The Sable Moon Read online

  Chapter Two

  Meg had never, not even in her silliest daydreams, fancied herself to be pretty. She knew that she had a comical, pointy face and a sharp nose like a benevolent witch. Indeed, witch was what some folk called her, all because the birds would alight on her hands. She did not mind being different, and it pleased her that the dappled deer did not fear her touch. But she minded being skinny. Some girls could make do with comeliness that bloomed below the neck, but not her, she told herself. Her skirts fell straight from her waistless middle, and she always had to sew ruffles inside the front of her blouses to give some fullness—though not fullness enough.

  Still, she had never, not even in her grimmest nightmares, imagined herself looking such a fright as now. Slogging along through the snow in her old pair of men’s boots, skirt torn and draggled, shawl clutched from her shoulders by the lowering Forest trees. Hatless, with her hair frazzled by the wind, eyes red and weepy, sharp nose running from cold and exertion and emotion. Flushed and panting, she struggled along, knowing it would be lunacy to stay out after dark, but too stubborn to give up.

  She found her cow at last and stood frozen a moment in astonishment that overcame her hurry. Mud! A gooshy, oozing, undulating pool of mud filled a hollow of the frost-bound Forest. From the center of the expanse, round brown eyes looked back at her. Only the cow’s head showed above the surface. Wisps of steam rose around her.

  “Come on, then, Molly,” Meg called gently.

  The cow did not budge.

  Meg coaxed, pleaded, extended a bribe of oats. Molly did not even twitch an ear. The day was moving on apace. Meg rolled her eyes heavenward and went in after her.

  “What is even more appealing than yer plain, everyday Meg?” she muttered viciously to herself. “Why, a Meg covered with mud, that is what! World, are ye watching?”

  As she had hoped, the bottom of the mud hole was solid. She forced her way through the twenty feet of brown pudding that separated Molly from the shore and took her by the halter. Molly would not move. Meg could hardly blame her, for the mud was deliciously warm and the air increasingly cold.

  “Come on, Molly, we can’t stay here all night!” she cried helplessly, tugging at the cow. Then she jumped, and screamed.

  Where before there had been only snow and the dark trunks of trees, now there was a rider on a beautiful silver horse—a young man, blond and very handsome. As Meg’s eyes met his of stormy green, she felt an instant of utter abeyance, as if heart and soul had stopped to gaze with her. Then she came back to self with a pang, feeling how ill-prepared she was to meet him, up to her elbows in mud. Still, she saw no amusement in his face.… She could not know that, for his part, he had felt an odd leap of heart on seeing her. He could hardly account for it himself, and irritably shrugged off thought of it.

  “I’m sorry I frightened you,” he told the girl.

  Meg tossed her head at that. She did not consider that she had been frightened, only—well, startled. Perhaps he had been frightened himself.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “Can you get out?”

  “Ay, to be sure!” she snapped. “But I’ll not leave without this cow.”

  Trevyn rolled his eyes at her tone. “Humor me,” he urged with exaggerated courtesy, “and come out. Please.”

  She fought her way toward the edge, retracing her steps. It was harder than she had expected. The ooze clung to her skirt as she inched along, panting. Trevyn dismounted and glanced around for a stout stick to offer her. “None strong enough,” he muttered.

  “Give me a hand,” Meg gasped.

  She meant that literally. Trevyn had not wanted to touch her. Grimacing, he grasped her by her muddy wrist and hauled her out, splattering himself with chunks of goo. She stood on the verge, breathing hard, rubbing her face and peering at him. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she declared.

  “The mud? I’ve heard about these holes in the southern Forest. Some are clear water, steaming hot. Too bad your cow couldn’t have chosen one of those.” He unpinned his cloak as he spoke, evidently steeling himself for action.

  “Ye’re going to go in after her?”

  “I suppose I’m going to have to,” he replied ungraciously. “Arundel—” He spoke to the horse in the Old Language.

  “What?” asked Meg, straining to understand the peculiar words. But then she cried out in protest as the young man took off his cloak and sliced into it with his sword. It was a thick wool cloak lined with crimson satin, more beautiful than anything she had ever owned. Trevyn stopped at her cry, looked at her quizzically.

