Fallowblade (62 page)

As they murmured together the prince stood quietly staring out at the passing scenery. He looked unscathed after his ordeal, but seemed almost radiant, and otherworldly. It was as if he had been made privy to the ineffable secrets of the universe; vast wisdom and tranquillity seemed to rest on his brow, and an aura of peace and virtue emanated therefrom.

‘William is altered, now, as you see,’ whispered Sir Torold. ‘I do not know whether the change will wear off or not. He is like some hermit who has spent years pondering on transcendental matters and has finally reached an ecstatic point of essential understanding. It is curious, but his mere presence soothes our agitation.’

‘Yes,’ said Asr
ă
thiel. ‘He is not as he once was. Almost, he has become a stranger. What of Fionnbar Aonarán who caused it all, and who was also seared in the Inglefire? I saw him but briefly before we rose in flight. He, too, appeared unharmed but changed in his manner.’

‘He is as calm as a meditating priest, or an apothecary dazed by his own smoke-dreams.’ After a pause Sir Torold added, ‘May I tell you something that struck me as odd?’

‘Say on.’

‘Aonarán’s only word, before he jumped into the Inglefire, was an exclamation of surprise and delight, as if he greeted someone and leaped forward to embrace them: “
A máthair
”.’

‘A máthair,’ Asr
ă
thiel repeated abstractedly. ‘It means “Mother”.’ Although she conversed, her thoughts were elsewhere.

‘Alas that so many good men have died,’ Sir Torold mused. ‘Fates be thanked that William lives. He was barely rescued in time. No mortal being could have done such a deed. Only a powerful eldritch wight could possess sufficient mastery of time to pull him from the fire before he perished. One of the goblins saved him, did you know? It is a conundrum. Why should they aid us when they hate us so?’

‘Why indeed?’ the weathermage said sadly. ‘The world is a seethe of mysteries.’

After delivering her three passengers to Wyverstone Castle and picking up three officers of the household guard, Asr
ă
thiel flew back to collect her prentices from their plodding southward journey. She refused to take Aonarán in her aircraft, bidding the guards bring him back by road.

When her tasks were done, so distraught was she, so wounded by the loss of Zaravaz, that instead of resuming her residency at The Laurels she returned to Avalloc in High Darioneth, retreating to her childhood home and the comfort of her family. Her world had changed; now she, too, was fundamentally altered. She revealed to no one the reason for her low spirits, for it was a secret that could not be shared. It was too much to hope that any human being might forgive her for falling for the ultimate foe. The burden of lonely grief, however, was too much to bear. She was inconsolable, sick throughout her spirit, and unable to bring herself to perform weathermastery any more. Since she would not wield the brí, she formally gave up her position as weathermage to Narngalis and secluded herself at Rowan Green. Neither friends nor family could lift her from her despondency; she lost all interest in pleasurable pastimes.

On that final balloon journey from Sølvetårn, as Asr
ă
thiel had pondered on her last moments with Zaravaz, she had come to understand that for her there could be no other. He meant more to her than she had believed. It was as if his spirit, and hers, had without her awareness melded to become one, and now were split asunder. Gone were her doubts about eldritch-human liaisons; the old tales told of many such, and besides, when faced with eternity, differences faded into insignificance. How could anyone bear to live forever, eschewing the most vital essence of one’s inner being?

She could not marry William, who, in any case, was no longer the man she had known. The prince had been transformed, and now she felt distant from him. When he visited her at Rowan Green she guessed why he had made the journey and tactfully forestalled his offer of marriage, suggesting he should look elsewhere for a wife, because she could never bring him happiness.

‘I am immortal,’ she said compassionately, ‘and you are not. There can be no hope for contentment between us. I shall never marry, but you have a different destiny, methinks. You shall find one who loves you as you deserve.’

The king’s son received her advice with the unwavering equanimity he had possessed ever since the werefire had rinsed him. He gazed radiantly upon the weathermage, saying, ‘You are wise, Asr
ă
thiel. I perceive that you are right. I must let you go, though you will always hold a special place in my heart.’

