The Wizard's Tower 02

by Peter Last

  The room lapsed into silence as the elf finished his story, and the humans leaned back in their chairs to consider what they had just been told. The elf took a sip of tea that no one had seen him pour for himself and rose from the table. He tested the stew hanging over the fire and stirred it before returning to the table. The humans were passing the tea pot around the table when he returned, so he took another sip of his drink when he sat. He knew that the humans would accost him with questions after they had served themselves, and he prepared himself for the onslaught.

  “How long ago did those events take place?” was the first question; it came from Cirro.

  “Like I said, this story was before recorded history, and as such there is no reliable date that can be given to it,” Josii answered. “There are some who guess that it took place five thousand years ago. Others say it was no more than two thousand. No one knows for sure.”

  “If it occurred before recorded history, how do you know that it happened at all?” Josiah asked.

  “A good question,” Josii replied and took a sip of tea. “The account of the tale has been handed down from generation to generation orally since it happened. A few of the details became distorted during this time, and the true account was given to us a relatively short time ago by Elohim.”

  “What about the castle of the city?” Brandon asked. “Why does it have walls surrounding it while the rest of the city is unprotected?”

  “The forest is the only protection that our lands need against any foe,” Josii answered. “However, we did not know this when we first arrived, so we built a walled city. The newer city has no such defenses, but walls of the castle have been saved along with the tower.”

  “I have heard a similar tale to the one that you have just related to us,” Stephen commented. “It was, of course, from the humans’ perspective, and a few of the details were different, but as a whole it was very similar.”

  “That really isn’t surprising,” Josii said. “The flooding of the earth was a very significant event, and everyone knows it happened, just like everyone knows that Molkekk exists and lives to the north of Magessa. The story of the flood was passed down to the children of each race, but as time passed, the details were skewed, making every version slightly different. As I said, the elfin account was also slightly incorrect as we found out when we were given the actual account by Elohim.”

  “How did you get the story from Elohim?” Josiah asked.

  “One of our prophets was chosen by Him to relate to us the events of the history of our nation before we started to record the history. This man wrote down all of these things since the creation of the world until our history began. Many of these events had been lost, and we were very glad to have regained them.”

  “Lost? What kinds of things were lost?” Josiah asked.

  “One of our most treasured pieces of history that we received at this point in time was that of our fickleness concerning Elohim,” Josii said. “These stories tell of how our nation followed Elohim but kept falling away from Him. Every time we did so, He would draw us back to himself by invasion, drought, slavery, or some other evil. We look back on this to remind us what happens to those who turn away from Elohim. Only death and misery waits down that path.”

  The people around the table lapsed into silence again, and Josii rose to check the meal. This time it had finished cooking, and he removed it from its place above the fire. He carried the heavy pot to the table and set it in the middle. He placed a ladle in the food and returned to his seat. After offering a quick prayer for the food, Josiah began to ladle the stew out into the individual bowls, and for the next several minutes there was no conversation as everyone ate.

  “Hey Josii, what happened after we left the throne room?” Heath asked as he wiped his mouth. “I noticed that you stayed behind after we left.”

  “Well, the king seemed set against sending any assistance when you left, is that correct?” the elf asked.

  “Yeah, that’s what it seemed like,” Heath answered.

  “He acts like he knows what he is going to do, but he actually isn’t as positive as he pretends,” Josii said. “On the one hand, his past experience with the humans leads him to believe that the best policy concerning them is isolation. On the other hand, he also knows in the back of his mind that Elohim wants him to send aid, though he tries not to admit this. One minute he wants to send aid and the next he is set against sending help of any kind. The man is struggling, and only Elohim knows what he will decide.”

  “So everything is not as hopeless as it seems?” Josiah asked. “I was thinking that perhaps someone else should have come to plead our case rather than me.”

  “No, the fault does not lie with you,” Josii assured him. “Your plea was very effective, and I believe, though he did not show it, that it almost persuaded him to promise to help you.”

  “But will help come?” Petra asked. “If the king doesn’t know what to choose, is that really much better than an outright refusal to help?”

  “I don’t know what the chances are that he will decide to send assistance,” Josii said. “The only thing you can do is pray to Elohim that the king will send the help you need.”

  “That is good advice,” Cirro commented. “Perhaps we should do it right now.”

  Everyone agreed, and together they bowed their heads and asked Elohim for His help. After the prayer, the conversation dwindled as the people started to nod off. Josii showed them where they were to sleep, and one by one his guests went to bed. Eventually only Josii, Josiah, and Petra remained at the table, and the conversation turned to what was going to happen the next day.

  “We can’t take the river to where we’re going to meet up with the army since that is upstream from here,” Josiah commented.

