Suddenly, the author was seized by an uncontrollable fit of sarcasm, and screamed:
"Chaotic evil drow?! What a freakin' concept! How come no one ever thought of this before?!"
VIII
"We'll be able to rest here for a little bit, I think."
"Thank the Mother," Valtaya said, falling to her knees in the middle of a small clearing of ash. The young druid felt so tired that she could barely think, she was covered with ash, sweat, and mud, and her fingers, though free enough to cast, still held some of the remnants of the disintegrating spider webs. Her hair was still matted down and sticky from the brandy that had been poured over her. Fife looked no better than she, covered in the same black grime, and still sported some of the injuries he had initially suffered against the dark elves. But at least they were alive. Slowly Valtaya turned back to her rescuer. "How long do we have?"
"We'll need to rest, at least for a little," Fife said, considering the morning sky. The eastern horizon had already turned a pale blue, signaling the coming dawn, but the fires had created a miasma of smoke that promised to at least partially obscure the coming sun. The ranger rubbed one hand along his chin, smearing ash and sweat into a black mess along his jaw as he considered the morning sky. "The drow won't move during the day, or so we hope," Fife continued, sitting down on a bare rock. "Hopefully, that will give us some time before they can chase us again. If nothing else, I would rather have my wits about me once darkness falls, to make certain I can see them coming this time."
Valtaya nodded in agreement, and the two fell into silence for a short while. For a time Valtaya watched the forest try to brighten around them through the haze of smoke and steam, until she finally turned back to her rescuer. Fife's eyes were half closed as he tried to make the most of their temporary respite, leaning on his bow for support.
"Fife?" the druid started nervously. She hated to bother the ranger, but she could not wait any longer to broach the subject of her interrogation.
"What's wrong?" the ranger asked, sensing her discomfort immediately.
"I… they drugged me, not long after that caught me," Valtaya started. "I… I think I might have told them how to… how to find Oakenbough."
"They… they know where Oakenbough is?" Fife repeated, his fatigue vanishing instantly with the news. Very few allies even knew of the elven capitol's exact location, a testament to the elves' secrecy over the past hundred years. Valtaya watched as the ranger practically jumped to his feet, shouldering his bow. "Valtaya, are you certain?"
"They know that it's east, along the Embléz," Valtaya replied quietly. Fife ran a hand along his newly shortened hair as he tried to think through the shattering information.
"We can't waste any time, then," the ranger decided. "We'll have to move inside of an hour, and start east immediately. We'll work our way back to the fire line, and then cut south until we get around the edge. As long as the drow sleep through the day, we should be able to make it fairly easily."
"But… what about the treants?" Valtaya asked, remembering one of the initial goals of the entire journey. The treants, to the north, would be overrun by the flames without help from the elves. Fife paced for a moment before shaking his head.
"They'll have to make do without us," the ranger said. "Every moment we delay, the drow gain more of an advantage over us. If they do know enough to find Oakenbough, the city must be prepared for an attack or possibly even evacuated."
"Evacuated?" Valtaya repeated, stunned by the news.
"Oakenbough exists because we have never told anyone its location," Fife explained. "Even the Mardanians are uncertain of its location, and although humans are hardly trustworthy, they are the closest thing to allies that we have. If our most hated enemies were to find the city, the king and the court would be in grave danger."
Valtaya simply stared at the ranger for a long moment, barely capable of thought. In only a few days, the druid found her world falling to pieces. The forest fires had devastated her one time home. Druce, Hefydd, Dolan and Keridwyn had all been killed. The drow had shown themselves to be more than just an awful legend. And now, because of her, Oakenbough might have to be abandoned. Druce had told her to prepare herself for the worst, but she had failed. Finally, Valtaya dropped her eyes to the ground, fighting back tears.
"It's my fault," she said quietly. "We're going to lose Oakenbough because I wasn't prepared."
"No one could have been prepared for this," Fife said, lifting her chin gently. "If I had been captured, rather than you, I doubt I would have fared much better against those demons."
"But they know now," Valtaya countered. "They know where Oakenbough is."
"But they haven't told anyone else, and they don't know exactly where it is" Fife said. He paused for a moment, lost in thought, but then continued. "Maybe they won't be able to find the river. Or if we find help, maybe we can stop them before they can return to their home."
"But…other than the treants, who else is out here that can help us?" Valtaya asked.
He had merely stepped off into the forest for a moment to relieve himself. He had not gone halfway back to the Mardanian border, or disappeared deep into the ruined forest. But in that moment, nine of his friends died. Fire and lightning had torn apart the small camp he and his companions had made, almost before he could even turn around. In a single thunderous moment, nine Mardanian soldiers had died.
