The White Hart

by Nancy Springer

  We came out of it, praise be, the next morning, before noon. I blinked in strong springtime light, staring as if I had never seen Vale before, although the scene was commonplace enough. To our left the river Chardri curved away toward Vaire. To our right the tall, dark peaks of Acheron marched away toward the southern sky. Meadowland sloped between. Knobby trees still fringed the mountains, but compared to the snarl we had just left they seemed almost friendly, stooping to peer at us. “Hello, old women!” I cried delightedly.

  “Hush,” Tirell growled. “There may be foes about.” The black beast lifted its head, questing.

  “Not the Boda, or at least not those you left,” stated Shamarra. “Who do you think shut the forest against them?” So perhaps it had not been Grandfather.

  The beast snorted and leaped from a stand into a gallop. Rabbits were feeding near the river. Almost before the little creatures could move the beast ran them down, stuck one with its horn and flung it overhead with fierce abandon. It speared yet another before they could scatter to their holes. I sat watching, sickened; but why? I had often seen game taken. A few more coneys lay stunned by black hooves. Tirell rode over and slit their throats. “Supper,” he said morosely.

  I got down to help him, still shuddering. There had been more to this scene than the gathering of food. Blood of the victims trickled over the beast’s forehead between its white-rimmed eyes. I wiped it off. Odd, but the monstrous creature was a comrade and an ally. I knew that even then. It rubbed its nose against me, and even in my horror I could not refuse the caress.

  We built a fire on the spot, cooked and ate, and left in midafternoon, carrying the surplus meat with us. Once again I invited Shamarra to ride behind me on my mount.

  “I will walk,” she said as before.

  “I must ride after my brother,” I told her angrily. “That is my first duty. But you cause me dishonor, lady, by your stubbornness. It is unseemly for me to ride away and leave you afoot.”

  She glanced at me haughtily. “There is no one to see.”

  “There are always eyes to see,” I retorted, though I could not have said what eyes. The lady raised her curving brows at me.

  “By Vieyra,” she remarked, “you are not entirely a fool. So since there is even that much truth in you, I will ride with you—for the time.”

  The black beast watched curiously as she took her place. Then we cantered down the slope after Tirell.

  Chapter Seven

  We traveled thus for several days, with Tirell on the black in the lead, the lady and myself following on the white, and the black beast roaming as it pleased, but seldom far away. Tirell kept to the foothills of Acheron, skirting the borderlands of Vaire. Though the meadowland through which we rode looked lush and fertile, we did not see a dwelling or a human soul. Honeycomb fungi sprang up everywhere in the springtime dampness. We gathered them to eat with our cold meat.

  “Why does no one come here?” I asked Shamarra. I attempted every day to converse with her, hoping to improve her opinion of me, though usually she answered with merest courtesy.

  “Men fear Acheron,” she replied briefly this time.

  “But why, lady?” I persisted. “You’ll think me a fool, but I have been to Acheron—part of it—and I have seen much that is fair, and not too much to fear.”

  She was amused, and flattered perhaps, and replied kindly enough. “You are young,” she said, “too young to really believe in death, and the Luoni mean nothing to you.”

  “Is it my youth that has protected me, lady, or your goodness on my behalf? Surely you are the one that I must thank, that I am not a sleeper amidst gray moss. I heard the trees whispering, that first night.”

  Shamarra laughed her laugh that was like rippling water. I think she was perhaps even a trifle impressed! “One of me you may thank,” she said. “Only one.”

  I could not reply to that, but I was delighted at any speech from her, even riddling speech. “And Tirell,” I went on, emboldened. “Is he also one who is too young to fear Acheron?”

  “No,” she answered, slowly and seriously. “Though it is true that he does not fear death, not at this time.”

  “He is very brave,” I agreed.

  “Courage is the least of it,” Shamarra retorted sourly, and she would talk no more that day.

