Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 01]

by Glenraven (v1. 5) (html)

  The warrag pair in the cell on the other side scoffed at the idea of ransom. They had, they said, no one who would care to ransom them; if their captors had wanted money, they would have killed them as soon as they found out who they were. At home the warrags had only their first litter of pups and the sister-cousin who was caring for them in their absence. The warrags became more certain every day that their absence would be permanent. They had been in their cell for three days when the brigands brought in Jarenne.

  Though she did not want to admit to fear—fear was for others, not for Kin of the Old Line—the bloodstains in the straw and on the walls gave Jarenne nightmares. Something terrible had happened to someone in her cell before she'd been thrown into it. The other prisoners reported that their cells, all nine of them, bore the same grisly evidence.

  The cells were ancient. They'd been built by the now-extinct Aregen to hold the Kin, back before Galira the Champion and her Heroes conquered them at the start of the Age of Heroes. Such Aregenish artifacts were supposed to have been destroyed in the Cleansing, when most of the Aregen oppressors were hunted down and killed. That one still existed indicated conniving on someone's part.

  Jarenne had tried the locks with her magic, without success. She'd tried to bribe the guard, tried to make a tunnel, tried to slip her children through the bars so that they, at least, could escape. In the end, she had decided further attempts at escape were hopeless. She was going to have to wait; going to have to discover what her captors had in mind. Meanwhile, she kept her children entertained with a little of the magic that had otherwise let her down; she spun light for them with her fingertips, shaped it into little dancing characters that ran and tripped and fell across the makeshift stage of her arms. She let the shining little dancers race up her daughters chubby legs, let them hop up her son's tummy, sent them sprawling headlong into the straw, while Tayes and Liendir laughed. When the children sang the songs they knew, she made her light-puppets spin and cavort in time to their music.

  For their sake, she never showed fear. She told them Father would be coming to get the three of them soon, but that in the meantime they were to eat their meals and play and have a wonderful time together. They were to be happy.

  Her children believed her. They were happy.

  She sent the little light-dancers scurrying into her children's arms when she heard footsteps. The door at the end of the corridor between the rows of cells opened, and the brigand leader entered. Usually he came accompanied by at least one of the warrags who worked with him, but today a woman walked at his side. Jarenne stared for a moment, unable to believe what she saw. Then her heart leapt. Her friend Aidris Akalan stood staring up and down the corridors, looking into each of the cells.

  Whoever had been holding them had been found out, and the Watchmistress had arrived to set things right. She came for us, Jarenne thought. Perhaps for some of these others, too; I'm not the only one here who is her friend. But certainly for us.

  She breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Until her fear left her, Jarenne didn't know how fierce it had been.

  She felt weak and even a little light-headed, knowing that she was going to live.

  "Aidris," she called. "We're here."

  Aidris's head came up, and her face broke into a smile. "You're not hurt, are you? Have they been treating you well?"

  "Well enough. And if they hadn't, we are Kin, aren't we? We endure."

  Aidris hurried down the corridor to her side. "Yes. You're so brave. And you and Tayes-Tayes and Liendir are all here, and all safe. Completely unhurt. I'm so glad. There has been so much speculation among our friends since you disappeared. Dommis has been completely mad, rushing about trying to find you and trying to understand how he couldn't hear your thoughts if you were still alive, and how he could still be alive if you were dead." She glanced at the pregnant girl. "And Kirlon's daughter Adeleth is here, and Shir, and…" She shook her head. "So many friends."

  "What did they want, Aidris?"

  "Who?"

  "The brigands who captured us."

  "Oh. Them." Aidris spread her arms, palms upward, and shrugged smoothly. "Who could possibly know what they want? It isn't important; I'm here now."

  Aidris looked older. She usually looked younger than Jarenne; and at first Jarenne thought the dim light didn't flatter her friend. But the lines around Aidris's eyes, the slight wattling of skin at her throat, the swollen knuckles and mottled skin of her hands were not tricks of the light. Something had aged her since she and Jarenne stood by the fountain together during the Festival of the Watch and discussed the vagaries of the Watch Court.

