The four royal leaders were all of the same purpose—to stem further bloodshed. Warwick, Thorgild, Ronin and Rahim hastened away from the field with their standard-bearers, gathering subjects and followers with their rallying cries, ‘To Narngalis!’ and ‘To the Brand!’.
Meanwhile the goblin king had again vaulted down from his trollhäst and was despatching adversaries with speed, skill and evident delight. He jumped, leaped and flung his body exuberantly through the air as if there were no such tyrant as gravity. By comparison, even the fittest of the human combatants moved as if wooden; laboured, laden, arthritic and ancient. Whirling, dodging and smiting with preternatural precision, his hair and cloak flying, Zaravaz once more showed himself to be as utterly ruthless as legend described. He even took the time to be sarcastic as he fought, mocking his opponents as he joyously spilled their life’s blood.
People were dashing hither and thither. ‘This time there can be no reprieve,’ someone shrieked. ‘The Wicked Ones swore to kill us all if we struck a blow against them! They will fulfil their oath! We are lost! We are lost!’
Asrăthiel attempted to slide from her eldritch steed, but its hide became as sticky as the coat of a waterhorse, and it would not let her escape. She had, however, been careful not to place her hands upon the trollhäst, and in a limited way she was free to act. She watched in anguish as reckless Conall Gearnach doubled back on foot, eluding a swarm of ravening kobolds. A trio of goblin knights was in hot pursuit of him; amongst them Asrăthiel recognised one of the lieutenants he had antagonised. The imps scattered before the onslaught of the eldritch warriors, and as the knights rushed at Gearnach he dodged, threw himself to the ground and rolled over. When he stood up, with one smooth movement, he was, after all, holding Fallowblade, which had been under him—but holding the sword awkwardly, like a man who has no control over a lightning bolt he suddenly discovers he has grasped. He sliced one adversary and slashed another, before the third closed with him. Together they fell, but Gearnach had managed to interpose the unruly weapon between himself and his opponent and, as they toppled, its double edges sawed them both to the spine.
Man and goblin perished in the same instant.
Shortly thereafter, three huge staghorn beetles lumberingly flew away with a heavy droning of wings, leaving the mortal soldier’s lifeless form prone on the heather, the golden sword lying athwart him, wrapped in a red mantle of blood.
So ended the deeds of Conall Gearnach, Commanderin-Chief of the Knights of the Brand, a valiant man, Slievmordhu’s foremost warrior.
When Asrăthiel saw the sons of Tir hard-pressed by kobolds with pitchforks and knights with eldritch blades, she screamed aloud, to anyone that might hearken, ‘Avaunt! Stay thy hand!’ but she doubted whether anyone heard over the cacophony of battle.
Perhaps they heard not, but they felt the blast of the freezing wind that came rushing out of the north, smiting them all like the breath of absolute Winter. It quelled their hot battle rage. Then the conflict ceased, for the warriors of goblinkind left off their battering and the kobolds followed suit. Fighters both mortal and immortal drew apart—the former carrying their wounded with them—leaving the ground littered with the fallen.
Asrăthiel let the summoned wind go barrelling away, and as the roar of it died, she sighted the goblin king. He looked at her steadily for an instant. Meeting his cruel violet gaze without unflinching she cried passionately, ‘Let them be. You have done enough!’
She said it with some confidence, for, during the brief conflict she had been thinking quickly and had arrived at the same conclusion as Conall Gearnach; namely, that there was a chance that even if their human foes broke the terms of the covenant the wights would not revenge themselves as drastically as they had implied.
Then came another hiatus when nothing moved except the wind-stirred heather and a meteor sizzling across the black heavens. Even the piteous groans of the stricken seemed to grow fainter. At the third and possibly the final juncture, the representatives of humankind and the prosecutors of unseelie wickedness waited upon the verdict of Zaravaz.
He made no comment in answer to Asrăthiel’s plea, but instead swung himself upon the back of his daemon horse and rode up to her.
‘Spare them,’ she repeated.
‘Will you go or will you stay?’ he enquired.
‘I will go with you. I have promised.’
He smiled.
