The Black Beast (20 page)

“Is it still snowing outside?”

Not snowing any longer, but no thaw yet, either. Still toothy cold
.

“Well—” I frowned. I knew that if I took the others up to have a look around there would be no getting them back down. But maybe part of me was yearning for fresh air and open spaces too, by that time. “Lead us toward the outside,” I said at last.

It took a week or thereabouts to get out. When we finally saw a glimmer of light that was not dragon glow, each one of us caught breath and hurried toward it. Our guardian dragon left us without a word, slipping out of the mountain and taking wing into—what? We faced a black void aimlessly splattered with white. A patternless jumble of black and white loomed below. We all stared, wondering what had become of the world during our absence; then we all started to laugh. We had emerged into night, a frosty, moonlit and starlit night, and we looked down on snowy; wooded slopes.

“Do you feel better, Fabron?” I asked. He glanced at me in surprise, for he had never complained.

“I hope the Boda have been thrown off our track by our little—er—sortie,” he replied.

“And I hope spring is near,” Frain added worriedly. “Look at the snow! We are going to miss our creepy-crawly friends.”

“If not warm of heart, they were at least warm around the mouth,” I quipped. “Should we go back inside?”

“I can stand the cold,” snapped Grandfather, and that seemed to settle it. We were done with the riddleruns.

Chapter Three

The thaw began within a few days. The many streams of Eidden, the freshets that fed the Chardri, bulged with springtime floodwater. They flowed so deep and swift, even the smallest of them, that often we had to trudge miles through the hilly land before we were able to bridge them. Some days we scarcely seemed to get any nearer at all to Qiturel, Oorossy's holding, a spot far south near the forks of the Chardri. I judged that, afoot and at an old man's pace, it was likely to be midsummer before we reached it. And so it proved—the more so because we were caught in an unseasonal storm.

It came up as suddenly as a serpent out of a well. Or rather it came down, flying and hissing down from the north, sweeping down the flanks of the Lorc Dahak, biting cold. It struck before we had time to do more than look at the gray sky. In a moment Vale had turned featureless white, a white that might as well have been the blackest gloom of night. We stood in it, instantly lost and shivering, with no shelter to hope for except groves of small trees. We had kept near the mountains for fear of the Boda. No one lived so near.

“We have to keep moving,” Frain said, “or we'll freeze. Perhaps it'll blow itself out.”

We stumbled along, keeping close together, over ground already covered with white fluff. It would not be long before it soaked through our boots and froze our feet. Grandfather didn't even have boots, only cloth wrappings. I wished I could carry him, but I knew better than to try that yet.

“We're likely to go in circles,” Fabron puffed. “Perhaps if we can find a stream, follow it down to some homestead …” We all knew there were no homesteads for miles. And we all knew there was no time. It had been late afternoon when the sky blotted over. I would not say it, but already it seemed to me that the whiteness was turning gray. An early dusk was coming on.

The black beast snorted and surged ahead of me. I understood that summons. “Follow the beast,” I ordered, “and keep ahold of each other.” We joined hands and stumbled along on feet that were gradually going numb. I was just as glad we had not found a stream. I had no fondness for water that moved—creeping stuff! Ever since I had met Shamarra I had been seeing strange things in water, the more fearsome because only half visible. I preferred the cleaner blindness of night or the snow.

Night came all too soon. When dusk deepened to the extent that we could no longer see the black beast amid the white snow—a gray beast now, frosted with rime—I grasped it by the mane and we struggled along in the dark. Frain grunted and let go of my hand, forcing me to stop in near panic; I could have lost him in an eyeblink. Grandfather had fallen. Frain stooped over him, and I could hear the old man complaining, “No, lad, I don't want any more of your strength. I've taken enough.”

“Get him onto the beast,” I said.

“That creature is not meant to be ridden,” Grandfather snapped. As if I didn't know that! But I considered that in this contingency … What a cantankerous old man. I swept him up in my arms, slung him over one shoulder. The beast let out that awful bray of his, urging us forward.

