The White Hart

by Nancy Springer

  A fortnight later we reached the southern outskirts of Acheron with twenty retainers at our backs. I would not have gone there with any lesser force or for any sake except Frain’s. I looked at him often as he rode. He sat his big, powerful black horse as if he had been born on it. He wore the fairest linen I could find him now, and my blue cloak, and he looked every inch a prince—but warmer, more generous of heart than any prince of Melior had ever been. Sometimes I dreamed of seeing him, my son, on that throne, forgetting the horrible altar. I will not say I thought of killing Tirell—I would not have slain him by any design—but if any mischance should occur, I thought, it would be well if I could help Frain to take his brother’s place. I did not know Tirell then or understand the strange forces that drove him.

  As we neared the woods of Acheron Frain gazed ahead anxiously, but no one appeared to give us welcome. Suddenly a monstrous black creature rushed toward us. The raven Morrghu, I almost said, but it moved along the ground. It lifted wide black wings and sounded a kind of stuttering bray that made me shiver. My men shouted out at the sight of the thing, and I confess I pulled my horse to a halt. But Frain trotted forward to meet it, and the nightmare came up to him, frisking, and rubbed its nose against his leg. He fended off its horn as if it were a lancetip. Yet he smiled, seeming surprised and oddly pleased. He caressed the awful creature, rubbing its head and ears.

  “So that is the winged unicorn, Prince Tirell’s pet?” I asked, shaken. “It is not much like the handsome animal on this brooch!”

  “Yet even this beast can be fair when seen in the silver waters of the high lake at Acheron,” Frain told me.

  Then he saw a figure among the trees and spurred forward with the beast after him. Tirell was a tall man, black-haired and with a face like carved white jade, very manly and beautiful of feature but cold. Frain grasped his hand and kissed him as I rode up, giving him the embrace of a brother, but Tirell pushed him aside in annoyance. I felt as if I had been struck, watching.

  “King Fabron,” said Tirell, “welcome. Pray join us at our fire.” Courtesy scant enough, and spoken in a toneless voice. I followed him with no more answer than a nod. But as we came to the fireside I forgot my anger in amazement. Frain was talking to the loveliest woman I had ever seen.

  He seemed confused, doubtful before her, not at all like my stalwart son! But as she turned her glance on me I understood why. Her eyes were like sparkling water, all dazzle. I could not see into them. I sensed she was a daughter of Adalis, and I soon had to lower my own gaze.

  “Lady, all good ever come to you,” I stammered like a bumpkin, offering my hand in greeting. Only the tips of her fingers touched mine.

  We ate, the four of us, in uncomfortable silence. Frain was perhaps more used to that constraint than I, for he made no attempt to break it. The food was delicious, out of place in that wilderness. There were several kinds of fine bread, and meat cooked to buttery tenderness, and strange fruits in sunset colors. I was half afraid to eat, suspecting it was enchanted fare. But for Frain’s sake I ate. It was evident that Tirell had not suffered much privation during his absence. I saw resentment and a sort of hopeless weariness form in Frain’s eyes. After we had eaten he went wordlessly away to a bed among the trees somewhere.

  “So,” said Tirell to me as soon as Frain was well away, “you have not told him that he is your get.”

  I was surprised, but not overly surprised; I knew of the visionary powers inherent in his line. “What for?” I asked crossly. “To manifest to him my most greedy and heartless stupidity? I would like him to think well of me for a while yet.”

  “He will be no more than a puppy of a man until he knows the truth.” Shamarra’s voice flowed like cool water. My reply was colder.

  “He has a brother whom he follows with greatest love. Should I tell him that he has no brother?” I turned to Tirell. “Do you not want his help against Abas?”

  “He would help me notwithstanding,” said Tirell with an indifference that turned the compliment into, an insult. “And you, Fabron—will you also help me?”

  “Why should I?” I challenged him. “To replace one mad King with another?”

  “You think me mad?” asked Tirell, unconcerned.

  “You who spurned Frain’s embrace, yes. I think you mad.”

  He shrugged. “Well, for the matter of that, I do not care who sits on the throne as long as Abas is slain. Let Frain have it if he likes. Or take it yourself, since I know Frain will not want it.”

