The Revenge of the Elves (5 page)

“How would he find us?” Cairn asked.

“He knows you’re with the boy, Robyn. I’d go after what’s dear to those I want the most,” Filaree said.

“Tamarand?” Cairn questioned.

“That would be the logical choice. Or Avalain,” Filaree suggested, “… if he thinks I’m the weaker link in this chain.”
Avalain. Will I ever see it again? There’s so much to do before I can go home and so little time.

“Tomas is in Avalain with Preston and Elion. They too are under Sidra’s protection,” Robyn said.

“You know that for certain Robyn?” Filaree asked. He was a Chosen. He learned of things in ways she could not.

“Sidra told me.” Filaree frowned at Robyn’s mention of her name.

“She told you?” Cairn asked.

“Yes, in a manner of speaking.”

“She came to him in a dream,” Davmiran added, and they all looked at him, Robyn most curiously of all.

“How did you know that, Dav? I didn’t tell anyone,” Robyn asked. As usual, his voice was emotionless.

“She came to me too, in a manner of speaking, that is,” he answered. “At first, I thought it was just another dream or maybe someone from my past, and that my memory was starting to come back to me. For a moment I imagined she was Mira,” he said, glancing at Cairn. “But, she spoke of my brother and of Avalain and the shield surrounding that city too. She told me not to try to contact him, to be careful and to remember the prophesies.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about this, Dav?” Filaree asked. “It might have been helpful.” It unnerved her that he kept such important information to himself. In battle, every fact was important and battle was approaching. She knew it. She felt it.

“It only happened last evening. I did intend to tell you all when we were together.”

“I too waited until now to say anything, though I saw both Filaree and Cairn already this morning,” Robyn explained. “Sidra’s influence is strong and she has her own reasons for doing what she does. But I’ve found no cause to mistrust her.”

“Maybe. But you still don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing. She seems far too able to move freely within your minds, this Sidra woman,” Filaree cautioned.
And to manipulate you if she wants. You don’t even know why you withheld this information.
“Why doesn’t she just come forward and talk to us in a normal manner?”

“She’s not a normal woman,” Robyn replied. “The Chosen communicate in many different ways that don’t always entail face to face conversations. That’s never bothered you, Filaree. Why then does Sidra’s behavior cause you concern?”

“Frankly, I don’t know, “ she confessed.
But it does. And it should bother you too.
“I’m not comfortable with the idea that your thoughts are being influenced. Should I be? Should you be? I can’t accept something that has no practical explanation. I know very little about her and that alone is reason for caution at the least. I respect her independence, but respect and trust are two different things. She’s too willing to manipulate from a distance without joining our forces. If we’re on the same side, then why not come forward? What does she fear from us?”
What does she want from us?
she wondered. She looked at Davmiran. He seemed calm, his eyes wide like a child’s.
He’s not ready, she repeated to herself again.

“I wish I knew,” Robyn replied. “She’s acting no differently now than ever before, though she’s more involved with the world’s affairs than in the past. When the time’s right she’ll be direct. You two would get along well, Filaree despite your reservations. You are similar in many ways.”

“Similar? Is that a compliment, Robyn?” she asked. “I don’t play games. If I have something to say, I say it.”
And you are far too taken with this woman.

“It’s a compliment nonetheless,” he replied. His admiration for both women was strong, though he found it easier to express his feelings for Sidra.

“I’ll reserve my judgment for another time. I’d like to ask her a few questions face to face first,” Filaree said.
More than a few. And she’s brought Avalain into the mix as well. And my mother.

“So Tomas is safe behind her shield too?” Cairn asked.

“And Avalain as well for the time being. Whether or not the shield causes Colton’s eyes to pass over a place without seeing what lies within it, I cannot determine. Though his power reached out to Parth when we first arrived, it didn’t pursue us once we entered. It was as if we vanished,” Robyn recalled.

“Parth is a special place, Robyn,” Cairn reminded him. “The confluence of power here beneath the ground offers protection of its own. It’s not merely the shield that is sheltering us.”

