Krull. Part 14

He did not turn away. This was not the time for turning away. But the memory was still painful. Let her take some solace from my pain, he thought. I too have suffered. Loneliness is a poor companion.

"I could not. You know that, Lyssa. There were many responsibilities, duties."

"Ambition," she said tightly.

"It had nothing to do with ambition. Perhaps I was too forceful at times in expressing my hopes for the future. Some might interpret that as ambition. But for myself I wished nothing." He smiled gently. "And as you can see by my appearance, that is precisely what I have gained. There were more important things to attend to.

The fate of Krull was placed in my hands."

"Ambition," she reiterated stubbornly.

"Is it ambition that one should wish to see Krull restored to its rightful place? Is it ambition that makes me sorrow as I watch the Slayers ravage quiet towns and villages and murder for pleasure? Is it ambition that I should want to see men rule their own lives and determine their own destinies instead of leaving them to the whims of the Beast?''

"You make it sound so n.o.ble," she murmured. "So inevitable. As if you never had a choice." Her eyes flashed and beneath the age and the exhaustion and the bitterness there was a hint of the woman who had been. "You had a choice. Every man has a choice. As for me, I grew tired of waiting. I despaired of you, Ynyr."

"Great things can come to pa.s.s only if one exercises patience and caution."

"Love does not make room for patience and caution. It burns wild for an instant and if not captured, it dies."

"Do you think I don't know that? Do you think that while dreaming all my dreams and planning all my plans, I didn't think of that? Of you? My life has been as lonely as yours. Knowledge is little comfort on a cold night. I have lived a life as solitary as your own, without wife or children. You see, Lyssa, though I encountered many women from many lands who came to learn from me, you and I were too much alike. None of them was"-his smile twisted-"suitable."

She turned away from him. "You were not as alone as you believe. You had a son."

Here was the thing he'd feared most, the thing he had not prepared for, could not prepare for. No wonder her greeting had been so much harsher than he'd antic.i.p.ated.

"You said nothing. You told me nothing. You let me leave in ignorance."

"I would not use such a thing to place a hold on you, Ynyr. There is no place in true love for such manipulation. I was alone when you left. I was alone!"

She gestured weakly toward the woven bed.

"I killed him."

"You killed our son?"

"I killed him at birth. I was angry, mad with anger at you and what you'd done to me. I could not strike at you, so I struck at him. With him went the last vestige of my hope and my humanity." She gestured at the silken prison that enclosed them. "I know you cannot forgive me.

"This small room is my life now, my life and my punishment, and the web-spinner is my jailer. I am left only with wisdom I cannot use. Men come in hopes of stealing it. They leave the mouth of the cave in terror. Those who try to enter never leave at all."

She bent over the table. For the first time in many years, she cried, though whether the tears were for herself, for her slain son, or for what might have been, Ynyr could not say.

He reached out to her, touched her gently.

"I cannot forgive myself. I have already forgiven you. I did what I felt had to be done. .. but if I'd known it would cause you this life of pain..."

"It matters not. You cannot forgive a woman who has killed your son."57 There was a small mirror nearby. The effort cost Ynyr some of his remaining strength, but he could feel the surge of love rising from deep within, reaching out to her.

"If I had not already forgiven you, Lyssa, how could I see you now as you were then?"

She changed as he stared, the wrinkles fading, the old Lyssa brought back momentarily through the power of love.

She looked at the gla.s.s, wiping at her eyes, and marveled at the image of the exquisite woman that lived for an instant in the shifting silica.

"You allow me to see back through time through your eyes. I had almost forgotten. I was beautiful, wasn't I?"

"Beyond compare." He fought to keep his emotions in check while holding the projection. "How could I have left you! Perhaps I deceived myself, perhaps I was afraid." The effort was too much. The mirror image rippled, became a true reflection of the woman gazing into its depths.

She reached across the table and for the first time her tone was comforting.

"Poor Ynyr. You have suffered too, haven't you? You told the truth in that."

"I always told you the truth, Lyssa."

"And I would not let myself believe that anything could be more important than our lives together. Blindness and ambition. Fate has not been kind to us." She nodded at the mirror. "Your vision was a gift to me. I know what it has cost you and I thank you for it. My memory weakens with age. I too had forgotten much."

"Your vision can be a gift to me, Lyssa. You are the finest seer Krull has ever produced."

"That is why so many continue to seek me despite the depradations of my guardian, and why they would make use of my talent against my wishes."

"It is that and more that I seek to prevent, for there is another of power who is to be used against her will."

From anger to sorrow the widow's emotions changed to curiosity. "What can I see for you, Ynyr?"

"I need to know where the Black Fortress will rise tomorrow."

"Useless, dangerous knowledge."

"I need to know."

For a terrible instant he thought her old anger would overcome her again, but her voice stayed calm, her expression benign. "No. Time enough to dwell on half-forgotten dreams. Perhaps it is time for all dreams and furies to end. You still hope to work something against the Beast?" He nodded and she shook her head sadly.

"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."58 Ynyr glanced at the hourgla.s.s. 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 hourgla.s.s.

"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 hourgla.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 coc.o.o.n 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 he59 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 coc.o.o.n 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 ba.s.so 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 a.s.sistant, 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.

"You don't sleep."

"No, I don't sleep, Colwyn. They all told me that I should call you Colwyn and not sire."

He smiled. "I prefer it that way. t.i.tles make me nervous. A t.i.tle has no personality. There's nothing to it save a thread to an uncertain past. I'd far rather be considered a man than a t.i.tle. I've always considered them suitable for those who have no confidence in their real names and need something artificial to subst.i.tute for their real selves."

"I'm not sure I understand."

He remembered whom he was talking with. "It doesn't matter." He saw that she was working to hide her face from him and he moved nearer. "What troubles you?"

"Nothing troubles me, si-Colwyn."

"Your mouth says one thing, the rest of your face another. Tell me."

She looked up reluctantly, her voice subdued. "I was betrothed to a young man from my village. We were to be married this summer. But he traveled across the sea and his ship was lost. They say he drowned with the rest of his crew, but I don't believe it. I know he is alive. I know he will come back to me."

Colwyn rested a comforting hand on her shoulder. It was warm, softer than he expected. Perhaps she was not as bony as she looked.

"That's a good way to think. Always think positively, my father told me. It helps the digestion if nothing else."

Her hand reached up to touch his, the fingers moving slowly, gently. "It's hard being far from the one you love, not knowing if you'll ever see him again."

"Yes, it is hard."

She faced him squarely. "Some say that I shall be alone forever if my betrothed does not return."

"I'm sure that's not so."

"Merith keeps me working the cook-fires and the garbage to keep me from looking pretty."