by Simon Archer
“That’s good.” One less problem was one less problem. “So, what happened in this Great War? How did all of the mountain elves die?”
“The mountain elves wished to take over the realm, as Nadeine told you,” Bernsten said, perking up a bit and looking kind of excited. “There are great stories from the war. It was the time that we had our greatest, most powerful mages, like Narkiss the Conqueror, Darshan the Gallant, and Romilda the Vanquisher. It was our darkest time, but it was also our proudest.” Bernsten sat up a bit straighter at this and puffed out his chest.
“Romilda the Vanquisher was my great-grandmother,” Marinka added, piping in for the first time. “She is the pride of my family. I am told I look somewhat like her.”
Bernsten nodded to Marinka with a smile before continuing. “You see, Leo, the mountain elves were always jealous of our magical abilities. They had powers of their own, derived from orbs they crafted from the heart of their mountains. When they believed that they had grown powerful enough to defeat us, they began a march towards our territory. We heard of this and sent magi to meet them in the forest and stave off their assault.”
“Unfortunately, we overestimated our abilities,” Nadeine said. She did not seem excited by the events of the war like her brother as her somber tone returned. “Or at the very least we underestimated the mountain elves’ powers. What we thought would be a swift end to their imperial intentions turned into a decades-long war fought in the forests.”
“But we did destroy them, in the end,” Bernsten said, his voice booming out through the clearing we were traversing. “We may have lost some battles, but we won the war. And great battles they were, indeed.”
“Wait, hold up, what are these orbs you were talking about?” I asked. “I thought you said only kingdom elves knew magic?”
“This is true,” Bernsten assured me. “The mountain elves had no magical abilities intrinsic to themselves, but something about their bodies interacted with the mountains in which they lived. We in the kingdom do not much understand it, as we have no such powers ourselves. But from what the old stories and legends tell us, the mountain elves were corrupted by this power. Their skin took on the pasty white exterior of the orbs and the mountains of which they were made, and their eyes glowed red from the orbs’ interior.” He shuddered at the thought of it.
“You must understand, Leo,” Marinka frowned as she spoke, “this is the content of our people’s greatest nightmares. Children quake at even the mention of the mountain elves. Images of them haunt us at night. They are, to us, the face of evil.”
“I guess it’s good they’re all dead, then,” I said, shuddering slightly.
“Indeed,” Nadeine said.
I hummed to myself in thought for a moment. “I guess the big question remaining is if there are there any of these orbs left?”
“No, at least not outside the mountains, but no one dares go there anymore for fear of the orbs and of the nightmares,” Bernsten said, some excitement returning to his voice and demeanor. “This is one of our magi’s greatest accomplishments. They discovered a way to destroy the orbs using their magic. They performed the spell together in the forest after the last of mountain elves were killed, and the orbs went the way of their makers. We have only to fear the memory of them now.”
“But fear it we do,” Marinka said softly, her bright green eyes wide and her expression indicating she was lost deep in thought.
“So, what happened after the war?” I asked innocently enough, but Bernsten’s face darkened at this question. He turned to his sister, indicating that she should take over.
“Our people suffered great losses,” she said as she cast a glance over at Marinka. I turned to her as well.
“Are you doing okay, Marinka?” I asked, noticing her anxiety and reaching over to brush my fingers against her wrist.
“Yes, Leo, thank you for your kindness,” she said, closing her hand around mine and holding it. “My family was hurt greatly by the war. The king, my great-great-uncle, was killed, and he had no heirs of his own. His sister, Romilda the Vanquisher, had a son, my grandfather, and he became king…” Her voice trailed off at that.
“It was a dark time for our kingdom,” Nadeine continued for her. “Some questioned the legitimacy of King Vipin’s claim to the throne. There was much political upheaval, and it took some time for a sense of normalcy to return to the kingdom. As for the rest of the realm, it has still not recovered. As Bernsten said, there are no mountain elves left, and no one has dared to venture into their territory for fear of their orbs, or perhaps even of the ghost of the mountain elves’ presence there. The forest elves were left destitute, I fear, though they never had much of a sophisticated society, to begin with.”
At this, we all fell silent and rode close together until we reached our destination for the night. I reflected on what I had just heard and wondered what would await us in the forest. What would the forest elves be like now if they had been so negatively affected by the war and had had no contact with the outside world in the centuries since? Would they even exist anymore? Would they welcome our presence, or resent it? Mulling over these questions, I continued to hold Marinka’s hand until we arrived.
8
Over the next few days, we continued to travel. During the day, I took every chance I could to practice my magic, and at night, we made merry in the taverns along our route. I was becoming accustomed to my new way of life and growing fond of my new companions. Luckily, we avoided any further run-ins with disgruntled elves, and I continued to master new spells.
One thing that disappointed me, however, was my failure to be able to conjure an instrument with which to cast my spells.
“Do you think I’ll ever be able to do it?” I asked Nadeine one evening in a library after a particularly frustrating practice session.
“I do not know, Leo,” she began, “but you are doing very well, advancing far more quickly than we ever could have expected. Your disappointment and impatience are unwarranted. Truly, you are doing well without an instrument. Many of our people’s greatest magi used only their voices as you have thus far.”
