Elven Winter

by Bernhard Hennen

  Ollowain looked around. Several towers in the city still swirled with magical light. Black pillars of smoke rose almost vertically into the night sky. Up there, there was still no wind. A large galley was attempting to escape from the harbor. Its oars were out, and the dark water foamed as the slim ship glided backward away from the quay. Suddenly a strong wind blew from the mangrove swamps toward the city. Several of the burning ships swung on their anchors. Desperately, the helmsman on the galley tried to steer clear. The massive hull of an Arkadienese round ship shattered its port oars. A large cog drifted across the harbor entrance. The first oarsmen were already leaping for their lives from the deck of the galley, their ship hopelessly trapped. In the harbor floated thousands of candles on pieces of cork. Beside them floated the dead, clad in their festive finest.

  The wooden landing stage shuddered beneath the centaurs’ hooves.

  “Set the boat down there,” Yilvina ordered. It was her job to assume command, to prevent Ollowain’s disguise from being discovered. So far, no one had recognized the injured queen lying among the other wounded, but if Ollowain were recognized, their subterfuge would soon be uncovered. Every child in Albenmark knew that in times of emergency, the swordmaster stayed infallibly at the side of the queen. But as long as it remained unclear how many traitors—apart from Lyndwyn and the archer that had shot at Emerelle—there still were, it was better for it to be thought that the queen had fled aboard the Moonshadow.

  The wounded were bedded down with care inside the strange sedan. Gondoran, the leader of the holdes, hopped around between the elves, giving instructions with confidence. Ollowain, with three soldiers of the queen’s guard, had disembarked from the liburna before it sailed. So far, none of the three had paid him much attention. As if as an afterthought, he pulled the silk blanket covering the queen a little higher so that it partly covered her face, which was as cold as a corpse’s. He shivered—the queen must not die!

  He climbed out of the sedan and joined the other guards under Yilvina’s command. Only Lyndwyn remained with the wounded. She had now laid one hand on Emerelle’s chest. The sorceress’s lips moved, but made no sound.

  Ollowain glanced covertly at the blood on the silk sheet.

  On a sign from Yilvina, the sedan was lifted carefully. One of the wounded groaned a little. The centaurs moved off at a walk, but Ollowain almost had to run to keep up with them.

  Many of the warehouses that surrounded the harbor stood in flames, and the swordmaster could see how the flames were spreading deeper into the city. The air was so hot that every breath hurt.

  Yilvina led them along the promenade by the quay. The direct route to the palace was blocked. Dead and injured lay where the fireballs had plunged into the crowds of the fleeing. No one tended to them or tried to extinguish the blazing warehouses.

  A figure in flaming robes ran screaming from a side alley and plunged into the harbor. They were soon wedged helplessly between kobolds, elves, and a small group of minotaurs, making space for themselves with their horns. Riverbank sprites tumbled from the sky on singed wings and tried to cling to the hair and robes of others seeking to escape, but most of them were trampled underfoot.

  The wind grew stronger. Searing hot, it tore at Ollowain’s tabard. The swordmaster pulled the helmet off his head. The cheek guards had grown so hot that they were burning his skin. The other three guards did the same. Their faces were red and marked by blisters. Sparks filled the air like red-hot hail. The wind hissed through the narrow alleys of the docks and fanned the flames onward.

  Gondoran hopped back and forth aboard the little boat, smothering the sparks falling on the injured.

  Yilvina waved and led the party out of the stream of those trying to escape and back down to the quay. “We need water,” she panted. Her lips had split, and her eyes were red. “There are buckets. Soak your clothes with water!”

  Ollowain obeyed. He hurried down some stone steps leading from the quay to the water and started a chain of buckets. Even the brackish harbor water was uncomfortably warm. The storm wind had now picked up so much that long tongues of flame from the burning ships shot almost horizontally across the water. A short distance away, he saw a riverbank sprite clinging desperately to a bollard. Her delicate wings had melted in the heat to a jellylike mass. She looked at Ollowain, her tiny eyes pleading. Then she was torn away, as if snatched by an invisible fist, and flung onto the pyre of burning ships.

