A Hero's Throne Part 21

"There was no chance of that. I could feel how you were both different-conflicted. I let you and the other one, the simple one, alone."

"The other one? You mean you didn't know who we all were? You still don't know?"

"No, but I am glad you are not with the other-he is simple and twisted inward. A yfelgop, is that right? You came back with one of them? Was the yfelgop escorting you, or you him? Please tell me, it is important to know."

"Neither," Freya said, her frown deepening. "That was Daniel you sensed."

"Truly?"

"I'm afraid so."

"That is a pity."

"Do you still sense him? Is he still here somewhere?"

"No. He . . . left. I let him go. Once he crossed the boundary of this building, he pa.s.sed from my perception."

"Modwyn . . . nider-cwen," Vivienne said, her tongue catching slightly on the unfamiliar word. "Where is the Great Carnyx?"

"I am not certain I should tell you-if I knew. I heard you speak of Gad while you were in these walls. Are you not an enemy of Niergeard?" Modwyn stopped and turned to Freya. "Do you not wish destruction to this place and the people in it?"

"How did you hear me?"

"It is not for you to know and difficult to explain even if I wished to."

Freya shrugged. "I honestly don't know. I'm beginning to think that this situation is more complex than just a simple either/ or, good/bad situation. Just because I agree with Gad doesn't mean I agree with what he's done. I think there might be a way through this all without so much bloodshed, if any. Hopefully not more than has already been spilled."

Modwyn smirked. "You have changed from the scared, wide-eyed girl who first arrived here. Perhaps Ealdstan was right to act as he did."

The Rage rolled through Freya like a blast of heat. She leapt forward and slapped Modwyn hard across the face.

"How dare you," Freya spit out, clenching the knife and feeling a terrible urge to plunge it back into the queen's chest. "How dare you put Daniel and me through what you did and not even feel badly about it. We were children!"

Even in the dim light of the lantern, the pink imprint of Freya's hand was starting to show against Modwyn's fine and pale skin. Modwyn lifted one hand, palm down. "I wish you . . . to understand why we lied . . . the circ.u.mstances behind what we did." She seemed rattled, uncharacteristically discomposed.

Maybe I'm getting through to her, Freya thought.

"You're right. It is a complex problem, and there are more sides than are first visible. And you two were a small part of that. Very small cogs in the big machine. Small, but vital."

"There were others," Freya said. "I saw some of them in a dream. How many were there in total? How many children did you send to their deaths on that dreadful quest?"

"I do not remember exactly."

"That's monstrous."

"You do not share our perspective, the perspective of centuries. All die in time-some sooner, some later. Try to imagine-century upon century, unending years-all the same. And facing more, ever more. Stuck down here, trapped. Locked in a dark box."

"You're right," Freya said with a fair amount of sarcasm. "How could I be so heartless? Pardon me if I feel no guilt. Are you going to tell us where the Carnyx is or not?"

"You are agents of Gad. I sensed your allegiances."

Freya said, facing her squarely, "You're not exactly helping to win me to your side. But anyway, Vivienne isn't."

"Blood does not lie."

"Blood? What do you mean?" Freya said. "She's Alex Simpson's aunt. Alex is one of your people aboveground. I thought-"

Modwyn's face was set. Her whole manner, Freya observed now, was in fact one of someone who might be undergoing some sort of interrogation. And Vivienne's manner-was it deferential or quietly dominating? "What do you mean 'blood doesn't lie'?"

"Freya," Vivienne said, her mouth twisting slightly, "Gad's my brother."

* III *.

"You are not dead," the unknown, imperious figure beside Agrid Fiall a.s.sured Daniel.

"Are you sure about that? I just journeyed through all of creation and spent an evening floating in a disembodied cloud around a field."

"You'd be dead if I had any power at all in the matter," Agrid informed him. "I'll do everything within my power to make you wish you were."

"If you were dead, this conversation would occur somewhere else," said the unknown elf.

"Somewhere much more uncomfortable for all of us," Stowe said grimly.

"But we're in Elfland?" Daniel said. "Why am I here?"

"Because when you were last here, you took something that didn't belong to you, which you were specifically warned not to do."

"No . . ." Daniel said. "No, I don't think I did. I was very careful to-"

"You took our lives, you empty-headed fool," Fiall interrupted him. "Oh, don't give me that look. Certainly our lives aren't something you could put in your pocket, but did you honestly, seriously think that you could blithely go around killing whomever you pleased and not feel the effects of it?"

