Lhind the Spy by Sherwood Smith
“No,” I had to admit.
“You will find things very different here. We do not have crime or insurrection, covert or overt. Come along. I promised to show you the music chamber, and I should do that before I forget.” He led the way up age-smoothed pale stone stairs to a round room in one of the other towers.
The room was not large, but contained several stringed instruments, and some wooden ones set on a side table.
“Go on,” he said.
I hated the idea of playing in front of someone else. I moved to the harp and ran my fingers along it. “Needs tuning,” I said, aware that my fingers did not move with the facility they did when I played my mother’s harp. Mother’s harp. My heart rapped against my ribs with my longing to play it again. But I had no desire to be under the same roof with Jardis Dhes-Andis before I had to. “I am not very good at it,” I added when I became aware I’d let a silence build. “I am a mere beginner.”
“That is not what I’ve been told,” he replied. “Perhaps you Hrethan are overly modest? But if you do not want to play you certainly needn’t. Truth to tell I can take or leave music, except as an adjunct to dancing.”
“Ah, I love to dance,” I exclaimed.
He had started out, but turned around to regard me with one brow more steeply aslant than the other. “You do? But not Djuran dances, I take it?”
“If you mean the other night, I wasn’t asked.”
“Your Imperial Serenity,” he retorted with one of those formal, sleeve-sweeping bows, “you have only to walk out into the middle of the room and they will all reform the dance around you. And if you want a different sort of dance, you speak up. That is what being an imperial princess means.”
“And won’t they hate me even more,” I retorted right back.
Both brows went up. “You mocked their prestige by performing beginning mage magic down in the bowels of the palace where the scrubbers and cleaners live, and then went out to clear snow that the laborers had missed, and yet you seem astonished at their circumspection.”
Circumspection? I snorted. “I did something useful. Further, when I cleared snow in the town, I overheard an old woman say that this was just like the old days with some empress.”
“Some empress,” he repeated slowly. “Would that be Lison, your great-grandmother?”
“I did not know I had a great-grandmother until very recently,” I said stiffly. “I don’t know anyone’s name. The idea of a family isn’t real to me yet.”
He led the way downstairs again, saying in a more courtly voice, “Her Imperial Serenity Lison—my great-grandmother as well—was much beloved by the people, all the old relatives say. Though her reign was not impressive in the political sense. She apparently felt it was our duty to tighten sashes during bad harvests and long winters, and to beg and plead for allies when Shinja threatened. In any case, at the height of the troubles she walked out the windows of her chamber of contemplation, leaving Emperor Ifan to take up the triple crown and raise the islands to deal with the Shinjans.”
We sat down in the comfortable room with all the windows, snow beating against the night-dark glass. “But we have ranged over a number of subjects as fast as a hawk can fly. If you will permit me to go back a few, why did you wear a robe embroidered with butterflies and yet refuse to dance?”
“I told you why I didn’t dance. What’s the significance of butterflies? I wore what the servants gave me. I thought it was pretty.”
“You thought it was pretty,” he repeated as he poured blue wine into two goblets. “Of course it was. That robe must have cost the equivalent of two fully equipped warships. Maybe more. You did not understand the conversation of weave, the color, and the symbols?”
“Symbols?” I sipped the wine, a kind I had learned was rare and expensive. It tasted like liquid gold. “So the spiky thorns and thistles on Amney’s robes every time I see her are more than chance decoration?”
Raifas poured more wine for me and then for himself as he said, “I am almost tempted not to answer, but it’s probably best. What do you think thorns and spikes signify?”
“Things that tear and make you bleed.”
He grimaced briefly. “By choice we avoid such ugliness. Thorns warn one to be wary around roses, yes?”
“So that is a warning to me, am I right? It surely wouldn’t be meant as warning to the Ev—to the emperor.”
“I would not hazard any suppositions about her relationship with Cousin Jardis. At least out loud,” he admitted with one of those flashing smiles. “I will say that defying either of them has its cost.”
