Twilight of the Elves

by Zack Loran Clark

  “Look at that,” he told Liza. “I guess you really do rely on me.”

  “Please get off me,” she said. “Right now.”

  “All right, all right,” Brock said roughly as he clambered to his feet.

  “First things first,” Liza said. “This poor woman needs to be put out of her misery.”

  She looked at him for his agreement, and after a moment he nodded solemnly and turned away. He listened as Liza retrieved her sword, its metal singing upon the stone. And he flinched when the sword struck stone once more.

  “You can look now,” Liza said. “It’s over.”

  “Only a fool would believe it so,” rasped the revenant.

  Brock whirled at the sound of the voice, and saw Liza aghast in horror.

  The creature had been cleanly decapitated. But she hadn’t been silenced. “My service is not yet ended,” she said. “Not while the children of Freestone remain free.”

  “That is . . . that is super-disturbing,” Brock said.

  “Children?” Liza asked. “You were after us, specifically?”

  “I was to deliver you to him, but if not me, then the others will. There is no escape for you.”

  “Do your worst,” Liza said, “because for the record, we don’t want to es— Wait. What if we surrender?”

  “Surrender?” both Brock and the revenant said at once.

  “You’re right,” Liza said, casting a broad and completely unnecessary wink at Brock. “We’re up against unbeatable odds. We see the futility, and wish to submit ourselves to the great Lich himself.”

  “Well,” rasped the head. “In that case, I shall take you to him as my prisoners. And you will know pain and suffering and worse things, the agonies without name or number which await us on the other side of Mort’s gray door.” The revenant’s head chuckled darkly, then came up suddenly short. “I will, of course, require you to carry me there.”

  “It’ll snow soon,” Frond said. “We don’t have time to wait.”

  She frowned at the sky as the queen and Selby made a series of complicated wizardly gestures in the alcove where Liza had disappeared. For all their finger wriggling, neither Liza nor Brock had materialized from the depths of the spell.

  “They’re beyond my reach, anyway,” Queen Me’Shala announced. She frowned, lowering her hands and wiping a pretty shimmer of perspiration from her pretty face, prettily. “Elderon’s Shade is woven throughout the city. It’s unlikely, but if they managed to slip between folds in the magic, they could have ended up anywhere in the valley. Even in the heart of Llethanyl.”

  Frond considered this while tightening a strap on her glove. “Could we use it the same way? To get close to the Lich? The element of surprise could keep Zed safe.”

  Selby was still working on the spell, but he shook his head before she’d even finished the question. “Not from here. The Shade is meant to have specific entrance and exit points. Without using them, you could end up locked in the crypts.”

  Zed shuddered at the thought. He was standing with Fel and Callum, keeping a watchful eye on the queen. Brock’s vanishing had thrown the team momentarily into panic, but Zed could still feel an accusation bubbling up inside him. For all he knew, Me’Shala had engineered the spell to trap his friends. If she really was betraying the humans, perhaps she wanted as many of them out of the way as possible.

  “The good news is,” Selby continued, “if your apprentices are merely lost in the Shade, they should be safe for the moment. It won’t be pleasant, but there’s nothing inside the demiplane that can harm them.”

  “A demiplane!” Jayna gasped. “Was that what we passed through?”

  “Oh, gee,” Micah gushed with mock enthusiasm. “I hope this means we get another magic lesson!”

  “Demiplanes are pocket dimensions separate from our . . .” Hexam began. He drifted off as Micah’s sarcasm finally sank in. Hexam cleared his throat. “Yes, well. At any rate, the creation of one is in violation of several treaties between our cities.”

  The minister waved away Hexam’s pointed look, pausing in his work. “The Shade was created long before such agreements. What’s your charming human expression? It’s been ‘grandparented in.’ ”

  “Grandfathered,” Hexam muttered.

  “Well, that’s rather discriminatory, isn’t it?” Selby mused cheerfully.

  “Enough.” Frond pinched the bridge of her nose. “The plan remains the same. Hexam, Zed, and I will head into the city with Callum and the rangers. The remaining group can work on freeing Brock and Liza.”

  “Wait,” said Zed. “There’s something else. Micah—”

  “There’s been a change of plans,” Me’Shala interrupted. “My ministers and I will now be leading the siege. Frond, you and your people may wait here in safety. All except for Zed, of course.”

  The queen spoke casually, as if reminding Frond of a last-minute dinner engagement, but Threya and Selby shifted slightly at the pronouncement, exchanging significant looks. Their postures were suddenly alert. All around Zed, rangers glanced at one another, then toward their queen. The elves’ resolved expressions made clear that something was happening. Something they’d been waiting for.

  Frond’s frown deepened. “No.”

  “I’m afraid I must insist. This is my city. The rescue of Llethanyl will be won by elves.”

  “Zed is my apprentice, Your Majesty,” Frond said. “His safety is my priority. You placed me in charge, at least let me—”

  “Alabasel, you are an exceptional human,” the queen said, “and a fine guildmistress. But I am the sovereign leader of a proud and ancient people. They are my priority—not your roughneck adventurers. This is not a request. From this moment forward, I am taking control of the mission. The situation is complicated beyond your understanding.”

  The queen was changing the plan. Thorn, Me’Shala’s surviving sword sister, moved her hand slyly toward her blade.

  Frond looked around her, absorbing the hostile atmosphere. The adventurers were outmanned two to one, and half were just apprentices. Her shoulders sank. “Me’Shala, don’t do this. Not to me.”

  “Believe me,” the queen replied. “It brings me no joy. But we all still want the same thing, Alabasel. We’re still allies in this.”

  “That’s a lie!” The words poured from Zed like ambrosia spilling over the lip of a flagon. He pointed an accusing finger at Me’Shala. “You’ve been working against us from the beginning!”

  The queen narrowed her eyes. In her gaze Zed felt something powerful taking aim. A tingling sensation swept over him, and all the hairs on Zed’s arm stood on end. “Choose your next words carefully, half elf,” she drawled. “What exactly do you accuse me of?”

  “You . . . well . . .” Zed faltered. His finger drooped. Should he reveal what Callum had told him? What would happen to the High Ranger if he did?

  “Someone wrote a false note from Frond at the wayshelter,” Zed began carefully, “telling us to turn around. Just when we discovered Frond’s real note, though, Fel’s dead father appeared as a wraith and nearly killed her!”

  Behind the queen, Selby frowned. “The night elf? What does that prove?”

  “Fel was the only one of us who knew the way here,” Zed said. “If the Lich could get rid of her, we’d have no way to join you here at Llethanyl.”

  “Ridiculous,” Threya sniped. “The deathling wasn’t even part of the expedition! How would the Lich know to target her?”

  “Exactly.” Zed snapped his fingers. He felt the evidence bolstering him. Something was very wrong with this mission, and he would root it out. Zed threw his shoulders back and met the queen’s glare with one of his own. “The only way he’d know was because Lotte revealed as much.”

  On the other side of the clearing, Lotte blanched. “Me?”

  “Not on purpose, of course.” Zed dipped his head apologetically. “Naturally, she told the rest of you who she’d brought with her while we were separated. I don’t know how, but one
of you warned the Lich. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

  Me’Shala’s eyes darted from Zed to Fel and back again. She was quiet for a long beat. When she finally spoke, her voice was a terrible whisper. “Felasege, is all of this true? You were targeted?”

  “Your Majesty,” Threya said, “you cannot trust the word of a deathling—”

  “Oh, give it a rest, Threya!” Selby spat. “Your small-mindedness will kill us all.”

  “The night elves have always hated Llethanyl!” Threya continued, speaking over him. “They are death-worshipping zealots who—”

  “Enough!” The queen’s voice boomed, silencing the ministers. “Answer me now, night elf.” Her russet eyes blazed as she looked to Fel.

  The last time Fel had faced the queen’s scrutiny, she had shrunk from it. This time, however, the girl squared her shoulders, standing straightbacked. Her own cobalt gaze matched Me’Shala’s in its fierceness. “Yes, it’s true. The Lich sent my father as a wraith.” Then her eyes turned, narrowing upon Threya. “He died for this city, by the way,” Fel added. “Fighting for a better Llethanyl. Insult me again, Minister, just one more time, and I’ll show you what a zealot I can be.”

