Allory Fae and the Dragon's Whiskers

THE SCINTILLANT FAERIE TOOK a deep, centring breath before marching into the hidden inner colony room. Quite the fanciest cocoons she had ever seen. Gorgeous Faesilk tapestries depicting famous scenes out of Faerie history hung on the walls, exquisitely crafted by the finest Scintillant Fae artisans, while the family cocoons hanging above and around her from their braided arsbinse cords were equally marvellous, each singularly woven with different patterns adorning the pure white Faesilk exteriors. All had diamonds and light blue sapphires woven into their structures. Gorgeous riches.

All a thousand leagues out of her experience.

"General?"

Certainly not jungle-ready, these cocoons. Not by any stretch under Middlesun. She wondered where this place was. Where and when she had come to, that Scintillant Fae were able to live openly amongst such unfamiliar baubles and treasures and even desired to do so?

"General Allory? The leaders of the Scintillant tribes have gathered as you requested."

Touching the twin zalish blades by her sides – sized for a Scintillant tinier than any other, of course, apart from the Faelings – Allory glanced about in confusion, trying to get her bearings. Suggids! The colony room was more crowded with Scintillants than she had ever seen in her life. So many variations on the sapphire with spiky hair theme. So many people like her, yet as always she was the smallest, and held herself erect as if posture might somehow substitute for stature.

"General!" The lad beside her hissed in her ear and pinched her arm at the same time. "Are you having one of your turns?"

"General … turns? Uh, suggids?"

"What's my name?"

Shaking her antennae slightly, she glanced at the young Faerie who had flown in beside her. Her eyes brightened. Umm, dishy. He overshadowed her by at least six inches and wore ceremonial silver armour. "Jynnari, we've known each other since –"

"Jandazari," he said, with a sigh. "Jynnari is my great-grandfae. He always said you'd go doolally-sap from time to time."

"Eep?"

"Yep. And please don't look at me like I'm a gourd of tasty nectar. It's gross. You're old enough to be my great-grandfae and possibly a great deal –"

"Eep!"

"– older than that," he finished, with a ruthless air.

Allory blinked and stopped herself from pulling on her antennae. "Right …"

"How old do you think you are?"

"Presently?" Allory lowered her voice, acutely aware of how conversation in the colony room had stilled at her entrance. Apparently, she had a reputation. Much of it involved Scintillants scowling darkly at her. "Nineteen?"

His wings buzzed in shock.

Nonetheless, Jandazari – her ally in this pollen-brained venture, she had to assume – drew himself up and announced in a ringing voice, "General Allory Fae!"

General? General? It would help if she could remember one iota of how that had come about!

What complete and utter pollen-brain had put a sparkly troublemaker in charge of the military? A Scintillant Fae military? Did she have the troops dancing their way into battle with excess scintillance playing off their gleaming armour?

How could this be anything but a misplay in her memories?

Yet it was so weird and ridiculous, it felt right. She could not have dreamed this up herself. Enter Allory Fae, Spheris-dominating dictator, mighty commander of something she had not the first whiff of the nectar about? Suggids! Right.

Across from her an elderly, hard-faced Scintillant with one missing antenna rose into the air, her face assuming an even graver expression than before, unlikely as that seemed. Her mind evaluated the room for threats, tasting the nuances of its hostility, of the emotional pangs and hardships of these people. Many struck her at thin, brittle vines, stretched almost to breaking point by the circumstances which must have driven her actions.

"General. Thank you for gracing this meeting with your presence, albeit a whole hour late," the woman said drily. "Having put our entire assembly at grave risk by your thoughtless actions in summoning us to this secret council, I trust you will promptly come to the point of the spear with your crucial, drop-everything, life-or-death proposal?"

Gulp.

If only she could remember the proposal … if her ridiculous tongue would wag and say something sensible, like –

"Annioli Fae?"

What? Who under Middlesun is Annioli Fae?

A titter shot around the room. She heard a few uncomplimentary comments over the hubbub, something to do with her being on the fizzy nectar again, a sharp comment about 'that madfae' and 'what did you expect from a runt?' Shame burned in her craw. Immediately. The reaction had been with her all her life – yet here, she was supposed to be a General. Bossing Fae around the jungles. Someone with battle experience. The antagonistic swelling of their babble made her sway before she caught the movement.

The hard-faced Fae said, "Are you quite in your right mind, Allory Fae?"

"My sap's as clear as a cenote, as far as runts go," she riposted.

That frosted out an epic silence. Even Annioli appeared taken aback. A far stronger response than she had expected? Frighteningly strong. Born from the nectar of the cruellest pain.

Suddenly, she remembered what she had learned from Queen Istrazuki. Historically, in many places across the breadth of Faedom and its disparate tribes, the runt of the seven pupae-siblings was seen as accursed. In many cases they were murdered, perhaps suffering an unfortunate 'accident' early on during their Faeling years. Not every litter of Faelings had a runt. However, the seventeen percent of the time it did happen – how she knew this figure off the top of her antennae she again had no idea – it was seen as a sign of weakness, of stigma, even of wrongdoing on the part of the parents. Killing was regarded as a mercy both for the community and the benighted creature.

