The Changeling

[The Hazards of Love]

Once upon a time, there was a boy.

He was a boy much like any other among elvenkind, and he lived with his mother in the High Forest. The boy and his mother lived an honest, ordinary life: they took what they needed from the land, and traded with neighbors for everything else. It was a simple life, or so the boy thought, and he never wanted for anything. To the boy, his mother was the whole world; the wisest, kindest, most beautiful being in existence, and he loved her to the exclusion of all else.

But the brightness of the boy's love cast with it a long shadow. A dark secret lay hidden in the heart of his mother, a heart ruled by fear of its consequence.

Long ago, the boy's mother was a girl herself, and in her girlish innocence, she loved a gallant sun elven warrior whose skill with the blade was equaled only by his pride. The girl longed for a way to draw the warrior's attentions, and her wish was made manifest by a Dark Lady who appeared to her in the woods spoke a cryptic offer:

"What thy heart wisheth, I shall grant to thee; but the song which is born from thy joy shall be mine forevermore."

The girl thought a song a small price to pay for the love of the warrior, and so she agreed. Henceforth she was capable of crafting and singing the most beautiful of songs, and with them she wooed her love. For decades uncounted by either of the lovers, the warrior remained. The girl continued to sing, but the Leanan sidhe never returned to collect these songs. It seemed as if they would be happy forever.

Forever is a rare thing among elves, however, and the gallant warrior began to yearn for travel and combat. As is often the case with elves- even elves in love- they separated, each going their own way, and the girl stopped singing. Such was her despair that she felt only dread, not joy, when she discovered she was with child. When the boy was born, he leaned more toward her own looks: that of the elves of the wood, rather than those of the sun.

As she reared the child, she dared not to sing for fear of attracting the Leanan sidhe to her - or to her son- once more. She only ever sang to him when he was deep in his reverie, when he could not hear her. In this way, the boy would never learn to sing, or so she thought.

But the boy did learn to sing. He sang the song he heard in his dreams, sung by her own voice, and with such a voice! A voice as sublime as her own- if not one to surpass. Her gift lived on in him, and the boy's mother fell still further into despair and dread, consumed by fear for the boy and for herself, mired in uncertainty for what the future held.

Her fears were confirmed on the eve of the boy's seventeenth birth-day. She had returned to the house to make for the boy his most favored treat- honey-cooked parsnips- when she saw the Dark Lady from so long ago standing there, watching the boy as he chopped wood for the fire, singing as he did. Her face was as white and luminous as the moon, but more frightful than comforting for the horrid pits which answered for her eyes. She stood all bedecked in bleak finery, a shawl woven of roses and thorns worn about her shoulders and neck. The thorns drew blood upon her flesh where they touched, staining her dark gown rust-red, but this seemed to bother the Dark Lady none. The boy's mother stood rapt in fear as the Dark Lady spoke thus:

"T'is time to collect thy tithe, songstress. Bring him hence to the fairy-ring where we met first, where the foxgloves grow aplenty. Lay him down to reverie sweet, and at dusk I shall collect him," spoke the Dark Lady.

The boy's mother bravely defied, "No- you shall not have him."

"Thou thinkest to break thy oath? The price for such is steep: thy life I shall have and more, but thou shall not die, oh no. I shall make thee sing, with each cut and cruelty thy voice shall ring. For the rest of thy days I shall be thy keeper, and thou willt rue the day thou didst spite me. Mark me, for I am the Baroness of Tortured Harmonies. Such things are mine to command!" the Leanan sidhe made her terrible promise with such malice it made the boy's mother tremble.

She had not the courage to deny her the cruel price she demanded.

So the boy's mother took him to the appointed place and lay her son upon the green. "We shall watch the sun set together," she had said, and sang him a lullaby so sweet it eased him to reverie so deep he did not notice as his mother left him, tearfully, alone with only the foxgloves as company.

And so alone the boy awoke, in the gloom of twilight. He looked all around, he sat up and then stood, calling:

"Mother? Mother, where have you gone?" the earnest boy called out to no avail.

He began to hear voices- as soft and thin as the whisper of dry leaves against one another in autumn- and movement in the brush.

".. Mother?" a quieter, plaintive call.

But Mother was not there to answer him; there were only shadows, and the Others.

[The Hazards of Love]

The boy was spirited away to a place most foul.

