by David Guymer
Anna gave him an approving nod.
“And everyone not of an age to fight, lord?” said Salter.
Fredric drew a deep breath, felt the cool air in his lungs harden his heart.
“Point them in the direction of Forthyn and Highmont, chamberlain. Tell them to run while they still can.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Greyfox
The Whispering Forest, South Kell
Starchaser was blowing hard, eyes wide and nostrils flared, tossing his head this way and that. It was the forest. It terrified him, and rightly so. Greyfox had lived in or near it all her life and it still terrified her. Exhausting all her gifts to calm the poor horse, Greyfox vaulted lightly from the saddle. Wading a short distance into the thick carpet of moon-dappled ferns, she lowered her good ear to the hard earth and listened.
Roots creaked as they delved deeper into darkness. Oaks, birches and yews that had weathered the coming and going of three Darknesses, and the cataclysms of the elves before them, armored themselves in lichens and mistletoe, and drew their spirits into harder woods. Somewhere nearby, a stream gabbled with unseemly haste, while in the canopy, high above, dark-feathered and ill-omened birds twittered of evil tidings. She breathed in. Moss and bark filled her nose with their scents. A slow fear filled her heart, but could not quite do away with the grief.
Her mother’s bow. It was all she had had left except for memories.
At least she had been able to save the string.
She eased herself up off the ground, making less noise of it than a furtive rabbit in the undergrowth.
Trees stalked away from her in all directions, in ranks a thousand years deep. The stream was to her left. It was not one she knew and she had thought she knew them all. The forest was changing, reordering the paths through it as it hardened its boundaries like a nut before a long winter. The Whispering Forest was one of the last refugees where the “Lays of the First”, the song that had made the universe, embittered and fragmented though its notes had become, could still be heard. Its grumbling and creaking was a lament for the end of a world already lost to time.
She had come too deep.
It was dangerous for her to be here, even had she been fully elven, but there was no helping it.
All the talk of the wild was of the Uthuk Y’llan.
If she meant to reach her friends and allies in the north ahead of the swarm, then she had no choice now but to be bold and brave the forest’s knotted heart.
Even the assault of the blue knight on her hideout was starting to seem providential. Without it, she might never have got out in time, and been caught between the Uthuk Y’llan and the forest for better or worse.
The evil would pass. Of course it would. As evil had in the past and would do again in the future. Whatever fears the forest and its creatures held on the matter. There would be blood. Naturally. There would be anguish, and upheaval, and anarchy – and Greyfox intended to profit mightily from it all because, as far as she was concerned Terrinoth’s Twelve Baronies were past due a little anarchy. When Harriet the Willful had led her peasant uprising to power in Frest, Greyfox had looked south across their shared border with expectation and envy. How many times had she dreamed of some similar revolution sweeping Kell? But she had been disappointed. However much muck Harriet’s commoner ancestors had or hadn’t shoveled over Frestan fields the “usurper baroness”, as she was quaintly known by the rest of the Twelve still lived in a castle and garbed herself in silk and jewels.
Power had changed her, Greyfox thought. She was no different than what had come before.
But when there were no more jewels? When there were no more fine clothes, no more castles, when the Uthuk Y’llan had swept those things into the western sea and all that was left was Greyfox and her band of believers, kept safe by the Whispering Forest, then the few folk who were left would be ready for a new way.
Greyfox’s way.
A creak shivered from the darkness of the wood. It lingered a moment, distinct from the low song of the forest, then died away and was taken up again elsewhere. She turned. There was a low chittering, as of an insect or a reptile, the snap of a twig underfoot.
Greyfox felt for the grip of her knife. It was bound in leather, by a human tanner in Carregolt, with a black iron spearpoint blade stuffed into her breeches.
She missed her mother’s bow.
The night was dark. Heavy branches crowded the moon from the sky. But elven senses were as keen as anything that walked or flew or sniffed along Mennara’s ground. Something in the darkest depths of the old forest was stirring. Something with wrathful blood and scaled bodies. Something with no love of the forest but neither, some elven intuition told her, any friend of the Uthuk Y’llan. It awoke as a reaction, not to a summons.
For the good or ill of Greyfox, she did not know.
For the good or ill of Kell, she did not much care.
The thick layer of ferns behind her rustled.
She grinned, stretching the scar that ran through her face and the ruin of her ear. The dull pain as it pulled reminded her of the first and last time she had ever been caught.
She swung around, drawing her dagger.
Her pursuer stood beneath a moonbeam, golden haired and pale skinned, her eyes the same sharpened blue as the edges of her plate. The forest did not appear to have touched her in her passing. Even Greyfox harbored a scratch or two and a leaf in her hair. The woman put her hand over the knife blade and spoke a short word in the draconic tongue. Smoke plumed from her closed fist and the iron blade melted in her hand.
“You followed me,” said Greyfox. “How on Mennara?”
The blue knight tossed a coin to the ground beside her. “With this,” she said, and struck the knife edge of her hand across the elf’s temple.
