Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02]

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

  The six elves looked at him with astonishment. Apparently they did not know he had overheard their conference. Finally, one said, “Come. We will take you to the Queen.” But, which one? he wondered as he followed them down into the earth.

  XV

  The six guards trooped silently ahead of Dylan, still debating amongst themselves. They had made no attempt to surround him as he had half expected, and in fact seemed reluctant to get very close to him. When he moved near them, they wrinkled their noses, and he guessed he must not smell very good. Several times he heard the rustling noise in the stone walls of the corridors, and once another head popped out for a moment. He watched a slender tongue flick out before it vanished again.

  “Those accursed Rock Folk are laughing at us,” one complained.

  “We will have the last laugh when we destroy them all,” another replied.

  “Of course. We have slain so many already,” the first came back with unmistakable sarcasm.

  “Why do you hunt these beasts?” Dylan asked. “They seem fairly harmless.” He was not certain if the salamanders were part of his wild domain, but the two he had glimpsed had a rather pleasant feel to them.

  “The Queen has ordered it.”

  “Which one?”

  “Eldrida,” was the sullen reply. “And it was Elpha’s last wish. Curse her. She was ever a mischief maker. Women!” Reflecting for a moment on mothers and goddesses, Dylan almost agreed.

  He moved up behind the troop as he spoke. “Are they difficult to—”

  “Please, keep back, manling. The stench of cow and sheep upon you is quite dreadful.”

  “I do not understand you.”

  “It smells of . . . green—of grass and sun, of all that we have lost.”

  Dylan caught the pain and regret in the man’s voice and dropped back a pace or two. The wool of his hosen and the leather of his pack had no particular smell to him, except those of his own body and long usage. He remembered what Melusine had told him of the terrible price the White Folk had paid for their pride, and almost felt sorry for them.

  “Do you have some moon-tree stuff upon you, manling?” “Moon tree?” He still had willow bark, and Beth’s light-bearing leaves. He realized he was clutching one in his left hand yet. Dylan tucked it away, for the guards glowed with more than enough light to see by.

  “It is the fairest of all that is green, first to leaf at snow-time-end, silver of skin and good against all that is dark. Perhaps you have hacked them all down with your hungry axes, for your kind is careless in such matters.” Dylan patted his pouch. “The woods still abound with such trees, and the lady who rules them is my guide.” “You lie, mortal,” hissed Nicor. “She would never give her favors to a shaggy beast like you—unless time has changed her.”

  Dylan was outraged for a moment. He was tired of being apostrophized by these arrogant fellows. At the same time, he could not help wondering why Beth would care for him. Sal, he was certain, loved him because he was his mother’s son. He felt a deep resentment that his mother seemed to stand behind each door he opened. How would he ever be a man?

  When you stop being a fool! Saille’s unmistakably acerbic voice rang in his mind, a startling, refreshing mental slap on the rump.

  Thank you, Lady of All Willows.

  I should think so—a sound which might have been a laugh or a gurgle of water. It was gone before he could be certain which, and with it her presence. Dylan took a deep breath and stood a little straighter, assured of himself once again.

  “Who are you to know the ways of a goddess, caveling?” Dylan asked.

  Nicor stopped in his steps and turned to face Dylan. His face twisted horribly. “You raping, thieving animal!” He trembled all over, and his baldric jangled.

  Dylan did not reply, and one of the others jerked Nicor and they went on. A faint musical sound began to echo up the passage, a harping that came almost from the stones themselves. A chorus of solemn voices seemed to drift in and out of the music, almost like a monkish plainchant.

  They entered a spacious cavern. The music faltered, and Dylan found himself the object of several dozen eyes. He ignored them, and looked around the chamber.

  On one side there were two large harps carved out of the rock of the walls. Their strings were crystalline, their beams covered with fair patterns. No player touched them, but they continued to tone, discordantly now, as if they required the guidance of voices to give them melody. Between the harps and somewhat forward, a woman sat on a seat of rock. Her gown was golden, pleated finely, and she bore a circlet of violet stone upon her pale brow. Huge purple gems bedecked her hands and wrists and girdled her narrow waist, while the bells across her almost breastless chest were the color of lilacs. Corn-colored hair flowed down her back.

