Patricia McKillip - The Tower at Stony Wood

The Tower at Stony Wood

Patricia A. McKillip

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Ace Books by Patricia A. McKillip

THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD

THE SORCERESS AND THE CYGNET

THE CYGNET AND THE FIREBIRD

THE BOOK OF ATRIX WOLFE

WINTER ROSE

SONG FOR THE BASILISK

RIDDLE-MASTER: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY

THE TOWER AT STONY WOOD

ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used

fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

THE TOWER AT STONY WOOD

An Ace Book Published by the Berkley Publishing Group

A division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New

York, New York 10014

The Penguin Putnam World Wide Web site address is

http://www. penguinputnam.com

Book design by Kinuko Y. Craft

reproduced in any form without permission.

First Edition: May 2000

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McKillip, Patricia A.

The tower at Stony Wood / Patricia A. McKillip — Rev.

p. cm. ISBN 0-441-00733-3

I. Title.

PS3563.C38 T69 2000 813'.54-dc21 99-040441

Printed in the United States of America 10 987654321

For Dave,

mi corazón,

who gave me Loreena McKennitt’s “The Visit”

The Tower at Stony Wood

One

^ »

She saw the knight in the mirror at sunset.

He rode alone down a road along a river. Where the black cloak he wore

parted over his surcoat, she glimpsed towers of gold; the cloak fanned behind

his back down the horse’s golden flanks. The knight’s head was bowed, his face

in shadow. The jewel in the pommel of the sword hanging from his saddle

flashed a bloody crimson in the last ray of light. His hair, swept back and

gathered into a silver ring at his neck, was black as jet.

She mused over him, scratching absently at a fleabite. Her own long, woody

hair, tangled and bunched as if small animals lived in it, fell over kelp-dark

eyes that glittered now and then with uncertain color. She brushed at the hair in

her face, then touched the mirror in its plain round frame lightly, as if to hold the

image in place. The horse’s steady pace might have found its unchanging rhythm

across miles, across countries. The knight followed the water’s slow path

toward night. That much she could see from the way the light faded, faster than

the water flowed, all down the river, leaving it mysterious with color. Beyond

the tall trees growing along the river, she could see little; she had no idea where

in the world he might be.

Melanthos, someone called far below. She shifted on her straw pallet,

slapping the air as at a mosquito’s whine. At that moment, entranced by the

mirror’s dreaming, she did not recognize her name. But the knight raised his

head abruptly, as if he had heard.

A strong, sun-browned face looked out of the mirror at her. His eyes were

unexpectedly light, the color of water, of the blade at his knee. She studied him,

wondering curiously at the grim set of his mouth, the mingling of apprehension

and resolve that honed the taut, clean lines of his face. Without taking her eyes

from him, she reached beyond the mirror on the stone window ledge for an

untidy pile of thread. The knight rode out of the mirror. The images in it faded

until only her own face remained, her intent, curious eyes. But she remembered

his colors. They remained reflected in her mind’s eye: gold, blood, silver,

night.

She sorted through her threads with slender, bitten fingers, chose a needle

and a square of linen. She threaded the needle and began with his face.

The story would come later.

Two

« ^ »

When the Lady from Skye rode through the gates of Gloinmere to marry Regis

Aurum, King of Yves, an old woman in her retinue caught the eye of Cyan Dag

as he stood in welcome with the knights of Gloinmere. Eager, as they all were,

for a glimpse of the stranger who would be queen, he found his attention snared

by the crone who turned her head to look at him as she passed. Her dark, softly

crumpled eyes held his gaze as if, he thought, she recognized him. But he knew

Skye only as a nebulous, unpredictable land along the western sea. It had been

overrun, a century before, by the restless armies of Yves, who had not realized,

until they conquered it, what a strange country they had made their own. Poets

came out of Skye, and rumors of magic, and the odd warrior seeking a place in

Gloinmere, with a cloak smelling of sheepskin and a name older than Yves.

