The Throme of the Erril of Sherill

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “I do not know where the Throme is,” he said. “Or where it is not. I only know that it is not here.” He tapped softly at the rim of his cup with the crescent moon of his curved nail, and his eyes went limpid grey. “I may have a suggestion, but it will lead to danger.”

  “There is a woman who weeps, waiting for me in Magnus Thrall’s house,” Caerles said. “I do not know that word danger.”

  “So.” The Erie Merle’s eyes winked like pure stars. “Then I suggest you look for the Throme of the Erril of Sherill at the Mirk-Well of Morg.”

  The Cnite Caerles stared into his emerald green eyes. He said in a voice two tones smaller, “But the Mirk-Well of Morg does not exist. It is a line in a song, a passage of a tale told to children by fire light. How can I go to a place that is not there?”

  The Erie Merle looked back at him out of midnight eyes. “What better place to find a thing that does not exist?” he inquired, and Caerles sighed deeply from his heart’s marrow.

  “Then I will go there,” he said.

  The child Elfwyth bounced suddenly in her chair. “I will go with you,” she cried, “and my Dracoberus will keep you from danger.”

  “A quest is no journey for a frail child,” said the Erie Merle, and his voice was a wind’s murmur in the still hall. “My child, a true lady would give thanks to a Cnite who had braved fire and water to please her. Good thanks would be to give him what he may need most.”

  Elfwyth looked at the Erie Merle. Her eyes grew round and heavy in the colored light from the watching windows, and her voice grew thin and quivered. “But he is afraid of my Dracoberus.”

  “I do not think he would be if you lent him your dagon to protect him from the glooms and harshnesses of the Mirk-Well.”

  “But he has a horse.”

  “I have a horse,” said the Cnite Caerles quickly. “And I need no thanks.”

  The Erie Merle turned his face to Caerles and the glow of his eyes was of sweet, wine-drenched amethyst. “Thanks must be given,” he answered softly, “and who will receive them if you do not?”

  The child Elfwyth sat still as a drooping flower. Then she lifted her fair head and sat straight in her straight chair. “You will ride my Dracoberus,” she said staunchly. “And he will protect you. And when you are done, you will ride him back to me. I will lend him to you in thanks, because you came with me in the morning light.”

  The Cnite Caerles achieved a smile. “I will ride him back to you safely,” he said fairly, “and for the sake of my sweet Damsen, I thank you, for the protection of your Dracoberus against whatever dangers lie in the Mirk-Well of Morg, wherever they are, if they exist.”

  The child Elfwyth smiled back at him. She said anxiously, “Do not forget to bring him back to me.”

  “Oh, child,” said Caerles from his deep heart. “There is no danger of that.”

  And that is how the Cnite Caerles left the hall of the Erie Merle by morning light, riding the violet-eyed, fire-voiced dagon Dracoberus instead of his true horse. He rode towards the path of the setting sun, where all darkness began, and the sun rode above him across the sky. At night, the eyes of Dracoberus glowed like violet stars, and his breath warmed the streaming air. He ate leaves from the trees and tender flowers newly opened, and he acquired a habit of licking the Cnite’s face with his great, red, fiery tongue. He moved like a wind over plowed field and meadow, and at the end of the second dusk Caerles knew they were lost.

  “Though,” he said reasonably as he dismounted, “I cannot be lost when I am going nowhere.” And he was surprised when instead of earth beneath his foot, he felt a nothingness that continued in a dazing rush. He landed asprawl on the damp earth and found the violet stars looking at him from an unreasonable distance. “How,” said the Cnite Caerles reasonably between his teeth, “can I possibly get where I want to go when I cannot go anywhere at all?”

  The dagon whimpered down to him in sadness like a child, and Caerles could hear the thump of its great tail like a heart-beat on the earth above. Then of a sudden the burning violets vanished, and the Cnite heard a light Boy’s voice in a lulling croon.

  “Oh, I love you, I love you, I love you…” And through his voice came the purry whine of the dagon and the thump-thump of its tail.

  “Who is up there?” Caerles called. The voice was silent. A dark face peered over the edge of the earth.

  “Who is down there?”

  “I am the Cnite Caerles. Will you help me?”

