Divided Allegiance

by Elizabeth Moon

  "It's only five to one," he said, smiling. "Your Duke has faced worse than that."

  Paks grinned. "Oh well—we'll win through easily, then."

  "You stay close, though. You have no protection of your own against that fear." Paks thought she had, but wasn't going to argue the point. She saw Connaught draw breath to send them forward; she wondered why the archers hadn't shot yet. Then Ardhiel moved, taking from his side the old battered hunting horn he had carried from Fin Panir. He set it to his lips.

  Paks had expected nothing like the sound of that horn. It began sweet and tender, swelling louder and louder to a triumphant blast that nearly shattered her bones. Wind swirled into the canyon, a great column of whirling air funneling into and from the horn's throat. A roiling mass of pink and gold-lit cloud blotted out the hard clear blue of a desert sky. Paks could not see the cliffs—the enemy—or Ardhiel himself. The cloud shimmered, steadied, became a piled and rumpled staircase of gold. Down it came a brilliant shining creature, winged with rainbow colors, so bright she could hardly stand to see it, and so beautiful she could not look away. On its back was Someone in mail brighter than polished silver, wearing a blinding white cloak. He spoke: the language was elven, the voice rang with authority and troubled the heart like elven harps. And Paks saw Ardhiel bow, and move to his side, and saw him mount that fabulous beast, and saw them rise once more into the clouds.

  When the clouds blew away, in the last throbbing notes of that horn-call, the enemy was gone, though the rattle of their flight through the rocks echoed from wall to wall. Ardhiel lay unconscious on the ground, smiling, and the horn in his hand showed its true nature: the finest horn Paks had ever seen, jeweled with rubies and emeralds, shining gold.

  With no delay, Connaught had them carry Ardhiel back to the others.

  "It's an elfhorn, it must be," he said over his shoulder. "I'd heard of them, but Gird knows I never expected to see one. Let alone hear one. By the gods, this is a bad place. You were right, Balkon. Bad for an ambush, and I walked right into it. I hope it doesn't kill Lord Ardhiel. That'll take some explaining. 'Old hunting horn,' indeed. No wonder he wouldn't play on it for our dancing that night. It makes my skin itch to think of it."

  "It's Gird's grace he brought it," said Amberion. "I wonder why they didn't shoot at once? They could have gotten us—"

  "Or thought they could." Fallis grunted as his foot turned on a rock. "Damned treacherous ground. Probably a damned kuaknom behind every stone."

  "Kuaknom?" asked Paks.

  "That's what we call them—kuaknom, tree-haters—as elves are tree-lovers. The elves call them iynisin, the unsingers. Remember, it's the kuaknom that used to be confused with Kuakkgani."

  Paks wondered how anyone could confuse those horrible parodies of elves with a Kuakgan. Confuse with elves themselves, yes—for her mind held the memory of the same beauty, the same grace. "Were they the same as other elves once?"

  "Aye," answered Balkon, before anyone else could. "And some say they are still, the blackheart rockfilth. The elves like to pretend all the kuaknom failed away many years ago. But here we see the truth of that! By Sertig's Hammer, all the fair-spoken ones would rather have a tongue of silver, though it lied, than tell iron truth at need."

  Amberion shook his head. "Your pardon, sir dwarf, but in this I judge you wrong. The kuaknom parted long ago from the true elves, in a quarrel that began before men—"

  "Not long before," muttered Balkon. "The Kuakkgani—"

  "If they are truly men, then it was not before—but it was before other men. And the cause of that quarrel—"

  "Was the Tree. Aye, I've heard that. But it seems a foolish quarrel to me. Would a dwarf enact rage because iron bends to any smith, or stone to any chisel?" He shook his head, and challenged them all with his look. "No, I deem not, and you know the truth of it. But I call no harsh name on Ardhiel's head, for his call saved us, and he has paid for that. The best of elves are fair indeed—aye, though we grumble, being made rough and ugly as rock and iron, we honor them for their grace. Well they name their lord the Singer of Songs; the best of them are true songs, well-sung; but we are other, hammered on Sertig's anvil to bear the blows of the world. Our songs are the ring of steel on stone." Paks was astonished; she had never heard any dwarf speak so. He bowed stiffly, and was silent thereafter until they reached the men-at-arms, now coming forward in battle order.

