“They're coming. Get up.”

Lila woke to find Dar shaking her and a peculiar zap running the length of her arm where he touched her, which she belatedly processed and recognised as a kind of bite or nip from his aetheric self. She got up from the floor and ran a full upgrade at the same time, so that when she had made it to her feet she was awake, alert, and feeling fine. Dar pushed handfuls of wet plastic tubing and first aid at her.

“I don't know how to pack these. You must carry them. They shouldn't know you've been here.”

Lila took them and saw that they had been flushed reasonably clean. The floorboards were drying from a scrub, but they were stained. She worked as fast as she could to put everything together and back in its place. She caught Dar staring openly as her leg compartments opened and closed with soft whirring and clicks, a silvery blur of motion that made her hands look slow, a whisper of sound like leaves stirring in a light breeze. He was fascinated and there was no trace of his earlier repulsion towards her on his face. She smiled. “Want me to sand the floor for you?”

“No. There is no time, even for you. If you are ready then we must go.” He stood by the door, tall and straight in new, clean clothes, a variety of bladed weapons stored across his back alongside the sweeping curves of a bow and two quivers full of arrows. Their fletchings were of various hues of brown, grey, and green, notched and nocked in varying ways her master-at-arms system identified as being intended for a wide variety of purposes besides simple killing.

She found herself glancing at Dar's face uncertainly. His eyes, now the colour of noon sky and nothing like the midnight of earlier, were clear and full of the need for urgent action. She glanced at his skin—it was pale, like daylight through flat, thin cloud.

“Ready,” she said.

He looked at her for a long moment. “Mmn, not quite.” He went to another cupboard and pulled out some clothing. “Your armour will reflect too much light, though I do not know if this will fit.”

“It's done,” Lila said and he turned, frowning, as she changed the surface of her metallic body parts to partial camouflage. Microscopic scales in the metal structure turned to reflect exact wavelengths of light, each different, to produce perfect reproductions of flat colour, very similar to those of her surroundings. It was a step down from full camo, which resulted in complete invisibility for her metal parts and the disconcerting sight of her head and torso floating around unsupported. She took a long shirt off him and put that over her khaki underwear.

Dar almost grinned. He put the rest of the clothes back. “Your hair will need some mud before long, I regret to say. It is a very un-elven colour.”

“Not yours?” She found she was teasing him easily, as though they had been the best of friends for some time.

“Mine is close enough to mud,” he said, listening for a moment or two before opening the door.

Outside, the forest still dripped, although the rain had stopped some time ago. It was so lush and green that Lila paused to look at it, to smell it, to feel the peculiar intensity with which things got on with growing. Leaves showed her that plants here were the same as those in Otopia, but here they were bigger and more healthy looking. When she listened and tuned out her own and Dar's sound, she could hear everything growing; a susurration of slow but immeasurable power. It was disconcerting. In a way that no Otopian forest could have been, this one was alive. It wasn't intelligent, nor even particularly aware—she didn't feel watched—its biology simply dwarfed hers in scale and appetite. It thrived, and her flesh body responded to that with joy.

They travelled fast, like Zal used to, running at an exhilarating pace through the trees and across open clearings, along the banks of streams, across rivers, through dry gorges choked with old glacial rocks, and up moorland hillsides where the heathers grew higher than their knees. All the time they ascended and, when Dar stopped to point out the views, Lila could see more and more of Lyrien, a beautiful green map, rolling out from her feet like the most sumptuous of carpets.

Lila marvelled at Dar's recovery, and her own. She had never felt better. With the sweat running down her face they came to a rocky outcrop which Dar called the Star Rocks. This tower of stone stood out from the surrounding land which had eroded around its harder substance. It held the two of them balanced on a finger of granite five thousand feet above the lowlands and Lila could see back into Lyrien and forwards, to Lilirien and Sathanor, hidden by clouds.

“Sathanor is a valley landscape within a ring of mountains,” Dar told her. “The place you last came to here is a village set against the foot of those mountains, where the pass into Sathanor begins. You can see it from here, right on the eastern edge of the range. Those lakes mark where the river runs out. You remember their shores? I saw you walking there, taking the rowboats out on the last day of that conference.”

Lila nodded. She did remember. It had been sunny and warm, the lake still as a mirror, all the boats graceful and smooth as everyone took turns at pretending to be good with oars. She had no idea that Dar had been there then. He could have been anyone. She hadn't been able to tell who was what, there were so many strange faces, and, anyway, all the elves looked the same to her then.

