Keeping It Real

by Justina Robson

  Wait.

  She obeyed his voice. Dar watched her uneasily.

  They are all bound to my spirit. They will burn you. If you are to use them you must let me make contact with them.

  Nice, Lila said. Just like genetically coded guns.

  Dar, guessing correctly the reason for her hesitation said, “Only he knows the power and use of those.”

  Spill it, Lila told Tath and flexed her X-ray hand.

  There was a moment of silence. The bees went quiet.

  I will not use them against you.

  Lila stood up and moved away from the weapons. “Not good enough,” she said. She accessed and armed her flame gun. It was a pity to waste a fuel cell when it was one of the few useful weapons she actually had here. Still—she stood back, Dar copying her, and clicked on the pilot light.

  No! I need them. You need them! They are the only useful tools you have her you’stupid, ignorant human! And they are the only weapons you will ever find that you can carry beyond death…

  Lila let a line of fuel run at low power out of the nozzle. It ignited as it vaporised and a narrow stream of yellow fire appeared, as long as a forearm, from the tip of her middle finger. She relayed to Dar what Tath had said and added aloud,

  “I don’t believe in Beyond Death and I doubt I’ll ever get there so you’ll have to do better than that.” She extended her line of fire another half a metre. The light from the flames danced over the silver dagger blades. She adjusted her oxygen stream and her torch became fiercely blue, flutter of flame changed to single cone of extreme heat. “I don’t care who forged them or what they can do. In ten seconds they’re solder.” She said it with conviction, though she didn’t know if they could be melted, not here anyway. She had heard of such efforts failing in the past. But the bow was made of natural materials, bone and wood, and surely it would catch fire. Actually, as she looked more closely she got the impression there was no wood involved…

  A vice closed in her chest. Her heart stopped.

  Is that better?

  There was an instant of failing, terrible weakness. Then her Al-self switched on its auxiliary pumping system. She felt the cold pleasure of the green spirit become tainted with surprise and a kind of grudging admiration. He restored her heart.

  At least, she thought, he knows when he’s beat. To him she said, “Killing me would be a mistake, surely?”

  In any other body you would be long since banished to Thanatopia and I would be master of your form, he informed her calmly. How ironic that it was you and not sweet Dar who took pity on me. but I think I could only command the flesh of yours and being a hopeless criplle does not appeal to me.

  Lila set the torch flame to the bow.

  Stop! I will do as you wish, without trickery. I give you my word..

  “He gave me his word.” She watched the bow’s grip starting to singe and blacken. Golden and black signs like words seemed to rush to the point from within its structure.

  “It will be good,” Dar said tonelessly.

  She switched off the torch. The bow smoked slightly but it was not on fire and had sustained no real damage. Tath snarled at her internally, unable to speak he was so filled with loathing. His spirit furled and stormed. She felt him suddenly unfold and spill like liquid out across her chest and down her arms. He paused where her flesh met the prosthetics, a pause of extreme repulsion and dread…

  “Do it!” Lila screamed, hating him at that moment with all her strength.

  There is elemental strength in this material, Tath said. You did not come by that in Otopia. It is vile to me but I can intersect it. How lucky you have been to find Dar. Few healers in Alfheim are able to remake metal into a thing able to carry aether. Did you know what he has done? He was taunting. She hated him more. And he did not tell you about it, nor why someone of his low stature could rise so high in the ranks. How little you know of him.

  Tath’s andalune suddenly surged down her arms like a fall of cool water. She felt her hands tingle. You touch them now, Tath said scornfully.

  Lila set the daggers on her own shoulders, his lovely composite bow in its quiver at her back. Tath withdrew immediately after, his presence lingering where the items lay close to her body, watching over them, comforted by their closeness. She had not detected anything unusual about them. After a moment’s hesitation she picked up the silver amulet.

  “You will forgive me if I ask you not to wear that,” Dar said.

