For the Love of Elves (World Walker Book 1)

by Shawn Keys

Ajax accepted that with a nod. “Perhaps I will make another attempt in due course.”

  Helleanna prodded him back to the story. “The King made you touch the pendant?”

  He nodded. “Not just me. Everyone in the court. He was hoping to provoke a reaction. He took us in front of the pendant one by one, in privacy. He wanted honest reactions, unpolluted by what we might think was the right answer. Rumor passed around, of course. Most spoke of an intense pain that stabbed their fingers.”

  Callistia guessed, “She was sensing their intent. They wanted to help the King. They wanted to prove to be the answer for him. To gain his favor or avoid his ire.”

  Ajax shrugged. “I would not call myself innocent of the latter. We were all watching him grow more frustrated by the day, and never knew when his anger would boil over. We all wanted to be the key to his success to end our fear of his anger. But perhaps, my curiosity was stronger. Or wonderment. So much has happened since then, I barely remember.”

  His smile shifted toward one of fondness. “What I do remember is the thrill of discovery that passed through me when I realized it was a living being within. The power of her mind is striking. Terrifying! But also intensely, flawlessly kind. You have heard of elementals, of course? The beings of magic conjured by mages? Well, she is a Creation Elemental, possessed of power but also a yearning to use her gifts. She is generous beyond measure.” He shrugged. “But that doesn’t mean she wants to die while doing it.”

  Jyliansa followed his story to its inevitable conclusion. “You’re trying to take her home?”

  Helleanna’s eyes widened. “Is that even possible?”

  Ajax shook his head, at a loss. But it doesn’t matter. He looked to each of them. “I honestly don’t know. I read what I could find. There is a stated argument from a master sun elf wizard from a few thousand years ago –”

  “– Ysilariss.” Callistia interjected.

  Ajax nodded, “That’s the one. He stated it was impossible for a non-native to enter the Plane of Creation. The infinite energy wouldn’t kill you. Rather, it would absorb you and use your essence to power-create something entirely new.”

  Callistia slipped in smoothly, adding more beyond what he might have read as a layman, “Everything I know suggests the same. Impossible to know. No recorded mage has ever ascended to that plane and returned to speak of it. That might be an answer all its own.” A note of warning entered her voice. “But to approach the boundary of that place, you would have to cross the elemental planes. Not to mention finding a path across the Wyld plane first. Not to mention finding a pathway into the Wyld in the first place.”

  Krizzilani tried to remember all she had been taught. “There are ways. But the Gatekeepers are of Elf-kind, who open the paths when the time of our summons comes and our time in the mortal world is done. They would not let us through for the sake of an adventure. And Ajax… they would kill a human on principle for daring to ask!”

  Ajax insisted, “If one path exists, then others have been opened. Such secrets do not remain so! I will find a way. I have sworn an oath, and that oath gave me the strength to see the monster I was becoming as a hand of Tyvanthelam. This spirit has already saved my life. I will give that life willingly to save hers.” He let that stand for a moment. Then, he said, “Now you see why I couldn’t trap you in promises before you knew the truth. This isn’t a quest to hide a fragment of obscure magic in a safe hole from a mad king. I’m going to walk where others dare not walk. I’m going to set her free even if it costs me everything.”

  He let out a wry chuckle. “Now that you know… anyone else want to come?”

  Chapter 10

  The question was beyond huge. Many might consider it a suicide mission. Certainly, there was a large possibility that one or more of them wouldn’t return home. The heavy question hung in the air, and the elfish women had slowly drifted away to search their souls and think.

  Ajax took the wheel, keeping them steering out into the open ocean, watching the sun rise higher into the sky. The heat rose, but the wind held, blowing across the deck and cutting the heat into something manageable.

  An hour later, Jyliansa approached him. The grander question remained unspoken. It hovered above them, but she set it aside for the moment. “We have distance on them and an open ocean to lose them in. But we need all the speed we can urge from this vessel.”

  “We need to set more sails,” Ajax followed her reasoning.

