The Black Beast

by Nancy Springer

  “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.

  “Frain, I am so sorry—” I, who had never needed to say I was sorry.

  “Let it pass,” he told me.

  “I will let it pass, but some things have to be said. I have been a brute to you these many months.”

  He smiled—he almost laughed, but pain stopped him. “I can take a few rough words,” he protested. “You were sore of heart, brother. Let it pass, I say!”

  “Words were the least of it. I sent you off to Melior, into a den of death—”

  “My home, a den of death?” Frain teased.

  “And Shamarra.” I could not go on. Suddenly Shamarra seemed very fragile and fair to me, and my crime iniquitous.

  And Frain did not answer. He looked away in his turn, and with a shock I sensed the bitterness beneath his forgiveness. But we could not admit that we would part—not yet.

  “You accepted me,” he whispered.

  “What?” I did not understand.

  “You knew, did you not, before Fabron told me? You seemed none too surprised.”

  That he was Fabron’s son. I had to smile. “I saw them bring you,” I admitted, “the night you were born—well, the night you came.”

  “And you accepted me, all those years.…”

  He seemed touched. I could not believe what he was saying. “The debt was all mine!” I tried to explain. “You—you were here with me, always by me—”

  Without him I would have been only another mad King of Melior, another Abas.

  “Some good fate sent you to me,” I told him. “Some blessing is on me. Frain, the altar is gone.”

  “What?” he exclaimed. “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember—Guron set me free, and I ran and ran to find you—then Abas—and Fabron healing the beast, and—tears on your face.”

  We talked for a long time, until he was tired. By the time we were done, fight it though I might, I knew things would never again be the same between us. I had everything now, all happiness, and Frain had—even less than I imagined. There was the wound, and there was a need I did not want to see.

  “Shamarra,” he said. “Where is she, do you know? She did not come here.”

  “Folk say she has gone back to Acheron.” All of Melior had noted that swanlike passing. I did not care to speak of Shamarra.

  “Fabron is hoping, expecting, that you will return with him to Vaire and be his heir,” I said. “I promised you to him once—but we have no quarrel, we both know I was an ass then. Really, the choice must be yours. Melior has always been your home, and you are welcome to stay here as long as you live.” Then Fabron came in, his smile all for his son, and I left them together.

  Days went by while Frain’s body slowly mended. He began to walk about with his arm in a sling, but some inner wound failed to heal; he went silent, his russet hair eerily bright above his pale face. The brown man laid warm hands on him for comfort, then went back to his northern home. Fabron laid hands and iron on him to no effect at all—the power had left him again for good. He watched his son with anxious eyes. Daymon Cein settled serenely into a chamber near the kitchen and seemed to be paying no attention to any of us. He let the servants wait on him; he had become very frail. I kept an eye on everyone, but I spent my days mostly with Recilla, laughing, talking, guilty in my own happiness, watching her blossom into love of me. Frain smiled at us sometimes, but he seldom joined us or spoke.

  I lay warm in my bed those days. I slept peacefully, but Guron told me that Frain had taken to wandering the night as I had once done. So I went to him a few times in the midnight chill, tried to talk to him, but there was nothing to say and all too much to say, and all I could do was be by his side. He would not look at me. He stood and watched the western stars.

  “Will you help me take off this torque?” he requested once. “I am no prince.”

  We undid the golden thing. It left a mark like a whip weal on his neck. I should have known then that he would not remain in Melior, but like a fool I continued to hope. Even if he went to Vaire, I told myself, I might see him often; it was not so very far.… In my heart I knew I was losing him forever. Still, I did not expect to lose him in the way I did. Not to the shadowed path.

  He made his choice on the day the sling came off for good. His arm hung twisted and useless, like an arm of warm wax pulled awry. He stood aimlessly, and Fabron and I sat in silent despair, and I forced myself to look up, to meet my brother’s eyes. The hatred in them stunned me, t
he hatred locked and warring with the love. Eala, what was to become of him? If only he could have shouted at me, struck me, killed me—but I was his beloved brother, and neither of us could give that up.

  “I am helpless,” Frain said woodenly. “I am a cripple.” I flinched at the word, and he touched me as if to ask my pardon—I, who had done this to him.

  “I don’t mean the arm,” he said.

