In Stone's Clasp (31 page)

His pleasure faded somewhat. “Oh, Kevla,” he sighed. “It is spring, and that’s a blessing to this poor land. But there’s so much more I need to do. There’s no grain for seeding the crops this year—people ate what stores they had just to survive. A whole generation of animals has died. Many, many trees simply couldn’t hang on long enough to reach this moment. I can feel their deaths, throughout the entire land.”

She didn’t answer, and he got up the courage to turn to look at her. Her expression was guarded, wary. She had heard his words:
There’s so much more I need to do.

He had no doubt but that if he stayed, he could do a great deal to help the battered land recover. He could make sure that what trees still survived were strong. That the creatures made it through this madness of the Ice Maiden—no, put the blame where it truly lay, of the Emperor—grew healthy and bore many young. That come autumn, there would be a harvest almost as bountiful as there was in years before.

But he could do none of these things, because he had made his choice.

“Do not worry, Kevla,” he said softly. “Though my heart breaks to say this, I will not stay in Lamal. I will come with you. We will find the other Dancers, somehow defeat this Emperor, and stand together against the Shadow.”

It was like watching the sun come out from behind a cloud, he thought, as the apprehension vanished from her face. She rewarded him with a radiant smile that he suddenly realized he wanted to see much more often.

“We have much to do,” Kevla said, getting to her feet. “We need to explain what has happened to the men, find the Dragon and the Tiger, and say goodbye to Mylikki and Altan.” Jareth smothered a smile. She was absolutely filthy, as, he supposed, was he. Her
rhia
was torn and caked with mud, and there was a large brown patch on her back.

Where I clasped her to me,
he thought, his mirth fading. He would have given a great deal to recover that moment, to have not yielded to desire. Now the memory would hang between them, no matter what she said about understanding the reason.

“There’s something you should try,” Kevla said. “Close your eyes and reach out to the Tiger. I can talk to the Dragon in my mind, and you can probably do the same with your Companion.”

“We have already done so, but not at a distance,” Jareth said. Obediently, he closed his eyes.

Tiger?

The Dragon and I are here.

Where is here?

Where is there?
replied the Tiger. Jareth laughed aloud.
Do not worry,
the Tiger continued,
we will find you. Stay where you are and the Dragon and I will be there soon.

The
taaskali…
Did they…

They have returned to their true forms. They once again bless and hold the land as the earth’s spirits.

Jareth was relieved and almost giddily happy. Perhaps too, that was why his calling spring had been so powerful. Never before had he worked with the aid of the forest and waters spirits, for not for a thousand years had they been part of the land.

Are Mylikki and Altan with you?
asked the Tiger.

Jareth felt a spark of worry.
No. Did they enter the circle after all?

Indeed they did. But you have defeated the Maiden, for we see that spring has returned to the land. We will find them, I am certain.

Jareth opened his eyes. “Altan and Mylikki—”

“Entered the circle, even though they promised they wouldn’t,” Kevla finished. “The Dragon told me. He seems to think they reappeared back in Lamal, as we did. They will be safe enough, I think.” She hesitated. “Would you like to ask them to come with us? It might be pleasant for you to travel with such a good friend.”

“I’m not sure. Let me think about it. It’s a dangerous quest we’re undertaking. But you’re right—I would miss them, were they not with us.”

He hesitated. “The Tiger told me to wait for them, and frankly, that’s just fine with me. I am in no hurry to rush anywhere.”

“Nor am I. A good meal and some sleep would suit me well.” She brushed at the drying mud on her
rhia.
“Nor would a bath go amiss, I think.”

For some reason, Jareth was reluctant to let the moment go. Soon, they would have to explain what had happened to strangers, to assess what they needed to do to complete their journey. He was comfortable here with Kevla, just the two of them on the living earth.

And there was something else the Ice Maiden had said that he needed to investigate. He did not wish to venture into that dark place alone. He wiped his muddy hands on his breeches, cleaning them as best he could, reached into his pouch, and took a deep breath. It was time to reveal his secrets to her.

“In this pouch, I have several items that have special significance to me. I can—I can talk to things of the earth, Kevla. And they can talk to me. They can tell me what has happened to and around them.”