“Together these forces may have drawn that attack while at the same time, they may render Parth invisible to his eyes. What does he see when he gazes this way?” Filaree asked.

“Invisible or unimportant at least,” Davmiran said. Talk of Colton made his senses tingle.

“A Lalas can mask its location. Parth has benefitted from that ability. A mind such as Colton’s cannot gaze upon this place clearly,” Robyn explained.

“But what of Avalain?” Filaree asked. “He knows of its existence. How safe is Tomas there?”
My father’s Lalas is dead. What protects Avalain? Sidra alone?

“If the shield around Avalain is similar to this one, he’s safe for the time being. And though Colton does know the location of the city, I believe Sidra’s shield affords it anonymity that makes it seem unimportant. They’re secure behind it. I hope they don’t do anything to reveal themselves prematurely.” A long rumble of thunder shook the ground and Robyn looked to the east. “Tamarand will be his next target.”

“To flush you out,” Filaree agreed.

“Colton must think I won’t be able to sit idly by if he attacks my homeland. If I reveal myself, he may hope I’ll lead him to Dav.”

“Will you be able to, Robyn?” Cairn asked.

“Do nothing, you mean, if Concordia is in peril? No,” he said without emotion.

“So you will play right into his hands? I don’t believe you Robyn,” Filaree scoffed. “You wouldn’t risk the boy that way.”

“All I said is that I will do something, Filaree. I didn’t say I need reveal myself while doing it. Promanthea resides near Concordia. If Colton attacks the city, for the first time he will have to confront one of the trees head-on.”

“You think he’s now ready to face Promanthea directly?” Cairn asked, appalled.

“It could be,” Robyn replied gravely.

The network of trees had weakened, but the idea of the Dark One invading an area where a Lalas still lived was unthinkable.

“Robyn? Can Promanthea withstand this if it happens? Is he strong enough? And what will become of you if he cannot?” Davmiran asked. A Chosen always died with his tree. They knew this only too well.

“He will prevail.” Robyn’s words were muted. “He is powerful and he won’t relinquish his moment before he decides to. No one else will make that choice for him.”

“Things have changed. They’re changing everyday. How can you be sure of this anymore?” Filaree asked.
Count the number of Lalas who already died. And we’re standing here talking. Talking!
“There are others to consider. We have much still to do. You have much still…” She paced back and forth, her impatience cloying at her.

“I will know. And I will tell you all if the time should come,” Robyn replied, cutting her off. “It’s the way of a Lalas and a Chosen,” he continued, looking only at Davmiran. “It has always been so. And I’m not ready to die.”

“Will you go to him?” Cairn asked.

“My responsibilities lie here with Dav and with you. There is much we don’t know, that we don’t understand. No one has ever killed a Lalas. The only trees who have died are those who chose to. If Promanthea decides it’s his time to depart, I will accept that. But if Colton attempts to kill him, there will be a battle like the earth has never seen before!”

“I think it’s all gamesmanship on his part. He wouldn’t dare,” Filaree began. “He’s suffered defeats, one after another. Though the trees weaken and the Gem’s light fades, can we really say Colton is responsible for that? He has had more success in generating fear than in actual victories on the battlefield.” She knew what fear could do to an army’s morale, but a good commander could overcome that.
A Lalas would never be afraid. Still, they’re choosing to die. Choosing it. Why? Why?

“She’s right. His major campaigns have been failures. What we do know is that things are happening at a time when the Dark Lord is being more aggressive. We do not know if he is the cause of them,” Robyn commented.

“We must find the Gem!” Cairn said. “Davmiran must find it. If we can locate it and free it from whatever is constraining it, then perhaps the trees will want to live once more. Isn’t that what we are hoping for? Isn’t that why we were summoned to Dav’s side to begin with?”

“If that is what’s causing them to behave this way,” Filaree said. “We don’t know for sure. No one does.”

“You should contact Promanthea, Robyn,” Davmiran said. “You have waited long enough.”

