by Greg Curtis
“It wasn't hard,” Gris added. “You didn't cover your tracks at all. A child could have followed you!”
“I'm still grateful,” he replied. And he most definitely was. “Things didn't go as I'd planned.”
“You actually planned this?” The sylph arched an eyebrow at him. “By all the laws of logic, how could you get things so badly wrong?!”
Fylarne took a deep breath. “Well I'm still grateful. But I should grab my stuff and we should get out of here before they send another harpy.” Though he wasn't actually sure if harpies flew by night. But it was best not to risk it.
“Oh, I wouldn't worry about them,” a human told him while patting his rifle. “They won't last long.”
“I hope you're right.” Was it over-confidence speaking? Fylarne didn't know. But considering that he'd nearly got himself killed, he probably didn't have much right to speak.
What he did have the right to do, was join them and be glad of the company. And as he left them and made his way across the now quiet land to where he'd left his gear, that was what Fylarne planned on doing. It seemed that despite his doubts, the Ladies and the Gentlemen had answered his prayers after all. He should be grateful – and humble. But most of all he should be hopeful.
Now he had an army with him. Or at least the start of one. His family, wherever they were, would be liberated.
Chapter Forty Five
Things were going strangely. Again. Which when he thought about it, made the strange almost normal. But still as he stepped off his portal to see a queue of people all waiting to sit on the golem throne at the far end of his yard, he wondered at how bad this was.
People were rushing off to fight the sprites. To free their loved ones. And while he couldn't blame them for that, he could worry for them. War was dangerous, and this whatever else it was, was a war. Probably one more dangerous than any ever fought. And even if they gained this one spell, to summon stone from flesh, it wasn't enough. They weren't trained soldiers. They weren't powerful wizards. And he wasn't even sure that they had proper generals to lead them. They were just people hurling themselves into the line of fire. It was courageous and noble. But it wasn't wise.
Unfortunately it wasn't his place to stop them. Chy tried to tell himself that as he draped his long coat over the clothes line, ready to go in the copper when he next started boiling it. This time at least, the garment was in good order. Just a little muddy. He was glad of that, as he had so many of the coats being mended in town at the moment that he suspected he was the seamstress' only customer.
Thankfully it turned out that the creepy stretch of forest that had arrived fifty leagues away was actually more or less harmless. The damned vines hanging down from the trees did have a horrible habit of reaching out and grabbing you, but they weren't strong enough to do any harm and they didn't have any poison or thorns. And why the trees whispered among themselves he didn't know, and he had to admit it was decidedly disturbing. But again, they hadn't seemed to be causing any harm to anyone. In fact the greatest danger he'd been in was from slipping over in the mud, which was why another coat needed cleaning.
Then things turned strange again as the front door to his home opened and Adrine walked out to greet him and hand him an orange.
“It's good for you,” the dryad told him. “Now there's a fresh loaf of bread cooling on the kitchen rack, and the home is clean and the table set.”
“Adrine –.”
“The garden has also been weeded and a new row of pumpkins planted. Your pig ate the others.”
“She's not my pig!” Chy objected automatically. Then he took a deep breath. “And please, you have no need to do these things for me. I can take care of myself and it's not your job.”
“You? Take care of yourself?” The dryad snorted in laughter. “Clearly not! Do you even know which end of a broom to hold?!”
Chy tried to find an answer for that. It seemed wrong to him that a woman with her hair full of twigs should talk to him about brooms and cleaning. But not as wrong as the fact that someone else was taking care of him. He could look after himself regardless of what she thought. But by the time he'd managed to formulate that into a sentence she was walking away, heading off across his yard to the road and her own home across the way.
Meanwhile he could see that she was right about the pig. Bacon was busy lying on her side, snoring happily, two of her legs pointed awkwardly up at the sky. Her belly was simply too round for them to settle to the ground. There was a chance, he realised, that the pig was actually growing so fat that soon she wouldn't be able to take to the sky.
And then just as he was about to head for the front door, his eye spotted the lamps on both sides of the new bridge across the river. Tall street lamps with glass walled wrought iron boxes in which the paraffin soaked wicks would burn. There was a street running across the middle of his front yard!
That was a shock. Not that the new street lamps weren't pretty – they were. But it suddenly occurred to him that his property, his home, the place that he'd worked so hard to build for so long, was no longer his own. There was a winged pig sleeping in his side yard after having eaten her way through his vegetable garden. The front of his front yard was filled with people wanting to use the thrones. A walking path spanned the middle of it. And dryads were treating his house as their own, even if they were good, kind people looking after him.
He was losing control! Again! This was one of the reasons he'd left home all those years ago. So how had this happened? When had it happened? And could he do anything about it? But the sad truth was that he wasn't even sure that he should.
Adrine however snapped him out of it, when she stopped and turned around. “And don't forget to wear something respectable!”
