The Rose of Sarifal (31 page)

Then they stopped moving. Each had found a corner of the room, and their voices fell into a kind of unison, as if they were reciting a catechism they all knew by heart: “Of all insects, she is the most industrious, the thriftiest, and the most useful, a model for all mothers at their looms, and fathers at their nets in the dark water. All storytellers owe a debt to her, all musicians and artists, and all kings and queens who strive to weave a pattern in the world’s fabric. Cruelly abandoned and cast into the Abyss, despised by Corellon Larethian, her children’s father, still she was able to redeem herself, because of the thousand female virtues that we celebrate in our lives …”

All this was part of Araushnee’s lament, Lukas guessed, the Spider Queen’s self-serving liturgy. Other races had different ways of spinning this same
narrative. He was interested, though, in the language of redemption, which seemed fresh to him, a fresh motif in the goddess’s history. Cast into the Abyss, given a new disgusting name and shape, she had dragged anyone who worshiped her down into darkness, away from the light. Thousands of years before, the dark elves had left their forest halls to migrate downward to the Underdark, drawn into a web of lies. But perhaps they had dreams now of returning to the surface, which were echoed and reflected in the goddess’s prayers: “Soon she will come back,” the elf maidens chanted. “The Earthmother has permitted it. She will guide her to her rightful place among the Seldarine, just as she raised Malar the Beastlord out of the Abyss …”

This sounded delusional to Lukas. But there is no creature so debased that she cannot dream of rehabilitation, and in any case he wondered if this new story was connected to the mystery he’d been untying and retying in his mind since Lady Amaranth had told him the story of her flight to Moray on the hippogriff’s back. Not the spite of her leShay relatives, which was only to be expected, so much as their association with the drow, because it was the dark elves who had ambushed the princess and her dragonborn guards in the highlands above Myrloch Vale ten years before.

As he watched Amaranth now, entranced, her face pretty with delight, holding her own light source above her head, Lukas felt his regrets overtake him and confuse his way forward. He stood, sword in hand, on a raised dais in a shrine to Lolth—he didn’t know where.
But if Lady Amaranth was correct, and if her vision had been a true moment of transcendence and not some illusion perpetrated by her enemies, then they had found their way to Gwynneth Island, perhaps through some tunnel in the Underdark. In the dumb luck that sometimes smiled upon him, perhaps, he had succeeded in bringing her to Sarifal, to the kingdom of the fey, as Lady Ordalf had asked of him. In which case he might win Suka’s freedom from the dungeon where she rotted with the others, the disgusting fomorian giantess and the lycanthropic pig.

But how could he feel happy about delivering the princess to her enemies? And even if he had warned her against them, still his responsibility could not end there, because she had been raised in innocence. Her memory of Karador was tinted with nostalgia, nor could she have any understanding of the treacherous whims and stratagems that moved like weather through the beautiful landscape of Sarifal. Her sister had required her death, had been willing to pay a hoard of gold for it, for reasons she had not bothered to explain. But that was tendays ago, and Lukas could only hope she had forgotten, or the caprice had left her—almost immortal, the leShays’ memories must be made of cheesecloth, doddering intellects preserved in perfect bodies, and it was no wonder if their wishes and commands were senseless, or changed from hour to hour. Whoever sent these girls to welcome Amaranth back home meant her no harm.

“Where are we?” he said.

Near him the wolf-maiden had risen to her feet, a dark-haired girl with high cheekbones and blue eyes. She stared at him, her face still streaked with tears, and he felt another quick surge of regret—where was the Savage now? Where was the daemonfey, his friend, who had fought against the Beastlord to cover their escape?

“You are in Citadel Umbra,” said the leader of the drow priestesses. “I am Amaka, and these are my sisters, Onyiye, Chinedu, and Kemdelime—” the others curtseyed. “We are the handmaidens of Araushnee, whom you call Lolth, the Spider Queen. We are in search of Lady Amaranth leShay, to bring her to her rightful place in the house of her ancestors, where a masquerade has been commanded in her honor, a festival of lights, prepared for the spring solstice by Prince Araithe, her nephew, the ruler of this land …” They chattered on and on, a circle of high, laughing voices. Amaka raised her lantern. “I recognize you,” she said to the wolf-girl. “The beauty of the leShays is legendary in all of Faerûn.”

