Rogue's Rendezvous
A Final Quest Sneak Peak
Djunshold, 2nd year of Grohmul’s Reign
The “Middle o’ the Road” was well-named; the tavern sat at the halfway point of the Thorn Road that ran from the Haunted Mountain to the towering Citadel on the Blood River. Buudji had seen all manner of travelers pass through; almond-eyed Longriders, sellswords and hedge sorcerers –even a hideous beast of a man who proudly claimed to be half-troll. But she had never met a man quite like the one who walked in, requesting a cup of elfwine and a private booth in an accent she could not quite place.
She wasn’t entirely sure he was a man. He stood as tall as one – or nearly enough. He had the warm brown skin of a trader from the southern desert. But his eyes were unnaturally large, and the golden color of a beast’s. He was dressed haphazardly in smoke-blue leather and tattered silks, like a travelling tinker. Yet he’s walked in off the Thorn Road without a mark of dirt on himself. He wore a sword-dancer’s hat pulled down over his ears and declined to remove it even when seated alone. And she could swear she’d only seen four fingers on his hand when he’d reached for his drink.
She’d heard of the Hidden Ones, of course. Every child had grown up hearing the stories of elves and trolls and forest fairies. She kept the old superstitions as much as anyone. But she never expected to meet a Hidden One, any more than she expected Threksh’t Himself to drop by for a pint.
She stretched up on tiptoe to look over the swinging doors to the private booth. The long-legged stranger was still holding a full cup of wine, his attention consumed by the flickering candleflame on his table.
“How long he gonna nurse that drink?” Buudji grumbled under her breath. “The way he looked, he walked in here… shoulda knocked back ten by now.”
Her fellow barmaid Loyla chuckled. “You just wanna bend over his table again, dontcha, Buudji?”
“And you don’t? But he’s mine, beesweets!”
“Oh, no fear there. I like my fellas to be human, dontcha know!” Loyla fired back with a smirk.
Buudji lowered her voice even further, until she could barely hear her own whisper. “You think he is… one of them?”
“You got eyes, aintcha? Can’t you see it? He’s got power coming off o’ him… like a black light, just crawling all around him. I know sorcerers and hedge magickers, but he’s the real thing. Gotta be.”
“Thought Hidden Ones were supposed to be small folk – no bigger than children.”
“Aintcha heard of Adiirak of the Nine Wings? He’s supposed to be taller than the Djun.”
Buddji giggled, half in fear, half in excitement. A real Hidden One in her tavern – oh, if only her poxy old mama could see her now. “Drukk it, I’m going back in.” Hitching up her corset to display her bosom to best effect, she pushed the swinging door aside and purred, “Would you be wanting… anything else, sor? Anything at all?”
“No,” he replied. “Not now.” His voice had a deep timbre, with a hint of a growl to his words. Buudji found herself biting her lip.
“It’s getting late, sor,” she persisted. “No other inns for miles. We got some fine beds upstairs, less than another cup of your elfwine.”
“No, thank you. I do not intend to stay the night.”
“Thorn Road’s not a walk to be travelled alone after dark. There are bandits between here and Maikah’s Mount.”
“I will not be travelling alone. I am waiting for someone.”
“Oh? A woman, would it be?”
He smiled wryly and took a sip of his elfwine before answering. “No. Not a woman.” He sounded amused at the very notion. “Not exactly.”
Coyness was not working. Perhaps he was the sort of man who enjoyed a challenge. “Oh, I like that,” Buudji said, pitching her voice midway between a taunt and an invitation. “The tattered lord doesn’t care for ‘exact’ woman, does he? Shall I call for the stable boy instead? Not a day over fifteen and only five coppers a throw? Would that be more to sor’s taste?”
It was a bold move – one could just as easily earn her a black eye as a conquest. But the stranger did not rise to the bait either way.
“And how much will it cost to be left in peace?” he countered.
With a huff, Buudji stalked out, leaving the stranger to his elfwine.
“Count yourself lucky,” Loyla said as he took her friend by the arm and steered her towards the bar. “Tangle with a Hidden One, you’re likely to lose your soul.”
The barkeep overheard. “You watch that mouth, Loyla,” he warned. “Nobody judges nobody here at ‘Middle o’ the Road.’”
A thick-necked, shave-pated man at the bar looked up from his pint of ale. “Told’ja you shouldn’ta let that un-human trash in here,” he slurred.
“Now, sor, you know the rules,” the barkeep said. “Anyone’s coin’s good here, long as they come unarmed and minding their own business.”
