The Golden Swan

by Nancy Springer

  Far below us at the foothills we could see pennons and movement. The huntsmen were so distant we could not hear horns or hounds. The hunt was all spread and straggling, as if something had led it a long chase. Frain watched the faraway horsemen with fascination, but I turned my eyes to the sky. It was darkening, the sun had already set, and we could not camp here on this open, windy pass with those dreadful Luoni in attendance—others had flapped down to join the first. They stared at me in their turn, and I felt as if all the eyes of heaven were on me as well. We would have to find shelter somewhere. There seemed to be two promising close-set rocks a little way below—

  “Fabron!” Frain gasped. “It is Fabron!”

  I looked. A rider had appeared halfway up the mountain, much closer than the others, flashing out from behind jutting rocks and gorse and driving his horse at a breakneck pace. It was easy to see how Frain had known him even at the distance. He was burly, full-bearded, golden-helmed, a splendid figure of a man, his dark velvet clothing studded with many clasps and brooches and ornamental chains. He gave off a rich metallic sparkle as he rode, and so did his steed, the harness well trapped—in a moment his quarry came into view before him. It was a deer, and such a magnificent deer—a stag, I thought, though I found out later that the roe deer of Vale also bear antlers—a great, shining, high crowned ruler of deer, silvergold—the color alone would have been enough to make men kill. Up and up the mountain it came, with Fabron urging his horse along behind, the poor steed slick with sweat, every inch of it. All the other horsemen and even the hounds had long since given up.

  On they came, straight toward us, the royal in pursuit of the regal. Frain stood oddly silent. I glanced over at him and saw some sort of struggle making confusion of his face.

  “I—let us go,” he muttered. “If he sees me—”

  “You don’t want to greet your father?” I asked, astonished.

  “No, I don’t. I—” Then he went pale, aghast. “Do you hear it?” he stammered.

  I heard it, a faint, sourceless, incorporeal ringing, thousands of thin and tiny bells sounding in a minor mode.

  “The chimes of the bluebell are said to be an omen of death,” Frain whispered. “And what else could that be?”

  There were no bluebells about, not in winter. So much the worse. I felt sick. There had been far too many omens of late.

  “Whose death?” I snapped.

  Frain did not answer, his eyes wide and fixed on Fabron. Hunter king and hunted creature had almost reached the twin stones that stood stark just below us, their bases in a pool of deepening shadow by now. Frain seemed to notice them for the first time.

  “Kedal and Kedur,” he moaned. “The betrayed ancestral staghounds of Vaire. Oh, no. Fabron.…”

  It was not a shout of warning; it was no more than a murmur. The deer appeared between the twin rocks, passed through them in one floating leap. Fabron appeared on his lathered, laboring horse. Eerily I noticed the staghound crest on his helm. He forced his reluctant steed into the narrow gap—

  And the deer whirled and turned on him, but in that instant it was no longer the deer. It still wore antlers, its crown, but it was all flash of teeth; it was wolf, staghound, hell hound, catamount and bear, a fluid, shifting, monstrous and bestial snarling thing that barred the way, a horned horror, all ferocity. It was feathered dragon, antlered serpent, writhing—there was a scream, or screaming. It could have been the apparition or the terrified horse or the triumphant Luoni, or Frain, or even me. I cannot tell. The dusk was full of screaming. Then Fabron fell.

  His death was very quick. And it was not the fearsome beast that killed him, either. His own horse did all the evil work, poor creature. Unable to flee in the narrow slot between monoliths, it reared and toppled backward and smashed its rider against the stone. Fabron fell to the ground, and the horse heaved itself up and ran off down the mountainside. The Luoni flew off, too, swooping and shrieking, pursuing the departing soul.

  And the staghorned monster was gone as if it had never been. A small, sooty bird flew up from the ground where it had stood and perched on the left-hand stone.

  Frain had stood frozen while his father met his doom. But a moment later he moved and ran scrambling down the steep rock toward the shadow where Fabron lay. I started after him too late to stop him. I strongly sensed danger—the very air inaudibly rang of danger. But Dair was off, too, right after Frain, down the jagged slope at the risk of his bare human skin, and I followed the pair of them more slowly.

