by NS Dolkart
21
Psander
Psander had underestimated the strain of closing off her mind to so many elves at once. It had been exhausting enough teaching Phaedra to defend her own mind, and this was so much worse. Psander shared a look with her protégé on their way out of Castle Goodweather and was pleased to see her own exhaustion mirrored in the younger woman’s face. Phaedra had held them off too, then.
It was a relief to be free of the crowds, with only Aviaste to worry about. Psander wondered what his function was in the queen’s court. The queen had spoken his name with a sort of contempt, and she had gotten the impression that she was supposed to be humiliated by this choice of translator. Was he the queen’s fool? Her prisoner? The way he had his hair braided around his neck reminded Psander of a collar.
For his part, the little elf seemed a bit too pleased about joining them.
“Hurry up back there,” Psander scolded him. “You are not only our translator, you are also our guide. If you dawdle instead of bringing us quickly to Castle Illweather you will be useless to me, and I will gladly have you dismembered.”
“I will guide you, then,” the elf replied. “But know that you cannot frighten me. There is nothing you could do to me that the queen would not do slower and more painfully.”
Psander chuckled. “You had a kinsman, Olimande. If such a thing were possible, I would advise you to consult him before making such statements. Know, in any case, that I would not eat you like some savage fool. I would turn you into a weapon. Fear whomever you will, but do not underestimate me.”
Aviaste’s reaction was not as she had hoped. He did not acknowledge her words with so much as a raised eyebrow, but immediately changed the subject.
“You have left your castle defenseless, wizard. Your own kin will surely suffer.”
“Have you not been listening to me?” Psander replied. “I will not repeat myself.”
But Aviaste was not even looking at her; he was looking at her bodyguards. Ah yes, they were his real targets. He meant to peel them away from her, and his words were clearly having an effect. Psander could see the pained, worried looks on their faces as well as anyone.
Palat was the first to respond. “My family is back there,” he said, coming to a standstill. “My wife, and my daughters and grandchildren. Wizard Psander, I know none of us will survive if you don’t find an answer here, but what good will it do me if you save the world and I have no family to share it with? You have to let me go back.”
How typical.
“Do I?” Psander asked him, raising her eyebrows. “And what do you suppose you could accomplish? If the elves wisely forego attacking the fortress, you will have endangered me and two worlds besides, for no reason at all. If the elves do attack, your presence is unlikely to tip the balance in your community’s favor, and you will still have endangered me and the two worlds for no reason at all. Given this reality, I see no reason to release you from your duties.”
Palat turned to Hunter. “Make her understand.”
Hunter shifted uncomfortably. “She’s not wrong,” he said. “We’re more use here than we’d be there.”
“We haven’t been any use so far,” Ketsa said.
“Your best use is as a deterrent,” Psander snapped. “Your presence reduces the likelihood that the elves will view me as defenseless, and thus reduces the likelihood that your arms will be required. If you have nothing to do, then you have been effective.”
Palat was only growing more agitated. “I don’t want to be feeling useless here with you, when I have a family to protect.”
“I don’t care how you feel,” Psander answered. “How you feel is irrelevant. You can protect your family by protecting me. If you would rather feel helpful than be helpful, you are a fool.”
The villagers recoiled at her answer, but thankfully Phaedra stepped in to help her, her voice gentle and calming. “We need you,” she said to them. “Please. You may not hear it from Psander, but you’ll hear it from me. We need you here, with us, protecting us from any elves who might think there’s no hope and decide it would be more fun to kill us than wait to see if we’ll succeed. You have reputations. Yes you, all of you. Hunter has fought some of them off himself, and they know he trained you. He trained you to outthink and outfight them, and they know it. We need you, with your skills and reputation. We’re relying on you, and so is everyone in Silent Hall. Please.”
Aviaste was shaking his head, chuckling, but Hunter quickly put an end to that by reaching out and smacking the elf in the back of the head. Aviaste stumbled forward, having obviously failed to anticipate the blow. Psander smiled – there could be no better demonstration of how effective Hunter’s mental techniques were against these creatures.
“Don’t say a word,” he warned Aviaste, when the latter had recovered his balance. “Your head would be just as good a translator without the rest of you.”
The elf sniffed and made a show of rearranging the braids of hair around his neck, but he said nothing further to poison the villagers’ minds.
“True,” Psander said, and turned to Hunter’s companions. “If you pierce an elf’s heart, it will die for good. Anything else you may do will not be fatal, so feel free to punish this one any time he opens his mouth to bother you again. And don’t be too afraid of killing him by mistake: we can always go back for another elf.”
Her words, and Hunter’s, had a positive effect on everyone. Aviaste guided them sullenly to Castle Illweather without another word, and there was no more talk of going home before their mission was complete.
