Half a War

Relics

‘This is the place,’ said Skifr.

It was a wide hall with a balcony high up, scattered with broken chairs, dim for the dirt crusted to the windows. A curved table faced the door with a thing above it like a great coin, ringed by elf-letters. There had been a wall of glass beyond but it was shattered, splinters crunching under Koll’s boots as he stepped towards an archway, one door fallen, the other hanging by broken hinges. The hall beyond was soon lost in darkness, water dripping in the shadows.

‘We could use some light,’ he murmured.

‘Of course.’ There was a click, and in an instant the whole chamber was flooded with brightness. There was a hiss as Father Yarvi whipped out the curved sword he wore and Koll shrank against the wall, feeling for his knife.

But Skifr only chuckled. ‘There is nothing here to fight but ourselves, and in that endless war blades cannot help.’

‘Where does the light come from?’ murmured Koll. Tubes on the ceiling were burning too bright to look at, as though pieces of Mother Sun had been caught in bottles.

Skifr shrugged as she sauntered past him into the hall. ‘Magic.’

The ceiling had collapsed, more tubes hanging by tangled wires, light flickering and popping, flaring across the tight-drawn faces of the two ministers as they crept after Skifr. Paper was scattered everywhere. Sliding piles of it ankle deep, sodden but unrotted, scrawled with words upon words upon words.

‘The elves thought they could catch the world in writing,’ said Skifr. ‘That enough knowledge would set them above God.’

‘Look upon the wages of their arrogance,’ muttered Mother Scaer.

They passed through an echoing hall filled with benches, each with a strange box of glass and metal on top, drawers torn out and cabinets thrown over and more papers vomiting from them in heaps.

‘Thieves were here before us,’ said Koll.

‘Other thieves,’ said Scaer.

‘There is no danger in the world so fearsome that someone will not brave it for a profit.’

‘Such wisdom in one so young,’ said Skifr. ‘Though I think all these thieves stole was death. This way.’

Stairs dropped down, lit in red, a humming from far below. A chilly breath of air upon his face as Koll leaned over the rail and saw their square spiral dropping into infinite depth. He leaned away, suddenly giddy. ‘A long way down,’ he croaked.

‘Then we had better begin,’ said Father Yarvi, taking the steps two at a time, his withered hand hissing upon the rail.

They did not speak. Each of them too crowded by their own fears to make space for anyone else. The deeper they went the louder their heavy footsteps echoed, the louder that strange humming within the walls, within the very earth, until it made Koll’s teeth rattle in his head. Down they went, and down, into the very bowels of Strokom, past warnings painted on the smooth elf-stone in red elf-letters. Koll could not read them, but he guessed at their meaning.

Go back. Abandon this madness. It is not too late.

He could hardly have said how long they went down, but the stairs ended, as all things must. Another hallway stretched away at the bottom, gloomy, chill and bare but for a red arrow pointing down the floor. Guiding them on towards a door. A narrow door of dull metal, and beside it on the wall a studded panel.

‘What is this place?’ murmured Mother Scaer.

Something in the terrible solidity of that door reminded Koll of the one in Queen Laithlin’s counting house, behind which she was said to keep her limitless wealth. ‘A vault,’ he murmured.

‘An armoury.’ And Skifr began to sing. Soft and low, to begin with, in the tongue of elves, then higher, and faster, as she had on the steppe above the Denied when the Horse People came for their blood. Father Yarvi’s eyes were hungry-bright. Mother Scaer turned her head and spat with disgust. Then Skifr made a sign above the panel with her left hand, and with her right began to press the studs in a pattern not even Koll’s sharp eyes could follow.

A green jewel above the door suddenly burned bright. There was a clunk as of bolts released. Koll took a step back, almost stumbled into Mother Scaer as the door came ajar with a breath of air like a long-sealed bottle opened. Smirking over her shoulder, Skifr hauled it wide.

Beyond was a hallway lined with racks. They reminded Koll of the ones he’d made to hold spears in the citadel of Thorlby. Upon the racks, gleaming darkly in the half-light, were elf-relics. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Hundreds upon hundreds, racks stretching away into the distance as more lights flared up, one by one.

‘Elf-weapons,’ said Skifr, ‘just as I promised.’

‘Enough to fit an army for war,’ breathed Father Yarvi.

‘Yes. They were forged for a war against God.’

Next to their craftsmanship Koll and Rin’s proud efforts seemed the mud-daubs of primitives. Every weapon was the twin of the one beside it, beautiful in its clean simplicity. Every weapon thousands of years old but perfect as the day it was made.

Koll crept through the doorway, staring at the works of the elves in awe and wonder and not a little fear. ‘Are these as powerful as the one you used on the Denied?’

Skifr snorted. ‘That one beside these is a child’s needle beside a hero’s spear.’

In a few moments on the wind-blown steppe that one had left six men ripped open and burning and a few dozen more running for their lives. ‘What might these do?’ Koll whispered as he gave one the gentlest, hesitant touch with his fingertips, its perfect surfaces more like a thing grown than forged, neither rough nor smooth, neither cold nor warm.

‘With these, a chosen few could lay waste to Grandmother Wexen’s army,’ said Skifr. ‘To ten such armies. There are even things here that can make that staff you carry send Death.’ She tossed a flat box to Father Yarvi and as he snatched it from the air it rattled as if full of money.

‘The staff of Gettland’s minister?’ Koll blinked at her. ‘That’s a weapon?’

‘Oh, the irony!’ Skifr gave a joyless chuckle as she plucked one of the relics from the rack. ‘It is strange the things deep-cunning folk miss under their very noses.’

‘Are they dangerous now?’ asked Koll, jerking his hand away.

‘They must be made ready but I can teach you the rituals, as I was taught them, as my teacher was taught them. One day with the South Wind’s crew and they can be prepared. A sword takes years to master, and in those years the pupil learns respect for the weapon, restraint with the weapon, but this …’ Skifr pressed the relic’s blunt end against her shoulder so she peered down its length, and Koll saw the slots and holes were grips, sculpted for hands to fit as snugly as a sword’s hilt. ‘A man who holds this, be he never so weak, is in an instant made a greater warrior than King Uthil, than Grom-gil-Gorm, than Bright Yilling himself.’

‘That is halfway to being a god,’ murmured Mother Scaer, bitterly shaking her head. ‘The elves could not control that power. Should a man be given it?’

‘We must take it regardless.’ Father Yarvi carefully lifted one of the relics from the rack. As if he did not mean to put it back.

Skifr propped her weapon on her cocked hip. ‘As the name of God has seven letters, so we should take only seven weapons.’

Father Yarvi lifted the relic, pointing it off down those endless racks. ‘There is no god here, remember?’ His withered left hand did not fit the grip so well as Skifr’s, but it held the ancient weapon iron steady even so. ‘We’ll take all we can carry.’