Sometimes the boy's feyish tormentors bore him aloft on their noisesome wings. Others, they chased him on foot, herding him as dogs do sheep with their keen claws and gnashing teeth, nipping and biting at his heels. The wicked host pursued him until exhaustion took him, then pushed him yet further. They drove the boy on until they came to a place where terrible winds howled through barren, claustrophobic tunnels with the voices of countless, maddened screams. This ceaseless, frenzied cacaphony served as accompaniment to to the boy's tireless march and fanfare for his arrival to the gates of the Gloaming Court both.

They came to a truly immense cavern black as night but with none of the serene beauty of the sky, hateful stalagmites and stalactites jutting from all directions like so many wicked teeth. Trees grew, but barren, and in twisted, unnatural shapes. Gloom pervaded every space, and the ferrous tang of blood could be smelled in all places, in all things. Nightshade blanketed the ground where they walked, and bloodwort pulsed with an unwholesome, haphazard light, making nightmares of every shadow cast by its light.

Still worse were the denizens of this place. The leering faces of the degenerate and accursed Unseelie were all around him, large and small, beautiful and hideous. Some of them licked their lips like slavering hounds, some of them beckoned him lasciviously, some of them offered him bargains in incomprehensible tongue. The boy was driven on even as he was surrounded by this plague-cloud of nightmarish creatures that pulled, scratched, and tore at him with grasping hands.

By the time the boy reached the obsidian chateau of his tormentor, he was all in shreds and shambles. For what seemed like days, he had not had reverie, and he was driven beyond even physical exhaustion. He had cried all the tears he had to cry, and so when he finally beheld the wretched Lady of this place, he could do naught but kneel before her when commanded to do so. She should have been beautiful- the planes of her elfin face of symmetry so perfect it could only belong to an ethereal being such as she, and with a luminous pallor to match, and yet her eyes were black as pitch; yawning and hungry voids which devoured all they beheld and craved for yet more.

She examined the boy, rose from her throne of leaden thorns, then approached him with steps silent save for the velvet of her gown whispering against the marble dais. She paced around him in listless circle as she spoke, with a voice as dark and smooth as quartz-glass.

"Knowest thou the reason for this? Thine own mother gave thee to me, and willingly so. A bargain struck long before thy birth. Thou art mine, now, and mine forever. Thou willt sing for me, and sing well, for it is thy song that I covet above all else. Swear thyself then to my service, upon thy true name, to craft with thy voice a jewel worthy of my trove." the Baroness' circling ceased as she came to a stop before him, extending a single, pale hand with fingers too long, too bony to be quite "elegant". Long, dagger-like nails were mottled with rust-red stains beneath. On her finger was a ring of carved jet, cut to resemble a rose. "Kiss my ring and swear."

The boy merely shook his head. He could not find the words, but his refusal was made known plainly enough. He was certain, absolutely certain, that this creature was lying about his mother. The woman he knew and so admired and held dear would never do this to him. Surely she was looking for him. Surely she would come.

The Baroness' features twisted into something uglier still. "It seems thou must first be broken, boy of mine." The faerie lofted her hand, and on this cue, her host descended upon him once again, dragging him kicking and screaming from the hall. The boy was dragged into a yard where slavering hounds with flat, mannish faces bayed and snarled, straining against their tethers. Navigating the yard was perilous, and he was certain that his captors purposely allowed for 'close calls' where the snapping jaws of these creatures came perilously near.

They left the boy in the middle of the yard, where all the hounds were close enough that moving much in any one direction meant certain death. It was all the boy could do, to sit there, making his profile as small as he could, that the hounds' teeth never found purchase. And so he did, all the while hoping that the one person who cared for him would come for him.

Many restless days passed thusly for him, but the boy's mother never came. The tireless Yeth Hounds ever nipped and snapped and howled at him whenever he wavered, ensuring he remained awake and upright at all times.

One day, the hounds were made to stop. The boy, delirious from raw nerves and lack of rest, saw the Baroness looming over him. Delirious though he was, he knew why she was here. And he knew no one was coming for him.

"I.. swear," he croaked, voice dry. "I swear upon my true name," he said, but as he spoke the name it was stolen from his lips.

The Baroness of Tortured Harmonies smiled her needle-sharp smile. "Then, boy of mine, we may begin thy education."

