Gods of the Forevergreen
Prologue
**Sunstream...? Sunstream, can you hear me....?**
Sunstream slowly stirred, slowly pulled himself out of oblivion. At first the throbbing pain in his head was the only voice, drowning out even his lifemate’s sending. But slowly he began to remember.
The call, the sending picture of a rich forest, so like the Great Holt...
The journey across the Vastdeep in the Palace to Sorrow’s End....
The shorter flight down into the wild rain forests Windkin liked to call the Forevergreen...
The long trek through the jungle in search of the mysterious elf who refused to answer Sunstream’s repeated calls...
The many days and nights following a winding river deeper into the dark forest...
The attack. The humans. The company scattering.
Kimo changing into a wolf. The humans recoiling in horror. A moment’s grace bought.
The blow to his head. Dart scooping him up in his arms, leaping onto Kimo’s back.
Yun and Wavecatcher taking to the river for safety.
Windkin seizing Quicksilver and flying to safety.
And Spar... Spar?
**Malin...** Quicksilver called gently.
Sunstream slowly opened his eyes. He lay on his back, Quicksilver bending over his fallen body. She pressed a cold compress of wet leaves to his forehead. “Are you with me, cloudhead?” she asked, smiling weakly. She was trying to sound cheerful. But she was very worried. He could always tell.
“What... what happened?” Sunstream moaned. “The others...?”
Dart crouched alongside Quicksilver. “The humans leapt out at us, Sunstream, do you remember?”
“Uhn... yes...” he licked his lips. “They... they spoke our language. They said ‘sky spirits.’”
Dart nodded gravely.
Sunstream tried to sit up, but his head swam. “Easy now,” Quicksilver gently supported his shoulders and eased him up. “You’re lucky that club caught you where it did.”
Sunstream waited for the vertigo to pass. He saw Kimo, still in wolf form, drinking greedily from the little creek. Windkin floated in the air a few feet overhead.
“Where are the others?” Sunstream demanded, panic rising in his throat. “Where are Yun and Wavecatcher? Where is Spar?”
Yun held her breath until she felt her lungs were about to burst and clung to Wavecatcher’s shoulders for dear life as he swam through the murky river, carrying them both forward with powerful strokes of his shapechanged tail. The human arrows and blowgun darts no longer pierced the surface of the water, but now they were swimming under a heavy layer of branches and fronds that had washed into the river. The surface was still out of reach.
She could faintly hear a distant sending buzzing in her head. But she could not divert any attention. Stars were exploding beneath her closed eyelids. She felt as though she were about to burst.
**Sharn!** she begged. **I can’t breathe.**
His sending was calm, almost unnervingly so. **I know, Yun. Hang on. I see a patch of air up ahead.**
She couldn’t hold her breath any longer. She exhaled, and a flurry of bubbles stung her face. Her head was spinning. She felt she was about to black out.
Suddenly they surfaced, and Yun drew in a ragged breath of air. Droplets of water about her lips went in with the air, and she gasped and coughed. Wavecatcher wasn’t even winded. The same powers that allowed him to self-shape a tail in water gave him almost supernatural lung capacity. And despite over three hundred years lifemated to the mer-elf, Yun had never managed to learn the deep breathing techniques he tried to teach her.
“Augh...” Yun coughed again. She was limp as seaweed. She struggled to raise her head and look around. They had surfaced in a small pool, not dissimilar to the one where she and the Islander had met years before. The jungle was still, the only sounds those of small birds.
Wavecatcher turned, treading water with slow strokes of his tail. “Hey, hey,” he gathered her in his arms and pressed his forehead to hers. “How’s my pretty lander?”
“Just a little... out of breath,” she murmured.
“We’re safe now. The humans are gone.” He stroked her hair back from her face. “You all right now, hmm?”
She nodded. “Think so. Someone... sending... under there.”
“Quicksilver. I answered her. She knows we’re safe.”
Yun smiled wanly. She had inherited too much of her mother’s Go-Back blood. She could never send very well over distances, and certainly not when panic adrenaline took over her blood.
“The others?”
“They’re safe... I think. You ready to hit the land?”
“Never been more ready.” Yun released his shoulders and dogpaddled for shore. She hauled herself on the ground and struggled to stand. “Ohh, little shaky,” she murmured, swaying on her feet.
