by Ethan Spears
They continued into the building, taking several turns before arriving at a broad set of double doors. They stopped in front, the guards before the doors placing their hands on the handles and waiting. A great deal of footsteps and chatter could be heard through the door.
“You’re going to be appearing before a judge to enter your plea,” said the man in the hat. “Acting out of sorts or with disrespect will be dealt with harshly.” It wasn’t a threat, more of a friendly warning. “For your sake, I hope you’ve already thought about what you’re going to say.” He nodded to the guards, who swung to doors open to admit them.
The room was more packed than Aoden would have imagined, people crammed into every available seat and standing in the aisles and against railings. There were balconies full of people rising three stories above, dangerously overcrowded as they jostled one another to get a better view of the elf walking in. A murmur swept through the already chatty crowd as Aoden was led to a raised platform across from a dais against the far wall that spanned the entire length of the room. Upon the dais was a tacky and ill-conceived chair of shining metal, looking no less than a throne.
“Stand here as you address the court and the judge. If you love your life, keep it polite and formal.” The man then waved off the guards, removing the rope around Aoden’s wrists himself. Once Aoden was free, the man gathered up the rope and carried it with him as he moved to the dais, ascended, and picked up a ceremonial staff that lay hidden behind the throne. He raised it and slammed one end into the wood at his feet, producing a surprisingly loud bang with each strike, a hint at hidden strength.
“I, David Lowe, Master of Law, call the First High Court of Winter Ridge into session. The defendant, one Aoden Halfelven, stands accused of trespassing, assault, and multiple counts of attempted kidnapping of children. How does the defendant plea?”
“Not guilty, obviously,” said Aoden.
“Let the records show the defendant’s plea.” Aoden noticed the scribe off to the side, pinned against a wall by the large crowd, trying desperately to record all that was being said from his uncomfortable position. “You, erm, will now have your first opportunity to present your defense to the judge, after which a defense attorney will be assigned to your case to handle all further court communications. Please note that a scribe is recording all your spoken words and will be used as a record of the assumed truth. Should your story be found to, erm, change between now and when next we review this case, it will reflect poorly upon you, so ensure that you tell only the complete truth without embellishment. Now, if all in the stands will please rise, I present High Judge, High Counselor, and Triarch, Lady Mira.”
Aoden’s eyes had glazed over during the majority of the man’s stream of legal formalities, but at Lady Mira’s name, he snapped back to attention. A door on the dais opened, and Lady Mira strode out. She was a woman of unusual beauty without a doubt, brown doe eyes and a soft yet regal face framed with auburn hair topped with an absurdly large and ornate hat.
She was also corpulent, perhaps over three hundred pounds with rolls of flesh spilling from her neck and bunched together under her tight-fitting dress. Now that Aoden saw her, he realized he hadn’t seen another overweight person in the entirety of the town, most being trim, skinny, or muscled.
Even with the weight, Lady Mira moved with a practiced, dance-like grace across the dais and stood before the Master of Law. “Thank you, dear husband,” she said, her voice soft and rich. She planted a dainty kiss upon his cheek.
Mira moved to her throne, taking a seat and folding her hands in her lap. “Welcome to Winter Ridge,” she said musically. “Please, tell us about your visit and the charges against you.”
“Lady Mira,” said Aoden, kneeling and giving her the proper elven salute. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting a Triarch before. It’s an honor.”
She let out a girlish laugh. “Our trespasser tries to ply a silver tongue,” she said. “While I am pleased to honor you, I beseech you to forego the frivolities and move to the matter at hand. What is your story, my dear half-elf?” She put a hand on her chin and gave him a charming smile as if expecting an engrossing tale. It put Aoden at ease.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m in something of an odd situation. I’ve come here searching for an item of great importance, but I don’t know what this item is, only that it is somewhere on this peninsula. I’m afraid I find myself lost.”
Mira hummed like she understood perfectly. “How did you make it past the lizardfolk at the border?”
“They understood the importance of my mission. Frankly, I did not expect them to be so accommodating.”
She tilted her head. “Difficult to believe but not impossible,” she said. “What of the events in the woods? I heard my daughter Madelaine was involved. Is there any truth to this?” The way she asked the question made it clear she already knew the answer and was not happy with it.
Aoden explained in detail what had happened after he stumbled upon the two boys. He kept his story honest and straightforward, embellishing and excusing nothing. As he spoke, Lady Mira nodded and commented where appropriate, but otherwise did not interrupt. When he finished, she folded her hands and sat back as if to consider his words, but her eyes were fastened on him. She stared for a while in silence, then sat forward again.
“I have a few questions for you, if you don’t mind?”
“Of course, anything you need, my Lady.”
“Excellent. I would like to know where you were during Kenta’s Fury.”
The question caught Aoden off-guard. “My Lady? I’m sorry, but I don’t see the relevance of that question.”
“Humor me, please. Most half-elves lived with humans, if I’m not mistaken. Since you didn’t perish in the Fury, I’m curious where you were.”
