by John Daulton
Pernie didn’t know if that was true, but after spending just over a year in training with the elves, learning how to be their Sava’an’Lansom, she rather hoped it was. The Sava’an’Lansom, or “assassin of the vale” when translated from elven to the common tongue of Kurr, was supposed to be the guardian of the High Seat, which apparently was what the elves called their ruler, although Djoveeve had explained to Pernie that they didn’t really have a ruler in the way humans did. But Pernie didn’t care about that kind of thing. All she knew was that after a year of being knocked around by elves, of being struck by their spear butts and kicked by their swift, accurate feet, she had a place in her heart that was rooting for some representative of humanity to fight better than the elves—Pernie being human and all. With all the stories she’d heard about the elves as she was growing up, especially the way people paled when they spoke of the dreaded Shadesbreath in low whispers, as if he might be lurking there in the room, it gave her hope for her own abilities to think that the most deadly fighter in the world was a human and not an elf. She could hardly wait to see the War Queen again, this time with much less fighting going on all around.
And see her they would. Seawind had told her that she must go to the human school. In some weird form of elf logic, it turned out that the best way for her to become the bodyguard of the elven High Seat was to learn from humanity. Elves didn’t make very much sense sometimes, but Pernie was fine with it. She was going to learn from the humans on Earth, not the boring ones here on Kurr. She was going to learn everything Orli Pewter knew, and then, when Orli Pewter died—maybe by accident, as one could never be too sure about such things—Pernie would be ready for Master Altin to fall in love with her.
Pernie could hardly wait.
Seawind led them out from behind the clump of bushes they had appeared behind. He pulled the long green cloak he wore about himself and drew up the hood even though it was a pretty spring day. She watched as he changed the pale green hue of his skin to the tanned tones of Pernie’s own flesh, though he did not change the seaweed-green color of his hair.
“Come, little Sava,” he said, “let us go get you to Earth.”
Pernie followed along behind him as they entered the city. Growing up at Calico Castle, she’d always thought that the walls of that gray stone fortress were high and mighty indeed. But now she saw that they were not. Calico Castle was hardly a cobbler’s hovel compared to Crown City. She had to tilt her head so far back to see the top of the walls that she was nearly looking straight into the noontime sun.
The guards at the gate made no particular notice of them as they passed through, and Pernie thought their scarlet capes very beautiful. She wished she had a scarlet cape instead of the boring elf-made clothes—dumb brown pants, dumb short boots, and a plain green tunic with no sleeves. That last was kind of pretty in a shiny sort of way, but it was plain. She felt like she should be wearing something better now that she was here and about to see the War Queen. Pernie wasn’t normally the sort to care about such things, but she really did want to impress Her Majesty this time.
The trek through the city was a long one, and it took them the better part of two hours to arrive at the spectacle that was Unification Avenue, rebuilt after the war in even greater glory than it had before. Pernie gasped as she gazed down it toward the Palace. The boulevard was enormous, a hundred spans wide and five hundred long. The trees along its sidewalks were still not as the old stories said, as the healers with their growth magic hadn’t had time to coax the newly planted replacements back to half-measure altitudes. But the statues were all back, tall and regal, old kings, famous warriors, and all the gods, major and minor, depicted in glorious poses down a wide median that divided the avenue. The least of them stood twenty spans high, and some, the five-armed god Anvilwrath with all his weapons in hand, had to be no less than ninety spans.
Pernie and her two companions walked down this central avenue, and she gawked and gasped. She had been in Crown City once before, but she’d flown in right after the orcs captured Calico Castle and only got to see one corner of a military compound. This was much better than that. They passed the statue of the Huntress, the divine guardian of the goddess Mercy, and just as in the stories, she had her great bow across her back and a spear forty-five spans long raised and aimed as if to pierce the sun above. Pernie thought the minor goddess looked a little bit like her, if only a little, but there was certainly a touch of similarity around the eyes and nose and perhaps a little more in the way her hair hung long around her shoulders and down her back. But someday it would all look like her. Pernie was going to grow up tall and strong like that, she knew. And she already knew how to use a spear.
