“Hush,” Fabron soothed him.
“Accursed!” Frain insisted. He spoke thickly, half delirious with pain. “I might as well go mad. The Luoni will come for me. I am a parricide.”
“You are not,” Fabron told him quite levelly.
“I killed—”
“You slew a madman. You have not killed your father. I am your father.”
I turned to them, my tears suddenly abated, my tangle of emotions in abeyance. All of the world seemed caught in calm that moment in spite of the battle uproar out beyond the grove. Frain lay gazing up at Fabron suddenly quite lucid, though pain pulled at his face. “What?” he whispered.
“I am your father. I sold you, in my greed and to my shame.”
“But—how—” Frain lay stunned, uncomprehending. Fabron caressed his forehead with a trembling hand.
“Never mind. You are my son whom I love,” he said, though he could scarcely speak. “Let suffering go awhile.”
And suddenly Frain moved as if to get up. The color came back into his cheeks. “The pain,” he said, amazed. “It’s gone.”
One step took me to his side, hoping—no. The wound was still there; my guilt would not so easily disappear. Frain looked up at his father in wonder, then at me. I pillowed his head on my lap.
“The healer has come out of shame into truth at last!” It was the brown man, his deep voice booming. “The beast, Fabron, help the beast! Come over here. Bring that great Sword.”
None of us would have dreamed of questioning his command. Fabron picked up my heavy iron sword and walked to where the beast lay, walked as if in a trance. The creature still breathed, but barely. Fabron knelt between its sprawling legs and laid the sword of Aftalun full length down the prone, heaving ribs. On it he placed his muscular hands. And slowly, softly, he recited the healer’s chant. I had heard it many times as a child, but only this time did I comprehend it. The words echoed and magnified in my mind, and I waited, holding on to my brother as if he were the only solid thing in my world.
Black and white,
Day and night,
Darkness and light
Can be one.
Moon and sun
Meet in the halls
Of Aftalun.
A shock of blinding bright power, a huge splinter of sunlight, burst through Fabron and into the still form beneath his hands. I should have known better than to think that a gentle healing could come to the beast! Fabron fell back with a cry of pain and the beast leaped up with a cry, I think, of exultation. Aftalun’s sword lay melted and shriveled on the ground, and the beast took wing. The beast took wing!
We all watched, stunned, breathless as Fabron who had been hurled to the ground. The brown man went to him and held him half sitting so he could watch the beast fly. The beast took flight! Straight up through the trees it burst, its broad wings rattling the branches, and out it shot into sunset light, riding the rising wind beneath the rain clouds, thunder god.… Three times it circled above us with soaring joy in every curve of its wings and high-flung head. It shone like a black jewel—lovely. And oh, the light on its wings, and on the dragon wings, and on the clouds.… It gave tongue, a deep, belling call I can hear even now, and an answering call tore from me.
“Tyr!” I cried. I scrambled up and ran out of the grove. The world was caught up in waiting. Even the battle seemed to have quieted, and instead of battle noise there sounded other noise now, thunder noise.
“Tyr!”
He came down at once, landed lightly on deft black hooves, folded his sleek wings and stood at a little distance, meeting my gaze. “Tyr,” I whispered. He was a person to me now, an ancestor, an other, and he looked to me for what only I could grant him. I swallowed and shook my head, closed my eyes against prickling tears. All around me rang a profound, waiting silence. How could he wish to leave me, after all the miles? Yet how could I deny him? He had served the line of Melior long enough.
“All right,” I said. “Go. Be at peace.”
He sprang up, bugled, and shot off westward, where orange light blazed between dark rain clouds and dark mountains and where the altar loomed, the White Rock of Eala. The sun had become a pulsing blood-red ball that rested on it and sent its shadow edging toward me.… Over the Rock the beast skimmed, let out his harsh cry, then spiraled, closing and closing, higher and higher, until he disappeared into the black clouds above.
And a roar of thunder came that shook the ground, and a mighty flare of lightning. And with a crack like the thunder the altar split and toppled in upon itself and stood there broken, and the sun hung free.
