Pandora's Box: Land of Strife: Pandora's Box Series, Book 1
Page 14
Leo pulled harder, using both his hands, until the door opened to a visible gap and then swung open suddenly. The inside of the tree looked similar to the dining hall of The Laughing Frog and men and women sat around tables with food and drink.
However, unlike The Laughing Frog, everyone stopped what they were doing when Leo and his companions entered. The interior of the tree, which housed approximately thirty people scattered throughout, fell silent in an instant. Two men in a corner held flutes to their lips yet no sound escaped them. All eyes were on the three humans and an elf who had just walked in.
Leo stepped forward uneasily and looked around for someone in charge. From the back of the room where the kitchen presumably was, an odd, skinny man with a long mustache appeared in a doorway. It was hard not to notice him. His clothes were flamboyantly colorful and he wore a large, green tricorn hat that was far too big for his head.
The man hopped up onto a table and his willowy physique was even more striking. He was tall and bony with long limbs. He leapt from one table to another, careful to avoid kicking someone’s food or drink over, which was tougher than he made it look. The distance between each table was also considerable and hardly an easy jump. Leo watched the man get closer to them with each bound, mesmerized by how he seemed to hang in the air, like a basketball player taking off from the free throw line for a dunk. When he reached the nearest table to the entrance, the man leaped forward with a flip and landed gracefully on the tips of his toes. Leo almost clapped.
In a very exaggerated manner, the man took off his ridiculously large hat and bowed all way the down, his head reaching his knees. He was balding and his thin hair was combed over the top of his head. Leo nodded awkwardly and the man rose, putting his hat back on.
“Alister the Wonderful, at your service,” the tall man said. All eyes in the room were on him as he spoke. “What a peculiar group! Three humans and an elf. What brings you here, travelers?”
“We’re uh, we’re going to Thermine,” Leo said. He hesitated because he still wasn’t sure if they had walked into a lair of bandits, but he hadn’t thought fast enough to make up a lie.
Alister examined the four standing before him. “Thermine. Why would anyone want to go to that decrepit and backwards town? But who am I to stop you?” It was a rhetorical question, yet the man tilted his head to the side and put two fingers to his ear, as if expecting an answer.
“Alister the Wonderful?” Eva offered hopefully.
“Yes! Alister the Wonderful!”
“What is this place?” Eva asked.
“This? This is a place for travelers like yourself! Come, we have no beds, but food and drink? That, we have,” the man said, and just like that, everyone behind him resumed what they were doing. People laughed and flutes played as Alister showed Leo and his friends to a table by the trunk of the big tree.
*
There were no windows inside the tree tavern and Karine sat with her back to the inner lining of the tree while they ate. Alister had someone bring over a plate of meat buns that stacked up high, along with four large mugs of ale.
The elf nibbled slowly while the humans scoffed down the food, even though they had just had meat that morning. Themba held a bun in his hand while chewing on the last bit of another in his mouth. He sat opposite Karine with his back towards the room, and Eva and Leo were on either side of him. Themba took another bite out of the bun in his hand and asked, “What is this meat? It’s delicious.”
“Thorus meat. Same as what we had this morning,” Karine replied, though she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring across the room at the bar where a woman in a red cloak sat. The hood was pulled over her head and it obscured her face. Eva followed Karine’s line of sight to the cloaked woman, who turned her head towards them at the same time.
“Do you know her, Karine?” Eva asked. There was something about the woman that Eva couldn’t quite place. She was different from everyone else in the room. For one thing, the bright red cloak seemed to be a poor choice for traveling in the woods.
“No, but her ring…”
Eva was about to ask what the elf meant, when the woman raised the mug in her hands and Eva saw the silver ring on her left index finger. It appeared to be a signet ring, but her eyesight wasn’t as keen as Karine’s, and she couldn’t make out the symbol on the ring. As the woman took a sip out of the mug, Eva could see her supple, scarlet lips emerge from under the hood. Was there lipstick in this world? Since coming here, Eva couldn’t remember seeing any women with makeup on, not to mention lipstick.
