The frail druid—the oldest goliath Gargan had ever known—knelt beside her, without fear as ever, and seized the Foxdaughter’s jaw. The elf clawed, but Mehvenne pushed her fingers away firmly but gently, as one might discipline a wayward wolf pup.
The elf gagged on the liquid the druid forced down her throat. It worked quickly, and her struggles slackened. Finally, the tent was silent and she slept peacefully.
Gargan had learned his herbcraft at Mehvenne’s feet, and even the rudiments of healing from her, but he was still impressed at the power of her potions and poultices.
“Demons of the flesh,” Mehvenne said, still not looking at Gargan, “and demons of the blood or heart. We can fight these. But demons of the mind and soul, we cannot.”
Gargan did not pretend to understand the minds and spirits of elves, but he knew what she had endured in those depths. She had been right about a traitor in their midst. Gargan had never trusted any of the companions, but he’d given Liet the most faith.
Liet and Slip.
Gargan felt a twinge of regret for the little one, but the demands of fate outweighed those of friendship. He reminded himself of that looking at the shuddering, moaning elf who lay in agony on the furs and hides.
He stepped forward and the attending goliaths turned away. He did not blame them. If they acknowledged his silent existence, they would soon share it. As he took the elf’s hand, only Mehvenne’s eyes traced his square features—a tribute to her station in the tribe—but even she said nothing.
“Come back, little fox,” he said in Common. “Wake.”
Then the tent filled with a new sound, one that prompted hands to dart to crude hilts of stone weapons. Laughter.
The elf’s lips curled back. “We have found her, monster,” her voice said, with words that were not hers. “She will be ours soon.”
An unholy chill flared from beneath her pale skin, shaking Gargan like a jolt of lightning. He fell, stunned, listening as maniacal laughter filled the tent for a long, painful breath. Then Twilight arched, her muscles snapping, and collapsed limply.
Finally shaking the shock out of his head, Gargan looked at the star sapphire in Mehvenne’s ochre hands. “The Shroud,” he said, realizing. “Gestal.”
Then he thought he heard a soft little laugh, but it was not that of Foxdaughter, nor was it that of Gestal. Gargan looked around, but no one was there.
“’Light!” Liet screamed. “Help me! ’Light!”
Demons pulled him down into an abyss from which flames arose. Putrid corruption spread over his body, slowly at first, but faster as the fiends bore him away.
She cried out, but could not hear herself over the cacophony.
Snarling lizardlike demons surged around Liet’s receding body, clawing and pawing at their new foe, barbed tongues licking and rending the putrid air.
Betrayal drawn, the elf-without-a-name slashed and stabbed, cut and lunged, all to no avail. The eldritch steel, its gray burned to white, bit into demon after demon, felling them as a scythe cuts wheat, but they kept coming—hordes of the fiends. She sensed them all around her and danced and dodged, trying to fight them all off.
She could not. “No!” she tried to scream, but she had no voice.
Then a single serpentine form rose from the darkness, towering over the other fiends. Its two baboon heads loomed over her, snickering and yowling at one another. The nameless elf cowered, her body locked in place by the awesome power that dripped from the demon lord. “Demogorgon!” shouted the fiends. “Demogorgon!”
Then the two heads had faces, and they were the same scarred, twisted, beautiful visage: Gestal.
“I see you,” he rasped. “You cannot hide.”
The nameless elf tore her gaze away, but everywhere she looked, there he was. Every demon wore Gestal’s laughing face, Gestal’s burning eyes, Gestal’s broken grin.
“Shadows cannot hide you,” the faces said. “We know your lies.”
Gestal surrounded her, his madness beating at every corner of her will.
“No,” she growled. “No!” The demons surged around her, and she slashed, tore, and cut, but there were so many—too many. She slashed at them and ran them through again and again, but they kept coming. Claws tore and rent her clothes.
“You fear,” they all said, out of bleeding mouths and broken jaws. “You fear being stripped of your shadows—fear being nothing—fear knowing your lies for lies.”
“They’re not lies!” she lied. The claws and fire tore at her clothes—her flesh froze, even though the flames rose and rose around her.
Claws wrenched the gray rapier from her hand and they caught fire. Their blackness burned away before her eyes, stripped and peeled like thick paint on a flawed canvas. White gleamed underneath—white like bone—and she screamed and shut her eyes. The darkness was not an escape—the demons followed her.
“You’re alone,” they said. “A lonely child—a fool child. A child.”
“I’m not a child!” she lied. She staggered and finally knelt, exhausted, naked, and surrounded. “I’m telling the truth!”
“No, you’re not,” a familiar voice said. “You are nothing alone—without your steel, without your lies. Nothing.”
Then a loving, gentle hand—Liet’s hand, she thought—reached out of the chaos.
Against all her instincts, against the demand of her will, gods help her, she wanted to take it—needed desperately to take it. She needed to let her mind go, let her heart take her fully, let the dream become her world.
“Come with me,” Liet’s voice whispered. He was there, welcoming, inviting. “Run—leave your pain and your lies. Accept what you are.”
They were all gone. Every man or woman she had loved. Her father, Nymlin, Neveren—all of the hundred or so creatures she had loved were dead. Lilten had abandoned her. Liet was gone. She had no one to call upon.
“Where are you wandering?” Liet smiled so sweetly. “Come. Walk with me.”
She reached out to take Liet’s hand.
Then there was a sound, from somewhere in the depths of madness roiling around them, somewhere beyond the gray emptiness that stretched forever.
A child’s laugh.
Reality shifted, the nameless elf hesitated, and an olive-skinned hand reached out and slapped his hands away.
And Ilira, for she remembered that Ilira was her name, screamed.
The elf woke, lying on her stomach, into silence.
There was nothing in the world but stillness and herself. It was a pregnant silence, so tangible a sharp knife could shave off a bit to keep locked in a box, and so inexplicably sad that it could only live in a lady’s heart. One arm pillowed her chin, the other hung at her side. A whisper of breath tickled the small hairs across her exposed back. She did not know if the dream had ended, or if it endured.
Twilight felt a presence and she froze. Slowly, as though any tiny shift would lead to horror or pain, she looked at the plain-faced elf she somehow knew knelt there.
Any Tel’Quessir who looked upon him would see a face like a reflection, but an elflord’s face all the same. A moon elf would see pale skin and midnight hair, a sun elf bronze flesh and a golden mane. The skin would seem copper to a wood elf, aquamarine to a sea elf, deep brown to a wild elf. He would be so unremarkable as to be extraordinary—neither handsome nor ugly, old nor young.
But Twilight saw something different. She saw herself, stripped of her lies and fabrications—naked, alone, and helpless—and she saw him.
Fingers traced the sunburst tattoo at the base of her spine in a way that sent chills through her body. Whether it was a sensitive spot or something else, she did not know. In the other hand, he dangled her amulet—the Shroud.
He smiled, and she felt something like courage.
“I …” Twilight pursed her lips. “Are you … are you who I think you are?”
No reply.
“You are.”
The smile widened a little, as though its owner laughed
at a jest she had made.
“I see.” Twilight shifted. She realized that the touch on her back was much more soothing than she imagined it could be. “I … I’m sorry for all the … all the lies I’ve told … about you.” She bit her lip. “About me.”
Then his eyes danced with laughter and turned away. His face slipped so subtly the elf barely noticed. His fingers tapped a rhythm on her spine and he rose to leave.
“One … one question?”
He paused and the eyes went to hers. The irises shifted, like a rainbow—red and blue and green and gold.
“When I wake … will those lies be true?” she asked. “Are you you, or just me?”
He grinned and held up two fingers, which he used to close her eyes. In that darkness, he kissed her on the throat, and the world turned only for her.
Breathless, Twilight opened her eyes, but he was gone. The star sapphire gleamed against the pale skin of her breastbone.
She let blessed darkness come, and wondered if she would find Reverie.
It occurred to Twilight that she might have asked if he loved her.
Foxdaughter lay unmoving on her back, eyes wide but empty. The black blanket contrasted sharply with skin paler than the whitest Gargan had ever seen on a living being. The amulet sparkling on her chest did not seem to rise and fall.
“I wonder why it sits by her,” Mehvenne said to the tent walls. “She is not dead, but neither does she live. She is lost.”
“She dreams,” Gargan said. He could not speak the tongue of the goliaths in that place, for a watcher might think he broke the laws.
Mehvenne inspected the back of her hand. “It fools itself,” she said. “All my herbs and potions are for naught. The elf-child will die.”
Gargan shook his head. There was nothing that would dissuade him.
“I did not agree with the tribe’s decision,” Mehvenne said to her pots as she stirred two at once. Her emerald stripes sparkled in the half light of the rothé candles.
“Not their decision,” Gargan whispered, inaudible outside the tent. “Mine.”
That caught Mehvenne’s attention, and she turned ruby eyes on him. Gargan felt something in the air strain, as though it would break.
Then she looked away and it returned. The distance between them that would always remain—would remain between Gargan and any goliath—until the day he died.
“The Stoneslayer lost his way, and thus he became the Dispossessed,” Mehvenne said. “He is blind. This is not his destiny, no matter what he believes. Not this doe.”
“Fox,” Gargan corrected. “She is the fox.”
Then the elf squeezed his hand.
Gargan looked at the soft skin stretched over delicate features. Her eyes blinked—red-rimmed, shot with blood, oozing tears, but alive. Mehvenne took a step back, startled and ready with a spell should she need to fight a demon.
But the next sound Foxdaughter emitted was a simple sigh.
“Gys sa salen,” she murmured, bringing one dainty hand to her forehead.
Gargan hardly spoke the Common tongue, much less Elvish. He wondered if his heavy mouth could even form such dainty syllables. But he, like all goliaths, was a student of body language and expression. Even though he did not catch the exact meaning of her words, he understood her basic desire.
As did Mehvenne, who knelt and offered the water bowl to Foxdaughter.
“No, my good lady,” she sighed. “Not that kind of drink.”
The druid furrowed her brow, almost looking at Gargan before she caught herself. Gargan could only blink and look down at Foxdaughter blankly.
“What was”—the elf paused—“that game … I saw?”
Gargan felt a smile tugging at his mouth. He squeezed her hand. “Kukanath kuth,” he said. Then he remembered that she wore no earring, so he exercised the few words he knew in the trade tongue. “Goat ball.”
The elf smiled, and it was the most reassuring thing Gargan had ever seen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
As their escorts led the pair into the desert, the sheer size of the goliaths struck Twilight once more. Even standing at about seven feet tall, Gargan seemed stunted and short beside his clan brothers. There was a certain feral strength and speed about him, though—rage tempered by the wisdom that shone in his emerald eyes, and it was this that convinced Twilight he was the most dangerous of all.
And it was part of what had led her to doubt the goliath, Twilight remembered with a pang of guilt. Well, no more of that.
They had stayed at the goliath camp for six days—three that Twilight had slept, three more that she had taken to recover. The poultices and chants had done wonders for her damaged bones and bruised hide, though she could not shake the soreness, regardless of how much walking and stretching she had done. She had spent those days as an observer in the goliath camp, watching the simple joys they took in boasts and tales, the artisans at their trade, and racers leaping the crags. She’d sat with storytellers, weaved necklaces and baskets, and learned some of the songs. She wore several goliath earrings, now, and they’d bound her hair with bone combs.
The goliaths knew peace, and Twilight wished she could be part of it, perhaps forever. But she had left many tasks undone in her life, and it was her lot—her purpose in this world—to see them done. There were many wrongs to be righted, many friends to be avenged. Asson, Taslin, Slip, Liet …
Gestal.
