4

CINNARINE

Forbidden Fruit

Cinnarine—orchard green, in Summer’s listless noon,

Tourmaline, tangerine, when winds of Autumn croon.

Leafless treen, gnarled and lean when frost bestows its sting—

Cinnarine, Blossom Queen in heady days of Spring.

FROM THE CHAP-BOOK: ‘POEMS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY’

Gentle brooks flowed in the folds and pooled in the hollows of this land. The orchards, for centuries untended, had spread wide and far. Wind and water and birds had borne their seeds away, broadcasting them over acres far beyond the borders of the original plantations, whose ancient moss-bearded trees, or the descendants of them, remained hidden in the secret cores of Cinnarine. Stretching one hundred and seventy miles from south to north, a wild tangle of fruit trees had grown up. They had aged, toppled and decayed in the grassy mold to give nourishment to rank upon rank of succeeding generations.

At this warm season and latitude, early fruit, peeping from beneath chaste leaves, ripened to shades of maroon, jacinth and passion-red, rosamber and cochineal. Already the first astringent apples, cherries, peaches, pears, yellow and red plums were ready to be gathered. Apricot and orange trees, figs and mulberries grew in their midst, fruited with bitter green jewels, for the season was too young for their bounty.

The wild harvest was abundant. Rich-hued raspberries, blackberries and wild strawberries peeped from their luscious bowers; honey dripped down from hollow trees where hives hummed; grasses waved feathery seed-heads; watercress dappled the frequent ponds; daisies rioted and dandelions spattered the ground with splashes of bright yellow.

‘Here is a place to be drunk on sweet nectars,’ sighed Caitri, ‘to gluttonise on ripe flesh until the juices run down one’s chin and one’s belly sticks forth like a sail in the wind.’

‘Pah. These fruits are plaster imitations,’ contested Viviana. ‘Where are the goblin trees?’

‘Where wood-goblins can find them,’ answered Tahquil, measuring a length of rope to use as a belt. Her leather belt had broken as she fell into Cinnarine. Wishing to save the metal against some future need, while leaving no trace of their presence, she strung the iron buckle from the chain of her jade tilhal and buried the severed strap in the loam.

It was now three days since the companions had entered Cinnarine—pleasant days of drowsy sunshine, spent sleeping in mansions of foliage; nights spent wandering northwards, gorging on succulence. Peril seemed far away, allowing Tahquil leisure to dwell only on thoughts of Thorn—yearning, constantly, to be back at his side. Sometimes she half-expected to see him come walking through the trees, emerging from the shadows with that graceful, easy stride.

Viviana remained enclosed in her dark prison of enchanted longing, and only Caitri was free to enjoy fully the bounty of this silvan land.

Embowered, the little girl reached up her hand. A peach filled it, flecked and striped as though spattered with multicoloured wax. Next, it filled her mouth with juices melliferous and tart. As she sat in the bower with late sunshine showering flakes of lime and gold on her skin and hair, she began to notice movements throughout the woods. About forty feet above the ground, it seemed as though the sunlight itself had condensed its rainbow colours to form living things.

Numbers of flimsy creatures were busy at the leaves and branches. Initially, the human watcher believed the quick movements belonged to birds or butterflies, but they proved to be neither. They were intent only on the trees. For this reason, in addition to their diurnal manifestation and benign appearance, Caitri viewed them without trepidation.

Indeed, the tree-beings displayed a preternatural loveliness. Of human height and form they were, but they appeared to be neither male nor female, possessing the genderless look of prepubescent youths or maidens. Although their faces were flesh-coloured, the hue of their skin altered at the shoulders to pale apple-green, deepening to become raiment of dazzling jade which flowed far below their bare toes in long trails like translucent mother-of-pearl.

They glided up and down the arbours, reflecting glints of light like shoals of fish in the sea, rising and falling swiftly as they flew back and forth. The undulations of their diaphanous trains created incessant pleats and flutings of pale rose, saffron, silver and hazy emerald-green. Yet they were not garments at all, these glistening trains, but veils of light or some other form of energy stream descending and spreading from the shoulders. As Caitri watched, the beings faded into the trees.

From time to time in their travels through Cinnarine, the wanderers would spy these and other elementals of the trees flitting rapidly in and out among the trunks or at the height of the topmost boughs. At whiles they floated higher, but they never descended to the ground as they occupied themselves ceaselessly with their esoteric tasks.

‘These nebulous sylphs,’ said Tahquil. ‘Meganwy taught me of such as they—the coillduine, wights of the trees, who dwell in the sun. Lovely they are, but their thought is closed to us. Some say they are almost mindless, like the plants they inhabit.’

Viviana cared nothing for the habits of the coillduine. Perversely, she searched for goblin fruits. The restlessness in her would not die—never was she satisfied, despite that her friends gave her the best of everything.

Would that I knew how to cure this affliction, thought Tahquil despairingly. Now two of us are infected with Yearning. She touched the ring on her finger, wondering how long its power would keep her from the pining-death.

But Tahquil bore her suffering with better grace than the courtier. When Viviana’s frustration overbrimmed its well, she would rail at the trees and kick them, or tear off their brittle boughs and use them to beat the boles.

Towards the close of the third day, the companions rested on a slope of springy turf beneath peach and pear trees. At the foot of the incline, reflections glimmered between the leaves. A pool lay in a depression there, like a dark green eye. They had been wary of pools since encountering the carnivorous fuath in Lallillir, but in this peaceful, wooded region the edge had worn off their apprehension. They had seen no wights save for the harmless tree-sylphs who were neither malign nor benign to mortals, and oblivious of the human race. Relaxed, filled with a drowsiness born of satiation, lulled by a ferment of perfumes and warmth, the maidens dozed late. Each vaguely hoped that another was keeping watch. To inquire who was on guard duty seemed bothersome and would possibly lead to shouldering that responsibility oneself. It was easier to let it be.

And what danger could await in these innocent orchards, here behind the protective sandstone wind-wall with its thorny hedge? The swanmaiden had warned of a ganconer, an unseelie wight whose honeyed words were poison: ‘Sweet-speaking handsome one woos,’ she had said, ‘where sprigs hang heavy with fruit. Fair face, fair words, sinister intent. She who falls for shadows shall soon weave her shroud.’

Yet there had been no sign of wicked things. Conceivably, the ganconer had long since followed eastwards to the musterings in Namarre.

So the travellers dozed. They did not notice this: that some boughs dipped and swayed, though no wind blew, or that the waters of the green pool stirred.

Evening came with beauty to Cinnarine. The richness of it, the deep mazarine blue of the northern horizon, the lather of sombre, white-tipped clouds lavishing the sky-ceiling, the boughs luxuriantly festooned in every shade of green, the layered wall-hangings of leaves—all made it a time for slow and tranquil awakenings. The orchards were tinged with an ambient light which might have been filtered through panes of antique amber glass, or through tannin-rich waters of a mountain stream—mellow, yellow light tinged with bottle-brown.

The leaf-ring quivered. Tahquil’s lids snapped open like two leaden hatches which had been fastening down her eyes.

A man—maybe—came out of the shadows. Roughly, Tahquil seized her companions by the shoulders and shook them out of their lethargy.

