The Sable Moon Read online

  He will come for them on the morrow, she thought, and the thought made her glad to overflowing. She undressed in the dark and lay awake on her narrow bed, feeling the touch of his kiss still on her lips. It was the first kiss she had ever known.

  All the way back to the manor, Trevyn berated himself. It was mad and cruel, he scolded, to give the girl hopes. For surely he could have no serious thoughts of her! She was a commoner, without education, dower, or social grace. And she was homely, or at least so he had once thought.… But he was the Prince of the realm, gifted with knowledge, power, and beauty. Surely there would be a princess for him, a woman worthy of his regard—perhaps an elfin princess in fair Elwestrand across the sea! He must not see Meg again, he decided, not even for parting. He did not care to cause a scene.

  When he reached his chamber, he found Gwern lounging on his bed, looking more presentable since his bath. The fey youth sat up to greet Trevyn with a perfectly unreadable face. Trevyn meant to ask him how he knew about the ancient sword of Lyrdion, why he had sung his eerie song. But Gwern spoke first.

  “Meg is a beautiful girl,” he said. There was no trace of mockery in his voice, and Trevyn knew by now that Gwern only spoke the most straightforward truth. Such truth sent a pang through him.

  “What of it?” he retorted gruffly.

  “I would like to know her better. Where does she live?”

  “You!” Trevyn flared in sudden anger. “You are only fit to consort with pigs! Stay away from her!”

  Gwern gravely rose from the bed. “Why, she is only a commoner, and you think she is homely,” he replied without heat. “And you have decided to cast her aside. Do you grudge me your castoffs?”

  “I grudge you life and breath,” grated Trevyn between clenched teeth. He was white with rage; he had never felt such rage. “Stay away from her, I say!”

  “Why, you need not worry,” Gwern remarked reasonably. “She is the Maiden, you know. Where she would not have you, she will not have me.”

  Trevyn sprang at him, knocking him to the floor with one smashing fist. Blood trickled from Gwern’s nose. But this time he did not punch back. Trevyn stood panting, helpless to vent his wrath, and vaguely ashamed.

  Gwern got up, taking no notice of his gory nose. He went to the door. “I will tender her your parting regards,” he told Trevyn levelly, “since you will not face her.” There was no fight in his words, only fact. Desperately, Trevyn hit him again, hard enough to split his own knuckles. Gwern staggered and shrugged off the blow.

  “If you go near her,” Trevyn gasped wildly, “I will kill you!”

  “You can’t,” Gwern stated, and ambled away down the stairs. Trevyn sensed that he was right, and in sheerest chagrin he wept.

  “How was the carole?” Megan’s mother asked her the next morning.

  “Wonderful,” her daughter answered. “There were marvelous ices. And I believe. Trevyn liked my dress.” She smiled in a way that made her mother’s heart ache, for the goodwife hated to see the girl disappointed.

  Confidently Megan waited for Trevyn to come to her. But instead came Gwern, with his bare brown feet hanging down, bareback and bridleless on Trevyn’s golden stallion. The big horse obeyed him at a touch. Filled with sudden foreboding, Meg went out to the fence to meet him, and he vaulted down from his steed to speak to her.

  “Prince Trevyn started back to Laueroc early this morning,” he told her. “I have come to take his leave of you, since he would not.”

  Meg regarded him steadily, her sharp face only a little tauter than usual, for she was practiced in hiding her feelings. “And which of us has frightened him away,” she asked at last, “ye or me?”

  “You,” Gwern said promptly. “He bears no love for me.”

  Her face twitched at that. “And how does it come to be,” she wondered aloud, “that ye’re Trevyn, and yet ye’re not Trevyn?”

  “I don’t know,” he grumbled, then looked at her with something like alarm. “Did you speak to him of that?”

  “Nay! He is not ready; he is terrified.” Meg was the wise woodland Maiden, as Gwern knew, but she knew herself only as a hurt and bewildered girl. Tears trickled from her eyes. “Will he ever come back to me?” she murmured.

  Gwern came to her, finding his way around the rough rail fence. “Megan, I love you,” he said flatly. “Let me stay with you, since Trevyn would not.”

