The Black Beast (10 page)

She was amused, and flattered perhaps, and replied kindly enough. “You are young,” she said, “too young to really believe in death, and the Luoni mean nothing to you.”

“Is it my youth that has protected me, lady, or your goodness on my behalf? Surely you are the one that I must thank, that I am not a sleeper amidst gray moss. I heard the trees whispering, that first night.”

Shamarra laughed her laugh that was like rippling water. I think she was perhaps even a trifle impressed! “One of me you may thank,” she said. “Only one.”

I could not reply to that, but I was delighted at any speech from her, even riddling speech. “And Tirell,” I went on, emboldened. “Is he also one who is too young to fear Acheron?”

“No,” she answered, slowly and seriously. “Though it is true that he does not fear death, not at this time.”

“He is very brave,” I agreed.

“Courage is the least of it,” Shamarra retorted sourly, and she would talk no more that day.

After perhaps a week of riding I began to notice wisps of smoke on the far horizon of Vaire, and now and then a distant rooftop. I took to skulking around the isolated homesteads at night in search of food, with a bit of spook-fire Shamarra had loaned me for light. Nobody was likely to come near that eerie glow. I carried it in my hand like a bit of fluff; it had no weight, or substance, or even feel to it, and I still don't know where she got it. The stuff gave me just enough light to steal eggs from the hens' nests. I would pull garden greens, also, and once I took a loaf of bread out of a kitchen window. Quite a comedown for a prince of Melior, but I had no choice. Even if we could have traded torques for victuals, we did not dare to be seen by daylight.

We had come far from the true Acheron, nearly into the Lorc Tutosel, what the southern people call the mountains of the night bird. After almost a fortnight of riding, I realized one day that the white mare was going lame. Her gait roughened, and we were forced to get on more slowly. I had always, since the start of this journey, kept close behind Tirell because of an unspoken fear that he would heedlessly leave me—he seemed so cold and uncaring. I had never dared to stop unless he did. But as the white mare ambled on more and more reluctantly, I made a happy discovery: the black beast would circle back to check on us, and Tirell, perforce, had to wait as well. He would never leave the beast.

I fervently hoped that Tirell would not comprehend the problem. He always rode with his back to me, seeming to notice nothing, hear nothing, and see nothing except whatever vision of vengeance floated before his mask of a face and his glittering blue eyes. Perhaps he could even remain oblivious to our slowness. But I should have known better. When we camped that evening he glanced once at the white mare, went to her, and felt her legs. He cradled her big head in his arms for a moment and studied her fine dark eyes as if he were speaking to her. Then he rounded on me.

“She is lame,” he said flatly, “and sore in her back, too. That is what has come of your hauling that wench along.”

“You would do well to speak better of the lady,” I flared, “and not risk her wrath! Has it occurred to you that she could destroy you? Is she not a goddess and a form of Adalis?” But Tirell laughed harshly, the chilly laugh that made me flinch.

“She is welcome to my person for destruction!” he laughed. “Nothing else.” He turned and thrust his hard white face at Shamarra. “Nothing else,” he repeated. It was as if he had spit on her.

Shamarra stood in all her silken beauty, pale golden hair and shimmering gown, moving only with the breeze and her own breath. She was not stony like Tirell, but just as impervious in her own way. If she had winced, if her eyes had widened as if hurt, I would have struck Tirell, and maybe Morrghu knows what might have happened then. But she looked through him, and in a moment he turned away and went back to the white mare, stroking her back and droning to himself. Presently the droning formed into a singsong tune.

“Hey, nonny nay,

My white horse is gray!

My gray is a black

If you look the right way.

My black is a beast,

My bird's gone astray,

And that's why I say,

Hey, nonny neigh!

Hey, nonny neigh!

My white horse is gray.

We'll all turn to ducks

At the end of a day

And swim in the Chardri,

And that's why I say,

No sense to this play!

Hey, nonny nay.”

“Mad!” I muttered.

We ate supper in watchful silence. Afterward, Tirell spoke to me in a tone I could not decipher.