High on a wall, trumpeters blew a fanfare to the king’s bride. The old woman

loosed Cyan’s eyes and disappeared into the patchwork swirl of dismounting

guests. Cyan searched through the confusion; the Lady from Skye had apparently

added herself to it.

The knights around Cyan had not been so distracted.

“Is she beautiful?” one demanded. “Or isn’t she?”

“She has a face like a fish.”

“She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life.”

“She’s too tall, and colorless as cloud.”

“I would lay my body in the mud for her to walk across. Anyway, the king

looks like a bear.”

“Which is she?” Cyan asked, wondering what he had missed, and how.

“You didn’t see her, Cyan? How could you not?” A gauntlet pointed. “Look

there. The gawky one with the king. It’s a marriage made of money.”

“There is no money in Skye,” he argued absently, finding nothing gawky with

or without the king.

“Then it is a matter of peace.”

“Skye is always peaceful,” Cyan said, for Skye had paid tribute without

comment for a century to the Kings of Yves, in return for being left unnoticed.

“Then it’s a matter of sorcery,” a dark knight beside him muttered sourly.

“She bewitched him, and will bring her monstrous ways into Yves.”

Cyan felt a sudden tension at his back, a breath sharply drawn, the shift of

metal in a scabbard. The raw, impoverished knights from Skye, drawn to

Gloinmere’s wealth and power, took suggestions of sorcery personally. Cyan

turned. His eyes, clear and light as rain, fell on them and they shifted.

He turned his gaze on the knight beside him and said mildly, “In a hundred

years, nothing without honor has come out of Skye, not a knight, not a promise.

Why would the king find anything less to bring back to Gloinmere?”

The dour knight blinked, yielded.

“Then it must have been,” he amended dubiously, “a matter of love.”

The shadow lifted over Skye; there was a soft laugh behind them. Cyan

brought his attention back to the yard.

“I still haven’t seen her.”

“There — on the steps.”

Cyan looked, but missed her again. The company of knights moved then to

follow the king to the hall. Their silken surcoats were bright with the symbols

of family and rank: birds and animals, suns and shooting stars, pyramids and

lightning bolts and the phases of the moon. Cyan wore three gold towers on a

field of midnight blue. Through centuries, the towers had lost their doors and

windows, had become only the idea of towers. It was an ancient emblem, but

beyond honor and a name older than the king’s, his family possessed little. He

had been brought to court by his father when he was twelve to be raised and

trained with the young prince. Cyan grew up in the sprawling shadow his father

had cast, and then out of it, abruptly, when he saved the newly crowned Regis’s

life during a border brawl with the North Islands. Younger than most of the

knights of Gloinmere, he wore his formidable reputation lightly. A tall, sinewy

man, he carried his strength lightly as well; most recognized it too late. His hair,

long and black, he kept neatly tied at his neck. His eyes rarely lost their calm,

even when he fought.

He walked with the knights across the yard. A pale-haired figure going up the

steps caught his attention, but it seemed laden with baggage. The guests had

gone inside. They were nowhere to be seen in the hall, where brilliantly

dressed lords and ladies waited to welcome the king’s bride more formally.

The king’s bard, in a tabard of cloth-of-gold, softly played a ballad from Skye

on his harp. The trumpeters had joined the ranks of other musicians and singers,

their purple tabards mingling with blue, silver, scarlet, green. Cyan set his

shoulders against a carved column of oak near the musicians and absently

watched for the ambiguous beauty of Skye.

Cria came to him, as he hoped.

“You look pensive,” she said. “My lord Dag.”

He looked down into her smile. She had skin as white as peeled almonds,

hair as dark as winter solstice, eyes the color of wild violets. She wore the

green, gold-scalloped tabard of a singer. Her voice was deep, sweet. Late at

night it grew smoky; embers flared in it. He lifted a hand to touch her and did

not, remembering where they were.

