The gray elves started to pursue them, rage on their faces. Likely they wanted to avenge the agonizing death of the gray elf the muridach berserkers had been using as a meal. But knowing the muridachs, they were retreating into the cellars of the city and would use that to return to the tunnels of the Deeps.
And if the gray elves followed, the muridachs would set an ambush and wait for their enemies to follow.
“Hold!” shouted Ridmark. “Hold! If you follow the muridachs, you will blunder into a trap!”
One of the gray elven archers glared at Ridmark. He looked thinner and sicker than Arliach, the black veins beneath his pale skin more prominent.
“We must avenge our fallen kin!” snarled the archer. “Humans understand nothing of this! Your lives are too short to understand our loss!”
“If you follow this muridachs, your life will be far shorter than you wish,” said Ridmark.
The archer snarled again, but Kyralion stepped to Ridmark’s side, bow in hand.
“He is right, Nilarion,” said Kyralion. “If we chase the muridachs they will set an ambush for us and kill us all.”
Nilarion grimaced, but nodded, visibly forcing back his anger. “As you say, Firebow.”
“Lord Arliach,” said Ridmark. He spotted the wizard gazing at the mutilated corpse of the dead gray elf.
“He was my nephew,” said Arliach. “The last surviving son of my sister and her husband, all of whom fell fighting the muridachs or perished in the plague.”
“We need to move,” said Ridmark. “If we linger here, the muridachs will regroup and come for us.”
“Or they shall gather Throne Guards and kalocrypt raiders,” said Kyralion.
“You are right,” said Arliach, pulling himself together. It seemed that Kyralion’s word carried great weight. The Augurs might have lied to Kyralion about his vision, but it seemed the warriors of the gray elves held the Firebow in great regard. “Let us hasten, and be gone from this place at once.”
They hurried through the gate, heading to the south across the plains before the muridachs could return.
Chapter 7: The Illicaeryn Jungle
Calliande had taken many long and dangerous journeys in her life, some of them in desperate haste, enemies harrying her step every mile of the way.
The two days of their flight from Cathair Avamyr to the Illicaeryn Jungle wasn’t the most harrowing journey she had ever endured, but it came close.
They had no choice but to leave the pack scutians behind. There was no way the poor lizards could maintain the necessary pace, and Calliande and Ridmark and the others stuffed extra supplies into their packs and let the beasts go. It saddened her to let the animals depart. Almost certainly the muridachs would eat them as they had done to that poor gray elf, but at least this way the scutians would have a chance to escape.
For the thousandth time since she had come to Owyllain, Calliande wished she had a horse. If they had horses, they could have outpaced the muridach footmen, and while the kalocrypts were fast, they did not have the stamina of horses. If Calliande had a thousand horses, they could have mounted the gray elves and smashed right through the host of the muridachs. For that matter, if she had the trisalians she had thrown against King Justin’s host at the Battle of the Plains, they could have crushed the muridachs and sent the creatures scurrying back to their warrens in the Deeps.
Calliande pushed aside the thoughts. Daydreaming would accomplish nothing. While she wished for things, she might as well wish for the Order of the Swordbearers and the Order of the Magistri to come to Andomhaim. With a thousand Knights of the Soulblade and a thousand Magistri, she could have driven back the muridachs, defeated the other bearers of the Seven Swords, and reunited Owyllain. Then Hektor Pendragon could have reigned over a realm at peace, and Tamlin could settle down with Tamara, Calem with Kalussa, and the New God would never rise to torment the world.
She gritted her teeth and forced herself onward, the weight of her armor and the straps of her back digging into her shoulders.
They were attacked four times in the first day from Cathair Avamyr, three times by muridach scouting parties on the backs of kalocrypts, and once by a troop of berserkers led by a pair of priests of the Lord of Carrion. Every time, Calliande and the others were victorious. The gray elves fought with uncanny harmony, and Calliande and Kalussa and Tamara loosed their magic while Ridmark and the others charged into battle, cutting down muridach after muridach.
