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Once a time and a time ago, the king of Lost-hope played with the king of Pity-me at twig-stones. He played elm, and lost a Christian slave, for elm detests Christians and loses them protection, while the king of Pity-me played oak, for strength and power.
The slave given to Pity-me joined the game, and played rowan, playing herself out of the game, for rowan cannot prosper the people of the brughs, if we play for never so many centuries in trying.
Since Lost-hope had lost a Christian, and no-one could come to the second turn to play stone after rowan, he went to the otherworld, where no-one may thank us for any gift, to liberate another.
He came to a strange room. We know that they have halls, for feasting and dancing, the same way we do. We know that they have bedrooms for love and for sleeping, comfortable rooms since they lie in sleep for such a great part of their lives. We know that other rooms may display the works of Christians in wool or paint, silver or gold or stone.
This room was filled with dead trees. Dead cattle reduced to leather bound them in place, fashioned into flat, sighing dead leaves. The blood of oak-galls lay heavy on every leaf. What a horror! Was it some boast of power, that someone could have murdered so many trees? What conceivable purpose might it serve?
Turning from this oppressive sight, the king of Lost-hope found a wizard whose hair had been cut off. Now, that is a thing we never do. So much of our personal power is in the wildness of our hair, tied to our natural force even as the story goes from the saint of the Christians, we dare not cut and offend our own natures too much. Only the more powerful of us shave, and we often take help thereto.
We do not tell the Christians of this.
He could not believe such an ugly, detestable creature could be so powerful, and tilted his false hair to show little natural hair indeed.
The king of Lost-hope asked what line was this man of? What others had come before him? We needed to know that we might counter him in his doings.
The Christian had the face to bleat that he was of no line, but had neither learned from a master wizard nor from sky, rain or stone.
"How came you to learn, then?"
"From books." Observing the confusion of that monarch, the Christian explained, "For example, there is a spell of Martin Pale's here, an excellent one of its kind."
He opened the thing that he called a "book". It offered no sound nor smell nor taste, but some lines like chicken-scratchings over the flat surface. "Look here!" The Christian laid a fingertip gently beneath the line and spoke a small yet quite familiar spell for stirring a slight breeze from stillness. But the king did not hear the spell rise from the sky or the land. Instead he observed from the movement of the man's finger and the delicate breeze that this Christian must have somehow enchanted the lines to hold the spell. But why do it that way? Why rely upon such a trick when he could have learned properly from whichever wizard was before him?
We have heard a little of this art from King Starling, but it comes not naturally to us, and he learned it among Christians. He told us it is like a bard or a messenger that can perform their office without a tongue, which makes it merely more obscure to us. However could this wizard wish to tell thousands upon thousands of spells to someone, not to hold the power for himself? And the more we learned of him the less he seemed to wish to tell them to anyone at all!
The wizard asked for Emma, a beautiful lady, to cross the worlds, for she had died to some Christian's displeasure, and England (one kingdom among the Christians) would be made powerful at war by gaining his favour.
The king of Lost-hope offered himself as a fairy-servant to begin to set the world to rights with cleverness and deceit, yet the wizard resisted yet, and spoke as though it were not the most signal honour that could be done him, that a lord among the people of the brugh should bow to his service.
A while and a while, and the king prevailed upon the Christian to keep his secret and offer him a reward, for that is how matters are arranged. He took a dainty token as my lady's favour, and let her walk across.
It amused the king greatly, when he watched the otherworld in a beck, to discover that Christians of this new, ill-tutored time knew no better than to delight in the febrile exhilaration of the resurrected lady, as though it were the glow of life and health. Three centuries back, they would certainly have been suspicious, and used rowan and cold iron and spells to protect her. Could it be true? Could so little time leave a people untutored?
The wizard was called Gnarl because his power was in the destruction of trees, and because he was a small and misshapen thing as Christians went. There had been wizards for many centuries, under many skies, but he and the people of his time called wizards 'magicians', a word for practitioners who went upon stone streets, between little or great walls, where the works of Christians might be the only thing to be seen with no fields or becks or trees.