“Why? I never did anything to her—no, I don’t even care why.” I wanted to escape, not to gossip. I gulped down half my blue wine in an effort to obliterate the sneaking conviction I would never escape.
“I will say only this, Amney is ambitious. And whether or not it is actually true, she regards you as an obstacle in her path.”
“Then she’s got thorns in the head,” I muttered, the wine burning like liquid gold down to my deepest places. “Tell me what other things the embroidery symbolizes.”
“Messages lie in color and shade, and whether figures flow left to right or reverse, but one can begin with dragons, the Djuran symbol, which is usually taken as. . . .”
I let a lot of the rest of what he said flow by, knowing I would never remember it all, because everything took on conditional meanings according to the knots in edging, and so on, and then it changed again according to what event you wore the thing to, and who the host was. Empire politics, personal politics. That much I knew from listening to talk about the court at Erev-li-Erval. In that sense, probably every royal or imperial court is the same: unspoken messages are a game that the rich and stylish play among themselves. I could never hope to compete even if I wanted to.
When he was done, I pointed out that the clothes I wore had probably been left-overs from other people, hastily remade to accommodate my spine hair and tail. And that was fine. The silks could symbolize whatever they wanted to.
I had finished my wine by then. Feeling that pleasant, heady warmth, I assented to more as I said, “About dragons. Is your dragon banner in honor of the dragon in the fire mountain?”
“What dragon?” he asked. “Are you speaking symbolically of the burning rock, or are you referring to old folk tales?”
I blinked at him, so astonished I didn’t know what to say.
He went on about dragon symbolism—power and beauty, awe, intelligence, and majesty, and from there he went on into the majesty of Djuran history, but by then I wasn’t listening so much as watching his lips.
And then he was sitting next to me rather than across from me, and I leaned toward him, liking how he was a little flushed from wine, the light reflecting in his slanted eyes as he gazed back at me. Not clear: I tried to blink away the shadow, or double vision, but his proximity only sharpened the blur into the gaze of a raptor.
The wine, the warmth, muffled what might have been surprise. All I thought was, of course he is part bird. Did he know it?
The wine had kindled an insistent warmth in me that I had thought forever gone, and my gaze blinked away the subtle raptor shadow to appreciate the clean line of his shoulder under the flattering sea-colored silk, the outline of his chest under the folds of the long blue scarf. His well-shaped hands, nails neatly trimmed.
“Is that it?” I asked, my lips pleasantly numb, as another puzzle piece locked into place. But giddy as I was, wariness was far older, and rather than comment on his bird shape outright I said tentatively, “The Sveranji. They were shape changers?”
“Long ago.” His brows lifted in mild surprise, then he smiled. “But we put animal natures behind us when we grasped civilization. And our fais help us keep them there.”
“I’m part bird,” I said.
He ran a finger up my wrist to my elbow over the tiny feathers of my fuzz. I shivered, but not from cold as I breathed in the warm, garden-fragrant sweetness of attraction.
I shivered again.
“Elenderi?” he asked, and stroked his forefinger down my cheek to my neck, and to my collarbone. Then his fingers spread and lightly rested on my shoulder.
“You’re talking to Princess Elenderi,” I muttered. And not to Lhind, about whom he never asked.
A scorching image, raptors tumbling through the sky wing over wing, talons locked. . . .
“Princess Elenderi,” he murmured. “Bewitching combination of contradictions.”
Contradictions.
And an errant memory: Hlanan’s voice as he watched Tir soaring against the sunlight, Aidlars mate for life.
I did not know why that thought came. Didn’t care. After the betrayals and fears and anguish of the past days, in this moment I simply wanted to be kissed. And here was the first Djuran I actually liked; his arm enclosed me and his perfumed hair slid soft as silk against my cheek.
