The White Hart

by Nancy Springer

  “Well done, my lord!” Trevyn whispered, with mischief edging at the awe in his eyes.

  Emrist grimaced. But before he could speak, Trevyn’s eyes narrowed in warning. A guard was studying them from the shadows at the far end of the corridor.

  Emrist tightened his lips. Then, as suddenly as lightning, he smote Trevyn across the face with the back of his hand. For love of him, Trevyn did what the whips of the slavers had never made him do: yelped and flinched from the blow.

  “Churl!” Emrist grated. “You shall bow when you speak to me, sirrah!” He beckoned imperiously and strode off again with Tervyn at his heels. The guard let them pass without comment.

  “Again, well done, my lord!” Trevyn whispered when they came to a large open hall.

  “I am sorry,” Emrist murmured.

  “No need; I’ve taken worse in sport. Which way?”

  Emrist shrugged in vexation. “I can’t tell. The Sight doesn’t work that way; it’s not a map! Just keep moving.… You tied the horse?”

  “Only loosely. He can free himself with a jerk and go where he will. But he will wait for us yet a while.”

  They moved through the labyrinth of the palace purposefully but at random. The council halls stood empty, for the court officials were still in their rooms. Slaves sped by with breakfast trays, taking no notice of the strangers. Presently Emrist and Trevyn reached a rear courtyard serving the kitchen and slave quarters. They stopped, for they could not expect to find Wael there.

  “We must go back,” Trevyn said, “and try to find some stairs. I should think a sorcerer would be lodged in one of the towers; that is customary, is it not?”

  Emrist had no chance to answer. From behind them came a startled exclamation and a clatter of pottery. Trevyn whirled. An old man sat with scrub rag in hand, his mouth agape and suds dripping unheeded down his arm. Trevyn went to him swiftly and knelt beside him.

  “Peace, Grandfather,” he warned softly, “for my life’s sake.”

  “What is it, Freca?” Emrist came up beside them.

  “He was a slave with me in the pit and in the string where you found me, and he was a good friend to me.”

  “All that flogging,” the old man gasped, “and ye never spoke or squeaked—”

  Trevyn pulled a wry face at the memory. “Ay, for I am a king’s son, Grandfather. I could not let them master me.”

  “Ye’re the one they seek!” the old man breathed.

  “Ay, and come to beard Wael for it, if we can. Where is he to be found?”

  “In the tower, as ye said. The farthest one. But ye’re mad to face him. He is terrible!” The old man spoke with trembling earnestness.

  “I have no choice,” Trevyn told him quietly. “You’ll not betray us?”

  He wordlessly shook his head.

  “Freca,” asked Emrist worriedly, “can we trust him?”

  “Ay, I think so. Anyway, what else can we do? Do you have a way to silence him?”

  “I’ll quiet yer fears yet a while,” said the old man with dignity, rising stiffly to his feet. “I’ll come with ye, to show ye the way.”

  “You’re likely to get a drubbing, if you’re missed,” Emrist said.

  He shrugged. “I am an old man and thick of hide; I do not mind.”

  “Then, many thanks. And let us go quickly.”

  The old slave took them up the back stairs that the servants used. They met no guards. They climbed up flight after spiraling flight, till Trevyn lost count. Their guide stopped at last at a landing leading to a corridor.

  “He’s within,” he murmured. “I can feel it. The first door. I’ll go no farther.”

  “Get yourself to safety,” Trevyn told him. “A thousand thanks for your help.”

  “May yer gods defend you,” the old man breathed, and hurriedly stumped down and away. Emrist and Trevyn looked at each other.

  “Rest a moment, gather your strength,” Trevyn whispered. He reached for the sword that hung at Emrist’s side, drew it silently from its scabbard. The two steadied themselves for the count of a hundred. Then they wordlessly touched hands and walked to the fateful door. Emrist reached out, and it swung open beneath his fingertips. They entered Wael’s chamber.

  The room, in the properest tradition of the sorcerer’s tower, surrounded and confounded them and hemmed them in with shadows and shadowy apparatus. Amid all the confusion, Trevyn’s glance picked out one thing at once: the gilded form of a wooden figurehead, a wolf leaping with bared teeth of pearl. The shaggy object beside it, however, he was slower to recognize. He blinked as the grayish form turned and rose to a meager height to face them. A bent old man stood before him; yellow eyes stared at him out of a face covered with bristly gray beard. Trevyn had seen those eyes before.

