Lord of Souls

FOUR

Annaig stared out at the shimmering green sump and delicate, insectile buildings that climbed and depended from the stone walls of the conical valley at Umbriel’s heart. Above, shining through the glittering strands of what resembled a giant spiderweb or some vast sea invertebrate, shone the sun of Tamriel. The sun she had been born under. It made her feel tight, claustrophobic, to know the light of that sun could illume the flying city, touch her, warm her-but that she could not go up through that sky, be in the wider world that orb washed with its radiance.

“You’ve not been here in a while,” Toel said.

Annaig forced herself to look at him. She had first seen Toel when he and his staff had slaughtered everyone in her former kitchen-everyone but Slyr and her. Even then, surrounded by brutally murdered corpses, he’d been calm, serene really. She had been terrified of him then, and was even more so now. She felt that at any moment he would stand, take her by the shoulders, and push her over the balcony to her death. Afterward, he would never think of her again.

But showing her fear would only get her killed more quickly. Toel had no use for the weak. She had to present him with something else.

“You’ve not invited me,” Annaig replied.

He shrugged and breathed in mist from the long, curved glass tube he held.

“I’m aware of why you haven’t been here,” he said, frost forming on his nostrils. “Are you?”

“You’re disappointed that I asked you to spare Slyr, after she poisoned me.”

“It goes beyond that. I thought you were like me, driven to excel, to rise. But you hold yourself back, and there isn’t anything I can do about that.”

“Then why am I here?” she asked.

“Because still you intrigue me. You invent marvelous things. I hope to reach you, at last.”

The hairs behind Annaig’s ears pricked up at the ominous sound of that.

“I do wish to please you, Chef,” she said.

“Do you?”

“Yes. But in my own way.”

“By definition, you can only please me by catering to my desires.”

Annaig shook her head, tightening her belly to act bold. “That is only the beginning,” she said. “A child’s idea of pleasure.”

“What is a child?” Toel asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “My point is that the best chef cooks what the patron never knew he wanted.”

“And what is it that I don’t know I want?”

“That is for me to show you,” Annaig said, trying to sound playful. “And it cannot be rushed.”

“And yet, I feel impatient,” Toel said, “and perhaps a bit condescended to.”

She forced a smile. “But still I intrigue you.”

“I cannot deny it,” he said, inhaling again.

He looked off into the distance for a long moment, and then returned his attention to her.

“There will be a banquet,” he said, “some days hence. It will be for the court of Umbriel himself. Four kitchens have been invited to present a tasting for Lord Rhel, Umbriel’s steward-mine, and those of Phmer, Luuniel, and Ashdre. Whichever kitchen pleases the steward most will cook for Umbriel. I need not tell you that it must be my kitchen that wins.”

“It goes without saying, Chef.”

“Phmer is our chief competition, to my mind. She is known for her creativity. Before Phmer, there were only eight essential savors: salty, bitter, piquant, sweet, sour, ephemerate, quick, and dead. But Phmer found a ninth sensation of taste, which has no name, and all attempts to duplicate it or ascertain how it is created have failed. And so, Annaig, although you may tantalize me with these desires you know I have which I myself do not, this is what I tell you now: You will find this ninth savor for me. If you do not, any other plans you have to gratify me are moot. Do you understand?”

“I do, Chef,” Annaig said. “I won’t fail.”

“Indeed,” he replied. She couldn’t tell if it was an affirmation or a question. “Now you may go.”

“A few questions, Chef,” she said.

“What are they?”

“Do you have a sample of this ninth taste, so that I might know what I’m trying to duplicate?”

“I don’t have any, no.”

“Have you ever tasted it yourself, Chef?”

For a moment his face might have been cast in stone.

“No,” he finally said.

“Can you at least tell me if it is a spiritual or gross substance?”

“We may assume spiritual, as only the highest lords have tasted it.”

“Thank you, Chef.”

Her knees were shaking when she left, and she felt profoundly unreal, as if she were watching this all happen to someone else. She returned to the kitchens, attempting to stay calm, to focus-trying to understand where she had to start.

She was sure she could duplicate anything she could taste, but that wasn’t in the offering. That left her with what seemed an impossible task, but it was pointless to entertain that notion, wasn’t it? She had to assume that it was possible. Phmer had done it, after all. Had it been an accident, or a design?