But we put animal natures behind us when we grasped civilization, he’d said. He was ready to kiss Princess Elenderi, the mask. Not Lhind the half-bird.
Here was no meeting of minds.
With Hlanan I had found and cherished a meeting of minds. He wasn’t handsome like Raifas. He didn’t fly boldly on gryph back, but oh, who else in the world could I sit down beside and tell my every thought without weighing the consequences or anticipating effect? Who had listened with all his attention as if every word I said mattered, not to political necessity but to him?
And he was gone forever. Tears of anger burned. I couldn’t have Hlanan. I ought to grab this pleasure, ephemeral as I knew it to be, because why not?
But there was Hlanan’s image interposing itself, and I stiffened in the grip of those warm, strong arms, and turned my face away from those kissable lips.
“Elenderi?” he asked, dropping his hands.
“Good night.” My throat hurt. My eyes stung. I got out of there and upstairs to the guest chamber, where I threw open the windows to the storm. And howled curses at Aranu Crown and the unfair world.
TWENTY-FOUR
With morning (and a lack of wine sloshing in my brain) came clarity. My emotions were ambivalent about what had nearly happened the night before, equal parts regret and relief. Maybe there’d be another chance, maybe not. I didn’t even know how I felt about that.
So I would think about something else.
I got up, shut the windows, and melted the snow that had scudded up against the walls, but my nerves chilled when I considered the two newest pieces of the puzzle.
One: that vast ruby-scaled shape not quite in the molten rock. From what Raifas said we would be visiting it again, so perhaps I would discover more.
The other puzzle-piece was those shadows. Human shadows attached to lizardrakes, in the same way that Raifas carried a raptor shadow. If Raifas’s “civilization” meant that offspring had lost their ability to transform, what had happened to the lizardrakes with human shadows?
The only thing I could think of was that their fais had locked them into lizardrake form, so they mated with other lizardrakes, and their offspring had lost the ability to transform before the fais was even put on them. Or had they chosen to give up their human shape and stay lizardrakes?
I changed and descended to the dining room, where I found Raifas talking to a scribe and a couple of servants. At my appearance the latter three bowed themselves out and closed the door.
Raifas greeted me, making no reference to what had almost happened the night before. As I settled down in my place, I said, “Are we going to the fire mountain?”
The words had scarcely gone from my lips into the air when I sensed a shift around me. It is difficult to explain: not the same as those shadows, or yet the connection with the tree, though the sensitivity that had awakened in me after my communion with the tree had not faded.
This sense was akin to the shadow figure sense, only I mentally perceived myself enclosed in glass as an amber eye regarded me. A heartbeat later I knew what it was: Dhes-Andis scrying.
“The gryphs are being harnessed now,” Raifas said. “We have only to breakfast, and we can leave.”
The glass bowl and the eye winked into non-existence. The sense of pressure around my head eased.
All right. This might be a new skill, but now I understood that Dhes-Andis was not watching all the time. Further, I would know when he was. That meant I could practice my pin-hole in the mental realm when his attention was away.
We got ready to go.
The flight up the mountain might have been faster if the wind had not blustered mercilessly from over the ocean, icy with sleet. I crouched down on Andisla’s back, glad of my thick cloak. Mere cold I did not mind, but no warm-blooded creature likes icy wetness.
So for most of the flight I concentrated on hanging on, though I did briefly practice my pin-hole contact on Andisla, to find pretty much the same blurred focus as before, as if the gryph’s mind existed behind glass.
Then we reached the vapors, and the real fight began: wind, cold, heat, and through it, Firebird struggling with all his strength against the storm, vapors, fear, and the inescapable coercion of the fais. I reached for his mind and recoiled from his fury underscored by agony. The intensity of his emotions seemed scarcely contained by the magical boundary that in Andisla felt thick as glass. I broke the connection, perilously dizzy.
Raifas’s will (and fais) predominated. Firebird broke through the underside of the cloud of vapors and smoke, followed by Andisla. They glided in tight circles through the rising fumes and hot air above the glowing molten rock glowing with the glory of a smoldering sun below.
