Part Second: The Hart Rampant: Prologue

Prologue: The Garden and the Serpent

3011 (1978 by human reckoning) ~ The Third Kingdom of Arcadia.

The year he was summoned as a Tithe page, Lucius Malfoy hadn't especially wanted to leave home, truth be told.

He was engaged to the luminous, luscious Narcissa Black, the most perfect patrician beauty Slytherin House had seen in decades. Her blue eyes, velvety white skin, and blonde hair, which fell, unbound, nearly to her knees, were keeping him awake at night with lustful imaginings. His parents were insisting on at least a year-long engagement for decorum's sake, but if Lucius had had his way, he would have married Narcissa that hour and bedded her the hour after that. He was also working as the assistant of a powerful senior Wizengamot official, which gave him access to some very interesting spheres of influence.

The Office of Magical Law Enforcement had other plans, however – Alastor Moody and his Aurors raided the Lestranges' manor in late January of that year, on a warrant issued after an investigation into a suspicious poisoning turned up some threatening letters from Rodolphus Lestrange to the recently deceased. Lucius and Rodolphus Lestrange ran in the same circles both socially and politically, so the Malfoy family had reason to believe that any evidence disclosed by the Lestranges concerning certain of their sons' mutual interests could prove... embarrassing... to the family. Abraxas Malfoy, Lucius's father, did not by any means object to any of his son's political convictions, having inculcated most of them into him by example – but he disapproved very highly of evidence coming to light, and even more highly of being summoned to testify in court.

It was then that Lucius's father had a flurried exchange of correspondence with a very old friend of his, a man named Buckminster Swain. Swain was a wizard scholar who lived in Arcadia, the home of some mysterious beings called Faeries. Lucius's only previous experience with beings called fairies had been as the phosphorescent, humanoid insects that served as Christmas decorations at Hogwarts. No, Lucius's father assured him, he was talking about Faeries, the Fae, the Hidden People, the Fair Folk, who, in a myriad of alluring, and terrifying, guises, had figured in the magical folklore of Europe, the United Kingdom, and especially Ireland for the last millennium.

And their world – the Faerielands, the Land of Eternal Summer, the pastoral, fabled Arcadia – was also quite real. Lucius's father had been there as a Tithesman himself, as had his grandfather and great-grandfather before him.

"All I recall about them from school is that Professor Binns talked about them for maybe three days, Father," Lucius said over the breakfast table, after his father first proposed the idea. "He said that they used to emigrate here sometimes, but had disappeared off the map by the fifteenth century. They're supposed to be horribly secretive, and don't like outsiders. Some people don't even think they have souls. Will I come back from being their page and find that a hundred years have passed here and Narcissa and all the family are grey and dead?"

His father laughed. "Of course not, stupid boy – you won't find real Faeries in the pages of children's schoolbooks like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – to begin with, they're far from beasts, and second, you'll never find them if they don't want you to. The Fair Folk are an ancient people – a thousand years ago, when more of them lived here on Earth, they were considered Europe's natural aristocracy. If you ever see a Faerie bleed, you'll see where our term blueblood comes from. Being chosen as a page of one of their Kings is a great honour – traditionally only the best and brightest and most talented are chosen."

The elder Malfoy's words appealed to his son – as with his father, the way to engage Lucius's interest was to appeal to his taste for that which was elite and exclusive. "All right then, Father. When do I have to go?"

"The Glastonbury Tor portal will be open next week," his father replied, and it was settled.

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The house-elves packed his trunks – in all, it felt remarkably like going off to Hogwarts for another year. Lucius's father had given him several heavy bags of gold Galleons as well as bags of molten gold, silver, copper, and titanium beads, and several large, expensive flagons of Healing Potion, eyedroppers, and boxes of tiny stoppered glass vials, saying that those were as good as currency in Arcadia. The Fae didn't coin money, his father told him – they traded in commodities. He could spend Galleons, but they were valued for the gold in their composition, not for their worth as currency. If you grew crops in Arcadia, you could trade them for clothes, wine, honey, labour from skilled craftsmen, anything the other person wanted or needed. If you grew or produced anything on a large enough scale, you could trade it for settled lands, or use it to settle and cultivate wild lands and thus claim them as your own, and so on.

His father also gave him a set of silver cutthroat razors, whetstone, and strop, as apparently shaving supplies were hard to come by in Arcadia, and bottles of a vitamin tonic he was to drink every day against anaemia, as iron didn't exist in the Faerielands.

The evening before he was to set out, his father took him into his study, off the long gallery at Malfeasant, and spoke to him seriously over glasses of fifty-year-old whiskey.

"You'll see some of the most beautiful women you've ever seen in your life in Arcadia, my boy. They can't give you any diseases, so I won't tell you not to indulge yourself. You can't give them children, except when they bleed – mind that you steer clear of any Faery girl in heat. We won't look charitably on any back-forest by-blow that you father, no matter how much good sport there is in its making. You can amuse yourself with the Fae, they're good for that, and I daresay they'll be happy to have you – during some of their festivals, they'll expect you to make merry with them. But remember – you're engaged to Miss Black, and it's a fine match with her family. Your wedding date is set, and I expect you not to humiliate us."

"Yes, of course, Father," Lucius had replied.

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On the day of his departure, his mother awakened him long before it was light out.

Lucius's father travelled with him as far as London, and told him that the King's men would meet him outside of Glastonbury Tor and take him to the portal. "Don't be late, now – the portals are only open for so long, and if you miss it, you won't get a second chance for twelve weeks."

"Yes, Father," Lucius replied.

A man met him at Castle Cary – a slim, wiry man, with twinkling brown eyes, wearing a tweed cap over thick brown hair like a wild goat's pelt. He was wearing a soft linen shirt of a cut that even Lucius, in his long cloak and Edwardian frock coat, thought was old-fashioned, with a woolly brown cloak and trousers, and brown huntsman's boots. "Hello – I'm Euan Doggins. You must be Lucius Malfoy."

"Yes, sir." Lucius shook Mr. Doggins's hand.

"Let's get your trunks, then." Doggins moved all of Lucius's luggage onto a trolley with ease – even the incredibly heavy trunk with the bags of precious metals. Though compact, he seemed stronger than he had any right to be. He led Lucius outside to a van, into which they loaded his luggage, and then Doggins climbed behind the wheel, and they set off. The sun had still not yet risen, and a white February fog lay heavily on the ground.

Lucius noticed that they were to be taking the roads into deep farmland, far from the Glastonbury high street. Before long, they had gone from paved road, to gravel road, to dirt road. All that he could see on either side of the van were muddy, harvested and not yet replanted farms and a long, brown, withered hedge. The sun had risen only high enough to shed a sour grey light through the fog.

Finally, Doggins parked the van in front of a remote little outbuilding, and Lucius saw another conveyance – a weathered wooden cart hitched to a great Percheron draft horse, waiting in front with a tiny, black-haired man at the reins. Doggins called greetings to this newcomer very jovially, and then they moved his luggage onto the back of the cart. Lucius was dismayed at the rustic appearance of the cart – surely a Malfoy going to the Court of a King could expect to travel with more style. But his two companions hustled him along so quickly that there was no time for protests, their breath blowing frostily in the cold air. In a moment, he was sitting in the back of the cart on one of his trunks, and along with what looked like the luggage of several other people, while Doggins and the small black-haired man took the reins up and called "Gee up, grey mare!" to the horse.

They started off at a brisk pace, along the same withered brown hedge. Finally, they came to a halt, and Lucius climbed down from the back of the cart, brushing his cloak off as though he suspected riding in such a contrivance had somehow infected it. Then he noticed the others – a group of six other young men and women, all in their twenties or late teens, waiting next to a gated archway in the hedge.

They were a diverse lot – three women, three other men. Doggins quickly introduced him. The women were Dakarai Shumwe, who had striking African features and shining black hair and skin, Eithne Brennan, a black-haired, blue-eyed girl with a southern Irish brogue, and Aliane Floriano, with dark hair and eyes and nut-brown skin, who he later discovered had gone to Wizarding school in Brazil. Among the men, he met Jak Dhayalan, a ruddy, blond South African, Varick Skúlason, a slight, dark fellow from Iceland, who was clutching an instrument case of some sort, and a Frenchman named Laurent Collier, with dark brown hair and striking light green eyes, who turned out to be a Beauxbatons alum.

Lucius was the only Englishman amongst the group, and by far the best dressed, which made him feel slightly conspicuous immediately. But the Brazilian and Irish witches both immediately looked at him with the usual appraising, approving eye that nearly all women turned on him, which made him feel more at ease.

The smaller of the King's men climbed down from the cart to stretch out on a great flat rock near the arch in the hedge and shook out his wild mop of black hair. Then an idea seemed to seize him, because he gathered his limbs together into an alert, crouching position with breathtaking alacrity. "Know you, Doggins, if we be in time for Imbolc? I feel a great fancy to see the maids dance in the fields."

"I know not, alas, Ciaran Puck – remember to allow for a day or five either way from today."

Lucius had been standing with his back to the hedge, when suddenly... something behind him changed. Energy crackled in the air, and a warm wind scented with fresh greenery and wood smoke wafted past his cold cheek.

"Oi! She opens!" cried the tiny black-haired man in a bawling voice. "I see the lights of home!"

Lucius turned back toward the dead hedge, then stopped, aghast at what he saw through the arch.

On the side of the arch where he was standing – it was a chilly grey February morning, with a thick fog on the ground and a stiff breeze blowing the dead leaves in spirals. On the other side – where, presumably, one would expect to see the spent fields of the farm beyond the hedge in the chill morning light – was a view into the dark of night, the arches of trees in deep forest, lit by a bonfire some two hundred feet distant. Lucius gasped involuntarily.

