The Rose of Sarifal (forgotten realms:moonshae isles)

by Paulina Claiborne

  She had lost her cap, and her long wet hair had tumbled down. Her face was smeared with mud, and she was bleeding from a wound in her shoulder, where one of the wolf-men had stabbed her. She felt close to tears, not just because the small community that she had built was failing, and would fail. Not just because many of the lycanthropes that she had raised up from pups or shoats were wounded or dead. Not just because she now saw she had been crazy to think that she could maintain a citadel of female authority here in this wilderness where had all the young ones come from, she now asked herself, that she and Esmerella the midwife had birthed in the nursery? Of course the lycanthropes had been going out into the forests and the fields of their own will to mate with the creatures who were now battering down their doors, surrendering to them one by one in degradation and pain, forced by nature she herself had not forbidden it. They were not her prisoners.

  No, that was the larger truth, too big to think about. But there was a smaller truth also, which had to do with her own citadel. Captain Lukas turned toward her. He also was not looking his best, bleeding from a cut over his eye, one arm hanging awkwardly. His lips were split, his clothes badged with blood. He d laid his sword along the top of the parapet, and he was smiling at her, a man she scarcely knew, the first man she had ever seen, a man who had put down his life in her defense. Their enemies were endless, surging like the sea below the walls, and doubtless in an hour or two hours they would break through the main gate and overwhelm them. But she had kept a smaller gate inside herself, and this man stood outside it, his blue eyes and dark hair.

  Are you hurt? he said.

  It s nothing.

  But she was lying, because she was hurt. It was quiet down below, the noise stifled by the rain, and the preparations for the final attack. And no one was around them on the walls. The lycanthropes tended the wounded. Amaranth crossed the broad, wet stones until she stood facing Lukas, just a few feet away, and then one foot, and then a few inches, and then nothing. Careful not to touch his scarcely healed ribs, she put her hand out.

  Lady, you re crying, he said, which was not true. She reached up to touch the tears on his own cheek. How could anyone tell in this rainstorm? She knew because she could feel the shudder in his breath.

  It s all right, he said how could it be all right? How could anything be all right? He bent to kiss her, and she turned her head to avoid him. But then she turned back, fiercely and furiously pressing her lips against his, and then opening her mouth so he could feel her teeth. He was the one who was here, and that was just as well. Better him than another. Look at the damage he had taken for her. Think of the damage he would take. Besides, he had played so sweetly in the afternoon, songs from her childhood in High Karador.

  She felt his hands on her back. There came a shout from down below, and another shout. In time they turned away from each other and leaned over the parapet to watch Great Malar come down the causeway toward them, moving in the middle of a phalanx of enormous wolves. He lumbered forward on squat, bandy legs, swinging his hunched body forward on his massive knuckles. But then they saw him rise up, straighten his back, raise his head, step forward almost like a man as his legs lengthened and reformed, his arms dwindled. Then he was down on all fours again, his long black tail lashing the air, his claws and teeth like sabers. Then his rough black pelt took on a scaly sheen, and he sank down lower, a black alligator wagging his enormous jaws. As he moved forward, his body transformed through a spectrum of predatory beasts, until he reached the gate itself and stood up on his hind legs.

  Lady, I must go, said Lukas.

  He ran his fingers through her hair. Then he lifted his sword off of the stones and ran down the spiral steps into the courtyard to take command of the gate. She watched him, and then looked past him to the broken cistern midway to the keep, the mouth of the tunnel to the sea. There was fighting there too, wolf-men who had climbed up from the water. Lycanthropes were inside the walls. So that was that. From down below she could hear the sound of the battering ram, a hollow pounding on the old, uncertain timbers.

  The rain fell. Amaranth wiped the water from her eyes, then looked up at the sky. All of her women had run down to join the fight at the gate. She was alone on the battlements, so she was surprised to see movement along the wall to her left. A small figure walked along the outside edge of the parapet, balancing precariously over the abyss, her little arms spread wide. She raised her head, and when she saw Amaranth she smiled, clapped her hands, and made a mincing, dancing series of steps until she stood above her, a little girl in a green dress, her long hair tangled, her lips cracked and chapped, and she was missing some teeth.

