David Dalglish - The Prison of Angels

The following silence was painful as she waited for his response.

“Your hair isn’t red enough,” Dieredon said.

She opened her mouth, closed it, then giggled upon realizing the elf had actually made a joke.

“Not just Jerico,” she said, feeling herself relax. “Lathaar. Darius. Tyrus the First. People revere them. I hear the stories, and all I desire is to do even better. I feel jealous, even. Jerico stood before a portal, slaughtering waves of war demons, not stopping even when a spear pierced his side. Lathaar defeated the ancient evil, Darakken. Tyrus drove the remnants of Karak’s beasts into the Wedge near on his own, surviving even though engulfed by thousands and returning a hero. Darius prevented Cyric’s madness from overtaking all of Mordan. Every night I went to bed listening to these stories, and when I look at Jerico’s shield, I think…”

She fell silent.

“Speak your mind,” Dieredon insisted. “You will receive no judgment from me, and no mockery.”

Jessilynn slowly forced herself into a sitting position. Her hand fell to the bow that lay beside her in the grass.

“I see the glow on my arrows and believe there has to be a reason,” she said. “Jerico’s shield was unlike all others, and look at everything he’s accomplished. Now I bear a similar gift, a blessing no one in my order has ever received before. What will I do with it? The demons are gone, the ancient evils defeated. What can I do to have my name belong next to theirs, to allow me to stand beside the heroes of my order and not feel ashamed?”

She bowed her head, felt her voice tremble.

“I have such a gift,” she said. “I’m just scared that I’ll waste it.”

For a long minute she endured Dieredon’s silence.

“This world is not safe, Jessilynn,” he told her, rising to his feet. “Your angels have done great things, but I fear the illusion of safety they have created has been more damaging than they can possibly understand. The east has gone wild, and within the Wedge the beasts are on the move. Every day my kind patrols the borders of our forests, always in fear of orcish fire. The ancient evils may be gone, but new ones have replaced them.”

He scattered the fire with his foot so they might safely sleep in darkness.

“I do not know what you will accomplish with your life,” he said, his eyes glowing in the starlight. “If you desire to be a hero, you have the necessary strength inside you. I can see it, clear as the stars in the sky. But your heroes didn’t become who they were by accident. They bled for it. They died for it. Not for themselves, but for others. Before you yearn for glory, think of the costs.”

And then he left her so she might sleep.

They spent much of the next two days in flight, landing only to let Sonowin rest. During those respites, Dieredon showed her how to light a fire with twigs, to hunt game, and forage for edible roots and berries. He barely let her touch her bow, telling her she should let her body rest and instead learn something new. Moving silently across the grass was the hardest for her, and more and more she saw her teacher growing frustrated with the clumsiness of her armor.

“It’s made for battle, not scouting,” he muttered one late afternoon.

“My arrows glow a bright blue,” she responded. “How stealthy do you expect me to be?”

He only shook his head.

“When the fighting begins, they’ll know your presence. It’s beforehand that matters. Sometimes you may not want to fight at all. It is a hard skill to learn, knowing when you are outmatched.”

“So you want me to learn to be a coward?”

“It’s not cowardice to adjust the battle more to your favor,” Dieredon said. “There’s a difference between them ten leagues wide.”

“What about all the times Jerico and Lathaar stood their ground when victory was hopeless, yet still won? Haven’t you done the same?”

She thought she had him, but instead he only looked more disappointed with her.

“I dare say they were left with no choice,” he said. “That’s either bravery, or poor forethought, depending on who you ask. Neither is something you should run foolhardily into.”

They took to the air on Sonowin’s back, and for the next hour Jessilynn sulked, upset at her inability to answer a simple question correctly. If Dieredon noticed, he didn’t mention it. The land passed below them, until at last the elf guided them back to the ground.

“Landing already?” Jessilynn asked, trying to pull herself out of her funk. She was being immature, and she knew it. “There’s nothing here.”

“That’s exactly the point.”

The elf crouched low to the ground as he walked, eyes scanning his surroundings. For what, she couldn’t begin to guess. The more time she spent with him, the more she realized she would never possess a fraction of his skills. The wilderness spoke to him in a way it never would to her. The arrows in his quiver were as familiar to him as his own fingers. Even the weather couldn’t surprise him, and twice when it rained he’d informed her a good twelve hours beforehand, showing her how to build a rudimentary shelter with just sticks and dirt. Jessilynn waited, feeling useless, following after when he strayed farther and farther away.

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head after ten minutes had passed and they’d covered a large swathe of area. “Everywhere we go, nothing.”

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“It seems the Vile Wedge is empty,” Dieredon said, standing and stretching the muscles in his back. “I can’t even find signs of recent passage.”

“That’s impossible,” Jessilynn insisted. “You said only orcs had gone east, and our boats patrol the western river, as does the Wall of Towers. If there’d been such a massive exodus, we’d have heard of it.”

“Perhaps,” Dieredon said, but he didn’t look convinced. “We’ll continue west for now. Tens of thousands of monsters don’t vanish without leaving a trace. They’re somewhere, and I will find them.”

Jessilynn’s butt and back ached from such long periods of riding, but she said nothing, only gritted her teeth as she climbed atop Sonowin and wrapped her arms around Dieredon’s waist yet again. The miles passed below as the horse’s wings flapped with a steady rhythm. Occasionally she glanced down, but it was always the same rocky hills and dull grass. Part of her understood why the creatures so strongly desired to escape. Living in such a bland, infertile land must have worn on them as the years passed. Not that she regretted it. Humans living peaceably next to wolf-men and bird-men? Preposterous. She knew well the stories Jerico had told of Darius and him making their stand against the army of wolf-men that had crossed the Gihon and made their way west. She’d often imagined herself sitting atop one of the homes, her bow in hand, releasing glowing arrows into the beasts, thinning the horde and saving dozens of lives.

“There,” Dieredon said, breaking her out of her daydream. Several hours had passed at a tedious pace. He pointed, and she followed his gaze. It took a few moments before they closed enough distance for her human eyes to see. From her vantage point it looked like a blob of darkness atop the yellow landscape. It helped none that the sun was beginning to set, obscuring it further.

“What is it?” she had to ask as Dieredon ordered Sonowin to fly higher.

“A group of hyena-men,” the elf said.

“Why aren’t we following them?”

Dieredon glanced back at her, gave her a wink.

“Consider it a hunch, as you humans might say.”

Once they were past the group Sonowin dipped lower. The land grew closer, and she saw more clearly the red stone jutting out from the grass, the spattered collections of trees that grew short and thin of leaf. Dieredon leaned so far off Sonowin’s side she feared he’d fall. They banked lower, lower, until the ground was frighteningly close below them. Jessilynn kept her legs clenched against the horse’s sides, begging Ashhur to calm her nerves.