The elf he had found was rather young to be knowing about him, he thought as he watched her sleep. The morning sun warmed
things
up nicely and it woke her, streaming through the cave mouth in golden bars as though everything in the world was perfectly
all right. She jolted, froze, sucked her breath in through her teeth as she realised things had changed while she was away,
and then relaxed enough to close her eyes and breathe normally for a minute or two. At last she rolled onto her side and opened
her eyes again. They were green and they stared at him with avid intensity, so much so that he found himself blinking for
her. Once she glanced upwards, in the direction of the sleeping drake, and then back at him.
‘From Demonia,’ she said, in a whisper.
‘Yes,’ he confirmed.
‘Real,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ He could feel her tentatively expanding, trying to search the area for danger. ‘There’s nobody close,’ he said. ‘You
can rest.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No time for that. We have to stop it.’ She tried to get up but it failed as an effort and he held out his
hand quickly.
‘Rest there, at least a while. You must.’ He handed food across to her and she grabbed it quickly without noticing or caring
that it was from Otopia and not much like elven food.
In between mouthfuls she said, ‘It’s why you came, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Where are the others?’
‘There’s only me.’
She stopped eating mid-bite and lay prone and motionless for a moment, then spat the food out onto the sandy ground. ‘Only
you?’ All the animation went out of her and she lay like a doll, eyes closing and her mouth curving into a disbelieving half
smile. ‘Only you.’ She laughed silently with a couple of quick moves of her ribs. He counted more than ten serious bruises
and scrapes on her exposed skin. She was wearing light clothes, something suited for indoor living, and they were mostly ripped
and dirtied. Her braided bronze-coloured hair was a mess. He betted she’d been running for a while. Though they were well
separated and she looked all given up, her
andalune
body clung fiercely to its contact with his, drinking in all she could about him. He guessed there was a lot to drink, given
Lila’s presence and all.
‘And are you all that’s left? Only you?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said after a while and coughed, so she had to roll back to her side. She pushed the spat food reluctantly
away from her, and took another bite of the cereal trail mix bar from her hand. She chewed it slowly, deliciously, enjoying
it in a way he wouldn’t have
thought possible. He hated the things himself. ‘Am I the last elf?’ she asked rhetorically, taking another bite. ‘I asked
myself that so many times I thought I would go mad.’
‘You’re not. So do you know what happened?’
She swallowed, went for another bite, thought better of it and licked around her teeth so that he could tell her gums were
sore. ‘Meaning you’re here I suppose. Did you find others?’
‘You’re the first,’ he admitted. ‘But I only got here yesterday.’
‘You saw the people here.’
‘Yes.’ He held his impatience in check. ‘Yes,’ she said and her hands began shaking. ‘I . . . was . . . I am a librarian,
at Delatra. All the others went . . . as you see, after the creature came. It asked for some records. Looked like an elf,
of course it did or we, but anyway, I went to look for them because the Master Librarian was arguing with it. There was something
strange about it you see and . . . I went looking and I was in the rooms when I felt them all disappear.’ Her green eyes were
round, completely ringed with white. It was the only outward sign of the freezing horror that gripped her. He felt it and
flinched, but he was still on guard and the despair and sadness that followed didn’t infect him.
‘But not you,’ he said quietly.
‘Not me.’ She dropped the food bar and her hand went to a pocket on her beaten trousers and fished around quickly. ‘I had
this.’ She held it in her fist and wouldn’t let go but he could see it, a pinkish stone object. The smile of slight hysteria
played across her mouth again. ‘It’s a soulcatcher. There can’t be more than four in the world and I was holding it because
I was looking for those cursed records and it was with them in the box.’ She stared at it in disbelief.
‘And what does that do?’ He’d almost forgotten what it was like to be in the Jayon Daga but now he remembered. Questions,
efficiency, action; it felt so comforting.
She caught the tail end of this emotion and smiled for a moment – a more genuine smile. ‘Yes. I thought it was a paperweight.
