The Elven by Bernhard Hennen, James A. Sullivan Read Free Book Online Page A

was paid, then there was no longer any foundation for revenge. The manboar came from here. The queen of the elves was responsible for the beast, and Mandred had lost three companions to it. Firnstayn was so small that the loss of three strong men threatened its very existence. He would demand a high recompense for the loss. Luth alone knew how many men from other villages the creature had slain. The Albenkin had wrought the damage, so they had to pay for it. That was only fair.
    The elves had no reason to fear a blood feud with Mandred’s village, but still he owed it to his dead friends to raise his voice at the court of the queen and call for justice. Did the queen of Albenmark already suspect as much? Was she aware of the debt she owed? Was that why she was having him brought to her palace with such haste?
    It was late in the afternoon when they caught their first glimpse of it. Still far in the distance, the palace perched high atop a steep hillside beyond a broad swath of woods and meadowland. The sight of it made Mandred’s breath catch. The palace seemed to grow directly from the rock it sat atop. The rooftops of its highest towers looked as if they pierced the sky. The walls were radiant white, while the rooftops shone with a blue-green shade that reminded Mandred of the color of old bronze. No royal seat of a prince of the Northlands could compare in even the slightest detail to the towers of this castle. King Horsa’s golden hall itself appeared insignificant against such splendor. The woman who ruled this land . . . how powerful she must be. And how rich. So rich she could probably have all the longhouses of his village shingled with gold with a snap of her fingers. He should keep that in mind when he named the price she had to pay for his dead companions.
    Mandred was secretly surprised at how slowly they seemed to approach the castle. Although the horses flew like the wind through the countryside, the palace on the horizon hardly seemed to grow any larger.
    They passed a tree that looked as old as the mountains. Its trunk was as thick as a tower, and curious objects could be seen in its immense spreading crown. It looked as if the living wood had woven its own branches into round huts, and rope bridges stretched through the crown of the tree, connecting the huts. Mandred saw figures half-hidden among the branches. Were they elves like Ollowain? Or some other strange residents of this land?
    Without warning, as if at some inaudible command, a flock of birds rose abruptly from the tree. Their feathers shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow. They flew low over Mandred’s head, described a wide arc in the sky, then circled above the two riders. There must have been thousands, and the air was filled with the beating of wings. The play of colors in the birds’ feathers was so brilliant that Mandred could not take his eyes off them until, gradually, the flock dispersed.
    Ollowain had been silent for the entire ride. He seemed to be deep in thought and unimpressed by the wonders of the heartland. Mandred, though, could not drink in enough of what he was seeing.
    They came to a shallow lake, the bed of which sparkled with gemstones. What kind of beings are these that they would throw such treasures into the water without a second thought? But even as he thought this, he remembered that he himself had made offerings to his gods. On a silent night beneath a full moon, at the holy spring buried deep in the mountains, he had offered up the axe of the first man he had beaten in battle as a gift to Norgrimm, the god of war. And Freya and the other women honored Luth by braiding artfully woven bands of cloth into the branches of the linden tree in the village. The elves were obviously rich, so perhaps it wasn’t out of proportion for them to offer their gods precious stones. And yet the wealth of the elves angered Mandred. He did not know how he had come here, but this kingdom could not be so far from his