Days Of Light And Shadow

by Greg Curtis

  “Twenty minutes, half an hour, no more. We run for the wagons and let the horses carry us away. Strongest fighters in the rear wagon. With luck we’ll be fast enough that the few of these things that catch us will only be on their own, and the men in a single wagon can hold them off as we flee.”

  It was a plan. Not much of a plan. And it meant abandoning their home, something no one liked. But what else could they do?

  Time passed agonisingly slowly after that, as the villagers fought on for as long as they could. Behind them they could hear the women doing as they’d been asked. They could hear the wagons being loaded and the horses nickering in alarm. They could hear the children crying. Several more villagers went down with bites and had to be carried away, leaving the remaining villagers still in the fight feeling more and more vulnerable. But they still had to stand and hold their line as the creatures kept coming.

  All the while they waited for the order to break and run. To abandon their home. And they didn’t even know where they were going to run to. All they knew was that the abominations were coming at them from the south so they had to flee north. But north took them into Irothia. Even though they weren’t watchmen or soldiers of any kind, and few of them were of even nearly pure elven blood, they couldn’t imagine that the humans would welcome them. Not so soon after a bloody war.

  Then without warning, things changed. They didn’t realise it immediately. They didn’t know anything except that without warning the abominations rushing towards them suddenly stopped dead. Four of them suddenly stopped in the middle of the street, not twenty paces from them, simply bobbing around on the spot.

  Halders stared at them, hammer in hand, and then at his fellow villagers, wondering what was happening. What they were supposed to do? Did they rush forwards and quickly behead them? Or would that be rushing into a trap? Could these things even plan a trap? Or did they stand their ground and wait, while maybe more abominations joined them, and they came at them as an actual horde? Neither option seemed good. Halders looked around at his fellow villagers. But none of the others seemed to know either. They like him, were just standing there, wondering what to do.

  “Look!” One of the woman yelled out, and for a moment Halders didn’t even know what he was supposed to be looking at. Then when he turned back to the enemy it was to see one of them falling face first into the street, a white shaft sticking out of the back of its head.

  It was an arrow of course, though a strange looking one. But that was nowhere near as important as the question of who fired it. Especially when it had been shot from behind as it charged for them. Three more fell the same way, and suddenly he didn’t care. Whoever had fired it, if they were coming up from behind them, then the battle was over. They’d won.

  Someone let out a cheer, a weak cheer, but little by little the others joined in. And soon what had started as a cheer became a roar. Halders roared too, tears of something - happiness, triumph, or relief - streaming down his cheeks. It might be unmanly but he didn’t care. All he cared about was that the battle was over.

  He didn’t even care that he could hear the sound of hooves pounding into the ground. Not until the riders showed up and he understood the white arrows.

  Black horses, small and fast, riders to match them with silver armour and silver hair flying free, and double recurved shortbows of white ash. The sprites had arrived.

  Sprites! In Elaris! It made no sense. This was an elven realm. It wasn’t Solaria. And the sprites seldom bothered to cross the border. And as more and more sprites thundered up the trail on their black steeds, he realised that they weren’t simple visitors. They weren’t traders or pilgrims. They were soldiers. A dragoon of wind riders, a hundred men and women at arms, maybe even from Widdens Heart.

  Why were they in Elaris? Was it some sort of invasion? But Halders discovered that he didn’t care. Not when he knew there were no more abominations coming.

  But he did care when he spotted one among them that he knew. A human in a brown monk’s robe, carrying a simple quarterstaff at his side, and waving a glowing hand in the air. Brother Pietre had returned home, and just in time. And he, Halders guessed, was the reason that the sprite army had come and that the villagers’ lives were saved. He was also the reason that the abominations had stopped moving, just before some sprites had put a few arrows in the backs of their heads. The priests had said they could do that.

  Happy chaos ensured as people ran around, screaming, crying, laughing and singing. The sprites were trying to pretend that they were a little more in control of themselves, but that was never in their nature, and soon they were singing their strange melodies. Someone had struck up a lilting air on the wooden pipes, which in no way resembled anything that was being sung, and the children were running around, dancing and yelling in excitement.

  For his part though, Halders couldn’t join in. He was simply too tired. And so instead he walked over to his smithy, wading through piles of bodies to get to it, and collapsed on the bench he kept for customers. Having trollish blood in him meant that he rarely needed to sit down. But it seemed that for the moment the blood had run dry. He felt the need. Maybe it was the wounds and the blood loss getting to him, but if it was it didn’t matter. There were many far more terribly injured than him, and they could use the healers’ touch first.

  Besides sitting there, watching the others, he felt at ease in a way he hadn’t in a very long time. It was enough to watch and listen while the afternoon sun slowly set. In time he noticed, others were doing the same. Finding porches to collapse on, railings to lean over, even walls to collapse against. Exhaustion was claiming them one by one.

  But along with that exhaustion there was also sadness. It took a while to let it sink in. To hear the words that were being spoken by their saviours. But little by little he understood more of what Brother Pietre was saying. That the threat wasn’t over. That the Reaver was truly back. That more of these things were coming, and in greater numbers, and that sooner or later they wouldn’t be able to defend their home. They had to leave. That they had to find new homes with strong walls and lots of soldiers.

  It was a dark thought. Aellwy Te was their home. It was where he’d been born and raised. Where most of the villagers had. It was where he’d met his wife, and they’d raised their children. It was more than just their home. It was their entire world. And they had to leave.

  Brother Pietre was adamant about that. He said there were more coming, and he was always honest. The sprites said the same thing. That a dozen dragoons had been sent west from Solaria to evacuate the border towns in Elaris, and bring the people to safety. Ten towns, the most southerly of them, were being brought back across the border in to Solaria. Six more were to be escorted north into Irothia.

  Aellwy Te was heading north.

  Chapter Eighty Nine.

  King Herrick was seated at his desk when the bell finally rung, and all he could think as he heard the sound ringing through the private library was that it was about time. The damned girl had been slow to drag her feet across the city, and he suspected that was as much about fear as it was the simple fact that she had no instructions. Since the dismissal of her precious high lord, she had no one to report to. No one to instruct her. An unfortunate position for an envoy to be in.

  A guard in his ceremonial bronze armour appeared at the door and before he could even open his mouth Herrick yelled at him to go out and show her in. Grumpiness was one of the prerogatives of age, and he was starting to enjoy it. His servants possibly weren’t so thrilled, and the man vanished even more quickly than he’d appeared.

  “Majesty.” Tara looked worried, but then she always looked worried. Being the high priestess of the Dibellan faith tended to add worry lines to a person. And it didn’t help that she was his aunt.

  “Don’t look at me like that woman. I know what I’m doing.” Herrick growled at her, assuming a confidence he wasn’t sure he felt.

  “I didn’t say anything Heri.” She smiled a little s
adly at him and for a moment he thought she was going to pat him on the head as she had when he was a little boy. After all she was already addressing him as she had all those years ago. She did that a lot.

  “And I didn’t say you did.” Foolish words exchanged, they waited impatiently until the envoy arrived. The Divines only knew what his other guests thought of the exchange. But sprites were very good at showing little of what they were thinking, especially if it was sad or awkward, and Herrick knew better than to ask. The one was an envoy trained in saying only the right thing, and the other, her far seer never said anything at all.

  “Your Majesty.” Luree appeared at the door, trying to look calm as she bowed to him, but even a blind man could have seen the worry in her face. She was little more than a child, not much older than his grand children, and placed in a difficult position. And that was before she’d been summoned to his private library, something even her predecessor had never experienced. Herrick liked to keep his private library for himself.

  He grunted at her and waved her in. Elves weren’t his favourite people of late even if it seemed the war wasn’t entirely their fault. By all nine of the Divines he hated that. He’d had an enemy. He’d defeated them. And now the accursed priests were telling him that he’d only defeated their hapless victims. He really hated that. But with the endless reports of disappearances and abominations roaming the lands, he couldn’t deny it.

  “Is there any word yet of a replacement for your high lord?”

  “No Your Majesty.” She bowed again, this time in sadness. “The great houses have not been able to agree.”

  Unable to agree! Herrick tried not to snort too loudly. According to the bards and the few traders that had crossed the border, the elves were brawling in the taverns, and some were spilling blood. There was talk of assassinations too. Elaris was in chaos. And for some reason the Dibellans seemed to think he should help them!

  The very idea still made his seventy year old blood boil. But Dibella was the goddess of life, and they thought everyone should be saved. Even their enemies. And he owed them. It was they and the elven elders that had found the cure for the watchmen, so that they could be sent home safely. Of course they’d also proclaimed long and loud to the court that the men were innocent of their crimes. That had not been well received.

  “Then who are you sending your letters to?” And he knew from his people that she sent pigeons away daily. But that not so many returned.

  “To Elder Varial in the Honeysuckle Grove, and Petral of House Pria, the Master of the Envoys.” In short to the priests who had no authority in matters of civil order or the military, and a man who could speak well but had even less authority than the priests. But maybe he at least knew who to speak to within the city if things had to be done. Herrick said nothing of his doubts though, knowing that there was no point. There was still only one thing to do and one person to do it.

  “You know these people.” He gestured to his other guests, not wanting to waste time on pointless introductions. “They have something to show you and a message that needs to get back to Leafshade.”

  “Highness.”

