Stealing the Elf-King''s Roses

  All their group were standing in the craft’s aisles now to look down at the view, or leaning against the windows. Lee felt no surprise to glance over her shoulder and see that dil’Hemrev was nearby again, looking at the staggering landscape with the gently amused expression of someone watching the reaction of tourists to a beauty she had herself long come to take for granted. Their eyes did not meet as Lee glanced back, but she knew that the Elf was waiting to discover what else Lee might see.

  Standing behind dil’Hemrev, looking over her shoulder, Per Olafssen said, “These are the Italian preAlps, aren’t they?”

  “Close. But we’re a little farther south, and a little farther west,” dil’Hemrev said. “If the equivalencies were complete, it would be the area around Latemar, in your world—not too far from Bolzano, in the Italian Tyrol. But in our universe Bolzano, or Dalasthe as we call it, remained just a little settlement. Probably it’s because the course of the Adige river runs differently here, farther east into what would be the Grödner Dolomites. With us, it was Aien Mhariseth that became the main trading center, because of the way the river and the pass road came together nearby.”

  Lee filed the information away absently as the craft made a broad circle around the city, losing more altitude. Aien Mhariseth resembled Ys only in that some of the materials, metals and stone, looked like those used there. Otherwise, the building style was mostly different. The majority of the buildings were older, blunter, crouching down into the hollow under the mountain walls. In the center of the city, a double handful of towers reached up; newer buildings, Lee thought, meant to echo the natural surroundings in a more ordered architectural idiom. They were handsome enough. But to her eye the effect had failed, for those spires were effortlessly dominated and overshadowed by the spines and thorns of stone uprearing all around. The stone was pale, an ancient coral-based limestone identical with that of the Dolomites in Lee’s own world. Once upon a time, all this had lain beneath the warm waters of the prehistoric sea that covered Europe. But the fires under the world had stirred, and the planet’s skin had heaved upward, shrugging the sea away. The calcified coral of the seabed had cracked and shattered, great layers of it tilting up onto their sides, as the floor of that part of the world abruptly became its walls. Millions of years’ erosion had fretted slowly at those walls, peeling them back and down along the now-vertical layers, so that Aien Mhariseth was completely fenced about with narrow peaks and pinnacles, jagged needles of stone like upthrust swords and spears, white or palest gray. Here and there among them an occasional patch of green lay nestled in some broad yoke or saddleback between the greater chain of peaks; but elsewhere were only boulders in a hundred sizes, gravel and rubble, and huge fans of gray scree scattered down the mountainsides.

  But here and there, too, as they swung closer around the great jagged wall that stood up directly behind Aien Mhariseth, sheltering it to the north, Lee began to see the patches of crimson clinging to the sheer stone. Only the very highest peaks were free of it just now. Elsewhere the color became less of a patchwork, almost an unbroken blanket in places, in purple or carmine or a dark dusky rose. At the sight of the color, once again Lee felt that terrible disorienting grip of pain at the heart, as if she were suddenly remembering a loss she had suffered long ago, and had, unconscionably, forgotten. But the feeling affected her less strongly today, either because she had been here for a little while now, or because she recognized it as possibly some kind of weapon…in any case, as something more than just the effect of transit between worlds. And it’s worse here, Lee thought. Had we experienced this on our first day, it would have simply left us all nonfunctional. But why is it stronger here?

  “Oh, isn’t that beautiful,” Mellie Hopkins was saying, and then she sniffed, and wiped a tear away. “It’s all pink…”

  Lee smiled. As good a time as any to push the issue a little. “The Elf-King’s roses…” she said. “Or one variety of them, anyway.”

  “Yes, we had quite a display the other night, didn’t we? The conditions were just right.” Dil’Hemrev smiled, completely innocently. “I wish I could say we arranged it for you, but very few of us are quite that accomplished.”

