Caine's Law

by Matthew Stover

  At least he doesn’t. That’s something. If this goes close enough to right, he still has five or six good years before reality fucks his dreams and shits on the last of his hope. Five or six good years is more than most people get.

  He flinches when I clear my throat behind him. I give him a second to get hold of himself. “You’re the professor, right?”

  He takes a deep breath and comes to his feet without turning to face me, still looking down at his dead friend. “Instructor,” he says, slow and distant. “This is … uh, I’m doing fieldwork. For my dissertation. That’s like a—huh. Never mind. It’s not important.”

  With a visible effort of will, he makes himself face me. He’s pale as ice, and his eyes are clouded and wet, and he has to swallow before he can speak. I don’t blame him for being nervy, even though I put away my weapons and he’s damn near twice my size. He’s seen a lot of men die today. He watched me kill most of them. Considering his entire previous experience with violent death comes from old movies and web games, it takes a lot of balls for him to look me square in the face from only an arm’s length away.

  “Are you a religious man?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “Depends on the god.”

  “He was Christian.” A flick of a glance down at the corpse. “It’s a faith of my native land. The One God makes of Himself a mortal man, and allows Himself to die on a cross to atone for the sins of humanity. I have just commended this man’s spirit into His Hands.”

  “All kinds of people die on crosses. I’m mostly interested in the ones who survive.”

  The ghost of an acknowledging nod. “Why does it feel like a sin to pray to a God I don’t believe exists?”

  Okay, I’m over the scared. “Maybe it’s a sin against your intellectual self-respect.”

  The clouds in his eyes evaporate, and his gaze sharpens like he’s seeing me for the first time. “You’re speaking English.”

  “So are you.”

  “Your accent—urban North America. West Coast. Downcaste with Professional overtone—Labor with elocution lessons. Oakland? How does an Oakland Laborer come to the eastern slopes of the God’s Teeth?”

  “Well, look at you. Henry fucking ’iggins.”

  “Ah … sorry—I’m sorry. It’s a—well, it’s a reflex. I can’t believe I didn’t notice already. But I’m a little …”

  “You’re having a tough day.”

  “I’m Duncan Michaelson.” He sticks out a hand. “And you are?”

  “Somebody you don’t want to know that well.”

  He leaves his hand hanging there, so I put the folding knife in it. “This yours?”

  “Yes—yes, it is. Thank you.” He clutches it like he’s grateful to have something to hang on to. “I’ve had it a long time.”

  “You carry a black knife.” Like the universe just made a mild pun.

  “I’m very fond of it.” He tries out a warm smile while he puts it away. “You do seem familiar somehow.”

  Because I favor my mother, who he’s already in love with, but telling him so won’t do either of us any good. “I get that a lot.”

  “Well—thank you. I’m sorry I didn’t thank you already. You saved our lives.”

  “We didn’t do it for you.”

  “Oh—ah, of course.” His eyes cloud over again. “I have some silver, of course, and our people will gladly pay you for our safe return.”

  “I want you to do something for me.”

  He takes half a step back, his face closed again, wary. “My gratitude extends only so far.”

  “Let’s start with what I can offer you.”

  “Beyond our lives?”

  “What if I could get you a one-on-one with T’ffarrell Mithondionne?”

  “The Ravenlock?” His eyes widen, but then narrow again, skeptical. “I’ve begun to wonder if the whole King of the Elves business isn’t just some combination of folktale and inside joke.”

  “Let’s say it isn’t. Hypothetically. If I could put you in a room with the Ravenlock, and he’s willing to answer questions. To tell you any story you want to hear.”

  “Hypothetically …” He chuckles, shaking his head. “For a chance like that, I’d sell my hypothetical soul.”

  My turn to try the warm smile. “That’s the answer I’m looking for.”

  It’s a glade. I’m in a glade. I’ve been walking. I walked into this glade.

  I must have, because I’ve been walking.

