Lila and Dar walked slowly, wading, slightly afloat with every stride, like swimmers who reach for the ground with their feet, each stride a bound, their hair in clouds around their heads, the water like a heavy air they could breathe, though it was a struggle to breathe it. The water itself was green and the light which fell through it was quickly smothered, leaving them in a khaki umbra where all colours became green. Lila saw the silver shapes of fish dart close in curiosity and then flash as they turned their sides and flicked away with a snap of tail fins. She felt her boots catch in clumps of weed as they slowly trod a stone-paved road, sinking ever further by its guidance down and down into the depths.
Soon it was so dim that Lila had to use infrared to enhance her vision. As she turned it on she felt Tath's permanent low level of contempt for her vanish in a moment of surprise. Dar saw well, even in low light his elfin vision had a much greater range and colour capture than Lila's, but by the time they reached a huge stone door that barred their way Lila could tell by the way his movements grew more tentative that he was finding it hard. The barrier before them was a smooth block of stone, a monolith carved and decorated with a low relief of animals and plants and words in an old form of elvish that even Lila's AIs didn't recognise. But they did recognise the simple frame and its scale as something that must be a door, though there was no sign of a handle or a keyhole or even anywhere for a guard to look out.
Lila watched Tath's pale, aethereal hair sliding around her face though she could not really feel it, and gave Dar a questioning shrug as they came to a halt one arm's length from the stone.
Dar said something and his words went up in bright bubbles from his mouth. Lila heard a soft sound, felt a vibration that seemed to come out of the stone under her feet. It was an ominous sound, and soon it came again. She felt Tath's focus attenuate—his listening felt like her nerves expanding and lengthening into the cold water that pressed them on all sides. It made her nervous. But she remembered that Dar had told her to show no fear, and so she stood and did nothing, concentrated on relaxing and tuned into her Als. The vibration soon became distinguished enough for her to identify it as the drumming of more than one drum. Together three instruments wove a syncopated beat which she could feel passing through into her body from the water. As the drum beat became stronger the water shivered.
A shadow, darker than the simple sedimentary gloom, crossed them with a distant cold touch as a large, sinuous, long body slid past somewhere above their heads. Lila felt the turbulence of its wash press her clothing against her. Movement, infrared and heat-based vision fed through her AIs and told her in a clean readout at the left of her vision exactly what she'd guessed just by the size and power of the creature. A water dragon had passed them by. Its sensitive whiskers would have picked out everything it needed to know from their scent in the water, the disturbance they made in moving, the sound of their breath and heartbeats, the magic or lack of it that ran through them. Lila glanced at Dar, but he was watching the door. Tath's andalune prickled throughout her body. She wanted to scratch, but she wouldn't have known where to start.
The door moved, the hairline gap between it and its frame suddenly darkening as it shifted position, moving straight back into the stone itself before rolling aside. Before them a circular entrance led into a new subaquatic darkness which none of Lila's senses could penetrate. She wanted to object, to confirm the impossibility of there being such a space but Lila didn't need to. Tath did it for her.
Do try, you won't succeed, he said, silently, from his safe place inside her heart. your hesitation will only make her think you unworthy. The magic that guards the palace is primal magic and not even your mechanical appendages will serve to do what it will not allow.
He was pleased when she believed him—and she had to, because she would have felt it if he lied. She felt his pleasure in her fear which rose up suddenly at his words and made her shiver in a tiny, convulsive motion she couldn't help. Lila knew the water was simply transmitting everything she did to all the watchers hidden in the silty murk. She didn't feel that she could cope with dragons, internal hostile agents, and the rest of it all at once. Tath in particular was in too close a contact to her true feelings all the time. She decided, with misgiving, to allow her AI-self to execute the routine to bypass her emotional centre and replace its decision-making finesse with cold calculations.
What was that? Tath demanded, able to feel the change but not understand it. He had no links to her AIs. Well, that was something, she thought. A red warning icon flashed in her upper right vision, to remind her that this was strictly an emergency procedure and that she should return to normal as soon as possible to avoid lasting psychosis. It was very distracting against the black background of total nothing in front of her. Lila switched it off.
Dar led the way inside. As they stepped through the circle they passed out of the lake and into air. Lila found herself unexpectedly plunging forward into the dark as the resistance fell away. She quickly got control of her feet and then stood firm on the stone road.
“Now we follow the air,” Dar said from a short distance away. “The entrance to this palace is via the primary elements. Water is the first. Void will lead us to the Air Gate. Air's the third.”
“What's the second?” Lila asked, hearing Tath's voice speak where hers should have been. It almost died completely in the strange space they stood in. She expected to feel uneasy but she felt nothing, only a calm kind of mild interest in what was going on, the all-pervasive calm of Nirvana. In spite of her orders the AIs signalled her regularly to turn it off—Nirvana was highly psychologically addictive, bad for the brain, bad for the nerves and with many other possibly unpleasant effects including sudden death. But Lila wasn't alarmed, of course. She tried to use the echo of her voice to map the space so that she could locate Dar, but all her readouts came back zeroed, even though she could hear him perfectly well.
“It is the Void,” Dar said in answer to her question. “The nothing in which you now stand. It is the fundamental in-between, the gap between one breath and the next, between last and first. Tath would know more about it. Necromancers must cross the Void to enter Thanatopia.”
Lila had been studiously ignoring Tath. She found that at maximum capacity on all sensors and using as much power as she dared, she was able to use her sonar system to trace a picture of Dar when their voices bounced off his body. She could also decipher a large hole not far in front of them. It was an irregular and ugly shape. Paths which seemed to offer good passage to either side quickly became useless ledges and smooth wall. There was a way across, set in widely spaced stepping-stones which moved in a snaking trail through the empty space although they seemed to be floating in midair. In Nirvana, this was all right.
“There's a big hole here,” she said confidently, noting Tath's annoyance. “I can see it.”
“I can feel it.” But Dar did not object when she moved closer to him and touched the edge of his hand.
“We can go this way, to my side,” Lila said. “As long as we keep talking, I can see the edges. There is a path of stones.”
“I have been here before,” Dar told her coolly. “But if you like you can go first.” She heard him getting something out of the bandoleers and then heard the tones of a chain of softly sounding glass chimes. Immediately, the sensitive nerves in her skin began to decipher the strange pathway much more clearly. It looked almost like a computer rendition of a series of platforms. If elf ears could pick that up without technology or magic, then they were much more sensitive than she'd thought.
Lila led the way out. The steps were sturdy, but no matter how hard she tried to, she couldn't see anything between them. “What if you fall here? Do people fall here?”
“I don't know,” Dar said. “Nobody came back to tell us.” He sounded tense and Lila left him to the chimes and concentrated on her footing until she was across. As she waited for him she peered into the hole, which was beginning to look much less like a hole and more like something perfectly flat. She thought she could detect the slightest traces of electrical activity, either big and far away or very slight and close at hand, but then Dar landed beside her and they were safe. His andalune touched hers and Tath's briefly and, with a keenness as though it were her own, she felt the truth of Dar's fear in the contact. It pulled at her, as though he wanted to catch hold of her. Tath flared on the instant with a brief, victorious contempt and Dar instantly stepped aside as though burned.
She ignored them. “The air,” Lila said in a strong voice to counteract the Void's giant swallowing mouth that strove to eat the sound. The Nirvana icon blinked at her, scarlet, alarmed. Whatever emotions she denied now, using its artificial bypass, had not gone away. They were simply active in a place where she couldn't feel them. After a certain load stress, if she did not reengage her experience they would begin to emerge in unpredictable ways. The red light was telling her that this moment was not far away. She glanced at the numbers and deleted it. Even if she went back right now, she didn't think she'd stay as frosty as Dar could, not with Tath waiting like a scatter of crows to descend on her every weakness. “Which way?”
