On that final balloon journey from Sølvetårn, as Asrăthiel had pondered on her last moments with Zaravaz, she had come to understand that for her there could be no other. He meant more to her than she had believed. It was as if his spirit, and hers, had without her awareness melded to become one, and now were split asunder. Gone were her doubts about eldritch-human liaisons; the old tales told of many such, and besides, when faced with eternity, differences faded into insignificance. How could anyone bear to live forever, eschewing the most vital essence of one’s inner being?
She could not marry William, who, in any case, was no longer the man she had known. The prince had been transformed, and now she felt distant from him. When he visited her at Rowan Green she guessed why he had made the journey and tactfully forestalled his offer of marriage, suggesting he should look elsewhere for a wife, because she could never bring him happiness.
‘I am immortal,’ she said compassionately, ‘and you are not. There can be no hope for contentment between us. I shall never marry, but you have a different destiny, methinks. You shall find one who loves you as you deserve.’
The king’s son received her advice with the unwavering equanimity he had possessed ever since the werefire had rinsed him. He gazed radiantly upon the weathermage, saying, ‘You are wise, Asrăthiel. I perceive that you are right. I must let you go, though you will always hold a special place in my heart.’
‘And you in mine.’
Their parting salutations had been chaste and respectful. He took the role of a fond and dependable friend to her now, yet sometimes he seemed more like some celestial stranger.
Tenember passed, and a new year commenced.
The Winter of the year 3491 was long and severe. Asrăthiel spent most of her time sitting beside her sleeping mother. The briars entwining the glass cupola grew stark and leafless. Blackened by frost, they resembled twisted iron bars. All through that terrible season the damsel sat sad-eyed in the eyrie while storms raged outside the panes and rampaged across the storths. No carlin or apothecary could heal her. The aged scholar Adiuvo Constanto Clementer, who now dwelled at the House of Maelstronnar, gave kindly counsel to Avalloc’s granddaughter; ‘You mentioned that lately, under severe duress, you cried,’ he said. ‘There is a chance that weeping might relieve your suffering. Can you weep again?’
She tried, but could not.
‘I have no more tears,’ she said.
And as in fancy she fled northwards, across hill and vale, forest and lake to the icy towers of the Ramparts, she thought she heard the sound of small hoofs clattering over flagstones, and peered about in the hope of catching a glimpse of a small, goat-legged figure moving like a shadow against firelight—but it was only a pair of song-thrushes knocking snail shells against the roof.
‘Crowthistle,’ she whispered, allowing herself to acknowledge, now, what she had previously attempted to deny; that Zaravaz had not befriended her, in the first place, solely in order to persuade her to free him from the spell. On the contrary—as an urisk he had shown himself unfriendly from the beginning, ill humoured and inclined to make a nuisance of himself—out of resentment for his plight, perhaps, or for want of any better divertissement. His pride forbade him from fawning on human beings in order to obtain their goodwill. Clearly he would rather have stayed forever cursed than stoop to such measures. No, he had not merely played on her feelings to suit his own ends. Any esteem the urisk had felt for her in those early days when they had fraternised with each other, any friendship he had shown her, had been sincere.
In the most unassailable depths of understanding, she had known it all along.
Similarly, when Zaravaz had cast her out of Sølvetårn so swiftly, she had never really wondered why it had seemed suddenly easy for him to give her up. He was aware of how grievously she pined for family and friends; furthermore, she had claimed she loved William, and it was almost certain Zaravaz had seen her kiss the prince goodbye at the gates. Even in his wickedness the goblin king had forfeited his desires for her sake, and that was perhaps the most painful knowledge of all.
Since his immersion in the werefire William Wyverstone had developed a faculty that was quite astounding. Indeed, it was a power worthy of an eldritch wight or a powerful sorcerer or—some said—of a man who had directly received the blessing of Lord Ádh himself. The prince had become capable of healing a multitude of ills, merely by touching a patient; but even he could not succour Asrăthiel. The changes in his character proved permanent; he never reverted to his former self. He had been blasted by the torch of gramarye, and was no longer as he had been, tugged this way and that by the tides of human emotion, but continued always detached and serene, a calming influence on those who surrounded him.
