Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 01]

by Glenraven (v1. 5) (html)

  One part of her mind, drolly amused, noted that it would be harder to trip that way. The rest, though, focused on keeping quiet, making no sound. She knew, without knowing how she knew, that she headed into terrible danger. Toward death. And yet she could not turn back. She was going where she had to go.

  The lights spun and swirled, fanned out in a thousand directions at once like a chrysanthemum rocket on the Fourth of July, and she moved to a place where darkness met twilight.

  Everything is twilight around here, even in my dreams, she thought, annoyed. You would think in my dreams I could at least manage better lighting. A bright hot golden sun. Summer breezes. If I have to walk into trouble, why can't I do it in the sunshine?

  But the purple haze remained, and she realized that at least she could see well in it. She found herself in a beautiful grove where the trunks of trees were stone carved by a genius; they curved up to arch against the ceiling, where leaves of silver and gold hung in strands on tiny wires and chimed with every passing breeze. Ahead of her, through that stone forest, shapes moved toward a dull yellow light. She followed them, keeping herself behind the trees, sliding forward almost afraid to breathe.

  As she drew closer, her fear grew. The light came from a ball of clear crystal that sat atop a short carved tripod of some dark, glossy wood. She would have been unimpressed; after all, how thrilling could a lightbulb be? But she felt power radiate from that crystal sphere. She knew with inexplicable certainty that the light it gave off represented nothing but an irrelevant by-product of enormous and ancient magic. She didn't know how she was so sure of this. She felt she could almost see the artifact's age, as if it radiated the weight of time along with its cold white light.

  Its light reflected off faces and forms—creatures at home in the realm of nightmare—gathering around it. Tiny fang-mouthed fliers with bat wings and women's bodies fluttered and laughed, swirling in elegant silks at odds with their black wings and death-white faces. Theirs was the laughter Jayjay had thought so childish. They flew with the hunters, she realized. I thought they were a sort of split-tailed bat. Beasts with lean greyhound muzzles, curling, tufted ears and close-set almost-human eyes sat talking to each other, their voices deep and rough. They too wore clothing of a sort; leather harnesses hung with tools and weapons. She recognized their appearance. They were of the same species as the unidentified heads that had hung on the walls of Wethquerin Zearn. But she also recognized their bodies and their voices; they were the almost-dogs that had hunted through the woods with her "rescuers." Warrags. Like Grah. Not dogs, not wolves—something else entirely. She stared at their hands, long-fingered, coarse-jointed and claw-tipped; hands designed with thick, hard palms made to be run on and with fingers so double-jointed they looked like the legs of particularly hairy tarantulas, fingers that stuck up and arched out above those thick dog-pad palms.

  "Oh, let's go out and save some more Machnan," one of them said, and laughed at its companion.

  "Shall we save them? Shall we, Grah? I'll save mine for lunch if you'll save yours for dinner," the other one answered, gravel-voiced. Both laughed wickedly.

  Jay felt that chill of fear run through her again. That was Grah—the one who had found her and caught her, who had played with her like prey. She didn't like Grah.

  With a shiver, she turned her attention elsewhere. The giant, lumpish monstrosity she had mistaken for a pile of rocks leaned against one of the tree pillars at the outside edge of the circle of light, its eyes blood-bright and hungry. Rhinoceros-hided, hideously wrinkled, it grinned with rows of shark teeth. Incongruously, it wore a glorious gown of velvet, embroidered with gold and silver, glittering with gems.

  Other, more terrifying creatures lurked beside it at the edge of the light, whispering in the shadows. Scaled or furred or slick with slime, dressed in beautiful raiment, like sycophants from the court of a medieval king transformed by a psychopath's nightmare, they all had in common that they frightened Jay. Their whispers made her think of fingernails on a blackboard, of stepping on a grave at midnight, of everything she had ever seen out of the corner of an eye that vanished when she looked for it again. They scared her worse than anything she'd feared as a child, worse than the worst nightmare she'd ever had.

