“‘You do not wish to fly and cry with the north wind?’ the goddess teased.
“‘Indeed I do not,’ said Aftalun. ‘Not as moth or dove, hawk, or even an eagle. Even if those punishing Luoni of yours keep their claws away from me, as they ought, since all my life I have labored for the well-being of Vale.’
“‘Be a griffin, and fly with them,’ she suggested with a hard smile.
“‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘only a swan will I be, to fly with the flocks of Ascalonia. I have known immortality, and I want it back.’
“‘You must secure it by your death,’ she said, and she detailed to him the sacrifice of blood she demanded. Listening to her, he filled up with cold rage, to the brim of reason and far beyond.
“‘You are heartless!’ he breathed when she had finished.
“‘If you do that,’ she told him coolly, ‘you will regain your godhead.’
“He could not deny the dare in her eyes, even though he knew he doomed his own sons to follow the precedent. ‘All right, I will!’ he cried, and rose to face her with flashing eyes. ‘But I tell you this, woman: in times to come my sons will bring your daughters to die on that same altar, and not by the knives of your harpies—but by their own fair, white hands.’
“‘Nonsense,’ she said frostily. ‘The goddess weds and remains. It is only men who come and go like mayflies.’
“‘The wheel turns,’ said Aftalun with a look locked on rage. Then he went to prepare his doom. With his own great hands he raised the altar upon this Hill of Vision, chiseled the stones from the dragon’s teeth, folk say. Now twenty men could not move one of the slabs. How the Sacred Kings have dwindled since those days.”
Tirell and I glanced at each other, smiling, for we knew that Grandfather was baiting us. But he went on without a sign that he had noticed.
“He lay down and let himself be tied to the altar and died under the knives of the priestesses, lay there a night with his blood drying on the stones. Then he stirred, burst his bonds, rose and left the altar in one great leap. He stalked off to the mountains in the east, the King’s Range, thus called in his honor. The Luoni made way for him, folk say, and some claim that he lives there yet. He was never seen again, but to this day the tallest mountain, that towers over Coire Adalis, is called Aftalun, the Hero, in his name.”
“A peculiar sort of hero,” Tirell growled, “who left a bloody altar as his legacy.” True enough, but he had never said so before. Somehow, listening to the story, I found that even the altar seemed beautiful.
“Perhaps he thought you could all bounce off it as he did,” Daymon remarked. “Kings earned their immortality at a great rate in the early days, if lore tells true. The Sacred King was needed only long enough to lie with the goddess and get her with child; he was slain on his wedding night. But the observance soon eased. The span of kingship was lengthened to a year, and later to seven years, and still later to an even twenty years. Wives follow their husbands to that grim end now, as Aftalun foretold, for custom decrees that they should slay themselves in sorrow. And folk complain that, so gentle have the priestesses become, the souls of the Kings fly away, these days, as mere hawks.”
“I’ll be a moth, and gladly,” Tirell snapped. I looked at him worriedly. We had heard the tale many times, and it had never bothered him so.
“For the matter of that,” Daymon told him, “you’re likely to make your own legend, to be laid like a fate on some poor heir of yours many years hence.”
“I plan to make an end of that altar,” he said quietly. Perhaps he expected consternation, but Grandfather only nodded.
“It was raised in hatred and it has been fed with envy. Men say that crops and prosperity depend on the sacrifice of a Sacred King, but better truth would be that the many hope to place their own suffering on the body of one. I agree with you wholly, Grandson. Yet, within the verity of the story, I say: no man has been as great as Aftalun who was god and became god again.” He bent a keen gaze on Tirell. “Can you understand that?”
Tirell did not answer. I stirred and spoke in his place. “Grandfather,” I asked abruptly, “what lies beyond the mountains?”
My old nurse would have said, “Fear, only fear!” and shut her mouth with a snap. But Grandfather replied mildly, “Why, the endless water, Frain, if the legends be true.”
“Some folk say differently. Have you ever seen, Grandfather?”
