And when the men were locked inside her cell, she led the way up the spiral staircase, up toward the surface and the streets of Caer Corwell. She remembered coming down three levels, and on the second floor she found the entrance to the main stairs leading up and down, wide stone steps around a square shaft. Peering down, she couldn’t see the bottom, but only endless galleries lit with fire, brighter and brighter the deeper she looked, a spectrum of infuriated colors. She went the other way, climbing up into the darkness, though when they reached what must have been the ground floor of the brick prison, they wandered through a series of dusty, ruined, windowless rooms without finding any exit.
“Shit,” she murmured, hiding her distress. She was the one with the plan, she reminded herself, though in fact all of her thinking had ended here, with them breaking through the wide doors into the courtyard and then into the street. She had thought it might be evening, had imagined the fresh soft air. Shit, shit—she must have been spending too much time with Lukas, and some of his stupidity must have rubbed off on her. This was the fey she was dealing with. There was no gate to the outside.
They stood looking at each other in the empty room, a big, high-ceilinged useless cube with only a single doorway. Light came from a remnant of the searing fire that rose up from the bottom of the stairwell. It curled over the threshold. Opposite, an expanse of moldy brick. But surely this was where the gate had been. What purpose otherwise could the room have served?
They had taken the three crossbows and other weapons. Marabaldia had her iron bar, and Suka had filched a long, hilted knife from the turnkey’s belt. Poke had dressed herself in the clothes of one of the archers, leaving him naked. She stood breathless in her most human shape, a strong fleshy woman with an upturned nose, long hair down her back, and a powerful set of teeth.
Now they heard a noise from the direction of the light, an ominous clanking and the stamp of heavy feet. “We have to leave,” whispered the gnome. “Can you find a way?”
Unspoken was the obvious, that Lady Ordalf had sealed the gates not with bricks and mortar but with something more subtle, a woven pattern of illusion. Suka, in one of her first jobs after leaving home, had traveled with a circus among the small towns of Alaron. One of her teachers had been a hypnotist who could make his subjects stagger around stupidly, looking for the opening to the tent. Moving her head back and forth, Suka felt some of the same queasiness, the same inability to see what was plain and clear. Marabaldia’s eye was useless now.
Worse was a feeling of numb hopelessness, which Suka knew was part of the spell—it didn’t help to know it. The excited rush of her escape was over. Doubtless the Ffolk wardens three floors below had already succeeded in freeing themselves, and had summoned some terrible power to recapture her. Perhaps all of the events of the past hour had been plotted in advance by Lady Ordalf and her slaves, part of a web of fey deceit more complicated than the future of a single stupid gnome—what had made her think, years ago, when she left her father’s house, that she could ever truly get away?
She heard the rhythmic smash of iron boots back in the antechamber the way they’d come. Marabaldia stood with tears her in eyes, wearing the threadbare blue dress she’d been arrested in so many years before. Her bar sagged down. She was stuck in the same funk. Only the lycanthrope seemed unaffected. She snorted, and struck the floor with her bare foot, carving a line through the dust and plaster rubble, revealing a stripe of old mosaic. Beyond the threshold, the sound had stopped.
They heard a soft, sibilant voice speaking in the Common tongue. “Who is there?”
Suka said nothing, only bowed her head. She recognized the source of her weakness in that voice. Nor was she surprised when the eladrin slipped into the room, a tall, gray-haired man who was underdressed for any kind of fighting. He wore a soft, embroidered linen shirt open down his chest, moleskin trousers with a tasseled codpiece over his groin, and soft, high leather boots. Instead of a weapon, he carried a pair of leather gloves.
“Bravo,” he said, striking the gloves across his palm. “Your ingenuity must be commended. I am pleased I am not too late to offer my protection. Princess Marabaldia—of course we’ve met. Partly I am here to offer you your freedom, and conduct you back to Umbra in the dignity you deserve. And you,” he said, turning his attention to the lycanthrope. “As soon as my mother told me about you—well, she might have expected I would come. Perhaps that is why she broke her word to the brave captain—this small game she plays, with the removal of the bars.” He nodded at the iron bar in Marabaldia’s hand. “Am I right in thinking she had … accelerated her schedule? I think perhaps she wanted to forestall me.”
