"Poor Ynyr. Always the hopeful dreamer."
"Then leave me this dream to follow to its end, Lyssa. Help me. Help me to help the girl. She has been carried off and awaits the attentions of the Beast. You know what that would mean. The location of the Black Fortress on the morrow?''
She sighed. "How well I remember that relentless sense of purpose. I was a weak diversion for you at best, Ynyr. You are a fanatic when it comes to the pursuit of knowledge. Perhaps your cause is worthy, but I doubt it.
"Still, I will tell you what you wish to know. Your Fortress will materialize in the Iron Desert. But the knowledge is useless to you and those who travel with you, for you cannot leave here to impart it to them. Many have come, a few have entered, but no man has escaped the web."
"Somehow I must do so. The young girl I refer to who is being held in the Fortress has your name. There is much else of you in her." He recited a genealogy he knew she could not ignore.
"You lie!" She rose from her chair and backed away from him, staring wide-eyed.
He walked slowly around the table and gently caressed a withered cheek. "Could I lie to you? I tell the truth now, as always. A young man seeks her. A young man the same age I was when you and I met. When you and I loved. He has much of me in him, though he knows not where it came from. In these two lovers all the planning comes to fruition, Lyssa. The Beast suspects and has drawn one of them into his lair. For there to be any chance of success in this matter her man must reach her before she is corrupted by the Beast. That is her last chance, and his—and Krulls. Help me, Lyssa. Help me to help them."
Still stunned by his words and what they implied she turned away from him. "Would that I might, but what you require is beyond my power."
Ynyr glanced at the hourglass. Of itself it was nothing: a transparent figure-eight filled with fine sand. What it stood for was everything.
Lyssa followed his gaze. "It may be turned only once. That is the law of the web." Her hand went to her forehead. "It would take a year before I could turn it safely again. I do not possess the resources to turn it twice in the same night."
"Then there is nothing more to be done, is there? The other Lyssa will suffer our fate. She will grow old alone, in a place of darkness. If she is that fortunate. I shudder at the Beast's ultimate intentions.
"Nor will she live alone in her suffering. This whole world will become a place of darkness, of figures scurrying about in holes in the rocks, like your many-legged jailer. It will not be a world of men but of frightened, furitive creatures unable to face the light of day. Krull will enter a long night of fear and savagery."
Lyssa let the resultant silence fill the silken chamber. Then she turned to pick up the hourglass.
"These are the sands of my life, not of Krull's. If you carry them with you, the spider will have no power to harm you, but your own life will run out with the sand, for I will have to draw upon it as well as my own."
"I promised my life to this cause. I have no fear of sacrificing it now. But what of your life? You've made no such promise."
She did not meet his eyes. "I am tired, Ynyr. Seeing you again has made me realize how tired I really am."
"I'm sorry. That was not my purpose in coming to you."
She smiled gently. "I know that. As for my life, such as remains of it, I give it freely to the girl who bears my name and perhaps a little more of me than that, if all that you tell me is truth."
"It would be simple to lie now, and in good cause. But I cannot. I have told nothing but the truth since I set eyes on you, Lyssa."
Before he could move to intervene she slammed the hourglass against the table's edge. It broke like an egg.
Ynyr eyed the shattered instrument uncertainly, backing away. "I have said that I would give my own life, but I cannot take yours."
"It is too late, Ynyr. The decision is done. Already I have set in motion the restraints that will hold back the spider."
"No." He continued to back away from her. This was not how he'd wanted it to turn out. "I cannot take it."
"You must. By your own words, you must. You are hung by your own logic, Ynyr, and not for the first time. It is proper that our passing be presided over by such irony. We did not live long together, but if there is another life I will find you there.
"As for the girl, for all your confident talk I do not see how she and any man can prevail against the Beast, but at least if she is rescued she may live the life I lost long ago." She held out a double handful of sand to him.
"Hurry now, or this too will be wasted." Her face showed the strain she was under.
"For the life we lost." Ynyr approached and took the sand from her. He clenched his fist tight around the warm grains, a symbolic gesture of union. The sand, like their lives, began to trickle out through his fingers.
His hand went to his head but did nothing to alleviate the pounding that had begun there. Lyssa was hard at work.
"I cannot stop the sand," he told her.
"You can't stop time, Ynyr. I know. I've tried." She closed her eyes as if in sudden pain, felt for a chair and sat down heavily. Her face was flushed with the effort she was making and a vein throbbed in her neck. "Go now, while there is still time. Save the other Lyssa."
He backed out of the cocoon and as he did so it seemed that his last sight of the chamber was not of an old woman slumped over a table but of a lithe, delicate young girl. Then he wrenched his gaze away and started out across the web.
The spider was there, waiting for him, but confused and uncertain. It moved toward him and Ynyr held up his clenched fist, as though the sight of the sand itself would turn the monster. Whether it was the sand or something unseen, the spider suddenly halted, once again frozen in place by an unseen power.
He hurried down the sticky cables, his progress impeded by the sand he clutched tightly in his right hand. He would have cast it aside save that it was all that remained to him of Lyssa.
Even so, some of it fell from his fingers with each step he took, jostled as he was by the awkward descent.
Only when he'd reached the entrance to the cave did he pause to look back. The spider had gone berserk. It ripped and tore at the laboriously constructed web, the peculiar bond that had held it in check now abruptly broken. The cocoon did not survive the rampage. When it fell beneath the spider's onslaught, Ynyr's eyes dropped to the sand that slipped steadily through his fingers.
No time now for recriminations or regrets, he told himself firmly. No time to lament what might have been or to wonder if another path might have been the better one. Little time left now for anything. He staggered out of the cave, putting memories and the sounds of destruction behind him. The pain in his head had grown much worse. He knew he had to reach Colwyn before the sand ran out. It was a marker, a guide, a timekeeper. Something was slipping from him, something Lyssa had been forced to make use of.
United at last, he thought calmly. We were not strong enough, Lyssa and I. The Beast never feared us. But it fears Colwyn and Lyssa.
That thought gave him a burst of energy, helped to drive him wildly down the rocky path toward the giant forest at the base of the mountain. Lyssa and Ynyr were not to be. , Colwyn and Lyssa must be!
Colwyn stood by the same tree, staring at the flank of the mountain. It was very late or very early, depending on how a man chose to reckon time, and he was growing sleepy despite his resolve to remain alert. A few snores reached him from the direction of the encampment, Torquil's sharp basso rising above them all.
He turned and rubbed at his eyes. As he opened them again, he was surprised to see the young woman… Merith's assistant, she was—yes, that was right—still seated nearby, eyeing him closely. As soon as she noticed his eyes on her, she looked away and down.