The Rose of Sarifal

by Paulina Claiborne

  She stared at him. All the light was gone from her face, except where the whites of her eyes were touched with pink. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, come with me.”

  As if dazed, she staggered to the south end of the cavern, where the ceiling slanted down. Where they had camped, it was too high to see. But now, cracked and fissured, it bulged down until its wet, rough, uneven surface was only a few feet above Lukas’s head. By contrast, the floor was laid with hexagonal stone tiles, polished and discolored by the tramp of many feet.

  “What about there?” Lukas said. “That looks more direct.” He indicated another way, an arched tunnel at the cavern’s southern end, higher and broader and straighter than the path Amaka had chosen. An army could have passed under the brick vault.

  Amaka shuddered. “That’s the fomorian road, now. Have you seen them? Giants—grease-colored skins, and they make a stink. A hundred of them together could come through here. And their eyes …”

  “What?”

  “They kill you with a look, if they come close.”

  Her step was unsteady, her speech slurred and halting—Lukas wondered if her own father had somehow poisoned her. But then she glanced at him and glanced away, and he thought that she was merely afraid, too afraid to function. What sense did that make? She was a drow. These corridors should have no power over her. The Underdark had been her home.

  If anything they were too shallow still. The way she led them, the tiles continued for a quarter mile or so then gave out. The path sloped down precipitously, a curling spiral of rough steps hacked out of the rock. No dwarf had shaped this stone. Lady Amaranth lit the way, but even without her the passage would not have been completely dark, because of the phosphorescent fungus on many of the rocks, where the drow had cultivated a pale glow to steer them up and down.

  It occurred to Lukas how foolish they were being, to trust in this uncertain guide. “This goes too deep,” he said. “We’ll take the other way. We’ll take our chances with the fomorians. Anyway, I saw no one—”

  “No,” said Amaka, seizing him by the wrist. She was in front, leading the way down, but now she turned and grabbed hold of both his hands, as if in supplication. “The leShay will catch you there. Already they will have sent their soldiers. But they’ll never dare to follow you down here. And if they did, one man could hold the passage. It’s so narrow.”

  Lukas hesitated.

  “They go to the same place!” she said. “Cambrent Gap, just as you wanted. I swear to you on the Shrine of Araushnee’s Virginity, before she was abandoned long ago.”

  What kind of oath was that? Lukas thought. The dark elves’ goddess was the biggest slut in the entire pantheon, and that was saying a great deal. This curving staircase reeked of them, a sweet yet poisonous scent that reminded him of night-blooming jasmine, which his stepmother had grown in her kitchen garden.

  And yet he still found himself climbing downward through the rocks. Why was that? Simple—the girl begged him. Her beautiful dark face was streaked with tears, impossible to resist. She needed his help. It would have been cowardly to turn away, abandon her for something as ephemeral and uncertain as rational decisions or good sense. This was why, Lukas told himself, it was absurd for him to be or to ever have been captain of this crew. This was why the Sphinx was at the bottom of the sea. And yet it was why the others followed him without a murmur of dissent, why they clambered single file after him; first Amaranth, holding up her lamp, then Gaspar-shen, and finally the druid, now in her human shape, barefoot, dressed in her wolf skin.

  Besides, he told himself. There was another reason he allowed the girl to pull him downward. All his life he had heard stories of the Underdark, the system of enormous caverns and limitless tunnels that founded the entire continent of Faerûn, puncturing the rotten rock and causing sinkholes, cave-ins, and whirlpools on the surface—a system part excavated and part natural, inhabited by hundreds of thousands of creatures who never saw the light, entire races and civilizations. Lower down, Lukas imagined, he might find dark cities and monstrous farms of bloated vegetables and pale livestock. He might find subterraneous rivers and even seas, where the fishermen lit torches to lure enormous purblind creatures from the deep.

  For a moment he had a crazy notion that he could raise up Lady Amaranth to rule here as a queen, in a black and shadow palace lit with crystal lanterns. What else? Did it really make sense to bring her penniless to Alaron? To do what—work in a shop for a thousand years and more? Perhaps she and Suka could open a tattoo parlor in Llewellyn Harbor or Callidyrr: Feywild Dreaming, or maybe Madame leShay’s Skin Boutique & Body Shoppe, or maybe even The Rose of Sarifal—whatever, as Suka herself might say. She wouldn’t want to spend even remotely that much time with another female, in any case. Two weeks was about her limit, as Lukas had learned on board the Sphinx. Though of course Lukas himself would be long dead, a pleasant thought under those circumstances.

