Harry woke to sunlight streaming through an open window. He investigated the loo Dathedr had mentioned last night.
It wasn't quite what he expected, but it all worked close enough to his expectations that he shrugged and used the built in one instead of pitching the tent in his room.
Someone knocked on the door.
"Just a mo'" he called, summoning his glasses and getting dressed. He pulled open the door. There was an elf there waiting for him, this time one with cherry red hair and eyes of the same shade. Her skin had red veins on it shooting up from her neck, seemingly like roots reaching up from under her shirt. He was startled for a moment by the unexpectedness of it.
"I am Majaia," the elf woman said, twisting her hand over her sternum. "So long as you need one, I will be your guide. You may find me back towards the main entrance, left of the hall on the lower level."
Harry tried to mimic her gesture. He thought he had managed it. The gesture looked complicated, but the motion itself was rather simple.
"I will show you to the mess hall," Majaia announced.
Harry followed her back through the halls to the grand staircase.
"Do you know how Arya's doing?" he asked. Nerves made him uneasy. This was always the worst part, when the healers took over and what happened next was out of his hands. Harry hated the feeling. When someone he cared about was in danger, he wanted there to be something to do to help. Sitting around and crossing his fingers was agony. He was not the kind of person who could simply sit on his hands while his friends were in danger. In this case, very real danger.
"Peace," Majaia said. "She was given the cure and survived the night. That is the hardest part. She is strong and the worst is behind her. Nor did the healers have to use your potion."
Harry breathed a sigh of relief. "Can I see her?"
Majaia shook her head. "Arya is still unconscious. There would be no point."
"Please," Harry pleaded. "I just have to see that she's alive."
The elf gave him a lingering look. "After breakfast. I will take you to the halls of healing, but I make no further guarantees. You will have to negotiate with the healers for your entry."
Harry nodded. He could work with that.
He tried to distract himself in the meantime from the gnawing anxiety that refused to abate.
Tialdarí Hall was breathtaking. It made Harry feel self conscious about his castle for a moment. There was art everywhere, but the elves had made it feel seamless. A statue in an alcove that was built into the wall between patterns of repeating pillars, paintings and tapestries framed by empty stretches of walls, chandeliers seemingly made from still-liquid stained glass shaped into dragons or eagles or sparrows soaring down the hallway.
The tapestries were unreal. They were sewn from thread so fine that the finished product looked almost photographic. And it was clear that whoever made all these pieces, they were all experts at their medium. Each piece told a story. Some were minimalistic and artful in the meaning they conveyed with a few brushstrokes, others were exaggerated in a way that made features pop without toeing the line of gaudiness.
Majaia caught his fascination with the art.
"It is a great honor to have your artwork displayed in Tialdarí Hall," she said. "In the time before the Fall, it was greater still. Art here was seen by all the guests who used to stay here."
Harry was enraptured by a wooden statue of a woman and a cat – a werecat, curled around her legs. She wore a cloak and little of her face was visible, but Harry recognized the curly hair. The statue was not detailed and smoothed but rather chipped and scratched roughly from what looked like an untreated log. It gave Harry the impression of tribal, native centaur art. Or what he imagined it would look like.
Yet despite the crudeness of the medium, the person it depicted was immediately recognizable.
"How old is this?" he asked, suddenly very interested.
"That was made by a werecat, long ago," Majaia said. "Maud, she goes by now. This was some centuries before the Fall–"
Harry choked. "Did you say centuries?"
Majaia frowned. "I forget how quickly time must pass for the shorter-lived races. This would have been-" her eyes unfocused, "-perhaps six hundred years ago. It is so well preserved because the wood is still alive."
Harry filed away the second revelation for later. Six hundred years made this chipped statue older than the Mona Lisa. That could make her older than the Flamels.
