The clouds were red. Red like blood. The mist arose from the river like some terrible apparition, seeking to strangle the spicy winter air. Ice-coated branches clacked together like morbid hands keeping time to a death-song. Far across the foggy heaths came the wailing, mournful cry of a wounded child. Then a horrible growl shook the snow lying on the forest floor, and all was silent. Silent save for the brush of the zephyrs in the frozen grass.

“All is lost!” shouted the sterling-eyed king. His long rich purple robes dragged along the cherry wood floor of his private chambers. “How will we gain salvation from our foes now? The heir to the Warwick throne is dead. Dead, I tell you!” The king stopped pacing to slam his fist on the small dragon-leg table, upsetting a silver goblet of rich red drink. His advisor, the tall, thin gray man with brilliant blue eyes, tapped his foot nervously in the shadowed corner where he stood. Long had he aided his king to rule Crescent and the surrounding kingdoms…but lately turmoil had erupted in the adjacent heath-province of Warwick, the kingdom of fierce warriors and brave women. Rumors of the Yule, the dreaded tree-beasts of some far northern mountain range, had spread like wildfire throughout the lands. Crescent’s king, good Wenceslas, had spent many a fitful night mulling over the fate of his dear people. The villagers, living scattered instead of companionably together, were forced to tear down their wattle and daub houses and move closer to each other, creating friction over farmland and field possession. The daily strife caused much pain to Wenceslas and already his smooth pale forehead was becoming creased. How long would these frightening rumors bring the Crescentfolk to his drawbridge, demanding restitution? The Yule had long since died out…had they not?

Wenceslas sighed and sat wearily down on his fur-covered bed. “Melchior…I am nearly spent of all my love for the Crescentfolk. How long will these tales persist to torment my once-peaceful mind?” Melchior, sitting down beside his king, rubbed his spindly hands together and enjoyed the rasping sound.

“Good majesty.” His voice was smooth and deep. “Why is it that you are troubled so by your people? Why not merely bar them from your presence and leave them to sort their own truth from the Yule rumors, hmm?” Wenceslas started and stared at his advisor.

“Melchior, are you suggesting that I abandon my people?” The king’s mighty voice shook with surprise. “I am pledged to love and serve the Crescentfolk like my father before me, and his father before him and all the way back to the Fairies who spawned us within their dew-laden cliff dwellings. To pay no heed to the cries of my suffering fellowmen would be an outrage not only to my ancestors…but also to the Fairies. We must not enrage them, must we?” Melchior sighed heavily; the gesture seemed almost forced.

“I suppose not, great one. Yet remember, to live a life of dull care and constant worry is not to live.”

Wenceslas gazed in confusion at the tall narrow shadow as his advisor walked from the chamber.

“She must be part Fairy. No other girl her age would care so for the well-being of her friends.” The warm, smoky voice came from a gossipy old woman sitting amid a voluminous dress of fine silk and furs upon a long red bench next to her friend. Cheerful music drifted across the shiny marble hallways and tickled the ears of rosy-cheeked children playing rambunctiously near the hearth. Murmured conversation reverberated through the big bright room and twisted around the columns to meet the two old biddies snickering over the guests.

“Yes indeed, she MUST be!” the other woman said. The two women watched the tall girl move gently through the crowd, her raven black hair catching the hearth firelight. “Can you see her ears? Maybe they are pointed!” The old lady gave a thrilled shiver and sipped her strong punch.

“Oh dear, her hair’s covering them. Well, if she is a Fairy’s child, we will hear about it soon enough.”

The girl did not hear their conversation. She was kneeling beside a little boy who had bruised his shin on a jagged corner. “There there,” she whispered as a tear rolled sparkling from the boy’s bright green eye. “It will not hurt for long.” The girl kissed his pink skin and took a damp cloth from her thick leather belt, and pressed it to the bruise. “Does that feel tingly?” The boy’s lips shaped an O and he laughed softly. “It feel like tasting peppermint!”

“Ah yes, peppermint, the herb of the winter,” the girl said. “That is good. You know, to feel something that has peppermint-taste is a very rare thing indeed.” The boy grew sober. “Really?”

“Oh yes! You must pay attention to that delicious cold feeling, for you never know when next you shall feel it.” The boy squinted up his eyes and held his breath. The girl laughed and stood up. “Thank you, Rhody,” the boy said in a pinched voice. Rhody ruffled his hair and moved silently around dancing couples. What a pleasant party! The duke had indeed outdone himself this Greenleaftime. Shrill bagpipes trilled and fiddles gave their high, swirling thrum. A young lad played with enthusiasm on a little drum and Rhody waved her hand to the beat. The boy nodded back and gave her a fond grin. Skerry was a nice brother, with his ruddy face and crooked smile. His thick thatch of hair was as black as hers and fell in his eyes as he bent once more over his drum. Rhody’s tan face darkened briefly as she recalled voices who said her and her brother were odd. Indeed, they were different, but not insane. Skerry had built their little home into the hollow trunk of a giant pine tree and kept the soup pot filled with good rabbit meat and pigeon. Rhody knew every plant and herb in the forest and on the heaths, and could sew masterfully. She ran a hand over her warm maroon cloak and smiled to herself as she sat down in a chilly window seat. Just because Skerry and she lived outside of the paranoid community of Crescentfolk, who had been pushed at each other by the Yule rumors, did not mean they were mentally ill or deliberately disobeyed the duke’s commands, which came directly from king Wenceslas. Crescentfolk, over the past several years, had learned to scorn those who did not conform to authoritative ruling. Rhody, in counter, scorned helpless fear that trained not the mind but the doubts. Skerry was a skilled swordsman, too young to be drafted in the duke’s regiment but a talented squire nonetheless. He taught Rhody the art of wielding the broadsword and Rhody in turn taught him to recognize vital herbs. Together they felt prepared to battle and aid as best they could should the Yule cross the eastern rapids.

Rhody leaned her head against the frosty windowpane as the music changed tunes and a clear pipe came into hearing. Her eyes slowly closed as the lilting sound carried her to sunny fields and cold streams, plump berries bursting with goodness and joyous laughter that floated on a slight breeze. Yes, this was where she’d come from. Long garments of materials she had never been able to find, graceful peace that evaded the most troubled soul and made it sleep. Thick, sweet water and bright dappled leaves whispering to each other. This was her home. Her real home…

You must pay the piper, two must dance along;

three should glean the grass and one will sing this song.

The merry tune was carried on the wind to the ears of several shepherds watching their sedate creatures.

“Ho, minstrel!” shouted one of them. The slender man carrying a gaily-painted lute strode over on long legs and sat before the shepherd’s small fire. “What will you have this cold noon?” he asked. His voice was happy and lazy. The cold seemed not to bother him. “Something suited to the day,” one shepherd grumbled. He pulled his fleece jacket closer about his sinewy shoulders and tore into his bread and cheese. The minstrel scratched his chin as the others nodded their agreement.

“A winter song, eh?” he said. “One would think you would wish a hot summer ditty to warm your stern bones!” One shepherd laughed mutedly but the leader turned austere blue eyes on him.

“I did not call for a jester, I called for a song in keeping with my miserable life.”

Why would you not want a song about joy? thought the minstrel. Surely it would do you some good! He did not say this aloud but stood up, his height towering and blocking out the sick gray sun.

“I fear I do not know any songs of those sort. I can sing only cheery tunes this noon, for I am going to be minstrel to king Wenceslas himself!” The shepherds, though discontented, whistled and let him on his way.

The minstrel walked on along the rude muddy road. He swung his arms in a wide arc and did not heed the sudden freezing blast of wind that danced inside his clumsily-sewn tunic. Slinging his lute over his shoulder, the minstrel hummed a washerwoman’s lay as the heaths came into view. The forests were behind him now; Wenceslas’s castle must not be far away now. With good blessing he could make it by supper time if he pushed his long legs to cover the distance. His gentle mother’s words rang through his head once more: “Now, my dear Conan, you must bring honor to your poor dead father and play well for the king. Wenceslas has been very kind to us here in Kentle, you must strive to play your very best for him.” Conan had given his word but with tears he had parted with his little mother. He’d protected her many a stormy night from drunken men and savage beasts, and his heart had grown tender towards her. His mother did promise to travel to a nearby village and seek shelter with another old widow, so Conan’s heart could be put at ease.

Conan’s voice drove away the chilling fingers of heath-winter as he sang of brave warriors defeating dragons to save beautiful ladies locked in high towers overlooking magical ponds. For amusement he twisted one tale and made it the lay of a woman sword-wielder who saved a wounded knight during a bloody foxhunt. The new story pleased him and he wove it into a well-known song. Once he had the words right, Conan ran his fingers through his curly brown hair and felt content. The heaths were now upon him; his cloak was soon damp with the purple fog and his the laces on his leather boots dragged in the squelching mud. Conan sang his tale over and over, but eventually the sad cry of marsh birds and the wind whipping off the mountain peaks surrounding the heath muted his joy. He began to feel weary and his steps slowed.

“This truly is a downtrodden land, with the very essence of melancholy,” Conan muttered as a briar bush wrapped stickled arms around him. He tore free and looked about him. The trees were strung with moss like grim decorations and the frogs croaked softly. As the sky darkened, the minstrel began to feel a creeping panic. What if he broke right at the height of his journey? Wenceslas’s castle was surely just over those few ridges! Yet on and on he traveled and there was no sight of the sprawling stone dwelling. The heaths grew silent and the wind bit at Conan’s buckling lute until he covered it hastily inside his dirty cloak. The screams of angry memories seemed to haunt the heaths and hidden marshes. Conan felt his happiness slowly ebb away and his fingers froze stiff, curled around his belt. He wished the king had provided him with an escort. The most there was had been a summons from a pimple-faced page, excited with his first duty, telling him the king’s decision to make him minstrel. Conan recalled the years spent studying at Kentle’s art school, the bleeding fingers and aching head, the hours away from his mother as he grew up mastering the lute. Thankfully, Conan was a quick learner and was soon able to spend more time with his mother, playing for her instead of steel-eyed instructors who cared nothing for depth or beauty, but only the true ring of the lute strings and wail of the pipe. And then the blessed day, the summons day.

Conan tried to think on these things as a delicious warmth overcame his cold limbs. No, no, he mustn’t give up! Not so close, not so close…

The black rider, his cape sweeping the dusty stars, galloped upon his frothing steed across the greenish gray heath hills. His eyes smoldered. How dare that king tell him what he must and mustn’t do! The rider shouted again in rage as his horse slipped slightly and he nearly fell off.

“Stupid animal!” The man dug his sharp boots into the horse’s flank. “We must make it to the woods in whole pieces!”

As the moon rose pale and thin over the heathlands, it saw a strange sight. The black rider and his horse has stopped before a lanky shadow stretched out in a marsh. The man tipped his head back and laughed. The moon leaned closer and heard his evil voice say, “What have we here!”

“This way,” said the kind voice, low and gently. “You are nearly to my hands, little one.” A girl, about nine years of age, walked unsteadily along the muddy road towards her aunt’s voice. A small crowd stood behind her, murmuring their surprise with soft exclamations. How much the child had improved over the past few weeks! Fiddlis’s cheeks were already bright with the highland sunshine to kiss them, and her patchwork dress was dusty with good rich earth. Fiddlis had been born blind, poor child; her vacant blue-green eyes often spilled tears for the sights she could only touch and hear. Yet since she had come to live with her Auntie in her hillside cottage, the young girl had grown fond of exploring her surroundings with her fingers. Many times she had burned her little hands in the fire pit, and her feet had often trod right into trouble; but Auntie loved her, she would forgive her every error and so Fiddlis was rapidly maturing into a happy, healthy, sturdy girl.

Fiddlis fell into Auntie’s arms as the crowd erupted with wild clapping. “You are so strong!” they said. Fiddlis blushed as they spoke excitedly about what her future would surely be. “You will run on the highland moors without fear of anything and you will brave the fierce winters like a hearty shepherdess!” Auntie scooped her niece up into her capable brown arms and carried her towards their squat cottage. As Fiddlis’s aunt poured some fresh goat’s milk out for her guests, a burly ironsmith roared, “You might even grow to fight the invading Yule!”

Instantly there was a somber lull. The ironsmith realized he had spoken with little wisdom, and he hastily gulped the rest of his warm milk. “What are the Yule?” Fiddlis asked innocently. Auntie sighed and began to usher her guests from the kitchen. “Thank you all for coming to encourage her,” she muttered as she flapped her apron at the curious washerwomen and big-eyed children.

“My faith, how will you explain the Yule to that child?” demanded a stringy-haired boy.

“Hush!” snapped Auntie. “I shall find a way. Now be gone!” Soon she was alone in the cozy kitchen with her blind niece.

“Auntie, what was the big ironsmith talking about?” Fiddlis said, setting down her brown earthenware cup. Her aunt bit her lips together and sat down in her carven chair before the fireplace. She drew Fiddlis to her ample bosom and hugged her close. “Pay no heed to his hasty words, my dear.” Fiddlis pushed away and ran her hand through her tangled sandy hair. “Auntie…what did he mean, that I might fight invaders? What invaders? Are we going to be fought with, Auntie?”

Knowing she would have to tell her intelligent niece the truth about the Yule monsters, Auntie braced herself and spoke. “Fiddlis, first of all you must understand that you are in no danger.” Fiddlis interrupted.

“Danger? Ha! I like danger; it likes me. Do not worry about that.” Her blank eyes seemed almost to sparkle as if Auntie had been teasing.

“Assuredly, my dear, I do not jest!” Auntie was shocked. One did not make light of the Yule. “Even high in the hills where you and I, your friends and that ironsmith live, we are in danger of becoming prey to a heathen race of monsters.” Fiddlis’s hands punched the air. “Monsters? Goody!” Auntie wrung her hands in distress. “No no, dearie, these monsters are the twisted spirits of the trees! They care not for sanity, nor do they heed sharpened broadswords. Blades bounce off their scaly bark like so many rain drops.” Fiddlis slowly sank to a crouching position.

“What about bows and arrows?” she whispered.

“Nothing can stop the Yule from destroying their enemies. They are invincible.”

Fiddlis felt a sudden cold creep over her flushed face. She brushed away a spider web that floated by her eyelash and felt frantically for the warm stones of Auntie’s floor to sit upon. “Then…if these tree monsters whom we highlanders call the Yule try to attack us here in the village…there is none whom can stop them?” Fiddlis’s merry tanned face grew a shade pale. Auntie sighed, tears pricking the inside of her eyelids. She had never lied to her niece. Fiddlis was too smart to be lied to, she took everything as it was said.

“Yes.”

The word hung in the middle of the small toasty kitchen, taking the warmth from the marrow and shoving it out through the open wooden door. An angry black cloud passed over the sun and Fiddlis gasped and jumped into her aunt’s lap.

“There now, what have we on your face! That is not a look of fear, is it?” Auntie hugged the precious child close. Fiddlis trembled for one second and then jumped down to the ground, her bare feet making no noise. “Fear? Me? Never.” Auntie laughed after the child as she ran out the door and into the dimmed sunlight.

Fiddlis ran wildly over the highland moors, loudly braying like a horse and barking like a dog. She scared a flock of sheep and fell into a fresh mountain stream, wetting her ragged dress. The black cloud was soon chased away by her throaty screaming and the sun once more shone down upon the little blind girl. Grinning widely, Fiddlis threw out her arms into the sunlight and twirled around and around until she was dizzy. Falling to the thick moor grass, Fiddlis wondered idly when their Greenleaftime would come. In the lowlands, in Crescent and Warwick, Greenleaftime was already upon the people. Snow had blanketed the heaths and marshes, driving the tender hens to her den and the rabbit to his burrow. Soon the winter would be upon the highlands, sweeping the warm afternoons from Auntie’s cottage and Kentle, the neighboring town. When that time came, Fiddlis would join the other village children in gathering and binding the golden wheat and luscious golden corn; the women would collect their spun wool to knit sweaters and socks for their families, and the men would travel down into the lowlands for hunting. The pine trees that decorated the distant hillsides would bear big prickly cones for homemade gifts, and the holly bushes would grow bright red berries. Fiddlis would chase the skunk into her comfortable hillock home and the bear would disappear from the highlands until the snowtime was over. And all the while, I will be growing big and strong and more able to protect my Auntie from the Yule, Fiddlis thought stubbornly. She believed that the tree beasts of whom Auntie had spoken could be defeated. It just took the right person.

Fiddlis’s shaggy brown puppy ran up to her and pushed his wet nose into her palm. The young girl squealed with surprise and threw her arms around her puppy. Together the happy pair wrestled in the mud on the highlands as a great billowing wind blew another black cloud before the sun.

Conan groaned and opened his eyes.

He could see nothing. A frosty draft hit his skin and he realized his cloak had been taken. His mind was as foggy as the heath mists and the minstrel could recall nothing about what had happened to him. He only remembered that beautiful warm feeling that had pervaded his limbs, melting the stiffness and lowering him to the soft heath grounds.

“Tell us again about the exiled duke!” shouted the children with a rambunctious clamor, their faces flushed from dancing and the firelight. Skerry laughed and bounced a little girl on his knee.

“Not that one AGAIN!” he moaned, trying to look fierce and failing. The children only laughed at his disgusted face and yelled louder for the popular tale. No matter how many times Skerry twisted the story around and retold it with grand flourishes, the Crescent children never tired of it. They all boasted to their parents that Skerry was a fine storyteller, although Rhody told the more graceful ones about fairies and golden moonbeams. “As long as that outcast boy does not stray into the realm of blatant monster stories, I am content,” one woman once said to her husband. The children quickly assured her that Skerry’s tales were full of magic and bravery, honest warriors and pure maidens. There was a certain goodness about them that made the children’s heart leapt. But on a night like this one, when the very heaths trembled against the snow-hooded winds, the Crescent youth were thankful for a scary yarn.

“Very well, I shall tell you the story,” Skerry finally gave in, “but you must promise not to beg for more when it is over. No one knows what happened to Northumbrio in the end!” The children promised, giggling, and nestled up to each other as Skerry, his black hair like a curled shadow in the firelight behind him and his green eyes cat-like, began his story.

“When your village of Crescent was but a young one, and Wenceslas had just been crowned king by his father, there came riding from the shadows of the northlands a tall dark stranger. He claimed to be a minstrel and piped haunting songs on a reed instrument. The Crescentfolk were enchanted by him, and allowed him to stay in their village amongst them. The man called himself Northumbrio and made free with the villagers, piping jigs and death marches on the same day.”

“What does a death march sound like, Skerry?” asked a boy. Skerry paused and rubbed his chin. Taking out his drum, he beat several muted, sad beats and hummed in a low tone.

“Oh, stop!” cried one little girl, hiding her face in her pink little hands. Skerry soberly put away his drum and resumed the tale.

“Wenceslas did not trust the minstrel. He thought that Northumbrio would stir up strife in Crescent and cause a revolt.”

“Why would he think that?” asked a thin pale girl. “Had the Crescentfolk been restless?”

“That was quick of you, Berrie. Yes, the people had been worried over Wenceslas’s coronation simply because he was so young. They felt such an inexperienced lad could not govern them the way a good king should. Northumbrio, on another matter, was tall, broad and well mannered. He knew how to charm the ladies and impress the men, and the children loved his jests. He gave every sign of having the right kind of leadership the Crescentfolk were seeking. But, children, he was an evil man.”

The children, even after hearing the tale over and over, gasped and their eyes grew round. “What did he do?” they yelped. Skerry sighed and leaned back against the warm hearth. “I really do not feel as if I can tell you any more, I am weary…” the children broke into protesting cries and pulled at Skerry’s hands, shaking his shoulders. “We must hear the rest, we simply must!” Skerry cracked one eye open and grinned.

“Do you not have pity for a poor slip of a lad who has beat his drum all evening?” he implored with a shaking chin. One girl burst into laughter and shouted “No! Now on with it or you shall have no cake!”

Skerry sat up straight. “Well, we mustn’t deprive ourselves, now must we?” he demanded and the children settled back down with big grins.

