The Tower at Stony Wood

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “From Skye!” the Queen of Yves said, taking Sel’s hands, as the astonished and vociferous knights and guards followed the king into the hall. “Tell me where you live; perhaps I know it.”

  “Stony Wood,” Sel answered, her voice grown small with wonder.

  “Yes,” the Lady from Skye said with delight. “I rode down the coast once from my father’s house, to see the strange stone wood.” She put her hand on Thayne’s arm as he waited behind the crowd so that Craiche would not get unbalanced in it. Some impulse from the dragon made him turn as the last guard drifted after the king. Sel felt it, too, as she lingered in the queen’s gentle grasp: the glance of a dark eye out of the dragon’s mind. The four of them stood alone outside the noisy hall, watching the dragon change.

  A tall old woman with hair as white as bone and eyes as black as the eye in the bole stood in the yard where the dragon had been. Sel heard Thayne loose a sharp, incoherent word. I know you, she thought with wonder. You watched me in the mirror…

  She smiled at Sel as if she heard her thinking, her heartbeat, the next thought still finding words in her head.

  “You won’t need this now,” she said to Thayne, and picked her staff out of the clutter fallen off the dragon’s back.

  He whispered as the old woman turned her back to them and faded into fire and night on her way to the gate, “I should have known.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Cyan Dag returned to Gloinmere at twilight, weeks or years after he had left; he was not certain which. It was still summer, the fields and orchards told him, patterning the rolling land around the city like a rumpled quilt. But which summer, they did not say. He had ridden hard from Skye, driven all the way by the vision of charred, broken towers, the city emptied, its occupants killed or fled, the knights of Gloinmere scattered, the king nowhere to be found, and the Leviathan of the North Islands flying over the rums.

  But the walls and towers of Gloinmere were as yet intact. No dragon shadow flowed across the rising moon. It would be easier to face the dragon and Thayne Ysse together, Cyan felt, than the king’s bewildering and dangerous wife. He still wore the battered disk over his heart, a reminder of his unfinished quest. He would show it to the king, who by now might have glimpsed something in his smiling wife that had begun to disturb his dreams, something amiss in her shadow, something chilling that happened to her eyes when she danced.

  So Cyan hoped, or he would be forced to lay the stark bones of the tale out before the king and try to convince him that they truly shaped some marvelous and deadly beast that in Yves existed only on a tapestry.

  He rode through the gate into the yard, barely noticing the startled expressions he caused as the guards opened the gates and the stabler ran to take the gelding. He walked wearily up the steps into the hall, where the king sat at supper with his court. Tables lining the long carpet to the dais grew oddly quiet as he passed, in his dusty, patched surcoat, his hair loose and untidy down his shoulders, the warped, tarnished disk hanging on his breast. He kept his eyes on Regis, wondering how to begin. The king, staring at him, seemed as mute. He gestured sharply at the musicians for silence and rose. As he passed behind the gold-haired man sitting beside him, Cyan’s steps faltered; he felt, for a moment, as if he were trying to walk through tide.

  The queen drew his eyes, then, the woman who had forced him out of Gloinmere, haunted his journey across Skye, and met him at his journey’s end. She watched him thoughtfully, lifting one hand that flashed gold in the candlelight from every finger as she touched the arm of the woman beside her.

  Cyan stopped. Regis reached him then; Cyan started to kneel, but the king embraced him, pounding dust out of his tunic as Cyan stared in disbelief over his shoulder. The baker from Stony Wood, his eyes were trying to tell him, was sitting next to the queen.

  “How—” he began blankly, but the king was already talking.

  “I know,” he said. “I know. Gwynne told me where you had gone and why—”

  “What?”

  “That she had asked you to go very quickly and quietly to Skye, to rescue a kinswoman of hers trapped in a tower. She told me that of all my knights you were the only one who could see his way clearly in Skye.”

  “I didn’t—I couldn’t—is that Thayne Ysse? Eating supper in your hall?”

