“I—” Frain looked down, uncomfortable. “I was—quarreling with my brother.”
“Oh?” said Trevyn, prodding for better truth. Quarreling was hardly the word.
“Really, my lord, it was nothing, it was of no significance. Dreams are unaccountable things.” Frain looked quite pained. Trevyn had mercy on him, or a partial mercy.
“This brother of yours—you say he is a True King, and yet he ravished your beloved, crippled you—”
“He was not himself,” Frain said hotly. “If you knew what he had gone through—” He would have sprung to sword for Tirell’s sake, I felt sure of it. How odd! He who had been ready to kill him a few hours before—
“The suffering comes before the kingship,” Trevyn remarked.
“Yes.” Frain gave Trevyn a wondering glance, all his heat cooled. “Yes, my lord, you know, you understand. I—remember how he wept after he had wounded me. Then I fainted, and by the time I awoke he had come back from madness, he was better, truly better, warm and whole as I had not known him to be since—since it had started. He was the brother I had always loved. He took my hand and met my eyes with love and sorrow, and the land itself hailed him, and all the people were rejoicing because the blessing of the goddess was on him—”
“So how could you be so petty as to sulk about a little thing like an arm?” Trevyn put in dryly.
“An arm and a true love.” Frain tried to match Trevyn’s tone and his smile, but could not. “I went away,” he added.
“To find Ogygia and lay your case before the goddess.”
“No, that came later. First I went to the lake to find Shamarra. But everything had changed. The swan had gone black and was as crippled as I, and the water itself was fearsome. When I looked in I saw—never mind.” His eyes shifted and he hastened on. “There was a woman there, a sort of queenly goddess, and she told me that the wrath of Adalis was on Shamarra because of her overweening. She had been transformed into a night bird and sent to wander the wind.”
Trevyn looked both startled and intense. “What did you say is the name of your goddess?”
“There are many names. Every woman’s name is a name of the goddess. There is Eala the swan and the white horse Epona, and Morrghu the raven of war, and Vieyra the hell hag, and Suevi, Rae, Mela—dozens of others. But the mother of Vale is Adalis.”
“I thought you said that. I heard, but I could not believe my ears.” Trevyn put a palm to his hurt brow with a sigh. “Frain, if you can say that most holy name so offhandedly without the castle stones flying from their places and raining destruction on your head, truly you must be of immortal kind.”
“Really?” Frain said that softly, but his excitement grew as he talked, he leaned forward and his voice rose. “You mean you call her by that same name, and she is here, she can respond to you? Do you really mean that?”
“She is here as much as anywhere,” Trevyn said with some small wonder, for the goddess makes every land her own.
“Why, then,” Frain breathed, “this must be Ogygia after all.”
“Perhaps. If you say so. I am surprised that it has taken you so long to find it.”
“Have you ever tried to find a legendary land?” Frain asked, a hint of vexation in his steady voice. “I never knew there were so many lands that lay beyond Vale. I trudged across them, places and places of them, and no one had ever heard of Ogygia, all they could do was point me toward this one and that one who might know, and I asked them all to no avail. Follow the setting sun, they said, and find the ocean. And when I found it at last, I walked the length of that vast shoreline looking for Ogygia or news of Ogygia: And I had never seen an immensity like that of the sea.” Frain’s voice was tinged with awe and terror. “I knew when I saw it that it was as the woman by the lake had said, that I could no sooner reach Ogygia than the crippled swan. But I had to try.”
Trevyn sighed in vexation of his own. He had indeed been to legendary lands, and he badly wanted to explain to Frain the ways of the All-Mother. But he knew that Frain had to find her on his own.
“There is an island far, far west of here,” he said finally, “where the elves have made their home, the ancient folk. There I spoke with the goddess once on her mountain of the moon. The name of that island is Elwestrand. Wild swans fly there. But you cannot go there unless she sends one of her swimming ships for you.”
Frain’s face sagged. “Why, it sounds as if I must go there nevertheless,” he whispered.
