The Elven (29 page)

Silvernight

T
hey rode in silence through the night forest. A mild autumn wind plucked the last of the leaves from the branches. Mandred had never before sensed the magic of Albenmark as keenly as he did at that moment. The moon hung low in the sky and was bigger, far bigger, than in the human world. It shimmered red against the darkness. “There’s blood on the face of the moon,” he’d heard the elves whispering, and he understood that it was a warning that something bad lay ahead.

The light was the strangest of all. It was not unlike the faerylight he’d seen sometimes over Firnstayn on clear winter nights, but this light was silver. And it wasn’t spread across the heavens, but hung among the trees all around, like veils made from a cloth woven of moonlight. Occasionally, bright sparks danced among the branches, like stars come down from the night sky.

This time, their path had not led them to Emerelle’s palace, and they had not crossed the Shalyn Falah, the white bridge. Nuramon had explained to Mandred that, on the last night of the fall, the elves celebrated Silvernight. They gathered in a clearing in the middle of the Old Wood. It was from that clearing that the Alben had abandoned the world. On that one night, Emerelle was able to cast a spell that allowed the elves to hear the voices of their ancestors—the elves who had gone into the moonlight.

The companions had already been riding through the woods for hours, and by Mandred’s reckoning, it must have been close to midnight when they heard the first soft strains of music. At first, it was no more than a breath, a barely perceptible change in the sounds of the forest. The
whoo-whoo
of owls and the rustling of mice in the dry leaves faded more and more as the music of a flute sounded in the distance. Mandred thought he saw a goat-legged creature playing a shepherd’s pipe among the shadows of the trees and dancing to his own tune.

Then other sounds mixed with the music of the flute, sounds the mortal could not ascribe to any instrument he knew.

The elves seemed restless, almost like the children in the Fjordlands waiting for the sweets they were given during the apple festival.

Between the silhouettes of the trees, Mandred could now see the glow of a red light. A huge lantern—no, it was a tent with a light burning inside. The forest opened up, and Mandred was spellbound by the sight that met his eyes. They had reached an enormous clearing, in the middle of which a large hill sloped up to a pinnacle of rock, like a stone needle jutting from the summit. Seen from below, it looked as high as the moon. Fifty men with outstretched arms would not have been enough to encircle the base. Thousands of lights danced around the rugged stone to the sound of the music.

Surrounding the hill stood dozens of menhirs, like little brothers of the needle of stone. Among the menhirs, all around them, the elves were dancing a high-spirited farandole. The rest of the clearing was a field of tents, lighting the night like giant paper lanterns. There were so many; it was clear that far more had come to the festival than only the elves of Emerelle’s court.

The rhythm of the music suddenly changed, and Mandred saw a single figure break from the ranks of the elves’ dance. Swathed in glistening light, the figure floated to the tip of the stone needle, and with arms spread wide, it seemed to greet the moon.

As if in answer to the greeting, flowing light spilled from the stone needle, quickly enveloping the entire hill and pouring out over the clearing. It came as far as Mandred and his companions, and the jarl held his breath in apprehension. He had seen a similar light once before, when he had dived into the clear waters of the fjord one summer afternoon. He could clearly remember how he had looked up to the sun from underwater and how the water had altered the sun’s rays.

Still, he dared not breathe. A feeling of dizziness overcame him. The light seemed to flow through him and to carry him along with it.

Mandred heard voices.

“No, he seems well enough.”

Blinking, Mandred looked around. He was lying in the long grass. “What happened?”

“You fell off your horse,” Nuramon replied. “But it doesn’t look like you’ve hurt yourself.”

“Where is the light?” Mandred tried to sit up. He was lying beside a red tent. The wonderful light that had come streaming from the rock had disappeared.

Nuramon helped him to his feet.

“You are the first mortal ever to attend the Silvernight,” said Ollowain, his voice stern. “I hope you appreciate the privilege.”

