by William Ray
By sunset, they were speeding into the mountains, and the view was spectacular. The sky was a delicate pink with streaks of blue, and distant snow-capped peaks were tinted orange by the fading light. This was the way men had classically depicted the land of the Elves since for generations the Elven policy of isolation had meant the beautiful peaks at Aelfua’s border were all most humans had been allowed to see of it.
At the base of the mountain, a newly built road wound slowly upwards, and Gus did not envy the unfortunate drivers who had to steer their wagons through the sharp switchbacks required to make it across the border into the Aelfuan territories. Far better to take the train and let someone else handle the driving.
~
“Country Living”
The picturesque joys of country living are always a joyful change for the urban dwellers blessed enough to share it with us here. What a merry jaunt it must be for them to leave behind brick valleys choking in soot and journey trails threading through cover and copse. Homely factories traded for lovely farmsteads that emerge from orchards and gardens of hawthorn. Rats and urchins replaced by rabbit and thrush. The noisy jangle of the grinder’s cries fades away, replaced by gentle songbirds.
– Duros Examiner, 10 Tal. 389
~
- CHAPTER 13 -
Dorna watched as the train sped by, its thundering passage through the countryside scattering birds and spewing smoke into the wind. The Master had once told her the legend of a great dragon that, in the world’s final days, would encircle everything, spewing forth smoke and fire as it constricted.
People had once taken that bit of prophecy to mean a literal fire-breathing serpent rather than a human-built monstrosity of iron. Dragons had died out long ago, so that ancient doom seem impossible, and eventually mankind entirely forgot about it. The relentlessness of mortal folly had overcome the steadiness of immortal wisdom.
Their network of iron rails was killing the world, but as she watched the passing train shrink into the distance, she greatly envied its speed. Her carriage plodded steadily on, but the two horses pulling it could never hope to keep pace. She had spent the past few days slowly navigating her way home with their prisoner, and it was fraying at her nerves.
Even at their present speed, she worried the carriage Terry had bought might not hold together as they passed from the well-worn thoroughfares of central Verinde into the rural counties closer to the border with Aelfua. He had worried the carriage was too dingy for her deception as Alice Phand, but as far as she knew, their inquiry agent had never laid eyes upon it.
At the time, she had felt what he wanted would be far too ostentatious out here, but now she worried over that decision as the springs creaked ominously below them. A woman personally ferrying her ailing father might attract too much attention if she looked wealthy, but a woman stranded with her ailing father due to a broken axel or something would be even worse.
Alongside her on the driver’s bench of the carriage, Edward Phand gave a muffled groan. Nervous that someone on that passing train might recognize him, she had covered his face with a hat, but despite his drugged stupor, covering his face always made him shift and moan.
The Master had specifically instructed that she bring Edward Phand by the road instead of by train. Terry had speculated that the Master was concerned someone would be watching for rail travelers meeting Phand’s description. It seemed likely Terry was right, but Dorna had still chided him for trying to second guess the Master’s methods.
Edward Phand groaned again, so she pushed the hat back from his face. He shifted in his sleep and made a few more soft noises but mostly quieted. The prospect of leading the flabby engineer through the Oblivion made her uneasy for more reasons than just the difficulty of silencing him; as harrowing as it was, that was their place, their harrowing to share, not his.
Spittle dribbled down his chin, and Dorna sighed as she fished out a handkerchief to wipe it away—she was posing as the devoted daughter taking her ill father home to die and would hardly look the part if she left him a mess. That lie grated at her. She could barely remember her actual father, but from what she could recall, he had been nothing like Edward Phand.
Her father had died when she was terribly young, young enough that she struggled to remember his face. She knew he had been very thin—they had been too poor for him to grow fat. At the time, all adults had seemed like giants to her, but she remembered that her father’s height was something people had remarked upon. What she remembered most clearly were his strong arms lifting her up and his rough, calloused hands.
Every part of Edward Phand looked soft. Even his beard was long enough to have lost the stiff bristling she recalled on her father’s face. Her father had worked in the mines, digging deep into the earth for the scant pennies men like Edward Phand would pay for honest labor. When her father died in that effort, those men gave no thought to the young daughter he left behind. She had spent her days pleading in the street for food and her nights in their empty dormitory until management had cast her out to make room for her father’s replacement.
Dorna prayed once again, to no god in particular, that the cab driver they had hired back in Gemmen had left their advance money with his family. He had mentioned a daughter, and Dorna hated the idea of taking the girl’s father. The man’s death had been part of their instructions, so it must be a necessity, but it still did not sit easily on her conscience. She worried that perhaps Dougal’s main purpose on their mission had been that the Master did not believe she was sufficiently devoted to carry out that unpleasant detail.
The idea made her bristle with injured pride, so she took a deep breath and softly recited the Elven words again. The Master knew best; he always did. Her injured pride was replaced with shame and sadness—questioning him was inappropriate. If he thought her insufficient, then she would have been. Softly chanting the phrases that the Master had them memorize, she resolved to recommit herself to their cause.
As she looked up at the steep mountains they would cross tomorrow, Dorna took a deep breath of the cold air that blew down from them into this valley. It was stiff and harsh, but it kept her sharp as the day wore on.
For countless generations, these mountains had kept men from the kingdom of immortals beyond. For generations, jealousy had festered in the hearts of her people, and rather than learn from the experience of their long-lived neighbors, they had warred against them.
Despite their history of ignorant aggression, the Master still held out hope for the race of men. Perhaps that compassion was why he had been chosen to remain when his people left the world. After her father died, the Master had taken her in as a lost young girl and raised her beneath his own roof, and she knew he cared deeply for the good of the world.
The Master had told her how her father was an agitator among the workers and tried time and again to improve the lot of the common man in Khanom. Her father had struggled daily to improve the human systems of labor that treated its subjects so poorly.
The Master had hoped to show him that humanity’s attempts at self-government had failed and that it was time to return the world to its natural order, with men and Elves each serving as they served best. Her father had not understood the need for such radical solutions.
With creditors to pay and a daughter to feed, Dorna’s father had continued to work within the system until it killed him. Early in her life, the Master had taught her that she must forgive her true father’s failure of vision. Humans were short lived and thus short-sighted.
It was petty human tyrants that made the world unlivable for the Elves, and the men who had profited from that continued onward, heedless of the consequences. It was only a matter of time until men like Edward Phand would make the world unlivable for themselves. Then they too would need to escape as the Elves had.
The Master would not tell any mere mortal where his people had gone, but even if he did, humanity lacked the magic to mimic their disappearance once things we
nt further out of balance. Man was doomed by a great dragon they had created themselves.
With the benefit of his immortal patience, wisdom, and experience, the Master had easily risen to power and influence in human society. His magic let him take on mortal forms, and through those, he had built the wealth necessary to pave the way for the Great Restoration. It was the labor he had been set to since his people had vanished from the world.
Dorna was proud to be part of the new generation of Wardens—men and women who understood the precipice they all lived upon and were willing to do what was necessary. Despite their difference in species, the Master had more in common with her father than the drugged engineer did, and she doubted he would have left the cabbie’s daughter to suffer destitution in their cause if it could be avoided.
If it could not, Dorna just had to reassure herself that the Great Restoration would make it right—for everyone.
Edward Phand groaned, and Dorna glanced down at him, wondering what sort of troubled dreams the Master’s concoction trapped him in. Clearly, stopping this tower was important, but it was less clear why she needed to bring its designer to the Master. Perhaps the prisoner could be won over, or perhaps his mind would be bent to their cause? Perhaps there was some antithesis to his proposed tower that could be built instead, under the Master’s direction.
Trying to second guess the Master was probably pointless—he was ancient and wise and so much more clever than a mere human could ever hope to be. It was foolish human arrogance to presume she could ever unravel his plans, much less better them. Pushing her doubts aside, she looked back at the clouds behind them and hoped she could stay ahead of the rain for a bit longer.
The chilly spring shower overtook them eventually, and they were slowed even further as the wheels of their carriage pushed through the mud-filled ruts. For all its claims of modern progress, Verinde had never matched the beautiful tiled roads of the Elves, and Dorna looked forward to them when she finally returned home. Even what the Elves had left behind was better than what her own people built.
She was a few hours behind schedule when they finally rolled into the decaying town the Master’s plan placed them in for the evening. Centuries ago, Duros had once been a center of great commerce, founded for trade between Elves and men at a time when the Elven queen allowed it. It had fallen on hard times when she closed the border, but brisk and illegal trade had continued despite the queen’s wishes, and for generations the Verin authorities had happily looked the other way.
These days, Duros was little more than a waypoint for small-cargo haulers passing through from Aelfua to wealthier points back west as the ever-expanding rail system increasingly rendered such services obsolete. Grand edifices of past centuries gracelessly decayed and were boarded up, and the signs advertising that they were for let had faded from long exposure.
The Master had selected an inn for them that evening that he called the ‘horse in green field’. Dorna had taken it for a clumsy name when he made her memorize the plan, but now she realized it was a description of the antique sign over the door, which depicted a horse’s head upon a green shield. More recently, whitewashed in giant block letters across the brick face of the building was the name Nag’s Head Inn.
Dorna wondered when the Master had last set eyes upon this town; perhaps it was in some bygone and less literate age, when businesses would simply identify themselves to their customers with symbols such as he had described. The building was certainly old enough. Had he traded with humans, centuries ago, on these very streets?
She pulled the carriage up to the door, unsure what to do about Edward Phand. There was no overhang to cover him, but thankfully the wet chill had reduced his noises to a pathetic whimper. Looking along the street she saw a man peeking up at them suspiciously as he trudged towards them, and uneasy with his furtive approach, Dorna pulled Edward Phand’s hat forward again to hide his face. Despite the man’s glances, he seemed to pay them little heed once he moved past and into the Nag’s Head.
Dorna sighed in momentary relief, then looked down at Edward Phand again, contemplating how she might get him into the inn, per the Master’s instructions. In phases where he was more awake, the heavy engineer could somnambulantly stumble along under her direction, but there were two more hours until the Master’s potion wore off enough for that.
The doting daughter she posed as probably wouldn’t leave her sick father out in the rain, but he was just too heavy for her to carry alone. With no other choice, she adjusted his hat again and then hurried inside.
There was a public house on the ground floor of the inn, with the likely proprietor manning the bar. The insides were dingy and drafty and seemed as much decayed as the outside. She suspected the rooms here would only be a little more comfortable than a night in the carriage.
Given the option, she would have looked for a barn or simply camped inside the carriage somewhere along the road, but she could not vary the plan.
The furtive man from the street was sitting at the back wall and looked up at her as she entered. Her heart skipped a beat at his momentarily expectant expression. She was not whomever he was expecting, and he looked away again. Scowling over at the bartender, she stomped about loudly on the pretext of shaking off her boots and rattled the rain from her long coat until he glanced up at her.
The bartender’s face very nearly matched the one of a man standing at the same bar in the long-faded painting just over the bartender’s shoulder, and she wondered how many generations his family had run Nag’s Head Inn.
A small bogey statue stood next to the painting and was also depicted in it—a squat, bearded thing that superstitious mountain folk once regarded as a lucky spirit. Both the painted and modern incarnations of the bartender looked short and a bit portly, the latter of which probably marked them as successful in these parts, so perhaps the ugly thing had brought them good fortune after all.
When the man finally looked up to see his latest custom standing impatiently by the door, he quickly wiped his hands and hurried over. “You’re here for a room, eh?”
The bartender smiled and looked her up and down, plainly assessing how much he could charge. Underneath her plain brown coat, she was still wearing one of the overpriced frocks Terry had chosen for her. It was a bit sullied around the hem now, and she had refused to match the shoes, opting instead to travel in her father’s boots.
Taking all that in, the man said, “It’s five peis a night.”
Looking around the place with a critical air, Dorna wrinkled her nose and replied, “Surely it can’t be a cent more than two.” The man drew himself up, ready to haggle, but too tired to engage in her least favorite pastime, Dorna raised her hand to forestall him. “Four, and you help bring in my things.”
The interruption seemed to startle him, but he settled back on his heels and produced a key from his jacket pocket with a smile. Apparently five was as outrageous a rate for this place as it had seemed.
Taking the key, Dorna nodded once and then said, “Good. Now come help me bring in my father.” The bartender frowned, looking put-upon, and Dorna launched into her explanation, “He lived on his own in Oulm but has fallen ill. My husband and I live in the Aelfua territory and wanted to bring him home to live with us. The doctor has said locomotive acceleration would be inappropriate in his present ….”
She trailed off as she saw the man’s eyes glaze over with studied indifference—it was an expression no doubt intended to rebuff any additional request for favor she might be building towards, and perhaps that was the Master’s plan in having her always offer explanation so freely.
She never felt herself a skilled actress, but so far, the story had been universally unquestioned. Dorna worried it would just attract attention and that someone might notice the lack of resemblance between she and her prisoner.
When he saw the girth of her ‘father’ waiting outside, the bartender frowned but kept to their bargain, and between them, they hauled E
dward Phand down from the carriage and up the stairs. Only once Edward Phand was laid down in the bed upstairs did the man try to squeeze her for another peis and a half to stable the horses.
It was a scandalously timed effort, and she was half-inclined to respond by hurling him down the stairs, but the Master’s plan demanded subtlety and constraint. She paid what he asked and clenched her fists at the man’s look of smug satisfaction.
After being settled on the bed, her prisoner had begun to stir restlessly, so once the bartender left, Dorna slipped one of the Master’s vials from her coat. She poured more of the Elven concoction past his lips and massaged his throat until he swallowed, just as she had been taught.
In moments, Edward Phand fell limp once more, and with hours to herself before he needed another draught, she felt she had earned a drink of her own. A woman dining alone might get a few extra glances, but a stranger in the public house wouldn’t be too unusual for a way-stop town like this. After driving for hours in the chill, she decided a hot meal would be worth the risk.
It didn’t seem like much time had passed, but apparently whatever tick of the clock signaled that the work day was over had been sounded. The inn’s quiet pub had become noisome and full, and while she was not particularly in the mood for any society at all, it at least felt more like home to her than any of the places Terry had insisted they visit in Gemmen.
Most of the pub was occupied by travel-stained gentlemen she took to be lonesome cargo haulers, now all engaged in desperately loud conversation as if to make up for the long hours spent driving in silence. A few less-weathered men and even a pair of women she took to be locals were scattered about the room, sharing drinks and stories with the cargo haulers. The tables towards the back wall were quietest, so she selected one farther from the bar.
The furtive fellow she’d seen on the street still sat at a table in the back corner of the room, but he was no longer alone, and seeing him animatedly engaged in hushed conference with the fellows at his table reassured her that whatever his concern was, he wasn’t a concern of hers. A few other men sat quietly by themselves at small tables there, and Dorna relaxed a bit, happy to have some buffer of likeminded unsociables making her feel less out of place in the now busy pub.