by BJ Hanlon
“And your original intent of the assault?” Tor asked. He’d not questioned motivation before, only what happened.
“I wanted to warn him… I know they are raising the army and the states are coming to invade.”
“We knew about this, which is why we destroyed the dry docks, or don’t you remember? What else, were you planning a coup of some sort? Planning on taking over because the woman you love was engaged to be wed to the man’s son?”
“No.” Then Edin turned toward Liert, the under-scribe was looking at him as if trying to read his mind. Maybe there was a spell that let someone do that. “I did not kill him.” That part was easy, it wasn’t a lie. “We talked.”
“Again, what did you discuss?” Tor said.
“I warned him.”
“About
dematians…”
Liert said trying to hide his amusement. Then the under-scribe looked up and the smile on his face dropped as did the scratching of his pen. His eyes moved from Tor to Edin and back.
If that was going to be the reaction from all, then he’d better get ready to flee… and quick.
“You’re serious?”
“Yes,” Tor said. “Laural confirmed it. And only the Grand Count is alert to it. The other two are focused on us.”
“They’ll have to deal with it sooner or later, right? It’ll be years before they can assemble any type of force that would be able to overcome us.”
“Didn’t you hear of the dry docks we destroyed? There is a draft and something else…” Tor said. “Something I’ve been loathe to speak of outside of the council but Edin must hear it.” He turned to the under-scribe. “Put down the pen and do not tell anyone until it is announced.”
Liert did so be hesitantly. He was wary of anything else.
“They have been building an army and stockpiling new weapons.”
“What kind?”
“Balls of iron: empty balls of iron filled with explosive black powder, like we used at the dry docks only there’s is stronger… and filled with wan stones. We believe it is their intention to loose these on us from special ships, ones we have only scarce reports on.”
“And what does this do?”
“The black powder explodes in the air and sends the wan stones to blanket a great area killing whomever they can and effectively cutting the talent from the rest.”
“Gods…” Edin said.
“We still don’t know when they’re coming but we know they are. I will be informing the forum of this tomorrow. Let us end this now.”
After eating the cold leftover food with Tor and Liert, Edin drank a little more and went up to the small bedroom. Edin was weary and a bit drunk. He’d tried to imagine what the weapons looked like and how’d they work. He thought about the serving girl. She was young and cute despite the mousiness. And she had her whole life ahead of her. It was just another death because of him.
As he entered, he saw Arianne reading in a chair next to an unending oil lamp.
She looked up, lowering the book in her hands and grabbed a goblet and drank from it. A red line was drawn across her upper lip.
“You’re here?”
Edin was hesitant to step in.
She was clearly drunk and the look on her face said angry…
“I thought you’d find your own room, somewhere away from me since you clearly hate me.”
“I don’t…”
“Quit lying Edin,” she said in a calm and even tone. “Do you love someone else now? That floozy from the tavern?”
“No,” Edin said. He looked at the small bed and thought of the night before, how great it was and the joy of just being with her. A part of him wanted that again. But he knew he couldn’t trust her. “I’ll take the floor.”
He laid down with a thin blanket and a pillow on the hard wood.
“You don’t love me anymore, is that it?”
Edin said nothing, he closed his eyes and pulled the blanket up to his neck.
“Or is it you don’t trust me?”
Slowly, Edin nodded.
“Well, the feeling is mutual. But I do still love you.” He heard her blow out the oil lamp and lay on the bed. “One day you’ll look back on this and wonder why you were such a blotard.”
Birds chirped outside and Edin slowly woke, shivering. The floor was freezing. His hip felt like he’d been hit with a hammer and he was stiff. In more ways than one he realized. Above him, on the bed, he heard a faint whistle of breath.
Edin closed his eyes and draped the blanket tighter around him.
A loud knock came. “Master Yentored wanted me to tell you they are heading to the forum.” It was a female voice.
“Thank you,” Edin said and dug his head back into the pillow.
It was late morning when he rose and found Le Fie in a light blue sitting room. “Have you heard anything?”
Le Fie nodded, “it is tense, the city is divided… didn’t help the fact that someone tried to assassinate you yesterday. Casitas didn’t like the implication.”
“Well that was the second try…” Edin said. “Third time is.”
“Don’t you say that,” Arianne said behind him. “You’re going to live a long time.”
“Listen to the princess.”
Arianne moved inside and stood a few feet from him with her arms crossed. She wouldn’t look at him, just at the gaunt raven-haired spy on the sofa.
“I suggest staying inside though just the same…” Le Fie said. “My house is your house.”
“Not a bad idea.” Edin said.
He did a bit of exploring. Some of the main living areas were gaudy with the yellows, greens and purples. Not Edin’s taste. He thought Tor’s office was much more his style.
Arianne appeared sporadically, she ignored him as if he were nothing more than one of her servants back in the old days.
The old days, he thought, when she had a family. A sadness ran through him as he thought about it. He’d found a barrel of ale in the cellar and began sipping it. The room was cool, almost cavern like in temperature and he found himself alone again. He drank and thought about her. It was all he could think about.
She’d been with only him, she loved him… and now he shunned her. No matter how many times he tried to justify himself, he felt, deep down, he was wrong.
Edin needed to take his mind off it. Off everything and found himself in a sitting room with a fictional tale from a few thousand years ago. A magi and an elf.
As he was reading, the world inside the pages seemed the same, yet different. The magi and elf were friends and the magi, a man, and the elf, a female seemed to have a tension built into their characters. They had travelled together to Soereh trying to rescue the sister of the female elf who was kidnapped by slavers.
As he read, it seemed a little less like fiction. He saw Carrow in his mind’s eye, he saw Alestow, the sea and the rough travel upon it. There were separate communities, human and elven but they were connected. It felt almost real.
Was it based on real life? Edin wondered.
He had once read a story of a wagon that could drive without a horse or oxen. It wasn’t magic either, there were pipes, tubes of metal spewing a brown smoke, and a rumbling box that moved the wagon. The driver was able to navigate roads and obstacles with something called a twisti-wheel.
“That could never happen,” Berka had said when Edin recapped the story in great detail. It had interested him.
“Were we always enemies?” Edin asked to what he thought was an empty room.
“What?” It was Arianne, she’d come in and taken a seat at a far chair near an ornate hearth. They locked eyes, the low fire back lit her hair as if it were a golden flaming crown.
“Men and elves.” Edin said. It was the first words he’d said to her since the night before. “This book,” Edin held it up, “it feels as if the scribe was writing what he knew… I don’t know it’s just the way the words come off the page, the descriptions.”
“Good s
tories do that.”
Edin noticed she didn’t answer the question and looked back toward her book. A small glimmer of anger grew. “You grew up in this world. I know nothing. So instead of dancing around it, could you please tell me why our races went to war, why they hate us and us them.”
“They died out,” Le Fie said. He appeared in a swinging door from the dining room.
Edin said nothing.
“Didn’t they?”
“Edin has an elven girlfriend,” Arianne said.
Le Fie moved closer and sat in a chair directly across from Edin. He clasped hands and leaned closer. “You met an elf?” The look on his face was excited, “not possible.” But it seemed he really wanted to believe it was possible.
“I forgot, you were… occupied. I promised not to reveal her tribe’s location.” Then Edin turned to Arianne, “she’s not my girlfriend.” He paused. “So, can someone tell me what happened?”
Arianne sighed. “Thousands of years ago, it was said the elves were free-moving peoples, for the most part. There were tribes that travelled in caravans, set up temporary homesteads, lived off the land. Others lived in cities where they were treated just like everyone else. For a long time, it was like that.” Arianne took a drink from a glass next to her and cleared her throat.
“In what is now called Porinstol, there was a plague. The land used to be lush and green, many farms and forests… some very ancient. Then there came a plague. A sickness that ravaged every living thing. This was long before my time even. It wiped out much of the old world. Many died from this. Elf and human each blamed the other. It was the elves who struck first; they sacked one of the old great cities, murdering thousands of people, men, women, and babies. There were stories that they feasted on the blood of the dying, ripping out hearts while they still beat. People were afraid, so the king of old, somewhere around thirty generations before me…” Arianne swallowed, “declared them to be savages and abominations… they were barbaric.”
“Then the war happened,” Le Fie said. “A brutal war that left many more dead than the actual plague. In the end, due to their numbers being much less than human numbers, the elves were destroyed… or so the stories say.”
Edin was silent for a bit, remembering the female elf at the side of the Eltu River, cleaning his wounds and preparing medicinal plants to help him. She was nice, she saved a stranger, a mortal enemy of her people.
How could someone like that be from such a barbaric lineage? Maybe she was an outlier, after all she was just one example of her people. A thought ran through him… a line from the day before… those have once before; must again be allied.
Edin kept the thought to himself. He looked toward Arianne who was back to reading. She glanced up and they locked eyes for a moment. Her beautiful gray-green eyes twinkled.
The day dragged and it was becoming stuffy. Edin wanted more than anything to get out into the sun before it dropped but Arianne stayed by him. She watched him as if she knew what he wanted to do and wouldn’t let him. She was trying to protect him. Arianne even walked behind him to the water closet.
It grew later, his mind wandered. What was happening at the forum? Did anyone believe him? Did he believe himself? What if the dematians weren’t rising? But Laural spoke of it also...
Outside, the evening sun turned an irate red.
Since the messenger earlier, there had been no word from the forum. With his blade strapped to his hip, Edin began pacing in front of the bay window that looked out into the front garden.
“Will you stop?” Le Fie said. His face was serene as he read some book on politics. Not a topic Edin was fond of. He sat, but soon found his foot tapping and saw annoyed faces on his companions.
“Is there a place to train here?”
“Cellar,” Le Fie said briskly. “Where you got the ale.”
Edin didn’t remember it and Arianne looked at him, a worried look on her face.
“I’m just going to practice,” Edin said.
Through a thick door in the cellar, past crates of food, racks of wine, and barrels of ale, he found a large open space. On the ground, there were marks in the dirt, a circle of feet. A hay target sat in the far corner with red circles on a field of white. Wooden stands held dummies, others held weapons of all sorts. He even found the one the dematian had used to slice his side. A horsehead knife.
Edin went through the Oret Nakosu before running through the sword and quarterstaff forms. He grew warmer and dispensed with his shirt. As he trained, he noticed small deviations in his movements. They flowed, but something felt off. His hand was a hair’s breadth too high. Blade tilted just slightly. The staff striking when it shouldn’t… until he noticed that it should.
He breathed, tried correcting them, but found his body naturally reverting to these new positions. What was happening?
A wooziness grew, a lost feeling as if he were stuck in a forest maze and could only go deeper inside. Edin nearly collapsed to the ground. He pulled himself toward the wall and slid down it before holding his head in his hands.
Images flew past his eyes, an open dirt circle surrounded by a forest. A wizened looking old man with a bent nose and a long white beard stood before him. He was holding a sword and staff. The familiar stink of a stable came from somewhere.
Then the man started, it was nearly identical to his set of sword and staff… though with the slight variations he’d been practicing. He noticed the of movement in the bearded face or twitch of the arms.
Suddenly, the man stopped and came at him, his feet seemingly dancing above the ground and his blade glowing red.
Edin looked down and saw his own weapons shimmer into existence. Mirage and a quarterstaff one with runes in it. The latter felt lighter and yet somehow stronger.
Was he in some sort of dream? Did the Inquisitor use that stone to summon him while he was awake?
He lifted the sword and the blades clattered. His mind began to work again, the world moved faster around him. They sparred. Edin blocked high and low switching between the sword and staff. He dodged strikes, thrusts, and slashes. The man’s blade left a glowing blaze in its wake as if it had been on fire. Edin blocked with the staff and thought maybe it’d catch on fire. It didn’t.
The old man was fast and after maybe a dozen tense exchanges, he stepped back and bowed. The points of his ears pushing through his hair. An elf.
“I see you are learning. Almost there,” the elf said touching his fist to his chest. “The dematian king has waken to all of our detriment.”
“What is this?” Edin said. “Who are you, how are you talking with me?”
A wide grin appeared on the old man’s face.
“In a time past, man and elf spoke through the Wave. We are at a higher plane, much like the structure in the tower or the seeing stone. Elves do not need such objects.”
“Where are you? Are you with…” Edin didn’t know her name and looked around. No other person was in the clearing.
“Time will come when you need us. No longer shall elf hide from man. We must join together.”
“How do I find you?”
“We sit on the banks of Eltu for now… but that is not your destiny young master.” He cleared his throat. “You must return to Bestoria, you must find the rest of the Ballast Stones… go to the northland, there you must search out ancient wisdom… ancient stone.”
“North? What are you talking about?” Edin asked, but suddenly there was a swirl of lights and a single image.
A broken tower on a cliff far above the sea. A dead, barren rocky land. A cape above the sea. White waves crashing into dark blue water. The image tickled something in the back of his mind… then it was gone.
It was only a moment. Then his eyes opened and he was in the cellar again. He was cold, sweat was wafting off his body and he had Mirage in his hand. Edin’s muscles ached and his breath beat rapidly from his chest as if he’d just actually sparred.
Pushing himself up Edin moved back toward the cent
er of the room. It felt almost like another presence was in here. He spun, looked to all sides but saw no one. The oil lamps flickered and for a moment, he was sure he saw an ethereal spirit.
Then voices floated down the stairs. Someone was excited, talking rapidly. Edin took a breath and advanced toward the stairs.
Up top, there was a flurry of movement. People rushing in and out of rooms some cursing, others muttering to themselves. Edin saw a serving man he’d met before, he grabbed his arm.
“What’s happening?”
“Ships… war ships.” He pulled his arm away and continued his ambling run back into the house. The place was huge and he didn’t know how many people actually lived and worked here. There were some he’d never seen before. Women with large aprons, a man with mud and muck covered boots and pants.
Edin slipped back into the sitting room. Le Fie and Arianne were both gone. A moment later, he spotted her golden hair fluttering in a wicked breeze outside talking with Le Fie and Tor.
He went outside into a cloudy and mournful day.
“Get back in, it’s not safe for you,” Le Fie demanded.
“No,” Edin said.
Arianne grabbed his hand and looked at him. Her fingers clenching like vices. Edin looked back.
“War ships? From Bestoria?”
“Yes… they are setting sail. Ashica brought news. A few hundred, maybe a thousand and that’s just from Carrow. Supposedly Alestow and Calerrat have sent equal that number if not more,” Le Fie said.
“Gods… how many men?”
“Hundred thousand at least. Ashica thinks it could be a hundred and fifty.”
“The forum has been put on hold,” Tor said, his voice calm and steady. “Casitas is calling for all able-bodied men to report.”
Edin squeezed the staff in his hand and nodded.
