Shadow Star

by Chris Claremont

  When next she looked down to the base of the tower, there was no floor. Only a surface, supernally smooth and featureless, that most resembled a vat of heavy oil save that it was lit from beneath by a glow that echoed Elora’s argent coloration.

  She sagged against the wall and stood braced there a little while, reflecting on what she’d done.

  “I have no magic,” she said in the barest whisper, summoning forth the memory of an exchange with Drumheller.

  “Not in the way most folks define the term, no” was his reply. “In a sense, you are magic.”

  “Hooray for me.”

  “Through my spells, I can command forces and powers. That, you cannot do. By the same token, you are likewise immune to those spells and those powers. Your gift instead, child, is to summon forth the magic in others, to draw them to you like a beacon would a fleet of ships. The question is, to safe harbor or to the rocks that will spell their doom.”

  She had been younger then, so she had ended the conversation the best way she knew how—by sticking out her tongue. She felt that urge again.

  Her steps wove a bit, side to side, as she made her way to the tower’s upper entrance, where Thorn and the others waited. She wasn’t tired, but the intensity of the rush had taken its toll.

  Thorn was waiting and as she stepped through the doorway, both brownies leaped from his shoulders to hers, snugging close to her neck, where they could best keep watch against any blindside attacks.

  “Hooray for me,” she said dryly.

  “Told you so.”

  “Everyone ready?”

  “As they’ll ever be.”

  “Thorn—!” she tried to begin, but that was as far as he’d let her go.

  “I’ve already had this out with Khory.”

  “You should listen to her. For once, old duffer, you should listen to me!”

  “I always listen. I merely don’t agree. I need to stay. You must go, and Khory with you.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Fine. Then she can take care of the rest of the column. Time’s wasting, Elora.”

  She nodded. “Tyrrel and his folk first,” she announced.

  Elora stepped aside, fitting herself into an alcove just beyond the doorway, as a faint thrumming made itself heard, interposed with the flutter of insectile wings. A few solitary beads of light formed the vanguard, flitting through the narrow hallway and into the tower. They formed a line on a level with Elora’s eyes, about three feet apart from each other, each of them linked by a spiderweb of energy. They were taking no chances. The string placed them in constant contact with one another, so that if the scouts ran into trouble they’d be able to communicate it instantly to Tyrrel.

  Moments stretched while they waited for word from the fairy Pathfinders. Absently, Elora plucked her knives from belt and boot and slipped them into her traveling pouch. In their place, she drew forth a pair of curved swords, her own forging from her days not so long ago when she served as apprentice to Thorn’s cousin, Torquil, of the Rock Nelwyn. Plain, unadorned scabbards and fitments, the metal of the blades folded hundreds of times, pounded and honed to the keenest edge known. Torquil had provided the ore but Elora had refined it, creating an amalgam that matched the strength of steel but was forged of noble metals, making them safe for use beyond the Veil.

  One she thrust into her own belt, the other was for Khory.

  With the all clear came the bulk of the fairy host, a cloud of iridescence that seemed to consist of all the fireflies in Creation, generating every color imaginable. They flew, they walked, they crawled, they were carried. They were smaller than a finger, they stood as tall as a child. They were naked, they wore all manner of clothing. They resembled Daikini in general form, perfect in every respect save size; they were nothing like Elora’s kind. They passed her in a steady stream for the best part of an hour, under the watchful gaze of Drumheller and their Monarch, without a word spoken.

  They were considered creatures of the Veil yet the overwhelming sensation Elora received from this multitude was of loss. They were being driven from their homes as much as the Daikini who would follow. Their present was as unsettled, their future just as uncertain.