They won all four fights, but five gray elves died. Two of them were killed the fighting, cut down before Calliande could heal their wounds. Three of them, as far as she could tell, died of exhaustion and the plague curse. Calliande did not know how much of the gray elves’ stamina went to combating their plague curse, but it appeared the strain of resisting the illness coupled with the stress of battle finally overwhelmed their constitutions, their hearts giving out.
They passed on, leaving the dead behind.
On the second day, after a short and restless sleep, Third, Ridmark, and Kyralion ranged out to scout, and after Calliande had checked on Gareth and Joachim, she sent the Sight ranging around them. She saw no sign of dark magic or of any enemies, and Ridmark and Third thought they had gotten ahead of the muridach horde. With luck, they would reach the Illicaeryn Jungle after another day and night.
Which meant they were safe enough for Calliande to start asking questions.
She could tell that Arliach and Nilarion and the other gray elves were uncomfortable with her questions. Or they were uncomfortable with speaking about the Unity to an outsider and a human.
Calliande didn’t give a damn.
Like it or not, she and her husband and friends had gotten swept up in the muridach war against the gray elves, and if they had any hope of survival, she needed to understand everything she could. For that matter, Calliande wanted to discover how Qazaldhar had used the Unity to inflict his plague curse on the Liberated.
Third kept close as Calliande questioned the gray elves. She, too, had reason to learn everything she could about the Liberated and their Unity.
“Then the Unity is not just mindspeech?” said Calliande.
It was drawing closer to midday, the sun hot overhead, the air sticky and damp. Sweat dripped down Calliande’s face and her back, and she frequently used the magic of elemental water to draw ice from the air to cool herself. The others marched south, pushing a path through the grass. The muridachs would have no trouble following their trail, but Calliande supposed it hardly mattered. All the muridachs were going south anyway.
“It is a more profound connection than that, my lady,” said Arliach. “The Unity lets us communicate constantly. We share our emotions, our senses, our impressions and thoughts. Words are not required for this manner of communication. Indeed, words are cumbersome in the Unity. We can communicate so much more efficiently without the use of language.” He smiled. “We mostly use speech for communicating with outsiders. The Unity is like the flight of an arrow, but the spoken word is a crawl by comparison.”
“I see,” said Calliande, remembering one of the things Kyralion had told her soon after she had met him. He had complained about the limitations of language, how a word that meant one thing to a man might mean something else to another. Since the gray elves seemed capable of communicating without speech, that explained why Kyralion found words cumbersome and clumsy to use. Especially since he was not part of the Unity.
She felt a flash of sympathy for Kyralion. It must have been a challenging way to grow up.
“It seems you do, my lady,” said Arliach. “You possess the power of the Sight?” Calliande nodded. “In ancient days, many of our wizards possessed that power, though now only the Augurs wield it. I suppose you can see the Unity. It must be a wonderful thing to behold.”
“It is indeed remarkable,” said Calliande. That was true enough. As she focused the Sight on the gray elves, she saw the web of the Unity that bound them. The Sight interpreted it as thousands of threads of
blazing blue light, linking together the gray elves in a mighty web. It was a powerful and potent work of magic, and the gray elves would be in constant communication, sharing thoughts and emotions and memories and images with the speed of thought.
A great feat of magic…and yet it disturbed Calliande.
Some things, she thought, ought to be private. She did not want anyone to watch or listen when she lay naked with Ridmark. And there were things in her mind she never wanted to share with anyone, things that shamed her. On the day of Rypheus’s treachery, for a moment Calliande had considered letting Kalussa die of her wounds, enraged at the younger woman’s attempted seduction of Ridmark. There was her lingering grief and guilt over the death of Joanna. It no longer dominated Calliande’s thoughts, but it would always be a part of her. There were older emotions that she didn’t want to share. She had been jealous of Morigna and angry at Ridmark when he had been with her, even if Calliande had kept those emotions walled away from her judgment. Sometimes she got exasperated with her children, and it was all she could do not to shout at them to shut up and stop fighting. For that matter, she missed her sons constantly and thought about them often.
