By Maradas Graham
Once, in the sunlit Realms of the Seelie, the King was served by a loyal and faithful knight named Niall. He had not always been the most virtuous of men, and had made mistakes in his younger days, but his later years had been spent making reparations for his earlier deeds, and trying his hardest to be a bastion of good. The King knew of this knights shady past, but did not fault him for it, and instead embraced the man all the more for rising above his misfortune to become the pinnacle of chivalry. With nothing but truth and goodness in his heart, the knight swore a great Oath to the King, to always serve him loyally, and without question. In exchange for this Oath, the King granted Niall, whose name means "champion", the gift of a single, unnamed favour--- the granting of any one thing the King possessed that Niall desired--- to be fulfilled by the King without question, should Niall but ask.
For many, many years, noble reader, by our mortal reckoning, Niall served the King loyally and unfailingly. He performed countless acts of heroism in the Kings name, and, in time, many in the kingdom came to love him and respect him. There were dragons slain and maidens rescued, deaths avenged and wrongs righted, and in that time, there were many great treasures recovered of great value, but not once did Niall ever ask the King for one of them. In fact, he never even spoke of the favour, taking it as much for granted and beyond mentioning as he did his Oath to the King. They were both a part of his duty, and neither needed much deep contemplation.
Of course, it should happen in the rising of a new year that Niall met a woman with whom he immediately fell deeply in love. She was a lady of the highest noble birth, and graceful besides, and could stop the sunrise with her beauty if she so willed it. Unfortunately for Niall, she was also betrothed to a wealthy Count of grand estates but little personality, who would have taken exception with Nialls admiration. So, with nothing but goodness and purity in his heart, Niall loved her from afar for quite a long time, longing, perhaps, for a gentle word from her, but expecting nothing. The lady was blithe and merry, and gave no thought to the knight, for outwardly he behaved no differently towards her than any other maiden, though inside he was in a torment of love.
The knight sought ways to catch the ladys eye, performing small tasks within her sight, offering small services to her family, and after a time, the lady started to notice that perhaps there was more to the man than she had thought. Niall seldom spoke to her, and never in a way that was outside the proper rules of etiquette for an unmarried lady and a knight, but there were times when his eye caught hers and it seemed that the time between them was all that mattered in the world. These moments were brief and fleeting, never planned and over much too soon, but something began to grow between them. One such day, Niall grew very bold, and left on the ladys doorstep a single white rose, as perfect in the ladys eyes as the lady was in Nialls. Attached to the rose was a note. "Meet me in the garden," was all that the note said, simple enough, but it sent the ladys heart a flutter.
When her family was all in bed, the lady crept quietly from her chamber, and into the garden below, to find Niall waiting for her on the marble bench beneath the rose bower. For a short moment they simply stared at each other, then the lady flew into Nialls arms. The two sat in the embrace until morning, when they parted for decencys sake. Every evening they would meet, after the house was quiet, and they would talk until the sun was in the sky again and the early rays of light pierced the windows. Still, a shadow lingered beneath the surface of their love. The lady was still to be married to the Count, and the knights first pledge of loyalty was, of course, to the king.
Niall pleaded with his lady love, begging her to call off the wedding, but for dutys sake she refused. He begged her, go to her father! Tell him of their love, and have him release her from her vow. Go to the King, and have him declared the vows of promise void between herself and the Count, but the lady would do no such thing. Perhaps she saw more comfort in the thought of a loveless marriage, where she knew both she and her husband would live out safe and secure, than she saw in the passion she shared with a man who put himself in dangers way every day. Perhaps she knew that his Oath to the King kept Niall from swearing an oath to her above all others. Whatever it was that made her refuse, made her turn a cold shoulder to her beloved.
When she failed to meet him in the gardens one evening, and then did not appear for several more days after that, Niall became distraught. He went before the King himself, and pleaded for the breaking of promise to the Count. He begged his Lord and Liege, please, please take her from the count and give her to him! The King would only shake his head no. She is not mine to give, said the King, if she would not give herself. Niall was filled with fury, and he shook with rage at the King.
"You swore an Oath," he cried with anger," A single, un-named favour, anything that I desire! This you swore when I bowed my knees to you before your kin and court. All I ask for my favour, all I ask of you in return for my unquestioning service and faultless loyalty, is that you give me this woman to be my lady wife!" The King shook his head ever more gravely at his good knight.
"I cannot give you that which does not belong to me, and the lady belongs to herself alone," said the mighty King of Seelie. "I must refuse you your request. Pick another favour."
"I would have no other favour, my Lord, save the hand of my lady love in marriage," cried Niall in despair, "And so by the terms of our Oath, I can serve you no more!" And with that, Niall turned and fled the court. The King hung his head in sorrow as he felt the breaking of the Oath, for Nialls words hard split the swearing in twain, and his heart was great with pain for his fallen knight. Niall had forgotten the most important part of the Oath, which was that the gift must be something possessed by the King, and all the ties between King and subject in this Fair realm or our own Mortal world could not have given the King claims over the ladys heart. So, the forsworn knight left the realms of Seelie, leaving his Oath to the King broken.
