Twilight of the Elves

by Zack Loran Clark

  Things were busy over the next few days, as the elves prepared for their long journey home. Fel was at the guildhall less and less, having become something of a favorite companion of the queen’s.

  The news that a hidden sect of druids had been discovered sent shock waves through the elves and humans alike. King Freestone called several special councils on the matter, summoning Frond away for hours at a time. Zed and the others weren’t privy to these talks, but they got the impression that many questions were asked and only some of them answered. The dro’shea of Duskhaven remained aloof, even by elven standards, and they were especially mistrustful of this stone city that had cut itself off from the land.

  Still, new ties had been formed. From Freestone’s perspective, the small, broken constellation of Terryn’s last survivors had grown a bit brighter, and that was a cherished victory.

  Zed kept to himself in these days. He ran drills with the others, and was a dutiful student in his lessons with Hexam, but he remained remote. He sat impassively when Jayna finally exploded on Hexam during one of the wizard’s more haphazard lectures, berating him for his stinginess in teaching her useful spells for the field.

  With Hexam’s office in shambles, they’d taken their lessons that day outside in the training yard. A small audience of guild members pretended not to listen while Jayna described how she’d failed her fellow apprentices during the battle against Selby. She used every bad word she knew, and some she didn’t but bravely attempted anyway.

  “I will never, ever find myself unable to protect my friends again—do you hear me? Even if it means I have to go marching into Silverglow Tower itself and demand that they provide me with a real education. You—you don’t appreciate what you have!” Jayna swallowed, suddenly self-conscious. The nearby adventurers had burst into applause. “In me, I mean.”

  She left that particular lesson with three new spells to memorize.

  And then came the day for farewells.

  The adventurers had all gathered just outside the city gates, helping the rangers to oversee the procession of elves as they departed Freestone. Zed stood with the other apprentices, watching Syd wave along a young family of sun elves. The mother cried with joy as she lifted her golden child into her arms and began the long journey homeward.

  “I can’t believe Fel didn’t come to say good-bye,” Liza said, wiping away a tear of her own.

  “We’ll get her on the way out,” said Jett. But he, too, seemed glum as his eyes searched through the crowd.

  Zed caught sight of Callum leading a troop of clamoring elven children into the center of the procession, where they’d be safest from any monster attacks. In all the time he’d been back, Zed hadn’t mentioned Callum once to his mother, much less their family connection.

  The High Ranger seemed to sense he was being watched. His gaze rose, and for a moment the two locked eyes, just staring at one another. Then Callum nodded to Zed, his face a mask.

  Zed nodded back. An instant later, Callum was gone, ushered away by his duties.

  As the morning dwindled, so did the lines of elves exiting the city. Frond joined the apprentices after a time, nodding in a satisfied way at the progress.

  Eventually, Me’Shala arrived at the gate, flanked by two new sword sisters in gleaming armor.

  “Alabasel, I . . .” The queen seemed to shrink as she reached the guildmistress. Her gaze fell to the ground, then fluttered back up again. “Thank you,” she said. “For helping us. For saving us.”

  Frond’s face was hard. The edges of her mouth bent into a slight frown. “Freestone and Llethanyl will always be allies,” she said blandly. “Remember that as you hoard your illegal magical artifact with the power to infiltrate my city.”

  The queen pursed her lips. “We’re not so different, Alabasel,” she murmured. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do to protect Freestone? To keep one of those ‘last lights’ burning?”

  The guildmistress remained silent.

  Me’Shala sighed, then stood a bit straighter. “Well, in honor of that alliance between our cities, and in thanks for everything you and your people have done for us, at least allow me to leave you with a small gift.” The queen held out her hand, where one of the sword sisters placed a crystal flask filled with milky blue liquid. “This is a very rare tincture, a potion whose formula was lost many years ago. Only a few bottles remain among my people. I’d like you to have one.” As Me’Shala pressed the flask into Frond’s hands she leaned in and whispered something into the guildmistress’s ear. Then she kissed her scarred cheek.