“Okay, okay,” I said with a chuckle. “I just miss it, you know?”
“I do not,” Nadeine said in her typically frank tone. “Is music not music?”
“I mean, it’s better than no music at all, but no, it’s not the same. It’s hard to explain…” My voice trailed off as I searched for a way to make Nadeine understand how I was feeling. Then I remembered her sword breaking, and how she had expressed frustration about the replacement not being good enough.
“You know how I said when I had to use someone else’s cello, it didn’t feel right, like when your sword broke and you had to use a different one?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said as her hand drifted to the hilt of the weapon at her side, the self-same one we had talked about those days ago.
“Well,” I continued, “what made you decide a sword was the right weapon for you? Marinka has daggers, and I remember seeing other weapons like a mace in the armory in the royal palace. Why not use one of those instead of a sword?”
Nadeine blinked in confusion. “The sword is my weapon,” she said simply as if that were an explanation in and of itself.
“Can you use other weapons?” I asked as I crossed my arms.
“Of course, but I am not nearly as proficient with them. Those weapons are tools.” A faint smile crossed the beautiful elf’s lips. “My sword is an extension of myself.”
“Exactly!” I said. She’d hit on my feelings without knowing it. “And the cello is my instrument. Giving me a different one, or making me sing like I have been, would be like if, instead of a different sword to replace your broken one, the armory gave you a mace instead. Yes, you could still use it, but it would be awkward and clumsy, and it wouldn’t feel as natural to you.” I tapped my chest. “It’s the same with me. That’s why I want a cello to appear so badly.”
“Ah,” Nadeine said, unfurrowing her brow. “I th
ink I am beginning to understand. You believe that if you conjure a cello, your magic will benefit from it?”
“Oh yeah,” I said with utter confidence. “A lot. It would feel so much more natural.”
“But you are already doing so well…?” Nadeine said, looking confused again.
“Yeah, and that’s great, I guess,” I raised a finger then, “but imagine how much better I could be if I had a cello?” Her eyes lit up a bit at that.
“Ah.” She nodded slowly as understanding truly sunk in. “We will have to discuss this with the older elves at the training grounds when we arrive there tomorrow. If it will be so helpful to you to have a cello, we must do what we can to make this happen for you.”
“Good,” I said, sighing in relief. As Nadeine and I turned to head back up to the castle in which we were staying’s dining hall, I felt my shoulders relax, too. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d been. Trying to explain such an odd feeling to a non-musician was more difficult than I thought. It was like I was trying to teach Nadeine a different language, although I guess music was a different language in a sense.
“But Leo,” Nadeine said thoughtfully, turning back to me. “I have just thought of something that may be important. We have had many instruments here in our realm throughout the centuries, but we have never had one like your cello. What if you are unable to conjure one? What if you must use a different instrument, one native to our world, not yours?”
“Oh,” I said as the released tension in my shoulders threatened to flood back. “I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t know. That would really suck.” A lump was forming in my throat, and I swallowed to try to push it away. I reminded myself that even if I didn’t get a cello, I’d still get to play music and cast cool spells, so it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Either way, it would be better than what I had going back on Earth.
“We shall see,” Nadeine said hastily, alarmed at my obvious discomfort. “These are good questions for the instructors. I should not have mentioned it. I did not mean to worry you.”
“It’s alright,” I said, turning towards the door again. “It was a good question.”
I pretended I felt better after that, but I went straight to bed after dinner instead of going out with my new companions. I longed for my cello back in the royal castle. I hadn’t gotten a chance to play it before I left, and now, I worried that I would not get to play one again until I returned from the quest.
We left for the training grounds the following morning. True to Bernsten’s words, the buildings were getting smaller and more spread out, and the scenery greener as we moved further and further from the center of the kingdom. The green of the grass and the trees was just as bright and luscious as the blue of the sky, and the gold of the buildings matched the light of my magic. The more I saw of this world, the less inclined I was to ever want to leave it.
When we arrived at the training ground, we were met at the door by two elderly elves, one male and one female, each dressed in light-colored, loose-fitting robes. They were just as shriveled as Baldo, the old veiny elf who made my mage robes. The building itself was long, round, and only appeared to have one floor. It was a dull yellow color, in contrast to the extravagant gold of the castles.
“Welcome, welcome, Princess Marinka, Leo Hayden, and their distinguished companions,” the male elf gushed when we climbed up the steps to the front doors. “I am Anil, and this is my dear friend and colleague, Siara. We are so pleased you have come.” He gave each of us a funny little bow, reminding me again of Baldo.
“Yes, we welcome you to our humble home and offer you anything we may have that you desire,” Siara added as she shook each of our hands in turn.
“Thank you for your generosity,” Marinka said, bowing back at Anil. He seemed surprised and pleased by this. Apparently, royalty didn’t usually bow to their subjects in this world. Or any that I knew of at all, for that matter, not that I knew a lot of royalty back on Earth. Queens is just the name of a neighborhood in New York City, after all.
