There are many different ways for a druid to move back and forth between her animal and human shapes, depending on her circumstances and her state of mind. These skills are studied as a science, but mastered as an art, and like all arts, this one grew out of an inner soil of fears, desires, and needs. When Eleuthra was learning, back when it was painful to transform, to feel her bones reknit, her skin stretch and sag, sometimes she would isolate a single part of her body, a finger, first, and then a hand. She d feel that she had thrust her hand into a fire. When she looked down to see the hair sprout and grow, she imagined that her skin was burning with a black flame. Later on, she learned to love the feeling, too intense almost to bear. Later on she d feel a shudder in her flesh, and the hair would spread like a wave out of an underwater quake. An abrupt shock, and she would change all at once, as if from the inside out, in an ecstasy that was almost sexual. Sometimes she d lose consciousness just for a moment. When she was frightened or in urgent need, then she d lose consciousness, or else enter a peculiar fugue in which quick intervals of oblivion were mixed with intervals of hyperfocused awareness, the more surreal for being interrupted. And in the unconscious moments she would dream, and her dream, also, would suffer from the same sequence of interruptions.
Now in extremity, with the drow closing in, her wolf s shape erupted out of her and she fell down on all fours into a crouch. But at the same time she dreamed a series of tiny, encapsulated dreams, each one large on the inside, tiny on the outside. She saw the daemonfey above her as if lit by intermittent flashes of lighting, now in one place, now in another, now naked, now clothed, now as she remembered him on Moray Island where they had found shelter, now as she imagined him in dreams or fantasies. Sometimes he spoke to her, though the movement of his lips did not conform to the words she heard, which were always versions of what he d said to her earlier, when she d been asleep: Come to me. Give up and come to me. Dare to leave this place and come to me. At the same time, even in the moments she was conscious and aware, then also she remembered him as if in a series of afterimages, which enabled her to superimpose him on the surface of the real world, almost as if he hovered above her in the dark cavern where they were surrounded by drow, and where the hierophant of Lolth conjured her magic, silhouetted by the fire burning in the entrance of her shrine, between the broken statues of the knight at the basilisk, and the curtain of flame that moved across the surface of the rock.
Eleuthra s body changed rapidly and completely, as if in a series of orgasmic shudders, and as she looked up from her wolf s crouch she saw the daemonfey as if suspended above the hierophant, his barbed tail hanging down as if to touch the dark elf s black and white streaked hair, which writhed and twisted around her delicate, small head as if it had an independent life, a trick, perhaps, of the lashing wind. Eleuthra heard a roaring in her ears: Come to me.
Gaspar-shen, his scimitar in his right hand, a short sword in his left, his bare torso glowing with a lambent, frustrated energy that snaked around his chest and arms and belly in blue lines, watched the she-wolf in the moment of her spring, watched her dig her claws into the rocks, watched the hair rise on her body and the thick ridge of her spine as if charged with static. He himself found it hard to move, because the drow witch had conjured away his strength and Lukas s also. Swords drawn, they also stood like stones, waiting for the seven warriors to surround them and conquer them, while the rest of the dark elves waited behind. But the wolf felt nothing of that conjuring, designed to immobilize more complicated brains, and as she broke across the rocky, uneven floor, he also felt the magic strain and snap the witch could not sustain it and defend herself at the same time. Lukas also jerked alive, as if suddenly released from the constraints of an invisible net, and with his sword raised he leaped upon the closest of the drow, insolently sauntering toward him, protected so he must have thought by the hierophant s spell. The blade bit into his skull. He dropped like a bag of sand, and Lukas, spinning, caught the warrior next to him with a back-handed slash across his throat then drove his sword s point through someone else s eye.
Someone must tell him, the genasi thought, of the benefits of striking below the neck, where the target was larger and softer. His own scimitar, he noticed, had punctured the belly of one of these treacherous creatures, popped it like an inflated bladder, and now he turned to the next. These drow had no culture, he thought grimly, as he severed one dark elf s arm from his body they overcooked their vegetables and undercooked their meat, and boiled too many pale tubers, and relied too heavily on spiced sauces and hot oil, or so he d heard. They baked no bread, made no pastry. There was no lightness to their cuisine, and now, by the gods, they d pay for it.
