“In my case, though, are they passing judgment?”
“To what end, Elora?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Walk with me a ways, would you? I think we’re secure enough here from prying eyes. Or spells,” Thorn added with a crinkle of old mischief around the eyes.
“I thought magic didn’t work in Sandeni.”
“That depends on how you define the term. What you did was magic of a sort.”
“I did nothing, Thorn, except perhaps persuade Tam’s body to work a little harder and faster.”
“And who sustained that body through all those trials and tribulations? The fire in you, Elora”—and he tapped a knuckle lightly on her breastbone—“comes from…” He was about to kneel down and tap the floor beneath them, as surrogate for the molten core of the earth itself, but then thought better of it. He wore an odd expression as he looked to the floor, to Elora, to the sky, then finally back to Elora. “I was going to say the earth,” he confessed, “but now I’m no longer so sure.”
“That isn’t comforting, Thorn.”
“I’m trying my best.”
“So am I!”
She was silent for a time.
“Something happened to me,” she said, “in my healing trance.”
“I feared as much. That’s what brought me down to you. I had to be on hand to help.”
She took his hand in both of hers and held him blindly, as a child might, while she told him of her two encounters with Kieron Dineer. At her story’s end, she looked to him for answers, only to see him shake his head.
“I don’t know.”
“Dream then, maybe? Nothing to worry about, I hope?” The intentional lightness of her tone belied the anxiety that twisted her insides.
He pulled her closer to him on the bench where they sat side by side, and thought of how he used to be able to lay his arm comfortingly across her shoulders; now the best he could manage was to catch her ’round the waist.
“After all these years with those two scoundrels,” he said in the same easy manner, meaning the brownies, “you’d think I’d have better learned the art and craft of dissembling.”
“That serious, huh?”
“I wish I could tell you different, Elora. The linkage between spirit and body is stronger in you than in any I’ve ever known, myself included.”
“Yet the Deceiver has his hooks deep in me, and now apparently so does Kieron Dineer. How can that be, Thorn?”
“Blood is the traditional binding element for such things.”
She snorted disparagingly, “Oh, wonderful, you mean we’re all related?”
“Anything I say here, child, I speak from ignorance. But the kinds of magicks the Deceiver has demonstrated, the way he acts upon the waking world—especially his need for a living, tangible host—leads me to suspect his origins are of the Circle of the Spirit. Kieron is dead, we both saw him die, but Kieron is also a dragon, and who knows what rules apply to them, if any rules at all! In both the instances you speak of, your spirit left your body. I can only assume that in some way that act left you vulnerable to Kieron’s power.”
“How can he have power if he’s dead?” she demanded in exasperation. “And don’t tell me it’s because he’s a damn dragon.”
“That might well be the case. You know,” he noted thoughtfully, “the dragon that brought me to Tir Asleen the night before the Cataclysm was named Calan Dineer. And his behavior was just as high-handed.”
“If he knew what was coming, why didn’t he warn everyone?” Her voice grew rough, thickened by grief and rage. “Why did they just let things happen?”
“Do you think I haven’t asked? There were nights, while Rool and Franjean and the eagles and I were wandering, that I would stand beneath the endless stars and scream his name until my voice was a ghost. I would light a magical beacon brighter than any noonday sun. I tried to command his presence, I begged for the mercy of a single visitation. And came to realize that dragons come to us in their own manner, and at their own pleasure. If we would go to them, we must first find the way.”
“Rool spoke of those who tried going mad.”
“To wield power on that level, to have safe congress with the likes of firedrakes and demons, madness is almost a prerequisite.”
“Kieron’s already been killed once, Thorn. Why does he want me to do it to him again?”
“Better yet, Elora, why does your troubadour seem able to prevent it?”
“I should have listened to Khory and joined you in your citadel.”
“No,” Thorn told her with some emphasis. “You made the right decision. The trouble with most Kings is that they too often have no contact with the people they rule. They suffer few of the consequences of their decisions. Your task is different—to weave the strands of these separate, antagonistic Realms into a single, common thread. You can’t do that without knowing them. And that’s the kind of knowledge you must discover for yourself.”
“Whether I like what I learn or not?”
“What do you mean?”
“I was window dressing tonight,” she said, indicating the scene before them. “It was Tam those bullies were after. They hated him, Thorn.”
“I can imagine.”
“ ‘Troll-boy’ was what they called him.”
“I’ve heard the term.” He didn’t like it.
“And I’ve been inside his heart. I know him, Thorn, as well as I believe I know the constable over there.”
“In what way?”
“Tam is Nelwyn,” she said, and when Thorn turned his face to her, “as much as Renny is of the High Elves.”
He had the good grace not to deny it.
“A world without the Veil Folk is a shadow of itself,” the constable told her, after Thorn called him over. “Yet by the same token, the prejudice of the Veil Folk cannot keep one Realm, one race alone, from claiming its rightful place. Achieving its destiny. Any more than they can people.”
