Fallowblade

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

‘If it pleases you, I shall do it. Hold still!’ Zaravaz emphasised his unexpected instruction with a raised index finger. Asrăthiel complied, though baffled. He extended his arm and lightly plucked a stray owl’s feather from her hair, where it had lodged and become entangled. After showing it to her, he cast it away.

  ‘Gramercie,’ she murmured, wondering why the hall was all at once so stiflingly hot. Presently she took courage and said, ‘And another request.’

  ‘Another! You presume on my good nature.’ Zaravaz smiled enigmatically.

  ‘The other man who dwells here, Fionnbar Aonarán, whom the trows call “Toadstone”. Why do you keep him?’

  ‘We do not. He has served his purpose but lingers of his own device. He was useful, once. For months before their release my graihyn in the golden tombs had been detecting his slow approach, hearing it through thicknesses of rock. His noises had disturbed them from their prolonged ennui, so they commenced calling to him. He answered. Having made him their prisoner, they used him to effect their escape. If he is here still it is because he chooses to tarry, or has not found a way to leave.’

  ‘I hardly think he would choose to remain amongst you. Your knights tormented him, I believe. In any case, I wish I might never again encounter him.’

  ‘Have you met him? Has he vexed you?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I shall give him over to my kobolds to play with as they wish. Skagi keeps a very pliant whip for just such a purpose. Her name is Lady Thrash, and with her barbed cords she does make men sing.’

  ‘You are cruel! He is a detestable man but I abhor the torment of any helpless creature.’

  ‘Then we concur, for my lieutenants and I prefer to meet adversaries in clean battle, and they bearing weapons, or at the chase, and they running free. We are not interested in flogging unarmed men in fetters. That is more the kobold way.’

  ‘Do not give him to the kobolds.’

  ‘Now, Daughter of Rowan Green, will you make us quarrel on this matter? I would let my flaieen pursue their interests.’

  Noting her expression of dismay, he relented. ‘But if you insist, the wretch shall be thrown out of the citadel. Behold how I indulge you!’

  ‘Indulge me again,’ she said, realising it was a flirtatious remark but unable to stop herself.

  Zaravaz sat up and left off his leisurely employment with the cherries.

  ‘What else would you have of me,’ he said softly, ‘now that you have rid my halls of human men?’

  After a moment she said, ‘Will you give me my own freedom?’

  ‘You are free.’

  ‘Freedom to leave Sølvetårn.’

  A bleak dreariness, like the tolling of a heavy bell, seemed to blast through the hall. The music paused, a hush settled on the crowd, and the goblin knights looked up, paying heed to their king.

  Zaravaz said silkily, ‘Sweet damsel, naturally you have my leave to depart at any time. Never have I sought to hold you against your will. Only bear in mind the terms of our withdrawal from the four kingdoms. Should you sunder your part of the contract and return to your kindred, the covenant will be rendered invalid. We shall ride down from the mountains and sweep through your realms like scythes through a cornfield, cutting down every man, woman and child.’

  Inwardly, Asrăthiel railed against the barbarity of goblinkind. Zaravaz waited, while she strove to conceal her vexation. She was unsuccessful. ‘You would slay innocent children?’ she burst out. ‘Then I name you wicked beyond redemption.’

  ‘Perhaps you are naive enough to think your mortal kindred are too virtuous to do the same, or perhaps you wish to enjoy your rosy delusions. Women, children, the sick, the aged, the helpless—those would merely find themselves enveloped in mists which caused them to fall asleep; there would be no pain, they would know naught about it. ’Twould be a better fate than many of your own kind have been wont to apportion, who batter wives and brats, or expose unwanted infants to die on open hillsides. There is nothing we would stoop to, that humanity would not stoop lower.’

  At the mention of death in the mists a gut-wrenching vision of the Councillors of Ellenhall falling asleep amidst the smoke of the druid’s fires formed for an instant in Asrăthiel’s mind. Nevertheless she had to concede that this, at least, showed a glimmer of mercy on the part of the goblins.

