One of the soldiers rapped on the door with the pommel of his bronze sword, and it swung wide on its hinges.
Light, warmth, and music spilled into the tunnel. Malden smelled meat roasting over an aromatic fire. The elfin guards stepped aside and gestured for the prisoners to step forward, into the hall beyond.
“Let everyone have a good look at you,” one of them told Cythera. “This should be quite diverting.”
Malden watched her walk through the door, with Slag leaning on her arm. She craned her head upward to see her new surroundings, and her mouth fell open in awe. Malden followed close behind and could scarcely credit what he discovered.
The darkness of the Vincularium gave way to dazzling light. Standing lamps lit this room, just as they had the dormitory, but here their reddish light was mellowed by the yellow glow of a thousand candles that chased every shadow out of the hall. He could not imagine what the room might once have been used for, as no sign remained of the cold, cyclopean stone halls of the kind favored by dwarves. The elves had made this room their own, paneling the walls with elaborate wooden carvings or hanging them with rich, warm brocades that spilled out across the floor to become luxurious carpets.
Musicians in motley and crimson danced through the room, no two playing the same instrument. They seemed to be competing with one another yet their melodies wove together seamlessly, filling the air with bright piping and vigorous drumbeats. Jugglers lofted blazing torches high in the air, catching them behind their backs as they bowed to passing ladies in diaphanous gowns that trailed unheeded across the floor. Elves in heavy plate armor bashed away at each other with wooden swords, laughing as their armor rang, again and again. A groaning board ran the full length of one wall, laden with meats and wheels of cheese and enormous flagons of brown liquid.
Malden realized his jaw was hanging open, and he forced it to close. He caught Cythera’s eye and imagined his own face looked much like hers-wide with uncontrolled surprise.
Despite what the elfin soldier had told them, the gathered elves did not seem at all shocked to see humans enter their home, nor curious to get a good look at the newcomers. They seemed too enveloped in their own revelry, too devoted to their own amusement, to even notice a change in the hall, or the arrival of three beings whom they had reason to hate. Malden was glad enough for that. He saw no instruments of torture in that place, no real weapons, even, other than those carried by the guards that brought them hence. If the three of them were to be tortured to death, it seemed they must wait until the party was finished.
Above them a wide balcony let out onto the hall, its far side hidden by thick red curtains. One of these curtains twitched aside and an elf strode out onto the balcony to stare down at the prisoners. Malden could see at once that this one was different. He had an aura of command about him, and Malden thought the elf must be their king or maybe some kind of high priest. He wore a black garment that started as a cowl around his head, revealing only his face, then fell without seam or fastening to the floor, as if he were covered in a sheet with a hole cut out for him to see through. Small bells were sewn everywhere onto this mantle, and they rang with a shrill sound as he moved. He was tall and his face was sharply featured, but his eyes were strange. From a distance it was difficult for Malden to tell, but he thought one of the elf’s pupils was much larger than the other.
“Silence,” he said, in a voice that conveyed no emotion at all.
Instantly the clamor in the hall ceased. The musicians stopped playing in mid-chord. The jugglers caught their torches and held them. The warriors drew apart and came to attention. The ladies stopped exactly where they were, and lowered their hands to their sides. Around Malden, Cythera, and Slag, the guards all stood up very straight and held their arms down at their sides.
“What,” the black-robed elf asked, “are these?”
As if noticing the newcomers for the first time, the gathered elves all turned to stare at the two humans and the dwarf. They grabbed at one another’s arms and pointed. Some pressed hands to their mouths, or their nostrils flared in surprise. None of them made the slightest sound.
The soldier who had threatened to kill Slag if he couldn’t walk hurried forward. The clattering of his armor sounded very loud in the still room. He dropped to one knee and raised his hands in supplication.
The black-robed elf stared down at him for a moment as if he had no idea who the guard was. Then his face cleared as if he’d suddenly remembered something. “You… may speak.”
