Soldier Undaunted -- Chapter 4.2

In the forest far beyond the fire’s glow Arden sat upon a rock with Argos beside him. His anger slowly cooled, but the better part of an hour went by before he was calm enough to think clearly. It had been many years since the rage that nearly destroyed him after the Fall had burned so fiercely. Tonight he had to leave the camp to contain it. Now Arden began rehearsing what Evénn had said about the dragons. He turned the information over and over in his mind: how the dragons had first appeared long ago; how they had been defeated; how the same dragons had returned thirty years ago, stronger in unison than ever they had been alone; and how the truth of their nature had been concealed, lest they return once more.

“Wait. What did he mean by that?” he said aloud. “What were his words? ‘Lest the misguided or evil later seek to bring them back?’ What does that mean? That they can be summoned into this world, by us? But who would do that? And why?”

The thought of it made Arden feel sick. He sat there rigidly, fists clenched and arms folded tightly across his chest.

“The consequences of our actions,” he said at last as he stood up. “Our actions.”

Arden’s wrath blazed up within him once more. These were questions that Evénn must answer without riddling or evasion. When the Ranger reached the camp, he found Evénn sitting much as he had left him an hour ago.

“Are you calmer now?” the elf asked softly without looking up.

Arden ignored this, and proceeded.

“You said that the true nature of the dragons was concealed, so that no one would seek to bring them back.”

“Yes.”

“So they can be summoned from the world of the spirits?”

“Yes.”

“And we are now paying the price because someone did so?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

When the elf finally looked up, graven on his face was the saddest look Arden had ever seen, rife with pain and regret for a secret that had caused untold harm. If Arden had not been so consumed by anger, it would have broken his heart. Yet a sickening dread of the answer crawled within him. For all that, he had to know.

“Who?” he snarled, impatient of even a moment’s respite.

“We did,” Evénn responded.

“You? The elves?”

“Yes.”

The pain of thirty years of mourning came roaring up from the darkness within Arden, and filled the heart that he thought could hold only bitterness. It blinded him to everything but hatred and vengeance. All Arden’s broken childhood faith in god, in the songs, in their hero, all his grief for friends lost, family lost, country lost – all this long despair – all his wonder at meeting Evénn, and all the tender hope that had flickered within him against his will, burst from him in a desperate howl of fury.

His sword swept from its sheath in a great arc. Its blade glittered red in the firelight, seeming to glow with the flame of Arden’s passion to slay this elf, this hero of a people who had betrayed the age old trust and loyalty of his own and murdered them. In this madness all Arden knew was that Evénn must die.

He leaped across the fire, and swung his sword at Evénn, who rolled out of the way and sprang to his feet, drawing his own sword in time to deflect Arden’s next stroke. Without word or cry, Arden pressed his attack, his sword slashing and thrusting at the elf. Evénn parried and moved aside again and again, always giving ground. Throughout Evénn was calm and in control, circling backwards around the clearing, his feet always sure beneath him, his swordplay quick and deft. Arden attacked and Evénn defended. Their blades rang constantly. Their feet scuffled in the dirt. The dog and wolf lowered their heads and looked on, uncertain.

At length Arden’s body could no longer sustain the fury of his onslaught. His breathing became labored. His sword weighed heavily in his hands. Though nearly staggering with exhaustion, he kept up the attack, but now Evénn stopped and held his ground. Now he began to drive Arden back. In four blows he disarmed the Ranger; his fifth slashed the dull edge of his curved sword across Arden’s ribs, driving the wind from his lungs even as he turned to reach for the blade that Evénn had just struck from his hand. Then the elf was upon him and threw him to the ground. His sword caressed Arden’s throat.

Arden eyed the hilt of his sword, which lay only inches from his outstretched hand.

“It’s no use,” Evénn warned. The pressure of his blade increased.

Arden glared up at him, his eyes burning with tears that never fell. For several minutes they remained still, neither moving. A passerby would have thought them statues, but not even Haldor of Talor could have rendered the regret in Evénn’s countenance or the fury in Arden’s. The mad light in the Ranger’s eye slowly dimmed. The elf put up his sword and walked away.

“Why?” Arden sat up and asked, his voice still thick with passion.

“Why indeed?” Evénn said, with a flash of bitterness. “I wish you had asked before you tried to kill me. Why? Folly and error. You recall I spoke of the temptations of the elves?”

“Yes.”

“In the tale of our years the world seemed to grow old. We mistook change for decline, and thought the world better and more beautiful long ago. We saw suffering and wished to right it. We saw illness and wished to cure it. We wearied of watching all but ourselves wither. We wanted to restore the way we thought things had been. Perhaps if so many of our friends and kin had not died in the first war, we would have been wiser. In the end we forgot that the world was as the creator allowed it to be, for reasons we did not need to understand.”

“But how could the dragons fix all that?” Arden asked wearily. “Good cannot come from evil.”

“Perhaps not. But the evil dragons were not the ones the elves wished to summon.”

“There are others?”

“Nine in all,” Evénn replied.

“Nine?” Arden said. “My teachers never – ”

“Your teachers did not know of them,” Evénn murmured. “The tale is told only in our most ancient writings.”

“And the elves saw fit to withhold this knowledge from us,” Arden said in disgust, “as if we were children.”

“But to us you are as children, my friend,” Evénn said, but with such kindness that the anger which glimmered in Arden’s eyes faded until it could scarcely be told from the flicker of the campfire. “Even among my own people there were never many who possessed this knowledge, and by the time the dragons came again only a few remained who could have read the tale if they had known where to find it.”

“Perhaps if more had known these secrets, the folly of the elves might have been checked.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. The many can be as unwise as the few, Arden, and just as arrogant.”

“Tell me of these dragons, Evénn.”

“God’s first children were the one and the eight: the great dragon, the mightiest of all, through whom god made the world; and the eight who labored with him to carry out the creator’s designs as he made them known to the one. But when they had done so, and creation unfolded in splendor before them, four of the eight mistook for their own the power they wielded by god’s sufferance. They smiled to think that this realm of the dawn was theirs to do with as they chose. When the other four chastised them for their presumption, they would not repent. Then the great dragon appeared, but still they would not submit. He cast out the four, out beyond the three worlds, where even the starlight does not go.

