Agnes knew it would be a mistake to answer, and she kept her mouth shut. She was relieved at first that Richard did the same, but then she dared a quick sideways glance and saw that he was blushing. At a time like this! Agnes all but stamped her foot. If Richard, of all people, couldn't be relied on to keep his wits about him, then who could?
Melisaundre dangled her bauble before her lips and blew softly upon it, setting it swinging gently on the pendulum of its chain. She reached out and delicately touched it—like so!—with the tip of a tongue as pink as a cat's. “Don't you wish you could be this jewel?” she asked. “Wouldn't you like to lie between my breasts forever? Wouldn't that be the pleasantest doom imaginable?”
“Thank you ma'am, no,” Agnes said quickly, dipping the briefest of curtseys. It was essential to be polite: she realized that instinctively. And the higher the level of danger, the more polite you had to be. She knew she had to be very, very polite to the queen of the elves.
Richard stepped forward involuntarily, his eyes glowing as if lit by a flash from a hidden mirror. In a dazed voice, he said, “I think that...”
“Richard! No!” Agnes said.
“I mean, it kind of sounds like...”
“Stop! Stop! Stop!”
“Maybe, I don't know...”
“Think, Richard! Don't just—”
“...I'd like that.”
And he was gone.
The elf-queen held the pendant up, admiring its newly flawed interior. “A jewel with a soul reflects a better quality of light, don't you think?” she remarked lightly. “And as we have none of our own, we are so grateful when you volunteer yours.”
Without thinking, Agnes launched herself at the elf-queen, clawing, kicking, and screaming. And found herself immediately frozen in mid-air, suspended about four feet above the floor.
“Cassis and asphalt,” said the elf-queen. “Hints of anise. An elusive smoky quality. Just a trace of honey. And a flintiness under it all. We could bottle that and sell it at market.” She placed her long, sharp nose in the crook of Agnes's neck and inhaled deeply. Sharp fingers pinched Agnes's arms and the inside of a leg, as if assessing her plumpness. “But with encouragement, what might you not become? Worthy, perhaps, of even a queen's palate.” She raised her voice. “Store her with the others, and we'll do more with her later.”
* * * *
Agnes was taken away and fed—on marzipan, melon slices, and sugared oranges, on candied ginger and great slabs of baklava so intensely sweet they made her teeth ache, washed down with honeyed tea. She ate until her stomach hurt. But all the while, though she was careful to hide it, she burnt with that deep inner anger of which children, in the sentimental imagination, were deemed incapable. Any casual observer of a kindergarten or a schoolyard, however, can see that the younger the child, the less capable it is of hiding any anger it may harbor. By Agnes's age, most children are able to bank their fury so that it is generally unseen by adults and, often, by the child itself. Agnes certainly could do that.
Then she was washed, in water that had been heated to body temperature and had hibiscuses afloat in it. Needle-toothed yakshis dried her down with impossibly fluffy towels and helped her into new garments. They were of elven make and did not cover her stomach, but otherwise they seemed decent enough. Finally she was led to a large oval cushion which, though it looked suspiciously to her like the sort of thing people had for their pet dogs or cats, was nevertheless so comfortable that she fell asleep almost immediately.
When Agnes awoke, the bed was rocking gently under her. She drew aside the bed-curtain and discovered that the armies were on the march again, and that her bed was being carried by two trolls. She swung her legs over the edge so she could climb down.
“I'd advise you not to do that, Missy,” one of the trolls said. He was a tusked grotesque with legs like a rhinoceros's.
“If you did,” said the second, “we'll reflexively stop you in the most painful available manner.”
“Which, truth be told, we'd really rather not.”
“You're just another victim of elvish depravity, like we are, after all.”
“So just stay with the program, okay?”
Agnes scrambled back into the center of the bed. “Okay,” she said. And, “I'm sorry. I didn't want to get you in trouble.”
“You can't get us in trouble, Missy.”
“Even if you could, what would we care?”
“We're not self-aware.”
