Kill him, Suka said, scratching her nose.
They stood outside the prison in Caer Corwell. Poke had dragged the leShay prince over the cobblestones, away from the blank wall and down the street. Now they paused to draw breath and consider the next step, Marabaldia, the gnome, the cyclops, and the pig. It was early evening, and there was a mist over the port.
No one followed them. For a moment, Prince Araithe seemed almost human in his vulnerability, whimpering with shock, his velvet cap awry, his eyes closed, his gray hair stringy and unkempt, his shirtsleeve ripped and bloody. He lay on his back. Poke had him below his elbow. His gloves were gone. Marabaldia stood above him in her old blue dress, holding the iron bar she had taken from her cell. In this light her eyes shone in different colors.
Kill him, repeated Suka. You know that s what he would have done, which didn t make much sense she meant it s what he would have done to them, was, in fact, trying to do whatever. She looked up at Marabaldia, and for a moment before she turned away in self-defense she caught a glimpse of herself in the giantess s right eye, as if in a mirror.
With an odd sense of distance she saw herself as others saw her, a tiny figure with an upturned, freckled nose and short pink hair, grinning with nervousness and gesticulating like a monkey, terminally unheroic, and the piercings and tattoos didn t help, seemed an obvious overcompensation, though she d never thought of them that way.
You know if we don t kill him, he will hunt us down, she grumbled, even her voice unfamiliar. It didn t surprise her when Marabaldia disagreed with her. How could anyone agree with anything she said?
And are we bound by what our enemies do? said the giantess, her voice gentle and pure, her skin a regal purple in the failing light. Isn t it always better to show mercy, as bright Sel ne has commanded us? Perhaps instead of copying the vices of our worst enemies, we should learn from them. Treachery and murder have brought this person low.
Suka looked away. Once delivered from the effect of Marabaldia s evil eye, she heard the wisdom of her own advice, which was obvious enough to convince even a pig, she observed. Poke had broken the prince s forearm, snapped the bone between her enormous molars, but the strange thing was, he didn t even seem to notice the pain but just lay on his back in the dust, helpless, Poke s cloven foot in the middle of his chest. It was as if his spirit had already left his body. She wagged her head from side to side, pulling at the joint until the arm was almost severed, while at the same time she began her transformation to her human shape, climbing up the ladder gratefully yet painfully, Suka imagined, until she let the prince s arm drop from her mouth and stepped away from him, a fleshy, pink-skinned woman with a crest of yellow hair. She spat a long splinter of bone out of her mouth, then raised her hand to wipe the blood from her lips. Suka could see the climbing rose tattoo under her arm.
Come this way, she grunted softly. I ve been here before.
And so what else was there to do? She took off running up the street away from the port, climbing the terraces below the castle s ruined walls. Suka put her knife back in her belt, picked up her crossbow, and ran off after her, cursing freely. They were sentimental, moralizing fools, but it was possible also that they had already lost their chance, that whatever rag or shard of Prince Araithe they d had under their hands was no longer where his spirit lived.
Marabaldia followed more slowly, her iron bar in her right hand. The cyclops came last of all, head bowed, unsteady on his feet, which Suka thought might be a matter of the terrible depth perception endemic in his kind, until she saw he had been hurt. Now, in the better light, as she looked back she realized he was smaller than she d thought inside the prison, smaller than Marabaldia, a yellow-haired, muscular fellow, barefoot and bare-chested, except for crossed leather bands over his shoulders. He was bleeding freely from a wound in his side. He had lost his axe.
Where are we going? Suka gasped as they hurried up the stone steps into the poorer neighborhoods of the abandoned city.
The large civic buildings near the port had given way to what had once been residential structures, their doors and windows black and open, their roofs often collapsed. In the cool, open air, her brain was working better, though she was still making the transition between escaping from something drow, Araithe, certain death and running toward something, into the future, but what, exactly? Maybe it was indicative of a sad lack of imagination that she was running after a pig, asking it for directions. On the other hand, presumably the pig wanted to find its way back to Moray, where Lukas and the boys were chasing after the ginger slut how happy she would be to see them again! She d never liked or felt comfortable around women, or females of any kind. She d hated Marikke, the only fly in the ointment of their little band, sanctimonious, like all religion freaks, but maybe she had died or something priests and priestesses were always among the first to go, evidence of their misplaced loyalty to the capricious gods.
