The Lady Amalthea stared at him through the gloom, putting out a hand, but drawing it back before she touched him. "Who are you?" she whispered. "Are you Rukh?"

"I'm Lнr," he answered, suddenly frightened. "Don't you know me?" But she backed away, and it seemed to the prince that her steps were as flowing as an animal's, and that she even lowered her head in the way of a goat or a deer. He said, "I'm Lнr."

"The old woman," said the Lady Amalthea. "The moon went out. Ah!" She shivered once, and then her eyes recognized him. But all her body was still wild and watchful, and she came no nearer to him.

"You were dreaming, my lady," he said, finding knightly speech again. "I would that I might know your dream."

"I have dreamed it before," she answered slowly. "I was in a cage, and there were others – beasts in cages, and an old woman. But I will not trouble you, my lord prince. I have dreamed it many times before."

She would have left him then, but he spoke to her in a voice that only heroes have, as many animals develop a certain call when they become mothers. "A dream that returns so often is like to be a messenger, come to warn you of the future or to remind you of things untimely forgotten. Say more of this, if you will, and I will try to riddle it for you."

Thereupon she halted, looking at him with her head a little turned, still with the air of some slim, furred creature peering out of a thicket. But her eyes held a human look of loss, as though she had missed something she needed, or suddenly realized that she had never had it. If he had even blinked, she would have been gone; but he did not blink, and he held her, as he had learned to hold griffins and chimeras motionless with his steady gaze. Her bare feet wounded him deeper than any tusk or riving talon ever had, but he was a true hero.

The Lady Amalthea said, "In the dream there are black, barred wagons, and beasts that are and are not, and a winged being that clangs like metal in the moonlight. The tall man has green eyes and bloody hands."

"The tall man must be your uncle, the magician," Prince Lнr mused. "That part's clear enough, anyway, and the bloody hands don't surprise me. I never cared much for his looks, if you'll pardon my saying so. Is that all the dream?"

"I cannot tell you all of it," she said. "It is never finished." Fear came back to her eyes like a great stone falling into a pool: all was clouded and swirling, and quick shadows were rushing everywhere. She said, "I am running away from a good place where I was safe, and the night is burning around me. But it is day too, and I am walking under beech trees in the warm, sour rain, and there are butterflies, and a honey sound, and dappled roads, and towns like fishbones, and the flying thing is killing the old woman. I am running and running into the freezing fire, however I turn, and my legs are the legs of a beast -"

"Lady," Prince Lнr broke in, "my lady, by your leave, no more." Her dream was darkening into shape between them, and suddenly he did not want to know what it meant. "No more," he said.

"But I must go on," said the Lady Amalthea, "for it is never finished. Even when I wake, I cannot tell what is real, and what I am dreaming as I move and speak and eat my dinner. I remember what cannot have happened, and forget something that is happening to me now. People look at me as though I should know them, and I do know them in the dream, and always the fire draws nearer, though I am awake -"

"No more," he said desperately. "A witch built this castle, and to speak of nightmares here often makes them come true." It was not her dream that chilled him, but that she did not weep as she told it. As a hero, he understood weeping women and knew how to make them stop crying – generally you killed something – but her calm terror confused and unmanned him, while the shape of her face crumbled the distant dignity he had been so pleased at maintaining. When he spoke again, his voice was young and stumbling.

"I would court you with more grace," he said, "if I knew how. My dragons and my feats of arms weary you, but they are all I have to offer. I haven't been a hero for very long, and before I was a hero I was nothing at all, nothing but my father's dull, soft son. Perhaps I am only dull in a new way now, but I am here, and it is wrong of you to let me go to waste. I wish you wanted something of me. It wouldn't have to be a valiant deed – just useful."

Then the Lady Amalthea smiled at him for the first time since she had come to stay in King Haggard's castle. It was a small smile, like the new moon, a slender bend of brightness on the edge of the unseen, but Prince Lнr leaned toward it to be warm. He would have cupped his hands around her smile and breathed it brighter, if he had dared.

"Sing to me," she said. "That would be valiant, to raise your voice in this dark, lonely place, and it will be useful as well. Sing to me, sing loudly – drown out my dreams, keep me from remembering whatever wants me to remember it. Sing to me, my lord prince, if it please you. It may not seem a hero's task, but I would be glad of it."

So Prince Lнr sang out lustily, there on the cold stairway, and many damp, unseen creatures went flopping and scurrying for cover before the daylight gaiety of his voice. He sang the first words that came to him, and they were these:

The Lady Amalthea laughed when he was done, and that sound seemed to set the old, old darkness of the castle hissing back from them both. "That was useful," she said. "Thank you, my lord."

"I don't know why I sang that one," Prince Lнr said awkwardly. "One of my father's men used to sing it to me. I don't really believe it. I think that love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time, and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last." The Lady Amalthea smiled again, but she did not answer, and the prince took a single step closer to her.

Marveling at his own boldness, he said softly, "I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me."