  The High Marshals led them swiftly out to the trail the others had found, and the whole company moved down the main valley while it was still light. Here the walls were nearly a bowshot apart. Thelon, sent ahead once more, had found a trail leading out: not where the valley seemed to end, for that was a jumble of house-size stones ending in a twenty-foot cliff, but climbing again over a shoulder of the western wall.

  "But it is no trail you could take in the dark, Marshal Fallis," he reported. "Even the near part will tax the horses; after that it is easier, but the first of the trail going into the canyon beyond is worse. I could not go far enough to be sure they can get down. We may have trailwork to do; I judge you will not want to leave them here."

  "By no means," said Marshal Fallis. "We had thought of that, when we saw this fertile valley, but we can leave no one behind to suffer attack of the kuaknom. And it is by no means so fertile as it seemed." For they had found all the valley floor to be sand, dry or wet or boggy; the green growth was sedge, not grass, and only a few trees dared that sandy expanse.

  They made their camp near the foot of the trail, watering the beasts in a hole dug downstream. Paks helped with that, for it took two to dig away the sand that slithered into the hole while the horses and mules drank. The High Marshals ordered a line of fires between the camp and the eastern wall, the one they expected the kuaknom to use. Paks wondered briefly if the kuaknom might infest the western cliff as well, but she could see no holes or caves for access. By this time the valley lay in shadow, lit by the sky. Gradually it faded. Paks had the late watch, and she rolled herself in a blanket against the surprising chill. The sand made a comfortable bed. She slept soundly almost at once.

  Thelon, the scout, woke her for her turn at watch. Paks stretched, stiff from sleeping in armor and took off her helmet to scratch her head. When she replaced the helmet, she let it sit loosely on her braid as she came to the main fire for a mug of sib.

  "Nothing so far," reported Thelon. "I wandered across the stream—if you can call it a stream—far enough from the fires to see better, but I saw nothing. But it feels strange, and I don't like it."

  Paks yawned. She took a long swallow of sib, aware of sand sifting through her clothes, itching. "I don't mind it feeling strange, as long as those kuaknom, or iynisin, or whatever they are, let us alone."

  "Iynisin is the better word," said Thelon seriously. "Elves are the sinyi, the singers of the First Singer's songs, and these scum are those who not only refuse to sing, but who unsing the songs, going against the Singer's will in everything. So, being created as the sinyi are to love trees and flowing water, these hate them, and burrow in stone, fouling bright water with their filth, or choking it—like this one—with stone dust. For the daskin race, the dwarves, it is right to live in stone; they are the dasksinyi, the stone-singers, whose song is stone and its metals. They honor the stone. But these iynisin defile it. So Balkon will tell you."

  "Yes, but he calls them something else—"

  "In dwarvish, yes—but dwarftongue is not truesong; for the right names, the truenames of things, ask an elf. The Singer is known by some as Adyan, the Namer of Names—"

  "I thought that was different," said Paks.

  Thelon laughed lightly, in the elven way. "Some also say that the god of men should be called the Sorter of Beads, for men worry more of such division, and not right and wrong." Paks scowled at him, but he held up his hand. "Indeed, you call your god the High Lord, and speak of his Hall as a seat of justice. What is justice, then, but judging and choosing—sorting fact from fact, and laying on one side the true, and on t
he other side the false? Now I, being but half-elven, have less pride of race than elves: my own thought is that the great king is one only: He Named the first Names, and Sang the first Song, and He rightly judges all things as true or false, good or evil. I would even say that Sertig the Maker is but another name for him—for surely one only came first, and did these things. Now we spend one time singing, and another time fighting, and another time learning or praying—but we are mortal—and even the immortal elves live mostly in one line—we divide, therefore, like a man who says that this mountain is gnomeland on one side, and his land on the other. But it is all one mountain."

