Bones of the Fair

by Host, Andrea K

  Aspen gazed at opportunity walking right up to him, all shiny and waiting to be plucked. Should he take it? He could end up tangling his chances with Leton, not to mention putting Diamond and Gold even further out of reach.

  "That's a whole story in itself," he said, greatly daring. "Why don't we go somewhere with less books and more wine, and I'll tell you all about me?"

  Just the right amount of push, rewarded with startled appreciation rather than affront, and then a fuller survey of what was on offer. The smile moved into tawny hazel eyes. "Indeed, my calendar is clear this evening."

  "I remember a particularly fine cellar two houses over. Let me show you."

  "Very well."

  Lit by a warm glow, but still taking care not to outrage any royal need for command, Aspen led the way out of the library, only to be stopped in his tracks by a sudden surge of magic behind him.

  Jurasel instantly drew shield and Aspen followed his lead a half-beat later. They both turned on their heels to look up at a house one back from the valley's inner circle. There was a crash of broken glass, but the casting was too far away for Aspen to even guess at intent. He took a doubtful step forward, but stopped when Jurasel dropped his shield.

  "Something's just gone up in their faces," the Cyan prince said, with a mix of derision and pleasure. And just an ounce of relief. "No magisters of their own, and can't bring themselves to rely on your master to set the pace."

  Aspen was dismayed, not only for this interruption of good fortune, but because Leton was in there. If Chenar was experimenting without real understanding–

  "Think I'd rather've had another display like yesterday than to jump at every trickle of power since the sun came up," Jurasel said. "We'll end up killing each other out of sheer nerves."

  "Could you tell what they were doing?" That had been physical backlash. If Leton was in the room, his shields inadequate to the task...

  Jurasel didn't answer, gazing over at Suldar's building. The man's restless energy was immense, and Aspen could feel the frustration pouring off him. "I don't know how much longer I can stand sitting on my hands myself," he added unexpectedly. "Dancing to the tune of that ice-water Darien. We're going mad with nothing to do, because against our Lady Dusk and this possible Dawn there's nothing we can do. Just wait for the axe to swing." He looked suddenly at Aspen, perhaps remembering who he was talking to. "So where's this cellar?"

  Trying to trust Leton to have kept himself in one piece, Aspen led the way to one of the nicer mansions, and through the kitchen to the array of bottles he'd already raided for yesterday's party. Struggling to recapture the mood, he lifted bottles at random.

  "Wine? Spirits?"

  "It's all guesswork with these vintages," Jurasel said, selecting a white and a brandy before gesturing mutely for Aspen to continue.

  Distractedly, Aspen snatched up a couple of glasses on the way through, and headed for the stairs. All the buildings had begun to blur together, but he distinctly remembered – yes, a suite of rooms one floor up, with a warmly cosy lounge opening on to one of those expansive Fae bedrooms.

  "Do you think much about the people who left this behind?" Jurasel asked, frowning at an elegant little carving as he chilled the wine.

  Holding up the glasses to be filled, Aspen discovered he didn't want to drink. Worry, the day's creeping uncertainty, had left him open to all the wrong kind of thoughts, and he found himself babbling.

  "What they looked like. What they were doing when it happened. What they'd think of us prancing about in their clothes and raiding their cellars. I can see their footprints everywhere, the things they've just put down, dropped; all the countless odds and ends of their lives left standing in a moment. But I can't taste them: they've faded out of presence, like the maintenance enchantments, and left only gaps behind."

  "We're living in a graveyard," Jurasel muttered, and put the bottle down on the nearest table, face shuttered. "Jostling for elbow room with the memory of ghosts."

  Aspen cursed himself for killing the last shreds of the moment with one of his stupid excesses of sensibility. But, though the mood was now less than light-hearted, the intention held. Eyes sombre, Jurasel lifted Aspen's chin, stole his breath in a kiss that was at once comfortless and comforting. His beard tickled, and his hands moved to touch Aspen's back, slide down his spine.

