Shadow Star

by Chris Claremont

  “So how do we find him then?”

  She smiled, very slightly and full of mischief.

  “We don’t.”

  “Elora Danan,” Franjean demanded in the most aggrieved of tones, “did you have to send the damned dog to fetch us!”

  “Hi!” Elora greeted them brightly, thankful to see the brownies hale and hearty. She’d cut them loose to go exploring the day they’d all arrived and had heard nothing since. That was why she’d asked Puppy to seek them out.

  “Of all the inconsiderate, unfair, unconscionable—!” Franjean was building to one of his trademark rants. Rool’s response was a sigh of weary resignation, he’d heard it all before, broken by a laconic comment to Elora.

  “Nice face,” he told her.

  “Put it on just for you,” she retorted in kind.

  Franjean struck a courtier’s pose and examined her as he would some ragamuffin dumped on his doorstep.

  “We must do something about the way you take care of yourself. Or rather, neglect to.”

  “I’m in disguise, remember?”

  “We’ll never tell,” Rool said.

  “Because that would mean admitting we knew you in the first place, heaven forfend,” added Franjean.

  “You put up with this?” Luc-Jon sounded amazed, and Elora realized belatedly that he’d yet to encounter the brownies in full cry, when they verbally took no prisoners. Well, she thought, I had to learn the hard way.

  “Is it any of your concern?” demanded Franjean.

  “Boyfriend,” answered Rool.

  “Rool!” squawked Elora, at this complication she did not need right now.

  The catalyst of this reunion allowed himself a yawn, baring his fangs and then snapping them closed with an audible clack before lowering himself to the deck and resting head on paws. Puppy looked very pleased with himself.

  “Well, isn’t he?” Franjean asked Elora, in all mock innocence, picking up his friend’s cue. Inside, he was bursting with laughter at her discomfiture.

  “Never you mind, the pair of you! It’s a private matter, between Luc-Jon and me, and none of your damn’ business!”

  “Wouldn’t be so testy if it weren’t so.”

  “You want to see ‘testy,’ keep this up.” She sounded dangerous and they knew they’d pushed the limits of raillery.

  “Smart play,” Rool conceded, “sending the hound.”

  “Thought his nose might find your scents, even in this rats’ warren. And who’d give a second look to a dog?”

  “No worries on that score, Elora Danan,” Luc-Jon assured her. “You’d be astonished at how hard Puppy is to spot when he doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Second that, I will,” Rool said.

  “So talk to me, the pair of you. We need to find Thorn and win him free.”

  “You’d best gather an army then, because that’s what you’ll need.”

  “Consider this a challenge. The greatest of tests for the greatest of thieves.”

  Both brownies gave her a gimlet pair of eyes. They appreciated compliments but they also knew when they were being fed a line of hogwash.

  “Had a chance t’ cut him loose the night we arrived,” Rool said.

  “That easily? Why didn’t you tell me? What happened?”—since obviously, they’d failed.

  “Wouldn’t come, curse him,” Franjean said, as if Elora hadn’t spoken.

  “Whyever not?”

  “Blessed if we know. He’s in the Crystal Palace, working with the Chengwei.”

  “Because they’re threatening him with Anakerie, correct? Her survival depends on his cooperation.”

  “If you say so,” Franjean said, but Rool shook his head vehemently.

  “She’s frost on snow,” he told Elora. “He was helping before they grabbed her.”

  “This makes no sense. He must be under a spell—!”

  “Elora Danan, stop grasping at straws,” Rool said, tossing his hands in exasperation. “Drumheller is in what passes for him as his right mind. No drugs, no sorcery, no coercion of any kind that we could see.”

  “Obviously you missed something. Or he’s playing a double game.”

  Rool shrugged, but Franjean spoke.

  “We were there,” he said flatly.

  “He dines with them,” Rool said.

  “Thorn? With the Chengwei?” And he nodded.

