HalfElven: an Elfquest story

Book Three: Part One

The pain was excruciating. Within the shadows of his mind Wyl clung to the sureness that was himself. Dimly he could hear a call within the silences of thought – high-pitched and quiet but growing closer. A burst of strength shot through him and he glared at his tormenter.

The black-robed figure merely looked puzzled momentarily. She thought she had felt something fly past her from somewhere outside, something which energized her toy of a captive. But that was impossible. There was nothing in Sending she could not hear, no one stronger than she.

She turned and rendered the wild beast-elf's mate unconscious with a thought. She was starting to get bored with these smaller, animalistic kin of theirs. If this is what the outside world had rendered those who rejected the safety of Blue Mountain into, then she was glad she had chosen to remain as she was. But she was growing bored. Perhaps the humans would send her a new plaything.

HalfElven never lost stride as she ran with the others, but she smiled to herself even as she ached for Strongbow's pain. The Black Snake would underestimate her. The only question still was, would she take the long route, or the short one?

The pipes stopped their singing.

Somewhere in the depths of her trance, the rockshaper Door noted the abrupt end of the fragile music. She paused in her preparations since the signals weren't right for her to shape the portal she guarded.

If there had been room in her devotion Door would have remembered being named Sekura; she would have remembered the mischievous glint that made her face so appealing to lovemates. The girl Sekura was gone though, and Door could not remember her. There was no time to remember all she had lost for the pipes had started again and the signal came to do her duty.

As they pushed their way into the mountain, only one Wolfrider was prepared for the look of the shaped edifice. Skywise glanced over at HalfElven's face and saw that it had turned hard and furious, her eyes crackling with anger. Her gaze was focused on the black-robed elf that Cutter had on her knees, New Moon at her throat. "Damned Otaku," she muttered, apparently to herself, "Fate has brought Change to you, ready or not." He didn't understand her words, but he wasn't going to ask, not yet at least.

HalfElven contained herself, barely, until her tribe was freed to call their kin. She joined the Sending, briefly hiding a silent handclasp with Strongbow in the mass of calls. She permitted a tight smile of success as the tribe rejoined itself around her.

Moonshade's announcement, though, caused the moment of inattention Winnowill had been waiting for and she took the opportunity presented to escape the barbarian's grasp and begin to make her way to her prisoner, signalling the attack on the Wolfriders.

As the Chosen Eight flew down, HalfElven felt the self-imposed limits shatter and she leapt into the air to join her tribemates in battle. She was already racing her way after Winnowill when Leetah called out to them.

If Strongbow was surprised to see her flying, he didn't show it, but their eyes met for a brief moment and she could feel him measuring her.

Some dispassionate part of Winnowill's consciousness noticed the strange elf maiden who flew like one of her own Gliders. Her soul shuddered when she realized that the girl, barely more than a child (like the barbarian Tyldak had Recognized), was of mixed blood -- human and elf. Before that moment Winnowill would have thought that such a union was impossible, for all that some of the Chosen Eight had been curious with her pets. She knew of the animal blood in the Wolfriders and knew that at some point there had been a halfling in their heritage, but she hadn't considered meeting another halfling, much less in her mountain. Something in the way the girl held herself, completely unafraid even as the birdkiller's life lay in Winnowill's delicate hands, taunted the twisted healer. Here was a puzzle to rival even her pets in the hidden bowels of the mountain, such an interesting tangle of high blood and low blood to untangle.

But then a glint in the eyes of the girl who floated motionless seemed to giggle at her, much like Door used to giggle before Winnowill had seen to defeating her, and she realized that the girl knew how much of a puzzle one such as she would be, and was enjoying it. Winnowill gathered her energies to kill the birdkiller when a dark skinned barbarian rushed forward to shield it with her touch.

Cutter declared he would speak with her "chief" and Winnowill decided that she would do just that, but the floating barbarian's face hardened. "All of us are going then." They turned to look at her. "We aren't leaving Strongbow behind to await the decision. Citaya!"

A green lizard-like creature appeared in midair near HalfElven. With a nod from her friend she popped out of sight and then suddenly was inside the cage. She settled down on Strongbow's shoulders, taking up the shielding of the archer so that Leetah could back off at HalfElven's look. "Back up, archer, as far back as you can."

Winnowill watched, intrigued, surely she wasn't also a rockshaper? Perhaps this one would do to serve her, once broken and hidden.

