by Holly Lisle
She was still pondering the mysterious and panic-tinged flight of the gods. She only half-heard his question at first. “Hmmmm?” she murmured. Then she thought back to what he asked her, and shrugged. “Well… I’ve dealt with snobs before.”
“Nice. Very nice. You could have fooled me if I hadn’t already known what you were.” He laughed.
Something about the way he said that grated on Faia, and she glared at him. “You know what I am? What?!” She snarled, “Let me tell you what I am, Witte A’Winde. I am the woman who owns this house. I am the woman who took care of you, who nursed you back to health, who invited you to stay in my home, who offered to take you to the First Folk ruins out of respect for the memory of my friend Nokar. Finally, I am not happy about this.”
Witte frowned, then turned and stalked away from her.
She strode after him and grabbed his shoulder. “Why did you invite the gods here? How did you find them, how did you call them? I want answers, and I want them now.”
Witte turned slowly and removed Faia’s hand from his shoulder. “I wanted to find out what they knew about the Dreaming God,” he said stiffly.
Faia frowned. “Some of them were arguing about the Dreaming God when I went out there.”
“Yes. Most of them agree the Dreaming God is real, but minor.”
“Some of them did not agree, I noticed.”
“Well, some. But Thessi Ravi is a hothead. She thinks with a bit more push, she can become one of Arhel’s majors—though I don’t think that’s too likely. None of the better gods took her attitude.”
Faia leaned against the wall and studied the little man. “Why does it matter, anyway?” she asked.
His eyes narrowed, and went cold and hard. “Because the oldest religions claim the Dreaming God is the god from whom all magic springs—and I’ve found evidence that he isn’t a god at all.”
“Not a god?” Faia arched an eyebrow. “It sounds like the sort of riddle my brothers and I used to ask each other; ‘When is a god not a god?’ And what is the answer to this riddle, Witte the Mocker?”
Witte smiled slowly. “When he’s Edrouss Delmuirie,” the little man said.
The silence seemed to crackle in the dark breezeway. Edrouss Delmuirie. Again. Edrouss Delmuirie, creator of the blasted barrier that trapped Arhelans on their little continent and denied them the endless seas beyond. Edrouss Delmuirie, false god. Edrouss Delmuirie, author of an infamous series of diaries, seducer of hundreds of willing women.
Edrouss Delmuirie. She could see the man in her mind as clearly as if she still stood in the First Folk catacombs; he knelt on one knee inside a pillar of golden light, sword out, chalice lifted, with his plain face tilted upward and illuminated by a beatific expression. Every time she thought of him, her stomach tightened and twisted, and her heart raced. Thirk Huddsonne had worshiped Delmuirie—had almost sacrificed Kirtha to him. None of that was Delmuirie’s fault, but Faia, remembering both men, could not separate her justifiable anger with one from her linked anger with the other.
Witte did not seem to notice her silence. He paced in front of her, talking. “I have a great deal of proof, you see, that Delmuirie is the Dreaming God… or rather, that he became known as the Dreaming God after he disappeared. I have proof, too, that it is because of his dreaming that the magic of Arhel has begun to run rampant. My theory is that Arhel will return to normal when someone wakes him. But waking him will take an act of will and magic unlike anything that Arhel has ever seen.”
Faia’s ears caught that phrase, and she frowned thoughtfully. An act of will and magic. And her mother’s words came back to her.
You will have a test—a test of your courage and your will—and, too, of your love for your friends, and for all the people of Arhel. You alone have both the magic and the spirit to do what must be done.
“Of course,” she whispered. This act of will and magic—waking Delmuirie, setting right the wrong, wild magic overrunning Arhel—certainly this was the destiny about which her mother had spoken.
She smiled slowly. Her destiny was not just to lead Witte A’Winde to the First Folk ruins. She could feel the truth of the real need in her very blood. She closed her eyes; at last she would have a chance to be Arhel’s hero, to remove the stain on her name that the burning of Bright and the near-leveling of Ariss had left. She would wake Delmuirie, and return Arhel to its rightful state.
