Lords of Arcadia

Book IV

THE ARMY OF MAB

By R. Lee Smith

This book is dedicated to the Redmond Library.

The real one.

Copyright © 2008 by Robin Smith All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including, but not limited to,

photocopying or by any information storage and retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the author.

Purplhouse@yahoo.com

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following

copyrighted material:

“You Are My Sunshine” by Jimmie Davis. Copyright 1940 by Peer International

Corporation. Copyright renewed. Used by permission.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, locales and events are either a

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

actual persons, places or events are purely coincidental.

Cover designed by Sarah-Jane Lehoux

A BRIEF WORD ABOUT FAMILY…

If there were one inexplicable quality of humankind that could be raised

above every other (and perhaps crowned) it would have to be that so much

sentiment be attributed to family. For the vast majority of beings, children are

nothing more than the consequence of a brief biological imperative, and the

sooner sent off about its business the better. Only for some does the concept of a

loving family exist beyond the immediate generation.

Humans, no matter their world of origin, would appear to have evolved

an emotional need for family every bit as strong as their genetic drive to create

one. It is not unusual for humans to document their bloodline for hundreds of

years or even longer, flaunting the great deeds of their offspring as if they were

their own, or being condemned by the sins of ancestors long since passed into

dust. To honor one’s parents is the first law any child learns to obey, not merely

for however long it takes to reach adulthood, but for all time, in every matter, at

the risk of physical punishment, social ostracism, or even one’s immortal soul.

And all too often, the strain of living up to familial expectations ends in a schism

of bitter dysfunction, perhaps a fitting end for those who seek perfection in what

is ultimately a biological crapshoot.

And yet, we are human, and so no matter what the reason or how happy

we may be about it, we are all undeniably our family. From them, we take the

imprint of our features, the lilt of our accent, the first poisonous sips of our

prejudices and the first subconscious gleanings of how our own children will be

raised. For good or ill, from Cleaver to Simpson, all of us find our first definition

there.

The family MacTavish had weathered the usual triumphs and struggles,

celebrations and squabbles, that humans believe so unremarkable and so binding.

Through the centuries that followed their ancient founding, they drew together

and drifted apart, fought and loved and traveled as strangers to foreign lands,

diffused into other bloodlines and continued their own through new generations,

and rallied always around that single point of pride that was their family name.

When Taryn MacTavish walked out of Earth and into Arcadia, she carried that

name and that pride inside her, allowing it to define and excuse her, and falling

back into its supports when all the rest of that alien world seemed to stand against

her. Her love for her family, and theirs for her, touched many of those whom she

encountered.

For one, this touch became an obsession.

In touching Taryn, one being became so affected by her rose-stained

thoughts of mother and father, hearth and home, that even after unhooking itself

from Taryn’s mind, that creature found itself suffused with a longing for the

things it had shared through her, things it had never known in all the uncounted

ages of its immortal life. And so it set out to soothe this maternal itch in the most

direct fashion, by locating one of its many progeny…and loving it.

This unfortunate child surely had done nothing to deserve its terrible

mother, nevertheless he sought at once to please her. And although he had never

known her deathless touch or heard her true name spoken in all the years he

believed himself an orphan, he knew instinctively the murderous ways by which

one loved Mad Mab, proving perhaps that no matter how other things in life may

change us, we all begin in the footprint of our family after all.

1. Lord of the Valley

The Lord of the Valley of Hoof and Horn, returned at last to the city of

his ancestors, woke from a dream into darkness. He lay still, staring through

faint moonlight at the carved tiles above his bed. His father’s bed, once. A

lord’s bed. He should be sharing it now with his lady-wife. She should be here

to soothe these childish sleeping fears. Instead, she was away in the holdings of

one he still considered an enemy and he was here, with another woman warm

against his side.

Her hand raised now, brushing at his arm before she snuggled closer.

She murmured something which may have been his name, and he moved to

embrace her, but his mind was elsewhere, still in the dream.

Taryn, lost. Wandering in the dark. Her arms outstretched, fumbling as

if she sought a wall, something, anything, to brace against. Seeking him,

perhaps. The sight haunted him, but more dreadful yet was the sound. The lack

of sound, more accurately. Her mouth had been moving, but whether she had

been calling him, or crying, or merely panting as she stumbled, he did not know.

A dream, aye. Even Taryn would tell him so.

If only she were here to tell him so.

Antilles gently disengaged himself from his sleeping bedmate, nuzzled at

her hand when she reached after him, and then went to the window. The moon

was a sliver in the sky, but it was waxing at last. The worst of the waiting was

done, and what remained would pass at the same speed it ever had.

“Antilles?”

Was she sleeping now? The lycan hunted night and day, they said.

Would their lord allow her to rest in his den or would he force her to run at his

side? Did she take comfort in his arms when they lay together, or did she close

her mind away to think her thoughts of peace-making when he came to take a

lord’s privilege of her?

“Aeson.”

And was her naked body repulsive to the lycan who possessed it? He

could well remember how strange it had felt to touch her smooth body that first

time. As strange as it now felt to touch fur.

“Shall I sleep elsewhere, my lord?”

That, at last, sank through the melancholy plating his heart and mind. He

roused himself to shake his head, knowing he should say something more, but

unable to think of what.

The bedding rustled, but she was not resettling. She rose and joined him,

her hand stroking down his back once in a gesture so familiar, he had dreamed of

it night and night again throughout his years of solitude.

Antilles raised his arm and Eurydome came beneath it to embrace him.

Her body was warm, her fur soft and sweet-smelling. When he had walked away

from Rucombe, he’d known she would follow. And when she followed, he’d

known he would lie with her that night. So he had, and it was just as he’d

remembered, so easy and so familiar. Her body welcomed his in ways little

Taryn’s never could, and it was good, strong love they made. And nay, he did

not regret it. And aye, when he came down the Silver Stair with Eurydome

beside him to welcome the first stream of his people back into their long-

abandoned city, he knew that their cheers were as much relief for the Cerosan

consort they saw as for their lord, who had taken a human to wife.

Indeed, when his mother saw them on her own return to Dis, she had

gone immediately to the temple to sing praise and burn incense, declaring to any

who would listen that the marriage had been political, meaningless, and that his

true heir would come through an honest Cerosan haetara. Rumors of her making

began to spread, growing more and more outrageous, until he sent a messenger to

ask if she would soon come to tell him why she had left Rucombe or if she

preferred that he send a runner to hear the tale from Tonka. Silence then, and he

had been so grateful for it that he had not made good his threat. He should, he

knew, but he knew also that there could be no happy tale associated with his

mother’s leavetaking, and he could not bear to hear another unhappy tale.

Memory struck him hammer-hard of Taryn lying beside him in the thick

furs of his bed, telling stories by firelight. That ridiculous tale of hers…the

Minotaur, son of barnyard beast and god-cursed queen…and Taryn’s hand upon

him, her soft voice asking if he wanted her to stop. And when, at last, he took

her to his bed and lay with her, she was so free in her loving, so fierce and

jubilant as she took him to her. She was not afraid of finding pleasure in a lord’s

bed, nor of taking it, commanding it.

“Beloved,” Eurydome whispered, and wrapped her arms around the

pillar of his body. “How shall I please thee, my lord? Whatsoever thee asks of

me, I willingly give. Come lie with me. Let me ease thy heart’s ache.”

He reached to push her hands away, but made himself give them a pat

instead. She meant well. He could not imagine Taryn ever saying those words,

though.

Eurydome’s sure hands moved down in eerie and unknowing imitation of

Taryn’s that night in his cave of refuge, but Eurydome made no inquiry. The

haetara of a lord should never need to ask. She should know her lord’s mind and

his will for pleasure. Eurydome caressed him, pressing her sweet body to his,

and whispered his true name. “Come to bed, Aeson. Lie with me and forget.”

“I do not wish to forget.”

Eurydome stilled. After a moment, she stepped away, but lay her hand

again on his back. “What, then? What may I do to comfort thee, lord?”

“Be with me,” he answered. “Share my bed.”

“Aye.” She pressed the side of her cheek to his arm, nuzzling tenderly

and with infinite patience.

“But ask nothing more of me,” Antilles said. “I have nothing more to

share.”

Eurydome held him for a time, silent. Then, softly, “Can you not love

me a little? I could be content with that. Just the pale blush of truth, the echo of

the song. Please.”

“Nephelene.” Her true name came from him in a sigh, unforgotten all

these years, but he could not bear to turn around and look into her wounded eyes.

“That is the thorn of the thing, Nephelene. It has always been the echo and I

never knew it, until I heard the song.”

He felt her hand slip away, heard her quiet return to his bed. Antilles

remained at the window. He stared into the courtyard, his eyes moving from one

lit window to another, seeking and finding signs of life he honestly had not

expected to see again in this place. Taryn had brought this about. She had ended

the wizard’s evils and made him believe that all things were possible, even unity

between the lords of the borderlands. And she was out there tonight, beyond his

reach, and some part of him would always believe she was lost and wandering in

the darkness.

2. The Underneath

Immediately after the rock melted shut, Taryn realized she could still

see. Sort of. Flat stones set all along the walls of the tunnel let out a faint blue

luminescence, enough to make out the twists and turns of the passageways, and

to see the horribly intent stare of the snake-man, but not much more than that.

She ventured a few steps forward, rubbing nervously at her belly. Her footsteps

did not echo; it was as though the air were thick enough to sink into, ankle-deep.

She shivered, turned back to ask the snake-man to lead her…well, anywhere.

And screamed.

Behind the snake-man (who looked neither offended nor particularly

surprised by her reaction), clinging to the upper corners of the corridor, was

a…creature. Corpse-pale, it glowed out from the darkness like the stones in the

wall, every facet of its awful features starkly visible. Its sunken eyes, black

sockets from which beads of light glinted, followed her as she staggered away

from it. A single slash in the center of its face was its only suggestion of a nose,

but its lips were grotesquely swollen by comparison, slack and blistered and the

color of tar. Black, wormy strands of hair dripped from its scabious skull and

clung to its knobby shoulders like living things. At the ends of its long, bony

limbs, grasping fingers and toes sank into the rock, allowing it to dangle from the

ceiling like a bloated spider. The tattered rags that shrouded its gaunt body

swayed with its breaths like cobwebs in a draft. It was nothing short of a living

nightmare.

The snake-man studied Taryn as she huddled, horrified, against the wall.

Finally, he twisted around and said something curt in his own language. The

creature ducked its head with something like shame, then sprang down from the

ceiling and scuttled away like a crab, covering its face with its skeletal hands as it

went.

“Forgive.” The snake-man touched his brow, throat, and heart in an

undulating gesture as he rose to man’s height on his powerful tail. “I am

Siddhartha, gatekeeper of the Underneath Empire. On behalf of all naga, I

welcome you and your new life.” He bowed down to the ground, writhing there

in the extremity of his servility.

Taryn blinked at him, shivered, and looked in the direction the horrible

creature had departed. She could see, well back in the tunnels, the skull-like

visage of its face or another very much like it, watching from around a bend.

“You must not fear. No harm shall come to you here. I swear it. No

harm.” The gatekeeper gripped at the floor, tugging himself toward her as his tail

pushed and slapped at the rock. His tongue flicked at the air again, coming

within a hair’s breadth of touching her bare feet. His eyes rolled back and he

writhed some more, then looked at her in fawning worship. “Come with me,

great lady. Come.”

He crawled rapidly away, pausing often to send her inviting and

elaborate gestures.

It was too late to take Nakaroth up on his offer on public matings and a

nice, normal life among the werewolves. She followed, fixing her gaze on the

gleam of his gold in the dim light and doing her best to ignore the blur of pallid

flesh that trailed after her. Kruin knew these people, and surely he would not

abandon her if there were any real risk.

Surely.

Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, giving her glimpses of her new

world. The floor was not rough-cut stone as it had seemed on her first steps, but

had been shaped in intricate whorls and ridges, no doubt to make it easier for

naga to traverse. There were archways here and there, opening into caverns of

impossible height and depth, where spires of swirling stone melted upwards to

meet bejeweled stalactites, and lacy-railed bridges crossed pools that had never

known a sun’s warmth. Glowing stones as thick as stars illuminated an endless

palace that she saw in glances from one archway or another, but the only things

that moved were right here—just him, just her, just the hideous thing lurking in

the darkness behind them. Light glowed golden or eldritch blue from a dozen

vaulted windows, but she saw no one in the chambers beyond.

“How find you our empire, o honored one? Does it please you?”

Taryn wrenched her eyes from the view of the palace and found

Siddhartha hovering at her side, practically licking her shoulder. She had to grab

a double-handful of her shift to keep from slapping him hysterically away. “W-

what? Yes! It’s incredible! Beautiful!”

He bowed, his tongue stealing out at the end of his grovel to dip up under

the hem of her skirt. She stepped back only to bump into the clammy body of the

thing following her and the sheer awfulness of that touch propelled her forward

with a scream, flinging both arms and one leg around the gatekeeper’s coiling

body in a panicked effort to climb over him to safety.

Siddhartha hissed something nasty-sounding as he clutched Taryn to his

chest, and she heard claws scraping in rapid retreat up the wall and away. He

held on to her, swaying and making croony, snakish sounds in her ear. His

tongue probed at her now and then, as if to taste her gratitude.

“I’m sorry,” she said, gritting her teeth to keep them from clacking. She

tried to back away, but he held on to her. “Those…um…what exactly…I mean,

who exactly…?”

“Servants. Only servants.” Siddhartha passed one hand through the air

in a curiously evocative motion equivalent to a reptile shrug. The other he kept

firmly clamped around her. “They build for us, keep our rooms, prepare our

meals. They are only servants.”

“They’re…” She didn’t know how to finish that. What were they,

really? Ugly? She’d seen so many different kinds of people in Arcadia, and

never thought any of them were ugly, just different. But these were. These were

simply ghastly, and it wasn’t just their looks. Whatever it was, it went all the

way down to their bones. “Everything is different here,” she finished lamely, and

tried tugging free of him again.

“Fear nothing, great lady. Fear not.” And then he licked her, not a flick

of the tip of his tongue this time, but a full-on lick, really getting right in there

and tasting every inch from the curve of her shoulder up to her hairline. He gave

in to her pushing, squirming efforts at retreat only after he’d finished, and spent

several seconds face-down on the ground before her, writhing and rubbing at his

hips and sides. The chill in the subterranean air made the slick track he’d left on

her tingle and she could not stop the shudder that shook its way up her spine even

if she’d wanted to.

Taryn’s brain presented her with a brief image of Nakaroth, boldly

mounting her in the middle of the raised rock back at High Pack. Not too damn

unpleasant now, was it?

“Don’t do that again!” she said finally, clutching at the tunnel walls and

shivering. “I’m serious. I do not like licking.”

“Forgive, forgive.” His eyes rolled back again—she was beginning to

think he really couldn’t close them—and he was still rubbing at his hips, both

sides at once, as though smoothing down an invisible skirt. But at last he looked

at her, drawing himself back to his ‘standing’ height only with the aid of the wall.

“It has been many years…many lifetimes…and I no longer know your customs.”

She opened her mouth to ask when and where a lick like that was ever a

human custom, and then closed it again with effort. She reminded herself that

Arkes and lycan both licked their hellos and she’d gone along with it. She also

reminded herself that she was here as a diplomat and that meant not getting

snippy about a little tongue-hockey. And she reminded herself in conclusion that

she was tired and her back hurt. She wanted to find a bed at the end of one of

these tunnels and that would happen sooner if she didn’t waste time insulting the

nice snake-man.

“It’s all right,” Taryn said with a last repressed shudder. “I suppose I’m

just…nervous.”

“So indeed, so indeed. Ah, but you honor us with your presence, great

lady. Yes.” His eyes crawled down the front of her shift to rest on her belly.

One hand touched briefly at his hip and then he launched himself into one of

those sweeping, swaying gestures of apology. “The Underneath shall welcome

you with every comfort. This way, great lady. Follow.” Siddhartha dropped to

his belly and slithered off, leading her now through one of the open doorways

and onto a wide swirl of stone that led from the tunnel down to one of the higher

levels of the palace.