Aiken had spent the next hours in hiding. He had watched as four undeniably elven figures entered his destroyed camp, kicking at one or two of the bodies to make certain that they were dead. They were followed by an entourage of bizarre creatures, including dwarven skeletons, disgusting spiderlike creatures, and a huge mastiff that was barely visible against the darkness. For a moment they argued in a language that was certainly not Argent elven, but something that sounded like a perverted form of the language that he could not understand. Then they moved off again, vanishing as swiftly as they had appeared into the night.
Now, as the sun finally cleared the horizon, Aiken stood slowly and returned to what was left of his slain comrades. All through the night, he had hoped that at least one of his comrades might have survived the assault, but with the first lights of dawn fighting through the smog the ranger could see the devastation more clearly. Most of his companions were now little more than charred skeletons and piles of ash, their armor blackened and warped by the intense heat of the fires that had killed them. No one could have survived such a holocaust.
"Pelor's sunny ass," Aiken whispered, stopping for a moment as he looked over the carnage. The ranger hesitated a moment longer, then turned to his own bedroll in the corner of the wreckage. His blankets were burned to cinders and his pack was destroyed, leaving nothing to salvage. His only stroke of luck was that he had been on watch the previous night, and he had been wearing his armor and weapons and carrying his long bow over his shoulder.
A faint groan rose from the opposite side of the camp. Aiken whirled, drawing his swords, but the mysterious elves had not returned. Instead, the groan had come from beneath a fallen, charred tree limb close to where the invaders had first appeared in the night. Aiken moved forward slowly, his weapons still at the ready, but as he got closer he quickly sheathed his swords and rushed the last few yards to the fallen boughs. As he reached the limbs, he dropped to his knees and quickly began to throw the blasted wood out of the way. Beneath the branches, a soot blackened man dressed in long, earth colored robes feebly struggled to free himself from the branches pinning him to the ground,
"Cyril!" Aiken exclaimed, throwing the limbs aside and helping the man to sit up. "Are you all right?"
"I hate this forest," Cyril complained weakly, still needing Aiken's hand to steady him. "What in the Abyss happened?"
"We were attacked," Aiken explained. Cyril turned to him quizzically.
"By what?" the wizard asked, rubbing his head where a large lump had already formed.
"I don't know exactly," Aiken replied. "They looked like elves, but they weren't from Argent."
"Utrecht elves?" Cyril inquired. Aiken shook his head, immediately disregarding that idea. The elves of the coastal magocracy of Utrecht had no interest in their forest dwelling kin, and certainly did not harbor the animosity that would have provoked such a brutal assault. "Well, I don't know any other elves than Utrecht elves and Argent elves."
"There might be other elves somewhere in the world, Cyril," Aiken said, looking over the wizard's injuries. While he sported a large knot where the falling tree branches had hit him and a few superficial burns, Cyril had miraculously come out of the night's horrors relatively unscathed. "Do you think you can walk?"
"Give me a minute to stop the forest from spinning," Cyril said, closing his eyes and putting his face in his hands for a moment. Finally, the wizard opened his eyes again, and nodded slightly. "I'll make it," he decided. "Where do we head?"
"Well, we aren't going to stay here," Aiken said. "We head north again and get back into Mardan. There's nothing we can do to help the elves now."
"Perhaps we should take a moment to rest."
"Perhaps you should use your magic to find the faeries you let escape," Talaith growled in reply, turning back on Fychan with open disdain. Although the wizard could not see his sister's features clearly through the translucent black silk scarves that the drow wore to protect their eyes from the worst of the morning sun, he could feel her eyes boring into him with hatred. Talaith's shadow mastiff, home in the nighttime shadows, had long since returned to its home plane, leaving Cadwared alone in tracking the fugitive surface elves.
"A priestess' spells are more suited to such a task than mine," Fychan countered smoothly, still indignant with his sister's decision to place the blame for the lost elves squarely on him. Although the statement was a fine line from being overtly defiant and grounds for harsh punishment, the wizard was certain that the circumstances would preclude any form of physical reprimand from Talaith. As if to prove his notion, Talaith stopped Rhonwen before the handmaiden could draw her snake headed whip from her belt.
"You are indeed fortunate that we need you, for the time being at least," the noble growled, leaning in close to Fychan. "When we return to Llyr, do not think that I will forget your insolence here, secondboy."
"Duly noted, dear sister," Fychan said, dropping his head in a genuine display of submission and injecting a clear note of remorse into his voice. "I apologize of my actions. The sun has made me unjustly irritable."
"It has done that to us all," Talaith said after a short moment's pause. Like Valtaya, Fychan could see Talaith struggling to assess the sincerity of her brother, but Talaith was much more difficult to trick than the faerie. The priestess hesitated another second before continuing. "The sooner we find the faeries, the sooner we will be able to rest."
