“Thou art something new unto me, Joe. I have never seen a fate-weave such as yours. When I look upon thee, I see naught but a blank swath. Yet when I look upon the selvage, the edges where thy fate intertwines with others and the world around thee, the border is tightly woven with dense complexity.” The banshee’s black eyes locked onto Joe’s, sending an involuntary shudder down his back. He did not think she meant him any harm, but her very nature had every instinct of his screaming ‘Danger!’
She continued to speak in her sepulchral voice, still holding his gaze. “I have seen those with hidden fates before; you are not unique in this manner. What is puzzling is you are both obscured and yet deeply pivotal to the fate of two realms. This be a combination unbeknownst to me before now. How is thy fate so crucial to the Gossamer Lands and yet ye are least of the Feykind?”
‘More fey mysteries,’ Joe thought. Getting information about the fey, so far, had been a challenge for him. Between surly fey knights and the scant materials in the library, the only details he had were mostly about specific races. There was also some basic advice for adventurers when dealing with the feyfolk; the first and foremost being, ‘don’t make deals with them.’ Bargaining with creatures from the Feylands rarely worked out well for the person making the deal.
While there was something inherently terrifying about Molly Mae, there was also a sense of helpfulness there as well. He decided to see if, for once, he could get some straight answers from one of the fey.
“I have some idea why I would look that way, but would you mind if asked you a few questions first?” Joe inquired. “Getting first-hand information about your … our people has been rough. What do you mean I am the least of the fey?”
“This is understandable. I am going to assume you are sìthbheire, what mortals call changelings. Yes?”
Joe saw no reason to dodge the question since it seemed his guess had been right about him finally receiving some answers. Hopefully, confirming his race would not derail that. He nodded to the island wraith.
“I thought as much. Your hounds make more sense now. The cŵn annwn would not follow most mortal fey, but the sìthbheire fall into a small nook of their own. Let me explain the greater tapestry first. Then we shall discuss the details of the People of Change.”
“The fey are stratified into three,” the banshee stated in a very school-teacher-esque voice, granted one that was augmented by a hefty dose of reverb. “The highest of us be the Noble Fey, those belonging to one of the once four, now two courts. The lords and ladies of the Feylands and all their courtiers fill this caste. Most are unique beings but there be a few races that fully belong to the eldest of the fey, such as the adhene, the corvin-sìthe, and the unicorns. Your hounds as well once belonged to a court of the Feylands.”
Joe pulled his gaze away from Molly Mea’s ebon eyes and looked to Maru. The large hound nodded back at Joe, somehow seeming even more regal than she normally behaved.
“Next there be the Host: beings of the Feylands yet not wholly bound to the courts. The satyrs, trolls, and dryads. The hags, boggles, and pixies. This names but a few. These be true fey, weakened by iron, strengthened by moonlight; yet they are at home in either realm, be it here or there, whereas the noble ones rarely return to the Midlands anymore.”
The banshee lifted both her hands to indicate himself and Earcellwen. “The last caste is the Mortal Fey; beings such as yourselves, as well as the bucca, korrigan, selkie, and many more who have traces of the Feylands in their blood but are truly beings of the Midlands. You belong to this world and would be visitors to the Gossamer Lands, as much as any dwarf or human would be. You are spared our aversion to iron but you also lack the ability to pass freely through the veil between the realms.”
“Okay. The last one makes sense. Being a mortal fey is more of a lineage … or heritage. What differentiates the other two, the nobles and the host?”
“To be a member of the court is a fundamental facet of the fey,” she answered. “We are bound by the laws of our Kings and Queens in a way no mortal could fathom. You have laws to keep peace amongst you but you are able to choose to follow those edicts or not. A mortal breaking mortal laws may have consequences, but you have that option should you choose it. The fey do not. It is almost impossible for a courtier or noble to break their covenants. Those that somehow do shatter their magics, sometimes even their very essences. The same holds for the host. They are bound by the High Laws of the Fey. They have a bit more latitude when it comes to the lesser decrees issued by any one court. As you might guess, the mortal fey are not bound any more than any other mortal would be. This is the first division.”
