The Amber Enchantress

SEVEN THE DANCING GATE

“Is that Nibenay?”

Sadira pointed at the plain below, to, where a distant city of minarets huddled in the shade of a rocky butte.

“Of course,” Faenaeyon answered, keeping his eyes focused on the hillside beneath his feet. He leaped over a spray of yellow cloudbrush, landing on a round boulder, then immediately launched himself toward a jumble of copper-colored stones. “Did I not promise to take you to the City of Spires?” he called.

“And now you have,” the sorceress confirmed. She kept her hands tightly clutched on her kank’s harness as it scuttled after her father’s running figure. “Your obligation has been met. You don’t have to escort me into the city.”

Faenaeyon stopped and looked at her. “You’ll need us to help you find a guide,” he said, a silver glint in his eye. “Besides, Nibenay is a good place for elves to do business.”

“I can take care-”

Sadira’s objection was interrupted by a wild scream from the hunters running ahead of the tribe.

“Tul’ks!”

Four terrified creatures sprang from the copse of silver-bristle and bounded down the hill. They were larger than half-giants and as gaunt as elves, with stooped shoulders and white skulls uncovered by any sort of flesh. The tul’ks had bulging eyes, toothless jaws, and a set of oblong cavities where their noses should have been. Each wore a shabby tunic of tanned leather, secured about their waists with snakeskin belts.

As they ran, the frightened man-beasts dragged their knuckles along the ground, using their gangling arms like an extra set of legs to keep themselves stumbling. The Sun Runner hunters set off in pursuit, gleefully nocking arrows as they leaped from boulder to boulder.

“Stop your warriors!” Sadira said.

Faenaeyon gave the sorceress a look of disdain. “Why?”

“Because it’s murder,” she replied. “The tul’ks have nothing to do with you.”

One of the hunters loosed and arrow that sank deep into a tul’k’s back. The man-beast stumbled and fell head over heels.

“They are beasts,” chief scoffed, grinning in amusement as he watched the injured tul’k regain his feet and try to flee.

“Beasts don’t wear clothes,” Sadira said. She thrust a hand into the satchel holding her spell components. “Call off your hunters, or I will.”

“As you wish,” Faenaeyon said. Turning toward the hunters, he boomed, “Let the tul’ks go!”

The elves came to a stop and looked back to Faenaeyon, their faces showing their confusion. “What did you say?” demanded one.

“He said to leave them alone,” Sadira called. “They’ve caused you no harm.”

The hunter looked from her back to Faenaeyon. “You want this?”

“I do,” Faenaeyon said. As the tul’ks disappeared into the brush, the chief turned to Sadira. “You really shouldn’t have stopped my hunters. By killing the tul’ks, we’re doing them a mercy.”

Sadira removed her hand from her satchel. “How can that be?”

“The tul’ks are descended from the Ruin Stalkers-a tribe of elves that disappeared three centuries ago.” He stepped closer, watching Sadira with a roguish grin on his lips. “Do you want to know how they became tul’ks?”

“Probably not,” the sorceress answered. “But tell me anyway.”

“The Pristine Tower,” Faenaeyon said. “They were searching for the treasures of the ancients.” He looked in the direction the tul’ks had fled, then added, “You saw for yourself what became of them.”

“What are you saying?” Sadira asked, suspicious of Faenaeyon’s story.

The chief shrugged. “The elders don’t claim to exactly know how it happened. The warriors might have fought between themselves, or they could have been attacked by a herd of wild erdlus,” he said. “Or maybe they just stumbled across a wasp’s nest. Whatever it was, everyone in the tribe was wounded, and they were changed into the beasts you saw.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you like,” Faenaeyon countered. “But if you go to the Pristine Tower, take care not to spill your blood. If you cut yourself, even if you scratch yourself, the magic of the place will change you into a beast more pitiful than the tul’ks. I’ve seen it happen.”

Sadira started to sneer at his claim, then remembered what the windsinger had told her about his origins. “Was that when you found Magnus?”

Faenaeyon’s eyes flashed, more in pain than anger. “Yes. What do you know about that?”

“Only what Magnus told me-that you found him there when he was a child.”

“He was a newborn baby,” the chief corrected.

“Tell me about it,” Sadira said. “Perhaps it’ll give me reason to heed your warning.”

