A Strange and Ancient Name

by Josepha Sherman

  “Kerlein?”

  “The Lady Kerlein. My physician. Go on, try your wine.”

  “The blue-haired lady? We’ve met,” Matilde said wryly and took a cautious sip from her own goblet. Oh, wonderful: warm and cool at once, sweet and sharp, sending a surge of strength through her . . . “How could you stand to drink what Gilbert and I served?” she burst, out, and Hauberin laughed.

  “Manners are everything. Ah, but I’m forgetting my own. Come, sit.” He added as she settled herself, “I hope you’re not finding all this”—the sweep of arm took in the whole land—“too overwhelming.”

  “Not quite,” she retorted. “Bewildering, yes; if I gave you my list of bewildering things we’d be here all day!”

  “Oh, really? Name one thing, then.”

  “Well . . . since this is the royal palace, I expected to see a city around it, or at least a town.”

  He smiled. “We aren’t much for the crowding of cities. Remember that when we feel the need for a market or any other gathering, we can . . . ah . . . create whatever temporary buildings we need. And the palace is the town; you haven’t had a chance yet to realize how big it is. My ancestors were a flighty lot, adding a tower here or deleting a walkway there . . .” His gaze was suddenly abstracted, and Matilde thought with a flash of amusement that he, too, wasn’t free of the urge for architectural tamperings. “It was a wonderful place in which to grow up,” the prince added, “full of strange nooks and hiding places.”

  Some of which Alliar had found. “But if there aren’t any cities, where does everyone live?”

  “Some do live here in the palace. Others have their farms or estates or what-have-you. Forest groves, caves; not all my subjects need or want houses.”

  “Oh.”

  Hauberin grinned. “It’s not all so amazing. Come, stand up again if you would. See that wisp of smoke, there, to the west?”

  Wondering how, with no sun for reference, he could tell west from east (some mystic sense basic to Faerie, she guessed), Matilde obediently leaned out the window. “I see it.”

  “That’s from the chimney of a perfectly human farmer.”

  “A—what?”

  “Oh, yes. As solid and steady a fellow as you’d like. He fell through a rift between Realms one day, saw how fertile the soil was, and settled down. With a pair of buxom woodsprites, I might add. They like his human beard, I’m told. And other things.”

  She gave a scandalized giggle. “You’re inventing all this.”

  “No, really! He sends me a tribute of vegetables every autumn. A loyal subject. Speaking of which . . .” Hauberin’s voice was suddenly formal, very regal. “I understand that certain of my courtiers have harassed you.”

  Matilde remembered those beautiful, casually cruel faces, those lazy, sensual eyes promising delight and pain.

  Fighting down a shiver, she murmured, “It was nothing,” not wanting to make enemies in this alien land. “It happened right after we knew you were going to live. They were overcome with excitement.”

  “It will not happen again.”

  She dipped her head in thanks, then glanced at him skeptically, noticing, now that she was standing this close, the underlying pallor of the olive-dark skin. “Should you really be up and about so soon?”

  He started to shrug, then clearly thought better of it. “My arm may be sore—mostly because I keep doing clumsy things to it, as you saw—but I’m no longer ill, thanks to you.” Hauberin paused. “Matilde, it was a brave, foolhardy thing you did, feeding me your strength in that burst of Power. Oh, believe me, I appreciate it! But you could have killed yourself, drained the life-energies right out of yourself.”

  She hadn’t realized that. Chilled by what might have been, Matilde slowly sank back into her chair. “I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t just stand back and let that—that traitor murder you.”

  “Thank you,” Hauberin said simply. “Eh, how do you feel?”

  “Not as weary as before I drank that wine, but I’m—Oh, Hauberin, I’m afraid.”

  “Surely not of those courtiers. I told you, they won’t—”

  “You don’t understand. I c-cast Power. I felt what people were feeling . . . I looked into Charailis’ eyes and saw what she was truly like, inside I mean . . . that poor, treacherous, empty woman . . . and I—I didn’t kill her, did I?”

  The prince shook his head. “All you did was help me Shield myself. The death-magic she loosed recoiled on her. In effect, she killed herself.”