  Hey, you, the little girl said. She was completely dry. Now she turned an ungainly pirouette and peered over the edge, where Malar and his beasts smashed at the gate. She wrinkled her snotty nose. I don t like him. I only had one priestess on this entire stupid island, and he killed her. The only one in generations, and he chopped her up into little pieces. She turned back to look at Amaranth and closed one eye. Shall I chase him away?

  Please.

  I don t like him, repeated the goddess.

  He makes a big mess. She squinted, then picked a ball of snot out of her nose, examined it briefly, and flicked it over the parapet. You know, she said, as if conversationally, your walls are coming down.

  Amaranth said nothing.

  It is not my will, continued the goddess, that they should stand.

  There was screaming from the courtyard. The postern was broken open, and there were wolf-men in the courtyard. They had found the doors to the hall where the Northlander women had taken refuge. From where she stood, Amaranth could see neither the genasi nor Captain Lukas, though there was still resistance down below, she knew. There would always be resistance.

  There was a hollow booming underneath her feet where the gate was giving way. The stones shuddered from the impact of the ram. But then Amaranth could feel a different kind of rhythm deeper and lower down, as if the crashing of the timbers formed the surface echo of something more profound, another gate deep under the earth.

  Look, Chauntea said, and pointed her dirty little nail-chewed finger. To the east, beyond the beast-strewn meadow that led down to the shore, Amaranth could see a black line on the horizon under the milky dawn light, as if somehow she could see the bluffs of Oman Island fifty miles away across the strait, and they were moving toward her, a wall of water, she saw now. At the same time she could feel the cause of the great wave, a low trembling inside the earth, and as she watched, she saw the topmost tower of the wrecked keep, high on its stone pinnacle, crack and collapse.

  It s time for you to go home, suggested the goddess. There s no place for you here, you and the Northlanders. This is the land of the Black Blood.

  I ve tried to go home, murmured Amaranth.

  Try again. East of Karador, by the water, there s a sacred grove of trees where the women pray to the Earthmother. In the evenings they pray to me, hoping you come back. When the light of the setting sun touches the water, they catch it in their bowls and pour it out again. It s a libation, silly! They have a good reason to pray. Your sister is a tyrant. Your nephew is a monster. That s the sad truth.

  I ve wanted to. But I can t find a way.

  You ll find it, consoled the goddess.

  Not land, not sea, not air. Find your boy and go. Follow the signs to the gateway in the Breasal Swamp. It will bring you home. Bring the boy with you. Tell you the truth, she said, and hope to die. He s cute.

  He s not

  But the little girl laughed and stuck her tongue out, as if to say, I saw you.

  Amaranth turned back toward the sea. The battering ram had stopped its noise. Everything was quiet on the battlements, partly because she and the goddess stood as if in the silent epicenter of chaos, and partly because for a moment the lycanthropes had ceased their fighting, and all of them drew breath and looked around. The world itself was drawing breath. Amaranth watched the great wave suck the sea away fro
m the beach, revealing weedy boulders and sunken wrecks there had been a battle here in the old days, between the fleets of the Northlanders and the Ffolk.

  Then the wave broke, and lost its height, and surged ashore over the low bluffs, across the meadows, over the causeway and beyond, until it flowed into the ditch itself, and broke against the walls of Caer Moray. When it pulled back, Amaranth could see Malar the Great in the shape of a black alligator, tumbling over the fields toward the shore.

  Goodbye, Chauntea said. Turning on the parapet, stretching out her arms, she danced back the way she had come, sometimes hopping on one foot. Whether it was from the force of her steps, or from the water churning underneath her, just behind her the wall cracked and slid down into the ditch Amaranth wasn t watching. The chaos closed around her now. She picked her sword up from her feet and ran down the steps into the courtyard where the fighting was over, the armies were dispersing, whatever remnants could pull themselves away.

  Chapter Eleven — Captain Rurik

  Kill him, Suka said, scratching her nose.