"Here we are," Majaia announced, leading him through a doorway beneath the grand staircases. The mess hall was half open to the air. An awning covered the right side, lanterns hanging on a trellis built low over the covered half. The other side was open straight through to the sky, the fringes of tree branches just visible around the edges.
It was unreasonably large for just elves, especially given the modest number of tables set up. Harry wondered if many elves had died in the Fall, or if they were more spread out across the other elven cities.
"What happens when it rains?" Harry wondered.
Majaia pointed across the room at a pole recessed in the far wall. "We pull that across. There is a sliding divider hidden in the wall. Though when it rains, we do not often use the mess hall. We fetch our meals from the kitchens and take them where we will."
She led him to a window with a series of covered plates on the counter. Inside, an elf manned (elfed?) the kitchen, cleaning up with a series of murmured words in the Ancient Language.
He drew himself to attention when Majaia brought him to the window. His long hair was tied tightly behind his head in a ponytail, falling in a bizarre camouflage pattern that had to be utterly impossible to grow naturally. It was as if someone had colored the pattern of eagle feathers onto his hair when it was already long like a canvas.
"Well timed," the elf smiled. "These were done only a minute ago. Tell me if anything can be improved."
Majaia took one platter and indicated that Harry should do the same. Harry thanked the cook who inclined his head, then hurried to follow Majaia to an empty table. The hall felt empty, like he'd gotten to breakfast in the Great Hall early, or during the hols. There were a couple of other groups at different tables scattered across the room, but the vast majority of even the rather sparse tables were empty.
He heard a peal of laughter burst out from a table near the far wall under the open sky section. One of the elves there had mottled red, white, and black skin, with straight hair as white as snow. He was too far out to make out the details, but even from his spot Harry could see that his skin had patterns on it.
He glanced back at Majaia and the reddish roots on her neck.
"Are elves born like this or…?" he trailed off, realizing he had asked a perhaps sensitive question.
Majaia was unfazed. "No. Most of us are born within the normal range of colorings humans may have. We know magic to alter ourselves to fit our desires. What better canvas for art than yourself?" she asked rhetorically. She removed the lid from her plate.
Harry was impressed. It looked like something he'd find in a restaurant, not a mess hall. He did the same for his plate. It was some kind of pasta artfully drizzled with bright colored sauces, and a cluster of berries arranged in a pattern of waves. He noted that the settings on the tables were also made with aesthetics in mind, the napkins were folded into birds and bugs and such.
"Who does all this?" Harry gestured expansively.
"Elves, magic." Majaia speared a noodle with her fork. "What confuses you?"
"Arya led me to believe elves did what they enjoyed," Harry frowned. It looked like a lot of tedious work.
Majaia grinned. "Is it so hard to believe someone might enjoy this? No elf is forced to do anything. I might find the tedium of growing and grinding wheat unpleasant, but enough elves enjoy nurturing plants, or find the act of serving the community enjoyable, to do it without compensation."
Harry took a bite of his pasta. His eyes widened. It was amazing. The flavors harmonized in a way that felt like poetry on his tongue. The sauce was strong and spicy sour and the pasta the perfect consistency.
"Even the chef?"
"Ymeir is passionate about cooking," Majaia agreed. "He has honed his art for decades, since he first asked to prepare meals for Tialdarí Hall. I'm sure he never expected to get the opportunity to serve an actual guest. To him it is no chore."
He swallowed. "So you weren't roped into being my tour guide? Why did you want the job?"
Majaia studied him. "Curiosity. I am not much older than the Fall, and I had never left the forest when it happened. You are the first human I have seen outside of fairths, artwork, or the scrying bowl."
Harry was strangely flattered by that. Then what she'd said caught up with him. "Wait. You're over a hundred years old?"
"One hundred and twenty seven," she confirmed. "Still rather young by the standards of elves."
Harry goggled. "What is the lifespan of an elf?" That made this early-twenties looking elf older than Dumbledore.
Majaia gave him a strange look. "We do not age. Did Arya not mention this?"
