He called for music then, and as the bagpipes of the fridean began to wail beneath the floor, the susurration of discontented conversation thrummed through the hall.
When at last the feast was over, the men, summoning much resolution, formally expressed appreciation to their hosts before they left Sølvetårn. It was no easy task, declaring gratitude to those whom they would much rather be putting to the sword. The lips of the human knights moved, and words were forced forth, but no conviction accompanied the sounds.
‘And thus,’ said Zaravaz, conducting his guests through the corridors on the way to the front gates, ‘as I promised to demonstrate, we dwell quite comfortably here, apparently living on worms and beetles in our dank burrows. As you have witnessed, your weathermage is diligently waited upon by her attendants and lacks no comfort.’
‘Let her go with us,’ said William.
‘You overreach the terms under which we made you welcome,’ Zaravaz said scathingly. ‘Beware. You agreed to keep silent on that matter. If you rescind your side of the bargain, our temporary treaty shall be annulled, and the lives of you and your cohorts shall be forfeit.’
‘Prithee, speak of it again, man,’ muttered Zauberin.
After this threat William resentfully remained silent, and they passed through the galleries of Sølvetårn until they exited from the front gates and stood upon the approach to the wonderful bridge that seemed fashioned of glass, and whose stanchions—if stanchions they were, and not weird decorations—resembled icicles dripping from a twig. Alpine gusts whipped their garments and hair, and the sky, cold and remote, seethed with cloud like pourings of steam and smoke and liquid pewter. Beneath the bridge the crevasse dived into dark and secret mouths where the wind whistled like a lost bird. Somewhere in those depths, Asrăthiel thought fleetingly, lies the Sylvan Comb. Or perhaps it is still falling . . .
There the prince halted, saying to the goblin king, ‘Give me a moment alone with Lady Asrăthiel before I depart.’
Zauberin glanced at Zaravaz, who nodded briefly, turned his back and walked away. The goblin king’s knights followed him, withdrawing from the presence of their human guests. Out of the gates a freezing wind came funnelling, as if the mountain halls breathed an icy sigh.
‘Asrăthiel,’ murmured the prince, ‘I could not ask this in their hearing, but have those ravishers dared to force their attentions upon you? If they have touched you they will pay dearly, before I rest in my grave.’
She answered, ‘I have not been forced. I have been treated with respect.’ Aware that this truth was close to equivocation, she felt a stab of self-reproach, as if she had been faithless.
‘I cannot tell you how glad I am to hear it!’ William took the damsel’s hand in his own and clasped it to his heart, saying, ‘You understand that my heart belongs to you. I shall never rest until you return to us.’
‘I know,’ she replied, ‘but do not be dispirited. I am treated well here and, incredibly, my opinions and wishes hold some sway. There is still hope that I will escape. Believe me, there is still hope.’
‘If they take you away from the four kingdoms, away from these northern marches to the mapless lands, I will follow.’
‘Oh William!’ Asrăthiel exclaimed with feeling, greatly moved by his constancy and selfless compassion.
He looked at her so sadly, with such devotion and affection brimming from his eyes, that she reached up, twined her arms about his shoulders and kissed him upon the mouth. ‘Now you must go,’ she said, stepping back and quickly glancing, not without trepidation, at the shadowy incarnations looking on. ‘I will be thinking of you. Do not fear for me, for I will be secure.’
Before leaving, the prince drew her close and kissed her in reciprocation; savorously, and with prodigious gentleness.
Then officers of the horde came swarming around them, and the Narngalishmen were hustled across the bridge of glass or crystal. The crowd parted and began to disperse. Asrăthiel remained on the spot, looking along the bridge after William, long after he had passed from view into the encampment. Eventually she made up her mind to return to her rooms, but when she turned around she saw someone standing a few paces away and the sight, unlooked-for, struck her to the heart.
