Courts of the Fey

by Martin H. Greenberg

  Her head extended above the drift which curled about her as if a cloak of thick white fur. Her dark brown eyes were alive and fierce, reminding him of those of a hawk perched upon the falconer’s wrist, at rest, but never tame.

  “Lady Champion,” he said, his tone haughty and tinged with mild disdain, “I thought our contest was for the unicorn, not to prove the worth of sword against spell?”

  He spoke so, although he longed to utter far different words, to speak as sweet as honey, because he suspected that she would never believe him if he spoke the truth.

  Those hawk’s eyes, darker than those of any hawk, fringed with lashes he longed to brush with his fingertip, narrowed, seeking a trap.

  He held his breath, waiting for a retort that did not come, then went on. “I have long trained to prove I could capture the unicorn and bring it back alive to my court. I do not doubt you have trained as well for your own mission. I offer you this. We are here together. Let us hunt in company until we find the beast and see which of our arts will win. Otherwise, what manner of a challenge would this be?”

  The snow was melting, falling from her with a swiftness that argued some enchantment in her own armor. In a moment, she would be free. Would she reply with words or weapons?

  As Blackrose struggled to break the ward, she knew she could not possibly succeed before the Seelie champion released his spell. She hoped that the charms against such magics worked into the runes that ornamented her armor would be sufficient to turn it aside.

  When she had given her order to the duergan, she had demanded protection from fire and water, earth and air, these in any of the forms they take. She had not thought to ask for protection against the sort of sweet-singing charms that the harpist had used—a foolish oversight on her part, for such deceptions were well-known in the Unseelie Court and made a lie of love and longing.

  Of course, the duergan had not volunteered any suggestions. Like the kelpie, they were helpful on their own terms, no others.

  She saw the enchanter′s violet eyes searching her face even as his lips shaped his spell. She wondered what he was looking for, what weakness he sought. He would find none in her. Her marrow burned as the ward strove to force her away, but she pressed ever on.

  The cold wet snow that knocked her back and wrapped her in a freezing embrace was welcome at first, for it cooled the heat that was boiling her blood in her veins. Despite this, immediately she began to fight free. She was so concentrated on her battle that she hardly realized when the harpist began to speak. His first words were lost to her, but she heard clearly the second part of his speech.

  “I have long trained to prove I could capture the unicorn and bring it back alive to my court,” said a voice deep and masculine, despite being as melodious as the notes of his own harp. “I do not doubt you have trained as well for your own mission. I offer you this. We are here together. Let us hunt in company until we find the beast and see which of our arts will win. Otherwise, what manner of a challenge would this be?”

  Blackrose could feel that the runes etched into her armor were working against the snow. Did this arrogant sorcerer realize that she would be free within a few moments? Was he prepared for the renewed onslaught of her attack?

  Something in those violet eyes told her that he did and was. Strangely, this made her respect him just a little, even as she was infuriated by his arrogance.

  The kelpie beneath her would not be free as soon. Best delay for a moment.

  “Do you trust me to hunt beside you?” she asked the Seelie champion.

  His lips curved just a little. “I trust that you would prove yourself a better hunter than the others the Unseelie Court has sent into the field these challenges past. I studied the lore of past contests. It is long since the unicorn’s horn was brought back to your monarchs’ realm.”

  Blackrose stiffened. She knew this only for the truth, but her pride was pricked—both to prove to the Unseelie Court that she was better than those who had come before her and to prove to this arrogant sorcerer that she could best him.

  And why shouldn’t I agree? Champions before me have told how always the Seelie champion found the unicorn before them so that their battle was not with the beast but with the other—and that other having the advantage of the unicorn on his side. Why should I not learn from their failure?

  She gave the Seelie champion a winning smile.

  “I like your spirit,” she said, and realized with some shock that she meant this. She hastened on, lest she admit to something else she had not known. “And I accept your challenge. Let us seek the unicorn together. When we find it, then we will see what flies faster, your net or my arrow.”