Scowling, Robyn’s face reddened. This was an uncomfortable and difficult subject for him. Doubts plagued him that he didn’t wish to confront. Doubts and suspicions.

“I shall. And my father too,” he added. “They both must hear from me. I need to tell them I can’t return in any case.”

“Maybe they can tell us something that may help here. We can’t remain in Parth forever. We must begin the quest as soon as possible,” Filaree said. “Each day, each moment we delay is dangerous. I’m beginning to feel as if we’re in a cage, not a shelter. The boy is strong, we all agree. We have spent weeks working with him. Maybe we should leave now,” she said. “Robyn? You were the one who said we must accelerate his training. How much time do we have?”
Strong, but not strong enough
, she brooded.

“I will speak with Promanthea,” Robyn replied. He was tentative, worried. His whole demeanor changed. “Let us discuss this further after he and I confer.”

“Good,” Cairn said.

“Okay, later,” Filaree replied, after a moment’s hesitation. “And you, Dav? What do you think?” She looked at him, but he didn’t respond.

Davmiran’s senses reeled. Though he appeared settled, the shards assaulted his thoughts with a thousand images, flooding his mind with memories. His head felt as if it would explode as the visions rushed madly before his inner eye. In opposition to this chaos, the ring washed his soul in rivulets of power, calming him, helping him to maintain his equilibrium. Reaching under his shirt, he grasped it tight in his hand. Behind shut eyelids, a familiar face loomed, though he could not put a name to it no matter how hard he tried. The voices of his friends called to him, but they were muffled and unclear.

His lips struggled to mouth the words. “We… we must wait for the sister’s return. Promanthea knows this. He will tell you.” The voices of the dead screamed in his head. “She… she has something. Something important. Something I need.”

Chapter Seven

Fallean closed his fist and stilled the magic. Turning, he confronted his captors, a look of resignation upon his face. He hung his shoulders and slumped forward, trudging along with the others. Shaking his head so that only they could see, he signaled to his companions to fall in line behind him. They allowed Madar and Teren to lead them up the path and into the woods ahead.

The trees reached out their branches to the trespassers, catching their already ragged clothing and shredding it further. Twigs wrapped around their boots like snakes and their heels sunk into hidden holes, forcing them to stare at the earth so they wouldn’t trip and fall. Dust rose from the dry soil with each plodding step, and hung in the dead air, making it difficult to breathe.

The uneven path was littered with rocks and other debris in various stages of disintegration. It forked a number of times and Madar grizzled his brow and pondered each one before choosing which to follow. He had never been in these woods before and he knew only that to get to Peltaran they had to march through them and over the rise upon which the pathetic trees grew. The alternative was to walk around the perimeter of the forest, and that would take too much time. If they tried that on foot, they would never reach their rendezvous point by the required date as they had no horses or wagons to speed the journey. The deadline was fast approaching and the incline of the hill rose before them still.

“Damn, I hate this!” Teren said. Perspiration dripped from his forehead. “It’s fucking hot!” he whined from the rear, while tying a dirty rag around his head of thinning hair.

“You bitch more than an old woman,” Madar replied, his patience worn thin. “You think I like this heat any better than you? I’m just keepin’ my mind on that gold so it don’t seem so bad,” he lied. His mind was on how long this was taking and how little time he had left to deliver the prisoners to Peltaran.

“You don’t know where you’re going, do you?” Teren asked.

“What makes you say that? The town’s on the other side, so I’m takin’ us up and over so’s we can reach it. You got a better idea?”

“Nah. I ain’t never been here neither.”

“How wrong can we be if we climb up here and then down there?” he asked, pointing to what looked to be the crest of the hill. “Even if we come out a ways from the town, it can’t be far,” Madar reasoned, but his worries grew with each new step.

“I don’t give a crap just so’s we get there. I just wondered if you was guessing each time or if you knew where you was going. That’s all. Shit. Shit. Shit,” Teren cursed, untangling his foot from a root that seemed to follow him up the path. “I suppose it don’t matter none that you ain’t never been here,” he shrugged, pulling at his ankle.

