Bones of the Fair

by Host, Andrea K

  And yet beyond unacceptable, unthinkable, impossible to force Aristide Couerveur to do it.

  ooOoo

  Aspen sat himself in a corner of Gentian's room and worked quietly on the best shield he could manage. His private struggle had, of course, not altered the path the Diamond had already resolved upon: using the brief moment of possession, Gentian's daily torture, as an opportunity to strike at Selvar.

  Was it only imagination that made the night feel so cold? Aspen had brought along his travelling coat, and huddled into it, wondering at his own presence. He had never aspired to be 'useful'. To enjoy life, definitely, and to lighten the trials of those around him, yes. Making the occasional witty observation, dancing divinely, and conjuring breathy gasps after suitable activity.

  None of that involved killing anyone. Not even when they were dead already, and some kind of monster of spite. Especially not when it would probably destroy any chance of a little gardening mage recovering herself.

  He glanced over at the bed, at the figure that had not moved or shifted since he'd put her there. She'd hated Selvar so much. Called her It. The last thing she'd want would be for her tormentor to break free, doing whatever it was that ancient Fae ghosts thought entertaining. Killing other Fae, perhaps? Gentian wouldn't want that.

  Gentian wouldn't want a lot of things. She didn't get to have an opinion in the matter: choice taken away by a rock and an unguarded moment. Aspen didn't feel he had been given any real choice either. He had sat stubbornly in his room during the midnight session of trying to draw Gentian's spirit back to her body, but as dawn approached he'd again followed the whisper of the saecstra, supplemented by a half-dozen spells built to bring death.

  As Aspen finished casting, other spells pricked at his senses. Outside, a reserve force waited against the possibility that the Diamond Couerveur, Golden Aloren, and Aurak Kubara Bes – the three great-mages of their company – should fail to crush one small gardener in the moment of Dawn's possession. What little he could make out of intent suggested defensive spells, and ordinarily Aspen would have most sensibly joined them. He could still do that, could get up and go downstairs, perhaps take comfort in a Phoenix's profile.

  Leton. Why hadn't he thought of him before? A brilliant swordsman, decisive, practiced at leadership and death, and unlike Aspen demonstrably...

  The Diamond glanced at him. He had not objected to Aspen's unhappy presence, but he was clearly aware of unusual behaviour. Aspen closed his silver-marked hand on the sensation of not-quite-there and held himself still.

  What made Aspen useful was his failure to present any significant threat. That had to be why Suldar had come to him. Though whether Selvar knew enough details of her tools to make that distinction was another question altogether.

  "I don't recognise that casting, Your Highness," Aurak Bes murmured, breaking a long period devoted only to inventive death.

  "I've placed a bent sliver of bamboo into her heart. If the casting is removed, the sliver will spring open."

  Aspen flinched, not at the terrible image the princesses' words conjured, but because his shield had responded to some outside touch. But it was only the kitten, nosing about his ankles. He relaxed his shield and scooped the ball of fluff up, depositing it to wriggle in a coat pocket, then hastily brought his shield to full strength as Aurak Bes murmured a note of warning. Only the Atlaran revealed his sorrow in the moment. Aloren was, as ever, the detached observer, and the Diamond...

  Expression as calm and unperturbed as a Deeping pool – and likely just as deceptive – his gaze never wavered from Gentian's face. In all Aspen's long observation of the man, he'd never found him so opaque. The Diamond usually made a play of mockery, acrid little displays of derision and courtesy, and clearly enjoyed the verbal joust. Those who knew him well could spot the tiny signs of displeasure or true amusement, but Aspen now found only an absence. Would this new–

  Light. Aspen flinched, threw up a hand to protect his eyes, and then concentrated frantically on his shield as the world seemed to float around him, and he was lifting, tumbling. An impact into pink, a riot of petals, and he bounced and slammed downward, then lay gasping until his mind churned through to an understanding that a cherry tree had not hurled itself out of nowhere to attack him. He'd been flung from the building.

  Rolling over, Aspen gasped again and jerked to avoid crushing the kitten. And then staggered drunkenly to his feet, searching wildly through the myriad shades of dawn for movement.

