by Lev AC Rosen
“Just think of all this, locked away from the rest of the world. The stairway is a beautiful piece of craftmanship, isn’t it?” Reunne asks.
“What is it made of?” Severkin asks.
Reunne shrugs. “We think it’s smelted opal—from an old, magical technique of the dwarves. Lost ages ago. The overlanders say it’s a solid rainbow—old lost elf magic. We all have our stories, but no one really knows.”
“And the merchants?”
“They moved in weeks after we opened it up. They heard there were dwarves who had never seen an apple. If you want an apple, I’d recommend waiting until you get to the overcity—cheaper there.”
“Thanks. You going to walk me to the top?”
“I wish I could,” Reunne says with a sigh. “But Elega has eyes everywhere, so she must know I’m back by now. If I go to the overcity before delivering this”—she taps at the pouch—“I’ll be in real trouble. And I don’t want trouble with Elega. But I’m sure I’ll see you again. I hope to, anyway.”
“I hope so, too,” Severkin says, grasping Reunne’s hand and shaking it. “It was a pleasure to meet you. You’re a great warrior. And thank you…for showing me the wall. I don’t know much about my bloodline, but I feel perhaps we are even more closely related than your wall shows,” he said, thinking of their kinship of spirit.
“I think so as well,” she says, and her eyes glisten slightly. She squeezes his hand. “I’d gladly fight by your side again. I’ll even request you for future missions.”
“It would be an honor,” Severkin says. They stand there for a moment, staring at each other. Severkin is waiting for her to go, but she seems unwilling. “Farewell,” he says finally, and takes a step back.
“And you,” Reunne says, smiling. The wrinkles on her face crinkle up but seem shallow in the strange light of the staircase. She turns around and slips out the metal doors, leaving Severkin on the stairs. He takes a deep breath and starts walking up.
The stairs feel cool under his feet, even through the soles of his shoes. But they’re not as solid as stone. They feel like a plush carpet, stiff with frost, but still slightly yielding. Severkin is grateful for this, because the climb is long, and his legs and feet soon begin to ache. As he goes higher, the stalls’ goods change, and the merchants, too. Now they are dwarves, bellowing out their wares—gold and silver trinkets from a trip to the underworld, pendants showing hammers and shields, small glass reproductions of the palaces Severkin had seen below.
He’s nearly at the top when a slim woman runs up the stairs past him, a wood elf, her brown hair pulled back in a bushy tail like a squirrel’s. She bumps him slightly as she runs, the sound of her feet tapping on the opalescent stairs like music played on glasses of water.
“Sorry!” she calls behind her as she runs on. Severkin hurries his pace, curious about a woman who would run up these stairs. The stairs are more crowded here. Dark elves and some wood elves and even some humans wander in crowds among the stalls, looking at the trinkets and goods being sold. But the squirrel-tailed woman darts a path through the crowd, and Severkin follows in her wake, wanting to get to the overcity quickly.
It isn’t much farther to the top, where the stairs open into a huge hall, the floors made of the same stuff as the stairs, with a domed silver ceiling printed with a pattern of spears or arrows interwoven like a checkerboard. The room is cavernous, and lining its walls are more stalls, these selling the finest goods Severkin has seen yet: furs and leather, jewelry that looks real, and fine wines and cheeses. The merchants don’t bellow out their goods here; they stand behind their stalls, stiff but smiling as customers in fine clothes make the rounds, inspecting things, asking questions in soft tones.
There is one large archway leading out of the room, with a guard standing beside it in a uniform with an eagle emblazoned on the chest, and wearing a horned helmet. The girl with the ponytail is about to dart through the door, but the guard holds out his hand to stop her. As he does so, Severkin notices the whole room slowly turn their ears to listen.
“Whoa there, Izzorchen,” he says with a smile. “Bringing a message?”
“You know I am,” the girl says with a smirk. “You just want me to tell you what it says.”
“I’m interested in local politics,” the guard says, smiling. “Come on. What does Elega say to Rorth today?”