How had she survived?

Placing her hands upon her blades, she said quietly, "A shame I wasn't terminated early on? A pox and a curse upon the cocoon that sheltered my worthless life?"

Hisses and curses!

Annioli rapped, "Now is not the time! General, you are out of line."

"Am I? Is the truth not to be spoken in this assembly?"

"We cannot and will not change the culture and customs of all Faedom here, General," the woman said. Did regret shade her tone? Shame? Could this Annioli actually be a secret ally? "Faerie are dying whilst we argue. Why did you invoke the norm-i tyrion, the Rite of Ascent, in order to demand this meeting? Explain yourself."

"Aye. Explain yourself," a male voice interrupted. It belonged to a stalwart male Scintillant of elder middle years, his sapphire hair shot with white. "I am Tolimon of Fanlae-Shira. May I address the Council?"

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A grumble of assent greeted his words.

Not the prettiest sound. Was this Fae a leader of a faction of this company? A substantial faction, if she judged correctly.

Annioli said, "Speak with the quickening sap of honour, Councillor."

Not a subtle rebuke. The General seethed.

He nodded courteously, but when he turned to Allory, it was with a voice of veiled poison. "You know that I hold nothing against a Faerie of your stature, General Allory Fae, nor does our tribe fail to honour all life as we judge to be right and proper. You know our mores and our traditions. Yet I have more than once challenged you in Council to identify yourself truly to our company, that we might weigh your counsel in all its fullness."

She frowned slightly. "Councillor?"

"Know this, General. Whatever your proposal is, if you are not fully known to us, I and the tribe I am honoured to serve will immediately and irrevocably vote against it." Allory sucked in her lips. "Aye. We cannot and will not find agreement in our nectar. Nor, in addition, will we fail to counsel every Fae tribe and leader represented here to act against your base untrustworthiness – for again, you are more than aware of the speculations amongst the tribes, which I shall not repeat here as I do not believe most of it myself. What I wish to convey is that whatever you say, as a stranger to our sap, it will be held as worthless as the stench of rancid nectar in our nostrils."

Hints, pollen on the breeze … her mind seethed as if it were an antheap infested with scintillance, trying to make – or remake – crucial connections.

"Whatever your challenge is," she heard herself say, "I promise I shall face it – but I will neither betray my tribe nor my birth that the so-called kinship-avengers should move against them."

What were kinship-avengers? Her mind swirled with strange tangs before settling upon a definition of Faerie who were zealous for a vision of purity of their kind, a form of purity which did not include physical weaknesses. Those with wing-defects, limb deformities, colouration differences and other undesirable characteristics, in their view, were not fit for Fae life and should be excised from amongst the congregation of the Fae. No-one knew the true number of attacks and assassinations they had carried out, nor how many communities had even given them an open invitation. Many Scintillants openly held to these views, in which they were no different to the wider Faerie tribes.

Delightful, her people.

Here she hovered amongst their leadership, the great and important ones of her nation, and she sensed what they thought of her. In some it was plain to see, in others, only to be known by the colours of their hearts' sap. Trenchant rage burned in the soul-sap of her Fae life. She must not give in. Take the higher path. The way of true scintillance.

By that same flash, she knew this might be the hardest thing she could ever endeavour.

"Good, because I do not wish to endanger your kin by speaking of that type of heritage." Tolimon smiled thinly. "General Allory Fae, thank you for accepting my challenge. Accordingly, I charge you upon the word of your honour to reveal your true sap to us."

Pandemonium!

Sapphire Scintillants exploded into the air inside the room, some rebounding off the tapestries or using the dangling family cocoons as platforms for their yelling. Stunned, Allory could make no sense of it all. What under Middlesun had she ever done to engender this reaction? To say that she must have done something to split opinions was like saying Scintillants were blue. She gazed at the fracas in utter consternation. What were the competing pressures here in the room? The nuances, the ties that bound and the prejudices that divided? Where was the leadership, the unity, the well-whetted awareness of dangers that surely must threaten the Fae nation and had – possibly subsequently to this time – led to the downfall of her people?

Through the crowding bodies, her eyes met Annioli Fae's keen gaze.

What did she read there? The woman nodded slightly as if seeking to prompt a certain response that Allory for the life of her could not fathom at this point.

She was a youngster somehow squeezed into the gourd of an older body, a Faeling when it came to conflict, a babe in terms of courage. The Councillor had trapped her like the naïve Faeling her inmost fears would paint her to be. Yet Allory recalled how she had stared down a Fire Raptor and called him all the insults she knew. She had crossed mountains and battled Giants and – grim chuckle – turned down a marriage proposal from a perfect sap-sizzler of a hero. That was the Allory she knew. This General? Not so much, but as a fresh awareness settled in her sap, she knew one thing she could offer them which she knew for certain. One gift, one act of defiance, one revelation that might just get her killed if their aversion to her paucity of physical stature or her unknown reputation was anything near as savage as she suspected.

