“Laifrita thae, Alberic.” She called Trevyn by his elfin name. “Laifrita thae, Dair, how are you?”
Quite well, Grandmother, thank you. His voice was a murmur or a growl. Only these special ones could understand him, they who conversed with the animals as all men once had.
“Is it good, being a wolf?”
It is very good. The smells, and the air in my nostrils, the chase and the warm meat—He stopped with a sidelong look at Trevyn, afraid of being laughed at. He had only recently killed his first rabbit; more often he ate at the king’s table and slept by the king’s bed. But both Ylim and Trevyn listened to him soberly. “He is quite content,” Trevyn said, “and I am glad of it. But I wish I knew what is to become of him, Grandmother.”
“Look your fill,” she said.
Dair looked as well. Most folk when they looked on the work of that loom saw nothing. Some who saw could not remember afterward. But Dair saw and remembered well enough. Light, it was all light, not cloth; mauve and lavender light. Then a striking feral face appeared. Broad forehead, brows that darkly met, nostrils that pulsed, wideset amethyst eyes that moved to meet his—that were his. A human face, but unmistakably his connate face, his own.
“A regal face,” Trevyn said in a hushed voice. Even as he spoke the face shifted form, became a flower such as no one had ever seen before, a blossom made of fire and dew. It blazed and flamed; then as they blinked it dwindled and vanished into the orchid light. The web on the loom went gridelin gray—
Now what? Dair wondered, puzzled. Shadowy water—
It was a lake, the most still and waiting of lakes, its smooth surface glinting iron gray, willows on its verge hanging moss gray in breathless, sunless air. On the dim water a swan floated with scarcely a ripple.
“Strange water,” said Trevyn.
The swan was black, its image in the water, white. It had been hurt or crippled somehow, for one wing hung limp. But in a moment the wing had healed and it was flying, and it had turned white, pure shining white. It circled and flew nearer, near—the water drew nearer as well. But it was no longer the still lake water. It was purple tinged and restless. The swan vanished or became the whitecaps of that sea.
Ocean, Dair murmured.
A vast expanse. He knew that cold, swelling, limitless expanse that surrounded Isle—and amidst all that vastness a speck, a floating cockleshell, a mere bauble of a boat, a coracle—and in it a solitary—
Who is that?
“Watch,” said Ylim.
Closer, always closer. They could see the face now. A youth with russet hair, freckles on the high cheekbones, fine, rugged features and a keen, seeking look about his clear brown eyes. One hand was on a steering oar. The other hung useless from a shriveled arm and shoulder—Dair felt his heart turn over. Without knowing he had moved he found himself standing with his front paws on the frame of the loom, and in a blink the vision vanished. He faced featureless cloth.
“Who was it?” Ylim asked.
I—don’t know. But already he felt the mystic bond.
“You will know him well someday,” Ylim said.
“Perhaps you will voyage with him out on that sea,” Trevyn mused. Dair turned to him in sharp distress.
But Father, I never want to leave you.
Trevyn smiled, a warm, companionable smile. “It is in the nature of human young to leave their parents,” he said.
But I am a wolf. And it is in the nature of wolves to be loyal.
“You are more than wolf or human either,” said Ylim. “Whose was the face, the first one?”
Mine. He did not hesitate to claim it. She nodded.
“And it is the face of an immortal. You are the son of Maeve the Moon Mother and Trevyn Elfborn, he who brought the magic back from Elwestrand to Isle. That was a turning of the great tide, a greater marvel than you can well imagine, and you were born of that magic.” She eyed him sternly. “Dair, the web does not show its wonders for just anyone, you know. Fate may well take you away from your father and Isle.”
Dair only whimpered.
“He is very young,” Trevyn excused him. “That one on the boat—do you think he is part of Dair’s destiny?”
“He and the swan, somehow. Ay.”
“Who is he? Where does he come from?”
“How can I know?” Ylim grumbled. “I don’t direct my weaving, Alberic, any more than you direct your dreams.” For Trevyn’s dreams were the font of the magic of Isle.
