The Black Beast

by Nancy Springer

  Our pace hastened a bit. Grandfather’s step was growing stronger, and it continued to strengthen all the way to Qiturel. We arrived at last in the heat of early summer and were admitted by a suspicious gatekeeper. He would not let us in the keep, but he went off to get Oorossy, shaking his head. We must have looked like beggars. Well, in a Way we were.

  To my surprise I saw an old acquaintance nearby—my faithful black steed! The horse was tied outside the stable, as if he had been making trouble. I went over and stroked him, and he eyed me sourly. There were no manners in that horse, but he would carry a rider till he dropped.

  “Yours, Prince Tirell?” asked Oorossy, coming out to greet us.

  “He used to be. How strange that he has come to you!” Not strange, really. The steed was big and powerful, a war horse, so he would naturally be sold to a lord’s stable. I wondered what had become of the other two. We never found out.

  “No, he’s yours,” Oorossy declared, adding a curse or two. “The big, hammer-headed, foul-tempered, graceless plug! Take him and welcome! Fabron, Prince Frain, you’re welcome.” He clapped Fabron heartily on the shoulder. “Choose mounts for yourselves. It is not seemly for royalty to go afoot. Daymon Cein, I am at your service. What may I get you?”

  “A drink of water,” Grandfather snapped.

  He took us inside to have wine instead. I found, to my dismay, that I liked Oorossy. He made a proper shrewd, rough and roaring canton king. He fed us well and couched us well and found us fresh clothes in the morning. After breakfast we held council and I told the tale of our wanderings. We had virtually disappeared for the past six months, and not even Abas seemed to know where we were. Oorossy said that all of Vale was in ferment with wondering what had become of me. The time was good for challenging Abas. His forces were divided between three places: Vaire, where he laid siege to Ky-Nule, and the Wall, and Melior. The people were murmuring, foreseeing yet another season of drought. Only the lack of an heir to the altar prevented insurrection.

  “I will be sacrificed to no goddess,” I told Oorossy as courteously as I was able.

  “Why, neither would I,” he agreed instantly, with great good humor. “But there is no need to tell everyone that right away.”

  “Wayte will march toward Melior as soon as the siege is lifted,” Fabron said eagerly. “And Sethym will march as soon as he receives word.”

  “Sethym! That big sissy!” Oorossy lamented. “Is there no other help we can depend on?” He leaned back in his chair and fixed an appraising gaze on me. “What a pity you didn’t see Raz.”

  Oorossy had sense. He was no slave to honor, he frankly hated Abas, and he did not mind fighting either, but he questioned my chances of winning such a battle—my sanity, even, for undertaking it. Well, he had to be persuaded to throw in his lot with us in spite of sense or reason.

  “I am not going back to Nisroch,” I stated.

  “Why, no need!” Oorossy replied, straight-faced. “Raz and a few hundred picked men are marauding through my bottomlands right now—”

  “What!” I shouted, and everyone else jerked to attention.

  “—and a few days’ journey will take you to him,” said Oorossy.

  “But—how—” It was Fabron, floundering.

  “He does it every summer,” Oorossy added mildly. “He always leads the raids himself, makes a jaunt of it. They loot the little towns, terrorize a few countryfolk—”

  “And you sit here?” Fabron demanded.

  “Why, yes. I don’t want to turn his little sorties into a war. He could take Eidden in a few weeks’ time with perhaps half his force. I often wonder why he has not.”

  “Have you never met him at all?” asked Frain.

  “A few times. He offered me one of his daughters once, and I had to go to Nisroch to make a courteous refusal, since I already had a wife at the time, which he knew well enough.… He seemed proud. He has a right to be proud. He must dream of power, sitting on a canton as big as the rest of Vale and rich to boot. But he keeps to himself. I’m still not sure whether he’s selling daughters or giving them away. Folk say he offers them to his snakes, but the snakes won’t have them.”

  Grandfather stirred reproachfully at this bit of gossip. “He schemes and dreams,” he stated. “Someday he will act.”

  “And then Adalis help us,” said Oorossy cheerfully. He was gazing at me again with a hint of a dare in his eyes, and I knew I had to meet it.

