The Queen was silent for a long while, then said, ‘Go now and rest, Jim Dasher. Eat and sleep and we shall hold council on what you have said. When you awake tomorrow, we will talk again.’
Jim had no doubt he would sleep through the evening meal once he had laid his head down, so he was not going to argue. Still, his curiosity was now fully engaged and he wanted to know what was going on. Moreover, he worried about Kaspar and the others. They might be cut-throats and brigands but these men were all loyal servants of the Crown and the Conclave, and despite their rough exteriors, all stalwart lads to their core. If he could save them, he would.
At the Queen’s behest, a servant conducted him to an apartment within a bole where he found a platter of fruit and nuts and a pitcher of cool water waiting for him. With sudden pangs of hunger, he set to while the young elf who had guided him said, ‘I will return with more substantial fare in a few minutes, Jim Dasher.’
‘Thank you,’ he said between mouthfuls. By the time the elf returned with a platter of game bird, some aged hard cheese and half a loaf of fresh grain bread, Jim lay fast asleep on the pallet on the floor of the apartment. The elf quietly put down the platter and left him in peace.
Jim awoke and devoured the rest of the food that had been left for him. After that he exited the little apartment and found the closest garderobe, in which he relieved himself and then hurried down to a deep pool where he quickly bathed. He was politely ignored by those elves also busy making their morning ablutions. As much as he admired women in their many configurations, from the willowy thin to the robustly voluptuous, he fond himself admiring elven women’s forms more for their beauty in an abstract fashion than with any lust. They were as beautiful as any human woman could hope to be, but there was an alien quality which robbed him of any carnal impulse in their direction. The elven men were also beautiful, in their fashion, and he admired their lithe strength. Rarely did anyone make Jim Dasher feel unfit, but every elf he saw bathing looked like an embodiment of youthful vigour, while he still felt ill-used and fatigued from his travels.
He donned his still-dirty clothing, having judged it imprudent to wash them and either wait until they dried or wear wet garb to the Queen’s Court. Once he was dressed, he hurried back up to the pavilion where Aglaranna and Tomas waited.
‘Good morning, Jim Dasher,’ said the Queen.
He bowed and said, ‘Good morning, Your Majesty’
‘Did you rest well?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I am in your debt for my welcome respite, my lady.’
‘We have conferred with our advisors on the news you brought us,’ said the Queen. ‘And to understand what needs to be done, you must be made aware of things few within our race know, and no one, not even our oldest friends like Pug, have been told.’
Jim raised an eyebrow at that. He had assumed that given the boyhood friendship between Pug and Tomas, Pug would be the most likely human to be told any elven lore. Still, he said nothing and waited.
Tomas spoke, ‘In ancient times there was a great war between the gods. Those called Dragon Lords by humans, whom we call Valheru in the elven language…’ He paused, as if uncomfortable speaking of these things. ‘… the Dragon Lords took a hand. In the end, they were cast out of this realm, dispersed to other universes.’
This piqued Jim’s interest. A great deal of the intelligence gathered by the Conclave over the last few years consisted of references to other planes of reality. A lot of it was incomprehensible to Jim, well, most of it, actually, but he had reviewed enough of the intelligence passing through his hands on its way to Pug or Nakor or Miranda to have some sense of it: there were other places that could only be imagined by a few beings – and he wasn’t one of them, but he took it on faith that they existed. Too much had happened already for him to doubt it.
Tomas continued, ‘But before the last of that great struggle, one of the Dragon Lords stood apart, the one whose armour I wear when I go into battle.’
Jim had never seen Tomas don the legendary white and gold dragon armour, but he had heard of it and imagined it to be an impressive sight. Even wearing a simple robe and sandals Tomas was one of the most impressive beings he had ever met.
‘He alone defied the Dragon Host,’ Tomas continued, ‘and his last act before the madness known as the Chaos Wars overwhelmed this world was to free all those who had been held in thrall to the Valheru.