by Ellyn, Court
24
“You seem out of sorts, brother,” said Laniel, entering the best room in the Dardra barracks. The Moon Guard occupied the floor beneath the Lady’s suite. Lothiar could usually hear Aerdria’s light step overhead, but so far, nothing. It put his teeth on edge to think of her sharing mead with those crossbreeds.
Laniel’s snide remark revealed he was well aware of it, which did nothing to ease Lothiar’s mood. Lyrienn’s complaint didn’t help:
“You humiliated me downstairs. Aerdria will be expecting me—”
“Sit down.” Lothiar gestured them toward his dining table. His quarters were anything but ornate. He preferred austere. He was a soldier, after all, and didn’t have time for frills. Stone walls and iron trimming, an unvarnished table long enough to seat the other ten dardrion, and woolen hangings the same dark blue as his cloak masked the dim light of the Veil pulsing across the night sky. A pair of squires delivered the food he’d ordered. Lothiar thought it brotherly of himself to invite Laniel to share a skewer of squabs while he was in the city. He had invited Lyrienn to sequester her from the consequences of a certain sparkle in her eye.
Her hands balled on her hips. She looked like their mother when Father used to tell her what to do. “She’s entertaining guests, Lothiar,” she argued, as if he didn’t know. He wasn’t softhearted like Father had been; he couldn’t afford to be.
“Stay away from them.”
Lyrienn’s pretty mouth pinched tightly. “I follow Aerdria’s orders, not yours!” She turned to leave, but Lothiar seized her arm.
“You’ll do as you’re told! Don’t cross me in this. It’s too important, Lyrienn.”
He felt her arm go limp as the will to resist drained out of her. She looked close to tears. He released her, and she sank into the dining chair.
Laniel lingered on the threshold. The three green stripes between his eyebrows drew together into the shape of an arrow. “Why attack her because of them?”
“You may stay or go, Captain.”
As if he’d been dared to retreat, Laniel sat in the chair at the foot of the table and demanded, “Answer me.”
“Forget it!” Lothiar snapped. He poured them wine to give his temper time to ebb. “For your own good, avoid becoming too friendly with that boy. Both of you.”
Lyrienn ignored Lothiar’s remonstrative glare and swilled her wine.
“So you take issue with Kieryn because he’s human,” Laniel surmised. “Or is it because he’s avedra? I can’t tell with you.”
“Shut up and eat, or get out.”
Laniel did neither, but sat back and twirled a butter knife through his fingers in a show of bad table manners. He was waiting, oh, so patiently for an explanation. If Laniel had forgotten so easily Lothiar’s grievance against House Ilswythe, he didn’t deserve to be reminded.
“I saw the stripes,” Lothiar said, “on the boy’s arms.”
Laniel swallowed laughter. “Is that all?”
“All? Stripes of prowess belong to us, yet you bestow them on a human?”
“Kieryn earned them,” Lyrienn put in, tearing a chunk off a rope of braided bread.
“He saved her from becoming an ogre’s breakfast, Lothiar. I would bestow the honor on anyone who did so, be he elf, dwarf, human, … avedra.”
Laniel spoke the word like a taunt, and Lothiar grit his teeth. “Recall, if you will, the avedra you fought when Aerdria sent you to fight for that duínovan bandit-king.”
“Tallon wasn’t king yet.”
“Spare me. I won’t engage in your petty bickering.”
Laniel grew grave. “Kieryn is nothing like Jevaerien Blackhand.”
“They’re abominations, Laniel. Blackhand, the boy, Zellel, too.”
“Oh, Lothiar, please … ,” Lyrienn whined.
He shouldn’t bother trying to convince them, it never worked, but he couldn’t help it. “Neither of you were born when we fought armies of avedrin, suffered their storms and fires.”
“What of the avedrin who would’ve fought for Linndun?” Laniel countered, thinking he’d won something.
“They wouldn’t have remained any more loyal than the rest of their kind, given half a chance.”
“Maybe you should’ve asked them instead of assassinated them!”
Lothiar put ice into his voice. “Breathe that a little louder, won’t you? I don’t think Aerdria heard you.” He sat back, crossed his arms. “Hnh, I won’t ar-gue the matter. You weren’t there.”
