by Simon Archer
Marinka smiled at me and nodded by way of introduction. She had long, flowing hair, and was dressed in soft, silky robes in contrast to Nadeine’s and her brother’s armor. They all shared the same jet black hair and emerald green eyes of the council members.
“Why now?” I asked. “You lost your magic a hundred years ago.”
“More than that,” Magdalina said. “Much more.” Her eyes clouded over as if she was lost in a memory.
“Because now we have you,” Dalibor explained. “We have been aware of the existence of other worlds for some time due to an ancient artifact that allows us to see into them, but we only recently discovered an entryway to yours, which is the first we have found to have a system that so closely mirrors our own. As for why we selected you, Leo, we considered a number of talented musicians, but you showed the most potential.” I met his eyes, old and wise.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, almost under my breath. It felt good to have someone believe in me. I hadn’t had that in a while.
“Will you accept our plea, Leo?” Dalibor asked. “Will you help us?”
I looked over at the three younger elves off to the side. Nadeine and her brother looked tough enough.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not? When do we leave?”
“On the ‘morrow, if you feel ready,” Magdalina said.
“How long will this take?” I asked, wondering how long I would have to be away from this amazing castle.
“We will not lie,” Dalibor said. “The journey will be long and difficult, but your skills will advance considerably more out in the wild than just practicing here. And you will get to see the rest of our kingdom and travel out into our world. More than that, you could save us all.”
“The rest of your kingdom?” I asked. “You mean there’s more than just around this castle?”
Dalibor laughed. “Oh yes, our kingdom stretches far and wide. There are three regions of our world and three races of people that live in them, or at least there were. Our kingdom’s elves live here. Forest elves reside in the forest. And, well, the mountain elves were once out beyond the forest, but they no longer exist. They were destroyed in our great war with them, when we triumphed over their forces. We made sure they could never harm us again. You will travel through the western half of our kingdom to reach the forests.”
“Your new companions will prepare you for your quest,” Magdalina said, holding her arms out in a welcoming gesture, and then bringing her hands together at her fingertips. “We owe you our never-ending gratitude and are forever in your debt, Leo Hayden.”
“Um, sure,” I said. “Thanks.” I was suddenly very overwhelmed. I was in a world I never knew existed, with people I barely knew, and about to go off on some dangerous quest to fight God knows what or who with magical powers and without a ton of help. But at least I wasn’t working at a dingy little piano bar in Queens where nothing ever happened.
The three younger elves walked up to me.
“Hello, Leo,” Nadeine’s brother said, grasping both of my shoulders with his armored hands. “I already know we will be great friends on this journey.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said as I awkwardly returned the gesture. He grinned at me and removed one arm, wrapping the other around my shoulders and leading me towards the door.
“We are to go prepare you for our journey,” he said. “And then we celebrate!” His voice was low, booming, but jolly.
“Celebrate?” I asked, letting myself get swept along.
“It is customary to frequent the taverns before a quest,” Nadeine said, jogging to catch up to her brother and me. The girl with the soft features followed behind us silently, but she smiled when I met her eyes.
“Do you all go on a lot of quests?” I asked.
“This is our first since losing our magic,” Bernsten said, squeezing me tightly to him and gesturing exuberantly as he spoke. “And a grand quest it will be!”
Somehow, that didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me.
“Do not worry, Leo,” Marinka said kindly. “We have been preparing for this quest for our whole lives. And we have you.” She strode up to us and put her hand on my arm gently. I felt my face flush, heat burning my cheeks.
“Thanks,” I said, and I did feel better. Plus, if what the council said was true, I was the only one in this whole world who could use magic. That had to count for something, at least.
We reached a room across from the great dining hall and entered. This must have been an armory. Pieces of armor and broad shields hung all over the walls, as well as broad swords and sleek daggers. I even saw a mace covered in spikes.
“Cool,” I said, gazing around at all of the toys. “What do I get?”
“These are not for you, Leo,” Nadeine said, and I felt myself deflate.
“I don’t get any?” I exclaimed. “You’re sending me on some horrifically dangerous quest without any armor or weapons?”
“Your magic is both your armor and your greatest weapon,” Nadeine explained. “Heavy armor and weapons will only slow you down, especially if you are not trained in their use, and more so, they will prevent you from utilizing your magic to the best of your abilities. Before we lost our magic, we had no need for such things.” She gestured around at the armor and weapons hanging on the walls and continued. “Marinka will get fitted for armor and weapons, as she has no set of her own yet. You will receive the traditional ancient robes of our mages.”
“It is a great honor to be given such a gift,” Marinka said, touching the crook of my arm again, and I perked up a bit.
“You guys will make sure I don’t need any armor, right?” I asked. “I don’t want to get killed because I don’t have any.”
“We will if you make sure we don’t get killed, either,” Nadeine said, her voice solemn. “As I said, swords are a flimsy replacement for magic.”
“Deal,” I said before swallowing hard and trying to hide my anxiety.
“If what I have heard is true, you are already more powerful than any other being in this realm,” Marinka said as her hand moved up to caress my shoulder.
