The calls outside were growing more persistent and more difficult to ignore. More noticeable, too. This visitor was either stupid, or deliberately trying to make trouble for her.
Ancaladis stared up at the ceiling of her inner chamber for a while – the young stalactites and straws came down like petrified rain at this angle, interspersed with the faint-glowing illumina she had strung there – but it was no use. She could see her visitor through the eyes of her dragons, watching everywhere throughout the eucalypts on her hill and beyond, and she recognised him from many visits before: persistent and irritating as a cloud of flies.
He was standing in the middle of the shaping-stone on the hilltop now, making screeching mental calls that would soon bring governmentally Reshaped agents from the nearby barracks if he got much louder. Ancaladis didn’t want Special Issue rifling through her home and belongings yet again. She would just have to go and see what he wanted this time … the same as every time, no doubt.
Hissing out breath and irritation, she rose from her cot and climbed the steep, winding way out through the galleries of her caverns, following the path marked out by her firefly-tiny illumina, careful as always not to touch and kill the fragile-growing limestone shapes. Special Issue were never so careful.
Chilly eucalypt-air brushed her face as she emerged from the last stony antechamber onto her hill. The night-noises rushed and moved around her like currents: hunting hood-owls, scrabbling macai-rats, singing tree-frogs.
Ancaladis! came the next mental shriek. Ancaladis looked up at the dark, watching shape of one of her dragons in the branches of the sheoak by her home, its eyes like two sallow harvest moons.
“Answer him,” she murmured to it, and the dragon leaped in a flurry of wings, flying off silently to send her greeting. She followed its fast-skimming flight through its eyes, watching the evening ghost-blurs of paperbark and the netted jarrah-shadows with absent pleasure, and watching with more active pleasure as it came up behind her visitor and landed heavily on his shoulder, startling a cry from the man’s lips.
By the time Ancaladis walked up her usual path to the hilltop and her shaping-stone, her visitor had quieted, knowing better than to try to dislodge the dog-sized dragon from its perch. It was one of her darker works, black with the jet she had made it from, its black teeth like jagged chips of stone; an attack at head-height could only lead to horrible disfigurement.
Not that this visitor had much to fear from disfigurement. He was one of her more frequent Faeborn visitors, a messenger from the resistance in the far north of the province. His face was oblique and narrow, too narrow to be human, and his oddly beautiful blue eyes were huge and round, all iris, much like a goat’s. No doubt his maker or Reshaper had been trying to get centaurs right again.
“What now?” Ancaladis asked without preamble, and leaving no room for it in her stare.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” the Faeborn replied in his cramped voice, constricted by a tongue too large for his small mouth.
“No, you aren’t. You always disturb me. Speak your piece so I can send you on your way again.”
The goat-eyed Faeborn tilted his head. “That’s a very closed mindset, Ancaladis. If you only opened your mind to the possibility of lending your country your assistance, we might not have so many disagreements.”
“My country is gone, and two very unsavoury races have spoiled most of the good left in it,” she replied bluntly. “Or one race and one half-race, I should say. Tell your masters to stop pestering me. If it hasn’t already become crystal-clear over the years how little I care for humans or Faeborn, and how much I hope you destroy each other, they really need to practice sentience-sigils when they make new members.”
“We ask you every year,” the Faeborn said, beautiful eyes flicking and fluttering as he stared at her. Even they hadn’t been made quite right. “It should be crystal-clear to you, too, that we won’t rest until you agree to ally with us, Ancaladis. Not for our sake, but for yours. Not for revenge’s sake, but for Loria’s. Humanity and its iron must cease to be.”
“My sake,” repeated Ancaladis in disgust. “Leave my sake to me. May you all die and leave my country to me, even. You’ve long since found other fae willing to help you, Faeborn, so be content – and begone.”
The Faeborn flicker-blinked its eyes. “If we have to say this every year, we will,” it answered, unmoved. “This is not a war where you can sit on the sidelines. Even you must know that. The fae of Loria learned it to their cost. Who knows what might have happened if Loria had fought beside ancient Inyaron?”
