Bones of the Fair

by Host, Andrea K

  "Nothing – a power store. We're going to make an attempt at midnight."

  His Phoenix turned his head, enough to survey the windows to the garden, where shadows were stretching to late afternoon beneath their prison's false sun. He closed his eyes, took a sustaining breath, then sat up, fixing unerringly on the tray.

  Only after inhaling half of the heavily buttered yam and onion concoction Aspen had reproduced did he cock a sardonic eye and say: "Not bad."

  "Bah."

  That earned him nothing, his Phoenix instead concentrating on eating quickly, apparently in order to make himself scarce. Not at all in the mood to be left behind, despite the dragging ache calling him to bed, Aspen followed him out of the building.

  The globe of unspent force still hung over Suldar's building, near-invisible yet sucking all attention. Determinedly ignoring it was a cloying vision of youth: the three Cyan brats sitting with Gentian in the grass, making garlands out of flowers.

  "Good to see our remaining forces working hard toward escape," Aspen said. "Now all I need is a bell to call them to dinner."

  But Leton wasn't listening, making a bee-line for another late afternoon riser, just poking his nose into the central gardens, and looking as if it was all too much for him.

  Aspen dogged his heels resolutely. Leton was barely up to walking, let alone all the cooking, cleaning and nurse-maiding the Saxans wasted him on. Truly a crime for a Phoenix to be stuck playing minder to such a tedious Pup.

  "Leton!" Prince Rydan held out a hand as if expecting a Phoenix to light upon it, then let it drop. "I – I had something to ask you."

  "Your Highness?"

  Leton's tone was the Guard Dog's obedient neutrality, but the quick survey he gave his younger charge said volumes. The boy might well have greased his face for a melodrama, so largely writ were the lines of tragedy. More worryingly, he looked two gulps short of vomiting, so Aspen took himself a few steps away in a pretence of giving the pair some privacy. He wasn't at all certain Rydan even noticed his presence.

  "At what point...at what point does duty...?" The Pup scraped his hands down his face. "I don't know what to do, Leton. Do I abandon myself for that which is my duty to protect? Chenar says we must place our trust in those outside this mountain, but the chance that, that..."

  "Have you eaten at all?" Leton asked, cutting short any opportunity for interesting revelations. He wasn't one to forget flapping ears. "Decisions should never be made in haste or hunger," he added firmly. "Balance yourself physically, and you will be better positioned to settle questions of right and wrong."

  "There's no time, Leton! We are past urgency." The Pup glanced at the false, sinking sun, noticed Aspen, and managed to catch himself up. "I–" He wavered, then sat down on the nearest bench. "You're right, of course. I'm not thinking straight."

  Leton glanced about and stooped to select small, vivid strawberries from the nearest garden bed. "Eat these, and then come in. I'll have something ready."

  They left him sitting on a low stone wall, staring at the berries as if he'd forgotten the trick of swallowing.

  "A good opportunity for another lesson," Aspen said firmly, when Leton glanced at him. "I'll cook, you instruct."

  Leton grunted, his attention shifting from Aspen back to the most irritating Pup, who had abandoned his strawberries to the wall, and wandered across to be offered a crown of flowers instead.

  "Cooking is a useful extra skill," he said absently. "Not a reason to avoid harder work."

  Aspen swore he didn't hear the noise of it, refused to have heard the noise of it, instead stopped at the jangle of harp notes, the shrill of children crying out in fright, and then Leton was shouting "No!", and Aspen turned again, to have that frozen moment burned into the back of his eyes: a small figure crumpled on the ground, and Prince Rydan standing above her, a heavy stone raised for a second blow.

  Leton, barely walking let alone able to cast, still acted, thrusting with direct force over far too great a distance, enough to send that stone spinning away. He groaned and fell, clutching at his head and leaving to Aspen a field of horror made worse by floral ornament, and all Aspen wanted was to run away, but his feet took him forward, close enough to see the blood, the...the dent. But before he'd crossed half the distance the air twisted with an abrupt redirection of the valley's monumental flow of power, and Suldar was there.

