Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Aaran
T hirty yards from the shipyard, we’ve been silently waiting for an hour. A dune meant to prevent rising seas from flooding the nearby villages keeps us hidden. The houses behind us are long abandoned. Lesser elves who look as if they haven’t eaten for days, maybe weeks, guard the ship. Dawn hasn’t yet broken. So, it’s better to wait for the darkest hour to attack. Then we can set sail in daylight.
When my mother led our people across the sea, we abandoned this port. Those who stayed were either conscripted by Venora or turned into her shadow demons. Moored to the stone bulkhead with thick ropes, two ships float at the wooden docks. Buildings that used to be for storage and port offices stand against the moonlit sky.
The acridness of sea and rotting fish fills the air, along with the undertone of putrefaction. Nothing is as it should be. None of this should have happened. My family failed this continent. Far too late for blame, I banish the thoughts and keep my attention on the larger of the ships and the movement aboard.
“Why didn’t she kill me?” Harper whispers from where we lie watching.
“Can we talk about this later?”
She blinks. “We may be dead later.”
“Then it probably won’t matter.” At least not to us.
Jax has taken half of our numbers and gone to the northern end of the port. Splitting our forces may give us an advantage. I can barely make out the silhouette of them hiding behind the old port master’s house.
Narrowing her eyes at me, she changes the subject. “Those people on the ship are what you call lesser elves?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to kill them?” Disappointment laces her questions.
Looking into those perfect green eyes surrounded by dark full lashes, I want to tell her it will all be alright. I want to lie and say I won’t kill anyone. “If I must. We will try to fool them and hope they run away.”
“It’s not their fault that Venora put them under a spell or infected them or whatever it is she does.” A crease forms between her eyes. “And why are they lesser exactly?”
“Because they don’t have written language yet and no magic.” I’ve never particularly liked the term either. “I know it’s not their fault, but they may give us no choice.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “There’s always a choice. Humans have no magic. Do you consider us lesser as well?”
“I didn’t see you defending the wolves or the shadow demons.” My temper is rising. I want to calm myself and tell her all the things she wants to hear, but the truth is, I may have to kill those poor elves.
“The wolves attacked us, as did the shadow demons.” Conflict flickers in her eyes, and she bites her bottom lip.
I lean over her so that she’s flat on her back. I wish she didn’t have to be any part of this, and at the same time, I want her to be here with me. “They have another name. Aracan elves. They are not less, but they are different. Humans have magic, but they have forgotten. Many elves will see you as less. I hope you know how I see you. I will do my best not to kill, but they are controlled by dark magic and may make it impossible, so I will not promise.” I take a deep breath. “She didn’t kill you because she fears killing you would only produce another chosen from your world to take your place.”
Eyes as big as saucers, she stares, blinks, and looks away. She rolls out from under me.
A high-pitched screech of a seabird pierces the air.
“That’s our signal.” I cast a spell of mirrors and hope it holds long enough. When we rise from behind the embankment, we look like hundreds of armed and armored elves marching into battle.
The ship is long with tall masts. Hopefully, it’s as good as it looks bobbing on its moorings. There are no goods at the port as there once were when trades were made between villages and cities. Only the rubbish remains, when once this was a bustling center of commerce.
A head lifts above the ship’s rail, and then another. A loud cry in an old elvish tongue sounds the warning.
If they knew we were a band of mostly injured and weak, magicless slaves, what would they do?
More heads and yelling.
“Hold.” I lift my fist to stop our progress fifty feet from the forward end of the ship.
Jax does the same from aft.
It’s been a long time since I studied the old language, but I cobble together a phrase telling them to abandon the ship and leave and no one will be harmed.
Tension hangs in the warm air.
Harper grabs the back of my arm. Her hand trembles. “I wish there was a way to cast the darkness from them.”
Someone walks the ramp from the deck toward me.
When he reaches land, I raise my palm. “Hold.”
His English is guttered and rough. “She queen. Her ship.” He slaps his palm against his chest. Crouching in a battle-ready pose, he growls.
Hunched and hissing like animals, dozens jump to land from the ship. With their cheeks sunken and hollow, they barely look elven. Long hair in every color hangs loose around their shoulders in filthy dreads. With empty hungry eyes and rotting teeth, they are barely alive.
“Damn.” My heart sinks, but there’s little choice. I raise my sword and wait for the first one to attack.
Harper releases my arm, but instead of stepping back out of danger, she runs past our lines. She raises her arms, rainbows of light shoot from her fingers into the sky, and screams at the top of her lungs, “No!”
