The Sable Moon

by Nancy Springer

  Alan paced frenziedly, panting in pain, scarcely seeming aware anymore of his surroundings. Suddenly, in mid-morning, he cried out, a terrible cry of tormented defeat, and hurled himself into the waves. Cory caught hold of him, and struggled with him amid the froth, and with some retainers wrestled him to the sand where he lay groaning. Alan did not attempt to rise again, and Gwern sat still as a stump. An hour passed, perhaps more, as Alan lay sweating in agony while Corin and his men stood helplessly by. Then Gwern sighed, almost sobbed, and Alan sat up, blinking in bewilderment. His pain had left him all in a moment. “What in thunder?” he murmured.

  Cory knelt by him. “Are you all right?” he whispered shakily.

  “Hungry and in need of a wash.… Do I remember sleeping on this accursed beach?” Alan got slowly to his feet. Gwern sank his head into folded arms.

  “What is it?” Alan asked numbly.

  “Grief,” Gwern moaned. “Death and grief, death and grief, grief.…”

  Alan stared, motionless, his mind caught on a question that would not find its way to his lips. Cory tugged at his arm.

  “Alan,” he begged, “come away.”

  In a haze of weariness, Alan followed him back to the castle. Cory got him fed and couched at once, puzzled, but very much relieved to see him better. The next day they talked, and neither of them had any explanation for the other. So, hoping for a sign of some sort, Alan lingered on at Nemeton. From time to time he rode to the Beaches, scanning earth, sea, and sky for his answer. Gwern was gone, and after a while Cory learned not to fear for Alan, letting him go alone. So no one knew what Alan found.

  The answer, or so he took it to be, came to him less than a fortnight after his narrow escape. In fact, it was on Trevyn’s birth day, and that awareness played through Alan’s mind as he rode gently along the fingertips of the reaching sea. A glow caught his eye, a golden shine among the pebbles of the beach, and he stopped to look—he felt as if a barbed shaft had pierced him to the heart. The rayed emblem of the rising sun glinted up at him, its spokes set with gems of many hues. As slowly as a man in a nightmare, Alan got down from his mount, picked it up, and turned it over and over in his hand. There was no mistaking the brooch, Hal’s gift to him on this same day eighteen years before. Alan did not weep, but desolation settled over him like a black shroud, for he felt certain now that his son was dead.

  He started back to Laueroc that very day. He did not show Lysse the brooch when he arrived, proud to spare her this grief, yet blaming her in his heart. He complained of nothing. But he ceased to be the loving husband Lysse had known, and as the weeks went by she grew sad, not knowing what to do for him.

  Book Three

  YLIM’S LOOM

  Chapter One

  Trevyn was never to remember anything of the voyage except sun and stars circling, the moon twirling between—all skimming through the movements of some inscrutable dance. Vaguely puzzling, he could not discern the pattern, so intricate was its phrasing, but he could feel its voiceless rhythm. He sensed that the elf-boat also moved in the dance, and so as not to interfere he lay very still on her deck, still and staring, with no thought of food or drink, twirl the moon as it might. If rain wet him he was not to recall it, or day’s heat, or night’s chill. Nor did he note his coming to shore. When awareness came back to him at last, it came with pain and reluctance of body and spirit, perhaps as keen as the pain of an infant in birth. But someone held him, cradled him as if he were a child, and the warmth of the embrace eased him. Trevyn knew those strong arms, he thought.

  “Father?” he faltered.

  “Nay, Trev.” It was a well-beloved voice he heard, but for a moment he did not recognize it. He gazed up into the sea-lit face, blinking the darkness from his eyes.

  “Uncle Hal,” he murmured, and sank back into oblivion.

  He sensed, distantly, that he was cared for. He felt the warmth of a bath, the taste of a strengthening drink, soft blankets, and a bed like an embrace. But his deeper awareness labored in the misery of Tokar. Vividly envisioning the whips of the slavers, he found that he could no longer face them; he flinched and struggled away from them, softly weeping. Emrist lay dying under the whips of the slavers, and he could not help him, not even by screaming. His grief bore him down like a weight as massive as the world. His own frailty struck him through with pity too deep even for tears.