She went to her private bench, far from the hustle and bustle of the stations, and began idly thumbing through the various powders, liquids, distillations, and ferments in her cabinet. She fiddled with the flow of soul force through the refraxor, but after an hour of that pushed back and placed her face in her palms. Her brain didn’t seem to work at all. Sighing, she went back to her room, but her thoughts flowed no better there, so in the end she gave up and opened a bottle of wine.

She was on her second glass when Slyr entered.

“I’m sorry,” the other woman said. “You’re never here this early in the day. I-”

“No, join me,” Annaig said. “I’m just thinking.”

“Well, I’ve no wish to disturb you.”

“Sometimes talking helps me think.” She pulled over a second cup and poured more wine. “Have a drink, talk.”

Slyr looked uncertain but did as she was told.

“What do you know of Phmer’s ninth savor?” Annaig asked.

“I’ve heard of it,” Slyr said cautiously.

“Before I came to Umbriel, I knew of only four or five essential flavors. When I was taught to cook, I was told that the success of a good dish was in the inclusion and balancing of these sensations. When I came here, you, Slyr, taught me that there were three more, all of a spiritual nature.”

“Quick, dead, and ephemerate,” Slyr supplied.

“So I’m thinking,” Annaig said. “I taste the five gross senses on different parts of my tongue, and I read long ago that the tongue is grown to interpret such flavors. But I cannot, like the lords, taste the difference between quick and dead. I might discern that a wiggling shrimp is alive and a still one dead, but the taste is the same, because my tongue isn’t designed for that distinction. And as for ephemerate, that’s another thing entirely, isn’t it? Those are the ‘flavors’ we make with souls. The tongue doesn’t taste them, although that’s generally how they are introduced, since they’re presented as food. But really, the skin or eyes can taste them equally as well-and ephemerate isn’t a single kind of flavor, but hundreds, thousands, of very different things made possible by the cuisine spirituelle. Like the terror you tasted the other day, or the joy I could create tomorrow. How does that compare with the electric vitality of raw, unrefined soul energy, or the needling pleasure of filple?”

Slyr took a drink. “So you’re thinking that the ninth savor can’t be ephemerate, then? That it must be a new material flavor?”

“Or something completely different, as different from the ephemerate as the ephemerate is from salty and piquant.”

“How can such a thing be discovered, then? If one knew only piquant, sour, and sweet, how would you guess that salty existed and learn how to make it?”

Something shaped itself in her mind then, a worm that might become an idea.

“Especially if one had no tongue,” Annaig pursued, her thoughts racing. “That is our dilemma.”

“Our?”

“You are still my assistant, Slyr.”

“I know that,” she said. “I only thought-”

“I’m giving you another chance,” Annaig said. “One more, do you understand?”

Slyr nodded vigorously, and then her eyes narrowed.

“You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?”

Annaig smiled. “It’s not what you think.”

“What, then?”

“I think I might be able to hit twice with the same stone,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Toel believes that I am not ambitious enough, that I’m not willing to do what I have to do to survive and get ahead.”

“Yes,” Slyr said. “I’ve heard him say so.”

“I’ll get the ninth savor,” Annaig promised. “And I’ll show Toel just how far I’m willing to go.”

“How?”

“I’m going to steal it from Phmer.”

Slyr’s eyes widened and her mouth parted.

“That’s impossible,” she said.

“Look,” Annaig said, drinking a bit more wine. “We can work for two weeks to invent this thing-and probably fail-or we can go where we know it already exists, and spend that time learning how best to use it to please Umbriel.” She sat back. “I think it’s what Toel intends me to do. I think this is a test he has devised.”

“That does sound like him,” Slyr admitted. “But to invade another kitchen, to pass all their safeguards and survive, much less escape being caught-I can’t imagine how it could be done.”

“I can,” Annaig told her. “I know how to learn secret ways, and I know recipes for concealment that-with a bit of work-ought to keep me undiscovered.”

“I’m not sure you understand,” Slyr said. “Even if you escape-if Phmer finds any evidence that you stole from her, she can demand Toel give you to her, and he must do so. That is the law. Perhaps that is even what Toel has in mind for you.”

“Then I had better not be caught,” Annaig said. “Or leave trace of my visit.”

Slyr’s face hardened into an expression of determination.

