The gathered community held their ground as they saw Deg shelter the lander at his side.
Tally, the hunting dTur, was first to speak. “Deg, we can’t have a creature that dangerous in the village.”
“He saved Sophie’s life!” Nahni shouted out before Deg could answer the man.
“Nahni, Tally, please calm down.” Deg looked down at the confused and frightened man at his side. “We don’t even know yet if he wants to stay. Let us ask him that and then we will tell you all why this lander is in our village.”
The villagers were slowly creeping in to form a loose semicircle around the conspirators. Still, they kept a more than respectful distance as they watched.
“Nyah, could you set his things down over there, between us and our audience? Danny, the staff too.” Deg turned back to Hardt and pushed him gently forward, away from the group and towards his things. Carefully this time he said, “Leave… OR, stay.”
The lander, not understanding, stepped back to his place at Deg’s side.
“I think he might imagine we’re throwing him to the kyirghon now when I say Leave. Can you help, Nahni?”
But it was Edwarg who spoke up. “Deg, we could identify ourselves as dTelfur home and that pile of his belongings as lander home and give him a choice between them.”
“Try it, Edwarg.”
The healer put his arm gently around Hardt’s shoulders and led the man reluctantly to the pack and staff sitting out near the other villagers, away from the protection of the dTelfur he knew. Edwarg kept his arm around the lander as he pointed at the items and said “lander home” several times. Then he escorted the man back towards the familiar crowd and gestured at them, saying “dTelfur.” A couple of times he did this and then he stopped with the man between the two options and looked him in the eyes. “You can go back to your lander home if you want OR you can stay here with us dTelfur.” He pointed at the sac and staff, “lander home OR,” he pointed at the conspirators, “dTelfur.” When he walked away to join the dTelfur friends, Hardt stayed where he’d been left.
The lander looked between the two options. He smiled at Nahni who was eagerly trying to influence his decision behind Akai’s back. He looked out at the growing semicircle of strangers, many with blind malevolence on their faces. Arms crossed over his chest, he stood his ground, stared at his things, and yawned. The yawn was deep and long and took a good many seconds and all his concentration. When his face finally returned to a contemplative frown, there were involuntary tears in the corners of his eyes. Several of the watching dTelfur, who hadn’t planned on being awake so late in the night and several who were just highly suggestible, caught his yawn and passed it on with much stretching and wiping of eyes.
He looked one last time at his new friends and then walked over and gathered his things. He pulled the sac onto his back, slung the blanket over his shoulder, and held the staff in his left hand. Then without a glance at any of the dTelfur he’d come to know and to name, he pushed through them and into the infirmary where, Edwarg reported, he curled up in the curve of Sophie’s neck and went to sleep.
Five
∞
An entire week passed before Konifer was found and returned to the village though he had been sent for before Deg had finished his story that night. While the old dragon explained, with help from Nyah and Dorat, the sequence of events that had brought a lander amongst them, Girsat and Tally pushed back through the crowd and took off to find the Vize. Dorat’s mate, Viscier had wanted to join them but his dTur friend Tian preferred to stay for the story as did all the other dragons present. With no ride to fly him, Viscier had to stay and only Girsat and Tally searched the western fields. And so the conspirators got a week’s reprise before they had to face the Vize. But the time wound quickly around the seven new celebrities.
None of the dTelfur present at Hardt’s midnight introduction insisted on the lander’s immediate departure though Viscier may have if he hadn’t stormed away from the gathering before the offer was presented, so Hardt was allowed to stay with Sophie. Kerander and the other healers approved Hardt’s installation in the infirmary once they saw how much more energy Sophie had with him around. Her wounds even seemed to be healing more quickly. Each healer was privately introduced to the man and told of his miraculous healing of Sophie’s cracked skull. They all liked him for that and for his own efforts at learning their ways. As Sophie had no trouble sleeping through Hardt’s visitors, he was permanently settled in a pallet at her side with chairs all round the room for the curious.
All the dTelfur present that night were invited to come by and meet the stranger. Each of the seven, it was agreed, would take turns introducing the dTelfur and many of them did come by though more than a few decided they weren’t concerned enough to take the time. A number of them decided the stranger was none of their concern and if Sophie wanted him to stay with her, that was her business. She certainly seemed happier to her friends than she’d been since dTserra had gone.
There was some concern among the conspirators that Hardt might repeat his distressful mumbling, “I am dTserra. I am gone. Why.” But Nyah pointed out that no one in the village ever, had ever since her departure, mentioned dTserra’s name in Sophie’s presence unless she brought it up first. Sophie, with no reluctance, agreed to let that topic lie for the time being and they hoped that the discomfiting memory of the tragedy would be enough to dissuade visitors from the obvious question of what this lander knew about that one. If conversation veered too close to the tragedy, the visitors’ escort would steer the conversation away or end the interview with some excuse about Sophie’s health.
As soon as it became apparent that Hardt was relatively safe and acceptable in the infirmary, Akai went off with Edwarg to gather the supplies left in Hardt’s falls side bower. They left the actual bower as it was in case they needed to remove Hardt from the village for any reason and as it was marked with Akai’s colors, she gave each of the other conspirators private permission to use the bower as they would. Too soon Dorat took Akai up on the invitation. Her mate, Viscier refused to meet Hardt and tried to forbid Dorat from associating with the foreigner any longer. But Dorat, as wary as she was of Hardt, felt disgusted and embarrassed by Viscier’s ignorant hatred and after a few horrid days and sleepless nights moved out of their shared rooms in the burrow and into Hardt’s bower. Initially she asked Nahni to fly her in and out but Viscier’s attached relationship with the dragon Tian quickly became strained as well as the dragon took Dorat’s side and soon he too moved from the village to the falls side bower.
Throughout the short week, news of the lander spread from dTelfur to dTelfur in the village and beyond to many of the bowers and burrows spread throughout the continent. Many of these distant members of the community came in to see the strange creature who remained in the infirmary under Sophie’s protection. Some of the visitors wanted to speak with him but many were content to watch his pantomimed conversations. A few dTelfur made the reverse move and quietly packed out of the village to their distant bowers in the belief that the lander was contagious or the advance scout of a war party coming to destroy the dTelfur.
No one actually said they thought a massacre was coming. No dTelfur had the words or experience to express such a fear. There had been wars. The most recent war had been fought between the dTur and the telfs and had resulted in their symbiotic bonding. But there had been no historian souls born to the dTelfur and not even Deg was old enough to remember a time when snarl-toothed dragons had no feet to speak of and three-foot high elfs had long, thin tails to keep their balance as they ran across the plains. Though dozens of centuries had passed, fear of war still existed, had been renewed by the lander people’s arrival on this continent, but a comprehension of such widespread intentional violence was unknown to the current dTelfur. Still the fear drove some from the village and it, in part, drove Konifer to overprotect his people.
The healers, so fascinated by Sophie’s hastened healing in the lander�
�s presence, were doubly grateful for the exercise his presence was inspiring Deg to undertake. Deg had returned to his eggs and suffered no shortage of eager youngsters to report every instant of the excitement at Sophie’s bedside, but still each night he would struggle off his eggs and drag himself down to the infirmary to talk with Hardt and Sophie himself. It was more activity than he had shown in decades and the healers were grateful, whatever the reason.
It was daytime, however, when Girsat and Tally returned with Konifer so Deg was not present for the Vize’s arrival.