  After perhaps a week of riding I began to notice wisps of smoke on the far horizon of Vaire, and now and then a distant rooftop. I took to skulking around the isolated homesteads at night in search of food, with a bit of spook-fire Shamarra had loaned me for light. Nobody was likely to come near that eerie glow. I carried it in my hand like a bit of fluff; it had no weight, or substance, or even feel to it, and I still don’t know where she got it. The stuff gave me just enough light to steal eggs from the hens’ nests. I would pull garden greens, also, and once I took a loaf of bread out of a kitchen window. Quite a comedown for a prince of Melior, but I had no choice. Even if we could have traded torques for victuals, we did not dare to be seen by daylight.

  We had come far from the true Acheron, nearly into the Lorc Tutosel, what the southern people call the mountains of the night bird. After almost a fortnight of riding, I realized one day that the white mare was going lame. Her gait roughened, and we were forced to get on more slowly. I had always, since the start of this journey, kept close behind Tirell because of an unspoken fear that he would heedlessly leave me—he seemed so cold and uncaring. I had never dared to stop unless he did. But as the white mare ambled on more and more reluctantly, I made a happy discovery: the black beast would circle back to check on us, and Tirell, perforce, had to wait as well. He would never leave the beast.

  I fervently hoped that Tirell would not comprehend the problem. He always rode with his back to me, seeming to notice nothing, hear nothing, and see nothing except whatever vision of vengeance floated before his mask of a face and his glittering blue eyes. Perhaps he could even remain oblivious to our slowness. But I should have known better. When we camped that evening he glanced once at the white mare, went to her, and felt her legs. He cradled her big head in his arms for a moment and studied her fine dark eyes as if he were speaking to her. Then he rounded on me.

  “She is lame,” he said flatly, “and sore in her back, too. That is what has come of your hauling that wench along.”

  “You would do well to speak better of the lady,” I flared, “and not risk her wrath! Has it occurred to you that she could destroy you? Is she not a goddess and a form of Adalis?” But Tirell laughed harshly, the chilly laugh that made me flinch.

  “She is welcome to my person for destruction!” he laughed. “Nothing else.” He turned and thrust his hard white face at Shamarra. “Nothing else,” he repeated. It was as if he had spit on her.

  Shamarra stood in all her silken beauty, pale golden hair and shimmering gown, moving only with the breeze and her own breath. She was not stony like Tirell, but just as impervious in her own way. If she had winced, if her eyes had widened as if hurt, I would have struck Tirell, and maybe Morrghu knows what might have happened then. But she looked through him, and in a moment he turned away and went back to the white mare, stroking her back and droning to himself. Presently the droning formed into a singsong tune.

  “Hey, nonny nay,

  My white horse is gray!

  My gray is a black

  If you look the right way.

  My black is a beast,

  My bird’s gone astray,

  And that’s why I say,

  Hey, nonny neigh!

  Hey, nonny neigh!

  My white horse is gray.

  We’ll all turn to ducks

  At the end of a day

  And swim in the Chardri,

  And that’s why I say,

  No sense to this play!

  Hey, nonny nay.”

  “Mad!” I muttered.

  We ate supper in watchful silence. Afterward, Tirell spoke to me in a tone I could not decipher.

  “Tomorrow, you take the black and go
on into Vaire. I will stay here.”

  “Perhaps I could heal the white,” I mumbled. It was Tirell’s stubbornness that had caused the situation, but as always, he somehow made me feel that it was all my fault.

  “Whatever you like,” he replied with no emotion at all on his lean, handsome face. “But I will not go any farther into Vaire, horse or no horse, until I have the protection of its king. I do not wish to be slain by the henchmen of my beloved father before I have had my chance at him. You can go. The Boda won’t bother with you.”

  I sat up straight in insulted protest. “They probably have their orders to kill me and bring you back alive!”

  “Well, maybe they won’t kill you until you have led them to me,” Tirell remarked indifferently. “Anyway, for every reason you are the one who must continue into Vaire.”