  That simple realization broke the small crew from their thoughtful malaise. Work intruded, and they threw themselves into their tasks.

  None of them were sailors. The act of climbing masts was a terrifying introduction to the bravery of sailors. How sea-faring faced climbing so high in the midst of a storm was beyond Ajax. The knight swore he nearly fell a dozen times even in the stiff breeze. It took them hours under Jyliansa’s guidance to let out enough canvass to capture a full measure of the wind. The effort coaxed a couple extra knots of speed into their swift ship.

  Fatigue had them dragging by sunset. They all had fitful sleeps, trading shifts at the wheel and looking behind, searching for the lights of pursuing ships. It was another advantage for them; they clipped along in total darkness. Krizzilani never touched so much as tinder-stick, at home in pitch darkness. Jyliansa, able to see in the dark depths of the ocean, was also at home. Helleanna needed only the stars. Callistia and Ajax were forced to carry light or risk stumbling on the deck fittings, but they used ruddy-red lanterns too weak to carry much beyond the rails. Anyone looking for them was going to be looking for a black shadow against the night.

  Morning came, and more work called to them. For Ajax, it was heaving a new set of ballista bolts up to the aft launch platform. Without the need to rush, Callistia etched powerful runes into each one, augmenting their power into truly devastating missiles. Ajax knew they would be necessary. Next time they entered battle, the enemy ship would have more than an apprentice onboard.

  Ajax noticed they were starting to exist a little easier around each other. Slowly, but it was coming. He first noticed them asking for help with less pride being stung. Then, they started to anticipate what each other needed. He found it very interesting that, although Jyliansa was the most experienced at sea, they deferred to his opinions more often than not. His decisions started to feel like those being made by a captain rather than a rogue, errant knight from a different realm. Even Callistia lent her polite effort without fighting for overt control. They treated her with respect, but she seemed to know as instinctively as the others that this was his quest. The spirit trusted him, so he was the one speaking on behalf of them all. It was a little nerve-wracking and not a little daunting, but Ajax couldn’t suppress a quiet thrill at the thought.

  So, he embraced it. He wasn’t going to lord it over them. They were willing volunteers rather than conscripted troops. But it they wanted to let him make decisions, then he wasn’t going to let them down or dither about making them.

  What really broke the ice was the random moments of fun that crept up.

  It had to happen eventually. Ajax thought Helleanna would shake free of the somber atmosphere and let her spritely attitude explode outward. But Jyliansa beat her to it. Her eyes kept straying to the choppy water breaking against their hull and the glistening blue waves stretching out to the horizon.

  With a sudden cry of primal need, the sea elf took a dozen running strides and leapt over the guard rail and plunged into the salty spray with a laugh of sheer delight. With dolphin-style whip kicks, she surged around and under the ship. The rest of their small crew ran to the railing, waving as she broke the surface in a huge leap, laughing in shared happiness to see her returned to her element.

  A part of Ajax wondered if she would ever step back aboard the ship. She hadn’t committed to the quest, yet. She had fulfilled all her promises to them. And now, she was free to roam in the environment she loved so very much.

  An hour later, when Jyliansa exploded once more from the water and landed
in a crouch back on the deck, Ajax let out a quiet sigh of relief. He had not been ready to see her vanish.

  Helleanna was standing nearby. She grinned at him. “I know. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, either.” Then she rushed over and gave the sea elf a huge hug of welcome, not caring at all that her crude dress got drenched in the process.

  Seeing Jyliansa so relaxed gave Ajax a new mission. They were going to be out to sea for days, and tension was going to creep in. He made it part of his mission and duty to find a way for each of them to blow off a little steam from their inner kettles.

  Callistia proved easiest. He had seen a few paintings in her royal apartment, and Helleanna confirmed she was an artist of some skill. Searching below, he found some rolls of spare canvass and more than enough lengths of wood meant for carpentry and ship repair. He thought cobbling together paints might be more challenging, but it turned out the ship’s workshop had a few tubs to refresh the ship’s side and whatever else a ship’s captain might want decorated. Adding a touch of mystery to the gift, he built an easel on the wheel-deck during the night so it seemed to materialize with the dawn that Callistia religiously attended. Everyone knew the culprit, but no-one pushed him to admit it. They treated it like a gift from the sea.

