In The Coils Of The Snake (19 page)

“I’ve been
puzzling over what he wants with her all the way
back,” admitted Seylin. “I can’t think of a single precedent
for it. Of
course, there’s no precedent for Miranda herself”

“He means to
use her against us, that much is plain,” declared the King. “She’s a
weapon now. Maybe he wants to force us into a situation where I have to choose
between her life or a guard’s.”

“You
don’t suppose,” said Seylin cautiously, “that he could
intend
its original use?”

“No. I don’t,
and neither do you,” his ruler replied. “That could only mean he’s
insane.” He sat in sober thought for a few minutes. “There’s no way
to break the spell, we’re sure of that?”

Seylin
shook his head. “The stars give him control over her until
he
dies.”

“Now, there’s a
tempting thought,” said Catspaw grimly.

He
said good night to his lieutenant and tiptoed to his bedroom,
but
he found the door half open. He heard a slam, and Seylin hurried back into the
room.

“She’s gone!”
exclaimed the King.

“She’s
overpowered the guards,” said Seylin. They went to the
doorway of the royal rooms. The two guards lay in
untidy heaps on
either side.

“Look at
Mongrel,” directed the King. “You can tell he was
completely unprepared. I told you,” he said
admiringly, nudging the
unconscious goblin with his toe, “that
Arianna’s s not afraid to use her magic.”

They
both spoke the Tracking Spell, spotted the small footprints,
and
followed the running track. It led them down many flights of stairs, through
the echoing grandeur of the empty Throne Room,
and out of the palace entirely, into the gigantic cavern that contained
the ornamental
gardens. It finally ended in the part of the artificial
forest that represented winter. The elf girl lay curled up on the snowy
white stone at the foot of a slender
metal tree. She was sound asleep.

“I brought her
here today,” said Catspaw softly, reaching up to
touch the delicate crystals that hung from the silver branches. “I
sup
pose it reminded her of home.” He studied his sleeping wife with
a puzzled frown. “She’s a strange girl,” he remarked.

“You could
carry her back,” suggested Seylin, but the goblin King shook his head.

“She’s finally
resting well,” he observed. “I don’t want to risk
waking her up. I’ll stay here with her. Go tell
the Guard to post men
at the edges
of the grove to keep everyone away in the morning. And
lend me your
cloak,” he added without much enthusiasm.

As Seylin walked
off, the goblin King stretched out on the hard
stone by his wife. He shifted uncomfortably. It was going to be a mis
erable
night.

Miranda awoke suddenly as the
enchantment released its hold. She
felt damp and sweaty.
With a sigh, she rolled over to find the elf lord
already
awake. Sitting cross-legged on his pallet, head bent beneath
the sloping cloth,
he was cutting his arm with his own knife and then healing the cuts. She
watched him sleepily for a minute, not
particularly
surprised. The goblin pages had done it, too. It was the
only way to
practice healing spells.

The elf lord gave
her a wary glance, trying to assess how she
might
be feeling. She had been so upset that morning, and she was so
unpredictable,
ready to argue over the most ordinary things. This was something Nir wasn’t
used to. None of his elves argued with him at all.

He
cut himself again and carefully healed the cut. Miranda
picked. up the knife that he had set down and examined
it curiously.
The handle
appeared to her ignorant eye to be some sort of antler or bone. It had a pebbly
texture and varied in color from gray to white.
The
blade was quite remarkable. Single-edged and about seven inches long, it was of
no metal she had ever seen. It was white and shone like satin.

She
fingered the blade thoughtfully, but when she wanted to test
the
edge, she found that she couldn’t, and the stars at her wrists lit
briefly. Nir glanced up in time to see them and
took the knife away.

“If you want to
know whether it’s sharp or not, just watch me,”
he said, cutting himself again. “It’s an elf knife,” he
continued as he
stopped the bleeding. “This
one was my father’s. We still don’t
know
how to make them. I hope we can learn from those books the
goblins are
bringing us.”

Miranda picked up
the knife again. It was very pretty as knives went. Nir paused to watch.

“It’s said that
the last elf King’s Wife killed herself with a knife just like that one,”
he told her. “No one knows how she could have done it.”

“What is it
made of?” she asked, not particularly interested in elvish history. “It
doesn’t even feel like metal.”

“That’s
because it’s not,” he answered. “We never use metal if
we
can help it. No metal, and no fire; they belong inside the earth,
like the goblins. I don’t know entirely what the
blade is made of, but
deer bone
makes it white. I can guess that because the Slaughtering
Spell powders most of the bones, ready for making
knives like this.”

Miranda
watched him as he studied his arm with a frown, prepay
ing to make another cut, and she thought about all the
times she had
done the same.
As long as the stars lasted, she wouldn’t be cutting herself again, and she
felt a little relieved that this man would never know
what
she had done. He would be horrified by it, she was sure; he would doubtless
identify it as yet another sign of her childishness.

And Miranda decided that
he would be right. There was some
thing
immature about hurting oneself in the hope that someone else
would come
along to stop the pain. It belonged with begging for presents, with daydreaming
about a glorious future. It belonged to her past. She was done with hoping for
better things to come; she
was ready to face
life as it was. At least this man didn’t try to. entice
her with stories
about how wonderful things were going to be.

