Chapter 8
The sun rose dully on the fourth morning. From her perch on the roof of the fairy keep, Randiriel could just make out its hazy outline behind a bank of thick gray storm clouds. It rose slowly from the eastern horizon, its dim light seeping over the forests like a stain. The eastern side of the Faeja was darker and wilder than the western, heavy with hundreds of miles of forest. It was all, technically, under the Iris. But the lands to the east held no real allegiance to man. They were the forests of the elves and the gnomes, steeped in ancient allegiances and enchantments far predating any single empire. As the sun climbed, the forests shed their deeper shadows, lit with a pallid gray. Their leaves took on the muted colors of an old painting. To the distant northeast, Randiriel thought she could see the gleam of Lake Esrathel, home of the merpeople.
When the light of dawn finally struck the Faeja, the sun had nearly risen; it devoured the plains beyond rapidly. Randiriel turned and watched as gray chased black across the plains of the human empire, swallowing the scattered woodlands and miles of farmland in dreary daylight. She knew that somewhere, miles beyond the horizon, lay the mighty Western Mountains, the true end of the Iris’s dominion. And somewhere between those distant rocks and the river which flowed beside Randiriel’s keep lay the Capital, the center of human order, the Crystal City.
There’s a flag out there somewhere, a golden iris sown in sky-blue silk.
That’s what Geuel had said. Randiriel scoured the plains with her eyes, knowing that the Capital was beyond the horizon but still wishing she could see its distant sparkle. She wondered what it would be like, to believe in a symbol so purely that you would die for it. She pictured herself as a woman, as if she had never become a fairy. She thought of living in the Capital, walking beneath that banner every day and knowing that it was her own. The fantasy was nearly intoxicating. To live every day with a fear of impending death, to spend every moment as if it might be your last, to know that your life was as brief as a winter breath.
Perhaps that was why the humans loved their symbol. The symbol was a taste of eternity. Every human was born to die, but the Iris never had to. The Iris could go on and on through the ages. And when a man gave to the Iris, his gift lasted.
Every one of them would bleed again, just to see it wave where it has never waved before.
Randiriel smiled to herself. She would see the Golden Iris. She would watch it wave above the Crystal City and try to believe. She looked down at the dull silver of the fairy keep. The Fairy City had been beautiful. But trivial. Temporary as childhood. While Ariel had meant it to last forever, it had passed in a matter of days. And even if it was never reborn, its passing would change nothing in the world. Its only meaning was in novelty.
A distant peal of thunder rumbled in the east, nipping the heels of an unseen lightning bolt. Randiriel glanced in that direction and saw the black centers of the gray clouds churning angrily. The storm would be brutal. A flash of silver off to her left made her turn her head. Brylle landed on the roof nearby and nodded toward the storm clouds. “The others will be frightened,” she said. “They’ve never felt a storm alone.”
“They’ll live. It’s only sound.”
“Perhaps, but not to children,” she replied. “To children it’s the sound of Ingway, clapping his wings as he comes for their souls.”
Randiriel laughed. “We’re not children, Brylle. Most of us have lived through five generations. It’s time we all grew up.”
“Many have,” Brylle replied, “thanks to you. But the others need care.”
“Then care for them,” Randiriel replied. “What difference does it make though, whether their fantasy shatters now or a thousand years from now? Someday their constructed innocence will end and they will face the same world that every grown being faces, a world with pain and anger and costly beauty. And nothing will have changed for their extended innocence. Nothing to last.”
“But at least they’ll have that thousand years,” Brylle said. She paused for a moment. “You’re not going back, are you?”
Randiriel shook her head. “Ariel told me as much, though I think she meant to hide it. Not that it matters. I’m glad. I want to leave—to feel and to know. I want to see the Iris waving over the Capital.”
Brylle sat down and stared out with her over the plains. “I’ve lived for a long time, Rand,” she said. “I’ve seen the world and known it.”
“Then how can you stay here?”
“Because beauty has no cost here,” Brylle said. “And you’re right, every childhood we save will eventually shatter, no matter what Ariel may wish to the contrary. But at least they will make the world beautiful a little while longer. I think that means something. Perhaps, after you leave here and see the world’s pain, then you will see why this place matters.”
Randiriel smiled doubtfully. “Perhaps,” she said and went back to watching the plains.
* * *
The rain began shortly after noon, soft and pleasant at first, tiny droplets floating on a cooling breeze. They soothed the burning in Geuel’s arm where his wound still festered. Gradually though, the sprinkling became a downpour, the droplets swelling to bulbous proportions and growing in number till they felt like one solid mass of lukewarm water.
Geuel opened his mouth periodically to refresh himself, still enjoying the rain as a welcome change from his journey’s usual swelter. It slowed him down, but he knew that he could still make the city by nightfall.
By mid-afternoon though, the rain had shifted from a welcome relief to an extreme inconvenience. The water, which had initially felt almost warm, chilled as Geuel’s body grew accustomed to it. In less than an hour, it felt freezing. Several times he fell while struggling up muddy hills and embankments. And each time he found it harder to rise again. Bruises and scrapes previously forgotten became more sensitive as the water ran down through his clothing and soaked at dried scabs and dirt. His body grew cramped and stiff. When evening neared, his visibility was gone, particularly in the woodlands. If his surroundings had not already become familiar, he knew that he would never have found his way. Around five thirty, he reached one of the outlying farms and struggled over the wooden fence of its pasture. He threw aside his pack about halfway across the field, welcoming even that tiny loss of weight.
When he reached the house, the full exhaustion of his journey came crashing down on him all at once. Every mile, forced from his mind by necessity, suddenly made itself known in his groaning joints. The torn blisters on his already calloused feet screamed in the stinging water that filled his boots.
He pounded on the door with his right hand, letting his left drop to his thigh to support his drooping body.
The door creaked open partway, and a boy around Hefthon’s age peered out cautiously. He swung the door open when he recognized Geuel. “Geuel!” he cried, “what are you doing out in this infernal weather? Come in.”
Geuel pulled himself upright by the door frame and entered. “Thanks, Toman,” he said. “Listen, I’ve come from the Fairy City.”
Toman started to laugh, knowing Geuel’s disdain for the little people. His laugh died on his lips as Geuel gripped his collar.
“Listen,” Geuel said, his voice coming in a pained growl, “the goblins are coming. The Fairy City’s gone, collapsed into the Faeja.”
Toman paled and dragged Geuel farther inside. “Talk to my parents,” he said. “Tell them everything. I’ll ride for the city.”
Geuel shook his head. “I’ll go.”
“You can barely stand,” Toman replied. “Stay here. Follow when you can.”
Geuel nodded. “Thank you, Toman.”
Toman grabbed a coat from a nearby rack and darted outside, his eyes flashing with excitement. Geuel closed the door behind him and sat down to take off his shoes. Toman’s father and sister entered from the dining room nearby.
“Geuel, what happened to you, boy?” Toman’s father asked, glancing at the door from which his son had just left.
“Goblins,” Geuel replied. “Toman’s gone to warn the city.”
A short while later, Geuel sat in a rocking chair in the family’s living room, washed and dressed in some of Toman’s clothes. Even unlaced at the throat, the shirt bulged uncomfortably on Geuel’s large frame. But it felt good to be clean.
Toman’s father listened quietly as Geuel told his story, pausing afterward to consider. After a moment, he said, “There’s no doubt they’ll come. They’ve been feeling us out all summer, prowling the farmland. I know at least half a dozen folks who’ve seen ‘em skulking ‘bout their farms in the evenings. We’ll head for town, get behind the walls with the others. We can warn the Perring farm on the way. No doubt they’ll send out riders to warn the others.”
Geuel stood, his joints groaning in protest. “You should bring food, weapons. It may be days before they show, may be hours.”
“Goblins aren’t known for planning,” Toman’s father replied. “If they have a weapon, I doubt they’ll wait to use it.” He turned back to his daughter. “Saddle four horses,” he said. “Make sure the others can get out to pasture.”
“What should I do?” Geuel asked.