“For several years, the turmoil increased until Wenceslas decided it was time to get rid of the minstrel. He had seen the hidden look in his darting eyes, the shifty plans forming in his mind. Yet Wenceslas, even being a king, could not merely banish one of his subjects without cause, for that would hardly be fair. Instead he waited, amid much pacing and wringing his hands, for Northumbrio to make a false move. But you see, the minstrel had traveled far and wide and had grown wise in the ways of the world and her kings. He abided just inside of the law and never committed anything that could be debated by a jury. He was even made duke of Crescent by her people!”

“The rat,” muttered Berrie the girl. Skerry glanced sideways at her. “Yes, he was crafty as a rat. Northumbrio was scheming something and the poor gullible Crescentfolk could not see behind his painted smile.”

“I would have,” declared one boy, puffing out his chest until a button popped. His older sister chuckled and began sewing it back it.

“I have no doubt you would have been more than able to look right through his dark face and see the treachery he was stewing!” Skerry commended. H enjoyed dragging out this certain story far as it would go, to keep his young audience in suspense. His eyes began to droop and so he hastened to the thrilling part.

“Finally one day, a horrible black cloud passed over the surface of the big white moon. It clouded out the silver moonfairies and drove the cats to their cottages. A hot steam arose from the heathlands, a terrible smell with it. Northumbrio blew war lays on his long reed pipe and the Crescentfolk began to mistrust the minstrel. For reasons only known to him and his black mind, Northumbrio needed to get inside the castle. So he strode up to the moat and introduced himself as a court musician. Wenceslas was at once suspicious, but he allowed Northumbrio to enter anyway.”

“What?” cried a small boy with a bruise on his knee. “I would not have been so foolish!” Three friends of his quickly sat on his head for talking so about the king. Skerry was silent until they were done scuffling; he did not agree with the king either and secretly admired the child for having such courage. To speak against the king these days was a serious offense. He breathed deeply and looked over at his sister Rhody. She lay asleep in the window seat, the fire light flickering over her tanned face and playing in her rich thick hair. He softly smiled at her and turned a t last once more to the story.

“Some time passed while Northumbrio tried to wriggle his way in to the castle. One morning the cook awoke to find a guard slaughtered, stabbed to the heart.” A young girl with dark brown hair groaned.

“‘Finally’, thought Wenceslas. ‘I can exile that minstrel from my kingdom!’ Northumbrio was charged with the murder, found guilty during a fair trial by the Crescent jury and court, and was banished from the king’s lands forever. Once, years later, he tried to return. Think on it, children, Northumbrio came back for a short while! No one knew at first, but when their cows stopped giving milk and the heaths grew searing hot, they remembered the minstrel who had so enchanted them and they flushed him out from a nearby hillock and drove him from the town, promising his death if he ever returned.” Skerry snuggled up against the warm hearth stones once more and looked around at the Crescent children. They stared at him. “Some say the exiled duke built for himself a great manor on the snowy peak of a mountain surrounding our heaths. They say Northumbrio looks down on us this very moment, his eyes smoldering and his breath rasping, waiting for innocent travelers to come up his mountain seeking shelter from the Greenleaftime cold and then capturing them for his rebel army. One day, it is rumored, he might return and kill Wenceslas. Any Crescentfolk who might oppose him will be slain.”

“I would be loyal to the king,” said one young woman. The other children nodded, all save the little boy with the bruised knee who had spoken against the king earlier. “What of you, Skerry?” asked a child. “Who would you pledge your loyalty to?”

Skerry was saved an answer by Rhody, tall and dark and beautiful, suddenly appearing by his side. “It is you bedtime,” she said to the indignant children. “Skerry and I must travel home now.”

One the misty road away from Crescent, Skerry draped an arm about his sister, who stopped every now and again to pluck a herb or a strand of marsh grass. The night was cold as they walked farther and father away from the lilting songs in the courtroom and the warm red light.

“What will become of us when Northumbrio does return?” Skerry spoke softly but in the still night his voice sounded obscenely loud. “I cannot bring myself under Wenceslas’s ruling. I simply cannot. And I know you would be just as unable to. His motives are wrong, sister. They are very wrong. I cannot possibly tell the children this, but Wenceslas is-”

“I know well what he is, brother,” Rhody hushed him. “Dwell not upon that tonight. It was a good night. My peppermint worked well.”

Brother and sister walked on in silence for a short while. The Skerry spoke and said, “You heard that little boy, the one who defied the king.” I was not a question.

“Yes. I heard him. He was the little boy I treated with my peppermint.”

“I like him. Who is he?”

“I know not who he may be, but I like him as well. Perhaps he is one of the orphans?”

“Would that be grand!” Skerry enthused. “We could take him in and raise him as our own if we wished!” His eyes sparkled, mirroring the stars. “I have always wished for a little brother.” Rhody slipped an arm around Skerry’s waist. “You will have one someday, if it be the way of things.”

Skerry was thoughtful as he said, “Sister? Do you suppose we will ever be ransomed from our life here?”

“I can only hope so, brother. I can only hope and pray to whoever is listening.”

The Fairy was tall and slender. Her long yellow hair sparkled like dewdrops and her eyes were deep brown, like the dark earth her bare feet trod upon. The dress she wore was spun of a special material called Virthum and shimmered about her graceful figure like rain on a rounded stone. The trees whispered over her shining yellow head and a few branches leaned down to stroke the Virthum dress. The Fairy laughed and held out her long brown finger to a small sparrow who was fluttering excitedly on a nearby branch.

“Greetings, little sister,” the Fairy said. Her breath smelled like ice. “What a lovely sun shines in the blue heavens!” The bird chirped and alighted on her hand. The Fairy walked on through the sun-dappled woods. How pleasant it was in the Riverlands! Nothing but sun and shade, peace and mystery. No one had ever threatened the Fairies’ power after the Great Wars had been fought and won. The Fairies had indeed been bestowed with respect and honor.

Far away, a waterfall gurgled in the twinkling light. At first the immigrant Fairies, driven roughly from their homelands in the Borders, had thought it odd that night never fell in the Riverlands but after a short while, they grew to cherish the omnipresent light. It somehow fed them, nourished them.

The moss under the Fairy girl’s feet felt soft and bouncy, and the hidden marble pillars carved amongst the mighty oaks were fraught with twisting vines that sprouted delicate white buds. Here is was always springtime; here the Fairies were safe.

The Fairy girl retreated into her home cut into the side of a gently-sloping cliff right before a roiling black cloud covered the Riverland sun.

That night, the wind that swept through Crescent and Warwick and wuthered about the highlands bore a stench that was overpowering. The sober gray trees and their ghostly thin branches shivered beside one another as they howled their lamentations to the silent mountain peaks. Packs of wolves and wild dogs tore at their meat, as if somehow they knew it would be a long while before they partook of fresh kill again. The birds did not sing towards evening but ruffled their feathers worriedly and hopped into their little houses soon after the last scarlet blaze had disappeared. The village cats and dogs paced with restless paws, yowling scathingly if someone happened to cross them wrong or step on their tails. They sensed the horrible black sensation that crept through the night air like so many insects on a spring tree limb. The children did not have to be told to slip into their beds and fall asleep. Their parents decided not to worry at the lack of complaining, however; it had been a long day at the party and their children had danced many steps in their little cloth shoes. Yet still, one good farm wife pricked her finger while she mended a fleecy jacket, and a farmer stalking about his fields shouted in rage at the withered leaves of his vegetables. What was going on?

Conan hated the cold rattle of his chains as he was led down the hall by two silent guards. He hated the dull thud of his boots on the dirty flagstones, the tickle of his hair falling in his eyes, the guard’s heavy breathing that sounded too much like a dying thing.

Late in the deep darkness, a loud palm had pounded at the dungeon door and a hoarse, shaky voice had shrilly asked whether the minstrel was still alive. Conan recalled the hot rush of indignation that had, for some reason, engulfed him. “Why should I not be alive?” he had yelled back. The door had opened and a stream of blessed light had fallen across the crawling floors. “You are to come with me,” a thin mouse of a man had informed him. So, Conan arose and followed the man out of the dungeon, only to be put in scratchy chains and pulled down the hallway. The minstrel felt broken over his failed mission. He wondered whether his tiny mother had ever traveled to her friend’s home. He remembered the shepherds he had refused to play for, and wondered if they had ever found joy.

“Where are we going?” he asked the guard on his right. “What is to become of me?”

The guard did not say anything for a long moment. Conan peered closer at the two and noticed a small patch of blackened skin in the shape of a flame burnt into their fingertip. Then the guard looked sideways at the tall minstrel and said, “You are to be musician for Northumbrio, eh?” Conan nodded but we wished he did not have to.

“I am taking you to his throne room. He has instructed me to bring you to him. I am taking you to Northumbrio’s throne room.” Conan nearly laughed at the round-about way the guard had said it.

“And where will I live?” he asked the other guard, tromping along the hallway with a tight mouth.

“Oh, he does not speak,” said the first guard. “The master had his tongue cut out for talking treachery against him.” Conan’s eyes widened and he fell silent. What form of monster was that man? For surely, Northumbrio was not human. Never in his life had the minstrel heard such tales of Wenceslas.

Conan cradled his lute in his shackled hands as the guards led him around a shadowed corner and halted before a big wooden door. The first guard turned, his burnished armor glinting in the light of several bracketed torches, and his yellow eyes seemed to pierce Conan’s stony expression. “Not a cross word,” the guard hissed, spit flying from his mouth and sparkling in the glimmering torches, “or you may find yourself not better off than him.” He jerked his scummy finger back at his mute fellow. Conan forced himself to nod and the guard opened the door. It swung on its hinges with a creak and slammed against the wall inside. Conan felt a harsh shove at his back and reluctantly walked into a dimly lit room.

The room was sparsely adorned. A small table with lions paws for legs stood in the center, and something round covered with a milky white cloth had been placed upon it. The floor was a polished marble and several crumpled maps lay in a cobwebbed corner. Conan looked across the room and to his left, and there was a great window made of frosty glass leading out onto a balcony. The window was open and long dark red curtains rippled in a foul-smelling breeze. Conan hugged his lute closer to his chest and stood, chilly and feeling ridiculously tall and awkward, in the middle of the stark room. Suddenly he heard a long deep chuckle that vibrated off his lute strings and his eyes were drawn to the cold white balcony window as a massive black figure silhouetted itself against the stern gray sky. Conan refused to cower back as the looming figure stepped inside the room and the shadows sharpened his blurry features. It was a man, broad shouldered and sharp-chinned, wearing a heavy black cloak and twisting his huge sinewy hands together. His skin was dusky and leathery, his boots were stub nailed and his nose was big and straight. All this Conan took in a single glance before looking into the man’s eyes. The minstrel gave a small gasp and stepped back, holding his lute tight. The man’s eyes were orange and flickering, like fire. They burned into his until Conan felt a physical warm prickle and averted his gaze. The deep choking chuckle came again.

“So. This is my new minstrel.”

Conan did not move. His chains suddenly felt very tight and the blood pounded like a waterfall in his head. Those bright fiery eyes…

“Well, man, what did you expect? I am Northumbrio. Are you shocked? I can see that you are.”

“You know nothing of what I feel,” Conan snapped defensively. It tore at his soul that his jolly countenance had fled. Yet there was no inkling of hope in him. It was as if his very spirit had been burnt out in the dungeon.

“Did my guards happen to mention that I read minds?” Northumbrio said. His voice was oddly muffled, as if he were chewing something. Conan started violently and held up his lute as if it could protect the prying magic from entering his head. Northumbrio grinned wildly. His teeth were large and white. “Yes,” he went on, “I can read them as you might read a book. Your joy was burnt out. You belong to me now, and soon you will feel nothing save what I wish you to feel.” The notion sickened Conan. “Your life here will be easy. Obey my command, play well, and you might live to be a well-tempered aid. Defy my ruling, try to run away or show any signs of rebelliousness and you will be tortured. Try to stir up my people against me and the punishment is slow death. Do you understand, minstrel?”

Conan fought the urge to curse Northumbrio in his mind. “I understand, master.” His voice grated around his clenched teeth. Northumbrio turned his flaming eyes on him once more; Conan willed himself not to tremble.

“Say that again.” Conan gulped.

“Yes, master.” He forced his voice to be pleasant and obedient. The man nodded grimly and stepped to his little lion paw table. He withdrew the white cloth and there, sitting on the smooth table surface, was a clear sphere about the size of Conan’s fist. Northumbrio stroked the bluish purple ball with a thick finger. “Come closer and see,” he cooed. Conan moved forward, his chains sounding like thunder in his ears. “Look into it,” Northumbrio said. His voice was hypnotic. Conan looked sideways at the skin between his master’s eyes, avoiding the flickering orange pupils, and then looked down into the ball. It was as if mists had been caught and trapped inside the hard glass sphere and lighted with cold white fire. Conan felt suddenly hot and freezing. He lowered his lute and set it upon the ground. Slowly he put his hands on the table as the glittering swirls danced in his eyes. Northumbrio smiled and stepped aside for his minstrel to realize his master’s complete control over his life. It would not take long for those saucy thoughts to be purged from Conan’s mind, oh no. He would see to that. His little ball was the first step, a mighty step. It had worked innumerable times in the past with everyone he had taken to the dungeon and lured up to his room. This poor excuse for a wandering musician would be no different.

Conan felt his body grow light as he swayed gently to music only he could hear. It thrummed inside of him and made his feet yearn to dance about the cold floor. His chains shook like thick marsh water and dissolved, melting into the air. Conan smiled happily. He was content to watch the dancing lights inside the sphere all day. They enchanted him, they made him mesmerized with their beauty, which was ten times fairer than the sprightliest village lass. Suddenly a burning desire to touch the sphere, to cup it in his palms, swept over Conan. Northumbrio laughed, low and throaty. Not long now…

His hand shaking, the minstrel allowed his fingers to hover over the glinting glass sphere. How beautiful, how perfect it was. One inch and he would feel the crystalline side, half an inch, nearly there…

The tip of Conan’s long finger alighted soft as heather upon the sphere.

A shrill, jolting madness overcame him, a ripping burning sensation that knocked him to the ground with a heavy thud. His head swam and tears sprang into his eyes. The minstrel screamed aloud as a biting acid tore into the flesh that had touched upon the sphere. It grew more and more painful, digging into his nerves and searing his bone.

“Make it stop, I beg of you, master!” Conan yelled. The pain was growing and spreading up into his hand. “Please, make it stop!”

Northumbrio looked down with disgust as his new slave cringed upon the floor, curling his whole body around his hand. In his bliss he hardly heard Conan’s screams but finally he sighed and bent down. He spat something out of his mouth and pressed it to the fingertip like a mother healing a child’s burn with a piece of ice from her rain barrel. Instantly Conan grew silent and hissed his breath in through his teeth as a cold tingle pervaded through the pain, banishing it and leaving him weak and helpless upon the floor. He felt Northumbrio breathing on him, and his breath seemed to grow hotter and hotter. Conan realized vaguely that it had been Northumbrio in the dungeon with him, burning him. Burning out his old self.

“You have seen what my power is capable of,” the huge man said, hefting himself to his feet and walking over to a corner in the room. He pulled from a leather pouch at his side a lump of something creamy. He held it up, breathing with a rasp. The room was growing warmer.

“Do you know what this is, minstrel?” Conan was too weary to answer or care; he lay exhausted upon the floor, tenderly waiting for the burning frost to leave his finger. “This, man, is a special kind of ice. I chew it so I will not set my manor afire when I breathe.” Grinning morbidly Northumbrio popped the cream-colored lump into his mouth and sucked on it. “You felt that heat in the dungeon because I did not happen to carry these down with me. Good thing, too. You were a dangerous rebel when you arrived. Now you are my cowering slave. You will do my bidding and no one else’s. You will play your lute for me, and fight in my armies if I so wish it. You are mine, Conan. And merely to prove this to you, look at your finger where you touched my sphere.”

Conan turned aching eyes to his throbbing finger. On it was the black brand of a flame, as he had seen upon the two guards. He groaned inwardly from sheer hatred and laid his head back upon the floor. The last thing Conan heard before slipping into a black oblivion was Northumbrio laughing to himself.

Fiddlis woke up early the next morning with a prickly feeling that something was very wrong. She reached out for her comb and tugged it through her sandy tangles. Then she slipped out of her warm bed, flung a blanket about herself and walked barefoot into the kitchen. Fiddlis peered around, wishing she could see. The fire had burnt itself out, for a cold wind curled around her bare knees, and when she groped her way through the blackness, wondering for the hundredth time what the sunrise looked like creeping over the highland hills, she felt for the door and it was hanging wide open.

“Auntie?” she called out, her voice sounding small and insignificant in the eerie calm that had smothered her village. Fiddlis cocked her head but heard no children laughing, no tromping boots of farmers headed for their fields, no chattering women. A nasty smell hung in the air, making the little girl wrinkle her nose. She puckered her pink lips and whistled for her puppy. She let some time pass before whistling again; Puppy often wandered the moors, he was probably too far away for his silken ears to hear. Yet after five whole minutes, in which Fiddlis shifted her weight from one foot to another, chewed her nails and cursed her blindness, Puppy still had not come. “Auntie?” she called again. Her voice, even to herself, sounded like a mournful wail. Fiddlis waited but heard nothing. Hot tears sprang to her eyes and she savagely wiped them away. “I will not cry. Perhaps Auntie took Puppy out for a walk.” Fiddlis secretly doubted this, and wished that she had named her puppy before he disappeared like this. Feeling very alone and trying not to let the bubbling fear grow stronger within her, the young girl walked out into the dusty road, kicking up several smooth pebbles as she felt them touch her bare foot. Usually there was always a teasing boy running up to pull at her hair or a kindly girl who pressed a cookie into her hand, but today there was no one. There came to Fiddlis’s finely-tuned ears not a sound, not even a bird singing on the highlands. No goats cried out, no kittens rubbed around their doorposts with their loud purring noises. Fiddlis shivered and realized a darkness had covered the sun. What manner of evil was this?

Fiddlis walked on through her silent village as the stinking wind played with her sandy hair and blew into her blank eyes. Slowly, ever so slowly from amongst the shadows of a furze bush, their arose a twisty grotesque figure. It looked like a tree, huge and hulking and knobbly, with a great lush tangle of leaves for hair and a face etched with rough bark. It carefully moved through the furze bushes, rustling them ever so slightly with his great spindly arms of bark-like flesh. Fiddlis froze in her tracks and wondered to herself what that crunching noise behind her was.

“Auntie?” she inquired hopefully. The crunching, which now sounded like the footsteps of something heavy, halted for one moment and then resumed, coming nearer and nearer to the little trembling figure before him. Fiddlis’s breath came faster and she desperately wished for her little dirk. A hot stinking breath was blown into her face, making her wince. “Auntie?!” she yelled as there came a crash and a whoosh of wind right before her. She heard a low snarl and gasped. Fiddlis whirled around on her heel and began running through her blackness as heavy hulking footsteps crushed the earth behind her.

“My king!”

Wenceslas was jolted from a deep sleep as his advisor Melchior strode into his private chambers, silver cape billowing out behind him. His bright blue eyes pierced into Wenceslas’s sleep-blurred sterling ones. “What…what is it, Melchior?” He had apparently fallen asleep lying across his bed, and he hurriedly attempted to regain some of his dignity as he faced his tall thin advisor.

“How can you sleep at a time like this?” Melchior snapped. His hawk nose was turned up disdainfully. Wenceslas cocked an eyebrow. His old advisor was the only one whom he would ever allow to speak thus about him. “Have you not seen the black sickness that is gripping Crescent and Warwick by her throat? Have you not heeded the angry bulbous clouds that poison the sky?” Melchior tramped to the window and pulled back the heavy blue curtains. Instead of being stricken by bright morning light, Wenceslas looked out into a darkness nearly black as night. The king stood up quickly, hissing through his teeth. “Northumbrio!” he rasped. “He must be working his evils again.”

“No doubt he is,” Melchior quipped dryly. “Never has there been such a faminous plague to kill off all the vegetation. Stroll through your fields, oh king, there is nothing left alive in the way of food.” Wenceslas heard hinted bitterness in Melchior’s words.