“But from the wastes of their exile they sent whispering dreams of power to elves and men. All these fools needed to do to invite them from the darkness to the light was sing the words of a great incantation. Dominion over all things would be theirs. All lies. But one listened and brought evil upon the world.”

“You mean Talinar, I suppose,” Arden said. “Yet another truth you hid from us. Tell me, did you slay him as the songs say, or is that another lie?”

“Yes, I slew him,” Evénn answered, “but even so the dragons remained, and many brave men and elves perished to destroy them.”

“What happened this time?” Arden asked.

“Many of our people felt that, if we could but summon the good dragons, the world might be restored with their help to what it was before the others had come.”

“But even then there was sickness and death and injustice.”

“True, even then the world was so, but my people forgot that. Some of us tried to remind them. They would not listen. They remembered the world as they preferred to remember it. Perhaps they, too, heard the whispers of the evil ones in their dreams, more cunning now than of old, this time promising the power to heal and restore instead of the power to dominate and control. As I said, time changes us, too, and we can deceive ourselves as well as any man.”

“How then did the evil ones come when the elves summoned the good? Surely even foolish elves would have recognized what the song of enchantment meant.”

“That is where error complements folly. It was the same enchantment. Only the name of the spirits they wished to summon was different, but the difference between the names was quite subtle, amounting to the slightest distinction in the intonation of a vowel and the aspiration of a consonant. Only a great loremaster of our ancient language could hear and pronounce it. But the one who did so erred. With a slip of the tongue, he named the wrong beings, and in naming called them.”

“What makes you so sure it was a mistake?”

“The loremaster was my father.”

“Your father! But he was a wise king, or so the songs tell us.”

“Yes, he was wise. But the last of the songs was composed eleven hundred years ago, before even your last king put off his crown and established the Republic. Did I not say that even we change? In longing for what he thought had been before the dragons first came, and in desiring to cure the ills of this world, his wisdom failed. He was not alone in this. Nearly all of the elf lords felt as he did, but the imperfection of their vision betrayed the good they intended. Blaming the evil dragons for the wrongs of the world, they concluded that the good dragons would restore the balance. And maybe they would have, had they come. Those elves were fools, my father included, but honest fools. The misspoken word was a mistake, terrible and fateful, but a mistake nonetheless.

“The moment my father erred, he knew what was to come; he knew his folly for what it was. He put forth all his powers of enchantment to attempt to prevent the barrier between this world and that of the spirits from opening. He fought to stop the dragons even as they entered and became incarnate. All the elf lords fought beside him, but their strength was too little, just as their wisdom had been too late. They are all dead now.”

“How did you survive?”

“I was not there. They were all far to the east in the Valley of Encounter, where your people and mine first met long ago. Only atop the Tower of Memory could the spell be cast. My brother told me what happened. Of all those present, he alone escaped. The dragons let him live. They wanted him to bear witness. For that I pity him. My father and the elf lords did not live to witness the darkness they brought upon us. My brother was not so fortunate. He perished in our homeland, in the last battle, the same as your brother.”

“It sounds to me,” Arden said, “as if your father and the others justly paid for the ill they caused. It is the innocent who were unfortunate.”

“I cannot dispute that.”

“Good. So where were you when this happened? Why did you not try to stop it?”

“I did. I tried to dissuade them, I and the few who felt as I did. We told them there was no need, that the world was as it should be, that it was too dangerous, that even the wise made mistakes and that the wise should know that and be guided by us. Until the moment they set sail from Elashandra for the east we kept trying. Whether they were deceived by the dragons, or merely by themselves, they were deaf to all we said. I remained behind and prayed that I was wrong. Yet the instant my father misspoke the name of the beasts, a shadow fell upon my heart, and I knew that we were lost.”

“You should have stopped them, fought them, not let them go.”

“Was I to raise my sword against my father, then? And my brother? And all those we held wise for thousands of years? That’s easy to say, Arden.” Evénn paused and sighed heavily. “But often in the night, when the dead seem as innumerable as the stars themselves, I have thought it would have been better.”

“Yes,” Arden responded, “it would have. For thousands of years we thought you wise, and we have become slaves, or outlaws, or corpses because of it.”

“As have my people,” said Evénn.

“But your people, not mine, brought this upon us all. And the battle you fought outside Elashandra was not the last battle, Evénn. That was fought at Narinen. We had no warning the dragons were coming. We didn’t know you had already betrayed us. For all your good intentions, you loosed this plague upon us. You speak of folly, but it was pride that led your people to it. You thought you could do anything. You forgot, as you said a little while ago, that it is better not to meddle in some affairs at all.

“I fought in that last battle, a boy believing in all that I had been taught of the elves, and god, and justice, and you, Evénn. And you. The fields before Narinen, my city, the shattered gates and houses, the streets choked with the dead and the dying, the smoking rubble of nearly two thousand years of history – those were the last battlefield. Not many survived. I have often wished I didn’t. All love, all faith perished that day, on the altar of elvish pride. But still I would not conjure dragons, good or evil, not even to win back all who died that day.”

“That,” Evénn said, “is not what I saw in your eyes when I first mentioned the possibility of such things to you. I liked that look even less than the madness I saw there a little while ago. Your fury I understand. I can’t blame you for it. But that look in your eyes? I have seen it before and no good came of it.”

“Then I did not know what had happened. Now I do.”

“Yes, now you do. And so do the elves.”

“We have learned too late then,” said Arden.

“That is the way of things.”

Throughout their talk, Arden had remained seated on the ground. Now he climbed to his feet, his side aching. Bending to pick up his sword, he winced.

“That was quite a heavy blow, Evénn,” Arden grunted.

“You aimed heavier at me, my friend. You left me little choice.”

“No, I suppose I didn’t. Forgive me for attacking you. None of this was your fault. And you’re right. I could not ask anyone to raise his sword against his father. I could not have done so either.”

“I know,” Evénn replied. “Now if you mix up some of the herbs I gathered for the horses, you will find yourself quickly healed.”

“But I have only watched you do it. I have not the skill.”

“You have enough for bruised ribs, and you heard the words I pronounced over them.”

“Very well,” Arden said and went to prepare the herbs, but before he had gotten far, Evénn called his name. There was a question in his tone.

“Yes, Evénn?”

“What do you want?”

“What do I want?”

