The True Bastards

by Jonathan French

  There was a pause and when next the she-elf spoke, her words came in a measured recitation.

  “From somewhere in the steaming jungles of Dhar’gest they came, fathered in rage, with no wish or reason to be more than what they were. Bringers of slaughter and sowers of woe. They built nothing, crafted nothing, made no music. Animals feared and shunned them.”

  “Sounds like thicks to me,” Fetch said.

  “Such is the oldest record we have of them. They came down into the vast basin of our forebears and brought war. But the magic of the elves was strong, as were their weapons. They repelled the invaders and might have rid the earth of them, in time, but the orcs had unknowingly planted the downfall of the basin in the wombs of the women they raped. As the humans do now, some of those victims survived the violation and birthed their half-breed babes. They could not have known, but these offspring would become the doom of their world. That lush basin is now the Deluged Sea because for the first time since their creation, the orcs found a way to become stronger.”

  Stronger. Fetching felt a great sense of unease hearing that word. Uq’huul. Strongest. The orcs called their sorcerers uq’huul.

  “They knew nothing of magic until mixing their blood with ours,” Starling continued. “They would have remained ignorant, for they cared naught for the half-breeds they sired, but those half-breeds were all possessed of the same violent, blood-hungry nature as their fathers. They matured among the elves, but could be taught nothing of love. Using the magic in their veins they proved themselves to the orcs, became their fiercest leaders and deadliest champions. None remained true to those that nurtured them. They were Ruin Made Flesh.”

  Fetch leaned forward. “Are you telling me this orc that’s made a hell of my hoof’s life, that took a god’s voice to drive him off, he’s a damn half-elf?”

  Starling nodded.

  “Then…I’m not.”

  “You carry the blood of my people. That is certain.”

  “But you told snake-bitch—”

  “Akis’naqam. Please, respect.”

  “You told her I wasn’t one of these Ruin fuckers. I sure as shit don’t look like the brute that’s hunting us. And…I don’t have his power.”

  She’d hesitated at the last, remembering her fight with N’keesos. The leap she’d made to reach him, the inability of the song-clubs to stop her.

  “You are different,” Starling said. “Your mother undertook great risk and trials in an attempt to change what you would become.”

  “How do you know that?” Fetch asked.

  Starling’s hands drifted to her stomach. “I share much with her.”

  It was known across the Lots, elves did not suffer bearing an orc’s seed, their women killing themselves should they fall victim to rape. After pulling her out of the Old Maiden, Fetch, Jackal, and Oats had kept a watchful eye on Starling, in case she attempted suicide, though Fetch had advocated they let her do it and have done. At the moment, she was feeling very grateful Jackal had won that argument. How Starling again came to be carrying an orc’s get was something even Fetch’s blunt nature refused to ask. She settled for the next nagging question.

  “Why did you save me?”

  “I believe that you are not tainted by the curse of the Ruin Made Flesh. Thankfully, Akis’naqam agreed. It was she that spared you. I only asked.”

  “Reckon the ones that forced me down here didn’t think that was likely.”

  “No. Even before the forest basin flooded, our ancestors saw the danger of our half-breeds and took steps to prevent their existence. They made pacts with ancient and powerful beings to help combat their evil.”

  Fetch tried not to look at the opening to the snake creature’s lair. “Like feeding mongrel children to monsters.”

  “My people find the killing of children abhorrent. It is the duty of the despoiled mother to sacrifice herself before the babe comes.”

  “To a fucking serpent-woman?”

  “Akis’naqam is the only one left to us. Only she has survived the long years since the flood. The seed of the orc is strong, impossible to rid once it has quickened. This is true for humans and elves, but for us the mother’s death is not enough. We learned long ago that the polluted mixture born of elf and orc blood is frightfully resilient, a formless atrocity that survives beyond death.”

  Fetch’s guts rolled over. “Wait. You mean…?” She knew only the Hisparthan word. “Sludge.”

