Beneath Ceaseless Skies #190

by Mike Allen

  The room was silent, yet full of subtle movement. Each time she blinked, the jars altered their configuration, as if the racks were switching places the instant her lids closed.

  At last Olderra snatched a jar and opened it. The weight vanished from Merav’s belt. Something spun in the jar, a tiny man formed of pale smoke, the gray circles of his eyes huge with horror. Then Olderra closed the lid, and the effigy of Jintien faded. She replaced the jar, immediately indistinguishable from its brethren as they shifted places. Merav could not have found it again on threat of death.

  “Now will you eat?” Olderra asked.

  Merav would never before have enjoyed such a gristly, fat-filled soup, but it proved ambrosia on her tongue. Her joints twinged, finally admitting aches from her exertions.

  Olderra sent her to the moss-lined chamber that would be her new bedroom. It too had the same tunnel-ceiling. Contemplating its shadows, Merav drifted to sleep, and dreamed of bringing down a stag with her tiny teeth and dragging the corpse home to her kits.

  * * *

  Days and nights coursed past with little to distinguish them, their hours marked off by meals before the hearth, slumbering in soft moss, chores of cleaning or retrieval carried out through the dozens of rooms confined within the tree, most of which served no obvious purpose. In one, dried leaves spun forever in a slow cyclone. In another, glass windows honeycombed the walls, but Merav could make no sense of the roiling chaos of color outside the panes. In another, slabs of wood grew together into stairs that rose to the trunk’s upper reaches, but a immovable trapdoor at their apex barred further exploration.

  At first Merav and Hundeil spoke little at their shared suppers, but gradually he proffered carefully measured tidbits. “All milady’s chambers exist in one place,” he said. “Beneath this same roof. But they never merge. Only milady can move between them freely.”

  Merav asked him to explain. He tried: he and Merav could go only where their host allowed, he said. Yet in his experience, once permitted access to a room, he needed only to think of it to summon an arch that led there, until Olderra chose to once more bar his access.

  After learning this, Merav tried repeatedly, without luck, to summon the chamber of floating shelves. She wanted to know what had become of Kaediya, who had not reappeared. Olderra, too, eluded her.

  Hundeil talked of the workings of their home but would not discuss its history. He did confirm with nods and strategic silences some of Merav’s suspicions: that Olderra never left the tree and yet could travel far beyond Dium Forest. That the tree held so many rooms within its unnatural dimensions that it was possible for many to live inside it and never cross paths.

  He talked least about himself, until Merav finally asked him, “Who were you, before?”

  In the middle of serving her soup, he dropped the ladle, slopping red sauce across the tabletop. As he cleaned with head bowed he muttered, “Milady prefers we not speak of such things.”

  Merav spread her hands. “I don’t see her.”

  He snorted. “You believe she can’t hear us?”

  “I’m sure she can, but does she always listen?”

  “Not a gamble I will make.”

  She couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “What could you possibly say that would worry her? We are both trapped. Helpless as kittens in a sack.”

  His narrow jaw flexed, cords bulging in his neck. “We are not trapped. We are saved.”

  The rage her father so often inspired, that spurred her to call him coward and monster, reared its head. In retaliation for that rage, her father had more than once pinned her down and beat her, careful not to leave visible bruises—but that never stopped her. Hundeil was a sheep by comparison.

  “You?” she mocked. “Saved from what? The arrow of some hunter who spied your horns through the trees?”

  “The first time, an assassin’s garrote, “ he said evenly, “when I commanded merchant ships for House Leursind.”

  Merav stared. House Leursind was only a story, attached to a burnt-black ruin of a demesne in Steermast Quarter, uninhabited for centuries.

  His deep voice quavered. “Longsleeves, the second time—” His eyes widened in surprise at his own indiscretion, and he turned from her, head tilted in shame.

  He had to mean the entity in the woods, its sleeves ever seeking prey to strangle.

  “Is it a ghost?” she asked. “Longsleeves?”

  He summoned an arch and left before she finished the final syllable.

  * * *

  He successfully avoided her for several days, until Olderra called her into the apothecary chamber with its hovering shelves, to reacquaint her with Kaediya.

