"Explain." Standing, I could see Aarundel seated back by the fire. He wore the same silver jewelry as the others, but had the faraway look on his face that I had come to associate with his communion with Marta. "I know we share a desire to leave the Imperator in peace at this time, so, please, do not make disturbing him necessary."
One of the Elves took a step forward and held out to me a set of the jewelry. "Required to continue the sojourn. You and it."
I accepted the jewelry and settled the coronet on my head. All I felt was cold metal against my brow and the backs of my ears. The catch-bracelets snapped over my wrists easily, which surprised me, as my wrists are thicker than those of an average Elf. With the anklets dangling down between my legs, I turned to the Dreel. "Secure them to my ankles."
Shijef snarled, but bent to the task. His huge paws closed the delicate loops gently even though I know he would have preferred to take my legs off at the knees. He remained seated on his haunches, refusing to look up, with his claws tracing odd patterns in the dirt.
I glanced over at the Elf holding the second set of chains. "Give them to me."
He did so, and I dropped to my knees in front of the Dreel. "Hold still." As I shut the bracelets and anklets, I made certain to clear all fur from the mechanism so Shijef would not have something more about which to complain. As it was, the bracelets were a fairly tight fit, and the coronet barely settled on the crown of Shijef's head. The chains had enough slack in them that I knew he could move normally, but he affected arm gestures suitable for a man thoroughly bound with chains of lead, not silver.
As I stood again and brushed the dirt from my knees, one Elf made a comment that prompted laughter from the others.
"He does not serve the beast, Siric, he prevents you from losing an arm while serving Shijef yourself." Aarundel's anger lashed out at the other Elves, and over half of them blushed.
I shrugged and looked beyond them at my friend. "I'd not be thinking Siric meant that comment harshly. Like as not he's thinking the Dreel is my pet—being as how, of course, only a Man would be dumb enough to keep a Dreel as a pet."
Aarundel nodded stiffly at first in acknowledging my point. "It would be like Siric to have forgotten to ask how a Man might have a Dreel traveling in his company. They might find the tale illuminating."
"Might be like they would, but enlightenment can wait." I held my hands up and shook the silvered chains. "Their explanation for our needing to wear these was a bit on the lean side."
Aarundel frowned at the other Elves, "The chains are attuned to the magick of the circus translatio. They allow you to use it. You'll see."
I smiled. "I can't wait. All dressed in our riding chains, should we be off?"
"Agreed."
Our horses had been similarly fitted with soft cloth of silver bands around their fetlocks, with the chains running along their belly and connecting up into the saddle. A silver plate had been slipped over the part of the bridle resting on the horses' foreheads, and that had two chains hanging down to connect with the chain running along the horses' breastbones. Blackstar seemed a bit skittish as I mounted up, but I patted him on the neck and that settled him a bit.
One of the Elves—it could have been Siric, but they all look quite similar in the twilight—leaned down from his horse and set a torch afire in the fire burning at the center of the clearing. Two other Elves extinguished the fire as Siric moved out toward the perimeter of the trees. He stopped in front of the tree closest to the northwest, bowed, and muttered something in Sylvan. Then he started to ride to the left, smacking the torch against the boles of each tree excepting the one where he started.
As he did this, I noticed two things. The first was that an uneven number of trees circled the clearing. Like the signs at a crossroads, I learned later, each tree marked one end of a plumb line that pointed to another circus translatio. While I've not got a merchant's head for figures, I realized that the Elves had an interesting network of magickal pathways stretching out over the face of Skirren.
The second thing was that the sparks exploding from every touch of a tree started to trail after Siric as he made his circuit. His horse ran faster and faster, as if the burning sparks were a swarm of bees in pursuit. A second and a third time Siric rode the circuit of trees, each time fire-annointing each tree except the first. As he completed the final circuit, he cut his horse hard to the left, bringing it to the center of our company; then he turned it and rode at a gallop toward the tree where he had started the whole ritual.
