The Book of Isle

by Nancy Springer

  Fabron flushed angrily. I spoke up before he could answer.

  “I do not intend to give you my throne,” I told Raz. “I do not care for it—sneer all you like, it is the truth—but it is mine, by Adalis, and I will sit on it. Take it from me if you like. Why have you not done so already? Or why have you not annexed Eidden, or Selt, or Vaire?” I followed the question with my stare and he stared back at me, a long, slow look from which all mockery was gone. He was thinking hard, though not, perhaps, of what I had asked him.

  “Laziness,” he replied at last. “Old habits are hard to break. I prefer to annex in the next generation.… I have one daughter left, Tirell of Melior.”

  The way was clear. “If we can come to terms,” I said promptly, “I will marry her.”

  “No!” It was Frain, the first word he had spoken; I had forgotten he was there. He jumped up, mightily distressed. “Tirell, say no such thing!”

  “Tirell has made the politic decision,” Fabron told his son tiredly. Fabron, taking my part in a quarrel with Frain? Was the whole world going insane? Frain ignored him.

  “You will have years to regret it,” he said to me.

  “Frain,” I warned, “be silent!” I felt harried and hot—bad signs. Talking with Raz had depleted my small store of civility.

  “Tirell, please listen.” Frain came over and knelt by me, entreating me. “It is wrong to marry into a loveless union. You might as well marry a whore as marry without love.”

  How could he say something so womanish in front of everyone? “Frain,” I declared in barely controlled rage, “you are an ass.”

  “Would you think, Tirell!” he cried passionately. “You have known what love is. You might yet know it again if you give yourself a chance—”

  The reference to Mylitta, veiled though it was, undid me. I swung out blindly with my fist and knocked Frain over; I am lucky I did not knock him into the fire. I wanted to stand up and punish him for all I was worth. Only Raz’s amused eyes on me prevented me. Fabron got up with a start, helped Frain up, and tried to lead him away.

  “Let me alone!” He shook off Fabron’s hand and turned to me for a parting shot.

  “All right.” He rapped out the words. “If you will not think of yourself, then think of the girl. Has anyone asked her opinion of you?”

  He turned his back on me and strode off to the shadows where the black beast waited. Fabron sighed and sat down again by the fire. On the far side of it Raz lounged, comfortable and quite expressionless.

  “All right,” I said to him. “Terms.”

  We agreed that he would bring a thousand men—and his daughter—to Melior. He would start back to Nisroch at once (I could hear Oorossy rejoicing), make his preparations, and march. He would send a messenger to Sethym. Meanwhile, I would backtrack to Qiturel and bring word to Oorossy.

  We ate our supper, finally, amicably enough, and dozed around the fire. We did not see Frain. We did not see him the next morning, either, when we made our departure. His horse was gone. But the beast knew he was waiting half a mile away, so I was neither surprised nor gladdened to see him when he joined us. I sensed his disappointment, but I kept silence, and so did he. I did not apologize for my temper of the previous evening. I blamed it on Raz and on him, not on myself.

  The quarrel made an uncomfortable ride, even for me. The few days seemed endless. But finally Qiturel greeted us, and Grandfather awaited us in his chamber there. “So, you have found Raz,” he remarked as soon as he saw us. “What is the fuss about?”

  “Tirell has gone and got himself betrothed to Raz’s daughter,” Frain answered bitterly, “the one who was the cause of all this row to start with.”

  “Why, lad, how can that be?” Daymon inquired innocently. “The poor lass—Recilla is her name, is it not? She has never even met him.”

  “You know what I mean.” Frain stomped across the room and sat with unnecessary force on the cot, sulking. “All those vows of love.…” He knew better than to say more. I would have hit him again. Grandfather turned to me and gave me a long, seeing stare.

  “So you have pledged your word,” he remarked.

  “Of course I have,” I burst out—bellowed, really. “We could not have stirred a foot without Raz.”

  Grandfather smiled—an odd smile, the most baffled, whimsical and wondering of smiles. He turned back to my scowling brother. “Tirell’s reasons are all wrong, Frain, I grant you that,” he said.

