Days Of Light And Shadow (3 page)

Riding with the rangers paid better than cleaning and brought some much needed silver back to the house. It was one of the few respectable occupations that was open to women. And it let her ride, and if she could no longer raise horses, at least she could still be around them.

Of course there was a fourth reason for taking the cloak. A very rare fourth reason for wearing it. Some believed it was their calling. Maybe, the captain was one of those. Behind his scars and inside his mixed blood skin, he was a man of honour. Cold, stark and harsh honour, but honour none the less. They might not be the Royal Watch, dressed in chain and tasked with the noble duty of serving the high lord, but they had pride and that which they served, the Grove, was to be honoured as greatly as the Heartwood Throne. Even if High Lord Finell seemed to disagree.

“So what do we do?” Grun spoke up, his deep powerful voice booming so loud in the silence of the glade. But then anyone who had troll blood in him as he surely did, was never quiet. Which still made it hard to understand how he could have become a ranger, a force where the skills of sneaking and running silently were highly prized. But he could do that. Despite his immense size, Grun could move very quickly and quietly when he wanted to. He could even remain unnoticed in plain sight. As long as he didn’t speak.

“We take it to the elder.”

“The witch! By the Mother!” Dura only whispered the words, but she was heard.

“Yes. By the Mother in sooth.” The captain fixed her with his piercing stare. “If anyone can tell us of this thing it is Trekor Aileth. And she is of the Mother. You would do well to remember that rider.”

Dura didn’t answer him save to lower her gaze. He didn’t expect her to. The captain spoke and his riders listened. It was not for the riders to speak back. In her few short months among them she had learned that much at least. But still she knew who he meant, and it frightened her. This early into her life as a ranger she hadn’t expected to see the witch, and she didn’t know quite what to expect. Troll, hag, swamp witch, druid and elder. All titles by which she was known. And the tales of her were even more varied.

Aellwy Te was home to the Black Otter’s second chapter house, and the witch lived a little way out in the fen beyond it. And as the only elder nearby she had the honour of acting as their connection to the Grove. She gave them their instructions. But Dura had only been to the town twice in her few months since taking the cloak, and neither time had she seen her. Naturally the other riders spent their free time telling her tall tales of the elder and her monstrous nature, having a little fun at her expense. And though she knew they were mostly just the tall tales of mist dreams, still they troubled her.

But the captain was right. If anyone knew what this thing was, she would. And as mixed as her blood might be, the witch had the grace of the Mother flowing through her veins. Those of the great houses would not be so accepting, of her. Even those of the lesser houses that one day aspired to greatness, would look down on her. As she had once been. But a ranger served the Grove and they cared nothing for a woman’s house or blood.

Abruptly Dura’s thoughts turned in a new direction as she realised the obvious. They would have to carry the creature’s remains to her. The question suddenly most prominent in her thoughts was that if they were to take it to the witch, who would carry its remains? And if there was one thing Dura was certain of, it was that she didn’t want any part of the foul creature near her. Even dead.

Of course no one else did either. And she was the most junior.

Chapter Three.

It was night and most of the city was asleep as it should be. A few guards kept a vigil at the entrances to Fernleaf, the light of the braziers easily spotted in the darkness, while more watchmen made their rounds, checking that all was well. In the distance the sounds of the traders in the market could just be made out. They liked to keep long hours in the city as they set up their stalls for the coming day. And the smell of wood smoke hung in the still night air.

A dark figure stood on a footbridge overlooking the town, leaning gently against the hand rail. Though he looked like a boy as even among his people he was slight of build, to anyone close enough to see his face they would have known him for a man. A man perhaps even older than his forty years. Bitterness and anger aged a man, and the unusual black of his hair did not help. Some even said, behind his back, that he had the face of a sour prune. But he didn’t care about such matters. Not this night.

To anyone watching he would have appeared to be simply taking in the view of the city by night. But in reality he was waiting. Waiting impatiently. And with every heartbeat that passed without his man showing up, he became more impatient.

Y’aris cursed gently under his breath. It was a poor habit he’d acquired while serving as a watchman in the Royal Watch, but one that he’d retained even now that his tour was done and he was back in civilization. At least though, there was no one there to hear him, or to look upon him with disapproving eyes. Many of his people did just that. They didn’t care that he was the high lord’s right hand. The High Commander of the Royal Watch.

