Courts of the Fey Read online

  And he remembered he hated her.

  The Lady Breena, fair as the sunlight, accounted prettiest in King Albric’s court, looked at her lord in disbelief. “The human, my lord?” she asked, as though he’d ordered her to lay with a rough woodland creature and enjoy it. “You wish me to sit with the human at a feast?”

  “Aye,” King Albric said, sad to see fear and dismay in the lady’s eyes, but not knowing what else to do. Bed and board and rest the man had accepted, and until and unless the queen of the North came to the rescue, bed and board and rest were the best weapons the king could deploy against him.

  The blessed court had neither army nor terrible magical curses with which to lay waste to the enemy. It had nothing but the weapons of delight with which to enslave the man and make him a willing thrall to fairyland. “Aye, you’ll sit with him, and feed him honeyed cakes, and for him you’ll play your enchanted harp, for you’re as fair and bright as any in my kingdom, and your music is as captivating as the whispering rivers in spring, and your sweets more delightful than mortal kind can make. You’ll play and you’ll sing, and you will make him love you.”

  “But sire!” she said. Looking up, she met only the ice and command he willed into his eyes. She bowed her head, and knelt at his feet, and cried but did not beg. And rose, and left, to fulfill his command.

  Cedric did not wear his spurs, the king noticed, when he came into the banquet hall. And in Albric’s heart a flame of hope was kindled. For now the light didn’t dim around the man and the bright palace of fairykind sparkled with its wonted brilliance, enough to dazzle mere mortal eyes unprotected by iron.

  The flying fairies thronged the air, spreading flower petals like rain. The floral scent, as the petals were crushed underfoot, filled the hall with the sweetness of spring and the heady joy of a summer day.

  Beneath this fragrant fall, lords and ladies of fairykind, dressed in their best, sat or reclined, attended by pucks, who refilled their shiny crystal glasses with mead-sweet and brought candied cakes to their idle lips.

  Cedric reclined, and tasted of the mead and ate of the cakes, and yet his mind remained unbowed and his eyes clear, looking around as though to say that among his rude people he’d seen better and more magnificent sights.

  And the king, sighing, saw that Breena’s sacrifice would be necessary. He stood and he clapped his hands, and she came forth, from where she’d waited.

  She was fair, oh so fair. For her five elven poets had spun a hundred delicate poems so beautiful that humans would die to hear them. Her face was as perfect as a jewel chiseled and polished in every detail, her emerald eyes shone with the green of new leaf, the joy of new life. And her skin was clear and bright as the petal of the rose before it’s fully unfolded to the sun. She wore white, which made her cream and pink skin look yet fairer and her glossy gold and red hair yet brighter. As she stepped in, graceful in her white slippers, and approached Cedric with a bright smile, his mouth dropped open, and his cup fell, quite unnoticed, from his nerveless fingers.

  Cedric rose and bowed to her, and he drank his mead by her side.

  But late that night, when the high lords of fairykind had drunk themselves into stupor, his eyes remained clear, his mind remained unfettered, and when the king took his leave, Cedric said, “You have two days, Albric. And not one night more.”

  “Where is Peaseblossom?” the king asked the puck, who helped him remove his robes and don his night garment woven of spider-silk. “And is there an answer from the North?”

  But the puck only bowed and spoke, with the voice of his kind which was rather like the rubbing of dry twigs or the grating of rocks, “No, sire. Peaseblossom has not come again, over the bridge of air, and there is no answer from the North.”

  The next day the court rode amid the meadows and fields, disporting themselves upon their fairy steeds. Three people stayed behind in the glittering palace: the human, who remained locked within his chambers as though fearful of trickery or attack, should he step out; the king, heavy with his thoughts, not knowing which would be worse, to ally with his northern foe or to be lost forever; and Lady Breena, who mourned her fate.

  For years she had been as fair as moonlight, as joyous as laughter. If she thought to marry—as she supposed it must one day come—she’d expected to be picked by Albric himself. For who else would he choose from his dazzling court but the most beautiful ?

