Dierá was inconsolable when she returned to the cell. Whether she opened or closed her eyes, she saw only Rastín impaled, and it drove her to hysterics and madness. She was a shieldmaiden of the Élvemere, and yet she had done nothing but whimper and cower before the great king. She had failed her people utterly; she had failed her king utterly.
It was a day before she could lift her head and do anything other than sob. A day more before G’rkyr and the other Empyrjurin got her to speak. Her first coherent words were a prayer to the Mother, begging for forgiveness and strength. She needed the Mother’s forgiveness to face herself. She needed strength to keep herself from slipping back into tears. Then just when she thought her heart could not break any further, she thought of Eldri and Síari, the sisters of her heart if not of her blood. Eldri was lost to her now and Síari had taken the Long Road.
G’rkyr and Zanük cared for Dierá as they would have one of their own, and their fondness for the elf maiden grew. By the evening of the third day, G’rkyr could not contain himself, but it was Zanük who spoke for his brother. “Dierá,” he pleaded, “For G’rkyr’s sake, you must eat and you must return to yourself. We Empyrjurin do not often find what G’rkyr thinks he’s found with you.”
Dierá lifted her head, regarded Zanük with eyes full of tears. Normally she found G’rkyr’s infatuation with her endearing, but at this moment she could only think of the impossibility of relations with an Empyrjurin. It was absurd. It was beyond absurd. Before she could stop herself, the anger and bitterness behind her tears became words. “I am Élvemere,” she shouted. “He is Empyrjurin. Our people cannot mix. It is absurd. We are all pets of the masters. Would you have me as a pet too? Would I then be the pet of a pet?”
Zanük’s response surprised Dierá. Turning to his brother, he said, “Tell her.”
“I cannot,” G’rkyr responded. “His Empirical Majestic Exalted One brought this on himself.”
“Tell her or I will tell her.”
Something in G’rkyr’s expression stirred Dierá and helped her focus. “Tell me what? What can you not tell me?”
G’rkyr said nothing. Zanük spoke instead. “Was he truly a prince, a prince of the Élvemere?”
“More than a prince,” Dierá said, “He was the son of the High King. When the king passed on to the blessed land, he became heir apparent. Save for the crowning, he was the High King of Élvemere. In my heart he remains my king.”
At the same time G’rkyr said, “His Exaltedness was a king?” Zanük said, “I see now. What were you to him?”
Dierá started to speak, but held her tongue. She had already said too much.
“Very well,” Zanük said, “but you must know G’rkyr is more than just G’rkyr?”
Dierá furrowed her brow, her eyes revealing a question she wanted to ask but did not. As her face paled and her expression fell away, Zanük raised the bowl of stewed meat and helped her eat. Nothing was said for a time, and then for some small amount of time Dierá slept.
When she awoke, one of the young female gargants was beside her and neither Zanük nor G’rkyr were to be found. Dierá asked of them in both the language of the Élvemere and the language of the Empyrjurin, but the other would not speak.
She was beside herself with tears by the time the brothers returned. When she saw them dressed in finery as if they had just returned from a celebration, she sobbed. Of the two, only Zanük approached her. G’rkyr seemed to want nothing to do with her.
When Zanük crouched beside her, Dierá lashed out at him. “Do you celebrate the death of my king with the masters? Do you gloat in my sorrow? Did you feast and drink to our deaths?”
Zanük reached out to her, putting his left hand on her shoulder, but it enveloped much of her small figure, too. “We do not celebrate death. We do not gloat. We do not feast and drink. We are as you.”
“You are not as me! I have never been given another as a gift!”
“You are more punishment than gift,” G’rkyr said quietly.
“What does he mean by that?” Dierá demanded.
“He means the masters’ gifts are cruel as this day was cruel.”
“Cruel?” Dierá shouted. “How can celebration be cruel?”
As she said it, she knew she should not have, because Zanük pulled away from her as she did so; and none of the Empyrjurin spoke to her for the rest of the day. She pretended to be hurt by his actions, when in truth she was more confused. She did not eat her evening meal. She cast her food and drink on the floor.
When none of this roused their sympathy, she pretended to be sick and faint. When this got no response, she went to the open cistern on the other side of the room and disrobed, slipping into the cool waters. Scrubbing herself clean occupied her for a time. As she started to relax and drift away, she forgot she was trying to draw G’rkyr’s attention and simply enjoyed one of the few pleasures that remained to her.
As she drifted there in the cool waters, her father’s face floated before her eyes. In this dreamlike state, she spoke with him as if he was there before her. “I have twice failed, father,” she said. “He did not see me as his queen, his equal. He did not love me even as I loved him. As I stood before the ageless, I could do nothing save tremble and watch him stumble onward to his death.”