‘Awake!’ she said. ‘It is he, the Ganconer of Cinnarine. Stopper your ears and avert your gaze. His words and looks ensnare …’

Like some wild creature he walked, easy, graceful, long of stride. Spying this unexpected manifestation, Caitri, half awake and not yet free from the adhesive webs of dream-illusion, wailed and fled. Tahquil sped after her, lest they should lose her in the wooden maze, and Viviana, not to be abandoned, trailed in pursuit.

Yet, as they ran on they heard muffled thuds on the grass—the pounding of hooves. A grey horse raced up beside them, yet it was riderless. Sharply it veered sideways to head them off in a small glade where moonlight fell like silver snow, and as the horse crossed their path they flung themselves backwards. The beast reared, its forelegs flailing. It swung its head towards the mortals as it came down, and its eyes looked through them, knowing. In terror they retreated, turned in the opposite direction to flee afresh. A shaft of moonlight pierced between leaves and illumined a pair of horns sprouting from a moving skull—the head of a second manifestation which barred their path of flight. They stumbled to a halt.

At Tahquil’s back, Viviana and Caitri clung to each other, pressed hard against the knobbed bole of a hoary plum tree. Under the glove, the ring zapped warning tingles up and down Tahquil’s arm.

‘Rest easy, lasses,’ fluted the horned one. ‘Och, there’s no call tae be afeard. ’Tis seelie we both be and wishin’ ye no harm.’

It was only an urisk.

‘No, I’ll not rest easy,’ cried Tahquil holding up her ringed hand in an effort to ward off wickedness. ‘There is a ganconer here, and that’s as unseelie as ever was.’

The grey horse was no longer in the glade. Instead, there emerged once more the man with the walk of a beast. He went down on one knee and bowed his head. Long, coarse hair slid off his powerful shoulders and hung in curtains as straight as weighted strings. In its glossiness, fluted water-leaves were twined like thin, green ribbons. He was naked from head to middle, clad only in leggings of some rough weave. The long nose drooped, the face too was elongated—strong-boned but not handsome. So pale was his skin that it seemed formed of cloud, and sheened with the polish of water seen by starlight. Smooth slate-grey hair grew thickly along sculpted forearms.

‘I am at yarr sarrvice, maiden,’ he said in strange accents.

‘No ganconer but a waterhorse indeed!’ Tahquil exclaimed. ‘Or is this some glamour?’

‘Nay, maiden,’ said the man-creature. ‘I am av the nygels as ye see me and I have sarrt after ye far many a night, since ye bart me freeness.’

‘I manumitted you? How can this be?’

He raised his head, his lips drawn back in a smile. There was no white to his eyes. They were the eyes of a horse, the centres huge discs of jet set in liquid malt.

‘De ye nat ken me?’

Tahquil’s mind jumped back to the day in the marketplace at Gilvaris Tarv, when her name had been Imrhien and she had possessed a purse filled with gold.

‘A pony for the pony!’ called Roisin.

There was general laughter, but the miller who held the rope said, ‘Is that a genuine offer?’

‘It is.’

Imrhien began rummaging in her purse.

‘What? Be ye turning scothy?’ hissed Muirne.

<<No. Please, show him the money.>>

Nobody outdid the offer. People stepped back, gawping in amazement—few had ever seen a coin of as high value as an angel. The Picktree miller made sure they didn’t get much of a look at it. As soon as he had bitten the heavy golden disc to test its authenticity, he pocketed it, handed the rope halter to Roisin, and disappeared swiftly into the crowd, doubtless afraid he might have become a target for cut-purses or less subtle robbers.

The transaction completed, the bystanders now focused their attention on the new owners, calling out advice and questions. Imrhien stepped up to the terrified wight and slipped off the rope. Instantly the crowd scattered.

‘Oh yes,’ breathed Tahquil, ‘I ken you now.’

‘Then ye’ll ken I credit ye with a favarr,’ said the nygel. ‘Ye served me well.’

‘You owe me nothing, sir.’

Then spoke the urisk: ‘Dinnae be sae swift tae dismiss your debtors, mistress. The favours of the eldritch are not tae be taken lightly.’

‘Nygels are the most seelie of all waterhorses, but they are practical jokers,’ she responded.

‘Aye,’ averred the urisk, ‘yet they can be stark and brawly and true.’

Beneath the plum tree, Viviana and Caitri shivered in each other’s arms. Unconvinced, Tahquil regarded the urisk. The night’s light sketched his strange form indistinctly.

Might this be the same urisk who has helped us before? It is difficult to tell one from another.

‘Are you the urisk of the Churrachan?’

‘Sure, ye’ve misca’ed me in the asking, madam.’

‘If I have insulted you, I am sorry. My vision is not as clear as yours, in the darkness. But are you?’ she persisted.

‘I am.’

‘How came you here?’

‘By Wight’s Way, what ither? And maist deserted it was, for on my journey I met wi’ anly twa. The first was the Glashan itsel’.’

‘The Glashan!’ Tahquil thought she recalled the name. ‘Is that not the handsome waterhorse who is far more dangerous than any nygel? I have met him—once,’ she shuddered, recalling the cottage at Rosedale. Thanks be to fate, that at that meeting I hid the gold of my hair beneath my taltry.

‘Not the Glastyn, mistress, but the Glashan, a hobgoblin. He had words wi’ me—words that might weel be o’ interest tae ye.’

‘What did he say?’ Tahquil asked, momentarily forgetting her apprehension regarding the nygel.

‘“I’m after a huzzie wi’ yellow birss,” quo’ the Glashan uncouthly,’ said the urisk somewhat unintelligibly.

‘“For what purpose?” quo’ I.

‘“For taen her tae the Lord Huon,” quo’ the Glashan, “and the Lord Each Uisge.”

‘“Spier some ither birkie,” quo’ I, and I went on my way.

‘Next, I happed tae meet wi’ the nygel. Quo’ he, couthly, “I’m after a lass wi’ hair of yellow.”

‘“Wi’ what purpose?” quo’ I, for I’s no be the agent of ane that delivers ye to the likes of Huon and his louns.’

Here the urisk bowed neatly to bleach-haired Viviana, who stared at him blank-faced.

‘So the sonsy waterhorse here,’ he continued, tell’d me about his debt. “Come alang wi’ me,” quo’ I. “For gin the luck is wi’ tham, bye and bye the yellow lass and her sisters will arrive in the Talam Meith, the koontrie men call Cinnarine.”’

He paused, frowning.

‘But I see the lass wi’ yellow hair is not the yin ye sought, nygel, and ’tis the dark yin after a’!’

‘How did you know me, sir?’ Tahquil quickly asked the water wight.

‘I did nat, at first,’ he replied, ‘because yarr hair is changed. Nearerr, I catched the tang av ye and the way in yarr standing. Lang back in the city I marked ye well, be sarrtain.’

Tahquil folded her arms and commenced pacing back and forth in agitation.

‘This wight, this Glashan, told you that the Lords of Wickedness hunt after a yellow-haired girl,’ she said abruptly. ‘Tell me more, urisk, prithee. Tell me about Prince Morragan—all that you know.’

‘I ken only what the nygel tell’d me. I’ve fared in faraway corners this many a lang year and hae not ventured into the heigh, broad world. A solitary I be, like all urisks. We only meet once every nine years, on the banks o’ Loch Katrine, and I’ve missed the last couple o’ gatherings.