  ‘It has apparently escaped you,’ said Zaravaz, ‘the history of the men my graihyn have so far slain. All your dead northern villagers were wagoners, butchers, fishers, hunters, fur trappers, tanners, saddlers, farriers, young bullies whose delight it was to catch blackbirds in the hedges, innkeepers who served up hot mutton pasties, and similar exploiters.’

  ‘As you see it,’ the damsel interjected.

  ‘All those we killed in battle were armed and set against the horde.’

  Angry sarcasm rose to the damsel’s lips. ‘You are excessively meticulous.’

  ‘We are thorough into the bargain,’ said the goblin king. ‘If you depart, we will destroy every human being. None shall be hidden from us; we shall seek them all out. The choice is yours.’

  Presently Asrăthiel said, ‘That is quite a ransom. So be it. I remain your hostage.’

  Frustrated at her feeling of helplessness in the face of such overwhelming odds, infuriated that the goblins would be prepared to go to such excessive lengths, hating their ruthlessness, the damsel was yet inebriated by sheer fascination with the extraordinary company she found herself keeping; her senses confounded by eldritch beauty and mystery, the intimation of pent-up power, the keen edge of peril, the feeling of being precariously balanced on the brink of madness or ecstasy. So discrepant were her passions that she scarcely knew what she was thinking, but tried to conceal her confusion with a mask of calm self-possession and indifference. She drank from her cup in the hope that the wine might soothe her, or at least furnish some numbness.

  The music started up again, and the hall reawakened with conversation and activity. The damsel brooded a moment. Under the hubbub she asked, ‘How long will you keep me with you?’

  ‘Indefinitely.’

  ‘Will you let me go back after you’ve had enough of me?’

  Zaravaz looked away, evidently distracted by the skylarking of some of his knights. He observed them for a moment, laughing at their daring escapades. When he returned his attention to his guest he said, ‘Frowning does not become you.’

  Taking a deep breath, Asrăthiel fought a sudden urge to wrench a handful of his marvellous hair and blemish his insufferable arrogance with discomfort. It was pointless to pursue questions he chose to disregard.

  ‘You have two other hostages,’ she said. ‘I have not entirely rid your halls of human men.’

  ‘Even so.’ The goblin king’s tone was light, perhaps over-casual.

  To gain a moment to marshal her thoughts the damsel again drank deeply from her cup. ‘Last night I asked you to grant them clemency. Since then I have had some leisure to dwell upon the beggar’s eyewitness description of the demise of my beloved kindred at the hands of Uabhar, and to recall the complicity of Virosus. Do you know the history?’

  ‘I do. Trows are newsmongers.’

  ‘My wrath is kindled when I picture my innocent friends lying drugged by the druid’s fumes while Uabhar’s executioner hacked them to pieces. I tell you now, I care not what your minions do with Uabhar and Virosus. I do not relish the torment of any living thing but neither would I lift a finger or utter one word to assist those two.’

  ‘It seems even you, gentle damsel, can be flint-hearted. I shall ponder upon the matter. Perhaps, after my kobolds have finished examining them, they might be hung in chains upon the face of the highest peak, fastened to fetters driven into the rock, there to perish, and their bones to rattle in the winds.’

  Asrăthiel shuddered, and swallowed more wine. The strong draught served to deaden her vexation and her shocked senses, but also to make her blurt queries with scant regard to prudence. Abruptly she asked, ‘Why do you not treat
me as callously as you treat the other hostages?’

  ‘Why, because you are pretty.’

  She spluttered, almost choked, recovered. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘What would you like me to say?’ Zaravaz smiled in a provoking way. He had been mellow, indulgent. Next instant, capriciously, his mood darkened. ‘Is your vanity such that you would entreat me to catalogue your qualities?’ he said, and now there was some iron in his tone. ‘Would that gratify you?’ The damsel followed his gaze, which might have lingered a moment upon the fastenings of her gown. ‘Shall I examine you with the same close attention to detail my mispickels are devoting to your friends, though with more gentleness, and for the purpose of listing each charming aspect of your design?’