“Wherever the elemental is,” Dar said. His voice was composed, cool and confident, nothing like what she'd felt second-hand through Tath.
Lila turned her face this way and that. There was a distinct wash of air moving in a steady, cool stream which she could easily follow.
“Not that way,” Dar said as she set off.
“You said…”
“An elemental is a being,” Dar said. “And we need its help to get through the Hall of Fire. Air and fire work together here.” As he was speaking, Lila began to see him with her own eyes. The presence of light made her search for the source and she saw that the walls and roof of the cavern they were in were giving off a faint, lichen-like, glow. Behind them, where the Void had—had not—been, there was a flat, ordinary rock floor. Their stepping-stones were scattered boulders lying on it. Dry sandy earth spread between them like any ordinary piece of ground. In the gloaming, Lila saw Dar reach into the bandoleer he wore again and bring out a whistle. It was fashioned from a pebble which had been hollowed and carved with a patience Lila could barely imagine into a slender ocarina shape with a perfect mouthpiece though it had no finger holes. Dar blew it and it made no sound.
“What is that?”
“A whistle for bringing down the wind,” he said. “Blow hard enough to hear anything and you get a hurricane.” He started to put it back.
“Can't I see it?” Lila stepped towards him, holding her hand out.
“No,” he said.
“Well, who made it?”
“They're not made, they're found…” He glanced meaningfully at her. “Are you quite all right?”
“I'm fine,” she said. “I was just curious, that's all. No reason. I never saw one before.”
Dar narrowed his long blue eyes and his ears flattened close to his head like a horse's do when the horse in question is feeling vicious. “As you say.”
“What do you mean by that?” she asked, intent on becoming very clear about everything before matters progressed any further. Was Dar being deliberately obtuse? Tath glowed like a smug beacon in her chest.
Dar's left ear tip came forward again, though his facial expression didn't alter. “Air elementals are curious. It will either let us through this hall, or it will not. It would be wise to be quiet and allow it to question you.”
Lila felt unpleasantly dizzy and slightly seasick. She could see the door they had come in by, just, if she squinted past Dar. For some reason her thinking seemed to be getting foggy. “What hall?”
Dar took hold of her shoulders and turned her around. Behind her a series of dark tunnels led off in different directions. He pointed at the central, largest tunnel, which was carved smooth, perfectly cylindrical and straight, and through which could clearly be seen a disc of brightly lit space across which figures moved easily. The round mouths of each end—magical gates—Lila could understand. The cylinder itself was quite empty.
“Throw something into it,” Dar suggested.
Throw? She didn't get it. Perhaps it was a signal and if she did it then the game would be up and Dar would betray her. Or it was a dare.
Tath, watching from the inside, tried to make a kind of contact with her AI while she was distracted in the act of looking through his pockets (her pockets) for something to throw. In the end he couldn't quite bring himself to touch the machine in the way he would have had to. His repulsion was too intense. Lila hacked and retched suddenly.
“Are you quite well?” Dar said again, with a touch more concern as Tath said simultaneously to her, Much as it pains me to observe this, I do believe you should undo your binding spell upon yourself, Agent, lest both of us soon have cause to regret it.
Lila's fingers closed around a small item in the close-fitted pocket of Tath's jerkin, over her breast. She pulled it out. A tiny flower lay in her hand, a white daisy. It was old and flattened and quite dried, though it had kept its colours surprisingly well. She tossed it, vaguely aware as she drew her arm back that Dar had started forward and that a sudden knot of anguish was unleashing itself inside her with startling acuity, making her gut spasm and her legs suddenly become weak.
No!
The flower was very light, almost featherlight, but Lila's AI-self had calculated perfectly and it crossed the magical boundary set in the stone just as it began to fall and tumble erratically in the air. As a warm tongue of air wound around her and curiously lifted the aethereal masses of Tath's glamoured hair, Lila saw the daisy burst into brilliant yellow and white fire. It was almost instantly embers that flared to red for a microsecond before a few motes of pale ash fell to the floor of the Hall of Fire.
