could feel the debt between us hanging in the air. But he’d intentionally indebted himself, so that did make me feel a little more amicable.
“I need a teacher before I hurt myself. The high court is said to have two changeling planeweavers.”
His frown deepened. “You can’t reach them. No one can.”
I gave him an incredulous look, and he sighed.
“I know you’ve probably heard rumors of golden halls and grand balls or some other such nonsense, but they are, for lack of a better word, fairy tales. There is no court, per se. There is only the king. A very old king. The very last seelie king.”
“The what?”
My father sank back in his chair and ran a hand over his face. He looked tired, and his youthful fae face looked older, ragged. “Tonight you’ve been watching plays on Faerie history and listening to ancient songs depicting legends and events of times long past, correct?”
I gave a small nod, not sure where he was going with this.
“Then let me tell you a story mostly forgotten by time. Once Faerie was not as it is now with its seven courts. Once it was only two courts: seelie and unseelie. The seelie court was bright and beautiful and full of fae whose glamour was fueled by the adoration and fascination of mortals. The unseelie court was sometimes beautiful but often monstrous. The unseelie reveled in fueling their glamour with the fear of mortals. The wars between the two courts were of epic proportions. They shook both Faerie and the mortal world alike.”
He lifted his hands, and a small scene appeared beneath them, conjured from glamour. Under one hand, the landscape was bright and full of gardens. Under the other, the landscape was dark and things seemed to move in the darkness that I couldn’t focus on. A small doll or maybe a stringless puppet appeared on each side. They were crude, featureless, but it was clear that the puppet on the bright side was male and the one on the dark side female. I watched, fascinated.
“The final seelie king was cunning and ambitious. After winning his throne, he proposed a century-long truce between the courts through a union with the unseelie queen. They both went into it planning to use the time and marriage to the advantage of their own court, but over the course of the truce, the unseelie queen fell in love with her husband. He dazzled her and her court with the wonders of his court, while continuing to propagate loathing of her court among his people. When the century ended, the queen requested an extended union, but the king refused. He rallied his troops and attacked on the same night the truce dissolved. Some say the queen died of a broken heart. Others say she remained in their marriage bed that last night and at the stroke of midnight, when the truce broke, the king murdered her in her sleep. The war that followed was swift but brutal. The unseelie court was decimated, and the seelie king claimed rulership of both courts, declaring himself the high king of all Faerie.”
The little seelie king puppet swung out with a small sword. The queen puppet stumbled back, doubling over, before falling face forward. I watched in morbid fascination as the little king puppet placed his foot on her unmoving back and lifted his sword aloft in victory. The light side of the scene poured over the dark side, driving the shadows to the far corners.
“But Faerie is never only one thing,” he said, and the scene began to tremble. The little seelie king puppet stumbled. “The seelie court’s total victory upset the balance and Faerie shattered. The new pieces became the courts as you know them now. The seasons balance each other and light balances shadow. The high king sits in the center, ruler of all but connected to none. Faerie keeps him at her heart, allowing his law to bend her, but he has no court, no courtiers; he has only his throne and he cannot step down from it. In the beginning he exerted his will heavily on the courts, made his own house the nobles throughout all courts, enforced truces and created laws, but over the millennia he has become more distant and withdrawn, slumbering away whole centuries.”
The scene changed. A wheel appeared under my father’s hands. The outside was the seasonal courts, depicted much in the same way as in the clearing that held the doors to all