“Sword master?” Two elves in shimmering armor approached. “The queen wishes to see you, alone.”

Farodin and Nuramon looked at one another in surprise.

“Have we fallen from grace?” asked Mandred drily.

“It is not our place to interpret the orders of the queen.” Without another word, the elven guards left with Ollowain.

“Has he been invited or taken away?” asked Yilvina in bewilderment.

“Do you think Emerelle knows how late he came to help us in Aniscans?” Mandred asked.

“I believe she wants to hear what he has to say before she talks to us,” replied Farodin. This time, the look he shared with Nuramon was one of concern.

The moon was low on the horizon by the time the two guards returned. Mandred and the others had been left with their doubts for more than an hour while the rest of the Albenkin in the camp carried on a merry festival. Now they followed the two soldiers to the queen’s saffron-colored tent.
It’s bigger than a longhouse
, thought Mandred with envy.

When Mandred tried to follow his companions inside, the guards crossed their spears, preventing him from entering. “Forgive us, mortal,” one of the elves said. “Tonight you are not permitted to see the queen. Just being present at this festival is an honor never given to any other human.”

Mandred was about to deliver a sharp rebuke when he heard the queen’s voice very clearly from inside and saw her shadow cast on the wall of the tent. She seemed much bigger than she had in the Royal Hall, but that must have been a trick of the light. “I am pleased to see you back safe and well,” she said.

“My queen, your wish has been fulfilled. Noroelle’s son is dead,” said Nuramon.

“You know very well what my wish was, and equally well that it has not been fulfilled. Guillaume did not die at your hand, nor at the hand of any of your companions. Do not tell me that my wish has been fulfilled.” The queen’s voice was as cold as the moonlight. Mandred had never heard her speak like this before. “You cannot begin to appreciate how much you have disappointed me, nor how great is the damage that will grow from your actions. This was never simply about Guillaume having to die. It was also about
how
he died. Do not dare to ask me about Noroelle. Your success might have redeemed Noroelle’s guilt, but as things are, nothing has changed.”

Mandred could hardly believe what he was hearing. What did Emerelle want? Guillaume was dead, wasn’t he? Farodin and Nuramon did not deserve to be treated like this. More than anything at that moment, Mandred wanted to knock the two guards aside so that he could go into the tent and teach their queen a lesson in fairness.

“Majesty,” replied Nuramon, and Mandred heard defiance in his voice. “All I regret is that I was not able to prevent Guillaume’s death. Noroelle’s son was not what you saw him to be. And if he bore any guilt at all, then it was no more than the guilt of being born.”

“You saw what his magic was capable of, and you wanted to bring him here. Whatever you say or think, he was the son of a Devanthar. Even in death, he is still the beast’s tool. You had an entire night in which to carry out my order unseen. In that night, you changed the destiny of Albenmark. Out there in the Other World, something is happening . . . in the water. I cannot see what it is. The Devanthar . . . it is using the way Noroelle’s son died to its own ends. It has not given up on taking its revenge on us. From this moment on, we have to be on our guard. No one shall leave Albenmark. And none shall return. I have appointed Ollowain as my chief gatekeeper, for he has proved himself my most trustworthy warrior. Now you have my permission to leave.”

Mandred was perplexed by what he had heard. What was the queen afraid of? No human ruler was as powerful as she was, and yet she was sealing the gates to Albenmark as if her land was some kind of castle waiting to be besieged.

Alaen Aikhwitan

A
t Nuramon’s side, Mandred rode into an expanse of woodland. Somewhere in there was the elf’s home. Farodin had gone to his family, but he planned to join them that evening to talk over what they might still be able to do now that the queen had stationed guards at every door between the worlds. Nuramon seemed downcast, and Mandred could sympathize. The queen, after all, had destroyed any hope he may have had of ever seeing Noroelle again.