Wavecatcher swam to the edge of the pond. With one powerful stoke of his tail, he rose up out of the water, shapechanging in mid-air. His silver-blue tail split in half, and his tail-fins shaped into feet. In an instant, he was once again bipedal, a scanty leather loincloth his only clothing, shaped fins on his wrists and calves the only signs of his selfshaping power.
Yun put a hand to her forehead and concentrated. **‘Silver... where are you?**
**Yun! We’re... east of you, I think. Yes. Head towards my sending.**
“Ready to run?” Yun asked Wavecatcher.
He stretched. “Little knot in my leg. Nothing I can’t shake off. Let’s go.”
The two jogged through the underbrush, stirring countless insects and small rodents. Yun saw a low hanging tree branch and she caught it, flipping herself up into the trees. Wavecatcher followed without missing a beat. He had adapted to the Wolfrider way much faster than she had to the Islander way.
They bounded from branch to branch, racing through the darkened jungle. It wasn’t long before Quicksilver’s sending star, feeble at first to Yun’s mind, grew bright and strong.
Yun dropped down from the trees into the clearing. Their kin was waiting for them alongside a shallow stream. Kimo lingered in wolf-form, while Quicksilver nursed Sunstream’s head wound and Dart and Windkin patrolled the perimeter on foot and in the air.
“Yun!” Quicksilver leapt up and rushed to her sister’s side. “Sister!” she hugged her. “I was so worried. Wavecatcher – are you two all right?”
“We’re both fine. What about you? Is everyone safe?”
Windkin floated back to the ground. Kimo got to his feet and shape-changed back into his elf form. Dart helped Sunstream rise to his feet. Yun looked around. Spar was nowhere to be found.
She drew in a breath. “Where’s Spar?”
“I... I carried Quicksilver up into the trees out of reach of the blowgun darts,” Windkin explained. “I couldn’t carry Spar too. And when I went back for her...”
“The humans,” Sunstream filled in.
“Did they... is she...?” Yun couldn’t bring herself to ask.
“She was alive when I saw her last. I tried to reach her – but I couldn’t. The humans were surrounding her... they drove me off with darts and arrows. I heard her calling for me. And then,” Windkin frowned. “I heard them speak. They spoke our tongue! The accent was strange. But I heard them say ‘Take her to Lord Kamara. Take her to Door.’”
“Stars...” Yun breathed. She looked to Sunstream and Quicksilver, and they looked equally grave. Wavecatcher looked from one elf to another, completely mystified.
“Who is Door?”
She was being led somewhere. She could feel someone pushing her, pulling her, picking her up and carrying her when her drugged steps faltered.
“Ohh... what a beautiful spirit...”
“Hair like sunset fire...”
“Eyes like jade...”
“And she has come to us?”
She was still dreaming from the poison in those tiny needles they had shot into her neck. She thought they were speaking in the elfin tongue.
She blacked out again, as she had many times on the long march. When the humans had first seized her, she had been bundled in cloth and carried on the back of a large five-finger. She vaguely remembered a trek through tall grass, spires of sharp gray rocks guarding a five-finger village, and great buildings of stone rising all around her, trimmed with precious metals. What strange manner of humans were these that built villages of stone and gold instead of wood and thatch?
When she came to again, she heard a man’s voice growling loudly. “Is she awake? Is she alive? It will be all your heads if the spirit dies on us! Yes, they can die. If they can bleed, they can die!”
No... it wasn’t the poison. They were speaking the elf tongue!
She was set on her feet. She blinked and struggled to keep her eyes open. Drowsiness tugged at her eyelids, and she wobbled like a wolf pup on dreamberries. She was in a stone room, lit only by a few glowing coals set in golden braziers. There were no windows, no silver starlight. The human she had heard growling in that harsh dialect of her own language was only visible as a glowering shadow, hovering near one of the braziers.
“She must be made ready,” the shadow ordered.
“Yes, m’lord Kamara.”
“Kamara...” Spar rolled the word on her lips.
“The spirit speaks!”
“Quiet! The spirit is tired. It is a hard journey to descend from the heavens. She does not know what she says. Now shut your mouths and dress her as befits as goddess.”
Spar looked up. She was surrounded by three women in simple cloth dresses, ornamented with gold collars and bracelets. Their faces were broad: tanned planes of cheekbones and foreheads. They wore their black hair simply bound in low tails. Their dark eyes glowed in the dim light and their smiles were kind.
They weren’t going to harm her, she could read their peaceful intentions on their faces. But the shadow in the corner – she was not so certain about him.