  “It’s okay. I’m no zombie. It might make people think twice before attacking us if they believe I’m a necromancer.” Lila soldered the broken chain closed with a quick arc shot from her finger and put the necklace on, hanging the sigil at her neck where it showed clear against the dark green of Tath’s jerkin. She bit back thoughts of Tath’s statements about her metal body, his feelings. She couldn’t afford to listen.

  “If you insist.” Dar seemed to sink under the psychic burden of the situation and she was sorry for him.

  “Dar,” she said and waited for him to give her his attention. Then she didn’t know what to say. She touched his arm and he just looked at her with that elfin, waiting look, but his andalune self flowed eagerly upward over her hand until it found her natural skin. Lila felt the faintest, lightest breath of it caress her neck.

  Then she felt a sudden surge of a very peculiar, delicate sensation, as of being washed through by imaginary water as Tath’s spirit rose hungrily, expanding through her human body towards the contact point. It was quite different to the feeling of a moment before when he had been completely guarded. In his impulse and diffusion now, made vulnerable by his need to be open to try and touch Dar, he was unable to conceal much from her.

  She understood that Tath loved Dar, among a complex set of other feelings about him. She knew it absolutely. She thought that she might too. She wondered if Dar could feel anything different but he broke the contact between the three of them at that moment and slipped away, closing in on himself. Lila was left confused by the welter of emotion, its nuances and meanings so similar to and different from her own.

  “We need to dispose of his body. We can’t leave it here.” Dar said.

  “Outside…” Lila suggested.

  Tath was appalled all the way as they carried his cold form through the tunnel, through the door and down the hill. The battlefield was deserted and the creatures were gone, though Lila could see them not far away, feeding in the deep pools of aether. It was a dark hour.

  Tath grew furious and agitated but calmed as he saw his physical self placed on the bloody ground where his friends had fallen. Lila felt him shrink and withdraw deep, becoming both still and silent. His quiet sadness was very heavy. Her horror at the idea of him being left there was no easier to bear. Sorry, she said to him, inside, and touched the pocket of his tunic at her chest, where she had replaced his personal effects. He did not respond.

  Dar and Lila made their way back to the shelter and waited there until dawn. They lay apart, uncomfortable in their full gear, and Lila slept only after drugs and alpha waves had nuked the feelings in her body down to a low, dull level. She dreamed, but the dreams were foggy and difficult and she didn’t remember them when she woke up. She was glad when Dar came and said it was time to go. He looked in a terrible state, but she tried to smile at him. As they left the warren and turned uphill again she did not look back towards the forest.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The enchantment keeping Zal unconscious let go of him after a period. His enforced insensibility had been so deep he had no sense of time having passed since the eagle had spoken the binding charm. It could have been seconds, or years, or centuries.

  He was inside water. A lot of water. One hell of a lot of water. The water was rich with life. It teemed. Vegetable empires abounded, surging, blooming, drinking, dying. Fishy awareness darted. Greater bodies, further off, sang quiet songs of freshwater. He felt the distant presence of many elves, and aetheric adepts of other races, their notes jarring with the rest.
Farther away still creatures of greater and lesser power lived and hunted and hid in light and shade. For a moment there was the faint signature of another kind of being, but it was like a flash, there and gone before he knew it.

  He rolled over onto his front, opened his eyes and stared down through the miles of water. He realised that he was not only close to the mighty lake in Sathanor, but a good way under it. The only thing that separated him from its vast tonnage and pressure was an enchantment—the Lady’s for sure. She was water adept and had many students who no doubt assisted her in maintaining the enchantments around the clock. But he wasn’t interested in the miracle of his prison, only in the trace of the alien mind he thought he had felt in that first instant of connection to the world.

  It was gone. In its place now he could only see the hypnotic depths of the abyssal fault that lay beneath the pretty surface of Aparastil Lake.