Once inside, the decorations became even more ornate as well as

accessorized by lavish works of art, most of them crafted from precious metals or

stone. There were a few fabrics here and there—a handful of tapestries, an

occasional carpet—but they were ancient, faded things arranged more often than

not behind a protective sheath of glass. There were no plants and, oddly enough,

no depictions of plants in any of the mosaics or carved panels that adorned the

walls. The merest suggestion of organic design came out in sweeping curves or

blooming columns, but everything was stone, lifeless and cold.

“Here.” The gatekeeper drew himself up to his full height beside yet

another perfectly-detailed archway, this one curtained with strings of glass beads.

One sweep of the naga’s arm showed her a small, bowl-shaped room, the walls of

which were dotted with thousands of crystal discs and dozens of glowing stones,

so that the whole room glittered with blue. At the lowest point of the room’s

center, a shallow pool of water reflected waves of light onto the ceiling. Several

short pillars surrounded the pool, pedestals for ornate bottles and vials of milky

fluid. Two more of the grotesque, cadaverous creatures crouched on opposite

sides of the room. One of them had a bolt of pale cloth locked in its arms.

Siddhartha ignored them both, beckoning as he bowed.

Taryn obeyed out of instinct, entering the room only to stop again. “Am

I…? You want me to bathe?”

“Please.” The gatekeeper gestured to the pool in a series of lavish arm

movements. “You must be prepared before our lord looks on you.”

“Your lord?” Taryn frowned. “I thought Kruin—”

Siddhartha bowed very low. “The lycan who serve us cling to their petty

delusions of mastery. We allow it. Let them have whatever titles they wish in

their world.” He straightened, swaying as his tail coiled beneath him to take his

weight. “The great Devrajah is our rightful lord and you must pay him homage.

But not as you are.”

Taryn looked down at herself, her torn and stained shift, her filthy hands

and feet. Her hair was probably home to a whole nest of tumblers by now. She

lifted her chin with cool dignity, forcing herself not to feel the blush crawling on

her cheeks. “I don’t usually look like this,” she said.

“For certain, for certain.” Siddhartha bowed, scraping at the ground just

before her toes. “Any eye could see your quality. Any eye but that of a beast.

Please!” He gestured again toward the pool.

The silent creatures waiting on the walls shifted, both at the same time,

as if their bodies were delicate enough to be stirred by the wind of his arm’s

motion. Taryn tried not to shudder and shuddered anyway.

“I’d like to be alone then,” she said.

The gatekeeper looked at her from his servile position. His tail twisted,

coiled, shook itself out again. “You must be attended.”

“I…” Taryn stared helplessly back at the creatures.

He hissed something in his language and the two creatures wordlessly

leapt down from the wall and left. The gatekeeper watched her watch them go,

his tongue tasting her relief. When they were alone, his tail twitched, just the tip

of it. “Shall I bathe you?” he asked.

There was an intensity to his words that Taryn decided she really, really

didn’t like.

“No, thank you.” And because that seemed somewhat insulting, she

added, “I’ve always been taught to make preparations in private when meeting

someone as important as your…lord.”

Siddhartha’s tail swept side to side. His fingers closed on the ground,

almost kneading at it. At last, he pushed himself up and said, “As you wish,

great lady. If you have any need of me—”

“I’ll call you,” she promised.

Once more, he went to his belly for a bow, and then he crawled away.

Alone, Taryn eyed her surroundings uneasily. She could count five

doorways leading out from this room, with only a few strands of beads separating

her from the dark tunnels and open chambers beyond. In the perfect stillness of

the place, she could hear echoes from the rustling of her shift as she unlaced its

fastens, but she didn’t feel very alone. Pulling it over her head and letting it drop

took a monumental swell of courage and she was loathe to step away from it

afterwards, afraid she’d never see it again. It had become unreasonably

important to her, a symbol of Antilles and the Valley that awaited her return.

But in the end, Taryn had to leave it, although she first folded it and set it

carefully on one of the pedestals. She then wandered the jeweled perimeter of

the shallow bath, sniffing at the contents of the different ewers and phials that

had been laid out for her. They were all heavily perfumed variations of the very

basic soaproot and scrulan mixture that she was used to back home, so she picked

the one that had the mildest scent and dipped a toe into the water.

It was cold. Not icy, but certainly not warm. Taryn heaved a sigh and

spared a longing thought for days of Earth and three-hour-long baths in a

spacious tub with a book and a burning candle and a tall glass of iced tea close at

hand. Then she waded in, stood in ankle-numbing water while she splashed

herself down, and started working up some lather. The feeling of being watched

was very strong. She didn’t even try to tell herself she was imagining it.

Her mind wandered as she washed, bringing her back time and again to

Kruin. He had made love to her and then sent her away to a horrible place, just

like Antilles. If she were inclined to think of it that way, she could honestly say

that every lord she’d met so far had done that once. Except the Dragon. And he

probably would, if she gave him the chance.

Oh, that was a terrible thing to think. Especially if it were true. Besides,

Taryn had told Nakaroth that she forgave Kruin for putting her here so she

needed to put aside her self-pity and forgive the guy. She hadn’t always been

nice and she sure hadn’t always been tactful, but she did try to be honest.

And being honest, she had to say she really didn’t want to be here.

Taryn washed her hair, then hunkered down awkwardly to rinse with

handfuls of water. Soap sluiced down straight into her eyes, whereupon she

discovered that whatever the naga used to perfume their soaproot stung like a

whole nest of drunken hornets. She splashed herself frantically, then stumbled

toward the pedestal where she’d left her shift, and managed to pry her burning

eyes open just in time to see one of the cadaverous things stealing it.

“You give me that back right now!” Taryn shouted, swiping at her

streaming, itching eyes.

The creature answered by throwing itself onto its belly and keening to

her in a rapid, glottal language.

And to her utter astonishment, Taryn realized she could understand some

of it.

“Nollag shona duit!” she gasped, staggering back to grab at the support

of the pedestal.

The creature hesitated, then raised its skull-like head to peek at her

between its fingers. In thick, hoarse English, it said, “Happy…what?”

“That was Gaelic! You’re Irish!” A sudden, horrible thought struck her

and she felt the bones go right out of her legs. “My God, are you human?”

The creature winced. “No,” it said and cast its eyes up at her in a

pleading, pained expression. “Never, great lady, I swear it.”

It sounded so earnest, so sincere…and so utterly, awfully aware of just

why the thought of a shared humanity should be so appalling to her. It made her

ashamed, but shame couldn’t make her let go of the shielding pedestal and get

any closer to it. Still, watching it try so hard to conceal its ghoulish features as it

cowered did provoke her to a kind of explanation. “You…I wasn’t

expecting…And you spoke Gaelic!”

The thing flinched and looked over its shoulder at the archway Taryn had

entered by. “Forgive me, great lady. I did not mean to frighten you.”

She had to get a grip on herself before Siddhartha came in here and had

the thing horsewhipped for being ugly in Taryn’s illustrious presence. She

swallowed hard and made herself uncurl from the pedestal. “I’m sorry. I…I

don’t mean to frighten you, either. Um…what are you doing here?”

“I came to bring you garments,” the thing said, pointing to yet another

pedestal, on which lay what looked like a pile of gold coins.

“No, I mean…I mean, how did you get here? From Ireland?”

“Ire…” Slowly, the creature’s arms lowered. It looked away. “I

remember no other land but this one.”

And that was a lie. It was as clear as the awful gash that stood in place

of a nose on the thing’s face.

“I’m Taryn,” she said. “I’m a human from Earth. My people came from

Ireland, too.” There was no reaction from the creature, so she tried a more direct

approach. “Who are you?”

The thing trembled. It glanced at her and then dropped its eyes again. It

bent, picked up Taryn’s shift, and hugged it to its thin chest. “We are sluagh,” it

said.

Sluagh. Taryn leaned back, gaping. Sluagh. She looked around at all

the rock closing them in and shook her head in utter disbelief. “What are you

doing here?” she asked. “I thought sluagh were storm-fairies. I thought you

were the Wild Hunt of Herne!”

The creature flinched again and stared at her, a pitiable light of longing

in its gruesome face. “You know of him?”

“What happened?” The instant she asked, she knew the answer. She

shook her head to dismiss it and started over. “But underground? You went

from flying through the air to…to this?”

“There was nowhere else to go.”

“What do you mean, nowhere else? Why aren’t you in the Aerie Domain

with the other flying people? I thought…I thought you all kind of…grouped

together,” she finished lamely. Said out loud like that, it did sound awfully naïve

of her.

“No one would take care of us. The lord of this land…the lycan

chief…he let us come here.” The creature looked around, its shoulders slumping.

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

The Wild Hunt, the howling sidhe of myth and legend, reduced to

servitude in a kingdom of stone. Taryn still felt like screaming, but now she felt

like crying, too.

The sluagh heaved a sigh and brushed the limp strands of its hair back

from its bony face. It met her eyes briefly, then dropped its own. “I shall attend

you, great lady.”

“No, I…I can do that myself.”

The sluagh ducked its head. In a dull voice, it said, “I can be masked, if I

repel you.”

Taryn’s cheeks flamed. “You don’t,” she said.

The sluagh looked at her with ancient, knowing eyes.

“Look, I’m acting like a goose, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything

wrong with you.” Taryn lifted her hand in half a shrug, then braced herself and

held it all the way out. “I’m really not so bad once you get to know me,” she

said.

The sluagh looked at her hand. Its own clenched on Taryn’s shift.

“I’m Taryn,” Taryn said again.

Slowly, the sluagh reached out. Its skin was clammy and too soft over

the hard nubs of its bones; gooseflesh popped out over Taryn’s entire body at the

touch of it. “I…I’m Lily,” it said, and that was how Taryn knew it was a female.

The sluagh looked down at their clasped hands, her face twisting. A single tear,

greasy and black, crawled down her cheek like a slug. “You’re so warm,” she

whispered.

‘And you’re cold and repulsive,’ Taryn thought helplessly.

Lily released her and stepped back, clutching Taryn’s filthy shift in both

hands. “I will dispose of this and return to attend you,” she offered, her dead

eyes fixed on the floor.

“Please don’t dispose of it. I know it’s ugly, but…” She trailed off,

wondering if that was tactless. “But it’s special to me.”

Lily nodded and set the shift back on its pedestal. “I will clean it then,

and bring it to you when your rooms are prepared.” She picked up the drying

cloth next, bowed low, and approached, opening it.

Taryn backed up. “Please, Lily. Don’t. I can’t handle having someone

fuss over me like this. It doesn’t feel right.”

“You must be attended, great lady.” A hint of anxiety entered her

ghoulish features and she glanced back at the door. “Shall I…send for one of the

masters?”

“No! Um…fine.” She sighed and rubbed at her eyes in unconscious

imitation of Tonka. “Just…just sit down and keep me company, then.”

“But—”

Taryn took the towel out of Lily’s hands with a little more force than

she’d ought to have used, and dried herself, trying to look less awkward than she

felt. The fabric was absorbent, but abrasive, and her skin pinked up wherever she

rubbed it. Ah, for the days of terrycloth.

Lily shifted from foot to foot, watching her hands move with what

seemed to be real distress. Every so often, her fingers would twitch, as though

wanting to take the towel and do it herself, but Taryn stubbornly ignored her and

eventually, the sluagh sat down. She pulled Taryn’s shift back into her lap and

folded it several times, then hugged it and looked unhappy.

“It’s nothing personal,” Taryn said, mostly just to hear a voice. “But I

have been dressing myself since I was five. There’s a lot of things that I’m not

very good at in this world, but that much I can still manage.”

“You must be attended,” the sluagh said again. “He will insist.”

“I’m not going to be here long enough for him to really worry about,”

Taryn countered. “Only until the full moon, at the very latest.” She paused. “Is

there a place where you can see the moon down here?”

“Sometimes you can see it from the garden.”

“You have a garden?” Taryn brightened. “That’s great!”

Lily frowned, scratching at her elbows. “You will not have to go there, I

am sure. They will want to keep you where they can look at you. They will want

to see you in comfort.”

“I’m comfortable in gardens.” Taryn found a place to hang her towel,

pretending not to see Lily leap up to retrieve it. She focused instead on her new

clothes.

‘Clothes’ was a misleading word. Clothes meant cloth, and there was no

fabric in Taryn’s new garments. They were entirely made from beaten gold: gold

in strips, gold in chains, gold settings around gems, gold in decorative circles,

and gold in tassels. She tried without success to find one end of the thing and,

after pawing through shimmering riches for several minutes, gave up and stepped

away.

Lily came forward at once, quickly and silently separating the pile of

gold into three distinct ones. Gleaming metal through prisms of reflected light

across the sluagh’s own rags, but her face betrayed no envy, only an eagerness to

perform a task for which she had been trained. Frowning, Taryn submitted to

being dressed.

The headdress was a mesh of gold chains weighted at the tips with ornate

beads. The collar was made of wide plates of gold meant for a much longer and

more graceful neck than Taryn’s; dozens of necklaces dripped from it,

completely covering her shoulders and breasts. A golden belt, delicate as

spiderwebs, supported strands of hoops and tooth-shaped wedges, some of them

falling all the way to her ankles. And gold, as Taryn was quick to discover, was

extremely heavy. Apart from the sheer weight of the stuff, there was an issue of

modesty. Every time Taryn moved, she played peek-a-boo in a number of very

private places. Plus, and this bothered her most of all, her belly was completely

exposed, bulging out in front of her like a flesh-colored beachball in a drift of

glittering, golden sand.

“Am I supposed to look like this?” Taryn asked finally, trying hard not to

fidget.

“Does it not please you?”

“Are you kidding? It’s skimpy, it’s heavy as hell, and I have a feeling

it’s going to be cold as soon as I get around to noticing. And, um, it’s a little

extravagant, isn’t it?”

Siddhartha’s voice slithered out into the room an instant before the rest

of him, saying, “Should you not wear riches to meet with our great lord? Ah.”

He gazed at her protruding stomach, his lidless eyes gleaming. “You wear it

magnificently, my lady. Please. Come.” He cut his eyes to Lily, hissed, then

bowed for Taryn as the sluagh gathered the damp towel and dirty shift and

retreated. “Follow.”

She went. Down empty corridors and over more bridges, through high-

columned rooms and many-chambered passages, she dragged her gold-encrusted

self in the naga’s wake. Her garments clanked like armor and each new step took

more effort than the one before. They passed no other naga, although Taryn

glimpsed several sluagh hiding in shadowy corners or crawling down over walls

to get a better look as she went by. Siddhartha did not speak to her, although he

was clearly excited about the task of escorting her. She couldn’t look at him too

closely. The slapping of his tail and the lurching way he crawled along the

ground reminded her too much of the wyvern.

At last, after what seemed an eternity of darkness, Taryn saw light ahead.

Golden light. Not glowing stones, but real candles. And the archway opening

into this welcome sight was draped with real curtains, crimson and violet banners

that rippled minutely in the breeze of some hidden airway. When she ran her

hungry eyes up the curtains, she saw a whole crowd of sluagh clinging to the

ceiling, staring down at her from the black sockets of their eyes. Suppressing a

shudder, she walked a little faster.

As she neared the end of the corridor, she found she could hear hissy

voices, the scraping of scales on stone, and the plucking of some stringed

instrument, all very quiet, very subdued. It sounded, Taryn thought, a lot like a

boring cocktail party, the sort that people attended solely to be seen and never

mind how mind-numbingly dull it was.

Well, she was about to liven it up, wasn’t she?

Siddhartha drew himself up just outside the archway, awkwardly

propelling himself inside with labored shoves from his tail while keeping his

balance by gripping the wall. He spoke at some length, gesticulating and bowing

frequently, and only at the very end did he bother to say any of it in English. “I

present to you, your greatness, the lady Taryn.”

Now he beckoned to her, so Taryn went, both hands rising nervously to

cover her bare belly. She stepped into the throne room of the Underneath Empire

and was suddenly fixed in a hundred serpentine eyes.

Taryn had heard the phrase, ‘a hush fell over the crowd,’ many times in

her life. She was even guilty of using it once or twice herself. Until that

moment, she’d never really appreciated the fact that when true hushes truly fall,

it is a heavy sound. Her ears ached with silence as she stared back at dozens and

dozens of motionless naga. Some of them still held delicate, fluted glasses to

their mouths, frozen mid-swallow by the shock of her appearance.

