Days Of Light And Shadow

by Greg Curtis

  Iros was constantly amazed by the river stone paths. It must have taken centuries for the masons to lay them out. The stones were dragged up from the nearby Aora, gathered together in a makeshift store as masons split them, then carted over to the city where more artisans had carved out the shape of each new path to be built and levelled it with river sand. Then each stone was painstakingly placed in the sand and when it was just right, set there with a special preparation of lime mortar and clay. Some days it seemed to him that the elves took even more care with their foot paths then they did with their houses. And they took great care with their houses.

  The architecture wasn’t truly to his taste; Iros much preferred the permanence of stone to wood. The solidity of block work to the delicacy of carving. There was something reassuring in stone. But still the houses were well built as well as perfectly decorated, and inside the mission he seldom heard the wind or felt the rain.

  But the perfection of the city’s construction was only a part of what amazed him. The artistry of the paths as they ran from the front door step of every house and building was even more breath taking. None of the paths were straight. They were flat and even, but the elves did love their curves. And no two were alike. Yet when seen from above, say from the first floor balcony of the mission, one could see the tracery that the paths made across the verdant beauty of the grass, and realise that together they formed a pattern. The buildings seemed randomly placed on the giant pasture, the paths meandering, and yet together they formed a giant weaving of stone and wood across the grass. The pattern of the veins in a fern leaf. The tracery of the wind swept ripples of water across a lake.

  When the city was busy, when the people were rushing about their duties, the elves’ brightly coloured hair shining in the sun made it seem as though the paths were really rivers of flowing magic. There was a reason they were known as rainbow elves. He loved to stand on the balcony of the top floor of the mission and watch that.

  In the distance, there was the forest, completely surrounding the city, framing it like an artist’s painting. It was a strange thing for a man born and raised in a land of flowing green meadows and fields to see. Leafshade had been built in a glade. A huge glade three leagues across, and so instead of a backdrop of distant mountains or seas, there were trees. Walls of impossibly tall trees.

  That was the elven way. The Mother, Gaia, was the goddess of the natural world, and in everything they did they gave thanks to her. Even in their city planning.

  It seemed to him that all the elves had a deep and abiding love of beauty. It showed in everything they did, but unfortunately not in everything they were.

  The people weren’t terrible. Strange with their long colourful hair hanging down to their waists, and with their pointed ears poking out at all angles through it, but polite enough. For the most part they were civil, uncommonly civil, and after two long years in the city, some of them were even friendly. A few. But they were the low born of course. Not those of the great houses.

  The high born were too formal for his liking. Too proud. And too important for him. Iros might be the son of a lord of a realm in his own right, but his home was a rough farming province on the borderlands, not the king’s court. Even if he hadn’t been an outsider he would have still been too minor a lord for them to spend time with. Those of the great houses seldom bothered to speak with him outside of his official capacity, and when they had to speak it seemed that they always looked down on him.

  But still even they were usually polite, even if their precious high lord and most of his court seemed to regard him as little more than a barbarian dressed in finery. It was a common view. The elves were nice enough people, save for the fact that they considered outsiders as just a little lower than them.

  They called human’s utra, an ancient word for savage. Trolls they named urdan or wild beasts. And the gnomes, well they were vesans or vermin. As for the dwarves, they had a hundred terms for them, each more horrid than the last. And sprites would always be sani, or traitors. A term that went back fifteen hundred years to the age of kings, when the sprites and the elves had separated. When the silver elves had left the rainbow elves as the bards would say.

  Still when some of them slipped up and let their disdain for him and his people show through, Iros let it pass. There was no point in creating a stir. Not when he knew that their pox ridden high lord, who was nothing more than a spoilt child, had probably encouraged the view.

  In sooth Finell was the only real problem he faced in Leafshade. And he knew that the other envoys to the city had similar issues with the high lord. And though none of them would speak of it openly, most of them came back to the one single problem. He was a brat.

  The kid, and even though he was nineteen and supposedly of age he was truly a child, needed a damned good thrashing. He needed to be put over a knee and paddled firmly. Or failing that he needed to take some time away from the Heartwood Throne to do some growing up. Not that Iros would ever say that to him, or even about him. Not in public. His father had schooled him well in the art of diplomacy even before he’d been sent away to the academy, and the first rule was always to think before you opened your mouth. It was a rule that had served him well in his nearly two years in Leafshade.

  Besides if Finell didn’t want him around, he didn’t want to be there either. He’d rather be back in his home, playing with his animals or riding through the lush fields of Greenlands hunting game. Or better yet, drinking in the public houses, carousing with the bards, throwing dice, wenching and even brawling as he had done as a young man. Those were his passions. Not sitting in a court, wearing all the uncomfortable finery gold could buy, bowing and scraping to one and all, and acting as the mouthpiece for the distant king. The Royal Chamber was his definition of the nine hells, or at least a few of them.

