Читать книгу Child Of Darkness - Jennifer Armintrout, Jennifer Armintrout - Страница 10

It was simple enough to find the search party Malachi had ordered—what had he hoped to accomplish by sending them into the Darkworld?—and convince them to give up their search. He insisted on staying behind, in case there were stragglers, even after the soldiers insisted there would not be.

And there would not be. That was not Cedric’s purpose in staying.

When he’d put enough distance between himself and the guards, he changed direction, and pulled from his shirtsleeve the rolled paper diagram that would lead him to the Gypsy camp.

The tunnels were not named on the drawing. Many of them went unnamed in the Darkworld, so it would not have helped. And only a few symbols, known only to those who were intended to find the place, indicated that it was a map at all. Dika had gone over it with him many times, though he’d protested ever needing to use it. He did not like to be in close proximity to mortals—at least, not large groups of them—and did not know how they would react to his presence. She’d been correct in her assumption that someday, his need to find her would be stronger than his desire to stay away.

He followed the map, doubting every turn, fearful of what might lurk in the shadows. It had been a long time since he’d had to use his battle training, and despite what most outside of the Guild believed, he’d rarely gone on missions as an Assassin, content to orchestrate the assignments and send others to do the fighting. He knew of the horrors that could lurk in these tunnels, knew in theory how to protect himself, but he’d not had the practice for a long time.

It was a relief when the tunnels became less dark, less damp. He knew it was a trick of his mind to equate light with safety, for untold horrors already stalked through both dark and light. But there seemed to be a life energy pulsing along the walls that Cedric could see in bright handprints and hurried smears where shoulders and limbs had brushed the cement in passing. These mortal imprints did not flare with terrified or angry energy, but happy excitement—the feeling of being home.

It was a feeling that Cedric could easily recognize but not truly understand. Faeries did not have homes. A dwelling to return to every night was a prison. The true joy of their existence had always been in the roaming, the never knowing where you would wake that morning or sleep that night. Trooping, that was what they had been made for. It made their lives in the Underground a particularly cruel hell.

Here, the feeling of home was pleasant, not stifling, and he continued on, alert for the rising of sound, which always accompanied the living spaces of mortals. The tunnel bent, and there were no more electric lightbulbs, but grates that let in the starlight. The scent of wood smoke, a smell he hadn’t experienced in decades, drifted up the tunnel, and, sooner than he expected, the buzz of mixed music and conversation. He rounded another bend and staggered on his feet at the sight of his destination.

It was as if the Underground had disappeared. The ground was Earth. Hard packed, dotted with bits of crumbled cement at intervals, but real Earth. The walls were not the carefully constructed tunnels the Humans had burrowed through the ground for pipes and trains and sewage, but rough rock walls that arched high, surrounding a hole with irregular edges and no grates, no barriers between the Upworld and the Underground. Through it, the view of the starry sky was blocked only by the black shapes of trees, reaching into the night above the heads of the mortals below.

And how many mortals! Cedric was certain the Humans here numbered far more than all the creatures on the Strip. Their dwellings were clustered in untidy, winding rows, pieces of property claimed here and there by stakes in the ground. Some of the dwellings were simple cloth tents. Others were built side by side and joined together by common walls of cinderblock and other materials. There were roofs made from blue sheets of mortal plastic or metal hammered flat, and some homes had no roofs at all. Mortal children ran without heed past mortal women stirring pots over communal fires or hanging sodden garments over lines stretched between tents. There seemed to be fire and joy and life everywhere, and for a moment, it truly overwhelmed him.

There was something else, too…. A sense of expectation, of a burden lifted. He remembered Dika’s words, and it froze the joy within him to ice.

He remembered why he had come. It occurred to him for the first time that, although he had found his way here, finding Dika would be a much different task. He would have to enter the settlement, not just survey it from afar.

Dika had never told him what to expect of her home, nor what to expect of the people there. It was possible that she had not properly thought through the consequences of his being there, that she had no idea how other mortals would react to an immortal creature in their midst. But such carelessness was not like Dika, and so he concluded that it would be safe to enter the camp.

