Chapter 7: Of Elves and Men
Thrace lay on the margrave’s bed in the manor house, her head carefully wrapped in strips of cloth. Her hair was bunched and snarled, blond strands slipping out between the bandages. Purple and yellow bruises swelled around her eyes and nose. Her upper lip puffed up to twice its size and a line of dark dried blood ran its length. Thrace coughed and mumbled but never spoke, never opened her eyes.
And Theron never left her side.
Esrahaddon ordered Lena to boil feverfew leaves in a big pot of apple cider vinegar. She did as he instructed. Everyone did now. After last night, the residents of Dahlgren treated the cripple with newfound respect and looked at him with awe and a bit of fear. It was Tad Bothwick and Rose McDern who saw him raise the green fire that chased away the beast. No one said the word witch or wizard. No one had to. Soon the steam from the pot filled the room with a pungent flowery odor.
“I’m so sorry,” Theron whispered to his daughter.
The coughing and mumbling had stopped and she lay still as death. He held her limp hand to his cheek, unsure if she could hear him. He had been saying that for hours, begging her to wake up. “I didn’t mean it. I was just so angry. I’m sorry. Don’t leave. Please come back to me.”
He could still hear the sound in the dark of his daughter’s cry cut horribly short by a muffled crack! If it had been a tree trunk or a thicker branch, Theron guessed she would have died instantly. As it was, she still might die.
No one but Lena and Esrahaddon dared enter the room that Theron filled with his grief. They all expected the worst. Blood had covered the girl’s face and her father’s shirt by the time they arrived at the manor. Skin white, lips an odd bluish hue, Thrace had not moved nor opened her eyes. Esrahaddon had whispered to her and instructed them to take the girl to the manor and keep her warm. It was the kind of thing one did for the dying, making them as comfortable as possible. Deacon Tomas had prayed for her and remained on hand to bless her departing soul.
In the last year, the village of Dahlgren had seen so many deaths. Not all were by the beast. There were the normal accidents, sicknesses, and in the winter, wolves hunted the area. There were also some unexplained disappearances. Often attributed to the beast, they could just as likely have been the result of getting lost in the forest or an accidental fall in the Nidwalden. In no more than a year, over half the village’s population had perished or gone missing. Everyone knew someone who had died, and nearly every family had lost at least one member. The people of Dahlgren had grown accustomed to death. He was a nightly visitor, a guest at every breakfast table. They knew his face, the sound of his voice, the way he walked, his peculiar habits. He was always there. If it were not for the mess he left, they might neglect to notice him altogether. No one expected Thrace to survive.
The sun came up, casting a dull light into the room where Theron wept for his daughter. The last of his family was leaving him. Only now he realized how much she meant to him. Thoughts came, uninvited, to his mind. Time and time again it was she who always came for him. He remembered the night the beast attacked his farm, when he was coming home late. Only she had braved the darkness to search for him. It was Thrace, a young girl, little more than a child, who traveled alone halfway across Avryn, and spent her life savings to bring him help. Then last night, when his stubbornness kept him at the farm, she came to him in the darkness, running alone through the forest, ignoring the dangers. There was only one thought in her mind—to save him. She succeeded. She had deprived the beast of his flesh, but more than that. She had pulled him back into the world of the living. She had ripped the black veil away from his eyes and freed his heart from the weight of guilt, but the price had been her life.
Tears ran down his cheeks. They hung on his upper lip. He kissed his daughter’s hand leaving a wet spot, an offering, an apology.
How could I have been so blind?
The even constant breaths his daughter took slowed with each inhale, less frequent, shorter than the one before. He listened to their descent, like the sound of footsteps receding, walking away, growing fainter, quieter.
He clutched her hand, kissing it repeatedly and rubbing it to his wet cheek. It felt like his heart was being ripped out through his chest.
At last, the regular pace of her breathing stopped.
Theron sobbed. “Oh, god.”
“Daddy?” He jerked his head up. His daughter’s eyes were open. She was looking at him. “Are you alright?” she whispered.
His mouth opened but he could not speak. His tears continued to flow, and like a barren bit of land seeing water for the first time in years, a smile of joy grew on his face.
———
Swift clouds moved across a capricious sky as growing winds and the portents of a coming storm marked the new day. Royce sat on the rock ledge where the cliff met the river and the spray of the falls dampened the stone. His feet and legs were soaked from a morning spent trekking through the damp forest underbrush. His eyes stared out across the ridgeline of the falls at the promontory rock and the towering citadel that sat tantalizingly upon it. He thought that perhaps there might be a tunnel running under the river. He looked for an access in the trees, but found nothing. He was getting nowhere.
After almost two days, he was no closer to his goal. The tower still lay out of reach. Unless he could learn to swim the current, walk on water, or fly, he had no chance of traversing the gulf that lay between.
“They’re over there right now, you know,” Esrahaddon said.
Royce had forgotten about the wizard. He had arrived some time ago, mentioning only that Thrace survived, that she was awake and looked to make a full recovery. After that, he took a seat on a rock and spent the next hour or so staring across the river much as Royce had done all day.
“Who?”
“The elves. They’re on their side of the river looking back at us. They can see us I suspect, even at this range. They are surprising like that. Most humans consider them inferior—lazy, filthy, uneducated creatures—but the fact is they are superior to humans in nearly every way. I suppose that’s why humans are so quick to denounce them; they are unwilling to concede that they may be second best.