The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy Page 33

  There was a necklace of the sort called “beggar-beads” in Armethalieh about her neck—a long necklace of multicolored glass and stone beads, no two alike, looped several times around her throat and dropped into the cleft between her heavy breasts. Under the panniers, she had a colorful hand-woven wool blanket with heavy fringes flung over her haunches.

  “Merana!” Idalia said cheerfully. “How good to see you! Did you see? The pixies are back!”

  The Centauress smiled. “Indeed I did, Idalia—I’m going to their tree now to trade for dream-honey …”

  Her gaze traveled past Idalia to Kellen and she regarded him with frank—and open—admiration. It might be difficult to judge Centaur ages, but Kellen got the feeling that she wasn’t very much older than he was.

  “So … this is Kellen. We’ve heard rumors about him, Idalia, as I’m sure you figured. Tell me, when are you coming to Merryvale again—and bringing your handsome brother?” Merana smiled and licked her lips.

  Kellen blushed hotly. Centaur or no, she made him think things he knew very well he ought not to be thinking, not with the promises he’d made to Shalkan! And the more he tried to untangle his thoughts and make them travel in chaste and continent directions, the more lurid they became, until all he could do was stare at his feet and hope he was struck by lightning. Soon.

  To his relief, Idalia laughed and walked up to Merana, linking arms with her and strolling with her ahead of Kellen—he could hear the two of them talking as they headed up the trail, and only hoped they weren’t talking about him. It was bad enough that Shalkan had told the dryads about his vow—if he was going to have to tell every female he met about it for the next four seasons, well, he didn’t think he could bear it.

  I’ll go back to the cabin. I’ll lock myself in the bedroom, hide under the bed, and Idalia can feed me through the window for the next thirteen moonturns, that’s all. Or I’ll find a deserted mountaintop where nobody goes and live there, he told himself desperately.

  A few minutes later, Idalia was back.

  “She’s an awful tease, isn’t she?” Idalia said, winking. “She’s got all the boys in the village chasing after her—frankly, I don’t see how she has the time to flirt with all of them, but she does. She’s the apprentice to the village Healer—plenty of work there, between bringing babies—human and livestock both—and setting bones. But I saw she was embarrassing you, so I figured I’d give her a little gossip, then get rid of her. All I had to do was remind her that Master Eliron would be wondering what took her so long to send her on her way.”

  “Thanks,” Kellen mumbled, still flustered. “I guess this vow isn’t going to be as simple to keep as I’d thought.”

  “That’s sort of the nature of them,” Idalia agreed gravely. “Come on. We’d better go looking for those plants.”

  Catkins were easy enough to find, and Idalia assured him they only needed one or two clumps, since the plants would spread quickly to take over their new home. While she gathered the fat roots with their swordlike leaves and their trailing root stems, Kellen dug out a few clumps of grass and reeds, digging deep to make sure he got most of their roots. And they were lucky; in a little pond they found enough water-cabbage that it covered the entire surface; Idalia quickly pulled in plenty of the leaf clumps with their trailing bundles of hairy roots, heaping them carefully in her basket. Armed with their bounty, they returned again to the pond.

  “Just about full enough to stock,” Idalia decided, floating the water-cabbage out into the center of the pond. They’d quickly begin to “calve,” sending babies out on shoots that would break off when the baby got big enough, and naturalize in their new home.

  Kellen was left with the muddier task of planting the reed bundles, and once he was done, felt his labors had earned him a question or two.

  “Idalia,” he began hesitantly, “I’ve been meaning to ask you. You talk about the Great War, something I’ve never heard of, and the Otherfolk that were driven out of the settled lands by it. Those creatures … does that include … Demons?”

  “Hush!” Idalia said fiercely, rounding on him. “Never mention them here!”

  “I—But—” Her sudden vehemence took him by surprise. “You don’t mean you believe in them, do you?” he said. Suddenly, once again, such a belief seemed so childish, so unreasonable. Demons were things for nursery shadows and wondertales, not the bright light of the forest.

