her mother, with her light chestnut hair, green eyes and the fair complexion of a Daleswoman. Only her high cheekbones and pointed chin marked her as being Kerovan’s daughter, also.
“Oh, Hyana,” Lydryth whispered. “What of Kerovan? Is he safe?”
“He is,” a new voice said, and the songsmith turned her head as Firdun appeared beside his sister. “Father is fine.”
As her foster-brother smiled reassuringly at her, Lydryth was again reminded of how much he had grown. At fourteen, he was more youth now than lad, tall and leggy. He had his father’s long, oval face, dark hair, and eyes that in some lights appeared yellowish brown, and in others pale grey.
“Where is Kerovan?” Lydryth asked. Her mind seemed to be filled with wool rather than thought. She could see from the expression on her foster-siblings’ faces that they were barely holding themselves back from a thousand questions. “He is in danger. I rode from near Garth Howell to warn him...”
“Have no fear for Father,” Firdun assured her. “Even now he is sitting on Landisl’s throne in the Great Hall, ringed about with enough charms and talismans to set up a booth at a fair.” He flashed his irreverent grin. “And complaining loudly because Mother warned him not to leave the protections. He is demanding to know what chances out here. I told him I would do my best to find out.”
“Where is Joisan? And Sylvya?” Lydryth demanded.
“They left me to tend you, while they are tending to your ... mount,” Hyana replied.
“Tending to him?” Lydryth repeated blankly. “But ... Monso is dead...”
Her foster-sister shook her head, her long braids, wrapped with colorful embroidered ribbons in the Kioga fashion, bouncing on her shoulders as she did so. “The creature lives,” she said. “But for how long ...” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“I thought I had ridden him to death,” Lydryth murmured. Indeed, her brain was not working well ... or was it her hearing that was lacking? It did not seem possible that Monso could still be alive, after the way the Keplian had collapsed.
“No, he lives,” Hyana assured her. “But... he is very weak, Lydryth. Mother is using her healcraft, but she does not know whether he can be saved.” Memory rushed back, propelling Lydryth upward, off Hyana’s lap. Ignoring Hyana’s and Firdun’s efforts to restrain her, the bard sat up. “The water!” she cried, looking wildly about her for Monso’s tack. “The water in my flask. The water from Neave’s spring-perhaps it can save him!”
Firdun held something up before her eyes. “This flask?”
“Yes!” Eagerly, the minstrel grabbed it. She hesitated, feeling her own weakness. She needed strength, too, or she would never be able to do what she must during the remainder of this night. Where was Alon by now? Confronting Yachne?
Determinedly, the girl unstoppered the flask, held it to her lips. Carefully, deliberately, she counted swallows, allowing herself only five.
She could feel the restorative effect of the blessed springwater working on her tired body almost immediately. After a minute, Lydryth was able to climb to her feet unaided, then walk steadily across the stone flags to where Joisan and Sylvya crouched beside the stricken Keplian.
As she neared them, the songsmith was horrified to see that the gaping wound on Monso’s foreleg had opened. The leg was covered with both fresh and dried blood. The stallion must have run for leagues after the wound had opened, and she had not seen it in-the darkness. “Monso ...,” she whispered, sinking down beside him and stroking his neck. He lay unmoving, barely breathing. Lydryth felt tears well up again, and resolutely fought them back. Weeping would not help Monso, but Neave’s springwater might!
“Joisan ... Sylvya ...” She clasped hands briefly with each of these women who had helped to raise her. There would be time later, after everything possible had been done for Monso, for embraces and loving greetings. “I have something that may help. We have to drench him with this,” she said, holding up the flask. “He is too weak to swallow, so I will have to pour the water down his gullet while you hold his head up.”
“Water?” Joisan asked. Lydryth saw that the Wise Woman had her bag of simples and her healcraft supplies arranged beside her. The wound was already cleansed. A curved needle and a length of pronghorn sinew were laid out on the clean cloth beside her foster-mother. “What kind of water? How can mere water aid him?”
“Not just any water,” the minstrel explained. “This is water from Neave’s spring. It has great restorative effects.” She held out her own hands, palm up. “I just drank some, and see how it has aided me. Otherwise, I would not be on my feet any more than Monso is.”
Joisan gave her a measuring glance, then nodded quickly. “Firdun! Hyana!” she called. “Come, help me hold this creature’s head up so Lydryth can drench him!”
It took three of them to raise Monso’s head so that his neck lay at the proper angle for him to swallow. Then Lydryth used both hands to pry open the unconscious stallion’s jaws. Pulling his tongue out to one side of his mouth, she drew the stopper from the flask, then, cautiously, poured the water down the pale pink tunnel with its enormous teeth.
She poured ... rubbed the Keplian’s throat until he swallowed, reflexively, then poured another measure down.
This time Monso swallowed on his own. Lydryth replaced the stopper, saving the remaining water for a later dose. Gently, her helpers eased the big head back down onto the pavement.
Monso’s eyelids lifted, then closed again. The stallion groaned, but did not awaken. His breathing grew stronger, more distinct, however, and Joisan, who kept one hand on his chest, behind his foreleg, looked up excitedly. “His heartbeat is strengthening!”
Sylvya laid her head against his shoulder, then glanced up at her friend, her enormous round eyes beneath her downy head-covering full of warning. “It is indeed! You had best do your stitchery while the beast remains unconscious, Joisan!”
Nodding agreement, the Wise Woman bent to her task, again cleansing the wound, then aligning the gaping edges, pulling them closed with careful, precise stitches, knotting and securing each one separately.
“Lydryth, I am anxious to know the whole of your story,” Joisan said as she worked, not looking up from her task.
The songsmith sighed. “So much has happened that I scarcely know where to start! Oh, Joisan ... we must save Monso, if that is possible. He is Alon’s horse... and Alon may even now be in terrible danger! We must help him!”
Joisan gave her a quick, sideways glance. “Who is Alon?”
Lydryth could not help it; she felt her cheeks grow hot. Firdun and Hyana, who were crouching nearby, exchanged speculative glances. “Alon ...,” the girl muttered, still blushing. “He is ... Monso-this Keplian’s-owner and master,” she began. “He is my ... friend ...”
The Wise Woman smiled slightly, and gave her fosterling a fond look. “Friend,” she repeated blandly.
Lydryth grew very busy checking to see that the water flask was indeed stoppered tightly. “He is an Adept who helped me on my quest to find a way to heal Jervon,” She patted the box in Alon’s jerkin pocket. “I have the cure with me. Praise Gunnora it will-“
She broke off at the click of hooves upon the steps. They all turned to see Kerovan descending. The Lord of Kar Garudwyn was of the heritage of the Old Ones, and was plainly not of full humankind. His eyes were amber, with slitted, uncanny pupils, and he stood upon cloven hooves rather than feet. Otherwise he was human, with black hair and features typical of the Old Race.
Lydryth’s mouth fell open, then she leapt up. “Kerovan, you must not leave your protections! Yachne may be trying to bespell you even now!”
“I could no longer remain inside,” her foster-father said testily, even as he enveloped her in a tight embrace. His strength and warmth felt wonderful after the perils of the night. Lydryth felt tears threaten again as she leaned against him for a moment; then he held her away, looking full into her face. “Lydryth... Daughter... scold me if you must, but, by the Nine Words of Min, tell me what chances tonight!”
Joisan carefully knotted the last stitch, then looked up at her lord, her brows drawing together in a frown. “Kerovan,” she said sternly. “Lydryth says that you are in danger. You must not-“
He shook his head impatiently. “You cannot expect me to sit in there and remain idle while there is a threat to my home and family, Joisan!” Kerovan turned to his foster-daughter, one hand going to the hilt of his sword. “Who is this Yachne you spoke of? How does she threaten us?” he demanded, all his years of soldiering coming to the fore.
