The First Room …

A shadow fell upon her mind. The flickering room seemed briefly darker to her, the cheer of the fire diminished. The autumn chill struck at both warmth and comfort as if they were the illusion. The Veil seemed suddenly taught here, thin. Did she cast the shadow, or was it cast upon her? Her thoughts hunted the danger through the darkness. They found nothing. This was a place of Men. The castle savoured of an unfamiliar tang in her mind, her inner sight was dulled by this Mannishness, the stolid stone of prosaic walls. A place of safety for her, yet what could she do hedged about in the narrow world of the Second Born?

The slaying of the Morning Star had changed everything. Men of Albion were restive, at odds with themselves. The Dark Elves, shadow-folk of the Combes, were wary, were arming. For the High Elves summer passed with injured Elvendon yet wrathful, keen in watchfulness, unslaked in anger, while her mother, she suspected, had mourned her cousin with defiance, with plans drawn and armouries stocked. For all peoples, old scars grew again livid, while raw fresh wounds smarted. The air of Albion tasted of uncertainty tinged with an edge of pregnant violence. It was the end of all things as we knew them, they had said.

She was not the same, now this had been laid upon her. Hers was but a part, a little light in the vastness of night Nan Un had said. Yet would anything she did remove her taint? Her bitter smile rebuked the question and gave the answer.

The Dark Elves sang no songs for the passing of the Star of the Morning, why should they? Their mood was grim nonetheless. Nan Un had sent for her.

Nan Un’s chamber had reeked of a pungent greasiness, wholly alien to her.

“Eat”, Nan Un had said simply.

“What is that?”, she had cried in dismay.

“Boiled bacon and peas, Elyssa. It’s what Men chiefly eat.”

“And this?”, she had indicated a second dish, which contained a green-grey repellent soup, marbled with more grease, in which suspicious shapes floated malignantly just below the surface.

“Same. In a form called ‘potage’”, she articulated the last word carefully, with delicate unfamiliarity, “You must learn to eat such fare. And like it. There is much else to learn besides”.

At that, her grandmother declined to say more. So Elyssa had eaten the rancid man-food and kept silent.

Elyssa was not stupid, marked, cursed perhaps, and outcast, but not stupid. She knew she was being schooled to pass as a Daughter of Man. Yet it was many weeks, after many furtive lessons in the food and apparel, speech and manners, laws and customs, and superstitions and beliefs of Men, before Nan Un deigned to offer an explanation.

“You must seek out the King in the North’s daughter. He holds the gryphon castle in the Vale, beyond which stands the dragons’ gate. Though it lies in the very lee of your mother’s lands, no consideration, even that, can stay you or check your resolve for a moment. Your mother places her trust in the king her father, but my daughter is prideful and not always so wise as she thinks. Besides, the mettle of his daughter is untested. The stone above everything, Elyssa. Save the daughter, if you can, but save the stone she bears. Bring them safe within our western walls. Or bring the stone.”

“How will I know this stone?” Elyssa had asked at length.

“Because I will give you this to study,” and Nan Un withdrew from her sleeve a small soft bag, and, gesturing her granddaughter to hold out her hand, dropped it into Elyssa’s palm.

Elyssa rolled the polished oval stone round her palm. It felt light for its size, and held many shades of blues and greys, flecked with whisps of white, stirring within it.

Nan Un spoke again, “Each elf-stone has its silent sisters, so-called because they are mute, with the appearance of a singing stone, but no power to voice. Take it to the window, Elyssa.”

Elyssa did so, holding it up to the light and seeing the hues of the sky change and swirl in the depth of the stone, now made bright and translucent in the sun.

“Look for the stone that looks like this, but which has a power deep within it. You, I trust, will know the difference. I doubt Men have the ability to sense a stone of power. Your princess will be deaf to the song in the soul of the stone.”

And so, with this task before her, Elyssa departed the fair Elfcombes of the west. Ever hidden in plain sight of Men, she had picked a weary way northward, always in fear, ever in hope, if generally in bad weather. Now at last was won the safety of the Vale, and she would not now be cowed by mere unfamiliarity of circumstance. Besides, there were reasons for present cheer. Had she not travelled out of danger into safety, and was it not good for any exile to be out of the cold and the wind and the driving rain? And this was a homely enough room to be in, even elegant, after the fashion of Men. The fire was now more cheerful seeming, and she could almost fancy herself warm. For all that the places of Men were strange to her mind, the white turreted Gryphonhold, high amid the pretty Vale, with the blue waters of the mere and its fields and woods, was a good place. It was said that the King and his daughter would come here to meet an Earl of Men and his son, who had travelled from a place to the south. If so, there might be no need to pass beyond the Gryphonhold to Dragongate, though she had hoped to see the Hidden Realm. It was known that the shadow-folk had found sanctuary in the Hidden Realm. Curious, yet thrilling, it seemed to her, these cousins shared the land with other races. She must at least amid Elf-friends, she decided.

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She began to relax. She saw strength, or at least resolution, in the young woman in the looking glass. Her raven hair was shining, adorned by a simple silver circlet on which the bloodstone glowed fiercely. Her pale Elven face now looked calm and implacably beautiful, her crimson and black gown gathered about her with a silver girdle. Motionless and silent she stood as she thought the last of her thoughts there.

Then she sensed something chillingly dark. Something Fell. She threw a mantle over the glass. Something was suddenly very wrong. Concern flared in her crystal grey eyes, deep within them the red flecks of her blood-kindred flashed in alarm. Her lips parted in shock. A change was happening. Was she too late, after all? There was a raw pain in her head now. She staggered at its onslaught. She fought back; she had to master her mind and regain her sight. At length she succeeded.