  “The whole thing is wrong, from start to finish,” Frain fumed. I clenched my fists.

  “He has acted out of defiance, craft, and several varieties of rage,” Grandfather went on, ignoring both of us. “Still, I feel only good to come of his decision.”

  “What?” Frain and I exclaimed in unison.

  “Oh, it will make a sorry precedent, I grant you that,” Daymon sighed. “Men and women should not be bound together by the cold agreements of power; all sense and instinct cry against it. That is the fate you will lay on your heirs, Tirell. But yet—and yet—and yet—I feel joy to come of this wedding.” The smile again, puzzled but full of hope. “I make you no promise, lads, but that is the vision and comfort that come to me. Therefore it must somehow be right.”

  Frain swallowed slowly, swallowing his wrath, looking at me askance. “The hell you say,” he muttered. For my own part, I felt dazed and a little troubled.

  “Now make peace, you two,” Grandfather ordered.

  The oddest thing was that, though we set aside the quarrel, neither Frain nor I really believed Daymon, though we had believed him all our lives. I did not want joy. I wanted revenge and a life of noble sorrow. And Frain fought my decision all the way to Melior.

  Chapter Five

  Oorossy was off raising troops in the hills. After a week he came back to Qiturel, but then there were more days of preparation before we could march. I fumed; I sometimes thought I could feel smoke curling out of my ears. Oorossy went about his affairs, whistling maddeningly. At last all was ready. I mounted my black charger, Frain and Fabron the horses Oorossy had given them. Grandfather was not coming with us, but he would not stay safe in Qiturel either, stubborn old man!

  “I was roaming Vale before you were born, young my precious lord!” he argued perversely.

  He would not have said that a few months before, I am sure. He intended to come along behind us at his own pace, and in spite of all my ire I knew he would be all right. The black beast stayed with him. I still remember looking back and seeing the pair of them ambling along side by side far behind us, he with his staff in one hand and the other on a black glossy back.

  We took five hundred men to Melior—a laughable force, a pathetic force compared to Abas’s thousands. But at least it was enough, as Frain said, to see us across the bridges. The dozen Boda who held the Terynon looked at us and galloped away. “There goes news,” I said grimly, and we started across the rich lowlands of Tiela, making our way along the Chardri.

  The march took some few weeks. We collected a couple hundred fortune-seeking youths as we dragged dustily along, and a plentiful supply of whores. I had noticed a few from the time we left Qiturel; where there is an army, there will be camp followers. But I believe that if Grandfather had been with us I might not have been such a brute with the whores and with Shamarra and Frain. To my shame.

  I was all right until we reached Melior. Until the day, I think, that I looked across the river to the place where my love had lived and died. The holding was all deserted, in weeds, the cottage downtumbling, an abode of ill omen. For the first time in all my journey I sought Abas with my own mind, intent on cursing him, harrowing him with visions of my forthcoming vengeance. But I could not find him. I camped my army before the bridge that served Melior, blocking all access, able to do nothing more for the time. We had to wait for more men, for news or troops from Vaire or Selt or Tiela, for Abas to make a move. Really, I had no wish to touch one stone of my home or to spend one soldier’s life; I only wanted Abas dead for what he had don
e.… I began to have a whore brought to me each night.

  I made no secret of it; I would stand at my tent flap every evening and roar for my manservant to bring me a woman. The soldiers took to laying bets on my punctuality, Oorossy told me. Frain and Fabron said nothing to me about it at all. I obstinately rejoiced in their averted eyes. I felt taut inside, stretched to the breaking point, because I refused to admit the change looming within me. Even as I lusted to shed my father’s blood I remembered—her, a warm, beating heart and soft lips, soft breasts.… To spite the goddess, I expended my warm thoughts in the coldest way I knew. Then Shamarra came back, and all that was in me turned to a hard, heavy black sword. The cutting sword of double edge.