The songsmith silently struggled to order the events of the past days into some kind of coherent account. As she hesitated, Joisan threw a blanket over the still-recumbent Keplian, then turned back to her lord. Suddenly the Wise Woman stiffened, then pointed at her husband’s feet with a cry of dismay. “Kerovan! Look!” she exclaimed.
Lydryth stepped back and stared, wide-eyed. On the stone around Kerovan’s hooves a dark mist-one that she well remembered from Yachne’s cave-was slowly forming!
“Kerovan!” she gasped, pointing. “That is Yachne’s spell! She means to draw you to her, then drain you of all Power! You must break the ensorcellment!”
Joisan bolted forward, hands going out to her lord, but he motioned her back, staring down at the dark purple mist now swirling around his legs. “No, my lady,” he ordered, in a voice that brooked no argument. “Do not seek to touch me, lest you be taken also.”
Lydryth felt as though she were trapped in a nightmare with no waking. She twisted her hands in impotent anguish. “Oh, Kerovan ... can you stop it? Don’t let it take you!”
He raised one hand into the air, slowly, formally, in a beckoning gesture that was not aimed at anyone present. “Yes,” he said a moment later, calmly. “I can stop it.” The lord’s strange, inhuman eyes seemed to glow with an inner light as he began chanting in the Old Tongue.
The stunned onlookers watched as a glowing shape began forming around the heir to the gryphon-lord, encompassing him as he stood. Lydryth glimpsed a fierce head that reminded her of Steel Talon’s, then a huge, raised paw. Tawny hindquarters like unto a lion’s merged into an eagle’s foreparts.
The unhuman shadow’s eyes glowed golden-amber ... and its eyes were Kerovan’s eyes. But the rest of that uncanny, dimly glimpsed shape was that of Landisl’s messenger, guardian and protector, the gryphon. Telpher. All her life Lydryth had heard the tales of how Landisi, the gryphon-lord, and Telpher, his servant, had protected both Joisan and Kerovan during their adventures ... but never had she seen Landisl’s heir summon the guardian spirit until now.
Slowly, almost contemptuously, Telpher’s shadowy form raised a massive paw, then dragged it through the thickening mist, breaking the spell-circle.
Then both mist and shadowy gryphon-image abruptly vanished. Kerovan stood, hooves planted firmly upon the stone pavement, unharmed.
Lydryth staggered forward with a cry of gladness, flung her arms around her foster-father, clutching him tightly. The rest of his family crowded around, exclaiming with relief.
“You ... you broke the spell!” Lydryth stammered finally, stepping back to look up at him. “And so easily ... where Dinzil could not help himself.” She frowned, thinking of how hard they had striven to reach Kerovan with the warning, remembering the Deepwater, Monso’s collapse ... and, most frightening of all, her abandonment of Alon. Had it all been for naught? “Perhaps ...” Her voice faltered. “Perhaps my warning was not necessary. Perhaps I did not need to leave Alon...”
Joisan by now was close-pressed against her lord’s side, one arm around him, the other encircling her foster-daughter. The Wise Woman shook her head, “Not so, Lydryth,” she said solemnly.
Kerovan echoed his wife’s gesture. “My lady has the right of it, Lydryth,” he said. “I was warned, and thus could defeat the spell when it attempted to ensnare me. But had you not come here tonight, this Yachne’s ensorcellment would have found me asleep and unprepared...” He shook his head grimly. “And I have no doubt that I would have been trapped.”
“You have a long story to tell us. Sister,” Hyana said. “And you spoke of an Alon who is in danger...”
“There is so much to tell, and so little time!” Lydryth said. “I must see Jervon immediately-I may have found the means to heal him! And then we must all ride to aid Alon, because I fear that Yachne will try and take him, since she could not prey upon Kerovan. He went to seek her, but he is wearied, and was wounded yesterday. I fear greatly for him...”
“Lydryth... dear one...” Sylvya was staring at the young woman in open amazement, as if she had never seen her before. “I sense so many changes... you are so different! You have been places, done things... changed ...” Quickly, the woman from the ancient past of Arvon traced a symbol in the air, and it glowed blue, tinged with green.
The songsmith drew herself up. “You have the right of it, Aunt,” she said, smiling faintly, proudly. Then, humming softly, she drew a sign of her own in the air-the shape of a musical note. It hung before them, outlined as if in a trail of turquoise fire. “I have discovered Power of my own kind,” she said. “Through my music. Else I could not have gotten Monso past the valley’s wards.”
Amazement spread across their faces; then they all stepped forward, besieging the songsmith with questions. Kerovan had to shout to be heard above the excited inquiries. “We must have the entire story, sitting down!” he ordered, now very much the lord of the hold. “And I for one will be most interested to hear about this mysterious Alon!”
Lydryth felt warmth again reddening her cheeks. She cast about again for words to tell the group about Alon, but still could find none. She smiled at her family, feeling their love, their concern, enclose her like warm arms after a nightmare. “I will tell you everything,” she promised, “as soon as may be. But first...” She took out Dahaun’s box, then opened it to peer cautiously within. To her vast relief, the healing red mud still lay within, seeming as fresh as the time she had used it to treat the Adept’s wrist. “First Jervon. I cannot sit still until I have seen my father.”
“Is that the cure you have brought?” Kerovan asked, peering skeptically into the little box. “Mud?”
Joisan put out a finger, touched the moist earth tentatively, then drew back as if it had stung her. “Where did you find this?” she gasped.
“From the Lady of the Green Silences in Escore,” Lydryth said. She glanced down at the sleeping horse, then picked up her harp from where it lay on the ground, still wrapped in her cloak. “If we are fortunate, there may be enough mud in Dahaun’s box to help Monso’s wound, also.” She smiled at all of them. “But first, oh, first I must see my father!”
Joisan smiled warmly as her fosterling. “Go, by all means, my dear. In the meantime, Kerovan and I will prepare food-I believe we have all worked up an appetite, with all these midnight alarums and excursions. Firdun and Sylvya will watch over your mount.”
“Come, Sister,” Hyana said, taking the songsmith’s arm, “I will accompany you.”
Carrying her harp and the little box, Lydryth followed her foster-sister through the halls of Kar Garudwyn, along a corridor lit by the light-globes like unto those she had seen in Es city, in the witches’ citadel. For a moment she found herself remembering Avris and wondered how her friend now fared. Then they came to Jervon’s door, and paused outside, trembling suddenly.
What if Dahaun‘s mud does not work? she wondered, feeling her mouth go dry with fear. I have traveled so long ... it has been so many years ... please, Amber Lady ... please, Neave! I beg of you, give my father back to me!
Hyana placed a steadying hand upon her arm. Lydryth nodded at her foster-sister, straightened her shoulders, then walked in.
Jervon was lying on his pallet. A Kioga girl sat in a chair, dozing. A servant or a member of the family always watched over the Power-blasted man, lest he wander away or harm himself inadvertently, like the very young child he now resembled.
The girl, whom Lydryth remembered was named Karlis, stared wide-eyed at the newcomer. “Lydryth!” she blurted. “Welcome home, Lady!”
The songsmith greeted the servant; then Hyana smiled reassuringly at the girl. “We will watch him for a while,” she said, and Karlis took her leave.
Lydryth walked slowly over to her father’s pallet. Even in his sleep, the slackness around his mouth, the vacant expression on his face, betrayed his malady. Sitting down beside him, his daughter took his hand gently. Beneath tumbled russet-brown curls, he opened blue eyes that had once been the same vivid color as his daughter’s, but now were faded, empty of reason. “Father ...,” the songsmith whispered, stroking his hair, “I’ve come home.”
Jervon grinned, then babbled at her, mixing random words with nonsense syllables. At least he still recognizes me, the girl thought, wiping a smear of wetness from his chin when he had finished his greeting-if such it could be termed. “Just hold still, now,” she whispered, then began to gently stroke Dahaun’s healing mud across his forehead, covering it with a thin layer of the cool redness.
Jervon twitched, raised his hands to swipe fretfully at the healing substance. “No, don’t wipe it off,” Lydryth said, and together, she and Hyana held his hands down until he subsided, eyeing them both nervously.