  I found Frain examining Fabron. “His neck is broken,” he was saying numbly as I drew near. “And he was trampled, but—I think that came after.”

  He’s dead, Dair told me.

  “I know that,” I snapped. I found it hard to be sympathetic when something was causing the short gray hairs on the back of my neck to rise. From just behind me there came a rippling, gelid laugh. I turned, Dair rose, Frain rose, we all stood as if we were puppets. Only Fabron, dead on the ground, remained indifferent.

  The most beautiful of women stood there, a woman like a silver flow of water, where the fatal beast had stood.

  “Shamarra!” Frain breathed.

  I heard and struggled to comprehend—was this his goddess? She was supposed to be his beloved; how could she have done this to him? But then I looked at her and understood, felt a shock of recognition, a certain disturbing empathy, even. She was the feral one. She was the wild thing, an elemental, the essence of all wildness in search of vengeance on the ways of men. How was I to say that Frain must not love her? She was a creature comrade, a fellow. More, she was myself, or in me, part of me, to my dismay. I had felt that feminine anger.… And she was magnificent, exquisite and awesome. I could have gone to my knees and worshiped her. And her singleness of passion gave her immense magic. I knew at once that I was no match for her. As for Frain, he was a pawn at her command.

  She spoke. I learned later what was said, for the language of Vale was strange to me. At the time I heard only her cold, numbing tone, wash of words as cold as a mountain stream.

  “Well, Frain, of all people!” She laughed again, the tinkling, liquid laugh of icy water. “How quaint of you to come.”

  “You—” Frain could not speak; his voice was wooden, splintering. Shamarra nodded almost coyly.

  “I have found my human form again, yes, and many others, and powers you cannot dream of. I have grown. You have had fantasies of rescuing me from my cruel fate, have you not?” She smiled benignly. “How very sweet of you.”

  “You—why have you killed Fabron?”

  “Oh, your father.” She cast a cool glance on the corpse. “Poor fool. It was because he would not help me kill Tirell.”

  Frain made a sound that was not speech, a strangled, stunned and questioning sound. Shamarra went on readily. She seemed quite willing to talk to him; she condescended to him, as it were. In a sense she treated him as an old friend. She ignored Dair and me. I have never felt so glad to be ignored.

  “Vengeance,” she said quite quietly. “You know what he did to me, Frain—I must have vengeance. It patterns all my days and dreams, my waking and my sleeping. I have worked toward vengeance these eight long years. Luring you away was only an easy first step, my pet. Then I had a setback, and I had to find my way out of that night bird form—weary work, but my powers have only increased by it. Lately I have taken council with Raz. He is only too glad to challenge Tirell now that I have showed him what I can do for him, how I can turn the river in its course and make it run against Melior. And there is that fool Sethym. He is always eager for fresh-spilled blood.”

  Raz and Sethym were canton kings of Vale, as Fabron had been.

  “And I felt sure I could persuade Fabron to join cause with us,” Shamarra went on. “He has been very bitter against Tirell on your account, young my lord, as I intended him to be. At first he seemed willing enough to turn traitor, but lately some absurd notion of loyalty has taken hold of him. And of course I could not have that. So—” She
shrugged her delicate shoulders, indicating the body which lay behind us with a slight movement of one pearly bare foot.

  Frain stepped forward, and Dair and I reached out with one accord to stop him. Shamarra was very dangerous—any fool could see that. He must not get too close to her. I could feel him trembling, perhaps not with fear.

  “But you must not kill Tirell!” he cried at her. “You can’t! He is—he is True King!”

  “I can’t!” she mimicked, mocking him. “Mustn’t kill Tirell! And what of his death that dwells in your heart, that makes your teeth grow long with yearning for his blood? I know how you dream of dispatching him when you dare to let yourself dream.”

  Frain stood as white as if he had been stabbed.

  “It is all right, you can tell me! I am the dark lake of death; have you forgotten?” She spread her slender hands. In that moment she seemed more his friend than in any other.

  “You are hateful!” Frain blurted. “Ghoul—” Convulsively he started toward her, his one fist clenched. We restrained him. I felt very frightened at the slight stirring of her face, shadow on deep water—very frightened.

