As one who by enchantment and brute strength tyrannized the beguiled and the cowed, Eurilda preferred oblivion to the disquiet of dreams in which she was at the mercy of her own mischief and malice; she would not wish such unrestrained cruelty, its effects magnified by the omnipotence of the dream world, on anyone but Inglefras. Even the wrong bottle of wine or an extra helping of dinner provoked uncomfortable dreams like waking up in bed with Huiln and Kuilea, or staring at her green duplicate that tried to speak, but only seeds escaped. Now the soporific medicine fueled her dreams: Jyantu's head was the Sixth World, and burst into flame when Eurilda fell to it; she gave birth to a dozen robed skeletons; most disturbingly, her diminishment spell stopped and stuck in a dollhouse with many doors. At each implacably locked door, Inglefras answered her knock, until Eurilda brushed past to be snared by branches and scraped by thorns, and in disentangling herself, dropped bleeding before another door. Despite feeling Inglefras behind every door, she continued her nerve-wracking, skin-scratching progress through the house of doors. While this dream was made even more horrific by a doubled perspective as both the door opener and an impartial observer of her futility, the nightmare that caused the most heart-ache was of a faceless woman slain by eight-eyed warriors, and an equally blank infant ripped from her grasp; she had not only borrowed but embellished Khyte's dream, to symbolize Khyte obscured by her cloud of unknowing.
She first noticed the stench; while not as potent as the flatulent stables of the kiuvathi, it was more insidious, so up close and personal that it seemed to have taken her nostrils for its lair. Balled-up bloody sheets on the floor, her skin tightened by dried streaks of blood, and her hair stuck to her brow, cheek, and neck by trails of new sweat and the acrid lingering of hours-old sweat, led to the guess that her unpleasant odor broke her slumber, not the pain of childbirth or the discomfort of recovery. Barely mindful of a sharp ache in her belly, she buried her face in her pillow, and was nearly asleep when she realized her belly was lighter, her heart raced slower, and her breaths were no longer crowded and short; though that thought resonated with alarm, she was still half-drugged and fell asleep despite the nasty clamor of concern, stink, and her drool-soaked pillow.
When next she awoke, Eurilda took in the bloody sheets, her unwashed, bloodstained skin, and the clinging stench of sweat, but only the deep and abiding hunger snarling at her core mattered. Her shrunken stomach still had the giant-size expectation that, if hungry, it should be fed.
When she stood, her head brushed the ceiling, and she nearly fainted from the rush of blood. She swayed over the smaller room—how had she fit on that bed, and why did she fear these measly dryads? More than anything, she felt the loss of control. When the guards dropped their spears to catch her, she muttered her diminishment spell, and shrank to a Tree-Woman's height.
As they helped her into bed, she shouted, "I'm hungry! Bring me food!"
One Tree-Woman bade, another departed. As she waited, she distracted her monstrous appetite by gnawing on the magical problem: if her spell failed, she would have woken twenty-two feet high, breaking not only the bed and the walls, but the princess, the doctor, and the guards. The realization seemed to shake not only her but the fabric of reality—for though the despair was a crushing weight, it was animated by a vigorous anger. They enlarged her halfway in delivering the infants—not only the girl, but the boy. Inglefras had not only deceived her, she had used the absurd elf and her defiant lover as unwitting agents to count her second coup in their war. If Eurilda let this stand, as trophies they might know the pride and vanity of their false mother, but they would never know freedom and love.
If the boy lived. While no six month gestation born of giant could live outside of the painstaking two year knit of a giant womb, the dryads' diabolical arts were so ingenious that he lived if the petty princess desired that outcome. It was cold comfort to know that while Inglefras wouldn't care if Eotua bottled him in a ciupla or a vial, Khyte would object to his son's death, when he was not bright enough to object to the boy living only as a hostage and an experiment. He would always be a monster under glass on the Dryad World.
While her grogginess had suppressed the pain, this line of reasoning delivered the agony of her unconscious ordeal to her tired bones. "Where's the doctor?" she demanded. "I need something for the pain." At their blank faces, she lashed out, "Eotua. Where is Eotua?"
When another left the room, there were now only two guards inside, and a dozen more in the hall. They were careless, contemptuous—they believed her defeated, thinking even a cannibal would linger for the scent of her own newborns.
When the food arrived, at first Eurilda thought it was the doctor, for the server was immaculately clad in a blue gown and minced to her bedside bearing the tray as if lofted up the panacea for life's ills. When the dish was uncovered, the savory-smelling meats were sweetly sauced, delicately arranged, and plated on ornate trays, but she no longer had any appetite. Her agony and anguish were further distressed by this tantalization. The princess teased her, knowing the delicious food would prove inedible to such staunch resentment, no matter how tempting.
Eotua entered, looked at the uneaten meal, and spoke at length. While Eurilda knew some dryad language, the clamor of pain and appetite occluded the doctor's speech, and she could not even manage a shrug.
Eotua's efflorescent eyes rustled timorously as she sat on the edge of the bed. The doctor's first spoonful was timid, but when Eurilda swallowed, and offered no violence, Eotua shoveled the food rapidly. Bite followed bite, and when Eurilda's strength was nearly flush with her dark mood, she slapped Eotua's hand, and stew stuck to the wall. When the doctor backed away in a swaying dryad curtsy, Eurilda grabbed her wrist.
Though Eurilda's mind was still clouded, she haltingly summoned the dryad words she needed. "You treat giants and know our language. Do not deny it." Eotua pulled, but could not break free. "No matter. I know some dryad. Where are they?"
"The prince consort was summoned to the wall, and of her majesty, I cannot say."
"Not them. The twins." As Tree-Women copied their Tree-Mothers, and this duplication was the norm and unworthy of a special designation, dryad language had no concept of twins, and she used the closest equivalent, ciuherataim: 'namesakes.'
"Of your litter, I cannot say,"
While Eurilda allowed 'litter' to pass, the repetition of 'cannot' was egregiously offensive. "What do you mean, cannot?"
"She forbade us to speak." Eotua pulled at Eurilda's hand. "Let me go."
"At least tell me if they lived or died."
"My oath is my life. Kill me if you must."
Though Eurilda's hatred for dryads was incensed, she respected their loyalty to Inglefras, a fidelity as powerful as Otoka's geas, but all the more impressive in not needing to be enforced by magic. "At least help me with the pain."
"Medicine was in your stew. I can give you no more."
"Please."
When Eotua jerked again, Eurilda let go, and in one staggering lunge—her arms clawing towards the door and her robe fluttering—the doctor fled without a backwards glance.
Eurilda put her feet on the floor, only to fall back in the foul bed. Though she told herself to get up, her eyes sealed, her shouting thoughts had no echo, and dizziness washed away her anger. She peered down at herself walking a gauntlet of apprentices, half with roughly hatcheted wooden faces, and the others with a blood fountain where their head should be. When she ascended stairs, then oases in the abyss, the top landing was Wywynanoir, a wooden throne for Inglefras, who raised Otoka's brimming head to her chin like a mead cup. Halfway to her mouth, his eyes widened with surprise. "Behind you, girl."
She woke with a start, hung her head over the side of the fetid bed, and peered under it. Seeing nothing, she ransacked the dresser and chest with renewed vigor, finding only a bag of stale nuts. "My clothes! Where are my clothes?"
When the guards entered, and one pointed her spear towards the filthy bed, Eurilda outstretched a finger and shrunk her to the size of a candle stub. This was so satisfying that she diminished them one by one until the shouting stragglers clambered downstairs.
Eurilda stepped woozily over the diminutive Tree-Women, lurched through the hall, and careened down three flights, jostling three Alfyrians coming upstairs.
The grandeur of their silken robes, emblazoned with gold runes, contrasted shockingly to her nakedness, and she shamelessly used this effect to her advantage, seizing one of their unwieldy ceremonial swords, swatting the other two with the heavy flat of the blade, and holding the edge to the owner's throat as she stripped his gilded robe. After she shoved him sprawling, she pulled on the silky fabric and drew the sash. It might have been only confidence, but when the bold robe made her feel brave, and the hefty sword made her feel stronger, she took the steps two at a time, then burst through the portico door.
Though Eurilda was now robed, the hotel guests lounging on the shaded portico steps turned away anyway. While they were mangy and unkempt from the extended stay forced by the siege, she could only imagine the effect of her bare feet, sweaty scrub of hair, and the wavering sword in her tremulous hand, not to mention her expression, which she could only imagine was a horror wrung from the warring twins, the melting of her motherhood, the lost days, and the postpartum remorse caused by the death of love.
Though the Qucuri gatehouse still loomed nearby, Khyte would not be there, and she turned towards the eastern wall overlooking the Councilor-Generals' army. As the robe's voluminous sleeves swallowed her arms and concealed the sword, she gripped its hilt as she strolled the wide avenue studded with hotels.
