Twilight of the Elves

by Zack Loran Clark

  The elves, too, allowed women to serve as soldiers. Rumor had it that Queen Me’Shala kept these so-called sword sisters on hand as elite bodyguards.

  “Not Frond,” Zed said. “It was one of the rangers, actually. The High Ranger.”

  “Oh . . . an elf.” His mother paused, wearing a careful expression he couldn’t quite read. “That must be so nice for you, getting to know the other side of your heritage.”

  Zed nodded, feeling the exact opposite was true. When the elves had first arrived in Freestone, Zed had nearly unspooled in his excitement. Though his own father had been an elf, Zed knew almost nothing about their culture.

  So he’d wasted little time before making a nuisance of himself. Zed had followed the rangers around for days, peppering them with questions about their customs and history and magic. To his great frustration, however, the rangers proved to be stingy teachers. And they were the least standoffish of the elves.

  “You could come by,” he said, “if you want. To say hello.”

  Zed’s mother smiled, but she was already shaking her head. “You’re such a sweet boy. I only knew your father for two weeks,” she said a little wistfully. “And while they were among the happiest of my life, I can barely remember any of the other elves Zerend introduced me to. They certainly wouldn’t remember some lowly servant girl barely out of her apprenticehood.”

  Zed frowned at his feet.

  “I should get going, anyway,” she added. “I’m running late.” A shadow fell over Zed’s feet as his mother approached, and then her fingers were touching his chin, lifting his eyes to meet hers. “I am proud of you, Zed,” she said. “I hope you know that. I don’t think I could be any more pleased with the young man you’ve become. The king didn’t say so, but everyone knows you and your friends saved this city. And those that don’t tend to get an earful from me.”

  “Mom,” Zed groaned, but a smile had stolen onto his face while he wasn’t paying attention.

  His mother grinned, too. “Tell Brock I want to see him over here soon.” She winked. “Or I’m going to start taking it personally.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  “Well, walk me out, then,” she said, pulling her cloak from its peg. “Things have been a little tense in the neighborhood lately. I could use my son the mage beside me, to scare off the zealots.”

  Zed cast a glance to the door, thinking again of Dimas and his cruel grin. What might he have done to the mason if that woman hadn’t stepped in?

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” he said. “I can protect you.”

  Zed stood outside the marketplace, hovering at its entrance.

  His mother had left him here and traveled up the narrow stretch toward intown. When she was finally out of sight, Zed pulled on his hood and—rather than heading back to the guildhall—sidled into a quiet corner. He glanced around anxiously for any familiar faces.

  Besides the armored knights, most Freestoners avoided lingering near what had once been the market. Zed watched as the odd servant or page hurried past, but they were always careful not to stray beyond the throughway. None spared Zed a second look.

  The new elven quarter was a place removed, as if a whole section of the city had disappeared altogether.

  “Zed, is that you? Why is your hood up? Are you hiding from someone?”

  Zed shrieked out a noise that was somewhere between startled boy and rusty door hinge. He spun around and found a young elf standing behind him. Her skin was dark as sable and her eyes flashed a lovely blue. Not the pale blue that some fair-skinned humans and dwarves had. Fel’s eyes were a rich, dark cobalt. The color of sapphires.

  “Fel,” Zed breathed. “You nearly scared the ambrosia out of me. I’m trying to be incognito.”

  Fel was a ranger—the youngest of them, in fact. An orphan whose parents had died years ago in a monster attack, she’d been raised by the rangers ever since she was a little girl. While she was still technically too young to join the order, she was unofficially acknowledged as one of them, and she stayed with the others in the Adventurers Guild hall.

  For Zed, she was an invaluable font of information about the elves. While most were aloof around humans, Fel was almost relentlessly friendly. She’d quickly fallen in with the apprentices over the last few weeks, and even guided Zed through weekly trips to the elven shantytown.

  Fel put a finger to her lips, studying his cloak. “Incognito . . . I’m not familiar with that word. Does it mean ‘sloppy’?”

  “No,” Zed said defensively.

  “ ‘Suspicious’?”

