A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  He was a city boy. All this grass-and-sky-tree crud was not his gruel. He’d never had much truck with elves — no elf in the Impire ever owned anything worth lifting.

  Rap wasn’t coming back. He would count up to a hundred and then go.

  Behind him, someone coughed politely.

  Thinal’s heart flew away and the rest of him twisted around so hard he near broke his back. Half a dozen elves stood in a semicircle. They all wore silver chain mail and they all had drawn bows trained on him. If he made one false move, he’d be a human forest.

  He called — Darad! Darad!

  Nothing happened.

  So Thinal did what he always did in moments of stress. He screamed in terror and peed in his pants.

  5

  The elves closed in on their prisoner, babbling in high-pitched voices with an accent he could barely decipher.

  Two were men, four women. They were all about his size, yet they seemed like adolescents and he had seen enough of the underlife of cities for that illusion to frighten him even more. Their golden faces were contemptuous, with big opal eyes flickering in impossible shades. Their silver-link tunics were prettied by bright-hued belts and baldrics and lanyards; their half-boots and helmets were equally gaudy. Their legs and arms were bare, except for dainty greaves and vambraces. Even their weapons might have been chosen for appearance, but he did not doubt that they were real and deadly.

  They twittered a few commands at him, ignoring his pleas and questions except to tell him to be silent. They tied his hands behind his back with a silken cord. They put a noose of the same cord around his neck. Then they formed up and began trotting along the road to the tree, cheerfully singing a fast-paced, complex round.

  Thinal followed. He had no choice, for the tether ran easily through a silver ring and would choke him if he allowed it to tighten. They ran him on a very long leash, so he must trail far behind them. Somehow that position felt designed to humiliate, as if he were something unpleasant they did not want to be associated with. Trotting along with his soiled rags flapping against his thighs, he preferred not to think about that. If he tried to catch up, then he would step on the cord and strangle himself. He feared that they would just drag him if he fell down.

  Guard and captive rounded the bend and the entrance to Valdorian was straight ahead. The trunk itself was still some distance away, a rugged cliff meeting the ground in an untidy, unelvish jumble of broken rock, stretching off on either hand until it disappeared in the far distance, and leaning outward, rising to meet the roof. The road ended at a freestanding spiral staircase of red and white polished stone. The guards continued on up the steps without pause, although they stopped their singing. There was no sign of Rap, or anyone else at all.

  The stair soared in an impossible spiral to vanish into an aperture in the roof. Halfway up, Thinal was gasping for breath and shaking sweat out of his eyes. He had no time to look around, for he must concentrate on the curve of the snaky cord rising steadily ahead of him. He could tell that he was falling behind when the cord no longer touched the steps. Relentlessly it grew straighter, then darkness closed in as the stairs entered a shaft. He ran harder and harder, yet slower and slower, lungs bursting, legs sheer blades of fire. He could no longer see the tether, but he felt it tighten around his neck — at first with the gentle touch of a teasing lover, then sternly, urgently, murderously; briefly it took some of his weight to haul him up the steps, until he choked and fell, battering himself on the hard edges.

  Voices warbled above him like furious birds. He could see nothing. The rope jerked repeatedly, tugging at him until he managed to scramble to his feet, his throat feeling as if it had been beaten with a hammer. He resisted the pull, holding himself to a walk. The noose yanked harder and he fell again, hurting himself in a whole new set of places. Again he rose and again he refused to run; with much angry chirping, his captors acquiesced to his slower pace.

  He hoped they knew that he wasn’t being stubborn, that they would not be angry with a poor weakling who could run no more. He was beyond speaking, even had they seemed inclined to listen. He plodded grimly upward around the spiral.

  Gradually light filtered down the tunnel, and it emerged onto the first layer of the tree. He was vaguely aware of mossy greenery and shrubs, of dripping sounds and a scent of flowers. The ground rose gently from the cliff until blue sky showed over treetops far away. High above those the sloping underside of the next petal roofed the glade like a low cloud, but it was shiny crystal, not dark as the outside layer had been. Light reflected in a million spars of color on ribs and facets.

