“Then recover your sword, my friend, for I think you will need it in a very short time.”
XVII
Dylan and Aenor stood almost shoulder to shoulder, despite the awkwardness of one being a right-handed and the other a left-handed swordsman, as a great host of White Folk picked their way across the ruins of the Crystal City. Dylan guessed their number at near a thousand, and he suspected they were the last remnant of an entire people. How many more of them there must have been to create the city! They were silent except for their baldric bells, and they were uneasy at the remains of the creature which bulked behind Dylan, a monument of rapidly decaying flesh. He could barely smell it over the filth of his own body, but he noticed the wrinkled noses and tight-held mouths of those closest to the front of the crowd.
The ranks split, and a couple walked forward—a dark-clad man and ruby-garbed woman. By their circleted brows he guessed them to be the King and the second Queen. He had thought that he would never see any White Folk who were not beautiful and fair, but this pair had a quality which made a lie of their fleshy selves. Perhaps it was the glitter of the woman’s eyes or the little nerve that twitched under the man’s cheek.
The woman smiled and Dylan felt cold all over. “I am Eldrida, true Queen of the White Folk, and this is my consort.” She did not bother to give him a name and he glared at her. He bunched his hands into fists. “I suppose
I must thank you for removing that upstart Margold from her silly little throne.” Her voice was deep and sensuous, full of enchantment and rich promise, and Dylan felt it begin to coil around him like a misty serpent.. Aenor shifted her weight slightly beside him, and Dylan wondered if she felt the soft spell. With a sense of sudden impishness, he waggled his ears at the Queen, a rude, boyish trick, and several titters echoed in the silence. The Queen whipped around and looked for the laughers, but every face was priestly solemn. Dylan thumbed his nose at her back, and many suddenly found the rubble on the floor to be intensely interesting.
The Queen turned back towards him and began again. “We have not met, really, and I do not have your name.” It was the same low voice, but it seemed as false as a moneylender’s good humor now.
“Why would you want it? Do you not like your own?” She looked pained and unhappy. “Why do you mock me? I wish only to be your friend, your good friend.”
“I would sooner be companion with a leper,” Dylan replied.
“But why? Am I not fair to your eyes? You will never leave this place, you know, but I am kind. Your captivity need not be onerous.” She seemed aware of the wave of unease that moved through the ranks behind her.
“Fair? In a whorish sort of way I suppose you are.” As he spoke he wondered why her magic did not seem to be affecting him as the other Queen’s had. Perhaps she was less skilled in the art. He noticed that no droning chorus supported her, as if her people reserved their support until she had proven some power or other.
She frowned quite prettily and the man beside her smiled broadly for a moment. “Such hard words. Has dear Aenor been telling tales?”
“I would not foul my tongue!” Aenor snapped.
“How dare you speak!” The Queen seemed genuinely startled that Aenor could talk, and Dylan wondered il her words had carried more meaning than he understood.
“Why should I not?”
“I command you silent!”
“Go back to your bloody rubies, you old bag of bones,” Aenor said quite calmly. “A fine Queen you have yourselves. Elpha must be laughing on her bier!” Her voice carried well in the great cavern, full of contempt and derision. The White Folk glanced at one another and at the Queen’s back.
The Queen shifted her weight and lifted her arms over her head, beginning a low intonation. Dylan boomed out a nonsense song he had learned from his mother, something about some people who lived in a yellow boat under the sea, clapping his hands to keep time, damned if he was going to risk another enchantment for himself or the woman. He was still a little deaf from the braying of the worm, and his ability to sing was never very good at the best of times, so what he produced was a fearful row of shifting keys and staggering rhythms.
Aenor looked at him round-eyed and many of the White Folk put their hands over their ears and shuddered, adding the jangle of glassy bells to the cacophony. After a second Aenor added her own clapping, and began to pick up the simple words.
