DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (169 page)

The perfect delivery system, Brynn realized, for the zombie would not panic in
the tight tunnel and could take its time in leaving, inch by inch.

“What is it?” Brynn asked after the gruesome zombie was finally gone from sight.

“Food and water,” Juraviel explained. “You go first and take as much as you require. It has been far too long since your last meal.”

Brynn stared at the pot for a long moment, considering the pain in her ribs and the nausea it had created in her stomach. She didn’t want food, but she needed it, she knew.

Or did she? What was the point, if she was just to be executed anyway?

Brynn dismissed those dark thoughts before they could ever gain a hold, and crept forward and pushed the cover from the pot. In the dim light, she couldn’t make out much within the shadows beneath the lip, but her nose told her that it was merely bread—stale bread, she determined as she lifted it out—and a small flask of water. It was her first meal in four days, and it hurt too much for her to enjoy a single bite or sip of it. But Brynn forced fully half of the bread and water down, treating each bite as a small victory in her resistance against her captors, her determination to win out and get out.

Juraviel finished the food and drink with the same resigned manner as he had welcomed the zombie waiter.

Brynn just stared at him, trying to impart some fighting spirit. It occurred to her, only briefly, that Juraviel was taking such a passive attitude so that his chances of getting out alive would be heightened, even if his apparent determination not to fight back doomed his companion.

No, Brynn told herself forcefully. Juraviel was resigned because he believed that they had no chance of any substantive resistance.

She would have to show him differently!

The zombie returned after what Brynn estimated to be the turn of a full day. It put the new pot down and grabbed the old one, now serving as a commode, and started backing down the hole.

Brynn started to move, thinking to kill the undead creature while it was vulnerable in the tight passageway, but her expression betrayed her to her companion.

“Do not!” Juraviel commanded, and Brynn stopped and stared at him, then looked back to the zombie, which continued to back away mindlessly, oblivious to the threat.

“If you kill it, then it will lie stinking in the hole,” the elf explained, his tone flat and even. “Then we will have to tolerate the added smell of rot, and that I do not desire.”

Brynn sank back against the wall and gave a great sigh. “Are we to do nothing?”

“We are to eat,” replied Juraviel. “And more slowly this day, for they do not always replace the pot they take away on their rounds.”

The cycle continued day after day, and while Brynn’s ribs began to hurt less, she was weakening, not getting stronger, she knew. Their captors were apparently not novices at this business, for they kept the food and drink to an absolute minimum,
gradually breaking down the strength and will of the prisoners.

Brynn knew not how many days had passed, and hardly took note when movement sounded in the tunnel. Even after the Doc’alfar emerged from the tunnel, it took the woman a few seconds to realize that this was not their usual zombie waiter!

“Belli’mar Juraviel,” the Doc’alfar greeted.

“Hail, Lozan Duk,” Juraviel replied, and Brynn’s eyes went wide with surprise.

“King Eltiraaz awaits you.”

Juraviel nodded and rolled up to his knees, and it took him a long while to steady himself. Brynn, too, started to move, but Juraviel fixed her with a stare and motioned for her to sit back, and Lozan Duk turned a threatening glare at her.

“You will have your chance to explain yourself to my king,” the Doc’alfar said to Juraviel. “This is your trial.”

“And am I to have my say to your King Eltiraaz?” Brynn boldly asked.

Lozan Duk slowly turned to regard her. “You have nothing to say,
n’Tylwyn Doc
.”

N’Tylwyn Doc
. The word played over and over in Brynn’s mind, for she had heard a similar word many times during her tenure with the Touel’alfar, particularly in the beginning, when her training in the ways of the ranger, in the ways of the elves, was in its infancy. Many times, the Touel’alfar had called her
n’Touel’alfar
, a derisive term that meant, simply, that she was not of
the People
, of the important people, of the only ones who truly counted. There was some hope to be garnered here, in the fact that the Doc’alfar had not similarly referred to Juraviel. By pointedly using the phrase in regard to Brynn as the reason she would not be allowed to go along, he had, in effect, somewhat included Juraviel in his clan.

That hope was lost on Brynn as she slumped back against the wall, though, for the derisive title,
n’Tylwyn Doc
, sounded to her like the call of the executioner.