  “So I am a ghoul, now,” she said softly, too softly. “I suppose I am. But, Frain, I will not kill Tirell quite yet.”

  Life’s breath seemed to have left us all. We waited for the final blow.

  “I intend to dishonor him first.” Cruel delight was in Shamarra’s every word, a catlike, nearly playful delight. “Raz has a scheme to make his wife leave him. And there are ways to make his warriors turn against him, and his officers, and even the people of his hall. I want him to see quite clearly his doom as it draws near.” She smiled again, the most warmthless of smiles. “And I want it to break his heart. I may even be able to make some use of you, my pup.” The epithet came out hurtfully; her eyes glittered with grisly inspiration. “I may let you slay him for me yourself!”

  It was nearly full dark. Shamarra shone in the gloom like so much pale ice. Her hair was a shimmering waterfall, her dress a silver flow, her features smooth as lilyleaves without being at all soft, and for all her beauty and for all my soul’s sympathy with her, I felt weak with terror of her. The purity of her wrath had filled her with insuperable power.

  “Alys!” I screamed out. “Alys, come here at once, I need you. Come, hurry!”

  Shamarra took the two steps to Frain—she seemed to flow rather than walk. She raised one lotuslike hand and laid the fair fingers on his arm, taking possession of him as completely as if she had bound him in chains.

  “You are mine,” she said. “Follow me.” He stood in helpless horror.

  “To think I once longed for those words,” he whispered. “But you enslaved me years ago.”

  Then Alys came down to the mountaintop, and all things stopped as they were.

  Chapter Seven

  Frain saw her as an enormous white swan with wings outspread, and Dair saw her as a huge and blinding argent moon. But I saw her as the massive Great Mother, she who sits like a sphere of white marble, unmoved by the world’s pleading.

  At times of great trouble, peculiar vexations take hold of a person. Frain turned from the apparition and looked at me fixedly.

  “That is the goddess,” he stated rather than asked.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “I know it is. I met her in Isle. You called her?”

  “Yes,” I whispered hurriedly. “I hope she might help you. For myself I have little hope. Shhh!”

  “Great galloping damnation!” he shouted out loud. “You mean I’ve tramped over half the world looking for her, and she was in Vale all the time?”

  “Of course she was!” I hissed at him fiercely. “Now hush, before she blasts you!”

  Dair added his voice to the muted uproar. Confound it, he complained, wasn’t one goddess trouble enough? Now we have two to deal with.

  Shamarra stood frozen in the presence of Alys as we had stood before her. Alys was far more dangerous than she but, I hoped, less malicious.

  “Silence, Dair.” The voice came from everywhere, chillingly, but the tone was not unkind. She liked Dair, I knew at once. His father was Trevyn, her favorite, after all, and Dair was a marvel in himself. “Silence, Frain.” She sounded merely bored. “Maeve.” Suddenly there was thunder in the tone, and fire flickered over the mountaintop. “Come here.”

  I walked forward about a half dozen steps, then stopped. I could not force myself any nearer. I have never felt so craven.

  “What,” said Alys, “are you doing here.” It was not so much a question as a rebuke and an accusation. I bowed my head.

  “We came to find water—” I whispered like a girl child, I, a woman of more years than I cared to count.

  “Speak up!”

  I squared my shoulders and spoke rapidly in the Old Language. Frain would not be able to understand me, but Alys would know that I told only truth. “We came to find water. Then Frain sensed his homeland and had to see it. We were very hungry as well, and foraging all the way. When we came to the top of the pass we saw Shamarra kill Fabron—well, cause him to die. And now she has told Frain to follow her. That is why I called you.”

  “You should be on your way eastward,” said Alys angrily. “If you had kept to your course, Frain would be in no difficulty.”

  “He would be in grave danger of death from thirst and starvation.”

  “Huh,” said Alys unsympathetically. “There would have been rain soon enough, and a jackrabbit or two. Maeve, you have no business being here, and you know you have none. You are part of a far larger design than anything that ever happened in this puny land of Vale.”

  I knew it was true, as she had said. I made no excuse; I only nodded. “But is Frain part of the pattern here in Vale,” I asked, “or is his destiny at the Source with mine, as I have sensed?”