"I cannot track them like this," Cadwared said suddenly, turning to the other three drow. He pointed angrily to the sun as his companions looked to him. "That… that thing is blinding me! I cannot see to track them any further!"
"We need those faeries," Talaith growled, forgetting Fychan in her desire to find her sacrifice. "Find the trail again, no matter what it takes."
"Perhaps we do not need to track them any further," Fychan said suddenly, regaining the priestess' attention.
"What do you mean?" Talaith demanded.
"Those faeries came here to help their allies, the tree things," Fychan said.
"They came here to stop the fire," Rhonwen corrected.
"That is true, but they are allies of the tree things," Fychan reasoned. "There is no other reason why Lolth would request that we destroy them by fire. We have killed other faeries in the past. The tree things must be important to the elves for Lolth to request them destroyed."
"The faeries will forget their tree things to escape us," Rhonwen said. "They will not face us without more of their kind."
"There you are wrong," Fychan countered bluntly. Rhonwen's eyes blazed with rage at the notion of a male correcting her, but the wizard continued quickly. "The faeries will foolishly try to aid their plant companions."
"And if they do not?" Talaith asked. Fychan shrugged.
"We block the south, and the fire blocks their east," the wizard explained. "The west offers them nothing. Only by going north can they even hope to find allies. If nothing else, we will at least finish the task Lolth has set before us."
Talaith paused for a moment, considering Fychan's idea. Standing beside the noble, Rhonwen's jaw tightened, wishing earnestly for an opportunity to scold the pretentious male, but the wizard could already see that his sister realized the value of his plan.
"We will move north, until the sun reaches its highest point," the priestess finally decided. "But if we lose the faeries, dear brother," Talaith growled, her voice growing colder, "you will be the one to take the noble's place."
Talaith had made similar promises many times before, but this time the priestess seemed far too serious. Fychan nodded, fighting to keep his nerves under control in the face of what seemed an all too real threat. Talaith lingered a moment longer, then turned and continued north through the fire blackened forest.
"Maybe we should head a little farther north?"
"Dead east to the fire line," Fife said, picking his way carefully through the ashes and smoke. For almost an hour they had continued on their journey to raging fire line, and even with the sun fully risen for almost all of that time, the charred trees and blackened forest floor remained shrouded in a pall of smoke and fog that obscured the sun's rays. "We reach the fire line and head south."
"I… we can't leave the treants," Valtaya said, stopping in the middle of a tiny clearing. "We can head north around the fire, rather than south, and at least warn them of the fires."
"If we head north, we lose at least a day to Oakenbough," Fife countered. "I don't want to se the treants killed any more than you do, but Oakenbough's security must take first priority here."
"The drow will cut us off if we go south," Valtaya protested.
"You said they hide during the day in a cave, right?" Fife said. Valtaya nodded reluctantly. "We pass them by during the day, and they'll never realize we cut back behind them."
"If they're tracking us, they will," Valtaya said. "And then they'll be even closer."
"You don't leave tracks," Fife pointed out.
"But you do," Valtaya countered. Warning the treants might have been a risk to the security of Oakenbough, but the druid could not stomach leaving the sentient trees to their fiery doom without even warning them. Fife remained silent for a moment, but before he could find the words to continue the argument a noise from the south caught both their attention.
"Cover," Fife whispered. Valtaya dropped to the ground behind the remains of a tree immediately, trying to focus enough to recall a spell to destroy her hated foes as well as find some kind of useful weapon. Fife slid back behind a fallen, burned tree to her right, ready to fire an arrow as soon as a drow showed its ebon face.
The two figures that appeared were indeed ebon, but from ash rather than skin color. One, dressed in tattered, filthy robes and leaning on a staff, limped badly as he walked, leaving a painfully obvious trail behind him. The other, slightly shorter than the apparent wizard, was still taller than Fife, and not so badly injured as his comrade. Like Fife, he dressed in sturdy, quiet leather armor and carried a bow that looked to be of elven make. What caught the druid's eye almost immediately, however, was their hair, or rather, the hair growing out of their faces. The robed man wore a patch of coal black hair around his mouth, while the shorter one, despite his slightly pointed ears, had allowed a reddish mustache to grow just under his nose. Shaking off her initial curiosity, Valtaya glanced to Fife. The druid had never met a human, as these two seemed to be, before, and did not know how to handle the current situation. Fife, for his part, was cautiously drawing an arrow, but the ranger would not glance in Valtaya's direction.
The apparent wizard dropped to his knee then, speaking loudly in a strange, somewhat guttural language that she could only assume was Mardanian. The man's companion let out an exasperated smirk before answering the wizard, though his concentration was set far more firmly on the blackened trees around him. Again Valtaya glanced to Fife. Nearly invisible in the clump of burned out saplings he had chosen for cover, the ranger was slowly lifting his bow, an arrow already on his bowstring. Valtaya frantically tried to get the ranger's attention, fearing that he was about to attack complete innocents, but the only one who seemed to notice her movement was the human with slightly pointed ears. The auburn haired archer turned quickly, his bow coming up quickly and an arrow appearing on his string almost as if by magic. Valtaya leaped out of cover before the man could fire, throwing her hands up in a gesture of peace.
