Shadow Star

by Chris Claremont

  Its water was like liquid crystal, a fair substitute for both wine and beer. There was no meat to be had, save what had been brought with them, and, having seen the King of the Forest, precious little enthusiasm for going hunting. Fruits and vegetables proved, surprisingly, a most acceptable alternative.

  As full night fell, the stars were visible. They were the same as could be seen on the Daikini side of the Veil, but the purity of the air allowed them to be presented in all their majestic glory. Even Elora was touched by the vision and a yearning to discover if those tiny dots of light above were truly suns like their own, circled by worlds such as this. A stillness came over the campground, as families tucked themselves in, the air dancing both with the firefly light of fairies keeping watch and the sounds of jokes, idle comments, endearments, entreaties. Wrapped in her warcloak, Elora wandered among the tents and lean-tos, savoring these ordinary realities of life. There was sadness in the air, for those left behind, and anger for possessions that had been lost—in some cases, the work of generations—but in such a land of peace and beauty these negative emotions didn’t linger long. She saw youngsters, too excited by this journey yet to surrender to sleep, gazing in rapt astonishment at some of the Veil Folk, drawn forth from the surrounding woods by just as strong a curiosity. Places were made by fires, fairy mead offered by hands that were webbed or bore six fingers, the gesture returned with flasks of hearty dark beer or highland wine. A grandfather waved his hand toward the sky and pontificated to a clutch of children the complete history of this constellation and that, while nearby one of Tyrrel’s people, who looked scarcely older than her audience though she’d seen easily twice the old man’s years and more, did much the same.

  She heard a guitar from one camp, fiddle from another, the roiling beat of a tiompan drum from a third, voices raised tentatively in song. She wandered over toward the guitar, accepted the instrument when it was proffered. Of their own volition, her fingers plucked at the strings, a random collection of notes at first that soon resolved themselves into an improvised melody. This was toe-tapping music, irresistibly infectious, and she let inspiration drive her forward, determined to lure some of her audience off their duffs and into a dance.

  A father of middle age was the first to accept her invitation and she modified her playing to suit his ability as she saw that ambition had an edge in him over skill.

  Then, suddenly, came a gasp from the crowd, the Daikini stopping dead in his tracks, as a spectral figure emerged from the fringes of the fireglow. Even Elora was taken aback, her fingers stumbling on the strings. Tyrrel rose to meet the newcomer, with a formal courtesy he rarely showed, and bid her welcome.

  She was elf and she was noble, taller than anything human had a right to be and whipcord thin. There were no obvious curves to her, yet at the same time she cast forth an aura of womanliness that matched even the most matronly Daikini present. Her hair hung to her ankles, caught by carved-jade clasps at the nape of the neck, the shoulders, and her waist, and wound into a loose braid beyond. If it were left unbound, Elora knew every strand would be precisely the same length, so that her hair would form a totally flat and even edge. Her skin was so pale it distantly echoed Elora’s silver coloring, her eyes touched by the faintest hint of cerulean, whereas Elora’s were a blue so dark there was almost no difference between iris and pupil. Her face was oval, her features possessed of the kind of grave beauty that men found haunting. The only bright spots on her were the gems that were dusted in runic patterns onto the fabric of her skinsnug gown, ankle-length and long-sleeved with a shallow scoop neck. The material itself was a gossamer so fragile to the eye it seemed the slightest touch would shred it. The gown flowed with her movements and created the sense that the elven Princess was shrouded by mist.

  In perfect harmony with Elora’s tune, and a grace that made the heart ache to watch, the Princess spun her way once twice thrice across the clearing to where the Daikini stood dumbfounded in the face of such a vision.

  She offered him her hand and a smile.

  It was quite a scene, Elora perched on a flat-topped boulder, guitar in hand, her skin gleaming like polished metal in the torchlight. Before her, a Princess of Greater Faery scandalizing her unseen brethren in the nearby shadows by doing what none of her kind had ever considered before, reaching out her hand in friendship to a Daikini. And that Daikini, torn between visions of this moment as a dream or a nightmare, wholly unsure of what to do and terrified that no matter how he chose it would be wrong.

  Elora’s smile was lazy, and a tad wicked, and the song she began was a match. The only thing it had in common with her initial piece was that it was for dancing and that it was as close to irresistible as she could manage. To the audience, it seemed at first that she played in vain because nothing much happened. The elven Princess stood stock-still, and whispers could be heard like the rustle of a background breeze, wondering if she’d lost her nerve, if she regretted stepping into view like this and how could she withdraw without shame? Virtually the same was said about her partner.

  To their surprise, it was the Daikini who made the first move. He had a good smile and he used it without trying, letting it light up his face as he gave full vent to the wonder he felt at the sight of the Princess. He bent his torso a little to the left, allowed Elora’s beat to bring him back to the right; he let his feet follow suit, and Elora made it easy with a strongly defined melody line. Then, out of nowhere, a sharp burst of chords sent the pair of them into each other’s arms and from there on, they were magic together.

  They each brought something to the dance, the Princess offering a measure of her supernal grace, the Daikini an unexpectedly unbridled passion; from Elora Danan came the music that bound them together and offered the opportunity to transcend culture and heritage and especially the prejudices that had kept their races apart for so long.

