It was an odd experience, being put to bed: having her clothes removed and folded carefully away by others, being wrapped in a new shift apparently only for sleeping in, an extravagance at which she marveled. Her hair was combed out and neatly plaited, her comfort fussed over. Eilonwy was relieved to find she was still permitted to clean her own teeth without assistance, and drew a stubborn boundary at having her bed curtains closed. They had always been closed, in Spiral Castle, and she had come to feel suffocated at the very thought.
The candles were snuffed and the hearth fire banked; Aerona was given the role of handmaid for the night. Eilonwy protested at this, yet once her chamber door was shut, and the silence of the room closed in, she found herself feeling a certain relief that there was another beating heart and warm body somewhere, close enough to call if needed. The chamber felt cavernous, a yawning darkness, with herself lost in the middle. Its emptiness was like a tangible thing, a nothingness that could be touched and held, that wrapped around her heart in an aching grip. She lay there, too lonely and exhausted even to weep.
After a time, she became aware of a silver light filtering in through the window and turned to see a sliver of moon peeking around the casement edge. Milky incandescence seeped into her, a sweet and gentle sustenance; her tense limbs relaxed, and she waved a hand sleepily at the pale light. Dallben had told her a little of her people's legends of the moon, of its goddess whom they had revered. He had done so with a certain hesitancy and brevity, as though unsure of the safety of too much knowledge. But how could it be a danger, this nurturing light, that curled back the velvet darkness like a page of a book—as a friend to be embraced, not as an enemy to be beaten back? Perhaps, here in this place near her homeland, where some still saluted the last Daughter of Llyr with the symbol of Rhiannon, she might learn more of this, at least.
"Hullo, Lady," she whispered, a little shyly. "If I could fall asleep while you're in the window, I should feel I had a friend nearby. Move slowly, won't you?"
Burrowing into her pillows at an angle that allowed her to see the open casement, she realized she could hear the crashing of the breakers against the cliffs far below. High tide sang the endless music of the sea. The moving water murmured, a constant rushing that filled her ears and blocked all other small night sounds with its steady, formless noise. She had an odd thought that the water was reaching up, up through the foundations of the castle, to try to reach her, find her, claim her as its own. Voices called faintly within the thunder of surf, so that she pricked her ears to try to understand them. But...no, there was nothing intelligible in that dull roar, no voices, only the fancies of her overtired mind, no doubt. She'd been listening to too many sailors' songs.
Her eyelids were heavy. But she could not quite close them; the beauty of the moon drifting slowly into view, minute by minute, painting the floorboards in liquid silver, kept her gaze drawn. Her turbulent thoughts had been born away upon the soothing rumble of surf, her mind lulled into a near trance. Perhaps this was why she felt no surprise, or fright, when the moonlight seemed to move. It coalesced, thickened, forming itself into a translucent shape of a woman.
Eilonwy recognized her; had dreamed her before, once: tall, and fair, and ageless, gowned in silver-white and crowned in light, and somehow she filled the whole room, her presence instantly close by the bed though she had not seemed to walk over from the window. She hovered there, her garments and long, pale hair drifting as though moved by a current of air, though no wind stirred the bed curtains.
Her face would have been too beautiful to look upon, had she been fully corporeal. Eilonwy gazed at her in serene wonder as the woman bent over her. As in her dream so many years ago, the word Mother filled the girl's mind and whispered from her lips. And the woman smiled, a mother's smile, in which joy and sadness and love and pride were all mingled together, and for a moment, a breathless instant, the transparency of her glittering face seemed to flush into solid, mortal flesh; her pale, depthless eyes flashed green, and her silver hair gleamed with glints of golden-red fire.
Mother, Eilonwy whispered again, stronger, and the figure bent and kissed her, and she thought a single tear fell from that lovely face. At least, something glittered in the corner of her vision as the white hand moved to brush her hair back, in a touch as warm and gentle and feather-light as a spring breeze. The woman hummed, low, a tune both unknown and somehow familiar, a melody that seemed composed of the rocking drift of the ocean waves, more potent than any magic plucked upon harp strings. It carried all awareness away in its wake, into a vast, peaceful, dreamless darkness.
Eilonwy did not know that she closed her eyes. But when she opened them again, she was alone, and the dawn sky was pearly outside the window.
