The Golden Swan (19 page)

A thought occurred to me. I groped around and found a sharp rock, a white flint—damn it that I had lost my knife, or I would have done better. I sawed away at the wrist of my useless left arm until the blood ran. The accursed crippled thing might be good for something after all, I thought. I hoisted it, dripping, streaming, and laid it on Dair's face and tried to open his mouth to let the drops run in. I felt certain at the time that this would be the remedy at last, but Maeve ran over to me with a gasp of shock, plucking at me in an annoying way, as if I had done something quite untoward.

“He needs red,” I explained to her lucidly. He had not eaten meat in so long, was it any wonder that his face was gray? But she tried to pull me away.

One of those smirking birds flew by and gave its hooting laugh, hootoo, hootoo. And quite suddenly I went crazy.

Chapter Five

I struck at the Tree with my flint, struck, stabbed, again and again, with the spongy bark bearing it all quite indifferently. Finally I threw it, hard, at Maeve. She dodged. Methodically, as if it mattered, I began to rip the honey-trumpet flowers from around the Tree. Damn it that I had lost my knife—

“It is not fair!”

I stood still for a moment and shouted the words at the darkening sky.

“It is not fair! Dair is the only one who has ever loved me not to betray me—you cannot take him from me! You cannot!”

I picked up a rock, the biggest one I could heft in my one hand, and flung it, not bothering to watch where it fell. Damn it that I had lost the use of my other arm. With it I would have been able to fling a larger rock. Maeve stood watching me warily.

“They all betrayed me,” I choked. “Tirell—” I tried to stop, but there was a torrent of anger in me pressing to be let loose. I had unleashed a trickle and it was fast turning to a flood. Maeve could not ask the questions, say the prodding words, but it did not matter; she had trained me well. She might as well have been speaking to me. I turned from the unresponsive sky and shouted at her.

“The arrogant bastard, he always knew he could treat me like dirt, take me for granted, he didn't care! He—” I paused, panting, and dropped down to claw at the grass. “He drove her away from me, raped her, took her, he—”

I glanced at Maeve, who nodded gravely. It seemed absurdly important that I should make this all perfectly clear.

“He
hit
me!” I cried. “He came at me with that great bludgeoning sword of his and wounded me, broke my shoulder, crippled me for life—and then he got a kingdom for it and a doting bride—and I—”

Pettiness. Self-pity. I didn't care. I plunged on.

“I got only a broken heart. And Fabron, my father, my own father, sold me into slavery, deceived me, lied to me, pretended to be my friend but didn't have the guts to tell me the truth—”

How unfair of me, how ignoble. I didn't care. I felt saliva run down my chin. Or was it tears. No matter. Nothing mattered.

“Made a fool of me in front of Shamarra,” I panted. “As if she had not made me fool enough. And that damn Adalis—Alys—whatever the bloody flood her name is—she laughed at me!”

I cursed the goddess by every name of hers that I knew, searching my mind anxiously to make sure I did not forget one. It took some time. After I was done with the goddess I cursed the pantheon of Ascalonia and the sacred kings, Tirell and the whole line of Melior back to Aftalun, one by one. Childish, but it helped just a little. Then I cursed that strange and unknown god who had sung this place, the One, whoever that was. And the earth did not even tremble, though Maeve did.

Then I set about to destroy as much of the paradise as I could. It had no right to be there when Dair lay dying.

Maeve cautiously sat down after a while, watching me. I went about kicking and gouging and snatching with my hand, breathing hard and muttering fervidly to myself, “Let them laugh
now!
” I blundered against fruit trees, broke sticks from them and threw them as hard as I could, shouting wildly. I found a clump of tree ferns and beat and smashed it down to the ground. I stamped and jumped on the vanquished boughs.

“Damn—Shamarra,” I shouted between heaving breaths. “Letting me—bathe in that—deathly lake of hers, never telling me—what I was doing. She always—scorned me, laughed at me. She hated me. She—”

Something moved in me and I felt horribly afraid. Maeve was sitting there so quiet, so vulnerable, and Dair lying helpless, and there was a beast loose in the gathering dark; did they not sense it? I did. I gasped in terror, turned and ran.

“She killed my father!” I shrieked to the night.