Then silence, utter calm except for the voices of frightened men. Tyr drifted out of the clouds, dipped in a sort of salute—to whom?—and flew away, over the mountains of Acheron and into the arms of his father Aftalun—into sunset glory. I watched until that glow embraced him, and I never saw him again. I stood staring after him with quiet, easy tears dropping down my face. Then the rain began, rustling like a living thing, sending up little spurts of dust from the dry earth as it fell. I stood in it, letting it wash me, understanding vaguely that something vast had changed.
“It’s the doom, of Melior!” someone cried.
“Deliverance!” came a deeper voice.
I had forgotten about the brown man until he hugged me. Instinctively I returned the embrace, laying my head for a moment against the flat, coarse hair of his neck and shoulders, feeling warmth and strength creep through me. Afraid? Why should I be? I had been a beast, too, or I had loved one.…
“Doom and deliverance,” he averred. “Tirell, can you see what marvel you have done? The beast is gone, freed and vanquished by your love. Altar, beast, blood bird, and madness—gone for all time! Melior as men have known it will never return!” His voice trembled with feeling, and he brushed my face with his mouth in a gesture I did not at first realize was a kiss. I stood dazed.
Then Oorossy and Sethym were kneeling before me. “King of Melior,” they said, “claim your throne.”
The throne! A pox on the throne! Frain was wounded, my father dead, the beast gone, and the altar destroyed; the whole world had turned upside down and now they wanted me to take a throne! “Why?” I challenged them.
“Abas’s captains have surrendered,” Oorossy explained patiently. “Their King is dead—”
“That is the least of it!” Sethym bleated. “The true King stands here! Look, the whole sky hails him!” The rain softly fell.
“Frain will do better in the castle,” Fabron said wearily from behind me, and then I moved. Fabron looked none too hearty himself. I signaled the captains, Abas’s and mine. The dragons soared off northward, and we all packed up our wounded and went home to Melior. I put Fabron on my black steed and carried Frain myself; he had settled into a deep swoon and the jarring did not trouble him. The brown man walked by my side, and the rain poured down, cleansing the dead and the living, enriching the earth. All along the way to the castle people stood cheering and dancing in the rain. Sethym tried to give me his horse. He would have it that they cheered for me, for a victory. I thought he was mad. I continued afoot, cradling my brother.
We toiled up the hill to my home, and there at the gate stood Daymon Cein. “All powers be praised, lad, you have done it!” he exclaimed, embracing me. I could not understand his happiness.
“Frain is wounded,” I told him.
“I can see that,” he snapped, but he sobered just the same. “How badly?”
“I think he will be crippled.” There was a catch in my voice, and Grandfather peered at me.
“And you did it.” He spoke gently, very gently; I had never heard such gentle forgiveness even from him. “Men will come to love you for it. Tirell, the King who did wrong. Life is an aching, comical, marvelous thing. Can you feel the wonder of it?”
I felt only the ache just then. “Help Fabron,” I said. “Help me get them in bed.”
The brown man helped, too. We took them to the very chamber Frain and I had once shared
as boys. The old wooden bedstead, scarred and carved by boys now as dead, in their way, as Mylitta.… How odd, that nothing had been disturbed. Fabron fell asleep at once, and Frain lay quietly, so I walked to a little balcony nearby and stood once again in the gentle, steady rain. I could hear people singing somewhere below, and glad shouts. Grandfather came and stood beside me, reached out and caught the rain on his parched old fingers.
“The tears of the King,” he said, and then I began to understand.
Chapter Seven
It rained, softly and steadily, for three days.
I sent my parents away to rest in that rain, on the Chardri. I found I was no longer afraid of the living water—everything else had changed, why not that? So Guron and I—he was my captain now—and some other household officials made our way down to the river with the heavy ironwood casques riding on staves between us. In mine, I knew, lay Abas in his ermine and his torque and his great royal brooch. I would never wear it, the twenty-headed thing! And in the other lay Suevi.… Grandfather walked along with us to bid his daughter farewell. We laid the caskets in the water with their solemn, painted eyes staring skyward. I did not know what Chardri would do—I had not had many dealings with Chardri—but he took them graciously, eddying them out into midstream and carrying them away with a low, musical sound. I shall always hear in the lapping of water the peace of that moment when we stood by the river in the soft rain. Souls and swans float the watery ways.… I appointed a retinue of trusty men to ride along the river and see the dead safely to Coire Adalis.
