Feast of the Elfs

by John C. Wright

  And by this, Gil knew Dornar mean to strike him dead.

  5. The Custom of the Feast

  Gil scowled. It was not as if he had not been warned that splendor of the elfs was but a trap. Had he been worried that this place was too dangerous for Nerea to visit? It was too dangerous for him to visit. He had no training with the sword, no skill. He was not even sure how to hold it.

  He saw the look of fear and sorrow on Ruff’s bewildered face: the dog’s eyes were dark and wet, his ears drooped mournfully.

  Ruff would not even be able to tell his mother what had happened to him, or how he had come to be killed by his own brother. All those years she spent on the road, hiding Gil, instead of living in an elfish palace as a princess, it would all be a waste.

  In his mind’s eye, against his will, Gil saw the picture of what his mother would look like at his graveside, pale and calm and sorrowing, with silent tears in long silver lines drawn down her cheeks.

  Sir Aglovale stood and said to Sir Dornar, “Brother, it is not meet that we should sully our blades on such business during a festive time.”

  But Sir Lamorak, the second brother, spoke without rising, “A feast is not spoiled if one who spoils it dies. The ladies were sore displeased by his remarks. Is it not a knightly duty to restore their joy?” And he raised his cup to the ladies in the chamber, who giggled gaily.

  Sir Dornar smirked and spoke loudly. “Is the stranger who was so unguarded in his speech now wary of the consequences of his untamed tongue? The Swan Knight is most right to be afraid.”

  Gil said, “Sir, I was thinking of your mother’s sorrow should her son die.”

  Sir Dornar blushed red with anger. “Why keep you talking of her? She has forgotten me and flown back to heaven! Heaven hates the earth—why else would it place itself so high above us, at such a far remove? She forgot her name and honor as well! A curse on all the Moths!”

  Gil said stiffly, “This tale is untrue, and unworthy of you, Sir Knight, and your curse merely curses yourself, and every brother and cousin you have.”

  Sir Aglovale, the oldest brother, said to Gil, “Pardon me, but you are too free with your speech. Let cooler heads and tongues more discreet prevail. If you were a known knight, I would know your face. Have you ever fought before? The contest is unequal—Sir Dornar is famed for his strength—it would be execution. A contest of wrestling or archery would serve this noble company more fittingly.”

  Gil wondered whether he should say that he had fought Sir Dornar previously, but thought this would give away too much.

  Sir Aglovale continued, “Swan Knight, I bear you no enmity. Apologize, beg my brother for his pardon, and admit you spoke falsely, and I will prevail upon him to spare your life.”

  Ruff whimpered. Gil dared not look at him.

  Gil felt as if two impossible pressures were pushing in on his heart in two opposite directions. He wanted to live: life was sweet, and the world held more wonders than he had even imagined, which, if he died, he could never see. But the opposite pressure was even stronger: he did not want to live as a coward, or a liar.

  It was not that he was too proud to apologize. It was that he thought the truth was more beautiful than sunlight, and lies were worse than sewer filth. And what was a liar, after all, but another type of coward, someone afraid of the truth?

  Gil said, “I can apologize for disturbing the ladies, which I did not mean to do.”

  Sir Aglovale frowned terribly. “That is not enough.”

  Sir Lamorak said airily, “He mocks us, brethren. He mocks us.”

  Sir Dornar said, “You must say you lied a false and craven and base lie.”

  Gil said, “No.”

  Sir Dornar looked surprised. “No? Have you nothing else to say but no?”

  Gil bowed his head, “I should say, no, Sir Knight. I do not lie. You do. You and your brothers tell that story to hide your shame. A mother who forgets the world and flies back to paradise makes her absence her fault, not yours.”

  But now Erlkoenig, the Emperor, held up his black gloved hand. The trumpeter played a flourish. Erlkoenig said, “We ask this Swan Knight if he be a knight in truth. Have you the spurs of a knight, or the lands of a knight given you by Arthur, or by any lord? We know you are sworn to Arthur as his man, but did you swear to be his knight?”

  Gil was blushing, ashamed, and he knew his cheeks were red because the saw the expressions in the many cruelly elfin eyes, who all were staring at him.

