The Forgotten Beasts of Eld Read online

  The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

  Patricia A. McKillip

  Fantasy Masterworks Volume 48

  eGod

  THE SORCERESS AND THE DRAGON

  Thoughts rose slow and formless as a dark bubble in the Dragon’s mind. It has been a thousand years since I fell asleep over the gold I gathered from Prince Sirkel, and fell asleep watching his open eyes and his blood trickle slowly over coin piece and coin piece and gather in a hollow neck of a cup. I dream of that gold, and wake to see it, and it is not here. I wake to cold stone. Give me leave to gather it once more.

  Sybel said, You will fly, and men will see you, and remember your deeds with terror.

  No. I will go by night, and gather it in secret, and if any man watches I will slay in secret.

  Then, said Sybel, they will come and kill us both.

  No man can kill me.

  His thoughts fled then, away from her and down to the forgetting regions of the mind where he was nameless even to himself, but Sybel was there, waiting. She stood among his memories of slayings, lustings, and half-eaten meals and said:

  Very well. If you want this so badly, I will think of a way.

  CREATURES OF BEAUTY AND TERROR

  BOAR CYRIN

  Keeper of Wisdom, who knew the answers to all riddles... save one.

  THE BLACK SWAN OF TIRLITH

  Who had carried a king’s daughter from the stone tower of exile.

  GYLD

  Green-winged Dragon who dreampt for eons over the cold fire of gold.

  FALCON TER

  Immortal Lord of Air, who had torn to bloody pieces the seven murderers of the wizard Aer.

  THE ROMMALB

  A dark mist of horror who could crush a man to the smallest bone, who lived on a diet of fear.

  The ivory-haired sorceress of Eldwold commands them. Sybel, who can stare into your mind and learn your secret name. Cherish her love, or tremble before your vengeance: for this slender young woman holds the wondrous, terrible power of The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

  For my parents, with thanks

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  ONE

  * * *

  The wizard Heald coupled with a poor woman once, in the king’s city of Mondor, and she bore a son with one green eye and one black eye. Heald, who had two eyes black as the black marshes of Fyrbolg, came and went like a wind out of the woman’s life, but the child Myk stayed in Mondor until he was fifteen. Big-shouldered and strong, he was apprenticed to a smith, and men who came to have their carts mended or horses shod were inclined to curse his slowness and his sullenness, until something would stir in him, sluggish as a marsh beast waking beneath murk. Then he would turn his head and look at them out of his black eye, and they would fall silent, shift away from him. There was a streak of wizardry in him, like the streak of fire in damp, smoldering wood. He spoke rarely to men with his brief, rough voice, but when he touched a horse, a hungry dog or a dove in a cage on market day, the fire would surface in his black eye, and his voice would run sweet as a daydreaming voice of the Slinoon River.

  One day he left Mondor and went to Eld Mountain. Eld was the highest mountain in Eldwold, rising behind Mondor and casting its black shadow over the city at twilight when the sun slipped, lost, into its mists. From the fringe of the mists, shepherds or young boys hunting could see beyond Mondor, west to the flat Plain of Terbrec, land of the Sirle Lords, north to Fallow Field, where the third King of Eldwold’s ghost brooded still on his last battle, and where no living thing grew beneath his restless, silent steps. There, in the rich, dark forests of Eld Mountain, in the white silence, Myk began a collection of wondrous, legendary animals.

  From the wild lake country of North Eldwold, he called to him the Black Swan of Tirlith, the great-winged, golden-eyed bird that had carried the third daughter of King Merroc on its back away from the stone tower where she was held captive. He sent the powerful, silent thread of his call into the deep, thick forests on the other side of Eld, where no man had ever gone and returned, and caught like a salmon the red-eyed, white-tusked Boar Cyrin, who could sing ballads like a harpist, and who knew the answers to all riddles save one. From the dark, silent heart of the Mountain itself, Myk brought Gyld, the green-winged dragon, whose mind, dreaming for centuries over the cold fire of gold, woke sleepily, pleasurably, to the sound of its name in the half-forgotten song Myk sent crooning into the darkness. Coaxing a handful of ancient jewels from the dragon, Myk built a house of white, polished stone among the tall pines, and a great garden for the animals enclosed within the ring of stone wall and iron-wrought gates. Into that house he took eventually a fountain girl with few words and no fear either of animals or their keeper. She was of poor family, with tangled hair and muscled arms, and she saw in Myk’s household things that others saw perhaps once in their lives in a line of old poetry or in a harpist’s tale.

