Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy and Other Stories (64 page)

“You rescued her. You expect me to believe you would kill her now?”

Lodi snorted. “Why not? Don’t play fool with me, magic man. I know slavers, and I knows a setup when I sees one. How you know what slaver to kill? How you know where he from? I thinks you set this up. You had her catched by the slaver, but he don’t sell her to you. You get outbid by that rich whoremaster in Malkan, and you don’t even know it. That’s why you kill the Oronti: He double-cross you. No wizard know nothing about slavers, but I buys from them many times. They double-cross their mother if they get just one more copper.”

For a moment, the wizard looked nonplussed. Then he shook his head ruefully. “Yes, well, I imagine it would have saved me a considerable amount of trouble to have hired you as an advisor from the start. But what was your interest in her? My understanding is that dwarves customarily have little use for elves.”

“We got lots of interest for an elf they pay gold to get back. I didn’t know she was a cousin to the Forest King, but I knowed she’d be worth something. Now, I want my gold, and I be thinking the dwarf king should be knowing what you Savonders is about. I knows we can’t stop you. I don’t even knows that we want to stop you. We don’t stick our beards in Man business. But we likes to knows what’s going on over our heads. So tell me, give me my gold, and then you can send the elf to the Dark if you like.”

The wizard pursed his lips. Lodi had the impression that he was trying to decide if he could kill them all fast enough and still preserve his long-sought prize. Finally, he shrugged in acquiescence.

“Very well, dwarf. It’s a small enough price and will do no harm. Look to the skies, my inquisitive friend. Not tomorrow, not next year, but I’m told you are a long-lived people. When you see fire in the sky, then you may tell your king under the mountains that the shaking of the earth is nigh.”

Lodi nodded and made a mental note to urge the King of the Underdeep to see that the deep strongholds under the mountain were well-supplied in the years to come. Even a dwarf could see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

The wizard had gone to dangerous lengths in seeking a specific spell used to control flying beasts. Fire. The sky burning and the earth shaking. Dragons! Even the evil witchmen of the north, with all their dark and demonic arts, had never managed to tame dragons! He stifled the urge to laugh at the wizard’s lunatic purpose and somehow managed to limit himself to a knowing nod.

“Do you understand, then? I suppose you must be rather more quick-witted than you look.” The wizard smiled, but there was little humor in his eyes. “Well, my bearded friend, I shall now bid you adieu. To the matter of the gold: As I would not have you suffer any loss for the services you have rendered to the crown, do allow me to compensate you for it.”

Lodi hid a satisfied smile beneath his beard as the mage produced a small, heavy-looking leather bag, which he was certain contained at least ten coins. Gold, he hoped. Any thought of warning the elfess of the Savonder’s role in her enslavement vanished—he’d thought to get only five or six out of the wood elves.

He knew a moment’s pang of shame when the pair mounted horses and the elfess looked back to wave at him and his four companions. But then he recalled another time when he’d seen elves on horseback, a time when he’d watched in utter despair as two thousand elves had ridden away, and he turned his back on the southbound pair with a clean conscience.

“You didn’t help us at Iron Mountain,” he growled under his breath. “Did you now.”

“What’s that?” Thorvald asked him as he reached up to pat a horse’s nose. Besides Lodi, he was the only dwarf who wasn’t terrified of the huge beasts.

Lodi had decided to keep the five remaining horses. They would journey on foot in the same direction as the wizard and the elf had gone, sell the horses at the first Man town along the way, then strike out northeast through the wilds until they reached the safety of the mountains. And he would buy a crossbow or three, he reminded himself.

Lodi grunted. “Get a move on, lads. It’s an evil sign when men are getting to be as devious as bloody elves. We got a long way to walk before we get home, and I want a thousand tonnes of rock over my head before those foolish Man wizards start learning what a bad idea it is to wake a dragon.”

FINIS

THE COLD AUTUMN day was slowly drawing to a close. The pallid sun was descending, its ineffective rays no longer sufficient to hold it up in the sky or to penetrate the northern winds that gathered strength with the whispering promise of the incipient dark. The first of the two moons was already visible high above the mountains. Soon Arbhadis, Night’s Mistress, would unveil herself as well.

