by Victor Milán
He’d not seen her since. But even then she seemed to have her eye on Karyl. Maybe she’d come to visit him now that he’d succeeded in the mission she gave him—as well as much beyond.
I have to think that, he decided now, restless on his bed. Otherwise, the best friend of my entire life is at this very moment in a room not a dozen meters away, committing what by all standards human and divine is a frightful crime.
He upended the bottle again, just in case. A final droplet splatted bitterly on his tongue.
Through the window, the sound of distant singing in the military camp that was Karyl’s seat came to him. Not terribly bad, to his own connoisseur’s ear. The mustering forces, especially his erstwhile scouts, seemed to be making merry late themselves.
Fuck it, Rob thought. If they’re still wary of me because of my man Bergdahl’s obtuseness, I can sing my way back into their graces, sure.
And in turn perhaps they’ll let me drink myself into the stupor I require. He threw the bottle out the window, rose, belched loudly, and teetered off in search of the best solace he knew.
And also a long-deferred piss, which, somewhat to his surprise, he hadn’t already taken down his leg.
Chapter 30
El Imperio de Gran Turán, Great Turanian Empire, Turania, Ovdan Empire—Nearest neighbor by land to the Empire of Nuevaropa, east from it across the high Shield Range. Spanning Aphrodite Terra from north to south, Turania stretches east for over two thousand kilometers of desert, arid steppe, and, on the Aino coast, rich croplands, dense forest, and swamp. Historically alternates between hostility and uneasy friendship with both Nuevaropa and Trebizon on the east. Has currently enjoyed two generations of peace with Nuevaropa, and maintains an uneasy truce with the Basileia. Its dominant languages are Turco and Parso. It is ruled by the Padishah, or as we sometimes call him in Nuevaropa, the High King. The current Padishah is Ertuğrul, first of that name. Turania is famous for its archers, who use powerful recurved bows made of horn, whether they ride horses, spike-frill dinosaurs (also called Styracosaurus), or in fighting-castle on the backs of the mighty Triceratops horridus.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“Oh, Karyl, I am so sorry.”
The new female voice from behind him was more familiar than the last, if marginally less unwelcome.
“I wish I could have spared you that.”
Karyl raised the head sunk to his clavicle as he slumped, graceless and all but boneless, on the library’s tiled floor with his cane-sword across his thighs.
“Wishes are cheap,” he said. “I wish I’d never met her. Or you.”
“But because I hired you to come to Providence, you saved the Empire. And probably your whole world.”
“There is that.”
He looked at her. Unlike the Faerie Queen and her eerie glow, Aphrodite appeared as nothing more or less than an attractive human woman. He realized it was a matter of aesthetic choice above all, though he reckoned that choice revealed deeper truths about both beings.
I have enough trouble trying to parse the motives of my fellow humans that I do not need to torture myself additionally with trying to read what drives supernatural beings.
“For what it is worth, Duke Karyl, you should feel honored. Or at least impressed. It costs even a Faerie such as Uma immense expenditures of will and energy to maintain such a form on this plane, for any length of time.”
“No more titles between us. I find them burdensome at the best of times. Besides, if I were unquestioned Emperor of the World, I would still dispose of some infinitesimal fraction of what you possess. While I’m willing to accept you don’t mean to mock me by using worldly titles, it still seems an … uncomfortable absurdity.”
“As you wish.”
“You’ve acquired the habit of appearing to me directly after I encounter the Fae. Since you’ve clearly come to tell me something, tell me this: did she tell me the truth?”
“Yes and no. She did save you. She did heal you. But that is not all. What she failed to tell you was that she and her … subjects tortured you in the Venusberg as well.”
Where he earlier felt his head had turned to lead, now he felt his body turn to ice. His stomach bubbled with nausea.
“Why?”
“For their amusement.”
He gazed down at his sword-hilt, clutched in both hands as if he were trying to squeeze blood from the blackwood. Its solidity, its familiarity, reassured him. But not enough.
And then he remembered where it came from.
He looked up at her, feeling a starker desperation than he remembered knowing. Even when he was naked and pursued by hounds and then Horrors, when he woke in the shallows of the Hassling two days after falling in the battle there. The first time he had met this creature, in her guise as the Witness. The time that ended in—
Terror. Sheer, unimaginable terror.
She stood almost over him, hand extended. He batted at it. His hand passed through her slender forearm without touching anything, as he knew it would.
“Stay back! Get away from me!”
She stepped back. “You know that it’s true.”
“The nightmares—the fragmentary memories—”
“All real. Or as real as anything which happens in the Venusberg.”
“Is this how you think to comfort me?”
She shook her head. “I know I cannot do that. So I shall do what I can. What I came for. Warn you.
The Angels are making ready to march against humanity again. They have set their aim on the Empire once more. They take Raguel’s defeat by mere humans as a personal affront, regardless of whether they favor his faction or not.”
“I knew as much,” he said. He said it almost eagerly. Talking about coming to grips with a known threat raised him from the depths of terror and despair.
Here’s where I am, he thought in a moment of terrible clarity. Where the Grey Angels seem a comprehensible, almost comforting foe.
“There is much sentiment at the Imperial Court for war with Trebizon, for their kidnapping of Melodía’s sister.”
“I can’t blame them for feeling that way, though it’s a truly stupid idea. They can’t beat the Basileia at sea, and they’d have to cross a thousand kilometers of the Ovda Plateau to try to come to grips with them on land. Which would be a greater disaster even if the Turanians permitted it. Which I can’t see them doing.”
Please keep talking about worldly strategy, he wanted to beg her. But he kept enough self-control to stop himself from that degradation, anyway. If barely.
“It is worse even than that,” Aphrodite said. “I have evidence that Montserrat’s kidnappers were acting against the interests of the Basileus and his family. Including his son, the Crown Prince Mikael, on whose behalf they were supposedly seeking the Princess Melodía’s hand.”
“You have human spies?”
“Of course. A few.”
“So the Grey Angels are seeking to exploit the Emperor’s just outrage.” And his daughter’s, no doubt. “Melodía showed some knowledge of military history, as well as great flair for the art. I hope she’s not letting her own anger overcome her better judgment in this.”
“That remains to be seen. But there is more: the abductors used magic to thwart Jaume and his Companions in their last attempt to rescue the Infanta on the docks of Laventura in their very moment of victory.”
“Magic is a thing mere humans can command?” he asked in disbelief.
“Not really. It was a Faerie. Or even several Fae acting together. Their magic injured one Companion severely and killed several other humans. That is an act which dwarfs even Uma’s manifestation to you of moments ago.”
“Was she involved in that?”
“I doubt it. Certainly not directly. It conceivably could have been her allies. Although it is also important to remember that while she may be the most powerful among the Fae, she is not the only powerful one. And while it’s rare, several lesser but sti
ll potent Fae might have combined energies to achieve it.”
“She has enemies, it appears.”
“She does.”
“Assuming that the old legends of the Demon War are true—”
“They are, barring a good many details.”
“—then I cannot conceive of why any Faerie might aid their bitterest enemies, the Seven. Unless they’ve made peace with the Grey Angels since being banished from the surface world?”
“The opposite. Their war has continued in what we call the World Below. If anything it has increased in intensity.”
“But helping Montserrat’s kidnappers can only benefit the Grey Angels, if their aim is to goad the Empire into a suicidal war.”
“Indeed. You spoke truer than you may have realized when you said you cannot conceive of what motivates a Faerie. You cannot. Nor can I, nor the Grey Angels, even the wise and knowing Michael, their lord. Even most Fae could not form the conception of their own motivation, unless, like Uma, they can actually form a conscious purpose and pursue it. Which is what makes her so rare and dangerous.”
“So—” He shook his head. “What am I supposed to do now? Unless your intent was to add unlimited confusion to my already all-but-limitless terror, at the knowledge of … what touched me and what still entangles me.”
He fought that terror down with all his power of self-control. His own capacity for fixed, indeed fanatical, purpose aided him in that. As had the many disciplines of meditation and self-command he had acquired in his wanderings in the eastern portion of the continent, whose namesake this creature had taken for herself.
“Because you needed all that knowledge, and one piece more. Because Uma did tell you one more truth.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“You have no choice but to ally with her against the Grey Angels, Karyl. At a cost I can appreciate more than you, who was in Uma’s power for months of your time.”
“No.”
She bowed her head.
“I feared you would say that.”
“Yet here you are.”
He had to admire the skill with which she crafted a human look of desperation upon her human-looking face.
“I had to try. I will keep trying. I must.”
“Leave me.”
“If you need any comfort—”
“It will not come from you, nor such as you, Lady. Leave me.”
She vanished. Far less theatrically than Uma had, but no less finally.
He managed to force himself to rise, recover his blackwood cane, resheathe his sword, and lie down carefully on the cool, unyielding tile again before the fear and horror overtook him, and he huddled into a knee-clutching ball and wept in utter helplessness and despair.
* * *
Tired from a day profitably and pleasantly passed in angling for the Emperor’s eye and continuing quietly to stir the pot of courtly opinion against Melodía, her outlandish interloper of an ancestress, and their schemes to thwart her, Margrethe sighed in pleasure at simple comforts as she lowered herself nude onto her canopied bed. Her chamber was filled with the complex and pleasantly palate-tickling aroma of burning agarbathi, incense sticks imported from Vareta, located almost at the other end of Aphrodite Terra. She felt a moment’s regret at doing so alone, but for a fact she was fatigued. And she had no doubt she’d soon have all the bed companionship her heart desired—and all the benefits that, in time, it would bring.
Tamping down the erotic feelings the thought of all that lovely power brought to her nether regions, she smiled, turned down the bedside lamp to a mere bluish flicker, and slid beneath the silken coverlet. She needed sleep, and a little anticipation would only whet her appetite.
Her foot touched something unexpected, down amid the puffy cushions that lay strewn across the foot of the great bed.
She froze. She hated surprises. They were frequently lethal. And meant to be engineered by her for the … benefit of someone else.
The unexpected something was hard to the touch. But between her bare sole and that hardness lay a thin layer of something else soft. And it moved perceptibly as she yanked her foot back.