[The Hazards of Love]

The boy's growth into adulthood was a cruel one.

He came to be called "Rye" by the fey of the Gloaming Court- a mockery born from the color of his skin- both for the sake of their fickle amusement and for the simple fact that he had no name to be called by, anymore. When he tried to speak it, he found he could not open his mouth to do so, no matter how hard he tried or how ardent his desire was to do so.

And so "Rye" came to mean "Him".

His education would have been a normal one for a boy at court, if it had been anywhere but here. He learned manners from the Baroness herself, who had him flogged whenever he dared to use "plain speech, like a peasant". He learned music from the Ghillie Dhu, a corrupted Korred with an affinity for the fiddle who drove him to practice unto exhaustion. He learned the ways of combat with the Knight of Blackened Briars, who was never shy to draw blood as lesson. Brutal teachers are often poor ones, and Rye struggled to learn the lessons pain taught.

Failure made a target of him, and try as he might to hide, to make himself small, the gloaming fey found him with their gnashing teeth and sadistic "pranks".

It seemed a torment without end, but just when it seemed Rye might wither away forlorn and yearning for escape, an elfin figure appeared at his window. The visitor assured wary Rye of his good intentions, and gave himself as Jack, a half-blood. Jack was long and lean, and bore upon his back diaphanous, insectile wings.. as well as a plain but well-made lute which rested between them. Jack offered to teach him what his "tutors" could not: how to survive, and even thrive in the Winter Court. Rye tentatively agreed, but knew well now that nothing in this place came freely. To which mysterious Jack did reply,

"All I ask is that thou willt help me fly this place when the time comes."

Rye was more than willing, for he desired freedom above all things. Surely they could escape together. Finding friendship seemed an impossible thing in this place, but a friend Rye did find himself. Jack taught him all he knew of surviving within the Court as an outside.

"Firstly, abide their rules," he said to Rye in the night. "Secondly, play their games. Third and last, but hardly least, hide thy heart."

During his nightly visits, Jack taught Rye all that his tutors could not. Of courtly manners, he taught proper speech, dancing, and turn of phrase. In music, he schooled Rye in the lute, an instrument far easier to sing with than the fiddle. In combat, he walked Rye through proper footwork and form.. and in moments of weakness and despair, he provided comfort and counsel.

"If you give a little, they will think of thee as one of their own. Play their games, give a little of thyself in promises and pledges- but mark me, never give of thy own body."

And so Rye did. He traded things he could afford to lose for favors and promises. Sometimes it was a dream, others a cherished memory. He even traded away the color of his eyes, once, but he won that back in a game of chance. Thus bound, and exhibiting now the skills and manners expected of him, the fey of the Gloaming Court began to regard him more as one of their own. Staying true to Jack's advice, however, he never gave of his body and his ability to govern it.

The good esteem of his "fellows" at court came with its own difficulties, however. It came with expectation, and duty. He was expected to visit upon other unfortunate souls the same sorts of cruelties which were once visited upon him. He was expected to ask favors and demand tithes. He was expected to kill and maim in the name of his Lady. These things he did and more, and it wore away at his ailing spirit all the while.

Moreso even than this, his true fear lay in the knowledge that he would be expected to sing. In all this horrible time in the Winter Court, his one hope was the denial of what his Baroness coveted above all things, and with the calling of Court upon them, he knew the time was nigh. As the Gloaming Host gathered, he met with Jack beneath the boughs of a petrified willow. His half-blooded friend urged him to simply give their liege what she wanted. The consequences of failure or disobedience were too high.

The Baroness of Tortured Harmonies was renown all throughout the Gloaming Court for her ability to extract the most beautiful songs to the delight of her peers and subjects both. Her reputation was intertwined with Rye's ability to deliver; a most dangerous and intoxicating idea.

The Winter Courtiers gathered for the Solstice Ball in all their hideous finery and terribly beauteous mein. Rye played for them, in the company of feyish minstrels, and as they danced the Dark Queen's empty throne loomed, fel light glittering upon the black diamond which occupied it, its dread presence presiding over the wicked rites. Before the last dance of the Long Night, the revelers quieted as a crisp clap called for their silence. The crowd parted as the Baroness approached the dais where Rye stood with the other minstrels. Sweetly she stroked his black hair, her dagger-nails threatening to break the flesh of his scalp- though he knew better than to cower away.

