It still took her a while. “I envied you that, you know?” she said at last.
“What?” Gelert said.
“What you two have,” Lee said, hugging herself against the cold. “The understanding. How you always seemed able to be together without rubbing each other raw. It always seemed to come so naturally to you. The closeness…” Her eyes hurt her; she tried to blink them against the ferocious cold, and found that she was having trouble. Lee put her hands over her eyes, trying to protect them from the wind…or at least that was the excuse. But her hands were as cold as her face.
“Once I actually had to leave the room,” she said, between spasms of her teeth chattering, “after I’d been watching you two for a while. It was just after everything blew up with Matt.” Lee shook her head. “I just couldn’t bear it, sitting there, seeing how close you two were, knowing that I had something like that with Matt, and now it was gone, and wasn’t going to come back. She was lying there with her head on your back, the way she does…” Lee had to stop for a moment, her teeth chattering so hard she couldn’t speak. “That sense of trusting another person, knowing you were safe with them, and that they were safe with you— It pierced me. I had to leave. I felt so stupid, and so selfish…”
“We knew you were hurting,” Gelert said. “But sometimes—that idiom about being there for somebody, actually just means to be there. Doing anything, saying anything, sometimes you know it’ll hurt them worse than just being quiet, and being close.”
For a while neither of them said anything. Finally, looking out into the blinding whiteness, Lee said, “It’ll never happen now. And I was just starting to believe it didn’t matter if it never happened. I thought, we’ll go home from this job, and I’ll get used to being by myself. That foolish time in my life is over. And now look at me. Now that I know—” she looked at Gelert, and still couldn’t say “we’re going to die.” “Now suddenly it feels important again.” She started to laugh, bitter laughter that would have gone on for a long time—but the cold was more bitter than her mood; when she drew breath it cut the inside of her throat like breathing broken glass.
We can’t last much longer. “You’ve always been a good partner,” Lee said. “I wish it wasn’t going to end here.”
“You’ve been a better one. Harder working, more serious…” Gelert shook his head and winced at the pain of his ears. They looked stiff, and their insides were the wrong shade of pink; they were starting to freeze.
Lee gathered his head into her chest and tried to shelter it enough from the wind to share a little warmth with it. “What do you mean I was harder working?” Lee said, and had to shake her head to whip the tears out of it before they froze her eyes shut again. “You were the one who always made all the money…”
He didn’t answer. She could hear and feel his breathing coming harder now, wheezing. His people weren’t meant for this kind of temperature; she might actually last longer than he would. She had to do something. It’s got to stop, she thought. I can’t get him out of here. It’s got to stop…
She closed her eyes and tried leaning her will against the world one last time.
Briefly, to Lee’s delight and growing hope, the snow began to drop off somewhat, the flakes getting bigger, their fall becoming slower, and the wind dropped off too, the shriek dying to a moan over their heads… But again it didn’t last. Within a couple of minutes, long enough for Lee to feel certain that the effect was due to something she was doing, the wind started to pick up again—and there was almost a message in it: No. No matter what happens to me, you’re not going to live through it.
Dierrich, Lee thought. She set her teeth and strove harder in her mind to make the snow stop; at the very least to make the wind drop off, for at these temperatures, it was the wind that would suck the heat out of their bodies and kill them at last. But it wasn’t working.
“Gelert—”
He didn’t reply. Lee felt the warmth start creeping up on her, slowly. No! Lee thought, for she knew what that meant. She tried to start moving again, just enough to slap herself with her arms if nothing else, but her body just wouldn’t obey her. In this short time that she hadn’t been moving, all her limbs had gone stiff as iron.
She closed her eyes for one last effort. Don’t leave them that way too long, they’ll really freeze shut, this time—She clarified the image of what she wanted in her mind. The wind silent, the snow ceased, the air warming, the sky clearing up past the mountain wall—
As she considered the mountain, without warning something seized Lee’s imagery and pulled it farther up the wall of stone, rushing her past the boundaries she had been considering. Her vision was caught up in a larger flow of power: more certain, more direct, going straight to the heart of what was happening around them. The wind was dropping off, too, but she began to get the feeling that it wasn’t her doing.
