"Maybe. Here's the path. Come on, let's see what's down there."
"Probably nothing. But I'll go. Only because you're going with me."
They started down the steep path. Lorrine took the outside. Kama trailed her hand along the cave wall beside them.
Lorrine pulled her necklace out from beneath her shirt. It flared brighter than the lightsticks, encasing them in a shining bubble of white light.
"You're handy to have around," Kama said.
"Thanks. Are those lumpy things houses down there?"
"Kind of looks like it," Kama said, a hint of curiosity coloring her voice. "The Mother said the Lake People lived here. Maybe their houses survived whatever happened to get rid of them."
They made it down the path. As they descended, the smell of water grew stronger, and they started hearing it as well as smelling it. The air felt damp, and filled with the scent of life, along with a hint of mustiness. Probably mushrooms, Lorrine decided. What else would want to grow in this lightless environment? Fish, clearly. Fish didn't need light to live. But no plants. Only fungi.
The buildings took shape slowly. They looked a little odd, by normal surface dweller standards, because they had no roofs. That made sense, in a way, because who needed a roof when they lived in a cave? The place was oddly lovely, though, and clearly magical. As they left the ramp and started down a path leading to the village, magical lanterns sprang to life every few lengths. And when they reached the cluster of buildings itself, each one lit with beautiful, intricate designs on walls, braces, around each door and window. Although not on the roof, as no buildings had roofs. It was a gorgeous, flagrantly decorative and outright wasteful use of magepower, and it made the place look like a gloriously elegant place to live, rather than a pit of darkness where people had fled to escape the wrath of their enemies.
Suddenly, Kama stiffened all over and froze in place. "They're coming!"
Lorrine looked around quickly. No need to ask who they were, not here in this weird underground world.
The shadows still caught her by surprise.
You! they shrieked. Black Rose, what have you done? You dare contaminate our home with such vileness!
Lorrine thought maybe this might be a good time to learn how to pray. The shadows sounded pissed, and they'd almost reached her. What to say, though? How did one pray properly? Maybe something rather formal, a carefully worded plea for assistance?
The shadows swirled around her, shrieking, biting with invisible teeth.
"Goddess, help!"
Not very eloquent, perhaps, but effective. Lorrine herself lit with the same blinding white glow as her crystal. The shadows chittered and sizzled, pinging off the light like it was a solid thing.
"What are you doing?" Kama yelled suddenly. "You invited us here!"
She'd lit up as well, with a golden light, shimmering around her outline. Far more subtle than Lorrine's blinding goddess-light.
We invited you, our Lyrebird. We did not invite that demon she serves now!
"Demon? I'll give you demon!"
Lorrine never knew what inspired her to swing her arm like she held a whip. But whatever it was, for whatever reason, she did, and the light whipped out at the shadows. They howled, swirling to the attack. Shadows sizzled against the glow, allowing their friends to get closer, then trading out as they nearly died against the light. Wounded shadows swirled out to the far edge of the cloud, healthy ones pressed in closer, and slowly the shadows wore away at Lorrine's light. She could see Kama doing something she couldn't understand. It almost looked like Kama was using magic. But she'd never had any kind of mage-talent before! Maybe she'd pulled some kind of magical weapon out of her bag of tricks.
"Stop this, right now!"
Suddenly the shadows quit attacking Lorrine, swirled up, then spun around and dove to engulf Kama. Lorrine tried to reach her, although she had no idea what she could do, then Kama bolted forward, running blindly and wrapped in a writhing ball of shadows.
"Kama, no!"
Lorrine could see, thanks to her goddess-granted light. She could see the edge of the lake ahead. She could see Kama running directly towards the shore.
And then she could see Kama run right into the lake and disappear, her golden glow barely visible for a brief instant before the water swallowed her.
"No! No! Oh, Kama, no, not the lake, get out of the lake!"
Irrational words, from a person suddenly engulfed in a frenzy of terror and grief. She ran to the shore, where the water lapped quietly. Her glow showed her the smooth surface of the lake, unmarred by bubbles.
