The Tower at Stony Wood

Eight

Cyan Dag, following a river across Skye, found the dead at sunrise. The river had grown shallow, and spread into thin, silvery fingers across a wide marsh. New light spilled over him as he dismounted; bright, startled marsh birds flickered around him, calling to the sun. Clouds in the distance, bruised purple and tumbled together, told him of the storm he had missed. He could smell it, rain still clinging to the leaves of the low, flowering brush he stood in, rain in the wind from the sea. For a moment the scent of the tiny, sweet flowers overpowered the stench of death. He stared at them. Six men, he counted, and two horses. Even the horses were armed. Two of the warriors wore rich, embroidered silks over their mail; the others wore fine black leather trimmed with silver. He did not recognize the emblems embroidered on the silk: black roses, or perhaps black suns. They were not of Gloinmere, and looked too rich for Skye. They might have wandered into Skye from some strange land across the sea, though why they had fought there, in that lonely marsh beside the sea, he could not guess. Light sparked in the jeweled chains still hanging around their necks, in the jewels in their ears. Their faces, bloody and smeared with dirt, seemed imperious. They gazed unflinchingly back at the sun, at the flies beginning to swarm, at the weapons scattered on the roiled ground, and explained nothing. But he stood listening to their silence, as if, becoming as motionless, as breathless, he might hear the language they spoke now.

A hawk cried above him, fierce, piercing, and he started. Something moved among the dead that was not windblown cloth or hair. A ring flashed; a hand shifted a spider’s step across the ground. He felt the cold, silken glide of horror over his skin. That warrior lay facedown, looking, Cyan had thought, into the black, rain-pocked shadow of his blood. He turned his head slightly, showing hair matted with blood, the bone sheared above his brow.

Cyan swallowed dryly, motionless again, waiting for the man to realize that he was dead. But the searching eye found him, held him until he was recognized: human and alive. Then it closed. The ringed finger beckoned.

Cyan stepped among the dead and knelt beside him. He bent low to catch whatever words the warrior thought he could still speak, and saw then how young he was. His lean jaw was smooth as a child’s, his eye golden and fearless, too young to believe in what it saw coming. He wore red and yellow silk; slashed ribbons of it swirled around Cyan as he listened.

“Name,” he heard, and said it. The warrior’s eye closed, opened when Cyan thought he had finally died. His hand moved; one finger touched Cyan’s arm. Words as frail as cobweb catching light among the leaves wove together somehow, made a coherent pattern.

“Who are you?” Cyan asked when he understood. Wind answered; a bird answered. He heard an indrawn breath, and then another. Then he realized that he listened to the sea. The warrior’s eye was still open. Cyan closed it gently and straightened, as stiff as if he had knelt there for hours.

His jaw tightened. He turned the young warrior over, knowing then how scavengers felt, prying under mail and cloth for treasure, trying to free it from the weight of flesh and bone growing rigid, unfamiliar. But he found at last what he had been asked to take.

He could make nothing of the plain silver disk. Round and polished to a mirrorlike clarity, it covered his palm. It refused to reflect anything, even his face, as he gazed into it. What it was, or meant, or did, it did not tell him. Magic, he decided finally. Incomprehensible. Still, he slid the heavy chain it hung on over his head, tucked the disk beneath his shirt. It would mean something to someone who knew the young man; perhaps that was why he had been asked to take it. Then he studied the cloth it had been wrapped in.

He felt the blood drain from his face; his skin prickled again with shock. There they all were, the six dead warriors, the armored horses. But they were made of thread now, depicted in bright, precise stitches. He recognized the yellow hair and silk, the golden eye, against a different background. They lay on a brown plain instead of a flowering marsh. A tower stood in the distance. The dragon wrapped around it opened one slitted eye wide, as if it had watched the battle on the plain.

Dragon, Thayne Ysse had said. Gold. Troubled, Cyan searched the picture for some hint of explanation. Neither dead nor dragon offered it. The dragon had killed them, he guessed. But nothing had been burned, and the dragon looked more curious than aroused. More likely, meeting by chance, they had killed one another, fighting over the gold they did not yet possess. But what were their bodies doing in the marsh?

He lifted his head then, perhaps at the odd silence. The relentless buzzing behind him had ceased. He did not want to turn, but he turned finally, slowly, to find that the dead had all unraveled into the wind behind him. There was nothing left of them, except their images in thread on the cloth he held, and the silver disk beneath his shirt.