“Yes, what do you want?”

“I want the world as it was when I was young of course,” he quietly answered.

“You can’t have that.”

“Then I would say I want to slay the dragons or die trying.”

“Why have you not tried before?”

“I was alone. When I was a boy, before I even came to the Rangers, they sent out two parties to kill the dragons. They failed and the price the dragons made our people pay for the attempt was horrible. Since then the Masters have said that it is not yet time to try again.”

“You are no longer alone,” Evénn said. “Would you try now?”

“Without hesitation.”

“Then perhaps I have found a part of what I have long sought.”

“Me?”

“One who is willing.”

“I am.”

“We shall speak more of this when we see the Masters. Now let us rest. Tomorrow the road grows steeper.”

__________________________

Chapter 5.1

Soldier Undaunted -- Chapter 4.1

Four

They spent the next week mostly in silence, speaking only at need as they made their way southeast towards the Rangers’ stronghold. On the third day of their journey they stopped outside a small village for supplies. They also sold the wagon, which they no longer needed, since Arden and Argos were now fully recovered. Evénn had entered the village alone, in case there were dragon’s men about, looking for Arden or other Rangers. He had driven a hard bargain for the wagon at the small livery stable, from no need of money, but to allay suspicion through boldness. For a stranger too willing to sell a good wagon at a bad bargain might have something to hide.

The silence of the elf troubled Arden little in itself. The years he had chosen to spend alone in the wilds had made fellowship and conversation rare passages in his life. Usually all the talking he did was to himself, or to Argos and Night; and they did not answer in words. It was only when he visited the Rangers’ stronghold that he knew anything of the free company of others, but with time such visits by him had become quite uncommon. In the last ten years he returned to the Valley only when duty or the Masters summoned him there. On the whole Arden preferred solitude and the exile of his thoughts, his memories, and his bitterness.

When he ventured into a town, he stayed briefly and said little. Though his garb and wolfhound revealed him as a Ranger to all, he revealed himself willingly to none. Some, like the innkeeper at Kinabra, and the other men and women old enough to remember the days before the dragons, guessed much of the life of this infrequent visitor from his countenance and spare words. They knew that hunted men, especially outlaws like the Rangers in these evil days, still yearned for the comfort of comrades. From a distance they offered what they could.

Arden did not deceive himself. He longed for friendship like the rest. Within him was a conflict he could never resolve. He wished to know others as he once had, but feared that gratifying this desire would leave him still more alone when those others also fell. His loneliness bred only loneliness.

So Evénn’s company on the road was as welcome to Arden as his silence. The quiet hours and miles left him to his thoughts. All the once held beliefs of his youth rose from the grave of Narinen to challenge the certainties that had taken their place. With the arrival of Evénn hope beckoned – for if the dragonslayer still lived, what more could be possible – but Arden defied hope. He had once believed in all that Evénn himself professed, and all that his survival into the withered, riven world of the dragons suggested. Arden rejected that world utterly. Suffering had so deformed his heart that even the appearance of a hero out of legend, who had defeated this same evil long ago, could not restore him. Years of doubt and grief, of solitary regret, were not forgotten in a few hours or days.

Evénn had said of the women of the farm that god could heal the hearts of those who wished healing. Yet for thirty years the Rangers had fought a losing battle against a stronger foe, whose numbers were always renewed while the Rangers dwindled through age, accident, and endless war. Theirs was a long defeat, devoid of final hope. They had become ashes waiting only for a last wind to scatter them into nothingness. What heart without hope could wish for healing? And what soul without faith could ask for it?

The little Evénn said in the first week touched on the craft of healing. He had discovered sores beneath the saddles of the troopers’ badly tended horses, and each day he spent some time treating them. He insisted that Arden help. As they worked, Evénn spoke of the gathering and preparation of the necessary herbs, a good store of which he kept in his saddle bags. He also spoke of the herbs’ history and the efficacy of each for various ills, explaining how to apply them and what prayers and spells to use. Beneath the elf’s skilled hands the horses, which had been skittish and unfriendly at first, quickly improved and took a great liking to Evénn. Within a few days they were following him like so many happy dogs at their master’s heels.

“Learning something of this craft will be useful to you,” Evénn often said to Arden during the week. “It is the same craft that healed you and your dog.”

By the ninth day the woods had so encroached on the path that they could no longer ride abreast, or even see Argos and the wolf, who rustled along beneath the dense thickets on either side. Several times the path seemed to end in a wall of dark green leaves. Yet Evénn pushed through without hesitation, never losing the almost invisible trail, which Arden thought was known only to Rangers. Even in the peaceful days before the Fall, few travelers ventured this deep into the woods, so remote from the nearest dwelling of men – the village where Evénn had sold the wagon, now six days’ journey behind them.

That evening Arden and Evénn rested beside their campfire. Above them to the east loomed the Gray Mountains, beyond which lay the last stronghold of the Rangers. All but the highest peaks, already touched with a blaze of snow, were doused in shadow. As Arden sat contemplating those summits and the ascent they would begin towards them the next morning, he listened to Argos and the wolf playing together. They leaped and rolled in the firelight, casting sudden flashes of shadow on the surrounding trees.

In the last week the two of them had become inseparable. They vanished into the gloom of the forest, to reappear again hours later, a pair of unlikely friends, returning shoulder to shoulder from adventures all their own that Arden and Evénn would never know. Not long ago Arden could never have imagined such a friendship, or that he would find himself gazing in admiration at the wolf’s long legged grace, as he did this evening. The wolf was beautiful.

“What is the wolf’s name?” Arden asked in the middle of their meal.

Evénn, seated across the fire from Arden as usual, looked over his shoulder at the wolf and the hound, who ceased their play at once and stared back, knowing that they were being talked about. Evénn turned back to Arden with a smile.

“I don’t know. He’s never told me.”

“Don’t tell me he speaks to you?” Arden asked incredulously.

“No, no,” Evénn replied, gently laughing, “but you know how it is with beasts sometimes. When you get them, you study them and consider what to call them. Then suddenly you know, as if somehow they have told you. That has never happened with him. Mostly I just call him ‘wolf’ and he doesn’t seem to mind.”

“I have never seen a wolf of his kind before. Where did you find him?

