the floor. The room was vaguely circular, lit and ventilated through long shafts to the outside air, which was not enough to dispel a damp, dim chill. She rubbed her hands together, peering down at the four eladrin on one side of the table, dressed in their ornate armor of gilded scales, expressions of haughty disdain poisoning their regular yet vacant features, coloring their beardless cheeks, while Captain Rurik walked back and forth along one side of the chamber, hands behind his back. Unarmed, he wore his battered mail and leather jerkin, strode in his seaboots, and showed every sign of impatience, an emotion the eladrin maybe couldn t even feel. Maybe you lose that capacity after all those years of contemplating whatever other people s labor and invention, mostly, she supposed.
Now Askepel was talking about Princess Amaranth, a subject Suka, if she d been consulted, would have advised him to avoid like the plague don t even bring it up. Was he stupid, or just utterly without a clue? That was a question too deep to resolve here.
It gives me pain to admit it, he persevered, especially to outsiders, and to the people gathered here together in fellowship. But I myself have noticed over the past sixty years that the current situation is intolerable, and the leShay, the proudest, most ancient race on Gwynneth Island, the tree, so to speak, from which we all have sprung, is now increasingly infirm. It must be pruned in order to regain its health. Fortunately, there is a perfect flower.
Translation (thought Suka): Ordalf is a whack job, and her son is worse, and they both have to be put down like rabid rats before they wreck the whole joint. But luckily, this demonic family of degenerate psychotics has managed to push out one final diseased excrescence, to whom I m hoping you ll swear loyalty for the next thousand years.
Good luck with that, Suka thought. She watched the muscles work in Captain Rurik s jaw under his gray beard. She watched the livid scar that split his lips and made him ugly. She is not my queen, he said. Some of the Ffolk will go with King Derid in Alaron. Some already have. I have no love for him, and neither do any of the Northlanders who fight with me. But I d prefer ten thousand of him to another one of the leShay. Let her be queen of Moray Island and the wild beasts. If she sets foot on Gwynneth Island, then she is my enemy, no less than her sister
A short man, he was scarcely taller standing up than Askepel sitting down. But he glowered at him and put his fist on the stone table, where there were documents waiting for his signature they would wait a long time, Suka decided. The only hope was to defer the whole problem, as long as Lady Amaranth was stuck on Moray with no one to bring her home. For the first time she wished that Lukas might fail, and that the Sphinx was at the bottom of the sea, though all her crew, of course, safe and sound of course. No, but with all her heart she wished Lukas was sitting next to her, his long legs outstretched, and she could lean over and whisper how Lord Askepel, as he wrinkled his fine nose, looked very much as if the Northlander captain had farted in his face, and he was trying to overlook the insult, because of his superior ancestry and breeding and long experience. Marabaldia was speaking now, her voice soft and melodious no one was listening. At that same moment, as if on cue, two more eladrin knights appeared at the entrance to the chamber, supporting between them a creature Suka had heard of but never seen a winged elf, a hairless, wizened creature with a torso scarcely larger than a baby s, who chose that moment to announce, as his escort brought him down over the shallow tiers of steps and through the double line of solemn marble figures, that Lady Amaranth had been seen in Winterglen with several other refugees from Moray Island, at Citadel Umbra in the presence of the queen and prince. This was supposed to be good news, Suka guessed, or at least all the eladrin thought so. A melancholy bunch, they rarely smiled, but they were smiling now. Finding herself ignored, Marabaldia had stopped speaking. Ughoth had risen to his feet, an angry expression on his face. And when Suka looked around, she saw Rurik had gone.
Suka jumped down from her seat. Who was with her? she cried, not because she thought anyone would answer her. None of the eladrin had said a word to her since Mindarion had been struck down. Tall creatures, they could not bend their necks to look.
Was Captain Lukas there with her, and a genasi water-soul? she said, as if to herself.
Marabaldia heard her, or at least she turned, and gave her such a sweet, sad expression, and shot her such a beam of pure light out of her eye, that Suka couldn t bear it. With her closed fist she pounded on the head of a marble monkey that guarded the steps out of the chamber.
