The Book of Isle

by Nancy Springer

  Gwern took no pause for his astonishment. “She answers to many names, but that is the most puissant,” he continued soberly. “Call on her when you have need.”

  Trevyn regarded his dun-faced companion in mingled wonder and suspicion. What was this Gwern, and why should he offer aid when Trevyn had never showed him anything but hostility? “I have been taught to call only on the nameless One, and that seldom,” he said at last.

  Gwern shrugged. “And what is this Aene?” he asked, again in the Ancient Tongue.

  “Dawn and dusk, the hawk and the hunted, sun and sable moon.” Trevyn impatiently parroted the words Hal had taught him; already he had tired of riddles. “What of it? Come on, Gwern, let us be moving!”

  The brown youth obeyed with a strange smile. Trevyn had just spoken the name of destiny, and in his ignorance he rushed to leave it behind.

  For another three days the two rode through a wilderness of jumbled stone and giant, lowering trees. They saw no living creatures except birds and deer and the elwedeyn horses that also liked to explore these parts. In time they came to the Gleaming River and followed it south, down to the Bay through which Veran had entered Welas. They reached that quiet expanse without a sight of Alan and the Queens. Signaling their horses to a stop, they looked out over the shimmering water.

  “There it is,” Trevyn said.

  Through the perpetual shadows of that dusky, brooding place moved a slim, gray elf-ship—a living thing, restless as a blooded steed between the confines of the shingle shores. Great evergreens towered overhead, the silvery water glimmered between, and the elf-boat circled like a swan, waiting. Trevyn moved closer.

  “Mireldeyn is coming,” he told the vessel in the Old Language. Then he gulped. “What in the name of—of my fathers is that?”

  Another ship floated close to shore near the mouth of the Bay, wallowing sullenly in the gleaming water. It was no elf-craft. It was broad, heavy, and high-headed, and it glittered all over with gold, shining like a miser’s dream. The railings were riotous with gold filigree. At the bow leaped a figurehead—a golden wolf with bared teeth of mother-of-pearl. Trevyn felt sick. This could be no mere chance.

  Slowly he rode along the verge of the Bay until he came to the glittering ship. There was no anchor or line holding it in place, no captain or any living being on board. The gilded wolf glared balefully, daring Trevyn to come closer. Grudgingly, he found a boarding plank, left at that sacred place from times long past, and he laid it to the polished deck.

  “Don’t!” Gwern whispered.

  Trevyn had never seen him so frightened. Gwern’s fear gave him a perverse triumph. Goaded, he stalked onto the golden boat.

  The very boards of the deck were gilt. Trevyn edged across them and looked below, every muscle tense with caution. He half expected an ambush of wolves or of wolfish men. Instead, he found casks of water and provisions for a long voyage. Then he felt the ship shudder beneath him, heard the boarding plank fall away. He sprang to the deck and leaped off at once, landing over his head in icy water. He fought his way to shore, sputtering. Gwern reached out to help him, and Trevyn did not scorn to take his hand. As he stood dripping, the wolf-boat clumsily circled and came back to its place.

  “In good time!” he shouted at it angrily. “I must say farewell to my father!”

  All his dreams of Elwestrand had been shocked out of him by the danger he had tried too long to ignore. He would be voyaging, but not to Elwestrand, he knew now. He might have let Gwern say his farewells for him, he reflected, but he had done that once too often already. Shivering, he rode into the shelter of the trees, and Gwern helped him build a fire. There he sat and warmed himself through the rest of the day and the night. The sleek elf-ship swam impatiently about the Bay; Trevyn could glimpse it in the moonlight. But the gaudy wolf-ship lurked stodgily in the shadows near the shore, flickering like marsh-lights in a darkened swamp. Already Trevyn hated its squalid splendor. He slept little and was glad to see the dawn.

  Rosemary, Alan, and Lysse came late the next day. Gwern and Trevyn watched from the shadow of a giant fir as the elf-boat sped gladly to meet them and nestled close to shore near their feet. Arundel gave a joyful whinny, the greeting of an elwedeyn steed to the elfin ship that was like kindred to him. But Alan exclaimed in consternation, “Look yonder! What is that chunk of metal floating there?”

  “Perhaps that boat does not concern us,” Rosemary murmured.

  “It does not concern Hal,” Lysse agreed.

