The Golden Swan (12 page)

“Let us go there,” I said, pointing out the most prosperous-looking garth. We strode off single file down the slope.

We spent the night by a warm hearth. They were hospitable, those lonesome garth folk, even toward so oddly assorted a trio of strangers. In the morning we left with a goodly supply of bread, cheese, apples and dried mutton. And without my necklace, of course.

And so it went until nearly midwinter. It did not snow, we were too far south for that, but we were often glad of the shelter of a stone homestead those chill nights, and I traded away my bracelet and ring. Oh, we met with the occasional rebuff, with hostility from time to time, even with danger—there were rough folk on those moorlands, too, it turned out. But what mostly happened was steady, silent days of walking and evenings of quiet talk, the bond between Dair and Frain and my motherly affection for the pair of them, and aches and blisters, and grumbling on rainy days, and a feeling that each of us could depend on the others. Even Frain, our cripple—Dair and I were protective of him, and he accepted it; he had never had proper mothering, I think. But there was far more to him than there seemed to be.

I remember particularly one time when Dair was off hunting for rabbits amongst the gorse bushes somewhere. It was dusk, the day between dog and wolf, as the country-folk would say, a threatening time of day, and two strangers with swords suddenly appeared at our campfire. They looked at us and laughed.

“A cripple and a woman!” one said. “And not much good to be had from either of them, it seems.”

“We'll take it out on the female,” said the other, leering. “Though at her age I doubt if she is still tight enough to afford much pleasure.”

Frain got up wearily. Neither of us was very much afraid. We knew that I would undergo a change when I became angry enough, probably into wolf form, and then those men would learn the meaning of bloodshed. But I suppose Frain's pride was stung—he had pride, though he usually kept it private—so he stood up to confront the pair of brigands, and they laughed anew, waiting with delight to see what he would do.

“Scum,” he remarked offhandedly, and then he moved with eagle speed. He jerked his body so that his left arm, the useless one, swung out and hit the nearer robber across the face with a fishy slap. Startled and angered, the man put up his sword, and I squeaked; it cut into Frain's arm. But on the instant Frain had ahold of the sword hilt with his good hand. He wrenched it away from his enemy. One quick backhand blow to an unprotected throat and the man was dead. Just as quickly Frain turned and parried the blow the other brigand was aiming at his neck.

This fellow was ready for a fight. He had his shield up, and Frain had none, and blood dripped down from his dangling, wounded arm. I began to think of shouting for Dair—he was already in his wolf form, of course. But I did not. I merely sat with my mouth open. Frain handled his sword with astounding force and skill. He was breathtaking, nothing short of magnificent—I could have watched him all night. Blade clanged against blade ever faster, but Frain remained untouched. All the while he pricked his enemy with his swordtip, nudged and caressed him with it in a grim game of power. He could have killed him any of half a dozen times, and the man knew it. Pallid and sweating, the brigand stumbled back, turned and fled. Frain stood and let him go.

I came out of my stupor, scrambled up and hurried over to him. “Mighty Mothers, Frain!” I exclaimed. At the same time Dair came running up, four-legged.

I saw a very scared sort of robber run by
, he said.
What has happened
—
Name of the Lady, Frain!

“Name of the Lady, Frain!” I translated, tugging at him. I got him to sit down, and I ripped bandaging for the slash on his arm. Dair sat on his tail, whimpering.

“Save your sympathy, both of you,” Frain grumped. “There is no feeling in that arm, no pain, as I knew full well before I presented it to be sliced.”

“Then why are you trembling?” I retorted. He was very pale and shaking violently. I wrapped the wound tightly to stop the bleeding.

Why didn't you call me!
Dair appealed. Both of us ignored him.

“Why didn't you
tell
me you were such a swordsman!” I snapped at Frain in mock anger, trying to make him smile.

“No. Please.” He turned away his face, trembling harder than ever, and curled himself into a taut ball. I put a blanket around him, puzzled and worried.

It is not pain
, Dair told me.
He is terrified
.

“But why?”

Because
—
he has used the sword, the weapon of wrath
.