  But he would not lie. “Your Imperial Majesty, I have none of those things.”

  Ethne the May Queen leaned forward and said in a voice of lilting exasperation, “But then why did you introduce yourself as the Swan Knight? How droll! You are nothing but the Swan Squire!”

  Gil said, “But, Majesty, I did not introduce myself as the Swan Knight. Phadrig Og did!”

  Ethne smiled and said, “Oh? It is not a knight’s place to undo deceits that grant him too much honor? But if you are a churl and not a knight, I suppose you may let falsehoods stand tall, and leave the task for fitter hands. Churls are so very lazy!”

  And everyone laughed at that. It was scornful laughter, the sound of disbelief. Gil wondered by what trick he now looked like a liar to them all. Except he saw the champion of Ethne, the giant Bran, did not laugh.

  Erlkoenig said, “Knights of Alberec, wisdom counsels you waste not your mettle on this one. He slew two worthless servants of mine, halfbreed Cobweb villains I use for uncouth work. This told me their incompetence, which is knowledge I had need of. In return, I extended him the courtesy of enrolling his heraldry in my herald’s lists, and extended him the courtesy of knighthood. The courtesy, I say, but not the substance. Let us continue the festivities: the matter will resolve itself, I doubt not, before Epiphany, in some more natural way.”

  Gil saw Ruff bristle. He knew his dog well enough to read his mood: there was danger here.

  Erlkoenig continued, “Sons of Alain le Gros, you see the Swan Knight—so let us call him, for he gives no other name—is of insufficient rank to meet you in honorable combat.”

  Whispers echoed throughout the chamber, while Gil stood there, feeling miserable. He told himself he should not care what these strange and evil creatures thought. And yet still he blushed.

  Gil also heard a dry, cracked, and wheezing voice behind him. It was the merest whisper, but, thanks to the clarity of the air, it sounded as if it were at his elbow. “After the festival, Captain Cobweb, you must mark which way he departs. You have a good nose. Good Doctor Cobweb will employ his terrible weapons.”

  Then came a second voice, this one lilting, laughing, “What if I take a fancy to the sword, old Professor Cobweb, and keep it myself?”

  A deep voice answered, in soft and angry tones. It sounded like words escaping through clenched teeth. “Silence, fool! Be still! Be he man or elf or half-ish like ourselves, die he will. But not by my hand: cousin Guynglaff has the prior claim to the corpse, Erlkoenig to the sword. More to say is unsafe in this place.”

  There was a slight hum in Gil’s hearing, a sense of pressure in his ear. He realized that no one else in the chamber had heard the voices talking, for they had cloaked their words under a glamour. But somewhere in the room, perhaps among the servants, were three Cobwebs, creatures half-human and half-elfin, seeking his death. He looked carefully left and right, among the lower tables and the gathered servants, but did not see who was talking.

  Alberec said to Gil, “Return to your seat, unknightly Swan Knight. You are in the bear’s jaws, but you are too small a fish to swallow, so he spits you back. Sons of Alain le Gros! You are fine and loyal knights, but peace and courtesy must keep this feast. I would not have a knight of mine these twelve holy days fight anyone on whom our Emperor, the Erlkoenig, such courtesy bestows, lest I prick old wounds or start new broils between us. Some other event, no doubt, will arise in time to satisfy the custom…”

  A horn blew.

  It was not a silvery horn like the summe
r elfs were wont to use, nor the harsher blast of the winter elf horns. It was a bold and ringing roar of soaring sound, bold as the roar of a lion, great as the trumpet of an elephant, loud as an explosion. Gil felt his heart expand and his spine straighten just to hear it.

  But the Elfs and Efts, Nibelungs and Nephilim, Sea-folk and Fomorians felt far otherwise, for they flinched and quailed, and the ladies clapped hands to ears and shrieked. Ruff and other canine-faced creatures, pookas or cooshee or lycanthropes, set up a howling wail.

  More strange than that, like the bells Gil had once heard chiming, this horn held a dreamlike note, and the sound seemed to come from above the ground, perhaps above the sky, beyond the circles of the world, but also, at the same time, from a tiny spot inside Gil’s head, right inside his ear.

