The most cynical members of the court wondered how Ashalan would greet the news that Jadrin had adopted a child found buried in the rose garden as the heir to the kingdom, but they complied with his wishes and kept their suppositions amongst themselves.
A year passed and still Ashalan had not returned from the east.The boy who had no name blossomed and filled out in the arms of his wet-nurse and beneath the dark, smoky gaze of his adopted parent. True, he did not seem an ordinary child. Occasionally, the women were frightened by the intensity, the ironic humour, of his gaze and yet, physically, he appeared normal if perhaps a little slight in build.
‘Whose soul are you?’ Jadrin asked the child and in response the tiny fingers would grip air, the petal mouth smile and sigh. He had no name, and the servants, his only company, jokingly referred to him as Nothing, because it was impossible for them not to address him in some way. ‘Where is Nothing?’
‘Asleep on the terrace.’
‘Nothing never cries.’
‘Nothing has the bright eyes of a bird - a very old bird!’
Jadrin watched his magical son grow and in his heart warmed the secret of his birth, forever silent.
Ashalan and his army had a hard time of it in the east. They had ridden out to battle light-hearted and confident, unprepared for the astute organisation of the warrior king and his tribe. It was like trying to dispel a mist; swords and lances were of very little use. Here and there the ragged warriors ran, under cover of cloud and branch; shadows themselves in the night, pricking Ashalan’s soldiers as they slept, loosing their horses, spoiling their water, stealing their food. Morale slumped; it was a slow business driving the enemy back, though by sheer weight of numbers it was considered inevitable by all that, eventually, Cos would have to succeed and carry the banner of victory back to Ashbrilim.
One evening, as Ashalan and his elite guard returned to their camp through a thick forest, a storm came up from the south, suddenly and fiercely. Trees above them shook leaves and sharp twigs onto the heads and shoulders of the men, rain sluiced them cruelly, wind tore their sight from them. Ashalan’s stallion took a fright, being more spirited than the rest, and plunged recklessly off the path, tearing madly through dense undergrowth. All Ashalan could do was lean forward and close his eyes, trusting that the animal would quickly spend his strength and not fall. The frantic calls of his men faded behind him and he gave himself up to a nightmare of lashing branches and furious galloping. Eventually the horse burst from the trees on the banks of a raging torrent. The storm had passed but the river was swollen. On the other side, unbelievably, Ashalan could see the lamps of his camp twinkling through the dark. How could he reach it? His body ached, his clothes were torn, he was drenched and tired. As for the stallion, it was unlikely he retained enough strength to brave the fast-moving water. The camp glowed, welcoming and secure. Savoury smells of cooking meat and fresh bread drifted across to him. Ashalan tried to urge his horse forward, but he dug in his heels and wheeled about, making noises of distress.
‘Either you cross the river, or we perish from cold and fatigue!’ Ashalan said wearily.
The stallion would have none of it, which was more good sense than stubbornness.
Ashalan dismounted and stared miserably at the water, at the trunks of trees mashed carelessly in its foaming ribbons, the rocks that moved sluggishly downstream that had not moved for a hundred years. Human flesh would be shredded like old lace in that torrent. He sighed, hugging himself, preparing to spend the rest of the night out in the open. In the morning, he might be able to find his way back through the forest. Wistfully, Ashalan let his thoughts linger on Ashbrilim and the warm mystery of his beloved consort. Would he ever see them again.
‘Why so glum, my lord?’
Ashalan turned quickly at the sound. Behind him stood a figure concealed in a hooded robe. He could not quite see the face.
‘As you see, I am stranded. This damned beast took a flight through the forest. I lost my company and can’t see how I can cross the river. There’s no sign of a bridge.’ It did occur to him that the stranger might be some creature of the warrior king, his enemy, and his hand strayed nervously to the pommel of his sword.
‘No need for alarm,’ the figure said, noticing his move. ‘Allow me to assist you. I am a builder of bridges.’
Ashalan laughed. ‘And can you build me a bridge before my fingers freeze off?’
The stranger did not laugh. ‘My lord king, I can build you a bridge before you blink your eyes.’
