Something was pulled out of my leg next, followed by the feeling of a tight squeeze. At last, I felt my body being placed down, and the sensation of all of this other chaos being dispelled.
* * * *
When I woke up, it was morning and I’d been laid down on a bed of dew-kissed leaves. I had been carried a slight distance from the tributary I was at before; the terrain was much more hilly and the mountain closer. The scent of meat cooking wafted over to me, and I looked about to see what it came from. Just to my left was the corpse of that beast I saw last night, its skin rolled up and ready to be tanned and the meat being roasted for breakfast by my captors.
There was no fire beneath the chunks of game to cook it, oddly enough, rather a strange creature working an orange-red mist out of the leaves beneath the meat. A few of its friends sitting in the pines above me took notice of me and approached.
Those were the first alfar I ever met, and what a wondrous race they were. As the poems and prose have written, it was fairer than the sun to look at, but unlike the poems, just as shapeless as well. It walked carefully over to me like a mirage, its entire body giving off a bright glare that was always changing its color. It stung my eyes to look at something this bright after having slept for so long, so I rolled over so I could look away from them. Just then, I was reminded of the wound I had suffered last night. There on my leg was a bandage made out of leaves.
An alf glided over to me and worked some magic on the leaves. I would have moved away, but a wince of pain persuaded me to stay still. As it moved, what I presumed were its hands over, under, and through my leg, the leaves began to glow a yellowish hue. “Th-the ranis…” It struggled to speak in my tongue. “Was…meant for…you?”
Was meant for me? Then why was he trying heal me? Immediately, I tried to slap the alfar away from me. “Savage,” I shouted indignantly. For the most part, my hand just went straight through the alf and it continued with its work, somewhat surprised by my response.
An alf with pink flame rising from the top of his head began to chuckle and then spoke to me in more complete Norse. “I must apologize for Ahrad, Midgardian. It has been quite some time since he last spoke your kind’s tongue and has confused some critical points in grammar. What he meant to say was he intended to shoot at the elderbear, not you.” Ahrad, I supposed, was the one tending to my wound and then backed away, the leaves on my leg appearing like they had melded into my skin like a tattoo, covering where the arrow had shot through entirely. “Please, understand he is sorry for his negligence. He is not the greatest bowman and should not have even tried to down an elderbear with a weapon of iron and wood.”
The alf that was tending the “fire” then came up from behind the others and began passing around the pieces of elderbear meat, and they all found a seat to enjoy their meal. It was a strange sight, seeing semi-solid light eat, particularly when it entered the area around where their mouths would be. Watching them eat made me realize how hungry I was. “I’m sorry,” I said to the one that could speak my language, “but could I please have some food?”
“We will give you nourishment; however, I would like to ask that you tell us why you were in the silvered glenn first.”
“I was being pursued by the Agrians. I was told it would be a good hiding place because no one goes there. I meant nothing else when I trespassed.”
The alf spoke a command to one of his alfar to give me some of the meat. “If you don’t mind my asking, what have you done to be disowned by your own people?” The pink floated about its head in a curious fashion.
I was about to sneer at the alf, but stopped myself, knowing he was speaking out of ignorance. “I am not an Agrian, I am a Shaloor. In the expected fashion, the Agrians have wrongly accused me of being a spy of some sorts, or at the very least, sport.”
He paused for moment. “We shall be embarking for Clafel, our home, in a short while. It would be wise of you to finish your meat quickly and grow accustomed to walking again.”
I tilted my head in confusion at that remark.
“The leaf wrap should have healed your wounds enough that you can stand now,” he clarified.
I tried to stand up. At first, there was a small bit of pinching, but that quickly went away. I was certainly able to stand up now, but it felt awkward, like my leg was somewhat hollow. I swallowed the hunk of meat in my mouth. “Thank you very much for the medical attention. I suppose we will be parting ways now, then?”
He bobbed his head about like he was saying, “No.” “I’m sorry, but we will need to bring you along with us. Your leg will need further healing, and we have concern for being here. It might not be as good of a secret place as we thought.”
