The Rose of Sarifal

by Paulina Claiborne

  He threw it across the stone floor, wiped his fingers, then turned to look at them, his lips drawn back to show his filed teeth, his dark face simmering with suppressed rage. “Wearily, wearily,” he whispered, scarcely out of breath, “we would think it best for you to die, all die, all of you, die in the darkness, except for one of you, except for her, that one, dead in the swamp, red blood on my blade, except for that one, except for you.” He extended his long black arm, black hand, black forefinger, and stretched it out toward Lady Amaranth, and did not let it drop.

  Eleuthra sat down on her haunches, licked her teeth, and let her tongue protrude. She let the sense of the drow’s words flow over her, and focused instead on the sharpened black nail that reached out toward the princess’s face. She swallowed, and let her tongue slide out again between her teeth.

  But Lady Amaranth flinched as if from a blow. Though he had intervened to help her and had brought her here, had rescued her, partly, from her sister’s hate, still the malevolence in his red eyes was hard for her to tolerate. As in the clearing below Citadel Umbra, she felt powerless to move, and the fingernail, as it descended from her face, seemed once again to uncover her and leave her bare.

  “All die,” he whispered. “Hot blood mixing in shadow and black mud, except for you. This is what Araithe tells me. Why is that? Tell me why.”

  On one side of the smoky guardroom, lit only by a plate of charcoal on an iron tripod, the drow captain stood with the priestess behind him, the young handmaiden of Lolth. With his left hand he held her by the forearm. On the other side of the stone room, Amaranth and the wolf and the watersoul genasi, and Lukas also holding onto her forearm, until she drew her arm away.

  “Too late,” whispered the drow. “Araithe sent me to bring you back. To bring you back and kill the rest, press their blood out in the dark. Because I have not done this, do not think I pity you.”

  The little room was full, but he spoke as if it were empty save for him and her, as if even the whimpering girl he held fast by the forearm did not exist. “Let their blood flow in the dark,” he repeated. Then he smiled. Or at least, he twisted his black, thin lips in an approximation. “Lady, the citadel is not a bright or healthy place for you. I believe you will not thrive there or be glad. You would not shine there like a jewel or a seam of silver.”

  Over the past hour, Amaranth had come to much the same conclusion. Standing erect in the low, smoky room, she felt too exhausted to be frightened. She had left her refuge on Moray Island with mixed feelings; part anger and sulky spite, to see her work there disparaged and destroyed. Part longing for home, and to be with her own kind. Part heartsick with the transience of mortal creatures. And partly from a sense of frustrated destiny, which she had used to muffle any fears she had for her reception.

  Now her fears were more than realized, and now she had felt the sting of her sister’s malice, her nephew’s selfishness and bloated arrogance. Yes, they had humiliated her and shamed her, and she had found the experience … exhilarating. Frozen in place, she had willed Lukas to look at her, and he had turned his stupid mortal eyes away. But maybe it took shame to set her free. Cheeks burning, she had willed them all to look at her, while at the same time she was thinking: Is this all you have for me? I am Princess Amaranth leShay, the Yellow Rose of Sarifal, untouched by mortal laws.

  In this way and in this way only she was like the other members of her family. When they were struggling and scrounging in the grass under her feet, she had felt her power over them. For ten years in the wilderness she had built a fortress of virtue and rectitude, and the gods had plundered it, knocked down her walls. Now she was home.

  She said nothing, but she raised her chin, staring down the drow captain, her cheeks red with shame. For the first time she felt the permanence of her endless life, in which one day or ten years was as nothing. These other creatures in the room with her, they were as shadows in the smoky air.

  If the drow understood anything of what she was thinking, he gave no sign. He grimaced, hissed, and expelled his breath as if in pain. “By the black Lady Araushnee, I fear you. Weak as you are, weak as dry dust, I believe I see in you the fall of leShay. Already the knights of the Llewyrr have left the boundaries of Synnoria. They are riding through the darkness and the light, hoping to find you and put you on the crystal throne in Karador. But my pact is not with you. It is with your sister and Prince Araithe. Tell me, if you were queen of Sarifal, would you let me bring my people from the Underdark, my daughters and my sons, to walk under the night sky? Would you let us build a temple to our goddess here in Winterglen?”