The Queen screamed. The shrill sound echoed across the cavern, and several of the elves closest to her crumpled to the floor and appeared senseless. “Kill them both!” Spears whizzed through the air, but they were flung halfheartedly, and neither Dylan nor Aenor had much trouble ducking the missiles. One fell at Dylan’s feet and he hurled it back into the crowd with better effect than it had been thrown at him.
The dark King suddenly smote the Queen upon her face with a balled fist, knocking the circlet from her brow. She fell backwards into the arms of several courtiers, and a cry of dismay rippled through the ranks. Some groups began to break away from the mass of courtiers, guards, and strangely sooty males, returning the way they had come, and Dylan decided that loyalty must not be much esteemed by the White Folk. At the same time, it seemed quite sinful to waste an opportunity to escape in the confusion.
“Let us steal away before they gather their wits,” he told Aenor.
“Where?”
“Can you call one of the Rock Folk?”
“No. They do not obey me—or any man.”
“Up, beyond the city ...”
“Dylan, we could wander in these galleries for years.”
“Perhaps.” His pack had vanished in the fight with the worm, and all he had was the clothes he stood in, ichorous and bloody, and a sword and a pouch with a length of licome tail and three shining leaves. No food of any sort. She was right. They required a guide. And the White Folk were hardly likely to offer them one.
The dark King stepped forward, his eyes glinting red, and he pulled a strange weapon, a swordlike thing yet different, from his side. It wriggled like a living thing. “You wretched girl! I should have killed you years ago.” The sword dripped something from its point.
Dylan stepped between the King and Aenor. The King paused. “Get out of my way, manling!” When Dylan didn’t move, he struck his weapon towards the man’s bare belly. Dylan swirled and caught the point in the folds of his cloak for a moment. At the same time he cut across the King’s chest with his own weapon. The edge cut the baldric in two and sliced into the flesh beneath the tunic a little.
The King stepped back a pace and crushed crystal bells beneath his feet, then struck again with his curious weapon. Dylan danced aside, whirled around and hacked at the King’s thigh as a number of spears flew at him. The King howled, lifted his weapon again, then fell forward in front of Dylan. A spear shaft vibrated between his shoulder blades. The King’s weapon twitched at Dylan’s feet, and he felt a sharp pinprick through one soft and nearly ruined shoe.
He barely noticed it as he waded towards the milling crowd and grabbed the closest guard, now spearless and dazed. “Show me the way to the surface,” he growled.
The Queen seemed to have recovered from her various trials, and she stepped towards Dylan and Aenor. “Give us back our jewel, and we will let you go,” she offered, again in some command of her voice. The man he held wrenched away.
Aenor and Dylan exchanged a glance, and he watched her face stiffen with stubbornness. “The jewel belongs to the sword—and the sword belongs to the world,” he answered. His foot seemed suddenly quite cold, but he barely noticed.
The Queen smiled as he stamped his foot to restore circulation. “Ah! So, he did not fail to kill you. Good. I can wait. I have forever.” She was smug and sure.
Dylan felt the cold advance up his calf as the Queen began to laugh. It was too much. He reached out his left hand and closed the silvery flesh around the Queen’s throat. She looked startled as he crushed the delicate structure within it into ruin, puzzled that forever was over so qui
ckly. She sagged, dead, into his hand, and he let her fall to the floor beside her King.
He started to move and found his whole leg was chill and stiff. But the nearby folk were still too stunned by events to move, and he caught one despite his clumsiness. Dylan pulled the licome hair from his pouch and hoped it worked on White Folk as well as it had on Demoiselle de Lenoir. He wound it around the throat of his captive and tied it into a slender noose and leash as the fellow squawked like a pullet on the block. One of Beth’s leaves fell out and wafted gracefully to the floor as the chill invaded his groin and began to creep into his belly.
Dylan paused a moment to confront death yet again. It was almost a friend, and if his last act was to free Aenor from this miserable half world, he would not be less than content. She bent and picked up the leaf, and Dylan remembered how the leaves had healed the wound in his shoulder. The cold began to grip his lungs. Clumsily he pulled another leaf from the pouch and pressed it against his belly, still holding the gabbling man with his left hand.
