"I'm here to rescue you," Khyte said, realizing as he did that he sounded like the naive idiots in storybooks.
"You are? Where's Huiln?"
Hearing further confirmation that Huiln's plot stretched further than even his sister knew, Khyte didn't know how to answer. "I know not," he lied. "Your mother sent me to bring you back."
"My mother?" she scoffed. "do you know anything about dryads?"
"If you don't want to lose a few more sprig-fingers or eye-blossoms," said Khyte, "pencil in a lecture." He pulled her off the bed, into the hall, and towards the boudoir's back entrance. He was about to impale this locked door when he spied the hairline crack behind a chip in his sword.
"This is your plan?" Khyte froze when he heard the voice behind him, for it was not the dryad.
"How..."
"No time." Eurilda pointed her long, gold-painted fingernail at the door and spoke cryptic syllables that set the air to glittering and the door to shrinking until it was no bigger than a matchbox. The dryad stooped to pick up the door and held it wonderingly, until the giantess yanked her upstairs, where they stood in a long hallway that bent right and left like an arc of a circle.
"I can't grow through this roof without crushing you under falling stones," Eurilda said, ignoring the dryad's quizzical look, "or breaking my own bones, so I say left." She grabbed the dryad's arm and hustled left without waiting for Khyte to catch up, either physically or mentally.
When a clamor of mailed boots clanked around the bend, they turned to try the other way, but stopped at what was either an amplified echo, or even more guards.
"Where did you put the door?" Eurilda asked.
The dryad held up the miniature door.
"On my command, throw it. Khyte, a little help."
Khyte considered fleeing into the boudoir and trying the way he came, but feared Eurilda might spring up like a weed everywhere he went, as that seemed a new trick in her sorcerous bag. When he took his place in front of Eurilda and the dryad and raised his chipped sword, the goblins rushed around the bend.
"Now!" shouted the sorceress. With the tremendous force of a bent bow, the dryad's arm made a whip-like crack, and the quickly enlarging door smacked into the guards in the lead, knocked them off of their feet, and landed on top. Khyte jumped on the door, pinning the goblins under it, and from this teetering high ground, swung his sword at their back ranks. Each time he lunged, his shifting weight made the door-trapped goblins scream, squirm, and strain to throw the young barbarian, which required Khyte to shift his weight back and forth like a circus tumbler as he killed one goblin with a thrust through the unarmored neck, and sent another spinning with a clout on the helm from his sword's hilt.
"Run, Khyte!" shouted Eurilda, for the goblins behind them were now at their heels. The door-crushed goblins became deathly silent as they were trampled by Khyte, the dryad, and Eurilda.
The corridor funneled into a ballroom lined with brocaded tapestries garishly colored gold, scarlet, and indigo, and enormous brass and glass gaslamp chandeliers that, though unlit, sparkled with illumination borrowed from the halls. The room dimmed when Eurilda and Khyte slammed the doors shut, seized an ornate flag pole and thrust it through the door handles.
"Was it too much to stick to the plan?" yelled Eurilda. Her eyes were drawn into slits and her nostrils flared; if possible, she was angrier than the first time Khyte betrayed her.
"You weren't on board, either. You followed me."
"You're a fool to think I trust you. I shrunk myself to the size of a flea and rode in the folds of your cloak. It was the most revolting ride of my life, as something you ate has made you grossly flatulent."
"You haven't changed," said Khyte, snickering, but red-faced. "I wish you were born a man."
"Take a poke if you want later, but smug and stupid is a self-destructive combination. For instance, you forget goblin castles are only one story. We'll escape through the window." Eurilda stripped one silky Alfyrian curtain after another, revealing magnificent ten foot tall lattices with bright panes, all barred.
"Goblins fear heights and wide-open spaces, but they're not stupid," said Khyte. "Can you shrink them?"
"Of course. I'm just choosing my window."
"Our window," corrected Khyte. "We're in this together."
She laughed. "We're not on the same team, or even the same page. But if you're offering..." she started, then yelled, "The other side!"
Four guards charged through the ballroom's opposite entrance, two clutching wavy longswords of snow-white goblin steel and spiked blue shields embossed with the likeness of a golden boar, and the other two gripping halberds a half-foot taller.
