by Debra Dunbar
“A copy then?” I was getting desperate. We couldn’t just poke holes in the ground, drilling down ten thousand feet on a hunch. I could reach down into the ground to try to sense the water table, but not that deep. Plus, I wasn’t sure if water would feel the same to me here as it did back home. We needed the map.
“Maybe. They’re not always eager to trade those sorts of things with us. The request would be better received coming from another elf.”
I saw where he was going with this. “I can’t. I might look like one of them, but I don’t speak more than five words of Elvish, and I’ve been told my accent is horrible. I can hardly claim laryngitis because I still wouldn’t be able to understand them.”
Also, I doubted that Rutter’s sorcery-induced brain injury excuse would work with elves.
“Then I guess we try as best we can with what we’ve got. We can work on getting a map, and maybe manage to trade for it eventually.”
Kirby set aside his work. “You look like an elf, but don’t speak the language, so the best thing would be for you to sneak in and out without any of the elves seeing you. And I think I know just the demons to help you. Two greed demons. I don’t do much business with them, but they’ve got a reputation as thieves. They, along with two other demons, pulled off a heist in Wythyn a few decades back that was legendary. The elves were furious. They never did recover the stuff these demons took.”
Which meant they knew the kingdom, knew the capital city. And there was a good chance they’d know the layout of the building that held the maps. The only issue would be payment.
“What would they want in trade to escort me to Wythyn, help me steal these maps, and escort me back?”
“A few chicken wands and the chance to take whatever they can carry.”
This might just work. “Think they’d be willing to leave first thing in the morning?”
Kirby grinned. “They’re greed demons. They’ll be more than willing.”
Chapter 9
Rutter found some elven-style clothing for me so I’d blend in if the worst happened and we encountered any elves. The ‘dresses’ were long strips of silk – spring green, sky blue, daffodil yellow, and a rich brown. One of the humans showed me how to wrap them around my body, then turned me to see my reflection in the mirror.
My bikini was more modest than this dress, but something within me snapped into place, like a missing piece of a puzzle. This was my elven half. This was who she was, and the revealing silky dress felt like a home I’d never known.
We met the two greed demons at the edge of the Wythyn forest. One looked as if he’d been in a horrible fire then rolled in red glitter. The other one was a giant snake with legs and arms. Not only did they actually know where the capital was, they knew where the archive building stood, and exactly what sort of protections the elves would have on the entrances.
We weren’t two miles into the forest before the arguments began. The greed demons wanted to extend the project to include several other elven items not in the archives. Then they bickered over the best way to get through the city gates and past the building wards. Finally, I had to separate the two, Glitter walking slightly ahead with Rutter while Snake followed with me.
The greed demon grumbled something, then looked at me with his black eyes, darting a long forked tongue out of his mouth.
“He wants to know if he adds a favor or two to be redeemed at a future date if you would agree to have sex with him,” Rutter translated. “He has always wanted to be with an elf woman and would be willing to trade either goods or services.”
Absolutely not. For once the succubus in me agreed. Odd that I’d been fine having sex with Harkel, but this demon turned my stomach. It wasn’t his snake-like form either. I liked snakes. This guy I didn’t like. He was the expert, and I needed him to get in and out of Wythyn safely with the maps, but after that I hoped to never see him again. Something about him set off all my inner alarm bells.
“Perhaps another time,” I told Snake, not wanting to outright refuse him. “I need to focus on getting the map and helping the humans.”
“He says he has lots of energy to share. That he has magical items, gems, exotic foods. He’d be willing to assassinate one of your enemies in return.”
“I’m tempted,” I said trying not to shudder. “I just don’t have the spare time right now. Perhaps in a few days when I’m done with the humans.”
Snake didn’t push the issue further, but his narrowed eyes made me wonder if he’d be more insistent on the way home.
“Miss Amber.” Rutter tugged at my dress and one of my breasts nearly popped out of it. “You look just like an elf. Just like a glowy magic elf. If you knew the language, you could walk right in and get the map. Everyone would think you were one of the high ladies returned.”
I doubted I could learn Elvish in the next six hours. Nyalla had been trying to teach me all year and I didn’t even know enough to phrase a convincing greeting.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to sneak in and out without any notice,” I replied. “There can’t be that many elves left behind. If there are a few hundred in the capital city, that’s not many per square yard.”
The further into the elven lands we got, the more I realized the extent of their modifications. How they’d turned the scorching desert with its acidic red soil into this lush forest was beyond my ability to comprehend. I could do small-scale plant modifications, but this… There were over eighty types of trees that I counted in one hour, along with hundreds of wildflowers, mosses, and bushes. Colorful lichens and fungus dotted downed trees, adding to the fairy-tale air of the place. Furry animals darted through the shrubs, and the birdsong was sweet and clear. It was like a Disney movie come to life. And all of it had been generated from a harsh unforgiving environment, held in place by the powerful magic of a handful of elves.
A cool breeze lifted my hair and I smelled honeysuckle and wild cucumber. This place was heaven. If I’d lived here, I’d never leave. Why had the elves decided to cross the gates when they had a paradise of their own creation right here?
