by Court Ellyn
All I had to keep me company were the slimy things that dwelled there. But I loved them, and soon I saw that they loved me in return. I only had to give them shape. But frogs are not fig trees. The process took me longer than I expected. They remain stupid, and they remain voracious eaters. But they have given me a name. Naena, they call me. Isn’t that sweet?
Like a kenneled cur, I was never permitted to love or to marry or to breed, so here I present to you my legacy. May my children plague you long after I am dust.
Yours ever,
Uthaya
Thorn sat back and remembered to breathe. A stunning account, yet it brought him no closer to the answer he sought. How was an avedra to explain how she manipulated flesh and bone if she barely understood the process herself? Instinct. Imagination, will, execution. And time. Thorn calculated the dates. Fifteen years it took her to change a simple lizard into a juggernaut. Uthaya had had plenty of time. Thorn had none. Her legacy bore down upon the people of the Northwest in numbers she must only have dreamt of. Now, now, Thorn needed a solution now. He scrubbed a hand over his face and pressed at dry, aching eyes.
“Have you been down here all night?” Lyrienn stood at the bottom of the winding stairwell in a change of clothes, her hair upswept tidily, her eyes fresh but concerned.
“Is it morning?” he croaked.
She approached the writing desk, arms crossed. “Nearly. Carah still sleeps. She will expect you at breakfast.”
“I haven’t time for food. Have you ever heard of a spell that un-spells a spell?”
“Say again?”
“A spell that … un-makes life?” He didn’t even have the vocabulary for it.
“Oh, Dathiel, what are you getting yourself into now?”
“If a species can be created, can it be un-created?”
Understanding dawned in her eyes. Pointedly, she asked, “Once it is created, is it right to un-create it?”
He groaned. No time for food, no time for moralizing, no time for resistance. “You sound like Zellel. If we were talking about a human or an Elari, I’d say yes, but this isn’t the Mother-Father’s work. The unbalance Ana-Forah mentioned in the vision isn’t a new one. I see that now. This unbalance has existed since the first ogre walked out of the swamps. We should’ve dealt with it long ago. Dorelia had the tools to do so. She had gathered all the known avedrin in one place, but she suppressed them because she feared them. By the time she may have realized this, it was too late, and the naenion had spread too far to be dealt with.”
“Then what can you hope to accomplish with such a spell?” Fear for him surfaced in her gray eyes.
While he appreciated her worry, he didn’t have time for it either. “Help me or walk away.”
Lyrienn planted her hands on her hips, let out a curt breath, but didn’t argue. “If there is such a spell, it’s likely in the Dark Tomes. But logic tells me no one bothered to invent a spell that un-makes life.”
“What logic?”
Her hands flew out sharply. “Why bother with something so difficult when one can just use a blade?”
Yes, one tedious stroke at a time. “Logic doesn’t account for thousands that must be affected at once.”
“Dathiel, will you stop a moment and listen to yourself? This is … perverse. These are living, thinking creatures.”
“I don’t intend to eradicate them, Lyrienn. Just … change them back. It was perversity that caused Uthaya to take an innocent bull frog and turn it into an eating machine. But if the naenion become again what they were originally, Lothiar has no army.”
“Unless Tíryus decides to join his cause.”
He huffed. “Don’t dampen my hope. Truth be told, I expect Tíryus, the Elders, all of them, to do exactly nothing. I can’t hinge my hopes, and my brother’s strategy, on their decision. I have to find an alternative, and this is the best I can come up with. Goddess help us. If I can figure out how Uthaya made the naenion, maybe I can reverse the process.”
“One ogre at a time?”
She was right again. Such a process would be as tedious and tiring—if not more so—as putting each ogre to the sword. And Thorn doubted the ogres would stand still for his convenience.
Lyrienn raised her nose. “If you want my opinion, unless you’re going to create your own ogre army, it doesn’t matter how Uthaya made them. Have you ever wondered what would happen if an ogre were shackled with baernavë?”
“The iron of un-magic! Lyrienn, you’re brilliant.”
“Hardly. How practical is it to slap an ogre in irons?”