Faenaeyon nodded. “When I was a young warrior, the Sand Dancers attacked us and stole my sister, Celba. By the time I recovered from my wounds and tracked them across the Ivory Plain, my sister had grown weary of being a slave-wife and fled into the desert. Her husband and four of his brothers went after her, so Celba fled to the one place they wouldn’t follow-the Pristine Tower. I found her pursuers camped in the lands just beyond the sight of the tower.”

“What did you do?” Sadira asked. She found herself more interested in Faenaeyon’s dedication to his sister than in what happened at the Pristine Tower. From the tale he had told so far, the chief did not sound like a man who would abandon a pregnant lover into slavery.

“I killed all five, of course,” Faenaeyon answered. “Then I followed Celba into the wild lands. What I didn’t know was that the Sand Dancers had gotten a child on her. When I found her, she was already giving birth.”

“So Magnus is your nephew?” Sadira gasped.

The chief nodded. “Yes, but Celba didn’t live to raise him. Because of the blood she had shed during labor, the magic of the tower changed her into a hideous, mindless beast. She tried to devour her child, and to save Magnus I killed her with my own sword.”

“And Magnus was wounded, which is why he’s-”

“Do you take my blade to be that slow?” Faenaeyon demanded crossly. “Magnus was born as he is.”

The chief fell silent and began a gentle trot toward Nibenay. Sadira spent a moment trying to reconcile the image she had always had of her father as a coward with the tale of bravery she had just heard. When she could not, she gave up and urged her mount after him.

As her kank came up behind Faenaeyon, she called, “If you’re telling me this because you want me to stay with the tribe, it won’t work.”

Faenaeyon slowed, allowing Sadira to guide her mount to his side. When he spoke, his voice was overly calm. “What makes you think I want you to stay?”

“Don’t you?” Sadira demanded.

The chief allowed a conniving smile to cross his lips, but did not take his eyes off the ground over which he ran. “We might come to an arrangement-”

“I doubt it,” the sorceress spat. “My talents are not for sale.”

Faenaeyon shrugged. “That’s unfortunate,” he sighed. “But it doesn’t change what you’ll find at the Pristine Tower. Truly, it would be better if you stayed with us.”

“Better for you, perhaps,” Sadira answered. “But I’ve promised to go there, and I will.”

“Only a fool would let her promise kill her,” Faenaeyon answered, shaking his head. “There’s a reason fear is stronger than duty.”

Sadira wanted to ask if he had forsaken her mother because he was frightened, but restrained herself. To do so would have been to reveal her true identity, and she still thought it wise not to trust her father with that particular secret.

Instead, she said, “Fear isn’t always stronger than duty, even for an elf. You must have been afraid when you went after Celba.”

“I was angry, not scared. No one steals from me!” Faenaeyon said, glancing at her with a frown. “If I had let them take my sister, they would have come back for my kanks and my silver.”

“I should have known,” Sadira said. If there was a bitterness in her voice, it was because she felt naive for thinking her father had ever acted out of noble motives. “You elves live only for yourselves.”

“Who else?” Faenaeyon asked. They reached the bottom of the hill and started across the flat plain, pushing their way through a thick growth of brittlebrush. “Life is too short to waste on illusions like duty and loyalty.”

“What about love?” she asked. The sorceress was curious about Faenaeyon’s feelings for her mother, and how, if he knew Sadira’s true identity, he would feel about her. “Is that an illusion?”

“If so, it is a good one,” Faenaeyon said, grinning. The terrain here was less broken, so he could afford to look at Sadira more often. “I have loved many women.”

“Used them, perhaps, but you didn’t love them,” Sadira said acidly. She did not know whether she was more angered by the elf’s flippant use of the word love, or the implication that her mother had been one insignificant consort in a stream of many.

Faenaeyon frowned. “How would you know about my women?”

“If you feel no duty or loyalty to your women, you can’t love them,” Sadira countered, avoiding a direct answer to the question.

“Love is not bondage,” the chief scoffed.

“I know that as well as you,” Sadira countered. “But it’s not self-indulgence, either. Did you even care for all the women you took as lovers?”

“Of course,” the chief replied.

“Then prove it,” Sadira said.

“And how do you expect me to do that?”

