Bones of the Fair

by Host, Andrea K

  Aspen carefully redirected this thought, before he really got himself in trouble. It was an interesting idea, but so terribly unlikely. The Diamond's expression was certainly far from lover-like as he finished casting and turned to study the subject of the experiment. She could as well be a frog.

  "So, what now?" Aspen asked.

  "Cast this." Ward complete, the Diamond handed him a slip of paper with runes neatly boxed down one side: a divination, one which would monitor any power used within the ward. Compact script covered every spare inch, giving a precise translation, outline of intent and guide to pronunciation. It was a complex little spell, and Aspen wondered whether he should be insulted at the level of explanation, complimented at the relative difficulty, or pleased to contribute something other than a pretty face to the proceedings.

  Or daunted. A test, a test, with every mistake a nail in the coffin of 'prenticeship with the Diamond. Did he even want that any more? What price the opportunity to make a fool of himself before a more exacting master than his first could ever have dreamed of being? What gain? It wasn't as if they had a hope of overcoming Suldar or her maybe-maybe not prisoner.

  Gentian had drawn her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms about them, no doubt wondering why he was just sitting there while the Diamond was well into the depths of something infinitely trickier. And Aspen reminded himself that this was Aristide Couerveur, who lived magic and politics, who would let nothing stand between himself and Darest's interests. If anyone was going to get them out of this trap, it was the Diamond.

  Throwing doubts to the wind, Aspen reviewed the instructions three times over, and cast with every ounce of care, gloating as it eased into being like he'd been practising for months. Instantly his head was full of ghosts of intent. The Diamond's voice in five different places, words hissing over each other. Block, said each corner of the room. Guard, the door replied. Watch, Pierce, Record, said the nightmarish knot above Gentian's head. Reveal, said the glowing orb that had risen to adhere to the ceiling. On my name, muttered the saecstra, with a finality which was more than apt.

  "Can you describe exactly what you experience?" the Diamond asked, settling back in his chair. Like a healer, asking where it hurt.

  "No." No wry edge: just a straightforward answer accompanied by that solemn stare. Then she looked away, resting her chin on her knees, profound discomfort betrayed by her determined focus on the vase of butterfly-serpents.

  "Put yourself in a place where you're utterly alone," she went on, in a voice colourless from control. "You know, with absolute certainty that you're the only person there, the only thing that can exist in that place. It is the place where you are. And then something, a huge, horrid, utterly wrong thing – a thing that has been standing behind you in the dark holding its breath – that thing leans, rushes, swoops forward and screams in your ear. That is not memory: I have the next moment, the waking moment, only remembering a hating, black, vast anger, an impression of great wrongness. Of a thing that hates me, hates everything, me most of all. A typhoon of it, surging forward, as if anger alone could push me away. As if I am crushing it, and must be crushed in my turn, as if I'm the wrong that blinds and cripples it."

  She spared them a sideways look, only her eyes moving, gauging their lack of reaction. "Never more than a moment's touch, never changing, never any less. I react physically to it, as a mouse would being dropped at the last moment by the owl. Pure fear reaction, then the quivering aftermath of shock, and a profound revulsion, as if all the world is wrong. I feel trapped, long to get outside, but if I move about too soon I prolong the weakness."

  "Weakness?"

  "Take that dizzy moment just after someone's startled you out of your wits and multiply it a lot." The faintest shrug. "It's nearly dawn."

  "You're able to feel its approach?"

  "There's a slight heaviness."

  She glanced at them again, then closed her eyes. It took Aspen a moment to realise that this was it, that she'd gone to sleep as easily and completely as an infant, still sitting upright with her cheek resting on her knees. Her chest moved, deep and even, as if she'd been dreaming for hours.

