A Strange and Ancient Name

by Josepha Sherman

  “Human or not,” the peri mused, “he was a good man, this Gautier. I tended his wounds and did my best to comfort him while he raved in fever of his longings for home and wife. The fever broke; he seemed well along to recovery. But . . . the djinn’s blood had touched him, burned him, poisoned him. As the days passed, I could do nothing but watch as Gautier weakened and . . . died.”

  Moonflame paused, eyes shadowed. “We had become something close to friends, human and peri, in that brief time. I buried him with as near to ferengi rites as I could manage. And then honor demanded I travel the winds to Western lands, to bring the sad tidings myself to Gautier’s widow. The Lady Alianor.” The peri’s voice caught in his throat. “She was so beautiful . . . beautiful in her foreign human way, not delicate and dark like our peri women, but tall and strong, with hair the color of mortal sunlight . . . Neither of us ever expected, human and peri, that love might touch us. But . . . as soon tell the lightning not to strike or the moon not to rise.”

  “I know the rest,” Hauberin said softly. “Her brother found out. And banished you.”

  “With iron,” Moonflame added bitterly, “and—secretly, so no one would doubt the purity of his oh-so-clean mortal soul—with bought-and-paid-for sorcery. After long and long I managed to return, briefly, though it cost me great pain, only to learn my love was—he had—Aie, damn him to the humans’ Hell, damn him forever!” Moonflame broke off, choking. Hauberin looked away, giving the peri a chance to recover control. At last Moonflame continued quietly, “He died not long after, not, alas, by my hand. In a hunting mishap. I blessed the horse that had crushed him and, since I could no longer endure the double charm of spell and iron still binding me, I went my way. I . . . never saw my daughter.” Moonflame smiled faintly. “But at least I’ve lived long enough to see you, my regal young grandson.”

  “And I’m honored to meet my grandsire, and all such courtesies. Now, will you please be still and let me free you?”

  He bent over the intricate tangle of chains once more. Moonflame said not a word, but Hauberin caught a quick glimpse of the peri’s eyes. And in their depths burned such sudden bitter despair that the prince drew back in alarm.

  “It’s a trap, isn’t it? And you’ve been bespelled so you can’t warn me. That’s why you kept talking: you’ve been stalling desperately, haven’t you? Trying to protect me.” Though Moonflame never spoke, the love in the dark eyes gave Hauberin the answer. “But protect me from what? Not you, surely,” the prince continued, watching his grandsire closely. “The chains?” He saw pain flash across Moonflame’s face as the peri struggled against the mind-binding spell, and cried out in dismay, “Ah, don’t!”

  “Can’t . . .” Moonflame gasped out in anguish, “don’t . . . chains, don’t touch . . . chains . . . Sorcery . . . Touch them, and die . . .”

  “Ah.” But after a moment, Hauberin grinned sharply. “I won’t touch them. This will.” He drew Matilde’s belt-knife, and saw Moonflame stare in horror at the deadly metal in this grandson’s hand. Silently blessing Matilde, the prince attacked the chains with cold iron, careful not to scratch the peri. As he’d hoped, sorcery crumbled at the contact. A stunned Moonflame staggered to his feet from a nest of shattered chains and drew his grandson into his delighted embrace.

  In the next moment, the not-world of the corridor shattered as well, tearing itself apart in a wild screaming of wind—

  —that left them standing dazed on a windswept, barren slope nearly at a mountain peak jagged as a broken sword. On one side of the slope a tangle of huge boulders lay where they’d broken off from that peak in some long-ago upheaval of nature or magic. On the other sides . . .

  Hauberin pulled away from Moonflame, staring out at a wilderness of savage gray mountains stabbing like knives at the sky—the clear, sunless sky. And the prince laughed aloud, a sudden rush of returning Power telling him what he already knew: this was one of the primal lands at Faerie’s very edge.

  “Hauberin!” exclaimed a startled voice. In the next moment, Alliar, sleekly golden, human guise dropped, came leaping spryly down the mass of boulders, calling back, “Matilde, he’s safe!”

  “Oh, thank the lord.”

