’Tis pity he’s an elf | Jen Williams #4
Amber tutted with impatience. “You know what I mean, Molly. How old does he look? Is he one of these decrepit greybeards, or a vital, ageless man with strong limbs and a sharp mind? He is the one on the throne, is he not? It seems to me that he is the real power in this realm.”
The sun had risen less than an hour ago, and there was still mist on the ground. Molly watched it swirl around her boots for a moment, thinking about Tristaine. She wondered if he would be equally dismayed by the direction of this conversation. She cleared her throat.
“There is, my lady, a queen of the realm too, who the king has been married to for over four hundred of those years…”
Amber made a disgusted noise. “You know as well as I do, Molly, that such things are easily overcome.” Her mistress raised the bow again and this time loosed the arrow in one swift, liquid movement.
There was a scuffle in the trees, and together they hurried over to the spot where the arrow had disappeared.
“If we are talking about useful alliances for our realm, then surely the king is where we should be aiming. Not the feckless younger son.”
“My lady…” Amber pushed her way through a bush covered in tiny, purple berries, and Molly followed on after.
“Remember, this isn’t about any old alliance.
This isn’t your usual political manoeuvring.
” Molly cast a glance up at the sky. Much of it was hidden by the canopy of trees, but she could see the very edge of the Emerald Portal, its light looking more uncertain by the day.
“The prophecy foretold of a love strong enough to hold the portal open. That’s what we are aiming for.
Not political advantage in the fae realm. ”
Ahead of them, lying in the undergrowth, was something small and furry. It seemed that Lady Amber’s arrows had finally found their way into something. Amber stalked over to it and prodded the animal with her boot.
“Ah, a juvenile hare. It’ll do, I suppose.”
She pulled a knife from her belt and set to work skinning the creature. At these times, all the usual calculation and haughtiness dropped from her face, and Molly found it easier to imagine Amber as a scruffy street urchin, looking for ways to feed herself and survive.
“Love.” Amber paused in her work to scratch her chin, leaving a smudge of blood there. “Do you know how many lovers I’ve had, Molly?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, my lady.” Although certainly Molly had heard the rumours, like everyone else. It was a source of great speculation back home.
“More than I can count on both my hands, but I have only ever been in love once. He was a pot washer boy at the tavern – blond curls, strong hands, and eyes the colour of bluebells. I would sneak in to see him every night, and sneak out again at dawn, well satisfied. I would have burned down the whole world for that boy, Molly.” She gestured around her with her knife.
“Hell, I would have burned down both the fae and mortal realms for him, and he knew it, too. Then one day I went into the tavern itself of an evening, hoping to surprise him, and I found him in the arms of some girl with piggery mud still drying on her boots.” She put her knife away, then pulled the hide off the animal with her hands, leaving it red and raw.
“We’ll cook that for breakfast.” She stood up.
“Yes, my lady.”
“What use is love, Molly? It’s a trap, a way to make yourself weak.
You may as well bare your throat to your enemies and invite them to bite.
No, I won’t be caught that way again.” Amber grinned, a sharp expression full of angry joy, the blood-speckled face of a woman who would sooner cut out a heart than have her own filled with some thing soft and yielding.
Molly felt a little worm of panic growing in her own chest.
“My lady, you have to be open to it. The fate of both our realms depends on it!”
For the last three nights, she and Tristaine had met to discuss the courtship of Lady Amber and Prince Eianor.
She had worn the jumper he had given her each time, seeing that it made him happy; the truth was she kept it close in her own quarters too, sleeping with her cheek pressed into the soft wool.
“There’s no need to get so pink in the face,” said Amber mildly.
She had hooked the bloody pelt onto her belt where it hung empty and accusing.
“The prophecy says we will save the portal, so it will happen. I’m not sure how, given that the prince is so incredibly soft and alarmed by the sight of a good, sharp blade.
I doubt his hands are strong enough to scrub pots.
” Molly’s mistress sighed. “But if the oracle says it is part of my greater destiny, then we shall continue our efforts. Those history books won’t write themselves. ”
Molly nodded. She suspected this was about as much enthusiasm as she was ever going to get from Amber. It would have to do.