Amaranth threw down her lamp. It shattered on the rocks and spattered a blue, glowing liquid. Likewise released from the magic, she drew the short sword she had carried from Caer Moray, and as the drow raged close she struck then jumped back. Surprised, she saw Amaka was still with her and, though unarmed, had seized one of the drow s arms as she pressed her blade between his ribs, watched the hot blood flow down. Under the hierophant s spell, all time seemed to have slowed and thickened. Now, released from it, she felt a burst of frantic energy, as if gravity were weak, as if the air were thin and offered no resistance, and as if all the processes of her body were quick beyond control. It could not last. Lukas was cutting through the drow as if through scarecrows, and the genasi had raised a barrier of murdered corpses, some of which still twitched erratically. There were several dozen drow at least, but they fell back from the onslaught of the blades. It could not last.
Eleuthra had reached the creature, drawn her claws down her face and neck, opened up her flesh and then sprung for her throat, and missed. Instead her jaws had closed on the hierophant s shoulder, cracking her collarbone and her upper arm, such was the fury of the wolf s assault. She d fallen on her prey like a crashing wave, but like a wave, now, she drew back after marking her high tide. As she did, she felt the hierophant s magic reinvest itself, flow into the spaces she had left, fasten itself around her like a living chain, squeeze her chest so she couldn t breathe, and all her struggles drew it closer. Desperate, she struck again, cutting with her heavy paws, and this time she felt the softness of the drow s breast, and tried to cut through that and through her ribs and through the plastron of her chest to reach her heart. But the wolf could no longer breathe. She released her grip on the hierophant s arm so she could strike again, and miss again, and now her jaws closed upon nothing, and instead she felt a coldness overtake her lungs, like a cold liquid poison injected in her viscera, causing the failure of her organs one by one, and the closing of her body processes until only her heart was left, fluttering in a bath of ice.
Come to me, said the daemonfey, and she saw him spread his leather wings until he filled the entire vault of the cavern, his red eyes diabolical, his gold skin and body perfect in her mind. Come to me.
And she went.
The hierophant stepped back from the wolf s corpse. Staggering, she fell against the statue of the knight, seizing the haft of its stone sword to stay upright. The blood flowed down her arms and face. But she was in a rage. She lifted her uninjured arm, and Gaspar-shen felt the air congeal around him, slowing his weapon and offering resistance as he drew it back and raised it up to strike. It seemed too heavy for his strength. One of the drow caught him by the arm and pulled him forward, and he realized suddenly they were not trying to kill him but disarm him, capture him alive. Again he struck at them, the circle of black faces which were close enough for him to see the silver rings in their nostrils and lips and in the ridges of their ears, even the scarified, raised patterns on their cheeks, even their filed and pointed teeth as they grinned at him in fury and drew him down.
After a moment he flopped helpless as if resting on a bed of slaughtered bodies, pinioned at his wrists, while at the same time he heard the noise of the hierophant s harsh breath next to his ear, and he felt her hands fumbling over his chest, and smelled her blood dripping over him. Nor did he have to hear her tell him that a spider must immobilize her prey with a cold bite, before wrapping it in pale cords to save for later, when she is hungry. The eating habits of spiders, he had always thought, should not be emulated by any higher being with a claim to civilization.
Far above, in the fomorian highway that ran under the Cambro Mountains from Harrowfast in the south and all the way to Winterglen, Suka rode on Marabaldia s shoulder. Sixty miles they had come in just a day. The princess seemed to gather and grow in strength as time progressed. Suka was exhausted even so. She had not wanted to be carried like a sack of potatoes, but every stride of the giantess was four of hers. And she had not expected they would never stop, or pause, or rest, or eat, or drink, hour after hour. Irritated, she had never complained, which was unlike her. But the mystery was easy to solve.
Suka felt the weight of Ughoth s death, caused, she imagined, by her own clumsiness on the borders of Synnoria. And she imagined, in this punishing pace, that Marabaldia was working something out, expressing some profound emotion. Suka didn t blame her for wanting to move quickly, leave the surface of Gwynneth Island, and burrow down deep into the Underdark. She would deny the princess nothing for the sake of her own dignity, so grateful she was that Marabaldia hadn t punished her, or even questioned her about what had happened between her and Captain Rurik and the Marchlord Talos-claere in Synnoria. She could only remember how her friend, and Ughoth too, had backed her without question in the council hall, supported her without hesitation when Lord Askepel had demanded that she stand trial, and answer for what she and Rurik actually had done, the mistakes she actually had made. Even now, even after the price she d paid, Marabaldia did not question her. It was as if the past were gone, and Suka were the only one still carrying its burden.
