wore peach-colored knee britches and a brown top. She didn’t look much like a killer.
“Are you her?” the woman blurted. “Annaig?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“My name is Fhena.”
“Mere-Glim’s friend.”
“So he told you about me,” she said defiantly. “I came down here to kill you. Everyone knows what you did. He thought you were his friend. He loved you. And now his poor body is all cut up.”
“I loved him, too,” she said.
“So you killed him? That doesn’t make any sense.” Her eyes were wide and sad, and Annaig felt just how fragile her anger was, sensed the artless innocence that lay behind the brave facade.
Or was that only how it seemed? Was she just trying to get a chance to strike?
But this Fhena was Glim’s friend, and she owed Glim.
“I want to show you something,” she told the woman. “If I let you out of there, will you promise not to try to hurt me?”
“I don’t think I could have done it anyway,” Fhena said after a moment. “I just don’t understand. I have to understand why you would do this to him.”
“Then come with me.”
She took the woman to her rooms, which had once been Toel’s, and led her back to the bath.
“There,” she said.
Fhena knelt and stared into the water at the translucent sack and the reptilian figure it contained. She looked up with tears in her eyes.
“It looks like him,” she said. “Smaller.”
“It doesn’t just look like him,” Annaig said. “It is Glim.”
Fhena’s red eyes were huge as she looked back at the embryo.
“Is it?” she breathed.
“If I hadn’t killed him, someone else would have,” Annaig explained. “This was the only way, as far as I could see.”
“But his body was cut up, parts of it everywhere…”
“True. They had to believe he was gone. The drug I put in the water killed him, but it also made his body grow a crystal, a matrix containing his soul, his thoughts, memories- him. It’s similar to what we call a soul gem- and also, I believe, to your ingenium. I used that to quicken a proform, and here he is.”
“How long?” she wondered. “How long does it take?”
“I was able to speed up the process with him,” Annaig said. “He’ll have an adult body in a matter of days.”
“And he’ll know me?”
“He’ll remember everything.”
Fhena clapped her hands together in delight. “That’s wonderful,” she said. “He thinks so much of you-I should have known. I should have known it wasn’t true.”
“I did kill him, Fhena. His body died, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for that. Or if he will ever forgive me, for that matter.”
“But you just said it was the only way to save him.”
“It was the only way I could think of,” she replied. “But that doesn’t clean my hands.”
“But he’s coming back to us,” she said.
Annaig nodded, not knowing how to respond. She had been forced to delay poisoning the trees until Glim could come out of the water-otherwise he would die with them. But the instant he was conscious, she planned to do it. If it worked, Umbriel would be crippled or destroyed, and there was a small chance that she and Glim might be able to escape. If it didn’t work…
“Listen to me,” she said softly. “There are other Argonian bodies growing in the sump. Only you and I will know this is Glim, do you understand? No one else can know, or he won’t be safe.”
“I understand that.”
“Make him understand that,” she said.
“Why can’t you?” Fhena asked.
“I hope to, but it may not be possible. If anything happens to me, you have to take care of him.”
Fhena turned her gaze back to the tub. “I’m not very smart,” she said. “I’m not strong at all. But I’ll do my best.”
She ran her fingers gently over the sack. Annaig’s throat felt tight, so she left Fhena there with him and sat on the balcony, watching the life of Umbriel, wishing for its ruin.
TWO
Attrebus found himself on his back, staring up at what appeared at first to be a few cottony clouds in a perfectly blue sky. But as he garnered his strength to rise, he noted odd unsettling patches, greenish-gray streaks that didn’t appear to be clouds but were more like stains on the sky itself.
He pushed himself up and saw Sul doing the same.
They had landed in a field of white clover-a woodland meadow that might have come right out of the paintings of Lythandas of Dar-Ei. But like the sky, a close look revealed withered, twisted foliage and odd melted- looking places that his eyes couldn’t focus on. Beneath the perfume of wildflowers, the breeze carried a scent of profound decay, like a wound gone to gangrene.
“That was different,” Attrebus said, glancing at Sul. “It never felt like that when we traveled in Oblivion before.”
“That’s because we didn’t travel here,” Sul said. “We were summoned.”
Attrebus caught a motion from the corner of his eye and faced it. A small white dog was watching them from the edge of the clearing, where a little path wound off into the woods. It twitched its head toward the trail and wagged its tail excitedly.
“You think he wants us to follow him?”
“I think that’s safe to say,” Sul said.
“Safe to say, but safer to do,” the dog added in a yappy little voice. Attrebus felt he should have been surprised, but somehow he wasn’t.
“Do we have a choice?” Attrebus asked, pointing the question at Sul. Unless the dog was really Clavicus Vile-which, given his experience with Malacath, wasn’t impossible-they didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger.
The Dunmer shook his head in the negative. “Follow the dog,” he said.
The dog led them from the clearing along the little trail, where the vegetation seemed to grow progressively sicklier. They crossed a brook on a fallen log, and he saw fish floating on the surface, their gills working desperately. Something fluttered by in the trees, which he at first perceived to be a bird, then a butterfly the size of a hawk, and finally a caterpillar with wings.
They wound along a spiral trail up a hill, where they found a table large enough to seat thirty or so, with whimsically slim legs that terminated in hooves. Now and then one of the hooves would lift and stamp, rattling the empty plates and cups on the table. Beyond the hill, the colors of the world seemed to melt and flow before the sky gave way completely to shimmering chaos. From this height, Attrebus could see that the trees and grass only extended a mile or so in any direction before similarly dissolving at the edges.
Seated at the head of the table, on a large wooden throne, was what appeared to be a boy of perhaps thirteen or fourteen years, although his lack of shirt displayed a paunch that would have been more at home on a middle-aged beer glutton. He had what appeared to be a goat horn growing from above his right eyebrow, but over the left there was a festering sore. He had his bare feet up on the table crossed at the ankles, and a mean little smile showed on his face. His eyes were most peculiar; Attrebus somehow could not focus on them, but his impression was contradictory: They seemed empty, but empty in a way that nevertheless held limitless
