“What are you doing?” she hissed.
“I’m hungry,” he said, matter-of-factly, and continued to the buffet.
Reva sighed, but a grumble in her own stomach reminded her that she’d not eaten anything today except for a slice of berry nut bread that morning. Giving in to her stomach, she quietly crossed the rotunda to the table.
The members of Pfeta fey Orung put out quite a spread. There were several cold meats all neatly sliced and laid on silver platters. Pre-cut rolls and buns were stacked in a wicker basket and there were platters filled with four different cheeses as well as grapes, strawberries, and melons.
Ansee was diligently piling meats and cheese together onto a large bun. He then grabbed several strawberries and bit into one greedily. Reva also picked up a hard roll. She piled on mostly cheese with a few slices of thinly cut salmon. If I’m going to steal their food, I may as well get the good stuff, she figured.
Finished, she picked up several strawberries and then she and Ansee headed for the stairs. She bit into her sandwich as she walked, savoring the salmon and smoked cheeses. If Pfeta fey Orung eats this good maybe I should reconsider joining, she thought.
They slipped into the opening leading to the stairs. The light from the rotunda allowed them to see where they were going but, as they descended the stairs, the light faded completely until it was pitch black.
“Just a moment,” whispered Ansee. There was some rustling and then he said, “Be ready.”
Reva closed her eyes as Ansee activated a light wand. Opening them slowly, she let her eyes adjust to the harsh magical light. They both finished their rolls as they continued their descent. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, they stepped into the pillared antechamber. Reva took in the pillars and ceiling decorated to resemble massive trees and sky.
“I call it the stone forest,” Ansee said, stepping into the room. He turned so that he could face the closest of the statues in its alcove.
“I can see why.” Reva stepped up to one of the pillars and ran a hand over a realistically carved squirrel climbing the trunk. She then caught sight of the statues and turned toward Ansee. “What are you doing?”
Ansee was cautiously moving toward the storage room door, trying to keep himself facing a statue at all times, constantly looking from one statue to the next. “I saw them yesterday. I’m sure they didn’t do anything, because Locera was here, but they might try to attack us now.”
Reva laughed. “Oh, come on. This is real life, not some second-rate play where the ‘adventurers,’” she made a gesture with her hands to stress the word, “are attacked by statues in the dungeon or temple or whatever hackneyed location those unimaginative playwrights can think up.”
Ansee straightened up and chuckled. “Hey, I happen to like some of those plays. In fact, Tomb of the Golem King being performed at Pfenestra’s Playhouse is pretty good, even if it is a bit predictable.”
Smiling, Reva said, “I love that play. I’ve seen it five times.”
“You have?”
“Don’t act surprised. Just because I hate adventurers doesn’t mean that I hate plays about them. They allow me to step away from the stress of the real world for a few hours. I can get lost in the playwright’s fictional world and not have to think or worry about anything.”
“Have you seen Scourge of the Slavelords?”
“Yes, though I didn’t think it was as good as The Keep on the Borderlands.”
“That was a good play. Who was the playwright?”
“Gygax,” Reva answered. Going to cheesy adventure plays had been something that she and Cas had done together. Ansee kept surprising her at how similar they were.
Reva walked up to the storage room door and pulled it open. She gave a pointed look at the statues in their alcoves to the right of the door, which remained unmoving and lifeless. “Told ya,” she smirked.
Ansee rolled his eyes while moving past Reva into the storage room. “I didn’t have much time to search the room before Locera showed up. I don’t think the catch to open the door is on the shelves.” He shone the light across the shelves on the left that held parchment, ink, quills, and rags.
Stepping in behind Ansee, Reva took a slow look around the small room. Two bookcases stood against the right and back walls and were filled with jars, wooden boxes, brushes, and other supplies.
“I might be able to cast a spell to locate the door,” Ansee offered. “But it still wouldn’t show us how to open it.”
Reva leaned past Ansee and reached up to the bookcase against the back wall. The case was simple with no decoration, the wood rough and filled with knots. She reached up to the upper right corner and pressed the knot there. There was a click and the bookcase slid back on silent hinges.
“How’d...?”
“Well, the trigger couldn’t be one of the objects on the shelves or folks like Locera might find it by accident. Besides,” she shrugged. “In the adventure plays, the secret door is always opened by pressing a knothole or something like that.”
Ansee shook his head, pushing the bookcase open. Beyond was a narrow passageway only about two paces wide that sloped down slightly. The walls, floor, and ceiling were smooth red limestone blocks. Ansee led the way, playing the light over the area. After about ten paces, the floor leveled out and the passageway widened enough to allow two people to walk abreast. An arched opening ahead of them led into a larger room at the end of the short passage.
Walking through the arch, Reva and Ansee both jumped as flames leapt from several wall-mounted sconces around the square-shaped room. After the initial burst, the torches all settled down and flickered off the stone walls.
“A bit melodramatic,” Reva commented, but she was thankful for the light. The room’s walls and ceiling were carved with twisting tendrils of stone.
“They look like tree roots,” Ansee said.
Reva agreed; that was her first impression. Around the room were portraits of elves, with diagrams or drawings beneath them. On the wall to their left, several diagrams hung without accompanying portraits. Looking closer, Reva now saw that they were family trees. Across the room from the entrance stood two flag poles—green, black, and red banners hanging from them—flanking an empty spot on the wall. A wooden table sat to the left, and the far left wall had several tapestries hanging on it, with one obviously missing from the middle.
Heading to her left, Reva looked at the family trees as she worked her way around the room. She heard Ansee incanting his spell that allowed him to see magic auras.
Many of the family trees had familiar names on them, which surprised her at first. There was a tree with the name Avecath beautifully calligraphed in red and gold ink. On it, she saw the First Magistrate’s name. Another tree had the name Ochroma colorfully illuminated with green vines and blue and silver ink. On it, she saw Lady Tala’s name neatly inked on the parchment. On each of the family trees there were dashed lines drawn from certain ancestors to side branches that were labeled “Underforest Heritage.” Some of the lines were connected to names that she didn’t recognize; others were simply marked as “unknown.”
“So it’s true,” Reva said quietly to herself.
“What?”
“What Rhoanlan told me, it’s true. There is a secret group of elves within Pfeta fey Orung who trace their ancestry back to the dark elves.”
“Why would anyone want to trace their heritage back to dark elves?”
Reva didn’t answer. She was looking at the other family trees, seeing the names of Aucarii, Betulla, Malvaceä—why did that not surprise her!—and then a family tree caught her eye. It was down on the bottom row, midway down the wall. The parchment was set in a dark wood frame and had a slight coating of dust. The lines and names on the parchment were fading but the family name, beautifully illuminated in blood red ink and fine black calligraphy, sharply pronounced Lunaria.
; Reva reached out and tentatively touched the document, wiping the dust away. Lunaria was a common enough name. It didn’t mean anything. As the dust fell away, she felt her stomach tighten into a knot, fear and dread filling her entire body. The dust fell in long streaks and she let out a small gasp as she saw the name Yaenoswynn Lunaria—her father.
Acid and bile filled her stomach and just looking at the name, here in this place, made her gorge rise. But she had to know, her hand roughly wiping more dust away. Next to her father was her uncle and beneath them, Reva’s own name and her brother’s. Tracing back from her father she saw familiar names that she associated with love and kindness. Her grand-uncle, who’d given her a beautiful amethyst crystal as a gift during the Bonfires Festival when she was eighteen. Her grandfather, who’d taught her how to shoot a bow. Her great-grandmother Olivia, who’d given her a lace doll on her tenth birthday.
Reva sniffed and fought back tears as she traced three dashed lines that led from her family to neatly calligraphed letters spelling out Underforest Heritage. Under two were scribed the word unknown, but the third, leading from her great-grandmother’s grandmother had the name Virosa neatly embossed in faded gold ink.