“Tomorrow, you take the black and go on into Vaire. I will stay here.”

“Perhaps I could heal the white,” I mumbled. It was Tirell's stubbornness that had caused the situation, but as always, he somehow made me feel that it was all my fault.

“Whatever you like,” he replied with no emotion at all on his lean, handsome face. “But I will not go any farther into Vaire, horse or no horse, until I have the protection of its king. I do not wish to be slain by the henchmen of my beloved father before I have had my chance at him. You can go. The Boda won't bother with you.”

I sat up straight in insulted protest. “They probably have their orders to kill me and bring you back alive!”

“Well, maybe they won't kill you until you have led them to me,” Tirell remarked indifferently. “Anyway, for every reason you are the one who must continue into Vaire.”

I stared at him, astonished, but mostly at myself. His madness must have spread to me; why was I not aghast—I, the prudent one? The proposal was insane. How could I leave him, how could I even know he would be waiting when I got back? If I got back. Yet, in spite of reason, in spite of prudence, I felt recklessly willing to try the venture, as if death could not touch me.… I shook my head in bewilderment at my own daring.

“Very well,” I assented. “I will go. What exactly is it that I am to do in Vaire?”

Tirell looked back at me with a hint of impatience tugging at the mask of his face. “Go to the castle at Ky-Nule to see Fabron. Tell him we will need help to take Melior, and have him send retainers. Better yet, have him come here himself.”

I almost sputtered at that. Such arrogance! “Why,” I asked sharply, “should he wish to help you at all?”

Tirell replied with a smile I did not expect, a wry, mocking smile. “Oh, he will wish. You will see.”

I said no more. I spent most of the evening struggling with the fastenings of my torque, and at length I got the golden thing off. I would be no prince when I rode across the heartland of Vaire.

The next morning I was up with the dawn, folding my blanket to put it on the black steed. Tirell and Shamarra silently prepared to move their camp deeper into the forest. They would keep to the shelter of the trees, in the foothills of southern Acheron, until I returned. I hated to leave them. My mind could not accept this notion of leaving my brother. But mind seemed to have been taken over by some sort of fearless folly, and I could not hold back. I did not even think of asking Shamarra to go with me. We all three assumed she would stay with Tirell. There was no secret as to where her preference lay. It gave me some comfort that Tirell would have her with him, since I believed she had some power to protect him; yet her indifference galled me even worse than my brother's.

Tirell did not wish me good-bye. I went to give him the kiss of leave-taking and he brushed me away as if I were a gnat. Shamarra condescended to follow me to where the black horse stood waiting. “Food,” she said, and handed me the last of our meager supplies.

“What will you eat?” I asked.

She shrugged. “There are rabbits and berries about.”

“You'll have no help from Tirell,” I warned her, peering toward where my brother sat among the trees and looked with hard, locked eyes at something only he could see.

She seemed amused at my concern. “I'll have help enough,” she replied with a hint of a smile. Help of weird trees, perhaps? I did not ask.

“Good,” I said slowly. “I can go more easily, knowing that you will have a care for him, my lady. But tell me, why do you cleave to him?”

“Would you have me do otherwise?” she parried.

I answered her with honesty that I think neither of us expected. “I would have you feel my love,” I told her softly. “I follow my brother, whom I have loved since I was born. But why do you? Surely you owe him nothing, and he scorns you.”

“He is kingly in his grief,” she said angrily. “He will be Sacred King when he is well.”

“He is mad,” I said.

“There is divine vision and compassion even in his madness!”

“He has shown you no compassion, and little enough to me.”

“Why should he?” she cried passionately. “You are nothing but a pup next to him!” She turned away, and I rode into Vaire with her words burning like hot iron in my mind.

