The most unique aspect of Elven Magic is the charm. Tales of old claimed that the elves had an innate allure, and indeed the mere form of elves is often fetishized in human culture. Yet the true Charm is something cast, not passive. No matter the god or school an elf pursues, they are typically capable of both resisting and casting charm spells. The resistance is passive, allowing the elf to easily shirk off the spells of others, while the casting requires intention and practice.

  Spacklebottom and Willowbirth’s “Theory of Elven Magic”

  ? 2339 Assandial University Publishing House

  The spell is already inside of you, the textbook read, left by your patron Lord. It is only a matter of reaching inside and releasing it.

  Someone knocked on Belaer’s back door. Swift as a serpent’s strike, he hid his daughter’s book on Wood Elf magic in the bottom of a stack of music textbooks. Instead, he took up a gazette that had been delivered the day before while his lovely wife, Alvarelle, rose from her lyre and flowed to the door. She had too much poise to betray trepidation in her steps, though he didn’t doubt that, after everything, she felt a spark of it.

  He scanned again the pamphlet, pretending to be absorbed in what he’d already read three times over. The most striking thing about the article was how uneventful the news was, as though no conspiracy were afoot. It smelled like cover-up.

  His personal assistant had been passed over for the Ceannship of Trade in favor of one of his Diplomatic-Clerks, a position he had invented when Master-Clerks had proven too analytical for managing interpersonal issues with ambassadors. He couldn’t say he was surprised to see his assistant passed over. Still, because these positions were appointed from within and merely confirmed by the other Ceanns, the House of Trade continued on much as before. The appointee had been confirmed 4-5, with only Willowbirth opposed. Another non-surprise.

  Belaer could retire in peace.

  Or what peace there was without Gale.

  “This way, Guardsman,” Alva spoke pleasantly to someone. “We have a water pump in our kitchen.”

  They were privileged to have it, but he had been a Ceann, and this home was always where he had intended to retire with Alva. If they were going to have privileges, he’d place them here.

  “Thank you, lady Silverstem. I’ll… try not to disturb you for long.”

  “Dysren!” Belaer jumped from his chair at the sound of the young Captain’s voice. He composed himself, smoothing back his tunic and hair, and followed the sound of the others’ voices into his kitchen. “Hello, Captain. I see you’ve now met my wife, Alvarelle. Alva, this is Captain Dysren Deepsun. He’s a son of Sanwryn’s since she married Revelyr.”

  “Oh that’s nice–OH!” Realization sparked in the fair hues of his wife’s gaze.

  Dysren gave a bow that was too low for their retired stations. “I came under the excuse of pumping water, so I can’t speak long. I wish I could sit to tell you what I’ve come to say. I wish we all could.” The young man glanced his soft, dark eyes toward Alva and began to fill his flask with water.

  “Speak, young man. Any news is welcome.”

  “You say that…” he pumped slowly. “Ceann Willowbirth sent a scouting party through–this will sound crazy–but through a portal to another realm. A wild realm. One that Fenn and Gale definitely went through. I saw the remnants of their camp. They didn’t–”

  “Oh frosts,” Alva whimpered. Belaer wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. She was right to be afraid, though even Belaer didn’t know what their child faced. Not unless she returned. Then she’d face exile at best.

  Remnants, he’d said. “Dysren, tell us directly. Is Gale alive?”

  Dysren winced. “I can’t prove it, but I believe they both are. They didn’t simply disappear. They’ve gone on an expedition searching for… something. I’ve got no idea what, but Ceann Willowbirth had us collect books–books left behind in the other realm by Fenn and books from his house. I didn’t understand the language of most of them, but the ones I did, well, they were books of heresy. Of magic and….”

  He trailed off, glancing between Belaer and his wife. “Maybe I shouldn’t say.”

  “Of greater powers. Greater persons.” Deities. Belaer finished for him, his shoulders sagging. It was worse than he thought. But Gale was alive. And he knew where she was–sort-of. The Wildlands. How have they been so near all along?

  “Yes…how did you–? Nevermind. My point is, Fenn and Gale have gone looking for something–or someone–in another realm, and Ceann Willowbirth is trying to hide all of this. I don’t know why, but he swore the entire party to secrecy upon the penalty of eternal imprisonment.”

  Alva’s fingers closed tightly around Belaer’s tunic. “Then you shouldn’t be telling us,” she said. “You have much to lose.”

  “But I thank you anyway. Thank you very much,” Belaer added, trying not to choke on a fearful lump growing in his throat.

