Elven Winter

by Bernhard Hennen

  That very day, Ollowain had argued with Emerelle about her need for extra protection. But the queen had calmly pointed out that none of the failed assassinations had involved magic. Three days earlier, they had found a poisoned thorn embedded in the upholstery of Emerelle’s throne. The poison had killed a kobold that had been dusting the royal seat. Then came the block of marble that had crashed into Magnolia Court directly beside Emerelle. An inspection had shown that there was no degradation of the mortar holding the stone in place, but rather a section of the terrace wall had been loosened with a crowbar. Someone had been lurking up there, waiting for the queen to cross the yard.

  Ollowain would have given his left hand to know what the murderer was planning next. So far, the assassin had kept his distance from the queen, leading Ollowain to suspect that the next attempt would be with bow and arrow. Emerelle would be departing again in just a few days. Time for the killer was running short. How fanatical was he? If he were prepared to trade his own life for the queen’s, he would be virtually impossible to stop—during the festival, hundreds of guests would be close to Emerelle. Or would he perhaps turn to magic after all? Were the two failed attempts a deliberate part of some insidious plan? Was the assassin really a sorcerer?

  Ollowain recalled his own mother. At a feast in the Skyhall of Phylangan, she had suddenly smashed the glass in her hand, a flowered goblet fashioned from red quartz. Ollowain, just seven years old, had been sitting opposite her. He still remembered the blood on his mother’s white dress and the look in her beautiful green eyes. Full of fear. And then she had plunged the long stem of the crystal glass through her eye and deep into her skull. It could never be ascertained whether she had been caught in the power of a curse or if some alien will had forced her to commit that bloody act. Some said she killed herself in that horrible way to punish Landoran, Ollowain’s coldhearted father, but Ollowain had never believed that. She would never have left him behind, alone. Never! She had been murdered.

  The swordmaster looked up. He heard the clopping of hooves at the end of the long tunnel, and the light from flaming torches cast dancing shadows on the entrance walls. Centaurs. So the honor guard had decided to appear after all. It puzzled Ollowain that of all her subjects, Emerelle had chosen centaurs to accompany her from the palace to the grand liburna. It seemed to him sometimes that the queen had a secret soft spot for creatures that so literally shat all over court etiquette. In the same way, she had liked that rough-hewn human who had come to Albenmark through the Shalyn Falah. Mandred. Mandred the Unbowed, as the courtiers mocked him, referring to how he had insulted the queen at their first meeting by not doing her the proper honor of bowing before her. More than thirty years had passed since that time, but the memories of the Fjordlander were still strong. Where had he gone when he had conspired with his two elven friends against the queen? All trace of the three was lost in the labyrinthine mesh of the Albenpaths.

  Ollowain stepped out of the tunnel and looked down on the broad expanse of Magnolia Court. It was the heart of the palace and ruled over by Matha Murganleuk, a magnolia tree so old that its trunk had grown to be as mighty as a stone tower. Emerelle’s chambers were perched high among its branches. It was said that Matha Murganleuk gave up some of her own wood so that the queen had a place in which to retreat and spend solitary hours. No one was allowed to follow Emerelle there, not even her maids or kobold servants. It was the only place in Vahan Calyd where the queen could be alone.

  She was waiting in the white pavilion. Embedded in the roots of the huge tree, the pavilion was reminiscent of an enormous, half-open magnolia flower. Kobolds and riverbank sprites surrounded the queen. A goat-legged faun handed her a coiled drinking horn, and Emerelle sipped only a little from the heavy gold vessel. Then she said something to the faun, and the bearded fellow burst out laughing. The centaurs, who had gathered some distance away around a large wine amphora, looked up curiously.

  Ollowain let out a silent curse. He was late! They were all waiting for him. It was not good to keep centaurs waiting. They had the uncanny ability to find wine wherever they happened to be. The swordmaster sometimes suspected that remaining sober for more than a day was considered a fault among the manhorses, and he momentarily and with horror envisaged Emerelle being escorted to the grand liburna by a horde of roaring, drunken centaurs. He should not have let himself be delayed!

  He took the last three steps up in a single bound and almost trod in a fresh pile of horse dung half-concealed among the roots . . . and that was just another reason why those barbarians were not suited to the royal court!

  On the other hand, they were unconditionally loyal. No assassin would ever be among them. When they were involved in a feud, there was nothing secret about it at all. In their eyes, a battle that one could not talk about over a round of drinks wasn’t worth the effort.

  When Ollowain reached the pavilion, he dropped to one knee before his queen. “I beg forgiveness for having kept you waiting, my queen.”

  Emerelle smiled. “I know you, Ollowain, and I suspect it was your duties that kept you. Now rise. This is not a day at court. There is no reason to kneel for me any longer.”

  Was she expecting him to report what had held him up? Or did she already know? Emerelle was able to slice through the veils of the future, and she repeatedly surprised those at court with her knowledge. Is that why she was so calm? Did she know that nothing was going to happen to her that night? Had she made her own preparations without informing even him?

  “Let us stand here a moment, Ollowain, and enjoy the loveliness of the evening.” She leaned against the pavilion railing and looked up into the branches of Matha Murganleuk. The crown of the magnolia spread across the broad courtyard like an enormous baldachin. The leaves whispered in a light breeze, and here and there, a flower sailed earthward in wide spirals.

  The centuries had passed over Emerelle seemingly without effect. She was among the few still alive who had seen the Alben, and yet the queen appeared almost childlike. Emerelle was a delicate figure—Ollowain was more than a head taller. Dark-blond hair tumbled in waves to her bare milk-white shoulders. Tonight she was wearing the Dress of Eyes, shimmering red with a pattern of yellow circles and black points. One had to approach the queen very closely to realize what was so special about the dress—it was alive! Thousands of butterflies had settled onto a plain, green underrobe. With their wings spread, they covered the queen as if to hide her from overly curious looks. When they moved, waves seemed to undulate across the dress. And every wing was marked with a large yellow-black eye.

  Without warning, Emerelle turned to him. The butterfly wings rustled softly. The queen held out the golden horn to Ollowain. “Drink, my guardian. You must be thirsty.”

  Was he sweating again? The queen would never mention his defect openly. But wasn’t there a concealed barb in her words? He took the drinking horn.

  Emerelle seemed enraptured. She gave him a melancholy smile, and her pale-brown eyes seemed to look right through him. The queen, in her mind, was clearly somewhere far away. The swordmaster took a good swig from the horn. It was cider, perfectly cooled. Fresh and sweet, from late-summer apples.

  “Drink it all, down to the dregs,” said Emerelle quietly. “This will be a long night.” The queen looked up again into the crown of the magnolia tree.

  She is saying good-bye, thought Ollowain uneasily. As if she were never going to see Matha Murganleuk again.

  His eyes roamed over the walls, which were overgrown with creeping vines. White oriels jutted through the tapestry of plants like rocky outcrops, and lights burned in a few windows. Emerelle had traveled to Vahan Calyd with only a small entourage this year. Master Alvias had remained behind, as had Obilee and many others. Most of the palace there in Vahan Calyd stood empty—which was not unusual, for until the next festival, only a few servants would stay behind to keep the place in order. Too few to control the flourishing wilderness around the Woodmer. In a sense, the condition of the palace reflecte
d Emerelle’s rule. She rarely involved herself in the affairs of the elven clans, in the blood feuds of the centaurs or disreputable businesses of the fauns. She left them to their own devices, as long as they did not cross a certain boundary. But when that happened, Emerelle reacted severely. As she had when she banished Noroelle, who had been as close to the queen as a daughter.

  Some observers liked to call the palace dilapidated. But for Ollowain, it had an irresistible attraction. The proliferation of plants was cut back only where it threatened the structure of the palace, and over the centuries, a wild beauty had evolved that no builder or gardener could have designed.

  Emerelle sighed softly and turned to Ollowain again. With every movement she made, shimmering waves billowed across the Dress of Eyes. And then it settled again, and the large wing eyes seemed to stare at him. “It is time to go.”

  “I have had a small sailboat prepared, my queen. You do not have to attend the festival. It is a mistake to go there. It is all but impossible for me to keep you from harm in the crowd.”

  “You cannot run from your fate, Ollowain. It clings to your heels like a shadow. It will catch up with us no matter what we do.” She waved to the centaurs, and the exuberant noise of their carousing fell silent. Apart from Orimedes, their leader, there were no warriors of note among them. Until now, Ollowain had considered the queen’s choice of honor guard to be no more than a whim, but now he suspected what hidden intention lay behind it.

  “You should tell me what you are expecting to happen this evening, my queen,” he whispered. “I will be better able to protect you.”

  “I don’t know what will happen. The veils of the future won’t show me what they conceal. Something foreign is interfering with my magic, something that can disrupt the spell of the mirror. Its intervention is changing the future almost hourly. I do not know what is waiting for us in the harbor, swordmaster. But one thing is certain: the blood will start to flow tonight. The sword will decide Albenmark’s future.” Her pupils widened. She stared through him as if she were looking far into the distance, as if she could see the approaching catastrophe in front of her there and then.

  The centaurs carried Emerelle’s sedan to the pavilion. It had been finished only that day. Servants had decorated it with masses of flowers, and even now, at the start of the evening, dozens of hummingbirds swarmed around the blossoms. Ollowain scrutinized the strange chair doubtfully. A small boat had been used, one of the broad-beamed, flat-bottomed boats the fishermen used among the mangroves. As far as the swordmaster could see, the only change that had been made were a few holes carved in the hull of the boat, where the poles for carrying it had been pushed through. The queen, with her choice of sedan, wanted to express her solidarity with the inhabitants of Vahan Calyd.

  Stretching a little, Emerelle stepped from the raised pavilion into the sedan, and Ollowain followed her. The queen braced herself against a crossbar that had been attached unobtrusively to the mast. Every movement she made was accompanied by the soft thrumming of the butterflies’ wings. Sometimes, small swarms freed themselves from the dress and fluttered around the queen, never flying more than an arm’s length away.

  Six padded carrying poles had been pushed through the holes in the hull of the boat. On a command from Orimedes, the centaurs grasped the poles and hoisted the sedan onto their shoulders. Ollowain had to hold tightly to the mast to avoid being thrown off his feet by the sudden jerk. A pack of holdes appeared from beneath the thwarts of the boat. The small green-brown creatures did not even reach Ollowain’s knee. They were distant cousins of the kobolds and lived among the mangroves of the Woodmer. Their heads appeared to be far too large for their small, wiry bodies, and each wore nothing but a leather loincloth and a colorful headband.

  “Come on, you swamp lice! You’re serving the queen!” scolded a gray-haired holde, his headband glimmering with gold thread. He was the only holde to carry a knife at his waist. His yellow eyes gleamed up at the swordmaster. “May I offer his most splendid knightship something to drink?” he asked in an unctuous voice. The broad grin on his face bore little correspondence with his oily tone.

  Ollowain dabbed the sweat from his forehead.

  “Have I already introduced Gondoran, my boatmaster here at the palace?” Emerelle asked casually. “It was his idea to convert this little boat into a sedan.”

  “Very original,” Ollowain replied curtly. “Perhaps it would be better after all to enter the harbor on horseback?”

  Gondoran glared malevolently at Ollowain. At the same time, he seemed surprised, for a moment, at least. The suggestion of riding horses instead of using his clever sedan boat had probably ruffled him.

  “No,” said Emerelle quietly, but her tone of voice made it clear that she would not discuss that particular decision.

  The leader of the holdes grinned triumphantly and ordered his men to lower the top of the mast so that the sedan could be carried through the long entrance tunnel and down to the quays.

  “March!” the centaur prince commanded. He himself was positioned alongside the mast. Ollowain saw how the weight of the boat pressed into the centaur’s shoulders. Orimedes turned his head to Ollowain. The centaur had a broad nose that had clearly been bashed several times. A white scar cut across his left eyebrow, and a poorly groomed blond beard framed his face. Around his chin, the hair was discolored by spilled wine. A wide sword belt fitted with gold stretched across the manhorse’s bare chest, and Orimedes also wore a dagger strapped to his upper left arm. All the centaurs stank of wine, sweat, and horsehair.

  The column moved off slowly. A troop of riders joined them from another courtyard, magnificently dressed young elves, their horses led by fauns holding the reins. Ollowain knew most of them only fleetingly. They were guests of the palace, and there had been no opportunity to leave them behind.

  The tunnel resonated with the sound of hooves. The air was musty and thick and reeked of rotting plants and old stone. In some places, a tangle of fungus, glowing greenly, swelled from the walls. Small lizards sought refuge in the gaps between the stones as the column of riders moved past.

  The calls of conch horns greeted them from every tower in the city when they finally exited the tunnel. The street was full of jubilant Albenkin, and a way between them only opened directly in front of the queen’s sedan. Cloven-hooved fauns with wild beards carried kobold children—who would otherwise get lost among all the trampling feet—on their shoulders. At the end of the street, Ollowain even saw a frost giant, obviously suffering in the heat, fanning itself with a fan the size of a sail to keep cool. Between the ruined pillars of a crumbling tower stood three of the Oreaden, mountain nymphs who only rarely left the Iolids. Beautiful Apsaras danced on the waters of a large fountain as surely as if they were on parquet. They were slightly more voluptuous than elven women. They had painted their naked bodies with bandag; glyphs twisted like snakes on their skin. It was said that they wrote their most secret desires on their bodies and that they would be true to whoever was able to decipher the arcane script until the way into the moonlight separated the one taken from the one still searching.

  A kobold band broke from the ranks of the onlookers. They had all decorated their caps with lotus flowers, which—considering the capriciousness of the small race—was almost the same as wearing a uniform. For a few lively bars, the trumpets, drums, rattles, and triangles followed the bandmaster’s stipulations, until his beard suddenly began to twist and writhe and his baton got caught in it. While the bandmaster stumbled and cursed and the merry tune descended into a clanging chaos, Ollowain noticed two Lutins disappear between the legs of an enormous minotaur. The fox-headed kobold clan were notorious for their crude mischief and only ever used their extraordinary magical gifts to play pranks on others.

  On the queen’s sedan, the holdes were just hoisting the elven flag, a golden horse on a green ground. Ollowain stayed close to the queen. His eyes scanned the crowd restlessly, then swung up to the terraces of the palaces they
were passing. In the little boat, they drifted high above the heads of the onlookers around them. It was a nightmare! The queen was a perfect target for the assassin, who was lurking somewhere out there.

  Ollowain tried again to put himself into the killer’s mind. How would he kill Emerelle if he wanted to? The murderer could hardly have known that Emerelle would appear in this strange sedan chair. Ollowain himself had found out about it just that afternoon. Only the holdes who had prepared the boat had been aware of the queen’s intentions in advance. Was it conceivable that one of them had betrayed the secret?

  Ollowain balled his fists in helpless fury. It was hopeless. The assassin would always be one step ahead of him. All he could do was react, whereas the killer had a thousand opportunities.

  A swarm of tiny riverbank sprites descended from the sky. Hardly bigger than dragonflies, they buzzed around the queen and dusted her hair with perfumed pollen. Hundreds of butterflies ascended from the Dress of Eyes and rose into the air to dance with the sprites in colorful, shimmering circles overhead. Emerelle laughed and waved to the crowd all around.