I wanted to hate all of it. I wanted the buildings to be ugly, the food inedible, the hospitality crude and lacking. I wanted the sao`ashan – the rhu xian – to be cruel and snide, the unrepentant villains that my people’s tales made them out to be, the ravening monsters of my childhood night terrors. But this was not a fable for children.
The architecture was beautiful. Even those buildings lacking adornment were constructed well and cleanly, enormous masonry blocks cut with expert precision so that, like the step pyramid and its ruined city that we had seen in the jungle, they needed no mortar to join them. Those buildings that were adorned, and the fine furniture we found within them, were all done in an alien style, not quite minimalist, but with an emphasis on materials and geometry and flourishes applied with exacting precision.
The food was unlike anything I had ever sampled. If the heavy seasonings favored by Vencari had come as a surprise to my elven palate, accustomed to simply grilled meats and fruits, the thick, spicy sauces we were served here were an absolute shock … and a delight. Even when the rhu xian – or, more likely, their ubiquitous giant servants – grilled meats and vegetables, they did so after thickly coating them in powdered herbs and spices. Even the rice – a staple of Vencari and Namoran diets, if not elven or Georgi – over which almost all of it was served was rendered unfamiliar by the violet or orange flowers with which it was cooked, imparting a strong savory floral flavor.
And their hospitality? Even the tiny suite to which Elana and I had been confined when we first entered the city had been as luxurious as anything to be found in Elana’s court in exile. Elana did not say as much, but I suspected that our improved lodgings rivaled anything available in the palace in which she had been raised.
When we joined our hostess for breakfast, we did so in what was clearly intended to be an intimate and informal setting. But the scale required to accommodate the liveried giant servants – the Jor freemen, Derrek called them, who always came in matched pairs, and who served with straighter backs and prouder faces than any who had served me in Elana’s court – and the crimson-clad cyclops woman who joined us at the table, made the space a rival to any banquet hall I had seen.
Our hostess took the head of the table, of course, with her cyclops companion at her right hand. Elana was seated opposite her, with Derrek at her left hand and me at her right. Our company and our hostess all sat in tall chairs that we practically had to climb into, and which the Jor needed to push up to the table when we had. The cyclops woman sat on a low cushion on the floor. When we were all seated, the Jor served us and then retreated to the back of the room, behind our hostess.
“Good morning,” she said. “I hope that you have rested well? Your accommodations are to your liking?”
The Lady Archon Ingmatmar, priestess of the Flame, was a little shorter than our own prince, perhaps not quite five feet tall. Despite her stature, she proved only slightly less imposing this morning, seated at the breakfast table, than she had been yesterday upon the tall throne of the temple palace, in the company of her fellow archons. She was dressed more casually but still richly, in a voluminous ruby colored tunic that Derrek called a dalmatica, tailored tightly along her forearms and the collar that rose high along her tall neck, but otherwise shapeless and concealing. A gold silk stole hung over her shoulders, trailing down her back and her front. Her accent was archaic and formal, but her smile seemed sincere, and her body language was loose, casual, and welcoming.
“The rooms are lovely,” Elana said, honestly. “And we are very grateful for your hospitality. Thank you.”
Elana and I both wore the second-richest of the silks we had been gifted, her in sky blue and I in hunter green. Our garments were cut very much like Ingmatmar’s. We had been given contrasting stoles, as well, but had, at Derrek’s suggestion, not worn them this morning. I found the garment luxuriously comfortable, if something of a trip hazard, particularly with the long, warm undertunic that went beneath it.
“I am so glad to hear that,” she said. “Please allow me to introduce my xian g`ul companion, Thieria.”
Thieria dipped her head, and smiled at us. She was the palest creature that I had ever seen, with ice blue eyes, and nails so red it looked as if her fingertips were frostbitten. She was also the largest, save the dragons: easily nine feet tall and possibly ten. I found her smile, her whole demeanor, slightly unsettling; I could not tell if she were attempting to restrain a look of mischief or malice.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” she said. Her accent, too, was both formal and archaic. But for all that, I realized, neither she nor her mistress sounded as if they had learned our tongue through the translation spell.
