Long, Dark Road

by Bianculli, Susan

  Chapter 2

  Jason gulped audibly beside me. I took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “Now?” Jason asked.

  Dusk smiled at him. “I do not think you need to worry about my mother, Jason. She approves of you.”

  Jason looked disbelieving, so Dusk added, “Elsewise she would not have gifted you with what she already has. Trust me on this.”

  I smiled at Dusk’s confirmation of my previous words.

  “So why hasn’t she said anything to me?” Jason asked.

  “Do you worship her?” Dusk asked him.

  Jason shook his head “no.”

  “That is why then,” Dusk said.

  But I privately wondered if maybe Jason actually worshiped her without knowing that he did. After all, in order to use magical items you had to believe in a Deity, or so Arghen had said. Jason was able to use the ring of frost he had gotten from the storeroom in the slave Exchange down in Chirasniv, the department where the Under-elves kept the Surfacers they’d bargained for from Bascom and Morsca. Jason had never met Caelestis, but he had met Quiris once before—even if it hadn’t exactly been a good meeting. Later she’d given him supplies without being asked. It would make sense if he unconsciously worshiped her. I would have to discuss that with Jason at some later time.

  The Miscere Surface-elf looked at the rest of us, and we all nodded our readiness—Jason a little more reluctantly and Heather a little more eagerly than the rest. It struck me then that out of all of us, Heather had the least amount of knowledge of the gods over here. That made me instantly curious to see what would happen if—when—Quiris arrived, especially since Heather had started to finally believe in magic a couple of days ago. Her timing on that had sucked. Bascom and Morsca had been able to take advantage of her new-found belief with a whole steal-your-body magic that they’d done, but thankfully things had turned out all right in the end.

  Dusk raised his eyes to the ceiling of the map room. “Mother? Can you hear me? Are you there? Can you come and talk to me?”

  “Yes, yes, and yes,” a cool silvery voice replied, echoing around the room.

  A faint, shining grey light appeared and thickened in front of him, kind of the way ghosts sometimes looked in movies and TV shows where their translucent bodies threw brief light shadows around the room. The form quickly became a handsome, tall, female Under-elf with skin whiter than an albino’s, and whose equally white hair was drawn tightly across her head into a thick braid dangling over her shoulder nearly to her waist. Her slanted amber eyes matched Dusk’s, and she had a sleek, muscular build that most men, let alone women, would kill for. She wore black, flexible, thigh high leather boots with tops that disappeared under what seemed to be extremely fine blackened mesh chainmail. A design of a long spear in silver chainmail links built into the armor decorated it from hem to neck. Bracers of a black metal also decorated with a long silver spear design hugged her forearms, and a tight, long sleeved black leather tunic under her armor tucked into the bracers.

  Having met Caelestis’ lieutenant goddess before, I raised my hand in a respectful greeting, as did Ragar and Auraus. Jason smiled tentatively at her, like he wasn’t sure whether he should draw attention to himself or not. Heather stood rock still, with the only sign of acknowledgement that Quiris had joined us being the thunderstruck look on her face. I smiled to myself, remembering my first view of Caelestis and how I’d felt the first and second time the Presence of the goddess had wrapped around me. Now, though I would never be completely used to it, the Presence was a more familiar feeling now, though Quiris’ Presence was somewhat less strong. Quiris nodded genially to us all, but she smiled specially at Heather and Jason before stepping towards Dusk with her arms spread wide. Looking at the goddess, I remembered what Arghen had said once—that he had been surprised to see that although Dusk was not a full Under-elf like she was, Dusk did look like his mother. Now I could see it for myself: Dusk was definitely his mother’s son in the face, but he was his father’s son in coloring and body type. Mother and son were both muscular, but Dusk was bulkier in shape.

  Dusk and Quiris hugged each other for a couple of minutes, and then he stepped back, breaking contact reluctantly. “So, Mother, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?”