Her father took her hand in his. “Athania Dierá Steorra, you could not have changed the course once set upon.”
“But I have the gift, father. I could have turned this aside, if only I had chosen to do so.”
“To reveal such a thing…to what end…to your ruin?”
“We dwell within the mists of ruin. Our age is a lost age, as our people are a lost people. I chose inaction when action was called for and—”
“—and you chose selflessly. You put the needs of our people above the needs of your heart. You became a queen, when a queen was most needed. A queen cannot always follow her heart, and you have learned this, though the cost has been dear, very dear. But I sense that… I sense—”
Her father’s words cut off and she could see him no more. The transition was so abrupt that she sank into the waters of the cistern and came up sputtering, gasping for air. As she started to go under again, G’rkyr scooped her out of the water and put her on the ground beside the cistern, where she choked and wheezed as she struggled to take in a breath while coughing up water she had swallowed.
After she finally took in several deep breaths, she threw her arms around G’rkyr’s midsection. “I’m sorry,” she told the gargant. “I didn’t mean to lash out at you.”
Uncomfortable with her nakedness against him, G’rkyr handed Dierá her slip and then turned away as he waited for her to put it on. “You meant it, Dierá,” G’rkyr said with his back turned to her. “You meant every word because you do not understand. The masters are as cruel to us as they are to you. In Jurin, today is Atonement’s last day. Atonement is our celebration of the cycle’s end and the coming of the time when day and night are the same.
“The masters…made Zanük and I…dress up and attend their feast…to my people’s fall…on our most…sacred of days. Your face…in my thoughts...is what…”
Dierá hushed him by thrusting herself against his side. “I’m sorry, G’rkyr. I thought only of myself, of my loss. The ageless king is most cruel.”
G’rkyr held her small form as she clung to him. “The fat one who lords over us is not a king. He acts the part of one, but he is not a king. You and I are not important enough to be taken before the master’s king, though perhaps Rastín was if what you said of him was true.”
Dierá moved around to stand in front of G’rkyr so she could look up at his face. “Not a king, but he said he was a king.”
“He may have been called by royal title, but he would never dare to name himself a king. He is but a slavelord, one of a hundred hundred such among the masters. This world is his bounds, no doubt for displeasing the masters’ king, and so he turns his displeasure to our suffering.”
“You know the masters well. Zanük said that you were more. What did he mean by that?”
G’rkyr withdrew from Dierá for a moment, started to say something, but then became quiet. Zanük spoke for his brother. “We, of course, know the masters well, for we have only just fallen.”
“Fallen?”
G’rkyr said, “He means to say we were once masters, not true equals to the drakónus or the titanus, but masters the same. Now, we are fallen. We are as you.”
Dierá could not believe what she was hearing. “And you, G’rkyr, are more?”
“I am,” the gargant admitted. “My father is Nük T’nyr. King of the Empyrjurin.”
“And Zanük?”
“Zanük is Zanük.”
“Why was I given to you?”
“A cruel joke, a twisting, a glimmer of what once we had. Now that we’ve taken to you it is certain—”
“You speak of drakónus and titanus.”
“The slavelord is Drakón. Dragon in your language, I believe. Most of his sworn are S’h’dith, the snake people. The watcher, he is titanus. Titans as you know them.”
Dierá reached out to G’rkyr. “But you said you were at war with the masters?”
“And we are,” said Zanük.
G’rkyr added, “We are, Dierá, and I must tell you—”
“Brother,” interrupted Zanük, “She does not need to hear you say what she already suspects. I will say it for you and spare you anguish.” Zanük paused, taking in Dierá’s expression. “The answer to the unspoken is yes. We are a warrior people known for our ferocity. We are savage, brutal, and without fear in battle. I am bred to this, as is G’rkyr, as are all Empyrjurin. An age ago, the masters rewarded our people for countless battles won across countless worlds by raising us up. My father sought to reach too far…This is our cost…”
Dierá balled up her hands into fists. “But you are not savage. You are not brutal. You are not cruel.”
“We are more so,” G’rkyr said quietly. “We are Empyrjurin. These things are our life—”
Zanük spoke heatedly with G’rkyr in a language Dierá did not know. These words brought the other Empyrjurin from the recesses of the cell. Five larger females spoke with Zanük and G’rkyr in this same language, then one Dierá did not recognize came forth. After this one spoke, all became quiet.
Zanük broke the silence. Speaking in the language of the Jurin peoples, he said, “My mother wishes to know of you.”
