by Greg Keyes
“Again, we have such drugs.”
“The venom is transformed by a certain agent in Argonian blood—”
“If this is another attempt to find out where your friend is, I can only reiterate that not even Qijne knows where he is—or even has the ability to discover it.”
“I know,” Annaïg said, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat. “I don’t actually need Argonian blood. I’m just explaining. It comes down to this: I think I can make a metagastrologic.”
“This is a nonsense word.”
“No. It’s something I’ve read about, something the Ayleids—ancient people from my world—once used in their banquets.”
“A drug.”
“Yes, but the only sense that they affect is taste—nothing else. No general hallucination, no loss of clarity. Look, the essential flavors are sweet, sour, salty, and hot, right?”
“Of course. And with the lower lords like Ghol you can add dead, quick, and ethereat, at the same level.”
“Really? How interesting.” She wanted to know more about that, but didn’t want her idea to lose momentum. “Anyway,” she pushed on, “a good dish will still balance those essentials, yes?”
“Yes. Or contrast them.”
“So with a metagastrologic, the first taste of the dish will have a certain balance of flavors, but as it lingers on the tongue, they begin to change. Salty is confused for sweet, ah—ethereat for hot, and so forth. And it will keep happening, different each time.”
Slyr just looked at her for a long moment.
“You can do this?” she finally asked.
“Yes.”
“Such a dish would have to be carefully thought out, so that no matter what inversion of flavors occurred, most would be pleasurable.”
“It would require a chef of some skill,” Annaïg agreed.
“Well,” Slyr sighed, “it will not be boring, at least. I will go work on a foundation.”
Annaïg tried not to watch her depart, but she finally stole a glance to make sure she was gone. Then she closed her eyes and thanked the gods, carefully opened the bottle, and smelled its contents.
“That’s not it either, Luc,” she said. “Keep trying. But—um, I’ll ask you to see them, okay? I don’t want you interrupting my chain of thought. Just keep them in your cabinet.”
“Luc do,” the hob said, and started toward the wall.
“First go and find the chef and tell her we need this snake quickened.”
“Luc do.” He bounded off.
A few moments later he came back following Qijne’s hob, which had the baton. Annaïg placed the viper on the table, put the sharp edge of a cleaver on its neck, and touched it with the baton.
When it twitched to life, it jerked back and nearly slipped free, but its head caught and she put all her weight on the cleaver so the edge bit, then followed the skull back to the neck, slicing cleanly through. The body fell away, twitching, which gave the hobs something to hoot about.
She expressed the venom into a glass vial and set to work.
Hours passed, and so absorbed was she in the task that she hadn’t realized Qijne was watching her.
“Chef?”
“What’s your hob doing going through the cabinets? Everything up there is known to me already.”
“But not to me,” Annaïg answered. “And if I’m to be a proper cook to Lord Ghol, I need to be familiar with all of it.”
Qijne’s expression didn’t change, but her glaze flickered down to Annaïg’s work in progress.
“Not really doing anything you’re supposed to do,” she observed.
“This is for the meal,” she said. “An additive.”
“Explain.”
Annaïg went back over the general properties of the metagastrologic.
The chef tilted her head slowly left, then right. “You’re cooking, in other words. When you’re supposed to be cataloging.”
“I am, Chef.”
“Which is not what I told you to do.”
“No, Chef. But Slyr is worried—”
“Slyr? Slyr put you up to this?”
“No, Chef. It was my idea. We failed last night. I didn’t want us to fail again.”
“No, no of course not,” Qijne said vaguely. Her eyes lost focus. “Carry on. Only know that if it does not please him, I will kill Slyr and cut off one of your feet, right?”
“Right, Chef.”
“That’s not a joke, if you think I’m joking.”
“I don’t think you’re joking, Chef,” Annaïg said.
After the meal went up, Slyr wandered off, her face pinched with fear. Annaïg slipped off, too, and had a look at her locket, but got nothing but darkness. She went back to the dormitory to wait for her meal.
A bit later Slyr rushed into the room.
“Come on,” she said. “Come with me.”
She followed the chef through the winding corridors and great pantries of the kitchen and into what appeared to be a wine cellar—there were thousands of bottles of something, anyway, racked all around her.
“Through here.” Slyr was indicating a sort of hole in the wall just barely wide enough to slip through.
It led into a small chamber illuminated by faint light. Once in it, she could see the light came from the sky—the chamber was at the bottom of a high, narrow shaft.
Slyr handed her a bottle and a basket of something that smelled really good.
“He wasn’t bored,” she said. “In fact, he sent one of his servants to commend me.” She looked up shyly. “Us.”
“That’s good news.”
“News worth celebrating,” Slyr said. “Try the wine.”
It was dry and delicious, with a fragrance she couldn’t quite place but that reminded her of anise. The basket was filled with pastry rolls stuffed with a sort of buttery meat.
“What is it?” she asked, holding up the roll she was eating.
“Orchid shrimp. They live in the sump.”
“It’s delicious.”
“It was supposed to go to the Prixon Palace servants for their night ration. I snatched a few.”
