The Road Home
Part Two
“Favored of Threksh’t was the Djun,” Korik boomed to the masses who had gathered in the High Town square for Grohmul’s funeral. Lacking a body to inter in the catacombs under the Citadel, the priests had instead laid out the Djun’s second-best armor on the bier. The nobles had already adorned the armor in their best jewels – some surrendering their treasures at knifepoint. Now the gentry glumly filed by, adding whatever trinkets they could afford.
“And though he knew that Threksh’t alone deserves our reverance, in his benevolence he had long tolerated the quaint habits of the those who worship the Hidden Ones – elves and trolls and sprites – elevating them above Threksh’t the Wrathful! In his infinite patience, the Djun held to the Pact. He declared himself Friend of Elves, though the elves have proven time and time again that they are no friends of man! And the Djun paid for his mercy with his life, when the elves who falsely promised him a shining road over the Haunted Mountain turned on him! When H’saka abandoned him! The wretched War Witch, reviled by Threksh’t – she promised him the Revelation! But she betrayed him! And the elves murdered him!
“Nobles, warriors and gentry – it is time you know! No more will Djunsmen be enslaved to the whims of the Hidden Ones! No more will we swear to a Pact our ancestors made in ignorance! Go! Take it to every corner of our realm! Be it known throughout all lands in the ten directions! The Pact is Broken. The Hidden Ones have proven themselves our enemies – now we will prove ourselves their betters!”
* * *
The Sea Holt steamed towards Port Bane at a leisurely pace. They had been plying the Vastdeep for sixteen days now, rationing their fuel carefully. When the currents were in their favor, Gypsy Moth ordered the engines cut to save on coal. The trolls of Port Bane charged nearly double what their rivals at Blue Mountain did.
Swift reclined under the palm trees of the Grove, nursing her cup of Sweet Blue. The drink was well-named on both counts: some heady blend of citrus and rum, sweet enough to make her teeth ache, the color of coral seas.
She was glad for the respite from the Palace, from the endless worries about humans and starstone and rogue elves. Drifting along on the waves under the hot summer sun, she felt something akin to the peace of the Now.
Rayek too had needed a rest, though he would never admit it. After a token show of resistance he had consented to let the Palace-pod sit unused on the aft deck, and within a few days the dark circles under his eyes began to fade, and his eyes regained their familiar brightness. If Swift cared to lift her head she could see him sitting over by the moon pool, legs dangling over the edge as he and Sea Raven practiced shaping spheres of water.
“No, no!” Sea Raven huffed in aggravation. “Augh – how many times have I told you – it’s not enough to shape the air around the water…. Honestly, I think you don’t want to learn.”
Swift smirked. Six thousand years old, a father himself, and yet when he lost his patience he still sounded like a pup on the verge of a tantrum. Pip, she corrected herself mentally. Their grandson was a Waverider to the core.
“And I think you don’t want to teach!” Swift called up into the palm fronds.
“Miss a chance to share my invaluable wisdom? Nonsense! And no, Grandfather, you’re not allowed to push me overboard – yes, I saw you considering it! You’re not exactly subtle, Master of the Palace.”
“Little point in trying. I know somehow I would end up soaking wet.”
“See, you can learn–”
“Don’t you dare–”
Now Swift had to turn her head, just in time to see Sea Raven playfully floating his messenger-sphere-sized ball of water over Rayek’s head threateningly. Rayek flicked his hand defensively, and his own jiggling water sphere caught Sea Raven on the side of the jaw. The Waverider sputtered in shock.
“You hit me!”
“An accident, truly–” Rayek began, but he couldn’t quite suppress the twitch to his lips. Raven’s dripping jaw tightened in displeasure, and Rayek held up his hands in contrition, a moment too late.
Sea Raven made a fist and his sphere exploded over Rayek’s head, showering him with a bucket-worth of sea water. Rayek cursed and spat, clumsily raking his dripping hair out of his eyes. Sea Raven was still a picture of injured pride. Swift laughed shamelessly at the sight her lads made.