Khyte sliced the first into four pieces—two with the forehand, and two with the backhand—but on the blade's return sweep, it snapped, leaving Khyte with a lopped-off half-sword no longer than a butcher's cleaver. He grabbed the next guard's halberd haft with one hand, shoved his sword stub into the goblin's breastbone with the other, then wrung the pole ax from the shrieking goblin. Behind him, crinkling and twisting metal set his teeth and spine on edge; then popping, splintering glass and the clatter of shards. Though the halberd-armed guards' reach was too great, and a peek might cost him his life, he surmised the cause was Eurilda's spell. Khyte speared one with his stolen halberd, and as the goblin writhed on the point, he tripped another with the shaft. When the prone goblin reached for his fallen weapon, Khyte stepped on his hand and risked a backwards glance: where Eurilda and the dryad once stood, a hole in the wall gaped over so much sundered glass and iron that it seemed the debris of twenty windows—or one magically enlarged one.
As six guards ran in two by two, Khyte charged through the smashed window, getting scratched by the shards stuck in the frame, and landed on his feet outside the castle. While the goblins gave chase, one cut his arm severely on the embedded glass, and five continued pursuit.
When Eurilda and the dryad were nowhere in sight, Khyte sprinted to the gates, where the sorceress swung the squirming dryad across her shoulders and leaped the wall. When Khyte was a few feet from the wall, he jumped, grabbed the top bricks with his fingertips, strained, struggled, and lifted himself to the top as halberds rattled below his feet.
Khyte dropped down to pursue the women through a court residential district, where one Baron's wall ran flush with another's in a row of single-story manors. While Khyte could smell the greenery of the walled-in lands, it contrasted with the insincerity of the manors' floral-themed facades, as well as the current architectural fashion, faux windows painted on wooden veneers clothing the outer walls. The magnificence was hard on Khyte's eyes.
"Hello," he panted, having outpaced Eurilda and the dryad. "We haven't been introduced. Rude witch that left me to Merculo's mercies, meet the princess I rescued."
"We've met. Khyte, meet Inglefras."
"Hello," Inglefras choked through sobs and red-rimmed eyes.
"Hello? How about 'thank you?'" asked Khyte.
"And I'm rude." Eurilda rolled her eyes. "Though I should have ignored her heap of questions, I had the vain hope the next answer might shut her up, and you can see the results."
"What?"
"You killed Count Kirqqa—her lover."
"Lover?" said Khyte.
"Huiln embellished her torment. Though they cut off her foot when she once tried escape, it grew back along with feelings for her captors."
"Captors? Which one?"
"Dryads are polyamorous," she said, "and she declared her love for Count Kirqqa, the King, several courtiers, and even our friend Huiln of House Hwarn—better to call him your goblin brother than friend—who wanted Inglefras for himself and used us to accomplish his aims."
"I don't believe it," said Khyte, keeping to himself that he had suspected Huiln's duplicity all along.
"Aside from Merculo's perverted peccadilloes, goblins are not the sharing sort. Unless you mean he's better than that, in which case your naivete is no longer charming. If you mean that a goblin put one over on me, I'm struggling with that," said Eurilda, "but it fits the facts."
"You don't share either," said Khyte.
"You're wrong to think I'm here for promise of ransom or reward."
"You snooped from the kindness of your heart?"
"Human idioms are stupid. The heart is the seat of blood and breath; kindness is in the head," said Eurilda. "If you must know, Otoka needs a spell in Arquaela, the fabled 'Changing Library.'"
"Just one?"
"It's a good one," said Eurilda. "Well, neither good nor bad, but powerful, that's for certain. Don't ask what it does; I won't tell you."
"Since you ask so often what I mean, I doubt you know."
"Are you taunting me?" said the giantess. "You baseborn, verminous cretin—where is Inglefras?" For as the ex-lovers argued, the grieving dryad had made her way to a business district nearly fifty yards away.
"Run," said Khyte. "If she makes it to Kettle Street, we'll lose her in the crowd." When Inglefras realized she was pursued, she waited. "I'll allow this rescue," she said, "but don't call it ransom. Let's just call it a reward, which your expectations and demands render vulgar."
"Where are we heading, anyway," Khyte asked Eurilda. "Why not make our way to Irutak?"
"They'll expect us to travel Baugn-back. I know another way."
