Faery Lands Forlorn

by Dave Duncan

  His way led across grassy meadow, through groves of trees, and alongside formal gardens. Many of the buildings were shielded from his gaze, smaller shields within the greater shield around the whole complex. He identified the recruits' barracks, but not the particular buck-toothed lad who had lost his lunch. He saw workshops and a library and private houses. He admired flower beds and herb gardens.

  He also saw a great many statues, some of them so ancient that they had weathered into shapeless pillars. They flanked the paths, being especially common at crossroads. He assumed that they represented former proconsuls or imperors or both, for almost all were male. Most were depicted in either uniform or antique costume, but many of the newer ones wore nothing at all, or only a helmet. He could think of few things sillier than a man brandishing a sword when he had no clothes on, but he saw some of those, also.

  And at last he arrived at a patch of forest, an unkempt stretch of trees and undergrowth. His feet continued without hesitation along a winding dirt track through the middle of this. His eyes caught glimpses of many little huts hidden away in the bushes, but each one was enclosed in its own fence of occult shielding, so he could not tell who inhabited this strange settlement. He thought he could guess, though. The flimsy wickerwork structures were identical to the houses in the fairy village, and on the same miniature scale.

  Finally his feet turned off along a narrow side path. He headed into a wall of shielding and broke through, and a few more steps released the compulsion on him. He stumbled to a halt a few paces from a cabin door. Lounging on a log in the shade, idly fanning away flies with a handful of fern fronds, sat Little Chicken.

  His angular eyes widened, then he grinned.

  "Welcome to prison, Flat Nose," he said.

  3

  She had escaped from jail—Inos clutched that thought as she would have clutched a rope while dangling over a precipice.

  The caravan had departed before noon and struck out at once into unfamiliar terrain, skirting the hills she knew from Azak's hunting trips. She had thought she already knew what true desert was, but she had been mistaken.

  The sun's light was a naked blade, its heat a bludgeon. The drab land lay dead and wrinkled as if it had been moist at the creation of the world and ever since been steadily shriveling and crumbling in that sadistic glare. A few goatherds and a scattering of miners were all who lived there; except of course for ants and millipedes and scorpions and poisonous snakes. And lots of flies. Lots and lots of flies.

  Camels were noisy and smelly and untrustworthy. Their gait was better than the motion of a boat, perhaps, but similar enough to make her queasy. With no reins to hold, she felt like a useless passenger in a very uncomfortable chair floating high above the arid dirt. In a few days, when she had become more familiar with camels, and when there was no doubt that the fugitives had safely escaped from Rasha—then, Azak said, he would happily give his supposed wife a few lessons in the finer points of camel riding. Meanwhile, the nose rope of her mount would remain attached to the baggage animal in front, and if she needed anything she should just ask Fooni, and excuse-him-he-was-busy-now.

  But they had escaped from Arakkaran. That one thought was a lake of cool water in the barren mental landscape, a jewel without equal, rain in a drought.

  As the sun dipped to the dark sharp edges of the Agonistes, the caravan came to an oasis. It was disappointing, not at all the soothing romantic setting Inos had expected. There were no buildings. The palms were few and scraggy, and the grass had been grazed to the roots over the years by thousands of caravans converging on the capital. There was a well for people and a couple of muddy ponds for the livestock, but no shade or shelter from a scorching wind that sprang up unexpectedly to blow dust into eyes and teeth. The camels expressed their opinions very loudly and unmistakably, and Inos agreed wholeheartedly.

  Having been returned to ground level, with legs unexpectedly wobbly, she learned that her first duty was to erect the tent in which Azak and his supposed family would spend the night. Azak, she discovered, was now Third Lionslayer and hunting for Second, who had so far managed to avoid him.

  The tent was erected, but Fooni did most of the work, while mocking and berating Inos for her incompetence with invective as shrill as a knife on glass.

