Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 01]

by Glenraven (v1. 5) (html)

  A detail clicked in the back of her mind. That tapestry had shown creatures that resembled the canine things whose heads hung on the walls. Those hideous giant clawed dogs who had ranged down out of the hills with the rest of the hosts of Hell.

  Odd.

  What did that mean?

  Their guide led them through the doorway at the end of the corridor into what had to be the dining room. Two rough trestle tables ran down the sides of the room with benches against the wall. The center of the floor was clear, which probably made serving convenient. A third table at the end of the room connected the trestle tables; it sat on a dais three feet above everything else. Sophie studied the setup and decided maybe seventy-five or a hundred people could eat in there at the same time. She wondered how often the place filled to capacity.

  "Does this place have a restaurant?" Jay asked. "I didn't notice one being mentioned in the guide."

  The doorman pondered the question for a moment. "We all eat here," he said at last. "The midday meal will be served shortly. You will be expected to arrive in appropriate attire."

  "This is what we have," Sophie told him, thinking that wasn't entirely true, but that he was likely to find Jayjay's Banana Republic wardrobe even less appropriate to the situation than the Robin Hood suits Lestovru had given them.

  The doorman's nose tilted into the air again, and he sniffed. "Thus comes the salvation of the Machnan," he murmured, then glanced at them. "I'll see that you are provided with something appropriate."

  Several side doors led out of the dining room, and the guide picked one. Sophie stepped into a dark, narrow hall crammed with people, all of whom were heading someplace in a hurry. Well, different someplaces. They all wore variations on the outfit the doorman wore—red, blue and gold over black.

  The doorman led them through a maze of stone corridors, down long halls and up a circular staircase, through stark, cold rooms, and all Sophie could think was that she was never, never going to be able to find her way out of that place; she would never remember her way to the dining room or to the garden in the center of the building, and she could very easily spend the rest of her life wandering through the corridors and up and down twisting staircases, looking for a door that led out.

  "Your room," their guide said suddenly, and stopped in front of the two of them and opened a door that looked like every other door in the place. No number identified it, no cute little theme-related sign—nothing. It was just a plain brass-bound wooden door, big and solid and ancient.

  "How are we going to find anything in here?" Jayjay asked, and Sophie could have hugged her for not being embarrassed about being lost in a hotel.

  "Pull the bellcord. Someone will come and take you where you need to go. Ill have the chambermaid bring each of you something suitable to wear when she comes to pour your baths." He eyed their clothes with evident distaste. "If you need anything else, tell her; she'll be able to get it."

  "Does she speak English?" Sophie asked.

  The doorman gave her a blank stare and said, "Does anyone?"

  "My senior English teacher in high school used to make remarks like that," Jay said, watching the doorman walk away. "Every time he graded papers, I think the answer he came up with was 'No.'"

  Sophie looked around the room. A massive hand-carved canopy bed took up much of the space. Rich red brocade hangings were drawn back and tied, but Sophie saw dark wood rings along the top that would permit them to slide forward. In drafty old places like this, those bed curtains would make an intolerable room warm enough for sleep. A writing desk took up one corner; unlike the bed, its style was simple and unadorned. A chair and musical instruments waited in the other corner. French doors led onto a balcony; Sophie walked over to them and looked out to the courtyard garden one story below. A fire had been laid in the fireplace, but not lit.

  She stared out through the small, uneven diamonds of glass, not seeing anything in front of her. A host of unrelated images flashed through her mind. Karen lying on the ground, gray-skinned and still; the old man at Glenraven's border studying them with an expression of worry; the highway robbers they'd eluded—maybe; the badly dubbed doorman; the yellow-eyed dog heads hanging on the walls and the way her stomach flipped when she looked at them. The tapestry. Her feeling when she had first seen Glenraven that she had come there to die.

  The horses. Something about the horses bothered her.

  Jayjay shouted, "Here's the bathroom!" After a short pause, she added, "Sort of."

