Feast of the Elfs Read online

  Gil listened, at first impatiently, and then with growing fascination. Here seemed to be a man who would answer his questions, who knew about the hidden world of which Gil’s mother spoke either in riddles, or not at all.

  Gil said, “How many species are there?”

  The voice chuckled. “The laws of nature, to them, are merely strong suggestions. They are not bothered by boundaries between kinds. The Moth family, for example, has mermaid and wolfman in their bloodline, not to mention Minotaur and satyr, swan-maid and fox-spirit, Nagas and Nephilim, Centaurs and cat-women, Borrowers and Brobdingnagians, Brollochan and Brownies, insufferable talking horses called Houyhnhnms, and just about every admixture you could imagine. I have heard of Cobwebs marrying ghosts and ghouls, diseases and delusions, and giving birth to abominations I will not describe; or Peaseblossoms marrying the seasons or the hours, or Mustardseeds, the stars. Love conquers all bounds.”

  “How can there be so much men do not know?”

  “Since I do not know how many mysteries are wandering Creation waiting to be found, I cannot say whether mankind knows a great proportion of them or small, neither can I explain the ratio.”

  “Why do the elfs hide from men?”

  “They love the darkness for the same reason men do: because their deeds are wicked.”

  “All elfs?”

  “Not all. The Old Ones recall brighter dawns, when they sprang shining and strong from the hand of the Creator and rollicked in the sea or rampaged among the clouds and stars, shouting for joy. Some regret the exile. Far too few.”

  “Who is Titania?”

  “Ask rather who she was. The empress and high queen of the elfs and fairest of all her wide realm, which is famous for the beauty of its beauties. She is lost, a fate too terrible to say, and still Alberec grieves and seeks her, paying no mind to the throne he has lost to his ungrateful and treacherous son. Titania is gone from the world and will not be reborn into it, nor shall any likeness of her return.”

  “Where do the elfs come from?”

  He heard another chuckle. “Where do the stars come from?”

  Gil tried to remember what he had half-heard in science class. “They were condensed out of a primordial gas cloud by gravity.”

  “If you say so. Well, for our purposes, the elfs were condensed out of a primordial gas cloud by the Fall of Man.”

  Gil frowned, cross. “Are you sure you are a police detective?”

  “I am, surely,” said the voice in a throaty tone, as if holding back a laugh. “But are you sure you know what police detectives do?”

  “Solve crimes.”

  “And what about crimes older than time and larger than the cosmos? Whose business is it to solve those?”

  More crossly, Gil said, “You must be part elf.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “They talk in riddles. I should know.”

  “But mine was one riddle whose answer you need to speak.”

  Gil was getting impatient. “What was the question again?”

  “Whose business is it to solve the metaphysical crime of men being the prey and playthings of elfs? Men cannot save themselves.”

  “It’s your business. You must be some sort of metaphysical police detective.”

  A sigh of disappointment sounded. “Ah, well. If you say so.”

  Gil leaned forward. “You wanted another answer?”

  “Did I?”

  “Stop answering every question with a question. It is really annoying.”

  “Is it?”

  “Stop that!”

  “I will, young man, if you answer me truly.”

  Gil took a breath and realized he had grown rude. He reminded himself of his manners and said, “I answer truly all questions I may answer, sir.”

  2. A Larger World

  The voice in the black room now took on a more serious tone. “Once there were wide expanses of wood and meadowland, oceans unsailed and mountains unclimbed, walled gardens, cities of alabaster and orichalcum. You were taught man has ruined these things with his industry and logging and hunting. It is not true. You are told that swiftness in ship and airplane makes all parts of the world reached in less time but that the globe is the same physical size it always was. Also not true. The portion of the Earth open to men has dwindled. The mist has merely covered more and more of the globe as the fay take and take all the goods things and good lands meant for man, leaving us the bones and gristle, and shrinking the world, leaving it dull and gray, lacking magic, mystery, wonder, and honor. It is a theft so monstrous that its sheer magnitude makes it invisible.”

