by Justin Rose
* * *
Water splashed in the stream, and Hefthon’s eyes snapped open. He slid his sword softly from its sheath and hid its gleaming blade in the bluebarrels beside him. Soft, snorting breaths sounded in the night air above the water. He could dimly make out clouds of steamy breath from several large forms that stumbled through the stream.
“Stop!” he cried, standing and lifting his sword. “Name yourself!”
“Whoa! Easy, lad!” came a chuckling warning from the darkness. “It’s me, Steun.”
“Steun?” Hefthon asked, sheathing his sword in relief. “What are you doing out this far?”
Toman’s father slid from his horse and approached, clapping Hefthon in a warm embrace. “Looking for you three,” he said with a laugh. “Geuel said you might be needing a ride back to the city.”
Tressa approached from the darkness. “Steun,” she said, smiling, “so good to see you. How’s the city?”
“It’s there,” Steun replied, “a little the worse for wear but still standing. I brought horses. So just climb on up and we’ll head back. Geuel’ll be more than happy to see you lot safe.”
“Geuel's there?” Veil asked, her eyes shining so brightly that they were visible even in the darkness.
“Oh, aye, he’s there, and they’ll no doubt be singing ballads of his deeds by the time we get back to join him. He saved a lot of lives with his warning.”
Steun stooped by the stirrup of one of the horses and helped Veil to mount. “You all look pretty tired,” he said. “Hope you can still ride though. I’d like to be back by the afternoon. Lots of work left yet.”
They rode at a canter, more than halving the time that they would have spent walking but still not meeting Steun’s desire. It was nearing dusk when they crested the brow of a Gath foothill and saw the city below them, its walls charred and collapsed in areas, numerous houses obliterated, and the lawn outside the walls littered with rows of sorted bodies. Tressa gasped at the sight and turned her face, memories long ago repressed flooding back to haunt her. Veil’s breathing quickened, but she showed no other response.
They rode down in silence and stopped outside the open gates. Dozens of people were busy in the courtyard, clearing rubble and patching the outer wall. A line of children were working the courtyard pump, passing buckets in a chain toward the hospital and barracks. Outside the walls, people were carting away bodies to the cemetery.
Tressa dismounted and walked slowly past the rows of dead, silently noting each familiar face, guessing about those too damaged to recognize. Veil held to her hand and walked beside her, tears falling unashamedly as she saw her friends and neighbors rigid and bloated in the dust. She covered her face with her collar to mask the stench.
Hefthon began to approach the bodies but stopped, his eyes caught by something else. Near the wall, a smaller field of dead lay scattered, the glow gone from every marble body, blood staining their colorful clothing and translucent wings. Over a hundred fairies were stretched out along the wall, their tiny bodies crumpled in various attitudes of pain, their faces twisted with passions previously unfamiliar. He walked among them for a while and noted the ones he had seen before. Then he left and entered the city.
In the piled bodies, he had seen the final answer to whether he could live his life as a mere sentry. Every one of those bodies had once been beautiful—and every one of them might have stayed beautiful if protected. Beauty is always worth preserving.
Hefthon found Geuel in the barracks chatting with Toman’s sister. Her eyes were filled with admiration as Geuel described his journey from the Fairy city. Hefthon leant against the wall nearby and chuckled to himself as he heard what he felt must be a rather embellished account of his brother’s hardships.
Geuel heard the chuckle and turned his head sharply. “Hey! Hef!” he cried, “you made it. Are Mother and Veil here?”
Hefthon approached the bedside and clapped his brother on the back, not being particularly careful of the bandages. “Yeah, they’re outside,” he said. “No doubt Veil’s already headed for the hospital to help out.”
They embraced, and Geuel began relating the state of Gath Odrenoch, both of them sobering as the casualty numbers unfolded.
Nearby in the gatehouse, Deni, Reheuel, Ariel, and Randiriel gathered around a small table, their voices lowered despite their seclusion.
“I say we follow them,” Reheuel said. “We didn’t before. And we’re paying for it now.”
