by S. K. Sayari
All became Undone.
Pavane for a Prince
Christiana Matthews
Lights blazed from every public room in the palace, but the ballroom outshone them all. Crystal chandeliers magnified the glow of a hundred candles, and light flared from silver sconces around the walls.
Prince Aubrey Serrar, heir to the tiny principality of Serrarn Isle, put up his hand to shield his eyes from the glare and made his way through the bejewelled, perfumed, and chattering throng to the adjacent card room—which, if equally noisy, at least promised something stronger to drink. Not that wine would make him feel any better. He pushed a hand through his dark hair and winced. Great Goddess, his head felt as if it were about to fall off!
“Aubrey?” Before he could reach that comparative sanctuary, a soft hand touched his arm and the anxious face of his betrothed appeared at his side. “What ails you? You don’t look at all well.”
Elayna, as always, glowed with health. Her cheeks were faintly flushed, her blue eyes sparkled, and her fine, flaxen hair, coming loose from its ribbons, clustered in ringlets about her elegant neck.
He laid a hand over hers and summoned a smile. “It’s nothing. I’m tired, that’s all.”
“Will you dance with me? People expect it, you know, at a betrothal ball.” Her smile was a little hesitant.
The hammers began beating at his brow ridge again. He had loved to dance, once. Now…now it was the most exquisite torture he knew. A craving that consumed him, crowding out all other thoughts and the faint pricking of conscience. But perhaps…perhaps just this once he could resist the call, the damnable insistent call which drew him away from the palace. It had drawn him, night after night, for…gods, he couldn’t even remember how long.
Surely he could resist, for once, if he was any sort of man. He owed Elayna one dance at least on the night they announced their engagement.
“Of course,” he started to say, but at the sight of the swaying dancers the familiar need arose, tightening his muscles and clawing at his stomach. Sweat broke out on his brow and his hands began to shake uncontrollably.
“Aubrey?” Elayna’s voice held the seeds of panic. “Perhaps you should lie down. I think you need a physician.”
“No!” The world’s greatest healer would be unable to help him, to cure the canker which ate at his soul.
Several guests glanced at them curiously. He removed her hand and stepped away from her, lowering his voice. “I can’t, Elayna. I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry, but…but I’ve just remembered I have to speak to my father.”
Leaving her alone, frowning and confused in the middle of the ballroom, he cravenly fled. The call was building in his blood, in his soul, taunting him, pulling him, drawing him away, out of the gates of the palace, down to the stables, and deep into the forest.
The next hour passed as if in a dream or a drug-fueled haze. He could recall nothing of the ride. He didn’t even remember going to the stables; he never did. But somehow there he was, mounted on his favourite dun gelding with a tall russet hound at his side, miles away from the ball, his family, Elayna, and everything and everyone he should care about. Still did care about, in some tiny, rebellious corner of his mind. Some part of him recognized the wrongness of this. Some flicker of his own identity still struggled to break free, but each time he made this trek the whispering magic overcame it a little more.
He slid to the ground, trembling with a familiar mixture of exhaustion, dread, and guilt—of shameful anticipation. Several times he’d thought he heard somebody following, but a cursory glance behind revealed no one, and the pull had become so strong he could barely think of anything else.
A small hillock, covered with brilliant green moss, appeared in a perfectly circular clearing among the trees. By now activating the spell was automatic; he spoke the words without thinking:
“Open, bright hill, green hill, in the name of the dancing hind,
Allow the young man entrance, with his horse and his hound behind.”
And heard, with a shiver of horror, a dulcet voice add to the formula:
“And also allow his lady, for her own peace of mind.”
Elayna! Elayna had followed him. He tried to turn and expel her, but the otherworld enchantment had him firmly in its grip and he could only move forward. Forward, through the veil and into the faery realm.
Behind him, Elayna gasped in astonishment, and he recalled—almost fondly—how he’d reacted to his first sight of the Faery Hall beneath the hollow hill. Nothing in his father’s palace or any citadel of man could compare to it. Gold, silver, copper, bronze, and all manner of precious stones were lavishly employed, but the effect was not garish. The skill and artistry on display would make any craftsman weep with envy and with joy.