Into the trees, said Poke, answering her question.
The city of Caer Corwell was a small one, built mostly on a hill above the firth. Suka and Poke stopped to draw breath in an open space, a vacant lot choked with dry weeds and refuse, and waited for the others to catch up. Suka turned toward the north, raising her nose into the cool evening wind, opening her senses to the breath of freedom. Above them she could see the highland ridge as it curled away northwest of them toward the places where she d grown up, along the southern edge of Myrloch Vale. Instinctively she looked to the other direction, beyond a gap in the Corwell wall, northeast toward Synnoria and Cambro and eventually Winterglen, seventy, eighty miles away is that where they were going? To bring Marabaldia back home? Surely that was not her fight.
Why? she said, a big question that had always bothered her.
She watched the fomorian and her cyclops labor slowly up the slope it must be difficult being so big. It must be difficult to move or run if you ve been locked in a cell for ten years. With all her heart Suka missed her little band of misfits, now that she was running away from the only place they knew to look for her. This jolly collection of ancient ancestral enemies was no substitute. But should she leave them, strike out on her own? Find her way east to the Ffolk settlements along the coast and then to Alaron, as she had many years before? But Lukas would be looking for her here. He had promised.
But then Marabaldia appeared out of the end of the street, and joined them in the empty lot, her face agonized and frightened.
Drow, she said, which was a relief, in a way, because it delayed thinking. And it was true: Dark figures massed in the shadows below them, gathering among the ruined houses. Suka and the pig had stopped just inside the old city wall, much of which had been cannibalized for building material even before the fey came to Gwynneth. But the gate was intact, and the road out of it. A few arrows stuck into the rubble around them, and then they were off again, as quickly as they could, out the gate into the world, an expanse of fallow land that had once been wheat fields, and a mile or so in the distance, visible just as a smear of purple shadow in the failing light, the woodlands underneath the high, chalk-white ridge, its eastern slopes still lit by the setting sun.
But there were drow there, too. In the middle of the flat, open, shelterless, bare ground, at a crossroads marked by a stone obelisk, Marabaldia stopped, planted her iron bar, and the others gathered around her. The cyclops was so tired and hurt that he could scarcely stand. He d pressed his palm into his side, and blood seeped between his fingers. With her left hand, Marabaldia seized hold of his jaw and turned his face until his single eye raised toward her, and she could look down on him with all the force of her own eye. Again it seemed to Suka that she could see or at least imagine a beam of light pass between them, and she wondered what it could mean a last farewell, an exchange of information, psychic healing? Because they were in trouble, obviously. The drow had caught them in a spider s web. They had come out from the dark woods, and out from the shadow of the wall, and had spread into the fields at either side.
Marabaldia looked up. Friends, she said, let us prepare to do our duty here. And if the day should go against us, let our final consolation be that we have borne ourselves according to the highest standards of our character. A bold death is a treasure that cannot be bought or sold. As for myself Poke, you, and Suka, and you, Borgol I will always be grateful
Suka thought: What, cyclopses have names? And in this case always looked to be about seven minutes. The drow weren t wasting their arrows, but moved steadily toward them along each of the four roads and also through the dried brambles of the fields. Nevertheless she found herself inspired almost against her will, as she unhooked the crossbow from her back and wound it up. She risked a smile at the cyclops, who was crouched so low his head was scarcely a foot higher than her own Borgol, are you kidding me? What kind of a stupid name was that?
How s it going? she muttered, planting her back foot and taking aim at one of the drow captains who sauntered insolently up the road, the last of the light in her white hair. Oh, well. At least she didn t have to make any decisions. And Marabaldia had saved her life back in the prison. Suka owed her something, whatever little she had.
