Of Dark Elves And Dragons

by Greg Curtis

  Regrettably he wasn’t, and in truth his quarry was one far more familiar to him. He wished he weren’t. It was a nice day, the sun was high and bright, the air crisp and fresh and filled with the scent pine trees and grass, and all he knew was the stench of betrayal and the taste of evil in his mouth. As the young elf apprentice came closer and closer, walking blithely into his trap, completely unsuspecting his presence or his danger, Ulnor knew a few more moments of pain.

  Tria was so young and a member of his own people from his own town. He had seen him probably every day back in the Soolleni Woods, mostly while he was rushing around doing errands for his mistress like so many other apprentices. He just couldn’t be in league with the necromancer. The understanding that he was, that he was at the very least carrying messages for the necromancer, had come as a terrible shock. Elves just didn’t do such things. But not a night before after having been set the task of following him by the elders, he had witnessed Tria making congress with a lich, standing not five feet from it, speaking to it as if it were an elf, and completely unbothered by its magic of corruption.

  How that could be he still didn’t know. At that distance even if the lich did nothing, its sheer presence should have made the elf feel unwell. And then of course, under normal circumstances it would have simply reached out and its touch even if it didn’t rip Tria’s head off, should have started a corruption in his flesh that would have left him writhing on the ground in heartbeats and dead in days. But it had done none of those things. It had simply stood there, apparently listening as Tria had spoken to it, and Ulnor assumed, to its master through it, and then watched him leave, completely untroubled by his departure.

  The boy was a traitor. Of that there could be no doubt, and he should have just killed him where he stood. But he couldn’t. Knowledge of his guilt apparently wasn’t enough for the elders who after casting their divinations had set him the task of following him, and his instructions were as clear as they were blunt. They wanted the boy returned to them alive. Ulnor hated that almost as much as he hated the fact that Tria had turned out to be an enemy. But it all seemed to be a part of his new life as a ranger of no rank. He couldn’t kill dark elves, and he couldn’t even kill traitors to the living, even when he had seen them colluding with the enemy with his own eyes. It ran against everything he had been taught. Letting someone so evil as to be in league with the necromancer live, that just wasn’t what he had been trained to do.

  Rangers protected the people, and they fought to the death whatever evil might walk through their lands. Demons, undead, black magic, it made no difference what it was, they permitted no darkness in their realm. And to let a traitor walk freely through them, that was simply wrong.

  Still, as he pulled back on the string and felt the satisfying tension in the muscles of his arm and back as he waited for the boy to step into range, he vowed he would do as commanded. There would be no more failings on his part. He would obey. And though the traitor deserved an arrow through his heart, he would be brought back alive and unharmed so that the elders could speak with him. Maybe then the elders would allow for his death as was right and proper.

  In the end it was over almost too quickly. Tria stepped into the small, snow tufted clearing looking neither left nor right and Ulnor released the arrow. Then he watched it travel all the way to its target, smashing him in the shoulder with its blunted heavy head, exactly on target, and knocked him back a step or two. He heard him gasp in shock, saw Tria’s other arm instinctively clutch at his wounded shoulder, and then watched happily as the powder from the arrow head formed a cloud around his body. Moments later he watched as Tria’s hand darted from his shoulder to his throat as he began choking and then pitched face forward into the long grass and stopped struggling.

  As quickly as that the battle was over. He might be a traitor and in league with the most evil of enemies, but it seemed he had no great magic to protect him.

  Ulnor waited though for a few minutes before approaching the boy with his bindings. Best to let the choking powder dissipate in the light breeze before he got too close. Then, quickly and professionally he started binding his hands behind his back with the silken cords. The silk bindings had been especially spelled so that they could not be cut or loosened. He would not get free.

  Once he was bound he sat the boy up, still unconscious, and began removing his weapons, taking his longbow, a surprisingly elegant weapon with some strange runes running up and down its length, and a belt knife with more of the same runes on its hilt. He wasn’t well armed, but then since he was an apprentice who spent his days mostly running around town performing errands, that was expected. The runes on his weapons though, they troubled him. They had some sort of magic that tugged at his eyes, and he quickly dropped the knife into his satchel, and wrapped the longbow up in a cloth bundle so he didn’t have to see them or touch them.

  After that it was just a matter of waiting for him to wake up, and he knew that would be a little while. The choking powder was quite strong. Aeriesal had made it just for him and the others as they set about their duties of hunting out the traitors. To make himself comfortable while he waited he gathered together a few small branches and turned them into a simple fire to warm his hands as he sat on a fallen tree trunk, and then boiled his small kettle.

  Summer had come and gone early this year, he suspected it was something to do with the necromancer and the undead though the elders said no, and the fall was already unseasonably cool.

