“It was a man. A human. He came down from the foothills and wielded impossible magic.” Ripthe quivered in his place. The man was beyond exhausted. I had never traveled to the Yutarl Mountains, but they were in the far distant North. If he made it back here in only four weeks, he probably had not slept.
“A single human killed your entire squad of thirty hunters?”
“Yes.” He bowed his head.
Anger continued to fill my chest and stomach. It had been mistake after fucking mistake with this human army. I scratched my nails across the armrest of my chair and contemplated my next decision. What I really wanted to do was put my face in my hands and scream.
Why?
Why had Kaiyer escaped the day before Vertarus and I were going to take his squad out into the field?
Why had it been next to impossible for our hunters to capture them?
Why did Kaiyer continue to elude me? I should have found a way to speak to him. He had no way of knowing that I wanted us to escape together. He only knew that we were hunting him.
I suddenly regretted killing Vertarus. After his third botched attempt to capture his escaped humans and fix the state of our tribe, I had lost my patience in a sudden burst of finality that left his head parted from his neck. The man had tried his best I assumed, but the results would not protect this tribe or my fate. If he had been alive now I might have asked him if we had any chance of capturing our lost and magically empowered humans.
I could guess his answer.
“What of Contania?” Elder Gnella’s daughter led half of the group of trackers, while Ripthe commanded the other.
“Dead, but not by the newcomer’s magic. One of the two men we were chasing threw an axe that found her head.” Ripthe bowed his head again in defeat while Gnella let out a soft cry of grief. The other elders quickly joined her in voicing their sorrows.
I sighed and put my hand to my face. Contania had beaten out my other suitors and returned with the bloody carcass of the carrion beast. It was the beginning of a sexually pleasant endeavor that had dulled the ache I felt from Kaiyer’s loss.
“Get some rest now my son. We will discuss this more tomorrow,” Vuma said and Ripthe nodded.
“No.” I held a finger up and the gathered elders stopped their keening. Ripthe halted his retreat and raised an eyebrow at me.
I could carry some of the blame for losing Kaiyer. If I had been more careful with our trysts, Ripthe would not have seen me and started the rumor that eventually forced me to kill Kaiyer’s family. Still, I put most of the blame on Ripthe. I had always wanted an excuse to kill him. Kaiyer was gone, and I had no reason left to keep him alive.
“This is an unacceptable failure.” I rose and felt the elders slide away from me a bit. Their fear tasted sweeter than Ripthe’s.
“No. Please.” Vuma was once haughty enough to argue with me, but in the last few months he witnessed what my displeasure wrought enough times to respect my power.
“You have other descendants, Vuma.” My sword slid out of its sheath with a silky whisper. Ripthe’s eyes widened and I think he actually tried to move away, but he was much too slow and tired. The point of my blade pierced his skull right in the center of his nose and came out the other end. His body crumpled into a pile in the middle of the room.
This improved my mood.
“Now there are no loose ends.” I turned to the elders and my father. The scent of their fear mixed with the scent of Ripthe’s corpse on the ground behind me.
“The humans have escaped. Our experiment has failed. It is time to move on.” I walked toward Vuma and the elder made a small step to shy away from me.
“We can hope that these humans will simply fall victim to the wilderness and there will never be another scent of them. What do you think of that possibility, Vuma?” He walked into my broken chair and stumbled over it.
“Yes, they will probably perish in the wilderness, as you have said.” His body reeked of rotten cabbage.
“No, you idiot.” I smacked him in the forehead with the palm of my hand like I was scolding a horse. “These humans could raise another army as in our legends. They will come after us for the generations of slavery we have inflicted upon their people. We will be butchered like cattle.” Their old faces crinkled in concern. “The most probable outcome lies somewhere between those two extremes. Likely they will raise a small army and be destroyed by another Elven tribe. If a human is captured alive, they may tell of our involvement. There will be an investigation, and we will be forced to go to war with our own kind instead of these humans.”
“So how should we proceed?” my father asked. The stress of this missing human army wore on him like a hundred years and he looked as weathered as the elders who advised him. I knew this was the possibility he feared the most.
“Every Elven or human who had any direct dealings with this army is either dead by human hand or my own.” I turned to regard Ripthe’s discarded body and wished I had done it sooner. “If there is an investigation, the other tribes cannot prove anything. Preparing for an eventual attack would be just as obvious as admitting guilt. We should continue operating our family lands as if nothing has changed.” They nodded at my words and calmed their scents.
“If nothing has changed, then you will be required to choose a mate. Preferably from another neighboring tribe so we can strengthen those relationships and have an ally in case of this investigation.” Vuma practically spat the words.
“Yes, I realize that I will now have limited options for a mate thanks to all of your failures.” I glared at the group and they seemed to cower in fear. They should have been afraid of me; in the last few months I’d disposed of most of the human garbage that had not escaped with Kaiyer.
“When will you choose?” my father asked.
“I will announce it tomorrow.” It had been difficult to keep the women and men from the other tribes in the dark and they were even angrier with my disappearance over the last several months.
“Very good.” My father nodded and the other elders seemed more than relieved. This was what they wanted: safety and success through my loins. I fought the urge to unleash the World’s magic into the room and roast every one of them to cinders.
“I will retire to my suite now. Let us make the announcement tomorrow at dinner. Do not disturb me before then.” I turned and walked out of the meeting room and did my best to control the scent of my anger. The servants in the manor let me know that I did a poor job of it; they fled from my footsteps like scared roaches.
“What happened?” Relyara opened the door to my suite and ushered me inside.