I received my bride also in the rain. Raz arrived at last, with his army of two thousand, just in time to be of no use, and with great pomp he brought the girl across the Balliew—Recilla. Never again would she be just the girl to me, the ceremonial bride. I had one look at her, dark eyes scared and defiant in her flower of a face, and I knew that I would love her, that I would court her to love me. Joy awaited me, as the old man had said. What a fool I had been! AH the way around the Vale, to wed the lass my father had chosen for me in the first place! I wanted to shout, to laugh. I wanted to tell Frain. Frain, my brother and friend.… He still lay in the stupor of his wound.
By the time he awoke, four days after the battle, the rain had stopped and a gentle sun shone. Already the land was sending forth fresh blades of green. I wore a crown and a crimson robe, I was King of Melior, and I had taken Recilla to wife and planted the seed of love in her. The canton kings had taken then armies and gone on home, all except Fabron. Everything had changed. Frain looked up at me in bewilderment.
“You are all right,” he murmured.
I hardly knew what to say. Within the span of a few days I had become a stranger to him. I sat by his bedside and took his hand, held it between both of mine, met his clear eyes. That was hard, but I had to give him what I could; I had hurt him.
“Really all right!” he marveled. “I would have given more than an arm for that, Tirell.” Joy lit his pale face. How his love unmanned me—I had to look away.
“Frain, I am so sorry—” I, who had never needed to say I was sorry.
“Let it pass,” he told me.
“I will let it pass, but some things have to be said. I have been a brute to you these many months.”
He smiled—he almost laughed, but pain stopped him. “I can take a few rough words,” he protested. “You were sore of heart, brother. Let it pass, I say!”
“Words were the least of it. I sent you off to Melior, into a den of death—”
“My home, a den of death?” Frain teased.
“And Shamarra.” I could not go on. Suddenly Shamarra seemed very fragile and fair to me, and my crime iniquitous.
And Frain did not answer. He looked away in his turn, and with a shock I sensed the bitterness beneath his forgiveness. But we could not admit that we would part—not yet.
“You accepted me,” he whispered.
“What?” I did not understand.
“You knew, did you not, before Fabron told me? You seemed none too surprised.”
That he was Fabron’s son. I had to smile. “I saw them bring you,” I admitted, “the night you were born—well, the night you came.”
“And you accepted me, all those years.…”
He seemed touched. I could not believe what he was saying. “The debt was all mine!” I tried to explain. “You—you were here with me, always by me—”
Without him I would have been only another mad King of Melior, another Abas.
“Some good fate sent you to me,” I told him. “Some blessing is on me. Frain, the altar is gone.”
“What?” he exclaimed. “You don’t remember?”
“I remember—Guron set me free, and I ran and ran to find you—then Abas—and Fabron healing the beast, and—tears on your face.”
We talked for a long time, until he was tired. By the time we were done, fight it though I might, I knew things would never again be the same between us. I had everything now, all happiness, and Frain had—even less than I imagined. There was the wound, and there was a need I did not want to see.
“Shamarra,” he said. “Where is she, do you know? She did not come here.”
“Folk say she has gone back to Acheron.” All of Melior had noted that swanlike passing. I did not care to speak of Shamarra.
“Fabron is hoping, expecting, that you will return with him to Vaire and be his heir,” I said. “I promised you to him once—but we have no quarrel, we both know I was an ass then. Really, the choice must be yours. Melior has always been your home, and you are welcome to stay here as long as you live.” Then Fabron came in, his smile all for his son, and I left them together.
