The Black Beast

by Nancy Springer

  We spent the nights on slopes and ledges, scarcely sleeping for fear of falling and for unreasoning fear of the Luoni. Even Tirell did not stir during those nights. Finally we came to the edge of the shadowed face of Aftalun, where the roar of Coire Adalis sounded directly below us and the Chardri ran at us like a glistening road out of the west—and we could not go on.

  We cast about for a whole day trying to find a way. Aftalun would not let us pass. Sunset came, its bloody rays streaming down the Chardri, and we stood confronting a blank, curving wall of rock, standing on a ledge scarcely wide enough for the horses. Frain and I stared hopelessly at each other. We had found ourselves on that same ledge half a dozen times before in the course of the day, to no avail. Those accursed Luoni watched us silently from above.

  “It’s a cave,” Tirell said suddenly from behind me—we had got out of order on the jumbling slopes. “Go on in.”

  For the first time I seriously doubted his ability to lead us. “It’s only the shadow of the rock in this harsh light, Tirell,” I explained patiently. “The sun strikes across it slantwise—”

  “Exactly,” he roared, “and it won’t last another minute. Get on in, I say!”

  I opened my mouth to protest again, but Frain simply walked into the shadow and disappeared, leading his horse. I must have blinked ten times before I followed him. He stood waiting for me just within, and he spoke to me as I entered to encourage me. The cave seemed bigger on the inside than the outside. I stood comfortably beside him, and I heard Shamarra stop beside me.

  “Go on!” Tirell grumbled from the rear.

  “Likely it will drop us into the deep in a step or two,” I whispered. I was trembling with the strangeness of the place. Utter darkness surrounded us, even though there should have been sunlight just behind. I did not dare to turn and look. “Make a light, Shamarra,” I begged.

  “I can’t,” she said flatly, with no trace of self-pity in her voice. I don’t think any of us realized how exhausted she was.

  “Let me pass,” said Tirell scornfully, and I felt his hard hand move me out of his way. We all walked along, following each other’s sounds. The floor did not seem to slope.

  “We’ll go off the edge in a minute,” I pleaded. “Can’t we stop here, light a fire, and maybe sleep? There seems to be room enough.”

  Tirell barked out a laugh. “In this hole? I’d as soon sleep on the ledge!” He pressed on. But soon, to my astonishment, I realized that I could see in a dim way. We were all walking through a kind of featureless gray expanse. After a while it occurred to me that there was nothing to prevent us from riding—no walls, no roof—so I got on my horse. Frain and Shamarra did likewise. Tirell continued to stalk afoot.

  I saw more clearly every moment. By some marvel we were not inside a mountain at all. Or if we were, the mountain was as big as the world inside. We rode across a broad countryside lit with a muted, pearly glow that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, showing no roof, no dome of sky, no encircling mountain wall—I felt as if I could float away into the misty light. Still, I grew less afraid of going off an edge into the deep; falling seemed likely to be of no consequence in this country. The land looked soft and gentle, like down pillows on a tufted bed. The trees and grass seemed fluffy as fur. I saw comfortable-looking thatched houses and people and cattle and everything necessary for prosperity, but all hazy to my eyes, like a dream. I do not remember sounds, or any colors at all.

  I do remember the castle. I remember watching it grow nearer during what must have been hours, even days, of riding. I was no longer troubled by hunger or thirst, and I cannot recall any weariness. I never tired of looking at the castle. It entranced me with its shimmering intricacy; it shifted like a structure of leaves in the directionless light, puzzling my smith’s eye. I sensed pattern, but I could only trace change as I drew nearer. The place was immense and the color of moonlight.

  From within the castle seemed as boundless as the countryside. Servants met us, blanketed our animals and took them to stable, welcomed us with every courtesy. They led us to a great hall, to a feast. Guests thronged around the tables, decked in jewels and robes and making merry. I remember a starry sparkle of gems and a lulling hum of talk. But I must have been more tired than I realized; the people seemed to ripple together before my eyes, all the colorless color of water. In his fair linen Frain floated swan-like in their midst; Shamarra’s hair and gown formed a waterfall of silver and sunny gold. Tirell’s black figure stood like a lance, shocking my bleary eyes. A pool of silence grew around him. He stood and stared at the dais, and I followed his stare, saw a king rise to give us welcome.