To Mandred, the forest seemed an uncanny place. He could not orient himself in it. The trees confused his senses. The deeper they penetrated into the woods, the harder it became for him to gauge which direction they were riding in. Perhaps it lay in the path that Nuramon had chosen. Mandred watched his companion, and it seemed to him that Nuramon was letting his horse choose which way to go. The horse, for its part, moved through the trees with such familiarity that it barely had to change direction at all. The animal clearly knew how to get to Nuramon’s house.

There were no obstacles to overcome, and the path they were following was level. Perhaps that was what was confusing Mandred. From a distance, the woods had looked as if a tree-covered hill rose at its center. If that was true, they should have been on its lower slopes long ago. But all around them, nothing rose any higher than an anthill. His confusion might also have had its roots in the huge variety of life in the undergrowth around him, all the birds, all the wild game that did not shy away from watching them in the distance, as if wanting to witness Nuramon’s homecoming.

The farther they pressed into the woods, the bigger and more ancient the trees became. The sheer variety in the elven forest continually surprised Mandred. Oak trees grew side by side with poplar, birch with fir, beech with willow. They all grew in harmony, as if each tree were striving to fit in with those around it. It made him think of Aikhjarto.

“How many of these trees are like old Atta Aikhjarto?” he asked the elves.

Nuramon looked at him as if he’d counted on just about anything except that question.

“Are the trees Albenkin, too?” Mandred added, surprising Nuramon a second time.

“Oh, yes,” the elf replied. “The ones with souls are, of course. But there are not many of them left in this forest. The times when the great Alaen Aikhwitan held council are over.”

“Alaen Aikhwitan? Is that a brother of Atta Aikhjarto?”

“You could say that. The oaks are the oldest. Some say they were the first Albenkin. You will see Aikhwitan soon.” Nuramon smiled, but Mandred could not tell if the smile was mischievous or friendly. He still found it difficult to read emotions on the faces of the elves.

They rode past bigger and bigger trees, and Mandred wondered how big Alaen Aikhwitan might be. How far might its powers reach? “Did all of these trees have souls?”

“Yes. Together they formed a large conclave. But that was a very long time ago. Now the only one left from those days is Alaen Aikhwitan. The other souled trees are much younger.”

Mandred looked around reverently. If the trees here had once formed a kind of council, then the forest now was like an empty town hall where the only one left was the mayor. How lonely it must be for Aikhwitan.

The branches of the trees overhead were tightly interwoven, like a fine cloth. Hidden away somewhere beyond the wooden roof was the sun, and only occasionally did a spear of light reach the ground. The trunks were like columns built by giants. The solemn mood of the place seemed to banish Nuramon’s gloom. He seemed more at ease here.

They rode around a huge trunk. Mandred turned in the saddle and looked back. It was a fir tree. In his world, not even oaks had trunks like that.

“Something wrong?” asked Nuramon with a smile.

“Pretty big, your . . .” Mandred broke off halfway through his sentence. They had reached the edge of a clearing, in the middle of which stood an enormous oak. It still had leaves, as if this titan knew no other seasons than spring and summer. The oak was so big that its shadow stretched away from them to the edge of the forest on the far side of the clearing.

Mandred’s breath caught. The trunk of the oak was like a cliff. It didn’t look like a tree; it looked like something that trees would grow on. A wooden stairway wound upward, spiraling around the trunk in broad sweeps. And high up, close to the crown of branches, Mandred could make out a single window. His eyes widened. The window must have been very large, even though it looked tiny next to the trunk. “You don’t live up there . . . ?” asked Mandred.

“I do. This is Alaen Aikhwitan, and up there is my house,” Nuramon replied casually.

“In this gigantic tree?”

“Yes.”

“But you said it has a soul.” The idea of living on something that could think seemed strange to Mandred. You would feel like a flea on a dog.

“It is a very hospitable tree, Mandred. My family has lived here for generations.”

