“But I probably will not. Anyway, if I want you, I can call you, and you will come without choice.”
He sighed. He said patiently, “I choose to come. It makes a difference.”
“Does it?” Then her eyes curved slightly in a smile. “Go home to your world of the living, Coren. That is where you belong. I can take care of myself.”
“Perhaps.” He gathered the reins in his hands, turned his mount toward the road that wound downward to Mondor. Then he looked back at her, his eyes the color of clear mountain water. “But one day you will find out how good it is to have someone who chooses to come when you call.”
THREE
The winter closed around them with a cold, strong grip. Great peaks of snow drifted against the house; the swan lake froze until it lay like the crystal face of the moon amid the snow. Ice ran in bars across the windows of the white hall, dropped downward in frozen tears before the door. The animals came and went freely through the warm house, found dark, silent places among the rocks to sleep. Gyld slept curled over his gold; the black Cat Moriah spent long hours drowsing dark and dreaming beside Sybel’s fire. Sybel worked in the silent domed room, reading, calling through the black, fiery skies, through moon-colored day skies for the Liralen. She sent her calls, searching and sensitive, across the whole of Eldwold, southward into the deserts, to the Fyrbolg marshes in the east, and the Mirkon Forest in the north, and the silent, unexplored lake-lands far beyond the rich lands of the Niccon Lords in North Eldwold. Silence answered her always, and patiently she would call again. Tam moved through the winter oblivious of it, spending days away in the small stone cottages tucked in the curves of the mountain, or lying long and silent with his arm across Gules, staring into the green fire, or hunting with Ter on his arm. He came one morning in midwinter to the domed room and found Sybel still motionless on its floor, after a long night of calling. He knelt beside her and touched her. She came back to herself with a start.
“My Tam, what is it?”
“Nothing,” he said a little wistfully. “Only I have not seen you for days. I thought you might wonder where I was.”
She rubbed her eyes with her palms. “Oh. Well. What have you been doing? Have you been with Nyl?”
“Yes. I help him feed the sheep. Yesterday we mended a fence that fell beneath a snowdrift, and then I took Ter into the caves. They seem so warm in winter. And then… Sybel…” She watched him, waiting, as he frowned at the floor, rubbing his hands up and down his thighs. “I told—I told Nyl about Coren and what he—what he said—and Nyl said—if he were a king’s son he would not live up here feeding sheep and running barefoot in the summer. And then—for a while—it was hard for him to talk to me. But tomorrow we are going to the caves again.”
Sybel sighed. She rested her head on her bent knees, silent awhile. “Oh, I am tired of all this. Tam, have you told anyone but Nyl?”
“No. Only Ter.”
“Then make Nyl promise he will tell no one. Because others might come for you, try to take you away whether you want to go or not. They may try to hurt you, those that do not want to have you king. Tell Nyl that. Tell him to answer no questions of any man he does not know. Will you?”
He nodded. Then he said softly, looking; at her, “Sybel, would my father come for me?”
“Perhaps. Do you want him to come?”
“I think—I think I would like to see him. Sybel—”
“What?”
“Is it such a bad thing to be?” he whispered. “Is it?”
She sighed again, her fingers twisting absently through her long hair. “Oh, if you were older… It is not a bad thing, itself, but it is a bad thing to be used by men, to have them choose what you must be, and what you must not be, to have little choice in your life. If you were older, you could choose your own way. But you are so young and you know so little of men—and I know so little more.” She drew a breath. “Tam, do you want this thing?”
He shook his head quickly. “I do not want to leave you and the animals.” He paused a moment, quiet, his eyes vague as though he looked into himself. “But Nyl—his eyes went so round when I told him, like owl’s eyes. And I felt strange to myself. I would like to see my father.” His eyes slid to her face. “You could call him for me. He would not have to know me; I could just see him—see what he looks like—”
She touched her eyes lightly with her fingertips, aware of Tam’s eyes, intent, hopeful on her face. “If I call him,” she said, “it may be that you will have no choice as to whether you stay or go.”
“He will not know it is me! I will pretend to be Nyl’s brother—Look at me, Sybel! How could he know I am his son?”
“And if he sees your mother in your face? My Tam, he would look once into your bright, hoping eyes and they would tell him more than the color of your hair or the shape of your face.” She rose. Tam caught her arm.
“Please, Sybel,” he whispered. “Please.”
So she called the King of Eldwold that morning in his warm house with its floors covered with rich furs and walls shimmering with ancient, embroidered tales. Three days later he rode with two men through the crusted snow, dark, small figures like brown withered leaves against the white earth. The wind lay frozen in the ice-sheathed branches; their breaths hung in a white mist before their faces. They rode slowly on the winding path upward from the city. Sybel watched them come from her high place as they moved in and out of the trees. She felt the King’s mind, powerful and restless, like Ter’s mind, filled with the fragment memories of faces, events, with war lust and love, with the cold, black stone of jealousy and the iron core of loneliness and fear like a white, chill, perpetual mist in the corner of his mind. When he neared her, she sent a call to Ter, flying with Tam, to bring him back.
Cyrin brought the message of their coming to her gates. He walked beside her through the snow, his broad back heavily bristled in a silver-white winter cloak.
I saw a man once leap into a pit to see how deep it was, he commented. But no doubt you are wiser.
Sybel shook her head. I am not wise where Tam is concerned.
It is an easy thing to call a man into your house, but not so easy to have him leave.
I know. Do you think I do not know? But Tam wants to see his father.
She opened the gates of her yard and stepped out to meet the three horsemen.
“Are you the wizard woman, Sybel?” the King of Eldwold said to her. He looked down at her from his black horse, his gloved hands resting on its neck. He was dark-cloaked, simply dressed, as were the two men with him, but she looked into his gray, weary eyes with the web of lines beneath them, and at the relentless stillness of his mouth, and the helm of gray hair on his head, and saw only him.
“I am Sybel.”
He was silent a moment, and she could not read the thoughts in his eyes. He dismounted and stood with his reins in his hands, his voice hushed in the great still world.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked curiously. She smiled a little.
“Do you want me to say your name aloud?”
He shook his head quickly. “No.” And then he smiled, too, the lines gathering at the corners of his eyes. “You have a little of—of my first wife in your face. You were kin. You know that, of course.”
“I know. But I know little else of her family—indeed of anyone living off this mountain. I have nothing to do with men’s affairs.”
“But that is difficult for me to believe. You would have great power meddling in men’s affairs, especially in these troubled days. Has no man ever offered you that power?”
“Are you offering it to me? Is that why you have come up the mountain in midwinter?”
He was silent again, his eyes wandering over her. “Do they not consult you, people from the city—buy little spells, favors from you to heal their children or cows, perhaps? Ease a little life out of a rich kinsman? Seduce a weary husband?”