When the elves are gone, p.25
When the Elves are Gone, page 25
Ninnel produced an insightful but exhausted smile and nodded in agreement.
***
The elf maiden led the group along an unmarked route that elves used sparingly, and humans never used. The dwarf quickly wished he had a mix of mash for his nostrils, although he guessed that the powerful citrus aroma would only infuse the smell of rotting flesh already clinging to his nose hairs, adding to the building urge to vomit his scant lunch. The dwarf used his palms to wipe the sweat from his eyes and cheeks, aware that his stomach was twisting with nausea. He tried to hold his breath, to breathe only through his mouth, but the stench had overcome his clothing, his skin, his hair like a paste of maggots and grease.
The trek took them north, skirting the eastern edge of one of the earthen mounds that served as mass graves. Agonni looked at the mound of dirt rising like a mountain. He fought the impulse to stare at the limbs protruding from the black dirt as if the dead elves were reaching for the companions only a few feet away. The companions looked forward, north to the city of Solinthilus, as the birds of prey nestled into the earthen mound, protective of their territory.
This is a place that even death wants none of, Agonni thought. The stillness of the air keeps this place hotter than it is in the mountains.
He wiped his mouth and looked at Ninnel. For her sake, he thought, I must keep my lunch in my stomach. The dwarf tightened his gut, took a deep breath of defiance, and frowned. He glanced at Jaar’s tight face and straight lips, wondering what he was thinking. The dwarf chuckled to himself. Perhaps he is smiling inwardly. Perhaps he is seething like me, he thought.
Ninnel continued leading the companions northward. They arrived at the southern border of Solinthilus as the sun began its daily descent. The dimming orange sphere sat quietly on the ridge of the mountain, as if it had tired of the day’s trek across the sky and needed to rest upon the dark peaks. It sat for a moment before dropping behind the jagged landscape, concealing itself protectively from the two moons of Solinth and the evil to follow.
“Our timing is good,” Ninnel said. “It will be dark soon, masking our travels to the council.”
Agonni nodded, shifting his sight to the street dotted with a few small mud huts. It was nothing like Stone Deep. He sighed at the lack of civilization, biting the inside of his cheek. “We should go.”
Ninnel nodded her head in affirmation, looking around with careful eyes.
The dwarf noticed her glance and assumed that she sensed danger. “What is it?” he asked.
Ninnel shook her head. “The path to Solinthilus has changed, Agonni.” Her eyes widened a bit. “There is danger, even among the dying.”
Ninnel stretched her legs and swiftly broke into a run, creating distance between herself and the group. The dwarf grunted, following behind Jaar, who was already attempting to catch up to the elf maiden. A twinge of panic replaced Agonni’s nausea as Ninnel disappeared into the dark streets of Solinthilus. Each time she rounded a corner, the others fell further behind. Agonni swore under his breath as he looked around a city he did not know in a growing darkness that he would not be able to cut himself free of. He ran until the elf maiden was gone, until all that remained were strangers in a dying kingdom.
“Jaar! Jaar!” Agonni whispered harshly. “Go no further! She has left us, and we must not separate!”
Jaar looked over his shoulder, grunted hoarsely, and came back to Agonni, whose eyes were wild with confusion. Burrock sat by the defeated dwarf, nuzzling his right leg. The group stood alone in the darkness of the approaching night, in a city that would see darkness as a reprieve from the atrocities of day.
An eternity crawled bitterly past the dwarf, his senses washed in a dense fog he could not clear away. They were indeed alone, and the silence of the night weighed heavily upon them all. It was stillness in the absence of productivity and devoid of incentive, which felt like madness to the dwarf.
Then, amid the sharpened frost of night, the ax began its hypnotic song. It whispered like a passing breeze, its words seeping into the dwarf’s listening ears and pumping into his heart and through his brain. The dwarf readied Deceiver, freeing the ax from his backpack. It felt like a caged animal ready to devour the darkness of night. The silver moons reflected sharply off the blade’s smooth surface with brilliant white flashes, dancing and swaying at the slightest turn of the dwarf’s wrist.