  From off to the side, from somewhere among the watching Daikini, came the wail of uilleann pipes, harmonizing off Elora’s melody, to be answered—almost as if on cue—by the riffling staccato drumbeat of a tiompan from where some of Tyrrel’s folk were gathered. A great grin split Elora’s face and her fingers struck at the guitar strings so fast their movements were a blur. The moment had become timeless, she cared nothing for the fate of Tregare or the perpetual winter that threatened the world, or the threat of the Deceiver. She existed for the joy and beauty created by this music and cast it outward to the audience as the sun would its rays of light and warmth.

  The song built to a crescendo and then, with a last tremendous chord, Elora brought it to an end, the sheer intensity of the act driving her to her feet.

  There was a wondrous silence, as the whole gathering attempted to catch its collective breath. Elora’s lungs pumped like a bellows, face flushed with sweat, eyes sparkling with crystalline brilliance, her body radiating such a glow of energy that you’d think her silver skin would turn molten. The dancers were no less transported, the Daikini with his hands around the Princess’s waist, she with hers cupping his face, their bodies curved bonelessly together in such rare rapport that the difference in their height actually seemed an asset. Her hair had come undone and as she leaned forward it cascaded around them like a cloak, hiding what happened next from the view of all, which was no doubt what the lady intended as she made this public moment one that was both private and as intimate as if they were alone.

  In all likelihood they would never see each other again but that didn’t matter. They would also never forget what happened here and it would be a memory both would treasure.

  A cheer bellowed from the crowd and as if that was a signal the whole campsite went mad with applause, filling the air with a deafening roar of approval. With an echo of the Princess’s grace, the Daikini took a step away, still keeping hold of her hands, and bowed formally at the waist, as elegant a gesture as any practiced at court. Her response was in kind.

  As they parted, Elora finished her mug of w
ater, repositioned herself on her seat, and began once more to sing. This was a gentle roundelay, offered like a sorbet to cleanse the palate between the main courses of a meal. When it was done, she slid smoothly into a song of moderate tempo that spoke of longing and love, and she smiled to herself as she caught the Daikini looking over his shoulder toward the Princess, before gathering his wife into his arms and strolling from the fire to find a shadow of their own.

  On that impulse, her next tune was mischievous, a playful, roguish romp the audience knew so well that many chose to join in.

  When Elora finally called it quits, after so many encores she actually lost count, her voice was a ghost of its true self and her clothes sodden, leaving her certain she’d lost a serious percentage of her body weight to sweat. She clambered off her perch and rubbed her sore butt, waggling her hips in an effort to restore lost circulation and writing a mental note to herself to include a sheepskin pad in her next performance so she’d at least have a comfortable seat.

  She had no sense of the Princess’s approach, only of her presence, and turned toward a face that loomed a third again beyond her own height.

  “I hated you for Angwyn,” the Princess said without preamble, and with a directness rare among her kind. “My mother and father remain there still, bound by the Deceiver’s sorcery. I held you to blame.”

  Elora said nothing.

  “I always thought,” she continued, her voice reminding Elora of the chiming of crystal bells, and which gave the plainest of words the sparkling melody of birdsong, “I should do you harm when we met. To take from you a pain to equal my own.”

  Again, Elora held silent.

  “But you are not the enemy.”

  “I never have been,” Elora said at last. “I pray I never will be.”

  “You are the light, she is the shadow. Forever at odds, forever one. In her, naught but despair. In you, foolish hope. Yet from that hope”—a flashfire smile, a sidelong flick of the eyes toward the Daikini—“a…revelation.”

  “Life should be full of them. Keeps us on our toes.” Long six-fingered hands cupped Elora’s face with a touch so faint it could be felt only as the barest tickle of sensation, yet she also knew that within that deceptively frail frame was a strength that beggared description. She’d seen High Elves take hold of Daikini with bodies built like barrels, all of it muscle, and break their bones like twigs. A flick of the wrist here could snap her neck, a handclap crush her skull. It wasn’t so long ago that some of this race had actively sought her death.

  Instead, what came was a kiss, as formal a pledge as oaths sworn in blood, as absolute a commitment as any written treaty.

  “I stand with you, Elora Danan,” the Princess told her. “Against all foes, to whatever end may come.”

  “Because of a dance?”

  “Because of what that dance showed me, about myself and these Daikini with whom we share our worlds. Because I would rather embrace hope than despair.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Our trust is not lightly given. Be worthy of it.”

  Gradually, after the departure of the elven Princess and her retinue, the human intrusion into the nightly chorus faded to silence, allowing Elora the chance to catalog the sounds of nature. The breeze rustling the tips of branches, the crowns of trees, a sharper, more emphatic stirring that told her of creatures hopscotching their way across those limbs. A crash in the middle distance as something was stirred to flight, a yowl of disappointment from whatever had hoped to make it dinner. No sense of insects, the sound of their buzzing was masked by the fairies’ wings, but plenty of birds, twirps and chitters and trills, the whoot of a solitary owl.

