Loose Ends
It had been a good hunt. Vaya returned to her cave-den sore in all the right places and feeling alive. She set her spear by the doorway and hollered “You home, Aurek?” into the depths of the rockshaped cavern.
Her lifemate emerged from the rear chamber. His face was grave – that was no great change. But there was a sadness in his eyes that made Vaya’s hackles rise. Something was wrong – something more pressing that another failure with his stone eggs.
“We’re needed at the Evertree,” he told her solemnly.
Her first thought was of their son. “Is it Wesh – is he hurt? Why didn’t you send to me?”
He held up his hands. “Peace: Wesh is fine. He’s the one who sent for us. He’s met some of your distant kin. They have news of your mother.”
Mother. She hadn’t seen Kahvi in years. The two had never been close; Vaya’s childhood had been a constant battle to earn her mother’s approval, and she had seized the first chance she’d been given to flee her birth-tribe.
The Go-Backs had left the Frozen Mountains centuries earlier, driven out by the trolls. An exile and dissent within the tribe’s ranks had led to a schism – and while half the tribe had journeyed to the New Land with Mardu, Kahvi had remained on the shores of the frozen sea, with a few old loyalists.
The last time Vaya had visited her mother at Passage Point, she’d felt an aching sadness. While Mardu’s Go-Backs had thrived in the open steppes of the New Land, trading their great stags for herds of ponies, Kahvi’s Go-Backs remained exactly as they’d always been – an ill-fed, yet determined band of warriors, forever training for the next war, constantly risking their lives for the sake of a good fireside tale.
Vaya couldn’t stand such a lifestyle any longer. Her time with Swift’s Wolfriders and her Recognition to Aurek had taught her a better way. Kahvi had accused her of becoming soft, gutless. And perhaps in her own way, she was right. But Vaya had shown her mother another kind of courage – she had walked away. And she had not been back since.
That had been nearly a thousand years ago.
Vaya looked up into her lifemate’s gaze now. She already knew what he would say next. But still the question slipped from her lips.
“Is she…?”
**I’m sorry, beloved. They say she is dead.**
* * *
The Palace made the journey across the Vastdeep in the blink of an eye. It was the very end of summer in the Homeland; the Evertree’s leaves were beginning to take on a golden cast as the death-sleep approached. Rayek disguised the Palace as a great wooded hill, and the Eldertribe Wolfriders gathered in its shadow to welcome the visitors.
Vaya had barely taken one step outside when Littlefire tackled her in a rib-crushing bearhug. The younger elves all stared. Littlefire’s aversion to physical contact was well-known. Yet after he’d squeezed the air out of his mother, he turned to his father and clung to him just as tenaciously, as Aurek smiled indulgently and ruffled the lad’s hair. Well into his third millennium, Littlefire had learned to become a Wolfrider, helped raised a cub, and recently become host to his deceased lifemate’s soul. Yet where his parents were concerned, he remained a little fawn.
The Wolfriders assembled under the branches of the Evertree, to greet the visitors from the New Land. Once familiar faces were missing – others had aged noticeably. The true price of wolfblood was coming due for the children of Timmain.
Moonshade was gone, as were One-Eye and Clearbrook. Strongbow was still fit enough for the hunt, but his face bore deep age lines, and his hair was peppered with gray. Kit had died as well, though she remained a constant, if invisible presence inside Littlefire’s mind. Vaya marveled at the intensity of their bond. She had no doubt Aurek had the magic to enter her body should he die, or else welcome her soul into his if she died. She just wasn’t certain she could stand to share a shell with him, lifemate or no.
The changes to the Eldertribe had not all been losses. Years before, Spar’s boy Wren had moved to the Evertree to apprentice with Kit and Littlefire, and now he and Mink welcomed their second child, a chubby little girl named Sunstill. Rainsong’s son Wing and his lifemate Behtia had also moved north, as it became clear that old age would soon claim Rainsong and Woodlock as well. The forest seemed to agree with them; Behtia had already taught the Wolfriders to make acorn flour, and a second Recognition for the pair meant Sunstill would have a playmate in another turn of the seasons.
Even Longfeather was back at his birthplace, though Vaya imagined he would fly back to Oasis once his baby sister was grown. Very conspicuous with his Oasis garments and his bronzed skin, Wren’s son scarcely resembled his Wolfrider kin anymore. He had far too much Glider in him, too great a love for sun and sky to be content in the forest understory. Vaya wondered what path baby Sunstill would come to choose. Perhaps she wouldn’t follow either blood, but decide to become a sailor instead. Such was the freedom all elves now had. The old tribe names scarcely applied anymore. Sometimes Vaya wondered if she even considered herself a Go-Back anymore.
There was no such doubt around the identities of the newcomers from the north. The elves were quintessential Go-Backs – wiry and sharp-eyed, dressed in fur-trimmed leathers ill-suited for the temperate climate, bearing short, sharp names like Drell, Krath and Cheikot. And so many – at least twenty, Vaya reckoned, before a young child’s antics made her lose count.