  The princess did not lie. For half a minute the drow captain studied her face, before he stuck out his black tongue. “I did not think so. Ten years ago Araithe sent me to bring you back, because you had almost come of age to serve his purpose. I lost you in the highlands at Crane Point. Too late to fix that. If I give you to the prince, if I give you to the queen, they will kill each other—no mistake. Same result. And then what happens to me? Araithe has promised me Winterglen and the citadel, all of it, when he moves to Karador after his mother’s death.

  “Not that he longs for that,” he continued moodily, lowering his head, staring into the glowing brazier. “He would destroy anyone who touched a hair of her head. He is a dutiful … son, that way.”

  His voice, despite its harshness, was so soft that Amaranth had to strain to hear. In these last murmurings, she imagined it had passed beyond the range of human ears, and that he spoke to her only or to the wolf. Now he spoke a little louder, “Aah, I must send you away. Or I will take back the head of one of you and say the rest escaped. No, but what a failure that would be. Ah—no.” His face twisted with frustration. “All of you must leave me. All of you must go. My daughter will show you—Amaka will show you the way. Go to Synnoria, to Chrysalis, and find your knights, and raise your rebellion. That is the only chance for you. Mark you, when I meet you again, and lead the dark elves into battle, I will do your family’s bidding, I will promise you. Whatever they ask, I will do it. If they want you cut apart so they can share you, that is what I will do. Heart on one side, bowels on the other. Living head on one side, living womb on the other. I will avenge years of failure. Remember that. Remember what I say, if in the future you are tempted to hope for better things. The drow will always choose the winning side.”

  IN SYNNORIA

  BUT IN HARROWFAST, IN THE MOUNTAINS ABOVE Synnoria, in a council chamber cut out of the rock, things weren’t going well. Irritated and distracted, Suka lounged on a stone seat that had been carved for someone many times her size, one of a semicircular row that ran along the west side of the chamber, away from the action, yet not so far away that she felt comfortable falling asleep on the yellow cushions, or picking her nose, or anything like that. Below her, at the bottom of the stepped floor, Ughoth and Marabaldia sat at a stone table, side by side, representing the fomorians. Opposite them were Lord Mindarion and several other knights from Chrysalis. Mindarion himself, though he occupied the seat of honor, was scarcely part of the proceedings, because of the damage he had sustained in the fight with the darkwalker; he slumped in his chair with his eyes closed, a pained expression on his face. In Suka’s opinion this was less a product of his wound, and more of a reaction to the absurdity of the eladrin representatives who spoke for him, or claimed to. From time to time he raised his long, pale fingers to his cheek and pushed away a lock of his pale hair, struck now with gray, Suka perceived for the first time.

  His wound was not visible. It showed itself in weakness and lassitude, as if he no longer cared about the project for which, after all, he had committed his life, and betrayed his sovereign, and entered into these negotiations with the ancient enemies of his race. He no longer looked as if he gave two shits about any of that, in Suka’s opinion. No, she guessed, his thoughts were far away, trembling upon some leafy bow in Synnoria, overlooking the sweet waters of the lake, while up here in the rocks these other morons made a mess of things.<
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  Of all races in the mortal realm, the eladrin were the worst diplomats. No one else even came close. Orcs would have been more successful. But the eladrin were incapable of hiding the contempt they felt for everyone unlucky enough not to be one of them. They treated Captain Rurik as men might treat a chimpanzee with whom they’d had to share a meal. With the fomorians they were even worse, forever rolling their eyes, fanning their noses, or holding up their scented handkerchiefs, while at the same time fumbling with each other for the farthest seat, and mumbling about the lack of fresh air. Lord Askepel, who had taken over the negotiations, seemed incapable of grasping his own position—that he had embarked on a revolt that had no hope of succeeding without help. Nor had he grasped that of his potential allies, the fomorians were motivated only by a sense of grievance, because of the injury done to their noble and generous and sentimental princess. As for Captain Rurik and the Ffolk, there was no reason for them to be part of this without significant concessions, and freedom from the bondage of a hundred years.