  The mountain opened.

  Aspen sat down again beneath a shower of scented petals as the false sky unfolded as gracefully as any blossom, if flowers could shake the earth and set bones to rumble. A brisk breeze caught falling specks of pink and whisked them skyward, to compete with the stars fading into dawn's chill light.

  The extravagance of the mountain's disrobing left Aspen's inner ear quivering and overloaded, but did leave the valley marginally brighter, enough for him to finally spot movement.

  Light washing from the room of instruments picked out a tall figure walking with a curious lack of grace into the gardens. Beneath the curving stone leaves of the central pavilion her goal waited. It took Aspen several blinks to recognise the reluctance embedded into each step, and to begin to sort the flow of magic between the pair. A massive, one-way wash. Not an attack, but a channel. With each day Selvar had become more adept at taking and using the magic of the captive true-mages, but on this last morning she ignored all but the true prize, finally won. Suldar.

  He had to get closer. To somehow reach that water-guarded pavilion unnoticed, and strike the blow that would stop this, and he almost broke down laughing at the idea of that, of him, and a creature who could open a mountain with the ease the rest of Darest sliced off the top of an egg.

  A voice spoke out of the grey. "We are but senserel in this. And yet, knowing ourselves gnats, do you not wish to sting, to at least be a nuisance?"

  Rua, grave but upright, reached down a hand, and Aspen took it.

  "Our lost friend would tell me that I reveal in this pride the precept's prejudices, thinking myself a gnat merely because I cannot compare myself in power. But the precepts also tell us that in times of great peril it is the responsibility of all who can act to lend their strength, no matter how small that strength is. Shall we see what we can do?"

  "Rua, you are ice in midsummer. I think I might love you."

  "Just a little," Rua said equably, proving she had taken his measure well. "Come, we may at least be able to offer up a distraction."

  "You think we have any hope of reaching her?"

  Rua raised her iron-shod staff toward the sliver of moon visible over the rim of the valley, and then struck the path beneath their feet, the sound of metal striking stone ringing out like a judgment. From the upper tip of the staff bloomed a twin spiral of glowing smoke, taking the shape of two long-eared and lean hounds.

  "Shield," she murmured, and Aspen hastily resurrected some measure of protection as twin trails of light and smoke loped through the air, paths crossing and crisscrossing in faster and wider loops until finally they came back together one last time, converging on the central island and its stone pavilion, only to flatten into nothing against an implacable wall.

  "Shield indeed," Rua murmured, even as the pavilion was lit by a second attack, a crimson light washing across it, setting the water on fire but not troubling the occupant at all.

  "No counterattacks," Aspen muttered, shoulders tight with anticipation of unfallen blows as he searched for whoever else was casting.

  "I think perhaps the Lady Suldar is resisting? Come, let us close on them."

  Aspen thought that if Suldar was resisting, she was not doing so very effectively. The ancient Fae had reached the bank of the valley's tiny central lake and, as Rua and Aspen dropped their shields in favour of stealth, Suldar ponderously lowered herself to her knees, gazing across the water at the gravely unsmiling face of the twice-dead.

  ~How many centuries? How lon
g would you have sacrificed yourself to their cowardice? And for what?~

  The mind-speech rang out clearly, though Aspen was not certain if he heard because he'd moved into range, or if the Fae pair had been silent until now.

  ~I have come to recognise that my reasons are beyond your understanding, sister.~

  ~I understand that you talk of duty as if it were a chain about your throat. That you buried yourself alive by Daseretal's command, and she left you to rot. Will you ever weary of the price placed on your loyalty?~

  ~Sister, it has never been Daseretal exacting this price from me.~

  The mind-voices were almost identical, both dignified and sorrowful, and Aspen wished he could better tell them apart, so one could clearly be the monster. And now what? The pavilion was protected by a shield, not to mention its own little watery moat. Any approach would be obvious, and need to overcome a shield so completely indifferent to attack that the Fae wearing Gentian's body didn't even glance aside when another bloom of fire spent its force just short of the pavilion.