The hair of Zaravaz was as black as perjury, limned with flowing gleams, the blue iridescence of a crow’s wing. As arousing as battle song, and as dangerous as lightning, he was leaning nonchalantly against a wall as if idling the hours away. Suddenly, for Asrăthiel there was nothing else in existence but those matchless lines of symmetry and vigour. Captivated, as ever, she marvelled at his eldritch beauty, the beauty of a supernatural being that no human creature could possibly hope to match, except, perhaps, viewed through love’s enchanted glass.
Had he witnessed the kiss? She did not know. They were alone together between the front gates of Sølvetårn and the depthless chasm; between splendour and infinity. Marshalling her scattered thoughts, the damsel spoke to the goblin king. ‘What are these plans you have made for the Four Kingdoms of Tir, if the Argenkindë depart?’
‘We intend,’ he said, ‘to leave behind additional mispickels to assist those we have already installed, who dwell throughout the lands, in caverns and warrens, in disused wells and abandoned quarries. These unremitting slaves of ours, both the greater and the lesser, will forever act according to our instructions, never succumbing to corruption. They will regulate and control certain affairs of men, enforcing goblin laws to safeguard and protect nonhumans. The Kobold Watch, comprising both the red and the blue, will patrol regularly, preventing and detecting crimes. The blues of the Kobold Justiciaries will judge offenders, and pass sentence and condemn them, while the doughty mispickels of the Kobold Avengers and Executioners will operate the penal system.’
‘Men shall band together and overrun them! Iron and salt will vanquish them! They will be defeated!’
‘Hardly likely. Mispickels are poisonous to your species, and cunning, and strong, and virtually immortal. They will lurk everywhere, frequently changing their place of abode, always delving deeply into lairs dangerous to humankind, tunnelling up to burst forth where least expected. Their armour resists iron and salt. They will wield uncanny weapons, and if the weapons are lost or destroyed they will simply manufacture more.’
‘What about giving teachers to my people, instead of punishers?’
‘As your lover said at the dinner table, all human beings instinctively know right from wrong. They need no teachers to instruct them to mend their ways. Besides, we tried that avenue long ago, with no success.’
‘If you ride north,’ said Asrăthiel, ‘will you drag me with you?’
‘Will you deign to accompany us?’
‘I would rather not.’
‘You disappoint me, Weatherwitch.’ The lavender eyes darkened to storm-purple.
‘You can coerce me to go with you, of course,’ said Asrăthiel, ‘but you won’t break my will. My mother had a saying, which she learned from her family in the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu. If you love something—’
Zaravaz interrupted, ‘Yes, I have heard that old saw several thousand times. If you love something, set it free. If it does not return it was never yours.’
‘No! If you love something truly, you would not have caged it in the first instance.’
The goblin king pushed off the wall and drew himself up to his full height. ‘Love?’ he said scaldingly. ‘You flatter yourself. Do you think one wench can please me more than any other? You are all much the same. Do as you please, Witch, it makes little difference. If we leave Sølvetårn you will be free to choose to ride north with us, or to return to the lands of men. Either way I will not yet exterminate the pathogens that infect the face of this fair land, those harm-causing agents which you seem to consider so precious.’ Zaravaz raked Asrăthiel from head to toe with one of his measuring looks. ‘Think on it,’ he said presently. ‘Think on whether you would stay, or come with us.’
‘I do not have to deliberate,’ sh
e said haughtily. ‘The choice is hardly difficult.’
He laughed, and with a swish of his cloak that sent biting draughts gusting, he was gone. But Asrăthiel felt torn apart. She had never expected Zaravaz to relinquish her so easily. Now that she was faced with the prospect of freedom the decision was, in fact, much harder than she had expected. Her confusion troubled her; she ought to be joyful, but was not.
Having appeared from some side corridor, Lieutenant Zwist accompanied Asrăthiel back to her suite. She said very little to him along the way, but he kept up a cheerful flow of chatter. At her door, just before he parted from her, he bent his head, cupped a hand—beringed with black opals—to her ear and whispered, ‘Know that my lord desisted from killing your prince only because he knows you love him. Good morning, Sioctíne!’
After performing an exquisite bow he swung away and strode off.
Zwist’s revelation served only to further agitate the damsel’s sensibilities. She threw herself upon her couch and lay against the silk-like cushions, staring up at the draped canopy and the long, curved bones of the ceiling without seeing them.
