by G. Deyke
~*~
When morning comes we make for the forest, and it is midday before we arrive. As soon as we are among the trees I am almost overcome with a sharp, meaningless fear – something is wrong here (Yes, there is something wrong with all this world, I know, but this is different.). The trees are hung with thick moss almost more green than gray, and the light that filters through it is touched with that green, and the trees themselves are nearly white (as bone, as silver moonlight bone). And there are things here. I cannot see them, but I can hear movement in the leaves, and I know that they are here.
My nature sense has been dulled by this world, I think, and yet I can sense things here. But they are not lives. I do not know what they are. Maybe they aren't there at all; maybe I am mad. I should not be surprised if I was. I am losing myself in this strange world of dim grays and bright thoughts in my mind and words I speak without learning them. I am losing myself in my forgetful frightened mind.
“It's wrong here,” I tell them, in our own language, for I will not use the shared tongue unless I must. “It's all wrong.”
“I don't like it either,” answers Therrin; “but we must reach the city, and this is the only way thither.”
I will be strong. I bite back my fear and follow her.
When at last I see one of the things in the trees, I nearly scream. I hold back at the last moment, remembering that I may be dreaming as I was on the ship (even that I must not think of); but I clutch at Therrin's arm in my fear, and I stare at the grinning face without blinking.
“Is it real?” I whisper desperately. “Can you see it?”
Therrin looks, and she draws in a sharp breath. “I see it,” she says.
Ty draws his sword and steps before us. “Begone!” he says, thrusting his blade at the ghastly medley of bones and rotted red flesh. It sits on a branch out of his reach, but as he attacks it gives out a high, wild shriek and swings away.
Now I am all the more afraid of these woods, but I know I must be strong. I must be. I fold my arms and clutch at my elbows to keep from trembling. I try to breathe slowly. My sight darts around the trees, always looking for another threat, but the sounds of the others fade to nothing in my mind, and I am so calm on the outside, so calm, that I hardly know nor care what they are saying and doing beside me.
At last we are through the forest, and we pass through a swinging gate through the city wall. I am glad to have that unwholesome wood behind us, but this empty city is hardly better. Many of the houses have nothing more than hanging cloths for doors, and these are tattered with age; and through them I can see no one inside, as there is no one on the streets. The city is empty and lifeless. All the same I wear my eyepatch now, afraid that we may yet meet someone.
A place this colorless and dead is hard to see through the black veil over my sight.
“Where are the people?” asks Therrin, frowning.
“Perhaps they are gone,” Ty says. “This is a dying world after all.”
The palace of the necromancer must be in or near the center of this city, we think, and set out for it; but the streets are round and twisting, and we quickly lose our way. For a long time we are all alone on the streets. The first sign of life we see is no life at all: there is motion in the back of an alley, yet I can feel nothing from it with my nature sense. As we step closer I can see that the thing is nothing but bones. They have the shape of a large dog, sniffing at the ground for food, but there is no flesh nor fur on them; and yet they hold their shape, and move with the grace of life.
Though its eye sockets are as empty as its skull, it seems to notice us at last: it looks up at us and raises its tail, and leans down with its forepaws, and snaps its jaw in the air with a motion very like barking. Yet it makes no sound at all. It has no voice.
“It moves like a living dog,” says Ty. His voice has an odd tone to it, almost of awe. He kneels and holds out his hand and clucks his tongue. “Come,” he calls to the pale dead beast before us.
I whistle to Snake. What is this? Perhaps a conjurer could use a cleaned carcass as a focus for a demon, and so animate the lifeless bones; but I very much doubt that they could seem so much alive, so like a real dog. I do not know the ways of this world. I don't know what this dog is. But I cannot feel it with my nature sense, so either I have lost my talent completely in this strange world or it is dead, despite its movement.
It cocks its head and trots toward us, holding its tail low and wagging it. Its toes click softly on the cobbled street, but otherwise it is completely silent. It stands before Ty, as though to sniff at his face, and he scratches its polished cheek gently. It wags its tail.
