Beyond Ragnarok

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  A stunned hush followed Dh’arlo’mé’s pronouncement. Captain alone knew no surprise. He had dreaded this moment for centuries, the day elves discovered humans corrupted by chaos, those who would sell information to enemies, who would place money or power before the good of their species or, ultimately, themselves.

  “Is there anyone who sees reason why we should not indulge his request?”

  No dissension greeted the words. Even Captain could see how information would benefit elfinkind, no matter the personal baseness of its source.

  Dh’arlo’mé’s follow-up brought a nearer concern to the fore. “We have no further need of Brenna and her evasiveness. Is there anyone who opposes disposal of this one who has caused so much trouble?”

  The words enraged and horrified Captain. He glanced around the assemblage, reading each delicate expression for evidence that someone, anyone, found the situation as deplorable as he did. As usual, he found She of Slow Emotions impossible to fathom; but none of the others greeted Dh’arlo’mé’s suggestion with anything short of contemplation.

  It suited Captain’s nature better to wait before replying, but Dh’arlo’mé’s time on man’s world had wreaked havoc on his patience. He was unlikely to allow the customary time to pass before considering all in agreement. “I oppose it,” Captain said, softly but with solid determination. He looked around the others for support, but no one met his gaze. Undeterred, Captain explained. “We’ve already determined she can’t escape our prison. What need do we have to kill her?”

  Dh’arlo’mé glared at Captain, a light in his eyes bespeaking an irritation and disgust rapidly growing into hatred. This threatened to become the last in a long line of disagreements; Dh’arlo’mé’s tolerance had worn as thin as Captain’s. Though not the most significant issue they had ever faced, it would bring a million others to a head. One way or another, one of them would lose this day, and it would span issues far more significant than the life of a single Renshai.

  Dh’arlo’mé addressed Captain’s question with appropriate calm, though the answers seemed painfully obvious. “We plan to slaughter all humans eventually. If we kill this one now, we may gain knowledge of the best means to destroy our enemies. Also, we have no concern about possible escape, endangering more elves, or taking care of her needs until the fateful day. If the best reason we have for keeping her alive is having no reason to kill her, our course is clear.”

  Nods swept the gathering, all except for Hri’shan’taé and Captain. The eldest of the elves took no consolation from the Slow One’s quiet stillness. It was her manner, not any particular agreement, that made her act as she did. It told him nothing.

  “Our course is clear,” Captain agreed out of turn. “You just don’t see it.”

  The tension that followed Captain’s outburst became tangible. Even Dh’arlo’mé found no immediate reply.

  Captain hesitated as well. Once he crossed the fine line between discussion and insubordination, the repercussions might prove more than he could bear. He pictured Rantire, her parting words haunting him, bringing images of an older Renshai to mind. Colbey Calistinsson had said and done much that shocked, at times had fought alone for a morality only he could foresee. Even the gods had become blinded to the proper course, consumed, as all beings, with selfish interest. Colbey had never desired the material things other men did, only to die in glory in battle. He had clung to the basis of his religion the way others hypocritically claimed to do, and it had given him a perspective few had understood until the end. Aside from a handful of gods, only Captain had supported Colbey’s need to keep the world in balance and its forces at peace. Now, Rantire’s voice seemed to echo in his mind, and he heard those words again, ones that reminded him so much of Colbey: There may well come a time, Captain, when you need to choose between what’s right for your people and your loyalty to them. When that time comes, the world may rest on your decision. Buoyed by the words, Captain broke the uncomfortable hush. “What’s become of us that we place less than no value on a life, especially one most like our own?”

  A gasp followed Captain’s blasphemy, though he did not attempt to determine its source. Anger drove his words as it never had before, and he could not stop if he wished to do so. “What have we become that we stomp and sleep like humans? That we talk of murder as justice and destruction as a foregone conclusion?” He waved an arm that encompassed the entire forest. “Once, elves played and giggled amidst the trees, living and loving without thought to weighty decisions or the future. Once, we loved life and lived it with joy and vigor, in the manner Our Creator intended.”