And then Greyfox knew only the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Andira Runehand
The Whispering Forest, South Kell
Two heavyset men in tattered robes and worn sandals hauled the unconscious elf up against a tree. Once there, the men sat her up and bound her. Half a day in Gwellan had been enough for them to imbibe every possible fairy tale about the bandit queen and the supernatural powers she held over moors and forest, and the pilgrim-soldiers that followed Andira Runehand were nothing if not superstitious folk.
They were taking no chances.
Andira leant wearily against a nearby tree while they worked.
Whether it was the elf’s doing or not, the forest did feel uncomfortably close. As if to warn them that they were unwelcome here. She could hear a stream running somewhere nearby, and that brought with it mixed solace. It should be easy enough to find, come the dawn, and to follow it from there to its outlet in the Lothan or the River of Sleep to the west. But either course would be wrong. Insurmountably wrong. Her destination was north. The same titanic pull that she had felt since encountering Baelziffar’s plans for the mortal plane still drew her by the hand. And when she looked around her, in that arboreal and earthly place, she heard not the sibilant whisperings of an old forest but those of Baelziffar the demon king, mocking her failure to oppose him in the proper place. Looking upwards, where the silver tracts of stars and moon pierced the canopy, she saw only the rents made in the firma dracem by his claws.
Another might have seen such omens and been fearful, but Andira could not recall ever having felt such a thing. She was not certain she was capable of it, as if there was something inside of that was fundamentally missing or she had been made better by being who she had become. Perhaps that had even been part of the bargain she had struck to acquire this power. She did not know, and sometimes when she was still like this it bothered her that she did not even know what the price of her powers had been. It was a strange thing, she supposed, to wonder what fear felt like. Most of her followers would no doubt gladly have given theirs away too if
they could.
With the rest of her followers seemingly content to mill about in the forest without guidance, she sat down against the tree bark and allowed herself to close her eyes, telling herself it would only be briefly. She put her head back and was soon asleep.
How long she remained that way she was not sure, for none of her followers would dare disturb her without Sir Brodun there to put them to it, and it was still night when she awoke, still sitting against the same tree. She gave her head a shake as if to cure it of sleep. The Greyfox’s horse, who had been set, unwatched, beside her, lowered his nose to her forehead and snorted through her hair.
For some reason, the unwarranted affection made her smile. She stroked his head absently. “Do not think I have forgotten who broke my ribs,” she told him.
“Andira.”
Sibhard stumbled through the undergrowth toward her. She was not sure what had become of the ranger, Yorin, only that he was no longer with them. She had sacrificed a great deal, more than she could remember, to the battle against Baelziffar, and it was only just that she allow others to make what sacrifices they would to the cause.
She supposed that put the boy in charge.
“The elf’s coming round,” he said. Even then, speaking of the captive Greyfox put a quaver in his voice.
“Good,” said Andira. “We will see now what part she plays in all of this.”
The bandit, as promised, was wide awake, struggling viciously at her bonds and snarling at the two men stood watch over her.
“Do not be so dismissive of your captors,” said Andira, lowering herself onto bent knee as one might before a sick animal. “They are simple folk but they brought you low.”
“You’re being too modest,” said the Greyfox. “It doesn’t suit a woman whose armor shines like yours.”
Andira touched her mortal hand to her breastplate. The most sought after blacksmith in Castle Talon had labored for six months to create it. Hamma had bankrupted his family to commission it for her, and then sold a castle to pay for the addition of the runic engravings that had made the metal not only practically unbreakable but surpassingly beautiful. “My armor was a gift. From a man you killed.”
The bandit queen turned her head to display her ruined ear. “So was this. From a man I killed.”
“You are a flippant creature.”
“I try to be.”
Andira pursed her lips. She found conversations even this long tiresome. “You are an elf.”
The smirk appeared again, fast and furtive like her namesake. “Are we to play a state the obvious game? My turn…”
While the elf made great show of pondering, Andira studied her face, some buried well of lore noting the gentler taper of her remaining ear, her fuller shape, the roundness of her jaw.
“You are a half elf,” she said.
The Greyfox’s expression froze briefly. The corners of her lips twitched, but it seemed she had nothing to say.
“Such unions are not uncommon in the free cities of the south,” Andira went on.
“They are uncommon here in the east,” the Greyfox muttered.
“I believe you. You could not lie to me.”
The elf snorted. “We’ll see.”
“When you attempt to deceive, even with the best of intentions, you are calling in some small way on the Ynfernael. That is why I never lie. Now, what is your real name?”
The Greyfox buttoned her lips.
“Are you one of the Daewyl elves?”
The elf’s eyes kindled with a sudden anger. She leant into her bonds, suddenly enough to startle the two guards, and spat on Andira’s hand. One of the men stepped forward, brandishing his club, until Andira stayed him with a glance.
“Don’t insult me,” the Greyfox hissed, venomous and low.
“If you are not one of that Ynfernael-worshipping tribe, then what are you?”