  A little shiver followed them along their course. Jurasel was powerful in a physical, arcane and worldly sense. That blunt forthrightness was backed by an able mind, and the proud temper was certainly no act. And here was Aspen Choraide, between this man and a wall, losing clothes without even trying.

  "Say thank you nicely after," the Diamond had said, and Gentian had laughed, but it was perfectly true. There was no better place to make an enemy than a bed, and if he offended Jurasel the consequences could be far more drastic then a few cold glances. This man was a prince, most definitely not loyal to Darest, and Aspen was playing with fire.

  Delicious.

  ooOoo

  Happiness should always be shared, and unexpected bliss made all the sweeter when you could sit talking to a friend without telling, smiling just enough so that they knew. Aspen thought it entirely inconsiderate of Gentian to have gone and fallen asleep. Still, he supposed it meant the pangs of spell backlash had faded. She certainly looked a good deal less cross-tempered and headachy, slipped down from her mound of pillows and...really, not moving very much at all.

  A well-timed breath spared Aspen the trouble of having a heart attack, but then there was a distinct pause before a repeat performance. Frowning, he peered at her in the dim light of the room's single candle. Gentian had said she had grown very weak toward morning: it would be a pity to get into a tizz about nothing and go waking her up. But it wasn't even midnight, and he'd taken the distinct impression that she'd not been able to sleep at all last time.

  The Diamond's divination was still active, though it was the type he would have to come and unpack to find out what was going on. Aspen cast one of his own, just to prove her pulse. Steady enough, but irritatingly faint and when he touched her arm he found the skin clammy, quite the opposite of feverish.

  "You do sick very badly," he told her unhappily. "You should have gone all pale and bravely stalwart and inspired the Diamond to sit at your bedside patting your hand." Aspen rubbed cold fingers. "Instead, I swear you looked relieved each time he headed for the door. What have you got against having a good time with the man while you're trapped here, and leave worrying about not living in Darest for when that's actually an option?" He took her by the shoulders, as he had before dinner, and shook her warily, then hastily stopped because her head flopped without any resistance at all.

  Aspen followed the beacon of the saecstra the short way down the hall, knocked on the Diamond's door and never would have imagined the reluctance he felt when the command came to open it. The Diamond Couerveur's bedroom.

  Beyond beautiful, he glowed beneath a magelight: cross-legged on a moss and pitch eiderdown, pale hair still damp from a bath and shapely feet bare. But for the five books sitting open around him, and the grim frown he wore as he read, it was a scene that fit the beginning of many of Aspen's choicest fantasies. Yet Aspen had never pictured himself unable to speak. Or wishing himself a thousand miles away.

  The Diamond didn't ask questions. He took one look at Aspen, then drew power and gazed through two walls at an experiment gone wrong. His face lost all vestige of expression.

  Badly needing reassurance, Aspen had to swallow down his stomach at least twice before Darest's unshakeable Diamond Couerveur remembered how to move.

  "Fetch Princess Aloren."

  "Aloren?" The last thing Aspen had expected him to say.

  "Her Highness has long collected the esoterica of healing. Go."

  After spending half his life at Court, Aspen had seen the Diamond Couerveur deadly displeased and coldly unconcerned, had watched him indifferently snatch impossible victories, and seen his face when he'd sworn his future
away to an unexpected king. He'd never seen him look so young.

  Aspen fled from it, out the room and up the stairs to the suites of Ceria and Atlarus. Both entry doors were shut, and it was a far different thing to burst in upon the Cerian Crown Princess in the middle of the night, but he would worry about royal temperament later.

  A few loud knocks resulted in the wrong door opening, and he turned to see Rua, puzzled and concerned. "What is happening?" He couldn't bring himself to answer her.

  Behind him, the other door shushed open and he looked back over his shoulder at a vision of gold and white, a grand ambition.

  And said: "Gentian's dying."

  The words fell clumsily from his lips, cringing before Aloren's golden majesty. What had death to do with a creature such as she? What business had Aspen to speak, and make it real?

  "I must tell the Aurak," Rua said, and was gone. Aloren simply started down the stairs.

