The Book of Isle

by Nancy Springer

  The searing did not help. Contagion crept down Gwern’s arm and up his neck; Trevyn thought the skin would break with swelling, and half of Gwern’s face turned a vivid puce, like a bruise; he looked as if he had been beaten. Whenever he moved, he shrieked with pain. Trevyn scarcely dared to touch him, even with the wet cloth. He no longer attempted to sleep. Exhaustion would take him for a few moments from time to time, and then he would wake with a start and try to comfort Gwern, if only with clumsy words.

  By the time Trevyn lost count of days, Gwern no longer had strength to scream. He lay softly moaning, but Trevyn could tell that his pain had not abated. Then one day, near evening, Gwern suddenly quieted, lying limp and still. Filled with dread, Trevyn felt for his breath. But Gwern opened his eyes and fixed them on Trevyn’s haggard face.

  “The pain is gone,” he whispered wonderingly.

  Trevyn only swallowed, and Gwern looked thoughtful. “Not good,” he added after a pause.

  “Nay.” Trevyn had heard about the respite that sometimes came just before death.

  “Tell me,” Gwern said.

  “Your whole arm is purple with infection, and your shoulder down to your ribs, and your neck and face.…” For a moment, Trevyn closed his own burning eyes. “I can’t help you. I’ve tried to help, and I’ve only hurt you.”

  “But I can’t die,” Gwern murmured incredulously. “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s what I keep saying,” Trevyn groaned. “I don’t understand. Sometimes I think I have been accursed since the day I was born. I had only just learned to—to love you, Gwern, and then this—”

  “But I can’t sicken! I am not mortal; I was never born,” Gwern explained laboriously. “Alys made me, somehow, to embody your deepest being, the Prince you liked the least. She ensouled me with her own breath. So I am Alys and I am you; how can I die while either of you lives? I have wept when you wept, loved when you loved, kept that feeling safe and helped it bring you back to Isle. I am wyrd; how can I just end? I don’t understand.…”

  “You are more than friend, even more than brother,” Trevyn whispered, shaking. “You are second self.…”

  “I am your inner fate. I am the child you have tried to leave behind; I am the white hart, the wild thing, and I am the wilderness within. I have loved you when you would not love yourself.”

  “Yet, you are also yourself, Gwern,” said Trevyn tightly, “to our sorrow.”

  “I am selfhead and godhead. So how have I become doomed to a mortal death.…” Weary, Gwern closed his eyes.

  Still trembling, unable to speak, Trevyn took his good left hand and held it between his own, stroking it, warming it when it began to grow cold. He did not dare a larger embrace; he would not risk jostling Gwern and causing him pain when he lay so peacefully. He could hardly tell when Gwerri ceased to breathe, but he saw the purple tinge creep all the way across his still face, felt the chill in his hand. Trevyn laid it down and edged away, sensing dark waters of hatred on all sides, welling up within him, drowning deep. He staggered to his feet, turned blindly and ran.

  Within a few strides he surged into rage that he thought would destroy him, destroy the world; he didn’t care. He careered against trees, punishing them and himself with all the strength in his body, smashing them with head and hands and knees, shrieking, but not with pain. He cursed with curses torn up from his reddest depths, cursed every person of the goddess, cursed Aene. Sometimes he stumbled and fell, ripping at earth with his bloodied hands. Sometimes he scrambled along, crashing through thickets like a hunted deer. He came up headlong against rocks, seized them and hurled them against the unresponsive earth, then plunged aimlessly onward. But he was too weak from fatigue and from his own recent illness to run mad for long. After a while he lay feebly thrashing, too exhausted to rise, too stubborn to weep. Later, eerily, he reached a calm even deeper than his hatred, and he knew quite surely that the goddess had not stirred for all his rage and all his grief. He felt her implacable love and understood that he would always be hers, always be alone. He bowed his head in acquiescence, laid his face in the dirt and slept.

  Something awakened him before dawn, some internal pang. He stared at the shadowy Forest, and remembered, and groaned. Then, unsteadily, he rose, wondering how far he had come from his campsite and how he would bury his—his companion; he could not bear to think of a more fitting title. He did not even know which direction would take him back to Gwern. But a faintly scornful snort sounded through the darkness and a white blur walked up to him: his wild-eyed horse. He crawled onto the beast, and it carried him off without a word of instruction through the gray dusk of dawn.