  And yet the sun was out, high in the clear blue sky, the air was warm and scented with the smell of wild flowers as spring reclaimed the land, and the laughter of the children as they ran around was music to his ears. On a day like this he could almost imagine that he was home again. Free. He could almost forget that he had duties to attend to. Almost.

  But there was work to be done. There was always work to be done. Being an envoy might seem like light work to others, a few quiet words spoken here and there, the odd meeting, and maybe a dinner or two, but that was only what it was meant to look like. The truth was that it was an endless chore.

  Iros turned and spoke to his assistant “Pita when you have the chance I want you to check if master Harold’s wagon has arrived yet, and if it has, if he has been able to acquire the fire glow foxglove. I would very much like to have those plants before Lady Elwene returns from her pilgrimage.” As she was the high lord’s sister he considered it important to have a gift for her whenever he could, and since she was turning to the priesthood more and more, he thought that the gift of the rare northern plant with its bright red blooms would be especially welcomed. It was after all a medicinal plant as well as a pretty flower.

  And if he was honest, she was one of the prettiest of elves, with her face always glowing with joy and never an unkind word on her tongue. The flower would compliment her well, maybe even bring a smile to her lips. And she had such a pretty smile. Not that the son of a farmer lord and a human would ever be considered worthy.

  “Yes sir.” Pita was busy making notes with his charcoal stick on the sheaf of rice paper he always carried around with him, and briefly Iros had to wonder anew if his memory was truly so terrible. But he seemed like a clever enough lad, his language skills were excellent, the reports from the tutors at the Academy glowing. So surely not. In time he hoped Pita would make a good envoy in his own right. It was just a lack of confidence he suspected. Pita was simply frightened of making a mistake, of forgetting something. But at least he could write as they walked, and it was a good day to enjoy a walk.

  “Make sure that the horses are seen by the blacksmith, and if possible all of them should be shod today. Indri is s
tarting to favour her front right and these river stone paths are hard on hooves.”

  “Also, call in on the butchers and see if you can get some pork bones for Saris. Her teeth are looking a little yellow.” Saris yipped in agreement as she trotted beside them. A simple jackal hound she had no idea what was being said, but she knew her name, and she liked it when he used it. She liked everything he did. Iros didn’t fully understand why she was so affectionate, her kind weren’t usually that way, even among themselves, but he would have missed her orange striped and spotted fur more than a little if she wasn’t there. And this was a day on which a man and his dog or his jackal hound should enjoy a walk in the sun.

  She was a useful animal to keep as well for an envoy, and several times he’d thought wistfully about putting her on staff. Children loved her for some reason, and they would come from all over to pet her. Something she accepted with good grace. And children had parents, some of them high born parents. If they carried back word of their happy encounter to their parents, that could only be good.

  Of course he did sometimes worry that she might snap up a pet. Children she knew weren’t food, but animals not so much. And elven children seemed to love their pet rabbits and squirrels. He had to watch her.

  “Then go to the library. See if you can speak with the masters there about obtaining a copy of the poetic works of Perilla of Storva. I would like all of us to be completely familiar with her work before the dinner next week.” Reading poetry wasn’t his favourite pastime, but when the mission had agreed to hold a formal dinner for the masters of the local Academy of Grace in honour of the bard, he could make an exception. It was expected, and it would be a chance to meet informally with more of the high born. Such was the life of an envoy. And Pita as he recalled, had studied verse in detail during his time at the Academy.

  Besides, Perilla of Storva had been a poet of the Mother, and so hosting an evening in her honour also served his other goal, which was one day, before his time here was up, to spend some time in Honeysuckle Grove. It alone in the entire city was off limits to him, and tucked away in the great forest, it wasn’t as if he could accidentally wander off course and find himself in it. A man had to be invited.

  Iros continued giving his assistant the details of his duties for the day as they walked leisurely towards the smiths’ quarter, but his thoughts weren’t really on the matters at hand. For the most part he was simply trying to put the coming afternoon’s suffering, out of his mind. Then the court would meet in the Royal Chamber and he would once more have to do battle with his wits against a rotten ruler with an appalling lack of grace. All with a perfunctory smile on his face and a civil tongue in his mouth. He hated it.

  For once though he was able to forget his woes. Maybe with the early spring sun warm on his back, and the smell of lavender and honeysuckle in the air, even a human like him could find a measure of peace in this strange land.

  Leafshade wasn’t the place he wanted to spend his days. But as assignments went it wasn’t so terrible, nor even trivial. Leafshade was an important trading city for his people, as well as the capital of Elaris and home of the elves’ precious High Lord. Here more than anywhere else, he knew, he would be able to make a name for himself, to truly earn the title of Lord in his own right. To make his family proud.

