Much mollified and taken aback, Albiona blushed.
‘Pray convey my greetings to your estimable brownie,’ said Zaravaz.
Murmuring platitudes, Albiona let the matter drop, being too flustered to take it further.
‘Your family,’ Zaravaz said to Jewel, ‘has a habit of offering me gifts. Generous of you, certainly, but I myself have a habit of returning property to its rightful owner. To whom does this belong?’ He held out his hand, and in his palm lay glittering the silver-white treasure from the Iron Tree.
At once Asrăthiel said, ‘It belongs to my mother.’
Beaming with delight, Jewel accepted the stone. ‘My father’s jewel!’ she exclaimed, caressing it admiringly. ‘There was a time I disliked it for what it represented, but it seems to me that its meaning has changed. This thing has become a symbol of hope and joy, and I am glad to have it back.’ At her request, her husband fastened the chain around her neck.
While Jewel continued to question Zaravaz about the urisk’s life in the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu, and to reflect on the brief conversations they had held together, Arran asked Asrăthiel whether she would draw aside to speak privately with him. She agreed, not without casting an anxious glance at Zaravaz who stood coolly alone in the midst of his foes, with the king’s household guard and the Knights of the Cup glowering at him on all sides, and she his only ally.
Her lover smiled, as if reading her thoughts, and said softly. ‘Do not vex yourself, ladylove.’ More loudly, and to the indignation of the warriors, he added, ‘I could take this football team as if brushing off a speck of dust,’ then in polite tones, as if to rub salt in the wound, ‘though tricked out so prettily and no doubt proud of their mothers’ best cutlery from the kitchen drawer.’
‘Are you still immune to iron and steel?’ Asrăthiel asked.
‘That I am,’ he conceded somewhat more reluctantly, and she had to be satisfied.
When they had secluded themselves out of earshot on the far side of the chamber, Arran whispered to his daughter, ‘Are you happy?’ and when she assured him she was, he appeared somewhat more content, though still unconvinced.
‘I can only surmise that this extraordinary attachment began during your incarceration at Minnith Ariannath.’
‘You are right.’
‘And you never told us.’
‘How could I?’
‘Fridayweed?’ said Arran, and the impet, which had been curled up inside his collar, thrust its long nose through the curtains of his hair.
‘Wot?’ it said.
‘Can you tell me whether my daughter is under a spell?’
‘Not if that one there would take umbrage against my doing so,’ said the little wight, peering, awe-struck, across the room at Zaravaz. ‘That there swanking bogle’d claw up both my mittens and use my kneecaps as a pair o’ cutty spoons if I fashed him.’
‘He would not mind,’ said Asrăthiel. ‘In any case, there is no spell.’
‘Aye, then, I’ll do it,’ said the wight, and it proceeded to recite a short rhyme in a language unknown to either Asrăthiel or her father. ‘Now man,’ Fridayweed said to Arran, ‘look through the crook of my elbow and see whether the colour of her eyes has changed.’
So Arran held the tiny creature on his palm, and Fridayweed placed its paw on its hip with its elbow akimbo, and Arran squinted as if looking though a keyhole. Presently the weathermage breathed a sigh. ‘The same,’ he said, lowering his hand.
‘Set me on the table,’ said the impet. When Arran had placed his fist on the snowy cloth Fridayweed scampered down his arm and hid behind a tray of comfits, where it plunked itself down, cross-legged, and began to munch with relish on the dainties.
‘Do not be tellin’ him I am here,’ it said, between mouthfuls.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m mortal frittened o’ t’ Mountain King. I’ll drink a brimmer to his health at a good distance.’
‘You were not afraid of a snow troll,’ Arran pointed out.
‘Man, that’s a long way different.’
Asrăthiel returned to the other side of the room with her father, whereupon Arran, who had been casting many a protective look in his daughter’s direction, said to the singular guest, ‘What is your intention by coming here tonight?’
Zaravaz replied, ‘The Argenkindë deserted your realms many weeks since, but I returned alone, because there was something I had left behind, which I wished to take with me.’
Jewel, Arran and Avalloc all turned to Asrăthiel, who smiled at her beloved family. The joy that shone upon her countenance was apparent to all.