As she watched his fellow constables go about their tasks, and a team of ambulance surgeons supervise Tam’s evacuation on a stretcher, Elora found herself examining every face with a fierce, questing intensity for the telltale signs of difference she now knew to be there. In the main, she was disappointed. Most of the forms and faces were Daikini through and through, but every now and then, in the structure of the body, in the subtle shadings of the face, she found clear evidence of mixed blood.
“I didn’t think it was possible,” she said to him, “for the races to interbreed.”
“And why is that?” Renny inquired in all innocence.
“Well, I just…I mean…I…” Flustered beyond words in the face of the constable’s infuriating equanimity, Elora could only shrug her shoulders and give up.
“There’s an old saying, Elora,” he told her, “to the effect of, whatever the obstacles, love will find a way. You sang a rather emphatic song about it earlier this evening, don’t you recall?”
“If I’d been a little more reasonable, Constable, a little less passionate—!”
“You blame yourself for this?”
“It isn’t what I intended.”
“You stir up folks, they don’t always go the way you intend. No matter how true the message, child, not everyone will believe.”
“I might love my horse,” Franjean groused from his perch on Elora’s shoulder, “that doesn’t mean I’ll wed the creature.”
“Tell that to the Centaurs.”
“They’re Shapers, a bastard breed.”
“Be careful, little master thief. In this city you smile when you say that.” Renny was smiling as he spoke, but there was danger behind his eyes. In appearance and manner, he presented himself as the gentlest and most easygoing of souls, but that was only a single aspect of his nature, the public face that was of the m
ost use in his work. There was another part of him nowhere near so pleasant and it had just drawn a line that the brownie was not to cross.
“I’m sorry you had to kill that boy, Constable.” For while Khory had slain the student facing Elora, Renny had dealt with the one who held her.
“He was a man, in terms of age if not honor. Your decency does you credit, Elora, but save both tears and sympathy. He would have spared neither for you.”
Another constable arrived with mugs of chocolate, and Elora noticed that before Renny handed them out, both he and Khory made a series of small passes over the tray, each checking in their own way to ensure the beverages were safe.
“Taking no chances?”
They both looked at her, with an unblinking directness she found eerily reminiscent of hunting cats.
Too damn much in common, she decided of them, then and there, all of it deadly.
They made no reply. Why belabor the obvious?
“Thorn, did Khory tell you…” Elora began, and then fell silent, dismayed to find that her hands were trembling. She laced her fingers together, gripping the mug so tightly her fingers turned as pale as the sturdy china, so determined to overcome this sudden bout of weakness that she couldn’t lift the drink to her mouth. “What I discovered along the frontier?” she continued, staring into the dark pool of chocolate as if it was a scrying pond where she might divine some aspect of the future. “I don’t believe the Deceiver is our only foe.”
“Dear child,” Thorn said with a loving tenderness that nearly broke her heart, she’d missed it so, “whatever made you think he was?”
Then, and only then, did proper tears come as the shock of the night’s events at last hammered its way through the bulwarks of her pretensions.
The mug fell from nerveless fingers as once more she accepted the embrace of the grave little man who was the centerpiece of her life.
“It’s all right,” he said over and over, holding her close with the extraordinary strength of his kind, so seemingly out of proportion to the construction of their bodies. At the same time he stroked her hair, while she buried her own face in the junction of his neck and shoulder and held on to him for dear life.
She snuffled loudly, to signal she was done, and he provided a handkerchief. She didn’t leave her knees, but stayed with back bowed, head bent, unwilling to face her other companions after such a display. Until a fresh mug of steaming chocolate entered her field of vision, and she tilted her eyes enough to see that Khory was holding it.
“What a baby,” Elora muttered, disgusted with herself.
“For being human?”
“You don’t cry!”
“I’m not human. I’m a demon wearing human form.”
“Wouldn’t make that common knowledge,” Renny cautioned.
“Are people afraid of everything?” Leftover distress from her bout of grief gave the question a snappish quality Elora didn’t intend.
“What they don’t understand, of a certes,” agreed the constable.
“However, like any sensible species,” Thorn added, “they respect powers that have done them harm in the past. The reputations of demons is not wholly undeserved, in any of the Great Realms, on either side of the Veil.”
“The fact you bonded with a demon, Drumheller,” Franjean accused, “to bring that one”—a gesture toward Khory—“into being, that’s one of the main reasons barrows the world over are closed to us now.”
“That isn’t fair, Franjean,” Elora protested. “Simply because demons are dangerous, does that make them inherently evil? Any more than a lion, or a shark, or an eagle?”
“Or a troll?” suggested Rool.
“Or a troll,” she agreed. “Strange days,” she told herself as much as the others, “where a troll can be found possessing more essential humanity than a Daikini.”
“Strange days indeed,” Thorn agreed. “And getting more wondrous all the while.”
“I am right, though,” Elora said to Renny as she pushed to her feet and took the stool catty-corner to him. “About you and Tam. And you’re not the only ones.” She turned back to the Nelwyn. “Thorn, did you know?”