  So Alan put the boarding plank to the elf-boat and lifted Hal’s still body from the horse litter, cradling him like a baby. He carried him on board his boat and settled him gently on the open deck. Hal would lie under wheeling sun and stars on his long voyage; his gray eyes gazed up serenely. Alan laid his plinset beside him, in the sturdy leather case Rosemary had made years before. Then he took the great silver crown of Veran and flung it with all his strength far out into the Bay. With a sigh that Trevyn felt even from afar, Alan knelt to kiss Hal’s quiet face, then left him there and stepped to shore. He looked at Rosemary, and she nodded.

  Alan slid the plank away. Instantly, the swan-ship glided off, over the bright water, straight toward the golden light of the setting sun. Gulls flew low, calling, and water rippled. There was no other sound.

  Trevyn watched it go. He thought he had put desire from him, but he had not yet felt true desire. He had never felt a force such as the mystic longing that took hold on him now. Scarcely knowing what he did, he started from his hiding place, running down the stony beach until his feet met the waves. He stared after the elf-ship, yearning. The sun reached out to him. The ship was a shape of marvel in its embrace. It swam swiftly away, at one with the wash of waves and the circling sea currents. Then it was gone, engulfed in the golden horizon, and Trevyn realized that the wash of water was in his own eyes. Still he stared westward. Not until the sun slipped from view did he realize that his father stood beside him, holding him. Alan, the great of heart. Trevyn had not yet learned the depths of his love.

  “You are quivering like a harp string,” Alan said.

  Trevyn shook his head to clear the haze of his trance. “Father,” he muttered. “I have grieved you, and I must grieve you more.”

  “Why, Trevyn?” Lysse and Rosemary drew closer to listen. Gwern quietly emerged from the trees.

  “I must go on that golden ship,” he told them.

  Gwern was expressionless, Rosemary too sunk in her own sorrow to care. Lysse looked at the wolf-ship with quiet eyes, seeking to pierce its secret. But Alan exploded.

  “If you had not been here, you would not have seen it!” he cried. “The elf blood is strong in you. I knew that if you came to the Bay you would yearn to sail, as Hal did.…” Alan choked and subsided. “From the moment he saw your mother’s folk taking ship to the west, he dreamed of the sea.”

  “I dreamed before I came to the Bay,” Trevyn answered in a low voice. “But the elf-ship is gone, Father. That gaudy boat will not take me to Elwestrand.”

  Alan stared at his son, truly seeing him for the first time in months. There was no glory lust in Trevyn’s eyes, no youthful impulsiveness. White-faced, the Prince looked as frightened as Alan had ever seen him, but still set in his resolve. “Where, then?” Alan whispered. But Trevyn had no answer to offer.

  Lysse turned from her study of the strange vessel, looked at her son instead, and he did not elude her gaze. “It is true, my husband,” she said to Alan. “He must go. There is a destiny on him.”

  Alan staggered as if he had been struck. “How can I know that?” he gasped wildly. “Suppose I defy this—this so-called destiny of yours, young man, and bid you stay. What then?”

  “Then I would defy you, and I would fight you, if it came to that.” Trevyn did not try to hide his misery. “Short of my killing you, nothing worse can befall us both than my biding here. No good can come to anyone who shirks a destiny, you have told me. No good can come to us if I stay.”

  “It
will not come to that,” Alan muttered. For Trevyn’s sake he would yield, though in all his life he had never surrendered with good grace. “Still, I do not understand,” he added bitterly, perhaps to the One. “On any other day or hour I could have borne this better.”

  “I can wait a few hours, or even a day,” Trevyn said quietly.

  “Nay, go if you must go! Are there provisions on that sickly ship?”

  Trevyn only nodded.

  “Confound it, let us be on with it, then!”

  They put the boarding plank to the gaudy wolf-boat. Trevyn strode off and fetched a bundle of clothing from his horse. Lysse stood probing the strange, glittering craft with smoky gray-green eyes. Only when Trevyn approached did she stir from her trance.

  “Your cloak,” she urged, motherlike. “It will be chilly on the open sea.”

  Trevyn got out the garment and flung it around his shoulders. Alan watched him intently, trying to seize the moment with his mind. Trevyn fastened his cloak, not with his golden brooch, but with a simple pin.