"Bless me, Mother, your sons return," muttered Euan Doggins in a prayerful voice. He called something to the horse in a language Lucius didn't know – and the horse whickered back something that sounded remarkably like an answer and started forward so that Lucius saw the wagon travel from the sunlit field into the dark, firelit forest.

"Come along, lads and lassies! First one to the End of the World buys me an ale!" shouted Ciaran Puck from behind them.

One by one, the seven young wizards and witches filed forward and through the arch, with the tiny Puck bringing up the rear, comically shooing them along like chickens. When Lucius passed through, from daylight into night in two paces, he felt woozy for a moment, as if the air had thinned, or the ground had shifted beneath him. He moved across the clearing to lean heavily against a slender birch tree – but then that tree turned and looked at him, and he saw that what he thought had been a birch tree was actually a slender girl with nearly parchment-white skin and long grey hair tangled with leaves. She put her hand protectively in front of her face and peered at him – startled green eyes, through long fingers with knotty knuckles. He recoiled – and in his momentary distraction, she was gone.

Doggins, seeing this, laughed uproariously. "You and that dryad gave each other a start, and that's for certain! Careful of the trees, my boy, some of them are women, and like all women, they respond best to courtesy."

Close beside Lucius, Puck shook his dark head again and cried, "Damn human Glamours are too much trouble for an honest Puck to bother hisself – I'll wear my own face at home, thanks."

Lucius turned toward him – and suddenly it seemed as though the Puck somehow shrank... his hair lengthened, and his eyes darkened – until he had changed from a very small and unkempt, but human-looking, man into a tiny imp of a man, perhaps four and a half feet tall, with huge, leathery feet and hands, woolly, high-arched brows, and hairy ears that came to an exaggerated point. Lucius gasped before he could stop himself.

The Puck turned toward him and leered with demonic amusement. "What say you, my tall Master – is this not a visage to sour the milk and scare all the children? But no matter – my mother loves me." He winked.

"Aye, but can you scare all the milk and sour the children, goodfellow?" asked Eithne, the Irish witch, in a playful voice. Lucius glanced in her direction – it was the first time she had spoken.

"If such as you wishest to see it done, lass, I surely will, and strive to curdle the sheep besides," Puck told her with a bow.

Then an authoritative voice called: "Travellers through our portals... Halt, make yourselves and your business known to us." A group of people emerged from the gloom beyond the bonfire. Firelight glinted off bright silver armour. Lucius stared.

There were six of them, men and women both, cloaked and in glittering chain-and-scale mail, with slender swords strapped over their backs. There were two women, three men – and one fellow easily seven feet tall and hulking in the shoulders. His face, from a distance and backlit by the fire, looked more than usually whiskered.

"Sir Euan Doggins and Lord Ciaran Puck, Your Honours, carrying seven more Tithe pages for his Majesty's service. Shumwe, Floriano, Brennan, Dhayalan, Skúlason, Collier, and Malfoy reads the inventory, and in the order collected," Doggins said with a theatrical tip of his cap. "These here be the wand-wavers. So who's on portal duty tonight?"

The portal guard evidently recognised the King's agents, for they called cordial greetings to them. Then the tallest warrior drew close enough for Lucius to see his face clearly – which was that of a great, stripe-furred, whisker-jowled tiger, walking on his hind legs like a man, and with a very intelligent expression on his face. One of the women warriors, who looked about forty, with dark red hair, was walking on what looked like a deer's hind legs beneath her chain hauberk and had very mobile, fuzzy ears, like some strange half-version of a centauress. Each of them wore a hooded plastron of grey leather, embroidered around the cowl neck with a stylised device of a goblet wound around with grapevines.

Lucius looked desperately behind him at the light of the February morning beyond the arch, but the arch was gone, and he was alone in this strange, strange land with these even stranger people. His knees shook, and he felt light-headed. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the Brazilian girl looking terrified and being comforted by the Irish girl. The South African fellow looked a bit scared, but the Frenchman, the Icelandic fellow, and the African girl were peering around with expressions of wonder, like little children who have found their way into their favourite storybooks.

Then someone's massive arm was under his, helping him to sit on a fallen tree trunk. "There, there, Master Page, the portals unsettle the knees – and sometimes the stomachs – of many," said someone's rumbling, vibrant bass voice. "Are you sick?"

"No," he said, shaking his head till it cleared. "Thank you, sir."

He looked into the face of the great tiger, who was peering into his face with concerned yellow eyes, and then, spoke to him again. "All right then, I'll be seeing you at Gwydion's banquet then, tomorrow eve." He held out a great paw, claws sheathed, like a man inviting a handshake – which Lucius realised a moment later was exactly what he was doing. Lucius remembered himself and threw back his shoulders – certainly the Malfoys were no cowards. He shook the tiger's paw with dignity.

"Lucius Malfoy," he said.

"William Blake – just Bill to my friends," the great tiger replied. "Be welcome to the Mother's land of Arcadia, Lucius."

Then Doggins slapped the reins down on the grey mare's back again, and she and the luggage wagon started forward down a clear path that seemed to open up amidst the trees. "Come, my young wand-wavers, the End of the World is close at hand. Trot lively now, there's a pint with my name on it waiting."

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The group of Tithe pages left the portal guard to their vigil in the forest and followed after the cart on foot, stumbling a little in the dark until Doggins and Puck pointed their hands at the cart and both muttered "Lioht" – followed by a sibilant whisper that Lucius couldn't make out. Suddenly the cart and the path just behind it were outlined with a pale, greenish light that made it easy to make their way along the path of hard-packed dirt.

After they had walked perhaps a quarter-mile, the dirt path widened into a gravel road, and a large, half-timbered grey-brick building, with dim firelight dancing in its many mullioned windows, appeared around a bend. A carved and brightly painted wooden sign near the great front door read: The Inn at the End of the World.

Doggins and Puck climbed into the back of the cart and helped the pages with their luggage. "Take only what you need for a short stay, my lads and lassies, we're only here for the one night." Then Doggins opened the great wooden door and motioned them inside.

The inn's dim interior was entirely panelled in dark wood and furnished with long, weathered wooden tables and benches. What looked like a whole roast side of lamb and a large covered cauldron were hung above a crackling blaze in a great hearth. A pretty, buxom, middle-aged woman was wiping down mugs behind the carved wood bar. In all, it would have looked like any old, prosperous pub in the backwoods of Britain – in about the year 1600.

Except, perhaps, for the patrons.

A handsome young man with long auburn hair approached them as they entered. He was wearing a fine linen shirt like Doggins's and soft trousers that gathered just below his knees – and as he drew closer, Lucius noticed that from those knees down, he was sporting the same kind of anatomy as the deer-legged woman soldier guarding the portal outside. The short, deerlike antlers on his forehead and his fuzzy, mobile ears drew the eyes of every Tithe page in the group, but he acted as though his appearance was entirely normal and mundane. "Oi, the lads return! Be you on your way to Court, then, Doggins? My honest Puck?"

"Aye, Corvus, with a cargo of Tithe pages for his Majesty," the Puck replied, clapping the young man on the arm in passing. He made a beeline for the bar, where he effortlessly hopped up onto a stool about three-quarters as tall as he was.

Doggins turned to the seven witches and wizards. "My young masters and mistresses, meet Corvus Greenwood, squire of his Majesty's Fianna. Corvus, I'll let you meet them severally, as I'm too parched for more introductions. Come, young ones, sit and have your dinners and ale." He motioned them to take seats at the tables and then caught the eye of the woman behind the bar. "Goodmistress Glorvinda, Glory of my heart, it's nine trenchers for seven Pages and two stewards I require, and some cheer." He swept off his cap and pressed it to his heart.

The other patrons in the pub all looked up as the seven pages found seats at one of the long tables. Lucius noticed that when Dhayalan, the blond South African, found himself next to the dark-skinned African witch in the crush, his expression hardened and he came around the table to take a seat next to Lucius instead. "Hello again," he said, holding out his hand. "Jak Dhayalan. Malfoy, was it?"

"Yes, Lucius Malfoy," Lucius said, shaking his hand.

"Strange, strange place they've got here, isn't it?" Dhayalan said, grimacing. Behind the other wizard's close-cropped blond head, Lucius saw a figure in a blue cloak sitting on the bench opposite turn toward them at his remark. High-arched dark brows pulled down over violet eyes, directing a disapproving look at the back of Dhayalan's head.

"Strange, exotic, and wonderful," Lucius said, ostensibly to Dhayalan, but more toward the woman near them. She turned toward him and smiled – and he smiled back.

Goodmistress Glorvinda, with her pointed ears visible through her luxuriant hair, was now setting down platters of fresh bread before them, and pots of butter and honey. A diminutive kitchen boy – with outsized feet and hands, and hairy ears like the Puck – slung everyone a pint of cold, reddish ale from a tray and then helped the landlady ladle out and serve handled, wooden bowls of something from the covered cauldron hanging in the hearth. Lucius waited until everyone else was served, then reluctantly dipped a polished wooden spoon into the dinner before him, not expecting anything but some sort of rough, plain, barely edible peasant's fare – and was pleasantly shocked at his first taste. It was a simple lamb stew, with herbs, vegetables and potatoes – but the meat was so tender it nearly melted on his tongue, and the broth was so rich and well seasoned it made his mouth water for more immediately. When he tore off and buttered a chunk of brown bread, and tasted the ale – they were just as delicious as the stew. Well, this was turning out to be a bit more pleasant than he thought.

