"It must have come from somewhere! Bears don't just roam the streets of Argivia!" shouted the irate captain.
A middle-aged man in long robes appeared. He had the pale skin and soft hands of a man who read books all day, and Edgur saw him approach carefully. The captain and the robed man exchanged whispers. Edgar grew cold with fear. If this man was a wizard, his plot would be unmasked for sure.
– something unnatural about this beast," the pale man muttered.
"What are you saying?" asked the captain.
"I'm saying this animal could be bewitched. It should be killed without delay."
Edgur began to struggle. He rolled over on his back with such force he toppled one of the horses keeping the net lines taut. A flurry of arrows punched into his hairy hide. Edgur bawled with the pain, and Dare's jewel slipped from his mouth.
"Hold!" shouted the captain as the gem clinked on the cobblestones. Gingerly he leaned in to retrieve the amulet.
Edgur watched helplessly as the key to his metamorphosis was taken away.
"What do you make of this?"
The pale man examined the stone. "It's a diamond," he said. "Of the first water. The clearest specimen I've ever seen."
Diamond? Clear? What had happened to the green magic?
"The animal had it in its mouth," said the captain.
"There's your proof," said the apparent sorcerer. "Gems are often used in enchantment spells."
As Edgur's life ebbed, he tried to summon the image of his lost Riliana in his mind. She did not remain long. The last thing he saw, before the pikemen finished him off, was the face of the trickster Dare, laughing. Somewhere he was enjoying his jest.
Riliana, veiled in black, departed the funeral of her late fiance Joren in an open coach. It was a fine day despite the grim business of the morning, and she relished the sunshine as an antidote to her sadness. A small wicker tray was laden with letters addressed to her, no doubt condolences from her friends and relations.
"Lady," said the coachman, "I hope you don't think it forward of me, but we'll be passing near Bowline Square."
"So?"
"The monster bear that slew Master Joren is on display there," he replied. "The city watch gave the carcass to the Ropemakers Guild in recognition of their catching the beast."
"Why should I want to see it?"
He tugged his forelock respectfully. "I thought it might do you good to see the culprit's fate, lady."
Riliana knew her coachman was curious to see the enormous bear everyone in Argivia was talking about. It brought no pleasure to her heart to think the carcass of the poor mad beast was on display, but the coachman would be more careful and appreciative if she indulged him, so she allowed him to detour to Bowline Square.
With an elegant ivory letter opener, Riliana broke seal after seal on the letters in the tray. Each was full of the usual platitudes and the empty rhetoric of regret. After three in a row that essentially said the same thing, she set the rest aside unopened. One letter remained.
"My dearest love," it began. Who wrote this? She turned the page over and saw Edgur's copper-engraved signet. A flush came to her face. "This will be a difficult day for you-"
"Whoa," called the coachman, drawing hard on the reins. The carriage stopped. The crowd was very large and surprisingly orderly. They couldn't drive any closer than the edge of the square. The coachman stood on his seat, trying to see the infamous man-killing bear.
"I see something hanging from the gibbet," he said, shading his eyes, "but it doesn't look like a bear. "
"It's not a bear, " said an old woman at the edge of the crowd. "Haven't you heard? When the sun came up this morning, the watch found a dead man hanging in place of the bear. He has all the wounds the bear had, they say. "
"A man?" Riliana said. She stepped down from the coach. Overnight she had accepted the verdict that her fiance had been slain by a wild animal. There was talk the bear had come ashore from the harbor, searching for fish. Grizzlies were powerful swimmers. Now they were telling her a man killed Joren?
"Let her through!" said the coachman as Riliana walked forward like a somnambulist. "Her husband-to-be was killed last night by the bear!"
Murmuring, the crowd slowly parted for the mourning girl. She was aware of a blur of faces beyond her veil, of softly expressed condolences and bluntly curious stares. Riliana walked on, indifferent to the closely packed people around her.
The timber frame erected to display the dead bear was a good seven feet tall. Stout ropes were looped over the top timber, and the grizzly had been hoisted up to a standing position by ropes tied under its front legs. Riliana drew off her heavy veil. The old lady was correct- the bear was gone. In its place was the naked corpse of a man, a man she knew well: Edgur the coppersmith. A Song Out of Darkness Loren L. Coleman
Already muted by cloud cover, little direct light penetrated the bayou's thick canopy. It fell in thin, lackluster beams that threw shadows and gleamed dully off black and brackish waters. Tendrils of land reached into the darkness, thin bridges that connected small hillocks and some larger spans of wet ground. The mournful cry of a marsh ibis caught in a caster's web rolled through the bayou.
Temken paused, feeling eyes upon him, and rested his leather satchel on the marshy ground next to his feet. His sharp eyes penetrated the bayou's gloom, nostrils tested the cool, dank air, searching. No movement, but for a chill draft stirring among the tall grasses and the gray moss that cascaded from overhead limbs into stagnant pools of water. No tree shapings or signs of organized care for the land. No scent of cookfires or the flower-scented paths commonly marked out by warriors and scouts.
No sign of other elves.
