O Tutosel, Ai Tutosel!
The night bird sings
Of Vieyra’s spell,
Of Aftalun’s
Sweet hydromel
And dark chimes of
The wild bluebell
In reaches of high Tutosel.”
There was more, about mortal’s knell and the sad and flightless song of the dawn bird. Such a melancholy ditty. The fire had burned down to ashes, and there seemed to be no more that either of us could say. Dair lay not in his blanket but on it, dozing, his limbs stretched out to one side, the attitude lupine even though he was in his human form. I sat and thought of the night bird. A small, dust-colored bird with a sweet, rippling, seductive voice.
“She should be flying with the flocks of Ascalonia,” Frain burst out. He meant Shamarra, of course. I looked at him in some surprise.
“Can she not fly?”
“Yes, I suppose. But the proper form of the immortal is the swan, like the swan that always graced her lake.”
“It is late,” I said quietly. I got my blanket and swaddled myelf in it somewhat, eased myself down to the ground. My poor, stout body, it was not meant for all this walking and sleeping on stones. It ached. It longed to be something else, something strong and naked and free.… The moon was on the wax, and the wild thing or the breath of the goddess was stirring in me. The night bird flew through my thoughts.
It took a long time for Frain to go to sleep. When he was still at last, I sat up cautiously to find Dair sitting up and looking back at me. His ears twitched, listening to the night noises; human ears, they moved on his human head, and his nostrils moved as well. He smiled at me. He smiled very seldom, and I was glad, for it was a disconcerting rictus.
Shall we go together? he asked.
“All right,” I whispered, “but we must stay close to Frain. There might be danger on the prowl for him.”
You do not have to tell me that, he growled.
True enough, and enough of motherly nonsense. Wings flapped within my mind, and in a moment I was myself in flight, a small bird darting effortlessly upward, all aches forgotten. I perched on the high branch of a wych elm tree to look down on our campsite. A fluffy gray owl noiselessly swooped up and settled beside me.
Have you ever flown before? I asked Dair.
No. It is delightful. Do you think we are going to be able to change back in time?
The night bird did not know and did not care. Her thoughts were dark, her nature treacherous and musical in the minor key, selfish and sad and lovely as decadence always is. The owl was a night creature also, his reputation for wisdom perhaps deserved. Dair proved less of a fool than I that night. But of that more in a moment.
We tilted our wings and fell into flight. We flew for the joy of it, circling above Frain’s sleeping form, wheeling and gliding, till dawn. There is nothing like coming out of human self to refresh one. No sleep can match it. Out of self.… Frain stirred below me, and I did not care what he would think when he awoke, poor fool. To fly, just to let instinct bear one up, so easy—
So easy to die in an instant!
A falcon had appeared above me, diving down out of the dawn sky. I flashed toward the cover of an evergreen oak, but he was nearly on me, his talons reaching for my stubby tailfeathers. How had he gotten so close without my seeing him? Desperate, I plummeted to the ground and took refuge in my human form. Instead of veering off in consternation as I had expected it to, the raptor settled lightly beside me and became Dair. And he gave me that unnerving grin of his again.
“Dair, you beggar!” I exploded at him. “What do you mean! You frightened me half to death!”
What of Frain, if he had seen you? Dair growled back. I have hurt him enough.
Frain sat up, startled and sleepy. He blinked as he focused on us and identified us as the source of the uproar. “What in the world?” he exclaimed. We were naked, after all.
“Nothing.” I swallowed my wrath, feeling suddenly sheepish as modesty and compunction returned to me. I reached hastily for my clothes, conscious of my thick body. “It is nothing at all, really,” I told Frain vaguely. “We were out flying.…”
“On your besom? What do you use to rub yourself with?” He got up, laughing hollowly to himself.
“Now, stop that,” I said, annoyed. “We were being birds, that is all.”
“Indeed.” He was still laughing softly, as if life were momentarily too funny for him to bear. He, earthbound with his crippled arm, he who dreamed of flight—cringing at the thought, I grew glad that he was laughing. I wondered how much anger the laughter hid.
