The Key of Amatahns

  ***

  For many days and nights they pressed onward into the Gideon Mountains. Janir’s brother took every opportunity to make their lives miserable. He never failed to exploit even the simplest things, such as gorse bushes to use for binding them at night. When they camped, she and Karile were tied well away from the fire. During the day, they were dragged behind the horses, while Lucan shrieked for everyone to move faster. He did let Janir and Karile eat eventually and soon learned that it was unwise to let a hungry enchanter have free access to a cooked animal meant to be shared between nine people.

  Their company wound between the steep mountains, crawling amidst the bases of the colossal titans. Often, they could not see the sun at all. Snow still blanketed these obscure corners of the world and where it didn’t there was icy slush, even though spring had come months ago to Green Haven. Lucan and the Argetallams seemed to be suffering more than she and Karile. Brevia received snow every winter, but the temperate Staspin Waste seldom saw hail, let alone a freeze. Irritation at the weather seemed to make her brother more spiteful.

  Gelid mud lubricated their path almost constantly. Janir worried about Kalbo more and more. All the horses slipped on the soggy terrain, but always staggered to their hooves and plodded on.

  At least Camak and the others left her and Karile alone for the most part. A few nights ago, Camak had come over to leer and ogle her, but a quiet glare from Lucan had reined him in. It had been brief, no more than a glance. Janir had often wondered since if she had imagined it.

  After several days of short rations and cold nights, they came to a place that peaked over a level pocket between two mountains. No more than a hundred yards in diameter, it was strewn with large boulders and scraggly, leafless trees.

  Here a path became clear. Trails the right size for mice led off from their own route. It was so narrow it might be mistaken for a game trail, but Janir noted all the curiously angled trees and strangely formed stones. Several rocks stood in a hodgepodge fashion, but when a double of the nondescript pile came into view on the other side of the path, Janir realized with a shiver that it was not natural.

  There was a whisper, a chitter, to their right. A flicker of pale blue motion to the side and then nothing. No one but Janir seemed to notice.

  The chilled group of travelers came out of the stark trees and were blocked by a stream running across the shadowed pathway. A moderate waterfall poured down to their left, spitting foam into the frigid water.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Lucan dismounted. Taking nothing but his cloak and Janir’s karkaton, he strode toward the waterfall. Not even waiting for a command, two of the Argetallams stayed to guard the horses while the others followed after their leader with Janir and Karile in tow.

  Rounded rocks lay like stepping stones to the waterfall, leading underneath the flowing curtain itself. With an impatient glance back at his companions, Lucan ventured gingerly onto one of the stones. He swayed precariously, but wobbled straight to the waterfall, braced himself for the cold, and dove into the pounding veil. The Argetallams shoved Janir and Karile across the stones without a single misstep and thrust them after him into the icy waterfall.

  At the other side, Janir shivered and brushed water off her face. The enchanter said something about “bloody cold water.” Concealing the entrance to a craggy passageway, the waterfall rumbled at their backs. Before them, Lucan sputtered and cursed the engineer who had designed the entrance. With an impatient snap, Lucan marched deeper into the earth.

  The tunnel continued at about the same level, arching to the left in a sinuous curve. Stones reminiscent of cobbles lined the floor of the passage, but were more natural in shape and texture.

  At first, Janir wondered why her brother had not ordered torches to be lit. But no sooner had the light from their backs faded than the light from the other side shone through. They continued on until they came to the end of the tunnel and reentered the cloudy day.

  Janir poked her head out, then ducked back in. Ahead lay a winding ledge that seemed to have been fashioned into some sort of a road. Below was the province of Snow Dale, far, far below. Lucan’s mortahns caught her and dragged her onto the ledge. Trying to attain control of her fear, Janir stiffly followed her brother, constantly reminding herself not to look down. Thankfully, it was not long before they came to a door, if it could be called a door. At first glance, Janir mistook it for a fault in the cliff. It was a subtle, sketchy outline in the rock.

  Lucan stepped up to the center of the vague shape and dusted earth off a section. Once it was cleaned, he revealed a set of five cylinders. Small, narrow pieces of metal faced sideways and spun with a series of clicks. As her brother absently spun the top one with his forefinger, Janir noted that each one had five odd symbols marking its sides.

  “What was the order of the symbols?” Lucan mumbled to himself. He spun the cogs contemplatively, as if trying to refresh a forgotten memory.

  Camak made to take a step forward. “My lord—”

  “It was a rhetorical question!” Lucan snarled. “Elf,” he said to himself, spinning the top cylinder so that a particular rune was facing out. “Followed by…Mortal, Dwarf, Mazag, and Troll,” he answered himself, spinning each cylinder into place as he cited its proper symbol.

