They rode for days afterward, south and west, into the woods. At the end of their journey, he spent another two days recovering in a small three-room cabin. Sera stayed alone in one bedroom while he slept in the other. A bed, small table, and single chair were his only furnishings. Four books lay stacked on the table, and when he felt well enough, he read parts of The Battles of Garrett Loor as it was the only volume written in Common. He spent most of his time in a deep, dreamless sleep. Sera checked in on him on occasion. She brought food and drink at meal times, saying very little and always rushing off quickly. Of Jin, he saw no sign.
On the third day Dain could no longer stand being cooped up. Garrett Loor’s exploits had lost their hold on his attention, and he had already counted each of the wooden planks on the cabin’s floor and walls. In the morning he dressed and belted on his tomahawk and dagger. The sword and bow he left standing in a corner. The cabin was silent save for his footfalls; he was alone.
Cautiously, he opened the outside door and found himself immersed in a lush, green forest. He could see no other buildings, only the towering trees, thick ferns, and a narrow path running alongside a slow, clear stream. Silver fish sipped at insects struggling on the water’s surface. Given the argument over whether to bring him along, he was mildly surprised at the lack of guards. Unwilling to return to the cabin without exploring, he ventured out along the path.
After following the creek for a half of a mile, he stood at the rim of a deep canyon. Steep-sided, the canyon was no more than a hundred yards across at its widest. The stream ended abruptly, pouring over the rim in a wide waterfall then plunging into the narrow chasm. Long, green strands of moss hung along the cliff, drinking in the waterfall’s cool mist. He could see several rock structures built into the sides of the canyon itself down from the waterfall. These were connected by a complex web of rope bridges and vertical wooden ladders. Surefooted wood elves crossed from building to building, each lugging heavy packs of various shapes and sizes.
Near the bottom of the canyon, the waterfall joined with groundwater and swelled into a mighty river. The lowest of the ladders dropped onto piers that reached out into the river like fingers. Using long pushpoles instead of oars, more elves navigated small canoes and flatboats along the waterway. Still more elves worked hoists and pulleys, hauling freight up from the river.
Dain stared, awestruck by the canyon’s beauty, until he spotted Sera walking along one of the rope bridges accompanied by a small figure with telltale black-and-gold hair. Jin. He leaned forward, smiling to himself, and tracked the pair as they crossed from building to building. Finally, they climbed a long ladder up to the highest level of structures, then continued over a bridge that disappeared into the rock face almost directly beneath him.
He watched the bridge, waiting for them to emerge, and then heard footsteps and crackling leaves from up the path ahead. He waited as the sounds drew near.
Jin appeared first, skipping around a corner in the trail ahead. She was singing to herself, and carried a woven reed basket. Sera followed close behind, head down. She seemed lost in her thoughts.
“Hi, Dain!” Jin exclaimed upon spotting him. Her face broke out into a wide grin.
“Hello yourself, Jin. I see that you’ve learned a little Common speak,” Dain said with a grin of his own.
“She has taught herself a few words. She studies every night,” Sera added as she came up alongside them.
“Yes,” Jin said with a solemn nod. “I study.” Dain chuckled and patted the girl on her tiny shoulder.
“Beautiful,” he said, turning back to the city below.
“You seem to say that a lot,” Sera said, one side of her mouth quirked up into a small, wry smile. “And yes,” she continued, “Teran is our capital. And it is a beautiful city.” Her hair caught the shimmering sunlight.
“Yes. Breathtaking,” Dain said.
Sera gestured toward the path. “Shall we head back up to the cabin?”
“I couldn’t ask for a better escort.” Dain offered the crook of his arm to Jin. The delighted child looped her arm up through his elbow with a small bow and a giggle.
The three returned to the cabin, where Sera removed a loaf of bread from her pack followed by a clay jar with a slab of cool butter laying in its bottom. She built a fire in the cabin’s kiva and set to work putting venison, carrots, and potatoes into a saucepan. From a small pouch she added a pinch of seasoning to the stew. Dain looked on, eyebrows raised in surprise. Sera saw him looking and waved the spoon at him.