  “Of course I do,” Idalia said in a low voice, taking a step toward him. “They’re real. Kellen—”

  “They are!” an aged voice whispered fearfully. “Oh! Terrible real, they are!”

  Crouched among the bushes at the edge of the trees was one of the Otherfolk. From Idalia’s references, and his own studies, Kellen guessed it to be a faun. It was a creature about the size of a two-year-old child, humanlike to the waist, but with a goat’s haunches. Its pointed ears were long and hairy, and goat horns grew from its brow, curling back over its skull. A small neat beard edged its jaw, adding to the goatish appearance. Unlike the Centaurs, whom Kellen could imagine to be very civilized despite their hooves and tails, the faun wore no clothes, and seemed far closer to the wild creatures of the forest than it did to the forest’s more civilized and humanlike inhabitants.

  Though he had no real experience with the races of the Otherfolk, even Kellen could see that the faun was very, very old. Its curling horns were as dark as winter leaves, and its hair and pelt were streaked with grey. Its face was as withered and dark as an old apple, and long ago it had been terribly injured—one eye was gone, leaving a web of white scars behind, and the faun’s shaggy haunches were dappled with white scars, relics of terrible wounds.

  And it was so frightened that it trembled all over, so frightened that Kellen could hardly believe that it was still standing there, speaking to them. The horror in its single, wide eye sent a chill down Kellen’s spine, and out of what depths of its soul the faun found the courage to remain and warn them, Kellen could not imagine.

  “Never speak of Them,” the faun begged, quivering in terror. “Never speak of Them—never! Or They will come here, where it is safe, and pleasant, and turn it into—I dare not say!” Having frightened itself thoroughly, the old faun turned and ran, vanishing into the undergrowth as if it burrowed its way into it.

  Idalia sighed, watching him go. “You see? Poor old thing. He came over the mountains years ago—long before I settled here. Something terrible must have happened to him there, but Piter never talks about it. I wish I could heal him—but he would have to ask, and he never has. I think he’s afraid of hurting me—if I healed him, I’d find out how he was hurt, you see, and I would be as terrified as he is—or so he believes.” She sighed again. “Poor creature, to be so afraid. Every year I wonder if this winter will be his last.”

  She turned away and began assembling their packs, but Kellen kept staring in the direction Piter had fled. The faun’s terror had been so real that Kellen felt his own heart beat faster in response, and for the first time in a long time the memories of his fever-dreams were sharp and urgent.

  “Can we—talk about this?” he asked his sister timidly.

  “Definitely. But later.” She cast a look over her shoulder, as if to make sure they weren’t still being overheard. “Later, when it’s—safer.”

  And it did not escape Kellen’s attention that she said “safer,” not “safe.”

  Demons were real. Lycaelon Tavadon hadn’t lied.

  And if that much was true, maybe the rest of what he’d said was true in some way as well.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The World Without Sun

  UPON ARISING EACH day, Queen Savilla first took a cup of spiced xocalatl to warm her, then allowed her slaves to dress her in a diaphanous chamber-robe, cut low in the back to allow freedom for her wings, and low in the front to expose her … abundant charms.

  The Endarkened did not sleep, precisely—not as the Bright World races understood the term—nor did they age and di
e, save by misfortune and violence. He Who Is had granted them the boon of endurance, but like all such boons, it must be paid for, and so, at regular intervals, adult Endarkened retreated for a period of deep contemplation that might—were a human to witness it—be likened more closely to death than to sleep.

  Their young had no need of this sort of rest, of course, and even the oldest Endarkened could set the need for rest aside, for a time, without ill effects. But to forgo it altogether was to court first madness, then the loss of power.

  It was best not to be foolish.

  Without the lights in the sky of the Bright World to mark the passage of days, time passed in its own strange way in the World Without Sun, its course marked by the magic that was the very heartbeat of the Endarkened, and by the rhythms of the bones of the Deep Earth that was their place.