Nadeine’s brother Bernsten led me to another room off to the side while Nadeine brought Marinka to a tailor be fitted for her armor. In the room was an old, shriveled elf sorting through some golden thread with his wrinkled, vein-covered hands.
“Leo, this is Baldo,” Bernsten said. “Baldo, this is Leo Hayden, our new mage.”
“Leo, hello, hello, come in.” The old man laughed, his voice cracking under the effort. “It is so wonderful to meet you, so wonderful, indeed.” He gestured for me to come closer to him.
“Good to meet you, too, Baldo,” I said, leaning in as he directed.
“Now,” Baldo began, “when I was a child, my father designed the robes for the kingdom’s most revered and accomplished mages. I sometimes watched him as he worked, needling all that beautiful fabric and making robes majestic enough to match the magic the mages performed. He used magic himself to make them, of course, but nonetheless, I have always dreamed of creating such a set of robes. And here you are!”
The old elf grasped my elbows, as much to steady himself as to reach out to me, I thought. He bent down gingerly to dig through a chest underneath his work table.
“Here, Baldo, let me help.” Bernsten reached over to hold up the chest’s lid.
“Thank you, my dear boy, thank you,” Baldo said, coughing a bit. The cough came out raspy, and his lungs rattled. From the chest, he pulled out a brilliant mass of blue and gold fabric.
“I have been working on this for years, but I never knew why,” the old elf continued. “But when they told me of you and your magic, I knew it was for you. It was always for you.” He held it up to me. “See? It even matches your eyes.”
Baldo was right. The brilliant blue fabric was an exact match for my eye color.
“Now, to get you fitted,” Baldo said.
The old man zoomed around me, measuring my body with surprising speed, given his advanc
ed age and features.
“Good,” Baldo said after he’d poked and prodded me to his satisfaction. “I only need to make minimal adjustments. It will be ready for you when you return on the ‘morrow.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It was good to meet you, Baldo.”
“And you, my dear boy, and you,” Baldo said, clasping my elbows again. “And thank you.”
Bernsten and left Baldo and went back in the main room of the armory where Marinka had finished up her fitting for her armor and was selecting a long, sleek dagger as her weapon. The armor was sleek and dark like Bernsten and Nadeine’s, with golden trim.
“How come you didn’t already have any armor?” I asked her.
“I am not a warrior by trade like Nadeine and Bernsten,” she explained as she tested the weapon’s balance. “I am here as your guide and to act as the council’s eyes and ears on this quest.”
She seemed to register my concern and continued, “I am not an incompetent fighter, Leo. I have trained just like all of the other elves in this kingdom. We have had to in preparation for further attacks by Viktor, but I have not climbed further than an intermediate rank in the fighters’ guild. Nadeine and Bernsten will be your main protectors.”
“Fighters’ guild?” I asked. No one had mentioned that before.
“It is our military,” Nadeine answered. “It did not exist until we lost our magic.”
“Enough talk,” Bernsten’s low voice boomed. “Let us go be merry!”
5
We went to a “tavern” across from the castle, but it wasn’t like any bar I’d ever seen. It was grand and draped in gold, just like the council chambers, great dining hall, and every other room I’d seen in the castle. The exterior was bright like the castle and covered in green grass and shrubbery, very unlike the dingy unlit alleyways outside the bar I worked at in Queens. Elves were walking through the city, illuminated by golden streetlights, laughing and being merry.
The lighting in the bar was lower, and it was filled with strange, round polished wooden tables and laughing, half-drunk elves dancing and playing some kind of bar game where they skipped stones across the tables into circular ridges on the surface.
“What’s that?” I asked Bernsten, gesturing to the elves playing the game.
“That is wazo,” he said with a laugh. “Come, let us play.”
I followed him over to one of the long tables and watched him pick up one of the rocks and flick it down to the edge. It settled in the circle at the very end. A few elves around us clapped, and Nadeine and Marinka whooped.
“Wazo is simple, but the execution is complex,” Bernsten said, his face lighting up with excitement. “You flick the stone down the table and attempt to land it in one of the circular indentations closest to the edge.”
“My brother is a champion wazo player,” Nadeine explained. “No one can beat him.”
“Come, you try,” Bernsten said, gesturing to me.
I walked up to the table and selected one of the stones. It was wide and gray, almost a complete circle. It fit well in my hand.
“Now, no cheating,” Bernsten warned. “Magic was banned in wazo tournaments in the old days.”
“Alright, then.” I grinned and tossed the rock down the table. It settled in the circle right behind Bernsten’s stone.
A crowd had begun to gather around us, and the surrounding elves gasped at the sight of my stone falling so close to Bernsten’s.
“Oohooo,” Bernsten chortled. “You have played this game before, no?”
“No, I haven’t,” I said with a shrug. “But I skipped rocks on the harbor back home. It’s kind of like that.”
“The harbor?” Bernsten asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I flicked them out on the water, and they bounced over the surface.”
“Interesting,” Bernsten said. “We have no such bodies of water here. Such things only exist in the mountain regions, and we do not dare travel there.”
“I thought the council said the mountain elves there were wiped out?” I asked. “You still don’t want to go there?”