  The soldier ahead of Ollowain doused himself with a bucket of water. “You’re the last,” he called to the swordmaster.

  Ollowain did the same, then hurried after the others as they continued along the quay.

  The centaurs forged a path more and more mercilessly, pushing aside anyone not fast enough to get out of their way.

  Ollowain pressed his way ahead to Orimedes. The prince’s steaming, wet hide was covered with burns. Bright sparks danced like flies around his flicking tail. “We have to get away from the quay!” The swordmaster’s voice was little more than a croak, almost lost in the infernal din of the flames and the screams of the refugees.

  “We will get through,” the centaur bawled back. A young elf girl threw her arms around one of his legs. With her face held down, she begged the centaur to help her. Grumbling, he pulled her onto his back. Only then did Ollowain see the injured girl’s face. Her eyelashes and eyebrows and the hair above her forehead were burned away. Her nose was no more than a formless hole, and where her eyes should have been gaped bloody hollows. She babbled an endless stream of thanks as she buried her ruined face in the centaur’s flowing hair. Her shock at the sudden inferno seemed to have extinguished her sense of pain. At least, for the moment.

  “We’ll take Lotus Rise!” the swordmaster ordered.

  “But that is much steeper! We’ll be too slow,” Orimedes objected.

  “The houses there are built of stone. The flames won’t spread as fast up Lotus Rise as they do here in the wooden warehouses.”

  Ollowain could see the cheek muscles of the centaur tense. Orimedes ground his teeth in anger, but Ollowain’s order was to be carried out.

  Many of those trying to flee had jumped into the harbor. The water offered a haven from the raging flames, but anyone taking refuge in it would be caught in a trap when their attackers entered the harbor. They would be at the mercy of the conquering forces.

  He could not put Emerelle in that position. Who could their enemy be? With whom had Shahondin allied himself?

  A deeper sound between the general tumult and the flames made Ollowain prick up his ears. It sounded like a sigh, although it would have been the sigh of a titan.

  “The wall—” The scream was lost in the combined roar of a thousand smaller noises. Ollowain instinctively lifted his shield above his head. Heavy blows rained down on him.

  The queen! The swordmaster reached over the side of the boat and pulled himself up. All around him, large red shingles came tumbling from above. The warehouse beside them, attacked by the flames, seemed to rise up in a final act of rebellion. It was shedding its roof!

  With his large, oval shield, he covered Emerelle’s head and upper body. As if by a miracle, the queen had not been hit by any of the falling shingles. Lyndwyn had been less fortunate. She lay unconscious beside Emerelle and was bleeding from a gash on her forehead.

  The holdes had sought shelter beneath the low thwarts of the boat. Gondoran was the only one who stayed close to the queen. With desperate courage, he used a broken oar to swat away any shingles that fell in Emerelle’s direction. But cursing, he finally had to take cover himself beneath Ollowain’s shield.

  The centaurs had broken into a gallop. The boat slewed wildly from one side to the other. Suddenly, there was a tremendous jolt. The boat tipped and landed with a cracking noise on stone, as if it had run aground on hidden rocks in a stormy sea. Ollowain was thrown forward and slammed into the mast. His shield arm took the full force of the blow, sending ringing pain shooting through his shoulder. Tears sprang to
his eyes. Blinking, he pulled himself together and sat up to see what had happened. Two of the centaurs lay motionless on the ground, their limbs splayed grotesquely. A falling beam had struck both of them. Even as he stared at their dead bodies, a second beam crashed to the ground beside them. One of the centaurs shied and reared up on its hind legs. The boat rocked. Ollowain was just able to grab hold of the mast as the wounded slipped back to the stern. One of the men groaned. The other no longer moved.