  “Greetings, Wael.” Emrist spoke sedately.

  “Little Emrist the Magician!” Wael made the name into a yelp of triumph. “Well met! And you also, Prince of Isle.” His voice turned crooning. “How fortunate for you that you have come to me at last! I can make you the most powerful of Kings, King of Sun and Moon, if you let me.”

  Trevyn felt his heart jump at the echo of Emrist’s words. But he took a tighter grip on his sword. “Is that how Rheged comes to be under your thumb? A promise of power?”

  “Rheged!” Wael let out a single harsh bark of laughter. “Rheged is leaden of nature. Nay, worse than leaden; he is dross, and you could be pure gold. What, Prince, have you not yet learned the first quality of magic? I should think even Emrist might have taught you that.” Wael shuffled closer, hunched and glaring with what was meant to be sincerity. “It is power, the power of perfection. Just as sorcery can raise the nature of metals, it can raise the nature of men, firing away what is base, freeing the rest to fly like the eagles, lending power like a god’s. You are young and beautiful, and you could be anything your power and vision can encompass.” Wael had crept to within three feet of Trevyn’s staring face. “Think of it, Prince of Isle.”

  “He knows you well,” Emrist remarked.

  “Too well for honesty. He has been spying on my dreams. Picking at my thoughts with his soiled hands—” Trevyn slowly swung his sword up until it rested against Wael’s gray-robed chest. “Your words sound fair, old man, but your face is the color of vomit. Get away.”

  Wael sprang back with surprising agility, his face ugly with rage. He abandoned his caressing tone. “That was discourtesy,” he snapped, “and I will punish it as I am accustomed to punish those who cross me.” A clawlike hand left his sleeve with serpent speed, and power snapped across the room. The sword fell to pieces, clattering to the floor. Pain shot up Trevyn’s arm; he dropped the hilt with a gasp. “Thus,” Wael added. “You see?”

  Trevyn did not glance at the useless weapon. “You have a brooch of mine,” he said flatly. “This causes me some discomfort. We have come to get it back.”

  “Indeed?” Wael mocked. “I am the master here.” He fixed his jaundiced gaze on Trevyn. “I am the master here,” he whispered in dreamy, hypnotic cadence. “Come to me, Trevyn of Laueroc.”

  Trevyn matched his stare and did not move.

  “Come to me, Trevyn of Laueroc.” Wael recited a spell in the same silky whisper, ill suited to the guttural language of his magic. He thinks the brooch pulls me, Trevyn thought, and ached inwardly for Alan. But Wael’s efforts were ludicrous, just the same, and Trevyn felt his thoughts swerve to Meg, her teasing, her smile. He could almost hear her exclaim, “Silly old man!” Hugging memory to himself like a talisman, Trevyn threw back his head and laughed the sweet, healthy laugh she had taught him. Wael stopped his chanting abruptly, and a faint frown shadowed his eyes.

  Emrist quickly pressed the advantage. “Let us see that brooch, Wael!” he cried, and power flickered through him. Wael’s coarse gray garments parted like wings, and Trevyn glimpsed the sparkle of Alan’s brooch within them. Excitedly he stepped forward. But in an instant Wael clapped his arms down over his robe, and Emrist was jolted as his spell was seve
red. Wrath crawled across Wael’s face.

  “Fool,” he hissed, “you shall pay for that.” He snapped both hands forward like spitting snakes, and Trevyn saw Emrist reel from an unseen force. “Stop that!” Trevyn shouted, and once again started toward Wael. But then the blow struck him in his turn, blinding him with the magnitude of its malice. He stopped where he was, clenching himself in helpless wonder that anything could hurt so hard and yet continue without abatement.

  “Take no notice, Prince.” Emrist’s voice, though labored, was composed. “It’s only pain.”

  “Very true.” Trevyn forced his sluggish tongue to move, trying to match Emrist’s tone.

  “He drains himself of power with the making of it,” Emrist went on. “When he stops, he will be the weaker.”

  “Still strong enough to deal with a dozen such as you!” shrieked Wael. Nevertheless, the pain stopped. Trevyn shook his head to clear the haze from his eyes. Then he stiffened. The leaping figurehead leered into his face, scarcely a foot away.

