Thayne gazed at the dragon, wondering which son his father saw: the one who stood before him, or the paper knight endlessly riding toward the tower. He turned to the harper again.
“How do you know—”
“I know,” she said, and he saw the memory of dragon in her eyes. “I am the Bard of Skye.” She raised her harp again, released a handful of sweet and haunting notes. “It’s a tale,” she said, “and it is true. Real and dream.”
“Which?” he asked harshly, and knew her answer before she spoke.
“Both.”
“It’s gold I need for the North Islands. To eat, to wear, to build our boats—we’re already rich in dreams.” He did not say the word for war; it hovered in the air between them like an unplayed note.
“I know some tales of the North Islands,” she said thoughtfully, and plucked a single string, as if to begin one. It ended there, on a dying note. “There was magic here, in Ferle Ysse’s time.”
“A tale.”
“Or true?” She raised her eyes; they held the expression she must have carried in her since she had watched the world begin. Behind her, his father was smiling, too, the familiar, wolfish, invincible smile that Thayne had not seen in seven years.
“Thayne,” he said. “Go and bring that dragon’s gold to Ysse.”
Thayne started to speak, stopped. Wonder swept like a wave through his heart at the name his father had given him. It seemed no longer the man he was, but the Lord of Ysse he might become. He turned, before he had to watch the smile fray apart into bewilderment, and went back down the tower steps, feeling his way in the dark. Crossing the yard, he smelled the mainland again, saw it crouched in the night across the narrow channel like some vast beast, its eye turned sleeplessly to the scattering of islands beyond its shore, its breath waiting to flame, its upraised claw to strike at any movement from the North Islands.
He heard himself whisper, “A dragon to fight a dragon.”
He felt something fierce, dangerous, as magical as hope rouse within him at the word, and he walked out of the gates to the sea.
Five
Melanthos saw the woman in the tower. She sat in light on an ornate chair covered with carved lions’ heads and roses. Melanthos could not see her face, only the white-gold hair that rippled down her back. She worked at a picture in thread on a broad round frame on a stand in front of her. From one side of the frame hung folds and swathes of unworked linen; from the other, transformed on its journey across the frame, bright images painted in thread poured down and piled on the stones.
Melanthos, kneeling in her own tower among her swirls of threads, stared, transfixed, at the vision.
The room seemed large; the window, its casement of colored glass open, was broad enough to sit in and look out. But the woman did not look at the world. She looked instead at the great round mirror angled across the window ledge to catch the scenes below. As she watched, her needle flashed ceaselessly, quickly. She paused only to replace one needle with another from a long row of them pinned to one side of the frame, trailing different colors down the unworked linen.
Melanthos’s eyes slid warily to the mirror. But she did not find herself there, watching the woman in another mirror within another tower. She saw lilies massed against the tower wall, a shallow river flowing past them, a road beyond the trees along the riverbank, and on the other side of the trees, furrowed fields beginning to flush green. A man rode through the mirror, too vague, translated between mirrors, for Melanthos to see clearly. Silver flared like the glance of light off armor. The woman’s hand rested briefly on the linen; her head turned very slightly toward the open casement.
She bent over her work again, her long hair trailing over her shoulder, shielding her eyes from the world.
Melanthos, her breath stopped as if the woman in the mirror might hear her, reached soundlessly for threads.
Six
Cyan Dag lost count of days and nights as he traveled west. He rode through sun and moon, wind and rain, and snow-white flurries of apple blossom without noticing them, as if, intent on Skye, he had already left the world he knew. Skye could be found as far west as one could ride without falling into the sea. How far that was, no one seemed certain. Seven days, he was told. Weeks. It depended, he was told, but on what it depended varied: the direction of the wind, perhaps, or the phase of the moon. He set his face to the path of the falling sun and continued his journey as methodically and relentlessly as he fought. If the sun set before he found a bed, then he slept where he stopped. If a road west took him across a mountain pass as narrow as a blade and so high he felt the cold starlight in his hair, he crossed it. Having left Gloinmere so quickly, he had taken little of anything with him, clothes, money, or arms. Sometimes innkeepers recognized the towers on his surcoat and gave him a bed for the sake of his name. Other times they bound him with a deed: a demand for justice, a rescue, a plea for mercy, or, when that failed, a battle. He did all that he was asked in the king’s name, and directed all gratitude and tributes back to Gloinmere. Sometimes, late at night, the lady’s eyes cut through his dreams, small and pupilless and ancient as stone. He would wake to find himself on his feet, sword in hand, searching for her shadow in the dark, while disturbed animals or other travelers edged nervously away from him. She haunted his dreams as if she searched for him, the knight who had seen her secret face, to snare him before he dragged her into light.
He thought she had found him one day. He stopped to seek a bed at a crazed inn beside the road he followed. The road ran west into a deep forest not far from the inn, and disappeared from view. The inn was a hunched, soot-blackened place with sagging floors and crooked lintels. He barely noticed such details; his journey west left him sleeping under a tree as often as not. But, he did notice the silence. Only one man sat at the hearth, making his way stolidly through what smelled like a bowl of scorched stew. At the sight of the armed knight walking in the door, he rose hastily, and Cyan saw the greasy, beer-stained apron he wore.
“My lord knight,” he exclaimed.
“My name is Cyan Dag.”
“My lord Cyan Dag—” He wiped his hands on the apron, then clutched Cyan’s arm as if the knight might change his mind and flee. “Have you come through that forest?”
Cyan shook his head, recognizing fear in the bloodshot eyes. “I’m riding west from Gloinmere. Are you the innkeeper?”
The innkeeper, a burly man as bald as an egg, loosed Cyan long enough to wipe the sweat off his head. “I am,” he said grimly. “You are the first traveler I have seen in three days. My lord, there is an evil in that forest. It will not let anyone pass without injury, and it’s frightening everyone away. You’ll be in peril if you continue on this road.”
Cyan was silent, trying to see the forest out of the thick, smoke-charred ovals of glass in a casement. He gave up. “I’m on my way to Skye,” he answered slowly, wondering if what troubled the forest had been waiting all these weeks, for him. “Skye lies west, so I ride west. If the road west goes through that forest, then so do I.”
The innkeeper sighed in relief. “You are a brave man, sir knight. If you choose to fight the evil in the forest, I will give you my softest bed, and whatever I have to eat and drink. Which is not much,” he admitted. “But the best I have, you will have.”
Cyan detached himself from the innkeeper’s hold and went to the door. The great, dark trees, blurred with dusk, might have been painted, they stood so silently. The road ran across a meadow to the edge of the forest, and then shadow swallowed it; he could see nothing beyond the night within.