The cyclops had a big face, heavy and massive as if hacked from wood, but not unpleasant, his big lips and brows. And he spoke in a low voice, a rhythmic chanting in a language she didn t think she recognized, until she did. As the shadows darkened, she found it speaking to her from the depths of forgotten memory, a prayer out of the Underdark, in the first language of the fey.
Then she heard screaming in the harsh voices of the drow. A stroke of light split the darkness north of them, toward the wood, and the dark elves scattered from the road. Horsemen were there, a troop of horsemen. But Suka saw the captain on the west road raise her black sword, and she shot at her and missed, hitting another behind her shoulder. Then the drow were on them, and it was hard for them to use their bows in such close quarters. Suka had her knife out, and she stabbed a fellow through his black leather armor into his belly, and felt the blood slide over her hand. The horsemen were around them, driving the drow back, and a man reached down and grabbed her by the back of her leather shirt, and lifted her over the saddle bow she couldn t tell what kind of man he was. Someone held onto her foot, and she kicked away hard, while at the same time she watched Poke clamber up onto an enormous Cambro draft horse, twenty hands high now that s something you don t see every day, she thought, a pig riding a horse, and not doing it well, which was a relief. Suka wasn t much of a rider herself.
But Borgol was dead. He had stood up to protect his mistress from the arrows, and had taken two in the chest. The light behind his eye flickered and went out. Marabaldia lowered him to the ground. The horsemen raged around them, keeping the drow at bay, but only for a time because their numbers were so great. Marabaldia stood over him, and it was only when he was gone that she stepped up into the stirrup and swung her leg over the great horse, who quailed under her weight. She pulled her dress up around her thighs and shook her bridle free; she knew how to ride. She held the iron bar above her head. And with her hair flowing in the wind she kicked her horse up the road toward the black trees.
Suka had already reached them. The boughs hung close overhead. Feeling her indignity, she squirmed around onto her back, so that she could see her rescuer, a human being by the look of him, black-bearded, dressed in chain mail and wearing a steel cap. He had an axe in one hand, and with the other he held onto the collar of her shirt. The horse galloped with no need of direction, a beautiful flaxen-haired creature who now broke away from the dirt road under the trees, following the others through the sylvan glades, between the cedar trees, up the slope into the hills. Sharp small branches whipped at Suka s legs as they passed, and whipped at her arms.
But they didn t go far. Suka reckoned they were scarcely more than a mile into the trees when the horse paused at the crest of a low ridge, then walked his horse downhill into a bowl-shaped dell where a fire already burned. Not a bonfire, but instead a soft, cool radiance that rose up as if from a hole in the ground. Other riders had dismounted, and the Northlander pirate for that was what he was released his hold on the back of Suka s shirt, and she scrambled down.
As was her habit, she tried to salve with bellicosity her injured pride. Swearing and muttering, she put herself in order, pulling her clothes down over her stomach, running her fingers through her hair, dusting herself off, taking inventory she had lost her crossbow but retained her knife and several other small weapons. And when her rescuer climbed down out of his saddle and busied himself with his horse, checking her for wounds, rubbing her neck, murmuring appreciation, Suka accosted him, not with recriminations, which would have been absurd, since he had saved her life, but with complaints:
Are we safe here? They ll have us surrounded in half an hour. They can see the glow, et cetera, et cetera, until the Northlander held up his hand.
Peace, said someone else, still on horseback.
They won t come here. And when she turned her rage on him, he explained: This is a fierce wood since the Spellplague and the fall of Caer Corwell a wild wood. Two hundred years ago the Kendricks ripped these groves up by the roots, but they ve grown back. The dark elves won t risk it. Not on foot.
This wasn t quite the reassurance Suka had been looking for. The rider must have seen a question in her face. We ll be all right, he grunted. This is a haven for my kind, but we won t stay past dawn.
He raised the visor of his cap, and Suka saw with surprise that he was an eladrin, with sharp, feminine features and bright eyes that seemed to pick up a reflected radiance from the fire. He took off his cap, revealing his gray and yellow hair, which he shook free around his face. He was dressed in the scaled armor of his kind, skillfully worked and decorated with damasked lines of gold.