  She rode in one day on her white mare. The whole camp, to a man, stood and gaped at her. I saw her coming and fled to my tent. As commanding officer it was my place to meet her, but, before all the gods, I could not do it. I would have struck her as soon as speak to her. Frain met her, the good fellow, greeted her as a friend, and I think she returned the greeting with better courtesy than she had ever shown him. Peering from my tent flap, I saw her lay her hand in his as she slipped down from her horse.

  Later she came to me as I sat in council with my officers. With many a courtly flourish she presented to me a banner patterned after my shield, the device being a winged black unicorn on a silver field. She gave me badges of office to match, and I was hard put to accept the things with even a scant show of courtesy. I could not look at her for rage. She had declared herself to be my lady with those gifts.

  “Aftalun sends his greeting and his blessing to you, his rival and scion,” she proclaimed. “He would join cause with you if he could, but it is unseemly for the dead or the immortal to meddle in the affairs of the living.”

  “Are you no goddess, then, that you meddle?” I asked harshly. If she caused trouble with Raz—

  She shrugged with a pretty air of pathos and a liquid look. “I was immortal once. Perhaps I am not any more.”

  I turned and strode away from her, out of the tent, all the angrier because she had routed me, made a fool of me in front of my men. That night I called for two whores and made sure the whole camp heard me.

  The next week was a horror. From their ends of the stone spans over the Chardri the Boda watched us and watched us, never daring to move against us, the cowards. Their prying eyes enraged me. And there was no escaping the presence of Shamarra, her beauty or my men’s awe of her aristocratic presence. Frain had told her I was betrothed, but she pretended she had not heard. What was I to do with her when Raz came? Within a few days I felt fit to be chained in a pit, though I still maintained an outward semblance of calm and control. Praise be to Eala, on the third day Sethym of Selt arrived with four hundred men after having ridden all the way from Gyotte blindfolded for fear of rabbits, white birds, and the like. He brought news: Abas had been seen with his army in Vaire. He had lifted that siege and was marching northward. Good news! Wayte would be able to muster his forces and come to our aid, and I would be able to engage my enemy at last. Abas was likely to find himself trapped between two armies. I had only to hold the bridges to prevent his obtaining help from Melior. I thirsted for battle now; my pent anger had heated me to battle fever. In a day or two we would march forth from camp and I would be freed of Shamarra for at least a battle’s span. Damn the woman! Would nothing drive her away from me?

  As it turned out, she herself offered me the way to be rid of her. When my man brought me my whore that evening, it was she. The poor fellow looked as if he wanted to hide. She had bullied him into it; I could see that in a moment. He scuttled away the instant the tent flap fell. Shamarra faced me in a queenly pose, her proud, pale face raised. “Take me,” she said, perhaps thinking that she could shame me. But I barked out a laugh and seized her, ripped off her flimsy gown before she could gasp. The haughty slut, I wanted to make her scream! But she would not scream, not the whole long night through.

  The longest of nights, but I will not dwell on it. I do not care to tell how I made the act of love into a ritual of hatred. I paid dearly for that night afterward. The memory of it poisoned my pleasure for years. But when Shamarra left me in the dark dawn, bruised and disheveled, I knew quite surely that she would not face me again. I shouted taunts after her, gleeful with victory and satisfied malice. I could have spit on her departing back! I was willing to pay any price to see her go. But I had not thought of losing my brother. I had not thought he could be so angry.

  I slept for a few hours and awoke sometime after dawn to hear a couple of soldiers whispering near my tent. I suppose they thought I would be snoring for hours yet.

  “Prince Frain will be off, I tell you!” one said. “He’ll not bear it, even from Tirell.”

  “The lady went to him of her own will,” protested the other.

  “I know it. She’s as crazy as he. But Frain looks angry enough to weep blood. And it would have broken your heart, too, to see her go away with her head down and her hair falling over her face. She rode that white mare of hers at the slow walk all the way to Melior, and the Boda on the bridge made way for her without a word. She didn’t even look at them. She went on as slowly as a swan, and Prince Frain stood watching after her every step of the steep way up to the castle.”

  “What does she want in Melior?” the other asked.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps only that none of us can follow her there. But Frain has sworn he’ll follow somehow, Boda or no Boda.”