Toman’s father hooked his hand. “Come on to the cellar with me, I’ve got some things to fetch.” He walked over to the kitchen and dragged aside the main table. An iron ring lay set into the wood beneath it. Toman’s father dragged up on it and pulled part of the floor free, sliding it aside. A dark hole yawned in its place, a flight of rough-hewn wooden stairs running down into the darkness.
Lifting a tallow candle from its niche in the wall, Toman’s father moved down into the darkness. Geuel followed and found himself in a small cellar, roughly the size of the kitchen above them. Wooden shelves lined one wall, covered in clay pots and glass jars of canned produce. Against the other wall lay a few cedar chests. Above them, wooden pegs jutted from the wall with two leather cuirasses. Toman’s father opened the cedar chests and handed off the contents to Geuel: two plain swords, a dagger, an old wooden shield, and a bow with twelve arrows. He pointed to the stairs. “Take that lot to the horses. I’ll fetch what’s left.” He dragged the armor sets from the wall and began piling jars of produce into them.
Geuel strode quickly outside where he found the girl and Toman’s mother cinching the saddles of several large plow horses. He strapped the swords into place on two saddles and hung the dagger on his belt. The shield, he tied into place with a strip of leather from Toman’s sister and the bow and arrows he rolled into a pack using a blanket from Toman’s mother.
Within twenty minutes, the four of them were riding for Gath Odrenoch. Every few minutes, Geuel looked upward to the skyline, waiting for the orange glow of fire over the trees, waiting for his nightmares to come true.
* * *
Reheuel awoke on the fourth morning to a chilling wind. The mountains of Gath were small, but the air was still cold at the height where he lay. He struggled upright and stretched his back with a grunt, feeling his body settle its members back into place after another night on lumpy earth. Ariel flew down from the bough of a nearby stunted poplar. “Are you ready to climb?” she asked.
Reheuel nodded. “Last day, why not?”
They traveled in silence for most of that morning, the cold filling them both with a sense of apprehension. Dark clouds hung brooding over the eastern sky, and far off in the distance, Reheuel could see the trailing curtains of a distant rainfall. It reached them just before noon, a miserable downpour that soaked the rocks and turned every minor cliff face into a death trap.
Ariel flew low, buffeted by the rain drops that, to her, felt like waves. She seldom created any aids for Reheuel, her focus constantly shattered by the storm. Several times, she crawled beneath shelves of rock or pine boughs to rest her wings from the weight of the water. And each time, it only became harder to fly after she had moved on.
Reheuel struggled as he climbed, falling twice when his hands slipped on the wet rock of small cliffs. His arms and waist were bruised heavily by the time they stopped to eat midway through the day. Ariel curled up beneath the shelter of a group of ferns and tried to blot out the sounds of the storm. “How much farther?” she called over the wind.
Reheuel shrugged. “A few hours normally, but probably not till nightfall in this.”
“Should we wait till morning?” Ariel asked. “They’ll be more active in the night.”
Reheuel glanced about at their surroundings. They were in a small hollow, blocked from the wind by a rise to the east and sheltered partially from the rain by the poplar trees that surrounded them. “Perhaps, this is as good a place as any to stop.”
He unrolled his wool blanket and dragged himself back against the base of a poplar tree, feeling the trickles of rain that burst through the thin branches and ran down onto his shoulders. It was going to be a long and miserable rest. He never noticed, hours later, when exactly he fell asleep. But he awoke with a start in the night. Ariel stood on his shoulder, tugging at his sleeve frantically. “Look,” she hissed as his eyes struggled open.
He turned sharply to follow her pointing arm and gasped. It was night, and the rain had stopped. The moon and stars were completely hidden by the thick clouds overhead, but still hundreds of lights glowed above them in the night sky, drifting westward like a cloud of embers from a forest fire. “Fairies?” he asked, knowing the answer but unable to imagine any other explanation.
Ariel shook her head. “Our light is clean, like sunlight.”
He looked again at the cloud that still drifted overhead, at least three hundred strong now, several hundred feet up and spread out in a wild spray. The light was orange and hazy, like embers clouded in smoke and ash. It flickered and shifted in intensity like a dying fire.
