Twilight of the Elves

by Zack Loran Clark

  How long had Syd been working with Hexam?

  And when had the guild’s smuggling problems begun . . . ?

  Brock shook his head. Now wasn’t the time. Even if there was a smuggler still at work, they all had a common enemy in the Lich. Everything else could wait until word came back that Llethanyl was free, the elves were saved, and Zed was returning to Freestone a hero to two peoples.

  He hurried down the hall, past the trophies, and up the stairs. Liza was in the dining room, carving up the central table with a dull cutlery knife, seemingly lost in thought.

  “Syd and Fife are back early,” Brock said.

  “Great,” she said absently.

  He turned to continue up the stairs to his bedroom, but she called him back.

  “Brock, listen. I thought you might want to talk.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, stepping fully into the room.

  “Great,” she said. Then she sat there in silence, looking at him.

  “Uh, go ahead?” Brock said.

  “I mean I thought you might want to talk about your feelings.”

  “My feelings?” Brock said, cringing. “I thought you were going to apologize.”

  “Apologize?” Liza said. “To who? To you?”

  Brock took a step back. “I’m . . . thinking . . . no?”

  “Exactly what should I apologize for?”

  “I just . . . nothing, but . . . out in the yard, the other day? You can be a little, you know, intense. . . .”

  Liza’s expression darkened, and the words failed Brock. They just evaporated beneath the heat of her regard, leaving him wondering what he ever thought he might have to say on the subject, or any subject, ever. Were there words he could speak now that wouldn’t lead to him getting clobbered?

  A plaintive meow sounded in the silence of the dining hall.

  Brock smiled. “Oh, the cat!” he said. “I love the cat. Don’t you?”

  Liza scowled.

  “Here, cat!” he cried, taking another step into the room.

  There was a scuffling sound from beneath a far table, then the pattering of feet, and Mousebane appeared. In her mouth she held another rat, lifeless and bloody.

  “Gross! Ugh, where is she finding those things?” Brock said.

  And then, with a sudden seizure of movement, the rat writhed free from the cat’s jaws. It fell to the ground with a wet red plop.

  Mousebane hissed at the mangled rat.

  And the rat hissed back.

  “How is it still alive?” Brock asked in horror.

  Liza’s grip on her butter knife tightened. “Brock,” she said, so calmly it gave him chills. “Listen . . . I need you to step back now, very slowly. . . .”

  “What?” Brock asked. “Why? I don’t—”

  She shoved him aside with a firm hand to his chest, and with her other hand lobbed the knife across the room. It flew true, finding its mark, sinking into the rat’s side. Brock figured it must have cut right through the animal’s heart and lungs and many other organs, too.

  It remained on its feet. It fixed Liza with its eyes, flashing strangely purple in the low light, and it skittered forward, the knife still lodged in its side.

  Brock screamed. He pulled Liza back with him, retreating as the rat advanced.

  “It’s little,” she said. “It can’t hurt us, right?”

  “I don’t know!” he shouted, tipping over chairs, trying to block its path however he could. “Let’s just not ever touch it or look at it ever again!”

  The door to the training yard burst open, and the door to the kitchen, Lotte and Jett and Fel all rushing into the room. “What in Fie is happening?” Lotte demanded.

  “Undead rat!” Liza cried, pointing. “Undead rat!”

  Jett and Fel both stopped short, but Lotte darted forward, grabbing the warhammer from Jett’s hands and making a tremendous overhead swing.

  Brock’s view was blocked by furniture, but he heard the splat.

  “Dead rat,” Lotte said, handing back the hammer. Jett grimaced at the mess on it.

  There was a loud creak from the floorboards upstairs.

  “Who else is here?” Lotte asked sharply. “Is the decoy party back already?”

  “Just Syd and Fife,” Brock said. “But I think they’re downstairs.”

  Lotte nodded grimly. “Of course. An undead rat isn’t much of a threat, but it’s a great distraction.”

  “To distract us from what, exactly?” Liza asked.

  “If Hexam were here, he’d have a theory,” Lotte said. “All I have is a bad feeling in my gut and a burning desire to stab somebody. Follow me. Stay close.”

