~
For the next few weeks, Kereth kept himself to himself. Hinfane had no idea what he did during the day, but she knew for certain that he was not working the mines, for the others had said as much.
On the Friday of the second week, when the night sky had begun to darken again to twilight, Kereth came down to the tavern a little later than usual. The miners and merchants were in the midst of a heated conversation when he arrived.
Kereth moved to a dark, enshadowed corner, away from everybody else. But Hinfane watched him. He was eavesdropping intently on their conversation.
Galt’s aquiline nose was bobbing up and down, “Some say they live for thousands of years. And some say they never die! They’re a peculiar lot, those elves.”
In a loud whisper Zhallad, the handsome one, said, “You don’t have to tell me that! I spent years trading with elves, and I know just how different they be. They think the sons of men inferior; they see us as a tenant farmer sees a pig or a goat – to them we are dirty, disgusting, unspiritual, earth-bound animals, bonded ever to mortality and decay, foul-mouthed and even fouler-smelling . Aye, men say that the elves are deathless – yet death attends their every step like the footman carrying the king’s coattails. Elves are dangerous!”
At this, Huch moved further away, blinking, pulling on his earlobe and muttering, “Seditious talk, it is, seditious talk! I’ll not be caught up in it. Mark my words, it’ll come to no good in the end!”
Zhallad said, “Perhaps Huch is right. You know that young fellow whose name nobody knows saw some animal remains in the snow out in the wilds that looked like wyrding.”
Galt nodded his hooked nose and said, “Wyrding? A mage, all the way up here? They got enough troubles in the south without wasting one of their prize wizards up here in the wilds.” They all agreed.
Cam sipped his mead, leaving a golden lustre over his red beard. He waved his tattoed forearm and said, “Elves run faster, live longer, need less sleep, they do not tire, suffer no aches and pains, and never have any cause to grieve. Zhallad, when you say that death attends their every step - that’s rubbish! The elves have life in far greater abundance than men and dwarves and every other Nyashal creature! Do you not envy their longevity? Our lives are too brief, like a vapour that is here and then it is gone, whish! Disappeared into the aether.”
Zhallad replied, “Ha. Their lives are long, yet shallow and fey. Elves never tell lies, yet even so, I reckon as they never tell the truth. Elves are keepers of their oaths, yet even so the proverb says, ‘only a fool makes a bargain with an elf.’ And some might say they never die, yet do elves value life? When my wife was dying, every day was a blessing, every moment we spent together was life lived to the full!” He wiped tears from his eyes and continued, “When our plans are interrupted by death or illness or absence, life becomes unbearably precious for us. Elves are completely unable to understand this. Even if they do die, they will never understand how precious to a man is his brief lifespan.”
In the enshadowed corner Kereth’s indistinct form was crouched in the darkness like a crow-eating carrion and in a stray flicker of firelight Hinfane saw his face – his eye-patch stood out like a knot-hole in the trunk of an angry, buckled, misshapen old willow tree - his face was twisted with rage! What could possibly anger Kereth about this innocent conversation? The brevity of life? How could that fact be angering him? Who was he angry at? Had he some deadly disease, for which he hated Udvé, the All-Father, for shortening his life?
Or was this an unreasoning fit of rage completely unrelated to the men’s conversation?
Kereth’s one good eye glowed in the dark like the eye of a stoat.
Suddenly Kereth shot a piercing glance her way that penetrated through to the marrow of her bones. Her knees went to water. She pretended to be absorbed in a painting on the wall behind him. She walked over, straightened it, dusted the frame, inwardly resolving to make her curiosity less obvious. He was a strange man, was all she knew for certain. That was for sure.
Clearly being a rebel against the Nomoi Empire had its price. Maybe Huch was right.
Viv’s dark skin was glinting in the firelight and he raised his hand like a wizard casting a spell that made his memories real, “I had dealings with the elves on the northwestern coastlands. Zhallad is right. They are fey, shallow, they live for the moment. All elves care about is their own amusement. Even so they take their revenge on their enemies with great spite.”
Huch strode over gesticulating, squinting and blinking like a mole in the sunlight, and spat out, “Stop it! Stop talking, I say, stop talking! You will get your selfs into trouble, and the whole town with you! The Nomoi are watching. Eyes! Watching! Ears! Listening! All the time!” He faced the wall and started pommelling it with his fists and shouting, “Do you hear me, elves? I am not part of this seditious conversation! I am a true servant of the Empire, a loyal subject, a serf who values his place in the scheme of things!”
Cam waved a single massive, rune-covered forearm at him and boomed out, “Huch, pipe down. It is embarrassing in the extreme to watch your intemperate displays.”
Huch sat down cradling his head in his hands, keeping his eyes covered, for he was blinking uncontrollably, and said, “Oh, Udvé, what would Uz say if she knew what we was talkin about? What would Uz say? She’s always tellin me not to come down here. ‘Don’t go down to ther tavern,’ she says, ‘Those men’ll lead yer astray, Huch, they’ll lead yer astray!’”
Raising his mead-mug so the mead sloshed around, Galt lifted his aquiline nose and said, “Of course. My wife doesn’t understand what I value here in the tavern either!” They all laughed.
Viv stood up, his dark face reflecting the golden fire, raised his mug, spilling a golden droplet onto the table, and proposed a toast, “After a week’s digging, there is nothing better than a pint of mead with your comrades! Skolt!” They all drank the toast except Huch and Kereth.
