Brotherhood Saga 03: Death (54 page)

“Is everything all right?” Jarden asked, silencing the staccato of the copper and turning zirs eyes up.

“Everything’s fine,” Odin said. “Why?”

“You seem a bit off-balance today.”

Do I ever.

Rather than directly respond, Odin nodded and turned his head up, offering th
e slightest smile when the grin painted on the Elf’s face became more than apparent. “I’m fine, zir. Don’t worry about me.”

“You a
re quite sure about that?”

“I am.”

“I assume you would like to continue on with what we were discussing the previous day,” Jarden said, lacing zirs long, bony fingers together.

“If that would be all right
.”

“If I recall, we were speaking about Elves and their direct connection to the Fae.”

“Yes zir. Actually, though… if we could…”

Come on,
his conscience whispered.
You can do this.

Could he, though? It seemed completely impossible—when, out of the blue, his stomach rumbled and bile rose
in his throat. Both correlated with one another like some sick symphony played in the grandest of balls, for torture was an instrument designed not only to negotiate things from men who’d committed crimes, but also to punish them for their lesser inhibitions. That in itself could be said for what he was experiencing in that very moment, for not once throughout the past months he had been here had he been so close to the goal he’d been so desperate to reach, so close to the very thing that could alter the course of his life and bring history back into a foreseeable light.

But how, by any chance o
r recognition, was he to broach the subject of the topic in but a few simple words?

You could just ask outright,
his conscience whispered, stroking his shoulders and trailing its armored fingers around the tops of his arms.

Going about it in that
sort of matter would only instill unsurety in the Neven D’Carda’s mind. Who was this boy—this
child,
by Elven standards, of only twenty years—to ask about a book that was forbidden and cursed; and why, by any chance, would he asking about it so soon after the passing of the man who’d just recently been revealed to be his father?

“I want to know about the Drow,” Odin finally said
, expelling a breath that seemed so weighted it would collapse the entirety of his body. “I want to know what they are and why they became cursed like they did.”

At this, Jarden offered a frown Odin found almost impossible not to react to. Once more, his stomach rumbled, though much less audibly, and twice in the past few moments bile
had risen to blanket the inside of his mouth. Were it acidic in any way, his teeth would likely be covered in plaque, spots that could never be removed and would remain there until dead or rot. The feelings of unease only continued to rise as the Elf stood from zirs place behind the desk and began to pace along the grooves in the floor, where, much like the training rectangle was, the desk was set into.

What
’s ze doing?
he thought.

You know what ze
’s doing,
his conscience replied.
Ze’s finding a way to tell you to get the hell out of Lesliana and go back to wherever you came from.

A strangled fit of a cry rising in his throat, Odin reached up, braced his hand against his chest, then applied pressure directly above his sternum. Though it would likely do nothing to contain the unease.

“You want to know about the Drow,” Jarden said, turning zirs eyes on him. “Our wicked brothers and sisters to the North.”

“The North?” Odin frowned.

“A long time ago—unarguably, Millenia ago, maybe even more—the clan of Elves that initiated the creation of the Drow were pushed from the mainland and fled to an island called Dyuna in a part of the ocean known as the Salem Sea. Though we have never been to this island, what little intelligence we have tells us that the Drow live under the harsh rule of a queen much like our own—that is, one that trains the stags of their society to fight regardless of their economical or commonwealth situation.”

“
So it’s a warring country then?”

“A warring country would be the best way to describe it, yes. So far as we understand, their queen is always at battle with various tribes that have split away from the royal order. There is constant battle, bloodshed, rape, pillaging.”

“How could the Drow have ended up here then, on the enemy’s side? Wouldn’t they have been noticed?”

“They must have completely bypassed the sea that borders the Three Kingdoms then.”

“Zir… about my father…”

“You must be concerned about his conception.”

“Yes. I am.”

“You have said in the past that he was raised by an Ogress Shaman that found him bundled in a wooden cradle at sea.”

“Yes zir. I am.”

“You wonder about how he came to exist, do you not?”

“I just don’t understand how he could have been born a Halfling… unless…”

“Unless your grandmother was a slave who was taken by the Drow,” Jarden sighed.

“There’s a slave trade of Pure Elves in Drow society?”

“Oftentimes, young does and stags will leave the forest in pursuit of something more—that is, something they feel the Elven community cannot offer. That is when
, upon the time they broach the kingdoms to the far southwest of here, they may encounter pirates, those of which will kidnap and sell them to anyone who has enough money to offer.”

“My grandmother must
’ve been a slave then.”

“And she could very well have hid
den her pregnancy from the Drow until the final moments—when, upon your father’s birth, she cast him into a wooden cradle at sea to free him from a life in captivity that he would otherwise have.”

“Which is where he drifted until Sunskin found him,” Odin murmured. He stared at his feet f
or several long moments, trying to piece together the reality of the situation, until he turned his eyes up to watch his Elven master for any emotion that could be seen placating zirs face. When he found none, he sighed, closed his eyes, then opened them only when he thought the moment was right.

Can I do it?
he thought.

It all came down to this.

He would not allow one final moment of apprehension to destroy his hold on the situation.

