The Seventh Daughter

by Frewin Jones

  Tania turned, and as she did she felt a tremor in the ground and a moment later she was struck by the fierce hot breath of a furnace wind that came roaring up from the south. The Sorcerer King of Lyonesse galloped toward them on a huge bloodred creature that was like an evil mingling of horse and reptile, hairless and scaled, its body lined by rows of hooked ridges and crests, its eyes blacker than the darkest night. And where the beast’s hooves fell, the ground smoked and was left blackened so that a burned path seemed to follow in its wake.

  “His captain is slain!” Cordelia shouted, lifting her sword in defiance. “He comes to avenge the death. Come, sisters—stand firm.”

  Tania released Rathina and the six sisters formed a line across the hillside. Tania gripped her sword, her mouth dry as she watched the King rushing toward them. The Sorcerer was clad from head to foot in dark red armor, and his bloodred cloak cracked, streaming out behind him as he rode. From beneath a high helmet crested with a rearing snake, his terrible white face stared out, the fuming eyes filled with boiling fire. As he came closer he lifted a long red sword and the air shrieked as if wounded by the blade’s edge.

  Tania’s knuckles whitened. She felt like a child standing on a bleak seashore as a great breaking wave curls above her.

  And then the King was upon them, his red blade scything the air as the hideous beast crashed into the line of princesses. Tania was knocked back, her sword ringing on the Sorcerer King’s armored leg, the jarring impact numbing her arms. She saw Cordelia strike at the misshapen beast as it thundered past, her sword stabbing at its throat. But the blade snapped halfway to the hilt as it struck against the armored scales and Cordelia was flung aside as the creature turned and reared, its huge hooves beating the air.

  One hoof struck Sancha, sending her spinning to the ground. Eden came in under the beast, shouting in a high voice with her hands raised, palms upward. Blue lightning sparked from her fingers, cracking in the air and wrapping around the head of the monster so that its bellowing changed to a scream of agony and rage. The Sorcerer King’s sword slashed downward, slicing through Eden’s lightning, gathering it and rising again, drawing the power with it so that the whole blade was alive with writhing blue light. Then he pointed the blade at Eden and the crackling energy struck her forehead and drove her to the ground.

  Only Tania, Rathina, and Hopie were still on their feet. The King lunged toward Tania, his sword ripping the air wide open. She lifted her blade and found Rathina suddenly at her side, her sword also raised against the crashing blow. Together they managed to deflect the great red sword, fending it off as the beast thundered past. The King gave a shout of rage. Tania saw that Hopie was in the creature’s path, her face bold and brave as she swung her sword and flung it at the King’s head. It glanced off his helmet and Hopie was only just quick enough to hurl herself aside as the creature’s pounding hooves bore down on her.

  Rathina leaped recklessly after the beast, shouting defiance. The king pulled on the reins and the monster turned, its mouth wide as it bellowed its anger. Tania saw Rathina standing in its path, her sword above her head, gripped in both hands, the level blade pointing forward. And even as Tania shrank from the sight of her sister being trampled Rathina thrust the sword into the gaping mouth of the beast, forcing the blade down the open throat and leaping to one side as the dying monster stumbled and fell.

  But the King didn’t share in its crashing fall. As the beast died under him he lifted out of the saddle and hung in the air, the billows of his bloodred cloak opening and spreading wide behind him. And it was only in that moment that Tania realized with a shock of intense horror that the cloak was a pair of red, leathery wings: thin-veined membranes stretched between curved skeletal fingers of bone.

  He hurtled down, his eyes blazing, his huge sword aimed at her heart. Again, Rathina came to her aid, bounding in as the King swooped, beating his sword aside. His arm swung and his armored fist struck her on the back, driving her onto her hands and knees. He came pounding down to the ground in front of Tania, the hideous wings lifted high over his back. She stepped back, her eyes on his face, her sword held out to parry his next blow.

  “Your sisters lie vanquished at my feet,” the King intoned. “Your mother has no power and your father is my captive.” He smiled, and it was the same smile that Tania had seen so often on Gabriel Drake’s face: evil and cruel and bitter cold. “Would you face me alone, half-thing? Would you die alone?”

