by Tiger Hebert
“What do the incomplete ones describe?” questioned the king as he dug deeper.
“It is hard and dangerous to even speculate because we have no clue as to their context. With that said, we have been able to extract some words like prophet, light, sacrifice, silent, keys, God’s right hand, and…betrayal,” said Duncan as he informed Tua’Liluon. “Perhaps the largest mission for the brotherhood up until now has been the continued search for more of the scattered texts, but I believe time has nearly run out.”
The king stood up from the carved wooden seat and stretched in silence, and then he spoke. “Grand Master Duncan, you have given me a great deal of information to process. I thank you for this information. I have much to consider. We will reconvene after I have meditated on these things you have shared.”
“Fair enough, my friend. Oh, you might want to take a moment to drop your weaponry off with Gragarr,” reminded the old man.
The king nodded in agreement. “I suppose you are right. I will get them to him now so he can begin his work.”
The king got up from the modest wooden chair and slowly walked away from the table where he and Duncan had been sitting. With his back to the grand master, he stopped and said, “If what you have told me is all true, it changes much.”
The sage replied slowly and deliberately with, “It changes everything.”
Remaining with his back to the grand master, the king asked, “And what about my people?”
“The truth is just that. It is often inconvenient, but it does not compromise or apologize for it. There are many who will not accept that, but it does not change to accommodate them. That choice belongs to each,” wisely declared the sage with a gentle and grandfatherly voice.
The king silently nodded his head in acknowledgement, and in a hushed voice, he thanked Duncan and walked away. Quickly and quietly he walked out of the library and out of the temple, and then he was gone.
18 Wooden Swords
Life among the brotherhood was quite a change for the elves. They did not spend their days fishing or singing or dancing anymore. No, their days were filled with drills, drills that they could only hope would sharpen their martial skill, if any could be uncovered at all. With the exception of the king’s royal guard, few of the elves had ever picked up a blade, much less trained for hand-to-hand combat or the rigors of battle. Little did these merry folk know of the legendary feats and military prowess of their distant kin of both past and present ages, but it was in their making. The brotherhood trained them both day and night with bow and spear and sword. War was not for the faint of heart, but they would have little choice. Elf and elf maiden alike would learn to shoot and parry with every opportunity that presented itself.
One such elf maiden, Isiirial, had taken to the training with enthusiasm. Her act of bravery during the invasion of Trellion was not an aberration. The young soul was beyond girlhood but was still adjusting to being a woman. She was full of compassion and fire but also full of naivety. She remembered the night that she helped evacuate the children. Truthfully, she could scarcely sleep because the memories haunted her every time her eyelids met. The feeling of helplessness overwhelmed her. She never wanted to feel everything slip beyond her control again. She refused to feel powerless, so she trained, and she trained hard. She rose before the rest and fired arrow after arrow upon the target dummies. She sparred with her peers at every opportunity. What she lacked in experience and strength, she made up for with persistence and tenacity. In just days, she needed to find new sparring partners because with neither glaive nor sword could her own kin best her.
Seratu took great interest in the young student. He loved her fiery spirit and intense demeanor on the training grounds. She was a clever girl and took quickly to her lessons. His interests were deeply rooted in her attitude and efforts, but they were not rooted there alone. The truth was that in his eyes, the young woman was like a dancing blade of craftsmanship straight from the master’s own unseen hands. He was not used to seeing elves, and the elf maiden captured a piece of him.
Like all elves, particularly the females, she was petite, even by human standards. Her frame was small and appeared soft and delicate. Pristine unblemished skin as pale as the moon’s glow was common among their kind, but not his. Her almond shaped eyes of silvery blue were a striking contrast against her milky complexion. A pointed nose and ears along with thin lips were customary on the confident grace of the elf-kind. Her hair was long and golden, normally falling unnaturally straight. Of late it was held back tightly into a high pony tail, freeing her from its distraction. Elven movements, both male and female, were smooth and direct, never clumsy, and always with purpose. She was no exception. Perhaps it was largely curiosity at first, but he was drawn to her. He could have marveled at her grace from a distance, but he preferred to engage her directly. She had exceeded her peers, and he was given the opportunity to take on her training personally.
Despite his affinity for Isiirial, he didn’t take it easy on her. For nearly two weeks, he pushed her, and he pushed her hard. His criticisms were fair but brutally honest and unrelenting. He rode her on her technique with bow and blade. In their sparring sessions, he found ways to slip the dull wooden training blades past her defenses time and time again. The bruises to her ego seemed to mount higher than the ones on her pretty white skin. He goaded her with gentle barbs about her skill and effectiveness. He got under her pale skin time and time again as he challenged her to move quicker and strike without hesitation.
“Isiirial, must I parry all of your blows? Surely you can strike me once after all these rounds,” begged the unnervingly good looking man.