  Great gouts of magic made the scene ahead shimmer, but Aspen's feet did not slow, not 'til he stood panting at the edge of that focused intensity. He fumbled for a reason for the outpour. The...the damage had already vanished, with only a few smashed petals to mark the thing, the wrongness.

  "He was right," Rydan whispered. "If she dies, the shield will be pierced."

  It was the power, more than the princeling shrieking wildly in the arms of his sisters, that summoned true-mages from exhausted sleep, to run and halt and stare at the scene and react according to their natures. Lady Mara and Princess Kestia gathering their children. Seylon Heresar speaking a quiet word to distract Prince Jurasel's impetuous advance. Prince Chenar, grey and appalled, hurrying to his brother. The Aurak, paused in quiet prayer as Rua and Dest flanked him protectively. Golden Aloren, her expression judicial.

  And Aristide.

  The Diamond Couerveur was not smiling. Beyond that, Aspen could not guess at his emotions. Once past their early skirmishes, he'd treated Gentian with a directness he accorded very few, but if there was more it did not show in the glance he gave her crumpled figure before focusing on Suldar. Rydan he ignored altogether.

  But Rydan would not be ignored. Chest heaving, he shrugged off his brother's restraining hand and took a step closer to the tight-wound maelstrom Suldar was channelling.

  "Just let it end," he pleaded. "Why must you keep us here?"

  The ancient Fae did stop, not in response to his words, but because she had completed her casting, leaving them in a strangely scrubbed moment, as if a storm had passed. Gentian lay as crumpled as before, with no sign of injury. Alive, within a certain meaning of the word.

  Aspen had to grudgingly hand it to the Pup: he did not flinch as the Fae – dwarfing him in every aspect – turned to look down at him.

  ~My duty. My sworn vow. You will not find its failure benefits you.~

  She turned, the only sound that of dead grass crunching beneath her slippers, but spared a parting word for those who had hoped to escape.

  ~I understand the outer shield to be designed to reflect internal attacks.~

  ooOoo

  "Choraide, take Magister Calder inside."

  Aspen started, then reluctantly moved as the Diamond turned to Princess Aloren with a calm that was somehow worse than anger.

  "It seems unlikely that we will succeed where the Lady Suldar has failed, but I would appreciate your assistance in the attempt."

  "So, that's it then?" Jurasel had not quite lost his bullish energy, though he glanced uncomfortably away as Aspen stooped to collect a small and crumpled mage. "We're stuck here?"

  "Until dawn," the Diamond replied. "Then I imagine Darest will detain you no longer."

  He moved to go, but the Aurak forestalled them.

  "I do not understand this," he said, and such was the man's authority that Aspen, who had contributed nothing to the situation, still quaked internally. "Why have you done this, Prince of Sax? Why, when we had finally determined a course of action, did you attempt to use death to pierce the shield?"

  Rydan gulped like a lad about to be strapped, searched the ground for answers and found instead shattered petals. Flinching from that, he shook his head.

  "It is a matter of the Skremmish succession, Aurak," said the Diamond, sounding only bored despite the muffled shock his words produced. "Skrem uses a Sun-blessed item to choose its ruler, a fist-sized knot of gold which relocates on the death of their monarch. The first true born of Skrem to hold it up to the Sun can claim their throne." The Diamond once again turned away, his glance warning Aspen to go inside or regret it.<
br />
  "And this is relevant how?" the Aurak asked.

  Arms full of a warm body that breathed but made no other movement, Aspen picked up his pace, but he heard Aloren answer, her voice rich with revelation and amusement.

  "Skrem was once rather larger than its current size, and the Sun's Knot has been known to relocate outside today's borders. The only sensible thing to do when that happens is to shield it and have it hastily delivered...somewhere else, before vast hordes of ambitious Skremmish divine its location. But the Knot is a drearily powerful bit of metal. No shield would last for long."

  You'd need a mage of Seylon Heresar's calibre to maintain such a shield, Aspen reflected as he followed the Diamond inside. Cya's Queen and Sax's King were far from friends, but Darest's revival was more than enough motive for a temporary truce. But why bring the thing to Sax, and tangle it up in a boating trip along the Galassas, instead of sending it directly into Darest?

  "The Aurak was due to go from Sax to Tor Darest," he said aloud.