“I was looking for the king’s bride,” he answered. “My lady Greenwood.

Tell me: is she beautiful?”

“Gwynne of Skye? You haven’t seen her?”

“I was distracted.”

Her smile widened, amused. “By what? Another woman?”

“Yes.”

“Was she beautiful?”

“I have no idea. She had cobweb hair and eyes like new moons. She rode

past me, her eyes caught mine, and in that moment that’s all I knew.”

“And in that moment she bewitched you, and you missed the Lady from Skye

entirely. Beware the sorcery out of Skye, my lord. Who was she?”

“Someone’s grandmother, most likely. Still.” He hesitated; Cria watched him

curiously. “She looked at me as if she knew me.”

“Perhaps she only wanted to.” Her eyes fell away from him then; her smile

began to fade. She glanced at the musicians; the clusters of color were growing,

but as yet no one had called them to order.

Familiar with her expressions, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

Her shoulders moved, fidgeting as against a hold. “My father is here for the

wedding. I will not dare come to you.”

Again his hand resisted its desire to fill itself with her soft, cloudy hair, to

measure her eyelashes against his thumb. “I’m sorry,” he breathed.

“So am I.” She folded her arms tightly across her tabard, looked at him again,

but without seeing him. “I don’t like what I think he is thinking, these days. He

complains about the time I spend here among the king’s musicians; he complains

about what I wear, about my hair — ”

“Your hair?”

“As if he sees me suddenly as someone else. Someone who dresses more

respectably and does not sing, who might bring him gold and meadows and

more cows than anyone could milk.” He felt the blood leave his face; he linked

his fingers behind his back, leaned against the oak, so that he would not reach

out to her with both hands. She was seeing him now, a line as fine as thread

across her brow. “I think he has someone in mind.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know yet. I do know that he will not ask me, he will tell me, after he

has pledged me to whoever has enough of those things to buy me — ”

“I will talk to him,” Cyan promised, wondering where, in a day, he could

acquire meadows, hawks and hounds, gold to drink, if that would persuade her

father. “I don’t,” he realized bleakly, “even have a roof of my own to offer you.

I’ll talk to the king.”

She nodded. Her face was very calm, as if they had been discussing ancient

ballads, and so pale it might have been carved of ice. “Soon,” she pleaded.

There was a flurry of notes from flute and drum, then; the musicians began to

sort themselves out. His hands clenched behind his back; he said softly as she

turned, “I love you, my lady Greenwood. And I would let you sing.”

He saw the Lady from Skye then, entering the room amid a chattering

entourage. She was quite tall, as tall as Regis, who moved to meet her. The

braided coils of her hair were as white as gold could be and still be gold. Her

eyes seemed to reflect a midsummer sky, an endless, timeless blue filled with

light. The long, graceful slope of her profile might be considered fishlike, Cyan

saw, but it seemed only to adjust the boundaries of beauty, so that what had

been called beauty until then became too small a realm without her. Regis, with

his brown, shaggy head, his massive shoulders, and all his teeth bared in a grin,

looked more bearlike than ever. She laughed as he reached her, and lifted her

left hand to his arm, shedding charm like sorcery throughout the hall.

The trumpeters blew a flourish. She smiled over the court, looking pleased

by the noisy welcome, the music, the shouting, the applause. Regis’s voice,

booming over the hall, fought the noise and took the field. Three days of

feasting, he declared. Dancing, falconry, hunting, contests of strength and skill

with weapons, and cups of gold awarded by the new queen as prizes. For three

days, no words of anger or unkindness would be permitted, no quarrels

addressed, all feuds must be held in abeyance. The king loved this pale woman

from Skye, Cyan saw. His hands unclenched, fell to his sides. In that mood,

Regis would be generous to other lovers; he would refuse to admit the

possibility that love might be worth less than cows.

