The White Hart

by Nancy Springer

  From the little chest at his feet, Adaoun reverently took up The Book of Suns. From this he read in the Ancient Tongue, the only language he knew. Rafe translated for the sake of the witnesses: “And it shall come to pass that a truly great lord of the land of Isle shall have two sons. One shall be by his mendor, a daughter of the house of Veran, and the other by a gentle lady to whom be shall be wed by chance of custom. And these two brothers shall not know each other, but shall grow in courage and goodness, each in his own way. Manhood shall be thrust early upon them, and great misfortune, and they shall meet strong enemies. In the course of their struggle they shall find and aid each other, and love one another as if they had been raised together from birth, though they shall not know of their bond. And the goals of their two lives shall become one."

  Hal glanced at his bride and, seeing that she understood, smiled and pressed her hand.

  “The son of Veran's line shall be he to whom all your dreams should turn. People of Peace. He shall be the means of your leaving to the land I have promised you; he shall be the savior of Isle and Welas, and the consummation of the Age. The blood of elves shall flow strong in him, giving him knowledge, power, and vision beyond those of other mortals; yet he shall know the love and pain of a mortal heart. Men shall stand in awe of him, and call him Healer, Ruler, Welandais Prince, and Sunset King. But your name for him shall be Mireldeyn —'Elf-Man.’ And these shall be the signs: that he shall come to you, unbidden, on a steed of the elfin blood, with the marks of suffering on his body, and the Old Language on his tongue, and the vision of the legends in his eyes. His only magic and his only power shall reside in himself.

  “But men's dreams shall find fulfillment in his brother, for he shall begin a new Age of peace for mortal men. A great-hearted man, like Veran before him, he also shall win the love of an elf maiden —"

  Alan stood, scarcely listening, with his arm around Lysse.

  “—so that his heirs may be blessed with elfin wisdom and vision. The knowledge of the Old Language, and of many mysteries, shall be his. Men shall love and honor him, calling him Elfstone, the Golden One, and Sunrise King. But your name for him shall be Elwyndas —'Elf-Friend.’ And these shall be the signs to you: that the ash maiden shall find love for him in her heart, and intervene for his sake, and lead him to you; and he shall fearlessly find the knowledge of the Old Language and its secrets in her eyes."

  Adaoun closed the Book, speaking now more slowly and thoughtfully. “This is called The Book of Suns. It tells of the rising and setting of many kinds of suns—the suns of all men's days, the suns of many men's lives, the suns of all the ages of history for both men and elves. But all of these are bound up and reach their culmination in the two sons who stand before you, sons of a truly noble man. From their first meeting, though they did not know each other, they loved each other as brothers, and now they find that they are brothers in truth. They were born on the same day, in the same hour; there is no thought of younger or elder between them. They are at one with each other, just as the sun which sets at night is the same sun which rises in the morning. In Mireldeyn, you see the splendid setting of the sun that rose with Veran. In Elwyndas, you see the splendid rising of the sun of a new Age, dawning, like the Age of Veran before him, in peace and love. Whether peace and love shall endure, mortal men, depends on each of you ....

  “This is a moment of great weight in your history, folk of the Second Song. The One has said that, if you will it, the sun can set forever on the wreakers of war and oppression. The tide of their onslaught can be turned for all time, if this land of Isle stands strong in its path. Aene has given you two men, the likes of which you will never see again, for this, your time of need. He has given you two who are something more than men, who face the specters of pride and greed and dare them to do their worst. They have shared the chances of life and death. They have fulfilled all the prophecies of The Book of Suns, except this last one, and they shall fulfill that one also: that greed and pride shall have no dominion, but all men shall live in harmony. Long, prosperous, and peaceful shall be the reign of Laueroc!"

  The people cheered. Hal smiled a tiny smile, thanking Adaoun for what he had not said.

  “Therefore,” continued Adaoun, and his voice was suddenly awesome in its majesty, “I say to you, mortal men, that it is meet that these two sons who have shared their peril and yours should also share the reward which means so much less to them than their love. For the first time in your annals or ours, I show to you Kings equal in power, goodness, stature and love—I show to you the Sons of Laueroc. I show to you the final Chapter of The Book of Suns —I show to you the Sun Kings!"