  Fooni was one of the sheik's great-granddaughters. She had been attached to Inos as tutor and guide. Fooni was worse than the flies. Having seen only her eyes and hands, Inos had no clear idea of Fooni's age, but she could be no more that twelve. She was tiny, shrill, impudent, and infuriatingly knowledgeable about the nomadic life of a camel train. She treated Inos as a moronic, benighted foreigner; nagged her, rode rings around her on one of the baggage camels, and wasted no chance to humiliate her. Inos spent the next half hour trying to locate Fooni accurately on her list of Those Who Deserve to Die, and eventually put her in fourth place, right after the dowager duchess of Kinvale.

  But the tent was erected at last. It was emphatically not the neatest of the many black tents that had sprouted among the palms and it was the last to be completed. Inos was on the point of heading off to fetch water when she noticed that the other women were carrying their jars on their heads; she sent Fooni instead.

  Then she busied herself with laying out the bedding mats. There was little room to spare, especially when she arranged a safety zone around Azak's sleeping place. If any of the three women accidentally touched him in the night—his hand or even his hair—she would be burned.

  Having done what she could in the stuffy, flapping dimness, Inos emerged into the twilight. Kade sat on the entrance mat amid a swirl of white feathers.

  "By the sacred balance, Aunt, what are you doing?"

  "Plucking the fowl, dear."

  Inos knelt down beside her on the rug, horrified and guilty. A royal princess plucking a miserable scrawny chicken? How could she have been so cruel as to subject the old woman to this? And her feelings were not helped by the twinkle of amusement in Kade's blue eyes. She was apparently smiling under her yashmak.

  Inos gulped. "I didn't know . . . Where did you learn to do that?"

  "In the palace kitchens, when I was small."

  "Let me."

  "No, it's quite a restful occupation. You can gut it for me, if you know how."

  "I don't!"

  "Doesn't matter," Kade said contentedly. "I do. It is great fun to try something one has not done for so long. It all comes back!"

  Inos said. "Oh." And then words failed her. Dear Kade! She had obviously accepted this expedition and was making the best of it. Had Inos lost such an argument, she would have sulked for days.

  Kade never sulked. "To be honest, dear, I was finding that opulent palace life a little dull. Travel is always very stimulating, is it not?"

  "Yes. Very." Inos decided she would peel the onions and enjoy a good weep. She glanced around the bustling campground and there was no sign of the despicable Fooni. She was probably deep in gossip with other children, or women.

  "I never realized," Kade said, "how beautiful the desert would be—in its own way, of course."

  Beautiful? Inos looked again, more carefully. The sky was blood-red behind the peaks, the first stars were twinkling in the east, and all around the campground the little braziers were glowing in the dusk. The wind had dwindled until now it seemed almost cool on her face.

  "I suppose it has a certain . . . unusual charm," she admitted. "But the best part is that I think we have escaped from the sorceress!"

  "Too early to tell, dear." Kade held the runtish fowl at arm's length and squinted at it. "If she knows where we are, she can come and get us any time, I'm sure."

  "You don't seem too worried by that prospect"

  Kade sighed and picked at a few stray quills. "I am still inclined to trust Sultana Rasha, my dear. As for Hub—"

  "What color pajamas," Inos snarled, "does a goblin wear? Sugar pink, to set off his green skin? Or arterial red in case he spills something on them?"

  Kade tut-tu
tted dismissively, although she kept her attention on the scraggy little carcass. "I've told you, dear, I can't believe that they were serious about that. Certainly the imperor . . ."

  Inos told her ears to stop listening. Kade had an unlimited ability to believe what she wanted to believe and she was determined not to admit that warlocks and imperors might ever do anything ungentlemanly, or a witch anything unladylike. Easy for her! She wasn't going to be bearing ugly little green babies.

  Before Inos could find a logical argument to rebut Kade's unpractical instincts, Azak came striding up with a swish of his long Kibr. He sank down on his heels and stared at Inos.

  "You survive, your Majesty?"

  She thought he was being humorous, but she wasn't sure; his moods were too hard to read. "Certainly I survive. I wouldn't ache all over like this if I were dead."

  He nodded in satisfaction and glanced at Kade, who was raptly holding the chicken over the brazier, singeing pinfeathers.