  No—Lord Askepel thought it was their duty to help him. He thought they would rejoice at the chance, as lesser beings who had been given an opportunity to improve themselves. It would be unnatural and perverse for them to expect anything in return.

  Bored and uncomfortable, Suka hugged her shins, nearly toppling out of her stone niche—her feet didn’t reach the floor. The room was vaguely circular, lit and ventilated through long shafts to the outside air, which was not enough to dispel a damp, dim chill. She rubbed her hands together, peering down at the four eladrin on one side of the table, dressed in their ornate armor of gilded scales, expressions of haughty disdain poisoning their regular yet vacant features, coloring their beardless cheeks, while Captain Rurik walked back and forth along one side of the chamber, hands behind his back. Unarmed, he wore his battered mail and leather jerkin, strode in his seaboots, and showed every sign of impatience, an emotion the eladrin maybe couldn’t even feel. Maybe you lose that capacity after all those years of contemplating … whatever—other people’s labor and invention, mostly, she supposed.

  Now Askepel was talking about Princess Amaranth, a subject Suka, if she’d been consulted, would have advised him to avoid like the plague—don’t even bring it up. Was he stupid, or just utterly without a clue? That was a question too deep to resolve here.

  “It gives me pain to admit it,” he persevered, “especially to outsiders, and to the … people gathered here together in … fellowship. But I myself have noticed over the past sixty years that the current situation is intolerable, and the leShay, the proudest, most ancient race on Gwynneth Island, the tree, so to speak, from which we all have sprung, is now increasingly infirm. It must be pruned in order to regain its health. Fortunately, there is a perfect flower.”

  Translation (thought Suka): Ordalf is a whack job, and her son is worse, and they both have to be put down like rabid rats before they wreck the whole joint. But luckily, this demonic family of degenerate psychotics has managed to push out one final diseased excrescence, to whom I’m hoping you’ll swear loyalty for the next thousand years.

  Good luck with that, Suka thought. She watched the muscles work in Captain Rurik’s jaw under his gray beard. She watched the livid scar that split his lips and made him ugly. “She is not my queen,” he said. “Some of the Ffolk will go with King Derid in Alaron. Some already have. I have no love for him, and neither do any of the Northlanders who fight with me. But I’d prefer ten thousand of him to another one of the leShay. Let her be queen of Moray Island and the wild beasts. If she sets foot on Gwynneth Island, then she is my enemy, no less than her sister …”

  A short man, he was scarcely taller standing up than Askepel sitting down. But he glowered at him and put his fist on the stone table, where there were documents waiting for his signature—they would wait a long time, Suka decided. The only hope was to defer the whole problem, as long as Lady Amaranth was stuck on Moray with no one to bring her home. For the first time she wished that Lukas might fail, and that the Sphinx was at the bottom of the sea, though all her crew, of course, safe and sound—of course. No, but with all her heart she wished Lukas was sitting next to her, his long legs outstretched, and she could lean over and whisper how Lord Askepel, as he wrinkled his fine nose, looked very much as if the Northlander captain had farted in his face, and he was trying to overlook the insult, because of his superior ancestry and breeding and long experience. Marabaldia was speaking now, her voice soft and melodious—no one was listening. At that same moment, as if on cue, two more eladrin knights appeared at the entrance to the chamber, supporting between them a creature Suka had heard of but never seen—a winged elf, a hairless, wizened creature with a torso scarcely larger than a baby’s, who chose that moment to announce, as his escort brought him down over the shallow tiers of steps and through the double line of solemn marble figures, that Lady Amaranth had been seen in Winterglen with several other refugees from Moray Island, at Citadel Umbra in the presence of the queen and prince. This was supposed to be good news, Suka guessed, or at least all the eladrin thought so. A melancholy bunch, they rarely smiled, but they were smiling now. Finding herself ignored, Marabaldia had stopped speaking. Ughoth had risen to his feet, an angry expression on his face. And when Suka looked around, she saw Rurik had gone.