  He had not been able to do that during his year among the trolls. Mostly what he had been able to do there was learn to ride in his sleep as the trolls ceaselessly followed their prey across their rocky realm. He had also learned to eat raw meat, bring down a deer at two hundred paces with his crossbow, pitch a tent in the freezing snow, and light a fire with only a couple of twigs. That had been a long hard year, and by the end of it, he had understood why the assignment was always given to either newcomers to the profession, or those who had upset the king.

  His days in Leafshade were also better than his time in the mission to Catalbria, where he’d spent close to two years trying to live in a land designed for little people. True the gnomes weren’t actually that short, most of the people standing at least as high as his shoulder, but they designed their doorways for people no taller, which meant he had to bend double entering most buildings. That did not do wonders for a man’s back. The elves at least were nearly of human height, and they liked their archways, something that his spine found a blessing.

  And his time here had to be better than any he might one day have to spend in the dwarven cities, burrowed deep into their immense mountains. He dreaded being assigned to the mission in Ironhold. There he understood the sun never shone and the diet consisted of edible fungi and farmed vermin. Worse than that though was the smell. Dwarves didn’t consider bathing a necessity, and locked away in the cavernous underground cities where little fresh air flowed, the aroma was described as invigorating by even the most diplomatic. Iros had never visited those cities, and he never wanted to.

  He dearly hoped that when his time was up here, and assuming his parents weren’t finally ready for him to return home and start taking up the mantle of lordship, the king would not send him to act as envoy to the dwarves. Anything but that. The gnomes, the sprites, even the trolls again.

  Still he had at least three years before he had to worry about that. Three years in a far more comfortable city. Three years with people he could spend some time with.

  The low born of course. Not the nobles.

  All he had to do was swallow his pride and get through his next three years in this land. And maybe then he could finally go home and celebrate by running through the streets barefoot. Drinking himself into a stupor in some of the inns with his friends. Or hunting frogs. That had always been fun. And even more fun when he’d made it back to the castle and his mother and heard her lament the state of his clothes. She’d always lamented his boyish ways, and he’d always secretly loved it when she did. It was even worth being thrust into the bath.

  It had been so long since he had been home. Since he had seen the endless green grass of the grazing lands. Since he had spent some time with his family, instead of simply sending endless letters.

  That in the end was the truth. If Leafshade truly lacked in anything it was really in that it wasn’t his home, and he missed his home.

  He missed the dirty streets of Greenlands, streets filled with traders and children and various others all jostling one another as they went about their day. He missed the cat calls of the women of the night as they advertised their availability, and the cries of the traders as they too advertised their wares. He missed the rough, worn stone work of the buildings, houses and shops that might not be so pretty but which would stand for a thousand years. He missed being able to just cut loose and run barefoot and free in the markets with not a care in the world. He missed being able to drink himself under the table in any of a dozen inns and knowing that when he did he wouldn’t be alone. He missed the women too. Real women with curves, not these refined sticks in elegant robes.

  But those were dreams from the past. A dozen years in the past. For the present there were no dreams, only duties. And formality of course.

  “Envoy.” Just as he was dismissing Pita to go about his duties Iros heard his name called and looked up. Elder Yossirion was heading his way at a more than respectable pace, waving enthusiastically to him as his quarterstaff tapped out a somewhat hurried tattoo on the stone path, and the sight made him smile.

  The elder’s robe was somewhat disarrayed, threadbare in places, his long golden hair floated freely in the gentle breeze, unrestrained as it should normally be, and his walk was as ever a little too fast for the measured pace that was expected among his people. The elder was possibly the most unelven elf he had ever met. But then he was an elder and Iros suspected it was a matter of pride with him that he didn’t conform.

  Just being an elder was a mark of nonconformity. Priests still kept the names of their houses, but taking that next step to the status of elder meant putting aside that connection. If the elder could be said to have any house, it was the Grov
e.

  He still didn’t fully understand the relationship between the high lord and the Grove. He wasn’t completely sure that the elves did either. But what he did know was that where the high lord was a spoilt little child from the great houses, playing at being a ruler, the priesthood actually seemed to run much of the place. Finell could make his grand pronouncements, set in motion his laws and his policies, but if the priesthood didn’t like them, they would soon be forgotten. He suspected that that was in part why the people had tolerated Finell’s rule these past two and a half years. They ignored it.

  “Elder.” Iros greeted him politely, actually quite pleased to see the elf. If there was one person in this city that he could enjoy spending time with, it was Yossirion. The man was interesting company, and he could play a truly outstanding game of quo’ril, the most vexing strategic board game he had ever encountered. Add to that that he had magic, a subject that Iros was eternally fascinated by, and it was no wonder that he’d spent many a pleasant afternoon speaking with the elder. Too often though, what the elder really wanted to talk about was the poor health of the mission’s gardens. He was in the end, an elf.

  “Enough of that Iros.” The elder brushed away his politeness with a wave of his hand and a frustrated snort. “You’re a man, act like one.”