  He spent his time waiting, studying Tria, trying to see the signs of his evil in his face, but he couldn’t. The boy was just the same boy that he had seen day after day running around the town. Young, sometimes harried looking as he rushed to carry out his mistress’ bidding, even innocent. He looked the same as every other young elf. There was absolutely nothing that spoke to his corruption, and that was worrying in itself. If one apprentice could be so deceptive, how many more might be the same?

  Maybe the elders would find out. After all they had known enough to send him after Tria in the first instance.

  The other question of course was why. What possible advantage could there be in making an alliance with a being of such evil? An enemy that hated all life? It made no sense.

  “Ulnor?” The boy surprised him as he woke up early. Maybe the choking powder wasn’t as strong as he’d been led to believe, or maybe it was his magic at work. But either way it was a good thing. The sooner he awoke, the sooner they could begin the long walk back to the village, and the sooner he could be rid of him. He kicked some dirt over the fire, somewhat irked that he wouldn’t have the chance to drink his tea after all.

  “Tria, on your feet.” He got up and went to help him up, but the moment he touched the back of his robe the boy just yelped as if he was in pain. He might be of course, for the heavy headed arrow he had shot could well have done some damage to his shoulder, but Ulnor suspected he was faking, trying to buy some time and maybe a little sympathy. So he grabbed the back of his robe a little tighter and simply lifted him.

  “Finished traitor?” He had little sympathy for anyone who would betray his own people. But then sympathy was not the way of a ranger.

  “I’m not a traitor!” The boy almost managed to sound indignant through his gasps, as if he had not just met with a lich.

  “Tell it to the elders.” Ulnor had no intention of listening to his lies. “Now walk. It’s a long way back to the woods.”

  “Mistress Saffa will be angry with you for this.” Denial had failed now maybe it was time for the threats to begin. Ulnor sighed quietly.

  “Mistress Saffa obeys the council. She’ll watch you burn with the rest of us.” In fact being a mistress of fire, she might well light the pyre. But that was by the by. He reached for his rope, tied a noose and looped it around the boy’s neck, since he seemed unwilling to walk by himself, and then began the march. Tria yelped some more, maybe he was in pain, but he still had to walk, and so Ulnor ignored him.

  Soon he had him
following along obediently. It wasn’t really a choice, since if the boy held back too long the noose tightened and started strangling him, and he didn’t like that. But with his hands bound tight behind his back, his choices were few. All he could really do was talk, and that he did incessantly.

  At first it was more denials, more threats about what his Mistress would do to him, and the occasional demand to be let go. Ulnor ignored them all, concerned only with getting him back to the elders for trial. Then there were the tears and the pleading as he demanded to know what he’d done that was so wrong, and Ulnor ignored that too. These were all the things he’d expected, and deep in the forests he had to concentrate on what was around him rather than his prisoner. There were wolves about as well as the undead.

  By the third hour though, as they trudged through the snow, he did have to listen as the boy changed his spiel. Suddenly it was no longer about denial and him making a terrible mistake, it was about his mistress and the undead, and Ulnor had to listen, even as he pretended not to.

  Thoria Saffa was also a traitor? That shocked him on a level so deep that he couldn’t quite understand it. But he believed the boy. He didn’t want to, but the idea that the necromancer would talk to a simple boy with only minor magic had never made a lot of sense. A mistress of fire however, a leader, nearly an elder in her own right, that made much more sense. And the boy was her apprentice, it was easy enough to imagine that he was simply doing some more of her bidding.

  As the boy continued like that, Ulnor paid him more attention than he wanted to, possibly more attention than he should have, but it wasn’t really a choice. Part of his duty was to gather evidence.

  He would do his duty, and maybe one day, though the very thought of it sickened him, he would find a way to thank the wizard for his lesson, and maybe even find a way to redress a little of his crime.

  Whether he wanted to or not.

  Chapter Twenty.

  It was blue, beautiful blue. That was the first sight that greeted Alan’s eyes as he opened them. A magnificent sky of perfect pale blue, with not a cloud in it. It was perfect – too perfect. And - he suddenly realized, there wasn’t a sun in it either, and that seemed wrong. He was lying on his back, staring up at almost all of the blue sky, and failing to see anything that looked like a glowing yellow ball of heat and light anywhere. It was daylight, without a sun; surely that wasn’t possible.

  It was green too he realized. The long grass was supporting him almost like a soft feather mattress, a brilliant vivid green that ran all the way to the horizon. A perfectly flat horizon without a trace of a hill or for that matter, even a tree. The horizon, where the vivid green and the perfect blue met, was a flat curve without so much as a bump or a hollow in it. That wasn’t possible either, surely. Then again he wasn’t in pain, and that had to count for something.

  He sat up, confused, and wondering if he was going crazy, only to take in more of the world around him and discovered that the entire world was the same. All he could see in every direction was flat green grass, league after league of it, stretching out until it touched the sky.

  “That’s not possible.” His voice sounded strange as he uttered his foolish denial, vibrant and powerful but also somehow wrong. Wrong against the complete stillness that had been there before he had spoken. Stillness that returned the moment he stopped speaking. Perfect silence returned, and yet it wasn’t just noise that was missing, there was no wind either. Not a breeze, not a sign of a single blade of grass even in the distance waving. Nothing.

