Free The Sword of the Spirits by John Christopher

become meaningless. My life was consumed with watching, guessing. Then one night, when we had both been guests in his mother’s house, he handed her her cloak on parting and I saw his hand rest, for another long moment, on her shoulder.
    We walked through the streets toward the palace; for so short a distance we had not brought horses. They were less dark than they had been: last winter I had had oil lamps put up such as they had in Salisbury. Blodwen hummed a tune. I said:
    â€œAre you happy?”
    â€œYes!”
    â€œAre you thinking yet of returning to Klan Gothlen?”
    She glanced at me in surprise. “Why, no.”
    â€œYou have been a long time here.”
    She laughed. “Have I outstayed my welcome, then?”
    â€œIf you do not go soon, you will be caught by the winter.”
    â€œWould that be so terrible a thing?”
    I said slowly: “I was wondering . . . what it is that keeps you.”
    â€œI have told you. I love your city. More than my own, I think.”
    I said: “What person?”
    â€œWhat person? Who else but Luke, Prince of Three Cities?”
    She said the words lightly, jesting, but there was a falseness. I asked:
    â€œWhat of Edmund?”
    â€œI am fond of Edmund, and all your friends.”
    â€œOnly fond?”
    She stopped. We stood under an oil lamp. Some distance away a polymuf scuttled into an alley, made still more crooked in shape by the shadows which surrounded him. We were alone. Blodwen said:
    â€œSpeak openly, Luke, and honestly.”
    My throat swelled and I had to force words from it.
    â€œThis,” I said. “Have you betrayed me with Edmund?”
    Her eyes looked into mine unflinchingly. “I have not betrayed you with Edmund, or anyone.”
    My misery lifted. I could live again as a free man, not a fugitive from nightmares. I said:
    â€œYou swear this?”
    â€œIf swearing is needed, I swear it.”
    I wanted only one thing more. I took her hands.
    â€œAnd you do not love him? You will swear that, too?”
    She smiled, and for the instant all was well. Then she shook her head.
    â€œNo,” she said softly. “That I will not swear.”

FIVE
THE COUNCIL OF CAPTAINS
    I SENT WORD VERY EARLY to Edmund that I wished him to ride with me. It was still dark when we clattered down the High Street, drawing curses from an upper room where the noise of our passing roused some good citizen from sleep, across the river and along the road to East Gate.
    He asked me when we met what reason there was for our journey, at such an hour. I told him he would know in good time. It had crossed my mind that Blodwen might have sent word to him herself, telling him of what had passed between us, and I searched his face for sign of this. But the bewilderment therewas real; he truly did not know why I had come for him. He shrugged his shoulders and, accepting his Prince’s command as a Captain must, mounted and rode with me.
    The guard saluted us as we left the city. I set no frenzied pace as I had done on that recent solitary ride. Then my adversaries had been phantasms of the mind. Now there was only one, who had a face and rode at my side. The sky ahead was paling with the dawn. I looked behind me at the gate and remembered my father’s head, stuck on a spear above it. I had thought life could bring no greater anguish than that. It seemed a small thing now.
    We traveled in silence. Edmund was not unused to this. I had had my times of silence before, when my mind was busy with some project and I saw no need of speech, and he had accustomed himself to them. The city slept behind us. There was only the sound of hoofs and harness and our horses’ breaths snorting in the chilly air.
    We reached the Elder Pond, black and rimmed with ice, and I took the fork that led to the Contest Field. I reined my horse in when we reached it. It lay bare and empty, with the dark mass of Catherine’s Hillbehind it. On the