A Gathering of Gargoyles

Chapter 10 Hungerspice

When Aeriel awoke, Solstar was al-ready two hours into the sky, floating a half degree above the western horizon. She felt vaguely sore. Her head ached. Erin sat by the window still, looking as though she had not slept. She remembered the dark girl speaking of something hours before - of finding plums in the suzerain's garden.
"I do not think I will drink wine again," said Aeriel, rising. "It makes me stupid with sleep."
Erin said nothing. Aeriel frowned, trying to think. There was something else she was forgetting, it seemed. Some task, some purpose had put her on the road - companions waiting for her in the woods?
Odd. The memory would not come. Even now, she was not very clearheaded - she remembered only hazily how they had arrived at the suzerain's villa. She sighed and shook her head, resolving to think about it later.
The hours of the daymonth passed. Whenever the suzerain lent Aeriel his company, he questioned her incessantly about herself, her kith and whence she came. She had no kith, she told him, was an orphan for all she knew. She came from Terrain.
But the thought of Terrain made her uneasy somehow. She turned away from it. After a time she remembered Isternes, what the maidens had told her, and their rime. But it all seemed very distant somehow, far behind her, long ago.
"I must go soon," she told the suzerain once, in the beginning, not quite sure why, but he put his hand on her arm.
"Not yet. Stay awhile. Pirs is a small, rarely traveled land, and I get so few visitors."
The suzerain showed her more of his gardens, his fountains that spouted from pools of red and golden fish. Aeriel laughed and tossed them tidbits - sometimes forgetting her dustshrimp completely until the little creature tugged at her garments and pricked her through the cloth.
And the suzerain showed her all the rooms of his palace, the great library with its many scrolls and books. These the suzerain unrolled or opened for her, that she might see the pictures, for she could not read.
Often, as by accident, while wandering the garden paths or palace halls, they happened upon the makings of a feast, ready laid, but no servant near. Then the suzerain was her servitor, pouring her cup and holding the tray. Never again did she take wine from him, though, so that after a time, he too drank only clear water in her presence.
The thought of Irrylath came to her once - he who had never walked with her, dined with her, conversed with her pleasantly on nothing at all. In all things now the suzerain was at pains to adjust his manner to her mood. Aeriel shoved memory away.
Yet, somehow, always in the suzerain's company she felt an odd distress. Something waited for her beyond the villa walls. And Erin did not like their host, which troubled Aeriel, for she could not find in him anything to dislike.
Nor could she truly enjoy the feasts he laid continually before her, for though the food was always deliciously spiced, her thoughts seemed to wander when they dined, and she found herself hungry again after only a little time. She plucked fruit in the garden then, when she was alone, only to feel oddly guilty eating anything he had not given her.
The fortnight came. All daymonth and now into the night she heard horns and the yelp of hounds in the woods. Sometimes she saw the suzerain's young men riding out on their black horses.
"What do they hunt," she asked the suzerain, "that they ride so, night and day?"
The suzerain shrugged. "Nothing in fine. They are huntsmen. They must hunt."
But another time, he said to her, "Last day-month there was only one Grey Neat in my woods. Now my riders tell me there are three: all different of foot and shape, but all stone grey with brass collars."
Some memory twinged in Aeriel, but she lost it again before she could catch it. She heard the suzerain saying to himself, "What might they be, I wonder?"
And she found herself answering, "Gargoyles," without knowing why. The word meant nothing to her. The suzerain only laughed.
Once he offered to take her riding with him beyond the villa grounds, but she declined, saying she had had enough of horses. It was only afterward, when she was alone, that she realized she had refused because she would have had to lay aside her walking stick.
It came to her then that ever since she had come to the suzerain's villa, she had clung to her staff as to a weapon. She had not set it from her for a moment. Walking, she carried it with her, and when they sat, she laid it across her lap.
Once he had offered to take her in a little boat to an island in the largest of the fish pools, but she refused, saying she could not swim. Only now she realized it was more because she would not have been able to take her walking stick.
Through a kind of haze, she began to notice he was forever asking her to do what would cause her to lay the stick aside. He led her up narrow, precarious steps to walk the parapet along the wall, down tangled paths in the garden, through great, echoing chambers of the palace where her staff's heel made a thunderous click.
He only did so when Erin was not with her, though that was often now. He had begun to stand closer to her when they were alone, speak more warmly and familiarly then. At first the dark girl had kept close beside Aeriel almost all the time. Now more and more, she slipped away.