He shivered, unsettled by the power that turned death into thread. He lingered, chilled in the bite of sea wind, but nothing else happened; nothing explained. He let the wind take the cloth, but did not watch to see if it, too, vanished. But he kept the disk, for a ghost had come out of nowhere in Skye and given it to him, like a portent. But of what, for what, why? Nothing said. He mounted finally and rode out of the marsh to the sea.

The tower overlooked the sea. It rose seemingly out of solid stone on a dark wedge of cliff; graceful walls dipped and curved away from it to enclose the castle within. Cyan, putting as much of Skye as he could between himself and the eerie marsh, saw the tower near dusk as he rode along the coast. The castle itself looked worn and unthreatening, stones spilling out of the old wall here and there onto the meadow, one side of the massive gate open and sagging on its hinges. It flew the blue banner of Skye, with its three white doves in flight. Its chimneys looked hearteningly busy.

He found an old man in the turret beside the gate, looking through a long, strange tube out over the fields. Cyan called to him. The man, his hair thin and cloudy white, his chin patched with white-and-gray stubble, removed one eye from the tube and leaned out of the turret.

He ran a sky-blue eye over Cyan, from the dust in his hair down the towers on his surcoat and his sword to his cracked boots. “You look lost,” he commented. “Though I couldn’t say where from.”

“From Gloinmere,” Cyan said. “My name is Cyan Dag.”

Both brows, fat and furry as caterpillars, went up.

“Cyan Dag is a knight in the court of Regis Aurum.”

“Yes.”

“Well, what are you doing at my gate in Skye? You’re a very long way from home.”

Cyan nodded wearily, feeling the sands he had ridden across lodged in his hair, behind his eyes. “A very long way,” he agreed. “Do you think that, in the king’s name, the lord of this castle might give shelter to a knight of Gloinmere? I have slept on the ground as often as in a bed since I left Yves.”

“Why—” The old man waved a hand vaguely at the word, and changed it. “Wait.” He took the tube from its stand, tucked it under his arm, and disappeared. He reappeared stepping out of an arch at the bottom of the turret. He wore a long black robe; its sleeves and hem and collar were of scalloped cloth-of-gold. Under his chin, Cyan noted, the gold carried a wine stain, a few morsels of old meals. He patted Cyan’s horse, then took the bridle gently.

“I am Verlain,” he said, “the Lord of Skye.” He walked the gelding through the gate while Cyan gazed at him, dumbfounded. “If you came from Gloinmere, you must have seen my Gwynne married. She would not let me come; she said I am too old to cross the mountains. Did you see them marry?”

Cyan closed his eyes, felt the grit in them. “Yes.”

“You must have left Gloinmere shortly afterward. No one of my household or family is back yet. Is Gwynne happy? Tell me. Do you think the king will love her?”

“From what I saw he loves her past doubt.”

Her father heaved a sigh. “Thank you.” He stopped, lifted the tube he carried. “Would you hold this for me?”

Cyan took it. It was broader than he expected, and heavy with circles of glass at both ends. He balanced it awkwardly against the pommel of his saddle, letting the Lord of Skye guide his horse. “What is it?”

“It sees dragons. At least,” Verlain amended, “it does when there are any to see. Sometimes there are, but I always miss them… But why did you leave Gloinmere to come to Skye? You look as though you left in a hurry, without an escort, without armor except for that sword. And your boots—”

“They aren’t mine. Mine were stolen.”

Verlain rolled a dubious eye as blue, Cyan realized, as his daughter’s. “No one would dare steal the boots off such a formidable knight.”

“They didn’t know it was me.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you stop them?”

“They threw rocks at me.” Cyan sighed. “It is not a pretty tale.”

The old man snorted in amusement. Then he patted the gelding’s neck, as if in apology. “In the name of Regis Aurum, who seems to have made himself my son by marriage, let me offer you a few things to help you on your way. Which, by the way, is where?”

Cyan hesitated. The woman in the tower might be anyone, he decided, and so might the woman who sent him on his bewildering path. “I am looking for a woman in a tower,” he said, watching Verlain’s face. The hoary brows lifted again, in surprise.

“You rode that hard, from Gloinmere to Skye, to look for a woman in a tower?”

