Across the Kolgan Sea

by Benjamin R. Babst

  It drew closer, a hissing sound rising from the frozen lake every time its ‘foot’ hit the ground. Holding out its arm toward me, the hand slowly extended and tapered into the shape of a rapier. I was unable to stand to try to defend myself; simply breathing was almost too exerting for me. However, I did barely manage to speak.

  “Why, you’re sentient.” I wheezed, knowing that mindless brutes don’t make crude weaponry, especially out of their own body parts. The flame stopped for a moment, lowering the torch that was its head to acknowledge my statement. “Then please,” I stalled, hoping to extend my time alive to when (and if) the alfar arrive, “tell me…why you are doing this before you kill me.”

  A low sigh came as it put its two hands together, making a small burst of flame. The elemental then shaped the fire from that into the image of a massive wave about to swallow a lowly fishing vessel; a symbol I was all too aware of.

  “So then,” I swallowed a drop of spit to wet my vocal cords, “you and Hognosht are the servants of Aegir I was looking for?” The living fire’s hue shifted from a pale yellow into a deep blue. It seemed obvious it didn’t like that last question at all, as the heat coming from it increased. Once again, it inched toward me, the ice now cracking as its scorching aura passed over it.

  I stared at the cracking ice with my mouth open like a drowning fish. In the dull haze of my head something occurred to me. Frozen rivers, as the name implies, are rivers covered in ice. Fire destroys ice, but since ice turns into water, it seems that this ice will take its enemy down with it. All I had to do was push it a little further. “All right…If you’re not his minions, who is? Maybe that—Solas?”

  That last remark summoned the wrath of Muspelheim itself, the pyrotechnics the fire expressed became the whitest of white flames and several mini combustions occurred all over its body, spitting hundreds of embers in all directions. The crevices in the frost below also grew more pronounced, and the small pools of water that formed all quickly boiled themselves out of existence. Then a loud crack came from the ice. A look of fright came over the creature as it realized what it had done, and it spent the split second before the ice vanished beneath its feet to look at me with a look of respect, spite, and fright all mixed into one.

  It fell into the water faster than it could finish its death shriek. Of course, I assumed it even pronounced that and the hissing sound I heard was it and not the sound of it turning into steam. As I looked at the hole it left, a newfound energy overcame me as I sprawled over to drink the river water. It was hot and boiling, but I didn’t care. My taste buds simply hallucinated that it was hot cider as it quenched my thirst.

  Something then pricked itself into my neck and interrupted the relief I was getting, something small and thin, no larger than a needle. What I found when I plucked it out was a dart made from a dull-gray stone and fletched with the bloodied feathers of a hawk. I spun around with curiosity and fear in my eyes, and for good reason, for as the ash blizzard died down, a svartalf was staring back at me from its perch on top the rockslide. The fell alf gave a jack-o-lantern grin as the shadows of her companions reflected off the cliffside, leaping through the trees toward the settlement.

  I supposed it was the very reason why the svartalfar had, but this was the worst possible time for an assault to have taken place. Three more darts were then shot into my back. I felt woozy, and my arm gave way, causing me to slide into the water behind me unconscious.

  Chapter 10

  Svartalf King

  I woke to a cold numbness in my face and chest. My arm stung with frostbite as a breath of cold air flew past it. All that ran through my head was, “What happened?” A portion of this question was answered as I woke up and looked below. I was staring through the grating of a cramped chamber, straight down at the entire ruins on which Clafel was built. Everything from the great lake to the courtyard around Niale’s throne room were in my sight. The forest, however, was nowhere in sight. What should have been a wide expanse of trees with ice-coated branches glistening like chandeliers in the orange light of dawn was instead a massive plain of cinder and ash, some of it from the ash fall and some from the wasted and crumbled evergreens.

  The morning sun didn’t even bring any warmth with it. All I saw and felt was the eye of that accursed Hognosht and a mocking breath of cold air, denying me the thaw the woods received all too much of.