  Was Aidris ill? In the years that she and Jarenne had been friends, since the day Aidris had chosen Jarenne from among the highborn daughters of the Old Line Kin to sit in council with her, Aidris had never aged a day. While Jarenne grew up, found her eyra, and had her babies, Aidris stayed the same. She wasn't the same now.

  "I'm glad to see you," Jarenne said. Her children had quit playing with their lights and now hid with their arms around her legs, their faces pressed into her skirts. "How did you arrange to get us out?"

  Aidris's eyebrow rose.

  Jarenne's stomach dropped in an inverse line to the movement of that eyebrow.

  "Get you out?" Aidris asked. She still smiled. Something about that smile froze Jarenne's blood as quickly as if she'd been thrown into an icy mountain river in the dead of winter.

  "Rescue us," Jarenne persisted, hoping that she was simply being dense, that Aidris was there to rescue her and her children and the others in the cells.

  "I'm the reason you're here," Aidris told her, still smiling, and now that smile grew broader; hideously wide, horribly ugly. A fleshless, leering skull could not have grinned more broadly or with less compassion.

  "Why?"

  Aidris chuckled. The Kin brigand returned at that moment, carrying a large bucket and a huge spoon-tipped stirring stick. Aidris didn't speak to him; she only pointed to the bucket, and then to the ground at the door. He seemed to know what to do; he put the bucket and stir stick down and backed out of the door again.

  He looked frightened, Jarenne realized. The brigand was frightened; the evil man who had killed her driver without any sign of remorse, who had imprisoned her and her children and these others in their cells; he was frightened.

  Something ghastly was about to happen.

  "Because living forever costs," Aidris said, turning her attention back to Jarenne. "Glenraven's magic fails daily.

  It grows weaker, more anemic, less useful. It sputters like a candle that has burned to the end of its wick and now dies slowly. Living forever takes magic. And I intend to live forever."

  Aidris walked down the corridor, picked up the bucket by its handle, and dipped the stir stick into the dull, red-brown liquid. She stirred for a moment, then lifted out a spoonful of whatever she had in there, turned, and flung the liquid on the powerfully built young Kin man who crouched in the first cell on the right. He jumped and shouted and tried to brush the spatters off of his clothes and skin. It didn't do anything to him. The liquid made a mess, but it didn't burn him or eat holes in his clothes. He couldn't rub it off, though; instead, it smeared and spread.

  "What is this?" he yelled at Aidris.

  "Blood." She stepped away from him when she said it, and raised her head, and gave a soft, penetrating cry.

  Something ghastly…

  Jarenne heard the whisper of wind. She would have sworn until that moment that the cell in which she'd been imprisoned lay deep underground, but the voice of the wind was unmistakable.

  Wind where wind could not be. She heard it, growing louder, moving closer, and after a moment she felt it on her cheeks. It carried with it the faint but inescapable scent of decay, of rot and ruin, of death. A soft breeze. Cool. Rank. Evil.

  Aidris, carrying her bucket, walked down to stand in the corridor beside Jarenne. "For nearly a thousand years, I took my sacrifices from the Machnan, and, when I could catch th
em, from the Aregen."

  Jarenne listened with only a small part of her attention. Nearly a thousand years. She heard that phrase and it registered, and she realized the rumors of Aidris's almost unthinkable age weren't rumors after all. Nearly a thousand years, when a strong, healthy Kin could hope to see little more than his second century. Aidris had lived far beyond expectation. What a pity, Jarenne thought. The majority of her attention focused itself on the man in the corner cell by the door and the events that were taking place in his cell. The wind grew stronger and louder. Tiny lights began to flicker around him, touching the places where blood had struck his skin and clothes.

  Tiny lights and wind. Innocuous. A soft breeze, but it carried the stink of death. Bright, beautiful firefly lights, but the blood drew them. Called them.

  "These are my Watchers," Aidris said, looking at the men and women and children of Kin and Kin-hera descent. "Every Master or Mistress of the Watch has had Watchers. Luckily for me, mine do more than just watch."

  Jarenne pulled her children close to her.

  Aidris laughed.