At this, the urgency of the situation unaccountably fled from Asrăthiel’s consciousness. ‘But have you,’ she said, growing dizzy and unable to think with clarity, ‘no quiz for your third guest?’ as soon as she uttered the words she wished she could unsay them. She thought, I am raving like some discomposed flirt, like some infatuated idiot! And on a bloody theatre of war, and to this unpardonable avenger!
Leaning from his trollhäst, Zaravaz stroked her hair. A stab of unspeakable intensity speared through her, and whether she had spoken foolishly or not ceased to matter. This close, his breath was so fragrant that the winds must be in love with it.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have just asked it.’
Then his steed, and hers, wheeled and sprang forward, and the unseelie horde followed, and without causing any further harm the Silver Goblins with their living booty passed from the view of humankind into the shadow of night.
After their departure, William and his comrades hastened back to their fortresses and armouries. They prepared in secret to ride in pursuit of the goblin contingent, their purpose being to rescue Asrăthiel. Much of the populace mourned the fallen, while others celebrated with wild delight, for the unseelie threat had apparently vanished, and the Marauders had dispersed to their remote caverns, and a fragile peace seemed ready to settle upon the four kingdoms at long last.
But Zaravaz the goblin king, whose hair was blacker than calumny, led the unseelie hordes northwards at preternatural speed; past the dim marches of the Wuthering Moors, across the River Clearwater at the ancient stone bridge, through the town of Paper Mill, and over the Harrowgate Fells to the foothills of the Northern Ramparts. Ahead of them the mountains, great, strong, enduring bones of the land, were flung up against the sky. So high they loomed that the clouds settled about their shoulders and their snowy peaks were lost to view. Further that cavalcade pressed onward into the bitter north, for they passed beneath the shadows of the mountains and climbed beyond, and ultimately Zaravaz led them high into the icy fastnesses of the high latitudes, to the fabled halls where he reigned as Mountain King.
6
MOUNTAIN HALLS
Glisten of the argent river where the frozen rushes shiver,
Glitter of the moon in Winter, shining like an icy splinter,
Lambent leaves of birch and willow; gleam of foam on stormy billow;
Starlight from the heavens spilling; polish on a mint-new shilling;
Crucible of precious sterling, glassy fish in cistern swirling,
Hoarfrost glinting on the clover, tinsel filigree all over.
Dewy web like pearly cable, lustrous ware upon the table;
Chalice, tankard, spoon and platter. Candle flames like diamonds shatter.
Thread and needle for the tailor; guiding beacons for the sailor.
Shadow in a burnished mirror, sharp as crystal, brighter, clearer.
Elemental, clever metal, snowy as an almond petal.
Shimmer on nocturnal water, heart-enslaver, shining: silver.
THE LOVE OF SILVER:
TRANSLATED FROM THE LANGUAGE OF THE TROWS
Across the entire sky constellations, heart-piercingly pure, glittered against a ceiling of hyacinthine mystery, as if caught in some intricate mesh. The stars silently radiating their splendour sparkled as brilliantly at the zenith as at the outer fences of the world. Presently a glow opened on the horizon behind the ranges, like the radiance from a city lit with white-flamed torches. Soon it brightened, impossibly, as if an argentine bonfire of gigantic dimensions had been kindled. A tiny arc of silver ascended, growin
g to become a semicircular disc. The moon had risen. Outlined against its pure luminosity, frozen mountain peaks raked the night sky, jagged as smashed crystal.
The journey across many leagues seemed hardly to take any time at all. Asrăthiel was aware only of a billion sidereal lamps wheeling above her head, while all else moved slowly, as if the world fell gently through a syrup of dark wine spiced with scintillants. She slept or dozed, at whiles, fastened by gramarye upon the back of the daemon horse, lapped by the cool aquamarine lambency of its mane, rocked like a child in a cradle. She had never imagined such refined movement; fluid, elegant and mellifluous, gentle as a breeze caressing blossom, but nimble as light. All the momentous events that had recently occurred and that currently unfolded seemed distant in time and place. As before, a type of detachment overwhelmed her. Temporarily, at least, inquisitiveness seemed to have drained from her conscious mind. The effects of the past anxiety-fraught weeks—the nights of scant sleep, the conflicts, the responsibilities, the urgency—had caught up with her. Now it was all over. Behind her lay places to which she no longer belonged, and people she had lost; before her lay places and beings unknown, but she was numb to all that. Her exhaustion of spirit was such that she must succumb to the opium of drowsiness. Lulled by the rhythmic gait of her steed, she accepted the ride amongst the eldritch chivalry, without any urge to ask where they were going or what would happen when they arrived. Let the future wait—it was out of her hands in any event.