During her time in the encampment—after the dreams—Gargan had scarcely left Twilight’s bedside, nor had the Shroud left her neck. The farthest he had gone from her had been to the tent flap, to sit cross-legged without, keeping watch. After that, he had been as her shadow, staying beside her at all times.
Twilight did not know if he had remained so near because of some sense of companionship, or if he was simply trying to remain within the protection of her amulet. She figured it was the latter. After all, the goliath had showed no real warmth toward her—they were as survivors of a shipwreck, joined by fate rather than blood or desire.
Why was he following her back into the depths? She had to go, but why him?
On the other hand, what proof did she have that he wasn’t a traitor, like Liet had been—unknowingly, even? Perhaps her old suspicions of the goliath was true.
Ultimately, it did not matter.
Twilight hardly cared whether her suspicion was true, or whether her mistrust hurt Gargan. It was cruel, but all she could think of were Liet and Gestal—two very different people in her mind, though they were the same man. She would give them peace, though she wondered if her current path was madness as deep as theirs.
Not that it matters, she thought, though she wondered if she lied.
As though he sensed her uncertainty, Gargan laid a stony hand on Twilight’s shoulder. Some of the tension flowed from her.
“We go,” one of the four escorts said to Twilight.
Taslin’s earring, dangling from her left lobe alongside three new silver rings with colored stones, translated the words, though she fancied that the few days she had spent among the goliaths had taught her enough to understand. That this was cursed ground went unsaid, but she caught hints of it in their bodies. There was regret in their voices, but only a touch.
The goliaths purposefully ignored Gargan, bowed to Twilight, and turned, never to look back. Twilight knew the goliath would not talk to his clan brothers—ever. The escorts walked one way, toward the desert mountains, and the elf and her companion went the other, into a wide expanse edged with rock pillars and broken crags.
“Why do they treat you so?” she asked as the escorts vanished over a dune.
“Exile,” Gargan said. His syntax was simple: declarative and efficient. “I am dead.”
That made Twilight smile in helpless sympathy. Perhaps she and the goliath had more in common than she had thought.
She gestured to the red markings that patterned his flesh. “What do they mean?”
“My destiny,” Gargan said. “My flesh is
the parchment.”
That made Twilight blink. “You have tried to read it?”
Gargan shrugged. “That is why—part of the why, not the whole why.”
“But you know what they say.”
The goliath nodded. “Follow the fox with the white claw,” he said. “My destiny.”
Twilight had nothing to say to that.
She spent some time within herself. Her hip felt light without a sword. Betrayal lay somewhere in those caves—lost in the confrontation. She had to get in, elude discovery long enough to recover the weapon, find Liet, then somehow defeat Gestal.
She wondered, abstractly, how she would do all these things. She wondered about Gargan. She wondered what had become of Slip. She wondered about her dreams.
The one thing she knew for certain was what she had to do.
“We arrive,” Gargan said at last.
They had come to the center of a grove of stone trees two spearcasts in width—the Plain of Standing Stones, Twilight recalled, if her geography was correct. Gargan knelt in the sand and put his ear to the ground as though listening for approaching pursuit. Twilight knew better than to disturb him.
“His magic covered the hole,” Gargan said. “I will find the cave I entered first.”
The elf agreed, though she knew it could not fail to be a trap.
“There,” Gargan said. “This sand is shallow. Whispers.”
Twilight shivered. Whispers beneath the ground.
He pointed.
They walked to the nearest of the stone pillars and searched its base. Sure enough, between two boulders they found an opening just large enough for a goliath to squeeze through—or a fiend-stitched troll, perhaps.
“You are the stronger in a fair fight, but we will not fight fairly,” she said.
He growled in his throat. “We fight without honor?”
“Best to eschew honor, when our foe can defeat both of us at once.”
Gargan finally nodded. He put a hand to his sword hilt. “Wait,” said Twilight, motioning Gargan to stop. “I have a plan.”
Depths of Madness Page 27