“Like Angwyn and Tir Asleen before them?” asked the Captain as Torquil flicked the reins to stir the team into motion.
“Aye.”
The Captain had the last word as the wagon trundled back toward the cavern mouth, with the offhand finality of a knife to the heart.
“God help ’em, poor bastards.”
Dinner at Torquil’s that night was formal. It wasn’t pleasant.
The children were sent off to bed early, and Elora with them, ostensibly to make sure they were all tucked in safe and sound. It didn’t take much insight on her part to figure it was also to get her well out of the way.
The whole mountain was on edge, as though every surface of every stone was a jagged crystal; the same applied to those who dwelled within. Elora got backtalk from kids whose usual nature was sweet as sugar, tantrums for no reason, and a couple of siblings who clung to her with the leechlike desperation of rescued kittens. Hearth fires blazed as big and bright as ever but they seemed to cast no warmth as the youngsters crowded together, as many to a bed as would fit, clutching down comforters snug about them and piling blankets and pillows high as though sheer desire could transform their bedspreads into mighty redoubts capable of repelling any onslaught.
“What’s all this, then?” Elora asked, upon discovering that all the massive beds had been shoved together before the fire and arranged so the taller headboards faced the doorway.
Nobody replied at first, as everyone feigned sleep and waited to see if she’d make them set the room to rights.
She lifted the end of one quilt and raised questioning eyebrows as a half-dozen anxious faces peered up at her from the shadows beneath.
“Expecting an invasion, Paj?” she wondered in a casual and conversational tone, adding a reassuring smile that in truth she didn’t feel. Part of her wanted to crawl right in and join them.
“The stones aren’t happy,” he said. He was Torquil’s blood son—as opposed to the children fostered to his care, since child rearing among the Mountain Kings was very much a communal responsibility—on the cusp of adolescence, that transition defined to his intense annoyance by a voice that chose to splinter at the most awkward of moments.
“Your mam and dada have seen bad days before. They passed, so will this.” The confidence in her voice surprised her.
“It’s a time of change,” she told them, casting about the room for a chair to sit on. Instead a section of quilt was drawn up and back from the corner of the bed nearest her. With a nod and chuckle she accepted the invitation and snuggled beneath the crisply ironed sheets, shifting a couple of plush pillows against the headboard to support her back. There wasn’t room to stretch full-length, so she folded her legs close to her body and luxuriated with closed eyes in the basking heat of the fire.
She loved to be warm, probably because her first and most basic memories were of the opposite. She was born to the damp, achy, desolate chill of a Nockmaar dungeon, to be followed almost immediately by the bitter winds that howled across the mountaintops of the Nockmaar Range as she was carried from that awful place. Harsh and horrible as those ordeals may have seemed, they paled in comparison to what lay ahead: an awful cold she couldn’t easily describe, even in memory, because it touched her soul rather than her flesh, as the Demon Queen Bavmorda tried to cast the Rite of Oblivion and hurl Elora’s spirit forever into the Outer Darkness, beyond all hope of rescue or redemption.
Bards told the story better, but they were supposed to, that was their profession. Each time she heard it, there was some new twist, an even more fantastical adventure to add spice to the retelling. Much more romance, for example, between Madmartigan and Sorsha, the wayward warrior and the princess who turned from evil to good for love. And Elora’s guardian, her godfather, the Nelwyn sorcerer Willow Ufgood, assumed a majesty of bearing, a force of command that would have done a Daikini warlord proud.
The story she chose to remember was much simpler, almost a chaos from start to finish, a cascade of seemingly happy accidents that cast the infant Elora Danan into the arms of one decent man after another, whose only real thoughts were to do her a kindness, which led to them being acclaimed as heroes.
It ended originally where such stories should, with battles won and villains vanquished. The final images were those she held closest to her heart, of her friends and companions as she remembered them best, with smiles on their faces, fearlessly facing a future as bright with promise as a spring sunrise.
They’d all forgotten that dawn does not banish shadows. Quite the contrary, it makes them that much sharper and more intense. The war they’d won had not been the last.
Elora slipped from the bed and made sure everyone was tucked in snugly, pausing a moment to brush some unruly clumps of hair from Paj’s face. The fire had reduced itself to banked coals, no more open flames, but these would continue to throw off heat until well into the following day. Yet, as Elora released her breath in a long, deep sigh that flushed her lungs to the very dregs, she saw a cloud of condensation form in the air before her, as though the air itself was freezing.
It had been cold as well the night of Tir Asleen’s destruction, a year to the day past Bavmorda’s defeat. Elora had fallen asleep in her own bed, all as well around her as any child could wish, waking from the most terrible of nightmares to find herself transported halfway around the world, naked, scorched as though she’d been scoured by the fiery breath of a dragon.
That night a cataclysm struck the globe, whose effects were felt across the whole of the Twelve Great Realms. Tir Asleen was destroyed, along with better than a score of other sites where the natural lines of force and energy intersected to form the principal loci of magical power. Elora found herself utterly alone, a stranger in a strange land, with no one to answer her cries for comfort in the night. When the King in Angwyn, in whose palace courtyard she’d suddenly appeared, and his advisers realized who she was, they immediately made her an object of veneration. At the same time, though, they had to face the very real fear that whatever had destroyed Tir Asleen might in turn come for them.