She tucked her legs quickly up, thinking of spring traps and poison needles. She turned the oil lamp up to its full blue-white radiance so that its piney aroma clashed with the soothing smell of incense. Bracing herself, she flung aside the spread.
Well, was her first thought, it’s no place he hasn’t been before.
But then he had the rest of him there, along with his head.
Parsifal’s dark brown eyes gazed unblinking at the juncture of her pale thighs. His tongue, whose touch she remembered well, lolled from slack jaws.
His severed head lay on the bed, placed on its side, carefully, where her cushions would prevent her noticing anything amiss.
For Parsifal himself she felt nothing but a sense of good riddance. She had set him an important task. One in which he’d clearly failed her.
But then the anger stabbed through her belly. Because she was the one who took. And now a thing had been taken from her.
“So that’s how it is,” she said. She laughed a harsh, hoarse laugh. “Well, then, we shall see how you like my next move, you shriveled old cunt!”
She stood up. The silken mattress cover was of course stained and ruined. There was quite the mess to clean up.
Fortunately, the late Parsifal was far from her only creature on the Palace staff. She rang for the attendant, and through a crack in the door gave quick orders for someone else to be summoned from bed.
Then she went and sat back down on the bed, gazing thoughtfully at the remnant of her spy.
They’d best be quick about getting this all seen to, she thought darkly. If I’m not asleep in half an hour, his might not be the only body dumped down the Moat without its head tonight.
Chapter 31
Chillador, Squaller, Great Strider.…—Gallimimus bullatus. Fast, bipedal, herbivorous dinosaurs with toothless beak. 6 meters long, 1.9 meters tall at the hips, 440 kilograms. Imported to Nuevaropa as a mount. Bred for varied plumage; distinguished by a flamboyant feather neck-ruff, usually light in color. Frequently ridden in battle by light riders, as well as occasionally by knights and nobles too poor to afford war-hadrosaurs. Extremely truculent, with lethal beaks and kicking hind-claws.
—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES
“No,” Melodía said.
“Here, now,” La Madrota said from the shadows of her peasant-style conical hat. Like a peasant’s, it was made of plain straw, not silk and fancies like a grandeza’s. Melodía wished she had one too. The clouds were thin, and day was hot down here in the scrubland around the Mesa de Gloria. “You said you’d do what I told you without question.”
“I’m not questioning, Abuela. I’m refusing.”
La Madrota raised her head far enough that Melodía could see her cock an imperiously questioning brow.
She waved at the large beast standing fifteen meters away grazing at low brown bunch-grass.
“It’s a dinosaur.”
“What did you expect? Today you begin your training as a dinosaur knight. It follows, logically, that there is a dinosaur involved.”
Melodía strode up to the great, ungainly creature in question and gestured up at it grandly, as if she were a war-dinosaur breeder looking to make a sale. A not altogether inapt comparison, it occurred to her. Except to the extent it implied any degree of choice on her part.
Melodía didn’t know much about war-hadrosaurs. She recognized this one as a Parasaurolophus; everyone knew a sackbut. They were the most popular war-mounts in Nuevaropa. Most of the Companions rode them. And of course when she fought Bogardus he’d been riding one.
La Madrota strode up to the dinosaur and produced a carrot. The dinosaur took it in its beak, then made it disappear amid crunching sounds into the great battery of teeth behind. As its jaw worked, it nuzzled its red-and-black head with its distinctive tubular back-reaching crest against the old woman. Who cooed to it and
scratched beneath its jaw as if it were—well, a decent, loving, lovable horse. And not a monster.
“His name is Tormento, by the way. Melodía, Tormento. Tormento, Melodía. I’m sure you’ll be great friends.”
“It’s named Storm?”
“He. He is named Storm. Yes.”
“That’s hardly reassuring.”
“Spirited knight, spirited mount.”
“I’m not a knight of any kind. And I am most particularly not a dinosaur knight.”
“And that’s what we are beginning to remedy this very moment.”
“I leave that sort of thing to Jaume and others who go in for it, thank you kindly. I ride horses.” She gestured toward Meravellosa, who was cropping the greener weeds along the actual stream.
“Oh, you’ll thank me, girl. When you’re older. Once you get properly started here, though, you’ll hate me far more than you do already.”
“I don’t—” The look she got made her stop. “All right. I do some, yes. But I told you, I’m not becoming a dinosaur knight. Today or any day. I don’t like dinosaurs.”
Tormento took that moment to raise his head, look at her, and bob his huge triangular head and snort dismissively.
“And they don’t like me.”
“Nobody’s preferences are being consulted here. You’re becoming a dinosaur knight, and he is becoming a dinosaur knight’s dinosaur. It’s just duty for both of you.”
She sighed.
“Don’t you see? You really have no choice. No matter how heroic and effective you were dashing about chucking javelins at cannibalistic mad things as the Short-Haired Horse Captain or swording them smartly with that curved Ovdan saber Karyl’s cousin gave you—close your mouth, there’s a dear; I told you to assume I know everything about you. In any event: you made me proud, but to the perfumed dandies at the court it’s all still nothing but playing at war with worthless peasants for playmates.”