“Corie’s not a village girl,” Kent said, with more heat than I expected. “She’s a nobleman’s daughter.”
Roderick spread his hands. “I apologize.”
I gave Kent a stern look; he had no reason to jump to my defense. “I don’t have any interest in learning to cook,” I said. “I want to be a healer.”
Now Kent moved his frowning gaze from Roderick’s face to mine. “You could have a higher goal than that,” he said.
“It’s my goal,” I said. “I’ll make it as high as I like.”
After that, we continued through the forest for a while in silence. Eventually, by common consent, we turned back toward our campsite. Jaxon appeared to be sleeping still, and Damien lay on the ground a few yards from him, eyes also closed. Bryan was standing waist-deep in the river, a fishing line in his hands and his eyes steady on the racing water. Three gleaming silver trout lay on the riverbed nearby.
“Oh, Bryan, how clever of you! You’ve been fishing!” I cried, running down to the river to exclaim over his haul. At first he seemed annoyed that I had interrupted his concentration, but at my words, his face relaxed into a smile.
“I thought to add something to our dinner table,” he said.
“Oh, yes! And Roderick’s shot some pheasant and we’ve found more dayig—it will be the most wonderful meal! I’m so impressed! I shall never starve if you’re with me in the forest.”
These words pleased him as well, though he cautioned me, in a friendly voice, to be quiet or risk scaring the fish away. So I knelt on the muddy riverbank for the next hour, as motionless as I could become, and watched him pull in two more trout. I regretted now that I could not fry up the meal. I would have liked to impress him as much as he had impressed me, but it was a little late to be gaining accomplishments that I had for so long resisted.
Soon enough it was dinnertime, and a fine meal it was. Bryan ate more than his share of the trout, which no one minded since they were, after all, his trout—and I noticed that for once he did not require Damien to taste them before he ate. I supposed he realized that, with his hands alone touching them, he was completely safe.
After dinner, as night drew on, we settled around the fire and began to tell stories. Well, Jaxon told stories as only he could, in that lilting, seductive voice that made far-off cities and exotic princesses seem so real and so magnificent that you ached to see them for yourself. Kent then told a few stories of his own, tales which he claimed he had read in the history books about past kings of Auburn. Roderick surprised me then by raising his quiet voice to repeat old bits of folklore about brave woodsmen and ensorceled maidens and strange dark villains who lurked in mysterious towers. My grandmother had told me similar stories when I was a child, and I had loved them then. Now, lying under the indolent stars and listening to the murmuring race of the river, I loved them even more.
By this time, the fire had died down and everyone was trying to smother yawns. Jaxon looked at us all and laughed.
“I think it’s bedtime for this group of adventurers,” he said. “But one word of caution! Make sure all of you wear your gold bands as you seek your beds, for aliora love to creep up upon sleeping men and steal them away in the night.”
“We’re safe,” Kent said, extending his hand to display his ring. Roderick lazily flexed his hand to show off the band on his wrist, and I held mine up to the firelight. Damien tugged on his gold chain to prove its existence. After a moment, Bryan did the same.
“Good!” Jaxon said. “Now, who’s sleeping where? I’m at the fire again tonight. It’s such a fine night.”
Kent shrugged as if to dislodge a clammy palm along his back. “I woke up to find a spider in my hair,” he said. “I think I’ll try the tent tonight.”
“I’ll bunk with Damien,” Roderick said. “Perhaps the two of us together will be able to fight off any aliora who come sneaking up on us in the night.”
I caught Damien’s look of relief, as I had earlier caught his look of fear when Jaxon mentioned that particular danger. So Roderick was a kind man, in an offhand, undramatic way. That impressed me even more than his skill with a crossbow.
We all said our goodnights and settled upon our chosen beds, but I, at least, had no intention of closing my eyes. I waited till I thought the others would be sleeping, then crept from my tent, my blankets over my arms.