  “I agree,” the other said. “I am called Sundeath, son of the sorceress Silver Lily and Oakheart, a knight of the Rade. May I know what to call you?”

  “I am Blackrose,” she said, “and who my parents are is of no matter.”

  She shook the last of the snow from her shoulders, felt how the sealskin of her armor had protected her from the damp. Beneath her, the kelpie kicked itself free of the last clinging drifts, muttering imprecations between square teeth. Flamewing came down and twined itself around her forearm, hissing and whistling in gusts of confusion.

  “Then, Lady Blackrose,” Sundeath said, promoting her, although she would not for this world or any other have told him so, “let us ride together, and seek the unicorn.”

  Yes, Blackrose thought. Let us seek it. I am not being soft. After all, who says my first arrow must be for the beast? A better target would be your back.

  They rode together in what rapidly became concord, not merely company. The kelpie rode shoulder to shoulder with the fey steed, muttering insults at Zephyr, who chose to ignore them. Little Flamewing fluttered about them, dancing on the winds and even going so far as to attempt to rest on Sundeath’s shoulder.

  To Sundeath’s delight, they discovered much in common. Like him, Blackrose had been the one child born to her court in many years. Her closest age-mates had been weird goblins and water sprites. His had been a maiden some five years older. Although they had been friends, when he had been selected as champion, that friendship had ended.

  Solitude had been a common state for both Sundeath and Blackrose. Now, finding someone who honestly understood, the words flowed between them. At first they came in spurts and starts, like a candlewick catching fire, then with the heat and intensity of a roaring blaze.

  Sundeath learned of Blackrose’s hard childhood, of the honors she was ambitious to win. Blackrose was told of Sundeath’s sense of betrayal when he learned he was wanted most for what he had not done, rather than his many gifts.

  Blackrose proved as prickly as the rose that gave her part of her name—quick to take offense, but ready to accept apology. Sundeath, for his turn, found himself sometimes struck dumb by his desire to declare himself to her, a declaration he knew to be impossible.

  Despite this strange accord between them, they did not neglect their quest. Sundeath did not dare use the Harp of Desires, for he did not know what song he might play unintended. Instead, he used the crystal dagger to etch a compass rose against the sky so that they might set their course.

  However, direction is only worth so much. Blackrose’s sharp eyes found the hoofmarks barely pressed into the grass of a small glade when he would have mistaken them for old deer tracks. After that, she never lost the trail.

  They came upon the unicorn all too swiftly for Sundeath’s liking, although the search had taken them many hours. The white sky had shifted to pale orange highlighted with yellow. The black moon had given way to a blue sun that gave clear light but created weird shadows.

  Was it these shadows that hid the unicorn from him, although it stood directly in their path? Or was it that it looked so little like what he had thought they sought? Sundeath had believed he knew what unicorns looked like. After all, until a few years ago, the prize of the last hunt had dwelled in the environs of the Seelie Court. Yet that creature, horse-l
ike, its arching neck wreathed with garlands of daisies, its horn wound round with silken ribbons, bore little resemblance to what stood poised on the trail before them.

  Delicate in build, solid enough to cast a shadow, nonetheless, there was something translucent about its slender body. Zephyr, Sundeath’s steed, was said to be born from fire and wind. By the same logic, the unicorn shared the heritage of wind, but in the place of fire it owed kinship to clear running water, un-graspable yet solid enough to drown the unwary. Through this flowed light, ebbing forth from a pale blue horn, illuminating wild eyes.

  The unicorn looked back at them over tensed shoulders. It seemed prepared to flee, yet wide nostrils scented the air inquisitively. Tentatively, as if bound by some compulsion outside itself, the unicorn began to take stumbling steps towards them.

  While Sundeath sat stunned, still trying to weigh his conflicting visions of the unicorn, Blackrose was bending her bow, reaching for an arrow.