It burnt like a hot coal and he roared with anguish, but the cold in his chest diminished. Aenor stared at him for a second. “Put it on my foot,” he gasped.
“Which?”
“The right. Aargh!” She rested the leaf where a toe had worn through the soft cloth, and it felt as if she had laid a burning brand against the flesh. It lasted no more than a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity, the pain overwhelming all his other senses until it passed. He was drenched in sweat, and his only pleasure in it was the wretching and gagging of the man he held and those few others who had remained. Even Aenor curled her elegant nose a little.
“Now, show us the way out of here,” he told the hapless captive. He glanced at the remnant of the host, a mere four dozen dazed courtiers and a few dark-avisaged men dressed like the King in sturdy tunics. One courtier, silver-haired and somehow old despite his unlined countenance, looked at the bodies of the King and Queen, and then at Dylan and Aenor. The corpses, Dylan realized, were already reeking with decay.
“Yes, Kalgor, lead them to the upper galleries,” said the pale-haired man.
“But, Tallis—” some courtier began.
“No! It is done. We are doomed. Eidrida was the last spell singer of our kind—unless you wish to have Aenor’s song in our halls.” A sort of shudder ran through the assembly. “Go, child. Take the song you have into the sunlight we can never see and try to forgive our folly. Remember what our pride brought us.” Tallis drooped his shoulders and clutched the bands of his robe with elegant hands. “Come. We have no Queen, no King, only me. And I bid you return to our caverns to await the end with as much grace as you can manage.”
“Who will be our light, without a Queen?” asked one, as he grasped the enormity of the situation. A silence answered him as his companions turned away. Tallis led them back towards the entrance to the Crystal City and in a minute Aenor and Dylan were alone with several corpses and a sobbing guide.
“Come on,” urged Dylan, feeling monstrous. Would he have stayed his hand from the Queen’s throat if he had known her importance to the White Folk? He did not know. I am not a man. I am a machine for killing.
Aenor was silent for a long time, as they left the Crystal City and journeyed upwards through narrow corridors and echoing galleries. Finally she said, “It is all my fault. They wanted my jewel, which my grandmother gave into my keeping. She made me promise to give it to no man except my beloved, and if I found no man to love, then I must leave it to God. I did not remember that, for my mind was clouded, but I could not give it up. I have slain the White Folk as surely as if I had poisoned their waters.”
“No,” said Dylan. “I killed the Queen. I did not know ...”
Their guide spat. “She was mad with blood. Her light would have destroyed us in the end. All you did was shorten the time of our fading, manling. If blame must be put, then Elpha must bear it for bringing Aenor into our midst. The foreseers warned her it would be calamitous— and she silenced them all. My dame was of their number.” He gave a horrible laugh. “She always said ‘We cannot unsing the song of our making and our doom.’ I was bom in these sunless caves and I remember when the Crystal City rang with endless song, the paean of Geldas the Great, before Alfgar stole the jewel for his mortal love and the beast we had trapped under the city arose, for the jewel had powers Alfgar, for all he was a singer, knew not. But Geldas’ song was—is—in that gem you bear, woman, and she perished with its thieving. All those years you wore it round your throat, Aenor, you must have felt the splendor of it in your bones, half-breed that you are. For Alfgar was Geldas’ son, and you are of his line, and hers. We wished that Elpha would tell you of your heritage, but she was ever envious of Geldas’ power and commanded silence. If you knew, we thought, you would restore it to us. We knew not of your pledge, for we are not a people who make much of such things. But trouble not your minds. We made our own destruction when the world was young and your brief, foolish lives not yet thought of.”
“You are very forgiving,” Aenor said a bit sharply.
“Nay. You are the last spell singer of our folk, and you have within you the greatest song we ever made. I forgive nothing. But I charge you to remember us more gently than you might wish to. When you look upon the light in the leaves remember that we loved them once.”
“Why could our two peoples not have been friends?” asked Aenor.
“Would you befriend a worm who resembled a man, but who would perish in but a day of your life?” Kalgor asked.