The bald brute knocked back the last of his ale and slammed his mug down hard on the counter. One of the sellswords from Kwynnmire, Buudji guessed by his accent. She hated serving her countrymen – they reminded her too much of the miserable life she had worked so hard to escape.
“It’s my business who drinks in my space!” the man barked. “Walked out or carried out – I don’t like ’em, they leave!”
Full of ale and self-importance, he staggered over to the private booth and wrenched the doors apart. “Hey, freak! Settle a bet between me and my girl Loyla here! She think you’re some kinda magicker elf – you know, outta the stories. But I told here you’re just so funny-looking ’cause your momma tum-bumped her brother!”
The stranger looked up with an expression of languid contempt. “Go back to your seat, sor. You look as if you could use another drink.” He withdrew a copper from his purse and tossed it in the Kwynnman’s direction. The brute just watched the coin bounce off his chest.
“Who do you think you are, some kind of lord? You’re nothing but a sorcery-stinkin’ son of a yellow-eyed snake!”
The stranger’s voice turned harsh. “Be gone, you drunken lout. It’s hardly my heritage that’s in question, only your own.”
“Question this, you walking skeleton!”
The sellsword charged the stranger. As the doors swungs wildly on their hinges, Buudji caught glimpses of a fight – a punch thrown, a blow dodged, and then a blindling flash of light, accompanied by a crackle of thunder.
The sellsword came flying back out of the booth. He crashed into a table and collapsed in a heap, his clothes smoking slightly from the sparks that still crackled about his limbs. The stranger rose from his seat and strode out into the main room. “I apologize,” he said coolly. “It was not my intent to be so… severe. I would gladly take my leave, but I am awaiting a companion. Now I suggest you buy yourself another drink on my coin and leave me in peace.”
The sellsword staggered to his feet. With a roar, he threw himself at the stranger again. He made it within arm’s length before the sorcerer raised a hand. The sellsword lifted off the ground and floated up to the ceiling, as if he were a tinkerer’s hot-air balloon.
“Loyla…” Buudji moaned, suddenly afraid.
The sellsword thrashed in the air, mindless with impotent rage. “Holy Threksh’t! Lemme down, freak! Lemme down!”
“Certainly.”
He lowered his hand, and the sellsword plummeted towards the floor, nearly ten feet below. Buudji screamed and hugged Loyla for support. “Don’t drop meeeee–” the sellsword screamed, but the stranger held up a finger and the magic caught the Kwynnman a moment before he would have smashed his face on the floor.
“Do something!” Loyla implored the bartender.
But he was entranced by the spectacle, a satisfied smile on his thin lips. “Don’t see no weapons – don’t see no foul. Let ’em sort it out.”
“Now…” the sorcerer floated the man halfway up to the ceiling again. “Will you allow us all to resume our diversions, or will stronger measures be required?”
“I’ll slit your throat!” the sellsword raged. “Monster! You let me down from here and I’ll–”
“And having said that, what makes you think I’ll ever let you down?” the sorcerer counted.
“Holy Threksh’t give me strength! Lemme just twist that pretty face good before you take me!”
The sorcerer raised one hand to his forehead, as if pained. “Give me strength,” he sighed, before flicked his wrist upward and slamming the sellsword hard into the ceiling. Buudji let out a shriek of terror, and the sorcerer turned his piercing gaze on her.
“Please… no…” she whimpered.
The front door creaked open. Buudji took one look at the newcomer and decided it must be the companion the sorcerer was expecting.
He was right: she was no woman – no human woman anyway. She stood a little shorter than the sorceror, her proportions somewhat less elongated. She was dressed like any adventuress, in a long tailcoat and snug calfskin trousers. But when she doffed her oversized hat, the pointed ears thrust brazenly through her mop of pale gold hair. Her huge eyes were a deep blue that seemed to glow in the firelight. A collar of gold and cat’s teeth encircled her throat. When she parted her lips in an amused smile, Buudji shuddered at the length of her eyeteeth.
“So much for ‘Hidden Ones’,” the female elf sighed wryly.
The sorcerer’s demeanor changed from vengeful to guilty. “He started it,” he protested.
“Of course he did. Now put him down.”
“As you wish.” The sorcerer made a gesture. The floating sellsword slammed once more into the ceiling. “Slipped,” the sorcerer remarked archly, as he gently guided the half-conscious man back to the floor.
“Unnhh… Threksh’t preserve me…” the man moaned. The elf-woman calmly hopped over his body to approach the bar.
“Elfwine, if you have it,” she ordered.
“Comin’ right up, m’lady,” the barkeep said. “Emm… we don’t allow weapons here, though.”