  She quirked a wry smile at him, amused in spite of her misery. “I don’t know much,” she retorted, “but I know wild, and ye’re as wild as wind. And ye cannot bear to be long away from him. How long would ye stay?”

  “A few days,” Gwern admitted. “But if he goes over ocean, I must learn to bear that pang. I cannot leave earth. My sustenance is in the soil beneath my feet.”

  “And he longs to go to Elwestrand,” Meg mused. “The tides wash in his eyes.… Go now, Gwern. I don’t need yer comfort. But if ye need mine someday, come to me.”

  She spoke bravely. But that night, after the fire was banked and she went to her bed, despair struck her that went too deep even for tears. She had let herself show a woman’s heart, and the showing had driven Trevyn from her. For who would want to be loved by a skinny thing like her? To think it of him, and he the Prince! And yet, what of that kiss.…

  In months to come, when she had driven from her all other hope of his regard, the memory of that kiss was still to linger in the heart of her heart, like a glowing coal in the ashes of a benighted fire.

  Chapter Five

  The winter holidays had nearly ended when Trevyn returned to his home—to Laueroc, fair city of meadowlarks. No birds sang now over the meadows that ringed the town, but the towers shone golden in the wintry sunlight. In the fairest tower, Trevyn knew, King Hal dreamed his visionary dreams. Below, artists of all sorts wrought their own dreams within his protecting walls. The countless concerns of the court city of Isle hummed on, and Alan saw to them all, frowning.

  King Alan heard the shout go up when Trevyn rode in, and he met his son at the gates to the keep. Time was when he would have been waiting with a stick in his hand, to thrash the Prince for going out-of-bounds. Trevyn was expecting a mighty roaring at the very least. But Alan surprised him. “I am glad to see you, lad,” he remarked quietly. “I ought to knock your head, but I haven’t the inclination. Come get your supper.”

  Trevyn stood still and peered at him. “What is the matter?” he asked.

  “It’s Hal,” Alan told him candidly. “He’s been sulking in his tower for weeks now, scarcely eating, scarcely speaking.… I have known him for a long time, Trevyn, and borne with his moods as he bears with mine, but this—it harrows me. I don’t want to speak of it. Come get your supper.”

  Preoccupied, Alan had not noticed Trevyn’s borrowed cloak or his missing brooch, and Trevyn gave private thanks for that. He flung the cloak aside and followed his father to the huge, cobbled kitchen. None of the Lauerocs had much patience with the prerogatives of rank; they usually helped themselves rather than eating in great-hall style. Trevyn’s mother and his Aunt Rosemary sat at a big plank table near the hearth, slicing bread. Rosemary smiled wanly as Trevyn entered, but Lysse jumped up to hug him, gauging his well-being with her elfin eyes.

  “You have been in danger, Beloved!” she exclaimed. “What was it?”

  “The snowstorm perhaps?” he hedged. He had left Rafe with the understanding that he would carry report to the Kings concerning the peculiar behavior of the wolves. But now, guiltily, he realized that he had no intention of doing so. He could not risk his newly won independence by telling his parents he had come to woe. Childishly, he felt that they would never let him out alone again, never let him sail to Elwestrand! Shaking off thoughts of duty, he turned the talk. “What is the matter with my uncle?”

  “He is fey.” Queen Rosemary proudly raised her lovely auburn head.

  “He is Mireldeyn.” Lysse spoke the name neither in agreement nor in denial. She sat down with effortless, fluid grace. “His ways are no
t the ways of men. He has withdrawn from men now.”

  Trevyn dipped himself a bowlful of stew, for he was hungry from his ride. No one else ate much; they all sat watching him. “But Uncle Hal has always been a recluse,” he ventured between bites of bread and meat.

  Alan distractedly shook his head. “Not like this. He was only a recluse in body, Trevyn; his mind and vision were focused on Isle and on me; I could feel his love even from afar. But now—his dreams have pulled away, like a sea pulling away from shore. He scarcely speaks to me; it is as if he is already gone. How will I rule without him? How will I live? He is Very King.”