Khyte knew one other way to travel between worlds, and did not like the idea. "There are no Alfyrian Ladders in Kreona."
"You're right, and you're wrong," said Eurilda. "How do Alfyrians send agents to Nahure?"
Never having a reason to consider the movements of spies before this, Khyte replied, "I would assume they travel the safer, intelligent way, by Baugn."
"That's too indirect, and too slow."
"Alfyrian ladders are fast, but I don't like Alfyrian odds. I can count on one hand the travelers killed by Baugn, while elves send ten messengers by ladder when they want one to reach their destination."
"That's not my Khyte," said Eurilda.
"A giantess taught me caution," retorted Khyte. "Speaking of pointless lectures, what about the catacombs?"
"While that was once our best plan, you trusted to dumb luck and brute strength."
"No goblin lives here," said Khyte of a building of interlocking towers erected on a series of terraces. Khyte's eyes followed the lines of the structure to be thwarted by tower roofs connecting in flagrant disregard of their parallel foundations. While the grandiosely vast edifice no doubt sent the weaker-minded running in flight—goblin foot traffic was very light—on any world, it would be an ostentatious architectural achievement and a mind-boggling brag of intellectual gifts. Having traveled to the Elven World, Khyte knew Alfyrian architecture when he saw it. Unlike the goblins, whose cultural shortsightedness was limited to family bonds, food love, and fulfilling their drives, the vain and petty elves believed those on other Worlds their crooked reflections, who needed straightened by examples of superior conduct.
"I've only ever liked one elf," said Khyte.
"And you're the only human I can stand, and only about half the time," said Eurilda.
Inglefras's face had dulled, like damp bark, and her floral eyes and eyelashes—a pistil and stamen structure that baffled and fascinated Khyte, who only knew the nomenclature of plants as far as seed, stem, and flower—looked half wilted, but she had stopped mewling. "If humans fight this much, I prefer goblins."
"I am not human," said Eurilda, her voice high and shrill, raising Khyte's hackles.
"Aren't you the same? I mean apart from your seed apparatus."
"My what?" Eurilda and Khyte blurted simultaneously.
"Never mind. Will I like them?" asked Inglefras.
"No," said Khyte. "Alfyrians are snobs, opiate dealers, and slave traders."
"Alfyrians outlawed slavery fifty years ago," said Eurilda. "Khyte doesn't know what he's talking about."
"Though they honor the letter of a treaty, they have other ways of trading in freedom, Inglefras. If they offer you refreshment, don't partake."
Inglefras laughed. "You know little about dryads."
"I don't deny it."
"The dryad body on our world needs no solid food; like trees, those bodies sustain themselves with soil, light, water, and air."
"You don't eat," said Khyte, thinking that this peculiarly verbose dryad reminded him of his other friends. Since all he had for his pains was a half-crushed crown that might sell for the metal value, and the ruby-tipped wand that Sarin Gelf mentioned was likely equal parts rumor and fantasy, Khyte hoped her grand manner corresponded to a rich payoff.
"Here my rootless body enjoys more frequent meals to replace what dryads take from the soil on my world. Not that I eat at the human or goblin pace—where do you put so much food in so little time? It's a wonder Nahure isn't nibbled away. In any event, as I ate the day before last, Alfyrian delicacies won't tempt me."
When Eurilda led them to the embassy gate, and the guards waved them in without identification or introduction, Khyte brooded that not only must the giantess have an abettor at the embassy, but the barbarian had played into her plans to rescue the dryad.
"I'm uncertain how it will play out," said Eurilda, as if reading Khyte's mind, "while your efforts were appreciated, you may have little more to contribute."
An Alfyrian guard led them up flight after flight to the top of the terraced towers. More than three Alfyrians could walk the stairs abreast, with ascending and descending traffic. Those in robes moved with stateliness, and those in armor moved with less grace but more surety as they cleared two or three steps with each stride. As Nahure spun to the night side of the Abyss, emerald green rods in sconces illuminated the stairwell. Khyte hadn't seen this kind of everyday magic since his only visit to Alfyria, and wondered, not for the first time, why elves guarded the trick of object illumination as jealously as the secret of prolonging life. Although it was marvelously useful for intellectual work in a sleepless embassy staffed by scribblers and their vigilant guard.