"Friends, enemies, and all in between, great pleasure is mine to introduce thee to my newest conquest, soon to bear fruit. He shall sing for us on this, the last dance of the Long Night." her needle-sharp smile faded as she knelt to look directly at him. ".. or else he shall suffer extraordinarily," her smooth, quartz-glass dark voice so quiet only he could hear.

Rye hadn't sung since his abduction, not even when he were alone- for how could inspiration blossom in a place such as this? A pall of silence had fallen over the chamber as the countless hateful revelers all affixed him with gleeful gazes and spiteful stares. Ensorcelled mortal thralls waited thoughtlessly for their next command while undead servitors paced. A gaggle of winterlings, pixies, and other terrible winged, fiendish creatures haunted the rafters overhead.

What a truly horrible place this was. Even now, Rye held nothing but contempt for it, and what they had done to him.

And from this hatred, a song was born.

It was not a song that the Baroness or any of the guests here would like to hear, but this only made his desire to sing it all the more ardent. His eyes found Jack- his sole friend- in the crowd, pleading with his eyes. They had planned to escape together, after all..

But wasn't the death the Baroness would surely deal him a kind of freedom?

Rye took in a breath and began to sing. It was not a beautiful song, but one of spiteful defiance,

"When I was only, only a boy
I saw my mother cry
The time had come to pay for her sins
The price, my friends, t'was I

A nest of flowers covered the green
Whereupon the ground I lay
Mother rendered her boy unto reverie
And summoned up the fey

The creatures flew me into their place
And tore apart my pride
Now I'm fore'er more their slave
How I wish that day I'd died"

Silence endured after he quieted. The Baroness seethed with a white rage. Rye had tempted her wrath before, but it was nothing like this. A miasma of cold anger permeated the place, and all cowered away from her.

She laughed a single, hollow laugh.

"Little Rye wishes he would die. How can we deny him his most fervent desire?" she asked, and turned to regard the Knight of Blackened Briars, who had come to her side at the disturbance. "Feed him to the Hook-briar."

[The Hazards of Love]

Beholding the hook-briar patch caused Rye immediate regret for his defiance.

With a name like "hook-briar", the mind already makes plenty assumptions and associations, all of them unpleasant. The reality of that frightful plant was much more grisly than his worst imaginings. Before him was a plot of nothing but woody brambles, the branches snarled in on one another as brambles do. Unlike common brambles, however, these bore no leaves or berries-- there was nothing soft to this thing. Instead, it had only hooks in place of thorns. Wicked barbs like fish hooks covered the stems, each bearing the rust-colored evidence of its diet. In the dense snarl of brambles, he could see the bloodless, dessicated remains of past victims still hanging contorted and decaying in its grip; corpses of hapless animals, unlucky thralls, or disobedient feyish courtiers.

"It hungers for blood, little Rye," said the Baroness. She let him take it in for a moment before the crisp, dry snapping of her fingers could be heard. Rye flinched, but he was not thrown in. "Not yet, boy of mine. First, a demonstration."

A rabbit was brought forth by a demented Redcap servitor. The rabbit's eyes bulged out in terror as the hateful creature held it fast in a vice-grip. Cackling madly, it hurled the creature into the briar-patch. The creature twisted in the air before it landed in the brambles, and Rye watched in wide-eyed horror as the hook-briar's stems moved, of their own accord, to constrict around the poor beast as it predictably began to struggle for escape.

The Redcap laughed with glee as the rabbit was flayed alive by its own survival instinct. "T'is my very finest creation," he bragged, then bowed with simpering obsequiousness to his Lady. "Anything and only the best for my Baroness."

"Thy loyalty and skill are, as ever, commended, Gardener. Begone now," she commanded, and bowing once more the Redcap did as she bid. Her attention returned to Rye, then, who began to struggle with great urgency against the iron-clad grasp of the silent and indomitable Knight of Blackened Briars. The claws of his gauntlets dug into Rye's flesh as he tightened his grip in response. It was only now, beholding the hook-briar, that he realized the origin of the Knight's thorned mail.

The Baroness drew in close, grasping his chin with a hand as cold as hoarfrost, her eyeless sockets boring into him as she seethed with frigid rage. "Struggle not, little Rye, should thee wish to live."

