The Throme of the Erril of Sherill

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  The Throme of the Erril of Sherill

  The throme of the Erril of Sherill did not exist. Yet Caerles, Chief Cnite of Magnus Thrall, King of Everywhere, set out on a quest for it because Magnus Thrall would not let his daughter, the weeping Damsen, marry without it.

  The search led to strange places and to even stranger advice. By helping Elfwyth, the small daughter of the Erle Merle, Caerles found himself riding a dagon instead of a horse and going toward the Mirk-Well of Morg. Then, when he fell into a Borebell pit and was rescued by a small boy, he found himself exchanging his sword for a star wand, which might help him at the Floral Wold, where the Throme might be.

  And so it went. From place to place he wandered, never quite finding what he sought, but always finding something, until at last he found a solution that both was and was not what he wanted.

  There is still mystery in the world and in the human mind. The Cnite Caerles explores some of those mysteries as only suggestion and the intricacies of art can.

  Copyright © 1973 by Patricia A. McKillip

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress catalog card number 73-76324

  ISBN 0-689-30115-4

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  by McClelland & Stewart, Ltd.

  Manufactured in the United States of America by

  H. Wolff, New York

  Designed by Harriett Barton

  First Edition

  To Kathy and Michele

  and Lorene

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  The Erril of Sherill wrote a Throme. It was a deep Throme, and a dark, haunting, lovely Throme, a wild, special, sweet Throme made of the treasure of words in his deep heart. He wrote it long ago, in another world, a vaguely singing, boundariless land that did not exist within the kingdom of Magnus Thrall, King of Everywhere. The King had Cnites to come and go for him, and churttels to plant and harvest for him, but no Cnite had ever looked up into the winking morning sky and seen Sherill, and no churttel had ever looked at the rich clods of earth between his boots and seen the Erril’s world. Yet the Erril, long, long ago, wrote a Throme of singular and unsurpassed beauty, somewhere in his own land called Sherill, and the dark King of Everywhere desired that Throme.

  The house of the King was a tall thing of great, thick stones and high towers and tiny slits of windows that gleamed at night when the King paced his hearth stones longing for the Throme. He had a daughter who sat with him and wept and embroidered pictures of the green world beyond the walls, and listened to her father think aloud to the pale sunlight or the wisps of candle-flame.

  “Who knows,” he would say, “Oh, who knows where lies the Throme, the Throme of peace, the Throme of loveliness, the dark Throme of Sherill? I must have it. If I had it, the most precious of all precious things, my heart would be at rest in its beauty, and I could stop wanting. If I had the Throme, I could wake at mornings knowing it belonged to me, and I could be content with the simple sunrise and the silly birds.”

  The King’s Damsen would lift her hands and let them fall again into her lap. “There is no such thing. There is no Throme. Everyone knows that.”

  “Bah. Everyone is a fool.”

  And a tear would slide down the still face of the King’s Damsen, and plop and twinkle on her hands. Her long hair was the color of pale sunlight, and her eyes were the color of long, motionless, uninterrupted nights. Somewhere beyond the dark stones was a moon-haired Cnite who loved the sad, sighing Damsen of the King.

  That Cnite came one night to the house of Magnus Thrall. Damsen, who from the high window had seen the churttels come and go, and the daylight come and go, saw the Cnite ride across the fields of Everywhere and thump on the drawbridge of the house, which shut itself up at night like a grim, wordless sprite. Her sad, sighing heart gave two quick beats. Magnus Thrall, wearing a circle in the stones in front of a skinny, dancing elf of a flame, stopped.

  “Who thumped across my drawbridge?”

  “It is your Chief Cnite Caerles,” said Damsen, and her voice was like the low, clear ripple of water across stones.

  “Ha!” said Magnus Thrall. “I know what he has come for. But he cannot have you because I need you. If you go away, I will be here alone in these dark, dank walls. I need to look at your sad face. It comforts me.”

