The Sable Moon

by Nancy Springer

  The sun was high before Emrist stiffened on his back and spoke. “By thunder, what is happening here?” Trevyn set him down and grinned at him.

  “Did you rest well?”

  “Like a babe in the cradle, being rocked.” Emrist looked around in bewilderment. “We must be nearly to the Way! Did you not sleep at all?”

  “I’ll sleep tonight. Come, let us eat!” They had reached a deserted stretch, where the path wound between dirt banks topped by beech and oak; homesteads showed only in the distance. Trevyn swiftly settled himself on the ground. He was very hungry after his night’s journey, already breaking the last of their bread as Emrist sat, but his hand stopped midway to his mouth as he saw the shadow on Emrist’s face. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” Emrist forced a smile. “Eat.”

  Trevyn put the bread down. “Not until you tell me what is wrong.”

  Emrist gestured irritably. “A foolish thing. It vexes me that once again you bear my weight for me. A fine adventurer I make, who must be carried to the fray!”

  “You are man enough, Emrist,” Trevyn replied quietly. “You do not need strength of the body for that. I thought you knew.”

  “Most of me knows.” Emrist smiled, warmly this time. “But there is no such thing as a man without foolish pride.… Never mind me, Freca. You did what you must.”

  “Just as you shall, when the time comes.”

  Trevyn gulped his portion of food. Emrist ate more slowly, picking his way through the meager meal as if it were a puzzle he had to solve. Trevyn watched him, brooding. He couldn’t really carry Emrist to Kantukal; he knew he was going to have to find him a horse somehow or they would never reach the court city in time. They were out of food now, and they had no money to buy any with. The journey seemed impossible, the quest itself impossible. He wondered if Emrist dreaded the confrontation with Wael as much as he did.

  “Emrist,” he asked suddenly, “can you teach me magic to face Wael with?”

  Emrist looked up with thoughtful amber eyes. “You can learn magic, perhaps,” he said slowly, “but I cannot teach you. Magic cannot be taught. It must always be learned anew.”

  “But why?” Trevyn raised his brows in bewilderment. “Are there not schools for magic, where spells are taught, and rituals, and symbols—”

  “Schools!” Emrist’s scorn burst from him. “Schools where the riches of the whole world and beyond are boxed into tidy charts—‘a’ is for alembic, and ten is the perfect number. Bah! Don’t they know that an emerald is not just the stone of the Lady? Everything of here or Other connects, and not in neat little boxes, either—or circles, or spirals, or any design a man can understand. Not even the mighty mandorla.” Emrist subsided a bit. “Really, more than two circles must join.… Nay, it’s only Wael’s kind of magic that you’ll learn in such schools, Freca. Even a villain can memorize certain ancient words, the puissant words of the Elder Tongue, and if power of self-will is in him.…”

  “So that is how a man such as Wael comes to be a sorcerer.” Trevyn glanced at Emrist mischievously, prodding him toward further asperity. “I dare say he has a black-handled sword—”

  “Ay, an athane, and robes of every color, gloriously embroidered, and gongs and censers without number. All that is good for show. But I have always scorned even to make the ceremonial circle; why should I need to protect myself? And to do any magic, either good or ill, only one thing is necessary: to call upon the dusky goddess of the Sable Moon.”

  “The great goddess?” Trevyn yelped, shocked. He had expected Emrist to call on Aene.

  “Nay, nay, only Menwy of the Sable Moon. She is only one phase of the moon, and one of the Many Names, though all are in her, nevertheless. But if one knew the true-name of the goddess, that power would encompass every pattern and power and peril.”

  “But someone has told me that name,” Trevyn protested. “It is Alys—”

  A tremendous crash and rending noise engulfed them with its vibrations, washed over them from every side. Earth moved under them and split around them; rocks slid from the slopes above and mighty trees toppled with a roar. Trevyn crouched over Emrist, shielding him with his arms, as stones and branches hailed around. A huge oak thundered to rest beside them, lifting a canopy over them with its trembling, upraised limbs. Then gradually the clamor subsided, and earth trickled to a standstill. Utter silence fell.

