Fairest Read online

  Below us the ogre stopped and grinned. I saw his mouth form the Ayorthaian word for friend.

  I illused a male voice, singing, “I heard it, too. ‘Friend,’ it said.”

  Would they come after their companion or seek their prey?

  They headed down the mountain.

  Uju grabbed my arm. We started picking our way upward, taking care to be quiet.

  We climbed for ten minutes or more. I fought an urge to stop my silent singing and listen to hear if they were close. Too dangerous—if they were still persuading, I’d hear them.

  Uju turned, a rapt smile on his face. He began to pull me back down the mountain.

  He’d listened to the ogres! I fought him. I managed to jam my hands against his ears.

  I saw comprehension return. We hurried up the mountain again. I hoped he had a destination in mind.

  He did. We reached it shortly, a rock-strewn ridge with a view into the valley. We could see the path we’d been on. There were our horses, still behind the boulder. There were the ogres, not far below the place we’d first seen them, trudging back up the mountain.

  One veered aside and found our horses and their dead comrade. They began to climb toward us, pointing out our tracks as they came.

  Uju started kicking stones down the mountain, hefting rocks and throwing them. I became a throwing zealot. Between us we hurled a huge, half-buried rock. I heaved and tossed and pitched the heaviest rocks I could lift, never stopping to see the result.

  Then Uju was pulling me away. We stumbled back as half the mountain below gave way and buried the ogres and our unfortunate horses.

  We scrambled down the far side of the ridge. I hoped the ground beneath us wouldn’t collapse. At the bottom, Uju started climbing the adjacent slope.

  “Wait!” I cried. I had to stop to catch my breath.

  “Not safe. Come!”

  I followed, holding my side and panting. What would we do without horses?

  Finally he collapsed, halfway up. I collapsed next to him.

  After he stopped panting, he said, “You saved us both.”

  “You saved us both.”

  “Queen Ivi told me to kill you.”

  Could she hate me so much? Could she be so wicked?

  “Not in so many words, but her meaning was clear enough.” Fright had loosened his tongue. “She said you were half ogre. She said we’d all be safer without you. I was going to kill you, but you’d grown so beautiful, I stopped believing her.”

  Beauty had saved me.

  “But if I had killed you, the ogres would have killed me.” He smiled ruefully. “If I was dead, she wouldn’t be able to knight me.”

  She’d promised to elevate him, just as she’d elevated me.

  “I’ll tell everyone I found you dead, but I’ll tell her I killed you. I want a scrap of your gown to prove you’re dead. She’ll knight me yet.”

  “Of course.” I tore a bit from the hem. My beautiful new gown was creased and filthy.

  “I’ll bloody it up somehow.”

  Faugh! “Are you going to leave me here?” If he was, he might as well kill me. I’d be dead soon enough, with no food and no idea where water might be.

  “No, Milady. I won’t abandon you.” He shrugged. “We’ll be there before we die of hunger or thirst.”

  “Be where?”

  “Gnome Caverns. The gnomes may take you in. If they do, you’ll be safe—if you can stay down there.”

  zhamM’s prediction was coming true.

  Uju found a cave for us to rest in. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. The sun was still high and hot when he said we should leave.

  “Anyone can see us.” I had never felt more visible, not even when I was ugly and twenty people were staring at me.

  He shrugged. “Nonetheless.” He had returned to taciturnity.

  I trudged after him. The heel came off my right slipper. “Uju?”

  He shrugged, so I knew he was listening.

  “When you reach home, would you tell Prince Ijori that one of my cousins ate me?”

  He nodded. Good.

  Rock walls rose around us, forming serpentine pathways. It was a landscape to be lost in forever. But Uju never hesitated, choosing each new chasm as if he was following a rope.

  The day wore on. My tongue felt gritty and dusty. Visions of iced ostumo, mead, raspberry juice, took over my imagination. I was parched enough to long even for apple juice.

  Uju turned a corner. I followed and then stopped short. He had opened a rock door into the cliff.

  The doorway was lower than my height and wider than my girth. Uju ducked and entered. I hung back, thinking of the castle dungeon.

