Authors: Justina Robson
necromancer I believe, so they may think it
worth the risk.'
'I didn't
think elves trafficked in the dark arts.'
'Needs must,' Dar said, his normally fluid body stiffening. He turned suddenly and vanished. Lila
saw from the faintest of temperature differences that the tunnel ended in four chambers and that he
had gone through a door. She moved to watch him and saw, with a frown, that he walked directly
to one of many niches, the only one which contained a lantern. He lit it deftly, shielding his eyes as
he did so, then put it back. She saw blinding white, then changed back to ordinary sight and the
dazzle became a soft glow.
'You're nocturnal . . . you're one of the shadow elves,' she said wonderingly, pleased with
herself, bubbling with excitement.
'You noticed.' He gazed at
her evenly and his eyes were the exact colour of the night
sky.
'But
you're fine in daylight,' Lila objected, thinking that
nocturnal must
mean incapable in the
daytime.
'Sue the Creator,' he said drily, almost smiling at her. 'So we are. Though many here would have
you believe otherwise. Of late great stupidity has grown up between our two races. All our
differences become causes for spite even greater than that
we reserve for other realms.' He closed
his mouth firmly and set
about
checking the supply cabinets with sudden vigour.
'Surely you can lead us safely through the night?'
'No,' he said. "Those creatures will as happily eat
me as you. In fact, much more readily. There
are many of them here since . . . there are many. And,' he paused in his activity and smiled to
himself in the bleak way people do when looking at old memories of a great struggle, 'they make
highly effective traps. They were good learners.'
She asked him questions but
he wouldn't
speak any more on the subject. It
seemed to be too
close to him, she thought, too personal. He shook his head.
Lila gazed around the earth cavern and saw the walls had been further hollowed to make beds at
waist height from the ground, not unlike cubby hotels she'd seen in Bay City and other great
Otopian centres. But these were otherwise a far cry from such places. There were a couple of
neatly rolled cotton pads in one or two of them and nothing
more. In the lantern's soft yellow glow Dar looked slightly less worn than before, but not much. He went
out and returned shortly with packets which he unwrapped in a hasty silence and handed her half.
She took the dried fruit and ate it almost as fast as he did. She remembered now that there had been
elves like him in Sathanor during the diplomatic mission. None of them had been in positions of any
importance, she thought, but her memory was vague on it. Yet Dar seemed to be in a position of some
authority in his own agency
.
Higher than she was in hers, she thought
.
He gave her water from a pitcher that tasted like it was fresh, and then he unrolled one of the meagre
mattresses and, to her surprise, offered it to her.
'Suppose they come while we're asleep? The Daga I mean,' she said into the soft
quiet
of the place
and even her voice was muted. Nothing of the outside world intruded.
'I expect they will,' he said, rubbing his face with both hands. 'But we must rest or we cannot cross the
mountains and do anything useful on the other side. So if they come, then we will fight.' He laid most of
his bladed weapons down carefully on the floor with quiet exactitude.
'Are you all right?' Lila asked.
T am not as young as I used to be, but I will be fine. Will you rest?'
'I'll keep watch,' Lila said, taking a tone of command for the first
time since she'd come to Alfheim. 'I
can rest standing up, keep a lookout, and still sleep.'
Dar paused, smiling faintly, then nodded. He lay down on the bed himself
.
'I forgot about all your
talents,' he said. 'What forethought
has gone into your making is remarkable
.
You are a miracle of
technological development
.
I wonder, what
does it feel like to be so changed?'
'Oh you know,' Lila said airily
.
'Your mileage varies.'
'It must have hurt,' he said very quietly. 'You never moved so well as you have done since we were
united.'
Lila almost blushed, thinking of the degree of attention he must have paid her. 'I've been feeling very
good recently, since our. . . well, since.' She felt unaccountably shy and concentrated on practical
matters, going over her routines before she locked her body in posi-tion for rest. Her Al-self switched
into sentry mode, leaving her free to sleep. 'Dar,' she said after a minute's silence, 'who is Zal to the
elves?'
'A plague on our house,' Dar murmured sleepily
.
'Our own blue-eyed boy.' He was almost
dreaming,
she thought.
'Zal's eyes are brown,' Lila said, remembering them suddenly with a falling sensation in her heart.
'They were not always so,' Dar said. 'They were very blue indeed, when he was one of us.'
'What are you talking about?'
'He was a Jayon Daga agent, our Captain Kurtz.' Dar rolled over onto his side wearily, turning his
back to the room. He sounded regretful. 'You know the story. The colonial officer who went
native. But
he was not
always so. And then again, he was always so, but
he never had the opportunity to discover
that
fact, until he came to Demonia.'
Lila thought
she detected personal sorrows. She jumped on them quick as she could. 'You
do
know
him?'
'Not really.' The elf sighed wearily and drew a deep breath ready for a lengthy explanation. 'Zal is of a
higher caste than I am, as well as different race. It may seem trivial to you, even invisible, but in Alfheim
these things are very important Zal is, was, Taliesetra Caste, of the ancient
line of Light
Kings, who are
most
closely bonded to Elemental
chi.