“What are they then?” he asked.
Ariel’s eyes were wide and gleamed in the darkness. Her body trembled with fear and offense. It was the most emotional Reheuel had ever seen her. “Something new,” she whispered, “something horrible and new.”
“You don’t mean they’re—”
“They were goblins,” Ariel replied. “I’m afraid they’re something else entirely now.”
“Gath Odrenoch,” Reheuel whispered, “they’ll be there before morning.”
“We have to find the Tear,” Ariel said. “It will not stop them, but at least it will weaken them.”
Reheuel packed his blanket quickly and dragged his pack over his shoulders. “We’re leaving now,” he said. “We can’t wait any longer.”
Ariel shook the moisture from her wings and flew upward a few feet. The cloud had passed now and was moving off to the west, a sea of glowing lights that winked and guttered in the darkness. A smell of ash drifted over Ariel and Reheuel. Their eyes stung as if from smoke.
They moved off together up the mountain side. The ground was still wet, but much of the excess water had run off down the mountain face and the going was faster. Ariel occasionally stopped to provide steps.
Midway through their trip, Reheuel noticed a light filling the southern sky. He thought at first that the clouds had cleared. Instead of the moon though, he saw another cloud of lights filling the sky, white and beautiful and clean. They shone like tiny suns, as alive and constant as their celestial counterpart. Reheuel wondered briefly how he could have ever mistaken the ember light of the goblins for these clean creatures.
Ariel gasped. “My children,” she said, “where are they going?”
“Looks like north,” Reheuel replied.
“The goblins,” Ariel said. She instinctively moved toward the light, protective and afraid. “They’re going after the goblins.”
Reheuel shook his head. “They couldn’t. They were broken without the Tear.”
“Rand could,” Ariel replied. “If she made the others . . .”
“They’ll die,” Reheuel finished, letting his eyes fall to the ground at his feet.
“Yes,” Ariel said, “and if they live, then what will they be? Without innocence, they will not be fairy. They will never reconnect to the Tear. They will be—”
“Outcasts.”
Ariel sank down to her knees on the earth, staring at the lights, the brave little lights flying to the north. Her eyes closed, and she let her hands fall folded between her legs. And, once more, if fairies could weep.
After several hours, they neared a group of cave mouths. There were rough timber walls blocking these openings and gates with iron studs. But no visible sentries stood astride the walls, and no movement showed around them. Only the sounds of running water echoed from behind each gate.
Ariel peered cautiously around the trunk of the birch tree she stood behind. “See if you can get closer,” she said to Reheuel. “They may have all left.”
Reheuel nodded and slipped out into the open, crouched down in the shallow bell heather. His bow was out now, strung and nocked with a broad tipped arrow. His feet made almost no noise as they softly brushed the heather flowers. He reached the wall undetected and placed his ear to the wood. Again, he heard rushing water but nothing else. He studied the wall above for movement and carefully checked each visible arrow loop. But no movement caught his eye. He waved to Ariel to come forward. If there were any guards, they could hardly help but notice her glowing figure.
She landed on the ground beside him and looked up the nine foot palisades. “Use these,” she whispered and placed her hand on the wall. Along its face, tiny pegs of solid light, just large enough for Reheuel to grasp, jutted out evenly. Reheuel hung his bow around his body and quickly pulled himself up the palisade, slipping quietly over the far side. He rested silently on the wall’s upper walkway and peered into the cave, his first true look at the goblin world.
The three cave mouths all opened into the same room, a massive hall-like structure filled with low stone barracks and stables. He could smell the stables and the rank odor of whatever creatures were kept inside. About halfway across the hall, he saw the gleam of water. A narrow river flowed across the cavern in a semicircle, its outer loop toward the wall on which Reheuel rested. The cave into which the river flowed seemed to be the only entrance further into the mountain. Ariel flew up beside him and sniffed the air. “I don’t think there’s anything here,” she said.
Reheuel nodded and approached some nearby stairs. They were too narrow for his feet, and he had to walk sideways as he climbed down. His long strides skipped over four steps at a time. Ariel flew down beside him and pointed to the river. “I guess that’s our route,” she said.