  Lee didn’t even dare glance at dil’Hemrev at that point. Just what are you trying to pull? she thought. Why are you in such a rush all of a sudden to get me to incriminate myself? And who are you working for, really? For she couldn’t get rid of the sense that dil’Hemrev was feeling pressured in some way…and that there was more to it than just whatever orders dil’Hemrev might have from ExAff. So do I take the bait? Lee thought. It was tempting, but she had no idea how such a brazen betrayal of what she could see and couldn’t might affect matters.

  “What are you on about?” Mellie said. “Never knew you were a gardener, Lee.”

  “Believe me, I’m not,” Lee said. “You should see my roses. It’s just something from an old story that some central Europeans made up to explain the alpenglow. When you have sunset and—” Lee decided not to make life easy for dil’Hemrev by coming right out and saying “a mountain range.” “—and high clouds in the right orientation to one another, sometimes it makes it look like the landscape is glowing internally. It lasts a while after local nightfall, because of the height of the clouds. People used to say those were the Elf-King’s roses showing through from the next world.”

  “That happen the night we came? It would have been lost on me,” Mellie said. “I don’t remember a thing after dropping my bags and checking where the plumbing was. I was wrecked.” Mellie looked down again as the craft began to circle lower, toward a green spot at the edge of the city. “Those can’t be real roses, though, can they. Not up here: it’d be too cold. This has to be a subalpine environment…”

  “You’re right, of course,” dil’Hemrev said. “I wouldn’t be an expert, but those are a little low shrubby kind of plant that blooms this time of year. A kind of giant heather, I think you’d call them. They’re very tough; they go right up past the snow line, and spend most of the year covered by snow, except for this little window of time when they bloom in a hurry. The name suggests that they got tangled up with the old legend somehow, probably when people found out that there weren’t real roses up there in their own worlds. And of course there weren’t any here in our world either; they couldn’t have survived. Just a fairy tale…” Dil’Hemrev smiled indulgently.

  Gelert had put his head over Lee’s shoulder. Pushing the issue, are we?

  Why not? Mellie gave me the opening.

  No argument. Just you be careful… “It looks like nice walking country,” Gelert said.

  “It’s very popular among those of our people who enjoy hiking,” dil’Hemrev said. “I’d be glad to speak to someone and have them take you up there in your free time, if you like.”

  Lee thought she understood the message: There’s nothing there of any importance at all, and we want you to see that for yourself. “Certainly,” Lee said. “If there’s some spare time in the next few days, I’d enjoy the opportunity. Gel?”

  “Absolutely. I could use a good run in the park.”

  Dil’Hemrev nodded as if there was nothing unusual about this at all, and went farther back in the craft to talk to some others of the committee members. Lee didn’t glance at Gelert, but via her implant she said: If I was uncertain before, I’m not now. The way she came back to the question of any “real” roses being here tells me she knows about my caller. The only question is how. Which Alfen intelligence agency has the comms in my house bugged? Or have they already pulled my caller in and had ExAff wring him dry?

  For our sake, I hope not, Gelert said. They’d probably have enough cause under their jurisdictional laws to chuck us in the clink right now. But I don’t think they’d like to do that… for the same reason your bluff worked just now.

  Well, we’ll see…

  “The city looks like it’s been here for a long time,” Per said, sitting down across the aisle and a seat or two up from Lee and Gelert.


  “Since our version of the Bronze Age,” dil’Hemrev said, all polished tour guide again. “Our oldest fairy gold mines are here; not mined anymore, of course, since the area’s now protected under cultural heritage statutes. And some of the buildings are very old indeed.” She indicated one in particular, set actually into the huge wall of stone, high up on an inward-leaning spur of stone that stood perhaps fifty meters above the floor of the small valley that the peaks encircled. “Ealvien dil’Lavrinhad,” she said, “the Laurins’ House. Its oldest parts are now five thousand years old; it’s the oldest continuously inhabited structure on the planet.”