  Puzzled, I looked up at him again. Weary and utterly calm, he met my gaze.

  “I hate what I have become,” he said. “I am adrift in my life, lost, full of bitterness—Tirell, I cannot stand another day of this. I am going.”

  “To Vaire?” I asked, staring at him stupidly.

  “No. Torn between you two—no. To Acheron.”

  “What?” I cried out, Fabron cried out, we both jumped up, and I took ahold of my brother, seized his sagging shoulders, and Fabron pleaded with him.

  “My son, don’t say that! You know I—we love you, a throne awaits you—”

  “I cannot help it, Father. I am doomed, drawn, caught, ensnared. Do not think I shall return.” Frain’s calm was the most frightening thing about him, really—his calm and those locked eyes. “Make Wayte your heir. He has served you well.”

  “But—to Acheron.…” Fabron faltered to a stop, choking on the name of Acheron, and he turned on me angrily.

  “This is all your fault, Tirell,” he accused. “If you had not driven her away—”

  “Stop it,” Frain ordered with something of Ms former fire. He stepped back, breaking free of the two of us. I sat down in astonishment.

  “Is it Shamarra you go to seek?” I asked Frain.

  “Yes. Lady Death.”

  His resolve seemed inexplicable to me. I glared at him in exasperation. “But Frain, why? You owe her nothing. The fault is all mine.”

  “You dolt,” he said, “I love her.”

  I felt walls and defenses crumble around me, my face crumble. For a moment I could not see, but I heard a small sound from Frain. He flung himself down beside me as if he had hurt me, laid his head against my side.

  It had never occurred to me that he loved Shamarra.

  It seems incredible now that I was so blind. That was what my shield of insanity had done to me. I had been blind to everything except my own visions of rage, numb to all needs except my own, and I had not understood that he could love where I so heartily hated. I had thought it was his unfailing courtesy that had made him lend her his horse, sit by her side, walk the halls of Gyotte in concern for her safety, rail at me when I had dishonored her. What an ass I had been! I had thought he was still all mine, the child that had followed me since he was old enough to walk. And it had seemed to me not at all odd that he always slept alone; he was old enough to fight for me, after all, but far too young for women. What a bloody-minded braying idiot I had been!

  “And I did that to her,” I whispered. “Frain, I have hurt you in every way.”

  “Never mind,” he mumbled into the fair silk of my shirt.

  “How can you abide me? How can you not kill me?”

  “No more of that,” he said sharply, and Fabron broke in, bending over him urgently.

  “Frain,” he begged, “come back to Vaire with me. Things may not always seem the same, so hopeless. If you are not better by spring—”

  “No.” Frain stood and faced him. “My father, I wish I could stay, I wish I could always be with you. But I must go, and now, within the hour. Even though the day is half spent.” His words were firm, but a wild desperation was growing in his eyes.

  “Only wait a day or two,” Fabron pleaded, “an hour, even, until I have thought of what to say to you—”

  “He should not have to bear it even another hour.” It was my own voice, coming out of me as I listened in vague surprise. “I know that tug. By Adalis, by the ancient Five…” I trailed to a stop, feeling the invisible eyes in the room, feeling fate brooding like a dark bird in the rafters. Such a cruel fate, such a lonely fate. There would be no king for him to kill.

  “Go see Grandfather,” I told Frain. “I will make ready your horse and provisions.”

  He kissed his father, and then we went out, leaving Fabron standing like a stone. He stood there a day and then took horse toward Vaire without a word to me. He could not face Frain again; he could not face Acheron.

  Within the hour Frain left Daymon Cein and came to me, dreamwalking, where I awaited him in the stable. “Grandfather knew already,” he told me.

  “Of course. He would.” That sly old man.

  “He said there would be no place for me, no rest, even in Acheron. He said I must find healing and dwelling within myself.”

  “But you are still to go?” I could not help asking.

  “Of course. I have no choice. It is only for—for love of you that I have waited this long. You are strong now. You will be able to manage without me.”

  It was true. I briefly considered belying the truth, making a weakling of myself, but I had felt the wing of fate. “I will ride with you as far as the Wall,” I said.

  “All right.” He mounted, took the reins with his one good hand.