‘And have you found what you sought?’ Avalloc Storm Lord enquired somewhat abrasively.
‘That I have, noble sir,’ said Zaravaz. ‘As for whether she will come with me, that is for her to decide.’
‘Aye,’ burst out Sir Huelin Lathallan, who could no longer contain his wrath, ‘you would seize the flower of us all, having already taken the lives of the best men in Narngalis! You reaving firebrand! It pains me to stand by and hear you garner gratitude, shielded as you are by guest code, when what you deserve is to be hanged, drawn and quartered.’
‘Hold your tongue, sirrah!’ King Warwick barked.
The shocked onlookers retreated from Zaravaz and many rushed from that chamber as swiftly as protocol would allow, in terror for their lives. Those who remained cast their fate in the lap of providence and fearfully fixed their collective gaze on the goblin king.
He smiled.
There was something about that smile which did nothing to ease their apprehension.
‘Sir Huelin,’ said Zaravaz pleasantly, ‘the work of soldiers is to kill or be killed. For the sake of the Lady Asrăthiel and her honourable kindred I will not bandy words with you. Nor will I bandy blows in this place, for I keep my word.’
‘You would not dare fight man to man,’ retorted Lathallan, ‘not without all your conjurings and cantrips and your unfair advantage.’
Tucking up his sleeves to his elbow, Zaravaz looked away as if wearied by tedium. ‘If you challenge me I shall be overjoyed to meet you on equal footing, at a time and place of your choosing.’ He smoothed back his hair, like a wrestler about to enter a bout, and glanced enquiringly at the knight as if waiting for an invitation.
‘There will be no challenges, Sir Huelin,’ said King Warwick. ‘Not beneath my roof.’
The knight had no choice but to acquiesce, and did homage to his sovereign to acknowledge it. The crowd’s tension abated, though Lathallan scowled, as if bandying blows were the very thing he most desired. ‘Had we met elsewhere,’ he said to Zaravaz, ‘it might have been different.’
Ignoring him, Zaravaz turned to Asrăthiel and said, ‘It is time for me to depart.’
‘Are you going with him, a mhuirnín?’ Jewel asked anxiously.
‘No. Not now.’ The damsel gave her parents a look full of significance. Arran and Jewel read her unspoken message, I will discuss this further with you later, in private.
Corisande tugged at the hem of Zaravaz’s cloak. ‘Are you going away?’ she asked, gazing up at him. ‘But I want to know why your eyes are purple.’
Albiona made to grab her daughter by the hand and impel her away; however, Zaravaz crouched on his heels to bring his face level with the child’s. Corisande did not tremble, but instead looked at the goblin king with shining eyes.
‘Did you know that purple is the final colour of the visible spectrum?’ he said. ‘Purple’s mystery is that it lies between the known and the unknown.’
The child seemed content with that, although Albiona muttered in her husband’s ear, ‘He still has not told her why his eyes are that colour.’
‘A master of rhetoric,’ Dristan acknowledged.
‘Will you do something for me?’ Zaravaz asked the child. She nodded shyly. ‘Will you tell that cowardly Fridayweed over there on the table that too many comfits will give him a bellyache?’ Corisande nodded again and giggled, after which Zarava
z rose to his feet with a swift and graceful movement, and only Asrăthiel noted the slight flinch.
Awkwardly, though with rigorous observation of decorum, Asrăthiel’s friends and kindred made their salutations as the goblin king took his leave of them. The atmosphere in the blue drawing room remained fraught with strain and incredulity. Most of the mortals were poised between disappointment and relief at the brevity of his visit.
Having said his farewells, Zaravaz conducted Asrăthiel out to the balcony. People stepped back to clear a path before them and nobody tried to follow, for it was clear they wanted to spend a moment alone; nevertheless the entire crowd watched them through the open doors as they conversed briefly together.
‘It is well that Lathallan did not challenge me,’ the goblin king said, ‘whether to a wrestling match or mortal combat. Since the burning made me seelie I am incapable of slaying any thing, and it goes hard with me to do any harm.’
‘Is that the only change in you?’
She saw in his eyes that it was not, and guessed that the agony of such a burning as he had endured would always be with him, though he would never admit to it.
‘The only important one,’ said Zaravaz. ‘To the consternation of Zauberin and others, who seek a cure.’