  They stood outside the prison in Caer Corwell. Poke had dragged the leShay prince over the cobblestones, away from the blank wall and down the street. Now they paused to draw breath and consider the next step, Marabaldia, the gnome, the cyclops, and the pig. It was early evening, and there was a mist over the port.

  No one followed them. For a moment, Prince Araithe seemed almost human in his vulnerability, whimpering with shock, his velvet cap awry, his eyes closed, his gray hair stringy and unkempt, his shirtsleeve ripped and bloody. He lay on his back. Poke had him below his elbow. His gloves were gone. Marabaldia stood above him in her old blue dress, holding the iron bar she had taken from her cell. In this light her eyes shone in different colors.

  Kill him, repeated Suka. You know that s what he would have done, which didn t make much sense she meant it s what he would have done to them, was, in fact, trying to do whatever. She looked up at Marabaldia, and for a moment before she turned away in self-defense she caught a glimpse of herself in the giantess s right eye, as if in a mirror.

  With an odd sense of distance she saw herself as others saw her, a tiny figure with an upturned, freckled nose and short pink hair, grinning with nervousness and gesticulating like a monkey, terminally unheroic, and the piercings and tattoos didn t help, seemed an obvious overcompensation, though she d never thought of them that way.

  You know if we don t kill him, he will hunt us down, she grumbled, even her voice unfamiliar. It didn t surprise her when Marabaldia disagreed with her. How could anyone agree with anything she said?

  And are we bound by what our enemies do? said the giantess, her voice gentle and pure, her skin a regal purple in the failing light. Isn t it always better to show mercy, as bright Sel ne has commanded us? Perhaps instead of copying the vices of our worst enemies, we should learn from them. Treachery and murder have brought this person low.

  Suka looked away. Once delivered from the effect of Marabaldia s evil eye, she heard the wisdom of her own advice, which was obvious enough to convince even a pig, she observed. Poke had broken the prince s forearm, snapped the bone between her enormous molars, but the strange thing was, he didn t even seem to notice the pain but just lay on his back in the dust, helpless, Poke s cloven foot in the middle of his chest. It was as if his spirit had already left his body. She wagged her head from side to side, pulling at the joint until the arm was almost severed, while at the same time she began her transformation to her human shape, climbing up the ladder gratefully yet painfully, Suka imagined, until she let the prince s arm drop from her mouth and stepped away from him, a fleshy, pink-skinned woman with a crest of yellow hair. She spat a long splinter of bone out of her mouth, then raised her hand to wipe the blood from her lips. Suka could see the climbing rose tattoo under her arm.

  Come this way, she grunted softly. I ve been here before.

  And so what else was there to do? She took off running up the street away from the port, climbing the terraces below the castle s ruined walls. Suka put her knife back in her belt, picked up her crossbow, and ran off after her, cursing freely. They were sentimental, moralizing fools, but it was possible also that they had already lost their chance, that whatever rag or shard of Prince Araithe they d had under their hands was no longer where his spirit lived.

  Marabaldia followed more slowly, her iron bar in her right hand. The cyclops came last of all, head bowed, unsteady on his feet, which Suka thought might be a matter of the terrible depth perception endemic in his kind, until she saw he had been hurt. Now, in the better light, as she looked back she realized he was smaller than she d thought inside the prison, smaller than Marabaldia, a yellow-haired, muscular fellow, barefoot and bare-chested, except for crossed leather bands over his shoulders. He was bleeding freely from a wound in his side. He had lost his axe.

  Where are we going? Suka gasped as they hurried up the stone steps into the poorer neighborhoods of the abandoned city.

  The large civic buildings near the port had given way to what had once been residential structures, their doors and windows black and open, their roofs often collapsed. In the cool, open air, her brain was working better, though she was still making the transition between escaping from something drow, Araithe, certain death and running toward something, into the future, but what, exactly? Maybe it was indicative of a sad lack of imagination that she was running after a pig, asking it for directions. On the other hand, presumably the pig wanted to find its way back to Moray, where Lukas and the boys were chasing after the ginger slut how happy she would be to see them again! She d never liked or felt comfortable around women, or females of any kind. She d hated Marikke, the only fly in the ointment of their little band, sanctimonious, like all religion freaks, but maybe she had died or something priests and priestesses were always among the first to go, evidence of their misplaced loyalty to the capricious gods.

  Into the trees, said Poke, answering her question.

  The city of Caer Corwell was a small one, built mostly on a hill above the firth. Suka and Poke stopped to draw breath in an open space, a vacant lot choked with dry weeds and refuse, and waited for the others to catch up. Suka turned toward the north, raising her nose into the cool evening wind, opening her senses to the breath of freedom. Above them she could see the highland ridge as it curled away northwest of them toward the places where she d grown up, along the southern edge of Myrloch Vale. Instinctively she looked to the other direction, beyond a gap in the Corwell wall, northeast toward Synnoria and Cambro and eventually Winterglen, seventy, eighty miles away is that where they were going? To bring Marabaldia back home? Surely that was not her fight.

  Why? she said, a big question that had always bothered her.

  She watched the fomorian and her cyclops labor slowly up the slope it must be difficult being so big. It must be difficult to move or run if you ve been locked in a cell for ten years. With all her heart Suka missed her little band of misfits, now that she was running away from the only place they knew to look for her. This jolly collection of ancient ancestral enemies was no substitute. But should she leave them, strike out on her own? Find her way east to the Ffolk settlements along the coast and then to Alaron, as she had many years before? But Lukas would be looking for her here. He had promised.

  But then Marabaldia appeared out of the end of the street, and joined them in the empty lot, her face agonized and frightened.

  Drow, she said, which was a relief, in a way, because it delayed thinking. And it was true: Dark figures massed in the shadows below them, gathering among the ruined houses. Suka and the pig had stopped just inside the old city wall, much of which had been cannibalized for building material even before the fey came to Gwynneth. But the gate was intact, and the road out of it. A few arrows stuck into the rubble around them, and then they were off again, as quickly as they could, out the gate into the world, an expanse of fallow land that had once been wheat fields, and a mile or so in the distance, visible just as a smea
r of purple shadow in the failing light, the woodlands underneath the high, chalk-white ridge, its eastern slopes still lit by the setting sun.

  But there were drow there, too. In the middle of the flat, open, shelterless, bare ground, at a crossroads marked by a stone obelisk, Marabaldia stopped, planted her iron bar, and the others gathered around her. The cyclops was so tired and hurt that he could scarcely stand. He d pressed his palm into his side, and blood seeped between his fingers. With her left hand, Marabaldia seized hold of his jaw and turned his face until his single eye raised toward her, and she could look down on him with all the force of her own eye. Again it seemed to Suka that she could see or at least imagine a beam of light pass between them, and she wondered what it could mean a last farewell, an exchange of information, psychic healing? Because they were in trouble, obviously. The drow had caught them in a spider s web. They had come out from the dark woods, and out from the shadow of the wall, and had spread into the fields at either side.

  Marabaldia looked up. Friends, she said, let us prepare to do our duty here. And if the day should go against us, let our final consolation be that we have borne ourselves according to the highest standards of our character. A bold death is a treasure that cannot be bought or sold. As for myself Poke, you, and Suka, and you, Borgol I will always be grateful

  Suka thought: What, cyclopses have names? And in this case always looked to be about seven minutes. The drow weren t wasting their arrows, but moved steadily toward them along each of the four roads and also through the dried brambles of the fields. Nevertheless she found herself inspired almost against her will, as she unhooked the crossbow from her back and wound it up. She risked a smile at the cyclops, who was crouched so low his head was scarcely a foot higher than her own Borgol, are you kidding me? What kind of a stupid name was that?

  How s it going? she muttered, planting her back foot and taking aim at one of the drow captains who sauntered insolently up the road, the last of the light in her white hair. Oh, well. At least she didn t have to make any decisions. And Marabaldia had saved her life back in the prison. Suka owed her something, whatever little she had.