Dryads were in short supply in this murmuring throng of Alfyrians, Nahurians, and Hravakians. In wrinkled shirts, rumpled ropes, uncombed hair, unshaven faces, and recreation strained by frozen smiles, these tourists had rough edges; Eurilda guessed these diplomats and merchants had stewed for weeks, weathering the siege with Inglefras's loyal dryads. Many dined at bistro tables, sweltering in the heat of the simmering Abyss, and others conversed leaning on statues of dryad kings and sages, stoneworks sculpted in transition between Tree-Woman and Tree-Mother to represent the whole dryad.
Eurilda's next thought was born more of desperation than ingenuity—where were the royal wedding guests? Would not some trickle in before the siege? Wywynanoir was a famed hospitality city with attractions and cuisine fabled in The Five Worlds, especially on Nahure, where the goblins loved pleasure and lived for their next gourmet meal. Though most of the groundhuggers froze at the thought of passing through the Abyss, the only goblins she would be happy to see were mad goblins unafraid of heights or open spaces, and she scanned the indolent mass for familiar goblin faces and the heraldic device of House Hwarn.
While Huiln would not be pleased to see her, she craved familiarity more than friendship, and even the recognition in a hostile face might relieve her loneliness on this pernicious weed-world that had entangled her children. Having twice persuaded Huiln against his best interests, once more was not unreasonable, and she hoped to snare him for her ally.
Eurilda peered in alleys where Alfyrians in dingy robes and shabby cloaks smoked pipes of intoxicating smoke, then skulked by bistro tables hoping to find Huiln perusing the latest Kreonan Times, or even the appallingly written Wywynanoir Gazette, but only saw the Alfyrians she mugged questioning the customers. When she entered through the nearest blue facade into a six-storied structure with three towers, she stopped short at the shout.
"Eurilda!"
Turning about wildly for the one who yelled her name, Eurilda was about to believe she imagined it when she felt the tug on her arm, raised her fist, and turned.
"Veirana?"
"Even a siege and an angry bride can't keep you away," The deep-chested goblin woman laughed, then seized Eurilda's hand in her wiry grip and pulled her towards a glass fountain blown into the shape of a Baugn. The eight eyes of the translucent black statue jetted water scintillating in the Abyss-lit skylight. As Eurilda was dragged towards the goblins benched beside the sculpture, she remembered Khyte's anecdotes on the aggressive, large-breasted goblin. "Have you met Uncle Meilo?" Veirana sat her next to a grizzled, silver-haired patriarch that Eurilda also knew.
"Lord Hwarn?" asked Eurilda.
"Yes," sighed Huiln's father. "My nieces and nephews should stop introducing me to half-clad women."
"We've met. I'm Eurilda."
"I know who you are. Do you know, I'm most grateful. I thought that idiot might inherit my legacy, but Kuilea now won't even speak to Khyte. I could barely get her to accept this invitation."
"Kuilea? Is she here?"
"No. Only Huiln inherited my brazenness toward the skies and the Abyss."
"I thought she accepted the invitation?"
"I'm here as her representative. Though I can't burst from a seed with my daughter's face, proxies are the rule in dryad culture."
"And Huiln?"
"If he wasn't summoned to the wall, my son would still be here, sulking about not being best man."
"Thank you." Unless the goblin's name and face were also renowned on the dryad world, it was Inglefras or Khyte who likely asked for Huiln. The giantess could care less of the why now that she had the where. Hearing this intelligence fueled Eurilda's ebbing anger, renewed her purpose, and most importantly, pointed her in the wake of her bad decisions, which she still hoped to navigate as if it were the right direction.
"My turn. When is this wedding? Or can I go home? Most importantly, what did you do?" The old goblin tried to cover his exasperation with a pleasant tone, but it peeked out when the crinkles of his smile bit a little too deeply into the corners of his mouth and eyes.
"I don't know what you mean."
"Let me clarify. Not why you wear that embroidered elven robe, but how you angered my children, that interloper and pretender to my good name, and his pleasant dryad lover. Why are you unwelcome at this wedding? Though you're a welcome sight to my old eyes, news of your arrival will sour the mood sooner than the siege."
Though Eurilda would have liked to unburden herself, the goblin patriarch would feel honor-bound to help, then become entangled by that responsibility. Why should the elder be slain in his dotage, when he should be cared for by grandchildren? Eurilda ignored Lord Hwarn and Veirana's shouts as she hastened from the fountain, through the lobby door, to stop short in a wet spot.