“M’lord Kamara, we have nothing her size.”
“She is so small... are all woman-spirits this small?”
“Stop your chatter!” Kamara barked. “If you have nothing to fit her, then make something new. I want her dazzling as a bird of paradise when we take her to her mate.”
Mate?
Suddenly the women’s hands were everywhere, stripping her of her garments. Her leather tunic, her skirt, her gauntlets and boots, all were taken from her. Spar tried to fight their grasping hands, but she was still too weak. She could only slump against the tallest of the women as the others started laving her limbs with scented water.
She was in no condition to fight, and she feigned another lapse into unconsciousness. She had always been good and pretending to be asleep. It was a game she and Yun and Quicksilver had played together when they were all cubs together. One would pretend to sleep, the others would try to make her laugh with tickling and jokes so dreadful they always brought a smile to the face.
Now she let her head roll back against the supporting hand of the woman, and she listened carefully with her wolf’s senses.
“Why... delicate as a child but with a woman’s body...” one of the woman murmured. “Truly this is a goddess from the sky."
“Aina,” she heard Kamara growl under his breath.
“Yes m’lord,” another distant voice, low and gutteral with masculine growls. Spar winced under the woman’s washcloth. How they slaughtered the beautiful birdsong of the elfin speech.
“The others, with the red-crowned one... describe them again.”
Her kin. Had they escaped? In her weakened condition, she had not been able to manage a clear sending to Sunstream.
“My lord, it was dark.”
“Answer me. You led the war party. What did you see?”
“My lord, they were all of that one’s height, more or less. Some were darkly tanned, others white as milk like this one. They were all possessed of varied powers. One could float on the air like our god. Another transformed his legs into a tail and dove into the river, taking one of the females with him.”
“A bouto?”
“I did not see him transform completely. But yes, my lord, I think so.”
“Hrmmm... I never believed the native superstitions... river dolphins that became men and seduced maidens into the deep water... but you say he was not as tall as a man?”
“No, my lord. He was the tallest of them, I believe, but still, not even up to my shoulder.”
“And the others. You said one was a werewolf? Is that all superstition, or did you actually see him change.”
“I did, my lord. One moment he was a small lad, no taller than my own son. Very dark skin, and blue-black hair. He wore... a blue loincloth about his hips. And as I watched he twisted and shaped into a black wolf, with the same blue cloth about his furred neck. Two of the spirits escaped us upon his back.”
Spar struggled not to let on she heard, struggled to keep her smile buried. So her kin had fled. They would soon come for her.
“Suppose the legends of the heathens are true, my lord? Suppose the woods are filled with spirits?”
“We would have seen signs of them by now. No. These came here in answer to our god’s foolish calls for other spirits. Now as you value your hide, Aina, you will keep your mouth shut about the others. As far as the people know, there is but one new spirit come to us. No bouto, and no werewolves. Understand?”
“Yes, my lord.”
The women had finished bathing her and brushing her hair, and now they were festooning her with ornaments. Spar flinched and squirmed as she felt them pawing her again. One woman dipped her fingers in some oily lotion or paint, and began to draw designs on her left arm, on her torso. A line of cold dots sprouted from shoulder to hip, and Spar couldn’t be still any longer. She fought the intrusive fingers tracing a pattern down her breast, down her stomach. But the woman holding her was strong, and she could do little beside shudder and snarl.
They placed rings and strange slips of gold over her fingers, until her hands were weighed down with metal. They wound ribbon as soft as moth-fabric about her right arm. They tied feathers in her hair and hung heavy golden rings from her earlobes, having discarded the delicate hoops she normally wore. They hung a feathered girdle about her hips, then a long pannelled skirt overtop, secured with cool gold chains. She felt them lifting her feet to tie more cloth and jewels to her ankles and her arches. Her shoulders were heaped with segmented gold bands until she bore a heavy collar that stretched from her throat to her breasts.
“Our Goddess Redcrown...” one of them whispered.
“So beautiful...”
“Enough!” Kamara came closer, and Spar took the risk of opening her eyes and lifting her head. The burly human stood before, seeming almost twice her height to her drug-blurred eyes. He had rich brown-black hair cut to his broad shoulders, and a heavy crown of gold and feathers crowning his scarred face.
Other elves often sneered that all humans looked alike, but Spar’s keen eyes noticed an immediate difference between this Kamara and the women who held her down. Where their faces were broad, all wide cheeks and brown skin, Kamara’s face was narrower, his cheekbones sharper, his skin lighter and his eyes slyer. He did not avert those dark eyes as the women did, but stared right back at Spar, challenge in his gaze.