Was there a man? Suka asked, running the comb of her fingers through her pink hair. Was there a golden elf? Then she ran up the steps and out into the air.
Soon it would be evening. In the rocky bowl in the mountains, Ffolk slaves were lighting the oil lamps in their alabaster lanterns, hung suspended from iron chains in the hands of stone giants standing at intervals around the rim dwarfwork, like all of this high perch, hacked out of the mountain by a race now lost, or vanished, or dispersed. In the light of the setting sun, Suka clambered up the steps to the lookout point, a causeway leading to a pinnacle of rock with a view south over Synnoria, or where Synnoria must be, hidden underneath a layer of mist and cloud so thick the red sunlight seemed to reflect from it as if from something solid, the bottom of a copper pot, perhaps.
Once only, at dawn, had the mist split and allowed her to peer down into the valley, steep slopes and enormous trees that, still in shadow, were pricked with lights too diamond-hard to be from fire. The woodlands fell away south, and at their edge Suka could see the lakeshore, and the lake water like another layer of milky cloud, and the crag in the middle with the city on its crest, a murmuring of light, and then the mist had covered everything again.
Suka climbed up onto the parapet. Rurik was there. She had seen his broad back, covered in black, seamed hide and mail, as he bent over the rock to spit. Now he kept his place, his beard jutting out over the abyss, not turning as she sat down cross-legged on the outer edge of the parapet. She felt agitated and despondent at the same time.
Why are you here? grunted the captain.
I m sorry.
Why? For the collapse of my hopes? I had a deal with Mindarion. We had a deal.
Suka wondered if that was going too far. Mindarion also, as she remembered, had been interested in the lost princess of the leShay.
Together, continued Rurik, we could be in Karador in four days. Who would resist us? Men and fomorians, and the knights of Synnoria, of Llewyrr. Ten thousand or more all together who would resist us? A few hundred eladrin still loyal to the leShay. A few thousand of the drow. They could never face us we would drive them back into their holes. And then my people would be free.
How long, Suka asked herself, had he been fighting for this, only to have it fall apart at the last moment? But? she prompted.
But they won t take our help. Rurik scratched angrily at his beard. From this distance Suka could see the rash over his cheeks, and the ingrown hairs along his neck. Finally, Askepel won t fight with us, or the fomorians either. Because if he did, he would have to admit we were his equals, that he needed us, and he would rather die. He would rather fail that s the strange thing. He would rather ride over the Cambro Ridge, and down through the sacred grove, all of them in their gilded armor, riding their white stallions, the sunset glinting on their lances, all of it. They d rather ride down to the lakeshore and be cut to pieces by the drow, as if life were a poem or a ballad or a play the last ride of the Llewyrr. They d rather do that than succeed. Why is that, do you think?
Cross-legged on her perch, in the last of the light, Suka reached her cupped hand over the edge of the stone parapet, as if she could drink the cloud below her, or stir it into a whirlpool. Search me, she thought. But in fact she had a theory, which coincided, in part, with what the captain said next.
It s because they live too long, he murmured into his beard. It puts them three-quarters in love with their own deaths. In the middle of their lives, it s the only romance they have left. They flirt with it, reach out to kiss it and pull back. The gods only know what it feels like to be them, alive for centuries. Again he spat over the side, then stood up straight and shrugged. Are you coming? I ll speak to Mindarion once more, or try to. Then at first light I m for the coast no one will stop me. You ll see. They ll be glad to see me go. It will be a relief to them, even if it costs them their victory. You?
I have no choice, she said, meaning she would follow whatever trace or rumor she could find of Captain Lukas and the rest, to Citadel Umbra now. Perhaps Marabaldia would help her.
Rurik shrugged. Or else they will do nothing at all, he said, still talking about the knights of Synnoria. He was no longer interested in her. She looked out over the surface of the clouds.
South and east, about a mile away, a winged shadow made its turn, a bird, she thought. It skimmed toward
