“Wael has put a locking spell on these gates,” he explained. “So we can’t afford to be delicate.…” A quiet light flickered through his sea-green eyes. He judged that he had power now to call on the dark goddess once more. He need not possess strength of body; Emrist had showed him that. He need only assent completely to her aid. “Here goes,” he muttered, and struck the gates once, lightly, with clenched fist. “Break them, Menwy, break them!”
The huge portals burst inward, hurling splinters and metal shards for a hundred feet. The portcullis that stood just beyond them writhed apart and flew through the air like nightmare snakes. Even the stones of the gatehouse flew. Within an instant, Alan found himself staring through a clean, open passageway into the main street of Nemeton, where a troop of Tokarians stood at muster. Luckily, the enemy soldiers were even more startled than he, and some were already mortally wounded. Hastily, Alan pulled Trevyn aside and bellowed for the charge.
Half of the Tokarians were trapped on the walls, demoralized by the sudden change in their circumstances. Alan’s army swirled in and took them from behind, quickly dispatching them. Others of the enemy were hunted through the streets and deserted houses of the town; this was slow, nerve-racking work. Ket spotted a glimpse of golden crown and was pleased to take Rheged his prisoner. Alan didn’t know. As soon as he could, he set a company to barricading the blasted gates, saw Trevyn onto his weird white steed, gathered some mounted retainers, and led on to Corin’s keep. There another set of barred and guarded doors awaited them.
The Tokarians within the keep saw them coming and met them with a shower of arrows and rocks. Sensing doom; they fought feverishly, hurling anything they could think of to hold vengeance at a distance. But Trevyn drew rein just beyond the range of their fire and flung up one arm. The gates toppled as if pushed by a strong wind, and he galloped over them, ducking, a wolf cub sheltered against his chest. The Tokarians scattered, and Alan’s liegemen began stoically to hunt them down.
“The dungeons,” Alan said.
“Meg’s on the roof,” Trevyn murmured, peering up. He could see nothing but his eagle, high overhead.
“There are enemies on the stairs. Let the men take care of them. The dungeons, first.”
Robin of Firth, Corin’s foster brother, was also intent on reaching the dungeons. He sped down the dark stairs ahead of them and greeted Cory with a shout of joyful relief. The lord of Nemeton and his followers sat fettered to their cell walls, looking somewhat starved and rather bewildered by the explosive noises they had been hearing. “No use breaking up the place,” Alan remarked as Trevyn reached for a lock. “We might need it.”
“You’re right,” Trevyn sighed. “Find the keys, Father; I’m tired.” He collapsed onto a dank stone step, laid his head against the rough-cut doorjamb, and closed his eyes. Robin had already found the keys and was opening cells, unlocking fetters. Alan glanced worriedly at his son, then looked up sharply as Ket brought his royal prisoner clattering down the stairs. Cory hugged Robin and came over to speak to Alan, rubbing his sore wrists.
“The girl, Meg,” he asked, “where might she be? Tokar’s sinister old spellbinder came down here a short while ago and took her.”
“Just like Wael,” Rheged snarled, “to shelter behind a wench, saving his own ancient hide, while brave men suffer—”
“Silence!” Alan roared at him. Trevyn stood up, arrow swift, arrow straight, but pale beneath his grime. Ket put the captured king in a cell.
“Witch’s whelp,” Rheged sneered at Trevyn from behind the bars. “Pretty warlock, Wael will put an end to you yet. He was deathless and strong before you were born.”
Trevyn gave him not even a glance for reply. “Upstairs,” he ordered the others, and began toiling up the tower steps. Several times he had to stop to gather strength, cursing at his own slowness. Alan followed him closely. Corin, Robin, and some retainers puffed along behind. The way out onto the platform was by a trapdoor; Alan insisted on going first, but no one was waiting to knock off their heads. Wael stood at the opposite extreme of the circular space, very close to the edge, with Megan arranged before him like a shield, her arms twisted behind her back. Trevyn knew that Wael did not have much physical strength in his withered, clawlike hands, but he also knew his power to terrify and deceive. Meg looked frozen; she might as well have been held in a vise.
“By my troth,” Alan exclaimed, “it’s Waverly!”