  “No, we can’t do that,” Josii agreed. “The only way to get to the Accri Forest is on foot.”

  “But isn’t it almost a hundred miles from here?” Petra asked.

  “Yes, it is,” Josii answered. “If we were all elves, we could probably make it in a day or two, but as it is…”

  “It’ll probably take us at least five days,” Josiah finished.

  “We may not even be in time to be of any help in the battle,” Petra said.

  “First of all, though every man counts, and only a few can turn the tide of a battle, let us be realistic,” Josii responded. “There are only eight of us, and from what you have told me, there are probably more than one hundred thousand soldiers in the attacking army. The only real help Magessa’s army will get is from the elves, if they decide to send reinforcements.”

  “You said there are eight of us,” Petra commented. “Does that mean you’re planning on accompanying us?”

  “King Einor may still be debating what to do, but I already know what Elohim wants from me,” Josii said. “I will accompany you and help in whatever way I can.”

  “But I thought we already established that we won’t even get to the forest in time to be of any help,” Josiah said.

  “That is not established at all,” Josii said. He rose from the table and retrieved a map from another room. When he returned, he shoved the chairs away from the table and spread the map out on it.

  “You said that you left the army when it was on the edge of Dublack Forest somewhere around where it meets the mountains,” Josii said as he stabbed a finger onto the map. “If we assume that was right here, they had a little more than a hundred miles to go. Right now we have a little less than a hundred miles to go. Granted, you have spent an entire day in the forest, and the terrain until we get out of the forest will be rough, but armies move at a much slower pace than a small group does. We may not reach Accri Forest before they do, but we should be in time to help them fight.”

  “Well, if we have that far to go, then we had better get some sleep,” Josiah said as he stood and yawned. Petra and Josii followed his advice, and in minutes the house was silent except for the steady breathing of its inhabitants.

  *
*****

  Josiah awoke to sunlight streaming through the windows of the house. He rubbed his eyes in surprise and sat up. He had figured that the foliage of the forest was too thick to allow sunbeams through it. He climbed to his feet and found out he had actually been right. The foliage was too thick; however, a hole in the canopy allowed a single sunbeam through, and that beam had found his face. Josiah stretched and stepped through a doorway into the dining room of the house. All his companions and their host were sitting around the table, eating breakfast in a leisurely manner.

  “What’s going on?” Josiah asked as he took a seat. “If we’re planning on making twenty miles today, we should have already started.”

  “Have some tea,” Josii said and handed Josiah a cup. “We aren’t moving out today.”

  “Why not?” Josiah asked as he took the cup and sipped the hot drink. “We should get moving as quickly as possible. I thought we agreed on that last night.”

  “Yes, we agreed on it last night, but there is new information today that has changed our plans.”

  “Are you going to tell me what the new information is, or are you just going to sit there and make me wonder?” Josiah asked after waiting for a moment.

  “King Einor has decided to send troops to accompany us to Accri Forest,” Josii said in an offhanded manner. “As such, we have to wait until they are ready to move. That will probably take two days.”

  Josiah jumped to his feet and gave a deafening whoop. When he landed, he looked at his friends, who were grinning at him. He gave another, smaller whoop and then sat down.

  “What are the details?” he asked Josii. “How many elves is he sending? When exactly are we leaving? How long is it going to take to get there now?”

  “Slow down!” Josii laughed. “You sure are different than you have been since I met you. I would never have guessed you would get this excited about anything.”

  “Cut the chatter and tell me the details,” Josiah said. It was obvious that he was still excited, but he was doing his best to contain himself.

  “The king is sending half of the city’s standing army and has sent messengers to the rest of Dublack, ordering our reserve army to assemble. He has also sent messengers over the mountains to the other elfin forests, but we really cannot count on them getting here in time to help in this particular battle. All told, you should have between five and ten thousand elves at your back when you join back up with your army. And did I tell you that some of our Megaeras will be in the army?”

  “Megaeras? What are Megaeras?” Josiah asked.

  “Megaeras are what we call our soldiers with the stringless bows,” Josii explained.

  “They will certainly be a welcome addition to the army,” Josiah commented. He thought for a moment, then asked, “How long is it going take to get to the Accri Forest now that we have more people traveling with us?”

  “Don’t worry about the elves slowing you down,” Josii said. “Remember that they made the trip from here to Saddun in much less time than we are allotting for the trip to Accri Forest. Of course, we do have to wait a couple days for them to gather, which will put us considerably behind schedule. Even so, if my estimations are correct, we should arrive in time.”

  “Couldn’t we start now and have the elves catch up to us when they’re ready?” Josiah asked. “From what you said, they’re more than fast enough to do that.”