I leaned against a tree, easing my load a little bit, but still allowing me to get used to how it felt to walk now. “So, I suppose that makes me your prisoner? Better than being tortured by those Juustos. Okay, let’s go then.” Juusto was an Agrian cheese and a term we used to mock them because they ate so much of it.
The alfar were also ready to leave and had, in fact, gathered up the uneaten pieces of meat and hide. “Perhaps you will be our prisoner, but you might very well be but a reluctant guest. It all depends on what the final decision is.” He too packed up and we were quickly on our way.
By the time we marched half a day, the pain in my leg grew from merely odd to actually sore, the wound evidently swelling from the constant movement. Many of the alfar were already hungry, so it was decided we would rest for a short period. The alf whom I presumed cooked the meat before began to gather the autumn leaves into a pile and created another fire-mist to cook the meat.
The alfar then conversed as the food cooked. As they spoke to the one who appeared to be their leader, I kept hearing what sounded like “Kaihar” repeated.
“Kaihar,” I interrupted, “is that your name?”
The alf I spoke to before looked up at me. “Yes, that is my name. However, I would rather you not refer to me…At least, not until we have decided whether you are truly welcomed by our community.”
Desperate for a conversation, I continued. “I take it you were hunting for this beast intentionally. What is it? Was it threatening your kind?”
Kaihar gave a sigh and put down his food. “You truly must not be from around here or you would have certainly heard of the elderbear.”
“I’m not. Could you please tell me why you were hunting it?”
He shrugged. “The elderbear, or ‘ranis’ as we call them, are a very hardy creature, impervious to all things but magic. We hunt them for food and as a mark of our skill.”
The elderbear meat was then passed around again. “Why are you eating so much meat anyway? I thought the alfar were supposed to be the gardeners of nature, not carnivores and hunters.”
Kaihar twitched his head about in a somewhat offended manner. “It is taboo for any of our kind to eat the fruits of the plants. The trees, the bushes, even the grass is too precious. I shall prefer you not further press on this issue.” It appeared I had struck a soft spot, much like when he asked me of my relation to the Agrians.
The alfar didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to finish their meal, after all, the place they chose to sit was sunny and picturesque. Even as a large cloud rolled over the sun, it was a very beautiful sight, what with the pleasing tint of blue it layered on everything and the chance it gave for our eyes to see finer detail. (The glare from a bright sun did make it difficult to see good distances, after all.)
The charm of the overcast sky quickly lost its appeal, however, as the winds grew cold blades of precipitation. The alfar payed little attention to this, as if the wind actually wasn’t freezing them straight through the stomach; they just went on regaling about previous hunts in their chirping tongue. It wasn’t until sleet had begun to beat against the trees that they stopped talking and scoured the area around them.
I rubbed my arms to try to produce some friction. “I’m sorry, but could you please give me a b
lanket or some magical mist? I’m getting very cold.”
“Do you hear that?” Kaihar asked, ignoring my question.
“Yeah, the sleet, that’s part of why I’m so cold.”
He waved his ‘hand.’ “What I speak of is far worse than frozen rain. It is a sound I have only heard when one thing is nearby.”
“And what is that?”
“Dwarves.” Kaihar then spoke to each of the alfar one by one. Some of them stood up and headed away. “You stay with Ahrad. If it is our sworn enemy, I do not wish to risk you with them.” He, too, then headed off, leaving me alone with Ahrad.
“Dwarves?” I said to Ahrad. “Does he mean…svartalfar?”
He processed what I was saying for a moment and then nodded. This was bad; here I thought the land was only inhabited by alfar, but, as the Agrians call them, dark elves, too? I supposed it was only logical that sworn enemies were destined to encounter the other. I was living proof of this, the will of Aegir himself dragging me across the Kolgan Sea into the realm of my nemeses. Curiosity got the best of me; I had to see a svartalf for myself.
