The Light of Burning Shadows

NINE

T he race against the storm was a welcome diversion. The Black Spike rose and fell among the waves as her sailors fought to keep her afloat and the Iron Elves simply fought to keep the contents of their stomachs.

Konowa didn’t breathe easy until the vessel sailed through the gap in the breakwater that arched across Nazalla Bay. He stood against the railing on the forecastle and marveled at the captain’s skills as he eased the ship between the rocks. She handled well even though the storm still raged. Perhaps some of the magic that once coursed through his father’s ryk faur still lived on. Konowa risked a glance over the railing and saw that the waves were indeed calmer inside the breakwater, though the blowing winds were crabbing the big ship sideways as it approached the port.

It was just past midnight according to the ship’s bells, and the combination of rain and cloud cover made it especially dark. Wood groaned and creaked as the sails were taken in and the anchors dropped. Konowa’s stomach still roiled, but just the sight of land was enough to buoy his spirits.

Not fifty miles beyond Nazalla lay the first outpost of the original Iron Elves at a flyspeck called Suhundam’s Hill. There were a series of these outposts stretching out across the desert in a sweeping arc aimed to control the flow of trade and protect the merchant caravans from raiders, but Suhundam was the closest, and the most important. The fort sat astride the meeting of three different trade routes that originated far in the interior of the Hasshugeb Expanse and wound their way to the three ports that dotted the otherwise barren coastline. Suhundam’s Hill would be their first destination. Konowa knew that, unlike the situation at Luuguth Jor, here his elves would still be in full control of their outpost. He’d trained them well.

He scanned the port for a sign that the harbormaster had seen their arrival, but so far no lantern glowed. He was tempted to launch a boat at once and make for the dock, but the waves were still high enough even in here that such a trip would needlessly risk lives. He had waited a long time to get this far; he could wait a little longer.

The smell of cigar smoke made Konowa smile.

“This won’t be our first talk in the rain.”

Rallie walked up beside him and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the railing. Underneath her black hood, her gray hair was even more frizzled, but her gravelly voice belied a calmness that soothed Konowa’s nerves.

“But perhaps our last, at least for a while. The Hasshugeb Expanse is rather on the dry side.” She took a long puff on her cigar and let the smoke roll out of her mouth slowly, watching it get torn apart by the rain. “Rain or snow or something else, there is a problem.”

Konowa nodded. “We cannot be afraid of this power, no matter whose it is or where we find it. A weapon is a weapon-it’s all in how you use it. This ‘white fire’ kills Her creatures. Imagine what we could do with it.”

“Oh, I do,” Rallie said, “I do. But perhaps the better question is: What could such a power do with you? ”

Konowa stood up a little straighter. “This isn’t like the oath. We will not be beholden again.”

Rallie tapped the ash from her cigar and clamped it back between her teeth. Despite the rain, the tip continued to glow orange and showed no signs of being doused. “Sage words, to be sure, and I hope they are prophetic ones. Tell me, what do you think you found on that island? What do you think happened to that soldier?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Konowa said. His knowledge of ancient and so-called mythical creatures was not vast. Worse, what he did know too often turned out to be wrong. “Did you talk to Private Renwar? He saw it, he felt it, he quenched its fire. He obviously knows something.” The image of the black frost burning in the soldier’s hands remained a vivid picture in Konowa’s mind.

“Indeed he does, and it’s a knowledge no one should ever possess. He’s gone farther, Major, farther than any of them, farther even than you,” she said.

“Farther where?”

Rallie pointed out to sea. “To the other side. To the place where death reigns and this world becomes a distant memory. He’s become powerful precisely because he’s slipping away.” She turned and looked him in the eyes. “He talks to them, you know.”

Konowa felt a chill, and he knew it wasn’t from the acorn. “He-why?”

Rallie shook her head. “Because they talk to him. He almost died when he lost his leg. The power that was tapped to save his life had a price. It always does. He’s connected to them in a way you aren’t.”

“But that doesn’t make sense…we all took the oath, except the Prince. Surely my power is the strongest. Renwar’s not even an elf.”

“Is that jealousy I hear, Major?”

Konowa waved the idea away even as he wondered if, in fact, it was. “I am just trying to understand. Why would the frost fire burn so much stronger for him?”

Rallie took the cigar out of her mouth and tossed it into the water. “Because he wants to die.”

It was a moment of pure clarity. Konowa had seen it before-soldiers recklessly throwing themselves into the fray. If they survived they got a medal, but few ever lived to receive it, not that they sought a medal in the first place. Konowa knew at some level that he himself risked his life more than was prudent for a commanding officer, but he was seeking to right many wrongs. Private Renwar risked his life for a wholly other reason.

Rallie nodded. “He wants the pain to end, and he’s close to making the final leap. He was prepared before when all that waited for him was eternal service to the Iron Elves and perhaps the Shadow Monarch. Now that you’ve found something that might break that oath, he’ll be even more determined. What’s an agonizing death if it sets you free?”

“I’ll have him put on mess detail, or assigned to assist my mother and Visyna with caring for the wounded. We just need time.” This was something that had kept Konowa up at night. What if the oath could be broken? Would that really be in their best interest right now? They needed power to fight the Shadow Monarch’s forest and Her creatures, and through the oath they had found it. So what if it was the enemy’s power? Konowa had swung an orc axe in battle when his musket had been knocked from his hands. This was no different.

“Having him peel potatoes won’t stop what’s been set in motion,” Rallie said. “Unless the oath is broken, he will end his life. Eventually, I fear that most of them will, one way or another. You know this.”

Konowa took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Resentment, anger, insubordination-these he could deal with from soldiers under his command. But this? Yes, none of the soldiers had bargained for this, but they were soldiers and they would obey. Without that single tenet no army could function, and no empire could survive. To break the oath now would be to weaken them when they needed their strength the most.

“We’ll find my elves, Rallie, we’ll find them and I’ll set things right.”

“I hope you do, Major. One of my sreex couriers found us the other day. It brought news of events in Calahr. Apparently my readers and a good many citizens of the Empire at large have been following your exploits with growing enthusiasm. The Iron Elves are the talk of Celwyn and a thousand villages and roadhouses throughout the lands. The orc drums are even reported to be carrying the story, though you are not portrayed in as flattering a light as in my accounts.”

Konowa tried to imagine it and failed. Did people not have their own lives to live? “The orcs care?”

“Absolutely,” Rallie said, her eyes shining at the very thought. “Everyone does. Things have gone so far that the One-Eared Donkey in the dwarf quarter of Celwyn now has a drink dubbed the Iron Elf. The exact ingredients are a closely guarded secret, but they say it’ll take you to the beyond and back…eventually.”

The idea that people read about their exploits galled Konowa. “This is a joke to them? Men are dying out here.”

“Come now, Major. When have things ever been any different? Somewhere in a distant land, elves, men, dwarves, and even orcs are always dying while back home others go to work, or the pub, and home to their wives, or at least somebody’s wife. Would you really trade your life for theirs?”

The thought of trudging to a job in a mill, or a foundry, or even worse, an office with a desk and quill and ink bottle was enough to set Konowa’s stomach on edge again. “No, but there are times when I wish my life could be simple like theirs. Where things are clear. You know the right course to take and your mistakes don’t cost lives.”

Rallie’s laughter startled a couple of seagulls perched on the railing farther down. “Simple, my dear Major, is definitely not a word I would use to describe anything about you. And lives are lost every day in the “simple world,” more, I wager, than are lost on a battlefield. But what happens out here has repercussions far greater than anything that happens back in Celwyn. And that’s why you’re out here, and not back there.”

Konowa grunted. “I take it the same can be said about you. This isn’t exactly a sightseeing expedition we’re on. It’s hard enough for young men let alone someone as o-” Konowa suddenly found himself staring into a pair of eyes with very little humor in them, “-oooccupied with affairs of state as you.”

Rallie held his gaze a beat longer and then smiled and turned back to watch the dock. “You are a charmer, Swift Dragon. Why am I out here risking life and limb when I could be at home tucked under a nice warm shawl? The answer is simple. You. Them, the Iron Elves. The Prince. The Shadow Monarch. All of this. And of course, the Stars.”

Konowa instinctively looked to the sky, but all he got for his troubles was wind-whipped rain in his face. He wiped his brow and squinted up at the clouds and tried to see a glimmer of a star in the night sky beyond, but the weather remained obstinate and he gave up.

“That’s a subject I’ve noticed you haven’t written much about in your reports back home,” Konowa said. “Everywhere you go, there are legends about Stars of power. Even the orcs have them. But for all that, no one really knows anything.” He shifted his position on the railing and looked again at the dock. Still no sign of the harbormaster.

“There’s little to know and even less to write about,” Rallie said, perhaps a bit too quickly. “The Red Star fell and Elfkyna was saved. Rumors abound, of course, but thus far only one Star has seen fit to return.”

Something was nagging at the back of Konowa’s mind, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. “You know more about this than you’re letting on, don’t you? The myth of the Red Star in the east proved to be true, which means the other Stars must be real as well.”

Rallie paused to look around them before speaking. “That is an assumption based on a solid supposition.”

Konowa scratched his head. “I’m not sure, but I think you just agreed with me. You do know more about this. You welcomed back the Star at Luuguth Jor almost as if you knew it.”

Rallie huffed. “How old do you think I am, Major? There might be a few creases in my carrying case,” she said, pointing to her face, “but do you really think I am that ancient?”

Konowa held up his hands in surrender. “It’s just that, well, you’re a witch,” he said, adding hurriedly, “in a good way. Aren’t you?”

“Am I a witch, or am I good?”

Konowa decided it was best to stop talking and merely nodded.

“Yes,” Rallie said.

Konowa walked his brain around that answer for a moment and concluded it was best to leave it be. He tried another tack.

“So do you know where and when the next Star will fall? Knowledge like that would be worth its weight in gold.”

“A hundred times over, no doubt,” Rallie said. She smiled and began pulling her cloak tight around her. The wind still whipped spray off the waves though the Black Spike rode at anchor with the solidity of a stone castle. “The gulf between what I know and what I think I know remains vast at this juncture, and until I can fill in some of that chasm with good, hard facts, I prefer to keep my own counsel.”

“And that of my mother and Visyna,” Konowa said, knowing he sounded petulant and not caring. The three women had become known, and with some affection, as “Which Witch is Which” by the soldiers.

“Not even the Prince presumes to intrude on the deliberations of three women of certain…abilities,” Rallie said.

Konowa knew danger when it spoke softly. “My apologies. You just have no idea how frustrating it is to be kept in the dark.”

Rallie tapped her upper lip with her finger and opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. A moment later she tried again, but Konowa could tell she had changed her mind about something.

“Trust me when I say this, Major. You’ll soon know more than you wish you did. Now,” she said, turning to leave, “I really should retire. We’re going to have a very busy morning.”

Konowa was tempted to ask if that was another veiled vision of the future, but he needn’t have bothered. He considered recent history and concluded that if something could go wrong for him, it most certainly would.