After a pause, the boy arose and opened the window.
‘It is time, Jadrin.’
‘Indeed it is.’
‘If only you’d had true magic, eh?’
‘If only!’ Jadrin agreed.
‘Well, I must give you the chance, I suppose. Have you thought of my name?’
‘I have pondered it deeply,’ Jadrin said. ‘Would it be... Grizelda?’
‘No.’
‘Nanune, Riboflax, Tanteberry, Archimund?’
‘No, no, no!’ The spirit flickered with delight. Jadrin patiently recited every name, both male and female, that he could think of. All the while, the spirit glittered and spat light and laughed.
‘No,’ it said, ‘none of those. You have just one more try. Your time has run out.’
Ah,’ said Jadrin, ‘in that case, would you, by any chance, be the shade of Angeline Hope DeVanceron, dead queen of Ashbrilim?’
At these words, the spirit shrieked wordlessly in horror, manifesting itself more definitely into the form of a gaunt, bedraggled woman, clothed in the rags of a shroud, with terrible, staring eyes. ‘Sorcerer!’ she shrieked.
‘I am learning,’ Jadrin said mildly. ‘Be at peace, Angeline. You are free of flesh, so be free of pain. Why carry it with you? Fly!’
‘Never! I must have my revenge, for my broken body, my broken spirit!’
‘Broken long before you became queen,’ Jadrin said. ‘Be healed, Angeline. Fly!’
The spirit uttered a horrifying squawk and flew at Jadrin, spectral claws reaching for his face. Jadrin stepped back swiftly and picked up the broken halves of the quartz. ‘If the earth cannot contain you maybe stone can!’ he said and, reciting a spell that the witch at the roadside had sold him, he issued an Irrefutable Order that the spirit of the dead queen could not ignore or fight. She was sucked like smoke into the quartz, whereupon Jadrin snapped the two halves together. They sealed in an instant as if they had never been apart. For a few moments, the quartz glowed as if it contained a small flame within its heart, but by the time Ashalan came through the door curtains, it lay innocent and cool upon the table.
The next morning, Jadrin took the quartz and buried it deep beneath the garden of the palace. Over its grave, he planted three creepers of ivy to bind it into the ground. He surrounded it with scented flowers, and called upon the spirits of the earth to heal the essence of Angeline. In time, he hoped, when all that was dark had left her tortured soul, she would seep through the stone as a radiant light and soar to the celestial realm.He could do no more. But whether his actions in this regard were successful or not, the spirit of Angeline never bothered him, or Ashalan, again. But there is no doubt that what Jadrin did upon that night changed him forever. He took a little of Angeline’s darkness into his being.
The Nothing Child
This story and the one after it carry on directly from ‘Spinning for Gold’, and retell a lesser-known Scottish fairy tale, ‘Nicht Nought Nothing’. It illustrates how magic takes the path of least resistance and you should be very careful indeed when making deals with supernatural beings, especially in the choice of words used to make the deal.
As he grows older, Jadrin becomes a distinctly darker character, which to me made him more interesting. When I wrote this piece, my fascination with capricious angels was already in full flight, and Lailahel, the angel of conception, is a precursor to the fallen angels of my Grigori trilogy.
Jadrin, consort of the King of Cos, desired a son. He pondered long hours upon this vain hope, sitting among the dappled shadows on the palace terrace, pacing the marble stairs, watching the stars from pointed windows. Between them, it was impossible for two beings of masculine physical aspect to conceive life, but neither was Jadrin composed to commit some sordid infidelity with a woman. As for encouraging Ashalan to do so, this was beyond him, beyond the hot, possessive passion of his love. There seemed no solution to his problem, yet the yearning would not leave him. He watched the palace women with their children. Perhaps he could sate this uncontrollable and inexplicable longing by adopting somebody else’s offspring? He considered this idea and then put it aside. No, it was a child of the flesh that he wanted. Nothing else would do. So obssessed was Jadrin with this desire that others came to notice a dark and poisonous aura about him, violet with the intensity of his feelings. It was mentioned to the king in careful terms. Was Jadrin perhaps not quite in the full flower of health?
Ashalan questioned him, at first tenderly, then sharply, fearing some other reason for the change in behaviour.