Aeriel was never aware just when she went, her going was so soft. She only realized her absence afterward, when returning to her chamber, she found the dark girl sitting, very quietly. Erin would not say where she had been.
The fortnight was only a dozen hours from daylight, Aeriel realized with a start. She sat with the suzerain in one of his great halls. They had just finished a feast in which the food had been more hotly spiced than ever. Aeriel had drunk half a pitcher of water to cool the burning in her throat. She felt dizzy and strangely hungry still.
A servant had brought his lord a bandolyn. The wood was ebony, the strings silver, the neck inlaid with ivory and shell. The suzerain sat tuning it.
"Why do you always turn away?" he asked her suddenly. "Whenever we sit or speak, you will not look at me."
The tone was still a hair's breadth off.
"In Terrain, where I am from," said Aeriel, "it is not the custom to stare."
"Do I stare at you?" the suzerain asked.
"Yes," she answered, searching for her cup. Her throat still burned.
"You had a bandolyn with you when you came," he said. "Why have I never heard you play?"
"I play to pay my way." The clear, cold water did not slake her thirst. "Am I not your guest?"
The suzerain laughed. "I will play for you, then," he replied, touching the strings. Aeriel shuddered. The pitch of the drone strand was still too high. The other stopped, adjusting it. Aeriel already knew the words.
"The world wends weary on its way,-
The ha{e hangs heavy on the Sea. If only there would come a day When you would not turn from me...."
The cup in Aeriel's ringers slipped and overturned. She had risen to her feet before she realized. The suzerain stopped.
"What is it?" he said.
Aeriel blinked and shook her head. She did not know what had come over her. Her limbs felt oddly hollow, light. "I beg you, do not play that song."
The suzerain laid his bandolyn aside. "Forgive me. I thought to please you___"
"No. No, it is not that," she heard herself saying. Such things would please me, she thought, if only - if only this were Isternes. If you were Irrylath. She glanced at the suzerain and felt herself shudder. A strange, fierce longing for Irrylath overcame her. The suzerain had risen.
"Are you ill? Sit down. I will call my herbalists - " He had taken her arm. Aeriel pulled away from him awkwardly, steadied herself. She schooled her voice to stop shaking.
"No need. I am only overtired. I must go to my chamber, and rest."
She left him hurriedly, almost running. He began to follow her; then seemed to think better of it. She heard him halt. Relief swept over her as she fled into the hall. He was not following.
She found Erin sitting beside the window, toying with something in her hands. Aeriel sank down heavily upon the couch.
"Where have you been?" Erin asked.
"With the suzerain," Aeriel replied. She felt breathless still.
"Feasting?" the dark girl said. Aeriel nodded. Erin looked up at last, and Aeriel realized what it was she held in her hand: a disc of polished silver. The dark girl said, "What is he feeding you that you are growing so thin?"
Aeriel looked at her, confused. Erin rose and stood before her, holding the mirror that she might see herself. Aeriel started, sucked in her breath. The face before her was hollow-cheeked. She felt the bones of her ribs beneath the skin.
"But," she stammered, "I have eaten well___"
"And how do you feel?" Erin asked, laying the silver disc aside.
"Dizzy," muttered Aeriel.
"Starved," Erin said.
"Yes," murmured Aeriel. "I am very hungry. Strange."
The dark girl fetched a bowl of bread and fruit. "Eat this."
But Aeriel turned her face away. The fragrance of the plums sickened her. "I cannot eat that."
"Why not?" Erin said, kneeling, refusing to take the bowl away. "It is good plain fare such as you and I both ate before we came here. Now you will eat nothing but what the suzerain serves."
"I cannot," Aeriel said, shoving the bowl away. "It has no bite to it, no savor...."
"That's hungerspice he has been feeding you," cried Erin. "Roshka has told me of it. It will muddle your thoughts, make you forget yourself - cause you to hunger always and will not satisfy."
Aeriel stared at her. "What are you talking of?"
"Do you think I do not know you are some magical person?" The dark girl said, "You have told me not one whit of what errand puts you on the road or calls you in such haste, but I know it has nothing to do with that man or this place. We have been here a whole daymonth!"
Aeriel glared at her, but realized with a start that she had not even thought of leaving since nightfall. What had the suzerain, what had his feasts and his palace of fountains and gardens done to her? How had she stayed so long?