  “Frain is a nuisance,” said Alys grimly.

  I waited, and in a moment she went on.

  “This matter between Shamarra and Tirell is a pattern which will work itself out in its own time and way and with its own justice. As Fabron has met with justice at last, the usurper. Shamarra was as much a tool of destiny as a crafter of that death—Frain should not be involved. It was not only Shamarra who lured him out of Vale. But since, with that eager stupidity of his, he has gone and gotten himself back in again—” The goddess’s tone turned hard. “—I am going to have to intervene, since you have summoned me. And I hate to intervene. It makes me testy. Shamarra knows that.”

  I stole a glance behind me. Frain had settled down beside his father and was stroking the dead man’s eyelids to close them. Dair had gone wolf, perhaps to threaten Shamarra should she make herself a monster again. Shamarra had folded her hands and stood very still.

  “Shamarra,” said Alys with distaste but no wrath, “Frain is not entirely yours. I have work for him.”

  “He has doomed himself—” Shamarra started.

  “Another destiny encompasses that doom. Play out your own play here, and leave him to his, and see. He has been gone from you this long, and he is to leave you again, I say.” The voice had taken on a touch of sharp edge. “Go now.”

  Shamarra nodded, gave a graceful curtsy and rippled away down the mountainside. She grew ghostly, seeming to float in the darkness, then disappeared. Frain stood up and gazed after her.

  “He is so much like a child,” Alys sighed, “that it is useless to scold him. But you, Maeve!” Her voice jerked me around to face her again. “You are no child.”

  I stood quite silently. I had lost my fear in resignation.

  “Nothing to say for yourself?” asked Alys rather nastily. “Well, be mute, then. With the first rays of tomorrow’s sunrise. And you will remain mute until the fern flower is found and plucked. That should speed you on your way. When day comes, tend to the dead man, then turn eastward—and take that bothersome Frain with you!”

  Thunder sounded, fire ramped and rained, and a blast of wind came that knocked me to my knees. When I looked up, A
lys was gone. The great swan had flown, Frain said. Dair told me that the giant moon had faded into starlight. They pulled me up by the elbows and led me back into the shelter of the twin rocks Kedal and Kedur.

  We sat all that night shivering and talking, not for diversion but for vital understanding. Frain told us everything that Shamarra had said, and I told him what Alys had decreed. He seemed drifting, dazed, incoherent, even, after Fabron’s death and Shamarra’s plotting and my own setback. He ended up telling us, not anything about Fabron or Tirell or Shamarra, but about Kedal and Kedur. Two giant and immortal staghounds who had been insulted, called curs, and turned to stone as a result. Fabron had told him the tale when they first met, he said. As he spoke, his eyes remained dry, but slow, seeping tears ran down the rocks from their blind heads far above.

  When dawn came we built a cairn over Fabron and left him. No one would ever find him, Frain said. No one came to the mountains except the foolhardy and the most daring of heroes. We trudged back up the steep and rocky slope to the pass, out of the shadow of Lorc Tutosel, the mountains of the night bird. I faced the morning sun. Frain looked back on the far hazy hills of Vale, then down at the cliffs that fell away at our feet, and abruptly he came out of his numbness into anguish.

  “Maeve, what in the name of misery am I to do?” he cried, hurling the words out to the heedless wind. “Such a fool I am, I have given my life away to folly—it is not she that I love, she is a stranger, I hardly know her, I detest her, she has betrayed me like all the rest—and yet I love her still! How can that be?” He turned to me fiercely, willing me to understand what he did not. “How has she made such an ass of me? No, it is worse than that; I have done it to myself. I and that lake and an ideal. Look, world, here we see Frain, the noble, loving and faithful one—faithful to what? A witch, a harpy? Ai, I feel like giving my body to yonder void.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but no sound came. The muteness had struck. Desolation filled me.

  “I can do nothing right,” Frain ranted, not looking at me. “I should be speeding to Tirell to warn him, help him, no matter what the goddess says—but I would not be able to face him. I am frightened at the very thought of it, as I was when I saw Fabron. I am such a coward—”