“With what?” Deni asked. “Half our soldiers are dead. The other half are wounded or exhausted.”
“Deni’s right,” Ariel said. “I won’t see any more of my people die. They came here out of duty. But they needn’t seek out further fighting.”
Reheuel threw his hands up. “Deni! Deni! You were there! We were all grouped around those cave mouths. All of us, bloodied and sore and tired of killing. And we let it go. We came back and said ‘let them be.’ And look around you now. Death is what we’ve reaped. We ought to finish it this time.”
Deni shook his head. “There were hardly any left last night. A few score, maybe. They’re not going to attack. But if we follow them, we could still lose any number of good men. I don’t want more blood on my hands.”
“They won’t attack now, no. But what about in ten or twenty years when our sons are in our position? Or thirty or forty when it’s our grandchildren? They could attack then. And we’d be long since peacefully laid to rest, our hands washed of blood. But our children will still bleed.”
Randiriel shook her head. “I’d go if we could be sure of our mission. But there are few fairies left who can fight. I don’t want to watch them die for my decision. They’ve no stake in this.”
Ariel nodded her thanks and looked back to Reheuel. “The fairies cannot help you. Our race has lost enough already. It could take five hundred years to replace the lives lost in this last week. Your family is safe, Reheuel. Take the victory you have.”
“Wise words,” Deni said. “Listen to her, Captain. We can’t afford more losses either.”
Reheuel’s voice came out in an even but forced tone, “It’s easy for us to call this victory. We won’t be here when the creatures return. They’ll be some other generation’s responsibility. Do we really want to let what’s happened here happen again?”
Deni shook his head. “No, but I want what happened here to be over. I want it done. I want to go home and kiss my children and tell them that they’re safe.”
Reheuel nodded and stood. “Then do so. Because they are safe—for now.” He strode from the barracks, his tone even but his eyes furious.
Deni followed him seconds later, relieved, but nagged by a vague sense of guilt.
Ariel sat down on the table. “I thought you would side with Reheuel,” she said. “You were so quick to defend Gath Odrenoch.”
Randiriel shook her head. “Defending this city was our duty. Our weapon placed it in danger. But I could not ask our people to fight Reheuel’s battles. If he asked, I would join him myself. But I would not bring our people to further death.”
“I respect that,” Ariel said with a smile. “It makes me sorry that we must part.”
Randiriel laughed. “The lives of fairies are long. Perhaps our paths will cross. You’re rebuilding, I assume?”
Ariel nodded. “Yes, our people still need a home, and the world still needs their innocence. I will leave shortly to return the Tear. After things have settled here, please tell Reheuel to bring his family to the City of Youth. I owe them a reward.”
Randiriel nodded. “I will.”
“And please, see that they come,” Ariel said.
As Randiriel left, she passed Brylle entering. Ariel nodded to the silver-lit fairy. “Come, Brylle, it’s time,” she said.
A short while later, two bright lights, one scarlet and one silver, shot over the walls of Gath Odrenoch into the darkness, a clear crystal gem suspended between them, reflecting the light of a thousand stars.
Chapter 12
The air was crisp with the warning chill of fall when Randiriel and Reheuel’s family set out for the City of Youth. As they neared the city, Randiriel rested lazily on Veil’s shoulder, jolting occasionally with the movements of the horse and rider beneath her. Around them a circle of Fairies had begun to form, spinning and dancing and laughing in the cool daylight. Their lights burned all the brighter for the cold, as if their heat came from within. They sang as they spun their circles, chanting songs of the ancient days, songs of the merpeople and of minotaurs and gnomes. And once or twice, Reheuel thought he heard his own name, as if the fairies had begun to work him into their lore.
Geuel laughed and flicked some water droplets out into the crowd of fairies, scattering them in gales of tittering laughter. “Well, near-death and trauma hardly seem to have done them any harm,” he said.
Randiriel flicked her head dismissively. “They’re children. They’d bounce back from anything.”