  “No!” Shamarra exclaimed.

  “I must agree with the lady,” I said stiffly. “The rightful heir must take the throne. Otherwise, every canton king and powerful noble in Vale will be vying for it.”

  “For Melior?” Tirell questioned ironically. “The bosom of the sweet goddess and site of her high altar? Who would want to be ripped to death on a slab of white stone?”

  “He is highly honored who weds with the goddess in death!” Shamarra cried furiously.

  “That is the only way you are ever likely to get me, my bloodthirsty wench,” Tirell told her with honeyed malice. “It does you no good to pant and whisper in the night.”

  She leaped to her feet with flashing eyes. “Fool!” she shouted, choking. “Don’t you know that I am your sacred destiny? I am goddess, and you will be Sacred King!”

  “Destiny be damned,” he said coolly. “I have told you I will wed no one since—since she is gone.”

  “But I am Mylitta!” Shamarra shrieked. “One of me is. She is in me! All women are in the goddess!”

  “Don’t say her name with your beak of a mouth!” Tirell sprang to his feet instantly, towering above the fire, and I sat stunned, unable to move. Even in Abas I had never seen such fiery blue rage as shot from Tirell’s ice-blue eyes. It smote me like a sword. I thought that he would strike the lady, but indeed I could not move! Then Frain appeared drowsily from between the trees and stepped in front of his brother.

  “Out of my way!” thundered Tirell.

  “No, brother,” said Frain quietly, as if in calm discussion. “You will have to knock me down first if you wish to beat a woman.”

  Tirell stood for an instant looking like frozen lightning. Then: “Send her away from here,” he said hoarsely, and strode off into the darkness beneath the trees. Shamarra stood straight and shining, looking after him.

  “I will not be dismissed,” she said to Frain. But even as she spoke to him she looked beyond him as if he were not there.

  “Do you have the power to fight him?” he questioned her abruptly. “Who are you? Yours is not any name of the goddess that I know.”

  She turned her eyes to him slowly, smiled, and sat by the fire. “You have grown a bit in Vaire,” she said.

  He sat beside her. “Who are you?” he asked again.

  “I am the lake,” she replied.

  “The goddess of the lake, you mean?”

  “I mean I am the lake, as Adalis is Vale, or Vieyra is Vale should famine arise, or Morrghu in time of war.… But I am one with all these forms of the goddess, as they are one with me. I am in Eala and Eala is in me. I am only one of me.”

  “Can you shift shapes?” Frain pressed her.

  “Perhaps.… I have never done so.”

  “Then what are your powers?”

  She made a sad little face at him. “Few enough, and certainly not to be named to you! Over Tirell I have not even the power of love. Nevertheless, I will stay with him.”

  “How?”

  “How can he send me away?” she retorted. “He has no hounds to chase me.” She rose and walked away. She still held her shining head high, but there was something half defeated in the pace of her steps. Frain looked after her with a sigh.

  “Whether she stays or leaves, my lord,” he said to me after a bit, “do you have a spare horse for her?”

  “To be sure,” I said gruffly, and added, “They are both mad!”

  “Can a goddess be mad?” Frain murmured.

  “Mad to f
ace Prince Tirell’s wrath, yes. And you as well! I thought he would knock you into the fire, and still I couldn’t move!”

  Frain smiled in rueful understanding. “Yes, that is the power of the Sacred Kings. The fey glare of addled eyes … Yet I cannot believe that Tirell would ever do dishonor even in his wildest rage. But Abas would kill as soon as speak when his mood is fit. Him I would not face.” He looked bleak. I thought suddenly of a small and frightened boy.

  “You grew up with this?” I groaned with emotion I had not meant to show. He looked at me in puzzlement, at the guilt written plainly on my face. How I longed to beg his forgiveness. But he must have taken my despair for doubt.

  “Tirell was not always frozen in rage,” he told me softly. “Time was when we would steal away together to the forbidden places near the river, hunt eggs and snails and sail sticks in the puddles. When we played marbles, he would win all mine and then give them back. He built things for me, toys that Mother never thought of, like a catapult or a bow. I was always littler, tagging along, but no one dared to trouble me when he was around. He would swagger and lie to the schoolmasters to save me a blow when my lessons weren’t done.” He stared into the fire, remembering.