  Trevyn and Emrist got cautiously to their feet, gazing wide-eyed at the destruction all around them. Only the little plot of land on which they sat was untouched, as if they had been at the vortex of a mighty storm.

  “Where did you ever hear that name?” Emrist gasped. “Don’t say it!” he added frantically.

  “Gwern told me,” Trevyn murmured. “But he said it without any such scene as this.”

  “Then he, whoever he is, must himself be of godly sort,” Emrist declared.

  It took them the rest of the day to fight their way out of the devastated patch of woodland. They wondered, at times, whether the wreckage stopped with the woods. But they got clear of it at last, and Trevyn was relieved to see that no households had been touched. He and Emrist went hungry that night, for they had found nothing to forage and, oddly, no animals killed by the uproar they had weathered. Trevyn’s snares, set in the underbrush around their camp, netted them nothing. The situation put Emrist in a bad humor.

  “You knew that name,” he grumbled, “a name of incomparable power, and you let yourself by flogged half to death.… And played at being mute, forsooth! Who is your enemy, Prince of Isle?”

  Trevyn creased his brow at him. “Why, Wael, of course!”

  “Wael is just a silly old man,” Emrist snapped. “He could have slain you in Isle or on shipboard, but he plays at power as some people play at dice, reluctant to consummate the game. Who is your more worthy enemy?”

  “Fate, then. The goddess, if you will.”

  “She is friend or enemy to no man; she is above such dalliance. Guess again.”

  “Gwern,” Trevyn hazarded.

  Emrist snorted. “You want to face Wael with magic, and you do not yet even know your own enemy! Prince, what did this—Gwern—tell you about that name?”

  “To use it when I had need.”

  “And when could you have more need than when you were enslaved? You had only to make a proper appeal, and the whips would have turned against their wielders. It is because you mentioned her so offhandedly that she threw things at us earlier. And that is but a taste of her power. We might feel more.”

  “So she is sending us to bed without our supper,” Trevyn retorted. “I’ll say ‘please’ to no such goddess. We Lauerocs call only on the One, and not to turn weapons at our command.”

  “You are your own enemy, Prince,” stated Emrist softly. “Do you really think Aene is not the goddess?”

  Trevyn sputtered. “Indeed, ay! Aene can have no name—”

  “But all things you can name are in Aene, and Aene is in them. How can you set yourself against any of them? They are part of you as well.” Emrist sighed, having vented his spleen, and lapsed into a gentler tone. “Nay, Freca, you are like a mighty castle for endurance, but you will never do true magic until you have learned the wisdom of surrender, the joy of swimming with the tides of your selfhood and your life. Women, many of them, come by that knowledge instinctively, and do not feel the need of chants and charms; they have their own spells. No wonder Wael hates and fears them so.”

  “Does he call on the goddess to do his kind of magic?” Trevyn asked curiously.

  “Only to make her a whore for his own lusts’ sake.… Nay, Freca, no such thing!” Emrist made startled protest against Trevyn’s thought, which he had heard like speech. “You cannot use that name against him. You could bring the castle down on top of us, but, what is worse, if Wael learned that name and survived to use it, he would become invincible. Do not even think of it in his presence.” Emrist quirked a wry smile. “I know you are practiced at hiding your thoughts.�
��

  “Then how are we to face him?” Trevyn demanded.

  “That is as it comes. For your part, I hope that endurance is all that will be necessary, for the time.”

  The next morning Trevyn awoke to find himself looking into the long, mournful countenance of a horse. Its whiskery nostrils were poised within inches of his face. He reached up to grasp the halter, then scrambled to his feet and looked the beast over. It appeared to be a pack horse that had escaped from some trader’s train—hardly a luxury animal, but suitable enough to carry Emrist to Kantukal. And the pack on its back contained a quantity of very barterable goods.

  “I think the goddess is over her pique,” Trevyn called.

  Emrist sat up painfully and stared at the horse with distaste. “Don’t press her,” he said finally. “We’re likely to find ourselves in trouble on that beast’s account.”

  “Nay, I think the Lady has made us a gift of it. Food, Emrist, we shall have food! Come on, get up!”