"Oh," she sighed, in disappointment; she had the sense of having slept well and deeply, but felt it was a shame to have fallen asleep while still in the company of that divine presence. She lay there and gazed upon the patch of sky, thinking of the white orb floating within the frame of the casement. I did ask her to stay where I could see, she recalled, so that I could fall asleep looking at her. I didn't expect her to come right into the room. She laughed softly to herself...what nonsense, surely that had been a dream! But a lovely dream, nonetheless, in a place she had expected nothing lovely, and for that, she could be grateful.
She stretched and sat up, feeling strangely light. Nothing had changed about her circumstances, nor was she happy, exactly, but the world did not seem such a bitter, disappointing place as it had last night, nor the years she must spend here seem to stretch quite so interminably ahead. Marvelous, what a decent night's sleep could do. Sliding from the bed, she padded in her bare feet across to the window, pushing the casements wide. Upon the far horizon where sea met sky, the sun blazed behind a rosy haze of banked clouds, its rim just touching the water and pouring out a rippling path of light that reached all the way to the breakers.
Eilonw stared, in wonder and delight. Since the morning after her first escape from Spiral Castle, she had loved to see the sun rise, loved the silence and the stillness that heralded its arrival, the pastel-painted sky, the soft awakening of the world as bird and beast and all things that moved through the day greeted it with song. But never had she ever seen any sunrise as beautiful as this.
Light burst from behind purple-hued clouds in crimson and golden banners, as though all the hosts of the heavens had assembled to herald the arrival of their flaming monarch. In its ascent, the sun scattered tongues of flame upon the vastness of the sea, which flung this glittering largesse back and forth upon its dancing surface, carving it into shimmering fragments until each shattered upon the rocks below.
The beauty of it brought a lump to her throat, a prickling ache to her eyes, and she sank to the seat in the window alcove, her legs gone heavy. Fire and water. Sun and sea. These were the elements, Dallben had told her, and Medwyn before him, whose eternal tension was the core, the source of the powers of the Daughters of Llyr. She was accustomed to thinking of them as opposites, as forces that dueled within her, like the dragons of legend beneath the lake at Dinas Emrys. It had never occurred to her, until now, that they could complement one another with such heartbreaking majesty...a glorious mystery that filled her with an aching, overwhelming desire to grasp at this magic, to both lose and find herself within it. Was this the splendor that her foremothers had known?...that she, their heir, had been denied?
She sat, gazing at the scene, a long time, until the colors faded into the pale blue and gold of ordinary daylight, and the sun moved into the herds of grazing morning clouds. She was still sitting, when Aerona emerged from the antechamber, groomed and dressed, and bade her good morning.
"It is," Eilonwy replied, with mild surprise, shaken from her reverie. She turned to the handmaid. "It's a lovely morning. I've never seen the sun rise over the sea before."
Aerona smiled, and Eilonwy looked at her more closely than she yet had. She was a pleasant-featured girl, perhaps in her late teens, round-faced and rosy-cheeked, with sparkling hazel eyes and nut-brown hair pulled back demurely into ribbon-wrapped plaits. "Aye, that's a sight, isn't it?" she said. "A thing all should see at least once, and we get to see every day, when the weather's fine. It's different, every morning, depending on what mood the sea is in. All the finest chambers in the castle are on the east side, for that very reason." She moved to the bed, began throwing the bedcovers off to air it. "They'll be having breakfast in the Hall directly. Will you be wanting to join them there, or have something brought to you?"
An astonishing concept. "I can do that?"
Aerona laughed. "Of course. The Queen often takes her breakfast in her own chambers, if we don't have guests."
Of course; she'd forgotten. Achren had always broken fast in her chambers, with Eilonwy's meager morning rations having been left unceremoniously outside her door for her to collect whenever she happened to rise. She had not often wanted them, so never had it become a habit. At Caer Dallben, breakfast was a communal affair taken after morning chores, warm with camaraderie, and her throat ached at the thought of it.
"I think I'll go down," she said. "I'm more likely to see my friends that way, and I don't suppose they'll stay much longer."
Aerona's smile was sympathetic. "As you wish. There were more clothes left for you, yesterday evening while you were down at the feast; come and pick something out."
"More?" Eilonwy slid from the window alcove and crossed to the chest. "How much clothing does one need?"