“No doubt,” said Lady Amaranth, stepping down from the stone dais onto the temple floor among the blooms and vines. She looked back and smiled uncertainly. “I am Amaranth,” she said.

“My name is Eleuthra Davos,” returned the wolf-girl. “I am an emissary of Derid Kendrick, the Ffolk king of Alaron, sent to—”

“The Ffolk king, the Ffolk king,” chattered Amaka and the rest, oblivious to their mistake. “Perhaps he will come to our masquerade.”

Lukas thought it was unlikely. Nevertheless, there was something touching about these misplaced hopes.

“Oh,” the drow girl went on, “perhaps besides the solstice and Lady Amaranth’s return we might celebrate for one night only the end of fighting in these islands, when the elves and the fomorians, all of us, will dance under the moon. When Queen Araushnee takes her place among the Seldarine, and the family of gods comes together, just as this family, here, has woven itself together with a spider’s silk. At long last the dark elves will see the morning come—” on and on, until Lukas had to wonder if they were drugged or drunk, stung with some enchanting spider’s venom. He himself felt his heart rising as he stepped down to the ground, and allowed one of the priestesses (Chinedu? Kemdelime? He had already forgotten the rest of their names) to guide him toward the tunnel’s mouth. Surrounded with such pretty women, who could feel sad, and who could dread the future? He had sheathed his sword. He looked back for Gaspar-shen who stalked behind, unaffected and bemused.

“Citadel Umbra—I remember my uncle,” said Lady Amaranth, drawn on by Amaka ahead of Lukas. “I think I was seven years old when I came here. I remember combing his gray hair, even though he was my nephew, thinking how handsome he was …”

The tunnel was carved through living rock, and the light from the lanterns caught at seams of glistening minerals along the raw, unfinished surface. They passed the black, gaping holes of many side corridors and
caves. Amaranth had put her light aside, but up ahead, a new source of illumination burst from the tunnel’s end, and there was music up there too, a dancing jig that nevertheless managed to maintain the haunting sadness of all eladrin melodies. Finally they stepped out into a larger grotto, through whose entrance they could see the firelight outside in the open air under the night sky—how long had they lain, dazed, in Lolth’s shrine? Lukas had thought these transformations to be instantaneous.

He guessed the tunnels they’d traversed had once been mines, cut by the shield dwarves and then enlarged, perhaps, by the drow, a route below Winterglen into the Underdark. The grotto looked natural to him, its roof gleaming with semiprecious crystals, green and yellow, peridot and citrine. A small cliff, perhaps thirty feet tall, formed the curved edge of a clearing in a forest of evergreens, a deep grassy glade with a stream running through it. On the other side, along the border of the forest, stood a half circle of silk pavilions, richly colored, and lit from the inside with charcoal braziers. By the banks of the stream there was a bonfire, and around it a small crowd of elves of all colors, eladrin and other fey, and nearby a small orchestra of a dozen human musicians, Ffolk slaves playing a tune Lukas recognized. It was a reel composed by Cymon the False, but tarted up in this performance with timbrels and bells. Better would have been a simpler arrangement of woodwinds and strings, played to a faster tempo. Better would have been a little joy. Instead, as often with the fey, you got a kind of brittle, frantic, melancholy gaiety—lords
and ladies, dressed in silks and velvets, capered on the grass, their faces hidden behind leather masks fringed in ostrich feathers. Painted and bejeweled, spotted and discolored, with witchlike noses and leering mouths, these masks concealed or else at least attempted to conceal the dancers’ endless beauty and eternal health, boring and tragic even to themselves.

This was not the first time it had occurred to Lukas to thank the gods for his mortality. Lady Amaranth was behind him, and she touched his sleeve. He paused to take her hand, but she didn’t want anything like that. Instead she pushed past him, murmuring excitedly, for she had seen a gray-haired man in a golden mask and a long velvet cloak, untied and open down the front. He stood near the fire. Turning, he reached out his hands then came toward them while the handmaidens of Lolth spun out into the field, chattering and singing.

Lukas guessed this was Prince Araithe, the son of Lady Ordalf, whom he had last seen in Caer Corwell. He was of medium height, and his cloak, when it flapped open, revealed a silver doublet, plum-colored hose, and a silver, tasseled codpiece, a style both ugly and pathetic, in Lukas’s opinion. Lukas was not disposed to like Araithe anyway, but was surprised by the violence of his own reaction as the man approached. Araithe lifted his mask with a right hand that also seemed fashioned entirely of gold, with the elegant, contrived fingers of a clockwork mannequin.

