David Chandler - A thief in the night

“There’s an escape shaft that way,” Balint said, pointing into the darkness. “It’s how my crew and I came in, back when I still thought this place was emptier than a spinster’s womb. We planned on taking the barrels out that way, so I had Murin drag them up here. If Slurri and I had come with him… but instead I had to go find Urin and gloat over his failure.” She shook her head. “I could be halfway to Redweir by now, and a good bath, and a session with the best mustache plucker in town.”

Croy only half heard her. “The barrels will be up there?” he asked. He still had no idea why Balint wanted the things now, but she swore they would be instrumental in slaughtering the elves. Therefore, he intended to get to them as soon as possible.

“Aye.”

He nodded and strode toward the arch at the far end of the room. Ballint and the barbarian followed.

“How can five barrels destroy an entire city?” Morget asked. He was not consumed by vengeance, and therefore was still thinking. In an offhand way, Croy was glad one of them was still asking questions.

“I told you, you daft pillock. The barrels contain the most powerful weapon the dwarves ever built. It’s terrifying, what they’re capable of. If everybody had what’s in those barrels, they would never make war again because they’d be too horrified to use them.”

“Even if they were full of magical swords,” Morget said, “we still only have six arms between us to swing them.”

“Not every weapon in this world needs a strong arm to wield it,” Balint replied.

“If you say so. But it also occurs to me it’s been eight hundred years since those barrels were stored away. Won’t the weapons inside have rusted or rotted or-”

“No, no, no, the barrels are sealed tighter than a toad’s arsehole, for one thing, and any way, the substance inside has a high measure of hydrophobicity-”

“High what?” Morget asked.

“It’s-It repels water, and that means it should last near on forever if it isn’t-”

“But how? How does it do that?”

Croy roared and turned to face the other two. “It’s magic, of course. That’s what she’s saying. It’s magic, so it doesn’t wear off. Now let’s get on with it!”

He passed through the arch, not waiting for a reply. The room beyond was filled with enormous tanning vats, great stone cylinders far taller than Croy’s head. Sitting between two such vessels stood the barrels in question. They were good-sized hogsheads, made of a greenish stoneware. They gleamed dully in the candlelight.

“That’s them,” Balint said, crowing in excitement. “Now we just have to move them up to the top level.”

“Where all the revenants gather? But why?” Morget asked.

“Let’s just do it,” Croy said, and bent to pick up one of the barrels. “I tire of waiting. I tire of questions. I want vengeance on the evil ones, and I want it now.”

The elfin children were as beautiful as their parents, and they laughed even more. Aethil led the three of them through the nursery, pausing frequently to coo over the babies where they slept in narrow cribs made out of beetle shells. “They’re so adorable. I envy the mothers so. Sometimes I come down here and just watch them sleep, when I’m feeling sorrowful.”

“You have no heir as of yet, Aethil?” Cythera asked.

“What? No, of course not, I-ah… But you can’t know. We queens of the elves are different from others. When the time comes to produce an heir, I will find my proper mate and for the first time I will know real joy.” She glanced at Slag as if sizing him up as a candidate for that position. The dwarf was chewing on his fingernails. He seemed to have no interest at all in elf babies. “I will conceive immediately, and bear a single child, a daughter, who will become queen as soon as she is born.”

“You don’t get to finish your reign?” Malden asked.

“I… cannot. You see, I will die in childbirth. Just as my mother did.”

Cythera made a sound of utter pity, a kind of deep, heartfelt moan. Aethil favored them with a bright smile that had little warmth in it.

“Enough-we need not speak of that. Let me show you the rest of the nursery.” She led them out into a larger cavern full of noise, where children were playing elaborate games. Malden recognized most of the games at once, as he’d played them-or something very like them-as a child himself: seek-the-hidden-one, catch-the-ogre, even knights-and-elves, where pairs of boys sparred with flimsy swords of scrap wood. He wondered if they called it by the same name.

“Until they are seven years old,” Aethil said, raising her voice over the noise, “they are schooled here. We make sure they’re educated in their history, in the vital arts, and given a smattering of arcane knowledge. Not enough to let them do any serious mischief, of course.”

Malden saw one little boy being chased by dragons of smoke, long ribbony illusions cast by a girl who laughed to see him run. Such a spell, he knew, would take a human sorcerer decades to master, and the sorcerer would pay a terrible price for the knowledge. Here it was a commonplace.

“What source of power does your magic draw on?” Cythera asked, in awe of even this small magic. “Surely they don’t summon demons to teach them these spells, and no child that young could ever master even the basics of witchcraft.”

Aethil laughed at the idea. “Our ancestors provide all the magical power we could ever require. Demons! Such foolishness! No one would ever be so foolish as to summon one of those.”

Malden and Slag shared a knowing look. Someone had to have summoned the demon that Morget came to slay. It was impossible for demons to come into the world unbidden-that was the pact the Bloodgod had made with humanity, that he would keep his terrible creatures walled away in the pit of souls. A sorcerer had to release them, and hopefully control them. So who had summoned the amorphous demon if not an elf? Malden suspected it must be the Hieromagus. The wizard-priest would certainly have enough power to do it, and his forgetfulness might explain why the demon seemed to be loose to prey upon men and animals at its leisure.

Aethil wouldn’t know about that, it seemed, and there was no point questioning her on the point, but Malden filed it away as another mystery of the elves.

The elf queen led them farther into a library, where older children were taking a lesson. While the very young had been dressed all alike in simple smocks, those of six and seven years were variegated in their garb. Half of them wore patchwork shifts, old and tattered and ill-fitting. The other half wore sumptuous robes and gowns. These must be the children of the noble class, Malden surmised-though he was confused as to why the poorer children were receiving the same education. “In human lands, only the very rich teach their children to read,” he said.

“But then how are the laboring classes expected to learn anything?” Aethil asked, quite scandalized.

“Mostly, they aren’t,” Malden told her. “They either learn a trade, through apprenticing to a master, or they work as unskilled labor all their lives.” And that was only in the Free City, he thought. Outside of Ness, nine of every ten humans spent their lives on a farm, and never learned more than how to hold a sickle properly or how to plant seed. In the whole kingdom of Skrae perhaps only one man in twenty knew how to read and form letters.

“Why-that’s-barbarous,” Aethil said. She made the word sound obscene. “You keep your people ignorant? They can’t even read? I thought you humans were nothing like the old stories, but this-”

Cythera stepped in hurriedly to change the subject. “All this talk of education has made me remember something I wanted to ask you.”