“It can’t be,” Reva whispered. She pulled her fist up to her mouth and bit her knuckle. “No, no, no.” How can this be? I’m as elven as the next person. I’m not a dark elf. I’m not halpbloeden. Why? Why hadn’t father said anything? How could he keep this a secret?
Under the Purity Laws, any elf with dark elf blood was just as impure as any elf with human blood—maybe even more so. Instead of being shunned and persecuted for your human ancestry, you were reviled and attacked for being related to the ancient enemy. The lucky ones who were discovered were just driven out of town. Most were attacked, their families targeted out of fear that they were spying for the enemy. It was why a secret organization of dark elves made sense: they’d need to be secret out of fear of being attacked outright. If the people knew there were elves with dark elf ancestry around there’d be a revolt, mobs in the street, looking to hang the traitors.
It was why Reva’s stomach was tied in a giant knot right now. A distant part of her knew why her father had kept this a secret. But that rational part of her mind was drowned out by the anger and vitriol building within her. How dare he do this to me! If this gets out I could lose my job! Hells, I’d be lucky if they didn’t stone me in the New Port courtyard.
“Have you found anything?” Reva jumped at the question.
“Wha…no. No, nothing important. Just a bunch of old family trees.” Reva turned and faced Ansee, her back blocking his view of the Lunaria tree.
Ansee jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “There’s some weird auras on the wall where it looks like the sword might have been kept. There’s a strong aura of illusion, but under it is a faint, and quite old, aura of enchantment, but it’s so powerful that I can still detect it.”
“Illusion? So, there was some kind of magical projection of the sword?”
“Maybe. More likely there was a real sword with some kind of illusion spell on it to give it a nice menacing glow. An illusion of a sword might be noticed quickly, while a fake sword might take longer to detect.”
Reva nodded at that; it made sense. “It still doesn’t tell us who is using the sword.”
“It can’t be somebody within this secret group, can it?”
Reva shook her head. “I don’t think so. The first two murders could have been assassinations as part of a power play within the group—I wouldn’t put that type of cruelty past a dark elf—but Aucarii’s death broke that trend of cold, methodical murder. His murder was full of rage and hatred.”
“So this gets us nowhere?” Ansee’s voice was full of resignation. All that work in the archives yesterday was for nothing now.
“Maybe not. We know that the killer hates dark elves.”
“Well that narrows it down to the entire city,” Ansee said sarcastically.
“And,” Reva continued, ignoring the remark, “we know he hates halpbloeden.” She held up a finger to stave off another sarcastic remark from Ansee. “And he had access to the sword, but isn’t a member of this secret order.”
“I still don’t see how that gets us anywhere.”
“It gets you up to your necks in trouble,” came an unexpected reply.
Twenty-eight
Reva and Ansee whirled at the sound of the new voice in the room. It was thickly accented, guttural and harsh. Behind them, out of the shadows of a large tapestry hanging from the far wall, stepped a figure. He was short, maybe fourteen hands tall, and thin. His skin was pale in the flickering light, pale to the point of almost being translucent. His white hair was pulled back and braided in a complicated knot that fell to his mid-back. Tall, sharply pointed ears protruded from his head; they were too big for his size and were almost demonic in the way that they caricatured the more graceful elven ear.
He wore a dark blue waistcoat with a tall, stiff collar and brass buttons. Under the coat, the dull gleam of metal shone from a chainmail shirt. His pants were a dark, blood-red color, the legs stuffed into black boots that came up to his mid-calf.
The dark elf had a broad, leaf-shaped blade in his right hand, held at the ready, pointed at Reva and Ansee. He stared at them with eyes of pale blue, like glacial ice. He took two steps into the room. Behind him followed three more dark elves, wearing black, red, and green striped shirts over chainmail armor. Two carried cruel-looking iron maces and the third held a crossbow.
Reva moved to draw her own sword, but a threatening gesture from the dark elf with the crossbow stayed her hand.