There were no guards; at least, no formal display of armed might, but a few males wandered at the outskirts of the camp, and one, upon spotting Cedric, approached.

“Do you speak our language?” he called, pulling something off of his back. A gun, one of those strange Human weapons that incorporated the magic of fire and force. Cedric stepped back instinctively. He did not care for such objects.

“I have this,” he called out in lieu of answering the question. He held out the map, and when the mortal came close enough, he let the man take it.

The man frowned at the paper. “Who gave you this?”

“Dika.” It was the only name he had. Did mortals, Gypsies, have other names? Secret ones that only they used with each other? “She told me her name was Dika.”

The mortal laughed. “Dika is a very common name. I suppose next you will tell me that she has dark hair and eyes?”

Cedric had nothing to say to this. The man continued to regard him with wary amusement. He did not return the map.

“I can walk you back to the Strip, friend,” he said, tucking the folded paper into the pocket of his shirt. “But you cannot become lost in our land again.”

“I must speak with her.” Though Cedric tried to keep his voice even, he heard the desperation in his words. “She has told me that you are leaving soon. That this will all be gone. I cannot chance not seeing her…I have made a terrible mistake.”

The mortal’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know of our leaving?”

“Because Dika told me. She told me. I can’t give you proof, but please, I must find her.” Cedric could say no more, only look to the man with what must have been pleading on his face, and wait for his decision.

Finally, the man sighed the heavy sigh of something giving way. “You are an outsider. You will have to take your case to the Dya.”

“Dya,” he repeated the word, rolled the unfamiliar shape of it around his mouth. “Dika did not mention this.”

“If you wish to see Dika, you will have to obey our rules, friend,” the mortal said, his smile not so kind.

There was little else Cedric could do but agree and follow the man through the maze of the mortal city. They passed the rough dwellings, came to cleaner, neater homes—as clean and neat as anything in the Underground could be—made from the same mortal materials, but with a certain air of pride about them. The children running the winding paths here were not as dirty, and the garments hanging to dry were much finer.

The people stared at Cedric as they passed. Mortals were roughly shaped, as if each was cut from a spare scrap of cloth, rather than crafted from the finest bolt. Of course, his appearance would stand out to them. Could they tell he was not mortal? He was built larger than most Faeries, but he stood only as tall as an average Human woman. The Gypsies were small people, though, wiry and compact, and Dika had not known him to be Fae, when they’d first met. He’d thought then that it was something of an insult, to look mortal. He still did, when other Fae muttered it about him. But now, now it might serve him to appear Human.

The mortal man led him to the center of the city. Only here did the plan of the settlement make sense. All of the winding streets led to the center hub, where a huge, communal fire blazed. Groups of singing, dancing, feasting Humans clustered around the wide pit of flames, mortal bodies writhing like salamander shadows in the firelight. Cedric’s guide skirted these groups, smiling or calling out to wave at someone, but he never veered from his path.

It was only after they had rounded the fire pit and started down a wide avenue that Cedric noticed people following them. On the other streets they’d taken, he’d assumed the traffic behind them had been the normal progression of bodies moving to their intended destinations. But this street was empty of dwellings, lit only by the flickering light from the communal fire, and the trailing mortals were evident. Cedric looked over his shoulder once, saw the eagerness and anticipation in their eyes, and did not care to see them anymore.

At the end of the path loomed the ancient, gnarled roots of a tree, the top of which would stretch into the Upworld sky, but the trunk and branches were not visible here, beneath the ground. The looping tentacles lay like the sleeping form of a Leviathan, those underwater creatures that mortal men no longer feared, though they should. It caused a shiver to crawl between Cedric’s wings; Faeries, too, feared the horrors of the deep.

A Gypsy wagon, like the ones Cedric had spied tramping through the forests of the mortal realm centuries ago, sat beneath the cascading roots, dwarfed by the coils that unfurled around it like embracing arms. This was where the mortal led him, and the people behind them stopped, either from respect or fear.

A small fire crackled beneath a smoke-blackened cauldron, and a female knelt beside it, the flames gilding her glossy black curls. Cedric stopped, though the Human continued on without him. “Dika?”