Dar caught hold of her arm. She saw that he was greyish white with shock for some reason and noted that even though he was holding onto her his andalune body had entirely withdrawn, as though he was in mortal danger and must hide. Within her body Tath recoiled and she felt the glamour flicker and fade. She saw the metal and synthetics of her hands begin to emerge from beneath Tath's illusory knuckles. Her moment of deadly anxiety had drawn back from her like a tide from the shore. She felt Tath poised, silent, waiting, as though he was a held breath.
The Nirvana icon returned and would not be banished. It had gone black and beneath it the load stats informed her in cold blue digits that she was now on an automatic countdown to a return to fully authentic experience, whether she liked it or not. A report would automatically be sent to Headquarters for the attention of Dr. Williams. It would not be favourable.
“You told me to throw something,” Lila said calmly. “So I did. The Fire Hall is obviously pure oxygen and the elemental in there ignites everything it doesn't think belongs in there. If we go in like this we'll burn up just like any other remotely flammable material. I get it. I'm working on a solution. Why are you acting like that?”
Only the compulsion of his naming kept Tath anywhere close to competent as he continued to project his aetherial self through her. Lila felt as if she were contained in an emotional storm, lit by bursts of strange lightning, as if emotion itself had a unique energy and Tath was generating it. His anguish created real static charges that built in her prosthetics and caused her senses to flicker. Meanwhile from the outside world micro-gusts of various forces lifted her clothes, wound beneath them, even blew through her lips and into her mouth, up her nose, and across her eyes in tiny flicks that made her blink furiously. The same thing was happening to Dar. As he stood, his arms held out to his sides to permit the frisking by the air elemental, his gaze met hers. It almost looked as though nobody was home.
“Don't move,” he whispered. “Don't do anything. Air is very sensitive.”
Lila was deeply, deeply puzzled.
4…3…2…1…
She opened her mouth, drew in a huge breath, and screamed at the top of her lungs. It was a raw, terrible sound and it expressed an equally raw and devastating onslaught of feeling which Lila was powerless to deny. All her senses were blotted out by the internal storm as though it was a tornado which ripped up her nerves and shredded them into chaff. Her heart faltered and the life-support systems came on with all their alarms in silent flaring yellow. Her reactor powered up. Most strangely of all the clear division between Tath and herself blurred. His emotions and hers were very similar and in their collision she saw what he had seen and realised what it had meant.
She saw the little white flower burning.
She saw the ashes falling.
She heard the magic in the bloom die, and felt the spell it had held fast break up and shiver away to nothing though she didn't know what it was.
She saw Dar's face as he had seen the daisy in her hand, in his hand, in Tath's hand. His eyes not looking at her, but into Tath's face, at Tath.
Tath had been telling the truth. Tath was Dar's ally. More than his ally. There was some kind of choice-brotherhood between them founded in silent spirit, a bond and a relationship that Lila had no name for.
Dar's devastation became more plausible.
There was something else too—about Tath's magic—but she lost that as her scream came to an end. The external world came rushing in. She found herself upright but no longer standing. Dar was below her and she was aloft in a maelstrom of air currents that held her suspended several metres above the ground close to the cavern roof.
Tath separated out from her as Lila was turned slowly upside down. Give me control if you wish to live and have a chance of saving Zal, he pleaded from the leaf-green place inside her chest. There is no time for explanations. The elemental knows that we are not what we seem.
The air that held them up began to swirl and eddy. It spun Lila around. Tiny zephyr slivers ran under the tips of her nails and darted down through her mouth in between her teeth and gums. It felt like needles. Lila fought it, trying to bat it away, to rub it out, to fight free, but her thrashing made no difference whatsoever. The air would have its way.
Lila gave control to Tath. She felt blown apart, like there was nothing in the centre of her except the strange concentration of his green energy. Tath bloomed outwards as the gyre of wind that held her up began to spin her around in a circle, building velocity steadily. She had only the vaguest awareness of Dar below her, the stone whistle in his hand.