  Dysren’s flask overflowed. He began to cap it. “One more thing, Ceann–sir. It was as if he–Willowbirth–already knew about the way into the other realm, that Door, he called it. The Cayth-Ceann Willowbirth certainly did. There’s… well, it seems like a conspiracy.” He shifted on his feet, his brows knit as he searched Belaer’s face.

  Belaer was sure it betrayed a darkness. “Then it is a conspiracy held outside of the House of Trade, certainly. Above the heads of the other Ceanns.”

  “Do you think the Highfather knows?” The Captain worried. He was right to worry.

  A sharp rapping sounded on the back door. “Dez, hurry back! I’ve got to relieve myself!” his partner called.

  She probably didn’t. She was probably suspicious.

  “I don’t know,” Belaer answered honestly. He had a hard time believing Vyrrell would approve of threats like banishment to the roots of the mountain. Her hand for justice was firm, but not cruel.

  With a final bow, Dysren sauntered to the back door. “Hey Silba, did you know that Lady Silverstem used to be my mom’s lyre instructor?” He spoke jovially to the other guard as he stepped out. “I had no idea!” It closed heavily behind him, leaving them in silence.

  “Oh Belaer,” his wife cried, “she’s run off chasing magic! We’ll never see her again!”

  She tried to bury the escape of her tears in his shoulder, but Belaer caught her chin on his fingers. He lifted her face. They both knew Gale had never really given up magic, but then there was something she had always treasured more. “No, my darling. Fenn may be chasing magic, but our daughter has gone chasing something much, much greater than that.” He pressed his lips to Alva’s furrowed brow, and she nodded.

  Gale should never have been theirs to begin with. She was a miracle chance. It was too unlikely a coincidence that just as Alva had yet another miscarriage, the Ambassador of the Wood Elves, his friend, would speak of a child who had lost all family and needed asylum somewhere safe. Somewhere peaceful.

  A child who needed a place of love as much as they needed to give it.

  And so love had been what they’d taught her to value most.

  Magic had been secondary to her, though possibly in common with the rather… odd love she’d chosen. The supposed gods may be mighty powers, but the greatest power of all was, and always would be, love. That, he knew, was what she chased.

  He hoped she’d found it.

  “You mean you’re letting zhem stay?”

  Fenn flinched at the outrage in Gale’s voice as Syrdin walked past him to perch in a tree, ignoring the building argument. It would be another difficult one to dismantle. He'd try anyway, as he had promised to do.

  “Mell and I are in no condition to travel. We need rest, and if Ferngal does attack us, it would be beneficial to have another capable fighter among us. Besides, zhe agreed to leave willingly after we depart the forest. It will be easier this way.”

  “For zhem, maybe! I’ll be worried about dying the whole time.” Gale placed her hand emphatically over her neck and glared. “Zhe should leave now.”

  “I’ll take watches with zhem until zhe leaves. I can’t be counted on for magical resistance anyway. You can take watch with Krid. He’ll look after you. Zhe won’t do anything to you, Gale. I promise.”

  Krid grunted his affirmation from the firepit where he’d begun cutting up the roasted cladafrum they’d left behind–that which remained after the small shoth had accosted it during their absence.

  “Because you’re so beautifully good at upholding your promises!” Gale huffed and stomped back into her tent.

  Fenn stared at the arrows in his hands, feeling like she had lodged one in his gut. He’d told her days ago that his word shouldn’t mean so much to her. But you couldn’t tell Galendria Silverstem anything. Not to listen. Not to leave him alone. Certainly not, “no.” She didn’t accept that one ever, hence the matrioniage. Well, he had said no until his father had gotten involved. Nuance. She’d still tried to reason him into it.

  “Well, that went well,” Mell growled with sarcasm. “Syrdin, we’d rather you just told us what it is you want in the fae. And no diversions–straight answers. Then you might actually be invited to stay.”

  “As I said before: you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try us.”

  “Hmmm, no.”

  Fenn sighed, defeated. “Go on to bed, Mell. Syrdin and I will watch first.”

  With her cheek bitten in her mouth, Mell trailed after Gale. As an aging human, she needed rest more than any of them.

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  “You sure you want to watch with Syrdin?” Krid asked, pulling out his tent.

  Fenn shrugged. “Maybe it would be wiser to have zhem watch with someone who could resist zheir magic, but…” he sent a cringe after Mell and Gale, “Mell, Gale, and Syrdin are the only people with resistance to charms. They must be split up. Gale shouldn’t watch with Syrdin, obviously, and things would go poorly with her and me. These are our best pairings, though I hate leaving Mell alone.”

  Krid grunted, but didn’t argue. Soon, he too was in a tent resting.

