‘I could ask the village council to let him stay’, he tried again, but again Sven’s mother shook her head. ‘His father never wants to see him again. The fact that he’s still under our roof is only down to his injuries. But I do have one request.’
Ahren nodded quickly. ‘Of course. Anything’, he said quickly.
‘If I could apologise to Culhen? He should know that we regret our son’s deed’, she said meekly.
Ahren stopped himself from sighing and from contradicting her. He wanted to tell her that an apology was unnecessary, but he realised that Asla need to make the gesture for her own peace of mind. ‘Of course, I’ll call him’, was his answer, and he carefully got into his friend’s mind. Culhen was in the middle of his morning nap, which he always took after an opulent breakfast, and Ahren had learned to make good use of that time, when he was alone with his own thoughts. But this time he didn’t waste a heartbeat and sent out a soft call.
His spirit was immediately filled with joyous excitement as the young wolf leaped up and bounded off enthusiastically. The apprentice could hear the animal barking with his ears, and he couldn’t resist a grin. Culhen had been practising the sound – rarely used by wolves – over the previous few weeks after he had noticed that humans in the vicinity reacted by stroking and feeding him. It wouldn’t have surprised Ahren if Culhen were to imitate a cat’s purring if it increased his chances of getting food
The wolf came storming up the hill, his tail wagging furiously, and he leaped joyfully up at Ahren. Because the animal on his hind-legs was even taller than the apprentice, the apprentice had learned to avoid his wolf’s giant paws before he had a chance to throw him backward to the ground and pin him down.
Came down, boy was the message Ahren sent to him and at the same time gestured to him to stop with his hand. The apprentice had found the combination to be very effective and had decided to use words and gesture as a temporary solution until Culhen’s understanding had sufficiently developed.
The wolf sat down on his hind-legs and gave Ahren a questioning look while tilting his head. Meanwhile Asla, who had sunk down onto her knees and was sobbing uncontrollably, cautiously stretched out her hand towards the animal.
Comfort her, please, said Ahren softly in the head of his friend. And he sent an image of a she-wolf, mourning for her cub.
To Ahrens relief, the wolf understood immediately and began whimpering and licking the woman’s hand, all the while gently rubbing his head against her.
Out of the corner of his eye Ahren could see the villagers standing around, observing the scene with great interest. Erring on the side of caution he spoke loudly and clearly. ‘Culhen forgives you and your family for the deed of your son. Neither the wolf nor I can find any fault in your behaviour.’ Then he lifted the miller’s wife to her feet, and she looked at him gratefully before he spoke again. ‘You are true servants of the THREE and should be treated as such.’
Asla collapsed into his arms, sobbing gratefully, and the apprentice was glad to see compassion for the miller’s wife in the faces of the villagers who were observing the scene. Ahren might not be able to save Sven, but at least he had spared his family from being ostracised within the community.
‘That was a big-hearted gesture’, said Trogadon as Ahren entered the porch. Lina, Sven’s sister and an old flame of Ahren’s, had led her mother into the house, whispering her gratitude to the apprentice in the process. Then the young Paladin had fled into the mill to escape the looks of the other villagers, leaving Culhen to bask unashamedly in their admiration.
Ahren shrugged his shoulders in embarrassment. ‘It was only a few words.’
‘But they were important and soothing’, said the warrior insistently. ‘I patched up stone and wood, but you healed the hearts of the poor people. Word of this will spread like wildfire and do Deepstone a lot of good.’
Ahren looked doubtfully and asked himself if the dwarf might not be exaggerating things a little.
‘Think about it’, said the broad figure with unusual seriousness. ‘Small communities such as this can be very resentful, and smaller transgressions than Sven’s have led to terrible feuds.’
Ahren had to admit that there was something to what the dwarf had said. Now he was doubly pleased he had helped the miller’s family. Then his face darkened. ‘But I can’t help Sven’, he said grimly.
