Elven Winter

by Bernhard Hennen

  He grasped Alfadas’s hand in a warrior grip. “In thirty days, I’ll return. Then we can bring the king’s army to Albenmark.” Ollowain searched the face of his foster son for an answer to all the questions that stood between them since the king’s visit. Alfadas had to know what it meant to take an army of humans to Albenmark. Something had happened between the jarl and the king. It made no difference how warm and sincere Alfadas was, Ollowain could clearly feel the silent sadness that had engulfed the human.

  “What about Silwyna?” Alfadas asked.

  “She did not want to go back yet.” Ollowain shook his head. “She is just as garrulous as you. Yilvina will watch over the queen. She will not leave Emerelle’s side.”

  “Emerelle is safe here.”

  Ollowain recalled the human king and the strange audience with the queen. He had insisted on kneeling at Emerelle’s bedside and had then whispered in her ear. Only he and Alfadas had witnessed the bizarre scene. Afterward, Horsa had lied to his followers and claimed that he had spoken at length with the queen. Humans! They were like children! Ever since they had seen the centaur Orimedes, they had been prepared to believe anything. They seemed to have an insatiable need to touch the manhorse.

  “Ready?” Lyndwyn said urgently. Golden light rose from the rock, and a gate opened. “Come on!”

  Alfadas took a step back. “We will meet again soon, my friend!” Ollowain stepped quickly into the light, almost as if he were fleeing.

  Lyndwyn led them just a few steps through the void; then they stepped out through a second gate. A broad expanse of snow-covered hills spread before them. The wind howled through the branches of a dead tree that stood close beside the gate. From its bleached boughs hung battered shields and the skulls of horses.

  Orimedes welcomed the wintry landscape with a whoop of joy. Then he clapped Lyndwyn so heartily on the shoulder that she almost fell face-first into the snow. “Good job, witch! I’ve never got back here so fast.”

  “Where are your men?” Gondoran asked indignantly. The holde’s teeth were chattering. He pulled on a fur sack that Asla had sewn for him, a shapeless thing with holes for his arms and head.

  The centaur spread his arms out wide, as if to take in the entire countryside around them. “Somewhere out there. I come from a race of wanderers. We never stay long in one place. I’ll find them. Believe me, you’ll like it here. The wind in your hair as you gallop through the hills is wonderful!”

  Gondoran’s face twisted into a grimace. “I admit I have never in my life seen snow, but it seems to me to be the only form of water that I don’t much care for.” He lifted his hands to his lips and blew on his clammy fingers.

  “You’ll get used to it.” The centaur wore neither cape nor vest, and the cold seemed not to bother him in the slightest. His breath puffed from his mouth in small clouds. His hooves trampled the snow. “I will gather my warriors and bring them to the Snaiwamark. It will take me a few weeks, Ollowain. One does not go to war without a decent drink first. And each of the clans will expect me to stay for a feast.” The centaur grinned broadly. “Some grueling weeks ahead.”

  “If you’d told me that in advance, I’d have stayed in the human world,” Gondoran grumbled. “Going from one orgy of drinking to the next with a centaur in the middle of a world of frozen water! Fate is testing me . . .”

  “Did I mention that we expect guests to drain at least one horn of mead with us? Anything less would be an insult.”

  “As long as you don’t piss in your mead, I’ll manage.”

  Orimedes patted the holde’s head. “Good boy. My people will have a lot of fun with you, my friend.” Then he turned to Ollowain. “Good luck, swordmaster. Until we meet again in the Snaiwamark!” With a whinnying whoop, the prince stormed down the hill.

  “So now we’re alone,” Lyndwyn said. She still wore the damaged dress she had on when they fled Vahan Calyd and had flatly refused to tolerate anything made of coarse human cloth near her skin. She looked intently at Ollowain. Did she expect an apology for how he had treated her as a traitor?

  “Can you find the way to Phylangan?” he asked, his voice cool.

  “Can your tongue find its way to admitting my innocence?” she replied archly.

  “Do you think I trust you because you were forced to help the queen?”

