The Book of Isle

by Nancy Springer

  “I know. Come on!” Alan muttered, and reached out to tug at Ket’s unresponsive arm. “It’s the best of good fortune that she takes us to the haunt, Ket, don’t you see? Nothing evil can reach us there.”

  Ket plunged on a few steps, then stopped, quivering, unable to move. The Forest had gone almost black; only vaguely looming forms could be seen amid the flutter of the snow. Ahead of Alan, the wolf barked sharply.

  Alan obeyed that urgent summons. He dropped his bundled sword and seized Ket as quickly as he could, lifted him bodily, and slung him over his shoulders. Taken by surprise, Ket gave a startled shout, struggling in Alan’s grasp.

  “Hold still!” Alan wheezed, bent nearly double under his burden, struggling after the wolf. She led him now by walking, doglike, almost at his feet. Their course lay between ancient earthworks and barrows, he dimly sensed, though not with sight. He could feel the bodiless presence of the spirits and feel Ket’s fear, a taut distress that somehow augmented the man’s weight on his back. If only Ket would faint, or even scream.… Alan wondered how much farther he had to stagger.

  Then: “Look,” he whispered. “A light.” Ket gave no answer, though Alan could tell he turned his head to see. Not far ahead, ruddy firelight flickered. The wolf streaked toward it. The haunt lay behind them now, an encircling barrier against any harm, and Ket went limp as a rag with relief. Alan lunged forward, banging against trees, and stumbled through an open doorway. The wolf sat, panting, by the fire, under a low, vaulted roof of unhewn stone. Alan dumped Ket on the ground and straightened himself painfully to look around.

  Firelight showed him a small, musty stone chamber, circular in shape, evidently long disused. Smoke stung his eyes, finding its way reluctantly from the central hearth to window slits. Wreckage of a stone stair led to rubble where an upper room had once been. Snow blew in at the doorless entry. A jumble of deadwood for burning climbed halfway up the bare walls on all sides. Beyond the fire stood a figure, very still.… Alan felt an unexpected leap and tumble of heart. He saw a royal-blue cloak, and he recognized the brooch that fastened it—but the person looked far too small to be his son. A mere slip of a girl confronted him, huddled in the thick cloth. A name floated effortlessly to Alan’s mind.

  “Meg?” he blurted.

  “Ay.” She frowned up at him, as bold as a trapped mouse but not, somehow, uncourteous. “And who’re ye that my friend has brought me instead of dinner?”

  “I—I am Trevyn’s father.” Alan stammered out the name, amazed to find that he could not call himself King, not to her. And why would she believe him anyway? he asked himself hotly. Covered with snow as they were, he and Ket might as well have been a pair of brigands. But Meg gazed into his face and silently nodded.

  “And this is Ket the Red,” Alan added, going to kneel by his companion. “Ket, this is Meg.”

  The poor fellow was sitting up, looking perturbed, his face nearly as pale as the snow. Alan brushed him off, grumbling softly. “Sorry to have hauled you in here like that. I should have stunned you first, but there wasn’t time.”

  Ket rolled his eyes. “I’m as glad not to have a lump on my head.”

  “Can I get ye something to eat?” Meg offered doubtfully. There was not a bit of food in sight. Ket looked at her in dry amusement.

  “Ay, I’m famished. What’s fer supper?”

  “Only a bit of cold fish,” she admitted. “I was expecting Flossie to bring me a rabbit for supper, and she brought me you two instead.”

  Ket and Alan both eyed the wolf. She lay curled by a tangle of firewood opposite the door, her plume of a tail covering her nose, her dark eyes shining over it. Lovely eyes, Alan thought. “We’re grateful,” he said suddenly. “Bring the fish, Meg, and we’ll put something more with it.”

  He and Ket started digging in their packs, scattering blankets in the process. “Such beautiful blankets!” Meg breathed, though they were mostly plain brown. Then she gazed, wide-eyed, as food began to appear.

  As it turned out, no one even touched the fish. They ate fresh bread lightly toasted by the fire, and bits of cheese, and dried apple snits, and sausage that they roasted on sticks until it dripped and sizzled. Alan and Ket fixed a blanket over the gaping doorway with arrows jammed between the stones. Meg sat by the fire, flushed pink from warmth and food and excitement. She had not felt so comfortable and full in weeks, and already she adored Alan, though she stood in awe of him. Her shy smile eased the taut angles of her face. Watching the quiet way her small head rode above her borrowed finery, Alan began to understand how Trevyn might have loved her. She moved with the unschooled poise of all the wild things.