‘I hae heard no ither news, except that when the black wings o’ the three Crows o’ War unfolded tae darken Erith’s skies and pass intae the west, there was naething o’ eldritch, whether seelie or unket, domestic or wild, shape-shifter or shape-stayer, solitary or trooping, dwelling in high places or low, in water or woods, that did not alarum tae that sally-forth. What hae ye done, that they should hunt ye so?’

Tahquil shrugged and turned her face from the urisk, unwilling to reveal anything to any wight.

Moonlight blinked out in the small glade, blinked on again. A shadow had passed between the sky and the ground. A hooting cry sounded far overhead and the nygel craned his neck skywards. He snorted.

‘What goes there?’ demanded Tahquil, squinting at the sky. Stars sprinkled its dark dome.

‘Ainly a birrid,’ said the mane-haired nygel-man. ‘Sit ye dane and I’ll tell ye the tale ye’ve requested. I’ll tell ye whay all acruss the land the hunt is an for a lass wi’ hair of yellie.’

‘Very well.’ Tahquil nodded guardedly. ‘I am eager to hear your story.’

They lowered themselves onto the grass, Caitri and Viviana at a short distance from Tahquil, wary of the two wights. The nygel began to speak.

He commenced with the story of Morragan, Crown Prince of the Faêran, who had been exiled with his elder brother the High King. For many years after the Closing of the Gates to the Fair Realm, the exiled Faêran lords and ladies had walked the known lands, and that period was known as the Era of Glory. Eventually tiring of Erith, however, these two Faêran lords had both chosen to lie locked in the Pendur Sleep for centuries, surrounded by those of their knights and other retinue who had been exiled with them. Under two hills had they slept—two hills many leagues apart, with the whole of Erith stretched between, for the brothers’ feud had waxed more bitter than ever since the Closing of the Gates to Faêrie.

In the Erithan year 1039, Morragan had woken under Raven’s Howe. Perhaps, as the tales would have it, he had been awakened by some foolish shepherd wandering where he should never have ventured, or maybe something else had disturbed this mighty Prince of the Faêran. Some surmised that he had merely chosen to leave the stasis and the timelessness of the Pendur Sleep in order to experience a variation on eternity. Whatever the reason, out into the world, unlooked-for, he had passed. With him went the knights and ladies who had accompanied him, first in exile and then in sleep under Raven’s Howe.

Meanwhile, under Eagle’s Howe, Angavar High King and his retinue slept on.

Changes had occurred in Erith since the end of the Era of Glory, that early period when Angavar and his knights had imparted much knowledge to humankind, and mighty cities had been raised and great deeds performed, and splendid songs had been wrought. The Crown Prince and his Faêran entourage from Raven’s Howe found a world much altered. Most of the cities lay abandoned and overgrown. Men had forgotten much that had once been known. While the Faêran slept, war had riven the lands. The dynasty of D’Armancourt had been cast down in the Dark Ages and had arisen again with James the Uniter. Stormriders now ruled the skies. Yet wights still roamed, haunting inglenooks and millponds, lurking beneath hearthstones, inhabiting wells. Those of unseelie ilk preyed, as ever, on humanity.

Morragan’s contempt for the races of Men had not diminished. He did not mingle with mortalkind. Eldritch wights were drawn to him, attracted by his power, by the forces of gramarye that played about him like silent, invisible lightnings. Driven to frustration by ennui and hatred of exile, their company he tolerated. He was inclined to favour those of unseelie, whose antics and pranks at the expense of humans proved diverting.

‘An attitude typical of the Faêran,’ Tahquil interjected with bitterness. ‘The deaths of mortals seem of little concern to them—they have no love in their hearts. Merciless are they, unjust and arrogant.’

‘Ye ken not o’ whom ye speak,’ said the urisk, glancing over his shoulder as though fearful of listeners.

‘Behold, I am confirmed. Even the gentlest of wights fears their wrath,’ Tahquil said with a sigh.

Shaking his head warningly, the nygel resumed his narrative.

Long ago the six greatest unseelie wights, sometimes called the Lords of Wickedness or the Nightmare Princes, had formed an Unseelie Attriod, with the formidable Waelghast at its head. Eventually they had been deprived of their leader, without whom the structure of their collective was rent asunder, and the Unseelie Attriod was dispersed.

Locked out of Faêrie at the Closing, these Nightmare Princes had scattered, to wander Erith through the long years, bereft of purpose. When the Raven Prince returned to wakefulness and emerged from Raven’s Howe, the Unseelie Attriod reformed around him. The Lords of Wickedness claimed him as their chieftain, and while he hardly acknowledged their claim, neither did he gainsay it. Grouped in this structure, they once again became a powerful force in Erith. Whiling away their immortal spans, they amused themselves with numerous sports and depredations, including predatory forays against Men. Yet in these Hunts, the Faêran themselves did not take part, being more inclined to chase Faêran deer, a quarry more elusive and worthy of their prowess.

Then the nygel recounted how in Autumn of 1089, in the month of Gaothmis, an intruder had been detected in Huntingtowers, the stronghold of the Antlered One. The spy had escaped, been hunted down and, as it was believed, had perished beneath a cave-in of the old mines. In wrath, Morragan demanded to know how such a mortal intruder had penetrated Huon’s fortress. This was not revealed, until months later a certain duergar was discovered furtively making his way towards the mountains. In his possession was a swatch of golden hair, which had been partially plaited into a whip. In his terror of Huon and hope of deflecting punishment, the hapless duergar loosened his tongue and told all, explaining that he had received the hair in exchange for a foolish mortal’s clandestine entry to Huntingtowers. He had taken the precaution of rendering mute the potential spy, merely out of malice, but he had augured that the wench would not long remain undetected in the fortress of Huon.

Despite his confession, no mercy was shown him. His fate at the hands of Huon’s servants had been most terrible, as was Huon’s way with all those who angered him. Throughout the length and breadth of Erith the word went out from Prince Morragan and from the Unseelie Attriod to all creatures of eldritch—find the yellow-haired spy.

‘Therefarr,’ concluded the nygel, ‘I’ll warrant the Prince is after ye tae take reprisal because ye were eavesdrapping an him. That is a crime utterly candemned by the Faêran. He will nat farrget ye.’

At this point the nygel’s story ended, for he had passed into remote regions and heard no further tidings. Having deserted Millbeck Tarn after his capture there, he had gone looking for another pool to inhabit. He found himself moving northward, impelled by the strange and continuous Call that made all things eldritch lift up their eyes and hearken, and one by one to leave their haunts and respond: the Summoning Call issued by the Raven Prince.

‘Och, but we owe no allegiance tae the great lords,’ interjected the urisk, ‘and although I lo’e the Faêran weel, I’ll not dance to Prince Morragan’s tune gin he’s hand in glove wi’ those who would do ye harm, lass.’

‘You are very kind,’ said Tahquil.

‘Ye’re the make o’ a lassie I once kenned. One o’ the Arbalisters. I hav’nae dwelt wi’ a family for some centuries.’

‘Myself also.’

‘Among them I kept an un-name, a kenning. “Tully” they ca’ed me.’

‘May I address you by that kenning?’

‘Aye.’ The urisk’s eyes shone. He was, after all, a domestic wight and although a Solitary, he belonged at the fringes of company, the outer edges of firelit circles. The wilderness was not his preferred haunt.

Again, Tahquil raised her eyes to the sky, as though she feared a presence there.

