Keeping It Real (46 page)

begin its work, where every magical being listened and watched.

The daisy was simply a daisy, so the spell was useless. Lila saw the realisation of their deceit dawn on

the Lady's face instantly. Behind Arie, Dar had gone ashen. He gave the most minute shake of his head

as he looked towards Lila and Tath.

"This flower.' The Lady plucked it gently from between the elves' hands. Her manner remained sweet

and she spoke as though personally wounded, her eyes beseeching. 'It
blooms not
for thy ransomed life,

Ilyatath. Where is your token, that
you have falsely given me this one in its place?'

'It
was burned in the Hall of Fire. An accident,' Tath said. 'My sister gave you . . .'

'I well know what
she gave me. Her loyalty to you is a shining example and her betrayal of me an

exceptional artifice whose skill must
be commended. Yours to me however, I find less worthy of praise.

Why would you not tell me immediately of its loss?' She made a single gesture with her finger and one

guard stepped to Lady Astar's side and took her arm in his hand.

Tath shivered but
Lila admired his grit when he said, T did not wish you to see me bound in life to this

form by my own dire mistakes. I would have you think highly of me. I thought
that
I would find another

way out
when the spell was done. And my strategies have not
failed yet. Zal is broken and here is your

most
dangerous opponent, his champion, at
my command.'

'It
is pretty reasoning,' Arie said, her voice rising a little at the end of the phrase, as though she was

considering his words. She let
the daisy fall from her hand to the floor and half turned to look back. 'Dar.

Perhaps you would remind me of how it
was you came by this robot
and Hya, and how the three of you

came to Aparastil.'

Behind and all around them servants were lighting lamps. The demon

thaumaturge and the elves at
the Otopian and Faery altars had ceased their activities and stood at

attention at their stations
.
Lila kept on looking with all her senses for any way out, for any useful thing.

She saw a server approach with a beautiful red and black lidded ceramic dish and stand alongside Arie,

face downcast
.
She looked for heat, but there was none
.
The container was cold and Lila could not see

inside it.

We are
lo
s
t, Tath said, though he didn't
explain. Dread claimed him.

Lila increased her drug dose, to keep her reactions clean.

She watched Dar lie and had to admit he was, to her eyes, completely and utterly convincing.

He said, 'I brought Zal's bodyguard from Otopia with me. We were both badly damaged by our

struggle. In Sathanor I was made well, at the overnight
huts where the Vale of Sinda meets the woods. I

pre-tended treachery to engage the trust
of this woman and made her believe we were coming here to

rescue Zal. At
the Deeps we were attacked by Saaqaa under a dark moon, and there Tath's band caught

up with us and we all fought for our lives. The wild magic was particularly bad that
night. Tath and his

companions were all killed there but, knowing his magical skills, I deceived this woman into taking on his

andalune
body, so that
he might
use his skill to gain control of her. At the Hall of Fire we sacrificed the

flower in order to maintain his binding upon her, else you would have released him easily and she would

have had a chance to kill you before you completely understood her nature.'

'It would gladden my heart to believe you. I would rival the sun in splendour to count you my loyal

friend but, sadly, in these moments of your close presence I can see inside your treacherous mind,' Arie

said. She reached out and gently removed the lid of the red and black dish. Inside it
lay white, glistening

concertina curls of sap-rich bark.

Lila did not
feel shame, to her surprise
.
Instead she felt a spark of gladness, because Arie was both

sentimental and cruel, a justified opponent instead of a misguided idealist. Lila glanced at Dar. He was

expressionless and did not meet her eye.

Everyone in the great hall had become still and silent.

Arie drew Tath's knife from its position at his side and held it out to him, handle first. T do not wish to

command you, but I will.'

Wha
t
? Wha
t
does she mean?
Lila demanded of Tath. There was a new anger inside him, but a

hopeless one, full of self-hate.

Leave me
t
o do
t
his alone, he said. Or share i
t
wi
t
h me. I
t
is up
t
o you. We have
t
o finish wha
t
we
began, all of us, in
t
he end

He took the hilt
and Lila felt
her hand close around it, her machine strength the core of his action. He

made to move forward but she prevented him, taking back control of her physical movements from him

easily, as she had always been able to do.

She could not
let
herself believe they had come to such a moment as this
No. I forbid you.

J
e
t
me
g
o, and she may ye
t
believe I ha
v
e mas
t
ery o
ve
r you.
T
his is why she asks i
t
. I
t
i
s t
he o
nly
way.

I will coun
t
ermand you
t
hen! You can'
t
do
t
his!
Lila screamed at him, but at the same moment her

Al-self confirmed his words as the best
course forwards, if she wanted to remain alive and potentially

enabled to save Zal. In the cool runways of perfect, drug-enhanced cognition, her emotions were swept

aside. T
his is my faul
t
,
she said, and let
Tath have control, but stayed with him all the same so that
they

moved together in a single forward stride, faster than any eye could follow
.

Lila was very strong, her aim perfect, her focus absolute. She looked into Dar's eyes as they stood

face to face for the last
time, her hand firm against his chest where the blade had pierced between his ribs

directly into his heart.

