Scanned by gojukai
From Tales of Fantasy, Elsewhere Vol. II
Edited by Terri Windling &
Mark Alan Arnold

The Ern Queen

Jane Newbold

In the court of King Hugh of Kilavarock there were no children nor any kin of the queen. Few were the servants and men-at-arms for the king's wants were simple and the kingdom at peace. In the evening the court gathered for dinner In the great hall and stayed for whatever entertainment found its way to their northern rock.

The hall was dark but for a glow from the hearth. The fire hissed faintly; it would not flame much longer. The people in the shadows stirred, pulling their cloaks closer, settling

chins into fur collars, pressing arms to their sides. A lone
minstrel sang, plucking minor chords, sighing. It was a long
song about the sea and the sky and green leaves and
shadows. He was not a famous minstrel but he should
have been and he sang with a trace of bitterness and
self-mockery. The court waited patiently for him to finish.

A strange noise crept around his song which he had not
anticipated. He sang louder; chords crashed, waves thun-
dered, a storm arose, a maiden shrieked, and in the follow-
ing silence the noise rolled on. The king was snoring amid
his dogs. The minstrel put down his lute and bit the inside
of his mouth so that he would not glower. The few people
murmured and shifted, cleared their throats and sniffed,
until the queen stood up and spoke.

"Good friends," she said softly. "The night draws on
and it is cold—though your music. Master David, warms
our souls. Let us retire to warmer places now." The cour-
tiers rustled and whispered away, and the room was empty
save for the sleeping king and his dogs, the queen and the
minstrel.

She stood behind the king's chair and her hands rested,
white and still, on the roughly carved wood. The minstrel
scowled now and moved his foot so that it rested on a
dog's tail. "Well, Master David," said the queen sadly and
softly, "There is the city."

The minstrel looked up and into her face in the shadows.
He thought before he asked, "Do you think I should go
there?"

"There is much to your advantage there. More than this
court can provide." She did not disparage; she stated a
fact A silence followed. "My brother is there," she said at
last. "He could be of help."

Another silence grew until a log collapsed in the fire.
"Before the snow comes," she whispered.

He did not answer. She gave him her hand but he did
not bow to kiss if Instead he stood holding it in his strong,
hard fingers, looking at her. His mouth was bitter but his
eyes were not. "We will hear of you," she said.

He shrugged and left her.

She stood a long time looking into the dying fire, feeling
the cold creep into her bones. Then she took up a candle,
tit it at the fire, and she gazed full at her husband still in his
chair. He was a big, broad-shouldered man with a strong
brow and a great black beard shot through with grey and
silver-white. His dogs were grey and black matted tangles
and a spotted young one slept in the chair with him. His big
knotted hands curled around the puppy's chest and she
knew how strong that grasp could be and how gentle. She
listened to the rumble in her husband's nose and chest,
and men left him in his chair and went alone through the
cold dark halls of stone, up the stairs to her room, her
shadow grotesque on the walls beside her.

Cold air flowed over her bare feet as she stepped out of
her blue court robe and slippers. She drew near to a
window; the icy wind filled her with pleasure. She gazed
over rolling hills to where a river glinted in a line pointing
toward the sea beyond the edge of the world. Sometimes
she imagined she could smell its salt, but tonight she tasted
only winter on the wind. The stars glittered around a cold,
silver sliver of a moon. She felt her mind spin free among
them.

"Yes, but not yet," she cautioned herself, and turned
with a shiver to strip from her fingers the only jewellery she
wore. "Put away our Jewels from us," she thought and
remembered that the minstrel would be gone. She felt very
old and heavy as a stone as she crawled into her bed,
pulling a woollen cloak over her.

