The enchantment keeping Zal unconscious let go of him after a period. His enforced insensibility had been so deep he had no sense of time having passed since the eagle had spoken the binding charm. It could have been seconds, or years, or centuries.
He was inside water. A lot of water. One hell of a lot of water. The water was rich with life. It teemed. Vegetable empires abounded, surging, blooming, drinking, dying. Fishy awareness darted. Greater bodies, further off, sang quiet songs of freshwater. He felt the distant presence of many elves, and aetheric adepts of other races, their notes jarring with the rest. Farther away still creatures of greater and lesser power lived and hunted and hid in light and shade. For a moment there was the faint signature of another kind of being, but it was like a flash, there and gone before he knew it.
He rolled over onto his front, opened his eyes, and stared down through the miles of water. He realised that he was not only close to the mighty lake in Sathanor, but a good way under it. The only thing that separated him from its vast tonnage and pressure was an enchantment—the Lady's for sure. She was water adept and had many students who no doubt assisted her in maintaining the enchantments around the clock. But he wasn't interested in the miracle of his prison, only in the trace of the alien mind he thought he had felt in that first instant of connection to the world.
It was gone. In its place now he could only see the hypnotic depths of the abyssal fault that lay beneath the pretty surface of Aparastil Lake.
“Gazing at the navel of the world?” said a voice in the sweet and gentle tones of a much nicer person than the one who was actually speaking. “The source of Alfheim's aether is closer to you than ever before.”
“Piss off, Arië,” ZaI said without getting up. Arië was not there in person, only her voice. Her actual presence would have been tangible and he felt only strangers close by. He was pleased to find himself still filthy dirty and wearing Lila's black leather jacket.
The moment of silence was rather sweet. He wished it would last but it didn't.
“I see you have slid further into the delinquency of the demon world.”
Zal yawned. “I see you're still spreading that bullshit about a Great Spell. End of the world required to save our lovely homeland from corruption and exploitation by incorrigible foreigners. Very nice. Must've taken you at least ten minutes to come up with that.”
“The Spell only awaits the opportune moment. Your belief in it, or in the reasons behind its use, is not required. But enough of these pleasantries.”
Four strong hands suddenly grabbed hold of him and lifted him upright. He was surprised but tried not to show it. He didn't know that Arië's guard could be stealthy enough to sneak up on him, but obviously they were better than they used to be or his sensitivity to the constant murmur of the Alfheim aether was much worse. Probably the latter, he thought with grim resignation. The guards didn't meet his gaze—they wore bone-plate helms in any case which shielded their faces almost completely. They wasted no time in stripping the jacket from him and searching him for amulets or weapons. He couldn't detect andalune from either of them, so they were adept enough to keep it away from him. He wasn't sure whether that was out of respect for the danger he represented or just revulsion at the changes wrought by his altered nature.
Arië's voice said quietly, “It is time you faced your elders and betters, Suhanathir. In the name of all the Houses of Alfheim, I arrest you for treason.”
“My name is Zal,” he said, pointlessly, to the empty air. He wished that the sound of his given name had no power, but Arië knew both parts of it, his life name and his caste name: Suhanathir Taliesetra. The only mark in his favour was that she did not know his true name any longer. Once, when he was still an elf through and through, she had known it, but that name was lost when he was in Demonia and he had a new one now. Then again, he did not know the full version of hers. Arië was just a part of it, as Zal was just part of his. Without being able to say all three parts in sequence, they could not command one another.
The guards silently braced his arms behind his back. One stretched out a gauntleted hand and touched the wall of the cell. It shivered and suddenly ballooned beyond his gesture into the darker, deeper waters of the lake, creating a corridor. In this way they walked through the water in their tiny pocket of air and it stretched out just ahead of them and closed just behind them.
Presently something other than a waterquoia tree loomed out of the thick green gloom. Zal saw another bubble like their own, but larger, and beyond it even more of them and more still, clustered like oversize frogspawn, netted and held in the branches of the underwater forest. The silvery globules were everywhere, above and below. Their bubble drew close and joined its skin to one of these. Where the cell walls met they stuck fast and a door formed. Without ado he was marched forwards.
The palace of Aparastil had been much extended in his absence. He remembered it as a house on a lake, fine and rather too large for the resident Family of Water but still no more than a mansion. These halls of trapped air with their falls and fountains lit by charmed sun and moonlight were all new to him. Like all such show, the waste of power put into their creation spoke of extravagance and strength way beyond his personal resources. It was meant to make outsiders feel puny. It did a good job, he thought wryly as their journey ended—that and the big guards and their massive enchanted broadswords and the astounding size of an entire courtroom full of Alfheim's noble lineage, ranked in tiers, robed and standing solemnly to attention, all looking down at him as he was taken to the centre of their vast oval and left there.
He looked straight at Arië, seated above him in the Magus's position; a place of ultimate jurisprudence which he knew she did not deserve. He was vaguely aware of empty places to right and left in various positions and knew, without having to look further, that these were all where his family and caste family should have been. Occasional other absences marked the positions of friends or people whose loyalty he had trusted.
Arië was as lovely as enchantment could make her, and she had been lovely in ordinary ways before that with her blanched-almond complexion, deep auburn curls, and soulful blue eyes. She exuded youthful beauty, glamour, and sweetness. It was a terrible shame.
It was no moment to be shy. Zal put his hands on his hips and took a very obvious turn, looking at all the faces present before turning back to Arië. “Tie me kangaroo down, sport,” he said with the full power of his voice, words dry as a desert. He knew full well nobody there would have a clue what he was quoting, but at least it was amusing him and he needed amusement desperately because otherwise he was going to start feeling afraid. “I'm hoping we can skip the part where you talk self-justifying shit and just get straight to the guilty verdict.”
His speech created an icy silence in response. Even those souls who had been ambivalent, perhaps sympathetic to him, recoiled from the lash of spite in them. Here, if not in any other realm, words literally hurt and his could hurt more than most. But the Lady was not affected. Her andalune lay around her like a gleaming shield. The minor charm simply bounced off her and the only thing it might have done was disrupt her sense of decorum. That was something, at least.
“The fact of your treason is indisputable,” Arië said. “You have betrayed us to Demonia, and most likely to Otopia as well. You disobeyed orders. You cut yourself off from your masters. You withheld information. Shall I go on? The only matter of interest remaining here is what the sentence of the court shall be. In ordinary circumstances it would be death, but you have made yourself a creature of unusual abilities that render you potentially more useful than a corpse so we consider that you may redeem yourself one of two ways. Either you return to the service of Alfheim by command of your true name…”
“Not a chance,” Zal said without waiting to hear the alternative.
“I think that it is at least possible you are open to persuasion,” Arië said and made a slight gesture with one hand.
Zal did not turn to look but he heard several pairs of feet enter the room and walk towards him. One pair dragged and shuffled.
“What I want to know is why the rest of you are here,” he said, ignoring the sound. “Why would you ally yourselves with this idiot, when the only solution she has to offer you is isolation and subservience? For centuries she has dragged power into Sathanor, away from every other region. She has fostered needless hatred against the Shadow…”
“There is an Aetheric Gate beneath Aparastil's water,” said a strong voice from the gathering.
The massed andalune of the gathering was a huge force, united, against him. Zal could feel it like a weight in the air. It was smothering. Within it those hearts that were guilty about their complicity in something they found repugnant (and there were many) were held back by its colossal inertia and the sweet, constant soothing of Arië's personal glamour. She groomed them and they would not resist. Feeling it made him sick. Where many andalune were voluntarily bound like this they were a psychic force almost impossible to fight against. Whatever he had to say was pretty much irrelevant at this point. They went on…
“Its energy is limitless. Once it is open we can restore the decaying lands and begin to reintegrate our society. These measures are temporary,” said another.
“It would not be safe to open it whilst connected to the other realms.”
“Alfheim is in crisis…the land falls into darkness. It cannot be denied. The Prowlers…”
All the old stories about the decline of his homeland: he knew them by heart and their reasons. The voices came in ones and twos from all over the room, old and younger voices, some less forceful than others. They were sad and grieving. They hated what they were doing, but still they considered it a strong and right manoeuvre. Zal could feel everything they did, because only a few chose to shield their intent. They wanted him to believe. They wanted him to join them. Their invitation was almost overpowering. He had been away for so long. The idea, the proximity, of being held again in the continuum of andalune that was the natural state of communion where minds and spirits ran so close! And not just the poor substitute of elemental companionship…he felt that he was just one step from heaven. One tiny step. Just agree. Just say yes.
And it was true, Alfheim was declining, rotting, its aether changing in unpredictable ways. It had been happening over long ages, though at rates that until recently were almost undetectable. But he had never believed it was because of the workings of the Shadowkin or even of the other aetheric realms, as many theorists did. His demon self knew it was not so and he used not to be the only one.
The great gestalt of the noble horde around him brushed at his awareness with the sorrowful acceptance of a family looking at a prodigal son.
Zal's back prickled. He fought with his disappointment at how many people he could feel in solidarity with the Lady. He took a deep breath and looked up at Arië. “Nice parrots. All you need now is a wooden leg.”
Arië did not flinch but she did remain stock still for a moment. The wave that had reached out to welcome Zal back withdrew. The room brimmed with anger.
Zal could tell that one of the people behind him was gravely ill. Within the court there was enough healing knowledge and power to do all but raise the dead, but nobody moved. He felt genuine disorientation—this could never have happened, even a few months ago. Who in Alfheim, even the most conservative, would let someone feel like that and do nothing?
Not one person stepped forward, although their anxiety and distress became palpable in the aether, increasing until he could even hear it as a faint whine all around. He stared at their faces. Most of them were looking away.
Arië beckoned. She was effective, cold. He hadn't realised how cold until now. She was the frozen surface keeping the rest under control. He didn't understand how she had taken so much to herself. He'd been away too long and it was too late. Zal didn't look at the suffering person until they moved into his line of sight.
The dying elf was Aradon. He had served with Zal in the secret service, been in various operations with him. He was friendly, loyal, a little introspective. He was one of the first to join the Resistance years ago when the extent of the High Light hegemony had become clear and the Shadowkin pushed out of Sathanor. Here, in the days of High Light rule over all Alfheim with its lore of purity and healing, he was a bloody mess. Someone had beaten him to the edge of extinction. His face and hands bore marks that Zal knew were torture inflicted, not just the result of a desperate fight. He was barely conscious and that was a mercy. Zal reached out to touch Aradon's andalune body but the guards moved between them. He got the impression Aradon no longer possessed an andalune, but without necromancy that was not possible.
“Many of your coconspirators have talked a great deal, Suha,” Arië said to Zal. “Even of your ridiculous plan to prove the nature of every person in the realms as equal. But they have been unable to tell your name, and finally I believe that none of them know it.”
“Help him,” Zal said, pointing at Aradon. He tried to make eye contact with the people nearest him but they refused. They stared through him or past him. “What's the matter with you all?”
He had thought that after all he had been through there could be no more things able to terrify him and he was right. He was not scared. But he had never imagined he could find himself so disgusted with his own kind. He'd never really believed they could become like this. And here, look. They were. Their outward silence said it all.
Zal tried to push past the guard. He was held back by two of them. Their bone gauntlets dug into his arms. He reached beyond them. His andalune was different to theirs, and they were not keen to touch it now, tainted with demon aether, but he could not reach Aradon anyway. There was no more to him than flesh and bone.
“Tell me your name and we will restore him,” Arië said. “And all those presently under arrest will be released to pleasant confinement in a civilised place.”
Zal looked at Aradon's swollen face, all but unrecognisable, at his hands and their bloodied nails. Everything he had ever known about elves, humans, faeries, demons, and their machinations in the complicated world of politics and power ran through his mind in a clinical stream. His name was all he had.
“After him how many more will there be?” he asked.
“All of them,” Arië said. “But not you. There are other tasks you must do. Either you will do them as our loyal bound servant or we use your blood to access the hidden well of aether…”
“It is no well!” Zal shouted at her, unable to restrain his anger, aware that it only made him worse in their eyes. “Fifty years ago we researched every possibility that the leaks from this lake may be some free source of aetheric energy and the conclusion from elf and demon alike is that it can only be some faultline or weakness in the realm that gives onto nothing but the Interstitial. The aether coming in is wild, but the lake moulds it by the time it reaches the surface so it seems like it's Sathanor energy. It requires some reinforcement, not weakening with your efforts to mine it.”
“We have found a way to cap the well,” Arië said. “I am confident. It is expensive but it will be worth it. And this is not your concern. You have your friends to think of, Suha. Your loyal brothers and sisters surely have much more knowledge they have garnered and hidden against us. It can be left to them and they to themselves if you are willing to surrender to us. Come, we are not partial to witnessing this pain and you delay its end.”
“The energy will make you invincible,” Zal said quietly to her. It was true. He was sure it was her major motive, but she would not think so.
Zal made himself look at Aradon again. He had no aetheric presence, as if he was already dead.
“He will stay alive this way, beyond light and shadow, unable to connect to the andalune, for the rest of his life unless you surrender. They all will. Of all people, you will know what this is like and it will be even less than the pitiful contact you are still able to make with us. Communion will be only a memory. The spirit is dead.”
Zal lifted his head and looked at Arië. He didn't know how Aradon had suffered or what had been allowed to tear out his spirit; maybe it was some captive Saaqaa. It was not important. All that Aradon was proof of was that Arië was beyond any kind of appeal to mercy. He could tell that the sight of Aradon revolted Arië, it hurt her and she loathed it, but she was able to master her natural impulses, and she was able to ignore them completely. For her there was a greater good and in the service of that good she was immaculate. The horror, and her own ability to withstand it, only increased her conviction.
The room's silent agony stretched out. Zal made it stretch longer.
He studied every empty seat in turn and thought of all the others, not knowing if this was a bluff of hers or if the entire project to prevent Alfheim's decline into tyranny was over because every person involved had been cut down.
He could end Aradon's suffering himself, he knew. But if he showed his demon power, then Arië would ward against it and any use it might be later, if there was a later, if there was a chance to get out—and there was no chance here—would be lost.
He turned his back on Aradon and gave his head the smallest shake—no.
“Very well,” she said. “As you wish.”