The Sable Moon

by Nancy Springer

  “What place could it have been!” Alan murmured. Exhausted, he could not think, and in a moment he fell asleep. The she-wolf came and settled comfortably into the bony curve of Megan’s side. Sleeping warmer than she had slept for many days, Meg dreamed of a white stag. But Alan, slumbering in a sentry tower of shattered Eburacon, dreamed of his son, and saw him laughing, whole, and well.

  Chapter Five

  It snowed, on and off, for five days, as Ket had predicted. When it didn’t snow, it blew. So the odd threesome was stuck in their lodging for a week, seldom venturing out, and then hurriedly, ducking through a blur of white. By the fourth day, they had eaten all their sausage and were already growing tired of fish. Despite that, and despite occasional sparring between Alan and Meg, they got along well. They played countless guessing games to pass the time, and drew puzzles in the dirt. In the evenings they sat talking for hours, keeping the fire going as late as they could. Flossie, the wolf, would lie in her own place by the fire, gnawing at the ends of their scorned fish. She made no doglike displays of affection, encouraged no impudence, but joined their circle companionably—as an equal, they sensed.

  The wolf had befriended her quite of its own accord, Meg explained. Her first, freezing night in the open, shivering under her ragged blanket, Meg had awakened to find the big, furry body pressed against hers. By morning, the two females were on familiar terms, and Meg had named her new comrade after her favorite childhood doll. Flossie had helped her evade the patrols Rafe had sent searching for her. Flossie had held back a skulking pack of unfriendly wolves with her snarls, leading Meg through a confusion of taunting howls to safety in the haunt. Awestruck, Alan and Ket stared at the placid creature.

  “Wolves are beasts!” Alan protested in bewilderment. “They go their own ways like other beasts; they hunt, and run, and mate and fight and die, and pay little attention to men if they can help it. That they should take up war against us is—it is most unnatural. And that this one should protect you, Meg, is a happier chance, but no more fitting for a wolf. What can it mean? Her eyes—I have known wolves, lass. Their eyes shine yellow in moonlight, red in firelight, spectral as a cat’s. But hers are the eyes of a lovely woman. Look.”

  Flossie gazed steadily back at them all, seemingly unperturbed. Her eyes were of a warm brown with a purplish tinge, deepening in the firelight to the color of violets. As Alan had said, they looked as if they should have been courted with candlelight and wine. He envisioned those eyes closing under smooth human lids, then shuddered.

  “Countryfolk say that certain people are marked to turn to wolves,” Ket said doubtfully. “Those who’re born with teeth or with brows that meet over their noses—”

  “Lying tales!” Alan retorted somewhat more violently than he had expected to. “I know I have not lived forever, Ket,” he added more discreetly, “but I—we—roamed the wilderness for years and learned no great harm of wolves. Most of the time they paid us no mind. But I remember one night when—Hal felt sad and played it out on the plinset, and the wolves ringed the fire to listen.” Alan swallowed. “We were not afraid.”

  “I have never been able to think too badly of wolves,” Ket said quietly, “since the time they circled the rowan grove at my lady’s feet and did homage to her.”

  The three of them had become very close, as people sometimes will when they are confined together. Shy Ket had found ways to speak of his longstanding love for the Queen. Meg had told with wry amusement of her dealings with Trevyn and Gwern. And Alan seemed more like himself than he had been for many months, Ket thought, gentler, more open—but still not happy. Ket longed for Alan’s happiness.

  “Hal—” Alan pronounced the name with difficulty. “Hal never placed credence in werewolves. He said that men fear wolves because they are so much like dogs. But dogs are friendly, and wolves are not, and they are cannibals, and rend each other from time to time.…” Alan gulped again. “That is their own business, but men think, what if dogs should act like that? Or what if my other friends, my fellowmen, my neighbors, should go wild, betray me, turn on me to rend me, bite off my outstretched hand.…” He paused to steady his voice, wondering at his own emotion. “Men fear themselves most. That is why they speak of werewolves.…”

  “Dogs are famed for their faithfulness,” Ket murmured.

  Meg looked down at the wolf that lay unmoved at her side. “D’ye really think Flossie would turn on me t’ rend me?” she challenged.

