The Rose of Sarifal (forgotten realms:moonshae isles)

by Paulina Claiborne

  Up to his shins in the black water, he stood up straight and lifted his sword. The sun shone overhead through the slender trees, the nets of vines. He clenched the demon-eye ruby in his left fist, and for a moment he thought of Marikke and Kip, for whose sake he had entered Malar s tomb, fought Malar s angel. Disoriented, head throbbing, he imagined their faces red-cheeked Marikke, little Kip.

  He imagined their faces, but he couldn t see them. Instead, he saw where he was going, a dry place in the middle of the marsh, a grove of beeches, and a circular pool of water. The jewel showed him. The loregem, Eleuthra had called it. It did not show him scenes from his own memory. It did not show him what was happening elsewhere. It did not prophesize what was to come. Instead, he thought it was like a book of knowledge or of spells, a book that was in sympathy with himself, which was why his palm thrilled with electricity and why his head ached and throbbed. The gem knew what he wanted or what he needed. The gem showed him the way. The gem allowed him to follow the wolf, and in his mind s eye that morning he had seen her squat and piss on a fallen gatepost in the abandoned town beside the river. When he arrived, the stone was dry, and he could read the inscription with the loregem s help. The soft flesh of the ruby thrilled under his fingers, and what had been indecipherable was now suddenly plain:

  This is not the way forward.

  And on the other side of the empty town it was called Horsa, he realized suddenly he had found traces of the wolf, a mound of scat. There was the bridge, the single span over the river. The wolf had ripped away the moss from a stone, revealing a column of runes carved in a language he had not known until that instant:

  Do not follow me.

  And beyond the causeway in the marsh where he was now Breasal Marsh, he knew its name he saw the wolf pause half a mile ahead, and cough or vomit up the fragments of bone from some unlucky small animal over a stone tablet just submerged. Inspired now, granted new energy despite his aching arms and head the mental images, so clear, so sharp, were like an irritant, he thought, like shards of rock or glass inside his brain he stumbled forward on Eleuthra s trail, looking also for the broken twigs or wet prints that marked her passage. Again he thought he was reminded for the first time in many years what love felt like, a hidden, urgent communication, a synchronicity in his and the druid s vision of the world, a shared experience that was painful and disorienting, but also welcoming and addictive. He needed her, and the gem knew it, and knew other things as well, like the location of the black, circular pool in Breasal Marsh, a portal before the Spellplague, when all this country had been full of fey, dead now, annihilated, as Eleuthra had told him, the water and the mud full of old and broken bones.

  He splashed his way to the submerged tablet, tried to push the water away. Then he bent down, and with sensitive new fingers read the incised letters like a blind man:

  You disgust me, ugly creature.

  Do not chase me.

  I will break your demon heart.

  These words were like food to him, nourishment to keep him going. And so he came to the place in time, as the land rose and dried out in the center of the marsh, and the trees grew straight and big, silver, smooth-barked beeches with their leaves like the blades of little knives, like the knife Marikke had left for him in the king s barrow below Scourtop, where he had broken his chains. And in the middle of a secret grove among the green, yellow, and copper-colored leaves, he found the pool, and the wolf waiting.

  No, not the wolf. He saw Eleuthra in her human shape, the wolf skin and the king s thighbone cast upon the bank. But she was washing the muck and sweat off her body in the clean water, the clean light of the afternoon, clothed only in the dappled shadows as the leaves turned and stirred above her head. Bent over in pain, leaning on his sword, he watched her from the deeper trees, watched the language of her gestures change as she became aware of his presence. Nor did she try to hide the treasures of her body, but instead displayed them more openly. The water was cold, he could tell by the gooseflesh on her arms, the color in her cheeks. But a woman does not hide herself from the gaze of an animal. And as he watched, he felt more and more distorted and deformed, as if from the inside out. This also the loregem was showing him as he squeezed it and it slipped and throbbed between his fingers: a vision of himself, the barbed tail hanging down between his legs, the high leather wings arching from his back, the row of sharp spines between them a monster, a daemonfey from House Dlardrageth itself. The loregem was showing him, and the king s gold was healing him, and the love knot with Eleuthra was binding him to her knowledge of what he was, awakening his nature, bringing it out of him, breaking down the walls that hid him from the world, cunningly constructed by his father and himself over many, many years that s what love is, isn t it?