  “Do you know what it means to heal, Ollowain? It means experiencing the pain of the injured person. It was not the shingles that robbed me of consciousness when we fled. It was the queen’s pain. She had fifty-three separate burns, seven broken bones, a pierced lung, and a gaping wound in her chest. The chest wound alone was enough to kill her, if not for me. And I saved your life, too. What else do I have to do to convince you that I did not give the signal to bombard Vahan Calyd?”

  Ollowain looked at her with disdain. She did not appear cold at all, and it was clear to him that she had cast a spell to keep herself warm . . . one of those damned spells he had never managed to learn. And she did not even have to concentrate. It simply happened, just like that.

  “You would have to shed your skin to make me trust you. You belong to Shahondin’s clan, and Shahondin is a sworn enemy of the queen. It is the skin in which you were born . . . I will never trust you. Now take us to Phylangan.”

  “And if I simply walk away? I could go anywhere I like.”

  The swordmaster brought one hand to his sword belt. “Do you think you could get through the gate faster than my blade could fly, traitor?”

  “I am a sorceress. It would be a simple matter to protect myself from your sword.” She looked at him intensely.

  “Shall we try it?”

  “If I die, you’re stuck.” She pointed to the south. The centaur was no more than a small, dark speck among the snow-covered hills. “Orimedes can’t see you anymore. And the cold will kill you if you stay here.”

  “Do you think that would stop me from doing something?”

  Lyndwyn lowered her eyes. “And the queen? Who will bring Emerelle back from the human world if you die?”

  “Orimedes knows where Emerelle is. He will rescue her if I no longer can.”

  “So that is why the queen chose you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “About you, Ollowain,” Lyndwyn snapped at him angrily. “You don’t exist. All you know is the destination, and you sacrifice everything to reach it. I could understand that if you were doing it for yourself, but you are no more than an empty shell. There is a kind of wasp that lays its eggs inside other insects. The young eat their host slowly, from the inside. That’s you, Ollowain. An empty shell in which Emerelle has laid her eggs. You don’t exist anymore. You live only for her to use.”

  “Are you finished?”

  She said nothing, just stood and glared at him in her fury. Or was there something else in her eyes?

  “Take me to Phylangan!”

  She bowed like a servant. “As you wish, master.” Lyndwyn kneeled beside the dead tree. Her left hand moved across the snow, feeling for something. She placed her right hand over her heart, then closed her eyes.

  Ollowain stepped up close beside her. She was pretty, but he could not let that blind him! Most importantly, she was Shahondin’s granddaughter. She was a traitor.

  A gate of warm light rose from the snow, the red of the evening sky after a clear summer’s day. “Let’s go.” He took hold of Lyndwyn’s wrist roughly and stepped into the void. After just five steps, they stood before another gate, although this one shone in all the colors of the rainbow.

  “The destination,” said Lyndwyn.

  Ollowain was still holding on to her wrist. He was at her mercy. From where he stood, it was impossible to say whether she had truly brought him to Phylangan. The gate might just as easily open into the prince of Arkadien’s palace, the heart of Shahondin’s snake pit. There was only one way to find out. His mind made up, he stepped through the light. An abyss opened at his feet—he was standing on a bridge of milk-white stone. It had no raili
ngs. The stone beneath his feet was polished so smooth that any water falling on it would trickle away. The Shalyn Falah! But that was impossible! There was no Albenstar on the bridge. And the cliffs around the Shalyn Falah were not forested.

  Perplexed, Ollowain looked around. The bridge extended only a short distance out over the valley basin, which would have been two miles or more across. The steep mountainsides all around were terraced. The walls mimicked the structure of rocky outcrops, so that at first glance it was hard to see any difference. But their elegant curves betrayed them. Thin, sheer pillars of rock rose vertically from the bottom of the valley in no discernible pattern. The highest of them seemed almost to reach the sky. Fine white rivulets of water descended from their tops, following twisting striae in the blue-gray granite. The entire valley appeared too harmonious to be natural. Ollowain knew it. Almost five hundred years had passed since the last time he had been here; at that time the Skyhall had been much smaller.