  I stared at him, astonished, but mostly at myself. His madness must have spread to me; why was I not aghast—I, the prudent one? The proposal was insane. How could I leave him, how could I even know he would be waiting when I got back? If I got back. Yet, in spite of reason, in spite of prudence, I felt recklessly willing to try the venture, as if death could not touch me.… I shook my head in bewilderment at my own daring.

  “Very well,” I assented. “I will go. What exactly is it that I am to do in Vaire?”

  Tirell looked back at me with a hint of impatience tugging at the mask of his face. “Go to the castle at Ky-Nule to see Fabron. Tell him we will need help to take Melior, and have him send retainers. Better yet, have him come here himself.”

  I almost sputtered at that. Such arrogance! “Why,” I asked sharply, “should he wish to help you at all?”

  Tirell replied with a smile I did not expect, a wry, mocking smile. “Oh, he will wish. You will see.”

  I said no more. I spent most of the evening struggling with the fastenings of my torque, and at length I got the golden thing off. I would be no prince when I rode across the heartland of Vaire.

  The next morning I was up with the dawn, folding my blanket to put it on the black steed. Tirell and Shamarra silently prepared to move their camp deeper into the forest. They would keep to the shelter of the trees, in the foothills of southern Acheron, until I returned. I hated to leave them. My mind could not accept this notion of leaving my brother. But mind seemed to have been taken over by some sort of fearless folly, and I could not hold back. I did not even think of asking Shamarra to go with me. We all three assumed she would stay with Tirell. There was no secret as to where her preference lay. It gave me some comfort that Tirell would have her with him, since I believed she had some power to protect him; yet her indifference galled me even worse than my brother’s.

  Tirell did not wish me good-bye. I went to give him the kiss of leave-taking and he brushed me away as if I were a gnat. Shamarra condescended to follow me to where the black horse stood waiting. “Food,” she said, and handed me the last of our meager supplies.

  “What will you eat?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “There are rabbits and berries about.”

  “You’ll have no help from Tirell,” I warned her, peering toward where my brother sat among the trees and looked with hard, locked eyes at something only he could see.

  She seemed amused at my concern. “I’ll have help enough,” she replied with a hint of a smile. Help of weird trees, perhaps? I did not ask.

  “Good,” I said slowly. “I can go more easily, knowing that you will have a care for him, my lady. But tell me, why do you cleave to him?”

  “Would you have me do otherwise?” she parried.

  I answered her with honesty that I think neither of us expected. “I would have you feel my love,” I told her softly. “I follow my brother, whom I have loved since I was born. But why do you? Surely you owe him nothing, and he scorns you.”

  “He is kingly in his grief,” she said angrily. “He will be Sacred King when he is well.”

  “He is mad,” I said.

  “There is divine vision and compassion even in his madness!”

  “He has shown you no compassion, and little enough to me.”

  “Why should he?” she cried passionately. “You are nothing but a pup next to him!” She turned away, and I rode into Vaire with her words burning like hot iron in my mind.

  Book Two

  FABRON OF VAIRE

  Chapter One

  I am Fabron. I was king of the canton of Vaire in Vale when I was alive. I came to my throne by virtue of threats and greed, but I tried to be a good king. I wanted to be well remembered. I rode the rounds of my canton yearly, hearing my people’s concerns, and when I was in my castle at Ky-Nule I held court daily. Any of my subjects, rich or poor, could come before me if they wished and dared. I tried to be just, but pettiness angered me, and I think my people respected my anger. Everywhere I went they cheered me. I tried to give them a procession worth shouting for, though I was not a young man or a handsome one. I was short, half hidden by my beard, but I rode tall, and every horse and retainer of my entourage wore ornaments of my own making, most of them gold. For myself I wore a breastplate all in link of iron chain, and a chain belt to my sword, and the staghound, the emblem of Vaire, leaping on my helm. I dressed in sober velvets to set off my artistry. Jewels and brooches show better thus.