“And what of my people?” he demanded. “Are they safe?”

Melchior turned slowly to look at his king. He rose to his full height and slowly walked around the bed, rubbing his wrinkled hands and looking beadily at the man sitting confused on his bed.

“What do you care of your people?” he suddenly cried out. “I know who you really are, Wenceslas; you are merely playing the part until my plans are fulfilled, which will be sooner than you think.” There was a mutinous expression flaming in his eyes. “We have known each other for many a great long year, boy. I know who you are hiding behind that kingly exterior.” Wenceslas’s breath came fast and his face grew taut.

“I will not be insulted like this, Melchior. You are to keep these things to yourself.”

The two men stared defiantly at one another and finally Melchior sighed and looked away.

“Your people are fine…as of yet. My men have dealt with them, they will not be a hindrance to the furthering of…of what we seek to gain.”

“Good.” Wenceslas spit out the word and it fell to the floor like a piece of iron. He got up and paced restlessly, a wild glint suddenly appearing in his eye. “Alert our…your men that things are being put together like so many pieces to a puzzle. My people will soon know who I am.” This was said with a sneer.

Melchior bowed. “Very good, your majesty.” He swept from the room, leaving a cold hard sensation behind him.

A gray shadow moved like water through a fresh pine glen. The lithe figure stopped in front of an elaborately carven pine trunk and reached out a calloused hand to stroke the sacred symbols. When would their Redeemer come?

Rhody laughed merrily and stroked the soft red fabric. “Will this make a fine cloak, brother?”

Skerry looked up from his whittling and grinned. “Where did you get that beautiful stuff?” Skerry and his sister were sitting inside their cozy tree house, feeding the fire and mending cloth. The rotten stench outside, rising hot from the heaths, had no power against the smoky essence inside, and no cold winds blew around the deerskin doorway nailed to the opening Skerry had cut. It was a happy, peaceful feeling, the feeling that Rhody felt as she let Skerry feel the rich red cloth with strong fingers.

“I was able to get it in the marketplace at Warwick.”

Skerry suddenly looked up. “Warwick?” he said in a low voice. “Warwick is ruled by the king, Rhody.”

Rhody hugged the unfinished cloak to her chest and stared right back at her brother. “Skerry, the king rules, yes, but his people are all individual. I know you have seen terrible things at the king’s hand; so have I. Yet we cannot let our hearts burn for a fire that will be stomped out one day.” Skerry leaned back, his whittling forgotten, and eyed Rhody’s strong brown face. “Explain further, I do not understand,” he said. Rhody stroked the cloak like she would a kitten as she spoke, her brow wrinkled as she tried to convince herself of the wild rumors.

“One day, if it be so the will of fate, a Redeemer might come and banish all thoughts of fear and hatred from our hearts. We will not need to hate the king or scorn his people, as they have scorned us in the past. We must look ahead, brother, to what life could be instead of what it is now.” Skerry’s lips curled up in a slight smile. He loved his sister.

“So you truly think this Redeemer will assuredly come to help the Crescentfolk?”

Rhody straightened her jaw. “I think the Redeemer will come to help everyone, not just those who dwell in our old village. If he ever does come.” These last words were said with hesitation.

Skerry opened his mouth to say something when they heard a horse’s hooves pounding the ground and stop with a whinny outside their tree. Skerry’s vibrant green eyes glittered when he heard an accented voice say, “Come out in the name of our good and loyal king Wenceslas the Second.” Rhody gracefully got up, looking more like an elf than ever, and pushed the deerskin flap aside.

“How can we help you?” she said once Skerry had stepped out behind her and stood, tall and broad-shouldered, ready to fight if there was any trouble.

The soldier on the frothing horse unrolled a scroll and said, “By proclamation of the King, whosoever once dwelled in the good town of Crescent must come at once to be counted there, and likewise in Warwick. The King further states that any and every able-bodied young man must be recruited in his army.” Skerry and Rhody turned to stare at each other, open-mouthed.

“That means you, boy,” said the soldier sarcastically before spurring his horse and thundering down the dirty road.

Rhody sighed and took her brother’s hand in hers.

“What shall we do now?” she asked, resisting the urge to begin sobbing upon her brother’s shoulder.

Skerry tightened his features and shook his head.

“The very man I have sworn to hate until I die…we cannot do it, sister. I cannot. I could never in my lifetime, thought I might live to be a hundred, bring myself to forgive that hypocrite for what…for what he did you our parents, what he did to your life-”

Rhody interrupted with a broken sob. “Skerry, please, do not bring up those memories for me again. I wish never, ever to relive those things. I want to forgive!”

“That may be impossible, sister. You may not be able to forgive Wenceslas.”

The tall Fairy man, the dewdrop crown encircling his forehead indicating his elected kingship, leaned back in his great oaken chair. He sat stroking his sharp bearded chin as the young page before him recounted his tale.

“I was walking through the woods, admiring the snow shining on the distant mountains and the birds singing in and out through the sun dapples, when there came a terrible black cloud that blotted out our precious Riverland sun and gave me piercing chills. The creatures fled to their homes and the wind died in the grass…and then came the foul odor. Such a stench as I have never known to invade my senses overwhelmed me, rendering me stupid until I gathered my strength to command my legs to move away from the glen.” The Fairy children took great joy in spinning wild yarns…but somehow the Fairy king, sitting thoughtfully silent on his big oak throne, did not believe the young boy was leading him astray from the truth. Indeed he had smelled a deathly pallor to the winds that rustled their green leaves and no woodland creatures had visited their dwelling that morning. The Riverland woods had become silent and still. No such restless peace had permeated the rich black earth, the sparkling white streams, the creatures of the woods and forests since the Great War, when the Fairies fought against the men for the Riverlands and, after a long, bloody battle in which many men and Fairies alike were slain, eventually won.

“What did you do then?” asked the king in his great rolling voice. He reached over and with long fingers poured the scattered page a bronze goblet full of a sweet thick liquid.

“I forced my legs to walk on through the forest, in the direction of your Cliffside dwelling, oh my king,” said the page, taking a sip of the offered drink. The stuff burned down his throat like fire and his clear purple eyes watered. Coughing, he continued.

“When I was but a good stone’s throw from your guard starting a shift at your door, I heard a high-pitched scream, as that of a human girl-child undergoing intense suffering.” The page’s smooth face grew pale as the king leaned forward, urging him to resume with his obsidian black eyes. “It…it was the most frightening thing I have ever heard.” The page took a gulp of his drink and grimaced at the scathing feeling. “I am sure that a small girl was in pain. I do not care for the human race any more than you do, my king, but a plague-curse strike me if ever I wish such agony upon any living thing.” The Fairy king shook his head thoughtfully and traced a circle on the cedar wood flooring at his sandaled feet. His features did not betray any emotion but in the depths of his soul, the Fairy was a peaceful creature. His page’s story troubled him deeply. The boy finished his drink and shuddered. He set the bronze goblet down upon the shining cedar floors and the clink sounded like a crash in the disturbing lull. The stench outside was stronger than it had been. The two Fairies regarded each other with bright solemn eyes. “What are your orders, oh king?” inquired the page softly. The king was aroused from his dark thoughts and he blinked his raven black eyes. “I will call a council,” he decided. “I can sense Evil in the tainted airs. We must be prepared to stand and fight and even die for a counter-cause against it.”

Conan looked over at the plain leather jerkin, the creamy sleeves of his lace-up shirt and the heavy black boots stuck all over with glinting silver nails, each as sharp as a two-edged sword. A weighty black cloak, designed for the constant onslaughts of freezing rain and furious blizzards, had been flung over his straw mattress. It looked like a crumpled dead thing, lying there on his cot. A dead body, that was it. Twisted beyond recognition. The minstrel’s lute he cradled in his arms, gently stroking the burns Northumbrio had given to its worn wooden sides. His master seemed to have burning blood, breath of fire, eyes of coal…and yet he had come from a northern land. Conan did not wish to fear him but the exiled duke’s ominous presence was on every loose flagstone, ever jagged castle spire and each beady red eye that blinked up from the shadows. Joy and laughter had no place there. Northumbrio’s world was one of blistering cold and searing heat. It was one where unkindness was encouraged. The kind of environment where, a day ago, Conan would have taken no part in. Yet whenever the minstrel tried to think a single thought against his master or try to regain a little bit of his former passion, a terrific pain would bit into his mind, numbing him until his relented to what was assuredly his master’s mind-reading powers. Conan hated it. He hated it ardently but Northumbrio seemed not to care whether his new slave agreed with his barbarous terms and let Conan be when he cursed his master’s hold over his spirit. It was a very subtle form of torture, this degradation of his instilled morals and motives, and slowly the remnants of Conan’s old life that had survived the dungeon and the shock of the sphere as being broken down into shards of depression, misery and hatred. During this black time Conan could not help but dare and think about his little mother, the people he had plucked his battered lute for. When Conan was a little boy, he had dreamed of the grand adventures and multitude of brave deeds he would perform with a merry countenance and a strong sense of right and wrong. But now, in his austere cell room, the young minstrel finally noticed and heeded for the first time the slow stripping of any hope he might still have cherished within his ardent soul.

There came a soft knock at Conan’s door and he was startled up from his gloomy thoughts. Walking warily he opened the door, shivering slightly at the echoing creak, to find a bedraggled young girl carrying a tray of food with bandaged hands. Her hair was gray and straggly, her mournful dark-ringed eyes dull and listless blue, her dress a mess of painstakingly-sewn patches. She said not a word, but held the tray out to Conan. Conan took the tray gingerly from her hands and looked down at his first meal in Northumbrio’s castle: a small dry piece of meat, some runny soup and a rusty cup of water, frozen in the middle. The little girl, certainly no older than six, looked up at Conan with a strange expression. She gave a little thrill and put a trembling hand out towards him. Conan, keeping his eyes upon the sickly child as if she might suddenly vanish, carefully set down his tray and reached his hand out to hers. The two touched ever so slightly and then with a shuddering, convulsive cough the girl jerked her hand away and sank to the cold stones, hacking.

Conan should have knelt down beside the girl and wrapped his long arms about her, murmured soothing words into the pointy red ears and rocked her back and forth like his mother used to do with him when he had experienced a fright…yet he found himself staring down at the quaking figure as a strange, almost enjoyable sensation pulsing in his veins. What foul devilry was this, to relish a young girl’s sickness? Conan felt the familiar prickle of Northumbrio’s power invading his mind as he reached down a hand to help the little girl up. She stared at him and, perhaps for the first time in years, an emotion flickered in her lazy eyes. An emotion, something like surprise or fondness, perhaps a little fear. Yet mostly there was a hopeful kind of wistfulness about her. Conan ignored the growing ache in his head as the rough bandages on the girl’s thin hands scratched his palms. He helped the girl up and did something he would regret for a long while. He squeezed her shoulders as an encouragement and pushed her gently down the hall. As Conan turned to pick up his tray, a ferocious scream split apart in his head and shook his sense until they felt empty and diminished. It was through tear-filled eyes that he watched the girl walk rigidly down the hallway once more, her hands hanging lumped and useless at her side, until she turned a corner.

Conan stumbled to his feet, barely able to bear the burning pain in his mind, and tripped into his room. Flinging himself on his cot the young minstrel clutched at his head and silently screamed out every word of praise and reverence he could possibly think of, directed towards Northumbrio in a wild rambling stream.

“You are wise and powerful, just and good, you care for your people and I am but a slave in your hands,” he cried out, sweat making his contorted face slick. “I meant no offense, no harm was intended, the child just looked so helpless and pitiful, I somehow HAD to help it but now I see this was wrong of me…” Gradually the pain began to wear off and Conan found himself truly thanking the monster that had controlled his mind.

“Master…you are good and fair and I thank you for what you did to me, do teach me a lesson.” Conan sat up, his eyes flashing. “I will never show love nor kindness to a living thing again if you do not so wish it.”

From in his high cold tower, Northumbrio laughed to himself. His breath made thick steam in the air and he popped a bit of his special creamy ice into his mouth. Talking around it, the huge dusky man looked at his sphere and said “The last bit of rebellion has been burnt out. Now begins the training.”

A tall man, about nineteen, walked through the rambling woods, his dark green cloak trailing along the withered pine needles. He did not stray from the path but measured his steps carefully with slate gray eyes that reflected the somber light touching off from the dense forest floor.

Slowly the trees thinned out and gave way to a crude camp. Shelters had been erected out of leaf-laden branches cut from the trees, and strong strips of leather used to tie the branches into a kind of lean-to. Several campfires flickered on the breeze-turned leaves and a deer roasted slowly over the cheery red embers. Men all clad in green cloaks with glistening sword hilts at their belts rested against the shuddering pines or sharpened their intricately-carved swords with quiet, rhythmic scrapes. One of the men’s swords caught the light shimmering off several tiny white moon fairies who danced every night in the beams when the moon was visible to the bare eye. The light bounced from the sword onto the young man as he entered the camp.

“Lorn, where have you been?” asked the man with the sword. Lorn shielded his eyes from the glint and worked his strong squarish jaw as he sat down next to his companion.

“I walked the length of the woods and halfway up ever mountain; I saw nor heard anyone,” Lorn answered wearily. For one so young, his voice was husky and deep. His companion, a massive redhead called Gorn, chuckled. “Did you look inside the trees?” he teased. Lorn cocked an eyebrow.

“Was I commanded to do so?” he answered.

“You might have had better luck had you looked inside the tree trunks; I hear the outcast brother and sister live inside a big tree at the side of the highway by themselves.” Lorn said nothing but rested his chin on the leather lacing of his shirt. His sandy brown hair fell across his face. After a while he said, “What makes the brother and sister defy our king and become rebel outcasts, wanted by every lawman from Crescent to Warwick and beyond?” Gorn gave a loud guffaw and said “Who knows what makes these crazy nonconformists act as they do. Their intentions are purely selfish, I can tell you that much.” Lorn was confused. “Yet is King Wencelsas not right and just?” Gorn turned and stared at his young friend, not saying a word.

“Is he not?” Lorn pressed. Gorn coughed and clambered to his feet.

“I am not able to say a cross word of Wencelsas; thus, I will say nothing.” Gorn turned a walked to his lean-to. Lorn relaxed against a thick tree trunk and slowly stroked the king’s emblem embroidered upon his inner jerkin.

In the village of Crescent, the good townspeople were milling about, chattering excitedly. News traveled quickly in such small proximities and goings-on such as this was big news indeed. The foul smell that burned along the heaths and withered the grass in its growing seemed not to bother the Crescentfolk as they gathered in the town square. Their murmuring drove the guards mad as they shoved the persistent people back into their cottage doorways. Angry shouts could be heard rising above the crowd and the overpowering smell now and then, blotting out the whining children and swirling the dust.

Someone had defied King Wenceslas.

The rumors were to remain spineless until the rebel himself showed his face in amongst the Crescentfolk, but by word of mouth the folk found out that it might be the young outcast Skerry, who had revolted privately against the king years back and thus lived alone with his sister in a tree by the side of the highway. The young man, surely no older than eighteen, and his sister were allowed and sometimes even welcome within Crescent and the neighboring kingdom of Warwick, yet always there was a kind of tension between the two outcasts and the people, who could never fully understand nor accept why the king’s ways were wrong in Skerry’s eyes. Perhaps the boy knew something about Wenceslas that they did not. Either way, the Crescentfolk could care less. All they thought of early that eventful morning was how strange to hear of a rebel being brought to justice…of his own free will.

“I hear the boy turned himself in,” said one grisly farmer. “Right stupid of him, I would say. Eh, woman?” he turned to his wife and said. “What think you of all these odd affairs?” His wife, a short portly lady with a thick yellow bun of hair, bit her lip in apathy. “I do hope they will not execute him,” she said with a worried wringing of her hands, “we have not had a hanging in a dozen years and I do not aim to encourage another.” Her tall burly husband grunted. “I suppose that is up to the jury and the King to decide, and then we will be given the outcast to flog him out of town or hang him, or whatever else the decision tells us to do to him.” His wife shuddered and leaned against his corded arm as the dust flew thick about the tromping feet of their fellow Crescentfolk. They, too, were anxious about what was to come. Always those who dared to defy King Wenceslas hid in the forest or made a living in the harsh highlands; some stories had been told of rebels finding refuge among the Fairies in the Riverlands. A few old biddies thought the girl Rhody might have had a Fairy mother, who wished her baby to grow up within a civil community. This tale, however, was discouraged because the Fairies had long since made it clear that they believed their life in the Riverland to be the more distinguished. Some tales held by the opinion that Rhody had been born to the Fairies and then spirited away by an enemy or a jealous lover along with her little brother, who at that time must have been only a toddling child. The Crescentfolk still remembered seeing a baby being laboriously carried into their small kingdom by a little boy, one who would grow up and defy Wenceslas. Such a sweet charming little thing he had been, too! He had lived with various townspeople and even taken to court to be christened Johnathon at the age of five, but he scorned the common name and stubbornly called himself Skerry. “My name be Skerry,” he would declare. “And this be my sister, my little sister Rhody.” H was so insistent that the given names were forgotten and the siblings became Rhody and Skerry, of no land. Being so young, neither could remember from whence they had come or if they were meant to be going somewhere. They lived their lives freely and happily, playing with the Crescentfolk’s children like any other happy kingdom child, and helping out in the fields to gather food for the winter. Rhody learned how to sew and bake, clean and sketch lovely pictures with charcoal on a smooth piece of wood and Skerry learned how to fell a tree, hunt in the thick forests and raise sheep. Yet the siblings maintained a vague kind of wistfulness, as if they had forgotten something vital to their full joyfulness. They could not altogether by happy with the kingdom dwellers, and the Crescentfolk could not deign somehow to learn the art of herbaltry Rhody offered to teach them, nor the art of beautiful storytelling Skerry was gladly willing to give to them.

Then the fatal day came. No one really knew what happened in the rain and miserable winds that autumn morning, they only heard the Skerry had fallen from the King’s favor and Rhody had scorned a soldier who had been making wild advances towards her. The two siblings agreed that the only wise thing to do was to make themselves outcasts. They left Crescent in the driving rain, carrying with them only a few belongings, for the hollow tree on the main highway. Wenceslas had been furious; he hastily ordered that Skerry and Rhody had been turned out because of their unmoral defiance to him and thus, the King kept his role and title clear in the eyes of his people. They suspected nothing and assumed Skerry and Rhody had committed an offense against their king, and deserved to be thrown out. It was made official that, though the siblings were not banished from Crescent and Warwick, they were not to be fraternized with. This decree broke Rhody’s heart, and nearly severed it in two when a terrible plague struck Wenceslas’s people. She could do little but administer herbs to them, when deep down her healing powers stirred restlessly. She had been forbidden to totally cure any of the sick Crescentfolk, and even thought it was a stupid and unfair law, she had to abide by it. She would not cause her brother nor their reputation as vague helpers any more division. At least she was able to aid them, if only distantly.

Yet if the Crescentfolk felt any qualms about condemning one of their most valuable resources, if die he must for whatever offense he committed, they did not show it. Instead there was a restless excitement. Something was about to happen! Finally, after months of snow and sleet and biting wind, after months of watching Skerry and his sister try to make peace with them, this must be some sort of climax. Their shadowy king would assuredly reveal something about his character. As the Crescentfolk began gathering in the town square for an explanation, they thought over the years in which Wenceslas had reigned. Thinking himself to be look upon as too young to rule, the King had become elusive, hardly showing anything about his morals, his character, his honest ranking. He issued out orders that were to be obeyed at all costs, the most forced being never, EVER to defy him or question his authority. Any cross word was punishable by means of slow death or permanent exile. Needless to say, the Crescentfolk did not need two warnings about this. They lapsed into a ignorant complacency and cared not whether the King was a truly good man. This was dangerous for them, but so far there had been nothing to give them much cause to worry.

All this was about to change.