  “Your brooch,” Alan said. “What has become of it?”

  “I lost it somewhere along the road.” But Trevyn was taken by surprise, and the lie showed plainly in his eyes. Alan stared at him, stunned. Falsehood, and at this, the last moment they had to share! Trevyn returned his father’s gaze with anguish in his own. Then Alan removed the jeweled brooch from his own shoulder, the rayed emblem of the royal crown that he had worn since Hal had given it to him on the day of Trevyn’s birth.

  “That is yours!” Trevyn exclaimed. “Keep it. I can’t take it from you!”

  “Borrow it, then. Bring it back,” said Alan tightly. He pinned it over his son’s heart, wordlessly handed him a purse of gold.

  “I will. I swear to you I will return.” Trevyn’s voice shook. “Father, I am sorry—”

  “Hush.” Alan gripped his shoulders. “There is no need for speeches. Go with all blessing.…” He hugged his son hard and kissed him fiercely before he released him.

  “Farewell, Mother,” Trevyn murmured, and embraced her hastily. Rosemary stood among the horses, her russet head bowed to Arundel’s neck; Trevyn knew she was hardly aware of his departure. But Gwern stood silently by. Trevyn froze with one foot on the boarding plank, feeling suddenly, absurdly, naked and incomplete. Gwern, whom he had wanted so badly to begone—Gwern had not moved from his place.

  “Nay, I cannot leave earth. You must sail alone.” Gwern stolidly answered the unspoken question. A hint of pain shadowed the claylike mask of his face, and Trevyn found himself utterly taken aback, astounded by that pain, astounded by the answering pang that put its grip on him.

  “I didn’t know,” he whispered.

  “Stay, then,” urged Alan.

  “Nay, I must go.” Hesitantly, Trevyn offered Gwern his hand, and the barefoot, brown-haired youth gripped it without comment. Trevyn turned and strode onto the gilded ship.

  He kept his head low, but Alan saw the tears that streaked his face. The ship started from its place like a hound unleashed, churned away from the shore. Alan put his arm around Lysse—to give comfort or to receive? He raised his hand in salute to his son. Gwern stood like a stump.

  “All good come to you, Beloved!” Lysse called.

  Trevyn straightened and waved to them. They watched after him until the ship turned the headland and was lost to view, vanishing like spook lamps into the dusk.

  “A wolf is an animal that roams the night and sings to the moon,” Lysse said softly. “There is no great harm to it.”

  “East!” Alan muttered. “The wolf-boat goes east. No good lies that way.”

  It was not until weeks later that the goodwife found Trevyn’s brooch among Meg’s belongings. Fluttering, she summoned her husband. They hated to scold Megan, for she had turned silent and moody since the Prince had gone away. But the brooch was valuable, and they were frightened.

  “Ye cannot keep this, Meg!” the goodman cried. “Likely ’tis solid gold!”

  “’Tis mine. He gave it to me.”

  “He only lent it t’ye! Did he say for ye to keep it?”

  “If he wanted it back, he could have come for it.”

  “Who are ye to say where he must come or go? He is the Prince! Why would he give ye such a thing? Folk will say ye stole it!”

  Meg had looked sullenly down, but now she straightened and flared back at her father. “What was I to do? Run to his castle, peradventure, and beg an audience?”

  “Ay, daughter, ’twas a hard spot, that I’ll not deny.” Brock’s voice was softer. “Still, ye should not have hid it away. We must take it to the lord; ’twill be safer with him.”

  Rafe regarded Meg with compassion while Brock told the tale. He had last seen her in a dress fit for a princess, glowing with the beauty that only love gives. Now she silently stared at the floor, and Rafe could see that her cheeks were pale. The pallor of love withheld, he judged.

  Goodman Brock could not be less than honest. “And there is the cloak, my lord, as well,” he concluded. The girl’s eyes flashed up, and Rafe quickly hid the pity in his own, for he knew she would not welcome it.

  “I think there is no need to say anything of the cloak.” Rafe saw, without appearing to see, Meg’s relief; this remembrance at least would be left to her. “I know my liege, and I am certain he would not begrudge it to you. But this brooch”—Rafe turned it delicately in his hands—“bears the emblem of the Sun Crowns. The King must know of its whereabouts.” Rafe climbed down from his audience chair and headed toward a table where lay parchment, pen and ink, sand, and sealing wax. “Come, Meg, let us write a letter to Trevyn’s father.”