Her mind was a stew of conflicting emotions, and Calliande knew she wasn’t unique. It wasn’t even a bad thing. It was simply how the human mind worked. She knew Ridmark would have thoughts and feelings he didn’t want to share with anyone else, and that would be true of every living man and woman. Yet to be joined with everyone else, to constantly share thoughts and emotions, to be bombarded with their negative emotions even as they sensed hers…
If Calliande was honest with herself, it sounded nightmarish. Perhaps Kyralion was fortunate in more than one way that he could not be made part of the Unity.
She wondered why the gray elves had done this to themselves.
“Remarkable,” said Calliande. “Tell me, can you communicate with the other gray elves scattered throughout the Illicaeryn Jungle? Or is there a…ah, limit to how far the Unity reaches?”
“There is,” said Arliach. “The range varies by the individual gray elf in question, and larger groups of our people can communicate over further distances. For my patrol, the distance would be about five or six miles. Once we approach the final refuge of my people, we shall be able to speak with the other gray elves from about nine or ten miles away.”
“A useful skill,” said Calliande. A flash of insight came to her. “That’s why no gray elf of the Unity can use one of the Seven Swords, isn’t it? The power of the Sword would spread through the link of the Unity and overwhelm your kindred.”
“That is correct,” said Arliach. He smiled. “You need not fear that we shall try to take the three Swords from your companions. They would do us no good, and trying to use one of the Swords would injure the Liberated grievously.”
“Have the gray elves always possessed the Unity?” said Calliande. “Or is it something that was created?”
“Not always,” said Arliach. “When we came to this land, we built mighty cities and towers in imitation of the high elves from whom we descended. You traveled through the Pass of Ruins to come here, so you know how that portion of our history ended.” Calliande nodded. “We made our last stand at Cathair Avamyr, and the Sovereign pursued us and destroyed the city. The survivors fled to the Illicaeryn Jungle, and there we founded the Unity.”
“So the Unity is recent,” said Calliande. “From the perspective of the gray elves, anyway. No more than a few thousand years old.” For the gray elves, that would be only two or three generations.
“That is correct,” said Arliach. “And it was the Unity that gave us the ability to defy the Sovereign. You saw us fight in Cathair Avamyr.” Calliande nodded again. “The speed of our communication is a powerful advantage in a fight. Especially in a place like the Illicaeryn Jungle, where we can prepare ambushes and fade into the trees. Many times, the Sovereign sent armies into the Jungle to defeat us, but we whittled away those armies piece by piece and destroyed them.”
“A powerful defense,” said Third, who had been silent for the conversation so far.
“It is, my lady,” said Arliach after a moment’s hesitation. “Without the Unity, the Sovereign would have destroyed us before humans came to Owyllain.”
“But it has some weaknesses, does it not?” said Third.
Arliach shrugged. “No method of defense is perfect.”
“The plague curse, for one,” said Calliande.
“That is the gravest weakness,” said Arliach, looking at the other gray elves, “and if the muridachs had not come forth, the plague curse would still destroy us in time.”
“How did the plague curse fall on the Unity?” said Calliande.
Arliach hesitated and looked at the gray elves again, no doubt communicating with them in silence.
“It was soon after the battles at Urd Maelwyn and Cathair Animus,” said Arliach at last. “The Guardian Rhodruthain and the Master of the Arcanii Talitha betrayed and murdered High King Kothlaric Pendragon, and the Seven Swords were scattered. The Augurs were furious at Rhodruthain and refused to help any of the bearers of the Seven Swords, and the Liberated returned to the Illicaeryn Jungles. We hoped that with the Sovereign dead, we could rebuild our civilization, and perhaps in time we would return to our ancient heights.”
“Then Qazaldhar found you,” said Calliande.