"Why, oh why did I never learn to swim? Kama! Damn it, Kama, come back here! Don't leave me alone! No. . . No. . . This can't be happening."
She fell to her knees, splashing into the shallow water on the shore, suddenly drained of everything but fear.
Underwater
They fought her.
Kama plunged through the darkness of the lake, surrounded by a bubble of air, and struggled with the ashantri. She could hear their voices in her head, their nasty chittering little voices. They didn't like Lorrine. They had some quarrel with Biao Tanu, and they wanted to go back and kill her.
But Kama wouldn't allow that. She had absolutely no intention of letting these damned shadow beings kill her Lorra. So she held them to her with her will, and dragged them deeper down into the water, where their essences slowly paralyzed with the effects of an element so foreign to their own. And she imposed her will on each and every surviving member of the colony.
The ashantri quieted, and their struggles ceased. Their shadowy darkness flickered and died. Then they were reborn into little golden fluttering squares, open to her will, eager to do her bidding.
Kama smiled as she commanded the water to buoy her up. The Shrouded One had been right, as usual. The little ashantri felt nearly as friendly as puppies, peacefully glowing golden and swirling ecstatically. But she had to hurry. She'd bond with them later, once she'd reassured Lorra that she was still among the living. Poor woman was probably just about hysterical by now, after watching Kama "die."
The surface of the lake parted around her. Kama convinced the water to bear her weight and walked back to shore, where Lorrine knelt with her hands over her face.
"Lorrine," she called.
Her head snapped up, and her jaw fell. Lorrine scrambled to her feet and bolted forward as Kama walked across the rather flexible water, surrounded by joyful ashantri.
"What the hell happened!"
Lorrine darted out into the water, getting wet. She stopped when she reached Kama, flinging her arms around her middle, as high as she could reach from the muddy shallows of the lake.
"Oh, get up here," Kama said, and hauled her dripping lover up onto her solid patch. "Walk with me. I'll explain when we get to shore."
"How is this even possible? Am I dreaming? Or am I the one that died?"
Kama laughed. "Come now, it's just a few more steps. You can make it that far, right?"
"Wait." Lorrine stopped, confusion forgotten in an instant. Her head turned, and she faced the darkness to the right.
"What is it?"
"A sound."
Boom.
Very faint. Very. . . otherworldly.
"Let's get on shore. Now."
Ashantri fluttered around them in an agitated cloud, picking up on Kama's adrenaline rush. They all but ran ashore, bobbing unpleasantly on the semi-firm water.
Boom, tik. Boom, tik. Boom. Ba-da-da boom.
"That sounds like a marching cadence." Lorrine's voice was tight, laced with a bit of fear. "What the thtock would be marching down here?"
"Look! Over there." Kama pointed towards the sound, where a blue glow emerged from the air, trailing wisps and streamers of light. She edged closer to Lorrine, trying to stay calm and keep her internal energies at the ready to face this new threat. Whatever it was. She could feel her ashantri clustering close to them both, adding their strength to hers. Individually, they were nothin
g. But as a group, they complemented and balanced her own mage power to the point where she felt near invincible on that front. Too bad invincible didn't translate into brave.
"What are they?"
"I have no idea."
Shapes began to resolve out of the glow, many shapes, lurching forward one boom at a time. Large, indistinct shapes, getting a whitish tint to their blue glow, marching in unison towards the two women.
"I think. . . I think those are frost demons," Kama said, more than a little hesitant.
"What's a frost demon?"
"Something a Dargasi would have no chance of running into in the wild."
Lorrine snorted. "Wonderful. That really helps, you know?"
"I know. And look, I'd almost swear that thing out front is a djinn!"
"Really?" Lorrine tried harder to make out details. "It looks like they're getting more visible with every step."
And so they were. Out front came the djinn, all blue and billowy, followed by six. . . were those really cave trolls? Ai! They were the drummers. Three of them carried monstrously huge bass drums strapped to their chests, three of them smaller, sharper-pitched instruments. But the sound they produced belied their small number.
After the drummers, the frost demons marched in rows. Kama reached for Lorrine's hand. Lorrine trembled, just a tiny bit. Not much reassurance in a trembling hand. But the contact still helped.
