Night Elves of Ardani: Book Three: Invocation

by Nina K. Westra

  She stood there for a long time, eyes closed, listening to the distant sounds of the road and to her thumping heartbeat. Gradually she began unclenching muscles.

  She became aware of Aruna speaking quietly. He was leaning against the wall beside her, not too close, saying things she couldn’t understand but could tell were reassurances. His fingers brushed slowly over her wrist. His hold on her was too light to be dangerous. It was more a caress than a restraint.

  She opened her eyes, and she was still in the cavern, and immediately she felt the need to escape it. She needed to get out of Vondh Rav.

  But she couldn’t. She had to help Aruna.

  When she’d stopped shivering and the world had begun to come back into focus, she looked over at him. He stiffened as her gaze shifted toward him. The fear in his face was startling. She looked away again. She hated being seen like this.

  He took her hand and pulled her from the alley, and though she was afraid to go out there again, she didn’t resist.

  They walked down the road for some time, and then he pulled her into another building, into a large room full of tables and people she didn’t look at. He ushered her into a chair at a table in a dark corner, then fumbled for the notebook. Words appeared in front of her.

  “Wait here.”

  She looked up, jaw clenched. He was leaving her alone?

  He didn’t wait for a response before he left. He left the notebook on the table with her. She watched him disappear out the front door of the building.

  She didn’t dare look around the room. She curled her hands into fists on the table and kept very still, as if that would keep anyone from noticing her. Soft voices filled the room. The air was warm and close and smelled like herbal smoke and food. She could hear a few people laughing loudly in a way that indicated they’d probably had too much to drink.

  When no one had accosted her after several minutes, she let her fists uncurl. The quiet buzz of the room and the seclusion of her corner let her come back to herself.

  She raised her eyes to look up at the dark room, seeing it for the first time. There was a bar at one end, and a hearth at the other. There was a window in one wall, and she peered out of it but could see only dim shapes and motion outside. People sat in groups at tables near her, men and women alike, but she saw no other non-Varai. Nevertheless, no one seemed offended by her presence.

  Of course they weren’t. He wouldn’t have left her there if it would put her in danger.

  She shook her head. She was weak. Weak and foolish.

  She pulled at the collar. It felt too tight, but when she pulled at it, there was enough space for her to fit several fingers under it. It could have been worse. She’d heard that people across the desert branded their slaves.

  When she’d been sitting there long enough to work up her courage, she passed the time by watching the people around her. A man in a group near the bar looked in her direction once or twice, which made her uneasy, but no one else paid her any mind.

  She was there long enough to see most of the other patrons leave, and more come to replace them. Finally, a grim-looking woman in an apron approached her.

  “Iv zadur?” the woman asked, stopping in front of her table.

  Novikke froze. Would they find it suspicious for a human in Vondh Rav not to speak Varai? Erring on the side of caution, she made a vague motion toward her ears and shook her head.

  To her surprise, the woman set down the pitcher she’d been holding and responded with a series of complicated hand gestures. Novikke stared. The woman rolled her eyes and made some more gestures, more sharply.

  It was a language made of hand signals, she realized. Did the deaf of Kuda Varai have their own language? Gods, she’d made things worse.

  She raised a hand, having no idea what she meant to do with it, and was exceedingly grateful to be interrupted by Aruna’s arrival. He and the waitress spoke, then the woman nodded and left.

  Aruna hovered by the table, looking down at Novikke appraisingly.

  She leaned back in her chair, making no effort to assuage the uncertainty and guilt showing on his face.

  She was angry at him. Mostly for the fact that he’d been there to bear witness to her Panic—he’d seen it before, but it felt so much more humiliating this time—but also for helping trigger it in the first place. He hadn’t warned her about any of this. He’d planned all of this, and he’d intentionally kept the less appealing parts of his plan to himself until it was too late for her to back out.

  He sat down across from her and scooted something across the tabletop toward her. A long strip of cloth. The enchanted translator he had worn at the Ardanian camp. He must have gone to get it recharged by an enchanter.

  She fastened it around her neck beneath the other collar.

  “Is it working?” he said after a moment.

  She ground her teeth a little, not wanting to speak to him. “Seems like it,” she said, quietly enough to not be overheard. She could understand the voices at the tables nearby now. It turned out that the woman who’d been talking loudly at the table behind her for the past hour had been complaining about her mother-in-law.

  He was quiet for a long moment. “I’m sorry.”

  She tilted her head away from him, looking out at the tables behind him.