  He stood twice the height of any man I had ever seen, massive, his great, muscular arms folded across his broad bellows of a chest. He verily seemed to shine in that muted place, golden, like a sun. I felt half afraid of him until I saw his face crinkle with smiling cheerfulness, his eyes that were merry and wise and very old although his body was that of an arrogant youth.

  “Welcome!” he cried. “Come, seat yourselves and drink and feast. All that we have is yours.”

  “Filthy old cripple!” Tirell shouted back. “I bow before no living man!”

  I gaped, and Frain turned as if he had been struck. The reply made no sense! But the giant on the dais seemed in no wise affronted.

  “Why, I am no living man,” he declared. “Lady Shamarra, Prince Tirell, Prince Frain, Fabron king of Vaire, you are very welcome. I am Aftalun, first god, then first man, then first to taste of death, and I rule death here. I am king of the dead, and here we hold our revels. All that we have is yours. Drink and eat!”

  “Drink and eat!” Tirell roared. “I would as soon eat the red mushroom of madness! Aren’t you the ass who built that bloody altar?”

  I tensed unhappily, feeling sure it would come to fight now. But Aftalun only mildly turned his eyes.

  “Why, yes,” he replied. “But then I was a man, intent on strife and glory. Now I am a god again, and I say rest, drink, and eat.”

  Someone handed me a cup of mead, and I gulped it down. It was the sweetest I had ever tasted. I took no further notice of Tirell’s sulkiness. I sat at a table and devoured fine wheat bread and crisp, hot pork and poultry and sweet red-gold fruits such as Shamarra had given us. Frain sat beside me, smiling.

  “Eat more slowly,” he cautioned. “You’ll get a bellyache.”

  I turned to reply and nearly choked. Just beyond him sat a courtly, winsome woman—Mela! Smiling, coifed, and crowned with a graceful circlet, she did not look much like the queen Frain had seen. Indeed, he seemed not to recognize her as she passed him dishes in solicitous and motherly style. I struggled out of my seat, knocking the bench awry, and blundered over to her.

  “Mela!” I cried, tears trickling. She glanced up at me in amazed sympathy.

  “Why, good sir, whatever is the matter? You must be exhausted. Here, let me help you.” She rose and got me by the shoulders, guided me back to my seat. A good thing, for I was tottering and I couldn’t say a word. “You’ll feel much better soon,” Mela assured me. “Here, have some more of the hydromel. It must be hard, so hard, to have come here through the darkened ways.”

  I took a huge swig of mead to please her. “You don’t remember,” I sputtered through it.

  “Remember?” Her clear eyes, so much like Frain’s, frosted over with thought. “The flight with aching wings and burning lungs, that I remember. And the dive—I was too frightened to dive, but I had to. After that, nothing but liquid light and ease.… Your way has been far harsher. What is your name, good sir, and how do you come to know mine?”

  “Fabron,” I told her. “I—you—never mind.” She was all that she had ever been: generous, beautiful … And more—she was at peace. Though words unspoken filled me with an urgent ache, I would not disturb that peace, not for anything. Not even to show son to mother. Mela deserved such peace after what I had done to her. I turned to warn Frain to keep silence in case he had heard me call her—


  I don’t think he had heard a word. He sat staring at the dais. Tirell was up there, seated between Shamarra and another maiden, glowering fiercely. Shamarra ate coolly and daintily in the place of honor by Aftalun’s side. Tirell seemed not to have touched his food. All looked much as usual in regard to those two, so I wondered what had riveted Frain’s gaze so.

  “Mylitta!” he gasped. “Right by Tirell—and he doesn’t know her!”

  The other maiden was a plain, pert lass with all the warmth of summer in her smile. She sat serenely observing the assembly with occasionally a humorous glance at the sullen figure beside her. She offered him viands as courtesy dictated, and he answered her with snarls that abashed her not at all.

