“Something was in the tower.” I pointed up to where we stood minutes ago. “I want it searched thoroughly.” My sister barked an order to one of her commanders. There were already search parties investigating the structure, but they would need a direct order from her to take the job seriously.
“Look at the trails of the bodies.” I walked back up toward the tower where Bur’tilon fell. From the angle below it was almost comically easy to make out the path of my dead warriors leading to the pile of bodies from the main battle below the tower. “Something came out of the tower, slayed Bur’tilon’s guards, and then came down here.” I pointed to the bodies behind us. “Then the battle turned.” I held my hair aside and bent down to examine a few bodies littered at my feet.
“Look here.” I pointed at two corpses. “Blunt trauma. Here and here.”
“Kaiyer?” Nyarathe asked. A group of warriors approached and I looked up to see my brother leading them.
“Their army split as the pass was too tight for the entire force. The smaller group went across the ridge and Bur’tilon guessed that Kaiyer would be here and risked an attack.” Grednil nodded to the woman standing next to him. Her armor was battered and smeared with blood and mud.
“Bur’tilon did not want to wait for your forces to catch up, Singleborn. Our scouts said you were two days behind us and he feared he would lose his opportunity to capture Kaiyer or one of his generals.” I forgot the woman’s name, but I recalled meeting her five or six years ago when I first began to retrain what was left of our race’s army.
“Then what happened?” Nyarathe asked.
“We had them, General. They were pushed back from three sides. Bur’tilon skirted the north with a small force to take the tower. One of our scouts said that Kaiyer and two of his generals were inside with a light guard. Then Kaiyer came out.” Her voice cracked. “They rallied. I was thrown from the cliff. When I awoke, the humans had already left.”
“It is surprising that they scavenged none of our weapons or armor. They did not even recover their dead.”
“They knew how close our main force was and knew it was unwise to tarry,” Grednil said and I nodded at his words. At least they were somewhat intimidated by the idea of facing the full force of our army.
“Agreed.” I stood up from examining the corpses and felt my head spin. If I was this tired, the rest of my soldiers must have been much worse. Bur’tilon’s message had been urgent: he was confident that we could strike a decisive blow against the humans if we made it to this range of mountains before they did. We had struggled to march across the continent to meet him.
But we were too late.
“We will rest on the peaks tonight. Tomorrow we’ll descend the other side and camp again. We need a few days to recover from our travels.”
“What about the humans?” the woman who spoke earlier asked. Her scent mixed with the stench of her armor and made her presence very unpleasant.
“If I were Kaiyer, I would either keep running or set up an ambush at the pass through which the other half of his army escaped. Since we took this mountain pass, my guess is that he will go with option one.” I turned to Grednil and Nyarathe. “Let’s meet in my tent in a few hours. Tell me what you find in that tower.”
“Yes, Singleborn,” they repeated in unison and the crowd of soldiers dispersed.
I took my time walking around the scene of the battle and rehearsing what must have happened in my mind’s eye. I didn’t begrudge Bur’tilon the risky attack, but I was dismayed that he was not successful. The man who called himself Kaiyer was the lynchpin of the entire human army. If he could be captured alive then their plans to destroy my race would be thwarted.
The human was a military genius and had outfoxed all of the generals that came before me. Even with superior numbers, the closest we had ever come to capturing him was Bur’tilon’s desperate attempt.
Kaiyer was also rumored to be invincible in combat. While our last skirmishes never played out with either of us entering the field of battle, the results on the cold icy ground around me were confirmation enough of his abilities. Bur’tilon had trained for countless hours at my father’s tribal lands when he was my suitor. He was powerful then, and another two dozen years of war had only sharpened his skills. His loss would hamper my plans and deal a punishing blow to my people’s morale.
I approached my tent and thought through my next few moves. I would have to break this news to the elders. They would not be pleased, but I had already spun the words in my head in a way that would ease their concerns. It was devastating to lose an entire battalion, but in our attempt, we had come very close to ending the war. We had almost apprehended Kaiyer and a few of his generals. This was something they had not even dreamed possible before I took control of the armies.
“What news, Iolarathe?” Relyara sat on a pile of sheepskin rugs that made up my bed during the winter months. In her lap was the master log book that detailed the intricacies of our supply chain and inventories. Her dark, blue-black hair spread across the white of the sheepskin like tentacles.
“What I expected transpired. We’ll pass over the mountains tomorrow and rest for a few days.”
“Won’t that give the humans a chance to escape us?”
“There will be other opportunities. I learned something from this battle that I need to utilize.”
“Oh? About Kaiyer?” She set down the book with a graceful movement.
“I still don’t know if it is my Kaiyer.” I shook my head at her and sighed.
“So you say, but I know you too well to believe the lies you tell yourself.” She leaned back slightly and let out a soft laugh. “It could be no one else. You believe the same or you would have demanded his corpse and not his capture.”
“No.” I shook my head and tried not to let her entice me into an argument. “We don’t need a martyr. These fucking humans think they are doing themselves a favor by killing us. They don’t realize that the Gods gave us this duty to perform. No matter who this Kaiyer is, I want him kneeling at my feet so his entire race knows their place.”
“So what did you learn?” She changed the subject but her lingering smirk made me think that my words had not convinced her.
“Kaiyer will show himself in combat if the circumstances are staged correctly. I need to find a way to split up his generals so that he will be forced to take on a direct role in battle.”
“We’ve split their army up before.” She nodded and ran her tongue across her lips to taste the air.
“I will need your help researching the terrain. We have them on the run now but they took some losses. The humans will want to retreat and lick their wounds. Kaiyer is much too conservative to face us directly for another few years. But if there is an easy target, it might entice some of his other generals to stray from the main forces.”
