A Dark Sacrifice

by Madeline Howard

  At the top of the stairs they passed into a small, square chamber and stopped before a massive wooden door. Silver bolts and silver scrollwork hinges seemed to promise a chamber of more than ordinary importance on the other side. “You will remain here until the King sends for you,” said Prince Tyr, handing the lantern over to Kivik. “I do not think you will wait long.” Then he and his band marched off before the prisoners had time to ask a single question.

  There was a soft creak of metal, and for the second time a door swung shut, closing Sindérian and her companions in—except that this time they were left alone, and in an unpleasantly confined space.

  “We ought to have put up a fight to begin with,” hissed Prince Ruan, “rather than allow ourselves to be taken in this cage of stone.”

  “They took us by surprise,” said Sindérian, too tired to argue. “But now we have a little time to plan. If we are questioned, as I suppose we will be, it would be better not to tell them too much—though where we wish to keep something hidden I think we should simply remain silent, making no attempt to deceive them. They may have heard us speaking together on the mountain, and if they catch us in any lies we will only convince them we are up to no good.”

  “Good or ill, what are our human plans or ventures to them?” Skerry exclaimed, in a rare show of impatience. “For myself, I thought their race extinct. For two hundred years they have lived without meddling in our affairs or us meddling in theirs. Why should that change now?”

  Sindérian shook her head. “We don’t know for certain that we’re the very first Men they have spoken with in two hundred years. We live in strange times, and news travels slowly.”

  A heavy silence fell over the room, broken at last by Kivik, asking the question on everyone’s mind. “But if not us, then who?”

  No one answered; nobody needed to. If not the allied lands, if not the men of Skyrra, Mistlewald, or Arkenfell, who but Ouriána, whose reach seemed to grow longer with every passing day?

  “I wonder,” said Prince Ruan, scowling ferociously at the great oak door, “whether we would be wise or foolish to try and find out what waits on the other side?”

  As if in answer, the wooden panels began to swing outward.

  At first they were dazzled by torchlight pouring out from the chamber beyond. A voice bade them enter. Once they were past the threshold, Sindérian’s eyes quickly adjusted. She found herself in a large audience chamber with a stepped dais at the center. The floor was paved with rich marbles, jade, and agate, and the rafters of that hall were the bones of some colossal creature—a fossilized leviathan of ancient seas, perhaps, or one of the shape-shifting giants, like the one whose bone was in Nimenoë’s ring. Upon the dais, on a throne carved from a single dragon’s tooth, sat King Yri.

  Bent, crabbed, wrinkled, very ancient he was, with hair and beard reaching almost to his feet, so that he seemed to be clothed in a mantle of white hair. Below and to either side of the platform a crowd of dwarf lords and ladies—if not so old, nevertheless of venerable appearance—were gathered, and the jewels they wore burned brighter than the torches. In all that throng the youngest face belonged to Prince Tyr, who had changed his plain green tunic for one of unknown weave and substance and a mantle trimmed with lynx.

  “Come forward,” said the King in a cracked voice. “Come forward that I may see and hear you.”

  Sindérian was not deceived. As she drew near the throne and sank into a deep curtsy below the first step, she saw quite plainly that King Yri’s eyes, though pale as glass, were filled with light and singularly penetrating. Neither his sight nor his hearing was failing. He sat for a long time studying them. Only Prince Ruan gave him back look for look.

  “It is many years since there have been Men on Penadamin,” said the King in his creaking old voice. Between the wrinkles, whiskers, and bristling eyebrows, his skin was very pale and fragile looking, giving him the appearance of a wax doll. “The hills to the north do not welcome travellers, and it is wild country south of these mountains. Yet Ouriána’s people were seen on the lower slopes five days ago, before they took the underground road through the catacombs, and I think it is not mere chance that brings you so soon after them.”

  As there seemed to be neither a question nor an invitation to speak, Sindérian prudently remained silent and the men did likewise.