  A man stepped out from among the most terrifying of them and moved within the circle of light, and the joking and laughing stopped. But no, he wasn't a man after all. His eyes were pale blue-gray, gold-kissed; his sharp, straight nose stood out boldly above a perfect mouth, a mouth with lips arched at the center, curled upward at the corners. His golden hair, close-cropped, gleamed like precious metal above his high brow. He radiated a sexual appeal so compelling Jayjay found herself walking toward him before she managed to stop herself and hide behind the trees. His very presence called to her; seeing him, she wanted him, and didn't know how she could be so sure he was what she wanted. Seeing him, she wanted to touch him, to taste him, to feel him touch her.

  But he smiled, and when he smiled, Jayjay saw long, sharp canines. And when he reached out and put one hand on the top of the sphere of light, she noted that his fingers were tipped with retractable claws. Her desire burned undiminished, but now fear curled beside it.

  "Matthiall," Grah said, "why did you not let us devour them?"

  Matthiall? What game was her mind playing on her? She had walked beside him in the darkness for hours. Beside him. Him. She had never felt anything but that he was human. Human…but whatever this thing was, she could see he was not human. It's a dream, she told herself. Oh. Silly of me. I'm dreaming.

  But it was a good dream. Seeing him took her breath away. He…man, male, magical golden creature…turned to look at the beast, and she realized his ears peaked slightly. Neat, small ears, perfectly formed, but pointed. "I am curious," Matthiall said in a velvet voice that gave her goose bumps. "They do not belong here…and yet they do. I sense things about them that touch on old magic, but how can this be?"

  Grah lifted one lip in a snarl. "I thought you had decided they weren't Aidris Akalan's precious magicians. I thought you believed the bitch's future killers were still free." It chuckled—that same rough sound Jayjay had heard before. "I thought you were going to give these two Machnan to me to eat."

  Matthiall shrugged. "I told you that when Bewul was listening, Grah. I don't know what they are. They aren't wizards. But they're something. They're something…impossible." He sighed and frowned, staring straight at Jay, straight through her. "I simply don't know what."

  "If they're dead, they can't be a threat," the red-eyed monstrosity at the edge of the darkness whispered. "And you could blame their deaths on Bewul; you could tell Aidris Akalan that he killed them but that they were the magicians she sought. Then the magicians would be able to attack her unhindered, and we would be unburdened of whatever those creatures are that you found."

  "I think they are what she was looking for. I don't think she knows what they are, either."

  The red-eyed rock creature shook its head, the gesture accompanied by the sound of grinding stone. "So you're going to hide them from her. What if Bewul finds a way to turn all of this against you?"

  Matthiall turned and glared at the monster. "No matter what we do with them, Bewul will complain about us to her. Bewul eats at Aidris's feet as if he were her lapdog. If she told him to crawl on his belly and lick her toes, he would do it and thank her." The golden-haired not-man stared off into nothingness, his eyes fierce and cold. "I am no one's lapdog, Hagrall." His voice dropped to a low, ominous rumble. "Especially not hers."

  Grah pulled the corners of his mouth back in an ugly grin and laughed. "And when tomorrow comes, and Bewul tells her you have captured two women who do not belong here, and that you are keeping them instead of killing them or giving them to her, she'll serve you your balls in a silver bowl, and watch you eat them. And what of our revolution then, old friend?"

  "That's why Bewul won't tell her that." Matthiall shifted his other hand to cover the sphere. Jayjay noticed he was
careful to slide one palm along the surface while he moved the other off, so that the top part remained covered at all times.

  One of the hideous bat-winged women flitted up to his face and hovered there. "And how do you think to prevent him? You think you call us here and tell us you want to keep two Machnan, and we will take this to him and somehow convince him to lie to her? He is not one of us. He would betray us to her in an instant if he knew of us."

  Matthiall's face became an expressionless mask. "No. I want you to find me two Machnan women's bodies; I will need fresh bones. Send the diggers, perhaps, to pull two who are newly dead down through their graves, and let the pakherries eat away the flesh so they can't be identified. If they find no young women freshly dead—" He hung his head and sighed. "—Then send them beneath the walls of Sinon after dark and find two who are not yet dead, and bring their bones to me."

