by Greg Curtis
“Elder?” It wasn’t only Alan who asked the question as the captain echoed his words. For Alan it was the shock of being described as a champion that stunned him. He had never been anything more than a dark elf. And for the captain it was the same thought that stunned him, except that he looked at him and saw a dark elf, then looked at the elder, and no doubt wondered if she was going senile. His men were surely doing much the same. But only the captain was foolish enough to give voice to his questions.
“Do you question me captain?” Finally there was a new emotion in the elder’s voice, irritation verging on anger and the captain knew it, even as he began bowing and trying to work up an apology. He was too late.
“This is Alan Feralis, son of Sir Reginald Feralis, Paladin of the Order of the Creator. He has a heroes’ blood in his veins. He is also the son of Aribella Moonwright, teacher of the ways of the Earth Mother to the dryads of Yersimon Grove, and later when she married his father, Priestess of the Order of the Creator. The blood of the most holy also runs in his veins. He is a druid of the First Kingdom. He obeys the commands of Sera herself, Queen of the dragons and carries her mark as you have seen. And you would deny him entry based on the gold of his skin?” It wasn’t a question and the captain wilted before the elder’s quiet words, while Alan watched and wondered who this woman was that she should know so much about him.
“Come child, we have much to discuss and you have much to read.” She gestured to him, and despite his surprise Alan knew that he also wasn’t being asked. He immediately approached her, somehow surprised to see she was in fact a high elf, her silver hair and skin, the way her ears pointed straight up, even the surprising thinness of her form, all said the same. And yet high elves were the most intolerant and arrogant of all elves. It made no sense.
“Captain, you will remain here and carry out your guard duties all night alone. The rest of you will form an honour guard for our guest.” The captain, knowing he was doomed, bowed low and accepted his punishment with the best grace he could, while his men rushed to take their places in front of them. No fools, they weren’t game to tangle with an elder. Neither was Alan, and he rushed to the elder’s side when she indicated he should, and walked beside her.
“You seem confused young Feralis.” She knew he was and she knew why too, she was just enjoying his bemusement. And just to add to it, she placed a firm hand on his shoulder, shocking him out of even his confusion. No elf ever would have touched him, and yet this high elf elder had. He almost didn’t know what to say.
“Elder I am just surprised by your familiarity.”
“And disconcerted by it as well I see. Already you’re trying not to flinch.” Which was actually true, and Alan quickly controlled his reactions as he’d been taught. Meanwhile, all around he could see high elves staring at him, staring at the elder and the way she was touching him, almost as though he was kin, while the soldiers true to their orders were forming an honour guard.
“But then I am not surprised by this. It is disappointing but not unexpected.” Her voice was strong despite her age, and the certainty in it stronger still, and Alan had the feeling she was speaking to a wider audience than just him. She was speaking to her people, the soldiers who had formed an honour guard around them as demanded, and a few other citizens who had started trailing them out of curiosity. A dark elf had come to the city, and that was new.
“Your mother’s people and even her family have been unfairly persecuted by their cousins for centuries, and surely you have learnt to fear and detest us for that. Perhaps even rightly so. But that same detestation makes it difficult for you to aid us as we must aid you in the battles ahead, and neither of our people can afford it any longer. You are needed just as your mother’s people are needed in the strife ahead.”
“Sera has said this?” He didn’t even need to ask her if she was a member of the House of Sera any longer. She knew so much about him that there wasn’t a question in the matter.
“Of course. It is why she sent you here. There are lessons to be learned by all of us. Hard lessons.” Lessons to be learned and not just by him Alan realized. He’d thought he was being trained by his assignments and perhaps he was, but so too were the high elves as they had to deal with the presence of a dark elf among them, and perhaps even his own mother’s people. Somehow he suspected he would be making many more trips to the various elven homelands over the coming months, teaching them tolerance and understanding by his very presence.
“It will be my honour to learn them Elder.” He carefully didn’t say pleasure because he knew it wouldn’t be, not with the dragons’ terrible sense of humour. Unfortunately the elder guessed that.
“Privilege would be a better term. The lessons of the teachers are difficult, confusing and often onerous, but few are given the opportunity to learn them. You should be grateful for their gifts.
“I am grateful Elder.” Just a little annoyed and confused by them from time to time, though he carefully didn’t say the last.
“As I recall being grateful so many years ago myself. Especially when they made me run up and down that accursed mountain so many times!” Alan tried not to laugh and ended up snorting, coughing and choking uncontrollably. She did know the dragons!
“I see they have had you doing the same young Alan, and please call me Norelle, Journeyman for the House of Sera.”
Without warning they left the darkened path they had been travelling into the city, and arrived in the city itself, and Alan was briefly overcome by it. Even by the light of the braziers, which were dotted all around the great central arena he could see that Heartsong was a beautiful city.