Lee blinked, trying to see clearly what was going on around her. Her Sight, however, had for the moment been co-opted, swept fully into the ambit of that larger power. She couldn’t see anything of the snowy darkness of the cave, or the brighter world outside. All she could See was the walls of the Laurins’ House, somewhere high above them, built of the same gray-white stone, but hewn and polished; and high up on those walls, a broad terrace inside the parapet on the longest wall that looked north. A group of people were gathered there down at one end of the terrace, seemingly looking northward, too. Lee tried to turn her Sight away, but it was as if something here, maybe the world itself, thought that this was more important and was overriding all other vision—
Lee gulped, suddenly finding it hard to breathe, as if the air itself was holding its breath. And then the voice spoke, the one the world had been waiting for.
“Dierrich,” it said. “I dislike seeing my prerogatives usurped. Exercise of mastery in this world, when the Laurin is here, is the Laurin’s business. What are you doing?”
The tone of voice was light, but there was more menace underlying it than Lee ever thought she had heard in a human voice. But he’s not human… And as he spoke, the wind stopped completely, as if someone had thrown a switch. Perhaps the snow had stopped, too; Lee couldn’t tell—she was blind to everything except what was happening up there on the castle walls. Her slightly frostbitten face could feel the air temperature starting to rise; an unpleasant sensation, as if someone was waving a blowtorch in front of her.
“Gelert! Gel!” Blind as she was, Lee could still feel him. She started shaking him, rubbing him. “Gelert—!”
He was still cold, and she couldn’t see him; but after a long, terrible moment, she heard him sneeze. Now, he said down the implant, I bet you’re sorry you said that big soulful goodbye.
Oh, shut up! She would have kept on rubbing him, but her Sight was locked so tightly to that other view that she finally had to stop, unable to concentrate on anything else. Up there on the terrace that overlooked the city, a group of Alfen stood, surrounding one small radiant form in daycloak and robes, traditional Alfen wear; and set over against them near the other end of the terrace was a single shape, a man’s shape, still, tall, arms folded, very dark, in a business suit and a tie.
For a moment Lee was distracted even from her astonishment at what was unfolding by a sudden memory, a sense of something familiar. Looking with her Sight at the group of Alfen standing about Dierrich, Lee abruptly made the connection. One of them, one of the Alfen up there, had a psychospoor that she would have recognized anywhere, she had spent so long contemplating it as she ran and reran her recording. The being associated with it had looked out of a shadow at the corner of Eighteenth and Wilshire, and been amused by the death of another Alfen, and had then parted the air and the darkness and stepped back into them. That’s him!
The little silver-haired woman walked slowly out of the group of Alfen among whom she’d been standing, walked up to the Elf-King, considered him a moment—then struck him hard across the face. “Traitor!”
His voice, when he replied, was s
urprisingly unmoved. “I trusted you with all my plans and dreams,” he said. “Bitter it is to discover that trust can be so utterly misplaced.”
Lee’s heart seized. Above, Dierrich’s beautiful, grave, calm face contorted with rage. “When a madman trusts those around him to humor his madness,” Dierrich said, “he’d better expect to be disappointed. We don’t want you for our lord anymore, ‘King of all the Elves!’ Our people waited patiently, they watched a long time, to see if the exercise of power would eventually teach you sense. No one forgot how you came to rule, in your arrogance, so sure you knew everything just because your power was greatest! Half a millennium, we all thought, would teach you better. Worldmastery’s its own school, our forefathers always said; give it time to work. And for a while it looked as if you’d seen sense, and some of us became willing to stand with you. But then your vision went irrational again, and you went back to your paranoid babblings about the great war between the worlds that was coming. No one will ever manage such a thing—”
“The supranationals are managing it right now, Dierrich,” the Elf-King said. “You’ve seen the preparations. You know the invasion they’re planning as well as I do. Another six months, no more, and they’ll be ready.”
Dierrich’s voice was scornful. “They don’t have six months, and they don’t even know it. We’ve been moving against them for the last five years… and you haven’t even known it! We’ve been playing the ephemeral nations and worlds off against each other; our people have been killing their operatives, especially the Alfen double agents they’ve suborned, sending them the message. Alfheim is ours; no one plots against us and escapes, even though Alfen may be helping them. They in particular will pay the price of their treachery in full.”
The Elf-King shook his head. “You still don’t understand. Stop this attempt by the mortals, teach them the lesson you think you’re teaching them, and they’ll back down…for a few years, a decade or two. But they’ll remember other things besides the lesson. They’ll remember that we hold final power in our hands, and that they’re powerless against it; that we exclude them in every way we know from any access to the true power at the heart of things. The resentment will build again. And in twenty years, or thirty years, or fifty, they’ll come again; with much more terrible weapons, this time. Right now, armies, yes, nuclear weapons, yes, those we might be able to stop them from using…perhaps. Or even absorb such a blow, and rebuild. But in fifty years, when their weapons are more terrible than we can presently predict, when maybe all it’ll take is one slipup on our part, one day’s relaxation of vigilance at our borders…and all life in our universe can be snuffed out in a week, or a day?” He shook his head. “This is our last chance, our best chance, to solve the problem—to cure the disease before it’s too late.”
Dierrich laughed, a great angry shout of laughter like the cry of a bird of prey. “You think the one thing that guarantees our survival as a people is a disease, something to be cured? You’re even madder than I thought! If there’s to be a war with the ephemerals, our immortality’s the only thing that will ensure our victory!” Her voice went grim. “But it will never happen, because you won’t be Laurin for much longer. Rai’lauvrin hetsuuriul, worldmasterer that was and shall be no more, stand forth and end your reign!”
The feeling of gathering fury in the air, in the ground, gathering and growing, was difficult for Lee to bear. “I stand forth with my world in my hand,” the Elf-King said, very softly, “but whether my reign shall end or not, the world itself decides.”
The people among whom Dierrich had been standing now backed away from her. She stood there, proud and alone, fists clenched at her sides, holding herself like a weapon that has waited a long time to be unleashed, and is ready now. The Elf-King did not move at all.
The wind began to scale up to a scream again; just the wind, this time, no snow on it, howling among the parapets, battering at the front of the castle. The Alfen watching her were pushed back by the force of it, against the inner wall of the castle. But the Elf-King didn’t move. He let the wind rise, screaming, until first grit and then gravel and then even stones from the mountain above the castle began to be thrown through the air by it. Then he shook his head, and once again the wind fell away, silent in a breath’s time.
Dierrich stood there, breathing hard. “All right,” the Elf-King said. “Water next? Or fire?”
She didn’t say anything, didn’t move either.
Under them, the ground began to vibrate. A slow, low rumbling built, a sound like the deepest possible note on an organ, terrifying to feel, terrifying to hear. The stones of the mountain began to tumble again, down the jagged wall this time; great slabs and flakes of stone the size of vehicles, the size of houses, fell toward the castle, and the roots of the mountain shook. The Elf-King moved only so much as it took to glance up at the mountainside, an offhand look. The falling stones were aimed right at him; but as he glanced up, they fell to the left and right of the castle, as if hitting some high invisible barrier, and bounced away in a thunder of ruin, down the mountainside. At the same time, the clouds began to rush together above the castle, and rain began to fall from them, lightly at first, then harder, until the shower became a downpour, and the downpour a torrent.