  “Not alone!” shouted a voice.

  Tania turned to see Edric galloping up the hill on Drazin’s back. Behind him Bryn and a whole herd of wild unicorns were racing toward them.

  The Sorcerer King hissed like a snake, his wings curling as they lifted him into the air again. His sword sliced down, cracking against Edric’s raised blade and almost tipping him from Drazin’s back. Howling with rage, the King lunged at Tania, raining blows down on her sword so that she was beaten to her knees. Her foot slithered under her and she fell sideways, but the king’s death-blow was warded off by Edric; he had thrown himself from Drazin’s back and had forced his sword between them.

  As she scrambled to her feet, Tania was aware that a strange, expectant hush had come over the battlefield. Even in the turmoil of her battle with the Sorcerer King, she saw that many faces were looking northward. She turned her head. At the edge of the forest a golden light was growing, bright as the dawning sun. As she watched, the light became stronger, shining out brilliantly. She stared into the light, her heart lifting as she saw Oberon and Titania step out from among the trees.

  At last the King had come. At last! But even from that distance, Tania could see how heavily Oberon leaned on the Queen. Was he strong enough to fight the Sorcerer King?

  Tania heard a gasp of pain; she turned and saw that the Sorcerer King had beaten Edric to the ground. One heavy armored foot was upon Edric’s back and his sword was poised for the kill.

  “No!” Tania leaped forward. Her sword was deflected by a side sweep of the Sorcerer King’s arm. It fell out of her hands as his armored fingers caught her around her throat, almost choking her as he brought her attack to a sudden wrenching halt. He lifted her into the air, her feet kicking. She clutched at his arm with both hands, unable to breathe. Red and black lights exploded in her eyes.

  But even as the darkness grew in her mind and the light of Faerie began to fade from her eyes, Tania felt something strike her from the north, something that poured over her like the warmth of the summer sun. Something that seemed to fill her with golden light, running through her veins, filling her limbs with new energy and tingling over her skin.

  She felt the Sorcerer King’s fingers snatch back from her throat, but instead of falling, she found herself floating in the air, surrounded by a golden corona that threw out rays of bright amber. And where the beams of light struck the ground, green blades of grass leaped up, sprinkled with yellow flowers. She turned her head and saw an undulating river of thick gold light spinning out from Oberon and Titania, joining them to her and feeding their power to her. Tania opened her mouth, letting the force of Sun and Moon together explode out of her in a long shout. Tendrils of golden light flickered at her fingertips as she held up her hands, creating intricate webs that went shooting in all directions.

  As the threads of gold spun from her fingers they seemed to seek through the air for the Gray Knights and the Morrigan hounds of Lyonesse. And where they struck home, the knights exploded in ash and the hounds shriveled to lumps of black rock, the battlefield ringing to the sound of empty falling armor and the crash of downfallen steeds.

  A cradle of golden light gathered around the Sorcerer King, enmeshing him in a network of shining tendrils that thickened and spread until he was lost in a globe of burning gold. Tania could hear his howls of anger and see his shadow thrashing about wildly. She felt a final rush of power, of golden potency that poured out of her eyes and crashed against the golden sphere, detonating it into a million sparkling fragments that mushroomed into the air
and fell like glittering rain.

  And where the Sorcerer King had been standing there remained only a smoky ball of shriveling darkness that waned and wasted and was gone.

  Tania gazed around her in amazement. All the brown and withered land was coming alive, the tide of green life spreading in a great expanding circle around her, washing up to the forest and turning winter to summer in a shining moment, sweeping down to the palace and filling the ruined gardens once more with color and beauty. But the flood of new life did not end at the palace walls—it burst over them in a gushing, tumbling wave, and everywhere that it touched it washed away the stains of the burnings and scoured the red and black disfigurations from the walls and erased all traces of the Sorcerer King’s brutal dominion. Shattered windows became whole again, broken roofs rose, and tumbled walls remade themselves.

