Naitachal shrugged. Nothing he had seen here shed any light on his problems. And he wasn't happy that not one of his main questions had been answered.
This is not where they practice the real magic.
Instead, this is just the place where they let the ama- teurs sit and stare at pentagrams and crystals. The answer must be somewhere in the palace, in a place I haven't seen yet.
As Soren led him to the front door, Naitachal sensed something beneath the hall, deep under- ground. It was the same ominous darkness he'd felt earlier, but stronger now, and obviously coming from directly beneath him. Soren seemed oblivious to it, which only made sense; the Dark Elf had already decided he was far from being a "real" magician. His magical abilities are probably only a notch or two above those of the poor chap back there staring at the jar.
But there was an -- entity -- down there, beneath the Hall. Alive, malicious, and very, very much aware of his presence. Something is down there, something not of Earth, and it's watching me.
He wanted to probe, to see what this thing was, but that would mean using magic. So tempting...
Perhaps this is exactly what someone has in mind.
Chap After sitting in steam for as long as they could stan Kai led Alaire out of the sowna and immediately went charging into the small lake just outside. He instructed Alaire to follow.
"Trust me!" Kai shouted.
Alaire shook his head, and regarded the lake dubi- ously. Under pretense of making certain of their privacy, which was in doubt given the leafless state of the trees separating them from the rest of the palace grounds, he hesitated for several long minutes before immersing his bare body in what had to be ice-cold water. Then finally, after increasingly scathing com- ments from Kai regarding his masculinity, he tested the water by dipping a single toe in the frigid lake.
"Aaaarrrrgh!!" Alaire shouted, leaping back from the water's edge. A thin skin of ice was forming around the shore. "You've got to be kidding!"
Kai stood waist-deep in the lake, and his expression said clearly the Prince considered Alaire's manhood to be in question after all.
A gust of chill breeze reminded him that it was win- ter above the water as well as below. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to plunge into the lake. If it will impress Kai...
The icy water instantly numbed his body. He immediately turned around, intending to get out as quickly as he had got in, and stepped into a deep depression. Cold water closed over his head He flailed his arms in panic until his feet gained purchase on higher ground. When he lurched up to the surface, clutching his sides, he tried to scream. But his voice wouldn't work.
"That's more like it," Kai said. He was getting out of the water, heading back to the sowna, where their clothes were.
"Where are you going?" Alaire managed to gasp.
Kai grinned. "Back where it's warm. It's cold in there!"
Alaire could have strangled him. But he figured this would not bode well for any future diplomatic relations with Suinomen. He followed Kai out of the lake, hip-hopping to the shore, hoping to speed up his circulation. Chagrined, he noticed that certain important portions of himself had retreated in terror into his body.
The sacrifices I make for Althea, he thought, shiver- ing his way back to the sowna.
He had no idea where Kai was taking him. They'd donned their simple clothes and headed back to the palace, without a word said about their destination.
"Where are we going?" Alaire asked casually as they entered the warmth of the palace. "We're not going out again are we?"
Kai smirked, giving his companion the impression he was keeping an amusing secret to himself. "I've already said we weren't. Besides, do you think I'd be caught dead in public in these clothes?"
Alaire shrugged, resigned to the fact he would find out where they were going when they got there. He had to admit, after the steam in the sowna, followed by the brisk dip in the icy lake, he was very much awake now. His strained muscles now felt better.
Alaire mentioned this to Kai, who replied, "The heat in the sowna, followed by the cold water, helps that. I'll bet you feel it tomorrow, though. But it won't be nearly as bad. I told you there was a good reason for everything!"
Alaire grumbled under bis breath about barbarians and torture, but the boy pointedly ignored him.
They strolled through some of the more highly decorated portions of the palace, halls covered with murals of rustic revelry. Intricate scroll work deco- rated the trim and moldings -- or rather, appeared to.
On further examination, he saw that this was an illu- sion; a skilled artist had painted the flat wood surfaces, giving the impression of sculpted plaster with cleverly depicted shadows. He wondered if this was some obscure comment on Suinomen society.
Servants stopped what they were doing and bowed deeply as they passed, but Kai didn't bask in the atten- tion as much as Alaire thought he might. He doesn't feel like a prince, Alaire said to himself. Perhaps he does feel as worthless as he says he is.
The end of the hallway opened onto a grand, com- pletely enclosed, glassed-in balcony, which overlooked the bay. This portion of the palace perched vertically upon the cliff face, as much, he reasoned, for security as for the sheer beauty of the view. Boats wallowed at their anchorages in the shallow waves of the harbor below. The sight, combined with the abundance of sun warming the balcony, made him feel slightly drowsy.
"Ah, Helena, my sweet," Kai cooed as a well- endowed maiden came flouncing over from a window seat and pecked him on the cheek. "You ready to marry me yet?"
Helena giggled, as did three other young women sprawled about on the cushioned benches set below the windows. Two of them could have been twin sisters; when Alaire appraised them from a discreet distance, he realized they probably were. Long, silky curtains hung on the walls, giving the balcony a very feminine atmosphere.
He started to feel uncomfortable as he tried to assess the kind of situation Kai had introduced him to.
This did not look like his mother's solar -- but it also did not look like anything else he recognized.
He was afraid that the young women here might be something other than the kinds of young women he should be associating with.
The prospect made his stomach quiver.
Alaire was, even at the not-so-tender age of nine- teen, still a virgin, and though naturally desirous of rectifying the situation, he knew it would be madness to even dream of doing so here and now. "Assume every friendly female you meet is in the employ of our enemies," Naitachal had said. Wise advice, Alaire reluctantly knew. Naitachal had often commented that his upbringing had an odd mixture of naivete and street smarts.
Don't get ahead of yourself, he thought. You don't know what's going on here yet. There could be an innocent explanation for all this!
Right. These are Kai's schoolmates. And those boats down there are going to take to the air and fly away like a flock of gulls.
"And who's this?" Helena said, moving clos Alaire. He unconsciously took a step backwards. "A new friend?"
"Allow me to introduce ..." Kai began, pausi Alaire's warning look. "One of the ambassadors Althea. Meet his Lordship, Alaire Re-Risto. Alaire, meet Helena."