  Now Frond’s stony expression finally melted away. Her eyes widened in shock.

  The queen stepped back, smiling slyly. She gazed down at the apprentices. “My thanks to you as well. You children saved my life, and my city. Frond is very lucky to have such a fine team supporting her. You will always be welcome in Llethanyl.”

  Then Me’Shala glanced to Zed, her eyes lingering, her face unreadable. “Good-bye, Zed. The path of a half elf is a lonely one, and for that you have my pity. But there are good and loyal friends beside you. Treasure them.”

  Zed nodded. He watched as the queen joined the procession, flanked by her guards, then disappeared into the crowd.

  Frond hurried away, leaving the apprentices to attend the last of the rangers as they trailed out of the city. Elves clasped hands with and embraced adventurers, then followed the winding parade as it snaked away into the trees.

  Finally, once all of Llethanyl had departed, the Stone Sons closed the city gate.

  Jayna wiped her eyes as the apprentices made their way back toward the guildhall’s private door. Liza held her friend’s shoulder, staring sadly at the ground. Brock and Jett plodded behind, Jett still watching the trees where the elves had disappeared.

  “She really didn’t say good-bye . . .” he said.

  When they arrived at the hatch, Micah reached out to take the handle. But it lurched from his grip, as someone pulled the door open from the other side.

  There, Fel gazed out at the apprentices, her eyes bright with cheerful confusion. “Oh, no, you all look so sad! Don’t worry—I overheard Frond saying we won’t have to wait the full six years until the next visit.”

  “Fel!” Liza cried, leaping forward and tackling the young elf in a hug. “What are you still doing here? Your people just left!”

  Fel laughed, returning the embrace. “Lotte didn’t tell you? The queen offered to make me a minister, but I decided to wait. I think she believed that having me around would impress the druids. Or soothe her own conscience.” Fel rolled her eyes. “Until Duskhaven revealed themselves, Queen Me’Shala was all too happy to leave my people behind. I’m thrilled that she’s committed to change, but she has some hard truths to face about herself, too. I won’t be her tool, or her flatterer.”

  “Wouldn’t you be the best choice for a minister, then?” asked Jayna.

  “I’m just a kid,” Fel said, shaking her head. “And I think that’s why she wanted me. The druids will show her what’s what. I want to be a real minister someday, and I’ll make a better one if I have a broader view of other cultures. Maybe you noticed, but elves can be a little exclusive.”

  “Now that you mention it . . .” Brock said with a grin.

  “Anyway, I’m now the official elven liaison to the Adventurers Guild.” She beamed at her friends. “Mousebane and I are staying in Freestone!”

  Zed watched.

  He watched as the adventurers meandered aimlessly around their hall, adrift in the suddenly ample space.

  He watched as Frond called Hexam and Lotte urgently into her office, her hand trembling as it gripped the flask Me’Shala had given her. Once they were all inside, the guildmistress slammed the door closed behind them.

  He watched as Brock turned to him, his eyebrows raised inquisitively. “She really needs to work on the whole subtlety thing,” Brock said.

  Zed watched. His mouth opened, and words came drifting out: “I guess so.”

>   But Zed hadn’t spoken them. Zed hadn’t spoken once since they’d left Llethanyl. Nor had he moved a muscle. He could only watch as someone else manipulated his hands and spoke with his voice. And this presence was now turning him away from his best friend, while Zed screamed silently in his own mind.

  “Brock! Brock! Help me! BROCK!”

  “Hey, uh, Zed . . . ?” Brock said.

  Zed’s body stopped. It pivoted, turning back toward the boy.

  “In Duskhaven I mentioned there was something I needed to tell you.” Brock’s voice was soft. Nervous. “And you said there was something you wanted to confess to me, too. Do you . . . Is everything all right?”

  “Brock, this isn’t me! Can’t you tell this isn’t me?”

  Zed’s face smirked. “Yeah, sorry about that. Guess all the excitement just got to me. Honestly, I can’t even remember what I meant to tell you. But if there’s something you need to get off your chest, feel free.”

