The Blue Sword (Damar #2)(52)

But each time she touched the blue sword it was as if a shock ran through her, and she listened to the quiet night, hearing the echoes of sounds that had rung themselves to silence hundreds of years ago. Her restlessness made Narknon grumble at her, although the cat did not offer to leave the bed and sleep elsewhere. At last Harry tucked her hands firmly beneath her chin and fell asleep, and in her sleep she saw Aerin-sol again, and Aerin smiled at her. "Gonturan will do well for you, I think, child, as she did well for me. You can feel it in the way she hangs in your hand, can you not?" Harry, in her dream, nodded. "Gonturan is far older than I am, you know; she was given me with the weight of her own years and legend already upon her. I never knew all she might lead her bearer into - and as it was, I learned more than enough.

"Gonturan has her own sense of honor, child. But she is not human, and you must not trust her as human; remember it. She is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous."

Aerin paused, and the dream began to fade; her face was pale, and half imagined, like a cloud on a summer's dawn, with her hair the sunrise. "What luck I had, may it go with you."

Harry woke up, and found the sword gleaming blue in a light that seemed to come from the blue mosaic walls, from the blue stone in the hilt, even from the silver water of the stream.

Several days passed, while some of the Riders went forth on errands; but the newest Rider did not. She spent long hours in the mosaic palace, staring at the air, which hung, or so it seemed to her, like tapestry around her; and in that tapestry was woven all of history - her own, her Homeland's, as well as Damar's. Sometimes she saw a little bright shimmer like someone tossing back a fire-red mane of hair; and sometimes she saw the glint of a blue jewel - but that was no doubt only some chance reflection from the glossy walls around her.

But most of all, she slept. Mathin had been right about the sorgunal. For several days she was content to sleep, and waken to do nothing in particular, and sleep again. Narknon enjoyed it as much as she did. "I'm sure Mathin did not put any of that stuff in the porridge," Harry said to the cat; "there's no excuse for you."

On the fourth morning Mathin came to her, and found her pacing from fountain to fountain and from wall to wall. "This is not a cage to enclose you, Hari," he said.

She turned, startled, for she had been deep in her thoughts and had not heard his approach. She smiled. "I have not felt caged. I have ... slept a great deal, as you warned me. It is only today I have begun to ... think again."

Mathin smiled in return. "Is it so ill, this thinking?"

"Why am I a Rider?" she replied. "There is no reason for Corlath to make an Outlander girl, even the laprun minta, a Rider. Riders are his best. Why?"

Mathin's smile twisted. "I told you, long ago - long ago, more than a week since. It is a good thing for us to have a damalur-sol. It is a good thing for us to have something to look to, for hope. Perhaps you do yourself too little honor."

Harry snorted. "Has a laprun ever been made a Rider before?"

Mathin took a long time to answer. "No. You are the first to bear that burden."

"And an Outlander at that."

"You Outlanders are human, for all of that - as the Northerners are not. It is not impossible that some Outlander might have ... a Gift, kelar, like ours, as you do - for you do. There is something in you we recognize, and we know it is there, for Lady Aerin has chosen you herself. Corlath makes you a Rider to ... to take advantage of whatever it is you carry in your Outlander blood that has made you Damarian, even against your will."

Harry slowly shook her head. "Not against my will. At least not any more. But I do not understand."

"No; nor do I. Nor even does Corlath. He - " Mathin stopped.

Harry looked sharply at him. "Corlath what?"

The faint smile drifted across Mathin's face again. "Corlath did not steal you of his own free will. His kelar demanded it."

Harry grinned. "Yes; I had guessed, and once he told me - something of the sort. I saw dismay on his face often enough, those early days."

Mathin's face was expressionless when she raised her eyes again to his. "You have not seen dismay there for a long day since."

"No," she agreed, and her eyes went involuntarily to the mosaic walls around her.

Mathin said, "You are a token, a charm, to us, Daughter of the Riders and Rider and Damalur-sol."

"A mascot, you mean," Harry said, but without bitterness; and still she looked at the mosaic walls. She asked timidly, not certain of her own motives, "Does Corlath have no family? I see here, in the castle, the people of the household, and the - us - Riders, but no one else. Is it only that they are cloistered - or that I am?"

Mathin shook his head. "You see all there is to see. In Aerin's day the king's family filled this place; some had to live in the City, or chose to, for privacy. But kings in the latter days ... Corlath's father married late, and Corlath is his queen's only surviving child, for she was a frail lady. Corlath himself has not married." Mathin smiled bleakly. "Kings should marry young and get heirs early, that their people may have one thing less to worry about. There has been no one in generations whose kelar is as strong as Corlath's; it is why the scattered folk along our borders and in the secret hearts of our Hills, who have acknowledged no Damarian king for many years, rally now to Corlath. Even where he does not go himself his messengers are alight with it."