The Sable Moon (32 page)

“By thunder,” Alan grated, “here is one lion that would willingly tame your wolf!” He drew his sword with the golden lion on the hilt. Wael's eyes glittered, and one hand flicked out to send the weapon flying with an invisible bolt. But at that instant, Trevyn quietly spoke a single word.

“Melidwen.”

Megan came out of her pallid trance with a blaze of fury. “Filthy old man! Let go!” she cried, kicking back at Wael's knee. He yelped, and she broke lightly away from him, sped toward Trevyn. But at the last moment she seemed to remember that she was angry with him, swerved aside, and darted toward the stairs.

“Father!” Trevyn called. “Catch her!”

“Got her,” Alan tersely replied.

“Don't let her go,” Trevyn panted between clenched teeth. “I want to talk to her!” He tensed himself against pain. Wael was hopping about on his end of the platform, frenzied and gibbering with rage, raining invisible blows on the Prince. “Stop that!” Trevyn shouted. “Stop it! Begone, you—you Crebla!” He spoke the sooth-name.

Wael vanished. Without even a gesture or a puff of smoke, he disappeared. A tall, cloaked figure stood on the platform in his stead, very still, very silent, unfathomably black, with only the black vortex of a hood for face. All of Isle seemed to stop, simply stop. Even the distant clatter of soldiers in the courtyard ceased, and the slight, random movement of clouds in the sky.

“Pel Blagden,” Trevyn breathed, and took a single step back.

“Nay,” said a sweet, dusky woman's voice, “it is I.” Then Trevyn noticed that tiny silver bells hung from the points of the apparition's empty sleeves. He went down on one knee, not in worship so much as in limp relief.

“Menwy,” he whispered. “Dark lady, thank you. But why are you faceless, like the mantled lord?”

“Because he is in me, as Wael is in me now. I must appear to you in forms you can understand.” Looming, she stalked over to Trevyn, stooped and extended to him the black cavern of her sleeve. Alan could not have aided his son, then, if both their lives had depended on it. He could not move even to retreat. But Trevyn reached up, grasped the invisible hand, and rose lightly to his feet. The lovely Black Virgin faced him now, with pearls draped over her shimmering forehead. Corin moaned and hid his eyes. He who had faced the faceless one could not withstand that beauty. But she looked up to Trevyn like a lover.

“Where are the dragons of Lyrdion, Alberic?” she asked him.

He had to clear his throat. “Within. Bound in the depths,” he answered huskily. “Until now, by all that is dark and beautiful.” He raised a hand, pointed eastward, and the others looked, stood rigid. Beyond the walls and turrets of Nemeton they could plainly see, from their height, the grasslands that rolled away toward the sea—on which came the newly landed Tokarian army, marching.

But the earth of the plain moved like so much water, bubbled and burst. And the dragons arose through the rippling, parting grass, loosed by Trevyn's gesture, scores and hundreds of them, with flashing, scaly flanks of ruddy gold, red-crested, black-clawed, launching themselves against the invaders with a flick of their fluted wings, letting out brazen cries that seemed to echo across the world. Trevyn was never to forget the sound of that fierce, nasal battle chant.

Everyone on the tower stood staring, agape. Even Menwy watched as the dragons drove off the Tokarians with tail-lashing leaps and puffs of fiery breath. The scene worked itself out within that middle distance where everything looks suspended, very solid but not quite real. They could not hear the cries of the enemy soldiers, but they could see them fall. The men could not flee fast enough to evade the dragons; they were trampled, crushed, and burned. The dragons trumpeted in triumph. Only one of them had fallen, killed by a lucky arrow to the eye. The others intently pursued their human prey.

“Bloodthirsty,” Trevyn blurted, sickened. “Too bloodthirsty! Why can't they just drive them back to the ships?”

“Mercy is not in the nature of dragons,” Menwy replied, though Trevyn had not really expected any reply.

The dragons and the fleeing remnants of the army topped a rise and disappeared toward the Long Beaches. Nothing remained of the strange tableau except a lumpy expanse of strewn bodies. Trevyn looked away from them, faced the goddess again.

“Why does it trouble you?” she asked. “You have saved many of your father's liegemen, perhaps even saved your land.”

“Because—I know those dragons are mine. They are in me.”

“So you were able to loose them to good effect. And if you have gained the victory over Wael, Prince, it is because you no longer hate the shadowy deeps, the realm of the sable moon. My workings are not all for ill, Alberic. Even a villain such as Wael cannot help but do some good. In a sense, he brought you two together, Prince and Maiden.”

