I only half listened, staring at the rough oval he had drawn on the planking. In a moment I took the charcoal from him and put my own map beside his. It was very nearly the same shape. Clumsily, for I still found it awkward to use my hands, I showed the river running down from the north and west—dragons lived in those parts in the old days, legend said—and I put a dot at the river’s mouth—Nemeton. Glancing up at Frain, I saw that he did not understand. How to show him that this was an island, an oval surrounded by sea? I drew a sort of walnut shell with stick masts at Nemeton harbor—a ship.
“Isle?” Frain asked, astonished.
I nodded.
“But—great goddess, what a coincidence! Are they both nearly the same size?”
They were. We discussed it in our way, he figuring weeks of travel and I agreeing. It would take just about a year to make the rounds of either kingdom with any ease.
“And Trevyn and Tirell, True Kings,” Frain muttered, more to the air than to me. “So alike, and yet so different. I believe the old woman is playing tricks on me again.” He strode off, and that was the end of our one-sided colloquy for that day.
I grew stronger quickly, even on shipboard fare, and I grew more hopeful daily, for Frain was most surely more at ease with me, and maybe one day he might truly be my friend. He grew somewhat more candid with me. One day toward the end of the voyage he asked me a stark question.
“Dair, were you really a wolf for a while?”
I nodded.
“Maybe we are what the goddess meant by wolf meeting dog. People used to call me Puppydog in Vale.… Because your mother was a wolf when you were born?”
Nod.
“Swans and serpents,” he breathed. “She must be a potent sorceress.”
I shrugged in wary agreement. Frain stared at me and then past me, thinking hard.
“Though why that should bother me, I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’ve seen enough strange things in my life, especially in a certain lake.” He shuddered slightly. “Dair,” he burst out, “if you would smile once in a while, it would help.”
Trevyn had told me that my expression was fixed and unnerving. The muscles of my face did not work as they usually did in humans, it seemed. But certainly I was willing to try them, I wanted only to please. I flexed my lips. Frain gave me a startled look and glanced quickly away.
“No good. You’re baring your teeth,” he said quite gently. “Never mind, it was a stupid idea.” He rested his elbow on his knee and his head on his hand. A large wave splashed over the ship’s railing and drenched him, and he jumped up, cursing.
“Go ahead, douse me!” he shouted at it. “Who am I, anyway? A leaf on the tide, cloud feather, bird dropping or some such. First I search seven years in one direction, and then she sends me back in the other—” His anger turned to a sort of desperate amusement, and he lapsed into laughter, watching the water trickle away from him like tears. “Dair, I’m all wet.”
I rose, offering to get him dry clothes, and he followed me below, still softly laughing. Then he stopped with a sigh. “I hate this endless water,” he said.
All I could do was hand him dry clothes.
“I never used to be so full of the mubblefubbles,” he told me wryly. “So fearful, so bitter—but the days when I was—when I was myself—seem so long ago that I can hardly remember them.”
The voyage drifted on. Every morning we sailed blind, straight for the rising sun. Finally one day a rim of black showed below the sun, and the next day cliffs loomed up. We had come to the rocky coast of northern Tokar. It was all wilderness—no towns or homesteads were there.
It was a shock to me, I admit it, that first landsight. I had always lived under the mantle of. Trevyn’s magic, and I had not known how drab the shadowed world would be. Rocks and twisted trees—without being anything less it was all somehow shrunken, there was no dream in this place. The greens were not the true dream green, the manycolors did not inhabit the tree trunks, the rocks would never sing or roses bloom in the snow or frost-flowers in the heat. It was a sere and unfriendly place even by mainland standards, I suppose, and to my eyes it seemed full of ill omen.
“I hope we are not taken by slavers, as Trevyn was,” Frain said.
We fetched our packs of gear and victuals as the ship turned broadside to the coast and sailed along it, searching for a landfall for us. The cliffs looked sheer, but after a while we sighted a jagged ravine where a stream ran down to the ocean. The smallboat was lowered to take us ashore.
Half an hour later we stood on a spit of gravel beach and watched the ship sail away toward Isle, leaving us behind. For the first time I felt desolate.
