XIX. In Ailfion
In the elven city of Ailfion, Sir Richard atte Lee sits alone in a cell. There are no bars, no locks, no doors. None is needed for there is no entrance, no exit. Just seven star-shot cells, counting his, ringing a central domed circle; all the other cells are empty.
How he has come to be here is itself something of a mystery. He recalls being led to a sort of outdoor court—and even that journey has gaps, moments or hours, even days perhaps where he can’t remember just what he saw. It’s as if time and distance collapsed upon him repeatedly. Brief memories of huge, strange trees, of skies full of whorls of stars, of a landscape of tall spires of glass and steel as if cathedrals have merged with blades so huge they poke at the underbelly of Heaven itself—glimpses of something vast and inhuman.
No idea how long he’s been held here. Nobody has shown up to torture or interrogate or feed him. His single meal appeared out of nowhere; it wasn’t there and then it was. There’s no sun, no moon, no windows, no way to mark the passage of time. Inexplicably it feels as if time is hurtling past.
Then darkness descends and Sir Richard experiences the same lightheadedness as when the food appeared. Carefully, he gets up and leaves the cell, thinking that more food awaits him.
Instead, in the central circle, an astonishingly beautiful woman sits on a high-backed throne of alabaster and incarnadine. She has hair of red gold and eyes of emerald. She wears a long flowing purple robe trimmed in gold thread. Her posture, her severe expression, her aloofness bespeak her status. This is a monarch.
Beside her stands a . . . creature. He does not know what else to call it. Two guards stand behind it but he barely notices them. The creature regards him, turning its head as if to view him side on, and when it does, its misshapen skull sprouting tufts of black hair becomes almost unbearably beautiful, as if the cast of light and shadow has shifted and realigned the planes of its face. The face keeps changing thus, from demonic to angelic, as the thing studies him. Its swaying head reminds him of a cobra he once saw. It’s so hypnotic that he only vaguely notices the deformed physique, uneven shoulders, and arms that end in mismatched hands—one brutishly human, the other tapered and clawed, with extra-jointed spiderlike fingers. For all its asymmetry it stands huge and powerfully built.
Finally, the Queen has one of the silent guards step between him and the creature—it’s the only thing that breaks its spell over him. He looks around, blinks, comes back to himself. She speaks to him. “Thomas Rimor, is it?” The mocking voice, he realizes, is inside his head. Her lips haven’t moved. But it’s the identical response of the knight who called herself Zhanedd. Obviously, the name from a ballad of a man who is taken on a tour of faery is as well known to them as it is to him. He’s been quite a fool.
He blushes, replies out loud: “Well, not actually.”
She allows a smile. “No, of course not actually. That particular mayfly will be dead at least half a century by now.”
“He lives on in ballads,” he lamely protests. “Song.”
“Mmm.” She nods. “I regret we had a hand in that. At the time it seemed expedient to make a myth of him, that we might introduce elements as it suited us. What is a ballad after all but a story simply leaving out its motivations? It left us free to write our own. But that is of no matter to you. You are not who you claimed to be, you are one Sir Richard atte Lee, a knight who went questing as your sort do, and in the bargain lost your fortune and your future in the World-to-Be. We met you previously in the mountains of Italia, though you escaped capture then, and later again at Carcassonne. Took up with outlaws—all of them deceased now, I will tell you. Nevertheless, you still might be useful to me. Do you know who I am?”
“Qu-queen?” he stammers.
Now her smile becomes indulgence. “But of what, you’re not entirely sure. Are you?”
“All I’ve seen . . .” he begins, pauses and begins again. “All I’ve seen that I can trust are these cells.”
“Rejoice then that you see even this much. The last of your kind who occupied that cell conspired against us, cost us dear. Truly, I had no choice but to punish him. You know, he appeared not to mind, either, but then he was wearing out.”
“What didn’t he mind, Majesty?” he asks uneasily.
“His ending!” She comes out of her throne. “Would you like to meet him? The undigested pieces, that is. They’re still visible.”
Sir Richard bows and kneels. “I would not, Majesty.”
“Yes, well.” She resettles on her throne. “Wise you are to say so. I think we should make use of you while we have this opportunity. Don’t you agree, Bragrender?”
The creature says nothing, just shifts again between beauty and horror. Sir Richard only looks at it sidelong. He hears a kind of buzzing, as if hornets have been set loose in the chamber, and in the midst of it a word, astralis.
Nicnevin tells him, “Bragrender is the offspring of your appropriated Thomas the Rhymer. His fabric—his astralis—proved sufficient to spark new life, though not, unfortunately, to shape it very satisfactorily, leaving Bragrender caught between two progenitors, two forms if you like. No one will procreate with him, either; whatever else he might be, he is as sterile as the chrysalis out of which he emerged.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No? It’s no matter. Perhaps you will surpass the Rhymer. Did you know that two of every three Yvags can alter our sex? And one of every five of those has the capacity to shift genetically to my own state, the superior stratum—the few not plagued, like Bragrender, by the sterility of our exhausted pedigree.”
Sir Richard can only shake his head that the more she tells him, the less he understands.
“For you it simply means that you can potentially procreate with a minority of our kind, starting of course with those who’ve invested themselves in prolonged lacunae in your world. Those are our Yvagvoja. They are most favored, and deserving of reward for their sacrifice. You will be that reward for a time, serving a greater purpose while you’re with us.”
“Majesty?” He can barely keep up.
“Oh, you and I might suspect otherwise, but they won’t. And who knows, you might impregnate one, expand the breadth of our formational pool, before I dispose of you or return you to the World-to-Be—which is to say, your world. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
She snaps her fingers. The ceiling goes spiraling up; the three of them in the center circle rise along with it.
On the way up, she tells him, “I believe you won’t be with us for very long, either way. You cannot tell us where our stolen treasure is—a situation in Sherwood Forest that must be resolved in short order. Once it is, I’m sure we’ll return you. Perhaps years will have passed by then. For now . . .”
On the next level wait dozens of Yvags, gray-green, spiky as carved gargoyles, and looking hungry.
Sir Richard cries out, “Majesty, please!”
However, the Queen is distracted, contemplating Bragrender for a moment before she announces, “He’s yours. But!” They stare at her, hesitant to act. Then she gives a laugh. “Oh, drain him dry as you like. It little changes how I will use him.”
The elven surround him, pick him up and carry him, screaming, away.