  Sophie pulled herself away from the French doors. Jayjay had opened one of the room's side doors and gone in. Sophie leaned through the open door and sighed. "Sort of?"

  Jayjay crouched beside the toilet, looking for a mechanism to make it work. "At least they have indoor plumbing here. After the ditch in Inzo and the side of the road, I was afraid we'd have chamber pots here." She tapped the pipes, and with an expression of sheer frustration, thumped the tiles on the wall behind the toilet with the palm of her hand.

  Sophie chuckled. "While you're figuring out the plumbing, I'm going to lie down for a few minutes. I'm tired and my butt hurts. Whoever made that saddle didn't do it with women in mind."

  Jay waved her away, and Sophie sprawled out on the bed. The hard mattress felt good after a night on a wood floor and half a day in the torture saddle. And the room certainly seemed luxurious enough.

  She closed her eyes, and when she did, her worries about the situation in which she found herself faded, replaced by bigger, more confusing worries. She saw Lorin the way she'd first seen her—bending down on the road in front of Sophie's house, a hoof pick in hand and her mount's left front foreleg tucked under her left arm while she probed for a stone. Lorin had pulled her hair back in a ponytail, and the light coming through the trees that overgrew the road had turned it to gold. She'd looked up and grinned when Sophie came down the walk, flicked the stone out with one final tug, and put the hoof back on the ground. She straightened and brushed her hands off on her jeans; short, sharp movements at odds with her tall, graceful frame. "Hey, there. He picked up a stone in his frog, and I had to get it loose," she'd said in a cool, vaguely southern drawl, and Sophie had nodded her understanding.

  "This part of the road is a bad spot for them. It was pitch-and-run until they paved it last summer. You'd be surprised how much of that gravel is still in the grass on the side."

  Small talk. She hadn't been able to figure out why she'd spoken. She'd just wanted to pick up her mail, and she definitely didn't want to discuss horses with anyone ever again; but Lorin hadn't talked about horses. And in Lorin Sophie sensed the same sadness she felt in herself.

  They'd talked. Small talk, really. The weather. What Lorin thought of Peters, because she wasn't from there. What Sophie thought of Tennessee, which was where Lorin came from—though Sophie had only been there once and hadn't much to contribute. Peters' complete lack of the cultural attractions Lorin had enjoyed in Knoxville; Sophie's dry commentary about the Junior Club Fall Fashion Fling and the Jaycees Fair being the height of culture in the town. Both women had laughed at that.

  And Sophie had gotten her mail and walked back to the house feeling good.

  That had started it. Lorin dropped by when she was riding past, and Sophie walked over to her house after Lorin told her where it was. The two women became friends; they went to lunch together once or twice a week in one or another of the little cafes in Peters, sat in each other's living rooms on Sundays when Mitch was out mowing the lawn, chatted about their dreams and their ambitions and their lives.

  Lorin had described herself as "between relationships" and Sophie had tried to avoid what she instinctively knew was a painful subject. Neither of them had talked about children, neither had talked about men. And then one day Lorin had remarked how hard it was to be alone and how much she missed her parents and her brother and sister, people with whom she'd had a falling-out but who she still loved. And she talked about a lover long gone, who had left her for a younger woman, who had moved
out without even saying goodbye.

  And over lunch, Sophie found herself talking about Mitch for the first time, wistfully recalling the days when things between them had been good. She'd talked about Karen, too, and about how her death had changed everything. She told Lorin about her restless feeling, her hunger for something she couldn't quite describe. A need to leave the past behind, to be someone new. To walk away from the unending pain.

  Lorin smiled sadly. "It hurts to love."

  "It does. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe what Mitch and I have left doesn't hurt enough." Sophie rested her chin in her hands and sighed. "I wish I knew that I still loved him…but I don't know that I do. I think maybe I'm ready to move on to something else."

  Lorin's face got serious, and she rested a hand on Sophie's elbow. Her sad eyes stared into Sophie's, and she whispered, "If you are, do you think you could move on to me?"

  Sophie opened her eyes and stared at the canopy overhead.

