Twilight of the Elves

by Zack Loran Clark

  The guildmistress now waited behind a large desk fashioned from lustrous wood. The legs had been carved into a set of four creatures Zed had never seen before. And judging by the many lovingly detailed teeth carved into each of the beasts’ open jaws, he didn’t want to. Their guild’s blue flag, sprinkled with five stars, hung on the wall behind Frond.

  And seated directly in front of the desk was Me’Shala, the queen of the elves.

  “There you are,” Frond grunted accusingly. By the way she hastily stood to greet Hexam, Zed suspected they had been sitting in awkward silence for some time.

  Hexam ignored her tone, turning instead to the elven queen. Rather than bowing, the archivist brought two fingers to his lips. “Welcome, Your Majesty,” he said.

  Me’Shala smiled at the gesture, and the room seemed to grow brighter for it.

  Zed had seen the queen only a few times. Though she lived with her people in the market camp, she was well insulated from outsiders. Even now, two elven women wearing glittering silver armor hung by the doors, casting wary looks at Hexam and the others as they entered.

  The queen had brown skin and eyes like fire opals. Her dress was decorated with looping, leafy branches.

  Callum stood in the room’s far corner wearing a blank expression, his arms crossed. Two more elves, dressed much more fussily than their queen, were seated on a dreary sofa that had been pulled up to the desk. Both were sun elves—ain’shea. The male’s hair was golden and his skin was fair, while the female’s bronze skin was veiled by lustrous white locks. Both wore circlets adorned with the shapes of birds in flight.

  And then there was Brock. The boy stood right beside the queen, as if he were her page. Zed’s eyebrows shot up when he caught sight of his friend. How had he already managed to insinuate himself into this?

  The female sun elf scrunched her nose as they arrived. She pointed a long elegant finger straight at Fel. Whereas Hexam, Zed, and Jayna had all stepped fully into the room, the young elf hung back, her eyes lowered.

  “No,” the sun elf said. She pursed her mouth into a pretty frown. “Not her. Too much is at stake here.”

  The two armored elves at the door stepped forward, each grabbing Fel by one of her arms. Llethanyl’s city crest was molded into their identical suits of armor: a great tree wreathed by a halo of birds. Zed realized that these must be two of Me’Shala’s illustrious sword sisters. Fel didn’t resist their grasps, or even lift her eyes.

  Zed’s jaw fell open. What was happening?

  “Wait!” he said, snapping back around to face the queen. “Why can’t Fel stay? She’s one of your people. She’s a ranger!”

  The female sun elf glared at him. “Are all human children so impertinent?”

  Zed’s ears grew red hot. He balled his hands into fists. “I’m half elf,” he muttered.

  The woman’s lovely eyebrows lifted like birds taking flight. “There are no half elves, my ignorant little friend,” she said. “There are elves . . . and then there is everything else. In any case, it’s plain from your question that you lack even a basic understanding of how our society works.”

  Zed watched as Brock’s face screwed into a scowl. He opened his mouth to say something, but was beaten to the punch.

  “Threya,” the male elf beside her chided. “Must you be so boorish in front of our hosts?” He rolled his eyes and shrugged, as if dealing with an eccentric aunt. “I say we let the night elf stay. What we discuss here affects all our people. That includes the dro’shea.”

  Unlike most elves, even the men, this one wore his hair short, in a cut not dissimilar to many human nobles. As elves went, it was a brazen, modern style.

  Threya cast an unhappy look at her companion. “Spare us your reformist blather, Selby. We cannot involve the deathlings in this. The Lich was one of theirs.”

  “You can’t judge an entire population based on one unfortunate example,” Selby snapped back. “Isn’t that exactly what the humans are doing to us?”

  “The Lich is not an unfortunate example. He is the destroyer of our people!”

  “My friends.” The queen’s voice cut through the rising pitch of the argument like water through a parched throat. “Please remember that we’re guests here, pleading for aid. We come in humility.”

  The two elves deflated back into their seats, though only Selby had the grace to look embarrassed. Threya stared forward, unwilling to even glance in Fel’s direction.