“No-one,” Ancaladis replied, blunt. “And that tired non-question becomes no more interesting to ponder as the years pass. If you have nothing new to say, Faeborn, leave my hill.”
“Your hill? The little slope in the woods where the Army has confined you? The wooded cell where you bow before human will, but would not dream of assisting the Faeborn who would release you?”
“If I had been foolish enough to swear you an oath, perhaps I would be plagued by you half-rodents as well,” she retorted. “As it stands, this ‘cell’ of mine must suffice. I imagine it far better than an iron room in the ground under Talton, where most of the Inyaronians you praise so highly went in the end. Now go – I’ve lost all patience with you.”
“As we have with you, Ancaladis,” replied the Faeborn. “And others besides us.”
He reached into his jacket and withdrew – of all things – a piece of paper. It was blank, but not empty. Not to eyes that watched for sigils. Ancaladis read the magic through the eyes of the dragon on his shoulder and gave a clipped laugh.
“Oh, if she thinks she’ll win this time, call her, by all means,” she invited. “I am so very tired of Inyaronians and Taltonians. Come sing in my home, Sincana!”
She flicked her hand, snatching the paper from the Faeborn’s hand and letting it flutter to the shaping-stone, where its sigil-structures had been written to trigger. The paper melted like paint onto the ground and dispersed.
She recognised her error instantly – not Sincana – even before the disturbed Flow had swirled and begun to coalesce into the shape the paper called. It emerged onto the stone just five metres away, like a diver emerging from the ether-nothing: first the head, then a reach of arms which pulled shoulders and torso free, and then one leg dragging out after the other. The will of the sigils continued to work on the filmy man-shape like erosion, wearing down the lines and angles of a long, hard face as colour blushed throughout.
Dragons began to shriek in the treetops as her alarm spread. “You!”
The simulacrum turned to her. It was not perfect. It had been sung or written with powerfully dark thoughts, and its eyes were oily black rather than the bright Inyaronian blue she knew they should be. The voice, when it came, was discordant. “Yes, Ancaladis. Me.”
“How dare you?”
“I’ve been trying to pay you a visit for a long, long time,” it replied, standing now with hands clasped easily at its waist. “It’s notoriously difficult to get out of the Iron Hold, you know. Even for a shadow-shape.”
“That doesn’t answer my question, almost-Arathalian.” Ancaladis drank eucalypt-deep from the Flow, ignoring the snow-flurries that began to fall and swirl around her. Her hill shared her rage. “Even in the flesh you’d have to fight for life to face me here, in my place. Sending a shadow from a will bound and boxed in iron is futile.”
Arathalian’s simulacrum stayed where it was, unmoved her rage and ice alike. Its eyes were dark, feeding holes in the snow. “Loryaronian born-to-be-slaves never could understand the strength of the Oath of Three.”
“Shall we talk terms, then?” asked the Faeborn on the sidelines, a little smile playing on his too-small lips. His goatlike eyes blinked and fluttered as he spoke, dancing from fae to shadow.
That question needed no answer, but it received one – and not from Ancaladis.
“There’ll be no terms,” said the simulacrum in its vile Taltonian accent.
The Faeborn’s gentle eyes began to blink harder, hazy with confusion, as their owner looked uncertainly at Arathalian’s construct. “What do you mean?”
“What I said.”
“You told the New Circle you could force her to terms!”
“I lied. I do that. Haven’t you noticed yet?” The Arathalian-shape made a shooing motion, though its black eyes were still on Ancaladis. “Go stand out of the way before you get killed. I expect to have the result reported back to me in the Hold.”
“I can do that, if you like,” said Ancaladis. “I daresay I'd enjoy delivering the message.”
Cracks of panic began to show in the Faeborn’s face. “Result of what?”
The simulacrum grimaced. “I’m so sick of dealing with these wastes of space,” it complained. “Broken Circle, the lengths that ironbloods and Lorians have driven me to –!”
Ancaladis lashed out first, hurling a great, unmaking shockwave from where she stood without giving it form or direction. She knew she risked misfire with such undirected release, but at least there was power to protect her here, and she wanted that dark thing dead as quickly as possible.