If my people remembered the xian g`ul, I did not. Unless? No. Thieria could not be one of the monstrous, soul-eaten warriors of legend, could she? Surely they did not exist. If I could bring myself to speak to him, I would have to ask Derrek about that later.
“Thieria speaks for me,” Ingmatmar went on, “and when you speak to her it is as if you speak to me. I will be leaving you in her care when I cannot be available to attend to your needs. And, please, you must tell me if there is anything that you need or desire.”
“Has there been word yet of Rennin, today?” Elana asked immediately.
“Yes,” said Ingmatmar. “Word came earlier this morning. The healers believe that the danger has passed. I expect him to be delivered to the estate some time this afternoon.”
“Thank you, your grace,” said Elana. After much consideration, Derrek had determined that giving the archons the same honorific Elana, herself, used was the best equivalent.
With that most personal of matters addressed, Elana withdrew into herself a little. Our hosts seemed to sense that, and the cyclops, Thieria, took over the conversation for a little while: asking as casually as possible about our travels across the holy lands, if we had found any of the lost cities, or encountered any unusual animals.
I told the story of the golden-pronged deer Rennin had caught on our first day, and of the delirious miscommunication that had led to my stripping it for preservation. Ingmatmar had been nonplussed, but Thieria had found it hilarious.
Derrek told the story of the step pyramid we had found in the jungle. He spoke of how it had eluded our best guesses at dating its establishment and demise, and our speculation that the same people had built the pyramid beneath the gate. To this, Ingmatmar nodded sagely.
“That was a Jor freehold,” she told us. “Erected some nine hundred years ago, and abandoned within the last century. The Jor did build the gate pyramid, too, as you surmise. The city they built of their own accord. The gate, they built with the aid of and at the behest of dragons, who sensed a thinness, there, in the boundary between worlds, and built that structure to make certain that it never grew.
I wondered if that thinness had been sensed and discovered by the ancient wizard Arcmedus, or if it had been made – or made worse – by his crossing. Since she did not offer that information, though, I decided not to ask. I wondered, too, if Derrek had already known some or all of that. Had he kept it secret, along with everything else? His face looked sincerely interested, but I knew, now, that he was a consummate liar.
===
As the archon had promised us, Sir Rennin Ösh was returned to us that afternoon. They brought him to us in a chair with wheels and a built-in splint which kept his injured leg braced and elevated. He still looked drawn and pale, but his head was freshly shaved and he even looked in moderately good spirits.
Elana insisted that Derrek tell Rennin, personally, everything that he had already told us. Derrek accepted this command with grace. He pulled the servant’s bell, ordered us a tea service, and gave our battered knight the same autobiographical sketch that he had given us. I placed myself where I could watch both his face and Rennin’s, but both men cloaked themselves in stoic masks. Another human might have perceived more than I did, but …
“Were you bound against speaking,” Rennin asked, “like the Illustrian traders of old?”
Derrek sighed.
“By oath and honor,” he said. “But not by magic.”
Rennin nodded, though, and his face relaxed.
“We owe the debts we owe,” he said, quoting from a poem almost forgotten save for that one line.
“There remains much that I could tell you,” Derrek went on, “if you ask, but that I cannot offer up unprompted.”
Elana and Rennin put their heads together and conferred quietly. Derrek drank his tea. His face was placid and composed, but several times I caught his eyes drifting my way.
“The spell you cast on Shadow,” Elana said after a few minutes, “that let him learn the language of the Compact. Can you cast it on us, so that we can learn the giants’ tongue?”
Derrek nodded and, to my surprise, smiled wickedly.
“I had hoped that you would ask that.”
One by one, he took our heads in his hands. Elana first. Then Rennin. Then me. He prayed over us in the language of the sao`ashan, burning incense and calling down the blessings of his foreign gods. A priestess of the Stars, he’d called himself. I had thought, at times, that his aura looked like that of a wonderworking priest. Looking at him, now, as he worked, I even thought that I could perceive the difference between the scintillating rainbow of his magical connection to the Holy Land and the white-gold light of his divine empowerment. I felt vindicated, too, that I had never even heard of his translation spell – it was not a thing of human blood wizardry! How much of his power as a Great Wizard had been wonderworking in disguise?