He looked curiously around at the other patrons as he ate, and they looked back at him just as curiously. The antlered, hoofed Corvus Greenwood, who was talking to Doggins over stew and beer at the end of their table, was hardly the oddest-looking inhabitant of this place. There were two people at the bar chatting with Ciaran Puck who looked exactly like very large grey foxes in elegant silk shirts and trousers, sitting up on their hind legs and drinking from mugs clasped between their outsized forepaws. In a corner by the window, there was a couple, a man and a woman, both with almost chalk-white faces, and hair and eyes as black as obsidian, who also had the same strange extra pointed frill of skin and cartilage at the tips of their ears. The woman had a blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms that, from the way she was holding it, could only be a sleeping baby. With another surreptitious glance at the pretty woman behind him, he saw the long, tawny body of a pet ferret lolling comfortably in her lap, being fed on tidbits from her plate.

And all of these extraordinary personages acted as though they themselves were mundane as could be, and he and his companions were the extraordinary ones.

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The Tithe pages and the King's men slept in rooms above the tavern that night. The next morning, Lucius got up early, partook of a lukewarm bath carried upstairs in many buckets by the Puck-ish serving boy, and then got dressed and walked into the marketplace just down the road from the End of the World.

And for nearly the first time in his privileged and decidedly blasé young life, he saw something that amazed him.

First, it was just... the sky. It was of a blue he had never previously seen before, except in painted landscapes – an impossibly saturated periwinkle cornflower cerulean – just one adjective didn't seem enough to describe colours here. And the trees and grass and leaves... all were so deeply green that they shone iridescently, like the most unspoiled fields of Ireland.

Then there were the flowers. They grew out of, and over, everything. There didn't seem to be a gate or fence or structure that was not at least partially covered over with flowering vines. None of the flowers had ever been bred for shape rather than scent, like the hybrid teas in his mother's garden – so the flowers were all fragrant. All of them were competing hotly with the others for the attentions of bees for pollination, so they responded by producing ever more delicious colours, ever more luscious fragrances, ever more attractively shaped and intricate jumbles of petals. Each windblown blossom was waving itself before the thrumming bees shamelessly.

And the sky, the green fields, and the flowers were like that everywhere.

To add to his sensual confusion – if the flowers were shameless, the women were more so. His father's warning that he would see the most beautiful women he had ever seen in his life here was proving to be entirely true and correct.

Everywhere he looked there were slender legs, heart-shaped arses, high, pointed breasts, slim arms, skin as fresh and firm as porcelain, lustrous hair of all colours, wide almond eyes, and rosy lips. He was now used to the strange extra pointed frill that adorned all of their ears, save his own and those of his fellow Tithesmen, in this place. Teenage girls, young women in their twenties (or perhaps their thirties, or forties, as his father had said the people aged more slowly here), and older women, with streaks of silver in their hair, were everywhere.

And the way the women dressed. The weather was unremittingly balmy in this place – it never got too hot, so heatstroke rarely occurred except in high summer, and it never got too cold, so that one only wanted a light cloak on winter nights. Spidersilk, as he learned later, was plentiful, inexpensive, and durable, so it was easy for all these fair, fair females to go about in colourful frocks of gossamer stuff that floated around their legs most delectably. The spider pookas, who he learned later were an elite merchant class here, liked to weave in their favourite shapes and motifs – the uneven, overlapping petals of flowers, insect wings, and spiderwebs. Wherever he looked in that market – feminine beauty, draped in sheer gowns.

And the women were like that everywhere. He was peripherally aware that there had been men in that marketplace as well, but he barely noticed them.

He followed one dazzlingly fair woman for some time; she was doing her shopping with a basket of fresh vegetables under one arm, dressed in a long-sleeved blue gown whose uneven hem wafted around her calves, until he drew closer and realised that her face was covered with fine lines and her blonde hair abundantly shot with silver – she had to be older than his father. Lucius turned in another direction to spy a very small woman with short, dishevelled red hair, striking amber eyes, and a wild expression hurrying past, wearing a halter-necked linen blouse and loose trousers and what looked like a heavy cloak of some mottled greenish velvet. He followed her a short ways away from the market, hoping to strike up a conversation. But when the redhead reached a clear area a short ways away from the crowd, she shook her head, flexed the muscles of her back – and the velvety folds furled on her back stretched into mothlike wings at least fifteen feet across. A downbeat of those wings bore her up and into the sky.

His heart raced – it was simply quite astonishing to see another person spread her wings and fly away.

A rollicking alto laugh sounded to his left. "Have you never seen a nixie before, Mr. Malfoy?" someone asked him in slow, accented English.

He looked up to see the African witch, leaning against a gate grown over with white flowers. She had swapped her witch's cloak from the previous night for a light dress of rose-red silk with thin straps, like those of the women in the market, and laced black sandals. Her bare shoulders and arms shone like polished wood in the sun. Black as coal, his mother would have said.

"No," he said. "Had you?"

"Only pictures in books," she replied.

"Miss Shumwe, Malfoy! There you are," someone called. He looked up to see Laurent Collier approaching them. Like Dakarai, he had swapped his robes for lightweight Arcadian clothes: a green spidersilk shirt and soft linen trousers tucked into boots. "Doggins sent me to find you. Come – we'll soon be leaving for Court."

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Outside the End of the World, the King's men had procured another horse-drawn conveyance for the journey, but this one – a large open brougham carriage with a gilded body and wheels, and smooth leather seats, was much more to Lucius's taste. Puck was outside hitching a pair of fine horses into leather harness.

Doggins and a few of the other Tithe pages were in the tavern having breakfast when they came in: eggs, rashers of bacon, and pints of ale. "There you are, my wand'ring wand-wavers," he said. "Ready yourselves for leaving – we want to be off by half-past or thereabouts."

"Is he angry? Are we late?" Lucius asked Laurent as they went back to their shared room above the tavern.

"Oh no, the Fae aren't big on late and early," Laurent laughed as they went upstairs. "Few minutes here or there, it's all the same to them. None of our sort of clocks here, you know."

"Why are we taking a carriage up to the castle? Wouldn't it be faster if we all just Apparated?"

"Apparition doesn't work here," Laurent said, splashing cool water on his face. "It just doesn't – no one's really sure why."

Lucius took a few minutes to tidy himself for his appearance at the Court of a Faery King, putting on a clean, starched white shirt and tie, and fresh robes, then brushing the dust off his black boots and combing his hair before packing up and readying himself for the journey.

"Robes? You're going to perish in the heat, Malfoy," Doggins said when he arrived in the courtyard. "Oh well, get in."

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Doggins was right – the weather was warm that day. When their group set off the road from the Inn at the End of the World, with Doggins driving the carriage and Puck following behind in the luggage cart, Lucius had broken a light sweat before they had gone a mile. Before long, he had abandoned his robes altogether, then loosened his tie. Then he unbuttoned his collar and rolled the cuffs of his shirt up to mid-forearm, and was wishing he had worn linen trousers rather than wool. Then he looked at Dakarai and Laurent, who looked comfortable in their light Faery clothes, and vowed to get some for himself at the first opportunity. In the seat just ahead of him, Jak Dhayalan had refused to relinquish his wizard robes, and his face was red and shiny with sweat. Aliane Floriano, who had chosen sleeveless robes of lacy white batiste for the trip, stole an approving glance at Lucius as his robes came off and his shirt came unbuttoned, as if in her opinion, his appearance improved the less he wore. But Doggins and Puck were driving the horses at a crisp pace, and there was a cool breeze blowing.

The landscape that rolled gently by them during that journey was enough to distract anyone from being mildly overheated, though – the fields nearly glowed with greenness, as if nothing he had ever seen had been truly green before. In the distance, there were gentle rolling hills, and every mile or so there was another stone or wooden bridge over a creek or little river. Here and there they would pass farmland, with clusters of half-timbered cottages or occasionally a large manor, with sloping roofs and mullioned windows like the End of the World. There were orchards, too, and more and more frequently, acres of vineyards, with orderly rows of grapes of all hues, pale green and gold, and purples varying from bright red to nearly black, tied to T-shaped stakes up off the grassy ground. The flowers were growing just as riotously here as they did in the little town they had just left – now and then they would pass fields or thickets carpeted brightly with wildflowers, and the fences and the sides of houses were often overgrown with trailing, flowering vines here too.

Aside from the rustic Tudor style of the architecture, Lucius was beginning to be reminded of parts of Italy and the south of France. Euan Doggins had started singing some silly little travelling ditty as they reached deep countryside:

Do you seek the road to Fairyland?

I'll tell; it's easy, quite.

Wait till a yellow moon gets up

O'er purple seas by night,

And gilds a shining pathway

That is sparkling diamond bright...

His song then gave way to a chorus of tenor humming and tra-la-las that sounded improvised on the spot. The terrain became more hilly and heavily forested now, with the occasional pinnacles of lichened rock protruding from the Earth – no, not the Earth, the land. Soon they drove under a cool, shifting canopy of old-growth forest, which provided a comfortable shade from the sun as morning became noon. Doggins clucked to the mare and resumed his song:

Then if no evil power be nigh

To thwart you, out of spite,

And if you know the very words

To cast a spell of might,

You get upon a thistledown,

And if the breeze is right,

You sail away to Fairyland

Along this track of light...

Then he turned back to the Tithesmen and -women behind him and called: "Oi, look to your left, my young ones, there's the castle, where you'll live this day and twelvemonth. I tell you, there's nothing more beautiful than your first glimpse of home after one has been a-wand'ring, eh?" He slapped the reins down on the mare's back and quickened her pace.