Too much to hope for at the first blow. Something echoed strangely in the Flow as the magic-currents moved – a sour ambience, something metallic – and the simulacrum simply displaced, unforming and reforming in a freshened swirl of magic.
Ancaladis pulled a stone to her hand by will and began to sing a shield from it, drawing on rigid stone-strength. The simulacrum turned where it stood and shrieked the nasu sigil at her in its discordant voice, and to her disbelief the magic ripped and unravelled in her grip.
She dropped in haste to her knees, placing hands on the spread of her shaping-stone, and used that to build a shield instead, singing up the strength and age of Mount Smaragdine on the horizon as an undertone. Nasu stabbed at her shield, sung vicious and shrill again, but it glanced off and turned aside.
Protected now by stone and mountain, Ancaladis rose to the attack again, looking up at the falling snow spiralling towards her face. She began to sing final winter into the flakes, clinging fingers of unmaking rather than another thrashing wave, and heard the simulacrum begin to moan as the ice settled on it and sank deep.
She looked down as she felt the weight of her will increase, watching the simulacrum clutch at its shoulders as if trying to physically hold itself together.
“Break, and may the iron lord feel you breaking,” she hissed, and then made it will, reaching into the unmaking cold to grip its body and wrench it apart. Arathalian’s shadow-shape contorted where it stood as she took invisible hold, and there was a sound like shredding paper.
The simulacrum collapsed and vanished – but she did not feel it disperse. Grim frustration settled over her as the sour resonance hummed through the stone and earth under her feet, stirring up backswirls and eddies in the Flow where it passed.
This was a masterwork of ironmagic. But who had more time than the Inyaronian warmonger to make a study of that?
She stayed silent. There was no need and no point in speaking any further to the simulacrum. It was a print of its maker, a still shot of his self and emotions at the instant of its creation, its grudge implacable. It was such a near-perfect copy, in fact, that she was very much looking forward to putting an end to it.
Ancaladis waited. The ironmagic spread like an oil-slick over her hill, formless but very much cohesive in purpose.
After a few moments she began to feel a slow constriction in her shield, a crushing-inward of her energies. She pushed her will back against it, holding it back by force and instinct as the pressure built and built.
There was a sharp report. Ancaladis dropped her eyes and followed, incredulous, the snow-spitting lines that hinted where her shaping-stone was cracking beneath the powder, branching fractures hidden under the white. But the sound, though muted, was not so hidden: rock crackled and cracked like wood in a fire all around her.
Warped and pinned between two wills – though how had a simulacrum been given such will? – Ancaladis’s shield abruptly shattered. Something echoed loud and far-off in the evening, too, but she would not have understood if one of her dragons had not then been on Mount Smaragdine, watching the heavy rockfall now tumbling from the peak.
Stone and mountain had been called to ward her, and now stone and mountain were broken.
Ancaladis felt an emotion as distant in her past as delight: fear. Not fear of the simulacrum, for she had not finished with the foul thing yet, but of the hideously powerful creature locked in iron under Talton.
He must never get out.
Nasu lashed at her as she stood unprotected, and for the first time she felt a stab of icy pain. The simulacrum had reshaped itself at the far end of the broken shaping-stone, crouched there like a vulture, its voice crow-harsh with loathing.
She did not care for ironmagic, but as a simple test she sang nasashu, iron-numbness. Arathalian’s shape drank it in like water, though its movements visibly slowed when it stood. It began to approach her, black eyes swallowing colour, and she realised why. She also realised that she had to let it touch her.
Maker against Unmaker. She knew she would win, but she did not relish the terms of the contest.
Nasu, nasu, nasu bit into her, cutting and tearing, and for all her discipline, her belief in the sound sharpened until physical cuts opened on her face and throat to spill blue blood in the snow. She bore it all silently, watching the hateful simulacrum approach, and offered her hand like a lady invited to dance before it drew close enough to seize her.
It paused at her demonstration of calm, looking at her with the face she had only ever seen in images, and swore never to see in the flesh. “No death yet, then, Ancaladis,” it said, voice even more discordant, battered. “Only pain. All the pain I can pass over the sea.”
