Keeping It Real

by Justina Robson

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Lila’s brief lift of spirit and moment of pleasure were broken by a flash of gold in the corner of her eye. The wall beside them bulged inwards suddenly and then recoiled back into place with a snap. A dull boom and vibration rocked the cell and shivered the lake water. She drew back from Zal and turned in time to see the dragon gliding off into the darkness at speed, its tail driving it strongly through the water.

  I think it likes you, Tath said drily, though he was jittery with fear.

  “The Game magic,” Zal whispered to her, “They’re attracted by it. We must discharge it or stop. Didn’t your friendly inboard necromancer bother to tell you that?”

  “He is not my…” Lila began but she didn’t get to finish. A golden face, as big as she was, loomed suddenly from the depths beneath them and slid up the side of the cell wall. The five-pointed black star at the centre of its eye narrowed as the candlelight struck it. Close-to she saw the hairlike fronds of the beard around its long, saurian mouth reach out and feel the bubble-shield of their cell, tasting its magic. It opened its jaws and a long, black tongue dipped between razor sharp diamond teeth and touched one of the trickles of wild magic that were rising from the deep lake bed. The eye narrowed again and blinked at her.

  An idea, in words and images not her own, appeared in Lila’s mind and she saw herself and Zal for an instant, as though through a strange lens, every place they touched one another attracting the snap and tang of the wild aether.

  Elfheart machine-woman and demonheart elf-man. Walking four worlds inside the forfeit bond. Sing the two, eight, eighteen canticle, the shape of things, the weird of breaths, the soft hand in hand dance, and, as all water is one across the worlds and sings each to each unbroken the lowest notes of sweet lament, we shall bend our mind to thy curious measure.

  “What?” Lila said aloud without meaning to as she snapped back to herself and found Tath churning and terrified, a panicking bird inside her chest.

  Zal put his hand over her mouth. “Listen,” he said.

  Lila smacked his hand away. “I am listening to the…”

  “Not the dragon.” His long tipped ears were moving subtly and he let her go and moved back. As he did so the dragon abruptly slid away from the wall, its body flashing past and wake buffeting the cell so that they both had to fight to keep their footing.

  She refined the search and tune pattern of her AI hearing. Arie has seen the dragon alongside us. Whatever we are about to do, we must do it now, Tath told her, back in command of himself now that the dragon had gone.

  “Plan?” Zal asked her, raising his eyebrows, body tensed for flight or fight.

  Lila ran everything through her Al-system, making the second she actually had into an approximate minute of ordinary thinking time. Like calculating the moves in chess she played and replayed the possibilities and permutations of the situation, but it was so complex she could not see beyond a second manoeuvre anywhere, could not calculate a significant favourable move. Their original idea was as good, or as bad, as anything else.

  “Pretend to lose,” she said in desperation, hearing the guards’ boot-steps outside and the singing of swords being drawn.

  Zal dropped to his knees in front of her. Where his hands caught hold of her metal legs she felt the sting of magic crackling, making the candleflames sputter and shoot high into the air. From the green darkness the dragon barrelled out at them as though it was about to ram the wall, then at the last instant ducked beneath. Its bow wave rocked the room as the guards came in. Lila felt Tath reach down through her and connect briefly with Zal. Tath said some elvish words and Zal repeated them under his breath too, humming them into a desolate melody. The coils of aether surrounding them suddenly drew in, as though inhaled by a breath, and the air snapped fiercely with the spit of releasing energy. After it, the wild magic had gone.

  Zal slumped down and let go of her as though defeated.

  Party trick, Tath said. He was tense and afraid, as Lila herself was, both of them knowing quite well that some, if not all, of their cover was surely gone. Worst of all, they had never got their story straight with

  Dar. Any wrong move by him now could undo everything. It was a desperate, terrible situation.