Marabaldia, whose horse was slower and more heavily burdened, now appeared at the top of the slope.
Princess, said the eladrin, making a gesture with his arm, I am honored to welcome you. I see the reports of your beauty are justified, and if anything fail to express the truth. I did not expect, though, such courage and such grace all of which seemed a little much to Suka, a little over the top, since, personal virtues aside, Marabaldia was nine feet tall if she was an inch, with purple skin, straw-colored hair, and widely mismatched eyes. But maybe there was something about the magic light in the little dell, because as the giantess swung her leg over her horse s rump and stepped down from the stirrup the great draft horse, meanwhile, seemed suddenly buoyant, suddenly inflated because of the reduced weight Suka was able to imagine what the eladrin was talking about. In the kind radiance the giantess s features seemed less bloated and grotesque, and her voice, always her best quality, sounded positively angelic when she said, Captain, I will not forget what you and your brave men have done tonight. You have my thanks. You know my name and some of my history, but I confess that I am ignorant of yours. And I wonder, do you have something else for me to wear?
The light, also, was kind to the blue dress, which, though tattered and ripped, Suka now confirmed to be of costly fabric, some type of iridescent velvet, with a woven pattern that had been invisible before.
In the Common tongue, said the eladrin, my name is Mindarion, warden of Synnoria, and I am at your service. This is my friend and companion, Captain Rurik of Winterglen.
Other soldiers milled around, both eladrin and Northlanders. Poke s horse had arrived with the last stragglers, and she needed help in her dismount. She rolled out of the saddle and sprawled heavily onto the ground. Her own clothes, which she d taken from the Ffolk guards in Corwell prison, had scarcely survived her transformation and return to human shape, but someone had thrown a cloak over her, which she had wrapped around her body. Aghast, Suka looked into her face, examining the mixture of human and porcine features, and at the same time she was thinking how astonishing it was to hear an eladrin of high rank identify a man as his friend what did the word mean to him? To both of them? And in this new world of possibilities, was it conceivable that her own friends and companions were a fomorian princess and a lycanthrope? She felt lightheaded, sick.
And yes, continued Mindarion. I believe we can find some more suitable clothes.
The horses had been drawn away to the other side of the fire. Suka noticed that no one was attempting to strip them of their saddles or bridles, and she drew a small conclusion as she turned to face the Northlander, a famous man, after all, and the reason she had come to Gwynneth Island in the Sphinx, with Aldon Kendrick and the others, carrying an important letter (yeah, right) from King Derid. I have a message for you, she said.
He raised his big eyebrows.
The message is she coughed into her hand portentously that the leShay can kiss my scrawny ass.
She watched him laugh. Some of his teeth were false, made of steel, and a livid scar ran over his lips and down into his beard.
Miss, said Mindarion gravely. I hope, believe, and pray we can accommodate you, at some time in the future.
But in the meantime, there was much that Suka didn t understand. Later, she, Poke, and Marabaldia sat on campstools near the fire, eating bowls of actual food for the first time (in the princess s case) in many years. Suka couldn t think about that. Her own hunger was fierce enough, and she didn t even know what she was eating, nor did she care. Poke and Marabaldia had found new clothes more appropriate for traveling. Rurik and Mindarion sat with them while their soldiers milled around, a dozen or so, not more. Suka hoped they were right about the drow, and for some reason found herself picturing the captain she had seen strolling toward her up the road, a smile on her black lips, her black sword held nonchalantly to the side. She did not look to be afraid of any fey creatures in the woods or from the trackless fens, whether night hags or shadow hounds or displacer beasts or owlbears. Suka even wondered, if she were Prince Araithe, if she might allow a few unimportant prisoners to be rescued, if it meant discovering the whereabouts of other more powerful enemies outside Synnoria, which was, of course, impregnable. But perhaps Mindarion had hidden them somehow, wrapped them in an incantation so the light from their fire wouldn t spill out of their little dell. Certainly he looked at ease, though he didn t smile. Nor did he eat, but drank a horn of water, sniffing it sometimes as if it were fragrant wine.
Do you have any wine? she asked, and Rurik laughed again.