Jadrin was reluctant to speak his thoughts aloud; surely the king would think him mad. His excuses only fuelled Ashalan’s suspicions. An argument ensued. Fleeing from hostile words, Jadrin ran blindly from the more inhabited areas of the palace. When his anger had left him and his breath, clutching furiously in his chest, forced him to pause and rest, he found himself amongst a clutter of abandoned buildings, far from the rich apartments he was used to. Curiosity at his surroundings chased the bitter words with Ashalan from his mind. Entranced, Jadrin began to explore. Some of the doorways had been boarded up, others left open to the elements, so that the winds had scoured the buildings barren. Naturally, it was the boarded entrances that interested him most. Especially that of a structure embellished with weathered, stone fetishes. Tearing the boards from their rusty nails, Jadrin forced an entrance into the building. All was dark inside, dark and silent. Jadrin’s flesh prickled with excitement. ‘This,’ he thought, ‘this is a place trod by other than mortal feet.’ He was right. And, as in the tradition of magical tales, it was within that place he found a great, old book...
That evening, the court noticed a change in Jadrin. He seemed more like his old self. Not everyone present at dinner was gratified to see he and Ashalan seemed to have settled their differences, but on the whole, the atmosphere was one of relief. Jadrin smiled secretively into his purple wine. Ashalan watched him carefully, mollified by Jadrin’s apologies, but still wary. He had seen this strange and guarded smile on Jadrin’s face before. It spoke of power, the kind of which Ashalan had only a cursory grasp. It made him feel as if he was sitting next to a total stranger, and someone not entirely human. It made him afraid.
Unbeknown to the king, on the night of the next full moon, Jadrin robed himself in black cloth and flowed like a vapour through the midnight gardens of the palace. He sought out a sylvan grotto, decorated with tumbled stones, that had been designed to resemble an ancient temple, artfully strung with trailing arms of ivy and convolvulus. Pale, glowing blooms exuded a secret, aching perfume into the moist darkness and above the cracked and mossy stones of the garden, the moon swam, pregnant with light, in a smooth, velvet sky, sequinned with stars. Jadrin felt energy course through the fibres of his flesh.He stood upon the stones and raised his arms to the moon. The cloth fell from his back and he was an aloof and dignified courtier no longer, but a witch-boy, the creature of his childhood, he that sang the water spirits from their gnat-gauzed homes: Jadrin, as white and deadly as the hottest of consuming flames.
He conjured forth a rare and capricious angel, whose hair burned the moss at his feet, whose eyes were pale as milk, as if blind. Jadrin had memorised an ancient invocation from the old book he had found. Some of the words made his teeth ache, some made his tongue stumble and become thick in his mouth, but he persisted. The angel swayed, sometimes fading a little as if to reprimand the boy when his words slipped.
‘Lailahel, angel of the night, prince of conception, I implore you...’
‘Implore me, nothing,’ the spirit interrupted. ‘You desire a child, yet you know this cannot be under the sway of the laws of the earth mother. You are male, Jadrin; your lover is male. There can be no issue from your union. This you know.’
‘This I know!’ Jadrin answered defiantly. ‘Yet I have summoned you, Lailahel; your power can facilitate my need. You would not have come otherwise.’
The spirit shimmered - a vagueness that could have signified amusement
or displeasure. ‘I have been called on pale, cold moon-nights by the fairest and most ill-favoured, youngest and oldest of women, yet never, in my experience, have I been summoned by a boy! Maybe I can ease your difficulties, but the Goddess will not be pleased. You risk needling her wrath.’
‘My Prince, I work magic, thus do I understand I must take responsibility for my actions. Make it happen. The child will be consecrated to the Goddess as soon as it is named.’
‘It will not be a normal child, Lord Jadrin.’
‘What is? I ask only for its body to be fair, its face to be the mirror of the moon, its mind to be swift and canny as the hounds of the Maiden.’
‘So little specification?’ The angel laughed; a sound both musical and sepulchral. ‘Very well. I shall instruct you in what to do.’
Jadrin bowed deeply. ‘I thank you, Lailahel.’ He raised his head. ‘So what is your price?’
