I was to be cook, it seemed, for Frain had fallen asleep with Fabron still fussing over him. So I made some crude oat cakes stuck together with honey—mouse cakes, my nurse used to call them—and toasted them over the fire. Fabron sat and munched his stoically. Grandfather ate a little, but I could see that we were going to have to grind grain for bread. In the morning.
“Why is Frain so weak?” the brown man asked. “He is too young to be so spent.”
Of course he knew who we were; we wore torques. But I suspect he would have known regardless.
“He has been healing me for hours,” Grandfather replied. “He should have saved his strength. I am a useless old thing.” He spoke very bitterly. I suppose Frain’s generosity distressed him. The brown man looked at him in mild surprise.
“Every creature has value apart from its worthiness,” he said. “That is why I am here. And it is a truth you know well, Daymon Cein.”
“I no longer know anything,” Daymon retorted truculently.
“Even the ants know their own truths!”
The fox cub came and sniffed at me. “A wild stray?” Fabron remarked to turn the talk.
“To be sure. Like Tirell.” I wondered if the brown man could be joking. There was no humor to be seen on that bearded goat’s face.
“But wild things wander by nature. How can they stray?”
“They depart from their truths much as men do. The fox cub is the offspring of an incestuous relationship. Not his fault, but he is outcast, his mother dead. The raven has broken rookery law. You saw the deer in the other building—the stag has failed to uphold leadership and has been expelled from the herd. His doe came with him.”
“And how have I strayed?” I asked, addressing him for the first time. I tried not to sound sharp, but I dare say I did because I was secretly trembling. He paid no attention to my tone.
“It is not in truth for the son to hate the father,” he said.
“Nor is it in truth for the father to slay—” I stopped, dry of mouth and visibly shaking. He was terribly strange, but something in him called me, and that call frightened me. It tugged like the strange force that had drawn me to Grandfather where he lay dying in the riddleruns.
“Indeed, it is abomination, what he has done,” the brown man agreed about Abas. “But how can hate help you?” Then he looked at me and let the question go unanswered. “Tirell, we will not be able to speak justly while you are afraid. What about me troubles you so?”
“You are half beast,” I said with trembling voice.
“To be sure. Like you.”
I stared at him, caught on an edge between anger and awe, unable to speak.
“Because the beast is half bird, do you therefore fear it?”
I moved my unwilling mouth. “I feared it at first,” I whispered.
“You are very brave, then. Befriending it was both wise and brave. Abas, who hates the beast, has never been able to drive it from him, but the time will come when you who love it will freely let it go.… Why does Abas hate the beast, Tirell?”
I turned away my head. “The beast has been with my family since the beginning days,” I said at last. “The shield tells me that.”
“And has no one ever told you more?” he wondered. He settled down further into the firelight, looking at me out of flickering golden eyes. And he told me the tale of the beast.
“In the beginning the beast was only a dream of Aftalun’s, and thereby a prophecy. In his dream he saw it amidst the tangling trees of Acheron, a place he had never been. He took its image as his shield device for the sake of its fearsome look and its mighty wings. He had a sword made to go with his shield, and the work was done by Ulv, the smith of the gods in Ogygia.
“‘That is a sword of double edge,’ warned Aftalun’s bride. ‘And the shield is heavy. It may yet become an insupportable burden.’ She was the goddess, and he loved her for what she was and hated her for her hold on him. So he heard her words with laughter and awe.
“After twenty years he built his altar and died on it and left it for the east, went up in swan form with chains of gold and silver trailing from his neck, men say, though some say he strode off in his own body and form. He had three grown sons: Aymar, Aidan, and Tyr. The time had come for one of them to take the goddess and die, as the newly formed order would have it. Aymar was the eldest, but he had no desire to be slain. Nor did Aidan, who would have been sacrificed the following year if his brother failed to give the goddess a son. So the two of them plotted between themselves to send Tyr, the youngest, to the altar in their stead.