  She bore Myk a son with two black eyes who learned to stand silent as a dead tree while Myk called. Myk taught him to read the ancient ballads and legends in the books he collected, taught him to send the call of a half-forgotten name across the whole of Eldwold and the lands beyond, taught him to wait in silence, in patience for weeks, months or years until the moment when the shock of the call would flame in the strange, powerful, startled mind of the animal that owned the name. When Myk went out of himself forever, sitting silent in the moonlight, his son Ogam continued the collection.

  Ogam coaxed out of the Southern Deserts behind Eld Mountain the Lyon Gules, who with a pelt the color of a king’s treasury had seduced many an imprudent man into unwanted adventure. He stole from the hearth of a witch beyond Eldwold the huge black Cat Moriah, whose knowledge of spells and secret charms had once been legendary in Eldwold. The blue-eyed Falcon Ter, who had torn to pieces the seven murderers of the wizard Aer, shot like a thunderbolt out of the blue sky onto Ogam’s shoulder. After a brief, furious struggle, blue eyes staring into black, the hot grip of talons loosened; the Falcon gave his name and yielded to Ogam’s great power.

  With the crook of an ungentle smile inherited from Myk, Ogam called also to him the oldest daughter of the Lord Horst of Hilt as she rode one day too close to the Mountain. She was a frail, beautiful child-woman, frightened of the silence and the strange, gorgeous animals that reminded her of things on the old tapestry in her father’s house. She was afraid also of Ogam, with his sheathed, still power and his inscrutable eyes. She bore him one child, and died. The child, unaccountably, was a girl. Ogam recovered from his surprise eventually and named her Sybel.

  She grew tall and strong in the Mountain wildness, with her mother’s slender bones and ivory hair and her father’s black, fearless eyes. She cared for the animals, tended the garden, and learned early how to hold a restless animal against its will, how to send an ancient name out of the silence of her mind, to probe into hidden, forgotten places. Ogam, proud of her quickness, built a room for her with a great dome of crystal, thin as glass, hard as stone, where she could sit beneath the colors of the night world and call in peace. He died when she was sixteen, leaving her alone with the beautiful white house, a vast library of heavy, iron-bound books, a collection of animals beyond all dreaming, and the power to hold them.

  She read one night not long afterward, in one of his oldest books, of a great white bird with wings that glided like snowy pennants unfurled in the wind, a bird that had carried the only Queen of Eldwold on its back in days long before. She spoke
its name softly to herself: Liralen; and, seated on the floor beneath the dome, with the book still open in her lap, she sent a first call forth into the vast Eldwold night for the bird whose name no one had spoken for centuries. The call was broken abruptly by someone shouting at her locked gates.

  She woke the Lyon, asleep in the garden, with a touch of her mind, and sent it padding to the gates to cast a golden, warning eye at the intruder. But the shouting continued, urgent, incoherent. She sighed, exasperated, and sent the Falcon Ter instructions to lift the intrudes and drop him off the top of Eld Mountain. The shouting ceased suddenly, a moment later, but a baby’s thin, uncomforted voice wailed into the silence, startling her. She rose finally, walked through the marble hall in her bare feet, out into the garden where the animals stirred restlessly in the darkness about her. She reached the gates, of thin iron bars and gold joints, and looked out.

  An armed man stood with a baby in his arms and Ter Falcon on his shoulder. The man was silent, frozen motionless under the play of Ter’s grip; the child in his mailed arms cried, oblivious. Sybel’s eyes moved from the still, half-shadowed face to the Falcon’s eyes.