They had not paused, neither to draw breath nor drink some water from one of the subterranean streams. Long used to human beings, now Suka had grown accustomed to the heavy stamp of the cyclopses, though she could not hope to copy its rhythm. Their single eyes glowed like lanterns. She looked back to see Mindarion and Altaira, similarly carried. Behind them, the tunnel was in darkness.
When the venom wore off and Lukas regained consciousness, he guessed the drow had taken him in through the cave mouth where he d first seen the hierophant, in between the shattered statues where Amaka had first tried to lead them. And in this new cave he found himself bound to a stone pier, perched unsteadily atop a mound of architectural refuse; iron spars, chunks of fallen masonry, loose bricks and coping stones, enormous wooden beams. All of this had been arranged around a hollow well, and the entire circular pile was alive with scurrying vermin, rats and lizards, but especially spiders, who wove their webs in the interstices, or else hung suspended from the pinnacles of stone. The mound of debris rose almost twenty feet from the cave floor, and the interior well descended through a crack or a crevice to a depth he could not guess, as it was choked with garbage and old bones, and layers of moon-white web as thick as mats. Entire bricks were caught in them and did not fall. Light came from the gas vents in the burning rocks, and from the bottom of the well a diffuse pale glow. Light came also from a makeshift altar at the top of the pile, an assortment of marble slabs, and urns and reliquaries that looked to have been looted from some other shrine, all surmounted by a cylinder of black, polished stone, which supported a circle of brass candlesticks, and fat, white, flickering tapers shedding beads of melted wax.
Gaspar-shen lay nearby, trussed as he was in silken, sticky ropes. Lady Amaranth was below the altar, tied down by her wrists and ankles. It occurred to Lukas that he had been in this place before, or else this situation, and then he remembered the lush temple where they had all come to Gwynneth Island, the gate whose other side was in the Breasal Marsh. The druid Eleuthra had been with them, and here she was again. As Lukas watched, a detachment of the drow marched from the cave s mouth, carrying the bodies not just of the druid but of their fallen comrades. Unsteadily they climbed the pile of rubble at its lowest point, and then tumbled the corpses down into the well, through a trap in the webs that looked as if it might have been woven for that purpose. Last of all they flung Eleuthra, dressed in her wolf skin, in her human shape.
She had scarcely known them, but she had given her life for theirs in vain, as it turned out, because here they were, prisoners just the same. Why had she done this? It was for the Savage s sake, he guessed. It was for love.
The drow seemed eager to finish and be gone. One or two glanced anxiously into the bottom of the well before they retreated to the cave s mouth. Lukas waited for the genasi to speak.
In the desert realm of Calim, Gaspar-shen began diffidently after clearing his throat the air was thick and humid and full of dust, there is a town called Calimpest. But they have nothing to eat.
Nothing?
Nothing. They have nothing to eat.
Surely they have bread.
No bread. Only pieces of stone, which they suck until they are smooth.
And is there anything to drink?
Nothing. Only fine white sand.
And the inhabitants of Calim are they happy?
No, they are not happy. They are very sad. All night long they howl and complain.
I don t blame them.
No one blames them. It has been this way for many years.
How many years?
More than six years. Fewer than seven.
Lady Amaranth was too far away to hear this nonsense, but someone else was not. Turning his head, Lukas saw the handmaiden of Lolth sitting above him, hands clasped around her knees. It was Amaka, the girl who had betrayed them and led them to this place. Yet she looked disconsolate, soot in her close-cropped white hair, her face streaked with dirt, her white shift streaked and torn.
Does he speak seriously? she asked.
No one knows.
Yet I, she said, would rather live in Calim than in Winterglen among my own kind. Calim is a paradise to me.
During their battle with the drow, Lukas had seen this girl fighting beside Amaranth, hampering the drow soldiers who attacked her. Why was that?
She could not read minds, he knew. Yet she answered him as if she could. I couldn t bear to see her harried so, like that, like a hart inside a circle of dogs. That s what I felt the truth. But what I told that woman, the guardian of the shrine, I told her I was protecting the blood of the leShay. I didn t want to see it spilled prematurely, see it sink into the dust. That is why I brought you to this place, isn t it?
For a moment she seemed unsure. I wouldn t know, Lukas said. He looked up to see the eyes of his friend tied down, helpless, away from him and to the left watching him. In the mix of light, harsh and soft, dirty and clean, the genasi s skin looked as pale and slick and unhealthy as a fish s belly.
It is the blood of the leShay, confirmed the girl. My father lied to you. He wouldn t send her south to Synnoria. He wanted her brought here, because this is the place this is the place
She paused for a moment, then went on, This is the place where he intends to raise my lady out of the Abyss. Then she laid her cheek upon her knees, hugging her shins within the circle of her black arms.
Araushnee, Lukas murmured.
Araushnee, she repeated. They have tried and failed, tried and failed here for months. The guardian has worn through an entire circuit of the lady s rituals, over and over. But it was her idea she could entice her with the rarest blood in Faer n, and Araushnee would answer to the smell of it, as if she were some predatory creature and not a goddess or a queen.
Silly, Lukas murmured, too softly for the girl to hear.
It s so silly, she continued without irony, as if she knew his thoughts but not his mind. Her spider s nature is the curse Corellon laid on her. She yearns to cast it away, reject it and be free. When we speak of our desire to live again on the surface in the forest of Winterglen, simple wood elves like our ancestors, it is so we also can share in a goddess s aspiration, and be more than creatures fighting in a hole. This is why she did not come, not until now. We should be looking for her in the shrine I built for her you saw it and not here in a pit of corpses and carrion, stinking of sulfur and decay. This is an insult.
Tears were in her eyes, Lukas saw, touched in spite of himself. He had heard different stories of Araushnee s fall and the emergence of Lolth from the Demonweb Pits. He wouldn t think about those stories now.
It is so easy to fall back into old habits, said the girl. How beautiful her voice was he had not noticed until now. Creatures in a hole, hiding and fighting. But if we are to walk among the moon and stars, surely we must change. Come back to what we were, long ago, in the simple time. Captain, she said, surprising Lukas, who had thought she was speaking mostly to herself.
Captain, that is why it hurts me so to see you like this, you and her. Among the drow, our men don t treat our women with affection, as you have treated her.
She meant the princess. Is that what it is? murmured Lukas, too low for her to hear. He was watching the genasi, who blinked once, slowly. Gentle mockery, Lukas guessed. Maybe that was also what Amaka was talking about. She probably didn t see enough of that among the drow.
Well, if it hurts you so, he said, and if you re sure it s useless, you could let us go.
Her expression, when she looked at him, was so panicked he could not continue. Where is the priestess now? he said, meaning the hierophant.
Hurt. Too hurt to conclude the ritual. Mauled by Eleuthra Davos, and by someone else. Crouching in her own little pit, too hurt to come out.
Like a spider, Lukas said.
Like a spider.
Amaka rose to her feet. Unsteady on the shattered, uneven surface, she came a few steps closer. When he had first seen her up above, Lukas had wondered if she was drunk or drugged, her spirits were so high, but there was no trace of that now.
She stood above him then flopped down on a chunk of marble, part of the facing stone of some ornate structure, a cornice or a frieze carved in a pattern of birds in flight. But because it had been slaved up from some broken palace in the Underdark, the birds themselves were fantastical and impossible, with tiny wings and long, curled bills and claws mythical beasts carved by someone who had never seen the sky.
She bent down over him. Do you think, she said, that if my sisters and I make our home among the trees in Winterglen above our heads, then we will find someone to treat us the way you treat her?
Lukas watched the genasi s eyes. They blinked once, slowly.
Free me, Lukas muttered, though he found he could not lie to her, even though she had betrayed them. She had obeyed her father, that was all. How could he find fault with her? Not that he had ever obeyed his own father much, come to think of it.
Still, he pitied her. He could not lie to her. I haven t kept her all that well, he muttered, wondering first whether his connection to Amaranth looked different from the outside than it did from the inside, and second whether anyone who knew how he had lured her back to Gwynneth Island and then lured her down here, would still say he had done the best he could for her. What did it mean anyway to treat someone well, in what had been, since he had known her, a series of disasters?
Free me, he muttered as Amaka bent over him, her pretty face a few inches from his own prettier, actually, than he remembered. The dirt was gone from her cheeks. Her eyes were closed. Again, thought Lukas, what this looked like was different from what it was. She was too innocent to know what she was talking about, and anyway he could scarcely move, so maybe none of it meant anything.