  Threya glowered, but she said nothing else for the moment.

  “But why,” the queen said, waving past the tension, “do you suspect me of betraying my own city?”

  “Because I gave him the idea.” Callum’s voice resonated from behind Zed. Zed felt the High Ranger’s hand fall upon his shoulder.

  “You?” The queen’s eyes widened with surprise.

  “Traitor!” Threya hissed. She pulled an enormous sword free of its scabbard.

  “I told Zed that you were misleading the adventurers. That we all were. And this was true. The Sea of Stars are our only friends among the humans! They’ve risked everything to help us, and yet we deceive and betray them!”

  “Elves don’t need human friends,” Threya said. “They are not our peers!”

  “What exactly were you lying about?” Frond asked Callum. “This? Me’Shala’s plan?”

  The High Ranger shook his head. “So many things. There are . . . weapons. Tools that we’ve kept secret from Freestone. One of them is Elderon’s Shade. As you saw, it can be used to bypass impassable barriers. But the Shade isn’t a fixed structure, like a building. It can be moved. Redirected. All one would need is the focus that controls it. And that is still hidden in the castle, accessible only to the queen.”

  Frond’s eyes blazed as the implication sank in. She whirled on the queen. “You willfully hid a tool that could be used to invade my city?” Zed had never seen the guildmistress so furious. Real anger boiled behind her eyes. He took an involuntary step backward.

  “Invade?” The queen laughed mirthlessly. “Your king detained my people in an open-air prison! Don’t lecture me about trust, Alabasel! The Shade is a back door. I thought if I could retrieve it here, then even if we failed today, my people might have a fighting chance when your knights came with swords drawn.” She frowned. “In any case, it’s safely locked away. The Lich can’t access the focus on his own.”

  The queen hesitated, her eyes falling to her feet. “But there’s a more pressing problem,” she said with a resigned sigh. “A weapon that the Lich does have access to. When he took the city, Galvino created an . . . abomination. He resurrected an ancient skeleton, a trophy that had been sealed within our crypts. That was the winged shape we saw on the horizon. The ‘mountain’ that flew away. I knew you would abandon the raid if we told you the truth about it. So I lied.”

  “What abomination?” Frond pronounced each word with cold deliberateness.

  “I think . . .” Hexam’s voice faltered. His eyes were on the sky. “I think perhaps I might know.”

  Shadows began flitting over the ground: small dots of darkness, like scurrying mice. Zed looked upward, toward the branches of the enormous tree that covered the city. Fluttering black shapes were emerging from the lanterns, flocking together into a beating mass.

  “Are those . . . bats?” Jayna asked.

  “No,” rasped the queen. “They are not.”

  The flock grew as Zed watched, forming into a writhing cloud. And from this murk a figure began to emerge, swimming in the gray sky. A wing. A claw. A lashing tail. The cloud solidified, the individual shapes knitting together in a greater whole. In moments, a long snout had appeared, and two eyes that shone with purple light.

  The mountain had arrived.

  Zed had never seen a dragon. No one alive in Freestone had, even among the Adventurers Guild. But despite the creature’s rarity, it was one of the few Dangers that everyone in the city knew well. Giant winged lizards that breathed fire and possessed a wicked intelligence, dragons appeared in countless knightly stories, destroying cities and hoarding mounds of glittering treasure.

  The creature that now climbed among the great tree’s branches was a dragon, Zed could tell that clearly. And yet it was not. Its scales were formed of some ragged, oily darkness, and its wings fluttered in the rising wind, occasionally smoking away. Its wasted face housed two cavernous hollows, in which purple coals burned from deep within.

  “Dracolich . . .” Hexam whispered, his eyes bulging.

  Perhaps the creature heard him. Perhaps it had been watching them all along. Whatever the case, the dracolich’s purple gaze fell instantly upon the group. It opened its desiccated maw and roared. Zed felt as much as heard it. It was the howl of a once-proud creature brought low.