  I told you, she said privately, to drop him off the top of Eld Mountain.

  The blue, unwavering eyes looked down into hers. You are young, Ter said, but you are without doubt powerful, and I will obey you if you tell me a second time. But I will tell you first, having known men for countless years, that if you begin killing them, one day they will grow frightened, come in great numbers, tear down your house and loose your animals. So the Master Ogam told us many times.

  Sybel’s bare foot tapped a moment on the earth. She moved her eyes to the man’s face and said,

  “Who are you? Why are you shouting at my gates?”

  “Lady,” the man said carefully, for the ruffled feathers of Ter’s wing brushed his face, “are you the daughter of Laran, daughter of Horst, Lord of Hilt?”

  “Laran was my mother,” Sybel said, shifting from one foot to another impatiently. “Who are you?”

  “Coren of Sirle. My brother had a child by your aunt—your mother’s youngest sister.” He stopped with a sudden click of breath between his teeth, and Sybel waved a hand at the Falcon.

  Loose him, or I will be standing here all night. But stay close in case he is mad.

  The Falcon rose, glided to a low tree branch above the man’s head. The man closed his eyes a moment; tiny beads of blood welled like tears through his shirt of mail. He looked young in the moonlight, and his hair was the color of fire. Sybel looked at him curiously, for he gleamed like water at night with link upon link of metal.

  “Why are you dressed like that?” she said, and he opened his eyes.

  “I have been at Terbrec.” He glanced up at the dark outline of bird above him. “Where did you get such a falcon? He cut through iron and leather and silk...”

  “He killed seven men,” Sybel said, “who killed the wizard Aer for the jewels on his books of wisdom.”

  “Ter,” the young man breathed, and her brows rose in surprise.

  “Who are you?”

  “I told you. Coren of Sirle.”

  “But that means nothing to me. What are you doing at my gates with a baby?”

  Coren of Sirle said very slowly and patiently, “Your mother, Laran, had a sister named Rianna—she was your aunt. She married the King of Eldwold three years ago. My—”

  “Who is the King these days?” Sybel asked curiously.

  The young man caught a startled breath. “Drede. Drede is the King of Eldwold, and he has been King for fifteen years.”

  “Oh. Go on—Drede married Rianna. That is very interesting, but I have a Liralen to call.”

  “Please!” He glanced up at the Falcon and lowered his voice. “Please. I have been fighting for three days. Then my uncle tossed a baby into my arms and told me to give it to the wizard woman on Eld Mountain. Suppose, I said, she will not take him? What will she want with a baby? And he looked at me and said, you will not come down from that mountain with the child—do you want your brother’s son dead?”

  “But why does he want to give it to me?”

  “Because it is the child of Rianna and Norrel, and they are both dead.”

  Sybel blinked. “But you said Rianna was married to Drede.”

  “She was.”

  “Then why is the child Norrel’s son? I do not understand.”

  Coren’s voice rose perilously. “Because Norrel and Rianna were lovers. And Drede killed Norrel three days ago on the Plain of Terbrec. Now will you take the baby so I can go back and kill Drede?”

  Sybel looked at him out of her black, unwinking eyes. “You will not shout at me,” she said very softly. The mailed hands of Coren curled and uncurled in the moonlight. He took a step toward her, and the soft light shaped the long bones of his face, traced lines of exhaustion beneath his eyes.

  “I am sorry,” he whispered. “Please. Try to understand. I have ridden the late day and half the night. My brother and half my kinsmen are dead. The Lord of Niccon joined forces with Drede, and Sirle cannot stand against them both. Rianna died of the child’s birth. If Drede finds the child, he will kill it out of revenge. There is no safe place for it in Sirle. There is no safe place for it anywhere but here, where Drede will not think to come. Drede has killed Norrel, but I swear he will not take this child. Please. Take care of him. His mother was of your family.”

  Sybel looked down at the child. It had stopped crying; the night was very still about them. It waved tiny fists aimlessly in the air, and pushed at the soft blanket wrapped around it. She touched its pale, plump face, and its eyes turned toward her, winking like stars.