“I have already felt all that body and soul can feel, Hoscolothos,” she replied, cold and hard.
Arathalian’s simulacrum took her hand and gripped it. “If you really believe there are limits to such things,” it answered, leaning in with oily eyes simmering, “come join us in the Hold.”
Its will snatched at her rather than hit at her, sucking and clawing down. Ancaladis did not fight – that must be saved for later. She simply let it pull her in, and the Flow swamped her, sour and erratic with the taint of ironmagic, robbing her of all six senses. Everything was black.
She was expecting what would come. Ironmagic soaked into her, razor-capped waves of it. It was fierce, ugly pain when it wasn’t under her control, but it was still something she knew how to use and manipulate; she was a Maker, the finest left in Inyaron or Loria, and what she lacked in oath-granted power she doubled and trebled in skill. Arathalian was just a prince who had sworn the Oath of Three; she had earned all that she had.
She continued to channel the ironmagic, diverting it from harmful paths to brain or heart, her reserved power now put to good use. Her blood was crystallising pain, but it flowed.
So did the ironmagic. On and on, as if it came from some unnatural iron wellspring rather than a finite construct. She waited for it to stop, but it did not, would not stop, and the more her power moved, the harder the ironmagic flowed …
Boiling silver seared down her limbs. Bullet-heat built in her veins, every iron tooth that had ever bitten her flesh, until she writhed at every pulse of it and clawed under her skin to have it out. Her heart pounded so loudly in her ears that she could only hear her voice between beats while she shriek-sang for the midnight frost, desperate to pull power and coolness through the morass gorging on her insides.
At last, though, at last, the rush of ironmagic from the unravelling simulacrum began to slacken, draining away like the last washes of rain pouring from a rooftop. Ancaladis could have held longer - far longer - but the thought alone was a horror-chord.
Not a fraction, whispered Arathalian’s draining voice. Not even a fraction. For Cochalyon alone I’ll give you a screaming death one day …
Ancaladis let her mouth twist – awareness of her body was already returning – and answered aloud, even when the leak of ironmagic was so small she was no longer sure it could hear. “You will eat iron and darkness until you die, Hoscolothos, and the sky will never see your face again.”
Then she opened her eyes. Evening sky was looking down on her, too overcast for stars, but the moon still slashed through gaps in the clouds. All was silent on the hilltop; even the chaotic night-mutterings of the forest were still. All her dragons were gone, fled in terror long ago.
The Faeborn had gone the same way, apparently.
She sat up, breathing deeply to supplement the still-sluggish flow of magic through her beaten body. This would take rest and care to heal. It was time to go home.
The Maker climbed out of the snow, stiff but still proud, and moved off slowly under the moonlight for the solitude and comfort of her caverns.
A little while later, the luminous lights of dragon-eyes began to blink again in the boughs of the reaching jarrah-trees.
Arathalian reached up to his higher shelf, searching spine-by-spine for his favoured volume on Ferrean monuments. He was in a lackadaisical sort of mood and felt like looking at triumphal arches, which he actually found entertaining – especially whenever he came across one he’d broken.
Before his fingers could close on the book he wanted, a stabbing pain fired behind his eyes, drowning out vision. He made it to his chair before he could collapse, gritting his teeth until pain and dizziness had both subsided.
“Iron break it!” he snapped aloud, since he was alone in his cell for once. “Lorian bitch.”
Clearly he’d have to wait until he got out. There was no point sending her another visitor if she’d destroyed that one already.
He wondered what had happened.
He wondered how good she really was.
Triumphal arches lost their appeal as he sat there, glaring up at his heavy iron ceiling.
Oooh, that made for some delicious break-fodder indeed! *dances* But I do so enjoy Ancaladis, so I'm giggly-happy to get more of her here. =D
Just loved it, though none of her dragons take after loyal dogs, apparently. I still am quite taken with the black-toothed big one. *malicious grin* So enjoyed Arathalian's spoilt mood at the end, too. Makes for a bummer of a night for Ancaladis, though. I quite enjoyed how you described that Fae-born, and how it was tricked. The whole contest was fascinating.
