Authors: Mark Acres
“Heilesheim will attack the Elven Preserve,” Elrond whispered, his eyes rolling back to gaze upon the face of Shulana.
Shulana looked startled at the news.
“Wot?” George exclaimed, prying again at the iron bolts. “Not even that sap Ruprecht is that daft,” he declared.
One of Elrond’ s arms fell from the manacle that had held it for what seemed like countless years.
“Just another minute, guv,” George said respectfully. “Get the other one in just another minute.”
“We came to
rescue you,”
Shulana began. “How strong are you?”
“My body is very, very weak,” Elrond confessed. “But my mind is as strong as the body will allow it to be. The eggs—you could not…”
“No,” Shulana said, hanging her head.
Elrond nodded wearily. The bolt holding the other manacle flew out of the wall, and Elrond’s other arm flopped weakly down. Gently, George and Marta lowered the old elf to the wet floor of his cell.
“‘E needs rest, and food,” George said. “Get ‘im some bread, Marta—you elves eat bread?” he asked, suddenly startled to realize he had never actually seen Shulana eat.
“Bread will do, and a bit of wine,” Shulana said. “Elven fare will have to wait.”
Elrond moistened his lips from the wineskin Marta produced from her great pack, and then licked a few crumbs of the bread she placed on his lips.
“No time. The king comes,” he muttered. “And Valdaimon.” Shulana whirled in alarm, then steadied herself, closed her eyes, and listened intently. In the distance she could hear the sounds of footfalls on the corridor paving stones.
“He’s right. We must leave here at once,” she told George.
“How are we going to do that?” Marta asked. “I can carry the elf, George can fight, but which way do we go?”
Shulana turned back and gazed into Elrond’s eyes. “I do not know the spell, but you do,” she said.
Wearily, with great pain, the old elf sat upright and crossed his legs. He raised his skeletal arms, drawing George and then Marta into an embrace, forcing them to sit. Shulana quickly sat opposite Elrond and threw her arms around the two humans, thus completing the circle. Elrond, braced against George and Marta, leaned far forward, head down. Shulana did the same, until the crowns of their heads leaned against each other.
George caught Marta’s eyes and rolled his own. Were these elves mad? Marta shrugged.
Shulana relaxed, growing more and more limp. She opened her mind, as for communion, fighting the fear of the force she knew she would feel. Elrond knew the spell, but his body was weak. She would have to cast the spell, using his knowledge and his mind. But that mind was so powerful! Once before she had felt it, for only an instant—a mind so forceful that her own could be drowned....
Peace!
The thought exploded in her consciousness, washed over her body, quieting the invisible trembling that had begun in her muscles.
Peace. Shulana. Elrond. Elfkind,
the voice intoned in her blank mind.
Elfkind. Greenlife. One, one, one.
...
George and Marta sat still as stone, seeing the two elves become silent, almost paralyzed. By the gods, George thought, they’d better hurry whatever it is they’re doing. He could hear the steps outside now, hear the clatter of footsteps in the torture chamber.
Shulana’s arms floated upward. Her delicate hands began weaving a strange pattern in the air. George watched, fascinated, unable to tear his eyes from those floating, weaving hands, even though his ears heard the invaders just in the next room....
“It’s Ruprecht!” Marta shouted. “Ruprecht, you murdering bastard!” Marta’s leg muscles tensed, and she started to spring up to hurl herself through the door, dagger in hand, and on the man who had branded her flesh and her spirit. But her muscles could not move her bulk, for a force came from Elrond’s feeble arm, laying across her back, a force pushing her downward, downward—a force like the weight of the whole universe, holding her still....
“It’s her!” Valdaimon screamed, unable to contain his excitement at the sight of Shulana, seated in the cell in the strange circle. “Where are they? Where is Bagsby!” the old man screeched. He stood in the doorway, his face contorted with unbearable anger.
Control,
Valdaimon told himself.
Control. Hold them.
He drew back both arms, focused his mind, recalled the word of command....
Shulana’s voice spoke a single word, and the four creatures vanished into thin air. At the same moment, Valdaimon spoke a word of command, and magical chains appeared where the foursome had been sitting. For an instant, ever so brief, the chains seemed to outline the figures who should have been beneath them. Then they clattered to the floor.
Valdaimon screamed his frustration. The sound reverberated off the walls of the empty cell.