  Weathermages were not accustomed to being thus spoken to. Between being incensed at his presumptuousness, annoyed at his having deliberately misinterpreted her comment and used it exasperatingly, and baffled as to his true meaning, Asrăthiel experienced a kind of delightful paralysis, as if transfixed by the stare of a basilisk, mingled with consternation that there could be any trace of delight at all in her response to such an address. She could not look at him, could not speak; nor did he seem to require a reply. She sensed, too, the element of anger behind his mockery, but could not account for it, unless she had some power over him of which she was unaware, which meant it irked him, despot that he was, to be thwarted.

  He left off his teasing and remained silent awhile. At length the damsel became intensely aware that the very attractive incarnation of wickedness was seated very close beside her, and that his arm, in the soft, loose fold of a black sleeve, rested along the back of her chair, behind her head.

  Together, earth-harp and trow-drums had been a rousing combination of sounds, but when uncanny violoncellos awoke, waves of fibrillation sawed up and down Asrăthiel’s spine as if she were the instrument being played. The lyrics of a simple yet expressive ditty she had heard once or twice flashed arbitrarily though her memory:

  ‘If it’s going to rain, it’ll rain,

  And if it’s going to shine, it’s going to shine,

  And if you’re going insane, you’ll go insane.

  Now you’ve lost your mind.’

  Upon an exalted platform a group of four beautiful knights—three cellists and a bass violist—was creating stirring music, swaying to and fro with the passion of their outpourings, their calf-length coats and long hair flying. Another accompanied them on drums, tubular bells and tambourine. The pouring hair of the musicians curtained the left side of their faces as they bent to their bows—for all were left-handed; indeed, their hair, being so long, must have become entangled with the strings, though this never interrupted their performance; conceivably, part of the reason their music was so thrilling was because it was played upon the living strands of their eldritch hair.

  Back and forth they swept the bows, with the deftness of artists executing precise brushstrokes, but their performance was utterly unlike that of some dignified human chamber quartet with heads solemnly bent, peering short-sightedly at pages of written score propped on a one-legged stand, motionless save for the fingers of one hand spidering up and down the instrument’s fingerboard and the elbow of the other sailing in and out like a pompous barque.

  Quite the contrary.

  The goblin musicians seemed to be lifted up with the sheer energy of the performance, tossing their extravagant hair in time to the beat, feet pounding the rhythm; vigorous, fully alive. Their instruments seemed as alive as they—as if fused, an extension of the musicians’ bodies—so that nerves linked them in one neural entirety, impulses flowing in a circuit through fingers, arms and bows, hair and strings, across the shoulders, up and down the spine, up and down the fingerboard, from head to bridge to base, engendering all the exultation that wild music can convey. Nor did the cellists remain glued to their seats, for from time to time they leaped up spiritedly, instrument and all, still playing, wielding the weight and cumber of the cello as easily as if it were a violin; jumping or spinning before flinging themselves back into their places to incite their dark, raw melodies with redoubled zeal.

  Asrăthiel had no recollection of joining the dance. Across the floor she whirled in the arms of a partner who was thrilling to look upon, and she became lost in a darkness that held a scent of lightning and thunderclouds, and she thought some honeyed corrosive had excoriated her immortal spirit, and she must perish of the wounds.

  7

  STRANGE LOVE

  There stands a fastness, hard against the stars

  On bitter crags of mountains bleak and grim,

  Where icy gales careen ’twixt jagged scars

  And waters tumble into fathoms dim;

  Where foot tracks wind through wild magnificence

  Surmounting airy chasms, bridging o’er

  Profoundest gorges, river-carved; from thence

  ’Midst pinnacles where foaming torrents roar.

  Fair Minith Ariannath’s slender spires

  And lofty pointed arches pierce the sky.

  Her roots are plunged in deep volcanic fires

  Which sluggish streams of molten rock supply.