"Magical?" she muttered, finding herself angry now, for no reason. "Magical - what do you mean?"
"Did you think I had not noticed?" Erin answered. "Do you think he will not?" She touched her wrists. "No mortal carries a salve to heal all sores."
"It was ambergris," snapped Aeriel. "I have told you of that salve."
"You appeared out of the air to me in the orchard."
"I never appeared out of the air," Aeriel screamed, standing up. She had never in her life felt such a sudden rush of rage. Her voice was a shriek. "You were frightened and you did not see me."
"Aeriel," said Erin, her own voice grown suddenly quiet again. Her black eyes gazed at her. "You have no shadow. You had no shadow in the orchard. That is why I took you for a sprite."
Aeriel stopped, panting. She swayed a little where she stood. Her knees were weak. She tried to quiet her voice, speak steadily. "What do you mean?"
"Look. Look," Erin cried then, seizing a lamp and holding it near.
Aeriel looked down. No shadow lay beneath her feet. She jumped, looked behind her, all around. Every object in the room had its own shade, flickering and darting in the white lamplight - everything but she. Aeriel felt her knees begin to give. She put her hands to her face. Her whole frame shook in a passion of uncontrollable tears.
"Where is my shadow?" she gasped. "Why don't I have one? I had one when I crossed the Sea-of-Dust. Where has it gone?"
Erin set the lamp upon the floor, fetched back the bowl of fruit and bread. "Here," she said. "Eat this. Eat this before you swoon."
At last, to please her, Aeriel ate. The meat of the plums tasted at first immeasurably bitter in her mouth. But gradually, strangely, it washed the spice from her tongue. She began to be able to taste the fruit again, and then the bread. Her throat ceased to burn, and she was ravenous. Her whole body ached. Soon she had eaten all there was in the dark girl's bowl.
Erin said, "You must talk to Roshka. He has told me something of the suzerain, but he says he must see you."
"Who is this Roshka?" Aeriel muttered, wiping her red eyes now and glancing about furtively for her shadow.
"The youth I met," Erin replied. "The one by the plum tree. He is the suzerain's nephew. I have told him I am not a boy, but he has warned me to let no one else discover it. It was he who suspected his uncle must be feeding you hunger-spice - but I will let him tell you himself."
Erin turned then, toward the wide window overlooking the grounds. Aeriel followed the line of her gaze. The foliage beyond the balcony wall had begun to tremble, as though someone below were scaling it, A PAIR OF HANDS, THEN A YOUNG MAN'S head and shoulders appeared. The youth pulled himself easily over the balustrade. His skin was mauve, the color Aeriel's had been before the desert sun had burned it fair.
He wore trousers and toed boots, a turban as his uncle did. Erin went to help him through the window and into the room. He knelt. His lashes were pale gold with a green cast to them. His voice seemed oddly familiar to her.
"Crown Prince Roshka to serve you, lady."
Aeriel began, "I am Aeriel, and no lady," but before she had finished, the young man drew breath. He leaned back a little in surprise.
"You have green eyes."
"So have you," said Aeriel.
"Do you come from Esternesse? Erin says..."
"I have lately come from there."
The other paused. "I have never seen anyone else before that had green eyes," he said at last. "Though they say my mother had. She was a lady of Esternesse."
Aeriel frowned. "There is no lady but the Lady in Isternes. Her name is Syllva, and her eyes are violet." The young man had fallen silent again. Aeriel watched him. "Erin said you would speak to me."
He looked up and seemed to come back from his thoughts. "I know that you are in danger here. My uncle has given you hungerspice." Aeriel turned her face away. The dark girl sat quietly, watching them both.
"Why has he done this to me?" whispered Aeriel.
"To keep you," said Roshka. "That you might hunger for his fare alone, and not depart."
"Why?" Aeriel said.
But the young man shook his head. "Tell me, have you noticed nothing odd about this villa in all the daymonth you have been here?"
Aeriel frowned a little, thinking. Her head had cleared somewhat now that the hungerspice had been washed from her mouth. "Nothing," she murmured, "save..."
"Yes?"
"I have seen no women."
"There are no women," Roshka said.
Aeriel looked up. "None in the villa at all?"
"None save the two old, old herbalists - past bearing, both. A long time past. Lady..."
Aeriel raised one hand. She could not follow him. "I am not a lady," she began.
"What is my uncle's name?"