Inglefras said, "my name isn't 'dryad princess.' Should I call him 'human swordsman' and you—well, whatever are you, if not human; how about 'mad-faced witch?' Not very flattering, is it?"
Khyte ignored the dryad and said, "Huiln or Kuilea don't figure into your end game?"
"They didn't figure into yours."
"I had cause—their scheme with Sarin Gelf doesn't include me."
"Don't you mean either of us? Even so, we know their objective. Gelf the money grubber only counts coin."
"Or Huiln played him too," said Khyte.
"Are they all so big?" Inglefras asked, as they strode through a hall bustling with towering, robed functionaries. Even these sedentary elves were a head taller than Khyte, and the Alfyrian guard that led them was a hand taller than that and twice as broad. All were long-haired, with wispy beards dotting their chins, but there were violet haired, emerald haired, and golden haired Alfyrians, as if they bred out any mundane color that occurred in nature.
"They aren't so big," said Khyte, laughing. "Our monster could crush them flat."
Inglefras frowned. "Having seen your handiwork, human, I won't make light of your prowess, but why brag in vain when anyone can see that Alfyrians dwarf goblins, dryads, humans—and whatever she is."
"Yes, whatever she is," said Khyte, "because I never said I was the monster."
"The monster," said Eurilda, "would find stone towers a tight fit."
"My lord," called out their escort, as they walked onto the roof. Though the topmost tower was crowned with a half-domed amphitheater open to cold, starless night, they could see by the emerald green torch-rods ensconced in the curved half wall. The Alfyrian lord's muscles may have rippled less than Khyte's, but the difference in proportion was so great that the elf's muscles bulked much larger. His goatish chin beard was hacked short, unlike the others in the embassy, and, along with his shoulder-length hair, was shock white.
"I am Azuri. I will provide the guidance you seek," he said.
Khyte considered this. "Just us? You're short in students because you tutor in ladders, long-shanks." Though he only wormed a snort of laughter from Eurilda, and the elves and the dryad remained impassive, he enjoyed every chance to belittle an elf.
"There are dangers when using our ladders," said Azuri, looking down his nose at Khyte.
"I've traveled the Five Worlds and am familiar with the abyss."
"On Baugn, yes? Not by ladder."
"I've climbed ladders, stairs, cliffs, and trees—no innuendo intended about present company,"—here he glanced at the dryad—"and the principle can be no different with your magical ladder."
"Infants that climb stairs cannot scale mountains," said Azuri. "Just as an articulate wag may not be intelligent." Eurilda and Inglefras snickered. "A Baugn's back beneath you, and its head before you, are reassuring fixed points in the hurtling Abyss. But the Ladder flings you rung to rung as fast as Baugn fly, and this play tricks on you: up looks like down; climbing feels like falling; and the unending, hypnotic rungs bring exhaustion and euphoria. Physical stamina alone will not get you to the other side; you must also armor your judgment and arm your wits."
"Consider me advised," said Khyte, "but still, now that I know these things..."
"You still know nothing," Azuri butted in. "Just as the distance between Kreona and Julaba is like a scroll laid flat, and those that ride Baugn travel infinitely fast, as if the scroll is suddenly rolled up, when you travel by Alfyrian ladder, the scroll is wadded up, and all the points on the crumpled surface touch at once."
Eurilda interrupted. "We're happy to have you as guide or observer, if it does not alter my terms with Ambassador Eidular."
"He is the one who ordered me," said Azuri.
"Where is this ladder? And is it a stepladder, a rope ladder, or an extension ladder?" Though Eurilda played nice, it was hard for Khyte to halt the momentum of his belligerence, and he still wanted to put Azuri through his paces.
"It's a foot above your head."
At first Khyte saw nothing, then the diaphanous, nearly invisible, bottom rungs wafted into sight like floating smoke. Having reached overhead to grab the rungs, he glimpsed the entirety of the ladder, like a towering string, and in a semicircle behind it, the silhouette of the other four worlds. The tower top, the black Abyss, and all of the Goblin World were engulfed by the incalculable magnitude of the ladder's destinations, and no longer certain if the embassy stones were under his feet, he let go, and fell flat on his back.
"You're not ready." Azuri stood over him. "If you had climbed one rung, you would have been long gone."