“We cannot go that way. We will cross the land as directly as we can from here. Quickly, we must get down from here.” He led the way back, across steeply sloping grassland and into the line of trees which crept as far as they were able up the knoll. Lila looked back as she descended and saw the heat trace of three human-sized bodies far back across the hills they had covered.

“Someone's following,” she said.

“No doubt,” Dar agreed.

“Dar,” she said as they began to jog downhill. “Do you know Zal?”

“Not personally,” he replied. “Though I have watched him a long time.”

Something in Dar's voice made Lila hesitate. “You're a fan?” she said, unable to believe her ears.

“We are not so far apart, politically.”

So, not exactly the kind of fan Lila was used to, screaming and knicker-throwing, but still. Fan. “Is he from Alfheim?”

“Of course.” He snorted with what may have been a laugh.

Their descent levelled off and Dar led her sloshing upstream through a narrow gully. She could see a high sandbank far ahead, pocked with the holes of swifts' nests, although it wasn't the season for them and the holes were empty. Another small way-hut stood atop the bank almost hidden in a drapery of vines. “Wait here,” Dar said. “I'll go steal the things we need.”

Lila stood up to her knees in cold flowing water and shivered with pleasure. Soft green leaves danced above and around her in the light breeze. She wondered what was going on with the agents back home, and how poor Jolene was going to manage when Zal failed to show up for Frisco. Her clock showed her that she had two hours left to get Zal there on time. No way. And she wondered if Malachi had found any more out about the peculiar recordings from the car back in Bay City. But it was a relief to only be able to wonder, and it occurred to her as she stood alone there that these few minutes, in which nobody knew where she was and couldn't contact her, were a gift of freedom.

Dar beckoned her silently from the top of the sandbank and she started forwards obediently. It was already over.

Lila climbed to meet him and followed his lead into the depths of a vigorous holly thicket. There was a small hollow inside the bushes, covered in flat, brown leaves and dry. They sat there and ate furiously. Lila's hunger was overpowering from the second she smelled the food and, even though it was dry rations that had to be chewed with a lot of water, they feasted.

“No lembas jokes, if you please,” Dar said when he could swallow and not bite again immediately. “I have heard them all.”

“Wouldn't dream of it. Perfect,” Lila said with her mouth full. As she slowed down and recovered her senses from the delicious intensity of filling her stomach, she realised how close they were, actually pressed shoulder to shoulder in the tiny place, knees bunched up, like kids hiding out. She glanced at Dar and found she didn't hate him one bit any more, even if she tried. It made her smile. “Do you do this often?”

“All the time,” Dar said dryly. “It is my continual misfortune to languish thus whilst dreaming of white-tile bathrooms and luxury king-size vibrating-massage beds and four-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and five-star room service.”

“You're kidding.”

“I am.” He licked his fingers and swallowed and listened. Lila saw his ears move. The long, pointed tips free of his hair made micro-fine adjustments in their position. It was rather comical, but she didn't laugh. She realised that he was filtering some magical dimension she wasn't aware of. But his humour had surprised her and she didn't feel like laughing at him.

“We have to go.” Dar slid out of the bush hideaway on his stomach and waited for her. “The ones who pursue us have tracker elementals working for them and it's possible there's nothing we can do to conceal you if there are metal elementals among them. We will have to keep running.”

He paused and drew a small packet from a pocket inside his jerkin, shaking some dust from it onto his hand. Lila flinched, remembering that he had once overcome her that way, knocking her out with a word and a single breath that blew the dust in her face. This time he blew it more gently over the holly trees and across the path that led to the little hut. She heard him whispering elven syllables she couldn't quite pick up.

“That should slow them,” he said but he didn't look happy. Lila avoided touching any of it and went the long way around to follow him uphill again as he kept to the contours, trying to place solid hillsides between them and those who followed.

“What was that?”

“Zoomenon dust,” he said. “Elementals dislike being removed from Zoomenon. They can only be run like pets by good elemental hunters. The dust is like catnip to them. They will not be persuaded to leave here until they have gathered it all back. The spell will tell me when that is done.”

Like the animal spell in the car boot, Lila thought. She asked him about that kind of magic.