Something about the question raised an alarm in Aoden’s brain, but he wasn’t sure why. Still, he had no reason to lie. “Truth be told, while I was born and raised in Handock in the northeastern part of the kingdom, I went to live with the elves after my mother died. The majority of half-elves, myself included, spent the Fury in a jail cell. I thought I was going to be executed, but I suppose fate had other plans.”
Lady Mira leaned forward. “Do you know why elves were in the Leiran forest, west of Azurcourt?”
She became immediately disappointed when his face fell to confusion. “I’m afraid I don’t. If there were, I’ve never heard about them being there. Were there any witnesses?”
“Yes,” she answered sharply, startling Aoden. She switched just as swiftly into another lulling, sweet tone. “I saw them myself. They attacked my retinue as we fled from the orcs.”
“Attacked?” But Mira was already signaling one of the guards at the end of the dais. The guard saluted, unlocked a door behind him, and vanished through it.
“I believe I’ve heard enough for the time being,” she said. “I will now pass my first judgment of the court. Please approach the dais.” Mira heaved herself from her throne and took a few light steps away from it. The guard returned shortly, his hands resting underneath a delicate fuchsia pillow which he carried like a precious child. Upon the pillow sat a short-hafted war hammer. As soon as his eyes fell on it, Aoden was filled with involuntary awe, as were many of those around him judging by the simultaneous intake of breath by dozens in the room.
The guard knelt beside Lady Mira, allowing her to lift the hammer from the pillow with some difficulty. Lady Mira dismissed the guard and rested the hammer in the crook of her arm as she turned to those assembled, putting the hammer on full display. It was a mostly plain war hammer, minimally etched with a latticework of white steel, the only oddity was it being made of an unusual blue metal. Aoden wasn’t sure why the sight of it stirred his heart, but certainly some magic was at work.
And then the poem floated through his mind.
Steel of a god.
Lady Mira looked at the hammer, then at Aoden. Had Aoden not been so focused on the hammer, he would have not
iced her eyes; where before she was calm and understanding, now that she held the hammer, there was manic energy behind them. She shouted to the assembled, “The crimes against the accused are quite serious, I’m sad to say, but justice will always be done. Should this man be innocent, let the goddess of justice speak through her tool. Annowyn, we beseech you!” She raised the hammer over her head and slammed it into the dais before her. There was a dull crack as the wood beneath the hammer struggled to hold against the blow.
A desperate light entered her eyes. “Annowyn!” she shouted again, striking the ground a second time, then a third. The dais took the attack, dented but unbroken. Mira, breathing heavily from the three wild swings, looked angrily at the ground, then back up at Aoden, madness in the face that moments before was the picture of elegance. She thrust the hammer into the guard’s chest, who staggered back, then placed the pillow under the weapon. She dropped it onto the awaiting cushion, then strode to the edge of the dais.
“The hammer has proclaimed nothing!” she shouted, looking around at those assembled. “This casts the defendant in a ghastly light! What does the defendant have to say?”
She turned to Aoden to wait for his response, but Aoden hadn’t heard her. He was instead watching the hammer being returned to its room behind the dais. Once it disappeared, he realized she was waiting for him. “Sorry, my Lady. I didn’t hear what you said.”
Her eyes went wide, darting towards the back door where he had just been looking. “Why were you staring at Senmozar?”
Aoden was awed as he spoke. “That was Senmozar? The famed hammer of Annowyn?”
Just hearing the name seemed to soothe Lady Mira. “Of course, dear,” she said sweetly. “I’m glad to see its name still holds power in those on the other side of the isthmus.”
Aoden nodded. “That explains the feeling I had when I saw it. I had my doubts about my mission, my Lady, but I believe I just found the item I came in search of.”
The guards on the dais reacted immediately, but rather than moving towards him, they shifted away from Lady Mira. The look in her eyes became what could only be called murderous. Aoden knew he had misread something dire.
“You dare?!” shouted Mira, her composure gone. She leaped off the dais, waddling gracelessly towards him. Aoden took a step back, but the Master of Law restrained her with a grip that looked little more than a comforting hand to a casual observer.
“Dearest,” he said, guiding her to a halt. “The hammer has spoken. Should we return the accused to his cell?”
She looked at her husband with a fury, then back at Aoden. “He is beyond accused, David. I am sure of his guilt.”
Her husband leaned in and whispered, “That’s not how the law works, dearest.”
“I’ve done nothing to warrant a verdict of guilty,” Aoden said.
She looked ready to charge him, but Lowe’s hand restrained her ungently. “You’re an elf. Your kind revealed themselves during the Fury for what they really are: murderers and treaty-breakers.”
Angered to be lumped in with the other elves, Aoden snapped back with, “Murderers? Really? I just told you I spent the Fury in jail! These accusations are unwarranted and, frankly, unbelievable.”
“You killed my Addy!” she screamed, pointing back towards the hammer’s room. “He was the greatest hero to have ever graced the land. Adgronius Zeion died in his duties as my protector, and you elves slew him like cowards!” Aoden made to speak to defend himself, but Lady Mira motioned sharply and several guards moved in to restrain Aoden, pushing him onto the ground and tying his wrists behind his back, any tenderness gone in their haste to comply. Aoden was hoisted to his feet and forced from the room as Lady Mira burst into uncontrollable sobbing.
Chapter 29
Truth and Judgment
Mergau had trouble sleeping. She’d spent a substantial part of her day sorting through the books and scrolls in the case and found something of a problem: she could barely make sense of them.
They were in three languages: Orcish, the language of magic, and some third one she wasn’t familiar with. The third she couldn’t read at all, and the second she could read aloud since she knew the characters but couldn’t translate them to anything she understood. Thankfully, most of the books were in Orcish, but it was an old form of Orcish that was borderline gibberish to her, containing words and spellings that were positively ancient.
She had spent the better part of the evening making sense of the first page of one book with limited success. Some of the older sagas she’d heard from the shaman and poets of her tribe used older language, which helped a bit, but even those long-dead saga singers who used ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ in their everyday speech would find the writing in these books antiquated.
Even the alphabet had changed since the books were written, containing at least four characters she didn’t recognize and lacking at least one she did, perhaps also missing some of the less common characters that she hadn’t noticed yet. She had thought this would be one of the easier parts of her mission, but this language stymied her progress.
Discouraged and hungry, she stopped for the night. Though initially wary of the food, the bread was filling, if plain. The vegetables tasted fine, though they looked strange to her, being of sizes and colors that were unusual. Strangely, there was some sort of dried meat among the rations, though why Hetipa would stock meat was baffling to Mergau. Perhaps she had guests?
And now she lay in Hetipa’s bedroom, turning this way and that, unable to lull herself to sleep despite the softness and comfort of the bed. She kept thinking about Larna and Ezma and Aoden, all wrapped up in this grand scheme which had already killed two of them, among countless others. She wondered if she or Aoden would be next, or Reggy or Jierta or some other person she had yet to meet. She had pondered this most nights since Tabir’s visit, but here—alone and immured in discomforting stone—it was impossible to shake these thoughts from her mind.
With sleep eluding her, she stood from her bed relatively awake and alert. She went back out to the central reading room. This whole endeavor was reminding her of the months in Ezma’s hut, where she spent her time studying things she barely understood and couldn’t tell if it was day or night. She wondered if Ezma would delight in the comparison, or even if she had structured her training to purposely reflect this moment.
She was again irritated by the concept of manipulating events through time and decided she was overthinking.
She grabbed a scroll and unrolled it, deciding to pass the time with further attempts at reading. She scanned the scroll, saw it was written in the language of magic, and rolled it back up, putting it in the pile of indecipherable scripts. She unrolled another, this one in Orcish, and spent the better part of an hour deciphering the first few lines. At length, she guessed the purpose of the scroll: an animal guide of sorts, listing creatures in the Verkan peninsula and likely describing them if she read further, but she put that one aside without delving deeper, her time wasted. She was just reaching for a third when she heard the sound of running water. Frowning, she headed to the bathroom, but each step drew her away from the sound. She checked the tub and the chute but, while the noise continued, there was no water.
When she turned back to the reading room, she saw a dim blue glow coming from the strange room across the reading room. She flew to the room, convinced some sort of magic was afoot. She stood over the basin and found it full of water.
The sound of running water ceased and the water in the basin rippled.
Another oddity. Mergau couldn’t fathom the purpose of this shallow basin of water, but she knew there had to be one. She stared, waiting to see if something happened, but the initial ripple traveled from one end to the other and dissipated, leaving the water still. She blew upon the surface, causing it to ripple once more, but it otherwise didn’t react. She wondered if it would be unwise to touch the water itself, but as she considered, the blue glow faded and the basin was instantly empty.
Dumbfounde
d and profoundly disappointed, she left the room, sure that she had missed something important. She went to her bed and lay down, her mind roiling with thoughts of magic and the basin. Momentarily distracted from her worries, she soon fell asleep.
***
Mergau could feel her frustration building. A week had passed in this cave and no progress had been made. She knew no more about slaying a god now than when she entered.
Her ability to translate the books and scrolls from Old Orcish to New Orcish (as she thought of them now) was significantly improved, but that only meant that she could translate one page every three hours instead of one a day, and due to a complete lack of writing material, she couldn’t even record what she found. Not that it mattered, as everything she had translated thus far were forwards and introductions and statements of purpose, nothing of substance. Before dinner, she had turned to a random page in the middle of one promising-looking book to see if she’d find anything worthwhile, but the page heavily referenced a previous section she had yet to translate, making it incoherent.
Her frustration made her feel so helpless that it brought her close to tears. She ate a dreary meal, soberly realizing that she was in desperate need of aid from Ezma or some other mage who was adequately trained. She considered returning to the lizard people as she no longer had confidence that she could shoulder this task herself. She was underprepared, unlearned, inexperienced, and far too much was being expected of her. She wished she knew what Ezma had been thinking.
She was staring at her hand, halfway to her mouth with a batch of lightly salted nuts, when the hue of the light shifted. She stood, scattering her dinner, and rushed to the basin room as the sound of running water echoed around her and the blue glow intensified. Before her eyes, water rose from the bed of the basin and filled the bowl to the lip. After a few seconds, the sound went away, a single ripple ran through the water, and she was again staring at still waters.