“Do you want anything to eat?” I asked him, solicitous.
“Who could eat?” he chortled. “Let us be getting on.”
We broke camp and trudged off eastward. It was midmorning before Frain seemed entirely his sober self again and we stopped for a bite of bread.
“This Shamarra,” I said to him. “You say she is an aspect of the death goddess.”
“Yes. In a very real way I seek death.” He said it baldly, with no great drama.
“She must be rather heartless,” I ventured.
“Yes.” Oh, the things he was not telling me!
“The form of the night bird,” I said, “it suits her.”
“Yes. I know it.”
He was maddening. “Would it be too dense of me,” I inquired with some asperity, “to ask why you are not content to just let her be?”
He seemed startled by the question. “Well, she turned friendlier toward the last,” he said hesitantly.
I was losing my temper. “Frain,” I warned.
“I love her,” he declared.
“Frain, I could scream!” I shouted at him. “The real reason, if you please!”
He kept silence for some time. I thought at first that he was sulking, but looking at him I could see that he was thinking, struggling with truth. My ill humor vanished. I waited.
“This condition of mine,” he said softly at last.
“Yes?”
“I doomed it on myself when I set foot in her lake. The passions I felt then will not fade. They are all still mine, still and forevermore. That is why I have not been able to grow—or change—”
I gaped at him. He met my gaze quite levelly, the lines of his face tight and grim.
“But—she let you?” I gasped.
“She let me. She wanted a faithful pet, I think.” His words were calm and bleak. “I am in thrall,” he said.
Chapter Four
We passed out of Tokar and through some other countries and into nameless lands, until not only the boundaries of kingdoms but even the nature of the earth changed. We came to the end of forest and onto something different, some sort of upland plateau. From a high, blunt promontory at the edge of it we looked out across a muddle of rocky hills, mostly sheep pasturage, with stone-walled garths on the summits. To me the outlook was bleak. We had not run afoul of brigands, not yet; Dair had seen to that. But we were out of food, and there would be no more wild grapes to eat, and no more deer for Dair’s hunting.
I fingered my modest gold necklace and sighed. By night I could be a prowling wildcat under a full moon, or the wisent with wicked curving horn, or the she-wolf, or even the witch Frain had laughingly accused me of being. But by day I was very much the woman, and I hated to barter away the jewelry my parents had left me. Still, when one is on one’s way to the Source there seems little sense in holding anything back.
“Let us go there,” I said, pointing out the most prosperous-looking garth. We strode off single file down the slope.
We spent the night by a warm hearth. They were hospitable, those lonesome garth folk, even toward so oddly assorted a trio of strangers. In the morning we left with a goodly supply of bread, cheese, apples and dried mutton. And without my necklace, of course.
And so it went until nearly midwinter. It did not snow, we were too far south for that, but we were often glad of the shelter of a stone homestead those chill nights, and
I traded away my bracelet and ring. Oh, we met with the occasional rebuff, with hostility from time to time, even with danger—there were rough folk on those moorlands, too, it turned out. But what mostly happened was steady, silent days of walking and evenings of quiet talk, the bond between Dair and Frain and my motherly affection for the pair of them, and aches and blisters, and grumbling on rainy days, and a feeling that each of us could depend on the others. Even Frain, our cripple—Dair and I were protective of him, and he accepted it; he had never had proper mothering, I think. But there was far more to him than there seemed to be.
I remember particularly one time when Dair was off hunting for rabbits amongst the gorse bushes somewhere. It was dusk, the day between dog and wolf, as the country-folk would say, a threatening time of day, and two strangers with swords suddenly appeared at our campfire. They looked at us and laughed.
“A cripple and a woman!” one said. “And not much good to be had from either of them, it seems.”
“We’ll take it out on the female,” said the other, leering. “Though at her age I doubt if she is still tight enough to afford much pleasure.”