  She ran her hands through her wet hair, elbows back. Then she turned around and bent down to examine a cut along the outside of her thigh, a beaded line of blood. Don t touch me, she said as he came close. But he didn t pay any attention.

  It s strange, she said later, turned away from him, lying on her side on the green turf. I knew this place, but I didn t know how to find it. I thought I was following you, even though you were behind me.

  He grunted.

  It s a gate to something, she continued.

  That I know. But the door is closed. You cannot open it. And even if you could, I wouldn t go inside it. Not with you.

  She turned over onto her back and pointed up at the sky. There were clouds overhead and as the Savage watched they gathered and combined into a knot of darkness overhead, which blocked the sun. And it began to rain, a soft, cleansing shower that drifted down, he suspected, onto themselves alone. The raindrops almost looked like flecks of gold, he thought, as they filtered down through the leaves.

  Then she turned toward him. What is your name? she asked. Your real name?

  But he wouldn t tell her. Later the shower dissipated as she fell asleep, lying naked on her wolf skin, while he looked for the gate. He laid his sword next to the sleeping girl but gathered up his other treasures, which he thought would help him. He held the loregem in his left hand. Without it he felt naked.

  The pool was as round as a drain. He knew it wasn t natural, a plug of water perhaps a dozen feet in diameter, much smaller than he had thought when he had seen it in his mind. At first the slope was gentle, a circle of gray sand then it dropped away until the water was black at the center of the pool.

  He walked around it on the circular strand, his head hurting. When he was with Eleuthra, near her, he felt better, healed, but now the pain was back. He felt swollen, as if some new growth inside his body were displacing the old, or as if his brain were too big for his skull, as if the loregem, squeezed in his left hand, had given him too much, too fast, too soon.

  In the old days, he said, the Kendricks had a way to move between the islands, a charmed circle in each of the Moonshaes, in private shrines and antechambers in the palaces and temples. There was one in Norland and Oman, and in Caer Westphal in Snowdown, and Caer Callidyrr, and Caer Corwell on Gwynneth Island. I believe when I saw the High Lady Ordalf on the terrace of the moon, that she had come from there. Those ways have been blocked for eighty years. But I know a way.

  He spoke loudly, as if to overcome the buzzing in his head. Loudly enough to wake Eleuthra, who sat up to watch him from across the water, scratching herself idly and softly. She wrapped the wolf s skin around her body. She yawned, sticking out her tongue.

  I know how to open the door, said the Savage, his head bursting, his heart swollen with the sight of her, the way she moved. There are signs along this shore look, he said, squatting down. He took the knife Marikke had left him, and used it to cut away the leg of an old stump, half submerged in the water. Look, here. In a minute he had uncovered what he sought, a buried hunk of volcanic rock, a hexagonal slice of black basalt not native to that place or time, and with the sigil incised in it. He couldn t read it, but once again he touched it with his fingertips and the meaning came clear:
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  I regret what you have made me do.

  He rose to his feet and staggered drunkenly along the shore until he found the place. He knelt, and in the hard sand and gravel he uncovered it, the hideous face of a demon carved into the black basalt, lips stretched wide, and the sigil cut into his tongue:

  I hate the feeling of your hands on me.

  And then another and another, each one a sixth of the way around the circle, each one carved into a block of basalt:

  I regret the taste of your lips.

  It is bitter in my mouth.

  You will never have me.

  Only my heart is pure.

  This had brought him around the entire circle. Now he was on the shore below her where she lay on the grass under the beech trees, watching him, an unreadable expression on her face. She had wrapped the wolf skin around her upper body, but her legs were still uncovered. Ah, he thought, there is a sign or sigil in her body, which I can read with my fingers.

  The way is open, he said, as the loregem had taught him, in the mark of the Black Blood. It s hidden now, but the water will clear. And we ll see the one in Corwell, see right through to the other side, the circle there.

  She shrugged, scratching at her armpits and the outside of her thighs, sniffing at her fingers. Sarifal, she said.

  The country of the fey.

  Come with me, he said, his voice harsh and pleading even in his own ears. Malar is hunting us. You saw him.

  He s hunting you, she said. Not me. Then she turned her head away from him, staring into the trees, entirely focused on a noise he couldn t hear, a smell he couldn t catch, until the bracken parted and another wolf loped into the grove, paused, lifted his leg against an old stump.

  He was a heavy brute with reddish fur, and a black mark on his forehead. He drew his lips back from his teeth. The Savage got up from his knees, his knife in his right hand, the loregem in his left. Hating the wolf, he did not see or even predict Eleuthra s transformation, until the female stepped delicately into his line of vision, hesitant and unsure, he thought, a beautiful brindled creature as if from a different species than the squat and heavy lycanthrope oh, how his head ached to see them move under the trees, circling around each other nose to tail. Eleuthra squatted to urinate, and the Savage wondered if she had come suddenly into estrus, perhaps that same day, perhaps an hour before as he lay with her on the bank; the stink of it still lingered. And now it was as if the wolves were playing with each other, running under the trees, chasing each other and then doubling back, sinking down onto their forelegs and then bounding up she was doing this to spite him, hurt him. He gripped the leaf-shaped knife in his right hand. The Black Blood. He needed the Black Blood. The Black Blood would save them. It would open the gate.

  Stung with jealousy, he blundered up the bank between the leaping wolves.

  Lukas had seen the knot of clouds from miles away, above and ahead of them as they clambered through the Breasal Marsh. It was the last sign the goddess showed them, the last they needed. Coal had run ahead, Lady Amaranth s lycanthropic brother, and they followed wearily, he, Gaspar-shen, and the eladrin princess. Some day, she said, I would request for you to play more music, when I am home in Karador.

  She meant it kindly, Lukas imagined as they struggled through the oleander bushes, the small branches whipping back. Still, he could not help but picture himself dressed in a servant s motley, sawing away, perhaps one of a quartet of tame humans in Lady Ordalf s court, while others, dancers or gymnasts, capered before the grave-faced, beautiful, ageless fey.

  It will be my pleasure, he murmured, teeth set, meaning the opposite. It was his intention to gather together his small crew, find the gnome, take whatever gold was due to them and then be gone, back to Alaron. There were packet boats, he knew, that left from Borth and Kingsbay, the free-Ffolk ports on the east coast of Gwynneth Island. Then he would build a new boat and sail north or south or east or west, anywhere out of the Moonshaes, where he had not been happy for a long time. He imagined the salt drying his skin as he tacked away from Callidyrr, Marikke at the foremast, Kip in the bilge, miserable, covered in tarpaulins. They were not dead. He could not believe that they were dead. The black cloud was above him now, and he heard Coal yowling and snarling, and the smash of heavy bodies through the bushes. Then they had reached the dry land, and they were underneath the beech trees. They came up the slope above the pool, and when he saw the Savage on the gravel shore, up to his shins in the black water, he knew that it was so, and everything the dead or dying old man had told him was true, and great Chauntea had not lied.

  The golden elf was stripped to the waist. What had the goddess called him? Daemonfey? Bishtek Dlardrageth? He stood with a shining, glowing stone in one hand, a knife in the other, while the red wolf jumped at him from the bank, rising up on his hind legs and scratching at his shoulders with his forepaws, biting at his face. The Savage turned to him, and Lukas could see the red slits down the centers of his eyes, see the sharp, predatory teeth as he sank them into the wolf s throat, the muscles of his back straining, his skin covered with scabs. Lukas could see amid the wreck of scar tissue on his shoulders and down his spine, the fresh growth there, the pinnacles of bone that had broken from the skin. He had a new circlet of gold around his neck.

  Lukas saw him drop the glowing jewel into the water. He saw him reach down with his knife and open up the belly of the wolf, while with his other hand he seized hold of the viscera and pulled it out, so that a cascade of blood fell into the pool, and the red wolf staggered and fell. Lady Amaranth cried out, her bow already in her hand, while a tide of blood washed away from the dying wolf, spreading around the shore as if drawn by a strange current. There was a black stone in the gravel at the water s edge, and when the blood touched it, it began to glow.

