Authors: Nancy Springer
“Willingly,” Hal replied, and dismounted, and sent Arundel to the stable, and tuned his plinset. After a while he plucked it, and sang, and the whole clattering hall quieted at the sound of his voice. He sang the great lays of Welas first, the stories of Veran and Claefe, and their twins Brand and Brenna who flew with the ravens for a season, and the story of an Islender, Alf Longshanks, who won the fair and willful Deona away from the royal court at Welden. All old songs, but he sang them into springtime newness, sending bright notes flying like birds through the hall. Servants set food before Hal, then, from the lord’s own table, but he took no time to eat. He sang songs that no one had heard before, his own songs, of love and the Lady, and the white, foaming horses of the sea, and Elwestrand. Einon never moved, but Alan saw tears slide down the grooves of the old lord’s face.
Finally Hal stopped singing. Lord Einon spoke a single word. “More.” But Hal shook his head and reached for his wine.
“More!” Einon urged, and undid the jeweled pin from his velvet cap, tossed it to the minstrel. So Hal flexed his fingers and played again. He sang about the lost fountains of Eburacon. He sang of valiant Bevan, the star-son, who strove with Pel Blagden, the Mantled God. He sang of Ylim, the seeress, weaving prophecy in her hidden valley. He sang of Queen Gwynllian. All the food sat cooling on the tables, and no one ate. The servants had gathered in the shadows, not moving. After a while, Hal stopped again, and Einon exclaimed, “More!” and tossed him a golden ring.
All that night Hal played and sang, and no one left the hall. The servants settled to seats on the floor after a while, but no one slept. Alan had often heard Hal sing to the tune of his plinset, in manor halls or alehouses or by a lonely campfire; but he had never known him to cast such a spell as he did that night. Hearing him, or even looking at him, Alan wept. It was as if a silver magic flew on the notes of the music, moved in his face with the mood of the song, flickered in his gleaming eyes. By daybreak, old Einon’s arms lay bare of gold, his jerkin stripped of jewels. He moved at last, stepped down from his dais, took off his golden collar, and fastened it around the Sunset King’s neck.
“More,” he begged softly.
But Hal silently held up his fingers; the tips were bleeding. Einon’s face crumpled.
“Minstrel,” he whispered, “I have given to you as you have given to me. But now my wealth is spent. What can I give you to sing for me?”
“For the sake of that blond-haired fellow there beside you,” Hal answered quietly, “one more song.”
“Him!” Einon burst out. “He is a lazy, useless, conniving Islender. What do you want with him? I’d rather give you a horse.”
“I already have a horse,” Hal replied, and played his last lay. It was the story of Leuin of Laueroc, who had died of torment in the Dark Tower at Nemeton, and even Einon sensed that Hal had given his all in giving that. The day brightened. Hal packed his instrument, gathered up his rewards, and rose to leave.
“Will you go with him, fellow?” Einon asked Alan roughly.
“Go with him!” Alan retorted. “I’d follow him into the sea! Good health to you, my lord.” The two of them walked out into daylight with Einon blinking after.
They rode off, both of them on Arundel. “I hope you’re satisfied, Alan,” Hal croaked when they were a good distance away. “My throat will be sore for a week, my fingers are raw to the bone, and I never did get my supper.” So Alan brought out a packet of food he had stolen from the table.
“That’s how they were,” Trevyn concluded. “Faithful comrades …” He fell silent, frowning.
“What did they do about Einon?” Meg asked after a while.
“What? Oh, nothing. They had the worth of ten years’ tribute in gold and jewels, and what would have been the use of telling him so? They let him alone, and when he died at an irascible old age, they found him a more amiable heir.”
“They are marvels, the Sun Kings,” Meg said softly. Though she, like Trevyn, had never known the bad times before Hal’s reign.
“Faithful comrades,” Trevyn muttered, still scowling at the ground. It had been many months, he realized, since he had heard Hal sing. The Sunset King hardly stirred from his tower; he looked more often than ever toward the west. An uneasy ache filled Trevyn at that thought.
The moon sent prickles of light through the tangled trees, and on the north wind rose the hunting cry of the wolves.
Chapter Three
It began far off at first—eerie, almost beautiful. To the east one would yelp, and far away to north or west or south another would answer him. But Arundel snorted at the sound, and Trevyn felt his fear-sweat run, for he sensed that these were cries of blood such as no animal ought to voice. With clever ease the wolves drew closer on all sides, exulting to each other over the echoing distances of the Forest. Trevyn could no longer hope that he was not the quarry. Arundel’s quivering ears bore him out. Tensely he rose, fingering his sword hilt. Meg piled wood on the fire, then stared soundlessly over the flames. In the firelight the grinning teeth of the wolves shone spectrally bright.
