Keeping It Real Read online

  “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 Al-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 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 so, 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 less 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, 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.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lila woke into full power two and a half hours after she had gone to sleep. Before she was aware of what she was doing she was padding quickly along the tunnel, a gun in each hand, her Al-self in control. After being still for so long she felt twinges and aches now, but she ignored them. Beyond the door she could hear sounds of terrible fighting from further down the hillside. She heard elven voices shouting, and they sounded desperate. For a moment her hand lingered on the door.

  The clash of metal on metal and the grunt of hard effort and pain, the whining buzz of magics and a horrible background noise she couldn’t identify reached her senses as she flung the bolts back and looked out. Flickering faint light danced a few metres below the treeline. The awful noise was like distressed metal screaming but she felt its timbre in her bones, what was left of them, and knew it for some kind of fell creature she didn’t want to see. A scream sliced the night in two and fell silent in its course, harmonics enough to damage ordinary human hearing. One elf at least was dead.

  Lila used sensors on her hand to sweep-clear the area around the door before stepping out and closing it behind her, in case there were any of the Night Prowlers still around. She didn’t consider waking Dar. Better he stayed where he was less likely to pull attention from the Saaqaa. Instead, she ran quietly downhill towards the fighting, concealing herself carefully with camouflage and stealthy moves until she was almost on top of the scene. Her effort was wasted, since nothing there was looking out for her.

  She saw an elf body on the ground ten metres away in a dappled pool of faint starlight. Over it the gigantic form of a black, bipedal animal crouched. It had long arms and savage claws. Lila didn’t know what it was. Like the Saaqaa it was eyeless, its long, narrow head merely jaws with ranks of dagger teeth and a bony crest running side to side across its skull. A long tail balanced the head’s weight and long legs, short at the thigh but lengthy in the shin and the foot, which was perched delicately on the earth. She was amazed to see that in one hand it held a short, decorated spear and with this it was fighting another elf, standing.

  It was extremely strong. The wooden spear point struck the elf’s sword with the force of a wrecking ball each time the elf blocked an attack and the elf was failing. Lila saw the fighter’s andalune body close and tight, weakening as the black creature came close so that it dealt not only physical punishment but drained the energy from the Elf at the same time. The andalune body was torn off with every pass of the creature’s hand as if it were tissue paper.

  The third elf of the party was casting the strange werelight Lila had seen from the doorway of the shelter. Its peculiar intense green made the black creature flinch backwards each time it flared, but it was clear that this was not enough to do any real damage. And then Lila saw one of the four-legged types of Prowler stalking around behind the sword-fighting elf, and knew that their time was up if she did not intervene. The light didn’t hurt the Saaqaa enough to deter them completely, and whatever the sorcerer whispered in between light bolts was drowning in the dreadful screech that the Prowlers made, a noise, she realised as her AI analysed it, that was geared exactly to disrupt the sonics of elven magical senses.

  Around the whole scene wild aether swirled and gathered. The black creatures’ tails actively swung around, searching for strong currents and these they seemed to drink into their skins, becoming darker as the aether vanished, and more violent.

  The elf with the sword missed her footing at last. Her energy body was almost gone. She was as magically undefended as Lila was. The creature’s spear struck her shoulder as she missed her block and she spun and fell on her face without a sound. At a speed Lila would have had to work hard to match the huge two-legged Prowler pounced on her and stabbed he
r through the back, pinning her body to the ground. It let out a shrill, terrible scream of victory and its doglike companion leapt forwards, head close to the body, weaving as though dancing as it drained the final aether.

  The werelight vanished. She lost track of the third elf as the bipedal

  Saaqaa straightened up and yanked its spear free with a bloody wrench. All this happened in a few seconds, no more.

  Lila felt the odds turning bad. She could go now and leave whoever was out here, yes. It would be smart to do that It would be the spy thing to do, the agent’s business dealt with by nature, not even her fault, not her guilt.

  She set a Starlight flare for a low altitude long burn and launched it from the gun in her forearm. Suddenly the forest lit up like daylight. The elf spellcaster whirled towards her at the sound of the gun and cracked a small branch in doing so. In the burn of the rocket glare he stood out against the wooded hillside like a white statue, as brilliant as an angel. The Prowler turned its attention instantly onto him, shadows gathering around its head like a cloak of darkness. It flung its spear and the cast drew a black line across the aetheric mist, gathering momentum as it went.

  Lila shot the wooden weapon out of the air in mid-flight with a flechette round that made it into matchwood before it got halfway to its target. Other fragments of the tiny grenade struck both prowlers, inflicting stinging cuts which confused them so that they leapt back into the darker regions, leaving the dead and their defender temporarily free. Without hesitation the surviving elf ran straight towards Lila.

  She caught his arm as he reached her and accelerated both of them even faster up the hillside towards the night shelter, their retreat accompanied by the triumphant screech and scream of the Saaqaa as the flare burned out and fell to ground.

  Lila bolted the heavy door behind them. Immediately her captive attempted to slide along the tunnel away from her, but he didn’t know she could see his every move as clear as day. She easily caught up and in the darkness used her excess of strength to pin him against the wall and bind his hands behind his back with a plastic arrest tag. His breath was hot and fast in the confined space, much faster than her own, and she could feel that he was shaking, although he did everything he could to stop it.