‘How did you know who I...’ But Ashalan never finished the question. Even as he blinked, he beheld a shadowy shape spanning the foam, high and arched, that had not been there before. ‘You are a magician, then,’ he said.
The stranger shrugged. ‘Of sorts. The bridge is yours, King of Ashbrilim. Why not cross it?’
Ashalan fixed the black, lustreless bridge with a narrow stare. Perhaps this man was an enemy and the bridge would dissolve to nothing when he was halfway across it, leaving him and his horse to drop helplessly into the furious swell beneath.
‘Oh, do not doubt me,’ said the stranger in a low, cajoling voice. ‘I am no foeman of yours.’
‘You are generous, my friend, but tell me the extent of your generosity. What payment do you require for this service.’
‘Why nothing, king Ashalan,’ the stranger replied. ‘I want nothing from you. Let us just say that I have your interests at heart. What do you say to that?’
‘If you want nothing then take nothing and I shall cross the bridge. I thank you sir.’ Ashalan remounted his horse and with a further grateful wave to the stranger urged the animal into a canter across the sombre planks. Around them the pitchy wood groaned and creaked, below them the river tossed and snarled. Behind them, the river bank was empty and it was without incident that they crossed to the other side.
On a day of great celebration, Ashalan led his men home once more, along the wide, yellow highway from the east, to the great, gilded gates of Ashbrilim. The air was full of petals as the maidens of the city thronged the balconies, tossing handsful of bright blooms into the air to be crushed beneath the feet of the snorting horses. Two long years had passed since the army had left the city. In the end, it had happened that the warrior king had been bought off rather than routed. Now everybody in the east seemed satisfied - at least on the surface. Ashbrilim gave the returning soldiers its best, shining with the last of the summer sun, giving off a heady aroma of shaded flowers and rubbed ferns.
Jadrin, with the elite of the court around him, waited on the steps of the palace, dressed in deepest blue that was the blue of midnight, with heavy, waxy blooms fixed in his hair. Behind him stood a woman holding the changeling child.Ashalan could have wept when he beheld his household. There was Jadrin, more lovely than he had remembered in his loneliest hour.There was Jadrin who came running down the steps, courtly aloofness forgotten, to reach up for his hands and say, ‘My lord, you are home.’ Ah, the homecoming was sweet.
Long and riotous was the feasting in the palace that day. Ashalan felt as if he was being swept along on an intoxicating wave of exotic perfume. His body was tired but it was carried high on the euphoria of his return. The fact that Jadrin carefully placed a young boy-child in his arms and, equally carefully, informed him that he now had an heir seemed only another heady facet of the glorious day. He raised the child on high and laughed, and the court laughed with him, spilling wine onto the marble floor, singing his praises. ‘You are home, my lord.’ Yes.
In the evening Jadrin led Ashalan into the gardens, saying, ‘The boy was found here, among the roses...’
‘How cruel! He seems wise for his years, such knowing eyes...’
‘Yes. We thought that too.’ A silence fell. They sat upon the grass, beneath the boughs of a drooping salix tree.
Ashalan began to speak of some of his experiences in the east. When he came to the tale of the strange bridge-builder, Jadrin’s gaze became more intense, his expression fixed and wondering. A
shalan laughed at the end of the telling but Jadrin was silent. He stood up, his back to the king, and stared hard into the trees behind them.
‘What is it?’ Ashalan asked.
Jadrin raised an impatient hand. ‘I... don’t know. Only this. I should have thought. I should have realised. It may not be important, I don’t know.’
‘What? What?’
‘The child. I refused to have him named until you returned.’
‘So? I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.’
‘Don’t you see... the servants, they call him “Nothing”! You promised nothing. Your son is nothing. Don’t you see?’
Ashalan was quite stupified by Jadrin’s outburst. He uttered a small but nervous laugh. ‘Jadrin, what you’re saying is ridiculous! How could that stranger have known about your... adoption... when not even I knew myself!’
‘There is more to it than you know, or could even guess.’ Jadrin punched the air in frustration. ‘Goddess, I should have realised!’
‘This means nothing to me!’ Ashalan said coldly. ‘Perhaps you’d better explain.’