Rayek and Sea Raven turned at the sound of her laughter. Swift saw the moment their outrage found a new focus, but she was far too dizzy to react. She could only blink, slack-jawed, as both elves floated up fresh balls of water and lobbed them in her direction.
Too later, Swift tried to roll aside. She saved her face, but the sphere burst on her back, drenching her linen tunic, and knocking her drink out of her hand. The lovely blue liquor ran over the deck, mingling with sea water.
“Savages!” she shot back at them.
Rayek recoiled. He glanced at Sea Raven, “We don’t have to take that from a wolf.”
“Drukk, no!”
Squealing, Swift scrambled behind the tree trunk as two more projectiles came flying her way. “I submit!” she called, “I submit!” before she dissolved into giggles that soon gave way to hiccups.
Their antics soon woke Lucky from her nap. The near-wolf staggered to her feet, whining anxiously. Then she saw the third set of water bubbles breaking against the palm tree, and she began to bark. She ran up, wagging her tail and dropping into a play bow. Sea Raven obligingly summoned another water sphere and floated it just over her nose as she yapped and lunged for it. After teasing her for several moments, Sea Raven let her catch the ball in her teeth, and he laughed as she spat out the mouthful of salt water.
Now the seals stirred from their own midafternoon rest. Stretched out on the moon pool’s ramp alongside Rum Keg, Timmain lifted her head and fixed Rayek with a withering look – or as withering as a limpid-eyed seal could manage.
“The High One is judging us,” Sea Raven observed.
“She usually does,” Rayek admitted. “Did I ever tell you about the time Pike tried to introduce her to dreamberry wine?”
“No! Surely she didn’t partake?”
“Oh, she partook – and practiced purging the very molecules of intoxicant from her blood as she went. Said she found it… ‘a fascinating exercise in self-control.’”
Swift poked her face around the palm tree. “Truce?” she asked, between hiccups.
An open sending echoed in their minds. **Red Alert! All crew to battle stations! Captain to the bridge!**
Fisher’s sharp sending had a remarkably sobering effect on Swift. So did the sudden absence of the engine’s hum. She and Sea Raven and Rayek scrambled to their feet.
“Should we go?” Swift asked. She was loathe to step on her daughter’s chief’s lock, after all.
But Raven nodded. “Father doesn’t call a full alert for trifles. Let’s go.”
A tingle of magic in the air made them turn, just as Timmain shed her sealskin and stood on unsteady legs. Rum Keg looked up at her with watery eyes, and Timmain murmured a respectful “Excuse me,” before moving to join the others.
They made their way up stairways and ladders to the bridge, overlooking the forward deck. They arrived only a few moments after Gypsy Moth. Fisher was beginning to explain the situation, and he broke off when he saw the newcomers arrive.
Swift saw the problem immediately. The Sea Holt had cut engines less than a mile offshore. The crenellated walls of Port Bane were clearly visible, as were the plumes of smoke billowing up from inside the town.
“Go on, Fisher,” Gypsy Moth prompted.
“Sorry, Cap’n. We – uh, we can’t raise Ralo in sending, and while we’ve just raised the query flag we haven’t gotten an answer yet. Could just be a coal fire–”
“Just? – That’s our ride back to the Homeland burning up–”
“But Farseer’s up in the crow’s nest,” Fisher went on. “And she said she thought she saw a fire-sling firing from the walls.”
“What is happening?” Timmain asked. “Is it an attack?”
“Sounds like it,” Gypsy Moth growled, showing a flash of Wolfrider canines. “Drukk it! What damned halfwit is trying to take on Drub of all trolls?!”
“There’s one sure way to find out,” Rayek remarked.
* * *
A pair of curtain walls encircled Port Bane, the smaller one guarding the human town, the taller one enclosing the troll citadel. The Palace-pod hovered high above both, as the elves watched the fighting unfold.