To the rest of his people he would always be the low born boy from the broken family. The shameful offspring of a mother who had disgraced herself. A boy grown up in the Royal Watch and lucky enough that he had eventually made if not a good life, then at least a respectable one for himself. They didn’t realise that he was pure of blood, or that he could track his lineage back to the last great king himself, Turion of Doven. And even if they did, they wouldn’t have cared.

His family had been broken after his father Verin of Doven had fled Elaris for reasons unknown. It was a shameful betrayal, and one that Y’aris was determined to avenge one day. If he could ever find his father. His betrayal had left them of few means and less honour. And that was before his mother had disgraced them further by wedding an outsider. In that shameful act she had cast aside her name and his, leaving him unnamed. His father’s house had been forgotten by time. And since her passing he had been a man completely alone, unable to even claim his name as Y’aris of Doven.

Among the elves, the lack of a house, was a mark of terrible shame. Everyone should belong to a house no matter how lowly. But not him. Thanks to the disgraceful life and death of his mother he had no house. And so the last of the Doven line had become unnamed. He had simply become known as Y’aris. And that fed into the peoples’ dislike of him.

Behind his back they called him riallin or black blood. A reference to the dark hearts of the fallen. He heard the whispers no matter how quiet. And one day they would pay for that. One day soon.

By the Mother how he hated them for that. And he hated the Mother too. Their miserable goddess could suffer and burn as far as he was concerned, and her priests with her. They had after all not only not stopped his mother’s remarriage to an outsider, they had said to her that the disgrace was acceptable to the Mother. What a foul thing to say. To allow. If that hatred added a few wrinkles to his face, so be it. They were well earned, and he would have his vengeance upon them all.

Which was why he’d been especially pleased with his latest plan. Whenever the priests suffered he knew a sense of satisfaction, even if they never knew that it was at his hands. And when they died, so much the better. This should be a good night.

Assuming that things had gone right, and the longer he waited, the more he worried that they might not have gone so well. That would be a catastrophe. There were few opportunities he had to strike, limited chances to advance his cause, and this had been perfect. The high lord’s faith addled sister, finally away on a pilgrimage to the wild groves and shrines. Away from her brother’s ever watchful eye and the protection of her guards. Finally within his grasp. It had to happen before he wasted more years futilely planning her demise and his next step in his advance to the throne.

One day he vowed, he, Y’aris of Doven, would sit upon the Heartwood Throne as a true king, and not a miserable high lord.

And then, when the throne was his, he could begin his true mission. He would return his people to their rightful place. He would rid the world of the lower races. The humans, dwarves, gnomes, sprites and trolls. And most especially the half casts and mixed bloods. Born of the debasement of elves, they were an insult to the elven race. An insult to the world. Why couldn’t the others see that? The true elves. Those of untainted blood, and family lineage going back thousands of years. Elves like him.

But they didn’t. Not the high born. They just sat in their stupid little homes and gardens, drinking their elderberry wines and herbal teas, allowing themselves to be served by lesser creatures, and thinking all was right with the world. They were self satisfied and lazy. They barely held to any of the principles that made an elf what he was. First among them, purity.

Sure their blood was clean. Certainly they would consider it a disgrace for any of their kin to intermarry. Or to wed a low born elf. They would decry it until the end of time. But that was as far as they went. They walked the market streets filled with low born and mixed bloods, as if it was completely normal. They allowed those same degenerates to live among them and to share the same freedoms as they did. After all their servants had to come from somewhere and what did it matter if they had a little human, gnomish or even troll blood in them? As long as they served them.

And then there were the priests. The elders as they titled themselves. Their foul breathed goddess actually accepted the outsiders and mixed bloods among her devotees, and her servants openly welcomed them. When he had seen them in the Grove as a child he had understood that instantly. It was then that he’d realised that the so-called Mother was no Goddess of the elves. For that alone her priests had to die. But they also had to die because they opposed his plans. They stood against him, even if they didn’t know it.

And they stood against his master. In fact they were the only thing that the great demon feared. He wanted them dead too, but not by the hands of his servants. He wanted nothing to be tracked back to him. So using the mercenaries was a favoured option. If they’d succeeded.

As he stood there, leaning lightly on the hand rail, staring down over the city’s twinkling lights, Y’aris’ face was dark as thunder. Anger and worry dominating.

The elves, a once truly proud people, brought low by the toleration of outsiders, by the ravings of their deluded holy men, and the weakness of their own leaders. There had been fifteen hundred years of weakness and shame since the last true king had walked the land as the god he was. As he, his last descendant, would be again.

