An Heir to Thorns and Steel

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  I wanted no such thing, but he turned me in his arms and it was so easy, so easy to move, to twist, to gather that purple mane in my limber fingers. I felt hot as sunlight, as summer, and the other was so cool, so accepting. It bled together, the cold and the fever, the ease, the pleasure, the shimmer of skin and light, and I didn’t know if I kissed a woman or a man or an elf or a demon, or even if it mattered... only that my body oh God my body worked and it yearned.

  I knew it was wrong. But I wanted it anyway.

  I woke to the white noise of pain. Years of the same grinding routine should have dulled me to it, but not, oh, not after the glory of having a working body. It was fresh as a new wound, and I bled anguish. Returning to that life was intolerable. I wanted to die.

  “Hush, Master, hush,” Almond whispered, licking my cheeks. “All will be well, all is well.”

  “Nothing is well,” I said, my voice husky. It had lost all its beauty and reminded me of nothing more than verdigris, something corroded and rotten. “Nothing.”

  “You are alive!” Almond exclaimed, wiggling her way into my embrace, pressing her thin body against my chest and belly. “We were so afraid. But you are alive, and so everything must be well.”

  I swallowed. It cost me so much just to breathe. “Where... are we?”

  “Near the tower,” Kelu said behind me. I felt her then, pressed against my spine. She sounded subdued. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because you had to see him,” she said. “Everyone knows he’s no good.”

  No good. Hot skin, wet mouth, firelight and friction and the burn of a rug against my knees, my back. Was that a dream? I tried to call it up, but I could not seal the image in mind. A woman beneath me. A man behind me. Violet mane. Crimson. Black as nightfall. Eyes turquoise, then lilac, then shocking ruby-red. I couldn’t remember the night. I couldn’t remember who I’d spent it with.

  “Why do they say that?” I asked finally.

  Silence then. Neither genet said anything, until at last Almond whispered, “He has been alive a very long time, Master. The elves who have lived so long, they become....”

  “Demented,” Kelu said.

  Bored, I thought. He was bored. I heard the clatter of dice on the nightstand, the muffled tumble of them on the carpet. Making love on the roll of a die. “How long...?”

  “A day,” she said, “and into the night, and now it is morning.”

  A long time not to remember clearly. Even my memory of the muscles beneath my skin gliding so smoothly, the sense that the entire world existed to buoy up my body, was fading. Soon it would be lost to me, shredded and consumed by the constant pain. Was he right? Was I enchanted? And would the magic cannibalize my body until I could no longer move, breathe, live?

  Was even my flesh a lie?

  The pendant pressed hard against my ribs, trapped between my skin and the ground.

  “What now?” Kelu asked, hesitant.

  “I need to go find the king,” I said.

  “The king!” Almond exclaimed and began purring. “Oh, Master! I am so glad!”

  “The king is alive?” Kelu asked, one ear sagging.

  “One presumes.” I couldn’t imagine the sorcerer lying to me about it. Deception would have taken too much energy. “He’s imprisoned.” A memory of a whisper in my ear, moist and urgent. “Someplace... Suleris? Does that make sense to you?”

  Both of them stiffened against me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You want to go to Suleris?” Kelu asked. “Are you mad?”

  “No,” I said. “I just want to free the king.”

  “We’ll never get him free from them,” Kelu said.

  I tried to think past the screaming ache in my limbs, so I could rise, try to get us moving. “Stop being mysterious and just tell me what new catastrophe we’re courting.”

  “The blood-flag Suleris is responsible for our creation,” Almond said, meek, her ears dipped. “As a blood-flag they are the most powerful magic-wreakers in Serala. Their stronghold is on Kesína, the island just west of us. It is not a kind journey, Master, and their estate is well-guarded.”

  “We will have to find a way into it once we arrive, then,” I said. “Let’s concentrate on getting there first.” I managed to sit upright with their help. “Are we... we’re alone.”