  “Nay,” Alan replied gruffly, “I cannot think that, even now. Even though …”

  “Well, what?” Ket prodded gently, after a long pause.

  “Even though,” Alan blurted, not understanding why, “my own most faithful comrade has betrayed me, rent me to the heart, though not with teeth or steel.” Alan hid his face in his hands, though his eyes remained dry and burning as coals. “How, how, could he leave me so, without a tear?”

  Meg came around the fire to kneel before him, her hands light as leaves on his shoulders. In an instant he understood why he had spoken after all the silent months: healing stirred in her lightest touch. “D’ye mean King Hal, Liege?”

  “Of course, Hal.” He raised his twitching face to her scrutiny and smiled slowly, distraught as he was. “Trevyn gave me a tear or two.”

  “Ay, well, he didn’t honor me with so much as a wish-ye-well.” Meg smiled bitterly in her turn. “So, Liege, though I hadn’t much claim on yer son, I can feel perhaps the tithe of what ye’re feeling. And I know ye’re angry enough to burst.”

  “Angry?” He drew back from her touch. “At Trevyn? But he’s dead.”

  “He’s not!” she snapped in exasperation. “And anyhow, I meant at Hal. So ye’ll give him no tears, either?”

  “I—” he sputtered, found he could not speak, and scrambled to his feet. “I’m not angry!” he shouted at last. Ket snorted quietly from his place by the fire. Alan ignored him.

  “Are ye made of flesh, then?” Meg inquired politely.

  “Let be, lass.” Ket spoke up unexpectedly. “Alan—”

  “What?” the monarch muttered, face turned away.

  “If ever ye’re to see Hal again, what will ye do or say?”

  For an instant, the question blazed through Alan. Shouts, blows, tears, an embrace; each flashed like fire across his mind, burned, and vanished. Nothing remained but a stark conviction and a black abyss of gloom.

  “I am never to see him again,” he mumbled.

  “Why not?” Ket sensed that Alan needed hope. “Ye’re as special as he was.”

  But Alan would talk no more about Hal. He refused to explain what he instinctively knew—that the Sword of Lyrdion had somehow cut him off from his brother. For all time.

  The weather cleared during the night; the wind stopped and the clouds wandered away. At midnight, Flossie roused Megan with her firm, cool nose, and the girl silently slipped out, clutching her pack and her ragged blanket, leaving the others slumbering by the ashes of the fire. Even struggling through waist-high snow, she would be miles away by morning, well on her way southward to seek Gwern.

  “Confound it!” Ket shouted when he awoke the next morning to find her gone. “There’s another one that’s left without a word.… The girl must be daft, Alan.” He sounded aggrieved, but Alan seemed amused, even relieved. He smiled whimsically.

  “Nay, she’s a wise lass. She knew I could not really keep her from going her way, but she spared me the facing of it. So I still have some shreds of pride and honor left.… Well, we had better get back to Lee as quickly as we can. Rafe will be fit for a madhouse.”

  “But we have to find Meg,” Ket protested incredulously. “She’ll freeze, or—or something.”

  “Mothers, nay! I pity anything that tries to harm her with Flossie near. She’ll be rocking at her ease when I’m turning to dust. Find some food, Ket.”

  They packed what they could and crawled out of their shelter, then stood motionless, blinking. Deep snow glinted in the wintry light, but that was not w
hat took their breath. A vast, ghostly, snow-draped vista from out of the deep past confronted them. Battlements and broken towers, turrets and court and ruined keep, silent fountains and tumbled walls—all quiet, shrouded and overgrown.

  “It must have been a city!” Ket gasped. “Here, in the midst of the Forest?”

  “Eburacon,” Alan murmured, suddenly understanding.

  “I have heard that name when men talk around the hilltop fires of magic and the way Isle used to be.… That is a most ancient shrine of the Lady. But what is Meg, that she was able to come here all alone?”

  “My son was an ass to leave her,” Alan growled in oblique reply, and abruptly stalked away. “Come on!”

  He led Ket back the way they had come, as near as he could reckon, and started searching for the giant sword of Lyrdion. It was difficult to find underneath the snow. Alan burrowed busily while Ket watched, frowning. “Is it within the ring of the barrows?” he asked suddenly.

