Chapter Text
I state that we should not kill each other. I state that we ought to live. Live in such a way that we don’t, later, have to ask anyone for forgiveness.
- Yarpen Zigrin
Andrzej Sapkowski, The Blood of Elves.
Mae’r caémm
n’corrason cáelm
arras aen amser tedd
aép dearme am vis
teddan a unidae
teddan a’deallwaeth
- Elven lullaby
1271, Ellander
According to an old Kaedweni proverb, fate never knocks on your door when it arrives. In my case, the saying held true. There was nothing extraordinary about the day when everything changed.
I raised my arm and aimed the crossbow at the heart of the man I called father, squinted, and squeezed the trigger. Scattered gasps erupted from the crowd. The bolt dug into a wooden framed cushion in my father’s hands, the size of his fist, followed by two more thuds of reloaded bolts.
The audience applauded. Yanis nodded and smiled with his amber eyes. I bowed before I prepared for the final act of our show; climbing Yanis’ shoulders and letting my younger sister Delys climb us to form a human tower.
We executed the well-rehearsed act with a semblance of falling to augment the excitement of the crowd. People sighed in awe and clapped their hands.
Unfortunately, perfect execution didn’t equal a well-filled coin pouch. After the war, people were generally too poor to give more than small sums of orens or ducats. We accepted other payments such as pelts and furs, tools and food for an hour of entertainment.
After the show, my sister circulated the remaining crowd at our temporary camp with a box in her hands, accepting coin with a radiant smile. The money would later be taken to Arno, the leader of our band. He kept it to himself.
I bent my head to the side and stretched my shoulders. The appreciative, and sometimes openly admiring gazes on my sister from parts of the crowd irritated me.
The sun reached zenith above the treetops. Spring lurked in every corner of the lands, still barren from the pressure of the recently melted snow. I packed my worn leather bag with small provisions of food and drink, dressed in my hooded parka and enjoyed the feeling of the worn, satin-smooth leather against my skin.
Yanis and Delys approached me.
“Watch out for the drowners.”
“Yes, papa.” My crossbow fastened at my hip, satchel on my back, I was ready for a few precious hours alone in the forest.
“Morgan…”
The change of tone made me pause. I searched for his gaze.
“We have another appointment soon. We’ll meet the dealers by the abandoned druid hut in the glade in less than an hour.”
I darted a worried glance towards the silhouettes of Arno and his two lackeys, Ben and Sivan. Arno let out one of his characteristic burly waves of laughter followed by a jet of brown saliva on the ground.
I desperately wished to get away from these men - the sooner the better.
“Stay in the background,” I muttered at my sister.
She tsk’ed. “If you’re worried, I could always join you to the forest.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’d step into a hornet’s nest or get butted by a boar.”
She made a face.
“Enough of that,” Yanis interjected, “tss, sometimes I forget you are adults. Listen: this is our last affair with Arno. After this, I have earned enough to repay my debt.” He leaned closer and whispered. “We can start over. We can rebuild the sawmill as you’ve always wanted.”
A wave of incredulity washed over me. “Really? But… what about the curse?”
He caressed my cheek. “We’ll find a way to remove it. I promise.”
I grew frustrated despite the knowing look he gave me.
“We should have gone sooner! Sold the key and -”
“No. Your mother wanted you to have the key. I had to repay my debt on my own, not by robbing you of what is yours.” He regained his smile. “Go, you big otter. Bring back some trout for us.”
He pushed my shoulder in a mock irritated gesture. I flashed him and Delys a smile before I proceeded my travel towards the river, steps light as if I treaded on clouds.
My soul sang. No more of the smuggler life! We could go back to Kaedwen and rebuild our old sawmill! Never again disguise Arno’s hawker business with our circus tricks, but lead our lives debt-free, as we wished to!
For the first time in what felt like years, I believed in a future for me and my family. That we could live a dignified life, not one of strife and deceit. People screamed for timber to reconstruct the cities and towns that burned during the war. We could play a small part in rebuilding the Northern Kingdoms.
The waters of the Ismena glittered through the branches of the birches and the alder trees. Their delicate leaves still hid in buds, waiting for the lingering rays of sun to bless them into sprouting.
Judging from a patch of blood among torn leaves, the fox was out hunting. The tufted deer and the great moose left torn bark on bushes and trees, felled alders and the beginnings of a dam told of the beavers’ activities.
The presence of the large rodents provided a welcome barrier between me and the drowners as the creatures didn’t cross each other’s territories. Pausing for a lunch of bread, cheese and dried meat, the characteristic croaking of the aquatic necrophages reached me from around the river’s bend. The sound was as familiar as the chatter of the magpie or the buzz of the bumblebee.