  Regis nodded, his mouth tightening briefly, as he contemplated the sight. “I had to yield the North Islands to him when he came with his dragon. That woman from Stony Wood threatened to raise all the magic in Skye against me if I didn’t.”

  “Sel did?”

  “Thayne Ysse said you faced that dragon in Skye. I’ve never seen such a monster in my life.”

  “It spoke to me,” Cyan said dazedly, “instead of killing me.”

  “It didn’t speak to me. It didn’t have to.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Thayne said it must have gone back to Skye.” He paused, eyeing the disk. He lifted it, looked more closely at the face in the cloudy silver while Cyan held his breath. “That’s Gwynne.”

  “It’s the woman I was sent to find.”

  The king dropped the disk. “She looks just like Gwynne.” He gripped Cyan’s shoulder tightly, studying him. “You look like you’ve been on a battlefield. Who slashed your towers?”

  “The dragon.”

  The king’s face changed, as if he had caught a sudden glimpse of the strange and dangerous path Cyan had followed out of Gloinmere. “Get the dust out of your hair,” Regis said tersely. “Then sit with us. I want to hear what happened to you in Skye.”

  Cyan bowed his head, grateful for a few moments away from the queen’s eyes, to gather his straying wits and piece them back together. She gave him just time enough to wash and change. He stood weighing the disk in his hand, wondering how much to tell Regis then, and how much in private later, when she entered.

  She walked through the door without opening it. The face she revealed stunned him, with its flat, dark, lidless eyes, the bones pushing out beneath them, widening her lipless mouth, her white skin livid and shining, like something born in shadow and water that evaded light. His fingers locked protectively over the disk. Beyond that he could not move. He could only watch her helplessly, as he had when her silver ring had flashed in his eyes beyond the tower walls, and he had let her live.

  This time, her ringed hand moved toward the disk. He shook his head a little, wordlessly, his hand tightening. He felt as though she reached through him for his heart. But not even habit could move him to raise his sword between them. His heart had glimpsed some mystery that his mind, warring against terror and rage and bewilderment, could not yet grasp. Her fingers freed the disk from his grip. He felt the touch of the sixth, the touch of magic, and closed his eyes.

  She said, “You won’t need this now.”

  The chain links parted suddenly. He realized only then, as it slid into her hands, how heavy it had been.

  He looked at her again, and pleaded without hope, “Where is Gwynne of Skye?”

  “In the hall, eating supper beside the king.”

  He had to grope for air before he could speak again. “Then who—Then what—Who are you?”

  The disk had vanished. She answered as the dragon had, her terrible, inhuman eyes holding his. “You could have killed me, Cyan Dag. You let me live. You tell me who I am.”

  He began to tremble then, on the verge of an answer as he looked back at the long journey he had taken and saw everything change. Suddenly there was not one thing that he had done or not done that he could explain with any certainty. He knew nothing then, it seemed, except her. He bowed his head, gazed at the silver ring she wore, that they all wore: the bard, the witch, and the woman before him.

  He touched her hand tentatively at first, and then less fearfully, drawing all six fingers into his hold and lifting her hand until the silver spark of magic that his heart had recognized caught light again between them.

  He said, “You are the third sister.”

  She s
miled. It was an unlovely sight by human standards, but he felt all his fear of her drop away like another chain, ponderous and invisible, that he had worn since he left Gloinmere.

  He whispered, “Why?”

  “We needed you.” She raised her other hand to hold his in both of hers, as if she were coaxing him to follow her across air. “We needed you to help Sel, and Thayne Ysse and the North Islands. We wanted all your courage and your gentleness, your determination, your loyalty and your gift for seeing and for doing, as when you heard the young boy crying in the rain, what must be done.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Regis Aurum married Gwynne of Skye, that day in Gloinmere. I came with my sisters to the wedding, since the Lady from Skye is something of a cousin of ours. I wore her face here with her permission, twice: when I danced with you, and again when I frightened you and sent you on your way to Skye. And I wore her face in Skye. I was the woman in the mirror whose story Sel told to herself. I was the woman in the silver disk. I was the woman in the tower.”