Besides, all of an instant, he got the distinct impression she was mocking him, and had been mocking him all along, with her talk about drow, and her desire for better treatment. Now he noticed how her shift was held together by a brooch or a needle on her right shoulder. He did not remember seeing it before. And now he could see the sharp end of it protruding from the fine white linen cloth finer, actually, than he had thought. This part of it wasn t ripped or stained. Close to his mouth, the other end was fashioned in the shape of a spider, a beautiful ornament of silver chased with gold. He caught it between his teeth and pulled it away from her, and the garment parted. Without opening her eyes, she reached up her hand to secure it over her breast.
But he didn t pay any attention to that. Instead he pressed his chin against his neck and bent himself to the intricate task of picking apart the silken cord that bound his arms to the stone pier little by little. He held the sharp silver needle between his teeth. He scarcely noticed when the light around them changed, became brighter and softer and less full of smoky fire. He had managed to loosen himself and sit forward a little bit, pry himself upright, the needle hurting his mouth, when he heard a sound from Gaspar-shen, a whimper of amazement, a soft noise whistling through complicated nasal cavities, and he looked up.
Amaka had climbed up to the shrine where Amaranth was laid out. She stood on the topmost ridge of garbage with the rats around her feet. They did not seem alarmed. One went up on his hind legs, poked his little nose in the air, curled up his tail between his legs and around his fat, purselike body. Amaka brought her hand from her right shoulder, stretched it palm up toward the candles, which burned now with a purer, bluer flame the wind had died. Her garment whether it was just a trick of the new light, Lukas didn t see any more rents or tears in it, or any dirt and filth. The cloth itself seemed transfigured the garment wafted to the ground. There was a time when I would gladly have accepted these gifts, she said. These offerings. Not now. Not today. Not from these hands.
Besides, she said, I have already eaten. I have no more room.
She was not altogether naked. Silhouetted by the candlelight, she seemed made of darkness, a girl-shaped hole in the world s protective screen. Lukas watched her lean down over Lady Amaranth and run her forefinger over her forehead, her cheek, and down her neck. The princess, who had been unconscious or asleep, now roused herself, came awake under the black hand. Lukas saw Amaranth press against her bonds, heard her little moan. But she had not yet opened her eyes by the time Amaka turned from her, and stepped over the lip of the abyss, and climbed down out of sight into the well.
Lukas said nothing, the needle between his teeth. Gaspar-shen blinked twice, in quick succession. Lady Amaranth struggled weakly against her restraints, cried out as if she had been hurt. Lukas bent down to his task again, worrying and picking at the pale strands. He worked faster now, hurting his mouth and not caring, because he wanted, once loose, to climb up to the rim of garbage and at least look down into the well, past where Amaka had descended, taking some of the radiance with her. The air was darker now. One of the strands gave way, and then another. He pulled, and his hand was free.
Gaspar-shen watched him extricate himself then stand painfully erect, rubbing his shoulders and his hands, wiping the blood from his mouth. He himself felt comfortable and secure, because he couldn t move. In the Elemental Chaos where he had been born, these moments of stasis formed small islands of bliss, even in memory. Traveling with Lukas, there was far too little of this, and it was worth it to be hurt, sometimes, or imprisoned, or in danger of a terrible death, to enjoy a small bit of quietude sometimes. Closing his eyes, he could see the colors of the ocean, hear the roaring of the water.
It couldn t last. Lukas stood above him then knelt down as if to free him. But and this was an astonishing thing, which made Gaspar-shen think with a surge of gratitude that sometimes his friend almost understood him instead he whispered in his ear, his eyes on the leShay princess waking up. Stay right here as if he had a choice! I ll go see what I can see. We ll need weapons to get out of this.
Maybe. Gaspar-shen wondered if they had gone past the need for fighting. In his mind he pictured the tidal wave that had inundated the field at Caer Moray, that had broken against the curtain wall ah, how beautiful. What passions it had washed away! And he imagined this place, also, flooded, the salt water rushing through the tunnels and caverns like the blood pushing through a human body then receding. He imagined the pressure building until the water found a vent onto the land, and it would wash them out into the sunlight and tumble them down into Cambrent Gap, and down to the ruins of Caervu on the Straits of Alaron, and down into the sea. What would he give, he thought, to set his course out of the Moonshaes and never return?
Feeling his constraints, he opened his eyes. Lukas had clambered down into the tunnel s mouth, and he disappeared between the burning rocks. The genasi, as if gifted by the goddess with a vision of the future, imagined himself walking after him, but not into some dark, desiccated passage underground, but into the open air above the sea. He watched himself stumbling down a stony beach, and falling on his knees in the shallow water, and allowing the surf to knock him backward, the seagulls above him, and a rainbow in the spray.
