The Rose of Sarifal (33 page)

So as she squatted listening to the music in the clearing, she had resolved to hold onto her human shape, for the sake of the music, the dancing, the fine clothes, the wine, and the memory of the daemonfey. But like an addict she had become more nervous and distracted as the moments passed, particularly as the knot that tied Lady Amaranth to her family grew more twisted and strained, and finally burst apart. She had found herself scratching her armpits and rubbing her lips, itching beneath her uncured wolf skin until she could scarcely tolerate her own humanity. And so when the ranger brought them in under the trees, she found herself subsiding gratefully into her lupine form, a drunkard forgetting her own promise of sobriety, happy to see the bright colors grow dim, at the same time that the darkness brightened. She leaped away into the night forest, and immediately forgot the lover she had left to die.

Forgot him even though, as her senses sharpened, she caught the stink of other fey and realized the danger
they were in. Doubtless the ranger knew it also: These pines and fir trees had kept down the undergrowth, and they could make good time along the woodland paths, over a turf of silver needles that deadened their footsteps. But among the heavy tree trunks she could see the fugitive shadows of other creatures, fell denizens of Winterglen, who had gathered in around the citadel to listen to the music, the human music the fey loved, because it spoke of transience to eternal creatures, and passion to the passionless. And so they had come like moths to a flame, night hags and feygrove chokers.

But the music was over now. Released from its power, they looked about themselves, their anger and their spite redoubled, because they’d been forgotten for a little while. Caught and released, now they looked to enslave others. And as the druid, the genasi, the princess, and the ranger made what speed they could, they picked up stragglers behind them, and on either side, and now in front. Where the largest trees were choked with vines, long sinewy arms with three-fingered hands reached down to snatch at them. The ranger had lost his bow in the gate but had retained his sword. He and the genasi slashed at them while Eleuthra hung back. A dusk unicorn, blood flanked and grotesque, loomed out of the shadow and she swiped at it with her claws, while all around them she heard yelps of pain out of the howling hags that shambled toward them through the trees, their hands held out, their bodies stinking of rot.

The ranger didn’t know where he was going. How could he know? His only thought was to bring the girl
away. But now Eleuthra wondered if in the minutes that had already passed since they had left the clearing, Prince Araithe had forgotten his distractions and was weaving a spell out of Citadel Umbra, a web of Feywild creatures to disarm them and bring them back. She leaped after the unicorn, chased it away. But beyond it, back they way they’d come, she saw the moving shadows of a pack of hounds, saw their yellow eyes as if reflected in a fire. Had the princess lit her beacon again? That would have been foolish. No, the light was from elsewhere, up ahead. She turned and ran back to the others, who had paused in a boggy open space, where the pines gave out into the softer, deciduous trees. There in the middle burned a bonfire, which had not been there even a minute before, and around it turned, as if following the steps of some simple dance, a circle of figures—eladrin, the druid guessed at first. That would have been a welcome sight, and doubtless that was what had drawn Lukas out of the trees. But then she saw him raise his sword, and saw also the faces of the graceful creatures illuminated in the firelight—fey lingerers, knights and ladies who, zombielike, refused to die. Still animated by hate, or malice, or thoughts of vengeance against those who had stolen their enormous lives away, they had gathered near their living brethren, a pack of ruined ghosts. Only in the darkness did their skull-like features retain even a shadow of their beauty, and now the darkness had fled. Bowing and turning, they circled forward, clad in moldy, slimy armor, though their swords were bright.

“Shit,” said Lukas. “Fall back.”

In her wolf’s shape, complicated human speech was hard to care about, hard to listen to, hard to understand. But she could handle “shit, fall back.” So where? Behind them were the chokers and the hags and the hounds now spreading out around them, weaving back and forth among the trees. Eleuthra wondered if this was still her fight, and what would happen if she slunk away into the trees, protected by her beast’s shape—no. These were the daemonfey’s friends, and she would fight for them. She’d left him to die facing Malar the Beastlord.