  At the beckoning of Adaoun's imperious eyes, Hal and Alan stepped forward and stood before him. A roar went up from the crowd, echoing to the sky, and fell off all at once to a waiting silence. Hal and Alan dropped to one knee.

  Adaoun placed the silver crown on Hal's head. “I crown you first, Mireldeyn,” he murmured, “only because you are the child of the old Age, which came before the new."

  He next placed on Alan's head the crown of gold. “All the blessings of Aene be on you both,” be whispered, and raised them.

  They stood before the multitudes of their people, their friends. They were crowned in rays of glory like the suns from which they took their titles. Thousands knelt before them with faces uplifted in glowing Joy, with hands raised in greeting, with voices raised in shouts of praise. Hal and Alan stood, and then, knees weakened before the adulation as they never had before hostile armies, and they turned to each other for support, only to see tears shining in each other's eyes. Almost laughing, they embraced in their grip of brotherhood, pummeling each other, and then they stretched out hands to their brides, holding them tight as the shouts of their people blended into a mighty chant of triumph.

  Robin and Cory brought them their horses. As they rode toward their hilltop bowers, the crowd pressed around them, and flowers filled the air. Somewhere, music started, and feasting began. Their whole world rejoiced, for their happiness was the happiness of their people.

  Epilogue

  A week's gentle journeying brought them to the Bay of the Blessed. It was just the four of them—Hal, Rosemary, Alan and Lysse—with the entire race of elves. They bad experienced one last whiff of eternity. The days of pleasant riding melted together in memory, leaving only an image of glowing days and balmy nights. The Kings did not wear the heavy crowns of Veran; Hal wore his plain circlet, and Alan a similar one of gold that Hal had given him. They rode with heads held high, and their wives regarded them with proud, loving eyes. In all those days, Rosemary did not ask the question reposing at the back of her mind. She knew, as simply as a mother with child knows, that the time was not yet.

  They arrived in midmorning of the eighth day. For the past two days they had seen no one but themselves, for this was a forbidden place, protected by the spirits of the legendary gods. The Bay of the Blessed shimmered silver-gray between shale shores and shadowy evergreens. At the mouth of the Gleaming River rode three gray ships at anchor, silent as ghosts.

  “Veran prepared them for us,” Adaoun explained, “when the prophecies became known to him."

  “They have stayed whole all these years?” Rosemary gasped.

  “They have stayed whole. There is power in living wood, and there was great power in his hands."

  There were no supplies needed for the voyage to El-westrand, nor any sails, for that is a singular journey. The elves lingered a while, talking with their friends, and ate a last meal before they embarked. The horses, all except Wynnda, had been given as gifts to Hal and Alan and the House of Laueroc.

  “We closed the valley,” Adaoun explained. “We blocked the entry with great rocks, and Wynnda flew us out. It comforts us to know that the creatures will always live there, the great eagles and the shy deer, without fear of men. We know you would have done what you could, Mireldeyn and Elwyndas, but a mortal's span is but short ...."

  “We understand,”
Hal replied quietly.

  After a while there was nothing more to say, and the elves slowly boarded. The four stood silently on the shore as, swimming like swans, the gray ships slid away with a lapping of ripples against their wooden flanks. Everyone waved. Hal held Rosemary's hand. Alan put an arm around Lysse's waist as she watched her brothers, sisters and loving father slip away from her, bound for El-westrand across the Western Sea. Her eyes held a strange, sad joy.

  “Farewell—farewell!” cried the elves, until their cries became one with the salt cries of the sea birds. Adaoun, at the prow of the largest ship, was soon only a dark post against the silver sea.

  They watched until the ships became birdlike shapes against the setting sun, disappearing into its embrace. Then the sun sank, and they could see the ships no more. Rosemary broke silence at last, for she felt the trembling of Hal's hand and heard the straining of his heart.

  “You wish you were going with them,” she said gently, “do you not?"