“Just bundles of reflexive responses, is all. It's not as if we were actually conscious.”
So she spent most of the day, dozing off and on, being carried along with the trooping armies of Elfland. When at last they made camp, she climbed down and fed herself from one of the many tables overflowing with food of all kinds. Then Melisaundre sent for her.
“You are a green gemstone, I believe,” the elf-queen said. “So you shall be treated with jealousy.”
“Ma'am? I don't understand.”
“You don't need to understand. Only to obey.”
Thus it was that for thrice a thousand and one nights in a row, Agnes served as the elf-queen's cup bearer. Silent and attentive, she sat on a small chair in a shadowy corner while her liege lady consulted with scholars and annotated books. Slim in green livery, she watched the elf-queen practice her archery, and brought iced tea to slake her thirst between bouts. At banquets, she poured a sip of every libation into a shallow bowl and drank it down, to test for poison. Rarely did she speak. Always did she watch. In this way, she picked up something of an education in the ways of polite society.
Even more did she learn at night, when the elf-queen retired to her bed and comported herself with whomever had caught her eye during the long day. Agnes brought flagons of wine to set the mood beforehand, vials of aphrodisiacs when the queen's lovers began to flag, and fruit-flavored ices to refresh them afterward. She watched as the elf-queen coupled with warriors, scholars, poets, fauns, women by threes and men by the brace, with centaurs and imps as small as lapdogs and quilled apes with extra arms. It was the queen's custom that her lovers should begin by entertaining her with oration and so, night after night, they related gesta taken from the history of Elfland, or ornate tales of bawdry stemming from their own experiences. Scholars taught her alchemy and astrology and the secret workings of the crystal spheres that moved the stars and planets through their complex dance in the night. Soldiers spoke of battles they had fought and heroic deeds they had seen.
Agnes watched. And she listened.
Sometimes, when Melisaundre was bored, she brought Richard out of his gem. He hardly noticed Agnes's presence, so besotted was he with the elf-queen. Agnes, for her part, watched him steadily, but her stare was hard. Once, during the heat of passion, his eyes accidentally met hers and the elf-queen immediately plunged a hand into his chest and pulled out his living, beating heart. He arched and spasmed until she returned the organ to its proper place.
“You liked that, didn't you?” Melisaundre murmured, looking Agnes straight in the eye.
“Whatever you want me to like,” he gasped, “I will.”
Agnes, as always, said nothing.
After the elf-queen had ridden him like a horse, Richard rolled over onto his back and when Agnes emerged from the shadows with the ices, he looked surprised to see her. He grinned shyly and started to say something, only to be shushed by an imperious royal finger laid across his lips. “You two are not to talk,” the queen said. “Not now. Not ever.”
Then she turned to Agnes. “Do you envy me, little virgin? Do you envy how many men come to pay me court, your precious friend among them, and how avidly they do so?”
“Yes, your majesty,” Agnes said tonelessly.
“They'll never do any of that to you, I assure you. He will never so much as touch you. I'll make sure of that.”
“Thank you, ma'am.”
“Oh, you don't fool me. You may not want it yet, but already you know you will. And every night you'll stand an
d watch, yearning, always yearning.... Those whom I bring to my bed are a complaisant lot. They'd be only too happy to oblige you, especially your lovely, dimwitted Richard here. But you shall stand and watch and grow old and withered and filled with regrets, while I remain gloriously young forever. When you die, I'll have your ashes made into a godemiche, which will rest near my orgies every night, with Richard immortal and at my service. But never—not even once!—will it be used.”
“As you please, ma'am.”
In a fury, the elf-queen seized a goblet and flung it down on the flagstone floor. It shattered, sending fragments of crystal everywhere. “You wicked, stubborn child! Do you think stunting your potential will make you happy? It will not! Embrace your anger, and it will bring you vividly alive. You will be an avid, thwarted, hopelessly vengeful avatar of spite!”
“As you wish, ma'am.”