The humans were trying to breach the walls to the troll enclave. But the trolls fought back with fire-slings and blast-rock cannons. Explosions rocked the human town. Half the wooden roofs were already on fire. The flames threatened the harbor and the neat line of sailing ships at anchor.
“Do we dare set it down?” Sea Raven asked.
“The keep is still secure,” Rayek asked. “We’ll land just below the northern tower.”
“Ugh… gently please,” Swift muttered. A quick trip to Reef before boarding the Palace-pod had purged most of the alcohol from her system, but she was still feeling too muzzy-headed for any aggressive flying.
The trolls were expecting them. No sooner had the pod touched down on the rooftop than it was surrounded by a fully armed welcoming party. “About time you got here!” Ralo barked, glaring at Rayek. “This is all your fault, you know!”
“What is? What’s happening here?” Sea Raven demanded.
Ralo was a stocky trollkin – one of Prince Smokewater’s many offspring. His grayish skin took on an angry red flush as he snapped back, “What’s it look like? The five-fingers have turned on us. Saying the Pact is broken – saying you Palace folk killed the Djun! The ‘black-hearted sorcerer-king’ to be exact.” He smirked at Rayek. “Sounds like your work, butterfly-legs.”
“Mm, and I’m quite proud of it,” Rayek remarked dryly. “Considering he meant to destroy the Firstcomers’ Palace and wipe both our races out of existence.”
“Huh. Well… good work, then. But it’s still left the Pact in tatters. And the filth who’s taken the Djun’s place has been making all sorts of speeches. We got a taste of it from the war-man we captured last night. Same old song: Wah-wah-‘kill-them-all!’” He rolled his beady eyes. “By the Smith, I thought we’d tamed this lot!”
A distant bomb detonated with impeccable timing, the impact shaking the stonework underfoot.
“You can’t tame humans,” Rayek said. “You can only shackle them for a while.”
“Well, they’ve slipped their chains! Foaming-mad vermin! Their fires will burn their own ships long before the flames reach our coal stores.”
“Perhaps it’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make.”
“Two-Edge help me! We’ve got the bulk of the stockpiles under ground, but I have five warehouse blocks full of the stuff – one of them marked for your ship, Waverider!” he accused Sea Raven.
“Forget Two-Edge,” Sea Raven said. “He’s on the other side of the world. What about your queen?”
Ralo moaned. “Some lickspittle already sent her word. She’s coming here by steamcar – and you know how she hates to leave Undermount! If I don’t have this mess under control by the time she gets here…”
“The fires are easily dealt with,” Swift spoke up. “Raven – why don’t you–”
“And the firestarters?” Ralo charged. He pointed to Rayek. “Pest control is his speciality, isn’t it?”
Rayek raised an eyebrow. “Shall I get up on the parapet and urge reconciliation?”
“Poke that! I want the humans cleared out. All of them. Burn ’em, blast ’em - don’t care how! Flashier the better, I say. Give the survivors a good show – and warn ’em what’ll happen if they come back with reinforcements!”
“We’re not –“ Swift began, but Sea Raven cut her off.
“You have blast-rock enough. Why can’t you deal with it?”
“You have any idea how much of that powder we’re wasting with every payload?”
“Seems it would still be less costly than letting those humans set fire to your coal stores…”
Ralo glared at him. “Those stores you’re hankering for. Your last message said to ready a hold-full. My guess is you’re running on coal-dust now. What will you do if our product goes up in smoke – break out the sails?”
Sea Raven shrugged. “We have enough dust enough to get us to Crest Point.”
Swift stared at him sharply. **You’re trying to bluff a deal now?**
**A proud Waverider tradition, Grandmother.** “Their product is grossly inferior, mind,” he went on blandly, “but it would serve until we could get back to Blue Mountain. That might be for the best. Your brother Gatlo always gives us such a generous deal.”