Khyte wanted to ask, 'how does it work,' but all that came out was "how?"
Either as unsophisticated as he looked or too honorable to have fun at Khyte's expense, Azuri said, "I do not know."
Khyte composed a scowl as he regained his feet. "Though it looks like a ladder, we move as fast as thought."
"Faster," said Eurilda. "Or we would die before we reach our destination. Even though that great speed transports us into the abyss in a single second, it will take more than a day of constant climbing to reach Ielnarona."
"No," said Azuri. "Alfyria."
Eurilda regarded the elf like something to clean from her boot, and as the tower roof had no ceiling to rein the giantess in, she had only to undo her diminishment to make this a reality. Though just as annoyed, Khyte watched her cautiously. Eurilda once flew into a rage when Khyte ordered her a drink, and he could only imagine what presumption on this scale would wreak. Even with a giantess on his side, he neither wanted to battle the Alfyrian embassy, which was built less like a political institution than a military installation, not to enter any fray with Azuri on the opposite side. Although the Alfyrian was not as large as the giantess in her natural state, Khyte felt the force of many battles in the way the elf glided in seventy pounds of armor as if in formal attire.
"For your sake, I hope you're misinformed," said Eurilda, "We're returning Princess Inglefras to Ielnarona."
"That is her ultimate destination," said Azuri, "but the ladder points to Alfyria, where the High Tzhurarkh will parade, fete, and pamper the princess, before she blesses the prized flower of our realm, The Gulidian Cuoruch."
Eurilda said, "I've promised this young dryad she shall see her mother tomorrow."
"Forgive this deception," Azuri said. "It was ordered. I could have lied, but chose the path of honor." As soon as the elf said 'deception,' Khyte grabbed Inglefras's hand and moved towards the stairwell entrance.
Just as he reached the door, another armored Alfyrian opened it. He was smaller and of lower rank, as if the Alfyrians doled out authority based on shoe size. "Commander," the elf said, "goblins mob our doorstep."
"How many?"
"I did not stop to count, commander. Dozens."
"What do they want?" asked Azuri.
"They know we're here," said Khyte.
"Merculo has many spies, and that may be so. Climb. There is no time for instruction."
"It's a little too convenient," said Eurilda. "If these spies have eyes on us, why not the ladder?"
Azuri said, "With the exception of my cook, whose loyalty I vouch for, we hire only elven staff. Undoubtedly, Merculo's hirelings saw you enter, and now lay siege to demand your release. If we leave now, they may occupy our halls, but they will find nothing, leave empty-handed, and give the bureaucrats cause to file a grievance and collect some petty favor from Merculo."
Khyte agreed with Eurilda that this seemed a contrived incentive to depart. But he preferred a forced vacation on Alfyria, inhospitable as the Elven World was, to an uneven battle and quick death long before the giantess succumbed to a hundred swords, whether they faced elven or goblin blades. Because of these considerations, Khyte lied, "I doubt they'd make that up. Let's go before our heads are on the block."
"I don't think so." Eurilda pointed at Azuri, who shrunk to less than ankle high. Then she stooped to pick him up and ripped his miniature sword from his belt. The shrunken elf's squeaks were silenced by the grip of the sorceress, though he still tried to mouth his rage with breathless words, then gasped through the fear contracting his tiny, purple face.
When Khyte punched the other Alfyrian in his square jaw, the elf fell slack. Inglefras whispered and huddled against Khyte, and at the press of her body, he smelled the faintest trace of the bordello musk, tinged with a warm but wintry cinnamon, and an acrid hint of green onions.
Eurilda put the tiny elf in her pouch, double knotted the strings, and gave Azuri's shrunken sword to Khyte. "Point it away from you. And me, fool. " When he did as she bade, she restored it to its natural size. This was not wholly good, as Azrui's sword had a despicable edge and was ungainly slag compared to Khyte's old blade. Though it would cleave armor better than a broken sword, at that moment Khyte wished for a sleeker weapon, for hurling at Eurilda.
He belted on the ugly sword. "What now?" he asked. When Eurilda brushed past Khyte into the stairwell, he stumbled into the doorjamb, and told himself that the next time she turned her back, he would slash free from the sorceress. When he steeled himself to this choice, he saw no reason to postpone this future, and reached for his sword hilt.
