Caine's Law (45 page)

“Hey.”

The horse-witch comes to me and reaches across the rope to take my hand. “You look scared.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Probably only to me.”

“I guess you’ve known me a lot longer than I’ve known you.”

She smiles. “I’ve known you a lot longer than you’ve known anybody.”

I’ll give her that one. “What about my—uh, the girl?”

“I don’t know.” The horse-witch tilts her head. A trace of frown wrinkles her brow. “Sometimes she’s here. This time she isn’t.”

“All right.” A long sigh heaves some of the weight off my shoulders. “Maybe it’s better this way.”

“That’s a matter too deep for me.”

“You know how to get there from here, right? The whole place is probably concealed somehow. Glamour or something.”

“I’ve been there before.”

I blink. “You have?”

“I have been—”

“Unusual places, yeah, I remember. Listen, you and Angvasse can get him up there even if he’s, well … if he has to be tied up or something?”

She looks thoughtful and shrugs with half a nod. “It’d be more convenient if you can talk him into cooperating.”

“Yeah, except that’ll involve, y’know, talking to him.”

“Is that why you’re scared? Is it him?”

“No, it’s me. Well, it is him. And me. Hell, I don’t know. It’s just … it’s like I can’t make myself talk to him. Not here. Not when I’m … well, me.” A heavy sigh. Letting it go doesn’t make it any lighter. “I know what he thinks of men like me.”

“He doesn’t know any men like you. Except the one he sees in mirrors.”

“That’s not exactly a compliment. To either of us.”

“It wasn’t flattery.” She squeezes my hand. I squeeze hers.

And smile.

In the camp, Angvasse cradles one survivor—Ridpath, if I’m remembering the right digigraph in
Tales
, a University cop on detached duty for
field security—as she prays away his wounds. Nearby, the other survivor is on one knee, his shoulders bowed, his big square hand resting lightly on the brow of the one who didn’t survive.

My heart lurches out of rhythm and thumps hard, twice, three times, and I barely stop myself from slipping my arm around those bowed shoulders of his. What he’s gonna go through—what the rest of his life is gonna be … Christ, I wish I didn’t know.

At least he doesn’t. That’s something. If this goes close enough to right, he still has five or six good years before reality fucks his dreams and shits on the last of his hope. Five or six good years is more than most people get.

He flinches when I clear my throat behind him. I give him a second to get hold of himself. “You’re the professor, right?”

He takes a deep breath and comes to his feet without turning to face me, still looking down at his dead friend. “Instructor,” he says, slow and distant. “This is … uh, I’m doing fieldwork. For my dissertation. That’s like a—huh. Never mind. It’s not important.”

With a visible effort of will, he makes himself face me. He’s pale as ice, and his eyes are clouded and wet, and he has to swallow before he can speak. I don’t blame him for being nervy, even though I put away my weapons and he’s damn near twice my size. He’s seen a lot of men die today. He watched me kill most of them. Considering his entire previous experience with violent death comes from old movies and web games, it takes a lot of balls for him to look me square in the face from only an arm’s length away.

“Are you a religious man?”

“Not really.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Depends on the god.”

“He was Christian.” A flick of a glance down at the corpse. “It’s a faith of my native land. The One God makes of Himself a mortal man, and allows Himself to die on a cross to atone for the sins of humanity. I have just commended this man’s spirit into His Hands.”

“All kinds of people die on crosses. I’m mostly interested in the ones who survive.”

The ghost of an acknowledging nod. “Why does it feel like a sin to pray to a God I don’t believe exists?”

Okay, I’m over the scared. “Maybe it’s a sin against your intellectual self-respect.”

The clouds in his eyes evaporate, and his gaze sharpens like he’s seeing me for the first time. “You’re speaking English.”

“So are you.”

“Your accent—urban North America. West Coast. Downcaste with Professional overtone—Labor with elocution lessons. Oakland? How does an Oakland Laborer come to the eastern slopes of the God’s Teeth?”

“Well, look at you. Henry fucking ’iggins.”

“Ah … sorry—I’m sorry. It’s a—well, it’s a reflex. I can’t believe I didn’t notice already. But I’m a little …”

“You’re having a tough day.”

