Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02]

by The Crystal Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  The woman flung them away from her against the wall, and they shattered with a metallic crash. “What an ugly song. Who made it, I wonder.” She stood up slowly, deep in thought. “It is so hard to remember. I was singing. Yes. And flowers came. Do you like my bower, Fejool,

  dear?”

  It is fair, but thou art fairer.

  She gave a little laugh and bent to fondle his head. “You are not a fool. You are a poet. And a bit of a flatterer,” she added, holding up the tom and filthy skirt of her gown, which she had slipped over her head.

  Nay. Coverings are naught but rags. A bit of shabby artifice, like the King’s men make. Thou art a song of light in the darkness.

  “A very hungry song, my friend. And weary to death of this dreadful place.” She turned and studied the door. “Now, that is an interesting bit of work. They must have slain half the dwarves in the forge hall to complete it.”

  More.

  “Earth must suffer greatly to hold these White Folk in her belly.” She paused as a shudder rolled beneath her feet. “Could I but see beyond the circle of the King’s court, I would run away—again.”

  / will guide thee.

  “No, Fejool. If we were caught they would kill you. And I could not bear that.”

  His heart sang. Open the great door. I will lead thee, my song’s own song.

  Aenor looked at him, at his long leathery body and his softly furred face, and felt his rocky threnody echo within the greater musical stream that flowed within her. It twined and coiled into her, full of his curiosity and fun, and within that the passion that led him to take so great a risk. It surprised her and strengthened her as well.

  “Very well. Now, the door. By all that is holy, this is an abomination. To use blood like this.” She stopped speaking and took a stance before the door. It was difficult and she wished she shared the salamander’s ability to travel through solid rock. Aenor realized that if she took the time, she could learn that trick, and, distracted, she turned a thoughtful gaze upon Fejool. He regarded her with helpless adoration and, somewhat embarrassed, she turned back to the spellbound door.

  After several minutes she closed her eyes and meditated upon the bloody patterns hammered into the metal. There was so much within her that was new, a thing between instinct and knowledge, and she saw that it was much greater than it had been when she sang her defiant little flowers into existence, as if her spellbound slumber had enlarged it from a single voice into several. Some of the voices seemed to be more like instruments: a viol, a flute, a tiny drum, and finally, a very large drum indeed. That last she considered for some time before she decided she did not know yet how to use it.

  For decades she had watched the Queen’s spell singers and web weavers in their work, acquiring their knowledge without realizing it. The craft of the spell singer was not grasped in a day or a year, for it was almost a living thing in itself: first a simple melody, then more and more complex variations laid upon it, until it becomes a corpus, a body of work. Aenor realized that her own song had come to her already partly grown, and that because she did not truly know the infant melody, her ability to use the variations was limited. She had great power and was somehow still powerless. The only way through the door was a sort of brute force that would have shamed a true spell singer. She was not as disturbed by the aesthetic problem, she decided, as she was worried about bringing the cave roof down on her head in her efforts to escape.

  I want to live, to stand under the sun again. Or at least long enough to make them wish they had never been bom! With this thought Aenor took her flute voice and prepared to shatter the barrier.

  Angold, spell singer, Mistress of Opals, sat beside Queen Elpha’s throne softly playing a curious crystal tambour of her own devising. All was as well as it could be. The Queen was fading, true, but Queens had passed before. That miserable child’s curse was remarkably telling. Angold had a momentary flash of admiration for Aenor’s clumsy but effective work. And, no doubt, she herself would be Queen afterwards. Her jewels were sung better than Elpha’s to begin with. She was tranquil, past her minor panic in the face of Aenor’s power. The threat was past. No drop of moisture would ever enter the sleeper’s cavern, and if they had not regained their city jewel, at least there was no further danger. Content, she began a merry tune upon the tambour. Several courtiers smiled, and a round dance of five, the number of fortune, began.

  She had an instant’s warning, a dreadful sharp tearing in her long body, before the tambour shattered in her hands, cutting the white palms to ribbons. Angold raised her hands to her breasts as the pain increased. She knew her death was upon her, knew true despair.

