Douglas Niles - Kagonesti

"I am beginning to think you speak the truth," he admitted. With this thought on his mind, he finally slept.

The next day, the maddened intruders were wild boars-three of them. The creatures stampeded into the camp, heads lowered, and charged at the first Kagonesti they saw. This was Dallatar, who ducked out of the way. But one of the young girls, trying to run, was tossed high by a tusked snout and suffered a broken arm. She cried shrilly as Iydahoe and the older youths finally slew the maddened animals with spears and arrows.

Once more the wild elves dragged the meat away from the village and left it to rot. Vanisia showed her clerical gift as a healer in mending and splinting the broken bone, but when she prayed to her goddess for aid in healing, those beseechments went unanswered. All her concentration and effort could not bring a response from the angered deities of Krynn-there would be no miraculous recovery.

On successive days, wolves, hawks, even rabbits and squirrels, dashed into the village in berserk frenzy. The youngest Kagonesti wielded clubs and threw stones, joining the rest to battle the unnatural onslaught. On the seventh night, the wild elves moved from their lodges into a large, dry cave that stood in one of the grotto's walls. There they slept fitfully, always with several sentries posted to keep their eyes on the night's exceptionally deep darkness.

Late in the morning of the ninth day, a bear lurched into the village. The brute drooled, snapping foaming jaws as it peered around with dim, bloodshot eyes. Iydahoe ordered the rest of the tribe into the cave and faced the monster alone. He shot many arrows into the bear before it charged, roaring. Then he chopped with his axe as the bear mauled the elf. The two combatants rolled across the ground, the elf snarling as fiercely as the bear. Claws raked Iydahoe's ribs as the steel axe bit again and again into the crazed animal's side.

It was that keen blade that ultimately saved him, slashing through the arteries in the monster's neck. Iydahoe's tribemates dragged the corpse off the bleeding, ravaged warrior, but the wild elf would not lie still and let Vanisia tend his wounds. Instead, he stumbled to his feet, shaking his bleeding fists at the equally gruesome forest.

"Why do you turn on us?" Iydahoe cried. The pain from his wounds was nothing compared to the spiritual betrayal he felt. His rage was mindless, directed at the woods and mountains themselves. The corruption of tree and wild beast was too much, too vile, to bear.

"Come and kill me-now!" he shrieked. 'The bear was too weak! Give me a real killer! Or are you afraid?"

He didn't know who he shouted at as he wildly looked around, but suddenly his eyes fixed on a focus for his rage, his despairing sense of abandonment. Blindly he stumbled to the mat where the shards of the Ram's Horn lay.

"Take back your gifts!" he railed. "Useless, pathetic symbols. What use are they to us!"

The elves of the tribe watched in shock as he picked up the shards, threw them by the handful into the woods, cursing and shouting until, at last, he collapsed into a ragged heap.

Deeply shaken, Bakali and Kagwallas carried him into the cave. Finally Iydahoe felt shame, knowing his outburst must have terribly frightened the Kagonesti. Still, there was that bleak, all-consuming despair…

If it hadn't been for the presence of Vanisia, Iydahoe felt that these dire portents might have caused the loss of his own sanity. Yet when his despair seemed darkest, when hopelessness settled over his mind like a burial shroud, she would ask him questions, gently direct his attention back to the mundane life of the tribe-such as it was. Sometimes she just held his hand, and the touch of her soft skin was the strength, the hope that sent a few rays of light spilling through his despair. At other times, they exchanged legends about their peoples. He told her of the Grandfather Ram and Father Kagonesti, while she spoke of wise Silvanos and his long, troubled legacy.

They shared these tales with the young ones and talked of lighter things as well. Vanisia allowed the girls to play with the large, coiled shell that was her belt buckle, explaining that it came from an ocean shore. For hours Faylai and Tiffli listened, rapt, as she told them of beaches and waves and the sea. Then the youngsters held the shell to their ears, listening, imagining the distant surf.

The elves drank water sparingly and slept as best they could. Always after dark the winds came, each night louder, more furious than the last. Shreds of bark were ripped from the roofs of the lodges, and dead leaves swirled into the low kettle of the grotto. One by one the smaller lodges had collapsed under the unnatural onslaught.

Vanisia passed some of the time by making herself a pair of sturdy moccasins, using scraps of hide from the ruined lodges. She was so successful in her endeavor that, in short order, she made footwear for several of the other Kagonesti-and taught the youngsters to do the same. Her silent labors were a source of reassurance, of normalcy to them all, and the young elves brightened perceptibly, wearing their first new clothes in fourteen years.

On the twelfth morning, Iydahoe awakened to a bleak silence. He saw Vanisia sitting in the mouth of the cave, looking outward. When she noticed that he was awake, she held a finger to her lips and gestured that he should join her.

"What is it?" he whispered, apprehensive.

"Look. I don't know where he came from, but he hasn't moved since first light."

Iydahoe was shocked to see an elderly elf standing under the drooping branches of an oak, apparently observing the battered village from the shelter of the forest. The stranger's hair was long and pure white, and he supported his frail frame by leaning on a stout, crooked staff. A pattern of faded ink seemed to darken the elf's skin in places, and Iydahoe wondered if he saw an oak leaf tattoo over the fellow's left eye. If he had been marked as a Kagonesti, the inking had been done so long ago that it had all but faded.

For a few minutes Iydahoe observed the old fellow, noting his ragged robe of deerskin, his bare feet, and his emaciated physique. The stranger looked back, seeing the two elves sitting in the door of the lodge but making no move to approach or retreat.

Finally, Iydahoe rose to his feet. Slowly, with a peculiar sense of reverence, he went outside, under the sickly green heavens. The trees had ceased to bleed, and a stillness had settled over the entire forest. The warrior wrestled with an unsettling sense that he and this old elf were the only two living creatures currently under that oppressive sky.

"Come, Grandfather. You are welcome here," he said politely, using the honorary term for an elder Kagonesti. "We have jerky and dried fruit. Join us as we break our fast."

The white-haired elf simply stared, though his dark hazel eyes sparkled. Iydahoe sensed that he had heard every word, but still the ancient figure made no movement, no reply.

"Do you hear me, Grandfather?" he asked.

"I hear-but do you, wild elf?" The stranger's voice was strong and resonant, a surprisingly forceful sound emerging from that frail chest.

"What should I hear?" Iydahoe was puzzled.

"You offer me help, but you cannot help me. Nor can I help you."

"Is there any help, any hope?" asked the warrior.

"You call me Grandfather, and this is wrong. Seek him, wild elf. Seek the true Grandfather of us all. Know the legends, and you shall know where to find him."

Iydahoe blinked, surprised by the elf's words, and by the serene confidence with which they were spoken. As he tried to formulate a reply, he realized that, in the space of his blink, the ancient hermit had disappeared.

"Did you see where he went?" he asked Vanisia, who emerged from the cave to look around. She shook her head, and he crossed the village clearing to look behind the great oak. Not only did he see no sign of the stranger, but the muddy ground where the elf had stood was bare of any footprint.