In the morning she found that the minstrel had gone
without waiting for a letter of service. She pondered his
pride as she set about to write to her brother. "Good Sir,"
she wrote, "there shall come to your city by the sea a
minstrel called Master David of the Moor, who is late of our
court. I recommend his songs and his bearing to your hall.
He will not be disposed to seek you out, nor should you
seek him on my account. But I would deem you a worthy
man should you look to his advantage for the sake of his
own fine talent and not because of the wish of your fond
sister, Elspeth, Queen of Kilavarock." She entrusted the
letter to the keeping of a merchant on his way north and
gave it no more thought, although she mused often on Its
subject

The king and his men stamped in and out, blowing on
their fingers, their cheeks and noses growing ruddy and
red over their bristling beards. They rode their great
shaggy horses over the frozen land and hunted for deer
and boar and sometimes loosed their hawks for dove and
partridge. There was always enough to eat at the king's
table, for if his skill in the wild wood failed, Acre were acres
of woolly muttons throughout his kingdom to feed him and
keep him warm.

A mountain of shorn wool, washed and waiting to be
carded and spun. fell to the queen and her ladies each
winter, for she would not suffer the fur of an animal on her
skin unless the warmth of its body still pulsed inside. And
so she wore no lynx or ermine collars and wept for seal and
otter robes, remembering her wild, silky pets as a sea child.
She carded and spun and wove me cloaks and tunics, the
hangings and blankets for use in the castle. She no longer
embroidered for she found that she could no longer pace
her stitches close and even by touch alone in candlelight
"Too long a sight," the king had said when she named a
bird to him he could only hear. "Too long looking out to
sea after the ships gone a-viking when you could not go."

All winter in the evenings the light from the fire fell over
the woolly dogs and the sleeping king; but, instead of
minstrel songs of me wind and waves, the sibilant lisps of
the priest cautioned the court against the sins of the world
and the serpent's desire made flesh. The shadows were
deep, the winds wrapped round me castle, cold and keen,
and the syllables slipped solemnly as the king snored.

One night the king came to her room and crawled in
under her woollen blankets. His dogs followed him and
Boris found room on the foot of the bed to curl up behind a
bent pair of legs. After they had loved, he told her he must
ride to Bragard in the south,

"Is there danger?" she asked.

"Some say," he grumbled into the pillow. She always
wanted to talk afterwards when he preferred to drift into
sleep.

"But what can they want?" She stared into the dark
overhead, stroking idly a dog's ear.

"Port," he said.

"Port? Port wine? Pork?"

"Sea port," he said with great effort and she asked him
no more.

"If the Loathians want a sea port, why don't they just ask
in trade?" she thought to herself. "Because they are
bloody fools, all temper and push." She got up from the
bed and, wrapping a blanket around her, stood at the
window, pulling aside a bit of the curtain. "If there is to be
trouble and Hugh rides Into it, perhaps now is the time,"
she thought.

The stars glittered in the night sky and thin, ragged
clouds sailed on the wind. "How can there be trouble
here?" me warm, heavy part of her asked. "Who would
fight over sheep pastures?" As far as she could see, the
land lay bare and gently rolling.

In the morning her husband left her to ride south with a
few of his men—and it was time.

She had to listen to the sermon about flesh wasting from
evil ways three more times before she truly knew. And
when she took out the book in her room late one night and
read over the inscription which her mother had written in
the runes her mother had taught her, she knew she had
waited longer than she needed. She locked the door and
pinned back the curtain at the window. "What if I can't
think?" she wondered- "What if I forget what I'm doing
and never come back?" A pang touched her heart for only
a moment and then she stripped off her cloak and her shift
and stood, naked, still slim and small-breasted, shivering in
the tower room. She whispered the spell and gave a cry of
terror as her feet twisted, wrinkled and sprouted claws, her
fingers shot bolts of huge, black feathers, and her breast
distended. In a moment where had stood Elspeth, Daugh-
ter of Roke, wife of Hugh, Queen of Kilavarock, a huge,
black, ungainly eagle rustled and stretched. Its yellow eye
was wild and fierce above a beak of ivory and it writhed its
neck and extended its wings as though its body did not fit
With a harsh grating cry it leaped to the window and clung,
balancing for a moment; then with a scream it fell away
from the tower and, awkwardly spreading its wings, soared
out under the stars across the cold, sleeping land.

