“Dair,” he whispered, “Dair, my son,” and he rocked me gently in his arms. “It will be better soon, truly it will.”
How did he know what I was feeling, the fear, the pain? But of course he would. He was wise. With some small surprise I saw that he was weeping too. Somehow his tears strengthened me. I straightened, looking for the youth I had found by the sea. The men had already brought him up beside us.
“It is he,” Trevyn breathed. “The one—”
We saw in Ylim’s web. I know.
Trevyn reached over and felt at him, checking his breathing and pulse.
“He’s more than half dead,” one of the men said.
“Cover him warmly and get him in all haste to Nemeton. There are doctors there.” Trevyn fastened his cloak around me and stood up, helping me up as well, supporting me.
“You are as tall as I,” he marveled.
It was true. We were two youths. He was twenty, and I looked about the same—we might have been brothers or comrades. But I might as well have been a child just then.
It hurts, I whimpered, meaning my legs and everything in general. The sounds that left my mouth were mere noises, but Trevyn understood in much the same way that he had always understood.
“I know,” he said. “Or I can imagine.… Perhaps I cannot. Try to rest as we ride.”
He got me onto his horse, carrying me sideways in the saddle before him. We cantered southward along the shore toward the port city of Nemeton with the men taking turns carrying Frain. I settled into a time of numb endurance measured out in the rhythm of the horses’ hooves. A memory floated up from deep mind. Trevyn had carried me like this before, but I had been very young then, still in my first fur.
It was dusk before we made the castle. Frain was taken to a sickchamber amid a tumult of excitement caused by our arrival. Trevyn sat me down in front of a blazing fire and saw to it himself that I ate. Then he put me into the royal bed that the lord of that place had meant for him, and he rubbed my strange, stiff limbs with his warm hands until I was able to sleep. It was the first time I had slept between sheets.
He was sitting by my side when I awoke in the morning.
That one I found? I asked.
“Much the same.” Trevyn reached out to touch me, awkwardly, for no reason. “Dair, why did you go away?”
I had to. The call was on me.
“And I did not understand or see what was happening to you. So there you were all alone when you needed me most.”
You came when I needed you most, I said. He did not reply, and I lay thinking.
The change, I added—I had to face it alone.
So here I was in human form. But I was not likely to make a very satisfactory human, I sensed. And my bond brother, what of him? All of life seemed in confusion.
I do not want to leave you again, I said to Trevyn. But we both knew I must.
Chapter Two
Being on two legs was a nuisance. It took me several days just to learn to stand and walk without help. The height made me dizzy and made everything look strange. And there were matters of modesty to be dealt with, where to relieve myself and clothing, which was a constant bother. I wore as little as possible. And eating. Luckily I had been accustomed to cooked meats, so it was only the manner of eating that was strange to me. I could no longer put my face down to a plate on the floor. I had to sit and use a cup and convey the food to my mouth with my hands. No mention was made of knife and fork, for which I was grateful. The hands were clumsy enough. So was the mouth.
“Move your lips,” Trevyn would say to me gently from time to time. “They are shaped like mine now. Make speech.”
“Awaaa,” I would say, or perhaps “Rawawarrr.” I could manage nothing more. Trevyn would repeat a simple word to me, “meat” or “water,” trying to help me. But I could not be helped. I had missed learning something that human young learn while I was a wolf.
For that first week, while I was struggling with human form, the stranger I had found lay abed and did not fully come to himself. He could be roused and given wine and bread and broth, so he grew no weaker. He talked. But he talked only to himself, his dreams or shadows on the wall, and in a language no one could understand. He did not know where he was, the doctors said.
As soon as I could walk the distance I went with Trevyn to see him.
He sat propped up on pillows, his hair bright and fine as feathers against the white linen, his crippled left arm beside him and the other folded across his chest. A doctor and servants stood by his bedside shaking their heads. The stranger youth was talking steadily to no one at all. His voice ran like a river between walls, behind weirs, calm, forceful, controlled. He might have been addressing a council. Trevyn sat beside him and listened, frowning.