  “Nessos, you take front left!” Orimedes ordered calmly. “Antafes, stay on the left, beside the sedan. I’ll stay right. We take over if anyone else falls. The sedan can’t be allowed to fall again. Let’s go, we—” A maelstrom of crashing and grinding cut him off. The facade of the warehouse began to lean out in the direction of the quay. Much as Shahondin always bowed with such excessive slowness before Emerelle to mock the very act of submission, the house wall now bowed outward with disdainful sluggishness. A wall of flame twenty paces high, bowing before death.

  One of the holdes leaped out of the little boat with a cry and ran for the harbor. The centaurs were straining to make it out of the death zone. All around them, beams and roofing planks pelted down. Ollowain helped Gondoran and his remaining companions toss overboard the burning rubble that fell into the boat. The elf girl who was clinging to Orimedes lost her grip and slipped off his back. Ollowain saw her fall among the hooves of the other manhorses. She was thrown around like a rag doll and finally left behind, lying motionless.

  The quay had emptied within moments. Almost everyone still left down there had jumped into the harbor basin. Covered with broken red roofing shingles, the cobblestones looked as if they were bleeding. With their iron-shod hooves, the centaurs had trouble finding a grip and slipped constantly. The boat jolted left and right. Ollowain had crouched low; he kept his back pressed against one of the thwarts and held Emerelle in his arms. Her head rocked with every new jolt.

  Nessos went down sprawling. Antafes instantly jumped in and took his place. The blond Nessos tried to get back on his feet, but his legs would not hold him up. Ollowain saw a bloody bone protruding through his hide. The centaur raised his arms defiantly, as if to embrace the wall of flames descending toward him, and then he was engulfed. Like an avalanche of fire, the wall crashed down onto the street, and parts of the roof tumbled into the harbor itself.

  The wave of heat hit Ollowain like a punch in the face. He felt his skin draw tight, and his eyes teared again as a wall of sparks showered down on them. Screams rang from the water.

  “Up here!” he cried. The centaurs had run past Lotus Rise. “Back!”

  A broad marble stairway wound up the fortresslike hillside. After twenty steps and the first bend, they felt as if they had entered another world. Lotus Rise was lined with magnificent structures adorned with columns. Tendrils of ivy wound upward in shaded niches, and on every step, lights had been set out. Only a few of the villas here had caught fire, and kobolds and goat-legged fauns were doing their best to bring the flames under control. They had formed a bucket brigade to a fountain. The towering buildings with their decorative gables blocked the view of the harbor. Only the crimson sky and a few soot-blackened figures who had escaped this far gave any sign of the inferno farther down. Ollowain eyed the few survivors scrambling up Lotus Rise from the flames below mistrustfully. Was someone following them? What had become of the archer who had tried to kill Emerelle? Had he or she seen through their ruse?

  Ollowain felt something warm trickle over his hand. The wound in the queen’s breast was bleeding again. “We will help you in the palace,” he whispered, supporting her head. She could not hear him, his rational mind said, and yet he hoped that in some way he was helping her. As long as he talked to her, he felt less useless.

  “It is not much farther. Andorin will heal you. No one casts more powerful healing spells than he.”

  Only then did Ollowain realize that the centaurs had come to a halt. They had reached the round plaza atop the hill. The villas and palaces had given way to gardens. Up here, the fireballs had hardly done any damage at all. From the hilltop, one could gaze far out to sea, and the hilltop also commanded a view over a large part of the city. The harbor, the warehouses, and the palatial tower of the prince of Reilimee, which stood at the end of a stone pier, had all been consumed by flames.

  In the quarters that lay farther from the sea, only a few buildings were burning. But Ollowain could see how the hot wind was driving the fire inland toward a single, gigantic pillar of flame: Emerelle’s palace! The swordmaster’s breath caught in his throat. The tower lay far beyond the range of the catapults, and the flying sparks could not possibly have carried the fire so deeply into the city yet. Someone must have set fire to the queen’s tower! The conspiracy against Emerelle went far deeper than he had feared.

  “What now, swordmaster?” asked Orimedes tiredly. The centaur gave his men a signal to set down the sedan. “Where do we go now?”