The air on her breast was full of cold needles and her
eyes stung. The balance was strange; she hung between
her wings, heavy and falling. Her gnarled talons dragged
below, opening, stretching at the ground as though to walk
through the air; the wind separated the feathers, rattled
them, and gave no purchase. She strained and screamed.
The runes gave her the form but where came the knowl-
edge to use it? And then the same muscles knew. In her
hands when she stretched and tightened, the flight feathers
stiffened into oars- Along her arms the pinions grew taut,
her feet curled up and tucked in and the power to claw
through the air, to glide, to swim, to fly upwards into the
sky came pouring through her form. She rose with great
sweeps of her wings beating down, raising her slowly and
heavily at first, but strong and stronger until she caught a
current of air which lifted her and she could glide and soar
without sinking. Back she looked at the stone tower where.
her room lay and she could see the dried vines around her
window ledge. She flowed with the air, a great shadow.
part of the night until she saw me river beneath her and
then, turning, she rowed and swam back to the far side of
the castle to catch the current again.

She flew well enough by the time dawn came. She
found she could count the stones in the walls far below her
and recognize the cottages and lanes. As high as she dared
soar, she could tell below in the moonlight the rabbits
trembling in the withered grass and the pale eyes of the
owls in the trees. She was filled with the joy of it when, tired
and near me end of her endurance, she alighted on the sill
of her window and stepped down into the room in the
shape of a woman. Exhausted and exhilarated, she crept
under the woollen blankets. Her back ached and throbbed;

her breast muscles fluttered from weariness, but she was
happy beyond her expectations.

She flew every night, patiently enduring the supper, the
sermon, the snores, of the court, dreaming of the feel of the
wind flowing under her, the horizon curving up and away,
the stars and the moon and the clouds her only compan-
ions. "What a song could be made of this!" she thought.
She slept late and kept to her room. Her appetite increased
enormously but her woman's body grew taut and thin, her
cheekbones stood out below her eyes and there were blue
shadows at her temples. If her ladies noticed, they did not
speak of it. At night she exalted in the power of her new
form- She flew effortlessly now, gliding for miles, soaring
above the frozen fields and the sheepcotes where the
woolly muttons huddled, steaming, near me matched cot-
tages. The dogs looked up but did not give alarm. She was
too large to be one of the marauders from the coast they
guarded against. They slunk into their kennels and whined
as she passed over,

Then one evening she avoided me dinner board, saying
she felt a cold coming on, and took to her room. She ate
lightly mere and flew away as the sun was sinking red and
wintery in the west. She flew south all night toward
Bragard and the king. Morning found her at the top of
a tall pine tree near the edge of me town where the roads
from the mountain passes converged with the high-
ways from the sea to the north. For most of the morning
she scanned the comings and goings of the people. She
saw a few Loathians garishly armed, swaggering about,
but hardly enough to make a threat or an invading
force.

At last she saw one of the king's guard on his shaggy
grey ambling through a half-empty square. The sergeant
was certainly not on his guard and passed from her sight
around me comer of an alley. She risked flapping to
another perch to see him dismount at a house painted pink
and bang on the door. He was admitted by someone she
couldn't see, but a small boy ran around the house, took
charge of the horse, and led it to a low bam in the back.
She craned her feathered neck and saw Hugh's brown cob
munching contentedly under a shed. The pink house con-
tained no kin of Hugh at her last visit to the city, so she
flapped up high to look down on the town. She realized me
pink house stood half-way down Bawd Street. A pang
smote her heart, a twinge of pain and then rage mixed with
despair. She veered sharply to the north and sailed back
toward the central castle hold.

Winter dosed her in, grey and cheerless, snow and sleet
blowing straight across the land and sifting about the cas-
tle. She drifted about me corridors, wrapped in grey
woollen sweaters. Nowhere did she find comfort; listless
but restless, she moved from room to room, waiting for the
king's return.