‘If Morragan is able to hold converse with the morthadu,’ she said, ‘which I doubt not, then the beasts of Black Bridge might already have sped to him with tidings of three wandering damsels—a notable trio in the wilderness.’

‘Even so,’ agreed the urisk, nodding his cornuted head solemnly, ‘even so.’

‘There’s one av the white kine as dwells in yon green tarrn,’ interjected the nygel, changing the subject unexpectedly—it appeared his equine mind was erratic and seldom able to remain focused. ‘She is av the Gwartheg Illyn and will allow harrself to be milked, this night.’

‘We have no pail.’

‘Suck’t fram her dugs.’

‘’Tis not our way.’

‘Marr’s the pity for ye.’

‘For almost two years,’ Tahquil resumed, directing her discourse at the urisk, ‘Prince Morragan has been toying with the armies of Erith—why, I can only surmise. Possibly, his disdain of mortal men grows and he wishes to set us at each other’s throats, leading to our eventual destruction. Or perhaps the Prince’s brother, Angavar High King, has woken and these two Lords of Gramarye use us as pawns in their war games, to while away the tedious years of Erith.

‘For, who would Morragan wish to harass, if not his brother who exiled him? Of course, one who sleeps dreamlessly beneath a hill is hardly a worthy adversary. I would warrant that, like the Raven Prince himself, Angavar High King of the Fair Realm is indeed awake and walks the lands of Erith or holds Faêran Court with his followers in some remote fastness—even in the leafy bowers of some light-dappled greenwood such as this!’ She paused reflectively. ‘Yet surely there would be some hint of his presence in Erith, some flavour? How could Aia’s greatest potency of gramarye reawaken and it not be sensed in every blade of grass, known in every stone, sung in the wind, borne on the water, shouted in thunder, whispered in the leaves? Does he yet sleep, the High King of the Faêran, or has he woken?’

‘To my knowing,’ said the urisk with a shrug, ‘the Righ Ard sleeps yet. But I ken little o’ the ways o’ the warld. I hae kept tae mesel’ these past decades. Mickle a drap o’ water has passed beneath mony a bridge since Tully last heard fresh tidings.’

There was a short silence, filled with apprehension.

‘Via,’ Tahquil turned to the courtier, ‘it appears Morragan and the Unseelie Attriod and untold numbers of wights hunt yet for a yellow-haired girl wandering in the wilderness. With your bleached locks, in my company, you are in danger. Dark dye for your hair must be found!’

Viviana scowled. Her hair, unkempt, was a tangle of dry yellow straw. Close to the scalp it resembled brown silk threads.

‘And for my own pale regrowth as well!’ Tahquil added. ‘We shall look out for dyestuffs as we travel,’ she promised, rising to her feet. ‘For the nonce, it is urgent that we continue on our way. Sir Waterhorse, if you truly mean to aid me, I shall not discharge you. Accompany us if you will. Your help may prove invaluable during our journey north.’

The nygel bared his square teeth in a horse-smile.

‘I will join ye.’

‘Och, and mesel’ also,’ said the urisk.

‘Oh, fither,’ snapped Viviana, recidivating into broken slingua. ‘Now we must contend with yet another uncouthant half-beast that minces its vowels and otherwise butchers the Common Tongue. Storfable, Es raith-na?’

‘Ignore her—she is half-spelled,’ said Tahquil quietly.

‘I am uneasy with this creature,’ Caitri murmured in Tahquil’s ear. ‘It is one thing to travel in the company of an urisk, a domestic wight, but quite another to journey with a waterhorse.’

‘A waterhorse indeed, but one of the most harmless type of all, and he says he owes me a favour.’

‘Owes you, m’lady.’

‘Depend on it, I shall ensure the favour extends to my friends.’

Faint and far off, a long, eerie stridor issued from the southeast, scraping down the night breeze like a fingernail on slate, and trailing into silence. It was not the voice of a howler predicting storms, nor yet a weeper grieving for a fatality to come, nor yet one of the morthadu yowling. It was a multiple baying and yelping, as from the throats of a pack of hounds.

‘The Hunt is out somewhere tonight!’ said the urisk, glancing up. ‘They havnae been about these parts for many a lang nicht.’

‘Might aerial riders see us through the trees?’

‘Not unless they ride directly over us, or mighty close to’t.’

‘Maybe they have picked up a trail,’ said Tahquil, shuddering in every limb, glad of the shelter of the trees. ‘All the more reason for haste.’

The shadow of a bird fled again between the stars and the ground. Following it, clouds rubbed out the moon. The black ruby of night held all things captive within its prism. Through it, five travellers passed swiftly through the woodlands of Cinnarine until morning brushed the east with colours. At uhta, some boughs dipped and swayed though no wind blew, the waters of a lonely pool stirred and the mortals found themselves walking alone.

In the mornings, the world was the bowl of a crystal goblet, its rim the horizon, pinging with pure resonant notes as though struck by tiny hammers. Birds in their gorgeous livery ushered in the day.

The coillduine flitted through the orchards between sunrise and sunset, lightly clad in opalescent radiance, through which their pale forms were dimly discernible.

‘Peacock feathers brush my eyes,’ murmured Caitri, loath to close her lids against these sights and sleep each morning, but too weary to do otherwise. Despite and because of their seelie escort, the little band must continue its nocturnal existence, remaining alert in the most perilous hours, resting only under the sun.

Northward they traipsed through Cinnarine by night. The urisk Tully openly trotted by their sides, the nygel slithered, a vague shadow in the trees horsing around with things he met along his way, betrayed now and then by a splash, or a mischievous whicker of a laugh that the urisk called ‘nichering’. When narrow brooks crossed their path, the urisk would disappear to skirt them by some mysterious means. After a night or two the mortals became less uncomfortable with the ways and manners of their eldritch companions.

And so it has come about, thought Tahquil, that we three are now six. One escorts us by choice, one by design and, she tilted her head to the dark skies, perhaps another, by obligation …

But it was all she could do to keep going, with the chains of desperate longing dragging behind.

Viviana raged alone among the trees at dusk, bitterness eating out the apple of her heart like codling larvae. A pear dangled like a drop of gilded jade. She plucked it. Could this be fruit of a goblin tree? Her teeth met in its flesh. She spat and flung the spoiled thing away. Thin fluids trickled from her snarling lips.

‘Everything here is so fair and preciously ornamented,’ she cried to no one but the trees, ‘and as dependable as stairs of sand.’ Tearing sprigs from the pear tree, she trampled them underfoot.

Alone she was, having left her companions in a grove of cherry trees, where they broke their fast on fruit and cold water. Unassuaged, stung by restlessness, the courtier had flounced away, as was her wont from time to time, to roam the woods in the lingering heat which was all that remained of the Summer’s day, searching for wood-goblin fare. Hurtful as her wightinduced pining was, she could not guess at the depths of the greater anguish that was about to afflict her. Sometimes, moodily, she sang nonsensical ditties, spontaneously composed—for a kind of madness had taken root in her.

‘Oh, the blue-faced cat is merry when she moos,

With wings of grass to fly on.

And the hog is shod with dainty little shoes

That I should like to try on.

And the fruit-bat spins a web of many grins

That men must hang and die on!’

A stranger’s voice said—

‘Might a nightingale endeavour to sing thus?’

