Elven Winter

by Bernhard Hennen

  Ollowain took his leave from Yilvina with a warrior’s salute. Even there in the house, she had not removed her twin swords. The belt that held the two blades crossed over her chest, and although she too now wore human clothes, Ollowain had brought her back a mail shirt and vambraces from Phylangan so that she could again look like a warrior of repute. With her cropped hair and high cheekbones, Yilvina’s face emanated something forbidding. She seemed cold and unapproachable, and Ollowain hoped that her inhospitable nature would not provoke Asla. Getting on with Yilvina was not the easiest thing in the world. Perhaps she was too much a warrior? Her eyes alone were filled with defiance.

  “May your road lead you back to Albenmark,” said Ollowain.

  “Only at the side of my queen,” Yilvina replied curtly.

  The swordmaster knew that Yilvina had little time for polite clichés. He left the house silently and mounted his waiting stallion; the magnificent white horse carried him around the fjord until close to the summit of the Hartungscliff. When he reached the swath of scree, he dismounted and led the stallion by the reins.

  His route led him past children and old men. Everyone from miles around was on the way to see the magical gateway open. Kalf carried an old woman, too weak to climb the mountain herself, on his back. Ollowain saw a woman carrying in her arms a girl with beautiful brown eyes. The child must have been five or six years old, and her mother spoke to her incessantly, describing the blue of the fjord and how tiny the huts below looked from up so high. Then Ollowain understood: the girl’s eyes did not move. They stared into nothingness—the little girl was blind.

  He would never understand humans. The scene touched him, though his reason rejected it. It was nonsense to believe that she could describe any more than a fraction of the wonders of this world to her daughter, but the way she rebelled against her daughter’s fate, the way she refused to accept that her daughter was excluded, that was worthy of respect!

  For a while, he walked beside the woman and listened to her awkward words. She described him, too. She called him a thin, white man with golden hair. Ollowain allowed the girl to touch his hair and his face. He also let her stroke his stallion and then tried to tell her something himself. He was amazed at how helpless his words sounded when he tried to explain what lay ahead of them: the bare dome of the summit, from which a circle of standing stones rose like the points of a crown.

  Alfadas stood in the center of the stone circle. The wind tugged at his woolen cloak. Everyone was watching him—including Ulric, who held his brown pony by its reins, and Asla, whose face was very pale.

  Kadlin twisted her fingers in Blood’s fur. The old Luth priest Gundar was chewing on something but trying to do so without anyone noticing.

  Horsa had his hands on his hips, trying to look as kingly as possible, but his impatience was clear. All around, on the slopes and summit, stood the men who would go with Alfadas. Lambi and his companions were still in chains. Ollowain saw the two brothers from the ferry and also Ole, who was talking insistently to someone who obviously did not want to talk to Ole.

  Alfadas’s fighters were a ragged-looking mob. They carried rolled blankets tied like large sausages across their chests and backs, and each man was loaded down with bags and bottles, emergency provisions for Albenmark, in case something unforeseen happened. Their eyes were bright—they expected no less than a miracle.

  Ollowain looked up to the sky restlessly. It was past midday. The gateway that would take them to the Slanga Mountains should already have opened.

  Wind swept across the fjord, shattering the mirror of its waters. A single seagull soared above them, looking down curiously at all the people below it. It seemed to Ollowain that the bird was afraid to approach too close to the circle of standing stones: it glided around the top of the mountain in a broad arc.

  Suddenly, a column of purple light shot out of the ground at the duke’s feet. It grew taller and wider until it was large enough for a wagon to drive through it with ease.

  Alfadas raised both arms. The murmurings of the crowd fell silent. Only the rush of the wind and the far cry of the seagull disturbed the silence.