  He had neither time nor desire to admire. His guards hurried him along a brief road, to yet another stair, this one narrower and carved into the side of the trunk. They began to climb again. How far were they going? Valdorian was two leagues high, higher by far than any mountain. He would freeze at the top of it — there would be no air to breathe!

  And where was Rap?

  The stair turned into the rock and again there was dark. Despite their mail, the elves moved in silence. He could not tell how far ahead of him they were except by the tightness of his noose. He fell only once on that stair, but he cracked his head hard enough to see a million stars.

  Back into daylight they came again, into a dim ferny forest, and at last his captors took a break — Thinal just crumpled to the moss at the roadside. A small stream of water cascaded down the cliff, ending in a free-falling jet. One by one the elves stepped under it to drink and be soaked. They jabbered and laughed among themselves, ignoring their prisoner. When they had all finished, they called Thinal over. He heaved himself to his feet and lurched forward; he sank on his knees in the pool, lifted his face. The cold wetness ran over him and down his throat like pure bliss. It was the best thing he could ever remember.

  His guards had been joined by another group — three male, three female. For a moment they all chattered together, apparently discussing a cluster of red birds singing in a nearby copse. Then the original six departed back the way they had come.

  “Up!” cried a boyish voice.

  Thinal leaned back until his groping fingers found the tether under him. He wrapped it in his bound hands as well as he could. When the jerk came it did not reach his neck, and the guards looked back in surprise and annoyance.

  He heaved himself unsteadily to his feet, his legs wobbling with fatigue. He could not tell which of the six was the leader, so he spoke to all of them.

  “Where are you taking me? Where is my friend?”

  The smallest stepped forward, holding up a very shiny, very skinny, very slim dagger. Her eyes twinkled amber and pale green in the dimness, but there was no smile on her face.

  “Let go that rope, imp!” she said in a piping treble.

  Thinal had never known himself to defy anyone before — not since that night in Orarinsagu’s house, anyway — and he knew it could not be courage that made him defiant now. It must just be sheer terror.

  “Not until you answer my questions!” His voice was as shrill as the elf’s.

  The guards all burst into twittering laughter, like birds. “If you do not let go of that rope,” the smallest one said, “we shall take it off your neck and put it around your ankles. Then we shall make better time.”

  Thinal released the rope.

  He lost track of the layers. Staircases and ramps went by in an ordeal of mindless trudging. He knew only the cramps and stitches and the bruises he gained in his falls. When he was granted a rest he fell to the ground and usually passed out. He was aware of being given water, and even food, which he could not eat. He was offered liniment for his legs; he knew vaguely that someone massaged it in for him, and more than once; his feet were tended and clad in better shoes.

  Higher and higher he went, step after step after step, every one a calculated agony.

  He was passed from squad to squad up the tree. The soldiers were not consciously cruel, as goblins would have been. They were not malicious like imps, or
even callous like jotnar. They sympathized with his suffering, in their alien way, although they could not help but regard an imp within a sky tree as a pollution. They pitied him after their fashion, but they had been given the task of conducting this prisoner up this tree and elves were fanatical about performing duties.

  Somewhere his bonds were removed, but he was never unguarded and he had no hope of escape. He obeyed and endured in sick despair.

  He lost track of the days, for after a few hours’ rest he would be taken on again, in daylight or by the amber glow of lanterns. As the temperature fell, his escort provided him with warmer clothes, fine silks and light woolens. His lungs strained in the thinning air.

  Mostly the way clung close to the central trunk and often followed shafts cut within it. At times, though, it veered away from the cliff, and then he traveled by spidery ladder and perilously narrow catwalks with the petal landscape spread out below him like a map: lakes and forests and fields, tiny picture-book cottages nestling among the meadows. His captors kept careful watch over him at those times, but they need not have worried. Thinal had no fear of heights. Heights were the only thing he did not fear.

