by Ellias Quinn
“I believe you,” he said. “For now. But how will it look if you continue northwest toward the Watcher, straight into the territory of our enemies? And you saw that they didn’t care whether you three were hurt. When they capture you, I doubt they will treat you better than we have.”
Dask’s ears lowered in frustration. “Okay, Your Smartness, we get it.”
“You will stay with us, then, ensuring everyone’s safety. Yes?”
Matil and Khelya nodded reluctantly. Ansi said something to the guard, who frowned with clear disapproval. But together they moved their arms, tilted Khelya’s flower until it touched the ground, and peeled back the net. Khelya rolled out with a yelp. They did the same for Matil and Dask, putting the nets aside in a heap.
The beetles and supplies fell in disorder, so Matil, Khelya, and Dask helped them flip right-side-up. Matil rubbed both of the beetles on the head. Olnar shuffled sideways rather grumpily, but Dewdrop wiggled her antennae.
On the stump above, Ansi looked out into the forest with a troubled gaze.
Matil watched him curiously. “Is something wrong?” she called.
“Yes, as always.” He floated to the ground, the guard following him. “Is it not the way of life?”
“But you look really worried,” she said.
“I do not look worried!” His wings sprang back up, his frown deepened, and now it was true; he looked more offended than worried.
Seeing him, the guard crouched into a battle stance and glanced between Ansi and the outsiders.
“I definitely saw some worry,” Dask said. He elbowed Khelya.
“Ow! Ow, uh…yeah,” she said. “Some worry.”
Ansi’s wings fluttered before settling. He gestured at the guard to stand down and then walked closer to the outsiders. “I’m not worried, I am…puva. I have lost something that I never had.”
“How does that work?” Khelya said.
“There is…a girl, but I can’t approach her.”
“That’s it?” Dask stretched his legs. “Just go up and talk to her. Never fails.”
“I cannot!”
“Of course you can, buddy.”
“If I do,” Ansi said, “I will be tortured by my own clan and locked up. Then, if I fail to publicly renounce the Vima daily for one year, I will be executed!”
The three outsiders exchanged glances.
Matil spoke for them. “What?”
Ansi turned to the side. “My father was chief of the Takkamakaini clan. My elder sisters, Fridda and Dag, are twins. One is a gifted magician, the other is not. Father wanted them to rule together, to share for once, but when he died, they fought to the point that it split the Takkamakaini. Two years ago, Fridda gathered around her the Taina, the strong in magic. Dag led away the Vima, the strong in arm. Since then we have been at war, a war you have already seen. It is the Vima who ambushed us earlier. So do you understand?” He lowered his voice. “I am Taina, and the beautiful lady is Vima.”
“Oh…” Matil said. “I wish we could help somehow.”
He looked at her in surprise and then narrowed his gaze. “Do you really?”
“Count on it,” Dask said. “Most alva would be more concerned with their own problems in this situation. But Matil’s a contrarian.”
She blinked a few times, embarrassed. “I just like it when things are right, and- and what he told us doesn’t sound right.” She turned to Ansi. “Can’t you leave to find her?”
“No!” he said. “No, it would be unthinkable. Just as Father gave to my sisters the clan, so he gave to me the responsibility of the clan. I will not leave.”
Dask casually tugged on one ear. “Why not get rid of your sisters?”
“Dask,” Khelya warned.
“Hey, I don’t mean what you think I mean. Just, you know, put someone else in charge. Someone smart.” He gestured at Ansi.
The Eletsol appeared shaken. “I…have not thought that way. It is against Father’s wishes also.”
“What do the Taina want?” Matil said. “Do they really want to be at war with the Vima?”
“When it first began, they wanted very much to fight. For them it was good sport. It was important to show the Vima that magic was the most powerful and that Fridda was more fit to rule. But alva died on both sides in the battles. My alva no longer desire war. I have heard the same of some Vima.”
“Then why are they still fighting?”
“The clan loves my sister,” he said. “I am smart, but they call her Tain Fridda the Smartest. They trust her. They don’t see her making mistakes or losing control. She and her closest advisors make certain that they don’t.”
“Thiffen,” said Dask. “Sounds bad.”
“It’s more than bad, you dense Ranycht,” Ansi groaned.
Dask opened his mouth indignantly, but Matil caught his eye with a shake of her head. A covert glare at Ansi seemed to settle his conscience. “Look,” he said, “I think we can help each other.”
“You can’t help me,” Ansi said. “You are outsiders in this land.”
Khelya put her hands on her hips. “You said you were given responsibility of the clan. But I don’t think it’s all that responsible for these chief ladies to keep fightin’ a war when nobody else wants to.”
Ansi paused, then paced back and forth, muttering to himself in his own language. “Alalat…”
Dask held up an encouraging fist to Khelya.
“What can I do?” Ansi said. “You’ve shown me that I am failing my father with each flight of the sun.” He dropped to his knees and struck the ground. “But I cannot take control from my sister!”
“Ferra?” the guard said, looking alarmed.
Ansi held up a hand. “Alatinnen.”
“Taking control won’t be easy,” Dask said, “though it’s not impossible. Buddy, what you need is power.”
He glared up at Dask. “Buddy is not a respectful word.”
“Sure it is!”
“Quiet.” Ansi stood, taking on his previous morose state. “I can’t get power. I lost what I had, because I assumed my sister would listen to me. She listened instead to the Maati, her council of friends, and now I merely lead scouts through the wilds.”
Dask put a hand on his chin thoughtfully.
“What about the alva of your clan?” said Matil. “You could show them the truth about your sister. If you don’t give up, there’s still a…”
The blue-winged, yellow-haired Eletsol flew over from the camp and landed. The guard thumped his chest in a salute.
Ansi spoke smoothly to the other man, who responded with a short sentence and much hard staring at the outsiders. A sharper pronouncement from Ansi got the yellow-haired man to leave.
“Who’s he?” Dask said.
“Kirra, the leader of this force,” Ansi said. “I’ve explained to him that you are not spies.”
“Leader? I thought you were in charge.”
Ansi pointed at the guard and the camp. “These men belong to Kirra. I am the chief’s son and higher in rank, so Kirra belongs to me. Even so, he doesn’t submit to my authority because he knows I hold little influence. I believe he wishes me gone, out of his way. He would have a better chance of joining the Maati then.” He opened his spiny wings and shut them again with a downward slice of his hand. “It would seem that I’m falling without wings. May the ancestors have mercy on me.”
Matil stepped forward. “You don’t have to—”
“Not now. I must leave and do my duty.” A gleam of life entered his eyes. “That ambush should not have happened in this part of our territory. I’ll speak with the clan living here to see what’s gone wrong. I will return tomorrow.” He gazed at the outsiders a moment, nodded, and took off into the branches above.
“He didn’t mean it,” Khelya said. “‘Bout the Elders. He’s wrong,
anyway. They’re the strongest beings in Eventyr. Once they wake up, everything…everything’ll be…” Her half-faded face looked wobbly. “He said they had Dyndal’s t-tomb.”
“It could be a mistake,” Matil said. “Besides, I’m certain that Myrkhar is alive.”
“That’s comforting. What if the Heilar are dead, but Myrkhar’s still alive?” Khelya covered her eyes with her hands. “We wouldn’t have a chance.”
“Don’t be so sure about Myrkhar just because Nychta’s using the Book,” said Dask. “If the other Elders are dead, it’s more than likely that Myrkhar is, too.”
“Oh, you don’t even believe in them,” Khelya said.
He smiled. “Who knows? My mind could change.”
Matil perked up her ears.
“I’m a logical guy,” Dask said, squatting down to pat Olnar’s head, “and my new theory makes perfect sense. Try this: The Elders were real alva a thousand years ago. Powerful magicians worshiped as gods by the other alva. Some ‘Elders’ got mad at the others, and they fought until they all died, either from the war or from old age. Most of the forest preferred to think of their deaths as a ‘Hibernation’ while the Eletsol had the real story the entire time. I saw the same thing in my orphanage. The nurses would tell really young kids that their parents were just asleep.”