Jewel-studded silver or gold also adorned the exquisite inhabitants, encircling their arms, wrists, and necks or hanging from their ears. More gems glittered in their hair, and their multi-coloured raiment shimmered with the sheen of silk and the lustre of golden cloth. The air, far from being musty as one might expect from an underground cavern, was redolent of lilies, honeysuckle, and rose.
How much was real and how much was illusion Aubrey could not have said, but that was immaterial. All that mattered was the music, the glorious, transcendent music, and the dance. As the faery folk led the horses and the dog away, a slender, sylph-like creature wearing celadon and emerald green drifted toward him, both hands extended in invitation. He shivered, wanting to refuse, to turn away. But he couldn’t. Even with Elayna watching, he couldn’t deny the need.
First, the faery woman led him into a galliard, stately yet lively, then the Queen’s Almaine and a succession of circle and country dances, followed by an indecent but exhilarating exercise called a ‘waltz,’ and finally—mercifully—a slow and elegant pavane. At the end of it he collapsed onto a long settee, chest heaving and perspiration sheening his brow, his breath coming in gasps. His green-clad companion had disappeared, but several others took her place, chivvying him, plying him with fans, urging him to continue. With an effort, ignoring his aching feet, burning calves, and pounding heart, he pushed them away and stumbled over to Elayna, still standing wide-eyed against the wall.
“Get out of here!” he said urgently, gripping her by the shoulders. “You shouldn’t be here, Elayna. This place is evil—it eats you. Devours you. Why in the Lady’s name did you follow me?”
She didn’t try to escape his hold; just regarded him with troubled blue eyes. “I wanted to find out what was wrong. How long has this been going on, Aubrey?”
“I don’t know. A few weeks…a couple of months maybe. What does it matter? Please, Elayna, beloved, you have to leave!”
She ignored him. “You’ve been ill for almost a year. When did it start, or do you not even know?” Her frown deepened at his flustered response. “You don’t, do you? You’re befuddled by their enchantments. No wonder you’re always bone-tired if this is how you’ve been spending your nights.” She gave a short, incredulous laugh. “And to think I feared a more traditional rival. A mistress, a courtesan—even a common whore. Or do they offer those services too?’
He flushed, dropped his hands, and looked away. It had, in fact, begun with a seduction, a chance encounter in a tavern with a bewitching raven-haired creature in a filmy, blood-red gown. His flesh quivered at the memory. He didn’t have extensive experience in the arts of love but was reasonably certain that even the most high-flying courtesan could learn a thing or two from the succubus who’d first lured him inside the hill. Soft, skillful hands, warm, luscious lips, and a tongue far more flexible than any human woman’s.
But the pyrotechnic sex, he had soon discovered, was but a precursor to the real objective—to addict him to the dance. For no woman’s touch, not even the faery woman’s, roused in him the exultant frisson of desire that was the faery dance. It did not, he thought bitterly, bode well for his marriage bed. Providing he made it as far as his wedding.
“Aubrey.” Lon
g, slender hands—some dark-skinned, some pale, some tawny—wound about his waist and tangled in his hair. “Come away, Aubrey. Come to us; dance with us. We need you.”
He tried to pull away, but they were much too strong. Even one of them could throw him around like a child’s toy, for all their seeming frailty. He followed them back onto the floor, stumbling with exhaustion, and felt his heart leap and almost stop when he saw a tall, elegant male bow to Elayna and lead her out as well.
“No!” Sheer terror for his betrothed gave him the strength to tear himself from their grasp. “Let her go!” He tried to shove the creature away, but it was like pushing against solid brick.
The man—if you could call him that, with his pointed ears and ruby eyes—subjected Aubrey to a long, deliberate, and vaguely insulting scrutiny. “From the dance? Certainly, although such an enchanting creature would surely perform with beauty and grace. But from this hall? I think not.”