  Her hands shook. Perhaps something in her rebelled against shooting at such a creature, but she loosed the arrow nonetheless. Instead of piercing the unicorn’s breast, the point coursed over its hide, slicing a narrow furrow that oozed blood.

  Compulsion broken, the unicorn fled, silken mane and tail flowing out behind it, pale blue horn glowing faintly against the shadows. Yet even as it fled, it looked back at them fascinated, even though the price of that fascination was its life.

  The kelpie immediately gave chase, ruby-bright Flamewing bursting from Blackrose’s shoulder into flight. Never one to lose a race, without waiting for command Zephyr broke into a gallop, easily catching up to the kelpie. So the champions thundered side by side, wind whipping their hair. Although it kept looking back, the unicorn outdistanced them, barely, never leaving their sight.

  As they tore along, Sundeath found himself frantically thinking. This hunt means so much to Blackrose, far more than it could mean to me. Should I let her win? No. She would know and that would kill any faint liking between us. Besides, my failure will doom the unicorn. How can she bear to put out such loveliness for mere ambition?

  Blackrose held readied bow and arrow, but she did not shoot again, aware that wind and distance would defeat even her skill.

  Now would be the time to take out Sundeath, she thought. He rides by my side. Flamewing has tested and his first ward is down. Surely he has other protections, but they may not stop an arrow.

  Yet she did not loose the arrow. Instead, she heard herself saying, “How can you bear to take such a creature and bind it into captivity? If ever there was freedom born, that is the unicorn, yet your people would pervert it into its own antithesis.”

  She could tell Sundeath was shocked, but his reply remained courtly, as had been all his speech to her.

  “How can you say that? You would slay it! From what I have heard, your people would devour its flesh, make cages from its bones, and you yourself would wear its hide as armor. We at least would give it its life!”

  “Life!” she spat. “Imprisoned freedom? You call that living? We would kill it, yes, but never take its freedom. When we dine upon its flesh, we take that spirit into ourselves. The cage from its bones is cruel because it retains the memory of perfect liberty. As for the armor, what greater honor can a killer give than to live embraced by the memory of what she has done?”

  Sundeath stared at her, his violet eyes wide. “Yet no matter what honors your people offer, the unicorn would no longer drink fresh water or breathe the bright air.”

  “And each breath a torment,” Blackrose retorted, “each swallow unable to ease a throat parched for a headier brew.”

  As if reined in by these dueling words, the kelpie and Zephyr had slowed their steps. Without speech, the two champions slid from their saddles until they stood facing each other no more than an arm’s length apart.

  The unicorn also paused. Its flanks heaved with effort, but its nostril furled, not to take in breath but as if drinking in some heady scent that mattered more to it than life.

  Blackrose was aware that her arrow had slipped from her bowstring, that she felt no desire to reach for her sword. Flamewing had settled onto the kelpie’s head and was making small noises of confusion, long neck arching back and forth between the unicorn it knew was their prey and his mistress.

  For his part, Sundeath did not draw the crystal dagger, nor did he make any move to toss net or rope over the advancing unicorn. Instead he spoke, his voice so soft that even Blackrose’s keen hearing could hardly catch the words.

  “You’re right. I hardly knew the unicorn when I saw it, so different was it from the creature that goes by that name in the Seelie Court. Death would be kinder.”

  But Blackrose, thinking of the stiff white armor that hung in the champion’s hall in the Unseelie Court, of how the last champion had died of what all said was some sort of unassuaged grief, thought differently.

  “No. Freedom cannot be preserved at such a cost. The prize is yours if you would take it. Look! The unicorn walks to within a hand’s breadth.”

  But Sundeath did not touch the unicorn that now nuzzled at his sleeve.

  “There is,” Sundeath replied, “another prize I would rather win.”

  He reached out a hand that could have grasped the unicorn’s mane and touched Blackrose’s cheek. “You are lovely beyond any I have ever seen. I have already lost my freedom. How could I take it from another?”

