Beyond Ragnarok

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  The familiarity of the pain soothed even as its presence charged the need to fight that seemed as much reflex as training. She grew wary, watching through the bars for movement, more angry with herself now than when she discovered she had not died in the battle. She had made a massive and amateur mistake. Always her torke had chided her for impatience. Now that fault might well prove the means for her own dishonorable destruction. One of the primary lessons of the Renshai raced through her thoughts: “Be patient. Find the weak point, and use it.” Impulsiveness had stolen that option from her. She had acted at first opportunity, without fully exploring her options or the enemy’s defenses. She would pay for that, she felt certain, with heightened security that even a Renshai might not breach. The rest of the lesson followed naturally: “If you find no weak point, create it.” She would do so, when the time came, by gathering as much information about her captors as possible and finding a way to turn it against them. Renshai prayed with violence for strength and guidance, never mercy or salvation. In her current situation, it never occurred to Rantire to rely on anyone or thing other than her own wits and martial skill.

  Shortly after Rantire’s awakening, the torturer returned to peer at her through the bars. His presence surprised her. She had not stopped to check how badly her attack injured him. In the heat of escape, it had not mattered to her whether or not one elf lived or died. She had believed she’d hit him hard enough to kill him or, at least, inflict a ringing headache; but, in the scramble, she had apparently not landed as hard a blow as she thought. Either that, or elves handled injuries better than humans. Their youth-lightness suggested just the opposite, but nothing seemed quite right about these creatures from legend.

  Meeting her gaze briefly with his canted, sapphire eyes, the torturer tossed a comment over his shoulder that Rantire tucked away in her memory as meaning something on the order of “she’s awake.” On further consideration, the term minkelik seemed inappropriately complicated for a simple pronoun, so she amended her translation to “the human’s awake.” She waited for the elf to address her directly.

  A reply wafted from the sidelines, then the torturer switched to his odd rendition of the trading tongue. “So sudden and violent all humans?”

  Several answers came to Rantire’s head, most intensely sarcastic. She considered the possibility that what seemed like a personal affront might actually be one of the torturer’s questions. She saw advantage in convincing the elves that humans would prove more difficult to confront than they believed. At least, it might make them reconsider any plans to stir war on a grand scale. “Me? Sudden? Violent? I’m just a woman.” The self-aspersion proved difficult. Had anyone else referred to her as “just a woman,” he would not have done so a second time.

  “Woman?” the torturer repeated, emphasizing the final syllable.

  “Female,” Rantire supplied. “Compared to our males, I’m a kitten.”

  The torturer glanced to his left, apparently assuring himself that someone with a better command of human language was listening. His body shifted, rising and falling at the chest in a gesture that resembled nothing human but somehow suggested resignation. This, she guessed, was the equivalent of a human sigh. “We just want answered simple some questions. None of them require difficult efforts to you. Like pain do you?”

  Rantire believed the “you” referred to her, not people in general. No matter the nature of elfin society, they would never believe she, or any human, enjoyed being hurt. “No one likes pain.”

  The elf nodded, his expression suggesting he had meant the question to be rhetorical. Relief softened his alien features. “Talk you now to me?”

  Rantire pursed her lips. Her aching arms had become a distraction that made clever thought difficult. “Depends on the question.”

  “Who is leader of humans?”

  Rantire shook her head, saying nothing. The query seemed as ludicrous now as when Dh’arlo’mé had asked, but Rantire believed she could use this gap in elfin understanding to her advantage. As long as they believed a single entity existed who fit this description, and she kept silent, they had reason to keep her alive. But this strategy had a major flaw: the elves need only capture another human and ask him. Luckily, they seemed disinclined to do so, presumably because they did not wish to risk more elfin lives to capture one. Rantire had never heard of elves outside of church tales, which suggested that, for whatever reason, elves did not mingle with mankind often.

  “Will you not answer?”

  “I will not,” Rantire responded, placing the words back into proper sequence.

  “Have I to hurt you?” Reluctantly resigned, the torturer gestured, and the smaller elf that had accompanied him previously edged into view.

  “I can’t stop you from hurting me,” Rantire admitted. “But it’ll do you no good. I won’t bow to pain. You’ll kill me before I give you that answer.”

  The torturer stiffened at the words, glancing toward someone Rantire could not see. Apparently, she had found a chink in his armor. The dirty cell she had passed during her attempt at escape held the answer, Rantire suspected. Apparently, the elves had killed a human before, by accident; and the torturer’s aversion to causing harm suggested his too exuberant ministrations as the cause. Since it seemed to bother him, she filed the knowledge away until the time she could use it against him.

  Rantire could no longer feel her arms, though each heartbeat triggered a deep, excruciating pain.

  “I have to try,” he said.

  “I understand.” Rantire locked her gaze on him, hoping the sharper pains he inflicted might draw attention from her arms. He carried no paraphernalia and obviously had no intention of moving her, so she could not guess his method. That misinterpretation had undone her before; she had believed he would escort her elsewhere and so never suspected gates would block the way. Clearly, he had not intended to move her that time either.