  “But where—how—” Trevyn faltered. Alan looked as if he might weep, and Trevyn had never seen his father weep, even over the tiny bodies of his stillborn sisters. “I don’t understand. I know you were close, but I thought—”

  “You thought I ruled,” Alan snapped, suddenly burying his grief in asperity. “Hal has suffered and labored for Isle, and men think I rule. He longs only for peace, and yet he was the greatest war leader this land has ever seen. Men rallied around his dreams. Likely his dreams will last longer than all my busy devices. And his wisdom in the court of law deserves to be legend. And yet, because I am the one who counts the gold, men think I rule.”

  “You suffered too,” Trevyn protested.

  “We both bear scars,” Alan grumbled. “What of it? Let suffering go, Trevyn.”

  “Hal has never been able to let go of his pain,” Rosemary whispered to her hands. “It has driven him mad.”

  “Nay, Ro,” Lysse said gently, “the truth is cleaner and harder, I think. There will be a ship for him, at the Bay of the Blessed, to take him where the others have already gone. Aene has called him, and he goes as he has lived, in his own solitary way.” Lysse shifted her gaze to include her husband. “You seem to have forgotten the days when he led and you followed.”

  “Why follow where there is no love?” Rosemary asked bitterly, and began to weep. Lysse turned to comfort her. Trevyn was grateful that his mother’s eyes were not on him. She had said, there will be a ship, and his heart had leaped in his chest; it pounded still. We will both set sail, he thought, and strove to hide the thought. Without speaking he stumbled from the room. Then he stopped in the corridor, groping at a wall for support, blinded and dizzied by vision.

  The others who had gone before, taking their magic from Isle … The star-son Bevan, with lustrous hands and lustrous brow, black hair parted like raven’s wings, facing the sea breeze. The long line of Bevan’s brethren the gods riding down to the Blessed Bay, leaving the hollow hills forever … Ylim, the ageless seeress, had lived and finally died in her own peaceful valley, Trevyn knew, but he envisioned her on a white ship beneath a changing moon. And the elves, his mother’s people, setting sail on the swanlike boats Veran had prepared for them with his own magical hands—boats like Bevan’s that went without sails. And now Hal, a Very King like Bevan of a thousand years before …

  “All right, lad?” Alan had come out and stood before him anxiously. Trevyn blinked and nodded, shaking shreds of legend from his head.

  “It’s a hard thing to come home to,” Alan added gruffly.

  Trevyn lowered his eyes to hide a gleam of joy and wonder. Let Alan think he had been sorrowing. But he was learning the elfin Sight at last, it seemed. It had never caught him up so strongly before, except that horrible time when a wolf had given him bad dreams, false dreams.… But these just now had been his own dreams; he felt sure of it.

  “I had better go to see my uncle,” he muttered.

  He climbed the long, spiraling tower stairs, his breath quickened by more than exertion. Hal did not answer the rap on his door, so the Prince pushed it open. King Hal stood staring westward through his window bars, his face haggard, his skin drawn into taut folds over the straight lines of his cheekbones. He did not stir for Trevyn’s presence.

  “Mireldeyn!” Trevyn called him by the sooth-name, and in a moment he trembled at his own boldness. Hal turned slowly and fixed his nephew with a silvery stare. In all the seven ages there had been no one quite like Mireldeyn, and even Trevyn, who had bounced on his lap not too many years before, could not fail to feel his greatness.

  “Trevyn,” Hal remarked. “I am bound for Elwestrand at last. You’ll not try to sway me from my destiny, lad? You are too young for that, I think—and also, in your own foolish way, too wise.”

  Trevyn did not know how to react. “Elwestrand is fair, you have told me,” he said at last. “But my father is saddened, my aunt angry and sad.”

  “I grieve that Alan must grieve.” Hal turned away to his window again, his voice cold and tight. “But the ways of men are strange to me now, and I do not understand his sorrow. Nor can I see any longer what may be in store for him. But as for your aunt—she will find fulfillment that I could never give her. It was not by her fault that we have been childless, Trevyn. Ket can better serve her, he who has loved her all these years.”

