“He says—” He . stopped, swallowing. “He says I am the son of the King of Eldwold.”
Sybel stood still beside the door, while a hot flash of sorrow welled in her and broke and died away. She said softly,
“My Tam, leave him for a while. He must rest.”
Tam rose, his eyes clinging to her face. “He says—is it true? He says— You never told me such a thing.”
She reached out to him, touched his brown face. “Tam, I will talk to you in a while. But I cannot now. Please.”
He left them closing the door quietly behind him. She sat down on the chair beside the bed and covered her face with her hands. She whispered finally into her palms,
“You told me to love him. So I did, like I have loved nothing else in my world. And now you want to take him from me, to use him in your war games. Tell me now: which of us has the heart of ice?”
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.”