"But the merchant-Reizger Lokkich-he said it would be all right, that I wouldn't have any trouble going back after I did."

Stowe chuckled. "And you believed him?"

"What about you? I killed you in my world."

"Oh, I'm just here for the show."

"You will have a reckoning in your world as soon as you have had one in ours," Agrid said.

"It isn't quite as Agrid states it," the third elf said. "Your actions came at a cost to your soul-and now your soul must pay the price."

"Who are you?" Daniel asked, looking him up and down. "I remember Agrid Fiall-Agrid Fiall who wanted to buy me and keep me as a pet-but I don't remember you."

"I was there." The elf tilted his n.o.ble face upward. "I was following behind Fiall to relieve myself. I heard the explosions from the device that slew him-slew him almost instantly-and then you turned your machine at me. One piece of metal hit my chest." He pulled at his cloak and revealed a white, smooth chest that suddenly warped and contorted before Daniel's eyes, turning into a livid, diseased, purple-green infected hole. The skin separated in the centre of the ugly whorl and oozed puss and blood.

"Another," the figure continued, "struck me here." He pa.s.sed a hand across his face and it was transformed to show a gash running from the edge of his chin up to his cheek and over his ear. The sickening discolouration filled the whole side of his face; his eye was blood red, with a completely black pupil.

Daniel breathed out and looked away.

"I did not die quickly. I lingered inside my body as they fought to keep it alive-surgeons, herbalists, healers, enchanters-but none of them had any powers over the poisonous metal that had entered my body. It took days, and I myself struggled no less desperately than they, but in the end I gave way to the inevitable and died."

Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel saw his face change back to the fine, unmarred, porcelain-like features of a few moments ago.

Daniel swallowed. "Were you a servant? Or a guard?" he asked. The elf's bearing, his manner, suggested something regal, and Daniel had already begun to suspect, before the words were even out of the other's mouth.

"I was not. I was Prince Lhiam-Lhiat. You a.s.sa.s.sinated one of the royal line."

Daniel winced. "I'm . . . sorry?" he said.

"Are you though? You must think it, I'm sure, but can you say you wouldn't do it again? Seriously consider that, right now, before you answer."

Daniel did think about it a moment. "You're right, I would do it again."

Lhiam-Lhiat smiled and nodded. "You do not lie. Good. I thought you would not be regretful. But tell me why."

"Why not? You were evil, all of you, and this world-any world-is better for you not being in it."

"Spiteful little pup!" Fiall spat venomously. "I'll see you regret those words!" He leapt at Daniel, springing high into the air. Trying to twist out of the way, Daniel fell back but was too slow. The enraged elf's outstretched hands met his chest and Daniel toppled backward. He hit the ground with Fiall's knees on his chest. He saw hands raised against the evening sky, curled claw-like as they descended, slashing at his face and neck.

But there was no pain. Or, Daniel also saw, blood. Fiall's fingers just bounced off of him with no effect or damage to either of them. When he realised this, he just laid back and let Fiall impotently continue. Fiall's rage gradually fell from him and he stopped. Daniel shifted his weight, pushed Fiall off of him, and then stood. Fiall was on one side of him, Lhiam-Lhiat and Stowe on the other.

"That was fun. I guess. Is that what this is, then?" Daniel asked. "I'm going to be haunted by you and shown the error of my ways? Have a miraculous change of heart and find enlightenment? Are you going to show me my past, present, and future so I can see what a ruthless monster I am? Will you take me on a tour of all the lives I've destroyed because of my actions and reveal the connectedness and n.o.bility of life? That might be entertaining. Go ahead, bring it on, because you're right, I'm not sorry, and I would do it again. I'm not an idiot. I know what I am. You think I don't? You think I haven't thought long and hard about what I've done, what I've set myself to do? I'm not some selfish, unexamined soul!" Daniel said, his voice rising. He drew his sword. "I'm a hero! So bring it on! I'll take you and the whole universe on! Win or lose, I don't care. I'm fighting on the side of good! It may not always be pleasant, but it is always right!"

Daniel stood opposite the two tall, gaunt, marble-like apparitions, his eyes blazing. He felt the electric fire of righteousness racing though him. Lhiam-Lhiat was smiling at him in that smug, self-satisfied way of his. Fine, let him keep smiling. Daniel wasn't a man to be intimidated by that. But . . . Agrid Fiall was also smiling, the exact same smile-and for some reason that rattled him.

The sky seemed to be growing darker.

"Do you know," Fiall said, "I do believe I'm going to enjoy this far more than I previously imagined."

"This isn't a lesson," Lhiam-Lhiat said to him. "This isn't forgiveness or an atonement-those rules work differently in this place. This is punishment, pure and simple."

There was a twisting feeling in Daniel's gut. The righteous fire of defiance inside of him faltered slightly. "Torture? Doesn't matter, I'll get through it somehow. I've got friends here, and in other places. They'll find me and rescue me. I can hold out until then. I can survive. I can escape."

"Can you run?" Fiall asked him.

"What?" Daniel asked.

Fiall's eyes shifted to look behind Daniel, and Daniel turned. Behind him, the sun had been setting; minutes ago, deep reds and golden yellows lit the sky. Now the cold, purple expanse of twilight filled the air above him, and on the horizon-dark. But it wasn't the dark that was an absence of light; it was the horrible, running darkness that chases after you in nightmares. It was darkness that had an edge to it-and a sharp edge, with teeth and claws. Although it was still a far ways off, and only flickering slightly, Daniel knew with the untold certainty of a nightmare that the darkness was alive, and angry, and coming after him.

"What is that?"

"When you were a child, were you ever afraid of the dark? It was because you had not forgotten the realm that came before existence. That is Night."

"What does it want?"

"You. Forever."

Daniel started running. He ran as fast and as long as he could, which was considerable, since he didn't tire here, but he couldn't outrun the turn of the planet.

The Night was behind him. Its arms reached for him and its jaws strained for him.

Daniel's feet desperately pounded the ground. He had looked back once and almost burst into tears; he didn't know exactly why, but the hard, bank of blackness was terrifying, bristling with unknown horrors that he somehow, instinctively, knew would destroy him.

He felt the chill on his back as darkness creeped in around him. He thought the fear entered into him then, but it didn't; it merely quickened the panic already in Daniel's breast, like a sympathetic note vibrating on the fear string of his heart.

And then the Night reached out and grabbed him, physically, reaching an inconceivably cold hand into his chest and yanking backward. Unable to breathe, Daniel flung his arms out into the darkness.

He only had a second to acknowledge the terror before pain became his world. He felt his skin tear, like it was being stripped, torn off of him one thread at a time, layer by layer, leaving the raw flesh beneath exposed. The pain was so excruciating he wished he would dissipate, like earlier. He cursed his body, his useless, pointless body that now only seemed to exist in order to house the pain.

He was screaming-at least, he thought he was screaming. He could hear nothing. The Night and its pain blocked out all noise.

He tumbled in torment for countless hours. Days? How could he stop the pain? How could he manage it? Could it be avoided? Transcended? If he could only think clearly for a moment . . .

And then, it stopped. The pain left him-but left him raw, aching, and brutally cold. It was too dark to see. He feared moving, so he just drifted. The blood in his ears thumped with the echoes of pain and the sounds of his sobs.

A grey blur floated before his eyes. He blinked to clear them and found the Elfin moneylender standing before him.

"Are you sure I'm not dead?" Daniel asked Agrid-more croaked-and he realised that he asked it in English, not Elvish. But that didn't seem to matter.

"Fairly certain."

Daniel sighed. "Really? How do I know I can trust you?"

Agrid Fiall smiled. "If you can't trust the dead, whom can you trust?"

Daniel hazarded a movement and brought his hand to his face. Contrary to what every nerve ending told him, his skin was still attached to the rest of his body, as well as somehow illuminated in the dark.

"What happens now?" Daniel asked. "You said punishment. Is this what it's going to be? Torture? You just keep going until I break? Is there more to come?" Or is it over? he hoped, but couldn't ask.

"My friend," said the moneylender with a leer. "You haven't begun yet."

"More pain?" Daniel asked, and felt tears in his eyes.

"Perhaps. Is pain the worst that can happen to you?"

"I don't know. It feels like it."

"If you do not fear anything more than pain, then you are blessed."

"Right now I can't think of anything worse than what just happened to me. What was it?"

"You don't fear solitude?"

The moneylender disappeared.

"Silence?"