Duainfey

by Sharon Lee

  The garden, her decision to remove the collar, the sharpness of the stones—had it only been today?

  "Yes," she said, not allowing her gaze to wander to Altimere's face. "I want to remove it."

  "Then do so," Sanalda said. "I give you the opportunity."

  Becca smiled, her right hand rose, snatched the knife from the cheese plate—

  And plunged it into Sanalda's throat.

  They reached the summit of the spystone by late afternoon, and stood for a moment, shivering in the cool breeze. The zig-zag path up the side of the stone had not improved over time. In fact, it was worrisomely overgrown, as if the Sea Wise had given over minding the stone, and the signal fire he had expected to find stacked and ready to light at need was merely a few sticks pushed into a pile, and a firestarter tucked inside a waterproof bag. There was no sign that the place had been visited by a fire guard in some time.

  "Well," he murmured, more to himself than to his companion, who was not listening to him anyway, but looking out over the domain of the trees.

  This might not have been, he said to himself, as he slipped his pack off and had a drink from his water bottle, one of your better ideas, Meripen.

  Still, there was no harm in trying.

  "Which direction?" he asked Sam Moore.

  The man came to his side, aura blaring and blowing in the breeze. Meri forced himself to stand firm, and not retreat.

  The Newman pointed—north and east, where the trees were tall and old.

  Meri sighed, nodded, and braced his legs. He moved his patch from his right eye to his left and looked out to the northeast.

  An elverhawk toyed with the wind, caught an updraft and was lost as Meri adjusted his sight past the trees, down—down to the ground, where he saw a fallfox trotting along a path, and two Brethren tucked companionably together beneath an overhanging weepertree, beyond—and there was a house.

  Or what had been a house. A branch had fallen from the enormous elder under whose friendly canopy the Newmen had constructed their home. There were people about this late in the day, and Meri counted them out, for Sam Moore's sake.

  "I see a down branch which has damaged a house," he said. "Two tow-headed boys are playing a game with a stick and a ball. A red-haired woman has a basketful of eggs on her arm. There are sawhorses set up near the damaged house, but I see no workmen."

  He winced at the sudden stab of pain through his head, and recalled that using the longeye for extended periods was likely of producing a headache.

  He reached up and moved the patch, cutting off the woman, the boys, the house under repair, and finding a carpet of treetops at his feet, and Sam Moore staring at him.

  "That," said Altimere sadly, "was unfortunate."

  Becca stared at him, screams locked in her throat, her fingers tight 'round the sticky hilt.

  "Doubly unfortunate," Altimere corrected himself, and leaned across the table, fingertips brushing Becca's forehead.

  "Poor child, you know I would never use you so, unless the need was dire."

  Warmth coursed through her, dissolving the screams, relaxing her throat and her muscles. Her fingers fell from the knife to her thigh, leaving wet red smears across the transparent fabric.

  "Why?" she whispered, looking into his eyes, that were so wise and so kind . . .

  "Why?" he repeated, one eyebrow up.

  "Why—did I kill her? Was it like Elyd?"

  Altimere shook his head. "Elyd died because he was too weak. Sanalda had to die because—she was too strong. She would have exposed us, and we cannot allow that." He rose, and stood looking down at what was left of the other Fey, sprawled gracelessly against cushions bloated with her blood.

  "My best and oldest friend," he murmured. "Who taught me everything. She would have done the same, were our roles reversed. Well." He sighed and Becca saw a tear slide down his alabaster cheek.

  Of a sudden she stood, turned sharply, lifted a foot—

  She fought it, hysteria bubbling in her stomach. "No!" she cried. "Altimere, for the love of life!"

  "Rebecca, do not try me." His voice was stern, but still she fought—and fighting, watched her foot sink slowly toward the floor.

  "Take it!" she shouted, her chest so tight she thought her heart might burst. "I give it to you!"

  Her foot completed its descent, but she did not take another step.

  "Take what, child?" Altimere came to stand before her, his face sad and stern.

  "My name," she gasped, forcing herself to look into his eyes. She snatched at his hand with her bloodstained fingers, but he easily eluded her grasp. "My name—take it."

  The sadness in his face deepened. He shook his head. "The time for that has passed. You have chosen, and I admire you for your choice. It confirms that you are worthy of the part you have accepted." He moved an elegant hand, indicating the tragedy behind her. "This was . . . unfortunate. Unlooked-for. And it grieves me beyond the telling of it. Yet, we are committed. We must do that which is necessary to achieve the goal, you and I, and recall our deeds proudly."

  He placed his hands gently on her shoulders, leaned over and kissed her forehead.

  "Go now," he said, "and sleep. I will wake you, when there's need."

  She thought to tell him that she would never sleep again. She thought to tell him it was beyond her to take pride in murder. She thought to tell him—

  But her feet were on the ramp, and her thoughts flowed away like water.