"No," Harry realized. "I heard it implied that Galbatorix didn't age, but I assumed that was just some evil magic of his."
Majaia shook her head. "Not so. He does not age because he was once a Rider. Nor do the elves for the same reason. The Rider Pact as a whole was made to end a war between us and the dragons. Riders experienced a heightened version of what both our entire races get. The best of both our races. Dragons got greater use of reason, civility, level temperament, the use of language. we got greater magic, physical ability, and Dragons' agelessness."
"Something about dragons makes them immortal, and that property is transferable," Harry mused.
The elf shrugged. "These are questions for a Rider. Perilously few remain, if any. So much was lost in the Fall. I am thankful for the gift they gave us, and you will find that most every elf reveres dragons." She finished up her meal. Harry started on the fruit, somehow even more impossibly fresh than what he could get from his gardens and with stasis magic.
"Come. You wanted to see how Arya was doing?"
Harry wanted very much to see how she was doing. He quickly finished and stood up. Majaia sent their dirty dishes gliding through the air and into a bin for cleaning. He followed her closely, a sudden resurgence in his worry consuming him. It was as if all the time he had spent with Arya momentarily forgotten came rushing back, and he was now working through a backlog of worry for her.
The implications of what Majaia had revealed also percolated in his mind. If all elves were eternally young, just how old was Arya really?
Majaia led him to a different wing of Tialdarí Hall. Past a certain point, the architecture got – cleaner, for want of a better word. The leafy, living sort of pillars and archways became clean, lacquered wood and polished stone bricks. They came to a double door set beneath glass windows, the first time Harry had seen windows with glass in them instead of open air. Majaia knocked.
A moment later, the door was answered. Harry recognized the elf as Nuanye from last night. The elf had a pixie cut trapped under a hair net and a thin smock over her short dress and leggings.
Majaia made the gesture, then said something in the Ancient Language. Nuanye made a response. Harry caught only bits and pieces of it. Something about stars, hearts, and fortune.
"Harry would like to see Arya and assess her condition," Majaia said.
Harry expected her to react as Madam Pomfrey did, and require quite a lot of convincing before relenting. Instead, Nuanye spoke another string of words and pointed at Harry, then waved him in. He understood that a spell had just been cast upon him.
"Good. I was about to send someone to find you." Nuanye's voice was deeper than Harry had expected from her build and general demeanor. "Arya is doing well, but I need you to give me all the details of her condition. What injuries she had, what treatment you gave, and when she was poisoned."
"Of course." Harry followed her inside. It looked like a cross between the Hogwarts hospital wing and St. Mungos. Arya was on a bed near the entrance. Her mother was sleeping in a chair at her bedside looking disheveled, like she'd been there all night.
When he caught sight of her, his breath caught. She still looked awful. Harry didn't know why he'd expected Tunivor's Nectar to instantly fix her. He was too used to magical potions that cured anything in an hour or at most, overnight. Evidently it was not that kind of cure. Arya had an ashen pallor and her veins stood out under her skin an angry red. Her breathing was shallow and labored, each inhalation rasping and weak.
"You did give her Tunivor's Nectar, right?" he checked.
Nuanye nodded. "Right away. It is no magic cure. It neutralizes the poison, it does not repair the damage."
Islanzadi stirred. Behind her, Harry noted the last vial of Wiggenweld on the bedside table. The elf yawned and roused herself. Rising, she made the twisting gesture towards Harry. He mimicked it, finally confident he was doing it right. Islanzadi smiled. The expression was weak, tinted with concern for her daughter.
"I must ask you what happened," Nuanye asked again. "Everything you know, please." She summoned a chair with a murmured word and offered it to Harry.
"It started with a dream," Harry told her. "Of an elf lady being tortured by a Shade named Durza." Islanzadi controlled her reaction, but Harry could tell she was loathing herself. As he haltingly recounted all that had happened since he left Teirm, he was mindful of the fact that Arya's mother was listening attentively. When he tried to be diplomatic in describing Arya's injuries, Islanzadi shook her head.
