‘I daresay you would fain be aboveground, weltering in your wind and rain,’ he continued.
‘On the contrary,’ she said, darting a bold look at him. ‘I like it here.’
Zwist took no part in this exchange. His attention was fixed fervently on the silver cupellation hearths. ‘The heat converts the remaining lead to litharge,’ he said, ‘which assimilates any other lingering base metal constituents. Our mispickels drain off the litharge, leaving purified silver in the hearth.’ The goblin knight stepped across the floor. With his bare hands he scooped up some of the cupelled metal, still hot, dripping and fluid as quicksilver. The watching weathermage could not help but cry out. Oblivious of her needless distress Zwist gazed long upon the molten silver before letting it trickle away through his fingers.
When he rejoined them a skin of shining metal was hardening on his hands. ‘The slag is drained off on the other side of the furnaces,’ he remarked, ‘and trucked away to be dumped.’
‘A wizardly trick,’ Asrăthiel said, staring at his hands.
‘Oh, I was in agony all right,’ Zwist assured her. ‘Silver has a low melting point compared to metals such as iron and iridium, but it sears goblin flesh indescribably. Pain but no damage.’ Wincing, he peeled away pieces of the thin film of silver; beneath, his skin remained unmarked.
‘Are kobolds not as immune to the effects of heat as other wights?’ asked Asrăthiel, noting that the imps wore thick gloves and attempted to keep away from the worst of the blasts.
‘Watch,’ said Zwist. He signalled to one of the workers, who ran up to him and bowed. The knight gave a command in the goblin language, whereupon the creature loped away and jumped into the mass of fiery slag spilling like syrup from the far side of the furnaces. A blue light flared and the kobold melted instantly. Tendrils of indigo smoke corkscrewed into the air, then dissolved. ‘You see,’ said the lieutenant, ‘they are not immune.’
Asrăthiel was horrified. ‘You have no compunction!’ she snapped, turning her back on him.
‘The thing was unalive!’ Zwist exclaimed, spreading his partially silvered hands palms upwards in a gesture of guiltlessness. ‘The unalive cannot be killed.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Asrăthiel.
‘Short spans are standard fare for them,’ the knight said in a somewhat conciliatory tone. ‘This is perilous ground for mispickels. If they avoid falling into a furnace, they might be run over by a train or injured by direct contact with iron. Iron is prolific here, as you can see. Too, salts exist in these ores; sometimes in the form of sodium chloride, most damaging to them. Their existence is short, but fortunately more of them can be manufactured when necessary.’
‘The lady disapproves of you, aachaptan,’ said Zaravaz, evidently entertained by his lieutenant’s attempts to vindicate himself.
Railway lines crisscrossed the floors of the refineries. A couple of kobolds whizzed by on a gangers’ trolley, madly pumping the seesawing handles, their tapered ears blowing backwards or forwards with the speed of their passing. On a siding nearby waited long trains of linked freight trucks and other rolling stock. Workers were filling deep, open wagons with liquid slag, then hitching them to a moving cable that ran between the rails. Off they went, clanking up a steep incline that wound its way into a tunnel. When they reappeared on the far side of an underground hillock, they had climbed higher, mounting some distant scarp or embankment that resembled a dully-glowing waterfall in the dark. The heaped contents of each iron pot were incandescent, making the train resemble some mythical beast with long lines of moving eyes. At the top of the luminescent bank the monster halted and the eyes dimmed, but Asrăthiel could make out tiny figures with long pincers in their outstretched hands, with which they seized the lip of each wagon and slowly tipped them sideways, disgorging the entrails of the furnaces. Flaming meteors of red and orange fire sprayed the dim scarp, glimmering brilliant emerald and plunged in feverish amber, wheeling and splattering down the slag pile. Viscous fireballs tumbled, blazing, down over the dump, fanning out to become a surge that exploded over the scalded embankment in gouts of glittering froth.
It was like a vision from the world’s birth.
Beneath the roar of blast furnaces kobold workers were belting out a song, keeping time with the twitching of their barbed tails:
‘T’ fuill-yiarg er yiarn,
T’ glassoil er copuir
T’ gormaghey er kobolt,
T’ geayney er nickyl.’
