‘That’s the best I can do. Almost everyone present has powers of magic, and any illusion that I create will only make you appear vain. Everything is so much easier in the Sun Court’. He stepped behind the apprentice and pushed him out into the light.
‘Come on, the others are waiting. Let’s get it over with, I’m hungry’. And at that he lifted off and floated quickly off, so that Ahren had to trot along quickly so as not to fall behind.
Chapter 21
They met nobody along the way and once they saw the enormous trees in the centre of the village, Ahren knew why. The whole platform was full of elves, who turned as one in his direction as soon as he came into view. No sound emanated from the gathering and you could hear a pin drop. As they walked towards the silent community, Uldini looked over his shoulder and said, ‘don’t worry about it, it’s their way of celebrating. They’re all bound together on the same emotional level at the moment and they’re jumping mental somersaults for joy. If you were an elf, you’d be participating and feeling fantastic. Just trust me. They’re very grateful’.
Uldini’s dry manner helped to calm Ahren’s nerves and stepped onto the platform. All the elves were greeting him with quiet smiles and he managed to respond with a smile of his own. The crowd divided and Ahren went to the middle of the platform, trying not to think about the fact that there were five hundred people standing on a thin cloth platform high in the air. Although he was used to the cloth paths, this enormous flat surface with its knotted material still made him nervous. His companions were waiting for him in the middle.
Jelninolan looked the same as ever. Her small, round figure, her red hair and green eyes were even more marked, now that she was surrounded by these many tall, slim, white haired elves.
Falk was standing by her sid, in full regalia with his gleaming armour and his fur cloak, and Culhen was lying on a fat cushion in front of them with a contented look on his face. He must have been thoroughly groomed because his fur shone like satin in the warm afternoon sun. He greeted Ahren with a joyful bark. Uldini floated beside the high priestess and indicated to him to stand in front of them.
As Ahren stepped closer, he saw the Voice of the Forest, who had rolled himself together between Culhen’s front paws and was now looking at Ahren with sleepy eyes.
Jelninolan smiled at him and produced Tanentan. The artefact had been cleaned and polished but the impression it left was still that of a simple lute. The priestess began to sing in the Elf language and her fingers plucked the strings, but no sound came from the instrument. At first Ahren thought the lute was broken, but then he felt it was talking to him, as if the individual sounds were being generated directly within his spirit. The priestess wove her song out of this spectral music, and suddenly it became clear to the young man that although he didn’t understand the Elf language, she was singing the story of his battle with the Swarm Claw.
He saw the images with his inner eye. It was as if everything was happening again, and when it came to the point where his dagger lunged into the Swarm Claw’s chest, Culhen uttered a howl which was the perfect imitation of the one he had uttered under the tree, when he had distracted the Dark One.
Then the song was over. Jelninolan place her hands on the strings and the horrific episode vanished. Ahren was dazed and it took him a while to come back to the present. He blinked repeatedly to banish the memories. When he had regained his sense of orientation he noticed that everyone present was bowing towards him and Jelninolan spoke in a booming voice. ‘We thank you for your deeds!’
Then everyone straightened up again and a quiet murmuring could be heard. The elves were beginning to behave like individuals again and not as one large, indivisible group. The ceremony seemed to be over and the spiritually united bond had dissolved.
Uldini clapped his hands. ‘That was refreshing. What is there to eat?’, he called in a self-satisfied voice.
The magus was obviously familiar with the elf customs for a short time later there was a movement among the crowd. Cushions were artfully arranged, and baskets of food were brought from the surrounding lodgings. Soon all the participants were sitting around, scattered in little groups on the floor. Ahren and his friends ate in the middle of the platform which had filled up in no time. Soon there were elves sitting on all the edges of the cloth, their legs dangling in the air below. There was eating and drinking, the air was filled with laughter and the melodic language of the forest dwellers.
There were groups of singers scattered about and Ahren was amazed at how harmoniously the songs intertwined with each other. There still seemed to be some kind of unconscious union among the elves.