  The first of those Daikini looked even more uneasy. They were bunched in the entrance to the house, by the scriptorium, gathered into a close huddle, children in the center. Elora tried to jolly them with a smile as she sidled by; she’d have a better chance of a response preaching to stone. Intellectually, she’d done a rough total of the column, it was another thing altogether to actually behold it winding its serpentine way back and forth across the waryard. Luc-Jon met her on the porch, lugging a bulging satchel, which he explained was full of letters and mementos from those who’d remain. She wanted to grab him away to some hidden corner, and steal time enough for a private farewell, but that wasn’t possible. He put on his bravest face and traced the line of her jaw with his fingertips, sending a fierce thrill straight down to her toes. She cast decorum to the winds right then and there, grabbing him by the melton wool of his hood that lay flat and bunched up close about his throat and pulling his lips to hers.

  It was the best kiss she’d ever given (or received) and it prompted a scattering of applause and good humor from the onlookers. More to the point, it left Luc-Jon bright-eyed and breathless, dazzled beyond speech.

  “You live, you hear!” she told him, and though her tone was as young and excited as his, her eyes as glittery, there was also the force to her words of a royal command.

  “I’ll do my best,” he joked, so she dropped all pretense.

  “You—live!” This time, it was a command and the force of custom plus her own indomitable presence rocked him back on his heels.

  His reply was in kind, and just as serious.

  “I shall do my best,” he told her, and it was only when she released him that he realized he’d straightened to full attention.

  When Khory chose that moment to approach, Elora grabbed the second blade from her belt and tossed it to her, in a single smooth, graceful motion. Khory matched it, snatching the weapon from midair and drawing it from its scabbard. The blade ran the length of her arm and followed the natural curve of that limb. When she reached to full extension, it seemed like a living part of her.

  Elora expected the warrior to hand over her own straight-edge broadsword for safekeeping in Elora’s traveling pouch, but Khory demurred, slinging the heavy blade diagonally across her back, right shoulder to left hip.

  “Tyrrel won’t like that,” Elora cautioned.

  “Tell him it’s the demon in my nature, being contrary,” she replied with a laconic twist to her mouth.

  “Time to go, then?”

  “They’ve lost enough nerve, by the looks of ’em,” Khory said, meaning the gathering crowd. “Let’s roll before they’re dry.”

  Elora took a last look at the fort and its garrison and hurried inside as her eyes began to burn hot with unexpected tears. A farewell wave from Shando on the battlements had been more than she could bear.

  Unaware how much like Khory’s her stride had become, her own legs just shy of the warrior’s in length, Elora made her way to the front of the line, deliberately presenting a face of good cheer and resolve. Tyrrel awaited her in the doorway, his wooden sword—whose keenness placed it in good company with steel when it came to cutting flesh—held at the ready. His weapon came from a markedly different design philosophy than Daikini blades; fairy swords were much shorter, the length of a forearm rather than the full yard that was the Daikini standard, and shaped like a slim leaf, with a serrated edge. At her approach, he raised it flat across his chest in salute.

  A mother and children stood near the head of the line. The woman was having a difficult time coping with toddlers and an infant barely a year old, grumpy because it was well past his bedtime. She was grateful when Elora snugged the baby i
nto her own arms and amazed at how quickly the child slipped into sleep.

  “My own nannies,” Elora confessed to the woman, “could never get me to be so cooperative.” Then, to Tyrrel, “My lord, shall we?”

  “I bid you welcome, you and yours, Elora Danan, to my Realm. I wish on all of us safe journey and Godspeed.”

  Elora led the way down the steps and onto the landing at the bottom. The floor remained so utterly motionless it could easily be mistaken for solid ground yet radiated sufficient light from beneath its surface to illuminate the entire tower. With a backward glance and a smile of encouragement, Elora continued her descent as the landing proceeded to another set of descending steps. She passed into the floor without raising a ripple, even as a burst of alarm hurried back along the people following her.

  Elora didn’t bother with any words of reassurance, none would listen. Instead, she maintained her deliberate pace, sensing that the others had come to a stop, ignoring the mother’s frantic outcry for her baby as the eerie substance of the floor passed Elora’s ankle, her knee, her hip. The next step would put the floor at the baby’s chin, the one after would immerse them both.