I whistle again to Snake. I don't understand this. How can he treat this thing as though it were a living dog? It does not look dead, if only because it moves, but neither can a being made all of bones be living. It is not a real dog. I don't know what it is. I don't want to know. I want to leave this dead world behind me.
Now Ty is murmuring softly to it, and stroking its head, and scratching behind the spot where its ears might be, if it had any. It leans into his hand as though it were real, and glad of a warm hand and a friendly voice. Therrin watches this, and I don't know if she is uneasy or curious when she asks: “What is it?”
All at once, before he can answer, there is a wild laugh behind us. Fear shoots through my veins, and I spin around to see an old man with a thick gray beard swinging a large dead fish by the tail. His eyes are wild and bright.
I could not feel him – I could not sense him with my nature talent – I could not feel him at all.
The bony dog stalks out from behind Ty. It looks at the old man and it lowers its head and its tail; perhaps it thinks it is growling, though without hearing its voice I cannot be certain. It barks its silent bark at him and runs away down the street with its tail between its legs.
The old man ceases his wheezing laugh and breaks into coughing. When he can speak again he does – though I cannot understand his words. Odd snatches of his speech are in the shared tongue of this world, but most of it seems meaningless.
“What is he saying?” Ty asks Therrin.
She takes the round stone from her satchel and holds it in her hand, and listens.
“Much of it has no meaning,” she tells us at last. “He is raving. He speaks of these Unnamed Lands – he says 'we must have our names' ... 'who are we, who are we?' ... 'we cannot name our own children, for there are no names left to give them' ... 'we are losing ourselves' ... 'soon we shall all fade away' ...” she sighs and shakes her head. “More of the same.”
He is mad, mad. Mad as I am. Who am I? Soon I too shall fade away.
“A pity we can't ask him the way to this necromancer's palace,” muses Ty in the shared tongue.
It seems that this word is one of the few that the old man knows, for he eyes us more sharply. “Palace?” he repeats. Therrin nods eagerly.
He descends back into a fit of crazed mirth, clasping the dead fish to his breast like a long-lost child. I can smell it from this distance: it has been dead for some time. A part of me wonders how long it will be before it falls apart in his arms. I am sickened at the thought. My stomach turns, and I look away for a moment before I grow too nervous to leave the man unwatched.
Now he is back to babbling. Therrin translates: “He says that the palace is the part of this city that is most alive, and that it is the only reason the city still stands. And it has life, or... death? I'm not sure... It is there,” she says as he points, “those domes in the distance; and he fears the necromancer. He fears this world, and the death that awaits it. No; the... this makes no sense.”
“Does he say how to find it?” asks Ty, and Therrin shakes her head. “I can't make sense of his words. He wants to know if we are servants of the necromancer...” She shakes her head again, looking at the old man.
He leaps up and dashes off, pulling the dead fish behind him. His crazed laugh echoes through the streets, echoing and fading.
“After him!”
cries Therrin. “He may yet lead us thither!” We run after him, following the olid wet trail of his fish. But I am slow and nervous, and the old man is quite nimble on his feet, and soon enough we lose him in the twisting streets. Still it was not all in vain: we are near enough the domes of the palace, now, that we can make our way thither easily.
The palace is surrounded with a deep moat, so deep that I cannot see clearly to the bottom, even with the demon in my eye to help me. All I can see is a glint of white (as of bone – but I do not know if that is the demon's knowledge, or if I am eager to see bones in everything in this city of the dead). I can hear nothing but a faint scratching noise and the wind in the tattered door-hangings as we cross the narrow bridge, but here the air begins to feel more alive, less dull. I can breathe more easily. I can also feel the strangeness of this world more sharply, and I whistle to Snake for comfort as Therrin raps on the door.
