Ethiliel guides the two naive young elves through the city into the fancier quarter. The streets are cleaner and quieter, the buildings more stable. After crossing another moat bridge, they reach a gate beyond which there is a wide green space. Ethiliel drops her hood, making herself plainly visible to the guard. “You will let us through,” she tells him, in a voice the brooks no disagreement.
“Yes, milady,” he replies with a deferential bob of the head.
Heppa feels out of her depth as she follows the elvish lady through the gate, still unsure of what is going on. She offers a tentative thank you to the guard as she passes him and then looks around herself in wonder. It is a surprise to see so much green space within the city walls. South Tower had a tournament field, yes, but this is more like a rolling meadow, complete with a thicket of trees similar in size to the one Tric dubbed Nasir’s Hideaway. Off in the distance, elaborately dressed humans are having a picnic brunch, attended by servants. Others have sticks that they are swinging at balls on the ground. At first, Heppa wonders if this is some sort of martial training, but it soon becomes apparent that it is a game. Whoever these people are—the court or just other nobles—they clearly have time to learn to read if they want to.
Once within the protective embrace of trees, Tric says, “We heard you were traveling through town to see off Sir Deoran. I did not know him myself, but I offer my condolences.”
“Yes, we’re sorry for your loss,” Heppa chimes in, able to at least be polite, even as she remains confused.
Ethiliel thanks them and comments, “It is but another loss in a long line of losses.”
“I suppose that is the way of things when one knows humans, is it not?” Tric says, assuming Ethiliel and Deoran were a couple.
The elvish lady frowns at the implication of intimacy with a human. “What I lost was not some sort of paramour, but one of the few people left who understands my position. While, yes, many potentially useful humans have died during my lifetime, the loss of my home is far more significant than the loss of any one life.”
Potentially useful?! Tric is not sure what to make of that, so he sets it aside from now, instead asking which forest she is from. As the innkeeper Seimon had suggested, it is the Aethenwood. In return, Tric tells her they are from Estbryn Forest, some ways east of Weldyn. “If you are familiar with the human settlement South Tower, it is near there.” From the blank look he gets, Tric assumes that is beyond her area of travel. “Have you known High Lord Volas?” he asks, showing off the ribbon seal entrusted to him for engaging with prominent elves of other forests.
Ethiliel’s eyebrows shoot up. “He fancies himself high lord, does he? Over that copse?”
“If he is the highest lord on the council, does that not make him high lord?” Tric asks, a bit perplexed by this reception. Ethiliel allows the technicality. Tric is not necessarily proud, but he defends his home. “I believe if you would ask a wose, they would confirm that Estbryn is a forest.”
“Would I be willing to settle for a forest like that?” Ethiliel mutters rhetorically. “Or is it better to have no forest at all?”
What happened to the Aethenwood? Heppa wonders. Did it burn down? Was it just her house that did? Was she banished? But she asks no questions yet, out of a fear of being impolite.
Ethiliel goes on, “Deoran understood why the Aethenwood was closed to me. So few others do.” Her shoulders shift as she sighs, and the sunlight sifting down through the branches glimmers through the space behind her, drawing attention to her ethereal wings. She is an elvish noble of high standing but more than just a lady: she is a sylph. To have obtained such mastery over the offensive line of fae magic, she must be powerful indeed. This is someone who scoffingly referred to Heppa as a sorceress, a title that, as far as Tric knew from Quaemilya and Aunt Penna, was something to be proud of achieving. He and Heppa are rather out of their league here.
Hepalonia, meanwhile, sifts through what Ethiliel has said and how that lines up with things she has heard from other sources, like their current innkeeper and their new friend Knots, who spent time fighting elves in Kerlath province, which is near the Aethenwood. She has heard tales—though their veracity is debated—that there were undead active down in that area fifty or so years ago. Heppa knows from her father that elves cannot do necromancy, but Breda tells stories of a Mal M’Brin down near the Aethenwood, and she claims he was once an elf. Ethiliel may have been witness to the events that produced those tall tales. That Ethiliel was here attending to a human on his deathbed suggests to Heppa that she sided with the humans in whatever conflict there was between them and the elves. And yet she also seems to have a certain amount of disdain for humans. If Ethiliel took the humans’ part against her own people, it must have been over something extremely important. Heppa doubts Ethiliel herself was involved in any necromancy. After all, she does not have Sir Deoran’s corpse walking around behind her now. Ethiliel reminds Heppa a bit of her own mother, but her curiosity overcomes her caution, and she blurts out, “So you were involved in the altercation with the undead in the Aethenwood fifty years ago!”
Those are stories Tric has heard about from Breda. “You helped the humans put down Mal M’Brin, right?” he asks, amazed to meet someone from a tale. He is impressed; his own people hung back when undead moved through their area, leaving the humans to deal with the problem by themselves.
Ethiliel’s haughty demeanor slips, and the cousins for the first time see her as the sad elf that Seimon spoke of. “I did not know how widely that information had circulated.” Her tone grows more defensive as she continues, “But yes, I helped the humans. No one else on the council believed them, but I saw what had become of my former teacher with my own eyes.”