“What do you know about the fallen Eleventh tribe?”
“More than most humans. Less, probably, than you.”
“How?”
Andira struggled for a moment “I… do not know.”
“Or won’t say.”
“No. I do not know.”
“How can you not know?”
“I do not know that either. I wish I did.”
The elf looked around as if waiting for the laughter. Her eyebrow lifted, a smile skulking about the borders of her expression, but something in her gray eyes conceded. Andira had the unpleasant sense of a kindred heart, though she could not explain where it came from, another wayfarer content to go where the gusts of fate carried them
“Elves who dwell in human lands don’t always hold onto the old tribes,” said the Greyfox. “They tend to have good reasons for letting go. But then, learned as you are in the culture of the elves, I’m sure you knew that.” The Greyfox’s smile faltered. She looked down and gave a small sigh. “But they have long memories. My mother was a wealdcaller of the Latari but she only ever spoke of it in the songs of the Aymhelin. Such beautiful songs. Like a sunset playing on the strings of a harp. But you know how the songs of the elves can be.”
“Riddles with poetry, metaphor and lies,” Sibhard snarled, standing over Andira’s shoulder.
Andira turned slowly to glare at him and he turned quickly away.
“Then your father was human,” she said, turning back to her captive.
“Did you work that out just now?”
“Was he Uthuk?”
The Greyfox spat on the ground. “Are you trying to insult me? Or just my mother?”
“Where is he now?”
“He died.”
“How?”
“He got old.”
Sibhard scoffed at that. “You look younger than I do.”
The Greyfox tilted her head towards him. “Where did you find this one?”
The boy drew his knife. With the wound that the Greyfox had done him in the battle for the glade, he wielded it now in his left hand.
Andira threw up a hand, and he lowered the weapon.
“Bad dog,” the Greyfox sneered at him.
Andira cocked her head. “You are lying. How did your father really die?”
The Greyfox glowered for a moment, then relented. “He was hanged as a thief.”
“What we come from matters less than where we go,” said Andira, gently. “I know a little of elfkind, but more than you appear to think. I have had some dealings with the Latari of the Aymhelin forest, spent some months fighting alongside them in the Athealwel before returning north, to Frest. Even the little I know is rare lore for one of my race. More than the Latari themselves would willingly share, even amongst their own. But if you are not one of the fallen Daewyl then tell me this: what business have you with the Ynfernael?”
The elf laughed. “None at all!”
“Why do you laugh?” said Andira. “No one here is joking.”
“Yes.” The Greyfox looked around the watching faces. “I see that.”
“I hunt Baelziffar. A demon king of the Ynfernael. What his ambitions in Terrinoth are I don’t yet know, but his rise and yours are too closely aligned to be coincidental.”
“Korina’s Tears and the Lothan are in close alignment too,” said the Greyfox. “For all that they are hundreds of leagues apart, spilling from different sources and running to very different places.”
Andira paused. She was not ordinarily given to doubt but there was a poetry to the elf’s argument that touched her. “Who benefits from the weakening of Kell but the daemon king, and his mortal instruments in the Darklands?”
“I didn’t weaken Kell,” the Greyfox answered. “I happened because Kell was weak. I am the benefit to Kell.”
“And your insurrection takes no support or instruction from the Uthuk?”
“None!”
Andi
ra shifted back, shaking her head. Aside from the fact that the elf told no lies she was not certain what to believe. She wished that Hamma had been here to advise her, to challenge that certainty. He had always understood human nature better than her.
“You believe her?” Sibhard asked in disbelief. “She’s a thief and a murderer.”
“I swear it on the silver spires of the elfhome of fair Lithelin,” said the Greyfox with exaggerated somberness. “I swear it by the Lord Protector of the Light and the crown of the First King.” She looked up and managed to make a pair of complicated signs with her bound hands. “By the Lady who looks down on us now.”
Andira smiled. “Truly, your mother did not neglect your history.”
“I don’t believe this,” Sibhard scowled. “Are we going to kill her here then? Or take her back for Sir Brodun as we promised?”
Andira glanced over her shoulder at him.
She wondered if she had ever been that innocent.
“Hamma did not honestly expect me to return,” she said, as softly as she understood how. “No more than I would have expected to find him alive and waiting for me if I had honored that promise.”
The Greyfox tutted approvingly. “Cold.”
“When I need to be,” said Andira, and then raised her voice enough for all to hear. “I am satisfied that she is not tainted. Nor do I believe her to be in league with the mortal enemy from the east. Whatever her earthly crimes might be, they are not mine to punish.”
“You’ve killed plenty of her followers already,” Sibhard argued.
“Battle and cold murder are quite different things. I will take no part in the latter.”
“We can’t just cut her loose.”
“Then you kill her.”
“What?” said Sibhard.
“What?” said the Greyfox.
“I will not,” said Andira. “But I absolve myself of her. Her power is broken, for the doing of good or of evil. Her fate no longer has any bearing on mine.”