  Elora never heard the woman’s wail of loss. She was already gone.

  Before shock had a chance to turn to outright panic, she was back, ascending the stairs to the landing, only now the baby was awake in her arms, gurgling contentedly and utterly unharmed.

  “It’s safe,” Elora called out, in a voice that filled the tower and would have served her well amidst a pitched battle. “I know you’re afraid, but this is our only salvation. Trust me,” she said, and held out her free hand to the baby’s mother.

  The woman grabbed her more tightly than any vise. Elora didn’t mind.

  Once more, she began her descent and passed through the boundary layer of the floor. And, as always happened with World Gates, where the normal rules of existence and nature never seemed to apply, found herself immediately climbing up out of an identical pool on the other side. The woman went all goggle-eyed, while a toddler made sounds of delight and amazement. Her brother, another toddler, shorter and younger, burst immediately into tears, which gave the mother something constructive to do.

  The contrast with the Realm of the Malevoiy was absolute, striking at all her senses with an immediacy that nearly stopped Elora in her tracks. Her strongest feeling among the Malevoiy was of a world and people who existed as the barest of memories. There was a ghostliness to every shape and substance, like a tomb that had been too long sealed, wherein even the air had gone tasteless and stale.

  The Realm of Lesser Faery reached as far as possible in the other direction. The air was so crisp and clear that every breath scoured her lungs with flame. It hurt, tremendously, but this was the kind of pain that actually felt delicious. In every direction, for as far as she could see, her eyes beheld a greensward of such richness all the labels for colors she had stored inside her skull suddenly became useless. Meadows of grass interspersed with wildflowers covered gently rolling hills and in the moderate distance stood a forest the like of which could not be found on the Daikini side of the Veil. This was a world very much like their own, yet possessing a vitality and a passion so fierce that even as any Daikini would rush to embrace it, they would be as surely consumed. In simplest terms, it was the difference between standing before the warmth of a candleflame and beneath the untrammeled fury of the sun itself.

  There was beauty here to make the heart ache and, of course, it was the children who responded best as Khory shepherded the last of the column through the Gate and she and Elora, Tyrrel and his fairy host, plus some of the adults among the Daikini, tried to form their unwieldy group into a semblance of marching order.

  “We’ve a ways to go,” Elora told them, though her attempts at the stern demeanor of a leader were subverted by giggles and shrieks of laughter and delight coming from the nearby field the children had appropriated for their own. They were playing tag, kids against fairies, and the meadow was patterned with color and light as the tiny, winged creatures zoomed this way and that to evade the eager but mostly clumsy attempts of the youngsters to capture them. Now and then, the fairies would swarm on a child, scooping him or her into the air for a brief ride that would be remembered for a lifetime.

  “Tregare to Sandeni afoot,” someone posited, “that’ll take us weeks!”

  “Time and distance don’t mean the same on this side of the Veil,” Tyrrel countered. “More likely, we’ll reach the Sandeni Gate in a few days.”

  “Assumin’ yeh know the way.”

  The Monarch of Lesser Faery creased a smile. “This is my Realm, sirrah.”

  “Is there food enough for the journey?” another asked.

  “My people will provide,” Tyrrel told them, which ignited a frisson of anxiety among the refugees. The oldest of wives’ tales told of the dangers of eating or drinking anything in the Realms of Faery, that doing so would enslave a person’s soul to them forever.

  “We are the Liege Lord of Lesser Faery,” Tyrrel cried in his best parade-ground voice, using the formal pronoun to remind them of his status, “Monarch of one of the Great Realms. In Our domain, Our will is law. You are welcome here. There is nothing to fear, not from Our subjects, nor from anything that lives or grows on these lands. Eat and drink your fill, you will be safe. Of that, you have Our most solemn pledge.”

  “Not altogether true,” Elora told him wryly as she and Tyrrel took the point, out beyond the head of the column.

