The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (4 page)

Coren was still beside her. Then he gave a little murmur, and his hand pressed, hot, over her hands.

“Please. Try to understand. Are you crying?”

“I am not crying!” His hand fell away, and she looked at him as he lay with his eyes still starred with fever, his back bare to the warm morning light. “And what is it that I should understand? That having given Tam to me to raise and love, now you think you can come as freely and take him back? He does not belong to you—you have no claim to him now, because he was never Norrel’s son. He is Drede’s son—Maelga told me that twelve years ago. But it is I who have loved him, and I will not give him either to you or to Drede to be used like a piece in a game of power. When you leave here, tell your brother Rok that. And do not let him send you here again. There are those here besides me who have no love for you, and they will not be any less gentle with you next time.”

Coren lay lean and loose in Ogam’s bed, silent awhile, considering her words. He said at length, “You knew what I came for the moment you saw me. Yet you bandaged my back and cut my hair, so it is too late to try to make me afraid of you. If I leave here without the thing I have come for, Rok will send me back. He has great faith in me.” He paused again, then smiled up at her. “It is not only Tam he sent me here to get. I am to bring you also to Sirle, Sybel.”

She stared at him. “You are mad.”

He shook his head cautiously. “No. I am wisest of all my brothers. There are seven of us—six, now.”

“Six of you.”

“Yes, and all Drede has is one son he has never seen. Do you wonder he might be frightened of us?”

“No. Six mad men in Sirle and the wisest one you—it frightens even me a little. I thought you were wise that night you brought me Tam; you knew such unexpected things. But in this matter, you are a fool.”

“I know.” Coren’s voice stayed quiet, but something changed in his face, and his eyes slipped away from hers, back into some memory. “You see, I loved Norrel. You know something of love. And Drede killed Norrel. So. In this matter, I am a fool. I know something of hate.”

Sybel drew a breath. “I am sorry,” she said. “But your hate is not my business, and Tam does not belong to you to take.”

“Rok sent me to buy your powers.”

“There is no price for them you could pay.”

“What do you want, in all the world?”

“Nothing.”

“No—” He looked at her. “Tell me. When you look into your heart, privately, what does it require? I have told you what I require.”

“Drede’s death?”

“More than that—his power, and his hope, then his life. You see how great a fool I am. Now, what do you want?”

She was silent. “Tam’s happiness,” she said finally. “And the Liralen.”

Coren’s face startled unexpectedly into a smile. “The Liralen. The beautiful white-winged bird Prince Neth captured just before he died—I have seen it in my dreams, just as I have dreamed at one time or another of all your great animals. But I never dreamed of you. I did not know to. Can you take that bird, Sybel? So few ever have.”

“Can you gave it to me?”

“No. But I can give you this: a place of power in a land where power has a price without limit and an honor without parallel. Is this all you want? To live here on this mountain, speaking only to animals who live in the dreams of their past, and to Tam, who will have a future that you cannot have? You are bound here by your father’s rules, you live his life. You will live, grow old and die here, living for others who do not need you. Tam one day will not need you. What, in years to come, will you have in your life but a silence that is meaningless, ancient names that are never spoken beyond these walls? Who will you laugh with, when Tam is grown? Who will you love? The Liralen? It is a dream. Beyond this mountain, there is a place for you among the living.”

She did not speak. When she did not move, he reached out, touched her hair, moved it to see the still, white lines of her lowered face. “Sybel,” he whispered, and she rose abruptly, left him without looking back.

She walked in the gardens, blind with thought beneath the red-leafed trees and the dark pines. After a while Tam came to her, quietly as a forest animal and slipped his arm around her waist, and she started.

“Is it true?” he whispered. She nodded.

“Yes.”

“I do not want to leave.”

“Then you will not.” She looked at him, brushed with her hand the pale hair he had gotten from his mother’s family. Then she sighed a little. “I do not remember being so hurt before. And I have forgotten to talk to Gyld.”

“Sybel.”

“What?”

He struggled for words. “He said—he said he would make me King of Eldwold.”

“He wants to use you, to gain power for himself and his family.”

“He said men would be looking for me to sell—to sell me to my father, and I must be careful. He said Sirle would protect me.”

“With what, I wonder. They lost to Drede at Terbrec.”

“I think—with you, Sybel, he said there were places for us both, high places in that world below, if we chose to want them. I do not know how to want to be a king. I do not know what a king is, but he said there would be fine horses for me, and white falcons, and—but Sybel, I do not know what to do! I think I will be something different than the one who herds sheep and climbs rocks with Nyl.” He looked at her, pleading, his eyes dark in his face. When she did not answer, he held her arms and shook her slightly, desperately. “Sybel—”

She covered her eyes with her hands a moment. “It is like a dream. My Tam, I will send him away soon and we will forget him, and it will only have been a dream.”

“Send him away soon.”

“I will.”

He loosed her, quieting. She dropped her hands and saw him suddenly as for the first time: the tallness of him, the promise of breadth in his shoulders, the play of muscles in his arms hard from climbing as he stood tense before her. She whispered, “Soon.”

He gave a little nod Then he walked beside her again, but apart from her this time, nudging pinecones with his bare feet, stopping to peer after hidden scurryings in the bracken. “What will you do about Gyld’s gold?” he said. “Did he get all of it?”