Book Two

FABRON OF VAIRE

Chapter One

I am Fabron. I was king of the canton of Vaire in Vale when I was alive. I came to my throne by virtue of threats and greed, but I tried to be a good king. I wanted to be well remembered. I rode the rounds of my canton yearly, hearing my people's concerns, and when I was in my castle at Ky-Nule I held court daily. Any of my subjects, rich or poor, could come before me if they wished and dared. I tried to be just, but pettiness angered me, and I think my people respected my anger. Everywhere I went they cheered me. I tried to give them a procession worth shouting for, though I was not a young man or a handsome one. I was short, half hidden by my beard, but I rode tall, and every horse and retainer of my entourage wore ornaments of my own making, most of them gold. For myself I wore a breastplate all in link of iron chain, and a chain belt to my sword, and the staghound, the emblem of Vaire, leaping on my helm. I dressed in sober velvets to set off my artistry. Jewels and brooches show better thus.

But it was not in such array that Frain first saw me. Spring had come and was turning into summer, but I was not holding court or preparing to ride through my domain. Mela, my wife of many years, lay ill with a wasting fever, and I stayed constantly in her chamber, seeing no one. She did not know me. Indeed she had turned dead to me many years before, after we had sold Frain. Not that she was cold or disobedient—she was ever an obedient wife—but something had died inside her. I did not understand; I thought we would have many babies, and what matter was one the less? Abas had need of a child to prove his continuing fertility, to keep his vassals content. He paid me dearly for it, first in gold and later in power when I threatened to expose him. But I paid dearly, too, over the years. Frain was our first child and our last. I had not reckoned, perhaps, on the anger of the goddess who abides in all women.

So Mela lay moaning and did not speak to me or cry out my name, and I could not help her. I felt somehow to blame—I always felt to blame for any ill in her life since I took Frain from her. The door opened. I looked up wearily, expecting another officious servant. But it was Wayte, my captain of guards, with an iron dagger at his throat. Other guards were milling about outside the door like beleaguered sheep. They were armed, of course, and so was Wayte. But they risked his life if they drew a weapon.

It was Frain who held the dagger on Wayte. I knew him at once, for I had made shift to see him a few times during the years, standing behind a buttress and watching him in the courtyard at Melior when he was too young and careless to notice me. He was a sturdy youth now, with auburn hair and high, freckled cheekbones and an earnest, open look about him. He hardly seemed more dangerous than the toothless baby I had given for gold. Yet there he was with his arms locked around Wayte's shoulders and the dagger at his throat. The captain stood almost a head above him.

“I beg pardon, my lord,” he said to me. “They told me I could not see you, but my business could not wait.” His voice was clean and courteous, like his looks, but there was nothing crawling about it, no anxious entreaty. He is a prince, I thought, and I longed to go to him and embrace him. Instead I kept my place and spoke gruffly through my beard.

“Let that so-called captain of mine go,” I said.

He did not move. “Your word, my lord, that I will not be harmed.”

I nodded, waving the other guards away. Frain loosened his grip, and Wayte bowed and left without a word, his face angry and white. The fellow was expecting my wrath; he did not know the joy he had brought me.

“Prince Frain,” I asked as collectedly as I could, “what brings you here?”

He whistled softly. “I had not expected, my lord, that you would recognize me! Have you heard of the events in Melior, then?”

“No, I have had no news from Melior. I know your face, that is all. What has happened to bring you here with your fine linen half torn from your back?”

He glanced down at himself ruefully. “Your guards would never have admitted such a vagabond. Have I your lordship's leave to seat myself?”

“Of course, of course!” I exclaimed hastily, suddenly aware of the poor account I was giving of myself. I was in a lethargy of despair from Mela's illness, roughly dressed, scarcely washed or combed, and now scant in courtesy. I bustled to clear a space on my cluttered couch. “I beg your pardon. Please sit and tell me what news you will.”

Such a tale he told me. Murder, and a desperate ride into Acheron itself—Acheron, where no sane man will set foot. Then a lake on top of a mountain, forsooth, and a goddess walking barefoot like a peasant wench, and a strange and ominous black beast. I gaped in amazement, but Frain's voice was so careful and modest that I believed every word he told me. At last he explained his errand. “Tirell hopes—no, expects—that you will help us overthrow Melior. He did not wish to come here himself, for he is certain that Abas has the Boda out in search of him. So he sent me to ask you to come to him.”