  Jarenne backed against the far wall and hid Tayes and Liendir beneath the wide, floor-length folds of her silk skirts.

  Something ghastly.

  "Do watch," Aidris said. "I so enjoy this part."

  The blood spots on the ma's skin began to glow. Pale, soft pink. Pretty. Even though she knew that what she was seeing was evil, Jarenne couldn't escape thinking that the light was so pretty. The man stared at his hands, his arms; he rubbed at the spots, and Jarenne realized he had begun moaning softly. Round-eyed, breathing harshly in the almost silent dungeon, he ripped a strip of cloth from his tunic and scrubbed at his skin with it. Every pair of eyes in the dungeon focused on him.

  The spots grew brighter, redder. Light began to crawl in waving, wormlike lines under his skin. The light shone through his skin, brighter and brighter; the lines spread and connected, connected, spread, filling in the spaces faster and faster until his whole body glowed.

  Red. Ruby red. Bloodred. His skin transparent now, brilliant glowing red; he was a living gemstone illuminated from within.

  His moaning grew louder and changed in character; then became not moaning but desperate utterances, pleas for mercy; the pleas became wordless, panicked shouts; the shouts mutated into screams. He dug at his skin. Clawed at it, tore it. Clawed at his face, at his chest. Ripped off his clothing.

  And then he began to swell. Transparent red skin stretched and ballooned, lifted away from his body, and under that skin, the light changed things; for a few moments Jarenne could see the outlines of his muscles. Beneath the terrible bloating he still bore the shape of a man. Then flesh melted into liquid, pooling in his legs and feet, and she could see only the sticklike forms of bones. The red light ate into those, too, so that only whatever it was that caused him to swell gave him shape. He toppled, his limbs flopping as his body bounced on the straw; he lay on his belly, blown up like a week-drowned corpse. Unmoving. But not silent. The scream that emanated from somewhere inside of him had become whistlelike, reedy, thin and quavering. Then it stopped, too, and Jarenne noticed cracks forming in his bloated skin—rips and rents where white light streamed out.

  She wanted to look away, but she couldn't. She couldn't. She kept her babies tucked beneath her skirts and held her breath and watched the man's body deflate like a punctured pig bladder. The only sound came from the air that hissed through the rents and tears.

  The light curled out of him like sparkling smoke rising from the embers of a fire, and when the last of it rose above him, his skin lay flat and crumpled on the filthy, packed straw, mired in a pool of his own blood and the liquefied remains of his body.

  Aidris sighed, and Jarenne turned to find her smiling.

  "The Aregen are extinct, save for one who casts auguries for me. They were richer in magic even than the Alfkindir, but I cannot hunt them now that they are gone. The Machnan never had a great deal of magic, but in the last few years, they have lost every bit of what they had," Aidris told her. "I have studied the problem, and I cannot puzzle out the reason why their magic is gone…but without it, they are useless to me. So while they remain plentiful and easy to catch and kill, they have no value to me beyond the amusement of watching them die. I have had to begin hunting among our kind."

  Jarenne stared at the woman she'd thought she knew, the one she had thought was her friend. The lights surrounded Aidris, brushed against her skin, swirled rich warm red-gold against her flesh, and for a moment she began to glow as the man in the far cell had glowed. As the light bathed her, her skin smoothed a little. Her back straightened a bit. Years fell from her body. Still old, still with every evil she had committed etched into the lines of her face, she was nonetheless inarguably younger than she had been moments before.

  She smiled at Jarenne. "It won't do you a bit of good to hide all the way over there. I can throw the blood that far." She scooped a dripping spoonful out of the bucket, stared at Jarenne, then flicked it sideways; it splattered on pregnant Adeleth.

  The girl, shivering and crouching in the far corner of her cell, screamed like the spirits of a thousand restless dead.

  Aidris's smile grew broad and happy; she shook her head, bemused. "The pregnant ones are always interesting to watch."

  Jarenne turned her face away. She tried stopping her ears at the screams—the nightmarish screams. She knew, though, that sound would never leave her. She would die hearing that scream.