He thought about that for a moment, wondering why, until the memory finally burned brightly in his head. Elodie was coming over for a meal. He had a date! How could he possibly have forgotten that?!
In that moment everything else went away as he realised he was in a hurry. And that he couldn't just stand around looking like the village idiot. Which was when he rushed for the front door, kicked off his boots, and headed inside. He had to get ready.
But there wasn't actually that much to do he discovered when he went inside. The fire had been lit, the table set, and he could smell something delicious cooking in the oven. Someone, Adrine he assumed, had even placed woven pieces of linen over the backs of the easy chairs. Where had they come from?
He didn't have time to wonder though as he rushed off to the stairs leading to the loft and his bed chamber where fresh clothes had been laid out for him. Adrine it seemed, had thought of everything.
Five minutes later he was dressed and his face clean as he stood in the main room of his home, waiting. But he didn't have to wait long before there was a knock at the door. And when he opened it, it was to discover that not only was Elodie standing there looking as lovely as ever, but she had a new dress.
“Praise the stars, you look beautiful!” It wasn't the cleverest thing he could have said he thought, just what had tripped off his tongue as he'd seen her. But as her face coloured a little and a smile started lifting the corners of her mouth, he knew it had been the right thing to say. He knew it even more when she stepped forwards, kissed his cheek and entered his humble home.
In that moment he knew that he didn't care about lamp posts, bridges and paths across his front yard. He didn't care about a pig that was growing too fat to fly, or a garden that it had eaten. He had an evening ahead with a pretty woman. There was nothing else in his life.
Chapter Forty Six
Elodie found herself humming as she walked around the Temple. Sometimes she even sang. Especially when she went out to the garden. She couldn't help herself. Life was simply too good this morning.
Her evening with Chy had gone well. Too well some would say, though not her. Never her. They had eaten and shared some wine. And then as the fire had crackled away below they had gone upstairs to his bed chambe
r and lain together as a man and a woman. Not as a Guardian and a worshipper. Not as an elf and a human. But simply as a man and a woman, as it was supposed to be. And they had still been entwined in one another's arms when the sun had finally come up. She did not regret that at all. She never would.
But maybe in his arms, sharing the passion that lovers did, she had found something else. Something she would never have expected to find. Understanding. Because when she had finally left him, knowing that they both had work to do and that his was dangerous as he battled each new emergency that arose, she had found a terrible question in her heart – what would she do if he was hurt? In that moment, in that question, she had understood something of Fylarne. Or maybe she didn't understand it so much as feel it. Because he had lost his family. It didn't matter that he should not have had a wife and daughter. It only mattered that he did.
The understanding did not mean that she could forgive him for what he had done. She couldn't forget it or put it aside either. It just meant that just as others had said, she found herself unable to judge him. Because how could he have sacrificed his family for anyone? Or her fellow guardians for them? It was an impossible choice he had been given.
He was off now, somewhere in N'Diel, fighting to free his loved ones, and she found herself despite everything he'd done, wishing him success.
Her task though, was easier. There was no choice involved. And if she was honest there wasn't that much work involved either. With the Temple closed and only her able to enter it, she had no worshippers to direct to the thrones. She might never have any again. Now that the thrones had been copied in a thousand different places, anyone could use them without the need for going to the Temple. And there wasn't a lot to do when it came to maintaining the Temple. There was no one to make any mess. A little dusting now and again was all that was needed. Sadly there wasn't anyone to talk to either. And the perfect elves, the thrones were the ones browsing the shelves of the library looking for any works that matched the leaders' requirements. With Fylarne's absence the work of translating them was slowed, but it continued. All of which left her with really only one thing to do – to try and understand the ancients' secret of the living enchantment.
Unfortunately she wasn't making much progress. The books in the library had all come from the times after the fall of the ancient world. The thrones too – they knew nothing of their creation and more annoyingly they weren't even curious about it. She was sure they should be. She would be – probably. If she was actually still alive in any meaningful way after the process of creating a throne was finished.
“Girl! You there?!”
A man's voice startled her as she sat in the terrace garden reading. And even though she knew the speaker wasn't there, he was only in her head, she turned around in her seat to look for him. It was instinctive.
So was the shudder that ran through her when she recognised the speaker.
“Yarin Coldstream?” She named the annoying dwarf, wondering why he was bothering her. Not to mention why he was at Chy's home, standing on the communications portal Chy had built there. There were other places he could be, she supposed, others, a few at least, could create the portals. But that was where he was. She was certain of it. Maybe she should have shown Chy how to lock the portal so others couldn't use it!
“You remember me then Girl! I'm surprised. After what the others here are saying you did with the wizard human last night, I wondered what wits would remain. A properly wooed woman can think of little else!”
