Winter's Gambit

[Eilonwy Joiselle]

The Hosting of the Sidhe

THE HOST is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing ’twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.


From The Wind Among the Reeds. 1899.


Finally it was too much. One had known all along that it would be, yet the golden blue-eyed Temple Cat who had in fact been there since the very beginning when Selitha Narathameralsia had fallen to the temptation to have the power to save Yukiko-called-Nomotabe had hoped that the result would be otherwise. Perhaps if Sindhur would have gone down to his twin sister and done to her what she had done to him in the Prior Time it might not have happened so soon, but Sindhur as he had always and forever been was lethally protective of his sister, the holder of the other half of his soul. He had seen the purity and happiness that was hers and he could not do it, could not make her take back her memories of madness and death, though he knew in his heart if he had told her why she must that she would have, for him. For if Selitha loved anything more than her twin brother only Correllon knew what.

Even now the Winter Wolves that were his special companions on Ered Lossen’s highest, most desolate peak Methrive, Endless Winter, were calling out in mourning though he had yet to pass away. One scolded them for their symphony of howling, swatting pale furred noses and being snapped at by bone crushing jaws for his trouble though even those supernaturally fast wolves could not catch a Temple Cat. They were other but One was Celestial and that made all the difference. Golden furred tail lashed behind One in a fury as he tried to think of an answer for this problem besides the one that had been discovered, the price for that solution was a dire one that One knew Sindhur would refuse again to pay. He had a noble soul and the part of his mind untouched by madness would never condone the plan that One had hatched even if it was the only thing that could save his life. Yet it was after all the only viable solution, the only solution that One could see that would not end with Selitha in tears for the loss of her beloved brother.

One’s greatest secret of course was that he loved Selitha. Had he ever been allowed a humanoid form he would have pursued her with all he had, which was most likely why the Celestial Bureaucracy had not allowed him any mortal seeming form but this one. So he had watched over her as her chiefest familiar when she had been the sole Komi of Winter, had been the force that made her summon Sindhur to share her fate and alleviate her loneliness so that they had become together the twin Komi of Winter, something that had never before come to pass. The problem lay in that to become the vessel of a Komi one must die and the body is inhabited by the Komi until the Komi burns out the mortal shell it inhabits. In a normal case the soul of the possessed lingers little and moves on quickly, but the case of the twins was far from normal. As they shared a soul, Selitha was able to remain in her body, cohabitating with the Komi and it was the Komi who split when Sindhur was brought over.

When they had together made war to again save Yukiko, they had finally used up their power and their bodies, but the purity of their sacrifice touched the Celestial and so they had been given their second chance, been reborn and allowed to grow up as they should. Then Sindhur had returned to RoseHaven and once more he had taken up the power of the Komi, and One had done all he could to preserve him, for Selitha’s sake. Perhaps if certain things had not happened, if madness had not enveloped that laughter-filled soul of sunlight that was Sindhur’s in this lifetime … but perhaps would not even fill a cup with green tea or a bowl with rice. So they were at this seeming impasse, and One had tried all he could on his own. He had sent Selitha dreams, warnings that her brother had needed her, and she came because she loved him.

Yet Sindhur would not go to her when she was in RoseHaven, no matter how she longed to see him. He would not go to her or let One tell her how to find him, nor would he go when that other tried to summon him though One could tell that the temptation had been upon him to do it. It was the other female that this plan of One’s concerned now, he had looked into her heart while she dreamed and he knew that she would do it, she would do what was needed, if only Sindhur did not find out what One was about, of course.

One, a being Celestial, had in his desperation to save Sindhur struck a fearful bargain with a Sidhe. It was dark and it was enough that should his superiors in the Bureaucracy find out about it he would no longer be Celestial but Infernal and should Sindhur come to harm he knew that the current Lady of Jigoku would torture him indefinitely since he was of course her favorite Uncle. One twitched his golden fur slightly at the thought, his version of a shudder, and had he not been shuddering since his meeting with that terrible Queene? Oh she had been beautiful of course, with her sharp teeth like a cat and her amber and golden tri-ringed eyes, her fur … er … hair loose and sweeping down to her ankles in a wave of gold and diamond strands, and that kind expression on her face. Yet she did not call her court the Court of Blood and Thorns for nothing after all, and she was Unseelie, right to her very core.

