The servants seemed to vanish. Everyone looked to the king as he took the first sip. He nodded and the rest of the gathered began to eat.
“The Royal Minstrels and Dancing Troop of Nia!” Herin shouted again as thirty men and women skipped into the hall and posed in the middle of the semi-circle the tables made. Six of them held various musical instruments. I don’t remember where I had seen similarly designed instruments, but I recalled the familiar sound of each as they began to play.
The music was fantastic, and the dancers moved with beautiful grace and agility. I briefly thought of Iolarathe, but then I forced the memory away.
They danced and played for almost half of an hour. I looked over to Paug and saw the reflections of the dancing women’s skirts in his eyes. The audience clapped when they had finished. The dancers bowed and ran out the door as servants came to gather the used soup dishes.
Paug stood up and stretched as a few other people around us did the same.
“Now we can mingle for a few minutes, until the next bell rings.” He looked over to the king’s table.
“Oh.” I didn’t feel like standing, but I did it anyway. I followed Paug’s gaze and saw Nadea engaged in conversation with her father and the male envoy from Brilla. She looked over at me and quickly looked away when she noticed my attention. It seemed that she was still mad at me.
“Did I do well Kaiyer?” a female voice said in my memories.
“Yes. Excellent job.” I was suddenly in a field of corpses. Elven corpses, I realized as I bent down to inspect one’s face, twisted in death. The stench of their rotting bodies smelled as wonderful as a plate full of food after a long day of training.
“They didn’t suspect I would flank their ambush of your forces.” The voice belonged to the woman whose arm I had broken. She wore a beautiful smile and her eyes sparkled a bright shade of green. Her armor fit her body perfectly, its massive plates of riveted steel each weighing at least ten pounds. It had taken the smiths almost six months to craft it for her. Finely etched dragons and lizards ran across each surface of the grayish metal.
The bell brought me back to the present. I sat down and looked over to Paug.
“What will the next course be?” I shrugged before I realized he asked the question rhetorically.
I frowned when I tried to pull back the fuzzy memory of the woman in the dragon armor. These recollections seemed to be coming more often now. Maybe I would remember everything in the next few weeks. I remembered the message Malek left me and couldn't help but feel a sense of dread. I hoped I hadn’t forgotten my past for a reason.
The servants came out with more silver trays and repeated the presentation. This course consisted of a baked fish with small boiled eggs on the side. Next to the eggs and fish were a few thin stalks of a plant I had never seen and couldn't remember. The servants returned quickly with wine bottles and began to fill the glasses that were placed in front of us.
“May I present: The Actor and Bard, Esthat Usmay!” There was a startled round of applause as a gray-haired man stepped into the semi-circle and pulled out an instrument with a long neck and twenty-four strings attached across its length. He bowed to Jessmei's family and to the gathered audience before he started playing.
Although it was just one man, the variety of pitches and tones he produced with his instrument seemed more varied and interesting than the musical troop that had played before him. I found myself entranced by his fingers and body movements as he pulled the music out of the air and pushed it to us.
I felt Paug touch my shoulder and I looked over to him.
“Don’t forget to eat, my friend! You’ve been watching him for ten minutes without touching your food.” I smiled and tasted the fish. It was as delicious as it looked, it melted into my tongue in soft, buttery flakes with a delicate, herbal flavor. The small eggs also were very fine, smooth and creamy, although I didn’t expect them to be as salty as they were and I had to wash them down with a gulp of wine.
“Careful you don’t get food on your shirt,” Paug warned me. “You’ll have to stand up in front of everyone when the king knights you.” I looked down at my still clean tunic and sighed in relief. This whole ordeal seemed to be a complicated process and I needed to be careful at each step.
After the servants cleared this course we stood again to stretch. The Baron asked me about the life of a fighting man, how much I trained, where I was stationed, and what brought me to this gathering. Paug came to my aid and helped me answer each question in ways that the Baron seemed to approve of. Shortly, the next bell rang and we all sat down in our places.
“This should be salad,” Paug said with a wrinkled nose. “I don’t really like vegetables that much, but Grandfather makes me eat them. I have a feeling that I will like these though.”
Paug was right. The servants set down a small plate of raw mixed greens, with purple and orange fruit, drizzled with a lemon-flavored dressing. It was light and helped cleanse my palate as I ate it.
“May I present: The Mistress of Song. The Dove Herald herself, Tanya Gettil!” The audience gasped and applauded loudly as a pretty young girl walked into the semi-circle. A servant ran and set down a chair for her to sit upon. She carried an instrument that looked like a large wooden horseshoe. It had strings across it and seemed to be made out of gold and silver leaves.
“She is famous,” Paug whispered to me, "and only plays for royalty or for one hundred gold pieces an hour! She is supposed to have the most beautiful voice in the world.” He gazed at her dreamily as she started to sing. Her voice did sound amazing, like the sound of the waterfalls in my dreams. I looked over at Paug after she had been playing for a few minutes and poked him.
