The Rose of Sarifal (14 page)

The light that flowed from the angel, transfiguring and pure, was now the greatest source of light in the noisome cavern. Whatever object it touched, it seemed to light it from within. The surface of the stone table glowed, and the sleeping bulk of the Beastlord also appeared to glow, each black hair alight. Kip had fallen to the side, and he seemed asleep, though with an egg of light inside his chest that illuminated the bands of his ribs. Argon Bael swung his sword, which seemed to cut away the lies from everyone it touched, leaving them defenseless. One of the druids was already dead, his naked body gnawed to the bone. The other
cowered in a corner, a simple human woman wrapped in a wolf’s skin.

The Savage stood over her, protecting her, his own sword branching with electric current—a winged, batlike creature sprang at him, and he slashed it from the air. Marikke hung above him. The wolf-men had fled, leaving her alone. Now, undistracted by their malice, she could work on the manacles that held her, which had been made for someone with larger wrists. Her own were slippery with sweat. She was able to slip the heel of her left hand through the ring, little by little, while at the same time she watched the duel that moved below her, tentative at first, as the opponents took each other’s measure. The angel’s sword separated truth from darkness, and when the light of it cut across the Savage’s face, Marikke gasped in astonishment as she worked her left hand free, for suddenly she understood why she had mistrusted him all this time. She had been right to hate him, wrong to feel guilty or unfair. What the golden elf did, whether he behaved nobly or honorably, manipulatively or arrogantly, all that was unimportant now that she saw him for what he was, revealed in the light of the angel’s stroke, which cleaved the air. The Savage’s beautiful features, his golden hair and green eyes, all that was a lie.

In her mind she prayed to Chauntea without ceasing, begging her to reduce the pain in her wrists and strip away the living tissue also, reduce her proud flesh. This was a piece of ritual abasement with a metaphorical meaning. Tonight, Marikke meant it in cold
seriousness—smaller, made little, she could slide herself free from the intolerable manacles, the intolerable pain in her shoulders as she swung and dangled back and forth. “Free me from the bonds of care,” she prayed, meaning the words literally for the first time in her life—a tiny slip, her wrists greased with sweat.

Below her she could see the Savage’s demonic form rise to the surface of his skin, as his eyes took on an unholy reddish flush, as his pupils narrowed into vertical slits.

Marikke prayed:

Earthmother, let my outward form reflect my inner misery. Squeeze me of excess. Make me little, as I have no desire to be great
.

The sweat dripped from her fingers. In a moment, in her despair, she found herself sufficiently diminished to feel the grip of her iron bonds soften for an instant—Chauntea had heard her. Below, the Savage struggled with the angel. The red sword rang against the white one, and the air trembled with the force of the electric charge. Momentarily revealed, the golden elf’s fiendish nature was now obscured in the storm of battle, which had taken on an elemental quality. Under her, a devil raised his sword against an angel of vengeance, and which side was she on? The devil, the daemonfey, surely he fought for her, to free her and Kip from their imprisonment on the altar of the Beastlord. Surely he had climbed down this winding tunnel to release her from the pit of death, swung his blade against the army of her enemies, whose smoking and disemboweled
corpses lay around him—the rest of the lycanthropes had pulled back against the walls to watch the red sword press against the white one. Marikke could see their eyes shining in the circles of conflicting light, and some of the awestruck lycanthropes had laid their heads down on their paws.

How could the Savage have hid himself from her for so long and so successfully? With what intolerable and astonishing effort of will had he kept that cast of red out of his green eyes, kept that pretty elf delicacy in his hands and movement? Even when he was asleep his fingers had not relaxed into claws, and spines of bone had not protruded from his skin—she had seen him aboard the
Sphinx
, wrapped in slumber and his black robe. Even now, when the angel’s wings shone above him, an effect more of light and shadow than of flesh, there was no trace of competing bat wings, no sign of a scaly or barbed tail protruding from his trousers. Was it possible she was mistaken? No, but she had seen his demon’s eyes when the light of the angel’s sword crossed his face, and she had recognized in his terrible beauty the wide forehead and high cheekbones of House Dlardrageth itself. And surely it was no ordinary elf that could press Malar’s avenging angel down against the stone table, hammering and pounding the red sword against the white.