The Wolfriders looked at HalfElven in confusion as she motioned them back, and then held her hand out in front of her, towards the stone bars that caged Strongbow. She closed her fist suddenly and the bars shattered, throwing rock shards in all directions and setting loose a fine smoke of powdered rock. Then a wave of her other hand and the smoke cleared.

Strongbow emerged and nodded to her, even as Moonshade rushed to her lifemate's side.

HalfElven turned to the rest of her tribe. "Now we can go see the chief of this mockery."

HalfElven could just about kick herself from here to Pern. She quietly followed the other Wolfriders as they made their way through the labyrinthine hallways of Blue Mountain, but in the silences of her mind she seethed at her own idiocy. Whatever possessed her to show her hand this early in the game? Goodness knows the Black Snake wasn't one to simply sit still and let things happen. Knowing that HalfElven had that much power at her disposal was not something the jealous Winnowill was going to simply let stand. She forced her breathing to calm. Anger was not going to change matters, it wasn't going to free the Gliders or help Door where she sat.

At least Winnie didn't know about the range of Sending frequencies and she didn't know about HalfElven's Seer's gift. With luck HalfElven could salvage What Must Be, before events spiraled into chaos.

Slowly she calmed herself and began a series of infinitesimal adjustments to the events around her in an effort to reclaim the necessary timing of their stay. Now was definitely not the time to shout her challenge to the Lord of Blue Mountain.

Lord Voll was old, and he didn't wear his years lightly. HalfElven edged closer to Strongbow where he glared at the Chosen Eight. At their entrance Lord Voll started to see the archer free. He looked at Winnowill.

Before anything could be said, though, Cutter spoke up to demand the full story. As the tale of woeful events unfolded, HalfElven could sense the puzzlement her Chief was wearing as plainly as his hair. He offered to hunt in the place of the food that the grounded flier would have gathered, but that was not what Winnie wanted from them.

Kill Briersting. That was her demand, and it sounded far too logical to a people who had lived so long on ideals that they forgot pragmatism.

Strongbow's hands clenched even as his mate sheltered Briersting with her own body. HalfElven glanced towards him in sympathy and Sent high and quick. Never.

Slowly Strongbow unclenched his hands and nodded to her. Leetah, though, was quicker with a variation on the argument that HalfElven would have used. "You might as well command that we put our own children to death!"

Though he accused her of cruelty, HalfElven could feel Voll's sudden surge of suppressed hope at Leetah's words. He didn't know about the murders within his own walls, about the twisted mockery of an advisor who had rendered all wombs around her barren to avoid being reminded of the product of her own.

But HalfElven did and even the unborn could cry out for vengeance.

The arrival of the children changed everything within Blue Mountain. And though she buried it so deeply that even she couldn't sense it, HalfElven felt Winnowill's heart cry out in anguish at their cheerful, fearless trust in the sure love of their parents. She didn't want to think about how she betrayed the trust of her own son.

In an effort to regain control Winnowill claimed something that wasn't theirs to claim, but no one in Blue Mountain was going to argue with her because they all shared the self deception. She said that they were the High Ones.

Hubris was having fun tonight.

There was silence for a stunned moment as the Wolfriders tried to understand what had been said. Suntop looked up at Winnowill for a long instant. He quickly whispered to his father and then turned to bury his face in his father's protective embrace.

The boy's actions puzzled Lord Voll and Winnowill's glib response was less than comforting. Rage boiled up in HalfElven's heart at the perversion Winnowill had made of herself and the instincts she bore that were a birthright of HalfElven's bloodline. It took all of her strength to silence the rumbling growl that would lead to a formal challenge. It wasn't time yet; it wasn't time yet.

"Could it be --?" Leetah's musings offered an outlet.

"I can glide." HalfElven said in a harsh tone. "I can shape. I can lift. You don't see me claiming to be a High One." She didn't mention the fact that her mother could very well make such a claim, and probably could back it up at that.

Cutter's reassurances to his cubs, though, shocked Lord Voll that they could ever be considered necessary. He did, however, find them a secure (relatively speaking) nook with a bathing fountain where the tribe could hold a council.

HalfElven's heart went out to Dewshine when she appeared and hesitantly joined them. HalfElven could feel her heartache and shame shimmering in the air around the fragile elf-maid.

When they got back to the topic and hand Cutter said, "We don't know enough about the Gliders to tell true from false."

HalfElven snorted in disbelief even as Strongbow interjected his opinions on the subject. Skywise was willing to conceed that Winnowill might have been telling the truth.