He knew! Elodie cringed a little at the understanding. The others, the dryads probably, were gossiping and the damned dwarf had heard them.
“Of course he might have got it wrong,” the dwarf continued. “He is human after all. A long tall bag of piss and bone. Wizard or not, he could have got it all badly wrong.”
“What do you want Yarin Coldstream?” Other than a good kicking that was! But she did her best to control her embarrassment and anger. To sound like a guardian in control of her emotions. And not one about to grab a spear and hunt an annoying dwarf down! “Or are you just drunk and ranting again?!”
“Bah! A dwarf can't get drunk here in this ugly land. These humans don't have any decent drinks! Nothing to satisfy a true dwarf's thirst!”
“Again, what do you want Yarin Coldstream?” And why she unexpectedly wondered, was she able to hold an actual conversation with him across the portal of sending? Mostly it was a device used only to send a message to a great many at once. It could do more, but that required someone with advanced magic of both dimension and the mind to use it. And he had neither – though he had briefly sat on the sphinx throne as she suddenly remembered. Could that have been enough?
“To forgive you, of course!” He hiccuped, the lack of decent drinks in the human realm clearly not having stopped him from guzzling them down.
He was drunk, Elodie realised. But still somehow holding things together enough to hold a conversation.
“Go to bed and sleep it off!” she told him sternly.
“You can't help yourself,” he continued, ignoring her. “You're just a woman. Too thin and tall, and weak of thought. And so you probably thought he was a real man and not a human piss bag like the rest of his people.”
“Ladies have mercy!” she muttered quietly to herself as she realised that the damned dwarf wasn't going to stop. He was jealous and drunk – an unfortunate combination. And unfortunately she was right. The damned dwarf kept talking. Explaining to her over and over again how she'd made the wrong choice.
This she just didn't need, Elodie thought tiredly. A drunk, jealous dwarf. But unfortunately it seemed there was nothing she could do about it. As long as he was standing on that damned portal and somehow had the right magic, he could probably keep talking until he finally fell down. All she could do was to try not to listen to him – and also to keep from responding. It would just encourage him.
So she did her best to ignore him and concentrate on her reading as he babbled. Even when he occasionally burst into song and swearing as he continued his endless rant about how he forgave her – because she wasn't worthy of him.
But then things took an unexpected turn when the sphinx walked out onto the terrace. Actually he marched, and his face had turned completely white as if he was angry. But he couldn't be angry. The thrones had no true emotions.
“Why do you let that putrid oaf continue to speak to you like that?!” he asked her, grinding his teeth with fury.
Elodie stared at him, so many questions rushing through her mind, and not just about the fact that he was obviously angry. But that he could even hear what Yarin Coldstream was saying.
“He will grow tired in time,” she eventually told the throne. “Or fall down in a drunken stupor.”
“No!” He snapped at her. “It is not good enough!” And as if it wasn't enough that he was shouting, the Temple was shaking too. “I would never let anyone speak to my daughter like that!”
“Your daughter?” He had a daughter? He remembered having a daughter? Elodie stared at the throne, wondering just what was happening with him. Because this was completely new. And all the time the damned dwarf was abusing her, making things worse.
“Imoge! And she was lovely like a summers day!” He smiled for a moment – another emotion she'd never seen on his face – or on that of any throne. And the volcano shook even more.
“I'm sure she was,” Elodie replied carefully, not sure what was happening but not wanting to make it worse. Something she feared was going to happen, especially when she saw the rest of the thrones troop out on to the terrace. And when she noticed that they weren't all perfect elves any more. They were shades.
“I have two daughters!” the three horned bull called out. “And a son!” His face started changing in front of Elodie, transforming from that of one of the Darisen to that of a shade.
Something was happening to them. They were remembering the people they had been. Even becoming them again, somehow. And she didn't know what
to do about it. She didn't even know if she should do something. But as the Temple started raging all around her, she suddenly decided she should.
“Yarin Coldstream, shut your mouth!” she yelled at the dwarf with all the strength she had, hoping it would get through to him. Unfortunately it did.
“You slut!” the dwarf yelled back angrily. “Pathetic little trollop! Whore!”
“Worthless pig!” the bull yelled back, suddenly raging out of control, while the Temple let out a terrible crack. “I'll slit you from gizzard to gullet!”
Something had broken, Elodie realised. Something big. And it was only getting worse. They could all hear the damned dwarf. They could talk to him too. But worst of all, they could argue with him. And the more they argued, the worse things got.
“Everyone be quiet!” she called out as she got to her feet, her heart racing in her chest. “Please!”
But it was too late. No one was listening to her. They were all too busy yelling at the annoying dwarf as he was yelling back. Trading insults and venom. While all around her the Temple was falling apart. There were cracks appearing in the rock. In the very volcano itself. And here and there she could see little trickles of lava beginning to flow down its side.