A slow scraping noise tore open the quiet and Taryn looked, flinching,

up the long room and through the crowd to see a naga rise over them all. It

wasn’t hard. He was already alone atop a raised dais, and he’d been seated in a

sort of way by a throne of golden coils that surrounded and supported his own.

His headdress flared out and joined with his collar, creating a cobra’s hood

around him that reflected the light to dazzling effect, but brighter even than that

were his eyes. She couldn’t look away. And she really, really wanted to.

The throned naga suddenly drove his hand forward, sweeping the golden

staff he held before him in an imperious extension of his own arm. “Stand here!”

he ordered.

Taryn’s feet took her forward without consulting the rest of her. Some

voices you just obeyed. Once she started walking, she more or less felt

committed to keep going, but she couldn’t look at him the whole way. Her eyes,

burning from trying to hold that furious stare, finally blinked and released her to

look away.

The room. What was there to say about this room? She’d seen pictures

of the interior of Windsor palace or the Taj Mahal, and this place was as far

beyond those as a star beyond the moon. The walls, the floor, the ceiling—all of

it, every surface—had been coated in silver or gold. Not tiled, but coated, as if

the metals had been melted and poured over the room before magically hardening

again. The light from a handful of burning braziers, mirrored back from every

surface, was more than adequate to illuminate the entire, colossal chamber. Its

brilliance actually hurt her eyes, and she was grateful for the dark curtains that

periodically cut across the walls.

Images of naga covered everything in a maze of snake-tails, swaying

arms, and staring eyes, but she had ample opportunity to look at the real naga as

she crept up the length of the throne room. It was a lot like walking through a

museum, one with particularly creepy exhibits. There weren’t many of them,

really. Maybe as many as fifty, but not much more and probably less. The

prominent and perfectly-formed breasts of the females made it easy to see

gender, but otherwise, it would have been difficult to tell. They were all heavily

made up with eye-paint and powders, all swimming in clouds of flowery scent,

and of course, all decked out in layers of jewelry, so much as to cross that fat line

between extravagant and tacky, and then leap all the way over into unsettling.

They wore gold the way some people used perfume instead of bathing. She

couldn’t look at all that wealth and see anything but decay.

When she reached the foot of the dais and stopped, the enthroned naga

rose even higher and swung his staff so that the jeweled tip of it banged into the

floor. “Here!” he bellowed. “Stand here!”

Taryn backed up automatically, hugging her stomach, and the naga’s

eyes dropped at once. He stared at her and her pregnancy with a look that was

stricken and wistful and covetous and furious all at once.

And that was when Taryn suddenly understood. The empty corridors,

the silent palace, the gold and gems and perfume and everything else that covered

up the ugliest truth she could ever have imagined.

There were no children here.

She stopped moving, her feet transformed to lead by this realization. She

wondered if Kruin had known this before he sent her here. She rather doubted it.

She couldn’t imagine he would give her to anyone who was capable of looking at

another living thing the way the naga’s ruler was looking at her now.

But her sudden stillness had not gone unnoticed. The naga’s lord

slammed the butt of his staff into the ground and dropped down from his throne,

slithering toward her with a look of pure rage, but he halted when a high,

trembling voice rose out of the crowd.

“A child.” One of the females dropped her glass indifferently, letting it

shatter and spill amber fluid over the golden floor (from the corner of her eye,

Taryn glimpsed the white blur of a sluagh dropping soundlessly from the vaulted

ceiling, coming to clean it up). She dropped gracefully to her hands and came to

Taryn’s feet, somehow able to make even the crawl of a naga into something

delicate and mesmerizing.

“A child,” she whispered, rising up to splay her scaled fingers over

Taryn’s swollen midsection. “She is carrying a child.”

A collective sigh gusted out from the crowd, as of every breath released

at once. The naga’s ruler drew back, frowning. His burning eyes darted from

naga to naga, then settled back on Taryn in a dark smolder.

“She has come to us at last,” the female said, suddenly drawing up to

tower over Taryn. “Pacha Ven is come!”

‘Boy,’ Taryn’s brain remarked as the rest of her dumbly gaped. ‘It’s

been a hell of a long time since they’ve seen a horseman if they can mistake me

for Ven.’

But of course, she knew better. Not Ven of Rucombe, but the goddess

all Vens were named for. Pacha Ven, the all-mother of the Arcadian pantheon,

she who was so sacred to the Farasai that anyone who wasted the food grown

from her fertile soil risked exile. Pacha Ven, whose immortal spirit allegedly

provided the spark of life at every conception. That Pacha Ven.

“Oh no,” she said earnestly. “No, I’m just Taryn, I’m not—”

“Pacha Ven is come!” The female flung herself up the dais to fall at the

ground before her lord, clutching at the coils of his tail in an ecstasy of gratitude.

“She is come, our lord has brought her, and now the curse will be broken!”

The naga’s ruler glared at Taryn in grim silence as all around them, the

room rang with cheers and weeping. Facing him, her mind reeling, all she could

think was that somewhere out there, Kruin had better be happy.

3. Lord of the Land

The chief of High Pack, Lord of the Land of Tooth and Claw, took his

rightful place upon the raised rock and lowered himself to his haunches. He hurt,

but he did not show his pains. Here at the close of this day, challenge was finally

done. The pale light of surrender had stolen the furious glow from his rival’s

eyes and there would be no more battle. It was done, Kruin was still chief, and

his son still lived.

But the day had taken its toll on more than two bruised bodies. The pack

had gathered to witness. Nakaroth’s morning hunt had proved fruitless and there

had been no others. It would be empty bellies for his people tonight, for the

mother who gave suck and the young mate only two days in his keeping. He had

won his place as master for another day, but he had failed to provide for those

who depended on him most.

Nakaroth stood suddenly, a shadow in a land of gathering dark. “Night

hunt, my lord?”

Kruin looked around him, counting heads, weighing hearts. “No,” he

said at last. Little game, dry heat, and a fresh-widowed wyvern close by. There

were too few of them, too fresh from conflict, and they were not true wolves.

They were only people, and they were all tired.

Nakaroth nodded, never questioning, never complaining. He settled

again, taking a position of watch over Sangar, now alone under the tieneedle tree.

Denning down for the night. Kruin felt the frost that had armored his

soul melt away, leaving only the scorched meat of his flesh and the weariness in

his bones. He gestured for his mates to come to him, closing his eyes to keep

them from going to Taryn’s empty place.

Madira came quickly enough that jealous Lura cuffed her aside. Kruin,

too tired to growl, merely moved his highest aside to offer his youngest mate a

consoling nuzzle before moving on to rouse Graal.

She, alone of all the pack, had not borne a full day’s witness to Alorak’s

recurring challenges, but had instead sought out a shaded place after the third

battle. There, she slept away the confrontation, which was either a declaration of

great confidence in him or one of complete indifference.

“Graal,” he said, bending to touch her arm.

He needed only the one touch.

Slowly, Kruin sank to his knees, letting his hand rest on Graal’s sun-

warmed fur. He bent his head as a new silence fell around him.

How long she had been dead, he did not know. Not so long, he thought,

for the heat would have brought out its own clues given too much time. But

there were corpse-flies on her, he saw, gathering at her eyes and nose in uncaring

celebration of their own good fortune.

He had no meat to burn for her, no tribute to share with the Black Wolf

of the River, who must carry her away. He had failed her at the time of her

greatest need.

And suddenly, it came to Kruin that he should have mated with her just

once these last few nights. She had been more like a mother to him than a mate,

and apart from that first night as chief, when he had sealed his claim to her with

the Heat-high breeding that had perhaps produced Gef, there had been no other

couplings between them. All the same, he regretted that he had not mated with

her in Taryn’s way. Graal had never been touched with tenderness. She had died

without knowing a female’s pleasure.

“Mother?” Gef reached past him, brushing at the coarse pelt. Her eyes,

so much like Graal’s, were wide with dismay. “Mother?”

“She’s crossed,” Kruin said, and marveled at how calm he sounded, how

much at ease. And why not? Death was no stranger to him or to any of his

Land’s people. Graal was old, the oldest among them, perhaps the oldest lycan

there was or ever had been. Now she was gone and that was the way of things.

Now she was gone.

Graal’s other cubs were coming near to mark her crossing. Kruin closed

his eyes, feeling the heaviness in the body beneath his hand, hunting out the

pangs of grief within him and crushing them. He must be above such things.

The chief of High Pack had no weaknesses and no heart to harbor them. He was

killed by frost. He would never feel again.

Hands found his shoulders. Kruin looked around into Madira’s brown

eyes, now grieving. She had not known Graal long enough to mourn her, but she

mourned anyway. Mourned for him, who could not. A kindness. Taryn’s sort of

kindness. He found a smile for her, his soft young mate, and felt the first

stirrings of a warmth he suspected may lead to honest love, given time.

Lura’s snarl cut across that small warmth and ended it. Madira took her

hands back, but that was not enough for his highest, who came striding swiftly

towards them with her head down and her tail stiff. To challenge, he saw. Here,

over Graal’s body.

One moon’s cycle ago, this would have been the way of things. Now,

inexplicably, it was too much.

Kruin stood, moving Madira to one side with a firm hand. He stared into

Lura’s now-triumphant eyes and saw his own face twice mirrored. He’d never

realized how much he looked like his father. He said, “I release you from our

bond, Lura of Snow Peak. Pursue another.”

She stepped back, her head cocked and her ears showing only confusion.

“What, again? But I chose you o-once…already.”

Kruin waited, holding his stare as she stammered to silence. He saw her

flinch, a ripple of movement that seemed to shake her from the bones on

outward, and when he saw that and the stillness that set in her afterward, he said,

“I do not choose you, Lura. I do not want you for my mate. Find another or

leave my pack.”

She stared at him, horror pouring out across her white face. Her hands

rose as if to clutch at him, then fell again. Touches pass from mate to mate, or

from higher to lower. She did not dare to touch him now.

“Please,” she whispered. There was a whine in her voice, threading in

and out of hearing. “Please, have me.”

Kruin said nothing. He held his stare.

Lura dropped her eyes, stumbling back. She looked around, blinking

tears of panic, and took a half-step towards Nakaroth.

He snarled at her, saliva flying and hackles spiked.

Lura covered her ears as to protect them from a blow. She was shaking

when she moved toward Sakros.

“I have the one I want,” he told her flatly. “And I have seen how you

behave toward co-mates. Move on.”

Burgash rose and gathered Ararro and his cub before she could even look

at him. As he walked away, the Fringe Wolves gathered.

Her options were narrowing. Kruin watched her agonize, and then she

threw herself at the last chance of status. Alorak had been bested today, but he

was yet a chief’s son and a future challenge may succeed.

But Alorak actually slapped her away, sending her to the ground in tears.

“Spiteful bitch! Coward! I would not have a thousand of you!” he snarled and

retreated, limping, to his den.

The other wolves of High Pack, who had followed her discreetly as she

stumbled back and forth across the clearing, exchanged an uncomfortable glance.

The opportunity for a mate was a rare one in these dark days, but Alorak’s words

were strong, and they, too, knew he may someday be chief. One by one, they

drew away, and let the Fringes surround her.

Lura huddled in the dust, rubbing over and over at the ear Alorak had

struck. At length, her trembling eased. She straightened, then stood, and faced

the Fringes. “Fight for me, then,” she said, dropping her chin with torn pride.

“I’ll have a dog if I must, but I’ll have a strong dog.”

The wolf who passed for leader of this second, shadowy pack glanced at

his second, then at the others around him. He showed his tongue in a broad

smile. “But we are not animals,” he said softly. “We choose to share.”

Lura reeled back, shock swiftly giving way to disbelief and defiance.

“Then I’ll have no mate!” she shouted.

“And you’ll hunt for yourself,” the Fringe-wolf replied.

“Watch out for wyverns,” another added, and several laughed as Lura

flinched.

Sangar, alone under the tieneedle, ducked her head with a self-conscious

shudder. Nakaroth looked at her, flexed his claws, and finally stood with a

muttered growl. “I will take you to another pack,” he said.

She shrank back, all her fur spiking out on end. She had been given as

tribute by her own chief-father, and now, to be turned out from High

Pack…Snow Peak would never have her back. Perhaps she would be taken in by

another pack—she was still young, after all, and still very beautiful—but the

shame of it would always be with her. She would be lucky to have a name after

this disgrace.

All this, Kruin knew. He watched Lura’s agonies in silence and the

thought came to him, itching like a flea bite, that if Taryn were here to see this,

she would be appalled.

Lura’s entire body uncoiled violently, as for a leap or attack, and she

made a sound that might have been a scream if she’d opened her mouth for it.

She gripped at her muzzle with both hands, shuddered once, and then slowly

sank to the ground. Her shoulders bent. Her hands dropped. Broken, she bared

her throat to the Fringes, and was engulfed.

So then. Kruin turned away and gathered Graal into his arms. He waited

as Gef buried herself at her mother’s shoulder for one last sniff, and then he

stood. “Go to my den,” he told Madira, “and wait for me.”

She nodded, patting once at his arm and once, touchingly, at Graal’s

before obeying.

The howl began as Kruin passed the pond. Gash, as Graal’s eldest, gave

first voice, but soon all the pack had joined, paying homage to a lord’s consort.

Kruin soon heard howls in the outlying wood as lone wanderers responded to the

cry and carried it on. In days, all of Graal’s surviving kin would know of her

crossing. Meat would be burnt for her by someone.

Kruin found a place deep in the woods to lay his mate down, the place he

had brought his father’s body, long ago. Night had closed him as he walked, and

so he chose a clearing where what little moonlight there was could fall on her and

he could look at her.

Her fur was silvered by the stars, made fuller, made luminous. One of

her eyes had opened slightly, and it glowed as with a second life. He was

compelled to bury his muzzle in her stiff ruff for another sniff, closing his eyes as

he mentally stripped away the taint of decay from her familiar scent—a scent he

would forget as time wore away his reminders. No, they were not wolves, but

they were not human, either. In time, he would forget even her name.

He felt a splintering, then a shattering, and then his strength gave out.

He fell against her, clutching helplessly at her unresisting pelt as the first hoarse

sob shook out of him, the first in all his remembered life. He would howl later,

when all the ears listening for him would hear only what was acceptable from

their chief. But for now, alone, the lord of the Land wept.

4. Fast Food and Air Conditioning

It was cold.

Outside the window, late August burned up the pavement. She could see

the heat hanging in the air, but inside the car, Rhiannon was cold. She hugged

her arms restlessly, watching the town roll by and trying to remember when she

thought it was impossibly sleepy instead of this clamoring, stinking,

claustrophobic eyesore. This wasn’t New York City, for chrissakes. It wasn’t

even Eugene. There couldn’t be more than eleven thousand people who called

this zip code home, so why did that seem like such an impossibly huge number?

“Do you want to stop at the store?”

Rhiannon rubbed her eyes and shook her head, trying not to see her

mother’s look of disappointment. “I’m tired, okay?” she mumbled. And she was

tired, that was no lie. Ever since the gypsy brought her back and deposited her

on her parents’ doorstep, she’d been dragging herself from day to day. She’d

sleep twenty hours at a stretch if her dad would let her and she could barely bring

herself to eat. Everything felt so heavy. Everything seemed so hard. And she

was always tired.

Beside her, her mom started talking in a too-bright voice about

something someone had said or done or seen in some other life, and Rhiannon

turned back to the window. She hummed and muttered now and then so that her

mom would think she was listening, but her mind was out of focus. She looked

out at the rolling buildings and saw Earth and it was a hostile, alien world.

“Should we pick up your father and go out for dinner?”

Rhiannon rubbed her eyes again. “You can drop me off and go out

together, if you want,” she said.

“Oh, but that’s no fun! I know! We could get dressed up and try that

Indian place on—”

“I’m tired, mom.”

Silence.

Rhiannon looked at the window, where the ghost of her mother drove,

looking pinched and pale and unhappy. She had put that look on her, Rhiannon

knew, but she didn’t know how to take it off. She closed her eyes and hugged

herself, rubbing away the chill of the air conditioning.

“We could stop someplace,” her mother said softly. There was a quaver

in her voice, thread-thin but definitely there. “Any place you want.”

She wanted to go home, but she knew if she said so, nothing on this

Earth could stop her mother from crying, so Rhiannon mustered herself for the

act of speech and said, “Burgers, okay?” She didn’t want burgers, felt vaguely

sick at the thought of having to eat all of one, but at least it gave her mom

something to think about.