“Several years ago on a journey I took, far to the north where the snow falls all the year round, in the place you call the Fields of Winter, I came upon him and his pack one icy morning when the sky was as clear and blue as when the world was young. He was barely more than a cub then, but he walked out from the pack towards me, and has followed me since. He came, though I did not call him. He chose me.”

“What brought you to the lands of snow?” Arden asked. His people rarely went there. “Were you searching for something?”

“I am often searching for something. Sometimes I find it and sometimes it finds me. I don’t always know what it is until I see it, however.”

“I see,” Arden said with a grave nod of his head. “I had always heard that the elves spoke in riddles. Now I know it is true.”

“That’s only because you fail to grasp what we are saying.”

“There you go again.”

Evénn laughed aloud – deeply, joyfully, sadly – and the firelight flashed in his green eyes as he threw his head back in pleasure. Arden had not heard him laugh so heartily before. Suddenly he recalled a lesson that one of his old Masters had taught him, that laughter can reveal all of a man’s life in an instant. Arden asked himself how long Evénn must have lived to have a laugh like that.

“I have also heard,” he said, “that a man’s laugh tells much about him.”

“That is so,” Evénn answered with an sly grin, “and even more so with elves.”

Now it was Arden who laughed.

“Your laughter is bitter, my friend,” Evénn stated flatly.

Arden stopped suddenly.

“I have much to be bitter about,” he replied.

“You do,” said Evénn. “But the world as it is is not your doing.”

“True, but I must suffer the world as it is. What was is beyond recovery.”

“That is always so, with or without the dragons, but we may still change what will be, for both our peoples.”

“I don’t see how.”

“If you cannot imagine it, then you will never know.”

They resumed eating. Between mouthfuls Arden paused, wishing to ask Evénn what he meant, but the habit of despair sealed his lips. He could not ask; he would not hope. The elf said nothing. Arden changed the subject.

“When you mentioned your journey to the north, you said the sky was as blue and clear as when the world was young. Just how old are you?”

Evénn laughed that laugh again. “Well, I am not quite as old as that. Not enough to remember the youth of the world. That was just a manner of speaking. I remember a younger world, but not a young one.”

“So what was it like when the world was younger?”

“You grew up by the sea, did you not? I can hear the accents of the eastern ocean in your voice.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then you know the great tempests that come from the sea in late summer?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How does the world seem the day after one of those storms?” Evénn asked.

“As if the wind and rain had scoured it clean. The sky is more blue, the trees more green, the flowers more brilliant.”

“As if the world were new again?”

“Precisely.”

“That is how the world was long ago,” Evénn said. “Each dawn could have been the first, and each night the stars shone as if newly kindled by god. The world was as if just imagined. It was like the first love of youth fondly remembered in later years.”

Arden winced at that and Evénn saw it, but Arden pressed on.

“So, what happened? Why is it no longer that way?”

“Because everything in the world of elves and men grows and changes, Arden. Some things fade, but others replace them. At least it often seems that way to us.”

“The elves do not grow old.”

“Not in body, as men do, but we do grow old in heart sometimes, precisely as men do. For us it takes much longer. Men seldom live long enough to notice any changes in us, but we do change. Memory and hope, and longing for the things we have loved and lost, can mislead us, just as they do men. We, too, can mistake the differences we see, or think we see, for signs of decline. In lives as long as ours, with memories as long as ours, that can lead to terrible temptation.”

“To what?”

“To attempt to resurrect the world as we remember it, because we think our memories are true.”

“But how?” Arden said, his voice a doubtful whisper.

“There are ways of power to accomplish such ends, Arden, but they are perilous beyond measure. They are better left untried. Succeed or fail, the cost of them is too dear,” Evénn replied sternly. For in Arden’s eye he had caught a strange and eager glimmer he did not like. He had seen that light before, in other eyes. “It is too dear,” he warned.

Arden withdrew his gaze, and lowered his eyes to the fire.

“So how old are you, Evénn?” he asked, when he raised them again.

“I am nearly five thousand years old.”

With these words, the crushing weight of time came down upon Arden. For he could only imagine so much time in the pain of his own life. If he were an elf, he thought, he would have to bear that burden alone through uncounted years, until the ending of the world. What followed next was only worse. For he thought of how long he might have known joy, had he been an elf and the dragons never come. With that much time he might have lived to win Sorrow for his own in the end.

Evénn saw all this in Arden’s eyes, saw it overwhelming him – he had seen this look before, too – and he recalled how Arden had flinched only a few minutes ago.

“I can guess some of what you are feeling,” he said sympathetically. “Mortals always think of their sorrow as never ending, and that the weight of the years must be unsupportable. They gasp at the thought of it, and gasp again when they consider the brighter possibilities of time. But it is not like that. Not quite. There is enduring pain, to be sure, and long joy, but there is also a point of balance between the two that one can find, whether elf or man.

“In a life that spans the life of the earth, we have more chances to attain that balance, but also more to lose it because there is so much more to grieve for. I have seen thousands of your kind die. To miss one you love for a generation seems long to you, and for you it is; but in five thousand years of the sun I have buried countless mortal friends, countless dogs, countless horses – all of whom I loved as you love Argos, and Night, and others – and the memory of them never leaves me.

“And though by nature the elves are deathless, chance and war can kill us, too. To lose those you have loved for a thousand years, and to mourn them for a thousand more – I lost my dearest blood in the first war with the dragons; and when they returned I lost my father and my brother as well. The dragons’ wrath fell hardest on us because we led the fight against them the last time. Now we are almost gone. Those who remain are scattered and hidden. Only a few walk beneath the open sky.”

“Like you?” Arden asked, with a look that said he was thinking of something else.

“Like me. They walk abroad in search of hope.”

“Hope!” Arden scoffed. “There is no hope.”

“If so, then we are all lost, your kind and mine. But if we do not search for it, then we do not deserve to survive.”

“I, too, lost my father and brother in the great war. My brother was with you across the sea. My father died in the fall of our city. They did not deserve that.”

“I am sure they did not. Your people fought bravely beside us that day at Elashandra, but in vain. Together we were a mighty force, but courage and strength were not enough. The dragons and their men were too many and too powerful. Our courage was overwhelmed. No tears could mourn the blood shed that day. ”

“But dragons have been defeated before if the songs are true,” said Arden, but Evénn could see he was still thinking.