  “It means I’m trying to blend in,” he puffed. “The elves always stare when I’m around. How am I supposed to learn more about them if my presence puts them on edge?”

  Fel nodded sagely. “Zed, my people can be slow to trust, but after what happened at Llethanyl you can’t blame them.” She shook her head. “It might take a while, but sneaking will only hurt your cause.”

  The girl stood up straight and squared her shoulders. “Just follow my example. Put on a smile and show them that you’re worthy of their respect.” Fel grinned at Zed, an expression so bright it made his face hurt just looking at it.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Zed grumbled. “You’re a full elf, so they already respect you. I’m an outsider to both Freestone and the elves.”

  Fel sighed and bit her lip. She looked like she might say more, but at that moment a shadow leaped down from the balcony above, landing right between them. Zed shrieked for the second time that morning, spilling backward into the snow.

  Before him stood a creature so scarred and misshapen, so horribly ugly, that it had somehow ventured into . . . cute. This was Fel’s cat, a half-feral tabby whose unpronounceable elven name translated to something like “the bane of all things small and simple.” The apprentices just called her Mousebane.

  “Mousebane, you scared me!” Zed reached out to give the cat a tentative pat, but she shrilled at him, bolting behind Fel’s ankles.

  Fel’s eyes were wide as she helped Zed to his feet. “I think she’s warming up to you! She didn’t scratch or bite you at all this time.”

  “I’ll win her over yet,” Zed said, wiping snow from his cloak. The cat had taken an instant disliking to him, but he remained determined.

  Fel turned toward the market entrance. Beyond, the tents and stalls stood in their usual colorful stacks, though they’d been emptied of merchants.

  “Shall we?”

  As soon as they entered the market, every eye turned toward the young visitors. Murmurs of conversation faded, as if muffled by magic. Fel ignored the looks, smiling broadly and standing straight as she strolled, but Zed felt his ears growing hot already. He pulled his hood on more tightly.

  It was still strange to see the market teeming with elves instead of humans. It felt a bit like when Zed discovered his old outtown friends had shot up three inches since the Guildculling, or that their voices now swam in the deep tones of adulthood.

  Everything familiar seemed to be changing, and while Zed would never side with scuds like Dimas, he felt a twinge of sadness at the thought that maybe some things had changed forever.

  Zed spotted an elven family gazing toward him and Fel. The ruby-eyed toddler clung to her mother as she watched them pass. Both mother and daughter were tan skinned, with rich, dark hair that was streaked with glittering strands of green.

  The toddler was smiling, but when she reached an arm toward them, her mother quickly snatched it back. The girl began to squall, and the mother retreated with her into a nearby tent. The flaps fell closed to reveal an intricate tree pattern painted onto the front.

  Wood elves, Zed thought. It had taken Zed weeks to remember the elven names for all three sects: cel’shea, ain’shea, and dro’shea.

  Wood, sun, and night elves, in the trade tongue. Once there had been more, back before the world ended.

  All elves looked different to Zed, but even within a sect there could be wide varieties of color. The wood elves
’ skin ranged from fair pink to deep umber, and their hair and eyes were tinged by greens, reds, and browns. But they all seemed to share a sort of woodland palate, as if their sect had grown from the forest itself.

  Wood elves were by far the most common of the three sects. Fel said they were the founders of Llethanyl. The other two had come later.

  Up ahead, Zed spotted a group of elderly sun elves playing a complicated-looking game with multicolored stones. The men’s skin ranged from pale to dark amber, and their hair and eyes glittered with gold, yellow, and white. Fel and Zed stooped to peer over one elder’s shoulder, but the elf huffed and quickly turned to block their view.

  “El sal fal’en!” Fel called as she continued on. She turned back to Zed. “That means ‘May your match entertain the watching sky.’ It’s a sun elf thing.”

  Sun elves, Zed knew, had arrived in Llethanyl long ago from somewhere far to the north, a dark place of almost perpetual winter. As such, the ain’shea loved daylight and the sky. Birds permeated their designs.

  “All right, Zed,” Fel chirped as they walked. “Where would you like to go today?”

  Zed inhaled deeply, taking in the strange scents of the elven encampment. Even their smells were different—suffused with the minty essence of magic.