Dair went over and sat by Frain, pressed against him. In a moment Frain gave a dry sob and took the wolf into his one-armed embrace, hiding his face in the thick fur of Dair's neck.

“We have to get away from here,” I said uneasily. “That robber who lived might come back with more.”

Frain got up and went about the work of breaking camp, his face tight, twitching. We set off at once, in the dark and without sleep—I am sure Frain would not have been able to sleep in any event. We left the dead outlaw slowly stiffening on the ground behind us, his sword at his side. Dair led us through the night in wolf form, very warily, while Frain and I walked quite silently at his heels. But no harm befell us that night.

Just before dawn Frain spoke at last.

“I had thought the sword skill had left me,” he said very softly. His tone was not one of rejoicing.

“You thought you had gotten rid of it, you mean?” I teased gently. I could not see his face, but I doubt if he smiled.

“No. A few years ago, some time after I left Vale, I got in a—well, a contest, and I was beaten so badly I had to be nursed for a month. I really wanted to be killed, but by bad fortune the man was merciful.” His tone was hard.

“You were splendid,” I said. “What troubles you so?”

“Bad dreams—and faces in the night. All the trees have eyes tonight.” He shivered.

“Let us sit and watch the dawn,” I said.

We rested. I could tell that the light comforted Frain. I glanced at him from time to time, thinking.

“Have you heard the tale of Eterlane, the hero?” I asked him, finally.

“The hero's name is Aftalun.”

“Aftalun, Feridun, Eterlane, it is all the same,” I said impatiently. “The hero is the one who confronts the dragon.”

“My brother Tirell talked with dragons,” Frain said.

I did not want to hear any more about Tirell. I gave him a sharp look.

“With Aftalun it was a swimming dragon,” he added with some small interest. “He had to dive.…”

“Deep in the water, the flood, until his fire was victorious or quenched,” I finished for him. Aftalun was the sun—I felt sure of it from the way Frain watched the rays break over the horizon.

“What of Eterlane?” he asked after a while.

“For Eterlane the dragon was in a dungeon.”

I took my time and told the tale. There was once a terribly poor kingdom, I said, hagridden by famine and plague and all kinds of misfortune, and this was all blamed on the dragon. It had been with the kingdom for ages, and no one could slay it; the dragon was invincible. The only thing that could be done with it was to keep it out of sight, hidden deep in its hole, shut into its dark lair. So there it lurked, with the whole weight of the castle over it. But it was prophesied that one day a prince would come of age who would be able to deal with it.

The prince had lived with the roar of the unseen dragon from his earliest days. And when the time came for his rite of passage, in which he would receive his true-name, a hag appeared at the castle gates, keening. The king himself went out to see her.

“What are you grieving for?” he asked her. He suspected her of being more than she appeared to be, and he was right. She stopped in midwail and glared at him.

“For human folly,” she snapped. “Where is that boy?”

The king called his son. “What do you wish with him?” he asked when the prince stood before them.

“I am to marry him,” the old crone said, “when I have taught him how to face the dragon.”

King and prince stood aghast at the idea and refused the bargain, and the old woman went away wailing as before. But no true-name came to the prince, and no true love either, and no good to the stricken kingdom, for the year after. And then the hag came again, and was refused again, and so it went for the next year, and the next, until at last the prince saw that the dragon had to be faced, though his father still trembled at the idea.

“I accept your offer,” he said when the hag came again.

“Empty the castle,” she told him.

It was done, and he turned to descend to the lair.

“What weapon should I take with me?” he asked the goddess, for it was she.

“Nothing except thoughts. I will give you three. The white dove casts a dark shadow. In the heart of the rose is a worm. Night fades into day and day into night; embrace them.”

“Is that all?”

“And your true-name. It is Eterlane.”

It was a good name. The sound of it gave him warmth and courage as he walked away.

The passage to the dragon's lair was strait and dark. The prince had to feel his way along, groping ever downward. At last there was a dim reddish light, and Eterlane stopped short. The glow came from a toothy mouth and two nostrils like embers. The bulk behind them loomed large, formless and terrifying.