  “You doubt Our word, Sacred Princess?”

  “Never! I just mean, once you’ve had a glimpse of paradise, it can’t help but change you.”

  “Paradise,” he snorted. “Forgive me, Elora Danan, but it only looks the part. An epoch ago, an epoch from now, it would look exactly the same, as would we.”

  “Is constancy so bad a thing?”

  “I admire a fly frozen in amber but it’s a helluva way to spend eternity. Still, for all my complaints, we’re better off here than in Greater Faery.”

  Tyrrel gestured with thumb and chin, off to the most distant horizon. Elora narrowed her eyes, assuming for a moment what she saw was some trick of the light. Marching all along that rim of the world was a magnificent escarpment, mountain peaks that more closely resembled spires, arranged in a serried rank that had to be so tall they’d dwarf the Stairs to Heaven back home. Most strange about them was the eerie sense that they were a mirage. Elora was sure she could see right through them and decided it was because they weren’t composed of stone at all but a kind of crystal. To her eye, they had no solidity, but existed in a flat plane, as if the sky were a transparent canvas on which some artisan had etched a design in acid.

  “Is that real?” she asked.

  “I’d tell you to go see for yourself, youngster, but then you prob’ly would.”

  The truth of his observation made them both chuckle.

  “Greater Faery, is it?” Then, after a bit more consideration. “How cold it seems.”

  “The Realms reflect the nature of their inhabitants. Because we of Lesser Faery spend as much time on your side of the Veil as on ours, because many of us make our homes among the Daikini, this land reflects that interaction. The High Elves of Greater Faery keep mainly to themselves.”

  “You don’t approve.”

  “ ’S’na’ a question o’ that, lass. Drumheller was born a farmer and a Nelwyn; look at him now. Find me another Nelwyn in all memory who would willingly stand at the scene of a Daikini battle, to cast his life into the hazard alongside them Tall Folk, with the knowledge he has of what’s coming.”

  “Don’t remind me, Tyrrel, or I’ll be back to join him.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “You doubt me?”

  “You’re the one who opens dead World Gates, Elora Danan. Without you, the way to Sandeni is closed for these folk. Is that fair payment for th
eir trust?”

  “Sometimes, Tyrrel, your words can be as remorseless as Drumheller’s.”

  “But you know them to be true.”

  “I know them to be true,” she echoed, in the barest of whispers.

  “You’ve changed, milady, just in the few months since we’ve met—and that’s my point. Change, Elora Danan. Growth! The constants of life. You Daikini have the shortest spans of all the Realms, yet with that mayfly existence comes the ability to alter the shape of your world almost beyond our recognition. We accept the world as it is, your kind tend to see it as a challenge. So mayhap”—and he looked back along their line of march—“the main good that comes out of this trek is your kind gets to see why we treasure the world and mine comes to accept that you’re not all monsters.”

  “Monsters?”

  “Aye, Elora, to the dryad whose grove is cleared to make room for a farmer’s field, or worse yet a road. To the naiad whose stream is dammed for irrigation or befouled by the refuse of some new town. Of a surety, we can retreat behind the Veil, but that’ll make us just like them yonder.” Another gesture toward the mirage mountains. “And you’ll lose the passion we offer.”

  The column’s route took them close by the woods and excited cries were raised as a Royal pair of deer appeared from the shadows, the King of the Forest and his consort. The stag stood taller than most warhorses, with more points to his antlers than could easily be counted. The couple matched the refugees’ pace a while, until the King was satisfied this incursion represented no threat to his people, then vanished into the forest in a single, powerful bound.

  With Tyrrel’s permission, a few campfires were lit as dusk spread across the sky. The rest were provided for by Elora, as she sang a variation on her Song of Remembrance, this time to a collection of rocks and stones, reminding them of how they’d felt when originally cast forth from the molten core of the World. Under Khory’s supervision, trenches were dug for latrines as camp was made close by a meandering stream.