We struggled along. Frain clung to my belt and I clung to the beast. I could hear Fabron wheezing somewhere in the rear. We slogged onward, gradually wearing down, like the toys I used to make Frain out of bowstring.… He leaned more heavily on me, and I leaned more heavily on the beast. I don't believe the beast was tired, but if it were not for him I am sure the rest of us would have toppled in a moment, like a row of stick soldiers. I remember almost nothing until the wind suddenly stopped. Then I snapped my head up, startled into alertness. We had come into some sort of shelter. I could smell animals and hear their faint stirrings all around me. I could faintly see a milky blur that was the entry through which we had come. Then it darkened, and I heard a footstep. Someone had come in behind us.

The figure carried a faint light like a spook—no, the glow was of too warm a hue for that. It was a lantern shielded against the wind. In a moment the man slid the panel—no man, not in any ordinary sense! I staggered back a step. Wise, black-barred golden eyes met mine. A goat's head with curling horns rose above a muscular torso clad in rough woven wool. It was the brown man of Eidden Lei.

“My lord,” I murmured, gaping at him, feeling as if I might faint. He reached out to steady me. I tingled all over at the touch of that hand; it was warm and covered with fur. I trembled with awe. His strangeness was deity, and I felt it as I had never felt godhead before. I had not felt such awe of Aftalun or Shamarra.

He lifted Daymon from my shoulder. “Your flock needs care,” he said.

Frain and Fabron had slumped to the floor of the building—it was a big stone barn with a thatched roof, full of all sorts of beasts. I got my two charges each by one arm, hauled them up one on either side, and followed the brown man, supporting them the short distance to his home—cot? It was a sort of domed beehive of stone, cleverly constructed, with a warm hearth at the center and a hole at the apex for smoke. We set Frain and Fabron and Daymon Cein on the dirt floor. There was no furniture to speak of, and chickens wandered about, cross at having been disturbed. The fire had already been banked for the night. I stirred it and piled on sticks while the brown man brought us something to drink in wooden noggins. One sip set us all to sputtering and livened us up considerably. Fabron looked around at a raven roosting on a corbel halfway up the wall, at a fox cub peering at him over a bushy tail, at the chickens, which had settled into a dusty hollow by the door. Then he took note of our host and looked aghast. But Frain faced the brown man in his quiet, accepting way and said what I had not yet been able to.

“Our thanks to you, Lord. We owe you our lives.”

“It is my function to shelter strays,” the brown man said. It was hard to read expression in that unsmiling animal face or in the voice, guttural and earthy, not quite human. But I think his was not a statement of deprecation or even of pride. I think it was of essence, to comfort us.

He took the wet wrappings off of Daymon's legs and feet and rubbed the cold flesh with his hands, which were furred and stubby, like paws, with strong black nails. I had experienced the power of that touch, and it was with more trust than surprise that I saw Grandfather's color return. Sluggishly I forced myself to tend Frain in like wise. He seemed very weak. He had been lending his strength to Grandfather, I realized, probably all through that long trek. Fabron got his own wet boots off. The brown man filled our cups again and pointed me toward some covered wooden bins along the wall.

“I have various kinds of grain, and there is honey. Can you humans eat those things?”

I was to be cook, it seemed, for Frain had fallen asleep with Fabron still fussing over him. So I made some crude oat cakes stuck together with honey—mouse cakes, my nurse used to call them—and toasted them over the fire. Fabron sat and munched his stoically. Grandfather ate a little, but I could see that we were going to have to grind grain for bread. In the morning.

“Why is Frain so weak?” the brown man asked. “He is too young to be so spent.”

Of course he knew who we were; we wore torques. But I suspect he would have known regardless.

“He has been healing me for hours,” Grandfather replied. “He should have saved his strength. I am a useless old thing.” He spoke very bitterly. I suppose Frain's generosity distressed him. The brown man looked at him in mild surprise.

“Every creature has value apart from its worthiness,” he said. “That is why I am here. And it is a truth you know well, Daymon Cein.”

“I no longer know
anything,”
Daymon retorted truculently.

“Even the ants know their own truths!”

