The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (27 page)

The king had gone abruptly stiff and was staring at Hoil
with a tight gaze. Birch’s brother continued gently but relentlessly.

“For many years, the son stayed away and mourned his fallen
state. Then one day a crisis arose in his home, and he knew he had to return,”
Hoil said, and now
Vareille
looked at him with wild
eyes. “He returned in disguise and wore a magic cloak so no one would know him.
The son wished to go before his father, hoping to find some way of speaking
with him again, to at least have his father acknowledge him and to know whether
he was still loved.”

Hoil fell silent.

“How does your story end?” the king asked, his voice quavering.
Rill looked at his grandfather worriedly, but stayed silent and still.

“My friend never finished the story,” Hoil replied. “He said
you would know and might tell me.”

The king drew a careful breath, his eyes closed tightly,
then stared at Hoil.

“The
Tallans
are human like you,
and no doubt your nobleman’s son spoke to his father and the father welcomed
his prodigal son with loving arms and all ended happily and well,” the king
said, recovering his composure. “Had it been an elven family, however, such public
acceptance could never have been possible. Our society is more rigid than
yours, I fear, so I can give you no clear answer. For your story I would
suggest, however, that the son should have found a quiet spot to speak with his
father rather than trying to confront him openly. Such a thing is unseemly, and
there are undoubtedly places in your society just as there are here where grief
and acceptance might meet. And if, as I can only guess from your story, the
father was aging, such a meeting would be doubly important before the seventh
hour chimes.”
[21]

Hoil nodded. “I’ll tell my friend, who will undoubtedly be
pleased to duly finish his story.”

Silent and forgotten, wrapped in inscrutability more protective
than his purple robe, the elf known as
El’Decein
heard the meaning of the story and his eyes narrowed in speculation. But even
as he observed in silence, so he was in turn observed, and his every reaction
was noted and scrutinized by one present but invisible and unknown. Someone who
did not exist.

- 2 -

Moreen stepped into the daylight, focusing her attention on
moving as gracefully as possible while making it look effortless. She had often
admired elves their casual grace and had even enlisted an elven maiden in Demar
to work with her to improve her dancing. In exchange for room and board,
Li’Sierenna
worked with Moreen for more than two months,
teaching her the steps to a dozen elven dances and showing her techniques she
could use to more closely emulate the elven grace required to perform them
well. By the time
Sierenna
left her, she had gained
financial stability and Moreen had gained a new confidence and aptitude.

Years later, Moreen still remembered the skills
Sierenna
had taught her, and she employed them to blend in
with their surroundings. She judged herself successful when no one gave her a
second look, although that could have been partially due to her companions.

Nuse and Perklet did not have the benefit of an elven dance
instructor, and indeed Nuse looked as though his feet had never done something
so elegant in his life that didn’t involve a sword in his hand. Perklet was
marginally better, but neither man was comfortable in his cross-species role.
To solve their dilemma, Nuse expediently twisted his foot to an odd and
painful-looking angle and adopted a limp. He leaned heavily on Perklet, and now
rather than two awkward elves, they appeared as old soldiers supporting each
other in their infirmity. Moreen played the part of
Nuse’s
daughter, though since they never actually spoke aloud, she wasn’t sure how her
role really mattered.

After leaving the caves of Maran’s acquaintances, they were
taken to a large tree with a single branch sticking out a foot or so above the
forest floor. The smaller branches coming off the main limb had obviously been
crafted by a
Woodweaver
, because they bent back and
were interlaced intricately to create a flat, almost solid platform
approximately five feet around. The tree was somewhat removed from any others
nearby, and it stretched like a giant, living pole up into the canopy without
so much as a twig to mar the limbless trunk. Moreen would later be informed
that only the uppermost section of the tree had any foliage, but at the moment,
that was far above her and beyond her limited vision. Trees like this were
apparently spaced throughout elven cities and manned by minor
Woodweavers
at all times.

“Step on, please,” their guide,
Do’Yier
,
instructed them as he stood at the farthest edge from the tree trunk.

The three pseudo elves followed suit and stood in the middle
of the woven branch. Another elf appeared and Moreen nearly jumped in surprise.
He ignored his passengers and stood at the edge nearest the trunk. He held both
hands toward the tree and closed his eyes in concentration.

“Hold on to each other,” he warned, and suddenly the
platform began to move up the tree. The bark around their mobile tree limb
warped and flowed like water as the limb rose effortlessly up the otherwise
empty tree. Moreen gasped in delight and ignored
Nuse’s
warning hand-squeeze as she leaned forward to see the ground rapidly falling
away beneath them.

Moreen had only twice been on a dwarven-make elevator, but
the sensation of having her stomach drop several inches in her chest was the
same. Fortunately, the motion didn’t set off the same motion sickness that
plagued her on seafaring vessels. As long as the ground beneath her feet was
stable, she was fine – even if that ground happened to be an artificially woven
tree branch rising magically above the ground.

The limb rotated slightly around the trunk to avoid an
overhanging branch from a nearby tree, then moved again to avoid a branch
higher up. All the while their escort looked up, his eyes alert, and the elf
controlling the branch looked inward at the tree, his eyes closed.

A few minutes later the limb shifted one final time to slot
itself neatly between two arms of a walkway that had obviously been prepared
for the elevator-like transport. Moreen looked at the tree trunk they'd ridden
up and saw the mobile limb now appeared like it had been growing in that spot
for decades. There was nothing to indicate it was anything other than an oddly
shaped tree limb.

“Marvelous,” she whispered in delight.

“Come quickly,”
Yier
said,
stepping from the platform and leading them down a secluded path made from what
appeared to be more interlaced branches. Moreen turned to look back at their
transport, but it had already disappeared from view back to the forest floor
below.

Doing her best to wordlessly portray a loving daughter
escorting her father and elder brother (
Perklet’s
role in their silent drama), Moreen followed after
Yier
as their guide led them to an inn. The common room there was a popular
thoroughfare in the city and would see citizens from all lots coming in and
staying for drinks throughout the day.

A short time later they were seated in an out-of-the-way
spot in the inn where they could nevertheless observe the majority of the
patrons without being obvious about it. Two elves were already sitting there
when they arrived, but they stood to clear the spot and disappeared without a
word. Once they were seated,
Yier
likewise left them,
but he and the other two elves returned seconds later as disembodied voices.

“We will relate to you any conversation you overhear,” their
now-invisible guide informed them. “I will devote myself to your ears, Moreen
an’Beatriz
, and my associates will pair with your paladin
protectors.”

“Will you be picking through the conversations to start me
off, or should I just point to someone at random?” she asked, slightly unnerved
at his unseen presence. The elf’s voice was soft and sounded like he was
perched on her shoulder like a parrot, or a lover sharing a pillow. She
shivered at the thought, instinctively picturing Birch and longing for his
presence.

“With your permission, I will provide a sample of various
nearby conversations, so simply let me know which catches your interest and we
can focus on that,” he replied.

She nodded, feeling foolish, but then, he could see her.

“The two men seated at the table immediately to your left,”
Yier
began. “They are discussing crop prices.”

“Skip for now,” she murmured into her water glass.

“Proceeding left, the next table with two women and one
harried looking man,” he said. “He appears to be explaining why he cannot
choose between them, but he will gladly take them both back to his house
together.”

“Skip,” she said a bit hurriedly. It was hard to tell with
Yier
invisible, but she could have sworn he was smiling and
hiding laughter beneath his voice. Or maybe she was just projecting her own
discomfort on him.

“What about the two men there?” she asked, lowering an arm
to the table to subtly indicate the direction. “Their heads are awfully close
together.”

“A moment.” There was a pause of silence. “Fans of dramatic
arts, it seems,” he said, and Moreen heard a tone of disdain in his voice.
“They’re discussing a play.”

Moreen nodded and indicated he should move on.

“The two young elves and the one older at the next table
appear to be an artisan instructing his pupils in the Way of their craft,”
Yier
said. “In this case, pottery.”

“The Way?” Moreen asked.

“The Way of the craftsman is to become proficient with his
tools, then work according to his design to the utmost of his skill in all things,”
Yier
replied.

Moreen blinked.

“I’m sorry?”

“The Way,”
Yier
said patiently.
“It is an elven concept, a path to enlightenment and divine peace through
devotion to one’s role in life. There are many Ways in the world, and it is
every true elven son’s duty to discover his role and devote himself utterly to
it in life. We believe that those who truly achieve harmony with the Way may
proceed to divine peace, while those who fall short are returned through the
cycle of death to try again in their next life.”

Moreen struggled to grasp what was obviously an intricate
and deeply ingrained belief for the elven society, yet was so alien to her own
worldview. She knew elves believed in some form of reincarnation somehow, but
this was something beyond that simplistic idea.

Unfortunately, it also probably had nothing to do with their
purpose there, and she reluctantly decided to let the topic lie. She sighed. It
was going to be a long, frustrating day.

“Next.”

- 3 -

The rest of their audience passed swiftly and somewhat
awkwardly, but they managed to avoid any undue reference to Hoil’s bizarre
story and its effect on the king. No one asked why he’d told the story, and no
one commented on the king’s added ending. If anyone was curious, he wisely kept
it to himself.

They passed the intervening hours until dinner touring the
palace and asking questions about elven life. Siran was their constant
companion, but he never answered their queries himself. Another elf named
Li’Docent
accompanied them and answered their questions in
fluent human. Maran sometimes supplied whispered answers that were more telling
than the responses they received from their guide, but for the most part the
invisible elf remained wrapped in a silence of thought.

Finally the seventh hour approached, and Birch and Hoil left
to prepare themselves for dinner with the elven prince, Rill.
[22]
Maran left them, confident in Hoil’s
abilities and Birch’s tempering presence to see them through the meal and
conversation without his help. Instead, Maran slipped through secret passages
and made his way swiftly through the palace until he arrived at a shadowy
chamber deep in the recesses of the massive complex.

The royal crypt.

Maran stepped into the dark room and summoned a glowing ball
of light that burned with a purple-white radiance. The light allowed him to see
almost as if it were daylight, but anyone not trained in its use would notice
almost no difference in the illumination of the room unless they were wearing
certain white materials or other colors and fabrics that reacted to the
abnormal lighting. Because of this, Shadowweavers were always very careful when
and how they used such lights.

The sarcophaguses were arranged in neat, even rows
stretching far back into the shadows. Thousands of years of elven rulers were
buried here, from all different dynasties and ruling families. Elves were
normally cremated and buried in the earth so their remains would rejoin the
cycle of life, but for the rulers of the nation, a small portion of their ashes
was withheld and stored here in sarcophaguses, often along with a few choice
possessions of the elf. The stone boxes were shallow with thick lids, but full
length as though a true body lay within. The names of each denizen were written
in the stone of the sarcophagus lid above a raised relief of their facial
features. Some of the older sarcophaguses bore life-like, three-dimensional
representations of the occupant, but that practice had fallen out of use long
before Maran’s family had assumed the throne. All the deceased were from the El
sect, of course, with only one exception: an elf from the Li sect had, through
some mad twist of fate, been named king two thousand years ago and ruled wisely
for more than a century, but he had died childless.
[23]