Jadrin opened his mouth to say, ‘I can’t’ but a sudden and bitter wind swept the words from his lips. His hair blew across his eyes and he heard Ashalan swear in surprise. All the trees rustled furiously around them. The air smelt of acrid smoke and stale flowers. ‘No,’ Jadrin said.
‘Such a welcome!’ said a ringing hollow voice.
Ashalan turned to follow the direction of Jadrin’s gaze and beheld the same cloaked figure who he had encountered on the banks of the river back east.
‘Lord Jadrin,’ the figure said in a silky voice, ‘would you give me any less welcome than you gave the king when he returned? After all, I granted you your heart’s desire.’
‘Who is this?’ Ashalan demanded, cold on the inside with a sick dread.
‘Tell him, Jadrin,’ said the angel.
‘It is Lailahel, prince of conception,’ Jadrin replied.
‘I have come for my payment,’ said the angel.
‘You asked for none.’
‘I asked for nothing.’
Jadrin sighed deeply. ‘It is plain to me what you really want. You tricked me.’
Lailahel laughed. ‘Nothing is a magical child, Jadrin. More my son than yours. Both of you promised him to me; you can’t deny that. He does not belong with you and your kind.’
‘Very well.’ Jadrin took a deep breath. ‘Tomorrow. Give us until tomorrow.’
‘As the cock crows. No more.’ And without further manifestation of any kind, the angel vanished.
Ashalan had no more than looked on in horrified disbelief; now he demanded an explanation. Feeling he no longer owed the angel anything, including silence, Jadrin told him the whole story. At the end of it, he stood back, expecting Ashalan’s rage, but the king merely shook his head and held out his arms. ‘Beloved,’ he said, ‘you are a dreaming romantic boy.’
Jadrin’s body stiffened in affront. ‘I am no longer a boy and there was nothing romantic about what I did. When Lailahel returns tomorrow another child shall be in Nothing’s place. Nothing shall be in the temple being consecrated to the Goddess!’
And so, long before dawn, Jadrin carried Nothing to the creamy-stoned temple. He roused the priests, who sleepily shuffled into the Hall of Naming and lit the candles and incense.
‘Hurry,’ Jadrin said, glancing through the windows. Only grey light showed outside.
They named the child Jadalan, for his parents, and crowned him with myrtle leaves. Surely no malefic entity could touch him now. Jadrin knelt before the altar and entreated the Goddess to protect the child. Perhaps he had done wrong in invoking the angel, but it had been done for love and without evil intent. Feeling reassured, Jadrin went back to the palace, leaving Jadalan in the care of the priests. At dawn, the angel came to him in his sitting-room.
Jadrin was holding a child on his knee, a happy, bonny creature. ‘Then take him,’ Jadrin said and held the child out, turning away as the angel’s glowing fingers closed around the plump, pink body.
‘You had your wish, Lord Jadrin,’ Lailahel said, ‘and several years’ enjoyment of it too. Think yourself blessed that I concurred with your desires at all!’
‘Forgive my ingratitude,’ Jadrin replied curtly, ‘but I can find no comfort in your words. Just take the child and go.’
Lailahel put the child onto his back and flew up through the ceiling, manifesting himself on another plane of existence. There was quite a journey ahead to the angel’s palace of light, but travelling through the aether is an intense pleasure in itself and time means nothing there. Pausing to rest, Lailahel put the child down upon a glittering crystal rock.
‘Well,’ it said, ‘Soon you will be a long, long way from the place you know as home. Do you wonder what your parents are doing now, little nothing child?’
‘I know what,’ the child said frankly. ‘My mother will be feeding the hens behind the kitchens and my father will be putting new loaves into the oven.’
With a horrified howl, the angel realised that he had been tricked. Furiously, he cast the child back into the world of men, some yards from the city gates.’Find your own way home!’ it boomed. ‘And tell Lord Jadrin I will be back at sunset!’
‘It was a mistake,’ Jadrin said mildly when Lailahel returned.
‘Mistake? Don’t try my patience. Don’t try to tell me you don’t know your own child, Lord Jadrin!’ The angel glowered, emitting a poisonous aura of brown and livid red.
Jadrin shrugged. ‘Nothing is very similar indeed to the baker’s son. I was distraught at losing him, blind with grief. The child you want is playing with the dogs on the terrace. Take him, take him.’
