‘I do,’ I whispered, drawing back at last from his mind to look at him, lying beside me in the ruddy fire glow. ‘I do so love you.’
His eyes opened and I was so much awash with his memories that it seemed to me I was him looking at me. I saw in his face the same confused wonder, for even as I had entered his mind, knowing him, so he had entered mine, knowing me.
‘You were forbidden to tell anyone about your quest,’ he said.
‘I did not tell you anything,’ I answered calmly.
He reached up to the chair and dragged a rug down, spreading it over us, asking, ‘Jik’s dog will come for you?’
I nodded, paused. ‘I don’t know. I always supposed he was to be a sign but why would I need one when I am intending to go to the Red Land without anyone summoning me?’ How wonderfully, strangely natural it was to speak of such things to him. ‘Maybe Darga is in Sutrium already or even in the Red Land, though I don’t know how that can be, unless he went on one of Salamander’s ships. I suppose he might have followed the Druid’s people who survived and were sold as slaves by Ariel after Jik was killed.’
‘He might be somewhere else,’ Rushton said. ‘After all, you do not know for certain that Sentinel is in the Red Land.’
‘I don’t,’ I agreed. ‘I think I will find out when I come to the Red Land. Maybe it is Darga’s task to help me learn the exact location of Sentinel.’
‘It is incredible to think there is knowledge you need in Dragon’s mind, planted there by a woman born long before either you or Dragon lived, and that she was working with my ancestor, Hannah. Working with her and planning for your coming.’
‘You think she really was your ancestor?’ I asked.
‘Adding what you know to what I know, I think there is no doubt in it. She was the one my mother called the Moonwatcher, whom gypsies befriended. Perhaps there is mention of her in their ancient promises, for how else could they know of her? She must have returned to the Land somehow, and while it seems tragic that no more than a poisoned mountain range prevented her returning to Obernewtyn, I would never have been born if she had not settled and bonded to some man. Indeed, she might have tried to reach Obernewtyn anyway, if she had been able to find one of the Beforetime safesuits. In the end, from what my mother told me of her, she went without it.’
‘It is very strange to think that Hannah’s blood is your blood through your mother, and that Michael Seraphim, who fell in love with her, was living at Obernewtyn where Hannah had longed to go. Rushton, I wish I could have told you …’ I began, but he laid his finger over my lips, silencing me.
‘You do not need to explain or apologise to me,’ he said. ‘I know everything now, including how you mean to keep your secret and why it must be kept. I console myself with the knowledge that I will one day remember all of the things I came to know this night.’
It was not a question, but I nodded, keenly aware that he had not once spoken of the fact that I would have to leave him, though he knew it now. But what was there to say? He knew I loved him and that I had no choice. We lay quiet for a long time, our bodies clasped loosely as two hands in repose. But when the rain stopped Rushton sighed, and bade me do what had to be done. I stopped the words with kisses and gave way finally without restraint to the hunger and desperation that welled up in me at the knowledge that every parting now was a foreshadowing of what was to come.
At last he drew back and there was compassion in his eyes as well as sadness. ‘You have carried a terrible burden these long years. I only wish I could help you bear it in the days to come. I envy Gahltha and Maruman their roles as your guardians and confidants but I can also see that if I had known, Ariel would have taken that knowledge from me. Be careful of him, my love.’ Without waiting for me to respond, he pulled me in to his chest and held me close. I listened to the slow, strong beat of his heart and the rigid unhappiness eased in me until I relaxed into his embrace.
‘Do it now,’ he whispered. ‘Only let me remember loving you.’
I reached out with my mind and coerced him, unresisting, into sleep. Closing my own eyes I dropped like a stone through the levels of my mind until I hung above the silver mindstream, caught perfectly between the need to rise to consciousness that was the will to selfhood and the downward pull of ultimate unconsciousness that was an abandonment of self. I gathered my will and coerced a tendril of the stream, drawing it to me and rising with it to consciousness. I willed it to flow through me and let it pool. When I had shaped it, I let myself flow along the silver strand that linked me to the spirit-form and opened my eyes. Immediately I felt the tingle of my spirit-form about me.