  “Well, my lovely late-night swimmer’s finally woken up,” a smooth, eloquent drawl came through the grating. The source of it was a svartalf, who was staring straight back at me. “Would have been awfully tedious of me to have fished you out of that ice bath just for you to be dead.”

  It was perhaps an hour or so until noon, so it was easy for me to distinguish her features than if it was camouflaged in the night. She had a more refined complexion than any of the other svartalfar I had seen before. There were relatively few wrinkles and her yellow eyes matched quite well with green irises. It was still fairly ugly, regardless. Her forehead, for one thing, was so small I could see the entire thing between the two bars in the doorway. I’m not quite sure if this was some sort of magic or simply some strange power of the svartalfar, but she was sitting very casually on the wall in the fashion of bats.

  Her remark about the ice water reminded me about last night, leaving me worried for the sake of the alfar and cold from my still-wet clothing. I didn’t want the cavern lurker beside me to know I was distressed, so I sat up and looked at the rest of my cell. It was a claustrophobic cell, large enough to fit a human only through the efforts of time and erosion. Through the rubble, it was clear there were chunks of carved stone and even remnants of the wooden structure. If the grating used to be part of the finished castle, this was likely a lavatory of some sort…I shuddered as I realized that meant I’d been shoved into the drain pipe.

  In an effort to keep my mind off the imagined smells of human waste, I began to drape myself with magic to keep myself warm. There then began a low whine and the grate I was sitting on began to glow a dull gray. A single ray of light darted out of it and shot straight for the magic mist, disrupting it and leaving my hands stinging.

  “I wouldn’t try to use any magic, my lovely little Erland.” She flicked a long, pointed fingernail against the grating and a pattern of smudged red flashed across it. “Tree alfar aren’t the only ones who can use backlash charms.”

  As any sane person would have been, I was off-set by her mentioning my name. “Have…we met before?”

  “You speak, then.” She leapt down onto the doorway of the cell like a house cat that saw a shiny toy. Again, I paid no attention to the fact that she should be falling right now. “No, but I know you from what the stones have told us.”

  “The stones?”

  “Why yes, we true alfar draw our power from the stones beneath the earth. They know many things about Midgard after all. It is only the pitiful tree alfar that depend on the far younger trees to do only a fraction of what we’re capable of.”

  I looked down at the scorched ground below again. “I suppose that you…killed all of the alfar?”

  She smashed her fist against the grating. “Tree alfar! Don’t you dare try to imply they were any more or I’ll put you back to sleep.” The svartalf pulled a dart out from her belt, one that looked much like the ones that were stabbed into my back last night.

  “Were? So you mean to tell me you cretins wiped them all out?”

  “Not quite, lovely. There were two maidens we took prisoner, odd blue one and the late tree alf chief’s daughter. Excellent spoils they were for our lord, the dverv.”

  That remark plucked a sour note in my heart that wasn’t quite one of hatred or of anger. The twinge made me think of my sisters and my desire to protect them. Maybe it was because they were women, maybe it was because they were friends (or at least, friend and acquaintance), either way, I was filled with the urge to rescue them.

  I quickly grabbed the bars of my cage and shook them violently. “Let m
e out or else…”

  “Let you out, lovely?” she interrupted as she spun the key in her hand. She then stuck the key into its lock and pointed to the ground so far below me. “Do you really want that?” She pursed her lips to whistle as she simulated falling with her hand and ended the fall with a loud, “Ploop.”

  That sinking feeling gurgled into my stomach just then, and I realized trying to escape might not be a very wise thing to do. “Can you at least stop calling me ‘lovely’?”

  The svartalf issued a short giggle. “If you say so…Snookums.”

  I evaluated the situation for a moment, weighing whether I preferred the pet name or ‘lovely.’ “Stick with ‘lovely.’”

