The Black Beast (25 page)

His eyes met mine with something more than pain—I could only call it love. He had not raised a hand against me. If there had been time I think I would have killed myself then and there. But there was no time; I had to catch him before he fell. Chariots and trampling horses and desperate men churned all around us.

I held him to my chest with one arm, felt his face resting against my own. I slashed my way out of the battle, struggling along, hating myself, swinging my sword and roaring and caterwauling while tears streamed down my face so that I could hardly tell friend from foe. Fabron joined me, hurrying along at my side, shouting anxious questions. I did not answer him. I carried Frain to the sacred grove. The goddess was good for something after all; no one would fight there if they could help it. The goddess preferred innocent blood of sacrifice, which was very nearly what I was bringing her.

I laid Frain down. He could not speak, but he touched my hand. Then he faulted. I ripped the tunic open and found the wound. It was his left shoulder I had struck, through flesh and bone, a terrible wound, a crippling wound, but it appeared no vitals were hurt—I tried to bind it up, but my hands shook, I could do nothing right. Fabron pushed me aside.

“Sit there,” he told me.

How could he speak to me, how could he not kill me? Surely he did not understand. “I gave Frain that wound!” I shouted at him. “I, the great Prince of Melior! Oh, Fabron, I am a wretched, hateful thing.…” My voice broke. I sobbed, and he reached over to pat me absently.

“I know,” he said, humoring me.

I wept—it seemed like hours that I wept. I hope no one ever has to weep like that again. I wept until I could scarcely breathe, until I thought I would die. Fabron tended to Frain, then put his arms around me; I shall always love him for that. But no one could help me much. Years of weeping were in me, for Mylitta, for Mother, for Abas whom I had loved, for Frain though he was still living, for myself.… I felt adrift in fate, floating in wells of sorrow, spun and eddied by a stream I could not direct, dark water—the world was dark; even the sky had gone dark while I wept. Great storm clouds had moved in from the Perin Tyr, and the battle clanged beneath them.

And Frain moaned and stirred by my side. And the brown man walked toward me. He came slowly into the grove with the beast following him as he led and urged and encouraged it toward me. It left a trail of red all the way, red running down from slashes on its shoulders; its wings hung limp and tattered and one leg dragged the ground, nearly severed. It fell at my feet and lay in silent agony. The brown man stood watching me weep.

“Accursed, the Whole line of Melior is accursed,” Frain cried aloud. “I might as well be dead.”

They would die, they would all die and leave me living and in such misery—

“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.