  Ket had heard about Meg and Trevyn at Lee. He felt ready to be fond of her, since she, a country person like himself, had likewise found herself entangled with these mysterious Lauerocs. He also regarded her with something of wonder. “So ye’re Rafe’s runaway!” he exclaimed, sitting at his ease. “And in the haunt! I roamed these parts for more years than I care to remember and never met a man who could brave this haunt, except a certain pair of rogues who became Kings. And now I’ve had to be carried into it. How’d ye ever come here, lass?”

  “I can’t say,” she answered, puzzled. “I just didn’t care, that’s all.… I was cold and tired and disgusted, and I wasn’t going to be tracked down and taken back to Lee, not for anything. People have been snickering at me ever since …” She stopped.

  “Since my son left you,” Alan put in quietly from his side of the fire.

  “Ay. They envied us when we were together, and now they are glad to see me saddened. I would rather live among the beasts; they are kinder.” Meg talked to the fire, but in a moment she straightened to meet Alan’s eyes. “What news of Trevyn, Liege?”

  “He’s dead,” said Alan harshly.

  “What!” shouted Ket, and for no reason scrambled to his feet, utterly startled.

  “He’s dead, I say. I dream of his corpse at night.” Alan turned away from them both, tired tears wetting his face. He could not say what had moved him to speak the truth as he perceived it. He had hurt the girl to no purpose, he berated himself. He could have let her hope yet a while.… Still, it felt good, the warm release of tears on his cheeks.

  “Sire.” Meg came to stand before him, facing him. “Have ye seen Gwern about this?”

  “Nay.” Alan found that he did not mind her steady-eyed presence. “Why, lass?”

  “He will know where Trevyn is, or if he is really dead. I am sure of it.”

  Alan grimaced in exasperation. “Gwern, this and Gwern, that! Gwern eats of my food and sings of my sword.… Who is this Gwern, that he knows everything and does nothing?” The King waved his arms in a grand gesture of futility. “I can’t go chasing after a barefoot weathercock, lass! I am likely to have a war to fight.”

  “I’ll go.” She returned sedately to her place by the fire.

  “You’ll go nowhere except back to Lee,” Alan stated, suddenly annoyed. “Your folk are worried about you.”

  She glanced up in genuine surprise at his apparent lack of common sense. “Ye can tell them ye saw me.”

  Ket stiffened and sputtered into his flask, apparently choking on the liquor. Alan choked, too, on nothing but air, though he had not been above running errands in his time. “You have no business traipsing about Isle, putting yourself in danger,” he flared at last. “These are perilous times, Megan! Get home, where you belong!”

  “I belong here as much as anywhere,” Megan flared back. “Who’re ye to tell me where I may or may not go?”

  Caught in another paroxysm, Ket expelled a wheeze that was indeterminate as to emotional color. Alan let out a harried bark, half laugh, half roar of rage.

  “Your King, girl! Just your poor, old King, that’s all. You should obey me, unquestioning!”

  “Drag me to Laueroc, then. Put me in chains.” She glared at him.

  “Halt! Truce! Hold!” Ket jumped to his feet with such an air of desperate command that they both gaped
at him. “Ye’re not going anywhere for several days, neither of ye, if I read this storm aright. So take a breath! Alan, where is that big, bloody sword ye’ve latched onto?”

  Alan stared at him a moment, thinking, then began to laugh soundlessly. “I let it drop when I jumped you.… Confound it, I can only just carry so much! Why do you ask, Ket? Do you think I should use it on her?”

  “I asked,” Ket replied pointedly, “to take yer mind off yer spleen. Anger is comfortless in these close quarters.” He turned sternly to the girl. “Meg, tread more lightly, if ye please! We have watched brave men die today.”

  “I am sorry,” she said with no cringing, only cleanest sympathy. “I didn’t know. The wolves?”

  “Ay.” Alan sat down, surprised to find how suddenly and intensely he liked her. “Ket is right; I am out of sorts. I beg pardon for my manner, Meg. But I am still concerned for your safety.”

  “I must go to Gwern,” she said softly, “as the salmon must go to the sea, or the stag to the meadow, safety or no safety. Can ye understand?”