  But the air that wafted out of the tunnel was cool and fresh. The floor was carpeted. The pattern was of pink pails and pink hammers and pink chisels on a light-green background.

  How could I fear? I hunched over and entered.

  The light dimmed. Uju had closed the door, soundlessly. I turned. The door was indistinguishable from the surrounding rock. When would I see the sun again?

  The tunnel was brighter than torchlight. The wall on my right seemed to be crisscrossed by sparkling veins and arteries. I guessed this was the glow iron zhamM had mentioned. It was magical—gnomish magic.

  The tunnel wound steeply down. We heard gurgling but saw not a drop of water. I was certain we were nearing the center of the world.

  Below us, the tunnel ended in a small circular room where a gnome sat, reading a book.

  Uju called out, “.fwthchor evtoogh drzzay eerth ymmadboech evtoogh drzzaY”

  The gnome, a female, looked up. She marked her place in her book, pushed back her chair, and exited through the rock where she was standing. Through the rock! She seemed to melt into it and was gone. More gnomish magic.

  “!ghufzO” Uju cried. He raced to where she’d been and pounded on the rock wall.

  I joined him and stared at the spot where she had vanished. It looked no different from the rest of the rock wall—smooth, glistening, coral colored. Uju kicked it.

  “What did you say to her?”

  He slumped into her chair. “It was a greeting.”

  I wasn’t worried. I had zhamM’s prediction to rely on. I was to see him in Gnome Caverns.

  “We can go back,” I said, “and find another entrance.” I’d heard there were many. But it would be a long climb, especially without food or water.

  He didn’t stand up.

  “Why can’t we?”

  “It was an entrance.”

  Yes?

  Then I understood. It was an entrance only, not an exit. We wouldn’t be able to find the door. We were stuck here.

  I still wasn’t concerned. “We’ll get in. A gnome once predicted I’d see him in Gnome Caverns.”

  Uju laughed bitterly. “A gnome predicted I’d be given a centaur before my thirty-second birthday. That birthday passed eleven years ago.”

  Oh. I sank to the floor. It might end here, then. We’d die of thirst with water gurgling somewhere nearby. Idly I opened the gnome’s book. Naturally the words were Gnomic, punctuated and capitalized backward as the gnomes did.

  If only I could get to that gurgling water! I wondered how it could sound so close with solid rock between us and it. The rock must capture the sound somehow. The rock was solid. Uju had pounded on it and kicked it.

  But she’d passed through it. Perhaps …

  “Uju, stand up!”

  He stood slowly.

  “Step aside!”

  He did.

  I went to the wall and touched it lightly. It felt soft as gossamer. My finger went into it, as if it were fog. I smacked the wall. Solid rock. I approached it gently again, and my hand went right in.

  I turned to him. “We can go through.”

  “What if it seizes up around us?”

  Then we’d die in the rock rather than outside it. “The secret seems to be to move smoothly.”

  A dozen gnomish warriors might be wait
ing on the other side, pointing their swords at us.

  “I’m going to try it,” I said. I thought, Glide, and stepped into the wall.

  It felt like stepping through feathers. Then I was out.

  A moment later Uju came through. “You saved me again.”

  We were in the same tunnel. The wall we’d gone through was filmy from this side. I could see the glow iron sparkling on the far wall.

  I looked for the source of the gurgling. There it was. Just past the edge of the carpeting was a trough through which water streamed.

  No one was in sight. Uju and I threw ourselves down. I cupped my hands and drank. I heard Uju slurping next to me.

  The water tasted pure and sweet. I thought I’d never get enough.

  “Maid Aza? Maid azacH? You came through our curtain!”

  The voice was mild and breathy. I scrambled up and curtsied. “Master zhamM!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  NEXT TO ME, Uju bowed.

  The green gentleman, in a yellow paisley tunic with emerald buttons, bowed in return. “Maid azacH,” he said, straightening, “you are changed, just as you’d hoped. You are smaller, and there is almost no htun in your hair. I’ve regretted your absence from the Featherbed.” He sang,

  “I’m not a Sir, I’m a serf,

  And my enemy’s worse

  Than a knight ever cursed.”