The seven pages turned left toward the view just above them – and even from a mile or so away, the castle looked like the home of a King whose people had inspired endless stories for centuries. Lucius's family home had been a Tudor hunting lodge; he had attended school at Hogwarts – but even he was impressed at his first glimpse of Greenbarrow Castle.

It was a vast structure, built from grey stone, massive wooden beams, and shimmering windows often set with ornamental stained glass, with battlements, spires, courtyards, arches, and winding staircases innumerable – a small town in itself, and home to over a thousand people. It had been built on a vast flat rock face next to a river that rushed down a gently sloping hill, so that the westernmost windows looked out on a magnificent graduation of large and small waterfalls. This cool, clear river, he was to later learn, supplied the entire castle with water in addition to providing an incredible view. To the north, east, and south lay cultivated fields and orchards, beehives and greenhouses, and lush rows of vineyards that continued for miles around.

The closest thing Lucius had ever seen to it on Earth was Neuschwanstein, a castle in Germany that had been built at unimaginable expense by a Bavarian king often considered to be a romantic madman. If Mad King Ludwig had had vast resources of wood, marble, and stone nearby, could have hired preternaturally skilled troll stonemasons capable of magically-aided feats of architecture, employed flying nixie craft folk capable of carving and painting ornamentation into inaccessible places and setting stained glass windows hundreds of feet above the ground, and had centuries in which to build – he might have come up with something like the home of Gwydion the Fifth.

They drove up a long, winding road cut into the forested hill, through an archway under a turreted guardhouse. "Welcome back, Sir Doggins, Lord Puck! Welcome to you, young Tithesmen!" called more soldiers in glinting armour from the battlements, waving down from their posts. The Tithe pages waved back. Lucius noticed that the archway was hung with bright banners, depicting stylised red and violet grapevines around a black goblet. Then they drove up another stone roadway to a courtyard bordered with smaller halls, and then up to a great central courtyard just before the main building. Doggins and the Puck slowed the horses to a stop, and both leapt nimbly down.

"Come disembark, young ones, we'll have some castle stewards bring your things in a moment," Puck said. "Follow me." And he led the way up the broad marble steps, through a vast foyer and along a covered gallery, into a magnificent, high-ceilinged hall, with a frescoed ceiling and silk banners draped over the white marble walls. The great windows looked south, over a bank of forest and down to the river below.

A small group of well-dressed people, both humans and Faeries, were already waiting in the hall. When the Tithe pages entered the room, they were each individually greeted by someone or someones who, Lucius realised, must have been the person responsible for their inclusion into the Tithe. Eithne Brennan had been immediately embraced by a willowy blonde woman upon her entrance. "No, dear heart, call me Morgaine here, I'm not your teacher now, but glad to call you my friend." An entire family, with a Faery father, a human mother, and who looked like a little flaxen-haired Faery half-brother had been waiting for Laurent Collier, and now he was embracing the woman and calling her Maman.

A human man with long brown hair and a neat beard, dressed in a dark blue silk shirt and black linen trousers, came up to Lucius and greeted him with a jovial handshake. Lucius noticed that he had dried inkstains on his fingers. "No need to tell me that you're Abraxas Malfoy's son, young sir – you're the very image of your father."

"Thank you, sir. I'm Lucius Malfoy."

"Buckminster Swain," the dark man said. "Come on, let's show you your room."

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As he followed Buckminster Swain through the castle, answering the older man's questions about how his parents and family were, and what was going on in his part of the world, Lucius racked his memory for everything his father had told him about Swain before his departure. Lucius's Tithe sponsor came from a very rich pure-blooded family that had also been politically influential about seventy years ago; he had written several well-regarded books on the history of Wizarding magic and been a popular member of the Wizengamot. ("A political moderate, though," Lucius's father had said, pressing his lips together in genteel disapproval.) Swain had been a Tithe page in the same year as Lucius's father, and had been a great favourite with the King and Queen during his time at Court. ("He went totally native practically the moment he got there," Abraxas Malfoy had said. "In the end, he had read more Faery history than some of them had.")

Upon Swain's return to the Wizarding world, he had married a pure-blooded witch of impeccable family, an aunt of Lucius's friend Mulciber, but she had died of a sudden stroke, after twenty years of marriage and four pure-blooded children. Some time after his first wife's death, Swain had gone back to the Third Kingdom for what he said was a year's sabbatical. At the end of that sabbatical, Swain declared his intention to divide his time between Britain and Arcadia on an indefinite basis. A year or two later, he married a woman who Lucius's father somewhat grudgingly said was extraordinarily beautiful, even for a Faerie. As he followed Mr. Swain through those bright, airy marble halls and up gorgeously carved staircases, Lucius was desperately trying to remember the Faery wife's name, or if there had been any children. He wanted to make an excellent impression on Mr. Swain, whom his father had said was very influential at Court. ("All I have to say about old Buck Swain, my boy, is that while he may seem just a gentle eccentric – don't make him angry.")

"Here we are." Swain unlocked a carved wooden door that led into a large, comfortable corner room, with cool stone walls and a sloped roof with great exposed beams. Much ornamental carving had been lavished on those beams, ceilings, and walls. There were several large, arched windows, which looked over the river to the west, while the north view looked out on miles of vineyards and small farms. The west-facing windowsills were grown over with vines bearing trumpet-shaped blue flowers. There was a knock at the door a moment later, and two men in livery piled Lucius's trunks at the foot of the bed, then nodded to Swain and Lucius and left the room.

"Well then, Lucius – why don't I give you about an hour or so to settle in, and then I'll show you the library and my office. And don't forget, the welcome banquet is tonight, after sundown. You'll want to dress up a bit for that – Gwydion is a gracious host, and his courtiers tend to be very fashionable." He handed the copper bedroom door key to Lucius.

"Yes, sir. Thank you very much, sir."

After Swain had gone, Lucius flopped down on the wide, fragrant, delightfully springy bed. The linens were of a cotton so fine it felt almost like silk. He was to later learn that the velvet coverlet was spun spidersilk, and that the sheets were scented with heather. But now, it just felt deliciously comfortable. The mid-afternoon sun was slanting in from the west, and the play of sunlight through the waving leaves of the vines that framed his window was lovely. The blue flowers were filling his room with a delicious scent, sort of like roses, and violets, and something else entirely.

He sighed. Let the Aurors try and send him a witness subpoena here.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

By the time Mr. Swain appeared to collect Lucius, he was already unpacked, having given a pair of passing housemaids a silver bead each to attend to it for him, and to fetch him some hot wash water. "All settled in then, Lucius? Come on, I'll show you the nice comfortable cave where Gwydion lets me keep my books and papers."

Swain led him down many flights of stairs, down past the ground level and out of the reach of the golden, late afternoon sun, into a long, sloping stone corridor lit by torches. "Here we are. Remember this, lad – count twelve torches from the left after the last turn, and – do you have your wand about you? The door is here, but I keep it Obscured and warded against intruders. Like so – " Swain waved a hand over a seemingly blank area of the wall – "The incantation you'll need is Ende Obscurant." – and then he silently spoke a word, under the threshold of Lucius's hearing. A stout wooden door with many locks appeared, and Swain unlocked each one with a different key and incantation. He opened the door and motioned for Lucius to precede him inside.

Mr. Swain had been absolutely correct when he described his library as a cave – it was indeed located in a stone underground chamber, albeit a cool, dry, well-ventilated one, with ornamental arches and borders carved into the stone walls. There were long rows of wooden shelves full of every kind of book imaginable, many of which looked hand-bound. There were great dictionaries on wooden stands and ancient, fragile folios kept under glass in cases. "I know it's a bit gloomy, but parchment and vellum like cool, dry places, and it's more secure than any place above ground with windows."

Swain showed him around the library, with what Lucius thought was a very strange demeanour – he seemed to look on those dusty stacks with the enthusiasm of a small boy showing off his favourite toy at Christmas. But then, his father had warned him that he might find Swain a bit odd and eccentric. "Now remember, Lucius, the existence of this library is the subject of controversy in some parts of the Kingdoms. There are those who would like to see all of its works destroyed, so we keep it well guarded. Only a few people are allowed unlimited access to these stacks. There's me, of course, the Royal Family, my wife, my daughter, and now you, my assistant for this year. Euan Doggins, the King's steward, has his own keys and passwords, and so does Morgaine Flaxseed, who is the King's Bard. Everyone else has to submit a request and make an appointment – no exceptions."

"I understand, sir. I'll look after your library as best I can," Lucius said stalwartly.

Swain smiled at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I believe you will, my boy. Now, shall we go up and introduce you to the King's Court?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Lucius followed Mr. Swain back up staircases and through corridors to the same entrance hall he had seen earlier, and then up another flight of steps that led into a second grand marble hall in the castle's southwestern corner, closest to the river. This hall, also hung with silk banners, could only be a King's audience chamber, judging from the two magnificent thrones set side by side on a raised dais. The westernmost-facing wall was a stained-glass archway that opened onto a great stone balcony that directly overlooked the river outside. A small crowd had gathered on the balcony – Lucius recognised Laurent Collier and his family, Eithne Brennan and her Tithe sponsor, and both Puck and Doggins in the people milling about, talking excitedly amongst themselves.

"Ah, what's going on, what's going on?" Ciaran Puck pushed forward, ducking nimbly amongst the sea of taller people. He was back in a moment, grinning merrily. "Now I've seen the cause of it."

"What's happening, goodfellow?" asked Doggins.

"Elaine's girl, my Lady Emily," the Puck told Doggins with a wink. "She's back from school as of yesterday, and this morning she quarrelled with his Lordship Traltivere. He's challenged her to a bout in the circle, and half the Court is here for the show."