“When he quiets,” Lydryth said softly, “I want you to take the mud that is left to Joisan. Tell her to spread it over the Keplian’s wound. Then have her rinse the container in a bucket of water, so that he may be offered that water to drink when he awakens and can stand again.”
“I understand,” her foster-sister said, softly.
Jervon gazed at them, then at the water jug that stood in its place on the bureau. He waved at it, babbling again. “He wants a drink,” Lydryth said, recognizing the gesture and sounds.
But before she held the goblet Hyana filled to Jervon’s lips, Lydryth, acting on impulse, dropped a dollop of the red mud into the liquid, then stirred it with a forefinger until it dissolved. “Here, Father,” she said, aiding him as he sat up. Jervon drank thirstily, then smiled vacantly and lay back down. He tossed restlessly, still wanting to scratch at the mud now drying across his forehead. “No, no,” Lydryth whispered. “Leave it where it is. Father...”
Hyana was holding the container, eyeing the red mud still within it. “Whoever this Lady of the Green Silences is, she is someone with great Power,” she said. “I can feel her magic through this container.”
“Dahaun has great Power, yes,” Lydryth said. “That is part of the story I have yet to tell you. Shhhh,” she said, turning her attention back to her father, “lie still, dear Father. Rest easy.”
“Perhaps if you sang to him ...,” Hyana suggested. “That always used to quiet him, even on his worst days.”
Lydryth nodded, then picked up her hand-harp. A moment to tune it, then she began gently plucking the strings, humming as she searched in her mind for a song. Alon’s face swam before her eyes, and before she knew what she was about, she was singing:
When the hills were purple with heather
And spring rode over the Dale
When my love and I were together,
I could dream of a bridal veil.
Before the Hounds came to rend us,
We did own the spring and the moor-
Now war has become my love’s mistress
And my young heart is weary and sore.
Still in dreams do I walk our fair valley
Still in dreams I remember his voice,
In that lost time still do we dally
And still now is he my heart’s choice.
For a bond, once formed, is not broken
And a promise, once having been spoken
Must be kept, regardless of cost.
She sang the old song quietly, as tears filled her eyes and slipped quietly down her face. When she was finished, Jervon had fallen asleep again. The red mud had dried, and was now hardening into its crust upon his forehead. Hyana placed a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “You love him, do you not?” she murmured. “This ... Alon.”
“Yes, I love him,” Lydryth whispered, leaning her face against Hyana’s shoulder, unable to meet the older girl’s eyes. “I love him ... more than I can say.”
Hyana hugged her gently, stroking her foster-sister’s curls. “Tell me, does he return your love?”
Silently, the songsmith nodded. “But I fear for him,” she murmured. “He was heading into great danger.”
“We will aid you. Sister,” Hyana promised, drawing back and clasping Lydryth’s hands in a reassuring grip. “I will tell Mother and Father to prepare to ride forth tomorrow.”
Lydryth shook her head. “Tomorrow may be too late. We must go as soon as possible. Tonight. Alon went alone to track Yachne, to a Place of Power-Dark Power. I dare not delay until daylight.”
Hyana looked grave. “There is no moon tonight,” she said quietly. “The Power of the Shadow is at its strongest, now. Especially in one of the Dark Places.”
The songsmith nodded. “I know. That is all the more reason to go before dawn.”
Joisan and Kerovan’s daughter nodded, then, quietly, slipped from the room, leaving Lydryth alone with her father.
The songsmith sat beside him, his hand clasped in hers, watching him sleep. Softly, she sang to him again, as memories ran through her mind like playful children. Jervon... carrying her on his shoulders when she was very small. Jervon, practicing swordplay in the courtyard with Kerovan, his face flushed and full of life. Jervon, teaching her to lunge and parry with her own wooden sword. Jervon, picking her up after her first hard fall from a horse, his face drawn with worry ... Jervon, standing with his arm around his wife, the last time she had seen them together before Elys disappeared ...
Lydryth’s memories dissolved into dreams as she dozed, sitting on her father’s bed, still holding his hand.
The songsmith started awake when the door opened to admit Joisan. Her foster-mother had changed her dress for riding trousers and thigh-high boots to protect her from underbrush. She wore a padded leather jerkin and heavy tunic, and her chestnut hair was braided tightly.
In her arms, she carried a bundle of clothing. “I brought some of your clothes,” she whispered. “So you can change out of those damp ones.” She gazed down at Jervon. “How fares he?”
Lydryth tapped the mud with a testing forefinger. “It is dry, and cracking,” she said. “Dahaun said to remove it when-“
She broke off as Jervon opened his eyes. His gaze traveled from Joisan to Lydryth; then he blinked, and it sharpened. “Joisan?” he whispered, staring at the Wise Woman.
Both women gasped in sudden hope and amazement. “Jervon!” Joisan exclaimed, her hand going out to clasp her friend’s. “Jervon, you know me?”
“Of course I know you,” he replied, obviously bewildered. “But... who is this?” He pointed at Lydryth.
The songsmith gulped, then raised the hand she still held to her cheek. Her tears splashed down, hot and salty. “Father...” she whispered. “Oh, Father! Thank you. Amber Lady! Thank you, Dahaun!”
Jervon stared at her, his eyes widening incredulously. He sat up, grasping her shoulders hard. “Lydryth!" he whispered. “Is that you? But... but ...”
Joisan hugged her foster-daughter, who was now crying too hard to speak. “Yes, Jervon. It is Lydryth. You have been ... ill... for a time. A long time. It was only tonight that your daughter brought home a cure for your malady, and it was thus that you have awakened at last!”
Jervon reached out to hug Lydryth, cradling her against his shoulder. Joy welled up in her, such joy as made all her struggles, her sacrifices, seem as nothing by comparison to the feeling of having her father’s arms around her, hearing his voice speak her name.
After a moment, Jervon spoke again, his voice strained and still bewildered... but already he was beginning to grasp that there had been changes .. ; vast changes ... that he yet remained unaware of. “Time ...” he whispered. “Joisan ... how much time?”
The Wise Woman drew a deep breath. “Six years, Jervon,” she said, steadily, giving him the truth.
“Oh, no ...” Jervon whispered. “My child ... grown into a woman. My wife ...” Sudden hope brightened his voice. “What of Elys?”
“Still missing, Father,” Lydryth said, pulling back a little to look at him, run her fingers over his dear, familiar face. Tenderly, she chipped away the last of the red mud. Now that his expression was animated, full of life again, it seemed that the intervening years had wrought but little change in him.
Her father stared at her. “You look so much like her,” he said, wonderingly. “You have grown into a beauty, Daughter.”
“What is the last thing you remember. Father?” she asked.
“The Seeing Stone,” he said. “I climbed ... I looked ...” He drew a quick breath. “Lydryth, I saw her! I saw Elys that day! She lay within a Place of Power-one I would recognize if I saw it again. In my vision, she was lying upon a pallet, her hands folded upon her breast. Our son ...” He drew a deep, ragged breath. “Our son was still within her. I could see the swell of her belly. Elys was surrounded by a mist, a glamourie of some kind, that shields her from view... but”-he grasped his daughter’s hands tightly-“she is alive, Lydryth! Alive!”
“Oh, Father!” she whispered. “If only we can find her ... save her!”
“We will,” he promised, and his words bore the ring of a sacred vow. “We will.”
Joisan stood up, one hand resting on each shoulder. “I must carry these happy tidings to my lord,” she said. “And then ... Lydryth, we are all still waiting for your story.”
The songsmith smiled up at her foster-mother. “I will be with you shortly,” she said.
“We will both be there,” Jervon amended. “If there is a story to be told, I want to hear it, also.” He smiled ruefully. “I have much catching up to do, it seems.”
