by Ellis Knox
“Shame, sir,” the professor cried. “Modesty!”
“It’s all right, professor,” I said quickly, even though it wasn’t.
“So, when you five fell into my hands, washed onto shore by the most fortunate of storms–well, you can just imagine.”
We claimed we could.
“I’ve been in a storm of indecision ever since. How to present you? When? And where?” He turned in place and clapped his hands several times, maybe as a sign of his indecision. His robe billowed outward, ran suddenly with sheets of red, then settled back to amber. Only now did he have the decency to return the robe to a state of translucence rather than utter transparency.
“Soon, certainly,” he continued, “for the Arrayal will not last much longer. Where? At the Crystal. Better than Marde’s tower, and Trillian is quite out of the question, don’t you think?”
He wasn’t really asking us.
“Then there’s the theme. And the seating arrangements, oh!”
He went on like that for quite a while. Some of it made sense, some didn’t. I think he rather forgot we were there. When he noticed, he seemed surprised.
“There you are! You’ll need food, I suppose,” he said doubtfully, “and appropriate garb. Hmm, there’s a possibility. Learn some manners. Hm. That for later.”
Kalut turned and went through an opening that appeared as he approached a wall. As he left, he was still talking, though whether to himself or to some unseen listener wasn’t clear. It certainly wasn’t to us.
“Who’s he talking to?” Nik said.
I shrugged. As far as I could tell, he spoke to the air.
“We’re prisoners of a lunatic,” Beso said.
“An eccentric,” Henrik amended, “but he’s not insane. He’s an elf, though, beyond a doubt.”
“Sane for an elf, then,” Nik said.
“Huh. Huh. Huh,” from Cosmas.
“I don’t find any of this amusing,” I said. “We’re being treated like circus animals.”
“I won’t be a trained dog for anyone.” This from Beso.
“Good point,” Nik said. “We’re not being treated like prisoners, which means they may not take the usual precautions for prisoners. I’m starting to like our chances of escape.”
“To where?” I said, bitterly.
“One step at a time,” Nik said.
Dark figures appeared from out of a wall.
They wore full-length robes so perfectly black and opaque as to hide all but the mere outline of form. Black cowls covered their heads. Black gloves covered their hands. They kept their heads down, faces deep within their cowls, bowing repeatedly. They must have worn slippers, for they moved soundlessly.
They were a dozen or more—it was hard to count shadows. They did not speak, not even to each other, but only gestured in small motions, not so much commanding or requesting as hinting. When all we did was look at each other in uncertainty, they gestured and bowed in a more earnest fashion. Every motion was discreetly contained. No movement went more than a few inches from the body.
“Gnomes,” Beso said.
“I think they’re the wash-up crew,” Nik said.
“We should go with them,” I said.
“I could use some cleaning up,” Henrik said.
Two gnomes moved toward one wall, returned, then repeated, with ever-deepening bows.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Beso announced. He planted his feet wide, crossed his arms, and set his jaw. It made him look a little ridiculous, but no one laughed.
“You think you smell like roses?” Nik asked without inquiring. “Bathe first, Bessarion, then resist.”
The chin went farther out.
“I can carry him,” Cosmas said. “As before.”
Beso flailed his arms and shouted, “You keep your hands off me!”
The gnomes scattered like startled birds.
“Beso,” I said, as gently as I could manage, “please do come along. I’d like you to.”
He crossed his arms again, but his eyes were ready for compromise.
“I’ll stay here with you, if you insist,” I said, “but I’m hungry and dirty and tired. If you come along, we may be fed, bathed, and rested.” I leaned closer to add in a whisper, “Then we’ll be better able to fight back.”
His arms uncrossed.
“They must give us better food,” he said.
We passed through narrow halls of light that curved not only left and right but up and down as well. As we walked, the dark yellow floor lightened beneath our feet, leaving footprints that lingered for a few seconds, then faded. I saw no doors, though there might have been a hundred, if they were like the ones Kalut had used. The whole place felt insubstantial, as if the building had been woven out of fog. Or as if it were living skin.
