7 Eleasias
"We bring what we have found for you," Kaishas said. She hauled behind herself a large basket, and dumped the contents before us.
Parts of anchor chain. Spoiled supply packing-cases. Ruined tarpaulin and sailcloth. Debris much less valuable than Durlyle's collection of relics of the past. But examining a little deeper, we began to see that there was more beside that reclaimed from the wreck: the dark blue cloak Viconia had taken from somewhere in the Cloakwood, my own stitches marking a corner of it I'd mended. It had some degree of protective enchantment, and she placed it upon herself. I found the dwarven shortsword, which was for Imoen as a backup to the few spells she would be able to cast; and my bow, which I couldn't use with the string twisted and wrecked by the saltwater. But the islanders had invented bows for hunting and fighting the beasts, though their examples were crudely made; Imoen and I both had borrowed from them. Ajantis, grimacing, hefted Varscona from the bottom of the pile. "I suppose that it will never leave me," he muttered, and secured it to his belt nonetheless, for it was an effective tool. The padded jacket that he usually wore under armour was there also, stained and ugly but still able to offer him slight protection. Faldorn had for a weapon a driftwood club, raised and knotted and reshaped by casting she had done. I rubbed my fingers together, and looked down to notice that the ring to see in the dark had been at some point lost from my hand.
"...Quite a good effort," Shar-Teel said, watching the chieftain.
"We know our own shores and tides," Kaishas said simply. "Sea-charts for mainland-home," she added, turning to Tellarian. "I keep them safe." She'd taken them from him; she didn't know of the other copy. She turned back to us. "Go well in your hunting."
Durlyle, covered by thick furs, stepped outside the gate with us. The villagers had erected a large wall about their homes, and even a tall lookout tower into the wilderness of dark trees climbing across each other and knee-length ferns and growths in the side of the island that the beasts took. Taking the first steps into the forest seemed little different to stepping into the Larswood long ago; utterly unfamiliar. Shar-Teel walked in the lead, her sword ready.
—
"Chieftain Selaad left in small boat a year before," Durlyle told the story to Imoen and me, taking us to his storehouse as he had offered. His relics of the past were such as a fragment of an introduction to some alchemist's textbook, useless to Imoen; a cracked metal flask; part of a kettle; a broken compass, the innards too damaged to be repaired; and an hourglass with but a scatter of—it was ruby dust, I thought; worth something on the mainland but useless here. A crescent moon that Durlyle had crafted himself hung on the wall, of tough grasses woven with pearls that the fishermen took from the waters simply because they were pleasant to look at. But the true value was in the history of what little he had; there were many interested in such old designs, and to handle the very objects that perhaps Balduran had touched in his time...
"And let me guess: Selaad was about so high, kind of burly and hairy...and, hey, did he take pearls like that with him? 'Cause he had a lot of gold..." Imoen digressed.
Durlyle replied that it was true. "Then he and Baresh sent you by a lie and I am sorry for it," he said. "Ought we to go to Kaishas? It is still true that there are monsters; and it is true that the monsters come too close to the natural harbour for us to build ship-home. A bad smell is a bad smell no matter the reason; but she is chieftain, and I not know her reason..."
"And Balduran's ship, it's definitely there?" I said. The artefacts looked of the correct era for it, that was certainly true enough...
"Yes."
It would be...counterproductive...if Shar-Teel were to precipitately act, then, I thought. It would be difficult or impossible to build a ship of our own; doubly impossible if the beasts held the only possible harbours. "We came for the history," I said. "You lied to us; Mendas lied to Halderwin and he's... But Mendas was still right that ordinary merchants would see no value in the ship and destroy Balduran's materials, or at least fail to keep them properly. So I want to go to the ship and fight. It's our only choice to get everyone back home."
Imoen looked at me, momentarily taken aback; then she smiled and shrugged. "Can you give us some of those to take back with us?" she said, pointing to the pearl decoration.
"It is...generous of you to offer that," Durlyle said; his brown eyes were wide and sorrowful. "It was not right to strand you here not knowing reason; should confront Kaishas..."
"After," I said, and explained myself to Imoen. "After sailing home we'll tell her that we knew of her and Mendas' plan; and tell them not to lie. I think perhaps I would have wanted to go anyway. For Balduran's ship, monsters or no monsters..."