She rose, then, towering over them. In this moment she seemed taller than ever before, Rye knew not if this were some magic or trick or merely the imagining of his terror-addled mind. He didn't have much time to ponder it before-

"Throw him in."

The Knight of Blackened Briars hesitated not a moment, hurling him forth with almost mechanical surety. Rye didn't scream as he hurtled toward the briar-patch, but that would soon change. Landing was painful, but not as much as what came after. The hook-briar's thorns pierced his flesh and snagged when they did, holding him securely, suspending him its embrace where he landed. Even aside the hooks, the posture in which he landed was ungainly and uncomfortable, but when he tried to move even a muscle to correct it, the results were excruciating as the dreadful plant constricted in response.

"I will see thee on the morrow, little Rye... if thou'rt alive still."

[The Hazards of Love]

The hook-briar's cruel and cutting thorns brought with them revelations.

The first and foremost of these being that there is always a greater pain, no matter how much you believe you've suffered.

The second was the notion that he should fly this place- and sooner than later. It was difficult to even imagine doing so as the hook-briar's greedy, grasping thorns bled him, made him weak.. but this very thing filled him with such urgency it took everything within him not to struggle for release. How many days in the hook-briar's bladed caress could he endure and keep his life, let alone his resolve?

The third was worst of all to endure: that his heart was well and truly taken by bitterness. How he hated this place and all who dwelled within it! And how he hated his mother, too, for surrendering him to this fate. As he lay in his bladed prison he dreamed that she suffered as he did; he dreamed of making her suffer so.

And he knew then that he was lost.

[The Hazards of Love]

First there was light- distant- then warmth- near.

Rye roused from his shock when he realized flames were burning the hook-briar away from him. The plant issued an ugly hiss and started to coil away from him of its own accord, freeing him as it retreated. Hitting the blood-soaked earth after so long suspended was both a reprieve and a torture of its own; his ruined flesh seared all over as if the flames were meant for him as he lay there, delirious and in pain.

There was a measure of relief, too, though he could do little but weep, too weak to accomplish much else.

He began to drift into unconsciousness, but sudden urgency burned within him, rousing him when a figure approached from the gloom; a shadow against the glow of receeding flames. Desperately did Rye try to move despite himself in single-minded desire to flee, but his cold limbs barely responded and all his effort resulted in little more than a feeble struggle away from the one who would surely become his new tormentor.

"Cease thy struggles, Rye. Jack is here."

Rye turned, beholding the face of his one and only friend as he bent to cover him with a blanket. Ease swept over him, easing him rapidly into unconsciousness.

Or maybe that was just the shock.

He lay there in abject misery for what seemed to Rye to be an age, drifting in and out of waking, between dream and nightmare. In dream he saw his home in fragmented memory: the greenery of trees, the planes of his mother's face. Far clearer and more frequent were the nightmares of all he'd seen and suffered, but he would wake from them and see Jack, either changing his bandages or asleep at his bedside. At times he would awaken and the lissome half-fey would be playing his lute, and in those times Rye felt something akin to comfort and contentment.

With time, Rye's countless wounds healed, and he grew stronger. He wasn't entirely sure where he was, but it looked as a hidden home inside a large, hollowed-out tree. More than this, it was a safe and quiet place. Jack helped him recover his physical faculties, and once he was well enough to travel and fight if need be, they talked over their supper.

"It is time for us to fly this place, my friend. I've charted hidden course through the tunnels. It shall be perilous, and fraught with frights and dangers else. I call upon thy oath; art thou ready to assist in mine escape?"

Rye had dreamed of this moment from the moment he had first met Jack and made this promise. The dream of walking free in sunlit lands once more, of breathing fresh air untainted by the ferrous smell of blood or the cloying fragrance of poisoned blooms; of hearing the birds sing and the wind whisper through the trees and fields rather than the endless howling of Pandemonium's cacaphonous gales, or the wicked laughter which follows the screaming.

"I honor my oath," he replied, as was expected-- and he meant it, his dream of freedom held close to chest.

What a fine dream it was, as clear and bright as a vision in crystal-glass, and just as fragile.

[The Hazards of Love]

Neither of them spoke as they crept through the tunnels of Phlegethon.