  He was still trembling, still trying to see where it was he had gone, what he had done while he thought he was doing something else entirely. “You sent me to rescue you—”

  “You rode out of Gloinmere to rescue the woman in the tower. What you truly did, while you searched for me, was to rescue Thayne Ysse and the North Islands from seven years of bitterness and hardship. You rescued Sel from her dark tower. I told her the tale she was living, and you helped her end it. Because of you, Thayne Ysse opened the door in himself for magic to return to the North Islands. Because of you, Sel remembered her great powers and brought her magic into Yves, so that there is peace now between Thayne Ysse and Regis Aurum. Because of you.”

  She held him upright, he felt; if she let go of his hand he would have fallen. “Who are you?” he asked again, the question his heart was asking by now with every beat. “Who are you in the world?”

  “Three sisters,” she answered simply. “Idra weaves. She wove your life into a perilous and complex path, and you changed everyone your life touched. We needed help, and Idra chose you. She was right, and we are very grateful.”

  He was silent, swallowing the mystery she gave him, since she gave him no answer to his question that he could understand. He felt the stones beneath his feet again; the dry, silken grip on his hand loosened a little. He said bewilderedly, with only a touch of bitterness, “She could have asked me. You could have trusted me instead of terrifying me.”

  “If I had asked you to outface a dragon, catch a selkie in the sea, persuade Thayne Ysse to trust a knight of Gloinmere, face death by water, sword and sorcery, and survive to bring magic into Yves, what would you have said?”

  He blinked, and felt the blood ease into his face. “No one,” he told her, “could do all that.”

  “You did,” she said gently, and loosed his hand. “You won’t see this face again. You won’t recognize me after this. But we three will watch over you, and return to you, as long as you let us, the peace and magic you have brought back into the world. I have many faces, and I might be any woman you meet, anywhere.”

  She stepped away from him; he felt as if she had taken the disk away from him again. But wait, he wanted to plead. Stay here. Ask me something else. Send me anywhere. He watched her strange face and body blur and waver and merge into smoke and shadows. Just before she faded, he saw her eyes again, full of color and light now, and reflecting, it seemed to him, all the worlds he had glimpsed in the dark tower. He heard himself say abruptly, words coming out of nowhere, “Show me your true face.”

  Stunned again, he stood for a long time after her shadow faded on the flagstones, watching that face flame again and again in his heart until, emberlike, the memory burned itself down, hid itself, and only flared, now and then, at unexpected times.

  He returned finally to the hall.

  He saw the face in the disk again, framed now by candle and torchfire, and stopped, his heart still raw. Gwynne of Skye, her eyes smiling, watchful, said softly, “I am glad for Regis’s sake that you returned safely from Skye, my lord. Sel told me that you met one of my kinswomen while you were there. My elusive cousin, Sidera. And of course you met her sister at my wedding, the Bard of Skye.”

  “Yes, my lady.” He took her hand, raised it to his lips, grateful to her for bringing such mysteries into the light of day. “I met a third sister. I never knew her name.”

  “Her name is Una.”

  “Thank you.”

  Thayne had risen to greet him. So had the young man beside him, who moved a little awkwardly out of his chair. His lean, dark-eyed face and sweet, fearless smile were unfamiliar. Then he put his hand on the back of his chair for balance, and Cyan remembered the boy’s slight weight in his arms, the face he never saw on the rainy night in north Yves.

  “Craiche?”

  “My brother,” Thayne Ysse said, touching Craiche’s shoulder. “This is the faceless knight of Gloinmere who saved your life.”

  “I never thought I would meet you,” Craiche said, his smile suddenly gone. “I don’t think I believed that you were real. You came out of nowhere, like a knight in a tale, and carried me to safety, and went on your way. I never—I always wondered why you took the trouble.”

  Cyan gazed at him wordlessly. Idra weaves, her sisters had said. Out of that single frail thread, an incident during a battle he had long forgotten, she had woven Cyan’s life and Thayne’s hope. “You were hurt,” he answered finally. “How could I not help? You saved my life in the dragon’s tower,” he added, and Thayne flushed.