With his eyes still on Menwy's subtle, sculpted face, Trevyn held out an arm and felt Meg move to fill it. The slender girl pressed against him, took the wolf cub from his cupped hand, and cradled it by her own small breasts.

“Without darkness, there would be no dawn,” Menwy added.

“So you, who flung me into the hands of slavers, who stole my father's brooch to make mischief with, now choose to aid me.” Trevyn sounded merely whimsical, not bitter, just then. “Why, ancient lady?”

“Because you are fair; no better reason.”

Trevyn risked a glance at Meg, felt with a shock her fine-drawn loveliness, saw Dair, his baby son, lay a searching muzzle along her neck.

“And I will give the Tokarians fair winds home, those who live, as I have given them foul winds hither,” added Menwy, with a hint of jealous edge to her voice. “Still, I am no one's servant. So, lest you lose all respect for me, Prince—feel this!”

A shock sent Trevyn staggering. Meg screamed; Menwy loomed taller and ever taller, in form of the fearsome horned god, her head a skull with the antlers of a stag.

“Farewell, Prince of Isle,” she sang, before he had recovered, and engulfed him. In an instant the tower was only a fleck caught in the hem of her cloak, in a black and roaring, directionless blackness darker than a thousand nights. Trevyn clutched at Meg, hid his face in her hair; Robin moaned, and Alan flung an arm over his eyes. Then they all looked up at bright sky and blinked. Voices sounded from the courtyard; Trevyn's eagle swooped down to perch on a parapet. The day moved on apace.

“Are ye hurt!” Megan demanded. Trevyn held on to her for support with one hand, and the other held on to his head.

“I think I'm going to swoon,” he said plaintively. “Be here when I wake up, Meg. Promise!”

“All right, I promise!” She peered up at him anxiously. “Trev—”

“Is it really all over?” Alan exclaimed incredulously, gazing down at the quiet town, the empty battle plain. “Is it really done?”

“I'm done in,” Trevyn murmured. “Meg, take good care of that wolf.”

“Of course.”

“It's my son,” he explained, lucidly.

“Of course. Trevyn, will ye sit down before ye fall and hurt yerself?”

“Not until I've kissed you.” But he missed his aim, lurching.

“Later,” she told him, and shouted at the others, “Dolts, will ye help me with this big oaf!”

They were all still dazed, gaping like Alan. “Can it really be all over?” he marveled again. “After all these hellish months?”

“My dream has just begun,” Trevyn protested softly, and folded onto the paving stones.

Chapter Five

They got him into a bed presently, and he slept for a full day, then awoke to ravenously gulp a meal, then slept again. He kept it up, not for the month he had promised, but for a week. A few times the servants roused him and ordered him into a tub, soaking grime and brown, caked blood out of his golden hair. But no one had leisure to really nurse him, in the aftermath of war, and it was plain to see that he was well and content. The servants took to leaving food on a table by the bedside, fruit and bread and cheese and cold cooked meat. Trevyn would wake at odd hours, eat, drink water, and instantly doze off again. As he slept, he dreamed—pleasant dreams, mostly. Even when not sleeping, he dreamed with open eyes. Of Isle, and Elwestrand, and love, and Maeve, and, the seventh day, of Melidwen—

Meg burst into his room that day; Dair pattered after her and jumped up on the bed. “Trevyn, what d'ye mean!” Meg cried. “What can ye be thinking of! I can't wear this!”

He gazed at her, breathless, and not only because of the furry, gray weight on top of him. She looked like a princess—nay, some being that was freer and more magical than a princess. She looked like someone Emrist might have invoked, spirit of starlight and daisy field and white winter lacework of birch. Soft, sparkling cloth enfolded her like an embrace, patterned white on white, floating richly around her bare, smooth feet. Her sparrow-brown hair flew as airily as the gown. She tolerated his stare for a moment, then stamped impatiently.

“It'll take washing every blessed day,” she complained. “And everyone who saw me thinks I'm putting on airs. And how d'ye expect me to go walking that precious son of yers in this?”

Clutching his blankets, Trevyn wriggled out from under the wolf in question. “Take it off, if you don't like it,” he gasped.

“I adore it.” Her pointed face softened into a smile. “But it's too grand, Trev. Dream me a few that are a bit more practical.”