She looked down. Blood dampened the hem of the stolen robe and spattered her feet.
On an empty bench, she tucked her head under her robe and was not surprised to see the wreckage half-healed, though pinked with the tears of the last hour. While the enchantment still purred, she had outpaced its ability to seal wounds, She must choke her grudge until the spell caught up to her escape from the cannibals, the premature birth of twins, and her foolhardy trust of a dryad megalomaniac and her mad doctor.
Fortunately, there was much an ill-humored spectator might enjoy. When a caped Alfyrian youth in a green doublet and pants flirted with an older Nahurian in a luxurious gown studded with iridescent black stones, Eurilda sneered at the pretended interest of both lovers.
Their exchange of illusions was a pleasure contaminated by exploitation and concealed discontent, as the boy feigned love in the hopes of enjoying her parade of riches. If each sought an ignoble satisfaction at the expense of the other, some might say that they deserved what they got, but Eurilda wished they wouldn't clutter her sightseeing with these mortifying displays, and get on with dying if they were satisfied with cheating themselves and others out of the lives they really wanted. If a usurious weed had choked their natural affection, they were not people but ghouls, and neither their first life nor their current pastimes were deserving of an epitaph. Eurilda committed their faces to memory, in the event her stray desire pleased the dark gods of the Abyss.
Two Tree-Women pushed a snack cart less than a hundred feet through the ravenous crowd before doubling back to the Blue Hotel to replenish their goods. Did the ones on the walls resent these Tree-Women, who in a siege pulled the luckiest duty? While Teuren and Quhinei's foot soldiers would likely slay the defenders, there would be little use in slaying those working softer duties, and this menial profession was their salvation.
Khyte was so surprised to see her, that either he was a good actor, or Frellyx lied. When Eurilda could not bear to follow a line of reasoning which ended in her lover's heart, she imagined relocating to Drydana, or some other remote wooded region of Hravak, where by magic, craftsmanship, and hard work they would build their cottage, she would summon beautiful, doe-eyed animals for Khyte to spit on his sword, and her beloved Otoka would live in a mother-in-law house in the back...
What woke her from her reverie was not the rude shove on her shoulder, but the embarrassing stupidity of her daydream, and she could not look at him for several moments.
"Tell me what is wrong." With such a disinterested way of asking about her well-being, Eurilda doubted Frellyx cared to know, even though he as much as commanded it.
"As you ask me with the aloof airs of a scholar who studies his subject, I'll only tell you what Khyte and his whore don't know: a mortifying daydream nearly killed me with shame, a phantasm spawned by unknown days, restless sleep, a ransacked womb, and terrifying shades riding my nightmares, and through all that, a desire to know bliss. Though I sum up these symptoms, I won't assist your deceptive addition, except to say that it equals madness."
The elf sat to her left. "While you counted sheep, I had the wool pulled over my eyes in another way."
"We may agree on this. I was just appraising you a liar or a fool."
"You mean fools. Two charged into this trap together."
"If you're no liar, I'll accept that."
"While I was not treated in so unfriendly a manner, neither was I honored as a friend. As you dreamed your drugged, fitful dreams, Inglefras interrogated me for two days, then Khyte afflicted me with the alternating tedium and exhaustion of his tribe's best man feasts, where his bride used the dances to needle me with educated and astute assumptions." He continued, "when I first visited your bedside, I was driven away by pity, a loathsome emotion I shun at all costs, while the second time I was driven away by your unbearable aroma."
"You must love me like a sister to sit here now, as I haven't had time to bathe, and that stench is stewing in this robe I stole from one of your Alfyrian brothers."
"I am brother to no Alfyrian," said Frellyx, "and my brother-in-arms has become a besotted fool since I let you steal him from me. It is only for love of Khyte that I weather his latest intoxicant."
"Even if you weren't lumping me in with her, I'm not so empty-headed and vain to be flattered by being compared to a whiskey bottle. I didn't addle Khyte's sense, I improved it."
"Like a common drunk, you don't deny the intoxication, only the effect. You should know by now that just as drunks are not connoisseurs, but cravers of drunkenness, so Khyte was besotted by love, not by you. Even if he was better under your influence, when the taste you refined decayed, he ran into goblin embraces; when the judgment you cultivated rotted, he was mulch for the plant princess."
"Perhaps we can help each other."
"If you mean to recover your infants, think again; as neither of us have any influence here, it would be better to weather the siege with the merchants and diplomats."
"Despite having influence with neither assassins nor besiegers, we're here regardless. So our current obstacles are known to us; so what?"