  "We northern women are tough," Inos said.

  "I knew that, or I would not have planned this."

  Inos detected an odd note in his voice and wondered if she had at last managed to light a spark of admiration in me giant. Could tent erecting have succeeded where hawking and riding had failed? The idea brought a twinge of uneasiness, almost guilt. If anyone deserved admiration in this situation, it was Kade.

  "Are you First Lionslayer yet?"

  Azak grunted. "Second, still. First wishes to put the matter to the test. I do not anticipate any problems, but if he should be lucky enough to kill me, I am confident the sheik will see you safely to Ullacarn."

  Kade looked around sharply, Inos dropped the onion and knife. "Kill you? . . ."

  "Unlikely, as I said. I am undoubtedly the better man, and a minor flesh wound is normally adequate in these cases."

  He was serious!

  This was not the Impire.

  And even in the Impire men fought duels.

  Inos was so aghast that she could hardly find words. "What does it matter whether you are First or Second Lionslayer? Why—"

  "It matters," he said flatly.

  It mattered to him. Whether or not it mattered to anyone else was immaterial. Azak's life was his own to risk; Inos and her aunt were mere passengers on his expedition. He was not their paid guide or guard. He owed them nothing; they had no hold upon him.

  Somehow this new outrage seemed to throw the whole insane situation into a different focus. Camels . . . desert . . . hiding from a sorceress . . .

  "Azak! That's crazy! The whole thing is crazy! Surely everyone here knows who you really are, and—"

  "Of course they know!" he snapped, his voice harsh enough to stop her protests dead in their tracks. "It will be the locals we must conceal you from."

  "What locals?" She looked around at the empty land beyond the tents.

  "Most nights we shall stop at more settled places than this—at mines, and goat farms. Elkarath is a trader, remember, not a tourist. As a djinn, I shall not be noticed, except for my stature and remarkable physical presence, and I can do nothing to diminish those. You have green eyes; your aunt's are blue. We do not want word of such freaks drifting back along the trade routes to Rasha. But the sheik's people are almost all his relatives, and reliable."

  "Not the lionslayers, though. They're not his relatives!"

  "Of course not. Most of them are mine. First is a nephew I banished only a few months ago. That is why he feels the call of honor, that one of us must bleed. Quite understandable. In his place I should feel the same, and I shall let him off as lightly as I can. But the lionslayers will not betray me. You can always trust the code of the lionslayers."

  "I thought you despised lionslayers?"

  Azak shook his head. In the fading light she could not make out his expression. "What leads you to think that?"

  "Just something Kar said as we were leaving the palace." That seemed like a long time ago.

  "Kar may despise them. I neither know nor especially care what Kar thinks about lionslayers, I pity them. Their fathers ruled kingdoms; their sons will herd camels."

  "Talking of kingdoms, how can you possibly risk being absent from yours for three months?"

  "It will be longer," Azak said, but Inos thought she detected an odd note in his voice, and she remembered his subtle wink in Elkarath's garden. She also sensed a warning that made her bristle. The only person within earshot was Kade.

  What devious intrigue was boiling inside that deceitful djinn mind? Surely he could not suspect Kade of being unfaithful?

  He rose suddenly, looming against the stars. "I must go, while there is still light enough for fighting.”

  "By the way," he added, "I don't like onions."

  He stalked away before Inos could think of a suitable reply.

  After a few minutes, she decided that there wasn't one.

  4

  Night came at last to Faerie.

  Moonlight shone in through the wicker walls of the hut, and Rap could not sleep.

  He was not accustomed to a hammock, for one thing.

  Little Chicken was snoring, for another.

  There were bugs, for a million more.

  He ought to be used to bugs by now.

  He was going to die. The word his mother had told him was worth more than his life; not that any man's life would be worth very much to a warlock, probably.