When it was time for
the evening meal, the elf lord once again brought her food. Miranda supposed
that he was just treating her
like a child, but her dignity didn’t object
to being waited on. She reached out to take it, but he held the napkin away as
he sat down beside her.

“Tonight
you need to ask me for your meal,” he said. “You need
to
ask like an elf.
Ninda —
`bread,”’ he explained, and he held up her
half of the flat circle.

“Ninda,
please,” said
Miranda doubtfully, studying the bread he
handed
her. She didn’t think
ninda
was a very good word for it.

“Dunabi
means ‘please,’”
he corrected.
“Shar,”’
he continued,
hold
ing out a radish.

“No,
you can keep those,” said Miranda, and her face lit up with
a
smile. Nir looked at her, rather taken with it. She hadn’t smiled at him
before.

“I’ve hunted
for your share, and I don’t want anyone else to eat it,” he observed. “In
the wintertime, you’ll be glad to have these.”

“Shar, dunabi,”
she said, shrugging, and he handed her the
veg
etables. As they ate, he pointed out
things to her, saying their names.

“Why do you
want me to speak elvish?” she asked.

“Because
I don’t allow English in my camp,” said Nir. “You live
with
us now, and you have to learn to be like us.”

Already depressed
about the darkening night, Miranda felt that this was rather too much. “Do
you know how many years I spent
learning
goblin?” she demanded angrily. “Days and nights of prac
ticing,
drilling, reading, writing. Years and years, while my whole family laughed at
me!”

“What a sorry
waste of your time,” remarked the elf lord sincerely. “Igira is
finished making your clothes. She still needs to fit
them to you, so she’ll take you back into the woods where you won’t
be
disturbed.”

“Into
the woods to change clothes!” At the sight of her horrified
expression, Nir’s
eyes grew bright.

“I assure you,”
he said, “that it will be perfectly decent.”

Igira was an amiable
woman, blond and blue-eyed like her daughter. “She doesn’t speak English,”
observed the elf lord, “but I
don’t
think you’ll have trouble understanding each other. During
this fitting,
I order you to carry out her commands as you would mine.” This really wasn’t
an order to Miranda but an order to the Seven Stars. Miranda glared at him for
it, but when Igira took her hand to lead her away, she had no choice but to go.

It turned out to be
a good thing that Nir had invoked the stars. Miranda had gone through countless
fittings in her life, but never one in the semidarkness out in the open woods.
Igira helped her
undress, absolutely
astounded at the quantity and variety of clothing
she hauled around, and
Miranda wasn’t in the least happy about parting with it all.

Elf
women wore only two garments, an under-dress and a dress.
Igira
pulled the dark brown under-dress over Miranda’s head and went about adjusting
it. It had a scoop neck and no sleeves, and it
extended to her knees. It was unlike any garment she had ever worn.
The cloth was knitted in some way, and so it was
very elastic, staying
close to her
body. Miranda felt as if she were wearing a giant sock.

Igira
made sure that the top fitted snugly. As she pinched mate
rial between her fingers, a strip of cloth came away as
if it had been
cut
off, but the cloth left behind stayed whole. Miranda surveyed one
side
after Igira had cut some cloth out of it, but she couldn’t even find a seam.

When
the under-dress fitted to her satisfaction, Igira brought out
a
knitted belt. She wrapped this around Miranda right below her breasts, pulling
the bodice of the under-dress tight and anchoring the belt under each arm. She
had Miranda hold the ends over one another for her. Then she produced a thin
leather lace and quickly laced them together.

Next, Igira pulled
the dark brown elf dress over Miranda’s head
and
began to fit it to the girl just as she had fitted the under-dress. Not
as stretchy as the under-dress, and more
substantial, it had no collar and no sleeves. This felt strange: Miranda wasn’t
used to having her
arms bare to the shoulders. It had no fastenings,
either. The simple
round neckline stretched
just enough to pull over her head. Snug to
the waist, the dress widened
out into a full skirt, the thick, heavy
material
draping and rippling gracefully as she turned. It didn’t
extend much
past the knees.

Miranda had seen the
elf women walking and dancing in their
short
dresses, but she hadn’t really thought about wearing such a gar
ment herself It was a drafty arrangement after all
her petticoats. She
took a few experimental steps. The under-dress,
hugging her legs,
felt strange in contrast
to the loose folds of the dress. She expected it
to begin creeping up,
but it stayed where it belonged, and the dress
slipped easily over it. She could move much more freely, and nothing
about her new garments caught at her or dug into
her: life in a pair of
socks was very comfortable.

The
elf woman gathered up the pieces of cloth and picked up
the
myriad garments that Miranda had worn. Then she led the girl
back to camp. The elves gathered around to admire
the simple
brown dress that suited her brown eyes and auburn hair, the
form and shape that made her into a member of their world. The women walked beside
her, smoothing or twitching the dress approvingly,
and the men called out comments as she went by. It was just as well
that
she couldn’t understand elvish because most of it was teasing. “Here comes
the morning star!” they said, referring to her bright bracelet. “It’s
the fox with her paw on fire!”