Queen Melisaundre screamed in rage. Then she bade Richard mount her once more, as Agnes stood by.
* * * *
But the prize of the elf-queen's collection was Frederic.
“My rough little diamond,” the elf-queen called him. She dressed him in jester's motley, and brought him out to amuse her guests at banquets. They would lie in triples, twains, and tangles, on chaises about the court, while Frederic stood in the center and harangued them.
“You have no emotions of your own,” Frederic said. He looked so solemn, Agnes thought, in those big round glasses of his. “That's your greatest weakness, and someday it will be your downfall.”
The elves responded with gales of laughter.
“You made a terrible mistake when you destroyed almost all of my people. It made those of us who remain rare. It made us powerful. Without us, you wouldn't even know you're alive.”
“And what about you, little fool?” an elf-baron shouted back at him. “What would you do without us?”
“I'd just go on living. I wouldn't miss you at all.”
They howled.
Another time, Frederic said, “The Earth is a sphere that revolves about a spherical Sun. The Moon is spherical too, and it revolves around the Earth.” Then, as his audience convulsed, “How many years have you marched around this world without finding its boundaries? Always you search for the way back to your own world. The land you came from is as flat as a checkerboard and so ours baffles you. You stupids! You are trapped here forever by your own ignorance.”
Finally, Frederic said, “You think us your prisoners, but it is you who are held captive by the topology of your thoughts. I am free! Unlike yourselves, I can move as I wish in all Euclidian dimensions. The only reason I share this with you is that you cannot possibly comprehend it. Should I wish, I can leave at any time by simply turning from your plane.”
Abruptly he crouched down and somersaulted away, out the door and gone.
The elves continued jeering and laughing at his japes for another hour, just as if he hadn't left.
* * * *
After the queen's orgies that night, Agnes lay on her pallet thinking as hard as ever she had thought before. Frederic had been speaking directly to her—she was sure of it. Was it rolling into a ball that had rendered Frederic invisible to the elves? Or was it simply his bold, spit-in-your-face self-confidence?
Agnes felt anything but bold. But the challenge had been put to her. She had to follow Frederic's example, curl into a ball, and roll outside. Either she would survive or the guards would kill her. It was as clean and simple as that.
So she rolled herself into a ball and tumbled off her pallet and out of the tent. The demon-hounds crouching by the salient did not even see her, though their eyes darted everywhere, their nostrils flared, and their ears were pricked for sounds far subtler than those she made.
Agnes somersaulted out into the moonlight.
Out on the grassy sward and down the bank she rolled, out of sight of the guards. When she came to a halt, she was not surprised to see Frederic tumbling to meet her.
“It certainly took you long enough,” he said.
“Unlike you,” Agnes replied tartly, “I can't simply do and say whatever I want, whenever I wish.”
“And whose fault is that? The elves have no concept of reality save what they see reflected through us. I've been trying to explain that to you since forever.”
“Do you know what happened to Richard? The queen—”
“What befell Richard would not have happened if he hadn't allowed it.”
“She keeps him in a jewel around her neck!”
“He was the oldest. He had the choice of staying and protecting us as best he could, or a safe life of cosseted slavery, and he chose wrong. It was despicable of Melisaundre to offer such a choice to someone so weak, of course.”
“You understand everyone so well,” Agnes said bitterly.
“I think we have argued enough for one night,” said Frederic. “Be sure to somersault your way back to your pallet. It confuses the elves when we rotate or spin, and somersaults short-circuit their brains entirely. I suspect that, like paper dolls, they're not completely suited to life in three dimensions.”
He tumbled away.
Agnes stood motionless for a long time. The tents of the armies of Elfland stretched away to the horizon as numerous as blades of grass in a meadow, and the queen's tent sat at the very center of the camp. A lunar moth fluttered raggedly past, and Agnes reflected that they two—she and it—were equally free and purposeless. Yet the lunar moth did have a purpose: to procreate, to lay clutches of tiny eggs on the leaves of trees. She had no such destiny; in its place she was forced to watch the futile carnival of Melisaundre's endless and sterile couplings.