Kevla looked down, and he saw she was blushing. “I know,” she said, quietly. “I have heard you, at night.”

Commingled anger and embarrassment rushed through him. “You spied on me?”

“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “I just—at first, I couldn’t understand them. But after a few nights, I was able to comprehend their…language, I suppose. I guess it’s because I’m a Dancer. I can’t make them talk to me, but when they talk to you, I understand it. Like when I first arrived in Lamal. I understood the language right away, but it was some time before I could speak it.”

His face was hot. “So you know…?”

She took a breath and faced him. “Everything, I’m afraid.”

“I see. So, when were you planning on telling me this?”

A smile tugged at her full lips. “When you decided to tell me about them. Like right now.”

Jareth sighed. First the unintended kiss, and now this. He felt exposed and vulnerable to this woman. “This was not how I would have had you learn these things about me.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. But I’m glad I knew.”

And suddenly, oddly, he was glad she knew, too. “One of the items is some earth from the floor of…of my house.” He withdrew the precious soil and cupped it in his hands. “The Ice Maiden swore that she had no hand in the deaths of my family. The earth will be able to tell me what really happened that night.”

She looked at him, worried. “You have never asked it this before?”

He shook his head. “I thought I knew what had happened. I saw no need to ask. And when I spoke with the earth…I wanted to recall happier moments in my home.”

“Are you sure you would not rather wait for the Tiger?”

“No. I want to know now.”

Kevla nodded, but she still looked apprehensive. Jareth dropped his gaze to the cupped soil in his palm, running his thumb over it.

Aware that his voice trembled, he voiced the request. “Tell me what happened to my wife and children, on the night of their deaths.”

And the earth responded.

Earth am I, soil and sand, ever-changing and ever the same. I am the flesh that was once living things, and the anchor to the roots of the trees and grass and all growing things. Earth am I, and I shall speak.

It was a bitter night, with winds and snow swirling about the timbers and stones that arched over me. But inside, it was warm and the steps that trod upon me were at peace. The door opened on that cold night, and the musical one entered, bearing sweet drink to warm the bodies and chase away the fears of the frozen night outside.

He was welcomed and the honey drink was sipped. Quickly, quickly asleep they fell, the woman and the girl, more quickly than the honey drink could have acted. Opened the door and window then did the singing one, fair of hair and smile, and quickly came the wind and snow inside. The sleepers never woke, but dreamed dreams of soft snow and warm darkness. Peaceful was their passing. He found them thus, Spring-Bringer, Stone Dancer, their skins as hard and white as if carved of ice, and he—

Blood thundered in Jareth’s ears. He fell forward to his hands and knees, gasping, trying not to vomit the bile that threatened to choke him.

Altan
had done this? Altan, whom he had brought into this world, had drugged his wife and daughter, and then opened the doors so they would freeze to death?

Why?

“Jareth, I am so sorry.” Kevla’s voice, warm and concerned, floated to him. But he did not hear it, did not want to hear it. He slammed his hands hard into the earth, digging deep with fingers that were stiff with a burning need for vengeance.

“I demand of the earth beneath Altan’s feet—
tell me where he is!
”

He felt the earth recoil from the violence of his onslaught upon it. He knew he was not meant to use his powers so, but he did not care. He gritted his teeth and forced his fingers deeper, assaulting the land, ripping from it the information he wanted, needed to know.

He runs upon me now,
came the distant, floating voice of the earth a few miles away.
His feet fall in terror.

Show me.
Again, the earth quailed from his attack.

“Jareth, what are you doing?”

He ignored her.
Show me!
Jareth demanded. He was hurting the earth now. Finally, it gave him an image. His eyes opened and his head whipped around.

There. Altan was there.

Earth, trip him. Open beneath his feet. Trees, hold him in your branches. Hold him until I come.

Jareth leaped up. Again, Kevla cried for him to stop. He heard her get to her feet, start to run after him. But he would outpace her. With each footfall, he called more power, more speed, from the earth, twisting it to serve him.