One saw the trap of her right away. She was acceptance where there had been none before for many of her followers, she was acceptance, respect, and power. What Sidhe, what Fae, what mortal did not wish all of those things? So they flocked to her from the Dream Realm and some from farther away, leaving Courts in which there were none of the things that this Queene offered, leaving all they knew forever simply for the hope, the chance, to follow Her. It was not a place that One would have normally willingly gone, for it was very different from anything that he had ever known, the rules were confusing to him and seeming fluid and too changeable by half. But there was power here, Power in the Queene, Power in her Court, from the Dream Realm and from the Sidhe who walked the mortal plane now. The Power drew him when he might have shied away, and now he had the terrible burden of his bargain with that horrific and beautiful Queene.

“I will do this thing thee ask,” she had said. “I will do this thing because he is Our Cousin of a sort, and my Court has nothing but gain to come of this bargain. But there must be sacrifice, thou cat of Heavenly Hue, a sacrifice come willing to the slaughter for love of Sindhur N’Alsia. When that blood spills out upon the clean snow, thee will have thy miracle, when the pure heart’s blood comes forth no more.”

It did not strike him until later that she had not seemed surprised to be speaking to a cat.

Now he was sitting upon a table that was coated thickly with hoarfrost, twitching and tail lashing as he sought to keep his voice level and calm as he gazed upon the wraithlike form that was the Komi of Winter now. Sindhur had never been over tall, but he had been sleek in his grace and well-muscled for an elf of his stamp, handsome enough to make a maid think of … well, sin. He was in fact as handsome as Selitha was beautiful, the same wondrous violet eyes and silver hair like newly minted coin. Or rather, he had been. Now those eyes gazed out from a face far too thin, his cheekbones stark and sharp like razors, circles of shadow under those violet eyes that made the color burn, made it vivid and filled with pain. His lips were held in a self-mocking half smile that held no joy in it, and One could easily count his ribs through the open shirt he wore. Sindhur was of course unaffected by the killing cold of the room and his voice came like an icy whisper to One’s ears.

“She called to me again, One. Just last night.”

“Did she?” Careful, so very careful.

“Yes. Did you know, that she gave me a locket, once? But then she left. Like they all do.”

“A locket, and the Book if I recall, it came to you then. Will you go to her now?” Perhaps, perhaps if he would go, then One would not have to do this terrible thing that he had planned. Yet Sindhur’s words killed that hope in the birthing stages.

“No. Leave me now. And tell those wolves to shut up on your way out.”

It was a dismissal, pure and simple, and One knew it was meant to be permanent. There was no choice for him now, but the bargain he had made, and he knew that Sindhur might never forgive him for it. So it was that when darkness fell and a certain raven-haired beauty lay down for her nightly reverie in RoseHaven Castle that at her window there appeared a golden haired blue eyed Temple Cat to whisper instructions to her while she was resting, to plant within her the idea of the urgency of the thing, and that there could be no more waiting, no more hoping. If she loved him she had to go now, this very night, and she could tell no one of what she intended to do.

In a half trance it seemed she rose up from her bed and she dressed in her warmest things and slipped on her sturdiest pair of boots. When she rode out and lifted her hand in farewell to the guard at the gate she was not stopped, for Eilonwy Joiselle Sulerian-N’Alsia had made a habit of going out in RoseHaven after dark, in her search to summon Sindhur. She was halted on the road out of RoseHaven to the East, but when she flashed her insignia of rank she was allowed to pass without question. The cold air stung her face as she rode, the wind of her passing making her raven hair ripple behind her as she narrowed her golden eyes to keep them from tearing up. Hurry, hurry, hurry it was as if some unknown voice chanted in her ear, as if she didn’t know in her heart that speed was of the absolute essence here.

She’d meant to go after Gryphon, up to find him at the heights of Methrive, where else would he be? She’d meant to go, yet kept on trying to summon him with her sympathetic magic instead. Even when the snow had come in soft clean white skirls from the leaden sky she still did not go, and now she felt a squeeze of terror in her heart that maybe it was too late after all. Perhaps she should have stopped and told someone where she was going at the least, but sensible thoughts like that were just beyond her now. Sindhur was waiting or rather she hoped he would wait, that he would not simply pass on without her saying what she had to say to him. She had taken that burden with her back to the Elven courts that her mother had once upon a time fled, kept it with her for all those years, and was it any wonder that she no longer wanted it?

