Bones of the Fair

by Host, Andrea K

  "Magister Enricar was closer than I," Leton Djol pointed out.

  "Was she true-mage?" the gardening mage asked, adjusting the straps of her bags. She carried them with an indifferent ease Aspen couldn't help but envy. He was already thoroughly inclined to dump his entire load.

  No-one knew whether the red-headed Cerian mage had been true-mage or only a word-mage, but apparently the Cyan had been true. "But he was further back," Aspen mused, then let the point drop. "You made an entire valley into a garden?" he asked instead.

  "No. Or yes, though I don't suppose most would consider it that way." She glanced sideways at Rua Ketu. "A 'fell place' is as good a description as any."

  "And what's that mean?" Aspen swore she was being mysterious purely for the sake of it.

  The gardening mage shrugged instead of answering, but then Rua Ketu volunteered that she had been sent there before the Aurak journeyed north. Aspen suspected the Atlaran shared his disinclination to walk on in silence: there was something about the endless pearl-white absence that clawed at the senses.

  "The valley lies a half-day's walk into the hills south of the Aurak's Seat," Rua Ketu continued, touching the sand-coloured cloth wrapped around her wrists. "I left at midday and reached it as the sun set. A small valley, almond-shaped, veiled with a rising mist." The curve had flattened out of her full lips, but she continued her story in a tone of steady honesty that commanded attention. "My pack was heavy and my feet regretted the instruction not to make the journey by air. The place looked damp, and stones of all sizes lay tumbled about, grey and spattered with lichen. There was no brightness in the place, only low, dark plants almost covering a faint track winding round to the base. I was not impressed.

  "I had been ordered to spend the night beside the pool at the valley's heart, and started down in an ill humour. It was quiet, and the mist curled without breath of wind. And I, who can kill with hand or stave, or a thousand ways with magic, found myself with my neck stiff from anticipation of a blow, looking among those stones for an enemy.

  "Neither sight nor spell would reveal who watched, and imagination conjured a thousand monsters from shadow on rock. I thought I could smell blood. I cast every protection known to me, and followed the path in the certain belief that the Aurak had sent me to my death."

  "Had you given him reason?"

  At the gardening mage's question, Rua Ketu's expression set into stone lines. "I had broken a precept," she said, with immense gravity. "I knew myself in the right, weighed the cost of delays, and took a man's choice from him. I believed that need outweighed the law. What harm to use magic to make a fool see reason?" She sighed. "I was the fool. I had admitted my act, knew the disappointment of my teachers, but I did not own the fault in my heart. The matter had been urgent, my reasons good. It was necessary. I told myself this again, as I walked down into that valley. I told myself that I was true-mage and great, and that I would undergo trial by combat, be proved in the right, and return with honour.

  "I was at fever-pitch when I reached the pool at the valley's base, and turned with my staff in my hands ready to face anything. And there was only mist and shadows, and a thousand stones in every direction, leaning down on me. I watched them until dawn. The longest night of my life."

  The gardening mage had tilted her head a little to one side, looking up at Rua Ketu with an abstract air. "Did you return with honour?"

  "I returned to the Aurak and asked his forgiveness. I have not yet regained my honour. But I strive toward it."

  Aspen gave up. "Am I the only one completely lost?" he asked. "What did the ambassador have you do to this valley, Magister Calder? It doesn't sound the least like a garden to me."

  "It does depend on what you consider a garden," she agreed, all solemn, but he could see laughter in her eyes. Aspen grimaced at her, but was privately pleased. This was prime distraction from the prospect of invasion, death and an interminable hike along this endless corridor.

  And the Guard Dog at least was equally confused. "A garden of stones?" he asked.

  "Why not? Stone and lichen, and creeping sage, which is why Se Ketu thought she could smell blood. It grows over that path, and as you walk down you crush it. Scent is a wonderful thing. I once made a maze entirely from rosemary. A tight, twisted maze, tall and close. You can't help but brush against the plants, and the smell is overwhelming." She smiled with simple pleasure. "Though I count the maze as one of my failures, because people invariably come out of the thing longing for a meal of roast lamb, which wasn't quite the intention. Creeping sage isn't unpleasant, but it's unsettling."