They hung together in a knot, the four of them. But now others were converging out of the shadows: drow soldiers. And to Eleuthra’s astonishment they cut and hacked through the whimpering fey. A choker, its arm severed, howled from a bole of vines. The lingerers, undaunted, still moved forward, but Eleuthra could see there was some magic with the drow, a warlock or other conjurer. Snarling, his lips drawn back, she could feel the electric thrill of magic in her heavy teeth. The bonfire snuffed out as if the gods had pissed on it, and in the stinking smoke she could see a drow captain in black armor, the same one from the clearing at the citadel, his white sword burning with a lambent flame. Lukas was with him, and the fire-striped genasi, and she also bounded forward, seizing a dead knight by the arm, dragging him down into the mud, trying to kill him once again. Above them, lightning flashed out of a cloudless sky, and it began to rain.

The drow’s ears were full of iron rings. His white hair was fastened behind his neck with an iron pin in the shape of a crab. His voice was high and soft and unpleasant, a sound like the rushing of the wind. “Come,” he whispered. “Come with me.”

There were seven drow soldiers, and also one of the priestesses or handmaidens of Lolth, the first one who had spoken to them in the temple of the Spider Queen—Amaka, she had called herself. Her eyes were wide with fright, but she ran with them under the trees, barefoot, her pretty white dress stained and ruined, the red cord missing from around her waist. The drow captain led them onward, still away from the citadel, and once again into the pine forest. In time Eleuthra could see they followed a stone road that had risen out of the accumulated needles. Now there was a low stone wall on either side, and a series of carved bas-reliefs. Still they hurried, and the wall rose higher, and Eleuthra realized it was because the road was sinking, a tunnel now, as the wall closed over their heads.

There was a light up ahead, a thin light spilling from a doorway, which the captain pulled open to reveal a guardroom lit by a smoldering brazier, and a couple of astonished guards. He swore at them, pulled them from their chairs, chased them out into the tunnel to wait with the rest of the drow, while he brought Lukas and the others into the room. His sword was still drawn, still smeared and smoking with the slimy yellow blood of the lingerers.

He threw it across the stone floor, wiped his fingers, then turned to look at them, his lips drawn back to show
his filed teeth, his dark face simmering with suppressed rage. “Wearily, wearily,” he whispered, scarcely out of breath, “we would think it best for you to die, all die, all of you, die in the darkness, except for one of you, except for her, that one, dead in the swamp, red blood on my blade, except for that one, except for you.” He extended his long black arm, black hand, black forefinger, and stretched it out toward Lady Amaranth, and did not let it drop.

Eleuthra sat down on her haunches, licked her teeth, and let her tongue protrude. She let the sense of the drow’s words flow over her, and focused instead on the sharpened black nail that reached out toward the princess’s face. She swallowed, and let her tongue slide out again between her teeth.

But Lady Amaranth flinched as if from a blow. Though he had intervened to help her and had brought her here, had rescued her, partly, from her sister’s hate, still the malevolence in his red eyes was hard for her to tolerate. As in the clearing below Citadel Umbra, she felt powerless to move, and the fingernail, as it descended from her face, seemed once again to uncover her and leave her bare.

“All die,” he whispered. “Hot blood mixing in shadow and black mud, except for you. This is what Araithe tells me. Why is that? Tell me why.”

On one side of the smoky guardroom, lit only by a plate of charcoal on an iron tripod, the drow captain
stood with the priestess behind him, the young handmaiden of Lolth. With his left hand he held her by the forearm. On the other side of the stone room, Amaranth and the wolf and the watersoul genasi, and Lukas also holding onto her forearm, until she drew her arm away.

“Too late,” whispered the drow. “Araithe sent me to bring you back. To bring you back and kill the rest, press their blood out in the dark. Because I have not done this, do not think I pity you.”