Fireflies twinkled over the leaves of the tall oaks, their glitter not unlike the twinkling of the great band of stars that crossed the forest sky, casting pale illumination on the countless enchantments below. This forest was ancient, deep, and thick. Green, leafy creepers wound their way up the trunks of the aged trees, which towered so tall many humans could not see their tops. Vines dangled from the countless branches that formed the overhead canopy, which was still strangely transparent to the sky—as though one could see either sky or darkness at will. The forest floor was covered with a rich spread of grasses, bushes, and fungi, which was broken in places by great, huge tree trunks that lay on the forest floor like fallen soldiers. The trees, the elves knew, did not bury their dead; they left them to become one with that from which they had come, and from which they would come again in the endless turn of seasons and years, ages and eons.
George had heard a faint popping sound, and opened his eyes to this strange sight. Now, less than half an hour later, he sat as part of a greater circle, Marta by his side, while the strange, angular faces of a dozen elves gazed speechlessly into the center of the ring. Softly, Elrond’s voice lilted across the still air, which seemed strangely tangible, laden as it was with the sweet fragrances of the thousands of wildflowers that blossomed in the surrounding wood.
“Our quest for the treasure of Parona has failed,” Elrond announced. “Despite our futuresight, this Bagsby has not brought us the treasure, but rather has taken it himself in an attempt to discover its nature,” the old elf said, a trace of weary sadness in his voice. “By now, I fear he may have solved the mystery.”
“Do you mean...?” Shulana asked softly.
“I do not know. If not yet, soon. But now a more immediate danger faces us. What comes from the Golden Eggs may in time come to destroy us, but what comes from Heilesheim now does, and it comes swiftly.”
“Heilesheim will break the Covenant, openly, with an open attack on us!” a stern-looking, vigorous member of the Elven Council declared. “So be it. If they want war, we can give them war.”
“But will it be war with all mankind?” Elrond asked.
“Those are the terms of the Covenant,” the younger male replied. “If any elf attacks mankind, all mankind is attacked and all elfkind are responsible. And if any man attacks elfkind, all elfkind are attacked and all mankind is responsible. Heilesheim dooms the human race.”
“Heilesheim dooms us all,” Elrond replied. “For if we loose the magic at our disposal, the effects could well destroy the whole earth. Is that what we desire? To kill the world to avenge ourselves on Heilesheim?”
“That was the only way we could find to end the wars before,” the younger elf reminded Elrond. “Even then, in those years, you were Head of the Council. It was you who drafted the Covenant. Would you now renounce it?”
“Renounce it? No,” Elrond said. “But I would realize that all things change, as the river of time flows through the wood of the world. The Covenant was made to prevent war with man. It has done so, until now. But now it is not man who makes war on us. It is Heilesheim.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, gents,” George said, his voice sounding strangely loud and coarse in the still night. “I’m a man; I’m even a man from Heilesheim, and I ain’t at war with you. If you’re going to fight Heilesheim’s nobles, I’ll be proud to stand beside ye,” he said cheerfully.
A murmur arose among the council members—they had invited George and Marta to sit with them out of gratitude—but for humans to speak in the Council was unthinkable!
“I have learned something,” Shulana called out, standing up. The murmurs at once fell silent. For when any member of the Council announced a learning, a truth on which he or she would stake their life, all members were bound to listen with the utmost attention and respect, no matter how heated the discussions had become.
“You wish to state a learning?” Elrond asked the ceremonial question.
“I do,” Shulana said.
“State the learning, that all elves may know new truth,” Elrond said, using the ancient formula.
“All men are not the same. They are different from one another, more different from one another than elves. I am different from Elrond, but we are still the same, we are elfkind. But George here is different from Ruprecht, and different so much so that he is not the same kind.”
“Has this learning application to the topic at hand?” Elrond asked, as the ceremony demanded.
“It does,” Shulana answered.
“State the application.”
“When the Covenant was made, our understanding of men was poor. We thought of them as one kind. They are not. Now that we understand this, we should negotiate a new Covenant with those among men who will embrace it. With those who will not be our enemies.” Shulana spoke forcefully, then sat down.
The young elf spoke again, rising and walking to the center of the circle, an indication of the deep passion that motivated his words. “Do you mean,” he asked, “that we elves, after centuries of keeping ourselves apart from the affairs of men, are about to become involved in their endless squabbles? For the practical outcome of this course would be to ally ourselves with some men against other men. And men are shiftless allies. Even now, the Holy Alliance dithers while Heilesheim devours its member states! What security will there be for elves under such a Covenant?” The speaker eyed the circle, glared hard at George and Marta, and retook his seat.
The Council sat for a long time in silence. Overhead, the silent stars moved in their courses toward the dawn. Still, the silence prevailed. The calls of day birds began to sound from the wood when Elrond at last arose.