  Creep up on a sleeper and scream in their ear. It perfectly described her waking: the jolt upright, eyes flown wide, breath gulped in surprise, horror. He could see the pulse in her throat, leaping madly as she stared at them, a shuddering moment completely without recognition. Her fingers closed white on her shins, and her face went chalky as she squeezed her eyes shut – for all the world as if she couldn't bear to look at them – and swallowed a tiny second breath that sounded like it hurt.

  And Aspen felt nothing. Gentian had gone – been forced – into sleep, and then blasted out of it, and the clever little spell the Diamond had crafted and Aspen had cast so well had shown him nothing at all.

  Chapter Twelve

  Having Aristide there was worse than Gentian had anticipated. It hurt to hate him, to look at him and struggle with nausea. She blocked him out, shut away the world and hugged her knees until her heart stopped trying to burst her throat and her head no longer echoed. And even then, when she'd recovered enough not to gasp for breath, she had to turn her face away and blink at the door.

  Gentian had lost count of the number of times she'd woken with an audience. Her parents had continually researched new divinations, and too many of the mages who'd come to consult her father had thought themselves equal to 'fixing' his daughter. She couldn't remember ever believing they'd succeed, or not resenting them for trying.

  Aristide...Aristide taking up that so-familiar position by her bed was a very bad thing. True, he was a superlative mage. Yesterday's tests on the shield had amply demonstrated that. But high skill wouldn't be enough to unmask It, any more than skill had been able to punch their way out of this cage.

  Turning her head, she found him as sleek and composed as ever, giving no hint of whether his divinations had been successful. Even in the near aftermath of It she wanted to reach out and touch him, if only to force him to stop looking at her as if she were a puzzle box he needed to open. On the whole, this strengthening, very physical desire was a welcome distraction, but Gentian doubted she'd long find it such a novelty to want so powerfully a lover she could not have. And, quite beside the sudden urgency brought on by the previous morning's attacks, Gentian didn't want to start the old circle of defeat with this man who made her ache. The myth of the infallible Diamond Couerveur could not hold true and she could not, would not, let herself believe in him.

  "What happens when you keep yourself awake, Magister?" he asked.

  It was as tidy an acknowledgement of failure as Gentian could imagine, and she was angry at herself for the spurt of disappointment it produced. Never, never could she quite stop hoping.

  "It was a little like a fever," she replied steadily, ignoring the prospect of tomorrow being one of the worst in her life. "Aching bones, a temperature, interesting shooting pains. I grew very tired, physically weak, until I couldn't even get out of bed. My parents were seriously worried, but the next morning I fell asleep and woke as...normal, and then the fever was gone and I could sleep. They could find no sign that I was under any enchantment, that it was any kind of curse or casting."

  "Just like all the rest of it." This from Aspen, who was looking a good deal less pleased with himself. "No sign of casting when you sleep and wake. No sign of casting when we were brought here, or when Suldar does her little spectaculars. And I certainly didn't notice anyone setting up that illusion-breaker yesterday. For all that it was the showiest thing I ever produced."

  "We felt the power of the transportation, of Suldar's spells, and the release of the illusion," she pointed out. "Just no intent. For me...well, providing the mechanism is well-constructed, it would take only the tiniest amount of force to knock a person out. That could easily be lost in my body's living magic."

  "And is something best discovered by attempting to keep you awake. We will try, first, to repeat your original experiment. If th
at reveals nothing, there is a casting I have in mind to craft, a variant of one of the healer's divinations, which may be useful for unmasking a hidden trigger."

  Aristide was certainly not one to turn back at the first fence. His apprentice, however, had developed that portentous expression, which he seemed to wear when approaching uncertain ground.

  "I was just chatting to Princess Aloren before," he said, in a very delicate tone. "She was asking why it was you, ah, fell over. After the sky went black." He grimaced, a jumbled mixture of apology and exasperation, and looked sideways at Aristide as if he was expecting the man to explode.

  It had been too much to hope that no-one had seen, that every soft, sore place of her wouldn't eventually be dragged out into the open. At least Aristide's immediate response was limited to a steady survey of his apprentice. "What did you answer?"

  "I didn't. I don't think she was expecting one."

  "And what was the cause, Magister Calder?" he asked then.

  The mild, genial tone gave Gentian a sense of deep foreboding, but she refused to go about apologising for her own upsets. "I don't really know," she admitted. "But it was me doing that – no outside force to blame it on. When the illusion was pierced, and everything went black, all I could think of was how much stone was above us. I'm not particularly afraid of the dark, or being locked up or whatever, but I've never liked the combination. Trapped in the dark. And I think that is because of what wakes me, because It is trapped, and I've had that imprinted in my head each morning, I suppose. A horror of being trapped beneath stone. And...at the time I thought, was quite certain, that It was in here with us. In the dark, under all that rock."

  "At the time?" He was looking at her with that detached, analytical gaze again. The Sun at eclipse: cold white fire burning on dark blue.

  "I did spend a lot of the rest of the day trying to find It," she explained. "Reaching out, seeking anything resembling that hate. That's what I don't understand, what eventually convinced me I was wrong. If It's here, why does It still only touch me for one moment of a morning?"

  "A valid point." He frowned, considering her. "Aloren is the second to be given reason to link you to our attacker, so we must anticipate these episodes becoming open knowledge. I will prepare the ground, paint you as a possible solution, but there is much relief to be found in a scapegoat."

  "Must you sugar-coat it?" she asked, wrinkling her nose at him, and was pleased to glimpse the faintest wry expression. "You'd think, if I were being used by something she was keeping prisoner, Suldar would have already removed me. The Fair's laws have a certain pragmatism at their core."

  "Until we know more of this place, Suldar's motives will only be speculation. We are better able to foresee how our companions will react."

  "The other one's Djol, isn't it?" Aspen put in, looking more than a little annoyed with himself. "The second with a reason. He was standing only a few feet away, and hasn't told Poet or Pup just what was said. Now that's positively interesting of the man."

  Gentian had been mulling over Captain Djol on her own account, but hadn't produced any sure answers. "I guess that falls into the speculation category too," she said, with a glance at Aristide.

  "It does. But also provides a reason to be wary. He may hope to gain an advantage, or simply be nursing a grudge. Prince Chenar might not be harsh, but his father has a reputation." He stood up, dismissing the last of his divinations. "We will reconvene this tomorrow, Magister. Since that experiment is likely to keep you from our other investigations for some time, there are several places in the valley I would appreciate your impressions of this morning."

  "Of course," she said, and had to smile at her immediate glow of pleasure. When the focus wasn't on her own problems, she was more than happy to work with – and ogle – him. But there was something that had been preying on her, which she needed answered first.

  "Lord Aristide–" She waited for the polite pause, then hurried on. "Vostal Hill. Putting aside my neglect in laying out some of the possibilities of my gardens, do you actually object to the intent?"

  "I was under the impression you had grown disenchanted with that particular design, Magister."

  "Oh no. The lower part of the hill, that's all mine. That the crest is more Fae than I first knew just emphasises what I was trying to do." Even though she was going to leave Darest, she thought it important to give that splendid crown a human touch.

  The re-emergence of the amused glitter in his eyes told her Aristide had read her well enough to know her gardens were far more than a hobby, that this was a thing she wanted almost as much as she claimed to want him.

  "Then, Magister, next time we are on Vostal Hill we must discuss the matter," was all he said, and with a faint, very sweet smile inclined his head and left her to stew.

  ooOoo

  Planting and weeding. It was Gentian's oldest memory, and her most soothing pastime. After a morning of intensive divinations, and an involved session restoring most of the function of one of the bathrooms, she was using an after-lunch break to work on one of the herbal borders in Telsandar's centre. A futile task given the valley's size, but it relaxed her, keeping the shadows away while she turned over earth and the prospect of Aristide, It, and tomorrow's ordeal. The only one she wanted was the one she was least certain of getting.