They had reached the Northern Ramparts. Supernaturally surefooted, the trollhästen galloped thousands of feet up the steep and pathless mountain slopes as if they negotiated a level plain, finding purchase where no purchase could possibly be, climbing slopes at impossible angles; surely their hooves must be as adhesive as their hides. Slender and fine were they in build, but their eldritch energy seemed inexhaustible.
Amidst soaring crags the goblin knights rode in procession across a level terrace that gave onto an extraordinary bridge. Slender and transparent, it seemed fashioned of glass. Asrăthiel wondered how such a fine, attenuated structure, whose stanchions resembled icicles dripping from a twig, could hold the weight of such a considerable cavalcade. Beneath the bridge a crevasse plunged to unthinkable depths: there cloud-spectres twined with entombed shadows in valleys never touched by sunlight. A ravening gale blasted out of that chasm, so powerful and swift that any mortal horse would have been blown aside like thistledown.
She looked up.
High amongst the gables of icy Storth Cynros—the tallest and most central of all the mountains—a fabulous semi-subterranean city concealed its marvels from the world. Built in ages past, this citadel of the Silver Goblins was all spires and starlight, eyries and lofty halls, glittering with ancient jewels delved from beneath the mountains. Its turrets were wrapped in mists, its roofs spangled with snow; its gorgeous walls hewn from sparkling basalt. Its galleries broke through the heights where the views were most breathtaking. To this remote and secluded fastness the goblin horde and their haughty chieftain were bringing their three human tributes.
Ahead of them loomed a pointed archway as high as a fully grown poplar tree; a grand entrance into the hillside.
‘What is this place?’ asked Asrăthiel.
‘Sølvetårn,’ said a voice nearby, although she could not tell to whom it belonged. ‘Though mankind’s legends name it Minith Ariannath, the Silver Mountain.’
Halfway across the bridge, the knight Zauberin, who was riding beside the kobold that bore Uabhar on its back, tore something from the dethroned king’s belt and tossed it into the abyss. Asrăthiel watched a leather purse go hurtling down, to be quickly swallowed in the steaming cauldron.
‘That was the Sylvan Comb!’ she murmured, half aware.
Zaravaz rode a short distance ahead of her. ‘I daresay ’twill lie in some forgotten niche until the end of time,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘or else some human fool will find it, and cause more mischief. Either way, I care little.’
It seemed an ignominious fate for such an improbable thing.
Their road passed beneath the archway and on into the mountain’s interior. As they travelled deeper into the citadel, Asrăthiel, roused by wonder, stared about. The ingenious engineering, the delicacy of architecture, the spectacular ornamentation, the grace and vastness and cold splendour of Sølvetårn astounded her. Never had she imagined such a sight. Stairs of hailstone spiralled to lofty pinnacles. Glittering cobwebs draped pointed archways, apses and traceried windows. Fire and water adorned the caverns: columns of flaming gases flaring up to ceilings too high to be descried; cascades of chthonian water streaming down to the many levelled floors, their tumult echoing from wall to wall. Deep dived the caverns of Sølvetårn, yet they were airy and elegant, upheld by fluted columns, traversed by airy, suspended ways and seemingly fragile spans and stairs. Cleverly positioned mirrors conveyed reflections of moonlight therein, and torches flamed like luteous flowers. It was an architecture of translucent glass and ice, pale limestone and stalactites, flashing diamonds and crystal, laced through with waterfalls, lakes and underground rivers.
Presently the weathermage’s attention was drawn to the two other human captives, who were being carried away down a glistening vaulted corridor in another direction, their wails ignored.
‘Where are they going?’ she asked Zaravaz.
‘To a place of sighs.’
Envisioning her fellow hostages suffering some appalling torment she said, ‘I ask you, sir, to grant them clemency.’