The love she wanted to share, the longing and guilt and sense of despair, those she could do quite well without. It should have taken her more than a week to reach the mountains, and perhaps another week to climb up the heights of Methrive, which even in full summer was so high that it was capped with snow and deepest cold, the air thin and difficult to breathe. Yet such was her haste and the strength of her need that she soon found herself at the foot of the mountain trail that would lead her up if she were brave enough to go there. The horse which had run this part of the race with her she took pity on and left in a farmer’s picketed yard, her hands scrubbing the lathered flanks with rough hay and carefully setting aside the saddle on a fence rail. The insignia on the leather would let the farmer know who owned it and that there might be a reward for its return.

She penned a quick note and stuffed it into the saddlebag as well, telling Torrin to tell Calumnus and Bamby that she was proud to have them as her students and that neither of them should worry. It wasn’t much explanation of course, but it was all she could compel herself to write in her haste. It would be her booted feet alone which would carry her up into the biting cold, and despite her Elven attunement to nature even she found herself knee deep in snow drifts that would perhaps have buried a human trying to cross them. Frost began to form on the exposed metal of her cloak’s clasp, the leather wrapped hilt of her rapier in its gentle rose color, the buckles of her boots when they were free of the snow, the bone buttons of her vest. Breath would come out of her in an icy cloud to be drawn in again like stinging needles of coldest ice, yet she would not stop her upward climb.

It was hard, she knew, because Sindhur was not helping her. Had he wanted companionship or even cared to know that someone was on his mountain, he could have sent the chill winds to clear away the drifts of snow from the paths or at the very least prevented the landslide that had nearly buried her alive a league or two back. Now the howling of the wind had gained an eerie quality that made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rise and had her arms not been so chilled already she might have had gooseflesh from the supernatural quality of the sound. That voice that had been with her since she had flung herself from her bed days hence ago whispered to her again to ignore it, the wolves wouldn’t touch her.

Which as it turned out was quite the bold lie.

[Eilonwy Joiselle]

She knew of these wolves, had heard the stories of them being seen with Sindhur during the depths of winter. She’d even had one of them painted into his portrait that hung in her room at RoseHaven Castle and while it was large, nearly pony-sized and silvery white, it bore no true justice to the real thing. Yet despite the cold that numbed her and stole her grace, she was still Eilonwy Joiselle Sulerian-N’Alsia and she was still the Rose Bladesinger who had earned her rose and black tiger tattoos on a world far from this one. She was sure that he would be wrathful with her, if she were to make it to him at all, since she’d killed two of his pets with her rapier and spells. Yet the fight had never been certain had it, and she was blooded with tooth and claw. His wolves had acquitted themselves well at the least and now some of the ice crystals and frost upon her were the color of blood frozen in snow.

They hung back now, watching her. She knew instinctually that with their intelligence that they knew they could take her down as a pack but she would cost them to do it, cost them more of their number and they were human smart and grew attached to their packmates in ways that fully natural wolves would never. So they would simply pace her and wait, knowing that eventually she would fall either to her wounds or the cold and then they would have her. She couldn’t bring herself to hate them for it and in fact she stilled long enough to bring up her rapier in a respectful salute before continuing on. If they would allow her to pass then she would not go out of her way to slay them either, it seemed terribly fair.

The braid she had placed her long raven hair in had long since unraveled and what hair was not stiff with ice whipped in the chill wind as she moved on. Her face where her scarf did not cover it felt stiff as well and she wondered if the Healers in the Tower of the Crescent Moon could fix such damage … which she laughed at softly there in the snow because after all it was not as if she thought she might live to ask one of the Priestesses there. She continued upward along the snow covered trail and did not look back, though if she had she might have stilled once more in surprise. Each place in the snow where a drop of her blood had come to splash, the color stayed vivid and warm and presently there would come the gentle smell of perfume, and the velvet petals of a rose where none had ever bloomed before.

It was inevitable that she would make it to stand before his palace of ice, perhaps she would even have made it were One not invisibly at her side the entire time to keep her out of Sindhur’s traps and the deep chasms that lay in random places along the trail. Now that she had made it the goading sense of fear and rush that had dogged her all the way from the Castle left her and she stood there on the flagstones unsure of just what she was to do. Ice coated the stones and the steps leading into the palace thickly, and her fingers ached in their leather glove where she still held tightly to the leather wrapped hilt of her rapier. She should sheathe it she knew, but her fingers were so stiff that she doubted that she would be able to let it go once she did. If this were a regular keep she would have been hailed by now by the Castellan or a master of the guards, or even a guard on duty but there was no one to greet her.