  “I understand many things I don’t like. But I know Trevyn cared for you, as I am beginning to care for you myself. Give him something to return to. He may wish to wed you, for all I know. The young fool.”

  “You just told me he was dead!” Meg cried.

  Alan blinked at her. “For a moment, just now, I thought he was alive,” he whispered, and bowed his head as pain washed over him.

  Ket got up and kicked ashes over the embers of the fire. “Sleep,” he ordered with the succinct authority of the servant. He distributed blankets, giving Meg an extra one. The night was icy cold, even within walls. They lay with their feet to the fire, and close together, for warmth.

  “What place is this?” Alan wondered aloud. A place that had already changed him, he sensed.

  “A sort of a—a mighty ruin.” Meg’s voice floated through the darkness, hushed, like a moth. “The fish live in circular pools rimmed with stone,” she added, after a long pause. “They lie right under the ice. There were a few apples still hanging from the trees when I first came.”

  “What place could it have been!” Alan murmured. Exhausted, he could not think, and in a moment he fell asleep. The she-wolf came and settled comfortably into the bony curve of Megan’s side. Sleeping warmer than she had slept for many days, Meg dreamed of a white stag. But Alan, slumbering in a sentry tower of shattered Eburacon, dreamed of his son, and saw him laughing, whole, and well.

  Chapter Five

  It snowed, on and off, for five days, as Ket had predicted. When it didn’t snow, it blew. So the odd threesome was stuck in their lodging for a week, seldom venturing out, and then hurriedly, ducking through a blur of white. By the fourth day, they had eaten all their sausage and were already growing tired of fish. Despite that, and despite occasional sparring between Alan and Meg, they got along well. They played countless guessing games to pass the time, and drew puzzles in the dirt. In the evenings they sat talking for hours, keeping the fire going as late as they could. Flossie, the wolf, would lie in her own place by the fire, gnawing at the ends of their scorned fish. She made no doglike displays of affection, encouraged no impudence, but joined their circle companionably—as an equal, they sensed.

  The wolf had befriended her quite of its own accord, Meg explained. Her first, freezing night in the open, shivering under her ragged blanket, Meg had awakened to find the big, furry body pressed against hers. By morning, the two females were on familiar terms, and Meg had named her new comrade after her favorite childhood doll. Flossie had helped her evade the patrols Rafe had sent searching for her. Flossie had held back a skulking pack of unfriendly wolves with her snarls, leading Meg through a confusion of taunting howls to safety in the haunt. Awestruck, Alan and Ket stared at the placid creature.

  “Wolves are beasts!” Alan protested in bewilderment. “They go their own ways like other beasts; they hunt, and run, and mate and fight and die, and pay little attention to men if they can help it. That they should take up war against us is—it is most unnatural. And that this one should protect you, Meg, is a happier chance, but no more fitting for a wolf. What can it mean? Her eyes—I have known wolves, lass. Their eyes shine yellow in moonlight, red in firelight, spectral as a cat’s. But hers are the eyes of a lovely woman. Look.”

  Flossie gazed steadily back at them all, seemingly unperturbed. Her eyes were of a warm brown with a purplish tinge, deepening in the firelight to the color of violets. As Alan had said, they looked as if they should have been courted with candlelight and wine. He envisioned those eyes closing under smooth human lids, then shuddered.

  “Countryfolk say that certain people are marked to turn to wolves,” Ket said doubtfully. “Those who’re born with teeth or with brows that meet over their noses—”

  “Lying tales!” Alan retorted somewhat more violently than he had expected to. “I know I have not lived forever, Ket,” he added more discreetly, “but I—we—roamed the wilderness for years and learned no great harm of wolves. Most of the time they paid us no mind. But I remember one night when—Hal felt sad and played it out on the plinset, and the wolves ringed the fire to listen.” Alan swallowed. “We were not afraid.”

  “I have never been able to think too badly of wolves,” Ket said quietly, “since the time they circled the rowan grove at my lady’s feet and did homage to her.”

  The three of them had become very close, as people sometimes will when they are confined together. Shy Ket had found ways to speak of his longstanding love for the Queen. Meg had told with wry amusement of her dealings with Trevyn and Gwern. And Alan seemed more like himself than he had been for many months, Ket thought, gentler, more open—but still not happy. Ket longed for Alan’s happiness.

