by A. L. Sirois
Baubaruva came to stand at Guilhem’s feet. Addressing himself to Uvaxshtra, he said, “Your fury on my behalf is humbling, brother mine, but as you see I am perfectly all right.”
“Baubaruva!” said the shivering nixie. “You are well.”
“I have been trying to tell you that.”
“But I am f-f-freezing!”
Guilhem went to the fire Oriabel had started and put Uvaxshtra down on the hot stones. “Now then, nixie,” Guilhem said, crouching next to the fire, “I mean, Person—are you calmed down enough for rational discourse?”
“Yes,” Uvaxshtra said in a surly tone. He brushed water out of his hair. “I apologize for attacking you. I thought my brother, here, was dead. I went to our village and got my mount, and came to kill you foul, sorcerous giants in repayment for taking my brother’s life.”
Guilhem growled. “Did you seriously believe you have the least chance of killing us?”
“I would have died trying,” Uvaxshtra said stoutly.
“I can believe that,” said Guilhem, as sardonically as he could.
The humans and the nixies seated themselves around the fire. Baubaruva described his idea to his still-sodden brother.
“So you mean to allow them access to our city?” Uvaxshtra said, with some skepticism.
“They have dealt fairly with us,” Baubaruva said. “They need provisions to continue their journey; and if they’re willing to work, why not?”
Uvaxshtra appeared to give his brother’s words some thought. At least he stood staring up at them in turn, while tapping one foot. At last he sighed and said, “I suppose it is a reasonable enough trade.”
“Excellent!” said Guilhem, more heartily than he felt. “We will do whatever is necessary, won’t we, Oriabel?”
“To be sure. To be sure.” The witch wiped her runny nose on her sleeve. “But first we must get out of the cold. Stand over there if you please, Duke.” She pointed to a spot a few yards away. Guilhem stood where she indicated. Oriabel pulled a wand out of her clothing and mumbled a rather long spell while the nixies, visibly impatient, waited.
Once more Guilhem had the disorienting sensation that the world around him was expanding and growing farther away. He knew well enough by now, having been forced to adapt to different sizes several times in recent days, that the world was not growing larger: it was he who was shrinking.
This time, at least, he thought, looking down on himself after the transformation was complete, I have retained my appearance as a man. And she managed to shrink my clothing, too.
As had she her own, he noticed.
The nixies, he saw with some disquiet, appeared very odd when seen from the vantage of someone of their height. Their skin was moist-looking and subtly scaled, patterned with frog-like stripes of darker green and white. The ears were small but distinctly pointed. The webbing between their fingers and toes was veined by darker blood vessels, and though they lacked nails or claws, their digits were pointed. Their thighs were quite muscular, and they were broad through the hips. Guilhem suspected they could jump and swim better than any human.
“Are you adjusted?” asked Baubaruva with overly elaborate politeness. “At least you’re a decent height now, and I don’t have to suffer a crick in my neck from looking up at you. Follow us, please,” and he and Uvaxshtra set off in a westerly direction across the snow.
“I grow weary of shrinking and growing, shrinking and growing,” Guilhem growled to the witch as they trailed along after the nixies.
“You must learn to be more adaptable,” she said without looking at him.
“I am adaptable, curse it. But possibly there is such a thing as being presented with too many circumstances to adapt to,” he replied, knowing he sounded testy but not caring.
His mood did not improve during the trek, which turned out to be much longer than expected. Later he estimated that they could not have walked more than a mile; but to two weary people measuring no more than a few inches in height, it was a substantial distance in the cold, cloaked or not. They clambered up hills and down into valleys that would be no more than mounds and ditches to a normal human being. At last, on the point of exhaustion, Guilhem and Oriabel found themselves entering a region where the land was interrupted by many oddly shaped mountains and hills, all vaguely reminiscent of—
“Architecture!” Guilhem said, realizing the truth of it. “These are buildings. Rather, they were. Now they are but ruins, long abandoned and overgrown.”
Oriabel, walking open-mouthed, reached out to take his hand. “I have never seen the like.”
Baubaruva, a few paces ahead, said without turning around, “Know you not where you are?”