Only the Vialin Caste among the shadow elves is aetherically
more powerful than that, and they are difficult
beings, not
truly elves at
all. Meanwhile, I am Dusisannen
of the Shadow, and we are not
of royal descent, not
of the high court or even the unhigh court; not
of any
court but
the fresh air. The castes are magical and spiritual distinctions. The details are irrelevant. The
point is that Zal and I could never really treat
each other with the familiarity you consider true friendship,
not
even if we were assigned to the same task, though of course, that
would never happen.' His words
were thickened with a disgust
he was too tired or not
caring to conceal.
'What do you mean, never
really?'
Lila pursued, yawning.
T followed Zal into Demonia,' Dar said hesitantly, then, abruptly as if he had decided to tell her against
his better judgement. 'And I failed to prevent his fall.'
'His fall?'
'In caste terms I should have given my life to prevent what hap-pened,' Dar said. 'But we talked there,
in the city of Barshebat: a long talk, a long time, and I came back and left him there unmolested. It was
my duty to slay him, rather than do so, and my homecoming was less than pleasant. I do not
wish to
discuss it
further. Let me rest'
^ 'Sure,' Lila said unwillingly. But
then she thought
it
over and it
occurred to her that
she might
not
get another moment
when Dar was so forthcoming, or another opportunity to ask anything, if they were
attacked. 'Actually I think I'll have to insist on some more answers,' she said. 'But I apologise in
advance.'
The elf made an unhappy sound. 'I would think we were in a Game if I did not know we were not,'
he said. 'Since you shared my spirit I have felt it increasingly difficult not to be candid with you. And
there is another reason, namely that I must consider myself the enemy of the Jayon Daga from now
on, rather than one of their brothers. In all of Alfheim there are less than five people I could trust, and
none of them are near, nor would I wish them to know what
I have done.'
'Because you didn't kill Zal? I thought you said you couldn't be sent after him.'
T said that he and I would never be sent together. But I was sent to bring him back or end him.
No Taliesetra or higher caste would want
to soil their spirit with that
eventuality. Even in the
circumstances, it would be a crime that
merited only the harshest
punishment.'
'Exile,' Lila said, speeding through elf data on the justice system. It
was arcane and vast, but
this
was simple to find. "They'd send you to take the fall and then abandon you?'
'Somebody must
do it. Low castes are considered expendable in such situations, compared with
the waste of a higher order.' Now at
last
Lila did detect
some bitterness in his voice and he felt it too
because he said, 'You must ignore my self-pity. My history with the Jayon Daga is no great
account
of glory. Death and blood are on my hands and the service of Alfheim is no excuse, merely an
explanation. You will understand this, no doubt.'
'I'm kinda new to the job,' Lila said. 'But
yes. I'm beginning to. But
why couldn't
they leave Zal
alone? If he'd gone and wasn't
coming back?'
'It
has not
escaped your notice that Zal is a public figure.' Dar rolled back to face her, his head
pillowed on his hands, eyes blinking slowly in the soft
lantern light. 'His continued existence risks
exposure of the fact of his Fall to the wider elf world and the realms beyond, most likely by agents
such as yourself
.
It is the shame that
the elves cannot
abide
.
His action, particularly as a high-caste
son, displays that
Alfheim's magic and culture is not
the living perfection of actualised spirit, a claim
upon which all caste power is based. It also shows others
in Alfheim that it is possible to reject almost the entire spectrum of elven lore and thrive in other realms.
This example most
of all, cannot
be permitted. Alfheim is on a knife edge, Lila Black. The high castes
have long allowed power to corrupt them and naturally they claim it will save Alfheim from inevitable
destruction. They have hoarded knowledge and power for themselves over the centuries most
recently
passed, and what
was once a fair division of learning between all castes, neither high nor low but
differentiated in talent, has become regulated by the hierarchy of absolutism
.
You have seen this many
times in history. Nothing is new. But all those who believe in the cause will speak as though this time it is
different. They claim secret know-ledge that they cannot
share, which tells them that
cruelty and
manip-ulation, early vengeance and defensive posturing are the only way to prevent a terrible
catastrophe. These are the people who have captured Zal. He serves a twofold purpose. It
is possible he
may be one axis of a great
Sundering spell, if such a thing exists. But it is certain that
there are other
things they would much rather he did while he was alive, and we cannot delay in prising him from their
control, although I fear it
is already far too late.'
'What
other things?' Lila asked.
'What
do you think?' Dar closed his long eyes. As he relaxed, Lila began to see that
he was
considerably older than she had first
thought. He was in excellent condition, and elves mostly looked
youthful, even when old. Dar's age was not
so physical as it
was emotional. He looked as though he had
carried a great
weight for too long a time and it was this, and not any running or fighting, which caused a
profound exhaustion
.
'Recant,' Lila said, the word springing to her mind intuitively. 'A public denouncement of what he did
from his own mouth.'
'Good,' Dar murmured, almost
asleep. 'You understand.'
'But
what
about you?' she asked. 'What happened to you when you didn't kill him? You're still in the
Daga.'
'I was given the opportunity to try again, once Zal entered Otopia,' Dar said and his body stiffened and
he drew his knees up towards his chest, curling up. 'And a friend and sister in our cause prevented my
first sentence of death from being executed upon me, dependent on my second effort becoming
successful
.
I was given the time and means to achieve this goal, but
of course, had no intention of
carrying it
out. I made it
look as though I was committed to his end, whilst in reality I
followed Zal closely only to protect him from other Daga agents, and then, some days ago, that
stay of
execution expired
.
My friend will have paid for Zal's survival with her life, as will Gwil, I do not doubt It