“Such cats are fey agents,” Dar said, shrugging as though everyone must know that. “Or they are Thanatopic messengers.”

“Forgive my magical dunceness,” Lila said, “but what about cats that change into rats, or mist?”

“That could still be either. Unless it was a ghost or a spirit.”

“No,” Lila said. “I don't think so.” She remembered the animal spirit at Solomon's Folly with a shudder. The cat in the car had been nothing like that. “Do elves have any affinity with Interstitial creatures as a rule?”

“No,” Dar said. “But some demons do. Not any that you would wish to meet however. Why, have you seen one in Otopia?”

Lila didn't answer at first. She wasn't sure how much she could really trust Dar, although she felt a bond with him now that made it too easy to talk to him, and his apparent candour made her want to tell him everything. She had to remind herself that he worked for a foreign power, and was no doubt highly trained in the art of faking sincerity. And so she told herself that, but it sounded a wrong chord in her heart which didn't believe that Dar was lying. Her heart felt confident in its judgement, had done so ever since the moment they had—well, what had happened?

Lila was brought up short by the realisation that she didn't have an explanation, in fact did not know what to call it or how to think of it. She had simply brushed it aside as irrelevant to the moment at hand. But now she had nothing to do but yomp along, watching Dar's back, and it hit home just how far she was from what she knew in any direction. But on the bright side, her aching bones and sore muscles neither ached nor burned. When she concentrated, she couldn't even feel a hint of pain where the medics had struggled to heal the junctions of metal and flesh mere days ago.

Now, as well as stopping mentally and emotionally, she stopped in her physical tracks. Dar turned and looked back at her, questioningly.

“Did you hear something?”

“No,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Nothing.”

He glanced at her with curiosity but didn't ask what was on her mind. He waited.

“How long would you wait?” she asked, turning the moment to test her heart and its judgements.

“A long time,” he said. “Questions are always leading. So one never asks a question, if waiting will suffice, otherwise one gets the answer one expects, which is not generally the truth. What you want to say will reveal itself, if it is going to, when it should. You humans tend to think of it as some kind of superiority complex, I understand, when we keep our silence and give you our full attention. To an elf such a thing is a natural courtesy.”

This was not the response Lila had been expecting. She felt conciliatory. “You must find humans most prying.”

“It has been noted. But I think our curiosity levels are well matched. It is simply the case that we have different ways of dealing with it.” He wiped sweat from his face with the fabric back of one of the archery bracers which encased his forearms. “I am glad that you have stopped, as it happens, because we are about to step onto the foot of the true mountains which mark the border between Lyrien and Sathanor, and these are places where wild magic collects in great abundance. I wanted to warn you to be on your guard for its presence in whatever way you can. It would be very difficult for us if we were to become trapped in a Game, even a trivial one.”

Lila's high spirits sank somewhat. “I never saw the last one coming, and I was watching for it. Sort of. Anyway, I knew it was a risk. You lot always…I mean, you're well known for catching humans in Games.” She stumbled over the end of the sentence in shame. Words that wouldn't have seemed even slightly dubious a few days ago now made her sound like a galloping racist. Because that's what she was. Or had been. She looked up, thinking she would see a flash of the real, haughty Dar now all right, but he only shrugged.

“We are guilty of many foolish Games with Otopians, romantic gambles being only one. But do not say you are not pleased by it, or I think you will make yourself a liar.”

That told me, Lila thought, and did not deny it.

“Come,” he beckoned, looking back and glancing at the sky where the sun was going down. Shadows lengthened. “Night falls like stone at this time of year in Alfheim. We should find some shelter and rest soon. Some hours are not good to be abroad in this part of the country, and one of them is fast approaching.”

“You make it sound extra spooky when you say it like that,” she grumbled gently, following him closely. “Why can't you say, it's getting dark, let's take a break, and by the way the neighbourhood could use some work. That sounds much less imposing, you know?”

“I…” Dar stopped. Lila felt the faintest prickle across her skin and a scent, like lemon, in her nostrils.

“Oh,” she said, realising the sudden presence of wild aether. Then, suddenly, from a childhood moment she'd never recalled until now, “White rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits…” She said it seven times.

Saying the silly words broke the charm that she could feel forming between them, the one which Dar would have contracted for them both if he had answered her question. The air around them twinkled with tiny, firefly lights and she felt the prickling more strongly, almost as though she were being nettled. It swirled and she thought, for an instant, that it formed something like a face that pouted crossly into hers, but then it was gone, and the breeze became an ordinary breeze.