  He turned to her, his gray eyes awash with the mystery of the gray sea. “Ay,” he whispered. “Ay. But there is so much healing to be done, in Isle .... I am fated to be left behind to carry on."

  Hal and Rosemary, Alan and Lysse camped on the shore that night, with the lapping of the waves and the crying of the sea birds in their ears. When the new day dawned, they turned their faces to the rising sun and rode back toward the world of green meadows and mortal men.

  So the battle's won, the consummation

  Now at hand, the living sweet;

  And still the Wheel is every turning,

  Tear by year the hill fires burning;

  Vision flits upon the moonlit waters.

  So if ever I should lose the love of men

  And choose to walk again

  My own fey, lonely way,

  Do not grieve, Love, but say

  That once, a summer day,

  You held me in the meadow sunlight,

  Kissed me in the meadow sun,

  And in that sunlit meadow closed my eyes.

  — a song of Hervoyel

  The Sable Moon

  Book One

  FATE AND THE MAIDEN

  Chapter One

  Prince Trevyn was seventeen years old, and still struggling out of childhood like an eaglet out of the shell, when he first met Gwern. It was not a happy meeting.

  Trevyn had galloped far ahead of the others, because his half-fledged falcon had led him a crazy course over the grassy downs. Muttering to himself and whistling at the bird, he topped a rise and saw a herd of yearling colts in the dingle below. Small heads, arched necks, level backs, and high-set, windswept tails—young though they were, everything about them marked them unmistakably as steeds of the royal breed. A stranger stood with them, stroking a chestnut filly on the nose.

  “You, there!” Trevyn shouted hotly. “Let the horses alone!”

  The fellow glanced at him without moving. Trevyn sent his mount plunging down the slope toward him.

  “Let the horses alone, I say!” he called again as he approached.

  The stranger, a youth of about his own age, met his angry eyes coolly. “Why so?”

  Trevyn almost sputtered at the calm question. Did the dolt not know that he was Trevyn son of Alan of Laueroc, that he was Prince of Isle and Welas, sole heir of the Sun Kings? The elwedeyn horses had been the special pride of the Crown ever since his kindred the elves had presented them, before his birth. No uninstructed hand was permitted to touch them. Indeed, they would not lightly suffer the touch of any hand. The royal family commanded their love through the use of the Old Language that had come down to them from the Beginning.… Quietly, Trevyn ordered the chestnut filly away from the stranger. It unnerved him that she permitted that hand upon her at all.

  The stranger looked up at him with eyes like pebbles, expressionless. “Why did you do that? Are these horses yours?”

  “Ay, they are mine,” replied Trevyn, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. Perhaps the yokel was a half-wit. There was something odd about his face.

  “You are a fool to say so.” The fellow turned away indifferently and stroked another horse, a cream-colored one. “These horses belong to no one.”

  Trevyn’s temper flared, all the more so because the other was right, in a sense. Galled, he sprang down from his mount and jerked the stranger by the arm. “Get away, I say!”

  Still expressionless, the youth pulled from his grasp and lashed back with a closed fist. In an instant, both of them were flailing at each other, then rolling in a tussle on the grass. Trevyn wore a sword, and after a bit he wished he could honorably use it. The stranger was as hard and resilient as an axe haft, and his blows hurt.

  Before the fight reached a conclusion, however, the combatants found themselves hauled apart. “Now what,” inquired a quiet voice, “is the cause of this?”

  Trevyn blinked out of a blackened eye. It was his uncle, Hal, the King of the Silver Sun; and though he did not look angry, Trevyn hated to cause him sorrow. Trevyn’s father, King Alan, faced him as well, and he looked angry enough for two.

  “Surely,” Hal remarked, “this row must have had a beginning?”

  “He was bothering the horses,” Trevyn accused, and pointed, childlike, at the stranger.

  “The horses don’t look bothered,” Alan scoffed harshly.

  The horses, apparently pleased by the excitement, had formed a circle of curious heads. The chestnut filly stretched her neck and nuzzled the stranger youth’s hand.

  Hal and Alan exchanged a surprised glance. “Fellow,” Alan addressed the stranger, “what is your name?”