The brother standing on watch duty at the abbey gate drew his cloak more closely about his shoulders, waiting for the bell that would summon him to Vespers and the warmth of the catholicon. While he was armed with a wooden staff, his only armor was the thick brown wool of the cloak. But this close to the inhuman lands, so near the elvenwood and the Waste of Kurs-magog, there were few brigands and thieves to trouble the stone walls that guarded the brotherhood of St. Dioscurus. One of the lesser orders, given formal recognition by the Sanctified Father only thirty years ago, the Dioscurines were not a mendicant order, but neither did they possess the wealth of the larger, more established brotherhoods.

Movement caught the monk’s eye, and he saw a solitary figure appear around the bend of the dirt roadway that passed by the monastery’s walls and led the occasional traveler to the nearby village of Mulvico. He was surprised. There were few who came this far north, here in the northeast corner of Sablema, but even fewer who were traveling in a southerly direction. There was little trade with the elves and none at all with the tribes of orcs and goblins that inhabited the Waste.

The traveler was no merchant, that was clear enough even at a distance. He lacked a mule or other beast of burden, and was walking too easily to be encumbered by any goods worth mentioning. Nor, as he came closer, did he appear to be a robber, since he wore no sword at his belt and there was no bow slung around his back. The brother already knew the traveler could not be a fellow Dioscurine, at least not one from the monastery. Except for him, keeping his lonely watch outside, all sixty of the order’s monks were already inside the walls, having recently eaten the second of their two daily meals permitted by the Rule of their founder.

The traveler came closer with each long stride. He was very tall, wearing a dark green cloak over a hooded robe, and he bore on his back a large leather pack that appeared to be half-empty. He carried nothing but a long, black walking stick that looked knotted, but turned out to be carved in an extravagantly ornate manner. His grey robe was brown from the knees down with the dust of the road, but it was woven from the sort of wool the monk would have expected to see a very rich man wearing.

The brother’s eyes narrowed and his hands tightened on his staff. But he did not step out from the gates he manned, nor did he call for assistance. Even if his suspicions about the tall traveler were correct, there was no reason to assume he intended any harm, or indeed harbored any desires beyond simply passing by.

And his suspicions were correct, he thought to himself as the traveler turned off the roadway in the direction of the monastery. But what was a solitary elf doing here on the road to Bithnya with winter fast approaching? And what could such an unexpected visitor possibly want with the brothers of St. Dioscurus?

He shrugged. It was rapidly becoming apparent that he would find out soon enough as the elf drew near to the gate.

“Peace be with you,” he bowed and greeted the elf in the humble manner he had been taught to show king or beggar. “Be welcome in our house, in the name of Our Immaculate and Ascended Lord.”

To his surprise, the elf bowed back to him.

“I come in peace. And I thank you for your welcome, priest of the Undead God. Have you a hostel in which a traveler weary may rest for the night? I have come a considerable distance, and I have coins I believe will be acceptable to your bishop.”

A little startled, the brother couldn’t keep himself from raising his eyebrows at being addressed in such an unusual manner, but he smiled politely and stepped back to invite the elf inside the monastery’s stone walls.

“I am no priest, friend elf, merely a humble monk. This is the chapter house of the Ordo Sancti Dioscuri, and you need no coins here. I am Brother Sperarus. You have come all the way from Merithaim?”

He did not ask the traveler’s name. It was the foremost rule of the order to give succor to all who asked it.

The chapel bell began ringing out Vespers before the elf could answer. Sperarus closed the gates behind the elf. The thick wooden doors slammed shut with a boom loud enough to be heard over the bronze clangor of the nearby bells. Then he leaned his staff against the wall and picked up the thick wooden post and wrestled it into the metal supports attached to the backs of both doors, barring them against the night.

The elf had thrown back his hood and was rubbing at one of his pointed ears as the last echoes of the final bell faded away.

“Are you summoned to dine?”

“Prayer,” Sperarus replied. “But first I will take you to a chamber where you can wash and refresh yourself. I assume you have not eaten?”

