The Rose of Sarifal (forgotten realms:moonshae isles)

by Paulina Claiborne

  Besides, she said, I have already eaten. I have no more room.

  She was not altogether naked. Silhouetted by the candlelight, she seemed made of darkness, a girl-shaped hole in the world s protective screen. Lukas watched her lean down over Lady Amaranth and run her forefinger over her forehead, her cheek, and down her neck. The princess, who had been unconscious or asleep, now roused herself, came awake under the black hand. Lukas saw Amaranth press against her bonds, heard her little moan. But she had not yet opened her eyes by the time Amaka turned from her, and stepped over the lip of the abyss, and climbed down out of sight into the well.

  Lukas said nothing, the needle between his teeth. Gaspar-shen blinked twice, in quick succession. Lady Amaranth struggled weakly against her restraints, cried out as if she had been hurt. Lukas bent down to his task again, worrying and picking at the pale strands. He worked faster now, hurting his mouth and not caring, because he wanted, once loose, to climb up to the rim of garbage and at least look down into the well, past where Amaka had descended, taking some of the radiance with her. The air was darker now. One of the strands gave way, and then another. He pulled, and his hand was free.

  Gaspar-shen watched him extricate himself then stand painfully erect, rubbing his shoulders and his hands, wiping the blood from his mouth. He himself felt comfortable and secure, because he couldn t move. In the Elemental Chaos where he had been born, these moments of stasis formed small islands of bliss, even in memory. Traveling with Lukas, there was far too little of this, and it was worth it to be hurt, sometimes, or imprisoned, or in danger of a terrible death, to enjoy a small bit of quietude sometimes. Closing his eyes, he could see the colors of the ocean, hear the roaring of the water.

  It couldn t last. Lukas stood above him then knelt down as if to free him. But and this was an astonishing thing, which made Gaspar-shen think with a surge of gratitude that sometimes his friend almost understood him instead he whispered in his ear, his eyes on the leShay princess waking up. Stay right here as if he had a choice! I ll go see what I can see. We ll need weapons to get out of this.

  Maybe. Gaspar-shen wondered if they had gone past the need for fighting. In his mind he pictured the tidal wave that had inundated the field at Caer Moray, that had broken against the curtain wall ah, how beautiful. What passions it had washed away! And he imagined this place, also, flooded, the salt water rushing through the tunnels and caverns like the blood pushing through a human body then receding. He imagined the pressure building until the water found a vent onto the land, and it would wash them out into the sunlight and tumble them down into Cambrent Gap, and down to the ruins of Caervu on the Straits of Alaron, and down into the sea. What would he give, he thought, to set his course out of the Moonshaes and never return?

  Feeling his constraints, he opened his eyes. Lukas had clambered down into the tunnel s mouth, and he disappeared between the burning rocks. The genasi, as if gifted by the goddess with a vision of the future, imagined himself walking after him, but not into some dark, desiccated passage underground, but into the open air above the sea. He watched himself stumbling down a stony beach, and falling on his knees in the shallow water, and allowing the surf to knock him backward, the seagulls above him, and a rainbow in the spray.

  His experience was not the same as Amaranth s as she woke up. And yet there was a point of similarity: She had retained a small sharp fragment of her dream, a vestige of a feeling that was comforting for a single moment. She saw herself in her bedroom in Karador when she was a little girl, before her mother had died and Mistress Valeanne had come to take her away, had woken her in darkness. Someone in her dream, perhaps her mother no, but her mother s skin was not as dark as that, her hair not as pale had touched her cheek and neck, had put her lips next to her ear and whispered something she was able to remember when she had come up to the surface of the world and looked around, and vainly tried to struggle against the suffocating ropes. In a moment of claustrophobic panic, she heard a voice whisper to her: You are as different to these creatures as a man is to a stone. You are like a goddess on this world. Do not let them judge you, for their ideas mean nothing. A thousand years will not wash you away. Your life is not with them. Do not be fooled by any chance resemblance or feeling. Remember this if nothing else.

  As it happened, she remembered the whole thing. She was able to lift her head. Lukas was gone. His friend, however, lay close to her.