Imoen shook her head. "Yer crazy," she said. "But I guess it's not the really bad kind of crazy, not yet."
Durlyle brought Jorin to Imoen for her components; I walked with Durlyle around the village, to learn a little more of each other's language and ways.
"Balduran was not one of our founders. He would not belong. I value history, but value not his role in it. He rather destruct than build," Durlyle said. It was wrong, of course—Balduran was a great explorer who founded our city. I wanted to explain to him...
A fair-haired woman came to me. "Stranger," she said, "I have nowhere else to turn to. If you would help me..." Her name was Maralee; the beasts had stolen her little boy two months before; and of course I said that we'd try. A child called Farthing, who called Viconia the pretty blue lady, asked for the return of her doll. Ajantis spoke of meeting with a fisherman, whose brother had been taken by a sea witch upon the western shores.
"Noble quests," he said; "after all, the saving of a child and of a man are of greater import than the scholarly knowledge you promised, though another has already paid the price." Ajantis had also met another stranger here, who had chosen to settle and to teach the villagers how to build boats; I filed in my mind that they had been kind enough to accept that man among their midst, rather than summoning him to be killed.
"In our favour for Umberlee we offended the Storm Lord," Faldorn said, and then I remembered the words of the fisherman north of the Friendly Arm, that Talos would know we had opposed him by returning young Tenya her bowl... "But that gale showed not the lightning-signs of Talos. And the winds were as strong as if Umberlee lent them," she said. She frowned. "The villagers feel...in harmony with the nature of this place, even though they use wood that has been chopped down; it is unusual for people to be so advanced. They feel quite different to my senses, but it must be a good thing that they are. I think it very stupid of them to wish to leave."
Imoen had spent time with Solianna as well as Jorin, playing with the child and her young friends and laughing. She studied her spellbook as best she could, speaking to Faldorn and Viconia on what they intended to cast; and was prepared when the dawn of the hunt came.
—
"Surfacers," Viconia hissed, below the shadows of a tall pine, "the sooner we have sent the animals to Shar's darkness and the sooner we repair to one of the human cesspools that at least pretends to be civilised...the smaller chance I shall have a terrible accident in your healing, or at the very least cast a command or hold and see what performance I can beat from a mere surfacer's whip without proper biting snakeheads dripping poison from their fangs."
Durlyle looked at her. "Surfacers? I know little of the fair folk, only that the tales say that a slender people with ears such as yours existed with our great-grandmothers. What is meaning of word to you?"
He had actually managed to shock her. Viconia stopped in place: "Do you mistake me for they? Waelen iblith! No surface male anywhere else would dare such an insult."
"He meant none, Viconia," I said. To Durlyle, I added: "Her kind of elves are descended from the fair folk, but they separated in a war a long time ago and chose to live underground. She left that and follows a deity of the surface, so she calls us surfacers because we were born there."
"A most charitable phrasing, little waeles," Viconia snarled.
"And one would think," Ajantis cut swiftly across her words, "that one of character would enjoy a rare chance to be judged as a mere oddity rather than as a representative of race." Some emotion flashed across Viconia's face; she held her head high, free of her cloak, preparing a retort;
"Shut up, all of you," Shar-Teel interrupted. "No bringing werewolves down on our heads." She glared fiercely at the undergrowth in front of our heads; the land was wild here, never cultivated like the village's small set of fields, and it was easy to imagine a pack of beasts waiting for the moment to strike.
Durlyle was obviously nervous; but he walked with us and guided anyway. He was nothing like a warrior or ranger in his hesitant, big-footed steps. Brave and...honourable, perhaps; brave of him to choose this.
Then we were hallooed by a very human voice; uncertainly we waited where we stood, for a human's voice was not a creature part wolf and entirely beast. It was a woman's voice, with desperation in its edge much like Maralee's plea.
"You are human!" she said; a young woman, dark-haired, wearing a long pale shift, undyed and stained by blood. She staggered in her walk. "Please help. The beasts murdered my mate, please come with me and fight them for me. I am Kryla..."
She stepped forward, staggering from the wounds she seemed to bear. Durlyle said quietly: "None who belong bear that name."
