Elcantar is four thousand kem from Vamlodar. A thousand on horseback to Pact at the edge of the Nar Mountains and five hundred more running through dense forest to the Dwarakai mountain city of Thul Dural and from there a thousand by the tunnel networks under the mountains to Thul Balahm. The last fifteen hundred kem will be by air on Drakai back.
We are at Pact. It has had that name for twenty seven years, named after the ‘Trade not Raid’ Pact between Elvakai, Dwarakai and Orakai and later with the Manakai of the Arten Commonwealth and the Narshadow Rebel Alliance.
I know all this because on our journey to Pact Hadrin Winterwise had taken it upon himself to educate me. Most evenings we’d sit with each other across a camp fire while the others, Elvakai Rangers, did what Elvakai do, sing and dance under moon and stars. They vibrate differently to me. They love differently. Tonight they sit together telling tales in the corner of an ill-lit tavern.
I no longer sit with them around their fires because I lay with one of them. With Vailarin. He’s the one with the ebony black skin, the long white hair and the green and black eyes of a cat.
I asked Hadrin why some Elvakai were so different. Most Elvakai that I’ve seen look like Renlai, white skinned Manakai with long ears. Hadrin looks like that, a typical Elvakai, except that he looks older than an Elvakai should. Besides Hadrin there are ten Elvakai in our group. I am the only Manakai traveling with them. Most have white skins but Vailarin is black, not black like Farjika, who is really dark brown, but black like a black cat with emeralds for eyes and white hair that falls over them when he leans to kiss me. Damn.
Hadrin explained that Elvakai appearance is more a matter of what is willed onto the patterns that determine appearance than is the case with other Kai peoples. A mother can shape the appearance of her child in the womb. Too, adult Elvakai can change the colour of their hair and skin over time. Vail’s eyes would have been willed by his mother as features such as this cannot be changed after birth.
Vailarin el Dininel whatever, Vail. Look. I don’t sleep around. God knows I don’t. But Vail, his ebony skin against my white. His green eyes, his hair. Yeah and all the rest. It wasn’t about the sex, well not just about that. He loved me, I felt it. But he’s with Arundel.. you know the one with the Elvakai typical blonde ethereal looks who sings like angels are supposed to sing. She said she didn’t mind. He said he could love us both. I said thank you but no thank you.
That was a few days and a couple of hundred kem behind us but I still can’t look at him, at them.
Elet None, the innkeeper of the Crow and Cask, comes to my table with vegetable stew, acorn bread and a half bottle of wine. She is a retired soldier, Dwarakai, though slimmer than any Dwarakai I’ve seen before. She was part of the Narshadow Resistance and knows Hadrin well. That’s why we’re staying here instead at the castle as befits emissaries of the Pendragon now Lady Protector of Narshadow. We don’t want to advertise ourselves as emissaries or anything else. Elvakai are not uncommon visitors to Pact but Vailarin with his black skin and Taimlie with the blue skin and black hair get a few looks even here.
Elet smiles at me kindly, as if she knows, Hadrin would have said nothing but I guess she can read me. Maybe I’m imagining it. I feel everyone can see what I’m feeling.
Hadrin arrives and speaks a few words to the innkeeper. It’s not Arkaenic and I don’t recognise the language. Maybe one of my ghosts would but I’m not listening to them now.
He always cheers me. Hadrin is safe. He expects nothing of me and I expect nothing of him. He asked once what I would wish to be besides the warrior and demon bearer. I replied, teasingly, “What would you wish me to be my captain”. His answer was direct, as he always is. “A friend Raksha Redmist” he said, “just a friend.”
Elet None bows very slightly to Hadrin. “Hai Kai” he says. It is not said in the usual formal way of a salutation acknowledging the presence of the other. There is a deeper respect that touches her. She smiles, squeezes my shoulder and leaves.
“What were you two saying?” I ask.
“Later” he says. “Have you been speaking to ghosts again?”
Of course I have. All I do these days is talk to ghosts. Not only the demon Killum, not only my memory of Rabia, not only the ghosts of the hundreds I have killed, but you also, whoever you are, my imagined bard that writes my legend.