  “Just at the barrows. Where you lost your—ah—strength.”

  “I’ll venture to say, then,” Ket drawled, “that no one’ll come near it. Let it lie, Alan.”

  “And get it later, you mean? There won’t be time; I’ll need it.” Alan glanced up impatiently. “Come on, Ket; help me!”

  “Alan, let it go.” A trace of desperation tinged Ket’s calm voice. “It’s not worth the price, at any price. It has changed you. Thanks be, you’ve gained some healing here.…”

  Alan paused, snow-caked and statuesque, half stooped, glaring. “Do you want me to give Isle over to the wolves, then?” he barked.

  “What matter!” Ket cried, suddenly anguished. “You were as wolfish as any of them for a while.” Alan met his wide eyes, looking as white and frozen as the snow. Ket saw a pang go through him. But then something else settled, hard and heavy.

  “What price I have paid is already paid,” Alan answered hollowly. “And I’ll keep what I have bargained for, Ket. My mistress, if you will. All I have left. Here she lies.” He strode with uncanny sureness to a spot a few yards away, reached into the snow and drew forth the sword. Hau Ferddas hung sullenly in his hand. Ket stared without moving, caught up in horror and mute appeal. Alan met his gaze with a flash of rage.

  “To Lee,” he ordered coldly, in tones he would formerly not have used to the balkiest of servitors.

  They trudged through the snow to Lee without speaking for the two days of the journey. Alan glared blackly for most of that time, and Ket kept silence as much from sorrow as from hurt pride. Late the second day they met Rafe and a patrol near the fringes of the Forest. Rafe looked frenzied. “All gods be praised!” he exclaimed thankfully when he saw Alan. He vaulted down from his mount and ran toward him to embrace him. Then he noticed Alan’s glowering face and offered his horse instead. He shepherded the two strays back to his fortress, sent the servants hustling with demands for warmth and food. Only when he had seen Ket and Alan fed and settled by a crackling fire did he speak again.

  “Half a dozen of my men made it back,” he stated quietly. “They’ve given me news of what happened. The wolves use horror as their weapon now, it seems.”

  “Nay, the fear was my weapon.” Alan spoke thickly. “A double-edged blade.… It also worked against me. My men fled as well as the wolves. Only Ket stayed.”

  Ket stirred at that. “More may yet make it home,” he offered.

  “I doubt it.” Rafe touched his forehead distractedly, wild-eyed from sleepless nights and comfortless days. “Nearly fifty men lost! What went wrong?”

  Alan seemed not to hear. “Nothing,” Ket told him at last, “except that there were more wolves than we expected. We slew a few score, and left eleven men dead.”

  Rafe gaped. “How many wolves?” he breathed at last.

  “Hundreds,” Alan answered flatly. “A forest’s worth.” Rafe looked into his hard, set face and found nothing to say to him.

  “Perhaps the rising sun will shed a brighter light on it,” he floundered at last. Rafe had never known the distress that warmth and food and sound sleep could not cure, though more than once he had felt the cold finger of death on his shoulder. “Come, both of you, your beds are warmed and turned for you.” For Rafe did not understand that Alan was chilled by more than mere loss of life.

  Alan went numbly and slept a sleep like death, though blood colored his dreams. He did not ride out the next day, or the next. In fact, he did not stir from his chamber. He accepted food with ill grace, light not at all, and warned away all visitors. Neither Rafe nor Ket could shake him out of the gloom that had taken hold of him like a sickness.

  Alan had no way of knowing that Wael, cloaked in his lupine form, lay frightened, powerless, and exhausted in his own dark den. That enemy had paid dearly for his victory. There had been no wolves seen for the week since the battle; folk thanked the deep snow for that. And yet, so peculiar is the mind of man, they blamed the wolves for the deaths of the soldiers who did not return from the Forest. In fact, Wael and his legions lay through the storm with noses on paws and no thoughts of troubling the desperate wanderers in their wilderness domain. All strength of evil had gone out of them for the time.

  Merest curiosity stirred Alan from his retreat at last, as the days ranked themselves into weeks and the wolves did not strike. Ket rode forth daily with Rafe’s patrols, and every evening he reported to his liege, gravely oblivious to black stares and thunderous noises. His keen woodsman’s eye had seen no sign of wolves, not the faintest pawprint, and that fact pricked Alan into action at last.

