Patricia McKillip - The Throme of the Erril of Sherill

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THE THROME OF THE

ERRIL OF SHERILL

Patricia A. McKillip

Illustrated by Julie Noonan

Atheneum 1973 New York

Library of Congress catalog card number 73-76324

ISBN 0-689-30115-4

Published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland & Stewart,

Ltd.

Manufactured in the United States of America by H. Wolff, New

York

First Edition

To Kathy and Michele and Lorene

The Erril of Sherill wrote a Throme. It was a deep Throme, and a dark,

haunting, lovely Throme, a wild, special, sweet Throme made of the treasure of

words in his deep heart. He wrote it long ago, in another world, a vaguely

singing, boundariless land that did not exist within the kingdom of Magnus

Thrall, King of Everywhere. The King had Cnites to come and go for him, and

churttels to plant and harvest for him, but no Cnite had ever looked up into the

winking morning sky and seen Sherill, and no churttel had ever looked at the

rich clods of earth between his boots and seen the Erril’s world. Yet the Erril,

long, long ago, wrote a Throme of singular and unsurpassed beauty, somewhere

in his own land called Sherill, and the dark King of Everywhere desired that

Throme.

The house of the King was a tall thing of great, thick stones and high towers

and tiny slits of windows that gleamed at night when the King paced his hearth

stones longing for the Throme. He had a daughter who sat with him and wept

and embroidered pictures of the green world beyond the walls, and listened to

her father think aloud to the pale sunlight or the wisps of candle-flame.

“Who knows,” he would say, “Oh, who knows where lies the Throme, the

Throme of peace, the Throme of loveliness, the dark Throme of Sherill ? I must

have it. If I had it, the most precious of all precious things, my heart would be at

rest in its beauty, and I could stop wanting. If I had the Throme, I could wake at

mornings knowing it belonged to me, and I could be content with the simple

sunrise and the silly birds.”

The King’s Damsen would lift her hands and let them fall again into her lap.

“There is no such thing. There is no Throme. Everyone knows that.”

“Bah. Everyone is a fool.”

And a tear would slide down the still face of the King’s Damsen, and plop

and twinkle on her hands. Her long hair was the color of pale sunlight, and her

eyes were the color of long, motionless, uninterrupted nights. Somewhere

beyond the dark stones was a moon-haired Cnite who loved the sad, sighing

Damsen of the King.

That Cnite came one night to the house of Magnus Thrall. Damsen, who from

the high window had seen the churttels come and go, and the daylight come and

go, saw the Cnite ride across the fields of Everywhere and thump on the

drawbridge of the house, which shut itself up at night like a grim, wordless

sprite. Her sad, sighing heart gave two quick beats. Magnus Thrall, wearing a

circle in the stones in front of a skinny, dancing elf of a flame, stopped.

“Who thumped across my drawbridge?”

“It is your Chief Cnite Caerles,” said Damsen, and her voice was like the

low, clear ripple of water across stones.

“Ha!” said Magnus Thrall. “I know what he has come for. But he cannot have

you because I need you. If you go away, I will be here alone in these dark, dank

walls. I need to look at your sad face. It comforts me.”

A tear dropped onto Damsen’s needlework and winked like a jewel among

the bright threads. She looked towards the door at the sound of footsteps. They

came through dark halls and empty rooms and lightless winding staircases

towards her, for the King had shut up his house so that he could wail and wish

alone. Spiders wove tapestry on the cold grey walls, and dust gathered,

motionless, on the stone floors. The footsteps stopped at the doorway, and the

Cnite Caerles stood in it, looking in at the warm fire, and the King, and Damsen

with her eyes like cups of sweet, dark wine. He smiled at her eyes, and they

smiled back, sadly, beneath their tears.

“Go away,” Magnus Thrall said.

“I just arrived,” Caerles said reasonably. “My horse is in your disused

stable. He is tired and I am tired, both of us having followed the sun and the

moon to get here.”

“You are welcome,” said Damsen.

“You are not,” said Magnus Thrall. “Besides, we have no room for you.”

“I will rest content on the cold stones,” Caerles said, “and in the morning I

will come and ask something of you, and then I will leave you.”

“I will give you an answer now,” said the King. “No.”

Caerles sighed. He stepped into the room. It was thick with fur beneath the

foot, shining here and there with gold or silver, or dark, polished wood.

Damsen’s needlework hung on the walls. New flowers, pink and gold, and

midnight blue, sat in water on the table. Such things would Damsen do in

Caerles’ house, bringing with her sad, lovely thoughts. He stood tall and

straight before the King, his shirt of mail silvery as fish scale, his sword and his

shield of three moons at his side, proper and fair from his carefully brushed

moon-colored hair to his gleaming, mouse-colored boots.

“I have come for Damsen,” he said to her wet face turned towards him like a

dawn-flower. “It is the time, in my loving, when I want no long, sunlit road

between us, and no stone wall and closed door.”

“You will leave without her.”

“But why? You are growing a flower in the dark. You are shutting a rare

stone up in a locked box.”

“Why should I give my flower to you? You will shut her away in your own

stones, to weep and sew beside your hearth.”

“But I love her,” Caerles protested. Magnus Thrall folded his arms and

looked into the fire. Tears of pity welled in Damsen’s eyes.

“You know nothing of wanting,” said the King. “You know nothing of the

gnawing beast of wanting, the ceaseless whine of wanting. You want Damsen.

My wanting is greater than yours. My wanting can make a great house empty,

can make a silly world empty. I want the Throme of Sherill. Find it for me, and

I will give you anything you want.”

Caerles’ mouth opened. It closed again, and then the words in his eyes came

to it. “There is no such thing as the Throme of Sherill,” he whispered. “Magnus

Thrall, that is unfair. The Throme is a lie left from another king, another year.

There never was a Throme. There was a never a land called Sherill. There is

nothing but the earth and the sky.”

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