“That’s ’cause he was dropped on his head when he was a mump, and Poppa’s too soft-hearted to stick him in the mushroom fields where he belongs.”
“I’ll give him your regards, then,” Sea Raven said, beginning to turn away. “Though you might as well come with us. After Queen Drub gives you a royal… drubbing, I doubt you’ll want to linger in the New Land.”
Ralo sighed heavily. “All right, enough flirting. What do you want, then? To help us out here.”
“Half-price on the coal.”
“Slugscat! I’d rather see it burn!”
“Suit yourself, then.”
“Does your mother know you’re speaking out of turn? Fine, I’ll give you a ten percent cut and you’ll be grateful.”
“Thirty percent.”
“Fifteen.”
“You keep insulting me and I’ll go back up to forty.”
They haggled for what seemed like an eternity, even as the sounds of battle continued in the background. In the end, they settled on a twenty-five percent reduction on the price of a hold full of coal. Spit in both palms and a hearty handshake sealed the deal.
“I’ll handle the fires,” Sea Raven said to Rayek. “If you’ll be so kind as to handle the humans.”
“It’s my specialty, apparently,” Rayek remarked.
“Right,” Sea Raven turned to the troll escort. “Which one of you strapping fellows would like to show me the quickest route to the harbor?”
Rayek left the Palace-pod safely in the shadow of the north tower, as he flew towards the fighting. Swift chased after him on foot, fast outpacing her troll escort. From the northern parapet, she could see the human horde converging on the walls. Hundreds of them, perhaps a full thousand – poorly dressed and mostly armed with crude spears and flaming torches. But Swift’s keen eyes made out mounted warriors amid the crowd. The crowd chanted in unison – “Pactbreakers!” “Demons!” “Djunkiller!” – clearly they had rehearsed their rage before taking to the narrow streets. The new Djun had sown the seeds of rebellion well.
Rayek set down on the parapet, in full view of the humans. The troll cannons fell silent. Drawing on the power of the starstone, Rayek’s voice found preternatural strength.
“Humans! You are the Pactbreakers here! You call for demons? Here we are!”
The mob responded much as Swift imagined: screams and curses, torches waving and crude projectiles thrown into the air. Most fell far short of the walls. But a man on a rooftop had a proper crossbow mounted on a tripod, and he shot off a bolt.
Rayek saw the bolt streaking up at him. He raised his hand and his shield slowed the quarrel, then froze it in the air. He gestured and the bolt turned around. Then he flicked his fingers and it streaked back along the path it had taken, right back to the man who’d fired it.
He saw his death coming, and started to turn. The bolt caught him in the side of the head. Then, to make the point clear to those with poor lines of sight, Rayek raised his hand and directed a bolt of lightning at the rooftop, setting crossbow and house aflame.
“You call me Djunkiller?” Rayek taunted. “I wear the name proudly! It was I who killed Grohmul, as I killed his ancestor Kargref ten generations past! It was I who burned Djaar Mornek – and I will do the same here! You have one chance to save yourselves! Leave Port Bane now – it is closed to your kind!”
The mob was beyond reason, beyond fear. They surged forward towards the wall. Rayek shot a second bolt of searing light at the base of the walls. The first row of enraged humans simply vanished in a white-hot glow. The ones further back burst into flames. Screams rose up from the crowd as those at the front turned and fought through those still pushing in from the back. Swift saw humans fall under the boots of their comrades, men crushed against buildings, warhorses forced down and trampled to death. Perhaps a third of the crowd fell to flames or the press of the crowd, and a large group of the survivors turned down the narrow streets, running blindly towards the harbor. Down in the warren of burning houses, they could not hear what Swift could: the shushing of water steadily gathering strength until it became a roar.
Swift ran to the easternmost corner of the wall and looked down at the water. Sea Raven had reached the harbor.