Without warning, Shappa’s face popped into her mind. With her eyes

shut, he seemed so clear, so real. She could see his eyes the best, narrow with

that singular blend of concern and frustration that he always seemed to wear

when he looked at her. She wondered dully what he was doing now and decided

it was a stupid question. It was late afternoon, so he’d be cooking dinner, along

with the other Farasai who served under Ven at the Jiko. There’d be tough,

herbed bread. There’d be fruit and crumbly cheese. There’d be spicy, stewed

vegetables and maybe a bit of meat, if Ven was feeling festive.

Burgers. Machine-grilled ground beef and waxy cheese, slathered in red

and yellow goo and served on a tasteless puff of a bun with greasy potatoes to

one side. Yuk.

But her mom was already pulling into a Big Burger, so Rhiannon said

nothing. Just sat and looked out the window while her mom ordered, dimly

aware that her mom was getting all her favorite things, doing everything possible

to cheer her up. The thought of her mom fixing what was wrong with her with a

Big Burger Doublestack and a Coke struck Rhiannon as painfully unfunny. She

rubbed hard at her eyes, pushing back the sting of tears before they could be

seen.

“Is everything all right with you?”

“Sure,” Rhiannon mumbled. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Her mother was quiet, but Rhiannon could see her hands flexing and

pulling at the steering wheel. After several false starts, she finally said the words

Rhiannon had been dreading. “Is it Taryn?”

Just for an instant, she saw herself shouting, ‘Christ, does it always have

to be about Taryn?’ right into her mom’s stricken face. The clarity of the image

left her shaken and sick to her stomach, and when it faded, she was left with the

memory of the last time she’d seen her sister—big as a house and walking away,

calling something distracted and cheerful back over her shoulder as she’d gone to

see the neighbors. And of Antilles, coming back alone with that awful look in

his eyes.

Yeah, right. Right before he’d gone off to Dis with his girlfriend.

Rhiannon swallowed hard as a second wave of not-quite nausea swept

over her. It was an ugly thing to think, especially when none of the parties

involved were around to defend themselves.

No one was around because she’d snuck off and left them.

“Honey?”

“She’s fine, mom.” Because the last thing she was going to say was, ‘I

don’t know, mom, no one does, because Taryn took her pregnant self off and is

being held as some kind of hostage for a couple of weeks as part of a bargaining

ploy in a peace treaty, because she thinks something bad is going to happen and

it’s big enough to maybe need an army.’ Oh, hell no. As dumb as Rhiannon

was, she wasn’t that dumb.

Her mother sighed, but only looked a little relieved. Most of the worry

stayed on her face. “I wish she’d come home.”

“She is home, mom.”

“I know.” Now her mother rubbed at her eyes, but then turned a wide

smile on Rhiannon and too-brightly said, “But I’m glad you’re back, baby. I’m

so glad.”

Rhiannon dredged up a smile from somewhere and said, “The burger-

guy is waiting on you, mom.” Then she turned back to the window. She hugged

herself. It was cold.

5. Masters and Slaves

Taryn woke up into a world of black and lay there, her heart pounding,

wondering where she was. Memory came back slowly, all mixed together with

dreams, confusing and confused. She’d been forced to stand in that awful

cocktail party for hours so that the naga could all have a turn at her. The sound

of their excited, sibilant words (they said nothing to her in English except

variations of ‘Pacha Ven, you have come’) quickly became deafening, but there

was no escaping it. She was touched, stroked, petted, licked, and there was no

escape from that, either. The stare of their ruler—Lord Devrajah, and there was a

title carried with real menace—never wavered and never lost one drop of venom.

When he finally ordered her to bed, she’d gone thinking that if he sent her into a

dark pit for the remainder of her visit, she wouldn’t even care.

But waking up in that total darkness was worse. She’d never been in

such impenetrable black before. She had to touch her eyes to be sure they were

open and when she did, she found them wet with tears.

The bed was too soft. The mattress was down-stuffed and covered in a

deep drift of silky furs. She felt like she was floating, even when she moved.

There were no sounds but the ones she made, and even those seemed muffled,

swallowed up by the black.

She could feel her nerves wanting to run away with her imagination, so

she pressed her hands over her swollen stomach until she felt Baby move.

Instantly, she felt calmer. Maybe it was just the reassurance that she was not

alone, but whatever the reason, she got a grip on her fluttery anxiety and called,

“Hello?” into the black.

Something huge scratched along the rock of the room’s ceiling. One of

the sluagh, she realized, and shuddered back into her pillow, trying not to picture

it up there, creeping above her. Watching her. Maybe even coming down while

she was sleeping and…touching her.

Light flared. A candle caught and slowly glowed out to throw an orange

light over the room. She could see the sluagh now, moving on to another candle.

It kept its face turned away, but even if it hadn’t, Taryn wasn’t sure she’d be able

to recognize it. They all looked so ghastly, it was hard to pay attention to

individual features.

“What time is it?” Taryn asked, pulling her blankets protectively higher.

“There is no time here.”

The sluagh’s voice was soft and scratchy, and that, more than its face,

was familiar.

“Lily?” Taryn guessed.

The sluagh paused, then slowly turned. “Yes,” she said, and there was a

pitiful sort of pleasure in that one word, a fragile sort of smile on those swollen

lips, just because she’d been remembered.

“Is it…I mean…should I get up now?” Taryn asked.

“Yes. He’s asking for you.” Lily left the candle and went to the puddle

of gold the naga called clothing.

“Do I have to wear that?”

Lily paused, fingering the golden threads of the skirt. “Our lord will

want to see you properly attired,” she said.

“I dressed up for him yesterday,” Taryn protested and winced at the

whiney sound of her voice. “Will I have to do it every day?” she asked then, in

an attempt to soften her first question. It didn’t help.

“He wants to look at you,” Lily said, keeping her eyes fixed on the

golden garments. “He wants the others to look at you. So you must be properly

attired.”

“Every day?”

“Yes.” Lily glanced her way, but not at her face. At her belly.

Yeah, that was right. She wasn’t just the new kid in town. She was

Pacha Ven. Oh, the days were just going to fly by, weren’t they?

Taryn got up and let Lily help her into the stupid gold clothes. The

thought came to her as the sluagh silently bound the collar onto her body that

when all this was over, she was going to have to go live in Dis, where Antilles

would probably force a whole army of servants on her. And she’d probably

never get to dress herself or hold her own cup or brush her own hair ever again.

She’d be lucky if she got to scratch her own nose. Her happy-go-lucky days of

independence were over.

“If you feel unwell, only tell me,” Lily said, and Taryn made an effort to

fight back her depression, or at least keep it from showing as much. “If the

furnishings do not suit you, or if the food is not to your liking, I will make it

right.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Taryn said with a sigh.

“I am yours to command, my lady. The lord is generous. You shall have

as many slaves as you wish.”

That gave her a nasty jolt and she drew back to look at Lily in alarm.

“You’re not really, are you?”

Lily’s ghoulish face closed off at once. “I can be masked—”

“No!” And she must have sounded sufficiently appalled, because Lily

hesitantly looked up at her. Deep in the sockets of the sluagh’s eyes were points

of color, deep red and reptile-yellow, but they were hopeful eyes regardless.

Hopeful and hopeless and above all, lonely. Taryn took one small, bony hand in

hers and lightly squeezed, suppressing a shiver at the feeling of unreasoning

dread this contact awoke in her. “I only meant…I don’t want a slave, Lily.”

“You must be attended,” Lily insisted. “I will serve you well, my lady.”

“No, I can’t accept a slave. But,” she went on desperately as Lily’s face

clouded over. “But…But I need a friend down here. I very much would like a

friend. Please.”

Lily was very still. It made her even more corpse-like.

On impulse, Taryn said, “I can be masked, if I repel you.”

Lily started violently, her mouth opening into a horrified hole. Then,

timidly, searching Taryn’s eyes, she smiled. She flinched a few times doing it,

but when Taryn only smiled back, she slowly relaxed into a shaky grin. Her

teeth were needle-thin, jagged, black.

The moment was thankfully cut short by a naga groveling his way into

the room. “Great lady, our lord bids you come to him. You must, at once.

Please. Come.” Grovel grovel.

Taryn stifled a sigh and started walking. Lily followed, leaping onto the

wall to scuttle along the ceiling, an act that was only slightly creepier than that of

the naga, who slithered and scraped his way down the corridor at Taryn’s ankles.

The rolling, writhing movement of his long, scaly body put her again in mind of

the wyvern. Her hand stole up to touch the strung teeth at her throat and she

shivered, but whether at the memory of the monster or the reality of the

obsequious thing crawling beside her, even she had no idea.

Once again, she passed no one in the ornate halls and open pathways of

the Underneath. Once again, the only stirrings of life came from the sluagh, who

moved at the periphery of her vision, silent and watchful. But she wasn’t seeing

it with new eyes now. She could look at it without the fear and amazement of her

first night and see the majesty of it. The beauty. And the awful emptiness.

When she came out of the passageway onto a precipice, that emptiness

was magnified with dizzying speed. Even though she could see the naga beside

her, even though she could see the sluagh crawling like white slugs on the walls,

when she stared across the vast, dark space of the Underneath at the dimly

glowing windows of the palace, she felt alone.

There was a rail along the landing here, fashioned to look like the

braided bodies of impossibly long serpents, and Taryn went to rest against it.

The stone was cold beneath her hands. Everything was cold here. As she stood,

she studied the spires and sloping walls of the palace, the vaulted windows and

graceful pillars crowned with sun-shaped icons. The light was all artificial,

streaming down from those eerie glowing crystals, but it seemed to Taryn that the

palace was meant to be seen by daylight. That it wanted to be. And yet, it was

here, locked away in eternal darkness.

Why even have a palace at all? It seemed so wasteful, to create the huge

caverns necessary to hold the towering walls and pointed rooftops. Rooftops!

For a structure that had no contact with rain or sun or weather of any kind! And

why did it need to be so far removed from the other chambers? Why, except to

force people to approach it like this, in awe? Darkness spoiled the grandeur of it

all, hence all the glowing stones, but a million crystals couldn’t compare with a

single sunrise and she had a feeling the naga knew it.

“Your rooms, great lady…you were comfortable?”

Taryn refocused on the creature groveling at her feet. “Yes, very.”

“There is no need I might see met?” He reached toward her ankle.

“No…desire?”

She stepped away, trying not to look too obvious about it. He stayed

where he was, but licked the stone where she had been standing, staring intently

up at her. She moved even further back.

“I was fine,” she said loudly. “The bed was very…very soft.”

“You were warm enough?” The naga stretched out one hand, gripped

the ground, and pulled himself a few inches toward her.

‘Dude, are you trying to get kicked?’ Taryn wondered silently and

backed up again. Aloud, she said, “Yes, thank you.”

“I am Shantanu, Herald of the Underneath.” He actually rolled onto his

back to grovel, and if he weren’t also rolling his lidless eyes back into his head in

the ecstasies of subservience, she’d think he was trying to look up her skirt. “It is

my honor to serve the lady Taryn!” he groaned, and flailed around some more.

Taryn erupted into terrified giggles. She couldn’t stop herself. She was

aware that Shantanu had stopped mid-gyration and was now peering up at her in

snakish bewilderment, but even that couldn’t rein her in. She just had to let it run

its awful, embarrassing course. Peals of laughter bounced off the stone and fell

into the chasm below her, but no new lights came on in the palace. No one stuck

a scaly head out to see who was making all the noise.

No one was there to hear it.

At last, although not entirely quiet, Taryn was able to clamp a hand over

her mouth and pretend at composure. She looked at Shantanu and he slowly

drew himself up onto his strong tail to match her height.

“You are…happy?” He bent as he spoke, accentuating his uncertainty

with a bow. His hands clutched at themselves, and for the first time, their

wringing did not look rehearsed. “That sound…it is one of happiness?”

How long had it been since he’d heard laughter? Had he ever? The

Underneath didn’t exactly encourage fits of childlike joy. But the silence

following his question was stretching out and Shantanu’s snakish face betrayed

more and more anxiety as he waited for her answer.

“Yes,” Taryn said finally, in a kind of surrender. “That’s what it means.

It’s…so beautiful here.”

“You honor us.” He bowed, then gestured at the winding road leading to

the palace. “Please, great lady. Our lord awaits.”

Patiently, no doubt.

Taryn nodded, murmuring something half-heartedly apologetic, and

started walking again. The palace rose up and up and up and finally swallowed

them.

She didn’t recognize any of the rooms they moved through, but they

ended up in the same great hall where Taryn had first been presented. The

cocktail party was back, or perhaps it had never ended. The naga all seemed to

be in the same glittering apparel, holding the same elaborate glasses and staring

at her with the same haunted intensity. The only difference between last night

and this morning was that they all bowed and rolled around when Shantanu

announced her and no one dropped their drink.

At the far end of the room, past panels of gold and curtains that appeared

to have been freshly-cleaned and perfumed, the ruler of the naga watched her as

she was fawned over. At the first lull in the writhing, he raised his scepter and

beckoned to her. “Human called Taryn, you will come before me now. You will

stand here—” He gestured laconically to the left of his throne, and Taryn noticed

that sometime between last night and now, he’d applied a full set of wicked-long

fake fingernails, making his hand glint with gold and cut emeralds. “—beside

me,” he finished, and struck his staff on the ground.

The naga released a single shared sigh at the tremendous honor of this

command.

Taryn shifted on her feet, which had already begun to ache. “I…I think I

have to respectfully—”

“You will stand here!” Devrajah spat, flinging himself out of his throne

to loom over the room. His tail lashed. His hand flexed on the body of his

scepter, producing a metallic rasping sound where those creepy fingernails

scraped it. “I am lord! Your will is mine!”

‘Tact,’ thought Taryn. ‘Diplomacy. Roads.’ She said, “I was hoping to

be allowed to walk around. I would very much like to see more of your

magnificent kingdom.”

The approving sighs of the gathered naga were abruptly terminated when

Devrajah shouted, “Kingdom?”

Taryn backed up. Devrajah threw his scepter at the nearest of his

subordinates and advanced on her, keeping his height and balance by snatching at

pillars and the shoulders of other naga. “My kingdom? Impudence!

Blasphemy!”

“I—”

“This!” He flung out both arms and every naga in the room dropped to

their bellies and was still. “This is the seat of all power! This is the center of the

universe! How dare you compare my empire to the insignificant scratches of

land over which mortals squabble! We are naga! We are everlasting! My

empire is everlasting!”

The last word reverberated and died. Taryn waited until she was certain

her voice wouldn’t shake and then she said, “I mean no offense. Where I’m

from, even heaven is called a kingdom.”

Devrajah glared, but the other naga murmured timidly from their

prostrations. Some were peeking up at them, anxiety in every eye. Devrajah’s

empty hands clenched and opened again. He turned, groped his way back to his

throne, and took back his scepter. “I forgive your ignorance,” he said, in what

was quite possibly the least forgiving tone she’d ever heard. “You shall see all of

my glorious empire in time, human. For now, you shall stand here.”

He pointed. Taryn climbed the dais and stood there. Only then, and with

an air of great disdain, did he lower himself back into the supporting coils of his

throne.

Victorious, he beckoned at the crowd and, somewhere within it, music

began to play—flutes and harps and delicate chimes, discordant to her ear, but

circling some complicated melody. He put out his hand and a naga placed a

jeweled cup into it. He snapped his fingers and another offered a tray of pierced

meats dripping with sauce. Both servants fairly glowed with pride, sending smug

expressions at the other naga as they bowed back from the dais. After a few

minutes of brooding silence, Devrajah gestured again and pointed at Taryn. His

servants rushed to offer her the food and drink, and Taryn, who had by this time

been awake long enough to decide she was hungry, immediately accepted one of

the hors d’oeuvres and put it in her mouth.

That was a mistake. She chewed, extremely aware that there was no way

she could spit it out and she was going to have to swallow it eventually. She

wasn’t sure exactly what they’d done to the meat, but she suspected it had started

out a little on the ripe side. Maybe even a lot on the ripe side. She didn’t

recognize the spice they used to cover the taste and that was impressive, because

whatever they used, they used a lot of it. It tasted a lot like a cross between

pickled ginger and roses, neither of which should ever be used to make a glaze

for over-ripe tumbler in the first place.

