The
cavalry troop wheeled about, placing Konowa and Visyna at the front
of their formation. Konowa turned his head slightly to speak to
Visyna.
"I thought I saw the air shimmering back
there," he said, turning around a bit more. "If I didn't know
better, I'd say it was some kind of mag—" He didn't get to complete
his sentence as the horse suddenly shifted underneath him, knocking
his left foot out of the stirrup. He started to slide off, then
felt her hands wrap around his waist and pull him back.
"You should pay more attention to your
riding," she said. Her hands stayed around his waist even after he
had his foot back in the stirrup, and he decided keeping his mouth
shut was the better course.
Movement far off to the right pulled his eyes
away, and Konowa caught a glimpse of black and red fur. He smiled.
Jir could trail them from a safe distance and had the speed and
stamina to keep up, as long as he didn't try to mark too many trees
along the way. Konowa was still watching the forest when the
sergeant steered his horse in front of Konowa's, causing him to
pull up.
"Um, it's a bit dangerous out here, sir,
m'lady, and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind taking the rear of
the column? It would ease my mind to know we had an officer of your
caliber back there watching out for us, sir." He doffed his helmet
to Visyna and smiled.
"You think that's necessary?" Konowa asked,
puzzled by the request. Visyna gave his waist the smallest of
squeezes, but it was enough to lighten his heart. "Good idea,"
Konowa said before the sergeant could change his mind.
He was in such a good mood he decided he might
have misjudged the cavalry all these years, their most recent
attempt to kill him notwithstanding. To be fair, that was
everyone's reaction until they got to know him. He was thinking of
telling the Duke how impressed he was with his men when he
overheard one of the troopers talking to a mate.
"Bloody hell, I thought the sarge would never
get that bugger downwind."
"You there," Konowa said loudly, startling the
man who had just spoken. "Yes, sir," he said, reining in his mount
to ride alongside them.
"I've been away from the civilized world for a
while, perhaps you'd be so kind as to catch me up on what has
transpired in the Empire this past year."
The man's eyes widened even as his nose
twitched. Before the trooper could answer, Visyna whispered in
Konowa's ear. "Sergeant Lorian has a rather large horse, I could
always ride with him if you'd prefer."
"On the other hand, I'm sure Ms. Tekoy will be
able to fill me in. Dismissed," he said, finding that giving an
order after all this time wasn't so hard after all. The trooper
saluted and quickly cantered up to the front of the column, leaving
Konowa and Visyna alone.
"You really do have a way with people, don't
you?" she said.
Konowa tried turning again the saddle, but
gave up when more pain lanced across his chest. "It started at a
young age. The point is, or rather, was," he said, waving at the
lost point of his own ear, "that if you were born with a black tip,
Her taint was believed to run deep in the blood. To the elves of
the Hynta, especially the Long Watch, it doesn't get much worse
than that. Not that long ago, they just abandoned a marked baby on
the plains beyond the forest to die. So no, if I don't get along
well with others, it might be because most have always wanted me
dead. It tends to make one a little…antisocial."
"But why mark babes? Why would the Shadow
Monarch do such a thing?"
Konowa shrugged. "Only She knows, and She
isn't saying. All I know is that's the hand I and the other Iron
Elves were dealt, and we've played it as best we can."
"I was dealt a different hand," Visyna said,
moving her hands underneath his shirt and resting them on his ribs.
"Perhaps I can change your outlook on things in some small
way."
Konowa raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
Her hands probed along his rib cage with care, but it still
hurt.
"Easy, woman, they're bruised enough already,"
he said.
She pulled her hands away from his chest and
began rummaging in a small cloth bag she carried. "Your name, Heer
Ul-Osveen, it sounds Calahrian."
"One of the finest in the Calahrian Empire,"
Konowa said. He shifted his behind in the saddle, trying to find
the right up-and-down rhythm with the horse. "Lieutenant Osveen
held off a force of a thousand orcs with only ten men at the battle
of Yacat Gorge. That was during the Border Troubles a century
ago."
"Is there a time in the Empire's history that
it didn't have border troubles?" Visyna asked.
Konowa let the barb slide. "The orcs could
have gone around the gorge and taken the small outpost the
lieutenant and his men were guarding, but the hairy buggers were
compelled to fight, and Osveen and his men slaughtered them."
"Compelled?" Visyna asked, leaning forward to
rest her chin against his right shoulder.
"Osveen had been a playwright before joining
the army. His greatest claim to fame was creating amusing limericks
for his plays. Ah, but you're the daughter of the great Almak
Tekoy. Perhaps your ears are a bit too tender for something like
that."
Konowa swore he could feel the skin of her
cheek turn hot.
"My ears are in fitter shape than yours," she
said.
"You wound me, madam."
Visyna went back to rummaging. "So tell me one
of these limericks."
Konowa readjusted again in the saddle and gave
it some thought. "Let me see…
A
witch had a useless new suitor.