"The truth," she insisted. "For Nuanye's sake as well as mine, we must know the unabridged truth."
Harry gave up trying to sugarcoat it and told her the story. How he'd ambushed the convoy while Durza was in the midst of transporting Arya to Uru'baen, how he'd known where and when to strike from his scrying and dreams, and how he'd managed to get away with her. How he'd started with a handful of doses of that magical cure, how the first dose had let Arya help fight her way free with him, and how they'd sprinted out into the Great Plains headed towards the Hadarac and eventually Du Weldenvarden.
He covered how he wanted to get his hands on bezoars to slow the advance of the poison, and how they'd agreed to throw Durza off their trail by covering their tracks with magic and heading back towards Gil'ead.
He was careful not to give away too much. Harry did not want to let the secret of apparition slip, nor did he want to openly mention how his magic was different from Alagaesia's. He kept the Cloak and the role it played in everything secret too. He recounted how Durza had captured him in Gil'ead and how Arya had come back for him, how they'd made a mad dash for Du Weldenvarden then (omitting the apparition to the other side of the Bay of Fundor and the subsequent boat ride across) and how Arya had wanted to sneak past all the rangers and cities and get straight to Ellesmera.
The story had some holes in it. Even Harry recognized it as he was telling it. Arya's reasoning for wanting to go straight to Ellesmera was not very pragmatic and he got the sense there was something more to it.
But neither Islanzadi nor Nuanye pressed him.
"Approximately five days between doses, four doses, almost three weeks." Nuanye said in disbelief. "Not in a coma, either. Awake and active. The Skilna Bragh is supposed to kill within a day. The fact that Arya is still alive is nothing less than miraculous."
She glanced over at the vial of Wiggenweld. "What is in that?"
Harry kept his mouth shut. Letting on the notion of brewing potions with dragon blood or the true nature of his magic, he would wait until Arya woke up. He couldn't take a secret back, and he didn't know the elves' loyalties and motivations well enough to risk trusting them.
Brom would be proud of him, he thought sardonically.
"Loads of stuff," he averred. "And a few ingredients I can't replace. So you might as well assume that's the last dose there is." he pointed at the vial on the bedside table. "I don't have the stuff to make more."
"If its efficacy can be proven, there would be elves willing to source materials," Islanzadi promised.
Harry shook his head. "I am absolutely certain that you don't have access to the key ingredient."
"Which is?" Nuanye crossed her arms challengingly.
Harry mimed zipping his mouth shut. "I can't say without raising questions I can't answer."
"Peace," Islanzadi told Nuanye. "We all have our secrets."
Harry answered a few more questions, but it became clear there was nothing more to do than hover by Arya's bedside while she was unconscious, and her mother had that role sewn up pretty well already.
He indicated to Majaia that he was ready to leave. The elf led him back through the hallways towards the entry.
"Does that satisfy your need to visit her?" she asked.
Harry nodded. "It's just odd, that's all. She was awake and talking with me the whole time, until a few days ago. Now that we're here and she's finally got the cure, she's comatose and looks inches from death."
This was supposed to be the part of the adventure where everything got easier. It was the part where they tried to haggle with Madam Pomfrey for a bit more time visiting in the hospital wing, making jokes or sharing plans for the summer while the potions did their work. He should be at Arya's bedside laughing with her at his stupidity for heading back into Gil'ead, or playing a card game and ducking his head when the healers shot them dirty looks.
Instead he was left carrying a boatload of guilt at killing a bunch of people, Arya was in terrible shape, and despite everything, Harry felt like all he'd won was a pyrrhic victory. It felt like he'd been handed a sack of gold by a bitter Minister Fudge while Cedric Diggory was dead.