**And they just… walked here from the Frozen Mountains?** she asked Littlefire in lock-sending.
**Limped, more like,** Kit’s voice answered.
Vaya looked again, and saw the signs of stress. Go-Backs always lived on the knife’s edge, but even to her forest-spoiled eyes, the new arrivals appeared in poor shape. Their leathers were worn to tatters, hanging off malnourished frames. Weariness had dulled their eyes and hollowed out their cheeks. They ate as if they never expected to see food again, and the older ones glared at their hosts with open suspicion, verging on hatred. Of the many faces, Vaya only recognized three: the warriors Kiv and Cheider, and old Roff, the portly lodge-guard who was always much better at eating trolls than at killing them.
Chief Redlance made the introductions. The black-haired girl next to Roff sat up at attention when Vaya was named. “Kahvi always spoke of you!” she exclaimed. “Whenever one of us failed her in a hunt or a raid, it was always ‘If only Vaya were here – she’d show you shivering fawns how a warrior fights!’”
Vaya smiled sadly. It was always Kahvi’s way. She never could praise anyone to their face. And she never appreciated what she’d had until it had left her. Vaya remembered well, being unfavorably compared any number of lost warriors.
“How did my mother die?” Vaya asked. “And how did you come to be here? The last time I spoke to Mother, you were all still living at Passage Point.”
“Passage Point?” the girl repeated. “Pft. We left that rock when I was still on the teat!”
“You’d best start again at the beginning, Drell,” Redlance urged gently. “I’m sure Vaya and the others will want to hear it all.”
Drell shrugged. “Well, I don’t much remember Passage Point. But Mother always said we left because the ice was thinning too much. That right, Roff?”
Roff paused in his efforts to extract the last bits of marrow from his venison bone. “We were always on the move. A few crustings at Passage Point, a few more at Farhold, then a long trek back towards Thunder Cliffs, stopping at every good cove along the way. We’d trace a big circle every fifty years or so. Time enough between each camp to let the prey come back.”
Vaya nodded. A wise choice; she could remember - but only just - the nomadic lifestyle they had lived before the Palace began to call them. They had always lived better on the move than stuck in one place, exhausting the resources around them.
The Master of the Palace did not share her approval. “A life without purpose,” Rayek grumbled. “Aimlessly wandering with the herds – did none of you wish for more? I gave Kahvi a piece of the Palace itself. I had hoped you might make use of it to better yourselves.”
**Not every elf needs to addle his brains on magic,** Strongbow sent crossly. Rayek rolled his eyes.
“We did,” one of the lads, Cheikot, piped up. “I was the best tracker the tribe had, and all because Kahvi let me practice seeing the beasts in the Palacestone. She wouldn’t let just anyone use it, you know! You had to prove yourself worthy.”
“Aye… Kahvi liked to keep it all to herself,” Roff agreed.
“It sang to her,” Drell said. “She said she could hear the voices of our ancestors – that she could see the future paths we’d walk.” Two dozen Go-Back heads nodded in unison, with a wide-eyed wonder lighting their haggard faces. It seemed Kahvi had become next-of-kin to a High One to these young elves.
“If she could see her future, why didn’t she see her own death?” Roff challenged.
“Maybe she did. Maybe she welcomed it.”
Kiv grimaced. “Well, that’s what we’re meant to do, isn’t it? You’d know all about that, Drell.”
Someone chuckled. The girl bowed her head and didn’t interrupt as Roff continued the tale.
“When the ice started to melt, we were already making ready to head back towards the Frozen Mountains. But by the time we’d gotten to Thunder Cliffs, we could hardly recognize the place. The ice had drawn back so much, it opened up a whole new piece of the sea.” He smiled at the memory. “Oh, the feasts we had. Fish and clams and all kinds of seabirds. I could have stayed there forever.”
“Why didn’t you?” Vaya asked.
“Humans,” one of the warriors said. “We thought they were just… fireside tales.”
“The thaw brought them north,” Kiv explained. “We tried to stand our ground – Kahvi wanted us to stand firm. But we were… what – three eights? Against those swift-breeding rats! We even tried killing just the lifebearers – thin the herd – but the big males always kept their females guarded in the middle of their nests. Didn’t take long to see this was one snow-bear you didn’t want to track. So we left the Thunder Cliffs.” He sighed. “Kahvi had dreams of taking the lowlands back once we’d built up our numbers again. The elders, we all remembered those metal clothes that Two-Edge made us, how it protected us from troll-swords – it would stand up against those little flint darts the humans threw at us. That was what we needed, troll weapons.”
“High Ones…” Swift moaned. “I think I see where this tale leads.”
“Aye,” Roff nodded. “Up into the mountains, right to the trolls’ main gates. We figured we’d have to fight our way in, but instead they welcomed us right in. Guests of King Picknose, they called us.”
“Picknose?” Swift exclaimed. “I thought he’d been killed ages ago.”
“Not killed – too slippery for that. No, just biding his time, until he threw over King Slagg and took his tunnels back. Or tried to. Trolls, paugh – no loyalty in them! No sooner than he got his crown back, one of his own boys tried to take it from him.”