Jaxon’s whisper caused me to leap nearly a foot in the air. “And where exactly do you think you’re stealing off to in the middle of the night?” he inquired. “Crossing the river, like the young prince threatened to do? I’ll have you know I won’t go after you, either.”
I stifled a giggle and spread my blankets on the ground across the fire from where he lay. “Well, the regent would scarcely notice that I was missing, so you’d have no worries there. And Greta would be delighted,” I whispered back. “But no, I didn’t think I’d go so far. I just wanted to sleep under the stars this one night.”
I heard his blankets rustle as he turned his big body. “I’m glad of the company. I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to you these two days. Are you enjoying the trip?”
“Oh, so much! I can’t imagine anything more fun!”
He chuckled softly in the dark. “It’s not such a terrible thing to be the only girl among so many men, now is it?” he observed. “Keep you on the trail much longer with this lot, and you’d be choosing among your suitors.”
“I hardly think so,” I said primly, though my voice trembled with laughter. Jaxon knew as well as I did that there was no suitable match for me in the young men of this group. Bryan and Kent were leagues above my social station; because of my noble blood, bastard though I was, Roderick was below it. And Damien could hardly have been to any woman’s taste, though I tried not to despise him for his wretchedness. I had long ago resigned myself to an unmarried life. I truly fit nowhere, and I was not about to try to force myself somewhere I did not belong.
Jaxon chose to misinterpret my reply as disinterest in my choices. “Well, you’re young yet. You’ll meet many attractive men. One day one of them will appeal to your wayward fancy.”
“It’s not the appealing that’s the problem,” I said drowsily.
I heard him chuckle. “Then there’s really no problem.” If he added another syllable, I did not hear him, for I was fast asleep.
I could not have said later what woke me up, for stray sounds were swallowed by the roar of the river, and the dying fire did not give off enough light to flicker across my eyelids. But one minute I was sleeping, the next I was awake, rigid and breathless on my hard bed and convinced I should not open my eyes.
I was lying on my side, one ear against the ground, so with my other ear I strained to hear any signal of danger or alarm. No night birds called, no hungry wolves sent out warning ululations; there was only the river, rumbling, murmuring, chuckling past.
Was that the faintest sound of voices overlaying the low monotonous chatter of the water—?
With infinite caution, I opened one eye—and then stared in absolute stupefaction, though I was clever enough not to move a muscle. Across the fire from me, a shadowy shape in the near-complete darkness, Jaxon sat crosslegged on his blankets. Before him appeared the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.
She had skin so pale that it glowed milky white against the darkness, illuminating the features of her face and the long, impossibly black fall of her hair. She was dressed in some sort of iridescent clothing that wrapped her in a net of silver glitter, and she looked in every way to be a thinner, sleeker, more elegant version of a human woman. When she gestured, the grace and fluidity of her long, frail arm was birdlike; when she smiled, her face seemed overlaid with tragic poetry. She moved once, turning to look at the river, and I saw that her feet did not touch the ground. She had no wings to keep her aloft, but she was so delicate that the air itself supported her; it was so enamored of her that it held her close and would not let her fall.
When I had finished staring at her, I re
membered that I had senses other than my eyes, and once again I strained to hear sounds over the rush of the river. This time, but faintly, I could catch the soft interplay of voices.
“A more than ordinarily risky venture, Jaxon Halsing,” the beautiful creature said, and her voice was as primitive and full of echoes as the voice of the river itself. “Or did you wish us to steal the young prince? Did you bring him to my riverbank just to tempt me?”
“If I thought such a bait would make you careless, I would have brought him years ago,” Jaxon said. “Go ahead—try to take him. It will give me just the edge I need.”
She laughed, and I heard the sound above all others in the night. I wanted to hear it again, I wanted it to be the last sound I heard in my final living moments. “Oh, no, I have not yet grown so tired of my life that I wish to turn it over to your safekeeping, Jaxon Halsing,” she said. “The prince stays with you.”