Khelya looked sternly down at him. “That’s not what the Chivishi says about the Elders.”
The Chivishi. It was a scroll Matil had seen in Khelya’s home that recorded laws, history, and songs from past ages, from before the Hibernation.
Dask looked right back at Khelya. “The Chivishi was written by alva. You don’t think alva can lie?”
“‘Course I know they lie,” she said. “But why would they lie about somethin’ so…so…”
His smile returned, small and bitter. “Depends. Some alva lie to make power for themselves. Like Ansi’s sister. Other alva lie because they’re afraid of the truth.”
“And what’s the truth?” Matil asked. Day after day, Khelya believed Thosten and the Chivishi were true while Dask called them lies. Matil was getting frustrated. “Is there any way to know for sure?”
“Great question,” Dask said. “As far as I can tell, there’s one sure way to know the truth. It’s by looking at the world around us. You see those flowers they put us in?” The yellow, white, and pink flowers still stood over the three outsiders and the guard. “Those things live and then they die. Same with everything here. That’s the real truth.”
He was right. But when she looked at the world around her, Matil got the feeling that there was more to it than could be seen.
“Anyway, Khel,” Dask went on, “all I meant is that we’re better off if the Elders are gone for good. We’d have a chance against Nychta, and we wouldn’t need to go hunting for a human. I didn’t say it to make you feel bad.”
Khelya paused. “Sometimes it’s good to feel bad. You think harder about things then.”
The three of them gathered their scattered supply packs into one pile as light rain began dripping from the tree canopy. Khelya moved closer to one of the flowers for extra cover, but it looked like they would stay dry under this tree.
Matil scrutinized Dask. He rarely talked about his orphanage. He had no problem telling harrowing stories of growing up in Ecker’s Brug and racing all over Nychtfal on jobs for his gang. But he deflected questions about his childhood, saying he didn’t remember it very well. Maybe he remembered better than he let on.
Chapter 4
Darkness in the Light
The Council Herald’s voice echoed through the gilded circular hall of the Ambermeet. “…and, as it should be, the Obrigi reacted to this latest rise in taxes with unwavering loyalty.” His wings glowed, shafts of light spilling outward from his back. He read from a parchment. “Construction of the Fortification has taken farmers from the field, resulting in a late planting season for many. The reduced crop yield is expected to hollow our coffers further.”
“Understood.” Golden-bearded Lord Councilman Owynth stood in front of his grand chair at the head of the assembly, his many-branched staff in hand. Beside him was an empty but even grander throne adorned with two butterfly wings.
The soaring walls of this place were made from ancient amber that encased fragments of the past – torn leaves, pebbles, huge insects. Raised wooden stands surrounded a beautiful sun mural on the floor. Sangriga with wings like sunlight and delicate purple robes sat in chairs on the stands. This was the Council of Tyrlis, where decisions were made for two nations of alva bound by alliance: the Sangriga and the Obrigi.
“What news, then, from Nychtfal?” Lord Owynth said.
A woman at today’s meeting stuck out from the other lavishly-styled Council members due to her plainness; she wore no jewelry, used sparse cosmetics, and tied her dark blonde hair in a simple bun. She held her own wooden staff, which ended at the tip in an upside-down iron triangle. It looked like a weapon, destructive and without subtlety. Councilwoman Lyria’s appearance fed the wary talk that she didn’t deserve her title, that she was a brazen commoner, an interloper making fools of the rest of them. In Lyria’s humble opinion, they didn’t need help with the last bit.
Her greenish-blue eyes were locked on the stout herald and she realized that, without thinking, she had leaned forward in her chair and tilted her head as though it would enhance the hearing of her long, tapered Sangriga ears. She wasn’t the only one with an interest in the alarming events taking place in the dusky realm of Nychtfal. Wise alva took heed of them.