  “Is the cloak worth more than your cow?”

  “That is not fair!” she answered hotly. “Molly is—is—she’s family! I dare say she is not a great worth, but—” Meg fell silent and regarded Trevyn curiously. His tunic was of linen, and his sword was inlaid with gold. It was not that which gave her pause; she had seen finery before. But this youth had a proud air about him, though he had not yet reached his full growth. He was not in her lord’s service; she would have noticed him if he were. Perhaps he was some lord’s bard or herald, or even a lord’s son? “What’s yer name?” Meg asked.

  Cutting strips from his cloak, he answered her without looking up. “Trevyn.”

  “Oh,” she replied. “Are ye from Laueroc, then? I have heard that many young men there are named after the Prince.”

  “I am not named after the Prince,” Trevyn stated, quite truthfully. “But ay, I am from Laueroc.”

  “Are ye in the Kings’ service, then? What are ye doing in the Forest?”

  “Will you ask one question at a time!” He smiled at her as he knotted his makeshift rope. “Indeed, I am at the Kings’ service, but I am here on my own business. What is your name?”

  “Meg.”

  “Margaret?”

  “Nay. Megan.”

  “Ah.” Trevyn slipped off his tunic and folded it as a pad for Arundel’s neck. The girl stared at him. She had not thought that a man could be muscular and graceful at the same time. Trevyn laid his sword belt aside, fastened the rope around Arundel’s shoulders, took the other end, and started into the pool of mud. Meg aroused herself. “What must I do?” she called after him.

  “Help Arundel pull.”

  Trevyn reached the cow and looped the rope around her horns. Then he grasped Molly around her heavy shoulders, braced his feet, and started to lift. As he wrestled the cow from her mucky bed, he called to Arundel in that strange tongue Meg had heard him use before. The horse threw his weight against the rope, and Meg tugged with all her might. Molly lurched forward, and Trevyn moved with her, lifting, shoving. Within moments she was out. Meg ran to her, kissing her broad, pink nose and feeling for injuries. Then she turned to Trevyn, who was gingerly putting on his tunic, scowling at the brown blobs on the fine white cloth.

  “Thank ye so much.”

  He smiled sourly, scraping mud, and suddenly she laughed, a sweet, healthy laugh. “Are we not pretty, though!” she cried, so infectiously that he gave in to good humor and grinned at her. But then he buckled on his sword and frowned, glancing around at the trees that stood, black and silent, on every side.

  “What’s to be done now?” he asked flatly. “Dark is scarcely an hour away.”

  Meg stopped laughing with a sigh. “I must get home, dark or no dark. My mother will be frantic with worry even now.”

  “There’s more to think of.” Trevyn leaned against a tree, judiciously. “Have you considered how Molly came to be here?”

  “I have not had time to consider!” Meg bristled at his tone. “I’ve been hours and hours after her. She has never come this far before.”

  “She was chased.” Trevyn pointed at the snow all around the margin of the pool. “Wolves. See their tracks?”

  “Ay, those prints look fresh,” Meg agreed reluctantly, “but why would wolves hunt Molly? It has been a mild autumn, and there are rabbits enough about.”

  “The wolves have been singing of larger game tod
ay,” Trevyn said evenly. “Their voices have filled the Forest.” Meg looked into his shadowy green eyes and saw foreboding there that she could not understand.

  “What’re ye saying?” she demanded, half frightened, half angry. “That the beasts are of a mind to attack? There is nothing in the Forest that will harm me.”

  “I would have said the same of myself,” Trevyn muttered.

  They stood eyeing each other in perplexity. Meg started to shiver as her clothes dried in the winter wind.

  “Wolves or no wolves,” Trevyn broke silence, “you need a fire.”

  “We should camp here, then,” she agreed heavily. “If they come, we can get into the mud hole—”

  “It’s too small for all of us. Come on.” Trevyn strode back the way he had come without even a glance at his horse. It followed him unled, and the cow, Molly, lowed softly and followed him as well.

  Meg stared in disbelief. “The poor thing must be addled,” she murmured, and trotted after.

  “Gather wood,” Trevyn called.