  Suka jumped down from her seat. “Who was with her?” she cried, not because she thought anyone would answer her. None of the eladrin had said a word to her since Mindarion had been struck down. Tall creatures, they could not bend their necks to look. “Was Captain Lukas there with her, and a genasi water-soul?” she said, as if to herself.

  Marabaldia heard her, or at least she turned, and gave her such a sweet, sad expression, and shot her such a beam of pure light out of her eye, that Suka couldn’t bear it. With her closed fist she pounded on the head of a marble monkey that guarded the steps out of the chamber.

  “Was there a man?” Suka asked, running the comb of her fingers through her pink hair. “Was there a golden elf?” Then she ran up the steps and out into the air.

  Soon it would be evening. In the rocky bowl in the mountains, Ffolk slaves were lighting the oil lamps in their alabaster lanterns, hung suspended from iron chains in the hands of stone giants standing at intervals around the rim—dwarfwork, like all of this high perch, hacked out of the mountain by a race now lost, or vanished, or dispersed. In the light of the setting sun, Suka clambered up the steps to the lookout point, a causeway leading to a pinnacle of rock with a view south over Synnoria, or where Synnoria must be, hidden underneath a layer of mist and cloud so thick the red sunlight seemed to reflect from it as if from something solid, the bottom of a copper pot, perhaps.

  Once only, at dawn, had the mist split and allowed her to peer down into the valley, steep slopes and enormous trees that, still in shadow, were pricked with lights too diamond-hard to be from fire. The woodlands fell away south, and at their edge Suka could see the lakeshore, and the lake water like another layer of milky cloud, and the crag in the middle with the city on its crest, a murmuring of light, and then the mist had covered everything again.

  Suka climbed up onto the parapet. Rurik was there. She had seen his broad back, covered in black, seamed hide and mail, as he bent over the rock to spit. Now he kept his place, his beard jutting out over the abyss, not turning as she sat down cross-legged on the outer edge of the parapet. She felt agitated and despondent at the same time.

  “Why are you here?” grunted the captain.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? For the collapse of my hopes? I had a deal with Mindarion. We had a deal.”

  Suka wondered if that was going too far. Mindarion also, as she remembered, had been interested in the lost princess of the leShay.

  “Together,” continued Rurik, “we could be in Karador in four days. Who would resist us? Men and fomorians, and the knights of Synnoria, of Llewyrr. Ten thousand or more all together—who would resist us? A few hundred eladrin still loyal to the le
Shay. A few thousand of the drow. They could never face us—we would drive them back into their holes. And then my people would be free.”

  How long, Suka asked herself, had he been fighting for this, only to have it fall apart at the last moment? “But …?” she prompted.

  “But they won’t take our help.” Rurik scratched angrily at his beard. From this distance Suka could see the rash over his cheeks, and the ingrown hairs along his neck. “Finally, Askepel won’t fight with us, or the fomorians either. Because if he did, he would have to admit we were his equals, that he needed us, and he would rather die. He would rather fail—that’s the strange thing. He would rather ride over the Cambro Ridge, and down through the sacred grove, all of them in their gilded armor, riding their white stallions, the sunset glinting on their lances, all of it. They’d rather ride down to the lakeshore and be cut to pieces by the drow, as if life were a poem or a ballad or a play—the last ride of the Llewyrr. They’d rather do that than succeed. Why is that, do you think?”

  Cross-legged on her perch, in the last of the light, Suka reached her cupped hand over the edge of the stone parapet, as if she could drink the cloud below her, or stir it into a whirlpool. Search me, she thought. But in fact she had a theory, which coincided, in part, with what the captain said next.

  “It’s because they live too long,” he murmured into his beard. “It puts them three-quarters in love with their own deaths. In the middle of their lives, it’s the only romance they have left. They flirt with it, reach out to kiss it and pull back. The gods only know what it feels like to be them, alive for centuries.” Again he spat over the side, then stood up straight and shrugged. “Are you coming? I’ll speak to Mindarion once more, or try to. Then at first light I’m for the coast—no one will stop me. You’ll see. They’ll be glad to see me go. It will be a relief to them, even if it costs them their victory. You?”