The Aracan stop and stare. Their tattered clothes cling to underfed hunched bodies.
“No one has to die today. You can leave. You can go home or make a home. Venora is poison, she will discard you when she thinks you are no longer useful.” Harper might be the bravest person I’ve ever known. She has no weapons, save the dagger I gave her, and it is still tucked in a sheath at her waist. She has no training or diplomatic skills. Yet, here she stands, face-to-face with forty or more enemy soldiers, begging them to stand down.
I tuck in next to her, the hum of her magic almost as addictive to me as the woman herself. “I don’t think they understand.”
“Then tell them.” Desperation makes her voice sharp.
I translate her words into old elven.
“Queen!” A roar rises from the Aracan. “Queen! Queen!”
Harper thrusts her hands forward, and the rainbow light floods across the witch queen’s followers. It highlights their barely living state.
Some scream, as if in pain.
A few rush at Jax and his flanking forces.
Raising his rusty sword, his face full or horror, their leader rushes toward us.
I step in front of Harper, my sword held horizontally ready to block an attack.
The color drains from the Aracan elf’s face, exposing his pocked flesh. His eyes shine with terror, and he throws himself on my sword, effectively slicing himself in half. Blood splatters and he collapses on the dock.
The rest of the forty or so stare blankly for a moment before running into the darkness beyond the port.
I dislodge my sword from the Aracan. My gut twists. Five more lie dead in front of Jax, Beran, and the others.
“Why would he do that? Did he fear Venora more than death?” Harper kneels and closes his gaping eyes.
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I wish I could ease her sorrow, but there is nothing I can say.
“He’s nothing but skin and bones. Doesn’t she feed her disciples?” Harper’s eyes flash with anger.
Cara steps forward, and taking Harper’s hand, urges her from the ground. She pats her cheek.
Dorian says, “Her tolerance for the physical needs of others is very low. However, perhaps she thinks the supply of willing bodies is endless. She once thought she could win this war with only shadow demons. When she realized they couldn’t do labor, she enslaved elves. She stole the lesser elves from the southern continent and Arcania. They may be easier to influence.”
Jax wipes his sword on the clothes of one of the dead. “We barely drew our weapons. It was more suicide than battle. What kind of magic do you wield, human?”
“I only wished for them to be removed from Venora’s power.” She steps back from Jax, who storms closer.
I step into his path. “Whatever the magic was, it saved us from having to slaughter them all. There’s nothing we can do for the rest of them now.” Looking into the dawn, I make out a few retreating figures running northeast. “I think they may be heading to the sacred forest.”
Fancor pats Harper on the back and gives her a sympathetic look, as if he were her uncle. “They won’t last long in there. They say the sacred forest never gives back anyone or anything that stumbles inside.”
Jax snorts. “Fables and folklore. It’s just a forest. If they’re smart, they’ll stay within and remember how to feed themselves on the berries, rabbits, and fish. If not, they barely had enough on their bones to last the week.”
My spell has dissipated and Jax’s is only a moment behind. Now, with the illusion of an army gone, we are just a ragtag group, looking little better than the Aracan.
I turn toward the ship named Gaithgaisce . “Bert, can you have a look and see if she’s seaworthy?”
He nods and points to the name. “What does it mean, Nainsi?”
Nainsi lets out a long breath. “Windfoe, or fighter of wind.”
“We’ll have to hope she won’t fight too hard.” He calls the four elves with sailing experience to go with him, including Beran.
They board with Jax and two more armed men to secure the boat and discover whether or not we can sail it across a very unforgiving sea.
My charges bring our meager food to the port’s edge.
Dorian shakes his head. “I’ll take two hunters with me, and we’ll see if we can find something more. This won’t last two days.”
“How long will we be at sea?” Harper’s cheeks are already turning green, and we haven’t set foot on the ship yet.
“At least five days, mo chroi . It’s a wide sea, and we can’t sail through the forbidden waters. It would be more direct, but too dangerous. We have to go southwest to the islands, cut through, then sail north along the coast to the north port.” I wish there was another way.
“All of this because I went into the woods for some peace during a party.” She sits on an old stack of pallets.
Cara sits beside her and pats her knee.
Dorian strings his bow and leans down to kiss his wife’s cheek. “We would still be slaves had you not come to Tobhtá. Everything for a reason, my friend.” With a squeeze of Cara’s hand, he and two others go hunting south of the port.
I call to them. “See if you can find any berries or vegetables. Fish should be available, but we’ll need to ration water and the rest.”
Dorian waves in acknowledgment but doesn’t turn back.