Rhody ran her long brown hand along the blood-colored fabric. Late into the night, she had sat awake sewing a cloak. Why she was sewing so furiously, fast enough to prick her fingers, she had no idea. It was like a wild kind of energy she needed to release from her troubled spirit. She and Skerry had talked long and hard into the night and finally came to a decision. It was a painful one, perhaps the most painful thing they had ever decided to attempt. A rash act, it would be called later, done by rash people. Yet in Rhody’s thinking, rash was better than silent in a world of loud voices proclaiming falsities. Nothing was truth. Truth had seemingly vanished from the face of King Wenceslas’s lands, there was nothing that could be legally fought for or against. It was all smothered. The Crescentfolk, look through rosied eyes though they foolishly may be doing, were being drawn into a shadow of fear, of doubt, of Evil. Evil was lurking in the hot suffocating heathlands, in the wild western winds, in the snow brought by icy invaders of old who were threatening to come back and haunt the kingdom’s towns and villages once more. Wenceslas promised protection from any harm as long as his people remained true to him. It was wrong. It was wrong and it was maddening, but the foolish people were becoming slow to think about their well-being and lazy to make a difference in their slowly-disappearing morality. For indeed, their very cores, the depths of their souls, were being craftily taken out from under them.

All this Rhody and Skerry knew to be true. Convincing their old people otherwise was a greater task. That was why, despite his sister’s tears and pleadings and threats, Skerry was admitting to his disobedience of Wenceslas’s new ruling and turning himself to the authorities. They could do with him as they wished, but at least the Crescentfolk might have an idea as to what other alternative morality was offered to them by the hidden goodness of mankind. Rhody was to remain in the tree on the highway, to guard it and keep soldiers away and also to heal any who might be in need of her unusual medicinal knowledge.

Rhody shuddered as the firelight played over the soft cloak, taking the warm fabric and turning the rich blood red into an evil bloodthirsty pallor. The tall dark girl nearly threw the cloak into the fire for the memories it summoned up in her mind, but her brother needed that cloak to stay warm and it was her duty to allow him to take it and own it. “It is beautiful,” he had said. “If I go to my death in Crescent, I will die wearing this red cloak you have sewn for me.” A single glittering tear coursed down Rhody’s strong coffee-colored cheek; she realized it and wiped it vehemently away. Skerry himself came in, carrying a large pheasant. Rhody dropped the bloody red cloak to the earthen floor and threw herself into his warm strong embrace. The siblings held on to each other, rocking slowly back and forth, wondering whether this would be the last night they would have to look into each other’s eyes.

“She may have been warned never to listen to strange men,” said the officer. He fondled King Wenceslas’s emblem on his chest and grinned cat-like to himself. “Well, that will soon change. Soon after that strange brother of hers leaves, you will advance to her home and keep working on her womanly soul until she relents to our power.” The officer heard a small gasp from the young soldier he was barking orders at and hastily corrected himself. “Uh, erm…W-w-Wenceslas’s powers, I meant. Yes, our good King Wenceslas the Second has powers that work through us and around us, dwell inside of us and shape the very way be think about ourselves and our fellow man.” Without knowing it, the commanding officer was quoting a book written by the King’s ageless advisor, Melchior. The book had been published and spread abroad, and virtually everyone had read it…or should have.

The officer whirled around to face the soldier he was speaking to. He had to tilt his head back slightly in order to look directly into the expressionless gray eyes. Lorn was a tall young man, a newer soldier who still had much to learn. But surely this task was not beyond his reckoning.

“Do you understand, soldier?” asked the officer sharply, emphasizing the word soldier.

Lorn squared his jaw, determined to set a good example for the little drummer boys and younger soldiers. “I do, sir. I understand perfectly.”

Fiddlis felt the rushing warmth in her body before her blind aching eyes even opened. She moaned and turned over in what she took to be a huge soft bed. The bed felt warm and delicious under her tired limbs and the pillows she was flattening with her weary head were deep and bouncy. It felt just like her own dear little bed, sitting in a messy corner in Auntie’s house, but ten times larger and warmer. Fiddlis let a hand drop down over the side of the bed and she felt cozy air embrace it. What lovely place was this? The faint smell of pine and strong sweet candy hung like a mist in the air. Fiddlis shook the sleep from her head and propped herself upon one elbow, cocking her head this way and that, trying to catch a sound that might tell her where she had been taken. The little girl heard a gentle swishing creak, like wind through ice-coated branches, but little else. Fiddlis tipped her head back until she was resting in her big pillow again, enjoying the warmth touching her face, making her pale cheeks rosy again. Surely this place was a heavenly one!

Fiddlis was just beginning to drift off into a happy slumber once more when her sharp ears caught the sound of a gentle footfall. She blinked her unseeing eyes and turned her head towards the sound of a heavy door opening. “Who is there?” she muttered sleepily. The door closed and the footsteps, along with the comforting rustle of soft thin fabric on the floor, tickled Fiddlis’s ears. Fiddlis sensed a presence halting before her and she guessed it was a tall woman by the floating flowery scent and a soft slender hand that reached down to stroke her forehead.

“I see you are awake,” said a kindly voice. It was warm and soft, like a mother, and Fiddlis was reminded of her dear old Auntie.

“Where am I?” she asked shyly, hiding her nose under the velvety covers. Whoever had touched her was a great lady, not a common villager. She felt the bed dip slightly at her feet and sat up, reaching out to hands to touch the lady settling herself on the bed.

“In good hands,” the lady answered. “My name is Stara Underwild and I will be caring for you over the next few days. You were badly hurt, my dear little girl-child.” Fiddlis rested her hand on Stara’s soft slippery dress and felt confused.

“I can recall nothing,” she said, muddled. “How was I hurt? And where am I?” Stara gave a small sigh and gently rested her hand upon Fiddlis’s head.

“You were attacked by a wretched Yule monster,” she said carefully. “Some of our men heard you crying out in pain, and ran with bows and arrows flying thick from their fingers to your aid. You had been hurt, tripped up by the Yule’s roots and then bashed over the head by one of their heavy wooden cudgels.” Fiddlis shivered and reached up to touch her head. It had been bandaged with a piece of the same fabric Stara wore as a dress. Fiddlis had not realized it was there, it had been wrapped so lightly around her head, which faintly ached now that she knew what had happened to her. Fiddlis sat in a stunned silence as Stara went on.

“The men were able to drive away the lone Yule tree-beast, but not before you had fallen into a blackness that only our healers had hope of reviving you from. For several hours, you lied upon this bed as if you were dead, yet the healers and enchantresses still had hope for you. They implored their ancient arts, given to us by the One Who Is Not Spoken Of, and finally they sensed life still pulsing weakly within you. With fervent prayer and hard work, we were able to let you live again.”

Fiddlis sat soberly stroking the soft dress and rubbing the side of her head, trying to remember something of what had happened. Yet it was all a thick stewy cloud made up of broken shards from sunrise light she had never seen and the grasping, curvy roots of the Yule that she could only feel as it came down upon her head with massive strength. “Where am I?” she whispered a third time. The woman sat in silence for a long while, as if hesitant to tell her anything. Finally, Stara said “Little human girl-child...you are in the realm of the Fairies. You lie in a Fairy bed in a Fairy room, in the Fairyland of our conquering. You were rescued by our Fairy men and healed by our Fairy physicians. You talk to a Fairy now.”

Fiddlis gasped. All her young life, she had heard ferocious tales of how evil and cunning the Fairies were, stealing away human child from the Crescentfolk and highlanders, and exchanging them for wild Fairy babies. Everyone feared the Fairies and held a grudge against them because they had won the precious Riverlands instead of their own human strength. Perhaps the villagers of the twin kingdom Crescent and Warwick were wrong to scorn the powerful Fairies; they had won fairly. Fiddlis knew but little of the age-old dispute, living so far away from the boiling prejudices and hulking violence which threatened to tear the King’s lands apart.

“What…what do you intend to do with me?” Fiddlis asked, suddenly fearful. She allowed her hand to slip from Stara’s knee and fall back into her lap. “Are all the stories I have heard about you true?” Stara caught up the child’s hand and presses it to her cheek.

“No no, my dear! Hatred and darkness makes humans talk so about us dwelling here in the Riverland. We mean you humans no harm, and hope you will show us the same respect.” Fiddlis grinned and felt a slight ache in her head.

“I cannot speak for the rest of the human race, but I will speak for myself. I respect you!” Stara gave her a soft hug and her honeysuckle smell enveloped Fiddlis.

There came a sudden pounding at the door. Stara helped Fiddlis snuggle back into her blankets and then walked over to crack open the door. Fiddlis tried to fall into a peaceful slumber once more but her unseeing eyes kept popping open as Stara and a deep male voice murmured back and forth. Finally Stara turned and smoothed Fiddlis’s covers.

“There is to be a Fairy council.” Her tan high-boned face was pale. “You are to come with me.”

The fat little cook, his face red and shining with sweat, impatiently ladled out that evening’s dinner. The gruel muddled with the stale piece of bread on Conan’s plate as he sat down to pick at the food. Northumbrio might give his servants warm clothes and a room of their own to sleep in, but he did not seem to care about their health as far as food went. A big black fly alighted upon the sagging gruel and Conan waved it away disgustedly. He picked up the hard little loaf of bread and nibbled at it, listening to the buzz of the big marble room ring in his ears. Northumbrio’s men, slaves and soldiers alike, all gathered here for every meal to partake of their meager helpings and often talked loudly to be heard above the clang if dishes and the grumbling of the three cooks, who felt their work to be too laborious for happy spirits. The very atmosphere was tight and unhappy, but Conan felt the odd bored sensation that he had always eaten here, that he had always listened to the incessant thrumming of voices, that he always had this sloppy, slippery gruel and miserable stale bread for his dinner. It was normal, it was what he had always done.

Conan was jostled as two loud vapid guards elbowed their way to sit beside him. One of them smelled strongly of garlic.

“Ho, minstrel, move aside and let two starving king’s men sup!” Garlic said. Conan ignored him and chewed his bread furiously. How dare they order him about, as if they were Northumbrio himself! The other guard tapped him on the shoulder. “Move aside,” he snarled in a gravelly voice. “We are hungry and you keep us from our meal!” Conan looked around the room, chewing thoughtfully. He was enjoying the two guards’ distress. Suddenly he felt a rough jerk at his collar as Garlic picked him up and flung him across the table.

“Can you not hear, minstrel?” he snapped. His eyes were small and piggish as they bored into Conan’s. “We said, MOVE ASIDE.” Conan struggled under the bigger man’s iron paw on his back, pinning him face first onto the table. The other servants and guards started laughing and moving away in anticipation of a brawl. There were often fights in the mess house, everyone was tired from the long day and wanted their bellies filled. Insolence was not to be tolerated.

Conan twisted around and swung his fist at Garlic, catching him on the side of the head. “I will sit where I please!” he shouted hoarsely. Garlic staggered back against the wall, then wiped the spittle from his cheek and lunged at Conan, a wild look in his eye. Conan saw the meaty fist coming but was too slow to dodge it and felt an explosion of pain ripple through his jaw. Conan rammed his head into Garlic’s ample stomach and knocked him to the ground. Garlic rolled over on top of him, pressing the breath from his lungs, and began pummeling him over and over. The other guard egged them on and started the other men chanting. Conan felt his skin break and a trickle of blood start at the side of his face. He began to squirm and kick underneath Garlic’s heavy square body and managed to push him off balance. Conan leapt up and kneed Garlic in the shoulder, going down with him and digging his sharp knee into his mushy flesh. Garlic shouted in pain and rage and caught Conan’s throat in his hands. He squeezed harder and harder, as Conan drove his other knee into Garlic’s thigh and the crowd became rowdy. A few guards on mess shift came running in, their armor clanking. Conan ignored them as his slight became blurred. He jumped off of Garlic and punched him as the bigger man came up swinging. Garlic reeled back into the arms of the men, who pushed him back into Conan. He crashed against the minstrel and caught his wrists, slamming him against the wall and pinning him there. The other guard tossed Garlic a fire poker from the hearth and he brandished it wildly, waving it above the heads of the excited crowd. Conan shouted curses angrily at the unjust match and tried to shove his knee into Garlic once more. Garlic saw it coming and brought his fire poker down across Conan’s leg with a hard thwack. Conan cried out in surprised pain and gently lowered his foot to rest on the floor. Garlic shouted triumphantly and brought the fire poker close to Conan face; it was still smoldering from the hearth and Garlic waved the red hot weapon back and forth before Conan’s throat.

“Shall we singe that pretty singing voice of yours?” Garlic laughed loudly, his foul breath blasting into Conan’s face. The minstrel struggled vainly as Garlic turned and lead the other men in a rude chant: “Burn his pretty throat, we will, burn his pretty throat!” Conan willed the armored guards to fight their way through the jostling men. Garlic chuckled as the men continued the chant and he let Conan feel the heat of the fire poker next to his face. Conan pressed his head up against the wall but Garlic brought the poker closer and closer. He felt a searing touch across his neck and clenched his teeth against an agonized cry.

“Leave him be!” shouted one of the armored guards. Garlic dropped Conan and he gasped, sinking to the floor and gingerly feeling the burn across his neck. Garlic melted into the crowd before anyone could catch him. The other men began innocently milling about, embarrassed.

One of the guards sighed, annoyed at being disturbed on duty. He held out his hand to Conan.

“Come,” he said. “You are to come to Northumbrio’s chambers and play for him this night.”

Skerry swung the long blood-red cloak around himself and shrugged to feel the perfect fit. He looked over at his dear sister Rhody, standing tall and dark and beautiful with tears streaming down her high cheekbones, and reached out to touch her shoulder gently. Rhody burst into louder sobs and fell into his arms, crying her broken heart out. She had been scorned and hated and chastised before, but nothing as dire as this had ever smitten her fiery soul. She was dangerously close to hating the Crescentfolk and their king, fat old Wenceslas, who claimed greatness of his own accord. He should never have been put into office. He should have remained a suckling prince! Yet nothing her spirited heart could ever hope for would turn back the strong ironed hands of Time. The only thing to do was to remain hopeful.

And still, even this was immeasurably hard.

Rhody shuddered and cherished the cozy feeling of her body enveloped in Skerry’s tight, firm embrace. How glorious is was to have someone to lean on, to hold her when she was sad and make her laugh once more if she grew weary of the continuous plodding of life. Indeed, it was a strange thing, life was. Some vital universe all by itself. One could not help but wonder whether there was something greater out there, perhaps hidden amongst the stars or within the thick purplish green furze bushes that grew in clusters on the heaths. Some greater good, maybe, that somehow lived inside of certain people, if only the people could accept the living faith to something…or someone…they could not even see. Perhaps the whole crazy idea was just too much to ask for, far too much to hope for. Rhody could not be sure of anything as she hugged her brother, silhouetted by the crackling firelight, softly rubbing his back and feeling his muscles ripple underneath her long brown fingers. She smiled into his corded shoulder as she felt the rough material of the vest she had made him several months ago, in anticipation for the cold heath-winters. It was sturdy and good, that vest. It would last him a long while. And more importantly, it would last him until he could come home.

“If you ever come home,” she whispered shakily.

“What’s that?” her brother asked, holding her out at arm’s length. “My dear, sweet sister; whatever happens, you must promise me that you will be strong. You have been faithful to your adventurous heart all these years and have never let me down. Now comes the hardest trial. You will--you must--brave this as well, headlong! as you have all the others. For indeed, I could not do what will surely be expected of me if I knew that you, my own little sister, were worrying and suffering here in our tree on the highway. It would kill me, Rhody. You must be true to that heart I have grown to love and protect.”

“But…but what if being true to one’s heart is not the only thing we can or should be doing?” Rhody asked him. “Is there something greater, something bigger?” Skerry pauses and petted the blood red cloak. It swished along the ground and Rhody wondered randomly if she had made it too long. Perhaps he would wait until she could seam it. Yet no, for her fingers would be powerfully tempted to idle at her needle, delaying him until nightfall. She must be strong, even if it was only her shadowed heart she could prove her spirit unto. She would do that, in the very least.

“There is only us, our hearts and souls and minds, our hard work and our bright spirits, sister; unless the rumored Redeemer of the mountainside outcasts be true and living. If that be so true, then he had better show himself. I feel a restless Evil in the air and I do not like it. Surely, Northumbrio’s boiling treachery felt much like this, if not exactly.” Rhody cried out softly.

“You must not say things like that!” she implored him, sinking down to sit on her bed. He knelt and began packing his things into a roomy leather pouch, with straps to put over his shoulders. He had made it himself, during the long cold days of an ice-storm the highwaylands had endured, out of a deer he had killed and skinned himself. It was one of his most prized possessions, that and his drum. And now his long red cloak, the color of rich lifeblood. It hung over his back, shielding it from the cold that was trying to pry in through the stretched hide doorway, looking like a great wound that had opened. “Very well,” Skerry said, packing a little knife. “I will not speak of troubling things anymore.” He looked up, his green eyes brilliantly glittering in the dark reddish light. “Yet I must warn you of the danger you will be in while I am gone.” Rhody rolled her eyes up to the carven wood roof and sighed. She wished to make light of the whole morbid situation, but Skerry seemed to think otherwise.

“It is not a thing to jest of,” he told her. “You might be alone for a great long while, my dear pure sister…and, though I hesitate to say it, perhaps forever. They may kill me for the defiance to the King, and we must accept that fact if it so be the will of things. We have no part in fate. It is something we could not possible hope ever to understand, our minds are merely not capable of it! I do not want you fighting against your fate and mine. If I am to die…” he stopped, choking, and bent over his pack once more to stuff some dried fish from the nearby stream. His dark black hair fell in curls over his distressed eyes. Skerry did not want to die. He wanted, with all of his power, to work against the bloody fate that assuredly awaited him in Crescent. He was not deaf to the sentences dolled out by the jury, nor was his sister. They knew he might never return if he turned himself in to their austere ‘justice’. All of his heart screamed out for fate not to be the supreme ruler of things, that he could live his life to the fullest without any boundaries or limitations.

Suddenly his old teachings in the village kingdom of Crescent, his experiences with all the families he had lived with, came flooding back to him and he shook himself and raised his face. Rhody was no longer crying; she had clenched her jaw and looked like a fearsome warrior, mature and brave, in the dark afternoon. “If I am to die in Crescent, so be it. It will have been the will of my fate, my inescapable destiny. I am willing to embrace it with my whole heart.”

Rhody shook her head, heartbroken. “You should not have to,” she whispered. “What if there really is another way to live life?” Skerry had no answer to her persistent question. The look in her eyes, wild and defiant, and the queenly stature of her slender figure would haunt him for eternity. Finally, after remaining silent for several moments, Skerry said in a hoarse voice, “I never thought I would utter these words, but what is it to lose life? It may not be the worst thing that could happen to a man. Yet to be a man losing his life, when it has not been lived to the fullest expectation of his fate, is surely to die in the midst of a terrible sin.” Rhody said nothing. She silently arose and began packing a small deerhide pouch of healing herbs and mosses.

“These will help you, if you recall how to use them with wisdom,” she said. Skerry began reeling off the names and usages for each one, as Rhody nodded. Then her brother stood and took from behind his bed a long broadsword. It had been given to him long ago by a kindly old farmer, who had retired from his fighting days and had no need for it. “You may have a care to use it as a weapon or a tool of self-defense, young lad,” the man had said in a lilting highlander accent. At first, Skerry had scoffed at the idea of him needing a sword for defending his life. He was a pleasant boy, merry and merciful to everyone he met, but fiercely protective of his younger sister, who at the time was still learning how to mend broken bones herself. And then the terrible day came when he and his sister were brought gingerly before the local jury and court of Crescent and Warwick, in the very center square of Crescent herself. Rhody was recalled of that gloomy gray afternoon, when the soldiers came to take them away to the town. They had been playing together in the woods, jumping rocks across the gurgling stream with a few other village children. When the soldiers, in their shining armor that glinted even despite the sun, and their big sharp swords hanging heavy at their waists, she had been scared. Skerry had been indignant. The soldiers ordered the other children to go to their homes, even going so far as to push one of them aside. Rhody’s hot temper had flared at that. She had flown into the soldier, yelling for him to “leave her dear friend alone.” Then the soldier had cried out, in a big loud voice that still made her hands shake, “These two siblings have defied the King! They are to be tried at Crescent; now GO!” Rhody remembered feeling at a terrible loss when the children suddenly turned and looked at them. “We do not agree with King Wenceslas,” Skerry had said respectfully to the largest soldier in a deep voice unsuited to one so young. “We cannot live within the city limits because he does things Rhody and I do not want to do. He is a bad man.” The other children had all gasped and Rhody’s special little friend, a sweet-cheeked girl who always wore ribbons in her pigtails, had cried out and covered her eyes as if merely looking upon the rebellious girl before her would poison her sight. Then they had been hauled off before the jury, a bunch of old men with wild eyebrows and dull dead eyes who stared down at her and coughed into their musk-scented pomanders. It had given her nightmares for weeks after. To see lives looking so wasted and unhappy! She had longed to serve them grapefruit tea, a rare delicacy. One of the Crescentfolk had been a merchant to foreign lands, and while she and her brother had been living in his house with the pink-faced maid, he caught wind of her surprising medicinal abilities and had bought some dried grapefruit peeling for her tea, but would not give it to her until she promised to let him have the first cup. Laughing, Rhody had agreed, and when the lovely steam arose and tickled the merchant’s nose, he told her that it would be good for making spirits bright.