  The voice paused, and the scope and cruelty of what had been done to man’s world began to sink in to Gil’s imagination.

  The man said, “Whose business is it to solve this crime?”

  Gil answered firmly, “Mine.”

  The man in the dark said nothing, but Gil could almost feel a look of warm satisfaction, an avuncular pride, issuing from the blackness.

  “Is that the right answer?” asked Gil.

  “If you say so. I mean that literally. Only one who truly wills this fight to be his can make it his. You are hired.”

  “Wait. What? You are not thinking I volunteered for something, are you?”

  The man laughed. “If you do not volunteer now, you soon will. It is in your nature.”

  “I don’t have any training. Real training, I mean. And no experience. And to be a detective, I would need to have papers, and be the right age, and be in the policeman’s union. Right? Since I cannot tell you my name, I cannot fill out any paperwork. What about boot camp? The police academy?”

  “Nothing is required for this line of work but willingness.”

  Gil was startled. “I have never heard of a job where you do not need any training or experience!”

  “I think you have.”

  “What line of work has no requirements but willingness?”

  “Martyrdom.”

  3. The Light

  There was a snap of noise, and Gil’s sharp eyes saw a tiny spark. In the light of the spark, he saw a large pair of callused and muscular hands breaking a fine necklace. Every link of the necklace flew apart, and turned into a bubble of tiny gold, then popped. The pendant of the necklace was a glowing object smaller than a credit card, made either of glass or mirror-bright metal, shining with an inner light.

  The metal spun end over end, growing larger. Gil caught it in midair. It was not hot, but cool to the touch. It was a badge of white shaped like a miniature shield, divided by two bold red stripes at right angles. Across the top were small metal letters: SCATHED. Along the bottom was written: THE FINAL CRUSADE.

  Gil said, “Scathed? What is that?”

  “Your force and division. You are hereby a member of the Special Counter-Anarchist Task Force, Heterodoxy Enforcement Division.”

  Gil heard the sound of the big man rising. The footsteps moved to the left, came forward, and then moved to the right again to stand just before Gil. Gil imagined the man must have stepped around a desk or some other large object.

  The sound of footsteps and a sense of pressure in the air told him that the man now moved behind him. He felt two large and heavy hands come down, one on his good shoulder and one on his wounded shoulder. Gil forced himself not to flinch or shout.

  The man said, “Do you accept this commission?”

  Gil thought of the mother whose child had been stolen. It was a crime no human being could see or detect. No one but him.

  Gil said solemnly, “I accept the commission.”

  “Then look!”

  A light leaped up from the badge, glistering and clear as starlight, and a beam reached out like a searchlight. The desk and wall Gil had presumed were there were not. Instead was a cloud of black mist, which, the moment the starlight colored beam fell on it, turned white and rushed away. At the same time, the sounds echoing from the wall, the sense of being indoors, also rushed away, as if the walls and ceiling were expande
d to a vastness like the night sky, or as if the chair and floor on which he sat were accelerating backward or tumbling in free fall. Gil clutched the wooden arms of the chair, trying not to faint. Nothing on his gear or garb was moving, so perhaps the rushing sensation was only in his inner ear, not in reality.

  Gil found himself in a high place looking out over a vast cavern. The floor was hundreds of yards away. The searchlight beam from his badge reached like a glittering finger across the gloom and danced back and forth on the figure of a crowned king, armed at all points, with his hand folded across his chest.

  The king lay on his back on a stone slab. He did not move or breathe. The ensign above him showed the image of a golden dragon; the shield at his feet showed a maiden in blue trampling a serpent.

  To his left and right were coffers and vessels filled with gold coins and silver ingots, or other elfin alloys whose names no man knew, and also gems large and small, chalices, drinking horns, and plates, necklaces, rings, armlets, brooches, torcs, and other treasures. A snow-white steed stood at his head, also motionless and unbreathing. At its foot was a cold-black hunting dog of fierce and noble aspect, but standing still as a corpse.