As for Aonarán, he never spoke another word; neither did he seek death as he once did, and many said his wits had been burned out entirely. His habit was to sit placidly beneath a plum tree in the courtyard of the Asylum for Lunatics, paying no heed to the antics of those who surrounded him.
A quarter of a year passed. The month of Mars eventuated, bringing the natal swellings of buds upon thorny stems. At High Darioneth people celebrated the annual festival of Whuppity Stourie. The bells in the tower of Ellenhall, which had hung silent from Tenember to Feverier, recommenced their evening carillon at sunset on the first day of Spring. As the opening peals rang out, children from the plateau and from Rowan Green raced three times around the hall, in the direction of the sun. As they ran, they twirled paper balls on the ends of cords, with which they buffeted each other. After the chorus of the bells came to an end the Storm Lord cast handfuls of small coins upon the lawn. Giggling and shoving playfully, the children swarmed to gather them up. Following the upholding of these ancient traditions, there was music, and everyone feasted in the great hall, Long Gables.
Asrăthiel watched the activities without participating. Seated between Avalloc and Dristan she picked at her meal, listening half-heartedly to the general gossip. People were commenting disapprovingly on the host of women who still fancied themselves in love with the goblin king. There had sprung up a brisk trade in portraits of him, many of them executed by artists who had never set eyes on any of the Argenkindë. Somehow a rumour had arisen that the goblin king had become seelie, having been burned in the werefire, and this gave his devotees courage to sing his praises even louder, flagrantly embroidering on the little they knew of their favourite until they had devised a set of biographies, endlessly and rhapsodically debated. The weathermage could not help being fascinated with this talk, while deploring it at the same time. No one ever asked her about him any more, because she steadfastly refused to speak of her imprisonment.
Other dinner guests were discussing the recent courtship between Prince William and the daughter of Thomas, Lord Carisbrooke. It was a match that met with general approval.
‘Lady Meliora is a delightful creature,’ they said, ‘as even-tempered as the crown prince. She would make an excellent queen, if chosen.’
‘What a king and queen we shall have!’ their companions cried, one adding, ‘The dear prince cured my aunt’s jaundice with one touch of his hand! People have been coming from all over, to try if he can help them, and he never turns them away.’
‘Yet he cannot restore everyone to soundness,’ someone else interjected. ‘He could not save my cousin.’
‘Is it not intriguing,’ one of the diners commented, ‘how our Prince William’s outlook has changed since his ordeal by fire. He seems quite beyond the mundane trials and woes of ordinary human beings. Nothing ruffles him. The courtiers say he is never irritable or angry, neither has he been seen to be woeful.’
‘Nor ever moved to burst into a roar of thigh-slapping laughter, either,’ the speaker’s neighbour reminded the listeners.
Not to be diverted from his point the diner continued, ‘So beatific is he that the superstitious folk of Slievmordhu have been conjecturing that he has been touched by the hand of Lord Ádh, and has been blessed or sanctified.’
&
nbsp; ‘That makes two of them!’ Albiona Maelstronnar rejoined.
‘You cannot be referring to that queer fellow in the madhouse!’
‘Nay, not at all. There is a rumour circulating amongst the peddlers that a most singular stranger has entered Narngalis and now walks—nay, runs southwards along the roads and lanes. His wears ordinary countryman’s raiment, but his unexplained haste makes him an object of curiosity. More than that, he has a certain air that makes people suppose he too has been touched by the hands of the Fates.’
‘What is unusual about him?’
‘They say he appears serene, yet there is a vigorous excitement about him. He looks to be in his early thirties, yet somehow he is also much older. It is clear he is no eldritch wight, yet something about him hints of the supernatural. He has two aspects rolled into one.’
‘Oh well, I don’t call that odd. Half the folk in my husband’s family are two-faced.’
Both women chuckled.
The matter piqued Asrăthiel’s curiosity, but only for a short while. Soon she relapsed into her customary apathy.
Her listlessness was somewhat diluted by the prospect of her mother’s birthday, on the eleventh of Mars.
To her grandfather she declared, ‘I shall fly Icemoon down to the lowlands to gather the blossoms of early Spring. I intend to deck my mother’s room with the golden-yellows of lesser celandine and forsythia, and wild daffodils, and fragrant gorse.’