“It worked,” Lila said with honest surprise, stunned. White rabbits never worked on anything. It was something you said on the first day of the month to ward off bad luck…she couldn't imagine it really doing something.

“Good,” Dar said, almost silently. He called her on with a nod and she concentrated on her step. The twilight had darkened, become blue. His skin had taken on the same hue, making him difficult to see. Around them the trees on this high ground had trunks that looked like pillars of ash as Alfheim's moon rose. Its thin sickle shed barely any light at all. Dar became shadow, and then Lila switched on her night vision and stopped in total shock.

Among the trees on the high hill, now restored to full detail and reprocessed by her AI-optics into realistic colour, she saw drifts of rainbow watercolours flowing across the landscape. Not like cloud, not like water, something of both, the transparent, delicate traces wound around objects, eddied and pooled. Sometimes they formed limblike shapes and darted swiftly as fish, sometimes they diffused into thin air or fell in showers. They were everywhere. And then she looked at Dar and saw him encased in a blue and lilac and emerald radiance, clearly of the same material—his andalune body. It had a distinctive outline many arm lengths away from his body. She saw that he was holding it diffused and that its edges helped him navigate the land. He paused to look back, wondering what had stopped her this time, and with his intent to locate her she saw an indigo streak dive towards her almost as fast as an arrow. It brushed her torso, so lightly she couldn't feel anything, and his gaze fixed on her at the same moment.

“Hell's bells,” she said to herself quietly. She'd never realised she could have seen magic just by shifting the sensitivity of her vision to different spectra. The wild aether followed Dar's interest, clustering around the slender string of his regard. Now she began to see how it latched onto things. As he walked back towards her, he trailed vast floating banners of it in his wake. Where it touched him it took on the colour of his andalune for a moment before furling softly away.

“I can see it,” she said. “On the full electromag display. I can see aether. I think.”

“I…”

“Wait,” she said. “There's a lot hanging around you.”

“I know that,” he replied, whispering. “We should not talk. The safe place is not far from here.”

Lila smiled. “I can see you.” A gout of sparkling pink seemed to leap forwards from her and pose just in front of his face. It looked as though it was waiting for him to reply. “Hey, d'you see that?”

Dar shook his head and started away again, not looking back.

Lila ignored his irritation and resumed the journey with a new lightness, recording as she went. This was so incredibly—well, she hated to say it, being a top spy with a mission, but—it was so cool! But then other thoughts occurred to her. Humans must have known about this—surely someone had tested it before? There had been years in which to scientifically address aether and progress was being made. But nobody had thought to tell her about it? She instantly tried to call Dr. Williams to complain but, of course, there were no comms connections. The silence began to annoy her.

She found that trees and patches of ground had their own magical signatures, that some plants were almost as actively involved in the wild magic as Dar was, that they had magical properties, clearly. She found a fungus that exuded a yellow vapour. She saw hidden animal dens by the gentle miasmas of green that surrounded them. It was a beautiful, unexpected delight. She didn't turn around and look behind her until Dar led her up a steep and difficult path to a hidden door in an outcrop of rocks. Beyond him she could see this led into a shelter inside the hill above the woods. As she ducked under the ancient lintel and turned to take the handle and pull the door closed, she glanced back at the forests.

The lovely coloured washes of aether extended up into the sky, across the trees and the open ground. Alfheim under the slight moonlight was as lovely as in the day, but her attention to this beauty was quite lost as she caught sight of sharp-edged silhouettes moving quickly along the path that she and Dar had taken. They were four-limbed, slender, with long tails like whips and strange heavy heads shaped like axe blades which they swung side to side in the streams of wild magic. They had no eyes or ears. They followed in her tracks with the unerring single-mindedness of stalking predators, and they left dark wakes that briefly obliterated even the trunks of the palest trees. She had the distinct impression they were filter feeding off the aether, tasting their way through it.

Dar pulled her sharply backwards and closed the door. She heard bolts slide home and then his breathing, elevated from the running, relaxing now. It was utterly dark inside the shelter. She had to switch to thermal imaging. Dar stood easily close to her, taking the quivers off his shoulders.

She told him what she'd seen in a rush, breathless herself, “What was that?”