  “I . . . what?” Brock faltered. He looked stricken. “It sounded like it might be important, though. Like you were in trouble.”

  “Obviously it wasn’t that important, or I’d remember.”

  A long moment passed, while Brock frowned skeptically at him. “You know what? Forget it. It’s fine.”

  Zed’s body turned away without a moment’s hesitation. “Forgotten.”

  Zed howled as his legs carried him away from his bewildered friend and through the guildhall. They marched him up the stairs to the barracks and then into his room. Most of the guild was still downstairs, so the cramped quarters were silent and empty. Zed’s hand gently closed the door behind him.

  “Nice try, Zed,” said the presence who spoke with his voice. It was the first time the presence had ever acknowledged him. Zed was shocked into silence by the strangeness of being addressed by himself. “Sorry, but I can’t have you spilling our secrets, can I? Our pact is between us.”

  Zed’s body crossed the room and sat down upon his mattress. His hands worked slowly and patiently as they untied his boots. “I’ve been watching you, you know. Keeping an eye on you from the necklace. Keeping you safe, like any good mentor would. I told you that once you’d made your way in the world, we could speak again of payments. But I never dreamed it would happen this fast. You were more powerful than Foster ever was. The fire burned so brightly in your hands.”

  Makiva.

  Zed’s mouth curled into a smile. “With my help, you’ll accomplish so many great things, my talented pupil. So many great and terrible and gruesome things. When we’re through, this dreary world will fall away like a dream, and you’ll witness horrors unlike anything you can imagine. This time we’ll do it right, Zed, without any interruptions.” Makiva sighed, pulling Zed’s boots gently from his feet. “But there are still so many preparations to make. We must be patient, you and I.”

  As Zed watched helplessly, a pair of burning eyes opened in the far corner of the room. Green flames licked outward from the orbs, forming into the fiery shape of a fox. It was the animal from Zed’s dreams, the watcher who’d spoken to him in urgent whispers.

  The creature’s shape billowed, exploding into smoke as the flames finally guttered away. The clouds expanded, re-forming into a gaunt man with haunted eyes and pointed ears.

  The man seemed almost to be made of the strange smoke. His shape curled and twisted in surprising directions.

  “I tried to warn you.” Zed heard a wry voice echoing through his thoughts, as if it inhabited the same strange nonspace from which he watched Makiva controlling his body. “She hides inside the chain. Uses the fire to burn a way into you. You used too much of it, and now she’ll take what’s owed her.”

  “Foster,” Zed gasped. “Foster Pendleton.” His own bodiless voice was laced with disgust.

  The smoky figure nodded slightly.

  “Welcome to the club, kid.”

  After so many days on the Broken Roads, the warrens beneath the streets of Freestone felt cramped. Brock was eager to do his business and get back to the guildhall. Get back home, he tried out, and found that the thought fit well enough.

  He donned his slender mask, made his way to the Lady Gray’s office, and removed the panel in the wall. He paused only when he’d dipped his quill in ink and stood before the ancient map. Was he really prepared to do this?

  “There’s a hidden village,” he said. “Those masked elves—I’m sure you heard about them?”

  The Lady inclined her head.

  “You should send for Master Curse,” Brock said, and then he got to work on the map, starting with Celadon Falls and working his way back along the path. By the time he’d finished, Master Curse had joined them. The magus leaned against a bookshelf and glared.

  “There’s a whole city hidden in the middle of the forest. Elven druids have been living there, without walls, since the Day of Dangers.”

  “How is that possible?” asked Curse.

  “I can’t quite put my finger on it.” Brock pulled a small package from his new satchel. It was a tightly wadded handkerchief the size of a pomegranate. “Oh, wait, that doesn’t quite work unless you realize—there’s a finger wrapped up in here.”

  Curse recoiled. Brock thought it was funny, but he himself flinched when he realized the Lady was standing at his shoulder. “Explain,” she said.

  “It’s the Lich’s finger. It’s all that’s left of him, and it’s riddled with a fungus—the same species that the druids use to protect their city.”

  “Magic?” she asked. “Like our wards?”