Rhody sighed and wished for some of that beautiful grapefruit tea right now. Skerry was ready to journey for Crescent. Turning around, he gave her a last warning.

“Forget not, my sister, that not all men seek to be good servants to a good fate, or to whatever they believe rules their lives. Some men may be wishing to do you harm. Never trust strange men, Rhody.” His green eyes glinted and Rhody, for the first time in a long while, felt the tiniest bit of fear towards her tall, daunting brother as the shadows settles underneath his tired cheekbones and played over the red cloak. She reached for his hand and was relieved to find it still strong and warm and calloused.

“I know it sounds heartless and untrustworthy, but you must understand that one cannot trust their lives to something so uncertain as the wild minds of mortal men.” Rhody clasped her brother to her breast again.

“I must trust only myself, then?” she asked. She did not like the idea. What a lonely stretch of life stretched out before her if nothing was to be trusted.

“For now,” Skerry said. Reluctantly, he opened the hide doorway and walked out into the fading gray sunlight. Rhody crossed her arms against the blast of cold that slapped her and her eyes grew wide when she saw what black shadows her brother was going to travel through.

Was there indeed more to life?

Conan felt exceedingly nervous as he walked between the armored guards down the long dark hallway. The torches, blackened ash stems bracketed to the dirty stone walls with pieces of iron, glimmered eerily in the squirming shadows. They passed by a high window and Conan saw stern gray snowflakes drifting down the frosty panes. The young minstrel shivered as he remorsefully recalled the happy snowfalls that had blanketed Kentle when he was but a stripling of a lad. He remembered playing in the cold wet white, loving the bite of it in his fingers, liking the way his friends’ cheek grew ruddy when they went inside to their cottage and drank melted chocolate, a treat reserved only for the heath winters. The snow back then had been merry and white, something to look forward to, a cold sweet taste on his tongue. But this, this terrible gray stuff falling from a broken sky, was a depressing reminder of where Conan had been taken and who he should be. He wondered if Northumbrio himself had beckoned the glum weather down from the heavens with his strange powers. Who really knew what Conan’s new master was capable of, what his cold-fire heart was made of? No one in the mountain peak dwelling seemed eager or willing to speak of Northumbrio as if he were human. He was like an essence, always present, inescapable and looming black over the hearts of otherwise cheerful and innocent folk. For indeed, the people could be happy if only they would embrace the life they were forbidden to.

The minstrel nearly stopped in his tracks at the rebellious thought, feeling a sudden pain split his head, but the guards shoved him on. They seemed vaguely frightened, as if they were unused to escorting servants to Northumbrio’s chambers. They had barely given Conan enough time to grab up his lute and long black cloak before they led him up a side flight of stairs, into a boiling blackness. It enveloped them, swirling around them in cold gusts from a draft in the cracks of the windows, chilling Conan until his nose was sore and his feet like hard blocks of unmovable ice. He grasped his lute tighter as the hallway gave way to yet another twisting, cobwebby flight of stairs. Dust arose from Conan’s stub-nailed boots as the guards pointed for him to continue alone. Conan wondered idly whether they were afraid to look upon Northumbrio’s face. Throwing his head back, the minstrel determined to look the huge man right in the eyes, forgetting all else, ignoring the horrible purplish blue sphere resting in the middle of that little lion-paw table.

He did not see the big wooden door before him and very nearly smashed his face into the rotting wood. He felt around in the thick darkness for a knob. Finding none, he pushed gently on the wood and it gave way with a silence that unnerved him. Wooden doors were supposed to creak! Bats were supposed to fly out at him! Yet nothing happened, the door only opened into more darkness, blacker than the stuff that held Conan outside. He finally made his feet move forward into Northumbrio’s chambers.

“Hello,” he said in a tight constricted voice, “my master?” Conan carefully shut the door behind him and felt his body grow warm with his master’s hot breath. The heat curled around him with a long, low moan and Conan knew Northumbrio was hiding amongst the shadows. He bowed his head and moved to the middle of the room, his foot feeling the lion paw leg of the sphere table. “You sent for me, master,” he said.

Northumbrio’s voice rasped from the darkness. “I know what happened in the mess hall, slave. Yet I wish for you to tell your side of the story to me.” Conan dared not look up. All thoughts of staring down those smoldering eyes and standing tall had been swept away with the onslaught of Evil. For indeed it was Evil that dwelled in the chamber, the very essence of Evil itself. Conan was frightened and wondered suddenly whether it was right for him to give in to fear. The now-familiar pain cut right through the middle of his thoughts, like a knife through a loaf of bread.

“You do right to fear me,” Northumbrio’s voice purred. “I want for it to remain that way.” There was an awkward pause. “Well?”

“What do you wish me to tell you?” Conan sighed.

“Why were you fighting in the mess hall? How did it start, why did it end with you being pinned to the wall, helpless?” The cruel words made Conan suddenly wish he had fought back vehemently, perhaps bashing Garlic over the head. Northumbrio heard this wish and smiled to himself.

“That guard wanted me to move aside for him and his companion,” Conan answered. He realized how ridiculous it sounded and felt tempted to be ashamed. Northumbrio quickly said “Good, good! So you would not move aside for him.”

“No, great master.” Conan’s doubt vanished. He had actually pleased his supreme master, the giver and caretaker of his needs and wants! This thrilled his very soul. “I would not.”

“What ensued then, minstrel?” Northumbrio’s voice was as smug as a cat who had just partaken of a juicy morsel of prey.

“He grabbed me and pinned me to the table. I leapt from my helpless position and struck him.” Northumbrio was loving this. Yes, this man would make a fine soldier. For indeed, the huge dusky man did not intend to use Conan as his minstrel. Not for long, anyway.

“You struck him! Very good.” The voice suddenly grew cold and icy. “Then why, Conan-minstrel, did you have the need to be rescued from a burning across your throat?”

“I was not rescued, master.” It felt odd, contradicting him. “The guard did indeed burn my throat, for the whole barrack was against me, save your two armored guards, and I was no match for the man’s brute strength.” Northumbrio growled; it sounded too much like a wild beast ready to spring and kill.

“You should have fought until the death,” he snapped.

“But master, it was such a small thing to die for-”

“That is of no importance!” came the booming voice. “I wish all my servants to be willing to die for justice!” Conan cowered at the voice, yet something inside of him hated to do it.

“Next time, I will,” he said. “I give you my word, as your slave, for slave I am and live only to cater to your wishes, oh great master.”

Northumbrio’s hot presence biting into his head drifted away; he had pleased his master once more. “You are right, minstrel,” said the deep smoky voice. “You are only kept alive because I think you will be useful to me. Now play. Play a song on your lute and make me contented, for it has been a long, hard day.”

This was the part Conan had been fearing. He had no notion of what to play for his master. He quickly licked his dry lips and fiddles with his lute strings.

“Well?” came the impatient growl. “Are you going to play something for me on that little soup pot of yours?” Conan heard growing intensity in his master’s voice. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, dragging his boots along the floor, biting his tongue. “I…I…” he stuttered. Northumbrio’s purring snarl, rasping and hoarse, sounded in his ears again. “What is the matter, my foolish young minstrel?” Northumbrio’s voice seemed somehow to be closer than the last time he had spoken. The hot breath began to hurt like so much fire upon Conan’s bare neck; the burn across his throat throbbed painfully and he felt a slight waver in his master’s rising anger as he cursed Garlic for it. He swallowed with an effort and stood a little straighter.

“I know not what to play for you, master,” he said in a loud but respectful voice. He felt a sliver of relief leap into his heart as the hot breath turned away.

“Something agonizing,” Northumbrio’s voice said. Conan gave a violent jolt, nearly dropping his lute. Never had he been asked to play something as his master wanted; indeed, he could not even play a sad lay to suit the shepherd who had asked for one! Yet the desperate yearning to please his ominous master trampled his doubt and he began to play a song built from pain, sweat, tears and death. At first Conan’s fingers fumbled over the unfamiliar combination of strings, tripping up several times and feeling the heated breath for his mistakes; but as he played, the lute’s voice grew louder and fuller and Conan began to enjoy bringing forth the song for Northumbrio’s approval. It twanged and shuddered in the dark, yet is was as if some unseen agony, long hidden, was guiding Conan’s fingers to play something he had never dreamed of being capable of. The song spilled forth onto the wet slimy flagstones like so many tears from a tortured soul, nearly frightening Conan. It was so fierce, so ferociously passionate as his fingers bled upon the sharp strings that Conan’s breath came faster and faster, his heart beat quicker and quicker, the horrible song came to him in jumbled tatters that rearranged themselves into a bloodthirsty pattern. Northumbrio loved it. Conan could tell by the sudden dropping away of heat, the darkness as it became thinner and the snow outside grew white instead of brackish gray. Conan finally felt the inspiration fall from him and he sank to the ground, exhausted. Northumbrio’s huge dark body leered down at him but Conan could not muster enough energy to raise his head. After several moments, his master departed, leaving Conan shivering in the dark. The gray snow began falling again.

Finally the minstrel picked up his lute and, with shaky legs, walked slowly from his master’s chambers out into the hallway. As he was turning to descend the dusty stairway, Conan felt eyes upon him and turned. It was the little girl with bandaged hands. She stared at him with an intensity that frightened him. Then she turned and melted into the darkness.

Conan never forgot the strange longing and disappointment in the little girl’s eyes.

Fiddlis turned over in her sleep and smiled. She was dreaming that a little boy, with curly brown hair, was holding out his hand to her. Strange, she could see him. In fact, Fiddlis could see everything in her dream: a gurgling stream laughed nearby, the water looked cool and white. The sunshine fell in merry orange dapples onto the springy forest turf and tall pine trees snickered to each other in their own tongue. Several small fairies, their wings transparent and frosted with twinkling light, flitted in and out through the hillocks of moss and a warm breeze stroked wide sunbaked rocks, perfect for climbing on. The sky was so blue…such a pristine, clear-cut blue such as Fiddlis has never known. Indeed, the young girl did not even know what to call the beautiful color that looked down upon her as she rubbed her eyes and stared, open-mouthed, about her. Fiddlis had never been taught the names of colors, as she had never yearned to name them. Yet somehow, as she caught sight of the little boy, who was pink-cheeked and grinning, she knew his hair was brown and the skies were blue. The skies were blue! And the boy’s eyes were blue as the sky.

Fiddlis gave a shiver as she realized this and stood up. She had been laying in a field of daisies that smelled like Auntie’s special homey smell; the grass underneath her body had been crushed, sent up a fresh juicy odor. One lone white daisy had been pressed into a perfect assembly of petals and seemed almost, not quite but nearly, to nod in the breeze as thought telling Fiddlis to follow the laughing boy, who was running in and out of the pines. Fiddlis shyly brushed off her patched dress, but was amazed to look down and find that all the patches had disappeared. Her dress was as soft and bright as when Auntie had first given it to her, many long years ago. The dress had come from an old peddler who lived deep down in the lowland heaths, hidden from view until his sheep had been sheared and the wool spun and sewn into cloth. Then he would come to the highlands, carrying a heavy load of blue, green and red plaid cloth to sell in Fiddlis’s village. Auntie would sit holding Fiddlis and explaining everything to her, but she never mentioned the colors; Fiddlis knew now the colors of the cloth and loved every shade. The children would all run around the man, fingering the cloth with chubby hands and wide mouths shaped into an O. Every year, he would come and every year, the children tugged at their mothers’ hands and begged their fathers to buy them the special cloth, for clothing. Their parents laughed and complained but it was all in fun. The old man’s cloth was the best in the low and high lands, and it would be another whole year before they could buy any more.

So coin flashed in the sunlight and the old cloth-peddler grew very rich. No one ever thought to ask him what he did with the money, but the highlanders were understanding people and if a naughty child blurted out the nagging question of where his parents’ money went, he was hastily hushed.

Fiddlis recalled many things as she ran after the boy in her lovely dress. She could remember Auntie calling the cloth-peddler over, putting her niece’s small hands on his wrinkled roughened ones, and the peddler’s thick rich voice asking “Which cloth will it be, child?” Fiddlis would have loathed the pity in anyone’s voice had they spoken thus because she was blind…but somehow the smoky tone did nothing to offend her and she would run her skin along every piece of cloth while Auntie fed the patient old man with cold goat’s milk and freshly baked bread. Fiddlis would munch the hot bread, strewn with raisins, as she inspected every inch of every yard of cloth and offered suggestions. “This one should be softer,” she would say and hear the happy cackle of the peddler. “It should!” she would insist, spilling several plump black raisins onto the cloth basket. “It would sell better!” Of course, the man needed no help selling his quality wares, but Fiddlis felt it was her duty to tell him if something was wrong with a piece of cloth.

“She sees more with those little hands than most people do with their big ol’ eyes!” the peddler would say when a curious villager walked by and asked him about the odd little blind girl pestering his cloth. Shrugging, the villager would walk past, pleased with the color of his new cloth. But Fiddlis could not choose by seeing the colors, so she would feel and touch and bother the fabrics until finally she would turn to Auntie and say “This one. This piece of cloth is good.” Auntie would tell the peddler to cut some cloth for her, a smile in her voice, while Fiddlis stood eating the last of her raisin bread with contentment.

The young girl had no idea why this certain memory stood out so clearly in her mind. Perhaps it was because she could actually see the color of her dress now. It was bright, vibrant brown, like that sweet stuff called chocolate they drank melted in the wintertime, and it had red point-cuff sleeves and a blue apron with small white circles threaded into the blue. The apron was not as blue as the skies, nor the boy’s eyes as he beckoned Fiddlis to follow him through the tall rustly grass, but rather blue as midnight. Fiddlis liked it. She could see her dress and she loved the world. The colors and feelings, sharper than before, thrilled her.

Fiddlis ran after the boy, screaming with laughter as the wind played in her sandy hair, which was silky and long instead of dirty and tangled. Her feet needed no shoes and she relished the rich black earth between her toes. What about the little boy made her want to run after him and play with him the sunshine? Fiddlis somehow needed to follow him. There was s strange light that shone from his face, from his brilliant blue eyes, like some sort of odd cold-fire. Fiddlis threw back her head and gave a loud, hearty laugh. She and the little boy, who could not be much older than her, ran through the ticklish grass, over smooth stones, across the soft dirt and splashed through the giggling brook.

The little boy suddenly turned and caught Fiddlis’s hands up in his own. Gasping for breath and perfectly happy, she and the boy spun around and around reveling the sun on their cheeks and the warm of the air as it swirled past them. They crashed to the ground, unhurt, and looked cheerfully into each other’s faces. Fiddlis found herself still holding his hand and suddenly looked down at them. Right in the center of the little boy’s palms were two holes. Blood was dried around the piercings and Fiddlis could see the green grass through them.

She hardly knew why when a tear slipped from her eye down her cheek. To be able to see what not all good, she decided. She gently put the boy’s hand down and blinked in the sunlight as the world fell away and all there was left was the strange blue-eyed boy looking kindly at her. Leaning forward, the boy spoke for the first time, into her ear.

“My name is Shaddai,” the little boy breathed.

Fiddlis woke up with a sharp grunt and found herself back in the Fairy bed, just as before. She expected to feel the same feelings and look around with black, blank eyes. With a sudden cry, Fiddlis saw before her carvings on cherry wood and lacy curtains hanging before a balcony, gently blown by a deliciously warm breeze.

“I can see!” she cried out. “I am no longer blind!” Then something inside of her, reverberating from the deepest parts of her soul, remembered Shaddai, the little boy with wounds in his hands. Fiddlis stared around her.

“Shaddai,” she whispered.

“I envy you, I really do,” Gorn assured his fellow soldier. “This kind of assignment would agree right steadily with me!” Lorn, his sandy brown hair hanging self-consciously in his slate gray eyes, shrugged and leaned against a nearby tree. Gorn put a hand on his friend’s broad shoulder and grinned. There was a small piece of mutton in his teeth and Lorn smothered a laugh.

“Why are you being so gloomy?” the barrel-chested redhead guffawed. He threw a wickedly-pointed dagger into Lorn’s leather knapsack and then followed it with a week’s supply of dried meat. “Any young soldier would be honored -not to mention thrilled to his boots- to have such an agreeable assignment. You get to know the girl, find out some secrets, and then break her heart! Perfect drama and tragedy.”

“If there is value in drama and tragedy then I wish to add my approaches it!” Lorn growled, snatching his leather pack away and stuffing spare clothes into it. “I have never known any girl save for my withered old granny; my mother and baby sister both died when I was too young to know the difference between friend and foe. My father and granny raised me until I was old enough to be drafted…I have been a soldier for King Wenceslas ever since. Therein my life has been both tragic and dramatic, yet I know not how to even talk to this girl.” Lorn flipped his hair out of his eyes and began lacing up his boots. “Some people say she is mad, some say she is a witch who poisoned the Crescentfolk and that was how the plague caught them. I know she lived with her brother in a tree off the highway, harmless as a cricket, and yet this undaunting herbalist frightens me to death. Gorn…I have no idea what to do.”

Gorn was looking at him with mild, slightly amused eyes and ran a big hand through his short red hair. “Has anyone ever told you that you could get by in life just with your looks?” Lorn rolled his eyes and drew his dark green cloak around himself. “You will not have a single problem charming this healer-girl. Trust me, my young friend.” Lorn somehow hated the thick meaty fingers gripping his arm. He brushed past Gorn, feeling no better about the task before him, and walked through the camp.

“Ho, Lorn!” shouted several of his companions. Lorn forced his jaw to keep still against the curses that invaded his mind. He just wanted to be left alone! Keeping his gray eyes glued to the officer’s tent, Lorn pushed through the canvas flaps and stood straight and rigid before his commander.

“I am ready to depart, sir,” Lorn said in a well-trained voice. The hot anger that had pulsed through him was gone now.

“Very good,” said his officer. “I trust you understand your assignment?”

Aye, my assignment, thought Lorn with a squirm, but not how I will go about it. His tan face was closed against these thoughts and he nodded curtly.

“Right then, soldier; I am entrusting you with this important duty. The King expects a job well done.” The officer leaned forward, dark eyes suddenly glittering. “Do not disappoint him.”

Melchior stood quietly watching the happenings outside the balcony window. His icy eyes bored into the individual villagers as they milled about in the dust and the cold, awaiting the arrival of the outcast. Foolish boy, did he expect to gain favor with the Crescentfolk by turning himself in to the jury and the council of the village-kingdom? Soon he would know what a futile, wasteful and utterly stupid act this was. Soon…

The King’s advisor turned with a sigh from the window, his long silver cloak sweeping around his ankles, and departed from the room to fetch the King. A matter of life and death would be decided that day

The Fairy king leaned back in his chair and looked with a thoughtful countenance at the young girl before him. She was short and feisty, and her sand-colored hair stood out in tangled bunches all around her head. Her cheeks were rosy from sleep, her once-blind eyes still leaked tears of joy and she let her mouth hang open unashamedly as she took in all the new sights with her restored vision. The gentle mellow colors of Virthum dresses, the broad brows of the assembled Council, the creeping gray stench that was pervading the cool marble room...it was all wonderful and mysterious, and Fiddlis loved it all. She grinned widely at all the Fairies, beautiful creatures she could now see with her own two eyes. In turn, the Fairies watched as Stara Underwild led the little girl over to one of the carven cedar chairs and picked her up to sit upon it. They saw the gentleness with which she treated the little human girl-child, as she might treat one of her own young Fairy cousins.