“I have not.”

“The evening prayers do not take long. The abbot will come see that you are provided with something to eat. I fear you will find our fare to be on the simple side.”

“I should be grateful all the same, Brother Sperarus.”

They walked past gardens covered against the coming winter and fruit trees mostly denuded of their leaves, toward a low building made of stone with small windows covered by unpainted wooden shutters. It was barely more than an animal barn, but the smell of smoke from the fire inside promised warmth as well as welcome.

“This is the guesthouse. You may choose whatever empty room pleases you. We have no other guests today. Three of the older brothers have chambers there, as it is warmer than our cells in the main dormitory.”

He went to open the door, but the traveler stopped him. “Don’t you wish to know my name and my business?”

Sperarus smiled. “I do. But then, curiosity is one of my besetting sins. As you come in peace, you are welcome here, sir elf, by any name. Should the abbot see fit to inquire as to your business, I am sure he will do so when he comes to you.”

The elf nodded. Then he smiled back. His teeth were perfect and white and just a bit more pointed than a man’s.

“Thank you, Brother Sperarus. I would appreciate it if you would tell your abbot that Bessarias of Elebrion is here and is most grateful for the hospitality he has been shown this day.”

The brother felt his eyes widen. He did not recognize the name, but he had certainly heard of Elebrion. And while it was highly unusual for a forest elf to pass this way, he had never heard of a high elf from the royal elven city ever doing so.

• • •

Father Waleran was the second Abbot of Saint Dioscurus. He was proud to be one of the fourteen founding brethren and to have presided over the fourfold growth of the order since its formal establishment by Sanctiff Temperantius III. He was an Amorran of lordly appearance with black hair greying at the temples. Many of his brothers assumed him to have been born into one of the patrician Houses. In truth, his father was merely a plebeian, although a wealthy one of the equestrian class.

Vespers having concluded, Waleran walked towards the guesthouse with an amount of what he was forced to admit was very nearly an unseemly amount of curiosity. What could possibly bring a high elf to Mulvico? Unaccompanied, on foot, and unarmed, no less!

He knocked on the door to announce himself, then opened it and entered. The foyer gave way to the common room, which was warmed by three logs being devoured by flames on a stone hearth. The common room was separated from a small kitchen on the other end by a series of small chambers on either side of the hall that ran from the entry to the kitchen.

The guesthouse was long and low-ceilinged, the better to retain heat inside the thick stone walls throughout the cold winter months to come. It was a version in miniature of the dormitory that the brothers shared on the other side of the walled compound, and if its sparse interior could hardly be described as luxurious, it was warm, and the rough-hewn beds with their chicken-feather mattresses were more comfortable than the canvas cots on which the monks slept.

A door opened from one of the chambers on the right, and a towering figure peered out from it. It was quite obviously the elf, Bessarias, of whom Sperarus had spoken.

“Welcome, Bessarias of Elebrion, to the Order of Saint Dioscurus. I fear we cannot offer you much in the way of accommodations, but such as we have, we are happy to provide.”

Waleran was not especially short, being of average stature, but the elf was a full head taller. His head very nearly touched the ceiling as he walked down the hall towards the common room. He was truly a beautiful creature, the abbot thought, although the shape of his eyes, his ears, and the inhumanly sharp features betrayed his alien nature. He wore his fair hair long, like a woman’s, but despite that and his slender frame, there was nothing feminine about him. Indeed, he projected a powerful air of strength and confidence that was surprising given his modest attire and humble demeanor.

“Am I correct in assuming you are the abbot?” the elf said.

“I am,” Waleran said.

“I thank you, my lord, for your gracious hospitality. I had not thought to find such welcome in the world of Men.”

“All are welcome who come to this place in peace, friend Bessarias. But you must not assume all men to be as we are. Saint Dioscurus was a man of peace, and we strive to follow his example. Others, I am afraid, are less inclined to do so.”

The elf smiled. “In this, at least, Man and Elf are all too alike. If you don’t mind, Abbot, I should like to know, is this what men call a monastery?”