A couple of canards fled with a violent flap to their wings as I stepped into the shallow waters to inspect my trap. The simple construction allowed fish to swim into it but hindered their escape back into the river.
At the sight of the trap, I stilled, frowning. To protect my catch, I had placed a few, flat stones as a roof on the construction. These stones lay beside the destroyed trap, flung by something, or someone, strong enough to lift them. I crouched, my hand on my crossbow. A near indiscernible indent from a leather shoe glistened on the sand.
Only one type of people left such little trace. Elves.
A knot of worry tightened in my guts. Arno hadn’t mentioned they would meet with the Scoia’tael today. To my knowledge, the appointment was set with human or dwarven traders to have anything to sell to the elves. Something wasn’t right.
I left the river bank for the forest but didn’t head back to our camp; instead, I directed my steps to the meeting spot to the west, driven by a sense of urgency.
To reach the spot usually made for trades, I had to take a large detour around an arachas territory. For the first time, the presence of the large insectoids irritated me.
I sped up my steps as I approached the glen with the hut overgrown by vines, the knot in my guts tightening to a boulder. An eerie atmosphere surrounded the place. No birds sang, the only sound the faint rustle of branches in the wind and my steps on the dry grounds.
My eyes registered the sight of the bodies on the forest floor a second before the smell of blood. I rushed, my leather boots slipping on dead leaves. Breath short in my lungs, I searched for her among the bodies on the ground, all pierced by arrows, except…
“Yanis!”
I ran to kneel beside him, my vision blurred from hot tears, breathing my father’s name. Yanis, Yanis… His temple glistened red with blood, a few drops hung from his beard. His left eye puffed red from a blow, and his underarms showed cuts from defending himself from a knife. He emitted a low groan, his eyelids pulsing. I inhaled his name with a sob of relief and grasped his shoulders.
“What happened? Where is Delys?”
“Morgan..?”
Panic churned my guts. Delys was gone. Delys was gone, Delyswasgone…
Yanis moaned.
“Lay still, papa,” I sniffled, “I’ll help you, don’t move.”
He uttered my name again. I got to my feet and searched around us, lifted my fingers to my mouth, and whistled hard. After a few whistles, our mule Madam approached, the wheels of our waggon creaking behind her. Exhaling a joyous sound from relief, I ran up to her and took the reins. She snorted at the smell of blood but continued, our stubborn, loyal mule, towards Yanis.
He sat holding his head when we arrived. A certain smell and a fresh stain on the ground told me he had vomited; signs of a concussion. I pulled one of his extra shirts from our packing to bind his arm and tried to get him to drink.
Yanis groaned, dizzy and faint. “The elves. They have Delys. You have to find her…”
He muttered other words I didn’t hear, drowned by the adrenaline rush that soared in my veins. My body tensed from the wish to sprint after the elves immediately.
“What about you?”
“I’ll be ok,” he moaned and grabbed my arm, “Morgan; the elves - they want the key. Bargain with them. Anything to get Delys back. Hurry. I’ll come after you.”
My mind reeled in confusion at his words - how did they know about the key? I grabbed my satchel and kissed Yanis on his cap. A single strand of blonde hair, the only sign of my sister, flowed in the wind from a budding sallow tree.
The elves had two, maybe three hours advantage.
I leashed Madam to ensure she stayed with Yanis and took a last look at our former companions. After a second’s hesitation, I knelt to grab the small coin pouch on Arno’s belt and dashed through the forest in search of my sister.
*
After an hour of tracking, I found the unmistakable sign of injury; a few droplets of blood on a single, dead leaf. The find froze my heart. I had to stop to calm the harsh breathing through my lungs, lest I start to cry, and all was in vain. Why didn’t I take her with me to the forest, why, why...
The elves moved through the landscape as by magic. Not a footprint, not a broken branch to a bush. Luckily, Delys left imprints from her sandals and another strand of hair hanging from a tree. She was as easy to track as a common rabbit, but I had never tracked anything with this amount of urgency before. The ploughing tears that burned behind my lids didn’t help my search.
What would do once I found her? Beg for her life? I had to think of something because getting killed was not on my to-do list for the day. It never occurred to me to attempt to kill her captors. Scoia’tael consisted of commandos of at least four elves, and their skill with the bow was legendary. I had never killed anything besides small game or fish.
I prayed to my Goddess. Let her be alive and unharmed.
Over a creek and into the thicket, I followed the tracks alongside a wheat field. The elven commandos preferred the woods and avoided human settlement; these lands had plenty of the first and not much of the latter. The warm remains of burned herbs on the ground assured me they weren’t far. I leaned against a birch to take a mouthful of water from my travelling skin and search the area for more tracks. A movement behind me made me jump, heart in my throat.
I turned to stand face-to-face with an elf.