“Hal thought as much,” Trevyn remarked.
“I am flattered, Laueroc!” hissed the chamberlain of the late and evil Iscovar. “That you should remember me after all these years! Though of course I remember you well. You drove me forth from this very court, set my old bones to wandering the weary seas, you and your bastard brother, a pair of pups! So I set my course toward revenge. But all has gone against me: the bastard has escaped me, and this elf-sprout has thwarted and defied me at every turn.” Wael glared venomously at Trevyn. “At last he robbed and destroyed the ancient thing that sustained me. Yet I will have my revenge at last, and you will both learn to hate the day you ever crossed me!” He twitched Megan nearer to the edge, where a smooth wall dropped hundreds of feet to the cobbled courtyard below.
“As I recall it,” Alan said, courteously enough, “you were asked only to obey Hal as heir to the throne. Instead, you slipped away and took ship of your own accord.”
“Do not speak to me of obedience!” shrieked Wael. “If I were in strength, you would all bow down to me and beg to know my will! Dogs! Sons of she-dogs! You would grovel before the Wolf as the jackal before the lion!”
“By thunder,” Alan grated, “here is one lion that would willingly tame your wolf!” He drew his sword with the golden lion on the hilt. Wael’s eyes glittered, and one hand flicked out to send the weapon flying with an invisible bolt. But at that instant, Trevyn quietly spoke a single word.
“Melidwen.”
Megan came out of her pallid trance with a blaze of fury. “Filthy old man! Let go!” she cried, kicking back at Wael’s knee. He yelped, and she broke lightly away from him, sped toward Trevyn. But at the last moment she seemed to remember that she was angry with him, swerved aside, and darted toward the stairs.
“Father!” Trevyn called. “Catch her!”
“Got her,” Alan tersely replied.
“Don’t let her go,” Trevyn panted between clenched teeth. “I want to talk to her!” He tensed himself against pain. Wael was hopping about on his end of the platform, frenzied and gibbering with rage, raining invisible blows on the Prince. “Stop that!” Trevyn shouted. “Stop it! Begone, you—you Crebla!” He spoke the sooth-name.
Wael vanished. Without even a gesture or a puff of smoke, he disappeared. A tall, cloaked figure stood on the platform in his stead, very still, very silent, unfathomably black, with only the black vortex of a hood for face. All of Isle seemed to stop, simply stop. Even the distant clatter of soldiers in the courtyard ceased, and the slight, random movement of clouds in the sky.
“Pel Blagden,” Trevyn breathed, and took a single step back.
“Nay,” said a sweet, dusky woman’s voice, “it is I.” Then Trevyn noticed that tiny silver bells hung from the points of the apparition’s empty sleeves. He went down on one knee, not in worship so much as in limp relief.
“Menwy,” he whispered. “Dark lady, thank you. But why are you faceless, like the mantled lord?”
“Because he is in me, as Wael is in me now. I must appear to you in forms you can understand.” Looming, she stalked over to Trevyn, stooped and extended to him the black cavern of her sleeve. Alan could not have aided his son, then, if both their lives had depended on it. He could not move even to retreat. But Trevyn reached up, grasped the invisible hand, and rose lightly to his feet. The lovely Black Virgin faced him now, with pearls draped over her shimmering forehead. Corin moaned and hid his eyes. He who had faced the faceless one could not withstand that beauty. But she looked up to Trevyn like a lover.
“Where are the dra
gons of Lyrdion, Alberic?” she asked him.
He had to clear his throat. “Within. Bound in the depths,” he answered huskily. “Until now, by all that is dark and beautiful.” He raised a hand, pointed eastward, and the others looked, stood rigid. Beyond the walls and turrets of Nemeton they could plainly see, from their height, the grasslands that rolled away toward the sea—on which came the newly landed Tokarian army, marching.
But the earth of the plain moved like so much water, bubbled and burst. And the dragons arose through the rippling, parting grass, loosed by Trevyn’s gesture, scores and hundreds of them, with flashing, scaly flanks of ruddy gold, red-crested, black-clawed, launching themselves against the invaders with a flick of their fluted wings, letting out brazen cries that seemed to echo across the world. Trevyn was never to forget the sound of that fierce, nasal battle chant.