The frost demons were beautiful, in an ungainly sort of way. They had a terribly awkward gait, but they looked like a clear geode come to life. Their skins were coated in crystals which somehow looked alive. They caught and magnified the light which surrounded the army as a whole and produced an extra haze of light around each of them, filled with rainbow glints.
The army marched towards them. Other than looking freakish, terrifying, and beautiful, they made no overtly hostile moves. Lorrine and Kama had a whispered conference and decided to stand their ground. The army came so close they could feel the ground shaking with each thundering footstep and drumbeat. Then the djinn at the front held up an arm. The drummers produced a roll, then a final crashing boom!
The army halted.
"Hail, Queen Stormrider! I am Atothka, the commander of your army. What are your commands?"
"Um, Kama?"
"Yes, Lorrine?"
"What the thtock is happening here?"
"I'm not sure, Lorrine. In fact, I have no clue at all."
Then Lorrine gasped and dropped Kama's hand. "Those frost demons! Oh, how horrible!" She ran forward, past the djinn and the trolls, directly up to one of the frost demons.
Kama shook her head. Sometimes Lorra did the oddest things. . . But at least a being that called her Queen didn't seem likely to harm her. So she moved forward herself, followed by her cloud of ashantri.
"Why do you call me Queen?" she asked, when she'd gotten as close to the djinn as felt comfortable. She could feel a kind of cool breeze coming from his lower cloud.
"Because you, our Golden Lyrebird, are the direct descendant of the line of Harmuth. You are the first of your kind to stand on these shores in centuries. And you are a Stormrider, the most powerful mage of all. You are the Queen."
Then Lorrine came away from the demons, anger in her stride and her snapping eyes.
"Kama. I know why the shadows tried to kill me when they saw the mark of Biao Tanu."
"Why? They wouldn't tell me."
"See the bindings on those poor frost demons? And on the trolls, and even on this poor djinn. Hello, djinn."
"I hadn't looked." Kama switched her mindset to one in which she could see energies and looked around her. Every being simply crawled with a kind of greenish, blackish web of binding energy, and every being likewise bore the mark of Biao Tanu.
"Djinn. Are you a follower of Biao Tanu?"
Atothka looked at Lorrine with a desperate, sad appeal in his eyes. He billowed as he tried to respond in speech, or to nod, or anything. But other than his dark, expressive eyes, the djinn could say nothing.
"That's it, see, Kama? These poor creatures are held here against their wills. Can you release them? He did call you Queen, after all."
"I can most certainly try."
Kama surveyed the beings in front of her. Part of her wanted to leave the trolls bound by their spells. Bound trolls wouldn't hurt her. But she knew that would be a terrible thing. Ancient binding spells that held through who knew how many ages were just plain evil, and she refused to be evil.
So she gathered up her mage powers, called on her new familiar hive, and began testing the bonds of her army.
To her surprise, the ancient spell released almost immediately, on her third test. Perhaps it was so old it had gotten fragile? Whatever the reason, it dispersed.
Immediately, a vast howl went up. The rock trolls threw back their heads and howled as they faded from existence. One of them stayed, though, looking at her with its big ugly face. She rather suspected the trolls were dead, now that she looked more closely. This one had the glowing, semi-transparent look of a ghost.
She turned her attention to the frost demons, and could scarcely believe her eyes. They were capering and cavorting about, clearly in an ecstasy of joy.
"Thank you, my Queen!" Atothka the djinn bellowed, swooping forward and grabbing Lorrine by the hands, swinging her around in a bizarre dance move. "And thanks to you, paladin of my goddess!"
He released Lorrine and flung himself into an exuberant series of acrobatic flips, corkscrews, and loops.
"By all the holies," Lorrine said, trying to recover both balance and composure. "What just happened?"
"I released them from their binding spell."
"You have got to tell me about this. When did you become a mage?"
"It's all because of you. Now hush, I'll tell you later, when we're not in the middle of some strange shared dream. I think this sparkling fellow has something to say to us."
One of the frost demons approached them, shooting glittering bits of light off his crystalline skin.