  The guards took Zal away, and waited only for Lila to reclothe herself in Tath’s gear before marching her off in the same direction. As she went she combined a few drags for herself, to boost her calm, to stop her shaking, to help her maintain her cool. Her supplies of basic composites were running low. She would have to be careful, she thought, and then she felt Tath react to the influx of chemicals in her blood, as though he was truly a part of her.

  What did the dragon mean? she asked him, feeling him calm down.

  The forfeit bond it spoke of is the Game with Zal. As for the rest I can gather only fragments. A canticle in Thanatopic magic is a summoning or banishing song to command the Dead The water reference is really to wild magic most likely, although water-element adepts, like Aerie, say that the water in all worlds is one sea. I don’t know about the rest.

  He spoke rather easily for Lila’s liking. She wasn’t sure he was telling her everything. She knew what the numbers meant though, remembering her chemistry classes. Two, eight and eighteen were the numbers of electrons that completed each shell of an atom with three energy levels. But, even though this gave her a fresh insight into the links between magic and science across the realms, it did not help the dragon’s statement make any more sense. The time for puzzling was over however.

  They had come to a vast cell like a cavern in the lake’s black depths. Above them they could see the rest of the Palace of Aparastil shining like silver spheres, glints and glimmers of light dancing within. To all other directions they saw only their own reflections against a black background, with tiny bubbles of air or motes of silt briefly illumined as they brushed against the walls. Glistening pockets of gases from the deep which had become trapped beneath them moved under the clear floor in silvery undulations. They collected like mercury where the floor had been shaped deliberately into the largest and most complicated series of magical circles Lila had ever seen.

  There signs and sigils bristled against one another for space and fizzed and glowed in the air above the ground. Artefacts of power: swords, flails, whips, wands, cups, candles, digital crystals, ropes and witchlights littered every available inch of space to either side of a clear walk that led directly to the heart of the circles. Shrines to the magical elements of earth, fire, water, wood, metal, air and space were arrayed around the walls. The room hummed with chant and incantation.

  Arie’s courtiers stood demurely waiting, clad in black and silver. There was a demon there, Lila saw with shock, his sapphire blue skin roiling with lightning streaks beneath its thick surface, his horns curled close to his head and dripping with grey smokes that trailed around him in the air. He was busy at his allotted station, working over a heavy stone thurible, stirring something with a bone held in the curl of his forked tail.

  All her mages are here, Tath said. That one is Zal’s replacement, bought or bribed or coerced into action, or a traitor to his kind.

  Who replaces you? Lila asked as she was pushed on towards the Lady herself where Arie stood with Dar and her entourage of attendants.

  Tath did not answer.

  Tath? But it had already come to her in a moment of horrible insight. There was no replacement for Tath, because he was here.

  Lila tried to exert a compulsion on Tath, to make him speak and admit where his loyalty lay, but he resisted her easily. Meanwhile the dragon’s words echoed in her mind. Water, water everywhere…

  Meantime they had been brought to stand in Arie’s presence. Her andalune body touched Tath’s briefly and he was comforted. “Come, Voynassi,” she said to him gently, using his honorific name. “It is time for you to resume a better form and occupy a vessel fit for the work ahead and your life beyond. Your sister here agrees to carry you until you can be made whole.”


  Behind Arie, Lila could see Astar standing absolutely still with terror, andalune body completely withdrawn. Dar was expressionless, his aethereal self barely visible to Tath, it was so restrained. He didn’t even glance at Lila but maintained his position among the courtiers. Arie held out a white daisy in her hand towards Tath. “Come, Lady Astar, take the hand of this golem and prepare to receive your brother’s spirit.” Arie’s lovely face glowed with warmth and kindness.

  Golem! Lila thought, her anger almost igniting despite the rushing cool of the drugs in her system.

  Astar came forward, staring into the glamour of Tath’s likeness on Lila with a feverish intensity, searching the face for any ounce of hope. Lila knew there was none now, with the possible exception that Arie may not discover the extent that Lila herself was in command of her faculties and not under Tath’s power. She saw Dar look at her, his gaze already the vibrant watchfulness of someone who is striving to take in every part of an experience.