  Somehow a white stag flitted through the scarred texture of his dreams, leading him away, though he knew he had not moved. It took him to a forest of huge and knotted trees, their branches woven together into a tapestry, forming intricate pictures of ships with wings, and myriad shining spheres, and leopards and dragons and black flowers. In the midst of the forest grew a slender sapling, its branches terse as winter, reaching. A cavalcade of alabaster ladies came and gave it their jewels for leaves, seated themselves beneath the young and growing tree. Trevyn followed the white hart. It sped out of the forest, plunged into the sea, and swam away, its silver antlers shining. Trevyn stood with his feet in the water, yearning; he could not follow it there. By the shore a man sat playing a silver harp.

  Trevyn sat and listened. The music took him up winging, carried him out of self, let him leap with the antelope and glide with the eagles and fight by the side of the star-son himself in a strange little land called Isle.… Trevyn blinked, and looked again, and saw that the harper was his Uncle Hal, playing his plinset by candlelight under a shelter of golden cloth. Trevyn propped himself up in his warm bed.

  “You have ransomed me with song,” he said huskily, “as you did for Father at Caerronan.”

  Hal set down his instrument to come to him, and one finger caught a string, striking a single, rich note. A form spiraled itself out of the vibrations; a bird flew up, ensouled by that sound, a bird of the most ardent red Trevyn had ever seen, red so true that it enthralled the eye. The bird circled the confines of the tent, singing a phrase that swelled Trevyn’s heart, which he was never afterward quite able to remember. Then Hal lifted the tent flap and the bird took its leave without fright, darting skyward.

  “That was my love for you,” Hal explained softly, sitting by Trevyn’s bedside. “Things tend to become very real here.… Lad, you bear scars. I am very, very sorry it has been so hard for you.”

  “Family tradition.” Trevyn grinned with moistened eyes as joy took hold of him. “I can’t deny I’ve felt as beaten as an old rug.… But one good look at you heals me. You are …” Trevyn did not know how to finish.

  “I am content,” agreed Hal.

  He was more than content; he was well and whole for the first time in all his tortuous life, and Trevyn was able to sense it quite surely. Hal’s eyes glowed, and his body moved with certainty and ease. Moreover, he no longer seemed aloof and appraising to Trevyn; he had greeted him with the warmth of a friend and equal. As Trevyn gazed at him, smiling but lost for words, Hal rose with feral grace and pulled back the door flap, beckoning to someone outside. A boy, perhaps twelve years old, entered with a covered tray, set it down, bowed with youthful haste, and hurried out. Could it be that all people in this place were blessed? The boy was beautiful.

  “One of your cousins,” Hal explained.

  Cousins! Trevyn’s mind reeled. He had no cousins, no relations of any sort, except perhaps in …

  “Then this is Elwestrand,” he gulped.

  “Of course.”

  Trevyn ate his food very slowly, as Hal cautioned him. He was caught in astonishment, and his flesh sat heavily on his unaccustomed spirit. He knew now that he had not filled his stomach for the months of the voyage—that thought alone stunned him. But the simple food, porridge and honey, soothed him with its familiarity. He slept peacefully afterward, and awoke later to the soft notes of Hal’s plinset, and ate again. Then he dressed in the clothing Hal gave him: a tunic of finest wool, spring green—his mother’s color—and light brown hose, and cloth boots, and a short leaf-gold cloak. “All right?” Hal asked. “Then let us go to see Adaoun. Your grandfather.
”

  Once again Trevyn’s mind was staggered. He had never had a grandfather, or expected to know one. Numbly, he followed Hal outside, to an air tremulous with sweetness. Tall, white, lilylike flowers grew wantonly as far as he could see; asphodel, he later learned they were called. Amid them clustered the rosy-purple amarinth, and amid … Trevyn stopped where he stood, scarcely a dozen paces from the tent. A unicorn raised its delicate, pearly-horned head from its grazing, met his gaze a moment with lilac eyes, then turned and whisked away at a floating run. Trevyn let out a long, shivering breath of delight. Hal gazed after the creature with sparkling eyes, even a smile.