His experience was not the same as Amaranth s as she woke up. And yet there was a point of similarity: She had retained a small sharp fragment of her dream, a vestige of a feeling that was comforting for a single moment. She saw herself in her bedroom in Karador when she was a little girl, before her mother had died and Mistress Valeanne had come to take her away, had woken her in darkness. Someone in her dream, perhaps her mother no, but her mother s skin was not as dark as that, her hair not as pale had touched her cheek and neck, had put her lips next to her ear and whispered something she was able to remember when she had come up to the surface of the world and looked around, and vainly tried to struggle against the suffocating ropes. In a moment of claustrophobic panic, she heard a voice whisper to her: You are as different to these creatures as a man is to a stone. You are like a goddess on this world. Do not let them judge you, for their ideas mean nothing. A thousand years will not wash you away. Your life is not with them. Do not be fooled by any chance resemblance or feeling. Remember this if nothing else.
As it happened, she remembered the whole thing. She was able to lift her head. Lukas was gone. His friend, however, lay close to her.
Ah, she said.
Do not be fooled by any chance resemblance or feeling. Well, there was no likelihood of that. The genasi lay on his back. Depending on the light, his skin was blue or green. His body was hairless, and streaks of color moved across it, words in unknown languages. Wind whistled through the slits that formed his nose. I have something to ask you, he said. If you could have one dish to eat right now, not to share, but just enough for you, what would it be?
How hungry she was! In Moray she d had simple things to eat, potatoes fried with onions, rabbit stew. But the genasi s words brought her back farther than that. They opened a door back to the past, through which she could catch a glimpse of the great kitchen in Karador, and the chefs slaving over their brass cauldrons, and the stewards carrying the covered silver dishes up the stairs, and the steam rising from the plate, and the smell of ortolans, blinded, force fed, drowned in brandy, then roasted and eaten whole.
Ortolans, she said. It is a songbird from beyond the sea. My mother said you could taste its whole life in one bite, and your life with it.
The whistle of the wind.
Ortolans, repeated the genasi. Then, after a moment, My friend and I will leave this island soon. The goddess showed me something when I was lying here, something far across the Sea of Swords, maybe in the country where the ortolans grow. You will not hurt him, said Gaspar-shen, by pretending even for a little while that you could share his fate, or he could share yours.
She could not tell if he was asking her or telling her, or both. And there was no time to answer him, even if she knew what she might say. Because Lukas had reappeared in the tunnel s mouth, and then was clambering up the pile, scattering the vermin. He carried weapons, the long, curved sabers of the drow. With one of them he slashed them free. Gaspar-shen closed his eyes and opened them.
Here we are, he said unhappily, she thought, but it was hard to tell. She rubbed her wrists and ankles, labored to her feet, then sat down suddenly and waited for a spell of nausea to move away. The air was full of ash. She wiped her gritty lips then tried again.
Look, said Captain Lukas. He led them down the slope and out into the larger cavern where they had fought the drow.
There s no one here, he said, and showed them what he d found, a few drow soldiers lying in contorted positions, as if they had been picked up and discarded, flung against the rocks. This was where Lukas had found the swords.
But in a smaller, adjoining cave, he showed them a pavilion of scarlet cloth, lit at the corners with flickering oil lamps. Inside, laid out on a padded cot, they found the hierophant lying dead. Her face was bruised and torn, her arm and shoulder bound into a sling of spider silk. A wad of webbed silk, stained with blood, was laid upon her chest. But these wounds were not what had killed her. Her face was gray and bloodless, and there were marks upon her throat where the goddess had savaged her.
As they watched, one of the oil lanterns guttered and went out.
We must be quick, said Lukas.
He found the way they d come, the way Amaka had led them down, and they climbed up the narrow passage into cooler, cleaner air. They carried the lanterns, but they were almost empty, and they blew out in the first breeze. After that they felt their way, for it was very dark, with just a trace of phosphorescence on the rocks. Lukas reached back for her hand. She would let him touch her for a little while more. Do not be fooled by any chance resemblance or feeling. She pressed her palm against his palm, laced their fingers together. It was easy in the dark. She remembered how she had kissed him on the battlements above the gate at Caer Moray. Soon she would kiss him again. She was like a goddess on this world. No one could judge her. If her sister had despoiled her in the gardens of the citadel, maybe even that was a good thing. It was best to know your enemies. She would have her revenge. She had a thousand years to plan it.