‘And you in mine.’

Their parting salutations had been chaste and respectful. He took the role of a fond and dependable friend to her now, yet sometimes he seemed more like some celestial stranger.

Tenember passed, and a new year commenced.

The Winter of the year 3491 was long and severe. Asr
ă
thiel spent most of her time sitting beside her sleeping mother. The briars entwining the glass cupola grew stark and leafless. Blackened by frost, they resembled twisted iron bars. All through that terrible season the damsel sat sad-eyed in the eyrie while storms raged outside the panes and rampaged across the storths. No carlin or apothecary could heal her. The aged scholar Adiuvo Constanto Clementer, who now dwelled at the House of Maelstronnar, gave kindly counsel to Avalloc’s granddaughter; ‘You mentioned that lately, under severe duress, you cried,’ he said. ‘There is a chance that weeping might relieve your suffering. Can you weep again?’

She tried, but could not.

‘I have no more tears,’ she said.

And as in fancy she fled northwards, across hill and vale, forest and lake to the icy towers of the Ramparts, she thought she heard the sound of small hoofs clattering over flagstones, and peered about in the hope of catching a glimpse of a small, goat-legged figure moving like a shadow against firelight—but it was only a pair of song-thrushes knocking snail shells against the roof.

‘Crowthistle,’ she whispered, allowing herself to acknowledge, now, what she had previously attempted to deny; that Zaravaz had not befriended her, in the first place, solely in order to persuade her to free him from the spell. On the contrary—as an urisk he had shown himself unfriendly from the beginning, ill humoured and inclined to make a nuisance of himself—out of resentment for his plight, perhaps, or for want of any better divertissement. His pride forbade him from fawning on human beings in order to obtain their goodwill. Clearly he would rather have stayed forever cursed than stoop to such measures. No, he had not merely played on her feelings to suit his own ends. Any esteem the urisk had felt for her in those early days when they had fraternised with each other, any friendship he had shown her, had been sincere.

In the most unassailable depths of understanding, she had known it all along.

Similarly, when Zaravaz had cast her out of Sølvetårn so swiftly, she had never really wondered why it had seemed suddenly easy for him to give her up. He was aware of how grievously she pined for family and friends; furthermore, she had claimed she loved William, and it was almost certain Zaravaz had seen her kiss the prince goodbye at the gates. Even in his wickedness the goblin king had forfeited his desires for her sake, and that was perhaps the most painful knowledge of all.

Since his immersion in the werefire William Wyverstone had developed a faculty that was quite astounding. Indeed, it was a power worthy of an eldritch wight or a powerful sorcerer or—some said—of a man who had directly received the blessing of Lord Ádh himself. The prince had become capable of healing a multitude of ills, merely by touching a patient; but even he could not succour Asr
ă
thiel. The changes in his character proved permanent; he never reverted to his former self. He had been blasted by the torch of gramarye, and was no longer as he had been, tugged this way and that by the tides of human emotion, but continued always detached and serene, a calming influence on those who surrounded him.

As for Aonarán, he never spoke another word; neither did he seek death as he once did, and many said his wits had been burned out entirely. His habit was to sit placidly beneath a plum tree in the courtyard of the Asylum for Lunatics, paying no heed to the antics of those who surrounded him.

A quarter of a year passed. The month of Mars eventuated, bringing the natal swellings of buds upon thorny stems. At High Darioneth people celebrated the annual festival of Whuppity Stourie. The bells in the tower of Ellenhall, which had hung silent from Tenember to Feverier, recommenced their evening carillon at sunset on the first day of Spring. As the opening peals rang out, children from the plateau and from Rowan Green raced three times around the hall, in the direction of the sun. As they ran, they twirled paper balls on the ends of cords, with which they buffeted each other. After the chorus of the bells came to an end the Storm Lord cast handfuls of small coins upon the lawn. Giggling and shoving playfully, the children swarmed to gather them up. Following the upholding of these ancient traditions, there was music, and everyone feasted in the great hall, Long Gables.