  But the years had passed and the king hadn’t asked. Indeed, he seemed to have no thought to creating that which after him must hold the throne, for though fairykind lived long, they were not immortal. But the king seemed content to watch season and year, decade and century, pass by with no thought of love, no delight in children, no desire for her.

  Sometime, long ago, she remembered hearing he’d crossed the bridge of air, night by night every night, to sup with the queen of the bright northern lights. But that had been another time, and a sort of madness—for who could marry day to night or the gentle magic of the blessed to that of the night fairies ? Who could join dark and light? Surely such a union would tear asunder and fracture the world caught in between the two lovers. No children could be born of such a match, or else, any born would die, in the instant of breath, the moment of first feeling magic. For how would their magic be? Neither dark nor light, neither blessing nor curse.

  And so Breena had waited, and she’d dreamed, and spun a trousseau as bright as butterfly wings, as soft as the feathers of birds in the spring. She’d learned to play, and learned to sing against the day when Albric would make her his queen.

  But now he ordered her, with force and with magic, to expend her enchantment on a mere, rough human? He would sacrifice her to save his kingdom.

  All that was soft in her heart turned to ice toward him, ice as bright and glittering as the blue eyes of the man named Cedric.

  That night, the hall shone brighter than ever. The captured light of a thousand stars was scattered across the glittering crystal ceiling that reflected the velvet-dark sky above.

  When the Lady Breena entered, in her dress of the purest blue, the human, Cedric, rose and bowed to her, and bent low upon her hand to kiss it.

  Then he stood by her, right near, as she played music upon her silver harp.

  She played melodies that were as old as the ice that had one day covered all of the land that men had now taken. And as she played, frosty fingers seemed to touch the faces of those who listened—to caress hair, to kiss lips, to tease like a lover and play like a child, among the grand assembled company.

  And Cedric stood and stared, and listened, and hung upon every note. When she sang the desolate songs of long-lost paradise before humankind, her voice as silvery as the notes of the harp, he shaped his mouth in wonder, and his eyes opened wide, as though he thought he’d been transported to paradise, and there was nothing more wanting in his life.

  Albric thought that this time fairyland had caught the human. Now would Cedric stay, in thrall of Lady Breena, a shadow in the court, spending his all too brief mortality upon worshiping her in vain.

  Yet when the singing was done and the court retired, the human told the king in unbowed tones, “You have one day and one night, king. And not a night more.”

  The puck, or another puck, as they all looked alike, and were all pieces of the same creature, part woodland and part fairyland, wood and bone together, looked at King Albric with the baleful look of a puppy who knows the master is displeased. “Nor has Peaseblossom returned,” he said. “Nor is there, yet, a message from the North.”

  And the king paced, half the night long, wondering what the queen could mean, and why she would let both their peoples suffer for his old sins.

  Not that it had been a sin, he thought, to leave her when he’d found that she’d meant to use her dark magic to bind him to her—no, the sin had been to fall in love with her. Oh, how he missed her midnight hair, her snow white skin, her red, red lips, and her body as passionate as his kind could never be.

  And he
r heart full of treason.

  But even traitors must know when they could not survive by themselves, without those they would abandon and watch die.

  “Send Aster after Peaseblossom then,” he said. “For I must have an answer from the North.”

  During the day, the king waited and thought. Like a woodland creature caught in a trap, he saw no way out but that which would cost him a part of himself. He rose every time he heard the sound of hooves. It wasn’t like the queen of the North to travel by day, but his emissaries might.

  She’s been massing her armies, he thought. She’s been ranging her soldiers. The terrible Orcs, the fearsome redcaps shall soon come and descend upon Cedric’s people and render all of it moot. They shall destroy and maim and so fill the humans with unreasoning fear that mortals will never again trespass upon the halls of fairykind or the glades sacred to our magic. The ones who survive will be fearful and small, and pour out a libation of milk every morning, to the kind elves who allow them to live. And no more will they build, and no more will they plow, and iron shall be banned forever more.