  She lifted her head and stared straight at Aidris. "I don't care what you do to me, Aidris. I don't care. But please…please…let my children go. Let them go back to Dommis. Please."

  Aidris laughed softly. "You think I brought them here accidentally? No. Tayes and Liendir are here because I want them here. They're such sweet little things." She tipped her head to one side. In that pose, she looked like an evil bird. Like a vulture. Like a grinning vulture. "So many things grow old and lose their charm in a thousand years, Jarenne," the Watchmistress told her. "You see the sun rise and the sun set with wearying regularity. You see every amusing sight, hear every story, grow endlessly weary of every song. Things pale, pall, become insignificant and dull and it becomes so hard…so terribly hard…to move through another day."

  The screams of the pregnant girl had become soft and liquid and bubbling. Though Jarenne wished she hadn't been able to hear Aidris or the dying girl, both sounds reached her ears with awful clarity.

  "My children don't mean anything to you," Jarenne said. "You don't need them. Let them go."

  "It's true that they will contribute almost no life to me; they're far too little to have much magic. Neither I nor my Watchers can do more than taste them—you're right about that. But I do need them. I find, after all these years, that the only spectacle which never wearies me is the glorious spectacle of death. And your sweet babies will be wonderfully entertaining when they die." Aidris's smile was a mockery of the sunny, friendly smile Jarenne had always seen before. "As will you."

  No more screaming. None. Adeleth was dead. Now in the dungeon Jarenne heard only a few voices begging mercy. Begging release.

  Aidris dipped the spoon into the bucket of blood.

  "Let them out of your skirts," Aidris said. "You don't want them to have to watch you die. Believe me, little mother, my dear friend, you will hurt less if you and your babies die all together."

  Jarenne stared at Aidris. She tried to imagine her children trapped in the straw, watching her swell and scream and claw at her eyes. She wished she could die right then. She wished she could kill her children quickly and painlessly, and then destroy herself. She wanted to beg, to fall on her knees and plead with the implacable Watchmistress, to offer her anything, everything, if she would only spare the lives of her beloved children. She would have given anything; but she could see in Aidris's eyes that nothing would please her more than such a display. Jarenne was Kin—Old Line Kin. The Old Line persevered, they lived with their heads held high, and they died
bravely. No mercy would flow from Aidris's hand. And the bitch was right. It would be better if the three of them died together.

  She lifted her skirts and pulled Tayes and Liendir into her arms.

  "Aren't you going to try to spare their lives? Send them to me," Aidris said. "Perhaps my little niece and nephew can convince me to let them live. Maybe they can tell me how much they love me." She pursed her lips and shrugged. "I would think you'd try."

  "If I sent them to you, you would make me watch them die," Jarenne told her. "You wouldn't let them go."

  Aidris laughed at that, sounding genuinely delighted. "Oh, you're right. You're so right. You aren't at all as stupid as you have always seemed."

  Jarenne cradled both silent, frightened children closer and faced Aidris. "I gave you my friendship," she said coldly. "You didn't deserve it."

  "I didn't need your friendship. Why would a lion befriend the lamb that was to become its dinner, except to amuse itself with the irony? Why would a bird befriend the worm? You are nothing to me but meat. That is all you have ever been."

  Jarenne pulled her shoulders back. Her children clung to her neck; she could feel the racing of their hearts pounding against her chest and the soft, rapid rush of their exhalations. They were so frightened. She rubbed her cheeks against their faces and hugged them tightly to her. "Be brave. We're together," she told them. "I'm with you. I will always be with you." They were comforted at the sound of her voice, and she glanced up at Aidris. "You've been misled," she said. "You've failed to see which of us is the bird, and which the worm. My children and I have flown on falcons' wings. We know love and joy; we know the wonder of life. We've seen the sun, and the moon, and the stars. But for as long as you live, you will know nothing but slime and blindness and filth, hatred and ugliness, poison and villainy. You will never know happiness. Your long life will be nothing but a parade of miserable days and miserable nights."

  Aidris snarled and flung the spoon of blood at her. "I'll live, though." The blood spattered against Jarenne's skin, cold and thick and stinking. It struck both children, who began to cry.