They climbed the steep stairs. She trusted Captain Lukas. When they reached the wider ways of the second level, she felt a surge of gratitude. She would reward him. So at the entrance to the brick tunnel, the fomorian road that ran toward Synnoria in the south, and north descended deep into the Underdark, she paused. She knew where she was. She recognized the smell. She held Lukas by his left hand, and with her other hand she took the sword from him and let it fall with a clatter. The tiles were smooth under her boots. She pressed him up against the flat wall and kissed him, and with none of her old uncertainty. Because this was the last time she would see him, she would enjoy this moment in all its melancholy power. The passageway was deep in darkness, and she pushed him back until she could not see his face. Instead she supplied in her mind s eye his short brown hair, his blue eyes and thin lips. She touched his nose and cheek as the goddess had touched her.
Nearby, invisible except for a few dim, snaking lines of light, the genasi cleared his throat. In the city of Uzbeg on the Golden Way, they make a confabulation of chocolate and nut cream, baked and then sealed in a layer of silver so thick and so hard, it must be opened with a lock and key.
Lukas said: Why don t you climb up a little farther the way we came, and see if you can find some kind of light up here. We ll wait for you.
A doubtful whistle in the darkness. Yes, Captain, he said, either humbly or else ironically, it seemed to Amaranth.
When he was gone, she bent back to the task at hand, kissing Lukas so fiercely, as if to leave the imprint of herself upon his mouth. She let him touch her more intimately also, let his hands move over her body, and he surprised her by the lightness and delicacy of his touch. But when he slid his fingers inside her clothes, she stopped him after a while, thinking how he would be dead when she was a great queen. And when his children s children were dead, still she would reign in Karador.
She laid her forefinger against his lips and whispered like a simpering, flighty, wavering human girl, No I mean not here. Not here it stinks of cyclopses and purple giants. No, I want to see you, she said, though in fact the opposite was true, and she would never have allowed him to take such liberties in the light. Take this as a promissory note, she said, kissing him again, and then she whispered near his ear: Imagine a blanket spread upon the dewy grass, and lanterns in the trees above our heads. Or else imagine us in the topmost tower of Karador, in my bedroom where I was a little girl, and the windows open, and the curtains of my bed drawn back, so we can look out over the waters of the lake. There are windows on every side.
Unless he was a fool, that should be enough to tell him she was lying to him, she thought, feeling something in her heart of hearts, a stab of ecstasy or guilt. Do not be misled by any chance resemblance or feeling, she thought, pulling him down onto the floor, propping up in the corner of the wall. He stretched out his long legs and she sat on them, her knees spread wide. They kissed for a while more, and then they turned their heads to watch a glimmer of light along the tunnel, the opposite direction from where Gaspar-shen had gone. It was not torchlight, but something softer and more varied, beams of light that moved along the blood-red walls. They heard the tramp of marching feet.
In time, Lady Amaranth got up, and straightened her clothes. She had not seen cyclopses since she was a little girl, when they had chased her and Mistress Valeanne on the way to Crane Point. Lukas got up too, and they joined hands and waited for a little while. But when she tried to pull away, or else pull him into some side passage, or else into some crack or crevice in the brick where they could hide, he would not come.
Don t worry, Lukas said, for he had seen a little figure running out in front, backlit by the glare of the cyclopses eyes, tufts of pink hair standing out all over her head. Imagining that Gaspar-shen had just gone down the tunnel a few hundred yards, Lukas called out his name, told him to come back. Then he walked forward into the light, holding out his hands, astonished to see the gnome accompanied by these creatures. He recognized Marabaldia from her prison cell in Caer Corwell, though she had changed. Perhaps he also had changed, though it hadn t been so long, after all. Less than a month, he thought he scarcely knew. He reached down for Suka s hand. Captain, she said, what a surprise.
She looked Lady Amaranth up and down. He didn t introduce them. There was no point. She stuck her tongue out, showed her silver stud. I ll tell you all that s happened once we ve stopped, she said.