  They crept upstairs, Lotte at the head with her sword drawn, Jett bringing up the rear with his hammer. Fel nocked an arrow in her bow; the two of them must have been training in the yard. Brock’s only weapon was a spoon he didn’t remember grabbing. The hallway was lined with doors, and they checked behind each one, making as little noise as possible. Lotte blocked each doorway in turn while Fel readied an arrow over the quartermaster’s shoulder. One after the other, the dorm rooms proved empty.

  They were running out of doors when they heard a shuffling sound.

  “They’re two doors down,” Lotte whispered. “Fel, with me. The rest of you, hang back. Don’t let anyone past you.”

  Lotte and Fel crept to the closed door. Brock’s stomach clenched with anticipation, and he took a step away from Jett. He didn’t want to be in the dwarf’s way if he needed to swing that hammer.

  Lotte kicked the door open and dashed inside, shouting a battle cry—which abruptly cut off.

  Fel lowered her bow. “It’s just Fife,” she said.

  Brock and Jett exchanged a look, chuckling with momentary relief. And then a door exploded at their backs.

  Brock stumbled forward, and Jett flew back. He turned in time to see the dwarf was stuck in the grip of some monstrous claw. It had clamped around his arm and an instant later had pulled him into the darkness beyond the shattered door.

  “Jett!” Liza bellowed, and she took up his fallen hammer and followed him. Brock scrabbled after her, only fully regaining his feet in time to step over the broken door frame.

  Inside was the creature Brock had seen downstairs. It had been dead then, he was sure of it—but here it was, standing on its eight segmented insectoid legs, gnashing its jagged maw and holding Jett aloft in one clawed hand. The dwarf battered it about the head with his free hand and kicked at its body with his dangling foot, but it seemed totally unconcerned with him, turning its tentacle-like eye stalks upon the new arrivals.

  Like the rat’s, its eyes glowed purple.

  The air whizzed all about Brock’s head, and he and Liza instinctively ducked aside as Fel peppered the beast with arrows, one after another. Where arrows struck chitin, they bounced harmlessly away. Where they struck flesh, their effect was equally harmless; the creature had no reaction to its skin being pierced, and soon, Fel had no more arrows.

  Liza swung Jett’s hammer, and that got a reaction; the locustrix skittered sideways, out of the hammer’s range. But Liza had put all her weight into the swing, and she couldn’t change her trajectory now. The hammer slammed into empty ground, shattering floorboards and leaving the girl open to a sweeping backhanded blow. Liza went flying, smashed into the wall, and crumpled to the ground.

  Brock cast about the cramped room for a weapon. The only object within reach was a silvery sphere set against the wall. He took it, intending to lob it at their adversary, when suddenly Lotte came charging into the room, rushing past him and severing the arm that held Jett with a single overhead swing of her sword. Brock lunged forward to break Jett’s fall. Black blood oozed from the monster’s severed limb, and when it opened its maw, Brock thought it must be about to scream—it must have finally felt that attack.

  But it hadn’t opened its mouth to scream. Brock watched in horror as the beast’s black gullet crackled with purple lightning.

  It was casting a s
pell, and he was helpless to stop it.

  Lightning arced from the creature’s mouth, a brilliant flash of brutal light that Brock knew would end them. Before he could blink, however, the bolt of purple had struck—not him, not Jett, but the silver orb he’d forgotten he still held.

  The orb flared white, the unfamiliar sigils on its surface glowing for an instant before a sharp crack sounded and the sphere broke down the middle. The two halves fell from Brock’s hand as he blinked furiously to clear his vision.

  “Get back!” Jett said, and he pushed Brock out of the path of Lotte’s sword. In those horrible, endless seconds in which the locustrix had turned its attention on them, the quartermaster had wound up for another blow, and this time aimed her blade at the thin segmented legs on which it stood. The locustrix collapsed, its legs sliced out from under it, and Lotte bore down, hacking away ferociously until the creature was still at last. Then she hacked away some more.

  “It’s dead, Lotte,” Jett said gently.

  “Yes, it is,” she said. “That’s what worries me.”

  She drove the sword through its now-limbless torso, pinning it to the ground.