‘Daughter of Rowan Green,’ said her host, concentrating his violet gaze upon her, ‘it is twice that I have shown extraordinary mercy, of recent times; thrice if you count my asking ransom for your kingdoms. Once when the man William Wyverstone, perhaps blinded by an excess of philanthropy, attempted to negotiate terms against my express wishes. Again when the man Conall Gearnach, perhaps blinded by a misguided sense of honour, assailed my graihyn as we departed. It has not been easy for me to show such unwonted tolerance. Do not ask it of me a third time.’ He smiled dazzlingly at her. ‘Besides, how can you know what fate I have in store for you? Would you not rather make a hoard of your clemency pleas? You yourself might soon need to beg for my leniency.’
Staggered by his inferences, Asrăthiel struggled to speak but failed. She felt as if she had been winded.
‘Yet fear not, I will not deal hard with you. We shall hold a banquet in your honour,’ announced the goblin king.
Before the damsel could say anything further, a brushing sound, like the swishing of leaves, or ragged hems sweeping the floor, heralded the arrival of trow-folk in great numbers. From the shadowy radiance of inner halls they emerged; small, grey-clad figures gliding towards the incoming cavalcade, uttering soft hoots and cries of gladness.
Asrăthiel recovered her composure and put on a brave face. ‘So this is where the trows were bound!’ she exclaimed.
First Lieutenant Zauberin’s sprightly trollhäst trotted up, its rider shrugging back his fur-lined demi-cloak. He said, ‘They clamour to be our servants.’
‘Of course,’ said Asrăthiel. ‘How could they not? The trows would be attracted to your kindred.’
‘They are attracted by silver,’ said Zauberin. He glanced sideways at the weathermage, allowing one eyelid to droop—a trick that exaggerated his habitual air of dissolution. As he rode away, the hooves of his trollhäst clattered on the flagstones.
‘Go with the Grey Neighbours,’ bade the goblin king and, since her steed followed the trows, the damsel must go too.
After dismounting from the daemon horse that had brought her to Sølvetårn, Asrăthiel found herself bustled away by a gaggle of trow-wives, wights who looked like little women, half her height, in grey headscarves and tattered frocks, bedizened with silver bangles. These dames took her to a suite of exquisite rooms hollowed out of stone, where she bathed in a solid silver tub beneath a cascade of hot, scented water pouring from a wall spout, arcing through the air like a swag of pe
arl necklaces. The overflow splashed into a pool hewn in the rocky floor, from whence it gradually drained away through some unseen conduit.
Invigorated by the water, Asrăthiel woke fully from her somnolence and took stock of her situation. Here she was, alone amongst enemies; no ordinary enemies, but the sworn foes of humanity. What was it that the lieutenant Zauberin had said? ‘Your race is held to be accursed by all the Glashtinsluight, and we cannot endure your presence in the world. We count it our duty to dip our swords in human blood.’ These wights were utterly antipathetic to the human race. Being anathema to her people, they were anathema to her also. She hated them with outraged passion, for all their arbitrary bloodshed and decimation. Yet she would receive as much profit by demanding that they treat her according to her rank, or haranguing them, or summoning storms against them, or refusing to cooperate, as a wave receives when dashing itself against a cliff of adamant. They held all advantage. Come what may her fate was in their hands, and if she were to exist in relative comfort it was in her best interests, at least for now, to appear compliant.
Eerie music was chiming faintly through the apartments. Asrăthiel looked about. The sounds appeared to be generated by airs wafting through shrewdly positioned interstices in the architecture. The ceilings, with their pointed-arch vaulting, were supported on slim pillars whose ornate plinths and capitals were carved with intricate, flowing designs, such as intertwining stems or roots, each stalk terminating in long, tapered leaves or fantastic tendrils. Silver shone everywhere, lustrous and pure as milk; untarnished silver, wrought in ways that enhanced its loveliness; cast, chased, filigree and repoussé, etched, engraved, carved, stamped and embossed. A separate chamber housed a splendid couch suspended on argent chains from the ceiling. By its fragrance, the mattress was stuffed with dry sprigs of lavender, poppies, hemlock and chamomile.
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