“No. I cannot see beyond the mountains. I know folk claim to have seen dragons to the north, bright shapes flying over the white-crested mountains in early sunlight. And to the south men speak of a great expanse of dry and lifeless sand. To the east, some say, there are storm serpents and thunder giants, a savage race with claws and tails like animals. But fear speaks in all those tales, and truth may not be in them. Men have gone to the mountains from time to time—heroes, on a dare—but none have returned in my lifetime.”
“And to the west?” Tirell prompted, to my surprise.
“There, I think, is fear.” We all looked up at the jagged hulks that loomed over us.
“Though I had a dream, once, that Ogygia lay to the west,” Daymon added. “And it was no sky realm, but lay on the water, amid vast water, and there were people riding on the surface of the water in vessels called boats.”
Ogygia was another name for Ascalonia, the realm of the gods. But boats! It was a word I did not then know the meaning of. We had no boats in Vale, and no water broader than one could throw a stone across.
“But even that is fearsome,” Grandfather mused. “Why, I wonder, when a little water is a blessing, does a world of water become a nightmare of terror? Still, it is so.”
“The main fear must lie closer at hand. Who built this wall?” It was Tirell again, he who usually sat silent. Grandfather turned slowly to face him with expressionless eyes.
“I don’t know. But you are right. There are fell folk on the other side. I hear them sometimes, living here. Theirs are awesome voices.” He did not shudder, as another man might; he needed no such devices to impress us. We knew he never spoke more than he meant.
“Voices of what? Men?” Tirell demanded, but Daymon shook his head. He had said all that he would.
We ate our noonday meal in silence. It was bread and cheese and such simple stuff as the peasants brought Grandfather in thanks for his help. I liked it better than our fancy fare at home. After we had finished, Grandfather spoke to us, casually enough.
“So, lads, what is your trouble?”
I guess I gaped, but Tirell retorted coolly enough, “Trouble? I was aware of none.”
“When a man is troubled, always he will turn to examine his roots. Tell me, Tirell—” Grandfather’s eyes grew suddenly as sharp as swords. “Why has your father not yet been killed? His twenty years are gone, and there has been drought in the land these two summers past.”
Tirell barked out a laugh. “Killed? Because he would take some killing, that is why! He has an army waiting for those who would come to slay him.”
“Even so. But it was not always thus. In past times the Sacred Kings walked tamely to their slaughter. Abas is not one of those. Though he is mad and cruel, he is also clever and bold and proud—it is for that, I think, that my daughter cleaves to him. He is not one to let harm come to himself or his sons.” Grandfather turned his piercing eyes to me. “You fear too much for Tirell, Frain. There is no need yet to flee beyond the mountains.”
“It can scarcely be said that our father loves us,” I mumbled resentfully.
“Who is to measure the love hidden beneath his hatred? But his pride will serve to preserve you two. Turn elsewhere for love.” The old man rose stiffly to his feet, our signal that the visit was ended. “Go with all blessing,” he said.
So we went, up the bare grassy Hill and past the altar and the glares of the priestesses and down the slope to the shade of the sacred grove. But I for one was not feeling particularly blessed.
Chapter Two
“Let us go”—Tirell bro
ke silence—“and visit Mylitta, since you wish to see her.” He was quiet, his bearing as quiet as I had ever seen it, and his face unreadable.
So we turned aside from the track and rode northward into the grove that ringed the Hill. The trees stretched straight and tall; it seemed that the sunlight never quite reached the soft soil beneath them, and there was no young growth. There was scarcely a noise, even of birds, in the greenish twilight between those trunks. I kept looking about me nervously.
“She lives where the grove meets the river,” Tirell said, his voice sounding much too loud in that stillness. “It is a little place, a few fields, quite by itself. I have never come at it from this direction, but—”
I screamed and flung up my hands. A black shape was hurtling at us from the gloom beneath the trees, a shape of no creature that I had ever seen. It looked like a horse, but a grotesque horse with flaring nostrils and pale, flashing eyes. Black feathered wings rose from its shoulders, and from its forehead jutted a horn like a black dagger. And the noise! Thunder drumming and wind whipping in those wings—Tirell was in the lead, and the thing was on him before he could do more than stare. His white mare shied and bolted, throwing him to the ground. He lay there, winded, and the black beast reared above him, beating those monstrous wings.
