Patricia McKillip - The Bell at Sealey Head

He looked spellbound.

I am trapped, she thought, in a stone cell with a man who can’t hear my voice, who seems to be conversing silently with a bell. Should I have let him unlock the tower door and gone up to feed the crows instead?

It was past midday now; the sun was beginning its leisurely arc toward the sea, though no light spilled yet through any of the windows. What had Maeve and Aveline and the knights thought when no one came to hold the third cup at the noon-hour ritual? She couldn’t imagine. The knights weren’t used to thinking; perhaps they just made do without her. Or had they, already armed and suspicious, scattered through the house to find her, raging among barking dogs, shadowed by the crows?

On the whole, she decided, thinking of their mindless, angry eyes, their sharp swords, she felt much safer in this doorless place that they could never find.

The bell began to vibrate silently. A thumbnail of gilt flecked off of it. Ridley closed his eyes.

That much happened, then nothing, except the bell shimmering in midair. Ysabo watched it for a while; then she turned her head and watched Ridley.

Something was happening between the man and the bell.

Ridley straightened, as though the bell had slowly pulled him away from the wall. His eyes never left it. The bell seemed to pulse, throwing a golden shadow around itself that faded, then grew bright again. Then faded. Then grew bright. Ysabo pushed closer to the wall, trying to make herself small, trying to watch both at once. The air itself seemed to vibrate, a tension in it that crawled over her skin and made her want to hide within the stones.

Ridley caught his breath. Ysabo stared at him. He cried a word suddenly, his face illumined by the glow of the bell as light poured out of it in every direction. The bell cracked completely, metal torn from metal in an arc from rim to dome. The twin pieces thundered to the floor and re-formed in a dizzying swirl of shape and color. Ysabo flung her arms over her eyes but still saw it, glowing like the imprint of the sun behind her eyelids. Ridley made another sound, a garbled exclamation; whatever it was, he had gotten his voice back. Ysabo lifted one arm, peered at him. He was still staring raptly, so she lifted her other arm, cupped her hands above her eyes. The brilliant blur was slowing, sorting itself into long, long hair, a smoky mix of gray and black, a tall, leanlimbed body covered in gray silk and black wool, extraordinary eyes of blue-green teal, a pale, lined, fine-boned face somewhere between Aveline and ageless.

She gazed down at Ridley as intently as he had stared at the bell, until he spoke the word again, and Ysabo realized it was her name.

“Hydria.”

Something snapped; the air sparked between them where a bond had broken.

The woman spoke, a boom like the sound of the sea and the bell together, and Ysabo covered her ears again.

“Where is he? I will tear his head from his shoulders and boil it for breakfast.” Her eyes loosed Ridley abruptly; he sagged back against the stones, drawing breath deeply, his face glistening with sweat. She looked at Ysabo. “Who are you?”

“Ysabo,” she answered, the only word, under the queen’s fierce gaze, that she remembered.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came with Ridley Dow.”

Queen Hydria moved suddenly, stepped forward to fold her long body down in front of Ysabo. “I know that face,” she breathed, tracing Ysabo’s jaw line with her forefinger. “It nearly broke my heart.” She turned her gaze to Ridley again. “How,” she asked with amazement, “did you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy. I heard that bell ringing across the centuries and followed the sound of it. I had no idea what it was until I saw the magic in it. I looked into it, and saw you.”

She closed her eyes, her face growing rigid, livid; Ysabo half expected the bell to sound again, Hydria’s voice for so many years, her only word.

“No wonder it cracked,” she whispered, and the queen opened her eyes, stared at Ysabo again.

“I felt such terrible sorrow, such loss, such fury, at that moment at the end of every day when the last light faded in the world. The bell was the sound of my heart, crying out to the world. Before Nemos Moore came, it was a joyous sound in my court. It summoned everyone to the evening feast, to music, laughter, companions. Before Nemos Moore came and broke our days into pieces, meaningless, joyless shards of tasks. Before he turned my knights into crows, before he replaced them with paper men from my wizard Blagdon’s book. Before he turned half my world into paintings from that book, so that we could see the world and long for it, but no doors led out of Aislinn House into it, only into the flat worlds of ink and paint—”

“Why?” Ridley whispered. “Why did he do that?”

“Because he wanted power over me, my realm, and I refused him. Because I saw what he was: a little man with great power, who would toy with lives just because he could. I invited him into my court out of courtesy and curiosity. He told me that he was a scholar of the road, traveling to learn what he could. I never thought to ask what road he had found that led him into the rich, secret heart of Aislinn House.”

“Your wizard. Blagdon. He made the book?”

She nodded. “He had great gifts himself, for magic, for painting and for poetry. All this Nemos Moore used—he trifled with those gifts, like a child tearing apart pages it doesn’t understand—to transform something bright and happy into a place of meaningless patterns, strictures, fears. A place without doors, without dreams. All because he knew he could never belong in my court. Blagdon was very old, almost as old as the house itself. He did what he could against Nemos Moore. But in the end, I was trapped within the bell. I don’t know what happened to Blagdon.”

Ridley had grown silent, in a way that Ysabo recognized; he was gazing into the queen’s eyes but not seeing her, seeing inward, backward. “I wonder . . .” he murmured finally and stopped, then began again. “That boat...”

“What boat?”

His eyes came alive again; a smile rose and sank beneath the surface of his face. “Can you get us out of here?”

“How?” she demanded. “There is no door. I have no idea where we are.”

“You had the power to speak to the world when you were spellbound,” he reminded her. “Nemos Moore is in your house again. If you want him, I’ll help you.”

“Oh, yes.” Ysabo saw the shimmering around the queen that had trembled around the bell. “I want him.”

She turned abruptly, walked into the stones. They tore as though they were paper. Ysabo heard Ridley’s breath shake. He pushed himself to his feet, held out his hand to her.

They stepped through stone into the wood beyond Aislinn House.

Hydria had already left a black rip between the trees, which were oddly silent and smelled of nothing. They followed quickly, stepped into a great hall full of painted knights drinking from cups held by three women. The tear that Hydria had left was through the sunlight falling into the open doors of the hall. The next rip in the paper world was through a flock of crows.

And then into shadow, walls of stone, dark water flowing silently through the underground cave. Ysabo could smell the water, the dusty, ancient air, feel the chill of a place that sunlight never found.

They were out of the book and in the boat. It was still moored by its chain and the stake hammered into stone. The lantern on its prow was lit. Nemos Moore stood within the light.

“Ah,” he said softly. “You found your way, Mr. Dow.” He nodded to Hydria. “My lady. Ladies. How does it feel to take a simple breath of air after so many years? Wonderful, I would think. Is it?”