  She studied him with a quirk of pale eyebrow. Then she looked at his companions. “I was under the impression you were hunting Rock Folk for the usurper.” Her voice was lovely, sweet and seductive.

  The hunters shifted uneasily under her gaze. “We were, Your Majesty. We came upon this . . . person in the Windless Walk.” The speaker paused.

  “And?”

  “He says he has come for the girl,” another blurted.

  “Indeed.” The Queen regarded Dylan with fresh interest. “You were wise to bring him into my presence.” She gave a smile he mistrusted immediately. “I am Margold, true Queen of the White Folk, and I bid you welcome, stranger.”

  He bowed awkwardly because of his pack, and heard twitters of laughter behind him. “Greetings, Your Majesty.” Dylan stood up and gave the courtiers around him a look that silenced their merriment. They seemed to shrink into themselves, shivering with distaste.

  “Come, come. We must have music for our guest,” Margold commanded.

  A sort of shrug went around the assemblage, and a few voices began to sing. It was a feeble effort compared to the music he had heard as he approached, and the harps seemed to be having some difficulty blending into it. A serious-looking fellow drew out a flute of alabaster and began playing. It was a clear, steady tune, and the singers seemed to take new life from it. Five courtiers, three males and two females, stepped out and began to dance. They moved in and out in an unbalanced pattern that he found confusing. Dylan looked away.

  “Bring our guest some refreshment,” the Queen ordered.

  Those courtiers who were neither singing nor dancing looked at one another apprehensively. Finally, a pretty, boyish one poured something into a crystal goblet, placed it on a golden tray, and advanced towards Dylan in mincing steps. He stopped an arm’s length away, curled his nose in distaste, and held the tray forward. Dylan remembered enough of his mother’s tales of mortals who drank or ate of the food of the Fair Folk to be wary, so he shook his head and waved the elf away.

  “But, surely, guest, you wish to quench your thirst— and fill your belly.”

  Dylan’s mouth went dry as dust at her words, and his stomach growled noisily. He felt almost compelled to reach for the goblet still held towards him. It was filled with a liquid the color of summer apricots and its scent was terribly inviting. The Queen was trying to enchant him! He tried to find some anger to ward off the spell, but the singing seemed to wash it away. Everything was so beautiful—the music, the fair Queen, the stuff brimming in the cup!

  With a great effort he opened his pouch and took a leaf between his thumb and forefinger. He reached forward and dropped the leaf into the goblet, then took the goblet stem in his hand. The server sprang away, snatching the tray against his narrow chest. Dylan watched Beth’s leaf turn from silver to dreadful yellow. A terrible smell rose from the cup.

  He poured the contents onto the floor and watched the leaf float down like a butterfly. “I do not care for rat piss,” he said, and caught the leaf as it wafted towards the lloor. It was still silver, still a shining piece of Spring, and Dylan wondered how something so small could be so potent. It was rather like his mother’s kiss, banishing small boyish hurts.

  D
ylan looked up from his reverie. The singing had stopped again, the dancers frozen in mid pattern with looks of puzzlement on their faces, as if they could not remember what they had been doing. Margold, the Queen, was clearly furious. Her thin chest rose and fell in quick breaths and her pale cheeks actually had a faint rosy blush to them. Her eyes seemed brighter, too. A salamander stuck its head out of the rock between the two harps, an old one by the greyish color of its snout, and gave a gusty snort and a flick of tongue before it withdrew again.

  “What sort of man are you?” demanded the Queen.

  “Oh, rather ordinary, I think.”

  “Has the race of men become so powerful that they can resist the music of the True People?”

  “Music? Was that what it was?” Impudence seemed a good way to keep the Queen off balance. Dylan scratched his head and looked more puzzled than he was. “I was not certain.”

  The pale blush upon the Queen’s cheeks darkened. “Are you deaf—and a fool?”

  “Neither, Your Majesty.”

  “I am the finest spell singer of an age, and the music of my court is—”

  “Wearisome,” he cut in. He waved a hand towards the wall. “Those harps could stand some tuning.”