“She is merely suggesting that the guards from over and under send each other blacksmiths to discuss weapon-smelting techniques,” the girl says politely. The crowd around them seems to lean in and draw a collective breath.
“That may be what she wrote in whatever you’re supposed to hand to Rorth, but what did she say?”
The girl smiles as though she has a particularly amusing secret. “She said that if we’re going to defeat the giants, then Rorth’s smiths must learn that weapons should be made for fighting, not for bakers to roll out bread with.”
The guard bursts into laughter at this, and the crowd around them all chuckle softly.
“Can I go now?” the girl asks.
“Go,” the guard says, waving her on. “Best to deliver the written message and not the spoken one.”
“I never deliver the spoken ones,” the girl says before racing off, her ponytail bobbing behind her. The crowd goes back to politely perusing the stalls, but Severkin can tell that they’re done here. They’d come for the show, and it’s over now. He approaches the horned guard.
“Greetings,” the guard says. “Returning home?”
“I’ve never been to Wellhall, actually. I came in through the undercity.”
“Well, now you’re truly home. Do you need directions?”
“Thank you, yes. I’m looking for two places: the barracks, and a pub called the Silver Roof.”
The guard nods. “The pub is just around the corner, to the left. On your right. Named for this roof, in fact.” He points his chin upward. “Although, technically it ought to be called the Silver Ceiling. But that’s harder to say when you’ve had too much ale, I think. For the barracks, you’ll want to head up King’s Way—the wide street that runs from here. It’ll go outside the mountain and then twist back inside farther up. Just stay on it. It leads to the palace. The barracks are on its right.”
“Thanks,” Severkin says with a nod, and heads through the arch.
Part of the overcity is carved into the mountain, and smells like melting snow and metal being forged. Buildings blend into rock walls, and in place of a sky, there are huge stained-glass windows, pouring in colored light. It’s cold, too. Archways lead outside the mountain, where the city continues to wind upward. King’s Way leads right from the archway with the guard through the center of town. Severkin thinks about heading to the pub first, as it’s closer, but he decides it would be best to become one of the guard first, in case it gets him a discount on drinks. And Rel had made it sound easy: Just show up, present Rel’s letter, and get a little badge.
King’s Way is cobblestoned and wide enough for carriages and wagons to go in either direction while pedestrians walk on the sides. And it’s a crowded street, too—a crowded city. Gray elves are everywhere, carrying goods, working at forges and fletcheries. Severkin has never felt so surrounded by his own kind. No one gives him a sidelong glance, the way they would in other cities. A few elves even smile at him and say good day. In other cities, he’s usually ignored, if not outright glared at. Gray elves are thought by other races to be conniving, suspicious. Guards always pick him out and follow him with their eyes. Shopkeepers tell him to keep his hands off the merchandise unless he’s going to make a purchase. It had made childhood especially difficult, knowing what an outsider he was in the city of Gallia, where he’d grown up. He’d learned very quickly to hide himself, not to be noticed at all. He couldn’t blend in with the crowds, but he could blend in with the shadows.
But here he doesn’t need to. He can walk down King’s Way without anyone giving him a second look. He feels lighter, somehow, like his armor has been to
o tight for years without his noticing, and now it finally fits.
As the guard said it would, King’s Way leads outside the mountain. No door, no gate, just an archway. Severkin walks through it and finds that the city continues, even outside, just as he’d been told. The rock of the mountainside rises up on both sides of the carved street, making it a valley. In the walls on boths sides of him are doors and windows, houses, shops. Above him, the sky is the color of ice, palest blue, polished like a well-kept sword. He follows the road as it curves up and inside the mountain again, and he finds that the city continues and looks just like it did on the level where he first entered. Severkin keeps walking until he comes to what seems to be the end of King’s Way, and the top of the city.
