by Dave Duncan
Thaïle flashed him an ominous smile. “This is the Master of Novices, Analyst Teal. Master, may I present Princess Kadolan of Krasnegar, a visitor to our land?”
Teal froze. In the ambience he flamed green terror. “An imp?” he croaked. “A demon? And you? Trainee Thaïle?”
“Archon Thaïle.”
Teal vanished with a wail. An instant later, the ambience blazed with occult power and the Meeting Place was deserted. The departure of so many people simultaneously created a clap of thunder. The deer took off for the safety of the surrounding forest. Ducks skittered across the water into flight; swans reared and flapped in white spray.
Kadie jumped and squealed: “Oh!”
Startled herself, Thaïle flinched, and then she began to laugh. “There!” she said. “I told you you had nothing to fear! They’re far more frightened of you than you are of them.”
Kadie’s pale face forced itself into a sickly smile.
“Thaïle, Thaïle!” a reproving voice murmured. “You’d better bring her with you, I suppose.”
“What’s wrong?” Kadie demanded.
Thaïle shivered. “We have to go and meet the Keeper.”
Rain was falling on the jungle. Little could penetrate that great ocean of foliage, but the air itself was wet, dense with odors of vegetation and rotting humus. The Way snaked dimly between giant trunks, barely visible to mundane vision. Kadie clung fiercely to Thane’s hand, whimpering nervously as trailing moss brushed her hair. Together they walked down into the blackness of the vestry, then through into the cold gloom of the shrine. Twice before Thaïle had seen this ancient ruin, and yet the Chapel had lost none of its power to awe her. Empty expanse of flagstone floor, high shadowed roof, ill-placed and odd-shaped window openings, the two black corner doors, and the absence of an altar — all seemed wrong and sinister. Again she sensed the mourning centuries.
Even a mundane could detect the outpouring of grief from the farthest corner. “What’s that!” Kadie shrilled, pointing a tremulous finger.
“Keef’s grave,” Thaïle muttered, and was annoyed to hear herself whispering. “The dark patch is ice, frozen tears.” For a moment she considered taking her visitor over there to pay her respects, and then decided not to.
This whole visit was folly. Her return to Thume itself had been. The thought of meeting the Keeper again was starting to hammer pulses of fury in her throat. She killed my lovely Leéb! She killed my baby! Hatred and loss! Raw, bleeding, unquenchable loss. Could even Zinixo surpass such evil?
The fourth corner was empty. To reach the Keeper, Thaïle must make that odd sideways move to the other Thume, the Thume that existed on the same plane as the rest of Pandemia — and she was not sure how to take Kadie with her. To leave her here alone would terrify her beyond reason. Even as Thaïle wrestled with the occult problem, the Keeper solved it for her. She did not seem to appear, she was just present, as if she had been standing there all along, a darker shadow in the darkness.
Kadie saw her a moment later and shied.
“It’s all right!” Thaïle said — adding I think under her breath. Nothing was all right where the Keeper was concerned. A demigod was not, strictly speaking, still human. Thaïle bit her lip as she stared over the barren floor at that eerie cowled shape, motionless as a draped pillar. She felt her hatred straining for release, for action. All the power she could summon was useless against the Keeper. She knew that in her mind, and yet her heart urged her to try again.
Hand in hand, the two women approached the ominous figure. Kadie’s trembling was likely from fear, Thaïle’s from abhorrence. They halted at a respectful distance. Instinctively Kadie sank to her knees, then glanced up in surprise at Thaïle, who remained defiantly erect.
“I will not kneel to you!” Thaïle could not penetrate the darkness within the-hood. She could remember the ravaged, wasted face it concealed, but she could not see it now.
The Keeper sighed, and that one faint sound dismissed her visitor as trivial, her rebellion and disrespect as meaningless. Her suffering, that sigh implied, was as nothing compared to what the Keeper endured and must continue to endure. Only her enormous Faculty could withstand the burden of five words, and then only at terrible, superhuman cost.
