The Book of Isle

by Nancy Springer

  Leaving the horses and gear, he led Cuin afoot back the way they had come. Following him closely, Cuin moved as quietly as he could in the dense shadows beneath the trees. After less than a mile they came to a campfire. Cuin could scarcely believe what he saw. Around it dozed men he had known from his youth; trackers he knew them to be.

  "So let us go," Bevan breathed in his ear.

  They rode northward through the night. Toward dawn they chose a rocky stretch of soil to turn sharply westward, and they rode westward through the day. That night they rested, and after a week without further incident they came to Wallyn. Bevan judged that they had lost the trackers. Not that it greatly mattered, for those who trailed them wanted tidings, nothing more. Still, in the properest spirit of Dacaerin's conniving, they rode into Wallyn by night. Clarric was sorrowful to hear what had chanced at Caer Eitha, but not surprised.

  "I knew we were risking Dacaerin's displeasure when I let you go a-roving," he remarked to Cuin. "He is not one to lightly abide another loyalty. You'll note I made no rush to tell him of your whereabouts."

  "I spoke him soft," Cuin mused, "but what he wanted from me I could not give him. After facing Pel's priests I could not tremble before him as I used to. At his very worst, Pryce Dacaerin can but slay me!" He laughed, and Clarric smiled crookedly.

  "I trust it shall not come to that! Ay, you've grown, lad, and I believe it is not only Pel's Pit that has changed you… Well, I hope your uncle will think better of you in time. Shall you winter here?"

  "Nay. By frost we hope to come to Lyrdion."

  "Lyrdion!" Clarric seemed strangely shaken by that one simple word. "My lord Bevan, is this your behest?"

  "It is at Ylim's advice that we go there," Bevan replied. "For myself, I know little of it. I would gladly hear your thought."

  "Ylim!" Clarric's tone had subsided to one of quieter wonder. "That also is a name of fair peril to me. I have no thought to offer you, Bevan of Eburacon, only fear. Six months ago, or even less, I would have locked Cuin in chains sooner than let him venture to that place of ancient dread and grandeur. But now I have seen that he is a man, and I can only say to him: Beware! Lyrdion is a place of deepest danger to one of your mother's proud blood, Cuin. I charge you: remember always how long have been the years since your mother's Mothers were the begetters of Kings beside the Western Sea."

  "So long the years," Cuin remarked, "that I have never heard of such Kings till lately."

  "Even so."

  "But it is not of warlike peril that you speak, Father."

  "Such peril there may be," Clarric replied heavily, "but it was not of such that I spoke."

  "Then tell us, my lord Clarric, that we might know," Bevan requested, "what has chanced at Lyrdion."

  "Is it my place to tell you what the seeress did not?" Clarric smiled faintly. "I have told you what I can, you two. For the rest, may the Mothers defend you! Come now, eat and sleep."

  "I will eat gladly," said Bevan, "but you need have no bed prepared for me, my lord."

  "Surely you're not going back to the Forest?" Cuin asked worriedly.

  "Nay, I'll stay within the walls for this one night."

  "Better tell the sentries, Father," Cuin suggested wryly, "lest they be startled into shooting him. He goes like a shadow in the dark."

  Clarric did so. Later, when all was settled, he made his way to his son's room. Cuin was wearily pulling the shirt from his scarred shoulders.

  "Does that warlock not sleep at all?" Clarric demanded.

  "Never, unless he is sorely hurt." Cuin heavily tugged the thick wrappings from his legs.

  "But what does he do by night?" Clarric exclaimed. "Bay to the moon?"

  "He wanders," answered Cuin stiffly, "and he talks to the creatures and to tree-spirits and to all the moving spirits of air. He takes on knowledge from moonlight and shadows. Sometimes he sings. I have heard him across the reaches of the dark, and no bard could surpass that sound for loveliness." Cuin blew out the lamp and turned to his narrow window. Clarric joined him.

  "So you have grown to love him well."

  Cuin was silent, and Clarric waited as silently for his answer. The darkness beyond the window took form before their eyes, and presently they could pick out the line of the faintly starlit battlements. A figure moved on the stone, the slender form of no sentry. It came to the highest place and grew still against the luminous sky.