“Thank you,” Annaïg said.
“Yes, yes,” Slyr said. “Eat. Drink.”
“What about Qijne?”
“She may be—ah, as you said. But when we succeed, so does she. Lord Ghol was on the verge of becoming the patron of another kitchen. When kitchens lose patrons, people start wondering whether the master chef ought to be replaced. We did well, so she’ll look the other way a bit if we take very discreet privileges.”
“What sort of privileges?”
“Well … this is about it. Having a little of the good stuff and not being watched too closely at night.”
Annaïg felt her face burn a bit. “Ah, Slyr—”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” the chef replied. “I just thought you would enjoy being here, where you can see the sky. And no noisy, smelly dormitory. I love being here, alone—I don’t think anyone else knows about it. I just don’t dare come here often.”
“Well, then,” Annaïg said, “I am flattered, then.”
Slyr became a little sloppy after the first bottle of wine.
“I have heard something about your friend,” she confided.
Annaïg nearly choked on her drink. “Really?” she gasped. “About Glim? He’s okay?”
“He’s in the sump.”
It jagged through her like lightning.
“What?” she whispered.
But Slyr smiled.
“No, not like that,” she assured her. “He’s not dead. He’s working in the sump. The guy who brought the shrimp mentioned him. He can breathe underwater, did you know that? All of the sump tenders are talking about him.”
“Of course he can breathe underwater,” she replied. “He’s an Argonian.”
“Another of your nonsense words? There are more like him?’
She remembered the slaughter at Lilmoth. “I hope so,” she said.
“Oh,” Sly
r said. “They’re down there.”
“Don’t you ever—” But she stopped herself. She couldn’t trust anyone here with thoughts of somehow stopping Umbriel.
But Slyr was waiting for her to finish.
“Have you ever been above?” she asked instead.
“To the palaces? No. But it is my dream to.” She looked up and her forehead wrinkled. “What are those?” she asked.
Annaïg followed her regard up to the small patch of night sky.
“Stars,” she said. “Haven’t you ever seen stars before?”
“No. What are they?”
“Depends on who you ask or what books you read. Some say they are tiny holes in Mundus, the world, and the light we see is Aetherius beyond. Others believe they are fragments of Magnus, who made the world.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“Yes.”
And so they ate, and drank, and talked, and for the first time in many, many days Annaïg felt like a real person again.
When Slyr finally curled up to sleep with her blanket, she opened her locket again.
There wasn’t anything there, which meant Coo wasn’t with Attrebus. She waited, hoping he would answer, but after an hour or so she fell asleep, and her dreams were troubled.
FIVE
To Colin, the corpses looked like broken dolls flung down by a child in a tantrum. He couldn’t imagine any of them ever having been alive, breathing, talking, feeling. He couldn’t find any empathy even for the worst of the lot—those burnt to char—and he knew he ought to. He should at least feel sick or repelled, filled with the fear of such a thing happening to him, but he just couldn’t find anything like that in him.
Well, Prince, he thought, congratulations. Well done.
“Stay away from the bodies,” he told the royal guardsmen. He didn’t have to tell his own people; they were professionals. “Put sentinels on the road and in the woods. Stop any wagons and route foot and horse traffic well around this. Tell them a bunch of ogres have set up camp and we have to clear ’em out.
“Gerring, you start the search for witnesses. Every house, every shack in the area. Hand, you go to Ione and Pell’s Gate. Guilliam—you take Sweetwater and Eastbridge. Be discreet. See who’s saying what in the taverns. You know what to do.”
He nodded at a flurry of “Yes, inspector” but kept his gaze on the scene.
Most had been struck by arrows and had either died of that or of having their throats very professionally slit later. A sizable fraction had been immolated, presumably by sorcery. The attackers, interestingly, either hadn’t had any casualties or—if they had—didn’t leave them behind.
The arrows he recognized as belonging to an insurgent faction from County Skingrad that called themselves the “Natives.” A number of the bodies had been beheaded, a practice also in keeping with that same nasty bunch of thugs.
He stopped in front of one body that was burnt but not incinerated. Bits of clothing and jewelry still clung to it and a notably large ring. The head was missing.
“Too convenient,” he murmured as he took a closer look at the ring. As he suspected, it was the signet ring of Crown Prince Attrebus.
Of course, if it had been the Natives, they would certainly have singled out Attrebus’s head as the best trophy. But then, why leave the ring?
“Oh, sweet gods,” someone gasped. “It’s the prince.”
Irritated, Colin turned to find Captain Pundus dismounted and standing a few feet away.
“Captain, I asked you to stay clear of the bodies.”
Pundus reddened. “See here, I’m the leader of this expedition. Who do you imagine you are, shouting orders at me and my men?”
“You were the leader of this expedition until we found this,” Colin said, parting his hands. “Now I am in charge.”
“On whose authority?”
Colin removed a scroll from his haversack and handed it to the captain.
“You know the Emperor’s signature, I assume?”
Pundus’s eyes were trying to pop out of his head. He nodded rapidly.