  Days came and went — weeks, perhaps — and the ordeal grew no easier.

  He gathered from some chance remark that Rap was traveling ahead of him. Thinal had never been to Krasnegar, but the others all had, and he remembered the stairs. Rap would be managing better.

  He became aware that the soldiers were the only inhabitants, that the tree had been evacuated, like the surrounding countryside.

  Time and again he tried calling the others — Darad, Jalon, Andor, or even old Sagorn. The spell never worked for him. He had to put in more living, even if he wore out his heart in doing so. The elves were determined that there be one of two possible outcomes — either he would arrive at his destination or he would die. He could barely remember a time when he had not been climbing stairs.

  6

  He was in a big, bright hall, whose walls and pillars of intricately carved cedar were barely visible through clouds of scented steam. Someone had just told him to strip. He fumbled helplessly with buttons, then golden hands came to help him, moving swiftly, urgently — two elves undressing him. He did not know what sex they were and did not care. As his pants fell around his ankles, a gentle push sent him toppling backward into a pool of scalding hot water. When he surfaced, spluttering and choking, two soaked male elves were having hysterics on the brink, holding each other up in mutual convulsions of mirth.

  After that they spared no more time for jollity. They jumped right in beside him, scrubbed him, shampooed him, ducked him, and then hauled him out to dry and clothe him. He could not stand unsupported, so they fetched a chair.

  “Whasall the burnin’ hurry?” he muttered, and one of them took that opportunity to shove a foamy toothbrush in his mouth and scour his teeth.

  “The High War Chief awaits!” exclaimed the other, lathering Thinal’s face for shaving.

  He relaxed. He had been afraid it might be the warlock. He dozed off during the shave.

  Clad in fine wool garments of silver and burgundy, he was hastened out to a chill morning. The low sun blinded him, blazing in over pine trees, reflecting also from a sky of carved diamond far above, glittering on the frosty grass beside the path and the film of ice on the lake. Steadied by hands on his arms, he stumbled along obediently. The air was much too thin to breathe. He was surrounded by elves, but none of them wore mail or helmets; sunlight flamed on the spun gold of their hair and the myriad colors of their garb.

  Then he registered a stranger, a head that stood clear of all the others and was topped by riotous brown thatch. Rap! He was clad in white and gray, the same gray as his eyes, a whale among a school of goldfish — Thinal wondered whose idea that outfit had been. In a moment. Rap glanced around and saw him. His ugly faun face lit up like the sunlight.

  What? Pleasure? Relief? In his fog of fatigue and hopelessness, Thinal wrestled with the amazing thought that the king of Krasnegar seemed glad to see him. Had even been worried, maybe? It was an incredible notion, a mind-crippling astonishment, a sensation so unfamiliar that his mind could not grasp it. He knew what the other four thought of him. He knew who his friends were back in Hub, and they were no more trustworthy than he was; any of them would sell him for a copper groat. Somebody cared?

  No, that was ridiculous. It must have been a trick of the light.

  He stumbled up the steps into the great wooden hall that stood on the lake shore, barely noticing the ornate carvings, the bronze-studded doors, the ankle-deep rugs within. Then his gaze was caught by a figurine on an onyx table. It was Kerithian workmanship, undoubtedly, but of a style he had never seen before — a horse rising on its hind legs, spreading butterfly wings. The porcelain was so fine that it was transparent and the colors richer than rubies. He had not known that the merfolk crafted for elvish tastes, but of course why shouldn’t they? And the thought of the price that piece would fetch from the fences of Grunge Street made his head ache.

  Then he had gone by that wonder and was being hurried past a portrait of some elvish beauty, unquestionably the work of the legendary Puin’lyn. No one else had ever mastered her technique of setting gemstones in crystal. With breathtaking artistry, the mosaic face smiled back at him mysteriously, as if challenging him to assess her worth. God of Greed! Of course he’d have to melt it down and job the gems by the cupful, but he’d still pocket enough to buy a palace.