Less than an hour later, Lydryth, dressed in fresh clothing, her hunger truly satisfied for the first time in days, sat on one of the stone benches in the Great Hall, finishing her food, her tale (cut to the bare bones) told. “And so,” she concluded, “Alon went to track the witch alone. I fear for him.” She glanced at her family’s faces. “So much so that I ride back out tonight. Guret must already be waiting with the horses saddled.”
“I will ride with you. Sister!” Firdun was the first to speak. “I have no fear of a sorceress!”
“And that lack of fear is precisely why you will remain here,” Kerovan told his impetuous son, grimly. “I will ride with Lydryth.”
“And so will I,” Hyana and Joisan said, together.
“And I.” Jervon was only a heartbeat behind. The former invalid was dressed now in riding garb. Thanks to the walks and rides his companions had taken him on, he was not wasted, although he had complained bitterly at his own thinness and lost muscle tone.
Now he smiled at his daughter and squeezed her hand, his blue eyes sparkling with teasing laughter. “We must rescue this young sorcerer, if only so that I may inquire as to his intentions toward my daughter.” He shook his head. “What a night! I have regained myself after years of lost time, only to discover that I now have a sorceress of no little power as a daughter, and an Adept as a prospective son. My head is spinning!”
Lydryth shook her head, willing herself not to blush again. She had said naught about what had happened in the Fane of Neave, beyond the bare fact that the Place of Power had cured both she and Alon of the Shadow-taint. And she knew that Hyana had not betrayed her confidence. But her family knew her well, and her voice had given her away every time she had spoken Alon’s name, she feared.
“Father!” she said, mock-reprovingly. “I said nothing of ... of...”
“You did not have to,” Jervon said gently; then he sobered. “After so long unaware of anything, I see tonight as if I have been new-forged. My daughter is a woman, and a Wise Woman at that. All of this will take me some time.”
“Thanks to the Lady of the Green Silences, we will all have that time,” Joisan said. “But for now, I suggest that we ride!”
In the end, it was decided that Sylvya and Firdun would remain behind ... over Firdun’s bitter protests. Kerovan reminded his son that he could track his sister by mind-link, and thus keep those at Kar Garudwyn informed as to their progress. As soon as all was in readiness, Joisan, Kerovan, Lydryth, Hyana and Jervon left the Great Hall together.
Outside Kar Garudwyn, Monso stood, chewing a mouthful of hay, awaiting them. The Keplian’s ordeal had left him thin and worn, but Dahaun’s red mud had again worked its magic, and his leg was nearly healed. The stallion had finished the water from Neave’s spring, and the water that Sylvya had given him after rinsing Dahaun’s box in it. Looking at him, Lydryth could scarcely believe that only two hours had passed since they had arrived at Landisl’s citadel.
She patted the Keplian, then swiftly saddled and bridled him. “Surely you do not intend to ride him?” Joisan said. “He needs rest, not more riding!”
Lydryth shook her head. “I will ride Vyar,” she told her foster-mother. “But Alon will need a mount, if we find him. And Monso will not be content to wait here for his master’s return. No stall or fence could hold him if he wishes to come with us ... and he does,” she said, smiling as the stallion whickered, then pawed, as if he understood her perfectly.
She removed the reins from the Keplian’s bit, so he would run no risk of stepping on them, coiling them and tying them on the saddle. Even as she had predicted, Monso clattered after them as they descended the ramp to the valley.
Within minutes, the rescue party set out, trotting slowly in single file, with Jervon, who did not have the night-sight, riding in their midst.
By the time they had reached the road, and set out along it, Lydryth was barely able to hold herself back from galloping full speed along it. Her worry for Alon gnawed at her like some wild creature.
As they moved westward at a ground-eating trot, she chafed, realizing for the first time how slow a mortal horse’s gaits were, in comparison to Monso’s. The riderless stallion ranged ahead of them, scenting the air as though trying to trace his master that way.
Suddenly Monso shrilled his stallion’s scream into the night, then reared before them. Fearing that the half-bred had gone berserk, the riders drew rein, watching the Keplian anxiously as he stood pawing nervously in the middle of the road. The half-bred screamed yet again-
and this time he was answered!
A shrill cry broke through the night air, and Lydryth suddenly discerned a blacker-than-black shape winging toward them. A shape that bore a white V on its breast.
“Steel Talon!” she gasped, as the falcon came to rest on the cantle of Monso’s saddle. She knew that the falcon would not normally fly at night, and her heart began slamming within her.
“This is the falcon you spoke of?” Kerovan asked.
“Yes,” Lydryth whispered, through dry lips. The bird looked straight at the songsmith and screamed again. “He has come to lead us to Alon,” she said, suddenly sure that she spoke truth. “He is even now in terrible danger!”
Steel Talon led them, winging from tree to bush, alighting always a short distance away, then voicing his shrill cry. Monso cantered after the falcon, and Lydryth and her family followed the Keplian.
Roads stretched before them in the darkness of the waning, now-overcast night-first the broad, well-traveled highway Lydryth had taken to reach Kar Garudwyn, then another, narrower way that turned south off the main route somewhere in Bluemantle lands. This secondary road soon deteriorated to little more than an overgrown, cart-rutted track.
All of the party, except for Jervon, could summon night vision at need, so they took turns riding point. In that way, no one person had to bear that burden alone. When Kerovan rode at the head of the group, Jervon rode beside him. As they companied side by side, Lydryth could hear the soft rise and fall of Kerovan’s voice, broken every so often by a quiet question or comment from her father. She guessed that Kerovan was attempting to fill in the missing years for his newly recovered friend.
Dawn was still more than an hour away when the little party reached the Place of Power that was Yachne’s destination. For the past hour, the riders had crossed moorland and picked their way across marshy hallows, for the trail had deteriorated to a game path, then dwindled away completely. If it had not been for the Keplian and the falcon, they would have been completely lost.
As they rounded a stand of brush, Lydryth, who was riding in the fore with Hyana, saw Monso stop. The stallion snorted, then stuck out his upper lip, exposing his teeth, as if he scented something foul. Steel Talon alighted on the cantle of Alon’s saddle a moment later. “Our destination lies just ahead,” Lydryth’s foster-sister said in a hushed voice. “I can sense that from the falcon.”
Peering through the night, Lydryth concentrated her night vision, making out a faint light from somewhere ahead. It brightened the way ahead, seeming as strong as the glow of a forest fire Lydryth had once seen-a forest fire that had burned itself down to embers. But the bard knew instinctively that whatever caused this light had no kinship with honest fire or once-living wood. The glow that now rose ahead of them was unclean.
Vyar, Lydryth’s Kioga mare, suddenly halted, ears pointing forward, then abruptly flattening as her nostrils flared. The songsmith felt her shiver; then, without warning, the horse ducked her head down to her chest and began backing away. If Lydryth had not driven her forward with her legs, she would have turned tail and bolted.
Hyana’s gelding shied also. Even in the darkness the songsmith could see the ring of white encircling the terrified creature’s eye. Kerovan’s voice came from behind them, floating softly on the pitchy air. “What chances?”
“The horses,” Lydryth kept her own voice soft. “They are balking. They smell something ahead that they do not care to approach.”
“Must we go on afoot?” Joisan asked.
“I do not know. Perhaps.”
But, after a brief struggle (and a firm smack with the reins), the songsmith was able to force her mount onward. Vyar was trembling beneath her, but, having managed the Keplian, Lydryth found a mortal horse far easier to handle. Once he was given a lead to follow, Hyana’s grey, Raney, fell in behind Vyar.
Stiff-legged, trembling, the mare followed Monso toward the source of that glow. It seemed to Lydryth to be a forest, one that had died-died so swiftly that the leaves had had no chance to drop from the branches. They shone white, a rank, phosphorescent white, like the lichens which grew in some caves. The branches and trunks which sprouted those eldritch leaves were dull black, as if they had turned in a trice to solid pillars of rot. And from many of those branches hung lengths of dead, silvery moss, veiling the depths of the forest from their eyes like concealing tapestries.