“And the flower, the lake—”
“I don’t know.”
“And how Dair’s human form is to come to him—”
Ylim merely smiled.
“Answer me just this one question, Ylim,” Trevyn requested. “The large question. What part have you seen in the pattern for Dair?”
She hesitated. “Dair,” she said to the young wolf at last, “this is not binding. The pattern is ever changing. You may yet change it yourself.”
I understand, Dair said.
“The pattern then is this: that you shall continue what your father has begun. That you shall carry magic onward to the mainland.”
Fern flower, fire flower,
Burn, burn when the great tide turns.
Fern flower, show your power.
The Swan Lord will he there to see,
To grasp the stem that burns
And speak with thee,
learn melody,
and sing with wind and tree.
Fern flower, fire flower,
Bloom, bloom when the true time comes.
Fern flower, share your power.
The wandering wolf will bear your seed
And take you as his doom,
For all men free
your harmony.
The tide has turned indeed.
book one
DAIR
Chapter One
I am Dair. I am spirit, speaking to you mind to mind, for I know no other way to speak the languages of men. As a man I was a mute because I was born a wolf and stayed so until I was grown—until the day I found Frain.
I had dreamed of him ever since I had seen him on Ylim’s loom. It is hard to explain how much he meant to me, this bond brother I had never met. There was something in me that could not forget him. Perhaps it was the wolfwit, which forms attachments for life. Or perhaps it was my father’s ardent Laueroc blood. His forebears, the Sun Kings, had been blood brothers and legendary friends, and then there had been his own bond with the god in the grove—or perhaps it was something of the elf in him that would not let me lose sight of the Swan Lord who was coming. Whatever moved me, hardly a day went by that I did not think of the russet-haired youth as I had seen him, afloat on the lonely sea, his destiny somehow mixed in with mine. I wondered and longed for him all that year. I grew restless and took to roaming the downs even as far as the Westwood.
“Wanderlust,” Trevyn grumbled. “Dair, you young furbrained fool, would you please be careful? I worry about you when you are out alone.” There was still much hard feeling against wolves in Isle. It had been only a few years since the war when evil sorcery had turned them to a horror, and even Trevyn’s good magic could not erase that memory.
No one can come near me, I bragged. I go like a shadow on the wind. I was well grown, strong and swift as mountain water.
“Indeed.” Trevyn sat back studying me, and for some reason he sighed. He had a human child now, an infant, his legal heir, but always he greeted me with warmth and joy. Truly, I had not meant to go so far from him. But fate had its finger on me. My second snowy winter came and my unrest deepened as the snow.
Sometime after the solstice of that winter I left. The dream of the bond brother was on me, I felt the focus of his coming in the east, and I ran that way to meet him.
I journeyed far faster than any horse. I needed only a coney caught in the snow or a mouse or two and then I was off, padding, night and day, slipping like a slate blue shadow across Isle. For some weeks I went straight as an arrow, straigh
t as arrowflight in silence, until I came to the eastern shore. There on the shingle beach I sat, trying to whiff the smell of destiny in the wind that came across the salt water. Finally I lay down, curling my warm tail over my nose. I lay there for three days.
I was stubbornly waiting. I would not move to hunt for food even though deer ran by within a hundred feet. Snow fell and covered me. Then the clouds drew away and a cold, cold night came. Every star showed, and all the stardark between, and all the warmth of earth seemed to have vanished into that void. There was a looming feeling in the night or in me. I got up and stretched myself for a moment and looked out over the dim ocean, feeling myself tiny in the sight of those twin eyes, sea and sky. There was a steady lapping sound out on the far water that I could not identify. Even my nose told me nothing. All night I sat and watched the dark water and saw nothing. I remembered such dark water from an old woman’s loom.
In the morning some instinct sent me northward a little way, and there he lay, naked, the salt spray turning to white rime ice on him.
