The Elven (3 page)

Awakening

W
armer than I expected
, thought Mandred when he awoke. He could hear the twittering of birds somewhere close by, and it became clear to him that he had not entered into the Hall of Heroes. There were no birds there . . . and the air should be filled with the scent of honey from heavy mead and the smell of sappy spruce wood burning in the fireplace.

He had only to open his eyes to know where he was. But Mandred put it off. He was lying on something soft. Nothing hurt. His hands and feet felt somewhat tingly, but it was not uncomfortable. He did not want to know where he was. He wanted no more than to lie there and enjoy the moment, enjoy how wonderfully well he felt.
So this is what it feels like to be dead
, he thought.

“I know you’re awake,” said a voice, sounding as if it had difficulty forming the words.

Mandred opened his eyes. He was lying on the ground beneath a tree, its branches curving over him like a vault. Beside him, a stranger kneeled and prodded at his body with strong hands. The branches hung down to just above the stranger’s head, but his face remained obscured in the play of light and shadow.

Mandred narrowed his eyes to be able to see more clearly. Something wasn’t right there. The shadows seemed to swirl around the stranger’s face, as if deliberately concealing it.

“Where am I?”

“In safety,” the stranger replied curtly.

Mandred tried to sit up but quickly realized that his hands and legs were tied to the ground. All he could raise was his head.

“What are you doing with me? Why am I bound?”

From inside the swirling shadows, for a moment, two eyes blazed brightly. They were the color of pale amber, the kind of amber one occasionally found farther west, on the shores of the fjord after heavy storms.

“Once Atta Aikhjarto has healed you, you may go. I personally do not place so much stock in your company that I would tie you down to keep you here. He was the one who insisted on treating your wounds,” the stranger said, then let out an odd clucking sound. “Your language ties my tongue in knots. It is devoid of any . . . beauty.”

Mandred looked around. Apart from the stranger, so weirdly surrounded by gloom, there was nobody. From the low-hanging branches of the mighty tree, leaves fell as on a windless autumn day and drifted unevenly to the ground.

Mandred looked up at the canopy overhead. He was lying beneath an oak tree. Its leaves emanated a strong, spring green. It smelled of good, black earth, but also of rot, of decomposing flesh.

A golden ray of light stabbed down through the tangle of leaves and touched his left hand. Now he saw what was holding him: it was the roots of the oak itself. Around his wrist wound finger-thick knotted roots, and his fingers were covered with a fine, white mesh of rootlets from which the odor of decay was coming.

Mandred reared up, straining against his bonds, but all resistance was useless. Bands of iron could not have held him more securely than those roots.

“What is happening to me?”

“Atta Aikhjarto offered to heal you. You were on the brink of death when you stepped through the gate. He ordered me to bring you here.” The stranger swept his hand to indicate the spreading branches. “He is paying dearly to draw the poison of the frost out of your body and give your flesh back its rose-petal hue.”

“By Luth, what is this place?”

The stranger let out a bleating sound that vaguely reminded Mandred of a laugh. “You are where your gods have no jurisdiction. You must have angered them, because they normally protect you humans from passing through the gates.”

“The gates?”

“The stone circle. We heard you praying to your gods.” The stranger again let out his bleating laugh. “You are in Albenmark, Mandred, among the Albenkin. That is a rather long way from your gods.”

This news startled Mandred. One who stepped through the gates to the world beyond was cursed. He had heard enough stories of men and women taken to the world of the Albenkin, and none of them came to a good end. But still . . . if one were stout of heart, it was occasionally possible to get them to render one a service. Did they know about the manboar?

“Why is Atta Aik . . . Atta Ajek . . . Why is the oak helping me?”

The stranger remained silent for a while. Mandred found himself wishing he could see the man’s face and decided it must have been some sorcery that kept it so doggedly hidden from view.

“Atta Aikhjarto must think you are of some importance, warrior. They say the roots of certain old trees run so deep they reach even your world. Whatever it is that Atta Aikhjarto knows about you, it must mean so much that he is willing to sacrifice a large part of his power for you. He is drawing out your poison and giving you his own lifeblood in return.” The stranger pointed to the fallen leaves. “He is suffering for you, human. And from now on, you will have the strength of an oak in your blood. You will never again be like the others of your kind, and you will—”

“Enough.” A sharp voice cut off the stranger’s words. The branches of the tree parted, and a figure, half human, half horse, approached the spot where Mandred lay.

