by John Goode
“Who kill,” Kor interjected.
Ater sighed and sat down on a rock. “Yes, Kor, we kill. We do not believe that every single life is a precious and sacred ball of light. We accept the fact that some lives, some souls, are just too vile and disgusting to live, so when attacked or threatened, yes, we kill.”
Kor looked Ater straight in the eyes. “And were you attacked or threatened when you decided to become an assassin?”
If the question was meant to rattle the dark elf, it failed. “Both,” he answered curtly. “I swore an oath to the Arcadian throne to defend it from enemies both foreign and domestic, and that means killing some people before they have a chance to kill others. I’m sorry that Koran’s vision isn’t encompassing enough to understand that, but there are bad people out there, and sometimes, bad people need to be killed.”
“That’s a convenient philosophy. It allows you to be a murderous thug, and somehow you still come out the good guy.”
Kor didn’t blink, but he still missed Ater jumping up off the rock and getting directly into his face. It took him another half second to realize there was a knife at his throat. “I never claimed to be the good guy. In fact, I have never claimed to be good at all. I am simply a man trying to do the best he can, and I am sorry that I don’t live up to your exacting standards, but if I recall my scripture, there is no other judge besides Koran, and that he doesn’t allow anyone to share in his decision making. So unless you have suddenly become a prophet, I am pretty sure your disdain is a sin as well.”
Kor ignored the knife at his throat and said, “I don’t judge you. Koran does and will. I am simply living in the ways he set out for us.”
Ater pulled away from the elf and sheathed his knife. “That’s a convenient philosophy. It allows you to be a judgmental asshole, and somehow you still come out the good guy.”
The look on Kor’s face was not pleasant.
“So it comes down to this. Once we enter the city, there can be no scowls, no eye rolls, and no disapproving looks, and I assure you, if you don’t hold your tongue, someone else will after they cut it out of your mouth.”
Kor sighed. “Yes, you’re doing a great job of convincing me these people aren’t all bloodthirsty criminals.”
“They are people who have spent their entire lives being persecuted for simply not believing in something, so yes, they would be a bit touchy if they found one of the people they had run from ended up in the middle of their city. In fact, the response would be similar to a dark elf showing up in Evermore.” Kor’s expression began to sour as Ater went on. “I’m curious, what exactly was my crime? I stood at the border waiting, made no offensive move against the city or its people, and yet I was sentenced to death within minutes. Did I attack you? Did I attempt to? So it’s not exactly respect for all life, just the life that agrees with you.”
After a long pause, Kor said, “No talking, no reactions. I got it.”
Both men wanted to continue to argue, but they were running out of time, and there was nothing left to say. For now.
“SO THE red queen, the white witch, and Glinda are related?” I asked as my head exploded from the implications. “How does that work?”
Demain gave me a smile that reminded me more of a cat looking at a mouse than an expression of something positive. “It works with the three of us in different realms vowing to leave the other two alone. We all share the same passions, so to avoid having to fight our own blood, we agreed to go our separate ways and leave it at that.”
“Passions?” Ruber asked, intrigued.
Another predatory smile. “Power. It’s always about power.” She stood up and was suddenly the all-business queen she had been before. “But Inmediares’s plan threatens all realms, which means she has broken the Accords, which means she must be stopped.”
“What about my mother?” Hawk asked. Just asking the question was like nails on a chalkboard to him. I put a hand on his shoulder and gave him as much love as I could through the link. I felt his thoughts lighten but not by much.
“One battle at a time,” the queen answered, sidestepping the question neatly. “First we need to convince Olim to join our side. If she has already sided with Inmediares, we’re sunk.” She snapped her fingers and a horse wearing a tuxedo shirt and cummerbund trotted into the room. “We will need to make arrangements to travel. In the meantime, please rest and prepare yourselves. Everything only gets harder from here.”
“How much time is preparation going to take?” Hawk asked, standing up and rubbing his palms against the thighs of his pants.
Demain gave him a sympathetic smile. “You’re young, and this is probably your first adventure, so let me give you some advice. When you have a chance to rest, take it. If the difference in winning or losing comes down to a few minutes, then what you want to accomplish has been a lost cause from the start. I will summon the court magician, and he will transport us to Niflgard in the morning.”
Hawk looked like he wanted to argue, but she held up a finger to stop him.
“Also, we can’t leave until I say so; and I say we are leaving in the morning. You can stand here and be angry about it, or you can follow Edward here to your rooms to rest for the night. The choice is yours.”
“If you gentlemen will follow me, please.” The horse’s precise English accent made him sound like what Batman’s butler would sound like if he was suddenly turned into a horse.
I thought at Hawk, You’re exhausted, and she’s right. We can’t force her.
He mentally sighed, and I felt his soul lean against mine for a moment to gather strength. I smiled toward the horse and said, “Please, sir, lead on.”
“I will have someone bring you some refreshments shortly,” Demain called from behind us.