  “Something like that, but their version is a huge mushroom in the center of the city. It keeps away the Dangers and even the snow. Their stories claim it originated in Fey.”

  “Interesting,” Curse said. “True or not, it’s certainly interesting.”

  “I had a bag full of spores for you,” Brock said. “I . . . lost it. And this is the best I could do.”

  The Lady fixed her eyes on Curse. “You can work with this?”

  Curse wrinkled his nose. “If I must.” He held out a hand for the package.

  “Careful with it,” Brock said, feeling a pang of guilt. “The druids . . . this thing is sacred to them.”

  “It’s a rotting finger,” Curse said, snatching it from Brock’s hand. “And potentially a great weapon. No more than that.”

  “Well,” Brock said. “It’s more like a shield than a weapon.”

  “Of course,” the Lady Gray purred. “I’m sure that’s what he meant.”

  When Curse had gone, Brock sighed wearily. “Well, I’d love to say it’s been fun, but even I’m not that good a liar. Are we done here?”

  The Lady took up one of her ledgers and flipped through it. “You may see yourself out.”

  “I mean are we done?” Brock said hotly. “I just betrayed an entire civilization for you. I brought back a kind of magic we didn’t even know existed. And I don’t want to brag or anything, but in stopping a power-mad Lich before he could tear Freestone down to its foundations, I also saved your life. Although that last part was more of an unhappy side effect.”

  “You’re right,” she said, bobbing her head. “You’ve certainly proven your value, Brock Dunderfel! I do believe I’ll keep you after all.” She put the book down to give him an unobstructed view of her smile. “You didn’t think I’d just cut you loose, really? Just like that?”

  Brock’s fury rose within him, but he knew better than to unleash it, knew from a lifetime’s practice how to temper and tame it and—

  “Forget it,” he said. “I’m done. Forget you, and forget Zed, who clearly doesn’t want my help. And forget our idiot king and this lousy city full of awful people. I’m done.” He ripped the mask from his face and let it flutter to the floor, then he ground it beneath his boot. “I quit.”

  He didn’t even take a moment to savor the look of shock on the Lady’s face as he turned his back on her and stormed out of her office.

  It had taken longer than he’d expected, b
ut he’d finally managed to wipe that intolerable smirk off her face.

  It was late when Brock returned to the Sea of Stars guildhall. He crept silently through the door, hoping he might get to bed for once without having to lie to any of his friends.

  Sure enough, the common area was empty of friends. Alabasel Frond sat alone in the dark, leaning her chin into her fists, gazing off into the distance.

  For a breathless moment, Brock feared he had been caught. But he forced himself to stay calm. Whatever Frond knew, he could talk his way out of it.

  But when he took a step forward, Frond looked sharply at him and said, “I didn’t see you there.” Then she returned to her quiet contemplation—gazing not at a distant nothing, Brock realized, but at the statue at the back of the room. The statue that had once been a living boy.

  Brock swallowed a dozen jokes. The sight of Frond deep in thought was comical to him and practically begged for comment. But he’d heard the story about how she had dragged that stone-cursed boy back to the guildhall, all alone for days, surrounded by Dangers, her fingers a bloody mess and her back in such pain she’d finally submitted herself to the ministrations of the Golden Way healers she so disliked.

  “Do you know the elves have no word for ‘regret’?” she asked.

  “I might have heard that,” Brock said. “It doesn’t mean they don’t feel regret, though.”

  “I’m not sure,” Frond said, keeping her eyes forward. “After everything Me’Shala did, everything her people had been through—everything she had us risk for her. She tried to explain her actions, but I know she wouldn’t do anything differently if she could change it. Isn’t that what regret means?” She narrowed her eyes. “A determination to do better. To be better.”

  Brock smirked. Frond managed to make emotions sound like exercise.

  “The elves didn’t believe in death, not really, and it nearly cost them everything,” she said, standing. “Maybe I’m the same. The more I try to save everyone, the more death I see.” She strode toward the statue. “You may as well stick around to watch, I suppose.”