She glanced down at the blade on her hip. “Oh, this?” She drew it out of its metal sheath and held it up to catch the light. A curved blade, too large to be a dagger, but too small to be a short-sword, it might have passed for a child’s toy were it not for the sheen of sharpened steel.
“This is just an apple peeler,” she said.
The barkeep knew better than to argue. “As you say, m’lady.” He busied himself with pouring her drink while the sellsword staggered to his feet and limped out of the tavern.
“So. How long you reckon we have before Lumpy comes back with reinforcements?”
“Oh, time enough for a drink, m’lady. His lot’s camped all the way on the other side of the brook.” He handed her the cup, and she raised it in thanks.
“Cheers.”
She tossed him a coin from the pocket of her coat, then withdrew into the booth with her darkskinned companion. The barkeeper gestured to the overturned chairs, and Loyla set to work straightening up.
Buudji turned for the door to the upstairs rooms. She’d be thrice-cursed if she stayed another minute in this job. She’d rather go back to her mama and the wretched farmhouse outside Kwynnmire.
* * *
Swift sniffed her wine skeptically. “Not real dreamberries, is it?”
“Last harvest’s squeezings perhaps,” Rayek said. “Mostly beeberries and some currants.”
“Ah well.” Swift took a sip. “It’ll do. What’s the word on the Thorn Road?”
“Many laborers and tradesmen heading north. The Djun is offering a handsome stipend for anyone willing to work on the flank of the mountain.”
Swift nodded. “They’re coming by the hundreds every day. Setting up logging camps all around the edge of the forest. And defensive walls.
“No human has dared set foot on Thorny Mountain for over a thousand years!”
“They haven’t crossed the boundary line yet. But they’re getting close. And the woodsmen aren’t happy about it. You should see the sellsword packs – I can’t decide if they’re there to protect the workers or guard them!”
“What is this new Djun playing at? He swore to the Pact. He knows to break it is to invite a war.”
“The workmen think he wants the lumber to build a fleet of ships. They’ve cut down all their own forests, so they have to look to ours.”
Rayek shook his head. “Then why not strike into the woods south of Port Bane? Why not pick another mountain – any other mountain than the ‘Haunted Mountain’?”
“The humans I spoke to said this Djun doesn’t fear elves.”
“More fool him. We will have to remind him of the price oathbreakers pay.”
Swift looked at him disapprovingly. “The last time we went to war with the humans, it cost us far more dearly than it did them.”
“I know,” Rayek admitted. “But what choice do we have?” **Tam, we cannot allow the humans onto Thorny Mountain. Not with what is coming due.**
Swift nodded. “The Palace,” she whispered reverently. After twenty thousand years, the elves of Abode had finally caught up with the Firstcomer’s aborted arrival.
When he had first unlocked the secrets of the Palace, Rayek had entertained dreams of rescuing the High Ones from their failed landing, and their crash into the distant past. But he had come to understand – as they all had – just how delicately the threads of time were woven. Any meddling in what had happened – in what would happen – could undo countless years of history… and erased countless lives in the process.
The Palace was due to appear over Thorny Mountain in three years.
And now humans were swarming about the mountain’s flanks.
The elves forged the Pact with the humans of the New Land nearly a thousand years ago. In all those years, it had only been broken once.
And nearly a hundred elves had lost their lives.
Swift bore the scars of that war deep in her heart, as did all those who had fought on the rampants of Djaar Mornek. Nearly every elf on the World of Two Moons knew someone who had been injured or killed during that terrible battle.
This time, human interference could mean the destruction of them all.
And that could not be allowed to happen. Whatever the cost in the present, the timeline had to be preserved.
“We should take this to the Circle,” Swift said. “The nations all have a right to know.”
Rayek shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we know more.”
“You have a plan?”
His lips twitched in a smile. “Don’t I always, lifemate? We’re trading in gossip and guesses. These humans know even less than we do. I think it’s time to cut to the heart of the matter. It’s time we pay a visit to this… Grohmul Djun.”
Outside the confines of their booth, they could hear the slam of the front door and the angry bellow of the battered sellsword.
“All right, where is that gwit?!”
“That’s our cue,” Swift said, gulping down the last of her wine. “What do you reckon? Up the chimney or out the front door?”
Rayek glared in the direction of the voices. “I am sick of hiding.”
“Right.” Swift drew New Moon. “Let’s go.”
The sellsword charged into their booth, followed close by three large accomplices. Palacemaster and Blood of Ten Chiefs met them with steel and magic.
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.