Agonni’s ears pricked at the hushed conversation of a male voice, the erratic inflections of which reminded Agonni of a rat picking through garbage. The voice chattered closely against Agonni’s eager ears. He held his hand up, piquing Jaar’s attention. The two listened while Burrock stood lazily by. The male’s words continued to skirt the shadowed alleys in low tones, dodging audible clarity before resting upon the dwarf’s ears. Agonni moved toward the sound, around a hut and beyond a small lot heaped with debris. Agonni moved closer to the voice’s seemingly one-sided conversation. Gripping Deceiver tightly, the dwarf brought the blade to the ready. He tread lightly on the gravel surface as he lowered to a crouch. He drew carefully closer. Whoever accompanied the prodding voice was close enough now to hear the dwarf’s breath if he listened for it. Agonni could tell the direction now; the speaker was just beyond a row of dilapidated huts made of broken branches and dried mud to his left. The dwarf stepped into the shadows, away from the moons, and let darkness blanket him.
“Do what you must but do it quickly!” begged a female voice. “The fate of Solinthilus hangs upon your black heart, Volindd,” she added rudely, her voice rising past loud. “The four of you shall not keep me from my duty so long as the heart in my chest beats.”
“Your body will be mine!” Volindd shot back. “I will do things to it that would make even the humans’ stomachs turn!”
Agonni quickly recognized Ninnel's defiant voice, causing him to mask a smile. He could make out the slurp of saliva washing around Volindd’s diseased tongue. Volindd watched Ninnel with a wandering eye, drawing his sparse lips into a thin smile. His large head and elven ears appeared grossly out of scale for his thin limbs, which appeared gray and sickly by the moons’ light. Only the swollen belly protruding between his tight, ill-fitting shirt and the loose pants held up with a small ribbon of twine seemed proportionate to his head.
She is smart, Agonni thought, spreading the webbing between his stiff fingers to signal to Jaar how many of the vile elves lay beyond the shadows. At the risk of alerting the bandits to his presence, Agonni moved more swiftly. He slid between two flimsy mud huts with Jaar on his heels and appeared behind the shadowy figures of four thin elves. The dwarf’s night vision did a fine job of outlining the bandits, his focused retinas noting the glint of steel in each one’s hand, courtesy of the moons’ reflection. If Ninnel saw the companions behind the band of elves, she did not make it known. The lustful Deceiver delighted as Agonni held his strong arms high above his shoulders and delivered a powerful blow downward, splitting the closest elf down the middle, stopping only when the blade lodged itself into pelvic bone. Jaar quickly stepped over the mess, grabbed the next elf and delivered powerful blows with his enormous fist until the elf’s skull caved. He threw the body to the ground and drove his heel hard upon the elf’s chest, cracking bones until he could hear no more bones and felt only mush. He turned toward the third elf, but Burrock was already upon him, sinking his sharpened fangs deep into the elf’s throat, tearing strings of muscle and shaking the elf in an effort to decapitate him. Volindd stared wide-eyed at the lopsided ambush. He dropped his chipped dagger and brought his hands together in a plea for mercy. Suddenly, he jerked, coughing with an open mouth as he turned to face Ninnel. She removed the thin dagger from his back, allowing him to face her before driving it between his ribs and into his heart. “Solinthuulis adari fuun shotguura!” she said, spitting.
Volindd was drooling blood as he glanced down at the blade buried in his chest. He grabbed at it with hands devoid of depth perception and then collapsed in a pile at Ninnel’s feet. The maiden yanked the blade free and placed it back in its small scabbard without cleaning it.
Agonni stood over the freshly murdered remains of Volindd, wondering if there was anyone worth salvaging in this certain hell. The fools are not satisfied to be tortured and killed by the humans, he thought. They must turn on each other, too? The dwarf spat on the dead elf and turned to Ninnel. “You are no fool,” he said resolutely. “But neither am I. And I would bet there are more not far off.”
Ninnel nodded in agreement. “You are correct, Agonni. There will always be more, but none as horrible as Volindd.” Her eyes wandered as though she were trapped in a dream she wished desperately to wake from. How many elven maidens had Volindd taken the flesh and innocence of? she thought to herself. She shook her head and continued, “When I discovered that we had entered the city so far west, my thoughts told me to run; told me that you would follow. I knew we would find trouble. It was only a matter of time.”