Mandred stared in open disbelief at the new arrival. He had never heard of such a creature before: the muscular torso of a man growing from the body of a horse. The manhorse’s face was framed by a black beard, twisted into ringlets. The hair on his head was cut short, and a circlet of gold crowned his head. Slung around his shoulders was a quiver full of arrows, and in his left hand, he carried a small hunting bow. He would have been the living image of a majestic warrior, were it not for the red-brown body of the horse.

The manhorse gave a short bow in Mandred’s direction. “They call me Aigilaos. The queen of Albenmark wishes to see you, and I have been given the honor of escorting you to the royal court.” He spoke with a deep, melodious voice, but accentuated the words strangely.

Mandred sensed the iron grip of the roots slackening before finally freeing him completely. The jarl could not take his eyes from the manhorse. The strange creature reminded him of the manboar. It, too, had been half human, half animal. He wondered what the queen of this manhorse would be like.

Mandred touched his upper leg. The deep wound had closed without leaving a scar. He stretched his legs uncertainly. No unpleasant prickle or itch. No pain at all. They seemed completely healed, as if the frostbite had never settled in them.

He stood up cautiously, still not trusting the strength of his legs. Through the soles of his boots, he felt the soft floor of the forest. That was magic. Powerful magic. Far beyond the powers of the witches in the Fjordlands. His legs and feet had been dead, but now the feeling had come back to them.

Mandred stepped up to the massive trunk of the oak. Five men with arms outstretched could not have reached around it. It must have been centuries old. Mandred kneeled in reverence at the trunk of the oak and touched his forehead to the fissured bark. “I thank you, tree. For my life, I am in your debt,” he said and then cleared his throat, hesitant. Was this how one should thank a tree? A tree with magic powers? A tree that the faceless stranger held in such esteem, as if it were a king?

“I . . . I will return, and I will hold a feast in your honor,” said Mandred. “A feast the way we do them in the Fjordlands. I . . .” He spread his arms wide. It was miserable to thank one’s savior with no more than a promise. There should be something more substantial.

Mandred tore a strip of cloth from his breeches and knotted it around one of the lower branches. “If there is ever anything I can do for you, send a messenger to me with this strip of cloth. I swear by the blood that is soaked in its fibers that from this day forth, my axe will stand between you and all your enemies.”

A rustling in the tree caused Mandred to look up. A red-brown acorn fell from the crown of the tree, glanced off his shoulder, and landed in the withering fallen leaves.

“Take it,” said the stranger softly. “Atta Aikhjarto does not give gifts lightly or often. He has accepted your oath. Look after the acorn well. It may be a great treasure.”

“A treasure with thousands of brethren growing on Atta Aikhjarto’s branches every year,” sneered the manhorse. “Treasures that stuff the bellies of swarms of mice and squirrels. You have been given a valuable gift indeed, human. Now come. You don’t want to keep our queen waiting, do you?”

Mandred eyed the manhorse suspiciously, then bent and picked up the acorn. Aigilaos made him uneasy. “I’m afraid I may not be able to keep up with you.”

Aigilaos grinned broadly. White teeth blazed behind the heavy beard. “You won’t have to, human. Swing onto my back and hold the leather band on my quiver. Hold tight. I am no less powerful than a warhorse in your world, and I bet my tail I would beat any steed you have ever come across in a race. My tread is so light that barely a blade of grass bends beneath my hooves. I am Aigilaos, the fastest of the centaurs, famed for—”

“An even faster tongue,” jeered the stranger. “They say centaurs’ tongues are apt to get carried away. Sometimes they’re fast enough to outstrip reality.”

“And when they talk about
you
, Xern, it’s to say you’re such a curmudgeon that only the trees can put up with you,” Aigilaos shot back with a laugh. “And only because they can’t run away.”

The leaves of the great oak rustled, although Mandred felt no movement in the air. Wilted leaves fell thick as spring snow.