Gwynne of Skye spoke then. “My lords and ladies,” she said. “I am grateful

for your welcome.” Her words had a crispness to them, like the bite of air in the

west, that enchanted the court; it fell almost silent, listening for more. “I hope to

know you and love you as Regis does. In Skye we are at the mercy of the

weather, and we name the winds according to their fierceness. But, fierce or

gentle, all the winds blow tales to us of the great court at Gloinmere, and I have

been hearing them all my life. I never thought I would be standing here beside

Regis Aurum on the day before our wedding, wondering what you all must think

of this woman from the unpredictable west about to be called queen.”

She was interrupted then, with cheers and drums and an untidy chorus of

horns. Someone pounded on Cyan’s shoulder, pushed a cup into his hand. He

raised it with the king’s knights in salute to the Lady from Skye. Regis, his voice

sending pigeons in the high windows flying, proclaimed the marriage of Lady

Gwynne of Skye to the House of Aurum and the land of Yves in that hall, at that

hour the next day, and let no one be a moment later.

And now let the feast of welcome begin.

“Watch her dance,” said a woman next to Cyan. He almost did not hear her,

for the music had begun, and as always he listened for Cria among the singers.

Then the strange urgency in the words struck him and he turned.

The old woman who had caught his eyes in the yard and stolen his attention

from the beauty of Skye, captured it again. She was taller and straighter than he

would have guessed; she looked as old as the world. Her white, rippling hair

swept away from her seamed face down her back, almost to her knees. She

wore a long, scarlet robe of fine linen, and a peculiar mantle, a crisscross of

faded colors, draped over one shoulder and pinned with gold. One hand flashed

gold at every knuckle, the other only a single, silver ring. She carried a harp so

pale and plain it might have been made of bone.

Again her eyes held him, black as new moons and as secret.

“Watch — ” he repeated, mystified.

“Watch her when she dances. She forgets herself in music and lets her true

self show. You have ancient eyes. You will see it.”

The music and the chatter grew distant. Something glided over him: the chilly

intimation of trouble. “See what?”

“What she is. You’ll see it in the sixth fingers on her hands, in the scales on

her feet, in her distorted shadow, in her terrible eyes. That is not Gwynne of

Skye. There is a woman trapped in a tower in Skye, who cannot free herself,

who dares not even look at the world for fear of death. Will you find her, Cyan

Dag? Will you free her, for the sake of those who love and need her?”

He swallowed the sudden dryness in his throat. “The king’s true bride is

imprisoned somewhere in a tower in Skye?”

“You saved your king’s life once before. Will you help him now?”

“But how do I — how do you know these things?”

“Watch the lady the king will marry. She will show you herself what she is.”

“Who are you?” His voice had gone.

“I am the Bard of Skye.” Her ancient eyes looked still as well water and as

measureless. “I was trained, long ago, to see what exists and to say the word for

it. The woman who calls herself Gwynne of Skye can hide nothing from me. But

I can do nothing; your king would never believe me. In this land, a bard speaks

only through music; words may be as fickle for them as for anyone. In Skye, it is

said that the bard can change the world with a word. You see with your heart,

Cyan Dag. You recognized me, in the yard.”

“I don’t know you,” he whispered.

“You saw me instead of that false queen. You recognized what is true. We

need you.” The dark in her eyes trembled slightly, well water disturbed by the

first drop of rain. “All of us in Skye. And all in Yves. Your seeing eyes, your

steadfast heart. Help us.”

It was the second longest night of Cyan’s life.

Perversely, the lady did not dance. She moved among Regis’s court after the

feast, learning names and faces. Her eyes, always smiling, quickened when she

met Cyan.

“The king has spoken of you, my lord,” she said as he bent stiffly over her

hand, counting fingers. “Of your courage, and great skill, and of your very long

friendship. So I must conclude that your three towers had their origins in Skye,

since I think that everything extraordinary must have come somehow from my

country. Even the king.”

He murmured something, and cast a glance at her shadow as she withdrew

her hand. Five fingers, her shadow said. Her shod feet told him nothing at all.