Taryn swallowed, fought a violent battle with her belly and won, then

offered the tray-holding naga a weak smile. “Thank you,” she said.

“That’s…extremely filling.”

The other naga responded to her faint praise by thrusting his cup under

her chin, filling her sinus cavity with the piercing aroma of very strong wine.

Taryn shook her head, beginning a polite refusal, and got about as far as, “I’d

rather—” before Devrajah struck out, slamming that staff into the stone right

beside her and bellowing, “Drink!” at the top of his lungs.

The music played on. The other naga maintained their conversations,

watchful.

“No, thank you,” Taryn said softly, her heart hammering. “It’s bad for

the baby.”

A soft sound rippled through the hall, a sigh seemingly heaved by all

naga in unison. Devrajah’s eyes flashed. He stared past her for a few leaden

seconds, then spat something in his own tongue and seated himself once more.

The naga who was the royal cup-bearer bowed away from her, looking

hurt, and returned to Devrajah’s side. He snatched up the wine and drank,

glaring at Taryn over the rim, then banged the empty cup down and waved the

other angrily away.

‘Buster, if you think I’m going to stand here all day just so you can give

me attitude,’ Taryn thought, but abandoned the rest of it with a sigh. She

couldn’t do a thing in her current situation and getting upset couldn’t change that.

Something touched her arm. She turned and was struck at once by the

bone-white sight of a sluagh’s face. It smiled, so it must be Lily, and it had a

silvery cup on a platter with clear liquid inside. “Water,” Lily whispered.

“Oh, thank y—”

“How dare you approach the royal person!” Devrajah roared.

Taryn spun, the cup flying from her hands, and saw the shimmer of

Devrajah’s staff coming at her. She threw up one arm and grabbed her belly with

the other, but Devrajah’s rage was not for her. He shoved her to one side with a

sweep of his staff and advanced on Lily, who had thrown herself facedown in a

very still huddle below him.

“Worm!” he spat, and swung. Before Taryn’s shocked eyes, he slammed

the heavy golden staff into Lily’s motionless body over and over. The sound of

it—two meaty thumps and one sickening crack—was wrapped inside sibilant

jeers from the other naga, who had all gathered around to add their derision to

this display of outrage. But when he raised his arm for a fourth blow, Taryn’s

paralysis broke. She grabbed the staff and was dragged forward by the strength

of his swing.

Devrajah turned his head just enough to fix her with one coldly glittering

eye. The rest of the room fell silent.

Taryn could feel her mouth working, but there were no words. She

couldn’t even think of what to say. There was nothing that wouldn’t sound like

an order, and while she was dangerously close to not caring if she insulted him or

not, she wasn’t so close that she forgot she was alone down here with no way out.

So she hung on him, her knuckles white and her lips quivering with all the things

she wanted to say and couldn’t, staring up at his scaly face in horror.

With one yank, Devrajah brought the staff back under his power.

Holding Taryn’s gaze, he drew back his arm and delivered one last blow to

Lily’s back, twisting as he pushed until something crunched inside her. Then he

shoved the sluagh away, banged the butt of the staff down on the tiles and opened

his mouth, exhaling in a low, challenging hiss.

“You…!” Stupefied, Taryn could only stammer at him, her hands raised

in a futile warding gesture, shaking. “You…! You…!”

“Yes. I.” Devrajah turned fully, drawing in his tail and balancing on its

powerful coils. He rose over her, impossibly tall, swaying only slightly as he

glared down at her. “Mine is the law of this Land. Mine is the hand of all

judgment. You are here by my will, and you will learn obedience or share the

fate of those who displease me.”

The words ‘Don’t you threaten me!’ rose up…and sank down again. She

was not wholly confident that Kruin had ever had dealings with any of the naga

beyond the gatekeeper. If that were true, then he might not be able to find her

down here, even if he magically knew that she was in trouble and he wanted to

come and get her.

She was alone. No one was going to save her if she needed saving.

No one was going to save Lily, either.

Trembling hard, unable to rip her eyes away from Devrajah even long

enough to blink, Taryn took one step. And another. And at the third, that cold

smirking light in Devrajah’s eyes suddenly flared into fury when he realized she

was not backing fearfully away from him, but putting herself in front of Lily.

His voice boomed out, scraping over her ears in that alien language of

theirs, but Taryn was already crying, “Lily, run!”

The back of his scaly hand slapped the rest of her words right out of her

mouth, knocking her into a pillar with enough force that she initially thought the

sound of hitting it was her own ribs breaking. Her gasp of pain turned into a

choking fit; she bent forward and sprayed blood all over the golden tiles of the

throne room. But no teeth. Her lips had been cut all to hell, but he hadn’t hit her

as hard as he could have.

One of the naga uttered a high, pleading stream of hissing words and

several others echoed her. Many fell onto their bellies, writhing and slapping at

the tiles. Devrajah’s gaze snapped to them and he shouted something silencing,

but the mood had definitely changed. His hand clenched on the haft of his staff,

but he didn’t raise it.

“Go,” he said finally. His voice shook, tight with rage, but that was all.

“I send you from my sight. Meditate upon your insolence until you are once

more honored with my summons.”

Taryn stumbled back, reaching through empty space to help Lily up, but

the sluagh was already gone. When she turned and fled, Devrajah flung out both

arms and roared something triumphant and furious. His reflections in the golden

panels flanking the great hall followed her, chasing her with his contempt until

she was out and once more in darkness.

6. Pretty Things

She ran through a jumble of empty rooms, taking turns at random,

seeing nothing, until the walls opened up and she was out. She staggered a short

way along the winding path, then grabbed a pillar and hugged it, letting go to

panic and misery and a bitter wave of resentment. What in God’s name had

Kruin been thinking?

‘Maybe he’s trying to kill you,’ her brain murmured, and as utterly

ridiculous and untrue as she knew that to be, the thought was still a blow. She

burst into tears.

Someone plucked at the golden threads of her halter. A soft, scratchy

voice said, “Please. Don’t do that. Don’t cry.”

Taryn gasped and whirled, first looking behind her, then up at the pillar

where Lily clung. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she cried, wiping her eyes. “Are you

okay?”

“I’ll heal.”

“Let me see it,” Taryn babbled, reaching out just as though she thought

she could really help. “He hit you so hard…are you sure you’re okay?”

Lily’s brows puckered. She let go of the pillar, now hanging impossibly

just from her toes, and lifted the loose sack of her dress.

Taryn staggered back, both hands flying to cover her mouth, but it wasn’t

the mottling of bruises that overwhelmed her with revulsion. Neither was it

precisely Lily’s naked body, although the sight of those grey, puckered nipples

and slack sex sank in on some visceral level and churned there. There was

nothing truly ugly about her, no growths, no malformations, but there was

something about her regardless, something that gave an impression of gross

mutation. And worst of all, it was moving. Lily’s ribs were rippling beneath her

pallid, doughy flesh, and Taryn could hear the eggshell-like crunching of bones

as they realigned. And she knew for a fact that the sluagh was showing her this

to calm her, but she really thought if Lily touched her now, she’d probably start

hitting her herself.

And then it was gone, covered behind the dirty rag Lily wore. The

sluagh dropped from the wall, one hand rubbing at her midsection, and now

Taryn couldn’t help but imagine what that was doing to the soft flesh beneath.

“You don’t need to worry about me. He just…has to hit someone sometimes.

But he can’t kill me. Not that way.”

Taryn fell into fresh tears and fell hard. “Everything is awful here!” she

brayed, and sank to her knees on the stone floor, hiding her face as she wailed, “I

want to go home! I hate this place! I want to g-go h-h-home!”

Oh yeah. Diplomat of the Year awards committee, start polishing that

plaque.

Lily’s clammy hand touched her, patting tentatively. It felt like a dead

thing brushing up against her in the dark and brought all kinds of Lovecraftian

thoughts right up to the front of her brain to slouch around, muttering and

slavering over one another. Suffice to say, it was not a soothing touch. Taryn

cried harder.

“Please get up. Please. I’ll take you to your room.”

“No! I want to go home!”

“I can’t do that.” Lily patted her again, then withdrew a short distance

and knelt down, folding her hands in her lap and looking helpless. “Please stop

crying. They’ll hear you.”

“So what?” Taryn sobbed defiantly. “Let them see how fucking

miserable I am in their everlasting goddamn empire! Let them see what they’re

doing to me!”

“They’ll never believe they’re doing it,” Lily said, neither protesting nor

attempting to convince her, but only stating a simple fact. “They’ll think I am.”

Taryn gulped on tears and stopped crying. She rubbed at her eyes,

hiccupped, and was quiet.

“Thank you,” said Lily.

“I don’t want to get you in any more trouble.”

The sluagh shrugged and looked up at the dimly-glowing windows of the

silent palace. “It wasn’t your fault. I knew the rules.”

“Then…then why did you…?”

“Sometimes he has to hit someone,” Lily said again. “I didn’t want it to

be you.”

She wanted to start crying again and couldn’t, so she sat on the over-

decorated floor of this ridiculously ostentatious walkway and felt sorry for

herself and for Lily, who really was too nice to deserve to look the way she did.

“Please get up now,” Lily said softly.

Taryn got up, wiping at her dry eyes a few more times.

“Let me take you to your room.”

Taryn thought of that room, its gilded walls and tiled floors and

sumptuous bed and lavish furnishings, and all of it dead silent and forgotten

somewhere inside this magnificent mausoleum of an empire. She shuddered. “I

don’t want to go yet. Can we talk for awhile?”

Lily bent her head in a kind of bow. “What would you like to talk

about?”

How much she wanted to go home.

“You have a very pretty name,” Taryn said, not without a sense of

desperation.

Lily gave her that timid, sidelong glance and half a hitching smile. “It’s

a kind of flower,” she said.

“I know. It’s also a very pretty flower.”

Lily shrugged one shoulder, dropping her eyes. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Here.” Taryn looked around in vain for a handy Etch-A-Sketch, and

then spat into her palm a few times. Dipping one finger into this moisture, she

drew the flower she’d seen so often planted on the chests of deceased cartoon

characters—the trumpet-shaped blossom, graceful stem, and broad leaves of the

Easter Lily. When she was done, the sluagh inched forward, the sockets of her

eyes fixed on the wall and her hands clutching one another at the level of her

heart. “It’s white,” Taryn said lamely. “Well, I guess it comes in lots of colors,

but the ones I’ve seen are white.”

Lily didn’t reply. The flower was already fading, drying away in the

desiccant air of the Underneath. Still, the sluagh stared, slack-faced and silent.

Only after it was entirely lost did Lily speak, and even then, she didn’t look away

from the empty wall. “Do you have them in the Valley?”

“No,” Taryn admitted. “I haven’t seen one in Arcadia, only Earth.

Gosh, I don’t even know if they grew in Ireland.”

“They must have them on his world then. I don’t think he’s been to

Earth.”

“Who?”

Lily glanced at her, then up at the nearest scowling statue of a hooded

Devrajah. “He named us after pretty things,” she said. “I think it was a joke.”

That was such an ugly commentary on the self-proclaimed ‘lord’ that

Taryn could not immediately process it. “It wasn’t very funny,” she sputtered

finally.

“No,” Lily agreed, still without emotion. “But no one laughs here

anyway. May I take you to your room now?”

Knowing she should drop the subject, but both sincerely curious and

deeply opposed to returning to that room, Taryn ventured, “So…he named you

all after flowers, or just you girls?”

Lily shot her a single pained glance and then looked away. Her mouth

opened a few times, but ultimately, she closed it without speaking.

“I’m sorry,” said Taryn unhappily. “I shouldn’t have asked. You can

take m—”

“We didn’t have names before,” Lily said. “We didn’t know we were

different.”

“Different from…?”

“Each other.” Lily looked at Taryn, her expression faintly imploring but

not really expecting to find understanding. “We were his Hunt, you understand?

Only that. We didn’t know anything but the Hunt and the Hunted…and him.

We didn’t know male and female. We came together sometimes and sometimes

there were little ones…but we were all Hunt. Only that.” She looked away.

“Until we came here.”

Determined not to speak again, Taryn merely nodded and wished she

could fold time back and never start this conversation. Or walk into the

Underneath. Or browbeat Tilly into this stupid ‘road’ idea in the first place.

“But we did come here. The lycan tried to live with us…” Lily heaved a

sigh and shook her head. “It didn’t work out. We were sent here, to the

Underneath. He didn’t want us, but the lycan made him take us. We tried to be

useful and at first it was all right. They were masters. We were slaves. And it

wasn’t so bad.”

Taryn’s mouth popped open to protest. She bit her lip, swallowed her

words, made herself be still.

“I know you don’t understand that,” Lily said. She pushed a lank fall of

her hair back over her shoulder, holding Taryn’s gaze for a while. There was

something almost pitying in that look. “And it doesn’t matter anyway. We could

be his slaves because we needed him so much. We weren’t the same anymore.

We weren’t the Hunt. We had to be something else. And he gave us so much to

do, you see? He gave us so much to be.”

Taryn forced herself to nod without speaking.

“We made him the empire he had promised his people. We gave him

something to be lord of. He told us he would protect us and keep us for his own

as long as we lived, but we had to provide for him.” Lily glanced upward,

frowning slightly. “He hates the lycan. He hates them because they’re stronger

and he hates them because they can have children, but mostly he hates them

because he needs them. He tried to make it so he didn’t need them anymore. He

tried to teach us how to hunt.”

“Teach you? But didn’t you already know? I mean, you are…

were…the Hunt.”

“It isn’t the same.”

“How?”

“It just isn’t.”

Taryn opened her mouth to ask again, but made herself close it when she

saw Lily sigh. It was futile to keep pressing, she realized. Either Lily didn’t

have the words to explain, or it there was some very real but metaphysical reason

for it that Taryn genuinely would not be capable of understanding. “I’m sorry.

Go on.”

Lily was quiet for a little while longer, studying the golden statue of

Devrajah. Her expression was faintly troubled, but only faintly. “He decided to

send some of us up to learn how to hunt. He decided it should be the males,

because they were stronger, he said. They died. We can survive a lot of things,

but we can be killed if you let enough of our blood out. So they died. And he

sent more. They died, too. He just kept sending more. Finally the lycan came

down and told him to stop, but by that time, there were no more males to send.”

“He doomed you,” Taryn said, stunned.

“We were doomed already.”

“My God, did he do it deliberately?”

Lily merely shrugged. Her apathy struck Taryn as sickening, even more

than the cruelty of the naga’s killing order. Anger put an edge in her voice as she

said, “Don’t you care? Don’t you think that’s wrong?”

“Sometimes.” That small wrinkle appeared between Lily’s brows. Then

it smoothed itself away and Lily looked back at her. “But I don’t think I ever

blamed him. Hope is such a cruel thing to live with. It’s easier this way.”

“How can you even think—”

“Would you raise your young one here,” Lily asked, “under his rule?”

Taryn’s outrage froze in her throat. Froze. The chill drove down her

spine and wrapped around her swollen belly.

Lily nodded and turned away from the statue. “The masters are

benevolent,” she said. “The masters are merciful. All the same, I would not

wish this life on anyone else. Our lives were over before we ever came to the

Underneath. May I take you to your room now?”

“No.” She had to see something alive down here; something green and

new to take just some of the awfulness away. “Can you take me to the garden

now? Please?”

Lily was giving her that sad-eyed, pitying look again. “I don’t know

what you’re expecting, my lady, but I think it will be very different from what

you will see. May I not take you to your room?”

“Please, Lily. I want to see the garden,” Taryn said, but she was

beginning to wonder if she meant it.

“Very well. To the Garden of the Moon, then.” Lily bent her head once

and started walking. “But I think you should prepare yourself for

disappointment.”

7. The Garden of the Moon

The gardens of the Underneath were just as awful as the rest of it. In

some ways, it was even worse. This was the first chamber Taryn had seen in the

Underneath Empire where no effort had been made to decorate it. None. And

considering the naturally beautifying properties of plants, that seemed to indicate

that, for whatever reason, they had gone in the opposite direction and deliberately

made it look as bad as possible. If that had indeed been the goal, then they

succeeded. It depressed her just to be here.

The walls were covered in ridges where moss and stringy clots of vines

could catch hold and grow, but there was no rhyme or reason to their placement.