Aeriel stopped short. "I... I do not know," she said, surprised. "He has not said. But why ask me - do you not know your own uncle's name?"
Roshka shook his head. "I do not. Nor does anyone in this villa, or in all of Pirs."
"He has no name?" said Aeriel. "How may a person have no name?"
"He had one once," the prince replied. "He was given one, as others are - but it is not his anymore. Not his to use, not his to tell. He has sold it. It has been taken."
Aeriel felt suddenly cold. "What do you mean?" she said.
Roshka looked down. "I will try to tell you," he said, "as clearly as I can. My uncle is not the rightful lord in Pirs. By rights he should only be regent. My father was the suzerain, but his brother seized power after his death and my mother's death. My sister and I were only a year old and some."
"Birthsiblings?" said Aeriel. "You have a sister born with you?"
The crown prince nodded. "She was the elder by a few minutes' space, heir to my father's lands...."
"Green eyes," murmured Aeriel suddenly. "The lady Syllva told me once how her sister had green eyes. She was Lady in the city for a dozen years while Syllva was in Avaric.
Later, she went away on a trading voyage, and never returned. Her name was Eryka."
Roshka looked at her. "That was my mother's name. And my sister's, though we called her Erryl, which is to say, 'little Eryka.' "
Aeriel studied him again, wondering if it was the Lady of Isternes he reminded her of. All his movements, even his way of speech seemed eerily similar to someone she knew.
"You are Syllva's nephew," she said slowly, "and so are cousin to m - " She had almost said, "To my husband," but stopped herself. Any memory of Irrylath was painful to her.
"You are some kith to this Lady bf Ester-nesse?" Roshka asked.
Aeriel shook her head. "Only slight kith."
"I must call you cousin, then," the crown prince said.
Aeriel looked away. "But you were telling me of your uncle, who has no name."
"Oh, yes," said Roshka. "He had a name, a name used by everyone, until my father died.
A hunting mishap, they said. But I will tell you what my father's footman told me once.
"He said a fortnight before my father rode out to hunt, a black bird alighted in the far watch-tower. No one knew what manner of bird it could be, all black, and at first the guards tried to drive it away. But it would not go, and bothered no one, so soon everyone ignored it.
"All but my uncle, who gazed at the tower. Then at a quiet hour, my footman said he caught a glimpse of my uncle going along the wall. A while later, the black bird flew, north and west toward Pendar and beyond. My uncle came down from the tower then and was very silent. Not even my father could draw him out.
"About the middle of the fortnight, the black bird came again, or another like it, and my uncle went again to send it off. Then my uncle was even more silent and brooding than before, but he would tell no one what had passed between him and the bird.
"And only a half dozen hours before dawn, as my father's servants prepared for the hunt, the rhuk came once more to the tower. My uncle seemed to know it was there before he was told, and went up to it without a word.
"This time the bird flew almost at once, but my uncle did not descend for some time.
When he did, looking very spent and drawn, he told my father he was ill and would not be coming with the hunt. It was after that no one could recall his name. They called him
'lord' or 'the suzerain's brother.'"
The young prince paused and glanced about the room. He drew breath. The lamp Erin had placed between him and Aeriel burned high. The dark girl sat in shadow, listening.
"My father rode off into the hills at daybreak," Roshka said. "The hunting was very good.
Night-walker, my father's mount, ran far ahead of the other steeds. But something bursting from the brush startled him and made him shy. My father was thrown and killed.
No one saw what had flown in Nightwalker's face, only heard it beating away through the trees.
"My uncle made himself suzerain then, and black birds have come to the tower since. My uncle goes to treat with them. Each time he returns looking worn and spent, for which the herbalists give him draughts. A rhuk came only a few hours before he rode out and found you, though none have come yet since."
Aeriel looked up. She felt cold as dust. The lamp flame could not give her warmth. "I do not like the sound of those birds," she said, "or the quarter toward which they fly. Has your uncle ever spoken of the Witch of the Mere, of a lorelei?"
"Witch?" said Roshka. "No witch that I know of. Though I have heard servants say that after the bird comes and goes, he cannot sleep, only dozes, muttering of a white lady in his dreams."
Aeriel flinched and turned away. She started to speak, and then stopped herself. In how many others' dreams did the lorelei speak? What would become of the world if she recaptured the lost Ions of Westernesse before Aeriel could find them?
She closed her eyes and could have groaned. What am I doing here? she thought. I might have been in Orm by now. She opened her eyes and glanced back at Roshka.
"But what has become of your sister?" she said. "You said she was the elder. Should it not be she, then, who is crown princess?"
The young man nodded. "I was coming to that. When my uncle seized the throne, he said if the Lady Eryka would marry him, he would forgo children of his own and make her children his only heirs. But my father's footman had shown her a great black feather he had found at the spot where my father died, and she refused.
"He set her in a tower then, that tower where he had met the bird, and said he would never let her out but she would wed him. He fed her hungerspice to make her forget her former love and long for her captor alone - and she ate, pretending to suspect nothing, until at last she had made herself thin enough to pass through the narrow window of the room.
"Her maid had brought her bits of silk to fashion a rope, but the stone sill wore through the cord before she reached the ground. She fell - not far, but because she had made herself so thin and frail, she did not live."
Roshka eyed the lamp burning between himself and Aeriel. His lips had grown thin, his green eyes dark and hard.
"My mother's maid says they searched the tower, but could not find the princess royal. I had already been taken away from my mother, but her maid claims my uncle was unable to get the little girl from my mother's arms without violence, and so left her, meaning to return and take her while Eryka slept.
"My mother's maid swears she saw a great white bird alight at her lady's window just before she fell and carry away the child. But I think she must have been mad with grief, and that my uncle murdered the crown princess."
Aeriel stirred upon the couch. Her shoulders were stiff from sitting so long. "What has any of this to do with me?" she asked. "And how, if your uncle would be lord in Pirs, has he let you live?"
Roshka smiled a little, thinly. "I am in no danger yet. My uncle has no wife."
"Wife?" said Aeriel.
"To bring him an heir," the crown prince said. "I am his only heir until then. All the women of this villa fled long ago. The daughters of the noble families hide underground - the peasant women, too.
"They live as the underfolk once did, before the underfolk went away. No one tends the land anymore. It will not bear. The Torch has grown dark. The lightbearers have no beacon to follow inland___"
"Lightbearers?" said Aeriel. She had lost his thread. The young man still knelt, now staring off. His voice had fallen to a murmur. He glanced at Aeriel.
"The pearlmakers," he said. "They bring the blue salt from the Sea. They once made Pirs so lush it was called the jewel of the West. Now everywhere save the suzerain's own private gardens and hunting wood has grown barren."
"Because the suzerain has no wife?"
"No woman will have him, a nameless man. My uncle sends his huntsmen out daily to search for them. In all the years he has been hunting, he has captured five women, but all have found ways either to escape him or die. He has another means to hunt them by night."
"Another means," murmured Aeriel.
"A winged seraph," Roshka replied. "A gift from the mistress of his dreams. They say its wings are darker than the dark----"
"But," Aeriel said, "he was hunting the Grey Neat, by night, when he found us." She glanced at Erin. The dark girl watched.
"Ah." Roshka nodded. "I should have said. He has been hunting the Grey Neat these last day-months, and no other, for the white lady's seraph has been hunting it, too."
"She wants it, the White Witch?" said Aeriel. "Why?"
"Who knows? He does not. But she values it, that much is sure. Perhaps if he can capture it before she does, he might use it to buy back his name."
Aeriel said nothing. She could not think, felt herself growing silent as Erin, as a shadow.
None of what the prince said made sense to her but this: the suzerain had been hunting her gargoyles all this daymonth, and she had known it, and somehow it had meant nothing to her. Hungerspice. She shivered hard.
"There is a prophecy," the young man was saying. "The last woman his huntsmen took, four daymonths gone, shouted it at him just before she killed herself with a bit of bone.
She cried it was written on the rocks, carved below ages past by the underfolk, that the Torch would blaze again, and Pirsalon return, and the rightful heir come once more in the land."
Aeriel started. "Pirsalon."
"The great stag," said Roshka, "warden of Pirs. The seraph bore him away when it came."
Aeriel felt heat coming back into her blood. "I am looking for Pirsalon," she said. "I must find him."
Roshka hardly seemed to be listening. "I will come of age in a year," he said. "And my uncle fears to be overturned. The high families want no more of him. They know there is some curse on him. Only by getting a wife, an heir, can he prove them wrong___"
"But what am I in all of this?" Aeriel demanded, again. Her head fairly ached from so much listening.
The green-eyed boy knelt, looking at her. "He means to wed you, Aeriel."