“This was done by means of the ceremony of the choosing of the goddess. Tyr loved a maiden of one of the many names—Evi was her name. He had secretly pledged himself to her, and they planned to run away and wed. But on the day when all the maidens of many names were required to appear at the Hill of Vision for the choosing, the priestesses touched Evi, even though she had darkened her face with soot. Aymar and Aidan had bribed them with gold.
“So Tyr had the choice of letting his brother have his beloved and being forsworn, Luoni bait, or of taking her himself and being slain. Once he fully comprehended the trap that had been set for him he rose to the challenge as Aftalun had, with bitter daring. He was crowned Sacred King, sat on the dais and feasted, took the maiden for a night of tender love, and walked to the altar the next morning shrouded in black rage, suffused with rage. He let himself be tied down, let the blood bird be taken without a cry—and then, in a death spasm, he broke his bonds and rose, toppled toward Aymar. He turned into the black beast. Some folk say that his soul went up as the beast, and some say that his whole body and being changed in a clap of thunder. But it amounts to the same thing. The beast has a name, Tirell, and it is Tyr.”
“We are truly of one flesh,” I muttered. “He is my ancestor—”
“He is in you, as you have long known.”
I shifted my position with a sigh, feeling less afraid of the brown man now. “What then?” I asked. Frain lay sleeping, Grandfather sat back with half-hooded eyes, Fabron listened with open fascination.
“Tyr charged at his brothers, intent on killing them, bugling, baleful, fire-eyed. They escaped him for the time in the crowd. Aymar took Evi as his shield, a coward’s act. The two brothers got to their horses and fled back to the castle, taking the woman with them.
“The beast stationed itself before the gates of Melior, never moving, never even trying its wings, and no one dared to come near it. Aymar and Aidan were trapped within their walls. After a month of this Aymar went quite mad and hanged himself in his tower room. A few months later Aidan reached the last stages of desperation. He armored himself and went out to face the thing he feared. He stood bravely, struck at the beast and broke its wing, but he was slain. The beast went away toward the west, and men forgot it as quickly as they could.
“After the proper length of time Tyr’s son was born to Evi. Torvell was his name. The boy grew to the age of twenty years, when he was required to go to the goddess and the altar in his turn. He took his bride in obedience to the priestesses, and as he was being led to the Hill of Vision his father came to him, thus giving him the only gift he could—the black madness that takes all pain away. Torvell went up as an eagle.… And such has been the grim gift of Tyr to many of his descendants, even in these latter days, when the demands of the goddess have gentled.”
The tale was done. I took a few breaths and then turned to Grandfather. “Why did you never tell me?” I demanded.
“I never knew. The history of the beast is one that men have taken care to forget, like that of Acheron.” Grandfather blinked at the brown man in a sort of professional appraisal. “You must be very old.”
“Does he—does the beast remember?” I whispered.
“I think not in any clear sense—though it embodies much of what is human. It has sheltered here often over the years—and by knowing it, Tirell, I have known you.” The brown man bent his golden gaze on me. “But if I fight for you
, it will be in large measure for Tyr.”
I got up and bolted toward the door. I could not stand the touch of those wise eyes. But Fabron got ahold of me. “Tirell, no!” he cried. “It is black night and blinding snow out there—you’ll be lost for very sure.”
“I am only going over to the bam to see the beast,” I mumbled.
But the beast nosed his way in through the blanket as if he had heard me call. So I had no excuse to leave. I settled in the most shadowy corner of the hut, holding fast to the beast as if the creature were my talisman, hiding my face against his crest I was more afraid then ever, for I had felt that tug again, and I had sensed the name of it. It was called love, and it was the same force that Abas was using to try to lure me back to Melior.
It was still snowing in the morning. I spent the day grinding grain into flour between two rocks, working so furiously that the powder smoked and toasted on the stone. The hard labor eased my feelings somewhat. Fabron watched me and whistled. “Such fervor!” he exclaimed, not expecting an answer. “Well, better thee than me, Tirell.”