A decade later, on the night of Elora’s Ascension, when the rulers of the Great Realms gathered in Angwyn to witness and celebrate her coming of age, it did.
An ingenious network of ducts and flues kept the household hallways comfortably warm, but Elora reflexively gathered her nightcloak close about her as she made her way to the dining hall. The main courses had long since been served and eaten, the last remnants were just now being cleared away, host and guests left to relax over brandy and hot spiced wine, cheese, and sweets. Manya was serving coffee and the rich aroma poked Elora’s belly like a stiff finger. With a rueful twist of the lips, nothing nearly that might be called a smile, Elora recalled how she’d planned to eat once the children were seen to. Then, as she concentrated on what was being said within, that twist turned downward into a frown and even the pretense of humor left her eyes.
The passageways and antechambers abutting the dining room were still bustling with activity. The only way she could approach unseen would be to enshroud herself in a magical Cloak, a basic spell that made the mind ignore whatever its senses perceived. People might see her, smell her, even touch her. The reality of the moment simply would not register on their consciousness. Or if it did, they would see only what was right and appropriate to the occasion. For example, instead of Elora Danan, the silver-skinned Daikini Sacred Princess, a scullery maid, as good as forgotten the moment she passed by. It was one of the first bits of magic Thorn tried to teach her before realizing it was no use.
Right then, Elora thought, rising to the challenge, since spells are out, what’s the alternative?
This time, when she answered herself, her grin was true.
The mountain was as much a living thing as those who made it their home, though the cycles of its life were measured in geologic ages rather than years. In its way, it breathed and even moved. A ch
ange in pressure within the planetary mantle miles below the surface would manifest itself in the shift of a reef, in layers of stone moving apart or closer together. For those brave enough—or fool enough, to hear their parents talk—to look, there were always new nooks and crannies to explore. One such circled up and behind the dining hall, forming a tiny gallery that was a close fit for Nelwyn children. The wall that overlooked the hall itself was pockmarked and eaten through, as though the stone had fallen prey to a madcap variety of moth, with a taste for something a bit more substantial than wool. If she twisted her head until it felt like it was about to pop off her shoulders, Elora could gain herself a marginal and one-eyed view of the proceedings below. Regardless, she was still able to hear.
Someone hammered fist on table, to emphasize the passion in his voice. The clan echoed the structure of the Great Realms themselves: it was divided into a dozen primary houses, the titular head of each serving as representative to the council. From their number, one was chosen on a rotating basis to officiate at meetings and speak for the clan as a whole. According to Thorn, Elora was apparently to play a similar role in the greater scheme of things. Only her Twelve Realms encompassed the domains of Earth and Faery, of this world and those beyond the Veil, who’d been crash-banging together harder and more frequently over the generations, with less resilience to cushion the impacts as time went on and far less willingness to compromise. Unable to live apart, unwilling to live together, the Great Realms and their component races were rapidly approaching the flash point where irritation would become outright enmity and disputes would be settled only by blood.
Elora had seen three different Nelwyns head the council during her stay. Over the course of a score of formal assemblies, plus countless informal gatherings in Manya’s kitchen or Torquil’s study, she’d long since come to the conclusion that Manya was the best. Patience was one of the keys to that success, she decided, as Ragnor’s fist thumped the table again and his gravelly voice pitched words like thunderstones. He had a tendency to treat opposing opinions like battlements to be smashed to rubble and from thence to dust. Usually, once he started this rhetorical bombardment, he’d keep on going until he won the day, unswayed or undeterred by anything short of outright surrender.
“Impossible, is what I say,” he bellowed.
In reply, she heard the Factor’s voice, calm on the surface but with anger percolating just beneath, the way bubbles do in a pot that’s close to boiling. Hanray was a proud man, he didn’t like having either word or honor questioned. “These days, my friend, that’s a word wi’ less and less meaning.”
“You believe this report then, Hanray?” Manya asked.
“I tell y’, lady, wha’ the courier told me. And as well tha’ my truthtellers can find no evidence of deception in him. Can y’ offer any confirmation?”
“Regarding Testeverde, no. But as nearly as we’ve been able to determine, the World Gates closest to Angwyn have been sealed, as if they’d never been. We’ve been unable to establish contact with any of the Houses of Lesser Faery who reside within Maizan-controlled territory, in the vicinity of those closed World Gates. Not fairies, nor dryads and naiads, not even any of the carrion eaters, ghouls, trolls, and the like. What we have heard are rumors of mass migrations.”
“Dryads leaving their groves?”
“It can be done. They cast an offshoot of their essence into the seed pod of their MotherTree, and let wind or bird take it to hopefully safer soil, where they can plant themselves and grow anew. The land itself has been strip-mined of every scrap of magic. Nothing remains,” Manya finished, sorrow and denial mingling in her voice, as though she dared not accept what she was saying. “Not even the potential for power.”
“And I say again, Manya,” hammered Ragnor, “impossible!”
