The Elven (22 page)

“Nice workmanship.” Mandred turned to his son. “This is what a man’s weapon looks like.” He wanted to return it, but Ollowain shook his head.

“A gift, Mandred,” said Ollowain. “In the human world, one must be ready for trouble at any time. I’ll be interested to see if you fight any better with an axe than you do with a sword.”

Mandred whirled the axe playfully in the air a few times. “A well-balanced piece.” Suddenly, he stopped spinning it and raised the axe head to his ear. “Hear that?” he whispered. “It’s calling for blood.”

Nuramon felt his belly tense. Had Ollowain perhaps gifted the mortal a cursed weapon? Nuramon had heard grim stories of swords that had to spill blood whenever they were drawn. They were weapons of wrath, forged in the worst days of the first troll war.

An oppressive silence had settled over the group. Apart from Mandred, it seemed no one else could hear the call of the axe, but that might mean nothing.

Finally, Alfadas went to one of the stalls farther back in the stable and saddled his horse. His action broke the spell of silence.

Nuramon turned to the stable hand. “Did the queen have horses prepared for us?”

The goat-legged stable hand pointed off to the right. “Standing right there.” Nuramon could hardly believe what he saw. It was his horse.

“Felbion,” he shouted and strode across to the stallion.

Farodin, too, was surprised to see his brown again. And even Mandred said, “By the gods. There’s mine, too.”

They led the horses to Ollowain. “How is that possible?” asked Nuramon. “We had to leave them in the Other World.”

“We found them at the stone circle above the fjord. They were waiting there for you,” Ollowain explained. He looked to the stable hand. “Ejedin has looked after them well. Haven’t you?”

“Course I have,” replied the faun. “The queen herself was even here, and more than once, to see to the horses.”

Nuramon took the appearance of their old mounts as a good sign for their mission. Even Farodin’s mood seemed to lift.

Nuramon had noticed that Farodin seemed extremely cool toward Ollowain. It was not a matter of distaste, though, as with Mandred. Perhaps it was that Farodin no longer trusted Emerelle as he once had and was therefore suspicious of Ollowain as her servant.

A silvery dawn was breaking as the small troop led their horses out into the courtyard. All was quiet in the palace. The only ones who would see them ride out were the guards at the gate. The contrast with their last departure could not have been greater. Then, they had left as heroes, in broad daylight. Now, they crept away like assassins.

The Saga of Alfadas Mandredson:

The First Journey

I
n that same winter, and side by side, Mandred and Alfadas left the dominions of the Albenfolk. The father wanted to be sure that his son was worthy to succeed him. And so they left, and with them went the elven princes Faredred and Nuredred, and together they sought adventure wherever it may lie. They shied from no fight, and anyone who stood in their path rued it before the first blow fell. Alfadas followed his father to places where no Fjordlander had ever set foot before. But Torgrid’s son was prone to fretting for the well-being of his own boy. He taught Alfadas how to fight with the axe, but seldom allowed him to put his skills to the test. And if ever the danger seemed too great, Mandred set his son to watch the horses or the camp.

A year passed, then Alfadas said to Mandred, “Father, how can I ever learn to be like you when you shelter me from every peril? If you live in fear that something might befall me, then I will never become jarl of Firnstayn.”

Thereupon, Mandred saw that until then, he had deprived his own flesh and blood of any prospect of glory. He asked the elven princes for counsel, and they told him that he should set his son a test. That very night, Mandred slipped away and climbed a steep and dangerous mountain. Reaching the summit, he rammed his axe into the ice there and returned to the valley without it.

Next morning, he spoke to Alfadas and said, “Climb that mountain and bring back what I hid up there.”

Alfadas set off along the path that Mandred had showed him. Hardly had the boy turned out of sight when a great fear came over Mandred, for the ascent was full of hazards. But Alfadas strived up and up and discovered a cave close to the summit. Inside, he found a sword buried in the ice. He took the sword and climbed on to the summit to enjoy the view, and there, he found the axe of his father. He left it where it was and returned to the others in the valley. They were more than a little surprised to see the unknown blade. Mandred, though, grew angry. “Son, that is not the weapon I hid up there.”

Alfadas replied, “But Father, the only weapon hidden up there was this sword. Your axe was jutting clearly from the ice on the summit. Had I an eagle’s eye, I could see it from here. That is how much it was hidden. You gave me the wrong goal, but you showed me the right path.”

Mandred had to climb the mountain once more to retrieve his axe, and he came down again grumbling. When Faredred and Nuredred explained to the son of Torgrid that in Alfadas’s sword, they recognized a blade from Albenmark, Mandred’s wrath dissipated, and he was proud of his son. For this sword was worthy of a king.