The bathing room certainly looked fixed and solid. Tubs stood along the walls, six in all, of differing sizes, each filled with hot water. I smelled soap.
With bows and gestures, the gnomes guided each of us to a tub. One was of a size to accommodate the ogre. Three gnomes brought me to mine. Heads down, one held a towel while one held out something that I prayed was soap. It smelled of flowers.
I looked around for another room, for some privacy, but saw none. Nik caught my glance.
“It’s communal,” he said with a good-natured grin. “I won’t look if you won’t.”
I’m afraid I may have blushed.
I managed to disrobe and get into the tub with some modesty, by getting the gnome to make a screen of the towel. I was, to be honest, more concerned with cleanliness at that point than with propriety. As I relaxed into the delicious embrace of warm water, I reflected that much of what we call proper behavior is really a social luxury. We only make rules about conduct and dress when all our basic needs are assured. No one in a loincloth issues sumptuary legislation.
I’ll pass over the bath scene, except to note how restorative is such a simple experience as soap (for such it proved to be) and hot water. At the end of the process, as the gnomes dried me, I chanced to knock back the cowl of one. He fell to the floor on his back, hands up as if about to be beaten.
I only stared, for the gnome’s fur was gone, and the flesh was as black as the cowl. Even his eyes were black. It shocked me, for gnomes are always the most pleasing brown and blond in their fur, and tan in their skin. Their eyes are famously pretty. He scrambled to cover himself again, but the impression remained of disfigurement.
I turned away, embarrassed. Behind me came the sound of scuffling, then a tug at my arm. I turned. The gnome was gone. Or perhaps clothed again. In their robes, they all looked the same.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said anxiously. “It was an accident.” I had no idea if the gnomes understood, for their expressions were uniformly meek and quite unreadable.
Our clothes had been taken, replaced by robes that had no cowl and were deep gold in color. No magic fabric here; these were comfortingly opaque. Once we were all dressed, the baths seemed to melt and transform, to become couches, with small tables next to each. Gnomes entered carrying bowls and set them on the tables, making motions we should eat. We each received two bowls, one a warm soup, the other holding bits of a dark, fleshy substance, very chewy.
“I wish I could eat and sleep at the same time,” Nik said.
I fully agreed. Hunger fought with weariness, but hunger won as it always did. I managed to get down a modicum of the tasteless, beige soup, decided the effort of chewing the meat-like stuff to be more work than it was worth. I was just beginning to choose sleep over food when the gnomes returned.
“No rest for us,” Nik said.
The gnomes were gesturing, and an opening had formed in the wall again. I wasn’t sure if it was the same one or not.
“Do you suppose it’s Kalut?” I asked.
“Probably. I haven’t even seen another elf in this place. You’d think there’d be hundreds, in a building this size. If Kalut has this whole tower to himself, he’s living gr
ander than a troll king.”
“We shouldn’t mention the Surface,” I said.
“Quite,” Henrik said. He was already up and arranged. “Let the drow bring it up.”
“What? Why?”
But the gnomes were becoming frantic in their prating, so I let it go. The professor would, I reflected, have only given another cryptic reply for me to puzzle over.
Kalut awaited us in the same room, or a different one. It was hard to tell. It was larger and a different color, the walls being a tawny shade like mead, but everything in the place seemed to take on form and color at need. Perhaps the whole tower was but one ever-changing room, an organism, a host to its inhabitants.
The drow wore a new sort of robe, of many layers. It descended from a high collar of nearly transparent lemon to a golden brown at his feet that swirled as if alive. Never have I seen so beautiful a garment. Hues swam through the robe like schools of fish in a pond, darting and gathering with his every movement, and even with every word or phrase he spoke.
“Sit.”