The trees sighed beneath a sudden wind. A thrush ceased its singing and Viviana snapped her mouth shut on her own. The question had risen, with a tendril of mist, from a thicket of close-growing, antique apple trees, whose semirecumbent boughs had surrendered to weariness. It was not the abruptness of the sound nor the surprise at finding herself not alone as she had supposed, nor yet the unmistakable masculinity of the tones which deprived her of movement and speech—it was the thrilling music of the voice, to which she leaned and hearkened without hearing the words.

‘Might it dare, were it audience to superior accomplishment?’ murmured the slender young knight who pushed aside foliage and stepped out of the thicket.

The blood pounded into Viviana’s face.

‘The King,’ she gasped, stretching out a hand to steady herself against a mossy column. She flinched, once, then resumed her stillness. Only a slight quiver scurried back and forth through her, like ripples in a cup—only that. Beneath the apparent stasis, her blood had ignited. She was aflame, she was assailed by dizziness, she was drunk. Her eyes drank him in but already her fever burned unquenchable.

He was clad in bleached linen, buckled over with half-armour in the soft grey tones and pure white highlights of silver; chain mail and plate which lent him the air of a dire machine of metal, or a carapaced insect or a cold-blooded sea-creature, yet within this casing, his excellence was obviously superlative.

Darker than wickedness was his hair, falling unbound past his shoulders. As compelling as forbidden pleasure was his countenance, but ‘Nay, I am mistaken …’ she said, and now she saw clearly that surprise had confused her. This champion whose looks and voice stirred the very marrow of her bones was not the King-Emperor. Slighter of build and somewhat less in height, paler of skin was the one who stood looking down at her from eyes not the hue of storms but black as sloes, eyes as alight with passion as her own—a passion matching in intensity, but very different, had she but known it.

And to Viviana now, any man not possessed of this exact stature, this frame, this hair and skin and eyes, was insufficient. The attractiveness of all good-looking men she had known was like candles to the sun. Never had she beheld anything more desirable, and she willed the moment to last for all time, that he might never leave her sight.

‘What maiden wanders here?’ he said, or sang, and she did not think to ask his name, nor why he cast no shadow. He did not smile; his look was sorrowful, like that of a brilliant poet precociously doomed—a sadness which, if it affected his comeliness at all, enhanced it.

Then he began to speak again, this time in rhyme—rhyme and metre being as natural to the speech of wights as prose, or more so. In fact, ‘ganconer’ was a word the Common Tongue had derived from the original; ‘gean-cannah’, which meant ‘Love Talker’. The words of ganconers were enchantment in its true meaning: snares to the senses. A sonnet was the form his wooing took, that traditional pattern of love’s eloquence. Hearkening to the puissance of his syllables, Viviana did not notice the skew of the narrative or its menace, its obscenity.

‘What maiden wanders here? Whose locks of gold

Frame youth’s fresh looks? What mortal paradigm?

Pulchritude sweet as this ought ne’er grow old

And suffer from the ravages of time.

With such hot passion do I burn for thee

That I would ward thee from that odious fate.

All other joys in life shall worthless be

When once our union is consummate.

The act of love reflects a violent death:

The piercing of the sword, the gasping cry,

Th’expense of spirit and th’expense of breath—

Close, ecstasy and agony do lie.

Now, hearken to the hungers of thine heart—

Let’s lovers be, whom death alone shall part.’

His tragic appearance was concupiscently romantic. Inside Viviana a bird sang shrilly, its beak perforating her heart.

‘You shall find me,’ added this vision of male allure, ‘breathtaking.’

He drew closer and she felt a chill like the utter coldness of a marble tombstone. A phantasmal mist rose out of the trees and twined about them, shutting out the world.

‘Silken of flesh,’ he said, provocatively brushing her cheek with a long finger, ‘hazel of eye and rose of mouth.’ His fingertip trailed across her lips. She trembled frenetically, distracted unbearably by his ardency, his nearness. The potent outline of his face was carved in alabaster against the spilled ink of his hair. Sloe eyes looked into her wide pupils, through her vulnerability to the wellspring of her psyche, and where they looked a wound opened and began to bleed.

‘But why so thirsty,’ he concluded softly, drawing away a finger on whose tip stood out a cloudy bead of pear juice, ‘beloved?’

All senses abandoned Viviana, consumed by obsession. She reached out. His arms closed around her. He filled her embrace with his passion, her mouth with his kisses, her eyes with his blinding hair, her thoughts with chaos, her lungs with his breath.

And that breath was as icy as a comet’s heart.

Tahquil sat with Caitri and the urisk in the grove of cherry trees while evening thickened. It was an unspoken fact that tension always eased with these brief absences of Viviana, who took her ill temper and sarcasm and fidgetiness away with her.

Tahquil’s fingers twirled a closed daisy plucked from the long grasses. She had just seen the nygel in horse-form, kicking up his heels and chasing a bevy of small, white pigs. Now he was feeding down by the nearby brook. From his muzzle trailed long, green ribbons that might have been water-weed or the feathers of a parrot.

Are nygels herbivorous like lorraly horses, or carnivorous like that prince of their breed, the cruel Each Uisge, devourer of mortalkind?

Recollecting her meeting with the Each Uisge under Hob’s Hill, she fell to brooding about her experiences at the Hall of Carnconnor, a thousand years since. ‘Cochal-eater’, the sadistic Yallery Brown had called her.

‘What does it mean, the term “cochal”?’ she idly asked the urisk.

‘Cochal? ’Tis a husk—a glume or a shell, an outer structure.’

‘Why should a wight accuse me of being a cochal-eater?’

‘Only some windy-wa’ blusterer wad scauld like that, lass. Mortals a’, and wights also when dining, eat baith the toradh o’ the fairin’, which is the essential guidness, and the cochal as weel. The cochal is only the appearance, the container, gin ye will, but the toradh’s the prie and the smell and the life-giving powers.’

‘Good sir—Tully—were you to be a little less, ah, parochial in your speech, I should understand you better.’

‘Och, then I mun give feater currency tae my jandering, lass!’

‘How is it possible to consume the one and not the other? To dine upon the taste and goodness of victuals, without eating the unnourishing substance?’

‘It is not possible, for yoursel’ or mysel’. Only the Lords of Gramarye, the Faêran, can take the toradh and not the cochal, leaving the fare to appear untouched.’

‘But food left without toradh must look hollow within—’

‘Not so. Ye mun understand the nature o’ toradh. It cannae be seen, nor touched, but it imbues e’en a pickle o’ wheat, a drap o’ milk.’

‘What would betide, were you or I to eat seemingly whole food from which the toradh had been stolen?’

‘We wouldnae thrive on’t. We might feast forever and niver gain an ounce o’ flesh, a doit o’ strength. In the transports of gluttony we would shrivel.’

‘Would we not notice a difference in the food?’

‘Nay. Though the true taste is removed with the toradh, a semblance remains—enough tae trick the palates o’ sich as you and I. Only the Faêran could tell the difference, and that at the verra crack, at the instant.’

‘Therefore the Faêran eat to live, in the same manner as mortals and wights, is it not so?’

A bird soared silently over the treetops: a swan. The urisk did not reply immediately. He seemed agitated, glancing about at the thick shadows woven by the trees, which his nocturnal eyes could pierce.