I like you, he said, but we have things to discuss. Tell me about King Derid s message.
She did, while he scratched his beard. It worries me, he said, that Ordalf has any communication with spies in King Derid s court, even if it s not with the king himself. Of course I have been hoping for his support in our war. But he s afraid.
Tell me about the drow, said Marabaldia. Startled, Suka looked at her, avoiding any glance at her right eye. Even so, it was hard to see any trace of the hunched figure in her cell, weeping over the various iterations of Oh, Father Dear. For the first time Suka imagined something else had happened when the giantess had lost her mask, some internal sharpening of perception.
Mindarion spoke. That is who lives in Citadel Umbra now. That is who does Prince Araithe s bidding. The eladrin have fled from there, and everyone but the dark elves. He must have made some kind of pact, promised them something, but I do not know what.
Marabaldia scarcely let him finish. Tell me why he held me prisoner. And what is his interest in my friend, she said, meaning Poke, who sat forward on her stool, her clumsy hands in her lap, her yellow hair over her face.
Suka noticed that Mindarion answered only the second question.
He wants to find the Lady Amaranth, he said. His aunt, if you d like to call her that. The last of the leShays.
His mother wants to find her too, offered Suka.
Rurik and Mindarion glanced at each other. Yes, I suppose she does, continued the eladrin. But for different reasons. Her sister wants her dead. But her nephew wants her to bear his child.
Yuck, Suka thought. Nobody spoke.
To understand this, you have to understand the leShays, murmured Rurik, his voice low and hoarse. They are old, older than him. He gestured toward the eladrin with his chin. They are the root of all the fey, a long, skinny, endless little root, and they hoard their blood like gold. They don t share it. Ordalf s mother is dead now after many thousands of years. Princess Callia Araithe murdered her, or had her murdered, a terrible crime. Because she bred outside the family after his grandfather died. He wanted Amaranth to be his daughter and his heir. When she wasn t well, you see.
Not exactly, Suka thought. Still no one spoke.
Let me try to make it clearer, ventured Mindarion. At one time there were several strands of the leShay, which they braided together in the Feywild. Now here, just the one. And they ve had difficulties stillborn babies, monstrous births, deformities that they ve had strangled in their cradles. They are not fertile. The last one was High Lady Ordalf s child, born ten years ago and lived just a few days. It was following his death that the princess disappeared. Lady Ordalf herself nearly died from the delivery.
And the father? Suka asked.
Can t you guess? Rurik asked. There s only the one. Ordalf s father is long gone, and she never had a brother.
And Araithe s father?
Captain Rurik examined his big hands. Mindarion spoke: was the same as his grandfather. The leShays can t remember their own childhoods. Their own histories mean nothing to them. These generational differences mean nothing how could they, in a lifetime that stretches back before the first Ffolk came to Gwynneth Island? The emotions that they have, the feelings for one another, none of that can make any sense to us. The only thing to remember is that it is only the youngest who inherits. Always the youngest. High Lady Ordalf hates her sister because their mother married out of the leShays my brother, actually, a Llewyrr knight of Synnoria, a simple eladrin, and a good man. Araithe hunted him down and killed him, and killed the princess too, his own grandmother, when she spurned him. He wanted her for himself, wanted to marry her, if it helps you to think of it that way. And now he wants her younger daughter, too. He s already had the older one.
Nobody wanted to hear any more of this, Suka guessed. No one had a question to ask. But Mindarion continued with his answers: Prince Araithe must have discovered that his mother had traced the Lady Amaranth to Moray Island. And he knew she would try to destroy her, because of her jealousy. She wants her own daughter. She wants to try again. But the prince is sick of her. They are not fertile together. That s why he came to find you, he said, meaning Poke.
Then he nodded toward Marabaldia. And when no one said anything, he continued, And why he kept you hostage all these years. Is it not obvious? The eladrin are deserting him. There are a few thousand left in Karador, but more are leaving every day, joining us in Synnoria, in the mountains. He and his mother have an army of Ffolk slaves, and other creatures in their service. But if the Underdark rose against him, the fomorians and the rest You have no love for the drow.