Something was moving, she saw, great, powerful and malevolent, and it was here, in the Vale, at the very walls of the Gryphonhold.

Just then she heard the insistent ringing of a great bell, as if the very metal was in fear and great anguish. She touched the stone upon her forehead and uttered a silent invocation. There were strange shouts and hurried horn calls now. Rushing feet. She took up her bow and quiver and let herself out into the passage….

***

The Second Room …

A start, even an unpromising one, is a start, she reflected. It was an unfamiliar room in a strange place. The image in the looking glass also looked unfamiliar, as if she had left one Sigird behind and found another. She supposed she had. Or, she added ruefully, it could just be because she was wearing a frock, and with her copper-red hair grown out, combed and dressed. This was a Sigird seldom seen. She supposed it was the Sigird she would now see every day.

She had escaped her home with its suffocation of expectation. And trousers, and swords and spears, and the back-slapping heartiness of flatulent boys; she had escaped them, too. She left behind the bitter censure of her father, the sting of his reproaches, to be somewhere she had chosen, to embark upon a life she had chosen. There was always a place in the Hidden Kingdom, for those who needed one, she had heard, if one had the spirit and endurance to win through. She was immensely lucky, she knew, to have been offered such a place; her family knew the King’s, apparently, and she silently thanked her grandmother for making the discrete approach. Thus, it seemed to her all the more vital that she did not bungle it. Yet her plans may yet come to ruin. Her first day at the castle, had been an exercise in humiliation. Through the acerbic medium of Afor Housemother’s scalding tongue, she learnt how little she knew of the world of court, or of royalty, or of fine ladies. In time, she hoped, she would adjust. At least the dress looked well enough on her, and her curtsies, which she sternly reminded herself she would remember to make in future, would become more graceful and less like “a collapsing scaffold.” Of most immediate concern was to understand what was expected of a princess-companion. Not that she had so much as glimpsed the Princess, but, then, no one she had spoken to seemed to have so much as glimpsed her either. Strange. She had heard the phrase “the Hidden Princess” spoken on the back stairs, but, somehow, sensed that it was not a name to be repeated in the upper rooms. She supposed from this insight that she was capable of learning the subtleties of court life after all. At least her awkward bearing, jerky gait and offensive sitting (“legs together, girl, you are not milking a cow!”) had yet to offend the royal gaze. With luck, her rough edges would be knocked off before she had to meet it. In the meantime, she should stop staring at herself in the elf-glass. A novelty, to be sure, but one to be wary of. You could lose yourself in the reflection of a looking glass, they said.

She gathered that the court would remove to Dragongate in the coming days. If she was accepted into the Princess’s household, she would be assigned lodgings there. She supposed these would be somewhat smaller and more workaday than this guest chamber in the Gryphonhold. She suspected, too, that this would hardly matter; she would hardly have time between duties to inhabit it. This evening, however, she had leave to retire to her chamber to ready herself for a feast in the Great Hall, a welcome for the Earl and his son.

She moved to warm herself by the grate. This far north in the Marchlands, she supposed, all but the warmest summer days must see a fire kept for much needed cheer and to keep at bay the damp that would creep through the walls from the mists and drizzles, the rills and becks, and the mossy grass of the hills. But, tonight at least she had window-glass and shutters and thick woven hangings to keep draft and damp at bay, and, of all wonders, a canopied bed. Such luxury she had not known in the oaken halls of her father. Yet, nor, she reminded herself, had there been much of cold, damp or draft in the warm, rich, glow and insulating fug of her home. The searching wind was a constant cold companion in the Northern dale she called home, but her father’s halls were proof against it. The smoke of peat hearths hung among the rafters before it seeped out through the thatch and turf of the rooves. The soft shadows and bright hearth-light of the dim interior were ever there to welcome the warrior home from the hard ride. A pang of something sharp, a shard of regret sliding like a knife between the ribs, stung her for a moment, then passed. She was, she assured herself, where she wanted to be. It would be fine. She would not fail. If need be, she would take each day as it came and survive them one at a time, and this day saw her warm, dry and ensconced in modest luxury.

She would embrace the comfort, the style of the place. She would make it part of her. She would come to belong to it and it to her. She drew strength from her new sense of purpose. Strength to face the throngs of courtiers in bright halls to which presently she must descend. Yet, even as she surveyed the trappings of her new life, she was reminded that her old life was still a part of her, and, in every sense, she had brought it with her. These fine stone walls would have to learn to accommodate that Sigird too.

Her spear, Mail-Piercer, stood leaning into the dim corner of the stone chamber. She had left it where it was least likely to get in the way or startle a servant, or, she admitted, be noticed by her. Yet, she was drawn to it now. Beside it a small and battered plain wooden trunk, folded upon the closed lid of which were her boots, breaches and jerkin. In the trunk, hidden from her gaze, her harness - sword, dagger, jack, hauberk and helm - lay in reproachful darkness. They had, she thought, been the embarrassing relics of a past she had turned from. She had not wanted to bring them, or, expected to. She had found, though, that she could not bear to leave them to gather dust in her father’s halls, the subject of remark by the curious; the arms of the maid who fought like a man so she could be the son her father had wished for. Unexpectedly, she found that, from these things, too, she drew a strength. She, who had ridden hard, in both flight and pursuit; she, who had fought hard, in both red-vengeance and at bay; she, who had killed at need for hearth and house and the honour of her father. She could surely master the parlour games of courtly dames?

It was then that she heard the frantic ringing of a bell, swiftly taken up by the blaring of horns, both near and far, as if calling and replying throughout the castle. And then, the sound of shouts and the pounding of many feet. Without thought she rushed to her chamber door and stepped out into the wide stone passage beyond it ….

***