The only reason I held onto it was because I was so frightened that I couldn’t let it go.’ She regarded the object – not carved
really, more like a smoothed rock polished lightly into a suitable shape for a hand. You could have thrown it down on a pebble
beach and lost it for ever on the instant. ‘Later I understood. I realised that there must be something important about the
ledgers. I thought that it was a temporary attack on the library you see, not a full-scale war. I could not imagine
what could do such a thing as wipe everyone out like they were chalk marks, for ever. I still do not entirely . . .’ She
broke off. She was shuddering convulsively and couldn’t keep speaking. Zal maintained his strong, compassionate energy but
he didn’t move closer to her. Their
andalune
bodies twined like ivy meanwhile.
After a minute or two she was ready to continue, the stone held in her hands, over her heart. ‘So. I took the ledgers.’ She
released her hold briefly to pat what he saw were large inside pockets on her soft jacket – booksized pockets. ‘And I took
the stone and I went through the rooms by the back ways until I was able to get out, thinking I’d hide until the worst was
gone and come back when everyone woke up. I’ve been at the library for over fifty years so I knew every inch of it back to
front. It would be possible to find someone there hidden in any of its places so I went down the mountain through one of the
long tunnels that led to the forest. There’s an energy sink not far from the mountain, at Orlinn, a water place. It felt right
to go there. I went and hid there and when it passed over it didn’t find me. I tried to pull everything in but I do not have
your skill with that. There was never any need to hide before.’ She paused. ‘I wonder why it did not see me. I think it was
not really looking. It swept over and killed them all and it was gone. That was all. But it wanted these.’ She put the stone
back in her pocket and slowly, one at a time, drew out two old and battered sheaves of manuscript.
‘May I?’ Zal asked.
She nodded and he moved forward and took them carefully. They were perfectly preserved and easily legible but he couldn’t
read the ancient words. ‘What is this, Old Yashin?’
‘Earlier actually. Shavic.’
‘What is it, can you read it?’ He handed them back to her and watched her smooth the curled edges
carefully.
‘Yes, I have read it many times now,’ she whispered. ‘One is a ledger of names. The other is a mage’s journal explaining exactly
how to strip the spirit from a living person without killing them and to put something else in its place. And before you ask,
yes, I do think this is the work of the Genomancers who made the shadowkin. It is not signed. There is no name attached to
it. The ledger is, I think, the record of all those who were so used. But I cannot be sure of that. I do not recognise any
of the names, except that they are commonly used.’
Zal thought of Xaviendra, and a wave of heat and discomfort passed through him. He pushed it away but the other elf had noticed.
‘You are cursed,’ she said, startled.
‘I’ve had worse,’ Zal insisted. ‘Tell me more about this stone.’
‘It anchors the spirit of the bearer in their flesh and bone. Lesser versions are used by necromancers in their studies but
this book,’ she tapped her right breast, ‘says there are a few master stones that have much greater powers. They are a kind
of lightning rod, earthing the spirit, or chaining it, depending on your viewpoint I suppose. It was after I read about them
that I understood what this must be and what had happened to the rest.’ She stopped and closed her eyes. Tears flowed out
of them and the shuddering returned.
‘May I see the names?’ he asked.
Without looking she fumbled the book back out and handed it across again. Zal addressed Lila quietly, ‘Can you read this?’
His left hand warmed. He lifted it on intuition and put it over the book, palm down where the soft skin of the black gauntlet
could ‘see’. As she had shown the map she now showed him the words written in contemporary elvish characters. He was poring
over them when suddenly he was crowded by the female elf, coughing and wiping her face as she stared at the back of his glove.
‘Translation!’ she said, astonished. ‘What is this? I thought you had some sort of barbarian armour with a demon inside it
but this is—’
‘This is Lila Black, my wife,’ Zal said, pulling a face as he did so because it sounded like stupidity even when he knew it
was true.
The elf recoiled but stayed where she was, drawn to and repulsed by all the notions rushing through her feverish mind.
‘Alive,’ Zal supplied. ‘Human. Machine.’ And after a pause, ‘Harmless.’ He turned the page, hoping that Lila knew more than
he did and would highlight something if it was important because as the librarian said, to him it was a list of names that
meant nothing and attached to nobody.
