The King of Elfland's Daughter
Lord Dunsany
BALLANTINE BOOKS
NEW YORK
First Ballantine Books edition: June, 1969
Printed in Canada
BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC.
101 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003
TO
LADY DUNSANY
Preface
I hope that no suggestion of any strange land that may be conveyed by
the title will scare readers away from this book; for, though some
chapters do indeed tell of Elfland, in the greater part of them there is
no more to be shown than the face of the fields we know, and ordinary
English woods and a common village and valley, a good twenty or
twenty-five miles from the border of Elfland.
LORD DUNSANY
_Contents_
Preface
I The Plan of the Parliament of Erl
II Alveric Comes in Sight of the Elfin Mountains
III The Magical Sword Meets Some of the Swords of Elfland
IV Alveric Comes Back to Earth After Many Years
V The Wisdom of the Parliament of Erl
VI The Rune of the Elf King
VII The Coming of the Troll
VIII The Arrival of the Rune
IX Lirazel Blows Away
X The Ebbing of Elfland
XI The Deep of the Woods
XII The Unenchanted Plain
XIII The Reticence of the Leather-Worker
XIV The Quest for the Elfin Mountains
XV The Retreat of the Elf King
XVI Orion Hunts the Stag
XVII The Unicorn Comes in the Starlight
XVIII The Grey Tent in the Evening
XIX Twelve Old Men Without Magic
XX A Historical Fact
XXI On the Verge of Earth
XXII Orion Appoints a Whip
XXIII Lurulu Watches the Restlessness
XXIV Lurulu Speaks of Earth and the Ways of Men
XXV Lirazel Remembers the Fields We Know
XXVI The Horn of Alveric
XXVII The Return of Lurulu
XXVIII A Chapter on Unicorn-Hunting
XXIX The Luring of the People of the Marshes
XXX The Coming of Too Much Magic
XXXI The Cursing of Elfin Things
XXXII Lirazel Yearns for Earth
XXXIII The Shining Line
XXXIV The Last Great Rune
CHAPTER I
_The Plan of the Parliament of Erl_
In their ruddy jackets of leather that reached to their knees the men of
Erl appeared before their lord, the stately white-haired man in his long
red room. He leaned in his carven chair and heard their spokesman.
And thus their spokesman said.
"For seven hundred years the chiefs of your race have ruled us well; and
their deeds are remembered by the minor minstrels, living on yet in
their little tinkling songs. And yet the generations stream away, and
there is no new thing."
"What would you?" said the lord.
"We would be ruled by a magic lord," they said.
"So be it," said the lord. "It is five hundred years since my people
have spoken thus in parliament, and it shall always be as your
parliament saith. You have spoken. So be it."
And he raised his hand and blessed them and they went.
They went back to their ancient crafts, to the fitting of iron to the
hooves of horses, to working upon leather, to tending flowers, to
ministering to the rugged needs of Earth; they followed the ancient
ways, and looked for a new thing. But the old lord sent a word to his
eldest son, bidding him come before him.
And very soon the young man stood before him, in that same carven chair
from which he had not moved, where light, growing late, from high
windows, showed the aged eyes looking far into the future beyond that
old lord's time. And seated there he gave his son his commandment.
"Go forth," he said, "before these days of mine are over, and therefore
go in haste, and go from here eastwards and pass the fields we know,
till you see the lands that clearly pertain to faery; and cross their
boundary, which is made of twilight, and come to that palace that is
only told of in song."
"It is far from here," said the young man Alveric.
"Yes," answered he, "it is far."
"And further still," the young man said, "to return. For distances in
those fields are not as here."
"Even so," said his father.
"What do you bid me do," said the son, "when I come to that palace?"
And his father said: "To wed the King of Elfland's daughter."
The young man thought of her beauty and crown of ice, and the sweetness
that fabulous runes had told was hers. Songs were sung of her on wild
hills where tiny strawberries grew, at dusk and by early starlight, and
if one sought the singer no man was there. Sometimes only her name was
sung softly over and over. Her name was Lirazel.