I was glad that I had lost my knife, lost the use of my arm. I had it in me to stab, slay, kill, I knew that now. The healer had murder in his heart. I myself was the reason I would not face Fabron or Tirell, the reason I had left them. I was the beast in the night. And the face, that hideous face, floated on the surface of the darkness, as if night were a deep and brooding pool.

It seemed quite real, a tangible illusion. It fully convinced me at the time. I thought I could reach out and shatter the water, but I did not dare, boneless hands would drag me down—it was an ugly face, contorted, glaring, frothing at the downstretched mouth—monstrous—it was the face I had seen in Shamarra's lake. Grotesque, fearsome—the face I had given the faceless spirits of the dead.

It was my own.

My very own reflected rage, hidden in every other way, and it sent a long spear of fear through me. I ran from it, whimpering, and it ran with me effortlessly, never leaving me. I could not have been more terrified if there had been a serpent wrapped around me, a demon clinging to my shoulders. “Please—” I begged the night, the face, but they did not answer.

I must have run for hours through the deep of night, the black pit of night, the darkest night I have ever known. No moonlight or starlight could penetrate the veiling cloud of that mountaintop, and the fireflies one by one went to sleep; I was all alone with only my unwelcome self for company, my mirrored self, my dark twin. It chivied me through the forest, hunted me through the thickets and streambeds, harried me as the Luoni harry the departing souls of the untruthful, cutting me off at every desperate turn, driving me toward—what end? I ran blind, crazed, bloody and sweaty and exhausted. At last I blundered into some sort of benighted copse—

I stood rooted, feeling the presence of the face at my back but unable to move. A kind of voiceless singing thrummed through me, a shivering, and I knew that I was in the presence of something holy. I scarcely breathed. I stood in terror and awe.

A glow, a tiny glow in the darkness, like the spark deep in the heart of a ruby, down at my feet, almost hidden in earth. It grew, wavering, flaming, flaring, blood red. It was a cup of honeydew, a mystic grail of flame and blood and tears, it was a head with hair afire, it was the sunswan, flamefeathers, flamepetals, and as it grew it climbed, a small fiery beast, a living thing, as alive as I was—perhaps more so. Up its stalk it climbed until it burned at the level of my face, and in the heartred pulsating liquid light of it I could see the leaves, fern leaves, each one a frost-flake, I thought they would melt before I could move—it was the fern flower, fire flower, Maeve's flower of hope. For Maeve—and without another thought I reached out, grasped the stem and plucked it.

I screamed aloud as I had never screamed before. The forest rang with the sound. I can still hear the echo in my mind.

Glory be to Eala, the pain! Intense, searing, it made my whole body cry out in sympathy with my hand. I felt as if I had snatched a rod of white-hot iron out of the coals of Fabron's forge. Worse—a burning serpent. The stalk writhed and squirmed in my hand as if it were a live adder. I very nearly dropped it in the shock of pain and surprise, but I hung on. And then the true pain struck me.

The pain of truth. The enormity of it, that I should hate my brother whom I loved, my father whom I loved, Shamarra—yet it was so. My own depravity stabbed me like my missing knife, stung worse than the burning thing in my hand. How could I be so—monstrous, so ignoble? I heard all the green things I had hurt crying aloud in pain. Truly. Their small voices sounded right inside my head, making a chorus of lament that matched my own. And the face still leered before me.

I sank down and wept.

H
E KILLED MY SEEDMATE
.

My love, the purity of my love, lost.

H
E HAS TORN OFF MY LIMBS
,
MY LEAVES
.

All my life I had thought of myself as one generous of heart—

H
E HAS BROKEN ME
,
TRAMPLED ME DOWN
.

A healer, a chivalrous warrior, the most loyal of followers to my brother—I had been great, in my way. At the very least I had been good. And now all that was gone, it seemed. My heart was full of spleen.

W
HY HAS HE HURT US?
W
HY?

What was I to do, how could I live—

H
USH
, the fern flower said. T
HE
S
WAN
L
ORD HAS COME AT LAST
. L
OOK
,
HE WEEPS
.

B
UT HOW CAN THAT BE?

