The Golden Swan

PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF NANCY SPRINGER

“Wonderful.” —
Fantasy & Science Fiction

“The finest fantasy writer of this or any decade.” —Marion Zimmer Bradley

“Ms. Springer's work is outstanding in the field.” —Andre Norton

“Nancy Springer writes like a dream.” —
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Nancy Springer's kind of writing is the kind that makes you want to run out, grab people on the street, and tell them to go find her books immediately and read them, all of them.” —
Arkansas News

“[Nancy Springer is] someone special in the fantasy field.” —Anne McCaffrey

Larque on the Wing
Winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award

“Satisfying and illuminating … uproariously funny … an off-the-wall contemporary fantasy that refuses to fit any of the normal boxes.” —
Asimov's Science Fiction

“Irresistible … charming, eccentric … a winning, precisely rendered foray into magic realism.” —
Kirkus Reviews

“Best known for her traditional fantasy novels, Springer here offers an offbeat contemporary tale that owes much to magical realism. … An engrossing novel about gender and self-formation that should appeal to readers both in and outside the SF/fantasy audience.” —
Publishers Weekly

“Springer's best book yet … A beautiful/rough/raunchy dose of magic.” —
Locus

Fair Peril

“Rollicking, outrageous … eccentric, charming … Springer has created a hilarious blend of feminism and fantasy in this heartfelt story of the power of a mother's love.” —
Publishers Weekly

“Witty, whimsical, and enormously appealing.” —
Kirkus Reviews

“A delightful romp of a book … an exuberant and funny feminist fairy tale.” —
Lambda Book Report

“Moving, eloquent … often hilarious, but … beneath the laughter, Springer has utterly serious insights into life, and her own art …
Fair Peril
is modern/timeless storytelling at its best, both enchanting and very down-to-earth. Once again, brava!” —
Locus

Chains of Gold

“Fantasy as its finest.” —
Romantic Times

“[Springer's] fantastic images are telling, sharp and impressive; her poetic imagination unparalleled.” —Marion Zimmer Bradley

“Nancy Springer is a writer possessed of a uniquely individual vision. The story in
Chains of Gold
is borrowed from no one. It has a small, neat scope rare in a book of this genre, and it is a little jewel.” —
Mansfield News Journal

“Springer writes with depth and subtlety; her characters have failings as well as strengths, and the topography is as vivid as the lands of dreams and nightmares. Cerilla is a worthy heroine, her story richly mythic.” —
Publishers Weekly

The Hex Witch of Seldom

“Springer has turned her considerable talents to contemporary fantasy with a large degree of success.” —
Booklist

“Nimble and quite charming … with lots of appeal.” —
Kirkus Reviews

“I'm not usually a witchcraft and fantasy fan, but I met the author at a convention and started her book to see how she writes. Next thing I knew, it was morning.” —Jerry Pournelle, coauthor of
Footfall

Apocalypse

“This offbeat fantasy's mixture of liberating eccentricity and small-town prejudice makes for some lively passages.” —
Publishers Weekly

Plumage

“With a touch of Alice Hoffmanesque magic, a colorfully painted avian world and a winning heroine, this is pure fun.” —
Publishers Weekly

“A writer's writer, an extraordinarily gifted craftsman.” —Jennifer Roberson

Godbond

“A cast of well-drawn characters, a solidly realized imaginary world, and graceful writing.” —
Booklist

The Golden Swan

The Book of Isle, Book Five

Nancy Springer

The loom, and on the loom

The vatic colors woven
,

The prophecies within the web
.

The lake, and in the lake

The mirroring reflection
,

The shadowshining face of fate
.

The grove, and in the grove

The riddle of the goddess
,

The dwelling of the guessing god
.

Prologue

In her secluded valley in the midlands of Isle lived Ylim, the weaving seeress, and thither rode young King Trevyn with Dair, his small son. Dair was a wolf. Leggy, half grown, he bounded along by the horse, his paws huge and playful, his slate gray fur unruly. Sometimes Trevyn smiled and slapped the saddle, and the yearling wolf would leap up to ride with him for a while. Dair was a wolf because his mother had been one at the time of his birth. She had since taken back her human form and returned across the sea to Tokar, Trevyn surmised. He was a Very King and a sorcerer in the truest sense; the kiss of the goddess was on him. But he did not know what to do for Dair. Destiny is a personal matter.

The young wolf entered the cottage at his heels and sat courteously by his side.
“Laifrita thae, Ilderweyn,
” said Trevyn to Ylim. “Sweet peace to thee, Grandmother.” It was the Old Language, the language of the Beginning, which only a special few still remembered. She was not his grandmother in fact, though she might have been grandmother of earth and moon.

“Laifrita thae
, Alberic.” She called Trevyn by his elfin name.
“Laifrita thae
, Dair, how are you?”

Quite well, Grandmother, thank you
. His voice was a murmur or a growl. Only these special ones could understand him, they who conversed with the animals as all men once had.

“Is it good, being a wolf?”

It is very good. The smells, and the air in my nostrils, the chase and the warm meat
—He stopped with a sidelong look at Trevyn, afraid of being laughed at. He had only recently killed his first rabbit; more often he ate at the king's table and slept by the king's bed. But both Ylim and Trevyn listened to him soberly. “He is quite content,” Trevyn said, “and I am glad of it. But I wish I knew what is to become of him, Grandmother.”