“Good,” she answered. “Because we have arranged another meeting with Prince Eianor. We’re throwing every thing at it, my lady, because there is barely any time left.” She looked up at the sky again. And it has to work.
* * *
The Masked Emerald Ball, as it came to be known, was the largest and most extravagant of its kind in recorded history.
Nobles and dignitaries from across both realms had arrived, all of them trying to outdo each other with towering wigs, bejewelled masks, glittering gowns, robes and suits.
Molly watched them arrive in a series of elaborate carriages, her heart thundering in her chest: this was it.
All of their scholars agreed that they were down to the portal’s final hours – by midnight, Amber and the prince would have to declare their love for each other in order to save it.
If they didn’t, the Emerald Portal would close forever and the intertwined histories of the fae and mortal realms would be severed.
Molly’s eyes slid over the arriving guests, glancing at – but not really taking in – a tall man with a stag’s head, his antlers festooned with strings of diamonds; a trio of identical women with furry antennae and gossamer wings of rainbow colours.
They had built a vast dance floor of marble and moss directly beneath the portal, which had diminished to a slender ribbon of luminescence – as it closed, it bent the light around it into strange shapes and colours, creating coronas and rainbows of violet, blue and yellow.
Technically, she was watching for Amber’s arrival, although she found herself sweeping the crowd of lords and ladies for an elf with brown hair and kind eyes.
She was wearing her finest gown, a narrow silk dress beaded all over with tiny copper beads, a necklace of amber drops at her throat – her mistress had insisted that her chief maidservant appear almost as glamorous as the real guests.
For her mask, she had chosen a simple copper half-mask.
Yet despite all her finery, she found herself thinking of Tristaine’s woollen jumper, carefully folded on her bed back in the quarters she had been given in the royal palace.
If they failed tonight, and the portal closed forever, she would be whisked back to the mortal realm with only the clothes on her back – quite aside from them being deeply impractical, she would lose the jumper forever. That, and so much else.
“There you are.”
She turned to find Tristaine waiting behind her, smiling. He too had a half-mask, a silver one that almost matched her own, and he was wearing a jacket of green and silver velvet – a leaf on his lapel marked him out as one of Prince Eianor’s household.
“I’m surprised you recognised me,” she said, tapping one finger to her mask, “with my cunning disguise.”
“I’d know you anywhere,” he said. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, ruefully shaking his head. “Molly, it feels like I have so much to say, and time is so short.”
At that moment, a chorus of violins kicked in, sending a tide of silence across the milling crowd.
Molly looked to the west and saw the guests falling back to admit Amber as she arrived on the back of a magnificent white horse.
She was wearing blue, the dress billowing and waving back and forth as though she were underwater, her hair flowing around her head like a shimmering auburn pennant.
Molly had worked with an elven enchantress to create the effect, and it was immensely satisfying to see it in action.
The Lady Amber looked like a spirit of the water, an otherworldly being every bit as strange and fantastical as the prince himself – it was their hope that this would help him see her as a worthy match.
The crowd around them murmured and gasped. Yet of the prince, there was no sign.
Molly leaned over to speak into Tristaine’s ear.
“Where is he?”
“He’s running a little late.” When she raised her eyebrows, he shrugged. “She’s not the only one who likes to make an entrance.”
“Wait, we didn’t discuss that. What is he doing? She doesn’t like to be upstaged…”
“I’m afraid I don’t know.” Tristaine looked pained. “He disappeared after his breakfast of sugar tarts, and all he would tell me was that he’d had an excellent idea, and that I should leave it up to him. He gets these impulses sometimes.”
“Oh no. How many sugar tarts did he eat, exactly?” asked Molly.
Amber’s horse had carried her to the centre of the marble dance floor, where she gracefully dismounted.
She paused to stroke the horse’s cheek fondly – a nice touch, Molly thought, although she personally knew that her mistress had no particular affection for horses and in fact considered them to be overly skittish manure machines – then looked up at the portal as the animal was led away, her beautiful face full of heroic anxiety.
Every pair of eyes was on Lady Amber, and yet, thought Molly, not the actual pair of eyes they needed.
“Where is he?” she asked again.