“The songs are true, but, if you recall them, you will also remember that the dragons did not fight together then. That was their error, a mistake they did not repeat.”

“Wait,” Arden said slowly, and held up his hand. “You speak as if they are the same dragons.”

“They are.”

“But you killed them.”

“Yes.”

Without a word, Arden leaned forward. His narrowed eyes demanded an explanation.

“The dragons are not like us, Arden, creatures of flesh, blood, and bone, but eternal spirits of great power, who under certain conditions can cloak their majesty in flesh, and enter our world in the guise in which we see them. The bodies they put on, however, are mortal. So they can be slain, with great difficulty, as you know from the songs. Yet the dragons themselves do not die. They merely return to the world of spirits whence they came.

“In the first war, as I said, they did not act in concert; and so with the help of many others we were able to slay them one by one. When they returned thirty years ago they had profited by their mistakes – even evil can do so – and joined together to subdue us to their will, or destroy those who would not submit. That much power gathered in one place, and aided by men they had seduced or enslaved, was too much for the nations of elves and men. Thus we were defeated, and the night of our affliction began.”

“You say they are spirits, but I do not remember learning that.”

“No, that was concealed, lest the misguided or evil later seek to bring them back and benefit from standing by their side.”

“Why would god permit such evil spirits to enter the world?”

“Oh, now you believe in god? Or, do you ask,” Evénn smiled, “merely to reinforce your doubts because there can be no satisfactory answer?”

“We could do without your wit right now, Evénn,” Arden said sharply, stung by the elf’s reproof. “This is too serious for joking. My family and yours, my people and yours have been destroyed by these monsters, and despite what you say of hope and the future and deserving to survive, I see no remedy for this ill.”

“Very well, I shall give you a more serious answer. But forgive my wit. You reminded me of myself. Do you think you’re the only one to taste bitterness and doubt?” Evénn said. His smile faded, and he began again. “Why would god allow such evil? I don’t know. Nor do I know why god would allow plagues and earthquakes. He has never answered me that. But for this world to be ours, we must be free to face its troubles and the consequences of our actions. If god intervened – ”

“Oh, enough of god already, and your musings,” said Arden. His voice now was jagged with anger. “You were right the other night. You do go on, like a scholar in his study, but that world is dead, Evénn, and the boys and girls who sat at the feet of scholars and debated such questions are dead. Where was god when they died? Where has he been the last thirty years? The consequences of our actions? How can the dragons be the consequence of our actions? I ask you, where was god?”

“Where he has always been.”

“And enough of your elvish answers. Riddles and reflections are not what we need. We need to kill the dragons or die trying,” Arden shouted.

He jumped up and stalked off into the forest, followed by Argos.

Evénn sat with his head bowed. He did not watch them go, though the wolf peered into the gloom until even he lost sight of them. Then, with a plaintive moan, he dropped his head into Evénn’s lap.

“It’s all right, lad,” the elf said, lovingly stroking his face. “That took longer than I thought, but that’s a good thing. Now we’ll see about the rest.”

Evénn turned his head slightly, tucking his chin into his shoulder as if listening, but aside from the crackling of the fire there was nothing to hear for a long time. At last he sighed.

“Seek god first in small things, my friend,” he said to the man who was not there.

___________________________

Chapter 4.2

Soldier Undaunted -- Chapter 3.2

It was twilight when Arden opened his eyes again. The left side of his head burned and ached, but even lifting his hand to touch it made it hurt more. He was lying on his back in a cart, looking up at the sky, his vision too blurred to recognize the stars and tell morning from evening. For a few minutes he remained still, contending with his wound. The sky darkened. The watery stars grew brighter. It was evening, then. Suddenly he smelled smoke, and remembered the farm. Despite the pain seething in his head, Arden sat up and reached for his sword. Gone. Nor was his dagger at his belt.

He forced himself to look around. He was no longer at the farm. The wagon stood in a woodland clearing next to a path that disappeared almost at once into the night shadows of the trees. In the middle of the glade a man knelt beside a small fire, stirring something in a pot. His back was mostly turned to Arden, and between the shadow and the flame he was little more than a silhouette rimmed in light. But in his movements, in the way he leaned forward over the pot and in the slow circle his hand described with the spoon, there was calm and certainty.

Off to the right, out of easy reach and clearly visible in the firelight, lay the stranger’s sword, bow, and quiver. Arden had no doubt the man had placed them there deliberately, a sign that he meant no harm. There was something else, too, a little farther away, a roll of dark blue cloth about four feet long. Arden was wondering what it was when he caught sight of Argos staring at him across the fire, and heard his tail thumping the ground.

“Argos,” he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper of joy.

The hound slowly stood up and began limping his way over to him. Arden eased himself to the back of the cart and got out, shifting his eyes from the hound to the man and back again. The stranger never took his attention from the pot. Then the Ranger remembered him. This was the man who had slain the dragon’s men and saved his life, but Arden no more knew who he was than he had before.

He knelt and threw his arms around the dog, but his eyes still rested on the stranger by the fire.

“Oh,” Arden cried as the hound eagerly licked his face and made the side of his head ache. “Thank you, thank you,” he laughed and held the dog still closer, trying to keep the Argos’ nose from his wounds. “Thank you for your help.” The laughter also hurt.

The kneeling figure turned his head slightly, just enough to see the Ranger over his shoulder, then returned to the fire, but not before Arden caught the glimmer of his eyes.

“You’ll find your weapons under the seat of the cart,” the man said. “I did not wish you to wake up and start waving that sword about. You are safe here. I have tended your wounds while you slept. You should both be fully healed in a day or two.”

The stranger’s voice was rich and deep, like the shade of a broad-leafed tree in its prime, with boughs spread wide to catch the sun above, and lend shade to cool the earth below. It was a thoughtful voice, weary and sorrowful, but also resonant with a peace and strength that, again like a great tree, drew sustenance from roots buried far beneath the surface. Arden marveled at it. He had never known peace like that, not even in his glittering youth by the sea.

“What of the farmer’s family?” Arden asked.

“They will live,” the stranger replied. “I healed their wounds, and gave them much gold for that wagon. Their hearts only god can heal, if they choose to be healed.”

“But what of the troopers’ bodies? Others may come and – ”

“No one will find them.”