Tath-in-Lila was as agile as her AI-self, but with an instinctive biological grace she'd never had. Lila felt her arms and legs moved, drawn into a shape that was sympathetic to the currents as they shifted around. Where she'd fought the wind, Tath flowed with it and almost immediately the worst of the turbulence stopped. Belatedly, Lila realised this must be the way to talk to the air. Tath opened her mouth and spread her fingers. The air rushed into her lungs and out again, it drew her along with it and held her up. The gyration slowed down steadily, becoming a lazy swirl. The needlepoints had gone. Only temperate currents ran against her skin and through her hair. They penetrated Tath's outer shell and felt their way along Lila's magical stain, along her face, everywhere on her body that flesh was marked forever by charm and bonded to metal.
Are you going to cast a spell? Did you? Lila asked Tath as they were gently lowered.
I know none that can hold the wind, he said. Only Dar's whistle has that power, and then, it is not so great a power. The elementals are charmed By who they will, and there is no magic, even wild magic, that can command them against their inclination. Mere magical circles and Barriers are insufficient. Air is the most curious of all the elements. This individual is in chosen service to the Lady of the Lake. Now we must wait and see if it is satisfied to let us pass. He hesitated a moment. Is that really a nuclear reactor?
Yes, Lila said as Tath unobtrusively handed her back her body, only his andalune glamour remaining unfolded within her. She lowered the reactor's capacity to normal levels and saw the last of the yellow alert icons blink out.
Lila felt her feet touch the ground. She became heavier, then her full weight was down and the curtains of air were withdrawing, rushing around Dar one more time before calming to almost nothing. She was about to speak and apologise, but Dar wouldn't meet her eye. He looked strangely chastened and then he turned.
“Time runs short,” he said.
Lila glanced back. The walls and roof of the cavern seemed closer than they had before. In fact, it was less than half as big as it had been when they crossed the stones. As she looked back at the Hall of Fire the other open mouths of the tunnels narrowed, closing. “Do they go anywhere?”
“I don't know. I have little hope of that,” he said. He looked down at the whistle in his hand and then dropped it on the ground. “Perhaps this will buy some time. What power I do have I will give back now,” he said to the air, and then stepped on the delicate thing. There was a crunching sound as he crushed it completely with his foot.
Lila didn't need Tath's dismay to tell her what a sacrifice that was. She felt Dar's andalune body touch her fingertips briefly, unconsciously, for he retreated a step when he noticed it himself. Around them the quiet breezes died away entirely. The walls and roof drew closer in a smooth, silent drift that would have seemed gentle in other circumstances. They walked closer to the Fire Hall's gate, as close as they could go and not risk accidentally crossing it. The Water gate came sliding towards them. The roof paused its descent as it reached the height of both portals, leaving them a few centimetres of clearance.
“Did this happen before?” she asked.
“No,” Dar said. “We are out of luck.”
“There has to be a way out.”
“The only way is through the Hall of Fire, but the air will have told the fire that we are untrustworthy and we will not make it through there. I am sorry I did not get you further…”
Lila took hold of Dar's jacket with both hands, pulled him close, and kissed him on the mouth. His lips were cold. The walls drifted in, world shrinking. No air moved. Dar drew back and they shared a look that didn't require words for communication. If this was it, then neither of them wanted to leave without doing something.
Lila contemplated nuking Alfheim's most sacred spot, envisaged the mushroom cloud, the devastation, the destabilising effect on the interdimensional sheet, the shocking, complete sundering of the worlds.
Dar's hands slid around her head as she felt rock against her back. He put his head beside hers as the closing space pressed them together, gently at first, then with a terrible authority. Lila's AI-self ran through a thousand attempts at escape, none working. Dar's heavy hair brushed against her cheek and pieces of metal began to bite their way into her ribs. She knew that she would be the last thing to break, or burn. She kissed Dar's ear as the breath was pressed out of them and the Water Gate arrived and began to slowly push them up to the Fire Hall's waiting maw.
She put her arm outside Dar's, her leg outside his. Her sleeve went through first and caught immediately. The pain was indescribable. She couldn't help but tense against the tall elf body. “Hold your breath and close your eyes,” she said feeling the strain in his body as his bones began to suffer badly under load. Her arm was burning, skin and synthetics in a conflagration, but the temperatures weren't yet high enough to spoil the action of her right arm gun system.
The outside edge of her foot passed the barrier but she had no real flesh there so it was only Tath's boot blazing for now. When it got hot enough steel was a fuel, and in pure oxygen it would continue to burn until it was nothing but iron oxide, but that wasn't going to happen. Lila configured the grenade shells in her arm for maximum burn and thrust her whole forearm suddenly through the shield. It caught with an explosion that incinerated her nerves and superficial transmission systems so fast that she felt almost nothing, but the gun assembled itself and discharged the full round into the hall as she used her considerable physical strength to keep Dar and herself from going through the invisible circle.
Her gamble paid off. The grenades went off about halfway down the tube in a glory of blue and white fire which flashed out instantly, filling the entire hall with a conflagration so extreme that the rock wall began to glow and melt. But the magical barrier prevented it burning them.
Dar groaned in pain.
“Press your hand over your eyes!” Lila commanded and felt his pelvis against her metal one starting to crack and one of the ribs she'd healed before broke again as she pulled free, dragging him with her into the Fire Hall and through the few seconds of near total vacuum and searing heat that was all that remained. The grenades had consumed the oxygen and rendered it into part of their crumbling pale ash and molten slag. The pain of the heat and the pain of near-explosion in the vacuum vied with each other.
Lila hadn't given any thought to whatever was at the end of fire. The oxygen level was rising fast as they ran, their boot soles burning, hair smouldering, skin scalded by the heat radiating from the walls. She put on a spurt of speed. Dar couldn't keep up with her, so she turned and lifted him, as she'd lifted Zal, throwing him across her shoulder in a fireman's lift, hurting him no doubt as the shear forces in both their bodies racked up terrible loads. She felt pieces of her tearing free of other pieces, but it was minor damage. At the same time Dar and Tath's combined aethereal bodies provided a kind of barrier against the rising oxygen concentration.
The rock surface slid under her disintegrating boots and then hardened, mercifully, but the temperature was so extreme that the oxygen didn't have to build up to its previous levels. Though the vacuum was gone, now things wanted to ignite readily. Lila felt Dar's clothes starting to catch light under her remaining good hand. She set her jaw and put all the power to her legs, making the last ten metres in a single leap which found them both alight as they fell through the empty rock ring and landed sprawling and gasping on the unyielding cool of a jade floor.
The floor dropped them. Lila found herself plunging into cold water. Still holding Dar she kicked strongly, but the weight of all her metal was making her sink. She couldn't swim with only one arm. Then she felt Dar's hands pulling her up, saw silver bubbles dashing past her, moving down. Abruptly several more pairs of elfin hands came and hauled them both out of the lake water and, as they drew level with the floor, the water itself seemed to solidify, becoming the jade that had caught them before. It lifted Lila clear.
“Tath?” said a voice Lila didn't recognise. She dashed water from her eyes, struggling to get to her feet. Tath's spirit body and this other's were in contact.
Astar, Tath informed her with sadness. It was someone he missed.
“Astar,” Lila made herself say though she could hardly see for the pain in her arm. But Tath's glamour covered this. She didn't even look particularly singed.
“What an entrance, My Lord,” said Astar's soft, feminine voice. Lila looked up at the person helping her stand and saw an elf woman with black hair that curled and coiled around her shoulders in waves of night. A single diamond shone from a silver circle on her brow and beneath that her eyes were more than a little concerned—not for Tath's health either, Lila thought, and her suspicion was confirmed as she heard another woman's voice, this one even softer and more melodious than Astar's.
“Tath and Dar, who would think to find you lacking in elemental kudos? There were days you would have danced to my door.”
