David Chandler - A thief in the night

“All right,” Aethil said. She had a new look on her face, a kind of guarded doubt that Malden didn’t like at all.

Cythera spoke quickly, though, and soon Aethil was nodding along. “When we first encountered your soldiers,” she said, “I was surprised to find that they spoke Skraeling-the language of my people. The accent is different, and the pronunciation of some words radically so, but we seem to be able to understand each other just fine.”

Malden had wondered about that himself. In the course of subsequent events-their capture, their imprisonment, the threat of immediate death, and being forced to act as if he were Slag’s servant-he supposed he’d put it out of mind. Yet it was wondrously strange. Not even all humans spoke the same tongue. He’d met sailors from Skilfing and the Rifnlatt and the other Northern Kingdoms, and was unable to understand a word of their speech-much less the courtly and decadent language of the Old Empire, with its myriad tenses and declensions. The dwarves had their own language as well, and even used a different alphabet. Yet the elfin and Skraeling tongues sounded almost identical.

“Your soldier told me that I was speaking elfin,” Cythera said with a little laugh. “I was hoping you might shed some light on this puzzle.”

The doubt on Aethil’s face had turned to pity by the time Cythera finished. “You poor creatures. You don’t know your own history, do you?”

“I beg your pardon?” Cythera asked.

“But of course, your lives are short, and you have no ancestors to teach you.” Aethil placed a delicate hand on Cythera’s arm. “You speak our language and we speak yours because they are the same language.”

“But-how?” Malden asked.

Aethil tilted her head to one side. “What do you know of your past? Do they teach you even that your people came from the Old Empire, exiled by decree? That you landed on the shores of this continent with nothing but what you could carry away? It sounds as if they don’t teach you at all about the age of brotherhood our people shared.”

“No, they never mentioned that,” Malden agreed. “Because there was no such age.” He looked at Cythera. “Was there? We fought the elves, and we won. That’s what I learned.”

Aethil laughed. “Oh, perhaps. But not until later. When you landed here, it’s true there were a few skirmishes, as we didn’t know what you wanted. Soon, though, we realized you couldn’t even feed yourselves. You didn’t know what plants were edible and which were poisonous. You had never seen snow, and you weren’t ready for the first winter. You would have died out if we didn’t take pity on you.”

Cythera shook her head. “You’re saying that our forebears relied on the elves for survival? That we weren’t matched in constant warfare for the land?”

“Hardly. The continent is enormous! There was plenty of room for both our nations. We took you under our wing. Taught you how to survive here, and more. We taught you our language and even how to work magic. For centuries we lived amongst each other-even intermarrying, though, sadly, our unions never bore fruit.” This with a longing glance at Slag. “Oh, you humans. We loved you, as Elders should love their juniors.”

“But something happened,” Malden said. “Something changed. There was a war. There was a war that lasted what, twenty years?” He looked to Cythera and she nodded.

“Oh, yes,” Aethil agreed. “And it only ended when we came here.”

“But-why? If we were so happy together?”

Aethil blinked her eyes. “You don’t even know about the Prophetess? How one of our own-an Elder, one of our Hieromagi-betrayed her own people? How she taught your people religion and turned them against us? She demanded that the humans worship her, and they did. Then she went too far, and demanded we worship her as well, that we renounce the ancestors and take her as our only goddess. When we refused, she set you at our destruction.”

“We- She- Who- But what…?” Malden was so confused he couldn’t speak. He’d never heard any of this.

“You rose up against us, and we were caught unawares,” Aethil went on. “It was all done with great stealth and cunning. In one night you slaughtered nine of every ten Elders in their beds. Those few who survived held out for twenty years, but in the end we retreated here.”

“That’s not the story we tell at all,” Cythera said.

It damned well wasn’t. Malden felt the blood rush out of his face at the thought. If all this was true… He’d never been particularly proud of his country, or his people. They were far too base and hypocritical to allow that. But he’d never thought their history was one of mass murder and deceit.

It seemed his people had good reason to want the elves locked away and forgotten. Suddenly he understood why nobody had broken open the Vincularium in so many centuries-because they didn’t want to learn the secrets it held.

Perhaps discomfited by the story she’d told them, Aethil took her leave of them for a while. She went and sat with a group of children struggling over a history lesson, and coached them through the hard words and the complicated tenses of elfin writing. Malden saw how much love and reverence even these children showed their queen, and he thought he finally understood her place in elfin society. She gave the workers something to believe in, an emblem of their traditions and heritage. The Hieromagus must find her very useful, he thought, for keeping the workers in line. So then why, he pondered, had he gone to the trouble of making her fall in love with Slag, which could only discredit her with these people?

Speaking of the dwarf, Malden looked around and saw him climbing on a high bookshelf. A ladder had been mounted on the wall for this purpose. Slag drew one slim volume off a top shelf, then scrambled down to floor level and started paging through it. Apparently he didn’t find what he was looking for, because he started to climb back up again.

Cythera grabbed the hem of his robe and pulled him back down. “We need to make a plan,” she said. “This tour is almost over. We’ll never have a chance like this again.”

“You mean to make a run for it now,” Malden said, nodding. “We’ll need a diversion. Slag, you could grab one of the children and threaten to-”

“Absolutely not!” Cythera cried out.

Aethil looked up from the lesson to study the three of them with questioning eyes. Cythera made a great show of smiling and bowing before Slag, as a proper shieldmaiden should.

When they were unobserved again, she went on. “I won’t allow that, Malden. These children are innocents. Don’t you believe in anything?”

“Not if it keeps me imprisoned in this pretty cage,” he told her.

“Lad, lass, calm yourselves. We can’t make a break for it now anyway. Where would we go?”

“The escape shaft. The one Balint opened up for us,” Malden insisted.

The dwarf shook his head. “Forget it, lad. That’s clear on the other fucking side of the Vincularium. Assuming we even made it back to the central shaft, I could lead you there, aye, but you saw those worm tunnels the elves have made. They’d be there waiting for us. No, we need a better plan than just legging it. I still think if we work on yon queen of peons, we can convince her to make a case for us, and get us released. She’ll do anything I-”

He stopped speaking because Aethil had finished her lesson and was coming toward them. “I’m so sorry for that,” she said. “You’ve been so patient, waiting for me. But now, let us return to our tour. I have something very important to show you.”

“Of course, your highness,” Cythera said.

“Sir Croy?” Aethil said. “Now what are you doing up there?”