  He found Gwern, no more than a lump in the dim light, and beyond him a bundle that had been impatiently pushed out of the way. Trevyn needed the massive sword of Lyrdion now. He pulled the weapon from its wrappings, took it and felt his way to the top of a slight rise beyond the glade. There he began to hack a hole in the ground for his wyrd.

  He worked through bright dawn and sunrise. The hacking and scraping soothed him somehow. But even through the numbness of his grief he could feel the haunting tug of the sword. Culean had killed himself with that weapon, Trevyn grimly remembered, and with less cause than he had, he thought.… No matter. He dared say he put it to more fitting use. When he judged the grave was done, he went to get the body.

  He reached the edge of the glade, stopped and reached shakily for a tree. Gwern lay where he had left him. But he looked like a graceful young god, lying there, like a woman’s dream of her sleeping lover somehow caught in light and form. His rugged face and the bare rise of his chest caught the early sun and took on a golden glow; no trace of sickly purple remained. Trevyn walked over to him, knelt beside him and felt the movement of his ribs, felt the warm pulse of his neck, felt breath, scarcely daring to believe. Gwern stirred under his touch, blinked, then sat up and gaped at him.

  “What on earth—” he exclaimed, as agitated as Trevyn had ever seen him. “What—Trev, what has happened? You’re all blood and dirt; you’re a mess! You look—like me!”

  Trevyn felt for his voice; it came out a hoarse whisper. “And you look better than I can fathom.” He raised a hand, and with the bruised fingertips he delicately traced the smooth line of Gwern’s neck and shoulder. “Not so much as a scar on you,” he marveled.

  Gwern stiffened, stunned by memory. “I was dead!” he gulped. “Was—wasn’t I dead?”

  “Stark and cold.” Trevyn shivered with horror and growing joy.

  “I was dead, and now I am alive.… Sweet Mothers, Trev, what have you done? What—what ransom have you paid for me?”

  “I think I have sacrificed nothing but my pride. By my wounds, Gwern, I’m glad you couldn’t see me! I threw a fit.” Trevyn collapsed beside Gwern with a tremulous laugh. “I railed like a child—and after a while I knew—I understood—and now I don’t understand! Bah!” He sat up again. “Mother of mercy, is there to be no end of riddling?”

  Gwern made a small sound that Trevyn could not identify, not until he saw the tears running down the gentle brown slopes of his counterpart’s face. He had never seen Gwern weep, and at first he could not react or comprehend. “My Prince—” Gwern spoke huskily.

  “Gwern, what—” Trevyn awkwardly reached out toward him, touching only one cupped hand.

  “Trev, I love you; I owe you everything. Will you try not to leave me again? I want only to be at one with you for as long as the riddles shall last. Without end.”

  “Then come here,” Trevyn breathed, stirred to his soul’s depths. “Come here, my second self.” He embraced the son of earth, drew him in with both arms, felt Gwern’s answering embrace, warm head on his shoulder, hair by his cheek, bare, smooth chest against his heart, tears—all in an instant, and for the first time, he felt that, and then it vanished with an odd twinge. He held a bundle of blossoms and leafy sticks wrapped in vines and sealed with clay. Crying out, Trevyn leaped to his feet and flung it away, breaking the clay binding
. “My curse on all your devices!” he wailed at the goddess, at the entire heedless world. Then he sank to the ground again and wept. “Oh, I have destroyed him!” he choked to no listener. “He loved me, and I have destroyed him!”

  He wept for hours, sometimes pacing in circles, sometimes quieting only to begin again. When the sun neared its zenith, he calmed somewhat at last and sat staring dully at white bean blossoms, ruddy tips of rowan and fragrant purple heather, all fresh and thriving. For no reason, his eyes glanced beyond the strewn sticks to where a wolf sat at the foot of a tall oak tree, gazing back at him. A wolf with lovely, violet eyes.…

  “Alys?” he whispered.

  “Nay, it is Maeve. I am only one small speck in Alys.” The wolf trotted up to sit gravely beside him, laid a paw on his knee in a gesture not so much doglike as human: for his comforting, he knew. He could barely speak.

  “Wael transformed you?” he faltered.