“Now, Inspector,” said the dark elf in the coat. His accent was harsh, like he was speaking with rocks in his mouth. “I would be careful if I were you, or you’ll end up with a quarrel in your chest.”
“What do you want, dark elf?” She spat the words out.
“Tsk, tsk. Such open hatred and racism.” The dark elf shook his head. “We prefer to be called Underforest Elves. Or you could call me Syntagma.”
“That’s a funny name,” Ansee blurted.
“It’s my title,” the dark elf glared at Ansee. “Like your Castanea. I am the leader of a battalion of soldiers.”
“And what, this is an invasion?” Reva didn’t bother to hide the contempt in her voice. She raised an eyebrow at Ansee.
The Syntagma walked to the center of the room, looking at the spot where the sword once hung. The three soldiers stayed where they were, the crossbow still aimed at Reva. “No, this is not an invasion. You might say I am the maid, here to clean up somebody’s mess.”
“So you’re the one behind these murders?” asked Ansee. He glanced at Reva.
The dark elf turned to face them. “No. I want the same thing you do: to stop these deaths. The Düh Penge is too powerful a weapon to be used by just anybody.”
“The Düh Penge?” asked Ansee. Reva gave him another look.
“It means Fury Blade in your language. It is a powerful artifact belonging to my people. It feeds off the wielder’s hatred, giving them great power, but the blade has a blood lust. Once it tastes blood, it feeds the rage back to the wielder, fueling them into a blood frenzy so that they will attack others and draw more blood. It’s a cycle that builds and builds until the wielder becomes a wild berserker, caring for nothing but death. Only those with the strongest of will can use the weapon and not succumb to its fury.”
“Great,” Reva said. “We want the same thing. Let us go and we’ll get your sword for you.”
The dark elf shook his head as if he’d just had to refuse something to a child. “We definitely want the same thing, but I certainly don’t need an elf’s assistance to get it.” He sneered over the word elf. “Besides, you now know too much about the blade and our presence here.”
“So what do you plan to do with us?” asked Reva.
�
�Why, kill you, of course.” He made a motion to the three other dark elves.
Reva started laughing, which caused the dark elves to pause. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
The three dark elves were looking at Reva and had ignored Ansee, just as Reva had intended. With one smooth motion, Ansee drew one of the throwing daggers from its belt sheath and threw it with a powerful underhanded throw. The blade flew true, striking the dark elf holding the crossbow in his left hand. He jerked the hand with a sharp cry of pain, pulling the trigger in the process. The quarrel shot high, striking the ceiling above and behind Reva. He yelled out in fury and anger.
At the same moment, Reva rushed at the two dark elves with the maces. They’d hung back to let the bow-elf fire and Reva’s laughter had caught them flat-footed. She took two quick paces toward them, crouching down and kicking out with her right leg and sweeping it across their ankles. The move surprised them and both lost their footing, falling with a clatter of armor and weapons. Reva came up with her sword drawn and pointed at the Syntagma.
“You elven bitch!” he swore, stepping forward and swinging his leaf-shaped blade.
Reva parried the first swing, but the strength of the attack surprised her for coming from such a small person. The pair of them began trading sword blows, each managing to deflect critical blows that might have ended the combat.
Across the room, the dark elf with the crossbow pulled the dagger from his hand and tossed it to the floor with a clatter. Blood flowed from the wound, but he managed to quickly pull back the bowstring with his right hand and started pulling out another quarrel.
“Majd meghalni, hogy te kibaszott disznó!,” he spat the words at Ansee.
“Baszd meg az anyád a szart!” Ansee yelled a curse back. It was one of the few things that he knew in the dark elf language, something he’d picked up from ex-army Constables serving in Nul Pfeta. Apparently, telling him to go fuck his mother with shit was enough to anger the dark elf so much that the elf’s face reddened and his hands shook with rage, causing the quarrel to slip and fall to the floor. He gave a guttural roar of rage at that.
Wrath of the Fury Blade Page 22