“Mal M’Brin was your teacher? He was a noble himself?” Tric asks.
Heppa’s question is more incredulous. “Mal M’Brin was an elf?!”
“Yes, Mebrin was a great elvish sage,” Ethiliel says. Sighing, she continues, “One of the few that still maintained knowledge of the dark sorceries that Haldric I brought to our shores.”
This is news to Tric, and he begins anticipating how he can roll it into his own performances. I greeted Haldric the First, mind you… he tries out in his head. That was only some six or seven hundred years ago. He is sure he can convince an audience of humans that he is that old. “I’ve heard of Mal M’Brin,” Tric says smoothly. “I’ll admit that I wasn’t sure if it was true. But we’ve dealt with our own share of undead troubles, enough to appreciate the risks that you took and the necessity of those actions.”
“But… but I didn’t think elves could do that kind of magic!” Heppa exclaims.
“And that is the attitude that prevented many on the council from taking action when it was needed,” Ethiliel says.
I need to be more careful! Heppa realizes. She has messed around with artifacts in her father’s study, innocently assuming she could do no wrong with them. But if necromancy is possible for elves, she could have inadvertently done serious damage. I need to tell Daddy about this.
Ah, so it’s not just Thrandolil. This belief is more widespread, Tric reflects. “May I ask… You did put him down for good, right?”
“Yes. He is destroyed, and he is no more.”
“Can you say how you did that?” Tric asks. “How did you ensure that the undead stayed dead? The best tools that we have are breaking bones and separating pieces.”
“Maybe also finding a cure for the disease to mitigate the spread,” Heppa adds. “Fire, maybe?”
“The woods south of the Aethenwood still have dark sorcery tainting them. They are shrouded in thick, cold fogs, and I would not be surprised if there were still ghouls haunting them. Mebrin was defeated by a combination of elvish magic and human ingenuity. There was no particular ritual to it, just a lot of smashing of skeletons by Deoran’s forces. Why do you ask these questions? Does your forest still have an elder elf from the early times in it? I thought Mebrin was the only one left who still knew anything from what Haldric’s people brought with them.”
“We think there’s a problem,” Heppa says in response to the first question. She pulls out her map and launches into her now well-developed presentation on all the places she and her cousin have encountered undead.
Tric, meanwhile, considers what Ethiliel’s second question might mean. He has never heard of the role of sage among elves. Thrandolil is certainly not that old. “How old is Breda?” he wonders aloud, looking at his cousin. “She’s been around. She’s the one who knew about Mal M’Brin.”
Heppa has been far more fixated on human ages than elf ages. “I don’t know,” she says.
“Have you ever met Breda?” Tric asks Ethiliel. “She’s an elvish storyteller of some renown. I’m sure she’s been to the Aethenwood before.” Breda did have an adventuring career in her younger days, and she had to learn the story of Mal M’Brin somewhere.
“Breda? Oh that’s where you’re from. She said she was going to retire to her small stand of oaks. Of course I know Breda. She was a fighter in the group that supported me.” Looking over Heppa’s map, she asks, “Do you know who is behind all these raisings? With the Aethenwood, there were bandits. They learned their dark secrets from Mebrin. Who is raising these things where you have been?”
“I think you can just unsettle them,” Heppa says. “We disturbed some skeletons in the tunnels under South Tower, and they just got right up. Hmm… Or maybe that was because we disturbed the artifact,” she theorizes. “I don’t think it’s so difficult if they’re not put down properly.”
“Our best understanding,” Tric adds, “is that if undead had been raised at one point and then were only casually struck down, later on they might get back up. I don’t know if that matches your experience.”
“Unfortunately, my experience is that once undead are put in motion, they do not always need their master around to keep them going. They can be sent out to do things unsupervised. In our case, they were working with the bandits. Those treacherous criminals had learned enough from Mebrin that they had become minor necromancers themselves.”
“There may be some tie to artifacts,” Heppa suggests. “It’s a theory I’m still exploring.”
“Those humans, they do love their artifacts,” Ethiliel says, words of criticism, not endearment. “Even their crown is based on who wields the Sceptre—and a dangerous artifact that is, too.”
“What does it do?” Heppa asks eagerly, temporarily setting aside the grim topic of necromancy.
“It undermines its wielder if they are weak,” Ethiliel says sourly.
“Which is habitually the case?” Tric asks.
“Among the humans, yes.” She pauses though, her eyes drifting away from the cousins. She looks off into the distance and says quietly, “But elves can be corrupted too. I do not think High Lord Ithelden died of natural causes.”
That is a name neither Estbryn elf has heard before. Their knowledge of other forests is severely limited. There is a much larger world out there than just discovering what humans are up to. “You would not be content settling down in another forest, is that correct?” Tric asks.
“The Aethenwood is my home, even though Eltenmir exiled me from it. Its protection remains my goal. I have not figured out a way to achieve that yet, given my situation. But Wesnoth is not the answer.”
“Yes, Wesnoth, for good or ill, is a large supply of ammunition for necromancers,” Tric comments.
“So are our forests,” Ethiliel replies.
“So many though? Are there not many more human graves?” Tric asks.