So. The magician, Gnarl, thought he had set terms with the king of Lost-hope, that that monarch would patiently wait for the Christians to have their pleasure and their use of the lady before taking her desiccated, juiceless and useless, to sit and mumble her few remaining years before a Fairy hearth.
Foolishness!
Without power and beauty, force and fire, Christians are useless to us. We steal their best and brightest while they are yet children, or at very least young. We may even return them when they are no more use.
The king of Lost-hope had only promised to take half her life. Gnarl had not pressed him to state which half, or when he would start. He had even been kind enough to take her sleep. Christians dance, and talk, and design, and eat, and love, and pay court to each other, and make war upon each other, all under the blaze of the day. In sleep, they merely lie like logs, like the dead, and mostly do not even remember their dreams. Surely it is the Christians who waste half their lives! Giving one delightful pleasures to replace their sleep can only be viewed as generous.
She was, it grieved him to report, a poor bargain. After a while she moped about sulkily, try he never such whims to entertain her. She did not care for the wildest of dances, however long they might last. She did not care for the most exquisite of dresses, even those trimmed with the teeth of an enemy transformed into a serpent. She did not care for the most delicious of foods, even those delicately sauced with a flavour of melancholy from the tears of forsaken dreams, or the slow bite of pain deferred from those damaged by war or disease. All these refinements she would not have had in her own world, yet she was ungrateful!
Meanwhile, the magician Gnarl showed every indication that he wished never to see nor hear of any of our race ever again. Instead of taking the king of Lost-hope as his fairy-servant, he eventually chose another Christian magician to distinguish with his favour.
This person was somewhat more like what we believed a magician should be. He had charm, grace and youth, and the beginnings of a proper respect for the nature of magic and the King these inconstant Christians had forgotten after a mere three hundred years. Instead of reaching for the stacked leaves of murdered trees, he reached for the song and the sound, the natural voice of magic.
His name among Christians is forgotten to us. Some of us call him "the English magician", after the nation the king of Lost-hope was visiting. Of course, Gnarl was pleased to call himself that too, simply because he had called upon the aid of the king of Lost-hope first, but such an ugly, petty, shrivelled creature, pawing miserly at leaf-corpses, fled from our minds as soon as the true English magician called reverently upon living trees to answer him.
That was some while away, though.
Somehow, without the assistance of one of our race, Gnarl shaped rain into a semblance of ships, that the enemy nation came not to war against such a great force raised against them. Somehow, without the beauty and youth that we believe inevitable companions of power among the Christians, he could use this art. He could not sustain it long, but the mystery confused the king of Lost-hope. Why would he have called that monarch, if the things he was going to work lay under his own hand's power to perform? The king himself had gained from the bargain, the company of the lady each night in his brugh, yet she did nothing for the Christians that he could see, only screamed and cried when she heard the peal of bells or the sound of dancing.
Another little while, where Gnarl dared not suffer another of our race (or indeed even of his own) as he worked at his tricks, but then, ah, then!
One day, the English magician came to call. He enchanted a book so the writing lay in reverse and the true writing lay in the mirror's reflection of it. The king of Lost-hope could hear the song of fresh magic being cast, tugging at the heart and the mind. Even though the spell concerned a book, the magic was the true and ancient style.
It was surprising that so could Gnarl. He tilted his head, a smile made his face momentarily less detestable, and he went to the English magician, holding out his hands and exclaiming in wonder and welcome.
Gnarl should have instantly given up his place as his nation's magician by right of challenge, for challenges are not always a matter of battle. A king of any realm or master of any art must cede when he is outdone.
Except in the otherworld, apparently. Gnarl immediately laid plans to be the English magician's tutor, and teach all he could have learned from the death of many trees and the blood of many oak-galls.