  “Aenor . . . wakes,” she whispered, and felt her song rip out of her body, exploding organs. It hung in the air of the court for a second, the Opal Song, coruscating like a fiery serpent. Then it vanished, and she sprawled into dismembered pieces, spattering her blood upon the Queen’s pleated hem.

  Aenor felt the flute. It was a sweet-voiced instrument, properly used, but she found she must abuse it to effect her deadly purpose. The wrongness of this disturbed her and her stomach rebelled. She gagged and doubled over in racking dry heaves. Weak and shaking, she stood upright and pitched her inner voice, her flute, into an earsplitting shrillness.

  The door stood for a moment, then cleaved into jagged shards, huge curls of crystallized metal that crumbled as they hit the floor. It was almost soundless, a sort of sigh of surrender, and Aenor was through the opening almost before the first piece shattered. Fejool folded himself through the rock, not liking the spell stink of the dying metal, and joined her in the corridor.

  This way.

  Aenor could see dimly at first, but about a hundred ells beyond the influence of the King’s court she was plunged into blindness. She laid a hand on Fejool’s neck and stumbled beside him, the sword a clumsy burden against her leg. Finally she untied it from her waist and carried it in her hand, probing before her for sudden obstacles. They crept along, hampered by her sightlessness, down narrow corridors and through galleries where she could feel great space even if she could not see it.

  It seemed an endless journey, and her bare feet were cut by sharp rocks, her knees scraped by repeated falls. Fejool kept up a steady murmur of reassurance, but she barely heard him. She wanted to scream at the darkness.

  Be brave, my song. We come to the upper reaches.

  A faint tinkle of crystal bells was all the warning Aenor had before they ran almost headlong into a blaze of lanterns and a host of armed courtiers. They shouted their own surprise.

  “Hoy! A stinking salamander!”

  “Kill it!”

  Aenor, dazzled by the sudden light, blinked.

  “Go, Fejool!” she cried.

  It was too late. Six guards, frustrated by their inability to seize Aenor, lifted their spears as one and thrust them deep into the flesh of the defenseless beast. Blood spurted onto the rocky floor and Fejool gave a piteous cry.

  “No-o-o!” Aenor screamed. A rage surged into her blood, a white hot blindness. She brought the sword down upon the nearest foe and hacked his proud head from his shoulders. Blood spurted up in a fountain from his neck, and Aenor felt a deadly song overwhelm her. She raised the sword again and again, mindless, and those closest by fell one after the other. The rest dropped their lanterns and their weapons and ran.

  Aenor lifted the sword again, but she was alone. The rage drained away as quickly as it had appeared, and she was left empty and gore covered. In a sort of petty fury she cut the bell-laden baldrics off the fallen and smashed them against the walls of the corridor, screaming her frustration and something of her grief. Finally she turned to the salamander.

  “Oh, Fejool.” She cut the hafts off the spears when she discovered she lacked the strength to remove them, then knelt beside her fallen friend.

  “I told you not to come,” she cried, and burst into fresh tears. “Dearest and best of friends.” She sat and took the dead head of Fejool onto her lap, stroki
ng the soft nose as the warmth fled his flesh and he stiffened.

  After a time her tears ceased and she crooned a discordant tune. It swelled from her breast, out of her heart, into a paean, a lay of his antics and his kindness that echoed along the walls.

  The White Folk found her thus engaged and hesitated, pausing to ponder that one akin to them, however distant, could praise a lowly beast. The simplicity of her song moved them, so they looked at one another in uneasy astonishment and shifted from foot to foot with a continuous jangle of crystalline bells. The ruin of their comrades around the fallen salamander seemed as nothing to the grief of the woman.

  Margold, the Amethyst Singer, sister to Angold, stood dumbly amongst the courtiers and felt the power of the singer. Slowly the body of Fejool began to change. It turned a dusky red, then green, and finally it crystallized to a bloody red, a gigantic ruby with a clearly visible heart of beryl. Margold shuddered as Aenor ceased her song, then gestured the dwarf servant Letis to take the girl back to her rooms in the Queen’s court.