  “You friend returns to us from a far distance,” the witch said. Behind her, Hundeil loomed, impassive.

  A thorn-studded heap of vines sprawled atop the table, its foliage adorned with violet flowers. Their sickly-sweet scent flooded the room. Olderra opened her fingers, trickling powder into the heap.

  The botanical mass coughed. Leaves and petals arranged themselves into a face. Kaediya’s gray eyes stared out from it.

  Merav burned with questions: why had her father’s men brought Kaediya to the woods, why had Kaediya’s house abducted Merav, why were House Uethorn’s men ordered to mutilate her face? But Kaediya’s expression held no recognition, no acknowledgment of her surroundings. Merav’s hopes drained away.

  Kaediya sat up, her form winding tighter into human shape. Olderra demanded, “Tell me your name.”

  Mute, the flower-woman regarded the witch.

  Deprived of one set of answers, Merav aimed for another. “What is Longsleeves?”

  Hundeil started.

  Olderra seemed unsurprised. “Longsleeves is what it chose to be.”

  Some part of Merav, the same part that had enjoyed the weight of the ghost hanging from her belt, tried to keep her jaws closed, but it could no more stop her than her father could. “Milady, that’s not an answer to my question. What is that creature?”

  The floating shelves began returning to their places. “Your enemy,” Olderra said.

  “Why? Because it’s your enemy?”

  The witch addressed Kaediya. “You at least will be more docile. Can you use a broom? Did your family ever require you to wash your own things?”

  Kaediya nodded.

  “Good, then I don’t have to teach you. Help her up.” Hundeil extended a hand and Kaediya took it, her new flesh rustling as she stood. Yet another door when none had been before opened into a room filled with huge, gnarled roots. A black substance crusted every visible surface. “Go in, listen for my instructions,” Olderra said.

  Kaediya shuffled uncertainly toward the root-room. The arch folded closed behind her.

  “Such a shame,” Olderra said. “One mercy, at least. She won’t understand she’s scouring her own blood from the heart of the forest.”

  Merav and Kaediya had never been friends in Calcharra. Still, witnessing the girl’s existence as a listless automaton angered Merav more. “What have you preserved her for? She’d have been better off left for dead.”

  “You say that because you despise Uethorn House.”

  “Not true.” The vicious rivalry between the houses Uethorn and Lohmar had been a fact of her life from birth, but she had always assumed it resulted from their competing spice and fabric trades, and thus a war of markets, not weapons. Blood had been shed in centuries past, so she was told, because the Uethorns had resorted to murder to undermine Lohmar’s influence with Calcharra nobility.

  As she had grown older, Merav came to loathe her quick-fisted father far more than any nebulous feud. She had expected no danger whatsoever when Uethorn’s men approached her outside Rosepike Market.

  She pointed at the wall where Kaediya had departed. “I don’t understand any part of what’s happened to her, or to me, any more than I understand that creature in the forest that your strongman runs from. But I am certain you understand everything.”

  Hundeil and
Olderra both eyed her. At last the antlered man grimaced at the witch. “It does no good to spurn the questions of the curious, milady.”

  “You would know that well, wouldn’t you?” Olderra said.

  The antlered man’s face stayed inscrutable.

  Olderra sighed. “We’ll see where your curiosity leads me, then. The one called Longsleeves arrived as you did, a wounded bird brought to me when the covenant had been broken.”

  “Someone harmed her?”

  “Yes.” Olderra fell silent, her mouth working as if her next words resisted uttering. Her demeanor grew strange, lips peeling back, eyes squeezing tight, arms shaking as hands curled into fists.

  At last she took a breath, then spoke rapidly, in pained syllables. “There are men of Calcharra who—who mistake their wealth for a... a license to defy the OnesI serve, the Ones Who Dwell Between, the masters of the forest. The brutes from Calcharra seek—seek to curry favor from ancient things, forces... order sacrifices that—that the Ones cannot abide. I am charged with righting the wrong, as best I can.” She sighed as if she’d just set down a sack full of bricks, gasped for breath and resumed. “When those I savefrom death spill... spill blood unsanctioned, they... they reject the gift the Ones give them. They will never, never again be right with the forest.”