“I’m Duncan Michaelson.” He sticks out a hand. “And you are?”

“Somebody you don’t want to know that well.”

He leaves his hand hanging there, so I put the folding knife in it. “This yours?”

“Yes—yes, it is. Thank you.” He clutches it like he’s grateful to have something to hang on to. “I’ve had it a long time.”

“You carry a black knife.” Like the universe just made a mild pun.

“I’m very fond of it.” He tries out a warm smile while he puts it away. “You do seem familiar somehow.”

Because I favor my mother, who he’s already in love with, but telling him so won’t do either of us any good. “I get that a lot.”

“Well—thank you. I’m sorry I didn’t thank you already. You saved our lives.”

“We didn’t do it for you.”

“Oh—ah, of course.” His eyes cloud over again. “I have some silver, of course, and our people will gladly pay you for our safe return.”

“I want you to do something for me.”

He takes half a step back, his face closed again, wary. “My gratitude extends only so far.”

“Let’s start with what I can offer you.”

“Beyond our lives?”

“What if I could get you a one-on-one with T’ffarrell Mithondionne?”

“The Ravenlock?” His eyes widen, but then narrow again, skeptical. “I’ve begun to wonder if the whole King of the Elves business isn’t just some combination of folktale and inside joke.”

“Let’s say it isn’t. Hypothetically. If I could put you in a room with the Ravenlock, and he’s willing to answer questions. To tell you any story you want to hear.”

“Hypothetically …” He chuckles, shaking his head. “For a chance like that, I’d sell my hypothetical soul.”

My turn to try the warm smile. “That’s the answer I’m looking for.”

It’s a glade. I’m in a glade. I’ve been walking. I walked into this glade.

I must have, because I’ve been walking.

It’s pretty. More than pretty: green-tinged sunbeams and gently whispering leaves, and somewhere nearby a waterfall hushes beyond the trees. Like I’ve walked into a painting. It smells more than nice too: wildflowers and clean rising sap, apples and pears and maybe even peaches, fresh black dirt, and I’ve been in a lot of forests and none of them actually smell like this. This place looks and smells and feels like I could turn around and bump into Snow White. I probably should know what I’m doing here.

I feel like I do know. But I don’t know
what
I know.

Wait.

Fucking elves. Primals, feyin, whatever. I know this spell.

I close my eyes and turn in place, counterclockwise, and count off each revolution. “Three. Two. One.”

It’s not a counterspell, just a mnemonic to trigger a conditioned logic-cascade. Straightforward application of Control Discipline. If I hadn’t been so distracted by how beautiful this place is, fucker never would have caught me in the first place.

I open my eyes. “Maybe you should come on out. On my best day, I’m not a patient man.”

Dust motes swirling through the glade’s green-shaded sunbeam organize themselves and coalesce into a tall fey whose face could have been chipped out of frozen limestone. He doesn’t even pretend to be real; his voice is blended of wind and birdsong.
Feral humans are not welcome in this land
.

“I’m not feral.”

He gives me an insufferably superior sneer. Reminds me of Kierendal.
The word
feral
means only that—

“I know what it fucking means, jackass. I’m not feral. I’m from the Quiet Land.”

What can you possibly know of the Quiet Land?

“That’s what I’m here to talk about.”

Your shallow puddle of amusement has now wholly evaporated. Go
.

“Ooh, good one. You’re like the three-year-old girl of smack talk.”

You may depart unharmed
.

“And with some luck I’ll never have to bring up that you said so.” Keeping my voice level is tougher than I expected. “I need to see the Ravenlock. Or really, y’know, he needs to see me. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

You can walk out freely. Or be made to walk out. Less than freely
.

Hey, I know this tune. “Look, I’m not here to cause trouble. But you should know I won’t mind.”

The dust-mote elf extends an insubstantial hand, and power gathers around it.
Begone, beast! Back to your filth!

“Um, well, when you put it that way …” I shrug. “No.”

His eyes widen, his feathery brow compresses, and the shimmer of power around his hand brightens until the glare hurts my eyes.
Banished thou art. Leave this place now with all thine speed, and never think to return!

“Some kinds of magick work on me,” I tell him. “Other kinds.”