Hearing this report, Swain shook his head with fond resignation. "She's always in trouble," he said to Lucius, heaving a deep sigh.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The crowd spread out to seek better vantage points for the competition, and Lucius followed Swain through the crush onto the balcony. There was a large circle about twenty feet across traced on the stone balcony floor in chalk, and two competitors were preparing themselves for the combat on opposite sides.

Both competitors were dressed for fencing, in canvas jackets, breeches and boots, with masks made of leather and wire mesh in their hands. The man, who the Puck had called his Lordship Traltivere, was a tall, pretty young fellow, with a great deal of long, curly black hair of which he appeared very vain. His manner, as he chose a duelling foil from a case offered by an attendant, seemed haughty and much aggrieved.

His opponent was a slender girl in her late teens, with waist-length red-gold hair and wide brown eyes. She appeared ridiculously fawnlike and insolent as she took playful practice lunges at the air beside the chalk circle. From her outward demeanour, she wasn't taking this seriously at all and seemed to think the whole challenge was the best joke she had ever heard.

"Anyone care to lay a wager on the outcome?" asked a courtier near Lucius, a haughty dark-haired man dressed in a tunic and trousers of peacock-hued silk. "Say, a cask of brandy on the winner? I say Traltivere bests her, three touches to her every one."

"I'll take that bet. A cask of your best brandy," Lucius said, not exactly loudly, but in a tone nicely calculated to carry across the stone floor. "On the girl to win."

Hearing this, the strawberry blonde girl turned toward him and grinned at him – an irreverent sort of grin, one that recognised him as an innate co-conspirator in her favourite kind of mischief. He gave her his most charming smile in return.

"You'll lose that bet – Traltivere is the finest swordsman at court, and the girl is completely untried, or so my little brother says," the fellow in peacock said with a knowing laugh. "But I'll be happy to take your liquor from you. Send it to Steifan Robinett, care of the King's Court."

"She's Elaine's daughter, though, Stef," said another courtier, a man with long auburn hair.

"But too young to have ever seen a Beltane fire, Corvus," the fellow in peacock scoffed, then turned toward Lucius again. "But then, you didn't bet on her thinking she'd win, did you, stranger? You're trying to win her favour."

Lucius merely smirked at Robinett. Then he did a double take at the fellow Robinett had called Corvus – suddenly he recognised the auburn-haired man as Corvus Greenwood, to whom he had been introduced in the End of the World. But today he was without his antlers, was wearing shiny brown boots instead of capering on cloven hooves. He also had much shorter and less hairy ears, somehow. Was this sort of thing normal here? Did people wear their antlers one day, and then leave them off the next? Lucius would have sworn the night before that Corvus's antlers had been an organic part of him, growing out of his forehead. It was all profoundly odd.

"But I wonder... will she choose you come Beltane, my friend?" the fellow in peacock asked Lucius, in a delicately insinuating voice.

"We'll see," he said airily, briefly wishing he could remember what Beltane was.

A tall, grey-haired man, who was apparently serving as bout director, motioned to both combatants to get into position – both the blonde girl and the curly-haired man saluted each other and assumed en garde position on opposite sides of the circle. The director held out his hand between the two of them and called, Fencers ready? Both combatants said Yes.

The director dropped his hand. Fence.

Lucius almost didn't want to watch – although he had bet on her, he didn't believe that the girl had much of a chance of winning this competition. Certainly she would be humiliated, and he hated to watch a pretty woman upset like that. The tall, curly-haired man loped easily down the floor in the girl's direction. He raised his sword toward her and –

Halt, the director called, stopping the action.

Somehow, the girl had her sword arm up, fully extended, and her point was pressed into the curly-haired man's shoulder. She was leaning into her sword's tip, so that the slender blade bent fully in an arc.

Attack into preparation. Point left. Fencers ready? the director asked. The girl immediately answered, Yes. The curly-haired man shook his head and rubbed his shoulder, grimacing.

Fencers ready? the director prompted.

Yes, the curly-haired man said finally.

Fence.

The curly-haired man advanced across the circle and took a quick thrust at the girl – who wasn't there. She turned her shoulder away from his attack at the last second, so that his point travelled past her, and with her shorter reach, had her sword arm extended in just the right place for her opponent's forward momentum to slam his right hip against her sword point as he continued forward.

Attack into preparation. Point left.

Fencers ready? the director asked. The girl immediately answered, Yes.

The curly-locked man directed a baleful look at the girl, who smiled sweetly at him. Finally he answered, Yes.

In the next action, the girl again attempted an attack into her opponent's preparation to attack – but he parried her, then attempted a riposte, but her blade slithered past his to take him solidly in the shoulder.

Halt, the director called. Thrust left, incomplete parry right in second, attack continuation left. Point left.

In what seemed like no time at all, the girl had five points, and the tall man had none. Furiously, he demanded another bout – and the girl was only too happy to accept.

They went on like that for another two bouts. The girl was slippery as a slender blonde fish, and just as impossible to pin down. Yet she seemed to land solid thrusts on her opponent with disturbing regularity. After the third bout was over, the Faery courtiers applauded both of them as they saluted each other and shook hands. The curly-haired man looked very annoyed and irate, and the girl was smiling politely at him, but with such a sense of smug satisfaction oozing around the edges that Lucius wanted to spank her bratty little arse himself.

"It seems I know a good fencer when I see one," Lucius said to the fellow in the peacock coat. "So when can you deliver my brandy? Send it to Lucius Malfoy, care of the King's Court."

"Tomorrow," the peacock fellow said grudgingly. "My compliments, sir – apparently you have excellent luck, enough means to waste, and know a pretty girl when you see one." He made a sarcastic bow and disappeared into the crowd.

Doggins, Greenwood, and the Puck came forward to congratulate the victor, who was pulling off her mask and raking back her long, sweat-damp hair; Buckminster Swain and Lucius followed a few paces behind. Ciaran Puck held out his leathery hands to the girl – "So, my little villain! She's back from the big bad Second World to slay all fops and varlets – too sophisticated for us now, and for certain, after making the acquaintance of the mass media and flush toilets. Come, lassie, give your old playmate a kiss."

"Hello, my honest Puck." She stooped, took both his hands in hers, and kissed his comical imp's face. "So they say you're an old married man now, tied to Nell's skirts?"

"If I be tied to my wife's skirts, then I know of no fairer bondage," Puck said, winking at her. "Let all men know a newlywed bridegroom's toils and travails, eh, lads?" He comically put his hand to his forehead. Greenwood and Doggins laughed and clapped him on the back, then came up to greet Lady Emily themselves. She called Greenwood "my pretty coz," and called Doggins "dear old friend," and teased and kissed them too.

Lucius shook his head in genteel disapproval. This blonde was the silliest little thing he had ever seen, making up to common men like that, even if she had won a bet for him.

"So, Emily, when will we be seeing you with a husband to warm your heart?" Doggins asked her. "While we're on the subject – my nephew Colin is a fine fellow, a new made journeyman squire, no less."

"Oh, come, Euan, she's naught but seventeen. I'm sure the boys will wait," Buckminster Swain said, approaching the group with a smile. Lucius watched as Swain warmly embraced the fair girl, and then she kissed him, too. "Emily – well done, dear. Your mother would be proud of your form and technique, if not your manners. Can you perhaps try to wait a few months to get into silly arguments with noble Lords, rather than on your first day back from school?"

The fair girl was Buckminster's own daughter. It was too perfect.

"Sorry, Da," she said, looking at him with contrite, appealing expression. He relented and kissed the side of her forehead.

"Now – there's someone I want you to meet. The son of an old friend." Swain turned toward Lucius. "Lucius, this is my daughter, Emily. Emily, may I present Lucius Malfoy? He's serving as Tithe page to Gwydion at my recommendation."

"Mr. Malfoy." She put out her hand, still warm and damp from the bout, in greeting.

"Miss Swain." He didn't shake her hand, but put a very quick and chaste kiss on the back of it – nothing overtly sexual, as her father was standing over them, but a definite acknowledgment that she was a beautiful woman, an ornament of the court. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise, thank you." She paled, her eyes downcast for a moment, and seemed more than usually breathless, which was the usual female reaction to being introduced to Lucius. Her eyes, he noticed, were very dark and dramatic in her pale, elfin face. "So I'll see you at the welcome banquet tonight, then?"

"I shall look forward to it," he said.

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The courtiers and Tithe pages began to assemble in the great audience chamber adjacent to the grand dining hall an hour or two after sunset.

Lucius had dressed to the nines in a crisp white shirt, silk waistcoat and tie, and black velvet dress robes. When the Faery courtiers began to arrive and he saw what was currently the Court fashion for upper-class women, he was glad to have the billowing robes to hide his... reaction to the way they looked. Wealthy women here favoured sleeveless (and often backless) spidersilk dresses of varying lengths, often with gilded lace, rich beading, or intricate embroidery, and sometimes with little corsets or bodices over them. They also liked to put some kind of shimmering powder on their exposed shoulders and bosoms, and seemed partial to unnatural cosmetics colours – one fair, fair creature had just wafted past him in a dress of mottled mermaid green, with silvery shoulders, with a silver-green gloss on her lips and eyelids. Faery women also seemed partial to tattoos – a number of them had a variation on the same red, violet, and black Celtic-looking knotwork armband around their right upper arms. Here and there were mostly older women with the some kind of coiled-serpent tattoo around their right upper arms as well. And one fetching female had just walked past whose backless dress revealed a pair of elaborately inked butterfly wings that covered most of her back.