“I do not know. Did you even try?”
Kalgor shook his head a little. “I believe we did not, in our pride. You may release me now. At the end of this passage is a door into the world. Since I am doomed, I am almost tempted to accompany you, just to see the sun I have heard of, just once. But I will not, for the door opens into a place of your kind, and to see the good light smiling upon you would not please me. I would even wish you joy, but your miserable lives will be too brief to know what that is.”
Dylan and Aenor stopped and Dylan untied the noose. Kalgor looked at both of them, shook his head once, and loped away with a ringing of bells.
“1 hope it is a city and has a bathhouse,” Dylan said.
Aenor laughed and danced against him, brushing his cheeks with a brief kiss. “Oh, Dylan. How can you worry about such things when I have not seen the sun or moon for decades. You reek, and so do I, but I do not care. Come. I can hardly wait.”
XVIII
Dylan and Aenor entered a great hall through a doorway that hid behind a large, dusty tapestry. Aenor sneezed and he coughed until his chest ached, but the noise brought no rush of anxious servants. Dylan wiped his watering eyes and looked around. The place appeared empty. What city were they in, he wondered, and whose house? A cool draft rippled the tapestry from the hidden door, and Dylan heaved the heavy fabric aside to pull it closed. A vista of femlike trees was painted on the wall beneath the hanging, and he shut the door and lowered the cloth thoughtfully. A fresh pull of dust tickled his nose and he sneezed several times.
Aenor was standing near the center of the hall, her head cocked to one side, studying the tapestries and the empty fireplace. She seemed puzzled by something.
“What is it?” he asked.
“These hangings were made for my mother and hung in my home. You can see her device there, in that one,” she said, pointing to a tourney scene. “But this is not my home, unless our hall has shrunk by half.”
“Your mother is dead, and perhaps they were sold afterwards. She spent her last years in Albion, with King
Arthur, and I suppose she discarded them.”
Aenor shook her head. “My mother never sold or discarded anything.”
This was consistent with Dylan’s memories of the greedy and troublesome Constance of Brittany, so he shrugged. “Let’s leave. I do not like this place.” He moved to join her, feeling weary and ravenous.
A wraithlike woman walked towards them from the shadows at
the back of the hall, all sable garbed, so her face floated like a disembodied mask in the still air. She had long black hair, unkempt and wild across her shoulders, and a narrow countenance. Dylan saw the resemblance to Pers Morel immediately. They might be brother and sister. She looked from one to the other of them and smiled.
“I see you have escaped from our kin, Alianora,” she began sweetly. “I never did approve of the plan to take you below.” Closer up, her eyes had a vague look, the musing vacancy of a drooling ancient.
Aenor moved towards Dylan a little, then took a combative stance, her hand resting lightly on the hilt of the sword. “Who are you and what are you doing with my mother’s tapestries?”
The woman laughed and fluttered her long, slender hands. The draperies of her gown continued to move around the hem even though she was still, and after a moment a feline head poked out from under them and regarded Dylan with wide-eyed interest. The kitten, a bright orange-striped beast, emerged from under the fabric, mewing cheerfully, and promptly began to climb up his leg, to the further ruination of Dylan’s hose and the flesh beneath. He plucked the animal up and it purred lustily.
“I am the chatelaine Brenna du Chanterelle. Welcome to my home.” Another cat popped out from under her gown. It bounded towards Dylan and rubbed against his ankles.
Tired and dirty as he was, Dylan could not help chuckling at his effect on the cats. “You, I believe, set an affliction of these cats on Pers Morel, did you not?”
“Perhaps. 1 do many things. Tell me news of the kingdom below.” She coiled a dank lock of hair around herfinger.
“The King is dead. The Queen is dead. The White folk are dying,” Aenor answered brutally.
Brenna nodded, grave and amused at the same time. “I thought as much. My crystal is so dark.” Half a dozen cats scampered out from her skirts. “Are you hungry?” she asked, as if it was the most natural question in the world.
Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02] Page 21