“No, I wasn’t, but you forget anyone’s hurt but your own. You were safe here, close to Aerdria, while Father and I fought those poor bastards who were cutting down our trees to make way for their damned Highway—”
“Interesting, don’t you think,” Lothiar said, “that Tallon went ahead and finished that road anyway?”
“That was Aerdria’s decision, and she compromised to buy us peace. But that’s beside the point. I was with Father when he was slain. I have just as much cause to hate the duinóvion as you do, but I choose to think differently.”
“As is your right.”
“Yes, but poor Lothiar, ever the victim, can’t keep an unwitting boy from getting under his skin.”
“Leave.”
“Stop,” Lyrienn pleaded. “Both of you, stop this!” She had dipped the bread into the herbs and honey but had left it there, untasted.
“Ah, I know,” Laniel drawled. “This is about Amanthia, isn’t it?”
With a groan, Lyrienn dropped her face into her hand. Lothiar’s grip tightened around his goblet. Laniel was nodding sagaciously. “The progeny of her human lover is here, and you can’t stand it.”
Lothiar flung the goblet, but Laniel batted it aside. Lyrienn grabbed to steady the table as her brothers surged to their feet.
“I’m going!” Laniel insisted. “I think I’ll dine below with the rest of the ignorant cubs who still know how to laugh.”
Lothiar lowered a fist and gladly ushered him to the door. Laniel, however, wasn’t finished making a nuisance of himself. On the threshold he said, “And if I read you clearly, you are the one who needs to steer clear of Kieryn. You ought not threaten Aerdria’s kinsman unless you’re ready for a demotion.”
“How can you defend his kind?”
“I don’t know about his kind, but I like Kieryn. I might even consider him my friend.”
“He’s not worthy of you.”
“Worthy? Of us?” Laniel’s smile betrayed a hint of sorrow. “It’s his kind who flourishes, brother.”
Lothiar closed the door in Laniel’s face and whispered to the andyr planks, “Not forever, brother.”
At the table, Lyrienn said with gentle contempt, “You always let him do this to you.”
“He’s a fool. He takes his games too far.” The strength seemed to have gone out of Lothiar’s legs; the walk back to his chair was unaccountably laborious. He slouched over his empty plate, and Lyrienn put Laniel’s goblet in his hand. Lothiar drank deeply and tried not to think about … her.
But Lyrienn said, “Memory of Amanthia still hurts you this deeply? I never would’ve thought—”
“Talk of something else.”
She spoke of nothing, however, and ate in silence.
Silence was worse than the arguing, for the memories rushed in quicker than the wine. Every time the regulars gave him leave, Lothiar would go to the celestial temple at the Meadow, taking Amanthia gifts, beautiful things he’d had made for her. But early one spring, when snow still lay thick under the trees, Lothiar rode into the clearing where the stones marked the stars, and found that Amanthia hadn’t spent the winter alone. She tried to hide signs of his presence, but inside the single tree-tower where she lived and studied, those signs were everywhere. A bow made for a strong arm propped against the hearth, a cloak of human make flung casually over a chair. Lothiar could still remember the green-brown color of the wool. But for the life of him, he could not remember the man’s name.
“He’s not worthy of you,” Lothiar had told
her. If she had been cruel, laughed at him, he might’ve been able to slay his obsession for her, but she refuted him so tenderly, crying all the while, as if her decision hadn’t been a simple one. “He won’t live another fifty years,” he’d reminded her. “I will have centuries to care for you.”
“Care for me?” she’d said. “I’ve cared for myself for eight hundred years, built a city, and you’re so young.”
“Young? I’m a decade older than your fool human, at the least.”
“I love him.”
“Love? Aye, like a girl loves a kitten, to coddle and pamper and pet, but not for forever. He’ll grow old and die, Amanthia, passing as quickly as a falling star, and leave as little mark.”
For a moment Lothiar thought he’d convinced her. Then she said, “But that makes it all the sweeter.”