  It’s pretty. More than pretty: green-tinged sunbeams and gently whispering leaves, and somewhere nearby a waterfall hushes beyond the trees. Like I’ve walked into a painting. It smells more than nice too: wildflowers and clean rising sap, apples and pears and maybe even peaches, fresh black dirt, and I’ve been in a lot of forests and none of them actually smell like this. This place looks and smells and feels like I could turn around and bump into Snow White. I probably should know what I’m doing here.

  I feel like I do know. But I don’t know what I know.

  Wait.

  Fucking elves. Primals, feyin, whatever. I know this spell.

  I close my eyes and turn in place, counterclockwise, and count off each revolution. “Three. Two. One.”

  It’s not a counterspell, just a mnemonic to trigger a conditioned logic-cascade. Straightforward application of Control Discipline. If I hadn’t been so distracted by how beautiful this place is, fucker never would have caught me in the first place.

  I open my eyes. “Maybe you should come on out. On my best day, I’m not a patient man.”

  Dust motes swirling through the glade’s green-shaded sunbeam organize themselves and coalesce into a tall fey whose face could have been chipped out of frozen limestone. He doesn’t even pretend to be real; his voice is blended of wind and birdsong. Feral humans are not welcome in this land.

  “I’m not feral.”

  He gives me an insufferably superior sneer. Reminds me of Kierendal. The word feral means only that—

  “I know what it fucking means, jackass. I’m not feral. I’m from the Quiet Land.”

  What can you possibly know of the Quiet Land?

  “That’s what I’m here to talk about.”

  Your shallow puddle of amusement has now wholly evaporated. Go.

  “Ooh, good one. You’re like the three-year-old girl of smack talk.”

  You may depart unharmed.

  “And with some luck I’ll never have to bring up that you said so.” Keeping my voice level is tougher than I expected. “I need to see the Ravenlock. Or really, y’know, he needs to see me. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

  You can walk out freely. Or be made to walk out. Less than freely.

  Hey, I know this tune. “Look, I’m not here to cause trouble. But you should know I won’t mind.”

  The dust-mote elf extends an insubstantial hand, and power gathers around it. Begone, beast! Back to your filth!

  “Um, well, when you put it that way …” I shrug. “No.”

  His eyes widen, his feathery brow compresses, and the shimmer of power around his hand brightens until the glare hurts my eyes. Banished thou art. Leave this place now with all thine speed, and never think to return!

  “Some kinds of magick work on me,” I tell him. “Other kinds.”

  His other hand comes up. The glow crackles lightning between them. Then bide where you are. Wait without motion, without breath, without thought, a man of stone—

  “Nope.”

  Strike forever all light from your eye—

  “Sorry.” And I am, a little. Very little. “It’s not your fault.”

  The elf’s face goes pensive. He reluctantly lowers his hands. Who are you, and what do you here?

  “You first.”

  I am Quelliar, Eldest of Massall. I ward this approach to the Living Palace, as have feyin of my House for ten thousand years.

  He says that like he’s proud of it. I guess I would be too. Something about
his name, though … I’ve heard it before. Where? “You can call me Dominic Shade.”

  I can call you whatever I please, he says, a little tartly. Is Dominic Shade your name?

  I shrug. “Today.”

  And your business, Dominic Shade Today?

  “I told you already.”

  And yet have offered no reason you should be allowed to defile Mithondion with your reek of rancid sweat and breath of crow vomit. With your filthy human feet and—

  “Yeah, yeah. Filthy human whatever.” Ahh, got it. I know who he is.

  I can’t exactly tell him, since most of what I know about him is that forty-six or -seven years from now, Raithe will murder him in Vinson Garrette’s reception chamber … but even a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. “Quelliar Massalle, huh? How’s your little sister—what’s her name, Finall?”

  The simulated fey goes still. Absolutely still: a rabbit at the footfall of a wolf.

  “And your father, the Massal. Querrisynne.” Because I really don’t like his attitude, I let him have one straight. “He’s going to outlive you.”

  And how do you hope to even find my person, let alone do me harm?

  “It’s not a threat.”

  No? What then might it be?

  “Prophecy.”

  From a feral?