  “Nay, I came of my own accord. There was need of—of some balance. But the Lady has returned to the Forest now, and my task will soon be done.… Freca, why do you grieve? The earth-son is not gone. He is at one with you, just as he wished.”

  Trevyn had sensed this truth even before she spoke. He knew where the dragons of Lyrdion were: in honeycomb depths of earth, his to loose as he had loosed his rage, for he was at one with that earth now. He could feel the song of a rowan’s root. He knew Wael’s sooth-name: it was the obverse of his own, encompassing his own despair and death. Gwern had given him all knowledge in making him whole. He comprehended mysteries of all realms, whether sky, sea, Isle or twilit Elwestrand—all stations of the sun, all phases of the changing moon. And all pain; he stiffened stubbornly against that knowledge.

  “I don’t care,” he grumbled. “Gwern was himself, as well as me, and now he’s dead.”

  “Changed, Alberic, only changed,” she said gently. She nosed at the disorderly array of sticks and blossoms that had been the wyrd. “Plant these in that trail of tears you’ve left, and you’ll have a grove that will be the glory of Isle in years to come, and better than any monument to his memory.”

  Even tired as he was, he obeyed her, thrusting the leafy shoots into the ground, spacing them in a sort of outward spiral. He surveyed his finished work sourly.

  “A poor substitute for a warm and gentle touch,” he stated.

  “Come with me now,” she told him, and led him to the tall oak tree at the edge of the glade. Nestled between its roots lay a wolf pup, soft, bright-eyed, still in its first fur. It gazed up at him with mingled valor and distress, wriggling. Automatically, Trevyn sat down so that his size would not frighten it, reached out to caress it. The little thing ran onto his lap and nuzzled under his chin, pressing against him, sending a spasm of longing through him.

  “Your son,” Maeve said.

  “What?” he whispered.

  “Your son, and his destiny is far stranger than yours. Being born a wolf may be the least of it.” She gazed at him out of dusky damson eyes. “Take him with you, to comfort you, and to grieve you when it is time.”

  He stood, cradling the wolf cub against his chest, where it lay contentedly. “But Maeve,” he faltered, “won’t you miss him?”

  “The babe is weaned,” she answered, then stood grinning toothily at him. “Prince, you know I am a creature of the wilds! Get on to Nemeton; they have need of you there.” She turned and trotted across the glade, between the newly planted trees. At the edge she faced around. “Look above you,” she added, then disappeared into the Forest.

  Trevyn looked. The eagle perched on a limb of the oak, staring down at him with hard, topaz eyes. Trevyn sighed, put out an arm, and the bird glided down to him, landing gently just above his wrist. He held it at a level with his face, and it regarded him steadily.

  “So you did only what you had to do,” he acceded. “What the goddess told you to do. All right. Will you get me something to eat, little brother, if you please? Or I am likely to starve before I ever reach Nemeton.”

  He put the golden sword of Lyrdion in Gwern’s grave, pushed earth over it with his hands, planted heather and white blossoms of bean to mark the place. He knew he would have to come back for it, but he would not take it where it might cause his father pain. Later, he rode away on a fey white horse, with a belly full of half-cooked rabbit, holding a wolf cub on the saddle before him. An eagle flew close overhead. It was only a few hours until dusk, but Trevyn would not stay another night in the place where he had so painfully become whole. He rode through twilight, deep into night, noticing to his vague surprise that his horse’s forehead shone with a clear, faint light, white on white, like a star. It had not done so before.

  “A quaint sight I make,” he muttered, “looking like a wild man, riding to face a sorcerer, all two of me, on a mad mystery of a horse, with a baby werewolf in my arms and an eagle almost bigger than I am thumping down on me from time to time.… Rheged may run when he sees me, but Wael is likely to laugh himself into oblivion.”

  Chapter Four

  After three days of hard riding, not even taking time to wash, he approached Alan’s encampment outside the walls of Nemeton. Alan blinked, watching him. “Gwern?” he queried, and then, as the rider drew closer, incredulously, “Trevyn?”

  “I think I shall be, mostly, when I’m bathed.” Trevyn dismounted, letting the wolf sit in the saddle. He had named the little one Dair, a word of strong comfort. Already Dair balanced expertly on the horse, in company with the eagle, which ted him scraps of raw meat. Alan glanced, open-mouthed, from the odd trio to his son’s thin, hollow-eyed face.