“Is it really you?” he asked. “When the priestesses told me of their dream, I thought it was too much to ask.”

And Lady Amaranth, because of her vulnerability and the blindness of her need, never hesitated. Lukas watched the two of them come together as if partners in a different dance, to a different rhythm. “I’ve prayed for this,” said Prince Araithe, his voice soft and pretty. “A long time—there are too few of us to keep apart. Whatever reason you had for leaving us—all is forgiven now.”

He put his arm around her shoulders. “The price you have paid, the hardships you have endured, let us not speak of them. Or if we must, imagine them as a test to bring you to this place. Your mother and father are dead now. But I am guardian of this tower, and I will be everything to you—mother, father, brother, sister, nephew, uncle, and more besides. There are too few of us to make distinctions, and we will be together for a long time. Everything I have is yours, and I will share it with you equally, for the sake of our shared blood. The world is vast, but we will find shelter …”

She laid her cheek against his breast. Lukas stayed near enough to listen to the prince’s murmurings, and now he caught his eye above her hair. Araithe’s golden fingers made a little gesture of dismissal. But Lukas persevered until a crease of anger marred the perfection of the prince’s forehead, and he moved away from the girl’s embrace. “Make yourself useful,” he said. “Bring my lady something to drink.”

Hogsheads of wine were open on the turf, and Amaka came toward them, a goblet in each hand. She herself had had enough to drink, Lukas decided, judging from
the unsteadiness of her little dance, the way the wine slopped from the crystal cups, the delirious sparkle in her eye.

Lukas put up his palm to forestall her. “Sir,” he said, “your mother promised me three hundred thalers to bring your aunt to Gwynneth Island. In addition, she was keeping a friend of mine in Caer Corwell as her guest, in security—”

The prince interrupted him. “My mother promised you more gold than she had, and paid you more than you are worth. I encourage you to drink a glass of wine then take your leave of us—in safety, with your friends.” He glanced at Gaspar-shen. “As for the person you speak of, I’m afraid I have bad news. She endeavored to escape from my mother’s hospitality, and was killed in the attempt, not by any force of ours, but by a treacherous lycanthrope, a pig from Moray Island.”

He was not clever, Lukas decided, this prince who lived for thousands of years. Time had robbed him of that. Lady Amaranth stiffened, and with her forefinger she touched the climbing rose tattoo under her jaw. She looked toward Lukas and he turned away, wanting to let her think about the possibility of spending eternity in this place, with its bad music and bad company and wine that, he guessed, would have been eighth rate even if it hadn’t been poisoned or full of magic—the fey were no good at ephemera, which was after all what most of civilization was. He waved to her without looking, as if he were washing his hands of the whole business—job well done—cut his losses—Suka was dead; he doubted
that. This lump of leShay shit wasn’t capable of telling the truth. If he said she was alive and well, then Lukas might worry. He affected a frown, as if he were afraid the prince might possibly rescind his offer of safe conduct and, nodding to Gaspar-shen, he went in search of the wolf-girl, whom he found squatting near the border of the trees, head in her hands. He went down on one knee beside her.

“Tell me,” he said.

And so she told him about Bishtek Dlardrageth—strange to call him that. The Dlardrageth had mixed their elf blood with demons out of the Abyss millennia before. More recently, in Spellplague times, Sarya Dlardrageth had gotten loose from prison and had fought some stupid war. From her defeat, Lukas guessed, his friend’s father had escaped and hid himself, had tried to cleanse his son of all demonic traces, and had failed.

These thoughts went through him in a moment. They occupied one part of his attention, while with the other he listened to the druid; how she had fought in Malar’s temple below Scourtop, where the Savage had gone to help his friends—she gave him that much credit, though he had failed, of course; they had both failed, and Malar had been hauled out of the pit, and Chauntea’s priestess and the boy were dead.

Lukas didn’t look at her. He stared out toward the bonfire where the elves danced, dark elves, mostly. Two others drew his attention, one a tiny, emaciated, gossamer-boned fey, scarcely taller than a gnome, but with enormous feathered wings that rose over his
head, his jeweled cap. His face was scrunched up like a monkey’s as he admired the dancers.