  He paced and thought, and he thought and he paced, and he twisted his hands together in distress, while his attendants stood by and watched, quiet and fearful. And part of him dreaded having asked her for help, for once she came, how was he to stop her? Her magic was cruel where his magic was kind, her magic killed while his magic protected, and when they were together there was no safe place to be and nowhere anything mortal or fragile could hide.

  And what would the queen think of Lady Breena, whom Albric had thought to marry, someday soon, when he no longer dreamed of the queen’s dark hair, of her skin of snow, of her red, red lips and that body that was like the heat of day, like the force of the sea, like the joy of life?

  He thought and he paced, but there was no certainty and there was no hope, and there was no answer from the North.

  Lady Breena would have to lie with the man named Cedric and endure his rough human nature and his crude natural ways.

  Tonight the walls themselves shone as though sun-rays were captive within them. A million butterflies fluttered and sparkled in the air, filling the hall with the giddy joy of nature unbridled. All the ladies and lords of fairykind had dressed in their brightest, adorned with colored feathers and sparkling jewels.

  The bards sat on gilded chairs at one end of the salon, clutching their golden harps and waiting for the Lady Breena, who now came walking into the salon, dressed all in red.

  Red like the firelight was her dress, red like the spring robin her cloak. Her hair was caught up in a ruby sparkling with something like flames. And her feet were encased in shoes embroidered in thread that shone like more rubies.

  Cedric rose and went to her. Beneath the glittering ceiling, amid the glittering pillars of the salon they danced. They spun like whirlwinds, in the arms of the music, perfect together, each step exact.

  Her body molded to his, his steps assured, hers echoing them exactly as they flitted and flew, now fast, now slow, now sad, now joyful—a reel and a turn, a careen and a winding down. In each other′s arms, they sparkled and smiled.

  And Albric thought perhaps this would do it. Perhaps no more would be required.

  But after the dance, when even the glittering elves of the court of the blessed were tired and broken by their exertions and joys, yet Cedric remained unbowed, untired.

  He bent and whispered upon Lady Breena’s ear, and then, with her by the hand, he approached the king. “Remember, O king. This is the last night of three. Tomorrow at dawn I will have your answer for what it’s to be—exile or the plow, restriction or fading. You have this night to think. And not a night more.”

  Her sighs and his laughter, and the sound of kisses echoed through the palace and pierced through the magical walls. They branded like iron and they cut like a blade.

  “Send Rosepetal,” the king screamed, above the sound of sighs and the echo of kisses, his throat tight with grief, his eyes blurring with unshed tears. “Upon the bridge of air, to the Queen of the North, to beg for an answer, to beg for rescue, to tell her I’m hers to do as she please, to tell her that she can have blood and pain and fire and grief, but not to leave me waiting for an answer from the North.”

  And the servants cowed, and paled and hid, but Rosepetal sprang upon the bridge of air, running like the wind, determined to bring them succor from the North.

  Morning dawned fair, the sky like the skin of a newly ripe peach and a little breeze bringing with it the chill of dew and the tinge of charcoal from the human village.

  The king rose, as though he’d been long dead, dead and buried and gone. How fortunate they were, his father and forefather and those before him, who had not had to face a young crude race, full of harsh devices. They were dead and past suffering, one with the wind, and the glittering air, and the hope of spring—they knew nothing of the iron that poisoned the land and made its fruits inedible; they knew nothing of men who hated fairykind.

  In the looking glass made of a perfect sheet of primeval ice, the king saw himself. His hair had turned white, his beard yet whiter, his eyes as light as the fog that clouds winter nights. His hands trembled and his lips sagged. He’d lost his way and nigh lost his wits.

  The servants who’d looked after him for the millennia of his untroubled reign, now cowered in shadows and looked on him as though he might at any moment order them to destroy or kill or maim.