  The voice was silent again. The night was silent but for the little voices of secret things that no eye could see. The trees lifted their great black heads against the stars and the wind curled through them, sighing.

  “Is this your thing up there? This beautiful purple and red and grey thing?”

  “It is the dagon Dracoberus that I was riding. Am I in the Mirk-Well of Morg?”

  “No. You are in my borebel pit. Are you sure you are not a borebel?”

  “I am not a borebel,” said Caerles. “I am the Cnite Caerles of Magnus Thrall, questing for the Damsen of the King. I am cold and dirty and sore and hungry and I do not like your borebel pit.”

  “Well,” said the voice. “Well. I think if you were not a borebel you would not be down there. It is a pit only for borebels. There is a long-toothed, hoary-voiced, squinty-eyed borebel snuffling around my mother’s house and I dug a pit to trap it. How do I know you are not a squinty-eyed borebel with a sweet voice to trick me?”

  The Cnite Caerles closed his eyes. He opened them again and said patiently, “Do borebels ride dagons?”

  “No. But I think you ate the Cnite who was riding this dagon, and now he belongs to no one. So I will take care of him, for he is more beautiful than anything I have ever seen and he loves me, too.”

  “I am not a borebel,” said Caerles. “And that dagon was lent to me by the child of the Erie Merle to protect me from all danger with its swift speed and its flaming tongue, but I do not know what will protect me from a troublesome young Boy.”

  “Perhaps I will let you out,” said the voice, “if you give me the dagon. Then I will have someone to sprawl on meadow-grass with, and explore deep caves, and dabble with in the river. If you give me the dagon, I will know you are not a borebel, for a borebel never gives anything to anyone.”

  “But I cannot give you Dracoberus because he does not belong to me.”

  “Then,” said the voice cheerfully, “you must be a borebel. Do not worry about your dagon. I will love him well.”

  The Cnite Caerles sat down on the damp earth of the borebel pit. “Boy,” he said wearily, “I am a Cnite on a quest for the love of a wheat-haired, wine-eyed lady who is waiting with love for me. You will have the dagon to love but who will there be to love that lady if you do not let me out of this pit?”

  There was the sound above of shifting leaves. “Well.” said the voice, and again, “Well.” Then it said again cheerfully, “If you are truly a borebel, there is no lady and no love, so I will take your dagon. But do not worry. I will feed you.”

  The heads of the Boy and the dagon vanished, and the Cnite Caerles was left alone with the far-away stars and the whispers of trees and the walls of earth rising around him. “Oh my Damsen,” he mourned softly to the memory of her, “will you still love a clumsy Cnite who falls into borebel pits?” And the Throme seemed as far from him as the star-worlds above.

  Morning fell into the borebel pit onto Caerles’ eyes, and he looked up and found a rope of sunlight up to the bright earth. He sat up and sighed for the ache in his bent bones and the thirst in his throat and the mud on his mouse-colored boots. Then he heard the whimper and frolick of the dagon and the high, sweet whistle of the Boy swooping like a bird’s cry through the trees.

  “Borebel,” he called, “I have brought your breakfast. And then the dagon and I will run as far as the world’s edge together, and shout louder than sound, and we will not come back until there is no more night. Borebel, borebel, I have brought bread and porridge and milk,
oh borebel…”

  And as he called and whistled, a strange noise tangled in his whistling: a snickering, snuffling, snorting noise that came to the very edge of the borebel pit. And then of a sudden, it came down into the borebel pit, and the Cnite leaped out of its way. Across from him lay a tiny-eyed, long-toothed, bristle-hided borebel blinking its red eyes in astonishment.

  “O Borebel,” Caerles breathed, for the borebel, sitting, was as high as his chin. “Move gently, or I will kill you, and I did not set out to kill borebels.”

  The borebel snorted. Its eyes flamed suddenly blood-red with rage, and the Cnite drew his sword. The borebel stood up on its short-haired hind legs and the scream of its fury silenced the birds in the morning trees.

  “O Borebel,” said the Boy above them, and his voice quivered like a bow-string. “Look up.”

  The borebel looked up. The Boy dropped a great bowl of steaming porridge onto its squinty-eyed face.