His
device was unable to suit her.
So
she went to her potions,
set
a new spell in motion
and
inserted a newt instead of a
neuter."
Visyna stopped what she was doing. "And this
would make orcs want to fight?"
Konowa shook his head. "No, Osveen came up
with a bunch of limericks and other insults to draw the orcs into a
fight."
"Newts have no intrinsic magical properties,
you know," Visyna continued. "I don't understand why a witch would
have any around in the first place."
"It's just a—I mean it's supposed to be
funny," Konowa said.
"But it isn't, is it? Ah!" Visyna exclaimed,
patting his arm, "now I understand. You chose his name because like
you, he's not very funny either, right?"
Konowa tried to remember why he'd hated being
alone in the forest and was having a hard time doing it.
"I chose it because Osveen was a rogue, taking
on overwhelming odds with little more than a sword and his wits.
Besides, I had to. Elves who leave their tribe and are rejec—who
choose not to join the Long Watch must leave behind their
pulchta,
their dream-name."
"Not really funny at all," she said,
completely ignoring his explanation. "Raise your arms again." A
pungent smell filled the air, at once musky and acidic.
"What are you doing back there?" Konowa asked,
doing as he was told nonetheless. A moment later something wet and
cold attached itself to his chest. He opened his eyes and, looking
down through the wide neck of his shirt, saw Visyna plastering
leaves over the broken rib, a brown goo holding them in place.
"Not so tight," he muttered, but the feeling
was surprisingly good. "You're very good with your hands," he said,
closing his eyes as the pain began to subside.
"Not just my hands," she said, beginning to
squeeze the leaves tighter against his skin. The wet poultice on
his chest grew fire hot, and he began to sweat. His breathing
slowed and he felt himself falling off the horse.
"What the—" was all he managed before she
pulled him upright as if he weighed no more than a baby. The air
shimmered as his vision blurred and every muscle in his body flowed
like water. A moment later, Konowa was standing in the birthing
meadow of the Wolf Oaks, which meant he was dreaming, which annoyed
him no end. I know how this goes
already, he told himself, frustrated that his
own mind would betray him by making him relive the first great
humiliation of his life. He tried to race through the scene so that
he could move on to something else, but the view before him refused
to change.
Accepting the inevitable, he walked to the
center of the birthing meadow, brushing past the young sapling cubs
stretching themselves skyward. The sun was high overhead, yet with
each step the air got noticeably colder, and the grass beneath his
feet began to crackle. Strange, he thought, remembering his time in
the meadow as quite warm. Now, however, frost was spreading out to
cover everything. Most of the sapling cubs were big enough that the
frost had no effect on them, but one tiny Wolf Oak began to bow,
its slender trunk slowly curving toward the earth as its leaves
started to blacken.
He walked toward the little sapling cub and
then stopped short. It was silver. Only once in many decades was a
silver born to the Wolf Oaks, and not without cost. Even as he
recalled that there had been no silver when he had gone to the
birthing meadow, another elf entered the meadow and walked toward
the sapling cub. She was young, and beautiful, her eyes filled with
love and concern for the little tree. A voice sounded in his head
then, a scared, weak voice begging for help. It was the sapling
cub, and it was dying.
Konowa swayed on his feet, overcome with the
power in that small, fragile voice. It yearned for life, for the
chance to grow its roots deep into the earth and stretch its
branches high into the open sky. Never in his life had he felt such
need, such desire to live.
More elves filled the meadow, and it was clear
that unlike the elf before Konowa, the silver Wolf Oak's pleas
would find no solace with them.
"Pwik tola
misk jin—to life the strongest," said the
elves of the Long Watch, turning and leaving the birthing
meadow.
Tears of sorrow and rage welled up in the elf
woman's eyes as she stared after the departing elves. Konowa
understood her anger and her grief.
"We must save it," he said, hoping there might
yet be a way. "We have to save it."
The scene before him suddenly changed, and he
was now standing on top of a black, bare mountain, the wind tearing
at his clothes. He shivered with the cold, his breath coming in
painful bursts. The little sapling cub was now a full-grown Wolf
Oak, but twisted and jagged, its roots stabbing the rocky ground
beneath it while its branches flailed at the sky. Thick, black
ichor oozed from its trunk, staining the once-silver bark, and the
voice that had cried out for life now raged with an insane,
consuming fury.
The elf from the meadow was there, too,
stepping between the slashing branches, which parted for her. She
rested a hand on its trunk, uncaring of the ichor that ran over her
skin, lighting it afire in a blaze of black frost. She was no
longer young and beautiful, age and something more having carved
great lines into her features. Her eyes, however, were still filled
with concern and love, but with an intensity that froze Konowa to
the bone when he looked into them.
"Now, I will
save you, too," the Shadow Monarch said,
reaching out with her burning, cold hand and touching the tip of
his left ear.
In his nightmare, Konowa burned.