But as Inglefras's eyes locked on Khyte's, his hand stopped halfway, and the tension fell out of him, as if he stood waist-high in a glassy pool. In that moment, he felt a liquid connection, as if his mind and heart had melted, losing the shapes of his desires in the rush. Still in the shadow of the giantess, he lost the consciousness of his life as he stood between that grinning deceiver and Inglefras. Khyte had known women but was a stranger to love, and having never acted once with altruism or charity, he did not understand these self-sacrificing urges, and felt like he was slipping away. It must be lust, he told himself, an attraction so strong that he did not know his own mind.
"Help me," Inglefras whispered. "Eurilda will kill me."
"I won't allow it," said Khyte, wishing his thought was deed, and the sorceress dead. As he imagined it, the giant corpse lay at the dryad's feet, as if he was a pet fawning before its master.
"You can't stop her," she whispered. He was kneeling before the dryad, as if his daydream and his flesh were on the same strings.
Eurilda called up the stairs. "I hear fighting. That clod spoke true."
"We must flee," said Inglefras softly.
This tall order snapped Khyte back to himself; the only ways out were a stairwell crammed with elves and goblins or the tower's half-dome open to the insanely crowded architecture of the Alfyrian embassy and a sheer drop.
Eurilda ran back up, with armored elves backpedaling behind her, as they furiously fought against an ascending wall of goblins. While the Alfyrians were huge, bold, armored, and had the upper ground in a narrow stairwell, the Nahurians were many, and favoring spears and halberds, were able to grind against the elves' advantages, and gradually push them onto the roof.
Had Inglefras not told Khyte of her impending death at Eurilda's hands, he would never have rested so much on such a slender hope. He climbed onto the rim of the half-dome, pulling Inglefras with him.
"Stop!" said Eurilda.
Khyte lied,"I trust you, Eurilda," grabbed Inglefras's hand, and jumped. As wind gusted past, blood rushed into Khyte's head and the taste of fear into his mouth, and then they were spinning like maple seeds. As they were dropping when Eurilda's lighten spell hit them, the energy of their fall had to go somewhere, so they skidded like skipped stones high above the embassy grounds, then were buffeted like snowflakes as they descended. The pinwheeling of their limbs and the spinning in his head made it impossible to see anything, and once they were on the ground, sprawling on all fours and panting with the struggle to regain their senses, it took Khyte nearly a minute before he could see what happened to Eurilda.
Through a haze of wind, sprinkling rain, and his reeling vision, he saw Eurilda, having abandoned her diminishment and boomed to her natural twenty-two feet, throwing and kicking goblins and elves alike from the roof, to fly through the air like cannonballs. The sky thickened with whistling, screaming bodies, and as her feet thundered, the tower shook and swayed. Though the clouds had only brought rain, Eurilda brought the storm.
When two armored elves hurtled at Khyte and Inglefras, it seemed the giantess not only regretted saving them but hoped to kill two birds with one stone. After he seized the dryad's hand, they sidestepped the lethal arc of the hurtling elves, whose faces were still wrinkled from the shock of the blow when new ripples of fear were blotted by the plash of elf on stone.
"Don't look," said Inglefras, but Khyte was already laughing at the elves' brief careers as missiles with a mixture of gleeful schadenfreude and good-humored pity, then met the dryad's stare and forgot all about them. In this sobering stare, Khyte remembered that sorcery rarely outlives a sorcerer, and determined they should exploit Eurilda's lightening before she died from mobbing or the tower roof's collapse.
"Inglefras, while this spell is on us, we can not only fall with little chance of harm, but also leap extremely high."
"Why must I know this, when you will carry me?"
Khyte picked Inglefras up and fled. Despite their negligible weight, their size and mass remained, and running and jumping while carrying a dryad was an awkward and unbalanced effort until he found the trick, which was not to carry her flopping over his shoulder, but to hold her in a close embrace, running nearly face to face, so that their combined mass became an asset for sticking his landings. When solving this kinesthetic problem cleared his mind a little, he wondered why he was doing her bidding. He couldn't call it love at first sight, never having been struck by that ailment, and yet there was a persuasive vulnerability about Inglefras. More likely, he was ensorceled. Not that it was the first time—he had long suspected Eurilda made him her fool not with natural attributes, of which she had none, given that her human dimensions were fabrications, but with enhanced allure and added charms. She hadn't attracted him so much as summoned him into love, and even though he loathed her, he still felt the unnatural appeal. Knowing more than one sorcerer by reputation, and one giant sorceress by long acquaintance, may have ruined Khyte for others' company, as now he was likely to suspect every perception and every feeling were revisions of a sorcerous hand.