The passages were so narrow they had to move single-file--and even then, sometimes they had to crawl--and all the while the winds howled madness at them. Still, neither dared to make a sound unless there was utter necessity. Their journey was made the more taxing by the cold; Rye realized the stones of the tunnel walls were sapping the warmth from their very bodies. Sometimes, Rye's sword and shield became necessary. Jack was a fair hand with his dagger, but he would not have managed alone against the packs of cave wolves or oozes which sometimes harried the two would-be escapees.

It is difficult to keep track of time in such conditions, but it felt to Rye that it must have taken several days. Several long, miserable days made the longer by the frequent rests that Jack needed on account of his frail constitution.

The air became fresher as they moved along, and the two were emboldened by it. They moved without rest, desperate for egress from these miserable conditions as much as from their shared bondage in the Gloaming Court.

They came eventually to a failed garden of hedges. The branches were bare except for a scant few leaves and withered roses, but they grew into the shape of a gate. Jack retrieved from his pack a ghastly-looking apple whose blackened flesh was so withered and shrunken that it looked like a humanoid face, frozen in abject fear. He'd seen such "fruits" growing in the orchards of the the Gardener before, upon high boughs guarded at the roots by Yeth Hounds.

"What is that for? How ever did you get it?" inquired Rye.

"This be the gate-key, friend Rye," quoth Jack in reply.

Heartened, Rye stepped forward with eagerness in stride, vital again despite all they endured together. "Let us be away from this place, then!"

Jack remained stood in place with a frightful sort of stillness. His features hardened and became cold. "Let this be thy fourth and final lesson, Rye. Trust no one."

"We had an oath!" Rye found his voice and roared in protest.

"Our oath was that thou wouldst help me to escape; and thou hast done this, albeit in a way thou didst not expect."

The chill of his voice settled into Rye's very bones and he grew still and quiet as they sank in, and he felt something inside him break, just then: some innocence he didn't know yet existed to lose. He stood in stunned silence and there was naught but the howling mad winds of Pandemonium between them. He might not have heard the Baroness' approach even without, for the roaring of blood rushing through his ears with the pounding of his broken heart.

The Baroness clapped her soft, polite clap--the clap of a concert-goer--as she approached, circling around Rye to stand behind Jack, laying her slender, bone-white hand on the half-blood's shoulder. "Truly a masterful performance! What else could be expected of the blood-of-my-blood?"

"It was too easy. He was eager to trust, flitting to warmth as a moth to flame," he replied. ".. we had a deal. May I now go?"

For a moment, the Baroness' needle-nails seemed to dig into his shoulder. Then, she released her grip. "An oath is an oath, though I shall miss thee dearly."

Jack gave Rye one last look, remorse or any kind regard whatsoever entirely absent from his gaze, and turned to the portal. His hand rose, grotesque apple in hand, and he prepared himself to step through the gate when a blade burst through his chest. It was already too late to fight back, even if he could; his heartsblood was already spilled.

But Rye wasn't yet finished with him.

Again and again, his blade fell upon betrayer Jack, and all throughout as blood and viscera rained on and around them all, the Baroness stood watching with her ruby lips peeled back over sharpened teeth in a wolfish grin.

By the time Rye regained his sense, he was standing in the epicenter of a bloody ruin which could only barely be identifiable as the remains of his once-friend. His entire being trembled with the terrible realization of what he'd done as his rage left him, and he felt his stomach turn with nausea, but the Baroness was there to "comfort" him. Her cold hand caressed his cheek before grasping his chin and wrenching his face upward to meet her eyeless gaze with a strength that belied her thin, fragile-looking hands.

"Hush now and let thy tears cease, little Rye. Thou hast done well this day, and thy reward is yet to come."

The Baroness wrenched the withered apple from Jack's death-grip with ease, the bones of his dead fingers cracking with the force of the motion. Then, she looked back, her taloned finger crooked and bidding him to follow as she stepped through the gate.

Why did he follow her? Rye couldn't rightly say. Why do things happen as they do, in dreams? All he knew was that when she beckoned, he had to.

What more could he do? What was left to him?

He paused before stepping over the heap of viscera that was the remains of his friend, stooping to pick up the well-worn old lute that Jack used to play for him. It was bloody, and a bit dented--but serviceable. He could fix it, or so he thought. Held within its body were many memories- things he did not wish to part with, even now.

