The next two short fantasies both have their roots in medieval literature. "The Castle of the Sparrowhawk" is based on a tale told by that champion teller of tales, Sir John Mandeville, in his Travels—a volume I heartily recommend to anyone who enjoys marvels, whether real, imagined, or—best of all—real and imagined so commingled that the one is impossible to tell from the other.
Sir John Mandeville heard the tale of the castle of the sparrowhawk, but only from afar, and imperfectly. If a man could keep that sparrowhawk, which dwelt in the topmost tower of the castle, awake for seven days and nights, he would win whatever earthly thing might be his heart's desire. So much Mandeville knew.
But he lied when he put that castle in Armenia. Armenia, surely, was a strange and exotic land to his readers in England or France or Italy, but the castle of the sparrowhawk lay beyond the fields we know. How could it be otherwise, when even Mandeville tells us a lady of Faerie kept that sparrowhawk?
Perhaps we may excuse him after all, though, for the tale as he learned it did involve an Armenian prince—Mandeville calls him a king, to make the story grander, but only the truth here. Natural enough, then, for him to set that castle there. Natural, but wrong.
You might think Prince Rupen of Etchmiadzin had no need to go searching for the castle of the sparrowhawk. He was young. He was strong, in principality and in person. He was brave, and even beginning to be wise. His face, a handsome face in the half-eagle, half-lion way so many Armenians have, was more apt to be seen in a smile than a scowl.
Yet despite his smiles, he was not happy, not lastingly so. He felt that nothing he owned was his by right. His principality he had from his father, and his face and form as well. Even his bravery and the beginnings of wisdom had been inculcated in him.
"What would I have been had I been born an ugly, palsied pig-farmer?" he cried one day in a fit of self-doubt.
"Someone other than yourself," his vizier answered sensibly.
But that did not satisfy him. He was, after all, only beginning to be wise.
In the east, the line between the fields we know and those beyond is not drawn so firmly as in our mundane corner of the world. Too, in the tortuous mountains of Armenia, who knows what fields lie three valleys over? And so, when Rupen, armed with no more than determination—and a crossbow, in case of dragons—set out to seek the castle of the sparrowhawk, he was not surprised that one day he found it.
But for a certain feline grace, the grooms and servants of the castle were hardly different from those he had left behind at Etchmiadzin. They tended his horse, fed him ground lamb and pine nuts, and gave him wine spiced with cinnamon. He drank deeply and flung himself on the featherbed to which they led him. To hold the sparrowhawk wakeful seven days and nights, he would have to go without sleep himself. He stored it away now, like a woodchuck fattening itself for winter.
No one disturbed his rest; he was allowed to emerge from his chamber when he would. After he had eaten again, the seneschal of the castle asked leave to have speech with him. The mark of Faerie lay more heavily on that man than on his underlings. In the fields we know, his mien and bearing would have suited a sovereign, not a bailiff. So would his robes, of sea-green samite shot through with silver threads and decked with pearls.
Said he to Rupen, "Is it your will to essay the ordeal of the sparrowhawk?"
"It is," the prince replied.
The seneschal bowed. "You have come, no doubt, seeking the reward success will bring. My duty is to inform you of the cost of failure; word thereof somehow does not travel so widely. If the bird sleeps, you forfeit more than your life. Your soul is lost as well. The prayers of your priests do not reach here to save it."
Rupen believed him absolutely. The churches of Armenia with their conical domes had never seemed more distant. For all that, he said, "I will go on."
The seneschal bowed again. "Be it so, then. Honor to your courage. I will take you to the lady Olissa. Come."
There were one hundred and forty-four steps on the spiral stair that led to the sparrowhawk's eyrie. Prince Rupen counted them one by one as he climbed behind the seneschal. His heart pounded and his breath came short by the time they reached the top. The seneschal was unchanged; he might have been a falcon himself, by the ease with which he took the stairs.
