She found herself in a small alcove, with pegs on either side for jackets and low-to-the-ground shelves for boots. Well-polished wooden walls rose up on either side, soft lights giving them a golden glow. Close-fitting stone covered the floor.

  None of the touches were elegant or sophisticated, but rather, homey.

  Tanelith glanced at Mironor but he merely indicated she should continue into the house.

  She could smell garlic, onions, and fresh bread up ahead. Then a figure stood in the doorway. Elder Finatiel. She wore an apron over her fine robes, and had her hair pulled back in a sloppy bun.

  “Hello!” the elder said with a huge smile. “I assumed that since you’ve been traveling for so long, what you’d most want would be a home-cooked meal. To join a family for dinner.”

  Tanelith felt the pricking of tears behind her eyes. “You’re right,” she said. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. It was incredibly thoughtful and kind of Elder Finatiel to realize that.

  “What can I do to help?” Tanelith asked. It had been so long since she’d worked in a kitchen. She still fondly remembered helping her mother with the family’s evening meal.

  Although, to be honest, she generally didn’t think of it as a joyful task but as a burden that she didn’t share often enough with her sisters, who never did their fair share.

  She was determined that when she returned home, she would enjoy everything with her family.

  “Dinner’s mostly prepared,” Elder Finatiel admitted. “But won’t you come into the kitchen and join me while I finish serving?”

  “Thank you,” Tanelith said. She glanced over her shoulder at Mironor. “Thank you,” she said again, “especially for bringing me here.”

  He nodded and gave her a soft smile. “Of course,” he said.

  The pair of them made their way into the tiny kitchen. There was a table and three chairs set up in a nook just past the work area. The floor was red tile, clean and well taken care of. A large, cast iron wood-burning stove hulked in one corner, and an elegant pump standing over a glass sink counterbalanced it in the other. A “cool room” was off to one side, where food was kept fresh magically. Cupboards lined the walls, along with jars filled with spices. The entire affect was homey and welcoming.

  Tanelith took the back chair, while Mironor poured them all wine in tall fluted glasses, along with mugs of water.

  Elder Finatiel served a pork stew into large clay bowls that were the blue of a spring sky, and put the sliced bread on the table as well. She didn’t bother to take off her apron, but sank down into her chair with a soft sigh, as if she wasn’t used to standing and cooking for so long.

  Perhaps she wasn’t. Maybe there was generally someone who cooked for her. But she’d gone to all this effort for Tanelith, who was touched by it.

  Elder Finatiel raised her wine glass. “To new beginnings, and new friends,” she said as a toast before taking a sip of her wine.

  It was a tart white wine, that tasted of apples, pears, and honey.

  Tanelith quickly put her glass down after a second sip. It was also strong, and she hadn’t had any occasion to drink alcohol for almost a year.

  They all ate in silence for a while, Tanelith appreciating the fine hand that Elder Finatiel had with spices. The pork was tenderly cooked in a garlicky tomato sauce, with large chunks of squash and sweet onions. Tanelith copied Mironor and scooped up the sauce with her bread.

  Elder Finatiel finally asked Mironor how his day had gone, how his training with Galote was progressing. Tanelith just sat back and ate her fill. She felt both blessed to be enjoying a quiet evening at home with a family, as well as homesick for her own mother and father.

  Eventually, Elder Finatiel turned to Tanelith. “Did you have any visitors this afternoon?”

  “I did,” Tanelith said. “Thank you for sending Galote and instructing her to take me to the sleepers.”

  Elder Finatiel’s expression turned more serious. “You needed to know the truth, and not have it sprung upon you by the elders tomorrow when we meet.”

  Tanelith nodded. “Galote also said that she would have me declared one of the guardians, so that I would only serve for a year.”

  “Yes,” Elder Finatiel said, a smile briefly crossing her lips. “I would support that. Both Galote and Mironor have said that the city responds to you, that you can interact with it.”

  “I can,” Tanelith said. She squirmed once as she let her senses reach out. “This chair is generally empty, isn’t it?”