  “Not with the acolytes or journeymen sorcerers, y’understand. Nor even the adepts. It’s him and the Vicars-General, the Lords and Masters of the Sects, the Magi.”

  “And they have no idea you’re here?”

  “Take a moment to listen, an’ you’ll need no more’n a moment, you’ll hear no tread of brownie feet. No elves nor fairies nor any of the Veil Folk of any shape or kind in this benighted hole.”

  She thought of the silence that accompanied the presence of the Caliban.

  “They’ve all been driven out?” she asked, adding a silent, or worse?

  “Left of their own accord,” Rool said. “So long back the locals, they’ve forgot we ever existed. The likes of Lesser Faery, we’re nothing to them. We could strip this town bare, they wouldn’t have a clue.”

  “Makes me nervous.”

  “Why, Franjean?”

  “No balance to the magic. Take a cup, Elora Danan. You can fill it past the brim, if you’re very careful an’ use a steady hand, trusting to the surface tension of the water to keep it from overflowing. That’s Ch’ang-ja, filled past its brim with magic. But there’s more. Suppose that cup were paper. Sure it’ll hold that water a wee while, mayhap even through the length of a proper meal. But the longer it sits full, the more saturated the substance of the cup becomes. What happens then when you try to pick it up to drink?”

  “It collapses.”

  Rool clapped his hands once, to indicate the disintegration of Franjean’s cup. “Welcome to Ch’ang-ja,” he said.

  “And nobody suspects?” She found that hard to believe, in this city chockablock with magicians.

  “Warnings a’plenty,” said Rool. “None wi’ wit enough to pay ’em heed.”

  “Hubris, thy name is Daikini,” suggested Franjean.

  Elora had a better idea, but she stated it gently and without sting. “And here I thought it was brownie.”

  Then she went on to state the obvious: “We have to get him out.”

  “From an impregnable fortress,” Luc-Jon noted, “and a palace of magic. You don’t demand much. Do you have any ideas?”

  “The way to get to Thorn is the way he got to me in Angwyn. We’ll reverse the old adage: what’s good for the gander should be good for the goose.”

  “Chances are, you’ll both get cooked.”

  “Oh ye of little faith.”

  “Aphorisms aside, Elora,” Luc-Jon inquired, “what are you talking about? How did Thorn get to you?”

  “Who’s the one kind of person who can go anywhere in a palace and never be noticed?” To make the point, Elora rose lithely to her feet, then crooked her back ever so slightly, assuming an air of abject subservience. She kept her head bowed, so that she was always looking up at those around her and never met their gaze. She withdrew all aspects of personality deep within herself, becoming as featureless a character as the bulwark against which she stood. She didn’t say a word, because her sort didn’t speak unless spoken to but her body language made clear her readiness to serve, quickly and well.

  “Servant?” Luc-Jon hazarded.

  “The more menial, the better.”

  “Why you?”

  “I’m the better actor. Thorn knows me. If I have to run, or fight, I have more options open to me than you do. Their magic shouldn’t be able to touch me. And one thing more.” She paused, and turned to take stock of the Crystal Palace, on its knoll, as imposing an edifi
ce in its way, with as bald a statement of power and purpose, as the Gate of Peace.

  “Which is?”

  “He came for me, Luc-Jon. Can I do less in return?”

  “Suppose it’s a trap?”

  Her reply made them all roll their eyes.

  “Actually,” she said, with a hint of mischief and an utter disregard for the risks, “I’m kind of counting on it. Look,” she continued, ready for their objections and determined to press on regardless, “if Drumheller wants to stay, I have to hear that from his own lips—and even then I may not accept it. In the meanwhile, what I require from you lot is a way out of the city.”

  “No more swimming in fire?” Rool asked innocently. Neither brownie had much enjoyed those journeys. Their reluctance was shared by Luc-Jon.

  “Only as a last resort,” Elora assured them all. “And there’s Anakerie.”