“Wile-Eye,” Cheikot said. “He held the valley where the Palace used to sit. He’d been fighting with Picknose for… longer than I’ve been alive!”
“That’s not saying much,” Roff muttered. “Anyway, ol’ Picky didn’t like to share his tunnels. He wanted help getting rid of Wile-Eye. He wanted muscle. And when we showed up on his door…”
“He got his muscle,” Swift finished.
“And Kahvi got another war,” Rayek added contemptuously.
“It was going to be glorious,” Drell protested. Her eyes lit up with the furious sort of joy Vaya remembered from her days in the war lodge. “Kahvi said it was what we were born to do. We’d help Picknose take back his tunnels, then he would help us take back the Cliffs. It would be the greatest adventure of our lives. Those who fell would be remembered in song, and those who lived would share in the trophies.”
Her younger comrades nodded. Roff sneered. “Tell it straight, girl. She traded us all for troll boodle. I’m an old coward, I know, and I’ve lived far too long – but I remember the Palace War. And this wasn’t like it. Not one bit. We weren’t fighting for anything. We were just killing trolls because Picknose told us to. And Kahvi kept all the trophies for herself and her furmates – troll-swords and chain-wear and good wine.”
“That's not true!” Cheider snapped. “Of course the best warriors got the best weapons! That's how it is. You want trophies - you have to earn them!”
“What about the Palacestone? That was meant to be our trophy! Our birthright! But she had Chot and Krim make up this armor special so she could wear it strapped to her breastplate. Like it was hers alone.”
Rayek’s eyes widened in disbelief. “She wore a piece of the High Ones’ starstone like some troll-gem?”
“But you never saw her in battle with it,” Drell said. “It hummed with the beat of her heart. Even in the darkest tunnel, we could see it glowing… pulsing this beautiful purple light. Like troll wine. And it gave her this power – I’d never seen anyone move so fast, swing a troll-sword so hard!”
Aurek nodded thoughtfully. “Even a small piece of the Palace can enhance an elf’s abilities – magical or otherwise.”
“Purple, you say?” Rayek probed. “Like dreamberry wine?”
“If that’s what the trolls drink,” Drell confirmed. Rayek and Aurek exchanged a knowing glance. Vaya caught the whisper of a sending passing between them. A single word-thought: Dying…
“So my mother fell fighting trolls?” Vaya pressed.
“Not… exactly,” Cheider said. “Drell can tell you.”
The girl seemed reluctant to speak now. She wrung her hands in her lap. “She’d promised the next raid would be the last one. Eight of us would hit Wile-Eye’s supply tunnel, where his trolls came out to hunt. We’d blow it closed with this gray powder Picknose gave us – it makes a huge boom, like a skyfire strike a thousand times over.”
“Blast-rock,” Vaya nodded.
“Aye, that’s it. So the plan was we’d blow the tunnel, while Picknose’s men charged in below. Wile-Eye’s trolls couldn’t use the tunnel to escape, and they’d be caught like a snowbear in its den.” She shook her head. “It was supposed to be so simple!”
“What went wrong?” Vaya prompted.
“Snow-slide. The blast-rock must have set it off. That, and the warmer air. The whole side of the mountain just melted away. We were all caught in it.” She flicked a nervous glance at Roff. “I was near the edge – I was able to keep on top of the worst of it. Still had to dig my way out of three spear-spans of snow before I saw light again. I was the only one who made it. Kahvi… Krim, Jekko and Sherla… all the others… all gone. The Palacestone was supposed to warn us of these things!
“The cave-in was bigger than the trolls expected – much bigger! Picknose and his trolls couldn’t get through. At least we got Wile-Eye – crushed him inside his own mountain. But Picknose wouldn’t pay up. Said Kahvi had betrayed him – said we were supposed to bury the blast-rock, but not use it. Said it was all her fault the snow-slide happened, anyway – that she’d used too much blast-rock. We won him his war, but he wouldn’t help us with ours. And we didn’t have the numbers to hold him to his word.”
Vaya found she was gritting her teeth. A snow-slide. A stupid snow-glide, set off by troll powder and an elf half-drunk on the Palacestone’s magic. Whatever her faults – and she had many – Kahvi deserved a better death.
“What about the Palacestone?” Rayek asked.
“Gone. Buried under all that snow. Probably halfway inside the Great Ice Wall by now, unless the trolls dug it out first.”
“None of you went looking for it?”
“None of us wanted to touch it!” Roff said. “We saw what it had done to Kahvi. We were done with wars, with quests.”
“We hadn't the strength for more,” Kiv sighed.
“The humans held the coast,” Roff admitted. “We had no choice - we went inland. There was food for our stags, but not enough for us.”
“We ate our stags,” said an elf mother with a nursing fawn. Vaya took in the gauntness of her face and the sorrow in her eyes.
“Aye, we did,” Cheider admitted. He looked up at Swift. “And we soon wished we hadn't. But what could we do... without a chief to lead us?”
“So we went south,” Roff said. “We figured we’d fight for a place like Thunder Cliffs – a place of plenty.”