  He had always thought of jails as being cramped, dark places, built of stone; smelly and cold, like the dungeons in Krasnegar. In Holindarn's day those had been mainly used as storerooms, and the palace children had played in them sometimes. At eleven or so, Inos had enjoyed ordering people locked up, tortured, and beheaded. As she would never let anyone else order such things done to her, the rest of the gang had tired of that game long before she did.

  Proconsul Oothiana's jail was not like those nasty stone boxes at all. The hut was airy and pleasant, and even reasonably clean. Clear water flowed up magically in a stone bowl and trickled away down a magical drain that served for a toilet.

  There were many of these huts in the woods, and probably they were all much the same, all set in the same sort of grassy clearing. Quite probably these were the most pleasant dungeons in all Pandemia, with fresh air, room to exercise, and no ugly stone walls. Birdsong and sunlight.

  The hut was enclosed in an invisible occult barrier. Merely by closing his eyes, Rap had been able to establish that the shielding cut off the tops of trees, so it was a dome like the dome that enclosed the whole palace compound, or the smaller shield over the castle at Krasnegar. Only someone with farsight would know that it was there.

  But the magical cowl did more than block his farsight; it was also an aversion spell. Inisso's chamber of puissance had been protected by such a spell, but that one had been old and worn out. This one was irresistible. If he tried to walk away down the path, he felt a strong desire to turn back. If he persisted, he became giddy and nauseous. Inos had often accused him of being stubborn, but he wasn't stubborn enough to resist what that sorcery did to his mind. He just could not make his feet obey.

  Simple!

  A pleasant jail. At mealtimes imp slaves brought around baskets of food. Legionaries guarded them, and they were not affected by the spell.

  Simple, but very effective.

  He was going to die.

  Unless the mosquitoes ate him first, he would be tortured until he told someone his word of power and then he would die, just like the fairies who had been abducted from the village.

  And Inos would never know that he had even tried.

  Buzzing of insects, and sea noises. Then the wind shifted in the treetops, and he heard a distant beat.

  He sat up suddenly, tipping himself sprawling from the hammock to the dirt floor. He yelped. The goblin grunted, twisted, and went back to sleep.

  Rap fumbled around to find his boots, then walked out into the moonlight. The night was warm and soft and restless.

  Now that he was trying to hea
r it, it was quite audible, a rhythmic tattoo somewhere to the north of him, nearer the end of the headland. The fairy child had said, "I will clap for you to dance."

  So at least some of the fairy captives were still alive, somewhere in this jail. The moon was shining, and they were dancing. The beat was complex, and stirring, and joyous, and it brought a hard knot to his throat. The fairies faced the same fate as he did, but they were much more innocent. He was a thief, an accessory to murder, and any respectable court of justice would condemn him to death anyway. Their crime was to have been born fairies.

  In the faint, hopeless hope that the aversion spell did not work at night, he headed for the path through the trees. In a few minutes he felt strongly disinclined to go any farther. He stopped, balked, a few paces from the occult shield that blocked his farsight.

  He was going to die.

  So was the goblin, although he might not have realized that yet. Possibly the forbiddance that Proconsul Oothiana had put upon Rap would prevent him from warning Little Chicken of his fate. He hadn't tried. There was no hurry. Warlock Zinixo might take weeks or months to make up his mind, but eventually he would come for all his captives, each in turn.

  A pleasant jail. Night-flowering plants were putting out heavy, drowsy scents. Bugs whined nearby, and the sea rumbled far away. Somewhere in middle distance the beat of the fairy dance rose and fell as the warm wind toyed with it. If he were Zinixo, Rap decided, then he would definitely harvest the faun and the goblin before slaughtering any of the fairies.

  With a sudden chilling insight, he realized that this was not a prison at all, it was a farm. The fairy inmates were livestock, and this jungle jail had been designed to give them familiar surroundings. There might be hundreds of them living here, generation after generation, bred to die. Oothiana had hinted —very evil, she had said. Completely unstoppable.

  He'd tried to escape, of course, but the aversion spell was implacable. The twists in the path had prevented him from working up any real speed, and no matter how hard he had tried, he had always failed to a stop before he reached the barricade, then come scrambling back from it in panic and revulsion.