“I think not. But we will speak to her soon and see what she has to say to you.”
“Where? How?” Frain rose to his feet in his excitement, and Trevyn could not help smiling.
“As soon as the weather has broken and you are strong. In a suitable place. Patience!”
Chapter Four
The thaw came, and then the early spring sun. Catkins sprouted on the twigs. Frain felt ready to travel, so on a bright morning we made our way out of Nemeton. Trevyn and Frain rode in cavalcade and I walked by Trevyn’s side. Once out of town, on the wealds, they put their horses to the trot, and I ran. I had learned to run again, on two legs now, and it felt glorious to be out in the air again, reveling in the tangle of lusty springtime smells and the feel of strong limbs—but my speed was pitiful compared to what it once had been.
I can barely keep up, I complained to Trevyn, and he slowed the pace.
“By human standards,” he said, “you are an extraordinary runner. Certainly the fastest I have ever seen.”
Having only two legs is a bother, I mourned.
“Well, then, ride, as I do. You will have four again.”
I faced the prospect doubtfully. Even my own human height was still sometimes dizzying to me, and the horse was higher yet. Still, I knew they could not always be waiting for me.
“Or share a mount with me,” Trevyn added.
I felt Frain’s chilly glance on me. At once pride took over, and I got on a horse of my own. I learned to ride within a few minutes. It was not hard. I had only to keep my balance and try to come to agreement with the steed. I spoke to the horse as I would to any fellow creature, and I never learned a man’s way of dominating it. No matter. We rode pleasantly. By midmorning we crested the uplands and paused to look back on Nemeton. We could see for miles the course of the deep river that flowed down from the Great Eastern Forest, and just beyond the city we could see anchorage and the masts of ships and the gray glint of the sea. But we turned our backs on the sea for the time, riding toward the north and west.
We were going to a place just at the southern skirts of the Forest, a place where the river forked and formed a sort of island, where there was a sacred grove. The Wyrdwood, it was called. If the goddess had to be summoned she was more likely to come amiably there than anywhere else in Isle.
I grew to enjoy riding over the next few days. It was indeed rather like having four legs again. I think Frain liked riding too. He needed only one hand to hold the reins, and he could do it as well as anyone. In fact, he rode as well as Trevyn. It was not hard to tell that he had been a prince, that he had been born to ride. But he would not wear a sword. Trevyn had brought him one with a cloak when we were making ready, and he had refused it.
“The shield arm won’t work for me anymore. I have no defense,” he said, shrugging. “I do better to stay out of trouble.”
Trevyn had raised his brows at this talk of defenselessness, but of course he could not tell Frain he knew better. “It is only for show in Isle anyway,” he had said. “Wear it. You are of rank.”
“I gave up both rank and swordsmanship some years ago,” Frain had said.
So he rode swordless. What an oddling he was. I did not care, I liked him. There was the bond on us, but I liked him for himself as well. Alas, he felt no such liking for me. He stiffened with discomfort when I rode beside him.
“Nille tha riste, Dair,” Trevyn told me privately. “Do not despair.”
We came to the holy grove on the third day. Trevyn led us in, and the tre
es loomed above us, hushed and mighty. That place was full of magic, anyone could feel it. All the magic in Isle centered there. Frain rode steadily, and I knew once again that he was brave, for more than one man of the company went pale with fear. The retainers were afraid to look behind them, knowing that they would see no way out, that the grove we had just entered would seem to go on pathless and forever. Trevyn saw their terror and had them stop.
“Wait here,” he told them. “We three will go on to the center alone.”
So Frain and Trevyn and I rode down the spiraling spaces between the giant boles. Trevyn knew the way quite surely. He sensed the center. It drew him, it was in him. He had been born here, in a way.
The center was only a circle of green meadow around a young and growing tree. A unicorn grazed there. It moved off when it saw us, its solitude disturbed. White flowers that looked like lacework grew there. The tree was in new leaf, and the leaves were jade green and amethyst, sapphire, ruby red and tourmaline red and topaz. They glowed in the sunlight, and they sent flakes of it skimming across the grass at every stir of the breeze.