  Aenor, dazed and exhausted, did as the little Letis told her, standing up and bending down to pick up her sword. She gazed at the blood-encrusted leaf-shaped blade, then looped the licome rope over her head, so the green stone gleamed between her breasts. A little sigh went around the assemblage as it reflected the green heart of Fejool the Fool. They escorted her back to the court, but Aenor remained blind to their presence.

  XI

  The void was not silent. Although certain he was dead or dying, Dylan still found the capacity to be surprised at this. The stars sang, and not very well either, and the gods or the angels boomed at one another. It was, in fact, a beastly row and showed no respect for his tragic demise.

  At this moment, Dylan discovered that wherever he was, he had left his body behind. He could hear and see again, but the other senses were still absent. He felt very free, but it was, he decided, not really any great improvement on the stifling oppression of that dark keep. He did not feel at all dead either.

  So, this is Heaven.

  No, no, you silly cub.

  Dylan looked for the speaker and found a sort of gaseous emanation with a trumpet nose and donkey ears. Hell, then?

  The thing made a very rude noise with its nose—it seemed to lack a mouth—and Dylan was annoyed. This is the Place Between, the Overworld. And I do not have time to waste on foolish mortals. It seemed to collapse into itself and receded away from him to a tiny pinprick of light, leaving him alone in the bawling, hooting, braying cacophony of the place.

  Am I dead?

  Of course, dear boy. The whole world is dead. But you must not let that prevent you from getting on with your life.

  The new speaker was a toad, a hideous warty beast with a gigantic jewel in its brow. Everything that is not consummation is denial. It flapped a long tongue out at him, and Dylan got angry.

  Stop talking nonsense!

  All sense is nonsense, replied the toad.

  Dylan seethed impotently, and remembered a funny tale his mother told him often. Move down! Clean cup, he bellowed at the toad. The Overworld went silent for an instant.

  Precisely. There is always another grail. The toad’s jewel shone more brightly and the stars took up their disharmony.

  The devil take the grail. Am I dead or not? He wished he had some hands with which to choke the answer out of the toad.

  What do you prefer?

  Prefer! Anything is better than this bedlam.

  The toad looked almost sad, and the jewel dimmed. I do my best. It is not easy to balance the humors, you know. I try to make it nice.

  Dylan felt a stab of sympathy for the ugly creature. Are you . . . God?

  Yes, on midsummer. And it is always midsummer here.

  I see. I do not think I belong in the Overworld.

  None of us do. The toad seemed quite dejected. Its huge shoulders sagged and its belly splayed beneath it.

  There, there. It is not so bad. If only those stars would sing together.

  They are very proud, you see, and each assumes his song is finest. They do not like to obey an ugly fellow like me, either.

  A moment before, Dylan had thought the beast quite the most hideous thing he had ever seen. Now, suddenly, he glimpsed a sort of tragic grandeur, a nobility greater than any . earthly monarch’s. The jewel coruscated the toad’s body in an iridescence of indescribable beauty. They are all fools.

  Yes. We are all fools.

  O Toad, this fool wants to finish what he began.

  Then you must not run away. Turn. Embrace the emptiness as a lover does. Eat the darkness.

  Dylan plunged back into his body, into stricken consciousness again. He struggled futilely for some handhold on his own being. He willed his body to move but did not know if he succeeded.

  Embrace! Embrace! The word banged like a tocsin within him, and he felt something darker than darkness flow into each opening of his body. It was a dreadful nothingness, something so loathsome that it revolted every part of his being. He wanted to escape its touch.

  Dylan struggled not to struggle. He battled his own will and forgot about the other. The darkness invaded further until it reached that final spark, the last bastion of self that remained. For a moment or eternity it resisted, but finally it surrendered and was swept away on an endless black wave of nothingness. Beyond despair or fear or love, Dylan rode the wave until, at last, it faltered and crashed upon a bleached and light-strewn beach and was no more.

  The faint smell of smoke stung his nostrils, then the stink of sweat. Dylan opened his eyes and found himself resting on his back in the dim and empty hall. The fire had died very little, which puzzled him. It was as if no time had passed.

  It is always midsummer here. He remembered the words and decided that perhaps time was not quite what he had always thought it was. He was exhausted, more tired than if he had fought a dragon, and he rose from the floor and staggered back to the fireplace like an old man. Dylan opened one of his packs and pulled out the rest of the food Pers Morel had given him and wolfed it down almost without tasting it.