  "What ails you?" Meri snapped as Sam Moore stood there, face gone pale, and mouth gaping like a landed fish.

  "I—it—" the Newman took a breath and forcibly brought himself to hand.

  "Forgive me," he said firmly. "I—I had thought you blind in that eye, at the hands of those who had—who had used you ill."

  Meri stared at him out of his uncovered left eye. "Yet you knew I was called Longeye."

  "Oh, aye. But it is—humor among us to sometimes name a thing for its opposite. For instance, my brother's dog, which would far rather sleep than hunt, and even when roused is the laughingstock of anything that climbs or burrow. The name of this sterling hound being 'Lightning.' "

  It did, Meri allowed privately, tickle a certain sense. He judged it something that the Newman did not need to know, so he frowned and shook his head.

  "It is not a . . . humor . . . shared by Fey," he said flatly. "Did you attend nothing that I said about the homestead?"

  "Indeed," Sam Moore stammered again. "I attended most closely, and I thank you for your trouble on my behalf. The house damaged by the tree is worrisome, but I am encouraged to learn that the hob—the Brethren exaggerated the damage."

  "So it would seem," Meri muttered, and rubbed the back of his neck, where the spark of pain was trying to become a full-fledged headache. Three times a fool! He knew better than to look so long.

  "Best we move on," he said to Sam Moore. "Unless you need to rest?"

  The Newman frowned slightly, obviously put on his mettle. "I have no need to rest," he said shortly.

  Meri grinned despite the headache, and swept his hand out.

  "Lead on, then," he said loftily. "Lead on."

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  She woke all at once, with the feeling that someone had spoken her name. The room was awash in sunlight, but as far as she could tell she was alone—no, even as she thought so, the door to her bathing room swung open, and the coverlet was drawn gently back. It could, Becca thought, hardly be any clearer what was expected of her.

  On the edge of the bed, her feet swinging above the floor, she glanced 'round again, beguiled by the play of light along the deep green tiles set along the line between ceiling and wall. The curtains, drawn back to admit the buttery rays of the sun, were cleverly woven into the seeming of flowering vines, rustling now as the breeze slipped by them, bearing the scent of flowers and green growing things.

  Her combs and brush were laid out on a vanity to the left of the bed, neat and glowing against the carved blond wood.


  Becca took a breath.

  This was not her room.

  Someone patted her lightly on the shoulder; ahead, the door to the bath moved encouragingly. Wherever she was, the Gossamers at least were familiar, and also the insistence that she rise now and have her bath.

  Slowly, she did just that, pausing short of the door to spin on a heel and consider the room.

  "Where am I?" she asked aloud. The Gossamers could not answer, of course, no more than—"Where is Nancy?"

  Silence. Before her, the door waggled impatiently on its hinges.

  Sighing, Becca went in to take her bath.

  It wasn't as if she had a choice in the matter.

  Nancy was waiting for her when she emerged from the bath and quickly got Becca into a dress of silver cloth over the sheerest of petticoats before setting to work on her hair. Becca, sitting docile beneath her maid's tiny, fierce hands, looked at herself in the glass.

  The dress, she decided, was a ball gown; the bodice cut low and the sleeves nothing more than a few short fluttering silver ribbons. Despite the lack of a stiff petticoat, the skirt was not binding; she would be able to dance. Altimere living retired in the country as he did, the puzzle was who she might dance with.

  And that was, she admitted to herself, a puzzle to which she did not wish to know the answer.

  Nancy had rolled her hair and secured it with a silver net; diamonds—or, more likely, cleverly cut pieces of glass—made it glitter and bounce when she moved her head. Between it, and the dress and the diamond collar, Becca thought, she looked a veritable snow queen.

  "Thank you," she said, but Nancy was not yet done with her. She zipped off, returning a moment later bearing a pair of square-cut diamond earrings.

  Becca shook her head, harder than she had intended—and might as well not have moved at all, for the attention that Nancy paid to her.

  The diamond earrings completed the image of ice, and snow—rather a stark contrast to the warmly sunny day outside her window.

  Becca sighed. "Where am I?" she asked again.

  "Why, you are in the Queen's own city, fair Xandurana." Altimere slipped in from the edge of the glass and stood behind her, smiling at her reflection.

  He was dressed in black, with masses of snow-white lace at throat and wrists.

  "I don't remember riding here," she said, watching his face in the mirror.

  He lifted an eyebrow. "You were sleeping; there was no need to wake you simply to exhaust you with a tedious journey."

  "Did we come by coach, then?" she asked.

  He laughed softly. "Child, the coach is an abomination of your people, not mine."

  "So, I rode," she persisted, even as she wondered why this was so important to her.

  "So, you rode," he agreed blandly. "Attend me now, my treasure. Tonight, I host a party, and you shall be my hostess."

  She felt ill. "Hostess," she repeated.