Hawk thought to me, Which means we aren’t to leave our rooms. We’re in a cage.
I hated to admit it, but he had a point.
As cages go, it was pretty lush. It was a series of three connected rooms, nicely decorated, with some crazy furnishings, some oversized, some tiny, but all expensive. I mean, if someone said they were going to lock you up in a huge suite in Las Vegas with all the amenities you could ask for, you might be all pissy because it was a cage, but you can’t say you wouldn’t be ordering room service all night long.
“Is there a reason all of this”—I pointed at the furniture—“is all different sizes?” I asked the horse while he made sure the room was properly supplied.
“We have multiple sets of accommodations in each room or suite. If a guest was to flip unexpectedly, he would be able to change beds, etc. without the inconvenience of changing rooms.” Edward explained everything nonchalantly, which made the whole flipping thing that much worse. I mean, he was talking about going to sleep as one thing and waking up as a completely different thing… and they had stuff ready because you just know it had happened more than once.
I shuddered at the concept.
“Is there anything you need presently?” he asked as he stood in the doorway. “Food and drink are being prepared as we speak.”
“Are we allowed to walk around?” I asked him, knowing the answer but wanting to hear him say it.
“I’m afraid not. The palace is still recovering from the last Fluctuation. We can’t guarantee your safety. It’s better you stay here.” He made it sound so… normal.
“But we will take responsibility for ourselves,” I pressed.
“I’m sorry,” he said insincerely. “But it’s for the best.” He backed out of the room, and the door closed and locked behind him.
“Well, that was—” I began to say.
“—expected,” Hawk finished for me. “My family has done the same when we had guests of a dubious nature. I can’t fault her for that.”
Fault her? No. But it was rude nonetheless.
Hawk sat down on one of the huge overstuffed chairs and closed his eyes. “There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
I would have bought the whole act if he wasn�
�t saying something completely different in my head.
Find a way to tell Ruber he needs to scout the area. He needs to find out anything that may give us an advantage over Demain.
Thankfully, Hawk was good at keeping his emotions out of his expression, which meant I was pretty good at it too because of our link. I thought back to him, She said she was going to help us. What kind of advantage? Why do we even need an advantage?
Hawk looked like he was about to doze off, but I could feel his mind operating at full speed. No, she didn’t. She said she is going to stop her sister; she said nothing about my mother or ascension. Trust me, that woman is going to betray us the very second she doesn’t need us anymore.
It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with him; I just didn’t get it. Why not just make us do what she wanted before she killed us? Why would you say that?
He half opened one eye, looked directly at me, and thought, Because it is exactly what I’m planning to do. He knew I hated it when he got like this, all dark and unforgiving, but I also knew he was right. The odds were that Demain was going to screw us.
I glanced over at Ruber and tried to figure out what language I was going to use. Because of the link with Hawk, I spoke what passed for English to fairies fluently, which meant Ruber no longer needed to translate for me, but I knew he could understand any language, including those he’d learned while he was on Earth.
Like pig latin.
“Uberray, ancay ouyay understandway emay?”
Ruber paused in midair and spun around until, I assumed, he was staring at me like I’d finally lost my mind.
“Ustjay aysay esyay ifway ouyay ancay.”
Very carefully he answered, “Esyay.”
“Awkhay ayssay ouyay eednay otay eaksnay aroundway andway indfay anythingway eway ancay useway againstway Emainday.”
He responded with, “Iway agreeway,” and then in English said, “If you two aren’t going to need me, I’m going to power down to recharge.”
Hawk waved his hand lazily at him as he faked falling sleep, and I nodded. “That’s cool. We’ll wake you when we’re ready to leave.”
He floated over to one of the tables, and his glow dimmed to almost nothing.
So now what? I thought at Hawk.
He slid over in the wide, comfortable chair and patted next to him.
I smiled. It was the best idea he’d had in days.
Chapter 8
“Home is where the heart is.
I mean to say home is where you hide the
jar you keep your heart in.”
Queen Madrastra
Ruler of the Blanc Region
The Wolflands
THERE WERE few places as well hidden as the dark elf city of Stygian.
Its main entrance was carved into the side of Mount Désepoir, the fabled place where Koran was supposedly betrayed and struck down by Lilith, the patron Goddess of Darkness. Although farms flourished within ten miles of the mountain, nothing, neither grass nor tree, nettle nor weed, grew inside an irregular circle inside that point. Wild animals avoided it with a passion. Elves in general considered it a cursed place, and only the holiest of clerics ever dared to approach it. To the elves, it was the last place in the Nine Realms they wanted to be; to the rest of the worlds, it was a dead mountain in the middle of a dead land.
The dark elves worked very hard to maintain that facade.
Patrols were sent out weekly to seed the surrounding land with poisons to make sure nothing would grow in the acrid soil and with musk made from the scent glands of the Tonnerre beast to ensure the animals stayed far, far away. Once every decade, when the clerics of Koran came to give tribute to their fallen god, the dark elves made sure there was nothing left astray to give their abandoned cousins something to wonder about. Stygian’s main defense was its relative invisibility, and the citizens maintained that invisibility zealously.