  Palatial citadel of precious ores,

  With silver ceilings, diamond balustrades,

  Jade columns, crystal walls, carnelian floors

  And polished porticos of sable shades!

  Great Silver Mountain of which legend tells,

  Entwined with veils of mist and cloud and snow,

  Wrapped up in weird enchantment, laced with spells;

  Your strangest secrets, man may never know.

  THE SONG OF SILVER MOUNTAIN

  Yet the dance came to an end, and Asrăthiel was soon sitting beside the goblin king once more while a trow-gaffer served beverages. The minstrels put away their eerie strings and bows, trows commenced a soft background tootling on breathy pipes, and the knights of unseelie fell to drinking, laughing and playing a confusing dice game.

  Zaravaz took up his chalice and swallowed a draught of wine. ‘I will expound further on the reason I treat the other hostages differently from you,’ he said gravely, regarding Asrăthiel over the vessel’s rim. ‘It is because of what they are, and what you are not.’

  Is it possible he knows that I am immortal? Despite their long incarceration, the goblins seem to know all about everyone in Tir—the trows and other wights must be industrious informers indeed. Can my immortality be the reason for his indulgence?

  ‘Since you seem unaware, I will make clear to you,’ he continued, ‘why my kindred do not love yours.’

  ‘Prithee,’ the damsel said, thinking, Surely humankind must have done more to offend the goblins than simply being subject to death, whilst they are not! ‘Prithee, tell on. Your words will fascinate me, sir, for I can imagine no offence that justifies such terrible revenge as you have proposed to exact on my race. You have waged war on us simply for being human.’

  ‘Our aversion stems from humanity’s belief,’ said Zaravaz, placing the chalice on the table and reclining against the padded arms and back of his chair, ‘that by virtue of their species they are superior to all others. Each one considers himself so special, yet in truth he might equally have been born a chicken or a cow. This mistaken conviction leads your people to commit atrocities most horrific against any beings that do not resemble themselves. You say we waged war on your kind, but what we did was nothing by comparison to what humanity has done. Every day, hundreds of thousands of nonhumans are victims of the longest-running, largest-scale war in history. They are robbed of their land, their freedom, their children, their lives, simply because your kind are capable of doing it. Within the culture of the Argenkindë and indeed of all the Glashtinsluight, such abuse is considered an utmost crime. For centuries we strove to open the eyes, the minds and the hearts of humankind—to no avail. Ultimately, your people have not the humility to accept that they are one of many different animal nations, dwelling beneath the same stars, all struggling to st
ay alive, to avoid pain and to experience joy.’ Musingly, the handsome knight let his fingers trace the rich ornamentation on the sides of the silver cup. ‘Having observed that human beings could not be taught to behave otherwise,’ he said, ‘we judged that they had forfeited the right to be part of the world. Our solution was to wipe out the human race.’

  ‘Genocide is as much a crime as any of the offences you so detest!’ Asrăthiel exclaimed feelingly.

  ‘When you submitted to being my hostage,’ said he, ‘was it not because you believed that the sacrifice of one person is worthwhile, for the greater good of many?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Similarly, the sacrifice of one species may be beneficial to the rest.’

  ‘Who are you to judge?’ Asrăthiel found herself instinctively shrinking from her host, repelled by his emphatic affirmation of misanthropic intent. The goblins were manifestly devoid of moral principles, yet they justified their fiendishness in the name of righteousness. The sharp eyes of Zaravaz missed nothing, she knew; but other than a twitch at one corner of his mouth that might have indicated wry contempt, he gave no sign that he noted her recoiling.

  ‘We are immortal beings,’ he said, ‘who have existed since the world was young. We have seen it grow sad and dim since the rise of humanity. You yourself have lived for only a handful of years. You cannot know how it used to be. Yet you are different from most, because you are no persecutor, like the rest.’

  Asrăthiel’s voice trembled. ‘If you wipe out humanity, you destroy the goodness as well as the iniquity.’

  ‘What goodness? Tell me about the great beneficence of humankind.’

  ‘There is love, for a start—love and compassion.’