Andre Norton: Trey of Swords

As the wand had vanished, so was the Shadow Sword now also gone. I stood with empty hands, staring at what I had wrought at that last order. Then Tsali's hand touched my arm gently:

"She is gone—but they," he pointed with his muzzle toward the silent Gray Ones, "may get their courage back—or rather their fellows will. It is best we go also—"

I shook off his hand with the same gentleness he had used. Rather, now I held both my arms wide and straight out from my body. Down from the leaden sky wheeled and darted the birds of Ninutra. They settled on my arms, my shoulders, silently but as if this was right and seemly.

I thought of Imhar. He was just someone very far away whom I had once known and wished well, but with whom I no longer had even kin-tie. And then, Yonan. In me I realized a little sadly that Yonan had wished me better than well, that I could have put out my hand and he would have taken it eagerly. But no longer could I do that.

Perhaps the gate Ninutra had found was closed past all opening. But in me that other I which had been stirring was near fully awake. I could not choose now the road which tradition laid before me, as Imhar's lady. Nor could I accept the richness Yonan wished to offer me. I was myself—alone. As yet I did not know just who or what that self was—or could be. But, even as the Sword of Shadow had burned with its power my hands, so now my spirit burned within me, lighting a hardly endurable fire to learn, to know, to be—

I looked at Tsali, my mind working to fit the proper words together. Before I was sure of them, he nodded.

"So it must be then. You have tasted Power; be very sure it is not tainted."

"It is not!" Of that one thing I was confident; I had been since the defeat of Laidan. So much would not have been allowed me had I been beguiled by the Dark. "Tell them that I must learn—and that I am still—no matter what may happen to change me—kin-bound. I swear this on blood I would not shed!"

I watched him go. Then I turned my back upon the huddled forms of the Gray Ones. And, with the birds still about me, I faced inward to Ninutra's Shrine. Or rather, was it a school for the learning of things not of this time and place? Now it seemed to me that already some of the lines of colored sand were beginning to send forth understandable meanings, even though the Great One who had wrought them was long gone.