  Just then, a horn blew in short, frequent bursts somewhere below us. The guard gave a short “Hmrph” as she stuck the key back into the lock. “I guess I’m letting you go anyway. You really should be careful of what you wish for, lovely.” With a quick twist of the key and faster than I could beg, the doorway swung open by my own weight and threw me down to the lake below.

  My eyes watered as air blasted past my face, something I should really feel thankful for as I’d rather not be forced to look on in horror at the enlarging lake below me. “Don’t worry, lovely, if we wanted to kill you, we’d have let you freeze in that river.” The svartalf lady’s voice came from behind me. As she caught up, she tossed me a vial. “Here, drink this.” It appeared like there was an aquamarine liquid inside of it. I debated whether I should drink it; it could have just been a poison that was meant to make my death more interesting, after all. Yes, she said they weren’t going to kill me, but pardon me if I didn’t think her word was outright law. She drank another potion that looked much like mine, so I drank it anyway.

  Nothing happened at first. There wasn’t any funny tingling like I would have expected. When something did happen, though, it was more like something that came from far away. It started out as only a small speckle in the distance and slowly grew larger and larger. I wiped my eyes to get a better look at it, and what I saw in front of me was what appeared to be an enormous hand shooting straight up at me. I was able to cover my face with my arms just before it hit, but that turned out to be completely unnecessary. It looked as solid as Shaloor construction, but was actually no denser than fog. The wind seemed to pick up as I was falling through it, which judging by how everything beneath me was growing at a much slower rate, seemed to be easing my fall. It was still rather difficult to see through the shape of the hand, as the illusory images of thousands of pebbles was constantly flying past me.

  By the appearances of how I was falling, the magical hand was changing where it was that I would land, as I was ever so gradually shifting away from the lake to the roofless throne room of Niale.

  Despite the potion’s slowing my fall, hitting the ground still made my knees buckle and my spine shiver from the impact. The sound of my landing was amplified by the svartalfar who surrounded me, as they all stomped the ground as I landed, turning it into the roaring of thunder instead of a common thud. My jail guard fell far more gracefully than I did, slowing down to a near crawl when she was just above her companions’ heads and dropping into their midst with hardly a sound.

  All vegetation was either hacked off, leaving chips and dents in the stone walls, or burned away by the fire from last night. The sun was just peaking over the eastern wall by now, but there didn’t seem to be as much light in here as there used to be. It was possible it was only an optical illusion caused by the mass of dark-skinned murderers that surrounded me, but it felt more like there was some hex that infected this area, both by instinct and my rain drop of magical knowledge.

  Each face of the svartalfar leered at me. A slight tilt in each of their heads dragged my attention toward the former throne of Niale and the svartalf sitting upon it. He was a young, but still a wrinkly svartalf who wore an armor of leather, studded with amethyst and onyx. Upon his head, he insolently wore the late alf’s crown underneath his own, a dome of black marble with a sliver spear fixated on the top.

  The usurper gave a passing glance at me as he lifted a young alf lady’s chin so she looked at him. The maiden was Reokashothi, and on the other side of the crumbled seat lay Alodia. I refuse to disgrace them by repeating to anyone the way our captors dressed them. All I can say was they appeared drugged and mostly unaware of the world, and that I hoped they didn’t let their women treat male spoils of war in the same way.

  “Welcome, Erland,” exclaimed the jarl svartalf as he rose from his chair. “Allow me to explain what you’re doing here and why we haven’t killed you yet.” He shrugged. “I suppose it’s more of a question. For what reason have—no, did—the tree alfar let you live among them?” It then kicked the body lying at his feet down the steps. It was the body of Niale, with his head bludgeoned inward.

  I looked away from the corpse and sneered at the pig of a spirit. “Why don’t you ask the dirt you worship? Or maybe give me whatever you gave her?” I thrust my finger toward Alodia, making sure I was still looking into the svartalf’s eyes to spray all of that acid on him.