She was a princess of the magic line. The gods had sent their shadows to
her christening, and the fairies too would have gone, but that they were
frightened to see on their dewy fields the long dark moving shadows of
the gods, so they stayed hidden in crowds of pale pink anemones, and
thence blessed Lirazel.
"My people demand a magic lord to rule over them. They have chosen
foolishly," the old lord said, "and only the Dark Ones that show not
their faces know all that this will bring: but we, who see not, follow
the ancient custom and do what our people in their parliament say. It
may be some spirit of wisdom they have not known may save them even yet.
Go then with your face turned towards that light that beats from
fairyland, and that faintly illumines the dusk between sunset and early
stars, and this shall guide you till you come to the frontier and have
passed the fields we know."
Then he unbuckled a strap and a girdle of leather and gave his huge
sword to his son, saying: "This that has brought our family down the
ages unto this day shall surely guard you always upon your journey, even
though you fare beyond the fields we know."
And the young man took it though he knew that no such sword could avail
him.
Near the Castle of Erl there lived a lonely witch, on high land near the
thunder, which used to roll in Summer along the hills. There she dwelt
by herself in a narrow cottage of thatch and roamed the high fields
alone to gather the thunderbolts. Of these thunderbolts, that had no
earthly forging, were made, with suitable runes, such weapons as had to
parry unearthly dangers.
And alone would roam this witch at certain tides of Spring, taking the
form of a young girl in her beauty, singing among tall flowers in
gardens of Erl. She would go at the hour when hawk-moths first pass from
bell to bell. And of those few that had seen her was this son of the
Lord of Erl. And though it was calamity to love her, though it rapt
men's thoughts away from all things true, yet the beauty of the form
that was not hers had lured him to gaze at her with deep young eyes,
till--whether flattery or pity moved her, who knows that is mortal?--she
spared him whom her arts might well have destroyed and, changing
instantly in that garden there, showed him the rightful form of a deadly
witch. And even then his eyes did not at once forsake her, and in the
moments that his glance still lingered upon that withered shape that
haunted the hollyhocks he had her gratitude that may not be bought, nor
won by any charms that Christians know. And she had beckoned to him and
he had followed, and learned from her on her thunder-haunted hill that
on the day of need a sword might be made of metals not sprung from
Earth, with runes along it that would waft away, certainly any thrust of
earthly sword, and except for three master-runes could thwart the
weapons of Elfland.
As he took his father's sword the young man thought of the witch.
It was scarcely dark in the valley when he left the Castle of Erl, and
went so swiftly up the witch's hill that a dim light lingered yet on its
highest heaths when he came near the cottage of the one that he sought,
and found her burning bones at a fire in the open. To her he said that
the day of his need was come. And she bade him gather thunderbolts in
her garden, in the soft earth under her cabbages.
And there with eyes that saw every minute more dimly, and fingers that
grew accustomed to the thunderbolts' curious surfaces, he found before
darkness came down on him seventeen: and these he heaped into a silken
kerchief and carried back to the witch.
On the grass beside her he laid those strangers to Earth. From
wonderful spaces they came to her magical garden, shaken by thunder from
paths that we cannot tread; and though not in themselves containing
magic were well adapted to carry what magic her runes could give. She
laid the thigh-bone of a materialist down, and turned to those stormy
wanderers. She arranged them in one straight row by the side of her
fire. And over them then she toppled the burning logs and the embers,
prodding them down with the ebon stick that is the sceptre of witches,
until she had deeply covered those seventeen cousins of Earth that had
visited us from their etherial home. She stepped back then from her fire
and stretched out her hands, and suddenly blasted it with a frightful
rune. The flames leaped up in amazement. And what had been but a lonely
fire in the night, with no more mystery than pertains to all such fires,
flared suddenly into a thing that wanderers feared.
