Chapter 17. The Living and the Dead
A lake lies east in the forest now,
a vast and silent lake,
and some shelts say
they fish every day
where dark things sleep and never wake.
—Wood faun nursery rhyme
Daren turned as quick as a hawk, but he still barely parried the sword that whisked past his ear. Char’s skill had improved with practice. However, skill alone could not have kept him alive against one of the greatest swordfighters in Panamindorah. Daren was frankly astonished to find himself fighting a fealidae, and it took him some moments to recover.
Char used those moments to maximum advantage. He struck hard and fast and managed to catch Daren across the ribs on a backswing. “You are everything I hate about the world,” panted Char as he watched the dark stain spreading across Daren’s tunic. “But the Creator must have some sense of justice, because he’s given me a chance to kill you.”
Daren managed a sneer. “Do I know you?”
Char launched himself at the swamp faun again. Round and round they went in the open tower room against the backdrop of Laven-lay in flames. “Slave,” grunted Daren. “I don’t know how you got here, but you’re still just a beast of burden. The wood fauns will see that soon enough.”
He was fighting to kill. Char saw it and smiled. “Where has your play gone, your lordship? Are you afraid that if you wait to toy with me, I will kill you instead?”
Daren cursed. He was far past exhilaration. The shock of finding Char here was affecting him badly. “Do you know where I sent your sister’s pelt?” he taunted. “I sent her to Port Ory to be sold at market during Lupricasia. Do you consider the cliff fauns your friends? I wonder which of them is wearing her right now.”
Char lunged at Daren and drove him backwards almost through the low window. For one second Daren worried that he had pushed it too far. But no. In close quarters he was able to catch Char’s blade, snap it away, and send it spinning into the air beyond the tower. His confidence instantly restored, Daren whirled to pin Char against the wall beside the window. “You fool. Did you really think you could kill me? Work and clothing—that’s all your kind are good for.”
“My name is Char, and I am a cat shelt. You may kill me, but you can’t kill that knowledge in the hundreds of fealidae who tore apart your armies in Port Ory and Danda-lay. They’ll do the same to your army in Laven-lay. Your queen is dead, and your cause is lost.”
Daren stared at him. “Fealidae,” he spat. “Cats are nothing, less than nothing. Stupid beasts that need a rope around their necks and a faun to tell them what to do.”
BOOM! The door to the room flew open. Capricia was standing there in the green and purple robes she wore when presiding as judge of the royal court. She looked down her nose at Daren. “Your fauns are causing a disturbance in my city, sir, and you are causing a disturbance in my study. You do not have my permission to be here, nor do you have my protection.”
Daren made a little bow. “I will be happy to speak with you in a moment, lady. I might even offer you protection from my guard, several of whom were speaking wistfully of your supposed absence.”
Capricia sniffed. “I am not in need of your protection. You are in need of mine.” At that moment, a huge white tiger pushed around her through the doorway. Lexis growled. “As you can see,” continued Capricia, “I do not have a rope around his neck, nor do I intend to tell him what to do.”
Daren started to bring his sword around, but Char punched it from his grasp. There was a brief struggle and then a scream as Lexis picked Daren up, shook him as a dog shakes a squirrel, and then flung him from the window.
* * * *
Everything seemed to be happening at once as Corry came up out of the dry pool with the Durian wolves. They were all shouting and yipping. He came around the tree just in time to see Dance in the act of springing at Targon. The centaur had turned towards Archemais with an expression of pure rage, but before he could do anything Dance landed on his back, and his teeth closed on the fragile centaur neck. Targon reared, bellowed, and then his form sprang out.
In the same instant, Corry heard his father shouting, “Mercurion, get out of here! Go tell the centaurs what they have followed. Run!”
Where Targon had recently stood, there crouched a great red dragon. He was as tall as the fig tree, with sagging naked scales and horned head. He flung Dance from his shoulders as a horse might fling off a kitten. Sandarin made a terrified rush for the door, but the dragon’s head snaked out and caught him around the human torso. He expired with a crunch and a hideous scream.
Mercurion was very pale, but he had not moved. “So,” he said. “Now you will begin killing us. Is this the culmination of your great plan?”
“Archemais has found a way to destroy my city,” hissed Gabalon. “Very well. We will retreat. In the meantime, my enemies will pay dearly for this day’s work.”
“We will retreat?” echoed Mercurion. “What makes you think the centaurs will follow you from here?”
“They will follow me because I am their king,” snarled Gabalon, “and because no one will tell them otherwise.” His jaws flashed out and closed around Mercurion, bearing him to the ground. Corry saw a gout of blood and thought that Gabalon had killed him. Then Gabalon froze. He released his prey and raised his head, shook it as though troubled by a fly. Mercurion moved weakly on the ground. Gabalon’s head shot towards him again, then veered away. He began to whine low in his throat—a sound of anger and pain. He took a step back, now shaking his head violently.
His form flickered wildly—now a dragon, now a centaur, now a man, now a creature with one head, now with two. He was growling and talking and whimpering all at the same time, and Corry thought for a moment that he had two voices and that they were arguing with each other.
I’m supposed to do something. Corry looked for Archemais and found him, standing well back against the fig tree. “Father! The Firebird said to tell you that you made your own prison. He said to tell you to try again.” And he said that he misses you. He said that, too.
Archemais whipped around, saw Corry, and smiled in a way that Corry didn’t think he’d smiled in a long time. I found the way out of my prison, he thought, now perhaps you can find the way out of yours.
The ground shook, and suddenly all the glass in all the mirrors exploded. A jet of water shot out of the ground near the roots of the tree. It hit Gabalon’s writhing form and seemed to shock him for a moment into stillness. He was a dragon, though a smaller and uglier one. “You!” he bawled at Archemais. “This is all your doing!”
He pounced, but before he could close the distance, Archemais shifted.
* * * *
In the cold, airless blackness, Fenrah held her breath and counted the brief stops of the rotating fireplaces. One...two...three. Huali didn’t think it was more than six. Halfway. Maybe. Four. Got to breathe. Hurts. Hurts. Laylan’s hand feels like a corpse. So cold. Got to breathe. Five. Fenrah wanted to open her eyes, though she knew it wouldn’t help. There was probably soot in the water.
CLUNK. The fireplace ground to a halt. Out of the blackness came an ominous shrieking, as of metal on metal. Something has wedged in one of the lower buckets, or perhaps one of the rooms has collapsed. It could be anything. Panic rose in her gut. They’d stopped between rooms, so they couldn’t even try to swim out. They were trapped in a tiny box deep underground and underwater. Stupidly, she remembered something Sevn had said once, “The wizards built their machines to last for a long time.”
Not long enough!
* * * *
Archemais reached for his true shape and found it. He knew even before the world came back into focus that he was a snake no longer. He was a dragon and not a naked scaly beast, but a dragon clothed in feathers of deep bronze. Gabalon struck at him, but he was awkward and off balance. He didn’t seem able to hold his shape properly.
Thank you, Targon, thought Archemais. I’ll put y
ou out of your misery now. He opened his mouth and breathed a sheet of flame. The creature that was mostly Gabalon screamed, twisting in the ball of fire. A yawning crack had opened across the floor of Gabalon’s throne room. The tree appeared to be sinking. All the wolves had fled. Even Mercurion had staggered to his feet and limped through the open door.
Archemais took one last look at Gabalon’s shrinking form. Then, as the walls began to collapse, he scooped up Corry, and they flew up and out of the sinking castle.