  A tear dropped onto Damsen’s needlework and winked like a jewel among the bright threads. She looked towards the door at the sound of footsteps. They came through dark halls and empty rooms and lightless winding staircases towards her, for the King had shut up his house so that he could wail and wish alone. Spiders wove tapestry on the cold grey walls, and dust gathered, motionless, on the stone floors. The footsteps stopped at the doorway, and the Cnite Caerles stood in it, looking in at the warm fire, and the King, and Damsen with her eyes like cups of sweet, dark wine. He smiled at her eyes, and they smiled back, sadly, beneath their tears.

  “Go away,” Magnus Thrall said.

  “I just arrived,” Caerles said reasonably. “My horse is in your disused stable. He is tired and I am tired, both of us having followed the sun and the moon to get here.”

  “You are welcome,” said Damsen.

  “You are not,” said Magnus Thrall. “Besides, we have no room for you.”

  “I will rest content on the cold stones,” Caerles said, “and in the morning I will come and ask something of you, and then I will leave you.”

  “I will give you an answer now,” said the King. “No.”

  Caerles sighed. He stepped into the room. It was thick with fur beneath the foot, shining here and there with gold or silver, or dark, polished wood. Damsen’s needlework hung on the walls. New flowers, pink and gold, and midnight blue, sat in water on the table. Such things would Damsen do in Caerles’ house, bringing with her sad, lovely thoughts. He stood tall and straight before the King, his shirt of mail silvery as fish scale, his sword and his shield of three moons at his side, proper and fair from his carefully brushed moon-colored hair to his gleaming, mouse-colored boots.

  “I have come for Damsen,” he said to her wet face turned towards him like a dawn-flower. “It is the time, in my loving, when I want no long, sunlit road between us, and no stone wall and closed door.”

  “You will leave without her.”

  “But why? You are growing a flower in the dark. You are shutting a rare stone up in a locked box.”

  “Why should I give my flower to you? You will shut her away in your own stones, to weep and sew beside your hearth.”

  “But I love her,” Caerles protested. Magnus Thrall folded his arms and looked into the fire. Tears of pity welled in Damsen’s eyes.

  “You know nothing of wanting,” said the King. “You know nothing of the gnawing beast of wanting, the ceaseless whine of wanting. You want Damsen. My wanting is greater than yours. My wanting can make a great house empty, can make a silly world empty. I want the Throme of Sherill. Find it for me, and I will give you anything you want.”

  Caerles’ mouth opened. It closed again, and then the words in his eyes came to it. “There is no such thing as the Throme of Sherill,” he whispered. “Magnus Thrall, that is unfair. The Throme is a lie left from another king, another year. There never was a Throme. There was a never a land called Sherill. There is nothing but the earth and the sky.”

  Magnus Thrall whirled away from the fire. “Unfair? What is unfair about wanting? Somewhere, somewhere, Caerles, you will find the Throme. Until then, I will grow my flower in the dark.”
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  “You are cruel and loveless, you and your wanting.”

  “I know,” Magnus Thrall whispered. “I know. The Throme is my hope. Find it for me, Caerles.”

  “But it does not exist.”

  “Find it for me.”

  “Find it, Caerles,” said Damsen. He turned, his hands outstretched.

  “But it does not exist!”

  “I know. But find it, please, Caerles.”

  “Is there no reason in this dark, empty house? Magnus Thrall, you are King of Everywhere. You should open your doors, open your gates, open your hands and heart to me, to Damsen, to all your Cnites, to your vessels and churttels. Put tapestries on your bare walls, flame on your cold torches. Go into the green world and be content with what beauty is Everywhere, that you cannot see when your eyes are blind with wanting. Give me Damsen. I love her.”

  The dark King stood unflickering by the fire. “There is a price,” he said, “on your loving. There is a price for the taking of Damsen from my hearth to yours.”

  “There should be no price!”

  “Give me the Throme. Then you may have my Damsen.”

  The Cnite Caerles closed his eyes and sighed. Then he went to the window where Damsen sat, the stars clustering about her hair. He took her hands and said sadly, “Will you wait for me?”

  “I will,” said Damsen, and a star fell down her cheek. “But oh please, hurry.”

