The White Hart (The Book of Isle 1)

by Nancy Springer

  "He need not worry," Bevan remarked crossly. "I am no warmonger."

  "He has heard of your prowess," Cuin smiled. "I will go."

  "Nay, let someone else go. Or at least let it wait until after the wedding."

  "In truth," Cuin told him quietly. "I would rather not be here for the wedding."

  So silent was Cuin's pain, when he looked on Ellid's happiness, that Bevan had almost forgotten it. Remorse gripped him as he met Cuin's eyes, and he failed to reckon with danger.

  "Go then with all blessing," he said hastily, "and do not forget to return quickly." He clasped his comrade's hand, but could think of nothing more to say. Then he strode off into the moonless night.

  At dawn Cuin left for Welas on his roan, towering above the three swarthy messengers and their runty beasts. Bevan was nowhere to be seen, but Ellid embraced her cousin in farewell. She watched Cuin go with a sorrow she could scarcely explain even to herself. She knew well enough the meaning of his departure, for she felt sure that he had not ceased to care for her. Still, her path had been chosen a year before. What, then, was this anguish that tugged at her heart?

  The next day was her wedding day. The taking of a wife was marked by no vows in those times; most often a woman merely made herself a bundle and trudged to her new home. But the wedding of a King was an act of royal policy and a portent of all good to the realm. Moreover, Ellid was Pryce Dacaerin's daughter. The broad lands of his holdings were to be wedded to the budding power of the young High King. Every lord in Isle who had even ten men to command was there for the event. The showing of their gifts made a high heap upon the grassy height of the Downs.

  The company gathered upon the rounded promontory that gave view upon hazy distances even unto the ends of Isle, or so it seemed. To the clearing at its flattened apex Ellid stepped. The heavy chains that hung her neck and arms with gold were but a portion of the dowry that Pryce had settled on her. A wreath of wheat was on her head, for fertility, and signs of every god and good omen were stitched in gold upon her dress of blue, the color of constancy. In her hands she held coins and cloth, for prosperity. Indeed, she bore the burden of as many hopes as folk could find symbol for, and beneath it all she herself was scarcely Ellid; she was a vessel, the Bride. Beside her Bevan was weighted as heavily with sword and robes and crown; he had become no more Bevan, but an implement, the King. Bride and King met each other's eyes, but they could scarcely see each other past the glitter of their gear.

  The priests postured and babbled. Lords paraded their wishes and their wealth. Pryce Dacaerin orated at length. Finally he grasped the girl and turned her, Bevan took her hand in his, and that simply all was done. They walked down the grassy slope to the cooking pits, and their people trooped behind them. Feasting began and went on until long after dark. Ale flowed, and many a bawdy jest was told. Ellid blushed as she nervously picked at her food, but Bevan seemed scarcely to hear. His face was as pale as the ermine of his robe, and his dark eyes looked far eastward, toward Eburacon.

  At last the maidens came and, giggling, led Ellid away. Later the men who were not too drunk took Bevan in likewise. Kael, reeling uproariously, relieved him of his robes; Dacaerin took the crown and sword. Delightedly, the others showed him to his tent. He stepped within and listened to them tramp away.

  Ellid lay clad only in her shift upon a high-piled bed of pillows and quilts. She scarcely breathed as Bevan came and lay beside her, laid his hand upon her. There was no warmth in the hand, no power of passion. From without came the sound of raucous laughter, and Bevan groaned.

  "Love," he whispered intensely, "it is all wrong; from beginning to end this day is wrong. I am not I; there is no heart in me; I am a puppet and a shell, as empty as yon black shell of a moon. I could not bed you if all nights were to end this night."

  "Ay," she answered dully, "all has come to naught since Cuin went."

  "By thunder, you speak truly!" Bevan breathed, and sprang up from the bed. Ellid stopped him with a startled gasp.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Duv knows! There is healing in the night, even the night of the hollow moon."

  "You will shame me!" Ellid cried. "They will look for you here in the morning. Lie with me at least, and let me hold you; perhaps you will find some comfort thus." Tears choked her.

  "So, even so," Bevan hastened to assure her, and he laid his supple body close to hers. He pillowed his head on her breast and felt her tears upon his raven-black hair; but there were no tears in Bevan of Eburacon.