The arena itself was made of cobbles extending hundreds of yards in every direction from where he stood, until in the distance all he could see were more braziers twinkling away in the night. But unlike a human city where the cobbles would have formed a blank expanse, these were filled with nature. There were small plots of land and gardens everywhere, exactly as he had been taught as a child. Fruit and shade trees were in abundance, springing forth from the cobbled ground to give their blessings to all those who might pass by.
Naturally a small river ran through the middle of the expanse, for elves loved the sound of water trickling by and it gave them water to drink and raise their crops. Of course to cross it they needed bridges, and he could see half a dozen of them, each a perfectly carved masterpiece of carpentry, and bedecked with flowers which dangled down over the sides like small blankets of colour. Alan didn’t need to be told that the elves would have watered them every day and tended to them as if they were babies. Elves loved flowers, and his wizard sight told him they were all in perfect health. He only wished that the ones he’d decorated his humble cottage with were so healthy.
Further afield he could see some of the great tree houses the elves were famed for. Massive structures as large as many castles, built if not grown, into the enormous trees that grew through their centres and which seemed to support them. Their size was impressive, but the artistry that had gone into their construction, the ornate carvings and the geometric designs, that was what truly impressed. And of course, by daylight, each of them would be shaded from the harsh heat of the midday sun by the tree canopies which rose above the very centre of each building, granting the elves a measure of comfort in their homes.
Each room in the tree houses had its own outstretched balcony, many so large that it appeared that the intricate spider work of small carved wooden supports and poles couldn’t have held them aloft, a testimony to the elves mastery of carpentry. As with the bridges, each balcony was festooned with flowers. But while the flowers were there for beauty and to let their natural fragrances fill the air, he knew that the terraces would also have many vegetables and other food plants among them, lovingly cared for by those that dwelled within. Elves, whatever their chosen profession, were always gardeners first and they considered it a mark of pride to be able to feed themselves. An elf who couldn’t do that wasn’t an elf.
As he gazed upon the city of Heartsong, finally understanding the reason for the city’s name and wishing that he’d arrived during the daylight hours, for the first time Alan knew a feeling of sorrow for himself. Sorrow that he couldn’t have been born and raised in such a place. To live among such beauty, and to feel the harmony of the city with nature.
Once the dark elves had had such towns and cities, before the time of the Everliving, and his mother had told him that they were every bit as graceful and wondrous as any other elven cities. But long before his birth, before even hers, they had lost that. Thrown it away in their insanity. So too he understood now, had the Huron. Whatever the elders of those ancient places had desired, power, immortality, it could never have been the equal of what they had exchanged for it.
“You like the city?”
“Elder, I love this city. It is exactly as my mother and grandmother told me of such places and yet even more beautiful. Your people have true greatness within them. The souls of true artists.”
“Then perhaps one day you might choose to live among us.” Her words caught Alan by surprise, as had most everything else about her, and he had to admit that he was tempted by them. To live in such a beautiful city, to be accepted, there was a hunger deep inside him that craved such things, but there was also reason and in the end it always ruled. He had given in to his fantasies once already and paid the price; he wouldn’t do so again. Her words were kind but it wasn’t to be.
“I would wish it could be so Elder, but the teachers will be working me hard for many a year if I am not mistaken, and the distrust between our peoples may take even longer to ease. Instead I will tell any of my cousins that I might meet of this city, and pray that they can one day create some villages half so grand.” It would not be easy. Few of his people that he’d met had retained their skills in carpentry. Those that lived together in groups valued concealment and flight over beauty and artistry, while those that lived among the dryads did not build at all. Through the dryad’s graces they grew their homes from the trees themselves. The others, living among the humans or dwarves or other peoples, lived as far as he knew as they did, and none of those peoples had such artistry and nature within their souls.
The elder pursed her lips evidently not completely happy with his answers while the guards’ faces also fell. They could deal with one dark elf, but the thought of whole villages of them was too much for them. None of them though would dare to say anything in her presence.
“Then we should continue on with our journey.” Journey was the right word for their path as Alan slowly realized. Heartsong was spread far and wide to ease the burden that so many elves might place upon the land, and the library was all the way across the other side of the central arena and then the best part of a league beyond it. But Alan didn’t mind the walk as it gave him an hour or more simply to enjoy the wonders of the city and dream of how he might improve upon his humble cottage. The high elves had so much artistry to inspire him. Yet the library itself, when he was fortunate enough to finally enter it, made all that had gone before seem as nothing.
It was a massive building, a full five stories high and each story a good twelve feet from floor to ceiling. Like all the other buildings he’d seen, a massive straight tree trunk formed the central pillar and support, while around it there wove the most elaborately crafted spiral staircase. But it was the bookshelves that really took his breath away. He’d seen the libraries in both Silver Falls and Calumbria, spent many long hours in the chapter house libraries of the Order of the Creator, and even passed some time in the libraries of the various dryad copses, but he’d never seen so many books and scrolls in his life as he had in that one library in Heartsong. Nor had he ever seen a book case that encircled entire rooms and then extended upwards for five full stories. No wonder it would have the books Sera had demanded. If it didn’t then surely no other would.