“The Council has before it,” he announced, “the old way, honored by tradition, that will surely lead to destruction for all; and a new way, untested, full of perils, that may or may not mean salvation for our kind. I, Elrond, oldest of living elves, slayer of the Ancient One, Head of the Council, shall set my feet on this new path, save the Council dissent. Let silence be approval.” Elrond then extended his right hand, palm up, and walked to the first council member seated on his right. He touched the elf’s chin, lifting his face, and said, “Speak.” The elf said nothing. This Elrond repeated around the full circle. When it was his time, the youthful elf gazed deeply into Elrond’s face. His pain was clear, but he said nothing.
“It is decided,” Elrond announced as the first rays of dawn began to peek through the forest canopy. “I shall go to Parona to begin negotiating the New Covenant. I will take with me Shulana and the two humans who have served this Council so well.”
Hunh,
George thought.
Leaders are the same, elves or humans. Always deciding what someone else is going to do.
Reunions
BAGSBY
tossed a chunk of preserved beef that weighed at least twenty pounds onto a flat rock. The enormous red mouth seemed to inhale the flesh; the rows of sharp, pointed teeth snapped shut once, and the dragon swallowed. Quickly, Bagsby tossed out another chunk. The dragon’s seeming twin gulped it down. Two pairs of black lizard eyes turned to stare at Bagsby.
“More,” the dragons demanded in unison.
Bagsby jumped to his feet, hefted the sack of meat, and dumped the entire contents on the ground.
“All I’ve got,” he said, dropping the bag and spreading his arms wide. “See? All gone.”
The entire contents of the bag were devoured quickly; the only immediate response to Bagsby’s explanation being occasional soft slurping sounds.
“What do I do with them?” Bagsby gasped, watching the feeding spectacle with growing alarm.
“Well, my goodness, I am thinking that is for you to be deciding,” Ramashoon said, still chuckling.
“Why do you think this is so funny?” Bagsby demanded. The little brown man sat there in the glow of the firelight on the side of the desert mountain laughing! “These things may decide you’re a tasty morsel in about three more minutes!”
“Oh, my, I am thinking they will not be eating me. I am being very thin, and not very good of taste,” Ramashoon said, as though he were stating the obvious. “Look at them. Are they not being beautiful? Their like has not been seen on the earth for five thousands of years, and now here they are.”
Bagsby flopped down on the ground, disgusted. Shulana had been right—they should have destroyed these things before they hatched. Dragons! Fire-breathing dragons! Talking dragons! What would keep them from overrunning the whole earth once their race was replenished? Bagsby buried his head in his arms. What was to keep them from eating Bagsby, who, being a bit plump, probably looked more like a dragon’s dinner than dried-up old Ramashoon? And what difference would it make if they did? Bagsby had no treasure now, and he certainly had no future with Shulana, who would be furious with him for crossing her, abandoning her, and then allowing these eggs to hatch. Even Bagsby had heard tales of the great war between elves and dragons, when men were hardly known upon the earth. Now Bagsby, doing a commission job for the elves, had managed somehow to bring back their worst enemies.
Something heavy, warm, and prickly nuzzled Bagsby’s thigh.
The thief raised his head, saw the cold black eye of the one of the dragons gazing up at him, the great snout tucked under his knee.
“She likes you,” the other dragon uttered, lifting its neck to let the last of the beef slide down its throat. With its tiny forepaws, the creature began digging in the hard, sandy earth.
“She?” Bagsby responded, looking on with despair as the female dragon wrapped her tail around his body.
“She is Lifefire,” the female’s counterpart said, continuing to scrape out a deep, shallow, bowl-shaped hole. “I am called Scratch, after my father.” The dragon’s voice was raspy, and the words were sometimes mangled, but overall Bagsby could understand the creature clearly enough.
“I am Bagsby,” the thief said, his voice hollow.
“We know,” Lifefire murmured. “We have awaited you for a very long time.”
“Awaited me?”
“You will be our friend in these early days of our race’s rebirth,” Lifefire said.
“Wait a minute!” Bagsby howled, shaking the curling dragon off himself and standing up.
“Wait a minute. How can you talk? How do you know my language? What makes you think I’ll be your friend?”
“A dragon counts as friend any who does him no harm,” Scratch said, beginning to dig a small, shallow ditch leading into the hole.
“Yeah, well, I’ve heard of dragons eating a lot of things that hadn’t done them any harm,” Bagsby retorted.