  The way broadened and the ceiling rose above them, beyond the princess’s light. Every step they took, Amaka seemed more terrified. She had her hand on Lukas’s wrist, and she pulled him onward, while at the same time she muttered words that seemed ridiculous to him for a drow priestess, a handmaid of the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, “Ah, Goddess, never to see the sun again or walk under the stars, never to feel the wind on my face or the grass under my feet …”

  As they moved farther into this new cavern, Lukas would have welcomed a little less wind in his face. He didn’t know what she was complaining about. They had climbed down into a new circle where the air was hot and humid and full of grit. Up ahead, fire burned at the entrance to another tunnel, a line of flickering red flame on the surface of the rock. Sulfurous gas escaped from a wide vent.

  Beside the entrance to this farther tunnel, the stone had been worked—a statue, one collapsed and broken, one whole, on either side of the red entrance. Amaka pulled Lukas forward, but he resisted, and freed his hand with a twist. He looked back toward the narrow defile behind him, where Gaspar-shen stood with his scimitar drawn, and then to the other dark niches in the cavern’s walls—grottoes, or else the entrances to other tunnels in the porous rock. Flames flickered in some of them, or else a faintly glowing haze.

  Lukas smiled and shook his head. “I’m not going in there.”

  The statue on one side was a knight in armor, his head bowed, his back against the living rock, his sword held like a cross in front of him, the blade between his hands. He was bareheaded, and his features were noble, though eroded, perhaps, by the same constant wind that filled Lukas’s nose with powdery sand. On the other side only the base was left, a reptilian shape with powerful legs and claws, perhaps a dragon or a basilisk.

  Lukas put up his hands. “I’m not going in there,” he said again. “We’ll go back up, take the fomorian road.”

  He already knew he had been played. It wasn’t the first time. But as he looked at Amaka’s desperate face, he wondered if she’d done this thing against her will. “Please …” she faltered, as her red eyes darted wildly from one entrance to another. Lukas drew his sword. Lady Amaranth and Eleuthra stood behind him, the druid still in her human shape. The princess was holding her lamp high. “Douse the light,” he said, too late. They were surrounded by the drow swordsmen, who had stepped forward from the niches and wormholes in the rock.

  He held up his own sword, wishing for a moment that the Savage stood with him. Then they’d have had a chance. He smiled, held out his hand toward Amaka, and made a little bow, while at the same time he looked past her toward the tunnel’s mouth, where a dark figure stepped forward from between the statues, an unarmed woman, her white hair glistening pink in the red light. “Give your father my thanks,” she said to Amaka. “I knew he would not disappoint us.”

  Now she came out into the brighter glow, and he could see her face. She was smaller than many of her race. She was beautiful, like all the dark elves, but with a haunted, used, imperious expression—she had none of Amaka’s freshness even in despai
r. Her pink hair was streaked with black and gray and rust. Lukas imagined she held some kind of cold magic in her hands, as she moved her fingers in a practiced gesture. “I am—no, you don’t need to know my name. I am the guardian of this sacred place.” Then she threw back her head in a false, simpering laugh. “Lady,” she said to Amaranth, “we are pleased we have been chosen to receive you. Almost we had given up hope.”

  Another gesture with her long, painted fingernails, and seven of the drow stood away from the others.

  KNIGHTS OF LLEWYRR

  IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBER AT HARROWFAST, SUKA SAID to Marabaldia, “I think we should get away from here. Captain Rurik has already escaped with all his Ffolk. He rode away while you were talking because there is no point to these negotiations. And without Rurik, this is not your fight.”

  This was measured speech, for her. Inside she felt a certain urgency.

  There was a circular open space at the bottom of the council chamber’s sloping well, a raised stone dais, and on top of it a long stone table. Suka stood by Marabaldia’s heavy chair, her head below the level of the table’s surface. Doubtless it was strewn with important papers, which were out of sight to her. “Let the knights of Llewyrr retake Karador. Let them put their lost princess on the throne. They will not welcome you there when it is done, or thank you for your help.”