After making sure the little girl was made comfortable and felt safe amongst the presence of these, Stara's stern noble people, she sat down upon her own chair with a shy glance at the raven-eyed king and a rustle of Virthum cloth. The king allowed a carefully small smile to shape his thin tight lips, and then he rubbed the dew drop crown resting upon his brown forehead and turned his attention to the little girl, who was wildly looking about her, drinking in all the glorious new sights like so much sweet water, as if she could never get enough of it, as if her very soul thrived upon sight. And indeed, perhaps Fiddlis's soul was made of something more than the other highlander children's souls. She sought after Life with a rare vivacity, as something to catch hold of, something dear to treasure, and something never ever to let go of, no matter the cost. It would have to be a great power that would ever convince Fiddlis, a poor orphan with a bright quick mind and a spirited soul, to give up her Life for it. Something great, indeed.

"You are the human girl-child, then?" asked the king in his rolling rich deep voice, yet it was more of a statement. Fiddlis looked at him in surprise and nodded. She liked to look at him; his face was kissed tan by the sun, his long Virthum robes flowed around his leathern sandals like a periwinkle waterfall, his long fingers curled idle about his wooden throne. The soft blue jewel in his thin crown rested above and between his eyes like a single tear, like a lament for something forgotten that should have been remembered. Fiddlis sat in the midst of a Fairy Council thinking these thoughts and kicking her heel against the cedar wood chair in which she so happily sat. Never in her lifetime would she have thought to actually fear these kind and majestic folk; their faces were so quiet, so peaceful...Fiddlis felt quite at ease and stared the king in the face with an excited expression, still not over the wonderful miracle that she could see. With her own two eyes! She could not wait to look into a piece of glass, one that had not been broken like so many pieces in her Auntie's highland cottage, and to find out what color her own eyes were.

"You have caused quite a stir in this, our home, the Riverlands," went on the king. Fiddlis straightened in surprise. "Me?" she asked. "Me, I have?" She contemplated this as the king nodded.

"To think, one so small could cause so much excitement!" muttered one Elder. He was quickly silenced by a look from the king. Now that the girl-child was at ease, he did not want anything to hinder his purpose for bringing her to their sacred Council.

"What is happening in the rest of the Lands?" asked the king. Fiddlis grew thoughtful and puffed out her chest with the honor of telling the Fairy king and his people something they did not know.

"Ah yes, the Lands," she said in a pompous voice. Stara smiled into the collar of her dress. "Well, King Wenceslas the Second is being naughty!"

The Fairy king looked around at his Council and saw grave looks. "How so?" he asked the little human girl.

"I do not know all about it," said Fiddlis apologetically, "since my Auntie and I lived in the highlands until those nasty Yule tree-beasts attacked me and your nice Fairy men brought me here." Several Elders were shocked to discover that, unlike the people of Crescent and Warwick, this young child harbored no ill will against them. Rather, she seemed to enjoy their company as she nestled into a more convenient position in her chair and looked around at the Fairy Council. "But I hear the highlander folk in my village talking all the time about how the King hates the outcast people he calls the Hinterlanders, and how he takes every chance he can to perse...perse...persecute them." Fiddlis hated how the evil word twisted her tongue.

The king rose and his height far exceeded that of the other Fairies as they rose to stand with him. "My companions, the faithful," began the king in a strained voice, "we are now faced with an important decision." Fiddlis saw Stara standing and decided to stand, too. She felt very small and vulnerable, yet the recollection of the king of the Fairies beyond the Lands and beyond the King's rule actually asked her for information was still fresh in her bright little mind, and she would never let that big warm wonderful feeling fade. Her attention snapped back to the Council when all of a sudden, a young Fairy squire with bright red hair burst through the two great doors and landed with a lithe kneel before the king.

"What is the meaning of this?" bellowed the Fairy king. Fiddlis shrank behind Stara as a blackness seemed to fill the smooth sad faces. "Why do you intrude upon our private gathering?" The young squire gritted his teeth; his offense was not well-taken by the Fairies and they muttered amongst themselves.

"Forgive me, oh king," said the squire. "Yet I have news that might aid your decision whether or not to return to the Lands with your army and help to beat back the tyrant King Wenceslas the Second."

The king sank back into his throne, as the Council quieted and sat back upon their carven chairs. "Speak on; we will listen to what you have to say," said the king. The squire hid a relieved smile and remained kneeling before the throne.

"Today, at the falling of twilight, there is to be an outcast punished for refusing to be drafted into the King's army." The Fairies broke into an excited angry chattering and the king had to rise and hold up his hands before it sank into hissing whispers. Fiddlis crossed her arms and thought, How dare that fat old king punish a poor man just because he does not want to be a soldier! Her cheeks were now flushed with more than the peace of recent slumber.

"We have a chance to save this poor fellow; he is barely a man!" continued the squire. The king leaned back and stoked his sharp clean-shaven chin. The Fairies' suddenly stopped their talk and huffy sighs when the doors opened once again, bringing in a cloaked and hooded figure upon the foul-smelling winds. The king straightened as he recognized the old mysterious Virthum weaver, who lived by herself on the wilder fringe of the Riverland.

"Why have we the honor of being graced by your presence here this day?" asked the king respectfully. Fiddlis shivered at the mysterious sight of the Virthum weaver and hid in Stara's long lean shadow, thankful for her motherly comfort.

The humped-over old Fairy woman straightened slowly and the cloak fell from her shoulders; it crumpled to the still marble floor and lay in a dark wadded heap, slowly shivering to the ground like a dying thing.

The old weaver's face was wrinkled and brown, like an autumn nut, as she moved gracefully to the center of the Council and stood facing the king, her wild snowy hair standing in tight curls all about her head.

"I have come to tell you a tale," said the Virthum weaver. Her work-worn fingers caressed the vine belt she wore and played around the jewel encrusted hilt of a small dagger at her side. She was an Elder, but wished to claim for herself no "high and mighty title", and so only took advantage of her given power when she felt it was needed.

The Fairies looked at each other a bit nervously. The Virthum weaver so infrequently came from her Riverland-fringe home that when that blaze was ignited in her dark blue eyes, they must heed it with all their souls.

"It is about something which happened to me, many years ago, and it will disprove the blatant lies the King spreads about us Fairies." The Fairy king nodded his consent and Fiddlis relaxed back into her chair. The weaver suffered a grin to break her serious face and she spread her skirts in the middle of the Council circle and began her tale as all the Fairies leaned forward to pay close attention.

"I was married to a tall, handsome human knight. He was brave and had obsidian black hair. I loved him with all of my being, for he was just and wise and respected me like no other creature I knew to respect anyone. We were happily wed for five years, in which he bore me a healthy baby boy and a precious beautiful daughter." The Fairies smiled to themselves to see the spark of mother-love alighted in the deep brilliant blue eyes. Many of them had children of their own, and well knew the treasure it was to raise wise and good children. Yet still they were stunned that a pure blooded Fairy would stoop to marry a human man, however handsome and kind he might have been.

The Virthum weaver must have sensed this, for her face was masked by a fierce far-away expression and she stared right into the king's eyes. "Whether or not a man is born human or Fairy, that does not measure the worth of his Life. I knew the human knight for a long while before I married him. He was a knight, not of the treacherous King Wenceslas the First, but of a Being who ruled his Life, and whom he called the Great One. Yes, Council, I married one of the Shaddai-Trusters and loved every moment I spent with him. Call me odd; call me crazy and disrespectful to our ancient customs...call me anything, but I loved this knight and knew his heart like no one had ever understood it. Eventually I became a one of the Shaddai-Trust." The Fairies gasped with one breath. This was madness! The Fairy woman before them was confessing things of her past no other Fairy would have dared to speak loud. But the king looked about his Council with such a ferocious face that they were hastily reprimanded into a subtle sulk. They held such a fierce grudge against the humans, those dirty beasts that called themselves men.

The weaver gave a sneering laugh. "I am no longer of that faith. I was not strong enough to bear such pain as came upon me soon after my conversion to the Hinterlanders." Fiddlis bit her bottom lip and looked with sympathy at the broken-hearted Fairy woman sitting on the marble floors with bowed head. She thought she saw a single sparkling tear course down the down wrinkles, but perhaps it was her restored sight playing tricks upon her. "One dark midnight, the human kind came and stole away my children." A gasp of rage ripped through the Fairy Council. This was appalling. The worst offense one could possible commit! The Virthum weaver nodded grimly and raised her eyes to the king. "If there be any way to aid the innocent, we must surely grasp it. If only to avenge my dear stolen children, please help the poor human boy."

Fiddlis paid no attention to the tears rolling down her flushed cheeks. It was all so pitiful, so sad that she suddenly leapt up and faced the king, unafraid of his steady black gaze.

"I want to help the boy," she shouted. "The King of the Lands is bad and his Life is being lived wrong. We must help the innocent!"

A free, wild smile broke apart the king's austere face and he called of the guards standing at the ready outside the door.

"Tell our army to ready their weapons," he said.

Only Fiddlis saw the fiercely happy smile that rent the Virthum weaver's face as she caught up her cloak and disappeared again into the putrid swirling mists invading the sunny Riverland.

Conan sensed it. Something was wrong, very wrong with the Lands.

He rolled over on his hard, uncomfortable cot and rested his chin on his long fingers. He felt again the numbing prick in his hands; he had been playing for Northumbrio's dark harsh voice all morning. Never had he shown himself, the master, that day, but the hot breath had been searing and the young minstrel's face was still hot from it. Why was the master so angry this day? Something was indeed quite wrong. In just the past several days Conan had served Northumbrio in his mountain peak stronghold, amid the snow and the foul stench that smelled nearly pleasant to his dulled senses now, his lute music had worked on his mysterious master like a magic charm. Indeed, only that morning Northumbrio had snapped at his music, asking if Conan was a magician in truth. Conan had forced back a loud laugh at the notion and had bowed his head to stare at the cold clear marble in meek servitude, muttering some praise for the master's wit. Whatever rebellion he had felt when first taken to Northumbrio's home had been burnt out and washed down with the all-encompassing sheerness of his master's dark magical powers. It was a strange thing, was magic. Conan remembered faintly the tunes he used to play, of brave knights and graceful princesses, of courageous deeds and gentle lullabyes whispered into a small child's sleepy ear...of good magic. Yet whenever he attempted to play something of that nature or to force his weary burned mind to refresh itself with something regarding wholesome and good things, Northumbrio's reeling power struck his senses and he quickly vanquished whatever bad thought had been in his mind. Conan was pleased to serve a master who gave his recognition for his talents and who taught him the right way to live his Life. It was almost like a dream, this wonderful pleasure that seeped into him at the master's long low purring grin. He could feel the approval in Northumbrio's shudderingly huge essence. It gave him joy to feel it; so he kept on with his work, his work amongst the darkness that was growing gray instead of black to his twisted mind, and minded not the crazed uttering of the newer captives who looked at him in horror. Once he had overheard a new guard stammering under Northumbrio's painful power, wondering aloud to himself why the stronghold minstrel could bear to give up the sweetness of his past Life. Conan felt the master's pleasure as he had laughed long and loud at that. Coming from the shadows, startling the guard, he quoted Northumbrio himself in saying that he had no Life before his service to the dark powers. Indeed, why call them dark? They were good and right! They were pleasing to the master, that was all that mattered to Conan anymore, was pleasing his master, going about his work in such a way as to never feel that terrible pain in his mind again.

Slowly, oh so slowly Conan was slipping from the kind, patient grasp of goodness. He was forgetting, by his own will, everything his dear little mother had taught him, ever good and right and just notion he had allowed to surge through his beautiful lute music. His music was not his anymore, it was Northumbrio's. The master made him play until blood lay upon the worn strings from Conan's long tired fingers, until the sweat dripped down his face and his breath came hard and quick. Then, and only then, would the great dusky duke let him stop and return to his quarters. Usually Conan was too weary after one of these tortuous sessions that he never left his room until it was time to play again. He would not stir from his cot, he would not eat a bite. Strange thing, but the mysterious little girl with stringy gray hair and bandaged hands would bring him his meals on a tray every meal time. Rarely did he eat it, but the girl was faithful. Conan had learned to pay her no heed, even in such a short time as he had been at the stronghold of his new dark master, yet...yet every now and then, despite a prickle of pain in his useless burned-out mind, Conan wondered why the young bland girl persisted in showing him forbidden kindness.

There came a timid knock at the door. Conan did not bother to answer, for the girl did not bother to wait, but opened the door anyway. "I have brought you your dinner," said the girl. Seldom did she speak! Her voice was soft and sad. Conan turned in surprise to stare at her. She fidgeted and shifted her slight weight from one foot to the other under his gaze.

"Why do you do this?" the young minstrel asked. The girl looked up, a rare spark of something like hope alighting in her colorless eyes. For that was what Northumbrio's power did; it not only burned out the old Life, no matter how strong the victim was, but also flushed out any color in the old self. The girl, strangely enough, seemed not to be affected by the painful numbing as Conan was; he did not know that the girl was possessing of a unique soul that could not be touched by the hideous powers; her body might be ravaged, her spirit broken, but Evil would not have her soul.

"I do not want you to live your precious life like this," the girl answer shyly. At the minstrel's beck, she sat down upon his hard cot.

"How do you mean, my life?" asked Conan curiously. Without meaning to, he began to eat the tasteless food.

"You have no idea what Northumbrio really is, do you?" asked the girl. Conan shrugged.

"He is my master, the ruler of the dark arts...a mighty man and a strong unperishable being." He stopped and frowned at the girl nodded sadly.

"Do you not see how far you have let your soul slip into Darkness?" she asked gently. Carefully she fingered the sharp silver nails stuck into Conan's heavy boots. He snarled and jerked his foot away. "I am one of a sect of outcasts, who will not let their souls be touched by Evil. Not by ourselves do we do this, but we are aided by the Great One and live in hopes that his Son, who will be called Shaddai and born to a pure one of the Lands, will be our Redeemer and deliver us from the grasp of Evil and the tyranny of he who calls himself King of these lands."

Conan was stunned into silence, his meal forgotten. Surely, these were treacherous and dangerous words! He expected to see the girl fall into writhing agony at Northumbrio's onslaught of ferocious power, but she remained still, blinking at him through suddenly bright eyes.

"I am a Shaddai-Truster. My father is their leader, Gabriel. We have been cast from the Lands, cursed to live on the edge of the king's power...but we serve a higher and greater King."

Conan looked around as if fearful that someone would hear him when he said, "Tell me more, child."

For the next hour, the minstrel listened to the little girl explain her faith. He also learned that she had been a lute-player as well, but because of her unfaithfulness to the powers of the Evil One, her hands had been burnt so that he could no longer pluck the strings. Conan's blackening heart was mad to listen closely to every word she said. He was hungry for this. No instrument of black magic nor Evil could quench this thirst, he was finally coming to realize what he had become. A puppet, a toy, a beast with no feelings and no self-will, no love for the Life that could be his if he was strong and discerning enough to grasp it and never let go, at any cost. Evil's pain grew to a throbbing ache inside his head as his eyes lighted with joy at the girl's speaking. Yes. Yes, this was what he needed, what he had been needing his entire life...but could the girl's Great One forgive him his terrible sins against the Life He offered?

"Yes!" cried the little girl with delight, when asked. "The Great One is willing to forgive anything you might have done! Indeed..." and her voice grew sadly soft, "...He once offered Northumbrio the beautiful life He now offers you, but the Evil had consumed his very being and he was too arrogant to grasp the wonderful gift. The Great One offers it freely to all, but few accept it." Conan nodded soberly. Evil was so strong! Goodness seemed so weak at times...but not now. Now, Conan's old Life was surging back through his veins, making the pain grow fiercer and fiercer...but he cared not.

"Little child," he said hastily, lest the pain slur his speaking, "I long to be guided to the heart of your Great One. I wish to become one of the Shaddai-Trusters." The girl collapsed into sobbing and together, in the dark cold room filled with the stench of Evil that suddenly became apparent to Conan's restored senses, he accepted the Life of the Great One and the black Evil fled from his mind. The pain still exploded strong in his head, but it was not so horrific as it had been. Somehow Conan could bear it better. He was a new man.

The little girl laughingly wiped at her damp eyes. "If only my father, Gabriel, could see you now!" she grinned. "He would be so pleased. I...I..." and she broke again into sobbing, broken-hearted crying now, "I wish I could see my poor dear father. Is there no way I can escape Evil and run for love?"

Conan grew serious and walked to the window, looking out with a stern expression. Dare he? So quick after his conversion? It might kill him. Suddenly the love for the broken child sitting lonely on his cot and the amazing grace that had infused his very being spread out into a small smile.

"Yes," he said, turning around to face the sobbing child, "there is a way. Go and ready yourself and then meet me by the front gate. Fear not, ask no questions, and hurry!"

An hour later the little girl met Conan by the gate. No one was about, the mess hall was reverberating with loud laughter and beast-like feasting. Only a few guards milled about playing cards; no one noticed a little girl hiding a pouch of provisions under her cloak walking beside Northumbrio's minstrel. Conan shivered against the steadily growing warning pain in his head and the cold needles of ice driving at his face. He knelt and embraced the little girl tightly.

"Thank you," he whispered into her ear. "The Great One has used you to guide me to Him. May He make His face to shine upon you in all glory...and may the Redeemer save us all."

The girl gave him a look of such fondness and hope that it tore at his heart and wiped out the pain momentarily. He opened the gate for her without a sound, the faint creak lost in the wintery winds, and watched as her small dark figure, running tall and proudly away, vanished into the night.

Suddenly from behind him came a frenzied shout. The girl was lost to sight, thanks be to the Great One, as Northumbrio himself came striding from his castle, scaring the guards at their card games and allowing his heavy black cloak to billow out behind him as a fiery blaze ignited his dark red eyes.

"Traitor!" he screamed, his deep voice harsh and grating. Conan stood tall under the onslaught of pain hit his senses in sickening waves that sought to double him over and crumple him to the ground...yet he remained standing, the love of the Great One and the promise of His Son still hot within his soul, as Northumbrio stormed to him and caught his collar in one rough meaty fist.

"How dare you defy me, your supreme master!" he shouted in his face. Conan nearly yelled at the blast of withering flames hit his face and blackened his cheek. Could the Great One's strength last forever under the terrible torments that assuredly awaited his "treachery"? Yet perhaps the hour of perfect peace and joy he had experienced basking in the new Life budding within his soul was worth anything Northumbrio could wreak upon him.

"Stupid little miserable worthless dog!" Northumbrio followed this tirade with a wave of cursing as he dragged Conan around the jagged black castle and shoved open a hidden door in the huge gray flagstones. Conan gritted his teeth as a slap of the death-stench hit his face. Northumbrio slammed the door behind him, enveloping them both in darkness, and threw Conan to the ground. Conan grunted as his body hit slimy scraping stones. He nearly lost his grand thinking when he recognized the smell and deep pitch darkness of the dungeon.

"Great One, help me!" he prayed as Northumbrio's fiery heat wrapped around his helpless body like a searing, acidic cloak. "Help me to bear it."

Rhody wondered what was happening to her brother.

The late night winds were piercing the strong hide door in her tree and she shivered, not only because of their eerie stinking chill but also from the memory of that strange young man who had sought her out in the shallow ravine. Who was he? Why had he come? No one hardly ever used the King's highway, it was too long and too close to the Hinterlands for the comfort of most Lands-people. To see such a promising soul wandering by himself was an odd thing indeed, and to see kindness in the eyes of a stranger was even more surprising. As much as she hated to, Rhody could feel that a protective hedge had grown about her heart. It would not let her trust anyone, and this displeased her. Why was she unable to accept the strong hand that had been held out to her? Rhody wished more than anything that she could learn to receive help with grace instead of forever scorning it as dangerous or foolish. She knew, deep down beyond her mind and common sense, that there would be a day when she would need help and could no longer mistrust a stranger if a stranger offered that vital help.