When my turn came, I did my best to put it all out of my mind. His hands were strong and calloused, warm and gentle. I did my best to put away the memory of their caress, as well. The language of the Compact has no words to describe the sensation of that spell settling over me, and my native tongue has but few. I suspected, now, what some words I had heard spirits use might truly mean. I shuddered when it was over, feeling like a book that had been gently opened, then written in with a heavy hand.
Once he was done, Derrek spoke to us in that alien language. The words washed over me in a rush. Some seconds later, a meaning blossomed in my mind. The spell was invented for and by ancient diplomats, he had told us. The more of the language we heard, the faster we would learn.
“That feels very strange,” Elana confessed, her eyes wide. Rennin nodded vigorous agreement. I concurred but kept silent for the sake of my dignity.
“I warn you now,” Derrek went on, once more in our common tongue, “that this is the language of the giants. The rhu xian have another language which they speak among themselves. It is an immortal tongue, and cannot be learned in this way. I can teach that to you all, as well, but it must be learned the hard way, and comes with all the risks of learning and speaking a language of immortals.”
Elana and Rennin and I exchanged a look.
“I believe that I will pass on the numbers and colors and tables of declension, for now,” Elana said. Rennin nodded. So did I, torn between my desire for knowledge and my desire to not spend such intimate time with Derrek Rowan right now.
The suite we had been provided included a small library of what proved to be popular poetry, and Derrek spent the rest of the day reading passages for us. Ingmatmar, it seemed, had a taste for pastoralists and romantics – that, or she assumed that her guests would.
“It’s funny,” Elana said as dinner approached. “I struggle to imagine our host, or any of the priestesses we have met so far, pining over the sorcerers.”
“Elana,” Rennin chided, “that’s quite harsh.”
“Perhaps,” said Derrek, “but it is quite astute. Very few among the rhu xian are romantically or sexually inclined. The love poems are largely composed by sien xian. They do contribute to the body of elegiac work, but it’s more an intellectual pursuit to them; it’s the Jor who are the true innovators of that genre. Priestesses overwhelmingly compose hymns. Sorcerers compose epics, mostly about their own adventures, and the exploits of their ancestors and descendants.”
“Do the Jor write love poems?” I couldn’t help myself.
“Yes,” Derrek said, “but mostly about fraternal love. The most significant relationship in Jor culture is not with parent, spouse, or child, but with one’s twin.”
“Fascinating,” said Elana. “So all the two-eyed giants are twins?”
“Very nearly. Singlets and triplets happen, but rarely.”
I was torn between the desire to interrogate Derrek about the peoples upon whose goodwill we were now dependent, and the desire to spend the rest of our time in this so-called Holy Empire hiding in my room, speaking to no one. Derrek helped incline me toward the latter with his next words.
“I know that your trust in me has been hurt,” he said. “But despite that, you should be ever more vigilant in keeping the tokens I gave you close at hand. There is no risk of our enemy hearing his name spoken, or finding us here in the Lightning Plains, but the same protections I enchanted against him will protect you against many of the powers of the rhu xian. In particular, their power to look into the hearts and minds of mortal creatures, which they also use to speak silently among themselves.”
Elana and Rennin gaped at him, then turned their attention to me.
“Will they not sense that we are keeping them out?” I demanded on their behalf. “And what about you?”
“I was raised among them, but it is a power unique to the rhu xian which cannot be taught to the sien xian or the Jor, and no attempt was made to teach it to me. But I have mastered, as have most of the giants who serve the rhu xian closely, certain disciplines that guard my privacy. Most will not think to wonder how you practice similar disciplines, and if that becomes a problem …. Well, we will deal with it then.”
