by E. A. Copen
The night forest was quiet but for the whisper of elves and their horses moving through the underbrush. A few of the elves murmured to each other in their own language. I wished I understood what they were saying. Dex clearly knew at least a little Elvish, but he hadn’t made the offer to translate.
I turned my head to whisper to him. “You know, you could’ve mentioned you were an elf instead of hiding it with that stupid hat.”
Dex sighed. “I’m only half an elf, and not even the right half, apparently. As if that’s not bad enough, Leseran is actually my half-brother on my father’s side. Talk about toxic family.”
“You’d think they’d be more welcoming to someone who shares their blood.”
“Oh, if only.” He gave a derisive snort and turned his head. “I’m a stain on our father’s otherwise spotless honor, a living, breathing reminder of the time a human witch seduced a member of the Telmara.”
“The Telmara?” I tipped my head to the side.
“Elves don’t have kings and queens. The Telmara is a sort of ruling council, but it’s more than a governing body. Their word is law, and their honor beyond reproach. Well, usually. They’re sort of like town elders, role-model celebrities, and living gods all rolled into one. Traditionalists like Leseran worship the ground the Telmara walks on.”
“The Telmara are not gods, nor are they infallible,” Leseran growled from somewhere ahead and to our right. “But they are honored elders, and our people would rather not be reminded of past dishonor.”
“Is that really what happened?” I asked Dex, ignoring Leseran. “Your mother was some sort of powerful witch?”
“My mother was a prostitute,” Dex said matter-of-factly. “She had a bit of magic, but to claim she overpowered an elf, let alone a powerful elder in his prime, is a bit of a stretch even for me.” I felt the weight of his shoulders rise and fall. “But if that’s the story they want to tell, I’m not going to argue.”
I twisted in the saddle. “Why not? It’s a lie. I’m sure your mother doesn’t appreciate it.”
Silence answered.
Leseran made a small sound somewhere between a grunt and a snort. “Humans are so fragile and only grow more so with age, don’t they?”
Dex’s hands curled into fists and pressed against my lower back.
I immediately felt guilty for bringing up his mother. I knew nothing about Dex, where he came from, or his history. For all I knew, she was dead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know she’d died.”
“There are worse things that can happen to you dhalethein than death,” Leseran said.
For a moment, Leseran’s words threw me back in time and left me standing in front of an expanding rift, screaming Ash’s name. Wind spun and twisted the air, drowning out my cries. Eerie greenish light glowed in the center of the rift, so close I could almost touch it.
I shook my head and came back to the present. Maybe it was better if I said nothing at all.
We rode in silence for a long time. I don’t know how long, or how far we went. Blindfolded, and in unfamiliar territory, it was impossible to tell. By the time anything changed, my lower back was screaming from the uncomfortable ride, and Dex’s extra weight against me. He’d fallen asleep shortly after I stupidly brought his mother up and was snoring gently. Despite the awkward position I occupied in the saddle, his presence was at least a little comforting.
Eventually, new sounds and smells joined the constant chirping of birds and the forest scents. I inhaled the familiar smells of campfires and imagined the last embers of the night’s fires fading into a foggy morning. Goats bleated. Wooden spoons scraped the bottom of iron pots. Low voices and light footsteps. We had made it to the elven camp.
The horses stopped and someone lifted my blindfold. I squinted into the morning light at first, but as I got used to it, I realized it was barely light out. The creatures I’d mistaken for goats earlier were something else, as large as an alpaca but with ram’s horns, thick fur, and the udders of a cow. Most of them wandered around lazily inside a wooden pen while a pair of elves worked to milk the creatures.
Dex slid off the horse before me. His feet hit the ground with an audible squish, and he winced. “Lovely. Nothing like stepping in orzalope shit first thing in the morning.” Dex muttered to himself as he desperately tried to scrape his boot through the grass to clean the feces off. He got too close to one orzalope and it let out a loud bleat before spitting at him. Dex sighed and wiped his face off with his shirt.