Glitter put out a hand to stop us and we all held still as he listened.
“He says that we’re far enough in away from the human settlements,” Rutter translated when the demon finally spoke. “Any trespass wards we’ve tripped up until this point will be attributed to wandering humans or adventurous demons. The remaining elves won’t spare the guards to come out this far and check on poachers, but as we get closer in to the capital, they’ll know we’re not just hunting durfts and they’ll sound the alarm.”
I bit my lip. “So what do we do?”
“We use these.” Rutter grinned and dug in a pouch, pulling out four elf buttons. “One for each of us.”
I’d discovered the joy of elf button teleportation just yesterday and was already a fan. “I’m assuming they’ll take us just inside the wall around the city? We’ll need to be stealthy, so we remain undetected until we reach the archive room.”
“Yep. We’ll need to be quiet and sneak through the streets to the archives. Once were there, the greed demons are going to get us in. We get the maps. They get whatever they want to get, then we leave.”
“How are we going to get back?” I asked. “Aren’t elf buttons one-use only?”
“These have two charges. One into the city. One back here.”
I hoped there weren’t so many elves in the city that we came across them, or that we accidently tripped wards, or that the goodies the greed demons wanted to steal had alarms or traps on them. And there was something else I was worried about. “I need to make sure I get the right map. Can you read Elvish?”
“No.” Rutter’s snout twitched and he turned to ask the greed demons.
Glitter looked insulted and spat out a reply.
“He says that he’s a greed demon. He can read their script, and the elves will have all the archive documents neatly organized and labeled.”
I was planning on getting all the maps pertai
ning to that section of Wythyn, just in case. It would be better to return carrying eight maps I didn’t need then trust Glitter to point out the correct one.
Chapter 10
Instead of taking us right inside the city wall, the elf buttons transported us to a lovely stable. It was nicer than my house. Chestnut beams and posts had been carved and gilded. The stall doors slid on whisper silent tracks, the bars shining with gold plating. There wasn’t a hint of poop anywhere, and the whole place smelled of fresh timothy grass and alfalfa with the faint hint of leather and horse sweat. I pushed some loose hay aside with my foot and saw the floor was an intricate inlay of different colored woods making a mandala in each stall. The center aisle was also inlay, this one with a stylized tree of life. Every piece of wood joined perfectly, as if it had grown that way. The whole place shone.
While the greed demons checked to make sure the coast was clear, I plucked a piece of hay from my hair and straightened my gown. As beautiful and sexy as the strip of silk wrapped around my body was, the outfit wasn’t all that practical for hiking through the forest or teleporting into a stable. It kept shifting as I walked, meaning I was always trying to shove my breasts back into the diagonal strip across my chest, and pulling on the lower section to ensure I wasn’t flashing my crotch with every step.
“You like it here,” Rutter commented. He’d been watching me ever since we’d entered the elven forest, and I got the feeling he meant more than the opulent stable.
“There’s something in the air that makes me come alive.”
“You’re a half-elf. Maybe this is kind of your home? Hel. Wythyn. Both of them.”
Probably. I felt as if I were a stranger but that this place was somehow my birthright. The demons scared me. I didn’t know how to act around them, didn’t know if they’d hurt me. Not being able to communicate with most of them added to my fear. And the elves would kill me if they discovered what I was. They murdered my mother, and that made me want to hate all of them, but somehow walking through the forest and even seeing this stable did feel like a homecoming. The whole thing felt like a homecoming, from the brief time I’d been here with Irix, to the moment I’d walked through the gateway in Columbia.
But as conflicted as I was, I couldn’t deny that I yearned to fit into this world. I wasn’t a half anything here. Normally I felt as if I were two beings, living in a weird sort of synergy within one body. Right now in Hel my two halves were in harmony.
We all made our way out of the stable, cautiously edging down the street from store to store. The capital was a ghost town, the perfect shops and homes starting the slide toward disrepair. A bit of paint was beginning to peel from a basket maker’s sign. One of the cobblestones was loose on the street. Rain had stained a walkway where a downspout ended, and there was mud along the curbs. And the whole place was silent, as if the only thing that lived here were ghosts.
I knew there were still hundreds of elves in the city or nearby, but we didn’t come across any as we made our way to the archives. We edged around to a side entrance, and I watched while Snake examined the door. He spoke to Glitter for a moment, then took an amulet from a pouch and placed it against the door lock. Silver light streamed from the amulet until the entire door was bathed in it, then the light vanished instantly and I blinked to see once again a plain wooden door with metal banding across the top and bottom.
Snake stuffed the amulet back into the pouch and opened the door. Glitter took a gem from the bag at his waist, and threw it into the room. It bounced along the floor, clattering to a stop against something, but we heard, and saw, nothing else. The door wards must have been it, at least within this particular room.
We filed in and my eyes adjusted, seeing in the dark room as if it were daylight. Glitter went to the opposite wall and picked up the gem while I noted the thin layer of dust on the desks and the glass cabinets. There were writing implements and parchments neatly stacked on shelves, waiting for the elven archivists to return. It was weird seeing all this, like the elves had died in a sudden apocalypse and left this all untouched.
How had the elves found it so easy to make a new life in the human world, where the humans here couldn’t? Although, come to think of it, I doubt the elves would find it all that easy. With their snobby pride they probably thought they’d have humans worshiping at their feet, feeding them grapes or some crap like that. In reality, they were likely to be living in a cardboard box under a bridge, and facing down a shotgun if they tried to demand subservience.
The sound of shattering glass had me reflexively dropping to the floor. The noise was deafening in the silence and I panicked, wondering if there was some sort of self-detonation ward on the building, or if the elves left behind had found us and were shooting into the building.
It wasn’t either of those things. Snake had punched his fist through one of the display cases and was busy stuffing bejeweled pens and scrolls into a bag.
“Idiot,” I hissed to Rutter, knowing that the demon wouldn’t understand the slur. “They should have waited until we had the maps before they alerted every elf within two miles that we’re here.”
Now we needed to hurry. I stood up, frantically motioning to the others as I tried to remember what Kirby had said about the building layout. Through that door, down the hallway, then into the main room? I grabbed Rutter’s hand and we followed the greed demons, expecting elves at any minute to burst through the doors and shoot us with arrows.
The hallway was long and sloping, but there was no mistaking the main area. We walked into the room and I stopped abruptly, staring open-mouthed. It was like a fantasy library. Four stories up with row upon row of books that lined the wall. Insanely tall ladders with wheels set in grooves were positioned against the walls, so the agile elves could reach anything they desired. The inner part of the room was a maze of three-foot-tall shelves and cases filled with books and scrolls. There were ornate cushioned chairs, long carved tables, artwork, and statuary. It smelled of oil paints, ink, and books. If I had thought the stables were amazing, this place was doubly so. The greed demons took off. I wandered the room with Rutter by my side, running my hand along the top of the shelves and cases which were still dust free. Did someone come in here to clean and maintain the place? This held all the history of Wythyn, their lineage, their maps, their stories.
I belonged here. There was a noise of breaking glass and I winced. The greed demons most definitely did not belong here, and I regretted Kirby’s promise to allow them to loot the archives. This place was sacred, holy. I had to let them steal some statues and gems, but I couldn’t let them carelessly toss the history of my mother’s people aside to be trampled underfoot.
“Miss Amber,” Rutter tugged on the edge of my dress. “Be careful not to trip any wards. There might be poisoned darts or some other security measure on the cabinets. I don’t want you to be dead.”
Shit. I froze. Snake had already made a ton of noise breaking the glass, and we’d been like elephants stampeding down the hallway. Any ward we tripped probably wouldn’t matter at this point, but getting jabbed by a poisoned dart wasn’t on my to-do list. Plus, I had one problem.
“I can’t read any of this and the greed demons ditched us to grab statuary,” I whispered. “All the scrolls look the same. I don’t know which ones we need.”
Rutter twisted his hands together, looking from me to where the sound of laughter echoed through the room. “I’ll go get them.”
The Low ran off. I heard him arguing with the other demons then a squeal of pain that made me clench my fists. If they’d hurt Rutter, I’d…shoot them full of lightning, or trap them in a giant bush of thorns, or sex them to death. None of which sounded very threatening, but I didn’t exactly have much in my arsenal that would help me take down two demons that were older and far more powerful than me.
I heard footsteps, then saw Glitter arrive with Rutter. The little Low had a cut on his cheek. I glared at the greed demon, but he ignored me, shifting his half-empty sack
to the other hand as he read the signs.
“He says that these are all histories. There’s a section in the back that says it’s for maps.”
Rutter and I followed Glitter. He continued to mutter words under his breath that the Low did not translate for me. I was pretty sure they were complaints. Or curses.
“Can you ask them to be careful when stealing things?” I asked Rutter, hating to put him in the middle of something that might get him more than a scratch on his cheek. “I don’t want them to damage the books and scrolls.”
I looked up to see Rutter’s panicked expression. “I…I can’t, Miss Amber. They’re greed demons and I’m just a Low. And you might be a half-succubus, but you’re young. They’ll do whatever they want and we can’t stop them.”
I bit my lip. “They can take the statues, gems, and paintings,” I told him. “I just don’t want them to trash the place, to disrespect the stories of my mother’s people.”
The Low’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought the elves were not your friends, Miss Amber. I thought they wanted to kill you, that they’d killed your mother.”
They had. They’d murdered the woman who dared to conceive and bring a half-breed child to birth. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if they realized what I was. But still, this place held a part of me, of my heritage.
“They’re just old books,” Rutter added. “They mean nothing.”
Maybe not to him, but to me they were like roots that tied me to the firmament. I might never read these. They might eventually decay and turn to dust. But I couldn’t let them be torn and trampled. I couldn’t.
But I couldn’t let Rutter take the heat for my decision. Communication might be an issue, but as soon as I got the maps, we were leaving. I’m sure whatever the greed demons had collected by then would be sufficient. It would have to be.