Now that Frederic had given her the key to freedom, she didn't know what to do with it. Where would she go? During waking hours, she could find the other children, for they were held close to the elf-queen's court, in case her whim required them. But when the revelries wound down into exhaustion, they were packed away to the fringes of the camp, to tents pitched among the ogres, dwarves, and other enslaved races.
She would not find the children tonight. And tomorrow, after the marching was done, their tents would be pitched elsewhere.
Nor could she escape into the outside world. There was nothing there but wilderness and ruins. Perhaps there were still people huddling fearfully in caves, as she once had. But what point was there in resuming that wretched and untenable existence?
Frederic, with his unique way of thinking, might be free, but Agnes was not. All the world was her prison.
Still, she had learned something tonight, and who could say it would not turn out to be useful? Clutching the knowledge tight to herself, Agnes tumbled back to her humble pallet at the foot of Queen Melisaundre's luxurious bed.
* * * *
Months passed, possibly years. Agnes had no way of measuring time: marks on paper, knots in her lacings, any accounting whatsoever eased away while she slept, leaving no trace.
At last there came a day when the armies did not march. The camp swarmed with activity. Elves flew into the nearest abandoned city and plundered it of building materials. Draft-giants hauled wagonloads of stone and enormous timbers. An arena arose in what had been a meadow the night before. Bleachers surrounded the oval of grass. Tall white walls soared upward and were decorated with clusters of the severed heads of ghastly inhuman creatures that Agnes had never seen alive.
Queen Melisaundre came silently out of her tent and gazed upon the arena. Then she turned to Agnes. “So,” she said. “The day has arrived at last.”
Agnes did not ask, but the queen answered her anyway: “You idiot child! The day we contend in battle and one of us kills the other, of course. Whatever happens, it will be a relief to be free at last of your constant witless questioning.”
It was vital that Agnes control her response. Anger the queen would understand: She would know instinctively how to react. Fear and defiance as well. But disregard? How could anybody dare ignore so dangerously mercurial a monarch? Agnes yawned and walk
ed off, leaving Melisaundre speaking sharply to empty air
She found Frederic in a brocade tent the color of dried blood, with jacquard dragons in its weave. Inside was a library whose stacks went on forever, dwindling into dusk. Bespectacled hobgoblins clambered up and down ladders, fetching and returning leather-bound manuscripts. Trolls stood by like bookstands, holding out dictionaries and volumes of encyclopediae.
Frederic sat at a small table, reading.
“What's this about me killing the queen?” Agnes asked. Somehow, she did not doubt it could be done.
Frederic shut his book. “It's time. I can read these grimoires without the queen's scholars now. So we no longer need her.”
“You mean we could have been free of her before this and you did nothing?” Agnes was accustomed to holding back her emotions, but now she found herself quivering and white with rage.
“Yes, of course, long ago. You'd have noticed this yourself, if you hadn't been mooning over Richard.”
Agnes slapped him as hard as she could.
One side of Frederic's face began slowly turning red. His voice remained mild, nevertheless. “I deserved that, I suppose. However, when we are married, you must not hit me again. It's not conducive to marital harmony.”
“Married!?”
“Married.” Frederic stood. He was taller than Agnes, which had never been the case before, and when he took off his glasses, as he did now, he was not entirely unhandsome. He was, Agnes realized with a shock, an adult, a man. “This has nothing to do with your personal feelings. Or mine, really. Agnes, you are the only human capable of assuming the elf-queen's role. But you have, as yet, no idea of how to wield power and you know it. I, on the other hand, do; so we must be wed.”
“It would be a loveless marriage.”
“That will change,” said Frederic, “if we want it to. We need each other. Our strengths are complementary; the weaknesses of one can be negated by the other.” His face was as pale and expressionless as the moon. “As a basis for marriage need is stronger than love.”
Asimov's SF, April-May 2009 Page 17
