“To what? Stop talking in riddles and misdirection. If you want my help, ask for it straight out! Why is that so hard?!”
The question took the Deceiver a step back, making clear to Elora that she was someone who rarely asked—in all likelihood, rarely had to ask—for anything.
“Very well, then,” the Deceiver said with a kind of finality. “The world stands at a crossroads, one path leading to a destiny bright with promise, the other to fell disaster. All it needs is a push in the proper direction. I possess the will and the foreknowledge to provide that push. I lack the power.” That confession didn’t come easy. “I require you to provide it.”
Elora bridled at the presumption of the phrase “I require you,” but she kept that emotion from her face. She pulled her gaze back a tad from her foe, no longer meeting the Deceiver’s eyes straight on but taking in the totality of her stance, her attitude, the way she moved, in an attempt to discern what would come next.
Aloud, she made a simple observation: “At the cost of my own life.”
“You’ve risked it time and again for friends. Countless others have made the supreme sacrifice in your cause. Can you do no less in return?”
The Deceiver was constantly in motion, from side to side across Elora’s field of vision, each step making a harsh crunch on the hoarfrost-encrusted ground. She would come closer, then slip away, feint after feint, without obvious pattern save to provoke a physical response from Elora.
All the while, the Deceiver kept talking in her honeyed tones, presenting her case as methodically as any minister would state policy.
“Why should I believe you?”
“If you have faith in yourself, you must have faith in me.”
“I’ve seen you wear many faces, Deceiver. Why shouldn’t this be just another mask?”
The other woman was starting to show some irritation. Arguments didn’t sit well with her and defiance even less.
“Yours is the power to listen, girl, to see behind all masks, is it not? I’m sorry for all that’s happened”—another admission that came hard and to Elora’s surprise she realized that the sorrow was genuine and heartfelt—“it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I cast the auguries, I examined my own memories, everything was planned. Everything was properly prepared. It had to be you because you and I are one! I could reach across the years and reclaim my own past, while keeping the knowledge of my life to come—every pitfall, every risk, every threat. Every—enemy! I want to go back and start over, and I will have the foreknowledge to sidestep the original mistakes that have led to this damnable place!” The last was a snarl so full of rage and intensity it would have done an ogre proud. Strangely, the emotional storm passed almost as quickly, replaced by an eerie calm.
“And you were just a baby,” the Deceiver said. “You had so little soul to lose.”
Elora staggered, as if she’d been physically struck.
And that, she cried in her mind while refusing to give her foe the satisfaction of hearing aloud how deeply she’d been hurt, made it all right?
Her mind tore the scene in two, one part of her observing the here and now, the rest viewing excerpts from her earliest childhood, that fateful night in the ancient Daikini fortress of Tir Asleen when the calm and loving certainties of her world, indeed the world itself, were rent asunder. Friends were cast into oblivion and the proudest fortress in that Realm was reduced in a heartbeat to scattered rubble. Elora herself awakened shrieking from a sound sleep, calling out to parents she never knew, to companions she’d never see again, for salvation that never came as she was wreathed in fires that burned hotter than any Nelwyn forge and propelled to the far side of the globe. Her gown was scorched tatters as she gathered herself into a huddled bundle on the cobblestones laid out before the Palace Royal in Angwyn, the air about her flashing with rainbow lightning. Her body was curled protectively about a stuffed bear, likewise scorched and looking like it had just waged the battle of its life, and over the days that followed no one could pry it from her grip.
Thorn Drumheller had made the bear for her, as a birthday gift. And since he could not be present for her birthday celebration, he’d left it for her to find. He’d told her the story on their travels but some part of her had always been aware of what he’d done, that’s why she’d kept the bear close ever since. It was her talisman, her cuddly, her paladin protector. Thorn had charged the bear with the strongest spell he knew to keep her safe and then, because he also knew that no outside spell would have an effect on her, wove the enchantment through the bear into the fabric of her own being—so that it would always be her strength that sustained it. The more powerful the sorcerous threat against her, the stronger she would resist, drawing on her own reserves.
“That little Nelwyn peck!” the Deceiver cried, and Elora realized with a shock that the pair of them shared the same insight into those long-ago events, more completely than identical twins. In all her years, she’d also never heard that slur voiced with such viciousness, making it to Elora’s ears the ultimate obscenity.
“The world isn’t as you remember,” Elora told her, “else you’d have known.”
“All this is because of him, don’t you see? If the bastard had left well enough alone, I’d have claimed my prize, the future would have been assured. Those deaths are on his head, my girl, this desolation is his fault!”
“No.” For Thorn, Elora remembered, had not come to Tir Asleen of his own volition, he’d been brought on the back of a dragon.
“Time to make amends, you can still do that much at least. Set things right.”
“No.” The same dragon, she remembered, that had visited her own dreams and brought her to his Realm to bear witness to the moment of his death.
“Are you so full of yourself, so absolutely certain that you know best?”
“No.” Hers was the hand Calan Dineer trusted to end his ancient life with honor and dignity. Hers were the hands into which he entrusted his offspring, the future not merely of his Realm but of all the others.