“Good,” she whispered. “When this is done, there will be none in Arhel who curse my name.”
Witte looked up at her and his bushy brows knit together. “You look awfully pleased by all of this,” he said. “I’d like to know why.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing my friends again,” Faia lied. “But I’ve decided we need to get ready and go to the ruins now.”
Kirtha wandered out into the hall. “It’s still dark, but I’m not sleepy anymore, Mama. Can I get up now?” The little girl rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Did Gramma come back?”
“You can get up.” Faia scooped her daughter up and hugged her; she was grateful for the interruption. “It is going to be dark for a long time. Gramma did not come back. I don’t think she will.” She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat and said, “I think she told me what I needed to know.”
Witte’s eyes narrowed. “Your mother stopped by?”
“Yes.” Faia did not wish to have her wonderful miracle questioned, so she said nothing else.
“Gramma is a ghost,” Kirtha said helpfully. “She’s very pretty.”
Leave it to Kirtha to blurt out Faia’s secret. “My mother appeared to me as I was lighting candles for the spirits of the dead. She told me something that confirmed much of what you say.”
“Your mother’s ghost confirmed…?” Witte frowned, and shook his head slowly. “I don’t like the sound of that—not at all.”
Faia shrugged. Odd that the little man would remark on what her mother said, but not the fact that her mother had been there in the first place. Then she considered… he’d summoned gods to her garden. The ghost of a lone mother must seem pretty unspectacular to him.
Witte gnawed on the tip of his braid and glowered into the darkness. “It doesn’t matter,” he said suddenly. “Are you ready to leave now?”
She had hoped to get a birthing present for Roba, who had surely delivered her baby by this time. She’d hoped to take gifts to Medwind and Kirgen, too. But this sign that her destiny awaited her was more important than finding gifts. She felt the thrill of anticipation, of waiting adventure, of the promise of a fulfillment she would never find in Omwimmee Trade. “I have to dress Kirtha and myself in warm clothes, and pack a few supplies. And talk to Matron Bendreed about feeding Hrogner.”
Witte smiled slowly. “Bring your cat, why don’t you? It will be a short trip—and I have to believe a cat named Hrogner would be lucky for me.”
Faia snorted. “Not for me. Hrogner is a four-legged disaster.”
“The best kind. I’ll watch him—I like that cat.”
“He will stay here,” Faia said firmly. “He’s too much trouble—and Kirtha and I will be gone a week or so. He would be hard to keep up with in the mountains for that long.”
When Faia met Witte back in the garden, she and Kirtha were already sweltering in the winter garb of the hill-folk—heavy boots, leather breeches, thick wool tunics, laced jerkins and sturdy hill-folk erdas, which were ugly square overwraps of waxed felt. Mother and daughter wore wide-brimmed leather hats, and Faia wore her waist kit-pack, and lugged her heavy supply pack over one shoulder. She carried a brass-tipped staff, while Kirtha had a simple wood walking stick. Faia almost felt silly wearing winter gear in the summer—but even in the lowlands the temperature had dropped with the absence of the sun, and in the mountains, bitter false winter would have already arrived, not to be banished until the sun crept out from behind the Tide Mother.
“I look like Mama, don’t I, Witte?” Kirtha asked.
“Yes,” the little man agr
eed, looking from child to mother and back to child again. He looked up at Faia in disbelief. “By my blessed bones, woman, what are you doing with all of that? We’re going to make a quick jaunt into the First Folk city. I’m sure your friends will be happy to entertain you for the few days you’ll be there.”
“Anyone who travels to the mountains and doesn’t anticipate trouble will be sure to find it,” Faia told him. “I know the mountains. I grew up in them.”
“Well, I can certainly see taking a few precautions… but you have a sling in your belt.”
“And spiked wolfshot in my waist pack.”
“You could melt any bedamned wolves we met with a flick of your fingers.”
Faia sniffed. “That is not the Lady’s way. With wolves, I prefer wolfshot. Magic has its uses—but so do the skills of hand and eye.”