The two elves moved out of the room with far more ease and grace than had the zombie waiter. Brynn again considered moving, not to follow, but to attack their jailor, though she realized that she would likely have no chance against an elf in her weakened state. The only thing that held her back were the implications for Belli’mar Juraviel. Brynn was likely doomed, as Juraviel had admitted, but perhaps her friend would find some way to get out of this.

So she sat back against the cool wall and let the minutes slip into uneventful hours.

J
uraviel followed Lozan Duk into a smaller chamber down near the exit of the earthen tunnel—which was still blocked, as far as he could tell—where Cazzira was waiting. Without a word from the female, and without a word of protest from Juraviel, the Doc’alfar moved and slipped a thick belt about Juraviel’s waist, tightening it down and pinning his wings, then buckling the front with some locking mechanism.

“You will not fly away, little bird,” Cazzira remarked as she fastened the lock,
and Juraviel noted that the Doc’alfar word for “bird” was exactly the same as the word in his own tongue:
marrawee
.

“Do you believe that I wish to fly away?” he answered. “Perhaps this is a long-overdue meeting between the alfar, and fate has guided me to you for a reason.”

“Perhaps,” Lozan Duk said.

“Or perhaps it was simply bad fortune on your part,” Cazzira was quick to add. Juraviel maintained a nonchalant visage until the female added, “And even worse fortune for your
n’Tylwyn Doc
companion.”

“Come,” Lozan Duk instructed, seeming as eager to be done with this particular line of conversation as was Juraviel. The Doc’alfar crawled into the ascending tunnel then, Juraviel right behind, and Cazzira following a short distance back.

Soon after, Juraviel crawled out of the tunnel, but not into the light, though he was outside and the sun was up.

But not there. The fog was even thicker than it had been in the graveyard of trees by the peat bog, casting the place in a moist and perpetual gloom.

“King Eltiraaz has accepted your request to speak with him,” Lozan Duk explained. “You should be honored.”

“Indeed I am,” Juraviel replied with all sincerity. A twinge of guilt struck him as he responded, as he thought of Brynn and her likely fate. Still, Juraviel had to admit his excitement in seeing his white-skinned and wingless cousins. For the Touel’alfar, this was monumental news, at least as important as anything Brynn might accomplish in To-gai, and though Juraviel was surely torn and upset about the possibilities of Brynn’s lack of future, he couldn’t deny his excitement, his thrill, at the opportunity to represent his people to the king of the Doc’alfar!

“Though I fear that I am hardly properly attired for an audience with your king,” Juraviel added.

“Your clothing will do,” Cazzira remarked. “The road-worn, weathered outfit of a traveler, of a thief, perhaps.”

Juraviel took the comment in stride and thought he detected a bit of softening in Cazzira’s tone, if not her actual words.

Lozan Duk motioned for Juraviel to follow, leading him down a winding trail to a large, hollowed tree stump. Juraviel found two depressions within, one with soapy oil and the other with clear rainwater.

The washing felt good indeed!

He turned when he was done, just in time to catch a towel Cazzira threw his way, then they were off again, walking the winding, fog-enshrouded trails, through skeletal black trees that all looked the same. Juraviel doubted he would be able to retrace his steps on his own, and he suspected that his two guards were tracking all about on purpose, to obscure the true path even more. They seemed a lot like the Touel’alfar, he mused.

Almost without warning, Juraviel found himself on a narrow trail amidst towering mountain walls, a narrow gorge trail that led to a huge cave. The two Doc’alfar each picked up one of those strange-glowing lanterns right inside the
cave and paused, turning to their prisoner.

Juraviel looked all about, though the other walls of the cavern were far beyond the limit of the light. When his gaze at last settled on Lozan Duk and Cazzira, he found Lozan Duk coming toward him, a black hood in hand.

Juraviel didn’t protest at all as they popped it over his head, pulling a drawstring set about its opening to somewhat close it. Lozan Duk took him by the arm and led him off, and they walked for a long and winding way, down corridors that closed in on Juraviel and through chambers that he sensed were very vast indeed.

A long while later, they stopped again, and Juraviel was surprised when Cazzira pulled off his hood, staring at him intently with her icy blue eyes. They were in a large chamber, and it seemed to Juraviel that he was actually out of doors again, in some secret mountain hole.