For a long moment we wait; then the door is swung open by a pale, black-haired woman perhaps a little older than Ty. “Who are you?” she asks at once in the shared tongue.
“I am Therrin,” says Therrin bowing. “I am here to see the necromancer – is that you?”
“You have a name,” says the woman. “This is... new. No, I am not the necromancer yet, though the rite of union grows nearer.”
“What is the rite of union?”
“Something an ancestor of mine began a long time ago. He thought he had a reason to live for a thousand years or so, and with the rite of union he shared his children's bodies after he died, to be sure that he could fulfill whatever task he thought he had. He is with my father now.”
“Then I would see your father,” Therrin says.
“And why do you think he would see you?” There is arrogance in her voice – but she cannot know I am kretchin. I am dressed as a commoner and my hair is bound back and I do not know if kretchin even exist in this strange world. Surely they must have been the first to die when the bane came.
“I have something for him from the woodland witch,” Therrin answers, patting her satchel. “He will know what that means.”
“Come in then; and wait here. Guards!” calls the necromancer's daughter.
The guards wear full armor, but their faces beneath the steel helmets are only empty skulls, watching us silently, gripping their spears with gloved hands.
The palace is dark and scarcely furnished, lit by flickering green torches and high, small windows. A part of me wonders what this strange green fire is, but a greater part wants only to flee. I do not like this strange world, and I do not like this palace. I whistle to Snake for comfort.
Once before I was told to come inside a place like this, and left in an entrance hall to wait while the girl who opened the door for us went to fetch the Mother of the House. I try to quench the memories as they come, but that was too much like this, and I find I cannot stop the flow of thoughts. The servant did not trust us at first, as the necromancer's daughter did not (why have they no servants here? Is this city truly so dead, and this palace?); and she showed her arm with its scar, I must not think of that Chinlar scar that I know so well, no, I knew so well, I do not know anymore – as Therrin said she'd been sent by the witch, so that the one who opened the door would let us in.
And she introduced us and she said I was not kretchin, and I knew that I was, oh, I still am; and she could have saved me long before from the misery of my world if she had only wished it, for she was skilled with lies. Mother Lithuk believed her, though I was only the same kretchin I have always been. But she was content to leave me. She loved my misery as she loved my wretched eagerness to please her. Her servant! As though I would serve her! Yet I would, I know, as well as I could, and indeed I did. I hate it now. I hate myself for what I did for her. I must not think of it. I must not.
I was so in awe of the luxury around me that I tried at first to see everything, but at her rebuke I tried instead to see nothing at all. Now I look around in open defiance of this past. At the same time I don't want to know. This isn't my world, and the less I know of it the better. I don't want to grow accustomed to it. I don't want to think this is home. It can't be, ever. I have no home.
All I see is dark blocks of stone and bright green silk arras, and the strange torches, and the dead guards with their fixed grins. It is not nearly so rich and colorful as that place was, that mansion. A part of me would be more comfortable here, in this darkness; but no, it is not my world. (Nor was that – no noble mansion could ever be a part of something I'd call home.)
Ty stands with his arms folded, straight but calm, his face stoic, his lip raised just slightly in the faint derisive smirk he wears always, wherever he is. She was pretty and demure and proper and perfect and it was a lie, it was all a lie, she was horrid inside, she delighted in my suffering and she would rather lie than tell the truth even when the truth might serve her better, and she worked so hard to look harmless and I believed her, she was the best person I knew, everyone believed her. And now the curse is standing there looking so like her and I cannot forget.
It follows me, it follows me, she will find me and she will kill me.
“Arrek?”
I am holding my breath and clenching my stomach, trying to ward it off, trying to block off the world and my mind and my memories and this place. And chewing on my fingers, scraping at the nails with my teeth, trying to distract myself with the pain, trying to stop it. And it will not stop.
My breaths are short and sharp and uneven and my mind is filled with confusion. I don't know what to think. I don't want to think. My thoughts are circling, circling, running into each other and breaking each other apart.