‘By Cleave and Lockridge, that song does so subtly unrhyme,’ Zwist remarked, wincing.
‘And so adeptly does the melody assail the hearing,’ subjoined Zaravaz. ‘Let us depart ere this rhapsody makes us swoon for joy.’
They returned to the upper levels where, at the bidding of his lord, Zwist left them alone.
At the midnight hour, when moonlight laved the heights, Asrăthiel stood with Zaravaz on a cliff-top balcony overhanging a precipitous ravine. The wind had subsided and on the other side of the gorge grey-white vapours were pouring down the mountainsides like thin sheets of water. Near at hand a fountain gushed from a carved stone spout set into the rock, its droplets chiming like a wild music of bells. Somewhere amongst the rugged bluffs a lone flautist, some eldritch wight, was piping an ethereal melody that rebounded from every mineral facet, multiplying until it harmonised with its own echoes.
From the corners of sight the weathermage watched her companion. He had never been from her thoughts since first she had set eyes on him. What was it about him that magnetised her so? Was it his demeanour—vital, untamed, unpredictable; or the look of him—tall and tapered, sculptured, the quintessence of masculinity; was it the way he moved, with a predator’s poised swiftness and a dancer’s grace, swift, lithe and perfectly balanced; or was it those charismatic eyes, shards of dark amethyst rimmed by midnight lashes?
Or perhaps some kind of spell was woven into his hair . . .
. . . which flowed gently down, as black as hatred, to drape across his shoulders the way skeins of silk would caress cast steel. It might have been the contrast of the soft fluidity and the adamant, in such close juxtaposition; like water pouring over rock, like long plumes spilled over armour, or like a veil of shadow let fall upon an oaken beam that seized control of her senses. In that contrast was an allurement that gripped her heart and tore it out by the roots. And when the wind, the fortunate, lawless, imbecilic wind, dipped long fingers into the nightfall of his hair and lifted strands of it, at leisure, into the air while he remained motionless, unmoved, and more beautiful than heart’s desire, she could have wept for jealousy and cursed the wanton air currents, and if she had possessed the power she might have grasped them in her hands and torn them and hurled them over the edges of the world, for daring to venture where she would trade her sanity to go.
It seemed the fixation was mutual, or else he had guessed her thoughts.
‘Eunyssagh. Aalin folt liauyr,’ murmured Zaravaz, catching up a wisp of Asrăthiel’s hair as it blew in the breeze. Idly he stroked it. When he spoke, his breath had turned to ghosts.
She stood yielding. ‘What is the meaning of those words?’ she whispered presently, her own exhalations condensing to mist in the cold.
‘Such lovely tresses.’ He smiled down at her, then something caught his eye and, directing her attention to an outflung spur of basalt, clearly visible across the moonlit valley, he said, ‘Look there!’
A daemon horse trotted into view, exquisite, fleet as cloud-shadows.
‘Behold Tangwystil, who brought you here!’ said the goblin king. ‘She chose you on the battlefield, not being mine to give.’
‘I am honoured,’ said Asrăthiel.
‘No human being ever rode a trollhäst, before you.’
Amongst so many eldritch beings, Asrăthiel was beginning to feel unhuman.
Zaravaz called out, his voice ringing clearly in the pure, cold air. The trollhäst named Tangwystil stamped and shook out her gaseous mane, then cantered away, su
re-footed as a goat amongst the crags. She seemed limned by emerald pyres.
‘Next time we ride out,’ said Zaravaz, ‘you shall come with us. Do you like the gifts I have sent, the gowns and other fripperies?’
‘I do.’
‘Then I will gift you with more pleasures.’
Taking Asrăthiel by the hand the goblin king led her through a doorway. They entered a large and high-vaulted chamber of gothic loveliness, circular in shape, its walls perforated almost all the way around by unglazed archways exposing the interior to the elements, its ceiling an intricate openwork lattice giving almost unrestricted view of the frozen peaks that towered against star-pitted skies. There was no sense of enclosure. This was a chamber that shut out neither landscape nor wind, neither cloud nor constellation.