Then Euan Doggins, now looking quite distinguished in a white silk shirt, and doublet and knee trousers of brown velvet, with a large gold medallion engraved with the goblet-and-vine device around his neck, called for everyone to rise and greet King Gwydion and Queen Dahlia. Corvus Greenwood (also looking handsome and aristocratic in green velvet with shiny high boots, and still without his antlers) raised a cup and led a toast to the King's and Queen's health. The Faery Court rang with cheers and hearty shouts of "To the King and Queen!" Lucius raised his cup to the reigning monarchs with a respectful nod.

Gwydion and Dahlia accepted these accolades very kindly and graciously and drank to the health of their guests in return. They were both elderly, with pure white hair, their faces covered with fine character lines. Despite their great age, they were both imposing, robust figures and carried themselves with immense dignity. Gwydion wore a dark red silk doublet over a black silk shirt and trousers, which contrasted dramatically with his waist-length white hair. His Queen wore a kirtle of the same red over a long gown of fine white pleated silk, and her hair cascaded in white curls to past her knees. When the King offered his Queen his arm and led her to greet their guests, there was an unselfconsciously romantic air to the gesture, as though no one had ever told this very old man that he was not a young husband escorting his new bride. Lucius noticed that they both had the same kind of wide-pupiled brown eyes as Corvus Greenwood and their great-niece Emily.

Lucius spotted Buckminster's feckless little daughter making her gambolling way through the crowd toward them. Emily was wearing a short black frock with a little velvet waist corset fastened with a row of tiny silver buckles, and sheer black stockings. Faint silver sheen on her shoulders and lips, dewy pink eyelids, long, loose, careless hair. He noticed then that she too had one of those red, violet, and black tattoos on her right upper arm. When the King and Queen greeted her, she embraced and kissed them like they were her best friends. Queen Dahlia smoothed her windblown hair and scolded her for letting it go with a grandmotherly air.

"That dress is far too old for you," the Queen was saying. "A young girl should be wearing a nice violet, or green."

"But I like black! Everyone in Paris wears black," Emily said, laughing, and emphasising nearly every other word in the manner of teenage girls. "I brought back a bunch of silk stockings and Chanel No. 5 and mascara, too. You have to come with me to the Louvre sometime – you'd love it, it's beautiful."

Then the Queen nudged her great-niece and nodded toward the front doorway at someone who had just arrived – a tall, striped, whiskered fellow, now in an elegant topaz silk shirt and trousers, who Lucius recognised as a member of the portal guard from the night – day? – on which he first came here, now out of his armour and into civilian dress clothes. Lady Emily smiled hugely, then raced up to him with a long shrill cry of Biiiiiiiiiiill!!! and threw herself into his arms. He hugged her back so enthusiastically that he spun her up and off her feet. Well – evidently those two knew each other. Lucius's brow quirked in momentary concern – did she prefer her lovers on the furry side, then, was that it? The pooka soldier was certainly a strapping specimen enough – but was that sort of thing normal here?

Lucius's fellow Tithe pages were mingling with the assembled company as well. Aliane Floriano looked very pretty in lacy, pale green witch's dress robes, but Dakarai Shumwe wore another Arcadian frock, a dark red gown with a draped neck. Laurent Collier wore Arcadian dress clothes as well, and looked very well in them too, the smooth bastard. Lucius was glad to see Jak Dhayalan and Varick Skúlason arrive in wizard dress robes, and less elegant ones than his own.

Dhayalan took a glass of liqueur from a side table and sidled up to Lucius. "So, what do you think of the place?" Dhayalan said, surveying the crowd with some apprehension.

"Some rather decorative women," Lucius muttered appreciatively.

"Some," Dhayalan said. His eyes lighted on Miss Shumwe in her red gown, as she was being introduced to the King and Queen by her Tithe sponsor, a red-haired woman with the coiled-serpent tattoo on her upper arm, and his lip curled in a sneer of distaste. "My parents were telling me only the best people get asked here for the Tithe. But I guess they can't be that choosy, if they're letting kaffirs in," he said, aside to Lucius.

Lucius shrugged unconcernedly. "Did you see the fencing today?"

Dhayalan laughed. "I heard you won a whole cask of brandy on a bet. Need someone to help you drink it?"

"Yes, I think I might," he said, smirking conspiratorially. "Perhaps tomorrow night, we can get started in my room before seeing what else this Court has to offer by means of entertainment."

Both of them looked up as Laurent Collier approached them with the Irish Titheswoman, Eithne Brennan. "Bonne nuit, Malfoy, Dhayalan."

"Good evening," Lucius said, inclining his head politely and smiling charmingly at the girl.

"So Eithne was just telling me that her Tithe sponsor is Lady Morgaine Flaxseed, the King's Bard," Laurent told them. "Bards are a very big deal here, I'm told."

"Morgaine is going to perform this Saturday – I can't wait to see it. I've never heard a real Faery bard perform," Eithne said excitedly. Like Dakarai, she had changed her witch's garb for Arcadian clothes and was wearing a low-backed spidersilk gown in the same dark blue as her eyes.

"So, what do you do, Mr. Malfoy? I'm told we were all asked here because we have some kind of talent – I'm asking everyone what theirs is," Laurent said.

"What do I do?" he repeated, too distracted by Miss Eithne's bare arms and elegant back to pay too much attention to the question.

"You know – Dakarai teaches Potions in Nigeria, Aliane is an opera singer, and Varick plays the violin... ?" Laurent prompted.

"I'm the assistant of Theopilius Solon, of the Wizengamot," he said, throwing his fair head back proudly. "What do the two of you do?"

"I'm studying to be a mediwizard," Laurent said.

"I'm a folklorist, and I teach literature," Eithne said. "So you're studying law, then?"

"Yes," he said. It was true – he had read some law at the office, when his work required it.

"How about you, Mr. Dhayalan, what's your speciality?" Eithne asked of the blond fellow standing next to Lucius.

Jak Dhayalan laughed. "My speciality? I don't need one – I'm a legacy. My family have been Tithesmen going back a century, so there was no way they weren't going to invite me."

Eithne Brennan looked unimpressed. "I'm a legacy," she said matter-of-factly. "My family has participated in the Tithe going back to when Faeries and human Celts used to celebrate Beltane, Samhain, and Imbolc together in Ireland."

"Really? You have got to tell me about that," Laurent said, turning excitedly to her. "I'm the opposite of a legacy – I didn't even know Faeries existed until Darryn and my mother started to date when I was seven."

The young Frenchman continued to tell the story of his widowed mother's romance with an expatriate Faerie who later became her husband, who then brought her to live at Court, and now he had two little sidhe brothers, et cetera, et cetera – Lucius was bored after about ten seconds, but Eithne was listening sympathetically to this charming tale of love conquering all in a mixed marriage, with either real or well-feigned interest.

Lucius turned back to the King and Queen – his eyes followed them as they moved on from being introduced to Aliane and Varick by their respective Tithe sponsors, to another couple of human guests, a young blonde woman in a beaded black gown that would not have looked out of place in a 1920's silent film, on the arm of a freckled man in a pearl-grey linen suit of unmistakably Muggle cut.

"Who are they?" Lucius asked, turning toward Eithne and Laurent, with a nod toward the couple.

Eithne and Laurent glanced in the same direction Lucius was facing. "Oh, those must be some of the other pages," Eithne said.

Lucius looked at her uncomprehendingly. "The other pages?" he asked. "What other pages?"

"The seven Muggle pages," Eithne said. "The goblins, giants, and merfolk didn't send anyone this year, and they've stopped asking house-elves. Morgaine says they used to, but the house-elves got very neurotic and took to drink when they were told they didn't have to do any housework while they were here."

"Muggle pages?" Lucius asked. He darted a hard look at the two humans talking to the King and Queen. "You mean to tell me there are seven Muggles here at Court, in addition to us?"

"Uh... yes, Mr. Malfoy, there are," she said, becoming a little testy herself at his harsh tone. "They arrived the day before we did. And I'm sure they didn't ask them here to personally offend you, all right?" She exchanged a look with Laurent Collier, then nodded and moved away with him into the crowd.

"Well, we know where we are then, don't we," Jak Dhayalan said disgustedly, aside to Lucius. "Rubbing shoulders with kaffirs and Muggles."

"Not to mention sanctimonious Irish," Lucius muttered.

"Lucius, there you are." Buckminster Swain had arrived, in handsome dress clothes of black silk and sapphire blue velvet and with a gold goblet-and-grapevine engraved medallion around his neck, like the one Euan Doggins was wearing. Emily immediately appeared at his side, tidying his rumpled collar. "Good evening, you two – I beg your pardon, Lucius, it's hard to tell what time it is in the library sometimes. Have you met the King and Queen yet? Emily, you didn't introduce him?"

"Bill just got back from portal duty, Da," she said.

"I see, if Bill's just got back," Swain said, laughing. "She and Bill Blake have been absolutely inseparable best friends since they were babies, you see – when we sent her to school, I think she cried more at parting from him than she did from Elaine and me."

"I did not!" Emily protested.

Swain and his daughter then escorted Lucius around the assemblage, introducing him to everyone; Lucius put on his most winning smile until his face ached with it. The King and Queen seemed impressed with him, as did Samiel Cobweb, the Royal Apothecary, and Morgaine Flaxseed, the Royal Bard. (Both Bard and Apothecary, Lucius noticed, wore engraved gold medallions like Swain and Doggins – he figured it must be a badge of office for the King's highest-ranking servants.) Swain and Flaxseed then got into a long, involved conversation regarding some epic historical poem or another, and Emily took Lucius's arm and drew him off into the crowd.