Harry felt lost. There was no clear path forward anymore. Brom and Eragon were off on their own adventure now. His standing with the elves was uncertain. He'd made a new enemy in Durza, he was probably wanted enough that he couldn't show his face in Gil'ead ever again. Galbatorix would soon learn of him.
All he could do was wait for Arya to get better. It made him wonder what might have happened if he'd stayed after dying in the forest. Assuming he defeated Voldemort, what then? He'd missed his whole seventh year. Would he have to do it over? And then when he graduated from Hogwarts, Harry wasn't sure what he'd do then, either. With all that Sirius and his parents had left him, he didn't need a job. He'd thought about being an Auror, but Harry was not sure he could tolerate working with the Ministry.
It felt like there were only two job openings in Alagaesia: fight for the Varden or fight for the Empire. He'd kind of thrown his lot in with the Varden now that he'd rescued Arya, hadn't he?
It was just that as far as he'd seen in his dreams, nothing really stood out about Galbatorix's behaviors as villainous. Tom Riddle had been tormenting children even before Hogwarts. He had enjoyed his power over others very much, and it had been obvious from Dumbledore's memories that without the right kind of intervention, Tom Riddle would end up as he did.
Galbatorix never showed signs of that. Of course, Harry had not seen so much of him to be sure he never behaved like that, but there was no pattern. Galbatorix seemed brilliant, isolated, and motivated.
Harry wondered if that was not simply the recipe for evil. He did not yet know how Galbatorix would react to being denied his second dragon egg, but this much was true: no one was born bad. Hadn't he shared the same traits? Dumbledore said as much; the parallels between him and Riddle were clear. But Harry had friends, he'd made different choices.
And it all circled back to the cyclical thoughts that ran through his head. Those guards were not born bad. They hadn't died bad, either. They had died doing their jobs for a reason Harry found inadequate for himself. He'd killed them and robbed them of reconciliation. He'd robbed their families of their loved ones, their coworkers of a good deal of their colleagues.
His thoughts soured his mood, a change that did not go unnoticed by Majaia.
"It was good news, was it not?" She tried to cheer him up.
Harry shook his head. "That's not what I'm thinking about." He did not elaborate further. He did not want to talk about it with this new elf. He did not want to talk about it much to anyone, but if he was going to, it was going to be Arya he confided in.
Majaia didn't press. "What are you interested in?" she asked. "What fills your time? Unless you intend to leave right away, sitting in your rooms must be boring."
Harry thought about it. Magic was the obvious answer, and also the one he could not give. Unless he intended to restrict himself to very basic uses and be careful to mind how much he was 'spending' so the elves did not get suspicious. And Harry was not enthused by the idea of babysitting himself like that.
He thought about his last chat with Morgan and came to an answer. "Where do elves go to make things?"
"Like what?" Majaia walked with him towards the entryway of Tialdarí Hall. "We have halls for weaving and sewing and fabric work, we have stoneworking workshops and metalworking workshops and carpentry workshops, halls for jewelers and painters and glassworkers."
"Metalworking," Harry decided. "No, wait. Where do elves get their ore?"
"We extract it with magic from wherever it occurs. I should warn you, elves are much stronger than humans. I would be happy to help you find some if smelting is your passion," Majaia said. "Though it is not necessary. I am sure the elves at the community smithy would be willing to give you materials to work with."
Harry frowned. He realized that this was something he'd have to do in secret. Airplanes had to be made of aluminum. There was no way they got planes made of steel into the air. But wasn't aluminum a relatively recent discovery?"
"Do you guys have aluminum?"
He gathered from the confused look on Majaia's face that no, they did not.
"Usually comes from a brownish ore called bauxite. There's a special process for purifying it, I think with electricity?" Harry's knowledge was fuzzy. He was reaching for obscure topics covered in Transfiguration and Potions and combining it with things he'd overheard on the radio or telly or in the papers.
"I am not familiar, but I am not especially knowledgeable on metallurgy," Majaia admitted. "You might ask another. I can show you to elves who would know."