  Do you think you could move on to me? The question hung in her memory, as fresh and burning as it had been the moment Lorin asked.

  Karen's death had broken so many things inside of her. She knew she would never want to have children again. She would never want the risk of giving birth and loving and losing another child, as she had loved and lost Karen. And she had lost the part of her that could take joy from Mitch, too. She saw him more as a reminder of what she had lost than the man with whom she'd dreamed of building a future.

  Restless, Sophie rolled from side to side, trying to find a comfortable position. Trying to find escape from her thoughts.

  Of course, if her premonition were correct, she wouldn't have to worry anymore. If she died in Glenraven, the problems of her life would cease to exist.

  She smiled wearily up at the canopy and considered the few and painful merits of leaving her troubles far behind.

  Eighteen

  In the castle of Cotha Maest, buried deep in the Faldan Woods, darkness knit itself tightly to everything on the brightest of days. The Alfkindir designers disliked daylight, but found it necessary to keep a firm grip on their diurnal Machnan subjects, so they built Maest aboveground in concession to that need. They built most of the immense castle within the shadows of the forest, though, and where windows were necessary, abutments and carved stone trees and other clever devices cast shade at all hours. Just past midday, most of Cotha Maest already squatted in tenacious gloom.

  Aidris Akalan wanted to be alone, however. Therefore, she settled herself into the Wizards Bell at the top of the tallest tower, the only point in the massive building where light ever poured into the windows. From that height, with the glaring unfiltered sunlight streaming around her, she could sit undisturbed in only slight discomfort; neither lesser Kin nor Kin-hera would risk the painful daylight brilliance to disturb her thoughts with problems.

  She wanted to consider Hultif and his omens. She didn't doubt the validity of his magic. Too many times before he had demonstrated his accuracy. She had to believe him when he said that death stalked her in spite of her pact with her Watchers, her hellspawn summoned from beyond the Rift. Their power could keep her young and strong until the last magic-wielding creature breathed its last breath; and all they asked in exchange was the opportunity to feed on Glenraven's creatures. Still, they did not protect her. She had to do that herself. Virtual immortality belonged to her—if she could hold on to it.

  Her face in the black glass had been the face of the dead. She had not admitted she could die for easily a hundred years; she hadn't faced anything in that long that threatened her. Now she felt the pressure of her own mortality, and she didn't like it. Something—or someone—challenged her; something that wanted her dead also had the wherewithal to make his wish come true.

  Perhaps the omen portended Matthiall's unlikely success.

  Maybe she ought to kill him, simply on principle. She would rather have him as a broken slave…but she didn't see much point in dying for the pleasure of trying to break him.

  Matthiall wasn't the only possibility, of course. The list of people who wished she were dead had to be almost the same as the list of people who lived in Glenraven. Among them, there might be one or two with the backbone to go after her.

  Well.

  She sat in the sunlight, staring out the window at the verdant canopy of the Faldan Woods.

  I was born to rule, she thought. Destiny smiles on me. There is no threat that I cannot overcome.

  Hultif would make himself useful. He would locate the source of the threat. When he did, she would take care of it.

  And she would do it in the most horrible manner she could contrive.

  Nineteen

  Jayjay hadn't thought Sophie was ever going to wake up. She'd been sound asleep and snoring lightly—a little cat purr of a snore—when the chambermaid brought both of them new outfits. The girl had given her a gold silk shirt and a full green silk skirt that went to her calves and a thick belt that started right below her breasts and hugged her waist and cinched tight, and a pair of rawhide moccasins that wrapped at her knees; she'd carried in a similar outfit in different loud colors for Sophie. Jay looked at herself in the tiny brass hand mirror and tried to decide if she looked like a gypsy or if she only thought she did.

  Jayjay recalled a Dilbert and Dogbert cartoon she'd once seen, where Dilbert and Dogbert, having arrived at a restaurant without the required jackets, were forced to wear the establishment's dreadful jackets, clown feet, and something that she recalled looking like platypuses on their heads. She had to wonder if she was wearing the Wethquerin Zearn equivalent of a platypus hat.