I had stayed on my horse somehow, but it wouldn’t obey me. So I sprang down and ran forward, yelling like an idiot and waving my fists; I was half mad with fear for Tirell. The weird horselike thing threw me a glance of utter, withering scorn and struck me with a wingtip; even that slight blow was enough to send me sprawling. Then it turned and leaped away. It was gone as suddenly as it had come, and the thunder sound of its hooves faded away. Tirell and I sat on the dirt, staring at each other and gulping for breath.
“Are you all right?” he exclaimed.
“You should ask!” I retorted. “Can you get up?”
We both struggled to our feet and discovered that we were not hurt. I tried to brush the loam off of Tirell’s fine blue cloak. “That was quite a fright you gave the thing, brother,” he remarked. He was often ironical. I ignored him.
“What was it?” I asked. “Have you seen it before?”
“Only in dreams,” he answered, and I saw then that he hid something with the irony. He had the bleak look that presaged a sleepless night, and he quickly turned away.
It took us quite a while to catch the horses. I was jumping and glancing about the whole time, but we did not see the beast again. Finally we got on our way once more.
“We had better try a little circuit,” Tirell said with just a hint of a smile.
We left the sacred grove briskly and rode down through the cultivated land of the valley. Farmers at their spring planting straightened to give us a courtesy and then stared after us. They learned nothing. The homestead where Mylitta lived, as Tirell had said, was far apart from the rest, halfway down the river slope and beside the sacred trees.
“How did you ever meet her?” I asked curiously.
“Wandering. This is the sort of lonely spot that suits my fancy well. There she is.”
I could scarcely see her at first, in her brown homespun against the freshly tilled brown earth. She was sowing grain. She carried the seed in a girdle at her waist as she stepped barefoot over the warm soil to meet us. Like most women in Vale she was named after one of the many names; “Mylitta” was a name of the goddess in fair maiden form. But Tirell had spoken truth when he said she was not so very pretty. Her skin was tawny from sun and weather, her mouth wide, and her nose a bit upturned. Yet I watched her as if I had never seen a woman before.
It was her grace, I decided, that drew the eye. Or something less courtly than grace. Her movements were effortless, unstudied, her body strong and thoughtlessly lithe, like the body of a wild creature. She came to Tirell and met his eyes with such love that I felt my jaw sag in astonishment. She took no notice of me at all. Rites of courtesy would be lost on this one. Words like pride, rank, honor would mean nothing to her. The workings of her mind were like the rhythms of days and seasons; she loved Tirell, I believe, because he was young, and manly, and hers. She was a simpleton, but I felt no inclination to laugh at her. I felt awed.
“I was kept from you last night, lass,” Tirell said, “but surely this night I will come.”
She nodded, accepting his assurance as she accepted sun and rain.
“We have seen a strange beast,” Tirell told her, “black, like a horse, but with a horn and wings. Do you know anything of it?”
“It lives in the grove and peers from between the trees,” Mylitta answered in a soft, rhythmic voice almost like a chant. “There is no harm to it, as far as I know.”
“No creature would harm you,” Tirell said, “but it seemed eager to harm me.”
“I will speak to it,” the girl said.
Tirell nodded and touched her brown hand; he could not have meant more in a hundred gallant posturings. “Till tonight, then, all peace,” he said softly. We rode away together.
“She is a child of the goddess,” I said when we had topped the slope.
Tirell turned to me with a rare smile. “I am glad you like her.”
“I do, I like her very much. But liking is the least of it. I mean she is a very daughter of Eala who is Vale. Are her folk anything like her?”
“No, they are ordinary peasants, flattered and frightened of me. Mylitta comes and goes as she will, and pays them little heed.”
“And what will she do about the black beast?”
