Prophet of Moonshae - Douglas Niles [51]
Yet when it came to the more distant future, all was a blur. At times a face or an event would crystallize before her, and as often as not these were horrifying, or dark and sinister. No, she could not fully accept his admonishment that soon all would be light in her life.
"Have you attended the passages I bade you to read?" asked her golden-haired lover.
"Indeed. They frightened me in places." She shivered at the memory of dark powers, described in their dwelling places on the lower planes, together with tales of those who had mastered them and of others, far more numerous, who had failed and had perished in pursuit of that dangerous task.
"As they should," he said. He spoke a word and she gasped as light sprang up in the library, a pale glow that emanated from the chandelier. Deirdre did not have to look up to know that no flame burned in the crystal light. It was the power of his sorcery at work.
His. Another of her nagging doubts returned, and she went to his side as he perused the scrolls that lay along a high shelf-scrolls that had come from the ancient vaults of Caer Allisynn. She took his arm and leaned her head against his shoulder, clinging lightly to him.
"My love, I have need to call you more than that. Can you not now tell me your name?" She spoke softly, feeling him grow tense at her side.
He stepped away and turned to face her again. She saw sorrow and much love in those deep, impossibly blue eyes. "I am sorry, my own love, but you know that I cannot. She who gains my name gains the secret of my soul, and that is a thing I must guard for all time."
"But… I must have a word, a name to call you, to know and remember you by."
"Then that is a thing that you must give me." He bowed slightly, a gallant nod of his head.
Did he mock her? She couldn't know and dared not ask him. "I shall call you Malawar," she said, unknowing from where the word came into her head.
"As Malawar I shall hear you," he said, again with that little bow, a smile tugging gently at the corners of his mouth. He proceeded to remove several scrolls from the shelf and place them before Deirdre. "These, now, you must begin. You have learned an awareness of the powers that will serve such as you and I. Now you must attempt to begin their mastery."
Deirdre took the scrolls and seated herself at the great table. She would do as he asked, as she had done before. Gradually the keys to power had been revealed to her, and in this, he showed her the path. Dutifully, knowing that he stood behind her, she began to read.
She felt the words of might wash over her, pulling her upward like a leaf borne on a powerful gust of wind, carrying her above the land, toward the very stars and moon themselves. The power was there, and she would wield it-soon, now, she could see.
For hours she read, and each new scroll took her to a higher flight across the land. Her mind was a hungry thing, driven by instinct deeper than thought to consume the feast he had laid before her. He… Malawar.
When she finally settled back to the world and the castle and the library, dawn had begun to color the eastern sky. And as she had known he would be, Malawar was gone.
* * * * *
The Earl of Fairheight paced restlessly through his Great Hall. He could not sleep nor even sit still, such was the tension that had gnawed at him throughout this long night.
At times he quailed from the course he had set, a route that might lead him to the mastery of all the Ffolk, to power he had never before imagined. But all too many branches of that path led him toward one end: a traitor's honorless death.
These were the possibilities that tore at his insides, denying him rest and comfort. Did the princess live? Had the mage worked his dark magic? Would his own involvement be discovered, suspected?
For a moment, he regretted the need to have the golem rampage through his own holdings, but he quickly realized the necessity of that tactic. Otherwise, it might prove all too obvious whose hand had orchestrated the death