'Foolish female,' she scolded herself. "To wait and
grieve for what is done. You are old and barren. He cannot
seek a wife in such a place. But Oh, there is no pleasure in
this place. And the Solstice feast will be grim with no young
people here. It may be spring before Hugh returns or word
comes from the north."

She began to dream a lovely song before she woke one
morning and, lying half awake, she thought of the minstrel
and his fortune in her brother's city. "I could go there," she
mused. "If he is faring well, I would come back with plea-
sure in that knowledge. If he is poorly or yet unknown,
think how great a sight he would make to have a huge, wild
thing at his command. They would soon know of Master
David and his eagle." And so she dreamed of how he
would not know her in her eagle form but yet be kind and
let her share his small room and meagre fare, or, if he
sought to harm her, how she could forestall his action
through her size and strength without revealing who she
was. If she found him well, she could tease him with her
knowledge of his actions when she as woman saw him
next And from a dream it grew into a plan and prepara-
tions so that they would not seek her in her room. With the
priest a scowl, she said she would revive the fasting vigil of
her people to assure the renewal of the sun's power so that
they need not look for her to leave her room until Solstice
passed.

On a bright night when the snow sparkled like the stars
overhead, she flapped away from the tower and headed
north to where the city lay beside the sea. High cliffs there
were where she could perch among small cousins of her-
self, true erns of the coast. She troubled them not but
marvelled at the grey churning waves and the flaming
yellow dawn. She flew about the crags and caves and
watched the city on the bright blue day with all the folk astir
because of the coming festival. Fires blazed in squares and
people hurried back and forth to build the new fires and
assemble their feasts. The ships, pulled up on winter moor-
ings, sported evergreens on the tops of masts; and
everywhere was hustle and bustle, entertainments, lights
and cheer.

From her crag she watched first the streets of inns and
sailors haunts, men the merchants' houses and the halls,
but nowhere could she see the minstrel. She perched on
her brother's house at dusk and listened at the chimney to
the merriment and songs but she saw not Master David nor
heard his voice. Three days she searched until Solstice Eve
and then she waited on the topmost roof and watched.

Out from each house the oldest daughter came with an
unlit taper to gather in the square before the priestess and
the hearth. She watched, remembering when she had
stood on those cold stones until the fire flared, rekindled by
Ac god. Now this fire sparked and through the streets, like
spiderwebs of light, slow lines of flickering candles twined,
returning a sheltered flame to light their family's hearth.
When the sun rose the horns and drums were sounded
and all the people shouted at the renewed and growing
sun.

She dared not linger longer on the slate and tiles of Ac
roofs but her longing grew to find her minstrel. As she flew
up, her anguish cried, "If he be not abroad, perhaps he lies
ill under some dark roof. Perhaps he never came here at
all." There was nothing more she could do. Her ladies
would look for her in the morning. She turned inland
sadly.

Over a cove she pondered the sea beneath her and
dropped down to skim the tops of the icy waves. The shore
hung rimed with ice and salt spray flecked her wings, but
the heave of the breakers below called back to her the time
when she swam with the seals and me sea otters to their
rocks. She banked away from the land and skimmed out to
sea. There were no seals on the rocks now. She flapped
out farther into the grey bank of clouds moiling down from
the north-

The winter storm caught her before she was aware, and
sleet and wind blew fiercely at her from all directions. An
avalanche of wind poured down on her, pressing her
down toward the waves, and then caught her up and
violently hurled her skyward. She lost her bearings and
concentrated only on staying aloft. Buffeted on all sides,
ice heavy on her wing feathers, she hardly flew but only
fought to stay level in the wind, until a warm fire grew all
through her feathered body. A battle it was, as fierce as any
berserker's with death as its reward; and she exalted
screaming in defiance of the storm wind. She coasted,
scattered, ducked, and dived against the wind until the air
relented. Triumphant she screamed and spread out her
great black wings to fly on the breast of the storm. In the
form of a beast she knew the joy of survival. In the surge
and power of the storm on her wings, she felt the life of the
world. In freedom from human desire she soared, coupled
with the storm. All of the power of wind and wave was in
her, the curve of the earth could not harm her, me storm
embraced her, and she was borne ecstatic, exalted over

the land.

