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!
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 turned 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?