So what if they are? Strongbow demanded in an emphatic Send. By conscious choice HalfElven didn't interrupt his heartfelt, nostalgic plea. We can return to the Way and start a new Holt -- but not if we stay here!

HalfElven stood and caught his gaze, and didn't let it go. she wasn't Challenging him, she just didn't let go of his eyes. "Yes, Strongbow, there will be a new Holt, but not just yet. The Way will survive, and you will help it, but Change has come as it came to those Firstcomers who became High Ones, as it has always come to Timmorn's descendants. We Wolfriders," she emphasized the pronoun, "aren't through with Blue Mountain and Cutter's Quest does not end here. We will never bow to Winnowill and the Gliders are not High Ones. They imitate without understanding and so have been perverted over time. With your own eyes you will see the difference.

"Strongbow, never forget, you may run with wolves, live like them, even bear their blood with pride, but you are not wolves. You are Elves and as such looking to the past and to the future is not evil." She paused for a moment and then chuckled slightly, at herself apparently.

Pike interrupted any further discussion and then Tyldak flew in and Dewshine's dilemma was revealed to all.

The Council broke up at that point, some to nap and some to think. Leetah wandered off and HalfElven found a corner and slid down into a sitting position, trembling. Nightfall found her there.

"What's wrong?" she asked, concerned.

HalfElven's head was leaned back and tears crept past her closed eyelids. "Oh Nightfall, you have a heart the size of this whole world, but I don't think you can help me."

Nightfall knealt down next to her. "I can listen."

"Dewshine's in agony. And I know exactly what she's going through."

Nightfall's eyes widened in surprise. "Who? When?"

HalfElven snorted, a half-amused sound. "More accurately the question should be who not."

Nightfall was puzzled. "What do you mean?"

HalfElven opened her eyes and looked at the golden-eyed maid for a moment before answering. "It's all of them, Nightfall. Some are stronger than others, my sympathy gives them strength, but I feel all of them hammering on my soul constantly. I've resisted, I have that much power, but I still feel it."

"But Recognition --"

"--means cubs. I am unique. I can, to a degree, control my own fertility. But the first time I join, I will conceive and I refuse to conceive without Recognition."

"But if you've already --"

"I hold it in abeyance. I am affected. I feel the pain. But I will not force that union on someone who does not freely choose it. I have the power, I will use it."

For a moment a flash of anger crossed Nightfall's face. "The tribe needs cubs, and you are preventing them?" Her own agony was painfully close to the surface.

HalfElven sighed. "Dewshine's fertility brings her no joy. Not yet anyway."

Nightfall was silent for a moment. "You said it was stronger with some --?"

HalfElven nodded. "I'm an emotional person, when someone has my sympathy it gives his soul strength in trying to bond to my own."

"Who?"

With a sigh, HalfElven told her. "Cutter, Strongbow, Skywise," a pause, "and Redlance."

Neither heard Moonshade's muffled gasp of surprise. They couldn't see her and she knew she shouldn't be listening in. She had been about to leave, until her lifemate was named, and now she couldn't tear herself away.

Nightfall's face showed several emotions chasing each other across it. She struggled with conflicting desires for a moment and then sighed. "Do you want me to speak to him?"

HalfElven reached out and grabbed hold of Nightfall's hand. "No." Her voice was harsh with emotion and she clutched the hand with an almost painful grasp, her eyes boring into Nightfall's. "I promise you, Nightfall, I will not Recognize Redlance, come what may, until you have a cub from him safe in your arms. You'll have the power. Join your souls as one and you can force Recognition's union. You'll need a healer to help since this would be your first child and you'll need the power of a special environment, but you can do it."

Stunned, Nightfall simply nodded. "A-and the others?"

HalfElven dropped Nightfall's hand and leaned back again. "Cutter has Leetah and I would never bear any cub who could challenge Ember's position as the next Chief. Skywise lost too much when he lost Foxfur and there are others who must be stronger in his heart."

"Strongbow?"

Moonshade's heart leapt into her throat.

"Strongbow looks only to Moonshade. It's at least half the reason I find him so irresistible. I cannot - I will not ever do anything to threaten their bond. Moonshade would have to agree completely. There's also a complicating factor involving a third party's choice, but that's -- complicated."

There was silence for a moment. In the end Nightfall gave HalfElven a brief squeeze of sympathy and left to find her lifemate and a much needed rest. HalfElven stood and wandered away in thought.

Moonshade sat where she was for a very long time in silence.