The sparks swirled around us, then again followed in his wake. I felt a magickal tug impelling me to follow him. I hesitated, knowing he was going to dash out his brains when he hit the tree. The other Elves spurred their horses forward, and I saw the Dreel galloping ahead in the thick of the pack. Only Aarundel held back, clearly waiting for me, so I touched my heels to Blackstar's ribs, and like an arrow loosed by a war bow, he shot forward.
The sparks clustered and thickened ahead of me, hiding the tree behind a golden curtain. As I closed with it, each spark became a dot again in a black honeycomb that closed over me with the feathery touch of a cobweb. As I passed through it, each spark stretched out to the length of Cleaveheart and shifted color from red to blue as I rode past. They dragged at me like an ocean's undertow, then touched my chains and released me. Free, I felt a moment of nothing before the onset of a pressure against me.
I met resistance akin to that of a strong headwind, but I could not feel the wind. My clothes remained still, as if I were not moving at all, yet between my legs Blackstar ran for all he was worth and then more. I instinctively hunched down against his neck, and I could smell his sweat as he labored so. Even though I had no trouble remaining in the saddle, each heartbeat brought with it the fatigue that a minute on the road would have caused.
That sapping of vitality might have concerned me, but other things served to distract me completely. The world through which we rode had become the ghost of itself. Whereas we had begun our journey at night, the sky and the landscape were white. Black pinpricks dotted the sky, and a black ball hung where I expected to see the evening's first moon. Trees flashed past all whitewashed and spectral, and I felt a cold chill as their limbs tried to drag me from the saddle.
I looked forward and back at the Elves and saw them still in color. My flesh remained tan and my tunic still appeared blood-red. Whatever magicks had been invoked in the circus translatio, we were a company now set apart from the rest of the world.
As we rode, miles fell behind us like rain falling in a monsoon. Then, suddenly, the land dropped away from beneath Blackstar's hooves, but he did not descend to the earth. He pressed on, as did the riders before me, his hooves striking hard on an invisible roadway. The horse galloped onward, apparently unconcerned with the lack of visual clues to his location. It occurred to me then that the Elves and the horses and even Shijef might see things entirely differently from me. If that allowed them to navigate through this world of white-shadow and lead me out of it, then I'd thank the gods for my companions' special eyesight and hang on tightly.
It should have occurred to me—given that when we rode through a tree, no forest branches had stung me and the land lay well below where Blackstar galloped—that the real world and our passage had very little to do with each other. This idea finally came to me when Blackstar plunged into a mountain. Bone-freezing cold filled me, and a shudder even went through my horse. The stone layers flashed by like a gray rainbow, with cracks and fissures cutting through them like black lightning forks trapped immobile.
For the briefest of moments we burst through into a cavern. We rode a dozen feet above the floor and slashed through the cavern diagonally. While the stalactite that bisected me made me think the room was a normal formation, the afterimages of worked columns and a cowering dwarf told me otherwise. Having been in a Dwarven stronghold before, I turned to look back, as if my vision could penetrate stone as easily as we rode through it, but a stone shroud denied me another gl
impse of the mountain's heart.
Flying out through the other side of the mountain, I saw what looked to be black bugs fleeing across a snowfield. Three wraiths chased after them, and though the whole sight grew smaller as we rode on, I was able to figure out what I had seen. A trio of shepherds were chasing down a flock that had been disturbed in the wee hours of the morning. If we looked to them the way they did to us, the shepherds would tell of ghost-riders raiding them, and I laughed soundlessly thinking that someday I would hear a bard singing a song inspired by our passage.
We sped straight across a mountain valley and again entered a forest. I reflexively dodged branches, but found myself getting sluggish. Lather covered Blackstar's neck and chest, and I felt thoroughly leeched of life. As Blackstar had come from Elven stocks, I had no doubt that he could go as long as any of the Elves' horses—I hoped, for my own sake, that I had as much stamina as the lancers themselves.