The Council Herald was already unrolling another scroll. “When the eastern township of Goska was taken without bloodshed by Nychta Olsta,” he read, “many nearby villages surrendered themselves. Shortly thereafter, Nychtfal’s government entered into negotiations with her, learning that she had named her captured territory the ‘Ranycht Dominion’. The result of their diplomacy was a treaty, the details of which are unknown save for the knowledge that the High Court of Nychtfal has ordered its subjects not to resist the Dominion.
“What has been seen of the Skorgon armies puts their number at roughly three thousand soldiers in total. Some Ranycht from the threatened townships in eastern Nychtfal have fled southward and are preparing for resistance. There are also claims that the Dominion worships the Elder of Night, Myrkhar.”
Mutters and whispers swept through the Council.
None of these details were new to Lyria. She had heard much the same from her spies. Unfortunately, with the tenuous situation in eastern Nychtfal and the Nychtfal-Obrigi Fortification in place, it would now be very difficult to glean information from those parts.
“Three outlaws have been seen traveling through Nychtfal, one of whom is a Ranycht woman without wings…however, no reports of them have surfaced since the sixty-third.”
Lyria felt a glimmer of satisfaction, but carefully arranged her expression into one of frustration. If Councilman Nider looked her way, she must not appear to be the one who had freed those three outlaws, for he had made it clear that he suspected.
The herald rattled off some things about trade, and then he mentioned the ongoing dispute with the High Courts of Nychtfal. The Book of Myrkhar had been stolen five weeks ago from its Vault here in Corwyna and carried to Nychtfal, where the governing powers refused to permit entry for Sangriga investigators. That refusal angered many Council members, particularly the older ones who recalled the last time the Book’s magic had been unleashed. Lyria was just a child when it happened.
As soon as the herald rolled up his scroll, the sturdy and short-haired Commander Dalen stood at attention. He was not an appointed member of the Council and, lacking the traditional purple robe, he looked out of place. Dalen, though young, was a senior military officer and wore a stunning deep bronze cuirass and heavy leather belt over a long white robe. He thumped the end of his bladed, tasseled staff on the floor in preparation to
speak. Several Council members snickered. Only the Lord Councilman stamped his staff. Lyria knew, however, that Dalen was more used to shows of authority over his soldiers than he was to Council etiquette.
“Order,” Owynth said, and that was enough to quiet the Council. “Speak, Dalen.” He nodded encouragingly at the man to whom his daughter was betrothed.
Dalen hesitated, looking like a boar amidst deer. He drew up his chest. “I advise the Council to fully mobilize our forces. With what we’ve just heard, I’m convinced that being caught unprepared would be fatal.”
One Councilman with his hair in a curled tail floated upward out of his seat, legs dangling but crossed at the ankles. His bearing looked casual, but Lyria knew he was carefully replicating a fashionable pose she had seen in paintings. With no sign of outward effort, he caused his wings to pulse with bright light. Now all eyes were on him. “Forgive me, Commander,” he said, “but…caught unprepared by whom?”
“By this Nychta Olsta,” said Dalen.
“And you think she is a threat…why?” The Councilman lifted an eyebrow.
“How do you suppose she managed a treaty with Nychtfal? Intimidation? A dangerous possibility. A promise? Even more dangerous. If they’ve allied with designs to acquire more territory – if they’re confident enough for that – then we had best be ready.”
The Councilman looked unconvinced even as he shut his mouth and descended into his chair.
“If what you say is true,” said another Councilman in a calm voice, “we oughtn’t use it as an excuse to fight.” A few Council members expressed their assent.
The voice belonged to Councilman Nider Vyng, who sat relaxed in his chair, tracing circles on the floor with the end of his emerald-studded staff. He had a handsome face, piercing yellow eyes, and a tasteful sleekness about him. His reddish-blond hair was pulled back at the crown and the rest fell silkily down his neck. Among the others he was popular and respected – not always present at meetings, but certainly there when the most important decisions were to be made.
“At the first sign of aggression,” he went on, “our diplomats can work out an agreement that will make violence unnecessary.”