“Are you in a rut then, you stupid girl, to say the same thing over and over and over, like some dumb farmyard beast?”
“No.”
“No no no no no no no,” the Deceiver taunted in a mocking singsong. “Is that the best you can say for yourself? Don’t answer, let me guess.” She clenched her hand into a fist and her armor obligingly grew barbs at knuckles and finger joints so that the merest scrape would rive steel and open ordinary flesh to the bone. “I possess the might of ages, Elora Danan. I have committed the most unspeakable of acts—without hesitation, without mercy—to bring myself to this moment, to claim what is mine by right. I am the Sacred Princess, I will be Savior of the World. Too much is at stake. I will not be denied. I will have you.”
With a great war cry, the Deceiver rushed forward, arms upraised, apparently to strike. Elora held her ground and didn’t shift her stance in the slightest to counter the attack, knowing that even a single blow would likely be the end of her.
At the last, she turned her eyes to the Deceiver’s. Their gaze met for the most fleeting of contacts…
…and then Elora stood alone, amidst the tranquillity of the Faery wood, soft grass underfoot and a riot of life within close reach. The air managed to be chill and warm all at once and the breath she took was sweetness.
It was as if the confrontation had never happened.
“As if,” she finished, “it was no more than a dream.”
Without turning, she spoke to Khory.
“I was looking into a mirror just now.”
“I saw,” the warrior replied. Elora didn’t need to turn to know that Khory stood with bared blade, the curved sword Elora had forged for her, held with casual deceit down and to the side. It would be no effort at all for Khory to swing her weapon from rest to the attack, and Elora had honed the edge so sharp that she’d likely never really feel it
s kiss as it slashed through the column of her neck.
“Did you know, you and Thorn?” she asked aloud. That it was me, she thought, but said, “That she would come for me?”
The shallowest of nods was Khory’s silent reply. But to which question, the young woman thought.
“Is that why he sent you along to watch my back?”
“Something like that.”
“Should I have fought her?”
“You did, in your own way.”
Elora found it hard to turn her back to the field where she’d faced the Deceiver, half-afraid that the moment she did her foe would once more appear to strike her down. Khory was evidently of a similar mind because her eyes constantly searched the field and tree line beyond; she never strayed more than a body length from Elora and her blade remained at the ready.
“I meant—!”
“I know what you meant, Elora Danan. To fight in my way. That may not be the answer. Moreover, even if it was, you’re not ready.”
“So you say!”
“Speak more like that, headstrong and willful, you become more like her.”
Elora turned to face her companion. “Is she”—she couldn’t bring herself to mouth the pronoun, to say me—“who she says she is?”
“She is the Deceiver, Elora Danan. That’s the only name you need to know. The only one that matters.”
Time danced to different beats between the Realms of Lesser Faery and the Daikini—a passage of but three nights in one turned out to be better than a week when the column finally reached its destination. The route Tyrrel chose lent itself to travel and the pace was easy, so spirits rose with every passing day. It delighted Elora, during her many strolls along the line of march and through each nightly campsite, to see these two races set aside their differences and find increasingly common ground to share between them. Wives exchanged recipes and story after story of how confounding and exasperating their menfolk were, while the mothers among them shared poultices and remedies for household ailments. The men gathered in groups, some talking of farming, others hunting, or the best mix of hops and barley for beer. They talked of craft and of sport and of the weather. They talked of their children and found to their surprise that they shared the same hopes and fears. Despite their appearance, in the ways that really mattered they weren’t all that different.
Elora told herself she wouldn’t sleep from now until she was safe within the walls of Sandeni but her body took that decision from her. She’d slept hardly at all prior to this evacuation and the work of opening the ancient Gate at the fort had been as hard as anything she’d ever done. In truth, she’d long since concluded the only thing keeping her going was sheer stubbornness. Alongside came the sneaky suspicion that exhaustion might have been what brought on the Deceiver’s attack, with Elora’s natural defenses at a low ebb. The young woman thought, with a tired smile, that the outcome of that confrontation probably surprised the both of them. It had also taken its toll.
How she managed to make it through the following day, she didn’t know. Events and people always seemed to be slipping in and out of focus, often in the middle of a conversation. More than once, the first clue Elora had that she’d drifted into a fugue state of waking unconsciousness was when the person opposite her would assume an expression of tender solicitude. Next would come a pat on the arm or shoulder and a comment about how tired she looked, Elora’s immediate and voluble protests notwithstanding.
By nightfall, she found herself without an appetite. She considered making her usual rounds of the camp, but chose first to set herself against the trunk of a convenient old tree. She vaguely remembered sitting down…
…and that was that.
The next she knew Tyrrel was looming like a giant over her with a bowl of steaming porridge in hand, garnished with fresh fruit and flavored just the way she loved, with cinnamon and sugar. It wasn’t yet official sunrise, although the whole of the eastern sky was light, and Elora noted, as she blinked her bleary eyes reluctantly into focus, that she’d slipped into a loamy hollow between a pair of massive roots. She stretched as long as she could manage, delighting in each joint that popped; she couldn’t remember feeling more deliciously comfortable in any proper bed. Or refreshed.
“Is this how fairies feel after a night’s rest?” she inquired.
“Summat,” replied the Monarch of Lesser Faery. “We cheated a wee tad, though.”
Elora Danan cocked an eyebrow in silent query, the rest of her intent on savoring the wondrous smells and tastes rising from the bowl Tyrrel handed over.
“Normally, we’d cast a glamour t’ ease your pains but spells don’t work on you, lass, so we had t’ find another path t’ help.”
“I can manage on my own, milord.”
“Pish-tosh, milady. Last I saw, ’twas a struggle t’ place one foot b’fore t’other. The state you were in, any decent healing would’a taken time we couldn’t afford. This was a better way.”
She caught the undertone of his apparently innocent words.
“You know what happened the other night?”
He nodded grimly. “The Deceiver”—and Elora noted that her name was as much a slur from his lips as “peck” had been from hers—“can mayhap walk Our Realm unchallenged, but not unnoticed.” Then Tyrrel deliberately lightened both mood and language with a return to their original conversation. “Some of my lot, we cast an enchantment on the ground instead, t’ make it nice an’ comfy.”
“Worked for me.”
“ ’Twas the idea, lass. An’, with your permission this time, we’ll do the same t’night. Not the ideal cure for what ails you, but a fair stride in that direction.”
“I can hardly wait.”
Her tone was light, her thoughts anything but as she busied herself with breakfast. Her sleep had been wondrous; in a whole host of ways she felt physically reborn and more mentally alert than she had since her return from the Dragon’s Realm. Strangely, that was what disturbed her most. It was the pea in the old legend of the Princess’s beds, the burr beneath her saddle, a blunt and unexpected—and no doubt unintentional—reminder of the first and foremost of Drumheller’s warnings to her. She was fundamentally immune to magic, that was so, but she was also a living, breathing human being. She could be hurt, she could be slain. She could be conquered but she could also be seduced.
If the Deceiver truly is my twin, she considered, my other—future—self, why doesn’t she know that? Why from the start has it always been victory through blunt force of arms?
Something told her the answer was a key of some importance. Too bad she had no notion of the lock to fit it to.
That thought led her to the Malevoiy and she was gripped by a sudden chill that nearly undid all the good caused by her meal.
They know that, she thought with certainty but no evidence. They know where I’m weak, they’re counting on that to their advantage.
There was a stream nearby and a stretch of it had been portioned off for bathing. Elora decided she needed a swim, as much to clear her head as for cleanliness. She dived in as Khory emerged, the warrior moving to a point on the bank where she could watch both the surrounding landscape and Elora.
As the young woman swam a series of fast laps to the bank opposite and back (registering as she went that Khory had strung her bow and slung her quiver over her shoulder) Elora considered her companion. The word that came to mind was elemental. In form and feature, Khory Bannefin was pared down to her essence, her body tempered in much the same way Elora honed her swords. There was grace and power in every movement, the kind possessed by the most dangerous of predators. She might be able to dance as well as any noblewoman, and look quite striking in Court attire, but she would never lose that martial aspect of her personality. Every interaction for her was a form of combat, it didn’t matter whether the weapons were edged steel or barbed repartee. Her features echoed her eagl
e tattoo, sharp and piercing, too angular for beauty, too distinctive for comfort.
Elora wondered suddenly if she was lonely. She wasn’t an easy person to know and though she kept the truth well hidden that she was a demon’s soul inhabiting a Daikini body (as sure a guarantee for summary execution as Elora knew of in all the Great Realms), there was enough of a hint deep within her eyes to make most folk turn away. Elora hadn’t paid much attention to other people when she was growing up. After all, she was the Sacred Princess, living a life of ultimate luxury in a tower built especially for her; everyone she ever met had but one task, to serve her.
She planted her feet on the streambed, bracing them against the swift flow of the current as she considered that string of memory. She’d been twelve then, going on thirteen; now she was midway through her sixteenth year and it seemed like she’d become a wholly different person altogether.
Looks, manners, attitude, character—even without the Deceiver’s spell that had transformed her physically into a figure of silver, she felt like next to nothing remained of the girl who was. That Elora had never slaved for hours in a Nelwyn forge, with the calluses and blisters on her hands as eloquent testament to how hard she’d worked. That Elora had never gone hungry.
And yet, there was a direct line from this moment to that, and from that to the infant lying on a sacrificial slab in dread, damned Nockmaar, the fortress of the sorceress Queen Bavmorda.
She looked down at herself to make a comparison with her companion. She was gaining height on Khory. Nothing that fit a year ago came even close today, which kept the sewing needles of the two brownies, Franjean and Rool, almost constantly busy. Her curves were gentler, the statement of her being more ambiguous. There was no mystery to Khory Bannefin, and no pretense. She was precisely what she appeared to be and dared the world to accept her on those terms. With Elora, people weren’t quite so sure. She was finding within herself the capacity to play a host of roles, none of them a lie but none of them the entire truth, either.
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