The handmaid laughed, lifting the lid and rummaging through piles of fabric. "Well, you don't think you're expected to dress so fine as you were yesterday, all the time! Good Llyr, what an ordeal it would be. Here we are." She pulled out a series of far more sensible attire than had yet been available—weaves of fine linen, trimmed beautifully, but simple and modest in cut, sleeves straight, lacing accessible.
Eilonwy surveyed them in great relief. "Oh, any of those. I don't care; you pick."
Aerona briskly chose a lilac-colored kirtle, and attended her morning rituals, acquiescing without a fuss when Eilonwy refused help on certain tasks, and hovering only to tell her where to find things she wanted. If one had to have a lady-in-waiting, she was agreeable enough, though it was still a tedious business.
"Now, then," Aerona chirped, after pronouncing the Princess presentable. "If you'll wait a moment for me to get my things in order, I'll walk you down to the Hall before I join my sister in the Solar."
Eilonwy shrugged. "It's all right. I remember the way to the Hall, now, I think, and I've got to learn my way around eventually. Go on to wherever you're going."
The girl looked bemusedly at her and laughed again. "You are a strange one! But all right—I can see you'd rather! A good day to you, milady. You send for me, if you need anything."
She disappeared into her chamber, and Eilonwy smiled a little ruefully to herself. How strange these customs—yet she was the strange one! She picked up her bauble from her side-table, and on a second look, palmed the ormer slice as well, and slipped them into the pouch under her skirts.
Leaving her chamber, she halted, startled, just outside the door. Across the dim corridor, a tall, boyish figure was sprawled on the floor against the cold stone wall. His head was dropped with his chin to his chest, his face obscured by the fall of his tousled hair, but she would know him anywhere and anytime by the mere shape of him: the slope of his broad shoulders and the angles of his hands as familiar as her own name.
"Taran of Caer Dallben," she exclaimed, in astonishment, and he jerked as though he'd been struck, lifting his head up to stare at her from a face as white as parchment, dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked momentarily confused, and then scrambled to his feet, his hand going to his sword-hilt automatically. As though she were a guard come to attack him!
"Taran of Caer Dallben," she repeated, in exasperation, "I nearly tripped over you! Whatever in the world are you doing?
He was on high alert, despite being obviously exhausted, stupidly stumbling to find an excuse. "I was...just...I thought...er...I was more comfortable here...than...in my...my chambers."
She squinted at him, unimpressed and irritated. "That is the silliest thing I've heard this morning. I may hear something sillier, because it's early yet, but I doubt it. I'm beginning to think the ways of Assistant Pig-Keepers are quite beyond me."
The door opened behind her again, and she heard Aerona give a little start of surprise. Taran looked wildly over her shoulder, clutching at his sword again. "Oh, for goodness' sake," Eilonwy burst out. "You and that sword! I wish you'd behave normally for once! I'm going down to breakfast. After you wash your face and untangle your hair, I suggest you have some too. It would do you good. You look as jumpy as a frog with fleas."
She turned on her heel and marched down the corridor, pausing not to see if he had followed her, hearing his brief stammered greeting to her handmaid and then his stumbling steps approaching as she turned a corner. Down one short set of stairs and up another...was he still behind her? He couldn't possibly know his way around the castle yet; how had he known where her room was? Had he sat outside her door for the entire night? Perhaps she should feel flattered, should feel grateful for such concern, but...no, there was nothing flattering about having her every movement so scrutinized, as though she were a child, or some rare object Taran was afraid of losing.
But it puzzled her. He had always been mindful of her safety, but this was beyond all reason. Why would he not tell her what frightened him so much that he could not eat, that he threatened her with guards and kept night watch at her door? Nothing about it made sense. And even Kaw, flying in yesterday and telling her...
"Princess."
She halted in surprise, the voice halting her inner conversation with a jolt as a figure stepped out of a side door...thin, pale, bearing a ring of jingling keys. That Chief Steward...Magg. He stood before her, blocking her passage further down the hall.
"Oh," Eilonwy said uncertainly. "Is there..."
"Something has happened," he interrupted gravely, "something very serious. You are to accompany me immediately."
He was up to something. She knew it at once; deception breathed around him, a miasma she could practically see and touch, but which part of his words were a lie, and in what capacity, was not clear at all. Eilonwy wavered for a moment, her instinct telling her to shove past him, to blast him out of the way with a flash of fire and run the rest of the way to the Great Hall, to shout back for Taran.