What was fifty years? Lothiar returned to Linndun, determined to wait for her. When at last she came back to the city she’d built, she was wasted by grief. Her human lover and her avedra son were dead, her temple destroyed. Lothiar assumed care of her, tried to console her, but she heeded him not, only stared at the fire in the hearth with a strange sort of smile on her face. He guessed what she meant to do, but plead as he might, he couldn’t convince her to stay. One night he woke to a blinding white glow, and when it subsided, Amanthia was gone. She had chosen first a human, then the Light, over him.
He’d hoped, at least, for the satisfaction of avenging the cause of her sorrow. Amanthia’s murderous grandson had fortified himself on the hill of the standing stones, and Lothiar believed he would be easily dislodged. But Mahel of the Massacre had half a dozen avedrin holed up with him, all purged from other Elaran cities and bent on revenge. Fire and hailstones pummeled the Elaran lines and drove Lothiar’s troops back into the trees. For the rest of the Human War, Mahel eluded Lothiar’s blade, dying at last deep in the safety of his new stone keep among his many sons.
Yet here was a descendent of Mahel. That timid-seeming boy had traipsed into the palace as if it were his inheritance. This avedra spawn of Amanthia’s misplaced love.
From somewhere far away, Lothiar heard Lyrienn’s voice: “You won’t harm him, will you?”
He found himself at his own table, only half a squab eaten, half the wine gone, and Lyrienn peering at him as a mouse peers at a coiled cat.
“What?”
“The boy. You wouldn’t hurt him?”
Had Lyrienn learned the avedra’s gift for mind-reading? Or was Lothiar so transparent? He would need to be on better guard. Relaxing his fists, he echoed, “Boy? He won’t be a boy for long. One day soon he’ll be a force to reckon with, Lyrienn.” Then it would be too late …
“Just leave him be. You need not trouble with him at all.”
Difficult as it was, Lothiar smiled at her. “Don’t fret over him, love. I’ll not touch the boy or Zellel, either one.” Indeed, he couldn’t afford to. Someone else … or something else … would have to deal with Aerdria’s beloved avedrin. Assassins? Or a magic so old and powerful that neither the boy nor that wrinkled old husk could contend with it.
~~~~
25
Water dripped steadily from the ceiling of the cave. Wind howled through the yawning mouth like a lost soul’s keening and put out every fire the ladies tried to build. Alovi and Etivva curled up inside sodden cloaks, teeth chattering, limbs cramping with chills. They hadn’t yet risked eating the plants of the bog, and the water wasn’t to be trusted. Worse, Etivva’s ankle had begun to fester. The wound itself had turned black with muck and infection, and red veins coursed up her shin.
They may have escaped their captors, but Alovi regretted having dashed wildly into the Gloamheath. The bog, steaming and stinking with septic rot, sank them up to their knees, and not once had sun or star pierced the rain clouds to show them the way. Alovi hoped she and Etivva had looped back toward Graynor by now, but trudging from one spot of high ground to the next, they may have strayed in the opposite direction. Being lost in this forlorn waste didn’t bear thinking about. Soon, Alovi told herself, she would see the towers of Graynor and she would send Bano’en’s message to Keth. Then, their agonizing trek through the marshes wouldn’t matter.
Just after nightfall, the ladies had stumbled onto a jumble of rock; the whistling of the wind had led them to the cave. Any measure of shelter was welcome, at least as far as Alovi was concerned, but Etivva had refused to go inside, reminding her lady that places like this were reputed to be the lairs of ogres and spirits of long-dead warriors and every manner of bloodthirsty evil.
“Those things are only in stories,” Alovi had argued. “As for ghosts, really, Etivva, I’m astonished at you.”
Brandishing the Fieran sword half like a weapon, half like a blind man’s cane, Etivva had finally ventured inside, poking at small corners of darkness and sweeping at big ones. When the unmistakable stench of rotting flesh whirled around them on the wind, they spoke not a word to one another, merely halted their incursion and sank down against the wall, hoping the dead were all who remained here.
Beneath their cloaks, Etivva massaged her wound. She was brave to keep going, never complaining about the pain or the hint of fever in her cheeks, but Alovi feared that, by morning, the shaddra would be unable to walk. Etivva, however, played the optimist. “Maybe tomorrow the sun will shine and show us where we are going,” she whispered.
“Yes, maybe.”
Etivva tensed. “What was that?” She pushed her hood back from her ears.