Then the wolf burst out from inside the woman. There was no time to think about it, to rationalise that where a human had stood was now a huge creature neither man nor beast. It was furred and inhuman with slavering mouth and red tongue; in its mouth were bright white fangs; and it ran toward us as quickly as a thousand-pound weight would fall down through the air. Shar-Teel attacked, the Burning Earth came out of its scabbard, and there were three more of them out from the trees.
They were faster than doppelgangers, too fast. Wolfweres, not werewolves: too much beast in them. I drove the Burning Earth forward into a stab—not wanting the creature to be close; and pulled it out of the wolfwere's ribs. The burn began to knit together again. The claws struck forward for my head, my neck; down and under was the only escape, rolling below a branch and up again to a crouch, raise the sword in time to catch him on the followup—
Shar-Teel sunk her greatsword into the belly of the first beast; she released her right hand from the grip, and punched the other by her in the skull. It recoiled, briefly stunned; then it burst forward to the four who weren't fighting hand-to-hand: Imoen and Viconia and Faldorn and Durlyle, who stood in shocked fear.
There was carrion on the wolf's hot breath, blood and scraps of meat on its teeth. It tore through the forest to get to me, and though it moved away from the fire it recovered quickly from the burns. Imoen cried out—the wolfwere was upon her but I couldn't get there in time, I hoped Shar-Teel or Ajantis would—and there was the fire from Imoen's own fingers in a quick instant. She was bloodied, the wolfwere before her on the ground with a black mark across his heart, and then she knelt down and drew the shortsword and did her best to cut off the head.
The wolfwere chased, and I ran. If I went too far away from the fight others would easily find me. I circled back; I had to match for speed, I had to be faster, twice as fast—
A branch; just above my height, the space above it clear enough. I ran forward, a burst of speed to get ahead. I threw the sword in the wolfwere's direction, and he swerved to avoid the fire. The bark of the wood met my hands, and I was moving quickly enough to swing forward, up and around, letting the momentum carry me above the branch and down on the side I'd started on. The beast hadn't expected that, striking claws forward where I wasn't any more; my feet hit his head. He was too strong, too weighty. I fell back and he only stumbled. But the hilt of the sword was there, on the grass, and I'd hit the thick skull. The wolfwere was off-balance while I snatched up the Burning Earth; I stabbed into the neck. The wolfwere stopped moving while I held the blade down, and I imitated Imoen.
Viconia had chanted her command; Ajantis had killed with Varscona, and Shar-Teel bisected the one she fought to two, still-twitching, halves. Imoen was scratched and bloodied, Faldorn already casting a healing spell on her. Durlyle watched as she knit flesh back together through the words of her druidic practice.
"You are...amazing," he said, suddenly; "your group heals by magic, you bear a fiery sword like celestial in stars. I trust in you..."
Shar-Teel spat on the broken corpse that she stood over. The wolfweres remained in that form of fur and claw and muscle upon death; if they were as doppelgangers, that meant that it was their true one. "It's not for you we fight, male dog," she said; something in Durlyle's face changed at the insult, and I wondered if it was a particularly vicious one in his culture. Perhaps it was. Their enemies were wolf-people.
"I will...bring up entanglements the next time we fight," Faldorn promised, stepping back from Imoen.
Shar-Teel gave her a curt nod. "Get out bows, if you've time; let them try healing from a stick inside them," she said, in Imoen's and my direction. The island bows weren't as good as those ruined by the sea, but we'd tested them to learn their limits. "And they shy away from fire, it seems."
"I have not heard that the beasts make fire," Durlyle volunteered, "they are supposed to eat raw."
"See? He's useful," Imoen said, healed and regaining some cheer. He'd known that Kryla was lying; all sorts of things that we might otherwise miss. "No sulphur, so no more fire spells for little ol' Imoen, but I've got two confuse-everyones, a rotten egg and at least four magic missiles ready to go, if my head holds out," she said.
"Quietly," Shar-Teel ordered. "Elf—" she added to Viconia—"use those ears."
"As you wish, abbil," Viconia said, courteously.
—
"What is it now?" Edwin sulkily snapped; but since it was that peculiarly unattractive broken-nosed Cyric-worshipper he waited.
—
waeles - fool
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