He slapped the gloves across his palm, the only sign of anger, Suka thought, that he permitted himself. His voice was low, his face calm, full of the predatory beauty of the leShay. “I will not draw you into our family squabbles. But is it true you’ve seen my aunt, the Lady Amaranth?” He smiled. “It must seem strange to hear me call her that—my mother’s sister. Her half sister, of course. But she is … younger.”
All this, Suka imagined, had to do with the politics of inheritance among kings and queens who lived for many hundreds of years, and yet whose bloodlines were so meager. Her own problems seemed suddenly tiny, whether she escaped this labyrinth or not, whether she lived or died. She stood with the crossbow in her hands, and yet defeated.
Marabaldia, however, wasn’t ready to give up. “How could you have left me here for all these years?” she cried. “How could you have stolen my love from me? Were you jealous of the one little thing that was truly mine?”
Prince Araithe’s eyes trembled with amusement, though his lips maintained their placid smile. “Oh, my dear,” he said, “never think that. All of this has been a sad misunderstanding, for which my mother is to blame. It was not until seven days ago that I learned where she had kept you. Luckily, all this can be fixed, because we are speaking of a trivial amount of time. A mere tenth of a century. Please believe me, your lover is waiting for you, though at the moment I cannot quite recall his name.”
Suka’s mind was not moving quickly. But even she could tell the prince was lying. More than that, she thought she glimpsed the outline of some larger idea, which would not at this moment come into focus. What was the connection between Lady Amaranth’s story and Marabaldia’s? Was it a coincidence that the fomorian and the lycanthrope had been locked up in the same place? Was it a coincidence that Lady Amaranth had disappeared ten years ago, when Marabaldia had first climbed up from the Underdark into Citadel Umbra?
“I am here to make amends,” continued Prince Araithe. “Please—put down your weapons. My dear, look what I have brought you, an honor guard to escort you back to your own country.” He raised his gloves and half a dozen drow filed into the room. Their swords were drawn.
“And we have brought one of your servants to pull your carriage. And food for you, and a wardrobe of clean clothes. Please, allow me to make amends. You have nothing in common with this … gnome, unless you would like to keep her for your slave. As for this … pig …”
The trouble with eladrin, Suka thought, their weakness, if you wanted to call it that, was their inability to guess the feelings of lesser creatures. She saw Marabaldia stiffen with distrust, and raise her iron bar. But now the source of all the previous noise in the antechamber revealed itself: A cyclops guardsman ducked his head under the doorway and stamped into the room.
He was bareheaded, his single eye shining in the middle of his forehead, a new source of light in the now-crowded room. On seeing the fomorian he sank to his knees and raised his hands. At the same time Marabaldia’s eye, which had been dormant, caught up some of his light and turned it back. Suka could see it pass between them, a beam of golden radiance that might have been partly her imagination. She knew these cyclopses from ancient times had bound themselves to the fomorians in the Feywild and in the Underdark, worshiped them as gods. Now she guessed the reason: Surely the effect of Marabaldia’s gaze was e
ven stronger in a creature with one eye.