"Now come meet my friends," she said. He was reintroduced to William Blake (who tactfully did not mention how unsettled Lucius had been upon first arriving), and Corvus Greenwood, who turned out to be Emily's cousin on her mother's side. She then presented Victoria Priquette, whose tall statuesque redheadedness won Lucius's extreme deference immediately, and Jayson Robinett, a handsome, wiry youth with Euan Doggins's kind of thick, cowlicky brown hair, who made his acquaintance with a decided sulkiness. Emily introduced Bill, Corvus, Victoria, and Jayson as her "sworn companions," whatever that meant. Lucius also noticed that Lady Victoria sported a red, violet, and black armband tattoo, identical to Emily's, on a sinewy right arm left bare by her indigo cut-velvet frock.

Swain's daughter's status at Court was becoming obvious to Lucius – she was a favourite with the King and Queen, who had no daughters of their own; considered something of a prodigy with the sword, especially after roundly defeating Lord Traltivere; and now she fancied herself very clever and sophisticated after going to Wizarding school in the "Second World." He knew the type: young, exuberant, innocently full of herself, and just selfish enough to be interesting. That sulky dark fellow – Jayson, most likely the little brother Steifan Robinett spoke of – seemed acutely aware of her every move, and she seemed to assume that his attentions were only her due. Lucius loved knowing that there was some other fellow out there who adored the woman paying court to him, some fellow that couldn't hope to compete with him for her favour and knew it.

Emily led him all through the grand dining hall, all set up for the banquet with embroidered damask, china, rows of wineglasses, and calligraphy place cards; pointed out some of the paintings of previous sovereigns on the walls. (None of the paintings moved or spoke, somewhat to Lucius's surprise.) Then she prevailed upon him to come out on the balcony to look at the view. The sun had set over the river valley, leaving the sky so richly blue it was nearly purple. Unfamiliar constellations were becoming visible in the moonless sky. Lucius realised that the girl was angling to be alone with him, in her unsubtle, disingenuous way. She was staring at him as unselfconsciously as a cat on a fence.

"So, tell me, my Lady, what did you and Lord Traltivere quarrel about that he challenged you to a duel?" Lucius asked.

"It's a long story," she said, with a disparaging shake of her head. "Let's just say he found occasion to call one of my friends an unsavoury, addle-witted animal cur, and in the disagreement that followed I may have sent a swarm of bees after him at some point. He was somewhat piqued at me after."

"What a fearsome creature you must be," he said, in a tone that said she was fearsome in a very charming and precocious way. "And it looks like I'm sitting by you at dinner."

"I know – I came down early and switched the place cards so that you would be," she said pertly.

"And why did you do that, my Lady?" He knew, but he wanted to hear her say it.

"To keep you from cracking your head on the floor when you fall out of your chair, of course," she said – not exactly the answer he had been expecting. "Tithe pages always get piss drunk at the welcome banquet. It's as much of a tradition as the flaming stuffed peacock. Six courses and they're all out cold on the floor."

"Really, why do you think that is?"

"Silly wizard – this is the Third Kingdom," she said, as if that explained everything.

"Which means?"

"Which means – we make wine. You know, miles and miles of grapevines, all around?" she said, with a gesture that encompassed everything around them. "We've been doing it for thousands of years – that's why our banner has vines and a cup on it... ? You get different kinds of wine with every course at dinner, and it's a nine-course dinner. And we have never had a Tithe page make it through all nine courses. I think the record was one big husky fellow who got to eight before he passed out."

"Thank you for the warning, my Lady," he drawled, laughing. "I'm sure I'll be fine."

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Lucius was not the first Tithe page to make it through the entire nine-course dinner.

He tried all of the tricks his father had taught him about staving off drunkenness – drank four cups of water before taking another drink, didn't drink too fast on an empty stomach, nursed only the one small glass of sherry (at least it tasted like sherry, someone told him later it was made from melons) during the cocktail hour preceding. He made it through the appetisers, then the soup course, the vegetable course, the cheese-leek-potato soufflé, and then huge whole baked fish rubbed with spice and herbs, each accompanied by a different white wine, ranging from an extremely light and tart vintage of a transparent grass-green, to a tangy, buttery, deep gold something with the fish. By the time the second entree was served, the roast stuffed peacock flaming in raspberry spirits, accompanied by a peppery, plummy pale red something (wine varietals all had different names here, he couldn't remember them right now) he was starting to feel glorious indeed. He was asked to carve at his end of the table and was at first entirely at sea until Lady Emily took the carving fork and knife and showed him how, cutting the first slice with almost surgical precision. He remembered eating some of the peacock, some of the grouse, some of the squab, and after that, he didn't remember much of anything.

Sometime later he sat up from where he had apparently been drowsing beside the table. Someone had pulled off his robes and had balled them up under his head. His shirt was half unbuttoned, his waistcoat was entirely unbuttoned, and he had no idea as to where his tie had gotten to. He found himself beside Emily Swain's chair, so he sat up, and sleepily laid his fair head on her knees. She bent down, smoothed his hair away from his forehead, and kissed his damp forehead. He reciprocated by putting a little kiss on her thigh, making her quiver.

"What course is it?" he asked her.

"Dessert," she whispered.

"Oh, I missed dessert?"

"Here, try this." Emily put a morsel of honey cake to his lips, which melted on his tongue most delectably. She followed that with a spoonful of what tasted like Devonshire cream laced with apple brandy. He was thoroughly enjoying himself – lying in a woman's lap, being fed delicacies like a great, sleepy pet cat. Then she hunkered down on the floor next to him, and he was leaning cosily on her shoulder. She offered him a sip of some amber after-dinner liquor from a glass in her hand, which tasted like whiskey, but was as close to the whiskey you got at home as sandpaper was to silk. Bloody delicious.

Sometime later he noticed that Emily Swain was manoeuvring him up the stairs to his room quite capably – like Euan Doggins, this slender young lady seemed stronger than she had any right to be. After he tried to fit the key in the door two or three times without success, she took it away from him and unlocked his door, juggling both him and the key quite dexterously.

Then he was alone in his darkened bedroom... with this girl under his arm. Sound of the river outside his open window, and soft feminine giggles in the dark. He gently lifted her face to his and kissed her, and then her arms were around his neck and she was kissing him back. Then her silk dress felt frictionlessly soft under his hands, the curve of her waist down onto the swell of her little arse was even softer, and nothing could have hoped to be as soft as the silky backs of her thighs... OhGodyesyesyes...

But then she had dropped him on his bed and spun away toward the door.

"See you at breakfast, silly wizard," she said, and was gone.

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Lucius appeared at breakfast in wool trousers and another Saville Row dress shirt the next morning, and Lady Emily immediately waved him over to join her. Over their quinces and melons, wheat cakes with honey, orange juice and champagne (at least it looked, behaved, and tasted like champagne, apparently it was called something else here), Lady Emily decided his wardrobe simply would not do at all. She was willing to keep him from hurting himself when he passed out drunk at the welcome banquet all right, she said, but if he insisted on giving himself heat exhaustion every day, he was on his own. Or he could always go into Rivendale with her and let her help him pick out some proper clothes.

He chose the second condition, as he really was getting uncomfortably hot in the clothes he had brought, and he had nothing better to do that day. He went back to his rooms and got dressed for riding, putting several handfuls of gold and titanium and vials of Healing Potion into pouches in lieu of Galleons and Sickles. Then he met Lady Emily ("Really, it's just Emily, I hate all that stuffiness") in the stable courtyard a half-hour later. She wore close-fitting black riding breeches, knee-high riding boots, and a man's black silk shirt, her hair in a long ponytail down her back. The groom (traipsing about on goaty hooves of his own) brought out a bay gelding for Lucius and held the stirrup for him to mount. Emily needed no such niceties – after spending a few minutes talking to her grey mare, who whickered and whinnied back in a very intelligent manner, she hooked a forearm under the front of her saddle and was up into it in a trice. Then she set off at a quick pace, calling back for Lucius to follow.

The city of Rivendale looked small to Lucius, used as he was to London and Paris, but he had to admit it was exquisitely beautiful. The residential streets ranged from elegant grey stone mansions with mullioned windows, to brick-and-mortar one-room structures without window glass at all, entirely grown over with flowering vines. Arcadians liked big gardens, he noticed – some people's homes looked as though they preferred more garden than house. The streets progressed from packed dirt to gravel to cobblestone as Emily led him down what looked like the most well-to-do of all the shopping streets. A painted sign adorned with a large spider read, Silkspinner's Quarter ====>.

Emily halted her mare in front of a neat whitewashed shop, then picked up a pail beside a water barrel standing outside, and watered both of their horses. Lucius noticed that the shop's front window was bordered with stained glass in a spiderweb motif – actually, the motif of spiders and their webs seemed prevalent here. The entire street of extremely well-kept storefronts seemed ornamented with it, either on the signs or in the windows or painted trim of the buildings.

Lucius discovered the cause for this spidery influence the moment he set foot inside Goodmistress Peshka's shop and that honest lady came forward to greet him. Unfortunately, he took one look at the dignified, grey-furred, hundred-pound spider, with her intricately woven and beaded shawl thrown over her back and the gold armlets on her front legs, let out a terrified gasp, and flattened himself against the door. The pooka froze, then took several nervous steps backward.

"Oh no, I should have mentioned... " Emily knelt down so she could look Mistress Peshka in all eight of her eyes. "I'm really sorry, Arachne. Lucius is from the Second World, and they only have the unintelligent sort of poisonous biting spider there."

"Ah, of course, I see." The spider pooka seemed put out, but she was extremely gracious about Lucius's faux pas. "I assure you, kind sir, I don't bite," she said with a graceful bow.

"I – I do beg your pardon, madam," Lucius said, controlling himself, and politely returning the pooka's bow. Mistress Peskha seemed much appeased.