  “Thought that was Bannefin’s lookout,” Franjean said.

  “So it is,” Elora agreed. “I just wish I had some news, is all.”

  “Be patient,” Rool assured her. “It’ll come.”

  * * *

  —

  The comforting constant about wizards was that they loved the perks of their profession. Perhaps because of the rigors of their various disciplines, perhaps because they spent so much time in “other” worlds they forgot what it was like to strive in their own, many of them felt society owed them a living. They accepted the best of amenities as a matter of right and too often within the confines of their palaces were a law unto themselves.

  That was Elora’s greatest risk. If she was caught, she would have no one to turn to for aid. Unlike in Angwyn, there’d be little likelihood of finding a companionable demon imprisoned within the foundation stones of the catacombs.

  After a couple of precious days of intense observation, she concluded the risk was justifiable. Like any grand household, the Crystal Palace ran on a strict schedule. The wizards had to be provided for, their needs catered to. Beds had to be changed, chamber pots emptied, clothes and linens washed; food had to be procured, both staples and fresh produce for the daily meals. The more exotic raw materials required for their work were the province of journeymen sorcerers and acolytes. Elora gave them a wide berth. Her interest was in the slaveys, who scattered to the four corners of the city markets every morning before dawn.

  Imposing as the Crystal Palace was from afar, closer inspection proved it even more dazzling. It rose straight and slim as a spike, as though trying to combine the design aesthetic of the High Elves of Greater Faery with the natural grandeur of a mountain. Any other building rising to such a height would require a broad and solid foundation, with stone laid artfully and with precision upon stone to properly balance and sustain its mass and volume. This tower took all those rules and presumptions and threw them aside, presenting the illusion of being in harmony with the world when in fact it stood in rank defiance of every natural order.

  “What d’you think?” wondered Luc-Jon as they made a slow circuit of the Palace. They were still better than a quarter mile clear of the tower, in a neighborhood that was undergoing a forced relocation. The sorcerers highly valued their privacy and had informed the Khan that the local buildings crowded too close about their temple; too many people, too much ugliness, wouldn’t it be nice if someone made all that unpleasantness simply go away? It didn’t matter that the neighborhood had been here first, that it was only in the past few years that the Crystal Palace had grown so in size and especially arrogance. The Khan had his directives from the Khagan, added to his own reluctance to force any kind of confrontation; the citizens thus affected could deploy no equivalent force in opposition. So, they were evicted and their houses and businesses—some of which had stood for generations in a society that revered its ancestors—leveled.

  “As without, so within,” Elora commented. “I don’t like ’em.”

  “Can’t fathom how they got that built.”

  “It wasn’t built,” she told him. “It’s growing.”

  “Alive?”

  She shrugged. “Depending on who you talk with, that term has a meaning too broad to be useful. Everything’s alive, each to its own way. You see a palace, I see a mountain. Only the sorcerers have refined it to its essence, stripped it of anything dross, of the slightest impurity.”

  “It is beautiful, Elora.”

  She grunted. “Spend some time at a forge, scribe,” she told him. “Purity has its uses, but a lot more liabilities.”

  “It isn’t very big,” Luc-Jon mentioned, after they’d meandered through another circuit, taking care to wander somewhat afield, into the surrounding byways and alleys to avoid arousing any undue notice. “Around, I mean. At its base.”

  “Yah. Certainly not big enough to fit all the traffic we’ve been watching roll in and out.”

  “You have an explanation?” he presumed aloud, which she did.

  “There are spells that fold space. Larger versions of the enchantment Thorn cast over my traveling pouches. Most wizards use ’em to camouflage their worth, to give a hovel floor space grander than a royal palace. But the spells needed to sustain that kind of scale—!”

  “The other orders, the sects, they’re all following suit.”

  A dozen similar but unmistakably subordinate spires rose above the city, grouped in a rough circle about the Crystal Palace, echoing the design of the Palace as the various orders attempted to evoke the structure of the Great Realms themselves.

