by ‘Your mother can’t withstand a wild night like that,’ hissed Jay to me, having drawn closer to me and farther away from the mother in question.
‘She doesn’t need to do much. We put her in a comfy chair, ply her with victuals, let her sleep through it if she wants.’
‘Ves, will you please think about something or someone other than the mission.’
‘I am! What else are we going to do with my mother? She won’t be left out, she won’t be sent for treatment until this is all over, and she won’t be fit and healthy until she’s had at least a week’s rest and care. We need to wrap this up tonight, and this is the best way I can think of to do it.’
Jay nodded. ‘All right, I can’t fault that logic, as far as it goes. But what are we doing with this party?’
I cleared my throat. ‘Dad will kick off the festival. I’m sure there are ways to make a suitably public show of it, get everybody here. Right, your majesty?’
My father rolled his eyes towards the sky. ‘Doubtless, but—’
‘Ayllin will be here with the rest. We find her, ask her what she did to alter the lyre’s song, get her to change it back, and then let nature take its course. Pass the lyre around, spend the rest of the evening in wine and song, and at some point it will choose a new monarch. Right? And then we all go home and sleep for a week. Especially Mum.’
‘Just “get her” to uncorrupt the lyre?’ said Mother. ‘Right! I’m sure there can be no possible objection to that.’
I shrugged. ‘If it’s a choice between that, or going on forever without a leader, I hope she’ll see sense. And it could be her chance to take the throne at last, if she still wants it.’
‘You’re forgetting something,’ said my father. ‘They hate me.’
‘The Yllanfalen?’
‘Yes. They threw me out, rather than accept me as king. What makes you think they’ll all come blithely party with me now?’
‘They threw you out, but you are still the king. Aren’t you?’
‘I… yes.’
‘I think they couldn’t have turfed you out if you hadn’t let them. You let them because you did not want the role. Well, now you can pass it on.’
‘But—’
‘Come on, Dad. We can’t do this without you.’
Father scowled in my mother’s general direction. ‘Is she always like this?’
‘Yes,’ said Jay.
‘And you haven’t gone insane yet?’
‘It gets things done.’
‘Being insane?’
Jay blinked. ‘Well… that, too.’
Father sighed, and directed his attention towards the three sprites, whose only contribution to the debate thus far had been suppressed squeaks of excitement from Euphony. ‘Will the sprites assist me?’
‘Yes, Majesty!’ said Cadence, in a ringing voice.
‘I will never get used to that,’ muttered Father.
I got up from under my tree. ‘Fortunately, you won’t have to. Let’s get started. The sooner we’re finished raving, the sooner we can sleep.’
It was the sprites who carried word of the revelry.
Everything began in the throne room of the King’s Halls, as was fitting. This space we had never glimpsed before, or I’d have certainly remembered, for the chamber was improbably enormous, and sumptuously decorated, even by the standards of the Yllanfalen. Chandeliers as big as my car were suspended from the ceiling, and when Euphony glided, chortling, up to greet them they burst into life, casting a vibrant, sunny glow over the hall. In that light we saw: great, lush hangings covering the walls, worked in silk and velvet and gilded thread, and depicting myriad mythical beasts; a floor of polished… something, that shone as silver as the chandeliers shone gold; long, long windows, arched and ornamented, beyond which the velvet-black night lay waiting; and a banqueting table, fully thirty feet long, already set with all the ornate silverware one might need for a kingdom-sized party.
Father beheld all this magnificence in silence, and gave only a weary sigh. Mother’s response was not much more enthusiastic.
Jay and I, though, were entranced. Jay especially, once he saw that, at the far-distant end of the throne room — situated not far from the throne itself, a confection of mist-whorled glass and cushions of green-and-gold moss — sat a grand piano, or something that closely resembled a piano. It had none of the mirror-polished, black elegance of a typical example from our world; instead it looked wrought from silver, or similar, its surfaces frosted over and a-twinkle with… ice? But its shape was familiar enough, and its bright white keys begged to be played.
Jay began to drift that way.
‘Well,’ said Father, wearily. ‘Let’s begin.’
‘How?’ said Mother.
‘With music. Out here, it always begins with music.’
Jay reached the piano, and sat down upon the silvery-frosted stool before it. He made an incongruous sight: clad in his adored black leather jacket, and with his short, dark, eminently modern hair, seated upon azure velvet stitched with silver and playing a piano from which magick dripped like melting ice.
But when he began to play, I realised at once why the Queene’s Rapture had struck a familiar chord with me. The melody Jay’s clever fingers were drawing forth was the same as he had once played upon the spinet in Millie Makepeace’s parlour, and it shimmered and twinkled like faerie bells.
Father raised his brows at me.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. Life had been busy. I’d forgotten to ask Jay about it.
‘Unusual chap, I think,’ said Father.
I was beginning to get an inkling of that myself.
The sprites had been busy. The piano was not the only instrument in the throne room, I soon saw: what I had previously taken for carvings and ornaments proved to be lutes and pipes and lyres, and one by one the sprites were bringing them into melodious life.
Actually, I take that back. They were carvings. I watched, open-mouthed, as Descant soared up the length of a grand pilaster set against one wall, reaching out with her small hands to touch and touch and touch. Everywhere her fingers brushed the stone, an inert sculpture leapt free of the pillar, transformed at a stroke into gleaming metal or polished wood, and began to play. Jay had finished his gossamer tune and taken up the Queene’s Rapture instead, and the sprites had every harp and dulcimer and flute playing along.
The effect was both deafening and rhapsodic. Indeed, one may even say… rapturous.
Mum made a sound that was half sigh, half groan, and folded into a chair at the table. I took the opportunity to hand her my last dose of potion, pleased to note that the empty silverware was rapidly filling up with delectable feast-goods under Cadence’s capable attention.
‘Drink,’ I said to Mother. ‘But try not to overdo it. It’s borrowed strength these things give you. You’ll pay for it later.’
Mother didn’t even try to argue, which told me all I needed to know about how exhausted she was. She drank off the potion in one swallow, blotted her lips on her sleeve, and said grimly: ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Uh huh.’
She waved me off. ‘Don’t forget to play later.’
‘I haven’t the smallest desire to play that lyre, Mother.’
‘You know you do. Your eyes say otherwise, every time you look at the thing.’
‘That’s not my fault.’
‘Nope.’ She grinned. ‘It’s your destiny.’
‘I don’t believe in destiny, and neither do you.’
‘Maybe I do, now.’
I decided we were done with the conversation, and walked away.
At once I observed that Father had done something highly out of character for him.
He’d made himself comfy on the Throne of the Yllanfalen.
He actually looked pretty good up there, I have to say. Tall, grey of hair and beard, noble; his face was set in resolute lines, and he looked ready to rule.
Appearances can be so deceptive.
I’d lost sight of the sprites. As far as I could tell, they were no longer in the throne room. That, perhaps, was because they’d gone out to wake up the kingdom and spread the party news, for soon afterwards the people of Yllanfalen began to arrive.
They ventured in tentatively, at first, gazing upon the throne room’s revived splendours in wary astonishment. And well they might, considering all this had lain untouched for decades.
But, it does not take much to coax the Yllanfalen into making merry, for they soon forgot their worries, and began snatching up flutes and harps from the walls, and delicacies from the table.
Until, that is, they caught sight of my father, seated in solitary majesty upon his throne. A crowd quickly developed at that end of the throne room, and grew larger and larger as more people arrived. These fae lords and ladies even managed to cluster decorously, for there was no pushing or shoving, no noise, no unseemly chaos. They stared, and they talked, and they waited, though any fool could see that they were not pleased.
My father stared them all down, every inch a king, and I wondered where he had been hiding that quality. In his lap, the moonsilver lyre glimmered with promise, and I realised that was as much the focus of the Yllanfalen’s attention as the king himself.
In fact, I began to feel they might have cheerfully dispensed with my father’s presence altogether — provided he left the lyre.
This did not quite fit with the narrative that the Yllanfalen had themselves rejected the lyre. Perhaps they had not. But then, if they had wanted it back, why hadn’t they taken it out of the water?
Time to talk to Ayllin.
I wasted ten minutes or so weaving through the increasingly crowded throne room, looking for Ayllin with my own eyes. By the end of it, I judged I had personally scrutinised about a hundred people at best, and how many thousands were by now thronging the King’s Halls? Better plan required.
Briefly I considered asking my father to call her up, but discarded the notion. This was not a conversation to be held in public.
The alternative, then? The sprites could find her in no time, no doubt. But where were they?
A recent memory popped into my head. Syllphyllan, the woman at the music shop had said. A favourite with gardeners and orchard-tenders, as the sprites adore it.
All right, then.
I snatched up the sheaf of music I’d received only a few hours ago, and sorted hastily through until I found Syllphyllan. Would Cadence, Euphony or Descant — or any of their sisters, as I imagined there must be more — hear a note of it over the tumult? Maybe not, but it was worth a try.
Out came my pipes. The first few phrases emerged awkwardly from the silvery flute, for my talent for sight-reading isn’t what it should be. But I soon got into the flow, doing my best to tune out the roar of faerie music around me. I probably got half of it wrong; I couldn’t even hear what I was playing.
Then again, if I got half wrong, then I got half right, too. I was nearing the end of the song when a voice whispered in my ear.
‘Who plays Syllphyllan on the King’s Pipes?’
I spun, to find Euphony had come up behind me… no, it was not Euphony. Another sprite, paler and smaller still, hovered by my shoulder. She wore a gauzy dress of heathery gossamer, and a hat of leaves crowned her tumble of wispy hair; more a sprite by appearance than Cadence, with her lumpy knitted drape.
‘I wanted to ask your help,’ I said.
‘There are no orchards here,’ the sprite pointed out. ‘No hedgerows, no herb gardens, no flowers, no fields, no—’
‘Yes, I know,’ I interrupted, for fear she would go on until she had named every possible growing thing. ‘It isn’t gardening I need help with.’
‘But you played Syllphyllan on—’
‘The King’s Pipes. It was the best I had. I am actually looking for someone.’
A cloud of displeasure descended upon her small face. ‘Then you should have played a song of seeking.’
‘I am sorry. I would have, if I knew one. Will you help me? It’s important work for the king.’
‘If it is the king you seek, he is there.’ She pointed a slender finger in my father’s direction.
‘Yes, but I don’t need him at the moment. The woman I want is called Ayllin.’
‘I do not know that name.’
Ohgods. That’s right, we had dubbed her Ayllin ourselves, for her whole name was… difficult.
‘Ayllindariana,’ I tried.
The sprite shook her head.
‘Ayllindarinda?’
‘No.’
‘Ayllindariolonda?’
The sprite folded her arms, and glared at me. ‘There is no such person.’
Giddy gods, I’d never get it right. I tried a few more variations, with no more success; but just as my not-so-obliging sprite was about to give up on me and wing away, another voice said: ‘Is it Ayllindariorana you seek?’
‘Yes!’ I shouted. ‘That was it!’
And Ayllindariorana herself emerged from the crowd, looking none too pleased. I suppose if someone mangled my name the way I’d just wrecked hers, I would be none too pleased either. ‘Can I help you with something?’ she said icily.
‘Actually, yes,’ I said. ‘Just one or two little things.’