  “This is the gateway that will lead us into a world of wonder and horror. Step through the purple light and your past will fall away like a snake’s old skin, if that is what you want. Maybe darkness awaits us beyond the gate. Maybe we will reach the Slanga Mountains in a single step. If you see a golden path before you, then follow it. Do not deviate from it even a hair’s breadth, or you will be lost in the darkness forever. And if your courage fades now and you are afraid to take the last step, do not worry. Everyone standing on these rocks with me now is a hero. Think of the skald’s stories, think of the fabled warriors of the past. You have all followed me to the edge of the world. And of even the most valiant and daring warriors in the Fjordlands, only a handful before you have ever come this far. Are you a fisherman, a trader, a ferryman? It does not matter: you are in no way inferior to the heroes of old. You already have your place in the songs that will one day be sung in the halls of kings. I bow my head before you, and I am proud to be at your side.” And Alfadas, in fact, did bow. A gust of wind blew his long hair in his face when he straightened up again. Fierce determination shone in his eyes. “Asla, I love you, and I will return to you, whatever may come.” He spoke those words calmly, solemnly, as if swearing an oath. Then he turned and with one step vanished into the gleaming light.

  Lysilla came to Ollowain’s side. She smiled derisively and spoke to him in the language of her people. “A little melodramatic, these humans.”

  “Don’t great emotions demand great gestures?” The swordmaster held her eye for a moment. He did not smile. Then he looked across to Silwyna. Ollowain knew that the duke’s last words applied to her as much as to Asla, but the huntress’s face showed nothing.

  AT THE THRESHOLD

  Vahelmin did not know how much time had passed since Skanga’s blood magic had transformed him into a servile beast. Days, weeks . . . or maybe only hours? In the void, there was no way to measure the passing of time.

  Sometimes, Vahelmin hoped he might suddenly awaken, that all of this was no more than a terrible dream. But there was that other creature . . . the source of all the grim meanderings in his mind. That being was deep in him. It had its share in everything he thought. Whenever he hoped he might soon wake, he could feel the beast inside him stir, recalling itself to his mind, turning all his dreams to dust again.

  The dark creature thought of nothing but light. And yet it shied away from the golden paths that crossed the void, far between. Vahelmin had struggled to teach the beast that these ways were now open to them, that the spell that kept the other creatures of the darkness away from the Albenpaths no longer applied to them.

  In return, the beast taught him how to move through the void, where there was no up or down, no solid ground beneath one’s feet. From the first moment on, Vahelmin had had the feeling that he was falling through the nothingness. An endless plunge into a bottomless pit . . .

  The creature in him had reveled at his fear. The void was a world of no light, no smells, no wind that one could feel against the skin. It was more terrible than any dungeon because you were locked inside it with only yourself and what you could feel inside, but with no sensory impression that might offer even a moment of distraction. In this place, devouring the fear of another was a feast without compare. The creature drove him to the very edge of sanity . . . and perhaps he had even crossed that boundary, for only now did his dark brother teach him how to move. First of all, it tried to make him understand that he was not falling. In a world with no horizon, no landmarks by which he could orient himself, a world with no mountains or valleys, there was also no bottom of the abyss to finally break against. He was falling into nothing more than his own imagining, because there was nothing with which he could fix his place in the world.

  Once Vahelmin comprehended that, he had been able to overcome his fear. He learned to move with the power
of his thoughts. The network of Albenpaths gave the void a structure, creating waypoints in the trackless abyss.

  The creature that Skanga had melded him with feared the Albenpaths like a disobedient dog feared its master’s whip. The beast did not dare to tread the paths, and yet it prowled the magical ways constantly. It sensed an intruder the way a spider senses something touching its web. Within a moment—at least, that is what it seemed to Vahelmin—they were at the place where something moved in the web. Lurking, skulking, they besieged the Albenpath with other creatures of the darkness, waiting for one of the interlopers to make the mistake of abandoning the safe path.

  If one left the path, the light that marked the pathway faded immediately. From the void, the golden web was invisible. One sensed it when one drew close, but it did not help to find one’s bearings in the darkness. The beast inside Vahelmin feared the power with which the Alben had once attired their ways. But now that they were both one, they could break through the protective spell with ease. Now it was Vahelmin who grazed on his dark soul brother’s fears as he led him along the path of light.