The training grounds were different from any of the other places we had stayed so far, which had mostly been castles of varying sizes. For one thing, it was just one huge floor, like what I imagined a mansion-sized ranch house might be like. For another, it was far less ornate than any of the other places we’d stayed.
While the walls were painted a dazzling gold, the walls had no trim or other decoration. There were some portraits in the dining hall of magi like the ones we had seen in the castle we stayed at on the first night of our journey, but while those portraits pictured the magi engaged in magical feats, these were simple profile shots, a lot like presidential portraits I’d seen before in textbooks.
“Why is this so different from the other places we’ve stayed?” I asked my companions in a low voice as we followed the elderly elves through the long, oval-shaped building.
“Well, this is not a castle,” Nadeine said, stating the obvious. “It was built as a training facility for the kingdom’s most promising magi, and since we lost our magic, it has been used as a training facility for our military personnel. As such, it is not designed to impress important people, but rather to be an economical place for talented individuals to focus on honing their skills.”
She seemed to know so much about the place that my next question was obvious. “Have you ever been here before?”
“Yes.” Nadeine nodded as we walked. “When I took my journey outside of the royal center of the kingdom, I stayed and studied military strategy for many weeks. This is the place where our people began to recover again after our magic was lost and learned how to fight the way that the forest elves fight: with our hands and with crafted weapons.” There was pride in her voice as she spoke of her people’s accomplishments. “This is also the site of our kingdom’s first and most preeminent forges. I will go there on the ‘morrow in my search for a new sword that is better suited to me.”
“I’d like to see that,” I said, wondering what it was like to make a sword.
“You may accompany me if you so desire,” she said. “The forges are a sight to behold, I must admit.” That was high praise coming from Nadeine.
With that, I turned to her brother. “Have you ever been here before, Bernsten?” Bernsten was an accomplished enough warrior to have been selected for the first quest in generations of kingdom elves, so it would make sense if he had spent time at the training grounds as well.
“Indeed I have, Leo Hayden.” Bernsten slipped back into referring to me by my full name. “I spent some time here when I was in my adolescence because one of my teachers back in the kingdom thought that I showed promise as a warrior. It was a great honor to be selected to come here. Very few are invited to do so. Even when we still had our magic, only the magi with the greatest promise in the whole kingdom were given permission to study in this place.”
I looked around at that, paying more attention to my surroundings. True to Bernsten’s description, the building had an ancient, mystic quality to it, and I got the feeling that this place was rich in history and stories.
Anil and Siara led us to a dining hall to eat dinner. Unlike the great rooms filled with ornamentation and long rectangular tables in which I had eaten each night I had been in this world, this dining hall was more what I would expect from a cafeteria, as much as I could expect anything from a room that existed in a mystical realm.
The tables were small and circular, and the furniture in the room was made out of plain wood, albeit handcrafted wood. The walls were decorated only with the same golden paint and a few select portraits like the ones I had seen on our way to the dining hall.
We sat down to eat with Anil and Siara. The other occupants of the room looked up when we entered and began muttering amongst themselves. They were mostly young, fit elves wearing armor like Nadeine, Bernsten, and Marinka’s. Interspersed among them were a few older elves in the same armor, but none as old as Anil and Siara. I turned to the older elves, who were not wearing armor like the others.
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“What are your roles within the training facility?” I asked.
“We are scholars, not warriors,” Siara explained. “This training facility houses a small number of us whose purpose is to study our people’s ancient magic, even though we are no longer able to practice it.”
“Did you used to be able to do magic?” I asked, remembering something Nadeine had told me earlier.
“When we were very small,” Anil said, giving me a weak, wobbly smile. “Very small indeed.”
Siara sighed wistfully. “We remember very little of our magical abilities. We were so young when they were taken from us, only beginning to discover our powers. But we remember how it felt to wield that power, to feel its potential buzzing through our veins. And we remember watching older elves perform magic before our eyes.”
“It is more than most are able to remember, I suppose,” Anil said. Suddenly, he picked up a cloth napkin and blew his nose very loudly, and I realized the poor guy was getting emotional. I tried my best to stifle a laugh at the absurd noise in the sleeves of my mage robes. I noticed Bernsten doing the same and started coughing to avoid laughing even more.
“Do you need some water, Leo Hayden?” Anil croaked through his handkerchief.
“No,” I coughed, sputtering in the process. “I’m fine, thanks.”
Nadeine was giving us the evil eye, so both Bernsten and I found it easy to get our laughter under control.
Which was good, because I wanted to concentrate more on the food if I were honest. It was not carried to us by servants or sitting across our tables like it was back in the castles, but rather was served buffet-style where we had to get up and go get it one table at a time. This was definitely more of a school than a shrine to wealth and royalty like the rest of the kingdom.
Likewise, the food from the buffet was great by Earth standards, but not as good as the food we had been served at the castles. I grabbed some fish, chicken, and a few vegetables. It was seasoned well and tasted good, but was far from the buttery, fat-filled, mouth-watering culinary experience I had become accustomed to in recent days. I figured this was a good start to weeding myself off the fat and starch for when we’d have to eat rations and wild rabbits in the forest.