In the centre stood a couch piled with sleek and glossy cushions, while to one side a table upheld a jewellery casket of embossed silver. Zaravaz lifted the lid from the casket and a diffuse illumination radiated out. He handed Asrăthiel a globe of light that reminded her of the jewel she had given to the urisk, Crowthistle, yet this sparkled palest blue whereas the other, at its core, had glittered virginal white.
‘It is a frost-jewel,’ said Zaravaz. ‘They are enchanted baubles, quite rare, fashioned from frost, and hardened by gramarye so that they cannot melt, like the ice-fern traceries on some of your gowns.’
‘Once I owned something like this,’ she said.
‘Now you own many,’ said Zaravaz, gesturing towards the casket.
Asrăthiel picked up the jewels and admired them, one by one. Each was dazzling, yet subtly different in colour and lustre from the last. Carefully she let the brilliant ornaments fall back into their padded nest. Beholding them reminded her of her mother, asleep in her cupola of glass and roses. The white jewel had belonged once to Jewel, who was its namesake. Now she had given away that heirloom and it was lost to her, like her mother and father. It was gone, like the little urisk, as some day her grandfather would also be gone.
A sense of desolation and loneliness swept over Asrăthiel at this reminder of past grief, but even as she mourned, she thought a flame of midnight flared urgently at her side. Zaravaz was standing so close that her skin tingled in the dance of eldritch energies surrounding him. He placed a finger beneath her chin, gently tilting her head up so that he could look directly into her eyes. His gaze was calm, evaluative and acutely sensual. Adrift in the violent essence of his gaze Asrăthiel was, yet again, thunderstruck by the terrible beauty of the goblin king. His touch, his look, were erotic in the extreme. He was the most exciting eldritch being she could ever have imagined, yet violent beyond all limits. She utterly deplored his principles, or lack thereof, but was profoundly attracted, in a physical sense, against her better judgement.
It seemed he had divined the sadness that afflicted her when she looked at the jewels. ‘It is time to celebrate life,’ he said, and for once there was no trace of sarcasm in his tone, only tenderness. ‘It is time to cease dwelling on the heartbeat that has stopped, and instead to rejoice in the heart that throbs with vitality, the pulse that quickens to the exuberance of song, the flight of dance, and the thrill of speed, and lovemaking, and power.’
For just an instant, she hesitated, shocked without fully comprehending why.
‘An open book,’ he said, ‘is easily read.’
Understanding with a start of shame and outrage that he knew exactly what net she was caught in, she murmured some excuse, picked up her skirts and ran from the room.
The weathermage found her way back to her silver apartments; it was never difficult, for trow-wives tended to flock around, offering their services as guides. Dawn arrived, but sleep refused to accompany it. Asrăthiel rolled fretfully upon her couch, as if in the grip of pyrexia. She had never fallen ill in her life, but had witnessed other people suffering from fevers; noted the sweat pouring from their flesh, and seen the way they shivered and could not lie still. I have contracted some eldritch ague, she said to herself, or been poisoned by arsenic, or bewitched. But they were all empty pretexts; she knew it was not so.
She thought it strange that this should happen. Asrăthiel despised everything the goblin king stood for: cruelty, pitilessness, exploitation, and war against humankind. For his part, he was arrogant and contemptuous of her well-loved people. Although her philosophies were identical to his in some aspects, in others they could not be more at variance. Genuine incompatibility existed between the two of them. Politically, they were worlds apart. On a completely different level, nonetheless, it was apparent that a fierce attraction existed between them. She had become obsessed with him, and it was obvious the obsession was reciprocated in full force.
So that, on the cloudy morning when Asrăthiel tried to sleep, racked by thoughts and desires, handsome Zaravaz, whose hair was blacker than wickedness, entered the twilit bedchamber where she was lying awake, and merely took a seat at the foot of her couch, nothing more.
She saw him through the gloom, sitting silently with his back turned, as if deep in thought, or as if waiting. At first she said to herself, I will fight this, but he continued to remain there without moving, and when she looked upon him once more all else vanished from sight and comprehension, leaving nothing but the intensity of his beauty, and she thought she must die of yearning. In spite of her misgivings she was no longer able to resist. She rose up from her pillows, reached out and touched him on the shoulder. He turned around.