  "In fact and in action." Altimere smiled at her gently in the glass. "The so-ambitious Zaldore comes to me, to persuade me to align myself with her agenda and lend my countenance and my kest to her bid to unseat Diathen, the upstart Queen."

  Altimere, she recalled suddenly, wished to depose the Queen, and so had—She flinched from the memory and met his eyes firmly in the glass.

  "So you will join forces with her," she said, keeping her voice even. "And make common cause?"

  "For a time, I believe I shall," Altimere said, bending down to nuzzle her ear. Becca shivered with longing, even as she cringed from his touch.

  "What is this?" he murmured. "Does my pretty child no longer find pleasure in my attentions?" He kissed her behind the ear, and Becca bit her lip, wanting and not wanting . . .

  "I—you give me so easily to others, sir," she said, and her voice was no longer even.

  "Nay, nay—those are but necessary sacrifices, to further the goal. I adore you as I have done from the first, and count you the chiefest treasure of my house. It pleases me exceedingly to pleasure you, and I very much hope that you will not deny me."

  Deny him? Becca thought. When he directed her every movement, even to causing her hand to—no. She took a hard breath, watching her reflection's bosom strain against the gown as she did. I will not think of that. I will not.

  "Certainly," she said unevenly, "your touch does fire me, sir. I am torn, however, between pleasure and fear . . ."

  Altimere laughed into her ear, his hands moving slowly, enticingly, down her arms, until his fingers encircled her wrists. She tensed as his grip tightened, aware that he could snap her bones so very easily . . .

  "That is the cruelest pleasure of all, is it not?" he whispered. "How the child has grown . . ."

  Abruptly, he released her and stepped back. His eyes met hers in the mirror.

  "You grow lovelier, Rebecca Beauvelley. I predict that you will make many conquests here in Xandurana."

  Again, she shivered, half in anticipation and half in horror as she rose to face him. "To further the goal, sir?" she asked boldly, and tossed her head.

  Altimere chuckled and extended his arm.

  "But of course," he murmured. "Everything we do must further the goal."

  He stood on the flanks of Mount Morran, elverhawks sporting below him, his breath icing on the thin, cold air. Far out, a league down and many to the east, rose a thick column of blacker-than-pitch smoke, its oily coils half-obscuring the rising sun.

  "Xandurana," he breathed, the horror in his belly colder than the arid mountain air. "They're burning the Queen out."

  There had been rumors—there were always rumors, and he had not paid any more attention to these than those that had been whispered before. Despite the Mediation and the Queen's Constant, which gave representation to every House and tribe, there were some of the Elders who wished only to have all as it had been.

  As if that were possible.

  But to burn Xandurana! His heart ached—for the Queen, yes, but moreso for the old trees of the city, soaked in wisdom, who had protected and nourished the Fey since the beginning of the world.

  A gout of flame shot high, dazzling Meri on his far-away vantage, and he felt his kest rise, burning with the will to aid the trees.

  As if he could do anything from here.

  And yet—

  Looking toward the sun was always uncomfortable, and sometimes actively dangerous. If he wasn't careful he would bring on a debilitating headache and sickness. Still, he thought he might—he must!—risk it.

  He placed pack and bow to hand and settled as carefully as he could with his back against a firmly-rooted ralif tree, then moved the patch from right eye to left, to see what he could see.

  He was surprised by the gentle disorientation, which was not nearly as bad as it would have been from the walls of Sea Hold or the mast of a ship at sea, for both of those placed him close to the horizon and distracting waves, birds, and sails. No, this was—

  Ranger, there is a fog upon the trees of the city of the Queen, said the ralif tree he was lodged against; and from there are only whispers of dangers, for they mostly drowse who live there. Others seek to wake the world, for this is no storm fire nor careless woodswork you see.

  The voice in his mind was a deep presence. At the same time his eye adjusted, hurling him past birds and clouds of fluff, down, down—and there! There was movement around the base of the smoke column.

  Ranger, you have trod my roots since nearly you rose this day. I was a seed before the strangeness that ended your war enveloped our seasons.

  The minute movement of his jaw as he was trying to frame a reply in his mind was enough to smear the scene before him.

  "After," he said aloud, and pressed his head harder into the receptive bark.

  It was not, he realized, Xandurana that burned.

  No, not Xandurana.

  Rishelden Forest was burning.

  The oldest forest in the Vaitura, comprised of oak and elitch, absent the City of Trees itself, the wisest entity known to the Fey.<
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  Meri was sobbing as he looked down, down further, to the very base of the trees, to the confusion of Brethren and Fey and horses hitched to—

  Drags! Cut of local tree limbs and branches, and . . .

  With horror he saw a horse whipped as the drag behind it was set afire. Screaming, the horse plunged into the forest, and there were Brethren, whipped like beasts, unwillingly loading another drag with brush.