Ahren was starving and gobbled down everything he could lay hold on. Provisions had been pretty meagre the last couple of days and so he stuffed himself with bread and honey, not to mention mint pasties stuffed with meat, washing them both down with a sharp-smelling fruit juice, which tasted a little of apple and aniseed.
Chewing with his mouth full, he asked his master quietly, ‘I thought elves didn’t eat meat’.
Falk nodded. ‘They only do it rarely. You could put it like this: they only eat what the forest has too much of. The rabbit population had to be reduced considerably this year, so that’s why there are pasties’. He bit heartily into one, then continued, ‘I remember one season when the river changed direction nearby and there was an explosion of blueberry bushes. For weeks afterwards all the meals had blueberries. As the gods are my witness, I avoided that fruit for years afterwards’. He laughed and slapped Ahren on the back.
He had rarely seen his master so happy and Ahren was painfully aware that this place really was the Forest Guardian’s home. He chewed thoughtfully on his pasty, then he put it aside and asked Jelninolan, ‘can I have a quick word with you?’
She gave him a quizzical smile and when he stood up, she followed suit. Ahren wound his way through the crowd until they got to a quiet spot near the edge. The elf priestess stood beside him and waited politely while he enjoyed the view and wondered how he should start.
‘Everyone seems to be very happy that we saved the Voice’, he began, awkwardly. The priestess smiled in amusement and raised an eyebrow quizzically.
‘And you worked that out for yourself?’
Ahren sighed. He was no good at these things and it wouldn’t get any better unless he came to the point. ‘I wanted to ask if I could make a request, now that we’ve helped you’.
The elf hesitated and looked at him in surprise. ‘You want a reward?’ Jelninolan’s aura had lost none of its power over Ahren and the disappointment that was revealed in her question caused him to flinch.
‘Yes…no, well, not for me anyway’, he said quickly. ‘I’d never be here without Falk, I’d never have learned how to climb or how to hunt Dark Ones or how to treat injured animals. Without his training, I wouldn’t have been able to save the Voice of the Forest. Would it be possible for his banishment to be lifted?’ His voice had been getting quieter and quieter and now it petered to a halt. His companion looked at him thoughtfully with eyes narrowed and with a maternal sternness. Then she nodded and said, ‘I’ll see what I can do’. She turned around and went, leaving a somewhat baffled apprentice in her wake, who didn’t know what to make of her reaction.
The elf priestess didn’t return to the others and so Ahren went back alone. Every elf he passed gave him a broad smile, or proposed a toast in his honour, or even bowed slightly before him. When he arrived back to his friends, he saw that Culhen had an enormous bowl of rabbit meat in front of him, which he was holding between his front paws as he wolfed down the food, growling with enjoyment.
Uldini watched the wolf with amusement and then turned to Ahren. ‘It seems our furry hero is perfectly content. The Voice has retired back into the forest. He was probably afraid our friend would eat him by mistake’.
Ahren laughed and then became serious and sat down on one of the cushions. Daylight was gradually vanishing, and a soft twilight was settling in on the fores
t. He took another sip of the strange drink and Uldini leaned over him.
‘Be careful with that. You hardly notice it but there’s some alcohol in it. If you drink too much and then go for another walk along the edge, well…’
He wriggled his eyebrows in an exaggerated manner and Ahren had to laugh again. The Arch Wizard really knew how to use his childish appearance to his advantage, whether it was just to make jokes or to highlight the difference between appearance and reality.
Falk was chatting to a group of elves some paces away and Uldini leaned closer towards Ahren. ‘We’re alone now and I’m in a talkative mood. Falk took off your muzzle today, so if you have any questions, now would be a good opportunity’.
The wizard’s offer took Ahren by surprise, but then he asked a question that had been troubling him for a while. ‘Why did you connect the reappearance of the Paladin with the eternal spell. Would it not have been better if all the Paladins were there before the betrayer wakes?