As they walked on, the hill continued rising before them. It didn’t appear to be this high from the outside, and it surprised them both that it hadn’t leveled off yet. The prisoners plodded on without complaint, following their captor’s instructions. Their chains dragged along the surface, sliding smoothly over the sticks and rocks littering the trail as they walked. Teren stopped frequently to free his own legs from the twisted twigs and branches upon which they got caught, cursing and spitting his annoyance.

“Don’t stare at me that way, you!” he snapped at one of the captives. “Keep your fucking eyes away!” he warned. “Hey, Madar! Did you get a look at this fucker’s face?” he shouted to his friend. “It ain’t no normal face, no ways!”

“How so?” Madar yelled from the front of the line.

They walked in single file now as the pathway constricted where the trees grew more dense.

“Well, it ain’t like yours or mine,” he replied. “It ain’t normal at all! His eyes are slanted,” he said, while picking up a long stick from the ground. “I wonder what his ears look like?” He extended the stick toward the hood on Fallean’s cape. Grabbing it with the tip of the branch, he dragged it down behind him. “Shit! I knew it! He’s an elf.” Teren shouted.

“So. Who cares?” Madar shouted back. “I suppose the women are too. Big shit,” he responded, uninterested. “All’s I care about is that she pays us for ‘em when we get there. They could be fucking dwarves for all it matters. Stop talking and keep moving. We’re running out of time.”

Teren backed away from his captive, while Fallean crouched, glowering at him despite the warning. His face was expressionless, but his eyes burned with anger. He cocked his head and his nostrils flared as he sniffed the air again , like an animal tracking the scent of another.

“We’d better watch this fucker well,” Teren said. “I don’t like the looks of ‘em.” Yanking on the chain that bound his legs together, he forced Fallean to hop forward like a toad. Teren laughed. The two women tripped behind him as they were attached to the links as well. “If you get any fucking bright ideas, elf, think twice,” he threatened. “I ain’t got no love for you people. Give me a reason, and I’ll kill you as soon as I’d take a piss on this bush here. No one said we needed to bring you in alive.” He spit on the dry ground and laid his hand on the hilt of the dagger that stuck out of the belt around his waist.

Fallean said nothing. His expression didn’t change as he turned his head toward Teren and stared at him once again.

“What are you stupid?” Teren shouted, while elbowing Fallean hard in the shoulder. “I fucking told you to keep those evil eyes off of me! You people should stick to your own kind. Now keep your damn head down,” he ordered and slapped him on the back.

Fallean looked at the ground. Ire flowed over him like hot water in a tub and he tried hard to calm himself. He thought of the cool waves lapping at his feet on a warm spring day on the island of Merala da, and forced his anger out to sea with the image of the ebbing tide. When Teren turned away once more, he signaled to his friends to remain patient, knowing they too must have reached their limits. A blue fire leapt from finger to finger and he closed his fist around it.

“Pay them no mind,” Madar said. “All’s we got to do is get them to Peltaran and the witch woman will take care of ‘em. All’s we got to do…” he repeated to himself.

“And we’ll get our gold,” Teren flashed a greedy smile. “That almost makes being near this scum worth it,” he said, pulling his foot out from under a thick clump of moss.

The path kept ascending but they marched up it expecting at any moment for it to turn downward. Though the trees had few leaves upon their branches, they grew closer together and more dense, forming a formidable wall on either side of the group. Teren couldn’t turn around without pricking his flesh on some thorny bush or catching himself on a sharp, barren offshoot that protruded from the flanks.

He glanced upward, to ensure that the prisoner he confronted was still obeying orders. Eyeing the chains and shackles that looped around their legs and bound the three of them together, he snickered with satisfaction, emboldened by the sense of security they afforded him. His courage always waxed when he was in control.