Nuramon suddenly lowered his eyes. No doubt he was thinking of the stigma that hung over him and his kin. Mandred could not understand that. To be reborn. Humans dreamed of just that, but for Nuramon, it seemed to be some kind of curse. Some among the Albenkin waited millennia for their liberation.
Millennia
 . . . an easy word to say, but Mandred realized that he couldn’t understand what that must really mean. A life so long was beyond a human’s imagination. The elves used the time they had to take whatever they did to the point of perfection. If they were reborn, did they remember their previous life? Mandred thought of the festival two nights earlier. Is that what it looked like when an elf went into the moonlight? It had been beautiful but overwhelming at the same time. Unearthly. What he had seen on that hill was not something human eyes were meant to see.

They dismounted and led the horses toward the oak. With every step, the tree seemed to Mandred to become more menacing. “Which is more powerful, Aikhjarto or Aikhwitan?” he finally asked.

Nuramon shook his head. “You humans. Power matters so much to you. But I guess you want to know where your Aikhjarto fits in the framework of this world. All I can tell you is this. Aikhjarto’s power lies in the gate between the worlds, in his wisdom, and in his generosity.” He pointed ahead. “The power of Aikhwitan lies in his size, his knowledge, and his hospitality.”

Mandred was not satisfied with that answer. These elves were always beating around the bush. Was Nuramon trying to say that it wasn’t possible to compare one with the other? Or were they equals? Useless elven claptrap. Why couldn’t they give a man a straight answer?

The elf spoke again. “You don’t need to worry, Mandred. Look how calmly the leaves are blowing in the wind, see how they reflect the light. Look at the bark. The cracks in his trunk are so wide and deep that when I was a child, I was able to put my hands completely inside them. I found footholds as well, and I climbed from down here all the way up to the house. It may seem threatening to you just because it is so big, but old Aikhwitan has a good soul.”

Mandred looked more closely at the tree. He looked at the leaves that Nuramon had spoken of, and the muted light. And it was true: up there, things really did look tranquil.

They reached the base of the stairway, which was made of pale wood, and unsaddled the horses. Mandred wondered where the stables for the horses were. Even the queen had stables inside her palace. Nuramon made no move to take the horses anywhere. He removed their harnesses and laid them with the saddles by the trunk of the oak. “They won’t run off,” he said. “Let’s go up.”

Nuramon’s horse was loyal to him, but Mandred’s mare had certainly not forgiven him for the incivilities of recent months. It would be a real pity to lose her, and he followed the elf only with reluctance.

When they had rounded the massive trunk once, Mandred looked up. They were still a long way from the house. What did Nuramon do if he came home drunk? Sleep among the roots? On the other hand, he had never seen his friend drunk. In contrast to Aigilaos, the elves had no idea how to drink or carouse. Mandred wondered why they bothered celebrating at all.

Mandred rattled the handrail to see how stable it was. Good carpentry. Something solid to hold on to if you had a sore head.

Nuramon strode ahead with a spring in his step. “Come on. You have to see this.”

Mandred followed, out of breath.
Stupid to live in a tree like this
, he thought. Sensible people only had to take one step across a threshold to call themselves home. The elves could keep all their climbing around.

Soon, they had climbed high enough to look out over the tops of all the other trees of the forest. Nuramon pointed to a snowy peak on the horizon. “The Iolid Mountains. The children of the Darkalben used to live there.”

Mandred didn’t like the sound of that name. Darkalben. And their children. Nuramon must be talking about the legendary dark elves. In Mandred’s world, terrible stories were told about the dark elves. It was said that they dragged humans into crevices in the rocks to feed on their flesh. They could not be seen at night because their skin was the color of darkness. Mandred wanted nothing to do with creatures like that, and it surprised him that Nuramon could talk about them so easily.

They climbed the rest of the way in silence and stopped at the entrance to the house. From here, they could look out over the land all around and see as far as the queen’s palace. The Shalyn Falah and Aikhjarto’s gate must lie somewhere beyond the palace. Everything else he could see was unknown territory. No human had ever explored any of the lands that stretched before them, that was certain. Ever since leaving Firnstayn, Mandred had been thinking about what he was supposed to do as a castaway in the elven world. What could he possibly do that the elves couldn’t already do far, far better?