Her hands aching, her arms insensible, Marikke prayed:

Great Mother, help me to choose wisely—

Better yet, you make the choice
.

Finally it was as if the goddess had acquiesced, had bowed her head, and Marikke’s tightly folded palms slipped through the manacles, and she was falling, just at the moment when Argon Bael parried the red sword and flung it upward in a last desperate attempt. The Savage staggered back, his sword point flailing wide. But before the angel could leap on his advantage, Marikke had tumbled onto his back. She felt the burning, shining skin. She had fallen perhaps twenty feet onto his back, which was enough to knock him to his knees, while at the same time she heard the goddess’s voice—the same impertinent little girl whom she had seen in her distorted recollection of the guildhall in Callidyrr, as if through a shard of broken glass, a little girl in a green dress who spoke into her ear as she rolled, stunned, from the angel’s back and slid down to the floor: “Malar doesn’t need him.”

The Savage stood above them. The red blade hammered home. The white one flickered and went out. Extinguished suddenly, it left the cavern rinsed in darkness, except for the guttering red flame along the blade of the demon elf. The torches were all out. Some of the lycanthropes were whimpering, other screaming softly in the sweating air. Marikke rolled onto her side.

She had fallen away from the table and lay on the greasy floor. Her arms were hot and numb. Raising her head, she saw a glow on the stone tabletop, a sphere of radiance. She imagined the black bulk of the unconscious god, and Kip’s discarded body, while at
the same time she listened to the voice in her ear, the muddy little urchin from the slums of Alaron.

“Good and bad, evil and kind,” the girl lectured primly. “They’re just words in the Common tongue. Maybe they mean something to you. But I can’t be described that way. I am bigger than you can imagine. We all are—we that you call gods. If we create, then we destroy. If we destroy, then we create. Look—Great Malar lives.”

Marikke didn’t turn her head. Instead she saw clearly in her mind’s eye the little girl with her tangled hair, freckled face, chapped lips, snot-caked nose, stained teeth. At the same time she was looking at the daemonfey who leaned wearily upon his sword above the body of his defeated enemy. His face was lit with a reflected radiance. He bowed his head, then lifted one hand as if in supplication.

All around the table, the lycanthropes had pressed their cheeks against the agate tiles of the cavern floor. Tense and immobile at the same time, they showed in their various postures the submissive urgency of beasts. From time to time Marikke could hear a little whimper of excitement, quickly suppressed. Something was rising from the surface of the stone tabletop. She had seen images of Malar in the pantheon of gods, an enormous panther with red eyes, and claws as long as swords. But Marikke, as she turned her head, already knew she wouldn’t see anything like that. Instead she saw Kip, the little cat-shifter, standing with his legs apart, his flesh transfigured as if lit from within, a tiny smile on his lips, and a black kitten struggling in his hands.

T
HE
C
LIMBING
R
OSE

I
N THE OLD HUMAN CAPITAL OF
C
AER
M
ORAY
, L
UKAS
moved among the beasts. During the battle on the ridgetop an orc had cut him in the side and broken three ribs. His life had never been in danger, and he was healing. The previous night he had slept on an actual straw mattress on an actual bed, and in the afternoon he toured the battlements.

He leaned forward on his elbows on the old stones, looking out over the sea of Moonshae with its white-capped waves. A fresh wind blew from the north. Lady Amaranth stood beside him, dressed in a gray wool cape—the day was pretty, though the air was cold. In places, arrows of sunlight split the clouds and struck the dark water underneath, making it tremble and glisten.

“Thank you,” said Lukas, finally. “You saved our lives, my friend and me.”

“Captain, we have you to thank. Without you, we would have come too late. Those women would have died.”