If the words had come from human lips, he would have given them no credence. But as he had told Mylikki, nothing of the earth can lie.

Altan, not the Ice Maiden or the Emperor, had murdered Jareth’s family.

Ilta ran.

It was all going so well. She had taken care of the troublesome Mylikki, the one person in the world that Altan would fight for. She had manifested in the realm of the Emperor, nominally that of the Ice Maiden, in the body of the woman she had been born to be. The Maiden was going to hold Fire forever captive in her icy realm. And then something had gone horribly wrong.

Warm inside despite the falling snow, Ilta had walked to within sight of the Ice Maiden’s castle. Here, the Emperor had told her via the twinkling, dancing lights in the sky, Ilta would find Jareth. He would be hers, as he had been before. And then, with that goal in sight, Ilta had felt the very earth tremble beneath her. The snow had begun to melt with a shocking suddenness, and she felt her body start to change.

“No!” she screamed, struggling to hang on to this exciting new, lush female form, with its graceful curves, its softness, its fullness.

“No!”
To her horror, her voice had dropped and was once again the pleasant tenor of her twin. She looked at her hands, the slim fingers growing larger, watched with sick helplessness as her chest broadened and grew flat and hard.

But Altan was still trapped somewhere inside her, and Ilta retained her sense of self.

It had all been ruined. She could guess at what had happened. Jareth and the Flame Dancer had managed to destroy the Ice Maiden and with her, her realm. Now Ilta, trapped in her twin’s masculine body, was back in Lamal.

She breathed shallow, rapid breaths as the panic set in. Ilta knew she couldn’t continue masquerading as Altan. She had endured it for years, but now having tasted what it was like to finally walk in a woman’s body, she could no longer live in this stolen one. She had to escape Lamal, had to contact the Emperor. He would take care of her, change her back somehow. And then they could try again to find Jareth.

In the meantime, she needed to flee.

She didn’t know where to go. She just set off running.

She hadn’t gone far at all before the trees reached out and grabbed her.

Dragon!

Kevla didn’t have time to form words about what had just transpired. She simply squeezed her eyes shut and the Dragon heard her thoughts.

The Tiger sensed it at once,
the Dragon reassured her.
She is trying to intercept Jareth. I am coming to you as quickly as my wings will take me, and you know that is swift indeed.

Kevla nodded, although the Dragon could not see the gesture. She was shivering, although the weather was now warm and she had never felt cold to begin with. She was shivering because of what she had just learned, and the terrifying manner in which Jareth had reacted to it. She still couldn’t believe that Altan was a murderer. He seemed so sweet, so gentle. Not the sort of person one could easily visualize walking into a house, offering drugged alcohol to people who were all but family, and then callously opening the doors onto a deadly winter’s night.

But she knew that the earth had not lied. It had been an awful revelation, and the violence of Jareth’s response had alarmed her. She did not know the intricacies of his talents as the Stone Dancer, but she did know that what he had done had caused pain to the earth. He had forced it to do something that hurt it, and she knew that was wrong.

What troubles me the most is the hatred that is in Jareth’s heart,
came the Dragon’s thoughts, echoing Kevla’s own.
He has captured Altan and plans to exact revenge upon him. He will kill the boy if we do not stop him, and that will destroy everything. It will render Jareth incapable of carrying out his duties as the Stone Dancer, and he will fall to the Shadow.

I don’t understand,
thought Kevla.
I have certainly taken lives.

It is what is in the heart that matters,
said the Dragon.
You fought only to protect your country, to save the lives of innocent people. And never did you feel any joy in doing so.

No,
Kevla agreed.
I hated having to use my powers to kill.

But Jareth won’t. He is filled with rage and grief, and he will
exult in torturing and killing Altan. It will be as sweet as honey to him, and that delight in murder will change him forever. Jareth will be lost if he takes Altan’s life. Dancers must face the Shadow with a good and open heart, or the Shadow will triumph. Once before, a world fell because of a Dancer’s darkness. We cannot let that happen again, not this time.

Kevla buried her face in her hands. She had tried chasing after Jareth for a few steps, but it became obvious that he was running with more than human speed and he outdistanced her quickly. Their only hope was if the Tiger reached Jareth in time to prevent him from becoming as ruthless a murderer as the man he longed to kill.