As I got up to follow Kaihar and the others, Ahrad grabbed me by the arm, shaking his head in discouragement. This was the first time an alf had touched me, in case it wasn’t obvious, and it was really kind of strange. Its hands looked like nothing but spirit stuff, yet I felt individual fingers, an entire hand grabbing hold of me. Immediately, I shook the hand off and continued to pursue the others. While I was intent to see a svartalf, Ahrad also seemed to be intent to keep me from seeing one. Next, the ground began to tremble and a solid protrusion of stone appeared in front of me, a faint and magical steam being shed by the barrier. It didn’t seem wise to test his ability to hold me captive anymore, so I resigned to stay with him.
We sat there for a very long time, but the others didn’t return. The sleet came down harder and heavier than before, making the insistent poking against my head unbelievably annoying. By this time, Ahrad had taken his attention away from me, instead focusing on a band of golden magic he was weaving around his hand. It was far more complex than the other manifestations I’d seen before, the magic having a much more solid shape and little scribbles swirling about in it. He seemed to have been drawing energy from the leaves on the ground and the trees around him and then feeding it into the strange spell.
I didn’t bother to ask him what it was he was doing, not so much because of the language barrier but because my stomach was feeling overturned. It felt a lot like the burn one gets when there was too much gas building up inside. Perhaps it was just the elderbear meat not agreeing with me.
There seemed to have been something coming from where the others went, some nauseating aura. Streaks of bright blue light flew through the air and crashed against the trees, making a sound like breaking glass. The lights then exploded and spilled all across the trees and the ground in front of me. The moment those first drops of the fluid splashed on the leaves, Ahrad dove in front of me and scraped the leaves away and pulled me close to him.
“Queet,” he whispered to me, presumably meaning ‘quiet.’ He then swung his arms about, stirring up a fog from the hail-ridden ground. The fog formed a bubble around us, and after a crackle of lightning traveled all through it, it became translucent. We both sat there with the roar of the hail being the only thing keeping us from sitting in silence. The blue fluids that covered the trees glowed like embers sitting at the bottom of a fire. Wherever it touched the trees, they shriveled into a pale brown, cracking like someone was breaking a plank of wood in two with their hands.
I writhed about a bit as the burning in my stomach grew worse. It was a strange feeling, this burning; it was now so strong I could tell that it burned differently than any other burn. It didn’t scald as if it were hot, nor did it sting like it was cold. All it did was burn my skin, nothing more left to describing it.
The aura of pain seemed to be getting closer and closer, feeling like it was coming from behind the stone pillar Ahrad had made. Then something walked straight through the pillar! The creature passed straight through it as if there weren’t anything there. The pillar even rippled and allowed one to look straight through for but a moment. I turned to look at Ahrad. Could it be he wasn’t nearly as skilled at magic as I thought he was? A mere charmer and not a sorcerer?
Ahrad’s complexion began to take on a tint of red as he looked on at the creature, something with a similar shape as he had. It had the shapelessness of an alf, but its form was more like charcoal smeared on an otherwise beautiful portrait. It also held a hammer made of a silvery metal in its left hand, the mere sight of which made my burning greater. The smear didn’t seem to pay much notice to us, instead swerving around the deceased trees.
I whispered over to Ahrad, “Is that a svartalf?”
Ahrad simply shushed me.
“Well, why doesn’t it notice us?”
Ahrad shushed me even louder. The smear then swirled about and faced us, its charcoal aura taking a slightly lighter hue. Dropping the hammer, it reached both hands into itself and slowly pulled out several vials full of glowing blue fluids, three in each hand.
Ahrad was now taking slow, deep breaths, like he was bracing for something horrible or painful. “Run,” he said to me flawlessly. The smear then began to throw the vials at all the trees around us, each of them giving the same groan as the ones that withered before them. I tried my best to stand up, but the pain had begun to reach my stomach and muscles now. I couldn’t even crawl. “Run! Run! Run!” he shouted as the final tree within a house’s width of us was destroyed. What was he expecting of me? Couldn’t he tell I was in incredible pain? Maybe I wasn’t running by now, but I was at least pulling myself away by inches at a time. There was one great crack from the last dying tree, and I was able to see the bubble Ahrad put around us for another moment. It started as a little ripple just in front of my fingertips and then became a visible mist once again. But just as quickly as it came, the mist vanished, stirred into the air by the hail.