At the end of the avenue was one last series of statues, three in a row, side by side, all of which were enchanted into motion, replaying short ten-second scenes. The centralmost was enormous, nearly as large as that of Anvilwrath and the great gods. The scene it presented depicted the mighty War Queen doing battle with an orc that was twice her height and at least three times as wide across the shoulders and chest. He was a monster. And he bore a battle-axe with two huge blades, each as wide as a wagon bed. The War Queen’s face was twisted in defiance as she swung her sword. The orc roared as he swung the axe, so loud it made Pernie step back. His mouth gaped like a cavern as he did so, and it was so large Pernie thought she might have been able to stand upon his tongue and not be as tall as his teeth, two of which curled out from his mouth like tusks, thrusting up from a jaw that was broad and square. The marble Queen raised her sword and blocked a blow of that mighty axe, and the crash of the two weapons made thunder and sent sparks out in a rain of fire. She roared back at the orc, and the sound was terrible and glorious. Then the statue was still for a time. Pernie got goose bumps running up her arms.
On either side of that statue were slightly smaller ones, the one on the right depicting mounted men and warriors on foot, battling with orcs that crushed in all around them. It came to life right after the Queen’s statue battle settled down. The men leaned from their saddles and slashed at their enemies, who jabbed with long spears back at them. They all shouted and cursed and growled, and the clank and clatter of their armor and swords mixed with the thuds of wooden spears pounding on shields of steel. Their battle went on for ten seconds too, and then it settled back to the white silence of the enchanted stone. Then the last statue’s enchantment began.
The statue on the left depicted yet another battle scene, this one showing humans from Earth in their splendid battle gear, machines that they wore like suits of armor, and from them sprayed death on light beams and tiny arrowheads that Pernie knew were called bullets. Pernie loved bullets. Roberto had let her shoot bullets from his gun one time. And the laser too. She liked the laser, but the bullets made an excellent sound and the whole gun recoiled in her hand. The weapons of the Earth warriors cut through the limbs and face of a hideous monster with many legs and eyes like spiders’ eyes. It had sets of mandibles all lined up in a row, which opened and closed, clacking loudly as they gnashed, a distorted and mutant face attached to a crab-like body with great mashing spheres where its crab claws should be, huge, round hammers big enough to crush mammoths into patty meat. But the Earth machines blasted into it, alien and powerful, and the demon limbs broke, blasted apart until it collapsed like an old swamp house on rotted pilings. Pernie watched and sighed and wished she could have an armored machine like that too. Maybe she would one day, now that she was going to Earth.
“I notice they didn’t bother to carve our friend in that,” Djoveeve observed as they walked past the statue of the Queen.
Pernie looked at it again, but couldn’t fathom what the old woman meant. She saw Seawind look up at it too. He acknowledged whatever the old assassin had intended him to see, doing so with a single nod, but he said nothing and no emotion crossed his face. They seldom did.
The three of them came then to the enormous Palace gates. Pernie’s pulse raced. The walls were so high she couldn’t
even guess how tall they were. At least twice as high as those that ran around the city. And these were mirror smooth. They looked like marble, but Pernie knew from the stories that they were so full of enchantment magic it had taken tens of thousands of magicians hundreds of years to make them as they were.
It was frightening to think, as she stood there, that the orcs and the demons had almost gotten through. How could anything get through all of that?
The guard at the gatehouse came out. His plate armor was gilded with gold and polished to a mirror shine. His cloak was red like the others were. Once again Pernie wished she had more impressive clothes.
“Business?” the guard demanded.
Seawind pulled back his hood.
“Mercy’s ghost,” the red-cloaked man said, stepping away. His face paled, and Pernie thought it was fun to see how scared he was. She’d used to think elves were scary too, but she didn’t anymore.
The man went back into the gatehouse. A few minutes passed, and after, the gates swung open enough to admit them.