  “Was that often?” I asked, smiling.

  “Often enough,” Frain admitted. “But after Tirell was about fourteen or fifteen none of our masters dared to constrain us. We were wild things. We rode where we would, and fought each other sometimes and were sorry afterwards, though neither of us would admit it.… He always roamed in the night, and sometimes he cried. But he does not cry these days. Good my lord, it is not Tirell that you see, but a shell and a stranger—no more. Think on that.”

  “I will try to remember,” I said.

  I had to brace myself to talk to Tirell the next morning. But I did so, and got him off alone, and we agreed that, if he should take the throne, he would name Frain as my heir. That settled, we made plans. I told him that he could win the support of Sethym, my neighbor, king of Selt. Sethym was fervent in his adherence to the ancient rituals of Vale, eager to replace the aging King Abas with younger, more vital blood for the goddess. Also I hoped that Oorossy, ruler of Eidden, the northern canton, might aid us. I knew him to be a kindly man who hated Abas for his cruelty. But of Raz I could say nothing. He kept to his vast domain and vouchsafed no word, or at least none to me.

  I think Tirell would have liked to have stayed near the mountains. Their loneliness felt safe to him, though they filled me with dread I could not explain, especially these mountains of Acheron—why should a man be afraid of nothingness, of twisted trees where no birds sing? Anyway, Tirell was obliged to leave his retreat. Summer was well started, and he had to prepare his bid while the weather favored.

  So we made ready to ride to Ky-Nule, whence he would travel on to Gyotte in Selt. There was some juggling of horses. Frain took his place beside his brother on a big, bright chestnut, and Shamarra rode up on a white mare. I have never seen such a woman. She could not have been hammered out of silver or gold; she would have to have been carved from ice, or from water itself for delicate, fluid grace. Yet there was metal in her, hard metal in the way she confronted Tirell. He looked through her and turned to Frain with a cold stare.

  “I told you to bid her begone.”

  “How?” Frain retorted. “She is a goddess and goes where she will. Do you have power to bind the wind or stop rivers from flowing?”

  “I have muscle to bind her to one of her precious trees,” Tirell snapped. “I suppose your courtesy would not allow of that. But did you have to give her your own horse?”

  “Mine?” Frain asked coolly. “The white? Since when am I marked for the goddess? Let her ride her own sacred steed.”

  Tirell seemed mollified, and we were able to get off without much more ado. Tirell and Frain took the lead, side by side, torques gleaming and cloaks thrown back from their shoulders in the summer heat. All my men admired Tirell; I could see that from the first. His stature and his boldness inspired awe without demanding it. He would make a King that men would die for. I rode just behind him, beside my lieutenant, and I passed my time in watching my son. How I longed for him, in my grief, and how I hated Tirell. Frain should have been riding with me.

  For his own part, he watched Shamarra when he could. She did not keep ranks, but ranged all around the troop, ahead or to one side, with the black beast gamboling after her. She rode effortlessly, as if she were of one body with her horse, aside, with her pearly gown trailing down.… No one could laugh at Frain for gazing at her. We all kept glancing at her like enchanted things. All except Tirell.

  When we had journeyed about a week, Tirell turned around to speak to me—the first time, I think, that he had done so. “Boda,” he stated tersely. “Are you willing to fight?”

  “Where?” exclaimed Frain and I simultaneously.

  “Beyond the rise, I think. Their red shirts swim before my eyes. About a dozen. There is still time to turn aside.” I could see that he, himself, had no wish to turn aside. He was trembling, a tremor scarcely visible, with rage he could not entirely contain, and his face twitched. The beast snorted, and he spoke to it sharply.

  I could scarcely believe that he had given me warning and choice. “If I fight the King’s retainers,” I said slowly, “it will be an act of war, and my throne the forfeit.”

  “Then, since you will be of small use without a throne and an army,” Tirell growled, “I suppose we had better turn aside to that grove yonder.” He gave the signal, and we rode into the copse that hugged the rise. There were twenty-three men of us, the lady, and the beast.

