Twilight of the Elves

by Zack Loran Clark

  So it figured the one time he tried to take a magical shortcut through a mountain, he would get lost.

  What would his father make of Brock’s recent choices? Smuggling edible grass and monster guts for a black market shadow broker and her fallen magus was far from the life of stability and security toward which Brock had always been pushed. Then again, looked at another way, it was Brock’s father who’d gotten him into this mess, in a transparent attempt to get in good with Lord Quilby.

  A transparent and successful attempt. Leave it to the elder Dunderfel to get exactly what he wanted, even as the world burned all around him.

  “Hello?” Brock called. “Anybody out there?”

  Fel’s singing had gone silent some time ago. It was difficult to say how long it had been; here, there was no context for time. It felt as if the darkness had somehow rushed in to fill the spot she had left. But the darkness was already everywhere. It was darker than the woods at night. Darker than a dungeon.

  He wanted to turn back. Was that the spell influencing his mind, or his own fear? Either way, he would be defiant. He put one foot in front of the other, but had no sense of stepping forward. He thought about touching his face to make sure he was still there in the truest physical sense and not some disembodied consciousness, but he decided he really didn’t want to know.

  He had to get out of here.

  He tried to will himself out of the darkness. Nothing. He focused on shuffling forward, but he no longer felt any ground beneath his feet. He couldn’t tell if he was moving anymore, forgot what it felt like to walk. Brock’s fear swelled into despair.

  And then, there was a light: a slice of pure white in the blackness. And framed in the light was a girl with a sword.

  She said his name, and it sounded like music.

  Brock lunged for her, heedless of the blade, wrapping his arms around her waist. There was a popping sound, and his stomach lurched, and suddenly Brock’s knees found hard stone and his eyes were dazzled with light.

  While his eyes adjusted and his vertigo faded, he stayed on his knees and held on to Liza like his life depended on it.

  “H-how long was I in there?” he asked. He shivered, his body prickling with gooseflesh where it met cool air.

  “Like five seconds,” Liza said dismissively, but she patted him affectionately on the head.

  “It felt longer,” he said, finally releasing her and rising slowly to his feet. “Did you . . . did you cut through the darkness?”

  “I cut through a spell,” Liza said excitedly. “The sword just sort of . . . pulled. I swear I could feel it guiding me. It was amazing.” She stopped to look around her. “This is bad, though.” She turned in a circle, and Brock blinked against the torchlight to take in their surroundings. Stone was all around them, but it wasn’t the familiar gray stone of home or the cracked, mossy stone of Duskhaven. Everything was white—white, but with swirls of glittering silver where it caught the torchlight. And every surface was etched with intricate detail. There were recesses along the walls, like shallow doorways, just tall and deep enough that an adult could stand within them. But they stood empty, and the overall effect was of a vertical wave of marble, peaks and troughs dipping into shadow and lifting back again to the light in an unbroken pattern.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  “It’s wrong,” Liza responded. “I was just with the others. We were outside. I came back for you . . . I thought we’d end up where I started, but who knows where that spell’s brought us.”

  Brock shivered and held his hands up to a burning torch, but the flame produced no heat. It was no natural fire.

  “Don’t tell Zed,” Brock said. “But I am really starting to hate magic!”

  They both flinched as his voice echoed through the large space. They stood in silence as the echo died off, waiting to hear whether anything moved in response. But the place was as silent as a tomb.

  And suddenly Brock knew that’s exactly where they were.

  “This is the mausoleum,” he said. “Isn’t it? This is where Llethanyl laid their dead to rest.”

  Liza pointed her sword at the ground, which was littered with broken pieces of white stone. Brock had assumed it was a deliberate choice, given the immaculate state of the walls and ceiling, but now he saw it in a new light. “Those hollows, the recesses all along the walls—they were sealed off once,” Liza said. “Something broke in.”

  “Or broke out,” Brock said, and he shuddered. “This is where the Lich got his army. All those dead elves just . . . got up and walked out of here.”