Veil held out a hand to some of the nearer fairies, letting one tentatively alight on her fingertip. She opened her mouth in awe and tried to draw it closer. It shot away in a flash, laughing merrily over its shoulder. “Did you see that, Father?” Veil asked.
Reheuel nodded. “You have a gentle way, daughter,” he said, “they’ll trust you more easily than your brothers.”
Randiriel rolled her eyes at the departing fairy. “Flighty little thing,” she said. “You’ve got a fairy sitting on your shoulder too, you know.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the same,” Veil said.
“Would it help if I spun a cartwheel? Or chortled like a water sprite?” Randiriel asked.
“That’ll be the day,” Hefthon said.
Randiriel ignored him. “At least I’ve developed some dignity,” she said.
The city rose before them now, larger even than before, with crenelated, silver walls and buttressed towers capped by tear-shaped domes. Every building terminated in a slender spire, like the weening tip of a teardrop symbol. Most had squat, circular bases of varying width. Overall, the city gave the impression of a scattered field of giant tears striking a pool of water, each tear submerged to a different level. And, as before, its central square hung in a great arc over the waters of the Faeja, planted on either bank by great, silver causeways, suspended by diamond-colored cables that ran upward to a network of high arches.
In the sky over the city, great clockwork gears of solid light spun and gyrated in various fantastic designs, shifting the walls and tunnels of an ever-changing three-dimensional maze, a favorite plaything of the fairies.
Ariel stood on a pedestal at the head of a flight of steps that descended from the raised main gate. Her light was as healthy and clear as it had been on the first day she met them, and her scarlet dress shone brightly even in the midday sun. Only the shock of gray in her hair remained as a reminder of her ordeals.
“Welcome,” she said, waving a hand to her guests. “Please, let my people bring your horses to the stables and follow me inside. We have a banquet prepared in the keep.”
Reheuel and his family descended, and dozens of fairies flit to the horses’ bridles to lead them away, tugging softly and whistling to draw them along. Randiriel flew to Ariel’s pedestal and extended her hand. “Ariel,” she said.
Ariel smiled and took her hand. “Welcome, Rand. I’m glad you came.”
Randiriel nodded. “Then I’m welcome?” she asked.
“As a guest and as a friend, you shall never be turned away from these gates,” Ariel replied. “It is only as a citizen that you will no longer find a place.”
Just then the sound of a tin whistle began within the gate. Several others answered, and Ariel turned to her guests. “They’re bidding us to the table. Come, let us dine.”
They entered the gates as a group, and as they moved through the streets, hundreds of whistles all around the city joined the song. They echoed off the silver walls and amplified through the tiny tunnels that threaded the buildings. After a few minutes, it was impossible to tell where any of the music was coming from. It filled the air in an even blanket, echoes trundling after faded notes. As if the city itself were lifting its voice in song.
They entered the banquet hall and a thousand petals rained down around them, rose and bluebarrel, daisy and iris. A gentle breeze sifted in through the tiny holes that ringed the walls and stirred the flowers in the air, slowing their descent. Veil laughed and caught at them as they fell. Above them, hundreds of fairies circled, scattering the petals and sometimes chasing after them nearly as fast as they dropped them.
A great stone table stood in the center of the hall with high-backed silver chairs around it. The surface was carved in shallow strokes to form a full map of Rehavan, from the southern jungles to the northern wastes and the eastern shores to the western deserts. The table was set at a height for humans, but on top of it and covering half of its oval surface, a second table rose, a great diamond-wood ring just inches tall and lined with hundreds of tiny chairs on both its inner and outer edge. Ariel waved her guests to their seats and took her own place in a chair of woven golden wire at the higher table. To her left and right, the members of the council sat down.
Reheuel led his family to the table and drew out a chair for his wife. Randiriel ignored the fairy table and sat down cross-legged on the tabletop near the humans. After a few seconds, a flood of tiny forms came winging in through numerous doors and passages in the walls. They carried trays of berries and pastries between them, tiny cakes twice the size of their own bodies, baked with wild honey and fresh cream. Steady streams of grape juice and cinnamon-laced apple cider flowed down from unseen funnels in the ceiling, trickling down runners in the walls to collect in large basins carved into the backs of grotesque statues on the walls. Tiny sluices in the statues’ mouths opened to fill the diners’ goblets.