Asrăthiel smiled.
‘It is my design to join my knights in the far north, beyond the ranges,’ Zaravaz said, clasping both of Asrăthiel’s hands within his and drawing her close to him. ‘I deem we may safely leave these kingdoms in the hands of the Kobold Watch. Perhaps some day your people will learn to deplore the eternal catch-cry of the bigot; man to woman, fair to dark, dark to fair, human to nonhuman, It is not like us, therefore it is inferior; whereby we have the right to treat it ill.’
‘Perhaps they will learn. I hope so.’
‘If you wish to come with me, set your affairs in order and meet me at Sølvetårn. I will be waiting there for you.’
‘I want to go with you,’ she said, ‘but I cannot do so if my leaving will bring sorrow upon my family. And, should they give me their blessing, I cannot know how long it will take to make the necessary arrangements. How long will you wait?’
‘I have all the time that ever will be,’ said he, looking down at her with eyes the colour of storms, ‘and so do you. I will wait until you come to me.’
With those words, and with a parting kiss that rendered her speechless, he sprang onto the balcony parapet, let flare his aerofoils of dark energy and flew away.
No sooner had he done so than hoarse and shrill screams arose from the blue drawing room. The damsel ran back inside, where she encountered a low level of chaos. Ornamental daggers, knives and dress swords lay strewn across the floor. Their owners were regarding them with suspicion, or sheepishly picking them up and examining them.
Albiona was standing with her hands on her hips, surveying the scene. ‘He could not help himself,’ she declared severely. ‘He had to leave a parting gift, that bothersome urisk!’ She was laughing, despite her cross words.
‘What happened?’ Asrăthiel asked her aunt.
‘Oh, as soon as he had gone the blades all turned into serpents,’ she replied. ‘You should have seen the men’s faces! And the way they all leaped into the air, casting the vipers from them and yelping as if they’d been bitten! It’s a wonder no one was hurt, with people and objects flying in every direction.’
‘A glamour, just a glamour,’ said Asrăthiel, trying not to smile. ‘Of course the snakes would not be real. He would not wish to harm the creatures.’
The three princesses then proceeded to cross-question her, wanting to know all that Zaravaz had said to her and all she had said in reply, but she refused to satisfy their inquiries.
Later that same night, when the rest of the household was abed, Asrăthiel consulted with her parents and grandfather. Their discourse was intense and candid; all facts were laid bare, all feelings expressed.
‘You have found happiness, a mhuirnín,’ Jewel said, her joy bittersweet. ‘We love you too much to keep you from it.’
‘Zaravaz could never live amongst us,’ Asrăthiel began hesitatingly.
‘Of course not,’ said Jewel. ‘We cannot expect you to stay with us now, though it costs me dear to even contemplate your departure.’
‘Mother!’ the damsel wrapped Jewel in a loving embrace.
Said Arran, ‘Though it hurts me to say so, it is clear how matters stand between you and he, Asrăthiel. Every bird must fly some day.’
‘No!’ Avalloc said vehemently. ‘Not if they fly towards the hunter’s arrow! My dear child, I cannot condone your going off with this—this wight. For a start, there is an age difference of thousands of years!’
‘You speak of Zaravaz,’ said Asrăthiel, ‘as if he were human. With eldritch races vast time spans are meaningless. For example, they are always in their prime—’
But her grandfather interrupted. ‘Nothing you can say will persuade me, Asrăthiel. Zaravaz is of unseeliekind. I do not know what fires have burned him, but he is King of the Silver Goblins, who have wrought us great ruin, and of all men, human or unhuman in Tir, I deem him the least worthy of you.’
A surge of pent sorrow and other emotions threatened to overwhelm the damsel, but out of love and respect for the Storm Lord she bowed her head. ‘If that is your opinion, Grandfather, I will not oppose you. I will not go with him.’ In her mind she said, I will stay here as long as you live, but after that I will consider myself free.
‘That is well!’ Avalloc said grimly, ignoring Jewel’s reproachful look and Arran’s questioning expression.
As soon as their meeting ended Asrăthiel went out into the night. She took herself down the road from Rowan Green to the plateau, far from human habitation where, alone, she walked for hours through starlit orchards and wild places, and the thoughts on which she dwelled were profoundly stirring to the spirit.