  “Which means we can walk out of here, too.” She waved her sword around in the empty air, probing for some sign of the spell that had deposited them here. “I keep hoping that Fel or the others will appear any second, but we have to accept the possibility that we’re on our own.”

  Brock gestured toward a staircase. “I vote we go up.”

  Liza nodded and led the way upstairs to a nearly identical space. The shattered stone of the floor made their progress awkward; Brock could feel the jagged edges through his boots, and his ankles tilted this way and that with each step. But they crossed the room to another staircase and kept going.

  In the next room, something was moving.

  Here, one of the hollows still had its lid: an ornate piece of stonework with a carven image of an elf.

  “Do you hear—?” Brock whispered, and Liza shushed him.

  Suddenly the lid jolted as something on the other side pushed against it. Brock leaped away, reaching out for Liza without thinking. But the lid held.

  “I guess that one’s stuck,” Liza said.

  Brock realized he was gripping her arm, which among other things would interfere with her ability to stab their enemies. He reluctantly released her.

  “Let’s keep moving,” he said, and they quickly crossed the room to the sound of the stone lid rattling in place.

  The creature in that tomb had to have been there for weeks. It was stuck, but it wouldn’t stop trying to escape. Brock considered each hollow they passed in the next room. Row after row of empty tombs in room after room, and each tomb represented an undead soldier in the Lich’s army.

  That army would not tire. It did not require food or drink or shelter from the cold. And seeing this place, the scale of it, Brock now realized that this unstoppable army numbered in the millions.

  “We can’t win,” he said. “We can’t beat this.”

  “We don’t have to beat the army. Only the Lich.”

  “Right. That sounded only slightly impossible when we had a secret weapon. But Zed’s fire didn’t work on the wraith. What if it doesn’t work on the Lich? What if we get close to it and all Zed manages to do is singe its robe and then we have to fight a newly angry Lich with a cloak of mystical fire?”

  “Not to worry.” Liza smiled. “I have a plan.”

  “Please tell me your plan isn’t ‘Micah walks up to the Lich and punches it with his healing fist.’ ”

  Liza’s smile went taut. “Sometimes the best plans are simple.”

  “And rarely do the best plans rely entirely on Micah.”

  They kept going. Brock wondered just how deep the elves had built. But whenever they came upon a set of stairs, they went up.

  “What’s that smell?” Brock asked. “It’s familiar.”

  Liza nodded. “It’s myrrh. They used it at the ceremony for the little boy.”

  “Right,” Brock murmured. “To ward off evil, Fel said.”

  “That’s a nice sentiment, but there’s a more pragmatic reason for it,” Liza said. “It covers the smell of . . . of rot.”

  Brock grimaced. “This is so wrong in so many ways,” he said. “Why bury your dead like this to begin with? It doesn’t even seem sanitary.”

  “It’s tradition,” Liza said. “Haven’t you talked to Fel about it? From their perspective, it’s far more natural than fire.”

  Brock shook his head. “I can’t wrap my mind around it.”
>
  “That’s the root of our problems though, isn’t it? Freestone used to draw people from all over Terryn. But we’re all from Freestone now. And it’s like . . . all those different ways of doing things went away, and now we act like there’s only one way. The Freestone way.” She pursed her lips. “I thought people would be excited to learn from the elves, to consider other viewpoints. But that’s not what happened.”

  “It’s not just Freestone, though,” Brock pointed out. “Llethanyl’s obviously failed to move past a war that ended centuries ago. And those druids weren’t exactly open to new ideas.”

  Liza smirked. “You’re almost as protective of Freestone as you are of Zed.”

  “How could I not be? Freestone is . . . it’s fierce. It’s been staring down the end of the world for two hundred years and it hasn’t blinked. How could you not love it?”

