Dark Castle, White Horse

by Tanith Lee

Genres: Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Dark Fantasy; Paranormal; General Fiction

Synopsis

For the first time in e-book, an omnibus of novels about two different but equally unlikely heroes, juxtaposing a somber tone with the absurdist comedy.

IN DARKNESS SHE WAKES--a beautiful young woman, forever imprisoned in the Castle of Dark. Guarded and bespelled by two old hags, can she master the secret magic to summon the champion who will set her free?
 
 
INTO DARKNESS HE RIDES--a handsome prince in an unknown realm. Who has conjured him here, and for what desperate deeds? Hailed as the Looked-for-Deliverer, with a changeling horse for companion, only he can challenge all magic's perils--from the Dragon of Brass to the Mad Witch of the kingdom-destroying horror, the evil, enigmatic Nulgrave!

Release date: May 3, 2022

Publisher: DAW

Print pages: 286

Sample

1
Lilune: Dusk

Half an hour before, the sun had set, and the iron bell had rung in the bell-tower. Now, the girl who only got up at dusk, walked into the Hall of the Castle.
 
She was slight, but not tall. Her dark hair was so long it fell over her body like a sooty mantle. Eventually it reached the floor and spread out there, so that it swept up the dust behind her as she walked. She was extremely pale; though her eyes were very green.
 
Entering the huge Hall with its towering columns, the girl went to a window and looked out into the gloaming. She glanced at the evening star, a blazing drop in the west, then straight downward into the courtyard below.
 
One of the two old women was drawing up water from the well. The bucket creaked. The old woman sang crazily to herself in her crack-pot voice. The girl watched her. A black pigeon preened itself on the well-head.
 
The girl whispered something to the pigeon thirty feet below her. The pigeon stopped preening and seemed to be listening. The girl whispered again, her green eyes wide. It was a Calling she was trying on the pigeon, although she was supposed to be ignorant of such spells. The two old women locked the doors of the cellars where they practiced their own witchery, but the girl was sharp-witted and sharp-eared. Many a midnight she had crept close and eavesdropped. She had a right to know, didn’t she? She was sixteen, and tired of her strange shadowy lonely life. She whispered. The pigeon, with a clap of wings, suddenly bolted up into the evening sky. The girl shrank back so the old woman shouldn’t see her, as the pigeon alighted in the window embrasure. The pigeon strutted and stared at the girl inquiringly. The girl was pleased with herself.
 
Below in the courtyard, the old woman shrilled suspiciously:
 
“Lilune? Lilune, my lamby. Is that you, my little owl?”
 
Lilune scowled and kept silent. The pigeon, released, flew away.
 
Then the other old woman spoke from among the columns of the Hall. She sounded just like the first old woman. They both looked the same, too; skinny, ancient, a-flap with tattered garments and tangled grey ringlets.
“Lilune, come at once and sup your drink before it loses its properties.”
 
Lilune didn’t like the drink on which she breakfasted. There were odd ingredients in it, which turned it black with a head of creamy foam. Sometimes the old women grated leaves on the surface, or flower petals, to tempt her.
 
“I’m not thirsty,” said Lilune.
 
“But the lamb must have her drink, or she won’t grow to be healthy and wise,” clucked the second old woman.
 
“It won’t be any use to me being healthy or wise,” snapped Lilune. She wondered if this old woman had guessed she had Called the pigeon. Lilune decided to throw a fit of temper to distract her. “I want to go out!” she yelled. “Why can’t I go out?”
 
“Later, little owl,” soothed the crone. “When the moon rises. Then we’ll go down to the lake and you shall look at the pebbles there, and the empty houses. But you must take your moonshade, for it’s a full moon tonight.”
 
Lilune clenched her fists in a real and desolate anger.
 
This was all she had ever known: the looming black Castle, the black woods that stretched away from it to the south and east, the swampy western marshes and the northern lake with its ruins, winter-frozen, or burning under a hot summer moon. And always these two old women hovering. Without ever having known anything else, Lilune nevertheless felt she was being cheated of something.
 
The second old woman plucked at Lilune’s sleeve.
 