  They found the Diamond standing at the window in Gentian's room, gazing out into the night. For a moment Aspen thought he hadn't heard them, but then he turned and said "Thank you for coming," and seemed almost his own self again.

  Aloren ignored him, casting divination without word or gesture, leaving Aspen to stare. A great-mage. Aloren, dismissed as decoration by half the West, and she was so skilled, so intuitive with the language of magic, that complex casting had become a true expression of will. A thing few outside the Fair ever achieved and, it was very likely, few outside this room would ever link to Ceria's Crown Princess.

  "I believe the Fair would term Magister Calder a 'land-seer'," the Diamond said, almost absently, as Aurak Bes arrived. "Sensitive to and affected by the boundaries and spirit of a place in a way that far outstrips a true-mage's ear for power. She has felt the Fair's taint since birth."

  This won Aloren's direct attention, and Rua, behind her master, gasped. Aspen tried not to look sick: to save Gentian they were going to have to expose her.

  With an air of preoccupation, the Diamond told the history of the dawn attacks, and elaborated on Suldar's reaction. He didn't once look at Gentian, lying so still and pale on the bed.

  "Magister Calder was conscious, holding up well when I checked on her after dinner," he concluded. "My sel-esta shows her becoming increasingly listless, until she passed into this state perhaps an hour ago. I cannot identify the cause of this weakness, any more than I can detect whatever touches her each morning, but I see no sign that this is an attack – rather, as before, damage she has done to herself preventing this unknown's daily touch. And if that one is a sibling of Suldar – the mirror of dusk – then she may not be able to heal the damage until we next enter her time of power. The moment of dawn."

  "You believe Magister Calder is the tool of our hidden foe?"

  Never had the Aurak sounded so sombre, the planes of his face transformed to basalt and granite. The Diamond only said: "I cannot discount it."

  "But you are not certain." Temporary reprieve brought the Atlaran's face back to life and he joined Aloren at the side of the bed. "I once offered her the best of my grandsons, and she told me she did not want to make another land her home. In my ignorance some part of me felt this an insult, because she had plainly not been in Darest for many years." He smoothed Gentian's short, rumpled hair. "I would that it not be too late to repair my error. Can we stop this?"

  The Diamond didn't answer immediately, looking out the window again. "Feeding her with an anaur is the obvious move," he said finally, "but I wished to ask Your Highness' advice before making the attempt."

  "There is little else to do." Aloren's honey-treacle drawl was casually factual. "But begin with a small amount only." She settled into one of the chairs, rearranging sheer white silk over burnished limbs, and watched with critical interest as the Diamond began to cast. Quite as if she would be scoring him on pronunciation.

  An anaur was a transfer, a horribly fiddly piece of casting used as a last resort to sustain life. It wasn't anything so simple as pushing arcane power into your subject. That would be about as useful as pouring sand down the throat of a suffocating man. Instead, the anaur would tap the living magic of the Diamond's body, an energy quite separate from any arcane strength he might possess, and try to use it to bolster Gentian's. And, because healing was always unnecessarily complex, you had to ease it over subtly, else it be confused for some wrongness or attack.

  Eyes narrowed with concentration, the Diamond pressed fingers lightly to Gentian's temple. It was not a loud spell, using a minimal amount of arcane force, and quite lacking any handy visual effects. All there was to see was the faintest flush of colour to thin cheeks, and then a deeper breath.

  "Gentian."

  The air vibrated. He'd called on her Name, put hooks of power into the word and tugged her to consciousness. Bruised lids shifted, and then she turned her cheek against his hand and opened her eyes.

  It was a moment of naked vulnerability. Gentian, having fallen asleep, woke to the touch of this man she desired. Surprise and wonder competed with exhaustion, and her lips parted. But then burnished gold shifted beneath moon silk, and she looked past him to Aloren. All expression fled.

  "What time is it?" The words were little more than breath, and she shifted to look at the steadily burning candle, moving, by no coincidence, away from the Diamond's hand.

  "Near midnight, Magister." The words were formal, his face aloof. "Can you tell us how far this experience differs from your first experiment?"

