Azuri descended into a sensory fugue for which elven sight had not prepared him: sight, sound, and touch melting in the whistling, flurrying, hurrying, fluttering, black of the Abyss where the vast tendril of Alfyrian Fire consumed the velocity, the moment, and farflung Azuri in a terrifying velocirapture, the vast chasm suspending one long breath as his speed-worm hurtled past Abyssal oases as sharp and jagged as teeth, towards worlds deformed into screaming faces, their splotchy, glowering continents hungry for Azuri.
Azuri was no stranger to the Alfyrian Ladder, having often crossed the Abyss to his mistress on Alfyria. She had been a young thing, scarcely a century old, the precocious, self-involved age when young elves lived only to fulfill their pitiful, petty desires, and rarely dreamed of crossing to other worlds. "Why? Having cultivated my tastes life long, why go where tastes are different? New tastes will not satisfy, but only tantalize, and I will pine for what I truly crave--perhaps for you, Azuri."
She had kept him for long weeks, months, once even a year, even as he flurried back and forth along the Ladder to keep up appearances in Nahure, where his daughter was also developing into a self-absorbed centenarian, with horizons defined by the goblin world, contracting her to an expatriate oddity of elven manners and goblin tastes.
Even at the mature age of four hundred, the goblin world had begun to pale for Azuri as well,
receding into the monotony of the everyday, where routine submerges the glories of experience in mundanity; ritual does not sanctify, it demythologizes epiphanies into imperfect formula by which we never reconstruct what seduced us, whether the real, the hyperreal, the surreal, or the fantastic. Even his love for his mistress, a carnal fire which once consumed him, soon became unremarkable; regardless of how exciting and titillating it remained, by agonies of repetition it slid into ennui, and the only thing that renewed it, that perpetuated this illicit ardor well past its date, was his incessant fascination with the Alfyrian Ladder. No matter how many times he hurtled from one world to another, his obsession welled up undissolved, fixating not on its melting horizons but on this rapturous inhalation of the Abyss, an elation of speed, falling into himself as well as space, crossing time as well as distance, finding his future as well as his destination. The Alfyrian Fire's incalculably potent and precise enchantment fused departure into destination, and dissolved the future into the instant. There was no time to bond to the distance, as his senses merged into one expectant point, from which it was less true to say that he arrived than that he appeared from the nothingness of the Abyss. It was not traveling, but disintigration with the promise of rising from the ashes of nonexistence. Having been snuffed out on Nymerea, he was now reborn on Alfyria.
They stood on a vast bridge, its white stone streaming through an endless cityscape to bind the interpenetrating structures in its infinite loop. As his homeworld made its familiar demands on his attention, his skull resumed its dull knocking, the constant throb resulting from accomodating the distortions of elven vision.
When Ialuna slumped to the stones in a shambles, groaning and holding her bruised jaw, Azuri's hands went to his head as well, for as he took in the familiar sights, his eyes lingered here and there, swelling with dizziness. Why were his boots twice the size of Ialuna's head? As the hot breeze whirled and whistled, flicking his long hair, he fumbled for the shakashia, but his hand clutched only air. He realized that when he had gripped Ialuna, his other hand had dropped it to grab the half-moon key.
I can never return now. On my own world, I am doubly exiled, first by my crime, and now by my monstrousness.
No sooner had he thought this than his body yielded with a shudder, shrinking so passively to his normal scale that it was as if it had relented, relinquishing all control to Azuri. As he came back to himself, Eurilda's pouch, still unconsciously clutched, remained the same size, so that it seemed to enlarge as he diminished, absorbing his attention. While it should expand into a giant-sized pouch here,
it was instead retaining the dimensions Eurilda had set.
Or was he maintaining that as well? He carefully restrained both his feelings and his thoughts,
not sure which had released its hold on the gigantification spell, for if the pouch resumed its actual size on his mental command, it might become as large as a sail, catch the hot winds, and drag him into the dizzying drop which the bridge spanned.
It might be better to leave it here, he thought. Whether Eurilda wished to find him or the pouch, Azuri felt obliged to make it as difficult as possible.
It wasn't curiosity that thrust his hand in the pouch, but practicality, for if his enemy believed the pouch's prisoner useful, either she meant to deceive him, in which case it was better to neutralize that threat now than leave it lurking behind him, or she told the truth, in which case he wouldn't mind another back between him and Ialuna.
As he withdrew the pocketed thing, it wriggled and pinched like a caged bird might,
unraveled to a wiry, mousetrapped frenzy, then doubled to a flailing cat-sized fury, not only cursing in Alfyrian and Hravakian, but in angry tones he recognized.
"Let go of me, you abomination!"
Having tugged Elani from the neck of the pouch, the diminished half-human was a curious mix of limp fatigue and scrappy frustration until her wide, outraged eyes fell on Ialuna, when she whitened, and hissed a spell that expanded herself so quickly that her thrashing elbow caught Azuri on the chin,
driving him back a step, while her other backhand slugged Ialuna in the ribs, doubling her over to pant pained jets of air, misting the toes of her boots.
"Elani?" Azuri spoke through the taste of blood. "Why were you in there?"
"Where's Eurilda? Do you conspire with Sarin Gelf?"
"That's an interesting question." Azuri wondered--was he still under the dryad's influence? When Sarin Gelf's Tree-Woman had emanated her intoxicating aroma, not only dissolving his will but eroding Otoka's geas, he had felt compelled to follow her, and he realized onky now that her compulsion had never come to an end. Was he still ensnared? Were all his actions since then the upshot of dryad secretions? "I never told you what happened on the longbow world."
"I was there, Azuri."
"Not how we turned the planetoid into a weapon. We were all a part of that. No, I mean when I raced away from Ialuna, thinking to strand her on the longbow world, hoping she would become part of the crater"--here he turned with a half smile--"I saw Sarin Gelf. She said she would not only permit what we thought to accomplish, but help bring it about."
"Why?" Elani's stunned look contrasted with Ialuna's uncaring expression.
"Turnabout is fair play," said Ialuna. "Having suffered destruction on her adopted Hravak, she thinks to inflict the same on us elves."
"I'm not sure." Azuri shrugged. "We exchanged few words, and what I remember is fogged by her intoxicating haze."
"Having lived a false life as a fat old man, Sarin Gelf has become a queen at last." Ialuna barked a mirthless laugh.
"While I can't say for certain, my feeling was she wants this war."
"Then she's an idiot," giggled Ialuna. "It will be bad enough for the elves, dryads, and giants at its center, but these are the last days for humans and goblins. "
"If literally anyone else was speaking, I might care to know your opinion," said Azuri. "As we're here on business, and it's not a speculative enterprise, I don't care to hear your speculations. In my experience, answers complicate our actions, they don't make things any easier. It's better to leave it at do or die."
As if on cue, a krydayn fluttered down to the span, its massive scaly wings flexing in and out as if taunting them to approach. "What a wonderful example. No matter which conspirator or god thinks to aid us, the effect is the same. Why question it? Whether synchronicity or serendipity lends a hand,
the krydayn is here for more than illustration." Azuri's hands shivered with expectation, and he didn't mount so much as hop astride the massive krydayn.
By comparison, Ialuna seemed loath to depart, for she climbed above the beast's rump, and eyed Azuri warily. He smiled thinly. While the six-limbed, many-jointed krydayn have six segments, none were out of Azuri's reach. Moreover, if he wanted Ialuna dead, there was no surer way to bring it about than flight.
"I suspect you brought this about, Ialuna."
"How would I manage this?"
"Whatever purpose guides this beast, I am happy to revenge myself on the High Tzhurarkh." As Elani mounted behind Ialuna, he barked, "fool of a half-elf, you're not saddled correctly. While I could care less if you are thrown, that could also spell our deaths." Seizing Elani under her armpits, he dragged her over the protesting Ialuna, dropped her in the saddle's middle, then painstakingly lashed the holdfasts along her calves and thighs.
"You strike quickly, Azuri. Perharps you are more serpent than man."
"I have been flattered and threatened by better wizards." Azuri glared sidelong and growled. When she cringed, but smiled coyly, he felt the familiar nausea of sycophancy, for she shrank not in fear, but flirtation.
Coiling the reins around his fist, Azuri yanked, dug his heels in the krydayn's fur-chased flanks, then leaned against its scaly neck as it flapped along the spiralling stone like a trapped, fluttering moth, hopping from one arc to another until it vaulted above the urban chaos.
As the krydayn scudded over tower tops, the smallest moon, Gimas, streamed so rapidly toward the horizon that it seemed to slide along its gleaming arc under the ponderous shadow of Atoma, Alfyria's largest satellite, whose mares and craters were lit so brightly by the hurtling orb that they now seemed like distant lands across the vast gulf sundering the moonlit Elven World from this celestial horizon. While the twinned moonlight lit the elven night brighter than the pale day shed by the Abyss's swath of light, there was a fine haze everywhere, a diaphanous curtain of glinting dust, which thickened toward the horizon, where darker dust clustered around the blasted crater of Julaba. Though hundreds of miles away, the black cloud stretched to the sky in dark plumes streaked with white ash, which gleamed like so many filaments of lightning in the dual moonlight.
"Part of the longbow world still stands." Ialuna sounded oddly satisfied to see the devastation wreaked on her home city. "Do you see that, jutting from the cloud?"
"It's only more cloud," insisted Elani.
"No, it's the top arc of the longbow world. While that bow will never be drawn again, it has struck home, too hard for anything to survive. If your cowardly plan had worked, I would be either ashes or dust, Azuri. Did it shed its Baugn into the Abyss, or did they ride it into destruction, I wonder?"
"Where are we going?" At Azuri's scowl, their chattering fell silent.
Elani sighed. "Why ask me? I was under wraps the better part of a day."
"Don't you pay attention? We're here to kill the High Tzhurarkh."
"Now why would I want to do that?"
"Why not? Isn't that what Frellyx hoped to accomplish with that missile?"
" If that's his goal, he never said so."
"Then the sooner you help us, the sooner you can go about your business."
"How, when I can't even trust my eyes? Your buildings and bridges are so impossibly convoluted, that when I follow the lines, my eyes get lost, my mind gets trapped, and I not only forget where I am, but who I am. I'm sticking with you, Azuri."
When her dizzy, crosseyed expression evoked a terrifying memory of the pouch, Azuri's face cracked a hard smile, a smug grin that fractured not only his scowl, but his mind, leaving his eyes as shiny and glassy as egg yolks and his lips twitching as terror warred with mirth. If Azuri no longer knew what it was like to be flooded by the overwhelming demands of elvish vision, he knew what it was like to drown in a sightless darkness. His snicker had a touch of sniveling, which trickled out in high-pitched, gleeful whistles.
"Our mission is cracked," sighed Ialuna, "and our tumbled-down hero."
Azuri's smile shrivelled to a dry grin as his knuckles whitened on the reins. "Flying a krydayn is not like riding a baugn. These beasts are as violent and docile as the baugn are gentle and wild. With a flick of the rein, I might will her to somersault, do spirals that surpass the coils of our knotted buildings, or even dive toward death. I could dash you both against those twisted spires."
When Ialnua's mockery folded under the warning glare of the half-elf, Azuri sneered, as if he could dissolve them by utter disdain, then sniffed the air and ignored them for several minutes.
"He still doesn't know where we're going," groaned Ialuna.
"Of course I do." Azuri nodded. "The summer palace."
"Forgive my ignorance, but why would the High Tzhurarkh winter there, when he should be busy with preparations for war?"
"Even if the High Tzhurarkh does not conspire with dryads and giants, we can presume not only that he was forewarned by the Guilidian Cuoruch, but that he communes with it now in the royal gardens, having glimpsed in the prophetic flower a glimmer of our plot. Even if the destruction of his capitol so shook him that he struggles with inaction, he has no doubt already been warned of our movements by his spies or diviners. Our destination may be certain, but our fate remains very dark."
"I had thought that fabled flower only a token of his authority."
"Our ruler's veneration of this plant suggests it is more than a mere signifier, and is indeed a true sign of futures. Its chaotic roots are rumored to reach not only into what possible futures may be averted, but for inviolable omens of certain futures, which fall as certainly as one day follows another, as death follows life, and as life springs from death."
"You believe our elven lies," Ialuna snorted. "Aside from these five worlds, the crumbs circling Nahure and Alfyria, and a few oases bobbing in the Abyss, there is only nothingness, no matter how many pretty myths embellish our days."
"If I did not believe, would I place my dead hopes in such a vile criminal?" snarled Azuri. "As for my last living hopes, they were inspired by my doubtful desire to see Cyhari whole. With her twice dead, I am only too happy to head into our dark future."
When Ialuna fell silent, but could not suppress a smile of cold satisfaction, Elani leaned back, not only jostling her, but interposing a counterfeit but compliant smile, with which Azuri pretended to be placated.
But when they were blasted by a sandy sirocco wind, and Elani squeezed her eyes shut and clutched his ribs--for half-elves had not the elven nictating inner eyelid, a vestige of their ancient lives as desert nomads--Azuri bent a murderous glare upon Ialuna, above the half-elf's pained, sand-blind squint. While his anger was yellowed by the clinch of his own inner eyelid, and her smugness was doubled by the gloss of hers, this only fanned his fury hotter.
As Ialuna's eyes were whitened by her doubled eyelid, she met his stare with a cold, gray glower that swallowed the fire of his anger, but he kept a bitter hold on his cold contempt by the realization that while Ialuna was vain enough for the surgery by which the richest Alfyrian women had this atavism cut out, she was not so high-spirited to risk her sight on the chancey operation. The sirocco-blown grit collected on her inner eyelid, glinting on the membrane and adding steel to her hard stare.