“This is her tree,” Trevyn said.
We got down and let the horses graze. “Alys!” Trevyn called, not loudly. “Mother of us all, come to us, if you please.”
“What was that you called her?” Frain whispered.
“Her sooth-name.” Trevyn barely glanced at him, for he was listening, alert. “Not so very different from your name for her.”
“You think it is the same goddess?”
“How can it be otherwise? There is only one goddess, despite the many names. And she is only one aspect of the One who has no name,” he added. “Alys!” he called again, and then we sat on the grass. We sat until nightfall and on into the forest night which is all shadow and no light. From time to time through the long wait Frain glanced doubtfully at Trevyn. He sat undisturbed, and Frain sat as well.
With night came the goddess. She was only a rustle of breeze at first. Then a cool voice spoke from the neighborhood of the sacred tree. “Alberic,” she asked, for that was Trevyn’s true-name, “what do you want?”
“A favor for a friend, Lady,” said Trevyn to the voice. It was no use flattering the goddess or being less than forthright with her.
“Ask anything you like for yourself, King of Isle, but ask nothing for your friend. He does not know me.” She sounded annoyed. “You have summoned me here—”
“It is for myself, Alys, for my heart has gone out to him. Help him. Please.”
“He has no wisdom. He is no better than a child.”
“As I was when you first knew me. If he is ignorant, then he needs your guidance the more. Mother, he has felt the touch of your hand, I know he has.”
Frain sat by himself, trembling at the strangeness of the voice in the night and not able to understand what was being said, for of course Alys and Trevyn spoke in the Old Language. I wanted to go to Frain, but I knew he would take no comfort from my closeness.
Alys sighed, a breath of wind.
“Alberic, you greathearted nuisance—” she said, and there was a puff of red light, red as fire, and the most horrible of hags confronted us from midair. It struck terror into me, I felt my sweat run, and it wrung a stifled scream from Frain.
“The Lady is out of humor,” Trevyn said tightly in Traderstongue, speaking to Frain. “She is not usually so—unlovely.”
“He knows that,” Alys snapped. In quick succession she took form as swan, red roe deer, raven, white horse, and a woman holding three red apples in her hands. She was blonde, gray eyed, grave. “Adalis,” Frain whispered.
“I am all of these and more,” Alys acknowledged. Suddenly a shimmering beauty stood in the night, a woman who shone like running water, her hair a silky torrent of silvergold, her soft green robe flowing to her feet. Frain jumped up with a cry. “Shamarra!” he gasped, but as he moved the vision shifted shape. A ragged brown bird stood there instead.
“Why did you do it to her, why!” Frain shouted, sobbing, plunging forward. But on the instant the bird stretched hugely, horribly, a nightmare thing, it was a feathered serpent rippling up over our heads, then something with horns, then something with a woman’s laughing, shrieking head—all fast, too fast to fathom. It hissed and writhed and menaced, sending Frain staggering back with the shock of it. I caught him as he nearly fell, and in an instant Trevyn was beside us as well, and the goddess laughed and laughed in the night.
“Why does she laugh?” Frain asked Trevyn from between clenched teeth.
“She says you are a fool to think Shamarra still stands and weeps.”
More words came as the goddess’s amusement calmed somewhat.
“She says Shamarra is not one to weep for long. Did she not send her minions against Tirell even before you left Vale, overstepping her authority? She was punished, but at this very moment she coldly plans her more fitting and lasting revenge. Frain, beware, Alys says. Shamarra makes a puissant enemy.”
“But Shamarra is not my enemy!” Frain cried. “She is my beloved!”
The goddess had quieted and taken her most fair and simple form, a moonlike orb, pearly white. It flared briefly in warning, white fire, and Trevyn put an arm around Frain.
“She says you are your own worst enemy. Hush, do not argue, listen. She speaks.”
She told us the tale of the crippled swan, and as she did so Trevyn told it to Frain in words he could understand.