  All heads snapped up. All eyes fixed on him.

  Jayjay felt sick. He would kill two innocent women to hide the fact that she and Sophie were his prisoners, and not dead?

  "Break the pact? For those two? Why?" Hagrall spoke.

  Matthiall frowned. "I don't know. I only know that we need them."

  Grah laid his ears flat against his skull. "If they die our hope of revolution dies with them? I had no idea they were so valuable."

  "I believe they are the key we've waited for. But don't worry. They are well hidden, safe even from Bewul. When we give him bones to take to Aidris, he will be satisfied; and when Aidris reads the bones and finds nothing extraordinary about them, she will believe me when I tell her the outsiders were of no value, so I fed them to you for sport."

  He stared down at his hand on the glowing sphere—glared at it as if it were his enemy. "In the meantime, perhaps," he whispered, "I will find the way to solve the puzzle these strangers pose to our overthrow of Aidris Akalan."

  Grah whispered something to the others of his kind, then growled. "We did not realize our futures depended on these creatures we found. We wish to set guards, to protect them from harm until they achieve their destiny."

  Matthiall showed his fangs in a slow smile. "Well spoken, Grah. Hanarl already guards them."

  Grah nodded and grinned. "Good. Our future is safe with Hanarl. If you'll tell me where he waits, I'll relieve him at the end of his shift. Nothing will get past me."

  "Thank you. With you there, our rebellion can breathe easier."

  Jayjay felt herself starting to slip backward. Rather, she felt as if she were receding, like a tide, inexorably. One of the warrags asked a question she wanted very much to hear, and she saw Matthiall's lips move, saw him smile slowly, heard the faintest whisper of his laugh, but she floated away from him, faster and faster, back through the dark corridors and winding passageways, back through silence, back and back and back, seeing only where she had been and not where she was going.

  With a start, she jerked awake. Shaking. She was shaking or someone was shaking her—

  Sophie said, "You got restless, started thrashing and making whimpering noises. I figured you were having a nightmare. Are you all right?"

  Jayjay sat up. She felt wearier than when she'd dropped off to sleep. "Another weird dream." She recounted the whole thing to Sophie, even the part about her inexplicable attraction to the dream-Matthiall.

  Sophie nodded. "I understand the part about Matthiall. Your subconscious is fantasizing a replacement for Steven. Someone powerful and wild and irresistible. The rest of your dream was pretty bizarre, though."

  "It didn't feel that way…like a dream, I mean. It felt so real."

  "You ever been psychic before?"

  "No."

  Sophie's shrug dismissed the nightmare as irrelevant. "Let's concentrate on getting ourselves out of here."

  Jay sighed. "Okay. We'll plan our great escape." She didn't say anything else about her dream, but she kept it in her thoughts. She didn't intend to let it go, because she wanted to believe that the dream had been a message from Glenraven. A promise that her life was changing, that she had something important to do here in this world where magic worked, and where she—a woman who had spent most of her life observing others taking chances and making risks pay off, while she wrote about what they had done—would have a chance to matter on a larger scale.

  Thirty-four

  Hultif waited behind the curtain; Aidris Akalan dismissed Bewul. Only when the Kin stalked out of the room and closed the door behind him did she turn to face the curtain.

  "You heard what he said?"

  Hultif, carrying the bowl and the black mirror with him, came out from behind the curtain and bowed to the Watchmistress. "I heard all that he said."

  "Is he correct? Did Matthiall capture the wrong two people? And if he did, why did you recommend to me that he be put in charge of the search party?"

  How like Aidris. She willingly passed blame for everything to anyone who was near her, but claimed responsibility for every success, no matter who engineered it.

  "Matthiall did bring the wrong people," Hultif told her. "But somehow, that works to your benefit, too. Look. Study the omens."

  He pushed the bowl at her and she took it and dropped gracefully to the floor, cross-legged. She stared for several long moments into her reflection in the black glass, her long pale hair falling forward, like curtains on either side of her face. Then she looked up at him and smiled; her white fangs glowed like pearls against the deep copper of her face. Her honey-gold eyes narrowed as she grinned. They, too, seemed possessed of an eerie glow. "Yes, Hultif. This is much better. I don't simply defeat the Machnan—I destroy them utterly. These are wonderful omens."