  The torturer unlocked and entered Rantire’s cell. Hunched into a wary crouch, the other elf followed, eyes flicking nervously from Rantire to the hallway to the door.

  The torturer waved for his companion to approach Rantire. The other did so, moving with slow, shuffling steps that charged Rantire’s impatience but did not seem to bother the torturer at all. The smaller elf worked his way to Rantire’s side then looked to the torturer for guidance.

  The torturer said something in elven, and his companion slid a clammy hand beneath Rantire’s tunic, placing his palm flat against her abdomen. His skin felt damp and tremulous, revealing his anxiety.

  Rantire waited in silent ignorance, unsure what to expect.

  The torturer shouted something, and a low chorus spread outside the cell in both directions down the hallway. Magic. Rantire knew but could not speculate further. So far, every spell the elves had thrown had required an assembly and a caster; she hoped it held true for all magic. One-on-one, she believed she would have only their physical abilities to conquer. Without the constant need to anticipate the unpredictable, she could defeat them or die fighting and find Valhalla.

  The elf’s hand warmed against her skin, and she naturally attributed the change to shared body heat. Then it flared suddenly to a scalding heat. She flinched instinctively. “Ow!”

  The elf jerked away from her movement, and his hand lost contact with her skin. The heat diminished instantly, though a painful tingling persisted. Rantire felt like a craven and a fool. She had anticipated some sort of pain, had steeled herself not to scream; but the abruptness of the temperature change had startled as much as hurt her.

  “You talk now to me?” the torturer asked.

  “No.” Rantire met his gaze easily.

  The torturer pushed his companion forward again. This time, the smaller elf took a position at her opposite hip, placing his hand flat as before. Rantire knew what to expect now. As the heat scorched her flesh, the agony seared much deeper, but she did not make a sound. Even when tears scored her vision and the need to swear transformed to the desire to scream, s
he did not move or cry out. Eyes closed, it took her several moments to realize that the heat source, and the chanting, had disappeared. The pain lingered, and nausea accompanied it. The image of vomiting on her captors was the only pleasure she could manage.

  “You talk now to me?” The torturer’s familiar voice penetrated her mental fog.

  “No,” Rantire said, trying to sound as casual as before, with mixed results.

  The torturer accepted the answer more easily than Rantire expected. “I will try for you again later.” Turning, he walked back outside the cell, the smaller elf scurrying after him.

  The pain receded further, becoming less than the dull ache Rantire’s arms still suffered. “There won’t be a later. Not if you leave things as they are.”

  The torturer studied Rantire. “What mean you?”

  “I mean,” Rantire explained carefully, “that if you leave me hanging like this, I’ll lose my arms. Then I’ll bleed to death.” She did not know if she spoke the truth or not, but the pain in her arms was rapidly growing unbearable. Had the elves known of the discomfort the position caused her, they surely would have left her until the need to move drove her to madness or confession. Rantire did not reveal the level of her distress, attempting to imply instead that she would succumb to a swift and painless death. “And if you don’t tend that burn, it’ll get infected and kill me.”

  “Infected,” the torturer repeated, brows knitted. The word obviously held no meaning for him. He leaned on the cell door, calling down the hallway in his native language.

  Rantire cycled a battle song through her head to distract her from the agony throbbing through her arms and hip:

  Renshai warriors

  Swords sharp and gleaming

  Allies few and

  Enemies streaming

  As heroes battle

  Honor teeming

  Leave our foes

  With entrails steaming.

  Eventually, Dh’arlo’mé and three other elves answered the torturer’s summons. They discussed the situation in elven, Rantire plucking a few more words from their conversation based on the torturer’s need to relay her concern and from gestures she could only partially interpret. Of the newcomers, one in particular caught Rantire’s notice. He bore the same long-limbed form as the others; yet, where most had a timelessness that made guessing years impossible, this one had an aura of great age. Silver wound through red-brown locks faded from sunlight. His amber eyes held a glaze of water, though none of the milky whiteness that plagued human elders. Wrinkles scored his face in odd patterns that she usually associated with smiling, though she had seen little of that among the elves so far. He watched Rantire with a studiousness the others did not emulate and spoke the least of the three. His tone contained none of the bitter anger the others displayed on occasion and Dh’arlo’mé showed all of the time.

  At length they came to an agreement. The elder pulled something out of his pocket that his fist hid and entered Rantire’s cell. As he approached, he opened his hand, revealing a tiny, round, glass bowl filled with a white cream. He scooped some of the contents onto his finger, then smeared a light coating over the burns on Rantire’s hip and abdomen. As he worked, he muttered guttural sounds suspiciously like those she had heard shouted during the casting of magic. No chanting assembly accompanied his work. If he used a spell, her theory lost all significance. Her hopes plummeted at the thought. If some spells or casters did not require an elaborate organization to work their magic, it became that much more difficult to evade or fight them.

  Without meeting her gaze, the elder elf continued to work, switching from the harsh syllables to the lilting Northern speech of humans. “Do not judge all elves by our leader.”