  The door of diamond shattered, and bright dust was flung to either side.

  There in the archway loomed a muscular figure twelve feet tall and green as holly leaves. He was mounted on a hairy steed twenty four hands high and green as grass. In one fist he held the body of the man at arms who had been guarding the door, Corylus son of the Hazel Nymph. In his other huge fist, was the other, Lemur the son of the Lilim. Whether stunned or dead, Gil could not determine.

  With a great shrug, the giant figure tossed the two men aside, and their armor clattered and rang on the marble.

  “Is there none to give me welcome? Is there none to give me cheer?”

  Chapter Eight: The Green Man

  1. The Wager

  Alberec raised his hand and said to the Green Man, “Welcome, lord, whoever you might be. The discourtesy you proffer my doorwardens I excuse, if you grant your oath that you are come to join in our play and good festivity, no foe to disturb these solemnities. From what world are you, dark or bright?”

  The green steed stepped forward, its hoofs clapping loudly on the marble. The rider came closer to the fire pit, and the servants of the elfs, carrying tiny lights like fireflies, now gathered near the horsemen to see him better.

  The man was muscled like a weightlifter, immense of bone and thew. He wore an emerald mantle, lined within with ermine. Hose of green clung to his thighs, and green stockings to his feet, which were bare of any boots. Emeralds and jade adorned his belt, olive his coat, lime his tunic, which was worked with lizards, beetles and garden snakes.

  His face and hands were waxy like holly. And yet, for all this, it was his hair that was most extraordinary. The hair of his head was thicker than a horse’s mane, a mass like a hood falling down his spine and hiding his shoulder and arms down to the elbows. His beard was a magnificent verdant bush springing from his cheeks to fall as a full thicket halfway to his broad copper buckle. The hair climbed so far up his check that only his nose was visible, and it was a false nose, made of copper, so large as to make the monstrous figure look like a bird. His mouth was lost in the verdure.

  Gil was startled to see the figure wearing dark sunglasses. But nothing else about the huge figure seemed to come from the world of men.

  Armor or weapon he carried none, except that from his saddle bow there hung a Frankish ax with a two yard tall haft of seasoned oak bound with rings of iron.

  But them the cluster of little firefly lights emitted squeaks and insect-cries, and fled in all directions, and the looming figure was dim and dusky, lit by firelight alone.

  Next to Gil, the Glashan muttered very softly, “Whatever being that is, he cannot be an elf or eft.”

  Gil whispered, “Why not?”

  “Cold-forged iron elfs will never touch. It is the metal given to Tubal-cain alone, the son of Cain. It is Man’s metal.”

  Gil look at the stranger’s height and width and hue. “That is no man.”

  But Gil stared at the huge green fellow carefully. Not only was he not coated in illusion, the colored shadows that filled the chamber were avoiding him and his ax of iron.

  The Green Man spoke. “No shield, no helm, no brazen corset wear I. Not even my feet are shod. If I appeared before you in my war gear, so terrible is my habergeon and war-spear that fully half the hall of these beardless boys would go blind with terror at the sight, and the other half would die of fright. In peace I come, to spread merriment and mirth within your joyless moping halls, O bedamned elfs. I have a wager to propose. Shall we game?”

  Alberec said, “You are no elf. Come you from heaven or hell?”

  “Did not Lucifer himself from heaven descend, in days gone by? Tell me which way you are going, and I will tell you from which way I come!”

  Alberec said, “In this gracious season of merry making and peace, I would welcome even a devil to the feast, if he will do us honor, share our mirth, and do no harm.”

  “Mirth for myself I shall have aplenty, little king, and any who is worthy to partake of it, let him look to it. As for your feast, I will not chew acorns with swine in your sty. Far and wide both spirits and birds, ghosts and mermaids tell tales of the splendor, bravery and noble courtesy of the elfs, and especially of those who adorn the court of Alberec! I see you seated here with ladies in waiting, serving maids, little girls, and, aha! More girls in fancy dress, disguised as knight and fighters, but with hearts as soft and gentle as any hens’—where are these bold fighters of whom so many tell? Bring them forth! I see only cowards and churls!”