“You are forgiven. You are welcomed back.” The Keeper spoke aloud — for the benefit of the mundane, perhaps — but the voice was a tortured hiss, a sound like rain on dead leaves.
Despite her brave show of defiance, Thaïle felt a cold wash of relief at the words, and despised herself for it. Why, when she felt only contempt for the Keeper and indeed the whole of Keef’s grandiose sorcerous design, must her pixie heritage so disgrace her as to make her feel relieved? Now that their cruelty and oppression had been revealed to her, why could she not shuck off the lies and indoctrination of her childhood?
“You are the Chosen One,” the Keeper said. “There is no doubt now.”
Shudder!
“Then may I read what the book prophesies about me?”
“No. I have destroyed the book.”
“Of course you remember what was in it?”
The Keeper did not deign to reply, leaving Thaïle shivering with frustrated rage.
The venomous whisper came again. “Your duties as archon begin now. You are assigned the western sector, as that is where the greatest peril lies.”
“I do not know what is required of me.”
“You will understand when there is need.”
The cowl tilted slightly, as if its wearer had moved to study Kadie, and Kadie, who had been staring up with green eyes big as tiger mouths, doubled over to press her face against her knees.
“You were not prophesied, child,” the scaly murmur said, “but I foresaw you.”
Kadie’s head jerked up in astonishment. “Me?” she squeaked.
There was a pause. “Not you personally, no. But someone yet unborn. You have your mother’s eyes.”
What sort of mockery or trick was this? Before even Thaïle’s occult reflexes could react, Kadie cried out.
“You know my mother?” She half rose, then stopped.
Could that have been a hint of a chuckle within that cowl?
“I was an archon when she came to Thume.”
Kadie blurted, “That was nineteen years —” And stopped.
The Keeper seemed to nod. “I reported the intrusion to my predecessor. I advised him to take a hard look at the young woman in the party. His Holiness commended my acuity of prevision and confirmed my premonition. It was for your sake that your mother was allowed to depart in peace. He let the others go, too, which I would not have done.”
“So the princess may remain with me?” Thaïle demanded.
“You sound,” the Keeper hissed, “like a child asking for a kitten.” Then she was gone.
The audience was over.
Impossible loyalties:
…home of lost causes, and
forsaken beliefs, and unpopular
names, and impossible loyalties!
Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism
FIVE
Word in Elfyn-land
1
Crunch!
Mm? Andor stirred, feeling the ache in his back.
Crunch! again? Where was he? Feet cold, back stiff as planks, lying on something very hard… Crunch! What was that infuriating noise?
He opened a reluctant eye and saw sky, pale blue, framed all around in impossibly green fronds. Sleeping outdoors? Wrapped in his cloak?
Crunch! He opened the other eye and turned his head.
The king of Krasnegar sat cross-legged beside him, eating an apple. Crunch! The oversized faun looked down with a mocking grin on his ugly, unshaven face and his big jaw moving in a rhythmic chewing. His clothes were laborers’ castoffs, as usual. His hair resembled a neglected woodlot — as usual.
“Good morning, sleepy-head!” Rap said. “I needn’t ask if you slept well. You certainly slept long enough.”
Fornication! More t
han dawn dew chilled Andor. Every time he got involved with this accursed ex-stableboy, he landed in trouble, big trouble. Now he remembered: being transported by Evil-begotten sorcery in the middle of the night from that stinking, sinking hulk to… Oh, Gods!… to Ilrane, elf country. Big, big trouble!
He returned the smile cheerfully. “Good morning, your Majesty! I trust you also slept the sleep of the just?” He heaved himself into a sitting position.
“No, I just sleep. Don’t stand up! You might be seen.”
Whatever the troll-sized grass was, it was only waist-height, admittedly, but why should a sorcerer care? Andor yawned and stretched. “Can’t you use your farsight?” The first time he had met this big rustic lout, years ago, had been beside a bonfire on an arctic beach. Farsight had been the issue then, he recalled, and he had wanted to scream at the kid not to reveal his talent. He had gone right ahead and done so, of course. There had been “duty” involved, and the faun had always been one of those idealistic idiots who rallied to Calls of Honor. That was a dangerous trait, one that had subsequently landed him in innumerable perils. He was no kid anymore — he was a lot older than Andor himself now — but he had never learned sense. Unfortunately he seemed to have a gift for dragging Andor’s neck into the noose with his own.