* * * *
Fenrah could feel Hualien and Laylan moving around her in the darkness, pounding at the walls, frantic to find something that would start the fireplace moving again. She had just begun to let out her breath in a stream of slow bubbles when, with a great grinding, the fireplace burst upwards and then...light! It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
They all washed out of the fireplace onto an uneven floor. Masonry was groaning all around them, splashing down into the waste-deep water. Laylan stood up with a giddy whoop. He picked Fenrah up and spun her around. She was still laughing when he set her on the windowsill, which was just above the water and the only surviving exit from the room. “Let’s get out of here.”
Hualien clambered up beside her, muttering something about how he was having to swim, but no one had bothered to pick him up. They climbed out the window into a hallway, found some stairs, and managed to reach a courtyard that was only ankle deep. “We’ll have to swim to get out, though,” said Fenrah. “We’re in the castle, and it’s the highest point. If it’s flooding, quite a bit of Selbis must be—” Fenrah stopped, staring at something black under the shadow of the portico ahead. “Oh, no.” She broke into a splashing run. “Oh no, no, no...”
The black mound was Dance. Fenrah knelt, trembling, in the crimson water beside him. The spear wound in his chest had been re-opened by some tremendous blow, making a pulpy mess of his chest. His eyes were glassy, his paws cold. The sight made Fenrah think of Sevn and how she would never see him again, and now Dance, and it was too much. She buried her face in his fur and cried like a puppy.
She could hear Hualien keening, whispering the strange chant she’d heard him say a few times before—a rat shelt’s memorial for the dead. She could sense Laylan standing behind her. She was sure he was about to tell her they needed to leave. You tried to kill him, too. Go away. I don’t want you here right now.
“If I had been a moment sooner,” she whispered, “I might have said good-bye.”
“You did say good-bye.” She looked up and found that Laylan had crouched down across from her. “You said good-bye every time you left.”
“He’s gone, lady,” said a voice behind them, “but it’s what he wanted.”
Fenrah looked around. She saw a gray wolf, as big as Dance. “He was a good king,” continued the wolf, “and he has surely found his way to the wood beyond the worlds. Don’t cry now, for the battle is won.”
“Who are you?” whispered Fenrah.
“We are what is left of the Durian wolves, mistress, the ones trapped in the mirrors. Someone broke the lock on our cage. Come, Selbis is disintegrating, and we can carry you out.”
Chapter 18. Postlude
In the end we all get what we chose in the beginning.
—Archemais, Treason and Truth
Voices echoed softly in gaily lit courtyards at dusk in Danda-lay. Shelts and animals were eating and drinking and talking. It was a sort of victory party, “because we never finished Lupricasia,” Meuril had said, but it was not like any Lupricasia anyone remembered. No fauns danced in the streets, and most of the merchants were silently handing out their remaining wares for free. Shelts held their families close in their ravaged homes, and they welcomed their neighbors who had no homes left. They mourned those they had lost, but they ate well and they hung their brightly colored lanterns, and everyone felt that it was the right thing to do.
Three days had passed since Selbis disappeared beneath a lake, which was purportedly still growing. Most of the wounded were in Laven-lay in the care of competent wolfling healers. More than half of the city had burned, and some fifty fauns had lost their lives in Daren’s attack. Nearly a quarter of the fauns who’d fought at Selbis were dead and more than half the centaurs had either drowned or been killed.
Something else had died as well—faith in the sameness of things. Panamindorah’s social and political landscape had undergone rapid and violent change, leaving its leaders perplexed. Two new nations had emerged overnight, and two more had plummeted to occupied status.
Canisaria was officially on the map again for the first time in twenty years, and the wolflings had a lot of work ahead. The fealidae were free, but most of the population didn’t know it yet or hadn’t grasped the implications. The victors were still trying to decide what to do with the surviving centaur and swamp faun soldiers. At present, Danda-lay’s dungeons were crowded.
In the cool evening air, a small group of shelts and animals were chatting in a palace courtyard. Meuril stood with his daughter, listening to Chance and Sham give a detailed version of how the wolflings in Laven-lay had been persuaded to help hunt down swamp fauns and put out fires. They and a handful of fealidae had been largely responsible for saving what was left of the city.