“But the iron itself! Its ability to negate avë.” He abandoned the writing desk and found the young keeper sleeping on a cot among stacks of books. Thorn shook her shoulder. When she roused, he asked, “Allyshien, where can I find a book on baernavë? How is it made?”
The keeper groaned. “You won’t find that in a book. Only hint is found in the Book of Barriers.”
“The tome Ruvion stole? Damn it.”
“Our smiths hand the secret down orally. You’ll have to ask one of them.”
Thorn’s fist pounded a lacquered door. Iron curlicues, more elaborate than those on other doors along the street, banded the andyr planks. The city resonated quiet in the pre-dawn gloom. Neither puffs from the bellows nor clinks from a hammer came from the smith’s yard. Overhead, the green agate leaves that ornamented the smithy’s roof lay still. Not the faintest breeze stirred them. Dew dripped down the thin cuts of malachite and fell heavily onto Thorn’s shoulders. Pale gold lit the eastern sky. A bird on a distant rooftop decided the Elarion had slept long enough and broke into a strident warble.
Thorn beat the door a second time. A peephole slid open. An angry blue eye peered out. “Kieryn Dathiel? What do you want at this hour?”
“Sorry to wake you, Le’orish, but I need to know how you make baernavë, and quickly.”
The peephole funneled the smith’s laughter. “The hell you do.” The peephole snapped shut.
Thorn glanced aside and shrugged. Lyrienn said, “Let me try.” She rapped on the door, gentle but persistent. She didn’t stop knocking until Le’orish opened the peephole again.
“Oh,” he muttered. Confusion replaced the anger in the blue eye.
Lyrienn smiled with extraordinary innocence, then lied through her teeth. “The Lady sent us. Dathiel has permission to learn your secret. Admit us, please.”
The door muffled a flow of obscenities, then swung inward.
“You have our thanks,” Thorn said, stepping into the shop. A relief to be out of the drip. The smithy filled the lower floor of the tree tower and extended out the backdoor. Tools, fanciful wares, and boxes of nails and hinges filled the shelves. There wasn’t a straight wall in the place; every surface, from the windowsills to the shallow domed ceiling, curved as if carved from the inside of a real tree. Pale thelnyth trim and elaborately painted plaster kept the dwelling from feeling like a cave. A winding stair led up to the private quarters. The scent of breakfast drifted down. “I don’t mean to sell your secret, Le’orish, never fear. I mean to use it against our enemies.”
“In what capacity?” The smith cut an imposing figure with wide shoulders, a shaved head, and fists as hard and square as mallets.
“I’m not sure yet,” Thorn admitted. “Honestly, I don’t know if my idea will work until you explain things to me.”
“Well, it would be damned convenient if you reasoned it out yourself, avedra, so I’m not betraying my vows.”
“If I could get my hands on the smallest clue, I could do that, but the librarians assure me that’s impossible.”
“Damn straight.”
“Then we don’t have much choice, do we? So? How can magic create un-magic that cancels magic?”
Le’orish snorted. “It doesn’t.” He glanced at the ceiling where kitchen utensils clattered, then lowered his voice, “Avë can’t forbid itself. If avë is the order in the universe, its opposite is…?”
Thorn’s mind jump
ed to the only possible answer. A search that ended with the Abyss was the last thing he expected. He recalled bottomless black eyes, laughter like autumn leaves crackling. The rágazeth still haunted his nightmares.
The smith nodded sagely. “Follow me.” He led them out the backdoor into a yard guarded by a high stone wall. A sleepy-eyed apprentice shoveled coals into the forge. Golden hair was mussed from a rough night with a pillow. “Son, go upstairs and eat. I’ll handle this.”
The boy’s blue eyes grew round and alert at the sight of his da’s exalted guests. An insistent nudge sent him scurrying inside.
A slate-tile roof covered the forge and sheltered a small shed from view of the upper floors of nearby tree towers. Thorn assumed the shed contained all the tools a smith might need, but when Le’orish opened the door, Thorn saw a steep stair diving into the ground. Le’orish claimed a lantern from a hook. Thorn lighted it for him, and down they climbed. At the bottom was another door. The smith removed a delicate chain from round his neck and showed his guests the key dangling from it. He unlocked the door and shouldered it aside with a grunt. Le’orish was large; the door was impressively heavy.