“Come and have your drinky, sweetheart. There’s candied rose-leaves in it tonight.”
 
Lilune suffered herself to be led to the table. It was pointless to resist. After all, she had Called the pigeon and the old women had not found out. She glanced at the hag’s terrible, loving, mad face. Perhaps, Lilune abruptly thought, the Calling might be used to summon . . . other things?

 
2
Lir: The Harp

Lir came up the track into the village just as the moon was coming over the hills. It was a late summer moon, round and pale smoky gold. It colored the tall grain in the fields, and the thatched cots. It colored Lir’s hair, which in any case was much of the moon’s color, and the light bronze box he carried on his back.
 
As Lir turned on to the village street, dogs, catching the footfall of a stranger, began barking. Almost immediately, four or five men were out on the street, eyeing him.
 
“What’s your business?” one said to him.
 
“To pass through. Or to seek a night’s lodging,” said Lir. The men in the street reacted to his voice, for the voice of Lir had music in it.
 
“There’s lodging,” said a man. “What payment?”
 
“Whatever you require,” said Lir.
 
“A day’s work with us in the fields.”
 
“If you wish,” said Lir, easily.
 
The men laughed. Somebody said: “But what’s that you carry on your back?”
 
“Only my harp.”
 
The men laughed again and came to draw Lir into their midst.
 
“A minstrel, a song-maker. Come, no field-work for you. Shelter, a place to sleep, all you can eat. And the price is your songs.”
 
“You may not care for my songs,” said Lir modestly.
 
But the men only clapped him on the shoulder. They took him up the street to the cut-stone house where the village’s most important family lived.
 
Soon the doors stood open and the big room was crammed with men and women. They had roused their children from sleep and brought them, and the babies. The very old were brought, the sick, if they could manage it. For who did not know, even in these remote lands far north of the cities, the power of a song-maker?
 
They gave Lir a cup of ale, but he would take nothing else yet. It was his habit to play before he ate. He undid the bronze box and lifted out the harp. There was scarcely a sound in all the crowded room. They watched as he tuned the harp. It was made of a light blond wood, polished by use. The sound-box had a plate of brown bone, the pegs were bronze. The strings glinted like silver hair combed taut on the frame.
 
Presently, Lir began to make a song for the people in the cut-stone house, and the harp woke and came alive in his hands.
 
Lir never chose a song out of himself, the harp would choose it. Somehow, the thin bright notes of the harp would find the song, and when the moment was ripe, Lir would begin to sing it. Now, when the moment came, his voice rose effortless and sure. Sometimes it would be an old song, one he had learned from the wandering harpers he had heard as a child, or met with later on his own wanderings. Sometimes a new song, which created itself as it was sung. Sometimes it was a little of both. And sometimes, even Lir was uncertain, singing it, of the song’s exact meaning. Yet always the song was the right one, for the harp made it.
 
Lir was a true harper. From the earliest, probably it had been so. Sooner than he could walk, he had sung. No doubt he sang nonsense then, but yet it was noticed. He was born one of many, the seventh son, and there were daughters too. Gladly, his parents apprenticed him to a roaming minstrel who was laid up through the winter in their village with a sore leg. And later, when a rich cousin died and money was available, they sent Lir off to learn in the Song-Makers’ School in the town. The school taught many things: the arts of rhyming and shaping, of tricks and cunning and showmanship, for fingers and tongue alike. It taught etiquette, and how to flatter, and how to make it seem each verse you sang was fresh, devised only for him you sang it for that hour. From this school, and others like it, a minstrel might go and get himself a place at some castle court, even at some lord’s house in a city. At sixteen, Lir with his beautiful voice, his skill and all the school had taught him, was fair set for such a place. He could have had pride and fame and wealth, but it was not to be.
 
One summer night, a minstrel came to the town.
 
It was a night when the moon was large and lasting, and a night-market was being held in the town square. By the sheep-pens and between the stalls and along the avenues where the red torches were stuck on poles, the minstrel strode. He was a wild-haired man with wild eyes. On his cloak were serpents of yellow thread, and on his back a box of yellow ivory. Any minstrel was generally popular. He would bring news, stories, good cheer, and welcome dreams to combat harsh reality. Perhaps his harping would ease the sick and the sad. Still, this was a town with a school of minstrels in it. Minstrels were a commonplace here. Yet the people stared at this one.
 