  He glanced at Rantire’s face, and she gave a slight nod to indicate she understood him. Her heart slowed as the pain of the burns eased and gradually disappeared, but it quickened anew with eager anticipation. She wondered if she had truly found an ally or just a trick to make her believe so. It seemed impossible that this elf might actually choose loyalty to a human stranger over his own people, but her instincts told her to trust this old elf as she had not the others.

  The ancient one returned his gaze to her wounds, though he seemed pleased by her admission of comprehension. “I supported the Golden Prince of Demons when those who claimed kinship turned enemies. The wise become fools when they mistake reasoning for truth.” He replaced Rantire’s shirt, returned the vial to his pocket, and left the cell as if he had never spoken. He closed the door and stepped aside to allow the torturer to lock it.

  The elves padded lightly down the corridor; Dh’arlo’mé the only one who glanced backward. Moments later, the hook supporting Rantire’s wrists slid down the stone wall through a groove she had not previously noticed. She snatched back her hands, returning blood flow an agony that usurped all previous pain. Incapacitated, she slid to the floor, mind clotted with a suffering that for a time allowed no coherent thought.

  When the pain finally dropped to a tolerable level, Rantire considered the old elf’s words: I supported the Golden Prince of Demons when those who claimed kinship turned enemies. Mention of Colbey Calistinsson, the Golden Prince of Demons as ancient prophecies once called him, did not escape her. This elf knew about Renshai and that she was one. How? Rantire considered. She had said nothing to give herself away, and the days when appearance revealed the Renshai’s originally Northern breeding had passed centuries ago. Those from the tribe of Modrey still bore many of the common features: the blond or red hair, pale skin and eyes, and the strange propensity to look younger than chronological age. But Rantire was born of the tribe of Rache, the one that least resembled the old race. Did he read my mind? Rantire discarded that possibility, still certain the elves would not bother to question her if they could invade her thoughts. Only one other clue came to mind: her sword and her combat style. Those who knew Renshai well might recognize their distinctive warrior training, riddled with secret maneuvers and ploys only Renshai were allowed to learn.

  Apparently, the old elf knew more about humans than his fellows. Yet even his knowledge fell short. He had used the Northern tongue when it made more sense to choose trading or Western; and he had tried to claim kinship with Colbey in the years of the god’s mortality. That would make him more than three centuries old. The possibility seemed madness, yet it gave Rantire pause. How long do elves live? She had no information even to speculate, except for her own inability to gauge age when she stared at the not-quite-human faces. She could not wholly dismiss the possibility that the elder had known Colbey before his ascension, though the ancient’s claim to have supported the Golden Prince of Demons seemed more difficult to swallow even than the concept of passing decades like human years. By legend, everyone, including the gods, had turned against Colbey Calistinsson. They had believed him the single-handed bearer of chaos and instigator of the Ragnarok when, in fact, he championed balance; and their desperate attempts to slaughter him brought the very war they sought to prevent. No one had sanctioned the Golden Prince. No one.

  Or could there have been one? Rantire dared to doubt. History tended to condense to absolutes, the details lost in obscurity. Just as no sword technique was entirely effective, and luck could steal victory from the better warrior. Rantire did not trust in “never” or “always.” And she began to wonder whether elves did outlive humans in the same ratio that humans outlived horses or dogs or maybe even insects. She could not guess the elfin life span, but the implications of such a thing went far beyond the obvious. And patience became a desperate need.

  Chapter 11

  The Only Answer

  Through all the battles, killing, and prejudice, the one thing our people never lost was their code of laws and their honor.

  —Colbey Calistinsson

  The dank darkness of Béarn’s dungeon enfolded Ra-khir like a sodden blanket, and the echo of his footsteps evoked imaginary monsters he had not feared since childhood. “The third cell on the left,” th
e guard had told him, remaining behind so the knight-in-training could address his father in private. They showed no concern over the possibility that Kedrin might attempt escape. Ra-khir hoped that faith stemmed from respect for a knight’s honor rather than the hopeless, black maze that stretched beyond the cages and that only a few of Béarn’s most trusted could negotiate. Flight from the prison meant certain death in lightless, spider-infested bewilderment from slow starvation or madness.

  One cell. Ra-khir continued his walk, heart pounding, envisioning each beat echoing through the cool, stone hallways. Occasionally, a clink or cough broke the stillness, loud as a drumbeat, the noises of Béarn’s prisoners. Two cells. Ra-khir wondered at their crimes: poachers, murderers, thieves. Outrage flared at the thought of his gallant father among these.

  Three cells. Ra-khir discovered his father sitting calmly on the stone floor of his cage, head lowered in prayer to the gods Béarn worshiped. Kedrin had always placed his personal faith in Thor, law incarnate, a warrior deity who embodied skill, strength, and honor. As Ra-khir drew nearer, the captain looked up and smiled at his son.

  Relief flooded Ra-khir, displacing his anger. His father looked well. For now, nothing else mattered. He stood in silence, finding no words that would not sound trite after the events that had transpired. For the first time in his life, he stood speechless before his father.