The White Hart

by Nancy Springer

  Very true. Was that warmth in her voice, congratulation, even? Perhaps more than my equal at most times. But just now the sun is in abeyance, Lonn D’Aeric, and for that reason I think you will not be able to stand against me.

  An odd, inquiring look washed over Frain’s face. “Not your doing, surely?” he murmured.

  No. Wry humor in Shamarra’s voice—they understood each other, these two! No, scarcely. Sun says that yon king’s death is in the pattern, Frain. I seek justice, no more. Now let me pass.

  He stood his ground. “We must make a new pattern,” he declared, or begged. “One of forgiveness, reconciliation—” “Only one way is that possible,” said a strong and quiet voice.

  It was Tirell who spoke. He had understood all that was said—he must truly have been one who had learned from dragons. He stepped forward a pace, sword raised.

  “You know well enough how such healing comes, Frain,” he said. “I must face the thing I fear. Is it not so?”

  A strange sort of thunder sounded, earthly thunder, and beneath our feet the ground shook. Frain swayed where he stood.

  “Tirell—I cannot let it happen!” he cried. But he had turned slightly to the sound of his brother’s voice, and the nameless creature that was Shamarra swept past him, gave a mighty leap and was on us.

  I say us because I still stood at Tirell’s side. I sprang to a deathgrip on the shapeshifting thing’s throat, and Tirell’s sword met its chest, plunged deep. But the creature surged forward, as fluid as water, taking me with it like a leaf. It ran right up Tirell’s sword and sank the many tines of its antlers into his chest, raped him with them tenfold, drove its way into him—and then with a mighty toss of its head it threw me off and ripped him open. Then it staggered away and fell. It lay dying, and it was the fair and maidenly Shamarra who lay there, a sword buried to the hilt in her bosom.

  The Luoni flapped down and sat in a nearby copse, waiting.

  Tirell lay—I could not look at him, I could not look anywhere. His chest was torn out, and his burning blue eyes gazed up at the darkened sun, frosted over with pain. Frain stood for a moment as stunned as I, staring at his brother, staring at Shamarra. Then he went to Tirell without speaking, laid gentle hands on his forehead and heaving sides. He lifted the prone head, sat and cradled it in his arms. Tears were running silently down his cheeks.

  “And a healer, yet,” Tirell marveled. His pain had left him at that touch. He spoke readily and lay in merciful ease. But Frain could scarcely speak for anguish.

  “This is all the help I can offer you,” he said in a choked voice. There was no mighty Tree in that place. He could not save his brother from death as he had saved me.

  “You have brought me your forgiveness,” said Tirell faintly. “That is the greatest of help and healing.” He let his head rest against Frain’s chest, and for a moment he closed his jewel-bright eyes. Frain stifled a sob.

  “With all my heart,” he averred.

  “And perhaps even Shamarra’s.…”

  Shamarra lay nearby, quite still and senseless, breathing only in shallow gasps.

  “She has hurt herself as much as me,” Tirell murmured. “Frain.…” The word was an entreaty and a caress.

  “What?” Frain whispered.

  “The Luoni will attack me. I am many times forsworn.”

  Frain touched his temples. “We will fly with you and protect you, my friend and I,” he promised. He laid his face close to the bloodless one he held. “I love you, brother,” he said.

  Shamarra went up as a swan, a fair white swan, the proper form of the immortal. I saw it go—perhaps things were manifest to me by then that would have been unseen before. Tirell went up as an eagle, the great black-and-white ger-eagle, at nearly the same moment, and Frain and I sprang up to be after him. Red hawk and gray falcon, we were beside him in a flash, and the Luoni swooped down on all of us, screeching.

  Laifrita thae, earthsisters, Frain told them. Give us passage.

  Laifrita thae, deadly ones, I greeted them courteously. They could not attack us who lived and tendered them the greeting. They wanted Tirell badly, but Frain and I flew to either side of him and Shamarra just above, the swan lady protecting her detested lover, and sharp talons curved below. The Luoni flapped about us, cursing. Shamarra? Tirell asked.

  It is all gone. She sounded glad. All hatred purged with the passing. I only remember that you were fair. I thank you, Lady, he said.