Now he shrugged casually. “I haven’t been outside the shielding yet. I chose this bivouac because it was shielded, remember?”
The faun had breakfast all spread out on the trampled herbage between them. Andor pulled a face and reached for the water bottle. He would prefer not to be reminded of the events of the night. He had an instinctive dislike of ships, especially sinking ships.
“Why would anyone put shielding in the middle of a hay field?”
“This ain’t hay, City Slicker! Likely there was a house here once, a sorcerer’s house. I think I was lying on some of the foundations, as a matter of fact.” The king grinned as if he had not a care in the world. Good humor early in the morning was a revolting vice; good humor in the face of hazard was utter insanity. He would be more malleable if he did not know how Andor felt on the topic, though. So Andor smiled again.
“I had the fireplace! What’s the program for today, Rap?”
The faun nodded in a direction behind Andor’s back. “We head for that.”
Andor turned his head to see. In spite of his grouchy, early-morning feelings, he felt the impact. The first rays of the sun had just caught the summit, blazing in crystal glory, a blur of rainbow high against the pale dawn blue. The sky tree was obviously very far off, the rest of its familiar pinecone shape still an indistinct shadow.
“Valdorian?”
“Valdorian,” Rap agreed. He tossed his apple core away and reached for a pear.
See one sky tree and you’ve seen ’em all. Andor glanced over the choice of breakfast, realizing he was hungry. The last meal he’d eaten had been an excellent dinner at Casfrel Station. The fact that it had been three or four months ago was of no importance. What did matter was that he had been called back into existence last night and had built up an appetite in his sleep.
The menu was entirely vegetarian. “I suppose one of the trolls magicked up this for you?”
Rap raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You’d rather I’d asked an anthropophagus?”
“Er, no!” Andor chose a mango and reached for his dagger to peel it. Big, big, big trouble! He was not only an illegal intruder in Ilrane, he was supposed to accompany this faun maniac on a visit to a warden, an elvish warden, an elvish ex-warden, an elvish fugitive ex-warden. Crazy, crazy, crazy! Somehow, he must detach himself and head for safety. Even getting out of Ilrane might not be easy. The yellow-bellies were deeply secretive about their ancestral homeland; they hated strangers trekking around in it. Their ports and border crossings were infested with guards, who had loathsome habits of throwing nonelves in jail at the slightest provocation.
Call another of the Group? That seemed impractical under the circumstances. Darad and Jalon would probably collaborate with the faun. Sagorn certainly would — besides, the old fool was too frail to be exposed to hardship and danger. Andor couldn’t call Sagorn or Darad at the moment, anyway.
That left Thinal. Funny, in any tight spot, Andor’s first thought was always to call that no-good fast-fingered little vagrant. It must be some sort of throwback to their childhood, when Thinal had been his big brother, leader and protector, fearless hero. Changed days now! Thinal did have a rat’s instinct for self-preservation, and he would share Andor’s sentiments about this present idiocy, but he would have even less chance of escaping from elf country, because at least Andor could usually talk his way out of trouble. How had he ever fallen into this cesspool?
“Valdorian? That’s Lith’rian’s ancestral enclave?”
The faun nodded, gray eyes twinkling as if he could read Andor’s thoughts. He could, of course, but he had some stupid scruples about reading thoughts. So he had always said and he was always moronically truthful.
Andor bit messily into the mango. “Isn’t that an absurdly obvious place to look for him? Surely the Covin’s been hunting him for months?”
Rap wiped his fingers on grass, apparently finished with breakfast. “I discussed this with Sagorn and he agreed. You must remember that.”
Andor hid his annoyance in a laugh. “Rap! Recalling Sagorn’s mental processes is like trying to recapture a nightmare. You explain to simple old me, huh?”