If they had been natural outcroppings, the effect would have been woodsy and

wild, if still somewhat gloomy, but they were not. No, the walls had clearly been

shaped, but there was no arrangement to them, no symmetry. The rock had just

been pulled out like the pouting lips on an idiot face, so that plants could drool

out onto a wet floor.

There was no path on the floor to meander along. Things grew in mossy

snarls here and there, and about the best thing that could be said of them was they

were hard to see. The only light came through holes in the crust far overhead,

holes mostly just large enough to admit a little sunlight or rain, but a larger hole

had been set in the very center, one nearly as wide as Taryn stood tall. A

hundred feet below this tempting, hopeless egress, a large, flat stone had been

raised. It was faintly indented and heavily-stained by blood, making Taryn think

of an altar, although if that was what it indeed was, it had been set in a really ugly

shrine.

Although Taryn was probably the first visitor ever to come to the gardens

just to look at them, they were not alone there. Sluagh crawled along the walls,

scratching up the moldy things that grew here. The harvest of this dubious crop

went into pouches slung around the sluagh’s necks. The stench of earth’s decay

was overwhelming.

“You’re right,” Taryn said sickly. “It’s horrible.”

Lily didn’t say any I-told-you-so, but her eyes showed it clearly enough.

She turned to go, bowing.

But Taryn moved on ahead, craning her neck to try and see up through

the largest opening. It showed her nothing more than an azure patch of sky.

“Can you ever see the moon through that?” she asked.

Lily tipped her head back to study the hole. “Sometimes.”

“Will you take me back here tonight to see?”

“If you wish it, it shall be so, great lady.” Lily’s hand brushed at Taryn’s

arm as she started to climb onto the shallow bowl of the altar-like stone. “You

mustn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Things fall there.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“I don’t mean things on the rock fall down. I mean things fall onto the

rock.” Lily pointed one finger up at the opening. “That’s where the lycan throw

our meat.”

“Oh.” Taryn backed well away from the offering place, frowning.

“They just chuck it down a hole?”

“Yes.”

“But they don’t…I mean, they don’t take off the fur for you or scoop out

the innards first?”

“Sometimes.” Lily cocked her head to one side. “But we treat the furs

to make soft beds for the masters. We eat the innards.”

“We do?”

Lily touched her own thin chest with the tips of her fingers. “We do,”

she explained, and made a circling gesture to include the other sluagh. “As well

as any meat the sun may have soured before the lycan bring it. The masters are

generous.”

So. Mold and moss and the offal of cast-out carcasses. Taryn could only

stare.

“Lily,” she said at last. “Why do you stay here?”

“To serve the m—”

“No, please. Just tell me.” Taryn took the sluagh’s clammy hand in both

of hers; Lily looked at it with haunted eyes. “Why don’t you just leave?”

The silence dragged out, but at last, Lily stirred herself to whisper,

“Where would we go?”

“My God, anywhere!”

“No one else would take care of us.”

“You’re not being taken care of here, you’re being used! You’re taking

care of them!”

The scuttling and scratching of sluagh on the walls abruptly ceased.

Taryn looked around and the others immediately continued their work, finishing

rapidly and slipping away through cracks and shadowed doorways. None of

them met her eyes.

“He took care of us.” Lily’s gaze was fixed, unfocused. Her hand in

Taryn’s was limp as death. “We flew through the air once and he led us. He

gave us a purpose. We hunted for him and he made us feel righteous.”

Taryn studied the face of the grieving sluagh. She could remember

hiding under the covers in the fold-out bed at Granna Birgit’s house when she

was small, too scared to sleep because she’d seen that awful storybook on the

bottom shelf and read the legends of the treacherous fey, stories that had slapped

all the Disney right out of fairy tales forever in her little head. There had been

several illustrations and one in particular, in full color over two broad, glossy

pages, showing antlered Herne charging out of a thunderous sky on a fire-

breathing, leather-winged horse with a tangle of clawed and misshapen creatures

forming a shrieking black cloud around him. The only thing that had ever made

that picture easier to bear was showing it to Rhiannon, so the two of them could

be scared together.

And now look at them. As real and as magical in their own way as any

griffin, but trapped under stone and locked into slavery. Pitiable and repulsive,

they had become the wretched echo of a nightmare whose dreamer had long

since woken up and gotten on with her life.

“I’m sorry,” she said. It seemed like the wrong thing to say, but she had

to say something. “I read about him when I was young. He had…powerful

stories.”

“He did.” Lily sighed, turning her face away. “But it didn’t help him.

They killed him with his name and an arrow made of oak, and then we were

alone until Pan found us. We were hundreds and hundreds in the Hunt. We were

eighty when we came to Arcadia. And no one would take care of us. So now we

are thirty.”

“Lily…you were orphaned! You were scared! But it’s been a long time!

You’re strong now. You know how to—”

“We know how to follow.” Lily did not look at her. “We know how to

obey. We know how to cook food that is brought to us and make pretty rooms

for those who live in them. The world outside will kill us.”

“The world inside is killing you!” Taryn burst out.

Lily shrugged one thin shoulder, still staring into the far corner of the

garden. “As we are dying anyway, why not die in comfort?”

“If you’re going to die anyway, why not live a little first?”

Lily laughed. It was a ghastly sound, and not just for the hollow despair

that inspired it, but simply because it couldn’t help but be ghastly, coming from

her. It was a sound filled with icy winds and demon wings, cut through with the

screams of small children, and just hearing it made Taryn’s hands twitch with the

urge to clap them over her ears. Lily glanced down at their shared grip and

stopped laughing. She sighed instead.

“But we are all in the places we choose to be,” the sluagh said. “Even

you. You talk of life outside, but what life is there for us? We are despised.

Here, we merely die. There, we must suffer first.”

“Not everyone would feel that way,” Taryn protested. “And there are

people you could really help. People who could teach you the things you need to

know without making slaves of you first!”

Lily looked again at their hands. Her fingers curled slightly, not quite in

what could be considered a squeeze. “You?”

Taryn blinked. “I don’t actually know all that much, but—”

Lily released her and stepped back, bowing low. “You are very kind,”

she said, and Taryn’s heart sank to hear her formal tone. “But kindness doesn’t

help us, and now that all our brothers are dead, nothing really can. You have

seen the garden, great lady. Now you must return to your room before he decides

to send for you.”

“Lily—”

“Please, follow me.” Lily gestured toward the corridor, still in her

servile crouch.

“Just think about it!”

Lily’s head bent even lower. Beyond the dark veil of her hair, her pale

face twisted. “Please,” she whispered. “Please. All I want…is not to think

about it.”

“I…” Taryn hugged herself, shivering in the damp. “I’m sorry. I only

wanted…I won’t ask again.”

“Thank you.” Lily straightened up, once more expressionless. “If you

like, my lady, you should ask our lord for leave to walk the Path of Blessings.

Nothing grows there, but it’s very pretty.”

“I’d rather go to my room,” Taryn said dully. And hide under the covers

and pretend that none of this was happening. “But you won’t forget to bring me

back when the moon comes out?”

Lily laughed that sad nightmarish laugh. “I can’t forget anything,” she

said. She raised one skeleton-pale hand in a boogeyman’s invitation, and then

walked away into the enclosing black.

8. Devrani

She was grounded.

That was the only way she could think of it. Lily was with her in her

room, and after Taryn convinced her that she didn’t need to constantly fill

Taryn’s cup or fluff her pillows, the sluagh was almost good company. But there

was a naga right outside the door, and even though he bowed and scraped and

wasn’t armed, he didn’t let her leave. When she mentioned hunger, Lily brought

her food. When she asked to use the bathing room, Lily brought her a pan of

warm water and heavily-perfumed soap. When she said she was bored, Lily

brought her games. The lavish comforts of the place made it a little ridiculous to

say she was imprisoned, but she was definitely grounded.

“So,” Taryn said, listlessly looking over her pieces on the round board of

the game Lily called Amravati. It was a little like backgammon, but not enough

that Taryn was any good at it. It didn’t help that Lily was always very careful to

lose, despite her lackluster playing. “I guess he’s pretty mad at me.”

“Yes.” Lily shrugged. “But he would be angry whether or not you gave

him a reason. He hates the things he covets.”

Taryn’s hand dropped to rub at her stomach. A fist prodded back at her.

She rubbed and Baby quieted. Soon he or she was floating just as easy as

Sunday morning, but Taryn’s disquiet only grew. There was nothing Devrajah

coveted at the moment so much as this baby. Did that mean he hated it? Enough

to…well, do something?

“Are you all right?” Lily asked.

Taryn nodded, still distracted by her own thoughts of Devrajah in a

murderous rage. The sound of his staff thudding into Lily’s body kept coming

back, along with that sickly crunch of breaking bone.

“Are you hungry?”

“Huh?”

Lily nodded at Taryn’s hand, still lightly stroking her belly. “Are you

hungry?” she asked again. “I could bring something. The lycan have fed us very

well since you came.”

That made her smile a little. “No, but thank you.”

“Great lady, forgive my intrusion.”

Lily leapt up onto the wall and scuttled into a corner as a naga slither-

groped his way into the room. He gave a perfunctory writhe to demonstrate the

depth of his admiration, then rose up and settled comfortably on his coils. “Ten

thousand greetings,” he said.

“Um, hello. Shantanu, isn’t it?”

“Herald of all the Underneath.” Writhe, writhe. He smoothed down the

sides of his skirts when he was done, letting his tongue flick at the air, as if trying

to taste how impressed she might be. “Our lord summons you to his presence.”

“Oh rapture.”

Shantanu showed his approval with a low bow and adoring sigh, proving

that while he had a very good grasp of English, he didn’t have a whole lot of

experience with sarcasm.

“I need to get ready then,” Taryn added, gesturing at the front of her

shift. “I can’t see him looking like this.”

“For certain, honored one. Slave! Garments!”

“At once, master,” Lily whispered, and slipped away through a wide

crack in the ceiling.

That left Taryn alone with Shantanu. He stared at her stomach, swaying

slightly and smoothing down the sides of his skirt over and over. And no, it

wasn’t the least bit creepy.

“Shall I bathe you?” Shantanu asked softly. The tip of his tail shivered.

“I’d rather make my preparations in private,” she told him, the same

excuse she’d given the doorman, Siddhartha.

Shantanu bowed, masking his disappointment with some obsequious

fawning and taking the opportunity while down there to lick the floor next to

Taryn’s foot. “I shall be just without, great lady.” He slid backwards, really

slipped that floor some tongue, and then left her.

Taryn sat back down, put her head in her hands and tried to remember

what it felt like to want to come to this place.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” Taryn sighed and got up, pulling her shift over her head to help

Lily get her dressed. “What do you suppose my odds are of having a happy

meeting with Devrajah?”

“Poor.” Lily draped the skirt around Taryn’s hips, low under her belly,

and knelt down to work the fastens.

“Has anyone ever had a happy meeting with him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“No one? He has concubines, doesn’t he?” Taryn grumbled, intensely

aware of how mean-spirited that particular comment was.

“Yes. But they aren’t happy. Maybe it would be different if they could

give him children.” Lily straightened up, pursing her swollen lips in a thoughtful

way, then shrugged and fetched Taryn’s collar. “But maybe not very different.

He just isn’t very nice.”

“Do you have any advice?” Taryn asked, holding her hair while Lily tied

the heavy thing on. “For dealing with him, I mean.”

Lily stepped away, making last adjustments to golden threads and

shining jewels. “I let him hit me.” She shrugged again. “Protect your head.”

“Great lady,” Shantanu called from just beyond the door. “Please, make

haste. Our lord’s will must never find want. Please.”

“Just a second.” Taryn brushed her hair back with her fingers and

headed for the hall. She took a deep breath, put on her best politician’s-wife

smile, and stepped out. “I’m ready,” she said.

Both Shantanu and the babysitter posted outside her chambers allowed

themselves to be overcome by her beauty, but not for long. Devrajah was

waiting, after all. And as Lily said, he wasn’t very nice.

Shantanu went ahead of her, clearly buoyed by the privilege of

announcing her. Taryn followed at what she hoped was a respectful distance,

trying very hard not to look as utterly depressed as she was. As before, they

passed no one. The sound of her footsteps and the hoarse rasp of his scales over

the stone bounced to deafening proportions in the vaulted corridors of the palace

and soon, there she was, back at the party.

Shantanu’s speech was lengthy and augmented by a lot of big arm

movements and tricky tail choreography. The naga applauded him after a

fashion when it was done, tapping their fingertips against their breastbones.

Then they all looked intently toward the throne and waited.

Devrajah’s voice rolled out, laconic and commanding. He didn’t bother

with English, but it had to be, “Come in.” The other naga groveled for their lord

and then rose just so they could drop and grovel for her when she took her first

steps inside. She smiled at them, telling herself it was good practice for when

she was the lady of the Valley, strolling with Antilles around Dis. Hopefully,

there’d be less rolling on the floor for the Cerosan. And hopefully, there’d be

chairs in Dis.

But hey…there was a chair. Right there on the dais beside Devrajah’s

own golden coils. God only knew what storage closet this had been sitting in or

who it had originally been made for (not to mention how many sluagh it had

taken to drag it into place), but it was here now. Smaller than Devrajah’s, but no

less ornate, the golden snakes that made up its form had been shaped for

someone to sit on, not within as he did. It was clear that this was her chair. It

was equally clear that it was not the seat of a visiting ambassador.

This was a throne.

“Sit there,” Devrajah ordered as he twined into his own throne.

The price of hesitation was always a damn shouting match and Taryn’s

ankles were swollen. The hell with it. She obeyed, taking the weight off her

aching feet and a billion exquisitely-carved snake scales poked promptly up into

her bottom. Oh joy.

The watching naga sighed and applauded some more. The musicians

began to play and the rest of them began to mingle, taking up jeweled goblets and

assuming postures of adoration.

Taryn tipped her head back to watch the sluagh crawling along the walls

and ceiling, balancing trays of sweetmeats and silver decanters as they moved in

defiance of gravity. She thought she saw Lily up there, but couldn’t be certain.

If so, Lily gave no sign of recognition, even when Taryn smiled at her.

“What are you looking for?”

Taryn brought her eyes down in a hurry. “Nothing. Just admiring the

ceiling.” That would be a lame excuse, if this were any other ceiling. “The floor

is beautiful, too,” she added, leaning forward to stare at it with what she hoped

was sufficient intensity.

A wave of Devrajah’s hand and the other naga parted to allow her to look

at all of it. And now that she could, by God, the floor was nothing but a huge

mural of Devrajah. Taryn made appropriate sounds of appreciation, very aware

that he was staring at her.

“What is the meaning of that word that you are called?” he demanded.

Devrajah never asked questions. He only made demands.

Taryn blinked around at him. “Taryn? Um, I’m not sure. Something

Irish.”

Devrajah nodded once, decisive. “Then I remove it from you,” he

declared.

“What?”

“You shall be called Devrani hereafter.”

The attending naga gasped and applauded, most going to their bellies at

least once. She scarcely noticed.

“Wait a s—”

“How like you my holdings, Devrani?”

That was a hard question and a pointed one, even if it weren’t for the

whole name-removing thing. Taryn shifted on the uncomfortable throne, trying

to let go of her resentment. After all, a rose by any other name could still be used

to stab this condescending bastard through the heart. She took a deep breath and

thought diplomatic thoughts.

“I’ve never seen its equal,” she said, and congratulated herself on her

sincerity and tact.

Devrajah’s scaly mouth thinned in what might actually be a smile. He

rolled the haft of his scepter between his fingers, looking at her. “There is no

equal,” he announced. “None. In all the Realms, mine is the only empire free of

all corruption. Time itself fears to travel here. My holdings are eternal.”

The other naga sighed and applauded and drank their drinks.

“So you will stay,” Devrajah finished, turning his gaze out over the great

hall.

Taryn waited for a while before realizing that those were the only words

he intended to say. Four little words. One flabbergasting edict. So you will stay.

He didn’t mean forever. He couldn’t possibly. He meant today, as in,

you will stay in your pretty chair and share my magnificence, right?

Hesitantly, Taryn uncurled her fingers and raised her hand. Devrajah’s

eyes flashed, but he continued to stare straight ahead. She could hold her arm up

all day. He was never going to call on her.

She lowered her hand again and tried another approach. “Um…”

“You will not speak!” Devrajah slammed the butt of his scepter down to

break the echoes of his command, then pointed the snake’s head at her. “You

will sit in your chair and be silent!”