A small bridge extended over the stream, wide enough for three to walk abreast but with no rails or walls. It hung just inches over the surface of the water, and beneath it an iron grill descended into the water. A stack of roughly carved poles lay on the bridge, and a dozen or so tiny canoes floated to the left, bumping softly against the iron grill. Reheuel walked out and lifted one of these canoes, dragging it over to the other side where it could run with the current. Ariel landed in it as he stepped down and shuddered as her feet settled in a layer of slime. “We should land as soon as possible,” she said.
Reheuel nodded. “I’d hate to be caught on the water if they find us.”
He stood in the center of the canoe and punted it along with the current, shaking occasionally as he struggled to maintain his footing. The canoe rode dangerously low under his weight, its walls just two inches above the water level.
“Look at the banks,” Ariel said as they rode.
Reheuel glanced at them. They were steep and straight, unnaturally angular. “They were carved,” he said. “These streams must be like roads.”
When the canoe entered the dark mouth of the exit, Reheuel stowed his pole on the floor of the canoe, its end hanging out on the right side, and unslung his bow. The new cave was little more than a tunnel, a long, narrow hole lit only by Ariel’s glow. On the walls, strange carvings flickered in the dim light, ancient monsters and creatures with names lost even to legend, remembered only in the hereditary fears of the goblins. Several times, as they rode, Reheuel thought he saw these carvings move. But each time he attributed it to the poor lighting and the shifting shadows.
The ride through the tunnel lasted for about twenty minutes, and then a light appeared at the mouth of an exit. It looked like neither sunlight nor daylight; it was duller, pale blue in tone. At first Reheuel thought it might be starlight, for it carried an oldness and a grayness. But it was too dim for starlight, too lackluster. This light was not so much old as sickly.
Reheuel tensed and lifted his bow in anticipation as they entered the light, but almost immediately he realized how useless the motion was. Moving from the pitch of the tunnel into this new light blinded him, causing him to quickly swing an arm over his eyes. He overturned the canoe as he did so, slipping off and crashing into the cold, four-foot water. Ariel shot upward immediately and hung above the water, staring in wonder at the world around them. For it was a world. The words hall and cavern fall desperately short of describing the true expanse of the area they had entered. It was conical in shape, as if the entire mountain were merely a hollow shell or an immensely thick wall. On its sides, from the floor around her and upwards for half a mile, thick, phosphorescent blue moss clustered like matted grass. It lit the entire expanse as far as she could see.
Towers and castles carved from the living rock of the mountain rose upward haphazardly yet majestically, the handiwork of centuries of labor. The angles were rough and ragged, the walls unpolished. Yet the overall effect of a city built from one stone was staggering. Many buildings had the melted look of stalagmites, covered in the residue of a thousand years of dripping water. Others had channels carved into their roofs and running down their bases toward the stream, single-droplet rivers carved by time.
And amidst all the grotesque splendor, the city was silent. No guttural nickers rattled from the open doors, no mealy howls from the towers overhead. The city might have been abandoned for centuries to judge by the sounds. Only the smell assured Ariel that goblins did indeed dwell in this place, the sickly, heavy scent of habitation and refuse, rotting flesh from scrap piles and rotting feces from some distant sewage system.
Reheuel clambered to shore and grunted in anger, clutching his leg. A long, thin lamprey clung doggedly to his leather chaps, struggling to break through to his flesh. Reheuel stabbed it with his dagger and flicked it back into the water. The surface roiled briefly as some larger shape moved in, drawn by the blood in the water.
He stood and looked around at the city that surrounded them. It went on for miles, far beyond where his gaze ended. The far wall above the city was merely a hazy patch of light, like the sky from the earth above. “Which way?” he asked Ariel, the sound of dripping from his soaked clothing amplified in the silence and stone.
Ariel pointed toward the center of the city. “That way,” she said.
Reheuel nodded, studying the towering keep that rose about half a mile distant, at least twice the height of any other building. “Guess it’s pretty safe to guess which building?” he asked.