The angel smiled. ‘My price? By the Heavenly Spheres and all their Motes, dare I ask a price for such a boon? My price is this: nothing. I want nothing from you, Lord Jadrin.’
Jadrin frowned. ‘Forgive me, but this is not the usual way.’
‘Nevertheless, it is what I ask.’
‘At least permit me to light a temple candle in your name and blend a sacred incense to be burned for the next three nights.’
The angel shrugged. ‘If such fripperies appease you, then by no means let me prevent you from realising them. If I should ask for anything, I should ask for your silence, but, as I said, I ask for nothing.’
‘You have my silence anyway. You may also have my blood, if you wish.’
The angel shook its radiant head, causing the cascade of hair to wave like weed under water. ‘No need. I want nothing from you.’
Jadrin could not help but feel uneasy. He understood that there is always a price for everything and he had been fooled by sly spirits before. However, the intensity of his desire forced him to ignore any misgivings in his heart.
He knelt upon the stones and Lailahel, prince of conception, whispered instructions as to what he must do.
The moon fell to her rest and Jadrin hurried back, like a shadow, insubstantial and furtive, to the palace and his king.
On the night of the first crescent of the waxing moon, the Maiden’s time, Jadrin bathed himself in salt water. Emerging, dripping and stinging, from the pool, he stood in the unlit bathroom of hollow echoes and slick water sounds, gazing towards the skylight, where hasty clouds muffled the stars. He closed his eyes and quickly, with a knife as sharp as a blade can be, cut the pale skin of his breast above the heart. Blood rilled eagerly over his fingers as he pressed the wound. Shaking, he knelt and lifted a silver chalice, catching a measure of the dark, warm liquid in the bowl. Inky, diluted streams ran down his body into his wet footprints. Perhaps he had cut too deep. He had not expected so much blood from a wound in that place. The air was still, watching. Magic, then. Magic. He hurried from the room, not even bothering to cover himself with a robe or towel. By the time he reached his dressing room, the wound had dried.
Ashalan slept on his back in the huge, canopied bed. Jadrin paused to regard him, filled as he always was with gratitude that such a magnificent creature could belong to him. ‘Ashalan,’ Jadrin called softly, a voice of the new, horned crown itself, ‘look, my love, to the window, the moon.’ Ashalan stirred, woken more by the invisible reverberations of the unseen blood-harp than Jadrin’s words. What he saw was the willow pale, willow slim form of the witch-boy, robed now in black, whose hair was an indigo smoke, whose eyes were black as the shadows of his hair.
‘It is late, where have you been?’ asked the King, who could not see the dark smear upon Jadrin’s breast.
‘Bathing,’ Jadrin replied in a strange, distant voice. He looked for a moment at the sky beyond the window. When he turned his gaze once more upon Ashalan, the king was almost afraid. Almost. His heart beat faster and Jadrin slipped between the sheets, cold and salty, feverish and hungry. If Ashalan thought it odd that his lover should whisper strange words throughout their pleasure, the heat of the moment put it from his mind. Not even when Jadrin speared himself on Ashalan’s lap and screamed and screamed a hundred arcane words, his body arched and tense, his hands clawing air, did Ashalan suspect that anything was different from usual. He knew Jadrin to be a bizarre and magical creature and after three years of his acquaintance knew better than to anticipate his moods and caprices. Spent and exhausted, he fell quickly into a contented sleep, where his dreams were innocent.
Jadrin did not sleep. He waited, lying motionless on his back, until Ashalan’s breathing proclaimed him unconscious. It took only a moment then to reach down for the knife that was concealed in his discarded robe. Ashalan murmured as Jadrin drew out his arm and winced as the sliver of steel licked into the soft flesh above the wrist, but he did not wake.Into the cup, to mingle with the caking ichor already within it, Ashalan’s blood dripped down. One spot fell upon the sheet. Jadrin stilled his shaking hands. No mistakes in this - no. He carefully placed the chalice on the floor, away from the heavy, swaying curtains that moved in the early morning breeze. Morning was coming through the window; there was little time. Jadrin sealed the wound on Ashalan’s arm with his own saliva. Into the dressing-room then, where a small, silver dish waited beside the mirror. Jadrin smeared the surface of the dish with Ashalan’s seed that he held in his body, blended it with a powder of his own essence. Blood and seed, dried over a flame, laced with wine, thickened and perfumed by the gums of karaya, tragacanth and myrrh, blended with a little warm milk; this was the basis of Jadrin’s elixir. Whatever else he cast into it, has not been recorded, but, by the time the sky outside was shedding its night robe for the pearl of dawning, Jadrin was slipping and darting down into the gardens once again, past the drowsing peacocks, the hanging terraces, the silent statues, to the rose garden. Here, in the yellow-rose light of dawn, he scrabbled with his bare fingers in the earth and buried the thing he had made, the blood-seed icon of desire, the egg of the dream-child. If anyone should have seen him working there, his hair and eyes all wild, they would have hidden themselves from his sight, for Jadrin in a frenzy of need was a fearsome and dangerous object to behold.
