‘Well met cousin.’ An attractive, slender woman of about the same age as Merilyn’s mother was standing under an alder tree beside a thin stream, which ran as a silver thread on the hillside down to the lake. It seemed to Merilyn that the blood-drinker was herself like cold, flowing water. Wearing black leather with silver buckles, with long and sinuous white hair, this impression was not so much a result of the fluidity of her gestures as she turned to Arthyr and spoke, it was a sense that a current of icy water emanated from her and stilled all the life in their vicinity. Gone was the background chatter of birds and mice. Gone were the slow dreams of trees and rocks. All was still; all the spirits of Uffen were holding their breath until she had departed.

‘Whether cousins or not, this is a most unwelcome meeting.’ Arthyr, apparently unafraid (though from the subtle tension in his movements, Merilyn knew otherwise), walked right up to the woman and seemed to be staring into her pallid, turquoise eyes. ‘Why are you following us? Are you a blood-drinker? Have you marked me for your victim?’

The woman laughed, a laugh that had the clatter of bones inside of it. ‘A vampyre? Not I. It is true that I am following you – just you – but it is because I carry a prophecy that I must deliver to you, now you are of age. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Princess Angharad, daughter of Cannabinna, lady of the Shining Castle.’

‘Are you though? Because it seems to me that you are careful to stand within the shade of that alder and that there is something of the grave about you. You have died at least once, haven’t you?’

Now that Arthyr had drawn attention to this quality of the Sí (if Sí she was) before them, Merilyn could recognise it too. It was elusive, like the scent of a distant rotting carcass that only can be detected with a shift in the wind. But in the aftermath of Arthyr’s words a fleeting expression of extreme hatred had appeared on the woman’s face.

‘You are very perceptive.’ The creature who had called herself Angharad looked cautious now and seemed to be weighing them up. Merilyn took up a position to the left of Arthyr, Gawain and then Netanya were on his right.

‘I name you blood-drinker and I call on my allies to aid me against you.’ Again, Arthyr was surprisingly direct but perhaps this was for the best.

At this, the woman drew herself up, her face altering to become more feral, such that Merilyn wondered at ever having thought her beautiful. With eyes that glared with rage and a voice that was as thrilling as it was frightening, she intoned:

‘Three wounds will you receive.

‘A bite, a curse and a betrayal.

‘Three stones shall be your enemy.

‘A jasper, an agate and an onyx.

‘A breath shall bind you.

‘A shadow shall drown you.

‘And madness will be your lot.’

On almost anyone else whom Merilyn knew, this terrible curse would have landed with devasting effect, if not immediately, then in the near future. For dark spirits were listening to the blood-drinker and were interested in making the prophecy come true. Arthyr, however, just laughed. And even just that simple action caused the force of the curse to weaken, like a snowfall that melted before it could fasten on the land.

All around them, the spirits of this warm, pleasant hillside rallied to Arthyr, whether through some deep, historical obligations to his kin or from a sense of outrage that the blood-drinker had attempted to bring darkness and shadow to their bright morning. A robin flew to Arthyr’s shoulder, aroused to bravery by his amused response to the attempt to curse him; wild mountain flowers opened their petals wide and surged upwards from the lush grass in a rainbow of colour; a dozen late-season bees darted around the undead woman’s head; and even the alder – no friend of mortals – leaned to the side, removing the blood-drinker’s shade and causing her to fling her arm across her head for protection against a sun that although pale and blue, still did her harm.

Netanaya pushed past Arthyr to stand beside Merilyn, directly in front of their opponent. It warmed Merilyn’s heart to see such bravery in her young friend and Merilyn moved a little to her left, to touch shoulders with Netanaya.

‘No wounds will harm my friend.

‘No bite, no curse, no betrayal.

‘Three stones will side with him.

‘The jasper, the agate, the onyx.

‘His breath will flow like sunlight.

‘A shadow will fade to nothing.

‘And victory will be his lot.’

There was a pause after Netanya had spoken and it seemed to Merilyn that even the wind and the lake were listening. Words that formed challenges and counter-challenges were very potent in Uffen.

‘Oh, well done Netanya,’ Gawain spoke up. ‘What great lines. And it is your prophecy that is coming true.’

The blood-drinker was visibly diminishing. Clearly, she now wanted to flee from this encounter but her feet were bound by an entanglement of bluegrass. The reality of her monster nature became visible: her Sí form melted into a large-jawed, fanged, muscular humanoid, one which would have terrified and overwhelmed Merilyn had she met it in the hours of darkness. Now, though, caught in an environment inimical to the undead, the creature was hunched in pain, with a grey mist pouring out of her that was being swirled away down the mountain slopes by darting zephyr-sprites.

‘I thought you were human children, not magicians, not Sí. Spare me, noble one, and I will serve you for a year and a day.’ The blood-drinker’s pained eyes were turned to Arthyr.

‘Would you have spared us?’ said Arthyr in a grim voice.

‘I would not. But I am hunger. You are love.’

‘Love? For some. To you I am catastrophe, apocalypse and doom.’

And the blood-drinker was no more, the fragments of her being returned to their proper state.[1] All around him, Arthyr felt the approval of the local spirits.

There was an evil smile on Arthyr’s face. As though the essence of the dying creatures had transferred into him at the end. ‘I feel like a storm is raging inside of me. That lightning is at my fingertips. I feel… powerful.’

Glorying in his triumph, Arthyr turned to Merilyn, ‘that’s how to deal with blood-drinkers.’

‘At this time and in this place. But if you were wise, you would not adopt this somewhat reckless approach in any other circumstances.’

Arthyr shook his head scornfully. ‘Have I ever said that you sound just like Ithel?’

‘Not more than a thousand times,’ laughed Gawain.

[1] I have been surprised to learn that in Uffen one can encounter a sense of what is right and proper. From Aristotle’s classic Politics we learn that in human affairs contentment arises from the alignment of deed and purpose in pursuit of the good. Insofar as I understand the Sí, they might not share our concept of the good but even more than us, they believe in fate and the importance of uniting deeds with purpose. If a prince is under geas to travel until, for example, he discovers a thread without end, a bird without song, and a spear without blade, then it is the fate of that prince to travel until his quest is resolved, failing which increasing misery and ill-fortune will be his lot. Vampyres and other undead violate the flow of fate in Uffen – they do not conform to the proper order of divine and spiritual affairs – and are hated by the Sí, even by those individuals whom we would consider to be extremely wicked.