  We rode out at walk and gentle trot, all the way to the Hill of Vision with scarcely a word between us. A few years before we would have raced the distance, whooping, in half the time. But we felt no desire to speed our way that day.… How the wheel had turned. Fate rode above us on the wind; I could almost see it. Ever since my brother had set foot in that dark mountain lake he had been changed in some subtle way—what strange force was tearing him from me?

  “It is not your fault, any of it.” Frain hurled the words defensively into the silence.

  “Oh, it’s not, is it?” I glanced over at him, baiting, amused in spite of myself. But he faced stoically forward.

  “No. None of it,” he said flatly. “You were not well.”

  “And you’re a prig,” I flared, suddenly annoyed. “Must you always be perfect, Frain?” Why would he not shout? But he did not have the strength for anger.

  “Perfect?” he murmured in honest disbelief. “I have always been a shadow next to you.”

  I snapped my head around to look at him, then rode on a while silenced by insight. “So you truly must go alone,” I said at last, hesitantly, hating to admit it. “I—it hurts me that you have to brave it alone. You were always there for me.”

  “Great Morrghu,” Frain whispered, reining back his horse as if he had sighted a panther. Sudden sweat of fear ran down his face.

  We had arrived. Just beyond the shattered Wall the twisted trees stood, idly whistling and twittering and popping the joints of their twiggy fingers, much as they had ever done. “Great Morrghu,” Frain breathed again. “What has happened?”

  “I told you.” I thought I had. “Did I forget to tell you? On that same battle day, just as I was learning the true meaning of despair, they suddenly rushed down. The trees, I mean—they moved. The Boda who held this Wall fled, scattered, but the trees stopped where they stand as suddenly as they had come. Grandfather says to let them be and let the Wall lie, too, for it is no use trying to shut out Acheron. That is where Abas made his mistake.”

  Frain stared in terror. I felt no concern for the haggish trees, only for him. He sat stiff with fear on his mount.

  “I know they’ve moved, but I—they’ve changed. They’re leering, contemptuous, they’re—they’re naked.”

  “They always looked obscene to me.” I eyed him with pity and a foolish hope. “Brother mine, it is still not too late to turn back.”

  “No, thank you. I am in thrall. I might as well be dead as disobedient.” He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “This is going to be harder than I thought, that is all. Tirell, go on back.”

  I looked down at my horse’s mane and shook my head. Frain sat bolt upright in surprise. He had not thought I would refuse him so simple a request.

  “Go on back,” he repeated. “I don’t want you to see me shaking.”

&
nbsp; “I have to watch,” I told him, trying to discipline my voice, “or I am likely to dream against all reason that I will see you again, that you have turned aside to wander Vaire or the Lore Dahak, that some wind of chance will bring you back to me.” The words broke the taut control I had managed to maintain for his sake. Tears fell down from my eyes and onto my hands that plaited the horse’s mane.

  “All right,” Frain acceded softly. “All right, my brother.” He reached over to me and we embraced; I remember yet the warmth of that embrace. Then he turned and, not even shaking—but with eyes shut tight—he spurred his horse into Acheron.

  I lingered awhile. Then I rode slowly back to my bride with the words of an old song, a lament, hazily forming in my mind.

  Like a swan on the still willow rivers,

  Like a swan on the streams of Ogygia,

  My sorrow floats the winding ways,

  The shadowshining ways of mind.

  Like a serpent out of a mountain cavern,

  A serpent of wind, my sorrow stings.

  My love, oh when will I see you again?

  My love, oh my little child?

  It seemed so unfair, what he had to face. He was only seventeen.

  Epilogue

  I had become a foolish old man in many ways—I, Daymon Cein, the great seer! And I felt sure my time must soon come. I no longer took any particular notice of anything. I lay in my warm chamber and let my mind stray; sometimes it happened on truth and more often on shadows, mice scurrying through forgotten garrets.… But when Frain left, vision swept me up one last time on wings the strongest I had ever known, vision like none I had experienced since that first searing night under the White Rock of Eala. But I was young then and hung back for fear of annihilation, and this time I was old and no longer afraid. I was no longer … I was not. I was with Frain. I was at one with Frain.

  I rode with him, I feared with him, I plunged with him into the forest. I fared with him for days. To be sure, my body lay in its chamber in Melior. It moved, ate a little, even spoke. Tirell prowled around it, came and went and pestered. There was no need for me to concern myself with him; he had Recilla to look after him.