  Ah, she said.

  Do not be fooled by any chance resemblance or feeling. Well, there was no likelihood of that. The genasi lay on his back. Depending on the light, his skin was blue or green. His body was hairless, and streaks of color moved across it, words in unknown languages. Wind whistled through the slits that formed his nose. I have something to ask you, he said. If you could have one dish to eat right now, not to share, but just enough for you, what would it be?

  How hungry she was! In Moray she d had simple things to eat, potatoes fried with onions, rabbit stew. But the genasi s words brought her back farther than that. They opened a door back to the past, through which she could catch a glimpse of the great kitchen in Karador, and the chefs slaving over their brass cauldrons, and the stewards carrying the covered silver dishes up the stairs, and the steam rising from the plate, and the smell of ortolans, blinded, force fed, drowned in brandy, then roasted and eaten whole.

  Ortolans, she said. It is a songbird from beyond the sea. My mother said you could taste its whole life in one bite, and your life with it.

  The whistle of the wind.

  Ortolans, repeated the genasi. Then, after a moment, My friend and I will leave this island soon. The goddess showed me something when I was lying here, something far across the Sea of Swords, maybe in the country where the ortolans grow. You will not hurt him, said Gaspar-shen, by pretending even for a little while that you could share his fate, or he could share yours.

  She could not tell if he was asking her or telling her, or both. And there was no time to answer him, even if she knew what she might say. Because Lukas had reappeared in the tunnel s mouth, and then was clambering up the pile, scattering the vermin. He carried weapons, the long, curved sabers of the drow. With one of them he slashed them free. Gaspar-shen closed his eyes and opened them.

  Here we are, he said unhappily, she thought, but it was hard to tell. She rubbed her wrists and ankles, labored to her feet, then sat down suddenly and waited for a spell of nausea to move away. The air was full of ash. She wiped her gritty lips then tried again.

  Look, said Captain Lukas. He led them down the slope and out into the larger cavern where they had fought the drow.

  There s no one here, he said, and showed them what he d found, a few drow soldiers lying in contorted positions, as if they had been picked up and discarded, flung against the rocks. This was where Lukas had found the swords.

  But in a smaller, adjoining cave, he showed them a pavilion of scarlet cloth, lit at the corners with flickering oil lamps. Inside, laid out on a padded cot, they found the hierophant lying dead. Her face was bruised and torn, her arm and shoulder bound into a sling of spider silk. A wad of webbed silk, stained with blood, was laid upon her chest. But these wounds were not what had killed her. Her face was gray and bloodless, and there were marks upon her throat where the goddess had savaged her.

  As they watched, one of the oil lanterns guttered and went out.

  We must be quick, said Lukas.

  He found the way they d come, the way Amaka had led them down, and they climbed up the narrow passage into cooler, cleaner air. They carried the lanterns, but they were almost empty, and they blew out in the first breeze. After that they felt their way, for it was very dark, with just a trace of phosphorescence on the rocks. Lukas reached back for her hand. She would let him touch her for a little while more. Do not be fooled by any chance resemblance or feeling. She pressed her palm against his palm, laced their fingers together. It was easy in the dark. She remembered how she had kissed him on the battlements above the gate at Caer Mora
y. Soon she would kiss him again. She was like a goddess on this world. No one could judge her. If her sister had despoiled her in the gardens of the citadel, maybe even that was a good thing. It was best to know your enemies. She would have her revenge. She had a thousand years to plan it.

  They climbed the steep stairs. She trusted Captain Lukas. When they reached the wider ways of the second level, she felt a surge of gratitude. She would reward him. So at the entrance to the brick tunnel, the fomorian road that ran toward Synnoria in the south, and north descended deep into the Underdark, she paused. She knew where she was. She recognized the smell. She held Lukas by his left hand, and with her other hand she took the sword from him and let it fall with a clatter. The tiles were smooth under her boots. She pressed him up against the flat wall and kissed him, and with none of her old uncertainty. Because this was the last time she would see him, she would enjoy this moment in all its melancholy power. The passageway was deep in darkness, and she pushed him back until she could not see his face. Instead she supplied in her mind s eye his short brown hair, his blue eyes and thin lips. She touched his nose and cheek as the goddess had touched her.