She turned, seeming to see the other Gypsy man first, then himself, and then the crowd at the edge of the camp. Her smooth face creased with confusion. “Cedric? You’ve come here?”

The answer was obvious, as he stood before her, but he did not say so. “You are the leader here?”

She came forward slowly, shaking her head. “No. No. I stay here with her…to help her.”

The mortal who had led him there drew himself up to his full height. “This stranger has come to this camp uninvited, and he must face your grandmother’s judgment.”

“He was not uninvited. I gave him a map to find us. I invited him here.” She squared her shoulders and glared at him, unblinking. It seemed neither of them would ever look away from the other, then the door of the wagon opened, and their attention shifted.

A lamp of many-colored glass hung beside the wagon door, and it swung wildly, sending a rainbow of shadows across the figure that emerged. At first glance, the figure seemed not even Human; a hunchbacked thing, like a rune stone jutting up from the ground, with a head covered by a leather cap with dangling flaps that obscured her face. She shuffled, and with each step the shells and trinkets wound on cords around her neck and arms clanked and jingled. The Humans waited with speechless patience as the woman made her way forward with a maddeningly slow gait.

When she was close enough to be heard, she pushed the flaps of the cap away from her face, revealing a countenance so marred by age that it resembled to Cedric some kind of rotted fruit shrinking in on itself. Two shrewd black eyes peered out from beneath eyebrows grown thick and white with age, and her seemingly toothless mouth worked from side to side as she regarded the mortals. “Dika, go and stir the stew pot.”

Dika left. In her obedience, she did not say a word for Cedric’s defense, as though she was not concerned about leaving him to this crone’s devices.

Then the old woman looked past the mortal who had led him there and declared with delight, “Why, Milosh! You’ve brought me a Faery!”

This was obviously a surprise to Milosh, as well as to the audience clustered behind them. But to the Dya, this development seemed as natural as if she’d found a coin in the street. “I think,” she pronounced with gravity, “I shall call him Tom.”

This, finally, moved Cedric to speak. “I am Cedric, lady. Of the Court of Queene Ayla of the Lightworld.”

“Yes, yes, and before that the Court of Queene Mabb, far beyond the Veil.” She turned to Milosh. “Go. And take them with you. I don’t suppose this one Faery is going to invade our camp. And if he is, well, I shall have to take him hostage.”

Milosh, his chest swelling with anger, would not be dismissed. “Your granddaughter gave him our location. She led him here and told him of our migration plan.”

“She’s told him more than that, I’ll wager.” The Dya raised her voice so that it would be heard by not only Milosh and Cedric, but Dika as well. “I’m sure she’s told him a great many interesting things.”

Dika’s head and shoulders sagged as she stirred the cauldron.

“Come, Tom.” The Dya no longer spoke to Milosh, as though he’d obeyed her and already left. “We shall talk about this transgression you’ve committed.”

She shuffled toward the side of the wagon away from the fire, where a small iron table and chairs sat rusting in the shadows. “You aren’t really allergic to iron, are you?” she asked with a wink, already knowing the answer.

“It is true, we can touch it. We are not fond of it,” Cedric said through gritted teeth as he sat down on the unforgiving metal. “Why do you keep calling me Tom?”

“I saw a Faery once, when I was a girl.” The Dya’s expression took on a faraway look. “I strayed from my family’s camp, lured by the sound of Faery music. And I saw the sweetest Faery you’ve ever seen. She had golden hair, and wings made of light. And a fiddle! She had a Human fiddle, and she plucked it with her fingers. She didn’t know what to do with it. But the music was so beautiful. I will never forget that sound.”

Cedric did not know how to respond. The age of this mortal made him uncomfortable…though she was far younger than his years, he did not doubt that. But her flesh had aged. It was an experience that Cedric had nothing to compare to. Perhaps that gave her wisdom he could not claim.

After a long silence, he said, “Dika did nothing wrong.”

The Dya chuckled, a bubbling, wet sound. “You know our ways so well, do you, that you can school the Dya of this camp on what is right and wrong?”

He said nothing.