Inside, the lantern’s light reflected brilliantly upon the walls of a circular room. The entire surface—wall, ceiling, and floor—was covered in sheets of baernavë. Tiny baernavë nails riveted the sheets together. As shiny as a mirror, the metal distorted the shapes of the smith and his guests, making them look as squat and round as pumpkins.
As soon as Le’orish shut the door behind them, Thorn felt a slow draining, as if his lifeblood leaked from his veins. Lyrienn caught him by the wrist. “Are you all right?”
He shook his head. His skull had grown too heavy for his neck. Terror rose inside him like bile. He knew that if he tried to light the lantern now, nothing would happen. An effective prison he’d stepped into.
But spells were different. They were spun of breath and words. As long as Le’orish kept his shoes on, as long as he didn’t reach out to touch the baernavë with a bare hand, any spell he spoke would take effect.
In the center of the floor stood a weaver’s spinning wheel. There was no stool, no basket of yarn, no carding combs, no looms. The wheel, with its spindle, was the only item in the room.
Le’orish jabbed a finger into Thorn’s chest. “You tell a living soul what you see in here, and I’ll drive a red-hot stake through your brainpan.”
Thorn exchanged a glance with Lyrienn, who pursed her mouth at the threat. He nodded. “Deal.”
The smith gestured at the baernavë lining the walls. “This is a precaution, in case something escapes. We have to make sure we don’t make the hole too big. We don’t want to fall in, and we sure don’t want anything squeezing out. When He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was sentenced to die for unleashing the rágazeth, it made us smiths doubly careful.”
“Wait, you open a portal to the Abyss right here in your backyard?”
“Where else would you suggest? A grand and obvious temple? My forge is here. The less I have to carry this stuff around, the better.”
“What stuff? The Abyss is a void, a non-substance.”
“Aye, that’s where the spell comes in. Rumor says you vanquished the rágazeth by imposing order on it, right?”
“I turned it to rain.” Poisonous rain, to be sure, but rain nonetheless. The effort had nearly killed him and resulted in four pale stripes bleached into his hair.
“Right, harnessing disorder with order. So here’s how it works. We break open a pinhole, use a spell like knitting needles to pull out a thread and string it on the wheel here. We spin the wheel, and we end up with chaotic yarn on the spindles, which we fuse into plain ol’ steel. Want me to demonstrate? It’s risky on an empty stomach, but I can make you a link before the sun rises over my wall.”
“That fast?”
Le’orish nodded.
Thorn considered. “I need to hear the spell. Teach me that, and I’ll not ask you to risk your soul before breakfast.”
“Teach you?”
“What did you think I was here for?”
“Avedra, you are wading into deep, dark shit.” He turned to Lyrienn. “The Lady sanctioned this?”
Barely able to hide her worry, she said, “I think the spell is what he needs most, and a spindle if you can spare it.”
~~~~
13
A pretty Elaran maiden, who might have been sixteen or sixty, escorted Carah up the tower to Lyrienn’s suite for breakfast. But Lyrienn wasn’t there to greet her, nor was Uncle Thorn. At the large round table, mounds of fruit and bread and soft cheese filled several platters beside a tea service. Rhian lounged at the table alone, a foot propped up in the neighboring chair, reading a leaflet of some sort. “Where is everyone?” Carah asked. She cast a half-glance at the maiden, who bowed out, then asked, “They’re not still…” Her nod at the bedchamber door finished her sentence.
“No. They’re not in his rooms either.” Rhian planted both feet on the floor and laid aside the leaflet. “I thought they’d be down in the Moon Hall, gearing up for council, but no one has seen them. Laniel’s here with his troop, though. Looks like he’s on the warpath.”
“I hope he uses words as effectively as he uses daggers.” She sat a couple of chairs down from him and picked up the leaflet. It was written in Elaran. The printed letters were a beautiful flow of curly lines and dots. Linndun’s juiciest gossip, presumably. “You can read this?”
Rhian’s shrug was petulant. “Most of it. I’ve forgotten some of the letters. It’s lucky I am that I can read in any language.”
“I wasn’t criticizing. I’m impressed. Hand it to Jaedren and I’ll bet he could puzzle it out.” It was bad form mentioning the lost boy at breakfast. Grief almost cost her her appetite. She poured tea for them both. It was a pale herbal that smelled of mint and rose petals.
Rhian ignored the cup, studied her instead. “It’s surprised I am that you’d deign to dine with me.”
“Why?” She chose a pinwheel-shaped roll studded with berries and reached for the dish of soft white cheese.
He muttered something under his breath, but Carah picked out the word “Elliona.”
“You think I’m angry with you because of her?” She shrugged. “I admit I was shocked at first, then I thought, why should I be?” She tossed him an impish grin. “You couldn’t know I’d come along.”
He grinned down at his teacup, trying to mask the depth of his relief. “She was the one who taught me Elaran. I can read that, thanks to her.” He gestured at the flyer.
“I don’t care to know any of those details, thanks.” Carah smeared a generous helping of the cheese onto the roll and took a big bite. Crudely, she spoke around the mouthful. “If you mean to go back to her, I’m sorry. She’s dumped you.”
“That was the impression I got as well.”
“I guess she expects loyalty as much as I do.”
Rhian grimaced. At least he was gallant enough to feel like an ass. To Carah’s ear, the conversation sounded childish. Innocent. Innocence was a luxury that belonged to the past. “What does it matter, really? We don’t get along, you and I, and even if we did … well, you can love her without anyone being disowned. My mum disowned my brother, did you know? I’m all they have left.”
The facts weighed heavily on Rhian. Carah saw it in the slouch of his shoulders, the way he glared at the tabletop. “Have they chosen someone for you?”
“Not that I’m aware.” She put down the roll, less hungry than she’d been a moment before. A pair of green eyes strayed across her mind, and she shifted uneasily. “With ogres running rampant, a wedding is last thing on everyone’s mind. My da has our survival to worry about. Who knows? This war might change everything.”
“Forgive me if I leave the hoping to you.”
“Would you … could you really put up with me for the rest of our lives?”
“Put up with you?” He laughed. “Put up with you, aye. But I should be hanged for thinking it
.”
Carah glanced about the grand marble room bright with morning sunlight, at the two of them sitting alone at breakfast. The thought that all her mornings could be like this was charming. Yes, it could happen here in this magical city, among these ethereal people who exalted none but their Lady. But she couldn’t stay. Outside these ancient bastions, the ugliness of war and the bitterness of reality awaited. Just a few more days, that’s all she hoped for. And then, maybe, she could face the ugliness and the bitterness both.
“Well,” she said around the lump in her throat, “we should head down, don’t you think?”
The silver doors to the Moon Hall were shut. Heated voices pummeled the far side like fists. Guards wearing the blue stripes of the Dardra stopped them from entering. “But is Dathiel in there?” Rhian argued.
One of the dardrion released a sigh of longsuffering. “No avedrin are permitted. Council’s orders.”
“Aerdria’s too?”
“The Lady is not within.”
Rhian crossed his arms and smirked. “Then what are you doing here? Isn’t it your job to guard her? Or have the dardrion become stooges of the council?”
The chill in the Elari’s eye cut straight to Carah’s soul. “Move along, avedra.”
Undaunted, Rhian opened his mouth to argue, but Carah caught his arm and steered him away from the door. “We’re going,” she told the guard. The corridor curved, taking them out of earshot. “Why provoke them? We need their support.”
“Thrainor’s an arse. He’s always been an arse.”
“You’re not trained in diplomacy, are you?”
Rhian grinned. “I want to kiss you.”
“Well, you can’t. Stop it.” They came to the side door that Lyrienn had used to slip into the Moon Hall the night before. A guard stood in front of it as well.
“I’m sorry, Rhian,” she said.
“Don’t worry, Murienna,” he replied far more gently. “We just want to listen through the door. We can’t influence anyone through a wall, promise.”