  “I will. Though I do not know what use it is to hurry when I do not know where I am going, and when there will be nothing to find when I get there.”

  “I know,” Damsen said sorrowfully. “My Caerles, you will be searching forever and I will grow old and ugly, and when you find it, you will not want me anymore.”

  “Yes, I will. I will be old and ugly too, then.” He kissed her sadly, gently farewell. Then he said to Magnus Thrall, “I will find your Throme whether it exists or not. I will return with the price for her.”

  “I know you will,” said Magnus Thrall. “That is why I set that price.”

  And so the Cnite Caerles came to leave the King’s house by starlight, looking for the Throme of the Erril of Sherill. He stared up at the quiet stars as he crossed the drawbridge, and they twinkled sympathetically on his upturned face.

  “But it does not exist,” he mourned to them. “Does it?”

  And so the Cnite Caerles spent the night under a tree. He hated sleeping under trees. Trees whispered at night and dropped things on his face; trees wound underground and made hard knobs of their roots that gave lump in the back and crick in the neck. Trees let the sun too early in his eyes, and the sun would not go away. But worse than the sun was the Thing, that jumped out of nowhere onto the stomach of the Cnite Caerles.

  “Oog,” said Caerles and opened one eye. A child looked back at him, her hair in sweet, moist tendrils down her back, her finger in her mouth. The other eye of the Cnite Caerles opened. “Child,” he said cheerlessly, “Why are you sitting on my stomach?”

  “I have lost my dagon,” said the child through her finger. Caerles looked at her motionlessly, unblinking in the sunlight.

  “I, too, have lost something,” he said finally. “I have lost my true heart’s love, the well-spring of my deep heart’s laughter, because I am sent on a hopeless quest from which I will never return. But that is no reason to go and sit on someone else’s stomach.”

  “I want my dagon,” said the child. She bounced up and down impatiently on the Cnite Caerles. Her eyes were blue as the tiny flowers that grew pointed like stars all around them. The Cnite reached out to still her, and she sat still, looking down at him, her eyes blue and fearless and certain as the true season’s sky.

  “Who are you?” said Caerles.

  “I am Elfwyth. My dagon is Dracoberus.”

  “Did you call him?”

  “I called and called and called. And called. Who are you?”

  “I am the Cnite Caerles, and I do not think I like small girls. Perhaps Damsen will have only sons.”

  Elfwyth took her finger out of her mouth. “I do not think I like you,” she said sternly. “And if you do not help me find my dagon I will bounce up and down and I will cry.”

  The Cnite Caerles lifted her in his strong arms and stood up and set her on the ground, where she came barely higher than his knee. He folded his arms and looked down at her. She folded her arms and looked back up at him. Then, sudden as a falling star, came a tear rilling from the curve of her eye down to the corner of her mouth. Another followed, and her blue eyes were flowers with hearts of rain.

  “Oh, please,” she sniffed. “Oh, please find my dagon. Then I will help you look for what you have lost. Oh, please.”

  “Oh, please,” Caerles said weakly. “Do not cry. If you cry I will have to help you, for the love of the tears in my sweet Damsen’s eyes.”

  “Oh, please find my dagon. I am lost and sorely sad without him, for I love him, and he loves me, and I will not go home without him.”

  Caerles gave a sigh sadder than the wind’s sigh on moonless nights. “Oh, child,” he said. “You are more annoying than a tripping tree root. What is a dagon?”

  Elfwyth glanced up at him out of her still eyes. She sniffed. “It is a small animal. A little, little animal. And it has a little voice, and pretty eyes. You will not be afraid of it.”

  “I am afraid of nothing,” Caerles said.

  “And it will like you very much…if you find it while I am with you. It likes me most of all.” She took the hand of the Cnite Caerles and turned him towards the morning sun. Flowers bent gently under her bare feet. “But it will like you, too, if you speak gently to it, I think…It is my dagon, my Dracoberus, and it was a gift to me from seven—people. And then, if you find it, I will love you, too.” She smiled up at him, raising her fair face like a flower opening, and Caerles gave once more the wisp and whisper of a sigh.