  “But I don’t know how I—what I—Oh God, what’s happening to me?”

  Hauberin’s eyes were gentle. “Don’t be frightened, please don’t. It’s nothing to harm you, only that Faerie is doing what it does to all with latent magic: it’s enhancing your innate Power.”

  Matilde stared in horror, seeing herself as witch, demon, no longer human . . . “Does that mean I can n-never go home?”

  “Why, lady!” the prince exclaimed. “Here you are only newly arrived in my lands, and already you want to leave them?”

  “Please. Don’t mock me.”

  He sighed. “No. If you return to human Realms and refuse to use it, your Power will dwindle back into latency.”

  “Then you can send me home.”

  “At the moment,” Hauberin murmured, “I doubt I could transport you across the room, let alone to another Realm. Stay here as my guest for now, Matilde.” His dark eyes were glowing, Powerful. “You will enjoy my lands, I promise.

  “But . . .”

  Hauberin’s face was suddenly closed, alien. “Enough, lady. As for your returning home . . . we shall discuss that at a later time.”

  ###

  The prince held himself regally straight of back till Matilde was gone. Then he sagged in the window seat, furious at his body for its lingering weakness.

  “Alliar.”

  “My prince.”

  The being must have been just outside the door, appearing so suddenly Hauberin started, jarring his wounded arm. Oh, damn, not again! The nagging stab of pain made him snap irritably, “How could you be so thoughtless?”

  “I . . . what?”

  “Matilde! How could you bring her here?”

  “I should think you’d be glad I did,” the being drawled. “Without her . . .”

  “I wouldn’t be here. Yes, I know, but—”

  “At the time, there wasn’t much of a choice,” Alliar continued. “I had you in my arms—dying, for all I knew—and guards were rushing down the stairs at us. Would you rather I’d abandoned the lady to Baron Thibault’s mercies?”

  Hauberin held up his free hand in surrender. “No. Of course not. But . . . she wants to go home, Li. When she pressed me, her eyes bright with despair, I couldn’t answer her. Instead, I placed the smallest of persuasion-spells on her to keep her here, content, an easy thing now that she’s no longer repressing her Power so fiercely. I couldn’t bear to tell her the truth.”

  “Which is?”

  “Oh, Li, I can’t send her home. If I made the slightest miscalculation of time or space—particularly of time—it would kill her!”

  The being shrugged. “She seems to like Faerie well enough. Keep her here, then.”

  “As what? My—pet?”

  Alliar’s eyes flickered with impatience, but the being said only, “Charailis’ estates have reverted to the crown, haven’t they? Why not give them to Matilde? She’s a capable lady, my friend. She’ll make a place for herself.”

  “I hope so.”

  Alliar paused, considering, head to one side. “It’s not just Matilde’s well-being that’s worrying you.”

  “Ae, no. There’s the little matter of the succession.” Hauberin laughed without humor. “My heirs don’t seem to be having much luck, do they? First Serein, then Charailis—and now that the stalemate of Charailis is out of his way, what are we going to do about Ereledan?”

  The being snorted. “Ereledan. All brave red-and-bluster, sitting safely at home so no one will thin
k he had anything to do with your poisoning. I don’t think we have to worry about him.”

  “Not worry. Just watch.”

  “The succession, though . . .” Alliar sighed. “I never was happy with Charailis standing so close to the throne. Now that she’s dead . . . I don’t know. You must have some safe kinsman or kinswoman you could name your heir.”

  “Who’d be ambitious enough to want the throne, but not so ambitious as to try to take it from me. Ah, I don’t know, either.”

  “Problems of succession are hardly anything new to this land. It manages to survive, regardless. And there’s still something else bothering you.”

  “Yes.” Hauberin slid to his feet, leaning back against the wall. “Serein. Can he really be dead this time?”

  “As dead as I could arrange.” Alliar’s eyes glittered. “Hauberin, my aim was good. No one, not even he, recovers from an iron-knife through the heart.”

  “I . . . almost wish you hadn’t slain him.”

  “What!”