  The Lady took Lila’s hand and placed Astar’s upon it over the daisy. Astar’s andalune surged forward to cling to Tath’s and a swift current ran between them. Lila felt herself freeze as Arie sang a few pretty notes and spoke her charms aloud. There was a moment in which all the room waited for the exorcism to begin its work, where every magical being listened and watched.

  The daisy was simply a daisy, so the spell was useless. Lila saw the realisation of their deceit dawn on the Lady’s face instantly. Behind Arie, Dar had gone ashen. He gave the most minute shake of his head as he looked towards Lila and Tath.

  “This flower.” The Lady plucked it gently from between the elves’ hands. Her manner remained sweet and she spoke as though personally wounded, her eyes beseeching. “It blooms not for thy ransomed life, Ilyatath. Where is your token, that you have falsely given me this one in its place?”

  “It was burned in the Hall of Fire. An accident,” Tath said. “My sister gave you…”

  “I well know what she gave me. Her loyalty to you is a shining example and her betrayal of me an exceptional artifice whose skill must be commended. Yours to me however, I find less worthy of praise. Why would you not tell me immediately of its loss?” She made a single gesture with her finger and one guard stepped to Lady Astar’s side and took her arm in his hand.

  Tath shivered but Lila admired his grit when he said, “I did not wish you to see me bound in life to this form by my own dire mistakes. I would have you think highly of me. I thought that I would find another way out when the spell was done. And my strategies have not failed yet. Zal is broken and here is your most dangerous opponent, his champion, at my command.”

  “It is pretty reasoning,” Arie said, her voice rising a little at the end of the phrase, as though she was considering his words. She let the daisy fall from her hand to the floor and half turned to look back. “Dar. Perhaps you would remind me of how it was you came by this robot and Hya, and how the three of you came to Aparastil.”

  Behind and all around them servants were lighting lamps. The demon thaumaturge and the elves at the Otopian and Faery altars had ceased their activities and stood at attention at their stations. Lila kept on looking with all her senses for any way out, for any useful thing. She saw a server approach with a beautiful red and black lidded ceramic dish and stand alongside Arie, face downcast. She looked for heat, but there was none. The container was cold and Lila could not see inside it.

  We are lost, Tath said, though he didn’t explain. Dread claimed him.

  Lila increased her drug dose, to keep her reactions clean.

  She watched Dar lie and had to admit he was, to her eyes, completely and utterly convincing.

  He said, “I brought Zal’s bodyguard from Otopia with me. We were both badly damaged by our struggle. In Sathanor I was made well, at the overnight huts where the Vale of Sinda meets the woods. I pretended treachery to engage the trust of this woman and made her believe we were coming here to rescue Zal. At the Deeps we were attacked by Saaqaa under a dark moon, and there Tath’s band caught up with us and we all fought for our lives. The wild magic was particularly bad that night. Tath and his companions were all killed there but, knowing his magical skills, I deceived this woman into taking on his andalune body, so that he might use his skill to gain control of her. At the Hall of Fire we sacrificed the flower in order to maintain his binding upon her, else you would have released him easily and she would have had a chance to kill you before you completely understood her nature.”

  “It would gladden my heart to believe you. I would rival the sun in splendour to count you my loyal friend but, sadly, in these moments of your close presence I can see inside your treacherous mind,” Arie said. She reached out and gently removed the lid of the red and black dish. Inside it lay white, glistening concertina curls of sap-rich bark.

  Lila did not feel shame, to her surprise. Instead she felt a spark of gladness, because Arie was both sentimental and cruel, a justified opponent instead of a misguided idealist. Lila glanced at Dar. He was expressionless and did not meet her eye.

  Everyone in the great hall had become still and silent.

  Arie drew Tath’s knife from its position at his side and held it out to him, handle first. “I do not wish to command you, but I will.”