In ancient times in Vale, it seemed, there had been two princes, twins, one light and one dark. They were sons of the goddess. And the light one was raised as the king’s favored son, and he was called Doray, meaning Golden. But the dark one was taken as an infant to Acheron and left there to die. The All-Mother in form of Eala the swan took pity on him and gathered him under her wing, and he lived.
Doray knew nothing of his brother. But in an inner sense he always missed him, and he grew up warmthless and fey. One day when he was yet small he tore from his nurse’s grasp and hurled himself over the battlements. He survived the fall, but it left him with a crippled, useless arm. “I was only trying to fly,” he said.
The king’s vassals would not accept the odd, crippled boy as heir, and when Doray was a youth they rose up against his father and him. The king was killed and Doray fled to Acheron, where he knew no one would follow him. He walked through the twisted trees and climbed the crags of despair. He came to the dark lake and stepped into it, and because he was of immortal sort he became a swan, a fair swan white as asphodel, white as white lotus. But his wing hung useless in the water, and still he could not fly. A black reflection looked back at him from the water.
“Who are you?” he asked it.
“I am Arget,” the black swan replied, “your brother, whom you have never known. Search for me.”
“But how can you be my brother, you who are black?”
“Search for me,” Arget said.
Doray left the lake and was human once more.
So he went on yet again, through the forest of fear, up the barrier mountains. In time he found a youth sleeping—it was Arget. A warm feeling went through him that he had never known. He awakened him, and they embraced.
They wandered, befriending each other. When they felt the bond complete, they made their way back to the dark and mirroring lake. Both stepped in together. Then a single white swan floated there, and its image in the water, white, and its wing was well and whole.
“You can fly now,” Arget said from the lake, the reflection said. “I am at one with you now, as I ought to be. Fly.”
The goddess grew still. The tale was done.
“Did he fly away?” Frain asked after a silence.
“Who knows? The tale is your own, Frain, and you will show us the end to it.”
“But how so?” Frain creased his brow in puzzlement. “Do I have a brother of whom I know nothing?”
“The dark twin, the one within. You have seen him.”
Frain shuddered and seemed to shrink
back. “What does all this have to do with Shamarra?” he asked.
“Little enough.”
“But—”
“Shamarra wants nothing but vengeance,” the goddess warned. “And your love of her means nothing, not even protection, for you will not be able to face her until you have touched the opposing threads of your own life.”
Trevyn translated that with some difficulty. “Threads?” Frain murmured in bewilderment when he was done.
“As on the loom,” the goddess said impatiently. “Must I explain everything? No good will come to you until dog meets wolf. You are but a puppy now, in puppy love—is it truly Shamarra you seek?”
The question caused Frain some unease. He stood breathing heavily. “If Shamarra is death, yes,” he said at last.
“Shamarra is danger, but your death will not be so easy to come by. You are an immortal, by your own folly, and your destiny is woven into the pattern. Shamarra is an aspect of Vieyra the hag who is a form of my being which is a mask worn by the nameless One who is infinite—and you are the merest thread in the cloak of the infinite, Frain. You are a fleck, a cloud wisp, a leaf floating on the turning tide, no more.”
He stood silent.
“No, Frain, it is your own deliverance you seek,” Alys said in tones of boredom, the moonlike circle of light said, faintly pulsing.
“Shamarra—” Frain began. He must have been bewitched to cleave so to thoughts of Shamarra.
“She does not care about you,” the goddess snapped. “And she will squash you like a fly if you come between her and her prey. Now listen, if you are to be of any use.”
“Use to whom?” Frain asked warily.
“Such temerity.” The goddess did not sound amused. “Listen, I say. When fire weds with flood, redemption will come to you, no sooner. When you have known the power of the fern flower, it will come to you. That is your quest. Go now.”
“But where?”
“East.” The moonform of the goddess dimmed into dusk, then darkness. “Maeve and Dair will help you,” added a voice in the night. A breeze blew, and then all was silent.
The Book of Isle Page 96