The fox cub came and sniffed at me. “A wild stray?” Fabron remarked to turn the talk.

“To be sure. Like Tirell.” I wondered if the brown man could be joking. There was no humor to be seen on that bearded goat's face.

“But wild things wander by nature. How can they stray?”

“They depart from their truths much as men do. The fox cub is the offspring of an incestuous relationship. Not his fault, but he is outcast, his mother dead. The raven has broken rookery law. You saw the deer in the other building—the stag has failed to uphold leadership and has been expelled from the herd. His doe came with him.”

“And how have I strayed?” I asked, addressing him for the first time. I tried not to sound sharp, but I dare say I did because I was secretly trembling. He paid no attention to my tone.

“It is not in truth for the son to hate the father,” he said.

“Nor is it in truth for the father to slay—” I stopped, dry of mouth and visibly shaking. He was terribly strange, but something in him called me, and that call frightened me. It tugged like the strange force that had drawn me to Grandfather where he lay dying in the riddleruns.

“Indeed, it is abomination, what he has done,” the brown man agreed about Abas. “But how can hate help you?” Then he looked at me and let the question go unanswered. “Tirell, we will not be able to speak justly while you are afraid. What about me troubles you so?”

“You are half beast,” I said with trembling voice.

“To be sure. Like you.”

I stared at him, caught on an edge between anger and awe, unable to speak.

“Because the beast is half bird, do you therefore fear it?”

I moved my unwilling mouth. “I feared it at first,” I whispered.

“You are very brave, then. Befriending it was both wise and brave. Abas, who hates the beast, has never been able to drive it from him, but the time will come when you who love it will freely let it go.… Why does Abas hate the beast, Tirell?”

I turned away my head. “The beast has been with my family since the beginning days,” I said at last. “The shield tells me that.”

“And has no one ever told you more?” he wondered. He settled down further into the firelight, looking at me out of flickering golden eyes. And he told me the tale of the beast.

“In the beginning the beast was only a dream of Aftalun's, and thereby a prophecy. In his dream he saw it amidst the tangling trees of Acheron, a place he had never been. He took its image as his shield device for the sake of its fearsome look and its mighty wings. He had a sword made to go with his shield, and the work was done by Ulv, the smith of the gods in Ogygia.

“‘That is a sword of double edge,' warned Aftalun's bride. ‘And the shield is heavy. It may yet become an insupportable burden.' She was the goddess, and he loved her for what she was and hated her for her hold on him. So he heard her words with laughter and awe.

“After twenty years he built his altar and died on it and left it for the east, went up in swan form with chains of gold and silver trailing from his neck, men say, though some say he strode off in his own body and form. He had three grown sons: Aymar, Aidan, and Tyr. The time had come for one of them to take the goddess and die, as the newly formed order would have it. Aymar was the eldest, but he had no desire to be slain. Nor did Aidan, who would have been sacrificed the following year if his brother failed to give the goddess a son. So the two of them plotted between themselves to send Tyr, the youngest, to the altar in their stead.

“This was done by means of the ceremony of the choosing of the goddess. Tyr loved a maiden of one of the many names—Evi was her name. He had secretly pledged himself to her, and they planned to run away and wed. But on the day when all the maidens of many names were required to appear at the Hill of Vision for the choosing, the priestesses touched Evi, even though she had darkened her face with soot. Aymar and Aidan had bribed them with gold.

“So Tyr had the choice of letting his brother have his beloved and being forsworn, Luoni bait, or of taking her himself and being slain. Once he fully comprehended the trap that had been set for him he rose to the challenge as Aftalun had, with bitter daring. He was crowned Sacred King, sat on the dais and feasted, took the maiden for a night of tender love, and walked to the altar the next morning shrouded in black rage, suffused with rage. He let himself be tied down, let the blood bird be taken without a cry—and then, in a death spasm, he broke his bonds and rose, toppled toward Aymar. He turned into the black beast. Some folk say that his soul went up as the beast, and some say that his whole body and being changed in a clap of thunder. But it amounts to the same thing. The beast has a name, Tirell, and it is Tyr.”