Molligan moved a tad closer as if her next word were not to be spoken loudly. “Then there is what death means for each. Did you know that fey were one of the very first races upon this world? Only the daemons, the servants of the Great Architect, whom you call the One Above, were before us. In those days, we were all one and the same. There were no nobles, host, or mortal fey.
“Additionally, every fey, great and mere, possessed immortality. When death would take one body from one of us, our spirit would find its way to a waiting womb. With all the knowledge of our past lives, we would be born and mature anew. Now only the noble fey retain this gift.”
“What changed? Why are only some of the feyfolk eternal now?” Earcellwen asked.
“The Gambit of the Queens happened. Ages ago the Queens grew wary when the number of mortals swelled to surpass us. The Architect introduced mortalkind in the eighty-first century. Until that time, the world had belonged to just us and the beasts. Well, the chimeras, too, but that is another tale.” She said looking to Finn, who had flopped down onto the grass and was on the verge of falling asleep. At first, the brawny akhlut had stood tense and ready to protect his new pack from this dire specter, but when the hounds lavished Molly with their affection, Finn stood down. After sampling one of the new moon-flowers and finding it did nothing to assuage his hunger, he hunkered down to wait out all the talking.
Stolen novel; please report.
“Mortalkind were weak, lacking the ability to recall their past incarnations,” Molly continued. “This meant they were primitives for so much longer than we had been. The Courts of the Fey did not deem them much of a threat.
“At least at first. But soon, they were everywhere. At the rate they were filling the Midland, soon the fey would have to integrate or confront them. At that time, we could have easily wiped mortals from the land, but we did not wish to anger the Great Maker. So we besought him to create for us a place we could reside, someplace apart but connected to the Midlands. Hence the creation of the Gossamer Lands. A world separated from this one by the ethereal Veil. Here we could exist and not be overrun by the hordes of grunting, rock-wielding savages. The Architect even donned the guise of one of us when walking beyond the Veil, renaming that aspect of himself Robin Goodfellow.”
Molly smiled a dreadful grin at the name, clearly recalling some encounter with Hawking as Robin. Eacellwen winced and squeezed Joe’s hand tighter. Even though her memory seemed like it might be a pleasant one, a banshee’s smile was a truly ghastly thing.
“The deep forests were still ours, for a time. And from them, we watched mortalkind develop; still more vexed than worried by their evergrowing expanse. It wasn't until the dwarves and their endless digging unearthed the Great Bane that we knew fear. Wrested from the roots of their mountainous mines, the stout ones brought forth our anathema, iron. Its touch unravels our magic and sears our flesh. The deeper the iron lived in the world, the more dire it was to us. One day, Dolb-Aed, the fire-shaper was destroyed, not killed, but completely obliterated by a hunk of black iron from the deepest dwarven mine. This was the final straw for the Queens of Summer and Winter. They feared the fey could be wiped out by this new treat.”
Earcellwen gasped at this and folded down to sit cross-legged in the long grass, pulling down Joe with her. He could tell she had known some of this already, but something Molly stated was clearly new to her. The deadly specter drifted downward to keep their heads level with each other, her spectral skirts passing through the grassy stalks.
“Do you want me to run our weapons down to the cove, Lady Mae?” Joe asked, realizing his and Earcellwen’s weapons might be off-putting to her.
“Nay, Joe. But I thank you for your consideration. Steel can no longer harm me. Iron could but not steel. We would not choose to wield steel but it is not the same as raw black iron. Steel weapons to us would be as you bearing weapons fashioned from ice, harmful eventually but mostly uncomfortable in brief contact. As an apparition, it holds even less a threat to me.” She glanced to Trisynun and added, “Your axe is not even steel. It is made of star-silver, our creation.”