  “Don’t shout. The fever hasn’t made me soft-minded. But if you could somehow have brought him here—yes, I know, you literally had your hands full—if you had been able to bring him, I just might have gotten the truth out of him about his curse. If it really is his.”

  “Eh well, the thing could have died with him. You haven’t had the dream since—” The being stopped short. “What do you mean, if it was his?”

  “When I was down in Thibault’s cellars, with Serein doing his best to keep me alert,” Hauberin absently touched the iron-burn on his forearm, “he didn’t show anger or triumph or any other emotion you’d expect from my dear cousin when he had me in his grasp. He was terrified. And I suddenly realized why: it hadn’t been him doing the transferring from body to body at all.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “No, wait. All along it didn’t make sense: Serein suddenly wielding magic he couldn’t know, placing a curse against the Rules, working a spell previously known only in myth. But when you accept that none of it was his doing, everything fits. Serein, somehow, found himself a powerful, alien ally. But by the time we were in the cellars, that ally, for whatever arcane reason, had decided to totally abandon him. Serein was trapped in human Realms in the middle of human politics, with nothing but the one fragile human body between him and the unknown—ha, no wonder he was terrified!”

  “Hauberin,” Alliar said gently, “you were hardly in any condition to be rational.”

  “I wasn’t imagining it.”

  “Why should this alien magician-or-whatever hate you?”

  “I . . .” Hauberin waved a helpless hand. “I don’t know. But I had a strange dream—”

  “When?” the being asked skeptically. “While you were delirious?”

  “It wasn’t just a fever-dream! I spoke with a very real presence, mind to mind, someone or something truly alien, truly hating, that wanted me dead. That . . . had already killed my parents.”

  “Ach, Hauberin,” the being murmured. “Come, sit down.”

  “Don’t patronize me!”

  “And don’t snap at me. We may never learn how Prince Laherin died, but it was illness that killed your poor mother; there are enough witnesses to swear to that. And it was iron-poisoning that created your dream. Remember when you were feverish from seralis? You were convinced an assassin was in the room.”

  “I’d forgotten.” Hauberin stretched, warily. “Ae-yi, maybe you’re right,” he admitted reluctantly. “Maybe it was all in my mind.”

  “Of course it was.”

  “Speaking of which, I’ll have to do something to reestablish the royal image in the minds of my people.”

  “Reestablish?” Alliar laughed. “My dear prince, you are the first ruler in recorded history to have survived iron-poisoning. Right now your people are in awe of you!’

  “Oh, indeed? We’ll see how long that lasts.” But Hauberin couldn’t hold back a grin.

  ###

  Matilde stood in her pink-pearl walled bedchamber before a mirror rimmed with silver (the royal metal, she knew that now, with its ties to moon and magic; gold, sun-metal that it was, was unknown here), and stared at the unfamiliar face staring back: pale from the lack of sun, yet as aglow with health as any true Faerie face; red-flame hair unbound save for a band of bright green silk; eyes . . . oh, the eyes were the strangest, wild and wide, full of joy and knowledge that had nothing to do with the merely human . . .

  But I am human, she remembered with a shock. Pretend though I might, ache for this land as if it was my homeland though I do, I—am—just—human.

  The image in the mirror was blurring. Matilde turned sharply away, brushing tears from her eyes with a brusque hand. God, how she wanted to stay here. How she wanted to belong! But it was impossible, it was foreign (she would not say “Godless”, for all that there were no churches here and folk never called on holy names), all foreign.

  Ah, but the wonder she’d seen and heard and felt . . . magic shining in the very air, waiting to be shaped (shaped like the first illusion she’d cast, hardly knowing what she did, too overcome by Power’s demand to be used to be afraid, a flame-red bird, and she standing, head craned back, watching it soar up and up, as delighted as a child); the elegant, fierce, quicksilver-fancied folk, perilous and proud, swift to rage or laugh, to dance, to sing—oh, their music, the wondrous music, sharp as pain, beautiful as joy, feeding the lonely places in her soul, and all of it feeling, somehow, totally right . . .

  The one thing she had never dared do was leave the palace grounds; Matilde knew with a strange, calm certainty that once she set foot on Faerie soil, felt the pull of it calling to her, find your heartland, cling to it, she would never, ever be able to leave.