“What do you want with me?” the dragon asked.

There was nothing Eterlane could do except answer it.

“I want you to stop this drought and plague and famine,” he said shakily.

“Misfortune?” inquired the dragon slowly. “But which of us is to blame? Let me look at you in the light.”

“What?” Eterlane exclaimed.

“Let me out to the light, I say.” The dragon started forward.

Eterlane was badly scared. He had left all the portals open behind him for his own escape, and now the dragon would get loose—what a fool he had been to let that hag send him down here without a weapon, he thought. He snatched up a stone from the floor and hurled it. The dragon grunted and sent him staggering back with a blow of its great clawed foot. Eterlane shouted and stamped at the claws, and another push sent him stumbling back again.

So they went, with the dragon shoving and slithering and the hero fighting punily all the way, until they came out of the dungeon into the granaries and guardrooms. Eterlane could have gotten himself a weapon there, but he had begun hazily to realize that he had not been harmed. He ran up the steps to the sunlit throne room, panting and wondering. The dragon followed, and at the dais Eterlane turned to face it.

The dragon came out into the full light with a crunch of scales. It was terribly ugly, gray and ulcerous and sickening, like a bloated snake. It stared at Eterlane with bleary yellow eyes.

“Why have you hurt me?” it asked him.

“What are you?” cried Eterlane, terribly confused. “And what do you have to do with me?”

“My name is Eterlane,” said the dragon, “and I have been confined in the dark because you hate me. Why do you hate me?”

Eterlane stood for a moment stunned. Then, “How can I hate one who bears my true-name?” he whispered. He walked up to the gray slimy beast and greeted it as a second self.

“So you see,” I said, “all that was necessary was for him to accept.”

The dragon was anger, of course, or any one of the hidden things that poison people's lives. I could tell that the tale made Frain uncomfortable. He did not understand it and did not want to.

“And the hag?” he inquired after looking at the sunrise for a while.

“Eterlane kept his promise and wed her, and she turned fair and blooming. She was his kingdom, you see, or the womanform of it, and when he took the throne fortune flowered once again for his people. But no good could come to him or to them until he had faced the thing he feared.”

Frain got up with a gesture of negation or disgust. “Let us go on,” he said.

He slept only fitfully for some time thereafter, and I noticed that Dair seemed constantly on the alert, for what sort of trouble I was not sure. But there was no more need of swordsmanship.

Chapter Five

The hills gradually lowered and lowered, falling away in front of us. We walked over them through the shortening days and the solstice and the lengthening days, eastward, always eastward, following the path of the swimming sun. We began to grow aware of a sort of shine far in front of us, and as we drew nearer to it we thought it was a great inland sea. But how could that be, with water becoming harder and harder to find? The garths were fewer and farther apart, their wells more grudging, the land arid. Only dry and twisted prickly things grew on it. No longer could we find the crabapples and wild pears that had sustained us somewhat.

We are going to have to live on lizards
, said Dair.
That is a desert ahead
.

So it was, a sea of gleaming sand with waves and ripples that slowly moved under the touch of the wind. Rocks stood irregularly scattered, carved into anvil shapes by the blowing sand. The warmthless winter sun pounded down, so harsh that the light hurt our eyes. Nothing seemed to live or move on that expanse except wind, sun shadow, and sand.

And we did not have much food or water. And the call of my unseen Source led us straight across the waste.

We camped on the last dry, rocky hill to consider.

“You two could turn into eagles or something and fly right over it,” Frain said. “In fact, I have been wondering for some time why you struggle along as humans at all. You could just fly away.”

It's not so simple
, grumbled Dair.

“What?”

“It's not so simple,” I translated. “Anyway,” I added, “we would not want to leave you.”

“That's nice,” he said, a trifle sarcastically. “But one of you could turn bird and go scouting. Or you could be horses and let me ride you across. Why is it not so simple?” I tried to explain. It was always awkward talking to him because he understood only the crude human languages. “Magic cannot be used, really,” I said. “It comes as Trevyn's dreams come, or rain—when it will. Usually only for sheerest fun or in time of greatest need.”