Elizabeth Bear - Book of Iron

Bijou’s eyes caught on a moving silhouette at the edge of the torchlight. “Halt!” she cried, her breath steaming in wet cold. Soaked clothes clung to her, and she shivered.

Everyone whirled, weapons ready.

But it wasn’t Dr. Liebelos. The shadow that detached itself from among shadows was the outline of a naked man. His head was shaved, his face clean-shaven. In the torchlight his skin shone glossy dark, browner than Bijou’s. Perhaps almost true-black—the red-black of a dark-hided horse, not the blue-black of Maledysaunte’s hair or a raven’s wing.

As he came closer, picking his way barefoot through the running water, the group of adventurers reflexively drew together. He didn’t raise his hand to shield his eyes from the beams of the torches. Bijou found herself staring at his face, unnerved by something about its structure or expression. She took an involuntary step back when she realized what it was: even the whites of his eyes did not shine—because his eyes had no whites. They were simply inky pools from lid to lid, and within them, she imagined she could see a faint shimmer like the schiller albedo of the huge, sooty moon that had so recently set.

“Don’t be afraid,” the man said. “I mean you no harm. It’s just been a long while since I saw your kind in the house of my ancestors.”

There was something about him—a neutrality of presence. Bijou quested after it with her wizard’s senses. He felt smooth and tepid to her mind. Plastic.

She was just figuring it out when Salamander said, “You’re not alive.”

“No,” Bijou said. “He’s a construct. An Artifice. Aren’t you?”

“Aren’t we all?” His tone was mild, amused. As sleek and room-temperature as the rest of him. Bijou noticed that even in the cave, it did not echo, though every other sound bounced eerily. “Whether we be made by gods or men is somewhat irrelevant.”

He paused at a distance of two canes or so and spread his hands. The mud and water of the underground river did not cling to him, but slid smoothly off his…surface. You couldn’t call something so poreless and frictionless a skin .

“What is your purpose?” Bijou asked.

“I am the guardian,” he said.

“Are you here to bar our way?” He wasn’t carrying any visible weapons, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be one.

“I am an interpreter. I see to it that the will of the gods is recognized and understood.”

Maledysaunte stepped forward, angling her body to move between Riordan and Prince Salih. When she stood at Bijou’s shoulder, she squared herself and said, “What are you guardian of?”

The blackness of his eyes made it impossible to see where he was looking. “I know your voice,” he said. “It was your voice that awakened me. You spoke words in the true tongue. You are the Book.”

“I am,” she said. “I seek the one who would destroy me. Will you let me pass?”

“I will,” he said in his echoless voice. “And I will come with you, where you go.”

Bijou put her hand on Maledysaunte’s sleeve, drew the necromancer close so she could speak into her ear. “You don’t trust that.”

“You can’t trust that,” Kaulas interposed.

Prince Salih merely stood quietly, one hand upon the hilt of his scimitar, and watched them all with a gentle frown.

Maledysaunte drew back enough to smile at her. “I trust nothing,” she said. “But he’s in the Book.”

Now they were seven, though the guardian’s presence was not like a presence at all. A hush settled over them with his arrival, so even the splash of footsteps in cold water seemed curiously muffled. They crept in the light of Bijou’s one dim torch until their eyes adapted—that is, the eyes that needed to adapt. For a long while, they did not speak; they only descended.

Salamander crept at the front with her newt and Prince Salih; Bijou walked just behind them.

The long silence was broken when Salamander said, in a whisper that nevertheless echoed, “You must think me an unnatural monster, who would hunt her own mother.”

Bijou let the back of her hand—the one that didn’t steady the torch—brush Salamander’s arm—the one that was not bent up to support the newt. The white Wizard’s words fell into Bijou’s heart—a lump of old pain like a stone in a still pool. And a mother who would not protect her own child? What kind of a monster is that?

But the betrayals of Bijou’s childhood were not Salamander’s concern. Not yet, anyway. If this fragile connection between them ever blossomed into friendship, though—

Bijou began to think she might someday mention it.

“I think a courageous—a loyal—child protects her mother,” she said, when she could get the words around the ache in her bosom. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“My mother,” Salamander said. And, with a glance over her shoulder to Maledysaunte: “And my friend.”

“Well then.” Bijou nodded, as if that explained—and absolved—everything.

Perhaps it did.

Salamander turned her hand around and grasped Bijou’s fingers. She didn’t say thank you . It wasn’t required.

Salamander squeezed. Bijou was still holding her hand when the river began to glow with a warm, amber light.

Salamander lurched forward without hesitation, dragging Bijou along with her for a couple of steps until they dropped hands. Salamander still held the hand with the newt balanced on it high and as steady as she could. “Run—”

Three steps, no more, with the feet of their allies pounding the sand and stone behind—and Bijou fetched up hard against a shimmering curtain of light that nevertheless felt hard and slick as a mountain of glass.

“Trap,” she said. She turned her back to it to survey the rest of the group.

The amber light englobed them completely. It crept across the uneven floor underfoot; it gleamed among the stalactites overhead, giving them an appearance of melted wax limned by candlelight. Sourceless, shadowless, it glowed steady and sure, even and bright, and did not flicker in the slightest. Its directionless shine flattened surfaces and washed out detail, making everything appear thin and papery.

“Amber,” Kaulas said on Bijou’s other side. “There’s a symbolism—”

“Amber,” Salamander agreed. “She’s a precisian. What do you think it means?”

“Trapped in amber,” Maledysaunte said. “Sealed away forevermore.”

“Well,” said Riordan dryly, “she wouldn’t want to kill her daughter if she could avoid it.”

The guardian, Bijou noticed, was not within their impromptu prison. Maledysaunte must have noticed too, because she cursed tiredly.

The remaining six fell in back-to-back, a defensive ring. Bijou’s breath misted before her. “Cold,” she said.

“The stasis bubble increases the effects of order,” Salamander said. “Heat is entropy.”

“She’ll freeze us?” the prince asked.

“Only in time,” Salamander said, avoiding glancing at Maledysaunte. “Long enough to finish her spellcasting.”

“Right,” said Prince Salih. “After all, ‘she wouldn’t want to kill her daughter.’”

After several minutes, Bijou realized that—slowly, inexorably—the bubble of light was creeping in on them. She watched its curtain contract at about the rate of movement of the dawn’s light crawling down a mountain. She couldn’t hear the echoing trickle of water any more: all the sounds of the cavern were gone.