  They all peered at it as the craft came down toward its landing site, in the shadow of what was a much more grand and impressive building, arched and porticoed like something out of ancient Greece, though the arches were more Gothic than Hellenic. Lee’s eyes, though, were still all for that building up on its spur of stone, leaning against the mountain behind it like someone very mindful of who might come up from behind his back. What few towers the Laurins’ House possessed had a grudging look to them, squared, blunted like the oldest of the older buildings below. Only one tower stood a little higher than the rest, sitting furthest back in the structure and built partially into the spur as the foundations of the building were. From it, a few cautious, narrow-eyed windows gazed down on the valley, giving an impression of thoughtful watchfulness, a regard that trusted no one and didn’t sleep. There’s a message there, Lee thought, if I could understand it…

  She lost sight of the building at last as the craft came down on a paved area not far from the huge building with its arched porticoes. “The Miraha are in morning session there,” dil’Hemrev said. “You’ve been invited to the afternoon session, which is formal… so you’ll want to change. We’ll get you settled in the visitors’ quarters and send someone around for you when it’s time for the session. Then the reception with the Miraha will be this evening.”

  “Is the Laurin likely to be in attendance?” Per said.

  “I think not,” said dil’Hemrev. “He’s been traveling on business for the last few weeks; we would have been informed if he’d returned. He’ll be disappointed that he missed you, of course.”

  “Of course,” Per said.

  The craft put its ramp out, and they all trooped down after dil’Hemrev and followed her across the landing pad and down a paved pathway to a great door in the bottom of one of the nearest towers, a massive drum-shaped structure with several smaller towers incorporated inside its outer walls. Shortly thereafter, following a climb up several circles’ worth of stairs, Lee and Gelert were ushered into their rooms by a young Alfen woman in the livery of the Miraha, and the massive steel-bound door closed behind them.

  Neither of them could do much for the first few seconds except look around in astonishment. “It’s a whole floor,” Lee said, gazing around. From where they stood, a long straight stonewalled room at least fifty feet wide ran right across to the far side of the tower, and seemingly straight out onto an exterior balcony; there were no windows or doors there that Lee could see. Massive, dark wooden furniture, beautifully carved, stood here and there—tables, couches, almeries, and bookshelves ranged against the warm brown stone.

  They walked in and looked through the big doors to right and left that opened from the main room. The one on the left was plainly meant for Gelert, at least half its great floor a single silken cushion, with heaps more silks lying here and there for warmth, and a door leading into a massive bath walled and floored in some dark sparkling stone that was warm to the touch. On Lee’s side the bedroom was hung with darkly rich draperies and tapestries, floored with a beautiful old woven rug in designs the like of which Lee had never seen before. The bed had an ornately carved, curved headboard nearly two meters high, arching up and over the head of the bed into an outreaching canopy, as if the designer had been afraid it might start raining inside. The whole effect was lavish, but layered, an effect entirely different from the polished perfection of the hotel room in Ys. This place looks like people have lived in it…

  My problem, Gelert said, is that it looks like people have died in it. He was examining some marks on the furniture in the common sitting area. I’d swear that’s a sword cut. Lee, does that look like a sword cut to you?

  She wandered idly past the chair in question, glanced at it. No.

  I wish I could be so sure. Either way, no one’s even polished it out. The maintenance around here leaves something to be desired.

  Maybe it’s something historic.

  If it is, that just makes me more nervous.

  Lee went back out into the central hall that led to the balcony, strolled down to its door, or where its door should have been, and stood gazing out. “Why can’t I feel the wind from outside?” she said, and walked out onto the balcony. The few steps answered her question: the sensation as of a spiderweb brushing across her skin told her there was some kind of forcefield between the window and the room.

  For a few moments she leaned there on the parapet, looking across the valley to the palace built into the cliff. After a little while Gelert came up behind her, got up on his hind legs, with his paws on the parapet, and looked over.

  “I’ve never slept in a theme park before,” Lee said, glancing up at the nearby towers, spired in silver and orichalc, clustered like candles in a stony candelabrum. “I feel like there should be somebody down in the bushes, wishing they were a glove upon my hand, like something out of Shakespeare.”

  Gelert sat down again and said nothing for a few moments. Finally, silently, he said, You feel it too, don’t you.