“Vegetables?” I said as I pointed at the greens with my fork and smiled.
“Ugh, you are just like Grandfather,” he said, his face scrunched up as he took a bite. Then he smiled and took another.
“Her voice makes everything good, right?” I said. He nodded.
“It is too bad this night has to end,” he sighed as he leaned back in his chair. “I hope I can remember this forever.”
“I agree my friend,” I said before I put the last bite of leaves into my mouth.
The young woman finished playing and bowed to us. All the gathered stood up to applaud her. She bowed again and took a seat at a table on our side of the hall, with the older man who had played before her.
“She is sitting here eating with us. Perhaps you should go talk to her?” I suggested to Paug.
“Oh no! I couldn’t do that.” His face looked white. “She is too beautiful.”
“So?”
“She would never want to talk to me. She is destined to marry someone great and powerful. I am just destined to be a village school teacher.” His face fell. “At least I got to see her play once.”
“I think you should go converse with her. Then you can say you got to see her play and you got to talk to her,” I said with a smile. The servants cleared off the finished course and I tried to avoid the Baron’s gaze. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore.
“She’ll reject me. Look at me. I’m not handsome, or brave, or powerful. I’m just a boy.”
“I think you should go talk to her,” I repeated. “But what do I know? I’ve been asleep for a long time.”
The bell rang again and we all sat, but instead of servants coming out, the king stood up and raised his hands, palms outward. The crowd instantly became quiet.
“I want to thank you all again for coming tonight, especially our friends from Loorma, Newvana, Brilla, and Gradar. Our families have stood together in peace for generations, and I could not see it any other way.” Heads around the hall nodded in approval. Paug mentioned that some of the countries here had only mild affection for each other. I wondered how much political skirmishing was going on behind the scenes to keep the wheels of their truce greased.
“But there is someone else here that I would like to personally thank.” He looked over to me. “
Kaiyer, please stand and come forward.”
All eyes in the room turned to me as I slowly rose to my feet. My stomach flip-flopped a dozen times when I took the first few steps around the room. A memory suddenly hit my brain and I remembered a valley full of armored warriors.
A thousand pairs of eyes watched me as my horse approached the ranks of soldiers. They were devoted to me like I was one of the Dead Gods the Elvens worshiped. There could be no one else that would save them, deliver them from the Elvens.
I circled the last table and made my way to the raised stage. The king walked in front of his dinner table and drew his ornate sword. Its blade looked perfectly balanced, the gemstones on the hilt sparkled, reflecting bright jewel tones as they caught the light from above. He raised it before his face and held it easily. He was still on the raised platform, so that he might look around to the gathering and down at me.
“It brings me joy to personally thank someone such as you, a hero who has risked his life many times to protect my beloved family.” I heard mutterings around the room, people asking who I was, what exactly I had done, and about the family I came from.
Suddenly Maerc was at the king’s ear whispering urgently. The general looked at me when he had finished and glared. I had been paying attention to the susurration of the crowd and didn’t hear what he said. That had been foolish of me.
The king’s face paled and I could see his hands shake a tiny amount. He continued his speech.
“Because of these great achievements toward my family I would like to bestow upon you--“
There was a tearing and explosion behind me. I turned to see the doors to the Main Hall ripped open. One of the great pieces of wood teetered off of its top hinge. Four figures walked calmly into the room.
Elven figures.
I stepped aside and my vision began to blur. My heart surged with the power of the Earth in the stone and the blood flowed through me like a roaring river. It thumped like a battle drum and I couldn’t hear anything. Tears came to my eyes as I tried to fight with my hatred. I tasted blood in my mouth. I was biting my tongue. It healed quickly as I tried to cut through it with my teeth.
Half a dozen guards came charging forward with spears. The Elven in the lead held up his hands and yelled:
“Peace!” The guards slid to a halt. Other soldiers stood in front of the king and the lead table. “We come in peace, King of Nia. Tell your dogs to step back, or we’ll decide to change our minds.” The figure oozed confidence. The sound of his voice made me want to scream and kill everything around me, human or Elven.
“What do you want, Ancient?” the king yelled from across the hall.
“Instruct your guards to move back and allow me to approach. I will tell you then.”
“Don’t let them closer, sire, they could kill you before we would have the chance to protect you,” Maerc whispered into the king’s ear.
“Tell your foolish general that we aren’t going to kill you. We would have done it by now if we wanted his death. Your soldiers are soft and like sheep to our wolf hunger.”
The king hesitated a second and then waved his hand.
“Fine. Move forward and say what you will. Then get out. You are not invited to our celebration.” I was surprised at the conviction in the king’s voice. The guards that had circled the four moved back slightly, allowing them to walk through the empty space that had previously been the stage for our peaceful gathering.