A herald approached down a main avenue that ran around a fountain and took up more space than all of Calico Castle did. He was riding on a golden disc that glided above the ground.
He came to a stop above the shimmering paving stones and simply hovered there, the flying disc barely three finger widths off the ground. “Please,” he said. “If you will accompany me. Her Majesty is being notified of your arrival now.”
“Thank you,” Djoveeve answered, sparing the elf having to remember his human courtesies. She made to reach for Pernie’s shoulder to nudge her toward the disc, but Pernie was already standing on it, right next to the herald and grinning ear to ear.
Djoveeve and Seawind followed suit, the elf’s face as inscrutable as ever and Djoveeve’s brightening a little in the glow of Pernie’s exuberance.
As they sped through the outer reaches of the Palace compound, Pernie gaped and pointed this way and that, crying out, “Oh, look at that” and “Djoveeve, do you see?” all the while. She must have asked, “Can’t we just go touch it for a minute?” forty times by the time they got to the Palace proper and the stairs.
Pernie was nearly delirious at seeing them. She’d never seen such a great stack of steps before. “Look at it,” she gasped. “It’s as high as a mountain!”
“And it might as well be one,” Djoveeve grumbled. “And I’ll have to climb them in these old bones.” She didn’t look pleased about that.
“Your jaguar form will make it easier,” Pernie told her matter-of-factly. “Or the crane fly.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Djoveeve said. “And you will not do any magic while we are here either, do you hear? Not one jot, or you’ll have all the guards on us in an instant. I don’t want to spend my last few decades rotting in a jail cell.”
“I would come get you out,” Pernie said. “I’m not afraid.”
“All the same, young miss,” said the herald, “you’ll do right to remember what the Sava’an’Lansom has said. There is no magic cast here without permission from Her Majesty, the Lord Chamberlain, or, in special circumstances, the Captain of the Guard.”
Pernie was more interested in how well the man spoke the elven words when he pronounced Djoveeve’s formal title as the current assassin of the vale. It came right off his tongue, easily. She’d been working very hard for over a year to learn the elven language and make it sound pretty the way the elves did. He did it as easily as if he’d said it a thousand times before.
They climbed the stairs on foot, which didn’t bother Pernie at all, angling slowly upward toward the enormity of the massive central spire, which loomed above as if it were trying to spike the sun before the Huntress with her spear could. The rest of the Palace was a golden panoply of towers and turrets and sprawling battlements. It was too bright to look at for very long, so Pernie mainly watched where she was going, and watched Djoveeve.
“They use floating discs for the flat spaces, and yet we walk up the steps,” Djoveeve complained when they were nearly three-quarters of the way to the top. “It’s hard to imagine how our people achieved anything, isn’t it, little Sava?”
Pernie had never seen the woman tired before. But then, Pernie had also never seen the woman travel much without using one of her animal forms. It was the first time Pernie really saw her as being old, old in a withering way, not just old in a gray and wrinkled way.
At last they reached the palatial doors, cast in bronze and inlaid with gold that sparkled in the sun, and Djoveeve took a moment before them to catch her breath. She caught Pernie looking at her, and glared in mock anger. “Come back here when you are three hundred and three years old, then see how well you do.” She winked, and Pernie smiled. She had a lot to be happy about. She was about to stand before the mighty War Queen as someone important now.
Chapter 6
Pernie grew very impatient waiting outside of the throne room, even though the wait hadn’t been three minutes yet. She could see all the people inside, and it was quite crowded today. A great milling about of regally clad courtiers and applicants hummed and buzzed in dialects from all over Kurr. Pernie had seen pictures in books and in the illusions cast by storytellers and traveling bards, depicting many of the styles of clothing people wore when they came to see the Queen, and many of those were evident for real within. Some of the faces she recognized as well, as if characters from those books and stories had suddenly turned real. There were even a few she already knew, great figures of wealth and power whom she’d seen visiting with Master Tytamon and Master Altin back at Calico Castle.