  But the healing went deeper than that, and it seemed to Tania that although the palace walls were solid, she could see right through them as if they were made of glass and she saw furniture being remade and slashed pictures mended and all the beautiful ornamentation of the palace recreated as new, even to the burned Library, where the ruination of the fire ran backward in time and ash turned to paper and cinders to leather and embers to soaring shelves that teemed with a multitude of restored books—including all the Soul Books that had been destroyed.

  And all the time this was happening, Tania could hear music ringing in her head. Music the like of which she had never heard before, music she had never even dreamed of. The loudest music of all came from the sun, its great, glad, glorious voice ringing out over the world, leading a multitude of other voices: the bass of distant mountains, the sweet descant of rivers, the harmonious cadences of tree and leaf and grass and blossom, the song of air and earth and sky and water, all burgeoning together in her ears into a thrilling symphony. The power and the song and the light grew inside her until she felt that she could not bear it anymore, until she felt as if her body and mind would explode from the intensity of it.

  At the last possible moment the funnel of golden power that linked her to the King and Queen wavered and dimmed, and Tania floated down to earth, the impossible light growing pale, the music of the world drifting away beyond hearing, the mystical strength that had threatened to tear her apart at last fading away.

  She saw Edric standing in front of her.

  “Wow!” she said. “That was really—” But before she could finish the thought, she toppled forward into his arms and fell unconscious into a warm golden void.

  XXVIII

  “Grieve not overmuch, my children,” King Oberon said gently. “Death is a bitter wound to endure for those who must remain to mourn, but it is not the end of things, indeed it is not.”

  Tania stood with Edric and the rest of the survivors of the battle on a long sloping lawn that ran down through blossoming cherry trees to the bank of the River Tamesis. The long and dreadful day had turned into a beautiful evening, the western sky banded with rosy clouds through which the rays of the setting sun extended like the spokes of a gigantic wheel. All along the riverbank the dead of Faerie lay at rest under sheets of white satin. Three hundred and seventeen knights had been slain on the battlefield, and many more were injured, gathered in a white pavilion that had been erected by the river, their wounds tended by healers working under Hopie’s guidance.

  The valiant fallen steeds of Faerie had not been forgotten. Cordelia had organized a group of knights to bring the bodies of the dead animals to the river to lie in state under white satin, all save for Zephyr, who was shrouded in the Sun Banner of Faerie and whose head was pillowed by the black serpent banner of Lyonesse that he had helped to bring down.

  All that remained of the Morrigan hounds were fists of hard black stone scattered on the heaths. Of the undead knights of Lyonesse, not one had survived; they and their fleshless steeds had blown away on the warm south wind. And good news had come to the survivors on that same south wind: The armada of Lyonesse had turned back, the hag Queen Lamia losing heart and hope when she learned that her evil husband was no more.

  The body of Gabriel Drake had been brought down from the heath. He lay under a gray shroud far from the dead of Faerie, and no one went near him or spoke of him.

  Of the highborn of Faerie, all had survived except for Lord Gaidheal, who had ridden his horse into the thickest of the enemy, reckless of his own life in his desire to avenge his murdered wife. The earl marshal had been wounded, as had his son Titus, but both were able to be with the King and Queen and their daughters and Lord Brython and Earl Valentyne and Corin and the marchioness as they stood around the bier of Princess Zara in the golden evening light. Silent tears flowed down Titus’s cheeks, and Tania saw that he could not bring himself to look at Zara’s face.

  Tania was still feeling light-headed from the after-effects of the Mystic Power that Oberon and Titania had gifted her with. After the death of the Sorcerer King and fainting into Edric’s arms, she had only the memory of floating on cushions of white cloud till she had awoken several hours later on Salisoc Heath to find Edric sitting over her, holding her hand. She was holding his hand again now, gripping it tightly as she gazed down at Zara’s pale, peaceful face.

  Oberon and Titania stood at Zara’s side, their heads bowed. The princesses and their husbands and the other members of the Royal Family gathered around the simple table of white wood. The King still leaned on Titania and Tania guessed that what power the Queen had been able to give him had been spent in the gush of golden light that had given her the strength to destroy the Sorcerer King. She just wished that the power had come to her a few minutes earlier and that she had been able to use it to save Zara.