Then … why was she here? Why had this General Allory called a meeting?

Why act so brazenly, when all she knew of her people's heritage and history was the opposite – that the one, singular instinct of the Scintillant Fae was to hide and hide deep, never offering another creature so much as a glimmer of scintillance.

Was that why the ability had as much as died out?

Until her?

Allory stared across at Annioli Fae and racked her fragile brain for an answer to the reality of her conundrum, that somehow in time's mysterious shadows she had lost track of her purpose. The name Annioli had to mean something important. Certainty burned in her life's sap. It foreshadowed a crucial intervention for which she was about to risk everything.

All it required was blind faith in a future – or past – that remained opaque to her.

Would this work? Councillor Tolimon's disguised antipathy was only the topmost leaf of an entire jungle; a tangled web of politics, discrimination and filth far deeper than anything she ever wanted to plumb.

Before she knew it, Allory nodded fractionally.

A dark sapphire eyebrow arched in clear query: did she know what she was doing?

Not the first bud.

Inclining her head to the manfae still buzzing by her right side, she whispered, "Jandazari, what exactly did your great-grandfae tell you about me?"

"He said you would be strange-sap and fey, but true in ways I could not imagine," he hissed back, his eyes darting about the congregation. "He called you a Traveller and ordered that I was to protect you with my life. You have not made that last part easy, General Allory."

His head jerked as if he regretted the slip of his tongue.

"I can only imagine."

Her dry humour drew an equally dry chuckle from her escort. "Aye. Your apparent eternal youth is hardly their only complaint."

A Traveller? Perhaps she had overstayed her welcome in this time. Perhaps she had felt forced to? Had Allory been here before? Lived a parallel life or one long before her own, yet as connected to it as any Fae was to the flow of her own sap?

Before Allory could ponder more upon this oblique reference, Anniori Fae rose into the air and clapped her wings sharply. Her natural scintillance burst forth, creating two flashes that briefly outshone the light pouring into the room from a concealed alcove above. This appeared to be a well-understood signal. The arguments quickly faded into a low mutter before all the august and great ones of the Scintillant nation settled themselves into a form of decorum that this girlfae strongly suspected would last about as long as the breath it would take to make her claim.

Annioli said, "General Allory will speak."

Deep breath. Into the silence, her voice chimed with increasing, wintip-tingling power, "Friends, I requested your presence here today because I believe there has never been a greater need for all Faerie to be united at this time of severe duress. We Scintillants have a vital role to play in the future of our nation, and there is a grave need for secrecy –" she paused, still unable to drag the necessary information out of her memory "– and so, as the Councillor Tolimon has requested, I wish to address you under the rite of norm-i tyrion, with the absolute confidentiality it demands. Is this fully understood by all?"

Her glare about the room met with mutters of assent. Mostly. Many still appeared openly affronted, one voice behind her back even called, "Grow up, General. We're waiting."

Rough laughter.

So hilarious, she forgot how to laugh.

Instead, Allory searched within for a form she had never knowingly summoned before, either in public or in private. The process was like an inhalation except for the ariavanae rather than air. In one sense, this was the magic she imbibed every day because of who she was.

It was her true sap.

In a voice stronger still, Allory chimed, "By oath thrice bound upon the very sap of my Faerie magic, life and soul, I declare to all present that truly, I am an Elemental Fae, and the Scinntarinae of the Scintillant people."

Had she embodied as Fire Raptor in the room, they would not been no less shocked.

Then, with one voice, the Council erupted in outrage.

"Necromancer!"

"Darksap! Her power is darksap!"

"Filthy Wraithspawn!"

"Die!"

"The runt must die!"

The last cry was loudest. It arose in at least five locations around the room, as best she could tell in the heat of the moment. Concentrations of wild, seething magic developed in those loci; a usage of Scintillant power she had never encountered before. Allory began to spin her sparkles about to assess the danger, when a synchronised wave of attacks speared toward her at the speed of light and Jandazari flung himself in the way to save her.

Brave but futile.

The room flashed as with lightning. The dreadful light attacks seared through her being, passing through her for the most part, but young Jandazari was not so fortunate in interrupting three of the beams, two in the torso and one against his legs. Vile magic seared against her awareness. Spinning, falling, fading, Allory retained just enough consciousness to hear and smell the horrific sizzling of his flesh, to observe the expression of surprise that briefly creased his features before his antennae burned up completely and his wings fell limp.

He crashed to the Faesilk-carpeted floor. She drifted in a dissipating cloud of near-white motes. Allory wanted to reach for him. Horrifically burned as he was, Jandazari still breathed in shallow rasps of the uttermost suffering. She strove to reach him, to summon her healing power. Just one touch …

The ever-infolding bounty of Soul Blossom's life claimed her instead.