4
The Halls below the Halls
Dark things often dwell at the edges of Iohmar’s Halls.
Strange creatures reside across his lands, secure under his protection. Iohmar lets them have their space and their own magic, and they return their quiet peace. None have ever needed pushing away as the rippling monsters in their dead lands, though their magic is often ancient and foreign. Even the most troubled of fae carry respect for their king beneath the earth. Many live below the mountain itself.
As days blend into a sweet mess of time, Iohmar wonders about the knowledge of such creatures.
Neither he nor Galen grasp human time, but Iohmar knows they age rapidly. So short are their life spans that childhood is but a blink of an eye even in human standards.
The boy is not growing.
If anything, he is smaller. What color Iohmar nursed to his cheeks has faded, and as he turns the boy’s fingers in his, they appear thinner. When he lets him sleep atop his chest—a habit Galen has witnessed and found baffling—the infant is lighter, less of a plump weight and more a wisp to float away. His threads of magic still exist but grow weaker.
Each time Galen visits the king’s chambers, Iohmar catches him glancing into the crib.
He has kept his silence about the child, realizing Galen’s disapproval and not wishing to engage in the matter, but breaks it now. “He became ill when I attempted to return him to the lands above. His life faded the moment we entered the trees. He seems to be fading here as well, simply slower. Can he be ill? I’ve never seen a human react in such a way to the Fair Halls.”
Galen peers down, fiddling with the blanket, shaking his head in short movements at the new information. “It’s difficult to say how humans react to magic. Perhaps it has lasted so long only because of this place.”
Iohmar is not easily sickened, not after battles and wounds and death of his own folk, but he forces himself not to shrink. “Would you tell me how to save it, if you knew?”
Offense lights Galen’s eyes. “I do not keep truths from you. Just because I disapprove of your decisions does not make me disloyal—”
“I was merely asking.”
Silence wraps around them. Iohmar evens his expression, but shame twinges his insides. Galen is dear to him, and Iohmar knows the truth is not being twisted. To imply such was cruel.
Joining his caretaker at the crib, he says, “I apologize. I know you do not approve.”
“You are causing trouble for yourself. You haven’t named it, have you?”
“No,” he says. Like his kin, he cannot lie, and so Galen accepts the word. With greater emotion than he is used to displaying, Iohmar says, “I do not wish the child to die.”
The babe grins at them. Under Galen’s scrutiny, Iohmar forces his expression not to soften. He lets the tiny fingers wrap around his thumb. Galen’s gaze presses against him.
“You are not yet old enough to learn the ways of cheating death, if you ever will. I will never have the gift. Those who may have been able are no longer with us.”
Grief weighs in his voice for the wars waged upon their people centuries ago. Everyone lost kin, and the eldest of their kind did not take well to violence and harshness. Some merely faded, returning to the trees and grasses. Though quite ancient, Iohmar was not always the eldest among his folk. Now, finding one older than he is presents a challenge. Within the mountain, it is only his caretaker.
Sometimes, he believes Galen survived for him.
“Do not think on it so much. It is a human thing. There are so many of their kind, and they live such short lives. It may have been suffering there, but it does not appear to be here.”
As if to agree, the boy lets out a giggling squeal, tugging at Iohmar’s finger and turning his grin to Galen. Iohmar puts his shoulder to the old fae, not wishing his expression to be seen.
Galen sighs. “Do not think on it too much,” he offers again, weaker than Iohmar is accustomed to, and brushes his arm as he departs.
Despite its strange effects on humans, Iohmar’s magic and that of the heart of the woods, which seeps through his mountains and forests and silver sky, does not harm something small or weak. His magic is a growing kind, a healing, soothing kind balanced in sunlight and shadow.
But it is not enough.
Crouching in the roots circling his forest-facing window, Iohmar casts his magic to the human world above and below, piercing the mist between their worlds, sweeping across each living thing. Night has fallen. Heartbeats reach him. Insects and animals, plants and trees, faint human lives too far to be near the borders of his lands.
Stretching his magic so far drains warmth from his limbs. Returning it to his own body and the surrounding mountain, he dwells in the plants and trees woven within the walls, the birds hopping near his windows, and the human life tucked among blankets. The babe’s heartbeat is a bird’s wing, soft and quick. Rising, Iohmar slips to the crib and draws his finger down the child’s chest. He is rewarded with a soft gurgle. Nothing dark dwells within the little heart, no magic touching him from the lesser creatures of Iohmar’s Halls.
Giving in to the grasping hands, he scoops the boy to his chest and stretches along the bed.
“What to do with you?” he whispers. The child drools on his finger. It is a guilty relief to Iohmar that he must keep the boy, not return him to some distant human who may share a scrap of his blood.
The mountains give off a soft rumble, as they often do, but never with such violence as when he was a child, buried in the caverns so far below the earth that nothing living had ever ventured so low. This is a passing tremor. He has encouraged his trees and their roots to reinforce the walls within the mountain, bracing the Halls for any dangerous quakes. The tunnels and their inhabitants are under no threat.
The tunnels.
Slipping into the soft-soled shoes he rarely dons, he folds away the carved door hiding his clothing. A wealth of fine fabric shimmers in the dull light of evening. He runs his fingers along each, testing the weight and texture, the statement made, and selects the darkest of the bunch. It was gifted to him decades ago by the high queen across the realm. Rúnda has a taste for dramatic gifts, but the robe is subtle and powerful. It pools around his shoulders like evening shadow, ink dipped in water. He is well aware of the appearance of his eyes when he wears such dark clothing—bright and piercing and terrible. Fastening the threads down the front, he tucks the child within a fold of fabric near his heart.
Galen would disapprove. He would lose every shred of calm he’s maintained since Iohmar was a youngling. But as he was keen to point out, so few remain who know the ways of life and death, so few now the war has come and gone, and Iohmar is powerful but too young by quite some millennia to wield such strength. If he ever will.
There may be some in the shadows of his realm who’ve been hidden so long they’ve learned the art of saving a sick human babe. And those below are secretive. Strange. Unlikely to spread rumor their king brought a human to their lands against his own decree.
“After tonight, I may have to name you,” he murmurs against the babe’s soft head as he leaves by way of the window cavern, finding his way down instead of up.
It isn’t far to the places beneath his Halls. Hours pass, though he soon loses track, and he would be lost if not for his magic.
Tunnels spiderweb beneath his mountains, a labyrinth of lightlessness. Far down, among mushrooms pressing through hard-packed earth, spouting incandescent spores, he feels a creature of pure shadow. In his dark robes and with his quiet footsteps, he would be invisible, bathed in darkness, if not for the subtle glow of his skin. Pale light radiates wherever shadows touch him, as it has since he was a child.