  “Gazing at the navel of the world?” said a voice in the sweet and gentle tones of a much nicer person than the one who was actually speaking. “The source of Alfheim’s aether is closer to you than ever before.”

  “Piss off, Arte,” ZaI said without getting up. Arie was not there in person, only her voice. Her actual presence would have been tangible and he felt only strangers close by. He was pleased to find himself still filthy dirty and wearing Lila’s black leather jacket.

  The moment of silence was rather sweet. He wished it would last but it didn’t.

  “I see you have slid further into the delinquency of the demon world.”

  Zal yawned. “I see you’re still spreading that bullshit about a Great Spell. End of the world required to save our lovely homeland from corruption and exploitation by incorrigible foreigners. Very nice. Must’ve taken you at least ten minutes to come up with that”

  “The Spell only awaits the opportune moment. Your belief in it, or in the reasons behind its use, is not required. But enough of these pleasantries.”

  Four strong hands suddenly grabbed hold of him and lifted him upright. He was surprised but tried not to show it. He didn’t know that Arie’s guard could be stealthy enough to sneak up on him but obviously they were better than they used to be or his sensitivity to the constant murmur of the Alfheim aether was much worse. Probably the latter, he thought with grim resignation. The guards didn’t meet his gaze—they wore bone-plate helms in any case which shielded their faces almost completely. They wasted no time in stripping the jacket from him and searching him for amulets or weapons. He couldn’t detect andalune from either of them, so they were adept enough to keep it away from him. He wasn’t sure whether that was out of respect for the danger he represented or just revulsion at the changes wrought by his altered nature.

  Arie’s voice said quietly, “It is time you faced your elders and betters, Suhanathir. In the name of all the Houses of Alfheim, I arrest you for treason.”

  “My name is Zal,” he said, pointlessly, to the empty air. He wished that the sound of his given name had no power, but Arie knew both parts of it, his life name and his caste name; Suhanathir Taliesetra. The only mark in his favour was that she did not know his true name any longer. Once, when he was still an elf through and through, she had known it, but that name was lost when he was in Demonia and he had a new one now. Then again, he did not know the full version of hers. Arie was just a part of it, as Zal was just part of his. Without being able to say all three parts in sequence they could not command one another.

  The guards silently braced his arms behind his back. One stretched out a gauntleted hand and touched the wall of the cell. It shivered and suddenly ballooned beyond his gesture into the darker, deeper waters of the lake, creating a corridor. In this way they walked through the water in their tiny pocket of air and it stretched out just ahead of them and closed just behind them.

  Presently something other than a waterquoia tree loomed out of the thick green gloom. Zal saw another bubble like their own, but larger, and beyond it even more of them and more still, clustered like oversize frogspawn, netted and held in the branches of the underwater forest. The silvery globules were everywhere, above and below. Their bubble drew close and joined its skin to one of these. Where the cell walls met they stuck fast and a door formed. Without ado he was marched forwards.

  The palace of Aparastil had been much extended in his absence. He remembered it as a house on a lake, fine and rather too large for the resident Family of Water but still no more than a mansion. These halls of trapped air with their falls and fountains lit by charmed sun and moonlight were all new to him. Like all such show, the waste of power put into their creation spoke of extravagance and strength way beyond his personal resources. It was meant to make outsiders feel puny. It did a good job, he thought wryly as their journey ended—that and the big guards and their massive enchanted broadswords and the astounding size of an entire courtroom full of Alfheim’s noble lineage, ranked in tiers, robed and standing solemnly to attention, all looking down at him as he was taken to the centre of their vast oval and left there.

  He looked straight at Arie, seated above him in the Magus’ position; a place of ultimate jurisprudence which he knew she did not deserve. He was vaguely aware of empty places to right and left in various positions and knew, without having to look further, that these were all where his family and caste family should have been. Occasional other absences marked the positions of friends or people whose loyalty he had trusted.