  Sophie was in the bathroom at the moment, soaking in the tub; Jay hoped when she came out she would be a little brighter. She'd been quiet during the day, and Jayjay had seen the telltale signs that she was obsessing over her daughter's death again. Jay empathized, but she kept hoping something about their adventure would finally get through to her friend and bring her out of the worst of the pain.

  Sophie came out fiddling with her skirt. "Do I look as idiotic as I feel?" she asked.

  "You look terrific." Jay decided if she looked in her outfit the way Sophie did in hers, she probably didn't look like a gypsy after all. She probably looked like a silk-swathed manic-depressive bag lady in her manic phase. And from the cautious smile Sophie gave her when assessing the clothing Jay wore, she figured her worst fears had been realized.

  "This stuff is sort of…frilly…isn't it?"

  Jay thought wistfully of her beloved Banana Republic photographer's vest and wrinkle-resistant khaki pants. She would have given almost anything to wear those to dinner. And through the rest of her trip, too. "Yeah," she agreed.

  Sophie frowned down at her skirt, a full circle of ruby red silk padded out with rainbow layers of slips. "You suppose we really have to wear this?"

  "We'll try it. If every other woman there is wearing an elegant little black dress, though, I'm not staying."

  "I'll stay." Sophie sighed deeply. "I'm starving. Right now if the doorman said we had to go to dinner naked in order to be served, I'd at least consider it."

  "Yeah. You're right. Even if everyone else looks gorgeous, I'll put up with having people laugh at me." Jay glanced at her watch and realized she and Sophie had been waiting in their room for well over an hour. Enough was enough. She walked over to the bellpull and gave it a good hard yank.

  The chambermaid appeared at the door. She didn't speak English, but she'd been patient when Jay had wanted to know if everyone at dinner would wear such colorful clothing. Jay decided to try the girl's patience once more.

  Jayjay dragged out her guidebook and used the phrasebook in the back to try to explain that she and Sophie were going to positively die of starvation if they didn't get something to eat soon. She went over the guidebook phrase three times, while the girl repeated the words after her, eyes getting wider and wider with each repetition. Then the chambermaid threw one hand over her mouth, gave a little yelp, and raced away, skirts f
lying behind her.

  "Nice going, O mighty explorer." Sophie leaned against the French doors, a smile on her face. "What in the world did you say to her?"

  Jayjay stared into the empty hall and sighed. "I wish I knew."

  "Do you think shell ever come back?"

  "Depends. If I threatened her life or her virtue, probably not."

  Jayjay stared down at the Fodor's guide, noticing again the tingle she got in her fingertips merely from holding it. She'd quit thinking about that—the sensation really didn't amount to much—but her fingers insisted the tingling had become stronger. Silly of Fodor's to use a coated paper that carried such a static charge.

  Sophie had settled down on the side of the bed with a Ziploc bag full of trail mix. "Want some, or would you rather wander around in the halls hoping we can find the dining room on our own?"

  Jay sat down on the bed beside her. "Gimme."

  Moments later, as the two of them sat in their silk dresses on the edge of the canopied bed stuffing their faces with granola bits and peanuts and chocolate chips and tasteless dried bananas, the doorman burst through their door, short of breath and red-faced. "She said one of you was dying," he gasped, and looked from Jay to Sophie, then back to Jay. As he took in the two of them sitting there, eating and obviously fine, his expression flashed from fear to bewilderment to relief to annoyance. "You are not dying," he said, pointing a finger at Jay. "And you are not dying." He pointed at Sophie.

  The poor chambermaid arrived at that moment, sobbing and wringing her hands, and the doorman lit into her with a stream of invective hot enough to melt the stones around them all. Oddly enough, he was shouting at the girl in English. She hadn't understood a word of the English Jay had tried on her, but she seemed to understand very clearly what he was saying.

  "Excuse me," Jayjay said.