  Blackrose felt herself unexpectedly smiling, her heart lightening, unfolding from tight buds she had not known bound it.

  “There is one way we could set the unicorn free,” she said softly. “For there is one weapon each of us bears that we could exchange and so seal our agreement to give the prize to neither of our courts.”

  Sundeath’s eyes lit with joy, their violet losing its shadows and becoming merry. He grinned at her.

  “From what I have heard, that exchange is not one to give once and never again, not if its full delight is to be understood.”

  Blackrose laughed, her blood rising in her cheeks. She stepped so that she could wrap Sundeath in her arms. She felt his heart beating against her, even through armor and clothing.

  “This will not do,” she said, fumbling with straps and buckles, finding her fingers unexpectedly clumsy.

  “No. It will not.” Sundeath took off his cloak of silken leaves and spread it on the ground. Her cloak of moss and shadows joined it.

  Zephyr moved off to graze. The kelpie snorted with disgust and wandered down the trail, Flamewing still on its head. Only the unicorn remained, hovering over two who, having divested themselves of clothing and equipment they had taken years to acquire, were now exploring each other with an intensity that forgot all witnesses.

  After a while, the unicorn shook itself as if astonished, sniffed the wind in puzzlement, found not what it sought, and fled.

  Neither of those entwined in each other′s arms noticed its departure. However, their dreams, when at long last they slept, were filled with a brilliant figure made of light and wind and water, running free.

  THE GREEN MAN

  Amber Benson

  The night was a living thing, black and squalid, its ragged inhalations enfolding the girl like a muted chorus as she made her way through the wood, her eyes busily scanning the ground for exposed tree roots and other obstacles. Whirlwind fists of frigid air raged against the trees, hellbent on ripping foliage away from branches and sending leaves spinning inside its eddying currents; while raindrops, fat as blood-filled ticks, fell in glistening sheets of refracting liquid, whistling their progress like the slashing of claws on silk as they buried their corpses into the mossy humus.

  But none of this bothered the girl. She was inured to the harshest of elements, the intention inside of her compelling her forward despite the inclement weather. It was as if she were tethered to the thing by a gently retracting string, so not even the freezing water that sluiced down the hood of her cloak, caressing her face and making her whole body shiver, distracted her f
rom her goal.

  The blue woolen cloak she wore was not meant for the coolness of an autumn night, let alone the torrential winter downpour that now engulfed the girl. It gave her meager protection against the bitter cold, openly inviting the icy chill to seep into her flesh, wrapping its sinewy embrace around her bones as if it could find a permanent home inside her. She had grabbed the cloak from the back of her stepmother′s black walnut carved armoire, knowing the piece of clothing wouldn’t be missed. The heavier winter cape she usually wore––the fleece-lined one that had belonged to her own mother before she’d died––still hung from its hook in the hallway. If anyone had noticed it draped there––though she doubted anyone had––it would only reinforce the idea that she was safely tucked in bed with the blankets pulled up tight to her chin, lost and dreaming inside the Land of Nod. They would never have believed she would dare traverse the dark of the forest without the cape’s protection; a thirteen-year-old girl with her soft, childish hands and innocent face out there in the dark, nearly naked against the elements, braving the storm to commit an unspeakable crime?

  It would seem implausible to any adult.

  They might have viewed it in an entirely different light if only they knew the truth, the sordid reality of the world the girl had inhabited since the day her father married that woman; the creature who, for the last seven years, had made the girl’s existence one of utter misery––then, and only then, did the act she perpetrated seem within reason. It had been born of desperation and the need to protect something smaller than herself; something that could not protect itself.

  As if in tandem with her thoughts, she felt the tiny bundle in her arms squirm and she realized that the baby she carried with her had awoken. She could sense its hunger, its need for warmth and affection, but she could do nothing for it until they reached their destination.