As Madar tried to maneuver past a tight bend in the path without scratching his face and arms anymore than was necessary, the others came to a halt behind him. It was hard to avoid the thorns and the legs of his pants got tangled in the underbrush. Teren walked over to him, easing himself past the prisoners, and bent down. While trying to free his friend’s leg from the prickles that constrained it, he got his own sleeve caught up in it as well.

“Damn this place!” Madar exclaimed. “If I didn’t know no better, I’d think these bushes didn’t want us walkin’ through here.”

“Maybe we should backtrack and take a different fork,” Teren said, frustrated with the entire effort.

“It’s getting late. Besides, we’re still going up. We gotta get over the top if we wanna get to the other side.” Madar yanked his leg free of the thorns leaving a large piece of his trousers behind. “Damn!” The sun was setting.

Teren’s arms were scratched and bleeding, and Madar’s cheek was marked by a long red line that beaded up with blood as well. Curiously, none of the prisoners incurred the same difficulties.

“If this fucking path gets any narrower we won’t be able to walk up it. Then what?” Teren asked. “How much time we got left?”

“I don’t know, but it ain’t much,” Madar admitted. “Why would a path end in the middle of nowheres? It’s got to keep going. Maybe it’s just overgrown.”

“A fucking lot of good that will do us! Overgrown or not, we gotta walk on it. How long we been up here anyways? Feels like forever to me,” he complained, though his friend was already a good distance ahead of him.

As he spoke, a particularly ornery thorn on the end of a particularly ornery branch stuck in his shirt behind his right shoulder. He tried to tear it free but it was lodged deep in the fabric. Reaching over his head and attempting to grab the branch, he yelped with pain. Blood oozed from his thumb. Scrambling to break free, another branch caught upon his trouser leg. The more he struggled, the more he got tangled in the shrubbery, stuck between the sticky web of branches.

Madar continued on ahead until he disappeared from his companion’s sight completely. Teren could no longer see much of the path in front of himself, but he was so caught up in the shrubbery he hardly noticed. The bush that lodged itself in his shirt made it difficult for him to reach the ground with his hands. He dangled stupidly from the branches.

While fighting to pull himself free, he saw the elf staring at him again, and this time the prisoner’s blue eyes glowed against the backdrop of the gray scrub brush. The severity of the situation didn’t strike him yet, and his anger multiplied along with his frustration.

“You think it’s fucking funny, don’t you?” he exclaimed. “Well you won’t be laughing when I chain you to one of these damn trees and leave you up here!” he threatened, but as he spoke he realized Fallean was having no difficulty at all walking through the trees and brush, and neither were the other two prisoners. A bad feeling crept over him. He gasped for air. “What’s going on here? What the fuck are you doing?” he yelled. The thorns ripped his clothing and stuck into him, and he yelped in pain while blood oozed through the fabric everywhere. “I knew you was evil! Your fucking eyes told me so,” he said, panicked, thrashing around, and becoming more entangled the harder he tried to free himself.

Fallean raised his hand and a blue-white light formed around it, pulsing from his fingers. Teren’s face paled. He couldn’t move, he was totally caught up in the underbrush, gasping and puffing. Fear enveloped him, replacing the arrogance he’d exhibited just a scant moment ago, and he struggled to reach the dagger at his belt. A thorny tendril wound its way around his arm, yanking it over his head. Another caught his ankle, pulling it out from under him, but he didn’t fall. He hung there, suspended between the bushes a few feet off of the surface, spread eagled and trapped.

“Madar?” he shouted, but his friend didn’t reply. “Help me!” he screamed.

Fallean moved the tip of his index finger and the branches tightened their grip on Teren’s limbs, stretching him further. Fallean said nothing as he bound his captor in the thorny underbrush, twirling away while the branches danced in response. Gazing at the chains that bound his own ankles, he bent over and grasped the thick links with his illuminated hand. The metal turned to dust and disappeared.

“Come,” he said in a youthful voice to his companions. “The path down is just on the other side of these trees,” he pointed in the direction Madar had vanished.