The door at the head of the stairway was of some golden wood Rupen did not know. Light streamed into the gloomy stairwell when the seneschal opened it, briefly dazzling Rupen. As his eyes took its measure, he saw a broad expanse of enameled blue sky, a single perch, and standing beside it one who had to be Olissa.
"Are you of a sudden afraid, then?" the seneschal asked when Rupen hung back. "You may yet withdraw, the only penalty being that never again shall you find your way hither."
"Afraid?" Rupen murmured, as from far away. "No, I am not afraid." But still he stayed in the antechamber; to take a step might have meant pulling his eyes away from Olissa for an instant, and he could not have borne it.
Her hair stormed in bright waves to her waist, the color of the new-risen sun. Her skin was like snow faintly tinged with ripe apples. The curves of her body bade fair to bring tears to his eyes. So, for another reason, did the sculpted lines of her chin, her cheeks, the tiny curve of her ear where it peeped from among fiery ringlets. He thought how the pagan Greeks would have slain themselves in despair of capturing her in stone.
Her eyes? Like the sea, they were never the same shade twice.
He stood until she extended a slim hand his way. Then indeed he moved forward, as iron will toward a lodestone. When she spoke, he learned what the sound was that silver bells sought. "Knowing the danger," she asked, "you still wish to undertake the ordeal?"
He could only nod.
"Honor to your courage." Olissa echoed the seneschal; it was the first thing that recalled him to Rupen's mind since he set eyes on her. Then the man of Faerie was again forgotten as she went on, "I will have provender fetched here; you must undertake the test alone with the sparrowhawk."
The thought that she would leave filled him with despair. But when she asked him, "Will you drink wine at meat?" he had to think of a reply, if only not to appear a fool before her.
"No, bring me water or milk, if you would," he said. He would not have chosen them in Armenia, but he feared no flux here. He felt bound to explain, "Come the seventh day, I shall be drowsy enough without the grape."
"A man of sense as well as bravery. It shall be as you wish, or even better."
Already Rupen heard servants on the stairs, though no sign he could detect had summoned them. Along with the flaky loaves and smoked meats, they set down ewers the fragrance of whose contents made his nose twitch.
"Fruit nectars," Olissa said. "Does it please you?"
He bowed his thanks. Against the liquid elegance of the seneschal, his courtesy seemed a miserable clumsy thing, but he gave it as a man will give a copper when he has no gold to spend.
She nodded to him, and he felt as if the Emperor of Byzantium and the Great Khan had prostrated themselves at his feet. Saying, "Perhaps we shall meet again in seven days, you and I," she stepped past him to join the seneschal in the antechamber at the head of the stairs.
The door of the golden wood was swinging shut when Rupen blurted out a final thought: "If no one is here to watch me, how will you know if I fail?"
He had hoped for a last word from Olissa, but it was the seneschal who answered him. "We shall know, never fear," he said, and the iron promise in his voice sent a snake of dread slithering through Rupen's bowels. Soundlessly, the door closed.
With the glory of Olissa gone, Rupen turned to the sparrowhawk for the first time. It stared back at him with fierce topaz eyes, and screeched shrilly. He had flown hawks, and knew what that cry meant. "Hungry, are you? I was not sure the birds of Faerie had to eat."
Among the supplies the castle servants had brought was a large, low, earthen pot with a lid of openweave wickerwork. Small scuttling sounds came from it. When Rupen lifted the lid, he found mice, brown, white, and gray, scrambling about inside. He reached in, caught one and killed it, and offered it to the sparrowhawk. The bird ate greedily. It called for more, though the tip of the mouse's tail still dangled from its beak.
Rupen shook his head. "A stuffed belly makes for restfulness. We'll both stay a bit empty through this week." The sparrowhawk glared as if it understood. Perhaps, he thought, it did.
As dusk fell, it tucked its head under a wing. He clapped his hands. The sparrowhawk hissed at him. He lit a torch and set it in its sconce. It burned with the clean, sweet smell of sandalwood.
That night, drowsiness did not trouble Rupen, who was sustained by imaginings of Olissa. He felt fresh as just-fallen snow when dawn streaked the eastern sky with carmine and gold. The sparrowhawk, by then, was too furious with him to think of sleep.
Noon was not long past when he fed it another mouse. Soon after, the first yawn crept out of hiding and stretched itself in his throat. He strangled it, but felt others stirring to take its place. Presently they would thrive.
To hold them back, he began to sing. He sang every song he knew, and sang them all once again when he was through. The din sufficed to keep the sparrowhawk awake through most of the night. Eventually, though, it grew used to the sound of his voice, and began to close its eyes. Seeing that, he fell silent, which served as well as a thunderclap. The bird started up wildly; its bright stare had hatred in it.
That was how the second day passed.
Prince Rupen stumbled through the third and fourth days as if drunk. He laughed hoarsely at nothing, and kept dropping the chunks of bread he cut for supper. He was too tired to notice they had not gone stale, as they would have in the fields we know. The sparrowhawk began to sway on its perch. Some of the luster was gone from its bright plumage.
On the fifth day, it took Rupen a very long time to catch the bird its mouse. The mice were wide awake. When at last he had the furry little creature, he started to pop it into his own mouth. Only the sparrowhawk's shriek of protest recalled him to himself, for a little while.
He remembered nothing whatsoever of the sixth day.
Sometime in the middle of the last night, he decided he wanted to die. He lurched over to the edge of the eyrie's floor and looked longingly at the castle courtyard far below. The thought of forfeiting his soul for failing the ordeal did not check him, nor did the certainty that suicides suffered the same fate. But he lacked the energy to take the step that would have sent him tumbling down.
He did not remember why he kept snapping his fingers in the sparrowhawk's face. The bird, by then, lacked the spirit even to bite at him. Its eyes might have been dull yellow glass now, not topaz. Both of them had forgotten the mice.
The sun came up. Rupen stared at it until the pain penetrated the fog between his eyes and his brain. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and continued to flow long after the pain was past. He had no idea why he wept, or how to stop.
Nor did the sound of footsteps on the stairs convey to him a meaning. Yet when the door swung open, he somehow contrived a bow to the lady Olissa.
She curtseyed in return, as lovely as she had been a week before. "Rest now, bold prince," she murmured. "You have won."
The seneschal sprang out from behind her to ease Rupen to the slates of the floor, his first snores already begun. Olissa paid the man no attention, but crooned to the sparrowhawk, "And thou, little warrior, rest thyself as well." The bird gave what would have been a chirp had its voice been sweeter, and pushed its head into the white palm of her hand like a lovesick cat. Then it too slept.
The seneschal said, "To look at him lying there, this mortal now has in his possession his heart's desire."
"Ah, but he will not reckon it so when he wakes," Olissa replied.
The sun sliding fingers under his eyelids roused Rupen. He sprang up in horror, certain he was doomed. Ice formed round his heart to see the perch he had so long guarded empty.
Olissa's laugh, a sound like springtime, made him whirl. "Fear not," she said. "You have slept the day around. The ordeal is behind you, and you have only to claim your reward."
"You did come to me, then," Rupen said, amazed. "I thought surely it was a dream."
"No dream," she said. "What would you?"
He was not yet ready for that question. "The sparrowhawk—?" he asked.
His concern won a smile from her. "It is a bird of Faerie, and recovers itself more quickly than those you may have known. Already it is on the wing, hunting mice it does not have to scream for."
Rupen flushed to be reminded of his vagaries during the trial. That reminded him of his present sadly draggled state. "As part of my reward, may I ask for a great hot tub and the loan of fresh clothing?"
"It shall be as you desire; you are not the first to make that request. While you bathe, think on what else you would have. I shall come to your bedchamber in an hour's time, to hear you."