‘Nay,’ he said eventually. ‘The Faêran dine for pleasure alone. They hae no need for meat or drink tae support them. Tae sich as they, food is not a source o’ life but a source o’ entertainment. Often wad they come tae feast by night in Erith’s groves before the Closing, but their feast tables were laid with toradh clothed in illusion, or else true fare which in the morning wad lie scattered on the ground.’

The leaves rustled. Drifting into a half-dream, Tahquil invented a scene in which Thorn was lounging idly on the grass close by, and she had only to reach out and she might touch him.

The urisk turned his curly head again, scanning the grove of cherries.

‘I’m waur’t Mistress Wellesley may be tint. She has been gane too lang,’ he muttered, ‘and something unket and kittle roams close by.’

The leaf-ring stung. Tahquil jumped up. Simultaneously, a willowy feminine form materialised out of the trees leading to the brook.

‘Sweet-speaking handsome one haunts here,’ hissed the swanmaiden urgently. ‘Heedless hussie hearkens. She stumbles. She who falls for shadows shall soon weave her shroud!’

Sickness punched Tahquil in the stomach. Her blood drained to her feet.

‘We must find her immediately!’ she cried. ‘Come, Cait! Ho, nygel, now’s the time to render assistance! Obban tesh, I should have known better than to let her from my sight.’ She grasped Caitri’s hand. ‘Stay with me, Caitri. Tully, prithee do not leave us. Against a ganconer we are as sparrows to a hawk.’

‘This way, I ween,’ honked the urisk, leading the way. Into the darkling woods they plunged.

A very faint, faraway music drifted through the arbours of Cinnarine, such tinkling music as might be produced by diminutive needles, delicately tuned, hung and struck with tiny drumsticks of iridium. A light breath of shang wind, only the edge of a greater unstorm rolling towards the east, briefly flicked over Cinnarine in passing. By its fires and velvet darknesses the companions made their way. They passed through colonnades of dark electrum, where silver branches dipped, picked out with mercurial leaves, along fructuous avenues arched over with trees of solid gold and then through silvan palaces upheld with pillars of diamond and emerald, coronalled with flickering lights. Hooded were the mortals—not so the wights. This was their element and would not mock them by replication. The thin sound of singing came threading through the trees. Following it, the searchers found Viviana.

Death by pining is a protracted affair. She was alive, although she had already begun to die, unaware of her condition. Untaltried, she sat alone at the edge of a glade, wearing a pair of long, red gloves. As Tahquil and Caitri approached it became apparent that Viviana’s hands were, in fact, bare. Blood glistened all over them, coating her arms to the elbows. Between her fingers she held a green pulp of nettles and thistles, which she was kneading. The prickles tore her flesh but she worked on without a sound, without complaint. No tear blurred her lily cheek and a woven circlet of willow osiers crowned her sunflower head. In a sweet voice, she sang the old folk song:

‘All around my hat I will wear the green willow,

And all around my hat, for a twelve-month and a day,

And if anyone should ask me the reason I’m wearing it,

It’s all for my true-love who is far, far away.’

The courtier’s shang image hovered around her like an aura. It must have been playing and replaying itself, but no change of expression flitted spectrally across the spectral copy of Viviana’s features; her air-imprinted countenance, shadow-eyed and utterly without mirth, remained stagnant.

They tried to dash the weeds from her hands but she would not relinquish them. Neither would she speak, or look at her companions. Only she sighed deeply as though a wound bled inside her that could not heal.

Pliable she was, and acquiescent. The spirit had been drained out of her. They raised her to her feet and led her away. She complied without demur.

‘She’s fa’en,’ mourned the urisk. ‘The bairn’s fa’en.’

The unstorm fled.

When they were far away from that place, Tahquil said gently, ‘Viviana, give the thistles to me. They are hurting you.’

Viviana shook her head. ‘When the flesh is parted from the fibres, then shall I take the fibres and weave them.’

‘What will you weave, Via?’

‘I will weave my shroud,’ said the courtier, emotionlessly. ‘For I have met the ganconer, in a bitter hour. I thought him a human sweetheart, but his lips were cold on mine and his breath as keen as death. Too late I knew. No longer can I joy in life. He has left me now, but for love of him I must pine to my grave.’

Then Tahquil knew the full meaning of powerlessness, futility and grief. Rage rose like magma to her eyes but streamed out as tears.

‘Three guardians to guide us!’ she railed loudly. ‘Three we have to protect us and not one, not one of you has prevented this. Hundreds of leagues we travelled on our own. A thousand dangers we faced without assistance and we won through. Yet now, under your so-called patronage, one of us is doomed. Tully, you I cannot fault—you gave us life in Khazathdaur, and on the slopes of Creech Hill you succoured us. But what use are you, swan, if you always come too late? And you, horse, what use are you?’

The waterhorse bared his teeth, laying his ears flat. The swanmaiden uttered a sound like escaping steam and raised her arms wide so that her feather cloak spread out like a black-petalled flower.

‘Feather-wielder forgets!’ she hissed savagely. ‘Swan’s sworn fealty in Cinnarine is finished. Honour is fulfilled. Horse of Water has vowed to help freedom-spinner singly. Spelled wench, suffering, heartsick wench, she’s no fret of horse or swan—no holder of wight-service.’

Caitri sobbed. Wringing her hands, Tahquil felt the hard lump of the ring beneath the glove. Somehow that pressure brought reassurance. Thorn’s ring. She regained her composure.

‘You are right,’ she said, ‘I am sorry. I spoke rashly and without thought. Forgive me.’ Putting her arm about the little girl’s shoulders she said in a low voice, ‘Peace, Caitri, be comforted. Do not lose hope. Maybe we shall find a cure.’ But even as the words left her lips, the forlornness of that hope made them clang as hollow as bells.

Both waterhorse and swan folded themselves into the pages of night.

‘They are not far away,’ said the urisk. ‘Ye can be certain they’ll not abandon ye.’

‘The swan has fulfilled her bond. Why does she remain?’

‘In your ain words, tae which she agreed, she mun see ye safe at least tae Cinnarine. Ye hae her at checkmate. There’s a lingering effect o’ such an indefinite phrase. Unwittingly ye might have bound her to ye forever.’

Taking Viviana between them, her bloody elbows hooked through theirs, Caitri and Tahquil resumed their northward journey.

At midnight, when they halted to rest, Viviana would not help them wash the blood from her hands. She would not look at the fruits they piled in her lap.

‘’Tis nae use tryin’ tae reason wi’ her,’ compassionately explained the urisk. Despite his words, born of his ancient knowledge, Tahquil and Caitri tried to tempt their friend with the most succulent of fare. Of course, it availed them not.

At early morn, when the urisk had departed and the sun’s newborn, age-old rays penetrated the canopy, making patterns through interlocking leaf ovoids, Tahquil drew off her gloves.

‘It has dawned on me with the day,’ she said to Caitri, ‘that this ring may have the power to heal.’

She took it off her finger and placed it on Viviana’s. The courtier remained passive, whey-faced, vacant-eyed.

‘Gramercie,’ she said, as automatically as a clockwork musical box might strike its notes.

‘There let the ring remain,’ said Tahquil, ‘in the hope that it will do her some good.’

‘And here let us rest,’ said Caitri. ‘Fain would I sleep now that the night’s wickedness is behind us and the sun comes to drive away fear.’

As they made themselves comfortable in the waving grasses, the coillduines of the plum trees appeared, their auras fanning out in ellipses of coruscating colours, crimson and gold, that rose hundreds of feet into the air. The luminous streamers that swept down to swathe the trees were tinted cochineal, outlined with rarefied gossamers of golden spangles.