I was careful to dismount in the other direction. As I did, I noticed several elves carrying Zia on a stretcher toward a large smoking hut at the center of camp. “Hey, wait.” I rushed to follow where they were taking her.
Leseran moved to block my path. He held my sword in a fist. “You and the half-ears will come with me.”
“Like hell I will. I’m staying with Zia. Someone’s got to watch over her.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “I am a man of my word. The Sinera will draw the poison from her blood if they are able, but that will take time, and your presence will be little more than a distraction to our healers. I must take you before the Telmara. They’re the only ones who can decide what to do with you.”
“Do with me?” I looked to Dex, who was only a few paces behind me. “What do you mean? I’ve done nothing to you and your people, yet you’re treating me like a prisoner.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Elves do not take prisoners. If I wished you dead, it would be so. Now come. I grow tired of speaking your corrupt tongue.” He put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me toward another building standing on a small rise.
I went, but only because I didn’t know what choice I had. The elves in the camp had all stopped to stare at me. After his performance back at the heretic camp, I knew I couldn’t best Leseran in a fight. Besides, he had my sword. If I wanted it back, and to get back to the wagon convoy safely, my only choice was to cooperate.
Dex joined Leseran and I on our path up to the large, round building, walking backward. “What does the Telmara want with her?”
Leseran didn’t even look at Dex. “I haven’t summoned them yet.”
“Then how do you know they’ll even want to speak to her? Look, if you want the sword, I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement. You bought it, right, Ember? Would you part with it for an honest price?”
Leseran stopped walking and sneered at Dex. “It is not the sword that troubles me, nor that this dhalethein had it. It is the timing, and the combination of the two.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “It’s just a sword.”
“And you are just a mewling sack of flesh and bone,” he spat. “I will not negotiate. I know my duty. Move!” He gave me another shove.
The large round building at the top of the hill was barely an inch taller than Leseran at the outer walls, though the ceiling rose higher the further toward the center. It looked to be made of many scraps of hide, tanned and stitched together. Gray smoke rose through a hole in the center of the roof.
Leseran didn’t enter. He lifted the door flap and stepped back. “You can wait here. The Telmara will arrive shortly. Know that I will place a guard outside. If you attempt to flee, you will be cut down on sight without question. Do you understand?”
“And I thought the elves didn’t take prisoners,” I scoffed. “Sounds a lot like prison to me.”
He just scowled at me. “Remove your shoes.”
I kicked off my boots and placed them by the door. “They’d better be here when I get back.”
Dex pinched his nose and dropped his. “I honestly don’t care if mine are still there.”
The tent seemed a lot larger on the inside than the outside, as if some magic were at work, changing the dimensions. I could barely see the other side in the dim light. Woven rugs with intricate detail lined the floor. Once Leseran let go of the tent door, it was even darker inside, at least until my eyes adjusted to the strange, smokey air inside the tent. At least it wasn’t unpleas
ant to breathe. I closed my eyes and inhaled through my nose.
“Honeysuckle and jasmine,” Dex said. “It’s supposed to be calming. I suppose it might be for normal folk. I don’t have pleasant associations with it.” He paced toward the center of the tent where a large iron stove stood. A semi-circle of carved wooden chairs sat before it, facing the door.
“What’s going to happen here, Dex?” I fidgeted with my hands and moved closer to him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Elves are protective of their heritage, but I’ve never seen anyone get so worked up over an artifact, let alone a sword. That thing didn’t have a hint of rust on it. Besides, it’s not like you desecrated an elven burial ground to get it, did you?”
“No! I found it at the blacksmith’s, just like I said.”
“Hm. Then maybe he desecrated the elven burial ground or something. Wouldn’t put it past a dwarf. Who knows?” He tapped his chin in thought.
I sighed and sat down on the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees. “You’re not being very helpful.”