If it had not been for the stomach-wrenching reek that emanated from that strange wood, that eye-searing aura of total wrongness, the place might have been termed strangely beautiful. As they halted just outside of the strange wood, Lydryth looked over at Hyana. “What do you make of it, Sister?” she asked, knowing that the other had the gift of seeing beyond the ken of humankind, into the spirit and future of things.
“Truly, this is a case where fair is foul and foul, fair,” Hyana replied. “If your Alon has followed the witch within, he has endangered not merely his body, but his innermost essence. To die in this place would leave one not only dead, but damned without hope of succor or mercy.”
“A path.” Jervon, ever the practical strategist, pointed to a distinct trail. “But there is no telling whether it leads to the right place.”
“If there is a path, then it is that way we must go,” Kerovan said. “Touching one of those ‘trees’-if such they ever truly were-would be as poisonous as inviting the strike of an adder.” Lydryth saw that the wristlet he always wore was softly glowing, warning, as was its nature, against evil.
“Will the horses take it?” Joisan asked, soothing her golden chestnut. “Varren is not happy even standing here, much less entering that place.”
“Monso is already going,” Lydryth cried, pointing to the Keplian, who was even now trotting up the trail. “Quickly, while he gives us a lead!” Her legs closed around Vyar’s barrel, but it took another smack with the reins to force the mare after the stallion.
The rot-trees (or so Lydryth had come to think of them) closed in around her. The soil beneath the mare’s hooves was grey, leached of life, sterile and powdery as talc. After a breath or two, Lydryth fumbled out her kerchief and tied it over her mouth and nose. She risked a swift glance back, and saw the others following her example. The horses were plainly not at ease in this “forest,” but none had balked.
Lydryth was in a fever of impatience, wanting to urge Vyar into a gallop, -but, after Kerovan’s warning about the danger of touching the trees, she restrained herself ... barely. Her conviction that Alon was in trouble grew until she was quivering like a plucked harpstring. She found herself remembering every moment, every passing touch between them since they had met, and was powerless to halt the images flowing through her mind.
The wood stretched away on either side of them, quiet and poisonous, but, somewhat to Lydryth’s surprise, they met no one and nothing. She had half-expected another contingent of web-riders. If there ever existed a place more perfect to have been their spawning ground, she had never seen it.
Glancing back at the others, she saw Kerovan’s wristlet glowing brilliant blue, as it had that day she and Jervon were nearly ensorcelled by the Keplian. But they did not need the talisman to warn them against the Shadow-or to tell them they were in grave peril. The rank stench surrounding them would not allow even a moment’s forgetting.
Steel Talon sat hunched on the cantle of the Keplian’s sad- die, and Lydryth realized that the falcon was, rightfully, loath to perch on any of the limbs in this unnatural wood. She wondered how far this Place extended-they had already ridden for nearly a league.
Even as that thought crossed her mind, they came to the end of their trail. Suddenly the rot-trees ended, leaving a huge, roughly circular meadow in their midst. The “meadow” was covered in a short, sere turf, the color of ancient lichen. In its center rose an enormous rock, as large as a good-sized cottage.
Monso trotted swiftly into the meadow with a nicker of recognition. Lydryth followed the Keplian’s direction, then saw, silhouetted against that massive boulder, two figures.
Violet light surrounded one, emanating from the crystal talisman he wore. His hands were up in a warding gesture, and a violet haze wreathed them, shaped almost like a warrior’s shield. The other figure was undoubtedly Yachne, though she still wore a shapeless grey robe and hood, hiding her identity. Serpent-shaped trails of purple light shot through with dark red streaks fell from the tip of her fingers, then launched themselves across the intervening space, aimed at the Adept’s head.
“Alon!” Lydryth shouted, and was off Vyar and running toward him before the mare even came to a stop. “Alon!”
Monso bolted toward his master; then, with a suddenness that nearly knocked him off all four feet, the half-bred stopped dead, as though he had run into some invisible barrier.
Which indeed he had, as Lydryth discovered a heartbeat later, as she, too, slammed into something unyielding. She fell hard, then lay winded. A moment later Kerovan grabbed her arm, and aided her to her feet.
The songsmith saw with horror what was happening. Evidently Alon had lost his concentration on his spelling when he had heard her shout, because, even as Lydryth focused on him again, the Adept was struck by one of Yachne’s snake-bolts of Power. He reeled, stumbled, then went down to his knees, plainly dazed.
“No!” Lydryth whispered in agony. Trapped behind the unseen wall, she was forced to watch helplessly. Seeing her and the other would-be rescuers, Yachne laughed aloud, gave the newcomers a cheery “thank you!” wave, then bent to her task. Horrified, Lydryth realized that she was completing the last closing of the spell she had employed to steal Dinzil’s Power. A dead fawn lay on the “grass” not far from her, its throat slashed. The blood-circle was nearly complete.
Lydryth pounded helplessly against the unseen barrier as the witch scratched her skinny wrist with the blade of the athame. In a trice she had completed the closing other ghastly circle; then she began to chant.
Alon slumped forward onto his hands and knees as the mist began coalescing around him. “Alon!” Lydryth screamed. “Stop her! You must stop her!”
After a moment the young man wavered to his feet, then stared down in horror as the thickening mist suddenly billowed up, nearly waist-high. “No!” Lydryth sobbed. She was scarcely aware of her father putting an arm around her, as she turned to Hyana. “Does Yachne’s wall extend all the way around this clearing?” she gasped.
Her foster-sister nodded. “I can see it. A barrier of pale light, nearly as tall as the tops of these loathsome trees.”
“Can you break the spell?” the songsmith implored Joisan and Kerovan.
The Wise Woman shook her head. “I have been trying to do just that, ever since we came here, but this is no spell I have ever encountered before.”
Laughing delightedly, Yachne walked closer to Alon. The Adept was struggling to force the mist back down into the ground, using the glow given off by his crystal talisman. But, slowly, a finger-width at a time, he was losing that battle. The mist by now was up to his chest. Lydryth knew that if it completely enclosed him, the Alon as she knew him now would be forever lost-to himself as well as to her.
“Alon!” she screamed. “The sword! Remember the sword!” Cold iron or steel, she knew, was ofttimes a powerful weapon against evil magic. And the gryphon-sword had quan-iron, that bane of all Darkness, embedded in its hilt. “The sword!” she cupped her hands around her mouth to help her voice carry. “Try the sword!”
Still obviously dazed from Yachne’s Power-blast, Alon shook his head, one hand still clutching his crystal talisman. Lydryth realized that he could no longer hear her-somehow Yachne’s spell must also be muffling sound.
The sorceress came closer to her victim now, just as Monso screamed in rage and rose onto his hind legs. The stallion’s powerful forefeet battered at the invisible barrier, but to no avail.
The mist was creeping up toward Alon’s chin. Lydryth turned to Hyana, clutching the other woman’s hands in both of hers desperately. “Can you mind-send?” she demanded.
Hyana hesitated. “I can with my mother and father... and Firdun. Sometimes with you.”
“Try to mind-send to Alon, Hyana! Tell him to use the sword! Try, please!
The other frowned, but obediently closed her eyes, concentrating. The sword, Lydryth thought. Alon, use the sword. It may break the mist! Use the sword!
Yachne was standing before Alon, now, her hands weaving in the air as she continued her chant. The mist thickened even further...
Alon fumbled at his back, as if in a dream. “Yes!” Lydryth whispered. “Yes, Alon! The sword ... oh, please, use it!”
The Adept bent, disappearing from view behind the mist that by now nearly reached his eyes. Lydryth clenched her fists so hard that her hands ached, but she was hardly aware of the pain. The sword! Is he unbuckling it, unsheathing it? What is he doing?
Yachne gave a final, commanding cry, using a Word that made the air seem to curdle with darkness. Mist lapped over the top of the pillar enclosing Alon. Lydryth shut her eyes, unable to watch-then immediately opened them again. She could not look, but she swiftly discovered that she could not bear to look away.