  “You will aid me if I can make an ally of Raz,” I said.

  “To the top of my bent.”

  “All right, then.” I rose. “I am off.”

  Frain and Fabron automatically stood to come with me. Even Daymon Cein creaked stiffly to his feet. “We will be riding, Grandfather,” I told him.

  “Oh.” He creaked back down again. “Your hospitality, Oorossy, until they return?”

  “Of course.” Oorossy rubbed his hands in high spirits. He was clever, that Oorossy, sending us to interrupt Raz’s looting. And of course he was looking forward to a jaunt of his own. “Meanwhile, I will be mustering my men.”

  Within a few hours Frain and Fabron and I took horse, well provisioned and well mounted, I on my old black with the black beast by my side, and my temper was as sour as the steed’s. I felt ready in advance to hate Raz, I suspected Oorossy of having gotten the better of me, and I darkly predicted that there would be Boda about. Actually, we met none. The journey went well. We found flat wooden bridges across the streams—too many for the Boda to guard or hold—and when we had to cross by fording the horses bore the brunt of it; I would not even look down. The beast would bugle its protest, then splash across at our heels. Presently we left the forest behind and rode across Eidden’s rich river farmland. The sun beat down day after day, making the young crops hang limp. And they had been trampled; there was more devastation than drought could account for.

  Oorossy had only a notion of where Raz might be, but we found him easily enough by following a trail of wailing villagers. Their lamentations set my teeth on edge. I could not afford to be touched by them or anyone.… Not that they came near us—I am sure they thought we were their nightmare embodied, with our swords and war steeds and the winged monster in our van. Even Frain could not comfort them. We had to ride by them, and he and Fabron would look straight ahead, as hard-faced as I. After several days of this we sighted Raz’s campfires ahead in the dusk.

  “Now what?” Fabron muttered. The old hound, he was worried about how to approach Raz; we had discussed it again and again. He was afraid of treachery, but we had been able to reach no decision because Frain held fast to that damned unnatural valor of his, and as for myself, I simply did not care. So we rode straight into Raz’s camp and up to his royal self. I had not seen him for years, not since I was a child, but Oorossy had said we would have no trouble recognizing him, and indeed we did not. His tent looked more like a temple to avarice, all gaudy with gold thread and bits of gem, and he himself was a proper peacock of a man in a jeweled velvet cap and jeweled earrings; I was surprised he did not wear jewels in his nose. He sat at ease by his fire, picking at the capon a manservant offered to him and not bothering to rise as I, still mounted, towered over him.

  “Yes?” he inquired blankly. He knew quite well who I was, curse his eyes! I could not bring myself to announce myself. Next he would have had me stating my business like a courier! I felt too angry to move, lest I slay him where he sat. The beast lunged out of the shadows and thundered toward him. Soldiers gasped and scattered, and the manservant dropped his platter of capon in the dirt.

  “Ah,” Raz declared as if in sudden benign enlightenment. “Tirell of Melior.” He got to his feet with oily grace, paying no attention to the beast that had stopped just short of his campfire. I dismounted to speak with him.

  I could see why he preferred to remain seated. He was short, even shorter than Fabron; he came only to my shoulders. He did not have the advantage of Fabron’s blacksmith’s build, either. He dressed in layer on layer
of sumptuous robes to bide his flab, and he strutted. I sighed and sent the beast away with a gesture and a hard stare. I had to deal with this man.

  We sat around the fire. Raz snapped his multiringed fingers for slaves to take the horses, hit the manservant and sent him for more supper. “How good-hearted of Oorossy to send you to visit me here,” he remarked.

  “We are here on our own business,” I said levelly.

  “Ah.” Incredible, the tones and overtones—irony, subtle mockery, cunning, and bland inquiry—that he managed to convey in that one simple exhalation.

  Of course, he would not ask me my business, now that I wanted him to. And it should have waited until after we had eaten. Nevertheless, I blundered on. “We have come to request your aid in the necessary overthrow of King Abas.”

  “Ah.” Again. He stroked his pointed beard as I detailed my somewhat ill-formed plans. Wayte from Vaire, Sethym from Selt, Oorossy, and Raz, all of us to meet near Melior and make Abas dead, that was all. I wanted nothing more.

  “And set you on the throne,” Raz prompted.

  I shrugged, avoiding his eyes lest he see the flaring hatred in mine. He smelled of oil and musk. Supper came, but Raz sat back, letting it cool. “Take hundreds of men, march to Melior, kill Abas, and crown his son,” he mused aloud. “Now why would I want to do that?”

  I met his eyes then. “I am not sure why you do anything that you do,” I said.

  He gave a squeak that must have been a laugh and regarded me with sudden interest. I had addressed the enigma, and he liked it.

  “All of Vale is mad, and I alone am sane,” he proclaimed. “Any noble in this accursed land would think I should leap at the opportunity to place on that throne yet another powerless King! Ruler of a parcel of land scarcely large enough to support his household, sustained only by tribute, offering not even good advice in return, of no function or use whatsoever except to be troublesome, to be flattered, to he killed for the goddess—”

  “I do not intend to be killed for the goddess,” I said.

  “A sensible intent,” he returned. Oh, the sneer even in that! “But how, then, can you expect the throne? Thousands of sacks of wheat every year as tribute. Gold. Baubles and adulation—”

  “I will have earned it,” I snapped, losing patience. “Let the throne take care of itself. I ask only your aid in taking Abas. Name your reward.”

  “By old Dahak,” he said smoothly, “that will take some consideration! The proposal strikes me as troublesome, mightily expensive, a strain, a bore, and, worst of all, aimless. You, Fabron!” He turned suddenly on my silent companion. “What possesses you to have thrown in your lot with this get of the madman? That idiot Sethym I can understand, and even Oorossy—he still holds to his silly ideals—but you! I thought you had sense, a streak of cleverness, even—”

  Fabron flushed angrily. I spoke up before he could answer.

  “I do not intend to give you my throne,” I told Raz. “I do not care for it—sneer all you like, it is the truth—but it is mine, by Adalis, and I will sit on it. Take it from me if you like. Why have you not done so already? Or why have you not annexed Eidden, or Selt, or Vaire?” I followed the question with my stare and he stared back at me, a long, slow look from which all mockery was gone. He was thinking hard, though not, perhaps, of what I had asked him.

  “Laziness,” he replied at last. “Old habits are hard to break. I prefer to annex in the next generation.… I have one daughter left, Tirell of Melior.”

  The way was clear. “If we can come to terms,” I said promptly, “I will marry her.”

  “No!” It was Frain, the first word he had spoken; I had forgotten he was there. He jumped up, mightily distressed. “Tirell, say no such thing!”

  “Tirell has made the politic decision,” Fabron told his son tiredly. Fabron, taking my part in a quarrel with Frain? Was the whole world going insane? Frain ignored him.

  “You will have years to regret it,” he said to me.

  “Frain,” I warned, “be silent!” I felt harried and hot—bad signs. Talking with Raz had depleted my small store of civility.

  “Tirell, please listen.” Frain came over and knelt by me, entreating me. “It is wrong to marry into a loveless union. You might as well marry a whore as marry without love.”

  How could he say something so womanish in front of everyone? “Frain,” I declared in barely controlled rage, “you are an ass.”

  “Would you think, Tirell!” he cried passionately. “You have known what love is. You might yet know it again if you give yourself a chance—”

  The reference to Mylitta, veiled though it was, undid me. I swung out blindly with my fist and knocked Frain over; I am lucky I did not knock him into the fire. I wanted to stand up and punish him for all I was worth. Only Raz’s amused eyes on me prevented me. Fabron got up with a start, helped Frain up, and tried to lead him away.

  “Let me alone!” He shook off Fabron’s hand and turned to me for a parting shot.

  “All right.” He rapped out the words. “If you will not think of yourself, then think of the girl. Has anyone asked her opinion of you?”

  He turned his back on me and strode off to the shadows where the black beast waited. Fabron sighed and sat down again by the fire. On the far side of it Raz lounged, comfortable and quite expressionless.

  “All right,” I said to him. “Terms.”

  We agreed that he would bring a thousand men—and his daughter—to Melior. He would start back to Nisroch at once (I could hear Oorossy rejoicing), make his preparations, and march. He would send a messenger to Sethym. Meanwhile, I would backtrack to Qiturel and bring word to Oorossy.

  We ate our supper, finally, amicably enough, and dozed around the fire. We did not see Frain. We did not see him the next morning, either, when we made our departure. His horse was gone. But the beast knew he was waiting half a mile away, so I was neither surprised nor gladdened to see him when he joined us. I sensed his disappointment, but I kept silence, and so did he. I did not apologize for my temper of the previous evening. I blamed it on Raz and on him, not on myself.

  The quarrel made an uncomfortable ride, even for me. The few days seemed endless. But finally Qiturel greeted us, and Grandfather awaited us in his chamber there. “So, you have found Raz,” he remarked as soon as he saw us. “What is the fuss about?”

  “Tirell has gone and got himself betrothed to Raz’s daughter,” Frain answered bitterly, “the one who was the cause of all this row to start with.”

  “Why, lad, how can that be?” Daymon inquired innocently. “The poor lass—Recilla is her name, is it not? She has never even met him.”

  “You know what I mean.” Frain stomped across the room and sat with unnecessary force on the cot, sulking. “All those vows of love.…” He knew better than to say more. I would have hit him again. Grandfather turned to me and gave me a long, seeing stare.

  “So you have pledged your word,” he remarked.

  “Of course I have,” I burst out—bellowed, really. “We could not have stirred a foot without Raz.”

  Grandfather smiled—an odd smile, the most baffled, whimsical and wondering of smiles. He turned back to my scowling brother. “Tirell’s reasons are all wrong, Frain, I grant you that,” he said.

  “The whole thing is wrong, from start to finish,” Frain fumed. I clenched my fists.

  “He has acted out of defiance, craft, and several varieties of rage,” Grandfather went on, ignoring both of us. “Still, I feel only good to come of his decision.”

  “What?” Frain and I exclaimed in unison.

  “Oh, it will make a sorry precedent, I grant you that,” Daymon sighed. “Men and women should not be bound together by the cold agreements of power; all sense and instinct cry against it. That is the fate you will lay on your heirs, Tirell. But yet—and yet—and yet—I feel joy to come of this wedding.” The smile again, puzzled but full of hope. “I make you no promise, lads, but that is the vision and comfort that come to me.
Therefore it must somehow be right.”

  Frain swallowed slowly, swallowing his wrath, looking at me askance. “The hell you say,” he muttered. For my own part, I felt dazed and a little troubled.

  “Now make peace, you two,” Grandfather ordered.

  The oddest thing was that, though we set aside the quarrel, neither Frain nor I really believed Daymon, though we had believed him all our lives. I did not want joy. I wanted revenge and a life of noble sorrow. And Frain fought my decision all the way to Melior.

  Chapter Five

  Oorossy was off raising troops in the hills. After a week he came back to Qiturel, but then there were more days of preparation before we could march. I fumed; I sometimes thought I could feel smoke curling out of my ears. Oorossy went about his affairs, whistling maddeningly. At last all was ready. I mounted my black charger, Frain and Fabron the horses Oorossy had given them. Grandfather was not coming with us, but he would not stay safe in Qiturel either, stubborn old man!

  “I was roaming Vale before you were born, young my precious lord!” he argued perversely.

  He would not have said that a few months before, I am sure. He intended to come along behind us at his own pace, and in spite of all my ire I knew he would be all right. The black beast stayed with him. I still remember looking back and seeing the pair of them ambling along side by side far behind us, he with his staff in one hand and the other on a black glossy back.

  We took five hundred men to Melior—a laughable force, a pathetic force compared to Abas’s thousands. But at least it was enough, as Frain said, to see us across the bridges. The dozen Boda who held the Terynon looked at us and galloped away. “There goes news,” I said grimly, and we started across the rich lowlands of Tiela, making our way along the Chardri.

  The march took some few weeks. We collected a couple hundred fortune-seeking youths as we dragged dustily along, and a plentiful supply of whores. I had noticed a few from the time we left Qiturel; where there is an army, there will be camp followers. But I believe that if Grandfather had been with us I might not have been such a brute with the whores and with Shamarra and Frain. To my shame.