“Your excellent presence be preserved, your beneficence praised in every quarter, Hieromagus. These are the human trespassers you sent us to retrieve.”
“I sent… you? Trespassers?”
Malden started to quake. He remembered the elf-the one who’d been so horrified by Slag’s vomit-say that a Hieromagus had ordered them to be brought in alive. The only reason they hadn’t been killed already was because of this elf’s command. If this Hieromagus couldn’t remember why he’d wanted them alive, they might very well die in the next moment.
“Hold,” the Hieromagus said. “It is time for my sacrament.”
The curtains behind him moved again and an elf hurried out. She wore a shift made of patches and rags. In her hand she held something small and dark. The Hieromagus opened his mouth wide and she placed the thing on his tongue. Before he closed his mouth again, Malden saw that it was the cap of a black mushroom. The Hieromagus swallowed it like a pill.
“I sent you,” he said. “I sent you to retrieve the trespassers. That happened in the past. Yes. I have it now. I see again their future. Very… very important, that they are… alive. It will be very important. Though… though…”
He fell silent then. Seconds passed but he said no more.
One of the soldiers, standing just to Malden’s left, moved his hand very carefully up to his face. He scratched his nose discreetly, then very quickly lowered his hand again, as if afraid someone would see him moving.
The Hieromagus suddenly slumped forward, leaning hard on the railing of the balcony. His eyes opened so wide Malden thought they might fall out of his head. His mouth twisted in a grimace of utter horror and his whole body convulsed.
Then, a moment later, he stood back up as if nothing had happened. In a quiet voice, the voice of a boy asking for a candy, he said, “Is it time for my sacrament? Why is there no music? When there’s no music I hear… I hear everything…”
The musicians launched back into their riotous song. The jugglers tossed their torches in the air. The warriors began to fight once more in jest. The ladies giggled and whispered among themselves. None of them looked at the newcomers anymore.
The Hieromagus walked through the curtain, not even bothering to lift it away from his body. With a sigh, the leader of the soldiers rose to his feet and gestured at his warriors. “Take them inside and lock them away. Maybe he’ll remember what he wanted them for, or maybe he’ll order their deaths. Who knows? I can’t say I find this game entertaining, either way.”
“That fellow’s in charge of our fates?” Malden asked. “I cannot describe the depth of relief that I feel.”
The guard behind Malden jabbed him in the back with a spear. The three of them were marched forward, only to stop again after a moment as the leader grabbed hold of Malden’s sleeve. “Don’t be fooled,” he said. “The Hieromagus sees everything-the past, the future as well. His sacrament allows him to confer both with his ancestors and his descendants. If he seems scattered about the present, it is only because he sees so much.”
Malden knew enough to stay silent, yet he had so little left to lose. “He didn’t seem scattered,” he answered. “He seemed insane.”
He fully expected the soldier to strike him with a mailed fist and break his already bruised jaw. Yet the soldier only laughed. “Right now his madness is the only thing keeping you alive, human.”
Part V
The First Duty of Prisoners
Interlude
Aelbring climbed
the stairs to the top level of the Vincularium, dreading what he would find. Like most elves, he hated the cemetery of the dwarves. The elves lived in a relatively small section of the lower levels and shunned the rest of the underground city, and for good reason. There were too many memories up high. When one got too close to the world outside the mountains, the ancestors refused to be quiet in one’s head. They remembered that world, even if Aelbring didn’t. They wanted so badly to escape the darkness and the dust. Maybe the Hieromagus could bear their whispering voices, but for a low-ranking soldier like himself, they threatened to overwhelm his senses. It just wasn’t fair.