“Nothing too difficult. Just name them,” Sadira replied, wondering what it would feel like to hear Faenaeyon speak her mother’s name-or to hear him forget it.

“All of them?”

Sadira nodded. “If you cared for them all.”

The chief shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly,” he said. “There’ve been too many.”

“I thought as much,” Sadira sneered. She tapped her kank’s antennae, urging it into a gallop.

Faenaeyon quickly caught up to her. “There’s no reason for haste,” he said, loping along at her side. “We’ll reach the city long before they close the gates for the night.”

“Good,” Sadira said, not slowing her mount.

They continued at that pace throughout the morning, eventually coming to a caravan track that led into the city. A spirited melody rose from the main gate and drifted out over the plains, welcoming the travelers to Nibenay. Many of the elves began to dance, trotting along the duty road in a heel-to-toe quickstep. Some of the warriors kept the beat by pounding the flats of their blades against a kank’s carapace. Even those fatigued by the morning’s hard run joined in the revelry and rocked their shoulders to and fro.

Only Faenaeyon seemed to resent the greeting, continuing toward the city at the unrelenting pace Sadira had set earlier. “By the wind, I hate this place,” he growled.

“The last time we were here, the guards demanded five silver coins to let us inside. No wonder they’re glad to see us.”

His gray eyes remained fixed on the gate, a high-pointed arch flanked by a pair of craggy minarets. On the terraces of these towers stood many Nibenese guards, each waving his bow over his head as he swayed to the music. Between the minarets, a buttressed porch extended from the city wall and overhung the gateway. A dozen musicians stood on this balcony, playing the huge drums, xylophones, and pipes that sent the melodies drifting into the silvery desert.

“I can get us inside for two coins,” said Sadira.

“How you can you save me this money?”

“Sorcery,” she answered.

Sadira gave him a knowing smile, hoping it would disguise the lie in her eyes. Her conversation with the chief had convinced her that Rhayn’s warning earlier had not been entirely self-serving. Despite the casual manner in which he had accepted the sorceress’s refusal to join the tribe, Faenaeyon clearly did not wish her to leave. As for her own feelings, Sadira’s curiosity about her father was sated. If he was braver than she had imagined, he was no less self-centered, and she had no desire to know him better.

Faenaeyon nodded. “Good. Do it.”

When, he did not reach into any of his purses to extract the coins, Sadira held out her palm. “Have you forgotten?” she asked. “I gave all my coins to you at the canyon.”

“In matters of money, I never forget,” the chief said. Instead of reaching for his purse, he summoned his son Huyar forward. The warrior’s relationship to Sadira showed only in his pale eyes, for his features were square and heavy for an elf. “Give her two silver, my son,” Faenaeyon ordered.

“I would, willingly, but you have taken all my coins,” answered, Huyar.

Faenaeyon frowned. “I would expect one who hopes to replace me someday to be wise enough to hold a few coins back,” the chief said, still waiting for his son to produce the money.

“I would never dishonor my tribe by disobeying my chief,” Huyar said. The warrior scowled at Sadira, clearly blaming her for this setback with his father.

Resentment had become common for Huyar since the sorceress had ingratiated herself with Faenaeyon. Whenever she wanted something, the chief looked to his son to provide it. Sadira suspected that her father had no true fondness for Huyar, but pretended to favor the gullible warrior only because it made him more willing to do his bidding.

Glowering at his son, the chief opened the purse he had taken from Sadira and gave her two of her own coins. “Will you get them back for me?”

Sadira shook her head. “Think of it like this-you’re not losing two silvers, you’re saving three.” She took the coins and slipped them into the pocket of her tattered cape. “I’ll go ahead and cast my spell on one of the guards. Allow a quarter hour for it to work its enchantment. Then, when you reach the gate, be sure to speak to the same guard I did.”

Faenaeyon, looked suspicious. “Perhaps I should go with you.”

Sadira had an answer ready to counter her father’s concern. “It’ll be easier to work my magic if I’m alone,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for you on the other side of the gate.”

The chief’s gray eyes dropped to the pocket where she had deposited the coins. He bit his lip, then nodded and looked away. “Two silver is not so much.”

“You’ll save more than that,” Sadira said, leaning forward to tap the inside of the kank’s antennae.

