by Duncan, Dave
The first ladder took them down to a room as appealing as a dungeon. Barren of furniture of any kind, it was dimly lit by narrow slits in the thick stonework. The ground floor was identical, except it had piles of leaves on the floor and a doorway leading out to the grasslands. The pivots for a door were still there, but the door itself was gone, and the implications of that were nasty. Avior took note of Rigel’s worried frown but said nothing, because Izar was waiting just outside, within earshot.
As they set off across the meadow in line abreast, the deer at the watering hole raised their heads to study them, but did not seem alarmed. The breeze was slight, but brisk enough to make Avior shiver as the wet grass chilled her feet. Izar removed his tee shirt and tucked it into his belt, and a moment later Rigel did the same. Not a nipple between them. How old was Rigel? About half her age, she decided—out of his teens, but not long out. She was amazed at the trust she was putting in him, but perhaps that was a natural reaction to all the impossible things that were happening. His calm acceptance of their situation was all that stood between her and screaming hysteria.
Besides, she had no choice.
If she failed to respond to the court order by Monday, George’s lawyer…
“A lesson in how to fight sabertooth tigers, please?” she asked.
Rigel exposed perfect human teeth in a grin. “As long as they don’t sneak up on you, they shouldn’t be a problem.” He stopped and tugged at the rings on his left hand, eventually freeing a gold one with a blue stone. “Put this on. Either hand, doesn’t matter. Now turn the stone inward. Put your thumb on it and pretend to throw something at that bush.”
“I’m not good at throwing.”
“Doesn’t matter. The amulet is. Try.”
Her clumsy gesture sent a ball of purple fire flying straight from her hand to the bush, which exploded in flames, then vanished in a cloud of smoke and drifting ash. She said, “Oh!”
“Now turn it so that the gem’s facing outward,” Rigel said. “That’s the safety catch. It will certainly scare the stripes off a sabertooth, if saberteeth have stripes. And I see that discretion is the better part of venison, too.”
“What?”
“We’ve scared the deer away.” He started walking again.
His childish humor was presumably intended to calm both her and his young ward. Or perhaps just her, because Izar seemed more annoyed than frightened about being marooned in this strange place.
“Seriously,” Rigel said, “there’s no need to worry. The starling and I both have Lesaths. At least I hope his dragon is still with us. Try calling her now, Izar.”
Izar stamped his left foot twice and said, “Edasich, Edasich, Edasich!”
The dragon appeared, strolling alongside him, no larger than a Saint Bernard dog now, rolling its globular eyes independently as it scanned the countryside for trouble. It had dried blood around its mouth.
“Good girl!” Izar said happily. He patted the scaly neck. “Edasich, go home!” The dragon vanished. The boy grinned at Avior and did a little dance so he could point at a jade bangle on his left ankle. “That’s where she lives.”
“Edasich would snack on mastodons,” Rigel said. “As for people, see this bracelet of mine? It’s old and very powerful and legendary, what the starfolk call ‘ancestral.’ ” He held out his right arm. “Saiph!”
Back came the gauntlet and sword that she had glimpsed in the art gallery.
“Rigel fought Hadar and Tarf and Adhil with Saiph!” Izar said excitedly. “Hadar has a Lesath called Sulaphat and Tarf had one called—”
“Let’s leave out the gory details,” Rigel said. He lowered his sword and it disappeared. “Saiph saved your life from the gunmen. Just before they opened fire, it yanked my arm so hard that I fell to the floor. Fortunately I guessed what was happening and grabbed you on the way down. I’ll have a bruise on my wrist tomorrow, see?”
It sounded as if her life had been saved by Rigel rather than his gadget. He must have incredibly fast reflexes.
“A Lesath is a magic weapon?” Avior asked. If anyone had told her an hour ago that she would be seriously discussing magic…Well, it did keep her mind off bat ears.