“Will the Veil Folk fight that?” asked another of the council.
A shrug in Manya’s voice to echo the shrug of her shoulders. “There is an opinion among them that if the Daikini desire absolute dominion over this world so badly, let them have it and be damned. A rival opinion posits that the Daikini, already being damned, should be put out of their misery.”
“And us along with them, Manya? We are of the Veil but we dwell upon the world. What’s to become of us?”
“I wish I could say, Simon,” she told the much older man. “All the Great Realms are in a tumult still, have been ever since they lost their monarchs in Angwyn. Unfortunately politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. And the easiest way to consolidate power, once you’ve seized it, is to take arms against a foreign foe.”
“What, does Greater Faery think to do some conquering of its own?”
“The High Elves want war?”
“Do the Daikini?”
“Many of Lesser Faery have already made their choice,” she said, “fleeing to the far side of the Veil as desperately as the merchants quit the bazaar this eventide.”
“Bugger that,” spat Ragnor. “We draw sustenance from the world’s soul as much as its substance. Damn Daikini do the same, ’ceptin’ they’re too damn dumb to realize it. Sever that bond, we’re all of us doomed.”
“What of Greater Faery?”
“Testeverde’s y’r answer, I suspect,” noted Hanray quietly. “It was the polar opposite of Sandeni, a location thick with magic, where the other is totally devoid of it, built around a World Gate, where Sandeni stands about as far from one as a body can get. Of all the cities in this part of the globe, Testeverde was where Daikini and Veil Folk could interact most easily, even those of Greater Faery. Tha’ point of contact was considered its greatest defense.”
“But the Maizan attacked regardless.”
“Made plain they could,” Hanray told the council. “Made plain tha’, if necessary, they would. Made plain the consequences if they did. An’ then, they offered honorable surrender. Which was accepted. Tha’s when the local Factor sent out his couriers.”
“What went wrong?” Manya asked gently.
“Damned if I know. Courier said he an’ his mates’d been riding the best part of the night, pushing hard to put as much distance as possible between them an’ any pursuit b’fore first light. He was up ahead, walkin’ his animal along a switchback canyon. Said the others saw witch fires punching t’ the top of the heavens, climbed the ridge for a look-see. He hung back. There was a terrible light, so bright it seemed t’ turn the ground itself transparent. There musta been sound as well, but nothin’ tha’ stuck in memory. He didn’t have much wit t’ spare for lookin’ because the flash had driven his horse near t’ madness. Took all his strength t’ keep it from bolting. Other animals in his string, they weren’t so fortunate. Ran themselves right off the trail, as though death was preferable t’ whatever they had to endure right then.”
He paused and the room fell absolutely still, broken only by the occasional pop and crackle of coal in the hearth.
“The other couriers, Hanray,” Manya prompted, “what of them?”
“Wouldn’t say in detail,” was his reply. “Nor much of what he saw beyond where he found them, save that the city was gone and the land scourged. He spoke of shapes an’ colors too awful t’ behold, that made the insides ache to look upon them. Then he fled, an’ never looked back.”
“Is that what the Maizan do?”
“Hardly. Some force or other among them apparently steals magic.”
The room grew deathly silent as each Nelwyn assessed what that would mean.
Finally a cautious voice broke the silence. “And the Maizan? How did they benefit from this?”
“They didn’t,” the Factor answered grimly. “Whatever army they sent to seize the city, they lost.”
From there, voices rose fast and furious, some she recognized, others she didn’t, lines overlapping or chasing each other like a pack of dogs each other’s tail.
“What do our shamans say, can you answer me that, Manya?
”
“Something as big as that should have made some impact.”
“It did not,” she said.
“That isn’t quite true,” Elora heard quietly from behind where she couldn’t see, as Torquil spoke in the most casual and conversational of tones, responding to his wife in terms meant for the young woman’s ears alone.
With an effort, she wriggled free of her hiding place.
“You’re supposed to be in bed,” he noted amiably.
“The stones have been twitchy,” she said. “I told you that days ago, as if the substance of the very earth had changed.”
Hastily, she tugged herself into a semblance of order and decorum, drawing her cloak all the way across her body so she was completely enclosed. She stood straight to her full height, but Torquil was lounging across the way on an outcrop of rock, so he retained the advantage on her.
“But why,” she continued, “could I sense something that the shamans didn’t?”
“Or couldn’t. That, lass, is a question.”
In the distance they could both hear the heated voices of the council, batting opinions back and forth as though they were playing tennis with thunderstones.
“You sayin’, then, we should take a stand with the Daikini against the Maizan?”
“Look what’s happened to those who’ve tried already.”
“Who’s to say they’ll even want our help?”
“Can you see us standin’ against a charge of armored horses? Ride us down, they would, trample us to bits, without even knowin’ we was even there!”
“We chose long ago to live apart and alone, from the other races as much as from our fellow clans,” Manya said quietly, stilling the arguments battling before her. “Now we behold the price. There are precious few who know us well enough, or care enough, to stand by our side. None to ask our aid, and none from whom we can ask the same in return.”
Shadow Dawn Page 5