The only magic he could see lay in her charms.

Later, he sat in the king’s chamber with Regis and a dozen of his most trusted

lords and knights. Regis, flushed with wine and happiness, assured them that he

had found the perfect, the most beautiful, the wisest — for all that her father

was an eccentric, absentminded old nodder, peering through lenses in search of

dragons and trying to walk on water. Cyan, with three women on his mind,

drank little and said less. She did not dance, his perturbed thoughts ran again

and again. I saw nothing. I cannot accuse her of nothing. They will marry. The

bard is mistaken. Or else the lady is a lie. But if that is true, and I am forced to

tell Regis that all he loves is a lie, then all love will become a lie to him, and

even my love for Cria will be worth less to him than cows…

Late at night, out of a mist of wine and goodwill, Regis fixed him with a

disconcertingly probing eye. “Cyan. You aren’t smiling. Everyone else is

smiling but you. You don’t like her.”

Cyan opened his mouth; nothing came out. Smiles grew thin around him,

curious. He rubbed his eyes, evading the king’s, and found words finally. “I’m

as bewitched as everyone else. Too bewitched to speak.”

The king threw an arm around his shoulders. “Maybe you have fallen a little

in love with her yourself. You should marry. Everyone should marry.” He

poured more wine into Cyan’s cup. “Drink with me. To Skye and all the magic

that has come out of it.”

Cyan coughed on his wine. The king’s eye rolled toward him again. But

someone else raised his cup to the king’s happiness, and that Cyan could

swallow. The knights reeled to their beds as the stars began to fade. Cyan,

walking along a battlement wall, saw the softly lit tower window framed with

roses behind which the lady slept. Did she dream? he wondered. Or did she

watch the flickering shadows and wait for dawn, having no need for human

sleep?

A shadow melted over the candlelight in the window. He froze on the wall.

Jeweled colors flashed in the casement as it opened. He saw her hair, rippling

loose and limned with fire. He could not see her face. But he felt her eyes on

him, the man on the wall, alone and sleepless, gazing at her across the well of

night between them.

She closed the casement; the room grew dark. He went inside, woke a page

dozing beside a door, and sent him to find the Bard of Skye. He waited in the

great hall while servants moved around him, laden with garlands to hide

doorposts, transform the throne, spiral up the oak columns to make a wedding

bower. The page came back to him finally. The Bard of Skye was not in her

chambers, nor with the lady, nor with the lady’s retinue, nor with the king’s

bard, nor with the musicians, nor, it seemed, anywhere at all.

And that, Cyan thought, baffled, seemed to be that.

He took his place the next day among the men escorting the king through the

hall to the flower-strewn dais. Caged doves, released at the entrance of the new

queen, flew upward into shafts of light. Her escort of women held her to earth

with ribbons of pearl they let fall when she reached Regis. She seemed to be

wearing every pearl in the western sea. Like everyone’s, her eyes burned with

sleeplessness, but with nothing more sinister that Cyan could see. The Bard of

Skye had reappeared to play gentle ballads from Skye and Yves with the king’s

bard, as Regis Aurum and the Lady from Skye pledged their lives to one

another. The bard’s eyes caught at Cyan once, above the bone harp. Why, they

demanded, are you still here? He heard Cria’s voice then, raised alone, sweet

and pure, singing verses to the harping. Her gaze had drawn inward; she saw no

one, not even Cyan. Chilled, he wondered if her father had already promised

her to one of the smiling courtiers watching her. Her voice soared toward the

circling doves. The king and queen kissed. Trumpets sounded; bells pealed in

answer, passing the message from bell mouth to mouth across the realm. Still,

he picked out Cria’s voice, like a thread of gold in a tapestry, fine and true, yet

fading into the growing tumult until he lost the thread and heard only the memory

in his heart.

He had little chance, that day or the next, to speak to her. She seemed always

Patricia McKillip - The Tower at Stony Wood

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