The soaps and scents of Faerie, finer and more delicate than the ones we know, washed the last lingering exhaustion from his bones. His borrowed silks clung to him like a second skin. As he combed his hair and thick curly beard, he noticed the mirror on the wall above the tub was not befogged by steam. He wished he could take that secret back with him to Etchmiadzin.
He started when the soft knock came at the bedchamber door. At the first touch of the latch, the door opened as silently as all the others in the castle of the sparrowhawk. The lady Olissa stepped in. As if it were a well-trained dog, the door swung shut behind her.
She watched him a moment with her sea-colored eyes. "Ask for any earthly thing you may desire, for you have nobly acquitted yourself in the task set you."
Had it been the seneschal granting him that boon, Rupen would have answered differently. But he was a young man, and quite refreshed, so he said, "Of earthly things, Etchmiadzin fills all my wants. Therefore—" His resolve faltered, and he hesitated, but at last he did go on, all in a rush: "—I ask of you no more than that you share this bed with me here for a night and a day. I could desire nothing more."
Still her eyes reminded him of the sea, the sea at storm. Almost he quailed before her anger, and was steadied only by the thought that she would despise him for his fear.
She said, "Beware, mortal. I am no earthly thing, but of the Faerie realm. Choose you another benison, one suited to your station."
"Am I not a prince?" Rupen cried. He was only beginning to be wise. "In truth, I would ask for nothing else."
"For the last time, can I not dissuade you from this folly?"
"No," he said.
"Be it so, then," she said with a wintry sigh, "but with this gift you demand of me I shall give you another, such as you deserve for your presumption. Etchmiadzin will not so delight you on your return; you will come to know war and need and loss. And ten years hence I charge you to think upon this day and what you have earned here now."
Her words fell on deaf ears, for as she spoke she was loosing the stays of her gown and letting it fall to the floor. Rupen had imagined how she might be. Now he saw what a poor, paltry, niggling thing his imagination was. Then he touched her, and that was past all imagining.
Afterward, riding back to Etchmiadzin, he wished he had asked for a year. On the other hand, half an hour might have served as well, or as poorly. Anything less than forever was not enough.
He returned by the road he had taken into Faerie, but somehow he did not enter the fields we know where he had left them. Yet he was still in Armenia, only a few days' journey from his principality. He had half looked for a greater vengeance.
Then he found his border closed against him, and his onetime vizier holding the throne of his ancestors. "If a prince go haring into Faerie rather than look after his own land, he does not deserve to rule," the usurper had told the nobles, and most said aye and swore him allegiance.
But not all. Prince Rupen soon mustered a band of warriors and undertook to regain by force what had once been his by right. Fighting and siege and murder engulfed the land of Etchmiadzin that had been so fair. By his own hand Rupen slew a cousin who had been a dear friend. He watched comrades of old die in his service, or live on maimed.
And in the end it did not avail. Etchmiadzin remained lost. By the time he admitted that in his heart, Rupen had lived the soldier's life so long that he found any other savorless. From a nest high in the hills—to its sorrow, Armenia has many of them—he and his swooped down into the valleys to seize what they might.
Sometimes Rupen was nearly as rich as a bandit chief as he had been in the castle of Etchmiadzin. More often he went hungry. There were white scars on his arms, and along his ribs, and a great gash on his cheek and forehead that was only partly hidden by the leather patch covering the ruin of his left eye-socket.
He seldom thought of Faerie. Few even of the hard-bitten crew who rode with him had the nerve to bring up his journey to the castle of the sparrowhawk. After a while, most of those who had known of it were dead.
Then one day, as the lady Olissa had decreed, full memory came flooding back, and he knew in astonishment that a decade had passed. He thought of the tiny space of time he had spent in her arms, of his life as a prince before, and the long years of misfortune that came after. He thought of what he had become: ladder-ribbed, huddled close to a tiny fire in a drafty hut, drinking sour wine.
He thought of Olissa again. Not even the folk of Faerie see all the future, exactly as it will be. "I'd do it over again, just the same way," he said out loud.
One or two of his men looked up. The rest kept on with what they were doing.