  “Ket!” Trevyn’s astonishment left him open-mouthed, and for a moment he wondered if Hal was really mad. Ket, the former outlaw who had never learned to properly ride a horse! He had once been valiant, Trevyn knew, but now he was only the stooping, gravely courteous countryman who taught archery and served Alan as seneschal. That he should so regard the Queen!

  “Do you think he has stayed in Laueroc for want of choice? He could have had any manor or town in Isle.” Hal skewered Trevyn again with his icy stare. “Nay, do not mistake me, young man. Rosemary has always been faithful to me. Indeed, I believe she does not know of Ket’s devotion; she is too modest to credit herself with such devotion. And Ket is a man of honor, and my friend.”

  “But you—has he told you?” Trevyn gasped.

  “He knows there is no need to tell me. I saw his love twenty-some years ago, when he and my lady first met. But she was a lass of sixteen, my betrothed, and he was thirty, with a price on his red head. So he guarded her well, for my sake as well as her own, and he has cherished her all these years.” Hal sighed, still staring into the reaches of the west. “I should have let him have her.”

  Trevyn could think of no answer, and left the tower room, shaken. He had thought himself adult, but in the face of adult trouble he felt very much the child. The more so because his own thoughts would cause his father pain, he knew. In days that followed he tried to give up such thoughts of sailing to Elwestrand. But vision replaced his conscious dreams, taking him at its will, day or night, flooding him like water and leaving him shaking. A silver ship, a silver harp, a winged white steed circling above the highest mountaintop.…

  One vision came often. A woman with skin white as sea foam, hair like living gold, claret lips, and azure eyes—a woman as lovely as any elf, and yet not of elfin kind, for passion moved in her white breasts and wine mouth; Trevyn had felt it, lying limply in his bed at night. Around her hands flew ruddy robins and little gold-crested wrens; at her feet nestled leopards and deer, graceful swans—all manner of creature loveliness, even a kingly silver wolf. Hal had once said that the eagle and the serpent were friends in Elwestrand. Surely this woman was a princess in Elwestrand; could there be another place so fair? Trevyn grew certain that she awaited him there. There would be a ship for him, too, a sign to help his parents see that his destiny lay with the sea. His mother, at least, would understand if there was a sign. But Alan might never understand.

  Trevyn avoided thought of Alan, let himself become lost in the dreams. He no longer worried about the wolves, or about Meg, or his uncle. And when Gwern returned from Lee, several days after himself, he scarcely minded his dogged presence. He moved through his days of lessons and training serenely, almost indifferently, with his mind’s eye on the white-breasted sea.

  Lysse frowned at him. “Vision is a chancy thing, Trevyn,” she said to him abruptly one day. “Love or pride or sorrow—any one of them will send you astray like a strong wind. It will be years before you can read the Sight aright.”

  But Trevyn would
not be lessoned by her, and soon her attention was demanded elsewhere. Before the winter was over, Hal left his window and took to his bed. He lay there day and night, restless at first, but later unmoving, uneating, unsleeping. Alan came to him often, to shout at him sometimes, but also to reason, and plead, and, Trevyn suspected, to weep. Rosemary came often, to sit silently by with averted eyes. Trevyn came uneasily, and as seldom as he could. But the only person to have any speech from Hal those days was Lysse. She sat by his bedside like the others who tried to care for him, but she did not lower her eyes.

  “That son of yours is dreaming of glory,” Hal said once. She could scarcely hear his voice, but the elves do not always need the words of the voice to hear.

  “I know it,” she answered. “Alan and I have expected it for years, and guarded against it, perhaps too well.… Surely you have not forgotten the portent that attended his birth?”

  On Trevyn’s natal morning, great golden eagles had circled the towers of Laueroc, mighty-pinioned eagles from Veran’s Mountain by the faraway western sea. Green-clad Lysse had watched them from her window as she gave her baby his first milk.

  “I have forgotten nothing,” Hal told her sharply.

  “So he is fated to travel ways far and solitary and strange to us,” she said, ignoring the tone. “He will leave the motherhood of earth, at least for a while; sea and sky will claim him. But I hope not yet. He dreams because he is young, and he shrinks from the grief that drapes his life these days. Alan is of no help to him. He is so fogged with bitterness that he scarcely sees beyond his own pain.”