Read Online The Sable Moon by Nancy Springer - Free Book Online

lived, in his own solitary way.” Lysse shifted her gaze to include her husband. “You seem to have forgotten the days when he led and you followed.”
    â€œWhy follow where there is no love?” Rosemary asked bitterly, and began to weep. Lysse turned to comfort her. Trevyn was grateful that his mother’s eyes were not on him. She had said, there will be a ship , and his heart had leaped in his chest; it pounded still. We will both set sail , he thought, and strove to hide the thought. Without speaking he stumbled from the room. Then he stopped in the corridor, groping at a wall for support, blinded and dizzied by vision.
    The others who had gone before, taking their magic from Isle … The star-son Bevan, with lustrous hands and lustrous brow, black hair parted like raven’s wings, facing the sea breeze. The long line of Bevan’s brethren the gods riding down to the Blessed Bay, leaving the hollow hills forever … Ylim, the ageless seeress, had lived and finally died in her own peaceful valley, Trevyn knew, but he envisioned her on a white ship beneath a changing moon. And the elves, his mother’s people, setting sail on the swanlike boats Veran had prepared for them with his own magical hands—boats like Bevan’s that went without sails. And now Hal, a Very King like Bevan of a thousand years before …
    â€œAll right, lad?” Alan had come out and stood before him anxiously. Trevyn blinked and nodded, shaking shreds of legend from his head.
    â€œIt’s a hard thing to come home to,” Alan added gruffly.
    Trevyn lowered his eyes to hide a gleam of joy and wonder. Let Alan think he had been sorrowing. But he was learning the elfin Sight at last, it seemed. It had never caught him up so strongly before, except that horrible time when a wolf had given him bad dreams, false dreams.… But these just now had been his own dreams; he felt sure of it.
    â€œI had better go to see my uncle,” he muttered.
    He climbed the long, spiraling tower stairs, his breath quickened by more than exertion. Hal did not answer the rap on his door, so the Prince pushed it open. King Hal stood staring westward through his window bars, his face haggard, his skin drawn into taut folds over the straight lines of his cheekbones. He did not stir for Trevyn’s presence.
    â€œMireldeyn!” Trevyn called him by the sooth-name, and in a moment he trembled at his own boldness. Hal turned slowly and fixed his nephew with a silvery stare. In all the seven ages there had been no one quite like Mireldeyn, and even Trevyn, who had bounced on his lap not too many years before, could not fail to feel his greatness.
    â€œTrevyn,” Hal remarked. “I am bound for Elwestrand at last. You’ll not try to sway me from my destiny, lad? You are too young for that, I think—and also, in your own foolish way, too wise.”
    Trevyn did not know how to react. “Elwestrand is fair, you have told me,” he said at last. “But my father is saddened, my aunt angry and sad.”
    â€œI grieve that Alan must grieve.” Hal turned away to his window again, his voice cold and tight. “But the ways of men are strange to me now, and I do not understand his sorrow. Nor can I see any longer what may be in store for him. But as for your aunt—she will find fulfillment that I could never give her. It was not by her fault that we have been childless, Trevyn. Ket can better serve her, he who has loved her all these years.”
    â€œKet!” Trevyn’s astonishment left him open-mouthed, and for a moment he wondered if Hal was really mad. Ket, the former outlaw who had never learned to properly ride a horse! He had once been valiant, Trevyn knew, but now he was only the stooping, gravely courteous countryman who taught archery and served Alan as seneschal. That he should so regard the Queen!
    â€œDo you think he has stayed in Laueroc for want of choice? He could