Couches formed at the word, in three sizes, one for each of our three Folk. The drow remained standing.
I arrived in a foul mood. I’d been washed and fed, which only made me feel my weariness all the more keenly. I didn’t care to be summoned like a dog at its master’s whim. Whatever Kalut wanted, I thought, let him be done with it quickly. Just let me rest awhile.
I should have known the professor’s mind ran in the other direction. He started in the moment we sat.
“We asked before what you wanted with us, sir. Perhaps you could do us the courtesy of a reply.”
“Courtesy.” The drow repeated the word as if it were foreign to his mouth. “Toward you?”
“Uncle, go slow,” Nik said quietly.
“You do understand,” the professor said after a quick nod to his nephew, “how extraordinary all this is to us.”
“I wondered if you would be able to appreciate the beauty,” Kalut said. He turned a full circle, as if to take it all in himself.
“This tower is striking, true enough, but I refer not only to yourselves but to the gnomes and the dürgar; indeed, to the plants and animals, and to the very existence of a world at the center of the world.”
The drow’s eyes closed. “This is the true world,” he said, dreamily.
“Our world’s as real as yours,” Beso said.
“It is secondary,” Kalut said. Two eyes opened. “Only lesser beings live there.”
Cosmas remained outwardly calm, but the other three bridled openly. I spoke up, looking for safer ground.
“Earlier you said something about an arrayal. Is that a feast of some sort?”
Kalut made a clicking sound. “You are most amusing,” he said. “The Arrayal is more than a feast. More than you can comprehend, in truth. All gather. Everything said there is … oh, how could you possibly understand? It is an ordering, a reordering. It is the making of reputation, the adjustment. A renewal. You people lack the values, you all grub about crawl along ….” He trailed off, then added, “But you will play your role.”
“What role?” I asked quickly, before any of us could voice offense at his words.
“I will take you to the Arrayal,” he said. “I have considered other approaches, but this will be best. Oh, what fortune you are!”
We all stared at him, unsure what to make of this.
“Agedat will have no answer at all. He had only the one; I have five!” He paused, then said, “I will show you.”
We waited, but that seemed to be all of it.
Beso spoke. “Show us? How? To whom?” His fists were clenched. He leaned forward, glowering, but the drow appeared to take no notice.
“To all, naturally,” Kalut said, “but to Agedat particularly. They will see how harmless you are, how powerless. You shall be a great surprise, and I shall vault over the other towers in repute.” He sighed with satisfaction.
Nik leaned back, as if also in satisfaction. Henrik, though, sought to bring the conversation to his own interest.
“You called this the true world,” he said. “Is this the home of the elves, then?”
“You are ignorant,” Kalut said, the way a person might say you have brown hair. “The people you call elves are a misbegotten tribe of criminals. True, we share a common ancestor, but nothing else. Elves have no virtue, their name is lightless, and their Center Eye sees only falsehood.”
“All very poetic,” Henrik said, “but also empty of meaning.”
“No words are empty of meaning,” Kalut said.
“I mean to say, you did not answer the question.”
“If that is what you mean to say, you ought to say it. But there, many times I have observed your kind take too many words to say too little.”
“And you still are not answering.”
“Oh, you will cause such a sensation at the Arrayal,” Kalut said, his lips curling upward. It might have been a smile.
“Never mind that,” Henrik said. “Tell me how the elves got from here to the surface world.”
“But you know that,” Kalut said, genuinely surprised. “Even you people know of Atlantis.”
I gasped out loud, but Henrik merely smiled.
“I would hear your version, to compare it with ours.”
“You compare truth with fallacies and misunderstandings.”
“So, correct me.”
Kalut made a gesture that might have been a shrug.
“The elves gathered in a single city. They planned to raise it into your world. They did not care at all what happened when they did so. Some refused to go. The project was a perversion and some refused to be a part of it. Those who remained, the elves called drow—left behind. They meant it as an insult, but we took the name as a badge of honor. It means not left behind, but those who stayed. It was a choice. A choice not to go into a land of corruption.”