  Margold glared at him. “They are new and not yet . . . harmonious,” she said, eager to shift the failure of her spell off onto the instruments.

  Dylan gave an enormous shrug. “I did not come here to listen to music or to watch such clumsy dancing. I have come for Aenor. I want her—now.”

  “And how will you force me to surrender her? Will you slay me? That is all your kind ever thinks of—lust and death. ’ ’

  Dylan thought of Paris, and almost agreed with her. “No, Your Majesty. I prefer to leave you to be Queen over this collection of asses. Even the Rock Folk laugh at you. But perhaps Eldrida will be more agreeable—or your King. I am impatient, but I can wait.”

  The courtiers around him rustled with murmurs, whispers of doubt hissing from lip to lip like the rush of the tide upon the shore. Margold raised her hand for silence, but it did not come. She rose from her seat and began to sing. Dylan marched up to the throne and slapped Beth’s leaf against the hollow of the Queen’s slender throat. Her song died in a terrible gobble of sound, a hideous parody of what she had made before.

  Margold gasped and clawed at her throat, her face contorted in pain. “Take it away!”

  “Bring me Aenor.”

  He heard a rustle of silks and watched one of the women leave the chamber hastily. Her hair, unlike the others, was braided, and he wondered what that signified, whether she was a servant, and what her errand might be. She might return with a horde of warriors, and then he would be in trouble. The spear-bearing courtiers he recognized as inept soldiers, but there were too many things he did not know about this strange world.

  The woman with braids came back alone in a few minutes. She came up and stopped a few feet from him, made a dipping curtsey that rattled her bells, and addressed him.

  “I am Elfrida web weaver, and I have sent for Aenor. Please release the Queen, for her song is our light.”

  “No!” gasped Margold, while Dylan noticed that the chamber was indeed somewhat dimmer. The crystal lamps which hung from the ceiling gave a pale silvery glow, when, before, their light had been golden.

  “We will wait.”

  “You need not doubt my word, manling, for I cannot lie. The Web is always true.”

  “So you say.”

  Perhaps ten minutes passed, the lamps growing fainter and fainter, until a hideous little dwarf came into the cave, leading Aenor by the hand. She was, if anything, fairer than she had been in his dreams, but she had an air of grief about her that was almost palpable. Her blue eyes were rimmed with dark circles, as if they were bruised, and her rosy mouth trembled. She was dressed in White Folk fashion, a blue gown of finely pleated stuff girdled with a wide belt. The sword hung incongruously from it, along one rounded hip, the blade slashing the delicate fabric to tatters with each step, so he had a glimpse of long, elegant leg through the ruin of her gown.

  “Release the Queen,” demanded the web weaver, but Dylan did not hear her. He walked towards Aenor, a grin splitting his heavy black beard. For a long moment they looked into each other’s eyes, and hers held a steady gaze, full of sadness but no fear.

  He knelt on one knee before her. “My lady. I have come a long way to find you.” To his shame, his voice quavered and cracked like a boy’s.

  “Have you?” She sounded mildly curious, and reached out a white hand to touch his curling hair. He felt her fingers coil into it, caressing the scalp. “You are real. How strange. At first I thought you were a dream.”

  Dylan stood up and found she was taller than he had thought, a mere head shorter than he, so her head came very naturally to rest against his shoulder. “A nightmare, more like.”

  “Yes, that too. My, you smell . . .”

  “1 know, my lady, I know. These folk say I stink.” “No, no. You smell of sweat and dirt and sunlight. 1 like it.” She plucked at his beard. “This hides your smile.”

  The web weaver danced around them, trying to penetrate their mutual absorption. “The Queen, the Queen,” she squeaked futilely.

  “Oh, yes.” Dylan released his light grip on Aenor and returned to the now livid Margold. He pulled the leaf off her throat and moved back towards the woman.

  “You monster!” Margold’s first words were a raven’s caw. “And you, Elfrida, you traitor!”

  The crystal lamps began to brighten, the stone harps to thrum unharmoniously. Dylan realized that quite a few of the court had disappeared quietly, and he assumed they had abandoned their erstwhile Queen in her distress. Loyalty did not appear to be one of their virtues.