“Your mother?” Dierá replied in the same language.
The one never before seen gazed at Dierá, and Dierá saw what she had not seen before. The five larger females were older; the one was fully grown. As understanding came, she bowed her head and knelt before the queen of the Empyrjurin.
Zanük repeated his statement, adding, “A rare trust she grants you.”
Dierá stood, unconsciously fixing her slip and smoothing back her hair. She hesitated before to tell the Empyrjurins who she was, but she did not hesitate now. She said clearly and carefully in the Jurin language, “I am Athania Dierá Steorra, a shieldmaiden of the Élvemere. In Élvemere, I was to have been a queen, a wife to Rastín Dnyarr Túrring, son of the High King of Élvemere.”
Realizing something unsaid, Dierá turned to Zanük, but the gargant recognized the question in Dierá’s eyes even before she asked it. “You want to know the obvious, to know why G’rkyr and I are not important enough if my mother is what you suspect.”
Dierá nodded, finding a new softness to his brutish face.
“My mother has right of birth over Three Hammers clanfolk. The other clans have their great mothers. Our people have but one great father. King Nük T’nyr, my father.”
As Zanük spoke, Dierá regarded G’rkyr and the queen. “In Élvemere, the kingdoms of my people each have their kings and queens. My father, Alborn Steorra, was king of Dobehen.”
Zanük’s expression became stern, the equivalent of a smile. “You, Dierá, are more as G’rkyr is more. You are a daughter of a king, and yet—”
“Dobehen was the first kingdom to fall to the ageless. My people speak of it only as a curse. To say that you come from this place where the ruin of the Élvemere began is to say you are nothing, so what I tell you is that I am nothing.”
“You speak an untruth to play against what my people value most. It does not change my opinion of you. Your line is one of strength. My father led the ageless to glory countless times and he struck the strongest first. Break resolve by breaking strength. It is the way.”
Dierá blew out a long breath and looked up at Zanük. “Truly?”
“It is as it is.”
The Empyrjurins began speaking in the language Dierá did not understand. The queen spoke at length. G’rkyr and Zanük made several responses, but mostly listened. When the queen finished speaking, there was a sudden uproar among the Empyrjurins. G’rkyr and Zanük beat back one of the large females just before the queen retreated to the dark recesses of the cavernous cell.
When G’rkyr and Zanük returned, Dierá put her hands on her hips and glared at them. She wanted to know what happened, and she hoped her stance showed the strength the gargants so highly respected.
G’rkyr’s response was laughter that boomed and echoed throughout the cell. To Dierá, it seemed laughter was the one thing all peoples shared, but she suspected that gargant’s laughter was a show of scorn rather than humor.
Zanük said, “G’rkyr leave us.” G’rkyr stopped laughing, his expression hardened, but he left without comment, leaving Dierá alone with Zanük. “He seeks to show my mother his heart remains hardened with fire. He will not be himself until he has proven this to her.”
“And why must his heart be hardened with fire?”
Zanük’s laughter followed the echoes of his brother’s. “G’rkyr has refused to take the thing he wants—and that thing is you. But that is as nothing to what my mother wishes.”
“Go on,” Dierá said as she cast a sidelong glance to G’rkyr who lurked just at the edge of the shadows.
“Before I continue, I must know the truth of you.”
Dierá turned back to Zanük and gave the gargant her full attention. “I’m listening.”
“In your own words, you told us you knew nothing of the Jurin peoples save what you’ve learned in books and had been told. Those things you read and learned—”
“—were in preparation for this day, this moment. The moment when the sons of the Empyrjurin king chose an elf maiden over their own people—and you have chosen, have you not?”
Zanük’s face burned with the living fire of his people. “How could you possibly know such a thing?”
“It was what I was born to,” Dierá said, almost bitterly. “Tell me now of the dream, the wish, the desire of my heart and make it truth.”
“But you—do you—” His words shifted to the language Dierá did not understand. When she did not react, he returned to Jurin language. “—you do not—and yet—”
“I have not the true gift, only a part of the gift. My mother had the gift and she saw my futures—the turnings of the many paths, spreading ever outward like the branches of the Eternal Tree.” She paused, closed her eyes, sucked in a long breath. “Please,” she begged, “this not knowing is torture beyond imagining.”
Zanük said, “Karthar would never kill such a king or even the son of such king with his own hand. Rastín must be among the twice-born now. If so, he is forever lost to us, for he exists in living death and now knows only the service of the masters.”
Dierá said nothing in reply, thinking to herself only of how little the Empyrjurin knew of the Élvemere.