Still, the land called to him. Beneath its own pain and suffering it whispered a promise that he walked the right path. Here, close by, he would find others-Survivors- those he had come to gather. The corrupt pallor draping this land cloaked them from view. Temken reached out as the dreams had instructed, feeling for the power inherent in the lands, and seized that which nurtured life, drawing it, channeling it, to reveal what the darkness hid from his normal senses. Though not the uplifting experience of nature's pure strength, the bayou provided enough mana for his purposes.
Temken was surprised by how close she sat, resting against the wide bole of the very cypress that stretched its limbs over him. The shadows retreated, leeched away by his summoning of the bayou's limited life-force, just enough to reveal her outline. For a brief moment he imagined a darker shadow hovering behind her, the sinister essence of darkness itself trying to summon the strength to oppose him. Then it too was lost, fled back into the bayou. The other elf shifted only slightly in the realization that her cover had been stripped. She moved, not to flee or to embrace her clanfolk, but with the simple resignation of a minor concern.
"Yes, I am here," she said, voice weary, slurring the usual melodic speech of the elves. "What words do you have for me?"
A touch of despair over the cold greeting trailed through Temken's heart, but he quickly banished it because of the importance of his quest. He stepped forward, deeper into the tree's embrace, and knelt into the marshy soil in front of her, ignoring the clammy wetness that soaked at his knee. Shocked by what he saw, he fought to keep concern from ruling his face or voice. He knew her vaguely. That was to say that he remembered her from Before-he a juvenile, scout apprentice, and she barely an adult but already a sentry. A century had brought them both into the long twilight of middle age enjoyed by most elven races, but while Temken had finally found a purpose in the After, bringing together the Survivors, it was clear that she had allowed a sense of despair to invade even her personal life. No need for magic; it was written in her appearance. Fatigue etched hollows beneath her opaline eyes and the sunken cheeks of malnourishment left her with a haunted expression. Her dark hair was wild and tangled with bits of moss and mud-the detritus of bayou living. The ceremonious words with which he had opened scores of previous reunions fled him. She obviously saw no cause for celebration in his arrival, and so Temken opted for a simple offering of warmth and hope until his mission could be explained better.
"I've come to bring you home, Gwenna."
Her gaze burned into Temken, eyes reflecting the pain still wrapped up in her memories.
"Argoth is destroyed," she said, immediately putting into so few words what most Survivors could not stand to even think. "We have no home."
Skirting the edge of the wetter portion of the bayou, Gwenna led Temken from the sentry post where she had awaited his coming to the village she and the others had settled. The shadow flitted at the edges of her vision and consciousness, always a presence lurking in the darker recesses of her mind. Gwenna chose paths most times at random, rarely by memory. Trails could change with the latest rainfall, wiped away or made treacherous to the point of mortal danger, and the ever-changing territories of the local predators always made it prudent to vary one's attendance to the trails. At one point the pair found their way blocked by a large web, easily twice the height of the elves. The remains of a few unfortunate creatures were spun into preserving wraps for later feeding. A spicy scent, lure for the less intelligent creatures, rose in the air about them.
"We've lost two young ones to the webs over the years, " she said in a monotone as they backed away from the site. "Be careful. Those strands are hard to cut, even with the sharpest blade. "
Temken was visibly startled. "That's the circle of life, " he said. "Still, I grieve for our loss. "
Our loss. Gwenna did not miss the way Temken automatically included himself. She remembered the courtesies and social law of Argoth-what affects one affects all. But instead of feeling appreciative for his consideration, she knew pain for the memory.
"We are no longer protected, " she said quietly. Stronger, she added, "We never really were. "
Certainly they had thought so. That was the lie to it all-the great lie that Gwenna had seen exposed in so short a span of years that she still reeled from the shock of its memory. Argoth, island paradise tended by the elves and ruled by Titania, avatar of Gaea. The law governed them, and Titania protected them. So thoroughly had Gwenna believed in that protection that she helped a human, cast down with his flying machine onto Argoth's beach, certain that even if he could escape the storms, Argoth would remain secure.
Her mercy cost the Argothians everything.
The human returned, bringing others with their saws and picks and shovels, their smelters and forges. Their war. Their incredibly vicious war, as two powerful brothers fought for dominance, in the process ruining that which the victor would have taken possession of anyhow. The island's precious resources were ripped from Gaea's womb as the air turned foul with smoke. The inhabitants of Argoth were caught between two mighty armies, one of which they might have held back, but not both. Gwenna remembered Titania herself weakening, dying. Then the flame-haired woman offered them the chance to strike back where the army of Urza was vulnerable. The target was the virtually unprotected mainland.
Gwenna still wasn't sure how many warrior enclaves finally accepted the offer-dozens, certainly. Her own band had been in the process of attacking an inland city when the southeast horizon suddenly glowed with an unnatural sunset. The Argothian elves heard Titania's final scream, Gaea's own cry, as their homeland was shattered by whatever final cataclysm the Brothers' War had released. The earthquakes and tidal waves, and the dark years which followed, were pitiful epilogues to that one terrible moment.