As Azuri twisted the reins, the krydayn's feathered head shivered on a grumbling roar, and they plunged over the glittering, silver dunes toward greenery sheltered by cliff rock, where the sirocco abated as quickly as it had surged, and, her nose no longer cupped to Azuri's armpit, Elani's whimpers were now perfectly audible growls.
As the women hollered curses, sand trickled down the krydayn's flanks in such voluminous streams, that Azuri guessed they ran their fingers through their hair and the folds of their garments. He felt the grit scraping in his own long white locks and the chinks of his armor, but with his hands wound in the reins, he could not scratch. As the itch rankled, he diverted himself with a heartfelt wish for Ialuna's comeuppance, and his gratification.
Although the sirocco still screamed above, in the lee of this wooded vale, the sandstorm could only whistle and sprinkle a finer silt than what heaped the surrounding peaks and dunes. They descended towards the pillared emerald canopy of the summer palace, whose twisted ivory struts bore aloft green domes, dimmer miniatures of the gleaming central half-sphere. From these jewels, lighter green globes projected, and it was to these minuscule orbs that Azuri now steered the krydayn.
"What are you doing?" shrieked Elani. "We'll be impaled."
"It's a trick of perspective." As the half-elf reminded Azuri of Cyhari, he stifled his mirth at her human fears. To cover his smile, he coughed, then let one hand leave the rein to pass through his long, white hair, releasing a hail of sand. "Sorry."
"Stupid," said Ialuna. "They're the same size as the foundation."
"Impossible. Think of the weight." Elani trailed off as they approached the outermost spheres, which swelled until they seemed colossal. "Are we shrinking?" Elani whimpered, then clutched Azuri all the firmer.
"That's one way of looking at it," said Azuri.
"The stupid way," snorted Ialuna.
"But just as true. Elani, your elven ancestors long ago surpassed the dimensions of the visible world. It may help you to think of our higher dimensions as an illusion; not that we we knit our cities in ways unpredictable and inconceivable to your half-human eyes by folding space, but by folding our minds over and over until these tricks are child's play. So whether we were distant, and now near, or whether we shrunk to approach a minuscule satellite, it matters not, for both are equally true."
"We must have shrunk." Elani maintained a plaintive and strident tone. "For I see only one arc of the gigantic sphere, as if we were gnats descending to a soap bubble."
"No matter where you are, or how you're divided, you're always the same person, Elani. However, it is unfortunate that you're half a human when we need you to be all elf."
"If she was all goblin," sneered Ialuna, "she would faint, and we wouldn't hear this whiny chatter."
"Yes. Even a mad goblin would be more useful." Still feeling himself a bereaved father, Azuri was unable to keep his scolding tones from skewing his gentle smile. "I know you're not mad. And you're somewhat prettier than a goblin. But can you be useful?"
Ialuna snorted. "Still playing the ambassador. You're a killer now, no better than me. We don't need a peacemaker."
"I'm the least likely to toady to the High Tzurarkh. I doubt I could say the same thing about his cousin."
"You're his cousin!" Elani's eyes widened. "You never told me that."
"You would have never trusted me. You'd think..."
"That you lead us into a trap?" mused Azuri.
"To what end?"
"To our end. We're not only traitors, but worse: embarrassments to sweep from the history of his majesty's reign."
"You don't really think that?"
"Do you think I care? Did you know I cradled her in my arms at the end?"
"As it was I was who stabbed her..." Ialuna leaned back as Azuri's hands tensed on the reins. "...who is the higher authority on her death?"
As its four wings fluttered, the krydayn seemed to writhe and undulate into a feathered stairway, alighting on a long white span.
After they dismounted, Elani whispered into the krydayn's ear, and it fluttered back the way they came. Ialuna and Azuri stared at her, then turned to each other until their eyes locked; while he could see her struggling to rein in her murderous thoughts, his own mind was far too placid and calm. If his heartbeat was pounding, why was his mind so still and empty?
"How did you summon that beast? You were in the pouch."
When Elani shrugged, and allowed herself a tiny, wry smile, Ialuna scowled at Azuri. "So much for your theories. Any thoughts on our escape? I had hoped to depart krydayn-back as well."
Elani's gaze was drawn to the steep descent, then the gigantic central dome, then wavered, trying to take in the satellite spheres.
Even for an elf, it was a lot to take in. Azuri remembered his first glimpse of the summer palace, built in the then-fashionable kazakt style of architecture. Kazakt meant "contained chaos,"
such as the way the parallel struts crossed, and the projecting spheres superimposed, until, depending on the angle of your gaze, they either stacked neat as plates, or extended a mile, as if bursting stone and glass were suspended midair at the moment of explosion.
Elani flushed, clutched her forehead, and murmured woozily. "This is much too narrow. I'll fall off before we reach that gate." Flanked by rune-inscribed pillars along its span, the white stone bridge ran to a gigantic coppery portcullis, which gleamed in the shadowy entrance where it was embedded.
"Look left." Azuri scoffed at her cries of shocked disbelief, and cackled at her gasp of wonderment. When it felt good to relax his deadpan reserve, he wondered if his old self had become a facade, and the goblin-like snickers, crouching behind this stiff shield wall, were the reality. He certainly had the appetite of a goblin, for visions of salty soups, sauced meat, and savory dumplings washed over him, so vivid his eyes watered. As he once could go without food for two days without complaint, before the allure of goblin delicacies wrecked his elvish restraint, this anticpation of gluttony was like a thin, green goblin dimension layered like onionskin, at once adding to and deadening the visual complexities of the elven world. His self-loathing had made of himself something so alien that now he looked on other elves less as elves and more as others, as false fronts, the sightless tips of a blind web spreading not like a conscious, civilized culture, but like a mindless disease. They had learned to question nothing in their haste to see everything. Despite his stiff old self, Azuri had many questions, a curiosity as insatiable as his appetite. Having joined this conspiracy on a burning and insistent impulse, he was surprised it still burned bright and clear, and felt right.
"It's impossible. When I look left, this narrow bridge now runs that way." Beads of sweat crawled on Elani's cheeks and nose, and the corners of her frown quivered, as if she intended to scream, cry, or throw herself over the edge.
"If your father loved you, you would have been schooled on Alfyria," sighed Ialuna. "By age three, an elven child can draw a square longer than it is wide, wider than it is long, and deeper than a cube."
"You're spouting nonsense."
"In your eyes," sniffed Ialuna.
"If these buildings are unlike your capitol, it's only that they're enchanted."
"You haven't seen the Palace of the High Tzhurarkh."
"Now she never will."
Why did the thought of the ancient edifice toppling make Azuri feel as light and joyous as the doubled moonlight? "Keep close to the pillars, Elani, and follow me."
"Why are you so happy?" hissed Ialuna. "Where do you take us? He is at the center, is he not?"
"I want a sword."
"The armory won't be in a tower."
"I don't need an armory. Just a sword. One." He levelled a dark stare at Ialuna.
"You would keep me from arming myself?"
"Will a strip of steel stand between you and death?" Azuri snickered. "When crossing swords might bring you nearer your last breath?"
As they skulked past the pillars, Azuri and Ialuna, who saw things as they were, walked freely, as if strolling on the widest concourse, while Elani, whose eyes could not bridge the higher dimensions, tottered as if her feet would not span them either, and she swayed on the bridge. If it seemed needle-thin to her half-human eyes, Azuri reasoned, it was because its architect had imposed a severe economy on the earthy dimensions, abstracting height, depth, and width, but letting kruve and elielc flower. If Elani was blind to the palace's ornamental decadence, its see-through struts must seem diaphanous threads spun by a glass spider.
As Azuri pointed out architectural features and decorations, she shuddered, and looked to him with a limp, filmy, and affrighted gaze.
"What is it?"
"I see only a gauzy wall. Your king's palace looks glued together with honey and wax. Can they see us?"
"Who?"
"Those silhouettes breezing inside," said Elani woozily. "Don't you see their shadows buzzing?" She clutched her head and slumped to the wall. "These cobwebs are as cool and hard as stone." Her voice was feather-soft and giddy. When Azuri tried to pry her away, she clung to the wall.
"It's her half-human eyes," said Ialuna. "In this case, seeing less is an advantage."
"Are there weapons? Guards?"
"Their murmurs hum in this porous shade." When Elani's pulse hammered in Azuri's grip, his own racing heart echoed as it went out to her maddened wits. Leaning over her, he took her in as if for the first time, inhaling her perfume, which smelled of sandalwood and jasmine, and noting how her hair was white at the ends, raven black at the roots, and gleamed silver and ebony in the light of the two moons. If her half-human body curved and swelled, as if also constrained to three dimensions, it flowered voluptuously to curvaceous breasts, thighs, and hips that rippled and shimmered as if by their own unearthly moonlight.
"It's your leaky human head that's porous," said Ialuna.
"Ignore her. Take my arm, Elani."
"Thank you." No sooner had Elani relaxed her grip on the wall than she clung to Azuri, her nails biting his bicep as they neared the gate.
At each inset window, Ialuna ran her fingers along the frame, until the fourth pane gave a little, and she tilted it inward.
"There are only three," said Elani. "One passes through, and two are stationed by a door."
"Guards?"
"Exactly what we need," said Azuri.
"Even if I could see them in truth, I couldn't change them," said Elani weakly, "because I need both hands." She still clutched Azuri so tightly that, for the moment, it seemed unlikely she would ever let go.
"Change them?"
"A spell."
"Human hedge wizardry," sniffed Ialuna, but her contemptuous glare warily eased into a doubtful respect.
"If you must nickname my magic, call it half-elven, for it was neither learned by rote in Alfyrian schools, nor a secret shared by human shamans, but witchcraft of my own devising."
Ialuna groaned. "Mo doubt more backfire than spellfire. A dubious pedigree might turn on us all, making us mice, beetles, or any of the many vermin of Hravak."
Despite her anxiety and nausea, Elani managed a cold-blooded stare. "While I had not thought us fast friends, do you despise me so much, Ialuna?"
Ialuna's scorn hardened. "How can you call yourself half elf, or half human, when you are weaker than either? If you can change people into creepy-crawlies, your knack is a lucky aberration, and no intellectual gift."
"Since we're talking shortcomings..." As Elani's voice grew wintry but stormy, her hand loosed from Azuri's to underscore, emphatically, the lightning-charged snowfall of her argument. "...I don't mind calling you a moral abomination of murderess grafted to traitoress, however much I hoped a person lay under the imperfections, and extended you the benefit of the doubt."
"Doubt." Ialuna sneered. "Person. Two words not in our language. That's your human mythology. To elves, all are more or less unique, but only some have the strength of will to be individuals. Two distinct forms describe elven being: valkuma and valura. Loosely translated strength and weakness, valkuma are builders and assets to society, while valura are the sick, stupid, incompetent masses, too dumb or weak to move from under the wheel of progress, perhaps hoping it digs them a comfortable grave."
"Your etymology is corrupt." Azuri sighed. "Valkuma originally meant champion, while valura meant multitude. All the same, this ancient dualism has few modern adherents."
"Perhaps more widespread than you permit, Azuri? A well-known liberal, you once championed benevolent interests. But equality does not benefit the superior man. When the strong lays down with the weak, the champion joins the multitude. As we have seen in your life. If we stand here all day, we'll be lost in the rubble when the giants arrive." When Ialuna swung the window the rest of the way, its iron frame grated on the stone embrasure. "There. They've heard us. Now we have no reason to wait." After Ialuna scrambled in, Azuri boosted Elani inside, then pulled himself through the window.
Where Elani knelt in the long hall, her black, satiny skirt spread into a glinting, shadowy pool.
Having pinched a green wriggle caught under the bunched pleats, she brought the serpent to her lips and kissed it with a wry smile.
It was Azuri's turn to be bemused. On the platform, the half-elven witch had been not only ashen, but faded, her complexion whitening past human to a light tree bark, then a powdery snow, and in the end as pale as a pencil sketch waiting for a hand to color her in. Now, her face oozed to an outrageous pout, looking less like a made-up woman than a painted one, filling in a bolder line traced by her recreated personality. To Azuri, this woman seemed an entirely new character. Orange rouge blossomed, purple eyeshadow pooled around longer and more luxuriant lashes, and her black hair, with its smattering of white at the ends, was now burgundy red shot with silver richer than coin. Not only had these reds, oranges, and violets spread like rot, but a wicked strength now possessed the half-elf. When she had clung to his forearm, that fainting spell had the appearance of virtue, a weak goodness worthy of his protection, but now she plucked up the transformed guard and tweaked the squirming snakeskin between two nails painted a glaring, garish red, brighter than blood, apples, or roses. It was such a strident red that it stretched nearly louder than elven sight could see.
How easily Elani had touched up past the point of real seeing, teasing even his elven sight with unlikely appearances. Were her enchantments so unconscious and instinctual that she could seem two different women as her whims changed? Having willed the shrinking violet on the catwalk, now she willed the rose armored by thorns.
"Is that the guard?"
"Does it look like a guard? You elves see too much, I think. And believe in nothing."
"Put it down."
"But I have need of a serpent." Elani smiled wickedly, then licked her lips.
"You're going to eat him?" growled Azuri. "He's not really a snake."
"He certainly is!" Elani laughed. "Prove that he isn't!"
"Then where are the guards?"
"Silly Azuri!" When Elani's head tipped back in a tinkling laugh, her bangly curls seemed to slither. "I turned them to snakes!"
"You just denied it!" Azuri's chest puffed as his breath seethed hot.
"You're much too serious," pouted Elani. "With muscles like that, acting younger would become you more. If you must know, I have no cannibal intentions for this fetching serpent, but I do need one for a spell."
Ialuna chuckled. "Then he's not cuisine, but an ingredient."
"You're elves," sighed Elani. "You should know. When illusion is more authentic than reality, it makes past tense of the real world. If he once was a guard, that was swallowed by the snake. Is it illegal to pop a snake in a cauldron here?"
"Alfyrian law is more cunning than your eye for an eye. With our eyes on a higher order than the material, we value the unseen more than the seen. Whereas human priorities hold the body first and foremost, we cherish not only mind, personality and meaning, but all their shades, knowing what is subtle to us may be a clearer truth to a higher being. You think us eager to put our pretensions on display, but as true sophisticates, we believe images only the shadow-show of meaning." When Elani put her hands to her hips, and upturned her face in a coquettish sneer, his heart turned to flame, a hot, piercing slag that still held an angry edge. "Did you at least spare their swords?"
"I knew I forgot something." After an exasperated, explosive sigh, Elani bent a crooked finger,
unleashing an emerald light to glint on a serpent, which wriggled, writhed, paled, then gushed spidery bone that skittered and convulsed as it was enveloped in oozing flesh, until the Alfyrian lay wet and hairless as a newborn, his golden beard pasted to his chest like a wheat field after a storm. Elani wagged her finger. "Your sword."
Having inched back on hands, elbows, and knees, the elf stammered, sputtered, then vomited. his jaw gaping with speckled puke, and his eyes even wider, as if they too would rather vomit their contents then see this evil sorcerer.
"You blind, stupid half-thing," said Ialuna. "He hasn't got one."
"I thought these were guards?" said Azuri.
"I didn't think to check," said Elani. "When you said have a care, I thought I would dispatch them silently."
"Kurdi," cursed Azuri. This gentleman's curse was obscure in any language, invoking not krydayn manure, nor the offensive fumes, but the putrid atoms whirling through the beast's repugnant wind, like tiny worlds passing through their own abyss. It summed up not only the depths of one's contempt but the despair of day to day existence. "Let him go."
Ialuna scowled, then snorted a sarcastic laugh. "Since we're doing things backwards and halfway like our rustic half-human, why not shimmy back out the window, stop halfway, and let our feet dangle?" Her smile faded. "You're not serious. He'll raise the alarm."
"If you won't let him go, he has to stay." Azuri's massive fist descended with a crack on the naked Alfyrian's jaw.
"Fine." Elani glared at the splayed, absurd figure of the elf. "Help me dump him through the window to the walkway."
"She took what I said to heart," snickered Ialuna. "Hilarious."
"What if he falls off?" Azuri shook his head. "Who cares if he's discovered? By the time he's slept that off, we'll be captured or long gone."
Ialuna rolled her eyes, then headed through the hatch, which opened into a breezy stairwell, a cylindrical stone conduit so vast that its spiralling stairs were barely visible from one side to the other.
Near the midpoint of their spiral descent, gravity gently flipped and down became up. Even to Azuri, it was a peculiar sensation to be conscious of going down, then so imperceptibly shift to an ascent that climbing became a creepingly slow fall toward a ceiling that couldn't shake its sense of being a floor.
When the reality of what was happening cracked, then upheaved the right words in their place,
ceiling not only became floor, up became down, and left and right changed hands in a jarring clasp of wrong with right.
The skyline seemed pasted to the embrasure windows, as if the glass not only abstracted the fourth and fifth dimensions, but the third, dissolving depth to a flattened but painterly image of crennelated towers and the palace sprawl that mirrored the wispy architecture of the clouds.
As Azuri admired these captured reflections, Elani raced around the stairwell, rubbernecking the way they came, obviously unable to wrap her head around their descent to the zenith above. Possessed more by hysteria than curiosity, Elani batted around the bending stairs, waving from the landings.
While Azuri waved back, he rolled his eyes, now unable to stomach this woman who played the tourist more than the infiltrator. She might be half elf, but her heart was all too human.
When they were on opposite sides of the conduit, Azuri rested his arms on a windowsill to take an eyeful of the palace, which sprawled not under, but on the horizon, the curvature of the winding cylinder having stretched space until horizontal embedded itself in vertical and bypassed the perpendicular, until the towers rising from the opulent straggle osbscured this vista like stone trees
whose growing shadows darkened their woods.
Having crossed from descent through progressive ambiguity to a paradoxical ascent, they seemed to have come full circle. Across the conduit, Elani also gazed through a window.
When the clatter of boots echoed, Ialuna darted down the bending stairwell, and Azuri turned, throttled one charging guard one-handed, then, winding up this improvised elf flail, swung him at a bone-breaking, vertebrae-popping speed, which threshed the others into the chasm so far, and so hard, that they whistled through the vast conduit until they fluttered in the gravity well at the cylinder's center, where constant, uncontrollable colliding brought their half-pulped bodies into an unconscious ball of bruised elves.
It ws like moths battering a torch until their wings blacken. Azuri laughed scornfully, strode past Ialuna without dignifying her with a glance, then soon fell in step with Elani.
The murmur of a large throng shivered a sealed gate twelve feet tall, and the echo rattled in the conduit like cymbals. Whether its guards had ditched their duties to sample the soiree, or whether they were summoned to deal with the interlopers, the gate lay unguarded.
Well knowing the power of elven divination, elven magic, and elven machines, Azuri hoped their luck would continue. Once their infilration was rumored, they would be glimpsed by far-reaching eyes; once seen, they would be locked in a distasteful mortal contest with every Tzhurarkh in the summer palace, with only death and freedom for prizes.
Having lived amongst goblins, Azuri was no stranger to brawling, but whenever he thought of closing his fist, it itched, like a phantom pain, for his iluree. While stolen by Khyte, his irreplaceable heirloom blade would always be part of him, for even in times of contentment, its proud, powerful heft whispered in his grasp, and he would glimpse its mirage in hand, as if haunted by the ghost of his sword.
When Tzhurarkh or Cerund neared the age of majority, an iluree was custom made, its measurement and weight cast according to unerring ancient formula, not only matching the wielder's reach and power, but forged to be unbreakable for normal use by its intended, so as not to shatter under a stern parry or unforgiving blow. While others might find an iluree unbalanced or even crude, for its intended wielder, there was no blade more graceful, no edge more deadlier, and no steel more resilient. As he could not hope to find his iluree here, he must settle for this shakasia, a sword minted by the hundreds for lesser warriors not born to noble purpose or knightly calling.
If the gate had been guarded, they left no weapons behind, only an oblong steel bar inscribed with hexagons and octagons. "What tool is this?"
"Perhaps the key," said Ialuna.
"Would they be so stupid to leave the key and abandon their post?" Elani shouldered ajar the spiral bars with a creak and a shiver.
"It might have been urgent."
"That's not the sound of battle." Ialuna pointed down the hall towards echoing laughter.
"Neither is it revelry," said Azuri. "It sounds forced."
"Bullied laughter? Perhaps my cousin," said Ialuna. "Whoever the brute, they sound like a Tzhurarkh."
"It takes one to know one."
"What do you mean?" said Elani. "Are you a Tzhurarkh?"
"No," snorted Azuri. "I haven't that privilege. Look to your conspirator."
"We're all co-conspirators, Azuri." Ialuna turned away, then walked down the hallway.
"Why are you taking that?" Elani tapped the odd tool.
"While I can't hope to find honest work," snickered Azuri, "it might guide me to heads to bludgeon. Right now, this blunted compass dowses best in my stagnant soul."
"Why are your thoughts so dark, Azuri?"
When Elani leaned in like the flirty, wanton girl she presumably thought he wanted, Azuri was neither deceived nor aroused by the flick of her perfumed tresses under his chin, or the coy pools of her overlarge eyes. While they were limpid, clear, and strong, her old eyes crystallized a web of desires too sophisticated for anyone who was young in truth. If she was the age she appeared, and took a fancy to Azuri, she would pursue him with urgency, not treat him with curiosity, like a serpent that had already swallowed one life and only wanted a taste of another. "Are you not free?"
"You know I am no willing playmate, hedge witch. We are marionettes, whose strings are pulled by your father; the false flower of Ielnarona; the giant warlords; or perhaps the whole wicked triumvarate."
"If I know this game's hidden rules, should you not heed my commands?"
"Pfft. Your half-human eyes can't even grasp the extent of the Summer Palace, our game board." Having eyed her with contempt, Azuri relaxed into an easy-going smile, but it was only a game face resting on an underlying jagged grin. "Even if you could navigate these halls, you should still defer to my experience. Few games match the political arenas of Alfyria and Nahure."
While the hall was luminous with ensconced lamps, it funneled into a blazing light magnified by the enormous pool shimmering in a sky blue basin where hundreds of naked elves splashed and swam. As the pool was captured in the mirrored apse above, Azuri could see not only the forefront of the frolicking bathers, but their backsides glimmering above. On each side of the mirrored panes dangled delicate golden chandeliers, their settings fluted like flower petals to bear the enchanted globes
that flooded the pleasure dome with bright, white light.
Azuri's lopsided smile was at once grimace and sneer, for as the faces in the pool and mirror washed over him, there was mutual recognition: Javorus, the weaponeer; Alcota, the composer; the Tzhurarkhs Ulvis, Tremora, and Vandom; too many for their names to ring in his skull all at once. Some eyes slitted and nostrils flared from love lost, and others from the infamy of their reputation. While at first the glances flicked over them, they fell back with accusatory glares, as if the lords guessed one of them had summoned Julaba's destruction from the Abyss. As the glowering looks scoured them, it struck home that he was responsible for the deaths of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. Having planted Frellyx's devices in the longbow world, Azuri and Elani had not only annihilated a city, but disintegrated the ancient artifacts of a millenia.
Had the inundated lords swarmed as one, they might have dragged Azuri and Ialuna to the pool's bottom or the king's feet, but when their eyes lingered on the steel rod in Azuri's hand, many sank to their necks, bobbing with cowed but loathing glowers on their wet faces.
Lords are cowards, his Treikondant Cerund mentor had told him, and he could only smile and nod, not daring to believe such an irreverent idea, still starry-eyed for the Tzhurarkhs and their glittering retinue. Until he had seen bold goblin lords, and had more experience of the inferiority of his elven superiors, who caved to his every demand, bent back under his sword blows during spars, and acceded to his ascendancy in the civil service. From the Alfyrian Embassy on Nahure, he had more real power than the High Tzhurarkh ever exercized, implementing trade accords, dissolving tariffs and embargoes, and diverting wars not only with his goblin hosts, but the giants, dryads, and human tribes who traveled there, less for diplomacy's sake than to enjoy Azuri's fabled hospitality. He had even entertained visiting elven luminaries, including many of the fearful and cowardly lot in the High Tzhurarkh's pool, which seemed to contain his whole stable of elven resources.
While Azuri had felt a flicker of remorse for Julaba's devastation, to see so many Tzhurarkhs, high ranking Cerund Knights, and their wives and husbands, romping in the pool invited a surge of anger--how had they escaped the falling oasis unless they had known? And if they had known, why did they not spread the word, and save the people? Was he Frellyx's dupe, the High Tzhurarkh's pawn, or simply an aged, wise fool? No longer certain who had guided him, and the gigantic missile he had steered into his home world, he felt like he was sinking into a vast, sprawling chaos, his finely patterned web of conspiracies disintigrating and re-crystallizing into endless loops, theads, and links, the only constant being Azuri at its hub. It was as if his consciousness had darkened, a cocoon knotting him in its dim, suffocating certainty that brought a confused clarity to his fading inner vision. While his hot, racing blood fired up his senses, and honed his fivefold elven sight, this intensified world seemed darker, as if the Abyss itself, having pierced the hazy elven world, shone darkly through the light.
If his wisdom had ceased to be an article of faith or an item of knowledge, Azuri could still remember. And Azuri the elf would be no one's fool.
"There!"
At her cry, Azuri turned, but Ialuna had already slipped in the pool, splashing forward with lithe ease. As he walked around the edge, she darted toward two hulking elves that rivaled Azuri in stature and surpassed him in musculature.
Cowering behind their broad shadows, the High Tzhurarkh waded toward the steps, seized an orange robe from a dumbstruck servant, and rose from the rippling water. The satiny folds drizzled and clung as the elven monarch shook, as much from outrage and the evaporation of cool water from goosepimpled skin as from the fear he now spread, his voice shivering and strident: "to me, my guards. Spare not traitors and spies, but slay them now!"
When an armored guard advanced, Elani pointed twisted green nails, but a sunbather stood from her golden chaise, raised a hand in an imperious gesture, and deflected Elani's bolt to a potted shrub, which fused into one thick root, thrashed in its soil, and cracked the clay pot, spilling dozens of jungly serpents slithering in snaky slivers for the pool.
Then purple elven blood misted the water, and Ialuna withdrew a bloodstained blade from a screaming guard's ribs. As the other guard took the High Tzhurarkh's elbow and dragged him to the doors, Ialuna's weapon not only dripped blood, it melted like slag; crafted from magic and water, then warmed by the gush of life's blood, the ice dagger returned, drop by drop, to the pool.
As the guards backpedaled one step at a time, the others shrank from the floating, leaking corpse to the shallow side, scampered up the blue basin's stairs, and drizzled in their naked flight,
both the men and women so soft that they jiggled as they fled.
Azuri dipped down, scooped up Ialuna, and shook her roughly to the floor.
"Fool. You spoiled our chance. The High Tzhurarkh was naked in a pool. Had you waited, we would now be planning our flight."
"I saw our quarry and took action. What would waitng have got us?"
"A better opportunity. You're still in his camp, aren't you?"
Ialuna spared him not a look, rolled to all fours, then rose in madcap pursuit of the High Tzhurarkh.
Azuri seethed. Having just come to grips with being used, the thought of Cyhari's murderer holding his reins, even for a moment, made him furious. Moreover, he could not help thinking of his daughter's monstrous double, however much her life was fiction. While he would neither pursue the High Tzhurarkh, nor go to Ialuna's aid, he walked fast enough to keep her in sight, and felt a new, peculiar sense of satisfaction.
If he was a tool, so was Ialuna. Both no doubt served Frellyx, whether to advance his purposes, or amuse him by serving cross purposes.
Azuri and Frellyx were never friends. The dilettante dabbled at being a Kundan Cerund, as he dabbled in everything. Cheating was easier than living. When, during the High Tzhurarkh's soiree,
they were sat at the same gaming table, the dabbler had cheated, and Azuri had excused himself, restraining himself from bashing in Frellyx's drowsy, half-lidded glower. Although Frellyx had the High Tzhurarkh's ear, he dabbled in that also, caring more for rumormongery and mockery than for influence and power. Azuri loathed being the pawn of such a dabbler.
While it was insufferable that the mocking, simian smile should mask an artful conspirator, Azuri admitted it was not a far stretch from cheating wastrel to sharp-eyed opportunist.
A faint rattle echoing down the corridor brought Azuri back to himself, for he well knew the sound of a sword drawn from its scabbard. Having wrenched an ensconced lamp free with a savage, creaking twist, Azuri shuffled near the connecting hallway. While weightier than a sword, the ungainly knot of bronze was also much softer, and he could not trust it with a single parry. Despite being forced on the offensive with a shapeless weapon, Azuri was unusually calm. Not only had he always been powerful in attack, being usually the tallest, heaviest, and strongest, but there was little point in defense when Cyhari's doubled death had slashed and burned the cobwebs of his old soul.
The ornate hallway was papered with samanha runes, multidimensional hieroglyphs that not only projected into the corridor, but shifted shape as the eye took in their elapsing form, which then circled to the beginning of the time-worm, a scrawl unceasingly rewriting itself.
When a tall, flaxen-haired elf stomped down the stairs and unsheathed his sword, Ialuna, clutching the wet nub of her ice dagger, yielded step by step until she backed into Azuri. As the duellists were more focused on their vast disparity in skill and battle readiness, with the armored guard smugly about to skewer Ialuna, neither saw Azuri until he raised his makeshift cudgel, still sparking with elfin illumination, for a furious smash that scattered each in their own way: the guard's head splashed in a gory spray, while Ialuna flinched, backpedaled so far she fell flat on her rump, then backed away on hands and knees.
Having done its unintended duty, the lamp had flowered into a glowing mash of bronze that expanded to fill the holes crunched through helm and skull. Azuri dropped it with a clatter and took a step back. His awkward weapon was now slag, with no use other than as a strange head ornament for the dead.
With a sigh, he took up the warrior's shakasia. Once he might have recoiled from the thought of sullying the honor of his name and order by wielding what translated as 'anonymous sword.' Now he had taken his second shakasia in as many days. Whether he renounced them or started piling them up, he would never earn another iluree now. Having consigned himself to his dishonorable path in the false hope of seeing his dead daughter, what harm was there in striking his name from the rolls of history? It would be better if Alfyria forgot Azuri.
At the clap and clatter of steel boots, Azuri seized Ialuna's wrist and dragged her down the crossing hallway.
"You goblin-brained idiot," Ialuna hissed, "you're taking us the wrong way."
Azuri continued his inexorable stride down the hall.
"Are you ignoring me?" Although she stiffened to make herself dead weight, and raked his forearm with her nails, he was unrelenting.
"No. I'm dragging you. Against my will and better judgment, I might add. If there wasn't a chance you were telling the truth, I'd let them take you." Azuri stopped at an iron-banded door. "Where is Elani?"
"Wasn't she with you?"
"It's as I feared," said Azuri. "We're not assassins, Ialuna. As if we would be entrusted with such a difficult task. We're clowns, sent to divert them from Elani's mission."
"You're not serious." When Ialuna scratched at his arm, he hurled her backwards, and she only retained her footing by planting her hands on the wall.
"Then where is she?"
"Lost. Vacuous," she snickered. "What can you expect? Half an elf is only half a brain."
"With better magic than you."
"That remains to be seen."
"Really? She makes snakes. You make icicles. Given an icehouse, I can make ice."
"Not from thin air," Ialuna bristled, glowering at Azuri.
"Making icicles from thin air is something, but making a snake from a stocky elf is better magic. To a layman, anyway." While plying his sarcastic tone, Azuri did his best to approximate a deferential nod. "I see your dagger melted. While the smack of a wet hand might sting a bit, you should arm yourself when we search for Elani."
"You go. Our alliance is at an end, Azuri."
"Three jackals dine on a lion, thinking to become one."
"What?"
"A Hravakian proverb heard from a king exiled to Nahure. When I lost my position on Nahure,
I comiserated over goblin wine with an exiled Hravkian king who shared this proverb, and on returning to Alfyria to find myself the prey of sycophants, I had reason to reflect on this wisdom. It means not only that unity in treachery is a laughable notion, but that deceivers are doomed to be weaker partners and parasites, even if no stronger predator arises from the blood of a lion. As the conspirators circle the stronger, they can't see that it's the circle that indicates the true power dynamics. Just as the heart of the circling jackals is the lion, you're so much dust in my orbit. If you had any gravity or magnetism of your own, you'd make your own bold lines." Hoisting Ialuna over his shoulder, Azuri ignored the fists drumming like raindrops on his broad back, which might serve as a coffin for three Ialunas. "If you think up another ice dagger, remember I hold the shakasia, and strike true."
When Ialuna's pounding ceased, she chuckled. "There's more to that memorable chestnut, Azuri, and none of it flattering to you. What I hear is the power of the weak and the vulnerability of the strong. But who are the three jackals if not myself, Elani, and you?"
"You forget Frellyx."
"It's hard to remember one who never steps from the shadows."
"A good tschifi player never moves his queen."
As he turned back the way they came, she resumed drumming and scratching his shoulders. "You're backtracking!"
"Not to double back on our steps, but to unkink her twisted motives," Azuri said through gritted teeth. "If you were lighter...and blunter...this would be much easier."
"Poor Azuri. " When Ialuna's velvet, languid purr aroused Azuri, for a disconcerting moment, the tables were turned, as if she had not been manhandled, but curled up on him in an act of catlike possession. "Are my nails too sharp for you?"
"I meant your tongue."
Having returned to the crossway facing the stairwell, where six Kundan Cerund milled around the landing, Azuri took a crouching, backwards step in the shadowed recess of a door, and unlimbered Ialuna to slump against the other side of the alcove.
"Why wait?" said Ialuna.
"Those stairs lead to the barracks."
"What better place to hide a High Tzhurarkh?"
"While it's a splendid fortification, only a Tzhurarkh may serve a High Tzhurarkh. Those stationed here are Kundan Cerund, duty-bound to his subordinates and this palace."
"A pragmatic ruler knows crises forge customs."
"If you're still trying to clear the throne, think again," said Azuri. "That's not Elani's goal."
"What of mine? And what else could she want?"
"Her true mission will be better suited to a witch. Just as we're more qualified to be dupes, or at least so thinks our absentee employer."
"Speaking of witches," said Ialuna. "What of the one at the pool?"
"What about her?"
"Why was their duel so short?"
"Perhaps they were mismatched, just as my duels are short, given that I rarely cross blades with an equal. Great as it is, I wouldn't pit my strength against Elani's magic."
"But she parried Elani's spell."
"What are you getting at?"
"That was no duel. That was a signal."
"Like a greeting?"
"Or a password."
"And when the wizard fled in that mob of Tzhurarkhs, Elani pursued."
"Yes."
"Then we have little hope of catching up now, and less as time goes by."
"So long as she stays in her hole."
"Isn't she long gone?"
"I think she has yet to strike, and snakes don't slither far."
"You're making sense. Lead on." Azuri lifted his sword arm until the point touched her chin.
"You first!" Ialuna's hiss was scathing. "You're holding the shakashia."
"You remembered. How unlike you to acknowledge it."
"I can barely stand the sight of low steel--how can you bring yourself to touch it? Surely you miss your iluree?"
"More insistent phantoms dog me now, a parade of specters headed by Cyhari, her deader image, and your future ghost, all of whom warn me not to let you out of my sight." His hatred was now so pure and rarefied that it was void of meaning, a bottomless pit consuming every thought of satisfaction. Grief whispered in the echoless chambers of his heart, but rage roared in his hot blood.
While Azuri no longer cared whether Ialuna died or lived, and her lies no longer fed his desperation,
every bright memory of Cyhari had been snuffed out, and in its place, one curious candle was rekindled by thoughts of Elani. And this idle lust had spawned a passion for new possibilities, new worlds, new faces, even more of Elani's spells. Having lived for five hundred years by cultivating perfection, he would now purge himself of his purities and live for his days.
"If either of us trip, the point of your shakashia could be the end of me. Moreover, it's your guesses that guide us."
"I would think you would want me between you and your pursuers. Not only do they know your name, but they'll see your face coming."
A laugh bubbled up as Azuri seized Ialuna. Once he might have lost his hand for the effrontery of touching a Tzhurarkh.He still might, months before they drew and quartered Ialuna. Would they punish a corpse, he wondered? Not that it was his concern, nor did he care one way or the other; it was only his curiosity, smoldering after centuries dormant, melting his leaden duty, and releasing his repressed youth. As his vengeance died, Azuri felt lighter. Not only lighter than air, but lighter than moonlight.
But perhaps not so light as Ialuna, whom he hurled face first towards the massed guards.
His hulking, stony muscles not only cleared the distance, but lobbed her over their gawking eyes. Ialuna seemed to expand to fill that violent instant, as her limbs thrashed mid-throw in a desperate bid to flop onto her back, and her wet, ouflung hand smacked one in the chest, imparting much of her momentum and knocking him off his feet into his comrades, who staggered in a slumping heap of armor as they struggled to help him find his footing. When Ialuna struck the steps with a crack, then bounced down like a tossed ragdoll, her rolling body tripped the off-balance warriors.
When Azuri darted back down the hall, he felt the strangeness of his lumbering gait as if he was another missile he had thrown. Having had cause to run only a handful of times in his half-millennium, running was an act of self-estrangement, of leaving himself in his own dust, and he acted without thinking, less elf than automaton. His stride and strength served him well, for his hale, young pursuers lagged behind in heavy armor. Though they shouted and smacked their swords on the wall, Azuri paid no mind, sprinting until his chest was so tightly drawn around his hot breath that he had no more room to inhale. Having reached the pool, he slogged a few more steps, bent double to clap his knees, panted long jets of air, then grasped the foot of a deck chair, which he swung in a sluggish but—to the committed momentum of his headlong pursuers—inexorable arc, splashing five into the water, and sweeping the sixth head first into the wall.
Most splashed flat, sinking like stones until their breastplates scraped the bottom, and as the two who landed upright stood neck deep, they struggled to keep their own footing as they braced against the drag of armor and water to haul their comrades to the surface.
Azuri fought his instinct to help the drowning Kundan Cerund. For months, he had been nothing but contempt, not only for the wicked and the stupid, but for himself, a self-loathing that roared louder than his hatred for Ialuna, and so had spared her some hours of life. While he still had not come back to himself, and he was still very far from the empathy he once possessed, he had begun to cherish freedom. If he despised their woes, he also wished their suffering at an end, one way or another. No longer slaved to duty, or waging a hero's pathetic war against the inevitability of death and suffering, he wished they would leave him out of it, and either embrace death, or escape it with a will.
When last in the pool chamber, he had dogged Ialuna's steps so intently that he paid slight attention to the fleeing Tzhurarkhs, and lost sight of Elani. So it was more by the process of elimination than from memory that he took the servants' passage, for ruling out the stairwell entrance and the corridor the High Tzhurarkh took, it was the only one left.
As workers darted into kitchens and storerooms, slammed the doors, turned keys, and drove rattling bolts home, Azuri continued to a stairwell that exhaled a warm, dry breeze, reminding him of the sirocco.
As Azuri descended the spiral, it curved so subtly that every other bend, up became down and down became up, like a threading corkscrew. Through the dim windows, there was no horizon, only
the palace sprawl, towers slicing across the vast expanse, every structure also encoding a new space transparent to walls running like platform roads, carrying vast foot traffic that flowed around and through the pillar conduits joining the spheres.
While Azuri was accustomed to elven architecture, and its trick of turning reality topsy-turvy, flouting gravity, transpiercing solids, mingling shapes, and, in other ways turning up its nose at the sullen rules of three dimensional space, this would challenge Elani.
Guessing he had only a few moments, Azuri drew the shakashia. "Elani." The echo criss-crossed, clashing off each end of the helical stairway to ring in Azuri's ears.
As he called out at every landing, the stairwell filled with a gray glow, tinged with blue. At first, his echo was the merest tremble, but as he descended, it swelled from a tremble to a resounding boom, a deep desolation reminiscent of his darker descent in Eurilda's sorcerous pouch, the noiseless void which not only snuffed out his screams, but turned him into a breathless cipher, less substantial than a buried thought. He may as well have been tossed in the back of her mind. As he recalled its endless folds, sweat dripped down his brow and nose. It wasn't the lack of space then or now that inspired his claustrophobia, but the crushing infinity of substance, of unending velvet or infinitely winding stone. But they paled in comparison to the canned immensity of the Doorway, which promised to cram him from one world to another.
When Eurilda had suggested it on Nahure, he had preferred the long way through the desolate catacombs and their clinging grey, to the glowing plenitude of the Doorway. The same luminous hue as the bluish-grey into which he now descended, to Elani's unknown objective.
Unlike that one, this Doorway was not ringed by chalk scrawl, but only a gray gyre gaping and twisting midair, streaming a chilled fog. While he now had many reasons to pass through the Doorway--or rather, many fewer, having little to lose--being dishonored, stripped of his standing in the Kundan Cerund, and only allowed his title and manor by dint of custom, what moved him through the fluctuating portal without a pause in his step was a vision of Cyhari and the fancy that his next breath lay on its other side.