Guilhem grunted. “I believe that the warrior Roland fought a famous battle near here some four hundred years ago, but beyond that...”
“You are passing amid fabled ruins, man child. This was once the city of H’lupheka.”
Oriabel started. “What say you? Is this true? I would never have believed it!”
“Believed what?” Guilhem said.
She waved her hand about at the tumble-down ruins. “This. Can it truly be H’lupheka?”
“Can be, and is,” Uvaxshtra said. “Apparently you know your history, witch-woman.”
She continued to gaze around, occasionally stumbling over uneven patches of ground for lack of attention to where she placed her feet. “Legendary, it is. This was Elfhome for centuries, you know.”
Guilhem scoffed. “We are in the Spanish foothills of the Pyrenees, Oriabel. What would elves be doing here?”
“They would be visible or not to you, as they chose,” Uvaxshtra said, without elaboration. “Doubtless invisible, I daresay, given your artless, uncouth manner.”
“Pay him no mind,” Oriabel said to Guilhem who had bridled at the nixie’s thinly veiled insults. “If you look carefully, you’ll see that the buildings are smaller than anything men could use.”
“I don’t know, they look sizeable enough to me.”
“Hmm. Well, see that birch tree? Big as it appears to us, in comparison to the other trees it is small—because it’s young. You know how big a young birch tree is... now look at the ruins with those eyes.”
“Ah.” He struggled to adjust his mental picture of the scale. “I think I understand.” Even though the stones seemed Cyclopean to him now, at his current size, he realized that they were in truth no bigger than she claimed. Men had never lived here; but some race of beings had. Who was he to deny that they were elves? “And you, you Persons... you say that the elves could hide this place from prying eyes?”
“Yes, many were the spells they set upon these stones,” said Uvaxshtra. “Men could pass within a dozen paces of H’lupheka and never know. Of course, it was off the trails, but even so men blundered into it upon occasion.” He shrugged.
Baubaruva said, “Now, of course, the elves are gone forever, and their magic has long since worn off. So it was when we came upon these ruins more than two thousand years ago. One reason we eschew magic is that its use brought doom to the elves.”
The nixies led them through the empty buildings by a path that seemed well-trodden, even in the snow. Evidently, many Persons had passed this way, perhaps on hunting trips, or for other reasons. There could easily be a sizeable population of these little fopdoodles in the vicinity, Guilhem thought.
Uvaxshtra said, “We have found safety here, in our realm of Fagertärn. It is easy to hide from predators. We live below the ground for the most part, swimming and fishing in underground streams and lakes. The elves left treasure and many artifacts behind them when they fled this place, and we dig for them.”
“What drove the elves away?” Guilhem asked.
“No one knows for sure,” Uvaxshtra replied. “Legends tell of one of their number who sought to open a doorway between Earth and some land beyond the sky where terrible beings dwelt.” He shrugged. “As to that, I cannot say. The old stories are entertaining, but who knows how much truth they cont
ain? All you see here is as we found it. No trace of whatever fate befell them remains, and they have long since departed the fields we know.”
The track led to a small opening between two stone blocks, into which Baubaruva and Uvaxshtra passed. “Keep close to me,” Baubaruva said to his companions. “The path is smooth, but there is no light and we have deliberately added blind passageways and twisting tunnels designed to confuse stoats and other enemies. There are sentries posted here and there, as well. We have foes other than animals.”
“What sort of foes?” Guilhem asked.
“There are other settlements of Persons nearby, such as Cáervine, whose inhabitants would rob us of what is rightfully ours,” Uvaxshtra said with a scowl. “Therefore we are determined to protect the valuables we have unearthed by excavating the elven ruins.”
“Aye,” said Baubaruva. “The Cáervinens are dangerous lunatics who claim descent from the vanished city-dwellers, saying that they have dwindled in size over the centuries but retain elvish blood.”
“And what do you believe?” Oriabel asked.
The nixie snorted. “It is nonsense,” he said. “Rubbish. Yet the Cáervinens insist that they alone are the rightful rulers of our people, and constantly war against us for supremacy.”