Lila jerked her hands back from Astar's gentle assistance before the other had time to feel a difference and straightened up, fighting to stand. “I have spent too long across the Void in Thanatopia,” she said, hoping this would be a good excuse to explain the situation. “Some changes are…inevitable.” She glanced quickly at Dar, who had also gained his feet though he looked both burned and drowned. Two strong male elves were on either side of him at a fastidious distance. Both of them were supremely well groomed and beautiful in that way that set Lila's teeth on edge; they reminded her of salesmen. Thankfully none of them looked like Zal.
Then Lila turned to see Arië.
The Lady of Aparastil had eyes of the most intense grass green. They shone from within as though they were made of stained glass and were set before a gleaming morning sun. Her face was the pale cream white of fine porcelain framed by a waterfall of coiling amber hair. A circlet of silver sat around the Lady's temple, and her ears were set close and elegant alongside her head, at a neutral angle. She wore watery, aqua robes of surprising practicality—Lila had expected dresses but Arië favoured britches, boots, and strong, forest-suited gear, all of which she made look infinitely more lovely than any piece of couture. Delicate silver leaves that twinkled threaded here and there through the fabrics and across the leather, so it looked as though she had been dressed by the forest, spiders her tailors. Her features were of a different cast to Dar's, the ones that Lila had grown used to looking at. Once all elves would have looked identical, but Lila recognised the High look now she saw it again—Zal's look. But before she could think on it she was staring up around them, at the room in which they stood—the Lady's Hall.
They were in a bubble beneath the lake. The walls and floor, and the roof itself, were made of water, water held aside by magic and charmed into the soft arches and parabolas of elfin architecture. The light that lit the place was sunlight, though Lila thought it must be channelled from the surface because her readings told her that there was about a fifth of a kilometre of lake water over their heads. Great thick stems of lily and giant water hyacinth rose beside them out of the dark green gloom. And below—the floor that Lila had taken for jade was simply water that refused to let them through its surface. She was amazed, trying to consider what possible conditions existed on that surface to permit her to stand on it and wondering how aetherial manipulation could create such a thing. For a moment she was struck totally dumb.
But Dar was far from being so impressed. He shook himself off, grimacing with the effort of concealing his wounds, and bowed deeply to Arië. “My Lady of Aparastil, I am your servant. Tath's glamour is but a trick. He was slain in Sathanor and his ghost inhabits the human against his will. It was a necessary evil I had to permit in the name of achieving delivery of your prize, Agent Lila Black.”
Lila felt her jaw actually fall open. She was speechless with shock, aware only of Tath's amusement inside her skin. “You treacherous fuck,” she said to Dar, in Tath's voice.
Do not be so upset, Tath said to her. The Lady would see through me eventually and though there are few elfin necromancers in all there are none who use flashbombs. A grudging admiration seemed to spread across the inside of her chest as he said this and Lila got the impression that Tath had rather liked the gun. This is the only way for one of you to remain at liberty here, and Dar is no good friend of Arië's, which she well knows. She will be far from happy, whatever her demeanour. Trust me. And whatever happens do not release me from the glamour. If she sees you her reaction will be less than kind. She knows only that you are human, not that you are a machine.
“Trust you!” Lila said aloud, only realising that she'd spoken when all eyes turned to her.
Tath reminded her about the daisy. She recalled her insight—even under the dulled effect of the Nirvana shunt—that he was an ally of Dar's. That he must be opposed to Arië. She had no idea whether or not she ought to trust either of them. No, she had a perfectly good idea that she definitely shouldn't, but there was no choice for the time being. She quickly covered up her slip…
“Trust you!” she said, slightly differently, stabbing her good finger out at Dar. “I don't know whatever made me believe that I could trust you!”
Dar drew himself up to his full height and did a very good impression of haughty superiority. Lila couldn't help flinching back—he looked exactly as he had in the instant before he had almost killed her. If she hadn't had Tath's insistence she would have counted herself completely betrayed. She was awed by his ability to dissemble, if that's what it was. She wasn't sure.