  Merav twitched her ears.The talk of sacrifice and seeking favor from ancient things and defying Ones that rule the forest made little sense to her, but she believed she understood one implication. “Longsleeves lived here?”

  Another deep breath. “Once. Now it has no home.”

  This is not my home, Merav thought. She pointed a clawed finger at Hundeil. “What grudge does Longsleeves have with him?”

  “Its grudge is with me,” the witch said. “For that, Hundeil suffered.”

  “Twice milady has saved me from death,” the antlered man said. “I am grateful for it.”

  “Grateful for what?” Merav’s hackles rose. “Are you grateful that the forest gifts you with slaves?”

  The witch had recovered her composure. “The forest requires it.”

  “What are you to the forest?”

  Olderra scowled. “I should have left your mouth unmended.”

  “If you don’t want these questions asked, surely you can stop me!”

  “I understand why the Ones chose this shape for you, with its snapping jaws,” Olderra said. “Longsleeves resented the forest’s price as much as you do, broke the bargain, and incurred a debt that can never be paid.”

  A new arch had appeared behind the witch, leading into a unfamiliar room where thick shoots grew from the floor to form pedestals supporting heavy books. “If you desire knowledge so strongly, seek it there.”

  Merav peered into the odd library. The closest tome was illuminated in letters she didn’t recognize. When she turned, brimming with more questions, the witch had vanished.

  “She’s indulging you,” Hundeil said. “She allows your insolence because she’s fond of you. Don’t squander that.”

  “Fond of me!” Merav spat. “Then why did she refuse me answers? If she indulges me, it’s because I’m nothing but a child’s toy to her. One insignificant slave in a line of many. Just as you are.”

  Hundeil went rigid. They stood in silence, eyes locked, for a long, tense time, before Hundeil summoned an exit.

  “She’s a monster,” Merav said, watching him go.

  * * *

  The next day Kaediya joined them in the dining hall. Her leafy brow crinkled above a puzzled stare as Merav tried to remind her of the dinners and dances they’d attended in Calcharra. Hundeil glared over his shoulder as he stirred the soup, silently entreating Merav to stop.

  Throughout the meal Kaediya shook her head in response to every question Merav asked. At last Merav accepted then that she had to find a different path for answers.

  She regarded the heavy antlers branching from Hundeil’s crown.

  In tales, ghosts spoke. They warned the living. Exposed the wicked. Revealed things only the dead could know. “Your prisoners,” she asked him. “Can you talk to them?”

  “What?”

  “The heads that hang in your antlers. Can you speak with them?”

  His scent grew acrid with outrage. “Their voices do not deserve to be heard.”

  “Our voices do,” she said.

  He let his silence express his disagreement.

  Merav again accepted a door forever closed. He would never be her ally.

  * * *

  Days passed without a glimpse of Olderra’s cowl. Merav spent as much time as she could polishing jars in the room of shifting racks, which she privately named the Chamber of Spirits. She had discovered that sometimes, when she laid her palm on one of the jars, the ghost sealed inside would stir. Usually this produced a faint twist of smoke and little more, but sometimes she could make out a face.

  Jintien could explain why her father had ordered Kaediya’s killing. Perhaps he even knew why House Uethorn had targeted Merav. She spent days searching among the jars for his ghost, until the morning her frustration peaked. She started removing jars from the shelves two or three at a time and rubbing them with her paws. Perhaps in every dozenth jar a face congealed, but never Jintien’s. She pulled a dozen more from the shelf, intent on testing them all.

  Abruptly she awoke amidst her cushions of moss. From then on, whenever she focused her mind on the Chamber of Spirits, the arch she summoned always led somewhere else.

  * * *

  Merav crouched by the reflecting pool. Her vulpine features bared fangs in synchronicity with a soft, bitter laugh. Behind her Kaediya used a broom of thick straw to smooth the floor. At the noise she glanced Merav’s way, face colorful, expression blank.