This memento held in hand, he followed in his Lady's wake.

[The Hazards of Love]

Rye emerged into a place from his dreams.

Greenery hung from branches and coated the ground all around. These were real trees, and mosses, and shrubs; nothing grasped at him or smelled of blood. He dared to look up, and through the gaps of the canopy he glimpsed the stars in the night sky, and when the night wind blew, it came not with the wailing of a thousand mad souls, but with the gentle rustling of the leaves and grasses.

He was home.

Ahead, the Baroness strode ahead, gliding like a swan on water. She wasn't looking. Should he run? Could he? He hesitated in his step, heart pounding in his chest.

As he faltered, a hand like an iron vice closed over his shoulder. He knew immediately who it belonged to, for he'd suffered many strikes from that taloned, thorn-wreathed gauntlet before. Silent, the Knight of Blackened Briars pushed him forward, as if he could sense his intent to flee.

And so Rye simply trudged on after the Baroness.

They soon came to a little cottage built into the trunk of a great tree. The windows were darkened at this time of night, but the Baroness' gliding approach was inexorable, and she strode up to it as if it were just another thing in her domain. Rye dug his heels into the mulchy soil against the grip of the Knight of Blackened Briars, but the faceless, tireless creature simply braced and pushed him onward with nary an effort.

Dread gripped him, pierced his heart and froze it as if a shelf of icicles had fallen. He tried to scream, tried to protest, but his voice failed him, smothered by fear.

He was home.

The Knight of Blackened Briars shoved him to the rough wooden ground inside the cottage. Familiar sights and smells assaulted him, in this moment nearly as unwelcome as if he'd been thrown into the hook-briar all over again. With a mere wave of her thin hand, the Baroness commanded her Knight to stride forth, and with the unquestioning surety of a servitor he obeyed.

A cry split the dreadful quiet of the night, and a brief struggle was heard from the next room. The Knight emerged, dragging a female elf from the bedchamber, sobbing and resisting in futility. It must have been years- decades, likely- since Rye last saw her, yet he knew her immediately, even in the night's gloom. How could he not know his own mother?

The Knight threw her to the ground at Rye's feet, crying.

"We had a deal!" she protested with rage-fueled scream, daring to look up at last. "What more do you want from me?!"

Rye's mother dared to look up at last. No doubt she thought to find the Baroness there, but found herself staring up at the face of her son, now grown, and protests died in her throat. Instead, she let herself crumple to the ground, wracked with sobbing.

"No.. not you."

"Thou didst trade away thy son for thy safety, but the agreement was never a formal one, nor was it absolute," the Baroness replied, in self-satisfied gloat. "Little Rye, look thee upon the one who sold thee to save herself. Is she not despicable?"

Quiet descended as it fell upon Rye to respond. He swallowed the lump in his throat. The initial shock and despair he felt upon seeing her for the first time in very long was melted away by all the anger he felt at being consigned to this fate by the one he trusted most.

And so his answer was "Yes."

"Dost thou hate this wretch?"

"Yes."

"Thy freedom is at hand, Little Rye. Freedom from thy anger and hatred. Take thy justice from her, and thus freed, sing once more!"

Rye raised his blade overhead. It was not long from slaying Jack so savagely, and it was poised to taste blood again.

Mere moments seemed to last hours as he held the pose.

He couldn't do it. Not like this. Exhaling a held breath, he let the blade ease downward and relaxed his stance.

The sound of blade piercing flesh, bone, and lung was a terrible one. His mother began gasping wetly as blood came in where air should be. Standing over her was the Knight of Blackened Briars, his wicked, thorn-wreathed blade through the woman's back.

"Make thy choice, little Rye: a merciful death, or one fraught with suffering? Thou willt have surely killed her, regardless," said the Baroness in airy tone, as if discussing mildly annoying weather.

The Knight of Blackened Briars watched- or seemed to watch, his eyes ever-hidden behind rose-and-thorn engraved visor- for Rye's reaction, his hookbriar-wrapped gauntlet still perched upon the pommel of his blade.

Rye stood there seething for a while as his mother slowly died before him, choking and gasping for precious breath, drowning on dry land. He could not bring himself to feel true sympathy for her, not truly. Not after what she had done. Perhaps he might have done it himself- if it were his own choice. Whether he could bring himself to slay his own mother in revenge was moot when he was being forced into it so.