A vertical black line appeared impaled on the horizon. I expected it to widen as we pushed on, but it did not. Wider than a hair, yet barely broader than Cleaveheart, the line hung tantalizmgly just beyond my reach. It did stretch out, above and below, but trees and rocks, streams and hills flew past on both sides without affecting it. Yet even though I caught no visual clues that we were getting any nearer to it, I knew we were.
Suddenly it engulfed us with the enthusiasm of a Dreel shoving food into its maw. An explosive wave of heat washed over me; then smoke swirled around me and I heard the sound of Blackstar's labored breathing. I cut the reins to the right, and as the dawn filled the grove with the first hints of color, I ran Blackstar around and clear of the Elven riders. I heard Aarundel come out from behind me, and a popping akin to that of a cork being pulled from a jug chased him from the magickal roadway.
I laughed aloud even though my chest ached from the effort of breathing. I felt as if I had ridden for a month, though it would turn out that we had only covered ten days' distance of normal hard riding. Blackstar stamped and I immediately swung off his back. "You've carried me far enough, friend."
My legs trembled but did not buckle, my spine crackled and muscles protested as I straightened up. Looking about, I saw very weary Elves clinging to saddles or already seated on the ground, but I resisted the urge to puff up my chest and carry on as if I were not weak as a kitten. Leading Blackstar back toward the middle of the clearing, I looked up as one of the horses emitted a little squeal and leaped sideways.
Shijef lay on the ground in the middle of the grassy circle, huddled over on his right flank. Blood, black-red at the dawn's first caress, covered his muzzle and paws. He clutched a fluffy ivory bundle to his chest and snapped and snarled at the Elves staring down at him. If not for the blood and the little black legs jutting out of the bundle, I would have thought it a pillow or a Dreel-sized toy, but I saw clearly it was a sheep, quite dead, and, for the Dreel, a prized possession.
Aarundel half fell from his saddle and landed beside me. "How did he procure that sheep?"
I shrugged and Shijef swallowed, then gave us a gory smile. "Magick Elves have, magick Shijef is." He howled delightedly, and more horses shied away from him. He bit down through the sheep's skull and sucked noisily at the brains, which made me give him a wide berth. I led Blackstar over to where an Elf set up a picket line; then I stripped him of tack and rubbed him down with handfuls of grass.
Having fulfilled my duty to my horse, I stumbled off and collapsed into a heap. Sleep came swiftly, and mercifully did not bring with it a dream-recital of Dreel gustatory grunts, groans, and squeaks.
We remained in that circus translatio for three days, which still put us a week ahead of schedule had we not used so remarkable a method of travel. Discussion of how the Dreel managed to take a sheep on the ride brought me more into the company of the Elves, as Aarundel indicated I was the repository of all knowledge about the Dreel. I was not, but I offered a few interesting ideas. That, along with performing a little bit more than an equal share of all chores, made the Elves used to me and prompted tolerance from more than half their number.
The second and third legs of the journey pushed us deep into the vast forests claimed by the Elves as their gods-given holdings. Being as how I was from the Roclaw Mountains, where trees were wind-scourged, gnarly-branched bird-roosts, and that I'd only seen the forests in and around Man-lands, the Forests of Cygestolia made me feel as small and insignificant as most of the Elves probably saw me. Where other forests were merely stands of growing trees, Cygestolia was a place where the forest flourished.
Before seeing the Elven wood, I was used to forests where one could look up and see a narrow river of blue sky coursing between treetops. In Cygestolia the trees grew on forever, rooted in the ground at one end and amidst the clouds at the other. In places, trees grew closely enough together that I could not see through them, and yet, at other times, wooded vistas extended for miles. The whole of the forest seemed almost quiltlike in how it shifted and changed—as if in the woodlands tended by the Elves, all the world's forests could be found.
With Aarundel or another of the Elves along, I was allowed to explore the areas outside the grove-circles. Dunlan and Reysawin seemed to detest my company the least, so we talked of all sorts of things while I rooted around looking for berries, roots, and herbs of various sorts—the Elves were feeding me, but I'm often as much a meat-gobbler as Shijef, so I laid claim to parts of his kills and cooked my own food from time to time.