  Kelu nodded. “The elves left. No place for them to stay here, after all. They were probably hired just to take you from Amoret.”

  Had they been? But why? I glanced over the hill at the silhouette of the floating tower: there would be no use asking, I knew.

  The drake hove into view then, licking a bloody mouth as it ambled up the crest of the nearby hillock. I stared at it, astonished.

  “They left you your mount,” Almond said. “It went hunting at dawn.”

  “I thought it was a rare and valuable animal!”

  “It’s Amoret’s animal,” Kelu pointed out. “Sedetnet doesn’t care who keeps it.”

  So he had a name, the sorcerer. I remembered then that they’d told it to me before delivering me into his arms. Sedetnet, blood-flag unknown or immaterial. Power that could float a tower did not need family.

  The drake came to a halt beside me and nudged my face. I slid my hands up its muzzle to cup its cheeks, doing my best to avoid the slime it was dripping. It blew its fire-draft breath on me, meat-scented, and I sighed. “I’m glad you came back,” I said to it.

  “It is yours,” Almond said. “Of course it came back.”

  “Is it really an ‘it’?” I asked.

  The two genets looked at one another.

  “Please,” I said. “The endless significant looks have long since grown tedious. What new and obvious thing am I missing now?”

  “The drakes... aren’t natural either, Master,” Almond said. “There were very few of them, and they couldn’t reproduce. This is the only one left.”

  “Did the elves contrive that?” I asked, using the stirrup to pull myself to my feet. I wobbled and found the drake’s side beneath my chest, so I leaned there, already exhausted. Did I propose to cross two islands this way? Without being caught? Presumably Sedetnet would make no arrangements to ward me from the avaricious grasp of other elves looking for human food. How was I supposed to evade capture?

  “I don’t know,” Kelu said.

  Almond shook her head.

  “So the drakes are just an elven mystery,” I said, accepting the drake’s help in climbing onto its back.

  “Yes,” Kelu said. “But I’m sure whatever the answer is, it’s core-rotten.”

  Almond untied the canteen from the saddle and stretched on the tips of her toes to hand it to me. I drank and wiped my mouth, squinting at the gently corrugated fields. “So, which way are we heading?”

  “That way, Master,” Almond said, pointing.

  “Well, let’s go,” I said. “I’m not getting any healthier.”

  “You’re not getting any closer to dead either,” Kelu said, pulling herself up in front of me.

  That struck me. “They can’t kill me if I’m an elf.”

  “Not without trying really hard,” Kelu said. “It is possible.”

  Almond climbed up behind me and slipped her arms around my waist. “They could imprison you, Master.”

  “As they have the king,” I murmured. “Why, I wonder?”

  “Histories say the king has great magic,” Almond said as the drake turned to the west and began to walk. “Persisting even past Dissipation. Perhaps they desire his magic.”

  “Dissipation,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” Almond said. “When elves are youths, their bodies are strong and bright and they have magic to spare. But as they age, their magics must be devoted to their immortality, and there is less and less for them to use for other things.”

  “Which is why they keep humans,” Kelu said. “To feed on them. To suck out all the magic so they can use it against one another.”

  “What they w
ere doing to me in that room,” I murmured.

  “Yes,” Kelu said.

  I remembered the words, then. Slow but endless, they called me. Was it because I was an elf that I was endless? And was I slow because my own blood was devoted to both immortality and my enchantment? “So this Dissipation is the point at which elves lose their ability to use their magic for anything but their immortality.”

  “Yes,” Kelu said. “Most can wreak some minor workings, but they are on the scale of lighting a candle from afar.”

  “The king never Dissipates,” Almond murmurs. “That is what the histories say.”

  “I can’t imagine it,” I murmured.

  “Certainly you can,” Kelu said. “Sorcerers don’t either.”

  My skin pebbled to gooseflesh. “So you think he might be imprisoned so that Suleris can feed their magical needs.”

  “It is possible,” Kelu said. “Probable even. Otherwise I can’t imagine how they’d keep him captive. If he truly is as powerful as the legends say, then he should be able to leave no matter how they tried to hold him unless they were draining him somehow.”

  I didn’t know the king... certainly I had no reason to love him. And I had more than enough evidence to show that the elves were amoral and cruel, worthy of nothing but contempt. My own people’s history showed that kings in particular were corrupt and wicked, so trying to imagine the intersection of both king and elf beggared my mind. But I could not, could not envision being caged for an eternity while people continually raped my essence the way they had in that room without feeling some twinge of empathy, no matter how unwilling.

  “Time is wasting,” I said, urging the drake into a lope.

  With the exception of that first day, we woke at sunset and rode until just after dawn. The drake brought down game for itself and the genets stripped the carcasses and charred them for me over the fires they built with their clever fingers. I had to let them care for me; even if I’d had any knowledge of the wildcraft, which I didn’t, my body was incapable of function after a night in the saddle. Without the poppy and with the effect of the genets gradually diminishing, I was reduced to curling on the grass and struggling to win back my strength, my composure... my will to persevere. The idyll in the sorcerer’s tower receded from mind, taking with it much of my passion for our task. It became an intellectual construct, my quest for the king of elves.

  To hold fast to something other than my own pain, I asked the genets to tell me stories, a request that Kelu refused with bitter hauteur. But Almond proved willing, as she so often was; as the drake loped across the grasses, tireless and swift, Almond recounted tales of angels and demons, of kings and princes, of children, of sorrow... of the betrayal of humankind.

  “Say that last again?” I asked in the blue night as the drake carried us ever westward.

  “The humans chased the elves off the mainland,” Almond said.

  “That’s not a story,” I said. “That’s true.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Kelu said.

  “Why do the humans say so?” Almond asked.

  I thought back to the folio. “The text never gave a distinct reason. And for us it was long, long ago. What do your stories say?”

  “That the humans were jealous,” Kelu said. “Of course. That they hated the elves for their beauty and power and coveted what they couldn’t have, and in a jealous rage they drove the elves away while killing as many of them as possible in as pitiable but titillating ways they could imagine.”

  My brows lifted. “So between one and the other the truth is buried, and likely to remain so.”

  Kelu shrugged. “You can just ask one of them.”

  Taken aback, I said, “I could just...”

  “Ask, yes,” Kelu said. “The sorcerer’s been around that long, rumor has it. I’m sure the king has too.”

  The concept of immortality remained an abstraction to me until these reminders gave them body and form. But then I thought to ask, “Wouldn’t all of the elves remember that time, if truly they can never die?”

  Kelu said, “Some of them are older than others. And though it takes a lot of work to kill an elf, it can be done, and a lot of them were destroyed. I don’t know exactly how it all works.”

  I nodded. Then, more quietly, “You haven’t told any stories.”

  Kelu snorted. “Like I care about elves and what they think of themselves.”

  “Surely,” I said, “the genets tell stories also.”

  Kelu glanced over her shoulder at me. “Stories are for people who don’t know how they were made. You can only enjoy mythology if your god isn’t standing above you with a foot on the back of your neck and a whip in his hand.”

  To that I said nothing. What could be said?

  On another night, a violet night sharp with the scent of sage and wind, I asked, “Why are we not followed?”

  “I don’t know,” Kelu said. “It may be that Amoret assumed that Sedetnet kept you. No one crosses him.”

  We had seen no towns, no roads, nothing but the short grasses, the thin rills, the occasional clump of palms and other trees. “Surely the drake....”

  “Everything is disposable to the elves,” Kelu said.

  Almond clung to me; though I couldn’t see her I could sense her distress in the way she rubbed her nose against my back.

  “Don’t worry,” Kelu said. “We’ll have trouble enough once we get to the coast. Somehow we’re going to have to get across the channel to Kesína and into Suleris without becoming slaves, food or merchandise.”

  “I have given that some thought,” I said.

  “Ah?”

  “The elves keep human servants, yes?” I asked. “How are they hired?”