“She is in very great danger. I was sent to rescue her. I was told only that she is in Skye, but not where… You have a tower,” he added suddenly, remembering the dark stones rising above the sea.

“Yes, but I don’t keep women in it,” Verlain said reasonably. “I go there sometimes to watch for dragons from the roof. Who is this woman?”

“A lady of Yves, who is trapped in Skye. Regis,” he added, inspired, “was so moved by the tale that he sent me without delay. So I went alone. So moved, myself, that I forgot a few things.”

“I never travel without a small village,” Verlain mused. “Attendants, guards, pots, dogs, spare horses, pavilions in case there are no suitable lodgings…” He summoned a stabler for the gelding. A liveried servant came down the steps to take the dragon tube so that Cyan could dismount. He cradled it in his arms as carefully as a baby.

Verlain said to him, “This is Cyan Dag, from the court of Regis Aurum, a knight of great renown. Treat him so.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Find him suitable clothes, a proper pair of boots, and—”

“A bath,” Cyan pleaded.

“Yes, my lords.”

“Bring him to the hall to eat with me. You can tell me about the wedding,” he added eagerly to Cyan. “The feasts, the celebrations, the games. And have the tube set on its stand on the roof of the tower for us to view the skies after supper. Tonight there might be dragons.”

The servant bowed. Cyan blinked, suddenly remembering Thayne Ysse’s dragon. But that was another tale, he decided tiredly, another tower. After he freed Gwynne of Skye from her prison, he would search for Thayne. He might have entered Skye, but Cyan guessed that even the smoldering Lord of Ysse, with all his dangerous intentions, would have trouble riding onto a plain made out of thread.

Washed, dressed in light wool and linen that did not have dirt and sweat ground into their seams, and in fine, supple boots that did not try to walk away without him, the towers on his surcoat golden again instead of dust, he presented himself to Verlain of Skye. Supper in the great hall seemed a haphazard affair, with dogs wandering loose among children eating on the floor, lovers feeding each other in corners, musicians with harp and flute and lute snatching bites between songs, and long gaps of empty, sky-blue cloth between courtiers.

“Everyone left me to go to the wedding,” Verlain explained, patting the cloth beside him for Cyan to sit. “And when they all return, my Gwynne will not be with them…” He brooded a moment, then added more cheerfully, “But my bard will. I miss her almost as much. Did you see her there?”

Cyan pulled the seamed, secret-eyed face out of memory. “A tall woman with long white hair and a very odd harp? Oh, yes. How could I not have noticed her?”

“The harp is quite old, made of swan and dragon bone, she says. She can pick songs out of the wind that have lingered there forgotten for centuries. She can hear the moon sing. Did you listen to her?”

“Yes.”

“She might know something about a tower… But she is not here.”

Of course not, Cyan thought. Like your dragons, she vanishes every time I look for her. He said cautiously, feeling his way into his questioning so not to appall the innocent Lord of Skye, “Your daughter is very beautiful. She charmed the court at Gloinmere with her grace and courtesy.”

Verlain clapped his hands, delighted. “Her mother was like that,” he said, signaling servants to heap salmon and lamb to overflowing on Cyan’s plate. “She knew everyone’s name, down to the boy in the cow barn who forked out the stalls.”

“She did everything equally well—she hunted, she judged poetry, she danced—”

“She loves to dance.” He picked a fish bone out of a bite, still beaming. “My bard taught her. We are so far from Gloinmere that dances change, she said, between there and here, passing from court to court.”

Cyan ate fish he did not taste, watching, in a flicker of candlelight, shadows appearing and vanishing on the cloth. “How did your bard know the court dances of Yves?”

“How do bards know anything? Will the king be kind to my daughter?”

Cyan looked into the sagging, sky-blue eyes, in which the hope of dragons flew. “Will she be kind to him?” he asked softly. “He has given her his heart.”

Verlain drew breath, loosed it in a long, surfeited sigh. “Then I can live without her. Thank you. Now. Tell me everything you remember of the wedding. Every tiny detail.”

Cyan sighed, too, soundlessly, and did his best to pick a harmless path around the nightmare wedding.