  “Hal—” Alan pronounced the name with difficulty. “Hal never placed credence in werewolves. He said that men fear wolves because they are so much like dogs. But dogs are friendly, and wolves are not, and they are cannibals, and rend each other from time to time.…” Alan gulped again. “That is their own business, but men think, what if dogs should act like that? Or what if my other friends, my fellowmen, my neighbors, should go wild, betray me, turn on me to rend me, bite off my outstretched hand.…” He paused to steady his voice, wondering at his own emotion. “Men fear themselves most. That is why they speak of werewolves.…”

  “Dogs are famed for their faithfulness,” Ket murmured.

  Meg looked down at the wolf that lay unmoved at her side. “D’ye really think Flossie would turn on me t’ rend me?” she challenged.

  “Nay,” Alan replied gruffly, “I cannot think that, even now. Even though …”

  “Well, what?” Ket prodded gently, after a long pause.

  “Even though,” Alan blurted, not understanding why, “my own most faithful comrade has betrayed me, rent me to the heart, though not with teeth or steel.” Alan hid his face in his hands, though his eyes remained dry and burning as coals. “How, how, could he leave me so, without a tear?”

  Meg came around the fire to kneel before him, her hands light as leaves on his shoulders. In an instant he understood why he had spoken after all the silent months: healing stirred in her lightest touch. “D’ye mean King Hal, Liege?”

  “Of course, Hal.” He raised his twitching face to her scrutiny and smiled slowly, distraught as he was. “Trevyn gave me a tear or two.”

  “Ay, well, he didn’t honor me with so much as a wish-ye-well.” Meg smiled bitterly in her turn. “So, Liege, though I hadn’t much claim on yer son, I can feel perhaps the tithe of what ye’re feeling. And I know ye’re angry enough to burst.”

  “Angry?” He drew back from her touch. “At Trevyn? But he’s dead.”

  “He’s not!” she snapped in exasperation. “And anyhow, I meant at Hal. So ye’ll give him no tears, either?”

  “I—” he sputtered, found he could not speak, and scrambled to his feet. “I’m not angry!” he shouted at last. Ket snorted quietly from his place by the fire. Alan ig
nored him.

  “Are ye made of flesh, then?” Meg inquired politely.

  “Let be, lass.” Ket spoke up unexpectedly. “Alan—”

  “What?” the monarch muttered, face turned away.

  “If ever ye’re to see Hal again, what will ye do or say?”

  For an instant, the question blazed through Alan. Shouts, blows, tears, an embrace; each flashed like fire across his mind, burned, and vanished. Nothing remained but a stark conviction and a black abyss of gloom.

  “I am never to see him again,” he mumbled.

  “Why not?” Ket sensed that Alan needed hope. “Ye’re as special as he was.”

  But Alan would talk no more about Hal. He refused to explain what he instinctively knew—that the Sword of Lyrdion had somehow cut him off from his brother. For all time.

  The weather cleared during the night; the wind stopped and the clouds wandered away. At midnight, Flossie roused Megan with her firm, cool nose, and the girl silently slipped out, clutching her pack and her ragged blanket, leaving the others slumbering by the ashes of the fire. Even struggling through waist-high snow, she would be miles away by morning, well on her way southward to seek Gwern.

  “Confound it!” Ket shouted when he awoke the next morning to find her gone. “There’s another one that’s left without a word.… The girl must be daft, Alan.” He sounded aggrieved, but Alan seemed amused, even relieved. He smiled whimsically.

  “Nay, she’s a wise lass. She knew I could not really keep her from going her way, but she spared me the facing of it. So I still have some shreds of pride and honor left.… Well, we had better get back to Lee as quickly as we can. Rafe will be fit for a madhouse.”

  “But we have to find Meg,” Ket protested incredulously. “She’ll freeze, or—or something.”

  “Mothers, nay! I pity anything that tries to harm her with Flossie near. She’ll be rocking at her ease when I’m turning to dust. Find some food, Ket.”

  They packed what they could and crawled out of their shelter, then stood motionless, blinking. Deep snow glinted in the wintry light, but that was not what took their breath. A vast, ghostly, snow-draped vista from out of the deep past confronted them. Battlements and broken towers, turrets and court and ruined keep, silent fountains and tumbled walls—all quiet, shrouded and overgrown.