“It doesn’t look like you made that great a choice,” Nik said.
“No?”
“Your world is dying.”
Kalut’s robe became nearly opaque. “All worlds die,” he said. “All people die.”
“Some live longer than others.”
I grimaced. Was Nik trying to provoke the drow?
“The corruption you see is the direct and sole result of Atlantis. Their corruption spread outward after the event.”
Nik leaned back with his arms crossed.
“What about the dwarves?” Beso said, his voice as tense as his body.
“The dürgar, you mean,” Kalut said. “They were close to Atlantis when it happened. They were … affected. Disrupted? You do not have the right word. Changed, I suppose.”
“You talk as if all this happened recently.”
“No, long ago. Very long. Entire lifetimes were spent just cleaning up, and more lifetimes trying to survive. And still more, building a new life with new cities. One by one, those failed, or were overcome, until we drow solved every problem. Now, all who wish to live, live here, in the homeland.”
I glanced at Nik, expecting him to say something about oppression and freedom and the gnomes. This wasn’t the time to rail at our jailer. Not if we were to get answers.
“Why did the elves do this?” I asked quickly. Nik just shook his head.
“Why?” Kalut said. “Because they are insane. Mad with power. They did it to show they could. Who knows why elves do anything?” His robe shifted patterns with almost each word. “It was a long time ago. Beyond the reach of memory. It doesn’t matter.”
“Reasons why always matter,” I said.
His robe settled on a saffron sheen.
“You humans always think that. It’s why you invented history—you think to control the future by mastering the past. But you forget, there is only the present.”
A dozen arguments crowded forward in my mind, but I chose another entirely.
“We do think that, but it’s not why we invented history, or any other area of research. We did it because w
e are curious. Relentlessly curious. We pretend it’s for a purpose, we believe there’s a benefit, but after all the justifications, the fact is we can’t help ourselves. It’s an instinct with us, as fundamental as breathing and as unavoidable as sneezing.”
Kalut looked at me for a long time. I met his gaze while trying hard not to look into the pale stare of his Center Eye. When he spoke, the saffron tones deepened.
“You are not entirely uninteresting,” he said at last. It was probably meant as a compliment.
“We don’t believe you about the dwarves. We saw signs of war.” Henrik was challenging him again. “The dwarves were driven out.”
“Is that what you think?” Kalut replied contemptuously. “The dwarves fled. They are cowards who abandoned their own people, and burned their city behind them. That is what you saw. Nothing more. They could not survive here. They stole some elvish secrets … no!”
At the word stole Beso lunged at Kalut. At the cry of no! the drow lifted the golden rod and fired. There was a sound of bees in the room, and Beso fell forward onto his face.
Cosmos moved in front of Henrik. Nik started forward, but I dove and cut him off, getting to Beso’s side.
“Nik!” I cried. “Help me with Beso.”
Nik hesitated, and that was enough. Kalut held his gun level, but did not fire. I called Nik’s name again, and he finally turned toward me. He came and knelt beside Beso, bending over to put one ear next to the dwarf’s mouth. He nodded to let me know Beso was still breathing, then he stood again.
“You’re lucky he’s alive,” he said to Kalut.
“It is not luck. I took appropriate action. Truly, you will all be most amusing at the Arrayal. Look how they fight! Look how easily they fall! Agedat and the others will not soon regain preeminence.”
The drow got to his feet, indifferent to any sense of conflict, and began to walk away. As he crossed the room, he spoke again as if to the air.
“We leave soon. You will wear your own clothes. For effect.”
A doorway formed, then disappeared behind him. I rushed to Beso’s side.
“How bad is he?” Nik asked me.
“I can’t tell. He’s unconscious, but I can’t see any wound. I don’t know if that’s a relief or a worry.”