“It’s not something the clans speak of easily, Elora. The Nelwyn way is to keep to ourselves, in public and private.”
“But love will ever find a way,” Renny repeated.
“You sound like you’re making fun now.”
He smiled sadly at her. “Hardly. Nelwyn and Daikini, elf and Nelwyn, Daikini and elf, the cards have been shuffled every which way over the ages. For the best of reasons and the worst, the Realms have a lot more in common than many will care to admit.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen people with that kind of mixed blood before.”
“Having seen so much of the wide world, of course, eh?”
“Go sit on a tack, Franjean.”
Sputter of indignation from one brownie, amusement from the other at his comeuppance.
“Well, I have seen the world,” Thorn said, “a goodly portion anyroad, and in the main Elora’s quite right. Such folk are very few and far between. Except in Sandeni.”
“Possibly, Mage, because the city makes them welcome. Our citizens are free; we’re judged one and all by our deeds, not the accident of parentage.”
“So how’s a body to know their proper place?” demanded Franjean.
“Make your own.”
“Fine.” Elora nodded. “Where does a ‘Sacred Princess’ fit into your scheme of things?”
“Not as a ruler, Elora. But perhaps a leader…”
“Therein lies a key difference between you and your adversary,” Thorn said. “It’s also why he’s so blessed hard to resist. The Deceiver offers peace, a goal which none can really argue with. He offers equality, which strikes a major chord among the Daikini, who’ve long felt they were anything but. If you accept the supposition that he knows best, it’s not so bad a world he holds forth.”
“Why?”
“I’ve never been able to shake the feeling there’s something familiar about the Deceiver. Implacable a foe as he is, and dedicated as we are to his destruction, I can’t think of him as evil. Wrong, that’s certain, in a fundamental and absolute sense. Cruel, ruthless, despotic, pick any pejorative you care to name. But not evil.”
“Hardly a comfort, Drumheller,” Khory spoke up, “if you’re on the wrong end of his spear point.”
“What would you do, Elora?” Thorn asked, to her surprise.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You no longer desire to be a bystander. How would you proceed from here?”
Her first instinct was to try something that had already worked, to attempt to contact the lords of Greater Faery and achieve a rapprochement with them as she had with their counterparts of Lesser Faery.
She shook her head, passing on Thorn’s question for the moment, preferring to listen to what the others had to say.
“Would they consider an alliance?” Thorn asked Renny, and the exchange wasn’t at all government minister to policeman but rather one equal to another.
“Who are you?” Elora wondered of Renny, searching his features for a clue. His mask was far more complete than hers and hid its secrets too well.
“Why should they?” the constable demanded. “What’s in it for them? Or rather, what price are you willing to pay for this alliance?”
“Freedom,” she snapped.
“They already have it.”
“The Deceiver’s closing the World Gates, he’s stripping the world of its magic.”
“And how much contact do they have with this side of the Veil anyway? They can find other venues for their amusement. It’s the Daikini Realm he’s hell-bent to conquer, nothing to do with them. And should they decide otherwise, should these raiders of yours out along the frontier prove to be the vanguard of some
thing more formidable, their goal will be to eliminate the Daikini altogether.”
“The Realms are all of a piece, interlinked one to the other,” she cried, meeting the constable’s imperturbable calm with a fury as elemental as a demon’s nature. “That’s why they’re represented by overlapping circles; what touches one ultimately touches all!”
“Figure that out all by your lonesome, did you?”
“That’s right!”
“Well, then”—Thorn smiled lazily and in his eyes was a level of respect she hadn’t noticed before—“we might have ourselves a shot after all.”
“You were baiting me!”
“And quite successfully. You’ve a temper, Elora. It’s a fair chink in your armor. Learn to control it better.”
She set down her cocoa, stepped clear of Thorn, and stood to face the constable.
“This war isn’t only a conflict of force of arms,” she said, putting words to the feelings that had been swirling through her throughout these past weeks, from the time she left Torquil’s. “But of the force of ideas, as well. Losing to the Maizan guarantees the Deceiver’s victory. Our triumph over them doesn’t necessarily assure us of the reverse.
“You’re quite right, Constable. I have nothing tangible to offer the Lords of Greater Faery. My army’s pretty much standing around me. Every monarch who would have sworn me fealty is ensorcelled in Angwyn. I have no claim on their successors, and given all that’s happened since, I’ll tell you flat the smart play for them is neutrality. Or an outright alliance with the Deceiver. By any objective standard, our cause has been pretty much lost from the start.” She stifled a smile. “But by any objective standard, it’s unlikely that Daikini and High Elf would mate.”
“If you sing half so well as you speak, Lady Elora, it’s no wonder you’re so popular.”
Renny stood up, at last to his full height, and Elora marveled at how effective a stooped back and slumped shoulders could be. He was taller than Khory, possessed of a lean, whipcord power that she suspected overmatched that of most men two or three times his bulk. He held out his right hand, and she took it in hers.
“I’ll do for you what I can,” he said.
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