Faerie Lord

Sixty-Eight

There were subtleties about his situation Henry didn’t understand.

They started with the ruined city. It was clear Lorquin’s people hadn’t built it. There was nothing about it in the tribe’s most ancient legends, with the sole exception of the legend telling how they found it. Henry heard it from Brenthis, the tribe’s main storyteller.

Long ago, Brenthis said, at a time when the world was lush and well watered, the Luchti were foodstuff for the savage race of Buth. They were held in pens or allowed to roam across great fenced estates, but each year in spring, two-thirds of their young were slaughtered and stored to feed the Buth.

One day a Luchti woman named Euphrosyne discovered a marvellous ark that allowed her to speak directly to Charaxes. Like the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament, Henry thought when Brenthis reached this part of the story. And Charaxes sounded just as bloodthirsty as Jehovah because he visited a Great Disaster on the Buth, which destroyed them entirely. This freed the Luchti, but dried the land so that it turned to desert and the Luchti became wanderers in the desert, always and ever in search of food and water. And that sounded suspiciously like the Exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt, Henry thought, frowning. It was spooky the way some things in the Faerie Realm reflected the history of his own world. But Brenthis was still talking and Henry dragged his attention back so he wouldn’t miss anything.

Thanks to the marvellous ark, Brenthis was saying, Charaxes journeyed with the Luchti and when they reached a desert flatland that seemed to hold no hope of life, they learned a secret practice of the mind that permitted them to alter certain aspects of reality. It was a difficult discipline that took them long months to perfect, but when they did so the entire tribe sank beneath the desert sands to discover the ruins of a mighty city, the like of which had never been seen by anyone before. And there, in the ruins of the city, they had lived ever since, though they roamed the desert wilderness on quests as Lorquin had done and to celebrate their release from slavery.

It sounded to Henry like the sort of legend that was a misunderstanding of actual events. Perhaps Lorquin’s people really had been held captive in the distant past. Perhaps their captors, the Buth, had been defeated in war or fallen afoul of some natural disaster. But who had built the city? And how was it maintained in this impossible bubble beneath the sand? How was it – even now, in ruins – supplied with light and air and copious supplies of water? Most mysterious of all, how had the Luchti found the means to reach it? Whatever mental discipline they used was far beyond Henry. When he wanted to travel to the surface, he had to be accompanied by Lorquin or some other obliging member of the tribe.

But the city wras only the start. He still could not understand how the Luchti survived. From everything he’d seen, there simply was not enough water, not enough food, not enough shelter to sustain them. Difficult enough for Lorquin and himself (and impossible without Lorquin’s special skills) but the Luchti, he discovered, was an extensive tribe. How did the desert support them? When he asked the question of Brenthis, the storyteller only shrugged and remarked, ‘Are we not as skilful as the vaettirs?’ Which was true enough in that the vaettirs and their draugr obviously survived as well, but not very helpful as an explanation.

Henry got no explanations for several other matters that concerned him either. The Luchti didn’t know why their skin was blue, beyond saying it was the ‘will of Charaxes’. (Henry’s own skin didn’t seem to be changing any more than it had when he first noticed a bluish tinge.) They didn’t know anything about the Analogue World, or Queen Blue and her Empire in the Faerie Realm. They didn’t know the name of their own country (it was just ‘The Wasteland’). They didn’t know how Henry had come to be in the desert or, far more importantly, how he might get back.

What they did know was that the tribe was overdue a celebration.

Lorquin was full of it. ‘It’s really my celebration, En Ri,’ he said. ‘Because they couldn’t hold it until I slew the draugr. But it’s not just about me. It sets the tribe’s song-lines for the next year and it gives thanks to Charaxes and everybody gets to eat a lot and dance and I might find a wife and -’

‘Wife!’ Henry exclaimed. ‘Lorquin, you’re only ten years old!’

‘I know,’ said Lorquin happily. ‘And Ino will consult the bones and Euphrosyne will speak with Charaxes and there’ll be drumming and everyone will drink much melor.’

Henry frowned. Euphrosyne? Ino was the squat man with tattoos and seemed to be some sort of witch doctor, but Euphrosyne was the woman who had found Charaxes’ mysterious ark at the very dawn of tribal history. ‘How old is Euphrosyne?’ he asked curiously.

‘Twenty years and seven months,’ said Lorquin promptly.

‘She’s not the same Euphrosyne who found the ark, is she?’

Lorquin favoured him with a strange look, if you were not my Companion, En Ri, I might think you were a little simple. Euphrosyne is the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the -’

‘I get it!’ Henry told him hurriedly. There was clearly some sort of priestly line going from the original Euphrosyne, passed from daughter to daughter in the service of Charaxes. He wondered if they’d preserved the actual ark. It would be interesting to see.

‘- of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter…’

Henry crept away and left him to it.