  Drawing closer had allowed Aspen to spot the other players in this drama, scattered in clusters a short way beyond Suldar. Aurak Bes and Jurasel, with Hapt-lo Des hurrying to join them. The Diamond and his brother. Lady Dhara and Golden Aloren, who had blood spattered down the side of her face and over the shoulder of her dress.

  And there a Phoenix, glorious shadow to Poet and Pup, and Aspen was struck by the fact that even the Saxans had stayed with some thought of fighting, despite how close the borders were, and how so much more sensible it would be to simply fly off and leave Darest to her angry ghost.

  So they were at hand at least, even if most were holding back. If he somehow could coordinate these forces to attack all at once, would that be sufficient to break the shield? And then he could hurl himself at the pavilion – he'd need a flight spell, and he had nothing prepared and this was still madness, ridiculous, and yet his feet took him forward as Suldar bowed her head and shuddered from some invisible blow.

  "Here."

  Rua tugged his shoulder so they crouched by a spreading bush covered in flowers in shades of lavender, a handful of metres from Suldar, and with only a tiny lake to travel to reach their target.

  "They prepare to place a shield over the Lady Suldar, as your lord did previously with the child, Kassen. When her sister is starved of the source of her power, we must strike with everything we have. Set your spells."

  Aspen grit his teeth and made himself concentrate on casting a flight spell. This was everything he did not want to do, and, no, he would concentrate on the casting and nothing else. Just a flight spell, something he'd managed dozens of time. And when Selvar was unprotected, he would fly over the water, and draw the knife as he rushed forward and then, then...

  Shuddering, he cleared the casting and started again, forcing himself to think only of the words. Exact pronunciation, crystal clear intent. A matter of flight, no...

  "Sun."

  Rua, preparations forgotten, straightened to her full height, staring upward. And Aspen joined her, startled out of all thought of death.

  "I thought they were myth."

  The sky-ships of the Fair. All the old stories of their Empire talked about sky-ships, but they had fallen far out of living memory, until it seemed that even the Fair themselves, long-lived but not immortal, had never seen one in flight.

  Aspen had worried about the armies of Skrem, or the West, or even Atlarus invading Darest while the Diamond was sealed beneath a mountain. But instead it was the Fair, a half-dozen ships skimming into view, and more cresting the rim of the valley as he watched. Hulls of golden wood, sleek and simple, beneath great layered networks of sail, planes of cloth set at complex angles and picked out in all the colours of the dawn's light.

  ~now~

  A tiny word, inserting itself into his mind, and Aspen looked away from the sky in confusion. The shield protecting the pavilion remained, solid and undisturbed, though the wash of power from Suldar to Selvar had suddenly increased, and the small figure worn by an angry ghost was staring upward with a clear and vivid pleasure as she wound all that strength up toward a blow to knock beauty from the sky.

  And then Aspen understood, and he flinched, giving Rua a glance full of an appeal she did not even notice. He fished in his pocket and handed her a kitten and left without a word. It wasn't far, perhaps a half-dozen steps, and he moved quick and deliberate, because there was no space left to doubt this course.

  Dead grass crunched beneath his feet, and she raised her head. Even kneeling she was nearly as tall as he, and from a still, cold place he saw that she had tears running down her cheeks, but that she smiled. Behind him a massive casting released, but he was in a tiny room where only two existed as he pulled the weapon she had given him, and ran it into her heart.

  Death leaves claw-marks. Gentian had said that, an eternity ago when she was alive. The death of a being such as Suldar went so far beyond that one could only reach for superlatives. Rent. Gouge. Rift. Chasm.

  All Aspen knew was that he was hurled into the lake, and that his arms hurt. His left felt like he had removed a bone along with the weapon. The right hand...

  He held it up, between his face and the receding surface of the water, and then he took it away and thrust it into a pocket of his coat, and was glad he'd removed the kitten, which was unlikely to have appreciated these circumstances. He thought about other movement. There was surely some flailing or kicking appropriate to the occasion, and yet that was beyond him and he did not seem to care, could only think of a smile both beautiful and rare, and gone forever because of him.