“I believe the trouble has just begun, Ninnel,” he cautioned, wiping Deceiver with a piece of cloth he tore from one of the dead elves. “Guide us to the Elders, Ninnel. The time is upon them to come clean to the elves of Solinthilus.”
Chapter 27: Till the Council Meets, the House of Elders, and Father
The companions trekked for less than an hour before they found themselves staring at a large mud building that stood out as opulent against the spattering of shacks surrounding it. The dark building boasted smooth sides. Elvish script was carved deeply into the dried mud facade above a small rectangular door, carved from charred wood . Agonni spit blood from his throat then kicked dirt over it with his foot. He looked at Ninnel. “How long till the council meets?” he asked.
Ninnel looked at the building, her gaze seeming to penetrate the wooden door. “I fear they are busy as we speak, dwarf.”
Agonni lifted his right eyebrow in confusion as he looked at the wooden door. No light shown beneath it. “Do we just go in?”
A penetrating darkness created a quiet space between the large building and the companions. Agonni felt he might never reach the door. He started to move but stopped, catching Jaar out of the corner of his eye, sniffing the air around him. The half ogre walked silently to the door and knelt, placing his nose at the small gap between the ground and the door. He breathed in, detecting life within the mud walls. Agonni felt anxious apprehension, watching the half ogre’s movements. Deceiver suddenly felt cold and heavy in his hands. He looked down at the blade; it showed no reflection, only the dullness of night. Deceiver said nothing, but it made itself heavy to wield. Agonni frowned as he hefted the ax, attempting a semblance of readiness despite the ax’s protest. He nodded to Jaar, who stood with his hand on the door. Jaar looked to Ninnel, who nodded, her eyes nervous. The half ogre turned the knob but could not open the locked door.
The group stood quietly for a moment, exchanging glances. “Kick it in, Jaar,” Agonni commanded as he moved toward the door, figuring that whoever was inside was already aware of their presence.
Jaar took a long step back and then brought his right heel hard against the door, which erupted in an explosion of splintered wood. The force of the kick caused Jaar to fall forward and into the building, with Agonni close behind. They went straight to a small flicker of light seeping from beneath another door across the large, open meeting area. The small crack of light illuminated the dirt floor, guiding Agonni to it like a beacon in the dark. The dwarf barreled into it with his shoulder, generating enough force to knock the small internal door from its hinges.
What he saw inside made the dwarf stand like a granite statue in the doorway, his shoulders slumping with heavy regret and an involuntarily buckling in his knees. He fought to right himself, gripping the doorway with one hand, dropping Deceiver from the other. The ax fell to the ground without a sound, black as the dirt it lay upon and cold as breath the dwarf exhaled into the scarcely lit room.
Agonni thought back to Journey’s End and his duty to labor over the dead. The great fire had to be richly fed. It was ever consuming, and the more it was fed, the more coin had poured into the dwarf’s palm like an unending spring. He was the deliverer, the liberator of the innocent, and his payment was metal. The past stood honestly and impartially before him now as an unwelcome stranger with questionable intentions. The dwarf thought of the small child he did not know who had rested upon his wagon that late evening at Journey’s End. He’d been swaddled in a mess of old cloth riddled with bodily fluids.
That day felt like an eternity ago. Agonni’s eyes rested on the current darkness as he dwelled in a past that he meant to neglect, thinking of the child he’d gently comforted on that evening. The child had been cold to his fingertips. He remembered that now. The cold of that frail shoulder still caused him to shiver involuntarily on warm nights. The dwarf looked at his empty hands. They reeked of the same chill, accepting the numbing indifference that was spreading throughout his burdened limbs. He felt deadness within him. Coldness. His eyes had finally taken in more than they could comprehend, but what had been seen could not be unseen. The sight before him pleaded incessantly to him like a fool with an assumption of mercy. “Am I not worth saving?” it begged.
He replied with a question. “Is there anything worth saving?” And he could only muster one word: “No.”