  “Thank you,” he said glumly, and lifted her up into his great curved saddle.

  They followed the sun until noon.

  At noon the sun was a soundless, rearing lion frightening their shadows into littleness, a huge, golden dragon that was never still, the coin-gold heart of a blazing flower. At noon, they stopped to drink at the ice-colored sliver of a sheer stream. Elfwyth danced with her bare feet into the heart of the stream, among the polished stones and speckled sand, and as she splashed under the full eye of noon there came a roar like the waking of seven beasts in new spring. The Cnite Caerles ran to her, and the stream water sank deep into his mouse-colored boots. He lifted the child, holding her all wet against him, and then her voice shrilled into his eye.

  “Oh, my Dracoberus!”

  There was a flash like the wink of lightning. A slender hound with violet eyes and fiery breath ran bellowing from the trees, and it was taller than Caerles’ horse. Caerles stared motionless at its coming, while the child Elfwyth wriggled against him and his horse behind him reared and whimpered. Behind the hound rode seven men in seven colors, each with an eye ablaze on his breast, and a spear, ice-tipped, in his hand. Elfwyth twisted eagerly in the Cnite’s arms.

  “Oh, let me go—” she cried, and slithered like a fish into the water. She ran across the stream to the fiery hound and the sudden hiss of its breath over her head came at Caerles in a flood of flame. He sat down in the water. Seven men gathered at the water’s edge. Seven spears formed a gleaming crescent above the Cnite’s heart. Elfwyth hugged the neck of the whimpering hound. She kissed its violet eyes and turned her head.

  “If you hurt the Cnite I will cry.”

  Caerles looked up at the still faces and fish nibbled at his fingers. He said between his teeth, “I do not like small girls.”

  “Go and kiss him thanks,” Elfwyth said to the great, frolicking dagon.

  “I do not want to be thanked,” said the Cnite.

  “You are afraid of my Dracoberus.”

  “Yes.”

  “You told me you were afraid of nothing!”

  “Elfwyth, Elfwyth,” said
a man in scarlet, “it is not good for a small girl to mock a grown man. Who is this one?”

  “I do not know. I found him beneath a tree and I bounced on him until he came with me to find my dagon.”

  The seven spears rose, flashing like birds. “We are the Seven Watchers of the child Elfwyth of the Erie Merle. We will bring you to him in thanks for his child, and you will be bedded in soft silk and washed in wine, if you but give us your name.”

  Caerles rose from the stream. “I am the Cnite Caerles, and I am questing for the Throme of the Erril of Sherill.”

  The Seven Watchers looked at one another. “It does not exist.”

  “I know, but I must find it. Will the Erie Merle help me? If not, I will bed myself in soft grass, having already washed.”

  The Seven Watchers turned their mounts. “The Erie Merle is wiser than an oak tree at twilight, wiser than the pale moon at moon rise. If he can help you, he will.”

  Caerles went with them, and Elfwyth rode the flaming dagon Dracoberus, and the barred gates of the Erie Merle opened without the touch of a hand to welcome them. The Erie Merle was a tall, thin wraith of bones and pale skin and hair like the spun gossamer of spider’s web. His eyes flashed like jewels, now emerald, now amber, and they smiled as the child Elfwyth came to hug his knees.

  “I have found my Dracoberus!” she shouted into his rich robe. “Now you must give that Cnite the Throme of the Sherill of Erril.”

  “Erril of Sherill,” said the Erie Merle, and his eyes as he looked up flashed blue sapphire at Caerles. His hand strayed thoughtfully among the towzled curls of Elfwyth’s head. “You are my wild child, and it was your Dracoberus and your Watchers and this Cnite who found you. Now go to him and give him your hand like a true lady and bring him gently into my house.”

  And that she did, gently.

  When they had eaten much of thin, hot slices of rare meats and golden-crusted breads and sweet wines and fruits, the Erie Merle sat back in his chair and looked first at Caerles and then at Elfwyth. Above his head was a huge, unwinking eye that the sun burnt gold, and all down the lengths of two sides of his hall lesser eyes watched, pools of violet, green, silver.