His eyes scanned up, up, eagerly, but as he turned, he quickly forgot all about the chamber itself, for there before him towered the magnificent gates of the Doc’alfar city.

“Tymwyvenne,” Lozan Duk explained. “You are the first who is not Doc’alfar to look upon the gates of Tymwyvenne in many centuries.”

“I am honored,” Juraviel said, again with all sincerity and more than a bit of awe, for the entrance to Tymwyvenne was what he would expect of any cousins of the Touel’alfar—and more! The doors, huge doors, as thick as ten elves side by side, were of some golden-hued wood. They hung open, flanked by two huge round pillars of the same material, which were set against a wall of gray-and-black stone. Across the top of the pillars was a third, lying horizontally above the doorway, and made of the same wood, with thousands of designs carved into it, many of them shining of various colors. Juraviel looked more closely and noted that many, many gemstones were set in that beam, a king’s treasure, and he was glad to see that there was an appreciation of beauty there, as in Caer’alfar—though his own people’s ideal of beauty was evidenced in the perfection of nature itself. Juraviel understood that such appreciation often signaled an understanding of the higher orders and stations of life, including mercy.

Through the doors, the trio came into an immense cavern, a place of quiet, but steady, light, where the fog was not so thick. Structures loomed all about them, made of burnished wood of varying hues and textures. There was no one singular dominant design, but each house, for that is what they obviously were, was its own free-flowing work of art.

Many other Doc’alfar milled about, making Juraviel’s path a veritable parade route. All wanted to catch a glimpse of the captured Tylwyn Tou, obviously, and he noted many expressions there, from curiosity to some almost giddy faces, to many, many profound scowls.

The place had a somber tone about it, to Juraviel’s thinking, gloomy but not dark. It wasn’t hard for him to figure out his escorts’ intended destination as they crossed a large central open area. Ahead of them, a crisscross of balconies lined the back wall, climbing up above the city. There, on a higher level, sat the grandest
house of all, which he knew without doubt was the palace of King Eltiraaz.

Belli’mar Juraviel fixed his gaze on that house and the many surrounding landings and ornate railings and balusters, trying to get a feeling for the occupants through their choice of design. The alfar could do this more easily than could humans because elven houses were rarely handed down—were, ultimately, a product of centuries of choices and intuitions and creativity from a single driving heart and mind.

This house looked inviting enough, very much like a place expecting many guests and revelers.

Of course, a pair of Doc’alfar guards darkened that notion. They were dressed in strange skin and wooden armor and held thin and nasty-looking hooked clubs, their full-faced helms showing only their dark eyes, and those eyes revealing nothing of their feelings toward this strange newcomer to their land.

The trio entered a wide foyer, then turned down a side passage and around a series of bends, at last coming into another wide room, set with two rows of decorated columns, with a thick green carpet running the length of the room between them. The only piece of furniture in the room was a large golden-wood throne near the far wall, behind which a fire blazed in a great hearth, and upon which sat a Doc’alfar with long black hair and large dark eyes. Like that of the rest of his kin, his skin was creamy white. His clothing, though, was far more remarkable. Thus far, most of the Doc’alfar Juraviel had seen were either in that curious armor or in rather plain garb. Lozan Duk and Cazzira both wore dark brown outfits—suitable for hunting the foggy bogs, Juraviel figured.

This one—King Eltiraaz, Juraviel knew before the formal introduction—wore light-colored breeches, embroidered with many gemstones, and a rich purple shirt. A cape that seemed a combination of the two hung back off his shoulders, bunching on the chair behind him. His vest was full of sewn images, in a thread that seemed almost metallic to Juraviel. He wore a crown of leafy vines wrapped about a silvery band, metal that the Touel’alfar recognized as silverel. That was very telling to Juraviel, for no race other than the Touel’alfar knew how to farm the exotic metal from the ground, as far as he knew; that crown proved to him that either the Doc’alfar had held that secret during the centuries of separation, or that this particular crown was a relic left over from the days when the races were one. Likely the second, he surmised, for he had seen no darkferns about, and no other silverel. If the Doc’alfar had the knowledge and the means to farm the wondrous silverel, they surely would not have their soldiers carrying wooden clubs!