All that I would have seen with waking eyes was dull to my spirit-eyes. The hut and its simple furnishings were grey or brownish black, being made from material that had no life, though the fire had a strange orange and gold aura that blazed and leapt wildly about the flames of its physical form. Through the window, the sky swirled and churned and coiled like some fantastical stormy sea of violet and indigo, and under it the mountains were the simple brown of dead stone, though I was startled to see there were hazy green and yellow streaks that wavered and floated over their material counterparts. Curiosity drew me to the window, but something else held me. Turning I saw the silver cord connecting my spirit-form to my flesh, but to my astonishment, there was a second, thick, golden-yellow cord running from my spirit-form to Rushton’s, which passively overlay his sleeping form.
I reached out and stupidly tried to touch the golden cord. Of course it had not substance enough to be held even by the fingers of my spirit-form, but as my hand passed through it I felt the languorous heat of our lovemaking and understood that Rushton and I had somehow forged the link by the depth and potency of our merge. The only spirit-bond I had ever seen before was the lavender twin bond that ran between Miky and Angina, and suddenly I was reminded of Elkar’s words about twins having a goddess bond that could not be severed.
Then I thought of the queer scaled spirit-form that had come to me in my dreams. Help us, it had begged in Angina’s voice. You must use the black sword. Was it possible that he had been asking me to sever the bond that linked him to his sister? But what was the black sword? The only sword that came to mind was the one Cassy had left for me in the Earthtemple in Sador, which now lay wrapped in cloth in my bedchamber, but being formed of stone it was not truly a sword. Nor had Cassy suggested I should use it. I had been bidden only to return it to its owner.
I thought again of the lavender link between the twins and wondered if a spirit-bond could be so strong that it would bind two people even when one was dying, so that both would die. Then another thought struck me. Could a link forged between two spirits last even beyond death? I was thinking of Miryum and Straaka now, of the look on the coercer’s face when Straaka fell and she knew that she loved him, and of the dreams in the dream-books that had described a cord or rope running from one of them to the other. Was it possible that the link was strong enough to keep Straaka’s spirit from entering the mindstream?
I wondered what the link that Rushton and I had forged between us this night would mean in the future. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but I could only feel comforted by the thought that the link would endure, no matter that we would never see one another again.
I looked down at Rushton. His bright spirit overspilled the dull shadow that was his flesh in a shimmering multitude of blue hues that flowed and melded, broken by occasional streaks of yellow-green. My own fleshy form, lying cradled against his chest, was barely visible to my spirit-eyes, lacking the overlay of spirit, but the cord that pulsed from Rushton’s spirit to my spirit-form seemed brighter than all else.
I felt a strong urge to run my fingers through it again, to feel an echo of what I had felt earlier, but instead I unfolded the wings of my spirit-form and rose into the air. Again I felt the tug of the golden cord, but it was no more than the slight but unfamiliar weight of it, and when I flapped my wings again and rose higher, the golden cord paye
d out just as smoothly as the silver etheric cord that connected me through my own flesh to the spirit stream.
So, the link would not prevent me from moving away from Rushton. I did not know whether to be glad or sorry.
It occurred to me that since I had taken on a spirit-form, I could seek out Atthis on the dreamtrails, but first I needed to ensure that the knowledge of my quest and everything linked to it, which Rushton had learned in merging with my mind, was safe and inviolable.
I dived down into Rushton’s spirit even as I had done when we were deep inside the Beforetime complex under Ariel’s residence on Norseland. I dropped through the layers of his mind, knowing there was nothing I had not already seen or known during our merge, but I was astonished to find all the layers of his mind reverberating with a lush, delicate music that I realised was the memory of our lovemaking.