  “Everyone has a different notion of a unicorn,” he remarked to Trevyn. “You’ll see them all in time, and each one utterly beautiful, and each one true.”

  “You mean …”

  “It is as I said; things become real here somehow. Thoughts. Dreams. Feelings, love and hate. All beautiful—even the darker ones, like that behind you. Look.”

  Trevyn whirled. A serpent confronted him, with scales like jet, a jeweled hood, blind eyes, and a crimson ribbon of tongue. Its head stood as tall, rearing, as Trevyn’s waist. He took a step back.

  “Is it—dangerous?” he asked edgily.

  “Only if you want it to be. Sometimes men feel a need for danger.”

  “I feel no such need right now,” Trevyn stated fervently.

  “Well, come on, then.” Hal turned his back on the serpent and walked away. Trevyn followed, and found that his fear ended after a few paces; he did not even look over his shoulder. Elwestrand entranced him, calling his eyes farther than he could see. He walked a curving footpath atop a gentle fold of land, watching the lush, random pattern of meadows and fragrant orchard and woven wilderness ripple away on either side. It took him a while to realize that no sun shone, that the sky, although clear, was not blue, but tender shades of peach and mauve, that the light, subtle and subdued, cast no shadows, only a kind of magenta haze. Hal seemed to read his thoughts. “We live in the afterglow here,” he said.

  “And is it always springtime?” The air was balmy, the land luxurious with blossoms, many more kinds than he could name.

  “Sometimes a bit hotter or colder, just for variety. Sometimes one of us dreams of snow and it falls—just for fun, I think. It quickly melts. The plants never wither, but there are seasons. I tell them by the flowers, and by the hills yonder. It is early winter in Isle.”

  Trevyn studied the distant, rolling hills that Hal pointed out, hills of the peculiar pinkish-gray of wintery woodland cloaked by neither leaves nor snow. “But …” Trevyn floundered. Hal glanced around, half laughing at him.

  “The sea is wide. The voyage must have taken you three months, maybe four. It is nearly Winterfest.”

  “So I lay and stared all that time. All right. But if those trees are bare, there on those hills, why is it springtime here?”

  Hal’s smile broadened, and he sat down on a smooth-worn stone. “Now that is the marvel of all marvels here,” he averred. “I believe those hills are there just for my benefit, to look at. You will never reach them by walking.”

  “Why not?” Trevyn sat also, glad of the rest, winded by just the small distance they had come. He wondered if Hal was teasing him on that account. But Hal seemed quite serious.

  “You see that mountain—the rocky peak nearer than the hills? We call it Elundelei—Mount Sooth. Truth lives there, for those who are able to grasp it. And if you climbed to the top, you might be able to see that we are on an island far smaller than Isle, with the sea ringing it all around.”

  “But how can that be?” Trevyn protested. “It looks as if the land goes on forever.”

  “And there is room enough for everyone who comes here, and all their creations, and room to roam, and solitude for anyone who seeks it.” Hal shrugged whimsically. “This is Elwestrand, Trevyn, and I dare say you will never understand it; no one does. Come, let us find Adaoun.”

  They walked along through wilderness interspersed with meadows, gardens, wheat fields, and occasional bright-colored canopies, graceful saillike shapes nestled into the curves of the land. Trevyn saw only a few folk, all comely even from a distance, raising hands in greeting, dressed in soft, rich-hued clothing like his own. “There is no need for crowns here,” Hal declared, “and no need for settled dwellings. We move as the whim takes us. And there is no need of firewood except for cooking, praise be. You know how the elves hate to fell trees.”

  “Is it only elves who live here?”

  “Nay, many others. Men of peace. Look, there is Adaoun.”

  Trevyn saw Adaoun’s horse first, the splendid, blazing-white, gold-winged steed that had once flown over Welas. It grazed beside a placid stream. Beyond, on a gentle rise overlooking the meadow, a swan-white awning draped slender birch trees. On a couch beneath the awning, propped up by linen pillows, sat an old, old white-bearded man.