“You’ll not fend us off with fire, Princeling,” they jeered. “We are not ordinary wolves, you know.”
“So you have been telling me all day,” he answered them in the Ancient Tongue. He drew his sword with a flourish. “But even if you are gods, steel will separate your souls from your bodies quite effectively.”
They laughed, yapping with open mouths and lolling tongues. “But there will be more, Princeling; always there will be more. We do not care if we die; blood is life to us, even our own. And after your guts are spilled on the snow and your brains fill our bellies, what then? What then for your muddy cow and your skinny maid and your fine war horse quaking against the stone?”
“Arundel is too old to fight,” Trevyn excused him. But his heart turned to water, for he knew that a steed of the elfin blood should fight to the death, no matter what his age. And Arundel, of all such steeds, to be so filled with terror! He who had seen Hal through a hundred combats.…
“Trevyn,” Meg whispered, “what is happening?”
“Just exchanging insults.” He kept his eyes on the ring of leering eyes that shone scarlet in the firelight. “They would like to bait me out there beyond the ledge. I’ll wager you anything you like that a score of them are up there waiting to jump me.”
“Bet me a new cloak!” she demanded with comic eagerness. Trevyn grinned, and some of the sickness faded from him.
“Keep some long sticks ready for torches,” he told her. “When it comes to fighting, light my way as best you can. But stay back!”
“Never fear!” she retorted.
A bit farther away sat a wolf half again larger than the rest, shining ghostly gray in a patch of moonlight. The others yelled taunts, jumping in place as if restrained by invisible leashes, quivering and whining with eagerness for the scuffle and the kill and the warm human blood. But the big wolf squatted at his ease. He barked once, and the wolves froze to a silence that screamed like the silence of a bad dream. Trevyn could not ignore the challenge in the leader’s yellow eyes. He met them, and his head swirled in nightmare, a nightmare imposed on him by an alien will.
Laueroc, its green meadows overrun, its high walls breached, the people ugly with panic. The proud
elwedeyn
steeds fleeing, their flanks dappled with blood drawn by tearing teeth, bursting their great hearts and falling dead with shame and despair. His father, a giant gray form at his throat—
“Trevyn!” Meg cried. “Beware!”
The vision vanished as Trevyn shook his head, dazed, realizing that he had moved steps nearer to the seated leader. “He almost had me,” he murmured. “Talk to me, Meg.” But before she could say a word the big wolf barked and the others sprang. Trevyn swung his sword like a reaper cutting a swath, and the fight was joined.
The fine points of swordsmanship were of little use to Trevyn against tooth and claw. But quickness and a long reach served him well. Though the wolves lunged at him in unison, none came nearer to him than the length of his sword. Many fell back, yelping, and three toppled dead. At Trevyn’s back, Meg held the torch high. The wolves could not come at him from behind without treading in the fire. Yet they pressed the fight like things possessed. Even the wounded attacked him. Half a dozen furry bodies now lay scattered, and the living clawed over them in their frenzy to reach Trevyn. His flashing sword held them off.
In his patch of moonlight, the wolf leader sat watching, but no longer at his ease. He growled with displeasure and rose from his haunches, padding toward the fray. Trevyn noted the movement, and for an instant his strength ebbed from him. That instant of hesitation nearly caused his doom. He felt jaws close around his legs, striving to bring him down. He beat at the wolves with his sword, but they kept their hold. They dragged him out from the fire, and he reeled as heavy bodies hit his back from above, teeth and claws tore at his shoulders. He knew that if he went down he was finished. The gray leader’s face was before his, with bristly hair and long, snarling snout but something strangely human in the jaundiced eyes.… What name of evil to put to this? It was over now, they were pulling his legs from under him.…
A yell as fierce as any warrior’s rang in Trevyn’s ears, a comet of light flew past his cheek, and unbelievably the grip on his legs was released. Entranced, he watched a howling wolf run madly by with the fur of its back on fire. Meg stood before him, swinging a torch in either hand. She thrust the leaping wolves in their gaping mouths, and they screamed and fell aside. Two circled around and came at her from behind. Trevyn blinked and skewered them with his sword.