“I have a few ideas already. Can you guess at their eventual destination?” Relyara rose and moved over to the massive chest of drawers on one side of my pavilion. Inside the thick wooden shelves were countless maps painstakingly put together by each of the Elven tribes dedicated to self-preservation. While Relyara searched through the scrolls I occupied the warm spot she had left on the bed. I thought about letting my exhaustion take my mind away, but then I tasted my sister’s scent on the air and heard her familiar boot steps approach.
“We found something in the tower. You better come see it.” Nyarathe was well guarded with her emotions so the unusual flowery scent of excitement on her body drew my curiosity. “No. You need to see it,” she said before I could ask her for more details.
I stood up from the skin and nodded to Relyara before leaving my warm tent for the icy mountainside. The trek back to the tower only took us another ten minutes, but my sister didn’t speak the entire way and the weight of my exhaustion kept me from voicing my curiosity.
“They were searching every floor. There are piles of ancient wood furnishings in the upper levels, but the first floor is bare,” she said once we walked into the strange circular base of the tower.
“What was this building used for?” I doubted my sister knew the answers. Some of our kind studied the Ancients, but most of their lore had been lost thousands of years ago.
“I believe it was an outpost. There was probably another structure made of inferior material a few hundred yards to the east. There is a flat spot on the ground that could be the remains of a foundation.”
“What am I looking at?” I moved over to where there were a dozen warriors against the far wall.
“I am surprised they didn’t find this doorway. It was concealed at the joint here.” Nyarathe pointed to the small dark passageway. The door was crafted in the same gray stone as the rest of the structure. “We found it because of the scent. The air there was stale and tasted colder.”
“What is beneath it?” I was already sliding through the group of warriors and walking down the steps. My sister didn’t answer; instead she just followed me down the tight spiral staircase until we reached the floor below.
This level looked similar to the one above: bare empty space in a circular shape. As Nyarathe claimed, the air did taste dead and lifeless. I quickly saw the reason for the odor. On the far corner of the room was a pile of petrified wood and a skeleton in a gray state of decay.
“I didn’t want to examine the corpse without you here.” We walked over to the pile of bones and the dust smell grew stronger.
“Kaiyer wasn’t down here?”
“No. They did not discover the door. I believe this place has been undisturbed since the time of the Gods.” Her ordinarily monotonous voice had an edge of excitement to it. My sister had always been interested in our ancient lore and I referred to her whenever we stumbled across one of the ruins.
The corpse was little more than a shadow of a skeleton. It appeared to have been wearing a robe, but the material had decayed and meshed into the bones and there was no way to discern what color the garment had been.
“Do you think this was a desk? Or a bed? Why was this the only furnishing in the room?”
“We know almost nothing of the Ancient race. Just that they were once human in appearance, we served them, and they challenged the Gods.” I grunted at her familiar words and began to pick through the scraps of petrified wood. It was as if everything in the room had been piled in one spot and then the corpse was placed on top of it. Maybe someone meant to burn the body but never got around to it.
“What are these?” I pulled three fist-sized stones from the middle of the garbage pile one at a time and set them on the empty floor next to me.
“I’ve never seen such artifacts in the other ruins.” She held on up in her hand and spun it around. “Looks like a simple stone, but I can feel some engravings on the surface.” It was almost perfectly dark, but I took the artifact from her and channeled a small amount of the World through my body to create a flicker of fire in my hand.
Suddenly, the small rock erupted with a rainbow of colors and the sound of wind. The reaction to my touch was so instantaneous that I found my grip tighten around the artifact instead of tossing it away as anyone with half a brain would have. An image floated above the stone. It was suspended in midair and I was reminded of the time Kaiyer and I made love at the ruins near my father’s lands. The Wisps that observed our passion had hovered around us in the same manner.
“There is a nest on the Curagnoth Mountains. Eastern range beneath the third mountain. We’ve been scouting the area for the last two weeks and found the entrance to the cavern.” A human’s face and torso floated half a foot above my fist where I held the smooth rock. It was somewhat transparent and misty, like a reflection in a waterfall. Next to his head floated an image that looked like a map.
“They are getting bolder. Who do you suspect it is?” A human woman’s face, head, and upper chest faded in by the man. They each stared off into the distance and it seemed like they spoke to each other, but were not making eye contact. The woman wore a silver helm with small wings decorating the sides. Beneath her helm, her straw-colored hair fell in a series of braids tied together with embroidered, gold-trimmed purple ribbons. Her eyes were cold and pewter gray like storm clouds. I could almost feel the woman’s power through the magical device.
“Recatolusti’catri. I suspect she has a mate,” the male said. It was difficult for me to tell the age of humans, but he appeared older than Kaiyer. Unlike the female, he wore no armor, but his clothing was the same purple.
“Kill her. Kill her mate. Move on this immediately. I can’t risk having a dragon so near our staging points.” The woman’s mouth formed a hard line and I felt my body begin to tremble. My stomach was tied in knots and I felt lightheaded. Was this device sucking my life force away?
“It will be done,” the man said, and the images faded with the same abruptness with which they had been unleashed.
“Incredible.” Nyarathe’s voice came out in a whisper of disbelief. “We might be the first Elvens to hear the Ancient’s language in thousands of years. How did you make that happen?”
“I wanted a light to see the etching.” I thought about pulling the World again but my body was still shaking. “What do you mean by the Ancient language?”
“Did you hear them speak? It sounded much more intricate than our language. I think I understood a few words. I wonder how they made the images appear. These rocks must have some sort of power to them.”