  As the woman started down more carefully, Alliar impatiently scrambled back up to practically carry her down, pulling her along to Hauberin’s side. Fairly blazing with excitement, the being chattered, “One moment I was surrounded by Fées, then I was here, and Matilde was with me, and the Fées, for all I know, are still trapped back there, while you—How did you—What did you—”

  “Alliar,” Matilde said softly.

  “Eh?” The being stopped short, staring, as Moonflame moved to the prince’s side. Hauberin grinned.

  “Grandfather,” he said formally, “may I introduce the Baroness Matilde, and the wind spirit, Alliar. Matilde, Alliar, this is the peri lord Nasif-i-Khanalat.”

  “Moonflame,” the peri added.

  “Grandfather . . . ?” Alliar’s eyes widened. Then, as the implications sank in, Li let out a high, shrill, wind-sharp shout of delight. “The curse is broken!”

  “Quite.” Moonflame smiled, and bowed with intricate oriental courtesy. “You are, I take it, my grandson’s friend?”

  “Oh, I am!” Alliar imitated the bow flawlessly. “And delighted to meet you, believe me.”

  Moonflame repeated his bow for Matilde, his dark eyes so appreciative that she reddened. “And this, I would think,” the peri murmured warmly, “is my grandson’s lady.”

  “Ah . . . no.”

  “No? A pity.” With true Faerie suddenness, Moonflame had forgotten all about danger, his smile only for Matilde. “You are half of Faerie, too, oh flame of delight?”

  “N-No. I’m human. Only.”

  “Oh, don’t belittle yourself, lovely one. It’s not ‘only,’ but—”

  “Grandfather,” Hauberin cut in impatiently (telling himself that no, he was not jealous), “this is hardly the time for flirtation.”

  Moonflame sighed. “Forgive me. I have been away from . . . gentle matters too long, and—” The peri tensed. “We’re not alone.”

  Alliar had already disappeared, stalking. There was a startled shout, a curse, the sounds of a fierce struggle, and then Li was forcing a man, arm twisted behind his back, out from behind the wall of boulders, to the accompaniment of much fury.

  “Damn you, you misbegotten wind-thing, let me go!”

  “Not yet,” Alliar snapped. “I don’t like spies.”

  “I wasn’t spying, curse it!”

  “That’s for the prince to decide.”

  Hauberin saw a powerful build (not quite as powerful just then as the strength of an angry wind spirit), disheveled red hair—

  “My lord Ereledan! What are you doing here?”

  The Lord of Llyrh finally managed to pull free, glaring at Alliar, too proud to rub what must have been a sore arm. “I think you know more about this than I, my prince!”

  “I don’t.”

  The fuming Ereledan ignored that. “I was hunting in my woods, minding my own affairs, when—whoosh,” he waved an angry hand, “I’m here. What game are you playing, my prince?”

  “I’m not—”

  “It was bad enough when Charailis was trying to confuse my mind—it was Charailis, wasn’t it? Or have you been experimenting on me?”

  “Look you, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Oh, don’t you? I’ve sworn fealty to you, but if you have been practicing spells on me—”

  “Enough!” Hauberin snapped. “I have not been bespelling you, I do not know what you’re talking about, and I—Now, what?”

  Ereledan wasn’t even looking at him. Matilde had moved from behind Hauberin, and the Lord of Llyrh, face gone deathly pale, stared at her almost as though he saw his death. “Oh, Powers . . .” It was the barest whisper. “Blanche . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” she said in the human language, “I—I don’t understand. Blanche was my mother’s name,
but—”

  “A daughter,” Ereledan breathed. “I never knew, I never dreamed . . .”

  To Hauberin’s astonishment, he said it in the human tongue. The prince glanced swiftly from Ereledan to Matilde and back again, stunned to suddenly realize why Matilde bore Power, why she had a Faerie-strong love for music, why she had always seemed so vaguely familiar. Idiot! How could you have missed it? Those subtly Faerie features, that blazing hair—he’d even compared its redness once to that of Ereledan, yet never once stopped to think—it seemed so obvious now, like the trick of some small sleight of hand which, once revealed, can’t not be noticed. How could you never have guessed?

  “Grandfather,” he murmured in the Faerie tongue, “you were very right: she’s half of Faerie, indeed!”