Harry was thinking now. "Maybe later. Where do elves work on larger projects. The sort that wouldn't fit in a building."
Now she seemed curious. "What are you intending to build that will not fit in a building? And how long do you foresee you'll stay in Ellesmera for that you'll finish it?"
"I've got magic, don't I?" he pointed out. "Speeds things up loads. It's a bit of a moonshot, but those have worked out before, so what the hell, why not?"
Politely disbelieving, Majaia began leading him through the city of Ellesmera itself. She wore an expression that said she didn't really believe he'd manage whatever he was doing, but that she was certainly interested in watching him try.
She showed him to a massive field. Most of Ellesmera was covered in some way by trees or shade. There were small lakes and marshes dotted about, but this was obviously cleared away. The trees in the area got abruptly smaller, and it was rather obvious as to the reason why.
In the middle of the clearing was a single enormous tree. The word enormous didn't do it justice. Harry didn't think there was any word that did. Just when he thought he'd wrapped his head around how gargantuan the trees in Du Weldenvarden could be, this one came along and made them look like those tiny little saplings that needed the corrugated plastic pipe around them to keep squirrels away.
It was an oak tree hundreds and hundreds of feet tall, half as thick around as the Hogwarts castle. It had branches large enough for dragons to roost like bats in rows. It defied belief and made a mockery of physics. It should have been impossible for wood to hold this much of its own weight. The canopy had to extend for half a mile. The tree's roots were as thick as subway tunnels plunging into the earth.
"The Menoa tree," Majaia said, a bit awed herself. "The greatest tree of the forest."
The name jolted Harry's memory. "The elf woman who murdered someone and then sang herself into the tree," he remembered. Brom had told him the story. Had he been here before?
Majaia seemed taken aback that he knew it. "Yes. How did you know?"
"A storyteller," he said vaguely. "He must have implied the tree was big, but this–" Harry trailed off. It was unreal. It was the kind of thing that belonged to fairytales.
Majaia pointed out the fields surrounding it. "There used to be trees like the great monarchs of the forest. When Linnea sang herself into the tree, it was already the largest and it only grew larger. Its canopy cast shade over the other great trees and they withered, starved of sunlight. Long ago we chose to clear this area away entirely instead of leaving it full of underbrush and the rotting trunks of the fallen trees we mourned. Now it is used for different things. Festivals, celebrations, assemblies, occasionally war games. Whatever we might need a great deal of space for. If it is space you need, this is where you will find it."
The field was immaculate. A perfectly level surface covered in vibrant grass. It was empty at the moment, just him and Majaia at the edge of the field gazing out towards the gargantuan Menoa tree.
"I can start a project out here?" Harry asked.
"If it is reasonable," Majaia supposed. "Why not? That is what it is here for. Everybody is expected to show respect to the forest, so we would object to a gigantic bonfire or other such thing."
Ideas started to come together in Harry's mind again. "I think this will work."
It became clear that Majaia was not going to leave him to his devices. Harry didn't have a valid excuse or polite way to get her to go away, so anything that had to be done in secrecy had to be done at night in his rooms at Tialdarí Hall.
Harry whiled away the day wandering through Ellesmera and exploring the elven city. Majaia gave him hints as to the paths to take as they walked and not coincidentally, they tended to pass by the workshops she'd mentioned earlier.
They also encountered elves. Harry was finally out from under the urgent pressure of Arya's poisoning, and able to look at everything that went by.
Elves were an eclectic bunch. They all looked between twenty and thirty years old with flawless skin and hair. They all had a regal, sharp sort of beauty that made Harry think of exotic supermodels. Not necessarily traditionally beautiful by the human metric, but fierce with angled features and slanted eyes and pointed ears.