But perhaps something had happened. Was still happening. Certainly Taran suspected something, and here, perhaps, was the answer to all his baffling behavior. If she went with this man, she might finally discover the root of the matter, while if she called or ran for help, they'd only lock her up tighter, probably, everyone else's worries forged into her prison, assuming they even believed her.
"Princess," Magg repeated, holding out his arm. She looked at him narrowly; he was watery-eyed and sickly-looking, pale and almost gaunt with thinness, and no taller than she was—she ought to be able to handle him, if he tried anything untoward. Blast! If only she'd thought to carry her dagger! But she did have her magic, after all.
"What's happened?" she said, taking his elbow, and letting him lead her swiftly down a side hallway.
"There is no time to explain it in full," he said. How convenient. "We must be swift now, but you will be apprised of all shortly. Your safety, and that of your friends, is at stake."
Oh, clever. Perhaps this was a lie and perhaps it was not. She could not tell, and anger and fear both swirled in her gut, but she followed him dutifully, down stairs and hallways, and bit her tongue from further questions, lest he should realize her suspicion of him and reveal nothing. They passed through unfamiliar parts of the castle, until he brought her out into a side courtyard, where two horses stood, saddled and bridled.
"We are to leave the castle grounds?" she demanded, a prickle of foreboding raising the hair on her neck. "What has anything beyond them to do with me?"
He looked back at her sharply, and seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then... "There are those within the castle who wish you harm," he said smoothly. "It is a part of that danger of which I speak. Not the King and Queen! Think not ill of them; they have known nothing of it."
"But you did," she said flatly, unable to keep her skepticism from showing.
"A Steward sees much," he answered. "It is my place to know all that goes on, but before I could move upon the traitors, certain things had to fall into place. Come, now. It is for your safety that you must leave the castle. We travel merely down to the next village, where a safe house waits to shelter you while the conspirators are dealt with."
"And my friends?"
"Yes," he said, "I shall fetch the pig-keeper and your other companion once you are brought to safety. He knows all, and is in my confidence, but was forbidden to speak to you of it, lest our hand be played too soon."
She frowned, beset by confusion at this turning about of her own suspicions. If this was true, it explained much, and so was plausible. If it was not, then what had worried Taran so much?
There was nothing else for it. She mounted the horse, watching as Magg did likewise upon his own steed. "Come," he instructed. "Do not gallop and draw attention, or it may alert your enemies. Only follow me."
They trotted through the sideyard and out into the main courtyard, weaving through scattered clusters of guards and castle staff going about their work. They approached the open gates; they were through them, the massive stone wall falling away behind her, the hills and valleys of Mona spread out below them. Despite her unease, Eilonwy felt a twinge of elation at the sight of open country—free, wild, without walls or towers, and she made no protest when Magg urged his steed into a canter, her own mount following its lead without being asked.
They rode swiftly into the hills, following a faint track of wagon wheels that twisted between the swells of earth, dipping into places thick with trees, their gnarled trunks blanketed by moss. Presently Magg turned from the path and rode into a wooded glade. "There is a spring here," he explained, turning back a little to her. "Let us water the horses. In my haste to take you from the danger, I did not ensure they were fresh, and my mount seems fatigued."
"All right," she said dubiously. They had not been riding long enough to fatigue any horse—barely a league. Their proximity to the castle made duplicitousness unlikely, however, and she dismounted when they reached the place he indicated, to let her horse step beneath the low-handing branches to drink. She watched Magg warily, but he did not come near her; he was lifting his horse's hind leg and examining its hoof in concern, crouched over with his back to her.
"Trouble with her shoe?" she queried.
"I think there may be," he answered. "Would you be good enough to hold her head, milady, and keep her quiet?"
She trusted him in no way, but this seemed safe enough. Eilonwy grasped the bridle of the strange mare, soothing words upon her lips.
They never passed into the air. The metal of the bridle sparked at her touch, shooting prickling, paralyzing sensation up her arm and into her chest. She gasped for breath, tried to let go. She could not. Her hand was frozen upon the thing, her muscles spasmed, clenched so hard that no order from her mind could relax them, could open her fingers. In less time than it took for her to recognize the effect of strong magic, less time than it would have taken her to scream out in realization, Magg had sprung at her.