  “You must excuse us,” Me’Shala said, turning to Frond. “But the truth is that I rely on this caution and passion from my ministers. The elves haven’t always been a unified people. Before the lleth’dia—the Day of Dangers—our kind were engaged in a seemingly endless struggle. To call it a war would be too simple, for it impacted every part of the lives and worldviews of our ancestors. Many old angers still fester.”

  She sighed and her eyes landed on Fel, who stood silently at the entrance. The girl’s arms were still gripped by sword sisters.

  “Galvino claimed he wanted to help heal our broken peoples,” the queen said. At the sound of the name, the ministers both flinched. Zed noticed that even Callum’s arms crossed a bit more tightly.

  “He was the first night-elf minister Llethanyl had ever seen,” Me’Shala continued. “And he was brilliant: an eloquent diplomat and a wizard far more accomplished than myself. His betrayal—his use of our lost against us—was more than just mutiny. It was a message. We can never escape our past. It will always, always rise again.”

  “Your Majesty . . .” Callum spoke from the corner. Though he leaned casually against the wall, his voice was tentative.

  Zed was struck by how tenderly the elven queen was treated by her subjects. Compared to King Freestone, Me’Shala didn’t command the respect of her advisors so much as she enjoyed their love. She seemed as much a mother as a monarch.

  She nodded for Callum to continue.

  “This girl is named Felasege. Her parents were both rangers who gave their lives protecting our city,” he said. “They were my friends, and I trusted them without reservation. They would settle for nothing less than a peaceful future for our people . . . and for their daughter.”

  Now Fel’s gaze finally rose from the floor. Her cobalt eyes widened as she looked at Callum.

  Threya scoffed. “This isn’t the time for weepy sentiments. The deathlings have always been obsessed with mortality. It’s why we went to war with them in the first place. How can we be sure this girl won’t turn against us? That any of them won’t?”

  “Fel’s parents are among our lost,” the ranger responded sharply. “The Lich did not discern between sects when he profaned them.” He returned his gaze to the queen. “Fel is one of us. I would ask that you let her stay.”

  The queen smiled appreciatively at Callum. “Thank you, High Ranger. Indeed, we’re all one people, and we have all been betrayed—the night elves perhaps most of all.”

  She cast a glance to the sword sisters, who released Fel’s arms without another word.

  Frond, who had watched this little drama unfold with uncharacteristic patience, now rapped her fingers against the top of the desk.

  “Queen Me’Shala,” she said. “Involving the question at hand . . . I’m afraid that King Freestone still hasn’t ordered a siege. But I am imploring him to show compassion for—”

  “The spring that feeds your king’s compassion has run dry,” the queen said. “My people are no longer refugees here; they’re prisoners. Which is why I’ve come to you, my old friend.” A mischievous sparkle shone in Me’Shala’s eyes. “We were close once, Alabasel. I implore you for compassion. You always favored action over talk.”

  Frond cleared her throat, unable to mask her flustered expression. “Be that as it may, the Adventurers Guild is only a small force. We don’t have the numbers or the training for a full siege. Without the knights, mages, and healers beside us, what you’re asking for is suicide.”

  “What use are all these knights, mages, and healers?�
� Threya grumbled. “Birds, who never leave the safety of their nest. It’s appalling that the burden of actually protecting your city falls on the shoulders of a small band of miscreants.”

  “Miscreants and children,” Brock piped up from beside the queen. “Thank you very much.”

  Frond sighed, running a hand through her cropped gray hair. “Our peoples have survived in their own ways,” she said. “Regardless, my point remains the same. If my guild went up against an undead army on our own, we would lose. And Freestone would lose its sole agents to the outside world.”

  Me’Shala inclined her head. “I agree. Which is why we’re proposing something a bit different. A bit subtler.”

  Frond leaned back from the desk, steepling her fingers. Zed wasn’t sure he liked the intrigued expression on her face.

  Selby scooted forward on Frond’s shabby sofa. “Undead Dangers are usually rare. By harnessing Mort’s energies, however, the Lich has created an army of them, and can maintain his thralls from any distance—but only so long as he lives. . . .”