Rhody ground up some precious peppermint, hobbling about her hollow tree home, and, after stoking the fire with a cedar branch, sat down upon her cot and rubbed the peppermint paste onto her raw ankle, after wiping away the blood with a dampened cloth from the dirty snow outside. She let a smile stretch her dry lips as the cold tingle spread over the aching sprain, fighting away the pain and brining a numb soothing sensation. It felt wonderful. She wriggled her toes with the delicious pleasure and for a while, forgot that her precious older brother might at that moment in the night, lie dead in the midst of those who despised him, that she was alone and wounded, that once again she could not let herself trust something new and strange.

Lorn scratched his head, standing awkwardly outside the tall wide hollow tree, peering at the loosening hide flap.

He was new to these sorts of things. He should not have been assigned this task. He did not know a thing about how approach one who had so openly scoffed at his help. Driving his fist into his palm in a useless, hapless gesture, Lorn threw back his broad shoulders, set his mouth into a frozen smile, and cleared his throat loudly.

The only thing that answered him was the night winds howling through the smoky gray trees, threatening to jerk his cloak from his back. A hot flush arising in his face, the young soldier tried again.

"Ho, young maiden!" he called out.

Rhody was wrenched from her reverie by the sound of a deep young voice outside, speaking above the battering winds. She gasped and whirled around. No, the hide flap was still in place, but then another call came to her ears.

"Healer within the tree, answer me!"

Rhody felt the pain of her ankle flood back in, defeating the peppermint coolness, and she gritted her teeth. Feeling her leathern boot for her little silver dagger, the hilt shaped like a horse's proud rearing head, and suddenly felt foolish. Here she sat, just thinking about trust and the merits of kindness, and she was already feeling the barricade about her wary soul rise up again. She felt sweat prickle on her forehead and the little crackling fire was suddenly too hot. It wold take time, she reasoned with herself, but somehow she could learn once more to love and trust. The least she could do, that night without her dear brother, was take the first step. Life must go on.

Rhody pulled the fastens from the hide door and shoved the flap aside. There stood the tall handsome stranger, out in the night, the firelight from inside playing in his longish sandy brown hair and glinting in his single silver earring. Rhody smiled shyly at him, trying to fight down suspicion and distrust that was waring within her soul.

"Forgive my rudeness earlier," she said, stepping to one side to allow the young man into the tree house. Still unsure of this new wild freedom, Rhody let the hide flap hang loose, in case she felt the need to run away. The dagger hidden in her boot felt strong and secure as the man's presence filled the interior of her home and his lean shadow danced on the warm brown walls.

"Please, sit down there on the cot," she offered. "It is late and you must be tired. Have you eaten?"

Lorn felt his stomach growl but he shook his head, still ill at ease. He sensed the girl was only trying to be polite.

"Thank you, but I have. You...you have a fine home here on the highway," he stammered. The beautiful young healer bent her long brown neck in a nod.

"Yes," Rhody answered the young man, "my brother....my dear brother...and I have lived here since our late childhood, ever since we were cast out by the Lands-people of the village-kingdoms of Crescent and Warwick."

Ah, thought Lorn, stroking his stubbly chin, now we make progress. He leaned forward, his slate gray eyes boring right into the healer's. "Why were you and your brother cast out?" he asked gently, trying to keep his voice in a kind rumble. Yet it was hard, when all he really wished to do was gather the information he needed and bolt from the tree.

Rhody was silent for a moment. Perhaps if she told the young man her darkest memory, she could trust him more fully and thus learn to entrust her tender soul to that which she was always fighting. She heaved a sigh and looked into the dark gray eyes.

"We refused to conform to the King's laws," she answered softly.

Lorn sat back on the hard little cot, blown away by this. Why would someone so beautiful and skilled wish to throw away her life by defiance? For not conforming was punishable by scoffing that made the Life of the victim unworthy of being lived. Yet he saw in the bright green eyes before him a spark of something like fierce, vague joy. He realized she did not regret her decision, even though it had made her and her brother, apparently so dear to her, outcasts of civil society.

"I..." began Lorn, something sympathetic in his voice as if he could somehow comfort the girl, but then he choked it down. She did not want comfort; she was glad and proud of her choice and her perseverance to remain true to the urgings of her soul. This was so strange, so seldom heard of that Lorn hardly knew what to make of the whole thing. "I see you are surprised," said Rhody. She began to feel at ease, somehow. This man, though daunting with his sandy brown hair hanging in his eyes as if to hide them and his long legs crossed up against his chest, did not seem as great a threat as she had at first thought him to be. Perhaps he really meant well. Rhody was thinking on these things when all of a sudden the young man's face was overtaken by a dark shadow.

I cannot persuade her to join Wenceslas, he thought to himself. Such devotion to personal morals cannot be vanquished even by means of earthly pleasure, not in one so spirited. Lorn knew he would be a fool to try otherwise and tempt her to sin and risk her reputation, outcast though she may be, for something she adamantly loathed. He looked into her vibrant green eyes, expecting to see the familiar hatred of the King, but instead saw something like pity. His breath hissed through his teeth when we realized it was pity for him, he who was too weak to stand up for his own beliefs and for something better than what the King offered.

Rhody watched the young man. He was smart, she realized, smarter than most. She could see the inner battle in his soul. He was struggling with his set values, his beliefs, his morals. Quietly she got up to scoop him out a bowl of stew from the small fire before her. The rudely carven wood spoon clinked merrily against the dark black kettle as she put it down and handed the hot bowl to the young man. She did not even know his name, but she sensed he needed help and she sat down opposite him, ready to give it to him. Nearly all of the old mistrust had been flooded away by the sight of his troubled gray eyes, the dampness on his trembling palms as he gulped and muttered a thanks for the stew.

"The King is wrong in the ways he tempts his people to do evil for him, as if it was a good thing to betray one's fellow man, a good thing to go against what he believes. The King was not always like this." Rhody smoothed her long rough homespun skirt of dark plain brown, and sighed as she heard the foul wind blow outside. "No. No, he use to be a good king, one whom the people of the Lands could trust and look up to. Yes, he was young, but so was his father when he first came to power upon the throne of the Lands. Yet because Wenceslas has allowed his heart to be consumed by thoughts of greater power, some sort of evil that has taken over his being and which has made him evil himself as a result, he had led the people who once could trust him astray. They have become as beasts instead of men."

Lorn shuddered with the eerie truth in the strange healer's words. He hardly felt when she pressed a hot wooden cup of tea into his hand. Involuntarily he took a sip and somehow relished the way it scalded down his parched throat. He was not brave enough. No indeed, Lorn the young soldier of the King, blindly following what he had known all along to be something wrong and bad. Yet the looming blackness of a death sentence had pushed him into following evil commands from evil people.

Death. What a dark word, a word without hope. Lorn was not ready to die. He had spent all his life being a puppy, a mere lump of clay in the hands of the wrong potter, a stupid sheep in the fold of the wrong shepherd. This concept, now that he was man enough to admit it to himself, terrified him and made him suddenly jump up, slinging the soup and tea across the room, and grasp the healer's shoulders in one last desperate attempt to save his Life.

Rhody shouted in rage as the strange shook her. "Submit to His Majesty!" he snarled in her face, his breath smelling of the vegetables she had put into the stew. "Let him rule your Life as he has ruled mine." The man tore aside his long green cloak to reveal the King's emblem emblazoned upon the breast of his tunic. "I have been commanded to persuade you to join the King's illustrious forces." The man suddenly sank to his knees. "They wanted me to play upon your womanly instincts. But I see now you will let no one take away that which you must treasure within your soul. Never lose your spirit, outcast; Life can be sweet if one only remembers there is more than Evil in the Lands." With a broken sob, the young soldier darted out the door.

Rhody was not ashamed that she had let herself trust him. He was confused, that was all. She got up, her fingers straying from the horse-head hilt of her dagger still hidden within her boot, and watched the long green cloak snap in the darkening night wind as the soldier retreated into the forests across the highway. Suddenly she was filled with an incredible peace. A rich, deep voice within her soul spoke and said to her, "Be merry, dear child of My heart, for you have remained pure and strong, and have guided the hand of the young soldier once closer to My sword of truth. Because you have proven faithful and have not forsaken Me, even though you do not yet know Me fully, you will be chosen amongst all the women in the Lands to bear My Son, who will redeem you all."

Rhody groveled upon the floor in awe, fearing this great strange voice. Was this the beginning of what the strange outcast Shaddai-Trust called the Redemption? How, then, could she be a part of it, not being one of that faith?

"My dear son," continued the voice, "Who will be sacrificed for truth and life and love, and Who will save My people from their sins in which they have stumbled into. You, My dear child, will bear this, My Son, the Redeemer. You will give birth to Him in the village-kingdom of Crescent and Evil be be conquered."

"B-b-but how can I bear a child?" Rhody whispered, suddenly fearful. "I am not married. And why have You chosen me, only a poor healer and an outcast, to do Your glorious work? I am not even sure the Great One of the Shaddai-Trust exists."

A warm long chuckle sounded in her soul. "My dear child, have faith and you will soon know Me."

The voice faded away, leaving Rhody lying in her hollow tree by the side of the highway...completely stunned, confused, and yet somehow more peaceful than she ever had been.

Wenceslas gripped the sides of his portable throne, his pale face twisting with livid rage. Melchior paused, the whip swinging in his hand dripping blood onto his fine silken sandals, watching the Shaddai-Trust rally themselves against the Lands-people. Usually they were a peaceful people who sought no feud with anyone, even towards the very people who had thrown them from the eye of decent society, but today there was a wild light in their eyes, something like righteous anger. It sickened Wenceslas and the King could feel not only sweat pouring down his flushed face and being dried by the stinking wind, which smelled absolutely sour that night, but the weak king also felt his new master's power prickle in his mind. He was terrified by the thought of disappointing Northumbrio, the duke whom he himself had exiled. Wenceslas knew the horrible penalties for rebellion given out, sometimes by the master himself. He shuddered to think what might happen to him if he failed to do away with that rebel, that silly boy hanging bloody at the post next to the young Shaddai-Truster. How could those people have so much courage? The King stroked his short beard nervously, his sterling eyes darting about the crowd, hating the trembling coward he had been reduced to. He was wrenched from his thinking when a snapping voice said "Let the innocent go."

"He refused to abide by the King's law," Melchior said coolly, his icy blue eyes kindling bright upon the tall man holding a sword aloft, poised for battle. Young impetuous fool, he would soon learn the weight of the King's power, if Melchior had to show it himself! Yet now it was not only for the King, it was for Northumbrio, that dark spinning power that held everyone in a tight grip, that grasp of pure Evil that was seemed impossible to escape from.

"A man should be able so follow the urgings if his own soul!" shouted the Hinterlander. His eyes blazed fiercely but Melchior merely tossed aside the whip and slowly walked down to stand face-to-face with the man.

"Yet you outcasts yourselves have a leader. Pray explain."

"Gabriel is no leader," the man snarled, "he is a teacher, inspired by the Great One, Who will one day descend and destroy all Evil once and for all and restore His Life back to us!" The crowd muttered at these words. What if they had been wrong all this time? Wenceslas groaned and suddenly slouched down in his throne as a blast of ferocious pain ripped through his head. "Kill them all!" came the sneering command. Wenceslas weakly held up one hand and screamed above the muttering crowd and the choking dark dust rising from the poisoned ground, "K-k-kill them! Kill them all, right now!"

The King could only sit helpless, the pain pounding in his head, as the Fairies slew his guards and gently untied Skerry from the post, bearing him away into the darkness. Melchior screamed "No!" and tried to leap for the retreating Fairy warriors, but he was too late. The Shaddai-Trust ran through the crowd and freed little Timothy. Wenceslas was horrified. His people just stared at the new kind of justice unfolding before them. Had they been wrong all this time?

"Master, I have failed you!" cried Wenceslas.

"Indeed, you have!" roared that terrible smoky voice, and such a pain as Wenceslas had never known exploded throughout his whole body, as if he were enveloped in flames. The Lands-people just stood in the dark and watched their King fall to the ground, dead and heirless. Melchior gasped, his face a deathly ashen pallor, and whirled around, grabbing a bow and arrow from a fallen guard, and wildly aimed into the dark after the sound of running footsteps. But the Shaddai-Trust and the Fairies had disappeared with Timothy and Skerry. Melchior snarled and pushed aside several townsfolk, jumped onto his horse and galloped into the night, for the snowy peaks of his master.

Stara Underwild wrapped the Virthum cloak tighter about Fiddlis's shoulders.

"Thank you," Fiddlis grinned, her teeth chattering, her nose wrinkled against the terrible heathland smell. It had never been as strong, so it seemed. She leaned back into Stara's warm motherly embrace as she rode in front of her on their great black steed. The horse pounded the marshy earth with his powerful hooves as the Fairy and the little girl, piercing the blackness with her wonderfully restored sight and wondering if the little boy named Shaddai from her dream had not had anything to do with it, rode hard through the midnight in the direction of Fiddlis's highland cottage.

Auntie bent her pale cheeks to her roughened palms and sobbed again. How longs would these hot tears persist? Somehow she no longer cared about it, she no longer cared about anything now that her precious adopted niece had been snatched from her, no doubt by the terrible tee-beasts spoken about in hushed voices, the evil Yule. During a rumored attack, only several days ago, Auntie and Fiddlis's shaggy dog, Puppy, had been forced to leave without a glance back. No one even gave little Fiddlis a thought, and no matter how Auntie struggled, she had been unable to tear free of the frenzied crowd. They had traveled far into the highlands and had hid in a cave for many dark, cramped hours until finally the eerie essence seeped away from the fresh highland winds and they felt safe to return to their cottages. Auntie had grabbed Puppy up and had hurried home, fearing the worst. Thankfully their cottages had not been touched by man nor beast, but Fiddlis was nowhere to be found. Many tears had been shed for her since that terrible afternoon when the highlands seemed to echo with the memory of her cheery laughter, when the skies seemed dull without those blank blue eyes staring and yet not seeing into the vast heavens.

Puppy whined and shook his tail, his soft brown eyes fixed to the wooden door. Auntie gasped and looked up as a quiet knock came at her door. She held up her rough homespun skirts above her ankles as she arose and, wiping her red eyes dry of her heart-broken tears on a lacy handkerchief, slowly reached for the knob and turned it.

Fiddlis leaped into her Auntie's arms with a wild happy shout. "I can see!" were her first words back home. The dark night swirled red and black, evil and deadly, above a joy that could only result from love. The winds howled and covered up Puppy, who was yipping after a tall graceful figure riding away to the Riverlands on a great black stallion. Stara had never felt such joy as had been kindled in her heart that night.

Lorn wrapped his arms around a tall white aspen tree as the soft morning lights began to pierce golden through the treetops. His silver earring glinted as the light touched upon it, and his slate gray eyes glittered as the sparkle from the golden rays burning upon the frosted pine needles jumped into them.

What kind of man was he? Weak, broken, lost to hope, without Life. The tears came fast and scalding down his tanned cheeks and Lorn sank to the ground with the weight of all he could have done to resist Evil came crashing down upon him. Suddenly he heard a crack of twigs behind him and huddled inside his green cloak, hoping to blend in with the forests.

"Child, why are you crying?" said a gentle elderly voice. Lorn looked up and saw an old man, carrying a stave and wearing a white homespun garment, one arm about the thin shoulders of a small girl, standing before him. The little girl's hands were bandaged and her hair was straggly, but her face shone with an uncommon light, rarely seen in the Lands for all the suffering the King had brought upon his people.

"I am crying because...because I have failed my creator, whoever that may be."

Gabriel looked down at his daughter and they smiled at each other. "I think we might be able to help you."

"The King is dead!"

The shocking words came as a sharp report through the soldiers' camp. Gorn snorted in his sleep and scrambled to his feet, quickly combing his meaty fingers through his scraggly red beard. The officer came striding from his tent, his eyes frenzied, to stand staring at the breathless messenger.

"The King Wenceslas the Second is dead! We must make ready for battle in the Lands, for now the twin village-kingdoms and their surrounding lands are without a ruler."

Northumbrio paced back and forth. His breath shot flames, his eyes were sharpened to a blazing light, his huge black hands twisted into fists. Conan lay upon a rude wooden table before him, his ankles and wrists shackled to the sides. "My powers..." rasped the exiled duke, "...it seems they are waning in the wake of something...well, greater."

Conan smiled to himself. He knew what power was overtaking the dark master; the Great One was working not only in his personal life but also those of the Lands-people. Northumbrio could feel it and it drove him mad. His power must not be trampled out by some sect of outcasts and fools! Yet here was this minstrel, smiling into his very face, not seeming to notice the heat of his breath nor the flickering red furnace cut into the blackened dungeon walls, adorned with long sharp pokers heating in the flames. He opened his mouth to give a shout of pure rage, hating the sight of the helpless minstrel smiling into the red-lighted shadows. Yet right then the dungeon door crashed open and a tall, spidery man came rushing in.

"Master, you have killed the King!" Melchior shouted. "What is your plan? Now the Lands-people are without a King, they are frenzied with fear! You must access your full powers now, my lord; call up the Yule, gather the King's old soldiers, and do battle against this illegal uprising of...Goodness." Melchior spat the last word upon the floor. His bright icy eyes darted around the interior of the dungeon and he saw Conan shackled to the table.

"Another rebel?" he sighed, suddenly very weary. Northumbrio grunted and turned, towering several feet above the King's old advisor, and said, "You tend to the unfaithful." He leaned closer, his scorching breath searing Melchior's ear, and hissed, "His music is the music of a traitor; assure he will never be able to play it again." Northumbrio turned and stomped from the room, letting the heavy metal door crash behind him. Melchior turned around and sneered down at the minstrel.

"It seems the master has disapproved of your playing," he said. Draconic fire burning in his blue eyes, Melchior picked up the cool part of one of the fire pokers.

Conan lay perfectly still, feeling the heat of the furnace play over his defenseless body, his soul at peace. The Great One knew his faith. New though it was, what Conan had found through the little girl was some wild kind of hope, a sweet, deep joy that could never be stomped from his heart.

Melchior grabbed Conan's hand and pressed the smoking heat to the fire-flame brand upon his fingertip. "You are no longer worthy to bear the master's mark." Conan felt the blaze upon his finger and gritted his teeth. "Praise...praise the Great One, then!" he managed through the pain. "For He and He alone is my new master; everything I am is His." Conan was hit with a wave of Northumbrio's incredible power, but somehow it seemed bearable. The Great One was indeed helping him.

Melchior gave a strangled shout of frustration and grasped Conan's hand. With beast-like strength, he curled the long minstrel's fingers around the searing metal and relished Conan's cry of agony. He would no longer play for anyone, not even his precious Great One.

"Your...will," gasped Conan as his other hand was mangled by the poor twisted soul at his side, "Your will be...done."

Rhody pushed aside the hide flap, feeling the dagger in her boot pressing against her leg like a foul, morbid promise, and was surprised to see the young soldier standing before her, his brown face streaked with tears, a new wild kind of joy piercing his dark slate colored eyes. Behind him was an old man and a young girl, their arms about each other.

"Young maiden..." he stammered, cheeks burning red, "I was wrong to conform to something which I should have been defying all along," Lorn managed to get out. He bowed his head. "I hope you will forgive me, but if that it asking too much..."

Rhody felt peace and love flood her heart. Yes, this was right. This she could understand, a new master she could serve. The Great One had come into her heart and had washed away all bitterness. She carefully pulled the dagger from her boot and threw it upon the ground before the young soldier.

"Will you not come in?" she asked him.

Lorn smiled and the peace in his heart was worth a million tears.

"Are you one of the Shaddai-Trusters?" asked Rhody of the old man once the four had settled themselves down for an early morning meal. Outside a fresh springy wind was rushing through the tree's leaves, making them whisper, and a celestial golden light was touching upon every ice-coated branch, making the Lands sparkle like a royal crown. Gabriel nodded. "That I am, young healer," he answered her. Rhody nervously wrung her hands, unsure of how to tell him what the Great One had supposedly said to her.