“Guards!” he barked, not taking his eyes off the elf.
The man he had been talking to, Aina, shuffled closer, accompanied by two guards almost as tall as Kamara. Spar’s eyes flitted to Aina, and saw he was of the same type as the women, slighter in build with wider, kinder-seeming faces. The guards, however, were clearly of Kamara’s tribe.
“Take her!” Kamara ordered. “She is ready for her mate.”
The guards pushed the women away, and suddenly Spar was lifted off the ground, one human holding either arm, carrying her slung between them. Her head spun, and Spar hung her head to conserve energy.
“The goddess is so small...” one whispered.
“Quiet!” Kamara boomed.
They carried her down a narrow corridor, and against her will Spar recalled her parents’ sending-pictures of Blue Mountain, and Quicksilver’s sending-pictures of the caverns Two-Edge had built under the rubble that now remained. Intricately carved stone pressed around her from all sides.
Finally they reached the end of the hallway, and a heavy wooden door which Kamara wrenched open on its metal hinges. “Bring her in,” he commanded the guards, who carried Spar over the threshold.
Light. The red glow of burning torches set in the walls, and the silver starlight let in from above, through an intricately carved skylight in the roof. Suddenly the guards released her, and Spar was dumped unceremoniously to the floor, her fall barely broken by the woven carpet.
She lifted her head and her breath caught in her throat.
There was a large stone throne set against the wall before her. And sitting upon it was an elf.
A Glider, he had to be, for he was almost as tall as the Tall Ones that crouched about his throne deferentially. He was clad in red and black robes, trimmed with feathers and gold braid. A metal skullcap ornamented with silver feathers concealed whatever hair he might have, and accentuated the sharpness of his cheekbones. His gray eyes pierced her to the core.
“Who... who are you?” the Glider asked.
Kamara answered before she could. “Almighty Door. Your calls into the night have been answered. See what a spirit you have called door from the heavens. Your mate – come to be one with you and rule alongside you.”
“Door?” Spar remembered the old tales of Blue Mountain and the collapse of the Great Egg. How Skywise had been imprisoned, how Swift had forced the male Door to release him, how the three of them had escaped as the entire structure came down around them. How Door, lost inside his own mind, had been left with the Hoan-G’Tay-Sho as their guardian spirit.
“Mate?” Door looked at Spar uncertaintly. Spar struggled to rise to her knees.
“You... you heard my sending,” Door breathed. “I cannot tell you... I feared... feared I was the only one left alive... after the mountain fell.”
“No,” Spar said. “There are many of us,” she spoke guardedly, mindful of Kamara, but fearful to send. In her state she might well reveal more than she wanted. “Families upon families.”
“Families in the sky,” Kamara said smoothly, moving to Spar’s side. “But what does that matter to you, Almighty, now that you have a companion at last, and now that we have a goddess to worship.”
“I don’t want to be worshipped!” Spar snapped at Kamara. “I want to be set free.”
“Quiet, wench,” he hissed under his breath. “You’ll be a caged goddess or you’ll be a free corpse!”
“A mate...” Door repeated, his gaze still on Spar. “Come closer, child.”
Spar hesitated.
“Do not be afraid,” he beckoned. “Let me see you better.”
Still Spar didn’t move. Kamara’s patience snapped and he seized a handful of her auburn hair. “Obey your master, Goddess Redcrown!” he growled as he dragged her across the floor by her hair. He dumped her at the foot of Door’s throne and shoved her head down so her forehead touched his knees.
Spar’s head snapped up as soon as he released her, and she glared up at Door. But Door still bore a dazed look of dreamy contentment. He cupped her chin with one long-fingered hand and gazed into her eyes. “What is your name?” he asked.
Spar was silent, defying Kamara to strike her again, defying Door to pinch her chin and shake her. She grit her teeth and tensed her muscles, ready to fly at her tormentors.
**Your name.** Door repeated calmly.
Spar winced at the intensity of his sending. It reached deep inside her pierced her very soul. A clear shaft of light broke through her defenses, illuminating what she had trained herself to kept carefully hidden. It was not an attack she could defend against, but something else – a request so powerful she could not ignore it.
His silver eyes had imprisoned her.
**Sohn,** she replied breathlessly.
Elfquest copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2014 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts