by Markus Heitz
“Oh, books are very useful when it comes to fighting orcs. You could have killed the whole band of them with the right bit of poetry!”
Boïndil looked at Tungdil and frowned. “No one could call you a warrior, but you’ve certainly got the build for it. Your hands are nice and strong — with a bit of practice, it might come right.”
Tungdil sighed. “I like metalwork.”
“That’s not exactly unusual for a dwarf. How about —” Boëndal trailed off and sniffed the air attentively. His brother did the same. “Something’s burning,” he told them, alarmed. “Wood and… scorched flesh! It must be a raid.” Boïndil pulled out both axes and broke into a jog. The other two followed.
The trees grew farther apart as the path rounded a corner and emerged into a clearing. Until recently, the spot had been home to a settlement, but the elf maiden’s haven at the heart of the forest had been ravaged by flames. Charred ruins hinted at the former elegance of the many-platformed dwellings that were set about the boles of the tallest trees. The carved arches, smooth wooden beams, and panels embellished with elven runes and gold leaf were so perfectly at one with the forest that they seemed to have grown with the wood.
But most of the gold was missing and the beauty of the glade had been savagely destroyed. For the second time on Tungdil’s journey, the orcs had got there first. He tried in vain to recapture something of the leafy harmony, but the desecration was complete. “By Vraccas,” he gulped. “We’d better see whether —”
“Absolutely,” Boïndil said cheerily. “With any luck, we’ll find a few runts. You’ve got to hand it to them: We couldn’t have done a better job ourselves!”
“It’s what you’d call rigorous,” his brother said admiringly, gripping the haft of his hammer. As true children of the Smith, the twins were unruffled by the wreckage around them; it wasn’t in their nature to feel pity for elves.
Tungdil felt differently. Wandering through the smoldering ruins, he lifted up planks and peered under girders in the hope of finding Gorén alive. Instead he found corpse after corpse, some of them horribly mutilated. At the sight of the carnage, memories of Goodwater came flooding back and he stepped away from the bodies, closing his eyes to the horror. The images stayed with him, more gruesome than ever in his mind.
Pull yourself together, he told himself firmly. How are you going to recognize Gorén if you find him? Where would a wizard hide if he survived? Tungdil’s gaze settled on the largest dwelling, which had come off slightly better than the rest. “Keep an eye out for any trouble,” he called to the others. “I need to find out what’s happened to Gorén.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Boïndil shouted jauntily to his brother. “Forget what I said earlier about not going in. We might find some orcs.”
While the twins began patrolling the ruins, Tungdil climbed the sagging staircase toward the front door. The charred steps groaned beneath his feet, but at last he reached the first platform and walked across the blackened planks.
The house was pentagonal in form, with the bole of the tree at its center. Linking the rooms was a corridor that encircled the trunk, its inner wall comprised of bark. Rope bridges led out to the sturdier branches where colored lanterns swung mournfully in the breeze.
Leaves were already floating to the ground, as if the tree were mourning the elves who had lived among its branches for so many cycles.
Tungdil gazed at the fluttering foliage, then tore himself away and searched the rooms. There was no sign of Gorén or any survivors, but the library had been spared the worst of the damage and he came upon a sealed envelope addressed to Lot-Ionan and some objects wrapped in a shawl.
He picked up the envelope and hesitated. Surely these are exceptional circumstances by any standard? He broke the seal, scanned the contents, and sighed. Yet another errand for me to run! In the letter, Gorén thanked Lot-Ionan for the loan of some books. The wizard had evidently intended to return them by courier, which meant Tungdil had landed himself another job.
There was a second letter, written in scholarly script and therefore indecipherable to anyone but a high-ranking wizard. He packed it away with the other items and continued his search.
A shudder ran through the platform. It started as a slight tremor, but in no time the planks were shaking violently. The wooden dwelling groaned and creaked furiously; then the commotion stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The dwarf took it as a sign that it was time for him to leave.