“Why would a Faery come into the Darkworld, Tom?” There was no humor in her face, nor the far-off look of a Human with a wandering mind. “Why would he come and seduce our secrets out of a girl stupid enough to give them freely?”

“It was not my intention.” He thought back to that first day, when he’d strayed over the border to follow Dika. He’d seen her on the Strip many times, but they had never spoken. She’d taunted him with teasing glances, and once even dared to toss him a beaded scarf that she’d used in her hair. The hours he’d spent stroking that scarf, pressing it to his face and inhaling the scent of her. Long, torturous nights that drove him from his bed and to the Strip in the vain hope of seeing her.

And she’d been there, coy and teasing as ever as she’d led him on a dancing chase toward the boundary of the Darkworld. A boundary that, it was apparent, she didn’t believe he would cross. But he did cross it, without a second thought, and caught her in the tunnel and took her there, without even knowing her name, against the rough concrete wall.

A shudder he could not suppress went through him at the memory. “I was bewitched. I did not seduce her.”

“And you did not press her for our secrets?” It was an accusation, not a question. “You did not make Faery promises to dazzle her?”

“She loves me,” he said, coldly, haughtily. It was all he knew to be true in this place.

“She is elfstruck.”

“She loves me! And it was she that sought me out!”

The old woman nodded, as if somehow satisfied. “You do not love her?”

He thought of it, carefully considered what she asked. “I do not believe we can love as mortals love. Your love is bound by time. That makes it more constant. Perhaps desperate. But in the way I am able, I love her.”

“Your love is also bound by time.” The old woman looked toward the flickering firelight. From where they sat, they could not see Dika tending the cauldron, but the Dya’s gaze was pulled that way, just the same. “Shorter time than you know. If she were to grow old, withered like a grape left on the vine, would you love her then?”

He could not say. “I would cherish her as something dear to me. It is all I can promise.”

“And that is a promise that you must make to her, and make clear.” The Dya’s voice was sad, but that sadness fled as she turned back to him. “I wonder, though, what your purpose is, coming here. Though we live in the Darkworld, my people have no quarrel with you.”

“I am not here to quarrel. In truth, I do not believe my Queene has so harsh a view of the Darkworld as her predecessor. I am here for Dika.” He looked down at his hands. “I am here because I no longer wish to be a part of the Lightworld.”

“Wishes are what your people deal in, Tom. Not mine.” The Dya fixed him with a cold stare. “You cannot choose to be apart from your kind. You could not survive.”

“I can no longer survive among my kind, either. Perhaps you would let me choose the course of my own future.” He nodded toward the fire. “Perhaps you would let Dika choose hers.”

He had the old woman at a disadvantage now, and they both knew it. “My Queene will be able to take no action against you. You are leaving, and will be gone long before she can find this place.”

“You will be hunted on the surface,” the Dya remarked, not wishing to relinquish her hand so soon.

“You are hunted there, as well. Your people tell fortunes and create elixirs. The Enforcers could not let such a thing go.” He leaned back in the chair, though the iron made him uneasy and his paper-thin wings bent under him, and crossed one leg over the other in a Human gesture. “You will be in a unique position, though. You will have a Faery to hand over to them. A Faery who was close to the Queene, who knew her plans. They may not bother with us on the surface, but they do not like us. You could make a valuable trade and protect your people, if it should come to that.”

The Dya chortled. “And how do you know I would not simply sell you to the Enforcers the moment we stepped on Upworld soil? I thought Faeries knew better than anyone what tricks could be played in a deal.”

“I am aware of what tricks you could play on me,” he stated simply. “And I am aware that your people fear my kind. You will not play me false, lest you suffer unintended consequences.”

She smiled at him, displaying a mouth that was toothless but for two golden stubs that peeked over her bottom lip. “You would find your footing among us, in time, I suspect.”

For a long moment, she contemplated him, then called for Dika. The girl could not have been far, certainly not as far as the stew pot, for she appeared, as if a shade summoned from the Ether, at their side.

The Dya pointed a gnarled finger to Cedric, and did not look at the girl. “Dika, Tom wishes to stay with us.”

“Oh?” She tried to sound disinterested, either for the Dya’s benefit, or for his.