It’s eerily similar to the square with the large buildings in the undercity. There, the buildings had gold-and-brown domes, and here, they have gray-and-silver peaks, but the way the buildings are placed all around a square, the tallest opposite the main street, is familiar. The statues might even be in the same relative places. Even the eagle over the door of one of the buildings reminds him of the snake over the guardhouse below. He stops for a moment, examining the statues—all of gray elves, proud warriors he recognizes from storybooks he’d stolen as a child. At the very center of the square is a huge building, which he assumes is the palace. It’s all fine lines and arches carved from the palest of gray stone, but halfway up, that changes. There, the building branches out like a tree, and the fine carvings fade away, turning into the rough cracks of a cave again. The palace is the mountain, he realizes. It stands right under the center of the dome and holds it up. Maybe the palace even continues farther up, to the very tip, windows carved into the rock, overlooking the world.
As he is staring up, he feels someone looking at him and lowers his eyes again. It is the wood elf from before—with the ponytail like a squirrel’s—who was carrying messages between the under- and overking.
“First time?” she asks.
“Yes,” Severkin says. “Am I so obvious?”
“The gray elves who’ve never been here before—they’re easy to pick out. To the rest of the world, you’re all thieves and killers, but here, you’re heroes.” She gestures at the statues. “I saw you coming up from the undercity.”
“You ran past me. You were delivering a message.”
“Delivered. I’m supposed to take another one back down now. Rorth said Elega must have cracked her head—probably bending over and trying to see her feet—to be dumb enough to steal from him. But then he told me to say something more polite.”
“You deliver insults between the guard captain of the undercity and Rorth—is he the captain of the guard here? I’m supposed to deliver this recommendation to him.”
“He’s the prince regent. Husband to our beloved queen and general of the army and captain of the guard. And he’s right over there.” She points at the building with the eagle over the door. “But he’s also in a bad mood. So be careful. And my job is being the runner. I deliver messages between the two. It’s just that they both take a few tries before getting their messages ready for sending. Name’s Izzy, by the way.”
“Severkin,” he says, shaking her outstretched hand.
“Well, I’m usually in the Silver Roof after dusk, Severkin, if you want to buy me a drink. All this running up and down the stairs keeps me in great shape, you may have noticed.” She wiggles her eyebrows, and Severkin is, for a moment, too stunned to speak. She takes that moment to turn and jog away, her movements, he thinks, perhaps more flirtatious than athletic this time. He grins as she runs, then shakes his head.
He turns and heads toward the building with the eagle over it. Two guardsmen stand outside, their armor the same as the guard’s he’d seen at the entrance to the city. They look him over as he approaches but say nothing.
“I have a letter for Rorth,” he says to them. “To apply to be a guardsman.” One nods his head, and Severkin takes this as permission to enter. Inside is a huge hall, all in the gray stone, with shields and swords hung on the walls. Severkin eyes the swords, wondering what their value is, but then sees they’re only replicas. At the end of the hall is a slightly raised platform with a table and several chairs on it. A few gray elves are there, arguing.
“We don’t even know this one. He isn’t even a guard!” says one of them, an elf with a long black beard.
“So let’s hold off judgment,” says another, this one a woman with long hair so dark red it’s nearly purple.
“Who are you?” says the last of them, noticing Severkin. This one is clearly the leader—a tall elf with white hair to his shoulders and a small circlet on his head. He wears armor more ornate than the others’ and at his neck is a gilded clasp shaped like a hawk, attaching a long yellow cape to his breastplate. Rorth, he assumes. Severkin approaches them and presents his letter with a slight bow.
“My name is Severkin. I assisted a guard named Rel at Bridgefall, and he said I should present this letter to Rorth along with my hope to join the National Guard.”
“You’re Severkin?” the elf with the beard says.
“You must have come straight here,” the woman says. “We just got a note from Elega saying her agent Reunne has requested you for a mission.”
“I’m flattered,” Severkin says.
“Elega also mentions that she now has the Hammer—she says you were key in delivering it to her,” says the bearded elf again, glaring. “Explain yourself.”
“I…don’t know what the Hammer is,” Severkin says. “Rel asked me to assist Reunne in bringing something back to Wellhall. I saw it, but it didn’t look like a hammer, and I never knew what it was.”
“You let a dwarf have it, though!” the bearded elf shouts.
“Easy, Ind,” the woman says. “He’s not a guard. He didn’t know what he was doing. He merely helped a dwarf get back home.”
“Reunne is a gray elf, actually,” Severkin says.
The bearded elf—Ind—scrunches up his face at this, wrinkles popping up and his skin darkening like a raisin. “Damn traitorous underelves,” he hisses.
“See,” the woman says, addressing the elf in the circlet, “he didn’t know. We can tell him—send him. And then we’ll have the Staff. Then we just need the Spear, and Elega will have to give us the Hammer.” She turns back to Severkin. “You’re loyal to the gray elves, aren’t you?”
“I…yes,” Severkin says. He thinks this is probably a better answer than to explain his feelings, which are complex and have changed a lot today.
“Are you from here?” Rorth asks.
“No,” Severkin says. “I was on my way here, and my ship crashed when a giant emerged from the sea.”
Rorth nods. “So you have no real loyalty to the gray elves of Wellhall.”
“I am proud of my race,” Severkin says.
“Yes,” Rorth says, “I believe you. So let me tell you this: the package which you helped Reunne deliver—it is a key part of a great machine. One built eons ago, when the giants were last awake. Gray elf and dwarf worked together then. The machine they built was to fend off the giants. It is the only thing that ever has. There are three components to it. The dwarves now have one.”
“But aren’t we all working together?” Severkin asks. “To defeat the giants?”
“The question is whether we will be working together when the giants are gone,” the woman said.
“We won’t,” Ind says.
“Probably not,” the woman concedes with a smile. “Which is why it is important that we, the gray elves, have the weapon. We defeat the giants, and then, if the dwarves try to go back to their old ways, we use the weapon on them. You understand that, don’t you, Severkin?” She smiles, her yellow eyes narrowing to stilettos.
“I do,” Severkin says, feeling his muscles tense, preparing for a blow.
“They now have one part,” Rorth says. “If we get the other two, they will have to give us the Hammer, to defeat the giants. And we know where the n
ext piece is—and they’ve requested you go retrieve it, with this Reunne.”
“When you do,” the woman says softly, “bring it back here. Don’t let it go to the undercity. Can you do that?” Her voice is practically a purr.
“Stop flirting, Siffon,” Ind says. “He’s going to think he’s trying to win your hand.”
“My hand is still up for grabs,” Siffon snaps back. “But I don’t think that’s what he’s interested in.”
“Both of you stop,” Rorth says, putting his hand between them. “He’ll do it because if he brings the Staff back here, I will reward him greatly.” He turns to Severkin. “Money, titles—whatever you want. We need this to defeat the giants. Anything we can offer you is nothing beside that. Bring me the Staff. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Severkin says. Titles? Titles almost always come with power, the power to go wherever he wants, permission to explore ruins, access to historical maps to find lost cities….Oh, yes—he’ll get them a staff if it means a key to the kingdom.
“Good. And if you bring it to Elega, I will have you banished from the overcity. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Severkin says.
“Then, welcome to the guard. Siff, get him a badge and tell him where he’s going. Ind, you’re with me.”
The two men stride out of the room, and Siffon smiles again at Severkin.
“This way,” she says, heading in the other direction. “I’ll explain the mission as we get you a badge.” Her armor is tight-fitting, blue-silver scales. A whip hangs from her belt next to a sword.
“You’re an advisor to the guard captain?” Severkin asks.
She laughs, a haughty birdsong sound. “I forgot we never really introduced ourselves. We were just so caught up in this mission—Elega wanted Severkin on the mission—who was Severkin? And there you were….I’m Siffon D’Greiges. I assist the prince regent and the queen. Technically, my title is advisor on special projects. Ind, the other one, is the chief advisor on military strategy. He’s really not so bad.” They walk down a small hallway off the main hall and down a staircase.