  Was this sinking sense of peace Suldar's? The deaths of stronger mages could leave more than a wound wrought with power: echoes of thought or feeling lingered, until even non-mages might shiver at an unseen past. What effect would such enormous power have on the hapless passer-by?

  A twist of intent reached through the heaviness, and then the brightness that was the surface of the water and the sky all rushed toward him, and he was lifted effortlessly from the lake and deposited...not next to the body, thankfully, but some distance away from a scene which barely looked real. Princess Aloren, bloody and alone, kneeling like a handmaiden by the fallen, gently rearranging limbs and smoothing the overlong dress.

  Aspen blinked, coughed, then turned his head and stared up into an infamous pair of ice and blue eyes.

  "Now I know I'm dreaming."

  The faintest of frowns lifted from the Diamond Couerveur's brow. "He'll live."

  "Indeed." Rua, kneeling on his other side, had a background of flying ships in disarray, no longer under attack but most definitely damaged.

  "It's over, then?" Prince Chenar asked, drawing tentatively closer. "We can leave?"

  "But what did you use on her?" Jurasel asked. "What was that?"

  Aspen shot a second brief glance at the body Aloren tended. The hilt of something, barely visible, projected just below the breast bone. The air looked bruised, over that place, darker and rubbed thin.

  "She gave it to me. To use...when...when it was time. They're both gone, aren't they?" Remembering, Aspen hauled himself onto an elbow and stared across at the pavilion. A puppet with cut strings lay discarded.

  The Diamond turned too, and that little pile lifted, and floated across to him.

  "I believe the Lady Suldar used the strength of her own demise to end her sister's hold on this world," Aurak Bes said, watching gravely as the Diamond settled Gentian's body into his arms. "There was a substantial link between them."

  "Bound beyond death," the Diamond said, looking down at the figure in his arms. Still breathing.

  There was something exceptionally horrid about carting around the empty body of a lost friend. How long did you preserve it? At what point did you choose to stop its heart?

  The Diamond turned to the largest clump of royalty – or perhaps simply to Prince Chenar, with his brother a wan shadow in his wake – and said:

  "Goldenrod Steading
, which is Magister Calder's home, lies at the northern foot of these mountains. No doubt you will wish to offer your regrets to her parents."

  Aspen thought they all flinched a little at that, at the thought of the Diamond arriving with both corpse and murderer in tow. Or perhaps it was at the man's smile, faint and full of promise. For the mountain was open now, and while there were sure to be all manner of forces rushing to follow the Fair's ships to a newly-opened valley, the main threat had been disposed of, and the Diamond Couerveur could indulge in other business.

  Chenar immediately muttered in his brother's ear, shaking his head. But Rydan, with the air of a martyr, drew a breath and nodded.

  "Of course."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  "Show me your hand."

  A Phoenix, narrow-eyed and determined, briefly leaving his charges to the argument that had followed the Diamond's departure.

  "No. Can't do that yet." Aspen watched the Diamond waft over the rim of the valley, then took a hasty survey of those nearest: Leton and Rua, with Princess Aloren approaching. "Why is he taking her so far away? Won't distance make it harder for her spirit to find her body?"

  "Aristide is far too much a realist to cling to a lost cause." Princess Aloren lifted a languorous hand to her bleeding upper ear, drew something out, and held it up for study. A sliver of bamboo. She flicked it away. "The possession alters the circumstances completely. Like a borrowed dress, reeking of another's scent and, worse, half the seams burst and the hem shortened. Unrecognisable to a spirit's limited senses. Particularly given that it was Selvar, a creature Magister Calder has been trained since birth to recoil from. So now we will have instead a salutary little lesson to Sax's cost, and I rather think your new king will have a difficult time of it in future."

  Sax's King Meneth would definitely retaliate if his son was killed, no matter what he'd done to deserve it, but Aspen knew that wasn't what Aloren meant. The Couerveurs had been brilliant regents, but all of them had eventually been warped by the strain of rule – or the doubled curse lurking beneath the Darien Gift. Soren had once said that the biggest threat Darest faced was the moment Aristide Couerveur decided not to act in its best interests.