  Aloren, a step behind him, hummed softly. She had been window dressing for the scheme, a role Aspen suspected she found ironic. Aspen doubted that Kubara Bes, Aurak and envoy of the Atlaran Empire, in whose company the Sun's Knot would most likely have travelled, found the matter half so funny.

  "It's...it's too over-elaborate," Aspen continued, finding himself almost affronted. "Every man and his dog's been heading to Tor Darest this last month. Why not shove it in the hold of the next ship, then sit back and watch the fun?"

  "The Skremmish are well aware of their own borders," the Diamond said. "There is no reason for the Knot to appear in Darest – or Sax, for that matter. Tracing its course back would be difficult, of course, but there would be a high chance of an attempt."

  "And the Sun might well have an opinion." Aloren hummed a triumphal note, then touched the forehead of the still figure Aspen had laid on the bed. "How unlike Meneth. Bad enough to allow Cya to transfer the risk to him. To give the task to those two limp sons of his, instead of someone with his own pragmatism, was not at all wise. He's become increasingly erratic, these past few years."

  The Cerian princess lifted her hand from Gentian's forehead, and briefly caressed one sun-browned cheek before stepping away.

  "Just a shell," she said. "The Atlaran precepts have some definite opinions about revived corpses."

  "Yes. The Aurak will not join us. He liked her enough to borrow time on her behalf. Besides..." The Diamond's eyes were veiled. "It may well be the best way to deal with Dawn."

  "The shield wasn't pierced, though," Aspen said, because he could bear to follow through that thought. "Suldar stopped her dying. Fully dying."

  "Stopped her returning to Lady Moon, certainly." Aloren hummed another note. "Death suppressed, not prevented. She has lost her link to her body, is as dead as any haunt or revenant. From what little I could translate of Suldar's intent, there was not sufficient response from whatever remains of the spirit."

  "Death is a traumatic event." The Diamond, expression still completely absent, looked down at the body breathing on the bed, then bowed his head to Princess Aloren. "It is too soon to make any attempt. Will you join me after midnight? Choraide, lend Her Highness your arm."

  Golden Aloren did not comment, merely accepting Aspen's hastily offered assistance for a walk upstairs. But when they reached her door, she hummed another note, then said:

  "Diamonds are very lovely and very hard. But they can still shatter."

  Chapter Twenty

  Aspen spent the remainder of the afternoon sitting in a hidden corner of the centre garden, staring profitably at the toes of his boots. As desperately as he wanted to sleep, he lacked the heart to try.

  Impossible for him to feel any lingering warmth where he had held Gentian's limp body, but still the sensation remained. There had been no resistance in her, no echo of the living person who had been so quietly assured, who had treated him with point-blank honesty, and had faced a daily beating because she wanted to return to a place she loved.

  Aspen had no particular attachment to places. He would never hang about to be slapped awake each morning for one, let alone treat one as the be-all and end-all of existence, like a certain Couerveur.

  How much pressure could the Diamond take, knowing the threats Darest currently faced? The combined wrath of the Western kingdoms, looking for their heirs. A Fae ghost liable to make the whole country unliveable for true-mages, and about to burst free of her prison. And the question of this Sun's Knot, sitting shielded somewhere, hidden even from the Saxan entourage. Had that shield, left unfuelled, failed and brought all Skrem down on Sax? Or had the Saxan King managed to have it located and moved on to Tor Darest? What would Soren and the divine Aluster be facing out there?

  It had been the prospect of his own exile that had nearly made the Diamond falter. But even after that realisation he'd forged on, leading the effort to keep Gentian alive, and then to find a way out of their trap. The double blow delivered by a rock and Suldar's parting words hadn't even made him blink, immediately thinking ahead to the possibility of turning Gentian's breathing corpse into a trap for Selvar.

  The revived dead – whole in all but spirit – were dangerous things to leave lying about. There were too many incorporeal things that might try to take up residence. Particularly Selvar, who had plenty of practice in at least momentarily possessing Gentian every dawn. That had been their vulnerability all along, the fact that had triggered the kidnapping of a barge of true-mages, then allowed an unkind spirit to reach into Suldar's sanctuary. It was entirely within the nature of the Diamond Couerveur to kill that possessed body in order to protect Darest.