In the cave, Lee could hear water splashing into the snow, and started to worry. We could be flooded out of here, she thought, we could drown! “Gelert—”
He was already scrabbling to his feet, wobbly as a foal. “Can you get up?” he said, but Lee was halfway up already, having kept hold of him as he stood. “Come on—”
She went with him, letting him lead, still unable to see except with the Sight, and unable to See anything with that but the terrace high above them on the mountainside. The Elf-King, who until now had moved not at all, now moved to the parapet of the castle and rested a hand on it, stroking the stone; under his touch the shuddering mountain slowly went quiet. Then he glanced up into the sky. He should have been wet, but the water storming down out of the sky never touched him. As he looked up, the clouds curdled, flattened, began slowly to stream away; and the rain stopped as they did so.
His face looked strained now, and Lee could see the sweat standing on his brow. But his expression was still composed, almost sad. “I don’t think we need to go through the rest of the moves, Dierrich,” the Elf-King said. “There’s more to this than just weather…but you never understood that, no matter how often I told you. Mastery of a world means more than just making it do what you want. Mastery goes both ways, but you were never willing to accept the world’s mastery of you. That’s why you have no idea what it needs now… and what it fears.”
“And you do?” Dierrich shouted. “You’re the one who wants to destroy our people’s basic nature, make it over into something the world never intended! They’ll have no choice in the matter if you have your way. But they’ll find a way to kill you first, Laurin! If I fall here—”
“I am afraid,” the Laurin said, “there’s no ‘if.’ ”
Over them, around them, a darkness began to gather. It was not the dark of night; this darkness excluded that, and was a different shade, of a different quality. It shut away the view of the clouds, the view of the city down at the mountain’s foot. Dierrich looked up and around at this, and for the first time her face began to show fear. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me, Laurin,” Dierrich cried. “It doesn’t matter if I die! The Alfen will still rise against you! Those of us who know what you’re planning will make sure that everyone else does—and afterward, no Alfen anywhere will refrain from trying to kill you, not even those who’ve been in the pay of the UN and the supranationals all this while. You think this whole business of transparency, of cooperation with humans, will buy you the ephemerals’ protection? It won’t be enough! Sooner or later, in mastery, or just with a gun, one of us will take you out of Alfheim’s history forever. There’s nowhere you can hide, now that your own people fear you and the change you threaten, more even than they ever fe
ared being without a worldmasterer—”
“It’s not change I threaten,” the Elf-King said, as the darkness gathered in the air around them. “It’s something that would frighten you much worse, frighten you the way it frightens me, if you had the wit to understand it. But it seems you never have. In the meantime, what mastery you possess isn’t nearly enough, though you do come of the line of the old Elf-Kings. For all that you grew up here, in the very heart of the Land, in the shadow of Istelin’ru Semivh itself, you still don’t understand Alfheim.” He was almost invisible now in that darkness, and outside the cave, in air no colder now than that of a normal summer night, Lee and Gelert staggered into the lee of the spine of stone where they had sheltered, both of them gasping with the sudden sense of pressure in the air.
“Have you forgotten what this place once was?” the Elf-King said. “I haven’t. And it hasn’t. But my memory for its buried realities has always been longer than yours…even though it’s you who’re supposedly old-world Alfen, superior to us outcasts, we ‘foreigners’ from the lesser realms west over Sea.” His voice was suddenly amused — though the amusement had something under it so dark that Lee would have given anything to turn her Sight away. “It makes you too uncomfortable, that oldest reality. Now comes the time when you pay for being unwilling to face that discomfort… and say your farewells.”
The darkness gathered there about the castle became a solid thing, fathomless green depths that came real out of the night, and all remaining light wavered and went out in a sudden crushing night of water, a night half a mile deep. Lee couldn’t close her eyes, couldn’t stop seeing, as only one shape remained standing upright in all that darkness—and everywhere else around it, bodies floated and flailed, bubbles rose in hectic streams until the lungs that gasped them out were crushed, and cries echoed bluntly through the massive weight of water until there were no cries left in it, and no more life. One last shape tried to stand, tried to fight, pushing the water away; but the sea knew its weight and its place, and nothing she did could dissuade it. Dierrich dil’Estenv crumpled to the stone of the parapet at last, the life crushed out of her; and when that was done, the waters ran slowly back into the past from which they had come, still leaving only that one form standing.