Ahead Guilhem thought to make out a glimmer of light, which indeed grew stronger over the next few minutes, illuminating the walls of the tunnel through which they walked. He was surprised to see, here and there, enormous plaques or panels of gold, some of them studded with jewels, embedded in the walls. Then the tunnel passed through a section made entirely of gold—or so it seemed, until he realized the truth of it: the horizontal golden shaft was a bracelet.
But too big for the wrist of an elf, or even a human, he thought with disquiet. We are walking upright through it. Did giants dwell here in ages past?
Scarcely had they gotten through the bracelet when they came to a pair of stout metal doors set into the wall. Standing to either side were nixie guards wearing steel helmets, armed with swords and lances. The brothers saluted them.
“I bring visitors to our realm,” Baubaruva said. “Two humans from the lands beyond the mountains.”
The guards looked Oriabel and Guilhem up and down. “Small for humans, wouldn’t you say?” one asked.
Oriabel opened her mouth, but Uvaxshtra hurriedly said, “They have been enchanted by evil ones, and are returning to their homeland where they hope to seek assistance.”
The guards shared a glance. The first guard now said, “Magic, eh? We don’t hold with magic here.”
“They are not wielders of it,” said Uvaxshtra, clearly irritated at the guard’s obtuseness. “They are victims of it. Would you turn them away in their extremity?”
The sentry scrunched up his face. The other one said, reluctantly, “I suppose not.”
“We thank you,” said Guilhem. He looked closely at the nixie weapons. “Made from elven steel, I suppose?” he asked the sentry.
“Precisely. You know your weapons, I see.”
Guilhem inclined his head. “I am a fighting man. It is my responsibility to know weapons and use them”
“That is interesting,” said the sentry.
“Indeed,” Baubaruva put in smoothly. “Not wishing to beg for his keep, the man seeks to join our armed forces to help us in our struggles against the wretched Cáervinens.”
Guilhem opened his mouth to protest but winced instead because Oriabel kicked him in the ankle as the two nixie doorkeepers turned to open the gates to Fagertärn.
“Hold your tongue!” she whispered.
The brothers ushered them into another tunnel, this one lit by glowing stones set into its wall. As they walked along it Guilhem saw other tunnel openings, marked with glowing letters in a foreign script that seemed at once pictorial, like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, yet as curvilinear as Arabic writing. He could make nothing of it.
Ahead, around a turn in the corridor, a metal grate blocked their way. As they came up to it Guilhem saw through and beyond the grate a vast space lit with a blue-grey light. He stared at a mass of Persons hurrying to and fro across his field of vision, their long feet kicking up sprays of liquid—for the plaza past the gate was covered with an inch or two of water through which the nixies splashed. Most were light in complexion, but some were as dark as Moors. Many were dressed in short tunics, though some wore only loincloths. It was a busy cosmopolitan world that had nothing to do with the sunlit Earth above.
Some of the inhabitants rode water rats, or led them on leashes. One pair of nixies drove a team of rats pulling a wagon that contained several moles in a large cage, urging the rats along with prods and loud whistles. “What are the moles for?” Oriabel asked. “Surely you can’t be using them as beasts of burden; they don’t see well enough, do they?”
“No. They help us dig new tunnels as needed,” Uvaxshtra replied.
Pressing closer to the grating Guilhem tried to gauge the extent of what he now understood to be an extensive underground civilization, excavated by industrious nixies endeavoring to provide themselves with a secure home. The walls of the cave were, as far as he could see into the pellucid distance, decorated with lines of small statues and enameled bands broken by niches containing other statues. Moisture made the walls shine in the light. The overall effect reminded Guilhem of a Buddhist cave temple he had once seen in his travels, except for the water on the ground. That’s not surprising, Guilhem thought, studying the landscape. They are water people after all, these... Persons. He sighed. It was so much easier to think of them as nixies.
Beside him, Oriabel murmured, “It’s like the Ellora Caves in India, all those statues and columns and the arches overhead.”
“I know not of that place, but what I see here is certainly impressive,” Guilhem said.