  "The point of the valley is to make people nervous?" Djol sounded incredulous.

  "In a way." Though she didn't smile, she was obviously enjoying their reaction.

  "A place of punishment. Can that even be called a garden?" Djol asked, as if it mattered.

  "Unless you count vegetable gardens, all gardens are, at their core, an arrangement to evoke a response. An art of environment. But yes, it was an unusual commission. Not a place of punishment, though. The Aurak uses it himself, rarely sends other people there. He is a very powerful man, and all Atlarus has hoisted him on a pedestal and done their best to worship him. He asked me to make him a place that made him feel small."

  At this Rua Ketu let out a shout of laughter. "That is what it does, very much so. Small and defenceless, a mouse before a cat. And that he asked for this, that is what proves the Aurak's greatness. He is ajudica."

  Aspen had heard the term before, though he wasn't clear on the details. "I'm not up on Atlaran philosophy, sorry."

  "You do not know the precepts? They are the path through the burden of power."

  "At least a way to try to stop history repeating itself," Gentian added matter-of-factly. "True-mages rule Atlarus in context of a series of rules to govern all born with the burden of power. To follow them well is to be justra, one who achieves. To embody the precepts, to not strive but actually be them, that is to be ajudica."

  She gave the word a remarkably cynical flavour, but Rua Ketu's response was only a quizzical: "You disagree? The course Atlarus has taken has kept us from past excesses, and the senserel, those without power, are well cared for, kept safe. They are no longer play-things to our excesses."

  "In power, responsibility. In absence of power, what? I don't like the precepts because the senserel aren't expected to live by them. It's just another way of saying true-mages are a more exalted race, held to a higher standard."

  The Guard Dog, with what was obviously a habitual frown, asked: "What exactly did you do to make the Aurak Bes feel small?"

  "More than plant creeping sage? Telensar Valley – my garden of stones – is a place of judgment. It looks at every creature that enters it and asks them what right they have to exist. Valleys aren't usually like that, don't often turn their attention to those who pass through them. I'm told it's been that way for centuries: true-mages who went there felt uncomfortable, and rarely lingered. But they could not understand the source of the discomfort, since outside the Fair there's few who really feel places.

  "My father's family is a sensitive one, and we feel place very strongly. We've been working with the character of our steading, Goldenrod, for centuries, until even people who aren't true-mage can feel it. You can't change the nature of a place, not really, but you can strengthen or modulate it. Sunlight to hearten or a mist to chill. Scent, to conjure countless associations. Objects arranged just so, pleasing or dissonant. Emphasising part of a place's nature until it becomes dominant, or countering some negative aspect until it recedes. People react, and then it feeds in a circle as the place responds to their reaction. The key to Telensar Valley was those stones, and the lichen. I spent an inordinate amount of time arranging them. Bulky, grey, hunched, all patches of shadow and ambiguous outline. Things that crouched and waited. Things that watched. Shapes which could be claws, teeth, the line of a brow. Nothing but lichen and hollows in stone, which fear made into something more. I gave Telensar
Valley eyes."

  Aspen, though he'd no inclination to visit dank and unlovely Atlaran valleys, was delighted by the idea of terrifying the grand and mighty true-mages of Atlarus with a bunch of rocks. "And you said you weren't a Shaper."

  "Did I?" She gave him that grave, sideways glance. "Well I'm not, according to my mother. And there is a great deal of difference between creating new breeds of plants and animals, and working with the spirit of a place."

  Aspen had thought the Diamond to be only half listening, but looking past the little gardening mage he saw that his mouth had taken on a curve instantly recognisable to any veteran of the Darien Court. It gave the man a look of ineffable sweetness, and was reputed to have once caused the Baron of Segai to drop a full glass of wine, then flee the kingdom. It was the expression Aristide Couerveur wore when considering an opponent's destruction.

