Douglas Niles: The Messenger

The crack of breaking wood shot through the quiet night, and Kerrick, thrown by the surprise of it, felt himself falling backwards. Somehow the entire trellis had broken free from the wall! He twisted, pushing away, trying to land on his feet. When his moccasins hit the grass he lunged to the side, stumbling out from beneath the collapsing rack of sticks and vines.

Something hard hit him in the head, and he dropped to his knees, thinking groggily that a piece of masonry must have tumbled from the wall. Then he heard the voice.

“Sneaking, crawling bastard !”

A fist lashed at him from the side, smashing his nose. Through swiftly blurring eyes he saw an elf-no, two elves-looming over him. The nearest was a minor nobleman named Patrikan Diradar. More to the point, he was Gloryian’s father, though he looked strange and monstrous now, his face contorted by an almost animal fury. Patrikan’s fist lashed out again, striking the struggling elf in the ear, knocking him on his side.

“I treated to you as a friend!” said the second attacker, his voice a low growl. This one he recognized as Gloryian’s brother, Darnari, a haughty young elf who had never seemed even remotely friendly to Kerrick. Darnari bent over, seized his prone victim by the hair, and punched him in the stomach. Again and again he jabbed, all the time meeting Kerrick’s watering eyes with a look of pure hatred.

“You are an embarrassment to Silvanesti, to E’li himself!” snarled a third voice from behind Kerrick, invoking the elven name of the great god Paladine. A savage kick caught him between the shoulders.

Kerrick’s head snapped back, and he collapsed on the rubble of the trellis, instinctively curling his knees to his chest. He couldn’t escape, couldn’t fight back, could barely draw a breath.

“You’re not fit to sweep up the droppings of an ogre whore!” growled Patrikan, stomping on Kerrick’s side with violent force. The elf groaned, felt his bile rise with the pain, and he vomited. His guts convulsed, as broken bones twisted and stabbed with each involuntary movement.

“Did you think you could get away with it?” declared the third elf, seizing Kerrick’s arm, yanking him around, as he lay sprawled helplessly on his back. Vaguely Kerrick recognized this new tormentor … Waykand Isletter, one of the most prominent of young nobles in all Silvanesti. “You dare to violate the woman who will be my wife. What foolishness creeps through your pathetic mind?”

“It is only through the goodwill of King Nethas that you are still alive,” Patrikan said, leaning over Kerrick with a look of disgust. He snorted contemptuously. “Our king, in his wisdom, seems to have fond memories of your time at court … though he recognizes that you have abandoned all claim to his protection and favor. Perhaps our liege still believes those stories about your father’s heroism in the war. As for me, I knew Dimorian Fallabrine for the pirate that he was, and I can see that his dubious legacy lives well in you. Like your father, you have no sense of your proper station, no awareness of your betters.”

Darnari dropped to one knee and let Kerrick see the silvery point of a dagger that waved very close to his tear-blurred eyes. “Not even the king’s favor will protect you if you ignore this warning.” The blade sliced through his shirt and left a burning trail of blood on Kerrick’s chest. “If you go near, if you look at, if you even mention my sister’s name again I will kill you.”

“Not that you have a prayer of ever seeing her, or this place, again,” declared Waykand Isletter. He had a sword drawn, and it looked to Kerrick as though the king’s favor meant very little when weighed against the lord’s desire for bloody revenge. “If I catch you in Silvanost, or anywhere in Silvansti, I will make it my business to kill you. So hear me well, sea-rat, and heed my words if you value your wretched life.”

Waykand’s sword touched Kerrick’s throat and he sobbed.

“Your father, at least, knew how to conduct himself in a fight. Whatever starch he had does not live in you,” declared the noble with contempt.

“Bah-his father had a lucky win in one battle,” snorted Patrikan. “The rest of the time he was consorting with humans or trading with kender. Finally he sailed to his destruction on a fool’s quest, leaving his progeny to befoul my daughter’s honor.”

“Gloryian!” The cry burst from Kerrick’s throat, as his eyes searched for her up in th balcony.

“Oh, you should know this,” Patrikan hissed hoarsely, rage choking his voice. “I have paid a fortune in gold to have the priest of E’li restore my daughter’s virginity and to banish whatever nightmarish memories you have given her. You are like a sickness that has been exorcised from her skull, a disease from the past that she will mercifully forget. She scorns you now and forever!”

Above Kerrick saw a white gown swaying. How many times had he tenderly removed that garment? His lover’s face was lost in shadow, darkened by the moon shining with mocking allure.

“Go away,” she called, and it was certainly Gloryian’s voice, though somehow hardened into a steel blade. “I will never see you again!”

“But-I love you!” These words, hoarsely exploding from his own lips, surprised him. Even through the fog of pain and humiliation he knew they were born of desperation and shame, not truth. Still, he shouted his love-his pride demanded it, required that he show these elves that his purpose was no less lofty than theirs.

He had the strange sense that his words might as well have been shouted into the sea-fog on a dark night. There was no echo, no sense even that anyone had heard. When Gloryian stepped forward to look down at him he saw the brightness of her eyes against the moonlight, and in that shiny blankness he saw nothing, no hint of the warmth or the vibrancy he had known so well.

“She has been changed, I tell you!” hissed Patrikan in his ear. “The priests have cleared the fog from her mind, so that the sight of you turns her stomach, and all knowledge of your intimacy has been excised from her memory!”

What else had they taken from her? As Gloryian turned and, trancelike, walked back into her rooms, Kerrick could think of nothing else to say, no words that would bring her back. The wraithlike image of white silk vanished into the shadows as strong hands grasped his forearms and began to drag him along the ground.

“This is how you repay me? By consorting with the first daughter of an Elder House?”

King Nethas betrayed no emotion in his face, nor did his voice reveal any trace of anger. Nevertheless, Kerrick recoiled from the words, felt a tremendous guilt. How was it that he had never imagined this, never stopped to reflect how his actions would seem to the king-to this elven patriarch who had given Kerrick shelter and direction in the years of his young adulthood, who had offered him a place to belong and thrive, when his parents had been claimed by the sea?

Now he, Kerrick, had betrayed that trust.

“I’m sorry, Sire-I-”

“Silence!” The regal elf, his eyes arching dispassionately, gestured to Waykand Isletter and Patrikan Diradar. “What punishment do you suggest?”

“He is not fit to live,” declared the younger elf, Gloryian’s affronted suitor, “but I know that we are not barbarians, not a people who put our own to death. So I want him banished forever. Yes, banished-brand him a dark elf!”

“I agree-his name and memory should be wiped from the People’s lives. A dark elf!” Patrikan was as vehement as the nobleman.

Kerrick slumped hopelessly within the arms of his two captors. There could be no worse fate for a Silvanesti than such condemnation. A dark elf was forever exiled, and even his name was stricken from the memories of his people, never to be uttered again.