  “My people call it the Filth. Akis’naqam is one of the few beings with the power to destroy it.”

  “But I was living with that shit inside me! It was fucking killing me, not granting me any magical hoodoo.”

  “The power of all Ruin Made Flesh comes from the Filth. Yet it is not separate from them as it was from you. They are born with it suffusing their bodies, as much a part of them as their blood, muscles, and bone. Their flesh is hardened by it, their limbs strengthened by it. A Ruin and the Filth are one, as all elven half-breeds have been since the birth of the first.”

  “But not me,” Fetch said.

  “No. Your mother delved into the arcane teachings of the past, unearthed lore believed lost to find a way to rid you of the Filth before you entered the world.”

  “So…I wasn’t born with it. It wormed its way into me from the Sludge Man.”

  “Yes. The Filth nesting in the Old Maiden Marsh were the remnants of the Ruin Made Flesh killed there during the Incursion. It was my people that fought there, slew the half-bloods at great cost. But we could not risk Akis’naqam in open war and so could not fully destroy the Filth. The Ruins were slain and their bodies left to rot, becoming what you name sludge, which found a host in a human boy and used him as a vessel.”

  “Corigari.” Fetch spat the Sludge Man’s true name. Memory brought bile to her next words. “And you’re the one that sent him after me.”

  Starling was unaffected by the accusation. “To save myself and the life inside me. And to destroy him. That demon went eagerly to his doom. It was a trap, Fetching, but not for you. I knew what you were. Something that had never existed before. A half-blood free from the curse of the Filth.”

  Fetch grunted. “Yet this Last Singing Ghost and his boys don’t believe that, so they tossed me down here to be food for the queen of all serpents. But here you come, ask her for mercy, and all’s fucking well?” Fetch could not help but laugh, shake her head. “The fuck, Starling? Last I saw you, you were a wide-eyed, loon-brained slip of an outcast elf girl clinging to Jackal’s saddle horn. Now you’re entreating snake-demons on my behalf?”

  “That is amusing?”

  Face resting once again in her hands, Fetch chuckled noiselessly. “Oh hells. Yes!” Starling was smiling when Fetch looked up. It was a thin, uncertain thing, but it was there. “What?”

  The elf woman looked away, the upturn of her mouth faltering, but not fading completely. More silence.

  “Why did the warriors allow you down here?” Fetch pressed. “Why would a group of men with weapons let a pregnant woman interfere?”

  The smile faded. The look Fetching received held bald sorrow. “Because I am honored. And feared.”

  Fetch wanted to laugh again, but kept it at bay this time. “Are you the fucking Tine chief?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “As you said. An outcast.” The elf woman’s hands came up and cradled the bulge of her belly.

  Damning all couth, Fetch asked the question. “Starling? What happened to your first child?”

  Thankfully, the elf did not take offense. She merely looked long at Fetching, as if judging whether she could be trusted. At last, she answered. “The life within me is the same one I carried when I left your fortress. I sought, and found, ways to delay its coming, keeping it safe until I am prepared.”

  “Ways? You mean Zirko. That’s wh
y you were at Strava. He was helping you.”

  Starling let her silence answer.

  “You want your baby to be like me, not a Ruin.”

  “That is my hope. I returned to Dog Fall to place myself before Akis’naqam to be judged. I am grateful she has chosen to spare me, as she has you.”

  “So…you were down here to help me due to nothing but fucking chance?”

  A small, sad smile pulled at Starling’s mouth. “If that is how you choose to see it. However, my people view such a confluence as much more. As do I.”

  Fetch blew out a hard breath. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.”

  “I take no offense.”

  There was a silent span.

  “You said she spared me before. Akis’naqam.”

  “When your mother first came here, nearing her time. She had done all she could to keep you from becoming Ruin Made Flesh and placed herself before Akis’naqam for judgment. She was given her life, and so you were given yours. Yet still the council decided your mother could not remain with her people. She was forced to leave before giving birth.”