  "And did your design for Vostal Hill involve any tampering with its character?"

  The tone was purely polite, with not even a hint of blade. Aspen could only see the side of the little gardening mage's face as she turned her head to meet the Diamond Couerveur's brilliant gaze, but he thought it possible she didn't quail. At the very least her voice was light and unperturbed when she said: "Of course. Why else would I do it?"

  "You fascinate me Magister. And what modulation do you propose to make?"

  Her pace slowed as she continued to survey his expression. Perhaps it was only then that she realised her danger, recognised how truly little tolerance the Diamond Couerveur would have for someone meddling with the nature of any place in his kingdom, let alone one set flush up against the palace. Her reply was steady, but far less light.

  "The first thing I saw when I reached Tor Darest was a Fae temple on Vostal Hill. Stark and exposed, glorious and inescapable. The Queen of the Fair may have made Darest over in gift to Domina Rathen, and centuries of human rule might have blurred the things that made it part of The Deeping, but Vostal Hill's crown strips that away, exposing the true nature of this kingdom. Right there in the heart of the capital, kitty-corner to the palace, a thing which said: this land is Fae. My design takes its shape, and echoes of the city, and gives the hill a cloak of human-kind. Makes it into a declaration, even a celebration of that Fae past, but a past merged with present. The shift I hope to make is one of acceptance." She paused, lifted a hand, then dropped it. "For, believe me, this land has never forgotten what it once was."

  Before the Diamond could react with more than a narrowing of those eyes, she added: "We're getting near something – there's active enchantments ahead."

  It was well-timed distraction. Aristide looked away from her, and the sense of approaching crisis waned.

  "I feel nothing," Rua Ketu said.

  Aspen suspected the Diamond didn't either, but he did study the far curve of the corridor before saying, "We must talk of this later," quite as if he hadn't been contemplating Magister Calder's immediate destruction a moment before. And then: "Tell me, Se Ketu, Captain Djol, to what purpose did your charges gather on Darest's border?"

  The two guards had drifted a little behind, and Aspen missed their immediate reaction. A glance over his shoulder showed the Guard Dog looking like his bowels had blocked up, while Rua Ketu had returned to that quizzical expression.

  "The Ambassador, guesting with the King of Sax, joined a boating party," she said. "I am sure many discussions of trade and mutual interest were held."

  Leton Djol didn't answer, and the Diamond actually stopped walking and waited for his answer.

  "I have neither the knowledge nor the authority to give you an answer, Lord Magister," the Guard Dog said.

  "Do you not? Very well. Tell me instead exactly where this barge was anchored."

  "Where? The nearest town–"

  Aspen realised where the Diamond was heading. "Which bank were you closer to?"

  "We followed standard practice." This wasn't a stupid man. He didn't let his eyes waver from the Diamond's as he added: "Dead centre."

  There was no need to say anything more. The barge had been in the centre of the river, and the vagaries of the current might take it entirely into Darest. Aristide turned away, and they trailed after him, looking anxiously down the corridor in the hope that the missing occupants of that barge were indeed ahead.

  Aspen saw them before he felt the enchantments they carried: four figures walking along the pearly-white passage toward them. A woman striding before three much taller men, one of them Atlaran. The Atlaran was dressed much like Rua Ketu, in sandy linen with heavier cloth bound about wrists and shins. The other three were dressed in lighter robes, sleeping garb.

  Snatching another glance at the Diamond, Aspen caught a very rare change of expression indeed. The faint smile faded completely, and his face went still. Then his mouth curled up into full and vivid appreciation, and his eyes blazed.

  Confused, Aspen studied the four. The Atlaran was obviously another guard, and hardly likely to surprise the Diamond. The woman was a smallish brunette, only a little taller than Gentian, with an attractive figure and a brisk carriage. The other two men were almost as tall as the Atlaran, with the fair skin and brown-red hair common to Cya. Both handsome, broad-shouldered, though otherwise dissimilar. One wore a neat, close-trimmed beard, and walked with a snapping energy that threatened to take him ahead of the other's relaxed stroll. There was something faintly familiar about the last man, and Aspen uneasily noted the moment when he in turn must have recognised Aristide. He checked his stride, and his precisely cut features took on an eager, almost hawkish cast.

  When the four stopped a short distance away, it was this man who stepped to the fore to incline to a brief and very mocking courtesy, surveying each of their faces in turn.

  And with a broadening smile he said: "Hello, brother."

  Chapter Six

  Aristide Couerveur had gone to what Gentian was beginning to think of as 'full glitter'. "Seylon," he said, sounding very pleased. "I trust you've been enjoying your visit to Darest?"

  "Immeasurably," the tall man replied, with an expansive gesture at his rumpled bed-robe, strained companions, and the stark corridor. His accent revealed him to be Cyan, and though his face was built on stronger lines, the shape and colour of his eyes were a darker version of Aristide's: the eclipse reflected in a deep pool. Familiar too was the sugared acid as he added: "Though I could wish for more notice in future."

  Gentian vaguely recollected that Lord Aristide's father had belonged to the Heresar family of Cya, and supposed a brother wasn't a surprising thing. From the highly portentous expression Aristide's apprentice was wearing, she guessed this Seylon was not even close to a potential ally.

  "A lapse on my part," Aristide said, sketching apology. "Let me know, next time you wish to view Darest, and I will make better arrangements. But we mustn't lose ourselves in pleasantries," he added. "I own, the role of rescuer is new to me, and you may have to prompt me. Whatever aid and succour I can offer, you have."

  "Oh, very nice." Simmering and derisive, the bearded man stepped past Seylon Heresar. "Do we thank you now, Couerveur? I presume we're to accept without murmur your so-convenient appearance? Believe you innocent of this assault?"

  There was nothing of courtly feint about this man, hands curling and weight balanced on the balls of his feet. He was spoiling for a fight, and though he lacked a sword he had the advantage of height and muscle in this place where magic would not be a factor in battle. Lord Aristide looked up at him with little of the veiled mockery he so readily turned on others. But nor did he betray any hint of perturbation, only saying: "I would not presume to dictate your beliefs, Prince Jurasel."

  "Sun spare me these mealy-mouthed word mincers," the Crown Prince of Cya exclaimed to the air, before snapping his attention back to Lord Aristide. "Tell me plain. What is this place? What do you know of this plot?"

  "At this stage, Highness, less than you. We merely followed your trail."

  Prince Jurasel looked anything but appeased, but
before he could respond the dark-haired woman, another Cyan, interrupted: "And do you have a way out?"

  "You are the Lady Dhara Orlath?" Aristide bowed his head in apparently genuine respect. "I regret not as yet. Our investigations appear to have led us into the same trap which holds you."

  "Then I hope you have food and water. We've had one flask between us, and the children are hungry."

  "And that is naturally our priority." Flat sarcasm from Jurasel this time. He shot the woman a look of open dislike.

  While tempers were hardly likely to be cool after a day trapped here, Prince Jurasel seemed to be positively eager to lose his. He was an impressive figure, vigorous and proud, and Gentian could easily picture him taking the lead on anything from a tavern brawl to a charge into battle. Right this moment, he seemed on the verge of swinging punches.

  "I've a little food," she volunteered, aiming for distraction without provocation. Noticing movement further down the corridor, she added: "Are those your children?"

  A miniature of Lady Dhara, about ten years old, was trotting along the corridor toward them, narrowly pursued by a girl of fourteen who more closely resembled Prince Jurasel. Both wore simple shifts. Lady Dhara clicked her tongue in exasperation, and turned to capture the girl by the shoulder.

  "I'm sorry, Mama-la," said the older girl. "She would."

  "Always. No fault of yours, Desseron. You need to learn to stay where you're put, Kassen."

  "I wanted to see, Mama," Kassen replied, with a straightforward assurance that curiosity was total justification. She peered around her mother's legs at the newcomers. "Can we leave now?"