At the center of the market place, he sat down cross-legged on a bale of straw. Opening his ivory box, he took out a harp, and set it in the crook of his arm. But he didn’t play. He only sat, looking about him. Finally a girl cried from the market crowd: “Come, man. Let’s have a tune we can dance to.”
 
Then the minstrel cried back: “It isn’t my night for dancing tunes, my girl. Nevertheless, this harp of mine is eager. I will tell you what. About my neck is a yellow gem. Let any man come up here and make a song with this harp of mine, and whoever pleases me the best, he shall have the gem.”
 
This was new: a minstrel who paid others to do his business. But the jewel he had pulled from his neck looked to be a rare one. Pretty soon a lout came over and took the harp, and struck up a discordant jig. There was much laughter and abuse. Next, another man approached, with more talent. Several of the young men from the Minstrels’ School were close at hand, walking about through the market. Eventually, one of these moved to take the harp. He played well, as if at a lord’s feast. When he was done, he gazed at the minstrel with the gem-stone, to see if he had won it. But the man grinned and sent him away with a “Good enough, but not good enough for me.”
 
After that, the young men of the school came thick and fast, vying with each other, joking and calling the wild-eyed minstrel an oaf when he dismissed them. “Doubtless this wanderer would play us all into Hell,” they said. “Probably the Dark One himself, Hell’s Prince, invites this old chap in to harp for him, after his supper of bats’ brains.”
 
“And maybe he does at that,” said Wild-Eye, and the serpents rippled on his cloak. But the yellow jewel never left his grip.
 
A deal of music was made, all of it excellent now, and the crowd in the market-place was enjoying itself. The moon burned high and the torches burned low. Still, the yellow jewel had not changed hands.
 
For some while, Lir had been standing at the edge of the crowd, watching. The show entertained him, and strangely troubled him, too. He felt a wrongness. Certainly, he had no intentions of adding his own efforts to the contest. Those he considered superior to himself had failed with the exacting minstrel. Besides, Lir had a girl with him, a pretty girl, and summer nights are short.
 
It was just as Lir was getting ready to turn away that the minstrel called out to him.
 
“You, the fair-haired boy. You’ve been staring long enough. Now let us hear what you can do.”
 
Lir felt the blood come up in his face, but he said: “It’s not my night for harping either, sir. I’ll sit the game out, with you.”
 
The minstrel shook his head. He said: “Don’t disappoint the harp. She chose you, not I.”
 
Then a thing happened which was discussed at some length afterwards. For the harp was leaning by the minstrel’s knee, and he never touched it that anyone saw, but it gave off a fierce twanging moan.
 
Lir discovered he had left his girl and was strolling across to the straw bale where the minstrel sat.
 
Lir had already learned to be sure of his trade in public, for the school taught that, too. In any case, with song or harp, he had never been shy. But he accepted the minstrel’s harp with some caution. It seemed made entirely of bone; Lir had never handled the like of it. However, leaning on the bale, he prepared to tune the harp. The minstrel touched his shoulder. “No need,” said the minstrel. “Only play.”
 
“What will you have then?” Lir asked.
 
“Not what I will have, but what the harp will give.”
 
Lir shrugged. He had a mind to sing one of the songs the school had introduced him to, a ballad of clever gibberish, to make the crowd laugh. But when his fingers met the strings, a vast fall of notes spilled from them, like water drops. He had not planned them, could not better them. And with a curious trembling of the heart, Lir let Wild-Eye’s harp lead him. The song which rose was one he did not know, nor could he form it again, after. But it was very fine. It burst from him as leaves burst from the trees in spring, as marvellous and as natural. The music carried him away as if it had loaned him wings.
 
When the last chord died, only silence was left, and the moon overhead, like a visible white piece of the silence.
 