Goblins that had been running from the hail of elves now pointed towards the embassy. Still carrying the dryad, Khyte turned to see the giantess mid-air. As the embassy's topmost tower was several hundred feet high, the leap should have ended in a fatal plunge even at Eurilda's stature. However, compounded with enchanted near-weightlessness, the leap stretched over a long row of manors.
It was dizzying to watch the giantess, who had such authority over the real world that she could shrink herself or a foe, enlarge, discard her weight, and vanish. How could she remain rational immersed in this mutability, when the clay of Khyte's mind was squashed and re-shaped once too often by arrogance coupled with magical and giantish manhandling, so that his heart had hardened into obdurate hatred, and he had nearly put his sword in her back. Those that did not know her, like the Kreonans agog at her impossible feat, could easily revise their memory to call it a cloud, a flock of Baugn, or a trick of the Abyss, but Khyte had to accept that he did not have a grip on reality in the face of Eurilda's pervasive manipulation. He had enough; sanity demanded satisfaction.
As Khyte and Inglefras walked in step with the gossiping crowd, he regretted the circuitous justifications that beclouded his mind, and nearly provoked him to a vile murder and betrayal of one who went out of her way to befriend him.
"Where is she?" asked Inglefras. If not for this princess, he would have slain Eurilda; thinking this, his affection for the dryad increased.
"Eurilda changes size like we change shirts," he said. "She likely went down a size."
"I doubt she changes a shirt quite like I do," said Inglefras
As this seemed extremely arrogant, Khyte exercised uncommon restraint in neither responding nor snickering, and if his eyes rolled left, then in a complete circle to the right, it may have been because they neared an intersection busy with coaches.
"If you're really here to take me home, do it quickly," she said. "She must not find us."
Khyte was torn; though loathing and fear overwhelmed his friendship for the arrogant sorceress, she was once his world, and leaving her battered and scarred to fend for herself was faithless to this remembrance. "Are you sure she intends you harm?" he asked. "Great strength can be useful in an escape." Inglefras did not notice when Khyte led her down a cross street that bent to parallel with streets in the vicinity of Eurilda's fall.
"Yes, I'm certain," she said.
"Where's your proof?"
"Though that word is not native to dryad language, we imported it as a slur to mark double talk. To dryads, what is in us is the factual, and we need not measure the world to be certain of our senses and feelings. As you also act from your heart, you might have a lot in common with dryads, Khyte."
"My heart does nothing without my strong sword arm, and desire is nothing without the strength to will. Though many lose what one wins in the battleground of desire, the fool follows his heart. And the war of desire is unending, so that the losers battle over the consolation after the winner takes home the prize. What do you do when two dryads feel differently?"
"This rarely happens, as the lowborn model their feelings on the highborn. While on Nahure or Hravak, everyone desires what is best for themselves, on The Dryad World, the lesser desire to better the greater."
"And a princess presumes how the lowborn feel. Are they really happy to receive their opinions from above, or do you have rebellions, revolutions, and wars?"
"Rebels we call iconoclasts, and uproot those whose lies become seditious."
"Uproot? Is that exile or death?"
"To a dryad, it is one and the same. As with war, a word in our tongue which can be nuanced to mean nature. As we hold war to be in our nature, our conflicts are smaller. When two highborn disagree, their peoples go to war, and the remaining highborn await the outcome."
While it seemed repellent that the lowborn might die to settle a grudge between two aristocrats, Khyte understood how disagreement led to bloodshed, as Drydanan thanes, earls, and kings committed warriors to whatever cause they wanted—often with very little cause. That said, it was rare for a thane not to take vengeance with his own fists when there was only one laughing head to punch. It was simply a matter of scale: the Drydanan code accepted dueling and boxing as an honorable way to establish justice, while the dryad world magnified infighting to the grander, pettier level of institutional feuding.
"Your rescue might cause war," he said.
"Why?"