  More, and more! Everywhere his eyes turned they found wonders and treasure. The itch in his hands was driving him crazy. Jalon’s head would explode if he ever saw this, and his own was like to. Thinal gave no spit for beauty; it was the value that stunned him. He had not known there was so much wealth in the world. This room would buy the Impire and leave enough change for a couple of Zarks.

  The sky tree’s leaves were narrow, up here near the summit. High and vast and airy, the hall was set on the very brink, its great windows overlooking a mauve sky. All of Pandemia lay below, curving away into a vague fog where the horizon should be. Thinal did not notice any of that. He stood in a fog of gold and riches.

  The solitary chair on the dais before those windows had its back to the chamber. Thinal had been placed beside Rap, flanked by a small group of elves. Two were token soldiers, the rest civilians. Everyone was waiting respectfully for that chair to do something — everyone except Thinal. He was estimating tapestry by the square cubit. He was assessing the diamond and crystal chandeliers, the sculptures and paintings. He was wondering if he could sidle closer to some of the jewel-encrusted bric-a-brac on the side tables. It was torment.

  The chair pivoted slowly to face the assembly. A youth in white velvet lounged upon the carmine satin of its cushions.

  Even Thinal noticed the drama of that quiet move. A quiver of warning raced down his spine. He had seen that lad somewhere before. No, Jalon had. Jalon’s recall of events was usually a blur, but his visual memories were acute as razors.

  A waiter? No, a dishwasher.

  How could that be? Why should even Jalon remember a juvenile dishwasher of no exceptional beauty, at least by elvish standards? Thinal’s knees buckled. That long-ago flunky had turned out to be Warlock Lith’rian himself!

  Fortunately everyone else was bowing, and he converted his involuntary curtsey into a bow more or less like theirs. When he straightened up, he pushed his knees hard together and tucked his sweating hands out of sight behind him.

  Rap spoke first. Surprised, Thinal glanced up. He saw no smile to accompany the words, but there must be a smile intended, or they would be outrageous.

  “I am Rap, son of Grossnuk. I come in peace. Your foes are mine.”

  Surely no elf in all history had ever heard that greeting spoken in his sky tree, but the warlock’s expression did not change by an eyelash, for there was no expression on his face at all. If he made a signal, it was not mundane. Two young pages hurried forward, one from either side, each bearing a silve
r tray. Warlock and king were tendered goblets.

  Lith’rian took his with graceful golden fingers and raised it in salutation. “Safe haven and good sport,” he said softly. It was, of course, the correct response, but he did not drink. The opal eyes shimmered to new shades. “Chieftain Rap, you are welcome to our hearth and spring. We offer what we have, and may the Good be prospered by your coming. May your stay be joyful and your leaving long delayed.”

  Rap glanced down, met Thinal’s worried stare, and flickered him a wink. Probably he was taking a moment to nudge his memory, but when he replied to the warlock he did not stumble: “May the Good grow within your house and the Evil diminish. May your men be strong and your women fertile, your children wax in beauty and your elders in wisdom. May your crops flourish, your herds increase, and all your arrows fly true.”

  The wink had produced a very odd sensation in Thinal’s throat. It had said, of course, that Rap remembered who had taught him the faunish salutation, and where, in days that were gone. But it might have said more than that — he would have to consider… Why had the warlock not touched crystal to lip yet? He wasn’t waiting on Thinal to do something, was he? Panic!

  No — Rap seemed puzzled, also. “Your Omnipotence, I confess I am ignorant of the correct elvish greeting.”

  The youth sprawled in the chair made an inscrutable gesture with his free hand. “Strangers within sky trees are so rare that we have never developed one. In most places it is customary for the guest to drink first.”

  As the men drank, Thinal felt a strange rustling among the closepacked elves at his back, almost as if they were commenting on the score so far. Suddenly he realized that they might all be sorcerers, Lith’rian’s votaries. He suppressed a wail, shivering all the way to his toes.

  The pages were departing with the goblets.