He helped me with the cooking. We had milk and eggs. We used some of each to make my flour into a kind of paste that we wrapped around sticks and held over the fire. The lumps came out black on the outside and gummy on the inside. Still, Frain ate the stuff ravenously, and Grandfather put down a fair amount. His disposition seemed to have bettered since Frain’s strength had improved. We offered our so-called bread to our host, but the brown man did not bother with it. He crunched raw grain between his strong yellow teeth.
It snowed for three days. The brown man would go out to care for his animals in his bare, shaggy, black-nailed feet, leaving wrenchingly human footprints in the snow. He would bring us water in a jug. He seemed to find his way through the white dither of snow by instinct, like an animal, trudging off into the directionless storm and returning before we had much chance to worry. Perhaps he could scent the water. It came from a stream; I could tell that as soon as I looked at it. Those deathly swimming things were in it, with spook lights in their shrunken hands. They looked straight at me in the close quarters of the hut, and I recoiled in shock.
“What queer creatures you mortals are,” the brown man sighed. “Frightened of fresh water, frightened of mountains and whispering trees, frightened of night and shadows …” His gaze shifted to Fabron. “Frightened of truth.…”
“Don’t you see them in there?” I demanded.
“Of course. They are what gives the water strength, and so you. Death is the seed of life. Everything you eat is dead, Tirell.”
“I don’t see a thing,” Frain said, puzzled.
I wouldn’t drink the stream water. I melted snow in a pan for myself; there are no dead things in such lifeless water. But the jug haunted me—that, and the brown man’s kindness. Long before the storm abated I took to pacing the beehive house in unrest, nearly frantic to be gone. Finally, as suddenly as it had begun, the snow stopped and began just as quickly to melt. It was spring, after all. Green buds showed above the white ground.
I boiled eggs for our journey and made more of my awful bread. As I cooked the brown man tried to talk to me.
“You are not so very different from me,” he said. “Part beast, as we have said, and also part immortal, being a descendant of Aftalun.”
“He did not frighten me,” I muttered.
“He and Shamarra are of Ogygian kind, sky gods. But I am of earth, as was the maiden you loved.”
“Don’t speak of her!” Spasms of pain rippled through me; I had to clench myself like a fist to keep from blubbering. “Abas will be sorry he did not slay me as well,” I said finally, angry because of the pain and the fear.
“He has no desire to slay you. Every day he seeks you earnestly.”
I barked out a laugh. “He would kill me cheerfully enough if he had me in his reach! He would kill his own mother if the mood took him. Anyone who knows him knows that. Ask Frain what Abas is capable of doing.”
“Frain sees the most clearly of you all, in his youthful way,” the brown man agreed, speaking very softly, for Frain stood just outside the door. “But in this one regard he falls short of truth. He believes himself to be Abas’s son, but he has known no fatherhood from him. Therefore he thinks you stand in the same peril as himself.”
Angered the more because the brown man seemed to know all our secrets, I could not answer. “Why are you so enmired in rage and hatred, Prince?” he asked me. “You will make fit food for the Luoni.”
“Sisters of yours?” I inquired acidly.
“In their way, as Mylitta was in hers. Yes.”
The name pierced me like a fiery lance. I sprang up and lunged at him, straight through the flames, scattering cooking gear and cursing. I can’t tell what I might have done to him—though, he being what he was, I believe I could not have hurt him much. But Frain hurried in and came between us. My rage always seemed to reach him somehow.
“If only she had not been killed,” the brown man mused as if I had not moved, “all would have been well for you, Tirell. Now I can’t see what is to become of you, and neither can Daymon Cein.”
Frain reached out toward me. I was all in tumult; I suppose if I had let him touch me I might have wept, and perhaps that would have saved me from much sorrow later. But I turned away from him as if he were made of white-hot iron and ran outside, into the wilderness. I did not rejoin the others until they had gone a day’s journey toward Qiturel.