Amber Lady, she prayed silently, tears slipping from her eyes, help him!
Purple light wreathed the sorceress’s arms as she began to draw Alon’s Power into herself, just as she had done with Dinzil. Help him! Somebody help him!
A shrill scream rent the air, just as something small and black fell upon Yachne like a stone, wicked talons aiming for her eyes. The only one of them who could fly over the barrier-Steel Talon!
The witch ducked, barely missing the winged death stooping out of the skies. The purple light wreathing her arms faltered, halted completely as she threw up both arms. A lash of dark lightning crackled from her fingers, striking the small black shape with the white V on its chest-
even as the blade of Lydryth’s sword poked through the mist surrounding Alon, cutting it away as though it were a solid substance. It slashed an opening; then, before Yachne was more than half-aware that her captive was making a bid for escape, Lydryth saw Alon’s dim form move within that pillar of deadly mist.
Weight balanced on the balls of his feet, knees flexed, arm extended-it was the one lunge she had taught him, and he did it perfectly. The length of shining steel licked out like a cleansing streak of blue-white fire, thrusting through the hole in the mist, burying its sharpness just below the breast of the woman’s tattered grey robe, impaling the witch.
Yachne stiffened with a shriek of mingled pain and fury as Lydryth’s gryphon-hilted sword, with all the strength of Alon’s arm behind it, transfixed her.
The mist vanished as the witch toppled over backward- and lay unmoving.
At the same moment, Lydryth and the others staggered forward as the barrier that had kept them helpless on the outside of the meadow disappeared.
“Alon, oh, Alon!” The songsmith ran straight to the Adept, grabbing his shoulders, hugging him ecstatically, but only for a moment did he return her embrace. His face set, he gently put her aside, then walked forward to pick up a small, stricken form lying on the ground next to the dying sorceress.
Lydryth cried out softly with grief and pity. Steel Talon was not dead yet... but he soon would be, that was plain. “Oh, no!” she whispered.
Tears stood in the Adept’s eyes as he cradled the dying falcon against him. “Steel Talon...,” he whispered brokenly. “You saved me...”
Lydryth lifted a hand to gently touch that fierce beak, staring at those dimming eyes. She thought that she glimpsed a strange satisfaction deep in them. Alon glanced up at her, startled. “Steel Talon is ... content,” he whispered.
Lydryth nodded as understanding suddenly flooded through her. “Because he has fulfilled the quest that was the only thing keeping him alive, is that not so?” she asked. “He dies content, knowing that he has gained his revenge.”
Alon nodded. “Yachne ... it was Yachne that night, when Jonthal died. She set the trap ... for me. But it was Jonthal who died...”
Steel Talon’s fierce eyes seemed to blaze even more fiercely; then the bird abruptly stiffened, jerked several times, and sagged, limp. Alon swallowed, then turned to walk away, toward Monso.
Lydryth started after him, but Jervon caught her arm. “No,” her father said gently. “Give him a moment to grieve in private. He would wish it so.”
The songsmith took a deep breath; then she nodded. They watched as Alon walked over to Monso, gave the stallion a quick pat, then carefully, tenderly, wrapped the falcon’s body in his undertunic. He tied the small, wrapped form to the saddle. She knew, without being told, that the Adept intended to give the bird proper burial on clean ground.
Lydryth turned back to her family, and saw Joisan and Hyana crouched beside Yachne. The songsmith was faintly surprised to see that the sorceress still lived, though it was plain that no healcraft could aid her.
Dropping to her knees beside the witch, Lydryth stared down at her, thinking how suddenly small and shrunken she appeared. Yachne opened grey eyes to regard her, and the younger woman realized that the gleam of madness that had so frightened her before was gone. The witch struggled to draw breath. “Am ... am I dying?” she whispered.
Joisan hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. If I could help you, I would, but your wound is beyond any ability of mine to heal.”
Sweat stood out on the dying woman’s face. “Yes ... feel it. Hurts ... hurts so ...”
“I am sorry,” Joisan said. “I can try to sing you into a painless state, if you so wish. That is all I can do to ease your passing.”
The witch nodded. “Alon?” she whispered. “Where is Alon?”
Lydryth hastily beckoned the Adept, who was even now returning to them, to come quickly. When he reached the woman who had cared for him as a child, he dropped down beside her, took her hand. “I am sorry,” he said quietly. “So sorry. I wish there had been some other way.”
“Not... not your fault,” she whispered. “I see clearly now ... been so long since I could do that ...”
“Hush,” Alon said, fighting to keep his voice from breaking. “Don’t try to talk.”
“Must... must talk ...,” she insisted. “It was the Turning ... the Turning.” She gasped for breath. “I was ... witch of Estcarp before then...”
“So we guessed,” Lydryth said. “And you lost your powers after the Turning?”
The former witch nodded. “Angry. Wanted what should have been mine forever ... wanted it back ...” Joisan carefully wiped Yachne’s dry lips with a cloth moistened in water. The old woman (for all her borrowed “youth” had vanished) sucked gratefully at the moisture. Joisan aided her as she swallowed a sip from a water flask. “Then I found out ... about the ones who still had the Power... the males. They had what should have been mine...”
After a moment she went on, “Wandered ... long time. Garth Howell... they took me in. They were there, too, the males with the Power ... the creatures against nature ... but they offered me a way...” She sucked in breath, then writhed for a moment. Finally, sweat pouring down her face, she subsided. “The spell. The abbot taught me ... spell. As long as I would take the Power from you ...” She gasped, staring at Alon. “That was the price ... one I was willing to pay ... and gladly. I am sorry for that, Alon...”
“Me?” He was plainly startled. “Why? I have never encountered the denizens of Garth Howell, never banned them. I was half the world away! Why me?”
“They fear you ... ,” she whispered. “You are one of the Seven.” She stared then at Lydryth, and Hyana. “As are they. The Seven ...”
“The Seven what?” Lydryth wondered.
“Defenders ... defenders of this land ... defenders of Arvon,” Yachne replied. She was laboring now for breath, and it was pain to hear her. “There will be ... Seven. Last has not yet ... been born.” Her gaze turned again to Lydryth. “Your brother,” she muttered. “Will be the last. If he is ever born.”
Lydryth grabbed the old woman’s hand in both of hers. “What know you of my brother?” she demanded fiercely.
“Promise ... promise you will ease my passing ...” the sorceress said.
“I swear by Gunnora’s amulet,” she vowed. “Where is my brother, Yachne?”
“Here ... and not-here. Within the stone that is not-stone. Beyond the cage, beneath the flesh ... uhhhh ...” With a rattling moan, she trailed off.
To Lydryth, the words had no meaning. She began to demand further explanation, but Joisan nudged her. “She is beyond speech. Daughter,” she whispered. “Shall we fulfill our promise?”
Together, Joisan and Lydryth sang softly, and all of the group watched the lines of pain smooth away from the aged features. When Yachne died, minutes later, her countenance was almost peaceful.
They covered her face with a fold from her ragged mantle, then withdrew to the other side of the massive stone to speak together for the first time. Joisan looked up at the eastern side of the Shadow Place. “Dawn is breaking,” she said softly. “We have lived through this night ... something that I doubted, a few hours ago.”
Alon stared around him at his rescuers. “I thank you for coming to my aid. Without your”-he nodded at Hyana- “mind-sending, I would never have remembered that sword.”
“Alon, this is Hyana, my foster-sister,” Lydryth said, remembering her manners. “And this is Lord Kerovan and Lady Joisan, my foster parents.” Pride tinged her voice as she hooked her arm through Jervon’s. “And this is my father, Jervon.”
Alon had bowed in turn as each introduction was made, but when he heard this last, he blinked in surprise. “Dahaun’s mud worked!” he cried. “This is ... this is wonderful hearing! Sir,” he added hastily.