  Nearby, invisible except for a few dim, snaking lines of light, the genasi cleared his throat. In the city of Uzbeg on the Golden Way, they make a confabulation of chocolate and nut cream, baked and then sealed in a layer of silver so thick and so hard, it must be opened with a lock and key.

  Lukas said: Why don t you climb up a little farther the way we came, and see if you can find some kind of light up here. We ll wait for you.

  A doubtful whistle in the darkness. Yes, Captain, he said, either humbly or else ironically, it seemed to Amaranth.

  When he was gone, she bent back to the task at hand, kissing Lukas so fiercely, as if to leave the imprint of herself upon his mouth. She let him touch her more intimately also, let his hands move over her body, and he surprised her by the lightness and delicacy of his touch. But when he slid his fingers inside her clothes, she stopped him after a while, thinking how he would be dead when she was a great queen. And when his children s children were dead, still she would reign in Karador.

  She laid her forefinger against his lips and whispered like a simpering, flighty, wavering human girl, No I mean not here. Not here it stinks of cyclopses and purple giants. No, I want to see you, she said, though in fact the opposite was true, and she would never have allowed him to take such liberties in the light. Take this as a promissory note, she said, kissing him again, and then she whispered near his ear: Imagine a blanket spread upon the dewy grass, and lanterns in the trees above our heads. Or else imagine us in the topmost tower of Karador, in my bedroom where I was a little girl, and the windows open, and the curtains of my bed drawn back, so we can look out over the waters of the lake. There are windows on every side.

  Unless he was a fool, that should be enough to tell him she was lying to him, she thought, feeling something in her heart of hearts, a stab of ecstasy or guilt. Do not be misled by any chance resemblance or feeling, she thought, pulling him down onto the floor, propping up in the corner of the wall. He stretched out his long legs and she sat on them, her knees spread wide. They kissed for a while more, and then they turned their heads to watch a glimmer of light along the tunnel, the opposite direction from where Gaspar-shen had gone. It was not torchlight, but something softer and more varied, beams of light that moved along the blood-red walls. They heard the tramp of marching feet.

  In time, Lady Amaranth got up, and straightened her clothes. She had not seen cyclopses since she was a little girl, when they had chased her and Mistress Valeanne on the way to Crane Point. Lukas got up too, and they joined hands and waited for a little while. But when she tried to pull away, or else pull him into some side passage, or else into some crack or crevice in the brick where they could hide, he would not come.

  Don t worry, Lukas said, for he had seen a little figure running out in front, backlit by the glare of the cyclopses eyes, tufts of pink hair standing out all over her head. Imagining that Gaspar-shen had just gone down the tunnel a few hundred yards, Lukas called out his name, told him to come back. Then he walked forward into the light, holding out his hands, astonished to see the gnome accompanied by these creatures. He recognized Marabaldia from her prison cell in Caer Corwell, though she had changed. Perhaps he also had changed, though it hadn t been so long, after all. Less than a month, he thought he scarcely knew. He reached down for Suka s hand. Captain, she said, what a surprise.

  She looked Lady Amaranth up and down. He didn t introduce them. There was no point. She stuck her tongue out, showed her silver stud. I ll tell you all that s happened once we ve stopped, she said.

  But Amaranth couldn t hear her, wasn t paying attention. While Lukas bent down to listen, while he squeezed the little gnome s hands, Amaranth found herself staring up into the round, heavy-featured face of the fomorian, its right eye large and bright. Though in Karador she had heard of these grotesque and misshapen creatures, she had never seen one, and she found herself fascinated by its eye, which reminded her for a wistful instant of the portal that had carried her from Moray, the way the surface of it seemed to swirl in a circle then slide open like the mechanical aperture in her professor s camera obscura, a device made of beaten copper, which she had last seen when she was a little girl.

