Elves: Once Walked With Gods

by James Barclay

  Sildaan shrugged. ‘You know there can be no certainty. But I have powerful allies in Ysundeneth. What we have set in motion can only have one outcome. Trust me as I must trust you. I know the elven mind.’

  ‘And the TaiGethen?’

  ‘They are your biggest threat. Your mages must be ready for them because your warriors can never be.’

  ‘I see your faith only extends so far.’

  Now it was Sildaan’s turn to chuckle.

  ‘Faith will not stop a TaiGethen cell. Magic just might.’

  And they were so stupid that they did not realise what was coming at them. They stood and bayed their hate and waved their cudgels, fists, torches and swords. The TaiGethen, already painted for combat, dropped their heads in brief prayer and swept from the apron down the steps and into the crowd.

  ‘Clear this place,’ shouted Katyett. ‘Desecrators. Heretics.’

  The face of the ula in front of her cleared at the last moment and sick realisation slackened his jaw. Katyett knocked the torch from his hand to go sailing back into the mob. She whipped one blade up to sever an ear and chopped the second left to right across his neck. The ula clamped his hands to his wound and tried to scream.

  Another ula fell across Katyett’s path, intestines steaming and spilling through his desperate grasp. Katyett took off, glancing right to see Grafyrre bring his bloodied blade to ready. Katyett flicked out a kick into the face of an iad carrying a slender blade, landed on the same foot and drove her sword into the elf’s unprotected chest.

  A torch was pushed towards her face. Katyett snapped up her left leg, blocking the flaming wood and pitch. She kept her foot there, against the ula’s wrist, her thigh touching her cheek. She pivoted around with both blades, sweeping them parallel across the elf’s midriff.

  Katyett bent her left leg at the knee and struck out, clattering her foot into the temple of another rioter, knocking him sideways. She paced forward. Hands and fingers flailed at her. Behind them a face twisted with rage. The mouth lunged, teeth clacking at her face. Katyett swayed beyond the fingers, ducked the teeth. The iad screamed and rushed forward. Katyett stabbed straight out. Her victim shrieked.

  Katyett paused. There was space around her. With those Grafyrre and Merrat had found, fifteen TaiGethen faced the multiple thousands packed into the piazza. Dozens of bodies littered the ground. The flames of the temple of Yniss cast a hideous glare onto the faces of elves and the bloodied stone.

  Pakiir worked with a brother Tai cell. He was deep in the crowd, extracting his vengeance for those murdered behind him in the temple and, no doubt, the burning of Olmaat. Faleen’s Tai savaged into a knot of unarmed ulas fighting with nails and teeth. A jaqrui chopped deep into the forehead of one rioter. A second lost a leg to a switch sweep of two blades and a third had her neck snapped by a kick to the underside of the chin.

  At last, panic began to take hold. The ringleaders had lost the crowd. A certain return to reality melted through the blind spitting fury of the mob. Elves were beginning to run.

  ‘Keep them going back to their filthy hovels!’ called Katyett.

  She flew back into the action. Her open palm thudded into the chest of an iad standing firm, spitting in the direction of the temple. The elf went over backwards. Katyett dropped both knees on her ribs, crushing cage, heart and lungs. Blood flew from her mouth, spattering across Katyett’s face.

  ‘Spit your last, efra.’

  Katyett surged to her feet. The crowd was bunching back. The many fleeing in the face of the few but the unutterably deadly. She brought her blades to ready and advanced. There was a screaming behind her. Screaming her name. Katyett spun round.

  Pelyn was coming down the steps, limping heavily. Blood welled from wounds on her face and stained her shirt at the neck. But there was enough strength within her to move and to yell her own rage.

  ‘What are you doing? Stop. Stop!’

  Katyett glanced over a shoulder and watched her brothers and sisters moving still, cutting down any that dared stand against them. She turned her gaze back to Pelyn and felt cold.

  ‘I am doing the work of Yniss,’ she said.

  Pelyn walked right up to her, the pair of them standing a pace apart in the midst of a blood-slick arena of stone strewn with bodies and washed with the flickering glare of the burning temple. The din of the retreating mob echoed against the walls of other temples, which stood in mute judgement over the acts of elves.