Frain got up wearily. Neither of us was very much afraid. We knew that I would undergo a change when I became angry enough, probably into wolf form, and then those men would learn the meaning of bloodshed. But I suppose Frain’s pride was stung—he had pride, though he usually kept it private—so he stood up to confront the pair of brigands, and they laughed anew, waiting with delight to see what he would do.
“Scum,” he remarked offhandedly, and then he moved with eagle speed. He jerked his body so that his left arm, the useless one, swung out and hit the nearer robber across the face with a fishy slap. Startled and angered, the man put up his sword, and I squeaked; it cut into Frain’s arm. But on the instant Frain had ahold of the sword hilt with his good hand. He wrenched it away from his enemy. One quick backhand blow to an unprotected throat and the man was dead. Just as quickly Frain turned and parried the blow the other brigand was aiming at his neck.
This fellow was ready for a fight. He had his shield up, and Frain had none, and blood dripped down from his dangling, wounded arm. I began to think of shouting for Dair—he was already in his wolf form, of course. But I did not. I merely sat with my mouth open. Frain handled his sword with astounding force and skill. He was breathtaking, nothing short of magnificent—I could have watched him all night. Blade clanged against blade ever faster, but Frain remained untouched. All the while he pricked his enemy with his swordtip, nudged and caressed him with it in a grim game of power. He could have killed him any of half a dozen times, and the man knew it. Pallid and sweating, the brigand stumbled back, turned and fled. Frain stood and let him go.
I came out of my stupor, scrambled up and hurried over to him. “Mighty Mothers, Frain!” I exclaimed. At the same time Dair came running up, four-legged.
I saw a very scared sort of robber run by, he said. What has happened—Name of the Lady, Frain!
“Name of the Lady, Frain!” I translated, tugging at him. I got him to sit down, and I ripped bandaging for the slash on his arm. Dair sat on his tail, whimpering.
“Save your sympathy, both of you,” Frain grumped. “There is no feeling in that arm, no pain, as I knew full well before I presented it to be sliced.”
“Then why are you trembling?” I retorted. He was very pale and shaking violently. I wrapped the wound tightly to stop the bleeding.
Why didn’t you call me! Dair appealed. Both of us ignored him.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were such a swordsman!” I snapped at Frain in mock anger, trying to make him smile.
“No. Please.” He turned away his face, trembling harder than ever, and curled himself into a taut ball. I put a blanket around him, puzzled and worried.
It is not pain, Dair told me. He is terrified.
“But why?”
Because—he has used the sword, the weapon of wrath.
Dair went over and sat by Frain, pressed against him. In a moment Frain gave a dry sob and took the wolf into his one-armed embrace, hiding his face in the thick fur of Dair’s neck.
“We have to get away from here,” I said uneasily. “That robber who lived might come back with more.”
Frain got up and went about the work of breaking camp, his face tight, twitching. We set off at once, in the dark and without sleep—I am sure Frain would not have been able to sleep in any event. We left the dead outlaw slowly stiffening on the ground behind us, his sword at his side. Dair led us through the night in wolf form, very warily, while Frain and I walked quite silently at his heels. But no harm befell us that night.
Just before dawn Frain spoke at last.
“I had thought the sword skill had left me,” he said very softly. His tone was not one of rejoicing.
“You thought you had gotten rid of it, you mean?” I teased gently. I could not see his face, but I doubt if he smiled.
“No. A few years ago, some time after I left Vale, I got in a—well, a contest, and I was beaten so badly I had to be nursed for a month. I really wanted to be killed, but by bad fortune the man was merciful.” His tone was hard.
“You were splendid,” I said. “What troubles you so?”
“Bad dreams—and faces in the night. All the trees have eyes tonight.” He shivered.
“Let us sit and watch the dawn,” I said.
We rested. I could tell that the light comforted Frain. I glanced at him from time to time, thinking.
“Have you heard the tale of Eterlane, the hero?” I asked him, finally.