  “Ay, you remember him well, do you not, Islendais Prince?” Wael gloated. “You will be his, you who have spurned me!”

  Trevyn could not move or speak. Some inexplicable horror of the thing bound him immobile. Its glass eyes took on a saffron sheen from the gilded wood and held his sickened gaze. Beyond them, shielded from his reach by the wooden wolf, another pair of yellowish eyes entered his narrowed view. “Look at me, Trevyn of Laueroc,” Wael whispered.

  Behind Trevyn, Emrist spoke tightly, forcing words from his frail, anguished body. “Do not heed him, Prince!”

  “A fine wolf, is it not?” Wael went on. “But this is only a toy. Since you will not join me, you and all yours shall be a sacrifice at the altar of the Very Wolf. Would you care to see him? Look at me!” Wael’s voice rose to a hiss. “Can a Prince such as yourself not withstand the gaze of an old man?”

  Trevyn looked, whether from stung pride or sheerest compulsion he could not say. In a moment his world had faded into nightmare. Laueroc had fallen, his father lay dead, his mother torn and dishonored; the wolves surrounded him in his turn, frenzied for his blood, worrying at his legs to pull him down. The largest wolf came at him, huge, looming, dark enough to blot out sun and day and sky.… Falsehood, he knew it to be, and he pressed his mind against the vision, struggling to see with present sight. For an instant, he thought he had succeeded. The sorcerer’s shadowy chamber was again before him. But a giant black wolf with teeth of flame was coming at him, leaping for his throat.… Trevyn could not, or would not, scream. He closed his eyes.

  “A thing of smoke and fire,” said Emrist in a strong voice. “You shall not gull us so easily again, Wael.” Trevyn’s eyes snapped open. The specter had vanished. Only old Wael faced him over a carved figurehead, his wrinkled face twisted in fury. Emrist stood with hand raised in command, straight as a young tree, his russet hair flying, though there was no wind. Trevyn went swiftly to his side.

  “Hold fast,” Emrist murmured to him. “The worst is yet to come.” Wael was muttering a spell in the harsh language of his cult, and Trevyn recognized some of the words; it was the spell for the transferring of the living soul. But not until he felt grinding misery fill his veriest being did he fully realize what Wael was doing.

  “Hold fast!” Emrist charged him again.

  The new torment was not so much pain as pressure, a straining within and a battering, hostile presence without. Though he breathed, Trevyn felt crushed, as if he held his breath under water, under something heavier and more alien than water or earth, with no hope but to smother quickly. He could see Emrist, though thick glass seemed to be between them, and he noted that his friend’s face looked white as death. If this spell succeeded, Trevyn remembered dully, he had promised to kill him. That would be the worst of promises to keep. But if his own strong body felt weakened under its magical load, how was Emrist to withstand it much longer?

  As if moving in lead, Trevyn forced a hand to his tunic, drew from it a rolled parchment. With a wrenching effort of will, he made his tongue move, form speech. “Wael,” he asked, “do you know anything of this?” He let the scroll fall open in his fingers.

  The spell left as suddenly as a weight dropping from a snapped string. In the empty moment that followed, Trevyn thought he could sense Wael’s startled fear.

  “Give it to me!” Wael demanded sharply.

  “I will trade it for a certain brooch,” Trevyn replied.

  Beside him, Emrist stood breathing deeply. “Freca,” he whispered between gasps, “you must by no means let him have it. It is a very evil thing.”

  “I will do what I must,” Trevyn told him obliquely, but with a covert wink.

  “Come, come,” said Wael, reverting to his caressing tones. “It is a paltry thing, of no importance except that I fancy it.… Why struggle for it? I will take it from you either way.”

  “The brooch, if you please,” Trevyn answered evenly.

  Wael pressed his lips to a line like a scar and extended his hand. The parchment in Trevyn’s grasp sent sudden pain through him like a searing iron, burning hot. He managed to keep his grip, though agony twisted his face. “False fire!” he taunted, between clenched teeth. Wael’s fire did not injure him, could not consume, if he wished to keep the parchment whole.

  “And water of like sort,” Emrist added. Trevyn felt his hand drenched in healing coolness, though nothing was wet. Wael wheeled away from him to face Emrist in consummate fury.