Leafshade! Even the name of their city was an abomination. A betrayal of everything that had once made the elves great. Furwhy Ne Leefan was the city’s true name, not this foul corruption of a word from Common. Just the feel of the word on his tongue made him sick to his stomach.

And Common itself was a foul tongue. A bastard tongue made from the words of the tongues of all the peoples and degraded by thousands of years of use. It was never what true elves should speak. Yet it was the language spoken by all. The only one. All the others had been forgotten over time. Only a very few like him had bothered to learn the true tongue. Most considered it archaic. But when he ruled it would be the only language tolerated.

The people needed leadership. They needed a king. A true king not afraid to do what had to be done. Not a high lord. Not a boy filled with selfishness and petty hatreds. A worthless creature built of false pride. Maybe Finell had some of the right thoughts running through his simple mind. But not enough of them, and he didn’t hold those truths to himself with conviction. He might be of the oldest family lineage, but in the end that wasn’t enough. He would have to die.

But for the moment he could be useful. He could be pushed and pulled in the right direction. But first his plans had to come to life. And before that he needed his man to show up and tell him that what had been commanded of him and his brigands had been done.

It was a frustrating wait.

A pebble cracked against the stone and Y’aris turned to see a dark cloaked figure almost seeming to float across the ground to him. But it was only an illusion. A trick of the night and the long black cloak the man wore over his armour. And of course his natural cat like grace.

“Finally!” Y’aris only whispered the word under his breath as he saw the huge man striding purposefully towards him, but still he was heard.

“Why? Did you miss me Y’aris?” Even in the darkness he could see the white of his teeth as the big man smiled. A cruel and sinister expression on an already ugly face. Y’aris rather imagined that his enemies saw that same smile, just before Anders put an axe in their chest. But they probably saw the terrible tracery of scars across one side of his face as well, a present from a hunting spider’s web so he had been told. It was a less than pleasant sight, which thankfully due to the lack of a moon that night, Y’aris was spared.

Soon he would be spared the rest of him as well. But not until after the fool had returned to his men, happy with his payment and unsuspecting of the fate that awaited him. Simpleton.

“It is done?”

“Yes. Exactly as you asked. I took the princess myself in front of her attendants, and then I took her head.” The man smirked a little as he said it, and Y’aris’ blood ran cold. Anders had his uses, and he had always come through when he had to. But the man was also a monster. In truth he was the very reason his kind had to be destroyed. Humans! Utra! Their very presence had to be cleansed from the land. They were more than just savages. They were evil. In sooth they made the trolls look decent.

“And the witnesses?”

“Half a dozen or so. We let them escape as you wanted and saw them spying on us from the forest. Later we watched in secret as they gathered up the fallen the next morning. They are in a wagon train heading here now. In two days perhaps three, they will be here and you can break the news to your poxy prince and start your war.”

“High Lord.” Y’aris corrected him automatically, then started. “You know my plans?” That wasn’t good.

“They are without subtlety. Sacred grove desecrated. Priests attacked and killed. Princess defiled and beheaded. And all by humans in front of witnesses. Why else would you want that save to start a war?” He said it as if it was nothing. As if he was not human. As if he would not be one of the ones killed. An improvement that Y’aris had already set in motion. When the big man returned to his camp he would discover things were not as he had left them. Just before an arrow took his life.

Y’aris tried not to smirk at the thought. Instead he concentrated on the man’s unexpected knowledge, and the worrying thought that he might have said something to someone. Even in death he could still be trouble.

“You knew and yet you went ahead with it? Why? It is your people that will be killed.” Maybe he thought that he would be spared somehow. Y’aris though would not spare him. Not once his usefulness was ended. Not after tonight.

“For the same reason that I was late here this night black blood.” Anders smiled some more and suddenly Y’aris felt a chill. This was a busy night and he had the worrying thought that the man knew of his plans. But how could he? His men had strict instructions not to act until their leader had left them for the town.

“Go on.”

“There was an accident, a foolish misunderstanding, as some of your soldiers suddenly started raining arrows down upon us, thinking we were their enemies instead of their allies.” Y’aris froze, trying to think of something to say that would not sound like a lie, and failing. He wondered briefly if he could reach for his belt knife, but he knew he would never be fast enough. Anders was more than just quick, he was deadly. For a brief moment he wondered if the brigand had decided to kill him this night instead. He was human after all, and they were known for their treachery.

“Not to worry little troll skin. They had clearly lost their minds so we quickly relieved them of their heads in sympathy.” The brigand chuckled quietly to himself as if it was a great jape.