  The far seer immediately began waving his hands above the silver bowl filled with holy water and mumbling something under his breath. A prayer, a spell, or even a favourite verse, Herrick had no idea what. But what he did know was that it worked, and within a few moments an image began appearing in the still water. An image of another face, a far seer in Widdens Heart, three hundred and some leagues south east of them. It was a useful magic even if only the sprites had it.

  The far seer’s face disappeared from the water, his job done, and Aquina, queen of Solaria and the most silver of her people, appeared in his place. At the same time the far seer in his library also backed away, while the envoy indicated for Luree to step up to the bowl. Poor kid, he thought. She looked absolutely terrified. And it was only going to get worse. For all of them.

  After that he simply sat back in his chair and listened quietly as the Queen of Solaria told Luree exactly what she’d told him less than an hour before. That she had dragoons of her windriders riding through the borderlands between Solaria and Elaris. That they had crossed the border and were evacuating all of the smaller towns. That more and more abominations had began to appear. That they were growing in numbers, travelling up it seemed from somewhere in Southern Elaris. She told her of the battles they’d fought, and the towns her people had come across that had also been attacked. She told her also of the towns that had already lost those battles, and the streets empty of everything except bodies.

  After she’d finished, it was Herrick’s turn to tell Luree of the actions he had taken, and the commands he’d sent to all five of his southern realms to take in refugees. He hated it. He hated giving succour to his enemies. He hated having to command his lords to take in refugees when their lands were in ruins because of those same people. He hated knowing that it was only going to get worse.

  But most of all he hated seeing the look of absolute horror in those big green eyes as a stripling girl learnt that her home was soon to be overrun by abominations. That her family and friends were in peril. Maybe she was an elf, but she was also little more than a child. And no girl should ever have to hear such a thing.

  No one should.

  Chapter Ninety.

  Argan looked down upon the body of his cousin and a great flood of sadness washed over him. Sera of Durlan had been a good woman and a good friend. Now she was just another body lying on the ground like so many others. Murdered, and though those around him were desperately trying to claim that it had probably been done by some brigand creeping around the city robbing people at the point of a knife, he wasn’t fooled. No one was.

  She’d been assassinated.

  As she had gone about her daily business shopping in the market, someone had taken the opportunity to stick a knife in her back, and remove House Durlan’s best hope to claim the Heartwood Throne. There was no robbery and no brigand. Just as there hadn’t been so many times before.

  This was Elaris, the home of the elves. It was Leafshade, home to both the Heartwood Throne and the Grove. This was supposed to be the most cultured place in the world. The nobles the most refined and civilised of all. And they were murdering each other in the streets.

  “Coo coo.” Ariane was bent over the body of her daughter, openly weeping and calling her by the pet name she had called her when she was a baby. Tears ran down her cheeks, as she sat on her knees in the grass, cradling her daughter’s head in her lap, rocking back and forth in her grief. Argan doubted that she even knew anyone else was there. Such a display of emotion was very unelven. To show such uncontrolled emotion, to allow her robes to get dirty, to lose control of her words, and yet it seemed right somehow. A mother should weep for her only daughter. The humans had that right at least.

  Beside her her husband Vana stood, his face completely white with anger, and though he said nothing, working hard to maintain his composure, Argan knew the dark direction his thoughts were travelling. Vengeance. Vana wanted vengeance. And as First of House Durlan he usually got what he wanted.

  What they needed though, was justice. They would not get that though.

  Though the best of the city watch were on the job, speaking with stallholders and shoppers and asking questions of those who might have seen something and getting nothing, he knew that the assassin would not be caught. The chances were that he had already left the city. And as for the man who’d paid the assassin, he could well be standing among the crowd of onlookers surrounding them. Many of them were high born. Most of them, even the ones who hadn’t been involved, were probably celebrating the death of another rival for the throne.

  “We should speak to the elders,” he said to his father standing beside him.

  “Hush Argan. There will be time enough for that tomorrow. Today we should allow Vana and Ariane their time to grieve for their daughter.” His father was looking to be not that much more in control of his anger
than Vana, though he hid it better. But he didn’t understand.

  “Not for the funeral. To find the one who did this.” Suddenly everyone stared at him. As if he’d suggested something disgusting. And maybe he had. This was the business of House Durlan not the Grove. And its resolution had to be theirs as well. Even if they never found the actual murderer and simply exacted their revenge on anyone and everyone they suspected. Which was exactly what would happen. Which was what had already happened too many times. Each death, each assassination begat more. But while the Grove would find the assassin and his employer they would not allow them to be executed. Blood would not be shed for blood. And the First wanted blood.

  Then too, there was the other problem. That the Grove, once they became officially tasked with the duty, would investigate fully, and no doubt turn up some dark secrets from within House Durlan. Other deaths perhaps, secret dealings, pacts between houses. None of the remaining great houses wanted the Grove involved.

  “Does the mist cloud your thoughts son?”