  Would striking down an ally he'd worked so hard to save be the blow to finally break him?

  They were going to try recovery first. That, at least, had been clear. Gentian's spirit had been prevented from returning to Lady Moon and, in theory, could take up residence in her body once again. If she was allowed the time to recover a measure of coherence, understand what had happened to her, and summon the strength and determination to do so.

  Gentian, Gentian, meek and mild.

  The Atlarans had thought the woman hugely stubborn, and Aspen acknowledged that it took a certain level of willpower to stay more than an hour in a kingdom where you were savagely assaulted every morning. But haunts and revenants could take months, even years to recover from the shock of dying.

  The thought of it all, of the sheer wasteful stupidity, made Aspen feel like he was suffocating. Particularly when he remembered Rydan's words, when Suldar had arrived to try to prevent a soul's escape.

  He was right. If she dies, the shield will be pierced.

  That idiot Pup. Led by the nose, and Aspen had no doubt which 'he' had fomented this piece of mischief. Just as Aristide was devoted to Darest, his brother was Cya's loyal dog. Those words were a titbit to choke on, and it was best to assume the Diamond knew or guessed whose hand had been at work, because Aspen most certainly wasn't going to–

  It was not imagination. The air was thickening, power creeping around him. Unable to detect intent, Aspen heaved himself to his feet, wondering if he could bear to try to draw shield, and whether there was any point trying. His strength was nothing but a handy store for Selvar to tap, his skills too minimal to provide sufficient resistance.

  But there was no outpouring, only a quietude, settling over an already hushed valley. And then, though harp music still cascaded from her sealed building, Suldar.

  Astonished, Aspen took a step backward, belatedly recognising that the heaviness surrounding him was increasing layers of shielding. And this was dusk. Suldar's time of power, just as dawn was Selvar's.

  ~Hold out your hand.~

  Running away would be pointless, but Aspen was still tempted. What was she going to do? What did she want with him, of all people?

  His hand had crept out, against all better judgment, and he flinched as she raised her own, but somehow he managed to hold still even as a spur of w
hite light appeared. But it was too much to expect him to just stand there when she thrust that spur down at him.

  A deep, numbing jolt shot down his arm. Aspen fell back into a bed of daisies, unable to believe how quickly she'd moved, clutching at his wrist above a hand he'd surely pulled back before any blow could possibly land and it hurt, hurt–!

  ~The pain will fade.~

  The daisies were dying. Aspen scrambled upright, staring from towering, too-close Fae to his hand, uninjured but for a faint silvery mark in the centre of his palm.

  ~When the time comes, you must strike.~

  Already gone, leaving Aspen wondering if he'd imagined the last words. Hoping, praying, that it was imagination, because otherwise...what?

  He curled his marked hand shut, and felt something there. Insubstantial, only present enough to be sure that it wasn't simply imagination, a cylinder. No, a hilt. And between the bones of his forearm, a blade.

  A weapon. Suldar had given him a weapon. Him, a weapon.

  Shaking, Aspen took a step, then another, and let his feet bring him inside. The Diamond would know what to do, would be able to put the Fae's weapon to better use than Aspen ever could.

  The saecstra led him unerringly to Gentian's door, resting on its latch. It eased open at a touch, exposing the now-familiar scene of a Fae bedroom with several recently-planted pots by the window, an invested glow fading as the twilight deepened. The difference was in the shallowly breathing corpse on the bed, a ball of ginger fluff curled by her foot.

  No Diamond. Aspen blinked, and for a wild moment wondered if Aristide Couerveur had spent the last few days disguising himself as an orange kitten. But a gleam of pale hair caught the eye, and he realised that the Diamond was sitting on the floor on the far side of the bed. Asleep, head resting on the mattress scant inches from one sun-browned and motionless hand.

  Aspen caught the door and pulled it closed.

  The only place to go was his room, to sit on a too-empty bed and contemplate options. Laughable to put himself in the role of the one who draws concealed weapons on Fae-possessed mages, and actually succeeds in striking them down. Ludicrous.