  “Shit,” Fetch hissed. “Is that what will happen to you?”

  Starling stood, sorrow in her very movement. “It is time to answer that question. For both of us.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  STARLING LED THEM BACK to the sunlight. Steps from the cave mouth, she paused long enough to whisper a warning.

  “Say nothing. Do nothing.”

  Out in the hollow, a score of mounted Tines waited with a dozen warriors on foot. They stood watch around the entrance, stags and elves shifting as Starling and Fetch walked toward their bulwark of war lances and bows.

  Ghost Last Sung was among them, his face grim beneath the war paint.

  “You live.”

  A blunt statement, neither relieved nor distressed. Fetch now caught the slightest inflection in his elvish, revealing he referred to both her and Starling.

  “Akis’naqam deemed it so,” Starling answered. “I go now to bring this news to the Sitting Young. Will you dishonor their wishes again, Ghost Last Sung, by preventing me? Will you further dishonor yourself?”

  The warrior’s gaze remained stern, but he lowered his lance. “No.”

  As Starling began walking forward, the riders guided their stags to allow her passage, eyes and weapons dipping. They seemed shamed by their own caution. Respected and feared. Starling wasn’t wrong about her people’s attitude toward her, that much was clear.

  Fetching fell into step behind, but paused when she drew even with N’keesos standing among his band, broken arm in a sling. Licking the length of her fingers she pressed them into his forehead. His eyes went wide and wrathful, but he did nothing.

  “Should have done it yourself, Blood Crow,” she told him with the sincerity her now-fluent elvish made possible. Removing her hand, she pointed where she’d touched. “Get someone to piss on that for you. Clean it off.”

  Starling looked back with a small, reproachful frown. The other Tines glowered at Fetching. She kept a smile on her face and walked on. Together, she and Starling left the warriors and the cave behind, though Fetch was certain they would be shadowed.

  They climbed out of the hollow, traversed the gorges. The walk was long. Dusk flushed the sky. By the time they reached a wide stretch of level canyon, the air was alive with the competing songs of night bugs.

  The flicker of firelight drew Fetch’s eye as they proceeded through. Within the rock on both sides, shadows moved within the triangular caves, some coming to the brink of the openings to look down upon their approach. Starling took a path leading to the canyon wall where the caverns were cut, a massive stone beehive looming above the tree line. Looking up, Fetch had a vision of each opening birthing a woman-headed snake and could not prevent the shiver that made merry down her spine.

  A much larger cave, identically shaped, stood at ground level. It was here that Fetch and Starling went. Twenty warriors stood guard with spears and hide shields, but Starling announced herself and entered the cool shelter of the rock without being challenged. Starlight shone ahead as well as behind, bright at the end of the peaked passage. Fetch expected to emerge within another valley, but the passage led to a chamber, a hollow pyramid. The slanting walls were smooth, the pale light entering through the apex, lancing down from on high and diffusing to fill the space.

  Fifteen Tine children sat in a semicircle within, each upon a patterned blanket. There were girls as well as boys, the youngest perhaps six years of age, the oldest at the threshold of adulthood. Behind each stood an adult elf, always the opposing gender. Like the children, their ages varied. Some looked to be from the warrior stock, others were white-haired ancients.

  It was one of the children who first spoke, an older girl. Her voice, though youthful, had no trouble filling the chamber.

  “You come again before us, Woeful Starling. Many here thought to be free of you, at last. Yet even the most wary can see the Selfless Devourer has spared you. Akis’naqam is wise, but she does not rule the Seamless Memory. Do not presume your continued existence in life grants you a place here.”

  It should have been ridiculous, being spoken to with such authority by a child, but the girl’s manner was assured, calm, yet undeniable. The manner of a strong leader.

  Starling bowed with earnest deference. “Nothing is presumed.”