  ‘You’ve done exactly what you told me not to do,’ shouted Pelyn, barely able to contain herself.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘What is it you said to me?’ Pelyn’s spittle flew in Katyett’s face. ‘ “Don’t let them goad you,” wasn’t it? “Don’t give them a martyr.” What by Shorth’s teeth do you think you’ve done?’

  ‘I have carried out sentence on murderers.’

  ‘You’ve killed those wholly unable to defend themselves against your skills. This is a slaughter.’

  Katyett grabbed Pelyn’s shoulder and dragged her round to look at the fiery remnants of the temple.

  ‘And what was this, Pelyn? Hundreds of my people, burned in a place they thought sanctuary. I will not leave such a crime unpunished. ’

  Pelyn pulled herself from Katyett’s grasp. ‘I was here. I was here trying to defend them. The most obvious target in the city. I was here. Where were you? Whose people were you defending on top of the playhouse?’

  Katyett paused a moment, trying in vain to calm down. ‘We are not the police of this city. That is your job. Are you seriously telling me you really thought a mob might actually torch the temple of Yniss?’

  ‘You didn’t feel the hate,’ said Pelyn. ‘I did. They would have cast me on too and I guess I have to thank you they did not. They’d have done it because I dared defend the Ynissul. Me, a Tuali. Never mind the temple, it was those inside they wanted.’

  ‘What’s done is done,’ said Katyett, looking out at the piazza. Fifty bodies lay there. Perhaps more. ‘But those who committed this atrocity know they cannot act with impunity.’

  Pelyn sighed. ‘No, Katyett. For you, it’s always so simple, isn’t it? And so naive sometimes. Too much time in the rainforest. What it’s taught them is that Yniss’s elite warriors have no control. That they mete out their version of justice on helpless elves.’

  ‘They have murdered my brothers and sisters by the hundred. They have burned my temple. They have put themselves in front of the TaiGethen blades. I am bound to respond and I am not merely going to shepherd them from the site of their crime.’

  Pelyn gestured at the remains of the fleeing crowd. ‘And what would you have done if they’d all stood before you, killed them all?’

  Katyett said nothing. Just stared into Pelyn’s eyes. Pelyn gaped.

  ‘Why so surprised, Pelyn? We exist to remove threats to the harmony. What would you call them?’

  ‘More Ynissul will die because of what has happened here tonight.’

  ‘Not here they won’t,’ said Katyett. ‘We will take them with us. No Ynissul, no elf of any thread, should suffer such a fate as those innocents in my temple.’

  Katyett turned away towards her TaiGethen. They were gathering on the temple apron, staring at the ruined timbers, the clouds of embers and coils of smoke rising into the night sky. They began to chant a dirge of grief.

  ‘Take them where?’

  Katyett turned. Pelyn looked lost, standing alone in the midst of the carnage. Alone and confused. Scared. Katyett wanted nothing more than to go back and comfort her. But this was not a time for friends. It was a time to do what had to be done to secure the Ynissul and what remained of the harmony. If anything did.

  ‘We will stage them at the Ultan and then move them into the forest.’

  ‘You’re leaving the city?’

  ‘The Ynissul are being targeted. If we are to hold back the tide of war we must remove the catalyst. I will need the help of the Al-Arynaar. Will I get it?’

  But Pe
lyn appeared not to be listening. ‘This place will tear itself apart.’

  ‘I will not shed a tear for those who die trying to destroy the work of a millennium.’

  ‘And the innocents caught in the middle of it all?’

  Katyett shrugged. ‘The Al-Arynaar are the keepers of the peace. It is why you are drawn from every thread. Looks to me like you’ll be very busy.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this,’ said Pelyn.

  ‘I’m doing what I was born to do. So must you. You said you no longer know who to trust, well you must trust yourself. You’re strong, Pelyn. You stood before that crowd and did not back away. You tried to save my people. Our people. Yniss bless you for your courage.