Jareth knew his feet ought to be sliding on the wet grass, or getting sucked down in the mud. But the earth did not hamper his flight, and his heart and lungs pumped more steadily than ever before in his life.

Images filled his mind: Altan sitting and playing beside the fire. Annu looking up at the boy with shy admiration. Parvan gurgling happily at the silvery sounds of the
kyndela.
Taya humming as she mended clothes or wove new ones. Jareth had given Altan a place in his home, in his heart, and his family had died because of that terribly misplaced affection.

He realized with a sinking sense of helpless horror that there had been signs: Altan’s cutting remarks that seemingly came out of nowhere, his strange, black moods. But Jareth had loved the boy, and had paid no attention to Altan’s odd behavior, and the people he loved most in the world had paid the price for it.

The trees had captured Altan. He sensed it. They had obeyed his commands like faithful dogs, and were now holding the deceiver, the betrayer, the
murderer
with a strength no human could hope to defeat.

The miles fell beneath his running feet, each step bringing him closer to his revenge. He knew exactly where he was headed. At last, he slowed, catching his breath, and walked the last few steps into a clearing.

The trees had not been kind in their capture. Their branches looked like deformed hands and they grasped Altan’s arms tightly. One of the boy’s arms was jerked backward at a painful-looking angle and he wept quietly. He had lost his footing and hung suspended by his arms, his knees bent and toes scrabbling for purchase. Hatred washed over Jareth, hot and vital and pure.

“You killed my family,” Jareth spat, stepping into Altan’s view.

Altan gasped and started up, crying out as the movement made him twist his arm.

“Jareth!”

Jareth raised a hand, curled it into a fist, and slammed it into Altan’s face. With visceral satisfaction, he felt the boy’s nose crunch beneath the blow.

Altan shrieked. Blood and mucous flowed down his face as he sobbed.

“I brought you into the world,” Jareth snarled, pacing up and down in front of the bound youth. “I wish I’d drowned you in the lake instead, you son of a—”

He turned and was about to strike Altan again when something strange happened. Altan’s face…
shimmered.
His features blurred and reformed for just an instant. The mouth coated in blood was smaller, fuller; the eyes, larger and more widely spaced.

Slowly, Jareth drew his fist back.

“Stone Dancer, can you see me?” Jareth stared. The voice was female! “Stone Dancer, I’ve waited so long for this moment—”

“Altan, what are you—”

“Don’t call me that!” It was an anguished shriek, and it was definitely feminine. “I’m not Altan, I’m Ilta, Jareth—Ilta!
I’m your Lorekeeper!
”

Jareth staggered back, hardly able to breathe. Ilta? Altan’s stillborn twin sister? The boy was going mad. And how dare he claim to be Jareth’s—

But the face kept shifting back and forth from male to female, and now it seemed as though the body was trying to follow suit. Altan’s slim boy’s build filled out for just a brief instant, with a tiny waist and full breasts—

“Don’t you remember, my love?” Altan’s—Ilta’s—voice was raw and pleading. She—he—writhed in the implacable grip of the tree branches. “Through four lifetimes we were together. We were everything to each other. Not always in love, no, but loving, devoted to one another. Try to remember, please, please try!”

Was
this
his Lorekeeper? The missing third of the trinity? It couldn’t be!

Even as he rejected the idea Jareth realized he had to know. Had to know if this mad babbling was the truth. He took a deep breath and turned his thoughts inward.

There was no breeze; the water’s surface was as smooth as glass. Somehow, Jareth knew that it shouldn’t be; that there should always be waves coming to the shore. The Shadow. The Shadow was coming. Somewhere, a Dancer had died, and with his or her death would come the death of everything.

“What will it feel like?” she whispered. For in this life, Jareth was a woman; a girl in her late teens, with long black hair and dark skin.

“I don’t know,” her Lorekeeper admitted. A man, older than the Stone Dancer, with graying hair and somber eyes. “I do not remember. The Lorekeepers remember much, but not that; not even what form the Shadow has taken each time.”