  “You have names, I suppose,” he said abruptly.

  They named themselves one after the other, beginning with Prince Ruan and ending with Aell, and she could see by the expression in those disconcerting eyes that King Yri was far from ignorant of the kingdoms of men or of the houses that ruled them. Yet for all this recognition of the others, she was the one who seemed to interest him the most.

  “Sindérian Faellanëos,” he repeated. “Unless I am mistaken, it is a name from the Isle of Wizards. And I ask myself: for what reason would two princes from Skyrra, a wizard woman from Leal, and a half-blood Faey wish to cross the Fenéille Galadan, particularly so late in the year?”

  His gaze moved on to Kivik and then to Skerry. “There is a lady who travels with the Furiádhin; she speaks with the accent of the north. From what we have observed, they treat her with some gentleness, yet she appears to be their prisoner. I think it is she who brings you here, perhaps with some idea of rescue. A hopeless task, it seems to me—but then I have found little wisdom in the race of Men.” There was a murmur of agreement from the courtiers gathered around.

  When one gnarled hand reached out to clutch the arm of his chair, it could be seen that the King wore massive rings on every finger, even his thumb. “They say the Fates intended all the peoples of the earth to live together, our very differences binding us more closely. But as the years go on, it becomes more and more plain to me that those differences only divide us.” His keen glance came to rest on Prince Ruan. “As you should know better than most, Ni-Féa prince.”

  For a moment Ruan’s handsome, colorless face was like a mask; then something flared up inside him and he flushed to the eyebrows. “You have mistaken me. I am not any prince the Ni-Féa would recognize as such.”

  “Do you not bear a Ni-Féa name as well as a Man’s—Anerüian Pendawer? And are you not the grandson of Gäiä, their great queen?”

  “I am—or was,” said Ruan between his teeth. “But that connection was severed many years ago.”

  “And your part in this,” said the King, turning toward Sindérian again, “that I do not understand. This girl Ouriána’s priests have taken—there must be more at stake than a simple abduction, to bring you here from half a world away.”

  Rather than meet that questioning gaze, she dropped her own. So many bewildering impulses were contending inside her, it was hard to know what to do. Common sense dictated that she remain silent, that she say as little as possible. Her heart told her that she ought to trust him. For she suddenly realized that this shrewd old dwarf would make a most valuable ally—if he were not already aligned with the enemy. But the heart can be a terrible liar, the Sight a cheat, if one wants to believe.

  “Twice you have named the Dark Lady of Phaôrax,” she said softly. “If I knew what you were to her and she to you—”

  There were gasps from the dwarf lords and ladies, a babble of indignant voices that swelled briefly and then died. “Indeed,” said the King, “who is this slip of a girl who dares to stand before me in my own hall and question my motives?” Raising her eyes to meet his, she was surprised to see a glint of amusement. “Yet perhaps I have invited the question. In any case, I mean to answer it.

  “It is five years since Ouriána sent her minions—I will not dignify them by calling them ambassadors—to bargain with us for certain of our treasures. Favor for favor is what she said: She would make us mighty in the New Age to come. We should command wide lands upon the earth as well as those under them. Magic arts she had that she would teach to us. When we refused to bargain, her messengers resorted to threats.” There was an angry rumble throughout the room.

 
But of course, thought Sindérian, looking around her at necklets, bracelets, rings, and brooches glowing with gemstones, worked with consummate artistry—in the world above, artifacts of dwarfish make were highly sought after, and their value had only increased since trade with the underground realms had ceased. Ouriána would covet these riches. If not for herself, than to pay her mercenaries. But that was not all: there were objects of legendary potency attributed to the dwarves whose value was far above gold or gemstones. It was said the Corridon had created the Dragonstones, the greatest treasure of Ouriána’s house.

  “But,” said King Yri, as if in answer to Sindérian’s thoughts, “there are some things we value so highly, we will not sell them at any price, nor yield them under any duress. For that reason Men have called us greedy, a miserly and heartless race. But in this they wrong us. For what we will not sell, we will occasionally bestow as a gift, freely given. She had done better in the beginning merely to have asked.