“A Lesath is an amulet with massacre potential. Amulets are recorded magic, like stored programs in a computer. It can take days to frame a complicated spell, so even high-rank mages store their spells in amulets, where they’re readily available. The greatest Lesaths have their own names. They’re illegal, but Izar and I have royal license to wear ours. That ring I gave you could kill someone, but it’s trivial magic and most starfolk wear protection amulets. There’s virtually no defense against Saiph or Edasich.”
They reached the pond, which was bigger than she had realized. The edges were muddy and trampled. She didn’t search for recognizable tracks among the weeds, afraid of what she might find.
“I don’t see any crocodiles,” Izar grumbled.
“Dive in and maybe we will,” Rigel suggested. “No, I don’t mean that.” He peered all around. “Starfolk adore water. If there’s a house anywhere in this subdomain, then it will be on a lake or a river. Now, physical laws don’t necessarily apply here, but we seem to be in a main valley. There’s a stream running into this slough here, and I expect there’s one running out at the far end. Starling Izar, if you were going to put a nice, clean swimming hole somewhere in this country, where would you do it?”
The imp preened at being asked his opinion. He pointed. “That way.”
“Upstream? Good thinking. Forward, then. We head upstream!”
Avior suspected that Rigel had just flipped a coin.
Chapter 4
They walked until Avior’s legs ached and the sun stood unpleasantly close to the treetops. Hard-pressed to keep up with her younger companions, she discovered just how out of shape she was. She was also chilled to the bone, so Rigel gave her his tee shirt to pull on over her blouse. He obviously had things to say that he didn’t want Izar to overhear, but although Izar ran circles around both of them, investigating every rock and bush, those enormous ears were always pointed in their direction and he was probably missing little of their conversation.
Rigel told her of his own rescue, which had involved an even larger massacre than hers, and she told him what she remembered of the news stories about it, although she paid little attention to such things.
“I’m an unusual halfling,” he said, “in that my starborn part came from my mother. She extroverted to Earth to have her baby in secret and then lost me through no fault of her own. She spent the next twenty-one years hunting for me.”
He was fishing for Avior’s story, but she wasn’t going to tell it. Not yet anyway.
“His mom was the queen!” Izar shouted from the sidelines, where he had been examining a heap of dung that would not have shamed an elephant. “And she admitted it before the whole court!”
Rigel rolled his eyes at this unwelcome revelation. “Queen Electra. It created a terrible scandal, but she was dying and wanted to make it up to me.”
“Is that why you’re so hated that people want to kill you?”
“Some people, yes. They think I ought to disappear. It’s more than just racial prejudice, because elves and humans are different species. Halflings are supposed to know their place and keep to it; royal halflings are a galactic disgrace. Queen Talitha has shown me favor by appointing me head of Izar’s bodyguard, so there’s that, too.”
“He’s her sweetie pie,” Izar sniggered, having come close.
“No, I am her kennel master.” Rigel’s fist grabbed the boy’s ear.
“Ayhihhh!”
“When I get you back to Canopus, imp, I am going to make you stand on the Star and repeat that remark.”
Obviously Izar did not enjoy having his ear twisted, because he yowled and struggled and threatened. “I’ll burn your jeans off! Yeeee! Stop, stop!”
“Not until you apologize to Halfling Avior for lying to her.”
Izar retort
ed that he did not apologize to halflings and Rigel took hold of his other ear as well. Uncomfortable with the scene, Avior walked on, leaving them to it. Rigel won, because a few moments later Izar appeared in front of her, forcing her to stop. He bowed, stretching his arms out sideways, but when he straightened up he did not meet her eyes. His ears were pinker than usual.
“Avior Halfling, I am truly sorry that I lied to you. My bodyguard and my mother are not lovers and never have been, and I am very ashamed that I insulted them both.”
“That is a gallant apology,” she said. “I forgive you. What’s the Star that Rigel mentioned?”
He fell into step beside her, still sulking. “Star of Truth, in front of the throne. If you tell a lie on it, your tongue goes on fire.”
“Then I think you made a very wise decision.”