‘Do so with my benediction, dear child,’ said Avalloc. ‘Anything that might make you smile brings warmth to my heart.’
On Jewel’s birthday Asrăthiel—immune to the prickles of gorse—adorned the bedchamber with wildflowers, and combed her mother’s hair across the pillow, while singing the songs of Spring. From time to time she glanced out of the briar-framed windowpanes. There was no way for her to know, but it was a morning strikingly similar to the first morning her mother had ever spent in Rowan Green. Across the garden she gazed, and through the foliage of a rowan tree, and past the parapet bordering the cliff edge. On one hand the fertile plateau of High Darioneth stretched away, shadows resting serenely across misty fields and orchards. On the other, steep slopes climbed into the sky, where clouds drifted around the peak of Wychwood Storth. The melodies of falling water and the twittering of blackbirds embellished the wind’s low murmur.
That very afternoon a man in peasant garb arrived at High Darioneth. Alone, or seemingly alone, he entered through the East Gate, and ran, with a steady, enduring gait, all the way to Ellenhall. Quite a stir he caused, because he was the stranger whom rumour had described; the man of two aspects. Watchmen accompanied him, and although he would not tell them his name they did not hinder him, for there was something familiar in his voice, his bearing, his face . . .
By the time the newcomer reached the road leading up the cliff to Rowan Green a crowd had formed around him, chanting and singing. Children were skipping and shouting. They had recognised him at last. Tall and lithe was he, with a dark brown beard, and hair that rained across his shoulders and down his back. His eyes were as green as leaves.
News of his approach travelled ahead of him. The bells of Ellenhall began to chime in celebration. By the time the traveller arrived at the top of the road, Avalloc, Dristan and Asrăthiel Maelstronnar were waiting. Their arms were extended wide, and the look of incredulous joy in their eyes was so moving that it was painful to behold. As the four, reunited, enfolded each other in a quadruple embrace, the old man wept.
Arran Maelstronnar had returned.
The newcomer was deeply affected by greeting his father, brother and daughter after the prolonged separation, and although he was clearly anxious to be reunited with Jewel he remained with them at the threshold of Rowan Green for a long while. The four were oblivious of the jostling throng that milled about them, remaining at a respectful distance but unable to keep their voices down.
‘It is he!’ the well-wishers jubilantly cried, ‘Arran has returned from the ends of the world! The Storm Lord’s son lives!’ More people were running up the road on the heels of the first crowd, and many clustered around Albiona—who was laughing and crying at the same time—and pelting her with questions, as if she were already an authority on every detail of Arran’s travels. Cavalon and Corisande, overwhelmed by the enormity of the event and the excitement of the onlookers, hung back with mouths agape.
For those at the centre of the maelstrom, time became meaningless. It might have flown, it might have stood still—they had no notion of it. The whole world might have suddenly become silent and blank for all they knew—the scope of their entire thought was filled with the presence of each other; they could not stop themselves from simply gazing and smiling. Arran’s relatives seemed unable to let go of him, as if he might vanish if they should lose their grasp, and he was in the same predicament. One minute Arran’s fingers dug into Dristan’s shoulder, next he grasped Avalloc’s hand with a grip of iron, but all the while he was enfolding Asrăthiel beneath his arm as a pen folds her cygnet under her wing; holding her close against him, and she clinging to him as if she would never give him release; like a climbing rose clinging to the wall that supports it. Presently they found themselves murmuring questions and answers, but they hardly knew what they said or heard; nothing sank in, and it would all have to be repeated later. By degrees, Asrăthiel recovered her senses sufficiently to take a second look at her father. Of course, he had not aged much, if at all, but she fancied she could see subtle changes that perhaps no one else would.
By then Dristan’s children were doing their best to squeeze themselves between their father and uncle, without success until at length Dristan noticed and drew aside to let them in. Looking up, Arran noticed Albiona amongst the onlookers, and beckoned her over. She fell upon his shoulders with a flurry of exclamations and he kissed her on both cheeks.