"I...I have heard something....you all need to hear," Rhody said, and suddenly the memory of that great kind voice inside her soul, speaking to HER, a simple healer, erased all fear. She threw back her head, black hair falling in smooth tangles about her elbows, green eyes bright and eager.

"The Redeemer is coming...and He is to be born of me."

Northumbrio stood in the midst of a dark wood. Black boiling mists arose all around him and the setting moonlight glowed down on his bare black shoulders, making him look like an eerie phantom. The huge man slowly raised his corded arms up to the black unholy heavens and muttered some ancient word. For the first few moments there was still silence, and then all of the sudden a slow creaking groan sounded all throughout the woods. A sharp white smile appeared on Northumbrio's dark wide face, his bight eyes glittered madly.

They were alive. They would serve him for this, the final straw, the last battle.

The trees before him slowly unwound themselves from their sleeping postures, the leaves shuddered and a slow hot wind blew on Northumbrio's face like living breath.

"Come," he said, his deep voice harsh with bloodlust, "come to me, and slay this uprising of Goodness."

"We hear and obey, master," said a sighing, wild voice, as if many voices had joined together in the words.

The Yule had awaken.

The wild winds were a swirling mixture of the sickening death-stench and a fresh kind of beauty that the Lands-people had known smelled since before Wenceslas the Second had been crowned. It tore with strong fingers at the long dark cloaks of the Fairy army and the simple rough homespun of the ramshackle Hinterlanders as they lined up for battle. Across the wide open field, dotted here and there with small white flowers soon to be trampled, the King's men from the woods and a ragtag bunch of enraged townsfolk shook their weapons and held them up to the twisted black and red sky. Evil had been abroad far too long; it was as if the clashing winds were a sign that it was coming to a climax.

The Fairies and men looked at each other, sharpening their swords upon their dull silver armor. Long had it been, time out of mind, when they had fought together side by side, as equals, instead of spilling one another's blood as rivals. Yet now, when they had to fight for the same cause, to push Evil back to its place, they praised fate (or the Great One, if they were of the Shaddai-Trust) for the chance to swing swords beside each other. The strange wind rippled about the scores of legs standing strong, staring across the muddy heath field, and through the long smooth hair of the Fairy warriors. The Shaddai-Trust stared straight into the eyes of the ones who had cast them out, but hatred refused to be kindled within the bright gaze. No, hate was not the answer, yet there came a time when battle was necessary. This, upon that day, was such a time.

Suddenly from the forests came a roaring growl that scattered the King's men to every side and deafened the side which claimed to fight for Goodness and truth and Life. The very ground trembled with the force of crushing footsteps and the hot poisoned wind sprang up and made the heathlands into a foul mushy mess that caused the Shaddai-Trust and the brave Fairy warriors, female archers as well as male sword-bearers, lose their footing and crumple into one another. There was confusion for several seconds as the sky was torn apart by a wicked clash of thunder and a spire of light arrowed down through the roiling reddish black clouds and touched upon the heathland...right at the feet of the Yule tree beasts.

Melchior unshackled Conan and shoved him to the ground, relishing his clenched breath as the burns across his palms sizzled and turned blackish. Yes indeed, that minstrel would never be able to make music with those hands again. The lute strings would break apart the wounds if he ever tried, and who would wish to cause himself further pain? Melchior sneered as Conan tried to rise to his towering height without the aid of his hands. Drawing back his fine sandaled feet the spindly wolfish advisor kicked the young minstrel hard in the side and paced around his collapsed figure.

"I do not have to tell you that I have complete power over your life now," Melchior snapped. He was surprised when the young man looked up, blinking through tears of excrutiating pain, and smiled. "My...life is in the hands...of the Great One," he gasped, "only my...body can be yours." Melchior gave a screech of rage at these words, for he knew them to be true. Even so, it maddened him that such a pivotal slave to Darkness had conformed and had resorted to the blatant, rebellious religion of the outcast Hinterlanders. His fist came quick and jabbing into Conan's face and Melchior smiled grimly when he saw the blood drip down the minstrel's face.

"Look where you Great One has brought you!" he barked, his voice made hoarse and rasping from the sulphuric air of the dungeon. "He has left you, boy, left you to cope with your wretched Life alone, in the darkness." Conan smeared the blood from his mouth and his eyes blazed in defiance to the words as Melchior grabbed him by the collar and pulled him from the dungeon. Taking a large string of keys from under the folds of his blue and gray robes, Melchior opened the dungeon door in the side of the heavy flagstone stronghold wall, and threw Conan out into the sharp wintry winds, slamming the door behind them.

"Then live it, boy; live your Life as an outcast who will never forget what a beautiful chance for easy servitude and lush comfort stood screaming his name over and over again into the perfumed breeze!" Melchior turned on his heel and left Conan standing outside the dungeon, his back stiff from the spread-eagle position on the hard table, his sensed whirling from all that had been said, and his hands bubbled with deep black scars. His fingertip, praise the Great One, was no longer marked with the dark flame shaped brand of Evil, but with the mangled wound of the outcasts, the steadfast Shaddai-Trusters, who would rather have their homes burnt and their bodies ravished than to recant their blazing, piercing, wildly sweet faith. To love, to live and not regret a single rebellion against what the soul knew deep down to be wrong...it was all worth it, all of the pain and the darkness and the taunting. Conan held his head high, the stinking winds slipping longing fingers through his thick curly hair, the astounded looks of Northumbrio's other followers boring into his back, all as he walked out the gate and into a ferocious blast of snow and death-stench, that sought somehow to hold him back from his decision. But no, Conan who would never again be able to play his precious lute again but who was blessed to carry it upon his back like a token of the false Life he had been offered, would never give up the Goodness he had found within the embrace of the Great One and the promise of the Redeemer, His Son.

"Let your grace fall upon the Lands soon, Lord," Conan breathed into the red black sky. It was then that the bolt of pure white fiery light ripped through the sky and touched down on the battlefield. Conan was in no battle; he was going home through the snow without his heavy black cloak nor the nail-studded boots to his dear little mother...and yet, he had indeed fought and won a kind of a battle, the battle against Evil to win and prevail!

Rhody and Lorn were promised to be married.

Gabriel and his little daughter, whom he called Rebekkah, had witness Lorn's tender promise that he was no longer of the King's men, but of the Trust, and he had vowed to protect Rhody from anyone who sought her harm. True enough, there had been an inward battle inside of Rhody's soul. Should she finally embrace that mysterious conversion that had taken the Lands by storm, and become of the Shaddai-Trust? Long had she fought whether or not she would be able to forgive the King of his wrongs. But the King was dead, and she felt a kind of an emptiness within her that tore at her heart. Wenceslas the Second would now never know the sweet peace, the awesome Goodness of the Great One. Convinced at that, Rhody, outcast and simple healer of the twin village-kingdoms, became of the Shaddai-Trust and told her companions of the wonderful promise the Great One Himself had made to her, that she would bear His Son, Shaddai. Now the joy bubbled up inside of her, spilling out in bell-like laughter and flooding her bright green eyes with all the intensity of the Great One's love for His Lands-people, flawed and confused and sometimes Evil though they were. He still loved them, He always would, and to doubt this would be a grave mistake. Rhody intended never to doubt peace and truth, and sweet beautiful Life again.

She and Lorn decided to move into the highlands. In her happiness, Rhody could finally accept that her dear brother Skerry had died defending what he knew to be true. Sometimes, to live a Life worthy of living was to give it up for the passion you pursued. There was nothing wrong or dishonorable in that. Rhody herself felt she could even forgive her dear brother's killer if it meant keeping the incredible joy that had invaded her soul.

She and Lorn packed up everything they had in the hollow tree house, after saying farewell to Gabriel and Rebekkah, who returned safely to the Hinterlands to live a long, peaceful and happy life.

Rhody was just pushing aside the thick hide flap for the last time, staring lovingly at the smoke-blackened walls of the wide tree room and the rich black earth underneath where her cot used to lay, when she heard the clink of sword sheaths and whirled around to face the bitter winds. There, borne between two Fairy men and trailed by a young boy with curly brown hair and big blue eyes, was her brother Skerry. His black hair hung limp in his weary eyes, he swayed upon his feet and blinked at Lorn when the young soldier appeared out of his home, but he was Rhody's brother and he was alive.

Rhody flew into her brother's arms and began sobbing tears of joy as she had never known. Skerry hardly noticed the blood still staining his entire back nor the pain that ripped up and down his spine as he wrapped his stiff arms around his younger sister and buried his nose in her smooth black tresses. The Fairies said not a word, but looked on for a moment or two and then disappeared into the turbulent winds as the sky cleared of its blackness and bloody trailing red, and the spear of light thrown down by the Great One, by His own hand, even, spread throughout all the Lands and brought a strange kind of peace and joy to the people as they had known long ago, and had all but forgotten.

After the jab of searing, writhing white flame had momentarily blinded the two rival armies from their rush, the forces of Evil, Northumbrio's men, the still-confused townsfolk from the twin village-kingdoms of Crescent and Warwick followed by the huge tree beasts called the Yule in hushes tones began running wildly towards the steadfast Shaddai-Trusters and the immovably stern Fairy army. It seemed that when the forces of Good, even though the Fairies did not believe in the Great One but perhaps could be convinced in the future, finally pushed their limbs to run to the great splintering clash they flew with winged feet. The sky, twisting with the onslaught of Light against the smeared Darkness that had so long pervaded and ruled the heavens, looked down upon the blood spilling onto the marshy heathlands and the glinting weapons of the two armies as they fought wild and ferocious as immortals for the justice and Goodness that had so long been stamped out by Northumbrio's icy cold powers. The exiled duke had become more than a tormented soul, more than a dreaded name to frighten weak-hearted Kings...he WAS Evil. He lived it, obeyed it, and let it consume him until he was possessing of powers far beyond that of any blinded follower. For the followers of Evil were blindly following it, and the words issuing from their lips was the mutated truth poisoned by lies far beyond recognition. The Lands-people knew not what was true anymore. The battle, so it seemed as the dark cloaks were ripped away and the life's blood dripped over the marshy grounds, was as if the people had grown tired of the lies that bound their hands together, rendering them helpless and mindless, mere puppets in a play, their strings pulled by the hands of Evil itself. Yet as the two armies fought and blocked offenses and stood strong and courageous by each other's sides, it became just that. They were fighting for truth, for love, for hope, and more Life. For the strength the Great One had given to them, yet the strength they could not find by merely running from trouble or trying to sort it out by themselves. Not since the Great War had such a wild fierce purpose surged through the vein of every warrior. They swung their swords and they fought for the side they had chosen. Many a Lands-people during that battle found themselves suddenly awed so by the bravery and the mercy of the Shaddai-Trusters, for they did not kill but merely wounded because the battle was necessary, that they turned around in the midst of the heavy breathing and the corded branches of the Yule as they crushed bodies underneath their roots and knocked dead anything in their path, and fought against Evil. It was more than a physical battle, it was spiritual. Even as the Good looked Evil full in the face as Northumbrio himself came riding down from his snowy mountain stronghold with a thousand riding behind his huge foam-flecked stallion, they did not flinch but fought the harder.

Suddenly, when the wet earth had been kicked up to the troubled skies and the blood and mud of both armies ran in streams over the heaths, Northumbrio gave a roaring scream and fell to the ground, writhing in agony. The two armies stilled, blood-stained weapons still held aloft, the wild scared look blazing in the Lands-people's haunted eyes, and all stared down at the fallen Enemy. His great black hands clenched in throes as some unseen torture plagued his soul.

"Goodness has won!" came the inevitable cry as the Lands-people and Northumbrio's once-faithful slaves ran in terror to the tall snow-cursed mountain. A second shaft of light, softer and kinder this time, came down and flooded out the Darkness that had for so long held the Lands in a strangling grip. The later afternoon sun came out from behind scudding blackened clouds and shone upon the upraised faces, lifted in song and praise to the Great One and even joined with a few rich Fairy voices, in a crown of blazing golden glory, melting the snow atop Northumbrio's mountain peak and kissing the heathlands with nutrients it had not partaken of for a very long time, or so it seemed.

Northumbrio reached up a hand. Melchior, who had been fighting alongside his supreme master, silver cloak flying in the now-fresh winds, came to the huge man's side and knelt at his nail-studded boots. He tried not to flinch as Northumbrio's breath burned against his face and blew the long gray hair from his stern high forehead.

"You..." gasped Northumbrio as the flames from his Evil spurted forth and singed Melchior's long hawkish nose, "you will be...forever endowed with the...ability to torture these miserable...souls who dared...defy me. Make them...suffer, demon, make them...suffer..." And with that, Northumbrio vanished into the swirling winds. All that was left of his existence was a lingering death-stench and a ring of curling gray smoke arising from the place where he had fallen. The Shaddai-Trusters and the Fairies looked about for Melchior, but he, too, had disappeared with his master into the sharpening wind. The Lands-people had all thoughtfully wandered to the twin village-towns of Crescent and Warwick, to ponder their spiritual value, or they had run away when the Light of the Great One, for surely it was He that had vanquished Evil upon that great day, to live their lives in fear and shadows.

Not a few Fairies went back to the Riverlands with newfound faith in the fabled Great One, for all long as He had seemed hidden from His people and leaving them to persecution and death, He had proved His supreme power to the forces of Evil and to the doubters. Evil would always be present; there was no way to defeat it by mere human powers, Evil was for the Great One to defeat in the Last Days of the Lands, according to His own time. In the meantime, there would still be trials and temptations. Such was Life. But now, even though the faithful Shaddai-Trust did not know it as they cleaned their blades, shook the hands of the Fairies with whom they had fused a companionship, and returned to the Hinterlands, there was hope. A burning, blazing, fierce hope that had alighted in one simple healer and which was destined to save every one of the Lands-people, the Fairies, the freemen and slaves, and the Shaddai-Trusters, who came to know and love and obey the Great One.

Eight and a half months later

The stars glittered above a motley crowd who were gathered about a small highland cottage. The moon fairies, their tiny whirling skirts floating suspended about their tiny legs, sang with high clear voices above the milling Lands-people gathered about the cottage. A young girl, with eyes bright from the restoration of her sight so many months ago in the Riverlands, knelt outside her home, her arms wrapped around a shaggy dog. Her adopted mother, Auntie, rested her hands which shook slightly from age upon Fiddlis's shoulders. It was a silent night, the wind blowed gently over the flowers growing upon the heathlands. Since the War for Truth all that time ago, many of the people who called the Lands their home had come to embrace the awesome faith of the Shaddai-Trusters. It kept them alive when all hope seemed lost, for Northumbrio was indeed living and thriving atop his snowy mountain once more, luring helpless fools who did not heed the urgings of the Great One into his ferocious blazing powers, marking many fingers with the dreaded black flame brand. Yet now, the Hinterlanders were accepted again into the twin village-kingdoms and they were able to show the Great One's love for the confused people of the Lands. Time would be spent encouraging, preaching...and yes, suffering, for the Last Days were not to come for a long while yet and faith must be sacrificed for it Life is to be lived to the fullest extent possible. Sometimes, to truly live Life is to die for it. The Great One held ever single soul, Fairy or Man, in His hand and He would not let anything happen to them that was not in His great will.

The Lands-people suddenly parted and made way for a tall rave black-eyed king to pass through them into the cottage where Rhody the healer, her black hair tangled but her cheeks flushed with joy, lay in a simple straw cot holding a little baby. It was the king of the Fairies who bowed before the suckling child, sweeping his long cloak behind him and looking up at Rhody with respect. Several Lands-people gasped but Lorn, Rhody's dear husband now, simply smiled. Gravely the fairy king drew from his robes a small blanket of Virthum Fairy cloth.

"I, myself, wove it for the Redeemer," came a startlingly strong female voice. Out of the shadows behind the Fairy king stepped the old Virthum weaver, her snowy white hair standing out like a curly cloud about her nut brown face, her blue eyes brilliantly fixed upon the tiny newborn child in Rhody's protective arms. "Great One forbid me to ever be worthy of the Child, His Son, wearing my cloth upon His body, but..." her voice trailed away as a tall boy came into the crackling firelight. Skerry had been living with his sister and her betrothed during the journey up into the highlands to live in Fiddlis's pleasant hilltop town, and even though the whip scars criss-crossing his back would never completely fade away, he did not mind the sudden jabs of pain because now he realized the Great One had kept him alive to serve greater purposes than he had been. Now he told stories of the faithful, about his own Life which the Great One had mercifully spared, and the wild wonderful Life that the Great One, the master of Goodness, held out in offering to anyone willing to come to Him.

The Virthum weaver slowly stood from her respectful bow to the Child and stared at Skerry. Was this her son?

"My...my son..." the old Fairy woman said in a broken voice. Skerry stepped to her and wrapped his arms about her shaking shoulders. After long last, the weaver had been reunited with her long-lost children. Rhody looked at her mother for a moment, then broke into a wide white smile. Sometimes utter passionate joy could not be expressed in mere words.

The Lands-people looked upon the big blue eyes of the Child, the promised Redeemer who had been born of a virgin healer, sitting happily in Rhody's lap and playing with Lorn's old silver earring, which he had taken off after accepting the Great One's love. Suddenly there was a stir and a very old woman with applish cheeks followed by a tall man entered into the warm open cottage, a fresh summery breeze following them inside. Conan felt tears course down his face as he beheld his Redeemer, that tiny pink-cheek baby waving small fists in the air like a warrior going to battle and raising his hands for blessing. Slowly he reached over his shoulder, with hands scarred from persecution and a face filled with peace, and unslung a battered wooden lute from his back. Unashamed to weep tears of awe and praise, Conan the minstrel laid his lute at the feet of the Child. Straightening again, he raised his voice in a song of praise to the Redeemer and His Father for His Goodness.

Rhody tipped her head back and gently kissed her husband. She felt like dancing, laughing, crying and staring silently at all the quiet faces around her, all at the same time. Finally hope had come to the Lands in a tangible, touchable way, and the hope now sat on her lap cooing happily in His clear baby voice. It was too Good to be true.

Slowly from the crowd came one of the Shaddai-Trust, the young man who had come into the Hinterlands that past year with so much pain and suffering cooped up inside of his soul and the memory of his dear wife's dying cries tormenting his soul, and knelt before the Child.

"I have nothing to give you," he said in a deep voice, husky with emotion, "but my love."

The Child turned to look at the man and at that moment understanding filled every heart there. They did not need to give the Redeemer anything, but their love. The man bowed his head and committed his Life to the Great One again, a second promise and one he would keep forever. No one could erase the magical joy felt that night as the Fairies danced upon the green heaths and the Lands-people lifted their hands in praise. Rhody, a simple healer and an outcast, had been chosen to bear the Great One's Son and she and her dear brother had been reunited with their mother. Fiddlis the young girl with a bush of sandy hair had been given her sight by the Child whom she now stared at, realizing that it was the little boy who had run with her in the fields of her dream in the Riverlands. The minstrel who could no longer play for showing love to a young girl, who now stood at the cottage door with Gabriel her father before going out into the night to declare the good news to all the Lands, sang with joy unsurpassed by anything he could ever feel again.

Yes, there would always be Evil in the Lands. Now there was Good, to grow and live and walk among it all, and to give His Life up for it someday. The secret symbol of the Shaddai-Trust, the imprint of a palm with a hole in the center, was symbolic of the death the Redeemer had been sent to die for the people. Not all would accept that gift. Yet if the people of the Lands and the Fairies all lived Life to the fullest, telling everyone they met about the wonderful gift offered to them no matter what they had done, if they would only fight for Good, against Evil, and never give up no matter what the cost, even if the price was their Life, then would not Life itself be more than worth living?

"What is his name?" asked a young boy. Rhody smiled across the cottage room at Timothy, her adopted brother, and said "The Great One, when He spoke to me all those months ago, said His name was to be called Shaddai."

Timothy slowly lowered himself to his knees and gently touched the Child on his tiny pink cheek.

"Welcome to the Lands, Shaddai, Who will save us all with Your Life."