  He shifted in his seat. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  She gave a short, harsh laugh. “Of course not. Why would I be frightened by a Varai bringing me to Vondh Rav and dressing me up like a slave?”

  He set his elbows on the table and leaned forward. He moved an arm as if to reach out and touch her hand, then pulled it back instead. Novikke wondered if the two of them touching would look strange to anyone watching. Did Varai ever have those kinds of relationships with their slaves? Her stomach turned at the idea.

  “Do you want to leave?”

  Her eyes flicked toward his. He looked like he was dreading her answer. It was a real offer then, not just empty words. He really was sorry.

  “No.”

  He looked relieved.

  She noticed a head at another table turn toward them. It was the same man who’d looked at her earlier.

  Aruna turned to see what she was looking at, and the man turned away. “No one will touch you,” he said, and nodded at her collar. “Because of that. They know you’re mine.”

  “Am I?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

  “That’s what they’ll think,” he amended. “People respect that here.”

  “Because humans are objects to be owned here.”

  His gaze dulled a little. “They are intelligent, dangerous creatures that must be kept under control if they are present in our society at all,” he corrected her.

  She bristled. “Am I to be kept under control, then?”

  “This is for show, Novikke. Nothing has changed.”

  She tucked her lips together, looking toward the bar again. “What did you think about that girl with the bruises? Or did you even notice her?”

  “I noticed her.”

  “And?”

  A crease formed between his eyebrows. He didn’t answer.

  “Dangerous creatures that must be controlled,” Novikke said. “That’s what you think?”

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s what you believed when you lived here?”

  She saw his chest rise and fall once before he answered. His eyes never left hers.

  “I suppose I did.”

  “And when did you stop believing that?”

  “Somewhat recently,” he said carefully. “But I never believed in the sorts of things that were done to that woman.”

  “Doesn’t anyone do anything about it?”

  “It is not illegal to discipline slaves as you see fit, within reason.”

  “That was within reason?”

  “But there are people who advocate for the rights of non-Varai. People who oppose slavery. My sister is one of them.”

  She was surprised and pleased for half
a moment before she heard the unsaid implication. “And you’re not?”

  “It’s a complicated issue. This way, there’s a system in place to let non-Varai stay here, in the custody of a Varai who becomes responsible for them. Before slavery, all non-Varai were simply executed. There are still those who object to them being here at all and would prefer to go back to that policy.”

  Novikke raised her eyebrows. She was getting whiplash. “Is your sister one of those?” she asked, alarmed.

  He almost smiled. “She is not. Though she also does not think that non-Varai should be permitted in the forest.”

  “That’s a complicated set of views.”

  “To an outsider, I suppose it would seem so,” he said.

  Novikke slipped a finger under her too-tight collar to pull it away from her neck. Aruna’s eyes landed on the strip of leather, then moved away again.

  “You have a right to be upset,” he said quietly.

  “Is that really what you think?”

  “I should have better prepared you for what you’d see here. I thought… I thought that if you saw the city for yourself, you might feel more generous toward it than if I just told you about it. It’s a complex city full of different kinds of people. Not all Varai are the same. Just like you and Theros were not the same.”

  She didn’t say aloud what she’d been thinking—that she had been questioning whether all of this was worth it. Destabilizing the Kuda Varai axis would harm Ardani and Ysura, too, but not as much as Kuda Varai.

  She’d be betraying every other enslaved person here if she helped him. Which was worse: letting the forest die, weakening the night elves and opening them up to complete destruction, or helping them and therefore helping them continue raiding and enslaving non-Varai?

  She felt the weight of Aruna’s eyes on her, and felt nauseous for considering leaving him.

  But she also felt the collective weight of her people’s eyes on her. The other soldiers who might have been burned, like she was, or worse. The other people who might have encountered Varai on the roads near the border, and not been as lucky as she was. The humans—and sun elves, too—that she’d seen walking by with collars on their necks.

  Maybe Neiryn was right. Aruna was the exception. He was the only half-decent night elf she’d met so far.

  But then she thought of the mob of children at Rameka giggling and crying hellos at her. She sighed.

  As if he’d been reading her thoughts on her face, Aruna said softly, “I like to think we are still worth saving, despite our flaws. Your people and mine.”

  “I know,” she said, and tension drained from his face.

  She crossed her arms on the table, still glancing nervously around the room. The air remained thick with discomfort on both sides of the table. Novikke was eager to put it behind them. “We… we did come here for some reason other than to torment me, didn’t we? So what do we do now that we’re here?”