  I swallowed. “She doesn’t know him,” I said to Frain.

  “I suppose not. We’re truly in the realm of the dead,” Frain murmured. “I know Aftalun said so, but I didn’t understand.… Fabron, Tirell must never know, never, that he sat by her side and glared. It would break his heart for good. Promise me.”

  “Of course,” I told him. “Have some more of this excellent mead.”

  I felt suddenly quite content. I sat and conversed pleasantly with my dead wife. How nice that she could not remember what a bastard I had been! She listened to me with friendly interest, and I talked and ate until warm weariness overcame me. After a while someone showed me to a chamber and I slept. Frain to the contrary, I suffered no bellyache. I never felt any ache of any kind in that place, not after that first feast.

  We stayed for days, I suppose, though there were no days and nights, only sleeping and waking. There were many amusements to take up the waking time, and of course meals, as many as one liked, and luxurious bathing. But I spent much of my stay in Aftalun’s realm with my wife. We became good friends. We would walk about together. She showed me the sights of the castle that never seemed to end, and we listened to music in every courtyard. I loved her with all a youth’s passion, but I did not woo her. My flesh was quiet those days.

  When not with Mela I was to be found with Frain. Aftalun did not neglect his guests. He spoke with us when he could, and I found him to be a marvelously amiable fellow in spite of his immense strength.

  “I thought Acheron was the land of the dead,” said Frain as we sat with him one day. The same question had occurred to me: How could there be more than one deathly realm?

  “Is that what men say in Vale?” Aftalun asked, smiling.

  “No one says it, but everyone believes it.”

  “Well, they are right. It is. The goddess rules Acheron, and I am the king of the dead here to the east. But it is all one ring of mountains, really, and it is all one place to those who travel the watery ways.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Frain.

  “Think of the sun, how he sets in the west and rises in the east each morning in renewed life. And think of the bosom of the goddess and her womb. She who takes also gives.”

  “The flood beneath,” Frain muttered. “You sit at the gate the Chardri makes, and Shamarra sits at the lake.… But we did not come here by any watery way. Are we dead?”

  The question above all questions that I had not dared to ask. Frain had nearly ceased to astonish me with his courage. But perhaps he surprised Aftalun. The giant cocked an amused eye at him.

  “Do you remember dying?”

  “No,” answered Frain ruefully, “but I was plentifully miserable. “Perhaps I did not notice.”

  “We have eaten your food,” I put in softly, “which all the legends say has power to keep us here.”

  Aftalun shook his head. “If you wish to go, and if you can summon the strength, no one will prevent you. It is true, the path is dark and steep. But I will show it to you myself.”

  “And if we wish to stay?” Frain asked.

  “Why, then you are my welcome guests!” Aftalun spread wide his great hands. “But I should warn you, Frain, destinies do not change even here. The lady likes you no better than she did in Vale.”

  It was true that Shamarra kept as distant from Frain as ever. I pitied him, but I did not entirely grasp my own problem until a few days later. Frain and I were lounging on couches after dinner, listening to the lutists, when Tirell came and stood over us. “If you two are rested,” he said with only the faintest trace of mockery in his voice, “it is time we were going.”

  Frain got up slowly, with a sigh, and stood beside his brother. I could tell he left regretfully and only because Tirell wished it. But I could not move. I lay as if dead. Half of my soul had already rooted in this place of peace and comfort.

  “Aren’t you coming, Fabron?” Frain asked.

  Tirell stood silently with knowledge gleaming ironically in his eyes. Tell him he is your son, that gleam said, and perhaps he will stay with you. Perhaps not. But the thought awakened all the old pangs of guilt and shame in me, and anger at Abas, and love for Frain—above all, that love. I wrenched myself to my feet, feeling as if I had been torn. In pain too deep for words or weeping I followed the others to Aftalun’s audience chamber.

  Shamarra sat with the giant king, playing at dice with him. Tirell nodded coldly at them both. “We have come to take our leave,” he said.

  Aftalun gestured vague assent. “That is my sword you carry, you know,” he remarked. “And my shield. The beast is ancient, you see, and madness was not always a curse. Use your weapons well.”