Bringing a light elf to its doors was treason.
“Look no one in the eyes, and, whatever you do, don’t talk,” Ater warned as they approached the city limits. “Your accent will give you away instantly.”
Kor glared over at him. “I don’t have an accent: you do.”
Before Ater could respond, two dark elves appeared in front of them. Kor was completely floored. He had no idea there was any way someone could get that close without him knowing. Yet there were two guards, looking as if they had been standing in front of them the entire time.
The sentries looked at Ater, clearly waiting for something. The dark elf quickly mumbled the word “Shibboleth,” and they relaxed.
“What say you, brother?” one of the guards queried. “Is this man your prisoner?”
Panicked but doing his best to hide it, Kor glanced over at Ater, who was ignoring him. “He is my friend. Is that a problem?”
The two guards looked uncomfortable. “He is… he is a light elf.”
“You can tell that by just looking?” Ater challenged him, his voice getting deeper, carrying more authority. And a great deal more sarcasm. “You’re so versed in the ways of the world that you can just glance at a man and know where his allegiance lies? With a talent like that, you should be doing far more than patrolling the border.” The guard looked visibly chastised. “Do you know who I am?” The guard nodded. “Then why are you wasting my time?”
He began to walk past them, but the other guard put a hand out to stop them. “Because I don’t know who you are, and that man is clearly a light elf.” He looked at Kor and then back to Ater. “You’re going to have to come with us to see the directeur.”
Directeur was an archaic term, but Kor recognized it as Old Elvish, the language both light and dark elves used before the Separation, which was when the dark elves declared themselves a culture unto themselves. Ater knew very well that, although the word directeur had for ages been a synonym for governor, in Stygian the word had come to mean “steward.” As the current directeur was fond of saying, “the clerics are the stewards of Koran; I am the steward of Lilith.” The directeur, whoever held that position currently, had absolute control over the city proper. The directeur’s word was law.
Which was a bad thing for Ater and Kor.
“Come with us, please,” the second guard demanded, indicating Ater and Kor should walk ahead of him and his companion. His hand rested on the hilt of his weapon, and from the way his fingers drummed on the sword, it was obvious he was ready for them to argue the order. Kor looked at Ater in question; the dark elf shook his head so slightly the other dark elves didn’t notice. Kor gave him a look—more a drawing of his brows—asking him if he was sure.
Ater just stared at him, blinking one time slowly—answering him yes, he was sure.
Without another word they were led into Stygian, both elves wondering if they had made a huge mistake.
THE FABRICATION floor was littered with pieces of machinery everywhere.
At first Ferra thought they were walking through an ancient battlefield from the extent of the damage; but as they traveled farther and farther in, she began to think differently. “Were these taken apart?”
Molly nodded as she navigated around the heaps of clockwork debris. “The choppers must have been salvaging what they could from these units to keep themselves intact.” She sounded infinitely sadder than she had when they arrived at the workshop. “Without being fully activated, these machines wouldn’t have been able to defend themselves. They just had to sit there while the choppers dissected them.”
Ferra paused in place. “You mean these were alive?”
Molly turned and looked back at her. “Of course. Once fabricated, all clockwork beings are alive and aware. These units were just waiting to be shipped out. They would have been in standby mode, or what humans would call paralyzed. The choppers would have met no resistance at all.”
The barbarian tried not to shudder as she looked around at the dozens and dozens of piles of machines that had been gutted.
Caerus seemed undaunted by them. “Why did
n’t the choppers just have the workshop make more parts for them?”
Molly strode past the piles of machinery. “Same reason the waiting room host wouldn’t acknowledge me. Clockwork beings can’t give orders to other clockworks. They would have had no choice but to turn on their own.”
Something about that explanation didn’t sit well with Ferra. “Then why was this room locked up? There are still parts all over the place.”
“Perhaps they had all the parts they needed?” Molly mused.
Caerus sounded concerned as well. “No, I saw choppers that had been broken down near the grove. They still needed parts.”
“Then I’m not sure why,” Molly said, sounding not at all worried as she kept walking. She didn’t notice that her companions had stopped.
“Molly?” Ferra called, staring past the clockwork companion, a wary, concerned look on her face.
“The controls should be on the far wall,” Molly continued, not catching the change in the barbarian’s voice.
“Molly! Look up,” Caerus warned.
Molly stopped and looked up slowly. At first she had no idea what the sapphire was talking about. All she saw was the darkness of the far wall looming ahead of them. Then her lenses reoriented, and she saw what Caerus was talking about and why Ferra had sounded worried.
That was no wall.
The sheer size of the unit was incredible, dwarfing all the other war machines they had seen so far. From what Molly could see, it was just the torso of the unit. She had heard of units being built that were so incredibly enormous they had to be shipped in modules and assembled later at the customer’s site.
