The Rose of Sarifal (31 page)

“I wouldn’t know,” said Amaranth primly. And then in a moment, “Oh, but I know where we are. The Earthmother told me about a gateway in the marsh. A gateway that would bring me home.”

Lukas, resting comfortably for the moment, felt her sit up next to him. She rummaged for something in her clothes. Then she held out her hand, and something glowed in it, a blue light that slowly gathered strength. “Someone gave this to me when I was nine years old,” she said. “A final gift.”

She stood up, and raised her arm above her head. “Something to lighten the darkness,” she said, and as she spoke the light got brighter, glowing from between her fingers, making her entire hand transparent, and showing them the place where they now found themselves, a high, square chamber full of pale vegetation and pale blooms of every kind, colossal succulents and bloated flowers. The four of them were on a circular stone dais about twelve feet across, with the humid earth beneath it, thick with vines. In each corner of the chamber stood an elaborate wooden screen carved to resemble a spider’s web. The work was intricate and fine. And in front of each screen stood a statue of a single female deity in four incarnations, one fashioned out of gold, one of ebony, one of bronze, and one of stone. Closest to Lady Amaranth, the ebony statue showed an image of the Spider Queen, personified as a maiden of the dark elves,
her cap of white hair carved in ivory, and balls of ivory in her eyes. Slim and graceful, she carried a spear in her right hand and a net in her left.

The other images were different. The one closest to Lukas was carved from sweating bloodstone, as if permanently greased. The goddess was human and hypersexed, with bloated, glistening breasts and a bulbous ass. With a seductive leer on her beautiful face, she squatted over some vanquished adversary, humbled through another force than violence. The wooden image was half spider and half woman, and the golden one, the smallest, was a spider only, its egg sac full to bursting.

“This is not good,” said Gaspar-shen. The strange patterns underneath his skin, like living tattoos, began to pulse with sea-green light.

“No,” Lukas agreed.

They had no sense of a ceiling above them. The walls ascended into obscurity. There was one doorway, which seemed to lead into a tunnel, and as they watched, a light started to flicker there.

They clambered to their feet. Lukas had lost his bow and quiver, but still kept his sword, and Gaspar-shen raised his scimitar. They were caught in the drow’s web—Lukas could see that now—a shrine to the dark elves’ loathsome deity. He wondered, though, why he could feel no sense of menace. The wolf-girl sobbed quietly to herself, and Lady Amaranth, the bulb of light in her left hand, stared at the carvings and the heavy, hanging plants with wonder and delight. No doubt in her sequestered life on Moray she had heard nothing of the Spider
Queen, full of venom and deceit, dragging her distended body through the bottomless layers of the Abyss and then up through the burrows of the Underdark, spinning her stratagems and nursing her regrets.

“Ware,” said Gaspar-shen.

But there was nothing to fight or be afraid of. Breathless, a girl slipped into the chamber, holding a lantern that swung from a small chain, a pierced-metal cylinder that cast a crazy swarm of lights. “Ah, so it’s true,” she said. She pressed through the pallid stalks of undergrowth until she stood next to the dais looking up, an elf maiden who in human terms looked to be between fourteen and nineteen years, dressed in a simple linen shift, fastened at the waist with a red cord. The white linen and her cropped white hair contrasted with the utter blackness of her skin. Lukas got a quick impression of a wide mouth and heavy lips, an arched, proud nose and wide eyes. She made a circuit of the dais, the light from her lantern scattering like a swarm of bees. “I saw the green-eyed white girl chasing a black kitten through the grass. And my sister saw the golden spider hanging from its branch, struck with a burning arrow of sunshine that lit her web on fire. We all saw it. And the green-eyed girl is Chauntea the Earthmother in her human shape, and the kitten is the king of beasts. And Chauntea told us that this portal would be open for a moment, from Moray to the citadel—no one has come this way in oh-so-many years!”

As she spoke, breathless with excitement, three others had come in to join her, drow maidens dressed in the
same fashion, all carrying their little swinging lamps. And they also started chattering as they rushed around the chamber, bowing as they did so to the four altars, and reaching up to touch and push apart the masses of white and yellow leaves. Soon Lukas could no longer tell which of them had spoken first, or distinguish which of them was speaking now. Their voices rose together, sometimes in unison, sometimes breaking apart into conflicting stories: “My sisters and I had the same dream—not the same, exactly. It was looking down into the well of paradise where the gods live. And … the girl had the kitten in her lap. No, he was bad and scratched her, and she swatted at his nose. No, but the spider was in the moonlight, and her web shone with it.”

Then they stopped moving. Each had found a corner of the room, and their voices fell into a kind of unison, as if they were reciting a catechism they all knew by heart: “Of all insects, she is the most industrious, the thriftiest, and the most useful, a model for all mothers at their looms, and fathers at their nets in the dark water. All storytellers owe a debt to her, all musicians and artists, and all kings and queens who strive to weave a pattern in the world’s fabric. Cruelly abandoned and cast into the Abyss, despised by Corellon Larethian, her children’s father, still she was able to redeem herself, because of the thousand female virtues that we celebrate in our lives …”

All this was part of Araushnee’s lament, Lukas guessed, the Spider Queen’s self-serving liturgy. Other races had different ways of spinning this same
narrative. He was interested, though, in the language of redemption, which seemed fresh to him, a fresh motif in the goddess’s history. Cast into the Abyss, given a new disgusting name and shape, she had dragged anyone who worshiped her down into darkness, away from the light. Thousands of years before, the dark elves had left their forest halls to migrate downward to the Underdark, drawn into a web of lies. But perhaps they had dreams now of returning to the surface, which were echoed and reflected in the goddess’s prayers: “Soon she will come back,” the elf maidens chanted. “The Earthmother has permitted it. She will guide her to her rightful place among the Seldarine, just as she raised Malar the Beastlord out of the Abyss …”

This sounded delusional to Lukas. But there is no creature so debased that she cannot dream of rehabilitation, and in any case he wondered if this new story was connected to the mystery he’d been untying and retying in his mind since Lady Amaranth had told him the story of her flight to Moray on the hippogriff’s back. Not the spite of her leShay relatives, which was only to be expected, so much as their association with the drow, because it was the dark elves who had ambushed the princess and her dragonborn guards in the highlands above Myrloch Vale ten years before.

As he watched Amaranth now, entranced, her face pretty with delight, holding her own light source above her head, Lukas felt his regrets overtake him and confuse his way forward. He stood, sword in hand, on a raised dais in a shrine to Lolth—he didn’t know where.
But if Lady Amaranth was correct, and if her vision had been a true moment of transcendence and not some illusion perpetrated by her enemies, then they had found their way to Gwynneth Island, perhaps through some tunnel in the Underdark. In the dumb luck that sometimes smiled upon him, perhaps, he had succeeded in bringing her to Sarifal, to the kingdom of the fey, as Lady Ordalf had asked of him. In which case he might win Suka’s freedom from the dungeon where she rotted with the others, the disgusting fomorian giantess and the lycanthropic pig.

But how could he feel happy about delivering the princess to her enemies? And even if he had warned her against them, still his responsibility could not end there, because she had been raised in innocence. Her memory of Karador was tinted with nostalgia, nor could she have any understanding of the treacherous whims and stratagems that moved like weather through the beautiful landscape of Sarifal. Her sister had required her death, had been willing to pay a hoard of gold for it, for reasons she had not bothered to explain. But that was tendays ago, and Lukas could only hope she had forgotten, or the caprice had left her—almost immortal, the leShays’ memories must be made of cheesecloth, doddering intellects preserved in perfect bodies, and it was no wonder if their wishes and commands were senseless, or changed from hour to hour. Whoever sent these girls to welcome Amaranth back home meant her no harm.

“Where are we?” he said.

Near him the wolf-maiden had risen to her feet, a dark-haired girl with high cheekbones and blue eyes. She stared at him, her face still streaked with tears, and he felt another quick surge of regret—where was the Savage now? Where was the daemonfey, his friend, who had fought against the Beastlord to cover their escape?

“You are in Citadel Umbra,” said the leader of the drow priestesses. “I am Amaka, and these are my sisters, Onyiye, Chinedu, and Kemdelime—” the others curtseyed. “We are the handmaidens of Araushnee, whom you call Lolth, the Spider Queen. We are in search of Lady Amaranth leShay, to bring her to her rightful place in the house of her ancestors, where a masquerade has been commanded in her honor, a festival of lights, prepared for the spring solstice by Prince Araithe, her nephew, the ruler of this land …” They chattered on and on, a circle of high, laughing voices. Amaka raised her lantern. “I recognize you,” she said to the wolf-girl. “The beauty of the leShays is legendary in all of Faerûn.”