T
HE
S
WAN
L
ORD, A DESTROYER?
I
T WAS SAID HE WOULD BE A HEALER—

I
TELL YOU, IT IS HE
. The voice of the fern flower shivered through me, warm.

B
UT WHY HAS HE HURT US?

P
AIN IS IN THE PATTERN
. Oh, the love, the gentle forgiveness in those words. My eyes were closed in agony, but I heard.

H
EALING IS FOR WHOLENESS
. W
AIT AND SEE
.

A rustling went through the forest like the stirring of leaves before dawn.

T
HE
S
WAN
L
ORD!
one soft voice said.

T
HE
S
WAN
L
ORD HAS COME!
breathed another.

B
UT IF IT IS HE—

I
T IS HE
. That flameflower, that voice like a lover's—

T
HEN IT IS TRUE WHAT HAS BEEN SAID, THAT THE SEED WILL BE SPREAD
.

I
T IS TRUE
. Words vibrant with joy.

T
HE MAIDEN GOES TO BRIDEBED!

A
T LAST WE WILL BE HEARD!

There was more, a paean of rejoicing, but I remember it only confusedly. Something was happening. The fiery pain in my hand was easing, but that was the least of it. A sense of strong comfort was coming to me. The pattern—I was very tired, and I could not think of the things Maeve had told me. I could think only of a quiet lake, a fair black swan with a reflection of white. Healing is for wholeness.… A face floated into view.

I opened my eyes. It was there before me, calm, almost smiling, the face on the surface of the dark. It was—was it really my own freckled visage? But it was beautiful, as beautiful as Dair's! As I gasped it rippled and blurred, fading.

“Wait!” I cried, I wanted to shout, though my voice came out a husky whisper. “Please—” It was awash as if in tears. “Please stay,” I begged. It was dark and lovely, and it was me, mine or part of me. In that moment I could not bear to lose it.

I
AM NOT GONE
, it said gently. I
AM IN YOU
,
FOR YOU HAVE ACCEPTED ME
. R
EST NOW
. S
LEEP
. And it swam away.

Away or within—at once the words comforted me. I lay down on the ground, my face nestled to loamy earth, the fern flower held close to my side, and for a few hours I slept. I remember that sleep as deep and refreshing, and yet it was full of dreams. Voices chanted in my dreams.

THE TURN OF THE TIDE

THE MAIDEN GOES TO BRIDEBED

THE TURN OF THE GREAT TIDE

THE MAIDEN GIVES THE SEED

THE TIME OF DEATHLESS PEACE

THE WILLING SACRIFICE

GIVING, LIVING

THE MAIDEN TAKES THE SEED

I dreamed that it was a woman who lay by my side, a woman fair as a flower, all clothed in petals of light. Petals caressed my face, her lips brushed my face, and they burned like fire. “The kiss of the goddess,” she said. “You will not always be a virgin, Frain.” My tears ran down and mingled with her fire, and the two together made a new and lovely thing. I dreamed again. I saw the midnight swan, the white swan and the golden swan, the sunswan in my dreams, and then I awoke, full of the feeling of blessing. It was just dawn.

Dawn. It had been a rather short and crowded night. The sun comes up early on Midsummer's Day. I got up, blinked in the dewy light and looked at what I held in my hand.

A length of fern, the most delicate of ferns, and on the stem a single flower. I had never seen any flower like it, even amid all the wonders of the Source. It was all the colors of sunflame, crimson and cloud pink and ruddy gold, and it held its petals cupped like sacral hands. The calyx was of copper color, and just at the heart of the flower I saw a fine-veined stain of blood red, so red it looked as if it were moist—perhaps it was. I didn't dare touch.

T
HE DAYSPRING COMES
, sang the wind.

L
IFT HIGH YOUR HEADS
, flowers told each other. S
PREAD YOUR PETALS WIDE
.

H
EY HOOTOO HOOTOO GOOD DAY!
shouted a pied bird.

Sunlight touched the upper leaves of the trees.

“Have I hurt you?” I whispered to the fern flower, speaking in a tongue that was not my own, a far more ancient tongue, the Old Language—it had come to me, and I had hardly noticed amid all the terrors and marvels of the night.

E
VERYONE HURTS SOMETHING SOMETIME
.