  Much of this Paks did not understand, but she liked the idea that the High Lord might be the same as Adyan and Sertig. She finished her sib, and went to her post, on the south end of the camp.

  The nearest watchfires burned low, scarcely more than a heap of coals, for they had found little wood to burn. High Marshal Connaught had told them to keep wood back, in case of trouble. A chill wind drifted down from the higher land; Paks heard a distant moan where it poured over the lip of the valley into the lower canyons beyond. One of the other watchers coughed; a horse stamped. She thought of Socks, tethered with the others at the north end of the camp, just under the bluff they would climb in the morning. Against the bright starry sky, the eastern cliff loomed, a black presence. It was strange to camp so near a stream and hear no water sounds, but the sand-choked flow moved silently. Something hissed along the sand near her; Paks jumped and looked around. Nothing. Her scalp itched; she pushed her helmet back again to scratch.

  All at once the night was full of dark fighters, striking at every post. Paks yelled, with the other sentries, and the camp crashed into wakefulness. Someone threw wood on the nearest fire; by that light she saw the iynisin eyes gleaming under their hoods. She could not tell how many attackers they fought. Blades swept toward her out of the dark; she felt the force of their blows stinging along her arm as she countered them. Something struck her head. Her helmet, still loosely set on her head, bounced off, and her long braid thumped on her back. She had no hand free to find the helmet; several swords faced her. The iynisin cried aloud in their beautiful voices, words she should know—but she was fighting too hard to translate. She was forced back—and back again. Then her foot came down on something that rolled beneath it, and she fell, trying desperately to tuck and come up, but the heavy sand caught her. A great weight fell on her, forcing her face into the sand. Before she choked, she felt a blow to her head, and nothing.

  * * *

  The attackers fled as swiftly as they had come. When High Marshal Connaught called the roll, four failed to answer. Sir Joris was dead, with an arrow through his eye. Two of the men-at-arms had suffered mortal wounds. And Paksenarrion had disappeared. They found her helmet, and her sword, but no trace of her.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  At first Paks was hardly aware that she was aware. It was dark and cold and the stone beneath her was hard and slightly gritty. She wondered vaguely if she was dreaming about the cells under the Duke's Stronghold. She tried to move, and a savage pain shot through her head. Not a dream. It was hard to think. Dark. Cold. Stone. She felt about with one hand. It met a wall rising from the surface she lay on. Fighting nausea from the pain in her head, she struggled to sit up and feel about her. Wall—another wall—yet another. All were stone; she could not feel any joints. Solid stone? She could not remember what might have happened—where she might be.

  As she moved, she realized that her skin itched and stung as if she had rolled in nettles. She reached up to see what she had on—a tunic of some kind. It felt scratchy. She grew aware of something uncomfortable around her throat—something heavy, and slightly tight. And cold uncomfortable bands around her wrists and ankles. She reached to feel the thing at her throat. Pain stabbed her fingers, and she jerked them back with a gasp. Her throat tingled; it was hard to swallow.

  For a few moments she held very still, fighting a rising panic. She tried to remember anything at all that would give her a clue to where she was. She thought again of the Duke's Stronghold. That wasn't right. A caravan. A caravan where she was riding, not walking. A tall black horse with white stockings and a blaze. My horse, she thought. All right . . . what next? She thought of gold, and at once remembered Amberion on his chestnut, remembered his name and the nature of the quest. She pushed at the cloud across her memory. They had been—coming into a canyon. No, they were in it. A day later—smoke from the cliffs, arrows—but nothing more. She remembered Ardhiel saying something about the black cousins, the iynisi the elves did not like to remember.

  Suddenly she thought where she must be. Underground, taken by the iynisin. She felt around frantically for her weapons. They were gone. Of course, she thought. No sword, no battle axe, no armor—and no medallion of Gird. All gone.

  She found herself breathing rapidly, almost gasping, and tried to regain control of herself. Think about it, she told herself. No, think about the others. Do they know? Will they come? Can they come? They will come, she thought hopefully. They won't leave me here; they will come. She tried to picture them, fighting their way down tunnels to find her. What if they fail? her mind asked suddenly. What if we all die under these rocks, and no one ever knows what happened? She tried to call on Gird, but something about the place—the quality of the silence, perhaps—stopped the words at her lips, and she could not say Gird's name aloud.