“Well, Dair,” Frain said, “now we’re on our own.” But he had been on his own for years, without even mute me for company. Was he sensing how I felt?
I turned my back on the sea and looked toward the mainland.
Trevyn had told me where Maeve’s home lay. It was somewhere in the jagged ridge country, at the end of the trail that led northward from Jabul. Its tall trees stood like an island in the scrub. We were coming at it from the west, but I felt confident I could find it. The house was encircled by a haunt, an invisible barrier of fear that kept it safe from the brigands and robbers who roamed these wilds. A haunt was a special place. We would be sure to hear talk of it—
If the brigands did not do us in first. Neither of us bore any weapon to speak of. Frain had his iron knife, which we would need for cooking and the like, but he had steadfastly refused to take a sword. And as for me, I was human, but not so human as to have mastered the arts of combat.
We filled our water flasks at the stream and climbed the ravine, dragging our packs behind us. Then we silently shouldered them and set off eastward.
Chapter Six
Within a few days I had put away hope of reaching my mother’s dwelling before midsummer. There was the heat, to start with. We had not reckoned with such heat so early in the season, or at least I had not. It sapped us. I soon shed all possible clothing. Frain seemed more used to the heat than I, but he could not manage the terrain very well with only one usable arm. The land was rugged, always putting barriers in our way. I cut a staff for each of us, for use as a weapon as well as for help with the rough going. But Frain found his staff as much hindrance as help, and I often had to carry it for him.
Our second day in Tokar we happened on a sort of trail, only the faintest of paths, it might have been made by deer. We followed it gratefully. But we had not been on it more than a quarter of an hour when I sensed danger. I got Frain by the arm and pushed him into a tangle of grapevines, where we crouched in silence. Soon three rough-looking men passed by us close enough to touch, towing some poor unfortunate behind them by a rope. They were slavers. We kept to our cover until they were well gone.
“Thank you, Dair,” Frain whispered to me. He looked shaken. “How did you know?”
I pointed to my nose.
“The wolf caught their scent on the air, you say? Well, I am glad to have you with me. I wonder how much they would get for a crippled slave.” He studied the trail with a sigh. “I suppose we must go off in the woods again. As long as we keep to a track we are easy prey for them or for robbers.”
It was very true. But the going was slow in the woods. I missed my four sure paws, my narrow body that could glide between the branches. Frain was even slower than I.
Within a week after we landed, our provisions were low. There is a limit to how much food a human can carry, and we found it was not as much as was needed. The human body does not behave like the wolf body. It wants its food far more often, especially when it is on the move. So although our packs were lightening daily, our steps were heavier. There was not much forage in the forest. The wild grapevines which hung everywhere bore not even green fruit yet. We found a few mushrooms now and then which Frain ate. One day, after he had stripped the fungi off a rotting log, I turned it over and ate the grubs and earthworms I found underneath. When I had finished Fra
in handed me the mushrooms as well.
“My appetite has left me,” he said wryly, and I felt worse than ever.
I smelled game everywhere, but I had no idea how to catch it. If I had been a wolf again I could have provided for us, I often thought.… Frain must have had some human notion of hunting, but he would not or could not use it. He threw stones that missed, set snares that were clumsy and caught nothing. I suspected that he could do better—how would he have survived, otherwise? But I had no way of saying so. I think he was afraid of killing anything, afraid of what the flow of blood might release in him.
We trudged on. We avoided slavers again, then robbers. Sometime in the second week we came to a burned place where the sun beat down on a dry meadow surrounded by the brushy forest. Tiny wild strawberries grew in the grass around the blackened stumps. We both picked them and ate them ravenously until our mouths and fingers were stained red. Frain ate more slowly than I because of his withered arm. He could only pluck one berry for my two. After a while I left the rest of them to him and tried to catch grasshoppers for myself in the taller weeds. It was hard, for the hands were stupid. I probably would have done better with my gaping mouth. But I caught a few and gulped them down. Frain looked at me oddly.
“This is laughable,” he said. “We are starving faster than we can eat. Let us go on.”