“And we had to fight,” Kiv said. “We ran into more humans. A lot more. Whole tribes of them our on the plains. A band of them chased us as far as the forest’s edge. And then, they stopped. Like they were afraid to go on.”
“The humans respect our borders,” Redlance explained. “You will be safe here. This forest is more than big enough for two tribes.”
“Can we stay here?” a young Go-Back child asked. “I like your tree-lodge.”
“Oh, I’m sure they don’t want us messing about in their tribe,” Roff dismissed. “Our thanks, but I’m sure we’ll be moving on as soon as we get our strength back up. Right, Kiv?”
Kiv looked up at the Evertree longingly. “Once the fawns have a bit more meat on their ribs,” he said, reluctantly. “If you don’t mind, Wolfriders.”
“Of course not,” Redlance said. “You are all welcome to stay as long as you wish, so long as you respect the rules of the holt.”
“Maybe we could sit out the winter here,” Drell said. “You want to stay a while too, don’t you, Krath? Cheikot?”
As the snow elves began to debate the issue, Vaya got to her feet and excused herself. Aurek and Littlefire followed her as she walked back into the Palace.
**Lifemate?** Aurek asked. **What are you feeling?**
**Numb,** Vaya admitted. **I… I can’t really believe it. Krim, the others – I can understand that. They were always looking for a good death. If anything, I’m a little surprise they lasted so long. But Kahvi… she’s old than the mountains. She’s fought so many battles, she’s beaten so many odds. How can she be dead? **
* * *
“If Kahvi is dead, her spirit is not the Palace,” Weatherbird ruled after a full day of meditation. “I’ve searched everywhere for her – asked everyone I know. I even found Krim – she says hello, Vaya. But she hasn’t seen or felt Kahvi since before the avalanche. I’m not saying Kahvi’s alive,” she added quickly. “Just that her spirit is not here.”
“But if she’s dead, where else would she be?” Vaya asked. “I thought all elves without wolfblood are bound to the Palace when they die.”
“They are – to the time and place where it rests. But the Palace’s aura…” she grasped at the air, as if trying to capture her thoughts. “It’s… it’s round like a ball, see? And the ball is bigger than this world. It reaches out beyond the two moons… it even brushes against other worlds out there in the stars. And spirits can go as far as the edge of the ball.”
Vaya felt a smile tug at her lips. “She’d like that. Always seeking the next adventure – she’d challenge the sun itself.”
“If Kahvi’s spirit is loose in the world, she will not reveal herself until she wishes it,” Rayek said. “But a more pressing concern is the fate of the Palacestone.”
“Grandfather!” Weatherbird hissed, jerking her head blatantly in Vaya’s direction. If the silver-haired elf was trying to be discreet, Vaya thought, she was not succeeding.
“No, it’s all right,” Vaya said. “Rayek’s right. The Palace is ours. Many elves gave their lives to recover it from the trolls, and in their honor we must recover any missing piece of it.”
“Well spoken, Vaya. Aurek, Weatherbird, will you help me? With our minds linked together, and the power of the Palace behind us, we should be to locate it.”
Find one piece of starstone, little larger than an elf’s heart? Vaya thought skeptically. But Aurek and Weatherbird moved to Rayek’s side, and the three of them bent their heads together. Soon Vaya could feel a crackle of energy in the air, like tiny wisps of skyfire.
They stood together, their minds linked, for several long minutes. Finally Rayek stepped back, breaking the connection. “It’s no good. I cannot find it.”
“Should I send for Father?” Weatherbird asked. “I think he said something about going to see Wren.”
“No, child, I don’t think even he can help us.”
“What happened?” Vaya prompted.
“Together, we extended our range across the whole surface of our world, ” Rayek said. “I could feel every piece of the living starstone that makes up the Palace. To spirit-sight, the starstone glows with a fire all its own. The Palace burns like a bonfire… but I could see other, smaller lights. A campfire in Oasis, lit by the Little Palace. A spark in the New World, with Mardu’s Plainsrunners… even the dying embers of the magic that lived inside Blue Mountain, the remnants of your Egg of Eight Spheres, Aurek.”
Aurek nodded. “I felt it too. Winnowill came so close to making a second Palace.”
“Then where is Mother’s stone?” Vaya pressed. “Are you saying it’s been destroyed? Can you destroy starstone?”
“You can extinguish its inner fire,” Rayek explained. “Like a fire needs to fed wood, so the starstone needs to be fed our thoughts and our magic. The stronger we are, the stronger the Palace becomes. And the stronger it makes us in turn. Like many hands feeding a fire. Vaya, you remember how the Palace was when we first recovered it from the trolls.”
She nodded. “The walls didn’t glow. The stone wouldn’t speak to you – to anyone. And you could feel the spirits in the air, but you couldn’t speak to them.”
“The Palace had been starved of elfin contact – living elfin energy – ever since the humans drove the High Ones into the wilds. It took the combined magic of all souls of Blue Mountain to restore it. When the Little Palace was damaged the day Sorrow’s End fell, a piece of it was left behind. That piece has since died – turned back into common stone, devoid of all but the faintest traces of magic. To hear Drell’s tale, Kahvi’s piece has been slowly losing its light for many years. The stone glowed purple, she said. Its fire is going out. And that was before the snow-slide. If the Palacestone was entombed in snow – or mounted on Picknose’s throne – it will have lost much of its lifeforce.”