  “And now that you know this,” he concluded, “is there some boon you would ask of me?”

  Sindérian took a deep breath. “We have not come here as beggars, or to haggle with you like Ouriána’s messengers. How could that be, when we never guessed we would meet dwarves in the mountains? All that we ask is to be allowed to continue our journey. Unless…” She hesitated. “Unless you know of some way that we might cross the mountains more swiftly. As it seems you are no friend to Phaôrax—”

  “Understand this: I have no intention of embroiling my people in your wars,” the King answered with a fierce look. “It is for your kind to end that madness, if it is not too late. I may be willing to assist you in some small way, but I am still considering whether to do even that much. I am, as you say, no friend to Ouriána, but she has never yet carried out those threats she made five years ago. We have not, perhaps, been much in her thoughts since then, and I would prefer that it remain so. Though haste may be to your advantage, it may not be to ours. I will think long and carefully before I decide what is to be done with you.

  “In the meantime, rooms have been prepared for your use. It is now night in the world above and you will wish to eat and rest.” He sat back in his dragon-tooth chair, as if he, too, were suddenly weary. “Though we do not regard you as welcome guests, no guest of any kind has ever had cause to complain of our hospitality.”

  Time moves differently in the kingdoms of the dwarves, as Sindérian was soon to learn. Without those cycles of dark and light, the phases of a fickle moon, or the revolving seasons by which Men measure their lives—time flows gently. How long she and her friends awaited the King’s decision, if it were one day or many, she could not have said.

  Two periods of rest she spent in a closet bed, on a feather mattress under fine woven blankets. Along with the men, she ate several meals in a room where all the furniture was of carven oak, well made and of goodly proportion, though somewhat low to the ground. During the intervals between, they were allowed to roam at will through Yri’s palace.

  In the underground kingdom no winds stirred, and the air was heavy with the resinous scent of torches and hearth-fires, yet it was a dim world, for it appeared that the dwarves did not require much light. The presence of strangers had apparently been duly announced, for while they received many curious looks from those who waited on them and those they met in the halls, the dwarves seemed to take the arrival of human visitors in their stride, and treated them with unfailing courtesy.

  Much more than courtesy, thought Sindérian. For the palace seamstresses had stitched for her, in what seemed a miraculously short time, an underdress and a loose flowing gown to her exact measure—which the maidservants insisted she put on while they took her own garments away for washing. The cloth was strange to her, with milkweed and thistledown spun into the wool, but very fine and closely woven, and she was not sorry to put aside the dirt of the road.

  “King Yri seems to favor you,” commented Prince Ruan when he first saw the gown.

  She shook her head. “I think it is only that the ladies here wanted a closer look at my clothes.”

  Whether he accepted that explanation or not, the Prince grew increasingly moody.

  “We are surprisingly complacent prisoners, are we not?” he asked, as he and his fellow travellers lingered over a meal of venison, pheasant, goat cheese, roast chestnuts, and elderberry wine. “They do not keep us confined; why then do we not even attempt to escape?”

  Sindérian eyed him over the rim of a goblet set with cat’s eye and tourmaline. Of them all, he seemed to take their captivity the hardest, being at all times animated by such fierce unrest that it exhausted her just watching him. Was it only his wounded pride, or was there something more serious amiss? Claustrophobia was inevitable under the circumstances, and she believed they each struggled with it, but there seemed to be something in their situation that goaded him almost past endurance.

  “Why shouldn’t we just walk away?” he said when the others remained silent. “The way to the surface is dark, but you could make a light.”

  “Even with a light, we would soon be lost in that maze of caverns,” Sindérian replied. “That is, supposing we even had time to lose ourselves before the dwarves overtook us. I think there is little that happens under or over the mountain that King Yri doesn’t know about, and he would certainly know if anyone passed his ward.”