“ – ask questions,” Arden insisted on finishing.

“No one will find them.”

Arden paused and thought a moment. What the stranger said made no sense.

“But there were seven bodies, not counting the farm animals and the wolves. You’ll never hide all that blood from the wolves the soldiers will bring. They will smell it.”

“They will find nothing, because there will be nothing to find. The good farmer is buried among his ancestors out past the farmhouse. If anyone asks, his widow can say he died in the fire. Which will almost be true.”

“But how?” Arden asked, unhappy and incredulous.

“A minor enchantment, if you must know,” the stranger said with some impatience.

“Enchantment?” whispered Arden, half stunned, half scornful. “Enchantment?”

Then he fell silent. As a youth he had heard tell of such things, and when he was a boy he had believed in them. Sometimes, too, Arden’s Masters had spoken of enchantments as a skill a Ranger far advanced in the training of body and spirit might learn, but none had ever offered to teach them to him; and he had never known anyone to claim such knowledge for himself or seen anyone practice it. Arden did not believe in it at any rate. Who was this man to claim it was real and in his power?

Arden looked around him. His vision had improved as they were speaking. The stars were now sharp and clear in the night sky. He wondered what day it was. How long had he lain unconscious and how far from the farm were they? For one man to bury so many bodies, even in shallow graves, and tend the wounded was no small task. It took time.

He turned back to the stranger, who was still calmly tending the pot which hung over the fire. From time to time he tasted the contents. His back was still to Arden. Then on the other side of the fire, half in darkness, Arden saw a wolf. Unlike the mountain wolves, it was a very light gray, long of body and lean, but with the deep chest that bespoke an ability to run endlessly. Yet it was nevertheless a wolf. If the stranger saw it, he gave no sign. Nor did Argos. Arden rose with difficulty, his head smarting, and went to fetch his weapons.

“It’s all right,” the man said before Arden had taken two steps. “The wolf is with me. He is not your enemy.”

Arden stopped and stared at him. Then he cast a cold eye on the wolf, who sat down and calmly returned his gaze for a moment, but afterwards seemed more interested in what was cooking.

“I have never met a wolf that was my friend,” Arden said, still eying him.

The stranger rose at last, lifting the pot from the fire.

“So now you have,” he replied. “Would you like some stew? I think it’s ready. You must be quite hungry.”

“Yes, I am,” he answered, only now realizing that more than his head ached.

With a smile the man pulled a pair of plain wooden bowls and spoons from a leather pack, and beckoned to Arden to join him by the fire. As he drew near, the stranger handed him a bowl, already warm from the stew within it. Arden accepted it and thanked him. He took a seat halfway between the stranger and the wolf. After glancing hopefully from bowl to bowl to pot, the wolf sighed, curled himself into a resigned ball, and went to sleep. There was something in the wolf’s indifference to his suspicions that amused and mollified Arden, and he turned back to the stranger, whom the firelight now revealed to him.

His hair fell thick and dark about his shoulders. His features were fine, his eyes green. He wore a green cloak much like Arden’s. Beneath a leather jerkin was a dark green shirt that had the sheen of silk. A dagger hung at his belt. Supple brown boots met his breeches, also brown, just below the knee.

“I thought you said you were hungry,” the stranger said, glancing up from his bowl. “Eat while it’s still hot.”

“Sorry, I will. Thank you.”

Arden fell to eating. The first spoonfuls only sharpened his appetite for more of the stew, meat, potatoes, other vegetables and roots in a broth so thick it was almost gravy. A second bowl quickly followed, but all the while Arden studied the stranger with furtive glances from beneath his brows. The stranger kept his eyes to himself while he ate, pausing only to refill Arden’s bowl and pass him water. Even a third bowl did not sate the Ranger’s hunger, as the warm food strengthened and soothed him, but he stopped with three. At length he spoke.

“Thank you for the food. And for my life. I though I was dead when that stone hit me.”

“You very nearly were,” the other replied. “You should have found that fourth trooper and killed him first. Then you would have had a chance.”

“I know, but my mind was on the farmer’s family,” Arden said.

“Little good you could have done them dead.”

“True enough. May I ask who you are, and where you came from just then?”

“My name is Evénn.”

Arden smiled to hear the name. It was an old name, from tales of the distant past. Many songs were sung of an elf hero called Evénn, who had lived a thousand years ago and more, if he ever lived at all. Arden remembered loving those songs when he was a boy, but he had come to believe that they were merely stories, shadows of a world none living could know.

“Thank you, Evénn. I am in your debt. My name is Arden,” he said.

The stranger bowed his head to him, but said nothing more, as if he preferred to leave Arden’s second question unanswered. So Arden asked it again.

“And just how did you happen to be at the farmhouse?”

“I was following you,” Evénn replied after a moment’s thought.

“You were?” exclaimed the Ranger. “For how long?”

“Since you first encountered the dragon’s men at Kinabra five days ago.”

Arden cocked an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Evénn answered. “You were unconscious for three days. That was quite a blow you took. And to answer your next question, I was inside the tavern when you arrived. Had you come in, our meeting might have been less dramatic. Be that as it may, I watched through the window as your confrontation with the dragon’s men unfolded. With great interest. You are a fine bowman.”

“So why did you follow us?” Arden asked, ignoring the compliment.

“I wasn’t going to at first, at least not immediately. You seemed to have the situation well in hand. But then the squadron posted at the south end of the town rode through, followed by another a minute later. That tipped the scales against you. And there are too many of their kind in the world today, and not enough of yours. I have always been fond of Rangers. Long ago one of them tried to do me a good turn.”

“Then there was another squadron of troopers,” Arden nodded. “I thought so. I heard horn calls the first day, and on the second I saw a wolf I couldn’t account for. What became of them?”

“I dealt with them, the wolf and I, that is.”

“The horns were in response to you?”

“Yes. My horse, like yours, is faster than theirs,” Evénn continued. “I overtook them just north of the town. Their comrades were too busy chasing you to turn back and help them. That one wolf did escape us, however. After that I hung back, thinking you might defeat the rest on your own. I followed and waited to see what happened.”

“Your help would have been welcome sooner, you know, since you seem inclined to give it.”

“Are the quarrels of the Rangers and dragon’s men my affair?”

“You did say you were fond of Rangers.”

