The schemes of the faerie king are subtle and far ranging, they say; few mortal men ever understand his machinations.

* François du Lutetia, A History of Narvonne

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17th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

Trist could not help the way his muscles tensed, as if his body was in expectation of sudden attack. He felt the eyes of the faerie throng at the tables, fixed upon him from behind, as a murmur of quiet voices spread. The dancers, to either side of him, made no sound, but stared intently just the same. From her side of the throne, it was Auberon’s daughter, the girl Osma, who spoke.

“How is that possible, Father?” The faerie princess’ brows furrowed in consternation. “Mortals can no more do that than a milk-cow could write a book.”

“Exarchs get a glimpse, from time to time,” Auberon said. “Though you are correct, daughter, that they could never see two places at once. And I doubt most of them could learn to compensate for the lack of their physical eyes… step closer, Sir Trist, and lift your cloth, so that I might see your wounds better.”

“Something tells me,” Trist said, “that you can see just as well with the cloth on.”

The faerie king laughed. “So I can!” he said, with a delighted grin. “You used the Boon you won from me at Falais, I see. But that thread is not nearly so strong as the Graal itself, and the most it was able to do was to close the wounds. No matter how much you drank, it would be insufficient to regenerate your eyes.”

“But the Graal would have been able to,” Trist guessed.

“Aye, that it would,” Auberon said. “Still could, most like. There are very few hurts beyond its power.”

“None of this explains how a mortal can see, Father,” Isma prodded the king.

“You see how I indulge my daughter?” Auberon commented. “Anyone else who questioned me like this, I would eat their core whole. But very well, a story it is, for the assembled company. A tale that begins over twenty-three years ago, when Sir Trist was but an infant in his mother’s womb. I am told your people celebrate each turning of the year since their birth, by the way, my knight. Allow me to raise a cup to your twenty-third birthday.”

Trist inclined his head. “Spent in an iron cage,” he confirmed. “Let us hope next year is in better circumstances.”

“Quite,” Auberon continued. “Your father and mother rode north from Falais into the Ardenwood, with a single knight as their companion, and from thence to the ruins of Vellatesia. I, of course, could not fail to notice a daemonic Exarch entering my demesne, nevermind the Plague Dancer herself, dragged along like a prisoner chained behind a wagon. I see that two of the three who made that journey are here with us now. Perhaps you would do us all the courtesy of calling them forth.”

“As you wish.” Trist drew his sword, planted it point-down in the grass, and spoke two names aloud. “Sir Tor De Lancey. Father. I ask you to come.” Frost crept out from the tip of his sword, coating each blade of grass in turn and freezing the drops of dew that had been left behind after the dancers parted. On Trist’s left, his father appeared, and on his right, Tor de Lancey, each only half glimpsed, as if through a funeral shroud, and shining like the moon behind clouds.

“The hermit!” Sir Rience gasped, his eyes fixed upon the throne. There, Auberon’s accustomed visage had been replaced by that of an old man, bent with his years, remaining hair silky-white and thin. He grasped a crude walking staff, and wore only undyed wool and a rope belt.

“Indeed!” the old man on the throne proclaimed, in a voice that sounded roughened and broken by decades of drinking, sickness, and ill use. He stepped down from the oaken throne onto the grass, and performed a twirl as if to show off his disguise before returning to the more familiar shape of Auberon and sitting back in his throne. “For the two of you it has been many years,” the faerie king observed. “And yet for me it is but the blink of an eye.”

“Father?” Trist asked, turning to his side.

“After we crossed the lake, we were harried by wolves,” the ghost of Sir Rience explained. “Until we came to a clearing where a hermit tended a rough forest chapel. He took us in for the night and fed us a hearty stew, and then accompanied us to Velatessia. It was he who led us to the seals that Veischax had placed round the city.”

At these words, Lorengel stirred, but remained silent. Trist saw the Angelus itself, wings of bronze tucked behind its back, observing the proceedings sternly.

“I showed them the way through the seals, and to the Gate of Horn,” Auberon continued, “by which we entered this world so long ago, and through which, when opened a second time, came the daemon Sammāʾēl the Sun-Eater, and thence the rest of the two and seventy daemons unleashed by Decimus Avitus of Etalus, son of Emperor Sevrus. And after them, answering the call of General Aurelius and the Legions of Etalus, the Angelus. Including the three that stand among us now.”

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“You speak of matters not meant for mortal ears,” Rahab called out from behind Trist, and he saw her wings spread, shining mother of pearl. “We have an Accord.”

“An Accord imposed on my people when the Angelus were at the height of their power,” Auberon shot back with a sneer. “And not, as you are now, nearly spent by two wars against our daemonic cousins.”

Dame Margaret gasped, and Trist felt his own jaw drop open. He had seen daemon, Angelus and faerie alike, it was true, and all of them had many things in common. But to hear it stated so plainly-

“This cannot be true,” Lorengel broke in. “It was the Angelus who created this world, and they who saved us during the Cataclysm. The church teaches-”

“Your Church of the Angelus is a pack of useless lies,” Auberon shouted him down. “This world was here before any of us, and you mortals as well. The Three Queens and I led our people to this world because we were sick of the constant fighting between daemon and Angelus. Here, we thought to find peace, and so we did, for a time. Peace, and mortals who were more than willing to offer up Tithes to us in return for our blessings. We had neither need nor desire to open the Gate of Horn, for a thousand years. It was a jealous, scheming mortal prince who did that.”

“Avitus.” Trist spoke the name aloud. “The first Exarch. The man who has taken Lutetia.”

“The same,” Cern confirmed, speaking for the first time since Auberon had begun. “And if I had known what he would do, I would have flayed him alive the moment he stepped foot on the eastern shore of Narvonne. Everything that has happened over the last three centuries - all the time we have spent under the yoke of the Angelus - I lay it all at the feet of a spoiled prince who could not accept being passed over by his father.”

“The yoke of the Angelus,” Rahab countered, stepping forward and spreading her wings so that Trist and the other knights had to stand aside and make room for her. “What have we done to you, Auberon, but set rules? Is it such a taxing burden, to curb your worst abuses of the mortals? You, who would not lift a hand to fight beside us, during the Cataclysm?”

“Your presence in this world was neither asked for, nor invited,” Auberon responded, shadows gathering around his throne in a coiling, writhing mass.

“We were invited by General Aurelius,” Rahab responded.

“A mortal. You intrude on our world, and have the gall to justify your presence with the invitation of a mortal,” Auberon scoffed. “Sir Trist, would you step onto a man’s property at the invitation of his goat?”

“We are not goats,” Trist said with a scowl. “And from the sound of it, this was our world before any of you ever came here.”

“So it was,” Rahab confirmed. “For our part, at least, we had no choice. We could not, in good conscience, allow the daemons led by Sammāʾēl to have free reign here. If they had their way, all of you would be nothing more than cattle - fattened for the slaughter to feed their hunger.”

“And the Angelus would have you as pets,” Auberon said. “Loyal hounds trained to their beck and call.”

“While you would hunt them as wild game,” Theliel said, stepping forward. “With no care for anything but the thrill of the hunt and the feast to follow.”

“And now, it is all laid bare,” Auberon said, leaning back in his throne and spreading his hands. “Angelus, daemon or fairy. The difference between us, mortals, is only how much care we have for our livestock. You are all destined to be served at our tables, sooner or later.”

Trist’s stomach turned, and it was all he could do not to empty it on the grass at his feet. He gripped the hilt of his sword, still thrust down into the loam of the faerie glade, and saw that the faces of Margaret and Lorengel, and even his father and Sir Tor, showed the same horror he felt.

“Why should we do as any of you wish, then?” Trist asked. “Why should we not cast you all out, and be free of you?”

“Because you yet need us,” Auberon said. “You most of all, Trist, son of Cecilia - or is it Trist, son of Agrat? Two mothers, bound together as one, carried you in their womb, boy. What an abomination - the child of an immortal, and a mere shadow. Unlike anything else in all this world, or the other. I never thought to see your like, but when I did, I began to wonder. This little seed, could it grow into a mighty oak? What would happen if I watered it? Yes, I led your parents to Vellatesia. I took the shape of a hermit, and told them the way to the Gate of Horn beneath the city, where Cecilia threatened to throw herself and Agrat through, both of them, unless the Queen of Plagues let her go free. And it was I who went from there to Camaret-à-Arden, where I broke the seals laid by Baylin, roused Acrasia, and set her to watch over you as you grew. And now we see what has come of it all. A being of two worlds, neither entirely mortal, nor entirely daemon. Fed a steady diet of Tithes by war, grown strong with Boons of my Court.”

Everyone was staring at Trist now, and he could not tell whether Margaret and Lorengel wore expressions of merely shock, or of horror and disgust that he was born of a union between mortal and daemon. He resisted the urge to turn toward Acrasia: she’d told him, at the Fighting Lion Inn, that she’d only noticed something special about him when they first met. She’d lied to him again.

“We thought we’d freed you of her,” the ghost of Sir Rience said. “I am sorry, my boy.”

“You have a bargain yet to keep with us,” Acrasia said, stepping out from Trist’s shadow into the space before Auberon’s throne, where she turned to put her back to the faerie king and to face Trist and the other knights. “The price you agreed to, in return for the people of your village being sheltered in the Ardenwood. You will go to Vellatesia, and you will destroy the Gate of Horn. No more daemons, nor any further Angelus, will come to this world. The way will be closed. There will be no second Avitus.”

“You would trap us all here, forever?” Veischax cried out.

“And now I see your scheme plain, Auberon,” Rahab said. “You kept your people aside to let us exhaust ourselves against each other. With every daemon or Angelus that dies, your own power grows.”

“It will be as it was,” Auberon said. “My people will once more have this world as our own, to do as we will, to live as we will. There will be no daemons to strike at our demesne, no Angelus to dictate Accords to us. The mortals will remember the old ways, and Tithe to us their sacrifices in the bone-fires. It has taken three hundred years of waiting, but at long last, we are nearly free of you all.”