  Over everything, a sense of peace. Of every element of life and nature living in harmony. Elora understood now the attraction the Realms beyond the Veil had for the Daikini, and the terror. There was nothing in their own Realm to equal this; at first glance, those who crossed the Veil must have thought they’d wandered into paradise. It was more wonderful than anything Elora had imagined…

  …and she knew, as well, and with a profound sadness, that if she came here to live it would drive her mad.

  With that thought, and the smile that went with it, she fell asleep.

  Immediately, her eyes opened. She knew it was a dream, that didn’t make the shock any the less.

  The topography hadn’t changed but that was the only thing.

  The greenery was gone, overlaid by a sheet of ice, and she remembered the ancient hero stories that told of the days when gods and wizards could do such terrible things, with an incantation and a puff of enchanted breath. Suddenly, this had become a world that had never known the slightest touch of warmth, or joy of any kind, a place whose undeniable beauty gloried in its equally harsh brutality. Elora didn’t know if survival was possible here; in truth, she never wanted to find out. The term that immediately came to mind as a description was wasteland. Nothing could prosper here. The best that could be hoped for was an all-too-brief denial of an inevitable end.

  She didn’t need to look around to confirm that her camp had suffered as the land. Everyone in it, Veil Folk and Daikini together, had become a macabre piece of ice sculpture, cast headlong into oblivion without the slightest comprehension of what was happening.

  Elora realized this must have been what happened to the people of Angwyn, years ago on the night of her Ascension, when the Deceiver made his first attempt to claim her body for his own. Drumheller and Khory and she had barely escaped the city as a blast wave of incalculable power literally froze it in its tracks. Ever since, she’d believed those people slain; now she suspected differently. Every life contained a portion of magic. It didn’t matter whether or not the person was aware of it, or could access it the way wizards and sorcerers could; since all the Great Realms were interlinked, that was the nature of things.

  “Figured it out, have you?” The voice was familiar, though as cold and pitiless in its way as this land had become, as Elora turned and found herself facing…herself.

  “Confused?” her twin inquired with a chuckle that held no amusement, and Elora wondered if she’d forgotten what it was like to truly laugh.

  “Not really. I’ve been expecting you.”

  “Liar. But a credible try, I’ll grant you that.”

  “We danced together in the Realm of Dreams, you and I, Deceiver. I carry with me the fate and future of that Realm. Hardly a surprise to find you walking dreams of my own, much as I might wish otherwise.”

  Elora watched the other’s face as she spoke, noted the downward twitch of the mouth, remembered the expression from her youth when she didn’t get her own way. That moment of recognition chilled her in a way this ice field never could.

  She prayed none of that showed on her face, and sought a bit of refuge in an examination of her mortal foe.

  The Deceiver stood taller than she, which suggested to Elora that she wasn’t done growing. Here, too, came another sheet of rime ice to coat her heart, at how naturally she accepted that this face of the Deceiver was not false. There was a heaviness to the body that likewise reminded Elora of how plump she’d been as a child, although in the Deceiver it was offset by an almost-palpable sense of physical and arcane might. Her hair was the strawberry blond Elora had flaunted before her transformation and there was a touch of cruelty to her features she hoped she’d never see in a mirror of her own. That the Deceiver was a beauty was undeniable; for that creature, though, it was merely one more weapon in an already considerable arsenal.

  Her costume flouted that fact. It resembled what Elora was wearing, in the same way that Elora the young woman resembled the Deceiver as one full grown, and like the Deceiver all of its accents were twisted toward what Elora thought of as the Shadow. Elora’s was made of cloth and leather, and it showed the wear of hard use; by contrast, the Deceiver’s gleamed like polished lacquer, a finish so glossy it was almost a mir
ror. It fit her and moved like fabric yet appeared to possess the hard texture of a beetle’s carapace, without any joints or segments. The image came to Elora’s mind that the other woman had been dipped and painted with a kind of liquid armor that gave the Deceiver as much the appearance of a statue as Elora herself—with the young woman cast from purest moonlight and her mortal foe from absolute shadow.

  Where Elora’s figure was suggested, the Deceiver’s was emphasized, so tightly you’d think it would be hard for her to move. Yet she prowled with the grace and coiled menace of a hunting—and hungry—cat. Her eyes missed nothing and behind them was a mind of cunning calculation. Low on her bare hip, the Deceiver wore a curved sword. The hilt was ornate, topped by the carved head of a dragon, and the guard was decorated with precious stones, but Elora recognized it as the twin of the one she carried.

  “Who are you?” she breathed.

  “Do you ask because you fear the answer, or seek to flee from it?” There was mockery in the Deceiver’s tone, the echo of how Elora herself had dealt with servants in Angwyn. The memory was like the flick of a lash across her face.

  “Everything about you is a lie!”

  “Then you have nothing to fear.”

  “What do you want?”

  The Deceiver made a pitying face. “Elora,” she chided, as though to a disappointingly backward student, “with one breath you condemn me as a liar, with the next you demand answers?”

  “Humor me.”

  “As you wish. I demand your future to save my past. Satisfied?”

  “You want me dead, to replace my soul with your own.”

  “There’s no other way.”