  Lee didn’t nod, but inwardly she said, There’s a lot more here than shows at first glance.

  Or scent, Gelert said, first or second. He breathed the late afternoon air, looking toward the mountains, closing his eyes to scent better. Lee followed his gaze. There was a claustrophobic quality to those mountains, a feeling as if they were not entirely a natural barrier, not an accident of geology, but a wall in truth, erected on purpose to keep something out…or in.

  Something there that’s not showing, Gelert said. Can you feel it?

  Yes, Lee said. Come on.

  The two of them stood there for some minutes. After a while Lee stopped wondering how long they were spending, and simply concentrated on bending her Sight against those mountains, willing them with all her might to show her what they had to show. But they stood there, still as stone, mute as stone, and would not reveal anything at all. They were rock, just rock; nothing else. They had stood there for more than a million years, and had seen nothing worth seeing, and meant nothing in particular to anyone. The only secret they held in them was gold, clenched there inside them as if in a fist; but even that secret was an open one, no news to anybody.

  Lee opened her eyes, let out a long breath of frustration. Anything? She said to Gelert.

  Nothing at all. Which, as we both know, is wildly unlikely.

  A glamour?

  If it is one, as we understand it, I’ve never felt one so strong. It can’t even be felt as such. Which means it’s powerful enough to override our perception of reality—

  Or our perception of reality is being more directly interfered with.

  Always a possibility. Lee thought again of the roses, of how a power like theirs might theoretically be enough, in some other universe, to subvert even the operation of a cardinal Virtue, of Justice herself.

  If it is, Gelert said, we’re screwed. The whole reason for us coming has been derailed; we’ve effectively been neutralized.

  The other possibility, Lee said, is that it’s not a glamour as we understand it, but something else, some other kind of power being bent against us. That our judgment of what we’re Seeing or Scenting is correct…and we need to keep doing just what we’re doing now.

  Gelert sighed. We’re going to have to play it that way for the time being, he said. But I smell trouble on the air that I can’t pin down any more specifically than that. Something her
e is wrong. The air says so, the water says so, the stones on the ground and the trees on the hill and the sky looking down all say it, too…

  The question is, are we going to be able to find out what before they send us home again?

  Way back down at the end of the main room, someone knocked on the door. Not right this minute, Gelert said. “Oh my gosh, we should have been changed by now…”

  Lee said, for the benefit of whoever might be doing surveillance on them at the moment. “Come on …”

  *

  Lee had attended her share of governmental sessions in her time, everything from the UN&ME in general session to that recurring bout of tag-team wrestling otherwise known as the biweekly meeting of the Ellay City Council. In content, the Miraha‘s “guest assembly” was probably no different from most of these, insofar as it involved a great many people, usually of advanced years, standing up and making long leisurely speeches in indecipherable language. The only difference here, Lee said silently, is that even in the Senate, the average age isn’t anywhere near as advanced as these people’s…and the Senate don’t speak Alfen.

  We should count ourselves lucky they can speak at all, Gelert said. These people may not be speaking any language we can understand, but at least they dress better than the Senate.

  Lee was inclined to agree, but wondered if perhaps they were doing it in self-defense. The building itself came of a period in Alfen architecture that had favored not only huge arched and domed spaces, but a luxury in materials and execution that would have made some parts of the Vatican, or for that matter the palace of the Dragon Emperor of Xaihon, look like a thatched hut by comparison. Elaborate frescoes and hangings adorned every wall of the long hallway that brought them under the central dome where the Miraha sat; delicate and impossibly complex mosaics and enamel-inlaid tilings covered the floors; detailings, carvings, and ornamentation in fairy gold were everywhere. Whole pillars made of semiprecious stone, especially a blue agate lined with green, had been inlaid with tiny gems that winked and glittered in the torchlight as one walked by—for the committee had actually been led into the vast space by Alfen women dressed all in black, wearing crowns and collars of black gems and bearing genuine torches. Gelert had muttered down his implant about not knowing whether they were destined for a barbecue or an auto-da-fé, and Lee had to restrain herself from poking him.