The price of defiance was steep, and he hated it. It made a piteous creature from a craven.

Rye raised his blade once more, this time hesitating for not much more than a single moment. He would not allow the Knight of Blackened Briars to kill what was his- to make her suffer so. He would be the agent of his own justice.

The blade fell decisively upon her neck.

And he felt but little. Cold anger and bitterness alone in an empty void.

The Baroness laid a hand on his shoulder, a gesture of endearing comfort made malicious though the strength of her hand and sharpness of her claws ruined the attempt. Rye's flesh crawled at the touch, but he was too tired to throw her hand away just then. He was too tired, too resigned to his wretched lot to do much else at all other than stare down at his mother's clay-cold corpse.

"Thou'rt free, now, my boy.. Freed thus from the object of thy hatred, free to sing to thy heart's content," she smoothed sweat-slick black hair away from his face as she crooned to him of her single-minded intent. "Let us put thy past behind us now. Sing for me, be my minstrel and my creature both, and give me what I desire most. I can be a kind mistress, with but simple obedience."

Rye gazed across at the Knight of Blackened Briars: rigid, disciplined, unmoving. His armor looked to be held on to him by strands of hook-briar brambles intertwined around and throughout his body. He'd never seen the greusome and frightening figure without his full helm on, and now he wondered what was under it. All these things aside, the Baroness' most loyal servitor appeared to be of similar height and build to himself.

And he wondered if he was looking at his future.

"Of course, my Baroness. How could I refuse thee when thou hast been so kind?" he answered, his voice absent of the sycophantry the Unseelie Lady no doubt expected.

"Then I shall bestow upon thee a proper name. Kneel, and receive it."

Rye forced his numb body to comply, kneeling before his Lady.

"Rise then as Rhydian- the free."

[The Hazards of Love]

It was another mockery, of course. He was anything but free.

It was something the Baroness would remind him of frequently, even when he behaved. When he behaved, his "reward" was often a walk through his Lady's domain. Sometimes he was "indulged" and permitted to partake in debauched revels; sometimes he was "allowed" to amuse himself with whatever mortal playthings the Unseelie had stolen from the Prime; sometimes the Baroness "treated" him to a showing in her Vault of Song.

In truth, it was the latter he hated most.

The Vault lived up to its name. It was a square and ugly chamber, its poor acoustics marking it as a place purely meant for storage, rather than listening. Within it was a dragon's hoard worth of glittering golden walnut shells, each containing within it a song; and not just any song, but the magnum opus and sum total of their creative essence- all things stolen by the Baroness of Tortured Harmonies over time immemorial. Upon a pedestal stood a shell that was yet empty, and though the Baroness never spoke of it, she always made certain to pass it by. No words were needed- its significance was clear enough.

That empty shell would one day house his own song; and he would never sing again.

Seeing it always stoked the fires of defiance in him, more than all other cruelties he was made to suffer or inflict upon others. More than all else in all the Gloaming Court, this moved him to run.

So he ran. Whenever there was opportunity, however scant, he ran. He ran when the faeries slept after one of their blood-drunk revels. He ran whenever he went out with the Host on their hunts. Most of all, he ran whenever the Knight of Blackened Briars was sent away to satisfy some whim of the Baroness.

For it was the Knight who, astride his giant dread locust and with his host of harrying Winterlings, hunted him down each time; the Knight who dragged him back to the manse of the Baroness, the Knight who threw him back into the hook-briar's waiting embrace each time.

And each time, Rhydian greeted that morass of tangled branches and cutting thorns like an old friend.

No matter how many times he came out of the hook-briar's clutches and appeared to turn over a new leaf; no matter how well he played the games and did her bidding, he always ran and he never sang.

It wasn't working, and the Baroness was losing her patience. She watched from a balcony as the Knight of Blackened Briars mounted up on his insectile steed, intent to chase her wayward minstrel once again.

Surely there was another way to sway him to sing.

"Hold," she called down from her perch. "Let him go."

Without hesitation, the Knight stopped, a hand held aloft to signal his Winterling host to stand down. The sprites whined and complained, disappointed to be deprived of their fun, but dared not disobey for want of keeping their own skins.

"Have thy freedom, Rhydian-Rye- I shall have what I need from thee in good time."