  Frond’s eyes flicked over to Hexam. The archivist nodded slowly, his face thoughtful. “Necromancy hasn’t been practiced for hundreds of years,” he said, “but the literature agrees. A lich uses its own body as a sort of focus for Mort’s energies. I wouldn’t call it alive, though. Not truly. The person beneath has become a kind of Danger themselves.”

  “But if we destroy the Lich . . .” Callum started, his eyes blazing. The elf bounded forward from the corner, graceful as a deer. “This is it!” he said excitedly, slamming his hand down on Frond’s desk. “Not an army—a smaller force could sneak in and destroy the Lich. Then this curse over our lost would disappear.”

  Hexam shook his head. “Slaying a lich is no easy task. Whole wars were once waged trying to accomplish such a feat. Like any focus, the energies he houses would make him incredibly difficult to injure. Maybe impossible. They are not like simple undead.”

  “Could Zed’s flame do it?” Frond asked. Zed’s eyes shot to the desk, where Frond sat with her hands clenched. The guildmistress met his gaze unflinchingly. “That green fire is more potent than regular flames, yes? It destroyed a fully transformed penanggalan.”

  The queen now watched Zed with new scrutiny, her expression thoughtful. “Then this is the young sorcerer I’ve heard so much about.”

  “How fascinating,” Selby muttered. “Green fire, you say?”

  Hexam considered Frond’s question, scratching at his beard. “It might work,” he said, with a note of resignation. “Maybe.”

  This . . . this was it. A plan to save the elves—and they needed him! Queen Me’Shala herself had heard of Zed, and she was watching him now with undisguised hope.

  “Then I’ll do it,” Zed said, his voice catching with the honor of it all.

  “Not a chance,” Brock said at the same time, only louder.

  Zed rounded on his friend, for once bristling under Brock’s protective impulses. Brock had all but disappeared the last several weeks. Now he suddenly had an opinion on what Zed did and where he went?

  “What do you care?” he snapped. Behind him, Zed heard Jayna actually gasp aloud—her first noise the entire conversation. “I earned my quest-worthiness, same as you! Or maybe you don’t remember, since you skipped the celebration.”

  Ignoring Brock’s grimace—and the supremely entertained expression of the elven minister Threya—Zed turned back to Frond. “Callum is right. This is the best way. And I’m the only one who can do it.”

  Threya coughed out a laugh. “Would you listen to him? You mean to tell me this child is the most powerful sorcerer in Freestone?” She shook her head incredulously and waved toward Me’Shala. “Our queen is a wizard of no small skill. Even Selby could probably rival your precious Mages Guild. We came to you seeking aid, and you offer this . . . infant!”

  Hexam frowned at the minister, placing a hand on Zed’s shoulder. “Sorcery isn’t as simple as most or least powerful,” he said. “The boy lacks finesse, but the fire he conjures is among the most destructive forces I’ve ever seen. It is perhaps the only weapon we have that’s capable of eradicating a true lich.”

  Frond watched Zed for a long beat, her scarred face unreadable. “We’ll see,” she said finally.

  “If he goes, I’m going, too,” said Brock. “Don’t you dare try to stop—”

  “Stop, Brock,” Frond interrupted.

  Brock came up short, then cursed himself.

  “The answer is no,” Frond said, her slate-gray eyes boring into him. “If we risk this plan, going behind the king’s back and imperiling the life of an apprentice in the process—if we make this journey, which is already fraught with its own hazards, to face an enemy who may very well be impossible to destroy—then we need to minimize our potential losses. The team sent to Llethanyl will be small. It will be specialized. It will be elite. And by my express order, it will not include Brock Dunderfel. Do I make myself clear, apprentice?”

  Brock stared at Frond, chewing on the inside of his cheek, his hands opening and closing at his sides. Slowly, very slowly, the expression of pure rage on his face quieted into something like acceptance—or at least a dull enmity.

  “Crystal,” he said.

  Brock yawned, loud and leisurely. It was a chill winter day, but he was wrapped in a blanket with a hot water bottle at his feet, reclining on a makeshift hammock he’d assembled from an old, torn tent. He turned the page of the book he had propped up against his knees.