Trogadon’s eyebrows flew upwards. ‘Do you want that at all? After everything he’s done. Falk says this wasn’t the first time he’s harmed you.’
Ahren chewed his lips and looked deep into his own heart for a moment. ‘I think I do. He’s been punished enough. Jelninolan and I punished him severely, and now the village has sentenced him to banishment. Nobody should have to pay three times for his deed.’
Trogadon looked at Ahren with pride and appeared at that moment like an undersized grandfather. ‘Never forget this lesson. Ideally you two would have dragged Sven before the village council, you and Jelninolan would have accused him there, and he would have been sentenced according to the rules of the village. One sentence, one punishment.’
Ahren vowed never to forget the dwarf’s words and gave a determined nod.
‘Cheer up’, grunted the dwarf. ‘When it comes down to it, you protected him from Jelninolan. If I’d laid my hands on the lad, he’d be dead now.’
Chapter 5
Ahren walked in a daze towards the threshold of the mayor’s house. His mind was taken up with what he had just experienced, and he was pondering Trogadon’s words when he pushed open the heavy door before realising what he was doing.
The room was quiet and empty, and the abandoned table around which they had so often sat looked strangely different.
The apprentice stood in the main room, hesitated and looked at the stairs that were situated at the other end and led up to the elf’s bedroom. It had been his earnest desire to talk to the priestess about what had happened in the mill, but as it had been a subconscious decision, his courage now failed him.
He was on the point of turning back to leave when he heard a sound on the steps and Khara came swiftly but lightly bounding down the stairs. She had Wind Blade in one hand, and she stopped suddenly when she recognised him.
‘I was asking myself who would slip in here without saying a word, but I should have known it was you’, she said crossly and loosened her grip on her weapon.
‘I don’t even know why I’m here myself’, said Ahren, attempting to explain himself with a rather lame excuse. But Khara simply shook her head, tossing her long hair.
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ she barked. ‘Of course you know why you’re here, and so do I. I think my mistress has been waiting ages for your visit.’
Ahren shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other and only the swordsgirl’s piercing look stopped him from hotfooting it out of the room.
His resistance finally cracked, and he nodded acquiescently. ‘It might help both of us’, he said, more in an attempt to persuade himself.
Khara gave him an encouraging look, as if to a little child who was just taking his first steps, and the gesture put him into a rage that eclipsed the uneasy feeling that had been weighing so heavily on him. The stairs seemed to stretch endlessly upwards as he clambered up one step after the other until he finally reached the darkened first floor. The curtains were drawn across the windows and the short corridor was only dimly lit through an open door on the left, the three closed doors being on the right.
Ahren was trying to figure out where Jelninolan had retired to when he recognised a familiar sound in his head. A sad, melancholy melody seemed to be unfolding within his very mind, and the apprentice realised that the elf was playing on Tanentan, the soundless lute. This elfish artefact was powerful, and the priestess used it, among other things, to influence the mood of people within hearing distance. She had a healthy respect for the power of the magical instrument, and the fact that she was using it to help herself didn’t bode well regarding her emotional well-being.
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The young Paladin sensed that the lute song was coming through the open doorway, and so he walked through it, cautiously knocking on the door frame to announce his presence.
Jelninolan was sitting in a crouched position on the floor of the darkened chamber, which must have served as the sleeping quarters for the mayor’s late wife. The colour shades of the modest furnishings were elegant, yet also warm and friendly as if reflecting the deceased mayor’s wife herself, who Ahren vaguely remembered, and who always had a friendly word for everyone.
Jelninolan didn’t look up - her eyes with a faraway look in them, were focused on the lute strings. ‘Sit down, Ahren’, was all she said, but her voice had an undertone of urgency, and so the young man did as he was told. He sat facing her on the floor, and finally the priestess looked up.
Her pupils appeared pitch-black in the diffuse light of the darkened room. A strong feeling of unreality came over Ahren’s perception and he felt himself being sucked in by the elf’s gaze.