  He remembered my words! And the tune, more or less.

  “I’ve missed your voice. I’m glad it’s here.” He smiled. “And you’ve come with it, to be exact.”

  I recalled his sense of humor. If he’d missed me, perhaps he’d let me stay.

  “Thank you, Sir,” he told Uju, “for bringing Maid azacH.”

  I introduced them, and they both bowed again.

  Uju sang, “I’m not a Sir, I’m a guard.”

  zhamM and I both smiled at the joke, the first I’d heard Uju make.

  zhamM explained that the woman who’d fled from us had done so because Uju had misspoken the gnomes’ traditional greeting, “Digging is good for the wealth and for the health.” Instead, he’d said that killing was good for both.

  She had thought the mistake innocent but hadn’t wanted to stay, just in case. So she’d fetched zhamM, who’d talked often of his expected visitor.

  “Come,” he said. “We’ll see if the gnomes can equal the Featherbed in hospitality.”

  He turned out to be an aristocrat and a judge, a widyeH in Gnomic, a gnome of honor. Servants came and led Uju and me away. zhamM promised to have a meal ready for us when we returned from our baths.

  I was taken to the bath caverns for female gnomes. There was a mirror in the alcove where I was to disrobe. I was dirtier than I’d ever been, but the potion hadn’t worn off.

  Naked, I stepped to the edge of an underground lake. Lanterns bobbed in tiny boats. Gnome ladies swam or reclined on rocky islets, or paddled about in bubbling springs. We were all naked, but because of their wrinkled leathery skin, they didn’t seem so—as a lizard or a snake doesn’t.

  No one was staring, but I waded in quickly, submerging myself as soon as the water was deep enough. It was pleasantly warm, and it lapped against me in a soothing rhythm.

  I smelled sulfur, the gnomes’ favorite scent. At the Featherbed their rooms always smelled of it by the time they left.

  The lake went on as far as I could see, branching into smaller caverns. The surrounding rock was pink and ivory and wet, like the inside of an enormous mouth. I wondered how sound would carry. If I’d been alone, I would have yodeled.

  I swam through sea foam, which turned out to be soap bubbles, coming from a spring below me. I raised my arm and found bubbles clinging to it. Scrub brushes were on the closest lantern boat. It was glorious to become clean. The soap-bubble water was buoyant. I didn’t have to paddle to stay afloat, and the mud I shed disappeared in a trice. I gave myself over to the sensation of the water on my skin, the pleasure of massaging my scalp, the vividness of the brush on my back.

  I sang a toddler’s bath song.

  “Sudsy bubbles float

  Past a bath-toy boat.

  Slip slide slither soap

  Up and down the belly slope.

  Out peeks the knee,

  Out peep the feet.”

  When not a speck of dirt remained, I swam away from the soap spring and floated on my back, drifting. I fell asleep and woke only when I passed through a stretch of pulsing, tingly water. My hunger returned in force. I swam to shore.

  My filthy gown was gone. I found instead a female gnome’s robe and undergarments, freshly washed and smelling sulfuric. The robe was a golden color. I suspected that the threads were actual gold, although they were soft as silk. The fabric would have fascinated Ivi.

  The neckline was square in front and rounded at the back. The shoulders were too broad, and the waist was vastly too big, but there was a sash, which improved matters. The skirt would have been too short, but a border of more gold cloth had been sewn on.

  I considered myself in the mirror. The bodice hung loose. The shoulders bunched up. However, I was still beautiful. I was radiant—among the gnomes, who thought me as hideous as I’d ever been.

  A servant conducted me to an alcove, where Uju and zhamM sat at a round table. Uju was attired in gnome finery too. zhamM may have supplied the tunic, because it had emerald buttons.

  Uju kept looking uneasily at the rock walls. I wondered what was troubling him.

  Servants appeared bearing steaming platters. I remember little of the meal. I was too exhausted. I know we were served root vegetables and there was conversation, but I have no memory of what was said. I don’t remember finishing my food or being taken to a bedchamber.