“So we’ll never find it?”
Rayek smirked. “I did not say that. No, I think we should see if Drell might be willing to show us the site of that snow-slide…”
* * *
The Palace hovered a handspan over the snowpack. Rayek floated down to test the crust, then nodded for the others to follow. Swift, Vaya and Drell all hopped down, while Sunstream and Aurek remained inside the crystal walls.
“Can you keep it floating a while?” Swift asked. “Can’t say I trust this snow.”
“The snow’s fine, chieftess,” Vaya called with a laugh. “If it was liable to collapse, it would have done it already.”
“I’ll let it down… slowly,” Sunstream said, and closed his eyes. The Palace gently settled on the snow crust, lightly as a feather. Vaya felt a tremor run through the snowpack, followed by the crunch of compacting snow. The Palace dropped a handspan into the snow, but nothing was injured save Sunstream and Aurek’s dignity.
Vaya turned away and looked up the valley. Immediately she saw how the blasting powder had caused a snow-slide. They stood in a narrow cleft between two mountain ridges, and where the ridgelines met, a nearly vertical snow slope unrolled to meet the valley floor. Drell had described the valley as a hunting ground for the trolls, but in the years since the avalanche, no new trees had grown in. The valley was one giant snow grave.
Rayek knelt down on the snow and sent for the Palacestone. Drell paced around and pointed out the features she remembered in a hushed voice. Swift listened attentively, but Vaya found she could not. She was too focused on the vast weight of snow under her feet. Kahvi had always carried the Palacestone into battle, Drell said. So if Rayek found it, he would surely find Kahvi’s frozen corpse as well.
She wished she had stayed with Aurek in the Palace. But she had wanted to see the truth for herself.
“Nothing,” Rayek said at length. “If it is still here, it has gone silent.”
Swift kicked at the snow. “Can we use the Palace to heat all this up – melt away the snow?”
“If you wish to flood out this entire valley, and three more downhill, of course. We could flood this entire channel halfway to the sea.” He smiled. “I wonder how well trolls can swim.”
“All right, bad idea, I get it. Well… seems we have two choices,” Swift declare. “Call off the hunt, or call for the trolls.”
“And just how do you propose to do that? Light a bonfire?”
Swift patted the crystal wall of the Palace. “Wait until sunset. This’ll be the biggest bonfire in the world.”
* * *
Sure enough, the troll scouts spotted the Palace as soon as night fell. It took until the morning, however, for Swift to negotiate terms of a parley with Picknose. Vaya kept her hand close by her dagger as she walked through the troll tunnels alongside Aurek. Sunstream had stayed behind in the Palace, and Swift had loudly informed him to use its power to blast the mountainside to powder if she did not return by day’s end – after plucking them out in floating shield bubbles that no troll’s sword could puncture.
**He can’t… actually do that, can he?** Vaya asked Aurek.
**Not at the moment.** He considered it a moment. **But give him another thousand years… perhaps.**
Picknose hadn’t changed much from the troll Vaya remembered from the Palace War. His black beard was perhaps a little longer, its lacy bow a little larger. He sat in the simple stone throne like he had been born to it. Something almost like a smile curved his obscenely thick lips.
“Intrusion! Intrusion – into our mountains! And in the Palace no less. I knew it could only be you, little weasel! Is there no end to your disrespect?”
“We missed you too, Picky,” Swift said.
“Speak for yourself,” Rayek muttered.
“If you’re thinking of setting down roots, you can forget it. These mountains are ours now! Unless… of course, you were to pay us for the privilege.”
“Just passing through,” Swift assured him. “Soon as we get what’s ours.”
“What’s yours?” Picknose sputtered. “Nothing is yours! Nothing here! Everything above and the below the ground is mine by right of conquest!” He pointed at Drell. “I know you – one of Kahvi’s little bootlickers. What have you been telling them? Is this about those troll-swords? I told you – I don’t pay for incompetence!”
“You appear to be sweating,” Rayek sneered. “‘Picky.’”
“Shut it! Kahvi nearly killed us all. I told the fool – bury the barrel uphill and wait for orders. Think I didn’t know it would set off a snow-slide? I meant to trap Wile-Eye in his den. Instead that halfwit decided to jam the blast-rock down the tunnel mouth and set the whole thing off herself.”
“Where is the Palacestone?” Swift asked. “And don’t play the dummy with me.”
“Palacestone? You mean that bauble Kahvi always hauled around. Pft. How should I know?”
“Come on, Picky. You knew she always wore it. You trolls are used to digging through rock – a little snow wouldn’t stop you. You telling me you didn’t go looking for it.”
“No, I didn’t.” But under Swift’s hard stare he quickly amended, “All right, I did. But I didn’t find it.”
“You just said Kahvi always wore it on her.”
“And for all I know, she still does. But I didn’t find Kahvi under that snow.”
“You lie!” Drell snapped. Instantly, a half-dozen troll crossbows were aimed at her.
“You’re lucky I’m such a patient host, wispy-girl,” Picknose said. “And it’s no lie. We found the rest of them – the blond girl with the smart mouth, that boy who always stank of fish farts – six elves in all, all frozen solid as stone. But no Kahvi and no Palacestone.”
Suddenly, Vaya felt dizzy. A hundred different questions crowded in her mind at once, but what came out her mouth was, “What did you do with the bodies?”
“What?” Picknose asked.
“The elves. The ones you pulled out of the snow. Krim and the others. What did you do with them?”
“What a question! I don’t remember. It was twelve years ago.”
“Picky?” Swift prompted, noticing the furtive darting of his eyes.
“They were dead. Long dead. What does it matter, anyway – you wolf elves always fed your dead to your pets.”
“I swear, if you ate them…” Vaya growled.
“No! No, of course not. We’re not Guttlekraw’s savages. Won’t catch me eating that stringy filth.” He saw the horrified expressions that accompanied his slip of the tongue and added, more loudly, “We didn’t eat them! They went to the furnaces, that’s all. A troll has to keep warm. I’m telling the truth!”
Swift studied him carefully. “All right, Picky. Let’s say I believe you – about the bodies, about the snow-slide. What happened to Kahvi, then?”
“I don’t know – maybe she blew herself up with the blast-rock – she used enough of it!”
“She didn’t!” Drell insisted. “I saw her – she was still standing when the snow hit her.”
“Maybe it carried her down-slope then. Maybe a snowbear dug her out before we could get to her. Maybe that dreamberry of hers had enough juice in it to shield her. Or maybe she turned tail and run – like you did!” he sneered, and the Go-Back maiden paled under the accusation. “How should I know?” Picknose went on. “And why should I care?”
“Because we won your kingdom back for you!”
“Paugh! You probably did more harm than good in the long run.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Swift asked.
“I wanted Wile-Eye captured – alive! I wanted him humiliated, but I wanted him spared. Kahvi’s stunt with the blast-rock collapsed the whole complex under that supply tunnel. Crushed him and half his warriors. Now he’s a fallen hero. And they call me Picknose Kinkiller – the monster who used blast-rock against his own son.”
“I weep for you,” Rayek drawled sarcastically. “Next you wish to buy elfin muscle, I suggest you pay extra for brains as well.”
“Keep your brains and keep your muscle too. I’m done with elves.”
Swift narrowed her eyes. “That suits us just fine. And if all’s as you say, Picky – and we’ll soon know if it’s not – then we have no reason to trouble you any longer.”
“Not so fast, elf. There’s still the matter of the toll.”
“Toll?”
“You’ve taken up valuable space on my mountain all day, with that shiny Palace of yours. We have rules! We demand recompense for allowing your visit.”
Swift sighed. “All right, I’ll bite. What did you have in mind?”
“If you think to win a piece of the Palace off us–” Rayek began.
“Paugh – I saw what that thing did to Kahvi. That bauble’s nothing but a pretty poison. No, it’s not boodle I want. It’s a service.”
Swift shifted on her feet skeptically. “I don’t hunt for hire anymore.”
“You elves… you’re still off in that other land, the one across the sea?”
“That’s right.”
“And once you’re over there, the Palace is the only thing that can get you back here?”
“The Palace, or a long hike across the ice. And the way the ice is melting lately… better make that a long hike and a long paddle. Why?”
Picknose smiled and tented his fingers. “I’d like you to take something back with you to that other land. A few somethings, actually.”
“How many somethings? And do they bite?”
“Depends on you, elf.” Picknose turned to one of his guards and bellowed, “Bring in Drub and the others turncoats!”
A dozen guards marched out of the throne room. They returned within a short time, flanking ten trolls with manacled wrists and ankles. The captives must have suffered a long confinement; their clothes were in tatters and layers of filth had turned their green skin almost brown. Vaya stared at the prisoners in amazement – not because of their state, but because the chief captive was a troll maiden.
She had seen only a few troll females in her life, and they were always timid, dull-eyed creatures, decked in gold and utterly submissive to their male kin. But this female wore a warrior’s garb, and held her head high, despite the weight of her chains.
“This ungrateful wench is Drub,” Picknose said. “My twenty-third born. Used to be a proper little princess – almost as sweet as my Trinket. Then she started getting ideas from Kahvi.”
Drub smiled tightly. “She taught me how to beat boy trolls. I liked it.”
“You’re not a boy and you’ll never be!” Picknose spat.
“Don’t need to be. Got bigger stones than most o’ them already. Got bigger stones than you, old wart.”
“You see?! Now she thinks she’ll take up where Wile-Eye left off. Twelve years I’ve had to put up with her mouth. Even Old Maggoty can’t break her. And I can’t kill her – not after what happened to Wile-Eye. I’d never live it down. So I want you to take her away – her and her boot-lickers. Get them out of my mountains. Dump them somewhere in your land. Dump them in the sea for all I care.”