  Gil from where he sat could not see who stood up first, but he saw Esclados the Red was on his feet, calling for his sword. Bran of Ys, like a landslide in reverse, was moving upward as he stood, and by magic the chamber seemed great enough to accommodate him. Tethra of the Speaking Sword was on his feet, calling for permission to draw his blade, and in a cold and ringing voice, that same sword, Orn, in the seat beside him, called the same. Sir Aglovale and Sir Dornar likewise had arisen, and were shouting. Then dozens more knight arose, and then all.

  All were shouting, demanding to avenge the insult. Only two fighting men there were still seated: Gil himself and Sir Breunis Sans Pitie. Gil sat because he did not really know what was going on. Breunis was leaning back in his chair, fingering his moustaches and peering warily from side to side, moving nothing but his eyes.

  The Green Man uttered an enormous laugh, a giant’s laugh, placing both hands on his belly and throwing back his bushy green head until his copper beak of a nose pointed at the treeroots in the ceiling.

  “Come now!” He roared. “This is a time of peace for elfs and men alike! Your strength is less than the fearful stinging of butterflies to me! No duel of swords, no passage of lances, or frightful wrestling that breaks the bones do I propose! A simple wager, this, a matter of honor. I have heard that the Children of Nox and Aer, Lords of the Night World, you fine princes of the elfin race, were the noblest creatures under the starry sky, superior to men!” With these words, he heaved aloft the iron ax, and, though mounted on his green steed, with one blow smote it into the marble floorstones underfoot, where it struck and rang, and stayed.

  The Green Man removed his hand from the axe, and with his knee, commanded his steed to take one large step backward. The iron ax had broken the stones, but Gil saw that the shine and beauty of the marble was gone from them for a yard in each direction. The iron axe seemed to be in the middle of a pool of dirty darkness that spread outward from the blade until it was about three feet in radius.

  The shouting died suddenly. The knights and warlords were staring at the ax in horror.

  Gil whispered to the Glashan, “What is that? That black pool?”

  The Glashan whispered back, “Titania charmed these stones when they were laid not to age and fade with time.”

  Gil understood. “Where iron touches, the spell is broken, and all the years of wear and tear return. Is that it?”

  Ruff the Dog said, “Oh! Oh! Perfect stranger whom I do not know! Whenever the maids are too lazy to sweep and mop the marble floor, they cover it with a glamour to make it bright again. That spell breaks too.”

  The Green Man bellowed, “My game is simple: an exchange. Let your bravest and mightiest
here smite me with this mine axe as hard and hardy a blow as he can muster. I will not dodge, nor duck, nor step aside. Hoolah! I will kneel to the blow! One blow and one alone he shall strike. But this the price I demand in turn: that he then come kneel before me at a time and place of my choosing, that I might return, with this same axe, one stroke and one only.”

  The silence, if it were possible, grew even heavier.

  Alberec said, “This game is not in keeping with the merry and gentle spirit of the season.”

  The Green Man said, “Not so, O king. Everyone knows the Christmas custom you keep here, not to eat of the golden boar until after some deed of arms is done, or duel, or contest of strength. May not a stranger keep your custom with you? I overheard a moment past you fretting that your elfish warriors and knights grow soft and craven with none but their own brothers to fight, and that over trifles of no worth. You are shallow as shadows, all of you: the outline of knighthood is here, but no substance!”

  Alberec said, “There is some contrivance in your wager. How do we know you have not some charm to protect you from your own weapon?”

  The Green Man laughed again. “Spoken like a fearful Son of Adam, mortally afraid to die. Where are the elfs? Where are the princes of the elfs? I heard that they kept feast here! But I see no sign of them!”

  And with these words he dismounted, strode hugely over to where Gil was sitting, yanked up the dinner fork Gil had been using, a miniature trident nearly a foot long with wickedly sharp tines. The Green Man strode back to where his huge axe was still sticking in the cracked and blackened stones. The Green Man held up his bare left hand and drove the tines of the fork into it fiercely, over an inch deep. He yanked out the fork with a hiss of pain and threw it clattering to the marble floor. Blood came from his palm and dripped to the floor.