Nancy Springer - Isle 03 - The Sable Moon.pdf - Nancy Springer - widez2

PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS NEW YORK

Another Original publication of POCKET BOOKS

POCKET BOOKS, a Simon & Schuster division of

GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION

1230 Avenue of theAmericas ,New York,N.Y.10020

For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of theAmericas ,New York,N.Y.10020

ISBN: 0-671-83157-7

First Pocket Books printing February, 1981

10 987654321

POCKET and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster.

Printed in-theU.S.A.

I am a crescent moon.

I am a rustle of padded paws,

I am a seed in the earth,

I am a dewdrop.

I am a hidden jewel,

I am a dream,

I am a silver harp.

I am a fruit on the Tree,

I am a beast of curving horn,

I am a swollen breast,

Page 1

I am the argent moon.

I am soft rain,

I am rivers of thought,

I am sea tides,

I am a turning wheel.

I am the waning moon.

I am the mare who rides men mad,

I am the sable moon.

I am the howl of the wolf,

I am the hag,

I am the flood of destruction.

I am the ship that rides the flood,

I am the crescent moon.

I am the dark, bright, changing moon.

Book One

FATE AND THE MAIDEN

Chapter One

Prince Trevyn was seventeen years old, and still struggling out of childhood like an eaglet out of the shell,

when he first met Gwern. It was not a happy meeting.

Trevyn had galloped far ahead of the others, because his half-fledged falcon had led him a crazy course

over the grassy downs. Muttering to himself and whistling at the bird, he topped a rise and saw a herd of

yearling colts in the dingle below. Small heads, arched necks, level backs, and high-set, windswept

tails—young though they were, everything about them marked them unmistakably as steeds of the royal

breed. A stranger stood with them, stroking a chestnut filly on the nose.

"You, there!" Trevyn shouted hotly. "Let the horses alone!"

The fellow glanced at him without moving. Trevyn sent his mount plunging down the slope toward him.

Page 2

"Let the horses alone, I say!" he called again as he approached.

The stranger, a youth of about his own age, met his angry eyes coolly. "Why so?"

Trevyn almost sputtered at the calm question. Did the dolt not know that he was Trevyn son of Alan of

Laueroc, that he was Prince of Isle and Welas, sole heir of the Sun Kings? The elwedeyn horses had

been the special pride of the Crown ever since his kindred the elves had presented them, before his birth.

No uninstructed hand was permitted to touch them. Indeed, they would not lightly suffer the touch of any

hand. The royal family commanded their love through the use of the Old Language that had come down

to them from the Beginning. . . . Quietly, Trevyn ordered the chestnut filly away from the stranger. It

unnerved him that she permitted that hand upon her at all.

The stranger looked up at him with eyes like pebbles, expressionless. "Why did you do that? Are these

horses yours?"

"Ay, they are mine," replied Trevyn, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. Perhaps the yokel was a

half-wit. There was something odd about his face.

"You are a fool to say so." The fellow turned away indifferently and stroked another horse, a

cream-colored one. "These horses belong to no one."

Trevyn's temper flared, all the more so because the other was right, in a sense. Galled, he sprang down

from his mount and jerked the stranger by the arm. "Get away, I say!"

Still expressionless, the youth pulled from his grasp and lashed back with a closed fist. In an instant, both

of them were flailing' at each other, then rolling in a tussle on the grass. Trevyn wore a sword, and after a

bit he wished he could honorably use it. The stranger was as hard and resilient as an axe haft, and his

blows hurt.

Before the fight reached a conclusion, however, the combatants found themselves hauled apart. "Now

what," inquired a quiet voice, "is the cause of this?"

Trevyn blinked out of a blackened eye. It was his uncle, Hal, the King of the Silver Sun; and though he

did not look angry, Trevyn hated to cause him sorrow. Trevyn's father, King Alan, fated him as well, and

he looked angry enough for two.

"Surely," Hal remarked, "this row must have had a beginning?"

"He was bothering the horses," Trevyn accused, and pointed, childlike, at the stranger.

"The horses don't look bothered," Alan scoffed harshly.

The horses, apparently pleased by the excitement, had formed a circle of curious heads. The chestnut

filly stretched her neck and nuzzled the stranger youth's hand.

Hal and Alan exchanged a surprised glance. "Fellow," Alan addressed the stranger, "what is your

Page 3

name?"

"Gwern." The youth spoke flatly.

"And who are your parents?"

"I have none." Gwern did not seem to find this the least bit remarkable.

"Who were you born of?" asked Alan with more patience than was his wont. "Who was your mother?"

For the first time Gwern hesitated, seeming at a loss. "Earth," he said at last.

Alan frowned and tried another tack. "Where is your home?"

"Earth," Gwern replied.

