The Queen of Air an Darkness

  Very tall she was in her robes woven of north-lights, and her starry crown and her garlands of kiss-me-never. Her countenance recalled Aphrodite of Milos, whose picture Barbro had often seen in the reams of men, save that the Queen’s was more fair and more majesty dwelt upon it and in the night-blue eyes. Around her the gardens woke to new reality, the court of the Dwellers and the heaven-climbing spires.

  “Be welcome,” she spoke, her speaking a song, “forever.”

  Against the awe of her, Barbro said, “Moonmother, let us go home.”

  “That may not be…”

  Plus seven more tales

  of myth and magic

  by Poul Anderson!

  Poul Anderson

  The Armies of Elfland

  A Tom Doherty Associates Book

  New York

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  THE ARMIES OF ELFLAND

  Copyright © 1992 by Poul Anderson

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  49 Kast 24th Street

  New York, N.Y. 10010

  TOR® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  Cover art by Dieter Rottermond, used by permission of the Luserke Agency

  ISBN:0-812-51919-1

  First Tor edition: May 1992

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Foreword

  The Queen of Air and Darkness

  House Rule

  The Tale of Hauk

  Fairy Gold

  The Valor of Cappen Varra

  The Gate of the Flying Knives

  The Barbarian

  A Feast for the Gods (with Karen Anderson)

  Foreword

  “Romance” is one of too many fine old words that in our day have taken on new, usually derogatory meanings. In publishing it denotes a specific, rigidly structured kind of novel, with the implication that this is pap. I don’t agree that that is necessarily so. A writer like me can ill afford snobbery while libraries and bookstores shelve “science fiction” separately from “literature.” But that is beside the point I wish to make, that in the Middle Ages “romance” meant a tale full of color and imagination.

  Though many early romances were the trash that Cervantes eventually laughed into oblivion, others remain keystone works of our civilization: for example, the Arthurian and Carolingian cycles. Such modern fantasists as James Branch Cabell, Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison, and J. R. R. Tolkien were fully in that tradition. Other authors of romances in the same sense, which contain no supernatural elements but nevertheless deal in glamour and adventure, include G. K. Chesterton, Joseph Conrad, W. H. Hudson, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, and Mary Renault — to pick, almost at random, half a dozen who are well regarded. Clearly, then, this school can evoke beauty and grapple with the eternal questions as well as any other, and better than some.

  The adjective “romantic” is, likewise, commonly misused as an antonym of “realistic.” Now certainly one can lose one’s head in oversimplified, wildly glorified views of the world and of human nature. When believers in these gain power, the result is catastrophe, as witness Nazism and Communism. Yet it would be equally false, or even more so, to deny that heroism and saintliness occur, that wonderful things happen and great things are achieved. For that matter, science, the most powerful examiner of reality that we have ever had, reveals to us a universe of exploding space, coalescing suns, moving continents, quantum leaps, vacuum a-seethe with energies, dinosaurs, Sumeria, rocks brought home from the Moon, machines that think, our kinship with everything alive on Earth, the molecular life-stuff itself — If this isn’t sheerly romantic, what is?

  Bar occasional poetry, science fiction is virtually the only literary form that celebrates it. Of course, not all science fiction does. Some turns its attention elsewhere, which is good; we need diversity. I simply maintain that romanticism has a legitimate place in the field.

  Fantasy too has its stories that concern themselves with the prosaic or the bleak faces of existence. Among them are several of the classics. However, much of it, perhaps most, tries to cast enchantment. Science fiction and fantasy are not the last survivors of romanticism. It flourishes quite lustily in mystery, spy, and historical novels, and sporadically elsewhere. Still, our two kinds may well be its strongest embodiments these days.

  Here is a sample of my work in the romantic vein. May you enjoy it. Inevitably, the tales fall short of, but in writing them I always strove for, the ideal that Kipling expressed so well in his long poem “To the True Romance.” I cannot close better than with a stanza from it.