Uldini’s eyes lit up. ‘A really clever question. We did discuss that at the time. We wanted to intertwine the problem and its solution. A balance of strengths if you so wish. None of the other ideas were implementable. The most popular suggestion at the time was: the Pall Pillar falls when the gods awaken. Sounds mad, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t. We would have had to connect the sleep of the gods to the Pall Pillar and thereby create a channel between Them and Him. Can you imagine how much power he would have been able to draw from such a connection? Other alternatives presented the same problem. If He or his servants had somehow managed to conjure up the end of the Bane Spell, then you’d have a world without a Paladin. So we decided to make things simple and fool-proof. First you appear, then he wakes up. The Paladins were our best option. Half of us thought the thirteenth would never turn back, the other half thought the new chosen one would be found within a few months. Then we would have gone with the little child to the Pall Pillar, we would have carried out the ritual of Naming and speared the swine without giving him a chance to bat an eyelid’. The Arch Wizard gave him a penetrating look. ‘Nobody planned it to take this long for a new candidate to appear. We came up with the idea of the focus stones sixty years later when it became clear that there was no short-term solution in sight. But now, hundreds of years later, the situation has completely changed. We have to travel all over the place, picking up people and items for a ritual that in those days we could have done in a day, because everything was close together’. He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. ‘We enshrined the Naming of the Paladin with the eternal Bane Spell because the ritual of Naming has enormous power. No-one should have been able to remove the Bane Spell or evade it. That worked. But the powers of the thirteenth Paladin were set free with your election and now He can tap into this power, slowly but surely – through the connection between the Bane Spell and your election. And the longer it takes us to perform the Naming, the more power He can steal’.
Ahren gave an understanding nod. ‘That’s why he wakes up earlier if we dawdle. He’ll become stronger, I’ll become weaker’. Ahren felt a shiver run down his spine at this thought.
Uldini hesitated. ‘Yes, more or less. I’ve gone through all the calculations again. Ideally, we’ll execute the ritual before the winter solstice. Then we have a few years before he wakes up in order to find the others and kill him with the united powers of all thirteen Paladins. But if we need longer than next winter solstice, he’ll wake up in the following winter and we’ll be done for’.
‘So that’s the reason for the delay tactics. The Swarm Claws that are looking for us and forcing us to travel more slowly, the bandits ambushing us and the attempt to kill the Voice of the Forest’, said Ahren slowly.
‘Exactly. You recognise the pattern. His main aim is to kill you, don’t believe anything else. But if He can slow us down at the same time, that’s almost as useful to Him. Death by a thousand cuts’.
Everything was much clearer to Ahren and he was grateful to the wizard for his explanations. But there was one thing he still wanted to know. ‘We have two of the three Einhans but who is the third? Has Falk said anything yet?’
Uldini shook his head. ‘We haven’t had a chance to have a private conversation yet, but he seems to have a plan. I mean he knows where to look and who to ask. That’s comforting. We can ask him together later’.
Ahren squirmed with excitement. He was being included at last. ‘And then we can carry out the ritual of Naming! What does that mean for me?’
Uldini raised his hand reassuringly. ‘Almost. We sealed the place of ritual at the time with magic so that nobody could find it by accident. One of the Wild Folk will have to lead us there, but that’s no problem. And no, not much will change for you, unfortunately. By rights you should get the talents of the Three at the Naming, but because you’re a special case, I’m not sure what exactly is going to happen. Only the Moulder will definitely touch you and make you resistant to the Betrayer’s influence. But I’ve been protecting you with my magic anyway since I’ve been with you.So you won’t feel any difference’.
Ahren looked at the childlike figure in surprise. ‘Thank you’, he said.
Uldini nodded and smiled drily. ‘One does one’s best’.
