The Rose of Sarifal (forgotten realms:moonshae isles)

by Paulina Claiborne

  Amaranth glanced at him. You must forgive me, she said, if I don t know what to say. I have lived for a long time alone among my people, separate from my own kind. And I thought there were things I understood. You are a man, isn t that so? A human male?

  Last I checked.

  She did not smile. I determined this as I was tending you, the night before last. It came as a surprise. You must forgive me, but my life has been sheltered in some ways, and there is much I do not understand. I must ask you why did you attack those creatures at such risk to yourselves?

  The orcs? I hate them.

  She nodded as if satisfied. It was from hatred. And if you had chased them away, despite the odds, and found those women still alive, what would you have done?

  Lukas shrugged. I hadn t gotten that far.

  Because you were blind from hatred. I see that. So you would have taken them for yourselves. Mated with them.

  Startled, Lukas turned to face her. I don t think you understand. These women, they aren t my concern. I was glad to help them. But I have friends who are in danger, and I blame myself. I was stupid to bring them to this island, stupid not to follow them, stupid to have lost them. Even now, if I felt I could run, and if my friend wasn t so hurt, I would be after them.

  Amaranth looked puzzled. Her brow furrowed, and she rubbed her nose. Your friend I think I am the stupid one, she said. If you didn t want the women, why did you attack the orcs? Oh, blind hatred, I think you said

  Like all eladrin she was beautiful, an impossible, mournful beauty. Because they lived so long, even young they had no springtime in them, no sense of freshness or urgency. When Lukas was an old man she would look like this. For hundreds of years after his death, she would look like this, her skin clean as paper, her red hair blowing around her face. A leShay, or half a leShay, there was no telling how long she d live. What would it feel like to be at the beginning of such a journey?

  I ask you, she said, because it s hard not to imagine from what you say, that these instincts that drive you are in some way valuable. Friendship. Loyalty. Sacrifice. Even guilt and self-doubt. And yet you are a man.

  Suddenly bored, Lukas turned away. Stick to the blind hatred, he murmured. Now, if you ll excuse me, I want to see someone. He had left Gaspar-shen at noon, his head bound up, asleep.

  But I do not excuse you, said Lady Amaranth.

  You do not have my permission to leave me.

  She had turned around with him, and now they stood with their backs to the sea, looking down over one of the courtyards toward the base of the ruined keep. Below them the lycanthropes worked among the tumbled stones, sorting them and shaping them. As far as Lukas could tell, the curtain walls were complete. But these interiors needed some work. Caer Moray had been sacked during the Spellplague, and then abandoned for a hundred years.

  Amaranth made a delicate gesture with her fingers. These are my people, she said. We keep no male animals inside the gates, no bulls or rams. Instead we have ewes, and mares, and bitches. Lots of bitches, she murmured, and Lukas studied her face, to see if she was aware that what she said might be considered funny that Suka, for example, would have laughed. But there was no hint of humor in her face. In a moment, Lukas found his heart go out to her, because how could it be otherwise? For ten years, since she was nine years old, she had lived on Moray Island, alone among the humorless beasts.

  She had told him some of the story the first night, as they descended through the thick woods toward the coast. And of course Lady Ordalf, her sister, had already given him the bones of it in Corwell; how traitors had stolen her away and packed her onto a hippogriff somewhere in the highlands above Myrloch Vale; how the hippogriff s rider, wounded, had taken her off course and fallen into the sea; how she had come to Moray, alone and defenseless. Even the first night after the battle, walking along the forest path in the rain, suffering with his shattered ribs and bleeding side, leaning on a broken spear, Lukas had regretted the judgments he had come to earlier, when he had imagined some kind of collusion between the sisters it was not like that. If this girl had been lonely in her isolation here, at least she had not been ruined by the fey.