Sightless, Viviana’s eyes stared through this glory.

At its going-down, the sun dragged night across the sky in its wake like a lambrequin stitched with baubles. As if caught up in the folds of this fandangled finery, the waterhorse and swanmaiden and urisk reappeared, an unobtrusive but persistent band of bodyguards. The swan flew or walked, scouting ahead; the urisk trotted alongside. In horse-form the nygel patrolled to the rear, irresponsibly playing leapfrog with water-leapers whenever he chanced upon a forest pool.

Two nights had passed since the encounter with the ganconer. Weariness had carved lines into the faces of the mortals, Tahquil and Caitri having alternately watched the unsleeping Viviana through the days. She would sit, her swollen hands trying to knit together the soggy sinews of bruised nettles. The courtier herself was so weak by now she could scarcely walk.

The urisk steered them a straight course by the stars—as straight as could be managed over the pathless, undulating country, so densely arrayed with timber. Up knoll and down brae they went, across brooks by fords or little stone bridges, through starlit glades and around thickets of old wood too dense to penetrate. All the while, Tahquil searched for the stuffs with which to concoct black or brown dye.

‘Look for iris or waterlily,’ she told the waterhorse. ‘Black walnut or sweet chestnut, bird-cherry or oak.’

But only tall reeds and straight-backed rushes grew in the pools of Cinnarine.

Soon after midnight, the nygel came bounding up in man-form, looking like a pleased puppy.

‘Swun is thinking she has seen a stand of aiks dane by yander cleeve.’

‘Not a coppice infested by unseelie wights, I trust!’

‘Nay,’ he neighed.

‘Is it far?’

‘Aye, she said it was, and aff yarr track.’

Tahquil looked at her companions. Viviana lay on the grass, motionless, her eyes open but blank. Caitri dozed beside her.

‘They are not able to travel further than is absolutely necessary. Tully, will you stay here and watch over them while I go? Whithiue,’ partially hidden in tree shadows, the lovely wight bridled as her name was spoken, ‘will you guard them also?’

The swanmaiden gave a soft cry.

‘She agrees,’ the urisk translated.

‘Guard them well,’ admonished Tahquil warmly.

‘As weel as we are able,’ said the urisk. ‘That is a promise, frae the baith o’ us.’

Tahquil nodded, gripped by reluctance.

While she had been speaking the nygel had unexpectedly resumed his horse-shape behind her back. He trotted off and she followed after him.

If this is some practical joke, I’ll cut off his curly tail.

Past the lattices of trees the stars rolled slowly by. The night was clear, so very clear it was extraordinary. Every leaf and blade stood out, articulated by celestial light. Even in the bosks and brakes and coverts the shadows seemed luminous.

‘How much further?’ panted Tahquil pushing through the trees, hot and scratched and hasty.

In answer, the waterhorse whickered.

They emerged from an orangery to find themselves in a clearing ringed by grand oaks, just as the swanmaiden had affirmed. Tahquil began to strip bark from the nearest trunk.

‘This must be soaked, preferably boiled,’ she muttered, more to herself than to the waterhorse, who was nosing inquisitively in some undergrowth. ‘How shall I boil it? And dye needs salt, and a mordant of rusty iron …

The waterhorse neighed.

She followed the upward turn of his long head. Between the branches and far off in the starry southeastern skies, a swirl of darkness could be glimpsed, like ink stirred into clear water. Dimly echoed the baying of hounds.

The Wild Hunt approached.

‘Will they be able to spy us beneath these oak leaves?’ cried Tahquil, panic-stricken.

The horse-wight shook his head, spraying his mane like water. A seashell flew out.

The black swirl hammered through the air, resolving itself into riders and hounds. Excited by the proximity of other eldritch steeds, the nygel caracoled, curvetted.

‘Do you see? Do you see where the Hunt is headed?’ screamed Tahquil, scattering strips of oak bark as she let them fall. Above the orchards and out of them, a gaseous tower arose, a white feather of steam or mist, towards which the Hunt was making rapidly.

‘That smoke!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is coming from precisely where we left the others. A signal! I must return to them. Hold still, if you honour me. Let me jump on your back, horse.’

A moment later, the waterhorse dashed into the trees with the girl clinging to his back. On her neck-chain, the iron buckle and the tilhal pounded against her breastbone.

Caitri had been sitting with willow-crowned Viviana on the grass, dozing in the warm and perfumed honey of the Summer’s night. She was aware of the swan-maiden’s vigilance in the trees and the urisk’s watchfulness by her side as he sat hugging his hairy goat-knees to his chest. She was aware of Viviana’s stillness, her pasty face, her slow, infrequent inhalations, as though she was forgetful of breathing and must try to remember, each time, just before she was about to asphyxiate.

‘You are so cold, Via.’ The little girl wrapped her arms around her friend. The fingers of the trees held stretched between them a starry canopy from which light trickled down. The sky was remarkably lucid, so fathomless and transparent that the world might fall, spinning, into its depths.

Three events then occurred simultaneously. The swan exclaimed, Viviana sat bolt upright and the urisk jumped to his hooves.

‘What’s amiss?’ squeaked Caitri, for nothing else seemed to have altered and she could see no reason for such unnerving behaviour.

‘Something unket this way comes,’ the urisk whispered.

There was nowhere to hide.

Presently, he added, ‘And has arrived. Stopper your lugs …’

Stuffing her fingers in her ears, Caitri swivelled her head. A slender young knight stood watching them, with long hair like waves of grief, and the face of a libidinous prince. His eyes were hungry—two black wolves. Viviana’s gaze, fixed on him, poured adoration from her eyes like a libation.

‘Ask me to tear out my heart, beloved,’ she murmured, ‘and I will.’

But it seemed he was unaware of her existence.

‘The wee lassies belang wi’ mysel’,’ said the urisk, who looked small and feeble compared with the tall, elegant form of the ganconer. The eyes of the predatory knight flicked over Caitri. Meeting that ardent gaze, she wondered, with a rush, what it would be like to sample that finely made mouth, and surprised herself by starting up. The urisk pulled her back, clapping a hand across her eyes.

‘Dinnae luik at him,’ he said crossly. ‘While I am here, he willnae come near ye, gin ye dinnae go toddling tae him like a silly hawkie tae the slaughter.’

Obediently, Caitri looked away. The ganconer was speaking phrases of seduction to her, but she could not hear him. A tenuous mist was creeping along the ground, rising in wisps.

‘A ganconer cloudie,’ said the urisk, uneasily. ‘What’s he at?’

The mist thickened, floating in rings among the trees. Through its laminae, the swanmaiden came stepping lightly like a princess from legend. Her feather cloak lay in a heap at the foot of a mulberry tree and she wore a gown of thin, snowy silk that clung to her lissom form like water.

‘No!’ shouted Caitri, starting up a second time, filled with concern. She whipped her fingers from her ears, gesturing wildly to emphasise her plea. ‘Swan-lady, you must not throw yourself away like this!’

It seemed now that the swan was unaware of Caitri’s existence.

‘But chiel, the gean-cannah cannae harm a down-feather o’ her,’ remonstrated the urisk, pulling her back again, ‘nor could she cowe him, nae mair than twa trees in a forest wad blatter each other. Dinnae fash yoursel’.’

