Page 35

“I do not know.” The words tumbled swiftly from Lord Foxglove’s lips, as though he couldn’t properly contain them. His voice was tinted with genuine distress.

An odd warmth trickled into Clarimonde’s chest at the admission, easing the edges of her disappointment. For all of Foxglove’s incessant evasions, she knew, he remained incapable of lying to her directly. “Oh,” she said softly. “That is a better reply than I had expected. At least I merit some consideration now.”

Lord Foxglove fell back into silence. This time, Clarimonde thought, he looked hopelessly perplexed. She decided to take pity upon him by changing the subject. She cleared her throat very delicately.

“Did you notice all of those instruments in Tertia’s boudoir?” she asked. “There was at least one harp among them.”

Lord Foxglove seized instantly upon the new thread of conversation. “The Daghda’s harp was not there,” he said firmly. “I would have recognised it.”

Clarimonde sat up straighter. “You have seen it before?” she asked him.

The faerie shook his head. “I have not,” he said. “But the Daghda’s harp is utterly unique. It is impossible to miss.”

Clarimonde let out a soft huff. “I know so little about Faerie,” she said. “I do wish that people would remember that fact. How is the harp unique, Mr Fox? I should know what it is that I am searching for.”

Lord Foxglove leaned himself against the dressing table, with a sly smile upon his lips. “Why, Miss Betony,” he teased. “Are you asking me to tell you a bedtime story?”

Clarimonde sighed heavily at him. “Oh,” she said. “If you must.”

Lord Foxglove took this as enthusiastic invitation, of course. He insisted on waiting until Clarimonde had climbed into her golden bed and pulled the covers up to her chin—whereupon he settled himself onto the edge of the bed and cleared his throat with grave and patronising ceremony.

And this is the story that the faerie told her.

CHAPTER 11

Long ago, when cruel faeries and wicked fomóraiġ ruled over human beings, a king known as Balor of the Evil Eye threw his firstborn child into the ocean.

Balor had not bothered to name this child—a weak and unworthy son, who never exhibited his father’s strength or immortality. But on those few occasions when Balor was forced to remember the boy, he called him Primus, after the order of his birth.

On the day that Primus was thrown from the cliffs of his father’s kingdom, he surely should have drowned and died. Instead, by fate or happenstance, a mortal fisherman pulled the child from the water and took him into his home.

The fisherman and his wife knew little of magic or kings; but they were loving parents, and they cared for Primus as though he were their own. In fact, because they did not know his name, they called him Lugh—because he had brought light into their lives.

As Lugh grew older, his strangeness became clear. One of his arms was longer than the other; his skin was pale as death, but never burned when brought into the sun; and when he stared into the water that had nearly taken his life, he saw images of things that had not happened yet.

Still, Lugh lived happily with his parents for many years, entirely content. It shocked them both, therefore, when Lugh declared on his twenty-first birthday that he would soon die.

“There is nothing to be done,” Lugh told his parents gently. “The ocean has been jealous ever since you stole me from it, and soon it will come to collect me. But I have lived a wonderful life with you and I would show you my love just one more time, if you will let me do so.”

His parents wept for him, but Lugh smiled and calmed them. When he spoke again, he did so with a faraway look in his eyes. “As soon as you find my body, you must bring it somewhere safe,” he said. “Go then into the fields and find a black-maned heifer. You must whisper into her ear that you have a found a weapon that can smite King Balor of the Evil Eye.”

Lugh spent the rest of the evening detailing his visions to his parents, who listened only at his long insistence. The very next day, the fisherman and his wife left the ocean behind and settled into a new village, intent on saving their son from his fate—but within the year, the nearby river flooded and stole him, all the same. When the floodwaters receded, they discovered his body drowned upon the river’s banks.

Lugh’s father fell into terrible grief, unable to fulfil his son’s last wishes. But his mother went into the nearby fields and searched for a black-maned heifer, then whispered Lugh’s message into its ear, still weeping at his absence.

The very next morning, a gnarled old man rapped upon their door with his staff, demanding entrance. The fisherman’s wife let him inside and showed him to Lugh’s body, still laid out for his wake.

“I was promised a weapon!” the old man declared. “What is this drowned child before me?”

“This is my dearest Lugh,” the fisherman’s wife told the man. “And he was everything to me while he still lived. But before he came to me, he was a child of King Balor, cast away by his father. His blood and bone can bring King Balor low—but they are a gift, and you cannot accept such things without a price.”

The old man grumbled at this observation—but he could not deny that it was true. For he was a great faerie known as the Daghda, long an enemy to the fomóraiġ, and especially to King Balor. Since faeries cannot accept gifts, he was obliged to offer the fisherman’s wife commensurate payment for Lugh’s body.

“What shall I give you then, in return?” the Daghda asked her. “I can offer you wealth, or blessings of good fortune. I can bring you and your husband to Faerie, where you will be waited on hand and foot for the rest of your days.”

The fisherman’s wife had thought long and hard about what she would ask for, however, and she shook her head at him in reply. “I cannot desire any of those things,” she said. “I have lost what was most dear to me, and I know that I cannot have it back. But King Balor is a tyrant to many mortals, and so are you and your kin. In return for my son’s body, I ask that you set all of those mortals free.”

This was an incredible price, of course—and the Daghda argued passionately against it. He offered the fisherman’s wife a hundred other wonderful, impossible things instead; but eventually, he was forced to relent, for he and the other faeries were losing their war against King Balor, and they were desperate now for help.