  Something behind the earth moved and realigned itself. Then the soil seemed to shimmer like a curtain and slowly the veil of earth parted to show the strangest place Janir had ever seen.

  It appeared to be some sort of underground exchange, a subterranean market. The expected sounds of a market were there—gruff voices protesting prices, vendors calling out their wares’ superiority to the other vendors who screamed the same message with as much conviction. Children ran about playing, beggars occupied the street corners, and scavenging animals prowled about, the only things remotely normal about this place.

  The ground, the ceiling and the sides of narrow walkways were all made of bright red dirt. A reddish tinge had settled over the cavern in a fog of light.

  Two wrinkled trolls with pointed ears and seminude bodies argued over the price of a strange little animal in a cage. The animal had a young eagle’s wings covering its head, with a lion’s muscular tail nervously twitching from side to side, a griffin.

  Vendors were selling things such as “invisibility amulets,” “sleeping potions,” “scent eraser,” and a variety of other wares that were foreign to Janir. Several children, normal in appearance aside from being no taller than chickens and purple, loped underfoot, laughing while chasing an animal that greatly resembled a rat with yellow scales all over. A willowy, long limbed creature in rags sat on the corner of a narrow street, holding out a wooden mug for alms.

  White rabbits, or animals that appeared to be rabbits, foraged the leftovers and scraps of the marketplace. Janir realized they weren’t rabbits when one of them spotted a piece of pastry that had fallen off a baker’s cart. The small rabbit-creature hunched its. Then, to Janir’s amazement, it shot out a long red tongue, just like a frog’s, revealing two rows of needlepoint teeth, and gulped down the crumb.

  Lucan dragged them into the crowd with unhidden impatience. No one even looked up from their business as the abnormal band of travelers melted into the crowd of unusual market goers.

  “I didn’t realize that portal was still working,” said someone off to the side, but no one else paid them any heed. If anyone was aware that Argetallams had just walked into their midst, they did not care.

  “Welcome to the Vermilion Market,” Lucan said patronizingly. “Where the underhand dealings of the magical world take place.

  Jostled by the strange pedestrians, Janir tried to stay close to her brother and his mortahns. Somehow being of the same race felt unifying. Every so often, Janir would catch a glimpse of an elf appraising something expensive. One or two dwarves bartered for a piece of especially rare metal and thrice she spotted mortal enchanters and an enchantress mingling with the throng. But for the most part the scene
was populated by the strange beings of secrecy, the ones many these days dismissed as myths.

  Even though she and her mortal counterparts were misfits amidst the others, no one even gave them a second glance. Lucan stopped to ask a troll selling mushrooms where a seeress might be. Janir’s eyes wandered about the market. Her gaze fell on an angry father troll scolding his son. They were too far away for her to hear their words, but she could see the boy apologizing. The father sighed and stared wordlessly for several moments, shook his head, and wrapped the boy in a forgiving embrace. Janir glanced back to Lucan and the mortahns.

  Where was Lucan?

  A frantic search of everyone in sight only revealed that he was not in sight. He must have neglected to check she was with him when he and his men moved on. Like Lucan had said, Karile was important. He had information, she did not.

  Perhaps she should have been glad she had escaped, but she was alone in a strange place and Karile was still captive.

  Janir stepped too close to the mob of market-goers. Suddenly, she was being shoved along between a pair of reeking trolls. Fighting against the current of the crowd, Janir forced her way free. When shoved, the huge mountain dwellers protested loudly and called her Trollish words that she had never heard before and doubtless did not want translated. For a second, the crowd thinned between waves and she was able to whip a frantic gaze around the intersection of narrow streets.

  Her brother and Karile were nowhere to be seen. Panic mounting in her breast, Janir pushed through the mass of unhurried bodies, battling to reach a spot where she could have a view to watch the ever mingling crowds and spot Lucan or Karile.

  It occurred to her that this might be her chance at escape, but first she needed to find Karile. She wasn’t going to leave without him—despite everything.

  As she cast a searching glance behind her, she spotted a cloaked figure who seemed to be moving against the flow of the crowds. At first she thought him no more than another one of the strange clientele of the odd market. But with each step she became more and more nervous. Deciding to test her paranoid conclusion, Janir broke into a frantic gallop, tearing through the placid crowd. She dodged a swinging basket of pears that hung from a large troll woman’s arm, swerved around a cart full of pigeon feathers, ducked under the arms of some creatures, and leapt over the heads of others. Taking a sharp turn to her right, Janir rounded a corner in the narrow street. Pausing for breath by a rat-on-a-stick stand, Janir glanced back.