  “I did what I had to,” the web weaver answered primly. The Queen seemed to recover her dignity a little. “I suppose you did,” she said quietly, eyeing Dylan and Aenor in a thoughtful manner. “It may work out for the best after all.” Margold sat back in her throne, fingering

  the necklace of amethysts that lay upon her breast, musing quietly. “He is nothing. A great, stupid beast of a man. And beasts rut.” She laughed softly. “He is already eager to spread her limbs. And when he does, the sword will pass to him. It will be child’s play to take it away from the brute.” She touched the base of her throat, as if the outline of the leaf still hurt her.

  The web weaver glanced at Margold. “And how shall we wrest the gem from the sword again? We paid dearly for it the first time.”

  “I am sure the brute can wrest it from its setting for us. Mortals have their uses, after all. I never noticed that before. And then I shall send him to serve in the King’s court as a slave. And her, too. It will be a fine vengeance for my sister, Angold.” She paused and smiled. “No one will doubt my domain when I have restored the sun to the Crystal City.”

  Elfrida web weaver pursed her lips thoughtfully. The gift of true foretelling was not hers, but she had moments of foresight, as did most of her people. The one she felt now was Margold’s doom, but she said nothing. The dark beast of a man was much more than he appeared, for she had glimpsed a wondrous light within him, an illumination that was quite remarkable. If he was commonplace, if such fellows walked under sun and star beneath the green leaves of spring, then the White Folk were fated to pass. Surely the cosmos could not contain two races of such perfection. Who would make a song of their passing? Not the brute and the beauty who stood already half enchanted with each other in the center of the chamber. The Clay Men had no gift for music. For an instant she saw the possibility of another sort of song within the man and woman, a briefer, sharper sound than the endless paean of her kind, and the webs within her snapped and twanged disharmoniously. It was horrible and ugly. It was as unthinkable as rocks singing back to a spell singer.

  She shuddered and tried to banish the idea from her mind, but it was like a stone amongst her webs. It caromed from point to point, smashing the delicate magics of her spirit,
destroying in a moment the aesthetic of a lifetime eons long.

  Margold hummed, and the remnants of her court took up the languid, limpid melody. The stone harps thrummed very softly, and the flute player began to weave a counterpoint of caressing tenderness.

  Dylan had been content to simply stand beside Aenor for several minutes, full of a sense of having reached his destiny. He would take Aenor into the sunlight and feed her strawberries and wine. It would never be night again, somehow, for she had been too long in the dark. And he would never see again the darkness of his own soul, because she would drive it out.

  Almost swamped by a flood of tender emotions, Dylan’s practical self struggled and shouted warnings. Strawberries do not grow on trees, and maybe she will not like you when she comes to know you. You are a prisoner in the bowels of the earth. You are a fool. The fair face may hide a shrewish disposition. Or is she a bitch?

  He looked into Aenor’s face and saw the slavering chops of the hellhound bitch who had so nearly enticed him into bestial carnality. Dylan’s blood pounded and he felt a horrible lust. He reached a hand out and touched her soft, warm breast, and the silver fingernails flashed faintly in the lamplight. He was a beast without a soul.

  Aenor trembled and laid a hand upon his cheek, then pressed the length of her body against him. She lifted her face and kissed him for an eternity. Her tongue was sweet and eager in his mouth. He could feel the rapid rise and fall of her breasts against his chest, the press of her thigh against his manhood. Now, take her, take her! It is your right.

  Dylan wound his strong fingers into her hair and jerked it back. Aenor’s eyes widened at the sudden pain, and she twisted her head free. He grabbed again, and she gave him a resounding slap in the face, then boxed his ears several times before he caught her wrists and twisted them behind her. The hilt of her sword pushed into his belly, and his ears rang with the ferocity of her blows. For a moment the blood-stirring lust abated.

  The soft, cunning voice of the flute touched his hearing, and passion came with it. He was outraged and helpless in the same moment. His body wanted the woman, now, this instant, even as his mind knew it was an enchantment. His hand held her shoulder and he could feel the fingers bruising her tender flesh.