===
When Rennin was pronounced well enough to be wheeled beyond the city walls, we held our funeral for Lord Sir Orland Borgon. A pyre had been erected at Derrek’s direction, and Orland was laying on it, waiting for us, when we arrived, still draped in the immaculate shroud that had kept his body uncorrupted until we were ready to lay it to rest. A priestess of Torh – known as the White Lady, here – took away the shroud as we approached.
Elana and Rennin both wept loudly over the body, wailing in ritual mourning. Derrek and I stood back. He was not our kin to grieve so extravagantly, but our eyes were by no means dry. When they had wept and wailed themselves hoarse, Elana and Rennin stepped back from the pyre, and the sao`ashan priestess stepped forward to drench the body in the same holy oils with which the pyre logs had already been soaked.
“Khanaarre,” Elana croaked. “I know that you abhor the pyre, but will you please …”
I closed my eyes. I had hoped that she would call on Derrek for this. But of the two of us, I had travelled with Orland longer. Even if Derrek were not under suspicion, she would have called upon me.
I drew my wizard’s claw across the meat of my thumb and spoke the words to call fire from the heart of matter. I spoke them slowly, softly, at first, so that the pyre would light, not explode. Then I said them again, more insistent, and again, coxing the fire to an intensity that would reduce the pyre to fine white ash in mere hours. The pyre burned hot and bright. The desert wind rose to meet it, sending sparks soaring into the sky.
When the fire had burned low, the priestess stepped forward with a gleaming urn. Elana knelt in the ashes to fill the urn, smearing some of the excess on her face and then on Rennin’s. In Vencar, I understood, a feast would be held in Orland’s memory. His family and his officers would toast his name, extol his virtues, recount his exploits, and sacrifice boars or bulls to the gods to see his soul safely escorted to the afterlife. Here, we would toast him in private and trust the rites of the Inevitable – Torh shared that title here and among my people, as in the Compact – to lead the hero’s soul safely to the lands of the dead.
Elana and Rennin wore the ash for three days, a public display of mourning that our host respected. During that time, Derrek continued to read to us in the mortal language of our hosts. The words and grammar sank into our minds, the most peculiar sensation that I have ever experienced: a spiderweb that entangled thoughts and flesh alike, tugging constantly at the edges of my perception. My only respite was when Elana and Rennin periodically retreated into full mourning, and when – each night, after dinner – our hosts took Derrek away. He told us that they needed to discuss our health and needs, both immediate and in the future, but there was always something haunted in his eyes that led us to fear that either he was betraying us, or that the health in question was his own.
The poetry gave fascinating bits of insight into the private lives of the people of the Holy Empire. There was an entire class of giant aristocrats that we had not yet seen. There were giant artists and artisans, merchants and philosophers. Somewhere beyond the city walls and beyond sight of the road we had travelled, Jor farmers tilled the soil and tended rice patties and watched over vast herds of aurochs. Unwed Jor and cyclops indulged in passionate cross-species affairs, simultaneously depending on and lamenting the infertility of those pairings. As an elf among djuunan, I found that last point particularly fascinating. Had it been the Withering Plague, itself, that had made the conception of the djuunan possible in the first place? Or did llamenan and rrotran have some common origin that made us compatible in ways the Jor and cyclops weren’t?
The pastoral poems seemed to resonate with Elana and Rennin in a way that made them homesick. I didn’t fully understand how or why, but I supposed I didn’t need to. Some of the romantic poems made me think of Rrii`aa; by the intensity of his gaze while he read them, some of them clearly made Derrek think of me, which was both flattering and infuriating.
The day that Elana and Rennin washed the ash from their faces, we received an invitation to join our host for dinner with the other archons the following evening.
“You can refuse,” Derrek said. “But if you do, we will almost certainly be escorted back jungle and we will be left to either face the dragons or make our way through the mountains rather than around them.”
Elana took the letter from him. It was a gesture of habit. The translation spell did not offer us any insight into the written tongue. Then she seemed to realize something about how he’d phrased the invitation
“Are you not invited,” she asked, surprised and suspicious.
“You are foreign dignitaries,” he explained with a shrug. “I am a prodigal child returned in the company of uninvited guests.”