  “Well,” Zed started. “I was actually hoping you could show me where the night elves are camped. I’ve seen plenty of sun and wood elves around. Where do your people stay?”

  The dro’shea seemed to be the rarest and most mysterious of the three sects. Their skin tones contained both the palest and darkest shades among the elves, and were often tinted gray. But their eyes and hair held flashes of color, touched by blues, violets, and glittering silver.

  Zed nearly crashed into Fel as she stopped suddenly. Mousebane hissed a warning at him, weaving protectively between the girl’s legs.

  “It’s actually pretty far from here,” Fel said. “I don’t think we’ll have time before your lesson with Hexam.”

  Zed sighed. He’d nearly forgotten. How long had it been since second bell? Maybe they should simply do a quick loop and head back around.

  He glanced to his left and sucked in a sudden gulp of air.

  A huge black smear lay ominously across the stones, encircled by a painted red ring and filled with an X.

  It was the spot where Old Makiva’s tent had once stood, until it mysteriously burned to the ground on the night the mystic disappeared.

  No one had seen Makiva since—not counting Zed’s strange dream—and all sorts of rumors flourished of what had really become of her. In the intervening weeks, the city magistrates had declared Makiva a fugitive and a witch. A hefty reward was offered to anyone who brought her into the Stone Sons’ custody. Dead or alive.

  It seemed the elves, too, had gotten word of her. Or else they instinctively sensed the spot had been corrupted. Though the shantytown was packed full, the foreboding circle was given a wide berth.

  For six weeks Zed had somehow managed to avoid this place. Until today.

  It burns, Zed.

  Zed took an involuntary step backward. An unpleasant smell wafted in the breeze, gone before he could place it. Suddenly he didn’t want to be here.

  Fel glanced toward the circle, then back up at Zed. “Are you all right? You look pale.”

  “I’m fine,” Zed said. “I just . . . I just remembered I should probably—”

  He was interrupted by the clanging of bells, echoing from the nearby Golden Way Temple. At first Zed thought that third bell had come already, but as the ringing continued—a high, shrieking bell that was reserved for fires and other emergencies—he realized something was very wrong.

  All around them, elves began jostling and shouting. Zed heard a voice scream from far off.

  “We should go,” he said.

  Fel nodded, gazing worriedly across the market.

  They squeezed between figures, with Fel leading the way to the outtown exit. The closer they came to the edge of the shantytown, the thicker the crowd became. Above the tumult, the Golden Way’s emergency bell was still sounding, shrill and panicked.

  Zed caught glimpses of gleaming metal between the bodies.

  What’s happening?

  Finally he and Fel arrived at the market exit, where they were met by a wall of steel.

  Stone Sons—a whole blockade of them—stood in a tight line surrounding the shantytown, led by Ser Brent. Zed watched as the guildmaster bellowed an order and the knights suddenly marched forward as one, pushing the elves farther back into their pen.

  Voices shouted in protest, but the elves retreated. They were being herded.

  “Ser Brent!” Zed shouted. “Wait, please!”

  The knight-captain glanced Zed’s way, then made an ill-tempered noise as he caught sight of him. “For the love of . . . must one of you always be getting into trouble?”

  “What’s going on?” Zed asked.

  Ser Brent’s mouth clenched into a grimace. “This morning your guildmistress revealed that an undead creature was spotted near Freestone. Some sort of wild animal. The elves are being confined to the market while the king decides the best course of action.” Zed opened his mouth to object, but the knight had already raised his shiny gauntlet to cut him off. “Yes, there will be exceptions, on a case-by-case basis.”

  He turned to one of the knights. “Let the boy through, but no one else.”

  Zed gripped Fel’s hand. “She’s with me! Fel is one of the rangers.”

  Brent’s eyes narrowed as they traveled from Zed to the young elf beside him. His grimace tightened. “Fine,” he said. “Go now.”

  Zed pulled Fel through a gap between the knights, but the ranger turned back momentarily, her eyes wide with shock. As soon as they’d passed, the Sons closed ranks.

  The anguished faces of the elves disappeared behind a barrier of steel.