  “But you talk about Freestone as if it’s alive. As if Freestone itself is fierce, or brave, or ingenious. But cities can’t be those things; you’re talking about the people who live there. A place is only as good as the individuals who shape it. And when it came to the refugees . . . Freestone failed, Brock. The people and the king of Freestone, we all failed.”

  Brock couldn’t disagree with that. But he chose not to voice his agreement, either, and silence settled over them as they ascended once more.

  The room at the top of the stairs was empty, and Liza spoke again as they picked their way across more broken stone.

  “And listen,” she said. “I wanted to say . . . I know everything has changed recently, and changed fast. And maybe one of those changes is that Zed doesn’t lean on you so much. But we all rely on you, Brock.” She cleared her throat. “Me most of all.”

  Brock kept his eyes to the floor, as if very concerned with the possibility of tripping. “Okay,” he said, knowing it was a completely inadequate response. But he felt emotion swirling in his stomach and his throat and up into his eyes, and he didn’t quite trust himself to say more.

  “You can lean on us too, sometimes, if you want,” she said. “You don’t have to fix every problem yourself.” She paused. “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say.”

  Brock nodded.

  The next level, at last, was different, the staircase leading them to a small antechamber. The stonework here was less ornate than elsewhere, and there was a single arched doorway. Elven script scrolled across the arch, and Liza pointed out one familiar word: dro’shea.

  Beyond the threshold was a long stretch of hallway lined with skulls. The low ceiling was of that same familiar white stone, but the walls themselves were nothing but bone, skulls stacked atop one another like bricks, each of them jawless and hollow-eyed.

  Brock wanted to ask what this meant. Were all night elves interred this way? Were these the remains of those elves lost in war, or to Dangers beyond the city, their bodies unrecoverable? Did the elves of Llethanyl do this to punish the night elves?

  That thought was a sour one, and it lingered. If the elves truly believed in resurrection, then this was the cruelest punishment he could imagine.

  He wanted to ask Liza what she thought, but the idea of speaking now felt somehow disrespectful. He could scarcely draw breath before those thousand empty stares.

  And then a sudden flash of light caught his attention, and he turned to see that one of those stares was not so empty. Within the eye sockets of one skull to his left, small purple flames burned softly.

  “Was . . . that like that before?” he asked.

  “Here,” rasped the skull. It had no jaw, made no movement, but Brock knew it had made the sound.

  Across the hall, right at Liza’s elbow, another skull’s sockets lit with violet fire. “They’re here,” it said, its voice faint and scratchy.

  “Here,” said another skull.

  “Over here,” rasped a fourth.

  “Run!” Liza said.

  As they ran, the skulls all around them flared to life, the purple fire keeping pace with them. Brock felt that eerie purple light as the weight of countless malevolent eyes. Though each skull’s voice was small, their sounds were compounding into a horrid cacophony that he feared would be heard throughout the building.

  Liza burst through a set of doors at the end of the hallway, Brock a half step behind her. They entered a dim, dusty room lined with carven panels, the stone worked skillfully to show scenes from elven history. From what Brock saw, most of the scenes were of battle, people fighting atop piles of bodies, and in the low light he could not tell if they were human or elf, dro’shea or ain’shea, only that they were killing and dying. Aside from the purple hallway at their back, three doors led from the room.

  “Which way?” Brock asked.

  Running footfalls sounded from beyond the doorway to their right.

  “Left!” Liza said.

  They ran down a hallway, up another flight of stairs. After a week of marching upon flat terrain, Brock’s thighs burned with the effort of so much climbing. Yet he would have given anything for another staircase when they came to a small chamber with no exit.

  “There has to be a way out,” he insisted. He ran his hands over the stone walls, even tried turning a torch in its sconce. The room was otherwise empty but for two rows of benches and a small altar.

  “We’ll have to stand and fight,” Liza said, and Brock could swear the green sword shone a little brighter when she said it.

