The Princess looked up and answered at once: “My name is Korah.”
There was silence a moment, and Sellena reached across the table to touch the Princess’s hand. “Thank you. We have not heard another name beyond our own in this place for many a long year.”
“You are welcome to it,” said the Princess, and smiled; and she thought, as something that was almost an answering smile hovered like a shadow over Sellena’s mouth, that it was the first time in many a long year that a smile had been seen in this place either.
“Now that I have eaten,” said the Princess, “and we hold each other’s names, will you not tell me something of your durance here?” and her hands tightened involuntarily around the cup she held.
“I am sent out as the Hind again and again whether I will or nay,” Sellena burst out; and in her voice was anger and helplessness and pleading mixed, “for he who holds us here loves to prove his power again and again with each new victim I bring him. And yet there is no other hope of our ever winning free but to go out as he wills, in the guise of a brute beast, and lure those who will come. And every failure weighs on my heart, for it is I who lead each to his destruction, however little I wish it to fall out so.”
“I tried once to free her,” said Darin in a low voice. “Even I: indeed, I was the first. I do not know if perhaps the wizard had not yet fully formed his plans, for I escaped with my mind, and only he lamed my leg; so I may think, but may not walk. And I am permitted to keep my sister company in her exile, and no further harm has he tried to do me. But perhaps it amuses him best so, to see the two or us clinging to each other in our powerlessness to resist him; and I do not know if it is a blessing to be spared, spared to watch all the brave hunters going to their doom.”
“It is a blessing to me, brother,” said Sellena softly; and Darin bowed his head.
Then the Princess said to them both as she had said to Sellena alone: “What may I do for you? For I will take my turn, and seek to free you, if I may.”
Darin answered soberly, “You must go to him who keeps us here and ask him to let us go.”
The Princess looked at him, and his eyes were grave. “It sounds an easy task, does it not? And yet there have been hundreds who followed the Golden Hind to this mountain. Some few of those, and of them we have no counting, have lost all but their lives in just the sight of the Golden Hind, and they go home tired and dreaming, and so spend the years remaining to them without strength or will. Some of those who track the Hind to the walls of this mountain do find their way inside. Some few of these cannot bear the sight of Sellena as you see her, for the dread wizard did lay upon her beauty; and even those who bear it are dazzled by it, so they cannot hold their spirits still within them when they go to face the enchanter. Of those six-and-thirty who have passed through the wizard’s chamber, eleven have died, and so completely did the wizard destroy them that not even their bodies remained to be given burial; and the other five-and-twenty returned to their lives and homes mad.”
“All but the last,” Sellena said, in a voice so low that it was scarcely audible; and the Princess stiffened in her chair.
“All but the last,” repeated Darin; “but I fear that the wound he received will still prove mortal.”
Sellena covered her beautiful face with her hands and moaned.
“That last was my brother,” said the Princess; “he lies on his bed dying even now, if he is not yet dead. He is why I am here.”
Again Sellena reached across the table to touch the Princess’s hand; but this time Sellena spoke no word, and though the hand trembled, it did not move away.
“He whom you must ask for our freedom,” said Darin, “will turn whatever is in you against you. The greater your strength, the graver the wound you will receive from the weapon he will forge of it. You must go to him empty, drained of all that is your spirit and your heart and your mind; you must be an empty shell carrying only the question: ‘Will you set the two you hold in bondage free?’”
The Princess stared at Darin. “Tell me one thing first, and then I will go as you bid me. What happened to my brother?”
It was Sellena who answered: “He looked into my eyes, even as you did—and as none other ever has; by this I should have recognized your kinship. But as you saw only that my spirit was like unto yours and could see in me a sister, he—he loved me. I, who have never been loved so, for my perilous beauty has blinded all those that look at it: all but Darin my brother, and you, Korah my sister—and that one other. Your brother, who lies dying for it.” And another diamond tear crept down her glowing cheek.
“He escaped sick and strengthless only,” said Darin, “because for all the strength of the love he suddenly found for my sister, it was of a clarity even the wizard could not bend entirely against him; and so he lost neither his life nor his sanity by it.” Then Darin turned frowning to the Princess and said: “This must have been a great blow to the vanity of this enchanter, who has shattered all who have approached him during our long keeping; and I fear for the sister of him who dealt that blow, for the added malice the wizard will hold toward anyone of the same blood.”
The Princess shook her head, just a tremor, right to left, for she feared to shake tears over the brink of her eyelids. “Still I will go, and fear no more than I must. The sickness laid upon my brother is a wasting fever that no doctor can halt; and he will yet … die, of that wizard’s work.” She turned her eyes, still bright with tears, to meet Darin’s quiet eyes, seeking comfort, and comfort she found. She let herself sink into their green depths and felt that she could rest there forever; and even as she felt Darin’s spirit reaching to touch hers, she remembered Sellena’s words: He—he loved me; and she shook herself free with a gasp.
Darin at once covered his eyes with a hand, and bowed his head. “Forgive me,” he said, and his voice was deep with an emotion the Princess chose not to hear; “I—I had no thought of this.”
“Where is the wizard’s cell?” said the Princess; and her breast rose and fell with her quick breathing. “Will you show me where I must enter? I do not wish to tarry.” She looked at Sellena, and did not permit even the flick of a glance to where Darin sat with his dark eyes still behind his hand.
“Yes. Come.” The two women stood up; Darin remained motionless as Sellena opened another door in the small chamber in which they had sat, not the one they had entered by. Across this threshold it was very dark. Sellena took the Princess’s hand to lead her. “I know the way and will not stumble. It is better without light, for the walls here are similar to those in the cavern where you met me, but the colors will lead you to confusion if you look at them long.” And down the dark road they went, hand in hand; their breathing and their soft footsteps were the only sounds.