The Black Beast by Nancy Springer

say,
    Hey, nonny neigh!
    Hey, nonny neigh!
    My white horse is gray.
    We’ll all turn to ducks
    At the end of a day
    And swim in the Chardri,
    And that’s why I say,
    No sense to this play!
    Hey, nonny nay.”
    â€œMad!” I muttered.
    We ate supper in watchful silence. Afterward, Tirell spoke to me in a tone I could not decipher.
    â€œTomorrow, you take the black and go on into Vaire. I will stay here.”
    â€œPerhaps I could heal the white,” I mumbled. It was Tirell’s stubbornness that had caused the situation, but as always, he somehow made me feel that it was all my fault.
    â€œWhatever you like,” he replied with no emotion at all on his lean, handsome face. “But I will not go any farther into Vaire, horse or no horse, until I have the protection of its king. I do not wish to be slain by the henchmen of my beloved father before I have had my chance at him. You can go. The Boda won’t bother with you.”
    I sat up straight in insulted protest. “They probably have their orders to kill me and bring you back alive!”
    â€œWell, maybe they won’t kill you until you have led them to me,” Tirell remarked indifferently. “Anyway, for every reason you are the one who must continue into Vaire.”
    I stared at him, astonished, but mostly at myself. His madness must have spread to me; why was I not aghast—I, the prudent one? The proposal was insane. How could I leave him, how could I even know he would be waiting when I got back? If I got back. Yet, in spite of reason, in spite of prudence, I felt recklessly willing to try the venture, as if death could not touch me.… I shook my head in bewilderment at my own daring.
    â€œVery well,” I assented. “I will go. What exactly is it that I am to do in Vaire?”
    Tirell looked back at me with a hint of impatience tugging at the mask of his face. “Go to the castle at Ky-Nule to see Fabron. Tell him we will need help to take Melior, and have him send retainers. Better yet, have him come here himself.”
    I almost sputtered at that. Such arrogance! “Why,” I asked sharply, “should he wish to help you at all?”
    Tirell replied with a smile I did not expect, a wry, mocking smile. “Oh, he will wish. You will see.”
    I said no more. I spent most of the evening struggling with the fastenings of my torque, and at length I got the golden thing off. I would be no prince when I rode across the heartland of Vaire.
    The next morning I was up with the dawn, folding my blanket to put it on the black steed. Tirell and Shamarra silently prepared to move their camp deeper into the forest. They would keep to the shelter of the trees, in the foothills of southern Acheron, until I returned. I hated to leave them. My mind could not accept this notion of leaving my brother. But mind seemed to have been taken over by some sort of fearless folly, and I could not hold back. I did not even think of asking Shamarra to go with me. We all three assumed she would stay with Tirell. There was no secret as to where her preference lay. It gave me some comfort that Tirell would have her with him, since I believed she had some power to protect him; yet her indifference galled me even worse than my brother’s.
    Tirell did not wish me good-bye. I went to give him the kiss of leave-taking and he brushed me away as if I were a gnat. Shamarra condescended to follow me to where the black horse stood waiting. “Food,” she said, and handed me the last of our meager supplies.
    â€œWhat will you eat?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “There are rabbits and berries about.”
    â€œYou’ll have no help from Tirell,” I warned her, peering toward where my brother sat among the trees and looked with hard, locked eyes at something only he could see.
    She seemed amused at my concern. “I’ll have help enough,” she replied with a hint of a smile. Help of weird trees,