After supper, Verlain took him to the tower on the cliff. Servants followed them to the roof with torches and wine, dried fruit and cakes, and left them there alone at the boundary of two vast plains of darkness. One sang with the voice of water, the other with the voices of trees. Dragons flying at night could best be seen against the moon, Verlain explained, aiming his tube on its stand at a cluster of stars as thick as bees around their waning queen. Cyan searched the night, saw mists sharpen into stars, and stars bloom into impossible fires. He saw the dark and pitted hollows in the moon. But he saw no dragons. Verlain watched one distant, glowing eye shoot past the moon; he swore that night wings had opened, their bones patterned with stars, to catch the wild currents above the sea so effortlessly that they did not seem to move as they flew. Cyan, giving up on dragons, swung the tube toward land and found, among the windswept trees, stars that burned and moved but did not fly.

He raised his head after a moment. “You have company.” The Lord of Skye applied his eye to the tube while beyond him the slow tide of stars flowed raggedly toward his gate.

Verlain gave a cry. “They’re back! My house is back from Gloinmere.” He leaned precariously over the edge and shouted down into the yard. Then he snatched a torch from its sconce and spiraled back down the tower steps. Cyan, smiling, watched the torch fire tumble across the yard below to stop beside the gate.

He turned to go down himself, and saw the eye of the dragon tube flash suddenly, a molten, heart-stopping gold. He stepped toward it, his lips parted in wonder. The lens flashed again, this time with darker fires. Breathless, not daring to touch it, he looked into the opposite lens.

He saw the dragon.

The broad plain it lay on was ringed with barren hills. The ground was so parched it seemed to shed flakes of gold.

The tower of flame-red stone the dragon protected had no windows, no visible door. Both the dragon’s eyes had opened. One burned gold; the other, in shadow, fumed iridescent blazes of blue, green, black. The arch of one folded wing rose as high as the middle of the tower.

Cyan stared at it, stunned. A single claw looked longer than his body; he might have ducked into the glowing fires of its eyes. That was the deadly, gorgeous monster Thayne Ysse dreamed of unleashing at Regis Aurum. It looked impossible. The dragon could kill Thayne like an insect with a flick of a claw. If he could even find it. There were legends, Cyan remembered, of magic in the North Islands. But they were as threadbare as an islander’s cloak. And there had been nothing at all magical in their desperate, ill-fated battle with Regis Aurum. Thayne, eaten by passion and delusion, could do nothing more than add his bones to the dead on the plain. So Yves could hope. But if, in seven years since that battle, he had learned to harness and unleash such power, the dragon would rend Yves like a tattered banner on its flight to Gloinmere.

Someone spoke behind him. He whirled, his muscles locking, his hand trying to shape the air at his side into the sword he had left below. The Bard of Skye waited patiently until he remembered his own name, and wondered, for the first time, about hers.

“Verlain told me you were here. You are a brave man, Cyan Dag, and true to your king.” Her face was in shadow, but her hair gleamed white as the moon behind her. “I’m sorry I cannot help you. I must go back soon to Gloinmere. The queen asked me to return. I think she does not trust me out of her sight.”

“Did you—” He stopped to swallow, still shaken by his vision, and the fierce, overwhelming urge to battle. “Have you seen that?”

“What?”

“Thayne Ysse’s dragon.”

She was silent; he felt her gaze, intense and unyielding as the night. “What dragon?”

“The dragon guarding its tower full of treasure. He wants it to—”

She shook her head quickly, impatiently. “Cyan, that is not the tower you are looking for.”

“But—”

“You must keep your mind on the Lady of Skye. You have no time for dragon hunting.”

“I’m not. It’s Thayne Ysse who wants—”

“Never mind Thayne Ysse. I know you’ve had a hard journey, and you don’t know where to go, that’s why I came up here in secret. I must go down again. Verlain will be looking for me.”

“Please—”

“Listen to me. You’ve said nothing about this to frighten Verlain. I can tell: he is still smiling. You must leave soon. At dawn and ride south—”

“I’ve just ridden north.”

“South,” she said firmly. “Until you see three hills to the west exactly even with each other, so that they seem reflections of one another. They are called the Three Sisters. Ride west into them. They may be farther than they look. Skye is sometimes imprecise. But you’ll find it.”

“What—”

“The tower you need to find. Be very careful there. It will be dangerous for you, and for Gwynne of Skye. I must go. I don’t,” she added, moving toward the stairs, “exactly know how you can rescue her. Only that there will be a way. Farewell, Cyan Dag.”

He felt her cool, strong hand on his cheek. Then she took the torch and left him in the dark.