And I find myself quite curious as to what 'Hoscolothos' means as well...
Thanks for posting! =D I really don't know how you find these things before I do. O_o
Ah, Ancaladis's dragons are mostly really smart (especially the black one), actually, which is why they clear out - not much a little bubby magical construct can do in that situation except get killed by her Unmaking power or the simulacrum's ironmagic. T_T
Oh, and 'Hoscolothos' means 'Unmaker' - one of the three titles of the Inyaronian rulers. I've only ever mentioned it very briefly, though, I think. If at all. *tries to remember to check*
Thanks for reading, me sweet! *hug* Glad you were cheering for the right team XD XD
14 Apr 2007
L. Shanra Kuepers
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its black teeth like jagged chips of stone Ah, but that's not the effect of iron, it's the rather nastier effect of ironmagic. Iron just deadens a fae's magic - makes them feel a bit dull and probably tired, depending on how much they take in. Ironmagic is worse because it's magic, so it flows through the body as per usual, but it's imitating iron and all the negative associations a fae naturally has with iron. ;P
Is it really his oaths that make him so powerful (as Ancaladis speculates, unless I misread that entirely)? Then, if they did have a showdown (and preferably not western style) and Ancaladis swore one too, wouldn't she win?
Most definitely. Estelhari was exponentially more powerful than Arathalian, for example. But the rather crucial point here is that the Oath of Three is the ruler's oath of Inyaron, and Ancaladis can't, er, swear that one really XD
It was always clear that more was going on in the dragonmaker's world, though not what. Does this happen in the same time period, or is this earlier?
This would be ... fifty-odd years earlier, I think. Possibly even seventy.
I've read some other snippets, but never realised that Arathalian is that nasty. Why do they keep him imprisoned instead of, say, killing him?
Arathalian is very nasty. You must have read some very specific shorts. XD;;
They don't kill him because a) he's far, far too valuable to them and their artefacts/magical research b) he doesn't do harmful things to researchers/others very often; he's mostly all talk and c) no-one knows he's doing THIS very particular sort of thing.
"No doubt his maker or Reshaper had been trying to get centaurs right again."
And yet you call him "Faeborn", while he's made instead of born as Fae.
Ai, ai, ai, 'Faeborn' never means 'fae' - fae would find that very offensive. Faeborn is a generic term for any -created- creature of magic (dragons, for example, are technically Faeborn; people who are modified are called Faeborn). A long, long, long time ago, fae used to be the only ones who could do such a thing, which is where the term comes from. In this particular era, it's also used as a political term for the faction of Reshaped/modified creatures who undertake terrorist action against the government. But it never refers to the fae themselves (who are called, rather simply, fae ;D).
Apparently Arathalian can't see through the eyes of his creation, while Ancaladis can, I wonder if that means anything.
She's better at Making than he is
Perhaps, someday, you could post a longer story where all the Inyaronians, Taltonians, Loryaronian and whatnot are explained? Ancaladis backstory seems interesting too, with the oath thing and all...
*falls over* Oi vey, don't ask for much, do you? XD;; That story is many, many books long. If you're genuinely interested, though, there are a lot of things explained in various shorts in my writing journal. I'd start with the FAEQ if you do look, though, because it's a mess. XD
Great snippet, with a nice, wrap up, ending. Thanks a lot for coming and having a read! Sorry for the confusion - there's a lot of prior information to pack into these shorts, and I often forget (or *cough* can't be bothered).
Being nasty to your captors is one thing, but this is quite a step worse.
It is. Arathalian has transferred a lot of blame to the Lorians over the years, and the fact that Ancaladis has additionally caved in and sworn an oath to save her life - and is now treated fairly well - infuriates him.
Oh, the classic enemy under-estimation. How silly of them.
Weell, to be fair to Talton, they were perfectly right in their estimations for the first three hundred years. He couldn't do anything. He just had to teach himself how and what to do over the centuries. And they're generally aware that he tries to get up to no good ... they just don't know how, or how successful he is.
Ah, born (made) by the Fae, hence Faeborn. Got it.