  Gil tilted and raised the badge, but the beam would not point at anything else in the cavern save the king on the stone. From the reflections darting from the glittering piles of gold and silver, Gil could see hints and half-shapes of other armored knights on lowers slabs, asleep to one side and the other, with their snow-white steeds asleep next to them. Each knight had a sword in his clasped hands. Only the king’s hands were empty.

  Gil said, “Where is his sword?”

  The man behind him laughed. “I see you are a true knight. A clerk would have asked about his soul, a burgher about his treasures.”

  “So where is it?”

  “That sword was thrown into a lake in Wales. It will not be seen again until that king is healed, opens his eyes, and puts out his hand. Do not wish that hour to come swiftly! Woe to England then, for the hour will be dark indeed for all Christian souls when the true king is needed and is called forth once again.”

  “How is there a giant underground cave on the second floor of a police station?”

  “This is the hollow hill beneath Alderley Edge in England. That is Arthur Pendragon, the rightful King of England and Emperor of Rome. By the unalterable will of Heaven he sleeps in an eternal sleep! By disuse and bad custom, men have forgotten him, but the laws have not forgotten. It is from him you take your commission. To him and to no lesser lord you must swear your fealty.”

  Gil said, “How can I swear to a sleeping king?”

  “How can you not? The oath is still binding in this world and all others, until Heaven and Earth pass away and are made anew! Go and kneel. Put your hands between his and swear. This hour will not come again. I will tell you the words if you do not know them.”

  Gil said softly, “I have known them since I was seven years old.”

  “You must go to him without your sword and helm, bareheaded and empty handed. Let go of the badge. Follow it.”

  This time, Gil knew, his promise not to set the sword aside did not hold. His mother had said the sword could be set aside when his lord commanded. If he needed to set it aside to get into the service of his lord in the first place, that also counted.

  He tossed the badge gently upward, and it hung in midair with nothing holding it aloft. He put the helm and swordbelt on the stiff wooden chair and left his shield behind.

  The badge began drifting forward. He followed. The beam of light stayed focused on the king, but now a sphere of light also began to glow from the badge in all directions so that he could see the floor at his feet, which was rough and grew rougher as he descended.

  The floor fell steeply. He used both hands to climb down the steep slope of rocks and boulders. Beyond that was something like a bridge or ramp the glowing badge led him down, a narrow path with a steep drop to either side.

  Closer to the king, the floor was more even once again, but there were stalagmites here and there, which over a thousand years of dripping water had built up. White horses in their brilliant barding and furniture stood as motionless as marble statues, heads lowered at identical angles. The knights of the Table Round, the fairest and noblest company of knights the world had ever seen, rested in strange and unnatural motionlessness in this vast cave. Gil was almost ashamed of how loud his footfalls were.

  Then, he was there.

  4. The King

  Gil knelt. It was a long moment before he could raise his eyes to look at the unliving and inanimate features. Gil was shy. This was the very man he had selected to be the model and the ideal his real father never was.

  Arthur was a handsome man, even asleep. Gil was glad to see crow’s feet at his eyes and wrinkles at his mouth to indicate that he laughed often, but there were also lines of care and worry around his brow and nostrils, those of a man who does not smile when he ponders many a hard judgment, or must make in the heat of battle the decision that will win or lose the war, and his men’s lives. It was a majestic face.

  Gil saw that the hands of the king were not clasped in prayer, for there was a little space between his right hand and his left. Gil put his own hands palm to palm and put their fingers between the palms of the king, so that Arthur’s hands were outside his, as if clasping them.

  Gil was startled. The king’s hands were not cold, but warm. There was no pulse, but the fingers were pink.

  Suddenly, like a skyrocket in his heart, Gil realized that all the old and impossible stories he had read and heard and loved as a child were true. This was the once and future king, the Lord of Camelot, who banished the lawless chaos of the land and established peace, justice, and good laws. He was not dead. His laws were not dead. His dream was not dead. He would one day return and with him, a new dawn, a new world. He lived.