Frain. The Swan Lord. I did not yet know him by those names, but I knew how important he was to me, and for a horrible moment I thought he was dead. He was lying on the hard, seawashed sand below the high tide ledge, his red hair snarled like wrack, his face far too pale—as pale as sand and snow. But he still breathed, I saw. I lay down right on top of him, trying to warm him with my thick fur, and at that touch a pang of yearning made me howl aloud and the change came on me all in a moment.
It was not of my doing or deciding. These things are often awkward—I might have been of more use to him as a wolf. But it came on me willy-nilly, amid a welter of emotions, compassion—it is the most human of emotions—and longing—I wanted his smile, I had come all this way to meet him, to be his friend, his human friend, it seemed.… Cold is what I remember first. The day was as bitterly cold as the night had been. Cold air and cold snow and sand—my fur was gone. I was practically hairless. How humans were to be pitied, to be always so naked beneath their clothes, so cold! I pitied myself heartily. My limbs shot out, long, and my heart pounded within great broad ribs. My muzzle disappeared. My vision blurred for a moment, then righted itself, and hands waved foolishly in front of my face. I was terrified, startled beyond telling. I sprang up to run off. But my limbs would no longer serve me wolf fashion, and I fell over on my side, thrashing. One foot struck Frain, and he groaned.
I had hurt him. I wanted to howl again.
Instead I quieted myself, gathered my wits a moment. Then I struggled up enough to balance on one front paw—hand. I used the other to tug and shake at him. His only reaction was to swallow. I tugged harder, then managed to sit on my haunches and get both hands free. I grasped him under the shoulders, pushed with my feet and sprawled over backwards, pulling him a little farther from the sea. I wanted to get him out of reach of the tide, though it meant dragging him into the snow. But I was barely able to wriggle out from under him. A few more such efforts and I was exhausted.
I was very weak. I had not eaten in too long a time for a human, it seemed. And I was cold, shivering, a horrible, strange sensation to me. I felt terribly afraid. I would freeze, we would both freeze, unless I found us help—
I tried to rise on my long hind legs, to walk man fashion. I fell. Again I tried, and again I fell, and again and again. I gave in and tried to go on four legs, but all my speed and grace and strength had left me; I could go no better than a snail. The nearest dwelling might be miles.… Despair washed over me like an incoming tide, and I bowed my head to the ground. This bond brother I had found, I was failing him in every way. I could not carry him to shelter, and I had no longer even any fur to warm him. I had thought that once we were together all things would come to rights, but we were naked, helpless, no better than mewling babes. I whimpered like the babe in its basket back at Laueroc. Then I whined dismally. Finally I raised my head and gave forth with a longdrawn, loud and woebegone howl.
And from the distance an answering shout came.
Trevyn. I should have known he would be anxious, that he would be searching for me, babe or no babe—I should have known. Dear Trevyn. I rose to my knees so that he could see me. He came thundering toward me over the wealds at the head of a half dozen men, looking angry and frightened both at once. When he saw me the look changed to one of astonishment. He brought his horse right up to me, pulling it to a plunging halt.
“Dair?” he cried out. “Dair!”
Thrown off balance, I fell over again. Hot liquid had started down my face at the sight of him. Tears. I would have known what it was if I had thought, but I was appalled by the feeling and by the spasms that had hold of me, the sobs. Trevyn knelt beside me and put his arms around me, folded me into the shelter of his cloak and of his embrace, trying to comfort me.
“Dair,” he whispered, “Dair, my son,” and he rocked me gently in his arms. “It will be better soon, truly it will.”
How did he know what I was feeling, the fear, the pain? But of course he would. He was wise. With some small surprise I saw that he was weeping too. Somehow his tears strengthened me. I straightened, looking for the youth I had found by the sea. The men had already brought him up beside us.
“It is he,” Trevyn breathed. “The one—”
We saw in Ylim’s web. I know.
Trevyn reached over and felt at him, checking his breathing and pulse.