“The hero’s name is Aftalun.”
“Aftalun, Feridun, Eterlane, it is all the same,” I said impatiently. “The hero is the one who confronts the dragon.”
“My brother Tirell talked with dragons,” Frain said.
I did not want to hear any more about Tirell. I gave him a sharp look.
“With Aftalun it was a swimming dragon,” he added with some small interest. “He had to dive.…”
“Deep in the water, the flood, until his fire was victorious or quenched,” I finished for him. Aftalun was the sun—I felt sure of it from the way Frain watched the rays break over the horizon.
“What of Eterlane?” he asked after a while.
“For Eterlane the dragon was in a dungeon.”
I took my time and told the tale. There was once a terribly poor kingdom, I said, hagridden by famine and plague and all kinds of misfortune, and this was all blamed on the dragon. It had been with the kingdom for ages, and no one could slay it; the dragon was invincible. The only thing that could be done with it was to keep it out of sight, hidden deep in its hole, shut into its dark lair. So there it lurked, with the whole weight of the castle over it. But it was prophesied that one day a prince would come of age who would be able to deal with it.
The prince had lived with the roar of the unseen dragon from his earliest days. And when the time came for his rite of passage, in which he would receive his true-name, a hag appeared at the castle gates, keening. The king himself went out to see her.
“What are you grieving for?” he asked her. He suspected her of being more than she appeared to be, and he was right. She stopped in midwail and glared at him.
“For human folly,” she snapped. “Where is that boy?”
The king called his son. “What do you wish with him?” he asked when the prince stood before them.
“I am to marry him,” the old crone said, “when I have taught him how to face the dragon.”
King and prince stood aghast at the idea and refused the bargain, and the old woman went away wailing as before. But no true-name came to the prince, and no true love either, and no good to the stricken kingdom, for the year after. And then the hag came again, and was refused again, and so it went for the next year, and the next, until at last the prince saw that the dragon had to be faced, though his father still trembled at the idea.
“I accept your offer,” he said when the hag came again.
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br /> “Empty the castle,” she told him.
It was done, and he turned to descend to the lair.
“What weapon should I take with me?” he asked the goddess, for it was she.
“Nothing except thoughts. I will give you three. The white dove casts a dark shadow. In the heart of the rose is a worm. Night fades into day and day into night; embrace them.”
“Is that all?”
“And your true-name. It is Eterlane.”
It was a good name. The sound of it gave him warmth and courage as he walked away.
The passage to the dragon’s lair was strait and dark. The prince had to feel his way along, groping ever downward. At last there was a dim reddish light, and Eterlane stopped short. The glow came from a toothy mouth and two nostrils like embers. The bulk behind them loomed large, formless and terrifying.
“What do you want with me?” the dragon asked.
There was nothing Eterlane could do except answer it.
“I want you to stop this drought and plague and famine,” he said shakily.
“Misfortune?” inquired the dragon slowly. “But which of us is to blame? Let me look at you in the light.”
“What?” Eterlane exclaimed.
“Let me out to the light, I say.” The dragon started forward.
Eterlane was badly scared. He had left all the portals open behind him for his own escape, and now the dragon would get loose—what a fool he had been to let that hag send him down here without a weapon, he thought. He snatched up a stone from the floor and hurled it. The dragon grunted and sent him staggering back with a blow of its great clawed foot. Eterlane shouted and stamped at the claws, and another push sent him stumbling back again.
So they went, with the dragon shoving and slithering and the hero fighting punily all the way, until they came out of the dungeon into the granaries and guardrooms. Eterlane could have gotten himself a weapon there, but he had begun hazily to realize that he had not been harmed. He ran up the steps to the sunlit throne room, panting and wondering. The dragon followed, and at the dais Eterlane turned to face it.
The dragon came out into the full light with a crunch of scales. It was terribly ugly, gray and ulcerous and sickening, like a bloated snake. It stared at Eterlane with bleary yellow eyes.
The Golden Swan Page 9