“Of course.” I smile.
“It’s about presence. ‘Hai Kai’ is not just a salutation Raksha, it’s an acknowledgement and evocation of presence. I think your ghosts cling to you because you permit them to be present.”
I pour wine into his glass and mine. Hadrin doesn’t need it when he is talking about deep things, about presence. But I needed it. I enjoy listening to him and I always learn from him. Nevertheless, the wine helps.
“Stillness, silence. Being in the moment. One with everything” A gentle smile crosses his face as he looks at me.
“You remember your bouts with Farjika in the training hall. No matter how hard and fast you came against her you still landed on your back or with her sword at your throat.
“That’s stillness moving without thought. I’ve known five Pendragons, countless warriors and many sages but only Ulf and Farjika could manifest the stillness like that, in combat.”
He pauses. He misses Ulf I think.
“But there’s a different quality about Farjika. When Ulf moved he dominated his opponents. It was almost as though he were forcing you to move and you were playing a part. But Farjika seems to move out of the way and you fall into a hole”
“I remember,” I say, I remember the shock of hitting the mat, the way Farjika’s blade always seemed to be already there before I even committed to a strike. It wasn’t anticipation or calculation, it was just presence.
“Farjika doesn’t move fast,” I murmur.
“She moves without hesitation. No gap. No noise in her mind. No ghosts”
I look at the fire in the hearth near where we sit, watching sparks rise like tiny fleeing spirits.
“It was just like I was falling into a hole .. it was like I wanted to go there.”
Hadrin smiled. He had sparred with Farjika, as he had with Ulf almost a century before.
Hadrin knows how I feel about Farjika. I don’t mind telling you that I love the woman. I think Hadrin loves something beyond the woman. I think he loves the legend in her that he loved in Ulf.
Hadrin knows how to love. They say that he gave up his immortality to age with his Manakai soulbond Esterra. Not that the Elvakai live forever, but three hundred years or so is pretty much immortal in my book and Hadrin looks good for two hundred or so
“It was like that, in the council chamber, that evening in Vamlodar, four moons ago.” Hadrin hesitates, staring intently at the fire. “Tharin Saelig, the mayor of Sanctuary, spoke on behalf of the Manakai in Narshadow. He asked Farjika to be Protector of Narshadow, to all intents and purposes, its monarch.”
I remembered. Hadrin had told me that he knew that Tharin was going to make the offer but the others didn’t know. Thrain Ironheart the Dwarakai King didn’t know and Gore Bloodaxe of the Orakai didn’t know.
“Only a few of us in that room knew what was going to happen but everyone accepted it without argument.”
They did. I could have told Hadrin that there were good reasons why everyone should have chosen Farjika. The Paldir leader was respected both for herself and her title. The Manakai saw her as a way to keep Manakai power alongside their more powerful Dwarakai and Orakai allies. And the Dwarakai and Orakai knew that she wouldn’t play favourites. Hadrin knew all this but he also felt that there was more than politics at play that evening. And as he looked back at me I recognised that I knew it also.
“It felt like falling into a hole, didn’t it?” he said. “It felt like wanting to fall in.”
We both held our silence for a long time. Then Hadrin spoke.
“The title ‘Pendragon’ is rich in legend. We are told that the original Pendragon came from that other world, where Manakai come from. That there was a King who brought a sacred cup and a sword. That he died soon after he arrived but it is said that his spirit is in the cup and in the sword.”
The room and my ghosts seem to listen in this moment as Hadrin pauses. Then he continues.
“They say that this king held back a darkness in his own world and came to this one to keep the cup and sword safe for a Pendragon who would take them up in the last days.
Ulf was a soldier, a Paladin of the Empire who always stood for justice over law. He was the conscience of the Emperor Genericus until the emperor became corrupted by Kigam Kalb. His men whispered that he was the Pendragon and the name stuck whether he wanted it or not. Do you know what ‘Pendragon’ means in legend?”
I said nothing.
“It means ‘the one who holds back the Darkness’. There is also an Elvakai legend that when worlds end there is always one who holds back the Darkness — even if only for a while.”