Keeping It Real (38 page)

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

Arie 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
Hie
blade, over the ornamental guard and onto Arie'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 Arie'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.

Arie 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,' Arie 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
t
ell 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,' Arie 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 differen
t
, I hope,
Lila thought She struggled and twisted so that, as Arie

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.

Zal lay on the floor of his cell, singing a little because he could think of nothing else to do
.
From time to

time he heard Arie's voice. She would just say the name of someone he knew and for a moment his

memory would fill in one of those blank places at the court with a familiar image. He guessed she meant

him to realise that she was listing the people he had condemned with his silence, maybe mentioning them

as she punished them. Or he was meant
to think so.

He was reasonably sure that Lila was in Aparastil. It was just a feeling but in Alfheim feelings were

unusually trustworthy about
this kind of thing. Aether was everywhere and it transmitted information

instantly, even faster than the Otopians' electromagnetic waves. He wondered how she had got
here, and

how long she would last. He sighed as he thought
about
the reception she would receive.

He thought
about
the songs he had been going to write and the hope that
the charm in the music and

the words could effect some kind of shift in awareness among a wider population towards a new kind of

openness between the races ... it
seemed very silly to him now. Trying it
in Otopia of all places where the

humans had so little use for other ways of seeing the world was manifestly dumb. He should have stayed

in Demonia where they were open to ideas - too open, but open nonetheless . . .

He realised he was singing 'A Hard Day's Night' and stopped with his mouth ajar. Thinking about Lila

was why. He wished she was there in the room. He wished he hadn't lost
her jacket
and his bruised

arms ached.

Of course he could not
have stayed in Demonia, doing nothing. Aggravating Alfheim's wavering

would-be radicals by pissing them off

with music and cavorting in Otopia was exactly the thing to do in the circumstances ..
.

Way out in the lake, something looked at
him
.

The same flicker of awareness he had noticed before was there again
.
It was faint, and very, very

strange
.
He thought it
was ghostly
.
Its attention was like the laying of a cool butterfly wing against
the

inside of his forehead.

All elves carried wards against ghosts; bones with eyes on, stones with naturally made holes in, small

circlets of thorn wood, snippets of cloth once soaked in children's tears. Ghosts could not
always be

turned aside even by these. They came and they took in silence.

Zal had long since discarded all of these trinkets, even before Demonia, when he decided it
was better

to know than not know, and he had let go of any hope of eluding fear. He just hoped that he not be

paralysed by it when it was strong
.
But that was all
.
And even this wish was only a necessary little bit of

flag waving
.
He recalled Lila's battle stance function with a wince and a smile - at
least
she could switch

fear off and act
in the face of it He worried less about her suddenly.

The thing looking at him was not a ghost. Zal knew ghostly touches. When the ghost of Forgotten

Forests touched him on the hill above Solomon's Folly it had felt - it had been the absence of feeling.

This was alien but not absent. It was almost the opposite of absence
.
He couldn't identify it
but
it
had,

yes, presence.

It
turned away.

Zal sang another line.

It looked back. It was so deep and far away he was not sure it wasn't imagination on his part. But

who cared?

He carried on singing, one song and another, whatever came into his head.

From the dark it
drifted upwards beneath him. He saw little gas bubbles and old leaf silt rising on a

new current, passing his prison as water was pushed upwards at some speed. The thick stems of the

waterquoia trembled. The cool wing under his skull folded itself closed and left with what impressions it

had gained
.
The water stilled. It didn't come again.

Dragons, he thought. In elven lore they were lucky creatures. Tales mentioned a time when dragons

and elves talked, but then again, tales mentioned a time when elves and demons were one race so... that

was probably too long ago to be of any use today. And if you went

back far enough there were records that stated the worlds were made by dragons spinning words like

silk, as if dragons were spiders and the universe their web-In modern times it was well known that

dragons were creatures of the Interstitial, of the space between worlds. The Otopians had even

attempted to tag one and radio track it. Of the research team nothing was ever found except a rather

nice handbag containing some fortune cookies. The cookie fortunes were classified, so Zal had never

dis-covered what they said, although he believed the rest
of the story when his informers didn't.

Dragons were inexpressibly strange. No. doubt
Arie considered its presence the final commendation

on her status. To attract
a dragon was the ultimate pride, a mark of absolute sorcery or innocence.

Zal didn't
think it was his innocence doing the trick, jr Arie just said the names. Zal sang songs and

waited and hoped Lila had some kind of discreet yet incredibly useful weapon hidden about her person

that he hadn't yet seen.

Astar trailed after Lila and her guards. They passed from the hall through walks glimmering with

wave-lensed light, beside gardens of weed filled with incredible varieties of fish curiously nosing up

against the air world of the interior. Rooms filled with fountains, walls tumb-ling with falling water . . . Lila

only looked to notice entrances and exits and to map the way. She tested the strength of her guards,

pulling this way and that, and realised they were tough, but much lighter than she was in spite of their

bigger size. She fought the urge to vomit with the nauseating pain of being held around her burned right

arm. To distract herself she talked to Tath and tried to discover anything that might make it more likely

she could get
into the same room as Zal.

Now
t
ha
t
we've bough
t
some
t
hinking
t
ime,
t
ell me, does Arie know
t
ha
t
I was Zal's guard?

Unless Dar has
t
old her so I would
t
hink no
t
. She has li
tt
le in
t
eres
t
in your func
t
ion al
t
hough, if she
ever dound ou
t
t
ha
t
Zal had caugh
t
you in a Game,
t
ha
t
would be a differen
t
ma
tt
er. A lever
agains
t
Zal is some
t
hing she would value more
t
han my life or Dar's,
t
ha
t
is cer
t
ain. She will no
t
accep
t
your mas
t
ery of me a
t
all and I believe she would sooner kill us bo
t
h
t
ha
t
suffer
t
he con
t
inued embarrassmen
t
of
t
ha
t
, for she sees me as her proper
t
y, bu
t
h she would gladly spend Dar
and myself in
t
he achievemen
t
of mas
t
ery over you. Like us, you mus
t
decide exac
t
ly how much
you value
t
he lives of
t
hose wi
t
h whom you mus
t
deal and how much you value
t
he grea
t
er good of
your people.

This was good news of a sort. As long as Lila played things right, she at least could survive long

enough for an attempt at escape
.
Tath's statements about
his relation to Arie made her cringe however.

Her proper
t
y?

Arie is
t
he leader of
t
he ligh
t
elves of
t
he Valar inheri
t
ance, among whose number I coun
t
myself.

As she is our leader, according
t
o her au
t
hori
t
y I am hers
t
o spend. I
t
is why I became a
necromancer. If no
t
for her engagemen
t
of me, why would I pre
t
end
t
o sucha loa
t
hsome office?

Lila guessed elf loyalties in the spy business might
run to extreme altruism.
For
t
he Jayon Daga?

E
v
e
n t
hey canno
t
require such a sacrifice
of
service.

Lila was turned to face a door. Like all doors in the lake palace it
had no solid barrier involved, being

a magical barrier which vanished at
the her guards' touch. A small room lay beyond encapsulated within a

dark area of weeds which overgrew the sides of the bubble walls. A bed, a table and a minimum of other

furnishings graced it, looking as though they floated in mid-air from most angles. It was hard not to