The thurge shrieked and waved his arms. Fire exploded all over the room, and Galanthir cried out as one of the fireballs hit him. The walls shivered and shook and tentacles reached up from the floor, whipping around Cariad’s legs as uselessly as weeds on the bottom of a pond.
Cariad wrapped both hands around Lindos’s throat, his teeth clenched, his face contorted. His arms bulged and the wizard struggled in his grasp. Juilene shrank back from the walls, screaming as a clawed hand reached from the walls themselves, questing blindly. Galanthir moaned in pain.
And then the tentacles faded, the fires flared out, and the thurge sprites disappeared in a blur of high-pitched screams. Cariad rose from the floor, and Lindos’s lifeless body lay at his feet.
He looked at Juilene, his chest heaving. “It’s done.”
Epilogue
The music floated on the warm summer air, soft as a faraway sigh, and the sounds of laughter rose and fell in predictable counterpoint. Juilene leaned against the stone railing of the balcony and drew a deep breath. The air was balmy and sweet, thick with the scent of thousands of candles and the fragrance of the white and yellow flowers of the darvion boughs that decorated the hall.
So much had changed in the last weeks. Her father’s recovery was slow, but steady; every day he made progress. Now he sat in his chair overlooking the hall, his eyes missing nothing, his big hands flexing impatiently on his lap, as though he ached to be active once more. The King had come back to his country, the winter was over. Spring had come to Sylyria at last.
She heard quick footsteps behind her, and turned. Cariad hesitated in the doorway, the expression on his face unreadable in the falling dusk. She held out her hand and smiled. He walked swiftly to stand at her side. He picked up her hand and kissed it. It was rare they were alone these days. With Lindos’s death and Juilene’s reinstatement as the daughter of a noble house, all their moments of privacy were severely curtailed.
“There’s been a message,” he said.
“From whom?”
“My father.”
She raised her brow.
“Oh,” he said, “Keriaan doesn’t know he’s my father, of course. But he’s had the news of his daughter’s birth—he’s coming to take the child and Lady Amanda home.”
“That surprised you, didn’t it?” Juilene asked.
“That he would come?”
“No. That she survived.”
Cariad shrugged, and gazed into the deepening twilight. “Yes. It did. It makes me wonder exactly what else has changed. But I’m still here, and so—well, I guess I have to assume I was meant to be here.”
“Of course.” She twined her fingers in his and held his hand tightly.
“But there is something I need to talk to you about. Galanthir and I are in agreement. I mustn’t be here when Keriaan comes.”
“Where will you go?”
“Not back to Khardroon, and Diago, that’s certain. Though your father and the King believe, and rightly so, that Diago and his sister must be watched, carefully, from afar. I had another place in mind.”
“Oh?” She turned to face him and waited.
“There’s still the matter of the harp. The harp should be taken to Eld. And perhaps the Guardians there can discern something of the changes in the future which must have come about with Lindos’s death. Perhaps they can even tell me what’s to become of me.”
“Maybe you’ll stay here—in this time—with me.”
He smiled then, and pulled her close. “Nothing would make me happier. But in the meantime, the harp should go back to Eld, and I should leave Sarrasin.”
“Oh,” she said. “I don’t want you to leave. I—I’ll miss you.”
“I don’t intend for you to miss me, sweet. I want you to come with me. There’s no better companion I can think of for the journey. And who else to bring the harp back to Eld, but one of the goddess’s own?”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and raised her face to his. “And what of my father?” she murmured as his lips came down on hers. “How will he ever agree to let me go?”
Cariad laughed softly in her ear. “My sweetest love, you’ve survived some of the worst roads in all of the League. If anyone can handle your father, it’s you. And besides, he’ll not object to a wedding trip.”
“A wedding trip?” She pulled back to stare at him.
He laughed again, and this time his laughter rang out across the courtyard. “Don’t you want to marry me?”
“Of—of course,” she said, nearly speechless with surprise. “But—but—what of the future—the present—the—”
He hushed her with a finger across her mouth. “Oh, Juilene, haven’t you learned that the past is over, and the future is no more than a dream? We can’t know for certain what will happen—I was sure Amanda would die and she lives. Lindos will never reign, and Diago and Rihana will find themselves closely scrutinized. Who can say what will be? There’s only the here and the now that matters.”
He gazed down at her, waiting for her to speak. But she only pulled his face down to hers and pressed her mouth on his, for there were no more words to say.
Also the author of The Power and the Pattern trilogy, Daughter of Prophecy, Children of Enchantment, and The Misbegotten King, ANNE KELLEHER BUSH holds a degree in medieval studies from Johns Hopkins University. She lives with her children in Farmington, Connecticut.
Lady Juilene of Sylyria is cursed.
THE SONGS
THE GODDESS SENDS
When Lady Juilene rejects a marriage proposal from the evil thurge Lindos, the wizard casts a spell that forces the young noblewoman to flee her family, friends, even kind strangers. For the curse destroys anyone who helps her. Love will break the spell—but Juilene’s betrothed lies murdered by Lindos. Left with just a harp and her talent as a Songsayer, Juilene is a forlorn exile in a land on the brink of apocalypse.
For Lindos has mastered the magic to turn 10,000 Years of peace into a regime of horror. And the one person who can stop the thurge—and end juilene’s curse—is a myth from an impossible prophecy.
A knight who has never been born…
PRAISE FOR ANNE KELLEHER BUSH’S DAUGHTER OF PROPHECY
“AN OUTSTANDING PIECE OF WORK.”
—Andre Norton
“FASCINATING—A MOST INGENIOUS BLEND OF SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY.”
—Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Knight, the Harp, and the Maiden Page 31