After the swiftest of glances, which clearly told him all he needed to know, his reaction was as immediate as it was extreme. He took her in his arms, pushing her back down upon the pillows. She felt his weight on her, his darkness pouring around them both like a canopy, his desire an ignition. Long and taut was his body, lean as a blade and hard. Through the spilling strands of her own hair, she stared with wide-open eyes at his handsome face, finely drawn against all that liquid shadow, and saw his look of fierce hunger. His mouth tasted as sweet as rain; his fragrance was myrrh and incense. A sweet and terrible heat spread from him to her like a delicious contagion, coursing through every pathway of her blood, and she lay transfixed with rapture beneath his touch. There could be no other embrace like this.
They spoke not a word to each other, but the consummation of their passion was single-minded, vehement and all-devouring. It was a gale picking them up and dashing them against the midnight sky; more than a wind, a hurricane, a storm of ecstasy, but she clung to him as if she were drowning.
All she could do was try to breathe.
8
WATERGLASS TARN
What draws me to your flame, unseelie knight;
A moth to singe my wings with eldritch light?
What drives me mad to lie down at your side,
Reluctant, yet as eager as a bride?
You are some poison, yet a draught so sweet
I yearn to drink until I am replete.
You might destroy me with your wicked ways,
With pleasure’s surfeit you could end my days.
Bring death or love—’tis all the same to me.
In both I’m blind, in both I am set free.
A VERSE FROM ‘CAITLIN GROVES’,
A FOLK SONG ABOUT A DAMSEL BEWITCHED BY A GANCONER’S SPELL
Then it happened that each day, while the goblin knights slumbered, or dozed, or lounged on cushioned couches idly pondering chess moves, or lingered in some trancelike state; and while the trows, who had retreated to their own niches, remained dormant until nightfall, and while the sun laved the Northern Ramparts with a pale radiance beyond Sølvetårn’s black curtains, they lay together, Zaravaz and Asrăthiel; and each night, as if by mutual consent—although no such pact had been made between them—they behaved as though nothing had occurred. It was as if each of them had split between two different modes: the driven, silent, desperately sensual persona of Sølvetårn’s sleeping hours, each devouring the other with need; and the cool, calculating, courteously aloof persona of the waking hour
s.
For matters had changed between them, necessarily.
All the ardency burned there in his hard and insistent touch, his look of fire, and she made no attempt to hide her own compulsion. When they were publicly in each other’s company, however—at feasts, or when surveying some treasure store, or gliding in silver boats on mountain tarns, or riding through the wind-swept steeps—their conversations together held nothing of that. At nights they never spoke of their daily encounters, although the intensity of their fervour was conveyed with every glance and contact.
As for the actual encounters—never a word passed between them then, either. All took place in silence, for the language of the body was sufficient communication and more, and expressed what words could never, need never convey.
For Asrăthiel it was as if talking about what happened and acknowledging it would make it real; as if by never referring to it, she might make believe it was not taking place. Often, when alone, she would imagine she must have been bewitched. She could not conjure any legitimate excuse why she would lie with the very incarnation of wickedness. Every rational principle protested against it. He was not of her kind. He was iniquitous and fell. Indeed he was beautiful, but he was not for her, never for her, and she felt she ought to have held out against his allurement. And she would picture William, dear kind William, her friend and gentle companion who would have risked his life to save her. For years he had loved her without pressing his suit, because he comprehended she was not ready to love him in return. Patiently he waited, as her friend. Asrăthiel understood, now, how corrosively the waiting must have seared his spirit.
Sometimes she felt as if she were transfigured into another person entirely, every morning when her eldritch lover came to her, in her bedchamber. It could not possibly be Asrăthiel, daughter of the House of Maelstronnar, powerful weather-mage, who had allowed herself to descend into such a predicament—bound by wanton passion to an unseelie lord. To lie with him was like coupling with the night itself; it was to be consumed in an inferno of bliss. She wondered, was she exceptional in his eyes, did she mean anything to him, or was he perhaps so amorous with all women? But there was no way of knowing, and ultimately it hardly mattered, since, of course, she cared nothing for him and was merely ensorcelled.
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