Prologue

Atop The Naked, in the Realm of the Faerie

The two giants walked slowly and majestically up the gentle incline of the hill. Each was almost eight feet tall and five in girth, each wore long garments of chain mail, and each had wild long curls of reddish-brown hair that escaped from under their smooth, conical helmets, and thick, tangled beards. One grasped a spear, the other a sword.

Although they moved smoothly and their limbs swung freely and their curls fluttered in stringy tangles behind them, each looked as though he had been carved from wood. If you came upon them in the dusk, when they were still and watchful, you would think them nothing more than massive tree trunks, denuded of their leaves.

Their names were Gog and Magog, and they had once been Sidlesaghes. Now they were the legendary defenders of London, the sprawling seventeenth-century city which occupied the Veiled Hills, the sacred heart of the ancient land of Llangarlia. While the giants spent most of their time resting motionless in the Guildhall of the city, they remained true creatures of the Faerie, and it was to the Faerie that they came this night.

After lying quiescent for tens of thousands of years, the Faerie was waking, and the creatures of the Faerie stirring. Eaving, the goddess of the waters, had been reborn, and soon her lover, Og, the Stag God, would also awaken from his long death.

There was one other to rise back into warmth and life and breath—the Lord of the Faerie, the master of both Eaving and the Stag God, and all the creatures of the Faerie large and small. It was for news of him that the giants had left the Guildhall and entered the Realm of the Faerie.

The smooth-grassed hill Gog and Magog climbed was one of many. It rose some three hundred feet from the valley floor to a smooth flattened peak. To either side, and to the north beyond the valley, rose many similar hills, although these were all wooded. Mist drifted in the valleys between the hills, scarlet and blue birds dipping languidly in and out of its billowing vapours. It was a tranquil scene, but only at first glance. If one looked closer, as Gog and Magog did when they paused for breath ten or so paces from the summit of the hill, flashes of movement could be discerned amid the trees of all the surrounding hills: creatures of the Faerie, converging on the hill which the giants climbed. This hill was the only one clear of all vegetation save grass. For this reason it was known among the Faerie as The Naked.

The Naked was one of the holy sites within the Realm of the Faerie, for it was here that its lord sat his Faerie throne.

Tonight, the Faerie who gathered atop The Naked hoped to hear the news for which they’d been yearning for ten thousand years: that the Faerie throne, so long bare and cold, would soon be filled again.

Gog and Magog halted as they attained the summit, looking about. Despite the fact that the hill was relatively small, the summit appeared roomy enough to hold several ten thousands of the Faerie folk.

The giants were not the first to arrive. They were greeted by a small, dark, fey woman who walked over to them, her hands outstretched.

“Gog, Magog,” she said, reaching up to kiss each one on the cheek (a feat which had to be aided by Gog, who lifted her up so she could kiss Magog’s cheek, and then his, before he set her down). “It has been so long.”

“Mag,” rumbled Magog. “We are glad-hearted that you are here.”

“I, and all my sisters and predecessors,” said Mag, the once goddess of the waters of the land.

“Is it…” Gog could not finish, for emotion had choked him.

Mag smiled, her face gentle and serene. “Aye,” she said, “it is time. The Lord of the Faerie approaches.”

The giants each drew in deep breaths of joy.

“Where?” said Magog. “When?”

“Not here,” she said. “Not yet, but before too many more years have passed.”

She stood back, and the giants saw that now many thousands of creatures thronged the summit: Sidlesaghes, water sprites, snow ghosts, wood sylphs, grey and black lumpens who were the souls of the mountains, badgers and moles (the most mystical and royal of those animals who trod the mortal world), moon shadows and sun dapples, and the strange low, pallid-skinned creatures who inhabited the caverns of the land, but who, since the beginning of creation, had refused to tell anyone their names.

Most of the Faerie simply called them cavelings.

One of the gathered Sidlesaghes walked towards where Mag stood with the giants. It was Long Tom, the Sidlesaghe who best knew Eaving, the new-born goddess of the waters. The giants greeted him cheerfully, for Long Tom had once been their brother.

“Is it true,” said Gog, “that the Lord of the Faerie shall be returning to us?”

“Yes,” said Long Tom. He stood back a little, and gestured eastwards.

The creatures that thronged the top of the Naked stepped back at his command, and the giants had a clear sight through to the eastern aspect of the summit. There stood a carved throne of faerie wood, known to mortals as burr elm.

On the seat of the throne rested a crown, made of twisted twigs and sprigs of red berries, and as the giants stared a beam of light illumed the crown of twigs.

“Do you remember the day that Eaving sat atop Pen Hill?” said Long Tom.

“Aye,” said Gog. “That was when Harold came to her, and the beam of light crowned him.”

Long Tom’s smile grew broader, and his eyes twinkled. Mag stared at him.

“No!” she said. “Truly?”

“Oh, aye,” said Long Tom. “The Lord of the Faerie shall re-awake in Coel-reborn, for he has proved himself a great man, a fair king and, most important of all, a man of true faerie-heart.”

Mag closed her eyes briefly. “I am so very glad,” she whispered.