“Saaqaa,” Dar said, setting the quivers down in a niche beside the door, his bow next to them. “Night Prowlers. They were once hounds of the shadow elves but they have become feral in the last centuries. Now they cannot be tamed. They eat flesh, but also some kinds of magic. The andalune kind in particular. Elves per se are not at the top of the food chain in Alfheim. I told you there were hours of danger. This is one. The first two of the sickle moon. After that, they will still be there, but their power will be reduced until moonset. Then it waxes again and we must hide until dawn. They are, like their masters, nocturnal.”

“And that door will stop them?” She thought that, maybe, if the door stopped the Saaqaa, then the Saaqaa might stop the elves on their trail. It seemed too much to hope for.

He tested the door and leant on it for a moment. “Any barrier of wood or earth or spelled natural fabric with an elemental charge of those types. They will not cross through those materials, but they will transect other substances. Not metal of course. They are not properly material.”

Transect! She didn't like the sound of that. “Is there anything else I should know?”

“Many things.” She heard the scrape of some part of Dar's body on the wall. She could see him perfectly well from the heat he was emitting, and he looked tired. His body sagged and he made himself stand upright when he clearly wanted nothing but to stoop. “Come with me. There is a room in this warren where we can both sleep. And water is there. And food, I hope.”

The tunnel was quickly made but sturdy. Lila got the impression it had been dug in a great rush, and then fortified later in stages. There were no niceties about it. Rough beams supported its narrow roof and the relatively welcoming width of its mouth soon became the height and narrowness of an average elf, which was just about the same size as she was, fortunately. “Is this some kind of hunting lodge?”

Dar snorted, “Hardly. No respectable elf would be seen dead in a lodge as rough as this one. This is a Night Shelter, an emergency post built by the light elves for when they are carelessly stranded in the wild at night. Many are scattered across these regions because of the Saaqaa. Our Daga pursuers will be in one, unless they have elected to travel under cloak and risk being hunted by the Prowlers. They are three, possibly including a necromancer I believe, so they may think it worth the risk.”

“I didn't think elves trafficked in the dark arts.”

“Needs must,” Dar said, his normally fluid body stiffening. He turned suddenly and vanished. Lila saw from the faintest of temperature differences that the tunnel ended in four chambers and that he had gone through a door. She moved to watch him and saw, with a frown, that he walked directly to one of many niches, the only one which contained a lantern. He lit it deftly, shielding his eyes as he did so, then put it back. She saw blinding white, then changed back to ordinary sight and the dazzle became a soft glow.

“You're nocturnal…you're one of the shadow elves,” she said wonderingly, pleased with herself, bubbling with excitement.

“You noticed.” He gazed at her evenly and his eyes were the exact colour of the night sky.

“But you're fine in daylight,” Lila objected, thinking that nocturnal must mean incapable in the daytime.

“Sue the Creator,” he said drily, almost smiling at her. “So we are. Though many here would have you believe otherwise. Of late great stupidity has grown up between our two races. All our differences become causes for spite even greater than that we reserve for other realms.” He closed his mouth firmly and set about checking the supply cabinets with sudden vigour.

“Surely you can lead us safely through the night?”

“No,” he said. “Those creatures will as happily eat me as you. In fact, much more readily. There are many of them here since…there are many. And,” he paused in his activity and smiled to himself in the bleak way people do when looking at old memories of a great struggle, “they make highly effective traps. They were good learners.”

She asked him questions, but he wouldn't speak any more on the subject. It seemed to be too close to him, she thought, too personal. He shook his head.

Lila gazed around the earth cavern and saw the walls had been further hollowed to make beds at waist height from the ground, not unlike cubby hotels she'd seen in Bay City and other great Otopian centres. But these were otherwise a far cry from such places. There were a couple of neatly rolled cotton pads in one or two of them and nothing more. In the lantern's soft yellow glow Dar looked slightly less worn than before, but not much. He went out and returned shortly with packets which he unwrapped in a hasty silence and handed her half.

She took the dried fruit and ate it almost as fast as he did. She remembered now that there had been elves like him in Sathanor during the diplomatic mission. None of them had been in positions of any importance, she thought, but her memory was vague on it. Yet Dar seemed to be in a position of some authority in his own agency. Higher than she was in hers, she thought.

He gave her water from a pitcher that tasted like it was fresh, and then he unrolled one of the meagre mattresses and, to her surprise, offered it to her.