  Gil said softly, “I, Gilberec Parzival Moth, avow me the liege man of life and limb to Arthur, Emperor and King, against every creature living or dead, now and for aye, to yield him true and faithful service, homage, and earthly worship: to bear arms against the king’s enemies; render justice to the king’s subjects low and high; defend the faith; uphold the true; honor the fair; and protect the weak. So help me God and the Holy Dame.”

  The king’s hands did not move, but they seemed to grow warmer. Gil took this as a sign that his oath had been accepted.

  He stood and climbed back the way he had come. Gil hoped for some glimpse of the man in the dark room, but the light from the badge faded, and the walls and ceiling seemed to shrink down to their previous proportions so that the feel of the air and the sound of the echoes told him he was in a small room again.

  “Sit!” ordered the voice.

  5. The Gift

  “When do I get my spurs?” Gil wound the sword belt around his waist and the baldric over his shoulder, took up the helm, and sat.

  The footfalls and sense of pressure from the large man moved around the room again, and Gil heard the scrape of chairlegs against the floor, the creak of a desk as if a heavy elbow now rested on it.

  “Officially, you are a squire as yet, but also a man-at-arms, and able to bear weapons in the king’s service.”

  “What about medical care? I seem to get hurt a lot, armor or no armor, not to mention training injuries.”

  “Show your badge to the desk sergeant at the police station in any nation where the writ of Arthurian Law runs, and if the healing hands cannot be found in that hour, you will be cast into sleep until they can be.”

  “The writ of Arthurian Law? What is that?”

  “You recall he once conquered Rome and assumed the purple as Imperator. Hence the House of Pendragon has lawful claim over all the lands once or ever ruled by the Roman Empire, therefore, also, the Byzantine Empire, the Carolingian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the British Empire, and the Austrian Empire. Basically, anything once ruled by Caesar, Kaiser, Czar, or Christian King, from Singapore to Calcut
ta to Patagonia, from the Bosporus to Australia, from South Africa to Northern Alaska, from Tripoli to Troynovant, still owes allegiance to Arthur.”

  Gil was trying to figure out which parts of the world that did not cover. His best grades had not been in geography or modern history. He thought maybe the Sahara and Siberia were not covered. He could not remember if any European power had ever conquered Tibet. He knew the Singapore had once been a British colony, and everything in South America was Spanish or Portuguese, so if he were wounded in Uruguay and could find a police station….

  Gil gritted his teeth and told himself to snap out of it and to stop wondering about useless nonsense. What were the chances that a boy without a car, or a squire without a horse, would end up in another hemisphere?

  “What about the Revolutionary War?” Gil asked sharply.

  “Which one?”

  “The American Revolution.”

  “Elfs don’t care about which bull leads the herd. In the end, the rancher owns them all.”

  Gil was not sure he like the sound of that. “I am an American. We are a free people.”

  “To be free of good King Arthur’s reign is not necessarily a good thing. And you are his subject now, and his loyal vassal,” the voice laughed, “no matter which way the rest of America decides to go.”

  “What was that about healing and sleeping?”

  The man’s voice said, “My gift is the laying on of hands.” The man heaved a sigh, which sounded odd coming from a voice so jovial. “I can heal everyone but Arthur, the only man I truly wish to heal.” Then, in a jollier tone, the voice continued, “My office door appears in any police station where the laws of my king still hold, as I explained. When any report that smells of elfwork is filed, I hear of it.”

  “And you can heal my wounds? By magic?”

  “It is not magic if, by that word, you mean breaking the laws of nature or trafficking with dark powers. But in the same way federal law at times overrules local ordinance, there is a higher law my gift calls upon. The badge is imbued with starlight, so it will drive the mists away, and you can find or summon my door. It is well trained. Not like some doors I know.”