It was getting even darker now, and soon some of the elves were conjuring up spheres of light which were floating above them on their gentle paths and partaking in a ghostly dance. Ahren lay on his back and looked up enthralled, leaning his head against Culhen’s overfull stomach. The wolf gave a disgruntled growl but was far too full to resist his friend. Ahren let the sweet night air take hold of him and followed the complicated patterns of the blue-white illuminated spheres which were moving across the sky like glow-worms. A solitary elf started to sing, then another and soon the harmonious singing was everywhere. A deep peace enveloped the young Forest Guardian and he let his fingers run through the wolf’s fur. His questions were forgotten, and he surrendered to the peace of the moment. Ahren took another sip of the elf fruit drink and was soon lulled to sleep by the light, the song and the warmth of his wolf friend.
Epilogue
When Ahren woke up the next morning, he saw that he wasn’t the only one had slept outside in the cosy warm embrace of Evergreen. At least half of the revellers were still lying around in small groups on the platform, their heads or bodies on the cushions. The sleep patterns and sleeping arrangements of the elves was as much a mystery to him as everything else about them. The missing doors in all their lodgings, the singing of the individual elves which always harmonised with the singing of the whole group, not to mention the previous day’s ceremony, all showed the young Forest Guardian how closely-knit the elves were. He tried to imagine a human group living like that and he could only laugh. The bailiff would have a lot on his hands because their living together would be far from harmonious.
He stood up and Culhen stretched himself in gratitude. Ahren had misused him for the whole night as a pillow. The wolf shook himself off and sniffed his friend’s hand.
‘You can’t be hungry again’, Ahren chided quietly.
The large bowl that the Blood Wolf had licked clean yesterday wasn’t two paces away and Ahren was convinced that half a dozen rabbits must have been in it. Culhen whimpered quietly and pushed against Ahren’s hand with his nose again. He shook his head in disbelief and relented.
‘Alright then, let’s get you something to eat. You’ve certainly deserved it’.
Ahren tickled the wolf between the ears and then began to pick his way slowly through the groups of sleepers. There was no sign of the others and Ahren figured that they must have returned to their lodgings during the night. He had no idea where he could find something to eat in the village and he didn’t want to wake any of the elves, partly because he didn’t speak Elfish, so he decided to go to the lodgings and ask Falk where he could fill up his greedy wolf.
Culhen trotted contentedly beside him, sometimes panting quietly and sometimes sniffing the ground curiously. The young Forest G
uardian looked at his friend thoughtfully. In nearly two years Culhen had grown into an imposing wolf. His head was now above Ahren’s hips, he was muscular and a little broader than normal wolves. If he kept on growing, he would be heavier than Ahren and no-one would take him for a normal animal any more. He tried to comfort himself by remembering what he had read in Vera’s books. The tome stated that Northern Wolves - and Culhen’s breed was descended from them – reached their full height at two years. Hopefully his friend would take after them rather than after his mother.
The truth was that Culhen was unique and would always put up with Ahren no matter what happened, so long as they could be together. He threw his arms around the animal impulsively, which resulted in his face being licked and being enveloped by the aroma of six eaten rabbits. He gave a groan of disgust and wiped his face dry with his sleeve. Then they went on towards the others.
Ahren arrived at the lodgings and found Falk, Uldini and Jelninolan at breakfast. The atmosphere suggested that they’d been having a friendly conversation and they greeted him heartily. He sat down beside them and Culhen made a beeline for the corner of the communal room where a bowlful of rabbit was waiting for him.
Falk looked over in amusement and said, ‘your wolf will get fat if he carries on eating like that. Soon he’ll only be able to howl at the Dark Ones because he’ll be too heavy to budge’.
Culhen glanced back, the picture of injured innocence, before continuing to eat. Jelninolan smiled and responded, ‘and he’s vain. There was no need for his howling yesterday, the song would have brought forth the memory anyway. But he wanted to show off’.
The animal gave a quiet whimper but carried on eating.
Uldini shook his head. ‘I’m telling you, he’s slowly beginning to understand every word we say. It seems it’s not only his tummy that’s growing’, and he tapped his head.
Ahren- the 13th Paladin Page 35