‘What is she doing?’

From somewhere, or everywhere, a slow skirl of bagpipes moaned into being, dimly, as if muffled. The ganconer and the swanmaiden gazed at one another. Mist unfurled in fans around them. Two long, white diamonds of vapour soared to pointed tips at the swanmaiden’s back, like vast moth’s wings hovering at her shoulder blades. The moon-pale chain mail of the ganconer remained undimmed, softly glimmering. Liquid star-shine ran up and down its sheen like quicksilver.

With her swathes of dark hair streaming through the translucent wings, and his shadowy locks cascading over the polished lames of his gorget and pauldrons, they made a breathtakingly striking couple. The eldritch loveliness of them was as poignant as a half-forgotten dream or a long-cherished vision never realised. Caitri knew then that she was witnessing something of eldritch such as mortals were rarely privileged to behold.

The plaint of bagpipes grew louder. It came from under the ground, from some subterranean road where, presumably, an eldritch piper or a long-enchanted mortal slave marched eternally in the darkness. The lonely piper halted directly beneath the spot where Caitri and Viviana sat. The ground stirred. The music’s time signature changed, becoming three quarter notes to the bar and it was ‘Sheemor’ the piper was playing—‘The High Sithean’. Caitri had heard Thomas Rhymer play the lilting melody once at Court, and it was said to have been taught to a Royal Harper of yore by the Faêran themselves. To its rhythm, the immortal couple now moved into a dance of exquisite grace.

‘I trow she is trying tae draw him awa’,’ hoarsely whispered the urisk, but all the time the eldritch mist was pouring upwards, from eddies on the ground, filtering from the trees, rising ever higher between the branches, blotting out the stars.

Dancing, the swan and the seducer seemed to meet but not to touch. Their feet appeared to float just above the ground. Through the fingertips crammed into her ears, Caitri heard and felt the music, which itself played the strings of her nerves, jarred her bones with a kind of ecstasy, thrilling her in ways she had never thrilled before.

Then, through the plugs of flesh and bone, over the music, over the throbbing of her own tides, another sound entered; long, low, bleak, ominous, dreadful. Somehow Caitri knew it was coloured black, the instrument which disgorged that clangour—a hunting horn created from a void.

And a cacophony of hounds.

Caitri was up and dragging Viviana to her feet. The little girl was screeching against the lubricous cadences of the pipes and the tumult of whips and hooves, of savage baying and shrill war cries and deep voices shouting.

‘Get up, get up!’ she screamed, and Viviana slumped like a doll in her arms, a doll made of uncooked dough. The little urisk was trying to prop up the courtier on the other side and failing, and shouting something Caitri could not make out. Branches were cracking, breaking. The mist was shredding, blown by the back-draughts of a swan’s frantically beating wings, or by the massive displacement of air caused by huge horses dropping out of the sky bearing terrible riders on their backs.

Viviana was snatched from Caitri’s arms. Her yellow hair went flying as she was thrown across a saddlebow. Caitri stood, dazed. A grinning horse loomed over her, disclosing pointed teeth. Boring into its muzzle were the most appalling gutters of nostrils she had ever seen, until she beheld the noxious cavities in the head of the apparition straddling its back.

That apparition leaned down. The last thing Caitri saw, looking back at the orchards dropping away as the Wild Hunt rose higher, was a tiny horse and rider wheeling to a halt between the trees on the ground below.

That rider was Tahquil.

Black against the night the trees reared their arms. Ragged ends of unnatural fog slipped between the leaves and dissipated among the stars. The hue and cry died away to the southeast. An owl flew by, hooting like a hollow pipe. A girl sat astride a horse, in Cinnarine. Zephyrs roused her tattered garments and draggled hair, but otherwise a vice of great stillness clamped around her.

She stared towards sunrise, where no sun was yet rising.

The horse beneath her shied. A horned and curly head peered around a cracked bole that oozed rows of resin like amber beads.

‘Be still, Tighnacomaire. ’Tis only I!’ reproached the urisk.

The cord suspending Tahquil’s concentration snapped. She made as if to dismount, but was brought up short.

‘Let me down, Tighnacomaire,’ she lashed out, quick to learn a useful name at need. ‘Have you forgotten who I am to you?’

Released from supernatural stickiness, her hands slipped down the glossy hide. She leaned forward, withdrew her leg over his croup and slid off.

‘How dare you adhere me to your back!’

The waterhorse hung his head humbly.

‘Yarr nat the best av riders. I had tae stick ye an.’

‘The Hunt has ta’en the twa lassies,’ said Tully heavily. ‘The ganconer betrayed us. There was naething we could do—’

‘I know,’ Tahquil acknowledged grimly, ‘you have not the power to match them. Where is he now, the ganconer?’

‘He has gane. The swan draws him awa’ frae here.’

‘It is as I feared—they have mistaken Via for me.’

She sat down on the grass, bowed her head in her hands, and remained silent for a long while. Eventually, looking up, she said, ‘Under my auspices my companions have suffered, despite that they accompanied me by choice. Out of friendship to me they have been brought to this pass. No mortal comrades have I now, and no ring of gramarye, no red vial of strength, no provisions, no means of making fire, no weapons or shields—but I have you, Tully, and you, Tighnacomaire, and I believe the swan remains my ally. In this terrible hour, I must abandon my journey to Arcdur and turn to the southeast, following the Hunt. If my friends live, I will rescue them. If not, I must know their fate, or else be unworthy of honour and deserve no fellowship.’

‘A mad quest, Mistress Mellyn!’ rejoined the urisk.

‘Do ye not ken what lies east and south of this place? The orchards of Cinnarine give way to miles, nay, leagues of country untrod by the races of Men. Beyond that, the mazes of Firzenholt, or Haythorn—call it what you will—and beyond that, barren Wastelands stretch to the Nenian Landbridge. Few mortals be such mollymawks as tae try and cross that sea-causeway—it was ever a kittle road. And the Landbridge leads into Namarre.’

‘If they have been taken to Namarre, Namarre is where I must go.’

‘We dinnae ken for sure—’

The swan fluttered in over the treetops, fell awkwardly through them and emerged as a pristine damsel, demurely smoothing her feather cloak.

‘What news of the Hunt?’ Tahquil rasped peremptorily.

‘Horse and hounds have hastened far with fair friends. Swan saw Huon fly where hedges wander. Swallows say he flies further to fallow, furrowed fields of war and salt-wind seashores.’

‘To Namarre?’ Tahquil demanded.

‘With certainty.’

It was a turning point. Once again, her path had changed direction.

She must abandon the search for the Gateway to Faêrie.

Four hundred and forty miles lay, in a straight line, between Tahquil’s turning point and the outskirts of the hedge-mazes of Firzenholt.

Eastwards and southwards galloped the waterhorse by night, tireless, jumping barriers of wood and stone, evading barriers of moving water, swimming across pools so still and clear they might have been forgotten shards of the sky. Swift and strong he was, beyond the powers of mortal horses. His rider must have fallen from his back many times, were she not fastened there by his sly magicks. Swift and unwearying also was the nimble-footed, leaping wight that ran like a goat at his side every time night’s doors swung around, while away up in the airy heights a long-necked bird kept pace using slow, sure sweeps of her wings. It was a pace no lorraly beast could match.

Strange hawk and hound and horse.

Strange huntress, who is the quarry.