Alliances

In the hut h found a half-eaten fowl and two wizened apples. After stripping the bird’s bones of meat and eating the apples whole, he searched for clothing. A pile of rags in one corner proved to be a robe. It was heavy, made of coarse brown cloth, and ragged at its hem, but he pulled it on quickly. Sized for a human, it easily covered his slighter frame from neck to heels. He hiked the trailing hem up so he could walk without tripping and cinched the sash tight. The garment’s deep cowl was a gift from the gods, but he supplemented its concealment with an old flour sack. With two ragged holes for him to see through, the sack made a fine mask.

Tired as he was, he left the clearing quickly. The loggers might return, might bring soldiers.

He followed a narrow stream until the water suddenly vanished. A few yards farther on, he came to the edge of a ravine. Descending, he found a cave perhaps twelve feet deep and eight high. The stream dripped down from the ceiling, pooled on the floor, and flowed out the opening to continue on its way.

Heart hammering, he curled himself into the deepest corner of the cave. The makeshift mask filled his head with the dry odor of old flour. That, and the unaccustomed heaviness of the food he’d so rapidly consumed, caused his stomach to rebel. He crawled to one side of the little cave and was thoroughly sick.

When his stomach was empty and the heaving had stopped, he dragged himself to the other side of the cave and lay on his back, staring into the darkness.

* * * * *

Birds alighted on him, unaware they perched on a living being. Troops of forest ants, black as polished jet, marched over the twin hills of his feet. Still he did not move, only remembered.

* * * * *

Hunger had again driven him to desperate measures, and he was digging through a refuse pile on the fringes of a human village when two women drew near. Their approach nearly sent him fleeing back into the predawn forest, but they ignored the ragged, cowled figure squatting beside the trash. They continued on their way and never interrupted their conversation.

“They bought another one?” said one, disbelieving.

The other woman nodded vigorously. “Emalen and her husband bought another slave, an elf who was actually in Qualinost when it was destroyed! He can read and write, so they set him to keeping the tavern books. He ran away once so Brand had to hamstring him…

The two women passed out of earshot. For a long moment, he couldn’t move, frozen by the casual, callous horror embodied in those few sentences.

He forced himself to approach a dwarf peddler and ask of Qualinost. The dwarf’s laconic account of the city’s destruction took his breath away. Had he heard it from anyone else, he would not have believed it, but dwarves did not exaggerate. Qualinost was no more.

He needed to see with his own eyes the fate of his city. And so he did. From a hilltop a mile away he looked down on the place that once had been his home and saw its mutilation as the crushing mirror image of his own. Gone were the towers, the elegant homes, the vibrant greenery. Lost were the lives of countless elves, extinguished in the very instant of liberation. Qualinost had been freed, only to face its doom. What remained was submerged beneath a foul lake, with the rotting corpse of a dragon at its heart, like a poisoned blade in a sunken grave.

* * * * *

The light beneath the trees changed subtly as another day drew to a close, the sun descending in the west. A fat cicada droned down the empty path, weaving from side to side on unsteady wings. Exhausted, it landed near his left foot. The insect was enormous, twice the size of the elf’s thumb, with wet, gauzy wings folded awkwardly across its back. It struggled through the dry moss, heading inexorably for his foot. When the cicada was an inch away, the elf moved. He lifted his foot and held it steady as a stone, waiting for the turgid insect to crawl beneath.

“Don’t!”

To his left stood an old man leaning on a tall blackthorn staff. He wore the remnants of priestly garb-robe, sash, and stole all grimy with age and inattention. His short white hair stood out from his head in all directions. He pointed a stubby finger at the foot still poised to crush the cicada and repeated, “Don’t!”

Without turning his masked head, the elf said, “Why not?” in a voice as dry as the litter covering him. “It’s dying anyway.”

“Its life is not yours to take.”

The old human came closer, walking slowly with the aid of his staff. “That cicada has spent seventeen years asleep below the ground. It’s been awake only a few days, but in that time it found a female, fought off rivals, and mated. Having fulfilled its purpose, it can only die.”

“Then why not kill it? Further existence now is pointless.” The cicada was just entering the footprint etched into the moss. The foot still hovered above it.

“Stay! Every act has a consequence. Can you know what will happen if you kill without cause?”

He hesitated then lowered his foot behind the struggling insect.