The English magician listened amiably to the long and monotonous lectures, quite as though he were learning, and grateful. He himself had some of the weaknesses of Gnarl, since he was much blotched and bespattered with the blood of oak-galls, so he had also scratched out lines. But the lack of the true knowledge we offer frustrated him. He did not hear of brook and rain, twig and bough, earth and stone. He did not hear of the many fairy-servants who had supported magic in the otherworld. He did not hear of the greatest King stolen from, and returned to, his nation, for Gnarl would speak of Pale and Belasis, Lanchester and Stokesey, but never name the last great King of his own land, the greatest of all the Christians who ever worked magic.
Yet the magician Gnarl permitted the young man to go to war, which surprised us greatly, for we thought that he favoured him, and would hold him back.
That was when the English magician set aside the dead leaves with scratched lines that Gnarl had shown him, and concentrated on proper magic. He offered to call rain. He roused the trees, and spoke to them politely as Gnarl never did. Here, where we began to listen to him with attention, we could tell that the soldiers of his people valued him highly. They gave him Merlin as a use-name, so we shall here call him young Merlin.
Meanwhile, the king of Lost-hope chose another consort and prize, since the first had proved so poor.
Indeed, he deserved, and chose, two.
A man arisen from slavery, as beautifully dark as the king himself was beautifully pale. Like our King Starling, he should move from the place of a nameless slave to the position of a king. He protested (see how little gratitude they show!) that he was not a slave, but if so, why should he spend every hour of his day running errands and turning his hands to the will of others? He had sat down to no feast, danced at no ball, in his life. Of course that could not be right! Stephen must be asked if he would dance in the brugh, and maybe he could go back to the strange land of England to give it a fine king who was not fat or old or ugly.
The next choice, equally sadly neglected, was Arabella, the wife of this young Merlin, who had disfavoured her by going to war. Even before that he had treated his wife with much love and care, yet how had he adorned her, how amused her? He had even spoken for her when she was offered food or drink, and she had seemed annoyed. With a proper consort to speak for her, she could be nothing but delighted, since he would make sure to give her those things that were best for her. She would not be able to be displeased, or to make different choices. He would choose the best of dances to please her and show her beauty, and the finest of clothes and jewellery to demonstrate that she was his.
The simplest of tests should stand before young Merlin, for we were pleased enough with him, and had no quarrels but for his failure to call for a fairy-servant (which was perhaps more Gnarl's doing than his own) and his failure to show the proper distinction to his wife.
The king of Lost-hope went to a dark bog with Stephen, and raised up a moss-oak. That should be the test. If our young Merlin should return and pass our simple test, he might have his wife, and gladly!
Young Merlin returned from the war. Like Gnarl, he had raised the dead, if in a different manner, and seemed troubled.
His "wife" came back to him drenched, out of a bitter night, and he knew no better than to claim her. If he could tell no difference between his true wife and a block of wood, he certainly did not deserve her! He had not even observed her for a night and a day to know her habits or cast simple spells which would have revealed our king's stratagem.
By this time, the Christians seemed particularly troubled by Emma's behaviour, although she was merely restrained by a rose at the mouth. The simplest of spells! A child might have undone it!
Yet she wandered out into the street and threw a rock to hit Gnarl and bring him low. Instead, it struck his servant who almost died of it.
Then, they tied her with ropes and troubled her with foolish questions. But the king of Lost-hope would never let go a chosen Christian, even if he later found a better bargain.
A time and a time, and young Merlin called up the king of Lost-hope. A madwoman, a speaker-to-cats, bargained him to give her her heart's desire, so she let him take a token of madness from her, and he turned her into a cat. He set the token in a bottle, and she left the room on silent paws.
The madness sharpened his senses, so instead of almost hearing the king of Lost-hope, he could summon him in accordance with the proper forms, insofar as he knew them.
The king of Lost-hope prepared the usual bad bargain for him, but young Merlin did not care for it. Instead, he asked first for a pinch of snuff (then disclaimed his desire for any such thing), and then he asked for the last thing that monarch had gained from an English magician. Well, although the bargain for Lady Emma had proved such a very poor thing, that did not mean the king of Lost-hope wished to return the token that held it in place. But he had to hold to that bargain, did he like it never so little.