  “A man will kill you, but I am not that man.” Abruptly my mind is made up. If it’s gonna work at all, it should start working with this fucker.

  I reach inside my tunic and pull out the black satin choker. The blood on it is long dry, brown and flaky. “See this? Take it to the Ravenlock. You fu—you, uh, people have magick and shit, you can tell who this belonged to, right?”

  He looks at it like I’m offering a handful of dog turd. Even immortal, I lack time to waste on feral mummery.

  Feral mummery this, fucker. “Tell the Ravenlock it’s a keepsake from Torronell.”

  His eyes go all feline and slitty. The Youngest of Mithondion has been dead for centuries.

  “For a corpse, he gives a pretty good blow job.”

  The breeze and birdsong voice does a pretty fair imitation of somebody gargling puke.

  “I’m not the only human who knows where he is and how he makes his living, but I can and do guarantee absolute silence on these matters in exchange for ten minutes of T’ffarrell Mithondionne’s attention. That’s all. He needs to know what I’m here to tell him.”

  A subtle shift in his expression—he’s finally decided to take me seriously. Abide. Should your passage be permitted, I will come for you.

  “No more fucking spells either.”

  Abide, he says, and dissolves into a swirl of sunlight.

  The Living Palace is kind of impressive, because, y’know, building a vast intricate castle out of stone is one thing. Takes a long time and everything, sure—but how long does it take to grow one?

  Hundreds of trees—thousands—woven together as they grew. Sequoia or something. Old beyond years and vast beyond conception. Gently teased together, shaped, and polished, self-supporting in a branching structure hundreds of feet tall, far beyond the height of any trees on Earth, at least since there’s been people around to look at them. It so ridiculously transcends description that the only useful comparison would be to Yggdrasil, and even that doesn’t do it justice.

  Deliann told me once that the Mithondion stronghold had been designed and begun by his grandfather Panchasell—the same fey who created the dil T’llan—ten thousand years ago. Until you actually see the fucking thing, those are just words. And then you walk in and somebody takes you to the Heartwood Hall, which is the formal audience chamber of the Mithondionne kings and just a hair too small for dragons to play rugby in, and you realize that you are standing inside a living being who is roughly the same age as human civilization …

  Language fails.

  It’s worth mentioning that the place has kicked all my usual cocky so far up my ass that it’s coming out my eyeballs. It’s not an overstatement to say that awe doesn’t have much hold on me, and reverence is a word I’d have to look up to be sure what it means, but when I walk up onto the Flame, a round red-gleaming disk inlaid in front of the royal gallery, it’s all I can do to not fall to my knees.

  Five primals up on the gallery, two males, two females, and one don’t-make-me-pick. The Mithondionne is easy to spot; not only is he the tallest of them, his waist-length gleaming platinum fall of hair has one black swipe thick as my thumb that runs from his backswept widow’s peak down over the front of his left shoulder, and ends exactly at the filigreed basket-hilt of his rapier.

  Your name. He doesn’t pretend he’s actually speaking; his bloodless lips stay tight-drawn in a grim flat line, and the words have the dry-leaf rattle of that Whisper Kierendal favors.

  “Dominic Shade.”

  Is not your name, feral. A flicker of annoyance from the Ravenlock at the other male—the “voice” is the same, but it’s a good bet it’s coming from the other guy. Twist your heart and knot your will, your lips each dark truth bespill—

  “Yeah, keep trying.” Already with the spells. So much for awe and reverence and shit. “Like I explained to that Quelliar guy, I’m not feral. I’m from the Quiet Land. And my name is whatever I say it is.”

  All of a sudden there’s so much rustling it sounds like a burst of static inside my skull. The Ravenlock takes a step forward and cuts them off with an abrupt slice of one hand. He says aloud, “Speak to us of our son, and their brother.”

  His voice is dark and clear and inhumanly pure as the toll of an obsidian bell, and I can feel it clutch at my will—no subtlety there, a straightforward Dominate. I show him my teeth. “Ask me nicely.”