“Tell me what I can do to help,” she said. “I will not fail you.”

“You had better not,” Annaig said. “This really is your last chance. You must understand that.”

“I understand,” Slyr replied.

“Good. I’ll let you know when I need something.”

Glim unfolded the note from Annaig the skraw Jernle had handed him. It was written in the jumble language of their childhood-which only the two of them understood-although Glim hadn’t seen any evidence that anyone on Umbriel could read in any language. Still-avoiding leeches was better than picking them off.

What are you up to, Nn? he thought. For a moment he considered refusing the request until Annaig agreed to make something to replace the vapors. He followed her logic, understood why she couldn’t do it, but still, something about her refusal bothered him. Maybe it was because she didn’t take him seriously, that she thought her cause was bigger than his. And it was, wasn’t it? How many of his people-his relatives-had died because of Umbriel?

But the skraws weren’t to blame for that. They didn’t even know it had happened.

But someone was responsible.

He turned to Wert, who was watching him patiently.

“I need detailed information concerning the kitchen of Phmer,” he said. “Bribe the pantry workers, if you must.”

“More maps?” Wert inquired.

“No. More than that.” He paused. “And let’s see what happens if some of the middens stop draining. That should get someone’s attention.”

Wert’s face broke into a huge grin. “At last!” he said. “Which ones?”

“You decide,” Glim said. “I need to have a second look at something.”

Everything led to the sump, which meant lots of things led away from it as well. Early on Glim had found his way to the trees of the Fringe Gyre.

The flying island of Umbriel was a rough cone, with the apex pointed down. The sump was a basin in that cone, and most of the population of the city lived in warrens in the stone. The lords lived on the upper edge in their delicate habitations of metal and crystal. But another world sprouted from the verge of the rim, enormous trees whose roots sank deep into the rock where vesicles from the sump fed and watered them, and whose boughs and branches flowed far out from the island like a sort of lacy collar, bending in a rightwise whorl. It was a world of strange birds and weird gardens growing from intentionally rotted places in the wood, of fruits and nuts and warbling monkeylike things.

Next to the sump, he liked this place most, and sometimes better. Part of it was the feeling of freedom the place afforded, but part of it was a familiarity that spoke to him almost below the level of consciousness, a sense of intrinsic belonging he’d lost months ago.

The view, however, was disturbing. If he looked to the horizons, he saw plains and forest, softened and made beautiful by distance. If he looked down, however, that was another story. Any open ground revealed the thousands of corpses walking, animated by Umbriel’s larvae.

The ground was very open now. Umbriel had changed direction, taking them east over vast mountains, and below them was heath and snow, and few trees to hide the undying. They seemed numberless, and-perhaps worst of all-organized, marching in a rough semblance of ranks.

“I haven’t seen you lately,” a pleasant feminine voice quietly said.

He glanced up but already knew who it was.

“Hello, Fhena,” he said.

With her charcoal complexion and red eyes, Fhena might have been a Dunmer woman of about twenty years. But she was no more Dunmer than Wert was human, and since Umbrielians were born adult, he’d reckoned from their earlier conversations she was probably no more than five or six years old. She wore her usual blouse and knee-shorts; today the former was green and the latter yellow.

“Did you bring me more orchid shrimp?” she asked hopefully.

“No,” he said, “but I thought you might like these.”

He handed her a pouch, which she took with an expression of purest delight. But when she saw what was inside, her look wandered toward puzzlement.

“Kraken barnacles,” he explained.

She pulled one out of the bag. It was about the size and shape of a large shark tooth, smooth and dark green, with a wet, tube-like appendage sticking out of the wide end.

She bit the tooth-shaped shell.

“Hard,” she said.

“Here,” he said. “Let me show you.”

He took the barnacle, gave it a squeeze so the shell cracked, then pulled out the soft mass inside by the projecting stalk. He handed it to Fhena, who bit into it, chewed a moment, and then laughed.

“Good, yes?” Glim said. “Those are native to the seas around Lilmoth, where I grew up. The taskers must have collected some and brought them up, because they’ve suddenly started growing in the sump.”

“Delicious,” she agreed. “You always find some way to surprise me.”

“I’m glad to be of service,” Mere-Glim said.

“But I’m not often able to repay the favor,” she replied.