He scoffed angrily and ran off to examine a hollow tree. Rigel arrived at her side again, red faced and silent. He possessed an interesting ruthless streak she had not suspected. He was not the queen’s lover, but any woman would know that so much smoke required some fire. Most men would be happy to encourage a rumor like that. How did the queen feel about him? If he was the son of the previous queen, how closely were he and the present one related?
The countryside stayed monotonously the same. The tiny stream was rarely visible, playing peekaboo in swamps or long grass. There were birds, including parrots and toucans, which were not normally found in beech woods or their like. Izar found spoor of ungulates and big cats and ostriches. The castaways were marooned in a game park, just as Rigel had guessed.
“Not every elf has his own domain,” he told her, “far from it. And many of those who do have inherited them, because only high-magic starborn, red or orange grade, can imagine their own domains or extend others’. Starfolk like to think they’re great artists, but ninety percent of what you’ll see is copied from Earth. Tal…The queen says she knows of at least fifty Romes, eighty Angkor Wats, and a hundred Versailles. A domain can have scores of subdomains. The royal domain itself is enormous, like a small continent.”
Suddenly weary, Avior put the big question into words. “Do you have any guarantee that there’s a house here for us to find?”
“No,” he admitted. “In fact it’s quite likely that there isn’t. If I were imagining a hunting park, I would certainly put the livestock in a separate subdomain, so that I wouldn’t find tigers in my pajamas. Then I would come and go by portal.”
He shrugged. “By now the queen must know what happened, and she’ll shake the Starlands from one end to the other to find out where we are. There were only two starborn in Fornacis this afternoon—Fomalhaut, who’s the queen’s court mage, and Mizar, his apprentice. One of them must have perverted my staff, so she’ll frog-march both of them to the Star of Truth ASAP.
“They know that,” he went on, “so they’ll probably come and rescue us themselves and pretend it was all a mistake.”
Izar had moved farther away to inspect a termite hill, so she could speak her mind.
“You’re covering up. If the queen’s reaction is so certain to reveal the truth, why would they risk angering her in the first place?”
Rigel sighed. “The plan was never to harm Izar. Nobody knew he was going to be with me. The plan was to kill me. Not because I’m so dangerous or hated myself, although a great many starfolk resent the favor the queen has shown me. The real problem is this Lesath of mine, Saiph. I can’t take it off. It’s the most dangerous weapon in the Starlands, and it will stay on my wrist until I die. The writing on it bears the names of the people and creatures it has killed, scores of them. The Family is terrified of Saiph, and the Family is almost certainly behind this somehow. I expect the plan was, and probably still is, to pit me against a company of archers and fill me full of arrows. Then I die. Hadar—he’s the chief goon—gets the bracelet, Izar either goes safely home or is held for ransom, with the throne itself as the asking price. What happens to you, I don’t know. Aren’t you sorry you asked?”
“No!” she said.
He smiled so disbelievingly that she was tempted to start describing some of her suicide attempts, but Izar veered close again and they talked of safer things.
Shortly after that, the faint game trail they were following led them into the thick and brambly undergrowth of a stand of aspen. Rigel went in front, using Saiph as a machete to clear the worst of the tangles. Suddenly Izar, bringing up the rear, bumped into Avior, who had bumped into Rigel, who had stopped in his tracks, his sword still in hand. The other two peered around him to see what the holdup was.
The game path was blocked by a naked man holding a spear and shield. His skin was a burnt-umber shade wherever it was not daubed with red, green, and white war paint, and his hair hung in long braids, decorated with fetishes of cloth, bones, ivory, fruit, and bright ribbons. He was young, powerfully built, and human. At least a score of warriors just like him were rising out of the undergrowth.
“You stop!” he said. “You not to go this way any more. The starling will come with us and you halflings must go back.”
Rigel dismissed his sword and put his hands on his hips. “Or what?”
“Or we are to kill you!”
Rigel laughed. He peered around. “Izar? Come here.” He put the boy in front of him and regarded the warrior over the imp’s head. “Izar Starling, did you hear what this mudling just told me?”
“Yes I did, Halfling Rigel,” Izar said with rare courtesy.
“And what do you have to say to that?”
