Free The Hammer of the Sun by Michael Scott Rohan

hesitate, why have you twice refused this already? Is it because… were you only delaying the moment? Do you yourself think you'll fly away, never come back?"
    " No !" she hissed, and then, more softly, "No, heart, I will come back. Never fear but I will come back…"
    He nodded, took the cloak from her hands and himself draped it around her shoulders. Then he reached into his pocket. "I believe that is what you truly want. But I have brought you a small token, keepsakes; wear them for me, and you will not forget."
    Swiftly he stooped to her ankle, one open band of silver in each powerful hand; he felt the first slide over her cool skin - Then his wrists were seized. Elof was stronger than most men, but he could not move a finger's breadth against the strong slim fingers that gripped him thus, that drew his hands up and into the light. He saw the glint of the silver mirrored in the chill green pools that were Kara's eyes, and, to his horror, the shimmering that ran within the silver also, as bright as ever he saw it himself. "Fool!" said a voice of steel he hardly recognised. "Oh, you unutterable fool! Did you think a Power had sunk so low in loving a man, that it should be blind to the forces within his works? Did you dream I donned your arm-ring that day in ignorance of what it would do? That I would not see through this silver of yours as into clear water, and read there what you have set in play? Did you think so little of my life, my existence, to trifle with it thus?" He saw the streaks of silver that coursed her cheeks, and his heart withered within him.
    "I sought… I sought only to reinforce our own truest wish… steady you by your own will…"
    The steel broke, and burst into flame. "Aye, by ensnaring that will! By goading it along the paths you choose!"
    "I sought only to embody what I knew you wanted! I set no compulsion of mine in the work!"
    "No more than you would compel the winds! And yet you did! And shackled them with fearful force! Can you not see that you cannot harness any desire of mine? Only as your own eyes see it can you give it form!"
    "But…" Elof swallowed. "If it is so close to yours… If it is what you want… then how can it harm you? If you truly love me, how should it mar that?"
    "How?" She laughed, but not as humans laugh. "By taking away what is most truly mine! How would it harm you to be whipped to breathe, beaten to eat, goaded to love? How would it harm you if Kermorvan drew smithcraft from you by prison and torment, not friendship and honour? Then my cunning child, my deceitful heart, then you would understand!" She lifted his wrists, shook then fiercely before her face, and the rage of the Morghannen shone there behind the tears. "And how would it mar love? By forcing it to tread one single path… one circling, spiralling, endless path! Never free to change, to grow, to find new ways and new reasons to love. Love of all things, that must change from moment to moment to live! That you would keep for yourself, aye, but never trust me with it! Must I be the same to you in age, when you will not be the same? Be to you then just what I am now, no more, no less? How fine a lover will you find me then, fool, how fitting company for your cooling blood? Yet to that you would bind me, shackle me in my own imprisoned spirit, encircle me about in the mazes of my own mind! You would deceive me, drive me by my very feelings, just as your damned mindsword drove men by their deepest fears - "
    A sudden shock drove deep into Elof s breast, as cold and breath-devouring as that blade's bite. He clutched at the scar, remembering. That older song, that tune that had arisen unbidden from his memory, as it seemed - he knew it now, knew the first words he had ridden upon its rising fervor…
    As sundered I found you,
In flickering flame,
As once then I bound you
I bind you again…
    Over the mindsword, embodiment of command, compulsion, driving by terror - over the last completion of that unhallowed