I couldn’t hope to move anywhere, at least nowhere that would make a difference, so I rolled myself onto my side to ease the labor in my breath. The smear then gave off a sound like crunching leaves and darted toward me.
“Ei,” Ahrad shouted as he charged the smear and managed to throw it off balance. The balance was lost for only a moment. The smear regained its composure shortly and knocked Ahrad to the ground with its hammer.
Now with nothing to stop it, it walked over to me. “Qualme,” was all that it said as it kicked me onto my back. I struggled to hold my eyes open while the hail beat down on my face. I was too intent to see what would happen to close them even if it hurt. Everything hurt anyway; frozen eyes were nothing but a stubbed toe right now.
The smear gave a chuckle at me, seeming impressed or amused by my resistance. Also intent to help me prove myself, it laid the hammer down on my shoulder. My entire body then began to spasm about. This metal felt like it were now trying to eat its way into my skin and then fuse into what was left. “Stop it,” I shouted, the hammer being too heavy to throw off. “Stop the stinging!” The beast only laughed more as I lost all control over my body.
“Qualm—me,” it shouted that word again, but the last part of it sounded like it was squeezed out of it. A blur of light darted over me, an alf, and lifted the poisonous hammer off me. Now with that source of great pain gone, I flopped my head over to see what had happened. The smear was laying lifelessly on the ground, the tuft of an arrow rising above its smoky form. More of those jars had also spilled out from near the arrow, one of them close enough for me to notice its imperfections, highlighted by the light of its contents.
Another alf then picked me up and carried me away. I whimpered as he rubbed my scorched skin. All the alfar ran like a horde of these creatures were on their way, only the one with the hammer staying behind. As my body was tossed about by my carrier’s haste, my mind was alive with what I’d seen of that label. It was Agr
ian. My father had taught me well that Agrian glass almost always had grains of red suspended in it on account of the sands they use to make it, and this did indeed have a suspension of red powder in it. “The outrage,” I shouted to myself. “The Agrians are in league with the svartalfar!”
Chapter 4
Strange Folk, Alfar Are
When threatened, alfar can move unbelievably fast. Blurred though my vision was by the pain possessing all of my skin, I could tell they moved swiftly and efficiently. They bent about trees, they tucked under bushes, and they leapt off large rocks to hasten themselves through airtime. Thankfully, the alf carrying me didn’t engage in these acrobatics. The penalty for this was lagging behind, but he was still able to keep up.
The pain I was suffering was immense, and under normal conditions I would have fallen unconscious. All that kept me from doing that was the way I clung onto the memory of that vial. The audacity of the Agrians knew no end. Heinous was their treatment of me and my fellow Shaloor, but they’d need a very special type of bile to endorse the deeds of the svartalfar even this much.
Confident we were a safe distance from the attack site, the alfar slowed and I was laid down on my back. It felt like there were bumps and bubbles scattered all across my back, and I could identify every single twig beneath me because of them. Carefully, the alf that carried me began to remove my shirt. He got no further than sliding it off my shoulder before he leapt back, shouting out a loud metallic shriek. My shoulder felt odd now, it felt cool as the breeze blew across it, but it also felt like something was crawling around on it.
I rolled my head to take a look at my shoulder for myself. There was a moment before my vision focused in on it, and my eyes widened when they did. My skin had become a wasteland ravaged by war, a crimson, sunburnt complexion rubbed over it. Sheets of cracked and peeled skin sloped across me like sand dunes and boils infested every place on me. A frantic conversation began among the alfar and all I could do was say, “What’s happening, Kaihar?” over and over again.
Across the Kolgan Sea Page 4