“I’m not going to clean your house for you, Picky,” Swift said. “And whatever they’ve done, I won’t abandon them to die.”
“Die?” Drub laughed. “Think we can’t do just fine for ourselves?”
“Do what you want with them,” Picknose said. “Take them to your new holt, feed ’em and spoil ’em and tuck ’em in at night with a lip-smack and a bedtime story. Just get them away from here.”
Swift glanced at the prisoners. “Is this what you want?”
“What I want is to get in the pit with Papa there and teach him some respect!” Drub snapped. “But since I can’t… I’ll settle for showing him up by building a better kingdom than his fat head could ever dream of. You take me to a place with good clean rock, and you put a pick in my hand and I’ll do just fine! We all will, won’t we boys?”
Her fellow prisoners nodded. They were not all boys, Vaya noticed. Two other troll maids, equally defiant as Drub, stood at the rear of the group. Three maids and seven lads – tribes had been founded with fewer. Knowing the tenacity of the trolls, Vaya had no doubt these prisoners would conquer whatever mountain they were given.
“All right,” Swift said. “We’ll take them – and the provisions they’ll need.”
“What?”
“You can’t expect them to set up a new kingdom with nothing. They’ll need tools and supplies.”
“So pester the Blue Mountain trolls. Think I haven’t heard about their King Smith? Oh, I know all about what ol’ Two-Edge has been cooking up down there. He took an elf for a queen, didn’t he? So he can help you.”
“Good idea. And maybe Drub and the others would like to stay at Blue Mountain with him. What do you say, Drub? It’s only a few months to the south. Easy enough to come pay Papa a visit if you’d like.”
“All right!” Picknose snapped. “Rotgut! Flakes! Go rustle up ten scout’s packs. No more. You want to conquer a new kingdom, Drub? You can do it the old fashioned way.”
“Suits me fine.” Drub held out her hands to be unshackled.
“Oh no,” Picknose said. “Not until you’re in the Palace and out of my hair!”
* * *
As Swift and Sunstream oversaw the transfer of Drub and her followers, Vaya caught Drell alone for a private conversation. The Go-Back maiden had been quiet and nervous ever since their return from the tunnels.
“What really happened the day of the raid?” Vaya asked.
“I never knew what orders Picknose gave Kahvi. She always met with him alone. Maybe he did tell her to bury the powder and wait. I don’t know. I only followed my chief.”
“And did you see her die?” Vaya pressed. “Not many elves have the presence of mind to look to their tribemates when a wall of snow is rushing down on top of them.” **But it wasn’t coming down on top of you, was it?** she added in sending, when the girl wouldn’t speak.
Drell shook her head.
**What happened? Truth, now.**
Drell swallowed tightly. “I ran,” she admitted, and her voice quaked. “When the blast-rock went off. It threw these huge pieces of stone high into the air. Kahvi and the others were cheering. But I panicked. I ran. I heard Krim laughing at me. ‘Shivering fawn,’ she called me. She might have said other things too, but by then the rumble had started. I couldn’t hear her. I felt the snow shaking under my feet. I knew what was coming! And I ran.
“I made it to an exposed rock ledge. It was big enough to shelter us all. And I called for the others. Sherla looked like he might have made a run for it – but it was too late by then. And Kahvi, she just stared up at the snow wall rolling down. And she shouted – no… she must have sent, because I couldn’t have heard her otherwise. Not over the roar. She sent… ‘Let death claim who it will today!’ And her spirit was laughing! I could still hear it echoing in my head when the snow-slide hit her.”
Vaya nodded. “That… sounds like her,” she murmured, as she became aware of the salt at the back of her throat.
“The snow rolled over us all. Only the rocks at my back keep me alive – gave me enough to air to breathe while I dug my way out.” Tears welled in Drell’s eyes now, making her look very young. “I didn’t even look for the others. I just ran right back to the camp. Told everyone what happened – but they knew. They’d all heard the roar… the echo – they knew what it had to mean. And they knew only cowards survived snow-slides like that.”
“You’re not a coward.”
“I ran! I’m a Go-Back – I was raised on the Dance of Life and the Dance of Death! Taught that nothing matters more in this life than proving yourself worthy of the next one – taught that a glorious death worthy of song is the greatest trophy I can ever earn!”
“You’re still a child. How many crusting have you seen?”
“I can’t remember… sixty or so.”
Vaya shook her head. “Too young to be thinking of death.”
“Sherla was younger than me. He earned a place in the Palace. He’ll always be remembered in song!”
“Will he? I wasn’t much older than you when I fought in the Palace War. We lost a lot of warriors. I remember seeing them piled up… three elves deep. And we sang and we danced for them, but ask me their names now, I could only remember one or two.”
Drell wiped at her eyes. “I can’t stay with the Go-Backs! I can’t stand the way they look at me. I don’t know what’s worse – the scorn in their eyes or the pity! Poor Drell, she could have had such a great death! But she panicked like a little squirrel and lost her chance… all because she was too afraid of a little pain.”
“Afraid of dying! That’s a good fear!”