  “They are fast enough to do that,” Josii replied, “and we can start whenever you wish; however, I would council you against leaving until they do. The assistance of the king is shaky at best at this point in time, and you taking off would only make it easier for him to withdraw his support. Then you would be counting on the arrival of elves that would never come.”

  “I don’t like to delay our return, but if you think that’s best, I will do it,” Josiah said. “As you said, we should still arrive in time.”

  “Then have some breakfast,” Josii said and slid a plate across the table to Josiah.

  Josiah and his men spent the rest of the day getting a tour of the city from Josii. Everywhere they went, the elf had something to say about that particular area or building. One of the largest buildings had a fence around it along with other security measures. This, Josii pointed out, was the manufacturing plant for the stringless bows. The facility employed less than one hundred elves, but all of them were the most intelligent of the race to such an extent that they were all considered to have magical powers. This notion was only fostered by the fact that they made stringless bows, one of the most effective of the magical weapons that were available. The factory only produced two of the weapons a week; however, this was better than when it was first founded. At that time it had only produced one of the weapons every month.

  Another interesting building was the elves’ temple to Elohim. It was not particularly flashy, but what it lacked in décor it made up for with its design and architecture. The building took up the most ground space of any building in the city and was only two stories tall, making it an unusual sight in the city of skyscrapers. The central part of the building was a large dome. On either side of the dome rose a relatively thin tower, each of which bore a banner attached at the top of the structure and which fell almost to the ground. These flags bore depictions of many stories that the humans recognized and several that were foreign to them. All of the stories involved Elohim. Near the ground, the pictures stopped and writing covered the last several yards of the banners. Some of the lines Josiah recognized as coming from the holy books of Elohim, and he assumed that those that he did not recognize also came from those books.

  The group passed into the temple, and the humans discovered how simple it really was. The whole dome covered one large room filled mainly with benches. A balcony circled the edge of the building and was also filled with benches, all of which faced the center of the building where a large altar made of a single stone stood. The ordinary benches and stone altar seemed out of place compared to the décor of the rest of the building. Gold covered everything from the doors to the walls. Large pillars of gold with artistic designs carved into them ran around the edge of the building, and even the plain-looking altar sat atop a stage that was overlaid with gold. Chandeliers of electric lights hung from the ceiling, but were unlit at the moment. Instead, the inside of the building was illuminated by sunlight drifting in through the many windows of the structure.

  Josii took the humans to one of the two towers that stood on either side of the dome. Compared to the main building, the tower was dull and boring. It was of typical construction, with a large spiral staircase filling it entirely. It had two floors, but both were small and obviously not used for any real purpose. The roof of the tower was just as Josiah had imagined; crenellations ran around the edge, preventing any careless soul from falling off, and the actual roof was no more than a flat surface that could be walked on. The structure itself was nothing special, but the view from it was amazing. One of the elves’ streets stretched away from them in a straight line, and they could see for nearly half a mile until a building interrupted their view. From their vantage point, they were also able to see what had been blocked from their sight at ground level. The path to the doors of the temple was bordered on each side by a tall hedge, which was all they had been able to see when they approached the building. On the other side of the hedges stretched huge gardens of flowers, bushes, and trees. Paths crisscrossed through the gardens, and gazeboes were stationed at strategic points so that people could rest in them. Fountains were seen periodically throughout the garden, often at the intersection of two paths. Figurines and statues could also be seen along the paths.

  The rest of the city tour went by quickly, and sooner than he had expected, Josiah found himself back at Josii’s house. The sun was setting, and the first day of gathering the elfin forces was ending. Josii reported that around twenty-five hundred elves had been gathered from Dublack and that messengers had been dispatched to the other elfin territories. Josiah went to bed glad of t
he knowledge that elves were going to be on his side, but praying fervently that they reached the battlefield in time.

  The next day was a flurry of activity in Lêf. Warriors poured into the city, and by noon the number of soldiers had swelled to fifty-five hundred. The humans spent the day meeting with the upper officers of the elfin army and explaining the situation to them. Troops continued to arrive throughout the afternoon, and finally, just as the sunlight was fading from the forest and the electric lights were coming on across the city, a large force arrived from the east. They bore a different design on their armor than the rest of the soldiers, and Josiah learned that they were from East Dublack. It was necessary for him to meet with the leaders of this army and explain the situation again, but he didn’t mind. Their soldiers brought the number of elves to just over eleven thousand. The meeting with these officers continued late into the night, and Josiah was exhausted when he finally made it to his bed. He fell asleep immediately, his last thought being that he needed to rest for the march the following day.