  Mironor and his mother exchanged a glance.

  “No, no one has said anything to me,” Tanelith said. “But your husband…is gone.”

  “He’s currently among the sleepers,” Elder Finatiel said, nodding. “His time to awaken is coming soon.”

  That news gave Tanelith a huge sense of relief. Not because the person was coming back, but because someone in an elder’s family was taking their responsibility seriously.

  “But didn’t he go when he was younger?” Tanelith said, a little confused.

  “Aye, he did,” Elder Finatiel said. She looked grim now. “But we need to take more turns, now. Or go for longer.”

  Tanelith reached out her senses further. Though she was far from the room of the sleepers, she still could find it, could now recognize the power that pulsed slowly from them, like a viscous river of magic, flowing out and through the veins of the city.

  “Are three hundred enough?” Tanelith asked. “Or will you soon need more?”

  Again, Elder Finatiel and Mironor exchanged a look. They held this one for longer, before Elder Finatiel sighed and nodded. “Yes. We will need more.” She paused, then looked up at Tanelith. “I know that you would speak to us of war. Of stopping the Ilburh from enslaving the Egarlorsar. There are those who might, might, support such a move. In exchange for more sleepers.”

  Tanelith blinked, surprised. “So if some of my people come and exchange places with your sleepers, you’ll loan me some of the guardians?”

  “Roughly, yes,” Elder Finatiel said. “The details would still have to be worked out. But essentially—those who were freed would have a choice of how they would thank their liberators.”

  The lovely dinner that Tanelith had just eaten roiled in her stomach. She didn’t immediately start yelling, though she felt like it. “Oh?” she said coolly. “What would be their other choice?”

  “If we had some farmland on Ithlond, we could reclaim some of our own fields for houses,” Elder Finatiel said, sounding more eager. “That way, with more sleepers, we could support more people. The population would still have to be strictly controlled. We couldn’t welcome everyone. We could still bring up more than we would have been able to.”

  “So the people you’d freed, your own people, would still be slaves. But instead of working the land for the Ilburh, they’d be working the land for you,” Tanelith said, not bothering to keep the disappointment from tainting her voice.

  “They wouldn’t be slaves,” Elder Finatiel said, objecting. “They’d be free to come and go as they pleased.”

  “As long as you, their masters, were properly fed,” Tanelith said, fuming.

  “We wouldn’t be harsh or cruel, not like the current Ilburh,” Elder Finatiel said.

  “And the blood metal collars?” Tanelith said, disdain dripping from her words. “Surely you would no longer use those.”

  Finatiel waved her hand, dismissing the idea. “If you people would just focus your magic, you could get rid of those collars.”

  Tanelith found herself sitting back, shocked to her core. “Have you ever seen blood metal? Touched it or used it?”

  “No. Why would we?” Finatiel said. “Now, I know that it must have been awful being captured as you claimed. But surely there was something you could have done?”

  “Something I could have done?” Tanelith asked, surprised at how mild her tone remained.

  “All you had to do was join your magic together,” Elder Finatiel said dismissively. “Surely you could have overcome the Gilukkhaz who’d captured you.”

  Tanelith shook her head. Elder Finatiel didn’t understand. None of them did.

  “The blood metal drains your magic from you,” Tanelith said. “We couldn’t have fought it. Only those with training could hold onto even the smallest part of their magic. We had to keep it hidden, deep within ourselves, a pool under our skin, or else suffer agony from the Gilukkhaz pain wands.”

  A moment of doubt crossed Elder Finatiel’s face, then she shook her head. “If you say,” she said, obviously not believing Tanelith.

  “You don’t understand,” Tanelith said, fighting to keep her temper. “The only way I could have removed my collar was by using the Dissolving Blade on it. Nothing else would have cut it. You’ve seen the door to the room of the sleepers. That, too, is metal fashioned by the Gilukkhaz. What do you think you could use against it, if it was sealed against you?”

  Elder Finatiel shook her head again. “I’m sure we would figure out something.”

  Tanelith opened her mouth, then shut it again, unsure what to say in the face of such dishonesty.

  “Besides,” Elder Finatiel said, “we all know that in some ways, the Egarlorsar down on Ithlond have diminished. Even you admit that as a people, we aren’t as tall as we once were. And we are no longer as powerful magically.”

  Tanelith speared the other person with a hard gaze. “Up here as well. You used to only need three masters. Now, you need three hundred sleepers.”

  It was Elder Finatiel’s turn to squirm in her chair, though the movement was slight and aborted quickly.

  “We lost so much during the War of Betrayal,” Elder Finatiel said quietly. “So much of our training. We were lucky to find people who would join together to get the city to fly again.”

  Tanelith nodded. “But surely you could do something. Just focus your magic.” She couldn’t help but throw Elder Finatiel’s words back in her face.

  The elder didn’t get angry, however. “Would this deal be of interest to you?” she said, sounding obstinate.

  Tanelith took a deep breath, trying to swallow down her anger.

  How much were twenty fighters worth to her? Thirty? Fifty fully trained Egarlorsar, in their milky-glass armor? What damage could she do with such a crew? Could she raid Nyarkib, the mines beneath the mountain Nyramukz, and free all the slaves working there? Maybe stop all the blood metal trade?

  How many of her people would volunteer to be sleepers for a year or more, just to ensure that the rest of her people were freed? Would those from the Broken Mountains, who had tried to maintain more blood purity, be willing? How about the merchants from the Blasted Plains, who had lost daughters and sons to the slavers? What would they pay to ensure that no one else’s children were ever lost?

  “I don’t know,” Tanelith said honestly. She did not want to take this deal. She felt as though the demands made by this agreement put her people into an awful place, quite honestly.

  She was also a merchant’s daughter. Her parents never gave away anything for free. Goods and services had to be paid for.

  “Sleep on it,” Elder Finatiel said “Consider how much good you could do in this war of yours with trained guardians at your side. There are about one hundred here now.” The implication was that Tanelith would only get some of those guardians, not all.

  Tanelith sighed. She didn’t want to take this deal. She didn’t feel as though she had the right to make this sort of decision for her people.

  What would the slaves do to be freed? Those who were in stud farms? Or were they too broken already?

  She suddenly wished she still had her collar with her, so that she could show the people from the city just how bad the blood metal was, what it was like to wear such a thing. There was no matter of “saving” one’s self. The magic was too overpowering, the circumstances deliberately debilitating.

  What would Elder Finatiel have done, trapped in the back of a slaver’s cart, being taught just how much pain she could endure? By a slaver who wanted them to cry out in pain, to “sing”?

  After they finished eating, Mironor took Tanelith back to her rooms. She was quiet on the walk back, thoughtful and weary.

  These people lived in the clouds. They didn’t understand what it was like to be hated by the others. To be prey for the Gilukkhaz.

  They wouldn’t have survived being made a slave. No, they still had too much pride.

  “Thank you for the lovely dinner,” Tanelith said as they stopped outside of the door to her room.

  “You’re welcome,” Mironor said, with a bow of his head. “I know—I know that you would just like our help. But I hope that you also see our position.”

  “I do,” Tanelith said wryly. “But what it if was your sister who’d been captured by the slaves? Your mother who was being threatened? Sold to a stud farm, so that you could breed more slaves? Used by the Ilburh males, whenever they had needs?”

  Mironor looked disgusted by that. “Surely you’re exaggerating,” he said.

  “You know I’m not. You know that I’m telling the truth,” Tanelith said, her tone as bleak as her heart.

  Mironor gazed at her for a moment, his gray eyes hidden. “Good night,” he said after a few moments.

  Tanelith let herself into her rooms, firmly locking the door behind her.

  They would never listen. Never believe what she had to say.

  Was it worth even trying?

  Chapter

  Twelve

  In the morning, Tanelith knew what she had to do. She broke her fast with the food she found in a basket just outside her door—fresh baked bread with some soft cheese and tea. Then she dressed in her travel clothes, leaving her borrowed robes behind. It had been so nice wearing clothing that soothed her soul, but she couldn’t keep them, couldn’t stay in this place of luxury and comfort.