  Matilde whirled. “What are you saying? And why are you all staring at me?”

  “Tell her, my lord Ereledan,” the prince commanded. “You seem to speak the human language well enough. Tell her how you followed my father into mortal Realms. Tell her what you did there.”

  All the defiance had ebbed out of Ereledan. “I didn’t know I’d gotten her with child,” he pleaded to Matilde. “I never would have abandoned her, or you. Please believe me.”

  “Believe you about what? What are you trying to say?”

  “That . . . that I’m your father.”

  “But—no, that’s impossible! My father is human, only human, and my mother would never, ever have betrayed him!”

  “Ah, my dear . . .” Ereledan’s voice and eyes were gentler than Hauberin would ever have believed possible. “How could it be a betrayal? She had never given her heart to the man. The marriage was a forced thing, a lie arranged by others.” He glanced at the prince. “Yes, I did follow your father. Or tried to follow; the transfer-spell worked for me, but I couldn’t quite control the differences in time.”

  “And so you were years too late to interfere with him,” Hauberin said without expression. “But not too late to interfere with human lives.”

  “I didn’t mean . . . Blanche was so lonely, so unhappy. And she was so lovely . . . When I first saw her, stolen out of her husband’s grim keep to sit in the moonlight, I . . .”

  He hesitated, and Hauberin could have sworn he saw tears glint in the haughty eyes. “What betrayal there was, was mine,” Ereledan said dully. “She was human. And I—I . . . just . . . could not let myself love a human.

  “It wasn’t until after I had abandoned her that I realized my mistake. By that time, of course, I couldn’t find my way back to her. Or to my . . . my daughter. Oh, please,” he begged Matilde, “you must believe, I never meant to hurt her!”

  “I don’t know what to believe,” she murmured, glancing at Hauberin in desperation. “To learn after all this time that my father isn’t—that I’m a—bastard, and n-not even human . . .”

  “It’s not such a terrible thing,” the prince murmured, and she smiled wanly.

  “Ah well, at least now I know why Faerie called to me so strongly. If Gilbert only knew—”

  But Alliar had come suddenly alert, cutting in on her words with a sharp, “Look!”

  A tall, lean figure stood above them on the sharp slope, a dark-cloaked figure with hood thrown back: a most familiar figure.

  Matilde’s cry could have been either of joy or pain. “Gilbert!”

  But when she would have run to him, Hauberin, cold with sudden horror, caught her in his arms, holding her with all his strength.

  “Hauberin! That’s my husband up there!”

  “No,” the prince said as gently as he could.

  “What nonsense are you—”

  “Gilbert is dead, Matilde.”

  “No, I—”

  “He’s dead, Matilde. I feel it.” Hauberin shivered, thinking of a similarly . . . empty human boy, dead even as he struck at the prince, and added softly, “What you see up there is nothing, only an empty shell.”

  As though his words had broken a spell, the baron’s body crumpled. In the next moment, a fierce, cold force swept down on them, wild with hatred, whirling dizzyingly about them, staring briefly, terribly, from Ereledan’s eyes, pulling at Hauberin’s will, forcing a gasp from Matilde, Moonflame, Alliar, snatching at their minds, trying in vain to control them in that sudden rush, then whirling back up into Gilbert’s body, which slowly staggered back to its feet.

  “It was you,” Ereledan gasped, face white. “You, Thine, whatever you are. The times I couldn’t think, couldn’t act, thought myself mad . . . the time I dueled my prince and nearly killed him: it was you in my mind!”

  The voice was all about them, mocking, hating, shattering into a thousand rough, overlapping shards, all grating painfully at once on their ears so they could hardly make out the words: *Easy . . . so easy to control . . .*

  What manner of Thing could possibly dominate Faerie minds? Fighting to keep his voice level, the prince said, “Then . . . it must have been you behind Serein as well. Of course it was. Those sudden, inept plots against me: that was you feeding his ambitions. Controlling him. Letting him murder a child.”

  *The weak, wanting creature . . . simple to push it into the proper paths.*

  Mockery echoed in the painfully alien voice, sharp as bits of ice stabbing at Hauberin. Grimly, the prince continued, “I never could believe Serein had found some mythical spell. You were the one who tore the spirit from his dying body, threw it across Realms into a human shell—why? And why abandon him?”