In the morning, Ashalan’s servants were intrigued by the stripes of blood upon the bathroom floor, the bloody handprint upon the doorframe. Ashalan himself was somewhat disturbed to find he had cut himself in the night and that he had bled upon the sheets. Jadrin walked through the day in a daze, but there was evidence of a smile upon his face.
Months passed, the Wheel of Life turned, seasons changed. Every day, Jadrin strolled in the rose garden, trying not to peer at the rich soil in an obvious manner. He never quite stopped believing in the spell, but as time went on and the soil remained undisturbed, the daily visits became more of a habit than an eagerness. Other matters took precedence in his life. In the east of the country, near the border of Candeleen, there lived a warrior king. His tribe was small, admittedly, but he had grand designs on the territory of Cos, and his swift, cunning warriors had become adept at worrying the skirts of the eastern duchies. Flustered and irritated, the dukes had approached Ashalan together, demanding that he employ Ashbrilim’s forces to quell the nuisance. Therefore, in the late Summer, Ashalan led his army away from the city to do battle.
Jadrin stood with the court on the battlements of the highest tower and watched the shining, prancing steeds kick dust from the highway, carrying the jewels of Ashbrilim’s manhood towards the east. Jadrin was not overly concerned about Ashalan’s safety, having worked a number of protective spells to ensure it, but he had no way of knowing how long the king would be absent, and that caused him grief.
One crisp morning when the smell of Autumn surged across the palace gardens for the first time that year, the head gardener came hurrying to Jadrin’s quarters himself, begging the servants for an interview. ‘Go away,’ Jadrin’s valet said, haughtily, ‘Lord Jadrin may not be disturbed by trifles. Take your bus
iness to the Chamberlain.’
‘The Chamberlain be damned!’ the gardener insisted. ‘I wait here until Lord Jadrin comes himself; this matter is too grave for the ears of anyone else.’
Sniffing derisively, the valet retreated and was consequently surprised by Jadrin’s animated reaction to the gardener’s request.
Maybe it was the turning of the season, the crescent of the new moon, but Jadrin knew that, at last, his spell had borne fruit. The gardener told, with wonder and amazement, how one of his underlings had been passing through the rose garden that very morning. A strange, mewing sound had attracted the boy’s attention and there, beneath the trained branches of the grandest bush, he had seen a pale-skinned baby writhing in the dirt.
‘Bring the child to me,’ Jadrin commanded and the gardener hurried away, to pluck the babe from the arms of the maids in the kitchen, where they were trying to tempt it with warmed milk.
Many grisly suppositions were whispered around the palace of how some cruel wench must have buried the child, perhaps because it was illegitimate. Perhaps she’d thought it dead. Wiser women pronounced the child a changeling, too pale, its eyes too knowing to be wholly human. Jadrin, keeping secret the occult origin of the baby, made it known that he intended to adopt it. ‘The king and I shall never have an heir,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it is this babe’s good fortune to be found upon our land.’
Some secretly questioned Jadrin’s judgement in this respect while others praised his charity.
The priests said, ‘Dedicate the child to the Goddess quickly. If it is evil perhaps the consecration will dispel all negative aspects. The boy must have a name.’
Jadrin merely shook his head. ‘The ritual must not be performed until Ashalan returns,’ he said. ‘It would not be right to do otherwise, however pressing it might seem. Let the king himself choose a name for his adopted son.’
The Thorn Boy Page 14