The woman set her drink down, got up from her stool, and started to walk towards their table. By now, Leo had also stopped eating as they watched the woman approach. She pulled back the hood when she reached the table, revealing a face that appeared ageless, though she had no pointed ears like Karine. There were streaks of grey in her dark hair, yet her facial features were youthful. Her skin was fair and flawless.
"Greetings, mistress," the woman addressed Karine. “It’s unusual for an elf to travel with humans. What takes you to Thermine?”
This was the second person Eva had heard address Karine as “mistress.” The first had been Leo’s aunt in this world. She wondered if that was how female elves were to be properly addressed. After all, she had only been here for a few days and Karine didn’t seem to mind that they called her by name.
“The ring. Where did you get that? There are only six such rings in existence that bear that sigil,” Karine growled, ignoring the question.
Eva noticed that the elf’s right hand under the table had now moved to grasp the handle of one of her blades. She placed a hand on Karine’s, who glared at her for a moment, but Eva didn’t barge. She couldn’t describe why, but she knew that the woman in the red cloak meant no harm.
“It is a gift from an old friend,” the woman said. She held up her hand with the open palm facing them to admire the ring herself, before turning her hand around to show it to them. There was a symbol etched on the surface that looked like an acorn.
“Who are you?” Karine asked. Eva felt a slight resistance against her hand under the table, but Karine didn’t draw her sword.
The woman paused as she pulled up an unoccupied chair from nearby and sat between Eva and Themba. She looked around the table and seemed puzzled when she saw Leo, but she said nothing.
“I go by many names,” the woman said. Leo chuckled to himself when he heard those words. It sounded so cliché for the setting that they found themselves in. “But you can call me Elin.”
Before anyone could react, Karine was already on her feet and one of her blades was inches from the woman’s neck. Except for everyone else at the table, nobody in the room seemed to care about the sudden commotion.
“You!” Karine seethed. Leo had seen how lethal the moonsilver blade was in Karine’s hands and he knew that she could have easily sliced Elin’s head off if she had wanted to.
Elin hadn’t even flinched. She used the finger with the ring that had drawn Karine’s ire and ran it down the surface of the blade in front of her, letting out a long sigh as she did. “You’ve heard the stories, I presume,” she said.
“You killed my brother and drove my father mad. You’re an enemy to all elves.” It was the most emotion Karine had displayed in three days.
“All elves? The elves haven’t been united against anything in thousands of years,” Elin smiled. There was a gentleness in her eyes. “But I didn’t do those things. Yes, I was in Kalor the night your brother was murdered, but I didn’t wield the dagger. And your father had long been ill before I set foot in Ifprin. I tried to help him, but there was nothing I could do. Evil runs deep in the roots of the Ifprin forest and he was corrupted by the taint in the trees, as will the rest of your people if you don’t save them.”
Karine’s blade lowered slightly. “What happened to my brother?”
“Put the sword away, you’re frightening the children,” Elin said, eyeing Eva, Leo, and Themba. The latter lo
oked like he was ready to bolt, and he clutched the meat bun in his hand so tightly that juices were seeping out and dripping onto the table.
Eva reached up to gently pull Karine’s arm down, and the elf lowered her blade, although she didn’t put it away. She sat down and placed the sword on the table, still pointed at Elin. The reflection of torches around the room danced eerily on the surface of the blade. In the background, a woman had started singing, accompanied by the flutes.
“Tell me everything,” Karine said. “Or I will cut you down before you can even raise a finger.”
Elin was unperturbed by the chilling threat and waved to a waiter. They sat in uncomfortable silence as she ordered another round of drinks for the table. Then, she turned back to Karine.
“I don’t have all the details, but I’ll tell you what I know. I was invited to Kalor many suns ago at the request of your brother to discuss the rising threat in the west.”
"Who's behind the threat?" Leo interrupted Elin. She glanced at him with a raised eyebrow, then continued her story.