  And like that morning in Karador long before, she saw many things that had been hidden, or else only vaguely guessed at. She saw the forces of Citadel Umbra gathered around them in a circle, while an army of drow approached from underneath. She saw a trap that would crush all of them and steal her away. She saw the cyclopses struck down, and Lukas tortured to death for the liberties she had granted him. Every detail was clear to her, as if these things had happened in the past and not some version of the future, and as if she were doomed to play them endlessly in memory. The fey stretched him out in one of their bright chambers, stretched and snipped his body in their delicate machines and made a game of him, and the genasi too. They cocked their heads quizzically, unused to cries of pain.

  My lady, this is the Princess Marabaldia, said someone else, an old eladrin who had come up through the ranks of cyclopses, leaning on a woman s arm.

  It is my pleasure to encounter you, said the monster, her voice beautiful and low, her tone formal and polite. But Amaranth stared into her eye, and in its surface she saw a moving portrait of herself in her nephew s arms, dancing stiffly and correctly as if in a darkened room. She could see her own back, the line of freckles underneath her shoulder blade, because her back was bare.

  Oh, but one day she would be a queen, and the mother of kings and queens. As she watched herself, she heard with part of her mind the peculiar, airless voice of Gaspar-shen, as he came hurrying back.

  I saw them, he said. Prince Araithe and his people. They have come from Winterglen eladrin mostly, and a few drow. They are camped in the big cavern, a quarter mile from here. Many hundreds, it looks like. His mother is not with them.

  His voice was high and calm. Marabaldia had laid her spear against the wall. Now she picked it up. I will be glad to see the prince again, she said grimly.

  Captain, said Gaspar-shen, it is too many. There are warlocks and mages, and more than a hundred knights. Prince Araithe is very strong.

  We ve beaten him before, said Marabaldia.

  That was Poke, Suka reminded her. And Poke is dead.

  Lukas felt Amaranth press his hand and then let go. He didn t know who Poke was. But he felt immensely tired. He remembered the recent fight, the mounds of corpses, and he felt their presence in the darkness around him, beyond the limit of all these glowing eyes. Nor did their spirits reassure him. But the air was stale with their breath, and thick, and hard to breathe.

  Gaspar-shen was staring at Amaranth. We can t fight them, he said. If the prince wants what I think he wants.

  Lukas was too tired to argue. The dead hung close around them.

  We have no choice, he said, bending to pick up his drow saber. An u
nfamiliar weapon, yet he would make it sing.

  Poke is dead? asked Lady Amaranth. Slowly, as if unwillingly, she turned to him.

  The gnome was looking at her as if she had two heads. Ah, forgive me, she said to Marabaldia. It is the Yellow Rose of Sarifal.

  Amaranth put up her hands. Let us make an end to all this fighting.

  The cyclopses had focused their regard. She stood in their eyes light as if on stage, her shadow stretching out behind her. And because she seemed to Lukas suddenly like an actress on a stage, he made himself aware of every tiny gesture, aware of how she moved her fingers as if caressing the soft breeze, aware also of how the part she played was different from the person she had been not ten minutes before.

  There s another way, she said. Let me speak to my nephew. He ll grant you safe passage. He ll do what I say.

  Her red hair hung listless. Her freckled cheeks were chapped and preternaturally pale in that strange light. Her eyes were wide and determined, or else afraid. Later, on board ship, his own gaze fixed deliberately on the horizon, he would remember how she didn t look at him as she stepped backward into the shadow. He would remember how no one spoke. He would remember how it seemed for a moment as if she had something more to say. But then maybe she thought better of whatever it was. After a moment she turned, and the darkness consumed her. They listened to her soft footsteps receding, and then nothing.

  Later, on board ship, Suka would tell Gaspar-shen and him her entire story, and he would tell her everything he knew. But now, they all stared at one another as if they were strangers. After twenty minutes, as they waited, Marabaldia called for a rest, for the first time on the march from Synnoria. She herself did not let go her spear. She sent some of the fomorians up ahead, and she posted a guard, but the rest of the cyclopses opened their packs and pulled out bottles of water, and loaves of bread, and links of sausages, and sat down or lay down, and they made camp.