Staying true to her nature, she preferred to trade blows with him rather than verbal barbs. She sidestepped his first swing and lunged forward with a thrusting strike. Swinging his hips to the side, Seratu dodged the sword’s wooden point. With a backhanded slap of his training sword, he swatted her on her round backside. Furious at his gesture, she kicked back at him, catching him off guard. As he stumbled from the kick, she spun around bringing the sword down, knocking his to the ground. She darted forward and kicked the sword out of his reach and swung wildly at his outstretched hand. He desperately withdrew his hand just in the nick of time, avoiding what would have been a knuckle busting blow. A furious series of wild swings quickly followed as she charged after him in anger.
“How dare you make a mockery of me! I am not your pretty little plaything,” she snapped as she continued to flail at him.
He continued to quickly backpedal, but his feet refused to move fast enough as his feral student descended upon him. Isiirial rushed forward as she seemingly tried to impale her instructor with her wooden blade. Seratu spun past the blade and his attacker and instinctively wrapped one of his arms around her neck and secured her in a choke hold from behind. Their momentum sent the two crashing into the nearby wall. He made sure to absorb the blow as he shielded her from the impact, and he held tight.
“Let go of me,” she growled as she struggled to get free from his arms.
“Isiirial, Isiirial, stop,” shouted Seratu as she continued to fight him.
“You will not take me,” she cried defiantly.
“Take you? I don’t want to take you,” he said in response to the insult as he released her. “I would only take that which you would give.”
“Oh, so you think that you just have to ask? That is the type of girl that you think I am,” snapped Isiirial as she prepared to swing her wooden sword again.
Out of frustration, he shouted back at her, “That’s not fair! You have me painted wrong, elf maiden.”
“You deride me every day and take great enjoyment out of beating me at every turn. What is this twisted pleasure of yours? Do you think that I should run into your arms that you might take it easier on me,” yelled Isiirial as she interrogated her instructor.
With a look of disappointment and a bit of heartache, he shrugged and said, “After all these days, I thought perhaps you might hav
e seen my measure. Yet you still think so little of me and my intentions,”
“What exactly are your intentions, Seratu?” she demanded.
“I cannot allow you to enter battle unprepared, and we are running out of time,” answered the man with a downcast appearance.
“You do not seem so concerned for the others,” she snapped angrily.
“Because I’m not.”
The honesty of his answer finally broke through. The awkwardness of the moment was felt by both of them as her eyes finally started to open.
“What?” started the young lady as she finally dropped her guard ever so slightly.
“I cannot bear the thought of you being lost in battle,” he admitted as he stared at the ground.
“So, you push me so hard because you do not want to lose me?” asked Isiirial in disbelief.
“Aye,” was the sheepish response of her once-bold and confident trainer.
“Do you believe I am yours to lose?” she asked him with a furrowed brow and sharp eyes.
“It is my only prayer,” spilled the man, his secrets vanishing.
The look on her face changed from anger and suspicion to that of simple confusion and embarrassment. She dropped the wooden sword to the ground and reached out a hand to pull the man from the wall that he still laid against. She didn’t know how to respond to this new information. Those types of thoughts had not even so much as crossed her mind, and now she had a lot of information to process. Her reddened checks gave away her discomfort in the situation as her mind raced, and her eyes darted everywhere but toward him.
“That is enough for today,” she said, nodding her head as if agreeing with her own assertion.
He nodded silently as he watched her walk away. She was all out of sorts, and he felt bad, partially for her and partially for himself. He felt like an idiot. He knew that he had blown it. She was perfect in his sight, and he had pushed her away by being too forward, too honest. Lamenting his brashness, he beat himself up all night. It wrestled hours away from his sleep, and when slumber finally overtook him, it was all the more cruel, as his subconscious mind toyed with his emotions. He saw his friends in the brotherhood and his new elven comrades crowded around him, pointing and laughing at his expense. It was worse when he realized that the crowd of hecklers was led by the beautiful face of Isiirial. She pointed and laughed at him, and the chorus of mockery followed from the crowd. The same miserable excuse for a dream tugged on the strings of his heart several times throughout the night. Each time the scene was the same, he ran away in shame.
The knock at the door came during the fourth round of humiliation. In his dream, he searched for the door, but he couldn’t find it in the dark. The knocking persisted and grew impatient until finally his waking mind realized it was beyond the dream world.
Still disoriented, he groaned, “One moment.”
He wiped the sleep from his eyes as he climbed out of his bed. He quickly pulled a robe around his long and lean frame, and then he answered the door in the dark morning hour. The bright torchlight of the hallway rushed in past the opened door and nearly blinded the squinting man. As his eyes struggled to adjust to the sensory overload, he could only see the blurred figure of a shadow in the doorway. His vision was slowly coming into focus when he heard the soft but direct voice greet him.
“The day waits. Let us go,” came her gentle and inviting voice.
His eyes finally settled on her beautiful face as she stood before him, and he was dazed. He wondered if this were just a different ending to the same old dream, one that was far less cruel. He collected his wits and realized that the young elf maiden was dressed and ready for the day with her bow in hand and a full quiver on her back.