Lir realized the minstrel was attempting to retrieve his harp. The minstrel coaxed him, softly. “Leave go, she isn’t yours. You must fashion a harp of your own. I will tell you how. Do you know the shrine at the cross-roads, half a mile from the town? I’ll meet you there at midnight.”
 
Lir was dazed, but he had the wit, or lack of it, to frown and ask: “Why?”
 
“Meet me, and see.”
 
Then the minstrel had leapt off the bale. He bellowed about him in the big fluid voice only a trained singer could muster: “And now I will award the prize.”
 
And striding to a member of the Minstrels’ School who had played earlier, Wild-Eye hung the yellow gem about his neck.
 
The people in the square were astonished. They jeered. Even the fellow who had the prize was taken aback. Nobody there could blind himself to the fact that Lir had proved himself the prince of harpers. Lir should have had the prize.
 
Only Lir didn’t care. He knew, with a giddy sort of drunken bewilderment, that the prize was not the jewel.
 
--

An hour later, standing at the cross-roads under the wooden shrine with the saint-statue in it, Lir began to wonder if he had gone mad. The moon was sinking over the roofs of the distant town. Just now it was poised behind the watch tower. Under that tower the pretty girl and Lir had parted company, and not in the most friendly manner. Lir thought of this and called himself a fool. Besides, did he need to be told how to construct a harp? Didn’t he know? And were there not, anyway, sufficient harps already being made in the town for the young men at the school to pick from? Fool indeed. Then Wild-Eye appeared at the roadside, apparently from nowhere.
 
There was no traffic about so late, though the gates of the town had remained open for the market. The minstrel approached the shrine. He bowed to the saint, and put his finger to the saint’s wooden foot, then licked the finger for luck.
 
“Well,” said Lir impatiently. “Did you summon me here to make an ass of me?”
 
“No, but I will tell you how to be an ass, if you wish,” said Wild-Eye. “Complete your days at your rhymers’ school, then seek a place at some lord’s court. Harp him for dinner and harp him to his bed. Praise his plain fat daughters for their beauty and his idiot sons for their sagacity. Coin phrases concerning the noble valor of his forefathers, who were land-thieves, pirates and cowardly back-stabbers. And when he throws you a purse of gold, catch it in your mouth as his hounds catch the meat he throws them.”
 
Lir said noncommittally, “I don’t deny there’s truth in what you say. To be a court minstrel is to do all that. And worse, perhaps.”
 
“Well,” said Wild-Eye, “I think it a canny profession for those suited to it. But you are meant for another.”
 
“Because your harp would let me play her?”
 
“Because all the gods, the old gods and the young, have made you a minstrel. Now I will instruct you in the fashioning of a harp. You will memorize what I say, and if you act on it, then you will have powers indeed. After that, you can select your own destiny. I shan’t be near to see if you are wise or an ass.”
 
Then Wild-Eye began to gabble. It was all in verse, the easier to be remembered, possibly, though maybe it was merely his jest. The gabbling was quite awful. The wild eyes rolled in their sockets, the hands clawed and gesticulated, the minstrel jerked from foot to foot as if he were possessed, or suffering a fit. Distracted, amused and unnerved, Lir never reckoned to recall a word. But he recalled every one of them, and some were terrible. He had guessed at once it was not simply a harp he would be making, but an instrument of magic.
 
When Wild-Eye concluded, Lir drew a breath and said carefully:
 
“Not for me, I think. It sounds dangerous, not to say unlawful. And I may botch the job.”
 
The minstrel answered that with a string of foul words, yet without violence, more like a man spitting to clear his throat. Then he said, “Brother my brother, you may do it or not, as you please. But I warn you of this: If you do not, though you become the richest dog in the courts of the lords, your soul will ache like a rotten tooth.”
 
Lir looked down at his feet, searching for a reply.
 
When he looked up again, the minstrel was twenty long strides away along the track. The serpents on his cloak thrashed as if they were alive, and the ivory harpbox shone in the last of the moon.
 
Lir trudged back to town feeling stupid and confused.
 
The next morning there was a mild uproar. The yellow gem the minstrel had awarded had turned into a shrivelled acorn in the night.