“You do not understand.”
“I understand that all men are fools.” She spoke bitterly and paused in her steps. “But I spoke of companionship, and you of alliances. That is not logical.”
“Men and women cannot be friends.”
“Why not?” She moved after the salamander, and he followed.
“It is impossible.” He could not think quite why he felt this certainty, for he had often felt that his sisters were dear friends, especially Rowena. For all of that, it was not the sort of friendship he had with boys his own age. Even as children, his sisters possessed a remoteness he could not breach. They had a hidden kingdom behind their eyes, a fastness he could glimpse but never penetrate. A man might dally with a thousand maids and count their surrenders as his conquests, and yet never achieve complete dominion.
“Impossible? That is what Master Guillaume said when I wished to learn to use a sword. He said I would weep at the first blow. I changed his mind.” Aenor spoke with grim satisfaction, and rested her hand confidently on the jewelled hilt of her weapon.
Dylan suspected she was probably quite competent at it, and he admired her bravery—and deplored such unwomanly activity—at the same time. His mother had wielded a sword, but only before she had met Doyle. He resented being who he was, the son of a heroic woman, and he realized that this woman was not unlike her. Dylan remembered that he had once wished for a wife as fine as Eleanor d’Avebury, and now he had found such a female, he did not know what to do with her. He had liked her better when she was still half enchanted by spells.
They started into a corridor and he noticed that they seemed to be ascending. The weight of earth above them seemed to diminish, and he felt a sort of tension in him begin to uncoil.
“Very well. It is not impossible. It is merely difficult.” Aenor turned to him and laughed until tears spilled down her pale cheeks. Then she coiled her arms around his chest and hugged him tightly. “Good. You will be my friend, then?”
Dylan kissed the top of her head lightly. It was all he would ever have of her, for once they came into the world again, she would belong to the realm of Kings and Princes, no matter what she believed. He hugged her back, feeling the warmth of her breath on his chest. “Yes. I will be your friend.” His heart did not quite break, but he was sure it cracked a little. Poor thing. She must have been sorrowfully lonely down here to desire friendship with a great shaggy fellow like him. “If it is so important to you,” he added hastily.
“Important! All those I counted as friends are long dead-—or in their dotage, except my brother, who was not much my friend. We are too alike. And I had few companions—a waiting woman named Matilde who was older than my mother, and a younger one, Clarise; Master Guillaume who taught me swordplay. The rest were sour priests and toadies.
“And here, amongst the White Folk, I have been alone, except for my dwarf maid Letis . . . and Fejool.”
He wondered if he could have survived without a human touch, or even the simple sound of real voices, without food or drink as men used them. His courage had nearly deserted him in three brief days in a dungeon, and he found he could not imagine living as she had, almost without hope, amidst the fleshless, pristine beauty he had glimpsed in Margold’s court. “Who?” What a curious name.
“Fejool the Fool, one of the Rock Folk. He was my companion, my friend—and he perished of it. It tried to lead me out of the realm, but they found us and they killed him.” Her voice faltered, and she took a ragged breath. “He broke one of their spells and woke me. I almost wish he had not—for what it cost him. Could you endure eternity without a touch, Dylan?”
Dylan considered this. He remembered the rough hugs of his father, the gentler ones of his mother and sisters, the bitter-scented caress of the Lady of the Willows years before, the ripe, fleshy embraces of tavern girls and the sweeter smelling ones of several ladies of the court who guarded their virtues well but were not above a clandestine snuggle in the shadowy halls of Westminster Palace. He recalled the soft lap of the Lady of the Birches, and how her hands stroked his brow, and the clutch of Melusine’s webbed hand upon his arm, the brush of her breath on his cheek when he had kissed her. Dame Marguerite’s earthy buss, and a hundred others floated in his mind, and he realized he took it for granted that men clasped arms and shoulders, that kisses were exchanged easily, a sort of human coin. He understood Melusine’s endless loneliness with a fresh poignancy, and how the hunger for a simple caress might become a small madness. But he knew he would never feel it as the woman beside him. She had clung to him not from affection but from need. Once he got her above ground, she would doubtless find many to ease her loneliness.