Chapter Four
I was fit only for the company of catamounts from that time on until Melior. Perhaps I did not always act it—I hope I did not—but I felt it, fear driving me wild inside, the brown man’s remembered touch and Grandfather’s old head bobbing along at my shoulder—if only he would walk faster!—and Fabron and Frain—all I had wanted were followers, and I had found friends, confound it. Love distressed me; clashing with my rage, it kept up a constant foam and splatter in my mind. And there was Abas still calling—damn Abas!—and I knew I did not dare to answer. We were afoot, helpless; his Boda could have caught us like insects in a moment if they had known where we were. So I could vent none of my spleen on Abas. I wanted only to be finished with my hatred, have my business done, settled—but Grandfather crept along.
And there were all the streams in the way. Eidden is full of them. Eidden Lei—Eidden Hills, the name means. They are covered with pine forest, and the streams run down between. Some of them stretch all the way back to the mountains.
“We are never going to get to Qiturel,” Frain complained, “if we must pussyfoot up and down every trickle until we find a bridge. Ford them, for mercy’s sake!” He was impatient, as tired of the journey as I was.
“You’ve grown bold in your old age, lad,” Grandfather remarked frostily, staring at him, and he subsided. But he repeated the argument at every rivulet we met.
I would not go near the streams, in spite of all Frain’s urgings. I could see the swimming things in them, waiting to touch me with their cold fingers. I would not even drink the stream water Frain dipped for me. I would find myself a well or go thirsty. But one day, when we came to a particularly broad but shallow stream and started up it toward the mountains again, Frain lost his temper.
“Mother of Aftalun!” he shouted fiercely, and splashed in until he was wet to the boottops. He stood with water running about his ankles, hands on hips and glaring at us. “Am I being eaten alive?” He lifted each foot fastidiously. “Pulled down? Carried away?” I still remember the sweet daring of him, standing there, but at the time I was speechless with wrath and fear.
“Come on!” he challenged us. “Tirell, you pugnacious coward—”
I found my voice. “Frain, I’ll thrash you for that!” I roared.
“Come and get me,” he said, grinning, and threw a handful of water at me.
I went in after him, of course, blind as a charging bull, and found myself on the other side before I knew it. He had led me there, the rogue. I stood on the bank, shocked
and panting, and he went back for Grandfather.
“Do you want me to carry you?”
“Great goddess, no!” Grandfather glared at him and picked his way across, leaning on his staff and with Frain’s hand at his elbow, however he attempted to shake it off. Fabron followed the pair of them, sweating a little and staring straight ahead. The beast nickered angrily and plunged across. And there we all were.
“Now,” said Frain smugly, “can we be getting on?”
So after that we waded across the shallow streams. But the time saved did not improve my temper—Eala, no! I felt everything rising to a peak in me, felt myself drawing nearer and nearer to what frightened me, or being drawn, being driven, and fear and rage walked with me. I had come through darkness, spoken with dragons, walked in water—I would not have been able to touch it a few months before. But every step caused me fresh terror.
The journey wore on. The brassy sun beat down every day. There was no escaping the promise of drought, even there in shady Eidden, the brown man’s country, where the silver mists rose in the morning and the rolling ranks of hills broke through—I loved them. Bah! Love! Something was trying to heal me. It was healing Grandfather.
“It’s coming back, Tirell! It’s starting to come back!” he whispered to me excitedly one morning a few weeks after we had left the brown man.
“What is coming?” I growled, though I already knew.
“The sureness, the sight!”
I thought as much. I had seen it growing in him days before he spoke. The rest of him had not changed much, but his eyes had gotten younger. “Why, what do you see?” I asked.
He grimaced. “Only those dearest to me. I can feel Frain’s presence there beyond the alders.” Frain went off by himself more and more those days. I shrugged. I had known where Frain was too, if only because the black beast with its animal senses knew.
“And,” Grandfather added, “the presence of your mother in Melior.”
So she was yet alive. More love to harrow my heart.
The Black Beast Page 16