“I doubt it. I shall have to let him fly at night.”

“I will bring it—Nyl and I—”

She smiled suddenly. “Oh, my Tam, you are innocent.”

“Nyl would not take his gold!”

“No, but he would not forget it, either. Gold is a terrible, powerful thing. It is a kingmaker.”

His face turned swiftly. “I do not want to think about that word.” Then he stopped to peer into the hollow of a tree. “Last year there was a nest here with blue eggs... Sybel, I wish I were your son. Then I could talk to Ter Falcon, Cyrin and Gules and no one—no one could take me away.”

“No one will take you. Ter Falcon would not let Coren take you, anyway.”

“What would he do? Kill Coren? He killed for Aer. Would you stop him from it?” he asked suddenly, and she did not answer. “Sybel—”

“Yes!”

“Well, I would want you to,” he said soothingly. “But I wish he had not come. He is—I wish he had not come!”

He ran from her suddenly, swift and quiet as a cat among the high peaks of Eld Mountain. She watched him disappear among the trees, and the autumn winds roared suddenly at his heels. She sat down on a fallen trunk and dropped her head on her knees. A great, soft warmth shielded her from the wind, and she looked up into Gules Lyon’s quiet, golden eyes.

What is it, White One?

She knelt suddenly and flung her arms around his great mane, and buried her face against him.
I wish I had wings to fly and fly and never come back!

What has troubled you, Ogam’s powerful child? What can trouble you? What can such a small one as Coren of Sirle say to touch you?

For a long moment she did not answer. And then she said, her fingers tight around the gold, tangled fur,
He has taken my heart and offered it back to me. And I thought he was harmless.

Sybel sat long among the trees after Gules Lyon had gone. The sky darkened; leaves whirled withered in endless circles about her. The wind was cold as the cold metal of locked books. It came across the snow-capped peak of Eld, down through the wet chill mists to moan in the great trees in her garden. She thought of Tam running bare-armed, barefoot through the sweet summer grass and the tiny wild flowers, shouting at great hawks with the voices of rough mountain children echoing his. Then her thoughts slipped away from her to the silent rooms and towers of wizards she had stolen books from. She had listened to them arguing with one another, watched them working, and then she had smiled and gone quietly away, carrying ancient, priceless books before they had even realized anyone had come.

“What is it you want?” she whispered to herself, helplessly, and then as she spoke, she knew that a Thing without a name watched her from the shadowed trees.

She stood slowly. The wind moved swift, empty past her. She waited in silence, her mind like a still pool waiting for the ripple of another mind. And presently, without a whisper of its leaving, the Thing had gone. She turned slowly, went back into the house. She went to Coren’s room. He turned his head as she came in, and she saw the dark lines of pain beneath his eyes, and his dry mouth. She sat down beside him and felt his face.

“You must not die in my house,” she whispered. “I do not want your voice haunting me in the night.”

“Sybel—”

“You have said everything. Now, listen. I may grow old and withered like a moon in this house, but I will not buy my freedom with Tam’s happiness. I have seen him run across the high meadows shouting, with Ter Falcon on his fist; I have seen him lie late at night, dreaming of nothing with his arms around Moriah and Gules Lyon. I will not go with you to Sirle to see him bewildered, hurt, used by men, given a promise of power that will be empty, exposed to hatred, lies, wars he does not understand. You would make a king of him, but would you love him? You looked into my heart with your strange, seeing eyes and you found some truths there. I am proud and ambitious to use my power to its limits, but I have another to think of besides myself, and that is your doing. And your undoing. So you will leave here, and you will not return.”

She could not read Coren’s eyes as he looked at her. “Drede will come for his son. There was an old woman of his court, a highborn lady who swore that Rianna and Norrel never had a moment of privacy—never more than a moment. She tried to help them—they plotted again and again for a single day of privacy—half a night—but always something, someone forestalled them. We took the child at its birth, afraid for its life, and the old woman thought we might kill it if she told the truth, that it was Drede’s son. Drede’s second wife died childless; he is aging, desperate for an heir, and the woman learned somehow that the child was alive and we did not have it at Sirle. So she told Drede the truth, and now he has a fragile hope. He knows that long ago one of Rianna’s family wed a wizard living high in Eld Mountain where few men ever go. What will you do when he comes for his son?”

She shifted uneasily. “That is not your concern.”

“Drede is a hard, bitter man. He has long forgotten how to love. There are cold rooms at Mondor he has ready for Tam, a house filled with suspicious, fearful men.”

“There are ways to keep Drede out of my house.”

“How will you keep the thought of Drede out of Tam’s heart? One way or another, Sybel, the world will reach out to that boy.”

She drew a breath, let it wither away from her. “Why did you come, bringing me such news? You told me to love Tam. I did. And now you tell me to stop. Well, I will not stop for Rok, or Drede, or for the sake of your hatred. You will have to breed your hate in some other place, not in my house, lying in Ogam’s bed.”

Coren made a little futile gesture with his hand. “Then guard him carefully, for I am not the only one seeking him. I told Rok you would not come, but he sent me anyway. I did my best.” His eyes slid to her face. “I am sorry you will not come.”

“No doubt.”

“I am sorry, too, that what I said hurt you. Will you forgive me?”