All the day’s exercise was tiring Psander out, but she tried not to let it show. Even Phaedra, limp, staff and all, was a good deal more used to walking these long distances. Psander hadn’t truly walked in over a decade, and going up and down the stairs in her tower a few times a day did not suffice to make her hardy. Now she tried to ignore the blisters developing on her heels and ankles as the rarely-worn boots chafed against her soft feet. Those boots still bore the sigils she had burned into them three decades ago, marshalling the stolen power of the Messenger God to prevent the soles from wearing out. She should have done the same to her feet.
On the way, Psander rehearsed what she would say to the plant-beast. She didn’t have a high estimation of her chances at convincing Illweather, but she did have some notion of what she would say to tempt it. The power of Goodweather’s seed, after all, was a great unknown. What if, when all the eons had passed, the Yarek would remake itself in Goodweather’s image and not Illweather’s? Why should Illweather rush toward this future when it could just as easily savor its dominance in the elves’ world for a few millennia first?
It wasn’t a masterful argument, but it was what she had. It relied on Illweather’s lack of intelligence, which she had only posited because Illweather was, after all, only half a plant beast, and Goodweather hadn’t seemed so terribly intelligent itself. More likely than not, Psander was underestimating the monster.
Psander felt Illweather before she saw it. The castle’s power was palpable even from a distance; even the drizzle that fell on the leaves above her was charged with it. When they crested the last hill and could see the castle, Psander’s feelings were confirmed. The patch of foul weather above the castle had expanded to more than twice the size of Goodweather’s, and the castle was visibly growing, rising slowly but loudly from the ground. It rumbled as it went, a triumphant sound if ever there was one. Even Aviaste couldn’t conceal a gasp.
“What is the prince thinking?” the elf muttered to himself. “He should not allow this.”
“Speak to it,” Psander said. “Get its attention. But let us move no closer.”
She noted how the elf projected his intention into the ground when he spoke next – the technique seemed replicable enough.
“Illweather,” Aviaste said, “a godserf wizard is here to speak with you.”
Psander did not wait for a response, but followed the elf’s lead and addressed the castle
herself. “If you continue like this,” she said, “the sky will soon shred you.”
She felt the response in the ground, though she did not understand it. The elf beside her, black in the afternoon sun, flashed momentarily silver in what had to be an exaggerated fear response.
“So said the prince,” he translated, his voice shaking, “before I devoured him.”
“Ah,” said Psander. “I see.”
“We should go,” the elf whispered. “Even at this distance, we are not safe.”
Psander ignored him. “And why did you not heed him?” she asked Illweather. “Why throw away your triumph so soon for such an uncertain future? Do you think this aspect of you will survive the splintering? From what I’ve heard, the Yarek beyond the mesh has already exceeded you in size and power, thriving in the fertility of the young world. The sooner your destruction comes, the sooner you will be subsumed into Goodweather’s stronger personality.”
The ground rumbled. “From what you’ve heard,” Aviaste translated. “From what I hear, it is clear you have not observed the seed yourself. You speak without knowledge. Your bluffing cannot prevent me from combining the worlds, foolish child. Nothing can prevent them from coming together. You can wait for the mesh to destroy you, or you can come closer and feed me your soul. Then you will know the joy I feel, bringing this world to an end.”
The elf quaked as he neared the end of Illweather’s speech, but Psander had other things on her mind. You can wait for the mesh to destroy you. Not Illweather, but the mesh.
“I think not,” she answered the beast, “but I thank you regardless. You’ve just reminded me of something that I had foolishly forgotten. I must take some time to think through the details, but you have shown me an alternative to our current path that I think even you, Illweather, will prefer. You will hear from me again. In the meantime, Aviaste, run back to your queen and tell her I have our solution.”
22
Atella
The elves came in the late afternoon, when many of the villagers were already looking out for Psander’s return. They came riding horses – Atella could tell that much by the sound of their hoofbeats, but she had no time or interest in climbing up to the walls to see. She had to save her children.
Tarphon had brought out Psander’s invisibility potion and was doing his best to dole it out quickly and efficiently, but she could see the panic in his eyes. Psander had other defenses for them – she must have other defenses – but who knew how long they would last? If they were going to hide, it must be now.
Atella received her portion of the brew, hot with its magic, and went to find her son. Tarin had already run off inside out of fright, so Atella scooped up Persada and ran in after him, trying to get the little girl to drink the stuff as she went.
It was a mistake, trying to do too much at once like that. Persada took one whiff of the foul-smelling liquid and tried to shove it away, spilling half of it on the floor. On Atella’s second attempt, her daughter’s little nails scratched her and she dropped the mug altogether, wincing as it shattered on the stone floor. Atella cursed and kept looking for her son. There would be more where that came from, and after she found Tarin she could see if her husband would have better luck getting them to drink it.
That was when she heard Tarphon’s voice, rising in frustration. “I’m sorry!” he cried. “I don’t know why she didn’t make more for us, but this is what’s left!”
Oh, no.
Never mind. New plan. If they couldn’t rely on Psander’s magic to hide them, they would have to find a very good hiding place.