  The swordmaster looked up to the sky: an illusion. It was translucent blue stone, like that on the island close to Vahan Calyd. But here they had removed all the metallic veins, and the illusion looked far more real. They had real clouds that floated vaguely beneath the pellucid ceiling, moving like drifts of fog on a wind-still morning. Everything there was a single, enormous cavern. The heart of Phylangan, the stone garden, the mountain fortress that watched over the only pass that led to the high plains of Carandamon. On his last visit, the Albenstar had still been in a grotto far above the Skyhall . . . the builders and sorcerers of the Normirga must have expanded the hall massively in the centuries in between.

  “Get me away from here,” said Lyndwyn softly. She was trembling all over, staring wide-eyed into the gulf below.

  Ollowain sighed. That was all he needed! He reached one hand toward her; she was standing just one pace behind him.

  “I . . . I can’t.” She suddenly crouched, pressed both hands against the stone of the bridge. Her eyes still stared as if mesmerized into the abyss. “It feels as if the depths are calling me,” she stammered. “I have to jump, to fly like a bird.”

  “Close your eyes,” said Ollowain. “You must not look down. I will lead you across. Come.” He crouched beside her. “Turn your eyes away.”

  “The . . . the chasm . . . it has me. I—”

  He grasped her under her chin and forced her to look at his face. “Do you see my eyes? Lose yourself in their abyss. Tell me what color they are.”

  She tried to turn her head aside again, but he held on to her chin. Her skin was clammy with sweat. All the color had drained from her face. “What do my eyes look like?” Ollowain asked.

  “They are green.”

  The swordmaster took her by one wrist. The palms of her hands were still pressed flat to the surface of the bridge. Her fingers twisted uselessly, trying to find a grip on the smooth stone.

  “You will now stand up. Keep looking into my eyes! Don’t you think that ‘green’ does not do them justice? What kind of green are they? Look more closely.” Ollowain rose to his feet again. He held Lyndwyn with his gaze, and she hesitantly stood up with him.

  “Your eyes are the color of the moss you find on the stones of the sealed Albenstar close to the Shalyn Falah. Your irises are surrounded by a thin black ring. The green is not even; fine lights and shadows run through it.”

  Slowly, Ollowain moved backward. Lyndwyn followed him on unsteady legs. He held both her hands now and had to look into her face to prevent her from turning her eyes away. Beneath them, the valley floor fell away more than two hundred paces.

  “When the dark chasm of your pupils opens, the green changes. It becomes more dense. Darker. I see my reflection in your eyes. Distorted. A grotesque creature . . . I must see in your eyes an image of what you see in me.”

  Lyndwyn had moved very close to him. Her breath softly touched his lips. She was beautiful . . . and desirable. Ollowain cleared his throat. Was she feeling so much better that she was trying to enchant him with a love spell? Had she only feigned her fear of heights? “It is the curve of my eye that distorts your image, Lyndwyn. No more and no less.”

  “The whites of your eyes are flawless,” she said, ignoring his words. “There is no trace of yellow, no burst veins to insult the white with an obscene red. Your eyelashes are full and delicately curved. There are elf women who would envy you your eyelashes. They are immaculate, like the reputation of the keeper of the Shalyn Falah. The swordmaster. The queen’s confidant, the one who knows only his duty.”

  Her voice was a little deeper than a woman’s voice should be, but it was that depth that made her voice sound all the more sensual in Ollowain’s ear. Her voice stood in stark contrast to her thin lips. They looked unkissed. What rubbish, he thought! And Lyndwyn’s eyes were also green, but of a lighter shade and shot through with golden points.

  Ollowain tried to concentrate completely on his steps. He did not lower his eyes, but he closed his heart to what he saw. There was something about Lyndwyn that moved him deeply, that addled his feelings. She knew what it meant to sacrifice yourself to an ideal. To strive for perfection. To outshine all others. But what weaknesses was she trying to conceal behind her ambition?

  No! His thoughts were once again far too close to her. She was a renegade! Focus on your steps, he reprimanded himself. He felt the hard stone through the soft soles of his boots. It was smooth, slippery. And yet this bridge was not as treacherous as the real Shalyn Falah. There was no spray from a river below to wet the stone, nor gusting winds that tugged at one’s clothes.