She meant the Northlanders. The orcs had raided and burned a settlement along the coast, poor fishermen
and crofters growing potatoes in the stony soil. They had killed the men and children, and stolen the women. Idly, briefly, Lukas wondered if it was merciful to salvage the lives of people who had lost so much. But life is always precious and the mind can heal. He knew this from experience. Besides, it didn’t matter. Stupid evil—like those orcs—must always be confronted and attacked if the world was to continue turning.

Amaranth glanced at him. “You must forgive me,” she said, “if I don’t know what to say. I have lived for a long time alone among my people, separate from my own kind. And I thought there were things I understood. You are a … man, isn’t that so? A human male?”

“Last I checked.”

She did not smile. “I determined this as I was tending you, the night before last. It came as a surprise. You must forgive me, but my life has been … sheltered in some ways, and there is much I do not understand. I must ask you—why did you attack those creatures at such risk to yourselves?”

“The orcs? I hate them.”

She nodded as if satisfied. “It was from hatred. And if you had chased them away, despite the odds, and found those women still alive, what would you have done?”

Lukas shrugged. “I hadn’t gotten that far.”

“Because you were blind from hatred. I see that. So you would have taken them for yourselves. Mated with them.”

Startled, Lukas turned to face her. “I don’t think you understand. These women, they aren’t my concern. I was glad to help them. But I have friends who are in
danger, and I blame myself. I was stupid to bring them to this island, stupid not to follow them, stupid to have lost them. Even now, if I felt I could run, and if my friend wasn’t so hurt, I would be after them.”

Amaranth looked puzzled. Her brow furrowed, and she rubbed her nose. “Your friend—I think I am the stupid one,” she said. “If you didn’t want the women, why did you attack the orcs? Oh, blind hatred, I think you said …”

Like all eladrin she was beautiful, an impossible, mournful beauty. Because they lived so long, even young they had no springtime in them, no sense of freshness or urgency. When Lukas was an old man she would look like this. For hundreds of years after his death, she would look like this, her skin clean as paper, her red hair blowing around her face. A leShay, or half a leShay, there was no telling how long she’d live. What would it feel like to be at the beginning of such a journey?

“I ask you,” she said, “because it’s hard not to imagine from what you say, that these instincts that drive you are in some way … valuable. Friendship. Loyalty. Sacrifice. Even guilt and self-doubt. And yet you are a … man.”

Suddenly bored, Lukas turned away. “Stick to the blind hatred,” he murmured. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to see someone.” He had left Gaspar-shen at noon, his head bound up, asleep.

“But I do not excuse you,” said Lady Amaranth. “You do not have my permission to leave me.”

She had turned around with him, and now they stood with their backs to the sea, looking down over
one of the courtyards toward the base of the ruined keep. Below them the lycanthropes worked among the tumbled stones, sorting them and shaping them. As far as Lukas could tell, the curtain walls were complete. But these interiors needed some work. Caer Moray had been sacked during the Spellplague, and then abandoned for a hundred years.

Amaranth made a delicate gesture with her fingers. “These are my … people,” she said. “We keep no male animals inside the gates, no bulls or rams. Instead we have … ewes, and mares, and bitches. Lots of bitches,” she murmured, and Lukas studied her face, to see if she was aware that what she said might be considered funny—that Suka, for example, would have laughed. But there was no hint of humor in her face. In a moment, Lukas found his heart go out to her, because how could it be otherwise? For ten years, since she was nine years old, she had lived on Moray Island, alone among the humorless beasts.

She had told him some of the story the first night, as they descended through the thick woods toward the coast. And of course Lady Ordalf, her sister, had already given him the bones of it in Corwell; how traitors had stolen her away and packed her onto a hippogriff somewhere in the highlands above Myrloch Vale; how the hippogriff’s rider, wounded, had taken her off course and fallen into the sea; how she had come to Moray, alone and defenseless. Even the first night after the battle, walking along the forest path in the rain, suffering with his shattered ribs and bleeding side, leaning on a broken
spear, Lukas had regretted the judgments he had come to earlier, when he had imagined some kind of collusion between the sisters—it was not like that. If this girl had been lonely in her isolation here, at least she had not been ruined by the fey.