Alfadas decided that in the future, this sword would be his weapon, because Luth had given it to him. He said to his father, “The axe is the weapon of the father, the sword that of the son. So will neither father nor son ever have to measure himself against the other.”

They continued their journey, but Mandred still doubted his son. Shortly, they passed through a mountain range. It was said that a troll lived there in a cave. At night, they heard the sound of hammering and thought the troll was trying to frighten them. Faredred and Nuredred determined to climb down and kill the monster, but Mandred held them back. To his son, he said, “Go and find the troll. I will judge you on your actions.”

Alfadas went down to the cave of the troll and found him inside, standing at an anvil. The troll spied him and raised his hammer. Alfadas lifted his sword and threatened the troll with it, saying as he did, “Part of me sees an enemy and says, strike him down. Another part sees the smith at his work. Decide which one you would rather be.”

The troll chose the former and attacked, but Alfadas eluded the blows of the hammer and let the troll taste the steel of his blade. Then the troll yielded and said, “My name is Glekrel. If you spare my life, I will give you a gift fit for a king.”

Alfadas did not trust the troll, but when the monster fetched a suit of elven armor and presented it to him, Alfadas was overjoyed and threw off his own armor to try on the new. Before he was outfitted again, the troll attacked. The young warrior was enraged at this treachery and hacked off one leg of the troll. He took the elven armor as his own and went on his way. This very armor is even today in the king’s possession as a reminder of those early days. Even the trolls know the story, for Glekrel survived and told them what Mandred’s son had done to him.

The next morning, Alfadas returned to his companions. And when Mandred saw his returning son, he was once again proud to be his father, for Alfadas now truly looked like a king.

Then the companions passed through the regions of the south and came across a wide sea and mighty kingdoms. They performed great deeds, and their names even today remain on the lips of those who live there. Once, they fought back a hundred warriors from Angnos to rescue a village that reminded them of Firnstayn in its early years. Another day, they rid the Fortress of Rileis of its ghosts. In many a duel, Alfadas proved himself a skilled swordsman, able to stand beside Faredred and Nuredred. In this way, two more years passed, until Mandred and Alfadas, out of friendship with the elven princes, followed them to the town of Aniscans, where the princes went to search for a changeling
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F
ROM THE
A
CCOUNT OF
K
ETIL THE
S
KALD

V
OLUME
T
WO OF THE
T
EMPLE
L
IBRARY OF
L
UTH IN
F
IRNSTAYN, PAGE 42

The Healer of Aniscans

T
hree years had passed since they left Albenmark, and still not a day went by that Nuramon did not discover something new in the human world. The languages, in particular, fascinated him, and he learned a great many of them. At the same time, it surprised him how difficult it was for Mandred to learn them. Alfadas, whom Mandred persisted in calling Oleif despite his son’s reluctance to accept the name, also found new languages difficult. Growing up among elves seemed in this case to be of little benefit. Strange, these humans.

The search for Noroelle’s son had so far been fruitless. They had crossed the broad forests of Drusna; had passed through the kingdom of Angnos, ravaged by war; had spent moons searching among the far-flung Aegilien Islands; and had lately visited the kingdom of Fargon. It was a green and fertile land, a land that wanted the people to come and conquer it, as Mandred never tired of saying. In recent years, many refugees fleeing the war in Angnos had gone there, and they took their beliefs with them. Some of the few inhabitants who had lived there for generations encountered the newcomers with curiosity, but others saw them only as a danger.

The companions had followed many trails. Their only hope was that the son of an elf and a Devanthar possessed magical powers. If he made use of such a gift, he would surely attract attention. People would talk about him. Based on this, they had tracked down every story they heard of magic or miracles to its source. They had been disappointed every time.

While their search demonstrated the endurance of the elves and Alfadas, as the years passed, Mandred grew more and more impatient. Many times, he drank himself into a stupor, as if wanting to forget that a human lifetime might be too short to search for a demon’s child.

It came as a surprise to Nuramon that Alfadas, unlike his father, but very like an elf, maintained his calm throughout. He even put up with Mandred’s lessons with a patience that bordered on self-sacrifice. Alfadas seemed to have inherited little from his father, except perhaps for his pigheadedness. For even after three years, Alfadas refused to recognize the axe as what Mandred called the queen of weapons, which visibly pleased Ollowain.

A new spring was in the air as they came down from the mountains to the town of Aniscans, chasing a clue. Nomja, Yilvina, and Alfadas had become good friends and were at times wont to forget the seriousness of their mission. Gelvuun remained a loner, rarely opening his mouth. Farodin had once told Nuramon that the trolls had knocked out all of Gelvuun’s teeth and that was why he never said a word. Nuramon still did not know if Farodin had been joking.