  Dh’arlo’mé found his tongue at last, shouting over Captain’s tirade to preserve his control. “Times have changed!” He fingered the empty socket with a gesture that seemed as careless as it surely was deliberate. The hands of others moved naturally to the residual effects from the Fire, Dh’arlo’mé’s subtle way of keeping the hatred and bitterness alive. “You always loved humans. That’s why you chose to live among them, and you never suffered the agony that changed our people. Once humans are dead and their world our own, we can return to the guileless innocence we once enjoyed if we wish.”

  “There’ll be no possibility for it then,” Captain said. “The damage will be done.”

  “Damage to you,” Dh’arlo’mé created sides without the input of any other. “Justice to us.”

  Dh’arlo’mé had misunderstood Captain’s point, so the elder explained. “By damage, I meant the ugly change in the nature of our people, not the evil we inflict upon humans. Once we become impulsive, conniving murderers, we can never return to what we were. Never.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Dh’arlo’mé dismissed the speculation. “Perhaps we have no need to become what we used to be, oblivious and naive. We might fall prey to treachery again. The time for change has come, and one who chose to live among men at a time when no other elf would ought to recognize that need.”

  Captain did not point out that Dh’arlo’mé, too, had lived on man’s world by choice prior to the Ragnarok, as apprentice to the Northern sorcerer. Such details had little place in this argument. Outcome mattered more, and the elves had to see where violence and cruelty would lead them. They had to see it or suffer consequences the elves as a race could not bear. “Can’t you see what vengeance has already turned us into? We argue. We hate. We fester in our own rancor, though hundreds of years and fifteen generations of man have passed. Even if we accept that mankind caused the Fire . . .”

  More gasps met those words, the issue settled long ago to the satisfaction of the unanimity that defined elves. “. . . the humans who live now had no hand in the matter.”

  The Nine stared at Captain, perplexity clear on seven faces. Elves lived and thought as a unit, and the idea of singular action held no basis for understanding.

  “Your words are treason!” Dh’arlo’mé sputtered, borrowing a word from the human Northern tongue where elfin failed him. No such entity existed in their society before. “And it is your deeds that may doom us.” Dh’arlo’mé addressed this one negative action, ignoring the myriad he and those who followed him had already embraced. “Ostracizing is the only answer. Arak’bar Tulamii Dhor, you are no longer welcome among the Nine nor the elves as a whole. Go live in peace, and keep your views for those who ask them.”

  The confusion turned to horror. Even Hri’shan’taé stiffened visibly at Dh’arlo’mé’s proclamation. There was no precedent for such an action. No laws had been needed to govern elfin politics before. Now those rules Dh’arlo’mé had gradually placed into effect and into writing gained true significance. Ideas few imagined any need to invoke had drawn little opposition, and now Captain wondered just how long Dh’arlo’mé had plotted his elder’s downfall.

  Dh’arlo’mé slipped from rage to deadly composure in an instant, more swiftly than any human Captain had seen and than he would have believed any elf capable. “Are there any among the Council who would oppose such a decision?”

&n
bsp; Silence reigned. Fear colored growing uncertainty, and no one wished to speak first. A line had been drawn, and sides needed choosing. To join the one of lesser votes meant sharing the exile. Yet Captain knew the hush would not last as long as such an important choice warranted. In the past, he could not imagine such a situation arising; but if it had, it would stretch out years or decades. Dh’arlo’mé, they all knew, would not allow that. Time would only tear their views further into opposition. This moment, Captain finally realized, had been inevitable. He guessed the others recognized that, too. Soon, his own argument would condemn him. If the elves retained enough of their original makeup to consider his point worthy, they would also feel bound to follow a course of action devised by themselves and the whole of elfinkind over the centuries. Captain’s mistake, he realized, was in waiting too long to challenge Dh’arlo’mé’s dominance. That, too, he could blame on elfin patience—his own. He should have wrested command from Dh’arlo’mé before three centuries of tradition stood firmly invested behind him. Yet Captain realized he would have had little support then either. Whatever Dh’arlo’mé was now, he had rescued those elves who survived the Ragnarok. Dh’arlo’mé would have found a way to exploit the hero worship heretofore unknown to elves.

  Vrin’thal’ros responded first, as usual. “I do not oppose. The Council cannot function with disparity.” He dodged Captain’s studied stare.

  Captain saw the wisdom in those words, though he despised them. Even in harmony, things rarely happened fast among elves. So long as Dh’arlo’mé and Captain both remained members of the Nine, few things would ever get decided or accomplished. That realization shoved his thoughts back to Colbey Calistinsson. Like Rantire and the other Renshai, he could learn much from a teacher and friend who had once seemed more like a curse. Colbey had fought against the stasis that had grown out of a world without chaos, insisting that a steady balance between order and disorder would serve mankind better than the slow stagnation into oblivion that came with law alone. Those who opposed him believed as strongly that even a small amount of chaos would bring ruin and the Ragnarok. They had all fought for the same goal, preservation of life, yet their battle against one another had taken precedence. It had seemed simpler to blame all the worlds’ problems on one man and to hunt him like a criminal than to find a common method or let one another work in opposition.

  Captain knew elfin slowness had to do with lifespan rather than law. Magic and nature had more inherent chaos than mankind; Alfheim had always held a balance that mankind and its champions had not understood. Human chaos took a different form, that of lies, theft, and deceit, virtually unknown until the years prior to the Ragnarok. Now mankind had found a balance of sorts, and elves seemed destined to find a similar one.

  All of these thoughts raced through Captain’s mind while the others of the Council deliberated, and his mind channeled all the information into a single focus. Either he or Dh’arlo’mé had to step down, and he doubted Dh’arlo’mé would do so peacefully. Even if the Council sided with Captain, and he doubted they would, Dh’arlo’mé would never let the matter rest. He might even resort to murder, a sin no elf had committed before, and the possible repercussions of such an act terrified Captain worse than those that might come from war against humans.

  For the cause of peace, and for the elves, Captain made a desperate choice. “Speak no more, my companions. I will withdraw from the Nine and from elfin society to live out my years peacefully in solitude. I ask only that you proceed cautiously with any plan involving this Béarnian heir. One who would betray his own would not hesitate to betray us as well.” He looked around the startled faces and familiar eyes. They would replace him with the next oldest of the elves, as if they had lost him to illness instead of exile. Finally, his gaze came to rest on Dh’arlo’mé’s single eye. Glimmers lit red by sunlight danced through it. He recognized his victory and reveled in it, yet Captain read disappointment as well. The eldest of the elves had bowed out too gracefully for the leader’s liking. He still itched for a fight.

  “You,” Captain said softly, “are no longer an elf. You’re something I don’t recognize, something dark and sinister that frightens me.” He shook his head sadly. “Save yourself, or you’ll drag all our people into the same darkness.” With that, he turned on his heel, but not quickly enough to miss the all-too-human anger burning in Dh’arlo’mé’s eye.

  Captain headed home to pack, never intending to spy on the Council of which he was no longer a part. But their words wafted to him softly as he departed. He focused on the rattle of leaves in the wind and the trilling birdsong, the more natural sounds that kept his zest for life alive long past even an elf’s time. He heard only Hri’shan’taé when she spoke at last, too used to listening to her rare and cautiously chosen words to ignore them now. “Enough of formidable matters for one day. There is no hurry to kill a defenseless prisoner. I say we give that matter the mulling time it deserves.”

  Captain smiled as he continued through the woods and the follow-up discussion became lost to distance. It was the best he could hope for the Renshai, her fate swallowed into the quagmire of elfin indecisiveness. Eventually, he felt certain, Dh’arlo’mé’s wishes would prevail; but Hri’shan’taé had gained her time. Hopefully, it would prove enough for the Renshai to plan her own escape. She had endured torture that would have killed most men. Once, she had spoken in the words of Colbey. Captain only hoped she would prove as resourceful.

  Chapter 21

  The Bond Sundered

  I have to assume that, for all their divinity and wisdom, the gods don’t know everything either.

  —Colbey Calistinsson

  Early in Tae Kahn’s travels, the West’s thick, lush forests had seemed suffocating and sinister after the wide-open, almost-contiguous cities he had grown accustomed to in the East. The bitterness of his mood had enhanced the feelings of loneliness and discomfort. The trees had looked like the giant bars of a prison cell interspersed with ropy vines like nooses and copses that blocked his passage in every direction. The mingled odors of mold, fungus, greenery, and musk made little sense to him, and his inability to find the source of the various smells kept him always off-balance. Sound traveled strangely. Movement that seemed distant often turned out to be just behind him, and he could not guess how far his own cracks and rustles carried. The brush rattled suddenly, often seemingly without cause, and unseen creatures scurried ahead of him in the impenetrable shadows. The fertile black earth seemed sticky, and his feet left impressions beneath the carpet of leaves.

  As rancor faded and he grew more adept at approximating and anticipating his route, the forest’s close security became a comfort. All the difficulties to which he had needed to adjust foiled his pursuers as well. The denseness of the brush kept him well-hidden, and he learned to use it to his advantage on occasion. His time with Kevral and the others had turned forest travel from a necessary chore to a pleasure. Planning routes for quickness and secrecy grew into an exciting challenge. Before joining them, he had nearly forgotten how secure it felt to be part of a group. The reason he had given for joining them had been as much truth as the need for their assistance with enemies too strong for him to handle alone.

  Now the closeness Tae had felt toward his new friends shattered, like every other relationship since birth. The caring he had developed toward them turned to loathing as he shuffled through leaves and twigs alone. They would pay with their lives for driving him away, Ra-khir most of all. For a moment, all of Tae’s hatred focused in on this one source. A thousand ways to dispose of the knight’s apprentice filled his mind in an instant, most of them slow and painful, all methods he could accomplish on his own with no outside help or interference. He believed he could divert them with little difficulty, assuring death for Darris, at least. Poisonings, quiet stabbings, crushing, and drowning: with those four, he could assure the end of them all. Even Kevral.

  Hemmed by deciduous trees, he sat on a deadfall with his chin in his hands. An image
of the Renshai rose with the thought: blue eyes as hard as diamonds yet with a hint of mischief dancing behind the danger. Though cropped masculinely short, her blonde hair bounced as she performed katas as beautiful as life. Its color intrigued Tae as much as its cut, strange and special after a childhood of black-haired men and women like himself. He loved her quick, sharp wit, the sarcasm nearly as caustic as his own, and the emotional strength Easterners equated only with men. Though no longer voiceless property legally bound into servitude, women in the East tended toward meek and mousy obedience to their husbands. His mother had been an exception.

  Images of the attack in his childhood drained away Tae’s anger swiftly. Fear clutched him, as it always did when his thoughts breached the walled defenses he had built to protect him from the memory. His mother’s screams exploded through his head, raising a desperate and primitive need to rush to her defense even as she strove to protect him. The pain had followed, the knife blade tearing through him repeatedly, despite his struggle, his own blood warm and sticky on his skin. Pain and terror had heightened his senses at a time when he most needed them blunted. He remembered counting twelve stabs, and the agony that accompanied them, before unconsciousness mercifully claimed him; and the scars told a story of at least four more. His father’s enemies had left Tae for dead, and anger alone had seen him through the months of recovery. His father had fueled that rage well with an attitude that left no place for mercy. The father’s words remained ingrained as strongly as the memory of his mother’s murder: “If you can’t survive without coddling, you may as well die now.” By luck, the wounds did not fester.

  Tae gasped, despising the memory and his own weakness for allowing it to come to the fore again. Situations of intense emotion seemed to awaken it beyond his control. As a child, he had not understood the reason for the seemingly senseless slaughter of a woman and her only child. Now, Tae saw his childhood self as naive beyond belief. Those men had come for his mother and himself because they belonged to Weile Kahn.