“What greater measure of friendship than to become one in the flesh?” Scratch said. He finished the shallow ditch, which ended by the cooling fragments of what remained of the dragons’ eggs. The creature climbed up to a rock overlooking both the ditch and the hole. “Stand back,” it said to Bagsby.
Bagsby took a few steps backward. Scratch inhaled, and breathed a roar of fire down the ditch into the hole. The flames scorched the ground for ninety feet. When they died, and the smoke cleared, the sides of the ditch and the entire surface formed by the hole were glazed, like a clay pot.
“Ready,” Scratch said to Lifefire. Lifefire rose on her rear haunches and opened her wings to the night sky. Back and forth she began to beat them, at first slowly, then more quickly, until the wind began to howl in the space around her. Then the creature gave a great shove against the ground with her powerful rear legs and, wings attaining a new speed, rose into the air. She hurtled skyward at an amazing pace, disappearing into the darkness. Seconds later, she was visible again, her form blotting out a tiny portion of the band of stars that stretched across the desert mountain sky. She hovered above the remains of the eggs, then breathed her own breath of fire upon them.
Bagsby flinched as the flames poured from her mouth.
Even though he was more than thirty feet away from the stream of fire, the heat was intense. The short man backed farther away.
The dragon poured her fire breath on the remains of the eggs until the gold coatings, already partly melted during the hatching, became molten. Gradually, the molten metal began to flow down Scratch’s ditch into the fire-hardened hole he had created. Bagsby could see the gemstones that had once adorned the great Eggs flowing into the hole along with the molten gold.
When the entirety was melted, Lifefire stopped her flaming breath and lowered herself gently to the ground near Bagsby. The molten mass had filled the hole, where it took on the shape of a sphere cut in half.
“It will harden as it cools,” Lifefire said. “Then you can carry it for us.”
“Carry it for us?” Bagsby asked.
“For Scratch and myself. It is the beginning of our treasure hoard.”
Ramashoon, who had been content to observe all this silently, laughed aloud. “Well, Bagsby, it would be seeming that your own time of testing is at hand. I am thinking you believed that the gold was yours!”
“Everyone’s entitled to a mistake,” Scratch responded. He and Lifefire burst into laughter, deep, growly, rumbling, dragon laughter, such as the earth had not heard for five thousand years. Ramashoon’s giggles tinkled high above the dragon sounds, and eventually, in the midrange, Bagsby’s laughter joined in, too.
Bagsby awoke in midmorning. He rose, strode out of the depressed area in the side of the mountain where he, Ramashoon, and the dragons had spent the remainder of the night, and looked out over the bustling city of Laga below. Shielding his eyes with his hand against the glare, he watched the puffs of dust that marked the steady stream of traffic into and out of the great city. What would the people of Laga think, he wondered, if they knew there were two fire-breathing red dragons encamped on the mountain above?
He knew what they would think. They would think: kill the dragons, kill them while there’s still time, before they can breed, before they become a family or, worse yet, a race. Dragons had struck terror into the elves, and those two races had come close to exterminating each other in their death struggle. Then men had fought the elves and, for all intents, the men had won. Elves beat dragons, men beat elves. Men could beat dragons—maybe—if the dragons weren’t too strong before the struggle began.
That was one option, Bagsby thought. He lifted a dagger, studied its short, gleaming blade in the morning light. It would be simple: the dragons were still young, and although they seemed to know a fearful amount for newborns, they were still vulnerable physically. A man of Bagsby’s cunning could trick them, get them to lower their guard, then ram the blade up into the space between a couple of scales, or drive it through an eye straight into the brain. Dead dragons. End of problem.
Bagsby wondered why he wasn’t going to do that. He honestly did not know—it wasn’t that he was squeamish about killing. He’d slit many a human throat in his day, and for much less reason than he had for ridding himself and his race of this potential threat. And killing the dragons would stand him in good stead with Shulana—after all, she’d wanted to destroy the eggs before they hatched.
But he wasn’t going to kill them. Maybe that was because Ramashoon simply assumed he wouldn’t. Maybe it was because there was something about them—something strange, mysterious, powerful and beautiful—that appealed to him on some level that he could not talk or even think about. And maybe that was just the way it was supposed to be.
Bagsby shrugged. He was not going to kill them. Then what? He’d have to feed them. Given that he didn’t want to kill them himself, he certainly didn’t want an armed mob coming out from Laga to hunt them down with sword, spear, and bow. And that would happen, certainly, as soon as the beasts were hungry enough to go hunting on their own. Dragons needed meat, and lots of it. Laga had lots of meat—all the livestock brought in by the nomads, not to mention the populace themselves. All the same to a dragon, Bagsby imagined. Couldn’t let them hunt—not here.