Once, a long time ago, there might have been a whimsically built snowman at the gate. But now there was nothing but empty courtyard, statues and plants decorating it made entirely of ice. The only sound besides the ones she had grown accustomed to in the wind and the howl of her wolfish would be diners was a gentle splash now and again when her blood hit the ice, or the newly roughened sound of her own breathing.

“Sindhur, I am here.”

Now, lower under her breath … What now?

“Do you love him, Eilonwy Joiselle?”

A pause, then the sound of her labored breathing. “I am here, so I would suppose that means yes, wouldn’t you?”

She didn’t turn to see who spoke, she was too stiff and it would hurt too much. Nor did she look downward at her feet to see the cause of the sudden wave of gentle perfume into the chilled air, she stood in a drift of roses that bloomed out of the heat of her spilling blood.

“I think this will really work.” A bit of rising excitement in that strangely toned voice behind her. “Look at the flowers, that’s never happened before.”

“Can I … can I see him now?”

A dismayed sound from the companion she had somehow gained told her no before he bothered to say it out loud, and his voice took on a pleading note.
“Not yet, and you should hurry. If he sees what we are about he’s sure to stop us.”

“Oh.” A pause. “What is it we do that will displease him so?”

Silence. For a moment she thought that he’d left her, but then that voice came so soft and regretful that she almost made the effort to turn and comfort him.
“I made a bargain you see. To save him, because he’s dying, and I don’t know what that will do to his sister since … but that doesn’t matter because you are here to save him aren’t you. Know now that without your action he will indeed die, he most likely won’t last until the end of the hour. Almost too late, we were. But to save him there has to be sacrifice and you my dearest one must die.”

She drew in a breath, not having the heart to tell him that she was most likely dying now anyway from frozen lungs and frozen bites that were bleeding still. So she closed her eyes and waited for the plunge of a dagger in her back and when it didn’t come she opened the black lashes tipped with frost and said…
“Well? What are you waiting for?”

Always practical, our Eilonwy. There was an almost half choked sound behind her, either tears or smothered laughter. “No,” the man or so she thought of him said gently. “You have to do it yourself. Heart blood to save him, if you really love him, but if you don’t, if there is a doubt, don’t bother because the spell won’t work.”

She took a look around the courtyard and then made slow painful steps towards a fountain that had a base of stone before the ice built it up into a thing of fantasy, and she raised her arm high before bringing her rapier down on it clashingly. One could not help his gasp when she did so, nothing meant more to a Bladesinger then their chosen weapon. But she did it again and again until finally the bright forged blade cracked, then snapped about half way down its length. For a moment there was ringing silence and then she turned her wrist and plunged the jagged edge of the blade deep into her own chest, driven by the very last of her strength.

One was horrified on some level that she had actually done it. He wanted to go back to the moment just before he told her what she must do and allow her to go home. But that was not something possible and so he had to bear witness to what happened next. Her breathing had been rough before but now there was a liquid quality to it as she sank slowly to her knees, hand still wrapped tight around the hilt of her broken blade. She coughed and blood splattered her lips, and tears of pain rolled down her frozen cheeks as she felt her heart beat stutteringly around the metal intruder in her chest. She could not draw enough breath to scream properly and One padded over to her and laid a paw on her thigh in his small attempt to comfort her.

She could not scream at all, so perhaps it was fortunate that Sindhur had finally risen up from his desolate throne so he could do it for her. He had risen and come to the archway with a wrathful expression on his sunken features, shouting that someone had slain some of his wolves and why could he smell fresh blood and if One had anything to do with it he was sure his sister could use some new fur lined gloves. But his words had died away when his violet eyes had rested upon the scene in his courtyard and he could after all be forgiven his scream of anguish that drug out from a heart that had been broken twice before. He found his voice after that, his chest rising with taking the breath to speak and One winced as he was even more painfully thin than before.

“Eilonwy what have you done girl?”

One didn’t think she’d be able to speak and he was prepared to spin his explanation to Sindhur and thus face his wrath when her voice came out small in the howling wind and when One looked at her lovely face he was ashamed. She had pulled off the scarf and her soft lips had curved to a happy smile, her eyes tearing up from more than pain, the golden depths no longer muddy with sadness.

“Sindhur, I’m saving you. I always loved you.”

