Sunrise

Chapter Six: Free

The force of raw magic that hit her the moment they emerged from the gap almost pushed her against the wall; a throbbing ephemeral net of invisible light that swathed around her in recognition; not dark, not evil, but powerful and penetrating. Eilonwy struggled against its sinuous grip, feeling its attempt to wind its way into her very breath patterns and heart rhythm; shook her head and gasped against its beat. No. No. I am my own. Not yours.

The probing subsided, but the magic still clung to her like a choking vine to its tree, so tangible that she glanced at Taran in wonder; how could he not feel it? He was gazing around at their surroundings, awestruck and anxious, but gave no indication that he sensed anything other than what his eyes and ears told him. Almost she envied him for it.

The chamber was not large, but it was cluttered, the floor littered with the skeletal remnants of a dozen or so armored men encircling a central stone dais. Baskets and jars lined the walls; the golden light glittered upon their contents like a handful of stars strewn upon the floor. Weapons and armor were scattered about and piled in heaps. "I'm sure Achren hasn't any idea all this is here," Eilonwy whispered to Taran, who was bending over one of the corpses. "She'd have hauled it out long ago; she loves jewelry, though it doesn't become her one bit." She picked up a brooch from the floor at her feet to examine it; a lovely thing, wrought in silver knots around a single blood-red jewel, but it tingled a warning in her hand and she dropped it, grimacing. Cursed. Thank the fates Achren didn't know about this place. She was bad enough without being hung all about with cursed enchanted jewelry.

"Surely it is the barrow of the king who built this castle," Taran whispered reverently. They both turned their gazes to the stone slab in the center, and picked their way through the fallen warriors for a closer look.

She barely noticed the crowned skull that grinned at them from the richly-clothed figure; the magic around her swirled and concentrated in a viscous funnel, sucking her gaze to the sword clutched in the bony hands. For a moment, it was the only thing she saw, etched in her mind like the blinding ghost image of a lightning bolt against her closed eyes. In an instant of breathless, startling familiarity she knew. This.

This was the heart of Spiral Castle.

This was the will that she felt in the stone, the almost-voice in the silence, the grudging sympathy that bent itself around her, unpredictable, sometimes capricious, but never malicious; or, at least, she now realized, never with a malice directed against her. This...thing, this enormous mass of power made small and trapped in the shape of a sword; she could feel it chafing at its own inactivity, burdened by its boundaries. It had been made for more than this.

It held her mind captive, singular of purpose. Freedom.

Taran had already left the dais; she was dimly aware that he had despoiled one of the fallen warriors; heard him shout that he'd found a passage. Her hand closed, almost unconsciously, on the jeweled hilt, and a jolt of power, hot and prickly, surged up her arm like quicksilver and swept her from head to toe. Freedom. For both of us.

The clawed hands of the ancient king crumbled away as she jerked the scabbard free, and in her mind the magic sang with fierce, ecstatic joy.

The sword shook in her hands as she stumbled away from the slab in a daze; to her right, Taran's legs were disappearing into a low crack in the stone wall. She threw herself after him with a sensation that she was breaking through a barrier; the web of light in her mind's eye shivered and cracked, bursting into a million sparkling fragments and something huge, something massive, shifted and quaked; she felt it both in her inmost being and in the sudden tremor of the earth around her.