“Uh, yes. Sorry, I must have overslept,” answered Seratu, despite knowing dang well that it was even earlier than normal. “I’ll be right out.”
He shut the door, leaving her in the hallway as he flung his robe aside and hurried to get dressed. His heart, and perhaps his foolish hope, arose at the sight of her, and the accompanying shot of adrenaline coursed through his body. He was jolted wide awake, and he was energized. He did not know what the day would hold, but he was excited at the prospect of spending it with her. His clothes were hastily thrown on, and he rushed out of the room while still trying to fasten his cloak. However well his mind was awake, his coordination had not yet caught up, and he struggled to fasten the two ends with the iron clasp as they walked down the dimly lit stone hallway.
After watching him struggle for a moment, she stopped in front of him and demurely asked, “May I?”
“Oh, please…and thank you,” he blurted overeagerly, and a tad bit clumsily too.
She gave a shy smile and kept her eyes fixed on the emblem, which she quickly used to fasten and secure his cloak. Nothing more was said, and the two walked quietly through the halls and then the streets until they reached the archery range.
The days in this region were actually getting a bit longer at this time of year as the sun came closer in its alignment, but the sun had still not come up yet. So they lit torches around the range so they could begin their work. The awkwardness of previous day had shrunk, but it had not completely vanished just yet. As she drew back each arrow, he was hesitant to provide her proper instruction as he feared crossing the line. With each attempt to shift her form, he was careful to respect her personal space.
She fired hundreds of arrows into the stuffing of the target dummies, some from short range and many more from hundreds of feet away. She was green, and her technique was raw, but she was quite gifted. It was the same when she entered the melee arena of hand-to-hand combat. What she lacked in power and endurance, she overcame with speed and accuracy. Whether it was the short swords that the brotherhood frequently utilized or the long elegant glaives that the king’s royal guard armed themselves with, she was a sight to behold. She practically danced as she dashed her wooden training weapons against the target dummies. The occasional rogue ray of sunlight would pierce through the jungle walls as her training continued.
“Okay, enough drills. I need to spar,” she said as she tried to catch her breath.
“Take a breather, and then we will start,” Seratu answered.
She nodded in agreement but only rested for a couple moments, and then she was back up and at it. For the first session, she wielded two of the oaken short swords while he used a wooden replica of the elvish glaives. The match started slowly, as he only poked at her a few times while he played very defensively. She would counter his jabs with a strike or two of her own, which he would easily parry with his spear. Unlike their normal fashion, the duel was quiet save for the cracking of the wooden weapons. There were no more verbal barbs and no boisterous remarks. He did not try to get under her skin or tease her; he simply let his weapon do the poking and prodding. In the still dark morning, he was more the aggressor, and she rarely took much to the offensive.
However, the boring defensive style of sparring that led to jab, jab, counter quickly got old to Isiirial. She became more aggressive with a round of attacks as she tried to stimulate more aggression from her trainer. Even when she had let down her guard to make herself vulnerable to counterattack, he did not seize the opportunity to strike. Isiirial wasn’t foolish; she could see that he was taking it easy on her, and she didn’t appreciate it—quite the opposite, in fact. It made her angry. She was frustrated with him and his inconsistency.
Each of her strikes came harder and faster as she attacked him. Soon her attacks became a flurry of angry blows that caught him off guard. He would deflect one blow, only to be whacked with two more. And the assault did not stop with each scoring blow. Instead she continued to whale on him as he struggled to fight off her attacks. Half a dozen attacks bruised his flesh and ego before she charged into him, sending them both tumbling to the ground. Before he could even spit out a word, she pounced on top of him and shoved him back to the ground. She held him down by pressing the hard oaken blade against his throat.
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“Are you a man of your word, Seratu?” she asked angrily.
“What? I-I don’t under—” he stammered.
“Do you mean the things you say, or are your words idle and without meaning?” she asked him plainly.
“What did I say?” asked the man in confusion.
She replied, “You said that you could not bear to lose me, that you would train me for battle.”
Still confused, he looked up at her and said, “Yes…”
“Did you mean that?” she demanded angrily as she clenched his garment in her balled-up fists.
“Of course I did…I-I do,” he stammered.
“And do you truly believe that this heart is mine to give away and not yours to keep or lose?” she asked him with passion.
“Of course,” he answered genuinely as he looked into her bright blue eyes.
“Seratu, do you love me?” she asked bluntly.
“More than anything,” he answered without hesitation.
“Then train me right and let me be the keeper of my own heart,” she pleaded earnestly. “Can you do that?”
“Yes,” he answered with conflicting emotions.
With that, she leaned forward and placed a small kiss on his forehead before smiling at him and saying, “Good, now fight me!”
She stood up and helped him from the ground to start their training once more. They were beginning to really understand each other now. The two rigorously trained as they prepared for the inevitable battles that lay ahead. They continued to focus on her training, and they became inseparable as a friendship of understanding and respect formed.