“I thought I knew every language of the overseas lands,” he said, “but this one is new to me.”
The youth talked through the afternoon and into the night. The doctor could neither soothe him into slumber nor rouse him to sense. Trevyn kept his seat, trying for some kind of understanding. It was very hard to hear emotion in that level voice. A few times there might have been a hint of anger or plea. And as dark fell I thought I began to hear weariness. No—more than weariness.
“What is it, Dair?” Trevyn asked me. “You have instincts for many things. What do you think ails him?”
Despair—or desperation.
Trevyn nodded and turned to the physician. “Let us try the little yellow flower,” he said.
It was called Veran’s Crown or Elfin Gold. It had come back to Isle with the other things of wonder, and it grew everywhere, but it was used only with greatest reverence and in cases of sore need, for it was a powerful balm. None was yet in bloom so early in the season, but some was always kept dried in jars. A single dried plant was brought to Trevyn along with steaming water. He whispered the blessing, crushed the tiny thing and dropped it into the water. The sweet green smell of it filled the room, the very smell of peace.
Suddenly I felt that I was a wolf again, a pup, romping by Trevyn’s side without a notion of anything except joy and without a care in the world—I could have wept for knowing it would never again be so, but at the same time the memory gave me a feeling of utter gladness. I could almost believe that those days had come back to stay. Those springtime days—the stranger had quieted, seeming to listen for a sound only he could hear. Suddenly he sat straight up and turned to the shadowy figure by his bedside—the light was very low, so as not to trouble him.
“Tirell?” he asked, or rather, he begged. His voice was no longer steady—it shook with emotion.
“Nay,” said Trevyn gently, “it is I, Trevyn, King of Isle.”
I brought a candle closer so they could see each other. The red-haired youth looked up in confusion.
“Tirell is King of Vale,” he said in a dialect we could understand, a mixed mongrel language called Traders-tongue. He stared at Trevyn. “Where—I thought I heard Tirell.”
“It is the balm,” Trevyn told him. “We had to give it to you to—comfort you. It has taken you back to a place of peace, perhaps the home where you were loved as a child.”
“Yes—though in truth it was none too peaceful.” The youth sank back on his pillows with a sigh, and when he spoke he had found calm again, it must have been second nature to him. “My name is Frain,” he said. “If this place has a king, I dare say it is not Ogygia.”
“I have never heard it called by that name.” Trevyn raised his brows. “We call it Isle. How did you come here, Frain?”
“In a leaky coracle.”
We saw you, I said. Frain heard it as a growl. He was not one of the special few who remembered, who could understand me. He gave me a startled, mistrustful look, such as the castlefolk often did.
“That is Dair,” Trevyn said. “He who found you by the sea.”
“I owe him my thanks, then.” Frain looked at me doubtfully and did not offer the thanks he said he owed.
“We found no coracl
e,” Trevyn added after a moment.
“It leaked, and then it sank,” Frain said in a matter-of-fact way. “I am not much of a sailor, and I had not carried enough food, either. Your Majesty, I am ravenous.”
“We will get you food. Call me Trevyn.”
“I can’t. Anyone can see you are a True King.”
The doctor bustled out to see about the food, and Trevyn sat smiling at Frain in amusement and growing affection. There was an air of fine, gallant bravery about Frain, and yet a modesty as well, so marked that it was almost shyness. An odd blend. I felt my heart go out to him for the oddity of him—well, it had gone out to him before I knew him.
“Why, then,” said Trevyn, “call me Lord.”
“Thank you, my lord. My brother, Tirell—he is a True King too.”
I would not have thought there could be two such kings in the world. This was either madness or the touch of the goddess. Trevyn gave Frain a keen glance. “You mistook me for him a moment ago,” he said.