Spinning at last in an eddy of falling snow, she found
herself over familiar pastures and sailed to her own win-
dow at dusk. She dressed carefully, trembling, feeling the
power still within her, trying to calm the fierceness in her
eyes. Now she knew why her mother's crest had been
eagle wings. Now she understood the stones of the great
eagles above the viking boats and the battles. The-boats
were beached now and the plunder divided. But the storm
clouds were there. She could wait to fly for them. There
she could test her power and strength and fulfil the long-
ings she had never voiced- Perhaps, long hence, she could
tell Hugh.

She descended to the hall wearing her best and her
jewels. She glowed with radiance as if the rekindled sun
had filled her with light. The king had returned and rose to
greet her and look wonderingly into her face. She smiled
and wished them all renewed life for the year. They ate.
She listened to their words as though each contained new
wisdom. Transformed by her flight, she spoke little, but
with great kindness and love. At the end of the meal there
was a small stir at me door. A grizzled crofter in a snow
encrusted cloak stood there. He was holding the minstrel's
lute.

As from a great distance she heard and saw all that
happened in the room then, as if she flew far over the
castle. She looked down at the lute, at the nubby, awk-
ward fingers that clutched it and then laid it on me table
before the king, who let it rest. She saw her hands reach
out and take it onto her lap. She smoothed and stroked It
as she heard the halting words of the shepherd who had
found it beside the horse, lamed and staggering, next to
me broken body of the man in the snow- She heard but
could not tell afterward where he was buried. She heard
the .man tell over again about the dog barking and the
shape of the horse in the snow. She heard how me man's
head was bloodied and how the leg of the horse had
mended. She looked only on the lute and did not speak.
Finally the crofter handed to her a bundle of parchment
wet from melting snow. "For Elspeth, Queen of
Kilavarock'' she read on the top sheaf. She had to stare at it
long to realize it was the song of die winds and the waves.
That was how the crofter knew to come to the court. She
heard his voice from far away, "Perhaps the queen . . .
After all mat way . . - On the road and in that terrible
storm . . . with the festival at hand . . -"

There were no words in her head as she drew off her ring
and handed it to me man. He stammered and gasped at
the worth of me reward. She saw how stupid he was, how
fawning. She knew that his dog could have barked at a
horse in the woods or a dying man for days before this
crofter would bestir himself to look. Perhaps his face was
evil enough to strike a blow from behind with a shepherd's
sling, seeking to rifle saddle bags filled only with songs.

Holding the lute and the parchments before her, the
queen left the table and mounted her stairs in the dark. She
laid the lute and the songs on her bed and stood, not
drained but churning, as though the storm she had
partnered was inside her. Was it grief? Did she mourn
because she loved him? Was it fear? Did she feel tenor at
the inscrutable face of death? No, it was fury, wild raging
fury at the blindness of the world which had not cherished
this man, at the stupidity of people who had wasted the
time of his life, at the mindlessness of the storm, the wind
and the snow, the trees, the dog, the horse, all around him
as he died. When had he died? A month ago? Before she
flew? The stupidity of the crofter, his weathered ugly face,
blank and broad like his foolish sheep, told her he could
have waited a month with his message and all the while she
had held, wrapped in the back of her mind, the knowledge
he was somewhere in the world to make songs, his happi-
ness her hope. Now he was gone.

He could never see her fly, she could not tell him of the
wonder of the storm.

There was a knock at her door, "Elspeth?" her husband
called. She opened her door and looked into his face.' 'Are
you all right?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry," he said, "I liked him, too."

