Very clever, kid, said Haplo to himself. Very clever. Bane no longer held the feather. Daddy was no longer prompting. That last had been Bane’s own idea, seemingly. A remarkable child, this changeling. And a dangerous one.
“But we thought the Judgment would be peaceful.”
“Was that ever said?” Bane countered. “Anywhere in the prophecy?” Limbeck turned his attention to the dog, patting its head, attempting to avoid answering while he tried to accustom himself to this new vision.
“Limbeck?” pushed Bane.
The Geg continued to stroke the dog, who lay still beneath his hands. “New vision,” he said, looking up. “That’s it. When the Welves come, I know just what to do.”
“What?” asked Bane eagerly.
“I’ll make a speech.”
Later that evening, after their jailors brought them food, Hugh called a meeting. “We don’t want to end up prisoners of the elves,” explained the assassin. “We’ve got to fight and try to get away, and we can—if you Gegs will help us.”
Limbeck wasn’t listening. He was composing.
“ ‘Welves and WUPP’s, wadies and gentle . . . No, no. Too many ‘wahs.’ ‘. . . Distinguished visitors from another realm’—that’s better. Drat, I wish I could write this down!” The Geg paced up and down in front of his companions, mulling over his speech and pulling distractedly on his beard. The dog, trotting along behind him, looked sympathetic and wagged its tail. Haplo shook his head. “Don’t look for help there.”
“But, Limbeck, it wouldn’t be much of a battle!” Bane protested. “The Gegs outnumber the elves. We’ll take them completely by surprise. I don’t like elves. They threw me off their ship. I nearly died.”
“Distinguished visitors from another realm—”
Haplo pursued his argument. “The Gegs are untrained, undisciplined. They don’t have any weapons. And even if they could get weapons, we don’t dare trust them. It’d be like sending in an army of children—ordinary children,” Haplo added, seeing Bane bristle.
“The Gegs aren’t ready yet.” He put an unconscious emphasis on the word that caught Hugh’s attention.
“Yet?”
“When father and I return,” struck in Bane, “we’re going to whip the Gegs into shape. We’ll take on the elves and we’ll win. Then we’ll control all the water in the world and we’ll have power and be rich beyond belief.” Rich. Hugh twisted his beard. A thought occurred to him. If it came to open war, any human with a ship and the nerve to fly the Maelstrom could make his fortune in one run. He would need a watership. An elven watership and a crew to man it. It would be a shame to destroy these elves.
“What about the Gegs?” suggested Haplo.
“Oh, we’ll take care of them,” answered Bane. “They’ll have to fight a lot harder than what I’ve seen so far. But—”
“Fight?” repeated Hugh, interrupting Bane in mid-dictatorship. “Why are we talking about fighting?” Reaching into his pocket, he drew forth his pipe and clamped his teeth down on it. “How are you at singing?” he asked Haplo.
37
Jarre’s hand slid nervelessly from Alfred’s. She could not move; the strength seeped from her body. She shrank back against the archway, leaning on it for support. Alfred never seemed to notice. He walked ahead, leaving the Geg, shaken and trembling, to wait for him.
The chamber he entered was vast; Jarre couldn’t recall ever seeing such a huge open space in her life—a space not inhabited by some whirly, clanging, or thumping part of the Kicksey-Winsey. Made of the same smooth, flawless stone as the tunnels, the walls of the chamber glowed with a soft white light that began to shine from them when Alfred set his foot inside the archway. It was by this light that Jarre saw the coffins. Set into the walls, each covered by glass, the coffins numbered in the hundreds and held the bodies of men and women. Jarre could not see the people closely—they were little more than silhouettes against the light. But she could tell that they were of the same race as Alfred and the other gods who had come to Drevlin. The bodies were tall and slender and lay resting with arms at their sides.
The floor of the chamber was smooth and wide, and the coffins encircled it in rows that extended up to the high domed ceiling. The chamber itself was completely empty. Alfred moved slowly, looking all around him in wistful recognition, as does someone returning home after a long absence. The light in the room grew brighter, and Jarre saw that there were symbols on the floor, similar in shape and design to the runes that had lit their way. There were twelve sigla, each carved singular and alone, never touching or overlapping. Alfred moved carefully among these, his gangly, ungainly form weaving its way across the empty chamber in a solemn dance, the lines and movements of his body appearing to imitate the particular sigil over which he was passing.
He made a complete circuit of the chamber, drifting across the floor, dancing to silent music. He glided close to each rune but never touched it, gliding away to another, honoring each in turn, until finally he came to the center of the chamber. Kneeling, he placed his hands upon the floor and began to sing. Jarre could not understand the words he sang, but the song filled her with a joy that was bittersweet because it did nothing to lighten the terrible sadness. The runes on the floor glittered brightly, almost blinding in their radiance during Alfred’s song. When he ceased, their gleaming light began to fade and, within moments, was gone.
Alfred, standing in the center, sighed. The body that had moved so beautifully in the dance stooped, the shoulders rounded. He looked over at Jarre and gave her a wistful smile, “You’re not still frightened?” He made a weak gesture toward the rows of coffins. “Nobody here can harm you. Not anymore. Not that they would have anyway—at least, not intentionally.” He sighed and, turning in his place, looked long around the room. “But how much harm have we done unintentionally, meaning the best? Not gods, but with the power of gods. And yet lacking the wisdom.”
He walked, slowly and with head bowed, over to a row of coffins that stood very near the entrance, near Jarre. Alfred placed his hand on one of the crystal windows, his fingers stroking it with an almost caressing touch. Sighing, he rested his forehead against another coffin up above. Jarre saw that the coffin he touched was empty. The others around it held bodies in them, and she noticed—her attention called to these because of him—that they seemed all to be young. Younger than he is, she thought, her gaze going to the bald head, the domed forehead carved with lines of anxiety, worry, and care that were so pronounced a smile only deepened them.
“These are my friends,” he said to Jarre. “I told you about them as we were coming down here.” He smoothed the crystal closure with one hand. “I told you that they might not be here. I told you that they might have gone. But I knew in my heart what I told you wasn’t true. They would be here. They will be here forever. Because they’re dead, you see, Jarre. Dead before their time. I am alive long after!”
He closed his eyes, then covered his face with his hand. A sob wrenched the tall, ungainly body that leaned against the coffins. Jarre didn’t understand. She hadn’t listened to anything about these friends, and she could not and did not want to think about what she was seeing. But the man was grieving and his grief was heartbreaking to witness. Looking at the young people with their beautiful faces, serene and unmarred and cold as the crystal behind which they lay, Jarre understood that Alfred did not grieve for one but for many, himself among them.
Wrenching herself from the archway, she crept forward and slipped her hand into his. The solemnity, the despair, the sorrow of the place and of this man had affected Jarre deeply—just how deeply, she would not come to know until much later in her life. During that future time of great crisis when it seemed to her that she was losing all that was most valuable to her, everything he said—the story of Alfred and his losses and those of his people—would come back to her.