“He’s more than half dead,” one of the men said.
“Cover him warmly and get him in all haste to Nemeton. There are doctors there.” Trevyn fastened his cloak around me and stood up, helping me up as well, supporting me.
“You are as tall as I,” he marveled.
It was true. We were two youths. He was twenty, and I looked about the same—we might have been brothers or comrades. But I might as well have been a child just then.
It hurts, I whimpered, meaning my legs and everything in general. The sounds that left my mouth were mere noises, but Trevyn understood in much the same way that he had always understood.
“I know,” he said. “Or I can imagine.… Perhaps I cannot. Try to rest as we ride.”
He got me onto his horse, carrying me sideways in the saddle before him. We cantered southward along the shore toward the port city of Nemeton with the men taking turns carrying Frain. I settled into a time of numb endurance measured out in the rhythm of the horses’ hooves. A memory floated up from deep mind. Trevyn had carried me like this before, but I had been very young then, still in my first fur.
It was dusk before we made the castle. Frain was taken to a sickchamber amid a tumult of excitement caused by our arrival. Trevyn sat me down in front of a blazing fire and saw to it himself that I ate. Then he put me into the royal bed that the lord of that place had meant for him, and he rubbed my strange, stiff limbs with his warm hands until I was able to sleep. It was the first time I had slept between sheets.
He was sitting by my side when I awoke in the morning.
That one I found? I asked.
“Much the same.” Trevyn reached out to touch me, awkwardly, for no reason. “Dair, why did you go away?”
I had to. The call was on me.
“And I did not understand or see what was happening to you. So there you were all alone when you needed me most.”
You came when I needed you most, I said. He did not reply, and I lay thinking.
The change, I added—I had to face it alone.
So here I was in human form. But I was not likely to make a very satisfactory human, I sensed. And my bond brother, what of him? All of life seemed in confusion.
I do not want to leave you again, I said to Trevyn. But we both knew I must.
Chapter Two
Being on two legs was a nuisance. It took me several days just to learn to stand and walk without help. The height made me dizzy and made everything look strange. And there were matters of modesty to be dealt with, where to relieve myself and clothing, which was a constant bother. I wore as little as possible
. And eating. Luckily I had been accustomed to cooked meats, so it was only the manner of eating that was strange to me. I could no longer put my face down to a plate on the floor. I had to sit and use a cup and convey the food to my mouth with my hands. No mention was made of knife and fork, for which I was grateful. The hands were clumsy enough. So was the mouth.
“Move your lips,” Trevyn would say to me gently from time to time. “They are shaped like mine now. Make speech.”
“Awaaa,” I would say, or perhaps “Rawawarrr.” I could manage nothing more. Trevyn would repeat a simple word to me, “meat” or “water,” trying to help me. But I could not be helped. I had missed learning something that human young learn while I was a wolf.
For that first week, while I was struggling with human form, the stranger I had found lay abed and did not fully come to himself. He could be roused and given wine and bread and broth, so he grew no weaker. He talked. But he talked only to himself, his dreams or shadows on the wall, and in a language no one could understand. He did not know where he was, the doctors said.
As soon as I could walk the distance I went with Trevyn to see him.
He sat propped up on pillows, his hair bright and fine as feathers against the white linen, his crippled left arm beside him and the other folded across his chest. A doctor and servants stood by his bedside shaking their heads. The stranger youth was talking steadily to no one at all. His voice ran like a river between walls, behind weirs, calm, forceful, controlled. He might have been addressing a council. Trevyn sat beside him and listened, frowning.
“I thought I knew every language of the overseas lands,” he said, “but this one is new to me.”
The youth talked through the afternoon and into the night. The doctor could neither soothe him into slumber nor rouse him to sense. Trevyn kept his seat, trying for some kind of understanding. It was very hard to hear emotion in that level voice. A few times there might have been a hint of anger or plea. And as dark fell I thought I began to hear weariness. No—more than weariness.
The Book of Isle Page 94