Jervon smiled. “I owe you much, young sorcerer,” he said. “And I gather from everything that my daughter has not said, that we have a great deal to discuss, you and I.” He held out his hand. “Well-met, Alon!”
This time it was the Adept’s turn to color, but he grasped the older man’s hand with a strong grip, and met his eyes steadily. “You have the right of it... sir,” he said. “Well-met, indeed, Jervon. You are a most fortunate man. We had no idea whether Dahaun’s red mud would restore an injured mind.”
“I am fortunate indeed,” Jervon said. “To have a daughter such as mine. Although”-he gave Alon an equally level stare-“I have gained the impression that I must now resign myself to sharing her.”
Alon’s mouth quirked slightly. “Perceptive, as well as fortunate,” he said.
Kerovan chuckled, then reached into his saddlebag and brought out hunks of journeybread and another water flask. “Here, Alon, you must be hungry.”
The little group sat in a circle, sharing food and water, while dawn slowly brightened the eldritch woods around them. The events of the night weighed heavy upon the songsmith now, and she felt at once so tired that she could have lain down and slept next to Yachne’s stiffening corpse, and so keyed up with frustration that she felt as though she must needs scream aloud.
Catching her father’s eye upon her, she gave him a wan smile. “To come so close to finding her ... and fail. Yachne knew where my mother is.”
He nodded. “It is hard,” he said. “But we will not give up.”
“Here and not-here,” Alon repeated, puzzling aloud. “Stone that is not-stone.” He shook his head. “What can it mean?”
None of them could think of an answer. But Alon refused to give up, worrying at the riddle as though it were a bone and he a hound. “Here ...” He glanced around the clearing. “What could be here, and yet not-here? Stone and not-stone? Stone ... stone is rock, it is granite, it is limestone, and quartz ...” He trailed off, staring down at the crystal he wore. “Crystal!” he exclaimed. “It is stone, yet not-stone. Could that be what Yachne meant?”
All of them turned to survey their surroundings in the growing light. “There is no stone except that one,” Jervon said, finally, pointing to the monstrous boulder. “And that appears grey, not crystal.”
The Adept rose and walked over to the stone. Lydryth walked beside him, and together they gazed upon it. “Here and not-here,” Alon said. “Stone and not-stone. It sounds rather like those mirror Gates we used, does it not?”
It was obvious that he was having some insight that Lydryth could not follow. “But that stone is nothing like this one,” she said, touching the crystal talisman he wore with her fingers, tapping it with a nail. It rang, ever so faintly, and Alon, who had been staring at the huge rock, gasped.
“Do that again!” he commanded, holding the crystal out to her. “And match the note with your voice, as you did once before!”
Puzzled, she obeyed him, making the crystal ting, then attempting to match the note.
“I see it!” Alon exclaimed, wide-eyed. “Lydryth, look at the stone as you do so!”
Again she sounded the crystal, echoed it with a sung note. And, before her eyes, the great stone grew translucent!
She could see within it ... and, in the crystalline depths, there was a pallet, and upon the pallet, a human shape!
“It is a Gate!” she exclaimed in astonishment. By that time the others, arrested by their excited voices, had come over to discover what chanced.
Once more Alon performed his demonstration, and this time it was Jervon’s turn to grow wide-eyed. “That is Elys!” he gasped. “That is what I saw in the Seeing Stone! I knew I would recognize it if I ever saw it again!”
“We must break the illusion that this is a solid boulder,” Joisan said. “We must link and attempt to open the Gate.”
“How?” Kerovan asked. “You and Alon seem to be the ones who have done so in the past.”
“I believe we should link hands and Power,” Joisan said. “Then pour our Power into Lydryth. The crystal responds to sound, and she is our singer. Her voice is the key that will unlock this Gate.” The Wise Woman glanced at Alon, and he nodded agreement.
So it was that they linked hands, concentrated. Within moments Lydryth began to feel light-headed, as though she were some kind of rod that was being used to conduct a thunderbolt. Opening her mouth, she sang-and her voice rang out with greater volume and clarity than she had ever possessed before.
Slowly, the boulder cleared again ... became crystal ... then became mist. With Jervon close behind them, the group took a step forward, straight into that mist.
They were in a place, and it was filled with light-but it was a Dark light, as though Shadow had been turned to flame, and given substance. The place had no horizons, no boundaries. There was no sky ... nothing. Their feet rested on something, but it was difficult to tell what. Lydryth swallowed as she was assailed by sudden vertigo. It was extremely disconcerting to have no reference points.
Except one. Before her was the pallet, and on it, Elys lay sleeping. Lydryth saw the gentle mound of her belly beneath her robe. “She has been here the entire time,” Joisan whispered.
“But why?” Kerovan asked. “Why take her and confine her? If these Adepts at Garth Howell are so powerful, and yet evil enough to do this, then why not simply do away with her?”
“Because to murder a woman who is carrying is such a great transgression that even the masters and mistresses of Garth
Howell would not dare to do so,” Hyana replied. “Gunnora is a powerful spirit who protects the unborn, and those who carry them. They dared not harm Elys outright. They feared Gunnora’s reprisal too much.”
Lydryth walked forward, and they followed her. The songsmith’s eyes adjusted more to the strangeness of this Place, and she could see lines of Dark light arcing over her sleeping mother’s form, as though she lay within a cage.
“Beyond the cage, beneath the flesh,” Alon whispered. “The Seventh Defender of Arvon sleeps before us.”
“How can we free her?” Hyana asked. “I know of no spell to undo this kind of sorcery.”
“Nor do I,” Joisan admitted.
“Landisi cannot help us here,” Kerovan said. “This Place is outside our world, and not within any that he ever trod.”
Lydryth scarcely heard her family’s comments. She stared at those lines of Dark light. And the longer she stared at those lines of Dark light arcing over the pallet, the more they seemed to her to akin to harpstrings. As though they could be ... plucked. Music. Music had been the key to so many of the spells they had encountered...
“Alon ...,” the minstrel whispered hoarsely, “lend me all your strength!”
“You have it,” he replied, and a moment later his fingers tightened around hers. Power flooded her... poured into her in a wave of warmth.
Humming, the songsmith formed in her mind the image of a giant finger pick. Concentrating fiercely, she forced herself to see it, glimpse it hovering over those “strings.”
Then, with an effort that made her break out in a sweat, she moved her giant mind-pick downward, made it pluck one of those “strings.”
A sound so loud it staggered her boomed out. Lydryth waited, but the cage remained in place. She concentrated again, and “plucked” another string. Then another.
“That’s three,” Alon said. “One of the numbers of Power.”
“What are the others?” she asked. “Three did not work, as you can see.”
“Seven,” he said. “And nine.”
“Seven,” she said. “Seven Defenders ... and, Alon”-her voice grew more excited, as she swiftly counted-“there are seven ‘strings’!”
“Try it,” he urged.
Shaking with the effort it took, the songsmith plucked the strings steadily ... until finally all seven had been sounded.
Nothing happened. Lydryth fought back tears of disappointment.
“Seven ... it must be related to seven,” Alon whispered. “It cannot be coincidence. Spells are often constructed with repetitions of certain numbers, words, sounds...”
“Seven Defenders, seven strings ... ,” Lydryth whispered. “Seven sevens ...”
“Try it,” Alon urged again.
Lydryth began. Wielding the huge “mind-pick” was taking an increasing toll of her strength ... and of the borrowed Power she was getting from Alon. The songsmith knew she was draining him every bit as surely as Yachne had planned to. His hand in hers began to tremble.
And still she sounded the notes. Seven different notes, in a complex pattern, choosing them nearly at random ... but aware all the time that a melody was being shaped. A melody of love, of longing. A child’s love for her mother, a husband’s love for his wife ... all of that and more she forged into that melody.
Fourteen ... twenty-one ... thirty-five ... Blackness was nibbling at the edges of her vision, like a voracious rasti. Forty-two ... forty-nine!
With a suddenness that made them all blink and stagger, the lines of Dark light vanished!