“Some other member of my party, then,” he suggested. “The prince’s cousin. He’s a fine young man, intelligent and good-hearted. Try for him. Not an ill prize if you should win him. Or Roderick, the tall one with the good aim. You might take him back to your encampment and make a fine slave out of him.”
“Unlike you humans, we do not take slaves,” she said in her musical voice. “Those who live with us do so by choice, and are glad to be among us. They are treated as equals, valued as friends, and loved because we love all our people.”
“No way to prove that,” Jaxon retorted, “since not one of them has returned to sing of your glorious treatment.”
“Unlike the aliora who have escaped from your confinement,” she said swiftly, “who tell tales of wretched captivity.”
I thought I saw Jaxon’s teeth gleam in a smile. “There is little wretchedness in the prince’s castle,” he remarked. “Even the aliora sold at the Faelyn Market go to homes of refinement and wealth. No one would mistreat an aliora. They cost too much on the open market.”
“And no aliora would enslave a human—or any creature,” she responded, and again her face seemed to me more tragic than beautiful. “How could you be so cruel to a nation who has done no harm to you?”
“Ah, yes, you with your soft words and sad entreaties can almost make me forget,” he said. “But I know the hunters who have disappeared into your woods. I know the children who have been lost wandering the edge of the forest in Tregonia. I know the tales that go back long before men like me began setting their traps for creatures like you. You began to steal us before we began to steal you. And we have lost many more loved ones than you have.”
“You have lost them because they chose to come to a world far more gracious and wondrous than yours,” she replied. “In Alora, the streets run with magic—you inhale rainbows when you breathe. The air is scented with cinnamon and decorated with song. No man lives in want, no child goes unloved, and the contentment of your heart makes every day a joy. This is true for the aliora, and it is true of the humans who have chosen to live among us. Come to Alora. See for yourself.”
Jaxon laughed shortly. “Yes, and be taken prisoner myself! Never to return to tell my family and my friends about my wonderful new life.”
“Come with me,” she repeated, extending one spider-thin hand. Moonlight glowed along its long, white length, glinted at the fingertips. “I promise you that you will be allowed to return if you so desire.”
“And to how many men have you made that promise?” Jaxon scoffed, but there was something odd about him now. He seemed to be leaning toward her as if a terrific force inclined him in her direction, mightily though he resisted; his arms and his back seemed knotted with tension.
“To all I have invited with me to Alora.”
“And how many of them have returned to the haunts of man?”
“Not one,” she said, “but not one of them wished to.”
Now Jaxon rolled to his knees, as if impelled by that great external coercion; still he seemed to struggle silently against some impossible desire. “And you think I would not want to?” he said, what I could hear of his voice sounding scraped and raw. “You think I would cross the boundaries of Alora with you and choose to stay forever?”
She still had her arm exftended toward him. Now she came a pace nearer and turned her hand palm-up in invitation. “Ah, Jaxon, you wish to come with me,” she whispered, but even so I heard the whisper. “You have long wished to see my home, to live with me among the beautiful people. You would not be lonely another minute, my friend—you who are so lonely now that you stay awake night after night for the companionship of a campfire. I know your heart, you see. It is bitter and empty and full of regret. Come to Alora, and all that will be washed away.”
“I cannot come,” he said, his voice very low.
“You want to come,” she replied.
“No.”
“You do. You wore no gold into the forest, Jaxon. Why was that?”
“So you would be unwary enough to approach me. One step nearer and I will snatch you up and bind you in chains.”
She floated closer by an inch, maybe two. It was then I realized that the aliora’s pose was as tense and painful as my uncle’s, that she yearned toward him with an equal longing. Her pale fingers trembled in their own ghostly light, and her face seemed shut tight against both dread and desire. “Is this close enough, Jaxon?” she asked. “Can you touch me now?”
“I warned you,” he said.