Izar, it turned out, had plenty to say to that. “You know who I am, mudling? I am starborn! I am the son of Queen Talitha and Prince Vildiar! Look at my hair! Look at my eyes! I am Naos! Do you dare to give me orders and threaten my halflings, you crawling, mud-eating worm? I will burn you to ashes. I will eat your children. I will have my Lesath tear you to pieces. Drop your weapons! All of you! Throw them down now!”
Spears and shields dropped.
“Now grovel!” Izar yelled, growing louder but shriller. “Grovel with your faces in the dirt. Eat grass! Go on, eat it like the animals you are!”
At that point Rigel clasped his shoulders. “I think you have made your point. Well done.” He stepped forward to the spokesman, who was indeed biting the vegetation. “Up on your knees, you.”
The man rose nervously, weeds dangling from his mouth.
“What domain is this, mudling?”
“Alathfar, noble halfling.”
“Who owns it?”
“The mistress, noble halfling,” the man said blankly.
“What’s her name?”
“It is forgotten. The old ones—”
“What’s your name?”
“Chief Tracker, noble halfling.”
“And who ordered you and your companions to parade around naked, Chief Tracker?”
Horrified pause.
Rigel said, “Saiph!” and the sword appeared to do his bidding. “I killed a minotaur with this. I have also killed a sphinx, a cockatrice, and several halflings. You think I would hesitate to—”
“A noble lady, halfling.”
“Where is she?”
“At the station, may it please the halfling.”
“You will lead us to her at once.” Rigel waited a moment to see if there would be argument, and there wasn’t. “The rest of you can stop eating now, but you are to stay there, on your knees, until the sun has set. Then you can go home. Understand? Lead on, Chief Tracker.”
As soon as the trees gave way to open grass again, Avior moved up to walk alongside Rigel. Izar was out in front, keeping an eye on the unhappy guide, and occasionally chivvying him along with a stick. She noted that Rigel’s expression was bleak, so perhaps he wasn’t truly ruthless after all.
“Was that necessary?” she demanded.
“They were armed and terrified. I doubt they would deliberately harm us, even under orders, but there might have been an accident.” He sighed. “I know, I didn’t warn you that ther
e were humans in the Starlands. There are millions, maybe billions, of them. They’re field workers, servants, drudges…They’re supposed to go around fully dressed to hide their non-starfolk deformities, and I’ve never seen any of them completely naked like that. I expect this tribe has been set up as part of the game park scenery to amuse starfolk visitors. Elves never die, so boredom is their biggest problem.”
“They massacre ‘natives’ for sport?”
He pulled a face. “I don’t think it would go that far. Mudlings are property and too valuable to slaughter out of hand. The point is, I’ve never heard even a rumor of a mudling threatening an elf or a halfling. This lady, whoever she is, is going to have to answer some sharp royal questions about giving her serfs weapons.”
“They’re slaves!” Avior said furiously.
“Not quite. Do you know the difference between wolves and dogs?”
“Of course!”
“Well, just like dogs are domesticated wolves, mudlings are domesticated earthlings. Their ancestors were brought here tens of thousands of years ago to serve the starfolk, and all the pep has been bred out of them. While wolves were skulking around our ancestors’ campfires waiting for scraps, mudlings’ forebears were learning not to anger their elfin masters. Slow learners died or were neutered. Now, like dogs, mudlings live only to please. They’re not very smart and they’re never aggressive.”
Izar had certainly been aggressive enough, and Rigel had encouraged him.
“Why did Izar call himself Naos?”
“Because he is a Naos. That rainbow sheen on his hair is the mark of Naos. By the time he’s adult—that won’t happen until he’s forty-one, by the way; starfolk take the time to enjoy childhood properly—it will be fully opalescent, and he’ll be designated a prince. The mark means he’s developing a special form of magic, also called Naos, which the ruler of the Starlands needs in order to keep them from vanishing into the void. So one day Izar may even be king. Naos runs in families, but not predictably, and it also crops up at random. You smell wood smoke?”