  The lycanthropes had wooden stretchers that they used to carry the genasi and the women they had rescued from the orcs. Tireless, they had hurried on ahead, while Lukas and Amaranth stumbled behind. As they came down the long, winding paths through the wet trees, as finally they could see the lights of Caer Moray in the distance, the eladrin told him what she had discovered or concluded. She saved my life. Mistress Valeanne. She and the dragonborn, and those riders, they gave their lives to save me. Since then I have brooded on the source of the danger who it was that was trying to kill me, a nine-year-old child. Who would send a company of drow from Myrloch Vale? Surely such a thing could not have happened without the permission or consent of the leShays my sister or perhaps Prince Araithe, her son? But perhaps there is something I don t understand. If I could see them again, or talk to them, then I would ask them face to face.

  Lightning flashed above them. Rain dripped down her neck. She had bound her red hair underneath her leather cap. Earlier that night, as he felt her fingers probing his side, examining his ribs, Lukas had rejected the idea that he would ever do her harm, return her dead or living to her sister s mercy, whatever the consequences the girl had saved his life.

  Now, at Caer Moray, looking down from the walls over the courtyard, Lukas said, I want Gaspar-shen to see me when he wakes up. I don t want him to be alone.

  Amaranth smiled, a wistful expression on his face. Yet I have been alone all this time, she said. No friends. You are friends with this creature, is it not so?

  He shrugged. Many things sound stupid when you say them out loud.

  And what is he a genasi, is that what you said? From far away?

  From the deserts of Calimshan. And yet he has a water-soul, from Abeir. Always he was looking for the sea. The Moonshaes were more welcoming than home.

  And how did you meet?

  In Alaron. I had a boat called the Sphinx. We ran cargo between Callidyrr and Snowdown, for the Amnians.

  Yet he has a different nature than yourself.

  We manage.

  He stared at her, fascinated. He knew what she was asking. He wondered how she would phrase it. We also have a different nature, she said. You and me.

  Is that because I am a human being? he asked.

  Or because I am a man?

  And then immediately he felt bad, when he saw the hopelessness in her face he wasn t used to these concessions from the fey. Lady Ordalf wouldn t have considered asking him for friendship, any more than she d have considered asking a fruit fly or a caterpillar or a bee. But then he had to remind himself that this girl was only nineteen years old, younger than he was, and that she d led a life that made her simultaneously more innocent and more mature descending to this island like a blazing star, a child alighting from the back of a hippogriff amid a circle of worshiping lycanthropes. Would he have survived as well, if he were nine years old?

  If you are a sailor, she faltered, perhaps then you could bring me home. My sister

  She stopped, unable to continue. Because this desire was so different from the one she had previously expressed, it must be, Lukas thought, a sign of terrible desperation she must know and must be told, he thought, that there was no home for her on Gwynneth Island as long as Lady Ordalf was alive.

  And so he told her that the Sphinx was at the bottom of Kork Bay. And he told her why he had come to Moray Island. He told her about Suka, a prisoner in Caer Corwell, and he found some comfort in telling her, because the little gnome was never distant from his thoughts.

  He stopped when he saw the tears on her cheeks. And is my sister well? she asked.

  For an answer he left her. He limped along the battlements, a pain in his side. It hurt to breathe. When he reached the signal tower he ducked his head inside, then climbed the wooden stairs down to the genasi s room.

  He was being tended by o
ne of the bitches, as Amaranth had called them, a soft-faced, long-eyed young woman with a ridge of fur combed back into her homespun cowl. She carried an empty chamber pot.

  When can we leave? Lukas asked, but she said nothing. Not all of them could talk.

  Gaspar-shen lay immobile, his head bandaged and his eyes shut. But Lukas could tell he was awake he didn t sleep much, and when he did, he dived down deep into the bottom of the soundless sea. The energy lines that ran over his body throbbed and burned and took on a distinctive amber hue, made a circling pattern over his greenish skin. Today he was very pale.

  Lukas sat down on a stool by his head. These artifacts the stool, the bed, the curtains in the window were cunning and well made in a workshop of quick-fingered lycanthropes. Amaranth had shown it to him earlier, set up in the keep s enormous banquet hall, a bewildering assortment of spinning wheels, belching forges, and turning lathes, manned that wasn t the right word, Lukas thought in shifts.