  “My mother died of me,” she said. “What is its name?”

  “Tamlorn.”

  “Tamlorn. It is very pretty. I wish it had been a girl.”

  “If it had been, I would not have had to ride all this way to hide it. Drede is afraid the child might declare its legitimacy, when it is older, and fight Drede’s own heir. Sirle would back it—my people have been playing for the kingship of Eldwold ever since King Harth died at Fallow Field and Tarn of Sirle held the throne for twelve years, then lost it again.”

  “But if everyone knows the child is not Drede’s—”

  “Only Drede, Rianna and Norrel know the truth of the matter, and Rianna and Norrel are dead. Kings’ bastards can be very dangerous.”

  “He does not look dangerous.” Her lean, pale fingers whispered over its cheek. A smile strayed absently across her face. “It will go nicely, I think, in the collection.”

  Coren’s arms tightened around the child. “It is Norrel’s son—it is not an animal.”

  Sybel’s level eyes raised. “Is it not less? It eats and sleeps and it does not think, and it requires special care. Only... I do not know what to do with a baby. It cannot tell me what it needs.”

  Coren was silent a moment. When he spoke finally, she heard the weariness haunting his voice like an overtone. “You are a girl. You should know such things.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—because you will have children someday and you—will have to know how to care for them.”

  “I had no woman to care for me,” Sybel said. “My father fed me goat’s milk and taught me to read his books. I suppose I will have a child that I can train to care for the animals when I am dead.”

  Coren gazed at her, his lips parted. “If it were not for my uncle,” he said softly, “I would take the child back home rather than leave Norrel’s son here with you, your ignorance and your heart of ice.”

  Sybel’s face grew as still before him as the still full moon. “It is you who are ignorant,” she whispered. “I could have Ter rip you into seven pieces and drop your bloodless head on the Plain of Terbrec, but I am controlling my temper. Look!”

  She unlocked the gates, her fingers shaking in an anger that roused through her like a clean mountain wind. She snapped private calls into the dream-drugged minds about her, and, li
ke pieces of dreams themselves, the animals moved toward her. Coren stepped in beside her. He propped the child on one shoulder, his mailed arms protecting its back, one hand cupping its head, while his eyes slid, wide, over the moving, rustling darkness. The great Boar reached them first, fire-white in the darkness, his tusks like white marble that hunters dreamed of, and a sound came, inarticulate, from Coren’s throat. Sybel rested one hand above the small red eyes. “Do you think because I care for these animals, I cannot care for a child? They are ancient, powerful as princes, wise and restless and dangerous, and I give them whatever they require. So I will give this child what it requires. And if that is not what you want, then leave. I did not ask you to come with a child; I do not care if you go with it. I may be ignorant in your world, but here you are in my world and you are a fool.”

  Coren stared down at the Boar, struggling for words. “Cyrin,” he whispered. “Cyrin. You have him.” He stopped again, his breath jerking through his open mouth. His voice came slow, dredging memory. “Rondar—Lord of Runrir captured—the Boar Cyrin that no man had captured before, the elusive Cyrin, Keeper of Riddles and—demanded either Cyrin’s life or all the wisdom of the world. And Cyrin uprooted a stone at Rondar’s feet, and Rondar said it was worthless and rode away, still searching...”

  “How do you know that tale?” Sybel asked, astonished. “It is not one of Eldwold.”

  “I know it. I know.” He lifted his head, his arms tight around the child as a great shape swooped toward them, silent, a shadow upon the night. The Swan folded itself gently before them, its back broad as the Boar’s, its eyes black as the night between two stars

  “The Swan of Tirlith—Is it the Swan? Sybel, is it?”

  “How do you know my name?” she whispered.

  “I know.” He watched two cats ease through the night, coming from opposite sides of the house, and she heard him swallow. Tamlorn struggled in his arms, but Coren did not move. The Cat Moriah reached them, nudged its black, flat head under Sybel’s hand, then lay down on her feet and yawned at Coren, showing teeth like honed polished stones.