  The elf was still gazing in incomprehension at the burning tower. Was it possible for such a far-reaching conspiracy to remain hidden from Emerelle? Or had she known about everything that would come? He recalled the way she had looked at Matha Murganleuk earlier, the enormous souled tree in Magnolia Court. His intuition had not been mistaken . . . Emerelle had said good-bye. She must have known about the fate of the palace.

  “Ollowain!” Orimedes was standing in front of him now. “Where do we go?”

  The swordmaster looked around helplessly. “We don’t dare take her down there in the sedan. Whoever set fire to the palace is just waiting to get his hands on the queen.”

  “Nonsense!” the centaur prince grumbled. “That makes no sense. The burning palace is a warning. It would have been much simpler just to lure us into an ambush there.”

  “Maybe they feel so superior that they just don’t care. They know that we can no longer escape them.”

  “They, they, they!” Orimedes’s tail flicked angrily through the air. “Who are ‘they’ supposed to be? Who is bombarding the city? Who set fire to the palace? Maybe there’s a simple explanation for the burning tower. Flying sparks. Or a lamp that got knocked over . . .” His voice trailed off. It must have been clear even to him that no lamp had caused that fire.

  Gondoran had climbed out of the boat and joined them. He clambered onto a marble bench and looked down at the palace. “She knew this was going to happen when she called on us to make the sedan.”

  Ollowain looked up. “Say that again.”

  “What?”

  “The queen instructed you to build this sedan?” What had Emerelle said shortly before they left? Have I already introduced Gondoran, my boatmaster here at the palace? It was his idea to convert this little boat into a sedan. “Didn’t you make the sedan as a gift to the queen?”

  “We did,” the boatmaster confirmed. “But she asked for a sedan like this. She asked me to find one of the mussel fishermen’s boats from the mangroves.”

  “But she said—”

  “I know what she said at Magnolia Court. And in a certain sense, it was my idea. I chose this boat from a dozen I could have had. But the fundamental idea of converting a boat into a sedan chair was hers. Maybe what she told us at Magnolia Court was a clue of some kind?”

  “If you ask me, the whole thing sounds like the whim of a capricious queen,” Orimedes objected.

  “No!” The swordmaster’s voice was determined. “She was not . . . she is not capricious! She was worried that there was a traitor very close to her. She wanted to give those who proved true to her a hidden sign. Only those who risked their own lives to carry her through the flames to this hilltop could recognize the hidden meaning of her words.”

  “You mean, she knew what was happening? But that is . . . that is . . . I don’t have words for it! She is almost dead. My tail is half-burned off, half of my men have perished . . . and she knew it all? If that was the case, I should have left her on board her accursed ship.” Orimedes stamped his hooves furiously.
“That cannot be! She could have stopped all of it!” He pointed back down toward the harbor. “Hundreds, maybe thousands, have died in the last hour. Shame on the queen if she knew that this would happen and did nothing to stop it!”

  Ollowain could understand the centaur’s straightforward thinking, although his abusive tone was not acceptable. The swordmaster’s own belief remained unshaken: Emerelle had done what was right. She had once tried to explain to him what a curse it was to be able to see into the future. When she was still very young, she had saved the life of her brother in arms Mahawan in the first troll war. Ollowain presumed that he had also been the queen’s lover, although she had never said so. She had used her knowledge of the future to rescue him, but by doing so, she had fundamentally altered her lover’s future. Because he did not die in the hour that fate had determined he should, he could also not be born again. Later, he disappeared during a quest in the Shattered World. He was never reborn, his soul forever erased. Emerelle had explained that Mahawan had been destined to one day wear the crown of Albenmark. She had also said that he would have been a good king. Her selfish actions had robbed Albenmark of that ruler. From then on, Emerelle was extremely careful about using her knowledge of the possible futures.

  “She knows what is best for us. We don’t need to be able to understand her decisions,” Ollowain said.

  Orimedes snorted disdainfully. “If her words are full of hidden meanings, then she is still interfering with the course of the future. She could just as easily say, ‘Do this, don’t do that!’”