Still, when the time came, Derrek helped us comport ourselves in the finest of the garments we had been gifted. All of our costumes began with an undertunic of shockingly fine silk that fell from our necks to our elbows and below our knees and clung like spider-silk but wasn’t. We were also all given pointy-toed slippers, beaded and embroidered in colors matching our new clothes. From there, though, our garments differed widely.
Rennin’s was the simplest: a long slate-colored tunic with silver embroidery at the neck, wrists, and calf-length hem, with a black-trimmed silver cloak that wrapped around his shoulders and clasped on the right, leaving his arm free. Hidden among the clothing when it had been presented to us were a pair of wide silver bracelets set with onyx cabochons, and a darkly patinaed silver circlet that dripped pearls, onyx, and moonstone beads from the temples.
“If you want,” said Derrek, “you may carry the Blade of Xadaer. It is a weapon and may be taken as a threat – though that would also be an admission of weakness by the one threatened – but a god-forged magical weapon is a symbol of status that you are entitled to carry, and may impress those that see it.”
Rennin and Elana conferred briefly. When Rennin went for his sword belt, Derrek held up a hand, and extracted a jewel-encrusted belt from his wizard’s chest. With Elana’s aid, Rennin hung his scabbard from the new belt and buckled that over the tunic and under the cloak so that the blade was visible on Rennin’s right hip.
“Presentation is everything,” Derrek said with an approving nod.
Elana’s costume, fittingly, was the most elaborate of all. She had been gifted a black dalmatica, voluminous except where it came tight to her wrists and neck, like what our hostess had often worn for breakfast. Rather than a contrasting stole, though, what went next was a wide-shouldered tabard in gleaming white, black serpents painted facing each other across the breast. The edges of the tabard and the long cuffs and tall collar of the dalmatica were heavily embroidered with thread-of-gold.
“Derrek,” she said, examining the heraldry with trepidation. “Do they know…?”
“Yes,” he said. “I was consulted on the details of your house symbols. They have elected to treat Rennin as your xian g`ul, rather than a scion of his own house.”
She, too, was provided with a bejeweled headdress: not just a circlet, but a jewel-encrusted velvet hat that could be easily mistaken for a crown. She was also gifted embroidered white and gold bands that tied on around her biceps and forearms, and heavy gold bracelets for her wrists, and a heavy embroidered belt with elaborately embroidered panels that hung down from the belt on either side of the medallion buckle.
My own clothing fell somewhere in the middle. It began with a tunic superficially similar to Rennin’s, with wider cuffs, a higher collar, and a hem that fell to the floor. Just as Derrek had told our hosts about the colors and insignia of Elana’s house, he had clearly told them about the colors of my Order. The bulk of the tunic was a fiery red-orange, with black flame-shaped details embroidered across the breast and back, and the cuffs and hem and collar were all textured black silk. Like the first tunics we had been given, before being presented to the archons, this one came with a long cloth and a ring-belt, this time in black.
“I can show you how to belt and tie the stole to show your station,” Derrek said. “Or you can wear your true regalia.”
I looked to Elana as a courtesy, but it was good that she nodded because my decision had already been made. I tied the ring-belt around my waist, and tied my Black Mask to that, then wrapped myself in the physical and magical protection of my himation.
I took a deep breath, straightened my back, and rolled my head and shoulders. I met Derrek’s eyes for perhaps the first time since he had finished telling us his story. There was pride there, respect and affection, and … knowing. He knew that this was my journeyman’s quest. How did he know? How long had he known? My face must have given me away, but he only nodded. Acknowledgement. More than that. Approval.
Fortunately, Elana and Rennin – busy fussing over each other – seemed to have misunderstood the exchange.
“If you’re going to fuck each other,” Elana said, mockingly sweet, “you need to wait until after dinner.”
“And if you’re going to kill each other,” said Rennin, seemingly serious, “I need you to wait until the war’s over.”
I blushed, but I laughed. Derrek laughed, as well.
“I had my fill of killing before the last war ended,” he said. “I will certainly not be doing any after we get through this one.”
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