  When the Queen went to her rest, so did her Court. In the World Without Sun, Queen Savilla was the Sun and the Moon, the dark radiance from which the world took its light.

  Each rising, as her slaves dressed her hair, and buffed and gilded the talons on her hands and feet, Savilla heard gossip and petitions … first from Court favorites, then from the Ministers of her Realm.

  All information was important to Savilla, and she despised no source of it.

  The softbodied Brightworlders that could not adapt to life in the World Without Sun—and the absence of those Bright World lights—sickened and died. Fear and pain kept them healthy for a time, of course, but even the hardiest of Brightworlders were brief-lived and fragile.

  It was always necessary to acquire more.

  And that was a matter constantly in Queen Savilla’s thoughts from her first waking moment, since for her plans to proceed against the Brightworlders required the constant expenditure of magic.

  Not the great and terrible magics of days gone by, that had caused the Brightworlders to cringe and tremble and fear the power of the Endarkened … and to organize against them. No, Savilla’s plans involved subtle webs of treachery, no less effective for that they went quite unnoticed by the soft stupid Brightworlders. Like the slow dripping of water that could wear away stone … or build mighty pillars beneath the earth, her magics worked unseen and unnoticed by their victims.

  But magic required energy. Energy came from blood and pain. Blood and pain came from the torture of slaves … and where did the slaves come from?

  Raids upon villages in the Wild Lands and the High Hills were simple enough to plan, but must be conducted with care, lest the Endarkened bring themselves to the attention of the Wildmages who lived there.

  Isolated wanderers, whether travelers, traders, or outlaws, could always find themselves lured away from safety, whether by one of the Endarkened in disguise, or by one of their human agents. That was simple enough, and always entertaining, but the numbers of slaves gained were far too few for the purposes of Endarkened magic.

  Slaves could certainly be bought outright, for not every land abhorred the concept of slavery—but again, the constant disappearance of slaves into the north might eventually attract unwelcome attention.

  And there was something so spiritless, so unsporting, about simply buying one’s prey!

  She would have to consider the matter.

  Carefully.

  “—SO you see, my Queen, while it is not precisely a crisis, it is, perhaps, awkward,” Cerbael said charmingly.

  Cerbael was Queen Savilla’s Master of Revels, his business the orchestration of the public ceremonies and entertainments of the Endarkened Court. He was entertaining and inventive, and had never, in all his long centuries of service, first to her father, and then to her, sought any higher position. He was, as he had once told Savilla with as much honesty as any of their kind could summon, already king of the only realm he cared about, and no one could give him anything he wanted more than what she had already given him.

  She would destroy him if he ever failed to amuse her, of course. And he would turn on her if she withdrew her favor and support. But until that time, they trusted one another … in their fashion.

  “M’mn.” Savilla stroked the head of the goblin at her feet and did not reply directly. Its bulging silver eyes were closed to slits in the dim light of the chamber, and its blue-grey skin glistened with gold-infused oil. Erlaon had given the creature to her as a present, and Savilla had decided to be amused at the obvious and clumsy attempt to court her patronage.

  One of her human servants approached the goblin too closely, and the little creature, startled, hissed and spat. Green venom spattered the slave’s grub-pale skin, and the Brightworlder fell to the floor, writhing in agony. Moments later, its pale body stilled.

  “There,” Savilla said in pleased tones. “That should solve a few of your problems, Cerbael.” She put her hand on the goblin’s collar to keep it from moving toward the corpse. Goblins were greedy creatures, always hungry, and Ixit was perfectly capable of eating the entire Brightworlder all by itself.

  Cerbael laughed appreciatively at his Queen’s jest. “I do not think Filendek would be content with this for long—and it’s hardly worth his greatest efforts, don’t you think, Majesty?”

  “True,” Savilla admitted with a fond smile. “We shall have to find him something worthy of his skill. Well?” she demanded of her other slaves, who cowered back, staring in horror at their fellow. “Will you clean this up? Or will you join it?”