Therrin puts her head near mine, and whispers to me in our own language: “I don't know what happened to you or where, but this is different. We're not in Thilua, Arrek. You've never been in this palace before, and you've never met this necromancer. Perhaps he won't be so bad. And whatever you're thinking of – it shan't happen here.”
She is right, of course. She isn't here. She isn't here to hurt me. And this place is very different. She can't get me here. She can't. But I am still afraid.
And Therrin – how does she know? I try to hold still, try not to show my fear, but I am shaking and I am almost in tears. I long for Silwen's comforting arms around me, or my mother's, or for a charm to hold in my hand, or even a scrap of blanket to clasp closely to my breast.
But I must appease her, I must make her think I'm all right. I nod, watching her silently through my eyepatch, and I try to calm myself, so that I shan't show a weakness before the necromancer. I must be strong. I look down and I whistle to Snake to calm myself and I wait. Snake will protect me. Snake is with me. Wherever I may be, he is between me and this strange world.
He must be.
At last the black-haired woman appears at the top of a stair, and calls down to us: “Come up, then. Follow me.” We follow. It is easier to think of the present now that we are moving, and things are happening, and the skull-faced guards are following us silently with their hands on their spears.
We are led into a great throne room, hung scantly in bright green. The throne itself is carved in twisting shapes of iron, and occupied by a thin old man with a long gray beard.
Therrin bows deeply; Ty nods, and I follow his lead. I want to keep my head down, afraid to meet the old man's eyes – for I am still kretchin – but I am more afraid not to watch him, afraid he will do something, so I raise my head again almost at once.
“Are you the necromancer?” Therrin asks.
“Yes,” says the old man.
“I was sent by the woodland witch. She told me to bring you this.” And she takes the little skull from her satchel, and presents it to the old man. He takes it and examines the scorched mark between its horns.
“So, you are the Princess he has chosen,” he says in a voice as old and weary as all this world seems to be.
“I am. I am here for the necklace.”
“Hnh. A moment. Would you care fo
r some food? We have apples – you can understand us, so they must still be real.”
“Thank you,” Therrin says. Each of us is given a fruit, round and ripe, dark red. I don't want to eat mine – I don't want to eat any more food of this world, even if it is real – but I don't want to offend these necromancers, so I bite into it (I must not remember the food I was given before, fit for the servants of nobles, I must not). It tastes real and fresh and alive. My mouth tingles with the taste and life and power of it, and the same strange taste that the witch's soup had.
Perhaps I can see why such fruit as this might bestow the eater with strange languages. It is difficult to believe that all this world was once so.
It still feels wrong.
“And that one?” he asks, gesturing. I don't need to follow his motion to know whither he points. I stiffen and I look straight ahead and I try not to listen.
“She's not real,” Therrin explains; “she's only a shadow. She'll have nothing to eat. Pay her no mind.” I am truly grateful to her for answering this question when it comes, that I mustn't.
The necromancer gives a tired grunt, and when we have finished our apples he says: “So, perhaps you are our Princess. You must at least fit the prophecy, if you have the witch's confidence. But that does not mean you are strong enough to control the dragon.”
“As I see it it isn't as much a question of controlling the dragon as of helping him; and if he chose me to do so, he must think I am worthy,” Therrin says. I am a little surprised at her tone: I didn't think she was so sure of her role. Perhaps she is determined to see this through now that she has started, or perhaps she is bent on saving this world because it was her mother's.
“It may be as you say; yet you still must have the strength to fight, if it comes to that. Who knows what may happen before you reach the dragon? And why should I give you the thing you seek if I do not know you will succeed?”
“Your world is dying,” says Therrin, her green eyes (so like Kerheyin's, like the painting, I must forget the painting) aflame with passion; “you might be glad that there is hope. Who will save the dragon, if not I? Whom would you give the necklace? We haven't the time to prove my worth. You haven't the time. If we dally too long, who knows if this palace will still stand when the dragons are freed? – this city? – this world?”