  Early the next morning, while most of the camp still lay in drunken stupor, Pryce Dacaerin rose and went a-hunting. He took with him bow and spear and a weapon strange for the search of game: the golden sword of Lyrdion, wrapped in a cloth of the dragon device.

  He knew quite well where the white hart was to be found, for several times the hunters had seen it haunting the lower reaches of the Forest near the Downs. Always it flitted away far too fast for their pursuit, if such had been their intent. But Pryce Dacaerin was skilled in stealth when stealth would serve his purpose. In the mid-day of mid-summer, when all creatures of the wilds lie and doze beneath the woven shade, Dacaerin stalked until he saw the gleam of silver antlers above the dappled ferns.

  Dacaerin drew his bow until the string touched his ear. The steel head of the yardlong shaft pointed full at the hart's reclining side. But even as the bolt was loosed some nameless finger of fear touched the stag; it leaped up and darted away. Cursing, Dacaerin ran for his horse. Still, he had not entirely missed his game. The knife-like arrow had sliced deep into the hart's leg above the hock. Now the blood-spoor dotted the leaves. East toward Eburacon it led.

  Dacaerin's red bay horse was tall and lithe of limb. Swiftly it ran between the trees, with its red-haired master bent to its neck in his eagerness. Through the long hot afternoon Dacaerin rode, and from time to time a flash of white far ahead showed him his quarry. Toward evening he knew that the hart must be growing lame and stiff, for swaying branches told him that it had but lately passed. Yet he frowned, for night drew on relentlessly, and darkness would bring his chase to an end. He spurred the horse to the fastest pace the Forest would allow.

  In the gray light of dusk he grasped his spear, left the twisting trail of blood and spurred straight between the trees. Presently he sighted the hart and gave a harsh shout of triumph. Foam flecked its mouth, and its dark eyes stared half-stunned from its delicate face. Dacaerin knew the look; he had seen it often in man and beast. His prey could not withstand him longer.

  Still its failing legs ran as swiftly as his tiring steed; Pryce struggled long to draw abreast of it. It was the last dim moments of twilight when he loosed his spear at last, and the hart staggered and fell with the blow. Then with trembling effort it rose, wrenched itself free of the spear and struggled away. Dacaerin watched it go and was well content. He had seen the bright stain spread on its white flank, and he believed that it could not live for long.

  5

  Ellid arose her first wedded morn to a husband as distant as her home. Bevan said little to her, but spent the day in council with his lesser lords, settling countless details of tribute and defense. Ellid knew that he was glad of the excuse to busy himself apart from her. Also she suspected he was glad of her father's absence, though she wondered where Dacaerin had gone. Her mother knew nothing, and as the day wore on Eitha passed from wonder to worry, roaming the camp and discreetly inquiring after her husband. But if anyone had seen him go they held their tongues, for it did not do to question the ways of Pryce Dacaerin.

  That evening Ellid and Bevan sat again with the company at the fires and ate the cold meats of yesterday's feast. Bevan reached for her hand.

  "Tomorrow we will ride toward Eburacon," he whispered for her ear only. "Just ourselves, Love. All will yet be well with us—"

  Ellid gasped and caught at his hand as he nearly toppled into the fire. Bevan was stricken like one felled by an invisible blow, and though waking he was speechless with pain. Men s
houted and brought wine; women plied him with plasters and rubs. Still he crouched stiff and trembling with agony. Kael and some others got him gently to the high-piled bed, where Ellid and Eitha stayed with him. Through that night he lay wide-eyed and shaking; nor did Dacaerin return.

  The next day dawned as golden as every day seemed to be on the Downs. Ellid could have cursed the sunshine that mocked her misery. Bevan lay in ceaseless suffering through the day, and though he sometimes gasped out a word, he could tell nothing of what ailed him. Ellid held his hands and stroked his head, but she knew that she scarcely eased him. The others sat idly and waited in anxious gloom, as if there had been an omen of disaster; for no reason Kael doubled the guard. Folk scanned the horizons to no avail. Dacaerin did not come, and nothing chanced except that, near nightfall, Bevan groaned and closed his eyes. Ellid rushed to him. He still breathed, but he seemed to know no more, and she was glad of it.