  “No report of them at all?” he demanded one night.

  “No one has even heard a howl.” Ket masked his delight as he encouraged Alan into further response. “Folk devoutly hope that they are gone for good.”

  “Fools!” Alan exploded. “They have only moved on.… Any word from Celydon?”

  “Ay, and all is well there. We hear nothing from Whitewater, though. No one dares to venture through the Forest.”

  “Least of all myself,” Alan retorted sardonically. “If we are to check on Whitewater, it will be by way of Nemeton. But I have no doubt at all that we shall find them strewing bodies to the south and east.”

  “Are we to ride, then?” Ket spoke diffidently.

  “Certainly!” Alan glared at him. “Did you think I would stay the winter in this hole? We’ll ride tomorrow, early. See to it!”

  Ket bowed and left the room without a word, saving his smile until he was well down the corridor.

  They departed from Lee at sunrise, with scant courtesy from Alan, though Rafe saw him off with warm affection. It was three weeks before they came to Nemeton, for they swung wide of the Forest. When they arrived at last, in murky weather, Corin looked askance at Alan, wondering when he had lost his smile. He was thankful he had no ill news to report. Messengers from Whitewater had brought word of no new attacks in the past month or more. Troops from Laueroc had arrived and been billeted, but as yet there was no work for them. Lookouts posted at the seaside reported no hostile craft on the water. Patrols roaming the southern reaches of the Forest found no sign of wolves and nothing amiss.

  “Do not slack your guard. The siege will come before long,” said Alan, and with ill grace he settled himself to wait. Ruddy, swelling tree buds whispered of the coming spring when the air was still icy cold, and folk began to hope that the terror might be over. Who had ever heard of wolf attacks except in the starving season of winter? But Alan had not yet been at Nemeton a fortnight when the patrollers’ horses came home riderless in the dusk. Alan and Ket and Cory rode out with a retinue the next day and found the men laid out, every one, with gaping gullets and vacant, staring eyes. They were not even within the Forest ways, but well out upon the wealds, with nothing but grass around them. Bodies of three wolves lay nearby.

  “These were brave men,” Cory whispered, sickened. “How could they fare so badly, here where nothing concealed their enemy?”

  “If their steeds were as brave, they might have done
better,” Alan answered bitterly.

  “Failing that,” Ket suggested, “they might henceforth carry larger shields, and form their own fortress when their mounts desert them.”

  “Ay, let them carry shields to their toes, and cupboards stocked with siege food!” railed Alan. “No wonder the wolves mock us.”

  Ket faced him steadily. “What do you propose, Sire?”

  “Nothing,” Alan retorted morosely. “I have no proposal.” He would not meet their eyes. He turned away to ride back to Nemeton, and they followed him silently.

  Scarcely a day followed thereafter that did not bring some news of grisly death: a hunter found slain before his huddled hounds, a priestess beset at her altar, a cottage family killed. Within a week, a carefully concerned missive arrived from Craig in Whitewater and a nearly panicky one from Rafe in Lee. Wolves roamed their demesnes once again, and they could not protect all who deserved their aid. Folk had been killed. Those who lived survived as if under siege, huddled within walls and already running low on food. Some had fled their lands altogether, seeking a place far from the Forest. Famine threatened, for tilling could be done only under guard. Trade had come to a halt. The land cowered under a shadow of terror like a chick beneath the hawk. What was to be done?

  Alan had no answer, no hope to offer. There were not enough men in Isle, he knew, to subdue the Forest. Nor could he yet believe or understand that its creatures had turned against him: he, who had slept the nights of his youth fearlessly beneath its leafy shelter! His mind stumbled in darkness; his heart felt like a stony weight. Only obstinacy sustained him. He moved through the days numbly, riding out with the patrols, doing battle at times, viewing the dead, feeling as if he already lay among them. Ket stayed constantly beside him. After a while, Rafe and the others came and held council, laid plans, asked his approval. Alan nodded, hardly hearing what they were saying. One hand held to his mighty sword. These days, he hardly ever put it down.