  ‘Somewhere, the minds behind this are working towards their end. The TaiGethen must find them and stop them. And if you truly believe in the harmony and in Takaar’s legacy, you will try and keep this city standing so that when the conflict is done, we still have a place, a society and a race of elves of which Yniss can be proud.

  ‘Think on that.’

  Katyett walked to join her people in the dirge for their lost.

  Chapter 13

  Show your enemy his entrails. It is the only negotiation he will understand.

  Auum travelled quickly, heading east when he left Serrin. He felt the absence of his mentor and friend more strongly than he had imagined he would. He followed a tributary to the River Shorth and turned north, tracking the great force from just inside the canopy.

  He had with him the clothes in which he stood, his twin swords in their back scabbards, three short knives on his belt and his camouflage paints in a pouch next to that which carried six jaqrui throwing crescents. His boots were soft and comfortable, allowing him to feel everything beneath his feet. He would have run barefoot like so often on Hausolis, but so much danger lurked on the forest floor and he could not afford an accident.

  Beyond the falls at Shorth’s Teeth he had found a small boat with oars, mast and a tattered but serviceable sail. He’d have promised payment to the owner but the village was deserted, bearing the signs of a hasty evacuation. Sildaan’s message was already out here.

  There was no wind to fill his sail but Gyal was ever present. Rain thundered on the boat, forcing him to stop rowing every time a deluge struck to bail out water. It was a frustrating journey, only tempered by the flow of the river taking him in the direction he wanted to go.

  Auum travelled the Shorth for three days. Out here in the middle of the rainforest, he could feel the harm being done to the land and its people. Yniss seemed powerless, or unwilling, to act. Auum rowed or sailed gently past river settlements whose inhabitants stared out at him with suspicion and even betrayal in their faces. He cursed Sildaan for the evil she perpetrated.

  Between the deluges and the snatched hours of sleep, Auum thought. Perhaps too much. Out there ahead of him was Takaar. He wondered if there would be anything left of the ula he had known only briefly. The hero of the elven race. He who once walked with gods.

  Auum wondered what he would say to Takaar. He imagined their conversations, dreamed about them sometimes, and always found his heart beating fast when he awoke. Takaar might not want to be found. He might ignore all Auum’s entreaties. He might, of course, be dead.

  That was not a thought on which Auum dwelt. Darker moments were banished by a prayer to Yniss or just by lying back and gazing at the glory that was Calaius. The Shorth wound its course through staggering changes of land. Beyond the waterfalls of Shorth’s Teeth the banks of the river closed in with swamps making landing all but impossible.

  Beyond the swamps hills swept away, covered by trees and scaling high towards cloud and Gyal. A further day’s sail north and the land changed abruptly. The river ran between mud walls over a hundred feet high and home to flocks of water birds and a myriad reptile species. The walls were topped by the canopy, and only when the sun was directly overhead was the light anything other than gloomy. And finally, with the Verendii Tual close, rose the great cliffs of the delta. Hundreds of feet up, pocked with caves and crawling with life.

  The cliffs ended dramatically, sweeping down to the outflow of the delta’s mouth and into the Sea of Gyaam. Auum stowed his boat before he met the brackish waters and difficult tidal flow out there, hoping, praying that Takaar had done the sensible thing and chosen to live high above.

  Down here, at the river’s edge, Auum felt the full majesty of the cliffs of the Verendii. He had travelled here many times before and never ceased to wonder at the power and strength echoing from every face of stone. Here he could drink in the glory of Yniss’s creation like nowhere else and so he sat with his feet in the waters of the western bank and stared up.

  Rain was falling, splashing down into the river and painting the rock face dark. At his back the climb was not so steep as opposite. Soon he would head into the forest and leave his mark and direction at the way stones and Yniss shrine. Serrin knew Auum’s likely landfall at the Verendii Tual. He would come to the shrine before beginning his search.

  Auum looked at his climb. Takaar would be up there on the eastern cliffs, he was sure of it. They boasted unparalleled views of the forest to the west towards Deneth Barine and Ysundeneth; giving early warning of anything coming into the delta or dropping anchor in the inlet beyond. And, of course, they offered the barrier of the River Shorth between him and most of elven civilisation.

  A place where an elf born to the forest could see pretty much everything coming at him and choose whether to be found, to leave or to hide. A place where surprise was the weapon of choice.

  Auum could see no sign of habitation up there and did not expect to. So he trotted back into the forest, left his mark at the shrine and rowed across to the opposite bank. There was an easier path up the cliffs a quarter of a mile to the south but he fancied a sheer climb. He found his first handholds, jammed his feet into small cracks up at waist height and began his ascent.

  Ysundeneth, dawn, and a shocked quiet hung over the city amidst the palls of smoke and the sounds of grief that echoed from every quarter. Whether it was the crime committed by ordinary elves who by day might open a shop and sell you a loaf of bread, or whether it was news of the extraordinary violence of the TaiGethen response was impossible to tell.

  Pelyn stood on the roof of the Hausolis Playhouse and could at least see the sense of Katyett’s decision to station herself there. But that was all the sense she could make of this morning. Poor Olmaat was gone from below her, stretchered away in the dead of the night when the rioters had quietened and the streets were the safest they’d been for a day.

  Gone to the muster of the warrior elite in the huge bowl of the Ultan, just to the east of the city. Gone to take part in whatever decisions the TaiGethen reached. The Al-Arynaar had helped in the main. Ynissul had been woken from broken sleep, coaxed from hiding places or guarded closely as they strode proudly from their scarred houses to make their way to where their escorts into the rainforest awaited them.

  All done swiftly and without error. The TaiGethen way. Pelyn envied them. Not their speed, their strength and their extraordinary skills. But their clarity of vision. The uncluttered nature of their beliefs. You could call it simplistic but there was no confusion for them. No grey in between the black and white.

  The growing light, muted beneath lowering clouds, brought with it a feeling of frustrated sadness to the Al-Arynaar clustered on the playhouse roof. Pelyn heard muttering around her. The maps had been wiped of rain so that all the damage could be marked.

  Down at the harbour, blackened timbers still bled smoke into the sky and the occasional blaze still burned. The destruction was widespread. Masts jutted from the water. Debris was strewn across the docks. More than half the warehousing was gone and much of the wealth of Ysundeneth with it.

  In the wake of the TaiGethen escape from the playhouse last night, the crowd meaning to surround them had returned to the spice market and smashed every frontage. A huge fire had been laid i
n the centre of the cobbled square and it burned on.

  They had reports of three hundred separate houses being attacked and set alight. Timber stores across the city had proved easy targets. Government buildings deemed Ynissul bastions had been assaulted, including the courts and the palace of the priests. This latter was more of a museum now but chambers were maintained for travelling members of the priesthood from any thread. Hazy memory and rumour labelled it a place where pressure was applied to lesser threads and power was brokered beyond the gaze of the public and the Gardaryn.

  Pelyn dared not look up towards the temple piazza. Everyone knew what had happened there. Latest word was that some had been to recover bodies, others to just stand and stare. Of the Yniss temple itself and those immolated within, nothing was left but ash, smoulder and a deepening sense of hate and shame.

  Since the news of the murders of Jarinn and Lorius had broken, she had seen hide nor hair of any senior member of the government. Helias’s house was empty and none of his staff could offer any hint of his whereabouts. The high priests of the rainforest temples had presumably all rushed back to their sanctuaries, and those whose authority covered Ysundeneth were, like Helias, nowhere to be found.

  The Gardaryn was due to meet in session this morning. Clearly that would not happen, but priests, administrators and officials should report for their duties. With a feeling of great discomfort and anxiety, Pelyn realised that if they did not, it left her effectively in charge. But in charge of what?

  ‘Pelyn?’

  She turned, grateful to be dragged from her thoughts for a moment. A clay mug brimming with a warm infusion of guarana and sweet leaf was thrust into her hand. She breathed in the invigorating aroma and took a long sip, feeling the liquid fire down her throat.

  ‘Bless you, Methian.’

  The ageing Gyalan loyalist smiled at her. He’d been her rock for two hundred years. What she’d do without him, she had no idea.