And many of them had very odd body modifications. The 'normal' gamut of elf hair seemed to resemble humans, with extreme black and white on either end of the spectrum and every shade between. Plenty had hair that stood apart. Silver was rather common, actual silver that gleamed in the light, along with colors of every hue.
There was a certain connotation that came with bright colored hair, a connotation Harry had picked up from the 2020s in muggle popular culture. It brought an amused tilt to his lips to imagine such a vibrant LGBT community among the elves, doubly so since he had heard nothing of it in the Empire. Maybe it was just the time period. Somehow he could not imagine a homophobic elf. The very idea seemed ridiculous on the face of it. Educated, polite, egalitarian elves snarling at each other over something as ridiculous as that.
Vernon would have loathed it.
Harry's grin widened.
Some of the elves had one or two exotic features, unnatural eye or hair color, a tattoo, facial markings, things like that. Others like Majaia had a more obvious and significant alteration. But some did not look much like elves at all.
Harry passed a bear-elf hybrid person with fur covering his entire body, wearing just a loincloth. Not even shoes, for his feet seemed modified to work like paws, bare against the ground. His eyes were yellow and catlike, and slid to follow Harry as he passed.
Harry tended to draw a fair bit of attention from the elves around him. Maybe the news had spread about Arya, or they really were that surprised to see a human in Ellesmera. They didn't seem hostile, just curious.
"How long since they've seen a human here?" Harry murmured to Majaia.
"I couldn't say," Majaia said with a bit of a smirk. "A long time."
"Is that the only reason they're watching?"
Majaia led him down a smaller path that headed off to the left. "I imagine not."
"Why else?" Harry kicked at a pebble that stuck out of the road, sending it skittering across the cobbles and into a bank of bushes. He had some guesses, but he'd rather be certain.
"It is not so remarkable for an elf to see a human, if they are truly motivated. We could find them easily to the south or west," Majaia pointed out. "However it happened, you were only found when you had nearly reached Ellesmera, bringing someone very important to us with you while she was grievously injured. And you are a magician. Your story has spread." Majaia pointed him towards a dining pavilion. Harry's stomach rumbled as the wind turned, carrying with it the smell of baking pastries and sizzling oils.
The pavilion was in the middle of a park of sorts. It was still wild, but a bit had been done to trim back the undergrowth and lay paths around the giant trees to make it friendlier to navigate on foot.
She led him up a winding path that cut through a grassy hill to the pavilion at the top where picnic benches had been set out. It was buffet style. He and Majaia loaded up their plates and brought them to a table.
"So what brought you here?" Majaia asked as she sat.
Harry frowned. "You were there at the hospital wing, right? It was a dream."
"But why?" she wondered. "Plenty of people have dreams and forget them in the morning. Or simply ignore them, or call them a figure of their imagination. You traveled far to reach Gil'ead on a hunch."
"I scryed to confirm the dream," Harry told her. "I was sure it was real."
She tilted her head. "Even so. Did you have nothing else to do that you could drop everything and leave for months?"
Harry snorted. That was exactly right. "Honestly, pretty close. I was traveling with a couple of guys, but we didn't have any missions in mind. Arya's told me you guys have magic to feed and clothe and shelter you, so there's no need to work. It's the same for me. I can grow food with magic on the road, as long as I'm willing to eat vegetarian, and I can pull gold from the ground and mint the Empire's coins to pay my way through traveling. I don't have any responsibilities right now, except for the ones I choose. Rescuing Arya felt more important than traveling with them, so I said my goodbyes and went for it."
Over on a little stage with a curved back panel, a troupe of elves set up instruments and began to play live music for the pavilion. Harry was taken aback by how much he'd missed music. He hadn't heard much more than drunken singing in Carvahall once or twice since he'd come to Alagaesia.
The elves made music that sounded a lot like home. It was no Christina Warbeck or Taylor Swift, but it had the same elements of a full song, rather than a simple melody alone. Two of the elves sang. It was all in the Ancient Language and Harry struggled to understand it all. The nature of the Ancient Language filled in some of the blanks. It was like a spell; Harry could almost see the ocean as they described it in a longing, mournful ballad.