  The fomorian princess and Lord Ughoth had been speaking privately, their heads together across the table, their whispering voices inaudible. Suka felt like a child at her friend’s knee, or perhaps a little dog jumping up and down. She heard her bark turn frantic. “We’ve got to leave,” she said.

  Eladrin soldiers had come into the hall. They were nosing around the entrance. Suka saw Marabaldia’s hand come down—the princess, lately, had gotten into the habit of touching her, stroking her hair, which was soft and fine in comparison to her own. I swear to the gods I’ll bite her thumb, Suka thought. Then she ducked under the stone tabletop and crossed to where Lord Mindarion was sitting unacknowledged by the others, slumped back in his chair. His eyes were closed, and a yellow-haired eladrin woman sat with him, fussing over him, rubbing some kind of cream into his beardless cheek. Her name was Altaira, and she was his daughter, or granddaughter, or great-granddaughter.

  “My lord,” said Suka in her least impudent and most servile tone, but the woman—clothed all in white and yet with embroidered patterns on her collar in rainbow-colored thread (gnomes’ work, Suka suggested to herself, gnome slaves’ work, because these people were too lazy and spoiled to lift a gods-damned finger)—interrupted.

  “Hush,” she said, in a tone both fragile and superior, “don’t disturb him. He is far away.”

  I would so like to join him, Suka thought, flicking her dog bone stud against her front teeth, while at the same time glancing behind her at the soldiers talking together along the upper circle of the hall. “The shadow walker hurt him,” said Altaira, her hand fluttering over Mindarion’s fine, high, effeminate cheeks, which were (it was true) ashen and gray, even in the light of the oil lanterns and the candles flickering behind their alabaster screens. “He has turned inward. He will linger like this for many years. He will not talk to us again, if I know anything.”

  “Well, then, we’re done,” said Suka, this time to Marabaldia and Ughoth who had gotten up from their stone chairs to stand over her, expressions of indulgence on their enormous faces. “Princess,” she said, “please let us leave this place. We can go north on our own, to Cambrent Gap and then beyond, below Citadel Umbra—that’s the way, isn’t it, to your own kingdom?”

  “Kingdom …” said Marabaldia, smiling at her prince. “I suppose you could call it that. But—”

  “Please,” interrupted Suka. “I don’t think there’s time.” She glanced behind her, where Lord Askepel and a few of the others were talking with the soldiers, their faces grave and severe, and as easy to read as children’s primers. “We must go,” she said. “Please, come with me.”

  Again she imagined Marabaldia might bring her hand down and run her fingers through her hair. Something had happened between the fomorian princess and her boyfriend. Something had changed in the last day, as a result of which Marabaldia had become less able to focus on the task at hand, and tended to treat Suka as if she were a child or a pet, scratching at her head, admiring the rosiness of her complexion and the delicacy of her porcelain skin, et cetera—screw that. If the fomorian was feeling so maternal now, maybe it had to do with her own change of circumstances. Her distorted, bloodshot, golden eye beamed down like a searchlight, or like a fumbling, gathering hand that was trying to comfort the little gnome and calm her down. But Suka would not be consoled, because, objectively, they were completely reamed—she twisted under the descending palm and took off across the translucent tiles of the central dais, lit from below now that it was night. She ran up through the tiers of cushioned stone banquettes and statues of griffons and other beasts even more exotic and extinct, trying to reach the door before Lord Askepel forbade it.

  Too late. Below them in the guardhouses under Harrowfast, a company of fomorian soldiers were doubtless drinking and playing knucklebones, bored to tears, together with an honor guard of cyclopses, which Lord Ughoth had brought up from the Underdark. Here in the council chamber no weapons were permitted. Six fomorian knights sat dozing among the seats, but now they roused themselves as a dozen or so armed eladrin came down the graded steps toward the stone table. Askepel was with them. Immediately Suka turned and, hands in pockets, sauntered down toward Marabaldia again, whistling the refrain of Oh, Father Dear as a kind of distress signal that she hoped the princess would recognize.

  And sure enough, Marabaldia came to join her, and Ughoth came with Marabaldia, and the three of them watched uneasily as the eladrin stamped down, hands on their sword hilts, and some of them carrying heavy lances of the type known as giant-spits—a violation of etiquette and the clear protocol of the council chamber. Ughoth raised his hand, and five of the fomorian guards retreated toward them down one of the empty side aisles, while the sixth (Suka was glad to see) stumbled upward toward the doors. They’d need the cyclopses, she guessed, before this was through.