Dar's hands gripped her shoulders. Lila remembered the night in Sathanor, the bioluminescent
night, when

she had held Dar's heart in hers. Now they were in synchrony again and the blade that
was killing him

was in her chest. For an instant
she felt
the wound's terrible pain and Dar's agonised effort
to cling to the

last
seconds of his life. Through their sympathy she was aware of all his energy scattering, his aethereal

body fading against
Tath's.

Dar was trying to speak to her, she realised, as she saw his lips move. She routed power from her

reactor through Tath into her bond with Dar.

'Surely no greater king has ever lived,' he gasped, fighting to draw one more breath
.
'No one with the

loving kindness, strength and courage

He was gone
.
His body, became a deadweight, slid off the knife blade with a grating wrench, and fell

to the floor
.

'What did he mean by that?' Arie demanded.

Lila dropped to her hands and knees beside Dar, letting the knife fall out
of her fingers. 'Goodbye,' she

said, in Tath's voice. His final words had cut
her to the heart. How many more times was she going to

find that
people dead were more loyal and true than when they were alive? She wanted it
to feel worse

than it did because she deserved to hurt but, because of the drugs, it didn't
.
And at the same moment her

smart AI-self noticed that her hands were flat
to the bubble's floor.

She set
her speaker films to the lowest
frequency they were able to produce - something well below

even elvish hearing span - and upped the power to maximum. She sent
a message in Sheean, the faery

language, just three words tuned to their particular tones and scales: Zal Aparastil Help. The only faery

she knew who might collect the

message was Poppy, or Viridia at
a push. The only chance she had was if the message carried and if they

touched water. If the story was true, if Malachi had been right
about
their faery natures. So many ifs.

Lila felt
the Lady's hand on her shoulder. 'Your presence is required in the centre circle, Tath. Come

with me now.'

Wha
t
abou
t
Dar?
Lila was jabbering inside to Tath as she got
up to obey and handed him overall

control.
Wha
t
will
t
hey do wi
t
h him? Where has he gone? Can'
t
you do some
t
hing?

Dar is dead
Tath said
. But we are not. You must concentrate on the matters at hand

And now what? What's going to happen?

Now we are going to bleed Zal and bind him to a fey fracture halfway between Alfheim and

Intersticial Space. It will not be a physical prison, merely an aetheric one. He will live here in the

palace and Arie will look after him like a sacred son all the days of his miserable long life.

But what are we going to do about it?
Lila pleaded.

When a moment arises that I think of anything, I will let you know.
Tath said. Come, there are

more vile deeds to execute before this trial is done.

Anguish and grief tightened Lila's jaw. She clung to Tath's self-possession as the effect of her drugs

began to fade; she did not have much left
and she must
save that. But she dare not let go of their artificial

restraint
on her feelings
.
She was sure that she would collapse here if she had to face up to what she'd

done in any realistic way.

T
hen do no
t
,
Tath ordered her.
Be strong and do what must be done. Time for recrimination and

the rest later. Now you must act.

Surely no greater king . . .
she thought. Dar had been telling her to carry on, just as Tath was, even if

they could never have been real friends.

Because it was all he could give you at that moment, Tath said. And if you do not fulfil that

command you will have twice betrayed him.

Arte and Tath had come to the centre of the circles. The other mages had followed them some of the

way, each halting within the ring that
denoted their particular shell of influence. Two mages stood in the

circle beyond the centre. Eight
in the circle beyond that Lila/Tath and Arie were alone in the nucleus, until

they fetched Zal.

if As he got closer Lila saw his eyes were dilated and sheened in a classic opiate reaction. He was naked

above the waist and his face and body were limned in sweat that was making the magical markings

drawn on him run in streaks of coloured ink. He was doped, and when Arte took his arms and

pushed him down he sank to his knees on the floor and sat
there, head slightly to one side,

completely unresisting. His
andalune
body was quite withdrawn, not even projecting beyond his

skin. He lolled against Arie's leg like a ragdoll and she stroked his hair absently with one hand as she

signed orders with the other. Lila could feel, through Tath, Arie's great
anticipation of relief, the

pleasure with which she looked forward to the safety and restoration of a world she loved without

limit.

Singers and speakers closed the outer shells of the seal, beginning with the least and outer ring,

and then the inner ones. As each was completed they hazed Lila's view of the room, spheres of pale

mist and aether leaping into instant
life around them until, as the inmost
ring was made whole, she and

Tath, Arte and Zal were enclosed within an opaque bell whose walls shimmered with all colours like

mother-of-pearl. This circle, unlike Zal's casts, did not
transport them to another realm. It took them

outside all realms, outside time, into the Interstitial. They hung nowhere and nowhen, everywhere and

everywhen, held within the tidal powers of all seven regions, balanced as though on the point
of a

pin.

Finally Lila understood what
Tath had meant when he called Arie the pearl, but
she did not
feel

pearl-like herself. As her blood reverted to normal she felt
cold and alone. She most longed to go

home and to never have come anywhere near Alfheim.

You
n
eed no
t
s
t
ay,
Tath said to her and lifted their hands upwards to his jerkin
.
Lila witnessed

herself opening hidden pockets on its front, lifting out the instruments they had always contained and

which, until now, she had never even discovered.
I
w
ill
do
i
t.