  “Gwern.” The youth spoke flatly.

  “And who are your parents?”

  “I have none.” Gwern did not seem to find this the least bit remarkable.

  “Who were you born of?” asked Alan with more patience than was his wont. “Who was your mother?”

  For the first time Gwern hesitated, seeming at a loss. “Earth,” he said at last.

  Alan frowned and tried another tack. “Where is your home?”

  “Earth,” Gwern replied.

  They all stared at him, not sure whether or not he was deliberately courting Alan’s anger. He stared back at them with eyes like stream-washed stones, indeterminately brown. He was brown all over, his skin a curious dun, his hair like hazel tips. He was barefoot, and his clothing was of coarse unbleached wool, when most folk of these peaceful times could afford better. What was he doing in the middle of the downs, with the nearest dwelling miles away?

  “Take him along home,” Hal suggested mildly, “and I’ll look him up in the census.”

  When he was king, Trevyn promised himself, he would set such nuisances in a dungeon for a week or so, to teach them some respect. Take him along home indeed!

  Alan shrugged and turned back to his son, less angry at Trevyn now. “Who struck first?”

  “I pulled him away from a horse, and he struck me.”

  “Pulled him away from a horse? And why? If an elwedeyn horse sees fit to bear him company, lad, you also had better learn to abide him. The horses are well able to defend themselves, and they’re better judges of men than most chamberlains. Think before you fight, Trevyn.” Alan was disgusted. “So now you have a black eye, and you have lost your hawk. Get on home.”

  They all rode silently back to the walled city of Laueroc, with Gwern behind Hal on his elwedeyn stallion, over rolling meadows where the larks sang through the days. For miles before they came to it they could see the castle anchored on the billowing softness of the downs like a tall ship on a shimmering, grassy sea. Atop the highest swell its ramparts vaulted skyward, and from its slender turrets floated flags of every holding in Isle. In every window, even the servants’ windows, swung a circle of cut and faceted glass to catch the sun and send colors flitting about the rooms.

  Centuries before, Cuin the Falconer King had raised the fortress at Laueroc with pearly, gold-veined stone brought all the way from the mountains
of Welas. He had not wanted to mar his new demesne with diggings. The land at Laueroc, in Trevyn’s time, was still nearly as scarless as the day it was born. The castle lay on its bosom like a crystal brooch, and two roads wound away like flat bronze chains. There were no buildings outside the walls. In the topmost chamber of the westernmost tall tower, athwart the battlements, King Hal made his study and solitary retreat.

  Trevyn climbed up there after him when they had stabled the horses, and to his dismay Gwern followed. It troubled him that the dirt-colored stranger should come so familiarly to his uncle’s room. Hal was more than Sunset King; he was a bard, a visionary and a seer. In all the kingdom, only three persons approached him with the love of equals: Queen Rosemary, his beloved; his brother Alan; and Lysse, the Elf-Queen, Trevyn’s mother and Alan’s wife. Trevyn held him in awe. When he entered the tower chamber he silently took his seat, knees loaded down with tomes of history, awaiting Hal’s leisure. But Gwern poked and prowled around the circular room, disturbing Hal’s scholarly clutter. And Hal stood gazing out of his high, barred window, seeming not to mind.

  “What do you see?” Gwern asked suddenly. Trevyn winced at his effrontery. The King of the Silver Sun had always looked to the west, toward Welas and the reaches of the sunset stars, and Trevyn had never dared to ask him why. But Hal turned around courteously.

  “I see Elwestrand, what else?” he replied, the sheen of his gray eyes going smoky dark. “And a fair sight it is.”

  “Where is Elwestrand?” Gwern craned his neck, peering.

  “Nay, nay,” Hal explained eagerly, “you must look with your inner eye. Elwestrand is beyond the western sea.” His voice yearned like singing. “I have seen a tree with golden fruit, and a great white stag, and bright birds, and sleek, romping beasts. I have seen unicorns.”

  “Elwestrand is the grove of the dead,” Trevyn told Gwern sharply, jealous that Hal would speak to him so equably.