  She wondered if he would use Vostal Hill to hold her to Darest. And whether she would be foolish enough to let him. Good idea or not, Gentian was by now quite certain Aristide was no passing fancy. There was something in him which resonated with her. A bizarre choice considering he was an infamously ruthless politician who had looked at her garden and seen only its cost.

  Closer acquaintance hadn't given lie to his reputation, but had revealed an intensely private man who – he did not hide behind the role of consummate courtier. She thought that was a sport to him, a game he was well-versed in playing, and thoroughly enjoyed. But his twin passions were Darest and magic, and not so completely divorced from her own. And she thought – hoped, trusted – that there was a sense of justice working along with that well-practiced pragmatism. How she was going to cope with walking away from him she did not know.

  Her immediate problem was these experiments. She'd long loathed every attempt to unravel her mornings. Always that starting confidence, growing more determined in the face of initial failures. And then, nothing. Bright ideas grew fewer, lines of investigation dried up. Until they gave in, and went away, and left her waking each morning to It.

  Those attempts were the only real shadow on her relationship with her parents. She'd always been angriest at them when they produced another mage wanting to fix her. She had good parents. They were caring and careful and they had taught her so much about the real magic in the world. And not only had they not stopped It from hurting her, they had continued to offer bubbles of hope. Her earliest lesson: there were some things that could not be fixed. And Aristide was going to teach her that all over again, and this time would hurt more than all those before.

  "Magister Calder?"

  Startled, she blinked up past the patterned hem of a too-long Fae robe to the handsome, hesitant face of Prince Rydan. What had Aspen called him? The Pup? It was oddly apposite to see he was holding a ginger kitten.

  "I wondered whether you'd like a pet?" he asked, rushing the words out with an embarrassed but determined air. "My – we found her alone, no sign of a mother or the rest of the litter and Che–, my brother always goes into fits of sneezes around cats."

  Nonplussed, Gentian stood to accept a kitten only six or seven weeks old. Immensely light, little more than a puff of fur with smoky blue-grey eyes, catching the skin of her hands with needle-prick claws. "Thank you," she said belatedly. "It's been a long time since I had a pet."

  "Then I am glad to have served," Rydan replied, with some of his brother's smoothness, and a faint hint of relief. She was immediately suspicious. He'd been sent. Sent with this diversionary feline scrap to...what?

  After they had recovered
from yesterday's attack, the Cyan and Saxan princes had abandoned arguing in favour of searching the valley – a good deal more haphazardly than Captain Djol and Rua. Gentian had glimpsed them from time to time, and entertained herself with thoughts of rival gangs of children, trying to prove themselves the better. But these people played games for higher stakes, and the sea-fetch looked out of her memory, riding an unfamiliar current of excitement and unease. Her link to It would soon be known, and likely make her less than popular. Given how Chenar had broached the question of Suldar's death, it was well within the bounds of possibility that a very nasty confrontation was on the horizon. She'd hoped to have a few more days before the tide of suspicion hit.

  "How have your explorations been progressing, Your Highness?" she asked, feeling her way cautiously.

  "They haven't been," Rydan said, shrugging. "Oh, we've gone through a few dozen buildings, and found all manner of wondrous objects, not to mention rotting food and countless books. But prisoners, exits, or anything of actual use..." He sighed heavily. "It's the kind of thing that sounds a wonderful adventure when someone's singing about it, but only because the tedium and the disquiet are compacted down into a couple of lines between the heroics. But – I think we're all facing it now. We're not going to get out of here quickly. We mightn't get out of here at all."

  "No." The kitten wriggled, and she began stroking the downy skull. "I wish I could say differently, Highness. But all our divinations have only shown us how thoroughly we're trapped. Even ordinary weather and time-of-day castings won't reference outside the valley, and we're left to rely on Suldar's sky." And Its inevitable dawn.

  "I find myself wanting to go shout at the Fae's door until she gives us answers, admits she was behind that attack or tells us who was. Why do you think she ignores us?"