“All I ask is a quick demonstration, that we might know you are not as helpless as you look.”
Ty's lip twitches beneath his thin beard – a motion so small that I might not have seen it at all, but for the demon in my eye. With one hand he grips the hilt of his sword; with the other he makes a gesture behind Therrin's back, where the necromancer cannot see.
The torches flare up, scorching the high ceiling. I jump, afraid, but I hold back from crying out. The daughter, too, jumps – then it was nothing she did? It must have been Ty, I think. But it was his power, then, and not Therrin's.
The old man smiles, even laughs (is he mad then? Is he mad?). “All right,” he says. “Perhaps you do have some small power; or perhaps I ought not to have given you the apples. I will help you, as I swore a thousand years ago that I would do, and then I may rest at last and leave my children and my children's children to their own lives.”
He stands, and hobbles to a wall behind his throne, where he mutters and makes motions I cannot see; and then he comes to us and gives Therrin a pendant on a gold chain. It is a clear green stone perhaps half as long as her finger, cut and polished, with a gold rim.
She takes it and looks through it before she does anything else. At first she looks around the room; then she looks directly at me, and gasps. “I can see your eye!” she says, “– though it looks different.”
I know by the thin black veil over all I see that I am wearing my eyepatch, so it must be by the power of the stone that she can see it. Then it does work, as the witch promised, and is not a copy. I try to be glad for her.
Now she thanks the necromancer for his aid, and puts the chain around her neck, and tucks the stone away under her shirt.
“It is you who are helping us,” he says in response. “If there is anything more we can do for you, we are glad to offer aid. Is this the first of your treasures?”
“That I can't tell you,” Therrin says, taking out the map; “but we'd be glad of it if you could help us reach our destination more quickly. Here it is: this little village.”
“Is another treasure there?” he asks. She shakes her head. “No,” she says, “but it is whither we must go next.”
“I thought there was no time?”
“That is our destination,” Therrin repeats stubbornly. “Can you take us thither, or must we walk?”
“It would be a long walk,” says the necromancer, “and you're right: we haven't that sort of time. All right. I can lend you a bird, one of our larger hawks, though I'm not sure it'll last to the village. The spell fades with distance under this bane, so perhaps it will die before you reach it. Still, it will be much faster than walking. Perhaps you can be there by tonight. Will you show them the stables, daughter?”
The woman nods stiffly. “Follow me,” she says, and we follow.
As we walk she says: “I do not trust you, strangers. You are not of this world; that much is clear, if only because you have a name. I did not know my father had this treasure, but he oughtn't give it away so easily. How do we know you're really the Princess? What if the witch was wrong?”
“Whether I am the Princess or not, I will see the dragons freed and this world saved,” Therrin says through her teeth. “The prophecy has saved my life and brought me to this world, but it is not my reason for helping you.”
“I would steal that little necklace from you if I could, and go myself to free the dragon,” the woman tells us; “but you have shown that you are able to defend yourself, and I don't know where to find the other treasures. So it seems I am forced to trust you, against my instinct. I will help you, because if you are the Princess, I must; but I don't help you willingly.”
“It is enough that you help us,” says Therrin.
The hawk we are given is quite large – large enough for the three of us to ride – and, like the dog in the city, it is made all of bones. Seeing it, Ty asks the woman: “There was a dog very much like this in the city, without flesh nor fur. Was it yours?”
“No,” she answers as she saddles the hawk. “They are... around. There are not many living things left in the city now, only a handful of madmen living by the river; but there are dogs and cats and rats which do not live, made of bone. I don't know how they came to be. It may be they once belonged to the palace, and ran away many years ago.
“There; now your hawk is ready to fly, and knows the way. Fly fast, strangers. If you are deceiving us, may you plummet to your deaths; if you are not, hurry, and bring us our dragons while we still live.”