Aubrey’s spine tried to burst from his skin and wrap itself around his throat. “You can’t keep her here! This is my future wife! She must come home with me to her rooms in the palace.”
The faery smiled cruelly, displaying white teeth set between long, pointed canines. “Very well; I’ll make you a bargain. The woman stays here tonight, just for a single night, and when you return on the morrow…we’ll see if you still desire to remove her.”
Aubrey thought of stories he’d heard, of people emerging from a night beneath the hollow hill to find that years had passed in the outer world. He shook his head and the faery, correctly divining his alarm, reassured him.
“Time will flow the same, both within the hill and without. Nor will her virtue be compromised. Make your choice on the morrow, mortal man, or forfeit both your lives now.”
Aubrey swallowed. They’d never proposed violence before, but then he supposed they hadn’t needed to. This was the first time he’d ever dared to deny or defy them.
“If you harm her—if you so much as touch her—I swear I’ll find a way to kill you.” His voice shook from a combination of anger and fear.
Again, that smile. “You have my word, Prince. Your lady is our honoured guest, and I promise we’ll treat her as such. She’ll know none of the delights that you have. You realize, do you not, that my kind never lie?”
Aubrey nodded, although the assurance failed to calm him. They might not lie outright, but they could twist and obscure the truth better than any courtier or politician. At last he said, looking not at the faery but at Elayna, “Wait for me, beloved. I promise to return and do whatever I must to bring you home again.”
Elayna’s lip trembled and tears stood in her eyes, but he knew she had too much courage and pride to indulge in useless protest. He rode away with a heavy heart.
As always, Aubrey entered the palace via a side door. Moving stealthily and pausing at intervals to check that the way was clear, he ascended to his room on the third floor via a servant’s stairway. Even at this hour he had to take care to avoid the occasional maid, but over time he’d learned the safest, least-used route.
He didn’t bother to undress, just wrenched off his boots—another skill he’d had to learn since this craziness had begun; it used to take his manservant half an hour to ease the moulded leather over his calves without marking that glossy perfection—and threw himself into bed fully clothed. Another hairline crack had appeared in the ceiling, and the resident spider had moved her web to the far corner. It had amused him, once, tracking the battle between spider and servants, the first seeking to maintain her webs, the second to destroy them. Now it just served as a reminder of the impermanence of life, of happiness, of joy.
Oh, gods, what if he lost her? What if he could never hold her again, his lovely Elayna? Never hear her sweet voice or look into her blue, blue eyes. Never dance with her, laugh with her. Or tell her how much he loved her.
All night he tossed and squirmed upon the down coverlet, unable to sleep. How long had it been since he’d slept through a night? He couldn’t remember. Restful slumber, boundless energy, and a tranquil life…all those things belonged in the faery-free past, the time before the hollow hill had claimed him. Staring with aching eyes at the ceiling, the chandelier, the panelled walls, and the heavy, carved wardrobes, his gaze eventually wandered across the room to the green velvet drapes. Elayna had declared her intention of changing them once this room became theirs instead of just his. Once they were wed. She’d thought green to be an unlucky colour.
Perhaps she was right. What trick, what subterfuge might the inhabitants of the hill use to make him renounce his beloved? Nothing came to mind, but he knew from bitter experience that their imagination and their capacity for cruelty far exceeded his. They must have something planned, though—else, why had they sent him home?
Morning, they’d said, but hadn’t specified the hour. He left the palace at dawn, bleary-eyed but for once clear-headed, replaying the faery lord’s promise and trying to find the kinks and tricks in it. How did they treat honoured guests? He should have tried to pin them down and get more information. She wouldn’t experience the things he had, they’d said, but he had no doubt that their repertoire of delights was beyond extensive. Thoughts of that creature doing to Elayna even half of the things his succubus had done to him kept scrolling through his mind, making his heart jump like a frightened hare and his bowels coil in pythonesque knots.