  “Do you believe that the eyes could be the window to the soul?” Lyndwyn asked.

  “Would I find gold in your soul?”

  “Because you consider me a liar and a traitor, you will probably have to answer that question yourself. What use would my words be to you?”

  Ollowain was surprised. She had not spoken with any condemnation in her voice. No, she sounded more sad than accusatory. Be on your guard, he warned himself. She is just playing with you. She wants to capture you, to lull your suspicions with gentle words.

  The ground crunched beneath Ollowain’s feet. The stone was no longer polished smooth, but rough, and the soles of his boots found better footing. He glanced over his shoulder—they were off the bridge.

  Someone clapped.

  “I have been the keeper of the Mahdan Falah for more than a hundred years, and I have never yet seen anyone cross it like that.” An elven soldier stepped from behind a rosebush. He wore a pale-gray tunic with thin silver trim along the hems. A long dark-red cape billowed from his shoulders, held at the neck by a ring-shaped clasp depicting a snake biting its own tail. His sword belt and leather sheath were the same shade of red as his cape, as was the crest that decorated the high, pointed helmet the keeper held casually under his arm. The elf had long blond hair that fell in curls to his shoulders. There was something doll-like about his pale skin and the even lines of his face. “You are the high point of this season,” the keeper continued in his soft, ingratiating voice. “It is rare for anyone to enter the Skyhall through the Albenstar. Would you be so kind as to introduce yourselves?”

  “I am Ollowain, swordmaster to Queen Emerelle, and this is Lyndwyn, sorceress at Emerelle’s court.”

  The keeper pursed his lips. “An answer as forbidding as your appearance is adventurous. Now tell me on what business you have come here.” Although the soldier maintained as much distance as possible with his words, Ollowain could read the ill-concealed curiosity in his eyes. He was certain that the soldier had heard his name before. Anyone who kept watch over this macabre copy of the Shalyn Falah must certainly know who, for decades, had been in charge of the original.

  “We wish to speak to Landoran, the prince of Snaiwamark and the high plateau of Carandamon. We are here in the service of our ruler, Queen Emerelle. Our business cannot be delayed.”

  “Allow me to point out that it is up to me to decide on the urgency of the business of uninvited guests. As mu
ch as it might please the prince to chat with guests who have, no doubt, traveled far, his duties naturally take up a great deal of his time. I will send a messenger to him. May I ask you to wait in the guest pavilion while we await a reply?” The guard clapped his hands, and a kobold stepped out from behind the rosebush. The little fellow wore gray livery and black boots with silver buttons. The colors matched well with his dark, olive-colored skin. The gray of his uniform was more subdued than that worn by the soldier. “Dolmon, you heard our guests,” said the guard. “Apprise the prince of their business. Ah . . .” The keeper turned back to Ollowain. “You don’t happen to have a letter of introduction that identifies you as a servant of the queen?”

  “No. And to be honest, this is the first time anyone has held me up when I have traveled in the queen’s service, but I can see that one has to make allowances for the remoteness of Phylangan. Out here in the wilderness, one naturally does not know who is or is not an intimate of the queen.” Ollowain noted the grin that appeared on the face of the kobold behind his master’s back.

  “You may go, Dolmon,” said the soldier. “And no dawdling!”

  “May I also inquire after your name?” Ollowain asked. “Just for the sake of the report that I have to present to my queen about my journey. You would be amazed at how fastidious Emerelle can be about certain things.”

  The guard straightened. “My name is Ronardin.”

  “Very good, Ronardin. Then lead us to your guest pavilion, and I would appreciate it if you would be discreet enough not to offend my traveling companion with your gaze.” The soldier had not glanced in Lyndwyn’s direction even once, but still he paled. He hurried ahead of them toward a small marble pavilion, from where they had a marvelous view of the Skyhall and the Mahdan Falah. The bridge was identical to the Shalyn Falah in every detail bar one—midarch, it came to an abrupt halt in empty space. Seen from the pavilion, its broad curves were like windows that dissected the panorama beyond. Tending that landscape of gardens must have been an endlessly arduous task, work that presumably fell on the shoulders of countless kobolds.