“In the dark.” Frain smiled, a warm smile and very good to look on. “You are as comely as he, but his hair is as black as yours is fair, Lord, black as jet, and his face white with scarcely a hint of color to it, and his eyes blazing blue, ice blue. Women pine with longing for him.” Frain’s smile faded. “But that is the least of him,” he added quietly. “I know the power of the True King. This is a magical place, Lord, is it not?”
Trevyn only nodded. I believe he was astonished.
“Then perhaps you can understand,” Frain said slowly, “when I say I have met with a peculiar sort of enchantment, or perhaps a doom. I have traveled seven years since I left Vale, my lord, but they have not aged me. I have not aged a day since the day I was foolish enough to bathe in Lady Death’s mirroring lake. I was fifteen then, and I am nearly twenty-four now. But I am still fifteen—in effect.”
Trevyn had seen too many marvels in his life to doubt anyone. He merely nodded.
“You do not look fifteen,” he said with a scholar’s interest. “Maybe seventeen or so.” Frain was sturdy, muscular even, and handsome in spite of the crippled arm.
“I was well grown.” A tinge of bitterness seeped into his voice. “A child in the body of a man.”
“And now you have eternal youth.” Trevyn sat back, musing, gazing at the stranger. “People judge that to be the greatest of blessings, the foremost gift of the gods.”
“They are mistaken.” Frain spoke so quietly, so evenly, that the sense of his words struck with a shock, jagged rock under still water. “It is the curse of the gods. Lord, I am entrapped. I have not been able to grow or leave anything behind in all my wanderings. Seven years and they have not helped me or healed me—it is as if I am frozen, a fly in amber. Lord, the wound smarts as if it were given but yesterday.”
For a moment there was silence. Even Trevyn did not seem to know what to say. Then the doctor scurried in, leading a servant with a steaming bowl of porridge. Frain could scarcely contain his eagerness. His hand trembled as he reached for the spoon.
“Slowly,” Trevyn cautioned, holding the bowl for him.
He ate, and not very slowly. As he sat back after eating we could see that he was in pain.
“Gut-ache,” he said. “Sorry. I tried not to gulp.” “Never mind. Lie down.” Trevyn helped him to curl up under the blankets. “Keep warm, maybe sleep. I will have someone bring you a warm brick.”
“Thank you. Truly, my lord, I feel that I shall soon be much better. Thank you for everything.”
He wanted us to leave. But Trevyn lingered, frowning thoughtfully.
“Only one more question, if you do not mind telling me. What were you seeking, that you set to sea in so small a craft, unprovisioned, and in the freezing season yet?”
“Ascalonia,” said Frain, his voice muffled by blankets. “Ogygia. The home of the goddess, if you will.”
“Is that a sunlit land? You could have gotten to it in a larger vessel, if it is, and at a more clement time of year. Or was it perhaps death you were seeking?”
“Yes, in a sense. Her name is Shamarra. But to find her I must first speak to the goddess in Ogygia.” Frain stirred tensely. “I hardly know anymore what I really seek—growth, death, change, ending—” “Who is Shamarra?”
“That is yet another question.” The daring of him, with a king he scarcely knew! But Trevyn smiled and touched his shoulder.
“Sleep well,” he said, and we left him. We did not speak until we reached the far end of the corridor.
He is a marvel, I said finally. I sensed uneasily that he did not like me, and I wished I could abate my liking for him, but I could not.
“Ay,” said Trevyn absently. “I expected no less. And it is a good name—can you say it, Dair? FRAIN—just try it one sound at a time. FR—”
Stop it! Sudden, surprising anger snapped through me and I roared aloud, Let me alone, I am of no use, I am fate’s fool, a freak—The few servants within hearing fled in panic at the noise I was making, but Trevyn hugged me. I stopped my ranting, laid my head on his shoulder and groaned.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I won’t badger you anymore.”
It is not you. The castlefolk talk in front of me as if I am too stupid to understand them. They call me woodwouse, wild man. I make such an oaf of a human.