That left only one alternative.
“Ramashoon,” Bagsby called back up the mountain. “Ramashoon, wake up.”
“Oh my goodness, the sun is already being high in the sky,” Ramashoon called back. “I am much thanking you for waking me.”
“I’m going to Laga,” Bagsby announced. “Will you stay here and watch... Scratch and Lifefire?”
“We are watching each other right now,” the holy man’s voice lilted back.
“You mean they’re awake? We were up almost all night. Don’t dragons sleep?” Bagsby shouted, exasperated.
“Not when we’re hungry.” The raspy reply came from Scratch, whose head popped up from behind the dip in the mountainside.
“Get back down,” Bagsby called, turning and running back up to where Scratch lay. “Don’t let the townspeople see you.”
“They would come for us?” Scratch asked.
“Almost certainly.”
“Then we must stay hidden,” Lifefire said, slithering over by Scratch, “until we are larger, stronger, and have many eggs awaiting the hatching time.”
“We must go north,” Scratch declared. “The northern mountains are full of food and hiding places. We will grow and breed there.”
“Ah, well, that would be very good for your friend, as well,” Ramashoon volunteered.
“What? Why is that?” Bagsby asked. “I’m getting pretty tired of you making these little surprise announcements about the course of my life.”
Ramashoon stood, smiling, and bowed. “I am not meaning to offend. But my spirits spoke to me last night, in the visions in my mind,” the holy man began.
“Yes, yes, you had a dream,” Bagsby said, impatient. “What did you dream?”
“Your friends are headed north. They seek the great court of Parona, and will try to bring Parona to the aid of the elves in the war against Heilesheim.”
“What war against Heilesheim?” Bagsby demanded, ready to strangle this bizarre little man.
“Oh, that you must be learning for yourself. My time to spend with you is almost being ended.”
“No!” Bagsby exclaimed. “You can’t leave me now, not with all... this... to take care of!”
“Oh, you will be doing very well. If you are not doing very well, you will be dying—either way, it will soon bring you rest, is this not so?”
“Let me get this straight,” Bagsby said. “The dragons want to go north. If I go north with them, I can meet up with my friends at the court of Parona. You, Ramashoon, are going to do a disappearing act and leave me with some inscrutable statement that’s supposed to encapsulate ancient mystical wisdom.”
“Ah, how wonderful!” Ramashoon replied, smiling, bowing and chuckling. “I marvel at your understanding! Oh yes, but first, I must be giving this to the little dragons.”
Ramashoon reached into a hidden pocket in his white breeches and produced another small, cloth bag. This he handed to Bagsby. “Please to be mixing this with their next feeding,” Ramashoon said.
“Will it do me any good to ask why?” Bagsby said cynically.
“Well, it is not for me to be saying what will be doing good for you, is it?”
“That’s what I thought,” Bagsby replied.
By midafternoon Bagsby was in the streets of Laga, fully dressed in the armor of a Heilesheim minor officer, a leader of a hundred. The former owner of that particular armor and livery had no further need for it, nor did the brothel owner who would be stuck with the soldier’s burial expense.
A few well-placed inquiries among officers of the same rank had soon led Bagsby to his goal, the home of one of the young recruits whom he had encountered on his journey to Laga. The house was typical for those of its class, the outer walls whitewashed to reflect the heat of the sun. The structure was two-storied, with balconies extending out over the street from the upper-story windows. The house looked to be reasonably large; there was probably an interior courtyard inside.
Bagsby approached with a bold stride and pounded loudly on the door with his mailed fist.
“A messenger from Hans Frisung with news of the son of this house, who is now engaged against the enemies of Heilesheim in far Argolia,” Bagsby said to the startled house servant who threw open the door.
The fine home did have an interior courtyard with a small garden, and even a tiny fountain. Bagsby was shown to a bench by the fountain to await the master of the house.
“Well, well,” the plump man called as he came bustling into the courtyard. “You are a messenger from the army? You have news of my son?”
Bagsby took in the man’s entire appearance at a glance. He wore colorful breeches of red silk, a large gold sash about his waist, and a patterned blouse of rich, soft material imported all the way from the Five Ports of the Rhanguilds in the far northwest. The man was unarmed. His home was tastefully yet sparsely furnished. His hands were soft and fat, and his face did not yet show the severe lines that would be normal for a man of his fifty-some years. The man was obviously wealthy, but not as rich as a minor noble. Bagsby all but calculated the man’s cash value before he replied.