I descended until I reached the vast empty cavern deep inside Rushton that was his Talent. It was dark, but the darkness was velvet soft, and even here, I could perceive faint strains of the music that permeated his spirit. Was it always so between two lovers, I wondered, or was it only when the two who merged were Talented? Or was it only because of who and what Rushton and I had for so long been to one another?
I let myself be drawn towards a brightness at the centre of the cavern. It came from the pool where reality was reflected, or Rushton’s memories or dreams when he slept. In it now, I saw myself in Rushton’s arms and watched him pull the hair back from my neck and kiss it. I shivered and shifted my gaze to the bear sitting beside the pool watching me. It was the shape Rushton’s spirit took here in his deepest mind, and in the green eyes looking out from the beast’s face I saw my reflection and understood that, once more, he had transformed me into the idealised goddess-Elspeth.
I became aware of a weight in my hands and looked down to see that I was holding a large golden bowl brimming with a brightness that was neither liquid nor solid but some combination of both. The bear Rushton rose up on his hind legs and lumbered around to me. Instinctively I offered the bowl to him. He cupped the sides of it and my hands with his enormous paws, and bent his great shaggy head to lap at its contents. When he lifted his head and straightened, he towered over me, dark muzzle and sharp fangs glistening gold.
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‘Seeker,’ he rasped, ‘I know why you have come.’
I recoiled a little, for there was a savage undertone to his voice. ‘I must ensure the knowledge of my quest, which you have seen in my mind, will remain hidden here.’
‘You drove the Destroyer from me,’ said the bear. ‘It is your right to do as you wish here. But you know that if you would bind your secret to this keeping place, you must use that which you fear most.’
I wanted to ask what he meant, but even as he said the words, I knew. Of course I knew, for where had Rushton got the knowledge but from me? I had kept it hidden from myself, but he had seen it in the greater truthfulness of our merging. To bind my secrets inside him, I would have to draw on the fearsome black power that I had evoked to kill Madam Vega when she would have slain him; the same power that, the last time I had evoked it, had exerted its own terrifying will so that I had barely been able to control it and I had sworn never again to waken it.
‘It is part of you,’ said the bear in its rough voice. ‘To pretend it is not is as foolish as binding your eyes and pretending to be blind.’
‘An eye does not have the power to kill,’ I whispered.
‘It does, if the mind and will of its owner are to kill.’
‘The black power does not serve me. It would rule me,’ I said.
‘Your fear of it rules you. If you would master the black power, you must master your fear of it.’
‘I am afraid that I will cause some harm to you,’ I whispered at last, hating the fact that I had known at some level that the only way I could keep my secrets safe was to use that deadly and terrifying power, yet still I had allowed the merging.
The bear gave a soft rumble of laughter. ‘You know in your deepest self that you can master the black power that is in you, or you never would have risked doing anything that would endanger me.’
Was he right that I had known I could master that dreadful potency I had banished to the depths of my mind? I wanted to believe it, for the alternative was that I had risked him for an hour of pleasure.
‘Pleasure?’ the bear growled. ‘Do not give such a large and profound thing such a small name. Now do what you came to do.’
I bowed my head, accepting his rebuke and his command. I set the bowl on the ground and straightened to take one of the bear’s great talon-tipped paws in my two hands. I drew him back around the pool to the boulder where he had been sitting when I came to him, and he sat down on it once more. His head was still higher than mine. I looked up into his green eyes and suddenly thought of a gift I could give to him, but before I could speak, my thought allowed the golden link between us to become visible. The light shining from it eclipsed even the brightness of the pool.
‘What is it?’ asked the bear, gazing at it reverently. I guided his paw to the link. As his claws passed through it, he drew a long shuddering breath.
‘We wove this between us with our loving,’ I whispered. ‘I did not know it would happen but I believe it will endure even when we are far apart.’ I lifted my other hand and stroked the bear’s cheek. To my astonishment his fur flamed briefly blue where I touched it. I drew my hand back in amazement, fearing I had hurt him, but when he leaned forward to lick my hand in tender reassurance, a little mist of shimmering light rose formed and dissolved.