The lead male wore polished plate armor. It was etched red with pictures of hawks and eagles. A thin long sword hung at his waist, and daggers on the other side of his belt had red accents on the hilt wrappings. His eyes were a pale gold, as was his braided hair. He looked like a beautiful statue. I wanted to break him into a thousand pieces. My blood felt like it might boil through my skin.
Two females and another male accompanied him. The three wore smooth leather armor dyed red, they were armed similarly to their leader. The women’s armor was cut low to expose the perfect cleavage of their breasts. One woman’s hair was gray and tied into matching knots on each side of her head. Her eyes were bronze. The other’s hair was a light slate green and flowed down her back like moss on a rock. Her eyes were as red as rubies and glowed like embers. The man's hair was a blackish-blue, and his eyes looked like amber stones.
“I am Greretal. Captain in the Empress's Red Army. I am here on behalf of our empress. We demand your decision.” They stood twenty feet from the king. I was off to his side slightly. Maerc had his right hand on his short sword and his left on the king’s shoulder. Guards with spears stood in front of the table but were not in between the Elvens and the king. It did not matter. As Greretal had stated, they could do nothing to protect their monarch if even one of the Elvens wished him dead. Four trained and armed Elvens could effortlessly massacre every human in the Great Hall, if I was not here.
“My decision?” the king asked, an eyebrow raised.
“Don’t be coy, Your Highness,” the Elven practically spit the word. “My empress thought sending me would instill within you the gravity of your decision. She wants it now.” The three other Elvens were looking around the room. They seemed excited. I looked at the female with the green hair; her right glove was dribbling blood on the floor. The room became silent except for the sound of the dripping.
“I’m sorry. I broke some of your toy soldiers; they didn’t believe we wanted to come in peace,” the green-haired banshee said with a giggle.
We never have to bow before them again. We’ll take the battle to them, striking when they least expect it and showing no mercy. Then we will disappear.
“This plan is suicide Kaiyer,” Malek said. “We are outnumbered three to one and they have the higher ground.”
“I’ll lead the charge,” I said.
Sweat was pouring out of every inch of my skin.
My armor had millions of tiny skulls engraved in the dense metal. My gauntleted hand dripped with blood as I sank my teeth into a pulsating heart. It tasted sweet and tough.
“What are you doing, Brother?” Thayer said. He tried to hide his disgust.
“I said I would eat his heart. Look, he still lives to see me do it.” The Elven general moaned as the last of his blood ran out of his body.
The green-haired woman had walked over to me. The flowery smell of her filled my nostrils. I could hear her reptilian heart beating its slow, careful rhythm. My body twitched and my vision faded from black to red to black again.
“Look at this one. He is so scared he is going to shit himself. Can I cut him open and play with his intestines?” she asked the leader in the tongue of the Elvens. My head snapped down and my eyes made contact with hers.
“How about I tear your throat out and drink your screams instead?” I said in our shared tongue. The power of the Earth flared into my body. I couldn’t stop myself. I had to kill them, grind them to paste, my hatred was like a pot of water that now boiled over.
The woman’s eyes widened in shock and her three companions’ heads jerked over to look at me in surprise.
They were just in time to see me grab hold of her throat and rip it out of her neck.
Her hands came up to grasp at the warm, gushing fluid that poured from the hole in her trachea. She managed to get out a gurgling sound of surprise before her friends realized what had happened. They shouted in outrage as the other two drew their swords and moved in front of their leader.
There were screams of shock and fear from the gathered party attendees, but no one dared to move. Now they would be privy to a different performance, one far darker and more sinister than what they had enjoyed so far this night.
We faced each other for a few seconds as the three Elvens looked from my face to my right hand, which still clutched a handful of her throat.
“Circle and cut him down!” their commander said. They slowly began to move around me.
“That sounds like a great idea. I’ll kill them first, and then rip you limb from limb,” I spat at the man in
the red plate armor. His face turned from outrage to fear. He wasn’t used to being taunted, especially by a human that spoke his language.
The male on the right attacked prematurely. When I was a normal human, I remember that they seemed to move so quickly and beautifully. Their strength and grace made us believe that they were Gods that deserved to rule us without question.
Now I knew them to be mortal, slow and weak. They could be slain like any other prey.
These Elven had never met a predator before.
His sword passed inches from my face. It was a vertical cut and my hands wrapped around his hand and wrist when he reached the bottom of his stroke, pulling it downward below my waist. I stepped over this sword and maintained my grip on his hand as I circled him and raised my arms across my body. The speed of my action combined with my weight and leverage caused his wrist to snap like a dry piece of wood. His body flipped and landed heavily on the stone floor. It made a sound like a thunderclap as the large tile beneath him cracked. His hand lost its hold of the sword when I broke his wrist. The movement had put the thin blade into my capable hands.
He screamed when he felt the pain radiate up his arm. It was one of pure agony and shame.
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