  Ruan left his seat and began to pace the room. “We escaped from Saer, despite spells and losing our way.”

  Hoping to turn his thoughts in a less reckless direction, she said the first thing that came into her mind. “King Yri had much to say. Far more than he needed to tell us, all things considered. I think he was watching to see how we responded.”

  Ruan stopped pacing, an arrested look on his face. “You believe he was testing us?”

  “Yes, I am sure of it. But I think, also, there was greater significance in what he did not say, in things he merely hinted at. What happens in our world affects them, too. They must go above to hunt, to gather food. Yes, and they must keep domestic animals somewhere—goats for cheese, bees for honey. Some of them may spend as much time on the mountain as under it. In the end, they are no more immune to the winds of the world than we are.”

  With a thoughtful look Ruan returned to his seat. “They are obviously in communication with the Ni-Féa, and that I do not like.”

  “But if he should chance to be a friend to your grandmother…,” Kivik began.

  “The Ni-Féa don’t make friends of other races.” Ruan folded his arms across his chest. “If Queen Gäiä ever had friends of any sort, they are long dead. Such friendship as hers could only prove lethal.”

  “Then,” said Skerry grimly, “we have no possible claim on King Yri. No reason to expect that he will wish to help us. Moreover, his knowledge seems altogether too vast and comprehensive. Where does it come from?”

  Sindérian shook her head. “I don’t know. He is a very powerful seer, that I can tell you. Perhaps the strongest I have ever met. But he may have other ways of learning things, too.”

  She pushed away her cup and plate, for her appetite was spoiled. Prince Ruan’s mood was beginning to infect her, and she thought she would explode with frustration if they were forced to wait much longer for the King’s decision.

  24

  Blinded by the light, shaking with the shock of her suddenly reversed circumstances, Winloki was only dimly aware of the men gathered around her. She crouched on the ground, breathing the clean air, slowly assimilating the fact that she was alive and safe. Finally, she gasped out a single word: “Camhóinhann?”

  “Is here, Lady,” said Dyonas’s voice somewhere nearby, and a shadow moved between her and the light. Gradually, that shadow resolved into a pale face with glinting metallic eyes, inside a halo of white hair. “Nor have you any need to fear for his safety.”

  “He spoke the truth. He truly was willing to lay down his life for me,” she said wonderingly. She had feared any obligation no matter how slight, and n
ow she owed him her life. She ought to be appalled, not grateful, for gratitude itself was a trap, and yet…

  “Did you think he would lie to you? What reason could he possibly have to do so?”

  Stunned by a question she had never thought to ask, she had no answer to give him. She had been entirely in Camhóinhann’s power, first to last—why then should he fear to tell her the truth about anything? It had only been her own weakness, her own fear, that made everything he said seem a lie.

  To her surprise, Dyonas bent down, worked some secret clasp on each of the silver bracelets, and took them away. “I believe you wished to work a healing on some of the men. I see no reason to deny you that opportunity now.”

  She sat for a moment rubbing her wrists, bewildered as much by this as by anything that had gone before. At last, gathering her wits about her, she rose to her feet and went to offer her help to the injured guards and acolytes.

  Afterward, a little unsteady from the effort it had required to purge the lingering poisons and to begin the process of knitting together torn flesh, she turned her attention to the one who had been on her mind all along: the stern, solitary figure in crimson robes who sat apart from the others in a pose of meditation or prayer.

  Camhóinhann opened his eyes at her approach, but said no word when she knelt down beside him. She hesitated, unsure how he would receive her offer. “I could heal you,” she said, gesturing toward his injured arm. “I need not use my mother’s ring. See, I removed it even before I touched Morquant or Rivanon, knowing that to look on it causes you pain.”

  “You are mistaken,” he replied. “It does not pain us to look on Nimenoë’s ring, not in the way you mean. It merely reminds us of what we were before—and that is a memory we do not like to dwell on. As for the healing you offer, it is not for me.”