"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 Krull's. 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."
Ynyr glanced at the hourglass. 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 hourglass.
"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 hourglass 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 passing 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 cocoon 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 he 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 cocoon 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!
X
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 basso rising above them all.
He tur
ned and rubbed at his eyes. As he opened them again, he was surprised to see the young woman . . . Merith's assistant, 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. Titles make me nervous. A title 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 title. I've always considered them suitable for those who have no confidence in their real names and need something artificial to substitute 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."
"She's a good woman, but in that, at least, I think it's plain for anyone to see that she's failed."
"Perhaps my betrothed is not lost but has fled from the sight of me. All the village girls tease me about it."
"Then they are equally blind."
"You think it, too, don't you?"
"No, I don't think that, Vella."
He watched as the hood of her cloak was pushed back from her face. Somehow she'd avoided contact with the soot from the cook-fire. Her hair tumbled bright and lustrous about her face. Her beauty put Merith to shame.
Her attitude seemed to change. In place of the demure, shy servant girl there suddenly stood before him a confident young seductress. The moonlight drifting down through the trees gave her face an exotic cast.
When she spoke again, her voice was full of new confidence. Confidence, and something else: barely concealed desire.
"Tell me truthfully. Am I not worth returning to?"
Colwyn's eyes moved from hers and he cleared his throat, which was suddenly tight. He tried to think of other matters: of Ynyr on his mountain and what ordeals he might be undergoing; of Lyssa in her distant prison and what must await her. He did this because the longer he looked at her standing supple and anxious there beside him, the harder it became to think of anything else.
He'd been a long time alone. There had been the furious ride from Turold to Eirig, the tension attending the ultimately inconclusive wedding ceremony, the battle at the White Castle and Lyssa's abduction, and all that had subsequently befallen him since he'd set out to rescue her.
But Lyssa was far from this wood, and he was very tired.
Where the devil was Ynyr?
He found his gaze turning back to the beautiful peasant girl. Suddenly even Ynyr seemed very far away . . .
* * *
The light was inconstant and deceiving, the twists and turns in the corridors endless. Lyssa ran onward, refusing to give up, the voice of the Beast booming and echoing all around her.
Abruptly she emerged into a wide hall lit with a milky glow. The walls here were higher than many she'd passed between during her long, seemingly endless run. The light itself seemed to twist and bend as she stared, forming eerie shadows and discomfiting silhouettes on the ceiling and floor.
Ahead lay a dome of some partly translucent material, ribbed with opaque, toothlike projections. It sat by itself in the center of the high-roofed chamber. It was made of material that differed from the rest of the Fortress,
She moved forward until she stood next to it, then searched for the safest passage around. There was movement behind her and she saw another of the silent white Slayers. A gap opened in the side of the dome. For an instant she hesitated, but no Slayers emerged from the gap. The path ahead was clear.
The walls of the passageway were contorted and warped according to some alien geometry. To see them was enough to know they hadn't been designed with human aesthetics in mind. She longed for the comforting, straight walls and angles of the White Castle.
She wondered at the sudden appearance of the passageway. Perhaps she'd tripped some concealed switch. In any case, there was the threat of the Slayers urging her onward. She ran forward.
The passage was not a long one and it instantly sealed itself behind her. She found herself standing in a dimly lit chamber. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust.
The sealing of the passageway behind her was ominous, but she wasn't entirely disappointed. If she was shut in, others were shut out. The closing prevented the Slayers from reaching her. For the moment it seemed she was safe from them.
She studied the floor and ceiling, which were fashioned of the same smooth material as the walls. She ran a hand along one curving section, following the arc down to the floor, but could not find so much as a crack where the two joined.
The air in the room was much warmer than it had been in the corridors or her cell, bordering on the sultry. She moved along the wall, searching for an opening, a lever, anything that might signify an exit or a means for producing one. There was nothing.
Except . . . there, across the empty floor from where she stood, a darker shape outlined against the blackness. Another doorway, perhaps. She hesitated, then moved toward it. Nothing there. Maybe a little farther on . . .
She halted and found she was shivering from a sudden chill, which did not come from a cold breeze. Carefully she retraced her steps until she was pressed tightly against the warm wall that had admitted her. She could retreat no farther.
At first it was only a sound—a faint, brushing sound like leaves scudding along a carpet. The sound was not distinct like footsteps, but more like a continuous rush across the floor, like something being dragged. A scratchy, rustling noise, not comforting to hear in near darkness.
Then something else—a steady pounding, deep and reverberant. It reminded her of the beating of her own heart, though whether this was the pulsing of another heart she could not have said, save that it was slower than her own and seemed to vary greatly in speed and intensity. With each pulse a brief flash of light temporarily illuminated a portion of the floor. She could not see the source of the light or tell if it was connected to the beating noise, but each time it flared to life she thought she could see something standing in the far portal she had considered entering.
Her fingers dug at the smooth wall. It helped to keep her from shaking so much. The thing that stood in the portal was very tall. In shape it was roughly human, but that was all that was human about it. She could not even tell if it was clothed or naked. She did not want to be able to tell.
Only the eyes showed clearly. They were enormous—oval instead of round—with bright red, vertically slitted irises. They focused on her where she stood frozen against the wall. At least, she thought weakly, there are only two of them.
She knew what it was without being told. Tales had been handed down through generations, old stories filled with more fancy than fact. Tales used to frighten unruly children. As a little girl she'd liste
ned wide-eyed and trembling to such stories. She was not a little girl now. It would do no good to behave like one.
With a great effort of will she forced herself to stand away from the wall and regard the apparition as stolidly as it regarded her.
"Are . . . are you the Beast?"
"You may call me that if it pleases you. My own name for myself you would find difficult to pronounce, though it may be that in time you will come to know it."
"What do you want with me? The same thing that you want with the rest of my world?"
"No. If it had been my intention to destroy you, I could have done so long before now. You have been brought here not to perish before me but to give what you alone can give. You have been brought here for a marriage, though not of the sort you can imagine. It will be a much more intimate melding than you can conceive of."
"I don't know what you mean by such words but I do know this: if you could force this marriage or melding or whatever you choose to call it on me, you'd have done so when I was first brought here. But you've waited. Something has made you hesitate. So I think that perhaps you cannot take what you wish from me without my agreement."
"You are hopeful rather than certain. For now it amuses me to leave you wondering. What I wish from you is a part of your mind, your soul. You are special, Lyssa of Eirig. Unique. In you many generations have combined to produce something atypical to your world. I would make use of it. It raises you far above the mass of insects you call your 'people.' Now, with my help and instruction, you will rise beyond your wildest dreams."
"My dreams are not wild and I do not care to rise above them. As for help and instruction, I have already chosen a consort to share my life with me."
Laughter seemed beyond the creature. "You have chosen a paltry kingdom on an insignificant planet. I do not blame you for this. It is all you know. But there is more to the universe, much more. Why have a kingdom when you could rule an entire world? You could be queen and satrap in one, ruling absolutely."
"I have no desire to rule at all, absolutely or otherwise. I have chosen love."