Young Merlin came down to the brugh of Lost-hope to claim his wife, but the king of Lost-hope cast a tremendous spell to bring him low, and that left young Merlin in darkness, misery and solitude. He was in the same place in the otherworld, but he was removed from the world of day. Death was too good for him--and far, far too fast.
Somehow, this did not trouble him as it should. While the king of Lost-hope was, in due course, awaiting the inevitable doom of young Merlin, that magician must have called upon a greater among the people of the brughs.
It disturbs us that we do not know who. Christians seemed incapable at that time of calling on the powers, forest and river and sky--the great powers of their nation.
Yet suddenly the king of Lost-hope was aware that they rose, and not at his own bidding. He determined to kill the English magicians, but Stephen spoke gently to him in his distress. Instead, the king of Lost-hope decided to make Stephen the King of his own strange land. England should have a fine King! The king of Lost-hope had been troubling himself with this matter long enough, he had killed many people simply in order to try to learn Stephen's true name. It was time for Stephen to take his place.
Meanwhile, a man who had been in Christian terms vicious came to Faery to take the position of the Champion of the Plucked Eye and Heart. He was a fine shrike, to hang his predecessor's corpse upon a thorn!
Gnarl had performed some tedious treacheries involving a book, which had distressed young Merlin, but now the young magician set those at nothing against retrieving his wife to the Christian lands.
They decided to make a working to call King Starling to their world to treat with them--yet he will not be called unless it please him to answer. They knew that "John Uskglass" (as it was a use-name taken on to forge alliances among the Christians) would do them no good to call upon, yet they did not know what name to use. So they called upon the Nameless Slave.
They offered all that they had, all that they were. Gnarl's books turned to ravens and flew wild about the room. Young Merlin's wife trembled in the brugh between dance and freedom.
And the power went out to the man who had been Stephen as he stood between one name and the next, one forced allegiance and the next. The old allegiances of England stood firm, where King Starling had held them, and they thought little of the minor king of a single brugh, be his art never so old and strong.
The land, hill and dale, millstone and river, lifted its shoulders and fell down, hard and strong. All of it was steady and still where the king of Lost-hope had been standing. There was a sense of struggle, then calm.
The king of Lost-hope should have remembered that England was not a strange land to Stephen, so he could not make Stephen England's King. He should have remembered that Christians do not always feel a sense of obligation to people who kill for them. The nameless slave, once Stephen, had changed too much, seen too much, to return.
The man who had been Stephen took on the role of the Nameless King, ruler of the brugh Hope-regained. The mournful fiddle was replaced by an orchestra, the slatternly if splendid dresses and feasts with clean linen and good food, the sometimes-dreary celebration of battles with poetry and history. The Christians are always good organisers, and if the last king of Lost-hope had been too proud to care, most Fairies are not.
Young Merlin released his wife, and Lady Emma, free to the Christian lands.
And King Starling pulled himself in from his deeds. He wrote his book, his own book, out again fresh for another reader. He made sure the old king of the brugh could never rise again. He opened the roads and the ways between here and there. He told us that all was done.
He did not, however, either punish or release young Merlin or Gnarl, who remained in the Darkness.
For the first time, no truly ghastly fate was visited on a Christian who had brought a Fairy low. A Tower of Eternal Darkness was not pleasant to them with the curse removed (why, we do not know, it was a sumptuous and deep blanket over them), yet they had some comfort.
Young Merlin said he would rather Arabella were free and happy than forced to live in Darkness, meanwhile there was always (given two great magicians) a fair possibility of going home, and he liked Gnarl's company well enough until then. Then he smiled, and sometimes kissed him, and Gnarl might say something fluttery and maidenish, and often decide to kiss him back at quite the wrong moment and spill marmalade on the tablecloth. Then they might go back to bed despite having just eaten breakfast, and being of the wrong bodily configuration for begetting, and not being as pretty or young as they ought to have been.
Christians are a very strange people.