  He badgered Emrist onto the horse’s back and traded for bread and cheese with the first cottage wife he could find, making a very bad bargain of it; he didn’t care. That day, with Emrist mounted, they went along steadily, reached the Way, and turned south at last, keeping an eye out for kingsmen who might recognize Trevyn. And he was hardly inconspicuous: a golden-haired youth with sword at side leading a mouse-colored, plodding nag on which sat a companion perched atop a packsaddle! Some changes had to be made, and that evening at their campsite they attended to it.

  “If you are going to ride,” Trevyn decided, “you must look like a horseman.”

  So Emrist had to wear the sword and a cloak, for rank. He would sit on a gaily patterned blanket. Trevyn attached reins to the horse’s halter, hackamore style, and brushed the animal up a bit. In these warm lands, even men of rank went bare-legged and sandal-shod during the summer. Mounted on his nag, Emrist might be able to look the part of a very minor noble.

  “And, if it is not too outrageous to be endured,” Emrist suggested tartly, “might we sully that crowning glory of yours?”

  A more humble servitor went forth the next morning, a sun-browned fellow with flattened, grimy hair of an indeterminate muddy hue. Trevyn would not have appreciated knowing how much, except for his eyes, he looked like Gwern. There was nothing to be done about the sea-green eyes, startlingly bright in his tanned face. He cast them down, as befits a mannerly slave, and took care to lag a step or two behind his master. A horseman traveling with a slave in attendance was no rarity. Kingsmen passed them with a nod.

  In a few days they came out of the jagged hill country and onto the great plain that stretched all the way to Kantukal, a flat, dusty expanse planted with famished beans and vines. They traveled it for over a week. Now and then the road crossed streams trickling deep in baked beds, each with a fringe of bright green grass. Everything else looked faded and worn, like a poor woman’s dress. The occasional kingsmen on the Way seemed interested only in putting this comfortless region behind them. The sun beat down without surcease. Trevyn and Emrist moved steadily through the days, camped gratefully in the cool of evening, and sometimes talked late into the night. The journey had become an interlude for them, an entity in itself; they did not think too much about the end of it. They clung quietly to the fellowship of the road.

  It must have been their tenth day on the plain, walking through the sweltering heat of southern Tokar, that Trevyn felt a breeze and smelled salt in the air. Gulls wheeled far ahead. With one accord he and Emrist stopped a moment in the road, staring at the birds and then at each other.

  “We are nearing our journey’s end,” Trevyn said. Emrist wordlessly nodded.

  By evening they could see the towers of Kantukal rising hazily out of the flat horizon. Beyond the town, more sensed than seen, lay the glimmer of the southern sea.

  Trevyn and Emrist camped in a grove of acacia that night. The lamps of Kantukal colored their sky, tree trunks loomed darkly all around, and dread weighted their hearts.

  Chapter Five

  “We must have a plan,” Trevyn insisted.

  With childlike obstinacy, he desperately believed that something could be done to improve their chances of defeating Wael. Emrist sighed wearily, for they had been through this discussion before. Moreover, he had his own reasons for melancholy.

  “How can we plan for such idiocy?” he grumbled. “Trust the tide, Freca.”

  “I’d rather depend on something I can control. This parchment, for instance.”

  “Control?” parried Emrist dryly. “Leave control to Wael, and perhaps he will manage to destroy himself, and perhaps not us.”

  Trevyn did not answer, but pulled out the parchment with silent stubbornness and unfurled it in the firelight. He could not be sure, in that orange glow, whether the emblem of the wolf was shining with its own spectral light. He took care not to touch it. He read the heading again, “On the Transferring of the Living Soul,” and the text, and found that it made no more sense to him than ever. Most of it was in a harsh language that neither he nor Emrist understood. Emrist used it as Wael would use the Old Language, without comprehension.

  “This is a property of Wael’s cult,” Trevyn said.

  “Ay, to be sure. I took it—well, no matter how I come to have it. I have never been sure how to use it. I believe it is not merely a document, but a magical thing, a talisman. Note the sheen of the device.”

  “I’ve noted it,” Trevyn replied sourly. “Perhaps Wael wants this parchment back. We could trade it to him for the brooch.”