“No, we would not dare.” Bernsten shuddered. “Too much carnage and darkness. We are happy here, in our kingdom.”
I could see why. I didn’t really want to leave the comfort of the castle myself. At the same time, I found myself thinking of all the food and drink I’d been served in the castle, and how much water that would take.
“Where do you get your water then, if there are no lakes?” I asked.
“From beneath the ground,” Bernsten said. “Water runs through the rock beneath us. Our ancestors built wells to tap into its supply, so we had no need to travel into the mountain elves’ territory. And speaking of drink, let us find some.”
Some of the elves gathered around our table, upon hearing this, clambered up to the bar and brought each one of us an enormous, frothing glass of what I assumed was a kind of amber-colored beer. It was nearly as big as the elves’ torsos.
“You are quite the popular fellow, Leo Hayden,” Bernsten said, slapping an arm around my shoulders again. “I will have to stick around you from now on.”
“Make sure you do,” I said, thinking of the quest looming ahead of us.
The beer was surprisingly good with a strong taste of wheat and walnut, with a leathery undertone. It was strong too, and though I was no lightweight, I found my mind fogging over only halfway through my first glass.
The elves were affected by the alcohol even faster, which was unsurprising given their small forms. Bernsten began to stumble and laugh even more indiscriminately after only a few sips, and Marinka began a string of cute little hiccups almost immediately. Nadeine was largely unaffected, and I noticed she drank more slowly.
“At least one of us must be lucid in the morning,” she said as she noticed my look. Still, her tolerance seemed to be higher than the others’.
I beat Bernsten at wazo once, and he beat me two times. It was a fun game, and the surrounding elves got more into it with each toss. Three massive beer glasses in, the crowd of elves started begging me to show them my powers. I grinned and stumbled into a circle at the center of the dance floor, much like the ones in the library, so I assumed it must have been for mages to display their magic many years ago.
I performed the light spell that Dalibor had helped me master. I wasn’t sure it would work, considering how drunk I was at that point, but it worked well enough. Particles of golden light appeared all around us, blending in with the decor. I could only hold it for a few minutes, but the surrounding elves didn’t care.
They whooped and hollered and cheered my name. The whole thing had me glowing just as much as the room. It felt good to be wanted for once, to be the center of attention. I wasn’t even the center of attention when I was the head of the cello section. That honor was always reserved for those asshole violinists who always had to show off. This whole experience was new for me, and not just because I was in a fantasy land surrounded by elves and performing magic.
After my display, the four members of my team returned to our table. Bernsten zonked out on the tabletop pretty soon after that, snoring even louder than he spoke, and a moment later, Nadeine got up to get us another round of drinks. I turned to Marinka, whose cheeks were bright red from all the alcohol.
“So, what’s it like being the head of the council’s daughter?” I asked, unable to think of anything else to say.
“My father is more than just the head of the council,” she said matter-of-factly. “He is the king.”
“You’re a princess?” I gaped at her. Magic, elves, and now a princess. I was running the gamut here. Ten-year-old me would be freaking the fuck out. Hell, twenty-two-year-old me was freaking the fuck out.
“Yes,” she said, averting her gaze from mine bashfully. “My family has reigned in this kingdom for thousands of years, nearly our realm’s entire history. This is why I have been selected to join you on your quest. I am the only member of the royal family of the right age
group. It is traditional for one of our numbers to be included in all quests, in order to ensure that our leadership is represented and our interests are preserved.”
“You seem nervous.” I took note of her rosy cheeks and seeming inability to meet my eyes. “Do you not want to go on the quest with us?”
“Oh!” Her cheeks grew even redder. “I, well, I have been preparing for such a quest for some time, as all members of the royal family are trained for such a task, but I must admit that I would have preferred that the council had found hope to recover our magic when my younger brother was of a more appropriate age to join the quest.” As she spoke, Marinka’s gaze darted between me and the table, as if she was unable to decide whether it was safe to look at me.
“I am, well, not the most militaristically inclined member of my family,” she continued. “My brother has dreamed of this quest his whole life, even going so far as to act out what it would be like in his play. From what I have heard, my father and his sisters were the same. I, however, prefer to stay in the castle and study. A life of adventure is not for me, I’m afraid.”
She sat up straighter, as if deciding something, and looked me squarely in the eyes for the first time. Though her eyes were the same green as the other kingdom elves, there was something brighter about them where the others’ were hard and unyielding.
“But you are here,” she said, holding my gaze. “And I am glad that the council has found you. I will gladly fulfill my royal duty, though I look forward with much anticipation to the end of our journey when I pray that our magic will be restored, and our people will be whole once again.”
Despite her more confident posture and body language, I could tell that the princess was still nervous. She shifted uncomfortably in her new armor, and her face and neck remained flushed, though less so than they had been before. Instinctively, I reached out across the table and took her hand in mine.
“I’m glad you’re coming with us, Marinka,” I said, holding her gaze. “And I’m sure that you will prove an invaluable member of our team. I look forward to getting to know you better.” I squeezed her hand, and she returned the gesture.