  "Ay, I love him," Cuin replied quietly at last. "Whether more in awe or in pity, I can scarcely say. He has powers and wisdom which have made me rich in wonder… But his strangeness sets him so apart, even from me. We are faithful comrades, but yet… Look at him. Have you ever seen a lonelier mortal?"

  For a moment they silently watched the distant dark figure sitting against the stars.

  "Still he returns your regard," Clarric remarked.

  "I scarcely know," Cuin murmured. "He favors me with fairest kindness; yet I scarcely know. I have not known his heart."

  4

  Cuin and Bevan left Wallyn the next night, slipping out by cover of darkness as they had come. They were well provisioned, and carried blankets and extra clothing against the autumn chill. The trees were almost bare. Between their dark trunks the earth showed bleakly brown. It was an unfriendly time of year to be traveling, and a verily villainous time of year to be traveling north. Yet north they must go, and they hoped by this folly to foil the spies of the mantled lord, or of anyone who cared to spy.

  They were a fortnight in journeying to Lyrdion, for there was no beaten track or even cow trail to ease the way. The land was high and hilly and wild as the day it was born; not even robbers seemed to dwell in these parts. On the last day of October Bevan and Cuin smelled salt in the air, and stopped lest Bevan draw too near to the forbidden sea.

  Above the naked trees they could see crags ahead, rendered liquid in the changing light of the setting sun. A moment later the flushed peaks went dark, and deep shadows were flung across the land. Night came that was soft and dense as a black cat's fur. It was the night of the autumn fires, when witches were driven from the harvest. Cuin knew that every hilltop in Wallyn far behind him blazed with bonfires. But there were no folk to kindle fire in these lonely parts… What, then, were the eerie flickerings that shone across the dark from the distant tors?

  "Fire-drakes!" Bevan exclaimed—as far as Cuin could tell, in delight.

  They sat in the dark and watched the bright breath of the dragons on the seaward heights, like children watching lightning before the storm comes too close. All that night they kept vigil together, counting the fiery puffs on the black surface of the dark; the blue-green flames and the rosy pink, the purple and the lavender… Of all his adventures, Cuin was never to know a time so fearful and beautiful, beauty of dragons and beauty of Bevan's comradeship. He never remembered a moon or stars in that night. When dawn came at last he stretched stiffened limbs and gazed, but not a dragon could he see; only the bony-hard rock of a fell brown crag in the daylight.

  "They have gone within," Bevan said softly. "They are the Old Ones, they and the mountain-giants and the small twisted folk who first delved the hollow hills. They are lovers of the narrow, dark places of the earth and of the things they find there. Sunlight brings no joy to them."

  He and Cuin ate a little, but neither of them had much desire for food. Then they rode slowly toward the jutting peaks to the west. Presently they came to their rocky shoulders; a high defile ran between their barren heads, and beyond was the pounding of the sea. There was nothing for it but that Bevan should remain behind the line of the tors. Cuin prepared to go on alone.

  "Dragons are cool-hearted folk and slow to rouse," Bevan instructed him. "But their sluggish hearts are yet set in bitter memory of what they have lost and in greediest grasp of what remains to them. Iron and steel were their undoing, the hot forged metals that are alien to them. Your sword will ward them off, but it will enrage them, also. You must judge nicely. Yet think more on that other peril your father ch
arged you with."

  "If I come to harm," Cuin told him in a low voice, "lay it not to your account, Bevan. It is for my own sake that I venture here."

  "I know it; else I would not part from you so lightly. But I do not doubt that I shall see you in good time. I will wait here. Farewell."

  They touched hands; then Cuin sent his steed up the steep slope. He stopped at the top, awestruck. Beyond the tors the land took a stunning drop to the sea. Away to the right was the ruin of a towering fortress, looming crazily between the rocks and the surf. But the landscape all around it almost dwarfed its grotesqueness. Weird shapes of stone soared out of the water at every hand. On their flanks sported great white birds and silver sea-drakes and things even stranger: sylkies and nikkurs, the soulless riders and horses of the sea. Truly Lyrdion was a place doubly protected; for if it took a bold man to come at it from land, it would take a lunatic to approach it from seaward. Cuin shuddered and turned away his eyes, for the vast waters were a shape of engulfing terror to him even without their shadowy denizens.

  He sent his roan slowly down the long descent to the gravelly shore. Ages past, it seemed, this had been a stone-paved track. The going was hard but not impossible. Once down, he rode along the shingle toward the ancient hold of Lyrdion, keeping as far as he could from the tumbling surf. The sea creatures paid him no heed; indeed, he could scarcely see them now over the foaming water. But landward Cuin noted movement from the involutions of the jagged peaks down which he had come. Even as he looked, a long, gleaming red-gold form launched itself and circled the air above him on fluted cape-like wings. Then with a harsh and mournful cry it came to rest on the topmost towers of Lyrdion. From the rocky crags a strange croaking chorus went up and fell away at once to a waiting silence. Cuin felt the stare of many alien eyes.

  I have been announced, he noted wryly, and patted his frightened horse. In a moment he came to the gaping entrance of the keep. Tethering the roan firmly, and fervently hoping that the dragons would let it be, he entered the dark and ruinous hall.

  Light filtered through the drafty crevices of the walls, dimly falling on ancient metal. Cuin stared; a heavy golden throne still stood on the dais, its rich ornamentation now complicated by cobwebs. Heavy cloth hangings screened it; mice squeaked among the folds. Someone's fine bone-handled dagger and fork lay on a rotted trencher table, as if waiting for a dinner of dust. Lyrdion had not fallen to storm or siege, that so much had been left in its accustomed place, Cuin thought. Plague, perhaps? There were strangely wrought weapons still hanging from spikes in the stones. But none of these, Cuin was sure, was the sword which he sought.

  He thought of exploring the tower chambers which echoed above him. But some instinct turned him instead toward the catacombs beneath. The crumbling stone steps were dark, and he went cautiously. Once below, he moved down a central corridor which ran inland, into the stony tors. High, tiny windows showed him chains and devices of torture rusting in the dungeon cells he passed. Cuin's hair prickled; eerily he felt the presence of the ungentle folk who had once peopled these halls.

  He passed doorway after doorway, half-fearful of each, before he realized that the bloody red of the stone dungeon floors was not a reflection from his mind. A gleam of dull red lit up the passageway. The garnet glow came from somewhere ahead, not from the grisly chambers on either side. Step by slow step Cuin moved down the passageway until he could see the source: two slowly pulsing whorls of ruddy light, ebb and flow, ebb and flow… With an effort Cuin stilled his own panting breath, calmed the racing of his own pulse, until he could hear the heavy breathing of the dark hulk that was the dragon. The blood-red vortices were its nostrils. Clutching his sword, Cuin took a step closer.

  A snorting roar shook the dungeons of Lyrdion as the dragon lit up its cave with a bright, fiery glow. It was huge, larger by far than the others Cuin had seen; it coiled like an ancient puzzleknot into its hollow beneath the rocky roots of the mountainous tors. Its scales were glittering red-gold, and a red plumy crest bristled from its high-flung head. Yet it could not match the glory of its own nest. It lay upon gold and gems; the whole stony chamber was filled with them. Jeweled chains and brooches, myriad coins and ornaments were piled halfway up the walls. Golden drinking cups, caldrons and flagons tumbled out of the heap. Amidst all the sparkle stood the sword which Cuin sought. Hau Ferddas confronted him.

  It was a splendid weapon, shining gold and studded with jewels, massive enough to slay by its own weight. Even through the blazing sparkle of the dragon's gemmy lair, Cuin had felt his eyes drawn first to the sword. Crosslike it stood, with its point encircled by a kingly crown, between the black sheen of the dragon's clawed feet. Cuin moved his gaze slowly up the rippling red-gold flanks to the angular head. Over the sword the dragon stared back at him with unblinking yellow eyes. The crimson fire of its nostrils kept up a constant surge like the sea, and its silent scrutiny was disconcertingly aloof. The hardness in those topaz eyes was too remote to be called hatred, too impersonal to be called enmity. The dragon looked sullenly out of the distances of another place and time. Cuin secretly felt for his voice.

  "O ancient guardian of this fearful place," he told it, "I am a son of the Mothers of Lyrdion, and I come for the sword which is my birthright." He could hardly expect that it would comprehend; he hoped only for such an understanding as one hopes for with a mettlesome steed. But something more passed between them; Cuin felt it at once. The dragon narrowed its glassy eyes, and its long, crested neck stiffened to attention.

  "O golden one," he tried again. "I am called Cuin, son of Rayna, who was born of Reagan, a daughter of the line of Lyrdion. I have come for Hau Ferddas." He gave the sword its name in the Elder Tongue.

  The result took him utterly off guard. He had looked for resistance, but instead a flood of welcome engulfed him, a tide deep as the sea beyond the walls. Though neither he nor the dragon had moved, Cuin felt as if he had been set upon strong and friendly shoulders. He was a comrade, a kinsman, a savior, indeed; all that he saw was his for the asking. Let him take the golden crown and place it on his head! Let rich chains be looped on his neck and jeweled armbands bind his wrists! For he would restore the glory of the ancient line of Lyrdion; all of Isle would bow to his might! He would be a warrior-king, dressed in breastplate and golden greaves. To Cuin it seemed that the blood of a hundred bright-helmeted warriors surged into his veins. He felt their bloodthirst, their brazen valor, their gaudy magnificence. He felt the multitude of their shades all around him, soundlessly chanting, urging him to fulfill them in their desires. But Cuin was ever loath to do as he was bid, and his spine stiffened against the voiceless clamor.

  "Nay!" he cried. "You do not understand! I take it not for myself, but for one far greater than I. The very son of the High Kings and of Celonwy daughter of Duv—"

  Instantly the dungeon air grew tense with enmity. The soundless chanting took on a deeper pitch, and Cuin was swept up in a dark flood of hatred. The Crown was old in Lyrdion generations before the High Kings reigned. Kill! Kill! the upstart son of a latter-day weakling called Byve. They who lived on in the form of the Ancient Ones needed no traffic with the goddess who had reft them of their domain. Kill! Kill! the son of Celonwy born of Duv! Onward, Cuin of Lyrdion! The invisible warriors roared.

  So compelling was their unheard song that for a vivid moment Cuin felt the entirety of their vision. Why could he not be King! Was his line not the more ancient and valiant? And who was this Bevan of Eburacon that he, Cuin of Lyrdion, should suffer his ambition to go unpunished? Any man who would not bow to his rule, let him beware his wrath! Bevan of Eburacon would learn the force of a sword in the hands of Lyrdion! The red dragon-glow was the haze of Bevan's blood before his eyes. The chant of the disembodied warriors pounded to a paean of triumph in his head. Crown him Cuin Conqueror! they cried. Cuin the Mighty One of Lyrdion! Let the jewels of the realm adorn his brows! Bring on the Crown!

  Suddenly utter revulsion gripped Cuin, a self-hatred that shook him
to his roots. The sight of the golden hoard sickened him. Raising his sword, he strode blindly forward. The great guardian dragon roared with rage and sent forth a spray of fire. Still it slowly retreated before him as he reached Hau Ferddas. He seized the mighty weapon and spurned the encircling crown with his foot. The royal diadem of Lyrdion spun away from Cuin's kick and clattered against the stone wall.

  "Thus I value your royal bondage!" he shouted, choking. "Golden ghouls! You are blood-blinded and galled with greed. To think that I would kill him, he who is the fairest—Hell-wights! I will leave this den of—of firebrands!"

  He ran out at once, stumbling in his near-panic to be gone from the place. He found his roan horse trembling where he had left it, and trembling in like wise he cast himself upon it. Dragons lined the cliffs, watching, splendid gold-shining presences to the number of a hundred or more. Cuin could not think of them as beasts only; he saw them as great gold-mailed warriors, their crested helmets plumed with fire. Crouched to his horse's neck, he spurred past them and made for the steep path down which he had come.

  He held the heavy jeweled sword of Lyrdion clutched clumsily within his cloak, loathing it, anguished at his own frailty. As quickly as he dared, he urged his roan steed up over the tors. He was frantic to see Bevan, irrationally frightened lest his momentary wickedness should have somehow done him harm. As he descended the slope, terror gripped him; Bevan was not where he had left him. But in a moment the Prince came running from between the rocks. Cuin stumbled down from his steed and into his comrade's embrace. Tears of relief and remorse slid down Cuin's face; he ducked his head to hide them. But then he became aware that Bevan had been as stricken as himself.

  "By tides and tempests, Cuin!" he exclaimed shakily. "I am glad to see you! I should never have let you go. I have heard some talk since you left, and you have been in such peril as I had not dreamed. If you had taken any thing except the sword from that dragon hoard, even so much as a coin to remember it by, we would have met no more. You would have become—"