  The monster had blindsided Syd; they found him on the floor of the warded room, cold to the touch, concussed but alive. From there, the creature had crept upstairs. That was where Fife had stumbled upon it. When he’d barricaded himself away from it, he’d unwittingly become the bait for the creature’s ambush of Jett.

  “But what was it doing up there?” Liza asked, rubbing the swollen knot on her forehead.

  After retrieving Syd, they returned upstairs, to the room the thing had burst from when it had attacked. It was Hexam’s room, and Brock’s heart sank at the realization. The archivist’s personal effects had been smashed to bits in the skirmish. The floor was a mess of splintered wood, shards of bone, and the strange glasslike material of shattered magelight spheres.

  The only item remaining on his desk was a map. It showed the route to Llethanyl, the very path Zed was walking at this moment. Every wayshelter was clearly marked, as was the precise entrance Frond had targeted.

  “Uh,” said Jett. “It wasn’t . . . looking at this map, was it?”

  Syd shook his head. “It’s got to be a coincidence. These things are just dumb animals. I was there when they killed it.” He scratched his chin, considering the mutilated corpse nearby. “The first time, I mean.”

  “There was something in its eyes,” Liza said. “Some intelligence. It looked at me like it knew me. Like it hated me.”

  “You’re right,” Brock said. “It does sound intelligent.”

  She glared at him, black blood in her hair. “You really just can’t help yourself, can you?”

  “And you’re sure it was dead, Syd?” Lotte asked.

  “Definitely. We carried it back the whole way, and it never stirred.”

  “Not even when we dropped it once or twice,” Fife added.

  “Somehow we only ever seemed to drop the end Fife was holding,” said Syd.

  Lotte clamped her hand over her eyes. “We all know what this means, don’t we? I don’t want it to be true, but there’s no other explanation.”

  “Its eyes were purple,” Liza said. “Like the raccoon we saw. The one they all said was under the Lich’s sway.”

  “But the Lich is in Llethanyl,” Jett said. “How . . . how can his power possibly reach all the way here?”

  “Again, Hexam would have a theory,” Lotte answered. “But Hexam isn’t here.”

  “No, Hexam is here,” Brock said, stabbing the map with his finger. The very map the Danger had apparently been poring over. “Can the Lich see through that thing’s eyes? If it can, then it knows Frond and the others are coming. It knows the exact route they’re taking into the city!”

  “Oh. That’s bad,” Syd said.

  “Pretty bad, yeah!” said Brock. “We have to go after them. We have to warn them!”

  “I agree,” Lotte said. “But our first duty is to Freestone. Ser Brent has to know that anyone—anything that dies can be corrupted, even on this side of the wards.”

  “No!” Fel said sharply. She’d been so quiet, Brock had forgotten she was there. He turned to see her standing in the corner, cradling Mousebane to her chest. She seemed to shrink a little bit at the sudden attention.

  “No?” Lotte echoed.

  “I mean . . .” Fel faltered. She bit her lip. “I mean, maybe we shouldn’t tell him?”

  “You’re afraid he’ll take it out on the refugees,” Liza said, and Fel nodded.

  “I’m sympathetic,” Lotte said. “But it would be irresponsible to keep this to ourselves.”

  “It would be irresponsible to start a panic over this,” Jett argued. “People could get hurt.”

  “Or killed,” Liza put in. “And then we’re in real trouble.”

  “You could tell Father Pollux,” Brock said. “He’s trustworthy, I think. And if anyone . . . passes away, it’s likely to happen in the temple, isn’t it?”

  Lotte narrowed her eyes. She looked from one apprentice to the next. “All right.” She sighed. “I’ll talk to Pollux, then at daybreak I’ll go after Frond.”

  “We’ll be packed and ready by the time you’re back from the temple,” Liza said.

  “You . . . ?” Lotte said. “You won’t be coming.”

  “Yes, we will!” Liza countered. “It’s against the rules to go out alone—”

  “You’ll need help—” Brock began.

  “Made the journey once—” said Fel.

  “Plenty of other Dangers—” Jett started.

  “Happy to stay here and watch the guildhall!” said Fife.

  The apprentices turned to glare at him.

  Fife shrugged. “What? Someone will need to be here to cover for you. And I’m pretty sure my best friend has a concussion.”

  He hooked his thumb toward Syd, who appeared dazed and unsteady as he slumped against the wall.

  “Well, Frond’s certainly raised a willful batch this time, hasn’t she?” Lotte said humorlessly. “Fine. You,” she said, pointing at Fife, “will hold down the fort and stall anyone who comes looking for us. I’ll take Syd to the healers, which will provide me an opportunity to talk to our Luminous Father while, as a bonus, making sure Syd isn’t permanently broken. The rest of you—be ready to go at dawn, or else you stay behind.” She swept her eyes over the group. “And you’ll do as I say, without question, starting now.”

  “Understood,” Liza said, nodding sharply.

  “We will catch up to Frond, warn her that the plan is compromised, and then come right back,” Lotte continued. “Which means we’ll be moving fast over hard terrain. So get some rest once you’re packed.” She directed Fife to help her walk Syd from the room, leaving Brock, Fel, Liza, and Jett alone with the fallen, mauled Danger.

  “She expects us to be able to sleep?” Jett said, eyeing the corpse. “Up here?”

  “Not me,” Brock said. “I’m going out, too. I’ll be back before dawn.”

  Liza sat heavily on the shattered desk. “Don’t you think you should at least try to sleep? Tomorrow’s not going to be easy.”

  “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” He shuddered on his way out the door, casting a final look at the beast that was still pinned to the floor. “And maybe not even then.”

  “Tell me more about the elves,” Zed said.

  Their party was on the move again, marching through the frost. Zed had tried to keep quiet. Fie, he’d even managed it for a while. But the cold had wormed its way into his bones like some invasive Danger. He needed a distraction from his misery—and the thoughts of home, and his mother, and the other warm things he’d left behind.

  Callum didn’t seem to mind the question, at least. “What would you like to know?”

  Zed couldn’t quite believe the opportunity. Outside of Fel, none of the elves had ever asked him this. It was like King Freestone had told Zed he could take anything he wanted from the castle treasury.

/>   “Everything!” Zed demanded.

  Callum chuckled. “Then perhaps we’ll begin our discussion of everything with Llethanyl itself.”

  Zed nodded enthusiastically.

  “The city is”—Callum looked thoughtful—“tall.”

  “I’m going to need more than that,” Zed muttered.

  “I mean that it’s exaggerated. A legend that is more embellished with every telling. To hear some elves describe it, you’d think the place had burst fully formed from the ground in a great act of magic.”

  “So it . . . didn’t, then?”

  Callum shook his head. “No matter how grand it becomes, a city is just a place where people come together to build their lives. In that way, it’s made by many little acts of magic, I suppose. For the elves, Llethanyl is a place to return to. It gets its name from a common elven exchange. The greeter says, lleth elan, or ‘Welcome home.’ And the greeted replies, lleth anyl . . .” The ranger’s voice constricted. “ ‘I’m home.’ ”

  Zed watched Callum solemnly. The High Ranger cleared his throat, not meeting his eye.

  “But you probably want to hear about the sights,” Callum said. “Llethanyl is built around a great tree, one my people have nurtured for nearly a thousand years. I’ll take you around the base once we’ve defeated the Lich. In the summer, the tree is home to hundreds of birds from all over Terryn—with feathers of every color you could imagine. Maybe a few you couldn’t.”

  “That sounds messy,” said Zed, thinking of the many times he’d scrubbed pigeon dung from the stone steps of the training yard.

  Callum smirked. “The ain’shea clean up after the birds. The sun elves consider it a sacred duty.”

  When Zed burst out laughing, the ranger looked down at him quizzically.

  “Sacred doodie?” Zed asked.

  “Did I . . . say that wrong?”

  Zed shook his head, wishing with a pang that Brock was around. “No, never mind. Keep going.”

  “Well, there are several magical academies, of course, and even a specialized school for sorcerers.”

  Zed’s eyes lit up. “Did my father go there? You know my real name is Zerend, right? Zed’s just what everyone calls me. Mom named me after him, and then I became a sorcerer, too. Does that happen a lot with our people?”