The Elven

by Bernhard Hennen

  “Did your djinn actually say when he visited this library?” Farodin asked.

  “No.”

  “It may have been centuries ago. Maybe there’s no longer any gate that leads there from here.”

  Nuramon did not reply. What could he have said? He had put all the hope he had left into the library. And now that they were here, they would search until they found a gate.

  Mandred seemed to have picked up nothing of his companions’ low spirits. He seemed captivated by all the strange impressions and leered openly at every halfway attractive woman. Sometimes, Farodin almost envied his companion. His life was short, and he took that in stride surprisingly easily. Nothing seemed to darken his mood for very long. He was always able to find something to be interested in, even if no more than chasing the fleeting joys of a night of boozing or love. Perhaps he even lived a better life?

  They must have gone a mile when the street they had been following intersected with an incomparably grander boulevard flanked by rows of high columns. Uncertain where they ought to go, they turned onto this magnificent thoroughfare. The hustle and bustle here was even more extreme than before. On the right and left, beyond the columns, were arcades of shops. These, too, opened wide doors directly onto the street and touted expensive wares. Cloth from every land in the world and prettily decorated vases and containers. Curious passersby watched goldsmiths fashioning delicate jewelry from the finest of wires.

  Every third column had a ledge five paces above street level, and on each ledge stood a larger-than-life-sized statue. In garishly painted robes, they gazed nobly down onto the people walking below. Some were draped with gilded chains and trinkets. Farodin wondered whether they were meant to depict gods or, perhaps more likely, particularly successful merchants.

  From a short distance ahead of them came a heartrending whimpering. A moment later, they came to a square where market stalls of colorful cloth had been set up. Each stall was home to dozens of amphorae.

  “A wine market,” Mandred crowed. “Those are all amphorae of wine.” A skinny trader with a red nose waved to him and smiled, holding up a clay cup. “He wants me to taste it.”

  Nuramon pointed up to a pole that jutted high above the wine stalls. A young woman was impaled on top of it. Her clothes had been torn from her body, and she was covered in bloody streaks. She whimpered softly. As Farodin gazed up at her, she shivered, and he saw how the weight of her own body drove the point of the pole deeper into her flesh.

  “Do you really want to drink here?” Nuramon asked.

  Mandred turned away in disgust. “Why are they doing that? What did that girl do? A city as lovely as this . . . and then that. Is she a child-murderer?”

  “Ah. And that would naturally justify torturing her to death so barbarically. How could I have missed that?” Farodin replied, sharper than was called for. What could Mandred do about the cruelty of the rulers of Iskendria?

  In silence, they pushed on through the crowds along the boulevard until the milling throng around them suddenly, as one, grew uneasy. From not far away came the beating of a drum and the bright clang of cymbals. The people around them pushed back all the way to the columns. The cries of the merchants and the drone of conversation among the crowd fell silent. The street was quickly empty but for the three companions, who were left standing out there.

  “Hey, Northman!” A burly blond man stepped from the line of humans. “Get out of the way!” He was speaking the language of Fargon. “The queen of the day is coming!”

  A procession turned from a broad side street into the columned boulevard. Young girls in radiant white dresses hurried ahead, strewing rose petals over the cobbles.

  The three companions darted out of their way. The blond man pushed over to them. His face was covered in stubble, and his sky-blue eyes sparkled. “Foreigners, am I right? I bet you just got here. You need a guide. At least for the first few days, till you find your feet and get to know the laws of Iskendria.”

  The flower-strewing maidens were followed by a troop of soldiers with breastplates of bronze and helmets on which black plumes of feathers waggled. They carried large round shields painted with the grim face of a bearded man. Strangely, they carried their spears the wrong way around, with the tips pointing at the street. Black capes embroidered in gold along the edges hung from their shoulders. Farodin had never seen soldiers so splendidly outfitted in the human world. Silent and solemn, they strode across the rose petals.

  “The temple guard,” explained their self-appointed guide. “Pretty to look at, but a nasty bunch. Don’t get on the wrong side of ’em. Anyone picking a fight with the temple will find themselves in the horse market before they know it.”

  “What’s so bad about your horse market?” asked Mandred.

  “They lock you in an iron cage, haul you up a mast, and let you starve to death. If you’re lucky. If you’ve offended Balbar, the god of this city, then they’ll smash your arms and legs with iron bars and chain you to the heretic’s stone in the marketplace. You’ll lie there until your wounds get infected and you rot while you’re alive. At night, the stray dogs will come and feed on you.”

  Revolted, Farodin turned back to the procession while Mandred listened eagerly to the stranger’s stories. The next group to pass consisted of dark-skinned men in red frocks. Large drums were buckled around their hips. They beat a slow marching step and set the tempo for the rest of the parade.

  An enormous open litter came next, carried by at least forty slaves. On it was a golden throne flanked by two priests with shaven heads. On the throne itself slumped a young girl. Her face was painted with lurid makeup. She looked down at the crowd apathetically.

  “Isn’t she pretty?” asked the blond with a cynical edge. “In an hour, she’ll be facing Balbar in person.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “They’ve fed her wine and opium. Just enough so she doesn’t fall asleep during the procession and is still awake when she goes to meet Balbar. You should see that. You’ll understand Iskendria better if you do.”

  Behind the litter followed a group of black-robed women. They were wearing masks depicting hideous visages, faces frozen in screams of misery, pain, and sadness.

  “She’s really going to meet a god face-to-face? And we could watch?” Mandred asked with interest.

  “Wager your ass on it, Northlander. By the way, the name’s Zimon of Malvena. No pressure, but believe me, you’d be well advised to have a guide here.”

  Nuramon pressed a silver coin into his hand. “Tell us everything we need to know about the city.”

  The procession had passed by, and all around them, the general hubbub was starting up again. “Let’s go to the temple square.” Zimon waved them out onto the street, and they followed in the wake of the procession. “So what brings you to Iskendria, gentlemen? Looking for someone who can use the service of your swords? Paymasters like that are easily found in the caravanserais. I’d be happy to take you there.”

  “No,” Mandred replied companionably. “We want to go to the library.”

  Farodin flinched inwardly. In moments like this, he could kill Mandred. What did it matter to a shady hustler like this what they were doing here?

  “The library?” Zimon eyed Mandred in amazement. “You stump me, Northman. That’s close to the harbor. They say all the world’s knowledge is stored there. It is more than three hundred years old and holds thousands of scrolls. There is no question on this earth that you won’t find an answer to in there.”

  Farodin and Nuramon looked at each other. A human library where you could find the answer to any question. That was as likely as a horse that laid eggs. Still, it was remarkable that such a library existed in Iskendria, of all places. Was it perhaps a pale mirror of what lay hidden beyond the Albenstar in the Shattered World?

  They came to a broad square, in the center of which stood a statue ten paces high. Its sculptor had carve
d the figure of a man with a square-trimmed beard, sitting on a throne. The arms of the figure were bent at a strange angle and rested on his lap. The hands were open as if expecting gifts to be laid in them, and there was, in fact, a wooden ramp that led up to the hands. The statue’s mouth was open wide as if it were trying to scream. Pale smoke billowed out of it.

  Behind this enormous idol rose a temple, its soaring columns painted crimson and crowned with gold-studded capitals. The temple gable bore a gaudily painted high relief of Balbar wading through the ocean, his huge fists battering galleys into the waves.

  On the steps of the temple, the priests had assembled. They were intoning a hymn with gloomy solemnity. Farodin did not understand a word of it, but their singing sent a shudder down his spine.

  The litter had been set down at the foot of the statue. The drummers increased the tempo of their rhythm.

  Thousands of people stood in the square and joined in the monotonous song of the priests. Farodin, from the corner of his eye, noted that Nuramon had grown very pale. Even Mandred was silent; all his sociability had vanished.

  The two shaven-headed priests who had earlier been standing on the litter now led the young girl up the wooden ramp. She moved like a sleepwalker.