  The moment they passed into the net of Albenpaths, Vahelmin remembered that they were searching for someone. An elf woman . . . the queen! But he could sense no trace of Emerelle. And his memory of Shahondin also returned. Had they not entered the web together? Why had his father abandoned him? Had he picked up the queen’s trail?

  Driven by a desire not to lag behind Shahondin in any respect, Vahelmin learned that he could also leave the void. In those places where the Albenpaths crossed in a star, it was simple to escape the darkness. When he broke out the first time, he found himself in a place of light and sand, standing in the center of a wide black basalt circle. Curious, he loped through the sea of sand but found nothing he could take as quarry. The land was dead, and so he returned to the void.

  After that, he ventured a number of smaller forays, testing his abilities. He passed through Albenstars at random but did not stay out long. Here he killed a rabbit, there a deer. Only when he stepped out into a wintry, steppe-like landscape did he feel an urge to stay longer. His white, translucent form, there, blended perfectly with the snowy backdrop. In contrast to predatory animals, he seemed to emit no scent. He was easily able to approach a herd of yaks and prey among them. His jaws met with no resistance when he bit into the flank of a bull, and he tore the light out of the animals easily. The throes of death were delicious, and to watch the weakening of life and see the panic in the eyes of the other beasts, which did not understand what was happening, was an act he reveled in. The light did not really satisfy him, but murder filled him with joy. Or was that sensation simply his dark brother rejoicing?

  One evening, he slipped into a camp of centaurs and murdered a mare that was just then giving birth. As a hunter in that distant time when he had still been an elf, he would never have killed a pregnant animal. It went against every law of the hunt. Now it gave him deep satisfaction to transgress those laws. He killed the defenseless baby boy while he was still connected to his mother by the umbilical cord, and the centaur mare had perished with her child in her arms. Being present to see the frenzy of the enraged father as, drunken, he entered the tent had been almost as arousing as the murder itself. He had just been celebrating the birth of his son with his friends, and in his derangement, he had tried to take his own life.

  After hunting, Vahelmin always returned to the void. For him, it was an enormous, unbounded cave. The predator’s refuge. And he hoped constantly to find some trace of the queen. Skanga had been so certain that they would pick up Emerelle’s trail. Perhaps he only had to wait for the queen to once again enter the network of Albenpaths? He would know if she did, and then he would rob her of her light! A searing pain shot through him. The queen was not his quarry. His limbs seemed about to tear from his body, and he experienced again the night of the transformation, the moment in which Skanga had stolen his body. He was her dog! And he was forbidden from harming the queen. She was Skanga’s spoils! And if he was a good dog, then perhaps he might become an elf again one day.

  A distant tremor startled him from his memories. Something big was moving through the web of Albenpaths. In a thought, he was beside the path that an opened gate had caused to tremble. Hundreds of humans were on their way through the void. They emanated the smell of fear. Vahelmin spent some time delighting just in their fear before breaking through the spell protecting the path, and began marauding among the humans themselves. He proceeded with care. Some of the men wore mail shirts, and the iron burned when he touched it. Most wore no substantial armor and were armed with only an axe or spear. Killing them was easy.

  The beast within him feasted, and he abandoned himself willingly to its cravings. A dozen or more bodies shriveled as he stole their light. Their horror sweetened the killings. But however many he killed, they barely quelled his hunger. It was like eating mussels. One slurped one down but enjoyed the pleasure of eating it for only a fleeting moment before tossing the empty shell aside.

  The stream of humans seemed endless, and it soon pleased Vahelmin to only nibble at them, to steal only a portion of their life force. Fear could taste so deliciously diverse! Some of the men who saw him fell into panic and fled the Albenpath, only to become a meal for the shadow creatures that lurked beyond the protective spell.