  “Hired?” Kelu asked, puzzled. “I don’t know. New ones just appear sometimes.”

  “Are they gifts from other elves?” I asked.

  “Sometimes,” Kelu said. “Not often, though. Elves tend to be selfish, especially about food.”

  “Perhaps they reproduce?” Almond offered, hesitant.

  The idea of humans having children in captivity who grew up to become the property of their elven masters, a chain unbroken for eternity, revolted me. “The few I saw didn’t seem to have the vitality to spark new lives,” I said. “Aren’t there wild humans? Human communities?”

  “Farms, you mean,” Kelu said. “There are some elven lands that are worked by humans.”

  “Perhaps I can be sent from a farm to serve the Suleris household,” I said.

  Kelu snorted. “Why would the farm release a perfectly good worker like that?”

  Wry, I said, “And I am so capable of physical labor, with my able body.” Almond winced against my back. “I thought,” I continued, “that my story could be that they sent me along because I had become too infirm to do any other labor.”

  “That might work,” Kelu said. “On the other hand, they might decide you’d make good food.”

  I shuddered.

  “You have to consider that possibility.”

  I did and I hated it. Not just hate... I couldn’t conceive of it. But... “Can you think of any other way to infiltrate the blood-flag house?”

  “In a way that would allow you to roam the halls freely?” Kelu said. She shook her head. “No... your idea isn’t a great one, but it might be the only one.”

  “Your confidence is greatly appreciated,” I said dryly.

  Kelu snorted. “I think this whole idea is an insanity.”

  “But it could turn the Archipelago on its end,” I said, smiling.

  “Maybe,” she said. “If you live so long.”

  “They can’t kill me, or so you say.”

  “When they’re done with you you’ll wish they’d tried,” Kelu said.

  I shook my head.

  When we reached the coast it was all I could do to slide off the drake and cling to its neck. The sky was just spilling the roseate light of dawn onto the white sands at our feet, and the scent of brine and sage hung in the mist,
draping over me, weighing my blouse and my hair down against my shoulders and back. And oh, the sound of the sea, the soft hushing murmur, the hiss as the waves crawled up the sand...!

  The sun rising at our back finally touched the distant crags of another island.

  “A little long to swim,” I said, exhausted.

  “The drake could make it.” Kelu hopped off its back and padded toward the strand. She swished her tail, agitated. “We’re going to have to find a boat. Or someone to take us across.”

  “And I can’t imagine anyone willingly taking us across the channel without deciding to keep me,” I said, watching the rose tint creep across the waters. The warmth of the light began to caress my shoulders, to shimmer on the scaled side of the drake. I turned to strip the saddle off its back; so long as I kept each motion deliberate and paced myself, I could sometimes help the genets with its care. I felt obliged to, for that it was a staunch companion. Such service kept me from dwelling on the more frequent stretches when I was a burden to them all.

  “You could begin your charade early,” Almond said, hesitant.

  I glanced at her over the drake’s back.

  “Mark yourself with Suleris’s sign,” Almond whispered.

  My gaze fell on my wrist; Amoret’s sigil had long since rubbed off.

  “With Suleris’s mark, no one would touch you, Master,” Almond said.

  “She’s right,” Kelu said. “There are many blood-flags, but few with Suleris’s clout. We might even be able to get the drake through. Not with one of Amoret’s saddles, though.”

  “So,” I said. “We disguise ourselves as possessions of Suleris’s—”

  “You do,” Kelu said. “We can’t change the tags on our collars. We’ll just have to make up something else for us. Maybe we’re going with you because we’re broken or Amoret wants to exchange us.”

  “And head... where to find this ship?” I asked.

  “To Erevar,” Almond murmured.

  “Erevar,” I repeated. I squinted at her. “Isn’t that where the one good elf is? Sadar. Kemses.”

  “Ah! Yes, Master,” Almond said.

  My eyes lost their focus, caught in the waves. “Perhaps he can help, then.”