Laylan and Shyshax were listening to a Durian wolf talking about his years of imprisonment in the mirrors and of some of the things he’d witnessed in old Selbis. “Do you know how you got out?” asked Laylan.
The wolf frowned. “I thought perhaps the prophet’s son did it. He was there. He led the way.”
Laylan shook his head. “Did they tell you how Fenrah, Hualien, Sevn, and I started the flood?”
“Yes,” said the wolf, “shelts say you went down into the roots of the earth, that you saw wonders, that you visited Glacia and spoke with the Architects.”
Shyshax rolled his eyes. “I think they all went down there and hit their heads in the dark. Laylan keeps trying to explain it to me, and it makes less sense every time.”
Laylan smiled. “It’s very strange, and I don’t pretend to understand completely. I think that everything in Glacia corresponds to something here. Only ‘corresponds’ isn’t the right word. Objects in Glacia don’t represent things here. They are the things—the real things. Sevn—the wolfling who stayed behind—broke the lock on a glass case full of little ice wolves, and I’m certain that was your prison. He let you out.”
“Ah.” The wolf thought for a moment. “We shall sing for him, then, when we sing for those who died. Perhaps he will hear it in Glacia, where all true things have a form and a name.”
At that moment a group of cats came gliding out of the palace, including Lexis and Leesha, accompanied by a number of fealidae. Queen Istra was trailing behind them. She approached Meuril. “Your majesty, I would speak with you a moment.”
“Very well.” Meuril put an arm around her shoulders. “I have seen little of you these last years, and that is unfortunate. I remember you visited often when Natalia was alive. Come, we will talk.”
“Char?” asked Sham uncertainly. He had seen the fealidae once or twice, but not yet spoken to him. “Some of us were wondering if a certain rumor is true.”
“Oh?” Char was walking arm in arm with a lovely female fealidae. She had crimson spotted fur and bright green slitted eyes. She was holding a young fealidae asleep in the crook of one arm, and two more were trailing after. One of them kept reaching curiously for Leesha’s tail, which Leesha jerked away with an annoyed growl.
Char smiled. “You want to know what happened to Daren?” he asked.
“Yes.” Chance came strolling over. “We heard that you...”
Char reached into his satchel and took out a roll of something dark and wet.
Sham started to laugh. “Well, I suppose that’s appropriate.”
“I intend to swaddle our next child in his pelt,” said Char pleasantly. “Or perhaps I’ll make a hat for one of the youngsters. I haven’t decided.”
/> “He’s been working on it all day,” complained Crimson. “It’s messy.”
“You have to flesh them properly,” said Char. “They taught us to do these things right in block seventeen.”
“Shyshax,” rumbled Lexis. “Exactly the cat I was looking for.”
Shyshax smiled madly and took a step back. “I didn’t do it.”
“Didn’t do what?”
Laylan looked around. “Yes, what?”
“Whatever it is you’re about to accuse me of.”
“I was about to ask you to sit on the next council meeting while we decide what to do about the cheetahs.”
Shyshax looked down at his paws. “Lexis, I don’t know much about cheetahs. I don’t really want to sit on the Filinian council.”
Lexis cocked his head. “That’s your choice. May I ask why?”
Laylan coughed. “Nervous of cats.”
“I’m not nervous,” said Shyshax with gravity, “just slightly allergic.”
Lexis gave a purring laugh. “Well, think about it.”
Capricia walked over to Lexis. She leaned forward and whispered something in his ear.
“Ahhh.” Lexis rose. “Excuse me.”
* * * *
Istra clenched her teeth on her tears as she walked back to her rooms. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.
She met Jubal coming from his office and stopped beside him. “You should go,” she said. They both knew what she meant. Go somewhere far away. Kings are not mocked. Shadock will have his revenge.
Jubal shook his head. “My place is here. This is my city.”
The Prophet of Panamindorah - Complete Trilogy Page 48