"We mean no harm!" the druid exclaimed, praying that the archer knew her language. The man froze for a moment, his bowstring taut and the arrow aimed at Valtaya's heart. The robed human jumped to his feet and fumbled for something on his belt, but Fife appeared at that moment, his bow trained on the apparent wizard. For a long moment, all four froze in place, no one willing to make the first move. With his eyes still on the Fife the robed human said something to his companion in Mardanian, but the archer shook his head without looking back to his companion. Finally, the man lowered his bow slightly.
"Argent elves," the auburn haired man said. Although his words were accented by the guttural human tongue, he seemed to be at least partially fluent in the elven language.
"We are," Valtaya agreed, her eyes still watching the broad bladed arrow pointed directly at her. "Please, lower your weapons. We mean you no harm."
"We were attacked by elves during the night," the archer said. "Eight men died by elven hands."
"They are drow," Valtaya informed the human. The archer's grayish blue eyes widened at the word. Fife, on the corner of Valtaya's vision, seemed almost angry with her revelation.
"Drow are a myth," the human said. The wizard, still too concerned with the direction of Fife's arrow, seemed not to understand the gravity of the conversation, but the archer seemed to know the elven legends thoroughly.
"They exist," Valtaya said simply. "We too have lost friends to the drow's spells and blades. Please, we are allies. We need not treat each other like enemies."
The human hesitated a moment longer, looking meaningfully to Fife's taut bowstring. Finally, however, the archer lowered his bow, and replaced his arrow in his quiver. Without any blatant threat, Fife reluctantly removed his own arrow, and turned to the human bowman.
"Who are you?" the ranger demanded curtly. "And what are you doing in Argent?"
"I am Aiken, of His Majesty's Royal Wardens," the archer said. "My companion is Cyril, a member of the Royal Academy of Sorcery."
"Mardanians," Fife concluded. Aiken nodded his affirmation. "What are you doing in Argent?"
"Over two weeks ago we noticed a large fire burning through your northwest boundaries," Aiken explained. "Lord Oswalt, in command of the southern frontier, dispatched a unit to investigate the matter, in case Trzebin was attempting a new attack against us or our elven allies. Out of ten, we are all that remain."
"We don't want you in our forest, half breed," Fife said sternly, speaking before Valtaya could find a suitable reply of thanks for the humans' attempted aid. The druid looked back to Aiken, finally understanding the combination of human and elven features in the Mardanian. Although she did not share Fife's apparent disdain for such a creature, Valtaya could only wonder what could bring an elf into any sort of relationship with such shortlived, aggressive creatures as humans.
"If you do not wish our help, we will leave," the Aiken said, speaking before the druid could find her voice. "We have no problem with letting your forest burn from here to the sea, if this is how you treat your allies."
"Aiken, a moment please," Valtaya said quickly, trying to placate the Mardanians in the wake of Fife's rude treatment. "Fife is… tired from our journey and under admittedly justified stress after our discoveries here. We are in dire need of help, and we would appreciate any sort of aid that you can give us."
Aiken nodded, casting a last, cold glance to Fife. The elven ranger turned a furious glare on his companion, but for the moment Valtaya was unwilling to let Fife's bias against humans drive away the only allies she could find the in the blasted forest.
"Very well," the half elf said. "Cyril, although he knows some of the elven language, is by no means fluent in it. There will be times when I will have to translate for him."
"I will try to understand," Cyril said in halting, horribly accented Argent. Cyril smiled slightly, then turned to Aiken and said something in Mardanian. Fife suddenly grew furious at the remark, but Aiken could barely keep himself from bursting into laughter.
"What did he say?" Valtaya inquired. Aiken tried to put on a straight face as he turned back to the druid.
"Um, he said that he didn't think elves could get dirty," the half elf explained hesitantly. Valtaya smiled at the remark, taking the good natured jest for what it was as she looked down at her filthy clothing.
"We wanted you to feel at home," Valtaya quipped. Aiken smiled at the light return, but Fife simply turned away and stared off into the forest. Aiken cast a curious glance to the older elf before turning back to the druid.
"Do you have any plans on how to deal with the drow?" the half elf inquired. "We don't know what their goals are, if any. All I can really say is that they are moving to the north."
"Four of us stand little chance against those drow," Fife said. "Especially when only two are elves."
"Four of us may not," Valtaya said, ignoring Fife's remark for the moment as a plan formed in her mind. "But four of us and six treants have a much better chance."