Asr
ă
thiel watched the activities without participating. Seated between Avalloc and Dristan she picked at her meal, listening half-heartedly to the general gossip. People were commenting disapprovingly on the host of women who still fancied themselves in love with the goblin king. There had sprung up a brisk trade in portraits of him, many of them executed by artists who had never set eyes on any of the Argenkindë. Somehow a rumour had arisen that the goblin king had become seelie, having been burned in the werefire, and this gave his devotees courage to sing his praises even louder, flagrantly embroidering on the little they knew of their favourite until they had devised a set of biographies, endlessly and rhapsodically debated. The weathermage could not help being fascinated with this talk, while deploring it at the same time. No one ever asked her about him any more, because she steadfastly refused to speak of her imprisonment.

Other dinner guests were discussing the recent courtship between Prince William and the daughter of Thomas, Lord Carisbrooke. It was a match that met with general approval.

‘Lady Meliora is a delightful creature,’ they said, ‘as even-tempered as the crown prince. She would make an excellent queen, if chosen.’

‘What a king and queen we shall have!’ their companions cried, one adding, ‘The dear prince cured my aunt’s jaundice with one touch of his hand! People have been coming from all over, to try if he can help them, and he never turns them away.’

‘Yet he cannot restore everyone to soundness,’ someone else interjected. ‘He could not save my cousin.’

‘Is it not intriguing,’ one of the diners commented, ‘how our Prince William’s outlook has changed since his ordeal by fire. He seems quite beyond the mundane trials and woes of ordinary human beings. Nothing ruffles him. The courtiers say he is never irritable or angry, neither has he been seen to be woeful.’

‘Nor ever moved to burst into a roar of thigh-slapping laughter, either,’ the speaker’s neighbour reminded the listeners.

Not to be diverted from his point the diner continued, ‘So beatific is he that the superstitious folk of Slievmordhu have been conjecturing that he has been touched by the hand of Lord Ádh, and has been blessed or sanctified.’

‘That makes two of them!’ Albiona Maelstronnar rejoined.

‘You cannot be referring to that queer fellow in the madhouse!’

‘Nay, not at all. There is a rumour circulating amongst the peddlers that a most singular stranger has entered Narngalis and now walks—nay,
runs
southwards along the roads and lanes. His wears ordinary countryman’s raiment, but his unexplained haste makes him an object of curiosity. More than that, he has a certain air that makes people suppose he too has been touched by the hands of the Fates.’

‘What is unusual about him?’

‘They say he appears serene, yet there is a vigorous excitement about him. He looks to be in his early thirties, yet somehow he is also much older. It is clear he is no eldritch wight, yet something about him hints of the supernatural. He has two aspects rolled into one.’

‘Oh well, I don’t call that odd. Half the folk in my husband’s family are two-faced.’

Both women chuckled.

The matter piqued Asr
ă
thiel’s curiosity, but only for a short while. Soon she relapsed into her customary apathy.

Her listlessness was somewhat diluted by the prospect of her mother’s birthday, on the eleventh of Mars.

To her grandfather she declared, ‘I shall fly
Icemoon
down to the lowlands to gather the blossoms of early Spring. I intend to deck my mother’s room with the golden-yellows of lesser celandine and forsythia, and wild daffodils, and fragrant gorse.’

‘Do so with my benediction, dear child,’ said Avalloc. ‘Anything that might make you smile brings warmth to my heart.’

On Jewel’s birthday Asr
ă
thiel—immune to the prickles of gorse—adorned the bedchamber with wildflowers, and combed her mother’s hair across the pillow, while singing the songs of Spring. From time to time she glanced out of the briar-framed windowpanes. There was no way for her to know, but it was a morning strikingly similar to the first morning her mother had ever spent in Rowan Green. Across the garden she gazed, and through the foliage of a rowan tree, and past the parapet bordering the cliff edge. On one hand the fertile plateau of High Darioneth stretched away, shadows resting serenely across misty fields and orchards. On the other, steep slopes climbed into the sky, where clouds drifted around the peak of Wychwood Storth. The melodies of falling water and the twittering of blackbirds embellished the wind’s low murmur.