Bloom of Blood and Bone

by R J Hanson

  Although Silas was no drow, that did not prevent him from appreciating the beauty and poise of this Queen Jandanero, she rode atop her carried throne, in the midst of assassins, slaves, and detractors, in an air of absolute confidence and control.

  As she drew close, Silas looked up to her and smiled.

  “Hello,” Silas said with a smile.

  The Queen seemed to give him a slightly disappointed look without noticeably changing her expression in the least. She tilted her head and raised her eyes to a point just behind Silas. A’Ilys responded to the glance without question, without hesitation.

  A’Ilys’s sword flashed from its sheath with a speed almost too quick to track with the human eye. However, Silas’s eyes were no longer exactly human. Silas half turned and caught the upper end of A’Ilys’s blade in his gauntleted hand. The force of the drow’s thrust brought them close, and the edge of the blade sliced through the leather of the gauntlet to grate against Silas’s bare palm. Silas gave the end of the sword a slight twist, demonstrating that he could break the blade with ease. He looked into A’Ilys’s eyes, and the drow looked over Silas’s shoulder toward the Queen.

  A’Ilys nodded, as if responding to some unspoken command from the Queen, and Silas smiled at him. Silas was pleasantly surprised when A’Ilys returned the smile. A’Ilys then tapped Silas’s exposed armpit with the tip of a leiness stiletto. A’Ilys’s obvious attack, and Silas’s own arm, had quite effectively concealed this hidden attack. Understanding dawned on Silas’s face as he raised an eyebrow and his smile broadened. Shezmu’s gifts hardened Silas’s skin to the toughness of plate armor. However, leiness would have pierced him like an icy wind from the northern oceans. That blade would have easily punctured his heart.

  “You may have some value yet,” Queen Jandanero said. “Think on how you might please me.”

  With that, her procession turned about and marched amid the gathered throng, back toward what must have been her underground fortress.

  “You are now mine to oversee and command,” A’Ilys said, re-sheathing his blades. “I spared you, as did the Queen. You now belong to both of us. It is drow law.”

  “I am no drow, nor do I follow drow law,” Silas said, his smile never leaving his face.

  “You do now,” Dru said.

  Silas bowed his head to her.

  “As you say, my Lady,” Silas said.

  “This way,” A’Ilys said.

  He walked away from them briskly. Silas looked to Dru, who, in turn, raised one eyebrow and gestured toward A’Ilys with her chin. Silas nodded, turned, and followed in-step behind A’Ilys. He led them out of the main thoroughfare and around the large, central, palace of Queen Jandanero.

  Silas had a difficult time resisting the urge to stop and begin taking notes. There were several species of creatures here he had never seen nor read about in the many volumes he’d studied. They were malformed beasts, for the most part, enslaved by the drow. He also noted three large temples bearing the broken sword symbol of the UnMaker, Muersorem, over a smaller mark of one of each of the three demon princes, Kertau, Tredch, and Prechii. The fallen champions of death, pestilence, and hate each had their own richly adorned temple.

  “I see the marketplace, and the palace and temples are hard to miss, but I don’t see houses,” Silas said.

  “Was that a question?” A’Ilys said.

  “I assume the slaves are kept in the guarded pit we passed on the way in,” Silas continued. “So, yes, the question is, where do the drow actually live?”

  “The lower merchant and trades classes live in their shops in the market,” A’Ilys said. “You will see where, and how we live.”

  Their path finally led to a set of iron-bound black wooden doors mounted in a sheer rock face. A’Ilys, with a deft flick of his wrist, produced a key which had been hidden within his sleeve. The key unlocked the door with what appeared to be a simple mechanical operation. However, Silas’s enhanced senses observed the many concealed runes and wards on the door and the key. Any burglars or sneak-thieves would likely find themselves charred beyond recognition if they should try this particular lock. Charred or banished to some horrid plane of existence.