  “Hit me,” Brock said, and for a moment he worried the burly, bearded man glaring at him from across the table might do just that.

  But the man only slapped a card down on the table, which Brock slid into his hand. “Ooh,” he said when he saw it. “Four of dragons. Just what I needed.”

  It wasn’t. Brock had a horrible hand of cards. Four of dragons, eight of griffins, and a wild unicorn—it was hard to imagine a worse spread. But the point of this game was to bluff, and that was something he could do. The people sitting around the table were evidence of that—one by one, they’d all folded, convinced Brock held better cards than he truly did.

  All six were journey-rank members of the Sea of Stars, the middle position in the guild’s hierarchy. While they weren’t masters like Hexam, Lotte, or Frond, all had passed—and survived—their apprenticeships. It was a badge of honor that Brock had come to realize was depressingly rare.

  But as far as he was concerned, they’d all started out as suspects. At the Lady Gray’s insistence, he’d spent his first month and a half as an adventurer talking to every one of his guildmates, making conversation and sifting through their stories for clues as to who among them might have the means and the motive to steal from the guild.

  Brock had expected to find a guild full of resentful draftees, all chafing under Frond’s tyrannical yoke. He’d anticipated meeting dozens of kindred spirits as eager to break away from her as he was. But as he talked to one adventurer after another, he found quite the opposite to be true.

  To his left were a pair of men, Raif and Damen, who had been guildless before joining the adventurers. Guildlessness was exceedingly rare—few guilds had enough members to turn anyone away lightly—which suggested the men had committed crimes their former guilds had found inexcusable.

  To the contrary, Brock learned that the smiths had unjustly cast Damen aside when a workplace injury left him unable to tend the forge at the pace they required. A rival within the Scribes Guild had framed Raif for theft, following a heated disagreement about apostrophes. The two men were deeply grateful to have escaped guildlessness with the adventurers; Bro
ck couldn’t see them doing anything to jeopardize their standing.

  There were several former Stone Sons in the guild’s ranks, including the men to Brock’s right: Adem Foci, who credited Frond with saving him from Ser Brent’s despotism, and a young man named Tym Oh, whose strange fascination with fire could never have been satisfied among the knights. Tym would remain loyal to Frond so long as she allowed him to shoot flaming arrows at Dangers—and she showed no signs of changing her mind about that particular strategy.

  Another fearsome warrior, a woman named Preet who was known for her expert use of a light saber, held no grudge for having been recruited at her Guildculling two decades ago. Based on her grumbling and glaring from across the table, she reserved her grudges for those who beat her at cards.

  There were dozens of men and women in the guild, each with their own story about how they got there. And the one thing they all seemed to have in common was an absolute and unshakable faith in their leader, Alabasel Frond. Brock found it hard to imagine any of them going behind her back to make an extra copper or two on the black market.

  His remaining opponent went exclusively by his nickname, the Clobbler, which the adventurers seemed to think was a hilariously clever play on words. Before Frond had selected him on the day of his Guildculling, he’d been apprenticed to a cobbler. Now, he liked to clobber Dangers with a large club. Hence, Clobbler.

  It was what passed for humor in the Sea of Stars.

  Just as Brock was sure his opponent was about to fold—the man’s scars flushed pink whenever he lost—the door to the guildhall burst open, and Brock turned to see Zed step through with unusual purpose. “Where’s Frond?” he demanded to the room before he’d even registered Brock’s presence there. He was followed by the young ranger Fel and an icy winter wind.

  It wasn’t the wind that gave Brock a chill. One look at his friend’s face told him something bad had happened.

  Brock dropped his cards and got to his feet. “She’s out. What’s wrong?”

  Zed scanned the assembled faces, dismissing them each in turn, likely not recognizing any of them. While Brock had made his way through the guild’s ranks, Zed had for the most part been content to stick by the other apprentices at meals and celebrations and in the training yard. The older adventurers had shown little interest in getting to know Zed, either, but at least they saw his sorcerous abilities as an asset. They didn’t avoid him out of scorn, but because, as Preet had once admitted when Brock pressed her on the issue, “You young ones don’t always last very long.”