Read Online The Black Beast by Nancy Springer - Free Book Online Page B

cover, and gaped.
    â€œBut our kingly father must be afraid!” I exclaimed. “Is it you he dreads? Or is it these whispering trees?”
    Tirell smiled grimly and gave no reply, staring with narrowed, glittering eyes toward Melior. I continued to survey the soldiers. Some men moved, and beyond them I saw something that bent me like an unexpected buffet.
    â€œLook,” I said. “Grandfather’s hut. It’s all destroyed.”
    The place was shattered like the Wall. Tirell gave no sign of having heard me. But the beast bounded past us and leaped into the open space beyond the sheltering forest, screaming defiance and hatred at Abas’s army. Its voice was hoarse and gibbering and wailing all at once, like that of a man whose tongue is taken away; it was an ugly, hurtful sound. I was frozen by that cry, and for their part the warriors only stood and shuddered. They stared stupidly at widespread beating wings, rearing underbelly, and hooves and daggerlike horn. I think every man of them would have run if it had not been for the restraint of their own ranks pressed around them. Moments passed before they remembered their weapons. One by one they reached for their bows, and arrows started to fly.
    I did not move, for Tirell and I were well out of bowshot. But Tirell gasped and ran to his horse. “Away, quickly!” he shouted at me. “The beast will follow. Come, before he is killed!”
    â€œWhy, we would be well rid of it!” I exclaimed in ex asperation. But Tirell had already shot away to the south. I galloped after him, muttering, sure that our noise would bring the whole army onto our heels. Tirell slowed down once we cleared the Wall. We cantered along between the forest of Acheron and the westernmost curve of the river Chardri, which edged ever nearer to us. We glanced behind us constantly, but neither the beast nor the Boda did we see.
    By dusk we were riding along the ridge of a high river-bank. We had never thought of crossing the Chardri; no one would have thought of it, not in Vale. Ages past, folk said, when the land was young, Chardri the bard sang to Adalis where she sat on her high throne at Ogygia. She listened to him often, for he sang superlatively well. But soon her favor made him overbold; he spoke to her of love, and she granted him his pleasure as a punishment. Lying on her, he became the river that runs and sings forever from her headlands to her womb. All the folk in Vale feared him for his godlike anger. Swans dared to light on his back, but no man would willingly touch him. Still, I felt a stirring of some new feeling, an odd sense that he would not hurt me, that I could approach him as an equal.… I shook my head at my own temerity. No need to put it to the test. The horses could not have made the bank.
    The forest was edging at us from the other side, and presently our way was blocked by our familiar acquaintances, the stooping, twisted trees. We rode into them. But the insidious things seemed to join hands against us. Beneath the shadow of that particular portion of wood was such a tangle as I had never seen. Roots bulged up and branches groped down and fallen boughs crisscrossed the spaces between. Rocks lumped out of the gloomy loam without pattern, like pebbles scattered by a gigantic child. Here and there lay huge fallen trees, each one a barrier. Between stood patches of brambles thicker than hedges. We had gone scarcely a furlong into this muddle when Tirell was forced to stop, cursing under his breath.
    â€œWhat now?” I asked. “We are trapped here for the Boda to find. The river confines us on the eastern side, the mountains and this accursed forest—”
    â€œIt is nearly dark anyway,” grumbled Tirell, interrupting. “We may as well stay here.”
    â€œBut what if the Boda come?” I persisted. “They must have heard us crashing off, and they will be after us. We had better try to find a way