He thought of Aigilaos. If only he still lived. Roaming the woods with him, hunting and drinking, telling tall tales of imagined heroics and shocking the fine she-elves at court with crude compliments . . . that would have been the life. Mandred smiled to himself at the thought. He missed the centaur. He would have been a great companion to the manhorse. Mandred was determined to see his blood feud with the Devanthar through to its end. He did not know where to even begin to search, and he also did not know how he was supposed to get out of Albenmark now that Emerelle had stationed guards at all of the gates. But he would find a way. He owed it to Aigilaos . . . and to Freya.

Nuramon pushed open the circular door. It was neither closed nor bolted; the elves clearly had no fear of thieves. The elf hesitated before entering. “The Other World confused my sense of time,” he said. “It feels like centuries have passed, not years.”

“It isn’t the time. It’s the fate,” replied his companion.

Nuramon started. “What did you say?”

“They’re not my words,” replied Mandred, abashed. “I once heard them from a priest of Luth. He said,
‘Time may seem to be long when the fate takes many turns.’”

“The words of a clever man, and it is a sign of wisdom to remember them.”

Mandred was pleased. Finally, a little recognition for something besides brawn and brawling.

“Come in. You are welcome in my house.” The elf swept his arm wide in a gesture of hospitality.

Mandred stepped inside, into the heart of the tree.

The first thing he noticed was the special scent of Nuramon’s home. It smelled of fresh nuts and leaves. Both the inside walls and the door were made of the same wood as the stairs they had just climbed. The light from the window, dimmed by the foliage overhead, spread evenly; there were shadows in places, but no corners that were completely dark. Mandred saw reddish-brown barinstones set in the walls. They reminded him of the elfhunters’ chambers in the queen’s castle and of how they had glowed at night. What a treasure a single one of those stones would be in the human world.

A cool breeze swept in from the door, and a few oak leaves were strewn on the floor, but they were not dry or wilted. They were alive, as if they were still part of the tree. Mandred looked around and wondered why, with all the openings in the walls, the place did not feel even draftier.

The furniture inside was somewhat plain, which matched the character of the room. There was nothing excessive inside, and that by itself made the place attractive. Nothing seemed fragile or delicate, but as robust as the oak around them.

A wooden stairway wound up to the floors above, which could not be seen from outside because of the heavy foliage. The floor they were standing on was built in such a way that the trunk of the oak had been partly hollowed out. Mandred wondered why Alaen Aikhwitan had acquiesced to that. What heroic deeds had Nuramon’s ancestors done to deserve this honor? The curved ceiling blended into the walls so exquisitely that it was as if Aikhwitan’s wood flowed into the paler wood of the walls and floor. “Which tree does this light wood come from?” asked Mandred.

Nuramon set his pack down on a bench. “It is the wood of Ceren.”

“Is that a kind of tree?”

“My mother said it was a birch tree. On the night before the elfhunt, I found out that its name was Ceren. Among the trees, Ceren is legendary.”

“Ah. And will Aikhwitan accept me being here? I’m sure no human has ever set foot in your house before.”

Nuramon smiled. “You’ve made it this far. Do you feel at all uncomfortable now?”

Mandred did not. He felt safe. Protected somehow. He looked around again. “And no one else lives here? Your house doesn’t look like no one’s lived here for thirty years.”

Nuramon looked blankly at Mandred. “What do you mean?”

“I see no dust or dirt. Only these leaves on the floor. But they don’t look out of place either somehow.”

“It is just as I left it.”

These elves led a simple life. It was probably the tree itself that kept the place clean, and Nuramon had never even thought about it.

While Nuramon went upstairs with the few items he had, Mandred poked through the adjoining rooms. Although he had never been here before, the house felt familiar. Maybe it was because he knew Nuramon, and his home matched him.