  But there was a purple light glowing from the doorway, heralding the arrival of a tall armored figure. She did not shamble or lurch into the room; she stepped forward with grace and deadly purpose. Her right hand held a blade with a glittering glass orb for a pommel. In her left, she held a skull, its sockets glowing purple.

  The skull hissed. “They are here.”

  “Who?” said the figure. Her face was shrouded in shadow. “Who defiles this sacred place?”

  “Um,” Brock said, drawing his daggers, his eyes flitting between the figure and the jawless skull. “I’m pretty sure this place was defiled before we got here.”

  “Stay back,” Liza snarled, holding her sword between them.

  The figure chuckled darkly and took another step forward. “Here,” said the skull.

  In the low, eerie light, Brock noted the figure’s armor, soiled and dented, bore the familiar sigil of a tree and birds.

  “It’s a sword sister,” he breathed.

  “I was, once,” said the figure. “Now I am a revenant. Doomed by regret. Cursed by failure.” With her next step, the light of the room’s torches found her angular jawline, her lush lips gone cold and blue. “I killed sages and rangers. Murdered even a minister. I was my queen’s blade, but I never knew another guided my hand.”

  Another step, and the light revealed her fully. She was ain’shea, with high cheekbones. Brock saw fine silver in her earlobes.

  She had been a lovely elf. But her eyes were gone; in their place, maggots writhed.

  Brock and Liza both recoiled.

  “He took my eyes, that I would not know him. He took my eyes, and now my world is red!”

  She slashed out with the blade, frightfully fast. Liza and Brock dove in separate directions, and the sword struck stone. She lifted it again and chopped at the air, as if feeling around for them—as if guessing where they might have gone. Brock scrabbled farther away, pressing against the wall, and the revenant lowered her sword and raised the skull, pointing it all about the room.

  Of course—she had no eyes. Somehow she was using the skull to see.

  He held a dagger carefully by the blade, lined up his shot, and sent the dagger flying.

  His aim was true. But the blade bounced harmlessly off the skull to clatter upon the ground.

  It did, however, get the revenant’s attention. She whirled on Brock, sword arm raised.

  And Liza thrust forward, slipping her own sword beneath the creature’s. The skull shattered in a flash of purple light.

  The revenant stumbled back, and while she reeled, Liza stepped ligh
tly across the room to Brock. She gestured for him to be quiet. With their enemy blinded, they would be able to sneak away, but apparently she thought Brock’s mouth jeopardized that plan.

  I know, he mouthed at her. It was my plan first!

  She shrugged furiously at him, unable to make sense of his silent bickering.

  “I don’t need to see you,” the revenant said, and the orb upon her sword glowed, patterns swirling on its surface like storm clouds in the summer sky.

  A bolt of energy leaped from the orb. The revenant had cast it in the direction Liza had stood before, and Brock hoped for a moment that it would find nothing but empty air and cold stone; but the bolt turned in midair, careless as a bird of prey, and came straight at Liza. It crossed the room in the time it took Brock to suck in a startled breath.

  Liza knocked the magic dart out of the sky with her sword.

  The sword sister cast another bolt, and another, and Liza advanced each time, slashing the magical lights from the air as easily as Mousebane swatted at fat houseflies.

  “Ha!” Liza cried as the third mote of light snuffed harmlessly against her blade. The way now clear, she advanced on their foe.

  “Curse you,” the revenant cried. “Curse us all!” And the orb glowed suddenly orange, and the room grew terribly hot.

  “Liza!” Brock cried, and he dove for her, knocking her away from the creature as it let forth a massive blast of searing heat.

  The noise was incredible, the force shattering the wall at Brock’s back, reducing heavy stone to shards and dust. He flinched, squeezing his eyes shut against the dust and covering Liza with his body, fully expecting the ceiling to come crashing down on them. But only silence descended, and as the dust settled, Brock risked a peek at their surroundings.

  The crack in the wall stopped short of the ceiling, and the revenant had been hurled back in the blast. Whether dazed or unconscious, she did not stir.