  Where were the men coming from? His curiosity overcame the hunger of the beast. Vahelmin followed the stream of humans back to its source. They were entering the void at a large Albenstar. He abandoned the path and lay watching and waiting. The beast sensed that there were still many humans outside. It wanted to go out, to spread panic and feast on their terror, but Vahelmin thought of the iron weapons. Beyond the gate, the humans would be fighting on known territory. Once they had overcome their initial fear, they could possibly cause him serious injury. He had to take them by surprise, lie in wait for them when the gathering broke up into smaller groups. He imagined how he would bring dread to their villages. Just a little patience, then he could cross the threshold to the human world in safety. It would be a most enjoyable hunt!

  A NEW WORLD

  Alfadas went from man to man. Most had not noticed at all that something had happened on their passage through the nothingness. They looked around uncertainly in the new world. They were in a clearing in a heavily snowed-in valley. All around them rose gently sloping, forested hills. The elves had pitched a number of silk tents, and colorful banners flapped in the wind, while overhead stretched a clear, blue sky. The sun stood at its zenith, but it gave no warmth. An icy wind blasted across the clearing, carrying ice crystals with it, fine as dust. Alfadas rubbed his hands together. The cold was already creeping into his bones, but the horror of what had happened on the Albenpath went deeper. He looked up at the large, gray menhir that marked the place where the Albenpaths crossed. Intertwined circles had been carved in the stone. If you looked at them for a long time, the lines began to dance before your eyes. He turned away. What had happened? With his father and Ollowain, he had passed through such gates many times when they had been on the search for Noroelle’s son. And each time they had been afraid that the structure of time might shift. But he had never heard of anyone being attacked on the paths.

  Close by, Mag crouched in the snow. He was talking insistently to his younger brother, Torad, and had placed one hand on his shoulder. The boy had his face buried in his hands.

  “Something as cold as ice grabbed at my chest. I only saw it for a moment,” Torad sobbed. “I . . . it was something big, white. It was just suddenly there. The man in front of me jumped to the side and disappeared in the darkness. It was . . .” He raised his head. His blond hair had become thinner and his face was deeply creased. He looked like a man who had seen forty summers, but Alfadas knew that Torad was only sixteen.

  He turned away. No one had been able to tell him what had happened on the Albenpath. Even the elves appeared unsettled. Again and again, they had asserted that the ancients’ paths were safe from att
ack by the creatures of the darkness. Truth wears another face, thought Alfadas bitterly.

  Ragni came hurrying toward him. “I’ve spoken to all of the war jarls. We’ve lost seventeen men. And more than twenty are . . .” He looked searchingly at Alfadas, as if unable to find words for what had happened. “More than twenty have been changed,” he finally said. “And there’s another problem. Do you think the elves could open that gate again?”

  “Why?”

  “Come with me. I’ve taken them into one of the tents so that no one can see what happened. Someone has joined our ranks . . .” The jarl looked at Alfadas with concern. “We are going to be in big trouble.”

  “Could you perhaps—”

  Ragni simply took him by the arm and pulled him along. “No word of this can get out. Lambi and his cutthroats would kill him.” The war jarl led Alfadas into one of the tents. Inside were Dalla, the king’s healer; Veleif, Horsa’s skald; and a lone warrior. The third man’s face was hidden in the shadows of the hood he wore pulled far down over his head.

  “What the devil is this?” asked Alfadas angrily. He understood what Ragni meant. Horsa would think that he had stolen his skald and his bedmate.

  “My king told me this morning that he no longer needs my services.” Dalla had sky-blue eyes, and she looked unwaveringly at Alfadas. “You know why! That talk last night changed him. And it’s good that it did. I would like to offer my services to your men.”

  Ragni grinned lasciviously. “You could have told me that right away.”

  “Not those services . . . I don’t care what you think of me, but I’m no whore. I loved Horsa. And I can do far more than please a man in bed! I can stop heavy bleeding, stitch deep wounds, and restore the balance of vital fluids if your soldiers take ill.”

  “Just the sight of you is throwing my vital fluids out of balance.”