“No doubt,” said Lady Amaranth, stepping down from the stone dais onto the temple floor among the blooms and vines. She looked back and smiled uncertainly. “I am Amaranth,” she said.

“My name is Eleuthra Davos,” returned the wolf-girl. “I am an emissary of Derid Kendrick, the Ffolk king of Alaron, sent to—”

“The Ffolk king, the Ffolk king,” chattered Amaka and the rest, oblivious to their mistake. “Perhaps he will come to our masquerade.”

Lukas thought it was unlikely. Nevertheless, there was something touching about these misplaced hopes.

“Oh,” the drow girl went on, “perhaps besides the solstice and Lady Amaranth’s return we might celebrate for one night only the end of fighting in these islands, when the elves and the fomorians, all of us, will dance under the moon. When Queen Araushnee takes her place among the Seldarine, and the family of gods comes together, just as this family, here, has woven itself together with a spider’s silk. At long last the dark elves will see the morning come—” on and on, until Lukas had to wonder if they were drugged or drunk, stung with some enchanting spider’s venom. He himself felt his heart rising as he stepped down to the ground, and allowed one of the priestesses (Chinedu? Kemdelime? He had already forgotten the rest of their names) to guide him toward the tunnel’s mouth. Surrounded with such pretty women, who could feel sad, and who could dread the future? He had sheathed his sword. He looked back for Gaspar-shen who stalked behind, unaffected and bemused.

“Citadel Umbra—I remember my uncle,” said Lady Amaranth, drawn on by Amaka ahead of Lukas. “I think I was seven years old when I came here. I remember combing his gray hair, even though he was my nephew, thinking how handsome he was …”

The tunnel was carved through living rock, and the light from the lanterns caught at seams of glistening minerals along the raw, unfinished surface. They passed the black, gaping holes of many side corridors and
caves. Amaranth had put her light aside, but up ahead, a new source of illumination burst from the tunnel’s end, and there was music up there too, a dancing jig that nevertheless managed to maintain the haunting sadness of all eladrin melodies. Finally they stepped out into a larger grotto, through whose entrance they could see the firelight outside in the open air under the night sky—how long had they lain, dazed, in Lolth’s shrine? Lukas had thought these transformations to be instantaneous.

He guessed the tunnels they’d traversed had once been mines, cut by the shield dwarves and then enlarged, perhaps, by the drow, a route below Winterglen into the Underdark. The grotto looked natural to him, its roof gleaming with semiprecious crystals, green and yellow, peridot and citrine. A small cliff, perhaps thirty feet tall, formed the curved edge of a clearing in a forest of evergreens, a deep grassy glade with a stream running through it. On the other side, along the border of the forest, stood a half circle of silk pavilions, richly colored, and lit from the inside with charcoal braziers. By the banks of the stream there was a bonfire, and around it a small crowd of elves of all colors, eladrin and other fey, and nearby a small orchestra of a dozen human musicians, Ffolk slaves playing a tune Lukas recognized. It was a reel composed by Cymon the False, but tarted up in this performance with timbrels and bells. Better would have been a simpler arrangement of woodwinds and strings, played to a faster tempo. Better would have been a little joy. Instead, as often with the fey, you got a kind of brittle, frantic, melancholy gaiety—lords
and ladies, dressed in silks and velvets, capered on the grass, their faces hidden behind leather masks fringed in ostrich feathers. Painted and bejeweled, spotted and discolored, with witchlike noses and leering mouths, these masks concealed or else at least attempted to conceal the dancers’ endless beauty and eternal health, boring and tragic even to themselves.

This was not the first time it had occurred to Lukas to thank the gods for his mortality. Lady Amaranth was behind him, and she touched his sleeve. He paused to take her hand, but she didn’t want anything like that. Instead she pushed past him, murmuring excitedly, for she had seen a gray-haired man in a golden mask and a long velvet cloak, untied and open down the front. He stood near the fire. Turning, he reached out his hands then came toward them while the handmaidens of Lolth spun out into the field, chattering and singing.