“No, I could not. But I met someone who has endured a longer time than you without companionship, and I can guess how terrible it has been.” And why you’d clutch at a half beast fellow like me, he added silently. “I saw a figure of a salamander after I entered the caverns- all made of ruby glass with a great green heart.”
“That was Fejool, for I made a song and . . . and then they bound me again. I have been caged in forgetfulness, prisoned in emptiness, but still the memories crept back. In the beginning I knew nothing, like a babe, and Fejool would creep into my sleeping place and lay his head upon my breast and whisper jests of his kind. And he would tell me tales of his tiny cousins in the world above, of great ancient wars the White Folk made, and long dead kings and queens. He told me of Alfgar the Accursed, my infamous ancestor.” She chuckled. “All my ancestors are notorious, are they not? My great-grandmother, Dangeruse, you know, ran away with my greatgrandsire, and lived with him without priestly blessing until the end of her troublesome life, and when she could not secure a marriage bond for herself, made content with wedding her child by her legal spouse to the son of her lover by his good wife, who first retreated to the Abbey at Fontevrault, and finally decently died. An infamous marriage, and not a happy one, I suspect. There is something wicked in wedding for power. My grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, wedded twice to kings and was never happy in it.” Aenor smiled at some memory. “When she visited us, she always looked the young men up and down like good horseflesh, and I think she patted their bottoms in the shadows too. My mother did not care for her, but I liked her.” “You sang the salamander into a statue?” Dylan asked, brushing aside her reflections on her questionable heritage. “How? A song is . . . only a song.”
“No. For the White Folk, a song is power. You heard a bit of it from Margold—a poor fragment, for she was not, I think, a great singer. The learning of it is the work of centuries, and it is a gift of the blood for all that. I do not know how I do spell singing, except that this jewel the White Folk want has something to do with it. ’ ’ She patted the hilt of her sword. “It has hung upon my throat since my grandmother gave it to me, and perhaps something in it seeped into me. When I touch it, I feel phrases and fragments of something very old and both beautiful and terrible. The song comes to me unbidden, like a sudden fever, a thing more my master than my servant, though I had begun to seek it before the last binding. The jewel holds, 1 think, a song much older than any I have heard with my ears here, and much greater than the White Folk can make now. Some ancient Queen bound her song within it, and I can touch it, but I am clumsy.”
“Only Queens sing?”
“Only females sing in power, except for this same Alfgar who was my ancestor. It hardly seems possible that there is much of his blood in me though, after many generations. I would trade it all to have Fejool back with his endless jests and foolish tales.”
And you would snatch at a half man like me to comfort yourself. Oddly comforted by these morose reflections, Dylan began to be more observant of the caverns they passed through. Yes, they were definitely continuing to ascend, and the quality of the caves seemed different from the previous ones. He tried to put a name to the difference and finally decided that there was something less than natural about them. The down-hanging icicles of rock seemed too regular, as if some artist had co
me along and carved them into uniformity.
“Some great spell singers labored here,” Aenor said quietly. “I can almost hear their melody in the rocks.”
They entered a short passage and emerged into yet another cavern. Here the effort of artifice was obvious, for the uprising icicles were subtly shaped so their surfaces resembled the bark of various trees, and the down-hanging ones had been removed. Where they had grown from the ceiling of the cave, the white rock was shaped like fluffy clouds. It was a burnt-out forest beneath a cheerless sky. Dylan could feel a great sadness almost seeping from the walls of the place.
Each cavern they entered was more realistic than the one before, each a greater travesty of a wood than the proceeding. Finally they came to a vast cave, the roof a glassy blue vault picked out in stars. Below it, the “trees” were branched in crystal and leaved in jewels. Birds sat on limbs, caught in songless perfection, and butterflies hovered in midair by some ancient magic. The floor was a carpet of crystal glass, with frozen flowers, scentless and exquisite, here and there. It did not look like any earthly forest, however, but resembled more the murals in Pers Morel’s house.