  “Matilde?”

  Matilde turned with a start, struggling to keep her face impassive. “Aydris. I didn’t hear you enter.”

  Aydris perched on the edge of an ivory-backed chair like a pretty, slightly plump bird with pastel blue feathers, and Matilde smiled in spite of herself. She liked Aydris, who, for all her Faerie whims and magics, hadn’t a drop of malice to her.

  But Aydris, like all her race, was swift to catch disturbed emotion. “My dear, what is it? You’re not pining for mortal lands?” Her quick smile was bright with mischief. “Or is it Hauberin for whom you pine? Believe me, I’m not a rival; the prince and I have shared joy now and again, yes, but we’re friends more than lovers. So if you—”

  “No!” Matilde could feel herself blushing; try though she would, she couldn’t accept the casual Faerie attitude towards matters sexual. “I’m a married woman, and I—I . . . Aydris, how long have I been here?”

  The slanted green eyes all at once were opaque, alien. “Not yet long enough,” Aydris replied evasively.

  “How long? A day? A year?” Horrified, Matilde realized she’d lost all track of time as surely as any poor fool in a fairyland ballad. And I didn’t once have the wit to worry about it! “Aydris, please! How long?”

  “Poor thing. Look in the mirror again. Reassure yourself; you haven’t aged.”

  Even knowing nothing could have changed from a few moments ago, Matilde still had to look, heart racing with the irrational panic she might somehow suddenly find herself hopelessly old. But as she stared into the clear glass, human and Faerie memories overlapped confusingly. Her mind saw Gilbert’s face beside her own, her mind heard his voice pleading, Don’t forget your mortal life. You are my wife. Please, please, remember me.

  “Oh, God.” Matilde buried her face in her hands as memories of her human life, her human responsibilities, drowned all else. How could she have forgotten . . . ?

  She straightened slowly. “It was Hauberin’s doing.”

  Aydris blinked in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

  “That’s why I’ve been so mindlessly content. Hauberin bespelled me. I’ve been under his enchantment all this while.”

  “Why, Matilde! Do you really think he’d do something like that?”

&nb
sp; No. Dear saints, no, never.

  Yet with her new feel for Power, there could be no denying the truth. And that meant everything she’d felt, all the joy and wonder, had been a sham. “Damn him! Oh, d-damn him!”

  “Matilde! Wait!”

  But Matilde was already storming out into the palace corridors to find the prince, wide-eyed servants scampering out of her way, courtiers staring, whispering after her, “It had to happen eventually. The human’s gone mad.”

  “You, guards!” she snapped. “Where is the prince?”

  “Here,” murmured a weary voice.

  Matilde whirled. Hauberin, clad in somber blue tunic and hose, was watching her quietly, tired eyes deeply shadowed. A corner of her mind rejoiced that not much time had elapsed after all, because even though he’d abandoned the silken sling, he was still treating his arm with obvious care.

  “Hauberin, I—”

  “You’ve broken my spell, I see. No, wait, before you explode, come out here into the garden where we can speak in private. And please,” he added with wan humor, “don’t shout.”

  The garden was small as a cloister in her own world, open to the sky and heady with the rich scent of the pure white Faerie roses. Hauberin sank to a marble bench and gestured to her to sit. She did, stiffly, beginning, “How could you—”

  “Bespell you? Ah, Matilde . . . please believe me, I never meant to hurt you in any way. The only excuse I can offer for what I did is that I wasn’t thinking too clearly yet, and I . . . couldn’t find any other way to protect you.”

  “Protect me?”

  “I repeat, I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “But everything I saw and did, everything I felt was a lie!”

  “Lies are foreign to Faerie,” he reminded her softly. “Whatever you felt was real enough; the spell did nothing more than relax your mind.”

  “To the point of childishness! Hauberin, why? Why in God’s name did you think I needed protecting?”

  “I wasn’t sure I could safely send you home. The times of our two Realms run at different speeds, even as the stories say. I suppose what I was trying to do was make it easier for you to accept living here.”