The Book of Isle

by Nancy Springer

  “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.

  Chapter Six

  “I must soon be going back,” Trevyn said to Hal when the first trace of springtime red tinged the distant hills.

  “Stay a few more days,” Hal replied, “and help us send your grandfather to his rest. Death will come soon for him; don’t you feel it?”

  He did, indeed, sense Adaoun’s gradual departure. It seemed that all of life and death lay open now to the touch of his mind. They surrounded him like an ocean, in Elwestrand. Trevyn had flown higher than the eagles on the back of the immortal white winged horse; he had tangled his hands in the mane at first, and later learned to trust. He had bathed in the sunset sea with Menwy’s jewel-black dragons, and he had walked beside the shy, sinuous leopards of Elundelei. He had slept fearlessly upon earth’s bosom, wherever night found him. Elwestrand was a land to mother all lands, he decided: marvelous, relentless, and yet most gently healing. He looked into her indigo lakes and saw Meg there, lovelier than any elf-maiden in all the bright valleys of this paradise. Trevyn wondered why he had not perceived her so before.

  So at the first faint signs of spring, Trevyn’s heart bounded like a stag, thinking he might soon be on his way back to his beloved, to Meg. If he had not lost her.… He would not think that. No use to think that, with three months yet to spend on the ship, even if he left in the morning. And he no longer tried to hasten the circling years of his life. He, too, moved in the cosmic dance, Trevyn knew, and made up some small part of its beauty. Its rhythm would guide and sustain him for all time, if only he could heed its soundless motion.

  “You will know when it is time to go,” Hal agreed, reading his thoughts.

  That evening there were new faces around the cooking fires, elves and elf-kin and fair folk of other lineage, drifting in and taking their places without a word of explanation, as floating leaves come to shore. All the next morning more came, until several thousand were gathered. They sat by the sea and watched their children run along the lapping waves. Trevyn sat with them and listened to the melody of their talk. After a while, something moved in him, and he got up and went to Adaoun.

  The ancient elf lay on his couch beneath his snowy canopy, as he had lain since Trevyn had known him. At no great distance, Ylim sat beneath the birch trees, weaving white lace of delicate pattern on a hand loom. With a nod to her, Trevyn settled himself by Adaoun’s bedside, taking a frail, dry hand into his own.

  “Alberic,” Adaoun greeted him, though his eyes could no longer see him. “Do you yet know the meaning of your name, lad?”

  “Partly, Grandfather.” Trevyn spoke softly, knowing that the patriarch understood him not so much through sound as through some soundless meeting of spirit with spirit. “It has something to do with unicorns, and white and gold.… They told me on Elundelei, and they told me the sooth-name of my enemy, but I cannot remember.”

  “You should be able to remember when the time comes. Enmity has small meaning here.”

  “I should be able to remember. For it seems to me,” Trevyn added, after a long pause, “that the words of the goddess were words that my mother tried to tell me long ago.”

  “Ah, your mother!” Adaoun smiled, the labored smile of great age. “I can see her in my mind’s eye, all green and golden, spring leaves in sunshine. What was it she told you, lad?”

  “That I am—all one.” The words seemed lacking, and Trevyn’s lips tightened as he spoke again. “That I am all alone. I am not sure why.”

  “The star-son in you.” There was no trace of pity in Adaoun’s tones, only mindful understanding. “You will always yearn for fellowship. Hal yearned, all his life.… Had he turned his back on the call that brought him here, it would have been like killing his veriest self. If your father cannot understand, it is because he has always been at one with anyone he befriends—but even he will need some healing here. The price of kingship is high.”

  “And I,” Trevyn murmured, “will I ever return?”

  “I cannot say. Ask Ylim.”

  “Nay, I don’t want to ask her. I don’t want to know what—what I already know.” Trevyn’s voice broke. “A person cannot expect to come twice to Elwestrand.”

  “Perhaps you are right. I dare not say.… But Elwestrand is in you now, lad, and you will carry it with you wherever you go. Something of it may come to you also in other ways. Be comforted, Grandson.…” The old elf’s voice trailed away to a whisper like that of winter leaves.

  “I will remember, Grandfather, and I thank you. But I am to blame for wearying you with talking. I had better go.”

  “Nay, stay a bit longer. It is not the talking that drains my strength; life wearies me. But I shall rest from it before long. They will send us off together, lad.” Adaoun’s smile broadened. “I also go to the sea, to Menwy’s domain. My ashes will flow with the circling waters and ripple with the wind, touching many shores.… Take me out of here, Grandson, to a place where I may lie on the earth and feel the sky. I don’t want to die under a roof.”

  The airy canopy was hardly to be called a roof, but to Adaoun, father of all elves, it was an irksome interruption of Aene’s song. So Trevyn gathered him up, light as a bundle of dried kindling, and carried him out to a wooded slope where the wind sounded in the trees and eagles sang far overhead.

  “Here,” Adaoun whispered.

  Trevyn laid him down on the bare earth, feeling a pang as he did it.

  “Now go, Grandson.” Adaoun spoke in words scarcely more than a movement. “I crave no company for dying. Farewell.”

  “Farewell, Grandfather,” Trevyn murmured, then went down to the sea to wait with the others. He told no one what had passed. But they knew it nevertheless. As the descending sun approached the sea crests, tipping them with gold, and as the sea-drakes formed their escort, the elves raised their heads and hearkened as if to unseen wings. Then Hal and some others got up and went to the place where Adaoun lay, as surely as if they had seen. They returned to the seaside in soft twilight, bearing the leaf-light body on a litter between them, shoulder high. Adaoun lay with eyes bright and open, robed in white, with a purple cloak trailing over his feet. Evergreen ivy girdled him and garlanded his head; a curled frond encircled his right hand. His kindred surrounded him in awe too deep for words. These were not people who ma
de much of death: the leaf greened and withered and returned to earth, as was just. But Adaoun was one who had been with them since the Beginning. His passing brought the elves to the fullness of all the circling ages they had known.

  Trevyn had never expected to see the elves revel with fire. Trees, like all living things, were most precious to them, and they hated to cut them even to clear land for their crops. But on this night, they spent freely of all things, fire and food and selves. The ranged great pyres along the strand, and danced around them in solemn triumph, and sang to the music of Hal’s instrument and many more. Between times they feasted, roasting nuts on the glowing coals, toasting bread over the flames. Feral eyes shone from the shadows at the reaches of the firelight: unicorns, and bright birds, and many other rare creatures stood there to watch this unaccustomed feast of fires. Huddled on the sand, blanket-wrapped children gazed wide-eyed at the leaping flames and at Adaoun, whose still form sometimes seemed to stir in the flickering light. When they dozed off at last, flames still leaped before their lidded eyes. The older elves did not sleep, nor did Trevyn. They exulted through the night on Adaoun’s account, and when the sun blazed up at last, sending streamers of brightness over the sea, it seemed simply the just reflection of the glory on shore.

  Dawn’s light showed Trevyn a boat waiting restively in the shallows. Close by it floated a far smaller vessel, a mere platform of wood, almost flush with the water. The elves waded around it, stacking on it their precious stores of fuel, cord upon cord, until a couch of wood was formed. On this they laid Adaoun, folding his cloak beneath him, settling him tenderly. Then, scarcely speaking, they turned to Trevyn. Hal embraced him in farewell.

  “I’ll see Father off to you when it is time,” Trevyn said.