“I can prepare my own food, you know,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t,” Dain said quickly. “Where I come from, royals rarely cook, or do much of anything for themselves.”
Sera seemed to consider this for a moment before giving a small nod and returning to the stew and tea.
“It smells delicious,” he added, feeling he’d unintentionally caused offence, but at that, Sera smiled up at him from the pot, and he settled back into his chair.
Jin had left the cabin and skipped off into the woods, whistling. Dain was grateful for the chance to rest again, his stamina having not yet fully recovered. He sat there, watching Sera as she prepared their meal. He admired her skill and graceful movements. Not a single motion was wasted. She looked at home.
“Jin resembles you,” he mused aloud. “Although, while many of your people have black, brown, or even red hair, I’ve seen no blondes. I doubt there’s many with eyes her shade of blue, either. And her ears and eyebrows appear a bit sharper, more distinct than the other wood elves.” Too late he remembered their earlier conversation, weeks ago, and how Sera had reacted. He was about to apologize for bringing it up again when she turned from the kiva and faced him, a determined look in her eyes.
“I was a slave…once,” Sera said. “I was out, working in a meadow, near the old road, when the Golden King’s men took me. It was a time of famine and plague and my people were starving. I had been collecting wild onions and Kachira, a rare herb that fights off plague. It only grows north of the old road. I’d spent all day gathering when a hunting party found me.”
Dain said nothing but leaned forward in his chair.
“My captors forced me to use my spells in a demonstration. They force all of their captives to. Slavers get a higher price for wood elves who can cast strongly. At auction, the most powerful of us go for thousands in gold. After the testing, I was placed in a cage too small to sit down in. I stood, waiting in that cage, covered in my own filth for three days before being sold to King Elam’s oldest son, Gallad. He kept me, along with over a dozen other wood elves, in a black cellar underneath the barn at his manor house. Each day at sunrise we were let out to work in his fields. I was fifteen when he bought me.” Sera cleared her throat.
She turned away from him, toward the kiva again, clutching the spoon so hard her knuckles were white.
“My people have been captured as slaves to the Golden for decades now. We lived in this land first. Before the orcs, before the Golden, before the humans, this was our home. Teran, our capital below, is over a thousand years old.
“We wood elves are one with nature. Our power stems from communion with life and nature itself. We speak to the waters, to the land, and all living things. The golden elves abuse our abilities to grow their food and make forage for their livestock. Slaves are even forced to beautify their homes and structures with vines and flowers. The bridge you crossed, coming here from the east—I and three other slaves made it. We grew it out of living oaks, bending and shaping them, warping their true forms to please our masters. Now, just as I once was, those mighty trees are enslaved to the Golden to do their bidding.”
Sera paused then continued.
“Three years after I was captured, Gallad returned from a stag hunt empty-handed and needing to…relieve his frustrations. He raped me, in front of his men. I could have used my powers to kill him. Slavery had made me strong. I could have called vines to sprout at his fee
t and pull him under. I could have forced the nearby plants to tear him to shreds. I could have even driven earth down his very throat and choked him from the inside out. His men would have killed me, but it wouldn’t have mattered. I wasn’t afraid to die. My honor would have been preserved. But I did none of those things. I just…let it happen.”
“What stopped you?” Dain asked.
“The others. He threatened to murder all the other slaves unless I complied. He knew I could have killed him at any time, so he made sure I wouldn’t. That was the worst part. Knowing that I could have prevented it, and Gallad knowing that I could kill him if I was willing to sacrifice the others,” she said.
The cabin was silent save for the stew bubbling away.
“Haldrin was Jin’s uncle, then?” Dain asked softly. He remembered the tall, proud warrior. A matter of “family honor” Haldrin said when asking for the girl. The prince had come close to defeating him, and thus to murdering Jin.
Dain grimaced. He wished he could kill the man twice. What manner of people were the Golden if their own princes behaved in such a despicable manner?
“Yes, her uncle and a monster. Like the rest of his kind,” Sera continued. “Three months later my father and brothers rescued me. Jin was born six months after I regained my freedom.”
She turned from the fire, and Dain saw tears running down her face. She wiped at them roughly with a small kitchen towel, as if trying to clear away the memory itself. Dain ached to embrace her, to chase away all the evils that plagued her, but he stayed riveted to his chair. She was a princess and far above him.
“How did they capture her?” he asked. “How did they know she was Gallad’s?”
“We were on our way to trade with some passing freighters. They buy the potions I brew and the herbs I gather. We approach them at night, usually when they camp. On the way we stumbled across a patrol. I escaped, but Jin twisted her ankle and fell. When I turned to look for her, she was gone. Her appearance—unusual as you said—marked her as a half-breed.” Sera’s lips twisted into a grimace. “Her captors interrogated her and determined she was Gallad’s. I’ve never made it a secret. How could I hide such a thing from her when she sees visions of the future? By their laws, all half-breeds are put to death at their birth, but they were hesitant to kill one from their royal bloodline. They took her to King Elam, and somehow she managed to free herself. Jin said an old golden elf helped her. She still won’t talk about it further, and I’m not going to push her.”
Sera’s shoulders slumped, she wiped at her face again.
“I should have stayed,” she whispered. “It should have been me they captured. Instead I ran, and because of that my daughter almost died.”
Dain rose from his chair. “It wasn’t your fault.” Sera met his eyes. He swallowed. “You couldn’t have known Jin would fall. They might have captured you both. You did what you could.”
They looked at each other for a long moment. At last, Sera nodded and straightened.
“Now you know my story,” Sera said. “Beautiful still?” Her voice trembled.
“Yes,” Dain said. “Sera—” he stopped, then willed himself to continue through his nerves. “We cannot control everything that happens to us. It wasn’t your choice to be captured, nor mistreated so terribly—any of it. Only what you chose to do afterward matters.”
CHAPTER NINE
A sharp knock at the door jerked Dain awake. He remembered reading about Garrett Loor and his exploits just before nodding off. Loor had been about to lead his valiant swordsmen against the ten thousand trolls of Agumiry. Trolls were tough fighters, slow but very strong. The man must have either been incredibly lucky to survive against so many, or else a fantastical liar. He suspected the latter.
Fog formed from his breath in the early morning’s chill. Although the enchanted lands were much warmer than the surrounding mountains, the nights were cold, and dampness stirred up from the nearby waterfall brought a clammy feeling to the air. Dain had moved one of the chairs nearer to the fire, and had sat with his back to it to better catch the light before tumbling down into sleep.
He was still dazed, rubbing sleep from his eyes, when the knocking rang out again. He gripped his tomahawk, just in case, then cracked open the cabin’s outer door. Sera’s youngest brother stood there. Dain turned toward her room to call for her, but Sera already stood in her bedroom doorway. She had wrapped herself in a wool blanket that reached down to the floor.
She stepped past Dain and went outside to talk with her brother, and he closed the door, respecting their privacy. He walked to his room, pausing for a moment to look in at Jin as she slept soundly in her small bed. Her hair masked her face, the blond and black strands floating on each peaceful breath.
Given her appearance and the circumstances of her birth, Jin would have had a difficult childhood. As a child or an adult, she would never be fully accepted here among the wood elves and the golden elves had already shown that they considered her impure. There was nowhere for a child like her to belong. He found it hard to pull his eyes from the sleeping child as he turned toward the sound of the front door opening once more.
“We must go see my father,” Sera said, reentering the cabin. “He has news that concerns us all. My brother, Tarol, will watch over Jin while she sleeps.”
Dain nodded and belted on his weapons. He followed Sera, along with an escorting elf, down the path to Teran. Still dark out, the canyon city was lit by blue glow-lanterns carried by wood elves or stationed along the busiest pathways. Those that were carried resembled fireflies, dancing in and out of the city’s buildings and bridges. Beyond the point Dain had stopped at yesterday, the trail turned toward a looming cavern. Two armored warriors stood at either side of the black opening, silent and alert in their dull plate steel.
The escort took up one of the iridescent blue lanterns that hung just inside, and then led Sera and Dain down a winding staircase into the dark below.
Dain stepped cautiously as they descended deeper underground. Trickling water leeched from the walls and ceiling, making each step slippery. With their inhuman balance, neither Sera or their escort had the slightest difficulty with their own footing, but he slipped twice during their descent, cursing both times.
He counted a hundred steps into the dark before spotting a patch of light ahead. Another fifty steps down, they stood in an enormous chamber. Glistening stalactites lined the ceiling. Crystals and minerals reflected the lamp’s glow like a thousand blue stars. A large stalagmite reached up to its mirror image near the stairway’s end. A chasm ran from wall to wall through the chamber’s center, over which they crossed by means of a narrow stone bridge. A wall stood beyond the bridge, near the cavern’s mouth, and they passed through a reinforced iron gate guarded by another set of elves. Once through, Dain spotted several ladders up to the wall’s top where a half-dozen heavy ballista were mounted. Four more guards patrolled there, watching the cave’s shadowed interior.
A few determined defenders here could stop an army, he thought to himself.
Outside again, they crossed a rope bridge then climbed down three ladders to the waterfront. A boat waited there, which they took downriver.
As they floated along, the canyon gradually widened until more than a quarter mile divided the two opposing sides. At first Dain could see an assortment of buildings on both banks, but beyond a mile or two only the southern bank seemed inhabited.
After traveling with the current for an hour, they tied the boat off at a long wooden pier in front of a massive stone fortress. A granary and a few other buildings stood just upriver, but Dain couldn’t see any other structures downriver.
This must be Teran’s southern border.
Their escort departed, leaving Dain and Sera alone on the pier. They faced the fortress.
The rising sun’s first rays shone over the canyon rim, lighting the impressive structure. Dain took a moment to admire the castle’s construction. Its front stood at the water’s edge, and the rear w
as built back into the canyon wall itself. Sprawling over a hundred acres, it was easily the largest castle he had seen. As in the cavern above, hundreds of thin arrow slits flanked the gate along either wall. Green and brown banners fluttered from the ramparts. Atop the castle’s rounded corners sat squat towers with a pair of heavy ballista, and a tall keep stood proudly above the walls.
They walked to the pier’s end then around the northern wall toward the granaries. The outer walls themselves were at least ten feet thick, and they had been strengthened by rune wards. An imposing iron gate stood at the wall’s midpoint. Powerful enchantments issued from its black metal.
Dain marveled. As a child he had been amazed at how some spellcasters could place wards and enchantments on objects. Complex spells that could hold their power for years or even centuries. Unfortunately, he’d never had that particular talent, nor did any paladin for that matter, and only a few rare priests that he had heard of. By the number of wards and enchantments he had seen so far, there must either be or have been at one time, a host of wood elves with the ability. Later, he would have to ask Sera about them.
Inside, after passing through the gate, Dain was surprised to find a grove of strange trees on either side of a paved stone walkway. A thick, white trunk supported each while gold and auburn leaves clung to their branches. They reminded him of the strange purple-leafed trees of the forest. He had never seen their like, and mentioned them to Sera, who smiled.
“One of our proudest achievements—they are specially grown from mintril, those you saw growing along the road, then enchanted further by our best spellcasters.”
“Do they have a purpose, other than their beauty?”
“Do they need one?”
The pair walked through fountains and row after row of the rose bushes that decorated the landscape all around the grove. A small army of wood elves cared for the garden, casting minor levitation spells and floating globes of water from marble fountains to each plant.
Kingdom's Forge: Book 01 - Paladin's Redemption Page 12