  Fenn set down the arrows and gathered together Anruwan’s bow and his notebooks. Syrdin could watch for predators, and he could watch for Syrdin. That didn’t mean he had to look at zhem the whole time.

  First, he examined the bow under a magnifying glass. The depiction of Anruwan showed the curly-headed elf reaching up to receive a drop of light from the sun directly over his head. The song We Praise the Sun had mentioned a place of worship on a peak where Sun first touched. Fenn had not imagined noon as a possibility, but if the sun were overhead, the light from it would still hit the highest peak first. He retrieved an unmarked map and tried to orient it. Now knowing the Yellow Wood was before them, he observed that the mountains were indeed behind them. He couldn’t help but wonder whether they could have come upon Anruwan’s birthplace if they had followed the sun instead of their shadows.

  Of course, there was a chance that it was just art, that both the poem and bow were symbolic. Yet, endless evenings of dance had proven quite possible, as had the stampede of waters and hail of the Clactyrnac battle. He could not assume that there was no literal meaning.

  He clenched his teeth and refocused. I am not searching for the location, but the enchantment. He held his magnifying glass up to the bows’ ends, then the back, then even the front of the bow, all around the edges and patterns, seeking the runic enchantment. When he found none, he set the bow down and sighed. It was no low-level enchantment. Just like the others.

  Though it consumed energy, he would have to study it the hard way. He rubbed his eyes under his glasses, pinching them. With his other hand, he drew the vision runes onto himself and focused the energy. When he opened his eyes, the toughness enchantment written into his glasses glared at him. He set them aside and reached for where he knew he had left the bow. He could no longer see physical details, or hardly make out the general shape. Instead, the shape of the magic glowed in his vision.

  He scanned over the bow. It was infused with sun magic, radiating gently of its warmth. Across the arc of it, he could see a series of runes written in pure Luth. It was similar to how he infused his own projectiles, but permanent, standing over millennia–likely until the end of time so long as no one interrupted it. With a practiced hand in spite of his poor vision, he carefully transcribed each rune. With curved tails and arced crossing of forgotten significance, each one betrayed an ancient origin. With so many, he would not be able to decipher it all in one night. He spent the watch copying, checking, and double-checking the transcription. Glasses on. Magic off. Magic on. Glasses off.

  A finger jabbed his shoulder, and he jolted by a brief panic into recalling the blurry world around him.

  “You gonna wake Mell or should I?” Syrdin’s face was a hand’s width from his, allowing him to perceive zheir flat stare through the blur.

  “Ah, would you? I think I’ll stay up with her for a while.”

  “Fine. Night.”

  Fenn couldn’t help but find it amusing how unabashedly zhe called the bright sunlight on shiny blue-ish leaves ‘night.’

  Syrdin had stood, but hesitated. “By the way, I wasn’t going to kill her. I probably shouldn’t have grabbed her. Forgot for a second how delicate she was with the way she was talking kruppa.”

  Fenn shoved on his glasses and stared, but Syrdin had already walked away. “I’m not the one you should apologize to,” he replied.

  “Ha. You wish.” Zhe ducked into Mell and Gale’s tent.

  He rubbed under his glasses and dismissed his magic vision. It hadn’t been a true apology, but zheir words implied one. He pondered whether it was a gambit or genuine. And he pondered zheir words. Gale, delicate? Zhe kept saying that. Mell had said something similar. He had yet to witness delicacy from her. Elegance, grace, and poise, sure; things not useful here. But delicacy?

  Mell’s shadow fell over his shoulder. “That many runes?”

  He regarded his open notebook. “Yes, written in Luth like it were ink. I assumed they would be enchanted by masters, but studying this makes me wonder if it was crafted by the gods themselves.”

  “Was it?” She leaned in as she sat.

  He shrugged. “It is consistent with how Wood Elf enchanters work, as opposed to Dwarf. I suppose it depends whether the gods taught the elves or not.”

  “Are there no stories of that?”

  “Only Skunyuv is said to have smelted metal.” He tapped the weapon thoughtfully. It tinked with the sound of sturdy smithing. “But we know little of her. She never created a tribe of her own to carry her tales, and whatever the Moon Elves recorded was destroyed in Etnfrandia.”

  Mell nodded. “It is too bad we didn’t ask Ferngal about the gods directly. She probably would know this kind of thing, too.”

  Fenn glanced to where Gale slept, worried she might overhear the critique.

  “Don’t worry, once she fell asleep, she was out like a candle. It’ll take a bit of coaxing to rouse her later.”

  He relaxed back into his seat of roots, suddenly feeling the weariness of his work. They were quiet for a while, and he found his eyelids heavy.