  Time hath no tide but must abide

  The servant of Thy will;

  Tide hath no time, for to Thy rhyme

  The ranging stars stand still —

  Regent of spheres that lock our fears,

  Our hopes invisible,

  Oh, ’twas certes at Thy decrees

  We fashioned Heaven and Hell!

  The Queen of Air and Darkness

  Unlike the other stories in the volume on hand, this one is not fantasy but science fiction. In fact, it might be considered “hard” science fiction, for it supposes nothing that a modern scientist would say is outright impossible, such as travel faster than light. (Granted, telepathy is controversial; but if it exists, presumably it operates within the framework of known natural law.) Yet the story embodies immemorial fantasy motifs and seeks to create an atmosphere of faery lands forlorn. I wrote it for a special issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction which was to honor me, and naturally wanted it to be something special. Later it won both a Hugo and a Nebula award. You may like to see my notes for the original publication:

  “The Queen of Air and Darkness” is a figure of unknown antiquity who continues to haunt the present day. T. H. White, in The Once and Future King, identified her with Morgan le Fay. Before him, A. E. Housman had written one of his most enigmatic poems about her. But actually the title — a counterpart to the traditional attributes of Satan — is borne by the demonic female who appears over the centuries in many legends and many guises. She is Lilith of rabbinical lore, who in turn goes back to Babylon; she is the great she-jinni of the Arabs; the Persians and Hindus told similar stories; the Japanese were particularly afraid of kami who had the form of women; American Indians, especially those of the Athabascan family, dreaded one who went hurrying through the sky at night. In medieval Europe, one of her shapes, among others, is that of the mistress of the elf hill, against whom Scottish and Danish ballads warn the belated traveler, and who reappears in the Tannhäuser story. Her weapon is always the beauty and — in the old sense of the word — the charm by which she lures men away from her enemy God. Certain finds lead me to suspect that they knew about her in the Old Stone Age, and she will surely go on into the future.

  The last glow of the last sunset would linger almost until midwinter. But there would be no more day, and the northlands rejoiced. Blossoms opened, flamboyance on firethorn trees, steel-flowers rising blue from the brake and rainplant that cloaked all hills, shy whiteness of kiss-me-never down in the dales. Flitteries darted among them on iridescent wings; a crown buck shook his horns and bugled. Between horizons the sky deepened from purple to sable. Both moons were aloft, nearly full, shining frosty on leaves and molten on waters. The shadows they made were blurred by an aurora, a great blowing curtain of light across half heaven. Behind it the earliest stars had come out.

  A boy and a girl sat on Wolund’s Barrow just under the dolmen it upbore. Their hair, which streamed halfway down their backs, showed startlingly forth, bleached as it was by summer. Their bodies, still dark from that season, merged with earth and bush and rock, for they wore only garlands. He played on a bone flute and she sang. They had lately become lovers. Their age was about sixteen, but they did not know this, considering themselves Outlings and thus indifferent to time, remembering little or nothing of how they had once dwelt in the lands of men.

  His notes piped cold around her voice:

  “Cast a spell,

  weave it well

  of dust and dew

  and night and you.”

  A brook by the grave mound, carrying moonlight down to a hill-hidden river, answered with its rapids. A flock of hellbats passed black beneath the aurora.

  A shape came bounding over Cloudmoor. It had two arms and two legs, but the legs were long and clawfooted and feathers covered it to the end of a tail and broad wings. The face was half human, dominated by its eyes. Had Ayoch been able to stand wholly erect, he would have reached to the boy’s shoulder.

  The girl rose. “He carries a burden,” she said. Her vision was not meant for twilight like that of a northland creature born, but she had learned how to use every sign her senses gave her. Besides the fact that ordinarily a pook would fly, there was a heaviness to his haste.

  “And he comes from the south.” Excitement jumped in the boy, sudden as a green flame that went acro
ss the constellation Lyrth. He sped down the mound. “Ohoi, Ayoch!” he called. “Me here, Mistherd!”

  “And Shadow-of-a-Dream,” the girl laughed, following.