He wrapped both arms around her from behind, one hand on her free wrist, the other at her throat. In a sickening moment she knew she had misjudged his strength, indeed had never known a man's strength at all; Taran, she realized in that instant, had held himself back when they had sparred, had allowed her to overpower him to an extent she had never realized. Now, in the grip of the thin but sinewy arms of a man not nearly his equal, she knew the utter impossibility of throwing him off. She screamed, then, a bloodcurdling shriek that frightened the horse; it threw its head and reared, carrying her with it by her paralyzed hand, lifting her off the ground, and her captor with her; she screamed again as the weight of both of them came near to jerking her arm from its socket.
Magg hissed something , and suddenly her hand was free, and they plummeted to the ground, landing hard, the breath knocked from her lungs. He landed atop her with a grunt and a curse, pinning her down with her face in the dirt, wrestling her arms behind her before she could so much as attempt a swing. The pain in her shoulder nearly blacked out her mind; it screamed within her, but she had no breath to release it, could only gasp for desperate air as she felt her hands being bound together.
Idiot. Fool! To lie here doing nothing. Are you a Daughter of Llyr or not? A voice seemed to roar in her clouded mind, and over her panic she shaped her lips into words that would spark the dead grass around them into blaze, but the intuitive movements of her hands, the gestures that guided the flow and intensity of the spell, were impossible. Perhaps a trained, true enchantress could have done it with her words alone, with thoughts alone, but she...she was abandoned, half-taught, held back and denied, and only a faint smoldering arose from the bracken.
Enough for Magg to notice. "Oh, no, dear," he hissed in her ear. "She told me you might be able to do something like that. But we'll have none of it." She felt him fumbling, and then his shaking hands dipped forward, forced a length of cloth between her teeth, pulled her head back as he tied it.
She. She told me. Who was "she"? What was happening? In her panic she could not think, could barely breathe enough, with her mouth blocked this way. Finding her stilled, Magg rolled off of her, and instantly Eilonwy writhed, flipping over and digging her elbow into the ground to push herself up; before he could react she kicked wildly at his face, making satisfying contact, and scrambled to get her feet beneath her as he roared in pain. She managed to stand and run a few steps, but her balance was unwieldy; she was disoriented, and knew not where to go. Magg was on her in a moment, seizing her by the arms and throwing her down, dodging to avoid her flailing legs until he had pinned her again, his full weight crushing against her back. She heard him panting, his breath ragged, as he tied her ankles together, and when he crawled off she saw that he was haggard, his lank hair clinging to his sweaty face, his mouth bleeding, his pale grey eyes wild and full of rage.
"You bloody wretch," he whispered hoarsely. "You damned witch's brat. I'll have the fight out of you by the end. I'll break you like a wild filly the moment you're mine."
Fear swept her, and anger, rising in red agony; the heat of it singed her fingertips and her bound wrists, but it had no outlet without words. She screamed against the gag, an enraged, impotent shriek, and he grabbed her by the shoulders and flipped her onto her back, pushing her down until her lungs felt like bursting, closing his bony hand around her throat again.
"None of that," he ordered. "Keep silent, or I may just forget my orders. She wants you untouched for now. Don't make me ruin her plans."
His pale face was repulsive; she wanted to retch at the sight of it so close to her own, at the crushing weight of him over her, and she writhed to get away. But he seemed to enjoy this, by his expression, so she fell limp, glaring at him. If only one could spit through one's eyes, how she would enjoy aiming straight for such a disgusting target.
Magg waited until he knew she would not struggle again, and rose, dusting himself off, holding the edge of his cloak to his split lip. He stepped away, collected the horse and brought it near, then crouched next to her. Eilonwy shut her eyes and grit her teeth as his arms slid beneath her torso; he hoisted her up and toppled her unceremoniously over the saddle, ignoring her unintelligible growls of indignation and discomfort.
"Your own choice," he said, when she was sprawled across the horse's back like the turnip sack Teleria had compared her to the day before. "If you'd have come quietly you'd be walking on your own feet. But as you wish."
Retrieving the second horse, he led both down the stream-bed that flowed from the spring, stony and pebbled and entirely unlikely, Eilonwy knew, to hold any sign of their passing. She watched the ground go by beneath hooves, trying to breathe slowly, to wrestle down the fear that wanted to crawl from her gut to her throat and strangle her. She would think her way out of this, she must. It was letting her feelings get in the way that had gotten her into it; only cleverness would get her out.