  Standing on the steps, where his head was not far below Ughoth’s, Askepel began speaking. Immediately he confirmed Suka’s fears. “Large sir and powerful madam, I bring you sour news, which could not fail to touch even a brute. Perhaps in your languages you do not easily possess such abstract concepts as treachery or even loss, because you have so little. I do not say this is your fault. But with my kind it is not like that, because every pebble of Synnoria is as costly as one of your jewels. Every moment of every day contains experiences and sensations you could not even recognize, and for this reason foul murder is a crime among us, which is something you might not instinctively understand. Let me explain. Not one hour ago, not one mile from this place, and yet within the sacred border of Synnoria, three of our kin were struck down and killed as they pursued their duties. Among them was the Marchlord Oemeril Talos–claere, my father’s sister’s son. Their perfumed blood was spilt upon the grass, yet even so my soldiers could detect another odor, or else a mix of odors: a Northlander and a gnome. The Northlander has already fled, which confirms his guilt. It only remains for you to surrender up this … person whom you have brought into our midst, to stand before the high wardens of Synnoria and answer for her crimes. If you had the noses for it, you would be able to perceive, as I do now, the attar of my cousin’s blood above her own rank smell.”

  Suka could see the eladrin’s delicate nostrils flare as she stepped backward to Marabaldia’s side. Not ten minutes before she had been irritated and frustrated at the giantess’s condescension, her increasing habit to treat the gnome as if she were a child or a toy. But now she reached up to grab hold of Marabaldia’s blue dress. She yanked importunately on the rich cloth, and then peered up into her friend’s noble face, its pale purple skin touched with an angry cast of red.

  Marabaldia reached down to
touch Suka’s shoulder, a comforting, encompassing gesture, while at the same time the membrane over her evil eye slid open, and the surface of the eye itself bulged from the plane of her flat cheek.

  Askepel put up his hand. “You will not coerce me with your sorcery,” he said, and nothing more.

  Whatever image Marabaldia had conjured to disarm him, the effect was instantaneous. He stood immobile, an expression of disgusted rage on his smooth face. The rest of the eladrin drew their swords, and some had carried double-bladed axes down the steps, along with the giant spits; a dozen or so knights of Llewyrr, in silver fish-scale armor, white capes, and spiked helmets. Ughoth lifted up his hands palm out, as if in a gesture of surrender, then drove his naked fist into the face of one of the eladrin and knocked the lance out of his grasp. The others grabbed at him. Eleven feet tall, he looked like a man wrestling or playing with a knot of boys, buffeting them about their heads with slaps of his great hands. Even now he wasn’t trying to kill them.

  The hall filled up with soldiers. Marabaldia had slipped Askepel’s sword out of its sheath. It looked slight as a poker in her big fist. Two fomorians had already fallen, hewn down on the steps before they could reach the dais. Their dark blood exploded out of them. At the top of the hall, a third was on his knees.

  Suka kept one of her secret knives in the crease of each hand. Standing in back of him, for a moment she considered whether she should cut down Askepel as he stood helpless, cut him across his hamstrings—no, she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t do that again. Already she’d disgusted herself by what she’d done in Synnoria, the unnecessary foolishness that had started all this, and that now seemed likely to get them killed, regardless of how she punished Askepel for insulting her. It wasn’t as if he’d had no cause.

  The three remaining guardsmen had come down to stand together with Ughoth and Marabaldia, and it was possible, Suka thought, that something could be done to save them all. She turned toward Lord Mindarion, still slumped in his chair, and the Lady Altaira stood beside him, a horrified expression on her face, her almond-shaped eyes wide with terror and distress. Suka climbed onto the tabletop and ran down to stand on the useless documents in front of the old lord. She kicked some of the parchments off of the marble surface then leaned forward and grabbed hold of Mindarion’s long nose, and forced her fingernails into his nostrils—not to hurt him, but only to wake him. The lady scarcely glanced at what she did. She stood leaning on the tabletop, her yellow hair around her face. All around her there was chaos and fighting as the eladrin pushed down the steps, but Suka pushed her fingers into Mindarion’s nose until he came awake under her hands.