  He touched his friend s right shoulder and felt the tiny electric hum. Lukas was frustrated and out of sorts, consumed with regret. If only he hadn t consented to Lord Aldon Kendrick s wild goose chase. The procurator on Alaron must have recognized his desperation and recklessness a crew of losers whom nobody would miss.

  And when Lady Ordalf betrayed them to the lycanthropes, if only he had managed to keep the crew together. Now they were spread over the island of Moray, with only the golden elf s sword to protect Marikke and the boy. And if only he had not allowed himself to be distracted by the orcs. Then Gaspar-shen would not be lying here, and he would be days closer to rectifying all this.

  And yet, what could he have done differently? He could not even bear to think about Suka in her cell.

  Methodically, the genasi licked around the rim of his circular mouth. His breath whistled through the slits of his nose. In Callidyrr, he said in his light, airless voice, I was at the bar of a little restaurant in Centipede Street. They had a cake with something they called sea-foam icing. It was made from caramelized sugar and vanilla, combined in a double boiler His voice trailed away.

  Is that all? asked Lukas. Then in a moment:

  What were the other ingredients?

  The genasi frowned, a fluctuation of his hairless brows. Egg whites and cold water and maize sirop. Beat it for seven minutes. It whips up so delightfully, like little waves. The burnt sugar is the light at sunset over the surface of the water.

  What was the spicing of the batter?

  I don t remember.

  Behind him in the doorway, Lukas heard a little gasp. He turned his head and saw Lady Amaranth standing there.

  The wolf-woman pulled away the blanket from the bottom of the bed, revealing one of the genasi s shining legs.

  They grow so fast, said Amaranth. One year, two, and they are fully grown. Ten years most of them and they are old. Many have died since I first came here. Not from violence they turn gray, sleep all the time, curl up on their mats, indistinguishable from beasts. Is it possible that I could live here for another hundred years? For them, how many generations will have passed?

  She was talking about the lycanthropes. I have tried to leave, she said, but they won t let me. I spoke to a fisherman in the Northlander settlements. But at night the rats attacked his boat and sunk it at the dock. So then I built a boat myself I had it built. I wouldn t step in it myself they wouldn t let me. I sent my friend the pig, the cleverest of all of them. They are very rare, the pigs, special and rare. My friend I d given her a name. I sent her with a message to my sister, begging her. But I wonder if her crew mutinied, or else she forgot they are forgetful. I haven t heard.

  I have waited, continued Lady Amaranth. But time has no meaning here. I have so much, and they have so little.

  Chapter Eight — Suka's Escape

  But in Caer Corwell, time was of the essence. At least Suka thought so; she was eager to be gone. The others were obviously more patient. Suka had discovered after many recitations of Oh, Father Dear that Marabaldia had been imprisoned close to ten years. She had made line after line of little scratches in the sallow bricks, in time-honored fashion, as if counting the days indicated some sort of action or commitment. Suka was amazed. After a tenday she was ready to jump out of her skin. She hung from the bars, performed mental puzzles, logical and arithmetical, made endless circuits of her cell, invented conversations with imaginary people, rehearsed variations of what she d do to Lukas when she saw him again (The cold shoulder? The swift kick in the crotch?). The pig-woman lay motionless, a sow in a sty, wallowing in the filth of her despair (and in actual filth, too), gnawing on the discarded carrots and radishes of regret, scratching the fleas of self-indulgence Suka could draw out these metaphors forever, in her frantic and myriad attempts to keep her mind alive.

  Poke was the sow s name, bestowed on her by the ginger slut of Moray, as Suka privately referred to Lady Amaranth, most unfairly, as she herself would have conceded. Like the ritual inking of the tattoos, Suka imagined, these naming ceremonies were a solemn occasion, perhaps some absurd version of a knight s investiture: rows of lycanthropes in their white shifts, all holding candles, and the ginger slut intoning variations of Arise now, Poke, and bear your name with honor. Arise now, Prod, and you, Bat-shit.