‘You want to understand’, she whispered, and Ahren nodded uneasily. He could hear the suppressed emotions of rage, self-reproach and doubt in the elf’s voice, and he couldn’t help asking himself how close she was to another Unleashing. He was shocked to realise that at that very moment he was terrified of the kindly priestess.
‘I think we can help each other, but it will cost us’, said Jelninolan conspiratorially, and the young Paladin immediately became nervous. What was she planning?
‘I can show you a memory, even share it with you completely. Tanentan will carry us back to the time of the Dark Days, and you will understand what it means to experience a true Unleashing.’ She raised her hand as he was about to respond. ‘It won’t be an enjoyable experience, but it will help you to understand. And sharing it with somebody will help me to break the power it still has over me after all this time.’
She sounded terribly fragile, and at that moment he felt a deep compassion for the gentle, warm-hearted woman who had helped him time and again over the previous moons. He would have done anything for her, and so he nodded firmly and without hesitation. ‘Show it to me’, he whispered, and the elf strummed the strings of Tanentan. Ahren’s world collapsed like a house of cards.
The first thing that struck him was the pungent smell of smoke in his nostrils - it was all pervasive and engulfed his senses, which seemed blurred and unclear. He was under the control of Tanentan’s magic to a degree he had never experienced before. When the priestess had called forth the memories concerning the rescue of the Voice of the Forest that time during the festivities in Eathinian, the effects had been as light and unobtrusive as a feather. But now the images were a raging maelstrom, blinding out everything else. Ahren felt the heat of smouldering fire, and all he could see were billowing clouds of smoke until his sight slowly grew accustomed to what was around him and he was able to find his bearings.
He seemed to be looking down directly on the scene that the lute wished to show him, and the new perspective made him dizzy for a moment. Jelninolan was standing there with half a dozen soldiers in the middle of a ravaged battlefield, which had to have been a village at some point. The details of the memory were concentrated on the area immediately surrounding the elf, whereas the happenings a further away were nothing more than blurred images. In the distance Ahren could make out undulating hills which reminded him of the Borderlands, and it seemed to be a hot summer’s afternoon. Not only did he smell the acrid smoke, but also the sweat of the soldiers, and everywhere he could see bodies lying in various degrees of mutilation, the sight of which made him nauseous. Many hundreds of dead humans and several lifeless elves were to be seen amongst the slaughtered Blood Wolves, incinerated Fog Cats and a strangely bloated Glower Bear. Ahren understood that a fierce battle had taken place between warring parties who had been equally matched in ruthlessness.
Jelninolan was staring with a glassy look at the dead bodies and the burning buildings. In each hand she was holding a chain wrapped around her wrists and stretching out at least eight paces. Most of the heavy metal links were lying on the ground engulfed in white-hot flames and the ends of the two chains seemed to be squirming like blind worms. The brutally destructive force emanating from the two chains seemed so alien to the elf who was holding them that he had to look twice to convince himself that it was she who was manipulating those murderous implements.
‘Mistress, we are the only ones left, and the Keketuktur is coming inexorably closer!’ pleaded one of her companions to Jelninolan. Ahren couldn’t make out the details of the heavily armed person under the visored helmet, but he heard the frightened and exhausted voice of a young woman. ‘We must stop it or it will attack the king’s cavalry from behind and the entire west flank will collapse’, she persisted as she pleaded with the priestess.
Jelninolan could only nod wearily. Ahren saw that some of her ribbon armour was missing where the leather bands had been torn through by sharp claws or raw violence, and blood was seeping from several wounds and into her clothing.
‘The chains have become heavy’, she said finally. ‘I don’t know how much longer I can control them.’
‘You have to!’ cried the soldier, horrified, and the helmets of the other soldiers nodded frantically.