“Suppose they come while we're asleep? The Daga I mean,” she said into the soft quiet of the place and even her voice was muted. Nothing of the outside world intruded.

“I expect they will,” he said, rubbing his face with both hands. “But we must rest or we cannot cross the mountains and do anything useful on the other side. So if they come, then we will fight.” He laid most of his bladed weapons down carefully on the floor with quiet exactitude.

“Are you all right?” Lila asked.

“I am not as young as I used to be, but I will be fine. Will you rest?”

“I'll keep watch,” Lila said, taking a tone of command for the first time since she'd come to Alfheim. “I can rest standing up, keep a lookout, and still sleep.”

Dar paused, smiling faintly, then nodded. He lay down on the bed himself. “I forgot about all your talents,” he said. “What forethought has gone into your making is remarkable. You are a miracle of technological development. I wonder, what does it feel like to be so changed?”

“Oh you know,” Lila said airily. “Your mileage varies.”

“It must have hurt,” he said very quietly. “You never moved so well as you have done since we were united.”

Lila almost blushed, thinking of the degree of attention he must have paid her. “I've been feeling very good recently, since our…well, since.” She felt unaccountably shy and concentrated on practical matters, going over her routines before she locked her body in position for rest. Her AI-self switched into sentry mode, leaving her free to sleep. “Dar,” she said after a minute's silence, “who is Zal to the elves?”

“A plague on our house,” Dar murmured sleepily. “Our own blue-eyed boy.” He was almost dreaming, she thought.

“Zal's eyes are brown,” Lila said, remembering them suddenly with a falling sensation in her heart.

“They were not always so,” Dar said. “They were very blue indeed, when he was one of us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He was a Jayon Daga agent, our Captain Kurtz.” Dar rolled over onto his side wearily, turning his back to the room. He sounded regretful. “You know the story. The colonial officer who went native. But he was not always so. And then again, he was always so, but he never had the opportunity to discover that fact, until he came to Demonia.”

Lila thought she detected personal sorrows. She jumped on them quick as she could. “You do know him?”

“Not really.” The elf sighed wearily and drew a deep breath ready for a lengthy explanation. “Zal is of a higher caste than I am, as well as a different race. It may seem trivial to you, even invisible, but in Alfheim these things are very important. Zal is, was, Taliesetra Caste, of the ancient line of Light Kings, who are most closely bonded to Elemental chi. Only the Vialin Caste among the shadow elves is aetherically more powerful than that, and they are difficult beings, not truly elves at all. Meanwhile, I am Dusisannen of the Shadow, and we are not of royal descent, not of the high court or even the unhigh court; not of any court but the fresh air. The castes are magical and spiritual distinctions. The details are irrelevant. The point is that Zal and I could never really treat each other with the familiarity you consider true friendship, not even if we were assigned to the same task, though, of course, that would never happen.” His words were thickened with a disgust he was too tired or not caring to conceal.

“What do you mean, never really?” Lila pursued, yawning.

“I followed Zal into Demonia,” Dar said hesitantly, then, abruptly as if he had decided to tell her against his better judgement. “And I failed to prevent his fall.”

“His fall?”

“In caste terms I should have given my life to prevent what happened,” Dar said. “But we talked there, in the city of Barshebat: a long talk, a long time, and I came back and left him there unmolested. It was my duty to slay him, rather than do as I did, and my homecoming was less than pleasant. I do not wish to discuss it further. Let me rest.”

“Sure,” Lila said unwillingly. But then she thought it over and it occurred to her that she might not get another moment when Dar was so forthcoming, or another opportunity to ask anything, if they were attacked. “Actually I think I'll have to insist on some more answers,” she said. “But I apologise in advance.”

The elf made an unhappy sound. “I would think we were in a Game if I did not know we were not,” he said. “Since you shared my spirit I have felt it increasingly difficult not to be candid with you. And there is another reason, namely, that I must consider myself the enemy of the Jayon Daga from now on, rather than one of their brothers. In all of Alfheim there are fewer than five people I could trust, and none of them are near, nor would I wish them to know what I have done.”

“Because you didn't kill Zal? I thought you said you couldn't be sent after him.”

“I said that he and I would never be sent together. But I was sent to bring him back or end him. No Taliesetra or higher caste would want to soil their spirit with that eventuality. Even in the circumstances, it would be a crime that merited only the harshest punishment.”

