Swan on the Moor

Chapter 7

Even at such a moment, Avalbane thought down to the Dusk Lord, trapped and unflinching after all these years. He had never begged or wept; he had remained stoic to the last and Avalbane respected him almost as much as he hated him. The figure sprawled on the floor before him had no such dignity.

"Majesty," she whimpered, extending a trembling, half-liquid hand towards Avalbane's fur-trimmed robe. He stepped out of reach, full lips curled in disgust.

"Never touch me, traitor, human sympathiser," he hissed. "Do you think I did not watch you all before I gained my throne? Do you imagine I did not hear of your collections of human trinkets and nonsense? You dared bring that earth-born rubbish into our Sithen, sapping and tainting our magic away?" He leaned in closer to the face, letting his hair fall around his face, so only his burning eyes glittered from the curtain of gold. In any other situation it would have been seductive, and such was his power that the battered figure of the merrow still gazed up at him, half in love already. She had been beautiful, once, a lady of the water who he had watched, sickened, as she followed a certain fisherman with her seafoam eyes, picked up little bits of net and paper he left behind, and cherished them, brought them back to her lake in the Sithen. It was enough to make his skin crawl with disgust, that a fae should choose a human to love, but under custom it was allowable if the fae renounced the Sithen and followed their mortal lover to live in the Upperworld. The humans that were brought back to the Sithen were servants, not guests – they served their purpose, be it to entertain in music or congress, but they were not equal to their masters, the inhabitants of the Sithen. It always puzzled Avalbane that the humans wanted often to stay, but surely that was merely a sign of the superiority of the Faerie beings. Even their captives loved them so naturally they wished to stay and serve. They were the earth that longed for the plough, to mould and improve them, as long as they knew their place.

Yet to consider a human an equal in this, Avalbane's Sithen, was abominable.

The merrow-lady's face was streaked with tears and blood, bruised and torn now, her hair ripped away, and she begged, she adored him, but even now, despite the pain and the helpless love, she did not admit fault, did not apologise. Avalbane's fury rose, and he struck her across her face, making her tumble away against the far wall.

"Rot, then," he hissed, sick of the sight of her pathetic figure and her refusal to give up her love, for either torture or seduction. He might have forgiven her if she had admitted her fault...maybe. The fact that she had ever considered the love of a human a worthy prize showed her weakness anyway. She had collapsed as soon as he had summoned her to the judgement room, a wreck, knowing she had

committed a crime against her king, yet she would not apologise. Her grovelling repulsed him, almost as much as her crimes. He had burned the human items. They weakened the magic of Faerie.

Tugging on silk gloves to protect his skin, he pulled an iron gate shut over the cell she was held in, and then dropped the silk to the ground. Almost at once a brownie hurried up as if from nowhere, whisking up the discarded material and tidying it away into the folds of his robe, bowing as he disappeared just as instantly. Avalbane was tired already; the canker bit so deep into the heart of faerie. Had it always been so? He had heard, from the Sithen history-tellers, that once there had been humans who had been welcomed as guests and honoured spouses. The idea had been so vile he had ordered at once that any such records be destroyed, the story-songs wiped from their minds, and the history-tellers had nodded, fearful. They had already heard of the judgement room, which had appeared in the Sithen the previous night. They dared not disobey, however: the Sithen knew this king so well that it responded to his whims almost instantaneously, meaning either he was the truest king Faerie had known in a long time, or his power and will were so strong they overwhelmed even the natural power of their home.