  “Lady?” Frain questioned with a note of alarm rising in his voice. Shamarra had not moved from her place.

  “I am staying for a while with this King here,” she said. “A Sacred King,” she added, staring directly at Tirell. “He has husbanded me since the time before time.”

  Tirell burst out in a laugh of the most genuine amusement I had yet heard from him. But laughter rang badly against his brother’s sorrow, and there was no cause for it that I could discern. We all stared at him. “The more power to you both!” he guffawed.

  No one smiled. “Insofar as she is goddess I have loved her,” Aftalun added, “and I have hated her for the same reason.… Well, Frain, you cannot always be expecting her to make lights and fruit for you. It wears her out. You should know that, lad.”

  Frain stared speechlessly and turned to the door. He wished only to be gone quickly. Why were we going, he and I, each of us leaving a heart’s love to follow a callous madman? Because the ladies needed us not at all. Even Tirell needed us more.

  Tirell lingered, still snickering. “I cannot believe you are the one who built that bloody altar!” he exclaimed.

  “What, Prince, because I was more than man, should I therefore have been less than a fool?” Aftalun grimaced. “Go in peace. Do you need me to show you the way?”

  “Snakefeathers, no!” Tirell left with a roar of new mirth. I could not follow. Aftalun’s eyes were on me.

  “So you are really going,” he marveled softly. “I expected it of the other two, but not of you. They are younger, and they do not know or understand the ache you suffer.… You are a very brave man, Fabron.”

  “Lord,” I whispered, “pray tender my parting regards to Mela.”

  “I will,” he said wryly, “but she won’t know what to do with them.”

  “Why does she not remember?”

  He shrugged. “She might remember when she has healed. Some do. Go with all blessing, king of Vaire.”

  Dismissed, I stumbled after the other two. When we had mounted I laid my head on the horse’s neck and knew nothing more. I cannot tell what way we went. When I awoke we were far down Aftalun’s shadowed face, riding northward along the Perin Tyr, bound toward Nisroch in Tiela—and the black beast was following us.

  Book Three

  TIRELL OF MELIOR

  Chapter One

  I am Tirell.

  I will not speak of Mylitta. Even now, ages and changes later, it is difficult for me to think of her. I remember how I loved her, but more often I remember how she died—was killed—and the black beast came to take her place.

&nbs
p; I was afraid of the beast at first. But I was defenseless, naked to every gust that tried to shake me, weak and helpless until I took it as my shield. People think it is a gift to be a visionary, but it is more of a curse. It made me terribly vulnerable. Abas groped for me even in Acheron, where I had thought his mind would not venture.

  “Tirell,” he whispered to me in my exhausted sleep, “my son, come back! You will perish in the darkness. Tirell, Tirell, my son!”

  He had not called me so since I could remember. I should not have answered at all, but I wanted my bitter triumph. “You’re far too late,” I told him, and he seized me with a bloody, invisible grip.

  “The beast!” he wailed. “Tirell, get away from the beast! Darkness of Acheron, darkness of Aftalun, darkness of the deep, Tirell, beware the beast, black get of Vieyra, black brother of the demon birds, black devil of the deep, Tirell! Slay the thing—it hunts you! Come back and we will slay it together, coward that I am.…”

  “Get away,” I muttered, waking.

  “I will kill Whatever threatens you, my son!” he pledged. I cursed him and wrenched myself away, put up a wall of will to defend myself, but the effort left me drained. Waking was not much better than my haunted sleep. In the gloomy dawn the beast lay near me, a living nightmare, and in my mind Abas shouted with fear. I was like him; I hated to be like him. I was afraid of the beast too—Eala, yes! But I loved it as my own precious madness. It was part of me. It had been with the line of Melior as long as the altar, I sensed. I felt its call—not unlike the tug Abas was trying to put on me, but I trusted the beast more. It at least would not try to talk. I went to it and embraced it, feeling Abas shriek within my mind. I learned later that I was not the only one he kept awake those days. He set the whole castle on edge with his rantings and noise.