Taryn thought about it. Then she stood up with as much dignity as her

body’s dimensions would allow.

Devrajah lunged upward, suddenly twice his height and full in fury.

“Sit!” he bellowed as the rest of his subjects flattened themselves on the ground.

“I absolutely,” Taryn said, making certain to speak softly and enunciate

clearly, “will not be yelled at. Not by you, not by anyone.” She started walking.

He grabbed her arm.

Several times since coming to Arcadia, Taryn had been confronted with

the overwhelming physical strength of the other races. Antilles, for example.

His hands could never be anything other than the hands of a Cerosan, hands that

swung the smith’s hammer and wielded the battle axe. Tonka’s hands were the

hands of a horseman, accustomed to lobbing ten-foot spears and doing the sort of

work that supported his village. Dryleaf, only a few inches taller and a few

pounds heavier than she, had nevertheless been able to lift her up and throw her

around without any obvious effort. Sometimes it seemed that everyone she met

was immeasurably stronger than any human could ever hope to be.

But even in the worst of times, even in those first distrustful days, even

in the satyr’s camp, she had never been held like this.

As Devrajah spun her back to face him, she fully expected to hear the

snap of breaking bone. His rough scales scoured the flesh from her in a red band

and his claws gouged bloody divots in her bicep and none of it, none of it, was

equal to the look in his yellow eyes.

“You will do as I say,” he hissed. “I am lord! And you—” He shook

her once, snapping her in his grip like a flag in a majorette’s hand. Her feet went

out from under her, but she didn’t fall. He held her like he didn’t even notice the

extra hundred pounds he was suddenly supporting. “You are mine to command!

Mine!”

“Airyia,” someone murmured. The word was taken up in several voices,

oddly subdued. One wild glance behind her showed Taryn dozens of naga, still

on their bellies, but watching raptly. Some were swaying. Some panted. More

and more were joining the chant. “Devrajah. Quiabe. Airyia Pacha Ven!”

He heard. Devrajah raised his head, staring coldly at his people and

completely ignoring her as she dangled from his hand. His gaze was still furious,

but oddly speculative as well.

“Quiabe! Devrajah! Airyia Pacha Ven!”

“Get out,” he said suddenly, and threw her back. She tumbled off the

dais and landed butt-first on the stone floor, already wrapped protectively around

her belly. Devrajah didn’t bother to watch her sprawl. He had turned his back

already and was re-arranging himself within his throne’s coils. “When I forgive

your insolence and defiance, Devrani, I will send for you. Until then, get out.”

Belated panic slammed into her. She kicked back, fighting tears and

breathing too hard, trying to get her feet under her and failing.

Another naga seized her. Taryn fell backwards and was immediately

covered in grasping hands. They pulled at her, rubbed her, patting and stroking

and licking every part of her that they could reach, and they could reach it all.

Naga voices rose in pleading wails, deafening her with words she couldn’t

understand.

Devrajah silenced them all with a shout.

Taryn clawed her way free of sulking naga and felt hands on her again.

She swung blindly, struck soft skin and bones and knew she’d hit a sluagh. She

looked around into Lily’s calm and sorrowing socket-eyes—Lily, who never did

a thing wrong—and burst into tears.

Devrajah did some more shouting in naga-speak, punctuating it with

slams of his staff. His people began to cheer and weep and roll around. God

knew what he was telling them.

“Come, my lady,” Lily whispered, helping her up. She did it easily, too.

Everyone was so strong here.

“I’m so sorry,” Taryn wept. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”

“No, great lady, I am for you to hit. Please, come. Come to your room.

Beat me there.”

Once out of the throne room, Taryn seized Lily’s arm and never mind the

nightmares. “Take me to the garden!” she begged. “I have to see the moon,

okay?”

Lily looked away, tugging at a length of her lank hair. “I…I am

supposed to take you to your room…”

“Please! I have to see that this is going to be over someday!”

The sluagh chewed at her lower lip. “I’ll take you,” she said finally, and

gave Taryn one of those hopeless looks. “But then you must go to your room, if

you are really my friend. He can’t know I’ve taken you. And you have to obey

him! Promise!”

“I can’t promise that, he’s horrible! He hits you!”

Lily swept a hand through the air, irritably pushing that away. The

sound of moans followed in the wake of her arm and her eyes glowed, just for a

moment. “I am for him to hit,” she said. “But your position is precarious, more

so than you realize.”

“What am I supposed to do? I can’t let him keep me! I won’t stay here,

Lily, not one day more than I—”

Lily’s soft hand clamped over Taryn’s mouth. She pushed her back

behind a pillar, nervously looking back at the silent palace. The touch of the

sluagh’s skin was repulsive to every sense—clammy, cold and filling her mind

with images of death and screams and darkness. She tried to stomach it, but had

to struggle, and when she did, Lily released her and stepped back, cringing. “I’m

sorry…but you mustn’t say such things. You mustn’t ever refuse one of his

commands.”

“But I—”

“There are dungeons here, too,” Lily said, and that shut her right up.

“You act like this can’t get any worse, but things can always get worse. Don’t

you understand that? Never refuse his commands!” She looked around again,

waved once, and set off down a corridor.

Taryn followed, rubbing at her bare arms. “I can’t stay here.”

“The lycan won’t abandon you. And he’s afraid of them. He’ll give you

back when they come, but it does no good to defy his will when you are here.

You have to see that. Hurry.”

She followed Lily deeper into the Underneath’s unlit passages, hugging

her stomach as she went. The strain of maintaining that swift not-quite-run was

wearing on her; Baby began to thrash in his watery bed. But the moon would be

at the end of it, she thought. It would be a bigger moon than when Kruin sent her

away. And somewhere in the world, Antilles would be looking at it with her,

counting the days just as fervently, and someday, this would all be over. And it

would be worth it. It had to be worth it.

If only she could see the moon.

9. Shared Moon

Antilles set aside the last document requiring his attention and went to

the window. A summer rain had moved in from the west. There was no night

sky to greet him, no star of promise, no moon to share with his displaced wife.

The thought depressed him to an unreasonable degree. He stared at the

lightless sky and tormented himself with the unpleasant fantasy in which

somewhere, in some unknowable lair, Taryn was trapped beneath this same

moonless heaven and sobbing uncontrollably. He supposed it was a poor

testament to his character that he should imagine such a thing.

“My lord?”

Without turning, Antilles said, “Tis good news you’ll have for me, or

take yourself away.”

A brief silence, then retreating hooves.

Antilles sighed, rubbing at the ridge of his false horn. “Hold,” he said.

“Hold and give me your message.”

It was a wary herald who returned to his knee before the lordly podium.

Antilles waved him up as he took the throne, already bracing himself and bitterly

determined not to lose his temper.

“My lord, I am sent to inquire as to the state of our great city’s stores.”

“Aye.” Antilles rubbed at his brow again. He could feel an ache seeding

itself in his brain. ‘Stores’ in this context could mean only food stores, and aye,

it was a pressing matter. There had been much food left behind in Dis upon his

people’s exodus, but so many years untouched had ruined all, even that left in

tins. The fields, long overgrown and blown to seed, had provided some

nourishment to those who endeavored to glean the tangled vegetation, and with

fish in the lake and hunts in the plains beyond it, the returned Cerosan had

managed to survive, if not to excess, at least in comfort. And yet, the summer

was ending and autumn was short and the stores, ah, the stores were still empty.

“Have you a census?” Antilles asked.

“In estimate, some little greater than two thousand.” The herald

hesitated, then added, “Another thousand are expected before moon’s fullness,

lord.”

“Gods and grief.” But it was not so terrible, he supposed. Three

thousand was but a hand’s fraction of the number that Dis had supported in her

glory and the infrastructure was still here. Summer was done and the autumn

passing fast, but those experienced in such matters could yet lay in a fair crop to

take them partly through the winter, and experienced hunters could thin out the

roving nyati until spring. “Aye, we’ll manage. Send word to my kraals and ask a

tribute of foods and of farmers.”

“What degree, lord?”

“I leave it to each Tonka’s judgment. I’ll not starve some of my

protected to feed others.” Antilles felt that throb and rubbed at his brow again.

“But keep an account for my own consideration. And send word also to the

rusakin of…of Northglen, only. Report to me how well a request for foods is

made and ask no kin of them.”

“Aye, lord.”

Antilles grunted, eyeing the colors tied around this herald’s arm. The

line of Haddeus. He should have known. As deeply-rooted in Dis as the line of

Cebrionus himself and always a thorn in the side of his descendants. “For now,”

Antilles continued, scowling, “I leave to the conscience of my people what

measure of each family labors and how so, but I take a dim view of those who

think they help best by bemoaning their condition.”

“Aye, lord.” The herald’s left bicep jumped. The colors of House

Haddeus waved.

“Dis was not built in a day. Nor shall it be rebuilt so speedily, and make

no mistake, ‘tis a rebuilding that we undergo here. If our people expected to

return as from a recreational outing and find a full table set and candles of

welcome at every window, they were mistaken. I shall not be overwhelmed by

them. Send word to Abbadon and make it known that any party who has not

crossed the Isauren Mountains by the autumnal equinox must hold their travels

until the following spring and be prepared to build upon their arrival.”

“A-Aye, lord.” The prospect of informing the noblest families of Dis

that they would be expected to bend their backs in labor seemed to possess a

physical weight; the herald bent to touch his horns to the tiled floor and stayed

that way.

Poor fellow. Antilles thawed somewhat, contemplating the despondent

curve of the back being shown him. “What education have you?” he asked

suddenly.

“Eh?”

“Education,” Antilles repeated patiently. “What have you?”

Blinking rapidly, the herald straightened up enough to sketch a more

formal bow. “I have letters, my lord, in the four cardinal tongues. I have

numbers, practical and theoretical. I have been instructed in science, history, and

philosophy. I…I play the harp…?”

“Excellent. Then I name you my Warden of Accounts.”

“You what?”

“Take a scribe—Oh hell. I think you are required to be of the gentry to

be named a Warden,” Antilles muttered. “What is your called name, anyway?”

“L…Laeranon, lord,” said the herald. He was still blinking.

“That will do. I would appear to have misplaced my scepter, but we’ll

manage without it this once. Laeranon, I raise thee to my service and grant thee a

household among the peers of Dis and mastery over, oh, the court of Metaxis to

be the legacy of thy sons. Now take a scribe—”

“I have no sons,” the herald said faintly. His gaze had fallen throughout

the honorifics until he was staring glassily at his lord’s left hoof.

“Then I advise you to get about it, but ‘ere you do, take a scribe…”

The herald looked up, visibly focused, and nodded. “Aye, lord.”

“And take a detailed census of the families entering Dis, where they

station, what labors they are about, and anything else you think of interest to me.

Account also for the contents of the larders, goods in storage, our armory and

particularly our treasury. Keep note of all those who believe they hold a debt

owing of any of these, aye?”

“Aye.” The herald, now Warden, nodded again, setting his jaw in a look

of fierce determination. “I’ll not fail you, my lord.”

“I doubt it not. Dismissed. And Laeranon…”

“Aye?”

“Begin with the House of Haddeus.” Antilles nodded at the colors still

striping the new Warden’s arm.

The Warden twitched an ear. “Aye, lord,” he said, and if there was some

grim pleasure in his eye as he pulled the flash from his arm, well, perhaps it was

only the satisfaction to be had in any promotion. Certainly, Antilles would not

believe the fellow to take any spite in auditing the holdings of his former

employer, no more than he himself had taken in ordering the audit. T’was only

the ambition of a new Warden, acting at the behest of his just and honorable lord.

Ha. He’d give a year of his life to see the old villain’s face.

Antilles got up before any further political nonsense could intrude upon

his evening. He passed from the public halls of the palace into his private ones,

waved away the abrasively omnipresent tide of servants, and took himself to his

bedchamber.

Eurydome was there, her head bent, embroidering. Antilles stood and

watched awhile. It was an interest Taryn had recently developed as well,

although they went about it in very different ways. Eurydome’s back was arrow-

straight, her form flawless as she plucked at the linen framed before her. Taryn

had done her stitchery from bed, naked with her blankets pooled around her waist

more often than not. Eurydome’s subject was ancient marks of royal design, the

standard of Dis trimmed ‘round with laurels and accented with crests taken from

the line of Cebrionus. Taryn’s own clumsy images had been knots, just knots,

deceptively simple and yet fascinating in their infinity. Eurydome embroidered

swaths of fine cloth to hang upon a wall. Taryn embroidered her shifts and

proudly wore them.

Eurydome had surely noticed him, yet said nothing. A lord’s consort

awaited her lord’s will. If she thought it was his pleasure to stand and admire

her, she would continue to perform for admiration. Never would Eurydome say,

“Quit staring at me, you’re throwing me off my game. Go make dinner or do

something useful, ya dosser.”

“How passed thy day?” he asked, as much to break the silence as to learn

the answer.

“Well. Thine?”

“I had forgotten how much of politics made up the task of ruling.”

Antilles kicked off his hoof-caps and went to the sideboard to pour himself a cup

of mead. “I feel that I have wasted the entire day with naught to show for it but

scratches of ink.”

“Mm.”

“I think perhaps I shall clear the Silver Stair tomorrow,” he mused, eying

his cup. “Tis overgrown and sore-littered with debris of the wizard’s making.”

“T’would do thy people well to see it gleaming again.” Eurydome

finished her stitch and rose from her chair to face him. “Yet it troubles thy

people to see thee at such menial labor.”

“Does it? A fair match then, for it troubles me to see such labors left

undone and so many of mine standing about idle.” He drank, too deeply perhaps,

and glared at the empty cup. “Yet I note that when I build, others are quick to

labor alongside me. There’s MacTavish truth, by the gods.”

Eurydome was quiet for a moment. “Shall I help you?” she asked

finally.

“All hands are welcome.”

“And tonight?” She took up the flagon and filled his cup again. “How

shall I serve thee tonight, my lord?”

“Howsoever thee wills.”

“Has thee no request of me?”

Antilles drank again and perhaps it was the mead that put a sting in his

tongue, for his tone was harsher than he intended when he said, “I am done

delivering lordly command for the night. If you ask for orders, I’ll order you

out.”

Eurydome bent her head without expression, her ears showing

compliance and only a quiver of hurt. “Forgive me, lord. I’ll leave thee to thy

privacy.”

She didn’t want to go. He could see that plainly as she slowly walked to

the door. She left because she thought he wanted her to leave. He could have

called her back with a word, or even a gesture when she reached the door and

looked back. Aye, he could have. He went to the window instead and stood

there until he heard his door close.

Antilles drank his mead and damned the rain that hid the moon.

10. Another Day

The moon was out, bright and clear and hanging in the sky like a paper

lantern. Rhiannon stared at it through the living room curtains (still the same

frilly curtains. God, this room hadn’t changed since she was ten). It was a few

days past full and waning. She wasn’t sure what that one was called…gibbon?

Sounded right.

Another day over. How many did that make? She couldn’t summon up

the energy to count. It was just another day, that’s all. Another long day running

errands with her mother led to another long evening doing yardwork with her

father, which meant that after yet another healthy homemade dinner, she was in

for another long night of sitting and staring at each other in the living room. Life

with parents. Ain’t it grand.

Ian MacTavish turned a page of his newspaper, shook it out, looked up,

and said, “Get a job, Rhiannon.”

“Dear,” murmured her mother.

“Fine,” snapped Rhiannon. “There should be dozens of exciting career

opportunities in the food service industry. Do you think I can put my time at

Rucombe on my résumé? Let’s see, last job experience: Two weeks in a log

cabin, cooking four meals daily for four hundred centaurs. That’ll go over real

well, Dad.”

“So volunteer somewhere. Take up jogging. Write a book.” Her father

gave her a hard look. “It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you stop sitting

around feeling sorry for yourself all day.”

“Dear.”

“I’m really sorry I’m such a huge disappointment, Dad. I am. I’m sorry

I couldn’t handle school and I’m sorry I couldn’t handle centaurs. I’m sorry I

didn’t run off to another planet and get knocked up like the wildly successful

other daughter you have. If you think it’ll help, I could always start sleeping

around right here on Earth.”

“Rhiannon, aisling.” Her mother’s pain was stretched taut over her

pleading face, too awful to look at. “Don’t.”