And today of all days to draw this duty! There were humans down below-humans! After all this time. He wanted to see them. Wanted to know if they were as ugly as the ancestors said, or as hairy. Maybe the old legends were wrong. They said there was a female human among them. Aelbring had a secret yearning, a half-formed hope that maybe she would be different from the others. Maybe she would have an exotic beauty unfound among his own people. He burned with curiosity. Maybe he could arrange to have himself assigned to guarding her. Maybe he could show her some small kindness, some bit of unexpected compassion that would cause her to look on him with whatever humans had that resembled affection…
He had his orders, though. Something had stirred up the revenants on the top level. Well, of course it had-the humans who broke in through the seal, yes? But no, he had been told this was some new intrusion. The eternal guardians had calmed down since the humans arrived, but now some new excitement was brewing among them. The revenants did not speak, nor did they have any way of sending a message down to the lower levels. The queen, however, was in tune with them in some arcane fashion, and she said she’d felt their rage burning stronger than ever. Which meant something had set them off. And someone had to go up and find out what had so upset them.
And of course that someone had to be him.
At least it wasn’t nighttime up there. The red sun burned as it did every twelve hours, and this high its light went everywhere, illuminated every dark corner. Its beams were almost too much for Aelbring’s eyes to bear, accustomed as they were to the gloom of the lower levels. The geometric tombs of the dwarves draped long shadows along the far walls.
At first he could see nothing out of place, no horrid surprises waiting for him in that haunted region. No revenants waited to greet him, but of course they wouldn’t make it that simple, would they? He checked the bronze sword he wore at his side and went to look for them, intent on getting this over with as soon as possible.
Up ahead, just to the side of a tomb shaped like a marble column, he saw something scattered on the ground. Some refuse left behind by the invading humans, most likely. Animals that they were, they could hardly be expected to pick up after themselves. He jogged over to see what it was, but before he’d taken half a dozen strides he tripped and nearly fell on his face.
“Human bastards,” he said, catching himself with his hands. He got one knee under him and rose gracefully to his feet, then turned to see what he’d stumbled on. For a moment terror gripped him when he saw it was a length of bone, ending in a skeletal hand.
Then the hand twitched, the bony fingers contracting on rotten sinews, and he laughed out loud. “Did one of you fall down and hurt himself?” he called out, thinking to draw the revenants. It would not be the first time they had grown excited over nothing. One of them would walk too close to the edge of the central shaft and fall into the water below, and the whole lot of them would panic, thinking they were under attack.
The revenants were strong, and nearly indestructible, and they burned with a desire for vengeance. But they weren’t very bright.
Aelbring kicked the bony arm away and headed again for the columnar tomb. The smile on his face faltered-but only a little-when he saw that what he’d taken for human garbage was in fact all that remained of a revenant. Its skull had been smashed in and its rib cage broken into a hundred pieces. One of its legs still kicked feebly at the cobblestones. The other had been ground nearly to powder.
“You haven’t been fighting amongst yourselves, have you?” he called out. They’d never done such a thing before.
“I’m afraid not,” someone said. Someone standing very close.
Aelbring gasped in surprise and whipped out his sword. He’d had no sense of anyone nearby, had heard no footfalls, seen no movement. And that voice-it had a human accent. Another of them? Maybe the first three had just been the advance guard of an invading army. The elves had been living in terror of such a thing for centuries. “Show yourself!” he demanded.
“Certainly.” The human moved into view, and Aelbring was glad to see it was no knight in iron armor. Instead this one wore a colorless robe, with a hood to hide his features. This the human pushed back, and Aelbring was surprised to see not the savage ape-face he expected, but the refined features of a scholar.
“You’re a human,” he said.
“And you’re very perceptive. I see you speak my language, too. Wonderful! That will make things so much easier.”
Aelbring licked his lips in confusion. It had not surprised him when the human addressed him in the elfin tongue. It had never occurred to him before that there could be more than one language.
“Hark, I’m really very sorry about what I did to your guardian there.” The human gestured at the broken bones on the floor. “I did what I could to communicate with it, but it wouldn’t stop attacking me.”