The birds lit on a shelf of cooled rock, Firebird dancing back and forth, occasionally letting forth a weird cry, echoed by Andisla.
I gazed down in fascination at the whirling, diving dance of fire-bright forms. Glowing, evanescent lizardrakes predominated, their arms busy with tasks instead of folded in awkwardly against their bodies, though I could not see their purpose as they faded in and out of my vision.
Other winged creatures winkled in and out, too brief to descry with any clarity, but far below, or beyond, lay that vasty ruby-scaled deepness. As I reached mentally I sensed a great stirring, as if alien eyes sought to meet mine.
Terrified lest my mind burn in that eerie fire, I closed my mental shield tight—and Firebird let loose a long, mournful howl. As Andisla began to echo it, greenish magic flickered over the decorative fais around the bird’s neck and the cry choked off.
Raifas leaned toward me, the glow reflecting in his enormous pupils. “Is this not splendid?” Before I could form any kind of answer, he indicated the surging mass of boiling rock below. “Now, here’s our purpose. Think you there is any way to fetch this up for the gryphs to carry? Is it magical, or physical, or both?”
“That is why we are here?” I called back.
“Yes. As I said. My idea for my fleet. Look about you. Is there a way to fetch and preserve the melted rock long enough to use its fire at sea?”
I looked around, but not at ways to bucket up the boiling rock. His raptor shadow-self either was not strong enough for him to recognize the half-seen denizens in the strange red glow below, or he shut them out as irrelevant.
I blinked, aware of my feathers singeing in the withering heat; I flexed my scalp and spine, winding my hair and tail into ropes, and drew the cloak around myself.
Firebird danced again, and again Raifas flashed the fais magic. I winced at how much it hurt the bird, an echo of my own fais pain, which in turn caused Andisla to dance nervously on the perch.
“Seen enough?” Raifas called.
“Yes.”
He sat back, and Firebird launched toward the dimly lit hole above, half-veiled by vapors and smoke. Andisla followed, as always.
Another jolting ride through the
When we reached the castle again, and a warm room with hot spiced wine to drink, Raifas said, “What did you see, Elenderi?”
“What was I supposed to see?” I asked.
He spread his hands. “You are half-Hrethan, which I am told means you are neither wholly the one or the other. Moreover, events have caused you to be now learning the skills you ought to have been taught from childhood. And that includes whatever skills you have inherited. Am I correct?”
“Yes,” I said, unable to repeat the word “correct.” I didn’t think I could ever say it again without a shudder.
“Your kind, that is, the Snow Folk, who I am given to understand are kin to Hrethan, used to cluster on this mountain, according to both written records and endless fanciful ballads and tales. Hrethan and firedrake, Snow Folk and Fire Dragon. There is more than a suggestion that magic and material mixed.”
“And so?” Did he sense that other world after all? I wavered, tempted to ask.
“Is it not obvious?” He leaned toward me, no mask, his enthusiasm open. “I know that magic alone is seldom useful in ship to ship conflict. But if you saw a way to combine them both so that I could drop molten rock onto enemy ships and set them aflame, a protracted struggle might be reduced to one or two examples and then surrender to the inevitable.”
“So you want the molten rock for war.”
“We think of it as defense, but you are correct.”
“To be carried by Firebird?”
“I am in the process of educating him in that direction, but the idea is to build a force of gryphs. Train them the way I’ve trained him. If we could make use of the gryphs to carry molten rock, I’d find a way to broaden the aft decks of our ships to enable gryphs to perch and launch. But I would still need to keep the molten rock sufficiently fired. And that’s why I asked about magic.” He drank spiced wine, and set his cup down. “Not to your taste?”
I had not drunk any. I needed to reflect and had no desire for wine haze. I lifted the cup and pretended to sip, to avoid answering.