When that song ended, they sang a cheerier tune about having a lover for a day, a month, a year, and a century. The details were lost on him again, yet Harry got the feeling it was different from how humans might have written a song about it. There were no hard feelings attached to the whole thing, and the song seemed to tie all the lovers together at the end.
Harry found himself nodding along to the beat.
Even after he was full and had cleared away his plate, the pavilion never got so full that Harry thought he might be making someone wait by sitting there and listening. Majaia ate her fill (which was dramatically more than he'd eaten), and sat back down with him, content to enjoy the music as well.
They sat for almost an hour as the day grew late, listening to the elves' music. When the set wrapped up, the sun had nearly set. Harry stood and stretched. "Let's head back?" he offered.
Majaia got up. "Of course."
Harry glanced back at the musicians, who were putting their instruments away. "They were brilliant."
They must have heard him from all the way across the pavilion, because two of them broke into wide smiles and another laughed, making eye contact with him. Harry waved back to them as he and Majaia started back down the path.
"Is the music where you come from different?" Majaia wondered.
Harry nodded without really thinking about it. "A bit. I'm still a bit shaky on the Ancient Language."
"How so?" Majaia asked. Harry was drawn up short. That was not a question he could safely answer.
"It's just…different," he excused. "And it's been a while."
The way back to Tialdarí Hall was lit by swaying lanterns hung from the boughs of the trees, strong along on lines hanging from the trunks and mounted on lampposts. It was mesmerizing, a sort of fey atmosphere that reminded Harry that Ellesmera was not a city made by humans.
Majaia bid him goodbye at the doors to Tialdarí Hall. Harry spent a while walking the gardens out front before finally heading up to his rooms.
He closed the doors and pulled over the canvas cover to the window, casting privacy spells and sealing the room as much as he could before drawing out the resurrection stone. Thrice he turned it over in his hand. For the first time, Morgan was not the only silhouette to emerge.
"He is adjusting well?"
"I am easing him into the social expectations elves have of each other," Majaia said. Islanzadi folded her hands together. "He accepts them readily, and exhibits many of those behaviors unprompted. He found our lack of religion unremarkable and understood the idea of post-subsistence living. He himself claims to live the same way by his own magic."
"What of it?" Islanzadi asked. "His magic."
Majaia chose her words carefully. "He is trying to be circumspect, but obviously does not know how to live without it. He tries to avoid casting magic in front of me. I think because his vocabulary in the Ancient Language is limited, and he is trying to avoid letting on that he often does not use the Ancient Language at all to cast."
Islanzadi's eyes widened a bit. That was interesting. "What does he do all day?"
"He visits Arya in the Hall of Healing every morning," she told her. "Then we take breakfast together in the dining hall before he insists on exploring the edges of the city in search of some sort of ore he is searching for."
"Brightsteel?" Islanzadi wondered.
Majaia shook her head. "Bauxite, he calls it. It is a brown ore, according to him."
"And in the evening?"
Majaia frowned. "It is odd. He seals himself in his room most nights, but he has forgotten to cast his wards against eavesdropping once. He was talking to himself, holding half a conversation. It could not have been scrying, for the wards would stop him."
Nor mental conversation, Islanzadi thought. There would be nothing to hear in that case.
"Do you think he will cause problems?" Majaia asked. She sounded uncertain.
"He cares for my daughter," Islanzadi assured her. "Of that much, I am certain. And I do not believe she would ever disclose the location of Ellesmera without being certain she could trust him. So for now, we wait for her to recover and learn the other half of Harry Evans's story."
AN: It has come to my attention that the recently updated chapters I've uploaded have lost their bolds and italics. I guess it's not a huge deal, but it does kind of bug me that it happens. I may try to fix them or not. If I do, apologies in advance for all the notifications.