Dex snorted. “What? You think just because I’ve got pointy ears, I know everything about being elvish? I was raised human. I honestly didn’t even know I wasn’t human until I was seven or eight.”
“You’d think the ears would give it away.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” He touched the pointed tops of his ears and sighed. “I just thought I was some sort of misshapen freak. I looked at my ears the same way most people probably look at their freckles or their twenty extra pounds. With the right clothing, I could hide them well enough.”
“So what happened? How did you find out?”
Dex let his arms fall limply to his sides. He paced back and forth a minute before plopping onto the floor across from me with a half-hearted shrug. “You have to understand that I didn’t grow up like most kids. For most kids, they’ve got mom, dad, the dog and maybe a brother or sister. They’re brought up thinking family is blood. I grew up thinking family meant people who lived together in one big house. That meant I thought of all the men and women in the brothel as family. I had a mother and a bunch of aunts and uncles… But I didn’t have a father. It didn’t matter so much to me until some other kids started teasing me about it. We fought, and I lost, badly.”
“So you asked your mom about it?” I leaned forward, waiting for his answer.
Dex wrinkled his nose. “Hell, no. I was too ashamed to admit I got beat up, so I found one of my uncles. Of course, he really wasn’t my uncle at all. Just another prostitute, trying to get by. But they looked after me. All of them did. Anyway, he was the one who told me what I was. I didn’t believe him at first. I didn’t think elves were real. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted it to be real. I started to imagine what life might be like if I had a father, as well as all my aunts and uncles. I had this fantasy in my head that I could find him, and everyone would get along because they loved me, you know?”
I nodded and swallowed familiar pang of grief. I hadn’t grown up as Dex had, but I’d lost both my parents when I was young. Old Jim had raised me and Ash, but I’d always known he wasn’t my father. There was a time when I wanted so badly to believe that the story I’d been told was a lie, that my parents had survived the attack and were really out there, searching for me. If I looked hard enough, I would find them. It ended when Old Jim finally took me to where they were buried. It felt like my entire childhood ended that day. Maybe it did.
“Anyway,” Dex continued, staring at the floor, “it didn’t turn out that way. I ran away from home, tracked down my father. Long story short, he and the rest of the Telmara made it clear he wanted nothing to do with me, and that I wasn’t welcome among the people.”
“I’m sorry, Dex.” I put a hand on his arm. “That’s not fair.”
“Hey, nobody said life was fair, right?” He cracked a smile. “Anyway, it’s fine. Imagine if things had worked out the way I wanted. I would’ve had to put up with Leseran as an older brother. Dodged a bullet there. Besides, my guild is my family now. The one good thing to come out of all of this is that I learned you make your own family. Blood’s got nothing to do with it.”
I nodded. “I understand that. Maybe better than you know.”
Light flooded the tent as someone lifted the tent flap. A tall, thin figure blocked out some of the light for a moment before it passed into the tent. Another followed behind. One by one, nine elves entered the tent in silence, their faces hidden behind beaded veils. They wore large, bulky cloaks of crimson with high collars and long trains. The cloaks wrapped around their bodies, hiding any definable features. There was no telling the gender or age of the elves who entered the tent. All of them were blank walls of crimson and silver veils.
The only one to stand out was one who walked with a large, iron staff made to look like a gnarled bit of wood.
Dex and I rose as Leseran entered and closed the tent flap behind him, standing guard at the entrance.
The procession of elves moved around the outskirts of the tent, meeting in the middle to stand one before each chair. The elves stood there, silent and unmoving, waiting for some unseen signal before they all sank into their seats at the same time.
The elf in the center seat lifted their staff and brought it down three times against the carpet. A wave of red magic exploded from the end of the staff and struck me, pushing the air out of my lungs. My skin burned as it washed over me, but the pain was short lived.
“The Telmara shall come to order,” said the leader in the center with a voice that was neither purely masculine nor feminine. “Bring forth the Gwǽtach Mhor!”