  Yet thinking about Gird and Amberion helped. Whatever happens, she thought—and forced back the imagination of what might happen—I am a warrior of Gird. Whether I can fight my way free or not, I can fight to the end. She remembered Ambros falling as he gave the death-stroke to Achrya's priest. That would not be so bad. Any soldier expected to die someday. She had heard tales enough, in Fin Panir, of paladins and knights fighting against impossible odds, for the glory of Gird. For a moment she saw herself, fighting alone against—what?—she imagined many black-cloaked swordsmen—in a blaze of light.

  Paks leaned on the wall and pushed herself up, dizzy as she was. Much better standing. The darkness was more than absence of light; it had a malign and bitter flavor. She edged around the walls, feeling her way along the stone. Wall. Wall—and something other than stone, colder than stone, and smooth. She felt along its edge. A door? Yes. Iron, she thought. She could find nothing but a smooth surface: no bars, no grill, nothing but the smooth metal itself until it met stone. Panic rose again. Suppose they just left her there forever?

  You're not a silly recruit any more, she told herself firmly. Don't think of that. And if it happens, it happens. She moved past the door, feeling for hinges, but found none. Without that clue, she could not tell which way the door would open—could not even try to surprise someone coming in. She went on around to the next corner, and the next—which would be opposite the door, she thought—and leaned into it. It was hard to keep her eyes open in the dark. She felt herself slipping down the wall, and straightened with a jerk. Whenever they come, she vowed, they will find me on my feet.

  Despite that vow, she woke on the floor of the cell when she heard scraping outside the door. She made it up before the door swung open, but her heart was racing, shaking her body, and her mouth was dry. She squinted against the light that poured in—a lurid yellow-green blaze. Something stank. Facing her was a tall slender figure, caped and cowled in black, face hidden by the shadow of its cowl. Evil radiated from it as it entered the cell. On its chest was a silver carved spider, a handspan across, hanging from a silver chain. Paks moved her hand in the warding sign she had learned as a child. The figure laughed, a liquid sound that would have been beautiful but for the evil aura.

  "That won't help you," said the silvery voice, lovely as all elves' voices are, but utterly cold. "Surely they are not sending children, now, with children's little superstitions?" Paks said nothing. She glanced past the first figure to see two torchbearers; the green-flared torches smelled like rotting flesh—the stench rolled from them in heavy waves. A th
ird attendant, also black-hooded, carried a wooden box hinged and strapped with leather. "We were informed," the first one went on, "that you were a warrior of some importance—even a candidate for the order of paladins, or some such nonsense. I find that hard to believe, as easy as you were to capture, but we shall see." It came closer yet. Paks braced herself, whether to take a blow or give one she could not have said. "No, mighty warrior," it said. "You cannot touch me if you try." Suddenly it threw back its cowl to reveal a face entirely elven but the reverse of Ardhiel's: the same fine bone structure, but expressing only evil, its nature cruelty and lust. She was instantly convinced that it was male.

  Despite herself, Paks shivered as he reached out a slender long-fingered hand and touched the band around her throat. She could not move back; the band tightened just slightly.

  "You see," the iynisi continued, "you wear already the symbol of our lady, and while you wear it you cannot harm any of her servants. Nor can your puny saint—whatever his name is—aid you. You have only yourself, your own abilities—if you have any—to help you here. If you amuse us, and learn to serve us, you may yet live to see the sky again. But, of course, if you prefer to starve alone in this cell—" He looked at her, waiting for an answer.

  Paks tore her gaze from his eyes, and looked around the cell, in the green light. It was stone, cut out of living rock: just long enough to lie down in. Nothing else. Her glance flicked down her own body. The tunic she wore was black, and slightly fuzzy. The bands on her wrists were black, with hasps for chains. There were no chains in the cell. Yet. She tried to think of Gird, of Amberion, but her mind froze, clouded.