  All three stepped onto the open palms of the idol. The priests forced the girl to her knees. They laid chains across her shoulders and hooked them into eyelets of iron set into the hands of the god. The floral wreath that had decorated her hair fell off. She crouched impassively, trapped by her intoxication and mute submissiveness. A female priest with long, loose hair came up to her, holding a golden pitcher. She anointed the girl’s forehead, then emptied the contents of the pitcher over the girl’s robe.

  With the other two priests, she stepped back from the hands of the idol and onto the wooden ramp. As she did so, the tempo of the drums increased again. The clanging cymbals were shrill and painful to listen to. The monotonous chanting grew louder.

  Suddenly, the arms of the statue jerked upward. The hands of the god clapped into the wide-open mouth, and the girl disappeared inside. The singing and the drums instantly fell silent. A muffled screaming could be heard. Then the arms came down again. Held fast by the heavy chains, the young girl still squatted on the god’s open palms. Her hair and the robes she wore blazed fiercely. She writhed in her bonds, and her screams filled Farodin’s ears.

  Mandred stared wide-eyed at the burning girl, while Nuramon turned away, wanting to leave the square. But their self-appointed guide blocked his path. “Don’t do it,” he hissed.

  Several of the faithful around them were already looking suspiciously in their direction.

  “If you leave, you will offend Balbar. I already told you what the priests here do to blasphemers. Look at the ground if you can’t stand the sight, but don’t leave now. Say a prayer to Tjured, Arkassa, or whoever you believe in.”

  The girl’s screams grew fainter. Finally, she slumped forward, dying. The priests began their bleak song again. Slowly, the crowd dispersed.

  Farodin felt sick. What kind of god was it whose believers paid homage with such indescribable cruelty?

  “Now we can go,” said Zimon flatly. “No one’s forced to take part in the sacrificial ceremonies. It’s easy enough to avoid this barbarity. I’ve been living here two years, and I still don’t understand the two faces of Iskendria. It’s a city of art and culture. I’m a sculptor myself. Nowhere else is my work as appreciated as it is here. The rich are obsessed with having statues of themselves. And there are wonderful festivals. In the library, learned scholars from all around the world argue about the fine points of philosophy. But here in the temple square, a child gets burned to death every single day. You simply can’t believe that they’re the same people.”

  “Every day?” said Mandred in disbelief. “Why do they do that? It’s . . .” He raised his hands helplessly. “It’s . . .”

  “Seventy years ago, King Dandalus from the Aegilien Islands came here and laid siege to Iskendria. His fleet brought a huge army to the city walls. They built catapults and towers on wheels. He had even brought miners with him. Their job was to dig tunnels under the walls. The siege lasted two moons. Potheinos, the king of the city, knew Iskendria was doomed. He promised that he’d sacrifice his own son to Balbar for the god’s help in lifting the siege. Immediately, a plague broke out among Dandalus’s soldiers. He was forced to give up the siege and retreat to his camp. Potheinos sacrificed his son. And he promised Balbar a child every day if the god destroyed his enemy. Two days later, the Aegilien fleet sank in a terrible storm. Our coast is a desert. With no more food or water, Dandalus had to abandon the siege completely. Without ships, he was forced to move west along the coast. Only one man in a hundred of those who’d left the Aegilien Islands ever went home again. No record of what became of King Dandalus is to be found anywhere. The Balbar priesthood claims their god went in person and fetched Dandalus and ate him. Since that time, no one has tried to conquer Iskendria again. But the city bleeds for what it has won, for Balbar eats its children. The royal family is gone. Today, the city is ruled by Balbar’s priests and the merchants. Iskendria is a very generous city. It has accepted legions of outsiders inside its walls, but woe betide any who break the laws of Iskendria. They know only one kind of punishment here. Mutilation, to death.”

  Farodin wanted to get back out of this city of child-murderers immediately. He even caught himself imagining throwing the shaven-headed priests down the statue’s fiery gullet.

  “We will take your advice to heart,” said Nuramon gravely. “Can you tell us of a good guesthouse?”

  Zimon grinned. “The brother-in-law of a friend of mine has a place at the harbor. He even has a stable for the horses. I’d be happy to take you there.”