He hurried into the corridor and stopped in surprise. The tree was moving, its leafless branches squeezing and crushing the groaning timber of the house. The trunk gave a ligneous grunt and swayed to the left. A gnarled bough swung toward him.
“Hey! You’ve got the wrong dwarf! I’m not the one who killed the sapling!”
The tree took no heed of his protests and swiped at him again. Tungdil ducked, the cudgel-like branch smashing into the paneled wall behind him. He darted to the steps, but found himself engulfed in a sea of white. In his confusion he thought for a moment that it was snowing; then he saw that the haze was made up of petals that were swirling around the tree. The flowers and trees of the forest were hurling their blossoms at him, the glade’s shattered harmony turning to violent hatred.
The house shook again, this time cracking some of the joists and sending debris crashing to the ground. Tungdil clattered down the steps to safety.
The twins were no less surprised than he was. Weapons at the ready, they were eyeing the glade suspiciously.
“It’s nasty elfish magic!” shouted Boïndil above the din of rustling leaves. “They’ve turned the trees against us.”
“We’d better get out of here,” Tungdil called to them. “The trees mean to punish anyone who —” He broke off as a Palandiell beech loosed a shower of withered leaves, exposing the gruesome secret hidden among its naked boughs.
They had found the elf maiden. Her delicate white visage, previously obscured by a thick screen of leaves, stood out against the murky bark. From the neck down she was a skeleton, stripped entirely of flesh but glistening wetly with crimson blood. Long metal nails pinned her slender limbs to the trunk.
The sight was too much, even for the otherwise imperturbable twins. “Vraccas almighty,” exclaimed Boëndal, “what kind of mischief is this?”
“That settles it,” his brother decided. “We’re leaving before the same thing happens to us.”
“Not yet,” Tungdil told them. “I need to keep looking for Gorén.” The horror exercised a strange attraction on him and he walked on, obliging his companions to follow. “The wizard’s body might be somewhere round here too.”
On closer inspection, it looked as though the elf maiden’s bones had been gnawed. Her murderers had finished the job by driving a nail through her mouth, pinning the back of her skull to the bole of the tree. In place of her beautiful elven eyes were two empty sockets.
“They pinned her to the tree and ate her alive,” said Boïndil. “It’s a bit too fancy for runts. They eat their victims on the spot and suck out their marrow.”
Tungdil swallowed and took another look. Even in death, the elf’s face had retained its beauty. For all his inborn antipathy toward her and her race, he was sorry she had ended so gruesomely.
Boëndal rounded the tree and discovered further corpses as well as a trail of curved black prints. “They’re hoof marks, but they’ve been burned into the soil. What do you make of that, scholar?”
Tungdil remembered the two riders who had parleyed with the orcish war bands on the night before Goodwater was destroyed. “Shadow mares,” he murmured. “They strike sparks as they walk. The älfar ride them.” It explained why the elf maiden had suffered so cruelly before she died: The älfar took pleasure in torturing their cousins.
“Älfar?” Boïndil’s eyes flashed with enthusiasm. “It’s about time we came up against something more challenging than those dim-witted orcs! How about it, brother? I say we blunt our axes on Tion’s dark elves!”
Tungdil, his gaze still riveted on the skeleton, was beset by awful visions of the mistress of Greenglade writhing and screaming on the tree while shadow mares ripped the flesh from her bones. The urge to vomit became uncontrollable and he covered his mouth with his hand, unwilling to forfeit the last shreds of credibility in front of the twins.
One corpse, a male body crumpled not far from the tree, excited their particular attention. A circle of scorched earth bounded the patch of grass where the dead man was lying, pierced by arrows. By the dwarves’ reckoning, seven orcs had perished in the towering ring of flames.
Tungdil was as good as certain that magic had been involved. “I think we’ve found Gorén. He probably conjured the ring of fire to defend himself.”
Hands trembling, he searched the dead man’s pockets and brought out a small metal tin engraved with Gorén’s name.
“He would have done better with a shield,” Boïndil said dryly. “I always said that magic can’t be trusted.”
His brother’s gaze was fixed on the rustling trees that were shedding their leaves furiously in spite of the season. “There’s something wrong with this place,” he decided. “If we hang around much longer, those trees will tear up their roots and attack us. We’re leaving.”
“What about Gorén and the others?” objected Tungdil. “Don’t you think we should —”
“What about them? They’re dead,” Boïndil said breezily.
“Elves, elf lovers, and orcs.” Boëndal set off at a march. “They needn’t concern us.”
As far as the twins were concerned, the matter was settled, so Tungdil fell in behind them, hurrying through the ruined village in the direction from which they had come.
Before they reached the path, he glanced round to bid the wizard and his mistress a silent farewell and apologize for leaving them without a proper burial. It was then that he saw something strange.
An easel, he thought to himself in surprise. In spite of the surrounding wreckage, it was standing upright, as though the painter would be back at any moment. Tungdil felt sadder than ever at the thought of the elf maiden or one of her companions abandoning their work in terror. The unfinished painting was a silent testimony to the moment in which the invaders had arrived.
I wonder what she was painting. “Back in a minute!” he told the others as he clambered over the charred timber, curious to see the elven artwork.
Boëndal sighed resignedly, setting his beard aquiver. “We’ve got our work cut out with this one.”
“You can say that again,” Boïndil said testily, wiping his sweaty brow with the end of his plait. Muttering under their breath, the secondlings hurried after their charge.
They caught up with him in front of the easel. There was something very obviously wrong with the picture: It showed the settlement in the aftermath of the attack.
There was no denying that the artist was incredibly gifted. The scene had been painted entirely in shades of red, every detail of the destruction reproduced with chilling precision on the smooth white canvas: corpses, the burned-out shells of buildings, scorched trees.
Tungdil peered at the work more closely. There’s something funny about that canvas. He walked to the back of the easel and paled. The reverse of the painting was a damp, shiny red. He reached out gingerly to touch it, then whipped his hand away. Skin! The scene had been painted on skin so flawless that it could only belong to the mistress of the glade. Tungdil had a nasty feeling that the paint was far from conventional too. He showed his grisly discovery to the twins.
Two smaller pictures had been propped up nearby. The first showed the tortured face of the elf, her eyes dull with pain and fear. The second depicted her crucified body in all its gory detail. Tungdil knocked them over in disgust.
“It’s still wet,” said Boëndal, peering at the easel. “The freak who painted these pictures could be back at any time.”
“So much the better,” growled Boïndil. “We’ll see how he likes to be flayed alive.”
“I’ve never seen anything so monstrous,” said Tungdil. Any admiration he still felt for the artist’s talent was overshadowed by his revulsion at the foulness of the work. He shouldered the easel and hurled it into the burning embers of the fire. The two smaller pictures met the same fate.
Silently they turned to leave the village, but were halted by an aggressive snort. It was followed by angry neighing and a furious whinny.
A black steed left the forest and stepped into the clearing twenty paces to their right. Its eyes gleamed red, and white sparks danced around its fetlocks as its hooves clipped the ground.
Mounted on the shadow mare was a female älf, tall and slim with long brown hair. She was clad in mail of stiff black leather with polished tionium trimmings.
“What do we have here?” The hilt of her sword was visible above her head and in her right hand she held a curved bow. A clutch of unusually long arrows of the kind favored by älfar protruded from a saddlebag. Tungdil needed no reminder of their murderous force.
“The stinking groundlings have ruined my pictures, have they? In that case, I’ll need some fresh paint.” She sat up in the saddle to get a better look at the dwarves. With her delicate features and fine countenance she could have passed for a creature of Palandiell, save for the gaping eye sockets that proved she was no elf.
“I hope your blood doesn’t clot too fast,” she said, reaching with her free hand for an arrow. “I won’t be able to paint the finer details unless it’s nice and fluid.”
“I was beginning to think we’d been cheated of our battle.” Boïndil grinned. “Quick,” he instructed in dwarfish, “make for the ruins or she’ll shoot us down like rabbits.”
The first arrow came singing toward them just as they were ducking behind a timber wall. It passed through the wood as if it were parchment and struck Boëndal’s mail with a ping. The black tionium cut a gouge in the metal, causing the dwarf to curse.
Keeping low, they scurried deeper into the smoldering village, hoping to throw off the älf, then attack her from behind.
Tungdil peered around the next corner and spotted the slender nose of the mare. There was something feline about the way it slunk through the ruins, branding the ground with its hooves. The earth gave a low hiss as the false unicorn passed over it, nostrils flaring as it tracked its prey.
Suddenly the dwarf had a terrifying thought. The mare’s saddle was empty. Where’s the rider? The älf was at large in the village. He closed his eyes, trying to forget everything he knew about her race.
When he opened them again, Boëndal and Boïndil were gone. He wasn’t afraid anymore; he was panicked.
“Psst,” he hissed, “where are you?” He tightened his grip on his ax, cursing the twins for abandoning him in the ruins. First they tell me I’m no warrior; then they leave me at the mercy of a shadow mare and an älf!
Someone touched his arm. Tungdil started and lashed out with his ax. The blade buried itself just below the man’s rib cage. The dwarf stared at him in horror. “Gorén? I thought you were dead.”
The wizard looked at the wound distractedly and ran his fingers across the gaping flesh. He fixed his gaze on Tungdil. “Nothing,” he moaned softly. “I feel nothing.” He plucked an orcish arrow from his body. “Nothing,” he said again, this time more desperately. He reached for a wooden beam, locking the dwarf in his empty stare. “All I can feel is hate…”
“Hang on, Gorén, I…” Tungdil leaped aside as the wizard brought the beam crashing toward him. It smashed into a wall.
The din was enough to alert everyone to their presence. There was a clatter of hooves and the shadow mare whinnied.
Tungdil made his escape by crawling under a sunken ceiling. Anything would be better than being discovered by the mare.
“Nothing…” Gorén straightened up and swayed drunkenly out of the ruined building, dragging the beam behind him.
The shadow mare leaped toward him, trampling him to the ground. Tungdil watched as its forele
gs crushed the wizard’s abdomen in an explosion of sparks. To the dwarf’s horror, Gorén rolled over and picked himself up.
The truth hit him in a flash: Greenglade had fallen to the Perished Land. Any who die here will rise again as revenants! The forest wasn’t grieving for the elf maiden; the canker had spread into the soil, poisoning the tree roots and filling the trunks and branches with malice.
But that’s impossible! Unless… Tungdil realized with horrible certainty that the girdle had failed. I can’t go to Ogre’s Death without warning Lot-Ionan that the shield has been breached. If the Perished Land has encroached this far, it might be advancing on other fronts as well.
But first he faced the immediate problem of leaving the glade alive, and the odds were stacked against him.
The shadow mare had picked up his scent and was heading his way. Its hooves struck Tungdil’s hiding place and the timber erupted, crackling with light. The steed was intent on driving the dwarf into the open.
Tungdil had no choice. He rolled out, hoping to throw himself under the nearest piece of debris, but the shadow mare was faster.
In a single powerful leap, it soared over the wreckage and landed beside him, its head shooting forward to seize Tungdil’s right shoulder in its jaws. The dwarf’s chain mail saved him from its sharp teeth, but the pressure was excruciating.
“Get your filthy teeth off me!” Tungdil’s fighting spirit came to the fore, and he forgot his terror, swinging his ax at the steed.
But the shadow mare had no intention of relinquishing its quarry. Jerking its head, it shook Tungdil back and forth like a doll. Without warning, its jaws flew open and he sailed through the air, landing on the ashen grass with a thud. The shadow mare whinnied, carving deep furrows as it pawed the ground. Tungdil was still coming to his senses when it thundered toward him.
The twins sprang into action. As the mare drew level with them, they burst out of their hiding places on either side of its path.
“Here, horsey, horsey,” shouted Boïndil, driving an ax with both hands into the steed’s right knee. Boëndal’s crow’s beak carved into its left foreleg.