“Tath!” exclaimed Astar softly from behind Lila's shoulder. Lila could hear tears in the voice.
“It is most unseemly to wear your victim as a disguise,” Arië said, although she could have been reading poetry for all the alteration in temper she showed. “Do us all the honour of releasing our friend from the hold of his name and we will look less unkindly upon your plea for fair trial after you also release his spirit to our care.”
Lila ran through scenarios in her mind, implicating Dar, not implicating Dar—she didn't have time to play them through. Her arm and portions of her back hurt fiercely and she released as large a dose of cocodamol into her bloodstream as she dared.
As you love Zal, do not give Arië anything now, Tath said.
Sure you're not just pleading for your own life? Lila shot back as the silence grew in expectancy within the lake hall. Aloud she said, “My hostage remains as he is. If you want him back, then you can arrange safe passage for me to Otopia.”
“So bold,” Arië' said, moving closer. She placed her hand on the pommel of a sword that hung beside her hip then drew the blade from its scabbard and held the tip out, placing it precisely in the notch between Lila's collarbones at the base of her throat. “Yet I can kill you now. I have no use for you. In fact, you represent a considerable danger. Why should I let you live?”
Lila used her good left hand and took hold of the sword point between her forefinger and thumb. She began to move it aside. “Because if you do then your beloved Tath dies with me on the spot.” She felt Arië resisting her actions quite firmly but that the elf would not exert enough force to show that she was actually losing to Lila's insistence as Lila forced the weapon tip away from herself. The edge of the blade altered subtly as Lila continued. She felt it grow harder and sharper until it was like a razor and marvelled at the speed and ease with which the substance changed to the elf's will. It turned and cut through the remains of her burned fingers right to the transformed alloy of her bones, but even so it was no match for Lila's brute strength. Blood dripped freely down onto the jade floor and ran back along the blade, over the ornamental guard and onto Arië's fingers as Lila pushed it away to arm's length.
Lila heard a satisfying and astounded gasp from the collected audience ringing them and turned her head to look at Dar. His lips parted and one side twitched upward for a moment. Then she looked back at the Lady. Although they both appeared to hold the weapon lightly, there was a great deal of force running through it in both directions. Lila glanced into Arië's eyes and wanted so much to destroy the cool hauteur there. With a small movement of her finger she bent the sword point to a ninety-degree angle.
There was a moment that Lila felt was adequately interpreted as a pause for thought. Tath was a cold pleasure in her heart, enjoying every minute.
Arië released her effort and Lila let go. The Lady watched the blood running over her own knuckles like a cat watching a mouse and then handed the sword aside to the elf at her shoulder—another of those big Nordic blond types, all angular features and disapproval. Lila ignored him.
“There are magics,” Arië said in the light, conversational tone in which true hatred is best delivered, “which Tath will know of, that are useful in dislodging the possessed. They would be hard to endure.”
Lila felt Tath shudder eloquently. Now you tell me!
“Perhaps you would be so kind as to await our decision elsewhere,” the Lady continued. Her Nordic type and another who might have been his brother stepped quickly to either side of Lila. Lila looked back. The elf Astar had her face in her hands but she looked up now.
“I would speak with Tath,” she cried. “My Lady, let me talk with him and perhaps I will be able to decipher some knowledge to our advantage or persuade this human to mercy.”
“You may have half an hour,” Arië told her kindly. “For that is the time it will take me to make preparations for his extraction.”
The elves took hold of Lila's arms, flexing their hands uncomfortably against Tath's glamour, feeling him in spite of the fact they suspected something different underneath.
You'll never know how different, I hope, Lila thought. She struggled and twisted so that, as Arië addressed Dar, Lila could spit in his face with all the conviction of the fear that she'd been holding back. One thing Lila was confident above all else in—she was a good shot. She hit him square in the eye. Dar's return glance, blinking, held all the condensed loathing she was pretty sure he could genuinely feel.
Then Lila let herself be taken away.