"While in treating with assassins, or Tree-Women of either army, there's no line we wouldn't cross, what if that line was drawn in front of Khyte?"
"If he won't cross it, he's on their side," said Eurilda angrily. If Khyte allowed her infants to be hidden without a plan for reuniting, she would slay him.
"If the rest of us can't see the line." After pausing to let that sink in, the elf continued, "will everyone be on your list?"
"What list?" asked Eurilda, a little flustered as she laughed, for she told no one of her private list of grudges, but secured the unwritten ledger in her well-ordered mind.
"Though I was being figurative, I'm not surprised at that reaction."
"You haven't asked if it's a list of bodies or a hit list," said Eurilda.
"A gentleman must allow a lady her secrets," he said.
"I'm no lady, and after 500 years, I doubt you're still a gentleman."
"For the first century, I did as I ought, but for the next 400 years, I did as I wished. But while I'm no gentleman, at my late age it pleases me to be affected by beauty. I am drawn to the theatrical appeal of your tragical, comical life."
"When beauty is fleeting and deceitful, it shields a restless truth."
"Or chases the truth away altogether."
"That pretty lie you told conceals your true motive," said Eurilda. "In this case, your concealment was so adept that you forgot to mention where my children are." The giantess leaned forward to seize the Alfyrian's arm.
"They are in Eotua's laboratory, inside two large spheres attended by the doctor's assistants."
"Take me there," said Eurilda.
"How do you propose I do that, when Khyte still loves me, but does not trust me. Most districts are closed off by Inglefras's decree, and if I ask Khyte to take me to one of them—in fact, to the place they want to conceal from you most of all—his distrust will be vindicated."
"You will take me," said Eurilda, "though you remember not the face of your own mother."
"I may be ancient, but I'm not old," said the Alfyrian. "And love never dies."
"Then what did she look like?"
"She was nearly as tall as me, with waist-length ruby-red hair that she tormented into a coif, as that was the fashion five hundred and twenty-nine years ago. You would have liked her contempt and biting sense of humor. She also felt that her world and those lucky enough to be born to it were superior."
"So she died. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?"
"She still lives, though she left my father for a lord, and I have never spoken to her since. In hindsight, it was a better match for me than for her, as my new father could afford kinulcra in an age when it was only affordable to the rich. Now, any Alfyrian can afford the drug, but I would have died hundreds of years before this democratization of longevity had my mother not married into aristocracy. Though I know this to be true, I despise her to this day, though I suppose I'm not as vehement as I was then, when my constant spitting in their faces produced their decision to send me away to wizard's college. At least I curbed myself of that bad habit."
"Magic?"
"Spitting."
"You haven't talked to your mother in half a thousand years?"
"While it may pain the old woman—though she looks as young as I do, I still think of her as an adulterous crone—I find pity as unpleasant as a vomitous flu, so when our social circles intersect, I avoid her as much as possible."
"Do not think me unsympathetic, Frellyx, but given your past, should you not advance my cause if Khyte sides against the mother of his child? Wouldn't he then be no better than that Alfyrian lord?"
"This argument would be more persuasive had you not taken magical liberties with my friend's memories."
"He told you that."
"His words were much stronger. Is it true?"
"Remember, not long ago we were lovers; moreover, while his feelings changed, my desires are unshakable. Having rescued each other from goblin blades, and waking to Khyte tending my wound, should I deny my moment of pleasure and our mutual satisfaction—for he was easily tempted—or do you object to my medicating his mind so he is none the wiser? I thought it a mercy."
Though Frellyx's face was still impassive, his tone seemed to descend a grade. "To enchant a man or woman to satisfy your lust would be rape in an Alfyrian court, but then to cover their memory with deep illusion is an even grosser offense, a crime not against one person, but against civilization. The fiction of a free society burns if we allow sorcerers to modify the contents of peoples' minds. Where is free will when we do not know what we once willed, if the narrative of our values is covered by lies?"
"Then you stand against me."
"While I'm not your advocate," said Frellyx, "it's Princess Inglefras, the acting sovereign of Wywynanoir, who has claimed the right of justice and stands against you, and Khyte, the one you wronged, who speaks to your defense, and only through his doing did you awake not in a dungeon, but a hotel bed."
"Do not think any of this surprises me."
"Khyte also charged me with persuading you to return to your room."
"So that's why you're here."
"Yes and no. Khyte also pleaded with the Princess to spare your life, and his argument was so persuasive that she asked me to kill you."