In keeping with its size, the library also had five librarians, three of them elders who seemed to pay him no mind other than to ask him which books he had been asked to collect. They too had obviously expected him and they were surely too well disciplined to let any impolite thoughts show on their faces as they spoke with a dark elf, whatever their true feelings. But then again they also possibly knew of his battle with the Everliving, and that more than anything else should have told them that he wasn’t in league with the demons. No demon would ever sacrifice itself for any reason. That was perhaps their greatest weakness. They did not have many.
Whatever the truth, he was grateful for their politeness as he was shown to a large table and the three tombs were brought to him. They also brought him some light, a glowing orb rather than a naked flame as fire would never be allowed near the precious paper and papyrus, and then left him alone to begin his reading. And as Norelle told him, Sera didn’t actually need to read the tomes, she wanted him to. This was just another part of his education. But it was an interesting part.
He began with Kirsten Greentree’s journals of her travels through the northern realms prior to the first appearance of the necromancer. It included her impressions of S’mon Gorge, where he had later established his base, and where he was no doubt working again. A natural, impenetrable and all but unassailable underground fortress set on an alpine plateau and completely surrounded by still higher mountains.
Her writings over the months she’d spent studying it, were detailed and frustrating, the latter mainly because she’d never found the heart of the Gorge, assuming it had one, but instead had wandered around in endless circles. Yet what she could report, and the maps she had drawn, showed him so much more about the underground fortress than he’d ever imagined, and first and foremost among those things he learned was its size. The gorge was an underground city, vast beyond anything he’d ever imagined it to be. Yet as large as it was, she’d never found a central chamber, or in fact any chambers larger than a good sized cavern, suggesting that much of it was still hidden somehow.
More important than that however, she’d also never found any graveyards or funeral vaults. So where had the necromancer found his bodies to reanimate? The answer was of course obvious and frightening. He could somehow draw the bodies of the dead to his fortress from all over the world, as many had speculated. Which meant in turn that once he animated them, he had an almost limitless army. Exactly as so many scholars had claimed over the years. Now, assuming that he’d spent all his armies fifteen hundred years ago during the first war, that meant he had another potential army of fifteen hundred years’ worth of dead from all over the world. Dead people, dead animals, and dead mythic beasts. That was a lot of dead he could raise.
As she’d wandered through its endless caverns, making her observations and drawing her maps, Kirsten Greentree had also speculated as to how such a structure could exist, a huge valley in the middle of such a ring of mountains, and had come to the conclusion that the ancients had made it. It wasn’t natural. She’d also concluded that the underground caverns themselves were part of a vast labyrinth built by the ancients, though in months and months of exploring them she’d never come across so much as a mark of theirs. But the walls were too straight, the floors too even, the slopes designed perfectly for elven feet, and here and there were even signs that fires had once been burning, ancient scorch marks from torches held in the walls.
Yet if it was an ancient fortress as she’d suspected, and which made sense given what else Dava had told him of the necromancer, it was vastly different to the ones the other ancients had been found in. For a start there were no traps, except that as Alan suspected from her writings, there might well have been a spell of disorientation on it, since she’d never found any of the main caverns. Even she’d suspected the same as she kept finding herself back at the beginning and all her maps showed the caverns twisting and turning in great endless loops and spirals. In six full months of exploring and mapping the labyrinth she’d crossed and re-crossed her own path on a nigh on daily basis, often without ever knowing where she’d rejoined the e
xplored caverns.
Now though he suspected, with the necromancer awake again, the traps would likely be set. It would take an army, even after his own armies had been destroyed, to reach him and destroy him, and the cost would be terrible.
Sir Neeveon the Bold’s works turned out to be another set of maps and drawings from an explorer’s travels, but in his case Sir Neeveon the Bold had been a knight of the Order of the Blessed from nearly two thousand years before. Half a millennium before the necromancer had first struck. As such he had believed in meticulous record keeping, and somehow, probably because when the Order had been vanquished a century or two later its members had fled to all parts of the world and taken their works with them, they had ended up in the hands of the high elves of Heartsong. That was the good news.
The bad news was that records written on paper that long ago, even with the restorative magics of the elven librarians, were badly faded. The worse of course was that the Order had believed strongly in the need to record the good and righteous in the world, but they tended to destroy anything that smelled of dark magic or evil. Thus as Alan slowly ploughed his way through the volumes and volumes of faded brown pages all loosely held together with twine, he saw entry after entry where Sir Neeveon simply reported coming across a shrine to something less than righteous and destroying it. In keeping with his vows he naturally recorded nothing about what it had been, looked like or what it had said, only the feel of evil or strangeness that had been upon it.