Cam waved his rune-covered forearm and a hush descended upon the men. In low, awe-struck tones he said, “For the sons of men everything is known in opposites: good and bad, day and night, light and dark – and this is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which our ancestor Udim ate from.” Not one of them interrupted, for they respected Cam’s wisdom in the ancient lore, though few of them had any time for religion. “But the first elf, Anwyn, ate from the Tree of Life. Thus, her descendants were cursed, as the Writings say, the elves are doomed only ever to know the literal truth, but never to possess the heart of the truth.”
“Pah! Heart, prat,” spat Tesed, the short, fat merchant, his bald head bobbing, “I never believed any of that religious gabbledigack anyhow! Men observed the way elves are, and made up their myths to fit, the way a cobbler cuts a shoe to size. Now consider Kereth over there! He spends his years fightin the accursed Empire of the elves, those who rule over us with a fist of stone - may Udvé bless them all - and keep them far away!” They all laughed wryly. “As the dwarves say, a man never knows his wife half as well as he knows his enemy. Surely no-one knows elves better than Kereth the partisan! Kereth, my friend, what do you say? The elves…?”
Kereth froze like a reindeer facing an avalanche, even his eyepatch appeared to be staring, even his scar was waiting. He swallowed hard and his mouth moved as though to talk but made no sound.
Every single one of them was silent, looking at Kereth, waiting for a single word, a syllable. An unsettled atmosphere of hostility seemed to be floating upon the air while Kereth remained intransigent but finally their patience won out. He croaked in strained tones, “Say naught of the elves! Ask me not how I know this, but it is true: even as you drink in this tavern each night an elf-mage wanders the wasteland snowdrifts, seeking fugitives and partisans and animals and who knows what to wyrd, but doubt not that he is somewhere near, close by, or even within, these very walls, invisible to you, listening to your conversation even now, by the foul magic he wields. Huch’s wife is wiser than any of you know! Speak no more of this if y
e value your lives.” His single good eye shone in the dark tavern brighter and more compelling than the red wanderer, the planet of war, when it rises in the night.
The others leaned forward. Greatly they desired to know his opinion of the elves. With a contemptuous gesture Kereth waved them off, saying darkly, “Huch was right. Even the walls themselves have ears where elves are concerned.”
Now even Huch was gathered close to him with the others, wiggling his fingers mysteriously in time with his blinking squint and saying, “Aye! That’s what Uz is always saying! The walls have ears… Heed him! Heed him!”
Kereth’s expression seemed to have changed, as though he knew he would have to speak now. He lowered his voice to a whisper, “Unexpectedly – my warnings have only fed your eagerness to know...”
He sat, not gazing toward them, with his face downcast. He whispered so softly that they had to strain their ears to hear his voice over the muffled whine of the howling wind outside, “Alright, I’ll speak on it.”
Stroking the scar on his cheek with a single calloused finger he said, “The elves, so they say, lost their true souls when they threw their life-rings into the sea, long ago, for want of knowledge of the truth. This is why they are fascinated with the lives of mortals.”
Huch muttered, “Indeed. Indeed, it is so,” and squinted another blink at the darkness.
The darkness in the tavern seemed like a weight, pressing in upon their heads. Hinfane was listening in silent fascination, just like the rest.
Kereth fingered his eyepatch idly and said, “There was a man. A man, tormented in the deepest dungeons of the elves. His cheek was marked with the brand and his toenails was torn out, right to the root. His eyeball was burned out with a hot poker, so that he must wear an eye-patch to this very day. Laughing like an insane creature, the elf-mage kept asking this man, this Kereth, over and over, ‘Where do you keep your soul, son of man? Where is that thing you call your soul, your spirit? I know where your liver is and your kidneys and your heart, but where is this spark that makes you a mortal man, a human? Show me and I will let you go! Where is the clockwork, where are the gears, where are the cogs and wheels that make you a man? Where is your soul?’”
Wide-eyed, every single one of them gasped. Someone said, “The cruel creature wanted to work out what it is that makes a man tick.” Someone else said, “The heartless elves! Like a beastly child that tears the wings off of a fly. Horrible!”
His eyepatch still downcast, still not meeting their gaze with his good eye, Kereth nodded and said, “Like they was takin’ apart a clock to figure out what it is that makes it tick.”
They were all silent.
The wind went strange.
Hinfane’s face burned with shame.
Kereth’s peculiar reserve was clearly the after-effect of everything he had been through in the dungeons of the elves – she ought to have known better. She went back to washing mead mugs, feeling sick.
Of course she’d heard the rumour that Kereth’s eye had been taken by an evil elf in the dungeons of Aros, all of them had. But she had never imagined what such an experience might be like. What it might do to a man. She glanced back.
The grown men were huddled together like children who had seen a ghost, and Kereth sat beside them, his head downcast, his form strangely contorted. Galt whispered, “That surely be why he sat over there in that dark corner tonight and not with us.”
With great feeling, reaching his rune-tattooed arm across the gap between them, Cam said, “We’re sorry, Kereth! We had no idea! Else we woulda never said anything.”
Viv’s face went solemn and he said fiercely, “Many are the travesties committed by the elves.”
But then Kereth’s good eye twitched.
Kereth clenched his fist and turned to face them and said, “The very elf-mage that did that to Kereth is the one that wanders the wastelands at night in the north, even as we speak. Be wary of him, be very wary. He is a monster - inhuman. Inhuman.” And they all shuddered.
A Feather on the Breath of Ellulianaen Page 5