“What say you in the matter?” The Dya turned and fixed a critical eye on her granddaughter. Her mind was made up, that Cedric could tell. But Dika did not realize it.

Cedric saw the turmoil behind her eyes and almost smiled. But he did not wish to offend her, or the Dya. He could wait a moment to express his happiness.

“I think that if…Tom…wishes to stay with us, it is not our way to refuse him.” She said it as though it were an answer she’d been taught.

The Dya nodded. “That is what I thought, too.” She turned to Cedric. “Well, Tom, it seems we can welcome you into our clan. For now.”

“For now,” he agreed. He had no doubts that, should there come a time that handing him over to the Enforcers became convenient, they would do so. But that time was not now, and he would deal with the Enforcers if they came for him.

“I am tired, Dika,” the Dya said, rising to her feet. “Bring me my dinner inside.”

The old woman held out her arm, and Dika helped her rise, casting a look to Cedric that implored him not to leave. He waited until they were gone, then rose, brushing the feeling of the iron from his body.

When Dika emerged, she looked for him, held out a hand with her index finger raised, and hurried to the cauldron, where she dipped a dented metal cup into the pot. She rushed this back into the wagon, and did not emerge for a long while.

As he waited for her, he settled into the curve of one of the ancient tree’s wide roots, and closed his eyes. If he ignored the cavern ceiling high above, he could almost imagine how it would feel to be outside once again, to feel the wind, to speak to the trees. He would have to live as a Human, but it was a small price to pay for the freedom so long denied him.

And what of the price she will pay? the tree asked cheerfully, in the quiet way trees had of invading Faery thoughts. To give up her one life bound to a lover who cannot love her in return? Doesn’t seem fair, that.

Then the tree, apparently pleased to see something passing through the forest above them, began to speak of rabbits. Dika emerged from the wagon, looked about, confused, until she saw him, and ran toward him, her face alight.

Cedric forced the tree’s unsolicited opinion from his mind and met her halfway.

“I can’t believe it!” She threw her arms around his shoulders, kissed his face. “I can’t believe you really are here.”

“I am here.” He smoothed her black curls from her face. Unfathomable as it might have been to him previously, he wanted nothing more than to never return to the Lightworld, to stay here, with these strange people, to insinuate himself into their company. “There is something I have not told you about my life in the Lightworld.”

Where to begin? Would he tell her how many years he’d existed? That he’d seen women as old as her grandmother born and dead ten, fifty, a hundred times over? Should he tell her of watching the Earth slowly shift apart, of walking the Human world and watching them “discover” the magic in plants to cure sickness, the sun to tell time?

No. All of that could come in good time. Now, she needed to hear this, without any embellishment or Faery tales to dazzle her. “In the Lightworld, I am not an ordinary…man.” What a strange word when applied to himself. “I am an advisor to the Queene of the Faery Court. Her closest advisor. And recently she has charged me with a very important task.” He wondered if the stories of jealous Human women were true, and if this would seem to her as ridiculous as it did to him, or enrage her. “She wishes that I should mate myself to her daughter.”

“Oh.” She did not meet his eyes.

“I will not. She is a mere child.” He stumbled over this, as he wasn’t certain Dika was much older than Cerridwen. He wasn’t sure how Human age worked, really. “She is old enough to find a mate, but she has been coddled and spoiled. I do not wish to spend an eternity with her.”

Dika looked up, a glint in her eyes that was caught between amusement and anger. “And me? Would you wish to spend an eternity with me?”

He opened his mouth to answer, and realized it was a trick. He could no more spend an eternity with her than she could spend one with him. “If it were possible, yes.”

“Then you content yourself to living with me until I am as old and withered as the Dya?” She came closer now, and gripped the front of his robes to pull their bodies together. “Will you still love me then?”

“I will love you for as long as I am able.” He knew now what had taken so long in the caravan, what the Dya’s muffled voice had been saying. “You know that I am merely an inconstant Faery, with no heart for Human love.”

“I know this,” she said, rising on her toes to touch their mouths together. Her breath moved over his lips. “I wanted to know that you knew it.”