  But his madness was past. There was yet no answer from the North. The Queen of the Dark, the Lady of Shadows thought she’d live on well and long with him. She had laughed at his messages. She’d scorned his desperate submission.

  Only one thought remained, only one spark kept the king’s heart from feeling as cold and dark as winter with no hope of spring—and that was that the Lady Breena’s love had conquered the dark savage heart of the man named Cedric.

  She woke in his bed, his arms around her, his heart beating fast, his lips searching her.

  “Come with me,” he said after he kissed her. “Come and be my wife.”

  For a moment she stared at him, her mind caught in his eyes like blue ice, his features so rough. She’d thought she’d hate him. She’d thought that to touch him would be to betray fairyland and her immortal kind. She’d thought she’d forsaken her ambition; she’d never be queen.

  Now on waking it was as though she had been asleep, not just all the night, but her whole life long. The dreams and the thoughts of her life in the palace, the spinning of a trousseau, the playing on the harp, the songs and the waiting, how long had it been?

  Centuries, millennia, and yet this morning, she was a maiden, young and fair and new, just coming alive, just learning of the world.

  When Cedric touched her all of fairyland looked like a bubble, spun for a moment on the surface of the water and just as quickly lost.

  “It will be hard,” he said. “I won’t lie to you. My people and yours are not alike. Your people are light, and air and wind; mine are the Earth and all that grows on it. We use iron to till, and we herd rough beasts. We live on coarse stuff, as coarse as we are.” He looked at her, intent but kind. “And yet inside, you will always remember, being a lady of the air, a princess of light; and many a time you’ll wonder why you left, for the hut of a farmer, the pain of birth, and the cry of the babes. I won’t lie to you. I want you to come willing and knowing, and be my farm wife, and remain by my side, till our lives are told and the earth claims us.”

  She knew it was true—she’d heard them cry, the women who lived with men like Cedric and bore their babes and spun their clothes and wore themselves out in tending the fields. She’d seen them shiver in winter and swelter in summer.

  But ah, she’d heard them sing in the spring, of love most strong, of two souls like one. She’d seen them smile at babes, newborn, and she’d watched them kiss their rough farming men. And until now, she’d never understood the joy in their eyes, the spring in their step.

  “I will come with you,” sh
e said. “Wherever you go. But won’t fairykind die in that world of yours?”

  He’d laughed loud, and shaken his head, swift. “Not if you wish to live, for you must know that every human inside knows what it is like to live forever and to be magic and air. It is all in the mind, caught in the rough body, and if you find your joy in between, then you’ll be one of us, and you’ll belong with me.”

  “My lord, my lord, wake and attend.”

  The king woke and turned, in surprise and fear, to face his servants standing beside him: Rosepetal and Aster and fair Peaseblossom.

  He sat up, his covers clutched to him. “Is it here at last? Has it finally come? Has the queen of the North sent her armies and bands, the horrible Orcs and the blood-mad redcaps? Will she wreak vengeance? Will she come and save us?”

  Their faces were grave; they did not encourage him to hope for much. But they had a letter, frail parchment, well folded.

  Rosepetal knelt and handed it to the king with her head bowed, her eyes looking down. Was that a tear glittering in her softly shining eyes? Was the news so bad? Was all lost, then?

  The king didn’t know; he could not see. He broke open the seal of the dark queen.

  Before he could read, a puck came in. “Milord, I have a message, from the Lord Cedric. He has dressed in his clothes, he’s put on his spurs, he says he is leaving as fast as he can, and he needs your answer, or it shall be the plow, because he said, my lord, you get not a moment more.”

  “He leaves so soon? He wakes so bold? The fair Lady Breena didn’t touch his heart, didn’t bend his mind?”

  “The Lady Breena is dressed and stands with him, ready to go to his world, to become his kin.”

  “But the iron in his spurs, the iron in heart?”

  “She chooses to be human,” the puck said. “Till death them part.”