  He filled his arms as he walked. After a few hundred feet he found the campsite he had noted earlier, a jumbled pile of rock protruding from a steep forest slope. Such formations were not uncommon in those parts, but this one had a jutting shelf of granite overhead. The dirt beneath was trampled clear of undergrowth, black with ashes. Many travelers had camped here—perhaps even Hal and Alan in years gone by.

  Trevyn made the fire, then collected firewood feverishly until full dark stopped him. The girl tended the animals and the blaze. Arundel stamped restlessly where he stood against a wall of rock. Molly stood beside him, swaying.

  “She’s quite exhausted,” Trevyn remarked.

  “Hadn’t ye better put the rope on her all the same?” Meg asked. “She’ll run off if—if anything should go wrong.”

  Trevyn shook his head. “She will not run.”

  “Humor me,” Meg told him pointedly. It was a phrase she had recently learned.

  So he tethered the cow and came to sit by the fire. He and Meg stared silently over the flames at a wall of darkness beyond. Trevyn felt satisfied with the sizable pile of wood he had brought in, and the rock that half surrounded them retained the fire’s heat almost as well as a house. Still, he had to admit that their situation lacked a certain comfort.

  “Nothing to eat,” Meg sighed.

  “Ay.” Trevyn grinned at the hint. “You’re right, Meg, I’ve nothing.”

  “Drat.” She shifted her position, trying to ease the contact of her bones with the hard ground. “Well, there’s no use sitting here like dummies all night, waiting for shadows. Let’s have a story.”

  “Certainly,” he said agreeably. “Go ahead.”

  “Nay, nay, I mean a story of Laueroc! Something about courage, something to speed our blood, give us heart—a story of the Sun Kings!”

  “Oh,” he remarked.

  “You’re from Laueroc,” she prodded impatiently. “Surely you know what I mean.”

  He did indeed. But it was not their courage that he valued most in his uncle and father.

  “It’s not quite what you have in mind,” he said slowly, “but it’s a beautiful tale. Have you ever heard about the Sun Kings and the proud lord of Caerronan?”

  “Nay!” She clapped delightedly.

  “Nay?” he exclaimed with mock surprise; he knew that the story was not told outside his family. “Well, it took place only a few months after King Hal and King Alan were crowned.…”

  He felt strange, speaking of them so impersonally. As if his mind had been disjointed, bent to a new angle, he saw them differently, envisioning them as he had never actually known them, when they were nearly as young as he.

  Here is the tale Trevyn told:

  The young Sun Kings missed their wandering life, and they got tired of courtly ceremony. So sometimes, when they could, they would put on old clothes and slip away for a week or two. They would ride at random around Isle, camping in the open or staying at a cottage. Perhaps people humored them and were not really fooled. Hal and Alan could not bring themselves to ride any horses but their own, and the beasts were far too beautiful for ordinary wanderers. Of course, the Kings were beautiful as well.

  Their wives humored them, too, but Lysse and Rosemary also got tired of staying at Laueroc. At the time of the trouble with Caerronan, Rosemary had put her foot down, with the result that she and Hal were riding court through Isle in cavalcade. Alan and Lysse were left to manage affairs at Laueroc. But after a few weeks of councils and hearings, Alan got restless and took a notion to ride by himself to Caerronan. Old Einon, the lord there, had failed to send tribute to Laueroc, give homage or take his oath of fealty. He held a small, isolated manor in the foothills of Welas, and his spurning of the Sun Kings meant practically nothing aside from insult. But Alan needed an excuse to get away.

  So he rode across Welas, all alone, through the last bright days of autumn, and went to see some friends he knew from his outlaw days. They said that Einon was a hard, rough old rascal, fair within the letter of the law but entirely lacking in generosity to his tenants, his family, or anyone else. There was no hospitality to be got at his hall.

  Hearing that, Alan left his horse and walked toward Caerronan. When he had reached the lord’s woodlot, he found a large stone—the heaviest one he could lift—and heaved it up and dropped it squarely on his own right foot. He gasped, and barely kept himself from howling. Then he took a stick and hobbled over to Einon’s fortress, limping pitifully, to request shelter and care.