"Those who benefit from your absence will resent your return."
She laughed. "While I gave them no reason to miss me, pulling up my roots would only please a few."
"I don't know this idiom," said Khyte. He wanted to say that she made no sense at all, but feared she might think less of his wits.
"Khyte, since you know so little about dryads, I will do you the honor of bringing you to my home."
"I've been to Ielnarona," he said. As the foot traffic around them had died, and day had dragged on, they now walked side by side only in the company of their long shadows.
"Ssyrnas, or Wywynanoir?" When Inglefras's entire face furrowed vertically, he wasn't sure what it signified. Whether it was like the sneer that crinkled a human or goblin's brow, or like the accusatory glare that answers a fart in a funeral procession, the alien expression made him feel comparatively inelegant and self-conscious.
"I spent a week in Wywynaoir."
"You saw nothing there that we did not wish known. Our recreational cities are stages we built to interact with offworlders in fictions they'll understand."
"We have trade cities on Hravak," said Khyte.
"Wywynaoir is no trade city," she said, "although we pretend an interest in trade to establish relations with your world. We want nothing but the novelty of your presence, which we nonetheless prefer to be managed during your stay. While you derive pleasure and relaxation there, to dryads Wywynanoir is a gilded cage for exhibiting outsiders."
"A zoo without locks," said Khyte, regretting every minute of his enchanted dependence on Inglefras. When Eurilda's enchantment ended, their crashing weight added gravity to the moment.
"Where are you taking me?" They walked past a row of shuttered businesses, their heels clicking on the cobblestone, and their voices lingering in an echo that soon dissolved into the din of a dim tavern where a few drunkards stared back and many more stared into their sour-smelling beer.
"To see a friend," he said.
"I have few friends left on Nahure. You saw to that. Are we going back to the king?"
"No, but this friend you know. We're going to the House of Hwarn."
"My dear friend Huiln," she said.
"Hope that he's also my dear friend. If not, Merculo's guards may be our welcome." Khyte saw no reason to mention that he took Inglefras roundabout through two commercial districts and a restaurant and bakery borough noteworthy for savory soups and warm, cauldron-baked breads and buns, not because he wanted a scenic route and a tour of goblin cuisine, but because he hoped to rejoin Eurilda.
Though the hour was late, the second commercial district buzzed and bustled, and one of the thoroughfares was a tumult jostled by six armored warriors in pursuit. Khyte could not see their quarry until Eurilda fled toward him, diminished to a spoon's length, and leaped onto Khyte's bootstraps, leaving her unchanged cloak to crumple to the ground.
In fear of shaking free the shrunken sorceress, Khyte slackened his pace and his conversation lagged, but Inglefras briskly droned on, "...can Huiln help me get home? If not, we should reconsider..." though she trailed off when Khyte pulled her into an alley.
Though appetizing aromas wafted out the restaurants' front doors, stove chimneys, and windows, the alley was the putrid receptacle for scraps, rot, broken glassware, bent flatware, ragged, piteous beggars, and drunks that slept off liquid meals.
"I'm sorry," Khyte said, "this can't be helped."
"Why are you sorry? Dryads abhor the smell of your fine restaurants, colognes, perfumes, and every other fragrance you think in good taste except for honest flowers. We like earthy smells."
"There!" The brick back walls echoed the voice, the clank of armor plate, and the scramble of metal boots. When Khyte grabbed Inglefras, turned to run, and in mid-step hurtled down the alley, he then pushed off from the cobblestones, dragging the dryad with him to the roof. He no longer questioned the now familiar spring in his step that came from Eurilda snipping their weight away. Despite the euphoria of weightlessness, and the exhilaration of leaping rooftop to rooftop, exhaustion befogged Khyte. Detached from his tribulations by numb determination, it was as if someone else was running, and when he saw landmarks that neighbored the House of Hwarn, such as The Grand Goblin Library, he felt no relief, only dull recognition.
After they leaped into the walled grounds of the House of Hwarn, Khyte stood panting until the slow realization that Inglefras yanked and wrung at his mighty grip, which pinned her light green wrist. When he let go, she dropped to the ground, gasping for breath. The constant subtraction of his weight suddenly struck him with a cumulative dizziness, so that he blacked out on his feet, then spun woozily to the grass.