The Elves all seemed initially reluctant to speak about themselves, so I drew them out by asking questions about the Reithrese. No love had been lost between those two elder races, so the Elves proved less guarded in speaking about them—I learned, for example, that the Reithrese have a similar system of circii translatio, but they base theirs around volcanoes and geysers. As Reysawin commented and I agreed, the Reithrese system was not very useful, because no one would want to go to those types of places in any event.
As we drew closer to the heart of Cygestolia, to the city that gives the whole region its name, Aarundel mostly and Dunlan a little bit began to instruct me on proper conduct. Dunlan treated me as if I were gutterkin utterly unschooled and uncomprehending about anything the least bit mannerly. He laid down absolute rules, which could be summed up as "Do nothing unless specifically invited to do it; and decline most of the invitations, because they will be offered out of politeness only."
As he knew nothing of my background, I expected him to give me such a simple system of strictures. I got some of the same from Aarundel, which surprised me, because he had been to the Roclaws and had dined at my brother's table. I put his occasional curtness down to nervousness concerning the reaction to my arrival. I knew he wanted me there as a friend, but doing something that might tweak the noses of the Consilliarii did cause him a little concern.
Aarundel laid out more carefully the things I could and could not do and explained some of the reasons behind the strictures, as well as all of the penalties I could incur if I broke them. Most things would be taken as my being ill-bred, which was a given because of my Humanity, but that would make Aarundel look bad. At the worst I could be whipped, though Aarundel allowed as how, given I was his guest, I would likely just be exiled from Cygestolia.
Only one crime bore a more severe penalty. "Under no condition, no matter the provocation, no matter the necessities of the moment, shall you touch one of the sylvanesti. Not a babe offered by a proud parent, not a lady falling faint, not a grandmother dead and in a shroud." Aarundel's dark eyes became slits. "You must remember this, Neal, for you will be slain and she will be disgraced. If things go too far, if there is issue, it will be slain and the denied woman will be declared dead among her people."
I frowned and plucked a ripe blackberry from a thorny bush. "What if a big hole opens beneath her feet and only I can save her from falling into it?"
"No hole will open, but were one to open, you would let her go. She would want it that way." He grabbed me by the shoulders. "Promise me you
will not touch a sylvanesti."
I nodded and winked at him, "I promise. I'm thinking you're just afraid I'd steal your Marta away from you."
"No, I have no reason to think that. What I fear is that you, who know her through me, and she, who knows you through me, might be so pleased to meet each other that you would hug or touch in an innocent manner, then both of you would be lost to me forever."
"I comprehend the source of your anxiety." I frowned. "Now this poor sylvanesti who has fallen down this hole, I could toss her a rope."
Aarundel shook his head with resignation. "Yes, a rope would be fine. She cannot feel you touch her."
"So if I grabbed her by her belt to stop her from falling, but didn't actually touch her flesh . . ."
"Neal! This is not a game." Anger shot through his eyes, then vanished. "Forgive me. I know you and can trust you. Others do not, and therein lies the potential for difficulty."
"You will never have reason to regret that trust." I slapped him on the ribs, then tossed him a blackberry. "I will act so proper, your people will be thinking me a bob-eared Elf with an odd accent."
The final leg to Cygestolia proved as exhausting as all before it, yet our company arrived giddy and exalted to be at journey's end. Excitement coursed through us, and a couple of the Elves slapped me on the back in congratulations even after they realized who I was. Aarundel almost immediately sank into one of his contemplative fugues, so I dragged him from his saddle and put both of our horses up before lying down to sleep myself.
Being as close as we were to Cygestolia, it might have seemed a good idea just to ride out to the city immediately, but we did not for the same reason that using the circii translatio to mount an invasion was ineffective. The circles and the magical energy inherent in them allowed us to recover from the exertions of the journey much more swiftly than we could outside their precincts. An army moved in this manner would be unable to function in a battle shortly after their arrival, and any of us who had ridden out to the city would have fallen from the saddle asleep before we ever got there.