Dylan moved carefully, trying not to smash the delicate things with his feet, as much out of respect for their beauty as to avoid cutting his feet to ribbons. As he had suspected, his soft shoes were not faring well on stony cave floors.
“They must have missed the land above to create such a work,” he commented.
“To be sure. They have many songs of a world of trees when they were rulers of it. All of them are very sad. And they are only sung on great occasions. Once, even, they hoped to return to the surface, and a spell singer named Melys, who was Queen, led a great force of the White Folk up and out. The sun slew them, so the tale goes. She claimed her song would sustain them, and many believed it. Those who had not gone with her say that the loss was grievous, for they lost much knowledge and now can only sing little baubles of jewels instead of great ones.”
When they passed through the forest, they came upon an unseen barrier. The salamander went on, but they could not. “What is it?” Dylan asked, groping his hand across what seemed to be an invisible wall.
Aenor cocked her head, listening to something he could not hear. “It is a shield song—Queen Elpha’s, by the sound of it. Let me see.” She walked a little way from him, her fingers extended in the air.
She paused, went a bit further, then returned to some point he could not see was different from any other. He watched Aenor stand with her feet about a shoulder’s width apart. She had an intent expression and she breathed slowly and deeply. Then she began to intone long solemn notes. The jewel on her sword hilt began to glow. Streams of green light began to pour out of it, then turned to red. Dylan lifted a hand to shield his eyes and felt stupid and useless. The cave moaned around them.
Aenor stopped her singing. “I cannot break this spell. It has web weaver threads in it, and I do not know how to undo them. The shield bends a little to my will, but no more.”
“Does your jewel always light when you sing?”
She looked down at the sword. “No, not always.” “Can web weaver threads be cut with a sword?”
“What a cunning notion. I do not know.” She drew the sword and extended it towards the invisible wall. Its point stopped. “It does not seem to.”
“Perhaps if you sing at the same time,” Dylan offered. He heard, he thought, a distant ring of little crystal bells. “I believe the White Folk have found our trail.”
Aenor turned her head and nodded after a moment. “You have keen ears. Very well. A song and a sword it shall be.” She took her stance, lifted the blade above her head, and began.
The nearby rocks started to hum after a minute, and the beryl glowed like a great red eye above her brow. Dylan could feel a pulse of energy, a power he could not define, throb across his body. The music of her song seemed terrible, and he covered his ears in a futile gesture. The sound seemed to vibrate along his very bones. He forced a scream back down his throat.
With a smooth gesture, Aenor brought the edge of the sword down in an arc. There was a flash that dazzled him for a second, and he felt Aenor’s hand close around his wrist. She yanked him forward and he stumbled blindly after her. A dozen steps later he tripped, and they both tumbled to the ground, Aenor under him.
Dylan found his face buried happily in her unbound hair, and he could feel her breasts against his chest. The beryl poked into his stomach, but he barely noticed until he realized that he was sprawling atop a royal Princess, as if she were some tavern wench to be made free of by any man with a pence in his pouch. She wound her fingers into his beard, and he required no enchantments to know what his manhood was meant for.
He rolled off and stood up.
“Forgive my clumsiness,” he half growled.
Aenor had a strange half smile on her lips. She extended her hand to be helped up, and simple courtesy forced him to comply. She rose in a single graceful movement and contrived to rest her weight against his body for a moment. She looked up into his face, a merry, curious examination, and seemed satisfied with what she found there. Then she stepped away calmly, except her breathing seemed a little short.
The salamander was regarding them with interest, and Dylan could not help wondering what the beast was thinking. It rose from its haunches and led them up a passage as wide and smooth as an ancient road. Dylan guessed a dozen men could march abreast on it without crowding. Pillars of white, translucent stone stood on each side of it—beautiful things, he thought, until he caught a glimpse of a pain-wracked face within one. The cavern over them arched away higher and higher, until he could no longer see the roof.
The avenue ended before a crystal trellis of stylized tree trunks and interlaced branches. It was enormous, six times his height, and a lovely work, the crystal a pale golden color. Beyond it Dylan could see shapes that might be buildings, almost impossible curves of glassy stuff, so fragile looking that he could barely believe in their reality.
They walked beneath the archway and their bodies’ lights cast faint rainbow-hued gleams upon the strange structures. Aenor had a curious expression, as if she listened to ghostly voices, her head moving from side to side.
‘ ‘The song of the White Folk has sorely faded since they made this place,” she commented.
“It is hard to believe that the jewel you bear once lit the whole of this vast city. What is that?”
“What?”
“A sound, like mail dragged over glass. And where is our guide? He seems to have vanished.”
Aenor looked around, but the salamander was nowhere to be seen. They moved forward towards the center of the Crystal City, and found the curving towers broken and smashed. Dylan moved carefully to avoid cutting his feet, and Aenor tiptoed. The further they went into the city, the more ruin they discovered. The rattle of glass became louder.
Finally they found a gaping pit in their way, a great, deep hole surrounded by smashed towers and crystal shards.
“Which way?” Dylan asked.
“You choose, for I do not know.”
Dylan peered into the gloom. “It seems a bit less glassy to the right.” He went before her, because the crashing sound disturbed him. His beast-sense informed him that something living caused it, but what, he could not imagine. The pit yawned on their left for several minutes.
There was a small stand of intact towers just ahead of them, a cluster of perfection in the ruins. Dylan eased a breath out of a tightened chest. Something roared. The towers shivered and one shattered into a storm of flying shards. Dylan pulled Aenor into the meagre shelter of his cloak and they crouched together, her head against his chest.
A huge head rose above the towers, eyeless and white as a leper’s face. It swayed back and forth, smashing another tower in its movements. A maw opened and bellowed a brazen challenge. It blundered towards them, snuffling obscenely and moving fast.
“Come on,” he urged. They stood up and moved as quick
ly as the glass-strewn footing permitted. It was slippery as well as sharp, and the thing slithered after them, braying horribly. Abruptly, they came to the cavern wall and turned to the right.
The beast swung its head down and yawned its mouth open. A smell like hot glass reeked from the maw as it closed around Dylan’s body. It was soft and warm and Dylan could feel the tongue flex under his feet. He pulled his sword and hacked at the organ as the hard palate of the upper jaw threatened to squash him. Something thick and sticky spattered his arms and he felt himself being swallowed. His grip slipped and he lost the sword in the utter blackness.
Something thick and fleshy flicked his chest. Dylan grasped it in his huge arms and pulled with every ounce of strength in him. The beast screamed and opened its mouth and Dylan was flung almost senseless against the cave wall. His ears rang as he dragged himself away from the organ he had tom from the throat of the monster. He stood up and wiped away some ichor from his forehead and eyes as the agonizing bellows of the beast assaulted his aching ears.
His vision cleared as the noise ceased. Aenor, her face set in fury, hacked the dying thing into segments, spattering a thick white fluid on the ruin of her garments. Her aura flamed like a geyser, and she appeared like some warrior goddess out of an ancient tale. He watched her work in awe for several seconds before he roused himself.
“Aenor!”
She turned, a look like death upon her face, then smiled and rushed towards him. They embraced in gore-smeared camaraderie. “1 was afraid you were dead,” she said simply.
“No, not quite.” A tinkle of many crystal bells caught his attention. “I think we are about to be intruded on.” “Yes, I hear them.” She did not move from her stance against him. “Promise me you will not die,” she said fiercely.
Dylan smiled a little. “I shall do my utmost to live to a ripe old age, but more than that I cannot swear.”
Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02] Page 20