It was a distressing condition she found herself in. She loved Zaravaz, and longed to be with him, but as she lay musing she recalled his past wickedness and realised, fully, what it entailed. The suffering of innocents was not to be brushed aside—not for the sake of love, not for anything. It came to her that she could never go with him because of the unseelieness in him, because he had slaughtered human beings cruelly, and without mercy, and even with joy.
There was no sleep to be had that day. The weathermage left open the curtains and gazed out through the window at the sky beyond the peaks. Billowy cumulus clouds floated there. The firmament was like some wind-blown meadow clotted with the blowsy heads of lacy umbelliferae: meadowsweet, cow parsley, ground elder, wild angelica, burnet saxifrage, hemlock. The flowing of the clouds against the frozen crags was hypnotic, creating the optical illusion that the sky was motionless and the mountains were crashing down, endlessly collapsing.
Sunset alchemised the snow-dusted landscape to a realm of gold and flame. It was then that Asrăthiel rose from her couch of desolation and went to seek Zaravaz. Throughout the night she searched, but he was not to be discovered.
Towards morning she found him beyond the walls of Sølvetårn, in the company of his knights and many trollhästen. They were congregating beside a noisy, fast-moving alpine stream that poured, glittering, down a rocky channel, deflecting from outcrops on either bank. The water foamed and boiled along its bed of oxide-stained rocks and water-worn pebbles. The goblin knights were dismounting, after a nightlong man-hunt. When she saw them, Asrăthiel drew to a halt. She did not approach Zaravaz or call out to him. She was smitten, as always, by the look of him, for it inspired terror to behold such beauty, and her courage began to fail.
But, upon spying the damsel, he left his chivalry and came to her, stripping off his riding gloves. His hair, wind-tossed, was so black it seemed to suck the light out of the surrounding air.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Have you decided,’ she said, ‘whether you will depart from the Northern Ramparts?’
‘I have. We will.’
The damsel felt as if, somewhere, a full-blown flower had shrivelled on the stem. ‘In that case, I shall tell you something. You gave me a choice,’ she said, forcing out the words. ‘I have considered. My decision is this: when you go, I will stay here in the Four Kingdoms of Tir.’
Asrăthiel held her breath. Behind the shoulder of the goblin king she could see the eldritch knights amongst the milling daemon horses. Moonlight rinsed them with a dry white wine. As the mountain stream churned over the rocks in the moonlight it flashed and sparkled with silver streaks. Bright droplets were tossed up into the air like a hurrah.
Zaravaz had merely given her a brief glance, his handsome face betraying no emotion.
He said, ‘Well if that is your choice, you might as well go back straight away. There is no profit in your staying a moment longer.’
Shocked by this reaction, Asrăthiel found herself at a loss for words. She had not expected this, but had presumed she would stay in the halls of the Mountain King for at least a few weeks more—however, from that instant, everything began to happen quickly.
Before she knew it a group of household trows appeared and she was whisked away from the goblin hunting party, along chiselled paths and stairs to the front gates of Sølvetårn. Tormented by anguish of spirit she feared she might never see Zaravaz again, dreaded that he had finished with her entirely, because she refused to acquiesce.
Yet she did see him again, once more, before she was cast forth.
He met her at the gates, accompanied by his ten highest-ranking lieutenants. All of them, all his knights, looked upon their human visitor differently now; even Zwist, who had been a kind of friend. They scowled at the damsel and their mood was grim, for she had displeased their lord, which angered them.
‘Go home to your yellow-tongued butter knife over the mantelpiece, Sioctíne,’ called out Zaillian. ‘Care well for it.’
‘That I shall,’ she replied defiantly.
‘We wish you ill,’ Zauberin snarled to Asrăthiel’s face, ‘for your ingratitude, your ungraciousness.’
‘Bee dty host, jouylleen!’ Zaravaz said sharply, and the first lieutenant subsided, his demeanour sullen.
Before his erstwhile tribute was taken across the bridge the goblin king gifted her with a sword of iridium, forged with gramarye.