The centaur glanced up at the mighty branches overhead. The smile had vanished from his face. “I have no grievance with you, Atta Aikhjarto.”

A horn sounded in the distance. The manhorse seemed suddenly relieved. “The horns of Albenmark call. I must take you to the queen’s court, human.”

Xern nodded to Mandred. For a moment, the magic obscuring his face vanished to reveal a narrow, handsome visage . . . if one overlooked the massive antlers growing out of his thick head of hair. The sight took Mandred’s breath away, and he recoiled, stunned at the sight. Was everyone here part animal?

Suddenly, everything that had happened came together for Mandred in a single clear picture. The manboar had come from here. It had spared Mandred deliberately during the hunt. It was no coincidence that he was the only one not slaughtered by the beast’s lethal tusks. And the pursuit . . . was that perhaps part of some insidious plan? Was he meant to be driven into the stone circle? Maybe he was just the beast’s quarry and had done exactly what it wanted. He had stepped into the stone circle after all.

The manhorse pawed restlessly at the ground. “Come, Mandred.”

Mandred took hold of the quiver strap and pulled himself onto the manhorse’s back. He would face whatever fate awaited him. He was no coward. May their queen have a thousand horns blown, he would not kneel before her. No, he would appear before her on his feet, standing proud, and demand blood money to atone for the blight her manboar had brought to the Fjordlands.

With his powerful arms, Aigilaos parted the protective curtain of branches and stepped out onto a stony field. Mandred looked around in astonishment. Here it was spring, and the sky looked to him to be much wider than it did at home in the Fjordlands. But if it were spring, how could a ripe acorn fall from a tree?

The manhorse broke into a gallop. Mandred’s hands held tight to the leather strap of the quiver. Aigilaos had not lied. He raced like the wind across the field and past a massive ruined tower. A hill rose behind the tower, at its summit, a circle of stones.

Mandred had never been a good rider. His legs began to cramp from gripping the manhorse’s flanks so hard. Aigilaos laughed. He was playing with him. But Mandred would not ask him to slow his pace, he silently vowed.

They passed through a bright birch grove. The air was filled with golden seeds. All of the trees were straight and fine, their trunks glistening like ivory. On none of them did the bark hang down in scraps and tatters as on the trees he knew from the Fjordlands. Tendrils of wild roses spread across scattered boulders of gray stone. It seemed almost as if, there in the grove, a strange, wild order prevailed. But who would waste their time tending to a patch of forest that yielded nothing? Certainly not a creature like Aigilaos.

The path climbed steadily and was soon little more than a narrow game trail. The birches gave way to beech trees, their canopy of leaves so thick that barely a gleam of light made it through. The tall, slender trunks looked to Mandred like gray pillars. It was eerily silent, which only made the muffled hoofbeats on the heavy bed of fallen leaves louder. Now and then, high in the crowns of the trees, Mandred noted strange nests resembling large sacks made of white linen. In some of the nests, lights glowed. Mandred sensed that he was being observed. Something was up there, and it followed them with curious eyes.

Aigilaos was still galloping at breakneck speed. They rode through the silent forest for an hour, perhaps even longer, until they finally came to a broad path. The manhorse wasn’t even sweating.

The forest began to open up. Overgrown with moss, wide bands of gray stone cut through the dark earth. Aigilaos began to slow down. He looked around, alert.

Between the trees, half hidden, Mandred made out another stone circle. The standing stones were covered with ivy. A massive fallen tree lay across the circle. The place looked to have been abandoned long ago.

Mandred felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. The air was a little cooler here. He had the oppressive feeling that something was lurking there, just beyond his field of vision, something that even the manhorse found sinister. Why had this stone circle been abandoned? What had happened here?

The path they were following led upward to a cliff top that afforded a breathtaking view of the land around. Directly in front of them lay a deep gorge that looked as if Naida the Cloud Rider had split the rocky earth with a tremendous bolt of lightning. A narrow trail hewed from the stone led down to a bridge that spanned the chasm below in a bold arch.

On the far side of the gorge, the land climbed again in gently rolling hills that, far in the distance, transformed into gray mountains. A multitude of small streams foamed into the abyss over the distant rim of the cliffs.