“True enough, but that fondness does not make your business mine.”

“And yet here you are.”

“I did not think your skill and courage should perish because like a fool you rushed into that farmstead. We all need our errors forgiven and corrected, or who could stand before god?”

Arden sat back and frowned.

“If there is one,” he muttered under his breath.

Evénn heard this, smiled to himself, and lowered his eyes to the fire. Raising his hand, he gestured to the wolf who rose and came to lie down beside him like a dog, like Argos next to Arden. The wolf looked up happily as Evénn stroked his fur. Arden glanced at Argos, who gave no sign that he found anything amiss. Before now the merest scent of a wolf had always caused Argos to bare his teeth and snarl. But not now.

“I have never seen this breed of wolf before,” Arden said.

“Argos and the wolf became acquainted while you slept. Besides, Argos had seen us before.”

“Oh?”

“We came upon you sleeping in the moonlight up on the hill above the farm. Argos did not alert you to our presence,” Evénn added in answer to the question in Arden’s eyes, “because he knew we were friends. Dogs are wiser than we are in telling friend from foe. If your dog takes a dislike to someone, you should mind the dog. We remained close by. When the dragon’s men set fire to the house and fields, I left to investigate. The wolf remained behind. After you went charging off, he came and watched over your hound. They are fast friends now.”

“The more I know of you, the more in your debt I find myself to be,” Arden replied.

“It is nothing,” Evénn said with a wave of his hand. “You intervened to save the smith, though he did not deserve it. We did the same for you.”

“Though I did not deserve it?

“No, because you did. As I said, we all need forgiveness and the chance to learn better from our mistakes. This much I have learned. You may scoff, but it is so.”

“I had no wish to offend you.”

“You didn’t. I have some notion of how you feel. I’ve felt that way myself in the past. You doubt god – many do – small wonder in such dark days. Some think, wrongly, that there can be no god because god does not walk openly among us; some conclude that there can be no god because no god would allow the suffering of the world; some do the same because they have suffered terribly themselves. Still others doubt because god answered their prayers, as he usually does, with a firm ‘no’; and then there are those who doubt because god granted their prayers, and they came to regret getting what they asked for.

“All this reasoning, if you can call it that, is false. To decide that god does not exist because we cannot see him, because he does not behave as we think he should, because he does not grant us our wishes or protect us from ourselves, is not logical or reasonable, or wise for that matter. In the pride of our wisdom we are too often fools.”

Evénn’s last words trailed off into silence, and he stared into the fire, musing. Then suddenly he looked up.

“But enough of that,” he said with a grin. “I’ve gone on too long, haven’t I? It’s a bad habit that comes of years spent alone thinking. No doubt your head hurts enough as it is. Get some sleep. We must start early tomorrow.”

“Very well,” Arden agreed, “but let me ask you one last question.”

Evénn merely looked at him and waited.

“At the farm, you moved so quickly, and I have rarely seen such swordsmanship. Where –”

“My masters were excellent, and I have had much practice over the years. As for my speed, well, time can seem to flow quite strangely to someone who’s taken a sharp blow to the head. That’s all.”

Evénn’s voice was friendly, but there was a finality in his tone that told Arden he was done talking. Though hardly satisfied with this answer, Arden wrapped himself in his cloak and lay down a few feet from the fire, Argos beside him. Evénn meanwhile stood up and walked out beyond the firelight, where only the moon and stars shimmered. The wolf went with him. Arden closed his eyes.

But he did not sleep. His mind was too full of the events of recent days, of this stranger, and his unexpected appearance. Evénn was different. That much was certain. Arden had known many men, learned and unlearned, Rangers that wandered far and alone in the wilds like himself, and townsmen who never left the place of their birth, merchants and craftsmen, farmers and soldiers, but Evénn was unlike any of them.

Clearly he was practiced in war, so quick and skilled with his blade that the first two dragon’s men might as well have been unarmed. Even the captain had managed to parry only twice, with difficulty, driven backwards and clearly overmatched. And the dragon’s men spent too much time in training for them to have been mastered so easily by even a well trained swordsman. Arden was very good, and he might not have prevailed against the three of them together. Evénn had credited much practice and excellent swordmasters. That was all, he had said.

But that was hardly all.

There was also the swiftness and stealth of his movements. Arden doubted that Evénn’s speed was just an effect of the blow he had taken to his head, an illusion produced by his injury. Evénn had been upon the troopers almost before they could move. Somehow on the journey from Kinabra he had passed them by undetected, and then come very close to Arden in the woods without making the slightest sound, which was quite a feat on horseback over ground scattered with the leaves of early autumn. Ranger though he was, Arden did not think he could match those skills without many lifetimes of practice.

Much practice indeed.

Then there was the man himself. Evénn spoke as an elder of many winters would, with decades to reflect on the days and dreams of a long life, yet he appeared younger than Arden; and the world that held up a mirror for the reflections of old men was long dead. In speaking to Arden of doubt he had really spoken of faith, with the fierce assurance of one who discovered god, not in the fire or the whirlwind, but in pain. Nor was it just the man’s words. Arden had seen it in him from the first. In silence Evénn took comfort. But for Arden the world was too full of woe, and all the faith of his youth had burned away in dragon fire the day the Republic fell. That crucible reduced him to emptiness. Its fire did not purify. In silence he found only refuge.

“No wonder he troubles me,” he whispered to the night as he lay with his back to the fire.

And what of the spell Evénn had used, so he claimed, to deceive the senses of even the wolves, and mask the stench of all that blood? Arden had no faith in enchantments. Old men and older tales spoke of such power, but he had never witnessed it. Where was it when the nations of the earth fell? It was as absent as the god he had once believed in. Yet Evénn had been insistent, as confident as when he mentioned god. Arden sensed no deception in him. Whatever the truth was, Evénn believed his own words.

“Who is this man?” Arden thought.

It all made his head ache again. Was he deluded, or dreaming? Was he even now lying unconscious at the burning farm? He had heard stories of strange visions men near death had seen, and he had dreamed many strange dreams himself. But never like this. To be rescued from death by a warrior who appeared from nowhere, who healed his wounds, who spoke of god with the assurance of a prophet, and cast spells to protect them from their enemies, all this belonged in some great song of elder days. It was of course only fitting that this stranger’s name was Evénn, the hero of so many of those songs, a dragonslayer and a healer, but the days of song were over long ago, and the elves had all vanished or died when the war against the dragons was lost. After the Fall the Rangers had sent messengers across the sea to Elashandra, the city of the elves, several times. The few who returned told of a shattered city, ruled by the silver dragon, and occupied only by his men.