  “Oh, here’s a nasty one,” he said. “Lamprey bats.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Fel said, straining at the string of her bow, lining up a shot. “Bats are cute.”

  “These aren’t real bats though,” Brock said. “More like . . . hairy worms. With wings. And look at these teeth.”

  Fel took a peek at the page. “Okay,” she said. “Not so cute.”

  “Brock!” Liza called from across the training ground. “Would you please stop distracting my sparring partner?”

  Brock stuck out his tongue, but Fel snapped to attention. “Sorry!” she said, and she let her arrow fly. It ricocheted off Liza’s shield.

  “Apologizing while you shoot her,” Brock said. “You fit riiiight in.”

  They were in the training yard, a dusty patch of ground in the shadow of the lopsided guildhall. Within the building, preparations had begun for the most ambitious and dangerous mission the adventurers had ever undertaken.

  Brock had been told to stay out of the way.

  “You’re missing a great opportunity to practice against projectiles,” Liza said, walking over to return Fel’s arrow—really more of a bolt: a thick, blunt wooden cylinder that could bruise but wouldn’t pierce. Liza, who had a talent for woodworking, had made it herself.

  “You’re missing a great opportunity to relax,” Brock countered. “After all, didn’t you hear? We’re not essential to the success of the mission.” He meant to sound flippant, but it came out sounding bitter.

  “So?” Liza said. “What’s your plan?”

  Brock leisurely turned the page of Hexam’s homemade Danger handbook, revealing another highly detailed horror. This one was an insect the size of a human hand, with fish-scale wings and a savage-looking barbed proboscis. “My plan?”

  “You’re telling me you don’t have a plan for undermining Frond and getting us on the mission?”

  “I’ve got nothing of the sort,” he said. “I’m perfectly content to sit here and consider all the terrible monsters that definitely won’t be eating me tomorrow. Ew, you wouldn’t believe where the fiendfly lays its eggs—”

  “What about Zed? You’ve given up on trying to keep him safe, have you?”

  Liza’s question was punctuated by a pitiful meow, and Brock saw Mousebane weaving between the girl’s legs. He frowned at the sight of her—wild and bedraggled, with a notch missing from one ear, she was a far cry from the pretty, docile house cats of the merchant quarter. Her snaggletooth, the sharp ca
nine projecting from her lower jaw that the others insisted was cute, made her look to him as if she were perpetually annoyed.

  If Alabasel Frond had been born a cat, he decided, she would look something like Mousebane.

  Liza bent over to run a hand along the cat’s mangy tail.

  Brock turned another page—sharply this time. “Keeping Zed safe is a losing proposition. To coin a phrase, you can lead a horse from water, but you can’t stop it from hurling itself off the next cliff.”

  Fel wrinkled her brow as if puzzling out his meaning. “Humans do such . . . unusual things with language,” she said.

  “What can I say? I’ve got the soul of a poet.”

  “Sure you do,” Liza grumbled. “Trapped in a cursed gem under your bed, maybe.”

  Brock watched as Mousebane’s ears perked up; the cat’s entire body went taut in response to some sound or movement across the yard. She took off like a bolt from Fel’s bow, disappearing from his line of sight. “Listen, you’ve said it a hundred times: Zed can take care of himself. And he can make his own decisions. His own terrible, utterly senseless decisions.”

  “Liza!” someone shouted from an upstairs window.

  “What!” she shouted back.

  “Have you seen my traveling cloak?” It was Micah, leaning out dangerously far.

  “I’m not going to have a shouted conversation with you from the yard, Micah!” she yelled. Then she turned casually to Fel. “What about you? Is Callum’s decision to leave you behind final?”

  Fel nodded. “It makes sense. We can’t all go. And I . . . my presence . . .” She looked lost for a moment, sad, and Brock realized he’d rarely seen the girl without a smile on her face. “It’s complicated.” She flashed her smile again. “But their plan is a good one. I’m happy to know I’ll get home eventually.”

  Home—Brock felt a little pang at that. It was easy to forget that, to some, Freestone wasn’t synonymous with home. There was a whole other city out there, one he might never see for himself.