  Short, swift and wild that flight was, but it was glorious. The way led to the west, where the great river ran, a broad, bright flow. Just as we came over it the sun burst forth from its bonds of darkness, far down the western sky, and touched everything with sudden gold. Tirell saluted his brother and made his whistling dive, disappeared into the shining water on his way to Aftalun’s realm. The Luoni wheeled away, complaining, and Shamarra sailed onward, majestic, into the sunset. She would fly with the immortal flocks.… On the instant Frain shot after her.

  No wait! I cried. I have to go back—I had left the fern seed behind. And already I had forgotten that his quest was different from mine. Frain, farewell! I called out, my voice cracking, and I turned back to where Tirell’s body lay, my heart half breaking. When I reached the battle place I found my fern seed easily enough, but the sight of that fair young True King, dead, turned me human in form, mirrored my own grief. I sat down and wept. When Frain came, only a few minutes behind me, I could not stop weeping.

  He put his arms around me even as the feathers were leaving them. “I must part from you soon,” he said gently. “A few more days. There is something I must do.”

  What is it? I asked, still sobbing.

  “You will see. Shamarra has told me what I must do.”

  I looked at him, calming myself with an effort, sniffling. Tracks of tears were on his face, but he seemed too tired to sorrow anymore.

  Does she no longer despise you, then? I asked.

  “I think not. All such spleen seems gone from her.”

  I doubted him. But then, I had doubted him about Tirell.

  “Look, the light is fading,” Frain said. “We will have to stay here tonight.”

  We were both exhausted and heartsore, too spent even to properly sleep. Scent of blood was on the air, and wails of women come to collect their dead and dying. We dozed restlessly and woke often with little cries in the night and spoke to each other for comfort. Dawn, at last—we got up and smoothed Tirell’s cold brow, closed his bright blue eyes. There were no rocks to build a cairn for him—

  Moved by some new instinct, I got the fern seed pod, carefully opened the pointed end of it and shook out a mist of seed so fine it could scarcely be seen. Then I stood openmouthed, joy growing in me and bursting into bloom. For the ferns sprang up even as I watched, unfurling bright plumes of green, surrounding Tirell with their soft stirring, raising their canopy over him, and each one of them held up a flower of fire red with petals that seemed to float on air.

  “You’ve made a memorial for him,” Frain breathed. “Dair, you marvel—”

  Hush, I grumped. Can we go now?

  “Yes. In fact, we must.”

  We walked off westward. Neither of us felt like flying just then, but human walking is a wearisome business. Can you be a wolf? I asked Frain, going wolf myself.

  He thought about it, and then he made the change. But instead of a wolf it was a wolflike dog that stood beside me—red, of course, with silky fur, finer than mine, and sensitive petal-like ears. He was a staghound, emblem of honor and fidelity.

  I should have known, I said.

  Wolf and dog. He grinned at me toothily. Come on.

  We trotted along companionably, covering the miles without much effort. I could not hunt, for I held the fern stalk in my mouth. But we met a peasant woman who, oddly, did not seem afraid of us, and she gave us food. We swam the river and crossed the farms and fields of Melior. We met the peasant woman again the second day, she with her apron full of bread and meat, and I could not hel
p but look at her askance, for how could she be there ahead of us?

  Mother of us all, said Frain softly, you are good to us. Thank you.

  “One more day and you will be each on his own,” she said. “Eat well.”

  We ate and slept and went on. The steep, dark mountains of Acheron loomed before us. We trotted into a forest of gray and twisted trees. Some of them looked half dead, but they might have been two hundred years old and ready for two hundred more. The trees of Acheron are deceptive things, like its water. They stooped over the trail like so many old women, and we could hear them talking.

  SO THE LADY HAS FLOWN AT LAST, one creaked.

  THAT IS WHAT THE SMALL BIRDS SAY, tittered another in tones of doubt. They were gossips.

  IF IT IS TRUE, THE SWAN LORD SHOULD COME SOON, rustled a third.

  DO WE GET TO SET ROOT IN MELIOR AT LAST? the first one asked. WE COULD LEVEL THE CASTLE STOCK AND STONE.