Our story does not end here, dear reader, though many wish it had. When Niall left the Kings palace, he fled to the only refuge he could find, the lands of the Unseelie. There he found himself in the court of the Queen, when he soon enlisted into her service. He would swear no oath of loyalty, and for that she bore him great resentment, but even the Winter Queen knows that a man forsworn cannot be tied by any Oaths, even those to his own heart. So he served her without question, loyally and unfailingly, for some time. Word came of the ladys marriage to the Count, and word came of the birth of their first child. Through it all, Niall said nothing, and shut himself off so well from his heart that he could not feel it breaking and breaking.
The lady, now Countess, bore more children to her husband, and lived in relative happiness and peace of mind. Her life was secure and untroubled, and filled with much joy amongst her many children. She even, in time, came to love her husband, though always with a pang of regret for what had happened with Niall. She moved on with her life, and made the best of things. Her life would have continued, happily and unremarkably, if a fated meeting had not occurred.
Long had Niall lived with the pain locked away in his heart, for it is easy to forget a wound that cannot be seen. He grew hard and cold, and perhaps even a bit cruel, and he hid from himself because facing the truth would have broken him. Breaking an Oath does things to a man, noble reader, for there is nothing so destructive than losing your faith in yourself. A man who has nothing left to live for, nothing he holds sacred, is a man who is to be feared. So, it should have been expected what would occur when Niall happened across the Count and Countess for the first time since he had fled the realms of light.
Riding in the Seelie Realms, on some mission of the Queens, Niall came across a carriage stuck fast in a stream where it had failed in the crossing. He was flagged down by a man, and begged to help, for the mans lady wife was inside the carriage and could not be made to struggle through the forest, nor could she be left alone while the man looked for help. Niall, reluctantly, agreed to help, for time had not changed him so much that he did not hold something of himself. He helped the man dislodge the carriage from the water, and the horses pulled it to safety on the other side of the stream. He made his "good days", and turned to leave, when he heard the ladys voice expressing her thank you for his kind help. Immediately, Niall froze fast in his tracks. It was not the words that were familiar, but the voice! He would have known that voice if it had been a thousand years, and more. He spun around where he stood, and his eyes met with those of the lady who had once been his love!
She was as shocked as he was, for though she had managed to put him from her mind, she had never stopped loving him. She certainly had never expected to run across him on some lonely road. Oh, cruel Fortune was not smiling down upon her daughter this day, for as the lady watched Nialls face, it began to twist, ever so slowly, from surprise to shock and finally into a look closely akin to hate. Niall trembled, his lip quivered, his whole body seemed to shake, perhaps with rage, or maybe with sorrow. As all the pain of memory came rushing back to him in a great torrent, Niall cried out in furious anger as he pulled his sword forth from its sheath. Without so much as missing a step, he spun about and rushed towards the man, the Count, with his bare blade!
The Countess gave a cry of terror, flinging her self form the carriage and in front of her husband, for though fate had dealt her unkindly, she did love her husband, and would not have her children lose their father. In his blind rage and fury, Niall could not stop his charge, and as he felt his blade thrust forward into flesh, he saw the look of disbelief in the eyes of his true love! The Count stepped back in horror as Niall took the woman into his arms, cradling her gently as he tried to turn the tide of blood the flowed from her. He wept as he held her there, crying out curses against Seelie and Unseelie alike, but nothing could be done for his true love. As the light began to fade from her eyes, and the color from her fair skin, she whispered the words "forgive me", and then breathed no more. Such a cry did Niall issue that it could be heard throughout the Sunlit lands and Shadowed alike, and in then Mortal realm it sounded as if the very sky thundered without the benefit of clouds.
Niall picked up the body of his lady love, though the sobbing Count weakly protested, and with her in his arms he mounted his horse and rode back to the Unseelie realms. There, he begged the Queen to restore the woman to life, but the crossing of the border from Seelie land to Unseelie had ensured that no force of the Unseelie Queen could make this woman walk again with the living. Unable to see his beloveds body be destroyed by time, Niall then took her to a craftsman of the greatest skill in both magic and artifice. There, the craftsman transformed her body into a heavy talisman of gold, and as Nialls tears fell upon it, they were turned into diamond stones set about the pendent. This he then placed on a golden chain around Nialls neck, and charged his thus with a quest: to forever feel the weight of his true loves death like a stone about his neck, and to search forever until he could find a way to transform her once again into a woman and restore her life.
To this day, Niall still searches the lands, both Mortal and faerie, hoping to find the powerful magic that will bring life back to his lady. Perhaps the task is impossible, but he wills search until he dies, for all that is left of his heart lies within that talisman. He is a man seeking to find his faith in himself again, and to reforge those oaths with himself that he has broken. Until such a time, he will be nothing more than a broken man, bitter and heartless, alone in the empty world.