  The Secret Library

  Water,” gasped the man in the iron cage. He was the last one still alive. Seven large cages hung at the east end of the horse market. One of the many death sentences of Iskendria was to lock the condemned in these cages and let them die of thirst in public.

  Mandred felt for his flask.

  “Don’t think about it for a second,” hissed Farodin, nodding toward the temple guardsmen standing in the shadows of the colonnade. It was too dark to say how many there were. “He may be hanging there for good reason.”

  The condemned man had one arm stretched out of the cage and was waving desperately in their direction. Mandred was glad it was dark, because it meant he could not see the man very well. His memory turned to the march through the desert, how he had damn near died of thirst himself. Spontaneously, he untied the flask and tossed it up to the prisoner.

  A shout rang out from the end of the square. Mandred did not understand a word. In the two weeks they’d been in the city, he’d learned no more than the most necessary words, the ones you needed to survive there: water, bread, yes, no, and let’s make love.

  Two guards stepped out from between the columns.

  Farodin and Nuramon took off at a run. Mandred took a final look at the prisoner, who drank greedily in deep swallows. It was one thing to lop the head off a criminal, but hanging them up like that for days under Iskendria’s murderous sun, to finally die in agony . . . that was just low. No one deserved to die like that.

  Mandred hurried after the elves. Farodin and Nuramon moved soundlessly and had disappeared down a dark alley some distance ahead of him. The jarl felt good. He’d done the right thing.

  Behind him, a horn sounded. Close by, a second horn replied. And then a third blared in the direction they were running. Mandred cursed. The guards were encircling them. Someone behind him barked an order.

  Before Mandred turned down the alley after the elves, he heard the sound of soldiers’ hobnailed sandals not far away.

  “This way.” Farodin stepped out of the shadows of a doorway and pulled him into a narrow hallway inside a building. It reeked of fish and damp washing. S
omewhere overhead, a couple was arguing loudly. A child began to cry.

  The hallway made a sharp turn to the left and ended at a courtyard. Nuramon was standing there beside a well, and he waved to them. “Here it is.”

  Mandred had been completely unable to keep his bearings in Iskendria. The night before, after an unsuccessful search, they had climbed out of a well somewhere in the city. They had been scouring the city’s catacombs night after night for two weeks, trying to find an Albenstar that would transport them safely to the library the djinn had spoken of.

  In that time, Mandred had begun to suspect that his two companions hadn’t truly mastered the gate spell. They had tried to explain the problem to him. Apparently, to open a gate, one had to be standing right on top of a star. But here, the stars lay buried beneath the rubble of centuries. The Albenkin still seemed to make use of the legendary library, though, which meant that somewhere in that labyrinth of tunnels, sepulchers, and drains, there had to be a hidden entry point to an Albenstar. It was this hidden access that they had spent every night searching for.

  Iskendria had been established at an extraordinary location. It was not just the meeting point of roads and waterways. More than thirty Albenpaths also crisscrossed the city, though they did not follow the crooked alleys, running instead through walls and rocks.

  Nuramon had slung a rope attached to a grappling hook down the inside of the well and was already climbing down. Farodin followed him. The elves were talented climbers. Mandred, though, hated hanging on ropes just as he hated crawling around underground like a rat.

  A shout rang out at the courtyard entrance. Guards. Mandred took hold of the rope and lowered himself into the dark shaft. The raw hemp rope burned his hands. As he felt for the opening in the well wall with his feet, faces appeared at the edge of the well overhead.

  Angry, Mandred looked up. He wanted to throw a curse or an insult back up at their pursuers, those butchers from the temple. Running away like this chafed at him. But his command of the language was too minimal, and he had nothing to say. Nothing, except . . . he grinned broadly and leaned far out into the well shaft so that they could see him. “Let’s make love!” he bellowed up at them. He stretched his balled fist in the guards’ direction and laughed spitefully. One of the soldiers hurled his spear down the well. Mandred hastily ducked it and retreated into the tunnel. The two elves, meanwhile, had lit three lanterns.