  Trevyn approached by Hal’s side, his mind clamoring. Ever since his earliest childhood, he had been told about Adaoun, father of the elves, first sung in the First Song of Aene at the beginning of time, ageless as the elements, sturdy as the mountains, visionary.… Surely this shrunken mortal could not be he! But the eyes that met Trevyn’s plunged deep as wells, nearly drowning him in wonder. He sank to one knee beside the ancient patriarch and felt a withered hand touch his hair in the gesture of blessing.

  “Alberic,” said Adaoun in a voice soft and vibrant and powerful as the wind. “Welcome.”

  “Someone else has called me by that name,” Trevyn whispered. “But I do not know why, Grandfather.” He dared the old man’s eyes again, and found that he could meet Adaoun’s unfathomable gaze.

  “Sometime you will know,” Adaoun told him. “But for now I shall call you Grandson,.if you like. I have grandchildren now, you know, by the hundreds, now that my children have chosen the lot of mortals and taken mortal mates. But you, whom I have never met, were the first. The years flit by like mayflies for a mortal.… You must be nearly of age.”

  “I am sev—nay, I am eighteen.”

  “Marvelous,” Adaoun murmured. “How marvelous to be so young, and growing.… I remember quite well when the world was so young. But at last the One has blessed me with ending. Day by day my body grows weaker, and it will not be long now before I am gathered into death’s embrace.”

  Trevyn flinched and lowered his eyes, for he was not himself on such good terms with death. But he had no need to respond. A young woman came toward them through the birch grove, walking with a sway like sea wind, carrying a tray of food. She brought it to Adaoun, her dress nearly as red as Hal’s red bird, set it before him, and wordlessly stood by his side.

  “This is Ylim.” Adaoun introduced her as if her name told all about her.

  “Time’s weaver beyond time, whom I met in Isle once,” Hal added with amusement. “Alan and I blundered into her valley where the elfin gold still flowered in spite of the blight of the evil kings—but I did not know how to read her web then, and I did not know her name, and certainly I did not know her in that form.”

  It was the form that made Trevyn stare. How could this lissome woman be the ancient seeress of Isle, the crone who had given her advice to Bevan? He could believe that she was ageless, for nothing about her suggested the tenderness of youth. But she was also lovely, and, he sensed, dangerous, if he so desired. Her skin, soft and lineless, glowed as white as lilies, as white as the belly of a white foal. Her hair, a ripple of wild mane, fell almost to her knees, golden—silver.… Trevyn blinked; it was of all colors, like a dream of horses, as changeable as the moon, as shining as the sea. Indigo eyes gazed back at him out of the full-lipped face, and something in Ylim’s level look made Trevyn lower his own eyes. They caught on the high swell of her breasts, then closed in confusion. Suddenly he recognized her as the “princess” he had dreamed of in Isle.

  “Well met, Alberic,” said Ylim.

  Her voice was husky, impersonal, not unfriendly. Trevyn could not repl
y. He heard her turn and take her leave, but he could not raise his eyes to look after her.

  “You will get used to her presently,” Adaoun remarked mildly. “Come, help me eat.”

  He meant eat with him. There was enough food for all, bread and mellow cheese and tangy fruits that Trevyn could not name; perhaps they had no names. Afterward, he and Hal followed the stream down to the seashore, where it spread into a lagoon. Tufted grasses edged it, and tall birds waded in the shallows, flashing blue or gray or green as they caught the shifting light. Hal and Trevyn sat down on a gravelly hummock to watch.

  “So,” blurted Trevyn, “am I dead?”

  “Do you feel dead?” Hal asked dryly.

  “How should I know? But Ylim is dead, I know that. Father found her slain by lordsmen, and laid her to rest beneath a willow tree—but she was an old woman then.”

  Hal puffed his lips. “Very true. But perhaps death need not kill. Most men are born squalling, and eat and sweat and brawl out their lives, and die, but there are some … Ylim is not of mortal sort anyway. And never was. Nor is she elf. I thing she is just—herself.”

  “But she has changed.”

  “Some are able to change—to go through the greatest of changes—and yet not change. I knew her at once when I met her here, though we had met only once before.”

  Trevyn swung his arms impatiently, batting away Hal’s words as if they were bothersome insects. “Uncle,” he asked doggedly, “am I going to be able to return to Isle? For return I must, and quickly. There is grave peril.”