  With consternation, she spotted the cloaked one forcing his way through the crowd with as much haste as she had. A stocky dwarf stood in his path and didn’t move fast enough to get out of the way. Her pursuer bumped into the little person, cowl slipping off his head and his cloak becoming disarranged at his sides. Slender swords gleamed on the left and the right of his waist and his raven hair was tucked behind the subtly pointed ears of an elf.

  Their stares met for a moment as the dwarf sputtered and cursed the elf in Dwarvish. The elf stepped around the furious little man and stared at her calmly.

  There was an agelessness about him that seemed to be about all elves, but he lacked the knowing, wise essence of one who had lived for eons. In several ways he was like the other two elves she had met. His face had the same angular shape, his midnight hair had that same slight sheen to it. But in others he was nothing like Saoven or even Velaskas.

  This elf’s bright blue eyes held a cold darkness. Shadows and ice immediately came to mind—anger and fury at an unspoken injustice.

  Janir thought him the epitome of “deadly beauty.”

  He held out his hand in a commanding gesture and Janir faintly heard him speak in a tongue that definitely was not Elvish. Something translucent shot from his outstretched hand, something that made her think of a watery spider’s web. It hurtled toward her so quickly that she barely had time to react at all. Janir ducked, but was struck anyway.

  It was a strange feeling—a feeling of something colliding with her body, but something that wasn’t solid, just wispy force, almost like mist. The next thing Janir knew, it had knocked her off her feet and she was sprawled on her back, lying in the red soil. She sensed, rather than saw, the pieces of magic lying about her, shattered like an earthen vase.

  Enchanter—undoubtedly, this elf was an enchanter. She was guessing that because his magic had effected her—even if not in the way he had meant—that he was of a much higher Degree than First. Leaping to her feet, Janir heard the elf cursing in his native tongue.

  A surge of the crowd came between them and Janir wasted no time. She sprang to her feet and bolted through the wiggling mass of bodies, trying to put as much space as she could between herself and her hunter.

  Nothing came to mind when she tried to think of a reason for why he would be chasing her. It occurred to her that he could have been sent to protect her now that Saoven couldn’t at the moment. But then why would he be shooting magic at her? Perhaps it was a mistake. What if he knew what she was, but would help her anyway because Velaskas or Armandius had asked it? That was not too far fetched, she thought.

  Just as she began to believe it was a misunderstanding, she remembered his eyes and the distilled fury behind them. Even if he were to claim he was here to protect her, she couldn’t believe it. She would be better off trying to rescue Karile on her own.

  Ducking under a line of hanging goods, Janir emerged on the other side with what seemed to be pond scum clinging to her hair. Glancing left and right, she made for an intersection of paths up ahead.

  Apparently, people here did not appreciate pushy little girls. By the time she reached a stout fountain in the middle of the crowded junction, she had been cursed in languages ranging from the common tongue to Trollish to Dwarvish.

  Bubbling as if it was doing the world an immense favor, the fountain consisted of three gray, unadorned stone basins with the two smaller basins rising above. The largest was the right size for a horse to wade in. Bright red, glowing fish resembling koi swam placidly under the water. Janir tried to spot a better place to hide, but nothing was close enough to be useful by the time the elf arrived.

  With resolve, she clambered onto the fountain rim and splashed into the basin, praying that the elf wouldn’t hear. In an instant, the water was over her head and she couldn’t touch the bottom. Grabbing the edge of the basin and pulling herself just high enough to see over the edge, Janir peered left and right. Nobody questioned her when she dove into the water, they just continued about their business. Not seeing her pursuer, Janir carefully lowered herself deeper into the water and under the inward curving rim of the fountain.

  It seemed an eternity that she remained in the cool basin with fish nibbling at her exposed skin and fishy water seeping into her mouth. At least she was getting some of the mud and filth washed off her, she thought.

  For a while, she didn’t move. After what she thought was a reasonable amount of time, she eased out from beneath the curved lip to check if the coast was clear.

  Cautiously, she looked to her left. Not spotting her pursuer, Janir glanced to the right. The crowds were moving at their usual pace, everyone mostly ignoring everyone else except to curse at someone they considered particularly rude.

  So quickly that she didn’t even realize until it was too late, a hand swooped down and snatched her up by the back of her collar. With consternation, Janir found herself staring into the icy blue eyes of the elf.