There was a bushel of Goblin Fruits made as a gift at the General’s wedding, from some sprite of the forest or other. The Queen ordered them all destroyed, but I got my hands on a few. What a night that was!

* The Life and Times of Legionary Titus Nasica

☀

17th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

Mist boiled around the four knights when they rode with the Wild Hunt beneath the hill. The fog was cool and left their skin damp; it muffled the sound of the horses’ hooves, and blotted out the view of their surroundings and the descent utterly.

“Stay close and do not stray from the path,” Cern, the Hunter, instructed them.

“What happens if we do?” Lorengel asked.

“Any mortal who leaves the path is no longer protected from the creatures in the mist,” Acrasia explained, her voice echoing like bells through the fog.

“I can hardly see the shape of the horse in front of me,” Lorengel complained.

“Aye, but your steed knows where he’s going,” Margaret assured him. “Just let him follow the others and he won’t turn aside.” Lorengel continued to grumble, but Trist put the Exarch of the Seal out of his mind. He could still feel Auberon pulling him closer, and there was no more chance he’d lose the path than that he’d lose himself in his father’s hall of Foyer Chaleureux.

“I can see light up ahead,” Trist called, and indeed the mist around them slowly took on a silver tone, as if lit by the full moon.

“I still can’t believe you can see anything,” Margaret remarked.

“You no longer walk among shadows, mortal woman,” Acrasia told her. “You have come to the other world now, and flesh is not what matters here.” With the faerie’s words, the mist broke, and there was not one of the knights who did not gasp, save Sir Cynric, who lingered on the edge of death and saw nothing.

The company of riders found themselves descending a gentle slope, along a path of bare black earth beaten by the passage of many feet. Before them stretched a vast plain of wheat, which grew to either side of them as high as a man’s waist. Rather than gold, the wheat was silver in color, and it stretched out as far as they could see in every direction.

Above their heads, Trist saw no earth, roots or stone, as one might have expected from a cavern beneath a hill. Instead, much like Acrasia’s bower beneath the Chapelle de Camiel, an endless sky extended to the horizon in every direction. Dark as shadows, it was, with bright stars scattered across it like grain thrown from the farmer’s hand.

“Beautiful,” Trist admitted. As much reason as he had to distrust Cern, and even Auberon, the faeries and their haunts were never less than awe-inspiring.

“Follow the path with your sight.” Acrasia pointed with one pale arm. “You notice the orchards? That is where we are going.” Indeed, following the direction of her extended finger, Trist could see the dark shape of foliage.

As they rode closer, the shapes resolved themselves into fruit trees of all kinds, but chiefly apples. For every peach or pear, there were half a dozen ripe apples hanging from boughs that arched over the heads of the knights. Lorengel reached his hand toward one particular fruit that hung low and within reach, and Margaret reined her horse over to bump into his, slapping his hand down.

“Goblin fruits,” she warned him. “Do not touch anything that isn’t offered! Didn’t your mother ever tell you stories of the Ardenwood?”

“My mother was a princess,” Lorengel groused. “She didn’t tell me faerie tales or any bedtime stories at all - that was for the governess.”

“The governess should have said it, then,” Margaret muttered.

“Dame Margaret is right to be cautious,” Trist said. “Acrasia, what do the fruits do to mortals?”

“They aren’t deadly poisonous, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” Acrasia explained. “But they do have a tendency to result in somewhat lowered inhibitions.”

Cern laughed out loud. “What my dear sister is dancing around is this: any human that eats a goblin fruit is going to be as randy as a goat, tearing their clothes off and tumbling the first person they see. It’s quite entertaining to watch.”

“No fruit!” Margaret repeated to Lorengel, emphasizing her point with a sternly raised finger, pointed right at his face.

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Up ahead, Trist could hear the murmur of voices, and the notes of gently plucked strings, rising above the conversation. The path turned one last time, and Trist found himself once again amidst the faerie-throng he had first encountered, delirious and wounded, in the heights of the Hauteurs Massif.

The tables of the faerie feast were spread out to either side of the path, which led directly through the center to a cleared space of fresh green grass, dew-decked under the night sky. The open grass was surrounded by torches in a circle, and filled with elegant dancers, tall and fair, with long hair unbound. The faerie dancers moved with the grace of cats, and as if it had been rehearsed over long hours, parted to either side, so that the knights astride their horses could proceed directly to the throne of the faerie king.

Auberon, as Trist had seen him do twice before, lounged on a seat formed by the trunk of a great oak. It looked not so much carved, as somehow grown into the shape naturally. The massive tree, whose branches rustled in the night breeze overhead, cradled the King of Shadows as if in a gentle hand. Auberon sat forward to inspect them closely, his goblet forgotten in his left hand, which leaned on the arm of the oak throne.

“Welcome,” the faerie king greeted the four knights. “Lady Acrasia, your presence ever brings joy to our revels. Knight of Shadows, you have paid your Tithes and served me well, though perhaps that has not always been your intent. But I see three other mortals here who have never come beneath our hills before, and I would hear their introductions.”

Dame Margaret slid down out of her saddle, set her glaive upon the grass, and bowed as if she were a man. It was considered appropriate, Trist knew, for female knights in armor, when a curtsy would be somewhat ridiculous. “I am Dame Margaret Bowman, Exarch of Rahab. With me are Sir Lorengel Aurelianus, Exarch of Veischax, and Sir Cynric of Rive Ouest, Exarch of Theliel, who is sore wounded from our battle.”

“I would hear more of this combat,” Auberon said, taking a sip from his goblet and leaning back into his throne. “And of how it is, Sir Trist, that you appeared so suddenly in our Ardenwood, at the grave of Sir Maddoc.” Cern, in the meanwhile, dismounted and walked over to stand at Auberon’s right hand, the wolves of the Wild Hunt sitting back on their haunches to observe the proceedings.

“And we are eager to share what we have learned,” Trist said, swinging down out of his own saddle. “For I think there may be much of interest to you, Your Majesty. But we would be poor comrades, indeed, if we did not first ask of you healing for Sir Cynric.”

Auberon rolled his eyes. “Osma, fetch him a goblet.”

One of the dancers, a slip of a faerie maid who looked to Trist to be no older than fourteen, rushed over to the tables and filled a goblet. “Help me get him down,” Trist said to Margaret and Lorengel, and between the tree of them they got Cynric out of the saddle without starting the bleeding again. Still, for all the ragged stump of his arm had been tourniqueted tightly with a sword belt, the entire left side of his armor was caked with dried blood, and it had soaked through his gambeson. Trist suspected that if Cynric had not been an Exarch, he would be dead already.

“Here, Sir Trist,” Osma, the faerie girl said in a voice sweet as honey, leaning down to hand him the goblet. Ruddy gold hair fell about her shoulders in curls, held back only by a sort of circlet or coronet set with many jewels. The jewels, however, were dull in comparison to the light in her eyes and the verdant tourmaline of her lips.

“My thanks, Lady Osma,” Trist said, accepting the goblet, and reached out, unwinding the sparking orange strand of his Boon from inside his chest. He stretched it out to the wine in the goblet, and stirred until a soft glow rose up from within the goblet. “Tip his head back and open his mouth,” Trist said, and Margaret set to helping him. Carefully, Trist set the rim of the goblet to Cynric’s lips and poured the wine, just a little bit at a time. After a long moment, the knight coughed, sputtered, and opened his eyes.

“Good,” Trist said. “Keep drinking. This will heal your wounds.” Cynric raised the gauntlet of his right hand to the goblet, and Trist let himself be guided, but did not release the stem until he was certain every drop of wine was gone. Then, he took the goblet away, and handed it back to the faerie maiden, Osma, who took it away.

“Will he live?” Margaret asked, for Cynric’s eyes had already fluttered once and closed.

“I think so,” Trist said. He was no surgeon, but it seemed to him that a flush had returned to the knight’s cheeks, and he no longer looked fit to be a corpse. Trist turned back to the faerie king and inclined his head. “Thank you, King Auberon, for allowing us to treat our companion. I am prepared to tell you all that we have seen, now, and how we came to be here.” His eyes followed Osma with curiosity as the faerie girl, after setting the goblet away on a table, crossed the grass to take up a position opposite Cern, on the right side of the throne.

“One of my daughters,” Auberon explained. “Quite young, in fact; she did not make the crossing with us, but has only ever seen this world. Continue.”

The words meant nothing to Trist, but he put his questions aside and began with a brief description of the siege of Rocher de la Garde, since last he had seen Cern the Hunter in the Ardenwood, and how after the victory the Serpent of Gates had tried to take King Lionel captive.

“This story we have heard,” Auberon commented. “It is what happened after you fell into the hands of the daemons that we would know.”

Trist frowned in confusion.

“I met your mortal wife two days ago when she rode into the Ardenwood to collect the people of your village,” Cern explained. “She told us of how you came to fall into the hands of your enemies, and I reported her words to my king.”

“Clarisant?” Trist could not help but exclaim. “Is she well, Lord Cern? I beg you, tell me of her.”

Auberon inclined his head, and Cern sighed. “She was as well as a mortal can be,” the Hunter remarked. “You are all touched by death, and it only waits for its moment to spring upon you. But neither she nor the child she carried had suffered any hurt, or sickness, so far as I could tell. She asked me to rescue you, and I refused her.”

“As you were bound to do,” Auberon said with a nod. “I am not ready for you to ride out from the Arden, my hunter.”

“She told me that your mortal king was sending her north across the sea to Raetia,” Cern continued. “I directed her to seek out Beira, the Queen of Winter, when she reached those shores. It may be that the Court of Winter can be of aid to your wife’s mission, though I cannot say what price she will pay.”

“I saw her on a ship,” Trist said, reaching a hand up to his forehead, which had begun to ache. “Sailing with my squire, but I did not know to where.”

“How did you see her?” Auberon asked, leaning forward in his throne again, his eyes sharp as blades.

“As we do, my king,” Acrasia broke in. “He can see as we do. Look at the cloth he wears bound around his eyes. Avitus ripped them from his skull. Any other mortal would be blind, but it is exactly as you told me it would be. He is like us.”