The Dark World Relit

remembrances hung like mists in my mind. Once I had known what he was, what chilling power lay hidden in the darkness of his cowl. And that was not magic either. The Crystal Mask would protect me against Edurn, but I knew no more than that.

  Even Llyr -- even Llyr! She was no god. That I knew well. Yet what she might be was something I could not even guess at as yet. Eventually I meant to find out, and the Sword Called Llyr, which was not a true sword, would aid me then.

  Meanwhile, I had my part to play. Even with Freydyr as my sponsor, I could not afford to rouse suspicion among the rebels. I had explained that Medeo's drug had left me weak and shaken. That helped to explain any minor lapses I might make. Curiously, Lirynn seemed to have accepted me fully at Freydyr' word, while in Ares' behavior I detected a faint, almost imperceptible reserve. I do not think that he suspected the truth. Or, if he did he was trying not to admit it, even in his own mind.

  And I could not afford to let that suspicion grow.

  The valley was very active now.

  Much had happened since I came there in the dawn. I had been through enough exertion both physical and emotional to last an ordinary woman for a week, but Ganelyn had only begun her battle. It was thanks to Edwina Bond that our plans for attack would be formulated so readily, and in a way I was glad I had been too busy for anything but the most impersonal planning with Ares and Lirynn.

  It helped to cover the great gaps of my ignorance about things Edwina Bond should know. Many times I angled craftily for information, many times I had to call upon the excuse of the mythical drug and upon the exhaustion of my ordeal at the Castle. But by the time our plans were laid, it seemed to me that even Ares' suspicions were partly lulled.

  I knew I must lull them utterly.

  We rose from the great map-table in the council-cavern. All of us were tired. I met Lirynn's scar-twisted grin, warmth in it now as she smiled at the woman she thought her sworn friend, and I made Edwina Bond's face smile back at her.

  'We'll do it this time,' I told her confidently. 'This time we'll win!'

  Her smile twisted suddenly into a grimace, and the light like embers glowed in her deep eyes.

  'Remember,' she growled. 'Mathwyn -- for me!'

  I looked down at the relief-map of the table, very skillfully made under Edwina Bond's directions.

  The dark green hills rolling with their strange forests of semi-animate trees, every brook traced in white plaster, every roadway marked. I laid my hand on the little mound of towers that was a miniature Castle of the Coven. From it stretched the highway I had ridden last night, beside Medeo, in my blue sacrificial robe. There was the valley and the windowless tower of Caer Secaire which had been our destination.

  For a moment I rode that highway again, in the darkness and the starshine, seeing Medeo beside me in his scarlet cloak, his face a pale oval in the dusk, his mouth black-red, his eyes shining at me. I remembered the feel of that fiercely yielding body in my arms as I had held his last night, as I had held his so many times before. In my mind whirled a question.

  Medeo, Medeo, red warlock of Colchis, why did you betray me?

  I ground my palm down on the tiny plaster towers of the Castle, feeling them powder away beneath my hand. I grinned fiercely at the ruin I had made of Edwina Bond's model.

  'We'll have no need for this again!' I said through my teeth.

  Lirynn laughed.

  'No need to repair it. Tomaorrow the Coven Castle will be wreckage too.'

  I dusted the powdered plaster from my hand and looked across the table at the silent Ares. He looked at me gravely, waiting. I smiled.

  'We haven't had a moment alone together,' I said, making my voice tender. 'I'll need sleep before I leave tonight, but there's time for a walk, if you'll come with me.'

  The grave green gaze dwelt upon mine. Then he nodded, without smiling, and came around the table, stretching out his hand to me. I took it and we went down the steps to the cave-mouth and out into the glen, neither of us speaking. I let his lead the way, and we walked in silence toward the upper end of the valley, the little stream tinkling away beside us.

  Ares walked very lightly, his gossamer hair floating behind his in a pale misty veil. I wondered if it was by intent that he kept his free hand resting upon the bolstered weapon at his side.

  It was hard for me to keep my mind upon him, or to care whether or not he knew me for myself. Medeo's face in all its beauty and its evil floated before me up the glen, a face no woman who looked upon it could ever forget. For a moment I was angry at the recollection that Edwina Bond, in my flesh, had taken last night the kisses he meant for Ganelyn.