“I don't direct my dreams,” he whispered, and reached out to touch her fingertips, drew her down to him by her warm fingertips, nothing more. Her flower of a mouth touched his; he parted it tenderly, probed with consummate tenderness, felt a sweet ache grow. Rosebuds and dew.… His fingers entwined her hair, found the warm nape of her neck, followed her tresses to the startled tip of her young breast under the magical cloth.… Meg placed her hands on his, dropped her head to his bare shoulder.

“Love me,” he begged.

“I do.”

“I know—I should have always known. I'd have known how I loved you, if I'd paid heed. But love me now, Meg. That is your wedding gown.”

“Then let us ride to where the wedding party awaits us,” she told him reasonably. “At the sacred grove.”

“What?”

“At the Forest's southern skirt, where the two rivers join. Gwern's grove.”

That sobered him. He let her go and sat to face her. “How did you know?”

“I—some things I just know—like I know that Dair really is yer son somehow—and I know that Gwern gave ye himself. He had to, for ye so whole now.”

“Ay. I feel like my life has just begun, Meg. As if you've just woken me to a new world. All that's happened since—since a young fool left you at Lee—hardly seems to count.”

“It counts.” She grinned wickedly at him. “But ye're right about the new world. Or a new Isle, anyway. Wonders are springing up all over. The whole land's taken on a new sheen; everyone notices it.”

He stared at her. “The magic is coming back,” he breathed.

“Ye've dreamed it back. Ye've even made me a touch on the pretty side somehow. Won't ye go back to sleep now, like a good prince, and dream me a few more dresses?”

“Great goddess, nay,” he exclaimed. “I've slept long enough. Where's Father?”

“Sped to his love.”

Alan had long since gone to Lysse, as fast as horse could take him. All along the path of his swift journey he saw magic springing up. Tiny yellow flowers winked from the grass, each one a radiant coronet. Veran's crown, the Elfin Gold, had come back to Isle, and all the land glowed with intangible luster by virtue of its presence.

Lysse met Alan on the road, far outside the gates. Sight and heart had returned to her together, and she sensed his coming long before he arrived. She greeted him smiling, but he wept in her embrace. “Even at my worst, I knew you would forgive me,” he told her when he could speak, “and that is a fearful knowledge.”

“Hal thought the same of you.”

“I know. Trevyn has told me a little.… My brother sends me his love, from Elwestrand. He wept to speak of me.… Well, I am no longer so proud that I can afford to think ill of him, Lissy.” He grinned wryly. “And I can somewhat account for the change in me; but what is to account for the marvels abroad in the land?”

“A turn of the great tide. Aene is claiming back what was lost for a while.” Lysse smiled dreamily. “Isle might soon be as magical as Elwestrand, I believe. But Hal and my people cannot return.”

“I know. When do we sail?”

“In the spring. There will be a ship at the Bay.”

“Far better fortune than I deserve,” Alan said softly, “if Hal awaits me. But Lysse, when I took the wrong path, when I laid hold of that great, bloody sword, I felt sure it severed me from him. For all time. How can I feel so sure now that I shall see him again?”

“Mother of mercy,” she chided, “can't you tell? Isle is like a clean-washed stone, like a bright leaf after rain, and your small transgressions are gone in the tide of time, like all others. Alan, the haunts are gone from the land.”

“What?” he whispered.

“The shades have gone to rest, even the stubborn shades by the Blessed Bay. All penances are done. And the dragons have left their gloomy lairs.”

“Ay, Trevyn seems to be in charge of them now. I wish I understood.… Love, glad as I shall be to sail to Elwestrand, I am glad we need not go soon. I would like to get to know my son.”

After Trevyn was up and about for a few days, he and Meg took horse toward the place she had named. Liegemen and a few maids rode with them, for decorum's sake, and Corin, out of friendly curiosity, and Ket. Craig and Robin and the other lords had long since sped back to their demesnes. There was a tremendous amount of work to be done; unguarded cottages had been robbed, repairs had been neglected, and spring planting had gone almost entirely undone in the eastern half of the realm. Already Alan had sent messengers to Tokar demanding ransom for Rheged, not in treasure, but in food, to avert famine. And the very day of the final battle he had sent patrols throughout Isle to prevent plundering and to spread news of peace. But there was little need of such reassurance. Folk sensed comfort as if it were a fragrance in the air and returned quickly to their homes. Even Trevyn's dragons, blundering northward along the eastern shore, did not seriously upset them. All along the road to their rendezvous, the Prince and his retainers were greeted by happy folk. It seemed to awe them that he carried a young wolf in his arms.