But at the same time she realized that the diffuseness of her thoughts, her inability to do anything here but watch and wonder, was part of the influence of the leShay prince, who was looking right at her, a contemptuous expression on his grotesquely beautiful features—she was earning his low opinion. The drow were ranged behind him, their black armor, black weapons, and black skins glistening as if oiled, their white hair and eyebrows … ah, gods, she felt a sudden pain in her head as if she had been struck with a hammer between her eyes, just at the moment she’d begun to ask herself what these malevolent elves, the source of so much suffering in their own dark lands, were doing here in Caer Corwell, allied with Prince Araithe. She took a step backward. It was obvious to her that the prince’s interest here was the lycanthrope, as he had confessed at first. That’s why he had come. Everything he had said to Marabaldia was a crude and obvious lie, which he imagined she was too innocent to understand. And Suka herself was utterly expendable as far as he was concerned. Why didn’t he give his orders to the drow? They stood like statues made of night, each in a different posture of defense. And why had he allowed the cyclops into the room? If his plan was to dispose of Marabaldia, didn’t he realize that this creature would die rather than allow it? He had sat back on his haunches, his face rapt and worshipful, his single eye gleaming as if lit with inner fire.
The pain in Suka’s head redoubled. Startled, she looked down at her own hands, and saw that she had raised her crossbow and had aimed it at the middle of the fomorian’s back. Her fingers grasped its levers as if their will was different from her own. Then in a moment she understood: She was to kill Marabaldia. And then the cyclops, enraged, was to tear her apart. There was no reason to risk injury to his beautiful dark elves, whom he was likely to consider as superior beings, more nearly on a level with himself. They were there for Poke, the lycanthrope. These other vermin he would leave to exterminate themselves.
Oh, her head hurt. She was astonished that the prince had left her thoughts so clear. His contempt was so profound, he hadn’t even bothered to confuse them. Or perhaps he took special pleasure in demonstrating that it was useless to understand. She stood with her feet braced against the crossbow’s recoil. Behind her, an empty expanse of brick—she knew the gate was there. But she couldn’t find it. Her hand tightened on the lever.
Marabaldia, by contrast, was full of feeling. The few thoughts she had were elemental and powerful. She knew Araithe was a twister and a snake, who had betrayed her years ago. If he said her lover was still alive, then maybe her last hope was gone. She stared at the cyclops as if she could bore into his brain through his unprotected eye or reach her hand in through some gratefully surrendered portal and grasp hold of his soul. She saw his lips pull back in terror, revealing his great teeth. She saw his hands fumble for the axe at his belt. She had the iron bar she had taken from her cell, and she’d rather die than go back there. For a moment she broke contact with the cyclops. She glanced back at Suka behind her left shoulder. The gnome’s pink hair stood up in clumps. Her tongue lolled out and showed her dog tattoo. Her brow creased. She had a puzzled, terrified expression on her face. She swung her crossbow wildly, aiming almost in Marabaldia’s face. But she and the gnome had sung their songs together. Marabaldia had nothing to fear from her.
But for security she captured Suka’s eyes with her own, just as the gnome jerked up her hand at the last instant and shot her heavy bolt. Marabaldia felt it slide past her ear. She felt the rush of wind. And one of the drow was down, shot in the mouth between his shining teeth. The bolt had done great damage. The drow was screaming, and Suka was screaming too. She bent over and put her hands to her ears, hiding her face. The rest of the drow were moving, and Marabaldia swung her bar. She hoped to catch the leShay prince. He had no weapons that she could see. Nor did he condescend to move aside, but just stood there with that insolent smile on his face while the ragged end of the bar whistled toward him … and stopped as if the air around him had turned to jelly, too thick and slippery to penetrate.
Frustrated, Marabaldia searched for the cyclops again, reestablished their link, so that she could wield him like a weapon. He had risen from the ground, his axe in his hand. He caught one of the drow as he ran past him. The axe bit into the back of his head. He had not expected the creature to attack him, and he fell. The others separated into two groups, and two of the dark elves moved toward Suka as the air blackened around them. Prince Araithe was taking the light away. Marabaldia pressed the cyclops to attack him while she struck at one of the drow with her iron bar. Scimitars drawn, wary now, they danced away and then came forward, hacking at her hands.
Suka’s fight was over, Poke saw. She knelt with her hands over her ears while the drow stood above her, his sword raised. Confused, maybe, by her helplessness, he didn’t bring it down. Now there were three around the giantess, who fought them valiantly with her great bar. And Poke had done nothing yet. She was managing her transformation.