Leseran left his post by the door to come and kneel before the Telmara, kneeling to present my sword to the leader with a flourish.
The leader elf took the sword, rose, and pulled the blade from its scabbard.
Light flooded the room, reflected off the blade from nowhere. A pulse of dark magic followed. An inhuman scream echoed in my ears. I gasped and fell to my knees, holding my head as visions flooded my mind.
The Telmara tent faded, and I was thrust into a foggy forest alone. Dew clung to the underside of the leaves, and spiders scurried around on their webs.
And there, grinning down at me from behind his stag skull helmet, was the giant, tree-armored creature from my dream. Black smoke billowed around my feet, turning into hands, grasping at my ankles. I tried to kick them away, but there were too many. Fingernails raked at my bare skin and the ground beneath me gave way, pulling me into a grave while the creature watched.
“Help me!” I reached for the creature, my screams echoing through the forest. “Please!”
The creature lifted a sword. Shadow raced along the blame like fire and spread into the surrounding trees.
And then I understood. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t there to help me. It meant to kill me.
Chapter Thirteen
I woke to the sound of a crackling fire and the touch of a cool cloth on my forehead. The ceiling overhead was made of strange cloth stretched over spokes of wood. A hole in the center opened to a blue sky. Smoke pumped through a black metal tube protruding through the hole, keeping it from building up in the tent.
“You’re awake,” Dex said, kneeling next to me. “About time. I was starting to worry you were slipping into some kind of coma.”
I groaned and touched my head. It throbbed from where the heretic had struck me before, but also in my temples. “What happened?”
“Good question.” Dex let his forearm rest on his knee. “One minute, we’re standing in the dark, and the next there’s this brilliant light. You’re on the ground, screaming and holding your ears, and the rest of us are standing around, baffled. At least I was. I had no idea what was going on. Leseran and the other guards snatched us up and locked us in here, presumably until the Telmara decide what it all means.” He gestured to the small tent.
I sat up.
Dex took my arm. “Easy. You went down hard.”
I was a little dizzy sitting up, but managed. The tent was still larger than most hotel rooms, maybe twenty feet from one side to the other, though the walls were slanted. I’d only be able to stand at my full height toward the center. There were two beds piled high with patterned blankets and pillows, and a table with two chairs. A woven rug served as the floor.
“The sword. I saw…” Images of the stag-skulled monster from my visions flashed through my mind. I shook my head, but that just made me dizzier. “They called it something mohr?”
“Beats me. What I know of elven lore couldn’t fit in a teacup,” Dex said with a shrug. “They seem to think it’s a big deal. I just wish I knew if they were going to kill us or not.”
I lowered my hands from my head and stared at him. “How would it help to know it in advance?”
“Because if I’m going to die sooner rather than later, I’m going to have to speed up my plan to seduce you.” He smiled and winked.
I rolled my eyes and swung my feet over the side of the bed.
The door flap opened and Leseran ducked inside, carrying a sack. Dex found his feet and moved between me and the elf.
“Sit down, fool,” Leseran growled. “If the Telmara wanted you dead, it would be so already.”
“If I’d remained sitting, you would’ve told me to stand and respect my betters,” Dex muttered and plopped back down. “There’s no pleasing you people.”
“You can’t keep us here,” I said. “We were supposed to return to our convoy. If we’re gone much longer, they’ll come looking for us.”
Leseran’s frown deepened. “Your convoy of big game hunters is the least of our concerns. Without one of the people with them, they’d never find this camp, anyway.”
“Then you could at least tell us why we’re being detained. What do you plan to do with us?” I crossed my arms.
The elf sighed and shifted the sack under his arm. “I’m here to invite you to dinner. But first…” He upended the sack on the empty bed on the other side of the room, picking up a small white bar and tossing it to Dex. “You two stink. Clean yourselves up and put on some decent clothes. I’ve had to estimate your sizes. Considering how short you are, finding clothes that would fit you was a task.”