I laughed incredulously.
‘It must be the link,’ Rushton said, and there was wonder in his rough bear’s voice.
I straightened, gathered my courage and then I reached up to hold my hands palm-down above his head. I closed my eyes and delved down into myself, finding the shadowy niche where the dark power slumbered. Even now I hesitated to wake it. In the past, awakened, it had terrified me with its violent potency. But perhaps there was no need to wake it wholly, for there was no great enemy here to conquer. There was only the chaining of a spirit, which would offer no resistance. I formed a delicate probe and sent the tendril into the slumbering pool of power. Carefully, I drew a trickle of it into me. It felt like a rivulet of icy water, or maybe of Grufyyd’s special mead, for there was something intoxicating in it. For the first time, I did not feel it to be violent or malevolent and I wondered if this was because I was drawing it into me rather than holding it off.
I willed the power to flow through me and out of my fingertips just as I did when I was creating a spirit-form. I did not try to force it into any shape, I merely fixed my mind on the need to bind my secrets to Rushton’s spirit so that there would be no trace of them in his conscious and waking mind, nor even in his dreaming and unconscious mind. I opened my eyes and found that I was holding a length of chain. The dark links were clumsily formed and heavy and I wept as I wrapped them about the bear’s body. It sat passive, making no protest, and when I was done, I held the ends to the stone beneath him and watched them melt into it.
To my shame and dismay, when I looked into the bear’s face, I saw that part of the chain had altered and flattened to become a hateful muzzle. Only its eyes could speak now and it broke my heart to see there was pity in them, but also serenity. The latter stopped me falling on the chains and trying to tear them away again, but I said, ‘I did not know what it would mean.’
The bear could not answer, but his grave green eyes held mine, and when I reached out to touch him, I heard the words he could not say.
It seems that after all there is a part I can play. I am to keep your secrets safe. I will wear these chains, my love, for are they not the price to be paid for our loving; even for this golden link that binds us? I pay it gladly and with all my heart.
‘The chains will not last forever,’ I reminded him, kissing his head. ‘One day they will fall away and you will remember …’
Un
able to endure the sight of him muzzled and in chains any longer, I closed my eyes and surrendered to the pull of spirit to living flesh. Rising to consciousness, I rejected the idea of seeking out the dreamtrails, for although I had let the dark power form into chains that would bind my secrets, there was a residue of it remaining inside me and I had no idea how it would manifest on the dreamtrails. Safer to let it fade away before I made any attempt to reach Atthis; safer to do it when I was alone.
Coming to full consciousness, I relinquished my spirit-form and felt the slippery flow of the silver thread as it returned to the mindstream, then I was within my own warm, heavy flesh and the languid weight of Rushton’s human arms were about me. I took comfort in their warmth but I had no desire to sleep. My senses told me it was deep in the night, and I could hear rain pattering lightly on the roof, though I could no longer hear the growl of thunder or see flashes of lightning. I stretched and found my body ached in familiar and unfamiliar ways and I thought with wonder of our lovemaking and the golden link it had forged between us. I thought of the bear in chains, and its eyes full of acceptance.
Inevitably I thought of Angina and Miky. I was now certain that the link between the twins’ spirits was draining the life from Miky, and I was equally certain that Angina had come to me in spirit-form to seek help for his sister, though he was no futureteller. No doubt Angina had taken on an unconscious spirit-form, as people did sometimes when they slept very deeply or were dangerously ill, but being locked in sleep, his spirit-form had gradually become conscious. In this state, he had obviously seen the cord binding him to his twin, and recognised that it would drag his sister to her death when he died, and been determined to break it. How he had come to think I could help him, I did not know, but given what I had done inside Rushton’s mind, I found I could not doubt that he was right. A power capable of killing a woman or of chaining a spirit must also be capable of severing a spirit link.
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