One hand clutched her crossbow. With the other, she unbuttoned her clothes down the front, so she could slip out of them easily. She felt she was climbing down a ladder, down from the furnished living spaces of a house and into a deep cellar. At each rung on the ladder she paused and looked down, before gathering up her courage to proceed. And the cellar was full of smells and noises that were not different from the ones in the house. But they changed in pitch, intensity, and significance as she descended. Foul smells turned intriguing, and then delicious. Speech sounds, which had such preeminence in the World Above, began to blend in with many other noises she had been ignoring, creaks and grunts and raucous breathing, and the subsiding moans of the wounded drow. Underneath these, down another rung, she could hear the shuffle of footsteps and below that, suddenly significant, the movement of rats in the corners of the room.
The light changed at the same time. In her human shape, upstairs, she had watched with the others as the room darkened and the leShay prince worked his magic. But her plan was to sink below the level of his illusions, which were designed, she guessed, for the perceptions of more complicated creatures than mere beasts. And so as she descended the ladder her vision improved, and she could see many things that had been hidden from her up above, including the gate to the courtyard and the outside street, an open postern set into the brick on one side of the wall behind them, with worn stone lintels and a stone threshold, and no door at all. Now she could feel, as if for the first time, the soft breath of outside air. It was a warm evening out there in the cobbled streets of the abandoned town.
And she felt her body change, a sensation that brought with it an intense and aching pain as her joints reformed, her hands stiffened. This pain, bad as it was, was for Poke an outward symptom of a more terrible distortion. Like all the followers of Lady Amaranth, like all the inhabitants of Moray Island who had chosen the way of the climbing rose, she hated this. She hated the feeling of her bestial nature reasserting itself, as she lost by increments the hard-won sense of her own consciousness and sunk instead into a landscape of primal emotions; rage, lust, fear, forsaking all the myriad variations of humankind.
But it was necessary, if she were to help her friends—with a surge of mournful pleasure she called them that, understanding also that in a few seconds she would forget the meaning of the word. A sow could fight where a woman could not. Her shoulders rose as her neck disappeared, as her jaw spread apart. Her head broke apart as she turned it to watch the leShay prince with his gloves still in his hand, the little smile still touching his lips. Enormous and furious, the cyclops was attacking him, and yet he did not move. He didn’t have to. In a moment the one-eyed creature was down, was crawling toward Prince Araithe on his hands and knees, laboring to lift his axe. But he was already defeated.
Just before her hand ceased to function entirely, before her weapon fell out of it and she herself sank to the ground, she tightened one of her two stiffening fingers on the crossbow’s lever, and watched the b
olt sing away. The drow had his black hand in Suka’s hair, had drawn her head back to cut her throat, when the bolt hit him in the chest. He staggered backward just as Poke sank to the floor. Tusks sprouting from the corners of her mouth, she made her run at the leShay prince. The room seemed bright as day, lit with a radiance that had bleached away all but a few colors from the world.
In her human shape she could see beauty everywhere she looked. But down here there was nothing but chaos. As she moved, she could feel the small tugs of all the mental barriers that Prince Araithe had woven in his own defense. They couldn’t hold her down here. She smashed through them like a hand smashing through a curtain of spiderwebs. She scarcely saw or registered or understood the amazed face of her enemy as she seized his right forearm and crushed it between her jaws. She didn’t hear his yelp of pain. Instead she turned and dragged him back across the floor, a light, delicate creature with no substance at all in these lower realms. Released from his power, the cyclops staggered to his feet, and with one stroke of his axe he severed the head of one of the three remaining drow that had pressed Marabaldia back against the wall.
The others fled.
Suka had also gotten to her feet. And when Poke dragged the leShay prince out through the postern door, the illusion stretched and snapped and vanished not just for her but for the higher creatures also, and they stumbled out behind her into the dark street.
The Rose of Sarifal Page 12