  “Sit down,” Regis said, gesturing to servants for a chair and food and wine. Cyan sat, flanked by Ysse and Yves. He raised his cup to Thayne.

  “To the Lord of the North Islands.”

  “And to the baker from Stony Wood, who saved the towers of Gloinmere,” Regis offered. “I’m hoping she’ll stay awhile, teach me some magic.”

  Cyan met the selkie’s eyes, with their deep, underwater smile. “Are you going to?”

  “Give up the secrets of Skye to Yves?”

  “You must stay, Sel,” the queen urged. “My cousins taught me a few things; together you and I could bring the magic back to Yves. It was here once. I can feel it, in stone and moonlight, in earth under my feet.” Her smiling eyes, alight with magic, moved from Sel to Cyan. “In certain, ancient towers.”

  A voice, deep and sweet, wandered away from flute and viol, singing, as they followed, of some impossible love. Cyan felt his heart melt and crack like ice in a fire. “Cyan,” the king said, as the flute picked up the singer’s note and sang with her. “We have waited long enough. Tell us what happened to you when Gwynne sent you to Skye. What of the woman in the tower? Did you find her? And how did you meet Thayne Ysse and Sel along the way? What improbable events brought them both to supper with me here in Gloinmere?”

  Cyan found the singer much later. The king had left the hall; the servants were taking up the cloths; the musicians were putting their instruments to rest in velvet pouches and rosewood boxes. She wore her green tabard; her hair spilled in a soft dark cloud out of the gold clip at her neck. He watched the way she laughed at something the flute player said, and touched his arm lightly. Then she turned, and saw the knight, and her eyes grew as dark and still as the tower among the hills in Skye.

  He went to her as uncertainly as he had moved toward any magic. She smiled a little, tightly, an unfamiliar expression.

  “My lord Dag.”

  “You’re still here.” He studied her silently, noting the shadows beneath her eyes, the slightest cobweb line beside her mouth. He said softly, “I left you without a word.”

  “Yes.”

  “I had no time to say good-bye, to tell you why I was leaving. I thought—I thought—”

  “That I would be dressed in fine clothes and holding the arm of some wealthy lord of Yves by now? Because you left me?”

  “Yes. No.” He drew breath. “I thought you would be given no choice.”<
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  “So did I.” She paused; he saw the memories bloom, painful and distressing, in her eyes. “So it happened. My father wanted me to marry, you had vanished, and I was desperate. So I went to the queen for help. You go for help to those who possess what you desperately want. She told me to stay here and sing. She persuaded the king to talk to my father, to tell him that I loved the greatest knight in Gloinmere, and that the king would help you in any way he could, and deny you nothing. So my father, in high dudgeon, told me not to bother coming home, and left me here to fend for myself.”

  “And do you still?” he asked steadily.

  She looked at him without answering. Then her face answered, pulled suddenly between laughter and tears. “Oh, Cyan. When I saw you walking through the hall in your patched surcoat, your hair falling down around your face and covered with dust, wearing nothing of arms or armor but that strange tarnished silver on a chain, looking as little like the greatest knight in Gloinmere as a page in a doorway, what could I do but fall in love with you all over again. I sang to you. Did you hear?”

  “I heard.”

  He touched her face, then drew her into his arms, felt the silk of her hair against his cheek, and then against his eyes. When he could see again, blinking dark, feathery strands out of his eyes, the hall was silent, empty around them, but for the echo of music, and a strange shadow cast in a crosshatch of torchlight on the floor: three women growing out of one, their ringed hands raised in greeting or farewell.

  PATRICIA A. McKILLIP

  is a winner of the World Fantasy Award, and the author of many fantasy novels, including The Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy, Stepping from the Shadows, and The Cygnet and the Firebird. Her most recent novels are Song for the Basilisk, Winter Rose, and The Book of Atrix Wolfe. She lives in Roxbury, New York.