We walked until nightfall and then camped. There was no fire, for we did not dare make one. We ate our last scraps of hard shipsbread and then lay down to sleep. Frain drowsed off promptly—hunger made him tired. But I felt very restless, even more restless than usual, and the moon was at the full. I could see quite plainly Frain’s face beside me, too thin. My bond brother, how was I to help him? … I got up finally and moved off to the crest of the nearest ridge, snuffed the night air, smelled deer not too far away and rabbits everywhere, and we were likely to die of want in the midst of it all.… I could not speak, but I could sing—that is to say, I could howl. I flung up my head and howled out my sorrow to my mother moon.
Some time later I walked softly back to camp. Frain was wide awake—I dare say my noise had roused him. As I approached his eyes fastened on me in startled fear. He jumped up and reached for his staff.
It’s only me, I said, a woof. I stepped out of the brush so he could see me fully. He gave a long breath of relief and lay back down.
“Your eyes,” he said, “they shine bright green in the moonlight, and you move so silently—I thought you were a panther.”
The wild thing was on the prowl in me. I sensed it as surely as he did. I went to him and touched him lightly on the face—the first time I had done that, and he accepted it from me. Then I turned and left him, knowing quite surely and against all reason what I had to do for him. I had thought that my human form would be mine for life, but now I thought differently.…
Before I had taken a dozen strides into the dark I went down on all fours, and in a moment I was a wolf again, and I whined and barked aloud with the joy of it. From a standing start I leaped away, rushed into the thicket of night, ran down a rabbit almost before I knew it was there. I beg your pardon, little sister, but I am famished, I gasped, and I ripped it up on the spot, bolted down the warm, sustaining meat, food and drink in one, so good! Then I thought of Frain and I was ashamed. I had eaten and had saved nothing for him. I would kill him a deer, I thought, all by myself. No, I would not be able to drag such a large carcass back to him.… I found the rabbit’s nest and absently bit down the little morsels it contained. I would have to find something I could take back to Frain. It was dawn by the time I returned to him, trotting along with a large hare in my mouth. Frain was awake, sitting and looking worried, waiting for me. I bounded up to him and laid the hare at his feet, and for a moment he looked as if he might faint. I had not considered how my new form would shock him, and I cringed in apology.
“Dair?” he whispered.
I swung my head up and down in an exaggerated nod.
“Well. You make a lovely wolf.” He blinked and swallowed, recovering. He touched the hare. “Thank you. But how am I to cook it? All sorts of riffraff will see the smoke and come for breakfast.”
I stood up, stretching, rippling my muscles, and gave him a meaningful look. He laughed a low laugh.
“Just let them try, you say? All right, Dair.”
He cooked and ate, and as it turned out no one disturbed us. By the time he was done morning was half spent, so we made short miles that day. But I caught him a coney for his supper, and I could see the strength returning to him. It made me glad. I felled a wild pig near our camp that night and feasted and showed him the carcass in the morning so that he could roast himself a haunch.
We journeyed on. I kept to my wolf form, worrying fitfully that I might not be able to find my way out of it again but knowing in a deeper way that I would make a change when it was time. After several days we found ourselves in a slightly more settled country. Homesteads lay widely scattered between woodlots and overgrown meadows. I hoped Frain would ask some human for news of Maeve, for I had heard nothing of a haunt in the forest talk. It must have been because animals do not fear such things the way people do—I could not suggest a sortie to Frain, of course. I could scarcely tell him anything at all.
He did his scouting on his own. The day after I killed a young deer he disappeared into a cottage with a slab of the venison. I waited in a thicket for him, and presently he returned to me with bread, blackberries, cheese and news.
“The south road to Jabul runs only a few days from here,” he reported. “Once we find it, we should be able to follow it north to the place Trevyn named.” He walked on cheerfully.
But there was to be no walking in the days that followed. During the night, as bad luck would have it, Frain became ill. Some strange human ailment—something in the food had affected him. Pain bent him in knots, terrible pain, and by morning he was out of his mind, whether from the cramps or fever or fatigue I was not certain. He lay panting and did not recognize me when I sat beside him.
“Why, hello, Father,” he said with a grim heartiness that chilled me.
I stared. Soon he reached up and touched my fur and laughed, a strained, unhealthy laugh.