“I don’t know!” Tirell shrugged, half laughing at himself. “All I know is that the birds sing before her without fear and the butterflies light on her hands.” He gave a sudden whoop and sent his horse leaping forward, leaving me in his dust.
“That’s not fair!” I shouted, urging my plunging chestnut after him. We raced along, but the chestnut galloped as if the air were water, and the white kept the lead all the way to Melior. Tirell was laughing, a sweet, ringing laugh from his heart with not a bit of scorn in it; I smiled just hearing him. Tears lay on his cheeks as we pulled up by the castle gates. It was to be a long year before I knew such laughter or such tears from him again.
We came to order and entered the courtyard at a seemly pace. But we had no sooner sent the horses to stable than a servant approached us. “The King sends for you, Prince Tirell,” he said, bowing low. “All day he has awaited your return.”
“Mighty Morrghu!” Tirell muttered in dismay. Rarely did the King wish to see him, and it was very ill luck that the notion had taken him on this day, when we had been absent so long. He was likely to be in one of his cold passions from waiting.
“Should I wash, think you?” Tirell asked me distractedly.
“It would take too long. You had better go straight away, before it gets any worse,” I decided. “I’ll come.”
“He did not send for you!” Tirell protested.
“He never does! And he will take no notice, you know that. Come on.”
“But it makes him angry, just the same—”
“Why? Who should have a better right to come before the King than his own son?” I argued perversely. “I am his son too, am I not?”
Tirell seemed to have no answer. “Well, come on, then,” he muttered, and we set off toward the audience chamber. I had no good reason for wanting to go along, risking the King’s wrath at such a bad time. I just wanted, like a young fool, to see what was afoot.
Servants and courtiers stood clustered by the great carved doors, frightened and fascinated, like birds around a snake. They scattered before us, and we strode past and entered. I felt my step falter in surprise. Mother was sitting beside the King on her gilded chair that was scarcely less ornate than the throne. Rich hangings set the royal couple off on all sides: Adalis plucking her three apples, the white horse Epona, Eala and the dragon. Vieyra stared down from the wall behind Abas, holding the lotus emblem of Vale. He sat before her on a high throne with bodiless metal heads staring from the arms. Mo
re heads, twenty of them, stared from his huge circular brooch, the perquisite of his sacred office and destined death. At its center was the lotus, the sacred five, and the pin was a long knife that protruded beyond his shoulder. Kings of Melior always wore that reminder.
He turned his glittering eyes on me and spoke. “Get those vultures away from the door, then stand there.”
I bowed and hastened to do as I was bid. “Go,” I told the lackeys by the door, and they scattered, for they also had heard Abas’s words. I stood on guard, quaking and listening. Some great event had to be in the making, and I fervently hoped it did not concern me.
Tirell stood before the throne. As far as I know, only he of all the court was accorded that privilege; bent knee and bowed head were customary. But Tirell met the icy blue eyes that were so much like his own.
“Where have you been?” Abas asked.
“To see Grandfather.”
“Out nattering with an old man. It is a useless life you lead. You are twenty years old.”
“I would be glad to be of assistance to my sire,” Tirell said smoothly. “Are there duties for me?”
Abas scarcely seemed to have heard him. His stare had locked on nothingness a trifle above Tirell’s head. “If is time you had a wife,” he went on. “You will ride to Tiela as soon as possible, to Nisroch. Raz has one daughter left, and she is of marriageable age. Recilla is her name. Obtain her.”
I could not see Tirell’s face; perhaps it changed. But his voice as he spoke was level, with scarcely a hint of edge. “Is it not traditional that the Sacred Kings should wed a maiden with one of the many names, the goddess in mortal maiden form, and that on the night of coronation?”
Abas half rose from his seat in sudden passion. “Sacred King! Do you wish to be a Sacred King or a King in truth? Go to Raz, I say, and you will die in your bed, not on a bloody altar! I have some power, and he has more. What, youngster, would you spurn it?”
“I spurn no power,” Tirell answered quietly, “and I die on no altar. But a haughty wife will be a lifetime’s misery to me, Sire.”
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