Ironfoot awoke. It was late afternoon. He'd fallen asleep at some point, still contemplating the pattern, still frustrated. He opened the shades and let the (morning? afternoon?) sun illuminate the pattern. Still nothing. He stood it upside down. Nothing. He held it up to the window, viewing the pattern through the back of the page. Still nothing.
It gnawed at him, this sensation that the key to its mystery was just outside his grasp. The Einswrath was an explosive-there had to be an Elements component to it. It was a delayed reaction, so it had to use the Gift of Binding as well. But what components? Which bindings? There was no binding ever created to hold in that amount of Elemental force, and no way to trigger it from such a distance. So what, then? It was right there in front of him. So why couldn't he see it?
The dread inside had grown into a fever. This was what he'd truly been afraid of. This was the source of the dread that had been welling up inside him ever since he'd returned to Queensbridge.
He had the pattern complete in front of him.
And he didn't understand it.
He turned toward the wall and lashed out with his fist, making a strangely satisfying crack in the plaster, though the pain that followed wasn't worth it. Raw failure sunk into him like a stone through mud.
You can do better than this, came the voice from inside.
He was disturbed from his misery by a message sprite tapping at the window. It looked familiar.
"Hey, handsome! Open up!" the thing shouted.
He tried to ignore it, but it just kept rapping on the windowpane, calling, then shouting, then howling expletives. He pulled himself out of the chair and shuffled across the room, stepping on the map and not caring. He opened the window, and the sprite flew in and alit on the edge of the chair in which he'd been sitting.
"What do you want?" he said.
"Wow, it took you long enough," said the sprite, sticking its tongue out for emphasis. "What are you, deaf or something? You weren't deaf last time. Did you stand too near something really loud? Because that can happen sometimes."
Ironfoot stared at the sprite, all of his fondness for it having evaporated in his desolation.
"I have feelings too, you know!" said the sprite, stamping its foot soundlessly. "Of course, my feelings are quite shallow, and can easily be repaired with a yummy stalk of parsley, or better yet ..." The sprite paused, rubbing its tiny hands together. "Celery!"
"Enough already!" Ironfoot shouted, stunned at the anger in his voice. The sprite fell backward, swore loudly, then flitted up again, raising its head gingerly above the back of the chair.
"Wow, you sure got mean."
"I'm sorry," said Ironfoot, trying to be patient. "I've had a hard day. What's your message?"
"Lord Everess replies that he's extra-sad you won't come see him. Except he said it in a less nice way."
The sprite thought for a moment, tapping its finger on its forehead. "There was something else, too. Something important. Let's see. Lord Everess ... extra sad and so on ... celery ..."
It snapped its tiny fingers. "Oh, yeah! He wants to know if you're done with your map-thingy yet. He was just blah blah blah about that map."
"I see," said Ironfoot. "Thank you."
"Oh, happy day, you like me again!" it said, looking at him with a loopy grin. "You want to be my boyfriend? I realize that there's a serious size difference that could present some interesting physical challenges, but I'm willing to work through it if you are."
Ironfoot sighed. Maybe this was what he liked about message sprites: their absurdity. Nothing could ever truly upset them because they had no real feelings to begin with.
The sprite flew up and wrapped its arms around his finger. "I want to have your big fat Elvish babies!" it cried theatrically.
"Tell Everess I'll come and see him tomorrow," he said.
"Okay! This is the best day ever!" shouted the sprite, and it zipped out of the window.
The city is old, older than anyone knows or suspects, save its ruler. There are myriad tales of the founding of the Seelie Kingdom and the birth of the City Emerald. Some are religious explanations; some are histories cobbled together by scholars based on the evidence of stones and documents so ancient that to expose them to light is to destroy them. Still others are the writings of retrocognitives, though even they will admit that theirs is an art rather than a science.
There is the official history, of course, taught to schoolchildren, that Regina Titania caused the ground to be leveled and the stones of the Great Seelie Keep to rise into place during the Rauane Envedun-e, the Age of Purest Silver. Like most legends of the Rauane, however, the story is often told with a wink, and the queen's official biographers parrot it with a telling blandness.
The city's original name was Car-na-una, which in Thule Fae meant "the first true thing," or perhaps "the basis of reality," and whatever the origin of the name, it is evocative of the feeling that the city often arouses in visitors; there is a weight, a feeling of solidity and eternity that resonates in the stones and in the art of their arrangement.
The poet Wa'on remarked in his journals that "it is not the city itself that provokes this emotion, this unconscious awe. Rather, it appears as if it is something beneath the city, a deeper truth upon which it was built.The City Emerald is ancient, yes, but what lies beneath it is older still. Something older than Fae, older than words or memories. A giant that slumbers, while the city and its inhabitants crawl across its massive frame like fleas on a dog, each unaware of the others' presence. As I passed through the gates I had a sudden fear that the leviathan might awake and stretch its limbs and I would be crushed. By the morning, however, the feeling was gone, and I would not have remembered it save that I had noted it in the margin of a book."
The City Emerald has a reputation as the most beautiful city in the Seelie Kingdom and perhaps in the entire world of Faerie. Even its most ardent admirers, however, have sometimes felt a momentary chill within its walls, sensing the presence of something just outside the edge of perception; something too large to be real; something that has already swallowed them whole.
-Stil-Eret,''Unpopular Reflections on the Capital," from Travels at Home and Abroad
A quiet servant met him at the entrance and guided him down a hallway of polished mahogany paneling that glinted in the light of perfectly tuned witchlamps in silver sconces. They passed through the main dining room, a sea of white tablecloths and expensive clothing and aristocratic half-smiles. Heads rose as he passed, but few of the diners recognized him, and even these looked away, uninterested. Before his imprisonment at Crere Sulace, before his long journey with Mauritane, before his disfigurement at the hand of Faella, they would all have known him, the ladies especially. But those days were gone.
As always, thoughts of Faella haunted him. Despite what she'd done to his face, he could not blame her, or be angry with her. He'd deserved it. And if not for breaking off their brief affair, then for any number of similar insensitivities in his checkered past.