  But it was not in such array that Frain first saw me. Spring had come and was turning into summer, but I was not holding court or preparing to ride through my domain. Mela, my wife of many years, lay ill with a wasting fever, and I stayed constantly in her chamber, seeing no one. She did not know me. Indeed she had turned dead to me many years before, after we had sold Frain. Not that she was cold or disobedient—she was ever an obedient wife—but something had died inside her. I did not understand; I thought we would have many babies, and what matter was one the less? Abas had need of a child to prove his continuing fertility, to keep his vassals content. He paid me dearly for it, first in gold and later in power when I threatened to expose him. But I paid dearly, too, over the years. Frain was our first child and our last. I had not reckoned, perhaps, on the anger of the goddess who abides in all women.

  So Mela lay moaning and did not speak to me or cry out my name, and I could not help her. I felt somehow to blame—I always felt to blame for any ill in her life since I took Frain from her. The door opened. I looked up wearily, expecting another officious servant. But it was Wayte, my captain of guards, with an iron dagger at his throat. Other guards were milling about outside the door like beleaguered sheep. They were armed, of course, and so was Wayte. But they risked his life if they drew a weapon.

  It was Frain who held the dagger on Wayte. I knew him at once, for I had made shift to see him a few times during the years, standing behind a buttress and watching him in the courtyard at Melior when he was too young and careless to notice me. He was a sturdy youth now, with auburn hair and high, freckled cheekbones and an earnest, open look about him. He hardly seemed more dangerous than the toothless baby I had given for gold. Yet there he was with his arms locked around Wayte’s shoulders and the dagger at his throat. The captain stood almost a head above him.

  “I beg pardon, my lord,” he said to me. “They told me I could not see you, but my business could not wait.” His voice was clean and courteous, like his looks, but there was nothing crawling about it, no anxious entreaty. He is a prince, I thought, and I longed to go to him and embrace him. Instead I kept my place and spoke gruffly through my beard.

  “Let that so-called captain of mine go,” I said.

  He did not move. “Your word, my lord, that I will not be harmed.”

  I nodded, waving the other guards away. Frain loosened his grip, and Wayte bowed and left without a word, his face angry and white. The fellow was expecting my wrath; he did not know the joy he had brought me.

  “Prince Frain,” I asked as collectedly as I could, “what brings you here?”

  He whistled softly. “I had not expected, my lord, that you would recognize me! Have you heard of the events i
n Melior, then?”

  “No, I have had no news from Melior. I know your face, that is all. What has happened to bring you here with your fine linen half torn from your back?”

  He glanced down at himself ruefully. “Your guards would never have admitted such a vagabond. Have I your lordship’s leave to seat myself?”

  “Of course, of course!” I exclaimed hastily, suddenly aware of the poor account I was giving of myself. I was in a lethargy of despair from Mela’s illness, roughly dressed, scarcely washed or combed, and now scant in courtesy. I bustled to clear a space on my cluttered couch. “I beg your pardon. Please sit and tell me what news you will.”

  Such a tale he told me. Murder, and a desperate ride into Acheron itself—Acheron, where no sane man will set foot. Then a lake on top of a mountain, forsooth, and a goddess walking barefoot like a peasant wench, and a strange and ominous black beast. I gaped in amazement, but Frain’s voice was so careful and modest that I believed every word he told me. At last he explained his errand. “Tirell hopes—no, expects—that you will help us overthrow Melior. He did not wish to come here himself, for he is certain that Abas has the Boda out in search of him. So he sent me to ask you to come to him.”

  “He is mad, you have said,” I remarked dryly.

  “Ay, so he is. Though perhaps”—Frain cocked a clear eye at me—“not in that regard.”

  “How is he mad, then?”

  Frain sighed, thinking, and for the first time I saw real pain in his fine brown eyes; he had kept away from emotion before. “He has taken his love and grief,” Frain said slowly, “and turned it all to hard hate and vengeance with a cutting edge. If he could weep it would be the greatest of blessings, I think, but he hardly moves or speaks except for vengeance. There is no human warmth in him these days, not toward any being of human kind. When he eats I think he does not taste the food; he tastes only vengeance. And I cannot say what he sees before his eyes.”