The beast slowly worked its way ahead of the tribe, two of its six legs striking the ground with each beat of the distant drums. A short time later, she passed between two argosies drawn up close to the city walls, one to either side of the road. A long line of Nibenese porters worked to unload each of the mighty fortress wagons, carrying heavy vessels and huge baskets into the dark shadows beneath the musician’s balcony. The great mekillots that drew the argosies, hill-sized lizards with a penchant for making snacks of unwary passersby, were turned away from the road.

Sadira slowed her kank to a walk and glanced over her shoulder. Her father’s tribe was more than a hundred yards behind. It was approaching in its customary disarray, the warriors moving together in a confused, noisy mass while their sons and daughters tended to the difficult work of keeping the kanks from straying into the king’s fields.

Sadira turned forward again and, as she passed into the shadows beneath the musicians’ balcony, found a sharp-featured half-elf stepping into the road. He wore a long checkered scarf wrapped around his head and a yellow sarami swaddled over his body. In his hands he clutched a spear of blue-tinted agafari wood.

“Nibenay welcomes you,” he called.

As he spoke, two guards forced their way past the bustling porters and crossed their spears to bar Sadira’s path. She waved a hand over her mount’s antennae, bringing it to a complete stop. The music from the balcony above reverberated through the stone ceiling, echoing off the walls in sonorous tones that were slightly less compelling than those drifting into the desert.

Sadira reached into her pocket and extracted one of the silver pieces Faenaeyon had given her. Holding it out for the man, she said, “If you overlook the baggage of the elf tribe following me, there will be nine more of these for you.”

The guard opened his palm and bowed. “If that is true, my eyes will not see.”

“Good,” Sadira said.

She released the coin, and the guard signaled his fellows to let her pass. As she rode through the gateway, the sorceress felt confident she had at last escaped the elves. Faenaeyon would never pay a bribe of nine silver, and the guard would not allow the Sun Runners to pass through the gate until he received the coins he had been promised. With luck, the tribe would be turned away from city altogether. Even if that was not the case, it would be delayed long enough for Sadira to lodge her mount. Then she would search out someone from the Veiled Alliance and ask for the secret organization’s help in finding a guide to the Pristine Tower.

The gateway opened into a muggy, foul-smelling courtyard surrounded by a warren of mountainous towers and gloomy portals. To all sides, square doorways led into the bases of jagged minarets, reminding Sadira of nothing quite so much as the ancient mines that honeycombed the peaks west of Tyr. Huge sculpted faces, sometimes vaguely human and sometimes completely monstrous, covered every available surface.

From the corners of the buildings peered long-nosed giants with disapproving frowns and blank stares. Where there should have been windows were gaping, fang-filled mouths. Columns carved to look like stacked skulls supported the balconies and overhangs. Even the walls were masked by fat cherubic visages with glutonous smiles, or by skeletal countenances of long-tusked fiends.

Between these looming buildings ran narrow, twisting lanes covered by vaulted ceilings of stone. Lines of Nibenese porters bustled down two of these dark tunnels, carrying their heavy loads to the emporium of some merchant house in the heart of the city.

Sadira directed her kank into what seemed to be the widest street. She had expected the shaded lane to be cool and pleasant. Instead, a stifling wind drifted down the tunnel, carrying with it the sour smell of too much humanity and the putrid scent of unkempt stables.

The sorceress urged her mount past a dozen Nibenese citizens and entered another courtyard, also encircled by sculpture-covered towers. Many of the doorways were larger than normal, with kanks and riders moving into and out of them. Sadira rode halfway through the plaza to an anonymous-looking livery, then dismounted and led her beast toward the door. She was greeted by an elderly, bald-headed man dressed in a grimy sarami.

“You wish to lodge your mount?” he asked.

“How much?”

“Three days boarding for a king’s bit,” he answered, referring to the ceramic coins most cities used as common currency. “We will feed it every night and water it every five.”

Sadira nodded. “I’ll pay when I return and my kank is in good health.”

The old man shook his head. “That’s not the way in Nibenay,” he said. “You pay in advance-every day if you like. If you don’t return before your money runs out, I sell your mount.”

Sadira fished her second coin out of her pocket. “You can give me change?”

“I can,” the man replied.

He snatched coin and let her inside. The lowest floor of the gloomy building was a workshop filled with slaves laboring to repair howdahs, carts, and even a massive argosy wheel. Sadira caught only a glimpse of this room before her guide took a torch from a wall sconce and led her up a dark ramp spiraling through the interior of the unlit building. The over-sweet stench of kank offal was terrible, and Sadira had to pinch her nose closed to keep from gagging.

Soon they reached the first of the dark animal pens. As they passed each gate, a kank stuck its mandibles through the bone bars and clacked them at the newcomer. Sadira’s beast returned the gestures, keeping up a constant clatter as they slowly climbed the steep ramp.

Dozens of pens later, they reached one with an open gate. The bone grid was held aloft by a rope running through a wooden pulley and tied off to a bone stake in the wall. The old man allowed Sadira’s mount to pass by the vacant pen, then stopped. He forced the beast to back into the stall by standing in front of it and tapping its right-hand antenna.

As the kank’s head went under the gate, it stopped and began waving its antennae in agitation.

“Go on stupid beast,” the old man said

He raised his hand and stepped toward the kank. Sadira saw an angry glint in the beast’s eyes. “Careful!” she cried, pulling the old man back just in time to avoid the kank’s snapping mandibles.

The beast started forward, but Sadira quickly stepped to its side and grabbed an antenna. She yanked on the stalk and forced it back into the pen.

“When I let go, drop the gate,” she said, looking over her shoulder. The liveryman, who was staring at her kank with his mouth hanging agape, made no move to obey. “Do as I say!”

The old man snapped out of his shock and untied the gate rope. “I’ve run this livery for thirty years, and never has a carrier drone snapped at me,” he said, keeping a suspicious eye fixed on the beast. “What’s wrong with yours?”

“I don’t know,” Sadira said. “It did something like this once before, not long after my journey began, but it has never been so violent.”

The sorceress released the antenna and leaped out of the pen, barely clearing the threshold before the gate came crashing down. The kank threw itself at the bars. When they showed no sign of breaking, it retreated to the back of its stall, then slammed into the gate again. It repeated the actions over and over as Sadira watched, perplexed.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the old man said, shaking his head in bewilderment. “I’ll have to hire an elf to look at it.”

“What for?”

“It could be diseased,” he said, leading the way back down the tunnel. “If so, I’ll have to kill and burn the drone. Otherwise, the sickness could spread, and every kank in my stable could die.”

Sadira was immediately suspicious of his motives. “My mount had better be here when I come back,” she warned.

“Can’t promise that,” he answered, not bothering to look at her. “And I’m keeping your whole silver. You’ll have to pay for the elf.”

“No!” Sadira protested.

“It’s your kank,” the old man said. “It’s only fair that you pay the cost of examining it.”

“How do I know you won’t pocket my coin, sell the kank, and claim the beast was diseased?” Sadira demanded, outraged.

The old man stopped and pointed up the ramp. “You don’t, but listen to that.” The echoes of Sadira’s mount banging itself against its gate continued to fill the corridor. “I’ll give you the coin back, but you’ve got to take the kank with it. Do you think any other livery master will charge less?”

“I suppose not,” Sadira admitted, wondering where she would find the money to feed herself until she contacted the Veiled Alliance-or to buy another kank, if it came to that.

The old man started down the ramp again. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t destroy your beast unless I must, and I’ll get the best price I can from the elf who looks at it.” When they reached the ground floor, the old man turned toward his workshop.

Deciding to see how well her plan to rid herself of the Sun Runners was working, Sadira retraced her steps into the dark lane from which she had approached the livery. She stopped in the shelter of its depths, then looked toward the gate. Her father had just arrived at the head of his tribe, and was approaching the sharp-featured half-elf to whom Sadira had given the silver coin. Faenaeyon smiled warmly and said something to the man.

The guard also smiled and held out his hand.

The chief scowled, then shoved the half-elf so hard that he came tumbling into the square. The gateman’s assistants screamed the alarm and thrust their spears at Faenaeyon. The elf casually slapped the weapons from their hands, then stepped past the two men into the courtyard.

“Lorelei!” he screamed, his angry eyes searching the gloomy portals that lined the small plaza.

Sadira saw a company of guards beginning to pour from the gate tower, then smiled to herself and turned to leave.