  We waited a while, Tirell still quaking with his subterranean rage—rage that went as deep as grief, Frain said, rage that was grief transfigured. Perhaps it was his own blood-red rage that swam before his eyes. I was just about to think he had misled us when the troop of Boda rode over the brow of the rise. There were fourteen of them, in scarlet tunics hung with long fur fringe—in the old days it would have been human hair—and bronze greaves below, and helms winged like the raven of war. The land was dry already, even in early summer; it looked as if we were in for drought again. But a troop of riders such as ours cannot help but leave a track even on the dryest ground. I watched anxiously, hoping the Boda would overlook it. But when they came to the place where we had turned aside, their captain stopped and studied our traces. He gave a command, and they pivoted toward the coppice.

  “Frain and I will slip out the other side.” Tirell muttered to me. “You tell them what tale you will—you suspected robbers, or some such. Perhaps we will see you again before we leave Vaire.”

  “No!” I blurted, suddenly panicky at the thought of being separated from my son. “I will protect you. Let it come to fighting if it must, and let none of them live to tell of it!”

  “Wait,” whispered Frain. “It’s Guron.”

  “What?”

  “He taught me archery and a bit of leathercraft.… Let me see if I can talk to him.”

  He rode forward. I gasped and reached to stop him, but too late. Frain rode out in the open, his hand raised in greeting.

  I have remarked before now on Frain’s courage. But besides and beyond that he had an air of artless self-assurance that had astonished me before then. The lad had good common sense; he had showed me that in conversation many times. And he saw as clearly as anyone I knew—but, Mother of us all! that he would ride out alone before a troop of armed enemies! How could I call him foolhardy? His daring provided its own shield. The troop stopped abruptly, spears leveled, but no one hurt him. They must have been as flabbergasted as I.

  “Guron,” Frain called out, almost gaily, “whatever are you doing in the Boda now?”

  “Half the castle is in the Boda and out looking for you,” returned the older man grimly. He gave his followers the signal to stand and rode forward to where Frain awaited him. I started to sweat for fear of treachery, but I saw his face, a furrowed, thoughtful face, and breathed easier. He held no weapon
. He would have given his hand for Frain to clasp, I think, if it were not for all those watching eyes.

  “How is Grandfather?” Frain asked softly.

  “Wandering,” Guron replied, “like so many of us these days. He is to be shunned for betraying his trust in regard to the Wall. Abas’s orders. But I expect some folk will dare to help him, for he is well loved.” Guron spoke rapidly and very low, but he stood so close to the trees that I could hear every word.

  “And Mother?” Frain asked, swallowing. Your mother died a few weeks ago, I thought with a pang. But Guron’s answer was scarcely kinder.

  “Imprisoned,” he replied. “She must have pleaded for you both too strongly. But no one except the King wishes her harm. The guards give her food on the sly.”

  Frain flinched at the thought of that proud queen in such need of charity. “And us?” he asked. “What are your orders concerning Tirell and myself?”

  “Capture. I may injure you if necessary, but you are not to be killed.” Guron could not quite meet Frain’s steady gaze.

  “The King desires that royal privilege himself?”

  “I can’t tell, lad,” said the man unhappily. “It’s true that he’s been wild as the very wind since you went, furious and still as stone by turns. But he looks for Tirell.…” Guron looked down in confusion, trying to explain. “He sits without eating, sometimes for days, chanting to himself—Tir-ell! Tir-ell! Sometimes he screams, something frightens him, but he keeps trying. He sensed something to the southwest and sent us here, several troops.”

  At my side, Tirell stiffened and muttered to himself.

  “More are all over Vale,” Guron continued. “Lad, I feel… It is not all hatred that seeks Tirell so.”

  “I saw his face,” Frain said flatly. “He would kill us both in a minute.”

  Guron lowered his eyes and did not reply.

  “There are twenty-some men hidden at my back,” Frain added after a pause. “Are you willing to be put to rout by them, Guron? Certainly I do not wish this to come to fight.”

  “Let them show their numbers to my red-clad minions yonder and I will be glad to flee. I must attempt to capture you, but I will say farewell first, and all good come to you. Now I will reach for my weapon, thus.” Guron grabbed at his dagger, but Frain started back with convincing quickness, and I shouted a command. Spears bristled out of the coppice where we hid. Guron wheeled and galloped back to his troop.