  Poke didn t move, didn t turn her head, only followed Suka s endless gyrations from the corners of her eyes. Only at night in the darkness did she come alive, during story time, as the gnome referred to it, or the hundred and one tales of Lady Amaranth, her virtue and her beauty. Fine, thought Suka. Whatever eladrin were wicked hot. Cold and hot. It was a well-known fact, part of what made them so creepy and grotesque and horrible and bad. They were slutty and sterile at the same time. Everybody wanted to have sex with them and nobody could.

  Poke had built a boat to please her, to carry a message to her sister, and the boat had sunk immediately, burned by the nagas, while Poke had drifted in the water, cold and miserable, hour after hour

  Wait, said Suka. Hold your horses. That s not what you said before.

  Poke, who never liked to be interrupted in these orgies of self-punishment, opened her eyes. Suka could see them glittering in the darkness. I mean, she said, the other night, the first night you told us this whole damn same exact sad story, you said you had come here with a letter for the Claw. Captain Rurik. From Lady Amaranth.

  That s right, said Marabaldia in her soft, sweet voice. I remember that too.

  Lady Amaranth has no deviousness, amended Poke.

  She knows nothing of any rebellion. She trusts her sister from the time she was a little girl. It is I, since I have been here, who have changed the direction of her mission, now I know the truth

  Poke s speech, absurdly formal and yet punctuated with little grunts, always made the gnome smile. And she was interested in this: The pig-woman had showed more gumption than she would have guessed. Although if the ginger slut of Moray was really on the level, whether in her dealings with Lady Ordalf or on any other subject, then she was different from any other eladrin in the history of Faer n, because the rest of them were unequivocally as bent as corkscrews.

  Tell me, said Poke, do you believe in Captain Rurik? Do you believe that such a man exists? Or is he?

  Suka reassured her, though to tell the truth she didn t particularly believe in him. But (who was she kidding?) it wasn t as if she wasn t brimming with fey blood, and hadn t her own store of deviousness. So sue me, she thought, while at the same time she imagined she could use this part of the conversation to reveal her plan, how when the Ffolk wardens removed the last bar that separated the gnome from the fomorian, then they could use Marabaldia s evil eye to freeze them in their tracks or something. Suka didn t know enough about the eye to have got much farther in her thinking, although she had some questions: Could you turn it off, or was it always on? If it was always on, did fomorians get involved in idiotic situations where they froze or disabled each other without wanting to, a husband and wife, say, over the dinner table or in bed, or else childr
en playing in a nursery? Over the past days Suka had amused herself by inventing various scenarios, none of which were useful now. She didn t mention them to Marabaldia, especially since the fomorian seemed suddenly shy around the subject, which was obviously a private thing.

  Of course we can control it, she d protested.

  It s a weapon you carry all the time, Suka said now, her curiosity overcoming, for the moment, any sense of diplomacy. I mean, even a swordmage, she said, thinking of the Savage, puts the damn thing down when he goes to the privy an unfortunate image, and Suka suddenly regretted it. Marabaldia was nothing if not modest, and had a good deal of trouble with the waste buckets and water buckets the Ffolk left for them, always waiting until darkness, when Suka, from the other side of the cell, could hear her nervously slopping around. Not wanting to embarrass her, the gnome always feigned sleep. One night Marabaldia had even washed her clothes.

  It s not a weapon, she protested.

  Besides, I can t get free. Suka, close to the bars along her side, reached in her hand as if to comfort her, but instead at the last moment ran her little fingers along the back of the fomorian s bulbous head, under her hair, releasing the catch. Then she drew back her hand as quickly as she could in case she had violated some long-established cultural taboo, which had to be punished, say, by biting or dismemberment. She hoped the effect, to Marabaldia, was that the iron and leather half mask over her eye, which had been her constant bane for many years, had fallen away as if by magic, or else in answer to her own prayers to Sel ne, the goddess of maidenhood and the moon. She burst into tears, and when she raised her head, Suka could see in the almost-total darkness, for a moment, some vestige or version of the beauty she had boasted of.

  Do you think he will still love me? the fomorian asked softly, after all these years?

  Suka knew what she meant, and she found herself affected, especially since Marabaldia could not possibly be so stupid that she did not guess or know or understand that the bridegroom she remembered was now probably long dead.