‘What sort of magic was that?’ he asked, partly trying to change the subject and partly because he was in enough trouble anyway so he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.
‘I finally know what’s up with Elgin’, said Uldini, still indignant but sounding a little self-satisfied too. ‘The oaf is in some sort of trance, some ritual that has been taking all his attention for weeks on end. No magic can reach him there. At least he’s not ignoring me deliberately.’ He rubbed his head and looked crankily up at the ceiling. ‘I’m asking myself what he’s up to there. Maybe it’s something useful for a change.’
Falk snorted in disbelief and said: ‘you really dote on this wizard, don’t you? Anyone else would have been on the receiving end of a furious messenger spirit by now; instead he’s still playing you like a fool’.
Uldini looked deliberately over at Ahren.
‘Don’t talk to me about apprentices. All the things your pupil has got up to already, it could fill volumes, and yet you still drag him around after you.’
Ahren recognised that it was just the usual squabbling between the Arch Wizard and the Forest Guardian that was kicking off and he decided to ignore the barb.
While they were involved in verbal jousting, he curiously stuck his head out into the hallway. Jelninolan had said she would join soon but there was no sign of her. The pair were still at each other’s throats and he could hear more arguments coming from downstairs. What if one of the other guests had discovered the elf? Then a real fight would ensue in no time. He stepped out into the hall and walked anxiously to Jelninolan’s room.
She didn’t react to his knocking, so he opened the door gingerly, just a tiny bit. After all, he’d just learned a painful lesson on the dangers of entering a magical figure’s room without being invited.
Jelninolan was lying on the floor, her arms and legs were bound, and she was writhing helplessly. Ahren’s worst fears seemed to have come true and he burst into the room, his hand on his knife, which he always carried with him after some particularly bitter experiences.
He looked around wildly, ready to attack whoever had done this to the elf in the blink of an eye. But the room was completely empty apart from the elf and himself. He turned to her and saw her pleading look.
And then he burst out laughing. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t resist giving in to the hilarity.
Jelninolan was lying before him, tied up in a tangle of leather bands, clearly Elvin ribbon armour that she had tried to put on by herself. Ahren was looking at a half dozen bands that had become twisted, thereby upsetting the balance of the armour to such an extent that with every movement the elf was simply tying herself up in more knots.
He panted and tried desperately to draw breath and wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes, but the deadly look from Jelninolan confirmed what he’d already suspected – how their next practice battles would turn out. A small part of him saw the painful days ahead, but most of him continued to laugh hysterically.
Finally, he managed to pull himself together. He hastily closed the door so that nobody could see the priestess in her unfortunate state, then, still laughing, hunkered down beside her.
‘You have to stop thrashing about, you know that yourself. Otherwise, I can’t help you’, he said, catching his breath and trying to calm her.
Jelninolan’s eyes were green slits that were almost paralysing him. His merriment drained away completely, and he asked as respectfully as possible: ‘shall I loosen the bands, or can you help yourself by using magic?’
The priestess maintained her furious look for a moment before giving up and rolling her eyes.
‘Not without using my hands, which unfortunately isn’t possible at the moment’, she finally admitted.
Ahren simply nodded and began silently recounting the Elvin tale of the Merry River, whose leitmotifs helped him to gradually work his way through the leather bands of the elf armour.
It wasn’t long before he had freed Jelninolan’s hands and she immediately performed a few hand gestures and murmured a complicated Elfish sentence. The armour slid into position, although Ahren noticed that the elf cheated a little by moving the leather panels to adjust the bands. He said nothing however, but stood up and took a few steps back.
The armour was sitting perfectly on her now, and the priestess gracefully got to her feet.
Ahren could now study the quality of the leather panels in some detail and what he saw amazed him. The leather was dyed green throughout and covered in complicated patterns, just like the Tree Guards who protected Evergreen. But he also noticed there were gaps here and there in the armour. It seemed that Jelninolan hadn’t quite succeeded in transforming herself back to her earlier form, because it appeared as though the armour was designed for a slimmer body.
She saw the look on his face and her scowl suggested an immediate and painful death if gave so much as a hint of a giggle. Ahren’s forehead broke out in a sweat and he froze like a rabbit caught in the torch light. Finally, Jelninolan threw a loose robe over herself, which hid the armour. He recognised the shimmering of Elvin material, but then the priestess cast a spell and the robe was transformed into the everyday linen garment worn by a farmer’s wife.
With head held high she imperiously swept past him, meanwhile hissing into his ear in a whisper: ‘not a word now!’
Ahren could only nod weakly and didn’t move a muscle until he heard her voice from the corridor calling back into the room, ‘stop dilly-dallying, Ahren! The others are sure to be waiting for us!’
He sensibly didn’t ask the question that was nagging him: why hadn’t the elf simply used the magic from the outset to clothe herself in the armour? Instead, he followed her in silence. Jelninolan gave him another warning look before they reached Uldini’s room. He shrugged his shoulders and decided to forget the whole incident as best he could.
Ahren followed the elf into Uldini’s room and noticed sulkily how she swept in unannounced and didn’t receive a hint of a rebuke. Ahren wasn’t particularly looking forward to the following few days as he now feared that both Falk and Jelninolan had a bone to pick with him. He carefully slipped into the room behind the priestess and retired as invisibly as possible into a corner.
The two men stared at Jelninolan in shock until finally Uldini walked towards her and gave her an awkward but genuine hug.
‘I’m so sorry, auntie. I know how much you had got used to your new form and role in the community. This must be a bitter blow’, he said kindly.
To Ahren’s surprise, there were tears in the eyes of the cynical wizard. He thought over what he had heard earlier. Elves changed their form because of the demands placed on them by their society. But this process was normally a gradual one. Now the elf had used powerful magic to force herself into her previous form because she felt it suited best in their present situation.
Ahren imagined if he had to go back to his previous form, as the timid boy without any prospects - the one he had been in Deepstone before being trained by Falk. The thought was unbearable and now he really understood the sacrifice the elf had made.
Falk too had laid an arm over the priestess’s shoulder and was now comforting her as she looked at the two men with her eyes full of determination. Her features were harder and more resilient, and Ahren caught himself thinking that he missed the old Jelninolan already.
Uldini cleared his throat and turned back to the window to point demonstratively outside.
‘We can’t leave in this weather, but by staying on here we’re tempting fate. The voices below are getting louder all the time and I don’t think this day will pass without fisticuffs or a real fight. And if one of the patrols comes in and finds us here then we’re in real trouble’, he said darkly.
Falk nodded in agreement. ‘Better to be wet in safety than dry in peril.’
Ahren had got very familiar with wet weather in the course of his training and nodded in agreement too.
‘I spent the whole night reliving
a memory with the help of Tanentan. So the lute can’t be used as an aid to calming the hot-heads below. Its effect was very powerful as you can all see, so I should really avoid using it for at least one lunar month – or it could damage me badly. I think we should leave immediately too’, she explained in a steely voice which sounded more like an order than a suggestion.
And so, a short time later they were all in the saddle and riding off into the autumn storm while suspicious eyes stared at them through the windows of the hostelry.
No sooner had they left when they were drenched by a squall of rain. It hit Ahren like a massive wall of water and within a few heartbeats he had fallen behind and was soaked to the skin. The cold wind pulled and tore at his clothing and after two hundred paces his whole body was shivering with cold. He carefully pulled out his flask, took a swig from it and grimaced. He had created his herbal drink from a medicinal perspective, and was still trying to find out a way of bettering the taste without lessening the effect.
The apprentice caught up with Falk and offered him the flask.
‘There’s Gorge Weed in it, which should protect us from a cold or worse’, he said, his teeth chattering.
Falk gave him a searching look, then shrugged his shoulder and took a large draught of the herbal brew. He returned the flask to Ahren with a look of self-satisfaction.
‘I taught you something useful anyway. Good that not all of my lessons have gone in one ear and out the other’, he grunted.
Ahren looked suitably contrite but he was jumping for joy inside. The apprentice had begun to understand that Falk liked to be sparing with his praise because he didn’t want Ahren to become cocky. He was slowly learning to look behind the mountain of criticism which the old Forest Guardian was constantly heaping on him.
The young man strode over to Uldini, granting himself a little smile that none of his companions could see. Then he gave the flask to the wizard, who drank from it too. Finally, he dropped back to Jelninolan, but she declined with a little hand gesture.
‘Elves never get colds. The weather can never get the better of us, whether rain, snow or sun. SHE, WHO FEELS is also the goddess of nature’, she said modestly.
Ahren, shivering from head to toe, put away the flask and wondered morosely if, when he was a Forest Guardian, he might not be able to change deity if he prayed hard enough for it.
Chapter 7
64 days to the winter solstice
They passed through the previous day’s battlefield without any problems. To his left and right Ahren saw tell-tell signs of the bloodbath, but the bodies had been taken away. A few torn and discarded tabards, some broken shields and the churned-up earth were the only clues to the battle that had raged so recently.
Only one day earlier people had died on that spot, but the piece of land lay there innocently, as though nothing unusual had ever occurred. And the storm was scattering any remaining evidence of the slaughter. This impression of transience both frightened and angered Ahren. They rode on silently, leaving the field behind them.
The weather hardly improved over the following days and neither did Ahren’s mood. He was constantly on the lookout for medicinal plants so that his supply of herbal tea wouldn’t run out. The others left its preparation to Ahren although Falk and Uldini helped themselves to generous amounts. His task was made more difficult by the fact that the surroundings were becoming more urban.
They spent most of their days moving from one village to the next, or if it couldn’t be avoided, along the outside of town walls. All this meant it was more difficult to find the necessary plants. And to crown it all, there were the nasty exercises Falk had thought out for him, which all had to be carried out in rainy conditions. Ahren practised pulling the arrows out of his soaking quiver, then he had to fletch his arrows anew or untie wet leather knots. Their nights were spent in draughty barns or by the side of the road in the small tents the elves had given them. Uldini and the others were afraid of another hostelry full of combative guests, and Ahren acknowledged the wisdom of their decision with sadness.
At least Uldini ensured they were warm every evening. He would always intone a magic spell over their campfire, which ensured a constant natural warmth so they could dry their clothes and warm their bones. Herbal brew or no herbal brew, Ahren was convinced that without this magical intervention, they would be sneezing their heads off the following day.
Finally, after a stormy but dry autumn afternoon they arrived on top of a hill from where Ahren caught his first glimpse of King’s Island. Large clouds were scudding across the sky, and every so often through their gaps the rays of sunlight would brighten the capital in a golden hue, just for an instant, before the city would cloud over again.
Ahren was amazed by the sight of this impressive, silhouetted city rising up out of a craggy island. There must have been a promontory once, connecting King’s Island with the mainland, but now it had been replaced by a gaping chasm filled by the swirling ocean brine. An enormous drawbridge, rising upward at a slight incline, connected the mainland with the egg-shaped island, which had been the seat of the Knight Marshes royal house since time immemorial.
The city walls seemed small and delicate when compared with the cliff-faces, but when he spotted the sentries positioned on the battlement’s walkways, Ahren calculated that the fortifications had to be at least fifteen paces high. Splendid buildings with shimmering roofs soared upward here and there from behind the walls, but what impressed Ahren the most was the palace, which he could see in the distance. The broad main street beyond the drawbridge stretched straight as an arrow directly up to the palace, so that any visitor entering the royal city had an unhindered view of the building. It seemed enormous, almost threateningly so, and was at least fifty paces high and almost five furlongs in length. A square-shaped tower stretched high into the air, seeming almost to touch the heavens.
Ahren gaped and Uldini seemed unusually contented.
‘It’s best if we keep going. It would be a pity if we were to get drawn into any trouble just as we’re about to arrive’, said the Arch Wizard.
The mood among the populace had changed over the previous few days. It was no longer that of open squabbling, but now there was an intangible brooding feeling of resentment against the authorities. It seemed as though the ever-present King’s Guards still had the surrounding baronies under control, but the general atmosphere reminded Ahren of the humming of an angry beehive just before the swarm bursts forth.
They travelled quickly on towards the drawbridge, which marked the end of the first stage of their journey. Ahren was excited and curious, and kept craning his neck as they approached the enormous wooden structure. Dozens of merchants, farmers, knights and guards crowded the wide bridge, at least twenty paces wide, whose beams were formed from mighty old oaks which had been cut into rectangular shapes. Ahren looked in amazement at ropes, as thick as your forearm, and iron heads as large as your fist, which bound each enormous plank of wood to the next. The chains, with links bigger than Ahren’s torso, stretched tautly into the heights above them, disappeared into holes in the wall, as large as a fully grown human. As they approached the opening in the wall, he heard the mighty surge of the waves, fifty paces below them, and racing through the narrow strait before they would crash into the coastal cliffs.
Ahren felt queasy when he looked down at the ocean beneath him and he could hardly wait to set foot on King’s Island. Falk’s training had not, up to this point, included any swimming lessons. The apprentice, it was true, could keep afloat in a still pool, but Ahren was under no illusions concerning what would happen if he fell into the maelstrom of water below and crashed into the jagged cliff-face.
The passers-by pushed and jostled each other in a hectic hurly-burly from one side of the bridge to the other and Ahren was surprised that not one out of this seething mass had fallen off. Personally, he would have been delighted if there were some form of barrier left and right, but its absence didn’t seem to bother anyone. It wa
s like a complicated dance where everybody seemed to know the rules, and the edges of the bridge was always clear of people.
A massive ox cart pushed by them while the cloth merchant on the coach box urged on the animal, causing the crowd to separate, only to join together in a wave of bodies, moving forward again as soon as it had passed.
‘Why is there such a coming and going? I know this is the capital, but I can see so many merchants. They can’t possibly all sell their wares on this small island?’ he asked Uldini quietly.
The Arch Wizard eyed him merrily.
‘Well spotted, boy. To make sure that the trade isn’t completely taken away from the capital city, every merchant who doesn’t sell his wares on King’s Island has to pay a higher tribute. In this way the political and economic power of the kingdom has been centralised in one place for centuries’, answered Uldini. ‘Also, the largest harbour on the north east coast is here. The currents are normally favourable and at night a mighty beacon in the palace tower guides the sailors on their way. Ships are becoming more daring and are even docking and unloading at night, so that there’s a constant hubbub at the harbour. A third of all goods from Evergreen, Kelkor, the Knight Marshes and the Green Sea are channelled through King’s Island before being shipped off to the Sunplains or into the Southern Jungles. Or indeed to the Silver Cliff, which is exactly why we’re here. It should be easy enough for us to find a ship that will take us to the dwarf enclave’, said Uldini hopefully. ‘But first I’ll pay a visit to Elgin. He has to put a stop to the activities of the Illuminated Path before the cult plunges the Knight Marshes into chaos. Senius Blueground is a good ruler, but I really don’t understand how he could have let things come to this pass’, said the Arch Wizard grimly.
‘That’s the disadvantage of King’s Island’, answered Falk. ‘It’s set apart. Trade and politics dominate day-to-day life and the voices of the common folk is scarcely heard here. The next baronial convention won’t be until winter and by that time the situation will have worsened considerably. The King may be hearing about isolated unrest here and there, but it will probably be too late by the time the barons present him with the full picture.’ Ahren noticed an urgent, almost pleading tone in his master’s voice and it reminded him clearly that his master’s original home was the Knight Marshes.
The Naming Page 10