Drell glared at her, resentful. “I thought you’d understand. Kahvi said you were one of the fiercest warriors she’d ever raised.”
“I do understand,” Vaya said. “Better than you know. Come here.”
She let Drell over to a crystalline bench and bade her sit. “Did Kahvi ever tell you much about the Palace War? About me and the Palace War?”
Drell shook her head. “Only that you fought more bravely than anyone. That you always had her back guarded – that you would have sacrificed yourself for her – for anyone in the tribe.”
“I did, you know. I held a gate until all the other elves had made it through or died. I even knocked Kahvi over with my own mace when that was the only way to get her to retreat. She… she would have stayed until they hacked her to pieces. And I said something unbelievably noble and… stupid! ‘That’s a warrior’s privilege, not a chief’s.’ Or something like that. Sounded sweet in the heat of battle. Sounded… ‘profound,’ my lifemate would say. You know – when the bloodlust is rushing through your veins, you go crazy as a hare… and you think you’ve learned some great truth about life, when really all you’ve learned is that you’re a heartbeat from death.”
Drell was listening intently. “But you didn’t die.”
“Not because of any great prowess as a warrior. When the trolls closed ranks and I saw I was the only one left, I turned and ran. Just as you did. Like waking up from a dream, I realized: ‘I don’t want to die!’ So I ran for the gate. The trolls caught me. Pulled me back. They could have killed me then, but they meant to take me to their king – to torture our tribe’s battle plans out of me. And Kahvi…” to her surprise, she felt a sudden spasm in her chest. Even after all these years. “Kahvi would have let me go. Because she believed in that… that buckrot of a glorious death. Because she would rather have had me as a triumphant spirit than a living daughter.”
She was clenching her fists, she realized. Her nails were digging painful crescents into her palms. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she laid her hands palms-down on her thighs.
“The Wolfriders are the reason I’m still alive. They saved me. Kahvi had the means, but she hadn’t the will. Oh… she was ashamed of herself afterwards… for a time. But if that bloodlust hadn’t lifted…if I had stood my ground… she would have watched me die, and she would have been proud of me.”
“Of course she would have. It would have been a marvelous death!”
“It would have been senseless. What would I have gained by dying? Songs in my honor? A spirit flight to the Palace? We all go back to the Palace when we die, whether it’s falling in battle or falling out of a tree! Oh sure, there are wonders in here. But what did I gain by living, Drell? Adventures, lovemates, three fine sons, and countless small joys and small pains that only flesh can feel. Death comes to us all in time. Even stars die. But don’t rush into death before you’re tired of living.”
Drell nodded cautiously. Vaya thought she saw a glimmer of understanding in her eyes, however small. “The Go-Back have always lived by one way,” Vaya continued. “But the Wolfriders showed me another one. And to look at your kin… they look tired to me – tired of war, tired of death. A winter at the Evertree might do you all a world of good. You’d know peace and plenty. New ways of seeing, new ways of thinking. New faces: I think I saw Longfeather looking to you last night.”
Drell looked up sharply. “The brown one? With the hawk feathers in his hair?” She sounded intrigued.
“I’m sure he’d love to… take you under his wing.”
Drell’s smile slowly returned. “He’s a Glider, isn’t he?” She bit her lip as she considered the possibilities.
Vaya smiled encouragingly. “You’ve had enough of death to last you a long time, young one. Now it’s time to learn to live. And there are no better teachers than the Wolfriders.”
* * *
Drell approached her again as the Palace touched down at the Evertree. “Vaya, what about Kahvi? Do you think she might have survived the snow-slide, like Picknose said? Are you going to keep looking for her?”
Vaya shrugged. “I don’t know. Kahvi… well, she’s always been a white-stripe with more than one way out of her burrow. She either has the blood of a healer or the luck of a ravvit to have made it as long as she has. Rayek is right – she’s either out there in flesh or in spirit. In the end it doesn’t matter which – we won’t find her unless she wants to be found.”
But days later, once the Palace had safely come to rest back in the Great Holt, Vaya approached the Scroll of Colors late at night. She knelt in front of the columns and concentrated as Aurek had taught her, until the cylinders began to turn, and thin threads of light danced between the two halves.
**Kahvi…** she sent. **Mother, did you find your glorious death? Do you wander the stars, or do you still walk the world inside your skin? Have you found the peace you sought, in life or in death?**
She felt the tears stinging her closed eyelids. **You don’t want to be found. I understand that. We parted ways long ago; you have your quest, and I have mine. But tell me: are you safe – are you happy? Were you ever happy for more than a day? Please, Mother, answer me.**
She waited all night, until her strength flagged and the Scroll stopped turning. No answer came.
**Call for me, if you ever need my help,** Vaya sent out in the aether, one last plea for a mother’s love. **Call me, and I will hear you.**
But Vaya knew Kahvi would never call. She never needed anyone.
Dawn was breaking outside. Vaya went in search of Cheipar. She had never felt such a need to hold one of her sons in her arms before. When she found him, she crushed him against her, and wept on his shoulder, as long and loudly as a baby.
Elfquest copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2014 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.