  “What in mercy has been going on?”

  “Gwern took ill and died—or seemed to die.…” Trevyn sat limply on the ground beneath his horse’s nose. “Father, I can’t begin to tell you half of what’s been happening to me. But Maeve—someone told me I was needed here.”

  “I’m relieved to see you; I’ve been expecting you for a week. But what you can do, I’m not sure.” Alan sat beside his son. “We’ve wiped the countryside clear of the invaders at last. It’s been grim work, but my men fight well now that the shadow of the wolves is gone and now—now that you are back and I am better. We’ve scuttled their clumsy ships. But on the day that I arrived some of the enemy took Nemeton, and they’re holed up there yet. It would be no trouble to starve them out, but Corin is in there, and some others who were too stubborn to flee.…”

  “Meg among them,” Trevyn murmured. He had felt her presence long since, with all of Gwern’s sureness.

  “Ay.” Alan’s face showed his distress. “She got caught up in the confusion, it seems, and took refuge there.… But how did you know, lad?”

  “I just know.… She’s come to no harm so far, Father. I’d feel it if she had.”

  “And Cory? And the others?” Alan leaned forward eagerly.

  “I can’t tell about them,” Trevyn admitted, hating to disappoint him. “I can only tell that Meg is all right. And I seem to catch a whiff of Wael.”

  “Ay, he’s there, I think. Talk has it that a particularly villainous-looking, yellow-eyed old devil landed with Rheged. But you must have drawn his fangs, Trev. He’s given us no trouble.”

  “I doubt it,” Trevyn said. “He’s just waiting for a time that suits his fancy. Wael is peculiar that way. And he hates me worse than poison. You’ll see some fireworks yet. We must strike quickly, Father, before—”

  Before Wael harmed Meg, Alan knew, though Trevyn could not say it. “As quickly as may be,” he gruffly replied. “I have men at work up by the Forest constructing siege towers.”

  “No need. I can open the gates for you with a touch. I have the ancient powers of Bevan now, Father. Watch.” Trevyn indicated his blanketroll, scarcely moving his finger, and it undid itself from his saddle, floated gently through the air, and settled at his feet. The wolf cub jumped down, pattered over, and curled up in his lap.

  “What—what have you bargained away for this power?” Alan breathed, startled and
dismayed. “What have you sacrificed, Trevyn?”

  “Gwern is gone.” Trevyn could not still the spasm of pain that crossed his face. “But there was no bargaining done, Father, believe me. I would far rather …” For a moment he could not go on. “I even think it might have been Gwern’s idea,” he finally said.

  “You don’t look strong enough to break a biscuit,” Alan told him roughly, to temper his concern.

  “I’m as weak as a kitten,” Trevyn acknowledged. “But in a way I’m stronger than I ever was before. And I won’t be able to sleep until this is settled—until I see Meg safe. Tomorrow, Father. Please.”

  Alan hesitated, measuring his stature and his need. “Only if I am never far from your side,” he said at last.

  “I’ll be glad of your shield.”

  “All right, then.… Where did you get the wolf?”

  Trevyn lifted the creature to his face, rested his taut cheek for a moment in its warm fur. “From the All-Mother,” he answered after a pause, “and he’s dearer to me than life, Father. Will you guard him, too?”

  “Of course. Trevyn, will I ever understand?”

  “When this is over, I’ll sleep for a month. Then we’ll talk for a year.”

  In the morning a messenger arrived whose news sent Alan stamping in circles with anxiety. “A second wave of invaders has landed,” he told Trevyn. “They’re marching on us across deserted countryside. My men are faithful, but they have been fighting for months; those who live are worn to the bone. They can’t take much more of this.”

  “All the more reason to regain Nemeton quickly,” said Trevyn. Alan nodded and called his army into battle readiness.

  He and Trevyn reached the main gate under cover provided by Craig’s expert archers. Still, rocks and hot lead hailed down upon them as they stood before the iron-sheathed doors. Holding a cowhide over himself and his son, Alan waited patiently while Trevyn ran questing fingers along the timbers, spoke a soft command. Nothing happened, and the Prince frowned.