By the time he’d reached the hill’s entrance both the horse and he were lathered in sweat— one from exhaustion, the other from apprehension. Only the dog appeared unaffected; she’d simply enjoyed the run.
The words, this time, suffered no modification.
“Open, bright hill, green hill, in the name of the dancing hind,
Allow the young man entrance, with his horse and his hound behind.”
Elayna waited as promised in the centre of the hall, the faery host crowding around her. And at her side, his eyes wide with wonder and a welcoming smile on his lips, stood Aubrey’s youngest brother.
Fear tightened Aubrey’s throat and gripped his heart with cold fingers. “Byron, what are you doing here? How did you find your way into the hill?”
The boy laughed merrily, unconscious of the danger. “I’d just gone to bed last night when I heard something at the window, as though a stone had been thrown. I looked out and saw Elayna. She beckoned me, so I went down and followed her here. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful, Aubrey?”
Aubrey glanced at Elayna, who shook her head.
“It wasn’t Elayna, Byron. It was one of them, wearing a glamour.” He glared at the leader of the host. “Wasn’t it? You didn’t have time to entice my brother as you did me, so you used illusion and trickery. Send him home now!”
A golden-haired vision in violet laughed shrilly. “No, Prince, we can’t do that. We promised you a bargain, and this young man is our bargaining chip. If you wish to leave with the woman, you must forfeit the boy—and vice versa.”
Aubrey shook his head. “No. I won’t choose. I can’t. Take me and let them both go.”
Golden-hair made a moue of mock sorrow. “But you’re very nearly used up, and we need some fresh blood. I must say, you’ve done quite well. Not many of our conquests last the best part of a year. That may have been because we allowed you to leave through the day, to recover. I doubt that will be necessary with either of these two, though. They’re young, fresh. We can play all day and dance all night, and they’ll still last for months before they fade away.”
As he continued to shake his head in denial, she added coldly, “Let me make it simple for you. Choose, or we kill you all. Which might, admittedly, relieve you of a burden…but imagine the sorrow it would bring to your family. And hers.”
Aubrey closed his eyes, fighting panic. Byron was but fourteen years old, on the cusp of manhood. He was fit and agile and strong, but to be forced to dance night after night—as Aubrey was certain would happen—would eventually kill him.
But the same was true of Elay
na.
“Choose,” repeated the faery. “And know that whichever one you take with you, the other must remain with us forever.”
He took a deep breath and announced his decision.
The day they’d chosen for their wedding dawned bright, clear, and in every way perfect but one.
Elayna smoothed her white dress and gazed with tear-filled, unseeing eyes at the posy of red and white roses she carried. Red, the colour of blood and of death, and white, the colour of mourning. She listened to the priestess intone the funeral rites in a fog of near desperation, wondering if the pain would ever end, how she could summon the strength to go on.
For the Fae, in their cold, uncaring, magnificent hall, had in the end claimed not one victim, but two.
A handsome, dark-haired, dark-eyed man approached, and her heart contracted painfully at the sight. He looked so very much like Aubrey. All three brothers had shared those hawk-nosed, angular features, that slender yet well-muscled frame. Only Byron had varied the pattern, having level brows rather than arched, and hazel eyes instead of brown.
“You have my deepest condolences, Lady Elayna,” said Rupert, the middle prince. No, now the only prince, and the heir. “I can’t believe he is truly gone. The accident…” His voice broke for a moment, then he brought himself back under control. “The accident was so unforeseen. Bizarre, really. Such a little hill; anyone would have thought the horse could negotiate it with ease.” He hesitated, as if about to say more, then shook his head and patted Elayna’s shoulder. “Utterly bizarre. The dun must have ploughed into the rise at full tilt, they said. I can’t understand why Aubrey wouldn’t have even attempted to turn him aside.”
“I can,” muttered Elayna, without thinking.
“What?” Rupert looked puzzled. “What did you say?”
She shook her head and looked away. “Nothing. It was nothing.” How could she explain? They’d all think she was mad. Sometimes she thought so herself.