Gods, everything hurt, everything...and she...she was done, trussed up as soundly as a chicken for the pot, helpless without speech, a wretched fool to have gone anywhere with this man. Surely her absence had already been noticed. Taran, vigilant as he was, would have realized it within minutes. He would sound the alarm, rouse the entire castle. If she had only listened to him!...if he had just told her...
No, there was no use in casting blame, now, only thinking of how she might escape. How had she been tricked? The horse's bridle had been enchanted, that was plain...a paralyzing spell, just like the one that had cemented her and all her friends to the Black Crochan in Morva. It had been just enough to catch her off her guard, long enough for Magg to make his move. But it meant he had planned this with help, for he was no enchanter; she sensed no magic about him. It had come from somewhere else, someone helping him...or the other way 'round.
She wants you untouched. She. A woman who knew her, knew about her magical abilities. That could be any woman on this island, given what they knew of her people, of the powers of the Daughters of Llyr. But the only woman she could think of who would assist anyone in an assault like this, one powerful enough, manipulative enough to plant a spy in a high position of a royal house, and provide an enchanted article of such potency to an accomplice...was...
Dead.
Her scalp and neck went cold as ice. Dead, she thought, nausea rising. She's dead. Dead. Dead. Dead beneath Spiral Castle, or Oeth-Anoeth, or off in the wilderness, somewhere, starved on a hillside. She'd been dead for years, she must have been; even Dallben had thought it likely, even Gwydion...
But Gwydion had never said Achren was dead. Only that he did not know what had become of her.
For a moment, Eilonwy almost succumbed to a wild impulse to throw herself from the horse. She could have done it; the right twist, a mighty effort, and she could have writhed herself off, tied limbs or no; anything was better than the horrors her imagination presented. At the last moment, rationality managed to stab a single ray of light through her mind. What good would it do her? She could not run, would likely injure herself falling, and then what? Magg would toss her right back and she'd be worse off than before. Stop. Stop panicking, you nitwit. Think. Even if it's Achren, a broken neck won't help.
What could Achren want with her? Now, after all these years? For that matter, what had she ever wanted with her? And what had this sneering abomination of a man meant by the moment you're mine? She shuddered, gagging on the cloth in her mouth. No, no...whatever unspeakable ordeal the creature intended for her, she could not allow herself to wonder about it, lest she grow too terrified to keep her wits.
They continued on perhaps another half an hour into the hills, always staying in the low areas and ravines, before Magg halted, and pulled the horses into the cover of thick trees, where he tethered them. He came to stand near Eilonwy's head where she dangled over the broad back, and looked at her appraisingly. She glared back at him, the only power left to her.
"We shall rest here a while," he announced softly, "until they've all gone far past us. Oh, yes, they're on alert – I heard the horns sound while you were throwing your tantrum, back there. They'll have their chase, but they won't find you, will they?" He raised a hand, gripped her chin and tilted it back. "You don't look easy, Princess. Would you like to be more comfortable?"
She jerked her head away in revulsion at his touch, and his lip curled in a sneer. "Better get used to it. But not yet. My crown first. The rest in good time." He stroked a stray lock of her hair, winding it through his white fingers. "You're just the sweet at the end of the feast."
His voice had an oily quality, as though he buttered his tongue before speaking. It was unbearable to listen to him, and even more unbearable not to be able to answer such taunts; she shut her eyes and turned her head away; better to ignore him entirely than allow him to see how his words affected her.
She heard him walk away and rummage in a saddlebag, then a grunt as he sat on the ground. Then silence, but for the twitter of birds and the wind in the trees. How odd it seemed, that the leaves should go on rustling and the birds singing, when she was in such peril. They always went on, didn't they, even when you lay dying. Someone, somewhere, was dying this very moment, and still the birds sang.
Gods, her mind was closing in on itself. If I could just use magic! She strained to move her mouth and tongue into words; she thought them as hard as she could, silently, fixing her attention upon every bit of dead wood within her line of vision. Her anger was a white-hot flame that broiled the inside of her throat, but it would not take shape without the proper sounds. Gone were the days when an impulsive outburst of temper would singe anything around her...she had refined the skill into something focused and intense, and in so doing, lost the ability to let it fly uncontrolled. Belin and Llyr! What good was magic, if it abandoned you at your most vulnerable?