  In the silence that followed, Zed heard a new sound rising all throughout the city. Footsteps—hundreds of them—either summoned by the roar or hidden within it. All across Llethanyl doorways crashed open and a monstrous populace spilled into the streets. The dead made no other sounds as they marched. They didn’t moan, or shout, or breathe. They just lurched forward, filling the wide avenues.

  Zed realized that there would be no surprise attack on the Lich.

  The rangers whipped around, pulling their bows taut. Frond drew her sword, and Thorn echoed her just moments later.

  “Hexam,” Frond said quietly. “We need a path to the palace.”

  “Then keep them off me for a moment, please.”

  “The palace?” Lotte exclaimed, rising from her perch and cradling her wounded arm. “It’s too late for that! The mission is a failure. We should retreat through the Shade!”

  “Hate to say it,” Micah piped up, “but I’m with her.”

  “Yes, back through,” Selby readily agreed. “Right this way, everyo—” He took a step into the alcove and slammed into solid stone. Where before there had been a layer of magical muck, now the wall was quite wall-like. “Ah! It appears this entrance is . . . damaged.”

  “Hex-am,” Frond called. All around them, the dead were pressing in. Even in the cold, Zed could detect the scent of rot.

  “I am working on it,” the wizard crooned back in an irritable singsong. Hexam’s eyes were closed, his fingers weaving into strange patterns. One moment they contorted themselves to look like a beast, and the next a wall of interlocking fingers. Veins of light trailed his movements, forming a circular sigil more complicated than anything Zed had ever seen in the archivist’s lessons.

  “Mindless, nameless,” Hexam chanted, his voice echoing strangely. “A sacred space behind the teeth. The peace which fuels the hunger. The abominable line.” The archivist’s eyes snapped open. His irises shone with a fierce blue light, and Zed was engulfed by the sharp scent of magic.

  “Back!” Hexam shouted, stepping forward to meet the approaching horde. The sigil traveled with him, the circle now rotating along an invisible axis. Callum grabbed Zed’s and Fel’s wrists, falling in behind the wizard, as did the others. Hexam raised his hands, spreading his fingers wide.

  The sigil unfolded.

  What emerged was a thing of teeth and fire, a great beastly maw that exploded from the seal just as the first wave of enemies reached it. Fiery fangs clamped down upon the undead attack
ers, obliterating them. Then the grinning mouth stretched forward, transforming from a wolfish muzzle into a tunnel carved from flame. The walls swelled outward, incinerating the dead that crowded against it. In only a few moments a passage had formed, snaking into the city and burning any of the Dangers unlucky enough to touch the outer layer.

  “Go . . . now!” Hexam cried. And before Zed had time to realize what was happening, he was pulled into the flames.

  The inside of the tunnel was surprisingly comfortable for something fashioned entirely of fire. Callum and Frond ran ahead, with Zed and Fel huffing just behind them. Mousebane was perched on Fel’s shoulder, warily eyeing the burning border of the tunnel. Zed was too winded to look behind him, but he heard plenty of footsteps following in his wake.

  Through the flames, Llethanyl appeared to be set ablaze. Zed couldn’t see where they were headed, and just hoped that Hexam’s magic knew the path somehow.

  There was a rumbling from outside the passage, obscured by the roar of the spell. A shadow fell over them, its darkness distinct even through the flames. Suddenly Zed was knocked from his feet by an enormous black talon as it crashed easily through the fiery barrier. He landed hard on his back, and the world shattered into blinking shards of light.

  It had begun to snow. Zed felt the snowflakes before he could see them. They prickled his face with small bites. In the distance, he heard screams of pain and alarm, but he couldn’t breathe well enough to call out.

  The shadow rose upward, and a squall of wind sent him spilling even farther away. Zed forced himself to roll onto his side, then clawed his way to his hands and knees. Looking up—his vision finally clearing—he saw the fiery tunnel darken where the dracolich’s claw had punctured it, hardening into a shell of white-gray ash. The ash spread outward in both directions, extinguishing the flames as it went and collapsing the tunnel upon itself.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Undead elves swarmed from the city’s avenues, falling upon the group just as they were recovering. Frond screamed, surging forward and burying her sword into the rib cage of a skeleton. Callum stood with his bow raised, firing arrows into the horde.