“They have reason to want your blood,” Aelbring told the human. He lifted his sword. “As do I.” He readied himself to charge, to run this human through. He would need to strike hard and fast. The ancestors were quite clear on the fact that humans felt no pain, and that they could survive injuries that would slaughter three elves with one stroke.
“Wouldn’t you rather take me captive?” the human asked, his voice quite calm. He sounded as if he were asking if Aelbring would like his wine served hot or cold.
For a moment the elf could only stare at the human, unsure what was happening. Luckily for Aelbring, there were certain forms one followed, certain protocols one learned as a soldier, for dealing with just such situations. None of them were particularly complicated.
If you caught an enemy defenseless, for instance, you threatened him into submission. It was just how these things were done.
“You fear me? You should,” Aelbring shouted. “I will strike you down if you show me the slightest sign of resistance.”
“I will be as meek as a little lamb,” the human said. And then he smiled. It was a gentle, kindly smile, the kind of smile one would give to a child.
So then why did it make his blood run cold?
“You should take me to your superior officer,” the human said. “Right away. I have much to discuss with him.”
“I’m sure he’ll-he’ll want to-” Aelbring didn’t like this at all. “He’ll have questions for you, I can guarantee it.”
“And I hope I have answers he’ll like,” the human replied.
Aelbring tried to remember the protocol for this situation. Ah, right. “This way,” he barked. “Walk ahead of me, where I can see you, and don’t try anything!”
“But of course,” the human said, chuckling to himself.
Chapter Seventy-one
Once the Hieromagus had withdrawn, the revelers in the great elf hall seemed to lose all interest in the humans and the dwarf. They barely moved out of the way as the soldiers pushed the prisoners through the hall. “They don’t seem as surprised to see us as we were to meet them. You’d think they were expecting us,” Malden said to Cythera.
An elfin lady, exquisite in gemstones and a mauve dress, failed to get out of the way at all. The soldiers begged her to move but she just laughed at some jest made by her companion, a warrior wearing a silver circlet.
“Rather it seems that they already know us, and have for so long that they’ve discounted our value as curiosities,” Cythera said, while they waited for the soldi
ers to make a new path around the lady. “I think they’re feigning, though. Do you feel like someone is watching you?”
Malden had a thief’s instincts for such things, but he’d been ignoring it until she spoke. Now he let the hair on the back of his arms rise up and felt the muscles of his back shiver. “Interesting.” He tried an experiment. Turning his head, he tried to catch the eye of the first elf he saw-a juggler. But the performer was, at that moment, turning away to make some saucy comment to a mailed warrior. “Ah,” Malden said. He turned his head again and looked right at an elf who was tuning a lute. The musician’s head fell forward as he studied his strings. “Yes, yes, I see it now. They are watching us, all of them, and most closely. Yet they’re doing their level best to seem as if they don’t even know we’re here. Very interesting.”
“Fucking fascinating,” Slag muttered. “In a few minutes, I wager the torture’s about to start. You think maybe there are more pressing mysteries to solve?”
There was no time for further conversation. Malden was shoved forward by the elf behind him and the three of them were hurried out of the hall and down a side corridor. The walls of this passage were as rough as the winding tunnel that brought them to the elf hall, but its ceiling was at least high enough that they didn’t need to keep ducking.
Alcoves and doors opened on the passage at irregular intervals. In most of them, elves stood waiting to watch them pass. These elves, at least, shared nothing of the bizarre affected quality of their cousins in the hall-they gawked openly, and whispered with agitation among themselves. They also lacked the finery of the hall, instead being dressed in the tattered patchwork of the Hieromagus’s assistant. They must be servants, Malden thought, or peasants, or whatever passed for slaves in elf society. Yet they were as beautiful as the others, radiantly, transcendently beautiful, their skin creamy and perfect, their limbs of perfect proportion on their lanky frames. He tried smiling at one, a tall elf woman with beads in her hair. She looked terrified and ducked back into her alcove as if running from a demon.
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