Her ribs ached, crushed against the saddle with every breath. She ought to have let Magg haul her down from the blasted horse, but the thought of his hands on her again was intolerable. Cautiously, she arched her back and rocked from side to side, shifting her weight until she felt herself sliding backwards, then with a desperate heave of her torso tried to keep her balance as she tumbled off.
Her feet hit the ground and her legs crumpled beneath her; she fell into a heap but the turf was thick and springy, and at least she could breathe again. Magg had started up when she fell, but seeing her sit up, paused. He watched, in passive amusement, as she pushed her bound feet into the earth and scooted angrily away from him, kicking herself backward until she ran up against an embankment and could go no further. Even that much effort was exhausting.
Magg raised a waterskin to his lips and drank long...much longer, she thought, than he probably needed, but he knew, no doubt, that she had not eaten or drunk at all that morning, and meant to torment her. She had no desire to eat, but the gag felt like a wad of hay in her mouth, and she would have sucked water through it, could she but get to the stream. But to do so she would have to crawl on her face before him, and she was not so thirsty as that. Yet.
Minutes crawled by like slugs, interminable and unpleasant. Eilonwy leaned against the embankment, telling herself that rest was important, since she could do nothing else. Black flies buzzed about, landing on her continually, impossible to brush away. Her shoulder still throbbed with pain; her jaw ached from its forced position; she felt dizzy and sick. The light filtering through the green roof overhead sometimes took on strange shapes... faces peering through the leaves, or hands, reaching down between them to grasp at her, as she slipped in and out of waking dreams.
The sun was high when Magg woke her, hauling her to sit up from where she'd slumped. "I shall free your feet," he said. "For we will need to walk. Try to run off again, and you'll rue the day you were born." He brandished a dagger, and set its cold point against her chin. "There's plenty can be done with this, without spoiling you too much."
She glared at him, immobile and defiant, while he sawed through the thongs at her ankles until they parted. His sweaty hands, trembling, lingered on her calves, and she kicked them off in disgust. He laughed, a mad, sneering chuckle, and yanked her to her feet. "Fine sensibilities, eh? Back on the horse, milady."
Her feet were numb, her legs heavy and her head light; she could not run in any case. Without use of her hands she had to let him hoist her into the saddle, and saw that her reins were tethered to his mount, dashing any hope of separating from him on horseback. Blast it! Would she have no chance of escape?
Magg doubled back, leading the horses in the direction of the main track and slightly to the east, moving through the diminishing hills until the river she had seen from the castle windows ran before them, a gleaming expanse between the dark shade of its tree-lined banks. He dismounted, and pulled her down from her own steed, ordering, "Walk. This way."
He left the horses grazing, and pulled her along through ferns waist-high, down toward the riverbank; when they neared it she saw that there was a small boat moored in its shallows.
If he got her into a boat, any chance at escaping him would be dashed. She could not swim away or row with bound hands. In desperation she balked, digging in her heels and yanking her arm from his grip. It caught him off guard; he tripped and fell as she ran headlong, back into the underbrush they had come through.
She could not outrun him in this state. Her only hope lay in losing him. She dropped to a crouch, hidden in the tall ferns, and tried to make herself small. Her heartbeat pounded in her own ears like a war drum and her breath, hampered by the gag, wheezed loud as she tried to calm it.
No good. Either he had seen where she'd run, or she could not stay still enough, quivering the ferns around her; in moments Magg was crashing through them, seizing her by the hair and dragging her back. She fought him, in a last wild burst of strength born of panic, wrenching away, kicking at anything that presented itself. He cursed and spat, dropped her and grabbed again, clutching at her wherever he could find a grip. She heard cloth rip, torn as the earth was torn beneath them, and a thump; from the corner of her eye she saw a flash of gold. Her bauble! Her clumsy, makeshift pocket had ripped its stitches, and the golden sphere was flung aside in the struggle, disappearing into the dead leaves and bracken.
Eilonwy froze at the sight, voicing frantically against the gag, and then tried to throw herself toward her fallen treasure. But the distraction gave Magg a second's advantage; too late she saw his arm swing; a blow to the head knocked her to the ground. Darkness filled her eyes and mind like smoke. Somewhere, in the between-heartbeats space in which she still could think, she thought of the moonlight in her window, and the silver Lady who had come to her in the night: the Mother so powerful, yet whose power had never yet saved her…from anything.