  The borebel danced and roared and splatted the porridge out of its red eyes and its long-toothed snout. The Boy dropped the end of a rope down the pit-edge to the Cnite. The dagon Dracoberus howled at the other end. Red flame singed the borebel’s hide. Then the dagon pulled with its might and Caerles slithered out of the borebel pit.

  He stood free above the mournful borebel, all covered with earth and tiny twigs and the frayed ends of leaves. The Boy looked up at him, shivering in the sunlight. He was bone-thin and brown, with scarred knees and elbows and his eyes were round as twin platters on a white table.

  “You are not a borebel,” he whispered. The dagon licked the Cnite’s face with a swoop of its tongue, then lay on his feet and thumped its tail.

  “Boy,” began Caerles. Then he stopped, and his anger faded away in the sigh of his breath. “No. I am not a borebel.”

  “I wish—I wish you had been. But I knew you were not. Are you going to be very angry?”

  “You saved my life,” said the Cnite, “in spite of the deep longing of your heart. I too have a deep longing for a special love. I cannot give you the dagon for a fearless-eyed child loves it, but I will give you, for your sacrifice, whatever else you may ask of me.”

  The Boy licked his mouth. “Then may I have—” He stopped and swallowed. “Then may I please have your sword?”

  The Cnite Caerles was silent. Little winds came plucking at him, springing away like teasing children. The great dagon rolled over and scratched its back on the bracken. He drew it finally from his belt and it flowed silver in the light and tiny jewels, red and white and green, winked in its hilt.

  “It is yours,” he said, “because you asked it of me. But why do you want it?”

  “To kill borebels bravely with, when they come snuffling in my mother’s garden. And then I will not have to dig any more pits.”

  Caerles gave him the sword. The Boy’s eyes caressed it from pommel to tip and he smiled. “It is very beautiful. But not,” he sighed, “as beautiful as the dagon beside me at night. And now, if you will come, my mother will give you some breakfast. And some water to wash with…”

  The Boy’s mother shook the Boy for leaving the Cnite overnight in the borebel pit, and then she hugged him to her, winking and blinking, for his quick wits, and then she shook him again for his request of the sword. Then she filled a heaping bowl of porridge for the Cnite and listened to the tale of his search. Then she said,

  “There is no such thing as the Mirk-Well of Morg.”

  “I know,” Caerles said. “But you see I must find it.”

  The Boy’s mother shook her head. “Mirk-Well of Morg is a tale for old men and babies, not for great Cnites. Now, if I were you, which I am not, being simple and stout and motherly, I would look in the Floral Wold at the World’s End. Now, there is a place for a Throme of beauty. A dreamer dreamed the Floral Wold, and it appeared, somewhere beyond the sunrise. I would go there. But then I am only a poor old woman with only half my teeth, and the Throme most likely does not exist. But I would go there, to the Floral Wold, if I were a brave Cnite with a loving, weeping woman. Eat your porridge.”

  The Cnite Caerles ate his porridge. Then he said, “I do not know where to go. The Erie Merle said nothing of a Floral Wold, but I cannot go to the Mirk-Well of Morg without a sword.”

  “It does not exist,” said the Boy’s mother, “and it was wrong of the Boy to ask for your sword.”

  “He would not give me the dagon,” the Boy argued contentedly; “I would have taken that instead.”

  The Boy’s mother ticked her tongue. Then she bent down and lugged a worn chest out of a spider-woven corner. She opened the lid and it wailed with age. A glow came from the chest like the milk-white eye of a lost star. “This my mother gave me,” she said, “and her mother to her. It is the guiding light to the Floral Wold, the candle that illumines dreams.” She lifted the star from the chest. It pulsed, softly white at the end of a staff, now petaled like a flower, now pointed like crystal, and the far heart of it was ice-blue. The Boy’s eyes grew wide, twin stars from the star-wand winking in them.

  “Oh, it is beautiful,” he sighed longingly, and his mother slapped his reaching hands.

  “Greedy,” she said, glowering. “Be content with the pure jewels in that sword.” She gave the star to Caerles, and the longing came, too, into his voice.

  “Oh, Lady,” he said softly, “I am greedy, too, for that land where this grew. If it exists, then I think I will begin to believe that the Throme exists, too, somewhere beyond the sunrise, beyond the World’s End.”

