Lillandra

He awoke with dust in his lungs; it took him several minutes to cough it out. His head hurt, and when he touched his temple, he found blood there.

Shell was hovering over him, fully conscious and apparently unhurt. She was holding the Candle of Hours. "Are you all right?"

"I think so," he managed, coughing out the rest of the dust. "What happened?"

"We broke through the floor," she said, pointing upwards.

Arai looked up, through the still-settling dust. He could just see the opening where they had fallen through, about forty feet up. If they had actually fallen from that height, they would have been killed, but somehow or other they had managed to slide down with the rubble, through another corridor and into the room in which they now found themselves. Half of this room was buried in brick now, but the rest of it appeared to be intact.

"The supports holding up the floor must have rotted away," Arai said. "Are you all right?"

"I think so. What about you? You were out for a couple of minutes, and you're bleeding."

He checked himself. He felt a little dizzy -- he had obviously taken a blow to the head -- but the wound itself did not appear to be serious. "I'll be okay," he said, wiping away the blood. "Where are we now?"

He had lost his torch, but the Candle of Hours gave them at least a little light. Shell waved it around the room, revealing rows and rows of books.

The room was apparently some kind of library. In addition to the books -- and there were hundreds of them -- it contained couches, candelabras, and a writing desk.

"Nharlek's private study," Arai mused. But there didn't appear to be anything interesting here, apart from the books, so he got up and began looking around for an exit. "How do we get out of here?"

Shell pointed to the pile of rubble that had fallen in with them, and which almost completely covered one of the room's four walls. "Through there, I think," she said. "It's blocking the door."

Arai groaned. There was an enormous amount of rubble there; it would take half an hour to clear it. He sheathed his sword and immediately set to work, throwing bricks from one side of the room to the other, while Shell held the light.

"Are we going to be okay?" Shell asked him worriedly.

"Of course," he assured her. "We just have to find Lillandra, kill this monster, and get back to searching for this sorcerer's Eagle Wing."

"Do you think she's all right?"

"She's the Queen of the Night," he muttered. "The Shadow of Velon. She'll be fine."

"Did she really overthrow your king? And kill the prince?"

He nodded. "About a hundred years ago."

"And she killed your father, too?"

"Well...indirectly," he said. "It was Lord Pierce who killed my father; I'm not sure Lillandra was even aware of it. She says she's spent most of the last hundred years in some kind of magical sleep. But she was the one who appointed the Pierces as her Lords Protector. That makes her at least partially responsible."

"If you say so."

"The whole nation has suffered under her misrule," he continued. "The growing season in Velon is short; famine was common even before she came to power. It's much worse now. Taxes are high, trade is restricted, and anyone who says anything bad about the Night Queen or the Pierces can expect to be thrown in a dungeon. Worse, she's allowed the Al'mud to run rampant, and the monster population has exploded, especially in the Hardways and around Harbor Town. Lord Pierce's men don't bother to hunt them."

"It sounds to me like this Lord Pierce was the one running the kingdom into the ground," she opined.

"He was Lillandra's creature."

"But she wasn't aware of what he was doing. You said so yourself."

"That's no excuse."

"It's not?"

"I don't want to talk about this."

"Fine," she said, shrugging. "What do you want to talk about?"

"I'm not really in a talking mood at all," he grumbled. "Let's just get out of here."

And he went on shoveling bricks. After a few minutes of standing around with the light, Shell began exploring the library, eventually finding her way to the writing desk, on which sat several thin volumes. She picked one up and started leafing through it.

"Well, this is interesting," she murmured.

"What is it?"

"I think it's a journal. It must have belonged to Nharlek."

"Really?"

She began to read: "The first few experiments were failures, but this latest one shows promise -- the creature is considerably stronger and faster than the previous subjects, and the addition of the Unbound Will seems to have made it much more intelligent, though it still lacks the ability to speak. I'm having some difficulty controlling it with my Dragon's Bit. Lord Kay sent another messenger this morning, asking me how my research was faring, but until I establish a proper retention field and open up an interference pattern to protect the...the..." She furrowed her brow at the book. "I don't know these words."

"Nharlek was creating monsters for this Lord Kay?"

"It sure sounds that way." She picked it up again with another entry: "The creature's strength is astounding, and the Draw of Shadows gives it excellent infiltration abilities, but its ability to withstand the Dragon's Bit is concerning. These assassins won't be of any use to anyone if they can't be controlled." She looked up from the book. "Assassins? I don't like the sound of that."

"Go on."

She flipped a few pages ahead, to what was apparently the final entry: "The creature escaped from the laboratory last night, disappearing into the shadows within its enclosure after the charge went out on the Owl Light. Worse, it managed to acquire several of my zemi, including the Eye of Domination. I have no idea whether it can actually use any of these zemi, but I'm not taking any chances. I created a new Owl Light and managed to erect a barrier around the Haunt, to prevent it from escaping the castle. As soon as day breaks, I'm going up to my laboratory to try to recapture the thing. Damn that Owl Light! And damn Lord Kay! I should never have agreed to undertake this project." She slapped the book shut. "And that's it."

"He was trying to make some kind of monstrous assassin for this Lord Kay," Arai summarized, "but it escaped, and probably killed him."

"Do you think it's the same monster that got Lillandra?"

"I think it's very possible."

She shuddered. "He said it was strong, and fast, and that it could jump through shadows."

"We knew all that already."

"But why would it want to kidnap Lillandra? Why wouldn't it just kill her?"

"I don't know." Had the other unfortunates who had entered the castle since Nharlek's death been kidnapped as well? Or had it merely killed them?

A few minutes later he had managed to remove enough of the rubble to get the door open. He drew his sword once more and motioned for Shell to follow him. "Where are we going now?" she asked.

"Up," he replied. "If this monster's anywhere, it's in Nharlek's old laboratory."

Leaving the library, they spent a few minutes wandering around -- their only light came from the Candle of Hours; they had trouble seeing where they were going -- before finding their way back to the gallery. It took them a few more minutes, but they eventually found a winding staircase that brought them to the top of one of the castle's four towers. But the room at the top was empty -- it certainly wasn't any kind of laboratory -- so they climbed back down to the gallery and tried another set of stairs. Meanwhile, outside, lightning continued to illume the sky, while thunder crackled ominously close.

Shell was obviously terrified, but she did a good job of hiding it, waving the Candle of Hours around as though its meager light would protect her. "This is worse than the Dwellmer," she said, her teeth chattering. "Much worse."

Arai thought it might a good idea to keep her talking, to get her mind off the monster that might attack them at any moment. "How did you end up in the Dwellmer, anyway?" he asked. "How did you end up all alone on the streets?"

It took her a few moments to answer. "My parents died when I was very young. My mother first, and then my father. He never got over her death; my sister told me he died of a broken heart."

"Ah. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. They were both over two hundred years old, and had had twenty-nine children by the time they died. That's more than most people get. Anyway, I was their youngest child."

"You have twenty-eight siblings?"

She nodded.

"And none of them took you in?"

"Elf families aren't like human families. My oldest brothers were eighty years older than me. They barely knew who I was. My sister, Sann, was the only one who cared about me, the only one I had any connection to. She was the one who brought me to Kingsaile, with her husband."

"You weren't from there originally?"

She shook her head. "We came from Turuni. That's one of the elf kingdoms. I don't really remember it, though; I was only five years old when we crossed the Fallhorn Mountains into Addis."

"I see. So what happened to your sister and her husband?"

"They drowned. There was this big celebration when King Lialte finally got married. Sann and Shay went out on a boat to watch the fireworks from Balastair Lake when a storm came up all of a sudden. They never made it back to shore."

"That's awful."

"They weren't the only ones who drowned. There were hundreds of people on the lake that night. Something like forty or fifty people died."

"Why weren't you with them?"

"I didn't want to go out on the water. I just had a funny feeling." She shrugged again. "Anyway, I was on my own after that."

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to talk about these things after all. "I'm sorry," he said again.

"Hey, we've all had it rough. Your parents are dead, too, aren't they? And Lillandra's family must be long gone, if she really is a hundred years old."

Arai remembered the story Lillandra had told him about her father running out on them, and of her mother disappearing not long after. It occurred to him that his own upbringing -- traveling around the Holy Empire with his father's mercenary company, fighting his way through sieges, skirmishes, and ambushes -- was almost normal compared to what Lillandra and Shell had had to endure.

They checked another tower, and then another, but found no trace of Lillandra or the monster. "Only one left," Arai said.

"What are we going to do with this monster when we find it?"

"Kill it."

"Yes, but how? You're a great swordsman, I know, but if this thing starts jumping through the shadows again--"

"I have an idea, actually," he said. "But it all depends on you."

"Me?"

He told her his plan, and then, together, with great and growing apprehension, they began making their way up the final tower.