  On the following morning Ellid sent men out to seek news of her father, for though Eitha said nothing her eyes were rimmed with red. At nightfall the party returned; they had scouted a great circle, miles around, and seen no sign but this: in the southern reaches of the Forest they had found a spent arrow and a bow. Ellid took the things without a word, but a strange fear clenched her heart, and she sat beside her stricken liege that night with cold dread for her cloak.

  Cuin had not traveled even a day with his taciturn companions before he learned to distrust them. He bore them no grudge because they did not speak his tongue, but it troubled him that they snarled and would not meet each other's eyes. Yet for two days they rode without incident, and for two nights he slept lightly and was undisturbed. They forded the Gleaming River and wended deep into the folding valleys that rose to the hills and mountains of Welas. This was a fair green country, but densely wooded, and Cuin saw few folk. His three bear-like guides took him southward, toward the mountains that rimmed the sea. In the foothills the soil was thinner and more easily worked. There Owen of Twyth had established his domain.

  On the third night Cuin went early to his blanket, for he was tired from riding and sick at heart. He had tried not to think of Bevan and Ellid, wedded now these two days, but still visions of their happiness would torment him. He could not wish them ill, but devoutly he pitied himself, for well he knew that he would never feel such joy. Ellid was never to be his, and none other would he wed, through all his life.

  He lay silent but waking until his rough companions were snoring. Then he slipped into fitful sleep and dreamed a dream that seared his mind. Ellid was sitting on a green Forest bank, clad only in her shift. Her tawny hair had grown and fell softly over her shoulders. Cuin had never seen her so unadorned and so lovely. The white hart came and gazed at her with dark and glowing eyes; then it knelt and couched its antler-crowned head on her lap. Ellid bent to kiss its mouth. But as she kissed it a giant red dragon loomed over them and devoured the hart; the Forest earth was stained with its blood. Ellid cried out again and again, but her cries were the piercing cries of a bird. She beat upon the dragon with her hands; her hands changed to the golden wings of a bird and beat the air. She flew and circled, crying…

  Wings of a bird touched Cuin's face. His eyes snapped open as Flessa darted away. For a moment he could not think where he was, but peril rang through him as he stared. In the darkness he saw darker shapes like three stumpy trees that had not been there before. Cuin drew his sword even as he sprang up and kicked the fire for light.

  They rushed him quickly, three against one. But they were hacking swordsmen, while he was taller and doubly skilled. He held them off with the length of his arm until he pricked them one by one. Then he gave them each the mercy stroke and sat down to clean his sword. Sleep was fled from him for that night; he did not know what to think. Why would Owen of Twyth set his men to slay an emissary? At worst he had thought they might intend him a painful welcome at his journey's end. But such a pass as this meant nothing, not even as defiance. Perhaps the men were merely robbers; might there be more about? But surely they had chosen a peculiar way to find their game!

  Cuin sat through the night with his nerves on edge. By morning he had decided what he must do. Owen of Twyth was a chieftain of fair repute, rough perhaps but not vicious. If these were his men, he deserved to know of them. Moreover, Cuin Kellarth was not one to turn his back on a task. He would travel as emissary to the southlands of Welas and bring back word to his King. Cuin left the bodies of the slain men where they lay, food for gore-crows. But he loaded their gear on their beasts. Roping the ponies together, he led off on his roan.

  Crazed, many might have called him, to ride to the holding of a foreign lord with spoils of three dead men in his train! Indeed, he often wondered at himself as he went, for he would not confess the real reason for his journey: that he could not bear to return to Bevan. Not yet.

  It was darkest night, and even the crescent moon had set, when Kael came to Ellid where she sat at Bevan's bedside.

  "Lady," he told her shakily, "there is a shape of whiteness on the Downs. I dare say it pertains to our liege in some way, but I'll not deceive you: I have not nerve to go near it."

  "The hart!" Ellid breathed joyfully, and hurried out at once. The guards huddled together and pointed to the north. Ellid could see no more than a white blur in the distance. Swiftly she ran to meet it, until she was all alone in the night, and then she stopped with a shudder as terror froze her where she stood. It was not the hart that stood before her; it was a woman who carried a bloodstained cloth in her hand.