  He stripped off his clothing and rubbed his furry chest and long legs with his tunic. Being cold and naked was preferable to sleeping in his filthy garments. Then he threw a few more bones on the fire and curled up in his cloak. For a few minutes he fought sleep, for it was too reminiscent of the terrible darkness, but in the end his body won the battle, and he slipped into profound slumber.

  A tiny sound woke him. Dylan leaned up on one elbow and listened intently. The hall was bright, for the moon had risen and shone through one of the narrow, high windows, but he saw nothing. There it was again. A scrabbling noise, like a dog’s toenails on the flagstones.

  A mournful howl rent the silence of the night, and another replied. A wolf? There was nothing to fear. Bears bowed to him. So, why were the hairs on the back of his neck bristling? There was the rattle of many clawed feet in the courtyard.

  They burst through the unbarred door, half a dozen lupine creatures with gleaming eyes and slavering jaws. Dylan leapt to his feet and grabbed his sword. The lead animal sprang at him and Dylan slashed the sword across the neck and deep into the chest. The sword emerged from under the left foreleg bloodless, and the wolf snapped, missing his arm by an inch. Its breath was cold, and he jumped backward.

  The rest of the pack circled him almost lazily, and Dylan pivoted. His brows throbbed and the wildness rose within him. His leg muscles bunched and he sprang over the circle. White teeth snapped and just missed his exposed manhood.

  Dylan growled a sound that never rose in any human throat, and felt his body change. It was fast and sickening, like fainting for an instant. The sword fell from a member no longer capable of holding it, and huge, crescent claws appeared. He felt his teeth turn into curving tusks, his nose lengthen into a bristly snout. His porcine eyes could see the tusks, and he knew they were not bone but metal.

  The wolves rushed him and he slashed the nearest with his terrible claw
s and felt cold blood moisten his paw. The thing gave a terrible cry as it fell back and two more reached him. One clamped gleaming teeth around his paw and the other leapt for his throat. Dylan tore the throat out of the first and sunk the claws of his other paw into the glowing eyes of the second, snapping its head back. Then he buried his tusked mouth in the thick fur of wolf and felt a gush of foul-tasting fluid touch his tongue.

  Another wolf leapt on his back as Dylan cast the two aside and bit deep into his great shoulder. Dylan roared with pain and tried to reach his attacker. The beast he was lacked the flexibility for such a maneuver, so he twisted sharply and tore loose the wolfs hold, then clawed its throat to a gaping hole.

  He turned to confront the remaining two wolves, but they were howling over their fallen fellows and had lost their enthusiasm for the fray. Dylan paused, his beast mind and his man mind in conflict over what to do next. Finally, with some distaste and regret, he slew them in their terrible mourning, and cast their corpses into the fireplace. He barely noticed that he had returned to human form in the course of his labors, until his stomach rebelled at the stink of blood and burning bowels and the pain of the wound on his shoulder almost made him faint.

  It was barely visible when he turned his head, a gash a handspan long of tom and bloody flesh. It burned intensely and Dylan did not want to think of what sort of putrefaction might arise from the strange saliva of the beasts. He took his remaining wine and squirted it ruthlessly into the wound, then bellowed with anguish. He sat naked upon his cmmpled cloak and loathed the pain and the filth of his body. His hands were caked with dried blood, and bits of flesh were embedded under his blunt nails.

  There must be a source of water in this benighted place, he thought, and struggled back into his braies and boots.

  He lurched upright and stumbled out of the hall into the courtyard.

  It was still and the pale moon silvered the cobblestones, but it was a natural stillness. All the sense of oppression he had felt about the place was gone. A tiny breeze brought the smell of oak leaves and moist earth to his nostrils, and he thought that no perfume could be so sweet. The almost silent passage of some nightbird—an owl, perhaps—reached his ears. The irregularity of the cobbles under his boots seemed quite marvelous, even in his pain, and Dylan rejoiced in the world of the senses. Even his growling stomach seemed good, assuring him that the night’s adventures had not robbed him entirely of his humanness.