  *A thing no longer useful is nothing . . .*

  Alliar let out a sharp hiss. “No wonder we couldn’t make sense of the curse! The Power fueling it had nothing to do with Faerie.” The being stood tense as a predator ready to spring. “What are you, creature? A demon?”

  “Nothing so trite, I think,” Hauberin mused, and shards of alien laughter, empty and humorless, grated along his nerves in response.

  *Would you know? Then, come, feel*

  And Power, dark and chill and dazzling, engulfed him. In one endless, terrible moment he knew—as well as any finite mind could know—the emptiness beyond reality, the nonspace between the boundaries of the Realms. He felt the thing that whirled and eddied there, nonliving yet alive, nonreal yet real, a force of living hatred left over from the dark side of Creation. He felt it swirling endlessly between those pathless boundaries, never able to enter any tangible world until—

  Hauberin pulled free with a strangled gasp, realizing the truth: there hadn’t been any pathway till Prince Laherin, in the process of creating his transfer-spell, had accidentally created one. Laherin could only have realized what he’d done; he’d been too skilled a magician not to have known. And he would have moved quickly to shut the pathway again.

  But he’d been too proud, too determined to cross from Realm to Realm. Prince Laherin had never stopped to realize he had left the smallest psychic crack unsealed.

  “And you seeped through it,’ Hauberin murmured, and felt the Other’s painful nonlaughter stab at him. The Thing was all but mindless by any true-Realm standards, a segment of chaotic force: living hatred, indeed. It could never have felt anything as rational as gratitude for the one who’d let it into new Realms; hatred was all it could be. And so it had set out to destroy him for creating change.

  *Yes, yes,* the Other taunted, *to destroy every trace of That One. This force was in the warrior that caught the male-form of That One as he crossed Realms and slew him. But first this force was the poison-illness that slew the female-part of him . . . *

  Hauberin heard Moonflame cry out in pain, “Not, ‘female-part,’ damn you! She was my daughter! They were separate beings.”

  That concept plainly meant little to the Other. *The useful/not useful one this force possessed is destroyed, too,* the thing continued blithely to Hauberin, referring, he guessed, to Serein, *and those others this force brushed are here. Only your fragment is left of That One. It was pleasant to play with you/fragment, pushing this way, that. You/fragment nearly was destroyed many times
, yet this force always let you still exist. Not for much longer.*

  Alien hatred enfolded Hauberin, so sharply he hadn’t a chance to defend himself, hatred cold as the space between the Realms, pulling the air from his lungs, choking him. Dimly, he heard the others shouting, but he could concentrate only on the sudden battle to breathe.

  As he staggered, Matilde snatched her dagger back from him. Murmuring, “Gilbert, forgive me,” she threw it with desperate accuracy—but the blade crumpled to dust in mid-flight. The crushing force vanished from Hauberin in a rush as the Other gathered back its hatred, doubled it with what it pulled from Matilde and hurled the deadly force back at her—

  “No!” Ereledan screamed. “I won’t lose her, too!”

  He hurled himself at his daughter to shield her. And the full spear of hatred struck him. Dead on his feet, Ereledan slowly sagged to the ground, leaving Matilde standing in wild-eyed horror over his body.

  But Hauberin didn’t waste time on shock. “Link!” he screamed to Alliar, and in the instant in which the Other was distracted, still wearing its human shell, mind-joined man and spirit shouted the strongest Spell of Binding they knew. Even so Powerful a spell wouldn’t hold the too-alien Other for long, but for the moment their doubled strength was enough to trap it in Gilbert’s body, mortal as Gilbert had been mortal.

  *No-o-o!* The savage shriek tore at their minds. Raging, the Other hurled its fury at them, nonvoice splitting into simultaneous messages of hate. But Hauberin could no longer be hurt by ancient taunts of “half-blood, weakling, unworthy half-human,” not after that ordeal in the corridor, not after the relief of learning his true lineage. But, still partly linked with Alliar, he felt the being’s anguish at enforced memories of lost, lost freedom. Aching for his friend’s pain, the prince drew Power into a death-spell—