“You might today,” he said. “Tell me about the trees.”

“The trees?”

“Yes.” He tapped on the nearest branch.

“I’m not sure what to say about them,” she replied.

“Well,” he said, trying to think how to go about this, “I’ve noticed that they produce nuts and fruit and even grains, of a sort. But what else?”

“What else?” She clapped her hands. “Salt and sugar, acid and wine, vinegar and sulfur, iron and glass. The trees have a talent for making things-they just have to be told how.”

“Who tells them?”

She looked thoughtful. “Well, I’m not sure,” she said. “They’ve been making most things for so long, I think they may have forgotten. Or at least they don’t talk about it. They just tell us when something needs doing, or collecting, or when something isn’t right and them in the kitchens must help.”

“Wait a minute,” Glim said. “The trees talk to you?”

“Of course. Can’t you hear them?”

“Almost,” Glim said. “Almost. But what does it mean?”

Her eyes had widened, and he realized his spines were puffed out and he was giving off his fighting odor. He tried to calm himself.

“What’s this about, Glim?” she asked.

“It’s about me,” he said. “It’s about my people, and why they died.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “But I can see how upset you are. Can you explain?”

Glim thought about that for a long moment. Annaig would tell him not to trust the girl; she didn’t trust anyone on Umbriel. But Fhena had only ever helped him.

“I would like to explain,” he finally said. “Because it might mean something to you. It might make you think of something. So don’t be afraid to interrupt me.”

“I won’t,” she replied.

“I’ve told you before; I’m from a place named Black Marsh. My people call themselves the Saxhleel, and others call us Argonians.”

“I remember. And you said all of your people are the same.”

“The same? Yes, compared to your people. We all have scales, and breathe beneath the water, that sort of thing. Umbriel chooses your form when you are born. Mine is chosen by-ah-heritage.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not important right now. We can talk about that later. What’s important is this; there is another race in Black Marsh-the Hist. They are sentient trees, and we are-connected to them. They are many and they are one, all attached at the root, and we, too, are joined to that root. Some say we were created by the Hist, to see for them the world where they cannot walk. They can call us or send us away. When we are named, we take of the sap of the Hist, and we are changed-sometimes a little, sometimes very much.”

“What do you mean, ‘changed’?”

“A few twelves of years ago, our country was invaded from Oblivion. The Hist knew it was going to happen, and called our people back to Black Marsh. Many of us were altered, made ready for the war that we had to fight. Made stronger, faster-able to endure terrible things.”

“I’m starting to understand,” Fhena said. “You’re saying the Hist are much like the trees of our gyre.”

“Yes. But not the same. They don’t speak to me as the Hist did. But you say they speak to you.”

“Not in words,” she replied. “They dream, they experience, they communicate needs. I can’t imagine them making a plan, as you describe.”

“But their sap can alter things, like that of the Hist.”

“Oh, yes. But as I said, usually they have to be told.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “I still don’t understand why this is so upsetting to you.”

“The Hist are supposed to be unified,” Glim said, “but at times certain trees have gone rogue, broken away from the others. It happened long, long ago in my city, and I think it happened again, not long before your world entered mine. A rogue tree helped Umbriel somehow, do you understand? It helped kill many, many of my people so they could serve Umbriel as dead things. And now I think it may have helped summon Umbriel here in the first place. Can you remember-”

But Fhena’s eyes had become unfocused with memory. He stopped and waited.

“We were in the void,” she said. “Nothing around. And then the trees began to sing a strange song, one I had never heard before. They sang and sang. It was beautiful. No one could remember such a thing happening before. And then we were here. They still sing it, but quietly now. Listen.”

She took his hand and pressed it to the bark. It was strange, the roughness of the tree and the supple warmth of her hand, and for a moment that was all he experienced. But then she began to hum, and something seemed to turn in his head, and the soft burring that was all he had ever heard from the Fringe Gyre before suddenly sharpened and he heard it in tune with Fhena’s humming, a faint, rising and falling tone, along with a thousand harmonics, as if each seed and leaf had its own note to add. And he knew that melody, had known it since before his birth. The Hist sang it.

But the Fringe version was a little different-simpler. Still, it drew him, pulling him out of language and thought, and for a long, long time he knelt there with Fhena’s hand on his, feeling newborn, empty, at one.