The little room was full, but he spoke as if it were empty save for him and her, as if even the whimpering girl he held fast by the forearm did not exist. “Let their blood flow in the dark,” he repeated. Then he smiled. Or at least, he twisted his black, thin lips in an approximation. “Lady, the citadel is not a bright or healthy place for you. I believe you will not thrive there or be glad. You would not shine there like a jewel or a seam of silver.”

Over the past hour, Amaranth had come to much the same conclusion. Standing erect in the low, smoky room, she felt too exhausted to be frightened. She had left her refuge on Moray Island with mixed feelings; part anger and sulky spite, to see her work there disparaged and destroyed. Part longing for home, and to be with her own kind. Part heartsick with the transience of mortal creatures. And partly from a sense of frustrated destiny, which she had used to muffle any fears she had for her reception.

Now her fears were more than realized, and now she had felt the sting of her sister’s malice, her nephew’s
selfishness and bloated arrogance. Yes, they had humiliated her and shamed her, and she had found the experience … exhilarating. Frozen in place, she had willed Lukas to look at her, and he had turned his stupid mortal eyes away. But maybe it took shame to set her free. Cheeks burning, she had willed them all to look at her, while at the same time she was thinking: Is this all you have for me? I am Princess Amaranth leShay, the Yellow Rose of Sarifal, untouched by mortal laws.

In this way and in this way only she was like the other members of her family. When they were struggling and scrounging in the grass under her feet, she had felt her power over them. For ten years in the wilderness she had built a fortress of virtue and rectitude, and the gods had plundered it, knocked down her walls. Now she was home.

She said nothing, but she raised her chin, staring down the drow captain, her cheeks red with shame. For the first time she felt the permanence of her endless life, in which one day or ten years was as nothing. These other creatures in the room with her, they were as shadows in the smoky air.

If the drow understood anything of what she was thinking, he gave no sign. He grimaced, hissed, and expelled his breath as if in pain. “By the black Lady Araushnee, I fear you. Weak as you are, weak as dry dust, I believe I see in you the fall of leShay. Already the knights of the Llewyrr have left the boundaries of Synnoria. They are riding through the darkness and the
light, hoping to find you and put you on the crystal throne in Karador. But my pact is not with you. It is with your sister and Prince Araithe. Tell me, if you were queen of Sarifal, would you let me bring my people from the Underdark, my daughters and my sons, to walk under the night sky? Would you let us build a temple to our goddess here in Winterglen?”

The princess did not lie. For half a minute the drow captain studied her face, before he stuck out his black tongue. “I did not think so. Ten years ago Araithe sent me to bring you back, because you had almost come of age to serve his purpose. I lost you in the highlands at Crane Point. Too late to fix that. If I give you to the prince, if I give you to the queen, they will kill each other—no mistake. Same result. And then what happens to me? Araithe has promised me Winterglen and the citadel, all of it, when he moves to Karador after his mother’s death.

“Not that he longs for that,” he continued moodily, lowering his head, staring into the glowing brazier. “He would destroy anyone who touched a hair of her head. He is a dutiful … son, that way.”

His voice, despite its harshness, was so soft that Amaranth had to strain to hear. In these last murmurings, she imagined it had passed beyond the range of human ears, and that he spoke to her only or to the wolf. Now he spoke a little louder, “Aah, I must send you away. Or I will take back the head of one of you and say the rest escaped. No, but what a failure that would be. Ah—no.” His face twisted with frustration. “All of you must
leave me. All of you must go. My daughter will show you—Amaka will show you the way. Go to Synnoria, to Chrysalis, and find your knights, and raise your rebellion. That is the only chance for you. Mark you, when I meet you again, and lead the dark elves into battle, I will do your family’s bidding, I will promise you. Whatever they ask, I will do it. If they want you cut apart so they can share you, that is what I will do. Heart on one side, bowels on the other. Living head on one side, living womb on the other. I will avenge years of failure. Remember that. Remember what I say, if in the future you are tempted to hope for better things. The drow will always choose the winning side.”