  The outer and central caverns had been well lit. Many of the other species living and working there did not possess the exceptional infravision bestowed upon the drow and the elves of Stratvs and thus could not operate in the utter black of the deep places of the world. Furthermore, the intricacies of more exceptional clothing, jewelry, and weapons could not be assessed via infravision. The drow were ever vain.

  Beyond this door, however, was absolute black. A’Ilys stepped through. In an instant, he disappeared into the shadows as completely as if he’d been submerged in a pool of ink. Silas, sorting through Shezmu’s capabilities as he might have sorted through a drawer looking for a particular surgical tool, found the ability he required. At first, the infravision was quite dizzying. His depth perception seemed to swim forward and back, and he had to place his hand on the nearby tunnel wall to maintain his balance. Silas felt a delicate, yet powerful, hand grab his right elbow.

  “Keep A’Ilys in sight,” Dru said. “They live in a maze here. One that I do not even attempt to traverse without an escort.”

  Silas noted several side passages and, to his surprise, passages in the ceiling as well as the floor. The many tunnels twisted and turned; their path rose and then dropped away. They climbed one set of steps, descended another, and passed several broad alcoves oddly equipped with a table, chairs, and wine service settings. The was like no maze Silas had ever imagined. There were mazes in the gardens of several Houses of Moras. Silas was given to understand that the inner workings of the Archives of the Arcana were laid out in a maze as a security precaution. This maze dwarfed all the others in that this maze extended into the third dimension.

  Furthermore, he’d noted several blind corners, cubby pockets, and thought he had sensed a few cully doors. Silas mused that the convoluted complexity of this quarter would be an assassin’s dream… or nightmare.

  After a time, they rounded a turn, and all went dark. Silas tensed and tried both the normal sight he’d been born with and then reverted back to the newly acquired infravision. Nothing. Blackness. He never thought he would be relieved to have a vampire holding him by the arm and standing close at hand.

  “Listen for the sound of my steps,” A’Ilys said in a bare whisper. “The path is only a few feet wide. Do not reach for the walls unless you wish to spend the rest of your tortured life here. Step lightly and make sure the path is beneath you before assuming your weight onto it.”

  Silas closed his eyes, they were of no use to him anyway, and reached out with his mind taking in every smell and every sound. His mind touched something far below and caused even Shezmu, shackled within him, to cringe and recoil.

  What scares you so, Silas inquired of Shezmu.

  Silas rarely engaged Shezmu in conversation. In the first hours and days of capturing him, Shezmu had raged against the restraints Silas had constructed in his mind. Each time Silas answered him, he felt the mighty fallen champion strain his mental shackles a bit farther. Conversing with the legendary demon was an increasing danger.

  It was an odd relationship. Abilities, innate and acquired, Silas could locate and use much like a carpenter searching his shop for a specific tool. Those were found in what Silas had learned was called an id. However, the higher thoughts that held memories, certain types of information, and learned skills were much more difficult. To access those, Silas had to incrementally release a portion of Shezmu’s ego and superego. A perilous proposition.

  It would destroy us both, Shezmu replied. Set me free so that I might save us from this peril you have placed us in!

  Silas felt Shezmu swell against those bonds of will. On an impulse, Silas flavored those bonds with the smell of the creature beneath them. Shezmu submitted immediately.

  Silas crept forward, straining his ears for the sounds of A’Ilys’s heals
striking stone. The sounds had somehow been muted, as if he was hearing the world from several feet underwater. He eased one toe down to stone, tested it, shifted his weight, and moved the opposite foot forward. This slow process seemed to go on for hours, although he was sure he hadn’t traversed more than a few yards.

  Finally, as suddenly as it had come, the darkness lifted, and he was standing in a large round room lit with many lamps of magical ever-light and encompassed by several doors. He tried to count them. The first count came to twelve, the second count came to fourteen, and the third count came to eleven. He looked behind him, but the tarry dark was no longer directly behind him; it was off to his left.

  Dru let go Silas’s arm and walked around the room to stand next to A’Ilys a few feet away and across from him. Both stood, their arms folded, watching Silas. This was some sort of test he realized.

  He looked the room over again. He tried another count of the doors and got thirteen this time. He looked behind him, and the black well from which he’d emerged was now slightly off to his right.

  “Tell me, when you look at it, does the Dark Hall move closer to you or farther away?” A’Ilys asked.

  “Neither,” Silas said. “It just shifts from side to side. It only does that when I’m not looking at it.”

  “That is very interesting,” Dru said. “How large is the room?”

  “Perhaps thirty feet in diameter,” Silas said.

  In response to that, Dru only raised an eyebrow and smiled at A’Ilys. Silas was learning that drow were very subtle people, but he thought A’Ilys gave him an approving look. Then he began to realize the implications of their questions. He had been a fool.

  He closed his eyes, focused his mind, and opened his eyes again. He looked behind him and directed his gaze on the Dark Hall, as A’Ilys had called it. He willed the black space on the wall to pull in and consume the doors around the room one by one. He watched as the doors slid along the chiseled stone wall like shadows moving about a turning lamp. One by one, they slid into the blackness of Dark Hall until the room was only ten feet across, and only one door remained.

  “You’ve eliminated all the doors but one?” A’Ilys asked.

  “Yes,” Silas said.

  “Where does the remaining door lead?” A’Ilys asked.

  “How would I know,” Silas said. “I assume to your quarters. Isn’t that where we’re bound?”

  “Let’s find out,” Dru said as she stepped to the door and pulled it open quickly.

  Beyond the door, Silas saw a large vestibule that would shame any manor in Moras. A vast staircase commanded the center of the room and led to a railed balcony twenty feet above them. The floors were checkered with white marble and chiseled black pearls the size of a cow’s head. The walls were adorned with magnificent tapestries depicting scenes of battles. There were three lush sofas upholstered in blood-red silk that sat low upon the ground. There were two engraved black wooden doors to either side of the entrance and another concealed behind the staircase.

  A’Ilys stepped through first, and Silas caught a glimpse of an intricate, yet subtle, hand gesture the drow made as he entered. Dru followed, and Silas entered last. The door closed of its own volition. Silas noticed something curious then. He noted the inside of the door did not match the outside. Silas also noticed the smell of the air was suddenly different. Much different. In the outer cavern, he could smell the damp rock and soil of the deep places. Silas now realized he had smelled the charged air of a glade just before a spring thunderstorm in the vestibule just outside. Now, in these quarters, the heavy smell of the inside of a grave was back and tinted lightly with the presence of herbs and perfume.

  “Larkhill,” A’Ilys called to the left.

  The door on their left opened almost immediately, and a large Great Man appearing to be in his forties walked toward them in dutiful, although slow, steps. He appeared to be in excellent physical condition, almost a full foot taller than Silas, and weighed at least two hundred stones more. His head and face, including his eyebrows, were closely shaved. In fact, Silas noted his arms were shaved as well. His eyes, what should have been the whites and the irises, were an unsettling sickly green. He wore black leather boots polished to a high shine, black leather pants, and a black sleeveless shirt of silk. Around his neck was a simple silver necklace laden with a single white diamond.

  Silas, who had grown up in a city that housed one of the four Silver Helm academies and having a brother among their number, recognized the man’s profession right away. Silver Helms had an unusual, and subconscious he supposed, manner about them. When they stood, they almost always stood with their feet eight inches apart, eight inches exactly Silas believed, and their hands clasped behind their backs. Their backs were always straight; their shoulders always pulled back. Silas also noted the tattoo of a bull’s head on the man’s muscular right shoulder.

  “Larkhill, this is Master Silas,” A’Ilys continued. “He is priority four.” Then, turning to face Silas, “Larkhill, here, will show you to your room and see to your needs. We will begin your tutelage in ten hours.”

  “Tutelage?” Silas asked.

  “Yes,” A’Ilys said.

  The drow then ascended the staircase and disappeared around a bend in the balcony above them.

  “Tutelage?” Silas asked Dru.

  She responded by gesturing to Larkhill, who turned and began back down the corridor from whence he’d come. Dru nodded her head, and Silas followed. They walked past several doors until finally arriving at what Silas assumed was his assigned room. Larkhill opened the door to a twelve-foot by twelve-foot square room carved into the stone. Within were two simple chairs next to a wooden table, a magical lantern whose level of light could be adjusted by tracing one’s finger over a rune on the face of it, and a goose down bed.

  Dru entered the room and took a seat on one of the chairs and gestured toward the other. Silas moved to the opposite chair, sat, and waited. Larkhill stood at the door, staring ahead vacantly at nothing.

  “Do you understand the entire nature of the ritual you completed in becoming a Lord of Chaos?” Dru asked.

  “The entire nature? No.”

  “Do you understand that, because you named me your mistress, with a word or thought I could release the fallen champion you’ve possessed? Do you understand that, if I die, it will be released to avenge itself upon you?”

  “I do,” Silas said. “I did not decide on you lightly.”

  “Good,” Dru said. “That will save us some time. The only reason you are still alive is that Queen Jandanero understands, or thinks she understands, how powerful a Lord of Chaos can become. She wanted to gauge your intellect and how adept you are at intrigue. Your rash behavior revealed a great deal to her. That was foolish.”

  Dru nodded toward Larkhill. He entered the room in his unconsciously, yet carefully, measured steps and took up the wine decanter. Silas could smell the blood within the decanter before Larkhill pulled the stopper from the neck. Larkhill poured blood from the decanter into a glass and placed it before Dru. She took up the glass and inhaled the scent. She closed her eyes for a moment as if recalling some pleasant memory. She sipped blood from the glass and placed it back on the table.

  Silas had displayed his willingness to be rash and irreverent once already that day and had decided perhaps once was enough. He waited patiently while Dru took her time enjoying the refreshment.

  “You were generously given the opportunity to play a much smarter game,” Dru continued after baiting him with her silence. “You were in the Queen’s presence in front of too many witnesses to quiet. Instead of seizing that opportunity to display a more politically devious mind, you acted rashly. Your reckless words enslaved you to her and to A’Ilys, requiring nothing from them. You gave up the small bit of power you possessed, your mystery, and gained nothing.”

  “You said I am to obey their law,” Silas said. “I will do as you say. However, I am above their law. You are above their law. We
are above all law.”

  Silas waited to see how she would receive this train of thought before he continued. Her face revealed nothing; no hint of approval, reproach, disappointment, or anger. He had indeed chosen well in pledging himself to her. He loved her, in so much as someone like him could anyway.

  “They have a racial bias against all that are not drow,” Silas continued. “An understandable bias in that no other race, on the whole, could compete with them. The only reason they don’t rule all the surface is their small numbers. I simply allowed them to confirm that same bias, something they already believed about me. They have suspicions about my power. I will endeavor to ensure they never truly understand my capabilities. If they believe I’m foolish and rash, then I am all the better for it. They will underestimate me. If they believe I am blunt and direct, they are much less likely to suspect me of any intrigue against them.”

  “This is our home,” Dru said. “Although you have arranged for us to move more freely in Moras, make no mistake; the drow are our refuge.”

  “Allies and enemies come and go,” Silas said. “Sometimes they are one and the same. I will take no action against any of them, except to save my own life, without your permission in advance. In this, you may believe me.”

  “Why do you believe you are safe in taking me into your confidence?” Dru asked.

  “Because my life is complete in your hands,” Silas said plainly. “However, and primarily, also because you are afraid of something or someone.”

  Dru’s expression changed only in the raising of that same eyebrow again. Silas took it to indicate curiosity.

  “You submit yourself to their rules and their ways, even though those ways are not your own,” Silas continued. “You used the word refuge earlier, yet you do not fear the churches or warriors of the land. Thus, I am left to reason there is something unnamed, something that you do fear, from which you hide. Something that causes you to believe you need a refuge.”