“He came here,” Truas said. “Saw him on the bridge.”
Orffa showed teeth. “Why didn’t you speak up before, thickhead—or were you so gagged with the dirty wool you couldn’t?”
“Here now,” Tristy answered before his brother. He still held the bloody knife he had been using on Hurten’s kill. “What’s gotten into you, Orffa?”
“Orffa?” He made a near threat of his own name. “Who are you to name me so familiarly, beast-keeper? I am of the blood of Ruran who was lord—”
“Stop!” Lethe’s staff was between the boys. Her eyes had narrowed as she looked from one furious scowl to another. “You saw Robar come here? Then let us find him.” Either the tone of her voice or some effect of the staff brought them together again—temporarily.
“We’ll search—” Hurten agreed.
“Perhaps there is no need to go far.” Lethe beckoned to Lusta and asked, “Which of those boxes of nuts there did Robar fill?”
Lusta shivered, and her hands whipped behind her back. “No! No!” She turned her head from side to side, like a small trapped animal gnawed by fear.
“Yes!” There was no escaping that order.
Lusta’s right arm moved outward, her fingers hooked like claws. She was staring down at the array of the morning’s harvest with fear-rounded eyes. Her hand swung, steadied over one of those containers.
Instantly Lethe raised the staff and touched the crude basket.
She had their full attention now, their quarreling forgotten. Her grip on the staff was loose enough to allow it play, swing of its own accord. She followed that direction, the others close behind her.
Back into the presence chamber—to the wall of the hidden room. She had been a fool to underestimate this other power. That early scene with Robar in there—why had she been so blind?
She strove within her to trace, to know—
“There must be all of you here. Find Marsila—Alana—”
Lethe did not look to see if she had been obeyed, but she heard the shuffle of badly worn boots across the hall.
“Lady.” Lusta had crept to her side. “Lady I am afraid—I cannot—I do not know what you would have me do.”
“Nor do I know yet what has to be done, child. As for can and cannot, Lusta, that will wait upon what we learn.”
She fought within her to set aside all the lives about her, to think only in terms of her weapon—no blade nor axe, spear nor bow, only what was her own. As she wove life, so now she must weave another sort of web, one to be both defense and trap.
“Robar! Please.” There was a tug at her arm. “Is Robar truly here?” Lethe looked around quickly—not only Alana was here, but all the rest.
She began a chant, the words issuing stiffly from her lips as if it were so long since they had been used that they had grown as rusty as untended armor. Once more the concealed door opened.
Around them the globe lights dimmed as if their radiance was being sucked out of them.
Lethe threw out her arm to catch Alana, who would have darted before her.
“Robar!” his sister screamed, and then her voice was muffled, for which Lethe was briefly grateful.
The light of the staff flared. In the armory a shadow sprang forth from shadows—and the light caught on a bared blade.
Lethe’s weapon swung down between her body and that intended blow. Robar crouched. His face was not that of a child. That which had entered him had molded his features, was blazing from his eyes.
The staff swung, pointed. Sparks formed into a tongue of light, but that was fended, curled back, before it touched the child.
“Join!” Lethe’s other hand moved as her voice rose above the insane shrieks from the small figure before her. Spittle flecked from his lips. Dread intelligence stared grimly and grotesquely from his eyes.
“Join!” Her free hand was gripped, she felt the surge of energy, then came a second and a third—that which had first brought them together was still in force.
The staff warmed. The thread of solid light from it was still held away from Robar, but the space was less and less.
“You are Robar!” Lethe called upon the power that lay in names. “You are one with this company. You are Robar!”
Small lips twisted into a sneer.
“Fratch!”
Lethe was prepared. That challenger name did not surprise her. As there were the weavers among the kin, so there had been destroyers. But time was long, and that which destroyed never grew without feeding. Had it been the invaders who had fed this one awake again?
“You are Robar!”
She sought the Touch, to seek out, to shift one personality from another. The light spear was now less than a finger-width from the grimacing child.
“Robar!” That was meant as a call, a summoning. At the same time she drew deeper on the energy fed her by the others.
The light touched the child’s forehead. His features writhed and he howled, a cry no human could have uttered. Then—it was as if something that had been confined in too small a prisoning burst forth.
Robar fell like a crumpled twist of harvest grain. Above his body wavered a mist into which bored the spear of light. Then the mist spiraled downward upon itself until it was but a grey blot which the blue bolt licked into nothingness.
“Robar!” Alana threw herself at her brother, pulling him close, twisting her own body about him as if to wall him from all harm.
“What—what happened, Lady?” Tyffan asked hoarsely.
“That was a shadow, of something which should have died long ago.” Lethe tried to take a step and tottered.
Strong young arms closed about her as Hurten and Marsila moved in. “A shadow of a will. First it tried to fasten onto Lusta, for her gift offered it power. Then it turned to Robar because he was too young to have those safeguards which come through living. Fratch—Styreon who was”—she addressed the empty air—“you were ever greedy for that which was not yours—nor shall it ever be!”
They went out of the armory, Orffa carrying Robar, who lay limp in his arms, Alana seemingly content to have it so. Marsila and Hurten kept their hold on Lethe, the end of her staff dragging on the floor, though she still kept it within her grasp.
Here was the table on which lay the banner. What was to be done was clear now, and the sooner done the better. Lethe spoke to Lusta:
“This is a beginning. Sister, take your dagger, that which is of the great forging, and not made of fatal iron, and cut from the head of each of these comrade-kin of yours a lock.”
They asked no questions, and submitted to Lusta’s knife. For the first time Lethe set aside her staff. From her belt purse she brought forth a large needle, which glistened gold in the light. This she threaded with a strand of hair and set about weaving it into the webbing as one would darn a very old and precious thing. So she did again and again as they watched. And with each new strand she repeated aloud the name of him or her to which it had belonged, forming so a chant.
Thus Lethe wrought in moments lifted out of time, for none spoke nor moved, only watched. When she was done they looked upon a length of silver-gold on which faint patterns formed, changed, reformed, growing ever the stronger.
Lethe withdrew her needle. “One is combined of many, even as you united in your flight out of death, as you gave me of your strength to free Robar—you are indeed one.
“But from that one weaving there will come much which is to be welcomed—and time will welcome it and you.”
It is told that in the fell days when the Ka-sati had laid totally waste the land and those of the barbarian blood would raise a temple to the Eternal Darkness, there came a company out of the northern hills, riding under a banner bearing nine stripes of gold. Those who bore it were of the blood of legends and what they wrought was to the glory of earth and sky, flood and flame—the darkness being utterly blinded by their light.