  When I awoke, the room was dark. I didn’t know where I was. After a few moments I remembered. Oh, yes. Gnome Caverns. I was an exile.

  I wondered what was taking place in Ayortha. Was Ijori still shuddering over the memory of our kiss? Was Skulni carrying out his plans, whatever they were? Did Mother and Father know of my disgrace yet? Was the search for me still underway? Might they pursue me here?

  Would the gnomes let me stay?

  I sang to quiet my thoughts:

  “Climb the day.

  Drop your dreams.

  Possess the day.”

  I wondered if it was morning.

  I sat up and saw the glowing outline of a door. I slid sideways, and sideways, and sideways. I finally reached the edge of the bed and started cautiously for the door, hoping not to trip over anything.

  When I opened it, a servant bustled in with a lantern. “!evtoogh fwthchoR” she said gaily.

  “!eftook swithcoR” I said, trying to get it right.

  She giggled and lit a lamp. I saw my bedchamber. Its walls were hammered copper laid over the underlying rock. Here and there a triangle or a square or a diamond shape had been painted on the copper in bright blue or green or red. The effect was cheery.

  The entire chamber had a lighthearted charm. There was a yellow rocking chair, a pink bureau, and a blue-and-white table. Atop the bureau was a bowl of colored stones—amber, blue, violet. I wondered if they were pebbles or gems.

  There was no fireplace. It always seemed comfortably cool down here.

  The maid said slowly and carefully, “Dress you. After I you widyeH zhamM take.” She curtsied and left the room.

  Another gnome’s gown had been spread out on an easy chair. After I dressed, the maid led me through a maze of carpeted tunnel to an open door.

  I entered a cozy parlor. There were four wide easy chairs, upholstered in bright fabrics, each with a matching footstool and a side table. The legs of the tables, chairs, and footstools were set with stones. On each table was a bowl of pebbles, or gems, like the one in my chamber. A low table was heaped with books. A circular hooked rug extended almost to the cavern walls. The walls were alive with glow iron, making the chamber as bright as could be without sunlight.

  zhamM came in through a door across the
room. “Good morning, Maid azacH.”

  It was morning then. “Good morning, widyeH zhamM.”

  “Oh! My title.” He led me to a chair. “They are bringing breakfast.”

  “I’m the chambermaid. I should be waiting on you.”

  “Not here. Here you are my guest.”

  Breakfast arrived on a tray: raw carrots, carrot puree, and glistening candied carrots. To the side was a tumbler of orange liquid. There were also two cups and a silver ostumo pot.

  zhamM said he’d eaten earlier. He indicated my meal. “Carrots done three ways and carrot juice and ostumo. We gnomes have come to enjoy your ostumo. It is a delicacy, to be exact.”

  I poured the ostumo for both of us. The color was right, but the smell was sharp. He sipped his and looked satisfied. I sipped mine and began to cough.

  He put down his cup. “I see we haven’t got it right yet. The carrot juice will be excellent, however.”

  It was, and the other carrot preparations were tasty, too. I felt guilty for wishing for a muffin.

  “Where is Uju?”

  “He set out for Ontio at dawn. He said he disliked being underground. Do you mind it?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t mind at all. This was nothing like the dungeon at Ontio.

  “Good. Few humans are able to remain here as long as you already have.”

  Did this mean I could stay? “It’s cozy.”

  “That is how we feel. But Guard Uju wouldn’t even wait for you to awaken. We gave him a centaur to ride when he left.”

  “The prediction!” I said.

  “Yes. The gnome who made it must have been thinking of Guard Uju’s age in gnome years.”

  “Oh.”

  “Before leaving, he promised to convince your pursuers of your death.”

  Good.

  But word would reach Mother and Father. “widyeH zhamM, would someone be able to deliver a letter to my parents?”

  He inclined his head. “I’ll see to it.”

  After I finished eating, he said, “You are in danger, as I foresaw. Tell me what brought you here. Perhaps a gnome can help.”