She could just make him out, a tiny shape suspended in a great waterspout. The whirling vortex of seawater battered the ships, snapping masts and snuffing out flames. Then the entire water volume of the harbor began to roll, sloshing angrily like liquid in a great bowl. The wave rocked back and forth, steadily gathering height until it towered over the ships. Then Sea Raven released the water ram, and the harbor emptied itself over the town.
The humans’ ships went hurtling over the walls. The waves flattened buildings and raced up the streets. Great liquid fingers tightened their grip over the town. The foam reached all the way to the walls of the troll citadel. Swift felt the foundations tremble as the untold weight of water and debris slammed into the stonework.
The fires were doused in seconds. The water continued to pool for several minutes afterwards. Then slowly it began to withdraw, draining back to the sea, leaving behind nothing but devastation.
A thin crescent of buildings remained at the westernmost limits of the human town. And as Swift trained her eyes on the waterlogged ruins, she could spot movement – survivors slowly clawing their way out of the wreckage. Swift knew the trolls would permit them to flee with their lives: Ralo wanted his witnesses, after all: war-shocked survivors spreading tales of ruthless exterminations. One way or another, the humans would be taught to keep the peace.
Rayek’s words returned to her: You cannot tame humans. You can only shackle them for a while.
When did we decide we had to shackle them? Swift wondered. She dimly remembered the birth of Pact as a treaty of equals. Was it a true remembering? Perhaps she had been been deluding herself all along.
* * *
Ralo tried to renege on the deal: he claimed the damage dealt by Sea Raven’s water-ram would cost them their discount. But once the harbor had calmed, Gypsy Moth came ashore herself, and Ralo’s defiance withered in the face of her implacable stare. Porters were ordered to start prepping the coal for transfer to the Sea Holt, and Gypsy Moth ordered up a celebratory feast from Ralo’s kitchens.
Swift found she was in no mood to celebrate. Rayek found her out on the walls long after everyone else had gone below to feast.
“What’s wrong, Tam?” he asked softly as he came up behind her. He slid his arms around her and felt the subtle tightening of her muscles at his touch.
“I remember when I tried to understand humans… when I dreamed of five-fingers and elves joining hands in friendship. I’ve been trying to figure out just when I gave up on that dream.”
“I don’t think you have. You let Winnowill heal that human girl at Thorny Mountain. And you’re out here now, mourning the dead.” He gave her waist a tender squeeze. “You show far more forbearance than I, beloved.”
“After Howling Rock, I thought we had finally taught the humans a lesson they could not forget. But there’s always some war-man greedy enough and resentful enough to challenge us – and always enough fools to follow him. It hasn’t been a month since the Djun’s death, and already another one has sprouted up. Did… did we make a mistake with the Pact? With the Doom of Threksh’t? Using their legends against them… claiming to speak for their god…. I used to scorn the humans for making us either demons or sprits. Now I embrace it.”
“We’ve tried truth before. It has never served us well in the long term.”
“No…” One might win over individuals, or even small tribes: the sailor Cam Triompe came to mind, or the Longriders of the Painted Mountains. But individual men died, and cultures evolved. And the greatest constant in human history was a festering envy of all the elves represented. On those rare occasions where elves had shared the truth of their origins with humans, it only inflamed their tempers.
And what will happen once the truth of the Firstcomers’ stranding gets out? Swift wondered. Now that we know we have the humans to blame, and not the trolls.
“Maybe Haken is right,” she sighed. “Maybe we should let them have this world. Start fresh somewhere else. There are more than enough worlds out there, after all.”
“You don’t mean that. You’ve always fought for the right to call this world ours.”
“Maybe I’m tired of fighting.”
Rayek thought about it a moment. “Ceding Abode to the humans would only postpone the issue. They are learning fast. It seems only yesterday they lived like animals in the clearings. Now they are crossing oceans and brewing their own blast-rock powder.”
“They learned that from us.”