As the green flames, stung by her runes, leaped up, and the heat of the
fire grew intenser, she stepped backwards further and further, and
merely uttered her runes a little louder the further she got from the
fire. She bade Alveric pile on logs, dark logs of oak that lay there
cumbering the heath; and at once, as he dropped them on, the heat licked
them up; and the witch went on pronouncing her louder runes, and the
flames danced wild and green; and down in the embers the seventeen,
whose paths had once crossed Earth's when they wandered free, knew heat
again as great as they had known, even on that desperate ride that had
brought them here. And when Alveric could no longer come near the fire,
and the witch was some yards from it shouting her runes, the magical
flames burned all the ashes away and that portent that flared on the
hill as suddenly ceased, leaving only a circle that sullenly glowed on
the ground, like the evil pool that glares where thermite has burst.
And flat in the glow, all liquid still, lay the sword.
The witch approached it and pared its edges with a sword that she drew
from her thigh. Then she sat down beside it on the earth and sang to it
while it cooled. Not like the runes that enraged the flames was the song
she sang to the sword: she whose curses had blasted the fire till it
shrivelled big logs of oak crooned now a melody like a wind in summer
blowing from wild wood gardens that no man tended, down valleys loved
once by children, now lost to them but for dreams, a song of such
memories as lurk and hide along the edges of oblivion, now flashing from
beautiful years a glimpse of some golden moment, now passing swiftly
out of remembrance again, to go back to the shades of oblivion, and
leaving on the mind those faintest traces of little shining feet which
when dimly perceived by us are called regrets. She sang of old Summer
noons in the time of harebells: she sang on that high dark heath a song
that seemed so full of mornings and evenings preserved with all their
dews by her magical craft from days that had else been lost, that
Alveric wondered of each small wandering wing, that her fire had lured
from the dusk, if this were the ghost of some day lost to man, called up
by the force of her song from times that were fairer. And all the while
the unearthly metal grew harder. The white liquid stiffened and turned
red. The glow of the red dwindled. And as it cooled it narrowed: little
particles came together, little crevices closed: and as they closed they
seized the air about them, and with the air they caught the witch's
rune, and gripped it and held it forever. And so it was it became a
magical sword. And little magic there is in English woods, from the
time of anemones to the falling of leaves, that was not in the sword.
And little magic there is in southern downs, that only sheep roam over
and quiet shepherds, that the sword had not too. And there was scent of
thyme in it and sight of lilac, and the chorus of birds that sings
before dawn in April, and the deep proud splendour of rhododendrons, and
the litheness and laughter of streams, and miles and miles of may. And
by the time the sword was black it was all enchanted with magic.
Nobody can tell you about that sword all that there is to be told of it;
for those that know of those paths of Space on which its metals once
floated, till Earth caught them one by one as she sailed past on her
orbit, have little time to waste on such things as magic, and so cannot
tell you how the sword was made, and those who know whence poetry is,
and the need that man has for song, or know any one of the fifty
branches of magic, have little time to waste on such things as science,
and so cannot tell you whence its ingredients came. Enough that it was
once beyond our Earth and was now here amongst our mundane stones; that
it was once but as those stones, and now had something in it such as
soft music has; let those that can define it.
And now the witch drew the black blade forth by the hilt, which was
thick and on one side rounded, for she had cut a small groove in the
soil below the hilt for this purpose, and began to sharpen both sides of
the sword by rubbing them with a curious greenish stone, still singing
over the sword an eerie song.
Alveric watched her in silence, wondering, not counting time; it may
have been for moments, it may have been while the stars went far on
their courses. Suddenly she was finished. She stood up with the sword
lying on both her hands. She stretched it out curtly to Alveric; he
took it, she turned away; and there was a look in her eyes as though she
would have kept that sword, or kept Alveric. He turned to pour out his
thanks, but she was gone.
He rapped on the door of the dark house; he called "Witch, Witch" along
the lonely heath, till children heard on far farms and were terrified.
Then he turned home, and that was best for him.