Witte laughed and wrapped a fur-lined silk cloak around him. “How silly.” He held out a hand. “If you have magic, you don’t need anything else. Hold tight, and picture the place in your thoughts,” he said.
Faia swung Kirtha onto her hip, grabbed her pack, then took his hand with her free one. She pictured the ruins, the domed whitestone worn by untold years of wind and rain and snow. Her stomach twisted, she smelled the sudden tang of bitter smoke, and that was all. One instant, she was standing beneath the stars in her garden, with the black Tide Mother over her head; the next, wind screamed around her and whipped snow into her eyes and down the loose neck of her erda. The white walls of the First Folk city towered over her head, and the curiously built, carved stone domes of the First Folk nestled below her. The three of them had appeared in the center of the circle of arches and pillars, on the high promontory above the main part of the city. It was very near the place where Faia and Medwind and Nokar had landed when they flew into the city more than two years ago.
But everything about the place was different.
Chapter 6
FAIA felt her heart begin to race as she stood on the narrow, rocky plateau and looked down into the lower ruins. Her skin and her nerves tingled with the charge of powerful, surging energy from somewhere nearby, and her heart raced. She could barely make out the forked shape of the library and the clusters of a few of the larger side-buildings through the darkness and the gusting snow. She was surprised she could even see those, so hideous was the weather; but below, the terrain gleamed with its own faintly golden glow.
The light was not from a campfire. It did not flicker at all. Nor was it mage-light, which was always palest white, with a cold sheen. It was a warm light, like the glow cast by a hearthfire, comforting to look at and oddly cheerful.
She studied that light and in the back of her mind, recent memories fell into place and she realized what she saw. She gasped, staring at the brilliant light. Horrified, she reached out tentatively with a thread of magic, and touched the light—then pulled back, her worst suspicions confirmed.
The golden light was the pillar of magic that had encased Delmuirie, now grown enormous in both size and strength. Faia stared over the bluff, trying to measure its spread; she realized it covered half the city that she could see, including all the areas where her friends lived and worked. The light was the source of the surging, prickling energy she’d sensed.
She remembered the way that pillar of light had rippled when she and Nokar, Medwind, and Roba had attacked Thirk with magic, and remembered as well that it had billowed out like a curtain blown by an invisible breeze when it swallowed Thirk at the end. The light had spread a short time after it swallowed Thirk, but then it had stopped, its boundaries larger but seemingly stable.
Evidently those boundaries hadn’t been stable at all. Now the light spread to encompass much of the lower city, including the places where Medwind and Kirgen and Roba lived and worked. Her grip tightened on her staff.
Now perhaps I know why I haven’t heard anything from anyone here in the past few months. Faia clutched Kirtha tight and stared down into that beautiful, frightening light.
I’m stronger, she thought—but so is that. Damn Delmuirie! How in all the heavens am I going to get through that?
She turned to Witte. “That light shouldn’t be there!” she shouted over the wind. “That’s what surrounded Delmuirie—”
“The cage of light?!” Witte interrupted. He stared down over the cliff at the unmoving sheet of light. “But I thought you told me it was a little pillar of light beneath the library! That’s enormous.”
Faia nodded. Strands of her hair, blown loose from her braid, whipped into her face and clung, damp with snow. She brushed them back—a futile gesture, for the wind never slackened—and shouted, “We can’t go down there. If you move into that, it swallows you and freezes you. We’d never get out. We’re going to have to find shelter though! We can’t stay out here.”
She started toward one of the few intact First Folk domes that remained on their level of the city, up above the encroaching wall of Delmuirie’s magic. Witte, though, tugged at the leg of her breeches and pointed toward the side of the mountain that backed them. “In there!” he yelled. “Cave will be warmer than one of those stone domes!”
She nodded and followed him. It was then that she realized she didn’t have her big pack. She’d slung it over one shoulder when she left Omwimmee Trade… but it wasn’t on her shoulder anymore. She looked around the plateau, and still didn’t see it.
“Witte! My pack isn’t here! What happened to it?”