“They are frightened,” said Trevyn, and he stepped back a little, eyeing me with a smile. “You are rather awesome, you know. Face of the god of the wild things—I have seen gods, remember—and strength enough for any two men, and grace coming to you already, grace learned from no human.…”
Some of the maids beckon at me, as if I were meat for their tasting. Then they laugh at me when I refuse them. I wish I were—I could not say I wished I were dead, though it had a fine ring to it, for it was not true. The Old Language speaks from the heart. It cannot say untruth.
“You wish you were a wolf again?”
There spoke Trevyn True King. He would not flinch from whatever was. I faced him with blinking eyes.
Yes. That is part of it. But the worst of it is—I forced myself onward, floundering after the sour scent of truth—Frain. He does not like me any better than the others do.
“He is frightened, too,” said Trevyn.
But why? I had expected better of him, somehow.
“The essence of you, the wildness, I think. Because you remind him of something—or because he is frightened of things within himself.”
I had thought he would be courageous, I complained.
“He is, he is very courageous! Look at how far he has come. And there is nothing more fearsome than what he is facing.”
I did not understand. But Trevyn spoke as one who knew.
“Perhaps he will learn a different sort of valor from you,” Trevyn added. “Perhaps that is what he has come here for, to learn from you.”
How? I burst out. I cannot talk to him, I can’t read or write, even. Any dog could serve him better. Mother of mercy, what am I to do? He will not want me—
Trevyn quieted me with a soft glance. We are not very different, you and I, that glance said. We are equals. I stood stunned.
“You will find your way, I am sure of it,” he said. “I was a mute, too, for a while, when I was with your mother. Perhaps you are indeed intended to continue what I have begun. Remember the words of the seeress, and await the word of the One.”
Chapter Three
Frain ate often during the next several days. When he was not eating, and sometimes as he ate, he talked with Trevyn. I would listen.
“Dair is my son,” Trevyn explained when he judged it was time. Frain looked both shocked and dubious.
“But how can that be, my lord? Are you older than you seem? I would have said that you two were nearly of the same age.”
“Nay, I am just twenty. And Dair was born only two years ago. He was a wolf. They mature faster than human young,” said Trevyn offhandedly. “There was some magic involved,” he added after a moment.
“I s
hould think so.” Frain stared hard at me, his face like a mask. “Well, there is magic in Vale as well, though it is a harsher magic than what I sense here, and there were creatures there that were half beast, and I was not afraid of them—”
“Magic, on the mainland?” Trevyn interrupted eagerly.
“I never really thought of Vale as part of the mainland.”
He spoke of Vale at some length. It was a place apart, turned inward upon itself because of the mountains that ringed it all around. It was ruled by canton kings and a high kingship of sacred monarchs who often went mad. Frain’s foster brother Tirell was the son of one such king. Two things became clear as Frain spoke: one, that he loved his brother Tirell with a wolf’s love, unquestioning. And the other, that Tirell had gone insane and hurt him badly. It was Tirell who had crippled his arm.
On top of that there was the matter of his fostering, of which he had been ignorant, that he had been given away at birth by his own parents. And on top of that there was the matter of Shamarra.
She was very beautiful with a delicate beauty, like crystal, pure and apart, like clear water. “She was the lake,” Frain explained. “Or the—being of the lake, the goddess of the lake. And the lake is very deep and shadowy and still, a hidden thing, it lies amid the mountains of death, what we call Acheron, where no one ever goes.”
We have seen it, I said. Trevyn glanced at me sharply to hush me, for Frain found my voice disturbing. It took him some while to go on.
He had fallen into ardent love with Shamarra. He had looked into her lake without terror, bathed in it without being dragged down by dark fingers. Thus, all unawares, he had won his immortality. But Shamarra had loved Tirell—I heard the hard undertug of anger in Frain’s voice, nearly hidden by the smooth surface flow of his words—though Tirell wanted only to avoid her. In the end she had offered herself to him, and in his madness he had taken her, savagely.
The Golden Swan Page 2