  “Where am I?” He only whispered it this time, feeling the wrongness of noise in this place, and still his whisper seemed too loud, far too loud. But the question was right, because even as he took in his surroundings he knew he was nowhere in the world he had just been. Nowhere could be like this. Nowhere real anyway.

  Alan stood up, not even sure why he did. Nothing was changed by his standing up, and there was still nothing to see other than the grass and the sky. The endless grass and the endless sky. Still he stared at it, confused and disoriented, and wondering where he was, how he’d got there, and what he should do. Unfortunately, there were no answers right then. There was no one to answer him even if he asked.

  He stood there for the longest time, confused and full of questions, until finally an idea hit him. He should fly. Fly high, because the higher up he could get, the further he could see, and perhaps, though even then he suspected it would be a waste of time, he could see something. A house or a hill, a stream or a lake, or just something. Anything.

  He went to undress to transform and instantly discovered a whole new set of questions to be asked, which began with his being naked. Completely naked and stuck out in the middle of nowhere. But he was never naked, least of all out in the open. And he was human again. At some point he’d changed back from his eagle shape.

  For a while he felt vulnerable, but the feeling passed quickly enough when he realized there was no one to see him. This place was an empty place, empty of everything and everyone except him, and in time a new feeling possessed him; he was alone.

  “Hello!” Surprised by the feeling, he yelled it out as loud as he could, not wanting to be alone. He didn’t necessarily want company, though someone with some answers would have been welcome, but he wanted to know that he wasn’t alone. That there was someone to talk to, even if he didn’t want to talk, because the alternative was too horrible to imagine. He shouted some more, annoyed by the sound of his voice in the stillness, but terrified by the fact that it was the only sound he could hear, maybe the only sound he would ever hear.

  Seconds or hours later, for there was no real sense of time in this place, he returned to his previous idea and began the transformation to a roc, and discovered yet a new mystery. He became a roc in the space of a heartbeat, without ever transforming. One moment he was human, the next he was a roc, and there was never a time between them when he was both and neither. That was wrong. That was impossible. It never happened. But it was only one among many such things, and somehow he ignored it as he flapped his wings and took to the air.

  Flying was different to normal, almost effortless like his transformation, and he quickly began ascending to the heavens, like an arrow given flight. Concentrating only on getting as high as possible as quickly as he could, he flapped his wings furiously, surprised by how little effort it seemed to take, and soon he was surely hundreds if not thousands of yards above the green. And yet the ground underneath him was still a perfectly flat expanse of green extending all the way still to the sky.

  Undaunted he gained more height, flying almost straight upwards for five, ten and maybe even twenty minutes until normally he should have been at his absolute limit. But the air up there wasn’t any colder or thinner than it had been on the ground, the sky above him refused to darken as it normally did and the grass expanse far below him, refused to show him anything but flat green without end. It was impossible.

  “Hello!” He called out again as loudly as he could and suddenly discovered a whole new problem. To scream, to speak or shout he had to have a human throat, and somehow he’d done that. But he’d done it by transforming back into his human form and he was falling. Except that he wasn’t. Even as he panicked, thought he was surely plunging to his doom, he suddenly realized he wasn’t. There was no wind streaming past him as their normally was when he dived, and no more did the ground seem to be approaching him, not that it was easy to tell when everything was a perfect expanse of green. He was floating.

  “Merciful creator, I’m dead.” The words just streamed out of him as he finally understood that the only way he could be doing any of this was if he wasn’t in the world any longer, and with that understanding his memories came flooding back. The bone dragon, the flight into the cave, the terrible burning on the souls of his feet and legs, the pain as rocks started tumbling down upon him, big rocks tearing into his flesh, crushing the life out of him. He could feel the pain, know the fear and despair, taste the dust and blood in hi
s mouth all over again. He remembered only too well the terror that he was going to die, and suddenly he knew that he had.

  But if he was dead, then where was he?

  This certainly didn’t look like Hades or the underworld, or at least the depictions of the artists, and that was good. More than good, eternal fire and torment didn’t fill him with joy. But neither did it look like any of the stories of the afterlife he’d ever heard. And it was empty. Where was everyone else? If this was the afterlife surely there should have been others, millions of others. Where were they?

  “Hello? Creator?” He gave up on shouting and almost whispered his questions. There was no point, in this strange world his voice carried everywhere anyway, and he wasn’t completely sure he wanted to meet the creator anyway. It was just that there didn’t seem to be much of a choice in the matter any longer.

  Laughter. For a moment he almost couldn’t believe he was hearing anything and then he realized he was. Someone was laughing. A child, a woman perhaps. Laughing happily, somewhere in the distance, but nowhere near him, nowhere he could see. Yet for a little while it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he wasn’t alone.