  And so the Cnite Caerles rode towards the World’s End, with the glowing-eyed dagon bounding beneath him and the starlight of dreams ablaze at his side. And the rising sun traced a path of gold before him, and the end of the road lay in the secret heart of the Floral Wold. On the third day of his riding he came to a norange orchard.

  The noranges grew full round, flaming orange and green among the warm leaves. Soft, sleepy winds drowsed through tiny specks of flowers, red, blue, yellow, white, dancing like stars across the orchard grass. The Cnite Caerles paused in the noon shadow of a tree. He picked a norange and peeled it slowly. Green and gold flies with jewelled wings hummed around him at the scent of it. The sunlight dripped from leaf to leaf and pooled upon the green grass. Caerles ate his norange, piece by piece, and the sun weighed upon his eyelids, and the jewel-flies hummed a dream from hidden places. The green world slept beyond the orchard, lulled motionless. Watching it, the Cnite’s eyes grew still, and the norange grew heavy in his hand.

  He fell asleep beneath the orchard tree and dreamed a dream…

  A jingler came flickering across the meadowlands, one-half of him red, one-half white. The bells on his hood winked and tinkled in the lazy winds. He sang, his fingers plucking at a gold-stringed harp, his voice light and cheerful in a dolorous song:

  I loved a lady once

  Beneath an orchard tree

  The fine lady Gringold

  And she did not love me.

  I sang my love to her

  And she laughed at me

  Fine-fingered Gringold

  Beneath a norange tree.

  Wake up and listen, Cnite

  Wake and listen to me

  Or you will taste of sorrow

  Beneath that Gringold tree.

  He came to the edge of the tree’s shadow, and stopped, looking down at the blinking Cnite and the yawning dagon. “Ho, Sir Cnite. Have you seen a lovely, light-fingered lady?”

  “No,” said Caerles.

  “Then you are fortunate,” said the jingler, and sitting down, he whirled a handful of harp-sounds light as butterflies into the air. His dark brows were arched in mockery, and smiles came and went in his eyes and tugged at the corners of his mouth. “She is a wilful wicked woman, even though she is more beautiful than a redbird in flight, or a flower new-opened.”

  “I know a woman so beautiful,” said Caerles. “She is the candle-flame in the dark room of my heart, and she loves me.”

  “Then you are ve
ry fortunate,” said the jingler. “But no man in love with a true lady should sleep beneath this norange tree. Why are you not at her side?”

  “I cannot be, until I find the deep Throme of the Erril of Sherill.”

  The jingler plucked three strings and sent a sad chord into the air. “Then you will never be with her, Cnite, for the Throme is a dream.”

  “That may be so, but I will find it.”

  “Where will you look for it?”

  “In the Floral Wold, at the World’s End.”

  The jingler laughed. “Then go back to sleep, Sir Cnite, and step into your dream for only then will you ever reach the World’s End.”

  Caerles was silent a moment. The dagon licked idly at his hands, and watched the jingler out of quiet, violet eyes. “You may mock me,” the Cnite said at last, “as I mocked the King who sent me on this hopeless quest. But I will not yield my true love to all the world’s laughter. I will go where I must, find what I must to get that Throme, for that is the price of my loving. You also would do what you must, however impossible, to win your Gringold’s loving.”

  “I do not love the Lady Gringold,” said the jingler.

  “Then why are you here beneath her tree?”

  The jingler turned his face away.

  There came a lady into the shadow. Her hair was wound in soft gold braids to the hem of her green robe, and her green eyes were smiling, full of hidden things. The wind shook her robe and from her came the sweet, light scent of noranges. She sat down beside the Cnite Caerles and touched his hands softly with her cool, fine fingers.

  “There is one man left in this wide world with the dream of love. Do not let this jeering jingler wither the flame of your dream with his windy words. Tell me of your quest and I will help you if I can.”

  “I must find the Throme of the Erril of Sherill,” said Caerles. He looked into the lady’s eyes as he spoke, and suddenly there was no color in the world but the clear ice-green of them, and no sound in the world but the memory of her voice. Far away, beyond the world, he heard the jingler’s voice in mockery: