A Strange and Ancient Name Read Online Free

had been extinguished with the prince’s retiring, and save for a few reluctant stragglers whispering or cuddling together, the darkness no barrier to night-keen Faerie senses, the exhausted royal court slept.
    Alliar never slept, not as the flesh-and-blood folk understood such things. And though normally the being hardly felt the lack, this once a spate of peaceful mindlessness would have been very welcome. Despairing, Alliar looked out at the cool, black velvet sky, unaware of the chill, tormented by the touch of the first sweet breezes of morning.
    Was I ever part of that? Was I ever . . . What? There were no words for what had been; the winds needed no words. After a moment, Alliar continued the thought awkwardly, Was I ever not-self? Not this narrow thing, this “body,” this stupid, solid “I”? Was I ever . . . free?
    The courtiers would have stared to see this. They all considered the wind spirit little more than a pet, a clever oddity that came and went as it would, all too conscious of the thoughts they never quite voiced aloud: How pretty it is, how intelligent it seems, what a shame it can never be our equal.
    Your equal. Alliar remembered storms as mighty as the birth of rage, as primal as Beginning, remembered skies bright and sharp with fire, remembered sweeping down the length of freedom, part of it as no finite little flesh-and-bloodling could ever be, one with the fury, one with the glory— As though I would ever want to shrink to being merely your equal.
    Finite. Alliar glanced down at the solid, undeniably tangible body, the possibly forever-binding shape that imprisoned spirit, and shuddered.
    (That one devastating moment when the trap had first closed fast . . .)
    The being groaned, trying in vain to block the surge of memory.
    (The sorcerer had dragged his captive down from infinity, forcing shape and a single, lonely identity on it, heedless of that captive’s fierce, bewildered terror. Ae, ae, the storm of sensation: sight and sound distorted, shrunken, wrong, the alien new senses of scent and touch, the unbearable horror of being so suddenly bereft and alone, alone . . .)
    Had Alliar a fragile mortal mind, the spirit would surely have gone hopelessly insane then and there. But the sorcerer, the one who named himself Ysilar, had wrought his spell far too well. The new slave had survived. Endured. Served. Learned new lessons in fear and pain and shame—
    No! I will not remember!
    But Hauberin was also a part of that past. Alliar smiled faintly. At least this one memory could be cherished: the young prince, then little more than a boy, so small, so defiant and brave at their first meeting . . .

    ###

    Ysilar, raging, had dragged his magic-stunned slave down here to the deepest cellar in the castle. Even as Alliar groggily roused, it was to the feeling of the sorcerer fastening a chain around one slim golden ankle.
    “What—No, master, please! You can’t leave me down here!”
    But Ysilar was already gone, and Alliar was alone, shut away from the sky amid dark, dead stone . . .
    There was a time of screaming. There was a time of sheer, mindless, claustrophobic terror. But at last, through sheer exhaustion, the being lost the first sharp edge of fear. If one huddled as tightly together as one could, and kept one’s absurdly limited eyes shut, this terrible dark confinement was almost bearable.
    Almost. Though Alliar knew with the last shreds of sanity that there was open space, that the cellar wasn’t that narrow, the terrible cold weight of the castle still seemed to press down and in till it seemed this frail body would be crushed.
    What if it is? Flesh-and-blood folk do something called dying when their bodies are destroyed. Maybe since I am tangible now, I would die, too, and be free.
    Free? Down here? Trapped forever in close, cruel darkness? The being huddled in a tighter ball and rocked miserably back and forth.
    There was a rustle, a scratching. There was a muffled yelp, and something