entire surface; Idalia quickly pulled in plenty of the leaf clumps with their trailing bundles of hairy roots, heaping them carefully in her basket. Armed with their bounty, they returned again to the pond.
'Just about full enough to stock,' Idalia decided, floating the water-cabbage out into the center of the pond. They'd quickly begin to 'calve,' sending babies out on shoots that would break off when the baby got big enough, and naturalize in their new home.
Kellen was left with the muddier task of planting the reed bundles, and once he was done, felt his labors had earned him a question or two.
'Idalia,' he began hesitantly, 'I've been meaning to ask you. You talk about the Great War, something I've never heard of, and the Otherfolk that were driven out of the settled lands by it. Those creatures… does that include… Demons?'
'Hush!' Idalia said fiercely, rounding on him. 'Never mention them here!'
'I— But—' Her sudden vehemence took him by surprise. 'You don't mean you believe in them, do you?' he said. Suddenly, once again, such a belief seemed so childish, so unreasonable. Demons were things for nursery shadows and wondertales, not the bright light of the forest.
'Of course I do,' Idalia said in a low voice, taking a step toward him. 'They're real. Kellen—'
'They are!' an aged voice whispered fearfully. 'Oh! Terrible real, they are!'
Crouched among the bushes at the edge of the trees was one of the Otherfolk. From Idalia's references, and his own studies, Kellen guessed it to be a faun. It was a creature about the size of a two-year-old child, humanlike to the waist, but with a goat's haunches. Its pointed ears were long and hairy, and goat horns grew from its brow, curling back over its skull. A small neat beard edged its jaw, adding to the goatish appearance. Unlike the Centaurs, whom Kellen could imagine to be very civilized despite their hooves and tails, the faun wore no clothes, and seemed far closer to the wild creatures of the forest than it did to the forest's more civilized and humanlike inhabitants.
Though he had no real experience with the races of the Otherfolk, even Kellen could see that the faun was very, very old. Its curling horns were as dark as winter leaves, and its hair and pelt were streaked with grey. Its face was as withered and dark as an old apple, and long ago it had been terribly injured—one eye was gone, leaving a web of white scars behind, and the faun's shaggy haunches were dappled with white scars, relics of terrible wounds.
And it was so frightened that it trembled all over, so frightened that Kellen could hardly believe that it was still standing there, speaking to them. The horror in its single, wide eye sent a chill down Kellen's spine, and out of what depths of its soul the faun found the courage to remain and warn them, Kellen could not imagine.
'Never speak of Them,' the faun begged, quivering in terror. 'Never speak of Them—never! Or They will come here, where it is safe, and pleasant, and turn it into—I dare not say!' Having frightened itself thoroughly, the old faun turned and ran, vanishing into the undergrowth as if it burrowed its way into it.
Idalia sighed, watching him go. 'You see? Poor old thing. He came over the mountains years ago—long before I settled here. Something terrible must have happened to him there, but Piter never talks about it. I wish I could heal him—but he would have to ask, and he never has. I think he's afraid of hurting me—if I healed him, I'd find out how he was hurt, you see, and I would be as terrified as he is—or so he believes.' She sighed again. 'Poor creature, to be so afraid. Every year I wonder if this winter will be his last.'
She turned away and began assembling their packs, but Kellen kept staring in the direction Piter had fled. The faun's terror had been so real that Kellen felt his own heart beat faster in response, and for the first time in a long time the memories of his fever-dreams were sharp and urgent.
'Can we—talk about this?' he asked his sister timidly.
'Definitely. But later.' She cast a look over her shoulder, as if to make sure they weren't still being overheard. 'Later, when it's—safer.'
And it did not escape Kellen's attention that she said 'safer,' not 'safe.'
Demons were real. Lycaelon Tavadon hadn't lied.
And if that much was true, maybe the rest of what he'd said was true in some way as well.
UPON ARISING EACH day, Queen Savilla first took a cup of spiced xocalatl to warm her, then allowed her slaves to dress her in a diaphanous chamber-robe, cut low in the back to allow freedom for her wings, and low in the front to expose her… abundant charms.
The Endarkened did not sleep, precisely—not as the Bright World races understood the term—nor did they age and die, save by misfortune and violence. He Who Is had granted them the boon of endurance, but like all such boons, it must be paid for, and so, at regular intervals, adult Endarkened retreated for a period of deep contemplation that might— were a human to witness it—be likened more closely to death than to sleep.