“Good. Then set your men to divert traffic, as I requested, and advise them not to speak of anything they’ve seen here. I advise you the same.”
“Yes, sir,” the captain said.
“After I’m done, we’ll need wagons, enough to hold the bodies. We’ll want them covered, as well. See if you can locate some in the nearby towns. And again, not a word.”
“Sir.” The captain nodded, remounted, and rode off.
He looked around a few more moments, then took a deep breath. He found the spark in himself that belonged not to the world, but to Aetherius, to the realm of pure and complete possibility.
He was lucky—this was easy for him. If he’d needed to start a fire or walk on water, it would require training, a mental sequence worked out by someone else to convince him that such things could be done. But for what he was doing, he need only focus and pay attention, look beneath the rock that everyone else didn’t notice.
The scene darkened and blurred, and for a moment he thought there was nothing left, but then he saw two spectral forms. One, a woman, was staring down at her body. The other, a man, was crouched into the roots of a large tree.
The man was closer, so he took the few steps necessary. He was already starting to feel himself weakening, the spark fading, so he knew he should hurry.
“You,” he said. “Listen to me.”
Vacant eyes turned to him. “Help me,” the ghost said. “I’m hurt.”
“Help is on the way,” Colin lied. “You need to tell me what happened here.”
“It hurts,” the specter said. “Please.”
“You came here with Prince Attrebus,” Colin pursued.
The man laughed harshly. “Help me up. I just want to go home. If I can get home, I’ll be fine.”
“Who hurt you? Tell me!”
“Gods!” He breathed raggedly, then stopped. His head dropped against the tree.
A moment later it rose again.
“Help me,” he said. “I’m hurt.”
Colin felt a sudden surge of anger at the pitiful thing.
“You’re dead,” he snapped. “Have some dignity about it.”
Almost shaking with fury, he went over to the other spirit.
“What about you?” he asked. “Anything left of you?”
“What you see,” the woman murmured. “Your accent—you’re Colovian, like me.”
“Yes,” he replied. “Where are you from?”
“I was born near Mortal, down on the river.”
“That’s a nice place,” he said, feeling his anger leave him. “Peaceful, with all of those willows.”
“There were willows all around my house,” she replied. “I won’t see them again.”
“No,” he said softly. “I’m sorry, you won’t.”
She nodded.
“Listen,” Colin said, “I need your help.”
“If I can.”
“Do you remember what happened here? Who attacked you? Anything?”
She closed her eyes. “I do,” she said. “We were with the prince, off following some half-cocked scheme of his. Headed for Black Marsh, of all places. We were ambushed.” She sighed. “Attrebus. I knew he would get me killed someday. Is he dead, too?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you did.”
“I didn’t see. First there was fire, and then something hit me, hard. I didn’t even get to fight.”
“Why were you going to Black Marsh?”
“Something about a flying city and an army of undead. I didn’t listen that closely. His quests were usually pretty safe, well in hand before we even arrived, if you know what I mean.”
“The Emperor forbade him to go. He disobeyed.”
“We weren’t sure what to believe,” she said. “Might’ve been part of the game. There were other times like that.” She shook her head. “I wish I could help you more.”
“I think you’ve helped me quite
a lot,” Colin said. He looked around at the carnage. “Are you staying here, do you think?”
“I don’t know much about being dead,” she said, “but it doesn’t feel that way. I feel something tugging at me, and it’s stronger all the time.” She smiled. “Maybe I only stayed to talk to you.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t feel bad.” She cocked her head. “You, though—something wrong with you, countryman.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re far from fine,” she said. “You take care of yourself. Maybe next time you see a willow, think of me.”
“I will.”
She smiled again.
He pulled back into himself and the sun returned. They were all just broken dolls again. He thought his head was ringing, but then he understood that it was just birds singing.
He was starving. Unsteadily, he went to find something to eat, and to hear the reports.
SIX
“Draeg’s late,” Tsani told Radhasa, her golden tail twitching in agitation. “Really late.”
Attrebus, nearly asleep in the saddle, tried to appear actually asleep, in hopes they might let something useful drop if they thought he couldn’t hear them.
It had taken him two days to figure out there were eight of them, because no more than four were riding guard on him at any given time. The others, he guessed, were scouts—one in front, one in back, one on each flank, and probably pretty far out. Radhasa was a constant, but he was just too out of it at first to realize the other faces were rotating. Now, after a week, he knew all of their names. Tsani, one of four Khajiit in the group, the others being Ma-fwath, J’yas, and Sharwa. Besides Radhasa, there was a flaxen-haired Breton woman named Amelia, a one-handed orc named—not too surprisingly—Urmuk One Hand. He’d had an iron ball fixed to his stump. The missing Draeg was the Bosmer he’d seen earlier, on awakening.
Radhasa didn’t say anything, just tugged at her mount’s reins to guide him down the steep path through increasingly more arid country. In the last few days the land had risen, and the thick forest and lush meadows of the West Weald had devolved into scrubby oaks and tall grass. Now, on the southern side of the hills, trees were more like big bushes, except when they came to a stream or pool, and tall grass prevailed in clearings.