The Knight

“Here Setr plans to judge our world,” Garsecg said when he got there. “Forcing us to live virtuous lives.”

I was still mad. I said it sounded like a tall order to me, that even though there were a lot of things I liked about the Aelf I had met, everybody said you could not trust them and they could lie birds out of the trees. I thought Garsecg was going to climb all over me for that, but he looked kind of sad and nodded.

I said, “Well, we’re not exactly the most honest people in the whole world either.”

Then he said something that surprised the heck out of me. He said, “Yet you are the gods of Aelfrice.”

I had never heard anything like that before. (Okay, really I had, but I did not remember it.) I knew he was serious from the way he said it, and I did not know how to react. I did not want to show it, and I wanted time to think about it, so I grabbed one of the Khimairas and asked again if she renounced Setr, and when she said yes, I told her to go back to being a regular Aelf, because I liked that shape a lot better. She tried, but she could not.

I told Garsecg he had been right. “You probably know Disiri,” I said. “I know her too, and she did some shape changes for me once. It didn’t seem like it was hard at all for her. Was it hard when you turned into the alligator with all the legs?”

He shook his head. “It is a matter of concentration, Sir Able. Observe.” Before he said that last word he had started to melt and flow. I know you do not know what I mean, even if you think you do. But that is the only way I can describe it. You know about Claymation? It was like that, like somebody I could not see was molding him between shots. He started looking like me. (I mean the way I looked after Disiri got through with me.) He looked more and more like me until he would have fooled everybody on the ship. There was no smoke, but I did not think about that.

That was when I first noticed his eyes. I have probably said a couple dozen times that all the Aelf had those yellow fire eyes. Up until then it had not bothered me that Garsecg did not. Before, he had bushy blue eyebrows, and the eyes deep in. The alligator’s eyes had been really small, and I guess I had not paid a lot of attention. When he looked like me, his eyes were easier to see and I looked at him harder. And he did not have Aelf eyes at all. He did not have human eyes, either. Or cat eyes or dog eyes or anything like that. His eyes were a high wind on a dark night.

I had been scared plenty already, and that scared me a lot more. I pretended I had not noticed, but I was shaking inside. To cover up, I told the other Khimaira to renounce Setr.

She would not, and I said, “Even if he made you look ugly and stay there? What did he ever do for you?”

“We ressieved nothing,” the first one said, “ssave thesse sshapes. We were promissed great benefitss, alwayss to be paid when the nexst tassk wass done.”

The one I had been talking to nodded. “Alwayss another tassk.”

Garsecg stepped between them and me. “That being so, as I know it is, why will you not renounce Setr as your fellow did?”

That one stepped around him and knelt to me. “Lord, I will sserve you in all thingss whatssoever. Iss that not enough? I ssaved you jusst as Baki did. Assk what sservice you wissh, and you sshall resseive it.”

I needed thinking time, so I said, “What’s your name?”

“Your sslave iss Uri, Lord.”

Garsecg was changing again, going back to the way he had usually looked. “You must not suppose, Sir Able, that those are their true names, of use in weaving spells.”

“Yess, yess!” they said. “They are!”

Well, I had wanted to think. And sometimes I really do. I had been wondering about certain things, like why Garsecg’s eyes did not look right and why he wanted me to let those two khimairas go. So I said, “It’s not always a real good thing to throw around real names, is it? Like, Abie’s just what everybody calls me here. Is it all right if I use your real name? Or should I just keep on saying Garsecg?”

Garsecg said, “You are correct. Do not speak my true name, even when we are alone.”

“Fine. I guess you know these two whateveryoucall ‘ems just about killed me.”

He shook his head. “I would have saved you.” If he was lying, he was a good liar. Which he was.

I said I would not argue, but I felt like he owed me.

“I will repay you by letting you claim a storied weapon all the world will envy.”

“Are you talking about Eterne?”

“No. It is not here, and I am surprised you know of it.”

I sort of shrugged. “That’s the only one I want, and you were going to let me take something anyhow, so I could fight Kulili for you. I think I’ll take these two instead. They’re quitting Setr, so they ought to take off his uniform. That’s how it seems to me.”

“One has renounced Setr, as you say, and the other has sworn to serve you. Will you fight Kulili?”

“I said I would. I don’t go back on my word, Garsecg.”

“Then there is no reason you should not have these two to assist you—if you really want them. Make no mistake. When a man owns a slave, the slave owns a master.”

I said I could live with that.

“Never say you were not warned. Their new uniform will be ... ?”

“Their natural shapes,” I said, “their Aelf shapes. If they won’t change for me here, I’m taking them to the top of this skyscraper. That ought to do it.”

Garsecg did not like that at all. He wanted me to let them go, and go straight down to the armories with him like he had pla

Chapter 24. Sunshine

If I told everything that happened after that on the stairway that went up the in side of the skyscraper, and what I said to Uri and Baki, and what they told me in the way that they told it, it would use up a stack of paper as high as the stairway was. So I am not going to. Here are the main things.

I wanted to know why the Aelf had driven Setr out, and it was because he wanted to be king of all of them. Some of the kings and queens they had already had not liked that.

Then I wanted to know why some of them were for him, Uri especially. It was because of Kulili. They hated her, and Setr had been trying to kill her. He had raised a big army, all the Sea Aelf, all the Fire Aelf, and some others. They had tried to mob her, and she had killed about half of them and chased the rest. I tried to find out why they wanted her dead, too, but I never got to the bottom of that. It was the same when I asked what she looked like. She looked all kinds of different ways, so she was a shapechanger too. She lived in the sea, like the Sea Aelf, but in deeper water.

We did not get to the top that day, or even the day after. I probably ought to say that, too. Uri and Baki knew where food might be as you went up, so we would stop whenever we got near a place, rest, and eat, if there was anything. Maybe we would find a room we could barricade. We did that both times when we slept.

Only I sort of lost track of the days, and it was night when we finally got to the roof garden. There was no moon, but there was bright starlight and it showed fruit trees with a lot of fruit on them. We were ready to eat anything, and that was great. Baki flew up a date palm and brought me a bunch of ripe dates. I had never eaten those before, and they are the best fruit in the world. There were oranges, too, not exactly like our oranges at home, but not exactly like tangerines either. Small and sweet.

When we were full I made Uri and Baki lie down and said I would keep watch. I did it because the closer to the top we got the less they had wanted to come up here, and I was afraid they would run if I put one of them on watch.