  “What? No ‘hello, mother, so nice to see you, how have you been, what have you been up to, would you like to sit down and I will get you a drink?’” she teased him.

  Dusk smiled. “Well, those were going to be attended to in the course of our conversation.” He turned around to the map table, opened the bottle, and poured it into one of the silver cups. “Would you like some mead, Mother? It comes from the valley and was made a couple of seasonals ago. It is from a very good batch, if I do say so myself.”

  He picked the goblet up and held it out to her. She took it from him graciously with a nod of thanks.

  “Hmmm, that is good,” she said after a long swallow. “The valley would certainly be able to export this as a marketable commodity if they wished.”

  “A commodity that many beings would like to try, like, perhaps, Arghen?” Dusk said slyly.

  His mother laughed. “All right. Let us get down to the real reason I am here, then.” She walked over to one of the comfortable black leather chairs by the fireplace and sat down in it. Dusk turned to us.

  “Anybody else want any?” he asked, indicating the bottle of mead.

  Ragar accepted a cup, but the rest of us politely refused, Jason especially. I smiled a little, remembering Jason’s first interaction with ale at the Morning’s Glory Inn in Mertizon on our original trip out to the keep.

  As Dusk poured one for himself, he said, “Accepted conventions say that I can have conversations with my mother, but she cannot be too specific about answering direct questions. We can extend this to her having a general conversation with all of us with the same strictures,” he said, moving to sit down in the chair opposite Quiris.

  Jason asked, “So, what would happen if one of us asked her about something specific, amigo?”

  Dusk said, “Excepting in very special situations—and this conversation would not be one such—she would not be able to answer. Even the Divine have limits.”

  I poked Jason in the ribs with my elbow as he rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything else. Over the course of the following conversation, which spanned at least a degree of the sun, we found out that Quiris was concerned for her Champion for all the reasons Arghen had first told us of when we were attempting to infiltrate Chirasniv some days ago, which basically boiled down to most Under-elves not being nice people. She told us once again that she could feel Arghen’s prayers, but she could not make out for what he asked—though she had a pretty good idea of what they might be about. She could also tell us that Arghen was definitely in some sort of trouble from the tone of the prayers she felt. We also found out how Arghen had come to the surface in the first place—there was a map that she had given him that led from where she’d found him in the Sub-realms to the cave in the hill up above where he’d first found us.

  “Gran. So it’s probably been lost somewhere since then,” Jason grumped.

  “Not necessarily,” I said to him. Turning to the Wind-rider, I said, “I’d bet that the map would be in Stalker’s saddlebags. Wouldn’t you think so, Auraus?”

  “It certainly is possible,” she mused.

  I made a mental note to go check on that map as soon as I could.

  “But that place where Arghen found you and me is at least a couple of weeks away by horseback,” Jason said with concern. “And then who knows how long it will take to get to Chirasniv from there? Even assuming that we can find out the tunnel markings that will lead us to where we want to go.”

  Quiris said, “I am sorry, but it is the best I can do. We, the Gods, do not involve Ourselves underground because the Under-elves have turned away from Us. As a result, We do not keep close tabs on what happens in the Sub-realms. There is also the matter that We
are-blocked-to a certain degree as well.”

  “Blocked?” Dusk asked her with surprise. “What do you mean by that?”

  “When Man, or so I am told, turned away from the Gods back before the Disjoin caused the separation of the worlds, he had little to no magic. Because of this it was harder to keep tabs on him even in the best of circumstances, unless he was actively praying to Us. When he turned away from Us and created false gods to believe in, a-cloud, one might say-gathered around the places where humans dwelled. As magic intensifies when in close proximity to itself, so does unbelief. And unbelief affects magic, which affects the Divine and Our abilities to some extent.”

  “But there is magic use in Chirasniv,” I objected.

  Quiris nodded. “They are the exception rather than the rule. I can actually use more magic there than in other city-states, simply because the Chirasnivians accept magic more than they think they do. It would seem that it is hard to deny the existence of the Gods and magic if it is being used around you, no matter your race,” she said dryly.