“Exile,” Lila said, speeding through elf data on the justice system. It was arcane and vast, but this was simple to find. “They'd send you to take the fall and then abandon you?”

“Somebody must do it. Low castes are considered expendable in such situations, compared with the waste of a higher order.” Now at last Lila did detect some bitterness in his voice and he felt it too because he said, “You must ignore my self-pity. My history with the Jayon Daga is no great account of glory. Death and blood are on my hands and the service of Alfheim is no excuse, merely an explanation. You will understand this, no doubt.”

“I'm kinda new to the job,” Lila said. “But yes. I'm beginning to. But why couldn't they leave Zal alone? If he'd gone and wasn't coming back?”

“It has not escaped your notice that Zal is a public figure.” Dar rolled back to face her, his head pillowed on his hands, eyes blinking slowly in the soft lantern light. “His continued existence risks exposure of the fact of his Fall to the wider elf world and the realms beyond, most likely by agents such as yourself. It is the shame that the elves cannot abide. His action, particularly as a high-caste son, displays that Alfheim's magic and culture is not the living perfection of actualised spirit, a claim upon which all caste power is based. It also shows others in Alfheim that it is possible to reject almost the entire spectrum of elven lore and thrive in other realms. This example most of all, cannot be permitted. Alfheim is on a knife edge, Lila Black. The high castes have long allowed power to corrupt them and naturally they claim it will save Alfheim from inevitable destruction. They have hoarded knowledge and power for themselves over the centuries most recently passed, and what was once a fair division of learning between all castes, neither high nor low but differentiated in talent, has become regulated by the hierarchy of absolutism. You have seen this many times in history. Nothing is new. But all those who believe in the cause will speak as though this time it is different. They claim secret knowledge that they cannot share, which tells them that cruelty and manipulation, early vengeance, and defensive posturing are the only way to prevent a terrible catastrophe. These are the people who have captured Zal. He serves a twofold purpose. It is possible he may be one axis of a great Sundering spell, if such a thing exists. But it is certain that there are other things they would much rather he did while he was alive, and we cannot delay in prising him from their control, although I fear it is already far too late.”

“What other things?” Lila asked.

“What do you think?” Dar closed his long eyes. As he relaxed, Lila began to see that he was considerably older than she had first thought. He was in excellent condition, and elves mostly looked youthful, even when old. Dar's age was not so physical as it was emotional. He looked as though he had carried a great weight for too long a time and it was this, and not any running or fighting, which caused a profound exhaustion.

“Recant,” Lila said, the word springing to her mind intuitively. “A public denouncement of what he did from his own mouth.”

“Good,” Dar murmured, almost asleep. “You understand.”

“But what about you?” she asked. “What happened to you when you didn't kill him? You're still in the Daga.”

“I was given the opportunity to try again, once Zal entered Otopia,” Dar said and his body stiffened and he drew his knees up towards his chest, curling up. “And a friend and sister in our cause prevented my first sentence of death from being executed upon me, dependent on my second effort becoming successful. I was given the time and means to achieve this goal, but of course, I had no intention of carrying it out. I made it look as though I was committed to his end, whilst in reality I followed Zal closely only to protect him from other Daga agents, and then, some days ago, that stay of execution expired. My friend will have paid for Zal's survival with her life, as will Gwil, I do not doubt. It is almost certain we will pay also, for my mistake in underestimating you.”

“Me?”

“Better Zal die on the road than stand up and take back what he has done,” Dar said. “If I could not have maintained his freedom, I would have killed him. Although he is a…clever bastard, you would say. There is magic in the music and in his changed voice. Where he sings is as important as what and to whom. I do not mean that metaphorically. It is our magic. I will explain it some other time to you.”

“And his songs are everywhere,” Lila said and thought to herself—propaganda!

“Even in Alfheim,” Dar agreed. “Though they are much murdered on the flute and tabor. Now you must sleep. Or everything will be wasted. If you are my friend, let me also rest.”

Friend? That was the word actually, Lila thought, inducing alpha waves across her brain to speed her into sleep. Yes, since yesterday's strange fusion, they had become somehow more like each other, or maybe only understood how alike they were, but it didn't matter which. In that moment they had become friends.

“Goodnight,” she whispered.

“Inaraluin,” he said—be dreamless.