Ariel sat at the head of the table and watched as the humans ate and laughed, pointing to the different mechanisms with which the fairies managed their service: the nets to carry the pastries, slung between a dozen fairies; the miniature siege towers full of peaches; and the little wheelbarrows full of jellies and butter. None of them had ever tasted cinnamon before, or peaches. The meal passed in great joy.
“Tell me, Brylle, why did you help defend Gath Odrenoch?” Ariel asked, turning away from watching her guests to the fairy beside her.
“I didn’t defend Gath Odrenoch,” Brylle replied. “I defended our people.”
“But you were the only council member who fought. Why?”
“Because the pure ones cannot fight. I had to protect them.”
Ariel pointed across their table to where the humans were eating. “Watch,” she said. A troop of fairies were braiding Veil’s hair again, listening in rapt attention as she told them stories of her farm. Several others were teaching Tressa the words of a song. The lines of care and worry that had etched their way into her face since the battle were all melting away. Her eyes filled with a light unseen in months. Hefthon was kneeling beside the table and lecturing a group of fairies about the design their fruit cart. Geuel and Randiriel were discussing something more abstract to judge by their gestures, something far removed from the City of Youth. But even they sat a little more relaxed, smiled a little more readily, than they would have outside that city. Reheuel leant back in his chair, his hands folded behind his head, and simply watched as his family found a moment of bliss.
“Do you see it?” Ariel asked.
“Their happiness?” Brylle said uncertainly.
“You see the effects of innocence on this world,” Ariel said. “What you see is the reason that the Fairy City exists. It is a place of respite to bless those who know toil and pain. A sight of innocence for a breaking world.”
“It’s beautiful,” Brylle said.
“Would you die for it?” Ariel asked.
Brylle paused, surprised at the suddenness of the question. “Yes, I suppose I would,” she said.
Ariel smiled sadly. “So would
I,” she said, “and someday I will. When that happens, I want you to take my place.”
Brylle laughed. “You’ll outlive us all,” she said. “A thousand years ago, you were already an ancient story.”
Ariel nodded. “Yes, but after today, my days are numbered. Perhaps millennia, perhaps just decades, but my hour-glass is about to finally tip, to begin its run toward the end.”
Brylle’s smile faded. “What do you mean?”
“I used to think it beautiful how men could live in the shadow of their deaths. Today, for the first time, I will begin to understand it. Today I shed my immortality. Nothing lasts forever.”
Ariel rose then before Brylle could speak and tapped her knife against her crystal goblet. Instantly, the hundreds of fairies scattered across the hall stilled themselves and grew silent. Reheuel stood and looked questioningly at Ariel.
She smiled at him. “Reheuel,” she said, “you have done my people a great service, one that we could never truly repay. However, I promised Geuel that his father’s courage would not go wholly unrewarded. So, today, I wish to present you with a gift, something that humanity has always desired.”
She beckoned forward a group of fairies who hovered in the main doorway and flew down to the center of the table where Reheuel and his family sat. A few dozen fairies immediately cleared off the table, and the fairies in the doorway flew forward, lowering a cloth-wrapped bundle at Ariel’s feet.
From the cloth, Ariel slid her Tear. It shone brilliantly in the light of the fairies gathered there, seeming to reflect each of their lights uniquely in its crystal shell. “If you would all stand still,” Ariel said, “I would be grateful.”
She knelt down and pressed one hand firmly on the Tear, extending the other directly toward Reheuel’s chest. Her body trembled with a surge of energy, and the Tear blazed. Her arm grew translucent in the light of the Tear and then filled with its own extreme energy, turning white and then disappearing in a pillar of blinding light. Her body flashed, her head snapped backwards, and a great column of light shot from her extended hand to strike Reheuel’s chest. There was no impact as it struck, just a fantastic, vibrant glow that spread through his body and then dissipated through his face and fingertips.