In her mind’s eye she pictured Zaravaz and thousands of Silver Goblins racing across the white wastes of Midwinter, the hooves of the trollhästen kicking up glittering clouds of snow crystals. And riding in cavalcade to meet them, she envisioned, came the Ice Goblins, lords and ladies both; graihyn and liannyn. Then the two groups merged, and with great rejoicing they wheeled and sped off into the unknown, and nothing was left to show that they had ever existed, for the snow sifted across their tracks, and all became pathless.
When, after dusk, Asrăthiel returned home her grandfather met her at the door with a lantern in his hand, his eyes of clear jade glimmering with tears.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘What right has anyone in the land to deny you happiness?’
‘What are you saying?’ The damsel was afflicted to see him so distraught.
‘I am saying, my dear, I have thought it over and I see now what a selfish old dotard I have been. Go ahead and seize your dreams. If you want to venture into the wider world with someone who has captured your heart, then do not hesitate.’
But Asrăthiel said, ‘I will hesitate, Grandfather. My mother and father will live on, but if I go now, I may never see you again.’
‘Do not allow that to hold you back,’ said Avalloc.
‘But I must,’ she insisted, clinging to the old man as if she were a child again, and he as strong and hale as he once had been. ‘I have all the time in the world. My destiny lies north of the mountains, but I will not leave High Darioneth before you do.’
‘I am but seventy-two Winters old,’ said the Storm Lord. ‘Let me tell you, my dear, that it was given to me to know the exact span of my life. I will live for another forty years. You may go away now, and return to visit us every once in a while. I’ll still be here.’
When she heard his words, the damsel’s happiness had no boundaries.
She returned to the Mountain Ring with her family after the betrothal celebrations came to an end, and took a week to put her affairs in order and make her preparations. When it came time to pack her belongings, the only thing she took with her was the gift of Za
ravaz, the iridium sword Rehollys. After saying all her goodbyes she made one final tour around the house of Maelstronnar. She gazed long at the portraits of the beloved weathermasters who had lost their lives on the ferny hill, visited the places where she used to play as a child and the library where she had conversed with Crowthistle, ran upstairs to the deserted glass cupola where her mother had slept for so long, viewed the antique fishmail shirt displayed on the wall, the jewel of Strang in her mother’s trinket box, and Fridayweed lying asleep, curled up in a sunny nook with his tasselled tail twitching as he dreamed eldritch dreams.
With each familiar object she saw and touched, the damsel felt a pang of wistfulness and a frisson of fear, to think of leaving behind all that was so dear and so familiar. Simultaneously she looked forward to the future with a thrill of excitement, and if at times she became so overwhelmed by nostalgia that she thought she could never depart, she would think of her lover waiting on the heights, and imagine the lands beyond the borders that had yet to be explored, and she would whisper to herself, ‘It is time to put aside old things. I cherish the past, yet it lies at my back. A new life beckons.’
It was in the dining hall, the wide, low-ceilinged chamber panelled with walnut and arrayed with comfortable furniture, that Asrăthiel’s eyes were drawn to the great sword in its scabbard hanging on the wall above the mantelpiece. There it was, Fallowblade, the golden sword, slayer of goblins, and heirloom of the House of Stormbringer. From beyond the casements came the musical notes of small songbirds twittering, and the soft cries of children playing on the greensward. The mountain wind, ever unquiet, sighed and murmured as it prowled the eaves and ruffled the rowan leaves with cool fingers. For a long moment Asrăthiel stood motionless, looking at the mighty weapon. One last time she climbed up, lifted it off the wall with both hands, and drew the blade from its sheath.
The fluted tongue of Fallowblade was a pillar of golden flame. Gripping the hilt firmly, Asrăthiel held it vertically in front of her body, as she often had done before. White-gold spangles ran up and down its glimmering length. The atmosphere seemed to sing with arcane voices where the sharp edges of Fallowblade severed the very air, particle from particle. Gently Asrăthiel hefted the sword in her hands, swishing it slightly, almost imperceptibly, from side to side, her gaze never shifting from the blaze of aureate loveliness around this beautiful, shimmering, lethal thing.
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