“Ripthe and Contania are dead, as are their hunters. The humans have escaped for good and there will be no further attempts at apprehending them.” I walked to the back of the foyer and began to sort through the rack of weapons I had displayed there. I had already secreted away most of my hunting equipment and camping supplies.
“What will become of us?”
“Nothing. It is doubtful that the other tribes will find out Laxile ever performed these experiments. The only Elvens alive who know anything of it are my father, his elders, you, and me.” I selected two additional swords from the rack that my sister had gifted to me many years ago and walked with them into my bedroom.
“What of your brother?”
“He knew we were doing something in the fields, but never dug into the matter. You will give him this note after I leave. Then you will journey to my mother’s lands and give this other one to my sister. Perhaps he will join you on your trip.” I pulled three sealed letters from my dresser drawer and handed them to the beautiful woman.
“I am not going with you?” Relyara’s voice cracked and I tasted the sour lemon of her disappointment in the air between us.
“No, lover. I need you to deliver that letter. My sister will require your efforts and she will be kinder to you than I have ever been.” I wrapped the blades in a blanket and then began to shift through the drawers of my dresser for undergarments.
“I’ve packed our belongings already.” Relyara pointed to four large leather packs that sat in the corner of the room. “This third letter is for me?” She held up the white envelope with her name written upon the front.
“Yes. They will ask you where I went. You will say that I disappeared in the night and only left you that single letter. They will read it and believe I am traveling north.” I walked over to the leather bags and picked the first one up from the wood floor.
“But you won’t be going north?” Relyara raised an eyebrow.
“Another reason I wish you to visit my sister is because we communicate through a complex code. I’ve told her where I am planning on being in that letter, but she is the only one who can decipher it.” I caught the scent of burnt flowers from her body. It mixed with the lemon scent in an unusual way.
“I won’t ever see you again, will I?” The smell of her sadness filled the room and her tears made her beautiful features glisten.
“I do not know what my future holds, but I will not be a slave to our race. I’m not a human. Don’t I deserve my freedom?”
“No one is free, Iolarathe. We are all slaves to the ones we love and the ones we hate.” She wiped her blue eyes and moved to retrieve two of the bags from the floor.
“Goodbye, Relyara.”
“Goodbye, Iolarathe.” Our fingers intertwined and I couldn’t help but remember the countless hours we had spent as lovers. Relyara was smart, cunning, beautiful, and loyal. I was surprised at how sad I felt about leaving her.
“I am sorry.” The words came without thinking. “I was cruel to you when we first met and I am being cruel to you now. You have always been there for me and I appreciate that more than I ever told you. If I felt it was safe for you to come with me, you would.”
She seemed shocked at my words and her scent quickly changed to one of ripe peaches.
“Thank you, Mistress. I shall pray to the Dead Gods that your sister will treat me well and that I will one day see you again.”
I grabbed the packs and slung them over my shoulders. Then I took one last stroll through the suite that I had called home for the past six years before exiting to the patio.
I dropped from my veranda silently and slipped down the hillside like a liquid shadow. I had already prepared most of my gear and it lay hidden in the stables. Once I was in the hayloft I uncovered the packs and supplies from the spot where Kaiyer and I had made love. His scent still lingered there. The memory of him never really left my mind and I wondered if I would ever be free of the love I felt for the human. Even now my desires seemed to flood my senses with the thoughts of our time together.
I would never see him again.
I felt the bitterness of guilt as I realized that Relyara must have been experiencing the same hollow hopelessness about losing me. I wished I had never encountered the human. We would both be better off. He would still be happily working in the stables, I would have chosen a mate by now and been carrying a pair of powerful children who would be the hope of their generation. My parents would be pleased. The elders would be confident in the strength of their tribe. Everyone would be at peace. Instead, I had created chaos and death in my selfish pursuit of my own desires.
Yet if I were somehow again at the crossroads, knowing what I now knew about the consequences of our relationship, I still would have chosen the path to him.
I loaded up the mules and saddled one of my favorite horses. It was a stout animal that could ride for days without rest. Exactly the one my trackers would expect me to take. The idea of trackers finding me was almost laughable. The best had already been killed by Kaiyer’s companions. None of those left alive would have the skill to find me.
I rode out of the stables with my pack animals in tow. The green moon was just a sliver, but it threw enough light for me to navigate to the outskirts of the fields and into the forested grove that ran alongside the river. The scents of the grass, trees, and moist gentle wind brought up rather fond memories. I had expected the stay here to be a horrible experience, though still preferable to living with my mother. I had not expected to enjoy the presence of my suitors and handmaidens. I had not expected to make a true friend of a servant. I had most definitely not expected to become a human’s lover.
Even a Singleborn could not predict the future.
“Ho. Ho,” the voice called to me from the bank of the river, the same place from which Kaiyer and his humans had fled. Leaving by boat seemed beyond the skill of a normal human, and I wondered if Kaiyer had orchestrated the plan.
“Hello, human.” The man was tall, a twisted willow tree. He smelled of pine needles, mint, and lemons.
“Greetings, Mistress.” He bowed low at the waist and his light hair touched the smooth stones of the river bank. “If it pleases you, you may call me Warc.”
“I care not for your name, bard. I only care for your methods.” I looked at the swiftly flowing water and felt anger burn in my stomach. “Where is this boat you promised me?”
“It is concealed in the foliage over yonder.” He raised a stick arm to point to my right and bobbed his skeleton head with a cooing sound. The traveling minstrel was odd, even for a human. Relyara alerted me to his unauthorized presence a few years ago. Once upon a time I would have just killed such a parasite, but I knew that I might one day need to escape. I made a deal with him to allow him to continue his travels through our lands unmolested in return for news and assistance in the event I would need to leave without a trace.