Alon and Lydryth stumbled forward; then Alon caught her arm, held her back. “Let your father go first,” he whispered.
The songsmith hesitated, then halted, knowing the Adept was right.
Slowly, reverently, Elys’s lord approached the pallet; then his fingers went out, stroked his sleeping wife’s cheek. “Elys ...” he whispered. “Oh, my heart ... my lady ...” Gently, he kissed her forehead, her lips; then Jervon raised her hand, prisoned safely within his own, to his face. A tear broke free, ran down his stubbled cheek, to trickle at last over her finger. At that touch, the sleeping woman’s eyelids fluttered, then lifted. She gazed up at him, bewildered. “Jervon ...” she whispered. “My lord ...”
“My lady,” he murmured, in a hushed, ragged voice. “Oh, Elys!” Quickly, he scooped her up into his arms, and, when Kerovan would have aided him, unsure that his friend was up to bearing her weight, shook his head fiercely at the other.
Silently, the group trailed behind them as Jervon strode forward, carrying his precious burden, and vanished through the Gate, leaving that uncanny Place behind forever.
When they emerged back into the clearing, it was into full sunlight. Elys seemed to have suffered no ill effects from her long ensorcellment, and as soon as her husband set her on her feet, she held out a hand to her daughter. “Lydryth?” she whispered. “Can it be?”
“Mother!” the songsmith said, and then the two of them were hugging and weeping with joy. Lydryth felt as though her heart could hold no more happiness. To have both her parents returned to her in the space of a single day!
When, at length, Elys was able to relinquish her hold on her child (as though she were afraid one of them might be torn away again), she greeted her friends. “Tell me what has chanced,” she begged, “for I remember naught.”
Voices rose in an excited babble as each tried to render his or her own version of all the lost years. When their story was finished, the witch’s lovely features were troubled, but Elys had been a warrior for years in a war-torn land, as well as a witch, so she did not cry out or rail when she discovered that the Adepts at Garth Howell had stolen nine years of her life from her.
Instead she shook her head, staring around her. “I remember nothing,” she said simply. “As far as I know, I lay down to nap in Kar Garudwyn, then awoke here. It is you”-she gazed at her husband and grown daughter, her friends and shield-mates-“my loved ones, who have suffered, not I!” Her mouth tightened. “I swear by All the Powers That Be, there will be a reckoning.” Her voice was quiet, but a note in it sent shivers down Lydryth’s back.
In silent accord, the group turned to make their way across the clearing to where the horses were tethered. But scarcely had she taken more than a step when Elys suddenly gasped, putting a hand to the small other back. “Elys?” Joisan was at her side immediately, her arm circling her friend, supporting her. “Is it the baby?”
Lydryth’s mother nodded. “And none too soon, apparently,” she said, with a grim attempt at humor, “since I have been carrying him, if what you tell me is true, for nine years!”
The single group quickly separated into three. Hyana and Joisan, both experienced healers and midwives, tended Elys as the hours passed. Jervon and Kerovan rode out of the clearing in quest of supplies and transportation for Elys, and returned some time later with their horses hitched to an ancient wagon they had managed to persuade a local farmer to lend them. They had left their swords with the man as a pledge of good faith in lieu of the future payment in gold they promised.
Lydryth and Alon worked together to bury Yachne, then spent their time talking, tending Monso and the other horses, catching each other up on the desperate hours of the past night. The songsmith learned that the Adept had been caught and tricked into entering Yachne’s illusion-cloaked circle with a vision of herself, lying upon the ground with a broken leg.
The sun was slanting toward the west, far past noon, when a squalling yowl of indignation-sounding almost like a cat whose tail has been assaulted by an unwary foot-filled the clearing. Lydryth and Alon, hand in hand, went together to gaze upon where Jervon, grinning broadly, stood holding the Seventh Defender of Arvon.
He was much too small, the songsmith decided, to bear such a portentious title... and seemed almost too small to bear the name his fond parents had bestowed upon him. “Trevon,” Elys whispered, from her nest of blankets in the wagon, as she regarded the squirming red morsel her lord held so proudly. “Hope,” Alon said. “In the Old Tongue, that means ‘hope.’”
“I know,” Lydryth told him, putting her arm around his waist and leaning wearily against him. “And hope is something we will need sorely in the coming years, if Hyana’s foretelling about a great conflict here in Arvon comes to pass-a war like unto the one you finished fighting in Escore not so long ago.”
The Adept nodded soberly, but there was a light in his grey eyes. “And apparently you and I have a role to play in that conflict,” he whispered softly. “Hope. We will need it.” He gazed intently at Trevon. “We will need him.”
Some hours later, the party left the clearing, leaving behind a mound of freshly turned earth where Yachne lay. Alon, astride Monso, suddenly pointed. “Look!”
Lydryth, beside him on Vyar, gasped. “The grass! It has turned green!”
Hyana’s voice rose, also filled with wonderment. “Look! Look at the woods!”
The rot-trees were changing, altering, as they neared them. Oak, rowan, beech and maple and evergreen now stood, instead of those stark black-and-white ghosts of trees. “The wood!” Lydryth cried, staring amazed. “It is healing itself!”
Beside her, Alon smiled, then reached over to take her hand. They rode on together, side by side, and the new tide of living greenness went before them, swelling outward, like a wave upon the shore.
Lydryth’s fingers swept a last, ringing chord, sending the note bounding around the Great Hall in Kar Garudwyn like a child on the morning of Midwinter Feast. “And so,” she said softly, as that final note began to die away, “they returned to Kar Garudwyn, after cleansing and healing that Place of Power. And their joy was very great.”
Clapping rang out as she bowed, applause from the assembled guests and family members. Even Trevon smiled toothlessly, gurgling in his mother’s lap.
“A fine song, Lydryth!” Jervon said. “ ‘The Ballad of the Songsmith’ is the best you’ve written so far!”
She smiled fondly at her father. “It is always best to write what you know,” she said wryly. Suddenly the bard was conscious of someone leaning over the back of her chair, and, turning her head, she saw (though she had known the newcomer’s identity within her heart immediately) that it was Alon. He smiled at the assembled guests. “A great success, my lady. I liked it very much. Especially the requiem to Steel Talon.”
Then, lowering his voice, he added, “But perhaps our visitors are wearied. It has been a long day of feasting, and evening is now upon us.”
Laughter boomed out from Obred, the Kioga chieftain. “I heard that. Lord Alon!”
Lydryth and Alon both colored, and the Kioga leader laughed harder. “We can take a hint, Lord Alon, and you have the right of it-it is indeed time to go. But,” Obred said, smiling, “you must expect such minor inconveniences if you would wed a songsmith. Especially one as good as the Lady Lydryth. Hearing her play and sing, one is loath to depart a gathering where she performs.”
Alon grinned at the burly leader. “I well understand, Obred. It was hearing her voice that made me fall under her spell in the first place.”
Lydryth put aside her hand-harp, then stood up, smoothing the skirt of her blue wedding gown. “You forget, my lord,” she said, under her breath, as she put her hand on her new husband’s arm, and made to follow him out of the hall,” ‘twas Monso fell under my spell first! You merely followed his example!”
“And a very good example it was, too,” Alon said, as he led her in the opposite direction from the departing guests, toward the stairs. They stopped, smiled and waved amid a last chorus of toasts and good-wishings.
Lydryth paused at the top landing to gaze back along the gallery, where they could see Kerovan and Joisan, Sylvya, Firdun, Hyana, and Elys and Jervon all bidding farewell to the wedding guests. The happiness of seeing them all together again filled her heart until it felt as though it would burst. “I will have to write a song about today,” she said softly.
Alon slipped an arm around her, then gently brushed back a wayward curl. “Cannot it wait until tomorrow?” he asked mock-plaintively. “Or will you forget it if you do not write it down immediately?”
Lydryth laid her head against her lord’s shoulder. “It can wait,” she promised, with a smile, then kissed him. “The best songs cannot be forgotten.”