"Thank you, paladin," he said. "And thank you, savior. I am Gnarsh, and I am the leader of the glim that stand here before you. I have come to offer you our services. Many of us fled with the removal of our bonds, it is true, but many of us remain. And out of gratitude, and the feeling that you are worthy, unlike your ancestors, we will remain here and do your bidding."
"The glim?" Kama looked at Gnarsh curiously. "Is that what you call yourselves? My people call you frost demons."
Gnarsh shrugged. "None of you humans has ever asked any of us what we truly are. In fact, I suspect most of your kind believe us deaf and dumb, with barely enough wit to follow commands."
"And yet, here you are, speaking as well as any other educated being. Well. What do we do now?"
At that point, the djinn zipped up to join them, his lower cloud pulsating like human lungs after a long race.
"My apologies for my undignified behavior," he said. "I have been constrained for far too long."
"No fear, Atothka, we understand that your joy needed an outlet," Kama said graciously.
"Indeed. And now, I am undecided. I would like to return to my people. But I would also like to see what happens with you now, Queen. . . I'm sorry, but we have not been properly introduced. May I have the gift of your names?"
"Oh! Of course. I am Kama, and this is Lorrine."
Atothka bowed to them both, then straightened and looked at Lorrine.
"I wish to thank you again, paladin Lorrine. It has been long since any of us have felt the touch of our goddess. As her representative, you have brought much joy and healing."
"Thanks," Lorrine said awkwardly. She shifted on her feet, tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. "I hardly feel as if I've done anything."
"You spotted the spell, and pleaded with Queen Kama to free us. That is enough."
"Atothka," Kama said, looking at everyone around her, even the sad-eyed troll hovering on the fringes of the conversation, "you keep calling me Que
en, and yet, I know nothing of this place, or anything at all about its history beyond what an instructor of mine taught me. There is nothing here, other than you folk who were bound to service. What is the point of being the Queen of nothing?"
"That is not within my power to answer, I am afraid."
Atothka billowed, and his gaze shifted back and forth, back and forth.
"What's on your mind, Atothka?" Lorrine asked. "You look uncomfortable.
"It is the height of bad manners to mention such a thing," the djinn said, looking away. His eyes fell on the troll. "Gumpa, you remain. What are your plans for the future?"
"Stay," the troll said, in a voice like rocks groaning. "Help build."
"Thank you," Kama said to the troll. She felt immensely proud of herself that her voice sounded neither fearful, nor disgusted, addressing such a terrifying and downright gross creature. Perhaps there was more to them than it seemed on the surface. She hadn't known even a few minutes ago that trolls could speak.
"Atothka, please, tell us what's bothering you," Lorrine pressed on, ignoring the troll. "No need to worry about rudeness. We've never dealt with your kind before, and have no knowledge of the correct manners, so you can't possibly offend us."
The djinn started to protest, then sighed, glowing eyes downcast. "It has been five hundred and forty-three annums since my—all of our—last meal."
"Goodness!" Kama felt her eyes open wide in pure shock. "You poor creatures! How are you still alive? What do you eat? And how do we go about feeding you?"
"Plants," the troll groaned. "Need plants."
Plants? Who would ever guess trolls could be vegetarian. . .
Many of the glim moved closer, looking desperate. "Sunlight! We eat light! We have been locked away in this darkness for so long, we hardly feel alive anymore!"
"And I eat the most uncomfortable thing of all," Atothka confessed, drooping. "Spiritual essence, produced by living beings. Such as yourselves. It does not harm those who feed me, but it is beyond rude to take without permission."
"So that's it. By all means, you have our permission," Lorrine said, not even needing to consult with Kama. After all, she felt very safe making the offer to a being who bore the mark of her own goddess. Pretty weird, that, being able to see a glowing white rune smack in the middle of the forehead of all these ancient beings. No wonder people could identify her so easily as belonging to Biao Tanu. Would she have accepted the goddess's protection if she'd known she'd get such a glaringly obvious mark? Probably. She had no desire to fall prey to anyone else with a damn controlling artifact. "Kama? Let's let these people go outside and eat, shall we?"
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