  Hultif knew they were. He'd fabricated every aspect of the vision she saw in the glass; he had made it as mysterious and complex as any real vision the oracle would have presented to her. He had formed every image to reflect power, conquest, success. Everything she saw encouraged her to believe that Matthiall, by doing the wrong thing, had done the right thing for her—that she was not merely safe, but that she was about to achieve complete control of every faction in Glenraven, and all without sending a single soldier into battle.

  There was an enormous advantage in always telling the truth, Hultif thought. When at last you told a monstrous lie, who would suspect it?

  Thirty-five

  Sophie closed her eyes and let the waterfall in their grotto pool pound down onto her neck. It gave a wonderful massage. Didn't do a thing for her thought processes, though. She might as well have disconnected her brain.

  Sophie looked at her fingers and realized she'd shriveled into a prune. With a sigh, she pulled the Glenravener outfit out of the stream and spread it on the boulders next to Jayjay's. Then she climbed out, dried off, and pulled on clean underwear and jeans and a polo shirt; she and Jayjay had finally decided the filthy Glenravener clothes had to come off for a wash. Her own comfortable, worn cotton felt wonderful. She was going to miss it when she had to go back to the leather and linen. When she finished dressing, she joined Jayjay on the other side of the grotto. "Have you thought of a way to save us yet?"

  Jayjay, who had taken the first bath and who now wore her favorite outfit—khaki pants, a khaki shirt, and the infamous Banana Republic photographer's vest—had been staring off into space. When Sophie spoke, she jumped slightly and looked up. "What?"

  "Have you thought of a way to save us?" Sophie repeated, managing to keep her voice patient. "Have you come up with anything? Five Best Ways to Escape an Invisible Wall; Three Easiest Techniques for Overcoming Guards—like that."

  "Oh. Not so you'd notice."

  The grass felt like strands of heavy silk beneath Sophie's bare feet. She hated having to put on shoes and socks, but if they came up with something, she wanted to be able to act quickly. She sat down near Jay and regretfully began to tug on a clean pair of socks. "Okay. So you've failed to be brilliant. Have you been moderately bright?"

  "Would you be satisfied with 'not entirely stupid'?"

  "If it got us
out of here, I'd settle for Jerry Lewis dumb. What did you come up with?"

  Jay pointed at the tall grass that hid the low, angular toilet. "We can take a couple of good-sized rocks from the little wall there. We can hide behind the grass, and make a lot of noise until somebody comes in. We can watch how he gets in, then hit him over the head with our rocks and run."

  Sophie stared at her friend. "You're right. That lacks almost everything a good plan needs. How do we make sure only one person shows up? If only one person shows up, how can we be sure we'll see how he gets in? If getting in and getting out are the same, and we do manage to overcome our theoretical responder and we get out, how do we find our way through the maze? And even supposing we find our way out of the maze, how the hell are we supposed to get across the draw-bridge?"

  Jay wrinkled her nose. "I know it isn't great. What's your plan?"

  "I still haven't come up with anything."

  "Nothing?"

  "Nope." Sophie didn't mention the hypnotic power of the waterfall. She felt a million times better for having had a bath, but the joy of being clean wasn't going to set them free.

  "But you don't want to try my great escape?"

  Sophie jammed her hands into her jeans pockets and nestled her back into the stone wall, which, like the ground beneath her, conformed until it fit her comfortably. "Well…let's just say I'd like to see the bugs worked out of it first."

  "Escape plans are unnecessary," a voice growled from the door.

  Jay and Sophie jumped to their feet and turned to face the door. A heavily furred, vaguely lupine creature the size of a Shetland pony sauntered into the room, whiplike tail lashing. He walked on four legs, but the unusual bulges at his hip and shoulder joints made Sophie think he could probably stand erect briefly; he had hands, though they bore obvious traces of an evolutionary heritage from paws.

  His face and coat were stained with bright red blood. He was breathing hard.