  Helleanna was something of a challenge, seeming to take her best delight in seeing the Callistia’s comforts. It was her humming that cued Ajax to a possible solution. Taking a chance, he put his wood working skills to use fashioning a set of satyr pipes. Those he left for her to find before one of her night watches, positioning them on the upper decks where she could hear the wind playing with them. The next day she had been beaming ear to ear, and could be heard practicing long into the night during her dull shifts at the wheel.

  Most challenging was Krizzilani. Well on her way to mending, the dark elf pitched in without complaint. She was a part of the crew, but a private one. Callistia’s race might be the most virulent with their hatred of their dark elf cousins, but all elves shared reservations. Dark elves were the only race bred of the Dark Wyld. To say that turbulence and chaos were in their blood was more than poetic license; it was a physical reality. Some would say the treachery of their nature could not be unlearned.

  Then again, Ajax mused, she was expelled from the cults of her race. If a light elf is exiled for her rebellion and evil, then perhaps a dark elf is cast out because of her unchangeable kindness. Seems as good a theory as any. Whatever the truth, Krizzilani had grown into an uneasy friendship with Helleanna and Jyliansa, with Callistia accepting her as one of the crew if never with any warmth.

  Then one night, the dark elf was huddled next to Helleanna on the main deck, speaking quietly about rambling things. The moon elf asked if Krizzilani missed the true night of the cavern homes of her people. She had laughed softly, and replied, “Why do you think I left?” Then, she pointed at the stars. “You might worship the moon, but those diamonds entranced me from the first time I walked on the surface.”

  He had his answer. They had ransacked the various cabins for whatever could be of use, but none of them were skilled at navigating the ocean. They were keeping on a steady course, hoping to leave behind the waters controlled by Lyvarress and stumble on whatever lands lay over the horizon. A foolhardy plan, for they could sail off the end of the world without warning. They could sail into the land of sea dragons, and they would be eaten before they knew of the danger. But they had little choice. Jyliansa navigated using the flow of the ocean, not the stars in the skies. They had no-one to teach them. So, they hadn’t touched the various tools used to determine positions at sea.

  Ajax had previously discovered the telescope in a large chest, then immediately resealed it. The brass-trimmed, black-oak housing was clearly of value, and he knew the glasswork of the lenses could be as expensive as bars of gold. Having forgotten about it since, Ajax now pulled it out and assembled the tripod under the starry sky.

  Krizzitani’s acceptance of his gift was simple. She simply began volunteering for the late night shift every day, giving the rest of them a chance for more sleep while she got the bet hours of the night to gaze longingly up into the night sky.

  Their other work continued, and Ajax began to feel ready. It was a dangerous illusion. No matter how many bolts Callistia ensorcelled and no matter how well they re-rigged the sails so they could be handled quickly by much fewer people, the fact remained that they were a crew of 5 on a ship normally home to a couple hundred. If it came to a fight, they would be out-powered by the two, if not three mages that would be carried by a ship of the realm. If it came to running, they would be out-classed, unable to get as much speed from the wind as a true sail-master could.

  But illusion or not, there was no doubting the sense of confidence settling over them as they became more and more a crew. A team. On some level, even friends.

  Then again, even for friends, the ship was a small place. Privacy was difficult to come by. Even the tiniest corner tucked out of the way was no guarantee against others wandering through searching for some piece of stock or to find a new length of rope.

  Just after daybreak on the tenth day out from shore, one of the stays for the main sail snapped. It had been fraying badly against a sharp corner on a wooden bracket. The blame was no-ones, for any of them might have made the error in wrapping it badly. With that rope broken, others unraveled, unable to handle the strain. The wind spilled out of the suddenly limp sail.