"We've come to get some clothes for Lucius that won't make him keel over in the heat," Emily announced gaily.

"Let's see... I've just run up a nice lot of men's things over on that wall – " Mistress Peskha indicated a rack with her left front leg, remaining a reassuring distance away from Lucius, who was still regarding her a bit apprehensively. In short order, Emily had put several shirts in Lucius's arms and shooed him into a changing room. Lucius thought the cut of the garments was awfully old-fashioned, like something out of the Renaissance or Jacobean times, but once he had his own shirt off and had pulled a pewter-grey silk shirt on over his head, he had to admit that the fabric felt wonderfully light and cool and that he looked very well in it. He had pulled the grey shirt off and was fingering another in sapphire blue when Emily breezed back into his dressing room with an armful of sleeveless doublets.

She didn't seem the slightest bit embarrassed, or apologetic, at having caught him with his shirt off. Instead, she set her armful down on a stool, fearlessly put her hand on his bare shoulder, and threaded her fingers through his blond floss of hair. "Well, aren't you pretty, Master Maidenhair."

"So are you," he said, bending over her with his most enticing smile.

"You really do have some gorgeous hair on you. You should wear it loose," she said decisively. His response was to untie the ribbon that restrained his hair and lazily shake it down over his bare shoulders – making her stare at him again.

"You have gorgeous skin. You really should wear as little clothing as possible," he replied, bending down to kiss her neck. She shivered, then ducked back out of the changing room with a giggle. He watched her go – her almost boyishly athletic thighs and arse were nicely outlined by the tight black trousers and high boots, which made watching her walk away almost as arousing as watching her approach him. He could die that Steifan Robinett said she was probably still a virgin.

Emily took him around to those clothiers who specialised in more casual linen, cotton, and wool gauze clothing as well, to the leatherworkers' and cobbler's rows, and then through the jeweller's and perfumer's rows, the Armourer's Quarter, the fish and produce markets, the Dionysian Vintner's Quarter, and the theatre district that day as well. The women were just as beautiful here as they had been down in the little village where the Inn at the End of the World had been, and they dressed with more opulence and sophistication in the city. In his new casual Arcadian clothes of grey silk and black linen, with his platinum hair loose around his shoulders, Lucius was getting much more than his share of admiring stares as well.

He could tell that Emily loved this city and was proud to show it off to a visitor.

By the time they ended up in a vine-covered riverside café, tearing into fresh bread, cheese, and apples while quaffing cool, crisp white wine, watching the diverse people strolling by, Lucius thought he could definitely allow himself to be distracted this year.

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Jak Dhayalan woke Lucius up a day or two later by pounding on his bedroom door. "You have got to see something. Get dressed."

"What is it?" Lucius asked, annoyed, as he answered the door in a robe.

"I went down to the barracks yesterday and watched the Fianna training. Fucking incredible. There's men and girls in the military here – and the girls are just wicked! You have to see them."

"All right – but you want to tell me what the Fianna are first?"

"Come on, Malfoy – who do you think keeps enemies out of these lands, flying monkeys? The Fianna are the King's armies. When you see someone with that red, purple, and black tattoo on their arm – that means they're in the Fianna."

"Wait... Emily Swain has one of those tattoos. She's in the army?"

"Fuck yeah, she's in the army – her mother's in charge of the whole bloody army. Where have you been?"

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Lucius followed Jak down a wide hard-packed roadway that from the north side of the castle – about a half a mile from the castle grounds, the training campus used by His Majesty's Fianna became visible, spread out in a shallow green valley on either side of a broad creek split off from the main river.

Ancient-looking stone buildings were dotted here and there – barracks and a mess hall for those who did not live locally, armouries, and stables. There were long green fields with wooden targets mounted against straw bales for archery practice, wide clay yards for sword practice. There was a squires' bladework session going on as they approached, and Lucius recognised Emily Swain, William Blake, Corvus Greenwood, Victoria Priquette, and Jayson Robinett amongst the participants. So Jak Dhayalan had been right – there were young men and girls training together. Not girls, really, as the squires appeared to be mostly women in their late teens and twenties.

And they were just wicked. The two Tithe pages watched as the group went through bladework and footwork drills, which seemed to go on at blinding speed to Lucius, then paired off for practice bouts. Emily Swain was paired with her cousin Corvus on the far side of the practice yard – Lucius could just make out the girl's fair head and her cousin's russet one – and when the order was given, they had at each other. Corvus immediately aimed a fleché attack at Emily's chest, but she turned one shoulder and slithered past it with what seemed to him almost unreal dexterity, stopped his sword with a bind, then aimed an attack at his left hip – and he sprang backward to evade it in a backwards leap no human should have been able to make.

Intrigued, Lucius nudged Jak and the two of them moved closer to where Emily and her cousin were practicing, skirting the edge of the practice field. William Blake (who was being harried all about by the formidable Lady Victoria, despite the fact that he probably outweighed her by two hundred pounds) gave them a jaunty wave as they passed.

What he saw, upon drawing close enough to get an unobstructed view of Emily and Corvus as they practiced their bladework, astonished him even more than his first view of Arcadia in daylight.

Corvus was back on his hooves, his familiar antlers on his forehead again – and so was his cousin Emily, racing about on hooves of her own, only no antlers sprouted from her brow. This nimble hoofed form apparently allowed them to leap incredible distances in one bound, and allowed them to react to threats at blinding speed, exactly like true deer. This was why Corvus Greenwood had antlers sometimes, and sometimes not.

And two such warriors, sparring at full speed, is a sight that few people will ever forget. Lucius simply stood and stared.

Beside him, Jak Dhayalan chuckled. "Told you the girls were wicked."

A changeling, as Buckminster Swain told him later, was not an uncanny left-behind false infant as the stories told by terrified peasants once said; real changelings were called such because they were shapechangers, in the most literal sense of the word. They were able, through a simple exertion of will, to reform their malleable flesh into whichever of their two forms was better suited to the situation at hand. Lucius learned later that Emily and Corvus, and Lady Elaine, and nearly the entire Royal Family, including the King and Queen – were fauns, able to assume a partial deer form – male fauns had antlers in this state. The Robinett and Doggins families were made up of satyrs, or goat changelings – both sexes had tiny goat horns in their other forms. There were other kinds of changelings as well, though satyrs and especially fauns made up most of the changeling population at the Court of the Third Kingdom.

Changelings were not to be confused with pookas, great reasoning and talking beasts, like William Blake and Arachne Peskha. And there were other varieties of Fae in the Fianna besides fauns and satyrs – Lucius spotted some other tiger pookas in the crowd, at least one of whom appeared to be female. There were a couple of people who looked exactly like huge dire wolves, and a black-furred pantheress, well over six feet tall upright. Pookas whose forms were traditionally quadrupedal seemed most comfortable standing on their back legs and using their forelimbs as arms, but they also seemed able to run on all fours with equal facility. Far off to one side was a spider pooka like Arachne Peskha – the eight-legged warrior was sparring with three opponents, tossing two practice swords between fore and back legs. Here and there were hulking trolls, not the uncouth, cretinous creatures Lucius knew from home, but noble and intelligent; the males had short bull's horns growing from their brows.

But not all the Faery squires could borrow natural advantages from the animal kingdom – Lady Victoria, he later learned, was a sidhe, one of the most human-looking of Faeries. Even if she could not trade her booted feet for hooves, she made up for that with speed, dexterity, and valour. There were also boggins, shorter and rounder than the tall, patrician sidhe, who were most commonly mistaken for human. Farther on were a few of those black-haired, black-eyed Fae, who he heard later were called sluagh. The more diminutive tribes of Faeries, such as pixies, brownies, and halflings, generally limited their involvement in the Fianna to medical training and local militia, except for the moth-winged nixies, who had the advantage of flight.

Once the initial shock of discovery wore off, Lucius was to find himself becoming used to the diverse physical assortment of Faeries during his time in the Third Kingdom. It certainly helped that everyone here treated fauns and satyrs the same whether they were padding about on their soft, toed feet, or clattering on their hooves, and reacted to the extraordinary circumstances of talking to intelligent animals who walked upright as though it was the most mundane thing in the world. The fact that the royal Greenbarrow family, and some of the most aristocratic families at Court, like the Greenwoods, Dogginses, and Robinetts, were made up of either fauns or satyrs lent this interesting quirk of theirs a decidedly upper-class air, as if only a noble could possibly have the convenience of assuming a different, often physically advantageous form at will. He would never quite get over the strangeness of spider pookas, however, even as he bartered for large amounts of their silken wares.

But what was most fascinating about watching the Fianna train that day was not that they had changeling, troll, and pooka warriors among them, or that equally athletic and competitive women fought alongside their countrymen – what most intrigued him was the Fianna fighting style, which combined physical skill with magic to great effect. As they watched Corvus and Emily sparring, Corvus seemed to land a solid thwack to Emily's stomach, which crumpled her to the ground with a cry of pain. He fell to his knees beside her in concern – but when he tried to touch her, the gasping girl on the ground disappeared entirely, like a reflection in water that has been disturbed – she reappeared behind Corvus, unhurt, and pinned him to the ground.

She would tell Lucius later that she disappeared through the use of something called Obscurantis; the pretended injury that provided the distraction was Glamoured. And she did all of it without once waving a wand.

When Emily finished her training session and headed back up to the castle with her scabbarded sword under her arm, Lucius called to her and fell in step beside her. "So," he asked, "how does everyone here do magic without wands?"

"Let's go talk to my father – he can tell you better than I can," she said.

By the end of that day, Lucius had begun trying to create his own True Name.