Before the elf could respond, a house literally burst at the edge of the memory, and a creature, the like of which Ahren could never have imagined even in his worst nightmare, stormed directly through the ruins. It seemed as large as a house, with two massive heads closely aligned, each having enormous floppy ears and a wormlike trunk ending in sickle-like bone spurs. The six-legged creature was completely covered in dull-grey scales, and Ahren calculated that the monster weighed as much as a good twenty full-grown oxen. Without hesitating, it trampled through the burning remains of another house before proceeding to charge at Jelninolan and the little group of soldiers.
Whatever it was the elves wanted Jelninolan to do, she still hesitated, and so two of them fearlessly threw themselves forward and stabbed their spears into the flanks of the on-charging Dark One.
The trunks swayed almost playfully left and right, sweeping the thick wooden weapons aside and boring its bone spurs into the unfortunate soldiers. Without slowing down, the Keketuktur raised the skewered warriors up into the air and slung them right and left into the burning building.
Once again, a nauseous feeling overcame Ahren, but he was so much within the grip of the memory that he could not look away.
Jelninolan uttered a cry of despair, which brought the chains to life in a most strange manner. The thick iron limbs rose up from the ground and whipped their way forwards like metal snakes and wrapped themselves around the necks of the enormous creature with their white flames and they slowly burned their way through the scales, the metal links tightening evermore with a scraping sound, strangulating the monster and cutting off its air supply.
Worse yet than the fire and the overwhelming power of the grinding metal were the waves of dread that suddenly seemed to emanate from the two weapons. The Dark One had clearly sensed them too, for instead of trampling Jelninolan to death, it was trying desperately to free itself from her and the two unholy weapons that had so suddenly embraced it. Its legs as thick as trees planted themselves in the ground, twisting the body of the Keketuktur around so that Jelninolan made a leap through the air as she was pulled forward. To Ahren’s amazement, the elf landed with both feet so firmly in the ground that she created deep furrows in the earth as she braced herself and her magic against the massive weight of the monster.
‘The chains are getting too heavy!’ she repeated. ‘I have to charm them!’
‘You can’t do that! Too many lives are on the line!’ implored the soldier. Jelninolan looked from the woman fighting beside her to the Dark One, which was still trying to free itself from the chains, and in a fit of madness had ground three further ruins to dust as it grappled with the magic shackles.
The chains were becoming blindingly white and Ahren could hardly
make out the surrounding details in the blazing light.
‘Run!’ screamed Jelninolan in an agonised voice. ‘Run for your lives!’
The remaining soldiers reacted immediately, throwing their weapons to the ground in an attempt to flee more quickly, but within a few heartbeats he saw in horror how their attempts to reach safety had come to nought.
Jelninolan sank down on her knees, and with her head bowed she started murmuring words in Elfish which quickly reached a screeching crescendo. Then she threw back her head, and her eyes were ablaze with the same white fire that surrounded the chains. One last outcry came from the mouth of the priestess before the whole area was ablaze in a searing forest of flames. Ahren heard the stifled screams of the soldiers also caught up in the wall of heat and light, just as was everything else within a two-hundred-pace radius of the elf, who was now slumped over. People, corpses, houses, the Keketuktur itself simply ceased to exist as the invocation incinerated all around it.
Only a blazing white was to be seen for several heartbeats and then the magic was over. Jelninolan was squatting in the middle of an enormous circle of fine ash which covered the area, and within which there was no sign that a village had once stood there. The chains had vanished, and when Jelninolan stood up sobbing and stumbled away towards the east, her footprints in the ash were the only clues that at one time people had been there, who had lived, loved and fought.
Ahren gasped for air when the memory came to an end. It was as if he had come to the surface after an eternity under water. He breathed deeply and sought to come to terms with what he had just seen. Jelninolan had stood up and drawn open the curtains, enabling the sun to do its work and bring warmth back into the room. Ahren closed his eyes in gratitude and basked in the invigorating rays as they reflected off his skin, their golden hue so different to the destructive white of the Unleashing magic. He opened his eyes and looked into Jelninolan’s gentle, smiling face.
The Brazen City Page 8