  Within a week, a messenger came to Laueroc and presented to the King the following curious missive:

  On this, the ides of May, in the Nineteenth year of his reign, to Alan, Heir of Laueroc, and Rightful and Most Gracious Ruler of Isle, Greeting.

  It being that a thing I hold may not be mine in truth, I hereby state my willingness to relinquish it, obedient to the word of my Liege and King.

  It being that my lord the Prince graciously lent me his brooch to fasten a cloak thereby, and his returning not therefor, I have cherished the brooch on his account until this time.

  It being that this brooch is of precious substance and molded in the likeness of the Royal Emblem, I have rendered it into the safe keeping of my lord Rafe of Lee until my Liege the King has seen fit to judge the ownership thereof.

  With many thanks to my lord the Prince for his gracious favors on my behalf, and especially for the sake of the cow Molly.

  Your humble servant, Megan By-the-woods.

  By the hand of her good lord, Rafe of Lee.

  Alan read this three times, then stumped off to find Lysse.

  “What do you make of this?”

  She read it and handed it back with a wistful smile. “Poor lass. I wonder what she is like.”

  “Either very honest, or else commending herself to our attention. Can he have got her with child, do you think?”

  “I think—I would have felt such a child.”

  “Perhaps.” Alan sighed. “Well, Rafe can tell us if anything is amiss. I will have him send the brooch to us.”

  “Nay.” Lysse laid her hand on his arm. “Let the girl keep it.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “Whatever for?”

  “There will be hard times ahead for all of us.” She faced him steadily. “Hard enough for you and me, my love, but we have much to sustain us. It may be that—she does not have so much.”

  Alan cupped her chin in his hand and regarded her closely. “Have you seen something?”

  “Nay, nothing clearly. It is only feeling.”

  He knew that feeling. His life had been a long battle with such heavy feeling since Hal and Trevyn had left. Call it foreboding, but not yet so dark that it benighted his thoughtful curiosity. He penned a reply to Rafe, commending the girl to his watchful care, then placed Meg’s letter in his files. Months later, he
still remembered her name.

  Book Two

  MOTHER OF MERCY

  Chapter One

  This gaudy craft was a dead thing, Trevyn decided, with no power of its own. Certainly it was not a living, swimming being like the elf-ship he had seen. He felt no vitality in its timbers, as often as he lay and lost himself in study of the mystery of its motion. He could discern no surge from behind or below, no gathering of heart at the bottom of the billow or of breath at the top. As the weeks went by, Trevyn became certain that the source of the power lay far ahead. He was in a bright bauble drawn by invisible wires, smacking crudely against the waves, for all the world like a child’s toy being dragged across a vast watery yard. He thanked the One that the sea remained calm.

  As yet, Trevyn had known nothing of the nausea that makes sea crossings a misery. To pass the time, and to keep from growing weak with the long voyage, he exercised for hours every day. Then he paced the deck as he studied the sky and sea. His course was to the south and east. Every morning at daybreak the rays of the rising sun haloed the hulking form of the wolfish figurehead. To Trevyn it seemed unfair, even treasonous, that the emblem of his father’s royal greatness should bedeck the wolf, which to him had become a symbol of lowest evil. Since he could command neither the ship nor the sun, he learned to turn his back on this moment.

  Trevyn had examined the figurehead closely on his first day out and had found it to be nothing more than gilded wood with glass eyes and pearly teeth. But at night it seemed to him that the lupine form was lit with more than reflected sheen. Amid the gleaming of the starry sea, he could not be certain. Yet the thing gnawed him with slow fear, even colored his dreams with its frozen leap, and he went near it no more. Another thing troubled Trevyn: that Meg from time to time would intrude her thin face before his inward eye. He strove to forget her, and turned his back on her image as on the wolf. Yet, had he noticed, where Meg’s image was the dread of the wolf was not.

  By the sixth week of the voyage, Trevyn began to see birds hunting the sea, wheeling ahead and to the left. He looked that way eagerly, searching the horizon for land. In the seventh week he spied it, a low, dark smudge where sky met sea. Trevyn judged that the land was no more than a day’s voyage away, though the ship’s course lay counter to the sighting.