  “Renegade sorcerer—” Wael spat out the words with choking emphasis. “How I wish I could deal with you at my leisure! I would make you into a thing a dog would pity! But it seems that I must dispose of you here and now, if I am to have my way with this young fool.…” Wael swept his hand across his body like a scythe, and Emrist slid to the floor with a gasp. Trevyn stood, feeling his knees turn to water as Wael confronted him. The old warlock was grining with triumph, his gaping teeth as jagged as fangs in his ancient jaws.

  “And now for you,” he breathed. “See the Wolf, Princeling? You shall be His tonight.” Wael turned toward the gilded wolf of wood, but froze, thunderstruck, as it burst to splinters before his eyes. From the crumpled form on the floor a movement had come; a hoarded bolt of power had dearly spent itself. Wael spun with an inarticulate screech and struck the air with his clenched fists. Emrist moaned deeply, then lay still.

  “Now, I will have that scroll!” Wael advanced on Trevyn with burning eyes. Trevyn let him come without a sign. All fear for himself had left him with Emrist’s moan. Rage filled him, but he did not let it show—not yet. He stilled himself until the sorcerer was within two paces, within one pace, and then he sprang with lion force, silent as Fate. Knocked to the ground, Wael gasped and flailed the air with his hands, but to no avail. Trevyn tore the brooch from his clothing. The moment he seized it, Wael slithered from his encumbered grasp and made for the door. “Guard!” he shrieked. “Guard!” The ancient warlock scuttled away down the corridor, and Trevyn let him go. With brooch and parchment in hand, he knelt by Emrist, taking his head into his arms. Emrist opened his eyes and smiled.

  “You have them both?” he murmured. “That is good, very good. We wore him out at last, it seems. But you must go now, Freca, quickly.”

  “Let me get you on my back, then.” Trevyn spoke past the lump in his throat.

  “Nay, I am done.” Shouts and the sound of running feet echoed through the corridor, drew nearer. “Go, make haste.”

  “I cannot leave you here!” Trevyn blinked back stinging tears.

  “By the mighty One,” Emrist begged in the Old Language, “do not let me fail in this one last thing. Alberic, as you love me, think of your kingdom and your sire and go!”

  The guards reached the door. Trevyn kissed Emrist once, the kiss of death’s parting, and then ran. The door opened before him; he burst through the startled guards like a stag through the bushes. The stair by which he had come was blocked. He ran the other way, the guards hard after him, found th
e front stair and leaped down it, careless of his neck, half crazed. He sped down another corridor, almost toppling a lean, swarthy man in a crown. The guards lagged far behind him now, but the whole palace was aery for him. Leaping, half falling, he descended some more stairs, then paused, listening. Shouts closed in from every side. He did not know which way to turn.

  A hand plucked his elbow, and he whirled. The old man, his fellow slave, beckoned, led him to a servant’s door behind a curtain. From there they twisted through a maze of dark, narrow passages and rooms smelling of chamber pots and unwashed bodies: the slave quarters. The shouting faded away behind them. The old man went surely, though none too quickly, with Trevyn treading restively at his heels. Slaves gaped at them from doorways, scurried out of their path.

  “You’ll get worse than a drubbing for this, if any of those tell,” Trevyn said tightly.

  “Someone will tell. But I am an old man, and quite ready for death,” the slave replied placidly. They came out at last to the back courtyard where Trevyn had found him before. The old man led the way to the postern gate, gripped the iron bars, and braced himself against them. “On my back,” he directed tersely.

  Trevyn kicked off his sandals and climbed up, one-handed, clutching the parchment and the brooch. Wriggling, he was able to squeeze out over the pikes and drop down outside the gate. “Good speed to ye,” said the old slave, and stood watching as Trevyn silently saluted him and trotted away.

  He had not left the shadow of the wall before the guards sighted him. The cry went up, and as he sped away he heard the call to horse. He ran aimlessly. The town gates would be closed against him, he knew. He and Emrist had not planned for this; hopeless as their confrontation of Wael had seemed, getting Trevyn and the brooch out of Tokar had been goals as distant as the stars. Now the tumult of his mind kept him from thinking. If only because it was easier on his tiring legs, he ran downhill. Between the houses and shops he could glimpse the gleam of the southern sea. Foolishness to go that way, where he would be trapped against the endless water. Yet some deep instinct of his elfin heritage called him to the sea, the longtime deliverer of his mother’s people. He ran toward the shining deep.