Days went by while Frain’s body slowly mended. He began to walk about with his arm in a sling, but some inner wound failed to heal; he went silent, his russet hair eerily bright above his pale face. The brown man laid warm hands on him for comfort, then went back to his northern home. Fabron laid hands and iron on him to no effect at all—the power had left him again for good. He watched his son with anxious eyes. Daymon Cein settled serenely into a chamber near the kitchen and seemed to be paying no attention to any of us. He let the servants wait on him; he had become very frail. I kept an eye on everyone, but I spent my days mostly with Recilla, laughing, talking, guilty in my own happiness, watching her blossom into love of me. Frain smiled at us sometimes, but he seldom joined us or spoke.
I lay warm in my bed those days. I slept peacefully, but Guron told me that Frain had taken to wandering the night as I had once done. So I went to him a few times in the midnight chill, tried to talk to him, but there was nothing to say and all too much to say, and all I could do was be by his side. He would not look at me. He stood and watched the western stars.
“Will you help me take off this torque?” he requested once. “I am no prince.”
We undid the golden thing. It left a mark like a whip weal on his neck. I should have known then that he would not remain in Melior, but like a fool I continued to hope. Even if he went to Vaire, I told myself, I might see him often; it was not so very far.… In my heart I knew I was losing him forever. Still, I did not expect to lose him in the way I did. Not to the shadowed path.
He made his choice on the day the sling came off for good. His arm hung twisted and useless, like an arm of warm wax pulled awry. He stood aimlessly, and Fabron and I sat in silent despair, and I forced myself to look up, to meet my brother’s eyes. The hatred in them stunned me, the hatred locked and warring with the love. Eala, what was to become of him? If only he could have shouted at me, struck me, killed me—but I was his beloved brother, and neither of us could give that up.
“I am helpless,” Frain said woodenly. “I am a cripple.” I flinched at the word, and he touched me as if to ask my pardon—I, who had done this to him.
“I don’t mean the arm,” he said.
Puzzled, I looked up at him again. Weary and utterly calm, he met my gaze.
“I hate what I have become,” he said. “I am ad
rift in my life, lost, full of bitterness—Tirell, I cannot stand another day of this. I am going.”
“To Vaire?” I asked, staring at him stupidly.
“No. Torn between you two—no. To Acheron.”
“What?” I cried out, Fabron cried out, we both jumped up, and I took ahold of my brother, seized his sagging shoulders, and Fabron pleaded with him.
“My son, don’t say that! You know I—we love you, a throne awaits you—”
“I cannot help it, Father. I am doomed, drawn, caught, ensnared. Do not think I shall return.” Frain’s calm was the most frightening thing about him, really—his calm and those locked eyes. “Make Wayte your heir. He has served you well.”
“But—to Acheron.…” Fabron faltered to a stop, choking on the name of Acheron, and he turned on me angrily.
“This is all your fault, Tirell,” he accused. “If you had not driven her away—”
“Stop it,” Frain ordered with something of Ms former fire. He stepped back, breaking free of the two of us. I sat down in astonishment.
“Is it Shamarra you go to seek?” I asked Frain.
“Yes. Lady Death.”
His resolve seemed inexplicable to me. I glared at him in exasperation. “But Frain, why? You owe her nothing. The fault is all mine.”
“You dolt,” he said, “I love her.”
I felt walls and defenses crumble around me, my face crumble. For a moment I could not see, but I heard a small sound from Frain. He flung himself down beside me as if he had hurt me, laid his head against my side.
It had never occurred to me that he loved Shamarra.
It seems incredible now that I was so blind. That was what my shield of insanity had done to me. I had been blind to everything except my own visions of rage, numb to all needs except my own, and I had not understood that he could love where I so heartily hated. I had thought it was his unfailing courtesy that had made him lend her his horse, sit by her side, walk the halls of Gyotte in concern for her safety, rail at me when I had dishonored her. What an ass I had been! I had thought he was still all mine, the child that had followed me since he was old enough to walk. And it had seemed to me not at all odd that he always slept alone; he was old enough to fight for me, after all, but far too young for women. What a bloody-minded braying idiot I had been!
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