But Amaranth couldn t hear her, wasn t paying attention. While Lukas bent down to listen, while he squeezed the little gnome s hands, Amaranth found herself staring up into the round, heavy-featured face of the fomorian, its right eye large and bright. Though in Karador she had heard of these grotesque and misshapen creatures, she had never seen one, and she found herself fascinated by its eye, which reminded her for a wistful instant of the portal that had carried her from Moray, the way the surface of it seemed to swirl in a circle then slide open like the mechanical aperture in her professor s camera obscura, a device made of beaten copper, which she had last seen when she was a little girl.
And like that morning in Karador long before, she saw many things that had been hidden, or else only vaguely guessed at. She saw the forces of Citadel Umbra gathered around them in a circle, while an army of drow approached from underneath. She saw a trap that would crush all of them and steal her away. She saw the cyclopses struck down, and Lukas tortured to death for the liberties she had granted him. Every detail was clear to her, as if these things had happened in the past and not some version of the future, and as if she were doomed to play them endlessly in memory. The fey stretched him out in one of their bright chambers, stretched and snipped his body in their delicate machines and made a game of him, and the genasi too. They cocked their heads quizzically, unused to cries of pain.
My lady, this is the Princess Marabaldia, said someone else, an old eladrin who had come up through the ranks of cyclopses, leaning on a woman s arm.
It is my pleasure to encounter you, said the monster, her voice beautiful and low, her tone formal and polite. But Amaranth stared into her eye, and in its surface she saw a moving portrait of herself in her nephew s arms, dancing stiffly and correctly as if in a darkened room. She could see her own back, the line of freckles underneath her shoulder blade, because her back was bare.
Oh, but one day she would be a queen, and the mother of kings and queens. As she watched herself, she heard with part of her mind the peculiar, airless voice of Gaspar-shen, as he came hurrying back.
I saw them, he said. Prince Araithe and his people. They have come from Winterglen eladrin mostly, and a few drow. They are camped in the big cavern, a quarter mile from here. Many hundreds, it looks like. His mother is not with them.
His voice was high and calm. Marabaldia had laid her spear against the wall. Now she picked it up. I will be glad to see the prince again, she said grimly.
Captain, said Gaspar-shen, it is too many. There are warlocks and mages, and more than a hundred knights. Prince Araithe is very strong.
We ve beaten him before, said Marabaldia.
That was Poke, Suka reminded her. And Poke is dead.
Lukas felt Amaranth press his hand and then let go. He didn t know who Poke was. But he felt immensely tired. He remembered the recent fight, the mounds of corpses, and he felt their presence in the darkness around him, beyond the limit of all these glowing eyes. Nor did their spirits reassure him. But the air was stale with their breath, and thick, and hard to breathe.
Gaspar-shen was staring at Amaranth. We can t fight them, he said. If the prince wants what I think he wants.
Lukas was too tired to argue. The dead hung close around them.
We have no choice, he said, bending to pick up his drow saber. An unfamiliar weapon, yet he would make it sing.
Poke is dead? asked Lady Amaranth. Slowly, as if unwillingly, she turned to him.
The gnome was looking at her as if she had two heads. Ah, forgive me, she said to Marabaldia. It is the Yellow Rose of Sarifal.
Amaranth put up her hands. Let us make an end to all this fighting.
The cyclopses had focused their regard. She stood in their eyes light as if on stage, her shadow stretching out behind her. And because she seemed to Lukas suddenly like an actress on a stage, he made himself aware of every tiny gesture, aware of how she moved her fingers as if caressing the soft breeze, aware also of how the part she played was different from the person she had been not ten minutes before.
There s another way, she said. Let me speak to my nephew. He ll grant you safe passage. He ll do what I say.
Her red hair hung listless. Her freckled cheeks were chapped and preternaturally pale in that strange light. Her eyes were wide and determined, or else afraid. Later, on board ship, his own gaze fixed deliberately on the horizon, he would remember how she didn t look at him as she stepped backward into the shadow. He would remember how no one spoke. He would remember how it seemed for a moment as if she had something more to say. But then maybe she thought better of whatever it was. After a moment she turned, and the darkness consumed her. They listened to her soft footsteps receding, and then nothing.
Later, on board ship, Suka would tell Gaspar-shen and him her entire story, and he would tell her everything he knew. But now, they all stared at one another as if they were strangers. After twenty minutes, as they waited, Marabaldia called for a rest, for the first time on the march from Synnoria. She herself did not let go her spear. She sent some of the fomorians up ahead, and she posted a guard, but the rest of the cyclopses opened their packs and pulled out bottles of water, and loaves of bread, and links of sausages, and sat down or lay down, and they made camp.