  As Merav watched in the watery mirror, Kaediya finished her work and turned to leave. An arch opened before her—

  Into the Chamber of Spirits.

  Merav sprang, tackling the other woman and falling through with her as the entrance closed. Kaediya shrieked as they hit the floor. The sound wrenched at Merav, but she bounded upright and dashed between the racks, determined to resume her hunt. She might have only seconds before Olderra intervened.

  She picked up a jar, clutched it between her palms, watched for smoke to stir. A face appeared, not the one she wanted. She slammed the jar back, grabbed another. Nothing. Next one, a face appeared—the same one as the first time. The racks had tricked her. It was her turn to shriek.

  Kaediya shuffled close, leaning on her broom like a cane, her fright apparently forgotten. She watched Merav snatch and curse, the leaves of her brow crinkling. In a jar by her flowering shoulder a figure coalesced, its mouth and eyes stretching in fury, its fists flailing.

  Merav swiped the jar holding Jintien’s ghost before the racks could steal it away. Kaediya stumbled back, her body emitting a hiss of leaves disturbed.

  Merav shook the jar. “Jintien! Hear me!”

  Her old friend’s face filled the vessel, his silent howl vibrating the glass. She tried to pry off the lid but it wouldn’t budge. She applied her fox body’s full strength to it. Muscles tore in her forearm, her shoulder. In her elbow, the sensation and sound of a cord snapping.

  The lid broke free.

  The ambient light dimmed. Jintien surged out, paying Merav no heed.

  Kaediya screamed as smoke whipped around her. Vines tore loose from her body.

  An itch to murder had possessed Merav when Kaediya’s blood first had been spilled in the forest. As Jintien’s ghost strove to complete his final mission,rend Kaediya leaf from limb, that itch returned a thousandfold. Taking life unsanctioned abused the goodwill of the Ones, defiled the forest.

  The knowledge that a killer had broken the forest covenant consumed Merav. Bloodlust coursed through her limbs. Jintien’s head was forfeit. But the ghost had no head to claim, no blood she could spill, no flesh she could rend. She staggered, her rage deprived of focus.

  Leaves and petals burst from the smoke that twisted about Kae
diya’s body. Kaediya’s screams stopped. Her gray eyes fluttered to the ground, petals plucked and discarded. A new pair of eyes took their place, their familiar gaze dark and cruel in a manner that Merav had never before recognized.

  As Jintien’s spirit filled the emptied vessel of his victim, energies drew taut through Merav’s flesh. The desire to kill poured a river through her, drowning out the voice within her that wept for Kaediya’s murder. Before his new form could even draw breath she leapt, the wet roots and stems vile in her mouth as she tore head from shoulders.

  The head unraveled, leaving her no trophy.

  All about her an icy wind blew, and that wind carried Olderra’s voice. “You impudent little fox, what have you done?”

  Hundeil’s forest of antlers charged into view. Merav, ruled by her thwarted craving, pounced on him without thinking, her tail sweeping dozens of jars to thefloor as she attacked.

  His blow knocked her aside as if the earth itself struck her, but her reflexes recovered faster. She grabbed his arm and vaulted forward to claw his face. A long strip of hide tore loose from his muzzle. He bellowed. The heads dangling in his antlers emitted ear-splitting wails.

  “To spill blood unsanctioned is to reject the gift of Ones.” Olderra’s voice rose like a river cresting its banks. “You are expelled from this sacred place! Join our enemy in exile!”

  The jars and walls vanished. Merav stood among withered trees in a part of Dium Forest she’d never seen. Light blared through skeletal branches, the noonday sun a merciless witness. Three cart-lengths away, white fluttered. Longsleeves drifted toward her, uncoiling its tapering arms, face veiled under its long hood.

  Merav’s urge to attack warred with her fear, leaving her paralyzed as the long sleeves slithered either side of her.

  She only found the will to move when the rough cloth brushed her skin. She clawed at the fabric, and it tangled her wrists. She savaged a sleeve with her teeth but it looped around her head. She thrashed and bit. The cloth stretched and ripped, but more replaced it. In moments she was completely cocooned.