“There are more humans than elves. That is true, but—”
“There are still wolves,” Heppa cuts in. Elves are not the only thing in the forest that can catch the undead plague.
Ethiliel’s point is that elves can be raised into walking corpses, the same as humans can, a matter on which all present can agree from personal experience. She goes on to warn the younger elves that these sorts of powers are very tempting, particularly to those who are already powerful to begin with. “The taller the tree, the more damage it can do when it falls,” she says. “The human magic users—and to some extent the elvish ones—can have an arrogance about them, thinking they are somehow above such things. That they can tame them, perhaps. But I saw what happened to Mebrin, and I know there is no taming of this power.”
“Did you ever feel tempted?” Tric ventures.
Ethiliel takes some offense at this. “Mebrin tried to tempt me with it, tried to reason me into believing that it was a wise thing to do. That there were secrets beyond imagining in this power. Why should an elf be content with a few centuries, when they could have eternity? I was perhaps protected by the horror I felt at seeing what had become of him. I also had the benefit of my allies, who were geared very much toward putting down the threat. It is possible that in a one-on-one encounter I might not have been as steadfast,” she allows. “I do not want to excuse the horrors that were wrought upon the land by what Mebrin did, but he was under a lot of duress. The humans drove him to embrace and use that power. He was abducted by brigands who knew he had access to that knowledge. He was tortured enough that he tapped into it to escape from them and became the very thing that he had been trying to avoid.” She lets out a long sigh. “I had the benefit of arriving with allies and having sufficient power at my disposal already, with my shamans and fighters at my side and Deoran’s human troops. And of not being bound up in iron.” Her wings shudder at the thought.
“So is necromancy the only dark magic?” Heppa asks. “Do those two expressions mean the same thing, or are there other things out there we need to be cautious of?” She has spent the past few months thinking she did not have to worry about accidentally doing necromancy, but she now knows that is wrong. What else do we not think we can do but actually can and might be dangerous? Heppa has had several magical accidents, but fortunately nothing disastrous has resulted so far. She is a bit nervous asking the question to the powerful and somewhat intimidating sylph.
“There is more to the dark magics than simply the raising of the dead,” Ethiliel says. “There is also draining life from the living. A lich can weaken you to heal themself.”
Tric is not much of a caster himself, but those words resonate with him due to his experience with the staff they recovered under South Tower.
“There are some creative aspects to these dark magics, as well,” Ethiliel continues, “things that elves would never do. Not that we cannot do them, as evidenced by what happened to Mebrin, but things that are wrong from our elvish perspective. What I am about to tell you is a controversial topic,” Ethiliel cautions them, “and the true answer is not known. I do not know whether humans are really natural or not. Some elvish sages believe that humans were created by liches, and not vice versa. If humans and orcs both were created by liches, then liches existed before then in some form and came into our world somehow.”
That is quite the news to Heppa and gives her some things to think about physiologically as she is examining patients in the future.
“But humans can certainly become liches,” Tric says. “And, as you’ve described, an elf can become as such? Or did Mal M’Brin not quite reach that level?”
“Unfortunately, Mebrin did become a lich,” Ethiliel tells him. “Elves can indeed take on the mantle of lichdom.”
“So if an elf can become a lich, and liches perhaps created humans…” Tric slowly reasons.
“Are you saying you think this all began with an elf gone awry?” Ethiliel asks.
“I’m trying to see where the chain starts. If it didn’t start with humans, and an elf could become a lich, that is one possibility.”
“I see your point,” Ethiliel grants. “That is a logical conclusion.”
Tric has his own final conclusion though. “But that also means that elves live across the sea! Or did at one point.”
“But dwarves also have some magical capacities,” Heppa comments. There are the runes that Glammur told them about, as well as the magic of words and rhythm that the bard and Tric both share. “Maybe a dwarf was the first lich.”
“No one knows. This is a topic I have heard discussed and debated by sages. Humans brought necromancy to these shores—that is an accepted fact among elves. Humans, who had been enthralled to liches wherever they were living before. The point of debate is, were humans simply enthralled to liches or did the liches create humans and orcs to be their thralls?”
“They did a crummy job then,” Tric mutters.
Heppa is still wondering about the earlier topic. “Or maybe liches are a whole different type of species…”
“You can obtain lichdom; it matters not where you came from,” Ethiliel insists.
“Yes, but there could be even more types of creatures across the sea,” Heppa points out.
“Maybe horse folk!” Tric says.
Ethiliel regards the two young elves in front of her. It sounds as though they have faced challenges, but they are still so naive. She sighs. Long gone are her own days of idle research or playful silliness.
Tric senses that Ethiliel may be running out of patience with them. “Thank you very much for your time. If you find your way out near Estbryn Forest, I’m sure you’d be welcome to visit. Breda is, as I have said, still enjoying her retirement there. She was a mentor of mine.” Tric is not sure what the protocol is for visiting elvish dignitaries. Certainly she will face less hassle than Glammur or Kachen did. Still, he gives Ethiliel one of his set of blue and gold ribbons as a sign of welcome. She sees him and Heppa to the edge of the King’s Park, and they part ways.