“Aaran,” Bert calls from the railing. “You’d better get up here.”
There’s no fear or signs of danger, so when Harper walks with me, I don’t try to dissuade her. Not that it would matter. I’m beginning to realize that trying to protect her is fruitless. She’s in danger, and she will continue to be until we defeat the witch queen. Maybe I can teach her to control her magic rather than use it only when desperately wishing.
We walk up the ramp and find the deck clean and clear. “They have been doing some upkeep.”
Bert nods. He points to the second ship. “No hope for that poor girl.” The smaller ship is listing badly and will soon sink or break apart.
“Does that mean she can’t get her army across the sea if she has more Aracan elves and we take this ship?” Harper runs her hand along the rail and jerks as a splinter pierces the pad of her finger. Using her teeth, she pulls it out and wipes the dot of blood on her pants.
Continuing aft, Bert disappears down a steep stair that leads to the hold.
Expecting to find some horror, I follow, keeping my hand on my sword hilt.
Weeping, quiet and childish, reaches me before my eyes adjust. In the hold, lit only by a few portholes and the growing dawn, it’s difficult to see.
Jax and Nainsi stare down at seven small children huddled on some blankets. A girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen with arms crossed stands, guarding the crying little ones. Her hair is light brown dreads, and a streak of dirt marks the left side of her tanned face. She’s wearing leggings that may have once been blue but have faded to gray with sun and dirt. They’re too short for her long legs. She hisses at me.
“She either can’t or won’t speak.” Nainsi shrugs.
Taking my hand from my sword, I kneel. “Do you know the common language?” I ask in both common and old elven.
“I know.” Her voice is rough and cracked, as if speaking at all doesn’t come easily.
“Your people have fled.” It’s information she needs.
“Dead?” She shifts teary eyes to my sword.
Holding up my hand to indicate that five had died. “Most ran away.” I point to my chest. “Aaran.” I point to her.
Her tears fall, but she narrows her gaze and growls. “Enemy.”
Nainsi lowers to her knees. “No. You are safe.”
The girl looks from Nainsi to me, then raises her chin to the sky and screams. The smaller children join her, and it’s like a pack of wolves calling for a lost member. Their grief echoes around the wooden hold, making it hard to think.
“Stop,” I command loud enough to be heard above the wailing. I hold up a palm for peace.
Seven sets of eyes stare at me through tears, but the keening stops.
This is not good. I look at Jax. “We could take them to the sacred woods and hope their parents find them.” Even as I say it, I wonder if those starved creatures have any sense of parenting. I can’t imagine running away with my child left behind.
“We can’t leave them without knowing they are cared for, and their people will be too afraid to come out of the woods if that’s where they went.” Beholding the girl, Jax says, “A female child.”
Of course, I thought it too. The Aracan elves can still have female children, or at least they could when this girl was born. “Those questions will have to wait. What do we do with them?”
Bert steps forward. “You can’t leave them to maybe be cared for by their parents. They need food, water, a bath, and clean clothes.” He lifts the smallest, a boy of perhaps four or five. “Will you set him in front of the woods and walk away?”
The child cocks his head and pulls on Bert’s beard.
Fancor climbs down the stairs. “What on Domhan is going on down here? The noise was like the gates of Ifreann had opened.” He reaches the bottom and surveys the space. “The lesser elves left their babes behind? Blazes!”
“They were not exactly in their right minds.” Harper sighs. “I terrified them.”
Wrapping an arm around Harper, Nainsi says, “They’d been under Venora’s dark magic. They may not even remember birthing these children if you broke that spell.”
The girl takes the boy from Bert’s arms and steps back. “Queen dead?” She clutches the boy, her grimy fingers threading through his blond hair.
“I’m afraid not, lass,” Fancor says. “She still breathes, but our people are free of her magic.”
Pointing to the stairs, she says. “Go?”
“Where will you go?” Bert’s voice is soft and full of sympathy. He sits beside her. No longer the burly fisherman, he speaks as if she’s his to worry over. “The rest have run away, and we don’t know where to.”
The boy in her arms touches Bert’s round ears and laughs. It’s a sound I didn’t expect to hear today, and it fills my soul with hope.
Even Jax smiles. “We should get them above and feed them. There’s little time before the tide.”
“He’s right.” Bert stands and offers the girl his hand. “If we’re leaving today, we only have an hour or so before the tide goes out.”
An hour to decide the fate of seven Aracan children. I wonder if this was what the oracle had in mind when she sent me to find the human woman. Any hope of leaving the shores of Ear Talamh today is quickly fading.