The noise that came from inside that room was such a constant din that she could only grasp bits and pieces of conversations. She tried, but she couldn’t follow any of them. She leaned and twisted trying to see the Queen, but she wasn’t tall enough. It didn’t help that Seawind and Djoveeve had pushed her behind them as if she were a child. Which, she supposed, technically she was, but she didn’t appreciate being treated like one. She was the Sava’an’Lansom, after all. Or at least, she almost was. Then they wouldn’t treat her like that anymore. No one would.
There came two loud cracks of the herald’s staff upon the floor, each sounding like a strike on a colossal drum. The herald’s voice boomed out over the crowd after. It was a spectacular sound, thunderous and loud. “Seawind of the White Meadow, Speaker of the High Seat and emissary of String.” He paused a moment, then went on. “And Djoveeve Ledgerwotch, Sava’an’Lansom, Protector of the High Seat.”
Pernie wrinkled her nose at that. She hadn’t known Djoveeve had a last name before. She didn’t think the Sava’an’Lansom needed one. Pernie had a last name, but it wasn’t real. Her last name was Grayborn, but they called all the orphans that if they didn’t know who their parents were. Pernie was not going to tell anyone her last name when she was Sava’an’Lansom. One day, her last name would be Meade. Then she would tell everyone.
She waited for the herald to call her name, even if it was going to be Pernie Grayborn for now, but he didn’t. He simply finished off after Djoveeve’s title with “and ward.” Seawind and Djoveeve were moving through the doors, the old woman turning back to make sure Pernie was coming along.
“But he didn’t announce me,” Pernie protested. “Her Majesty won’t know who I am.”
Djoveeve smiled over her shoulder at her. “Oh, she’ll know, little Sava. I promise.”
Pernie followed, but she wasn’t too happy about being relegated to “and ward.” She glared at the herald as she walked by, but he did not look down at her. Pernie didn’t think his gold-trimmed livery was as nice as it used to be. She knew she could take that big staff from him and beat him with it too. Plus he had an ugly nose.
The crowd froze as they passed along, gasps and murmurs preceding them but falling to silence as they drew near. Pernie looked from side to side and saw them all gaping at Seawind. Nobody even looked at her. Nobody looked at Djoveeve either, or at least not much. Important people d
on’t see old women and children. That rankled too.
Someday they would see her.
Pernie peered between Seawind and Djoveeve, looking through the space between their hips. She could see the Queen now.
The War Queen sat in her throne upon a dais, several steps separating her from the people all around. She was bright and majestic, just as Pernie had known she would be: all dressed in shiny plate armor of solid gold to match the regal chair, her armor and her seat sparkling, picking up the light from stained glass windows high above. Best of all was the giant broadsword slung across the back of the throne. It truly was enormous, and Pernie thought it might be twice as long as she was tall. She hadn’t gotten a very good look at it that day the orcs attacked them outside Calico Castle. But now she could see it just fine. She really wanted one.
At length they came to stand right before the monarch, and Seawind and the Queen exchanged formal greetings, which included a lot of calling each other friend. “Hello, friend Seawind” and “Hello, friend Karroll” and then friend this and friend that. Pernie tilted and tipped, trying to get a better look. But it seemed that the Queen and Seawind were going to talk forever about boring things.
She sidled to Djoveeve’s left and looked around. She saw, to her surprise, that Master Tytamon was standing there. She was still mad at him for grabbing her by the neck and casting a counter magic spell on her just because she tried to kill Orli Pewter again. She understood why he did it, but she was not going to talk to him today so that he would know that she was mad. More surprising, and more fun, was the discovery that standing next to Tytamon was her friend Roberto from planet Earth. He was nice and funny. He was wearing a thick, stuffy sort of suit with lots of lights and lumps like the one Master Altin had been wearing that day he came back from the big red Hostile world all covered in blood. It had almost killed him, the planet, not the suit, but Pernie saved his life. If it had killed Orli Pewter, that would have been all right.