“Zir,” he said. “I… I
’d like to know about how the Elves turned into the Drow.”

Jarden
’s empty eyes flickered in the pale light streaming from the candles alight on zirs desk.

Does ze know?
Odin frowned.

He
’d safeguarded his memory. He’d felt no probe, no tendril of consciousness, seen no bird of power that could have stolen his memory during an isolated moment, and unless the ball of light really was something other than his dead father trying to speak to him from beyond the grave, there couldn’t have been a form of magic to whisk his emotions away and turn them into something audible—concrete, even, to pull from its quilt the strings of reality that were beckoned into the world through word, action and consequence.

In all, it came down to one final thing.

The Neven D’Carda could know nothing, as he’d taken such careful precautions to guard each and every thing about his mission.

Slowly, as to not dissuade the Elf from shying away from the conversion, Odin pushed himself forward in his seat, set his hands to his knees, then
attempted to stand, but not before Jarden’s eyes seemed to seal him in place with one single look.

“You want to know about the thing that turned them into the Drow,” Jarden said, pressing one han
d to the table and spreading zirs fingers until they created an equal pattern. “The thing that made them what they are.”

“I know that Necromancy was what made them mad, zir, but I—“

“You aren’t aware of the Book of the Dead, then?”

“No.”

Yes.

How could anyone be so ignorant as to
not
know of the thing that could bring the dead back to life?

“You have not heard of this terrible thing that still dwells in our midst to this day,” Jarden said, lacing zirs hands behind zirs back and seating zirself into zirs usual chair. “This…
thing…
this…
abomination…
that does things that makes even my skin crawl upon its expanse of muscle.”

“I
’ve never heard of it, zir.”

“Then you have not heard of its history, of its presence and its titillations toward those who bear weak minds and even weaker hearts.”

“No,” Odin said. “I haven’t.”

How he was able to remain composed was beyond him. To take such a serious blow could have easily been compared to being struck in the abdomen with a hard object—a thing that, while painful, seemed to come in ebbs and flows, like waves along a beach.
Most people would have shown emotion in the face of such adversity. For that, he considered himself strong.

I
’m stronger,
he thought.
Much stronger than you or even I think.

“In simple terms,” Jarden said, lacing zirs fingers together and inchi
ng zirs elbows onto the desk, “it used to be used for simple things—bringing back animals who had met their untimely fates, healing those pieces of flesh that had succumbed to disease or even worse treatment, stabilizing species who were dying off before our very eyes. It is, with every grasp of knowledge within our hearts, that we fear death, come to loath it even when we are, like myself, immortal. But there are those who do not understand that death is a natural part of life, Odin—that without death, things cannot continue working the way they do; that without death, those who are born cannot rightfully deserve their place within the world. It may seem a fickle thing that can easily be avoided, if only by the use of magic, but those who attempt to bring back the dead often do so for purposes that are completely unjust to their cause.”

Odin swallowed a lump in his throat. “Go on,” he said.

“Some millennia ago, when we first discovered the principal use of bringing back the dead through higher sources of concentrated healing magic, we used it to do just as I described—to stabilize flora and fauna populations on the verge of extinction and to heal dead flesh, the sort of things we considered moral and justified in the context of what we were doing. But, as there are with every group of individuals, there were those who believed that death could be cheated, that it was just a threshold upon which people could exit the world and then return when they saw fit.

“I
’m going to tell you something, Odin, and before I do, I want to assure you that what happened to these individuals is unarguably one of the most horrible things that could have ever transpired within our country, maybe even the world if you want me to be completely honest. I would never wish this upon anyone, even my worst enemy, were I to have one, for there are some things even worse than death.

“There was a clan of individuals who believed that bringing back the dead was a purpose that could be confined within an isolated form of magic. This clan—a troop of about some three-hundred or so individual
s—began to disguise themselves in dark cloaks and masks that would shield them from the view of the royal, magical court, which had always considered the art of bringing things back to life, even animals, a horrible disservice to the things they were in life. Animals, you see, Odin—they were a semblance of their somewhat-mortal selves, for they were not of the conscious variety that we can consider ourselves, humans, Dwarves, even some of the Leatherskin people capable of. But this was not the thing that upset the Elven court. The thing that upset them was, tragically, much worse than simply bringing a dead familiar back to life.

“One night, when this clan of individuals had set out to revive the body of an Elven stag who had just recently passed from a disease we had no conscience of, they made their way from the outskirts of the wooded areas inside Lesliana to the town square—where, as you will have already noticed from your excursions throughout town—is directly outside the inn, where the monument to the Elven people stands proud and strong. They carried upon their shoulders the body of this young creature and set him directly before the monument. It was there, with the blood and hair of his forefather
, that they set about using the magic that would normally heal one’s mortal wounds and directed it to the deeper parts of the Ether—where, as we understand it, the souls of every living thing go after we die.”

“The S
prites,” Odin said.

“Are what we believe to inhabit our bodies until our death. Yes. This is why we commonly know them to be used in Necromancy, for when someone dies, the soul has but a few lingering moments on our earth—that is, unless someone stops their transition into the
land of death before they can ultimately be stopped.”

“What happens when there isn
’t a soul around to be pulled from the Ether?”