At last Arran said, gently disentangling himself from everyone’s warm embraces, ‘Is it still in the cupola, her sleeping place?’ and like a jolt it came home to Asrăthiel that her father would not have returned if he did not bear with him some hope for her mother’s awakening.
‘She is there,’ Avalloc affirmed, whereupon Arran ran across the green and into the house ahead of them, heading straight upstairs to where Jewel lay asleep. Albiona hastened to position herself at the front door, where she endeavoured to impose some sort of order on the steadily growing deluge of joyous friends and acquaintances, while the rest of the family followed in Arran’s wake. When they had assembled around Jewel’s couch, amongst the wildflowers, they watched him lean down and kiss his wife, then draw back.
Only then, as he gazed lovingly at her flawless face, Arran hesitated.
‘Jewel,’ he murmured, ‘can I awaken you?’
‘Is it possible?’ exclaimed Asrăthiel. ‘Father, have you found a cure?’ It was too much to hope for, too much to comprehend. She felt excited, terrified and amazed. Suddenly light-headed, the damsel leaned on her Uncle Dristan for support.
‘I do not know for certain, my darling,’ said Arran. ‘If it is not a cure, then all my labours and travails these past years have been for naught.’ He made to take something from a pocket in his tunic, but thought better of it. ‘Now that the moment of proof is at hand I find I am reluctant to try my remedies, for they are the last hope. If they fail, all is lost forever.’ Sweat beaded Arran’s brow, and he was trembling.
‘My dear boy, let us bring you refreshment,’ said the Storm Lord.
‘Gramercy but no, Father. I have vowed that once I entered this house I would neither eat nor drink until I had tried to waken Jewel.’
‘Bide awhile and compose yourself,’ the sage Clementer advised gently. ‘Jewel has waited all these years. She will wait a few moments more.’
‘You are right.’ Arran sat down at his wife’s bedside, never taking his eyes from her face, with his daughter sitting close beside him, holding his hand. Tiny hands parted the strands of Arran’s hair that fell across his shoulders, and a
pair of eyes the size of cucumber seeds peered out.
‘Hello, Fridayweed!’ Asrăthiel said to the impet, who was sitting next to her father’s ear. ‘I am glad to see you.’
The little wight bowed politely. Avalloc rested his hand on his son’s shoulder and, clasping Asrăthiel’s hand more tightly in his, Arran began to speak.
‘There is no single straightforward remedy for such a unique and complicated malaise, this endless sleep,’ he said, ‘caused as it is by poison and flawed sorcery. I searched long and hard to ensure I had explored every possible avenue. My path to the truth was beset by impasses and swindles, false leads and useless clues, but eventually I happened upon three—nay, four treatments that held promise; one for the flesh, one for the breath and one for the blood. One also for the spirit, and that is the simplest and most powerful of all. Together they may have efficacy.’
‘They will work!’ cried Asrăthiel. ‘I know they will!’ She directed an agonised glance at her grandfather. Avalloc attempted to smile reassuringly, but could not conceal his doubt.
A second time Arran made to remove something from his pocket and a second time he stopped short. ‘Let me dwell in hope a short while longer,’ he said. ‘I will tell you the story of my wanderings, and at the end of it I will try the remedies. Ah, Jewel, can I waken you?’
Then he told his father and daughter a tale of a deserted coast where gulls swooped in changing skies, where serried lines of foaming waves rolled in to crash upon the rocks, spreading out to become white lace edgings that fizzed as they drew back into the ocean. Curly shells littered the beach, mingled with strands of brown bull-kelp, and tiny uncut gems, blue and green; jewels of the sea. Silvery leafed saltbush clung to crevices in the cliffs. It had taken a year to reach this shore.
In the morning, at low tide, Arran rose from his sleeping place in the dunes and picked his way amongst the rock formations along the low-tide mark. He heard the sound of sobbing and, following it, entered an airy cave sea-scooped from a precipice. A mermaid lay there in a clear rock pool, her fish’s tail of shining, overlapping discs coiling through gardens of sea anemones and chains of seagrass, her pearly skin gleaming, her yard-long green hair sliding like wet paint around her strange face. She cried and moaned, talking in an outlandish language, but it became obvious to Arran that the reason for her lamentation was that she had been stranded when the tide went out.
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