“Behold Fagertärn, the fairest city in the world,” said Uvaxshrta, with obvious pride. He opened the gate and ushered them through, then closed it again behind them. Guilhem and Oriabel entered a bewildering maze of narrow streets and corridors, all wet from rivulets trickling through them, under a roof of dressed stone. Many, in fact, were deep and broad enough to function as underground canals: these were crowded with boats of all sizes, from one-man vessels like canoes, in which the nixies paddled busily about their affairs, to larger craft with ten or twelve nixies aboard. Some, no bigger than dinghies, bore tiny stoves; the owners of these hawked treats or fresh-cooked meals to the passengers of the larger vessels.
Uvaxshrta guided them along wet passageways. Guilhem found that, to his relief, his boots were stout enough to keep the moisture out. Some stretches were residential neighborhoods crowded with small dwellings, while others were more obviously commercial, with stalls displaying various foodstuffs and piles of scrolls, small fabric squares, pottery and odd metal objects that had no immediately obvious purpose. This crowded locale, closest to the walls, opened on another wide plaza, at the far end of which ranged tall buildings with intricately carved facades that had the look of temples or cathedrals about them. The nixies had indeed created a secure home for themselves beneath the ruins of ancient H’lupheka.
“Whither are we bound?” Guilhem asked, dodging a young nixie bearing a tray of what appeared to be roasted mice; though to someone the size of a nixie the things were bigger than chickens. So far “the fairest city in the world” seemed a great deal like the souks or bazaars he had seen in the Holy Land: crowded, noisy, and rife with odd, off-putting odors.
“To the palace of our monarch, Queen Kemalíezad.” Baubaruva pointed at the most elaborately decorated building, which was also the largest, with tall spires at each corner that reminded Guilhem of minarets.
“She it is who will determine your fate here among us,” said Uvaxshtra, nodding. Even while speaking, they entered another plaza. The nixies navigated the crush of citizens with the aplomb of those who had lived this way all their lives, dodging and weaving around obstacles and groups of nixies engaged in disputes or haggling w
ith each other. Oriabel and Guilhem, on the other hand, were obliged to almost elbow their way forcefully through the press.
At last they were past the worst of it, having crossed the width of the vast subterranean plaza. Guilhem looked up at the roof—which was more like a ceiling—high overhead. Doubtless those regular stones comprised the floor of some ancient elvish temple above.
Soon they came to Kemalíezad’s palace. Guilhem and Oriabel stood patiently while the nixies explained their mission to a sentry, who bade them wait while he marched inside to confer with his superiors.
“You told us that your nation is at war with a kingdom called Cáervine,” Guilhem said. “Yet to my eyes you appear to be quite safe from attack here. No one can get at you from above, even if they knew you were here.”
Uvaxshrta scowled. “I thought it was clear. Cáervine is not above, it is down here. Its inhabitants are, like us, Water Persons, and like us they mostly shun the upper reaches.”
Baubaruva said, “They have been causing us a deal of trouble; attacking on outlying districts, carrying off some of our citizens for slaves…” He got no further because the sentry returned, bearing word that the queen would see the strangers.
To Guilhem and Oriabel, Uvaxshtra said: “Bow when we do. Do not speak unless spoken to. Address her as ‘Your Grace.’”
Guilhem shrugged mentally. Royalty was the same the world over, he mused, whether human or nixie. They all demanded respect. Whether they were deserving of it or not was of no importance. At this point, he could not tell if Kemalíezad deserved it.
Inside the palace it was as elaborate and grand as any Guilhem had seen among his own people. A long carpet led to the throne, which sat at the far end of the main hall under a stone canopy of such beautifully carved lacework that Guilhem could scarce believe his eyes at its delicacy. The only difference was that the carpet was soaked with water, which trickled out of tiled openings in the walls.
Beneath the canopy was a golden throne atop a dais, and on the throne sat Fagertärn’s queen, Kemalíezad. Female attendants stood to either side. The queen was as beautiful, in her way, as Uvaxshtra and Baubaruva were unprepossessing, with long green-black hair and a pale, oval face dominated by large blue eyes and a full mouth. A gold tiara-like crown sat on her head. She could almost have held her own among any of the lovely women Guilhem had known—save for her scales and her long webbed fingers and toes.
