Hey Everyone!! :-)
I thought I'd give you a little reminder of one of the features of All Hallows Eve, the Wild Hunt, just in time for Halloween. Enjoy!
Excerpt from Taken By The Huntsman:
The Erlking had left Faerie for the human world, something he hadn’t done in decades, to hunt the one who had killed a pixie child named Coel. The Wild Hunt, also known as the Wild Horde among the Fae, often punished murderers; though, oath breakers, liars, and others who committed crimes against the goddess fell within their province as well. But catching a child-slayer had special meaning. Children were revered among the Fae, probably because they had so few. So, when Aeronwen, Coel’s mother, spilled her own blood and called for vengeance against her child's murderer the Erlking responded immediately.
Aeronwen claimed Griogal, the male Sidhe whose suit she had rejected, had murdered her son out of spite. As a Sidhe, Griogal's pursuit of a Pixie was considered something of a perversion among the Fae, and Aeronwen told the Erlking she had been disgusted by the idea. But, she had never dreamed that her refusal to consider Griogal's romantic overtures would result in the death of her only child.
The Erlking had reviewed the evidence against Griogal and found it more than sufficient. No one called the Wild Hunt lightly because, if the evidence didn’t support the charge or the offense was not great enough to warrant a punishment by the Hunt, the one whose blood had summoned them would be punished instead. The Erlking was the sole judge, jury, and sometimes executioner when the Hunt was called. Even more so than the US Supreme Court, the Erlking decided which calls to heed and his judgment was final. No appeal was possible.
In this case, the Erlking had heard Aeronwen’s call for vengeance against Griogal and had traveled to the scene of the crime immediately. The ability to instantly appear to a caller was a power that, as far as the Erlking knew, was unique to him. It was a power he possessed only when a call for vengeance was released onto the wind with blood. He could carry any or all of the rest of the Horde with him to the initial call, but the pursuit of their prey had to proceed by other means of travel.
When the Erlking and his Horde appeared at Aeronwen’s side, she accused Griogal and was supported by two witnesses who had seen the Sidhe cast a spell of fire against Coel. The Fae were extremely hard to kill, but a magical fire was one of the few things that could accomplish the task. Especially, with a child who would not have grown into his own magical protections yet. The Erlking cast his own spell of revealing, which did indeed show that Griogal had used magic fire to murder Coel. With the charge being child-slaying and the guilt of the Sidhe proven beyond any doubt, the Erlking had immediately started the hunt for Griogal.
As any child would be, Coel had been loved within his community and the Pixies were eager for his murderer to be brought to justice. But even those who had never met Coel refused to shelter Griogal. People were rarely willing to risk the wrath of the Wild Hunt, because to interfere with the Hunt was to be magically compelled to join it. The duration of the service was entirely at the discretion of the Huntsman.
However, it was also rare that there would be any who would be willing to aid the Hunt. Under other circumstances, nothing could compel the residents of Fairie to draw the attention of the Wild Hunt except the most urgent and righteous need for vengeance. In this case, with a child-slayer as the focus of the Hunt, the Fae had not only refused to hide Griogal, they had left signs to direct the Hunt to places Griogal found to hide himself. With the act of murdering Coel, Griogal had literally left himself with nowhere to hide. The Erlking would have caught Griogal long ago, except for the fact that the Sidhe had escaped to the human world.
The human world was fraught with peril, more so now than in older times. The humans had dirtied their world to the point that the air was dangerous to breathe and the water not fit to drink. They had covered whole swaths of land with tar and metal and other artificial things so that nothing natural could grow in those places. There had always been some risk in entering the human world. Any manmade metal could poison a Fae if it broke the skin, and even touching such materials would burn some Fae. These were the reasons the Fae’s deadliest swords and spears had always been made from manmade metal, specifically manmade cold iron. But never had the human world been so dangerous as it had become in recent years, with humanity’s enormous increase in numbers and apparent determination to make their world uninhabitable.
Humans were susceptible to Fae glamour, the ability to change appearance or to become invisible, so the Erlking was concealing his Hunt while he searched for Griogal. Though, he was not sure what, if anything, would show on their recording devices. In ancient times, if the Hunt had revealed itself in the human world, the humans who saw it went mad. The appearance of some members of the Hunt was so fearsome as to make it impossible for an unshielded human mind to survive an encounter with them without breaking. The Erlking was worried about what might happen if a modern human happened to see them. Would they also go mad? Or had humanity lost too much innocence for that?
It was the recording devices that the Erlking was most worried about. If humanity saw proof of the existence of the Fae, would they try to find a way to enter Fairie? Would they succeed? Humans had worshipped the Fae at one point in history but had forgotten them in more recent times except for old stories, which were dismissed as imagination. If the humans realized that those stories were real, what would they do? The Erlking tried to set aside these concerns as questions for another day; he had a child-slayer to catch. It was a testament to Griogal’s desperation that it would even occur to him to try to flee to the human world.
Of course, those hunted by the Wild Horde were nearly always desperate. The punishments devised by the Erlking were the stuff of legend, and Griogal was not the first Fae to run to the humans to hide. It was more common in times gone by, but even in more recent times there had been some Fae who had tried to hide with the humans. The magic held by most Fae made it possible for them to hide their true natures behind glamour and, in some cases, to amass the kind of wealth recognized by humans.
In past times, some of the Fae the Erlking hunted had tried to blend in with a human community and sometimes they even succeeded for a time. In more recent times, this happened less frequently because of how polluted the human world had become. Most full-grown Fae could not die of thirst or starvation, but they could suffer from them. As dirty as the human world had become, it was almost impossible to find food or water that was not contaminated with the same manmade substances that would poison a Fae. So, trying to survive for any length of time in such an environment was not a happy prospect.
Want to read more about the most famous Hunt in history? Grab your copy of Taken By The Huntsman at the link below and let the magic of the Fae enchant you this Halloween. Happy Reading! :-)
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