  I burst out of my tent, routing the soldiers, and hurried to Frain’s. He was not there. I ran to look for his horse; it was gone. I got my own and went blundering and swearing off to the north. But I met that fool, Sethym, and he did me a wise man’s service. “That way,” he said, and pointed me along the south road toward Melior.

  Frain was standing just out of sight of camp, beyond a rise and nearly within bowshot of the Boda who held the Gerriew bridge. Fabron stood there with him. He started to move away when he saw me coming, but Frain motioned him to wait, unbuckled his sword, and gave it into Fabron’s keeping. The gesture stunned me. As if he believed he might be tempted to draw it on me! I rode up and dismounted to face him, and I think I must have been ashamed even then, for I let him have the first words.

  I cannot remember all that was said. I was dismayed by the force of his anger, passionate anger, and something more—pain? Despair? I did not know, I could not understand. His words scorched my soul, and I put up a cold, cold shield. Iron of hatred. After a while I stopped trying to answer him. I let my hard face be my shield.

  I remember some. “She has left defeated,” Frain said softly, with a softness that struck me to the core; I could have stood it better if he had abused me. “She who is fit to fly with the flocks of Ascalonia and yet was snared by love of you, a mortal, and you defeated her love! You have dishonored her in her own eyes and all eyes that judge her. Are you proud, Tirell, to have bent the head of a goddess?”

  “She came to me of her own accord,” I answered sullenly.

  “She came to lift you out of your morass of hatred, to shame you into sense. But you had to drag her down with you, into your filthy wallow! She wept on my shoulder when you were done with her.” His voice went husky, and I had to shift my gaze; I could not meet his eyes. “She told me she had not believed you could take her lovelessly. As I have never believed you have lost all love for me.… But I begin to wonder now.”

  “Why, if it will please you,” I retorted coldly, “for the sake of your courtesy I will never bed a woman again.” I meant that as amends, in my twisted way, and as martyrdom. But Frain allowed for no martyrdom.

  “It does not please me,” he shot back. “A woman who loves should be lovingly bedded. And even in her shame Shamarra loves and serves you better than you know. I would have followed her for pity, but she would not allow it. She rode through Melior to prevent it.”

  “Why, you can follow her, for all of me,” I said coolly. “I will give you the badge of an emissary
to earn you safe conduct into Melior if you like.” What demon was in me! But I never really thought he would go. I trusted his brother-love for me even when I would not acknowledge it or endure its flame.

  “Give me the emblem,” he said grimly, and I flung the black and silver thing at him as I mounted my horse. Fabron came running up.

  “My lords, no!” he pleaded at both of us, and then to Frain: “Dear Prince, you cannot leave him now! Not after all the miles—” He took Frain by the shoulders, and Frain stood like a red-hot poker in his grip. If I had found the courage or the sense to stay then, I think—but thinking is of no use. I spurred away. I risked a glance just before I crossed the rise. Frain had softened; Fabron held him in his arms.

  Fabron would bring him back to me, I thought. I rode back to camp and slouched about for an hour, listless, waiting for Fabron and trying to pretend not to be waiting. Fabron came at last, with a look as if he could cheerfully skewer me.

  “Frain has gone into Melior,” he said roughly, “to see Shamarra and your mother, if he can. He says he will return.”

  I ignored the look and the tone. “Why, then he will return,” I murmured, fixing my mind on my brother’s faithfulness.

  “Small thanks to you if he does,” Fabron snapped. Men were watching; I thought I might have to fight him after all. But a soft voice spoke from behind both of us. There stood Grandfather with the black beast by his side.

  “Put away anger,” he said. “There is fear to be thought of. Abas is in Melior castle.”

  “What!” I shouted with dismay that cracked my mask of a face; I felt it split. “My report is that Abas is marching hither from Vaire, at the head of his army!”

  “No, Grandson,” Daymon said quietly, “he came back to Melior just before you did, secretly, for your mother lay ill and likely to die—and she lies dead now. It is his fault, so he keeps the news to himself—and the knowledge does not improve his temper. I cannot think how he is likely to greet Frain.”