  Well, I would see his again tonight, before he died by my hand!

  In my mind I saw the tiny roadway of the map-table, winding down from Coven Castle to the sacrificial temple. Along the real road, sometime in the night to come, I knew the cavalcade would ride again as it had ridden with me last night. And again there would be forest women hiding along the road, and again I would lead them against the Coven. But this time the outcome would be very different from anything either the rebels or the Coven could expect.

  What a strange web the Morns had woven! Last night as Edwina Bond, tonight as Ganelyn, I would lead the same women in the same combat against the same foe, but with a purpose as different as night from day.

  The two of us, deadly enemies though we shared the same body in a strange, inverted way -- enemies though we had never met and never could meet, for all our common flesh. It was an enigma too curious to unravel.

  'Edwina,' a voice said at my shoulder. I looked down.

  Ares was facing me with the same enigmatic gaze I had met so often today. 'Edwina, is he very beautiful?'

  I stared at him.

  'Who?'

  'The warlock. The Coven warlock. Medeo.'

  I almost laughed aloud. Was this the answer to all his aloofness of the day? Did he think my own withdrawal, all the changes he sensed in me, were due to the charms of a rival beauty? Well, I must set his mind at rest about that, at any rate. I called upon Llyr to forgive me the lie, and I took his shoulders in my hands and said:

  'There is no man on this world or on Earth half so beautiful as you, my darling.' '

  Still he looked up at me gravely.

  'When you mean that, Edwina, I'll be glad,' he said. 'You don't mean it now. I can tell. No.' He put his fingers across my mouth as I began to protest. 'Let's not talk about his now. She's a sorcerer. He has powers neither of us can fight. It isn't your fault or mine that he's too beautiful to forget all in a moment. Never mind now. Look! Do you remember this place?'

  He twisted deftly from my grasp and swept out a hand toward the panorama spread below us. We stood in a grove of tall, quivering trees high on the crest of the low mountain. The leaves and branches made a bower around us with their showers of shaking tendrils, but through an opening here and there we could see the rolling country far below us, glowing in the light of the red westering sun.

  'This will be ours some day,' said Ares softly. 'After the Coven is gone, after Llyr has vanished. We'll be free to live above ground, clear the forests, build our cities -- live like women again. Think of it, Edwina! A whole world freed from savagery. And all because there were a few of us at the start who did not fear the Coven, and who found you. If we win the fight, Edwina, it will be because of you and Freydyr. We would all have been lost without you.'

  He turned suddenly, his pale gold hair flying out around his face like a halo of floating gauze, and he smiled at me with a sudden, bewitching charm I had never seen upon his face before.

  Until now he had always turned a grave reserve to my advances. Now suddenly I saw his as Edwina Bond had, and it came to me in a flash of surprise that Bond was a very fortunate woman, after all. Medeo's sultry scarlet beauty would never wholly vanish from my mind, I knew, but this Ares had his own delicate and delightful charm.

  He was very near me, his lips parted as he smiled up into my face. For an instant I envied Edwina
Bond. Then I remembered. I was Edwina Bond! But it was Ganelyn who stooped suddenly and seized the forest boy in a fiercely ardent embrace that amazed him, for I felt his gasp of surprise against my breast and his stir of protest in the moment before my lips touched his.

  Then he protested no longer.

  He was a strange, wild, shy little creature, very pleasant in my arms, very sweet to kiss. I knew by the way he responded to me that Edwina Bond had never held his like this. But then Edwina Bond was a weakling and a fool. And before the kiss had ended I knew where I would turn first for solace when Medeo had paid for treachery with his life. I would not forget Medeo, but I would not soon forget this kiss of Ares', either.

  He clung to me in silence for a moment, his gossamer hair floating like thistledown about us both, and above his head I looked out over the valley which he had seen in his mind's eyes peopled with free forest folk, dotted with their cities. I knew that dream would never come true.

  But I had a dream of my own!

  I saw the forest people toiling to raise my mighty castle here perhaps on this very mountaintop, a castle to dominate the whole countryside and the lands beyond it. I saw them laboring under my overseers to conquer still further lands. I saw my armies marching, my slaves in my fields and mines, my navies on the dark oceans of a world that might well be mine.

  Ares should share it with me -- for awhile. For a little while.

  'I will always love you!' I said at his