Of them all, it was Ollowain who never lost sight of the duty laid upon them. He constantly pushed them to spend no more time than necessary in one place and to move on the moment a trail had petered out.

Farodin, by contrast, took every opportunity to get away from the group. He was always the one who volunteered to scout the trail ahead. Sometimes Nuramon got the impression that Farodin was not searching for the child but was secretly keeping watch for something else. Perhaps he was even trying to hinder their journey to avoid the need to kill Noroelle’s son.

Mandred rode at Nuramon’s side. Together, they led their small troop down through the hills to Aniscans. The human, whose friendship Nuramon had accepted in the ice cave, often entertained the others with the things he said and did and, for a short time, made the elves forget the reason behind their journey. And though the fun was often followed by the realization that finding what they were seeking would mark the start of a lifetime of suffering, Nuramon was glad of Mandred’s talent for lightening the mood.

“Hey, remember the time we ran into that gang of bandits?” asked Mandred with a grin. The human perceived time differently than the elves did. A year, and he was already reminiscing. It was strange, as the feeling that they had been through a lot over a long period of time had also passed over to Nuramon.

“Which bandits do you mean?” replied Nuramon. They had encountered several, and most had just as quickly turned tail and fled.

“The first ones,” said Mandred. “The ones who really put up a fight.”

“I remember.” How could he forget the raiders from Angnos? He and the other elves had been wearing their hoods up, and at first glance, it was not at all clear that they were Albenkin. For the bandits, that discovery was a rude awakening, but they had stupidly shown no inclination to give up the fight. They thought they had the upper hand based on sheer numbers. They quickly learned a painful lesson in the difference between quantity and quality.

“Now
that
was a fight.” Mandred looked around. “I’d love to run into a few cutpurses lurking in these woods.”

Nuramon said nothing. Mandred’s wish could only mean one thing. Alfadas would have to steel himself for another practice session that evening. Mandred just could not stop himself from trying to interest his son in the axe as a weapon. But Alfadas had shown his father often enough that he was more than a match for him with the sword. The times that Mandred was defeated by his son, Nuramon could never be sure of the older warrior’s feelings. Was he proud or offended? And there were times when Nuramon wondered whether Mandred surreptitiously held back in their battle practice, for fear of injuring Alfadas.

They crested a hill and had a clear view over the river valley below. Nuramon pointed to the city on the western shore. “Aniscans. We can finally put the wilderness behind us.”

“And we can finally get to a tavern and drink something decent. My stomach’s starting to think that someone’s cut my head off,” quipped Mandred. “Reckon we can find mead down there?”

One could almost believe that Mandred had forgotten his grief over Freya, but Nuramon saw through the outward appearance to a man who was trying to dull his pain with drink.

Slowly, they rode down the slope on the other side of the hill. At the bottom, they found a road that led straight on to the town. A bridge crossed the river in seven low arches. The river was swollen with snowmelt that had brought with it a great quantity of wood from the mountains. Men with long poles stood on the bridge, prodding at drifting tree trunks and branches to prevent them from catching sideways against the pilings.

Most of the buildings in Aniscans were built of quarried stone and were light brown in color. They were high, massive constructions built close together. The only decorative touch was the shingles on their rooftops, which were a radiant red. All around, on the outskirts of the town, were vineyards. Mandred would definitely find somewhere to slake his thirst, thought Nuramon bitterly.

“A land of fools,” the human suddenly exclaimed. “Look. A rich town like that, and they don’t even bother to build a wall. Firnstayn has better defenses than this place by far.”

“They didn’t count on you coming to visit, Father,” said Alfadas with a laugh, and the rest of the troop joined in. Even Gelvuun grinned.

Mandred turned red. “Flippancy is the mother of many a misfortune,” he said, his voice humorless.

Ollowain laughed merrily. “It looks as if the spring sun has melted the crust of ice over the barbarian king. And wonder of wonders, there’s a philosopher underneath.”

“I don’t know what kind of insult
flossofer
is supposed to be, but this barbarian king is about to stuff his axe down your throat.”

Ollowain crossed his arms over his chest and pretended to shake. “But suddenly the winter returns to freeze the prettiest flowers of spring.”

“Now you’re calling me a flower?” Mandred growled.

“Just an allegory, my friend.”

The human creased his brow. Then he nodded. “I accept your apology, Ollowain.”

Nuramon had to bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud. He was glad when Alfadas, a moment later, began to sing, a welcome interruption to the unhappy little clash. The lad had an exceptional voice . . . for a human.

They followed the road by the river, passing stables and small farmsteads. Cows grazed in the meadows beside the road. The landscape here seemed strangely disordered. In all his time in the human realm, Nuramon had never managed to get used to the otherness of the world, but he had learned to see the beauty in its strangeness.