“Closer still?” she murmured. “Would you like me to lay my hand across your cheek? Would that convince you to follow me across the river?”
“If you touch me, you are lost,” he said.
“If I touch you, and you with no gold upon you, you are mine,” she retorted. “Is that what you want? Do you want me to touch you?”
He made no answer. The night was unbearable with stress; I could not move nor breathe. Both of them seemed to tremble with an uncontrollable emotion that kept them weighted in place even as it propelled them forward. Then suddenly there was motion too swift for me to follow. It seemed as if Jaxon leapt for her and she shot away, for there was a whirl of gowns and blankets and suddenly she was twenty feet from him. Jaxon was on his feet, breathing hard and staring harder, his hands clenched at his sides and his face a study of anguish.
She was laughing. “Not this time, Jaxon,” she called to him, her voice carrying over the distance and over the sound of water. “Not for you—not for me.”
“I’ll return,” he said. “Often and often.”
“I will await you,” she said, and disappeared.
Yes, she did, she disappeared, because I did not take my eyes off of her. One moment she was there, white and glowing against the streaky blackness of the night, and the next moment she was gone, not even a sparkle left behind. My tiny gasp was covered by the gurgle of the river, and by Jaxon’s sudden stomping around the campsite. He stalked some distance away as if to release some frightening energy, and he rubbed his hands up and down his arms as if he had suddenly grown cold. I could not tell if he was disappointed at missing the chance to capture the aliora, angry that he had come so close to surrendering to her—or if some other emotion, mysterious to me, kicked him down to the river and back. He did not look any happier or any calmer as he came close enough to the fire for me to see his face, and I was wise enough not to let him know that I was awake.
What could you say to a man, after all, after witnessing such an encounter as that?
He had brought some logs back with him and built up the fire, so I was careful to lie as motionless as possible. He sat there for some time staring into the flames, then he dropped to the ground again and rolled himself in his blankets. Though I lay open-eyed for another thirty minutes or so, he did not make another sound, and eventually I fell asleep.
IN THE MORNING, Jaxon made no mention of his adventure from the night before. Roderick was the first one to rise, but just by emerging from his tent he startled Jaxon and me awake. The guardsman crept to the fire with a few branches in his ar
ms, and then moved less quietly once he saw our open eyes.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked, squatting on the ground and feeding fuel to the coals.
“As well as a man can on a hard ground,” Jaxon said cheerfully enough. “You, Corie?”
“Oh—I don’t think I stirred all night,” I said a little hastily. “Just fell right asleep and stayed there.”
Roderick slanted me a sideways look. “So much for admiring the beauty of the stars,” he commented.
I was tempted to reply that the beauties of the night were very impressive indeed, but I didn’t want to rouse Jaxon’s suspicion. “Maybe next time,” I said vaguely.
A few promising young flames were licking at the wood, and now Roderick added a good-sized log. “No aliora dropped by unexpectedly, I take it?” was his next question.
Jaxon glanced around. “Well, not that I know of,” he drawled, “but who knows that they didn’t go raiding the tents? I guess we should wake the others just to make sure they’re safe.”
“Let them sleep,” Roderick suggested. “If they’re not safe now, they’re beyond our help.”
Jaxon laughed and agreed. The two men set out to make a breakfast meal while I headed down to the river to freshen up. While I splashed vigorously in the water—much cooler at this time of day and not nearly as much fun—I pondered over the strange events of the night before. Clearly Jaxon did not want any of us to know about his odd conversation with our midnight visitor. Clearly Jaxon and the aliora had met often before, had sparred and whispered to each other across many campfires over many years. Clearly each wanted desperately to get power over the other.
Was it possible he had brought us all to this campsite at this river solely and specifically for a chance to meet up with this aliora again?
I scrambled up the bank to find all five men heading down. “Watch the fire,” Kent told me as he passed me, “and keep your eyes turned away from the river. All of us need to strip down and clean up.”