“Fabron, the dog-king of Vaire! Scion of staghounds.” Grasping my neck, he pulled himself up, sitting and feeling at the points of my ears. He frowned in puzzlement, trying to smooth them down to lie flat as a staghound’s ought. “No, no, you are a usurper, I keep forgetting,” he murmured. “You will die for that someday, Father, you know you will. Destiny—”
I whined in inquiry, and he lay back and wagged a finger at me, gravely reproachful.
“This taking of thrones, Fabron, greed for power and lust for gold and sell—sell—selling of your own child, you will die! Die! The hounds of hell rend you—” He sobbed, then struggled upright in rage. “Never mind!” he shouted wildly. “You’re a dog anyway, and a son of a bitch, and that makes me a dog too, a pup, Shamarra said so—”
Silence took hold of him and he stood half bent over, staring fearfully. I went to him and pressed against his unsteady knees, trying to support and comfort him, but he did not notice. He was seeing things that were not there. “Hands,” he hissed, “hands of doom,” and he inched back, taut. “Damn—lake,” he panted. “Hates—me. The—face!”
He turned, stumbling, and tried to run, but pain staggered him and he fell—I bore the brunt of it, making a cushion for him until I scrambled out from under his thrashing weight. He was still running, legs beating the air madly, going nowhere, in the sort of fit that puppies suffer sometimes when they are about to die. Frightened, I tried to make him stop by lying on him, but he pummeled me with his one good hand, shouting, and drove me away. At last exhaustion quieted him and he lay in the dirt, covered with the leaf mold he had kicked up, panting again.
I went to fetch water—I in my wolf form, too dismayed and too unpracticed to find my way out of it—taking the flask in my mouth and finding a stream and dropping it in until i
t was full, padding back with it, spilling it over him. Again and again I did that until he was lucid enough to grasp it and drink. Then with my teeth I tugged blankets over him, and he dozed.
Before midday he awoke again and lay gazing fixedly at a straight and slender gray-barked sapling that stood nearby.
“Shamarra,” he addressed it, “I have never been able to understand what he did to you. How he could make that mystic tool into a hurtful, thrusting thing, a weapon of his hatred, no better than a broomstick—”
The thought seemed to both inflame and alarm him. He started struggling and shouting again. “I know what I would do to him if I were you, Shamarra! I would wind his guts around a stake. I would flay him alive. I would—no, oh, no—”
He started clawing at himself, his chest. Coming closer, I saw that his skin had gone as red as if it had been seared. “Shamarra, not me!” he shouted fiercely. “Hag, why do you despise me? You know I am doomed to—oh, Tirell, my brother.…” He started to weep. He was raising great welts and bloody gashes on his body, tearing at himself, and I took his wrist in my jaws, struggling with him and trying to calm him. I knew now what ailed him, and I felt a cold chill thinking of it. The rye plague, the holy fire. Seed of it had come to him in the bread. Very likely it would leave him either insane or dead. “Shamarra, please!” he groaned. “Let go!” I could have cried for despair. But slowly, after some moments, a sense of hope came to me, for little as he seemed to know me he was speaking to me still in the language I understood, the Traderstongue. It must have become second nature to him in all the years of wandering. And how could he feel, I wondered, speaking always that mongrel tongue, a thing of mismatched parts and fragments as he himself—
“Let me die and have it over with,” he whispered. I suppose if it had not been for that matter of bathing in a forbidden lake he might have died. He was grievously ill for some days, unable to eat. At first he ranted and flailed, and I had to try to control him—luckily he had only the one arm and I was able to keep him from hurting himself too much. Later the fire left his skin but he lay like a corpse, nearly senseless, wasting away until his fair skin was stretched taut over the bones of his face and they showed through whitely. Once again I felt that I was failing him, I in my wolf form. I brought him meat, but it was of no use to him. All I could do was lick his face and lie close beside him. The warmth of my furry body seemed to ease the pain in his belly. In the night he would stir and moan and whisper of Tirell and Shamarra and Fabron the doomed dog his father until I pressed my muzzle against his face, and then he would throw his arm around my neck, hug me and sleep for a little while.
The Golden Swan Page 5