  What? What does she mean? Lila demanded of Tath. There was a new anger inside him, but a hopeless one, full of self-hate.

  Leave me to do this alone, he said. Or share it with me. It is up to you. We have to finish what we began, all of us, in the end

  He took the hilt and Lila felt her hand close around it, her machine strength the core of his action. He made to move forward but she prevented him, taking back control of her physical movements from him easily, as she had always been able to do.

  She could not let herself believe they had come to such a moment as this No. I forbid you.

  Let me go, and she may yet believe I have mastery over you. This is why she asks it. It is the only way.

  I will countermand you then! You can’t do this! Lila screamed at him, but at the same moment her Al-self confirmed his words as the best course forwards, if she wanted to remain alive and potentially enabled to save Zal. In the cool runways of perfect, drug-enhanced cognition, her emotions were swept aside. This is my fault, she said, and let Tath have control, but stayed with him all the same so that they moved together in a single forward stride, faster than any eye could follow.

  Lila was very strong, her aim perfect, her focus absolute. She looked into Dar’s eyes as they stood face to face for the last time, her hand firm against his chest where the blade had pierced between his ribs directly into his heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Dar’s hands gripped her shoulders. Lila remembered the night in Sathanor, the bioluminescent night, when she had held Dar’s heart in hers. Now they were in synchrony again and the blade that was killing him was in her chest. For an instant she felt the wound’s terrible pain and Dar’s agonised effort to cling to the last seconds of his life. Through their sympathy she was aware of all his energy scattering, his aethereal body fading against Tath’s.

  Dar was trying to speak to her, she realised, as she saw his lips move. She routed power from her reactor through Tath into her bond with Dar.

  “Surely no greater king has ever lived,” he gasped, fighting to draw one more breath. “No one with the loving kindness, strength and courage—”

  He was gone. His body, became a deadweight, slid off the knife blade with a grating wrench, and fell to the floor.

  “What did he mean by that?” Arie demanded.

  Lila dropped to her hands and knees beside Dar, letting the knife fall out of her fingers. “Goodbye,” she said, in Tath’s voice. His final words had cut her to the heart. How many more times was she going to find that people dead were more loyal and true than when they were alive? She wanted it to feel worse than it did because she deserved to hurt but, because of the drugs, it didn’t. And at the same moment her smart AI-self noticed that her
hands were flat to the bubble’s floor.

  She set her speaker films to the lowest frequency they were able to produce—something well below even elvish hearing span—and upped the power to maximum. She sent a message in Sheean, the faery language, just three words tuned to their particular tones and scales: Zal Aparastil Help. The only faery she knew who might collect the message was Poppy, or Viridia at a push. The only chance she had was if the message carried and if they touched water. If the story was true, if Malachi had been right about their faery natures. So many ifs.

  Lila felt the Lady’s hand on her shoulder. “Your presence is required in the centre circle, Tath. Come with me now.”

  What about Dar? Lila was jabbering inside to Tath as she got up to obey and handed him overall control. What will they do with him? Where has he gone? Can’t you do something?

  Dar is dead Tath said. But we are not. You must concentrate on the matters at hand.

  And now what? What’s going to happen?

  Now we are going to bleed Zal and bind him to a fey fracture halfway between Alfheim and Intersticial Space. It will not be a physical prison, merely an aetheric one. He will live here in the palace and Arie will look after him like a sacred son all the days of his miserable long life.

  But what are we going to do about it? Lila pleaded.

  When a moment arises that I think of anything, I will let you know. Tath said. Come, there are more vile deeds to execute before this trial is done.

  Anguish and grief tightened Lila’s jaw. She clung to Tath’s self-possession as the effect of her drugs began to fade; she did not have much left and she must save that. But she dare not let go of their artificial restraint on her feelings. She was sure that she would collapse here if she had to face up to what she’d done in any realistic way.

  Then do not, Tath ordered her. Be strong and do what must be done. Time for recrimination and the rest later. Now you must act.