  Gentian turned her head with leaden care to mark the occupants of the room: Aloren, Aspen, Aurak Bes, and Rua by the door. For a moment it didn't seem she'd even heard the question, but then she blinked, and said: "I don't remember not being able to sit up. But – I think it's just sooner. Didn't...really flatten till nearly dawn, before. Perhaps because I'm older, more sensitive?"

  Only then did she look back at the Diamond, staring straight into those sapphire and ice eyes as if she was trying to memorise every fleck. "I saw a sea-fetch," she told him. "Just after I crossed Darest's ocean border. Another relevant detail, I suppose, but I found it hard to believe." She smiled, regret leavened with a fleeting hilarity. "Does it count, if you strike yourself down?"

  "I do not know, Magister," the Diamond replied, without so much as a glimmer of humour, but she was already gone, slipping unresisting from consciousness. The Diamond stood a beat longer, then said: "The transfer should have sustained her better than that. Where is her strength going?"

  Aloren's answer was to cast, a word-magic spell of painful complexity. Aspen tried to follow the intent, but his Elachar wasn't nearly equal to the task, and he was guessing at particularly esoteric divination when Gentian flickered into light.

  A rainbow palette painted a fragile shimmer of green and blue, with a wash of gold flecked with red all around her. The spell stained the living magic of her body, but it was fading as they watched, the colours wavering up into nothingness.

  "Her strength is not being taken," Aloren said. "It's evaporating. Mist in the sunlight."

  "Do you know a way to stop this, Highness?" the Diamond asked, and Aspen wished he would stop sounding so remote, so disconnected from what was happening. So oddly...not there.

  "I have read of a case of possession," Aloren replied calmly. "A revenant. The creature was successfully cast out, but some hours later the victim fell to exhaustion in just such a way as this. The envelope of living magic had been torn. The account states that their attempts to stop the outflow were 'like sewing shut a rain-cloud'."

  "But it fixed itself last time." Aspen was swinging wildly between dismay and outrage. Selvar was possessing Gentian for an instant each morning? The implications were impossible to face, and he wanted to shout, only calming when Aloren's burnished gaze switched to him. "It woke her again and she was back to normal," he said. "Can't we keep her alive 'til dawn?"

  "Very likely. What happens when she wakes is another question."

  The Diamond turned away from the flicker of colour above
Gentian. "The shock?"

  "The reaction you have described must surely place a severe strain on her heart. In this state, I would not expect her to survive that. Nor would I recommend trying to build up her strength against it. That might further strain whatever is torn, possibly speeding her decline. Of course, since we are relying on this Other to repair her, perhaps it is capable of withholding the effect." Aloren's voice was quite impersonal, but she watched the Diamond's reaction with interest.

  Which was not to react at all. Aspen was painfully aware of the waiting silence, and wondered if it was possible he hadn't heard. But then, "We will make our own attempts. Since we have the precedent of an earlier case, we will at least be able to eliminate what has failed already. If you will assist me?"

  "Of course," Aurak Bes said, with just the faintest hint of affront. Aloren produced that slow smile, but inclined her head. They would do it.

  The Diamond barely reacted, giving no sign of being relieved or grateful. "Choraide, we will need food," he said, after another of those uncharacteristic pauses, and began another divination.

  Feeling a fraction dizzy, Aspen nodded and hurried out of the room. Arcane casting was energy-intensive enough. Repeatedly transferring living magic would leave them starving hollow.

  One day's lesson did not make a cook. But a 'prenticeship devoted to avoiding Elachar definitely ruled out Aspen making any other contribution. He was not going to let that bother him. Instead, he gathered simple things, nuts and juice and cheeses, and kept half his attention on the flow of magic above. Aloren's spell cut out abruptly, and after a long pause an intense wash suggested a major shield, which vanished while Aspen was making his way upstairs.

  They cast another shield as he arrived. Not trying to keep something out, but to hold a life in. Putting a bandage on a cloud. Biting his lip, Aspen poured drinks and passed them around, and held his breath as Aurak Bes brought a hint of pink back to Gentian's cheeks with another anaur.