“As Guardian of Kalor, your brother had begun to see incursions on the borders of the forest by men that had been touched by the stain of corruption. He had also started to grow suspicious of those around him, wary that someone in his ranks was consorting with the enemy, so he sent a trusted aide to get me. I arrived late in the night and was taken to rest. Our meeting wasn’t until dawn, but in the middle of the night, a large fire broke out in the Guardian’s quarters and when everyone got there, your brother was already dead. They found him with a dagger in his back that pierced through his heart.”
Elin shook her head. “I should have insisted on seeing him the moment I arrived. My appearance must have spooked the conspirators, and they accused me of killing your brother.”
Karine said nothing. The information appeared to come as news to her and she was trying to process it.
“But you weren’t in his quarters. How could they accuse you?” Eva asked. There was so little of what Elin had said that she could comprehend. She gathered that Kalor was some sanctuary forest where elves live, but that was about it.
“The fire,” Karine answered. “Normal fire doesn’t burn strong in a forest protected by elves. The trees put them out.”
“The trees can move?” Leo asked. As tragic as the story of the murder of Karine’s brother was, Leo was still eager to learn more about this world. He had some impressions of what things would be like based on his knowledge from fantasy novels and movies, but so far not everything lined up. He wondered if he could write a book about their adventures here one day. An accurate account of a world with elves and dwarves and who knows what. Maybe if he got home one day.
Both Karine and Elin looked at Leo as if he had gone mad. “Trees don’t move. Are you humans really that naïve? Trees live, breathe, and think. Their life force and strength is amplified by elven sanctuaries and magic, which allows them to protect themselves from flames.”
Leo thought about it for a second before coming to his own theory in his head. Karine was probably correct about trees being sentient, but he hypothesized the ability to extinguish flames was more likely about the plants being able to control the oxygen and carbon dioxide around them. Of course, plants where he came from couldn’t do that, so there had to be a certain amount of magic involved.
“The fire wasn’t normal?” Eva asked, “What kind of fire was it?”
Karine nodded at Elin. “Magical fire. She’s a wizard.”
Eva and Themba shifted visibly in their seats and leaned away from Elin when Karine called her a wizard.
The woman in the red cloak tapped her fingers on the wooden table as she studied the expressions of everyone around her. Leo was the only person who wasn’t surprised. He had guessed that Elin was no ordinary woman when she approached their table.
“And my father?” Karine asked.
“More lies, I’m afraid. Your father had been going down a dark path for a long time before I got to Ifprin. That’s why he exiled you from the shiny forest, was it not?” Elin said. Karine bit her lips and looked away.
“The evil that lies deep in the soil of the land has been getting worse for many years. Your father knew that. The ancient trees were dying one after another. He’s strong, but even he could only hold evil that old at a distance for so long.”
“Is there a cure?” Karine asked.
“The cure for evil is to eradicate it at its source. But it is not so simple. We have all ignored it for too long and I’ve just gotten word that someone has risen to take Gormore’s throne to the west after it has been vacant for more than two centuries,” Elin sighed.
“What’s Gormore?” Eva asked.
“Child,” Elin took her hand, “So much potential unharnessed in you. Gormore is the city of ruins. Many, many years ago, before this tree that surrounds us was even a seed, Gormore was built by Jaxon the Indomitable. Every bit of dirt that Gormore stood on was soaked with the blood of his enemies. Jaxon’s thirst for conquering and killing lay waste to the land and even in his defeat, he left such an indelible, evil stain on the earth, that most plants and animals cannot survive within Gormore’s realm. Any human, elf, dwarf, or otherwise to set foot in Gormore becomes corrupted to their core. It breeds greed, bloodlust, and violence. It spreads like an illness, and unbeknownst to us all, it has been spreading right beneath our very noses.”
Elin stomped her foot twice to emphasize her point. “It goes deep into the ground and creeps back up. We can ignore it no longer.”