  She looked at Eden, who was standing at her side. “Can’t we bring her back?” she whispered. “What about the Power of Seven? Sancha said it was the power of life over death.”

  “Zara is lost to us, Tania,” Eden replied. “We are but six now; the Power of Seven cannot be called upon ever again.”

  “But you could use your own powers, surely?”

  Eden turned her sad eyes toward Tania. “To call back a Faerie spirit from the Blessed Land of Avalon were a wicked deed,” she murmured. “Would you have our sister walk among us as if she were a Gray Knight of Lyonesse? For that is how she would return.”

  Tania swallowed. “No, I wouldn’t want that.” She looked down at Zara. “Is that place you mentioned like…well, like heaven, then?”

  “Avalon?” said Eden. “Oh, yes, very heaven indeed.”

  Tears welled in Tania’s eyes. “Will she be happy there? Will she be able to sing?”

  “Let us hope so,” Eden said. “Hush now, darling. It begins.”

  A silence came over all the people gathered on the riverbank. The copper disk of the sun kissed the distant hills and the land was suddenly steeped in rich, deeply colored shadows. At that moment Tania became aware of a tingling in the air and of the soft hymning of voices that seemed to come drifting up out of the grass all along the river. The ethereal singing grew until the air shimmered with it. And then a single dulcet voice soared above the chant, rising and rising in a bittersweet carol of such loveliness that Tania found tears pouring down her cheeks.

  It was Zara’s voice, leading the song as it swelled to fill all of the land and all of the endless Faerie sky.

  As the song reached its zenith fluttering streams of white mist were drawn up from the bodies of all the fallen, Faerie knight and animal alike, coiling and spiraling upward, twining together and filling the sky. And as the light ascended so the bodies of the dead faded away and the coverings of white satin settled gently over the emptiness where they had once lain.

  But the illumination that came from Zara as her body turned to pure light shone brighter than all the rest, and it was radiant with all the colors of the rainbow. Instead of flowing upward it coiled around King Oberon, enclosing him in a cloak of multicolored light that swirled faster and faster about him like a whirlwind until, in a rainbow blur, it
entered his body and vanished.

  The King gasped, his back arching, his hand coming away from Titania’s shoulder as the rainbow light filled him. His head tilted back and he gave a shout of joy as arrows of red and blue and green and indigo and yellow and orange and violet light sped upward from his eyes, coloring the hanging curtains of white light like a scattering of jewels. And in the patterns of sapphire and emerald and ruby and topaz, Tania thought for a moment that she saw a Faerie host riding on jeweled steeds, and at their head, Zara seated astride a unicorn. She seemed to turn and look down at them and smile for a moment before the winds of heaven blew the vision away and the white river and the colored stars poured away into the west and were lost in the heart of the setting sun.

  The evening had darkened to a warm and star-filled night filled with the honeyed fragrance of evening primrose and the spicy-sweet aroma of night scented stock. Torches had been set up all along the river and the Faerie folk sat in groups in the grass, eating a simple supper and talking quietly together in the lee of the tall palace walls.

  Tania sat in the grass with her Faerie family and with Edric at her side. Eden was with Earl Valentyne and Hopie with Lord Brython. Tania was intrigued by the difference between the two couples. While Hopie and Brython were loving and intimate, Eden and her ancient husband behaved like strangers, exchanging an occasional polite word, but clearly not at ease with each other. Tania guessed that theirs had probably never been a love-match, more likely a union founded on the earl’s great wisdom and Eden’s thirst for knowledge.

  Bryn Lightfoot was also there; he had eagerly accepted Cordelia’s invitation to eat with the Royal family, and the two of them were sitting close together.

  Tania remembered the King’s words. Death is a bitter wound to endure…but it is not the end of things. Tania felt the truth of that keenly. Zara would never sing with her again, they would never play duets together, but her sister was not entirely lost—she existed still, and not only in Tania’s heart and memory; hopefully her voice and her music could still be heard in the Land of Avalon that lay beyond the setting sun. It was a comforting thought, and although it didn’t stop Tania from mourning, it took the bitterness out of her grief.