The buildings of the town were huddled around the base and up the sides of a hill, on top of which rose a temple. Its walls were surrounded by scaffolding, and the hammering of stonemasons could be heard far beyond the river. The construction was not decorative in the least and had walls as thick as those of a fortress tower, but Nuramon found a certain charm in its coarse plainness. To anyone approaching from far away, it seemed to cry out that there was nothing here to distract the faithful, for no work of art can compare with the beauty of true belief.

Nuramon thought of the old mendicant they’d encountered a few days earlier in the mountains. His eyes fervid, the man had told them about Aniscans and the priest whose name was apparently a household one all along the river valley: Guillaume, who spoke of the god Tjured with such zeal that the power of his words passed over to those who came to listen to him. It was said that the lame could walk again if they came and heard him and he touched their limbs with his hands. His magic seemed able to drive out any suffering, vanquish any poison.

How many times had they followed such rumors in the past three years? But every time, they had found nothing. They were looking for a man around thirty years old who could work miracles. This short description matched Guillaume just as it had matched a dozen other men, not one of whom had possessed any sort of actual magical power. People were far too simpleminded. They were only too ready to be taken in by any charlatan who showed them some trick or sleight of hand.

The mendicant had claimed that in his childhood, where the town of Aniscans now stood, there had been no more than a small stone circle where the people came for the summer and winter solstices to make sacrifices to the gods.

Nuramon looked up. The stone circle had most likely stood on the small hill where the stonemasons were working on the temple.

The hooves of their horses clattered over the cobblestones of the bridge. Some of the workers turned to watch them pass. They wore plain aprons and broad-brimmed hats of woven straw. Humbly, they bowed their heads. Warriors were held in high regard in this kingdom, it seemed.

Nuramon looked across to the houses and public buildings. Their walls were made of rough-hewn stone and appeared heavy and solid. Measured against what the humans normally managed to build, they were not badly constructed at all. Most of the walls were straight, and few of the rooftops sagged under the burden of their shingles.

Before leaving the bridge, Mandred and Alfadas positioned themselves at the head of the band. Anyone seeing the two of them would assume that princes from the wild north had come visiting, bringing a mysterious retinue in tow. The inhabitants of the town turned and watched them ride by with astonishment, but soon went back to their daily routine.

Strangers were clearly nothing new in this town.

There existed, though, an unrest that had nothing to do with them. The closer Nuramon and the others came to the temple, the more palpable it became. There was something going on in Aniscans. The entire town seemed to be on its feet, the townsfolk pushing through the narrow alleys and up the hill. Soon, he and his companions were unable to go any farther on horseback. They were forced to dismount and take their steeds into the courtyard of a tavern where Nomja, the archer, stayed with them. Then they rejoined the throng streaming toward the temple. Around them, the atmosphere reminded Nuramon of a kobold wedding, everyone mingling and mixing and in high spirits.

Nuramon picked up scraps of conversation from those around them. The people were talking about the miracle healer and his spectacular powers, about how he had brought a drowned child back to life the day before and about how more and more strangers were coming to town to see Guillaume. An older man spoke with pride of how the king had invited Guillaume to his court to take up residence there, but the priest had apparently turned down the offer to leave the town.

Finally, the small troop reached the public square in front of the temple. In all the jostling of the crowd, it was hard to estimate how many had gathered, but there must have been hundreds. Wedged in among the sweating, milling humans, Nuramon felt increasingly unwell. All around him was the reek of sweat, unwashed clothes, rancid fat, and onions. From the corner of his eye, he saw Farodin holding a perfumed handkerchief over his nose. Nuramon wished that he could find some sort of relief like that. Humans and cleanliness were two things that simply did not go together. It was something he’d learned indirectly from Mandred a long time ago. In the past three years, Nuramon had grown somewhat less sensitive to the multitude of smells that assaulted his nose in the human world, especially in the towns. But here in the crowd, the stench was truly overwhelming.

Suddenly, somewhere ahead, a voice rose above the sounds of the crowd. Nuramon craned his neck to see but could not make out the speaker among the tumult. He seemed to be standing close to the tall oak tree spreading its branches across the center of the square.

The voice was melodious, sonorous, and the speaker well versed in the art of rhetoric. No syllable passed his lips heedlessly. Every word was carefully accented, spoken like the philosophers of Lyn, who practiced debating for centuries to take their vocal abilities to the limits. In doing so, the true art lay not in being able to rely on the strength of one’s arguments, but in performing the words in such a way that the spirit surrendered unconditionally to the voice. What the man up ahead was doing was something like casting a spell.

The people pressing around them took no further notice of Nuramon and his striking companions. They were too captivated by the voice.

Farodin pushed his way to Nuramon’s side. “Hear that voice?”

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Nuramon replied.