  Emrist gravely sucked his cheeks. “Only as a last resort. It is sure to increase his power. But it saps ours; such an evil thing cannot be used for good without a dire struggle.”

  “Ay, I can feel it draw.” Trevyn put it away and sat back with a sigh. “If only I knew Wael’s sooth-name.…”

  “Ah,” the magician mocked gently. “If.”

  “Who was he born of, Emrist? Where is he from?”

  Emrist shrugged. “Who knows? He seems to have some connection with Isle. I think he is probably Waverly, Iscovar’s old sorcerer. But he could have been Marrok, who tried to win the magical sword Hau Ferddas by a spell. Or even old Pel Blagden himself, he who was vanquished in the dragon lairs of inner earth.… Sorcerers are like the mighty folk of legend. Gods fight and are slain, goddesses sorrow and pass away, but in a sense they never really die.”

  Trevyn sat up in sudden abeyance, open-mouthed and breathless, utterly forgetting Wael. Something had moved deep in Emrist’s gold-flecked eyes, something that filled him with a pang of loss and longing and, nearly, recognition. “And you, Emrist,” he gulped at last. “What legend from out of the past are you?”

  “I am myself, young, spent, and sickly!” Indeed, Emrist looked like no legend just then. He sat huddled by the fire, hunched in pain and perhaps in despair. But after a moment he looked up, caught Trevyn with a clear glance, determined to give the Prince what he could. All he could.

  “Do you know the legend of the star-son, Alberic?”

  “I know what Hal has told me of Bevan,” Trevyn stammered, shaken anew that Emrist had called him by his true-name. “His comrade Cuin won him Hau Ferddas from the dragons of Lyrdion. Bevan lighted it with the power of his argent hand, defeated Pel Blagden, the Mantled God.… Later he left the sword with Cuin and sailed to Elwestrand. That was over a thousand years ago.”

  “Ay, he was a star-son, and Hal, too. But the legend is older than either. Patience a moment.” Emrist settled himself tenderly against a tree, watching the ebb and flow of the fire. Presently he spoke, his eyes still on the iridescent shimmer just above the restless flames.

  “The story begins so long ago that the sky was still sea, the sun not yet thought of, and the moon was a pearly island on the tides. In those days the moon-mother gave birth to a star-son, for that Lady is by nature a bearer of sons and needs no help to conceive. But this was her first and best beloved son, though she has had many since. The baby grew quic
kly to a boy and a young man. But, except for his mother, he lived all alone on the island. So one day, when she found him sad, his mother gave him a silver harp that sang by itself to amuse him and keep him company. And the harp sang of a place where all his unborn brothers lived, the faraway dancing ground of souls, where all selves are part of one. Inconsolable longing took hold of the moon-mother’s son.

  “‘All of life is but a decay unto death,’ he exclaimed. ‘Let me go to that marvelous place, Mother, quickly, before I start to wane.’

  “‘Death is only a journey and a change,’ his mother protested. ‘Stay! Look, I can give you powers to make your own marvels, and your own fair light to adorn you.’ And she gave the gifts.

  “‘Still I must sail,’ said the youth, and left the pearly land. Some say he went on a swan, or on a silver boat like a hollow crescent moon. Others say he sailed on the silver harp itself. Whatever the means, he left to wander, glowing with his own white light, across the midnight deeps like the wandering stars.

  “Then the moon-mother faded and went dark. And in her despair, and not recognizing the nature of her own change, she went to the great dragon that girded the deep, the one that Sun drove down later. And she lay with the dragon and conceived. So she waxed again, great with child. But her new babe was born as dark as the unlit lands and grew into a serpent with coils so huge that they forced her to the fringes of her domain.

  “One day, as she was walking along the waves, she found her first son’s bones lying among the seashells, his skeletal hand clutching the silver harp. Hungry to take him back into herself, she ate a single finger and conceived. She hid the harp in a cave by the sea. And her child was born as fair as the first, and grew rapidly, and killed the serpent when he was grown. Then heart sickness took hold of him. He cried, ‘I have slain my brother!’ and lay without eating until it looked as if he would die. Then, in despair, his mother went to the sea and fetched the silver harp.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Trevyn interrupted. “He went—”