“And we learned from them. They are marvellously inventive creatures – I will grant them that. Like the trolls, I suppose they have to be, having no magic of their own. And I suspect that even if we and all our artifacts were to disappear, they would continue to develop. Perhaps one day they will even learn to construct their own form of starstone – if any creature could build magic, I think they could. And once they do… they won’t be satisfied with just one world. If Haken settles Homestead, I doubt he’ll have more than a quarter-spiral of peace before the humans show up in orbit, flying brightmetal star-shells.”
“So what’s the answer then? Endless war? Extermination of them or us?”
Rayek sighed heavily. “Constant struggle appears to be every creature’s lot in life, does it not?”
“That’s a poor comfort, lifemate.”
“I know.” He stepped back but held onto her hand, gently drawing her away from the parapet. “So let’s take comfort with our loved ones below.”
Swift swallowed, nodded. But her eyes took in one last regretful sweep of the ruins below. At that moment she wanted nothing so much than to return home to the Palace proper, to reunite with her children and her soul-brother. She wondered how Skywise was faring on his own quest.
Just before she turned away from the scene, she caught sight of another elfin observer: Timmain stood unmoving on the lower walls, studying the carnage with detached fascination.
* * *
“We’ll make a quick ride-out – well, fly-out,” Skywise told Halcyon. “Scout out the Rock from the air. If Kahvi is there, Aurek will be able to sense her.”
“We’ll set up camp here – on the green side of the line if you please,” Halcyon said, casting a dubious look at the sharp line of death that cut across the ground. Mika was still crouched on the ground, sobbing softly into Dunecat’s shoulder.
“Let’s get this done and move on,” Halcyon said. “I’m sick of this place already.”
Vaya, Aurek and Cheipar joined Skywise in the Palace-pod. After amoment’s hesitation, Teir hastened to join them. Ember stayed behind, held gently in place by Halcyon’s firm hand on her shoulder. She had neither the need nor the strength to revisit the Rock.
Skywise raised the pod and flew them over the blighted landscape. The land looked like it had been razed by fire. In places it seems the very rocks had melted and then solidified in strange new forms. There ought to be smoke and gray clouds, Skywise thought. The land ought to want to hide itself in shadow. Yet the sun shone brightly in a blue summer sky, illuminating every scar on the wasteland.
Was Ember right? Should Rayek feel ashamed of what he’d done? Skywise didn’t like to think about it: to do so called into question his own involvement in that night, the dark satisfaction he admitted to feeling when he saw Kargref Djun’s fortress disappear in that burst of light. Left unchecked humans would scorch the whole world one step at a time, and they wouldn’t even notice until it was too late. Better to burn one patch as a warning. Better an ugly scar than a fatal wound.
That’s what all the Palacedwellers had told themselves. The alternative was to condemn Rayek as Ember had… and admit they were becoming butchers just like the humans.
There’s a difference between killing to survive and killing wantonly, he told himself. But gazing at the blighted landscape, Skywise feared he was looking at evidence of the latter.
Even at a leisurely glide, the Palace-pod flew faster than any bird. Soon Howling Rock rose on the horizon, its once-familiar contours charred and crumbling. Here the light had seared away the muzzle of the stone wolf, and eroded the shoulder into jagged spines. The silhouette was more reminiscent of an Oasis Shapechanged than any forest beast.
“High Ones…” Teir breathed. “To see it like this...”
“Can you sense anything, Aurek?” Skywise asked.
Aurek listened. “Perhaps. Can you take us closer?”
The pod flew on, until they came up abreast of the Rock. Though the ground was still far below them, the pod’s flight kicked up such winds that Skywise could see little plumes of black dust rising up in their wake. He gestured and the pod moved into a slow circle over the eroded spires.
“Yes…” Aurek murmured. “I can hear… something. Lingering energies… the echoes of dying screams…” His eyes drifted closed and his brow furrowed in pain. “Their spirits, bound to the Palace – they live still… and they remember their deaths.”
“But Kahvi?” Vaya pressed. “Is she here?”
