by Ellyn, Court
“I don’t think so.” Maliel stumbled about in the dark, found a place to set the lantern where it wouldn’t be tipped over and the oil lost. “I wound about a bit, doubled back. I didn’t see anyone. Sorry I took so long, sir. Aerdria has kept us under close watch. I got away as soon as I could.”
“Hnh, or as late as you dared.”
“Truly, sir. The palace has become intolerable. Aerdria is in no want for help in keeping an eye on us. She’s replaced you with Cheriam.”
“Cheriam? That bitch who turned on me. Of course. After what she did, she must be the only one Aerdria feels she can trust.” One day, the Lady would regret her choice. Cheriam may be loyal, but she had served the Moon Guard for only a decade, through no great crisis until the rágazeth tore through the palace. But right now, in Aerdria’s time of doubt and fear, blind loyalty must seem more important than experience.
“Cheriam is not the only problem,” Maliel added. “The avedra is back.”
“Back?” Lothiar didn’t know that Kieryn had left Linndun in the first place, nor at this time did he care. The avedrin were no longer his primary concern. Not yet.
Maliel explained how Kieryn had won the city’s favor by returning Amanthia’s harp. Lothiar’s heart twisted in agony. She had played for him many a night on that harp.
Return to me
when the sun bares the earth’s shoulders
and kisses her snow-bathed face.
Return to me …
He was grateful for the darkness that shrouded his pain. He had thought that harp lost forever, destroyed centuries ago. But all this while the Lords of Ilswythe had hoarded it, like dragons with plunder under their bellies.
“Afterward, the avedra left the Wood and must’ve gotten caught in the blizzard. I worried about you, sir.”
“Hnh, I’ll bet you did. What about Kieryn?”
“Your brother rescued him, but there were rumors he’d not survive.”
“But, of course, he did.” Such was Lothiar’s fortune.
“Aye. And he has no intention of ever leaving the city again. He’s even changed his name, and people are saying he’s taken up with your sister.” Was that a hint of laughter in Maliel’s voice?
“Ah, Goddess! You lie!” Lothiar roared. No longer able to sit still, he imagined coming upon the two of them together and driving the dagger into the unsuspecting boy’s spine. He buried the blade deep into a tree root and snapped it off clean, then tossed the haft into the night.
For some time, Maliel kept his distance, but at last said cautiously, “Sir, I brought food.” He retreated to his horse and returned with a pair of saddlebags. For the past month, Lothiar had survived on the few rabbits and crows he’d managed to snare, so he was grateful for the offering of bread rounds, jars of preserved apples, and smoked duck. There was even a skin sloshing with mead. He summoned a ball of light, barely enough to see what he was stuffing into his mouth.
Opening the flap of the second bag, he found not food, but the frayed leather binding of a thin book. “You brought it. I thought you’d forgotten.”
“I tried to.”
Once Lothiar had successfully summoned the rágazeth, there was no need to keep the Tome of Sigils close. He had feared someone finding it in his quarters. Nor had he dared put it back in the vault, in case he found a need for it again. So he’d hidden it, taking care to consider the safest place. Who would ever suppose to look for it among volumes of mundane history and lore? So, on the regular shelves of the library, between Segrithyn’s Tales of the Western Sea and Silmaea’s One Thousand Songs of the Lost Lands, Lothiar had tucked the Tome of Sigils. Aerdria had passed right by it and missed it.
“You don’t … mean to use it again,” Maliel said.
“What good would that do? The avedra’s guardian won’t leave him unprotected, will she? And the last thing I want is a rágazeth loose in the city again.” He fully accepted the blame for that blunder, but he’d be damned if he’d suffer execution for it.
“Humans are capricious,” Maliel said in an offhand way. “Perhaps Dathiel will leave the Wood eventually and you can take him then.”
“Dathiel? Is that the name he’s chosen for himself? I have no interest in waiting on the border of this prison, hoping he’ll show up. We have other matters to attend to.”
“We?”
Lothiar shoved the dim ball of light closer to Maliel’s face. He looked perplexed. “You can’t go back! Don’t be a fool. You and the horse you stole will have been reported missing by now. We’ll be lucky if Wingfleet hasn’t caught your trail yet.”
“But, sir, where will we go?”
“Have you forgotten what it was like to travel freely, Maliel? From the Drakhans to Galvalia without hindrance? Without hiding?”
His stupefied expression said he had. Maliel would have to remember on his own; Lothiar had no interest in filling deaf ears. “We will go to the last place Aerdria expects us to go. There, we will find many caves like this to shelter in.”
“The Gloamheath? There are thousands of ogres who would be happy to catch us tramping around in there.”
“Precisely. Untold thousands. And not only in the Heath, but in the Shadow Mounds, in the Drakhans, as far south as the Mahkahan jungles, and who knows where else. To me, it sounds like an army waiting to be rallied under a common banner.”
Maliel loosed a peal of laughter that echoed out into the night. “The banner of Elarion? They will feast on our bones first, Captain.”
Lothiar’s fist swung out of the dark. Maliel staggered into the wall. Holding him up by the collar, Lothiar said, “I may have lost my marks of rank, but I will not be laughed at. What I propose is no joke.” Lothiar released him. “We fought together, you and I, in the battles under Slaenhyll and near Bramor. When the humans overwhelmed our regiment, you were all who was left me. Don’t abandon me now.”
Maliel squared his shoulders, saluted. “I beg your forgiveness, Captain. I’ll do whatever you need of me. Only tell me why. Why risk alliance with naenion?”
Lothiar went to the cave mouth, stared up at the broken red patches of Forath beyond the trees. “The thousandth year of our defeat is approaching. One thousand years we have lived in exile, cut off from the rest of the world, wearing invisible chains.” From a tree root dangled the baernavë shackles that had bound his wrists. As soon as he’d climbed out of the river, he had used the key Maliel tucked into his pocket to unlatch the shackles about his ankles, then kept running, abandoning them, but he had waited to free his wrists until he was safe in hiding. The magic-infused steel gleamed like polished silver in the dim red light. “It is time to throw away our chains, Maliel. It is time to stop living in fear, and time to reclaim what is ours. Our cities, our stone circles, our freedom. Can you imagine? Feeling the sunlight on our faces, unbroken by the shadows of trees. Walking wherever we choose without needing the Veil to protect us from being hunted.”
“So, what you told the court was true. You’re proposing war against the humans.” Maliel failed to sound as excited as Lothiar had hoped.
“Ask yourself why we lost the War. We Elarion possessed greater wisdom and knowledge of all things in the earth and the heavens. We had greater ability with sword and bow. We had the Veil, which allowed us to approach our enemies unseen. With all these advantages, how could we have lost?”
“Smaller numbers,” Maliel replied. Because humans were short-lived, they bred litters in a few short years, while an Elaran woman might give birth to a child once every century.
“The naenion begin to close that number gap, don’t you see? They, too, know what it is to be hunted, loathed, and forced to hide in dark places.”
Risking Lothiar’s fist, Maliel approached him. The faint moonlight shimmered red on his pearlescent face. “If the ogres are hunted, it is because we have been the hunters. And if they are forced to hide, it is because we aim arrows at them when they poke their heads above ground. Just as the humans have done to us.”
“Yes,” Lothiar agreed, “and we can use that hypocrisy, Maliel.”
“No matter what you use, sir, no na’in will agree to fight alongside an Elari.”
“I did not say it would be easy to convince them. And I didn’t say it would happen overnight. It will take patience, persistence, and appealing to the right appetites. We have twenty years, more, until the anniversary of our defeat rolls around.”
Maliel paced. He wanted to believe. “You realize, we won’t only be fighting humans. Aerdria will send the regs against us.”
Lothiar nodded sadly. “Yes, I have no doubt.”
“And what about Dathiel, and all the other avedrin hiding in the crevices of the world? Smaller numbers were not our only disadvantage during the War. I remember well when that handful of avedrin turned up dead in the city. The rest fled Linndun thinking we Elarion had turned on them. They must’ve been all too happy to aid their human kin after that.”
Lothiar’s sigh was heavy with memory. The rágazeth running amok wasn’t the only blunder he’d committed. Whether or not Maliel suspected him of assassinating those avedrin who once called Linndun home, he wisely kept it to himself. Lothiar’s only regret was that so many had escaped to use their talents against his people.
“Our comfort,” he said, “is that there are fewer avedrin these days. And most of them deny what they are, if they realize at all. Humanity turned on them, too, recall. We’ll find a way to deal with Dathiel and the others who remain, when the time comes.”
“How? Not the rágazeth.”
Lothiar chuckled. Maliel was loyal, to the point of betraying Aerdria, but he had scruples lurking somewhere. “Only as a last resort. But first things first. We move out. Now. We have miles to cross before dawn.”
~~~~
The stars bloomed overhead, unfettered. There was only the song of water as the Leathyr rippled past, and the occasional whistle of wind in the reeds or in clumps of frozen grass. For miles, not a tree, nor the rustle of a single leaf.
“Captain,” Maliel whispered. He stared up for a long time, then to the horizon all around. Lothiar waited for him to say more, but Maliel was silent. What words sufficed in the face of all this empty space?
A strange feeling, viewing the world in the horizontal instead of the vertical, without the bars of trees and towers.
“I feel like I’m going to fall, sir, straight up. Won’t someone see us out here?”
Lothiar grinned. “There is no one, Maliel. Not a Guardian, not even a bird.”
They found a shallow place to cross the Leathyr and waded in up to their chests. The current was ice cold. Lothiar held the Tome of Sigils over his head, while Maliel lifted high the food and other supplies. On the other side, Lothiar ordered, “Get a fire started. Hurry.”
“And what do we use for fuel in a treeless world, Captain?”
Ingenuity did not fail them. Twisting together cords from the long grass with numb fingers, they agreed to sacrifice a small amount of the lamp’s oil, and soon they were able to dry their clothes near a crackling fire. But the firelight dimmed the stars. Lothiar sat with his back to it and watched the moons set for the first time in a thousand years.
~~~~
The Gloamheath stretched to the southern horizon. Ice crusted the edges of the murky pools and glittered along the stems of the sedge. Reeking vapor bubbled up from the water, and ravens croaked a bitter argument in the gaunt branches of a drowned tree.
Maliel groaned. “Can’t we skirt that waste, Captain, look for a na’in on the outskirts?”
Lothiar’s companion had done little but complain since the wee hours of the morning. Cold and tired. That’s all Maliel could think about. On the other hand, Lothiar had had nearly a month to become accustomed to sleeping on cold, knotty ground, and that without the luxury of a campfire. As a result, he felt nearly chipper this morning, and he didn’t need Maliel ruining his mood. “We have an objective, aurien,” he said. “That’s all that need concern you. To meet it, we have no choice but to venture into the marsh. Complaining will only lead to defeat. So bite your tongue.”
Maliel grit his teeth. “Yes, sir.”
In truth, Lothiar was in no hurry to get his feet wet again. Frozen toes might well make him cross, and it had been centuries since he’d needed the soldier’s dry foot spell. He racked his brain until he remembered the words and stuttered through it. A faint purple glow enveloped his legs, toe to knee, then faded. He plunked down into the nearest pool. Though his boots were hardly made for slogging through bogs, his feet remained dry. He started off, but Maliel stayed put.
“I detest using magic,” he groused. “My spells always unravel.”
“Get used to it or get foot rot.”
Curling his lip like a child ordered to shovel out the stables, Maliel repeated the dry foot spell. He had to do it three times before the wards on his feet took effect.
“Now stay close and stay alert.” Lothiar chose a path that wound from landmark to landmark; a stand of decaying trees to an up-thrust of rock, searching for signs of ogres. They found plenty. On a hillock above the wet, a scattering of stag bones marked where a party of ogres had fed. A tunnel carved into a rocky bluff led to a honeycomb of ogre dens. Approaching the tunnel, Lothiar’s hope lifted, but he soon decided the tunnels had been abandoned. Some sort of shrine or totem had been built of bone and rock in the cave mouth, whether in commemoration or in warning, he couldn’t guess. They moved on.
Despite the dry foot spell, Lothiar was soon damp through, his fingers and toes stinging with cold. Maliel, too, must have been miserable, but to his credit he swallowed his complaints. Early in the afternoon, they paused to rest, and glancing back, Maliel hissed, “Captain, Veil Sight. Look!”
A pair of lifelights drifted along the trail that the Elarion had left through the grass and muck. These weren’t the clear, bright azethion of elves or avedrin, or even of humans; they were as murky as light shining through bog water. Maliel dropped to his belly. “They’re tracking us, sir.”
Lothiar crouched deep in the grass. Though he saw only two lifelights, he would’ve felt more comfortable if he and Maliel had more than one sword between them.
“We can still outrun them, sir.”
“Outrun? No, we need to talk to them.”
“Sir, they’re likely a hunting party. And I don’t feel like turning on a spit.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Naenion eat their meat raw. You know that. Come, we’ll lead them.” A hill rose in the distance. Atop it, a deep stand of alder trees had yet to succumb to the acidic waters of the bog. Once inside, Lothiar armed himself with a hefty branch, then crouching in the underbrush, the Elarion waited.
The naenion soon came snuffling into the trees. A voice rumbled, “Dem sweetmeats gone in there. Long way from home.”
“Dems lost, Roogin?” said another.
Broad shoulders shoveled branches aside. The first ogre passed, a damn large brute more than eight feet tall. The flat, high nostrils above his gray-green muzzle flared wide. His boar-like tusks were long and stained yellow. In his meaty fist, he wielded a club of knotted wood spiked with splinters of twisted metal. Thorny tusks grew from his knuckles.
The second ogre followed, hesitant. Shorter and smaller, this one was either a juvenile or a female. Hard to tell, for neither gender is fair. Her ears were too large for her head, and her tusks short and white, meaning she was young in any case. She carried the frozen carcass of a bog pig across her shoulder. A dozen yards from the elves’ hiding spot, she glimpsed the quivering tip of Maliel’s blade and said, “Roogin?”
Lothiar sprang from cover, bound up Roogin’s crooked spine, and bashed the ogre in the head until he fell.
The female squealed, dropped the pig, and ran. Maliel raised a hand and shouted the Spell of Arrest. Off balance in her running stance, she tumbled onto her side.
It took both Elarion to drag her over to Roogin. Brittle vines wound enough times proved to be as unbreakable as rope. Even Roogin
was unable to break free once he woke. Grunting and roaring, he cursed the sweetmeats for vile tricksters. The female tried to hide in his shadow. Her eyes, as red as two drops of blood, darted from one captor to the other in terror.
After giving them some time to think about their situation, Lothiar approached them and said, “Be still. Roogin, is it?”
“Dis naeni suck your bones!” the ogre bellowed.
“Mm-hmm. First, tell me something.”
“Dis naeni say not’ing.”
Lothiar glanced at the female. She hid her eyes and shrank from his scrutiny. He decided to take Roogin at his word and test the female’s mettle instead. “Maliel, your sword.”
“Eh?” He was in no hurry to part with it.
Lothiar beckoned sharply, and Maliel laid the haft in his hand. All the while, Lothiar glared at the female. The leaves beneath her rustled she shook so violently. He stepped closer, and she scooted away. He grinned, and her eyes clamped shut as he plunged the sword into Roogin’s chest. With a twist of the blade, the ogre’s heart burst.
The female squealed and tried to worm-crawl away. Lothiar grabbed the reeking hide she wore and slammed her against the bole of a tree. She gnashed with her tusks but went still when he pressed the dripping blade under her jaw. Goddess, she stank of dead, rotten things. Gritting his teeth to keep his stomach from turning, Lothiar asked, “What are you called?”
“H-hard Teeth,” she answered.
“Hard Teeth. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She snorted.
“Your chieftain. Who is he?”
“Korax.” Her glance slid toward Maliel and back again. “Korax … Elf … bane.”
Lothiar laughed at the irony. Maliel looked sick. Perhaps delighted that she had made a joke, Hard Teeth snuffled with laughter. The press of the blade silenced her. “You will be called No Teeth unless you take us to him.”
She considered briefly, then shook her head. “You a scout, no? Bring ‘Lari army. Kill us all.”