T Lain - The Living Dead

“Soveliss, I say we are old friends, and I meant that literally. A millennium ago, you fought at our side.”

“What?” Devis exclaimed. “Diir isn’t a day over a hundred! Look at the guy.”

“The sword you carry, Soveliss,” Zalyn continued, “is called the Mor-Hakar. The Death-Killer. After we sealed Cavadrec beneath the mountain—renamed Morsilath, mountain of death—”

“Always thought that was because of all the wights,” Devis interrupted.

“The wights, Devis, are there because of the Buried One,” Zalyn explained. “They were unfortunate explorers who delved into the mountain and discovered his prison.”

With Devis mollified, Zalyn continued her tale. “Soon after we imprisoned the Buried One, Favrid, Gunnivan, Muhn, and I learned that our solution for containing his evil was far from perfect. Moradin was more than enough to keep the fallen cleric underground, but Ehlonna can be capricious. She had been injured greatly by Cavadrec’s savagery and needed time to heal after she helped us confine the madman.

“I’m afraid the Mother of Elves fell asleep,” said Zalyn. “Wanderers in the tunnels below the forest were able to break into the Buried One’s prison, as I said before. Ehlonna, more worried about the growth of trees than the confinement of a hated enemy, was not able to prevent their access. These hapless souls were converted by Cavadrec into wights and began wandering back into the world. These wights have plagued Dogmar and these woods for centuries. We elves of Silatham have kept them in check.”

The bard nodded. “That explains why so few get out.”

“Correct,” Zalyn agreed. “The three of us realized we needed to destroy Cavadrec once and for all. He was, after all, an elf, and could easily live as long and Favrid and I intended to. Because of Ehlonna’s distraction, however, we needed to bide our time for her to recover.

“You, Soveliss—or ‘Diir’ if you prefer, that’s actually a pretty good joke—volunteered to help. The village could spare only one ranger after our battles with Cavadrec. You stepped forward, the commander of the last remaining troop. You were given the Mor-Hakar to hold, and Favrid proceeded to turn you and the sword into stone.”

Diir—no, Soveliss, Mialee reminded herself—was stunned. Mialee didn’t blame him. It wasn’t every day you learned you’d been a statue for a thousand years, although it wasn’t like his transformation was news.

“I am…a thousand years old?” said Soveliss. For the elf, his raised eyebrows were equivalent to anyone else’s screaming fit.

“Chronologically, you are aged one thousand and ninety-three years,” Zalyn replied, “but the preservation offered by your millennium of transmutation ensured that the Mor-Hakar and the power infused within by Ehlonna would never want for the steady hand of a Silatham Ranger. We buried you on the battlefield of Morkeryth, beneath the ruins of our last outpost to fall before Cavadrec surrounded Silatham. That’s the same place where we ultimately confined him. Many, many bodies have been laid low beneath that hallowed ground. You were simply another body beneath the earth, but you held a critical part of Cavadrec’s ultimate destruction.”

Mialee scribbled a question on a scrap and shoved the paper under Zalyn’s nose.

“Yes, he did,” the diminutive elf nodded.

“Did what?” Devis said.

“Mialee asked if Favrid released Soveliss from petrifaction. Clayn tells me Favrid left Silatham a week ago. He planned to retrieve you, Soveliss, and bring you to Dogmar to meet the others. I was still in the temple, of course, but Favrid contacted me with telepathy. I warned him not to be foolish, to at least take Clayn with him, but he refused. He has the stubbornness of a millenarian. Cavadrec struck just as the spell to return Soveliss to us was nearing completion.”

Mialee drew a finger across her throat quizzically.

“Yes, the spell failed to complete. Much of his mind was left as stone.”

“I remembered this place,” Soveliss said distantly. “I remember something like it, before this, I mean. And something else. It’s close and urgent, but…”

Zalyn produced a pinch of something Mialee didn’t recognize and tossed it into the air with a wave of her hand. The little elf intoned a brief incantation, and Mialee saw the twinkling-light aura of a transmutative field fan out from Zalyn’s fingertips. The sparkling field wrapped around Soveliss’s head like a turban, then dissolved through his helm and into his skull. Soveliss was dumbstruck, his face flooded with recognition of everything at once.

“Sorry I didn’t do that earlier,” Zalyn said apologetically, sounding like her young gnomish self. “It’s been a long time since I’ve cast that spell, I had to study it this morning. And you have to admit this is more dramatic. Gunnivan would have liked it.”

Diir/Soveliss’s brow raised even higher as his eyes bugged at Zalyn. “I have a family!” he whispered.

“Yes,” Zalyn said, inclining her head to Clayn.

“Shocked, shocked, I am,” Devis said, and rubbed the knot on the back of his head. “They’re nothing—ow—alike.”

“Ellyra,” Soveliss hissed lividly after a few tortured seconds, “She’s, she’s not here. And the children. Where are they, elder?”

Mialee was stunned. The familiar, peculiar Silatham accent was there, but a new man inhabited the elf’s skin. The ranger—for he could be nothing else, Mialee thought—made an angry move toward the elder cleric.

Zalyn closed her eyes and bowed her head, and Clayn moved to put himself between his apparent ancestor and the little elf.

“They do not walk with the wightlings,” Clayn said, placing a hand on Soveliss’s shoulder and looking him in the eye. “They all died over a hundred years ago, in the woods north of Silatham.” The ranger grimaced. “Wolf attack. Nothing supernatural about it, maybe that’s why we didn’t expect it.” Clayn’s gaze narrowed at Zalyn, and it held a hint of the same fire that Soveliss barely held in check. “I was only ten.”

“He was the only survivor,” Zalyn said sadly. “But it was not a random attack. I fear it was something more. It is tied to the reason our enemy proves nearly indestructible.”

“Excuse me, your eldership,” Hound-Eye growled, “I’ve ‘destroyed’ an elf or two. It don’t take a magic elf-sticker. You people bleed like anyone.”

Every elf in the room—along with the one bird—frowned at the scruffy little man in bloody furs, even Devis, who had heard all about the halfling’s elf-fighting exploits. Clayn actually let his swords clear a full inch of their scabbards.

“Well, I have. You ain’t all just about life and goodness, are you? I killed elf bandits what tried to kill me and mine. Any of you’d done the same,” Hound-Eye retorted. “And anyway, this feller isn’t an elf anymore, is he? He’s a bloody wight of some kind. I’ve killed wights, too.” He opened his palms outward. “No magic.”

“Hound-Eye, please accept my apologies. The rangers were forced to take action against those who would disturb the Buried One, and your people—”

“Apology, hell! You bloodless sons of kobolds killed any halfling you found more’n a mile outside Tent City,” Hound-Eye barked.

Mialee thought he might actually draw his pick, but he simply clenched his fists.

Zalyn darkened and locked her gaze at the little man’s good eye with a scowl wholly out of place. “You exaggerate, Hound-Eye. Your people—and many others, I’ll grant you—were trying to burrow into the mountain for a cache of riches that never existed,” she snapped, jamming her finger in the halfling’s face. “We gave up trying to warn your people away hundreds of years ago, and resigned ourselves to killing any who were found before they could become Cavadrec’s servants. The loss of every one of those lives wounded me as deeply as the Buried One wounded Ehlonna. I am sorry for your loss. Either do me the courtesy of sparing me your self-pity or restrain yourself. If you cannot do so out of respect for those you claim to have held so dear, you’re welcome to take the matter up with the dead of my village.”