The infirmary was bustling with activity when the man burst in with the memory of dTserra in his eyes. Sophie’s wall was pushed back and the children who’d been banished to the sickroom due to a summer cold running through the nursery were revolting against the enforced inactivity with an illicit game of tag around the beds of their sicker companions. Several teachers who’d also caught the illness were working on quiet projects with the less energetic nursery exiles. Edwarg and Fieara, a dTur, were the healers on duty but Kerander had come by to examine the blackness on Sophie’s tail and all three were discussing the mystery by the folded wall where they could keep an eye on all of their patients. Akai was acting as escort keeping an eye on Hardt and his visitors so that the overly tired Sophie could sleep without fear of danger to Hardt. She herself was lying as close to the far wall of Sophie’s room as she could be, her head laid on the ground so she could see Hardt over Sophie’s neck but remain unobtrusive. She smiled occasionally partly because Sophie had the funniest little snore and partly because she’d just recently figured out how to manipulate her facial muscles to do so and had found the experience even more worth the effort than Nahni had said. Sitting along the east wall of Sophie’s room, three farmers from the northern lands who had flown in to confirm the rumors were laughing amongst themselves as they watched Hardt trade leatherworking skills with Gyari and his apprentices.
The atmosphere in the infirmary had been sparking with barely contained energy since earlier that morning when Gyari dropped by to tell the sick little ones the story of Teero and the rollaway egg and Hardt, enjoying the tale, had reciprocated with a sad story of his own. No one had heard him speak so much before and a few of the healers who had begun recognizing individual words in the lander speech claimed to understand the tale and had been repeating it quietly to the others in the infirmary. Gyari became very interested when in Hardt’s storytelling, it became clear that the lander had tanning skills and he had called for his students and monopolized the lander’s time since. They were quietly working on opposite corners of a piece of training hide, the apprentices vying for a good view, when Konifer arrived, still covered in the dirt and sweat of his journey. Everyone quieted to watch the scuffle between the Vize, the dragon healer Kerander, and the telf healer Edwarg.
Konifer wore his thin hair long in the typical fashion of the dTelfur about two centuries past. His angled features were sharpened even more by his anger and, Edwarg allowed, his fear. Girsat must have picked him up in the middle of a day’s hike and the Vize hadn’t bothered to clean up. His clothes were as filthy as his face. His hands, on Edwarg’s arms left stains on the healer’s apron.
“Konifer!” Edwarg gathered all his courage to stand down the dynamic Vize. “Get control of yourself. You have no business disturbing our guest.”
Konifer stopped fighting both healers and turned the force of his considerable power on the white-bearded man. “I am the leader of the dTelfur.”
“Only in times of universal emergency.”
Akai’s sharp intake of breath was like a crack of thunder in the silent room. Edwarg was right. The Vize’s powers were limited though significant and traditionally the community looked to him or her for guidance. But over the past century, since Konifer’s ascendancy to the position previously held by his father, the well-respected dTarent, the dTelfur had come to look more often to Deg for that guidance, leaving the Vize to his overarching duties. Konifer was a good and wise man in emergencies though his soul was less suited for minor conflicts. But no one before, in Akai’s experience, had ever dared, ever thought to tell the Vize his place and Edwarg had never ventured the possibility in any of the conspirators’ discussions of the matter. She watched in awe as the healer continued in Hardt’s defense against the now dumbfounded Vize.
“Hardt is not a universal emergency. Hardt has been among us for a fortnight. The night he arrived, he alerted some of us to a personal emergency but Sophie is healing well now and is pleased to have him as her guest. She has been giving attention to all complaints against the lander’s presence and when you’re calmer, you can meet the man and give Sophie your opinion as well.”
Activity in the infirmary had ceased and while no one in the building was talking, a few of the younger hatchlings, scared by Konifer’s entrance, were crying or whimpering quietly. One of Gyari’s apprentices was even having trouble breathing. Hardt set down his tools and laid a calming hand on the boy’s shoulder. Then he stood and despite Sophie’s attempts to shove the lander behind her, took a few steps towards the escalating battle of wills. The Vize turned and Konifer and Hardt faced each other across the room.
The Vize was the more apparent source of danger between the two. He stood stiffly, shaking with barely controlled anger and all his bitter prejudice splayed on the rictus of his face while the lander stood calmly in his new dTelfur clothes, his hands hanging empty and relaxed at his sides. He waited it seemed for the clearly important dTelfur to make an overture. One of the watching farmers noticed the slight relaxing of Konifer’s posture and breath a moment before the lander spoke.
“Hello, I’m Hardt.” He raised his arms out to the sides in the traditional wingspan greeting of the dTelfur.
Konifer ignored him.
Sophie too had seen Konifer relax. His shoulders lowered, his chin raised, and he got a distant look in his eyes and she knew he was imploring Nature. She’d seen him do it before, many of them had. But she had also seen nature deny him.
After dTserra had died, after Konifer found out that dTserra had died, she’d seen him somewhere along the southern edge of the burning forest. He was alone, the dTelfur crews having done their work. He’d just finished, she assumed, shoring the firemoat with Natural defenses and stood, exhausted in the middle of the cleared dirt, raising his chin one last time. She landed near to offer him a ride home, but caught in his grief he didn’t notice her arrival.
He implored Nature in a voice that bent her already broken heart, “She loved me. Our union should have created the soul to take from me this burden of power you have gifted to me.” He raised his arms then to the smoky sky and cried, “Take dTserra’s pain and with it smite the whole of these invading peoples!”
His fingertips had glowed. His entire body shivered. With the shock of a winter ocean, his body had shaken with electric light. Then he had stiffened with pain, forced by Nature into a position unnatural, untenable to telf anatomy. Sophie had watched, helpless to relieve him as Nature denied his request with the most violent of refusals. She’d watched from her hidden place, as Konifer fell to the ground, a burnt shell of all he had been moments before. He’d been denied and Sophie had seen it.
In her fear, she’d run away. She’d left him there wanting, needing, aching.
She didn’t know Nature’s rules, but she feared any strike against the landers would be received as cruelly as the other and if here in this populated infirmary he fell to the punishment of Nature, she feared that none of the villagers could ever follow him again. They would doubt him as she did. So she cried out in desperation to stop him.
“Konifer!”
“Please,” she said, “Please, take a day. Come back and meet him.”
She begged him. With every inch of her soul she begged him to stop. She wanted Hardt to stay, to be safe, but more she knew the village needed Konifer to be unquestionably strong. If his request of Nature failed and here, in front of all, he were shamed, he could never lead as he was meant
to lead.
Heat rose from the Vize, a heat she could taste. The sharp edges of the copper air sparked with all the Nature he could reach.
“Konifer!” She screamed over the weight of his stale grief. “Give me what I ask. She was mine. Mine should be the anger. Mine the revenge. Give me some small respect in this.”
The overcome Vize looked up to the wounded dragon. He’d nothing to do with her for two sheddings yet her desperate words reached him and stalled his request. His thoughts fell as did his chin, he looked at the lander and considered. Sophie did not speak again, fearing she might have done better to not point out his lack of claim on the woman he loved. She waited. The whole infirmary waited. When he spoke, the Vize was brief, his words and venom for Sophie alone. Even Hardt heard the threat in his words.
“As you will, Sophie. Our destruction on your head. I will return tomorrow.”
And he left. Without a second glance at her, at Edwarg, or at Hardt, he left.
And still not a soul in the room breathed.
Six
∞
The atmosphere of the hospital was changed after the Elder, Konifer, stormed out with his escort man and dragon. Hardt knew he’d barely survived the meeting and he had best get prepared for the next one. When the elder had first entered the room, Hardt had felt the threat before he saw the murder in the man’s cold eyes. He’d gripped the leather punch but searched for escape routes until he felt the man make a decision. Edwarg and Kerander misread Konifer’s relaxing muscles and loosed their grips on him, but Hardt knew that he was in serious danger and he stopped looking for escape. He could feel the air crackling around the long-haired dTelfur as it had around Gaerel and Kalina when they were learning how to use Nature to heal Stray’s wounded. But the power building up around the angry little dTelfur froze the pit of his stomach and raised all the tiny hairs on the back of his neck. The leather punch wouldn’t help him against this kind of weaponry so he set it down and stood to face the danger.
Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 16