“I was told it was made of mithril,” Joe remarked, looking at the weapon.
“They are one and the same. As mortals learned that raw iron was inferior for tools, we did so with silver. We learned to harness the magic of the moon and starlight to form star-silver, or mithril as you call it. It is lighter and stronger than your steel but takes far longer to forge.”
“Mithril is not its own metal,” he mused. “Where I come from, Tolkien …” His further thoughts were dismissed by a pointy elbow to his ribs. RC was giving him that look she did whenever he wandered off-topic. “Sorry, Ma’am. Please continue. This is exactly the sort of lore I have been trying to learn but for some reason, no-one speaks of it.”
“There are both reasons and customs that invoke the silence you have been battling, Joe. One of the few perks of my twilight existence is that, much like a mortal, I am no longer so tightly bound by them. I can speak of the Queens’ Gambit and fear not the sting of suborning their royal edict.”
“Returning to my answer; the Morrigu and Gloriana wished to see our numbers increase in response to the ever-growing horde of mortalkind. It was their design that created the host. If the land itself could hold the spirits of the dead and give animus to the newly born, the number of fey would no longer be a fixed counting. On death, the spirits of fey, not directly bound to a court would merge with the Feyland, and, from that collective pool, new fey would be born. This melding would, unfortunately, strip them of the memories of their prior lives, but the numbers of these new fey could grow to rival the sea of morals filling the Midland.
“The Queens beseeched Robin to allow some fey to procreate as the mortals do but Goodfellow would only make that alteration with a majority of the royal's vote. They needed either the agreement of the Erlking or the Oak Baron. The Kings of Spring and Autumn did not see the need to change the nature of their brethren. Should mortals challenge the Fey, then they would settle matters as they always have with magic and might. Thus the divide between the Kings and Queens began.
“The Court Wars,” Earcellwen breathed.
“Rightly so, my dear. Beyond the Veil, unbeknownst to most of the Midland, battles were fought between the Seasonal Courts. The first to fall was the Spring King, for his nature was far more suited to beauty and artistry than it was to warfare. Cursed, wounded, and trapped in his last fortress on Lark Hill, the Erlking, in his desperation, fashioned a new form of magic hoping to use it to save himself and his kin. On that fell day, the Blossom Lord created necromancy. When he realized what he had accidentally wrought, it destroyed his sanity.
“The Queens’ forces overran Lark Hill and tore down the Court of Spring. The forces of the Lark King were imprisoned with him. After the battle, the Queens rewrote our history, turning my King into an upstart knave and fool. I survived the battle and escaped from Lark Hill, but the curse on my king and his twisted enchantment are what bind me here in this twilight state.”
“The Oak Baron was a far different tale. As the Lord of the Hunt, his forces were more fearsome than either army the Queens could bring to bear. It is likely he could have withstood against both Winter and Summer. Yet, the Lord of Leaves knew should he batter the Queens into submission, he would eternally mar the Feyland and destroy the Courts themselves. Unwilling to unmake the Way of the Fey, he offered the Queens his exile. The Great Tree King left the Feylands and has never returned.”
“Since those days the seasons of the Feylands have stopped turning. The world beyond the Veil is locked, half in the hold of Summer and half in the grip of Winter. They say it shall remain so until the Kings are reborn, freed from death and madness, and unbound by self-banishment. Many of us long for that day to come. For the noble-bound of Autumn and Spring cannot be reborn until our Kings return and the cycle of seasons spins once more.”
“And I bet the Queens will not be thrilled if that happens,” Joe muttered.
“Not at all. For centuries they have only had to contend with each other,” Molligan moaned eerily. “They would take any change to the state of their rule as a direct threat.”
“Weeelll, funny you should mention that,” Joe drawled. “I think I know why my fate borders are so messed up. I might have tossed a monkey wrench into that equation a couple months ago …”