  Arie was as lovely as enchantment could make her, and she had been lovely in ordinary ways before that with her blanched-almond complexion, deep auburn curls and soulful blue eyes. She exuded youthful beauty, glamour and sweetness. It was a terrible shame.

  It was no moment to be shy. Zal put his hands on his hips and took a very obvious turn, looking at all the faces present before turning back to Arie. “Tie me kangaroo down, sport,” he said with the full power of his voice, words dry as a desert. He knew full well nobody there would have a clue what he was quoting but at least it was amusing him and he needed amusement desperately because otherwise he was going to start feeling afraid. “I’m hoping we can skip the part where you talk self-justifying shit and just get straight to the guilty verdict.”

  His speech created an icy silence in response. Even those souls who had been ambivalent, perhaps sympathetic to him, recoiled from the lash of spite in them. Here, if not in any other realm, words literally hurt and his could hurt more than most. But the Lady was not affected. Her andalune lay around her like a gleaming shield. The minor charm simply bounced off her and the only thing it might have done was disrupt her sense of decorum. That was something, at least.

  “The fact of your treason is indisputable,” Arie said. “You have betrayed us to Demonia, and most likely to Otopia as well. You disobeyed orders. You cut yourself off from your masters. You withheld information. Shall I go on? The only matter of interest remaining here is what the sentence of the court shall be. In ordinary circumstances it would be death, but you have made yourself a creature of unusual abilities that render you potentially more useful than a corpse so we consider that you may redeem yourself one of two ways. Either you return to the service of Alfheim by command of your true name…”

  “Not a chance,” Zal said without waiting to hear the alternative.

  “I think that it is at least possible you are open to persuasion,” Arie said and made a slight gesture with one hand.

  Zal did not turn to look but he heard several pairs of feet enter the room and walk towards him. One pair dragged and shuffled.

  “What I want to know is why the rest of you are here,” he said, ignoring the sound. “Why would you ally yourselves with this idiot, when the only solution she has to offer you is isolation and subservience? For centuries she has dragged power into Sathanor, away from every other region. She has fostered needless hatred against the Shadow.”

  “There is an Aetheric Gate beneath Aparastil’s water,” said a strong voice from the gathering.

  The massed andalune of the gathering wa
s a huge force, united, against him. Zal could feel it like a weight in the air. It was smothering. Within it those hearts that were guilty about their complicity in something they found repugnant (and there were many) were held back by its colossal inertia and the sweet, constant soothing of Arie’s personal glamour. She groomed them and they would not resist. Feeling it made him sick. Where many andalune were voluntarily bound like this they were a psychic force almost impossible to fight against. Whatever he had to say was pretty much irrelevant at this point. They went on…

  “Its energy is limitless. Once it is open we can restore the decaying lands and begin to reintegrate our society. These measures are temporary,” said another.

  “It would not be safe to open it whilst connected to the other realms.”

  “Alfheim is in crisis… the land falls into darkness. It cannot be denied. The Prowlers…”

  All the old stories about the decline of his homeland: he knew them by heart and their reasons. The voices came in ones and twos from all over the room, old and younger voices, some less forceful than others. They were sad and grieving. They hated what they were doing, but still they considered it a strong and right manoeuvre. Zal could feel everything they did, because only a few chose to shield their intent. They wanted him to believe. They wanted him to join them. Their invitation was almost overpowering. He had been away for so long. The idea, the proximity, of being held again in the continuum of andalune that was the natural state of communion where minds and spirits ran so close! And not just the poor substitute of elemental companionship … he felt that he was just one step from heaven. One tiny step. Just agree. Just say yes.

  And it was true, Alfheim was declining, rotting, its aether changing in unpredictable ways. It had been happening over long ages, though at rates that until recently were almost undetectable. But he had never believed it was because of the workings of the Shadowkin or even of the other aetheric realms, as many theorists did. His demon self knew it was not so and he used not to be the only one.