  His face goes even tighter. “The tricks you use to resist us? I myself taught those to your Ironhand half a millennium gone, friar. We have powers no Monastic Discipline can counter.”

  “First, I’m retired. Second, thanks for reminding me why I hate you fuckers. I came here to help you, goddammit. At considerable expense, and risk of my mortal fucking life, I found your son, and that was just to buy a chance to talk to you, because I know you arrogant shit-humping cunts treat humans like we’re rats in your fucking bedrooms. And third—”

  I spread my hands. “You want to do this with me? Make a move, elf-king. I’ve got powers of my own.”

  Before he can decide how much I might be bluffing, the taller of the two females steps up to his side and puts a hand on his elbow. “Peace, my lord,” she says. “Humanity has done yeoman’s service for House Mithondionne in former days. Presume, if you will, that this mortal may be himself an inheritor of the debt we owe the Ironhand and the Godslaughterer.”

  “Yeah, funny that you mention those guys—”

  She turns her gaze on me, and some blinding grief behind her eyes cuts me off like a slap in the mouth. “If it please you, my lord Dominic Shade, share with me the news you have of my son.”

  “I’m no lord, and—” Oh, crap. Fuck me inside out. “Your son?”

  “Two and a half centuries have passed since I last had word of my Torronell; I have mourned in private the death of my son, and carry that grief to this day. Lift it from my heart, and you will have the friendship of House Mithondionne as long as I yet walk the glades of day.”

  Which won’t be as long as she thinks, but let that go. “I apologize, my lady. I … lost my own mother many years ago. Somehow it’s always kind of a surprise that other people have mothers at all.”

  Which also leaves me completely unprepared to look Torronell’s mother in the eye and say, Oh, sure, your youngest son’s a junkie rough trade cock-whore fucking humans in Ankhana.

  “Torronell is the leafmaster for a very exclusive entertainment establishment in a human city. He has a sterling professional reputation and a considerable following. I wouldn’t call him happy, but he takes justifiable pride in his widely acknowledged expertise.”

  She inclines her head fractionally. “And if I ‘ask you nicely’ to share the res
t of what you still conceal—?”

  “I will respectfully decline, my lady.”

  “Will you—” She folds her hands and lowers her head. “Will you tell me where he is? How he can be found?”

  “I won’t. And before you start looking for him—if you send someone for him, or go yourself—you should probably first ask yourself how much truth you can bear to know.”

  Her eyes drift shut. “Ah.”

  “And, y’know, how much truth he can bear for you to know.”

  “Yes.” Her voice has gone hushed, crumpled like a wad of paper. “Can you take a message to him?”

  “No.”

  Her head comes up sharply. “You will not?”

  “I’m in the middle of something.”

  Her lips peel back, and something sparks in her eyes that hints where Torronell gets his ferocious temper. “What business can a feral have more important than the life and honor of a prince of the First Folk?”

  “I told you: I’m from the Quiet Land. We call it Earth.” I nod at the Ravenlock. “When your father Bound the dil T’llan, there were a few hundred million humans in the Quiet Land. Right now there’s almost thirteen billion. More every day. Not long ago, we figured out how to get to this world without using the dillin at all. The dil T’llan is useless. We’re here, and it’ll get worse. Within fifty years, your kingdom will be dust, and your people extinct.”

  Now all five of them might as well have been carved from alabaster.

  “While I’m here, I should also mention that I know about Pirichanthe. I know the shit you tried to make sure nobody would ever learn. All of it.”

  The Ravenlock steps forward and the temperature in the Heartwood Hall drops twenty degrees. “This is impossible.”

  “Yeah, so am I.”

  He just looks blank.

  “I’m only mostly human,” I tell him. “Pirichanthe goes tits up a little less than fifty years from now. Which means various gods are busily back-chaining causality until pretty soon they’re gonna unhappen the Deomachy.”

  “It cannot be done.”

  “Just trying will probably destroy the world.”

  “And what are you, that you know so much of what has not yet happened? A prophet? Some furtive godling escaped from beyond the walls of time?”