Aurek turned his head as if listening hard for a whisper. “She is… envious,” he said at length. “Resentful. Her kin fell here – found peace in the finality of death. She hoped to find the same stillness. The soil is quiet here… she has burrowed into it – let it fill her mouth and nose and ears. She wants the stillness to smother the song of the starstone. But the spirits scream still – her starstone cannot help but hear…”
Skywise became aware of a buzzing just within earshot: not the healthy crackle of magic, but the discordant sound of injured starstone.
“And now we are here – our pod amplifying the screams, stirring the memories in the earth…”
The buzzing rose sharply in pitch, making Skywise’s ears ring. He winced and the pod trembled in its orbit over the Rock.
Aurek’s eyes opened. But he did not see Vaya standing in front of him. His pupils had shrunk to pinpoints in sightless blue orbs.
“We have awoken something…” he breathed.
“Aurek?” Vaya urged. She waved her hand in front of him.
“Shades of Blue Mountain… memories living in the rock…”
“Aurek? K’Saren? Oh, please look at me!”
“It seeks sentience… the energy seeks to know itself.”
“Agh!” Skywise cried out, hands flying to his temples. The Palace-pod rocked sharply, and the elves lost their footing as walls became floors. They tumbled along the inner curve of the egg-shaped pod before coming to rest in a crook at once had been the ceiling. Teir cried out as he landed hard on his shoulder.
“Nnggnh…. we’re listing.”
“Falling!” Cheipar corrected.
The pod was indeed beginning to lose altitude. It rolled in a slowly deteriorating spiral over the summit of the Rock. Vaya shook Aurek to stir him from his wide-eyed trance, while Cheipar scrambled over to Skywise.
The Palacemaster lay in a fetal position, hands clasped tightly to his forehead. He grit his teeth against the searing pain behind his eyes.
“Skywise – Skywise!” Cheipar shook him roughly.
“Can’t…” he hissed. “Can’t…”
“Fly us out of here!”
Skywise shook his head sharply. Why couldn’t the cub understand? “Trying… just – all I can to keep – up–”
“It’s Kahvi!” Vaya cried. “She’s gotten into his head too!”
“Then get her out!” Cheipar roared.
“What can I do?”
“Do it…” Skywise ground out. “Call her… distract her – oh stars!” He beat his head on the floor of the pod, as if the screaming presence in his mind could be dislodged by brute force. Cheipar held him up before he could do it again, and Skywise began to convulse in his arms.
The pod was gathering speed as it spiralled down towards the earth. Vaya looked out the clear walls and she could see a figure standing atop the Rock – an elf dressed in rags and covered in black soot.
“Teir – help me!” she begged. “Cheipar. Spirits – anyone – give me strength!”
Teir crawled over to her, propping himself up on his good arm. He took her hand in his. Together they sent out a single word.
**MOTHER!!**
The sending burned with every conflicted emotion in their hearts – love, sorrow, rage. It was a plea and an accusation all at once. Amplified by the starstone of the pod, and twisted by the corruption of the Palacestone, it rang out loud in Kahvi’s head. For an instant, the screaming in Skywise’s mind stopped.
It was all he needed. A moment before the Palace-pod would have smashed against the side of Howling Rock, Skywise summoned all his strength and displaced it safely back to the Plainsrunner’s camp.
The tipped-over pod touched down gently on green grass. Skywise opened the door and the elves tumbled out. Halcyon’s riders rushed up to help them.
“Teir!” Ember dropped at her lifemate’s side. “What happened?”
“Unhhh… we are not trying that again,” Skywise moaned as he rubbed his head.
“Aurek? Are you all right?” Vaya brushed his dissheveled blond hair back from his face.
“It is… quiet now,” he said, breathing softly. He pressed his forehead to hers. “My heart, I would not have you hear what I heard for anything.”
“Was it Kahvi?”