  Amaranth drew her arrow to her ear. Loyalties split, Lukas hesitated, and her bowstring sang. His face twisted with rage, the Savage ducked his head, and the arrow passed over his shoulder. At the same time, Lukas saw another woman on the shore, kneeling as if out of breath, dressed only in a brindled wolf skin. She rose to her feet, holding a strange, curved sword. Gaspar-shen had drawn his, and the blade glowed with emerald fire. But she paid no attention. She stood on the grass bank, and as another black stone showed its glowing sigil, and then another farther along the circle of the shore, she cried out, I hate what you have made me do. I hate the feeling of your hands. Your taste is bitter in my mouth.

  As she spoke, the entire surface of the water started to turn in a counterclockwise direction. Touched by the wolf s blood, the six stones came alight. The Savage stood up to his shins in the little pool. At any moment he expected to see the water clear, the opaque surface open, and the other side of the portal reveal itself, the circle of lamps on a stone floor, perhaps, in a temple of the gods anywhere but here. He didn t have the ears of a wolf, but even he could hear the baying of the hounds, the hunt approaching through the marsh. The afternoon light slanted down through the beech trees, and among the silver trunks he could see his friends Lukas and the genasi. He almost didn t recognize them, not because they d changed, but because he had. His eyes saw differently, the sound of his voice was foreign to him, and the pain in his shoulders and down his back was hard to tolerate. His chest and hands were greasy with the wolf s blood. He looked up into the eyes of a pale eladrin maiden with red hair, a bow in her hand, a second arrow pulled back to her ear, a tattooed line of thorns below her jaw he knew who she was, the Lady Amaranth, the Rose of Sarifal. Lukas had found her, and if he could keep her from shooting him, then together they would bring her back to Caer Corwell as her sister had demanded, and they would unlock the gnome from her cage, and accomplish good, pure, right things to change the world, and perhaps save the lady also, and depose or destroy the leShay queen, who had hurt the mortal realm for far, far, far too long. The Savage s thought branched into the future like a sudden bolt of lightning, breaking it apart there were kingdoms to be saved or overturned. There was a treasure to
be won. Eleuthra stood above him with his sword in her hands, the king s sword he had taken from the tomb. With his new eyes he couldn t read the expression on her face. The world, the light, seemed tinged with blood. With his new ears he couldn t understand what she was saying. The lycanthropes came running up the slope under the trees, and the eladrin girl had turned her arrow that way, had shot one of the slavering great brutes. Lukas had drawn his sword, and the genasi, also, was hacking at the wolves why wouldn t the water clear? The sigils were alight. The circle was made. His friends had turned away from him and only Eleuthra was left, the Ffolk druid, King Kendrick s spy, who stepped down from the bank into the water, an unreadable expression on her face. No she was bringing his sword to him. But why had she raised it above her head as if to cut him down? The pain in his head could not be tolerated, the buzzing in his ears. The dogs were barking, and now there were new beasts among the trees, and then Great Malar himself came up the slope in his panther shape, his black shoulders mangy and streaked with scabs. Still joined to his haunches were the dry and withered remnants of the boy Kip, attached like remnants of a skin that a serpent was sloughing off. A boneless hand hung down between his legs. The god rose up on his hind legs, transforming as they watched. Lukas, Amaranth, and Gaspar-shen had stumbled down into the water now, still black as ink why wouldn t it clear? The lamps were lit. Eleuthra had come to him, whether to kill him or stand with him, he couldn t tell. As the god towered above them, losing his panther shape and metamorphosing instead into an enormous bear, the girl came to embrace him, kiss him, while at the last moment he wrested the sword from her, kicked aside the floating body of the dead wolf, and pushed her down into the bloody water. And with the king s sword in his hand he left the turning circle to do battle, Bishtek Dlardrageth the Savage. He climbed up out of the water to do battle with the god. The loregem was already lost. He wrenched the gold circlet from his neck and threw it into the pool, and his headache was immediately gone.