The Black Beast

by Nancy Springer

  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 nothi
ng 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.”

  “He is mad, you have said,” I remarked dryly.

  “Ay, so he is. Though perhaps”—Frain cocked a clear eye at me—“not in that regard.”

  “How is he mad, then?”

  Frain sighed, thinking, and for the first time I saw real pain in his fine brown eyes; he had kept away from emotion before. “He has taken his love and grief,” Frain said slowly, “and turned it all to hard hate and vengeance with a cutting edge. If he could weep it would be the greatest of blessings, I think, but he hardly moves or speaks except for vengeance. There is no human warmth in him these days, not toward any being of human kind. When he eats I think he does not taste the food; he tastes only vengeance. And I cannot say what he sees before his eyes.”

  “But he fends for himself well enough day to day?” I asked.

  “All too well,” he wryly agreed.

  “And you, Prince Frain—” How I yearned to call him Frain, my son. But I would not do that. Long silence is not lightly to be broken.

  “You need not call me prince,” he put in. “I have never been ‘princed’ much. Tirell is the prince in Melior.”

  “And you, Frain,” I said softly. “Do you accord with Prince Tirell in this bid for the throne?”

  “I have followed him since I was old enough to walk.”

  “And now that you are old enough to think,” I returned sharply, “will you follow a madman?”

  “Thinking is the least of it,” Frain replied slowly. “To be sure, he is brave, and comely, and honorable in his way, and there is vision in him, perhaps even some wisdom. But I believe I would follow him even if he were a wretch. Because of something in me—I don’t know what.”

  I could not say a word.

  “As for the throne,” he continued, “what else can we do but try to take it? Abas will pursue us until either he or Tirell lies dead.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “He is a father. Perhaps he seeks Tirell only to make peace.”

  Frain shook his head doubtfully. But before he could reply a long, anguished moan filled the room. Mela had awakened from one of her brief sleeps. I hastily crossed the room to be at her side, taking her dry hand between my own. But she looked through me and past me, as always, seeing nothing to help her. Frain stood beside me, and I caught my breath; her vague gray eyes flickered onto his face. But then she turned away her thin face and tossed her head to and fro in a sort of weak, distracted protest against her own misery. Her red hair lay snarled on the pillow, angry and unkempt. I placed a hand on her brow to still her.

  “I could try to heal her,” Frain whispered. The words seemed dragged from him. “Tirell says there is healing in me.”

  “Prince Tirell may speak truth,” I said roughly, trying to hide my sudden hope. “Though I know more of healing than he is ever likely to learn.”

  “I know you were a smith.” Frain turned to me with his steady, questioning gaze, and I could scarcely meet his eyes. “Can no one, then, heal those who are dearest to them?”

  “Maybe not, Frain,” I said quietly, for that was truth. “But I lost my gift for healing years ago, when I grew too fond of wealth—wealth and power.”

  “My baby!” Mela whispered, and her frail hands moved on the bed sheets.

  “Try, Frain,” I told him. “But do not take it too hard if you fail. She is far gone.”

  “But what should I do?” he asked.

  “What do you think?” I asked in turn.

  “There is something to do with metal,” Frain said slowly. “I used a knife last time. But I hate to touch her with such an ugly thing.”

  “A knife can cut away blight from the stem,” I said. “Clean pain can heal. Use it.”

  He did not tell me that he had hardly eaten for days, nor that he had ridden far, in haste, and with little rest. I learned that later, much later, when we were at Melior. He stood by Mela’s bed with his back straight and his head bowed, like a hostage for her, and laid a hand on her hot brow. She stirred beneath his touch and whispered again. He curled his fingers around the iron knife blade and moved it over her heart, over her hands and head. He trembled, and I knew what he was feeling, remembered it well. The power moves in you and through you from depths beyond knowing or from some place beyond being—I never understood which. It carries you out of self and you shrink in fear. But I don’t think Frain was afraid. He stood with Mela in her own dark place, bent over her, embracing her, struggling to lift her, to free her. His whole body trembled and strained with the effort, though he had not actually moved. Every sinew of his spirit was taut. For the space of countless heartbeats he fought for her, with her, against her—

  And for an instant I thought he had succeeded. Her bleary eyes met his and cleared. “My baby!” she breathed. Then an awful tumult of feeling surged into her eyes, love and rage—and the rage snapped her away from him. I saw it happen. Frain swayed as if he had been struck. His knife clattered to the floor, and he clutched at a bedpost for support. He clung to the heartless wooden thing and sobbed.

  I went and put my arms around him. He let go of the bed and cried against my shoulder, cried like the child I had never known. “Easy, lad,” I murmured, swallowing, patting him clumsily. “Stop your shaking, now …”

  He raised his wet face. “She is trapped in a tangle of rage and despair,” he said wildly, “roots and strength-sucking vines, anger—I tugged and tugged—”

  “I know,” I told him.

  “The knife would not cut her free. Knives are like water in that place. I—I was a drifting thing, I didn’t know who I was, I couldn’t remember my name.” He gulped for breath. “I—there was something—if I had only known …”

  If you had known she is your mother, I thought with a pang, it would only have increased your heartache. He had given everything, down to the last dram of his strength; he could scarcely stand. I had never seen such courage. I knew that such had not been my courage, in my day.

  Mela lay quite still. “Is she—dead?” whispered Frain.

  I reached out and touched the pulse of her neck. “No, but she is beyond knowled
ge or pain, and I am glad of it. She will die soon.” I guided Frain toward the door. “Come.”

  He was still trembling. “I am sorry…”

  “I told you she was far gone,” I said more gently than I had ever heard myself speak. “You did no harm, and more good than you know. Come.” I took him down the corridor, half supporting him. The guards watched us pass in barely concealed astonishment. I led him into my own bedchamber and laid him down, took off his boots, and covered him and pulled the curtains around him. “Sleep,” I ordered, and left him there.

  My wife died two nights later. I did not see Frain in the interim, though I often thought of him. I ordered the servants to extend to him the fullest hospitality: bath, clothing, food, whatever he needed. I knew he would feel weak and drowsy for a few days, after what he had done for Mela, so I was not really expecting him as I sat with her. In fact, I suppose, he avoided the sickroom, for he was still very young. Death makes grim company. But it came easily enough for Mela. She slipped away without a movement or a word to me. I wept a bit, and then I slept for a good while. By the sun, it was past noon of the next day when I awoke.

  I immediately went hunting for Frain. He was not in his chamber—my chamber, really. I prowled about and found him readily enough, though the servants were avoiding me. He and Wayte were at the center of a crowd of guards and grooms and the like in the courtyard. They were fighting—with wooden swords, I was glad to see.

  I wondered if I ought to intervene. Frain could not possibly be at his full strength, not after the effort he had expended for the sake of my dead queen. But Wayte was no fool; he would not let anything tragic happen. I could not believe that he bore the lad any real ill will. And as it turned out, I was right. He and Frain had become well acquainted over the past two days. Wayte had been curious about the youth, and curiosity had already turned to regard. But he had to keep the respect of his men; hence the mock combat in process.

  I walked up to the back of the crowd, waiting to see what happened. The lackeys around me gaped and, at my glare, had the good sense to keep silence. Frain was fighting well but not flashily, sweating a bit but holding his own. He was quick with his defense.