“At least you could put a picture of my kid on the wall,” Rhiannon said,

and her stomach cramped. She rubbed at it, wanting to throw up.

Her father hadn’t said anything. Not a good a sign. Some people, like

Rhiannon and Taryn for instance, got louder as the emotional thermostat dialed

up. Ian MacTavish got quieter. And when he hit the lowest notch of his self-

control, he’d send her to her room to sit and stew until he came in to tell her, very

quietly and articulately, just why he was disappointed in her behavior.

Sometimes she wished he’d just spank her, like a normal father.

It had been like this every day since Rhiannon had been home. She

thought it would be easy to come back, that she could wake up out of Arcadia

and shake it off like last night’s dream. She couldn’t. Earth was so much paler

than she remembered, so much more banal. Going to work, to the bank, having

to even look at money—it was all a game she’d outgrown. The grocery store

overpowered her with blandness; she could actually taste the ‘process’ in

processed foods. Television had nothing to offer her; even the news, horribly

violent when it wasn’t pointless, was as abrasive to her ears as the droning of

mosquitoes. ‘Get a job,’ her father said. Sure. Real things were happening out

there and Rhiannon was supposed to spend her day dipping fries.

Real things were happening out there and where was she?

“If you want me to leave, just say so,” she said now. Her stomach again,

churning with fear on top of upset. She had nowhere to go.

“No one wants you to leave!” Kate stood up, her gaze darting from one

to the other of them, silently begging for peace.

“What I want,” her father said quietly, “is for my girls to be where they

need to be.”

“Oh.” Rhiannon threw up her hands, let them slap down again on her

knees. “Where do I need to be, Dad? You tell me.”

He said nothing. His newspaper was still open, but his eyes never left

hers. Disappointment radiated from him in waves she could almost see.

“Do I need to be at school, Dad? Is that where I need to be? Well, I

couldn’t hack it. Do I need to be at work? Not a whole lot of Fortune 500s

hiring stupid dropouts like me. What does that leave? I suppose I could always

join the real Peace Corps, but even that would probably let you down after

Taryn’s finished negotiating peace on another planet.”

She couldn’t do this anymore. Arion was right. It felt exactly like

stabbing herself with a knife.

Arion.

And the strangest feeling came over her. As Rhiannon sat in the living

room, calm settled on her like a clammy blanket. She saw herself getting up,

walking down the hall, drawing herself a bath, and slicing her wrists right up to

the elbow. It would hurt. Then it would all be over.

She didn’t try to tell herself that anyone would be happy to see her gone.

She was aware that it would be a thunderbolt of trauma in a family already pulled

too tight, but she didn’t care. The rest of her life loomed over her like an anvil.

She’d rather cut the damn rope now than spend her days wondering when it was

going to drop.

“Rhiannon?”

Her mother reached out to touch her knee. Rhiannon stared dully at it.

Warm, soothing, loving hand. She couldn’t feel it. She didn’t deserve to.

Someone knocked on the door, shattering whatever thick fugue had

settled in the living room. Three heavy bangs. A cop’s knock.

We’ve had reports of a young lady soliciting…

Rhiannon hunched in her chair, thinking about that nice, warm bath and

two quick cuts. She knew she wouldn’t do it. She was too much of coward.

She’d just screw it up with her folks right here in the next room, waiting to find

her and pull her naked body out of a bloody bathtub. That was too humiliating.

But she could hike up to Sorenson Gorge tomorrow and jump off. Not even she

could screw up a two hundred-foot fall.

Her father folded up his newspaper. “I’ll get it,” he said dryly, and went

to answer the door before the cop had to knock twice. He still had that too-quiet,

angry look. He almost always had it these days. She was ruining this family.

They might not think so right away, but they really would be better off without

her.

Ian reached the door. “Holy Mary, mother of God!” he shouted, even

before the door had finished swinging open, and then he lunged to one side and

slapped the porch light off.

“My apologies for the hour,” rumbled a very familiar voice. “Oh damn,

let me start again…Hail, Ian MacTavish, man of Earth. I greet thee as kin and,

though I have no herald and I bring no gift, I beg the hospitality of thy home.”

One massive hand gripped the doorjamb and Arion bent to glare at her

over her father’s shoulder. His blazing eyes found the couch where she sat. “Is

Rhiannon receiving tonight?”

11. Come Home

“Have you lost your damn mind?!”

She meant to shout it. It came out as more of a squeak. They were still

in the living room (the hallway being too narrow for a Cerosan to easily

traverse), but her parents had gone into the kitchen with the gypsy (who himself

looked extremely annoyed at having to be here), so they had a little privacy. Not

enough, though. There was no such thing as enough privacy when there was an

eight-foot tall naked minotaur in your house in the middle of Shoestring, Oregon.

“What were you thinking? Did you just walk up the damn driveway?”

“Aye, and what of it?” he shot back. “Who would believe the telling of

me?”

“That’s the stupidest—” Rhiannon pressed the heels of her hands to her

eyes, blocking him out with the explosions that pressure produced until she

couldn’t stand it. “You’re an idiot!” she shouted at him. “There could be a mob

with pitchforks and friggin’ torches on our front lawn in, like, five minutes!

Anyone could have seen you!”

“Then let them see me, woman! Let them cry my coming from one sea

to another! I care not if they come for me with armies!” Arion declared,

whumping himself on the chest with one fist. “The Dragon’s own shall see me

safely gone, but I mean to have my say!”

“Well then…” Rhiannon floundered, staring around at the unhelpful

walls, before finally crossing her arms and glaring at him. “Fine. Say it quick

and get out of here!”

Arion nodded once, curtly, then pulled in a deep breath. “If you—” he

began, rearing back to make as impressive an oration as possible, and promptly

tore twin holes in the ceiling with his horns. He ducked down again, taking out a

good chunk of the ceiling, all the rest of his words lost in a cloud of white dust.

He rallied gamely, waving one hand frantically to clear the air, and choked out,

“If…If you…can…If…” He dropped to his knees. “Water!”

Rhiannon sprinted to the kitchen, pushed the gypsy out of the way, and

sloshed water from the tap into a cup at random. One of the commemorative zoo

tumblers from some family fun day in the ancient past. Had an elephant on it.

Funny, the things you notice.

Arion drank, coughed, drank the rest, and then leaned back on his

haunches and studied the elephant. At length, he handed the cup back. Most of

his fire was gone, but his voice…she couldn’t not listen to his voice. She could

still hear him saying her name, groaning it against her shoulder. The air closed in

on her, dense and hot.

“If you cannot bring yourself to look at me,” he said in that burning,

subdued voice, “then so be it. If you cannot bear my touch, nor hear my voice,

nor share the air from whence my breath comes, so be it. Send me away,

Rhiannon. It has ever been in your power to bid me go hence. Send me away. I

can survive knowing that I fought and failed, but ‘tis not in me to let you go and

never say once what lies in my heart.”

“Oh, stop it,” she begged.

“Nay, I will say it!” He started to rise, cocked an eye at the ceiling, and

then caught her hand and tugged her to her knees also. “I care for you,” he said.

“Thee. I could love you easily if you…if thee would allow it. And because I

care, I will leave you…Damn it!” He slapped a hand over his muzzle, shook his

head, and then grabbed both her hands again and said, “You! I will leave you to

have whatever peace you think must follow in my absence, but I beg you to

return to the Valley.”

“I can’t.” She tried to wrest out of his grip.

He released her wrist, but seized her shoulders, not to the point of pain,

but well beyond what she could tug free of. “This world has failed you,

Rhiannon,” he insisted. “Perhaps not beyond returning, but well beyond the

deserving of you, especially if you have to return like this! You are a warrior!”

She laughed at him and his eyes blazed.

“You are! You take what you have fought for! In Rucombe, you fought

for peace and purpose, and bitter spoils they were, aye, but you did begin to win

that battle! Until I ruined everything,” he said with a grimace. “Because I could

not see through my own heart to your struggles.”

“You don’t understand!” she cried, desperate just to shut him up. Every

part of her soul was shaking, reaching out for his words. And it couldn’t be true.

It couldn’t be. No one could love her. She was dirt.

“Nay, there’s truth, I’ve no idea the battles you are fighting. But well

enough I understand that I have hurt you, and I cannot bear to do it more. Bid me

leave, and you will never see but the back of me again, but come back to

Rucombe. Find your place, my warrior. Not for Taryn and not for me. For you,

Rhiannon. You deserve better than defeat in this world.” He gave her a shake,

searching her eyes. “Come home.”

“I can’t.” Rhiannon clutched miserably at her stupid elephant cup,

staring into the fibers of the carpet. There was so much in her that needed to be

said, and she had no words.

“Look at me.”

“No.”

He released her shoulders to cup her face in both his hands, waiting out

her staring attempts to find something else to look at. It hurt to finally meet his

gaze, to see his heart in his eyes and know that she was breaking it.

“Come home,” he said.

“I don’t belong there.”

“You don’t belong here!” he cried, and shook his head hard. “Come

home!”

“I can’t.”

“Why can you not? Tell me plainly.”

Her mouth worked in silence.

“Come home.”

“It’s not my home!”

“It could be.”

She hunted for another argument, and out came, “I’m all alone!” in a

voice that broke. She slapped a hand over her mouth hard enough to hurt.

Arion gently moved it and brushed his thumb across her lips. “You

needn’t be. Come home.”

“No!” she shouted.

Arion’s head bent. He heaved a sigh and rubbed at his closed eyes.

Looking at him, Rhiannon felt all her blood congealing into an icy knot. He was

giving up.

“Very well,” he said. “You leave me no other choice. I will stay with

you.”

“What?” Rhiannon gasped, so shrilly that it nearly obscured her

mother’s, “What did he just say?”

Arion looked sourly around the living room. “I am going to ruin your

ceiling,” he muttered.

“You can’t stay here!” Rhiannon stammered, tottering on the verge of

both giggles and tears. The absurdity of it was so huge that she couldn’t even

find the words to tell him just why not. She staggered back, her mouth working

in silence, and finally blurted, “You just can’t!”

“Aye. If you can, I can.” He shook his head again and stood up,

awkwardly crouching. “I’m sure to find some way to prove useful. I

could…reach things down from high shelves.”

“God, you idiot!” She stamped her foot. It was the first time she’d ever

realized people actually did that sort of thing when they were frustrated. “You

can’t stay here! Someone will see you!”

He turned to her, once more burning with that inner fire. “Then bid me

leave!”

And she couldn’t.

Arion dropped to one knee and caught at her hand. His gaze never left

hers, not even long enough to blink. “Come home, Rhiannon!” he thundered, but

it was quiet thunder, scarcely audible even as it resonated in her bones. “Come

with me, come back to the Valley, and come home!”

“Why?”

“Because I need you,” he said simply. “I need to see that you are well. I

need to see you fierce by sun’s rays and see you gentled by moonlight. I need to

see the snapping banner of your hair and hear the war-horns of your radiant

anger. I need to see you. I can survive it if I am never again made welcome in

your arms, but I need to see you.”

It was very quiet. Not a sound from the kitchen, and certainly not in

here, where even the air was holding its breath.

“You don’t mean it,” she said finally, dropping her eyes.

“Damn it, Rhiannon!” he shouted, and shook her hard. “Tell me that you

do not care for me or that you do not want me with you, but stop telling me what

I feel or mean or dare not do! I know my heart! I have followed it across Roads

outside of space to find you, so say aye or say nay, but never tell me I do not

want you!”

“I’m broken,” she whispered.

“I know.” Arion opened his arms in a helpless shrug, and let them drop

again. “But I’ll mend you. Come home.”

There was nowhere else to look and nothing else to say. She covered her

eyes, found them wet, and shook her head. “Okay,” she said.

He exhaled in a sudden gust and then pulled her roughly to him,

surrounding her with his power, his strength. She tensed, shivered, and finally

broke, sobbing hard against his shoulder. He was saying something, but she

couldn’t tell what. The words didn’t matter as much as his voice, anyway. She

didn’t need to hear the words to know that he was telling her he loved her.

And she believed him. God help her, she really did.

She could hear her mother in the kitchen, crying softly while water ran in

the sink. When she looked up, her father was standing there in the living room,

looking back at her. He had her backpack in his hands, the one she’d never

unpacked.

She couldn’t let go of Arion and she didn’t think he could let go of her,

anyway, but she held out one hand. “Dad, I’m sorry.”

He set her pack down to take her hand in both of his. His grip was warm

and his voice was hoarse, but neither wavered. “I told you, all I want is for my

girls to be where they need to be. Your mother and I love you, Rhiannon. Be

safe, be happy…and remember to write.”

12. Rucombe

The hardest thing Rhiannon had ever had to do was walk back into

kraal-Rucombe after leaving it the way she had. Romany ended their Road right

in the middle of the commons, so there was no time at all to have second

thoughts or slink away. She knew that everyone would be looking at her, and

they were, but she wasn’t prepared for them to rush her.

She shrank instinctively against Arion’s side, and for a moment, it was a

nightmare. It was walking onto campus the day after the column came out,

hearing her name in jeers and seconds only from feeling that pelting storm of

crushed paper and condoms. But then the first Farasai reached her; they pulled

her off her feet into joyous embraces and she could hear the sincere happiness

with which they received her. It further twisted the storm of emotion already in

her. She wanted to be happy with them, but she was filled with shame.

“Ah, Rhiannon, my kinswoman!” Tonka lifted her bodily into his arms

and reared with her dizzyingly. “You return to us! You are very welcome here!”

“I shouldn’t have left,” she mumbled.

“Nay,” he agreed, but there was no condemnation in the word. He set

her on her feet and clapped her shoulder. “Come. Late-meal is prepared. Share

our labors also, traveler.”

“You honor me, chieftain.” Arion put his hand on Rhiannon’s other

shoulder, and walked her between them to the Jiko.

Ven, hard at work at her hearth, looked up as they entered and dropped a

bottle of spice into the pot she stirred. She recovered swiftly, swearing and

stamping as she fished it out and tasted the damage with a worried look, but her

reaction had drawn every eye first to her and then to the doorway.

“Rhiannon!” Shappa flung his platter of trenchers in the general

direction of the table and came at a full gallop down the crowded Jiko.

Horsemen sprinted out of the way and Arion nudged her forward to give Shappa

a clear shot and soon, she was being swept skyward for the second time. “Praise

the gods you are safe!”

“Of course I’m safe,” Rhiannon said, suffering his crushing embrace.

“Where did you think I went?”

“Earth!” Shappa spat. “Back to that evil nest of adders, Earth!”

Tonka murmured something in Far.

“Nay, I will not!” Shappa said fiercely. He did release his hold on her,

however, grudgingly adding, “But I will hold my tongue for now, for my beloved

kinswoman is home and tonight, let nothing mar our celebrations.”

Though it made her nervous to be the center of anyone’s celebrations,

Rhiannon allowed herself to be towed all the way up to the high table (stopping

several times to be welcomed back by various Farasai, most of whom she didn’t

even know), and stood next to Tonka. Since she wouldn’t let go of Arion’s hand,

Tonka graciously invited him to the high table also, and Shappa invited himself

by refusing to leave and eat in the commons as was his custom.

Tonka’s benediction began with, “Tonight, we are all witness to the

mercy and strength of the gods, for our own Rhiannon is once more among us,”

and everyone cheered. Actually cheered. Toast and green salad had never tasted

so good. Good food had never been so hard to choke down.

It did feel like home. She did want to be happy. But on every smiling

face, she saw a ghost of the worry she must have caused them. She hadn’t

realized she mattered so much, and realizing it now made her feel worse, not

better. Of course, the longer she picked at her food and the more withdrawn she

became, the more concern came radiating off Ven. To forestall the inevitable,

Rhiannon tried to excuse herself.

“Is thee ill?” Ven asked at once, already coming toward with healer’s

hands outstretched.

“Just a little tired. It’s…It’s been a long day.”

“Of course. Shappa! Take—”

“Aye.” Shappa was already putting together a basket of food and drink.

“Come, kinswoman. I’ll bed thee down in Taryn’s lodge for tonight.”

“I—” Rhiannon looked back at Arion as the grim-faced roan led her

from the lodge.

“I’ll find you, I’m sure,” he said. “Go on now. Even warriors need their

rest.”

The Army of Mab

Available Now on Amazon Kindle