“So how can evil be eradicated?” Eva asked. It was like learning history for the first time. Except this was no American Revolution or World War II.
“After Jaxon fell, a few men have sat on the throne from time to time. The throne of Gormore itself is said to be imbued with Jaxon’s legacy, and if a person can survive its corruption and is deemed worthy, they shall have dominion over evil and all those touched by it. The last man to do so was Thurmill Furngood. He was defeated at the battle of Quilen more than two hundred years ago. Foolish, that man was, to leave his seat of power. Such hubris was his downfall.”
“So, to eradicate evil, Gormore has to be destroyed,” Leo said.
“Yes and no. Nothing is that simple.”
Karine gripped the handle of the sword on the table. “Why should I believe you, wizard?” she asked.
"Because you know what really happened to your father no matter what they say, mistress," Elin replied, and then with a flick of her wrist, a bright flame appeared in her right palm. “You’ll have to trust me about your brother, but I could just as easily burn you and everyone in this tree down and walk away.”
There was no malice in Elin’s tone. She was just stating the facts as she saw them. After a long while of staring at the flame in Elin’s open palm, Karine stood and returned her sword to its rightful place before sitting back down.
“Fine. What then?”
Chapter 29
It wasn’t ideal, but at least she had an audience and they seemed to enjoy her singing. The tune from her accompanying flute players sounded unfamiliar, yet she sang the lyrics of the song as though she knew them from heart. It wasn’t even in English.
Already, several of the patrons had tossed Sarah some coins as tips. Most of them didn’t aim for the bowl on the ground, and Sarah found herself having to catch the coins while she sang. One even appeared to be made of solid gold, though she had never seen the engraving on it before. It didn’t look like the currency of any country she knew.
As she sang, Sarah thought about how she came to be here. A few days ago, she had been woken up in a room upstairs by the owner of this establishment, Alister the Wonderful. The last thing she remembered before that was being at the dig site in Greece with her brother. Then came the red light bursting out from the box.
Sarah had screamed at first when she saw Alister and it took a while for her to calm down when she realized that he posed no harm. However, he knew nothing of Greece or London or anyt
hing that she said. He was so concerned about the perceived gibberish coming out of her mouth that he called for a doctor. Even stranger, when the doctor arrived, he had no concept of modern medicine and diagnosed Sarah of having bad dreams and merely prescribed some herbs for Alister to brew for her.
In the days since, Sarah had come to learn more about the world she had found herself in. She felt like she had fallen down a rabbit hole into a crazy, maniacal world. She had seen elves and dwarves come and go. Alister was a strange man himself, and the tree tavern where they lived in had a long winding spiral staircase that seemingly went all the way to the top, although Sarah hadn’t ventured up there yet. At night, Alister would lock the big blue door of the tavern and retire upstairs. Sarah never asked what was up there.
It also turned out that Alister was under the impression that he was her guardian who had taken her in when her parents had been killed by bandits. He claimed to have raised her in the tree and now she provided entertainment in his makeshift tavern as a singer. He didn’t respond when Sarah had asked if she had any siblings, and she wondered where David was. If the wooden box in Greece had been the vehicle for her getting here, David had to be somewhere in this world as well. She remembered clinging onto him while he had been holding the box in his hands.
From the corner where she stood and sang, Sarah observed the table near the wall where the recent group of four travelers were seated. She had been taking a break near the entrance when they arrived, and she immediately felt that the three humans were different from everyone else she had met here. Her curiosity about them grew even more when she heard two of them speak. They had American accents.
Sarah had seen the woman in the red cloak join the table a while ago, and she paused mid-song when she saw a flame appear out of nowhere in the woman’s palm. Sarah composed herself and continued singing, wondering what was going on at that table. A copper coin lobbed at her from a nearby table brought her attention back to where she was, as it barely missed her head and dropped to the floor. Sarah quickly stopped it from rolling away with her foot and looked back at the group across the room. She had to talk to them. Maybe they knew how to get her out of here.