Then as her eyes closed she toppled over none too gently to the stones she knelt on and the last of her heart’s blood spilled out on the snow. Horrified now, One padded backwards, ears flat to his skull as he looked upon the unchanged Sindhur and the now dead elfess. Sindhur, despite his nearness to death had lost none of his spellfilcher’s grace and he brushed by the stunned Temple Cat to kneel right there in her spilled blood and remove the broken rapier from her chest with a wet sucking sound. He threw it across the courtyard to land with a dissonant clang before he gathered her up and glared with all the force of his power at One.

“I don’t know what you did, One. But I will never forgive you for this.”

He kissed her gold dusted lips and tasted her heart blood there, his hands slick with it as his arms went around her. The gentle softness of her in his arms and the smell of her perfumed flesh filled his senses though part of him shied away from taking the deepest breath of her because he did not want the experience marred with the taint of her death. He wanted to go then, to dissipate into the ether as a ghost perhaps or a soul bound still to his twin to watch over her in RoseHaven, but he did not. So he did not move, simply held Eilonwy tighter as he whispered to her.

“I could have loved you. You gave me a locket with your heart in it.”

One was snarling in fury as he stalked about the pair, he should have known better than to trust that terrible and beautiful Sidhe Queene and he tried to think of a curse appropriate enough for this, for his being made fool of and costing the life of an innocent when he heard the tiny sound of metal on metal … snick … and the sudden shuddery indrawn feminine breath that came after. The locket was something that Sindhur had found upon coming here once more and he had on some impulse opened it now. One’s blue eyes shot their gaze back to the kneeling pair and in amazement he saw the brilliance of the light that suffused them. He thought it was maybe the spell and that he had been too hasty in his judgment of the Queene but then he realized that the light was coming from within the pair of them, dancing under their very skins and flowing from one to the other.

Eilonwy had always been considered a rare beauty and not just because of her exotic mix of gold elf and moon elf though that was a large part of it with her golden eyes and skin pale yet dusted with gold over the points of bone and her lips. That skin had come over with her yet more pure and if One had ever known a Seelie Court he might have seen a Seelie Sidhe with skin like this though it was rare. Her golden eyes had not much changed save that they were ringed now, metallic gold around soft gold around gold dust, and her raven hair was pooling around her and down her back in a softly glimmering wave of darkness. Sindhur’s changes were far more pronounced yet well within fitting to him, his silver hair like new minted coin held a deeper undersheen now, the tips more like molten silver and his hair too swept down in a fashion that would let one know that it was at least down to his calves. His wondrous violet eyes were stunning with a vivid ring of violet circling a soft lavender ring that held the hint of snowflakes around a ring of more icy violet and the silver lashes that fringed those eyes were also darker at the tips than the base.

He narrowed those eyes at One as he stood up with Eilonwy still held in his arms, his strength of body restored to him now and he was in no mood as yet to have her away from him.
“I expect you’ll tell me what you did, One. Then I expect to never see you again.”

The words were precisely cold and cutting and even One felt a bit of fear. He had known that Sindhur would not thank him for this bargain of his, and he had not expected to be thanked. He truthfully knew that his motivation had not changed, that he had not done this so much for Sindhur as he had done it for Sindhur’s twin. How she would react to the changes in her brother remained to be seen, but at least he would be alive for her to have a reaction to. Yet he had not expected this rather Unseelie feeling of rage washing from the newly born Sidhe and so he tread rather carefully when speaking as he told Sindhur the absolute truth and perhaps he surprised himself that he did so since it was far more the norm for a Temple Cat to speak in riddles. He even indicated his surprised pleasure that Eilonwy was alive and there was darkness now in that middle lavender ring of snowflakes in Sindhur’s eyes that made him want to tread even more warily around the former Komi. He had thought Sindhur was enraged before, until he told him that Eilonwy was meant as a simple sacrifice to save him and that she had been perfect for it since she of course truly did love him.

Later on he reflected that perhaps he should have kept that bit of information to himself as he floated disincarnate and disconsolate around the halls of the Celestial Bureaucracy, but how was he to have known that Sindhur would wake his first and second Hand of Power right there in his revenge on One and use his Celestial Blood to seal their wakening fully? He also should not have been surprised that Sindhur was more than just a Sidhe, he was a Sidhe Prince. For a moment he thought about that, remembering the other Prince he had glimpsed during his visit to Rae’s court and wondered how they might get along. But it wasn’t even as if he could watch over them from here … and so he began plotting on how he could get reincarnated once more.
He wasn’t about to let a simple thing like physical destruction stop him for long, after all.

~Fin~