His other hand comes up. The glow crackles lightning between them.
Then bide where you are. Wait without motion, without breath, without thought, a man of stone—

“Nope.”

Strike forever all light from your eye—

“Sorry.” And I am, a little. Very little. “It’s not your fault.”

The elf’s face goes pensive. He reluctantly lowers his hands.
Who are you, and what do you here?

“You first.”

I am Quelliar, Eldest of Massall. I ward this approach to the Living Palace, as have feyin of my House for ten thousand years
.

He says that like he’s proud of it. I guess I would be too. Something about his name, though … I’ve heard it before. Where? “You can call me Dominic Shade.”

I can call you whatever I please
, he says, a little tartly.
Is Dominic Shade your name?

I shrug. “Today.”

And your business, Dominic Shade Today?

“I told you already.”

And yet have offered no reason you should be allowed to defile Mithondion with your reek of rancid sweat and breath of crow vomit. With your filthy human feet and—

“Yeah, yeah. Filthy human whatever.” Ahh, got it. I know who he is.

I can’t exactly tell him, since most of what I know about him is that forty-six or -seven years from now, Raithe will murder him in Vinson Garrette’s reception chamber … but even a little knowledge is a dangerous
thing. “Quelliar Massalle, huh? How’s your little sister—what’s her name, Finall?”

The simulated fey goes still. Absolutely still: a rabbit at the footfall of a wolf.

“And your father, the Massal. Querrisynne.” Because I really don’t like his attitude, I let him have one straight. “He’s going to outlive you.”

And how do you hope to even find my person, let alone do me harm?

“It’s not a threat.”

No? What then might it be?

“Prophecy.”

From a feral?

“A man will kill you, but I am not that man.” Abruptly my mind is made up. If it’s gonna work at all, it should start working with this fucker.

I reach inside my tunic and pull out the black satin choker. The blood on it is long dry, brown and flaky. “See this? Take it to the Ravenlock. You fu—you, uh, people have magick and shit, you can tell who this belonged to, right?”

He looks at it like I’m offering a handful of dog turd.
Even immortal, I lack time to waste on feral mummery
.

Feral mummery this, fucker. “Tell the Ravenlock it’s a keepsake from Torronell.”

His eyes go all feline and slitty.
The Youngest of Mithondion has been dead for centuries
.

“For a corpse, he gives a pretty good blow job.”

The breeze and birdsong voice does a pretty fair imitation of somebody gargling puke.

“I’m not the only human who knows where he is and how he makes his living, but I can and do guarantee absolute silence on these matters in exchange for ten minutes of T’ffarrell Mithondionne’s attention. That’s all. He needs to know what I’m here to tell him.”

A subtle shift in his expression—he’s finally decided to take me seriously.
Abide. Should your passage be permitted, I will come for you
.

“No more fucking spells either.”

Abide
, he says, and dissolves into a swirl of sunlight.

The Living Palace is kind of impressive, because, y’know, building a vast intricate castle out of stone is one thing. Takes a long time and everything, sure—but how long does it take to
grow
one?

Hundreds of trees—thousands—woven together as they grew. Sequoia
or something. Old beyond years and vast beyond conception. Gently teased together, shaped, and polished, self-supporting in a branching structure hundreds of feet tall, far beyond the height of any trees on Earth, at least since there’s been people around to look at them. It so ridiculously transcends description that the only useful comparison would be to Yggdrasil, and even that doesn’t do it justice.

Deliann told me once that the Mithondion stronghold had been designed and begun by his grandfather Panchasell—the same fey who created the
dil
T’llan—ten thousand years ago. Until you actually see the fucking thing, those are just words. And then you walk in and somebody takes you to the Heartwood Hall, which is the formal audience chamber of the Mithondionne kings and just a hair too small for dragons to play rugby in, and you realize that you are standing inside a living being who is roughly the same age as human civilization …

Language fails.

It’s worth mentioning that the place has kicked all my usual cocky so far up my ass that it’s coming out my eyeballs. It’s not an overstatement to say that awe doesn’t have much hold on me, and
reverence
is a word I’d have to look up to be sure what it means, but when I walk up onto the Flame, a round red-gleaming disk inlaid in front of the royal gallery, it’s all I can do to not fall to my knees.