‘Wield this instead of Fallowblade,’ he said, his tone remote, his violet eyes as cold and as fathomless as underground lakes. ‘This is Rehollys, “Moonlight”, and it will serve you well.’
Before she could stammer acknowledgement Lieutenant Zauberin took a pace forward and declared dismissively, ‘At the equinoctial full moon the Argenkindë will ride out into the regions north of these mountains, into the frozen lands.’ Stepping back he bowed fleeringly, his manner somehow conveying, We are well rid of the likes of you.
‘Farewell,’ Zaravaz said to Asrăthiel. ‘Bannaght lhiat.’
The goblin king bowed brusquely and with impeccable courtesy, then strode away without a backward glance. Zauberin and the other lieutenants closed ranks behind him, and Asrăthiel was left with only Hulda and some other trows. ‘Come alang! Come alang!’ they entreated, pulling at the damsel’s skirts, and she allowed them to conduct her across the thin, high bridge. Evidently a message had been despatched to William in his encampment on the other side of the crevasse, for the prince, with his retinue, was waiting for her.
As Asrăthiel curtseyed before him, for some reason it kept running through her mind that she had not even been given a chance to bid goodbye to Tangwystil.
11
GOLD
Lord Luck, thou comely youth with shining brow,
I beg thee, shower fortune on me now.
Pray heap on me thy bounty in great store,
And I will praise thy name forevermore.
Lord Doom, bold warrior who wields the axe,
Let not thy double blade fall on our backs!
Show mercy; may thy bell toll not for me;
I swear to pay full homage unto thee.
Great Lady Destiny, thou wondrous crone,
In humble state I kneel before thy throne.
Thy wheel spins out the threads of human lives,
Please do not cut them short with cruel knives.
Fair Lady Ill-Luck, siren bright and fell,
Pray do not curse me with thy dreadful spell
If thou shouldst shun me when you pass my way
Then thou wilt have my worship every day.
A DRUIDIC CHANT
As morning fog slowly dispersed from the peaks, Asrăthiel left the halls of the Mountain King and started for King’s Winterbourne, escorted by William and his troops. On the wooded slopes of the foothills, autumnal maples snagged the first beams of the rising sun, like yellow lamps illuminatin
g the gloomy forests of pine and cedar. Upon receiving news of Asrăthiel’s imminent return, William had despatched the swiftest runners from his encampment to the nearest semaphore station, with messages to key personages. Two days later, while his entourage descended the winding paths of the hills at a walking pace, the wind changed unexpectedly. A sky-balloon appeared from amongst the clouds, whisking along like a bubble on the breeze. As soon as Asrăthiel spied the aircraft in the distance her spirits rose and her footsteps lightened. She could hardly wait to see her friends and family again. When the balloon landed she saw, to her joy, that the pilot was Avalloc himself, and ran to meet him. The Storm Lord, trembling with emotion, greeted Asrăthiel with a single word, ‘Welcome,’ and a heartfelt embrace. He thanked William and all his men for the part they had played in rescuing his granddaughter, though they refused to take credit for anything except escorting her from the gates of Sølvetårn.
‘I am amazed to see you looking so well, after your ordeal, dear child,’ Avalloc said to Asrăthiel, tears coursing down his cheeks. ‘My knees have been shaking ever since I received word that you had been set free. Such a dreadful burden has been lifted from my shoulders!’
‘Oh Grandfather, I am mightily glad you came to take me home,’ the damsel exclaimed. ‘There were times when I wondered whether I would ever see you again!’
Over meadow and wood, across hill and valley and swift-coursing river, the Storm Lord’s aerostat transported Asrăthiel and William to Wyverstone Castle. The return of the weather-mage sparked wild celebrations in King’s Winterbourne. From the moment the citizens heard the news that she and the prince were on their way, they began to gather in anxious anticipation outside Wyverstone Castle, braving the chilly Autumn morning. Over the next few hours the crowd swelled to more than a thousand people eager to witness Asrăthiel tasting freedom after two months in the underground prisons of unseelie wights.
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