  Ajax was proud of their instinctive response, forgetting about blame and scrambling instead to wrestle the huge sail back under control. It took hours to do what a trained crew could have done in minutes. When it was over, they had celebrated with douses of water over their heads, a few ragged cheers, and cooking as fine a meal as they could with the meagre stores onboard.

  Afterward, they had retreated from the main deck one by one, seeking a little of that privacy.

  Ajax was at the wheel when Callistia approached him. She offered, “I’m not finding sleep. You’ve been up here too much today.”

  He smiled, “You were all having such fun dancing. I didn’t want to let it stop. Helleanna is already getting better on those pipes, isn’t she?”

  Any mention of her moon elf maid tended to bring a fond smile to Callistia’s lips. This time was no exception. “You could have joined us.”

  Ajax had been surprised to see Callistia swirling about with the other elfish women. When Krizzitani and Jyliansa first began to swirl their skirts in time to the pipes, he had thought the sun elf would remain aloof. But it seemed even royal elves could be moved by the call of music. She had joined them with radiant pleasure. The idea of crashing into the beautiful moment with his thick feet sounded absurd to him. “Not without ruining your fun.”

  “You would have been welcome. Even bad dancing is good dancing.” She chuckled, a pang of oddly placed regret lingering behind her eyes. “Then we would have taught you. Sometimes, it’s more about just letting go of your fear and doubt.”

  Ajax figured there were a lot of things like that. Indeed, he had a strange feeling that Callistia wasn’t only talking about dancing. She looked reflective, like she had come onto the upper decks to do a little soul-searching and challenge a few things inside her own mind.

  The mystery eluded him, and he decided he didn’t need to know. Instead, he just offered her the time she wanted with a pleasant smile. “If you’re of a mind to take the wheel, then I won’t say no to some extra rest. Call me if the night starts to drag on you.”

  “I will.” She sounded already lost in thought.

  Trusting her to her word, Ajax clambered down to the main deck. The ladders, corridors and cabins of the ship were not made for him, to be sure. Space on a ship was always at a premium, and things were built small even for humans. Elves might be comfortable, but only barely. For one of his stature, he often felt like a giant ready to burst through the ceilings or break open the walls like a tin of sardines.

  Stepping inside the after-castle, he squeezed down the corr
idor and into the planning room. It was once the captain’s cabin, but none of them had claimed it. Instead, they had converted it into the space to store their gear and to display the chart that was the best guess of their position. The chart was huge, showing a representation of the continental coastline behind them. Tyvanthelam’s realm was furthest south and stretching far inland, then Lyvarress’s which they had left behind, and then another sun elf lord to the north by the name of Erosallen. He was an unknown to Ajax, though Callistia considered him little better than the others.

  Ajax ran his hands to the far side of the chart, chewing at his lips in mid concern. There were vague scribblings about other land masses, but remarkably little detail. Other realms existed, but the maps showed far too little about the precise distance to their coastline, nor any specific landmarks to use to identify where they would be upon landing. A few descriptions were jotted down, details bought from merchant ships who had actually been there. Those merchants guarded their secrets as fiercely as any nation. Little wonder why they had not shared those secrets. Ajax read the names of the realms again, named after the Sun Elf lords who ruled them: Ralegorathim, Cymarramathis, Mirimiramis, Pharfirolith. Names without context. Anyone of them could be their salvation or their death.

  There was an “x” on the chart behind them, less than a day old. Jyliansa has scrawled a note next to it, along with a small line pointing from the “x” to a nearby seamount. The note read: ‘Sighted this underwater mountain just before midday. Two leagues off.’ The sea elf had taken to roaming outward, using islands, reefs and underwater marks to try and pinpoint them. Once they passed beyond her tribe’s migration routes, her knowledge would fade. But for now, it was all they had. She considered seeking out others of her kind, or perhaps one of the merfolk cousins to the humans, but word would undoubtedly spread if she did. So far, Ajax had asked her to avoid them. Using her other references was enough.