“The Maledictus of Death appeared within our refuge,” said Arliach. Again he hesitated, glancing at the other gray elves, and Calliande suspected they were deciding how much of the story to share. “He said that the Sovereign was dead, but that the Kratomachar would rise and conquer the world. In repayment for the defeat of the Sovereign, Qazaldhar pronounced a curse upon us. The plague curse spread through the Unity, and neither or Augurs nor our lorekeepers nor our wizards knew how to remove it. We have been slowly dying ever since, and now the muridachs have been roused to finish us.”
“I am sorry,” said Calliande. She had tried using the magic of the Well on Arliach twice, first to heal him of the plague curse, and then to attempt to break the necromantic aura of the plague. Both times she had failed. The plague was a magical disease, and the healing spell would not work upon it. For that matter, trying to dispel the necromantic magic of the disease had proven impossible. As soon as she attacked it, fresh dark power surged through the web of the Unity to renew it. Qazaldhar had woven the plague into the very fiber of the Unity itself, and the only way to break the plague would be to sever the individual gray elf’s connection to the Unity.
That would be fatal.
“It is not your doing,” said Arliach. “This battle has been underway since long before Connmar Pendragon founded the realm of Owyllain. Long before humans even came to this world, in truth.” He sighed. “I fear you have come to see the dismal final chapter of our kindred. Once we ruled this entire continent, and our cities glittered like jewels in the sun. Now our final remnant awaits the end.”
Third’s face twitched and then settled back into its calm mask, and Calliande knew her well enough to realize that Third was hiding disdain. Arliach’s attitude would be alien to Third. She would meet the end fighting, her blades covered with the blood of her foes, and would consider bemoaning the tragedy of her fate to be a waste of time.
Calliande wondered if that was Arliach’s attitude, or if it was the opinion of the rest of the gray elves.
Perhaps it was the opinion of the Unity.
“Another question, my lord,” said Calliande. “How did the Unity begin?”
“The Augurs founded the Unity when we fled to the Illicaeryn Jungle,” said Arliach, repeating what he had said earlier.
“Yes, but…how exactly?” said Calliande. “It is a stupendous feat of magic. As the Keeper of Andomhaim, I am curious how it was done.”
“I…” Arliach hesitated and looked at the other gray elves. “We are not permitted to speak of it to outsiders, by the decree of the High Augur. Perhaps when you meet the Augurs, my lady, they will tell
you about our origins.”
“Of course,” said Calliande. “I look forward to it.”
“If you will forgive me,” said Arliach, “I would like to take a look around. We should be well away from the kalocrypt patrols, but I would prefer to verify that with my own eyes.”
“Certainly,” said Calliande. “Thank you for your time, Lord Arliach.”
Arliach bowed and jogged away, three of the gray elven scouts falling in around their leader.
Calliande and Third shared a look.
“He didn’t like that last question, did he?” said Calliande.
Third’s mouth twisted. “No. It seems clear that while the Unity offers many advantages, it also exact a sharp price from its members.”
“The advantages would be coordination and harmony and speed in battle,” said Calliande.
“Aye,” said Third. “During an ambush in a dense forest, that would be a fearsome advantage. But the disadvantages are sharp. Did you see how the gray elves all seem to agree with each other? It seems that the Unity enforces consensus. I doubt that any of them have had an original thought for centuries. For that matter, I wonder if Arliach’s fatalism has spread through the Unity in the same way as Qazaldhar’s plague.”
It was one of the longest speeches that Calliande had ever heard from Third.
“That thought occurred to me as well,” said Calliande. “I suppose there are worse things than consensus.”
“It depends on the consensus,” said Third. “In the scriptures, it was the consensus of the mob that Pilate should release the murderer Barabbas rather than the Dominus Christus.”
“That is a good point,” said Calliande.
“I wonder if the consensus of the Unity causes the gray elves to make similarly ill-founded decisions,” said Third. “I can also see why the gray elven warriors admire Kyralion so much.”
“Why is that?” said Calliande.
“Because he does not share their fatalism,” said Third.
Calliande frowned. “Kyralion said several times that he fears the muridachs will destroy his kindred.”
Sevenfold Sword: Unity Page 12