“All long ago,” murmured Arden and slept at last.

The next thing he knew, it was morning. Evénn was hitching one of the troopers’ horses to their wagon. Argos and the wolf were nowhere to be seen.

“Feeling better?” Evénn asked when Arden sat up. He gestured at a steaming bowl, which sat atop a rock a few feet from the smothered fire. “I saved you some stew.”

Arden took it and began to eat.

“Thank you. I am,” he answered. “My head hardly hurts.”

“By the end of the day it should not hurt at all, but you should probably drive the wagon while I ride. Your wound will heal more quickly that way.”

“Very well,” Arden acquiesced. He wanted to ride, but with the desire came a pang as he remembered that his horse was dead. Night had been his constant companion for nearly ten years. He was an old friend.

When Arden finished his breakfast, he rinsed the bowl and spoon with water he found waiting in the pot in which Evénn had cooked the stew. Without warning he found Evénn standing above him, hands held out for the bowl, pot and spoon. Arden gave them to him and watched Evénn return to his horse, where he packed them into his saddlebags. Strapped to the saddle was the roll of blue cloth he had noticed last night. In the morning light he could tell the fabric was silk. Something long and slender was wrapped inside, but Arden couldn’t guess what it was. He wondered if he should ask.

Arden stood up and walked over to the horse, while Evénn checked and tightened the cinch. He ran his hand along the horse’s sleek neck. It turned to look at him with large, dark eyes.

“This is quite an admirable horse,” Arden said. “He looks like he could run all day.”

“Much like yours, he can, fast as the wind and enduring as resentment.”

Arden laughed.

“Pity about your horse,” Evénn said. “He was rare. What was he called?”

“Night. And yours?”

“Moonglow.”

“They would have gone well together then.”

Yes,” said Evénn, and they smiled together.

Arden looked across Moonglow’s withers at him. He and Evénn were of much the same height, though Evénn was slightly taller and not as broad across the shoulders.

“Where are we heading?” Arden asked.

“Well,” Evénn said, letting the word hang in the air between them, “you’ll be needing a new horse, won’t you, and a longbow and other gear as well. So, we are returning to your people.”

Arden stared at him in disbelief.

“I cannot bring you there. It is not permitted.”

“Perhaps not, but I can bring you. I know the way.”

“Only the Rangers know the way,” said Arden, alarmed and suspicious.

“Easy, my friend.” Evénn said. “The secrets of the Rangers are safe with me. Didn’t I tell you I have always been fond of them? Your stronghold lies deep in the forest of Tasar at the foot of the Mountain of the Stars, about twelve day’s journey south and east of here. It is reached through a deep gorge that opens into a hidden valley. It is quite lovely there in the springtime.”

“How can you know that? None but the Rangers and their kin have been to the Valley since the war began.”

“I have been there, though.”

“When?” Arden scoffed. “I would have seen you or heard of your coming.”

“It was some time ago.”

“When?” Arden insisted.

Evénn sighed. For a long moment he looked up at the sky with his hands on his hips. Then he looked Arden straight in the eye.

“Before you were born, Arden. Listen to me. I know the way to the Valley. I went out of my way to save you. You know this. If I were not to be trusted, you and all your kind would have perished already.”

Arden watched him closely, weighing his words. He could not contradict him.

“Trust comes hard to us now,” Arden said.

“That must change, or you will never be more than the ashes of what you were; and in the end ashes are always scattered by the winds. Is that what you desire, to vanish on the wind?”

“No.”

“Then let’s be on our way.”

Evénn mounted Moonglow, and moved off at a quick walk. As he did, the wolf and hound emerged unexpectedly from the woods across the clearing. The wolf loped after Evénn, who never looked back. Joined by Argos, the Ranger walked back to the wagon and climbed up into the seat. The hound sprang up beside him. At the twitch of the reins on his back, the horse started the cart moving. Behind them followed the three other troopers’ horses, tethered to the rear of the wagon.

All Arden’s reflections of the night before flooded back into his mind as he drove along the road. Now this man, who looked younger than he did, claimed to be old enough to have visited the Valley of the Rangers before Arden had been born. Traditionally, not even the leaders of the Republic had known its location, and the few who had, seldom visited. But Evénn had described the way there accurately. Clearly he knew where it was.

So much about Evénn was extraordinary. Arden had no other word for it. Everything about him fit together and made sense, but led to a conclusion that was difficult to accept. For it all fit together in a way that suited someone, not from real life, at least not from Arden’s life, but from a heroic tale. It was as if Arden had woken from his wound to find himself inside a song that someone else was singing in a great hall lit by fire. But this was no dream. The only conclusion that Arden could draw about Evénn – that he was not a man at all – was the only one that made sense. Still he did not want to believe it.

For several hours Arden guided the wagon along the narrow path. It ran steadily east through the trees, climbing the low hills that rose and sank before them. His eyes were fixed on Evénn, who rode slowly ahead of him. He sat tall and erect in the saddle, his longbow slung across his shoulders. Still he did not look back. He left Arden to mull his questions and answers alone.

Over and over Arden rehearsed what he had seen, and what Evénn had told him since last night. He measured it all against what he remembered of the old tales. Finally he recalled a detail that would in his mind test the conclusion his mind had come to against his will. He quickened the pace of the horse and soon began to overtake the rider ahead of him. As he drew near, he called out his name.

Evénn stopped and turned.

“You have another question, I gather?”

“Yes,” Arden said.

“I hope you give as much thought to the answers as you do to the questions, my friend.”

“I have done little else today.”

“Well?”

Arden paused.

“Go on.”

“Evénn, tell me, where did you learn to heal as you do?”

Evénn smiled the distant smile of one recalling a cherished face that only memory could see.

“From my mother,” Evénn said quietly.

That was the answer Arden had expected. He took a deep breath before he went on.

“So, then, you’re an elf, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You are Evénn, the dragonslayer.”

“Yes, I am.”

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Chapter 4.1