  “Hey, Quiris? How were you able to get Stalker away from Arghen’s original home of Relkanav, if the Gods’ magic is affected by the cloud?” I asked her.

  “And how did you meet Arghen in the first place?” Jason added.

  Quiris replied first to me, “I have, on occasion, made use of magical contacts I have in this world. I do carry the occasional odd, one-use magics that are not of Divine origin for use down there. It was one of these that allowed Me to give Stalker back to Arghen since it was operated from a periphery and not directly in the city-state.” She then looked at Jason. “I am still an Under-elf in origin, and as such I can pass for a Warrior of any city I choose, though my personal magic is severely limited in the clouded area. I go to the Sub-realms for the Concordance of the Divine from time-to-time in order that We have some basic knowledge of what happens there.”

  “Like a spy?” Jason asked.

  Quiris merely smiled and didn’t answer.

  Dusk had narrowed his amber eyes at his mother during this conversation, but all he said was, “Going back to what you said earlier, Mother, did this ‘cloud’ around the Under-elves form right away?”

  Quiris shook her white-haired head. “Once the newly-made Under-elves purposefully cut themselves off from the Gods and brought up the next generation of children with no divine beliefs, it was then that the cloud appeared in the Sub-realms. Since that time, We, the Divine, have had no direct knowledge of what happens in the Sub-realms unless we go specifically in disguise,” Quiris explained.

  Everyone was silent.

  “I was unaware of all this,” said Dusk to her.

  She shrugged. “What purpose would it have been for you to have known this, My son?”

  I held up a hand. “Ummm, this question might not be relevant, but would the cloud of unbelief maybe have something to do with the Conductivus?”

  Quiris raised a white eyebrow in thoughtful surprise as Dusk looked at me.

  “The what?” he asked.

  “The Conductivus. She’s kind of like a medium,” I explained. Dusk, Ragar, and Auraus still looked blank, so I said, “She’s like a mouthpiece for the dead according to Arghen. He told me and Heather about them right before we saw the one for Chirasniv. Supposedly the ghosts-errr, souls-of the Under-elves hang around the city-states, and she talks to them.”

  “It’s true. I heard a little about this mujer when I was their prisoner,” Jason added.

  I looked at Quiris. “Could the cloud actually be because the ghosts don’t have anywhere to go anywhere after they die, so they hang around the Conductivus because she can hear them?”

  The goddess raised her eyes to the stone ceiling of the room and pursed her lips for a moment. “Hmmm. I had never thought of it that way. You could be right, Analise. Souls do have power, after all.”

  “It would make sense,” I said, warming to my theory, “because you need belief in the Divine to work magic, but the Under-elves don’t believe in the Gods. But magic works in the Sub-realms around the Under-elves, so the cloud can’t be there completely because of unbelief.”

  “Thank you, Lise. Perhaps it took an outsider to Our world to make Us think about the situation in a different light. We will have to consider your words. I am glad that you chose to become Caelestis’ Champion,” Quiris said, smiling.

  “But that leaves our problem still intact—how do we get to Arghen so we can spare him suffering?” I asked, my voice rising in concern.

  Her expression softened. “You are a good and noble child to wish to save him pain, but that wish is too late. All you can do is get belowground to make his suffering as short a time as possible. You will either rescue and heal him, or send him to Me before you escape back to the Surface.”

  My brain refused to process her words for a moment, and then my jaw dropped open as I realized what she meant. Everyone was silent a moment—none of us had even thought about the possibility of Arghen not coming back with us if we made it to him.

  “But that’s why we asked to talk to you. We need to know the fastest way to get underground so we can rescue Arghen,” Jason finally said.

  I shot a glance at the goddess, worried that that was too direct a question, but I was relieved when she only sighed and said, “You can either try to use the map for free, or ….”

  I grasped at the conjunction. “Or?”