  Even Einon did not have the gall to turn away an injured man. Customary law decreed that he was obliged to maintain Alan for a reasonable length of time, as long as Alan had need. So he had to take him in. But old Einon grudged every bite of food that went into his guest’s mouth; Alan could tell by the way the lord eyed him over the table. Einon went about in a velvet cap with a glittering pin, and jeweled rings, and golden bracelets stacked halfway up his skinny arms, and a broad gold collar that dangled jewels over his velvet jerkin. But the old lord didn’t eat much, and he seemed to think that no one else should either.

  For three days Alan lounged by Einon’s warmthless hearth, his sore foot up on a bench or soaking in a medicinal bath, chatting with every servant who passed, winning the sympathy of every woman in the keep, and eating night and day. Then, for another week or so, he hobbled around with a stick, conferring with the kitchen folk and flirting with Einon’s young wife, just to gall him. Alan spoke the Welandais tongue brokenly, with a terrible accent, but he had always had a knack for making friends. He was not able to befriend Einon. Still, he found out nothing untoward about the lord except that he was stingy.

  His leisure ended abruptly one night at dinnertime. Einon had seated himself early and was watching with a sour eye as his household arrived for the meal. As Alan entered, the old miser went rigid, then stood up, leaning on the table and shaking with rage, stretching out a long, trembling finger of judgment. Alan felt as if that finger jabbed him, though he stood half the length of the hall away.

  “You cursed Islender!” Einon shrieked. “You cursed Islendais spy! You’re limping on the wrong foot!”

  Fairly caught, Alan felt like a royal dolt. His foot was healed, of course, and Einon knew it. Einon shrilled for his guards, wanting the impostor thrown in a cell at once. Somehow Alan didn’t care to mention that he was the Islendais King. He made some humble protestations, suitably flattering to Einon’s hospitality, and finally the two of them agreed that Alan should work off his debt of freeloading, as the old lord saw it. So Alan went to help in the kitchen, and a couple of weeks later, when Winterfest came, he was still at it.

  There was not much giving of gifts in that pinched household, but there was a feast of sorts. Alan was appointed to carry the dishes to the lord’s table, since he made such a fine, golden sight, and since the lord took some pleasure in seeing him kneel. And just as he presented the roast pork, a minstrel rode into the hall. He sent his horse right u
p to the foot of the dais, in the best old bardic tradition, and in his arms he carried a finely carved plinset, the stringed instrument esteemed by the Blessed Kings. The silver horse was so beautiful that everyone blinked, and somehow the minstrel shone, too, though he was dressed plainly enough. It was Hal, of course, back from his courtly rounds and checking on his comrade. Alan had to duck his head so that no one would see him smile.

  “Greetings, Einon, son of Eread, lord of Caerronan,” the minstrel proclaimed in the purest speech of the old court of Welas, without a trace of Isle in his voice or of mischief on his face. Hal was a master of sober statesmanship.

  “Greetings,” Einon snapped. “Are you a minstrel or a thief? Where did you get that horse?”

  “It was given to me by the King of Isle, for my surpassing excellence in the tuneful arts.”

  “The more fool, he,” the old lord growled. “I’ve always said those Kings of Isle must be fools, the two of them halving a throne between them, and never any gold of mine they’d see to spend on horses! You’ll get no horse from me, minstrel. If you sing here, you must sing for your supper.”

  “Willingly,” Hal replied, and dismounted, and sent Arundel to the stable, and tuned his plinset. After a while he plucked it, and sang, and the whole clattering hall quieted at the sound of his voice. He sang the great lays of Welas first, the stories of Veran and Claefe, and their twins Brand and Brenna who flew with the ravens for a season, and the story of an Islender, Alf Longshanks, who won the fair and willful Deona away from the royal court at Welden. All old songs, but he sang them into springtime newness, sending bright notes flying like birds through the hall. Servants set food before Hal, then, from the lord’s own table, but he took no time to eat. He sang songs that no one had heard before, his own songs, of love and the Lady, and the white, foaming horses of the sea, and Elwestrand. Einon never moved, but Alan saw tears slide down the grooves of the old lord’s face.

  Finally Hal stopped singing. Lord Einon spoke a single word. “More.” But Hal shook his head and reached for his wine.