  “The lya’záta emerges also,” said another girl, half the age of the first.

  There was that word again, only now Fetch heard its meaning clearly.

  The aberration.

  Nothing further came from the girl. It was the blunt observation of a child. Fetch’s scalp began to itch as her irritation grew.

  “She was brought to judgment by the slyness of Ghost Last Sung,” Starling said. “Though he tried to force her death, he became the hand which wove her life to mine.”

  One of the boys lifted his hand from his knee and the woman standing behind him leaned down to receive a whispered question. Her answer was given with the same subtlety before she straightened.

  “She is the greater aberration now,” the boy proclaimed. “Freed from the Filth in the womb, possessed by it in recent days, and now spared by Akis’naqam a second time. I say this should not be ignored.”

  “It cannot be ignored,” the first girl added, “but do we agree with Woeful Starling that it portends well, or side with our ancestors and brand it an unacceptable threat?”

  The eldest boy smote his leg with an open palm. “It is a threat. We would be wise to cast the aberration back to the Devourer and forbid any to intercede.”

  “You need not,” Starling put in. “If you wish Fetching dead, you do not require Akis’naqam. The Devourer has fulfilled her oath and made her choice. This is no Ruin Made Flesh that stands before you. She is, as the humans say, a half-orc. They name the obvious blood, the source of the other half means little to them. They brand the threat with their words. Yet, I would ask this council see her—and name her—differently. See that half the blood being judged is ours. Name the woman you could execute as half-elf before making your choice. Akis’naqam has returned to slumber. She will not rouse herself for a threat that can be ended with lance or arrow. It is the Sitting Young of the Seamless Memory that will have to command, and witness, this death.”

  A younger boy, blind by the look of his colorless eyes, added his voice. “We need not call for her blood. Neither must we accept her among us. Exile from our lands is wisest.”

  Starling was quick to counter. “Exile is the same as death. Fetching is not Ruin Made Flesh, yet one does hunt her. Without our protection, she and her tribe cannot hope to survive.”

  The council was silent for a time.

  “We will consider,” the first girl pronounced, and signaled the warriors.

  Fetch and Starling were led from the cham
ber. Outside, they were taken to a place a little removed from the cave mouth and commanded to wait. Standing there in the night, surrounded by armed Tines, Fetching ventured a question.

  “What was that?”

  Starling was taking in the night, infuriatingly at ease. “My people are governed by the most promising of our children. We believe the fate of the tribe should rest with those that will inherit its future. The adults behind them act as mentors, but can only offer counsel if directly asked by the child they support. No matter what advice the elders give, the decisions rest with the Sitting Young.”

  “Great,” Fetch whispered. “Tell the men here to go ahead and put a good point on their spears.” Silence. “What will you do if they don’t allow you to stay?”

  For the first time Starling’s calm was rippled by surprise. It was a small thing, more curiosity than shock, but it drew the she-elf’s eye. “The Sitting Young debate the wisdom of your execution and you worry over my fate?”

  Fetch didn’t respond. What could she say? That she had no intention of going to her death without a fight? Unless…she was given promise that her hoof and its people could shelter safely in these canyons. Was that even true? She didn’t know. The thought of being condemned to die was merely that, a thought. She’d known the sludge was killing her, would kill her. But that was a notion of the future, never truly drawing closer despite the evidence of her failing strength. Death itself remained distant, dwarfed on the horizon by the biting and clawing of each waking hour. What had Oats called it? The daily struggle. He’d given it thought. Fetch never had. Survival was instinct. It was akin to hunger or breathing. They happened without thought or permission. Sometimes, they were a challenge. Fetch had been on the verge of starving, of her lungs failing, but she did not dwell on them as looming axes that would inevitably fall. Their descent could be halted, their blades blunted. Anything, everything, could cause pain. Ul-wundulas was a land of pain. It had hurt Fetching every day that she could remember. But it could only kill her once.

  And hadn’t yet.