She found Tarin under the long table, sweet silly thing, and quickly dragged him out from under it. “The storage cellar,” she hissed at the wailing child, whose arm she was clutching too hard. “It’s dark and cluttered down there. Go!”
She followed him down the stairs, squeezing Persada to her chest as the little girl tried to wriggle out of her arms. It was too dim to see in the cellar without a lamp, but she made her way by touch. There had to be some sack to hide in, some pile of something to crawl under. She had seen elves cast their own light in the darkness and knew better than to consider the cellar an adequate hiding place on its own.
“Mama,” Tarin cried, “you’re going too fast! It’s dark!”
“I know, sweetie. I’m sorry, we have to hurry.”
“Will Papa find us?”
“Sure he will. But we can’t let anyone else. We have to be so quiet, even ants won’t hear us.”
They reached the bottom of the steps, and she was finally able to let go of his hand for a moment. She put Persada down by her hip and rummaged around in the dark until she found a sack large enough for her two children to fit in.
“You two can hide in here,” she said, but no sooner had she begun pouring the grains out on the floor than she realized that the pile she was making there was bound to implicate her children’s hiding place. No time to fix that now; she would have to devise a solution after her children were hidden. At least Persada was too shocked to be screaming. When the sack was mostly empty, Atella helped Tarin and his sister inside it and drew the strings together at the top, tying them in a tight knot since a loose one would be suspicious.
“Are you comfortable enough in there?” she asked. “Can you breathe?”
“Yes,” Tarin whispered. “How long will we have to hide?”
“Until I tell you to stop. But take your foot out of this corner. I have an idea.”
She had found a good explanation for the pile of grain on the floor. She kicked some of it away, scattering it across the floor as best she could in the dark, and then knelt down beside the sack and took the corner in her teeth. Her jaws were not meant for such work, but through prolonged effort she nonetheless managed to tear a hole in the corner and fill it partially with grain from the pile that remained. If the elves didn’t look too carefully, they might think rats had gotten to it. She gave the pile another swipe with her hand to scatter it and then went looking for her own hiding spot.
There had to be some barrels down here somewhere, she thought, because her husband Tarphon had been brewing wheat beer and needed a cool place for it to ferment. It took her some time to find them though, during which time her children cried out for her and Tarin asked what was going on. “I’m finding a place to hide,” Atella told him, “so I can be just like you.”
At last she found them. Eskon the cooper had made five small barrels for Tarphon to use, and four of them were lined up against the far wall. Atella made room for herself between them and the wall, rocking and wiggling them back and forth to move them. When she started on the last one, a pair of objects that had been resting on top of it fell to the floor with a slosh and a thud. Feeling around with her hand, she found a smallish waterskin and a mallet. She quickly replaced them atop the barrel, not wanting the place to look noticeably disturbed.
Too quickly. The waterskin came unstoppered as she set it down, and it took her many long moments of fumbling in the dark before its contents were safely contained again. By that time, easily half its liquid was dripping down the barrel onto the floor, or else soaking into her clothes. Worse, it wasn’t water. It was a grain liquor, its smell powerful and unmistakable. Psander had brought some out a few times to let people celebrate their triumphs – the rest of the time, she had claimed, she saved it for magical purposes, whatever those might be.
Either way, it had a smell that would attract attention.
“Mama,” Tarin said. “It’s really dark here. And it’s cold.”
Atella stifled the instinct to scream at him that the dark was the least of their problems. “We can pretend it’s bedtime,” she said. “Should I sing you some songs?”
Persada wanted them; Tarin didn’t. “I’ll sing quietly to your sister,” Atella told her son. “You don’t have to listen.”
She sang every lullaby she knew, over and over, even as panic settled in her chest and it became harder and harder to breathe. The elves would come, an
d they would find them. Even without Atella’s fatal blunders, what good could hiding do without Psander’s magic to protect them? Elves could hear people’s thoughts; it was not enough to hide their bodies.
A soft snore met her ears, and Atella stopped singing. Both her children were asleep. She wondered if sleep could quiet their thoughts enough that the elves wouldn’t hear them. It was all she had right now – she would assume that it worked. But could she quiet her own thoughts enough that she wouldn’t be discovered? She was not like her children, five and two, who could so easily fall asleep. Being forced to lie still in the dark was not enough for Atella, not when she knew the danger they were in.
Maybe if she snuck back upstairs and found herself a weapon, the elves would have to kill her before they could read her thoughts and learn of her children. She imagined doing so; she thought she might – and yet she would not rise to her feet. If she went upstairs, her children would wake up still tied in that sack. Nobody would know they were here. She owed it to them to survive.
Now she thought she heard screaming from somewhere above. She hoped she was imagining it. As far as she knew, everyone except her children and herself had taken Psander’s potion and ought to be invisible to the elves. Unless Psander had somehow forgotten to make the potion shield their thoughts too, and then… she didn’t want to think about it. Tarphon was up there. Everyone was up there.