The faun frowned, puzzled. “I don’t understand that, you know! If you share memories of events, why can’t you remember what he was thinking?”
Why didn’t he mind his own accursed business? “Because, old friend, I’m just plain dumb compared to him. He jumps to conclusions so fast that he doesn’t even notice how he gets there. So he doesn’t remember the steps — and then neither do I.”
“I see. Well, it’s not simple, I admit.”
“We’re talking elves, Rap. Nothing is ever simple around elves.”
The faun laughed agreement. “Precisely! That’s the point. When Lith’rian fled from Hub, everyone’s first thought was that he would head back to Valdorian. Elvish instinct — go home to the tree. But Zinixo is hunting him with the Covin, so the obvious place is the last place he would be, right?”
“Right!”
“So that’s exactly where he will be.” Rap smirked, and began packing the rest of the food away.
Andor hastily chose two more mangoes and some grapes. “Surely that’s too obvious?”
The smirk widened. “Therefore that makes it even more likely!” He turned serious. “It’s a gamble, of course, but Zinixo is a dwarf, and you can’t have two ways of thinking more different than elves’ and dwarves’. I’ve had a taste of both sets of mental processes in my time, and I tried to apply them as well as I can. As I see it, to Lith’rian the only place he can possibly hide is his own sky tree, Valdorian. Honor and dignity require it! To Zinixo, anything as obvious as that can only be a trap. And there’s two other reasons to start there.”
“Tell me!” Andor could see that worse was coming, but he smiled as if he were enjoying this craziness.
Rap began buckling up the pack. “First, we don’t have any other leads at all, and Ilrane is just too evilish big to search. The elves will never tell us where their beloved warlock is hiding, and he’s a very powerful sorcerer — we can’t hope to find him by ourselves in a thousand years. It’s Valdorian or nothing. Second… how do you think Warlock Lith’rian is feeling now?”
“I haven’t the foggiest,” Andor said cheerfully, thinking that there was nothing in the world he could care less about. Then he guessed, and a moderate size iceberg settled in the pit of his stomach. “Oh! Defiant? Suicidal?”
The faun nodded somberly. “Glorious last stands are an elvish tradition. It fits the present situation, somehow. Lith’rian has been a warden for almost ninety years and probably expected to have another century or so. But now he’s facing defeat by his old enemy, a detested dwarf. The millennium has
come and brought total ruin to everything. My guess is that he will have rallied his votaries in Valdorian, planning to go down gloriously, with all flags flying.” He shrugged. “It’s not much, and if you’ve got a better idea, I’m certainly willing to listen.”
Andor had a thousand better ideas, and Rap would never accept any of them. If the big mongrel wasn’t a sorcerer, Andor would talk him out of this in minutes. And if there was anything worse than a warlock, or an ex-warlock, it must be a suicidal ex-warlock. God of Horrors!
“Sounds good to me,” he said.
Rap smiled gratefully. “Sky trees are heavily guarded. You’ll be a great help if you can just charm the elves into admitting us.”
“No problem, Rap. Elves are about the easiest people I know.” He was a sorcerer — let him do his own damned charming! “I can handle elves! Dwarves, now, or fauns… Ugh!”
Rap laughed aloud, completely unoffended. “We’ve had some grand adventures together, old friend, haven’t we?”
“We sure have, Rap,” Andor said. And none of them was ever my idea! “But this one beats them all.” Gods get me out of here!
Rap chuckled and rose to his knees, then more cautiously to his feet, looking around him all the while. “All clear,” he said.
Then came pulling on of boots and buckling of swords. Andor scowled at his cloak. It would be a dreary weight to lug around, and Ilrane near to midsummer was certain to be hot. The only use for a cloak was as bedding, and he did not intend to repeat this sleeping-out-of-doors nonsense. There was no need to argue that point now, though. Eventually he rose also. He hoisted the second pack, grunting at its weight, although it was substantially smaller than the one the faun had taken. He slung it on his back, and it made him stoop, putting his eyes about level with the king’s collarbones. There was something obscene about a faun bigger than an imp. It was contrary to nature.