They all stared at him, not sure whether or not he was deliberately courting Alan's anger. He stared back

at them with eyes like stream-washed stones, indeterminately brown. He was brown all over, his skin a

curious dun, his hair like hazel tips. He was barefoot, and his clothing was of coarse unbleached wool,

when most folk of these peaceful times could afford better. What was he doing in the middle of the

downs, with the-nearest dwelling miles away?

"Take him along home," Hal suggested mildly, "and I'll look him up in the census."

When he was king, Trevyn promised himself, he would set such nuisances in a dungeon for a week or

so, to teach them some respect. Take him along home indeed!

Alan shrugged and turned back to his son, less angry at Trevyn now. "Who struck first?"

"I pulled him away from a horse, and he struck me."

"Pulled him away from a horse? And why? If an elwedeyn horse sees fit to bear him company, lad, you

also had better learn to abide him. The horses are well able to defend themselves, and they're better

judges of men than most chamberlains. Think before you fight, Trevyn." Alan was

disgusted. "So now you have a black eye, and you have lost your hawk. Get on home."

They all rode silently back to the walled city ofLaueroc , with Gwern behind Hal on his elwedeyn

stallion, overrolling meadows where the larks sang through the days. For miles before they came'* to it

they could see the castle anchored on the billowing softness of the downs like a tall ship on a shimmering,

grassy sea. Atop the highest swell its ramparts vaulted skyward, and from its slender turrets floated flags

of every holding in Isle. In every window, even the servants' windows, swung a circle of cut and faceted

glass to catch the sun and send colors flitting about the rooms.

Centuries before, Cuin the Falconer King had raised the fortress at Laueroc with pearly, gold-veined

stone brought all the way from the mountains of Welas. He had not wanted to mar his new demesne with

diggings. The land at Laueroc, in Trevyn's time, was still nearly as scarless as the day it was born. The

castle lay on its bosom like a crystal brooch, and two roads wound away like flat bronze chains. There

were no buildings outside the walls. In the topmost chamber of the westernmost tall tower, athwart the

Page 4

battlements, King Hal made his study and solitary retreat.

Trevyn climbed up there after him when they had stabled the horses, and to his dismay Gwern followed.

It troubled him that the dirt-colored stranger should come so familiarly to his uncle's room. Hal was more

than Sunset King; he was a bard, a visionary and a seer. In all the kingdom, only three persons

approached him with the love of equals: Queen Rosemary, his beloved; his brother Alan; and Lysse, the

Elf-Queen, Trevyn's mother and Alan's wife. Trevyn held him in awe. When he entered the tower

chamber he silently took his seat, knees loaded down with tomes of history, awaiting Hal's leisure. But

Gwern poked and prowled around the circular room, disturbing Hal's scholarly clutter. And Hal stood

gazing out of his high, barred window, seeming not to mind.

"What do you see?" Gwern asked suddenly. Trevyn winced at his effrontery. The King of the Silver Sun

had always looked to the west, toward Welas and the reaches of

the sunset stars, and Trevyn had never dared to ask him why. But Hal turned around courteously.

"I see Elwestrand, what else?" he replied, the sheen of his gray eyes going smoky dark. "And a fair sight

it is."

"Where is Elwestrand?" Gwern craned his neck, peering.

"Nay, nay,'* Hal explained eagerly, "you must look with your inner eye. Elwestrand is beyond the

western sea." His voice yearned like singing. "I have seen a tree with golden fruit, and a great white stag,

and bright birds, and sleek, romping beasts. I have seen unicorns."

"Elwestrand is the grove of the dead," Trevyn told Gwern sharply, jealous that Hal would speak to him

so equably.

"Grove of the dead?" Hal turned to regard his nephew with a tiny smile on his angular face. "Elwestrand

is but another step on the way to the One, for all that it lies beyond the sunlit lands."

"It must be dark," Gwern said doubtfully.

"Nay, indeed!" Hal cried. "It shines like—like the fair flower of Veran used to shine, here in Isle, before

the Easterners blighted it. ... Elwestrand is lilac and celadon and pearly gray-gold and every subtle glow

of the summer stars. And glow of dragons from the indigo sea, every shade of damson and quince and

dusky rose. The elves remembered it all in their bright stitchery--all that this world was, and this Isle,

before the Eastern invasion, before man's evil shadowed and spread." Hal turned back to his window on

the west, pressing his forehead against the bars.

"My kindred the elves sailed to Elwestrand," Trevyn told Gwern more softly. "All of them except my

mother."

"Now they live amidst the stuff of their dreams," Hal said from his window.

"But does no one return from Elwestrand?" Gwern asked.

"Who would wish to return?"

Page 5

Nancy Springer - Isle 03 - The Sable Moon.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: