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King Mobei spurred his eight-legged horse into a gallop, keeping pace with his new lord, High King Luo Binghe. Great, glowing dogs, the offspring of Failinis, bayed at the fore of the hunting party, crying out eagerly for the prey. The Wild Hunt was on.
In King Mobei’s opinion, it was a perfect night for it. The snow softly carpeting the forest floor was tossed violently into the air as it was bashed about by the hooves of the many horses that bore down upon it. The tall, thin, sparse trees cast long, broken shadows in the cloudy night. The freezing chill in the air bothered King Mobei not at all. It was colder still in his own halls, whose craggy walls were of glass and stone and which was lit only by will-o-wisps. To King Mobei, whose bones were of ice, whose blood was of winter winds, and whose eyes were of the void of space, this cold was nothing.
The glowing dogs lit the way for the Fair Folk’s party and killed every creature who crossed their path, be it rat or boar. No lesser creature was safe. They kept the way clear for their masters and had no mercy in them. They would follow every command, even if that meant killing people. None of the host had any doubt about this, for they had seen it many times before over the centuries. The dogs were, after all, traditional companions of the soldiers on the Wild Hunt.
The Wild Hunt was an old tradition, too, older even than the Fairy Kingdom, which had stood for thousands of years. The hunters, who were traditionally garbed, followed their traditional leaders. Things were as they had always been. Mobei reflected that the only novel aspect of the Wild Hunt tonight was its leader, the freshly ascended High King, Luo Binghe.
King Mobei’s new lord was an amazing one who did nothing as expected.
Take tonight for example. Rather than hunting for slaves for the bedroom, blood sport, or housekeeping, High King Luo Binghe, the newly crowned High King of all Fair Folk, sought nothing but a single husband. He hunted for one particular mortal man, who had rejected the king when he had been still a boy, to spirit away from the human realm this night.
A lord of the Fay could, of course, do as he pleased, and any mortal High King Luo Binghe wished to have should naturally be his, but the half-human Luo Binghe had not begun life as a lord. He had been a wandering warrior when he had taken up the shining spear, that black and hungry blade, Xin Mo, and with it fought the entire Fairy Realm.
Most incredibly, Luo Binghe had won. Against all odds, he had won. He had won with strength, charm, and cunning, like a true Fairy. King Mobei did not mourn the deaths of the lords who had refused to bow to the young Luo Binghe and had been cut down for their resistance, not even for his father, the previous King Mobei. The Fair Folk might some of them be gay and warm, but all of them had pitiless hearts. Mercy was a human trait. To the last elder and child among them, all of them were fey.
As the hooves of the High King’s horse ate up the ground, King Mobei watched the half-human’s hair fly loose in the wind and thought, “Wild and fey,” and knew he had made the right choice in supporting this man. King Mobei was glad to follow this Lord of the Fairies.
Up ahead, one after another, bells began to ring in great alarm as the hunting party neared its prey. Then, the wolfish host was through the trees and the capital of this mortal land lay before them like a newborn deer; soft, still, and helpless. In their ecstasy at finding their quarry, the soldiers at King Mobei’s back howled so loudly that they drowned out the incessant baying of the dogs.
As the host bore down upon the walled city where High King Luo Binghe’s prize, Shen Qingqiu, lived, their horses did not slow. Instead, they leapt. Higher they flew, and higher, until they had cleared the great walls. From above the walls, King Mobei looked down on a city of a million souls and was satisfied.
This would be the most successful Wild Hunt in history.
When the High King began his descent into the capital, King Mobei, with his star-bright hair and his cave-black armor, dove for the rooftops like a bald eagle with its talons outstretched, seeking a sweet, fat fish to pluck from the waters below. His horse landed like a boulder on the first unwary mortal, who screamed and died under its hooves. A mortal woman shrieked and grabbed at the dead man, drawing his corpse into her arms. King Mobei considered grabbing her, but turned away. Rather than collecting his own slaves, King Mobei left that task to his men, who would be rewarded proportionately to their contribution. Instead he followed his king through the screaming, howling, ringing streets.
Though his soldiers rode hard through the wider streets, leaping houses and trampling mortal soldiers, King Mobei and the High King’s horses went in a nice, smooth saddle rack down side streets and narrow alleyways, giving King Mobei ample opportunity to observe the capital. The city was a twisted maze, poorly designed and thoughtlessly built-up over the centuries of habitation. King Mobei disapproved of the way mortals built their nests. They were like termites, with senselessly complex mounds where its occupants all lived on top of one another. It was disgusting.
A few minutes later, High King Luo Binghe checked his fiery-eyed stallion, dismounted, and strode on ahead. King Mobei followed his example. He had no fear that their horses would be stolen or wander away. Even if some mortal were foolish enough to attempt to steal a fairy’s many-legged horse, the beast would simply crush them to death.
If the mortals were smart, they would shoot the horses instead, but mortals never did. They were never smart.
Soon, the pair came to quiet little street. The lights were on in every house, but no one was in the road. There would be no escaping here tonight, no matter what the capital’s occupants tried, but they didn’t know that. Of course, after the first few tried to leave the gates, the rest would soon find out.
The High King silenced his steps with magic as he approached a house on the corner, and King Mobei did the same, not needing to be instructed to know his sovereign’s mind. Voices came from within the house. The High King stopped just outside the door to listen.
“No! Their dogs will remain outside the gates to devour any who try to flee the city for the countryside! There’s no way out! All we can do is hide, so stop stalling and get climbing, Yingying! Get up into the ceiling and be silent! Ming Fan, take this water. Hurry now, up the ladder!” The voice was low and smooth. The careful enunciation of each word, even though spoken in haste, gave the impression of erudition.
“What about you, teacher?” A young man’s voice asked.
“I will make a sacrifice of my blood and pray to the gods.”
“Teacher, it’s too late for that!” A young woman cried.
“Then it is too late for anything else to work either. Are you going with them?”
“No. I know where I want to be and it isn’t in an attic,” a third man said. His voice made something itch at the back of King Mobei’s mind.
“I’ll fight with you and protect the others!” the young man from before vowed.
“Ming Fan, climb or I’ll drag you up by your hair myself!” the cultured voice said. There was a long pause. “Pull the ladder up with you now. Whatever happens, be quiet and don’t come down.”
This was followed by the sound of boards being pulled across each other and then two pairs of feet were racing around the room.
“The knife! Give me the knife!” The cultured one said.
“You know this isn’t going to work, right? You can’t defeat the protagonist like this,” The other man said. King Mobei suddenly wanted to see the owner of that voice very much.
“Shut up! It’s not for me! I need protection for the students! Move over! I need to get to the statues!” the first voice hissed.
The High King sighed, and a smile bloomed on his stern face. Placing one hand on the door, he wove his magic just so and the sound of a little iron slide bolt being pulled back could be heard from inside the door.
The two mortals scurrying inside stopped, in favor of making no noise at all.
The High King pushed inexorably at the door and it swung slowly inwards, pushing a pile of furniture that had been blocking the door to the side. The two men revealed within were dressed in the plain, long tunics of peasants, which was only to be expected of those dwelling in this little street. What was unexpected was the effect the sight of one the two had on King Mobei.
He knew that mortal. He knew him! He was sure of it! But how? Who was this small, mousy creature? Why did he make King Mobei feel as if the world was spinning beneath his feet?
“Teacher, I’ve missed you,” the High King said warmly. For one terrible moment, King Mobei feared that his sovereign was speaking to the plump, rabbit-like man.
“No,” King Mobei thought rebelliously. “Mine. He’s mine.”
His fears proved unfounded.
“Binghe,” the tall, pale, dour one said. He was the owner of the well-educated voice King Mobei heard earlier. He was holding a knife in one hand and bleeding from his other wrist onto a set of three small stone statues. Dismissing this man as uninteresting and, more importantly, his sovereign’s future spouse, King Mobei looked away and towards the smaller mortal.
Their eyes met. The sight felt like a revelation that King Mobei couldn’t understand.
“Your prayers have been answered, teacher,” High King Luo Binghe said. “I’ve only come for you.”
…
The High King had decided they should leave the hidden people in the attic and place a mark of protection on the door to keep his soldiers at bay. He had not objected, however, to King Mobei taking the other man as a slave.
Shang Qinghua was his name. It wasn’t familiar, but the man who owned it was. King Mobei faintly remembered the man’s eyes from somewhere, perhaps a dream from long ago.
The High King rode his steed away into the night with his husband to be, leaving King Mobei in charge of the soldiers and their spoils. Now that his duty to accompany his sovereign had been completed, it would have been a grand night of fighting and slave-taking, but he had lost interest in the proceedings.
His attention was captured entirely by Shang Qinghua, who didn’t struggle, or cry out, or attempt to flee even once, but watched King Mobei with a great intensity. Perhaps whatever King Mobei was feeling, this mortal was feeling, too.
When the night was thinning from the distant dawn pouring in, the Wild Hunt took off with their tens of thousands of new slaves and rode slowly for the edge of the world, where the mortal realm became the fairy realm once again. Just before the border, King Mobei and his men departed from the rest of the horde and turned north towards Lake Svetloyar. Once they had arrived at the lake, by using his terrible power to twist the worlds together, King Mobei turned the lake into a great rippling mirror,4 and walked through it into the Kingdom of Winter.
As King Mobei stepped out onto the eternally frozen Lake Svetloyar that existed in the Fairy Realm, he saw home again. It always did King Mobei’s heart good to see the Northern Castle standing like a spearhead, stabbing the sky without relent. All around, rising from the shores of the frozen lake, mighty hills rolled, but the slim, triangular castle was unchallenged by them in height. The mighty pines of the Kingdom of Winter grew in clumps here and there, but the permafrost was covered mostly by low-lying grasses and lichens, which girded the lake and blanketed the hills in soft greens and muted reds. It had not snowed recently, so the land was making the most of it.
The Northern Castle was a place where winter always dwelt, where the snow would never melt entirely, and where King Mobei’s newest captive would never leave, not even in death, for King Mobei kept the ghosts of his human slaves to light his halls.
That thought bothered him for some reason, as he rode sedately over the ice, his captive shivering in the wind as he walked behind King Mobei’s horse. It wouldn’t do for Shang Qinghua to perish too soon. King Mobei would have to take steps to ensure his mortal survived. He stopped his horse and summoned Shang Qinghua with a single clipped syllable.
“Come,” King Mobei commanded. Shang Qinghua obeyed, running up to King Mobei’s side. Something about the readiness with which the man came to him made King Mobei relax somehow. He felt that this mortal man should always be by his side.
Or that King Mobei should always be by Shang Qinghua’s side.
The thought was so strange that it unsettled King Mobei. What was going on? It couldn’t be that the mortal had enchanted him. King Mobei had sigils of protection stamped into his armor and he had platted spells of mental fortitude into his braids the previous morning. Not even the most skilled enchantress should be able put thoughts into King Mobei’s mind.
King Mobei held out a hand to Shang Qinghua. Shang Qinghua hesitantly put his hand in King Mobei’s. Then, King Mobei transferred a tincture of his own power to the mortal. It was a trifling thing, but it was just enough to keep the mortal comfortable in the cold. Little kindness though it was, King Mobei had never done so much for any mortal before, kindness having long been beaten out of him by his father as a child.
The mortal’s reaction was instantaneous.
“Thank you, my king!” Shang Qinghua said, smiling gratefully and bowing obsequiously. “My king’s kindness shall not be forgotten. This lowly servant will do all he can to repay him,” he gushed unctuously.
“Repay me?” King Mobei rumbled, as his soldiers and slaves marched around him.
“Of course, my king!” Shang Qinghua insisted. “I am skilled at many things, although not at combat. I can organize your papers, I have a good head for sums, I write in a fine, clear hand, and I know three languages and am studying a fourth. If it should please your majesty, this humble servant would be honored to serve as a scribe in your majesty’s household.”
King Mobei considered this proposal. With the reformation of the Fairy Kingdom from all of the once-independent smaller kingdoms of the Fairy Realm, and with the High King leaning on King Mobei to take up much of the burden of governance, King Mobei had been faced with an ever increasing amount of paperwork to contend with, which was not something he had ever had much patience for.
“Such duties would not take Shang Qinghua far away from me,” part of King Mobei said.
“I am amenable to this,” King Mobei said. “You shall serve as my scribe.”
“Your humble servant is deeply grateful for this opportunity, your majesty!” Shang Qinghua said, bowing pathetically low. “Thank you so much!” he said ingratiatingly.
King Mobei blinked. He had been played. He, the King of the Kingdom of the North, had been played by a mere mortal with a paltry number of years of existence behind him. It had been a very long time indeed since anyone had been able to manipulate King Mobei to do anything. This was the land of cunning people, who could use magic, and played fatal tricks on their fellows for amusement; if King Mobei had not learned how to avoid being manipulated, his court would have eaten him alive in his first century.
King Mobei smirked faintly. He was going to enjoy spending time with Shang Qinghua.
“I will discover the mystery of you yet, Shang Qinghua,” King Mobei thought, and kicked his horse into a slow walk towards the dark stone castle across the lake with Shang Qinghua trailing close behind.