  “Y’know what’s interesting,” Luc-Jon told her. “Ch’ang-ja now has a mountain range of magic to go with the range of stone that defines the harbor.” Meaning the Twelve Kings, as those islands were called.

  “They’re mad,” Elora said. “There are only two, maybe three, places in the world that I know of could possibly sustain such a concentration of arcane forces: Tir Asleen, Nockmaar, and, perhaps in its heyday, Sandeni.”

  “This Magus Point isn’t strong enough?”

  “Not even close. Luc-Jon, it can’t even support a World Gate, what does that tell you?”

  “Perhaps they know what they’re doing?”

  “They’re mad,” she repeated. “Luc-Jon, it’s like using a stewpot as a cauldron in a blast furnace. Sure, the iron may withstand the heat and the pressure of the molten steel a wee while but that isn’t what it was designed to do. And these nimwits keep increasing the stress on the vessel. It can’t hold, it won’t.” She spoke with flat certainty, as if relating an article of absolute faith. “The sooner we’re quits of this place, the happier I’ll be.”

  A different time, a different place, a different occasion, Elora would have been transfixed with delight. Everywhere she turned was a new scent to intrigue the palate, shaved ginger to use as spice or ointment, tarragon, cardamom, pepper, chilies so hot the merest sniff set her eyes to watering. There were planks of raw teak and sandalwood, each with their own delicious fragrance, to be transformed into articles of furniture oiled and polished to so lustrous a sheen they rivaled mirrors and whose texture surpassed silk. Fishmongers offered delicacies she’d never seen before (and some she’d rather not see again) and most stalls offered the opportunity to choose from still-living catch. She counted sweets in abundance, candies and cakes, fruits and vegetables of all types and description. Weavers offered cloth of every imaginable quality, in a riot of color and design, and just along the market could be found tailors who’d turn those purchases into garments. Jewelers hammered out their wares, from the very crude to pieces so exquisite Elora couldn’t understand why they were being sold from a stall.

  In Angwyn and Sandeni, the goal of a merchant was to open a permanent establishment, to possess a shop, to become a man of property. In Ch’ang-ja, the goods themselves were paramount. In this most structured of Daikini societies, Elora found a market that was truly egalitarian, where a tyro plied his trade right beside a master artisan and it
was up to the customer to tell the difference.

  Yet even as part of her was dazzled by the abundance of choice, almost irresistibly tempted to partake of the market’s wares, Elora recognized the flaw that ran through every stratum of this community. Every stall, every artisan, every retailer, to some degree or other employed magic. Each of the wealthiest of these merchants had a minor wizard on retainer, while the less affluent banded together to engage one, either by vendor (such as an association of butchers or greengrocers, to keep their produce from spoiling) or by the street. The enchanters made it easier to do business. Their spells allowed Daikini seamstresses to equal the otherwise matchless skill of a brownie tailor, they cast impurities from metal and erased the blemishes from precious stones. They cast wards of protection against thieves.

  If Sandeni was a city wholly bereft of magic, whose hallmark was the ascendance of technology and mechanical invention, Ch’ang-ja was grounded just as extremely on the opposite shore. Nothing existed here—not the people, not the city itself—that was not shaped and defined and sustained by magic, to an extent Elora wouldn’t have imagined possible even in the Realms beyond the Veil.

  She couldn’t say which disturbed her more, that the situation existed, or how blithely the people took it for granted. The more she saw, the more it strengthened her determination to be quits of both the city and the Empire it represented.

  They found a purveyor who was the main supplier of commodities to the Palace and quietly joined his gang of laborers. The work was brutal, manhandling hundredweight sacks of corn and millet, rice and grain from pallet to shipping cart, and it made Elora thankful for her years in Torquil Ufgood’s forge. She would never match a Nelwyn in raw strength but she could hold her own with any Daikini man.