  I DOUBT IT, they said. WHEN I SEE I’LL BELIEVE. They joined in a dry, whispering chorus. WHAT MATTER, WHAT MATTER THE DOOMS MEN FORETELL! LORDS AND LADIES COME AND GO, AND IT IS ALL THE SAME TO US. DEATH GOES ON DYING, AND WE STAND BEHIND THE WALL.

  They were wrong.

  WHAT IS THIS? one said with a sigh of limp leaves. A WOLF AND A DOG, SIDE BY SIDE?

  We broke into a lope and left them behind. Steep slopes of loose rock met us, then sheer crags. But we went surely on our clever paws, and Frain knew the way, for he had been here twice before. The peasant woman met us and fed us once more on toward evening, and then we slept and made the final journey to the lake.

  The lake where it had all begun for Frain, the lake I had once seen on an old woman’s loom. Set so much as a foot in the water, folk said, and your own darkness would drag you down. If not, you would become immortal, but eternally in thrall to whatever passions touched you at the time.… It was a deathly lake. High up amid the mountain peaks it lay, in a dark and secluded valley, the water very dim and very still. Far out in the middle of the mirrorlike expanse floated a single swan, a black swan, its left wing trailing in the water, crippled. The image in the water below it was white. Along the far verge, beneath some willow trees, lay a white winged unicorn. Its reflection in the glimmering water was black.

  “This is the most perilous of places, the most dangerous of lakes, Dair,” Frain told me softly. “Don’t go near the water or look into it, or I can’t say what might happen to you.”

  He had taken his human form, and I took my own at the sight of him. And he went to the water’s edge, as he had told me not to. He knelt there and looked so long that I wondered if he might be bewitched. Slowly, uncertainly, I walked up behind him. There were odd four-petaled flowers at the grassy verge, white, and black flowers floated in the shallows below them, or so it seemed. Frain’s freckled face looked up from among them—just his own face, reflected, nothing more. Puzzled, I glanced toward where my own shadow lay. But Frain, suddenly aware of me, jumped up with a shout and lunged at me, wrestling me away with both arms.

  “Dair!” he exclaimed anxiously. “Did you see—”

  Nothing but myself. Only my own peculiar face had looked back at me from the shadowshining water. Frain let go of me with a huge sigh.

  “I should have known,” he muttered. “You are as pure as I was. Dair, what a fright you gave me! I told you—”

  What did you see? I asked, to head him off. I wanted no quarrel. Not this last day.

  “Myself. Somewhat darkly, but nothing too terribly hard to bear.” He looked out at the middle of the lake. “There is my swan,” he said. “Well …” He turned back to me for a moment, laying his hand on my shoulder. “Dair, goodbye.”

  Fear clenched me. Frain, wait, I begged. I don’t understand. What are you going to do?

  “Give myself to the lake.”

  But why? I tried to contain my horror. The white moon-mark, sign of the kiss of the All-Mother, shone faintly on his cheek, and there was a sureness about him.

  “You have your task.” His hand gentled my arm as he patiently explained. “And I need my rest.… Dair, I love her still, I always will, it is fated on me, but the love is a torment in me because in this body I hate her as well. I am tired, too much has happened and I remember it all too well, I bear scars. She has gone beyond that now, and if I do the same—if I take a different form from which I may not return, why—there is a chance.…”

  He looked away over the towering mountains that made a barrier to the west.

  “I know it will seem odd, Dair, but—it is the only way for me. Truly. And it will be—healing of an innocent thing.”

  The swan swam a little closer, trailing its crippled wing.

  “Goodbye,” Frain muttered, and he hugged me, hard. I felt his face against my own and I felt tears—my own. He turned away. I stopped him with a touch, but he would not face me again, only half turned toward me.

  “Dair, I have to go!” The words were choked. Tears on his face, too.

  I know. Frain, if you should ever see Trevyn—in this world or another—

  He looked at me then, eager, smiling. “I will go to him straightway. What would you like me to tell him?”

  Just say that—I am well.

  “I’ll tell him far more than that.”

  He embraced me once more, touched my hand. Then he turned and, with scarcely a ripple, waded into the lake.

  It did not take him. I could see quite clearly that it had no power over him at all. He waded in until the water was up to his head and the swan swam a little way ahead of him, and then he gave himself to the lake, he disappeared. I watched for long moments, scarcely daring to blink, sure I would see him again but frightened for him as well—

  And the water reached up, the white reflection in the lake reached up and embraced the swan, and the swan lifted its wings with a shout of exultation, crippled no longer. It was black no longer, either, it was white, sea-foam white, lotuspetal white, with a sort of golden sheen about it, an aureole, and it took wing, it soared. It sang—I had never known Frain to sing, but I knew it was he, even so, and the song was one of victory and joy. Triumph, triumph, swan, windmaster, winging, singing through the sky.… The swan flew once over my head, calling a clear greeting, and then it lifted like thistleseed over the westward mountains, sang yet again and was gone. Watching, I found that I was weeping and singing aloud for love and loneliness—howling, if you will. I was a wolf, after all.

  Laifrita thae, Frain. Sweet peace to thee. Fly away.

  I padded off through the mountains with the fern seed held in my mouth. I passed out of Vale into the lands beyond and planted seed when the mood took me. Sometimes I dreamed of Frain or of Trevyn, and the dreams comforted me.

  Epilogue

  On a golden day when summer was thinking of autumn, King Trevyn of Isle rode homeward toward Laueroc from Rodsen. As he rode a great white swan whistled overhead, a swan with an aureate glow that reminded him of certain unaccountable legends he had lately heard, the most splendid of swans. Seeing him, it circled back. Alberic, it greeted him by his elfin name.

  “Lonn D’Aeric,” said Trevyn with a wondering smile. “Swan Lord.” He got down from his horse to meet an equal, and the creature landed in the grass beside him.

  “So the final age is truly at hand,” Trevyn murmured. “Peace passing into eternity—”

  Dair asked me to tender you his greeting, the swan said.

  “Frain!” Trevyn exclaimed.

  Folk used to call me by that name. I scarcely remember.… The swan arched his lovely neck. But I remember Dair. He is—Even the Old Language would not encompass what Lonn D’Aeric felt. He bowed his graceful head in a sort of homage.

  He is a marvel beyond belief, my lord.

  “So you came to love him at last,” said Trevyn softly.

  I learned to love him, and all else followed.

  “I can scarcely believe that you are really come,” Trevyn said in a hushed voice. “All striving drawing to an end, yours and everyone’s,
soon to be done for all time.… What is for you now, Lonn D’Aeric?”

  The wide dim sea and that western land—what is its name?

  “Elwestrand.”

  They talked for a while longer, of Dair wandering with the seed, of the sea—Lonn D’Aeric longed for the sea—of the turn of the great tide and the dreams of the One which were nearing consummation. When the stars came out the swan looked skyward and spread his wings.

  “It is a long flight,” said Trevyn. “You will be well?”

  How can I be otherwise?

  He soared off, and Trevyn stood looking after.

  Some days later Trevyn had a dream of two swans who met on the bosom of the sea.

  It was calm. They floated easily on the dark and sparkling tide, face to face. One swan seemed to wear a crown of golden light; the other shimmered silver where the water jeweled her. They gazed at each other, then dipped their bills to the water, long necks highly arched, drifting closer together; then they raised their heads. Snowy breasts met. Heads came softly together. The necks of the swans formed the twin halves of a fair and perfect white heart.

  And then one swan shouted aloud in joy and victory. He spread his great wings, shining and white as foam, raising his body from the water, golden light glinting from his highstretched head, surging and yearning skyward, singing. The triumph song—the other swan joined him, spreading wings, crying joy to the sky. Triumph, triumph, raise thy pinions, Swan Lord skimming, winging high.… They flew. Wingtip to wingtip they flew, westward across the endless water, into sunset light, and the sun was a golden swan that welcomed them into its embrace. Then it sank, and all disappeared into amethyst twilight.

  Eastward at the hills of morning

  Sunswan lifts his wings of light

  Golden golden glory glory

  Lifts his wings of light

  Triumph, triumph, raise thy pinions

  Sunswan golden, blazing bright,

  Triumph, triumph, swan, skymaster,

  Lift thy flame in flight.

  Then winging winging wheeling singing

  Skimming triumph up the sky