The dwarf had finally conceded to the rage within him. He struggled with a blossoming madness, a clumsy physicality, as he focused on one of the occupants of the room, a naked, middle-aged elf with long, thin, silvering hair and a fat belly. Agonni grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked him from a makeshift bed, consisting of old rags and torn blankets deposited in the corner of the room. As Jaar rushed to enter the room, the dwarf unexpectedly clipped him with his elbow, knocking him sideways against the doorframe. The half ogre moved aside for the wild-eyed dwarf as he dragged the male elf from the room.
Three small elven girls huddled in the corner, each chained to the floor with large, heavy shackles hooked to spikes of dark iron. Agonni struggled with the weight of the naked elf, shoving Ninnel aside as she made her way to the threshold. He ground his teeth, shoved out his jaw, and tightened his thick hands around the elf’s neck. He forced the elf to his knees.
Ninnel righted herself, peered into the bedroom and began to weep. Within a few moments she realized the peril unfolding before her, and she wiped her eyes and looked from the children to the elder, Denrathis. Ninnel had known him since she was a child. But she had never known him so well as she did now. “Shura yathawr o nithril,” she pleaded, in the hope that the nightmare would soon be over. The elf maiden looked at Agonni but did not appear to be begging him. Her eyes roamed with her thoughts around the large room.
Agonni tightened his fingers around the elder’s fat throat, introducing his thin dagger, which enjoyed carving on soft things. He brought it close to Denrathis’s neck—a glint in the shadow of night. Jaar watched Agonni with anxious eyes. Small grunts flowed from the thin line separating his teeth. He saw Agonni’s eyes twitch with rage, the blood through his veins causing them to redden and protrude wildly. The dwarf pressed the dagger tightly to the elf’s throat and began to score his esophagus.
“Wait!” A voice begged from the building’s front door.
Agonni stopped short. A drop of bright-red blood worked its way from under the blade, contrasting sharply against the elf’s pale skin. The dwarf was unable to make out the shadow standing in the doorway. He brought his eyes to a tight slit so he could better examine the figure behind the voice, but the moons’ soft glow enveloped him from behind, making it impossible.
“Come closer!” Agonni beckoned. “You’re welcome to meet the same fate as your friend.” He turned back to the panicked elf, who now huddled in a puddle of his own urine.
This time it was Ninnel who spoke. “Agonni, wait! Let my father speak!”
Agonni and Jaar looked to Ninnel, then to the figure in the doorway. Agonni shook his head in disbelief, straightened his swollen knees, and pointed the tip of his hungry dagger at the guilty elven male on the floor. He tilted his head, speaking low and hoarsely to the elf. “The evil of Solinth will sob tears of joy at the momentary reprieve they have been granted through the pain you will shoulder for them. I will start at your toes.” He smiled. “I’ll work my way up your legs, stopping for a while at your groin. But fear not, old one, your eyeballs will be the last thing I take from you so that you may watch the things I will do to you in the name of the children and the elves of Solinthilus.”
A deep guttural snarl seethed through Jaar’s teeth, the kind that stands hairs on end as it ricochets between frightened ears; an animalistic utterance that spreads like mist from the dangerously dark corners of night, confidently warning all those near enough to feel its vibration that death follows close behind.
Ninnel’s father spoke from the doorway. “I am Hasivath. Either by will or by force, I see that you know my eldest daughter, Ninnel. Tell me the meaning of your intrusion into the House of Elders.”
“It is not by force that I know your daughter, I assure you,” Agonni said. “Dwarves do not practice the same…rituals as you elves do.” He spat the words as if he had just chewed rotten meat.
The two eyed each other for a stretch of time before Hasivath entered the large room, shuffling with short steps toward the companions. The elder’s robe reminded Agonni of his own father’s. Hasivath’s was far simpler, though—the worn, loose-fitting gray garment hung upon his thin frame as if it had been tailored for someone else. Hasivath’s long, thin hair draped his shoulders in smooth layers, the streaks of silver making it seem to be made of marble. A hairless chin and a thin nose drooped sadly toward the floor in stark disagreement with his bright-brown eyes and high, sharp cheekbones, giving him an unnatural look, even for an elf.