  “Well,” he began carefully, “first, we have to go see a priestess.”

  “And then what?”

  “It’ll depend on what the priestess says.”

  “Glad you’ve planned this out so thoroughly. Do you at least know where to find a priestess?”

  “I have one in mind.”

  She nodded, mentally preparing herself to go out into the city again. “It’s good to hear your voice again,” she said.

  He smiled, and her own lips copied the gesture automatically. She loved seeing his smile, even when he was annoying her. “Yours, too. Are you ready now?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Chapter 6

  They wound back through the cavern. Aruna led her through sparsely populated dark alleys instead of the main streets, a courtesy that she noticed and was grateful for but was too embarrassed to acknowledge aloud. In a few days, she’d look back on the episode with indifference, but right now it was still a raw wound.

  Aruna kept his hood up, and Novikke followed suit. There may still have been people around who recognized them.

  They passed a group of men lounging beside the back door of a shop. They stopped talking and watched them as they passed. Novikke stiffened as eyes fell on her.

  As they were about to pass, one of the men reached out to grab Aruna’s arm.

  “Hey,” the man said, and jerked his chin at Novikke. “Rent her to me. How much?”

  She supposed glaring wasn’t slave-like behavior, but she did it anyway. The man only smiled back at her.

  Aruna shook the man off and kept walking. “Fuck off.”

  Novikke gave him a surprised glance. She’d almost thought he didn’t know any words like that.

  “Ten silver?” the man said.

  “Do you see a for sale sign? Go to the markets if you’re so desperate.”

  The man put his hands up, looking amused. “All right, then. No offense meant.”

  Aruna grabbed Novikke’s arm and pulled her down the alley. She listened for the sound of footsteps following. There were three of them. If they decided to harass them further, she and Aruna wouldn’t be able to fight them off easily.

  But she heard nothing. She glanced up surreptitiously as they rounded the corner, and found the men still standing by the door, involved in conversation again.

  Aruna let go of her as they turned onto another street. There was a distinctly uncomfortable silence.

  “Is that a common occurrence?” Novikke said eventually.

  “I wouldn’t know. In this part of town, maybe.” He looked over his shoulder, evidently having had the same concerns Novikke had about being followed. “The Goddess condemns the forceful taking of another’s body. That’s why the thought of it fills one with disgust. It’s anathema to her designs. It’s unnatural.”

  “Even if it’s a human’s body?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about violence, then? Toward someone else’s body?”

  He gave her defensive glance.

  “I’m curious,” Novikke said. “About your goddess.”

  “Ravi has no objection to warfare. There is honor in being a skillful fighter. Fighting serves a purpose. It’s been a part of Varai culture for as long as we’ve existed, since the Dark Days, because it allows us to protect ourselves when hiding fails us. Rape serves no purpose. It’s cruelty for cruelty’s sake. It’s one of the few true evils in the world.”

  “That’s what she says?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not all Varai are devout followers of Ravi, it seems.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  He frowned, pausing at an intersection of roads. Then he changed directions. “This way,” he said over his shoulder. “We’ll take a detour.”

  “A detour?” she asked nervously, looking around for followers again.

  “The scenic route.”

  He led her down another tunnel and down a lot of stairs, then into a busy cavern that was open on one side, facing a dark valley outside. Novikke was out of breath by the time they reached it. She began to think of the place like a giant anthill—a few structures above ground with a massive labyrinth of tunnels burrowing into the earth below.

  It was shockingly chaotic. Voices echoed off the walls, amplifying the already significant noise.

  “I thought night elves were supposed to be quiet,” Novikke said wryly, leaning close to be heard and to keep from losing him in the crowd.

  “Hard to keep things quiet in such a cramped place. I doubt it’s been quiet here for many centuries now.”

  “Why don’t they expand the city?”

  “Digging through bedrock is difficult, even with magic, and people don’t like to be too far from the surface, anyway.”

  She was about to ask why they didn’t build on the surface, and then she remembered the trees in the town above them. They’d carefully built around the trees to avoid cutting them down.

  “It’s built vertically so that it doesn’t take up space,” she realized. “So that it doesn’t encroach on the fores
t?”

  “Of course.” He turned to consider her. “You…don’t do it that way in Ardani?”

  “No.”

  He shook his head. “Humans don’t respect the land.”

  “I don’t know what you’re picturing, but the land Valtos sits upon isn’t like Kuda Varai. It’s a lot of flat, empty fields. It’s good for farming, but it isn’t brimming with magic. It isn’t alive like Kuda Varai is.”