No. He had snored through the songs. He had been as
careless with the gift of music as he was with the gift of love,
with his marriage vows.

"Yes," she repeated and closed the door.

Her fury broke inside her, scalding in her throat Her
fingers clenched. She ripped off her gown and flew shriek-
ing back into the night, searching for respite from the
violence which tore at her. There were no storm clouds
left. The moon shone down on the smooth, white pastures
and the clots of huddled sheep. She flapped on almost
frantically, heedless of where she flew. A clot of sheep
awoke and bolted. From the comer of her eye she saw a
ram gallop into a drift and flounder. She descended over
him, extending her legs, feeling the soft wool under her
talons, and then the warm struggling muscles of the back.
She gripped, feeling the writhing beast, hearing his bleats
of terror, and carried him easily over the fields to a mound
of rocks. When she set her burden down, she found she
had broken its back. Her talons clawed out the belly. Her
hooked beak ripped strings of woolly flesh from the bones
until the ivory dagger was red and reeking and still me
madness in her eyes was not extinguished. She left the
steaming destruction and flew off to another pasture. It was
too easy; there was no slaking of her passion. Six sheep
she took that night and left the mangled bodies mixed
together on the rocks. Six shepherds found their flocks
frantic, the dogs cringing. The dawn found her lying on her
bed, breathing deeply, her hands still clenched.

She walked through the castle by day as if asleep and
said nothing to those who spoke to her, keeping her eye
cast down. She sat at table like a stone, eating little, drink
ing less. She spun the wool into long grey ropes beside the
king as he drowsed by the fire after dinner. The priest’s
sermons made her flesh crawl but she spoke not a word
Every night from her window she flew, the spell form on
her- She returned at dawn, her feathers stained with blood
The shepherds stood guard with pikes and staves but she
carried off the dogs and caught their sticks in mid-air, flying
back at their heads. A gigantic eagle, destroying but no
eating the sheep at night, was a matter of witchcraft and the
people carried crosses to ward her off.

If mere had been a storm to buffet her and exhaust her
passion, she might have made her peace with the king adn
her grief; but no storm came, the nights were dear and
cold, and her marauding scream floated out under bril
liant, blinking stars on the cold wind- The crofters huddled
under their roofs and me men muttered and grumbled at
spending cold nights in the sheepcotes. Fifty miles round
she flew so that no one was safe and everyone feared

At last they sent a delegation to the king and his bow-
men. With the queen beside him he listened to their pleas
She listened to their words and watched them with her wild

eyes- The king swept their criticisms and clamour aside with
his broad, flat hand and shouted them into silence. He and
his men would ride, he promised them, scowling. That
night he ate standing in armour and received the priests
blessing- He kissed the queen's cold face and strode from
the hall with her blazing eyes on him.

She flew that night low over the snow, seeing him far
ahead on the stamping horses. Low she skimmed over the
crust until, rising sharply behind the men, she shrieked and
banked, soaring out of bow range before they could con-
trol their mounts- She led them long across the fields and
left them to return far ahead, killing a dog on her way back.
Three nights they hunted her: The king grew grim and
thoughtful. Sometimes she felt his eyes upon her during
the day but he said nothing. The priest talked of storm
demons and malevolent souls called forth by pagan fires.
She watched the king as, he looked to his bow and sighted
down his arrows but the wildness in her eyes never waned.

At the end perhaps she grew tired of the waste she
caused. Perhaps her anger abated. Perhaps his horse went
lame and the king returned ahead of the others. He saw
me great cm shape against the moon and the queen's
tower window near at hand. Before he thought, the arrow
was loosed and he did not see it fall. The eagle shape
slipped through the window and he gave a strangled cry as
he knew what he had done. Two at a time he took the stairs
and burst open the door. As he wrapped her naked form in
his cloak, she did not speak but put her hand upon his lips.
As she died, his arrow in her heart, the fury had faded from
her eyes,