“Look your fill,” she said.

Dair looked as well. Most folk when they looked on the work of that loom saw nothing. Some who saw could not remember afterward. But Dair saw and remembered well enough. Light, it was all light, not cloth; mauve and lavender light. Then a striking feral face appeared. Broad forehead, brows that darkly met, nostrils that pulsed, wideset amethyst eyes that moved to meet his—that
were
his. A human face, but unmistakably his connate face, his own.

“A regal face,” Trevyn said in a hushed voice. Even as he spoke the face shifted form, became a flower such as no one had ever seen before, a blossom made of fire and dew. It blazed and flamed; then as they blinked it dwindled and vanished into the orchid light. The web on the loom went gridelin gray—

Now what?
Dair wondered, puzzled.
Shadowy water
—

It was a lake, the most still and waiting of lakes, its smooth surface glinting iron gray, willows on its verge hanging moss gray in breathless, sunless air. On the dim water a swan floated with scarcely a ripple.

“Strange water,” said Trevyn.

The swan was black, its image in the water, white. It had been hurt or crippled somehow, for one wing hung limp. But in a moment the wing had healed and it was flying, and it had turned white, pure shining white. It circled and flew nearer, near—the water drew nearer as well. But it was no longer the still lake water. It was purple tinged and restless. The swan vanished or became the whitecaps of that sea.

Ocean
, Dair murmured.

A vast expanse. He knew that cold, swelling, limitless expanse that surrounded Isle—and amidst all that vastness a speck, a floating cockleshell, a mere bauble of a boat, a coracle—and in it a solitary—

Who is that?

“Watch,” said Ylim.

Closer, always closer. They could see the face now. A youth with russet hair, freckles on the high cheekbones, fine, rugged features and a keen, seeking look about his clear brown eyes. One hand was on a steering oar. The other hung useless from a shriveled arm and shoulder—Dair felt his heart turn over. Without knowing he had moved he found himself standing with his front paws on the frame of the loom, and in a blink the vision vanished. He faced featureless cloth.

“Who was it?” Ylim asked.

I—don't know
. But already he felt the mystic bond.

“You will know him well someday,” Ylim said.

“Perhaps you will voyage with him out on that sea,” Trevyn mused. Dair turned to him in sharp distress.

But Father, I never want to leave you
.

Trevyn smiled, a warm, companionable smile. “It is in the nature of human young to leave their parents,” he said.

But I am a wolf. And it is in the nature of wolves to be loyal
.

“You are more than wolf or human either,” said Ylim. “Whose was the face, the first one?”

Mine
. He did not hesitate to claim it. She nodded.

“And it is the face of an immortal. You are the son of Maeve the Moon Mother and Trevyn Elfborn, he who brought the magic back from Elwestrand to Isle. That was a turning of the great tide, a greater marvel than you can well imagine, and you were born of that magic.” She eyed him sternly. “Dair, the web does not show its wonders for just anyone, you know. Fate may well take you away from your father and Isle.”

Dair only whimpered.

“He is very young,” Trevyn excused him. “That one on the boat—do you think he is part of Dair's destiny?”

“He and the swan, somehow. Ay.”

“Who is he? Where does he come from?”

“How can I know?” Ylim grumbled. “I don't direct my weaving, Alberic, any more than you direct your dreams.” For Trevyn's dreams were the font of the magic of Isle.

“And the flower, the lake—”

“I don't know.”

“And how Dair's human form is to come to him—”

Ylim merely smiled.

“Answer me just this one question, Ylim,” Trevyn requested. “The large question. What part have you seen in the pattern for Dair?”

She hesitated. “Dair,” she said to the young wolf at last, “this is not binding. The pattern is ever changing. You may yet change it yourself.”

I understand
, Dair said.

“The pattern then is this: that you shall continue what your father has begun. That you shall carry magic onward to the mainland.”

Fern flower, fire flower
,

Burn, burn when the great tide turns
.

Fern flower, show your power
.

The Swan Lord will he there to see
,

To grasp the stem that burns

And speak with thee
,

learn melody
,

and sing with wind and tree
.

Fern flower, fire flower
,

Bloom, bloom when the true time comes
.

Fern flower, share your power
.

The wandering wolf will bear your seed

And take you as his doom
,

For all men free

your harmony
.

The tide has turned indeed
.

book one

DAIR

Chapter One

I am Dair. I am spirit, speaking to you mind to mind, for I know no other way to speak the languages of men. As a man I was a mute because I was born a wolf and stayed so until I was grown—until the day I found Frain.

I had dreamed of him ever since I had seen him on Ylim's loom. It is hard to explain how much he meant to me, this bond brother I had never met. There was something in me that could not forget him. Perhaps it was the wolfwit, which forms attachments for life. Or perhaps it was my father's ardent Laueroc blood. His forebears, the Sun Kings, had been blood brothers and legendary friends, and then there had been his own bond with the god in the grove—or perhaps it was something of the elf in him that would not let me lose sight of the Swan Lord who was coming. Whatever moved me, hardly a day went by that I did not think of the russet-haired youth as I had seen him, afloat on the lonely sea, his destiny somehow mixed in with mine. I wondered and longed for him all that year. I grew restless and took to roaming the downs even as far as the Westwood.