“More. It was the very rock itself – infused with magic from Rayek’s attack, awakened by the pull of the starstone. As the ruins of Blue Mountain have a presence all their own… as pools of rotten magic spawned monsters before Weatherbird cleansed them all. Now the magic in the rock has joined with Kahvi and her Palacestone. It seeks sentience, self-awareness, freedom! It would take Kahvi’s… but she longs only for oblivion. And now they are bound together, a burning mindless instinct seeking fulfillment… and annihilation.”
The riders brought them water to drink, and fresh mare’s milk. Teir’s shoulder was dislocated. Aurek offered to find a sympathetic healing spirit inside the Palace-pod, but Teir preferred to tend to it the traditional way. Ember gave him sliced wackroot, and as soon as the pain began to dull, he bit down on a piece of leather as Halcyon popped the shoulder back into place. A coating a strong-smelling salve and a few scraps of cloth later and Halcyon had bound the arm tightly against Teir’s side until the swelling went down. She hummed a song as she worked, and combination of salve and root and music worked to ease the lines of pain from Teir’s face.
“You have healing hands,” Aurek remarked, when Halcyon and Teir joined the others. They sat in a rough horseshoe around the newly-dug firepit, resting and contemplating their next move.
“It’s not magic,” Halycon demurred. “Just… a knack I have.”
“The line between magic and the natural world is not always as sharply drawn as that one,” Aurek waved his hand in the direction of the dead zone’s borderline. “Your grandmother comes from a line of healers, after all.”
Halcyon needed a moment to process the allusion. “Oh, that’s right. I always forget that.”
“Makes sense you would,” Vaya said. “Kahvi rejected magic all her life. Even though it saved her life when she was just a fawn.”
“You mean the pool?” Halcyon asked. “The one she fell in when she was still a Wolfrider?”
“You know the story?”
“Vaguely. I haven’t heard it in years.”
Vaya summarized the tale in a few words as possible: the parts she had learned from Kahvi, the parts she had seen for herself in the Scroll of Colors, or within the ever-changing shells of the Egg. How a young Wolfrider named Briar had challenged her sire Two-Spear, and how he had left her for dead in a pool of Firstcomers’ magic. The pool had healed her, but stolen her memories – memories that only returned through the communion with the Palacestone.
“Huh, ” Vaya murmured, when the tale was finished. “I never really thought of it before now… but one way or another, she’s been tied up in High Ones’ magic since the beginning.”
“I wonder,” Aurek mused. “You said the pool healed her – but what if it merely amplified her own latent healing magic? What if the Palacestone is doing much the same?”
Vaya frowned in bemusement. “What do you mean, K’Saren?”
“What if the power to sustain her has always been within her… the Palacestone only awakened it? Kahvi has always endured where others feel. It cannot have been luck alone. What if Kahvi always had a wisp of healer’s gift to her… and now it is amplified and twisted: her own latent magic used to keep her alive against her will.”
Vaya shuddered, despite the heavy heat of the late afternoon. “And she knows it. Dung chips, it’s another slow torture for her.
“Oh scat!” Kirjan called out. “Uh… magic-folk? You might want to come take a look at this!”
Halcyon helped Teir to his feet. The questing elves hiked over to join Kirjan at the site of the human-made scarecrow. “What?” Skywise asked.
Kirjan pointed down at the ground. Where once the scarecrow’s post had been sunk exactly on the boundary line, now the grass all around it was dead. A ring of blackened earth surrounded it like a shadow cast at midday.
“Did someone move it?” Skywise asked.
“Are you pulling my tail? Nobody’s touching this thing!”
Aurek bent down, lifted a pinch of black dust. He grimaced and shook the flakes off his fingertips as though they were burning embers.
“We’ve awoken something…” he repeated ominously.
Skywise looked down the borderline. What had been a clean cut through the landscape was now an uneven smear. Barely a finger’s width of ground had been lost in places, but it was lost all the same.
“The corruption is spreading,” Skywise whispered.
Elfquest copyright 2015 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 2015 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2015 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.