  The pook halted. He breathed louder than the soughing in the growth around him. A smell of bruised yerba lifted where he stood.

  “Well met in winterbirth,” he whistled. “You can help me bring this to Carheddin.”

  He held out what he bore. His eyes were yellow lanterns above. It moved and whimpered.

  “Why, a child,” Mistherd said.

  “Even as you were, my son, even as you were. Ho, ho, what a snatch!” Ayoch boasted. “They were a score in yon camp by Fallowwood, armed, and besides watcher engines they had big ugly dogs aprowl while they slept. I came from above, however, having spied on them till I knew that a handful of dazedust —”

  “The poor thing.” Shadow-of-a-dream took the boy and held him to her small breasts. “So full of sleep yet, aren’t you?” Blindly, he sought a nipple. She smiled through the veil of her hair. “No, I am still too young, and you already too old. But come, when you wake in Carheddin under the mountain, you shall feast.”

  “Yo-ah,” said Ayoch very softly. “She is abroad and — has heard and seen. She comes.” He crouched down, wings folded. After a moment Mistherd knelt, and then Shadow-of-a-dream, though she did not let go the child.

  The Queen’s tall form blocked off the moons. For a while she regarded the three and their booty. Hill and moor sounds withdrew from their awareness until it seemed they could hear the northlights hiss.

  At last Ayoch whispered, “Have I done well, Starmother?”

  “If you stole a babe from the camp full of engines,” said the beautiful voice, “then they were folk out of the far south who may not endure it as meekly as yeomen.”

  “But what can they do, Snowmaker?” the pook asked. “How can they track us?”

  Mistherd lifted his head and spoke in pride. “Also, now they too have felt the awe of us.”

  “And he is a cuddly dear,” Shadow-of-a-dream said. “And we need more like him, do we not Lady Sky?”

  “It had to happen in some twilight,” agreed she who stood above. “Take him onward and care for him. By this sign,” which she made, “is he claimed for the Dwellers.”

  Their joy was freed. Ayoch cartwheeled over the ground till he reached a shiverleaf. There he swarmed up the trunk and out on a limb, perched half hidden by unrestful pale foliage, and crowed. Boy and girl bore the child toward Carheddin at an easy distance-devouring lope which let him pipe and her sing:

  “Wahaii, wahaii!

  Wayala, laii!

  Wing on the wind

  high over heaven,

  shrilly shrieking,

  rush with the rainspears,

  tumble through tumult,

  drift to the moonhoar trees and the dream-heavy shadows beneath them,

  and rock in, be one with the clinking wavelets of lakes where the starbeams drown.”

  As she entered, Barbro Cullen felt, through all grief and fury, stabbed by dismay. The room was unkempt. Journals, tapes, reels, codices, file boxes, bescribbled papers were piled on every table. Dust filmed most shelves and corners. Against one wall stood a laboratory setup, microscope and analytical equipment. She recognized it as compact and efficient, but it was not what you would expect in an office, and it gave the air a faint chemical reek. The rug was threadbare, the furniture shabby.

  This was her final chance?

  Then Eric Sherrinford approached. “Good day, Mrs. Cullen,” he said. His tone was crisp, his handclasp firm. His faded gripsuit didn’t bother her. She wasn’t inclined to fuss about her own appearance except on special occasions. (And would she ever again have one, unless she got back Jimmy?) What she observed was a cat’s personal neatness.

  A smile radiated in crow’s feet from his eyes. “Forgive my bachelor housekeeping. On Beowulf we have — we had, at any rate, machines for that, so I never acquired the habit myself, and I don’t want a hireling disarranging my tools. More convenient to work out of my apartment than keep a separate office. Won’t you be seated?”

  “No, thanks. I couldn’t,” she mumbled.

  “I understand. But if you’ll excuse me, I function best in a relaxed position.”

  He jackknifed into a lounger. One long shank crossed the other knee. He drew forth a pipe and stuffed it from a pouch. Barbro wondered why he took tobacco in so ancient a way. Wasn’t Beowulf supposed to have the up-to-date equipment that they still couldn’t afford to build on Roland? Well, of course old customs might survive anyhow. They generally did in colonies, she remembered reading. People had moved starward in the hope of preserving such outmoded things as their mother tongues or constitutional government or rational-technological civilization…

  Sherrinford pulled her up from the confusion of her weariness: “You must give me the details of your case, Mrs. Cullen. You’ve simply told me your son was kidnapped and your local constabulary did nothing. Otherwise, I know just a few obvious facts, such as your being widowed rather than divorced; and you’re the daughter of outwayers in Olga Ivanoff Land, who nevertheless kept in close telecommunication with Christmas Landing; and you’re trained in one of the biological professions; and you had several years’ hiatus in field work until recently you started again.”

  She gaped at the high-cheeked, beak-nosed, black-haired and gray-eyed countenance. His lighter made a scrit and a flare which seemed to fill the room. Quietness dwelt on this height above the city, and winter dusk was seeping through the windows. “How in cosmos do you know that?” she heard herself exclaim.

  He shrugged and fell into the lecturer’s manner for which he was notorious. “My work depends on noticing details and fitting them together. In more than a hundred years on Roland, tending to cluster according to their origins and thought-habits, people have developed regional accents. You have a trace of the Olgan burr, but you nasalize your vowels in the style of this area, though you live in Portolondon. That suggests steady childhood exposure to metropolitan speech. You were part of Matsuyama’s expedition, you told me, and took your boy along. They wouldn’t have allowed any ordinary technician to do that; hence, you had to be valuable enough to get away with it. The team was conducting ecological research: therefore, you must be in the life sciences. For the same reason, you must have had previous field experience. But your skin is fair, showing none of the leatheriness one gets from prolonged exposure to this sun. Accordingly, you must have been mostly indoors for a good while before you went on your ill-fated trip. As for widowhood — you never mentioned a husband to me, but you have had a man whom you thought so highly of that you still wear both the wedding and the engagement ring he gave you.”

  Her sight blurred and stung. The last of those words had brought Tim back; huge, ruddy, laughterful and gentle. She must turn from this other person and stare outward. “Yes,” she achieved saying, “you’re right.”

  The apartment occupied a hilltop above Christmas Landing. Beneath it the city dropped away in walls, roofs, archaistic chimneys and lamplit streets, goblin lights of humanpiloted vehicles, to the harbor, the sweep of Venture Bay, ships bound to and from the Sunward Islands and remoter regions of the Boreal Ocean, which glimmered like mercury in the afterglow of Charlemagne. Oliver was swinging rapidly higher, a mottled orange disc a full degree wide; closer to the zenith which it could never reach, it would shine the color of ice. Alde, half the seeming size, was a thin slow crescent near Sirius, which she remembered was near Sol, but you couldn’t see Sol without a telescope —

  “Yes,” she said around the pain in her throat, “my husband is about four years dead. I was carrying our first child when he was killed by a stampeding monocerus. We’d been married three years before. Met while we were both at the University — casts from School Central can only supply a basic education, you know — We founded our own team to do ecological studies under contract — you know, can a certain area be settled while maintaining a balance of nature, what crops will grow, what hazards, that sort of question — Well, afterward I did lab work for a fisher co-op in Portolondon. But the monotony, the… shut-in-ness… was eating me away. Professor Matsuyama offered me a position on the team he was organizing to examine Commissioner Hauch Land. I thought, God help me, I thought Jimmy — Tim wanted him named James, once the tests showed it’d be a boy, after his own father and because of ‘Timmy and Jimmy’ and — oh, I thought Jimmy could safely come along. I couldn’t bear to leave him behind for months, not at his age. We could make sure he’d never wander out of camp. What could hurt him inside it? I had never believed those stories about the Outlings stealing human children. I supposed parents were trying to hide from themselves the fact they’d been careless, they’d let a kid get lost in the woods or attacked by a pack of satans or — well, I learned better, Mr. Sherrinford. The guard robots were evaded and the dogs were drugged, and when I woke, Jimmy was gone.”