Everyone on the tower stood staring, agape. Even Menwy watched as the dragons drove off the Tokarians with tail-lashing leaps and puffs of fiery breath. The scene worked itself out within that middle distance where everything looks suspended, very solid but not quite real. They could not hear the cries of the enemy soldiers, but they could see them fall. The men could not flee fast enough to evade the dragons; they were trampled, crushed, and burned. The dragons trumpeted in triumph. Only one of them had fallen, killed by a lucky arrow to the eye. The others intently pursued their human prey.
“Bloodthirsty,” Trevyn blurted, sickened. “Too bloodthirsty! Why can’t they just drive them back to the ships?”
“Mercy is not in the nature of dragons,” Menwy replied, though Trevyn had not really expected any reply.
The dragons and the fleeing remnants of the army topped a rise and disappeared toward the Long Beaches. Nothing remained of the strange tableau except a lumpy expanse of strewn bodies. Trevyn looked away from them, faced the goddess again.
“Why does it trouble you?” she asked. “You have saved many of your father’s liegemen, perhaps even saved your land.”
“Because—I know those dragons are mine. They are in me.”
“So you were able to loose them to good effect. And if you have gained the victory over Wael, Prince, it is because you no longer hate the shadowy deeps, the realm of the sable moon. My workings are not all for ill, Alberic. Even a villain such as Wael cannot help but do some good. In a sense, he brought you two together, Prince and Maiden.”
With his eyes still on Menwy’s subtle, sculpted face, Trevyn held out an arm and felt Meg move to fill it. The slender girl pressed against him, took the wolf cub from his cupped hand, and cradled it by her own small breasts.
“Without darkness, there would be no dawn,” Menwy added.
“So you, who flung me into the hands of slavers, who stole my father’s brooch to make mischief with, now choose to aid me.” Trevyn sounded merely whimsical, not bitter, just then. “Why, ancient lady?”
“Because you are fair; no better reason.”
Trevyn risked a glance at Meg, felt with a shock her fine-drawn loveliness, saw Dair, his baby son, lay a searching muzzle along her neck.
“And I will give the Tokarians fair winds home, those who live, as I have given them foul winds hither,” added Menwy, with a hint of jealous edge to her voice. “Still, I am no one’s servant. So, lest you lose all respect for me, Prince—feel this!”
A shock sent Trevyn staggering. Meg screamed; Menwy loomed taller and ever taller, in form of the fearsome horned god, her head a skull with the antlers of a stag.
“Farewell, Prince of Isle,” she sang, before he had recovered, and engulfed him. In an instant the tower was only a fleck caught in the hem of her cloak, in a black and roaring, directionless blackness darker than a thousand nights. Trevyn clutched at Meg, hid his face in her hair; Robin moaned, and Alan flung an arm over his eyes. Then they all looked up at bright sky and blinked. Voices sounded from the courtyard; Trevyn’s eagle swooped down to perch on a parapet. The day moved on apace.
“Are ye hurt!” Megan demanded. Trevyn held on to her for support with one hand, and the other held on to his head.
“I think I’m going to swoon,” he said plaintively. “Be here when I wake up, Meg. Promise!”
“All right, I promise!” She peered up at him anxiously. “Trev—”
“Is it really all over?” Alan exclaimed incredulously, gazing down at the quiet town, the empty battle plain. “Is it really done?”
“I’m done in,” Trevyn murmured. “Meg, take good care of that wolf.”
“Of course.”
“It’s my son,” he explained, lucidly.
“Of course. Trevyn, will ye sit down before ye fall and hurt yerself?”
“Not until I’ve kissed you.” But he missed his aim, lurching.
“Later,” she told him, and shouted at the others, “Dolts, will ye help me with this big oaf!”
They were all still dazed, gaping like Alan. “Can it really be all over?” he marveled again. “After all these hellish months?”
“My dream has just begun,” Trevyn protested softly, and folded onto the paving stones.