  Not while her people were suffering and dying down on Ithlond.

  She sat in her front rooms, sipping the lovely tea that they’d brought her—it tasted of tart fruit and sweet mint—watching the garden mural. It was interesting how the sun moved across the sky, though the plants never moved. They didn’t turn and twist in the sunlight, didn’t grow.

  Like these people didn’t change. They were stuck, as beautiful and as stagnant as the mural.

  Tanelith was ready when the knock came on her door. She shouldered her pack and called the armor to her. It flowed easily, enclosing her body quickly. She wasn’t sure if the Dissolving Blade recognized that she was in danger, or if it was just responding to her tense mood.

  Maybe some year she would be able to get fully trained in how to use it. Maybe she could visit again, and talk to Galote…But those were dreams for another time.

  She opened the door and found Mironor outside. It didn’t surprise her that he was in full armor as well.

  “Thank your sister for the clothes,” Tanelith said as she stepped out and released the lock on the door. Now, anyone could enter.

  “Are you sure?” Mironor said. He sounded sad, which she hadn’t been expecting.

  “I am,” Tanelith said. “I need to free my people. With or without your help.”

  Mironor nodded and led the way back to the city hall. No one paid any attention to them as they strode through the beautiful hallways and corridors, stepping out into bright sunlight then back again into cool shade.

  Tanelith felt her heart breaking as she drank in the sights of the city. The beautiful murals filling the walls. The elegant mosaics that danced across the floor. The sophisticated robes and manners of the people.

  These were her people, just like those from the Broken Mountains, as well as the children sent away from such places, captured by slavers and broken until that life was all they knew.

  This time, instead of being led into a stuffy chamber in the city hall, Mironor took Tanelith to a meeting room. The elders all sat at a long table across the back, two dozen in all. Elder Enwere sat close to the center. Elder Finatiel sat next to him. They were dressed in all the colors of spring flowers, though elegantly so, their voices low and murmuring like a mountain brook.

  Tanelith stayed just inside the door of the room, taking it all in. A large abstract mosaic of black and white covered the floor, a geometric pattern with sharp points all leading to the table. Heavy red drapes covered the windows behind the elders’ table, backlit with the bright sunlight which tried to sneak in. Great white globes hung from the contoured ceiling, banishing all shadows from the room.

  Maybe that was the other reason why the elders met during the day, so that no one could be hiding in here, skulking around the shadows.

  While Tanelith had seen more than one statue dedicated to the Goddess as she and Mironor had been walking through the city, she hadn’t seen any mention of the Hidden One.

  Of course, these people would only stay in the light. They had no need to pray to the Hidden One to keep them safe. Only those on Ithlond needed such a protector.

  Finally, Tanelith stepped away from the door, toward the center of the room. As she walked, the room grew quiet, until all that could be heard was the shuffling of robes as the elders settled down, because Tanelith kept her own footsteps silent.

  “Welcome, visitor,” Elder Enwere said, sounding as pompous as ever.

  “Welcome, Tanelith,” Elder Finatiel said immediately afterward.

  What, had Elder Enwere forgotten her name? Probably.

  He glared for a moment at Elder Finatiel before turning a fake smile back toward Tanelith. “You are just a visitor here, in Vallethlar,” he said firmly, as if daring anyone to counter this truth.

  “And I truly have enjoyed my time here, and your fine hospitality,” Tanelith said, bowing her head.

  Elder Enwere preened at that. Tanelith didn’t roll her eyes in response. She might hurt something. It wasn’t as if he’d provided any of that hospitality.

  “But now, a choice must be made,” Elder Enwere continued. “There are those who would have you stay here as a guardian. While I could see the arguments for that, I’m still inclined to disagree.”

  “May I ask why?” Tanelith said. No one had given her any guidance for how this meeting should go, so she had no idea if her question was out of line or not.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18