“Back!” he shouted, vaulting to her side. “Get back, Meg!” They edged back until they could feel the warmth of the fire behind them. Still the wolves lunged to the attack like mindless things, and still the bright sword drew their life’s blood. Then the leader barked, and they stopped, forming a ring just at the rim of the firelight. The big wolf sat behind them, grinning with long white teeth.
Trevyn blazed into thoughtless fury at this thing he feared and did not understand. He threw his sword to the earth at his feet. “Come out, you!” he shouted. “Fight like other things of flesh! Rend me though you will, I will wrestle you to the ground and break your foul neck with my unaided hands!”
The wolf raised his head and laughed, a high, sinister sound. “Not yet, Princeling,” he cried gaily. “Let us play yet a while. The time for us to meet will come soon enough, and it will be sweet, so sweet.…”
Then they were gone, and the sound of weird wolfish laughter floated on the Forest air. Behind the fire, Arundel trembled and huddled against the sheltering rock.
“So!” Meg softly exclaimed. “Ye’re the Prince of Laueroc.”
Sunk to earth and trembling in his turn, he couldn’t answer her. She tore strips from her muddy skirt, kneeled beside him, bound his hurts as best as she could before she spoke again. “I should’ve known it long since. But I never dreamed yer folks’d let ye go gadding about alone.”
“They don’t, as a rule,” he muttered. “Are you all right, Meg?”
“To be sure, I’m fine!” She smiled tightly. “They didn’t want
me
, those wolves.”
He glanced up at her, wincing. “Is that what made you guess?”
“Everything. Yer outlandish talk, yer lovely horse, yer lovely self …” She teased him, not being willing to say that she had seen his eyes blaze like green fire. But he did not seem able to smile.
“You saved my life,” he mumbled. “Meg, I’m sorry.…”
“What?” she protested. “Ye’d rather be dead?”
“Nay, nay!” He had to laugh at her, though the movement brought tears of pain to his eyes. “Sorry I didn’t tell you more truth.… It’s hard.”
“I can imagine,” she said wryly.
The wolves still sang, sending echoes scudding like shadows between the trees. Trevyn could not talk anymore. He sat by the fire till dawn, shivering in spite of the warmth of the flames, and Meg kept him silent company. The wolves made the whole Forest wail, but they did not return.
At daybreak, Meg and Trevyn quitted their comfortless campsite. The girl lived just beyond the Forest’s edge, near Lee. They headed that way, both on Arundel, with Molly trailing along behind. Trevyn felt tense, almost too shaky to ride. He wished that they could speed out of the Forest, but they had to travel slowly because of the cow. He found himself jerking to attention at every sound or stir. But before midday he smiled and sighed with relief. A search party thundered toward them, a dozen grim, armed men, headed by Rafe, the fiery lord of Lee. The troop hurtled up to them and pulled to a jarring halt. Rafe grabbed at Trevyn and missed. He nearly fell from his horse in his excitement.
“Trevyn! Are you all right?” he shouted, and gave the youth no chance to answer. “By thunder, is that Meg?” He peered at the grimy girl. “Your father’s been bellowing for you since yesterday, lass. Trev, you young rascal, what have you been up to? Rescuing fair maidens?”
Meg snorted; she had never felt less fair. Trevyn scarcely heard. “Wolves,” he muttered, and felt horror ripple through him, the horror of a nightmare not his own, the horror of a shadow not understood. Wolf and stag were both in Aene, he had been taught, like hawk and hare, water and fire, and all of these part of the old order that only man sometimes leaves—so how could the wolves turn against him? They had attacked him like brigands.… Pale and sweating, he closed his eyes, laid his head on Arundel’s neck. He felt Meg’s thin arms around his shoulders, trying to steady him, but he knew he would slip away.… He heard a cry from Rafe, then nothing more.
He awoke hours later to find himself tucked into a monstrous sickbed. At Rafe’s stronghold, he knew, because he saw that same lord seated beside him. “Have you nothing better to do?” he mumbled.
Rafe smiled. “How do you feel?”
Burns stung him, seemingly to the bone, even before he moved. He hoisted himself painfully. “Confounded. Not long ago I hated snow. Now I could go out and roll in the stuff. I take it you’ve cauterized the wounds.”
“Ay, we’ve had to brand you, lad.” Rafe pulled back the sheet, reached into a bucket at his feet, and piled mounds of snow on Trevyn’s legs and shoulders. “You’ve slept for five hours or so. Could you manage more?”