‘You should apologise for the inconvenience you have caused me,’ said the angel in a peevish voice. ‘Otherwise, I could cause all of your hair to fall dead upon the floor and really blind you, forever, grief or no grief.’
‘I am mortified!’ Jadrin clutched his throat, a picture of wounded innocence.
Lailahel experienced a pang of satisfaction that such a beautiful creature had formed the magical child he intended to abduct. ‘Very well. Have no fears for the boy, Jadrin. He shall grow in power and magificence far more than he could have done under your care.’ And in a whirl of light, Lailahel, formless and spiralling, swept out of the window and across the terrace. A black haired boy sat upon the chequered, marble tiles whispering to a pair of panting, grinning hounds. Light enfolded him, warm and strong as hands. Still giggling, the child was borne aloft, tossed onto the angel’s back and away.
This time, they travelled overland; fields and forests passed beneath them as they rushed towards the sinking sun. Lailahel listened with pleasure to the delighted cries of the child as the world flashed by beneath them. However, a faint but persistant niggle of doubt caused him to sigh, ‘You will soon be far from the world you know, little nothing child. Do you wonder what your parents are doing now?’
‘That’s easy!’ responded the child, precociously, ‘My father will be waiting on table in the king’s apartments while my mother mends lace in the butler’s parlour.’
Only the fact that he was prince of conception and thus, in some ways, a patron of children, prevented Lailahel from hurling the unfortunate boy to the ground and hurtling straight to Ashbrilim to raze the palace to the ground. He swallowed his fury and with a graceful curl, skimmed around and flew back the way he had come.
Jadrin and Ashalan, as the child had predicted, were indeed sitting down to enjoy their evening meal. The light had not yet vanished from the sky when all the long, arched windows of the dining-room burst asunder and the angel Lailahel gusted into the room. With frightening calm, he strode over to the table and placed the butler’s child among the tureens of vegetables. ‘Your servant may be missing this,’ the angel said dryly.
Jadrin attempted to bluster some reply but the angel raised his hand and shook his head.
‘I don’t want to hear your e
xcuses, Lord Jadrin. There is only one thing to be said and it is this. Unless the real child of your blood is brought to me immediately, I shall be forced to shake this magnificent and historic building to rubble and then curse you and your beloved king with a dreadful plague, which you shall unwittingly spread to all your subjects before dying a particularly painful and undignified death. I hope I’ve made my intentions clear.’
‘I don’t think there can be any doubt as to your determination,’ Jadrin said in a choked voice. He turned to Ashalan. ‘We have no choice. We will have to give up our son.’
‘You should never have done this, Jadrin,’ Ashalan said. He called for the butler. ‘Your son is returned to you,’ he said. ‘Have no fear, we appreciate the service you did for us and you and your wife may keep the gold we gave you. Be thankful that events have turned out this way. Now, be so good as to have your good woman bring out Prince Jadalan.’
With great sorrow, Jadrin handed his son to the angel, who smiled and said, ‘In future, have the good sense to adopt some earthly child, Lord Jadrin. I believe there are plenty of them about. Good evening to you!’ And with a spiral of blinding effulgence, he whisked the child onto his back and flew away, towards the red sky of the west.
As they streaked between the rosy clouds Lailahel felt to compelled to ask, ‘What do you suppose your parents are doing now, little nothing child?’
Prince Jadalan curled his perfect little white fists in the angel’s streaming hair and said, ‘You know very well, Lord Lailahel. They will be grieving my loss and perhaps ordering somebody to sweep up the glass in the their dining-room.’
Thus, with a deeply satisfied laugh, the angel looped and wheeled and disappeared from the world of men taking Jadalan the changeling child with him.
Living with the Angel
There are echoes of the androgynous Wraeththu in this story, probably because it was written while I was working on ‘Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit’. At the time, I was pondering deeply the concept of gender and identification, although probably wouldn’t have thought of it in those terms. I must have been playing with these ideas when I devised Variel’s fate in this piece, because if I had followed the premise and theme of the previous two stories in the sequence, it wouldn’t have happened. I don’t want to say more than that in the introduction, because it will give the plot away.