Witte looked around, his face both puzzled and worried. “I don’t know. I thought my magic was strong enough to transport all of us and our belongings here, but maybe it wasn’t. The transport spell will drop inanimate things before animate ones—that’s a safety feature. It might have gone over my mass limit!” He turned and headed for the tunnels, leaning into the wind.
An especially vicious gust, screaming down through the mountain pass, hit Faia broadside as she turned, and she staggered. She scooped Kirtha into her arms and hurried after Witte.
Into the tunnels, she thought. She knew they weren’t caves—they were the labyrinthine lairs of the long-extinct First Folk. They wandered down through the mountains, their long, uncharted passageways honeycombing the whole of the ancient ruins. Into the tunnels—and perhaps she could find a way through those tunnels, using magic and intelligence. Or perhaps not. Perhaps there was no way through. None of the scholars had gone more than a few rooms into the maze in any direction or from any opening. No one knew how the rooms linked or where the tunnels led.
The wind cut instantly as she ran into the opening after Witte. The dark of outdoors did not begin to compare to that of the lightless tunnel. Faia stopped. She could make out none of the details of her surroundings—her eyes refused to adjust. She stood still and held them closed a moment, then opened them. Still she was blind.
“Faljon says,’Only fools walk in darkness/ When light is at hand,’ “ she muttered. She conjured a faeriefire. The bright spot of light cast long, dancing shadows, and showed her a rounded little cave with tunnels leading in three directions.
Witte seemed to have vanished. She worried that he might be lost, or that she might not be able to locate him if he wandered too far. “Witte!” she shouted. “Where are you?”
“Stay where you are!” Because of the echoes in the tunnel, Faia couldn’t tell where Witte’s voice had come from, but he was nearby. She waited, and before long, he popped out from a side passage, his own faeriefire following him. “I’m right here. I was beginning to wonder if you’d fallen off the side of the mountain.” He grinned at her. “I was exploring a bit,” he said. “Trying to figure out how this place is put together.”
Faia nodded. “I have an idea about that. I can cast a seek-and-find spell—I used to do something similar when my sheep scattered. I can call hundreds of faeriefires that will seek through all the passageways, looking for a tunnel that goes where we need to go. When one finds the way, the others will follow it back. The spell is difficult, but I’ve done it before, and I t
hink it will work here as well as in searching for sheep.”
“That seems reasonable, but what will you send your spell in search of?”
Faia thought. “One of my friends, I suppose. Medwind, perhaps. I know her best, and can give the faeriefires the best description of her.”
Witte smiled. “That should work just fine.”
Faia closed her eyes and summoned the magic—easy, when the whole of the ruins thrummed and crackled with it. But while the summoning was easy, the control was hard; harder now than it had ever been when Arhel’s magic was weaker. Still, she focused. She’d learned control in the past years—never again would she accidentally melt a stone village into glass.
Thousands of faeriefires appeared and swarmed for a moment around Faia, Kirtha, and Witte. The faeriefires coalesced suddenly and hung in the air. Then they burst apart, as if they were a flower budded and bloomed and gone to seed in an instant. The individual fires raced away in all directions.
“Just wait,” Faia said. “This will take a while.”
For a few moments, only Witte’s and Faia’s faeriefire lights lit the cavern. Then Faia noticed flickers along some of the cavern walls, and in a rush, the faeriefire swarm reformed. It hung in front of the three of them again, and after an instant, took off down one passage. Witte, faster than she would ever have imagined, turned and raced after it.
Faia shifted Kirtha around to ride on her back, and hooked her arms beneath her daughter’s legs. Kirtha wrapped her arms around Faia’s neck and shouted, “Go, horsy!”
“Not so tight,” Faia grumbled. She took off through the labyrinth of connected stone caverns, all carved out of the living rock by the First Folk. Each domed room had three or four arched paths leading to other rooms. All of them looked exactly like every other one.
How could even the First Folk have found their way through this place? she wondered. Perhaps they had done it the same way she had—with magic. No simpler solution occurred to her.
