Read Online Exile's Song by Marion Zimmer Bradley - Free Book Online Page B

song she intended. She had a blurry vision of the silver-haired and silver-eyed man of her old nightmares, seated in a large carved chair, and the feelings she had about the man were, as always, a muddle of fear and excitement. For just a moment she saw the Old Man, with his hair not salt-and-peppered as now, but still all dark. Both his hands extended from embroidered cuffs. It was a flash, and it was gone.
    Her throat closed slightly and her eyes stung with tears. Then words forced themselves out from between her lips. She swallowed, trying to push the words away, for they were elusive and not completely like anything else she had ever sung. Then, abruptly, resistance disappeared; she let the words flood out, simply because she could not stop them; the thickness in her throat vanished and she surrendered to the melody as if possessed.
    “How came this blood on your right hand?
Brother, tell me, tell me.
It is the blood of an old gray wolf,
That lurked behind a tree.
No wolf would prowl at this hour of the day,
Brother, tell me, tell me.
It is the blood of my own brothers twain
Who sat at the drink with me.”
    The verses rolled out of her without volition, one after another. Margaret was like a woman entranced—captured by she knew not what.
    An indefinite time later, Margaret found herself slumped over the ryll, with an overwhelming feeling of disorientation and foreboding, and the image of the silvery man wavering behind her eyes. I know him; I have walked with him in my dreams, he used to carry me in his arms, he has kissed me and stroked my face. I was small enough to carry then. Who is he? And why am I sure he is old, much older than Daddy. He sang me a lullaby once. Dio caught me crooning it once to my doll and slapped me—and she never did things like that. Not even when I ate up the greenberry tart she had made for our guests.
    Margaret felt her muscles tense with an exhaustion that had nothing to do with the instrument now resting quietly across her body. She had a sense that she stood on the brink of discovery—though what she might be about to discover she could not guess. Her heart was pounding, and she waited for it to return to its normal rhythm. She wanted to cast the ryll onto the polished floor and run up to her room, shut the door, and scream until her throat was raw. It took every ounce of her hard-earned control and self-discipline to remain just where she was, looking to the two men, she supposed, like an ordinary woman. They could not guess the visions that haunted her, nor what the playing had raised in her, like a phalanx of ghosts.
    Her mouth was very dry, and seemed to strangle her throat. She was taking very shallow breaths, because she knew if she breathed deeply, she would pass out. Questions swirled in her mind, painful questions that came up whenever she was distressed. Why did my father always look at me as if the sight was painful? The older I got the worse it became. I was so glad to get away, and I still feel ashamed that I was glad.
    For just a moment she had the impression that the Old Man had materialized in front of her, slightly transparent, but to her eye, completely visible in the room. He was staring at the stump of his arm the way he did, as if puzzled by the absence of his hand, and drinking. She knew it was a memory, even when the vision lifted its eyes from the arm, and looked right at her, appearing to look right through her. He could remain like that for hours, while she got more and more anxious, wondering what she had ever done to him.
    In her heart, Margaret knew she had never done anything, that everything that had gone wrong, that had cost him a hand and something else she had no words for, was not her fault. She had been too little for any faults, except perhaps spilling her milk. She knew the image before her only existed in her mind, that it was memory, nothing more. Still, it felt as if her mind were shattering just a little. She knew she could not let that