Chapter Five
They got him into a bed presently, and he slept for a full day, then awoke to ravenously gulp a meal, then slept again. He kept it up, not for the month he had promised, but for a week. A few times the servants roused him and ordered him into a tub, soaking grime and brown, caked blood out of his golden hair. But no one had leisure to really nurse him, in the aftermath of war, and it was plain to see that he was well and content. The servants took to leaving food on a table by the bedside, fruit and bread and cheese and cold cooked meat. Trevyn would wake at odd hours, eat, drink water, and instantly doze off again. As he slept, he dreamed—pleasant dreams, mostly. Even when not sleeping, he dreamed with open eyes. Of Isle, and Elwestrand, and love, and Maeve, and, the seventh day, of Melidwen—
Meg burst into his room that day; Dair pattered after her and jumped up on the bed. “Trevyn, what d’ye mean!” Meg cried. “What can ye be thinking of! I can’t wear this!”
He gazed at her, breathless, and not only because of the furry, gray weight on top of him. She looked like a princess—nay, some being that was freer and more magical than a princess. She looked like someone Emrist might have invoked, spirit of starlight and daisy field and white winter lacework of birch. Soft, sparkling cloth enfolded her like an embrace, patterned white on white, floating richly around her bare, smooth feet. Her sparrow-brown hair flew as airily as the gown. She tolerated his stare for a moment, then stamped impatiently.
“It’ll take washing every blessed day,” she complained. “And everyone who saw me thinks I’m putting on airs. And how d’ye expect me to go walking that precious son of yers in this?”
Clutching his blankets, Trevyn wriggled out from under the wolf in question. “Take it off, if you don’t like it,” he gasped.
“I adore it.” Her pointed face softened into a smile. “But it’s too grand, Trev. Dream me a few that are a bit more practical.”
“I don’t direct my dreams,” he whispered, and reached out to touch her fingertips, drew her down to him by her warm fingertips, nothing more. Her flower of a mouth touched his; he parted it tenderly, probed with consummate tenderness, felt a sweet ache grow. Rosebuds and dew.… His fingers entwined her hair, found the warm nape of her neck, followed her tresses to the startled tip of her young breast under the magical cloth.… Meg placed her hands on his, dropped her head to his bare shoulder.
“Love me,” he begged.
“I do.”
“I know—I should have always known. I’d have known how I loved you, if I’d paid heed. But love me now, Meg. That is your wedding gown.”
“Then let us ride to where the wedding party awaits us,” she told him reasonably. “At the sacred grove.”
“What?”
“At the Forest’s southern skirt, where the two rivers join. Gwern’s grove.”
That sobered him. He let her go and sat to face her. “How did you know
?”
“I—some things I just know—like I know that Dair really is yer son somehow—and I know that Gwern gave ye himself. He had to, for ye so whole now.”
“Ay. I feel like my life has just begun, Meg. As if you’ve just woken me to a new world. All that’s happened since—since a young fool left you at Lee—hardly seems to count.”
“It counts.” She grinned wickedly at him. “But ye’re right about the new world. Or a new Isle, anyway. Wonders are springing up all over. The whole land’s taken on a new sheen; everyone notices it.”
He stared at her. “The magic is coming back,” he breathed.
“Ye’ve dreamed it back. Ye’ve even made me a touch on the pretty side somehow. Won’t ye go back to sleep now, like a good prince, and dream me a few more dresses?”
“Great goddess, nay,” he exclaimed. “I’ve slept long enough. Where’s Father?”
“Sped to his love.”
Alan had long since gone to Lysse, as fast as horse could take him. All along the path of his swift journey he saw magic springing up. Tiny yellow flowers winked from the grass, each one a radiant coronet. Veran’s crown, the Elfin Gold, had come back to Isle, and all the land glowed with intangible luster by virtue of its presence.
Lysse met Alan on the road, far outside the gates. Sight and heart had returned to her together, and she sensed his coming long before he arrived. She greeted him smiling, but he wept in her embrace. “Even at my worst, I knew you would forgive me,” he told her when he could speak, “and that is a fearful knowledge.”
“Hal thought the same of you.”
“I know. Trevyn has told me a little.… My brother sends me his love, from Elwestrand. He wept to speak of me.… Well, I am no longer so proud that I can afford to think ill of him, Lissy.” He grinned wryly. “And I can somewhat account for the change in me; but what is to account for the marvels abroad in the land?”
The Book of Isle Page 71