We have no love for the drow, the giantess repeated, blinking her great eye.
Mindarion turned his head away from her and said, The fey are not like Northlanders, like men and women. We are too old to fight for causes, for freedom or what is right. We have no interest in such things. He smiled ruefully. Prince Araithe is a tyrant, it is true. But we have not known happiness since we were young. We need someone to fight for, one of our kind. And so you must tell me He looked toward Poke, and Suka watched the ridges of his nostrils curl, as if he caught a faint, unpleasant odor. Is it true? Is Lady Amaranth, my brother s daughter, still living? Captain Rurik will send his boats to Moray Island.
Dutifully, as if by rote, the lycanthrope recited a version of the story Suka had already heard too many times when they were prisoners, after ceremonial incantations of Oh, Father Dear, how a wounded hippogriff had come down like a winged star, had alighted on the beach near Caer Moray, and how the helpless child on its back had been taken in and nurtured by a she-wolf, Deucala, as Amaranth had subsequently named her, the great matriarch of the northern shores, dead now. How the lost princess had grown up under her tutelage, and in time had brought incomparable gifts to the Northlander tribes, had liberated the Black Blood and the females of all species
Suka stopped listening, and watched instead the play of emotions on Captain Rurik s face. She wondered why it was so damned important to him to find Mindarion s lost niece and put her on the crystal throne in Karador. Surely he didn t need to hear this semimythic affirmation to send a boat to Moray, if that was what he wanted he wasn t a fey, stuck at home forever, endlessly and mournfully circling the drain. He was a man, quick-thinking and resolute, like all his kind (well, most of them some of them, at any rate) and now he turned his big rough face toward her, frowning, as if he guessed what she thought.
Breaking eye contact, she looked up at the sky. The stars shone brightly. Actually, not so brightly, because of a new mist that had settled over the dell, small wisps of duller darkness that writhed and curled between her and the new moon. The evening wind had brought it, and brought also a strange smell. She stood up, rubbing her shoulders in the sudden chill. Captain Rurik cursed, kicked over his stool, reached for his axe, and the drow were upon them.
Not as many, perhaps. A small crew. Enough to overcome the sentinels that Rurik had posted down below. As Suka drew her knife, she looked up at the ridge on the far side of the dell, where it rose into the wooded hills. The drow captain was there, illuminated in the soft blue light, the wind in her long white hair, a curious smile on her beautiful face as she raised her sword. In her other hand she carried a throwing spear, and Suka watched her cast it into the middle of the dell, into the glowing fire. As it fell, it also erupted into flame then exploded, scattering the radiance, extinguishing all light. And then they were caught in the noisome graveyard smell and the swirling black mist that seemed to stick to their skin, drawing them together even as they moved to defend themselves.
Great, Suka thought, a drow magician, a priestess of disgusting Lolth, a darkwalker from the web between the worlds. But Mindarion also had some kind of power. A small new light had risen up from his clasped hands, a battle between elements that transcended the cold struggle underneath, a struggle that itself seemed less like a battle between mortal creatures than like something supernatural the air was thick and hard to breathe, and so cold that it hurt the lungs. The horses screamed and bolted, staggering away into the trees, some with their manes alight. And the men and the eladrin found themselves pressed together and constrained into the bottom of the dell, fighting enemies that seemed in one moment to be creatures of flesh and blood, and in the next made of smoke or spirit. Near Suka, an eladrin knight was down, his breast hacked to pieces, a hulking figure looming over him. But when she slashed at it her knife divided only air from darkness, mist from light. Men cursed guttural oaths in the Northlander tongue. Above their heads Mindarion s light had made a glowing roof or shelter, against which the burning shafts of the darkwalker Suka could see her prowling the perimeter crashed in explosive spasms, weakening it slowly until finally it caved and foundered, leaving them defenseless against the concussive blast. Suka crouched down with her arms around her head. Looking up, she caught a vague impression of Princess Marabaldia standing over her, bar upraised. Then one final explosion and she staggered and fell, knocking the gnome cold between her feet.