  She was neither old nor young, but agelessly beautiful; and though her hair was white, it was the same luminous white as her hands and dress. Her face glowed as pale, but no line was on it. She glided rather than walked as she drew near. Ellid felt faint, for the white ladies of the night were said to enslave mortals with a word… But yet the night was Bevan's friend. Ellid forced her tongue to move.

  "What do you want?" she whispered.

  "My son," the woman answered in a voice that carried all the music of sorrow.

  "Celonwy!" Ellid breathed as all her fear flowed from her. She knew now where she had seen the delicate shading of that face. "Mother," she murmured, and turned to lead her to the tent. The guards scattered before them, and even Eitha gulped and fled. Ellid did not care, for she had heard the love in that melodious voice.

  Bevan lay with ashen face and lidded eyes; his body was clenched in pain. The goddess sat and took his head into her arms. She bared his chest, and on it she placed her blood-soaked cloth. She pressed it fervently with her white hands as she raised her face and called out in words that Ellid did not understand.

  Bevan stirred, then lay still with deep and easy breathing. A faint glow lighted his cheeks. Shaking, Ellid knelt to touch him. Then with silent tears she reached out to the one who had healed him. Celonwy took her hand and embraced her; a mortal caress, though Ellid could not have said how she knew. Blinking the tears from her eyes, she looked again; it was only a lovely old woman who sat by Bevan's sleeping form.

  When Bevan awoke, hours later, it was Ellid's tired face that first met his eyes. He reached out to her hungrily. "Oh, Love, Love," he murmured, and kissed her tenderly; warm comfort flowed through her from his caress. "I am sorry," he whispered.

  "Hush," she told him gently. "Look, here is one who you have not seen this year and more."

  Bevan looked on a placid white-haired woman he did not know, then looked again as truth struck in. "My mother!" he cried, then choked as he embraced her. "Oh Mother, you have given yourself over to Death!"

  "'Tis not so fearful a prospect, and high time, too," she said serenely. "Your father went, these many months ago, and he went gladly."

  "Death is a fair fellow, some folk say," Bevan replied shakily, "but still I would not meet him yet awhile."

  "Nay, for you have the best of life yet to taste, my son." Celonwy smiled. "Therefore, when I knew that you must leave me and blunder into darkest peril, I conjured from you your vita
lest spirit and placed it in the keeping of a noble thing, the white hart. And in you I settled some of its feral wanderlust to carry you out of danger. Thus your lives were linked, and so long as either of you lived, the other could not die. "'Twas interference of me, I own it. Twice to my knowledge it has saved you, but some harm has come of it. You could not fully live, fully love or fully sorrow… At your core you were but a wild thing, a wanderer apart from men. And finally it brought you to the misery wherein I found you."

  "But what has happened to the hart?" Bevan exclaimed. Ellid's face was taut and white.

  "It struggled back to me, terribly wounded by a hunter's spear. Swift of steed and hard of heart must have been he who pursued it. It will be dead now and done with suffering, thanks be… I took some of its blood on a napkin and hastened here to give back to you what I had taken, your veriest heart. I rejoice that you are well now, but I grieve for the passing of a thing so lovely."

  "Sorrow be to him who smote it," Bevan muttered.

  "We all know who that may be," Eitha spoke from the entry. Her round chin trembled, but her gentle face was set in hard lines; anguish spoke in that hardness.

  Ellid went to her swiftly and put her arms around her. "Mother," she told her softly, "there is no need."

  "There is need for me to be a woman and no more a worm. Lass, he is not the man I wed. These months past all concern has gone from him except the cold cunning of power. I know that he wed you to Bevan only so that he could be the father of a Queen. He drove Cuin from us to keep you as his heir. And now he has taken the golden sword."

  "What word from Cuin?" Bevan demanded.

  "None," Ellid whispered. "He is yet in Welas."

  "Then I must ride forthwith." Bevan jumped up to make ready, scattering clothing in his haste. "Find me some food and my gear… Ellid, you would not have me stay when Cuin is in peril?"