‘I . . .’ the elf began but was unable to articulate any more. She stared at him.
‘We need to know who else is still surviving,’ Zal said calmly as his survey went on through sheet after sheet.
‘And then?’
‘And then . . .’ Zal said but he didn’t know what happened then. ‘I am supposed to report back to Otopia and figure it out
from there.’
‘So they know. They are preparing an army.’
Zal continued reading. ‘Did you see this creature, as you call it?’
‘It looked like an elf,’ she repeated. ‘I was not paying attention. I was preparing some documents for . . . I am just saying
that there was an elf who asked for these things and she had a very strange aura now that I think about it. She was cold.
Some people can be that way, you know, when they have had a shock so that was another reason I did not look at her, in case
it was too much for her. I do not know that it was a she. I assumed . . .’ She had started to babble and the hysteria in her
voice was rising.
‘It seems a reasonable assumption,’ Zal broke in firmly. ‘I would agree with it. In any case, it is all we have to go on at
the moment. Later you said people died and it came for them. How did you see it then?’
‘I saw it,’ she used the word for seeing with the
andalune
body, rather than with her eyes, ‘as a wave of silence. And cold but I think that the cold is only my feeling and there was
no coldness as such. Silence came. But they were not dead. I heard them. They heard me. I had to run away. Very fast.’
Zal watched the meaningless names scroll across his hand. ‘When I met you you were afraid of me even though we heard each
other well in advance. Why?’
‘I thought it was how she would hear me. That she would find me and kill me for the books and the stone.’
‘How would she know that you even had them?’
‘Because I was alive when I should be dead.’
Zal thought that was reasonably screwed up but it made sense enough. ‘She has no reason to search for someone she doesn’t
know is missing though.’
‘No,’ the elf sat back and then lay down again in the sunlight, curling up small. ‘I think of her in the room, looking for
the books, seeing they are gone.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Zal said in reply, thinking aloud to himself. ‘What does this gain anyone?’ The names rolled on and on.
There was no mark anywhere to show what had happened to them – if they survived as shadowkin or were killed in the process.
Then a name flashed at him and made him blink.
His father.
He got up and stuffed the paper booklet down the front of his shirt. ‘I have to go. I’ll be back soon as I can. Stay here.
It’s safe.’ He was already pressing the collar of the armour, signalling Unloyal so that
the drake got up from its nap and came down to the sandy area in front of the cave ready.
The elf . . . ‘
I don’t know your name,’ he said as she backed away rapidly from the drake, staring at it with loathing and wonder in equal
parts.
‘Tellona,’ she said but had to say it twice because her voice was choked. ‘Will you be hunting us all down with that thing?’
Zal glanced at Unloyal’s hideous mass, the eyeless head at an angle that suggested it didn’t care for who said what about
it. ‘If I have to.’ The thought of exterminating the ‘survivors’ had passed through his mind – his demon part wanted to do
it badly – but he’d let it go along with all his sense of connection to the victims. It had been surprisingly easy. Why that
should make him, the arch defector, so sad, was another mystery. Then he re-stated firmly, ‘I will be back.’
‘What if it comes?’ Tellona was suddenly holding out the other book. ‘You should have this.’
‘To preserve it,’ he said in a neutral tone, recalling Xaviendra again and her vivid insistence on the preservation of the
library. He went back and took the paper.
Tellona watched him with thin lips. ‘The acid in your skin will hasten its destruction,’ she said reprovingly. ‘You should
take it because you have a chance of defending it. Whatever it wants I am thinking it should not have if only because I am
vengeful.’ Her look became a glare.
Zal stuffed the second book down the other side of his shirt and felt Lila press them close as her chestplate stiffened and
moulded itself around the forms, sealing closed up to his jaw. He saluted Tellona. ‘You have the stone.’
‘Yes,’ she said, hand already around it, knuckles white.
‘Keep it.’ He saw relief flood across her face.
‘You are immune?’
‘I have no idea,’ he said and went back out into the blazing sun, climbed to the saddle and adjusted the leg harness so that
he was held fast. ‘I am going to Halany. I hope not for long.’