  “Or I can send someone who can help you in a way that the Divine cannot. But that help will cost you, and even I cannot dictate to the being what price to charge.”

  Dusk frowned. “Who is this being, Mother?” he asked with suspicion.

  She looked at him with no expression on her handsome face for a moment and then turned to look at the rest of us. “There will be a price to pay for him to even come here to talk to you, and a price to pay if he agrees to aid you in whatever way is offered.”

  I grew curious. “Is it a full mage of some Elven settlement?”

  “No.”

  She rolled the silver cup between her hands. I waited a moment to see if she would elaborate, but she remained silent.

  “What price, then?” I asked.

  “What treasure would you be willing to part with?” Quiris asked.

  “Wait, Mother, you do not mean …?” Dusk started to say, but I cut him off.

  “The magical items we brought up from Chirasniv in the caravan!” I said eagerly. “Wouldn’t they be a good price?” I looked at Dusk. “Would we be able to have at least some of the other magical items we brought up from underground, do you think? Please?” I asked him.

  “Lise, I do not believe that anyone would begrudge you whatever you asked for. You have rescued many who never thought they would see the light of day again. Were you to ask anything short of their lives, I do not doubt they would give it willingly,” the Miscere Surface-elf replied, still slanting a suspicious look at his mother.

  I blinked. Wow. I felt both kind of shocked and humbled at the same time by his words.

  Auraus and Ragar and Jason also offered up the items in their possession: the fire brooch, the bedazzling lights bracelet, the vial of drinks, the frost ring, and the ventriloquist ring.

  I turned to the goddess. “Would all those magical items be enough?”

  She smiled. “I do believe so. I would offer no more than a couple of them as the price to get Frelanfur to come in the first place.”

  “I knew it!” interrupted Dusk harshly. “You want to get us mixed up with dragons!”

  Chapter 3

  Quiris looked calmly at her son, one white eyebrow raised. Tangentially, I wondered if that was an Under-elven trait—they all seemed to be able to raise one eyebrow just so. She placed her now empty cup back down on the silver tray.

  “Why not ask a full Elven mage instead, like Lise suggested?” Dusk continued, exasperation showing clearly on his handsome face.

  I looked at him in surprise as my attention was yanked back into the conversation. I wasn’t too sure
I’d suggested anything, but I didn’t think I wanted to get in the middle of what looked like a family argument. Heather, Ragar, Jason, and Auraus also looked uneasy.

  His mother quelled Dusk with a look. “Because full Elven mages would not have the immediate wherewithal to know what is needed, whereas a dragon would. And because I can summon Frelanfur with a word, something I cannot do with a full Elven mage.”

  “How is that?” I broke in, unable to stop myself.

  “Because he was-and still is-a friend of mine from when I was incarnate,” she explained.

  I blinked in wonder. Friends with a dragon? That had to be some story, and one that I would love to hear in the future. But not right now—Dusk looked like he was ready to continue arguing, and I realized that I should probably get involved now. I stopped him by stepping in between him and his mother.

  “All right, let’s do this,” I said. “The sooner we can get underground to rescue Arghen, the better I’ll feel.” Dusk looked annoyed at me but indicated with a wave of his hand that I should go on. I looked at Auraus and Ragar. “Let’s start with your pieces of treasure.”

  Auraus unpinned the fire brooch from her tanned flying leathers, Ragar twisted the light-making bracelet off his wrist, and Jason also handed over the ventriloquist ring. Auraus was going to give the vial of drink-making and Jason the frost ring too, but I told them to keep those items for the next deal.

  Quiris held out her slender, pale hand and said kindly, “Please give them to Me.” My friends gave her the articles, and she said, “I will be right back.” Then she vanished.

  I heard a long exhale behind me and turned to see Heather, dark eyes shining in a way I had never seen them look before—even more than when she had met Dusk for the first time back before the war for the valley.

  “Wow. A real, live, magic-using goddess who is friends with a dragon! How cool is all that?” she said with excitement.