“I heard nothing,” Alovi said, eyes trying to pierce the darkness.
“Scratching, snuffling,” Etivva said. “Back there.”
“With all this wind, how could you—?”
“Beneath me, too. I felt it under my bones.”
Alovi heard it now. A low grunt that registered more upon the flesh than in the ear. Etivva jumped into a defensive squat, one hand upon Alovi, one poising the sword. “We cannot stay here, my lady.” Panic shook the edges of her accent. “They smell us. They know we are here.” Fast as she could, she limped back toward the entrance, dragging Alovi with her.
Trudging out into the rain again might get them sick with pneumonia; staying might see them hung over an ogre’s cook-fire. The ladies felt their way carefully down the rock and into the cold muck of the marsh. Casting a weary, regretful glance back at the cave, Alovi glimpsed a pair of far-set red eyes blinking back at her.
~~~~
Kieryn woke the next morning among the cool silk. A harp twanged somewhere nearby. He couldn’t call it music exactly, but on occasion the notes came beautifully together, only to stop and begin clumsily again. Harp lessons, he decided. On a floor above or below the avedrin’s suite, someone was giving harp lessons. A particularly sour note drove him from bed.
Zellel had been awake for hours. While he drank hot tea, he flipped through a book written in Elaran and used the crystal orb of his staff like a magnifying glass to enlarge the small script, “Hallieva’s at it again,” he grumbled. “Why doesn’t she give up? She must have a human in her line to own so tone-deaf an ear.”
They dined in their parlor on sweet rolls and peaches baked in honey-butter. Kieryn had finished his first helping before something occurred to him. “How do the Elarion have peaches, or butter for that matter, unless they trade for them?”
“Hmm?” Zellel said, trying to look ignorant and failing miserably.
“The elves trade with the outside?”
Zellel slapped his scowl back on and barked, “Not in any guise you’d recognize. So forget about it.”
“I’m sworn to secrecy, remember?” In fact, the idea titillated him. He thought of Helwende’s noisy, awkward crowds and imagined it a simple matter for an Elari cloaked in magic to slip in and purchase the luxuries his family desired. After all, what human expected to encounter an elf?
After breakfast, Lady Aerdria invited the avedrin to join her in the gardens. Flowers Kieryn didn’t recognize sprang up along pathways that wound from the
Palace to the tapering point of the Isle. A pair of green-skinned fairies hovered over a climbing ivy, twisting the tendrils over a stone wall until they were pleased with the outcome. Other fairies closed nocturnals against the sun rising over the trees.
“They’re as old as time, aren’t they?” Kieryn asked.
“Perhaps it’s best if you ask a fairy,” she replied.
Kieryn found Saffron glistening beside him, spindly arms crossed over her chest.
“Very well,” he said, “tell me of Faery.’
Saffron whirled and chimed, “The first flower to bloom with the turning of the First Spring was a crocus. It broke through the ice of creation, and folded within its petals was me. These others,” she indicated with a sweep of her hand, “followed soon after. Ana-Forah placed us in charge of all things living and growing upon Lethryn, while naiads guard the waters, dwarves the mountains and plains, and dragons the forces of Avë that bind everything together.”
“Dragons?” Kieryn blurted. He had read accounts of dragons in Klarinda the Word Hunter’s books of lore; she had described them as some half-divine mystery, too sacred to be seen or touched.
Zellel grunted and wagged his beard as if Kieryn’s ignorance knew no bounds.
Aerdria was kinder. “As the Wings of Avë, nothing would survive here if they did not. If ever there is a creature of myth, it is the dragon, even for we Elarion. Er avárithen are wholly of the Realm of Magic, some say the Realm of Divine. The flesh encasing them was thought to be barely substantial enough to contain their magical essence, which allowed them to assume whatever form they chose. Occasionally, they put on human or Elaran form, but their eyes were changeless, betraying their true nature. Disguised or not, the avárithen imparted their wisdom to the rest of Creation, and it is said that we Elarion learned of the Mother-Father and her universe from the mouths of dragons.”
“Where have they all gone, these avárithen?”
Saffron answered, “They are the Mother-Father’s special creatures, her servants, her messengers. So she keeps them close to herself.”