  He didn’t mind the jeer. He simply threw it straight back at me by laughing. “The blue one? There’s no need to know why they gave it shelter. Collecting rarities is its own reason after all. You, on the other hand? I see no reason to trust the gossip of the deep quarries when what we wish to know could simply be scrapped off the dog’s tongue.” The crowd joined together in a chorus of snickering, howling, and panting to give power and spite to his remark.

  Needless to say, the taunting made me clench my teeth together and harden my glare. “Scrape all you want, you’ll just cut your tongue off.” I didn’t care what his threats were, they killed the alfar, and there was no reason to tell him anything.

  His face brightened at the quip. “Such a brave creature for one who’s walked amongst the tree alfar.” The jarl glanced at Alodia and Reo again. “Perhaps you do not know of what ‘their’ fates will be by your refusal.”

  There was a sudden sinking in my stomach. “You mean it will be worse than what they have now?”

  “Well, I’ve given it some thought, and it occurs to me I am only keeping them as trophies. And of course, I don’t really need them to be alive for that end.” He pulled his knife over to Alodia’s forehead. “I only need this one’s skin, in fact.”

  I closed my eyes and shuddered as the blade brushed past her, and I kept them closed. Was there anything I could do to stop them from being reduced to pelts on the wall? I wasn’t nearly good enough with magic to fend off the horde that would surely come after me. My shields were taken away from me by the svartalfar, I barely even grasped the art of making mirages well enough to trick them…

  Trick them, that was exactly what I needed to do. I might not have been willing to tell them the nature of my alf blessings, but I didn’t see any reason not to tell them a lie. “Stop,” I shouted. The prince stopped in his sadistic waving of the knife. So, perhaps I didn’t protect them from all the disgraces, but I knew I could stop any more. “I’ll tell you, so long as you leave them alone.”

  “Hah,” the svartalf bellowed. “I suppose they won’t be hanging on my wall, then.” The jarl quickly beckoned a few of the svartalfar to take his hostages away. “That is to say, if it proves to be an effective choke-hold.”

  “On your knees, lovely.” The warden thrust me into the middle of the room, causing me to stumble onto the ground.

  I took the time I was on the ground to devise a lie. It was convenient that the fall gave a very real knock to my kneecap, as it gave me an excuse to stall. I gasped for breath as I thought through the last bit of my story. “I had the fortune to rescue an alf—tree alf from a small troop of svartalfar. The tree alfar gave me shelter as a—” A sharp pain interrupted my speech. It felt like a dagger had been run across my tongue, and the taste of blood came shortly afterward. I flickered my tongue out for but a second to see what it was and wiped the fluids that came out onto my
hand. It was definitely my own blood diluted with my own saliva. What magic was this?

  A howl came from the horde surrounding me and several of the savages leapt toward me and began to beat me with their fists and feet. It took only a moment for their leader to grow tired of them pummeling me and dismissed his dogs with one quick bark. “Back,” he ordered. They all cowered back half a second before he rebuked them. He then simply chuckled. “You lied. Back when I told you we’d scrape what we wished to know from the dog’s tongue, I was referring to the charm the tree alfar’s master was so kind to ward this place with during his occupation of it. Now how’s about you tell us what is true?”

  I held my mouth tightly shut, the blood quickly filling up the entire cavity and I didn’t know whether to let it spill to the ground or to swallow it. The usurper lounged back in his stolen seat and sat patiently for my next tale. “You know all too well what will happen to them if you refuse,” was what his smile and his squint told me as he adjusted his double crown. I would have bit my tongue to punish it for what I was about to say, but the split that ran down it discouraged me from such.

  “I can’t allow more of friends to die.” That was the only justification I could offer myself for this broken promise. To demonstrate my contempt and self-loathing, I spit the blend of bodily fluids in my mouth straight toward the usurper. It only got as far as the first step, but it was obvious from his momentary wincing the point had gotten through. “Fine, then. I’ll have you know they took me into their clan to protect me from the likes of witch-hunting Agrians.” I paused for emphasis and hissed what I said next, “And from defilers such as you.”