“Will it hurt?” the Stone Dancer continued. “To be…erased…or will we feel nothing?”

She felt the kiss on her shoulder. “It won’t hurt. You won’t feel a thing.” A pause, then, “I love you.”

The Stone Dancer felt his hands on either side of her face and just before the Lorekeeper did the deed, the Stone Dancer felt those fingers tighten. Her eyes flew wide, she opened her mouth to scream
no, no, don’t kill me,
and then—

Jareth had ceased breathing and now pulled air into his lungs in a choking gasp. This was the recurring dream he had started having in his youth, and now he knew it was no dream, but a memory. A memory of his past life—and death—as a young woman whose lover, whose trusted Lorekeeper—

“You…you killed me,” he whispered.

Altan’s face was now again that of a young man. It shone with joy. “You remember!” he cried, in Altan’s voice.

“You killed me!” Jareth repeated, more strongly. “You killed me, you killed my family—how many deaths are on your head?”

Tears filled Altan’s eyes. “You don’t understand! We were supposed to be together! Taya, Annu, Parvan—they were keeping you from me. Keeping you from your destiny. I died—the cord was around my neck—but I refused to give up. So I merged with Altan. Two souls in one body. But I’ve won. Altan’s gone and this body is now mine, and I’m not giving it up. All we need to do is get to the Emperor and I’m sure he can—”

“The Emperor? Does your treachery know no bounds?” A sudden thought struck him. “Where’s Mylikki?”

Altan made a dismissive face. “I tied her to a tree in the Ice Maiden’s realm. I don’t know where she is or if she’s alive and don’t you see,
none of that matters!
”

The face and body shifted again, back to those of a female. “I love you, Stone Dancer! I am your Lorekeeper. Whatever I’ve done has been because of you, to keep you safe, to keep you with me. Surely you can see that. There’s nothing now that stands in our way!”

“You broke your Dancer’s neck,” Jareth grated. There was no sanity in the Lorekeeper’s words. The memory of that deed, combined with the horror of having to live trapped inside a body that was not her own, had clearly driven Ilta mad.

“You drugged and murdered three innocent people. More, if Mylikki isn’t still alive. I could never love you, Lorekeeper or no. The Ice Maiden, false construct that she was, had a warmer heart than you. At least she acted out of ignorance.”

He stepped forward and placed his hands on either side of Altan/Ilta’s face. A wave of pain swept over him.

“Altan? Are you—can you hear me?” The Altan Jareth had loved as a brother was the greatest victim of Ilta’s madness. It had been Altan’s body that had done the deed, but Ilta was the murderer. If he could still be reached somehow—

“Stop calling me that!” shrieked the Lorekeeper. “He’s gone, he’s gone forever. I’ve taken care of that. There’s only us now, Jareth. You and I, Lorekeeper and Dancer. We can finally be together as we were meant to be!”

“You’re insane,” he whispered. “It drove you mad, didn’t it? Killing me?”

“That’s what the
selva
told me, too,” cried Ilta, “last night. When they took us away to give us the dreams, she said I wasn’t well, that guilt had stolen my mind. That I needed to turn from my path before it was too late, or something like that. But she was wrong. I’m not crazy. I don’t feel guilty. It was what I had to do, you should understand, you should understand everything—”

His Lorekeeper, his soul, looked up at Jareth, pleading. It was time. He didn’t need to learn anything more from this demented monster masquerading as a boy.

Goodbye, Altan. I’m sorry. I know you’d want me to stop her before she harms anyone else. And she will. She will.

“No, my love, don’t, please don’t—”

Jareth leaned close and whispered in his Lorekeeper’s ear. “You thought I didn’t feel anything when you snapped my neck,” he whispered, almost as if imparting endearments. “You were wrong.”

His fingers tightened.

STONE DANCER!

The unheard voice shuddered along Jareth’s bones and hurled him backward. He landed hard, the wind knocked out of him for an instant. Seemingly out of nowhere, a giant blue form sprang upon him.

Jareth growled and buried his hands in the ruff of blue and white fur, muscles quivering with the effort to force the blue Tiger off of him.