Chapter Thirty-Four

Dorina

 

I did not sleep, but Raymond did, hugging me tightly from behind, utterly exhausted from the day we’d had. I tried to get up after I was sure that he was out, but he mumbled something and tightened his grip, pulling me further back against him. And I knew he would wake if I forced the issue.

And I did not want him to wake.

Raymond was loyal and good and often kind, but he had a temper, and it had been tested enough today. I needed information not a fight, and I did not think that I would get it if he came along. Of course, I wasn’t sure that I would do any better myself, with my nerves every bit as frazzled as his.

Perhaps there was a better way.

I waited until he settled down again, then mentally snagged the ogre who was still helping the guards to hold the door shut. He did not run screaming like the first one I’d snared, perhaps because he was very drunk, and very focused on finding another flagon. I released the other two, who stood there, blinking in confusion, and peeled him away.

He would not be easy to control without a drink, so stop number one was the Great Hall, where the party was over except for a few unconscious types snoring under tables or slumped against walls. And the only ale to be had was dripping from spilled tankards and puddling on flagstones. But the ogre was crafty and he headed for the kitchens, where he grabbed a small barrel for the road when the pixies weren’t looking.

Only that road wasn’t headed to a pile of his brothers in a dark cubbyhole, where he had been planning to sleep. Instead, I steered him after the faint scent of Mircea’s cologne, which his nose picked up as well as mine could have. We followed the trail like a bloodhound along intersecting corridors, up long flights of too high stairs and then down even more for this place was a maze.

It also reminded me of a patchwork cloak, looking as if it had been built by many different species over the centuries, with different needs. We left the rough, rock and timber construction and oversized everything of the giants’ area and passed into a corridor with red brick walls and low archways lining a central hall, which gleamed with the light of many furnaces. My nose twitched from the familiar smells of a blacksmith’s shop: coal, hot metal, leather, sweat and finishing oil, and the nose twitching reek of past fires that had soaked into the very walls.

I remembered the smell, but had forgotten the heat, so intense in places that the air shimmered in front of us. It was cooler where the walls blunted it and gave us brief moments of relief, and blazingly hot when we passed open arches and got hit by new blasts. I glimpsed anvils inside as we scurried by, so large that they were being worked by five or six blacksmiths at a time, their hammer blows striking rhythmically even this late into the night. They were manned by the duergars that populated this area and who stared at us, their faces closed and secretive under their ever-present hoods, as we passed.

They sent a slight shiver up my back despite the heat and the ogre noticed. He paused to scratch the itch that my reaction had caused on the brickwork by an archway, threatening to crumble it under his weight. Until a duergar came out and shouted something at him, and gave him a coin to go away.

He pocketed the coin and ambled on, passing into an area of mostly trolls. They wore the homespun, rough leathers and old furs that their kind seemed to prefer, with the exception of a dandy showing off a cape made out of scraps of velvet and satin. Most of their clothing was practical, and some was strangely beautiful, but none was what could be called elegant.

Unlike their surroundings.

I gazed up at soaring, arched passageways carved out of pale, sand-colored stone that were spacious but seemed slender because of their great height; at delicate lamps swinging on gossamer chains; at cooking fires laid in tall arches where statuary had probably once stood; at slabs of wood with crudely drawn pictures serving as shop signs and hanging outside of doorways with finely carved vines twining up the sides; and at lines of wet clothes flapping overhead like colorful flags, and cutting down the lofty ceilings to something cozier.

If troll height could be considered cozy.

The inhabitants didn’t match their environment, an impression that was only heightened when we passed into a courtyard with an exquisite central fountain featuring marble cranes, where some troll women were doing their laundry. They had their sleeves rolled up and pipes dangling from their lips, while children gamboled about, the toddlers already almost as tall as me. One of the huge babies bumbled into the ogre and he grasped it by the head, causing me a moment of panic.

Only to see him turn it around and send it back to its mother with a light swat on the backside. It waddled off happily, looking for new adventures, and she raised a hand in thanks. And to my surprise, the ogre raised one back.

Unlike on Earth, where old grudges often died hard, here the two groups seemed to have reached a truce. To the point where a sole ogre in less than full command of his faculties could wander these halls without fear. And pass unmolested through to the entrance of a wide staircase going up.

It was as broad as the hallway, with large windows cut into the walls, following the slope of the stairs and allowing me to see out. And there was much to see, with a huge open area sprawling out below us that confused the brain, as it seemed too large to be inside anything, even a palace. Maybe because it was, I realized, looking back over my shoulder.

It seemed that we had left the palace when the stairs transitioned into what I now recognized as a bridge overlooking a city at night. But not like one I’d ever seen or even dreamt about. And which appeared to be built around an immense hole in the ground, the bottom of which disappeared into darkness, while the pale colored, strangely striated sides supported the buildings.

And there were plenty of them.

The palace sat atop one towering sweep of stone, right on the edge of the chasm, and hundreds of buildings were clustered around the entire extent of the rest. For as far as I could see at least, because the sides, too, were lost in the night. Or hidden behind other buildings, as the chasm was not a perfect circle, being stretched here and elongated there, like the banks of an irregular lake.

But everywhere I looked, were buildings and roads and people and life.

So much that it was impossible to take it all in at once, and left me feeling slightly overwhelmed. But one thing I couldn’t ignore was directly in front of the castle, between it and the bridge. But its proximity wasn’t the main thing that had caught my eye.

I felt the ogre’s feet slowing as I stared in awe, but not because I had suggested it. But because no one could have passed by and not stared a little. If for no other reason that to figure out what, exactly, they were looking at.

There were islands of greenery atop slender, white columns spearing up out of the darkness below. Some were short enough for me to look down onto their tops, while others were taller than the bridge itself and partially hidden from view by its roof. They would have been pretty enough on their own, having the same deceptively delicate looking architecture of the troll area we’d just left, but these had an added feature.

A cluster of them had been designed to fall at varying heights, allowing a stream of water to cascade down them from some unseen source above, creating a waterfall in stages. I blinked my eyes at it, not sure what I was seeing, but yes, I’d gotten it right. It had been cleverly made so that the water hit, not the greenery itself, although that was doused with the spray, but stone platforms which were angled to send it flying onward to the next little island in the chain.

The result was that the water hopped from base to base, creating a silvery river untethered to anything but gravity. And it was visible despite the darkness as the islands had flowers and rock formations on them that provided illumination. The flowers glowed dimly, and were only bright where many of them clustered together, but the rocks had cracks in places, deep fissures showing off crystalline formations that blazed with light and lit up the whole fantastic structure.

I stared at it in surprised delight, the relative brightness allowing me to enjoy the strange floating river that the fey had made. The islands of greenery atop the towers served as its flower strewn banks and all of it appeared to float in midair. I knew that was an illusion, but it was a convincing and beautiful one, so much so that it took a moment for me to recognize that there was something else dotting the islands.

Something far more unsettling.

Ravens, what must have been hundreds of them, were everywhere. I hadn’t immediately noticed them, as the bright, sparkling river drew the eye and their coloring allowed them to be almost invisible against the night when they stayed still. And most of the ones on the islands were motionless, having bedded down for the night, save for a few who were strutting about with their chests thrown out as if they owned the place.

But now that I’d noticed them, they were everywhere, swooping together overhead as if the darkness had grown wings and chose to fly. And it was a great deal of darkness, as these were not Earth birds. They had to top six feet, reminding me of the massive stone carvings about the fireplace in the Great Hall, which I had assumed were exaggerated in size.

But perhaps not.

But they were as mischievous as the smaller birds I knew, with some soaring and diving and chasing each other around the vast open space, while others were playing with some trinket they’d stolen from a guard. I couldn’t see what it was, just that it flashed gold in the night, but the troll clearly wanted it back. He was yelling at them from a walkway a good distance off, clearly demanding the return of his possession, but the birds didn’t appear impressed.

Several dove at his head, causing him to stumble backward and bat at them, while the one that currently possessed his property dropped it from a height as if meaning to return it. The troll somehow spied it through the flapping feathers and made an impressive leap, trying to grab it before it disappeared into the darkness below. And he almost had it, was just about to close his fist on it—

When another raven swooped in and snatched it away.

“Bastards,” my ride murmured in his own language, but I saw the meaning in his mind.

Perhaps we should walk on, I thought, letting the suggestion glide lightly along the surface of his brain, and I didn’t have to do it twice. He might get along with the trolls these days, but he clearly drew a line at huge, badly-behaved birds.

And, frankly, so did I. There was something uncanny about them, with their actions a little too alien, a little too . . . non-bird-like . . . although I couldn’t have said just how. But it caused me to feel uneasy, and then there was the fact that there were so many.

We started climbing again, with the ogre staring about suspiciously and clutching his barrel to make sure that no rogue bird tried to steal it away. It gave me a chance to gaze about a bit more, including back at the palace, which had a strange mixture of almost Grecian columns and medieval arches. It stood out from brick, wood and darker-colored stone buildings surrounding it, glowing ghostly pale in the low light.

The waterfall helped with that, sending dancing light shadows to further highlight it, as did the two statues that framed the portico. This time, they weren’t ravens, but a giant on the left, his shaggy beard reminding me of the one I’d fought in the arena, although his clothes were considerably finer. And on the other, was someone who looked like a member of the light fey.

I thought at first that it must be another giant, maybe a younger version as he had no beard. But the longer I looked, the less I believed that. The two statues were of a height, probably so that they would match or be seen as equals, but even so, they were clearly not the same.

The light fey was far less imposing, with none of the bulging muscles and stocky, square body of the giant. His facial features were also different, being more slender, almost delicate, with a thin nose and lips and high cheekbones. Even without the height difference to go on, one would never be confused for the other.

So, what were they doing there?

I chalked it up to one of the very many things I did not understand about Faerie, and moved on. Or rather, I tried. But the initial shock had worn off now, and I was taking more in.

Causing me to keep stopping to gaze around in awe and growing realization. Because it was a city spread out around us. An entire city of the dark fey.

Ray had spoken of their unusual use of portals, but I hadn’t really understood until now. They really had just picked up a city and taken it with them, hadn’t they? But how?

How could they possibly power something like this? A village, yes, that I could understand, although it would have been quite a feat. But this broke the brain to even contemplate, or at least, it broke mine.

And my ride wasn’t any happier, although the view wasn’t what had caused a low growl to emanate from between his lips.

He was staring at something farther up the bridge, near the arch where it started down the other side. For a moment, I squinted in puzzlement, not understanding what I was seeing. It looked rather like a beaver dam which had somehow ended up blocking most of the pathway, just a great mass of sticks and debris.

But then I glanced to the side and saw similar structures on the towers and dotting the roofs of surrounding buildings, and light dawned.

It’s a nest, I thought, and felt the ogre nod slightly. He’d already known that, and didn’t like it. Perhaps because the gigantic creation covered so much of the path that we were going to have to get a bit too close for comfort in order to edge around.

Or perhaps his distress was because there were sounds emanating from it.

Ripping, tearing, gobbling sounds.

He thought briefly about the battle ax slung across his back. But grabbing it might be taken for aggression, and anyway, it would require putting down the barrel and he was not putting down the barrel. He edged closer.

The nest was a testament to the ravens’ strength, being formed of small trees instead of sticks and containing a worrying number of bones woven through the mix. Along with wool, some sizeable tufts of some unfortunate animal’s fur, huge strips of bark, withered grasses, and even pieces of clothing, the latter probably stolen from the trolls’ laundry lines. But those were just the supports; the decorations were even showier, including small mirrors, pretty bits of ribbon, seashells, someone’s boot, which had been made of red leather and buffed to a high shine, even pieces of jewelry and coins stuck in patches of dried mud.

But despite the latter, no one had come to retrieve their items, and as I passed by using the scant open area of path left to us, I realized why. For there were two birds inside, still with the bald, prickly skin of the recently hatched, without a single feather. Yet they were already savaging the carcass that a loving parent must have left for them.

I did not know what creature the carcass had belonged to, as it was too mangled for identification, but it was the size of a stag, giving some ideas of the little one’s appetites. They were tearing into it with glee, their beaks bloody and their faces gory, until they paused when we came too close, to watch us with bright black eyes. I strove to look as unthreatening as an ogre can although I wasn’t worried about the babes, for neither was above a foot high and the blue speckled eggshells in the muddy bottom of the nest proved that my estimation of their age was correct.

But there were altogether too many of the massive adults about, so many in fact that none cared that one of their nests lay on a public thoroughfare. And had probably been there for years, as ravens on Earth tended to reuse nests, and this one did not look new. But then, who was going to disturb it?

Not us, we mutually decided, and assured that our feet did not linger.

But we weren’t fast enough, for a massive shadow rippled across the bridge as we cleared the obstruction, covering us in its shade. And a rustle of wings caused the delicate lamps swinging overhead to sway as if in a stiff breeze. The ogre started and looked about wildly for a second—and then looked ahead again slowly, to find himself staring directly into the eyes of the biggest raven I’d ever seen.

It was taller than us by at least two feet, had huge claws, a truly savage-looking beak, and a great mass of iridescent, blue-black feathers with tints of green in them when the lantern light hit just right. But its size was not the strangest thing about it, no, not by half. Because I’d been wrong before; it wasn’t staring into the ogre’s eyes, whom it barely seemed to notice.

It was staring into mine.