  Her dressing-slaves scuttled to obey.

  After Queen Savilla had heard all Petitions of the Dressing Chamber—and acted upon those which it pleased her to act upon—she allowed her surviving slaves to dress her more formally, and went, as was her custom, for a walk in her gardens.

  Of course nothing grew here. Savilla would have been quite offended if it had. Elsewhere in the World Without Sun there were vast farms of strange pale fungus in their infinite varieties, tended by slaves and hosts of the Lesser Endarkened. There were soft writhing worms and lakes of glowing blind fish and tunneling insects for whom the kiss of the sun was fatal, all of which the Endarkened considered delicacies.

  But Savilla’s garden was different.

  Here colored crystals had been coaxed from the ground by magic, in much the same way that flowers sprang from fields of rot and decay in the World Above. And within each crystal, Savilla had trapped some moment of agony of one of her special victims, so that she could cherish it always.

  She strolled along the twisting paths, brushing her fingers along the stones and wakening the stored memories into life with a touch of her magic.

  —Here, the moment when one of her pet Darkmages had torn the horn from a living unicorn. No Endarkened could touch the creature without dying, and so the beast had thought itself safe enough, but it was not safe from Savilla’s Darkmage. How it had begged, pleaded, reasoned with the man, telling him what his own eventual fate would be! But all in vain …

  —Here, the Darkmage’s own death, when Savilla had grown tired of him. How she had enjoyed taunting him, reminding him of how he had killed the unicorn, reminding him that everything it had told him had been true, that he could have saved himself had he only listened to it instead of killing it …

  It was so perfect, placing these two stones next to each other, so that they could stand in rebuke to one another for all Eternity, though the minds and souls and deaths that had gone to make them were long expended, gone to fuel her magic.

  Which reminded Savilla, once more, of her problem.

  She seated herself on a bench cunningly wrought of human bones—some of the younger members of the Court made quite a hobby out of crafting things of what the Endarkened’s victims left behind, and some of their pieces were quite artful—and devoted herself to considering the problem.

  Problems, really. A ruler had so many problems to deal with, and not one of them could be neglected. Even the tiniest, the most seemingly inconsequential problem, could be the tear in the wing that made it useless in flight.

  There must be a way to solve so many minor prob
lems at once. Even Filendek’s problems must not be slighted—Cerbael had been quite right to bring them to her attention, for the chief cook was an artist, and his complaints would be seen as setting a certain tone for the entire Court.

  Filendek was quite beside himself at the emptiness of the larders, and the lack of delicacies to set upon Savilla’s table. No faun, no selkie, no naiad, and the stocks of human and Centaur—in the cold-larders and in the fattening pens—were (so he said) dangerously low. As for unicorn, it had been a long time since that flesh had graced one of the Royal banquets, and no one at the Endarkened Court had tasted Elven flesh since the last War.

  It was sad, really, to see the simple elegancies of life dwindle away even as you watched. But let her plans go as she would have them, and all would be well again, the Court returned to the height of its glory. Their larders would be full, and they would have no need to conceal themselves from the notice of Wildmages, lest their plans be discovered before the proper time.

  But until that moment came there was much to do.

  She thought back over her morning’s reports. Their campaign against the Elves was going well, so now it was time to cause Armethalieh to do something foolish. Her agents there assured her that the Arch-Mage had been ever more unreasonable since his son had turned Wildmage and been Banished … perhaps there was something in that she could use to solve her own small difficulties, for as the Arch-Mage went, so went the City.

  Savilla smiled, and set the thought aside to ripen.

  “WHAT do you suppose, my love, I would do if you betrayed me?” Savilla said to her son.

  She smiled lazily as she felt Prince Zyperis’s body tense against hers, then relax with an effort.

  “I would never betray you, my mother, my Queen, my love,” Zyperis protested. He kissed her shoulder.