I suspected it was something like that. The real question is if she's better at Making than he at Unmaking.
It is indeed. I wish I knew for sure at this point. XD
It was just a suggestion! Worth trying, too. But yeah, that many books long story is what I pine for. ;-)
I am very possibly the leading competitor for the Elfwood's Laziest Writer Award, so I may not be the candidate you're dreaming of T_T Becca is one of a kind, alas! But I have actually made a start on the first one ('The Iron Hold' was incorporated as the prologue, if you already read that) and the others, sketchily planned out though they are, jump back and forth a bit between timelines. So, er, if my Life-Extending Tonic works out okay, maybe they'll get finished.
I stumbled on the Soulfiresnippet thing before, so my confusion wasn't too great, but I'm mostly missing the big picture of it all. Right now it's just a bunch of snippets floating in my mind. Maybe if I read more of them it becomes more clear. Yeah, sorry, it really is a mess. The timeline might help - the earlier stories link off from it in order (*note to me: update it soon, you lazy cow*). It's at http://community.livejournal.com/soulfiresnippet/9545.html#cutid1 if you're brave. XD
Thanks for taking all this time wth the feedback! And the reading! ^_^ *hands spam-o-scope*
Ohhhh. Very very interesting indeed. Must say, this is probably the nastiest I think I've seen 'Thalian, which is odd, since you would kinda think the whole destruction of Talton would mark that title. But no. Possibly it is because he is levelling his hate against one of his own kind (no matter how betrayed and wronged he feels towards her).
You would kinda think so, yes XD;; No, but I know what you're getting at. All that is a sort of impersonal nastiness. This is personal and fully deliberate and ugly.
Very powerful, me dear. Ancaladis makes me long for Dragonmakers, though. Then stop trying to feed the other muses XD
Hmm, there's a whole lot of hate between these two, is there not?
A little XD
I think the main problem is that they've both taken a generalised situation that they hate (ie. Lorians not coming to help the Inyaronians, Inyaronians stirring up wars with humans and dragging Loria down too) and personalised it in each other ...
Should I be worried about the fact that I completely understand Arathalian's pov on this one? *is not a big fan of the Lorian Fae*
I think I should.
*unobtrusively pushes panic button under desk*
Although, you can understand why Ancaladis never wanted to be involved. As a Maker you don't really want to go to war and have it all destroyed...
As I am a vacillating writer, I sympathise with Arathalian and Ancaladis at the same time. XD; I don't think Arathalian or past rulers would've had as much against Loria if they'd said something like 'Look, we don't want to fight or anything, but here's what we -will- do to help you in terms of a place to escape if you need it, or some Makers to help make defences for cities and hide them, etc.' The whole 'bah, warmongers, it's all your own fault and don't come crying to us for anything' thing is a bit cold.
And conversely, I think the fact that a not-very-friendly but stable relationship with humans on Loria was totally wrecked by a succession of Inyaronians going 'RAH, we kill you all!!', and the fact that Loria's entire uninvolved society was subsequently destroyed, would be something to be very, very angry about. O_o
*sigh*
I love the complex questions that lie underneath all these tales. Especially those that swirl around Arathalian. I may feel strongest for Cochalyon, but you can't help but admire the complexity of that there psycho moon fae XD (Well, maybe others can, but I can't.)
There is no lovelier compliment to me than 'complicated' - thank you, sweetness. *huggles* I think he's actually gotten a bit inconsistent compared to the earlier things I used to write, but I'm just going to pretend they don't exist.
This was, as always, a very interesting snippet. Gotta love those dragons. Especially the eyes creeping back at the end. I wonder if she made any out of carrots.
*glomp* Thank you for reading, precious; thou art a doll.
This is a friendly reminder to update the timeline on your LJ. I think it may come in handy. Unfortunately I found it only after I'd finished reading this piece. It was my first introduction to Arathalian and it was quite a confusing one. At least now I know where to start! Ah, thanks, hon, will do. I should put a note in the blurb as well. Thankees! <3
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L. Shanra Kuepers
Then stop trying to feed the other muses XD