  “Did Syrdin say anything on watch?” Mell asked.

  “No,” he said with a sigh. “Nothing revealing. Just sort-of that zhe shouldn’t have threatened Gale.”

  “Just sort-of that?” Mell snorted. “You have a strange definition of what’s revealing.”

  “It could be an act, Mell.”

  “I suppose.”

  Fenn tried to blink the heaviness from his lids for Mell’s sake. He’d had something he wanted to discuss. Sleep took him before he remembered.

  Gale’s heart was broken. Not by Fenn. That’d be overdramatic, and deep down she was still glad he was alive. So glad that she’d slept for the first time in days.

  No, she watched with stabs of pain in her chest as her atti turned another page of her book, his form fading in the crystal artifact. He was thinking of her as much as she thought of him and Matta. They were more than just the parents who raised her: they were her best friends, and she’d left them behind–probably forever–with no words of parting. She hadn’t meant to. Hadn’t known. It was Fenn’s fault. Fenn hadn’t explained anything. Except that he was looking for the Wildlands, and he was taking artifacts with him. It was hardly an explanation, much less justification, and done at the last moment.

  She thrust the crystal beside Mell’s rolled bed and stomped from the tent. Sure, along the way he’d mentioned a thing or two about gods and missing knowledge and false history. It was belated and all clear as mud to her.

  She ripped aside the tent flap and saw Fenn shoulder to shoulder with Mell, pointing to something on her bow. That meant he’d stayed awake after his watch just to spend time with her during hers. It was bad enough that he’d insisted that he take a watch with Syrdin. Why not me?

  “I do think you were right about the clactyrnac and the mountains after all. The morning has gotten earlier, and look, Anruwan is dancing under a noon sun in the artifact. Noon would be behind us, as would the source of the storm.”

  “We couldn’t have known which way noon was anyway.” Mell squeezed his bicep, but removed her hand when she heard Gale’s feet pound the earth behind them.

  Gale plopped to the ground across from them and pretended to admire the shimmering leaves nearest her. She’d been the one who failed to ask Ferngal about mountains or a temple. In a way, their predicament was her fault–except that they’d all be dead without her. It was incredible how they all seemed to have forgotten–especially Syrdin.

  “Did you sleep well?” Mell asked.

  She bit her lip. “Fine.”

  “Any… news of your father?” Fenn asked.

  “Any news of chasing away Syrdin?” she snapped back.

  Fenn stared at the long tendrils of grass jutting between the tree roots he sat upon.

  Mell nudged him in the arm, and he turned to Gale with reluctance. “I feel bad, you know. About his involvement.”

  She frowned. He’d already apologized for that. “You should. He was studying my book of Wood Elf magic. He regretted that he’d given me that, but now it’s one of the only parts of me he has. He doesn’t even know where I’ve gone, much less why.”

  Fenn shrivelled against the tree like leaves in a drought, his jaw working. Mell had the nerve to glare at her.

  Gale wished the man would stop sulking and reach for her. He wasn’t even trying except when Mell told him to. Sure, Gale might bat away his hand if he did, but he wasn’t supposed to stop trying. He was supposed to love her.

  He shoved the bow toward her and stood. “I never wanted you to get hurt, Gale. Not by Syrdin or anybody. Especially not by me, though I knew I couldn’t avoid that. Not when you–”

  “‘Couldn’t avoid it’ my ass,” she grumbled, attempting some the more colorful Allspeech she’d been hearing lately. Fenn’s lying had been as avoidable as a boulder resting beside a road. All it took was mentioning his goals at any point in the last six years since his return, and naming and explaining Syrdin’s race. Even a simple admission to an interest in magic would’ve changed everything.

  Fenn’s fists clenched with frustration, and he didn’t finish his thought. “I’m going to sleep some more.” He stomped off, taking a chunk of that disgusting burnt cladafrum carcass with him.

  She glared after him. How dare he sleep at a time like this. When I need him.

  Behind her, Krid puffed in a way that reminded her of a dry snort. “I see your battle of words is going well.”

  Mell arose with her arms out in a stretch.“Their ‘battle of words’ is going about as well as a copper train-novel at its climax.”

  Krid roared with laughter, apparently understanding the joke. “I couldn’t even finish one. A copper thrown out like trash.”

  Mell grinned and stretched. “You should’ve finished it. If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.”

  “I didn’t need to. The lovers were going to get together in the end, but only after disaster took everything else away. Predictable, and written bad. Even I know better Allspeech than that.”

  “Mhm,” Mell grunted some kind of confirmation. “How far did you ride?”

  “Caught the rail’s head in Rockfall and rode all the way down to Spurfton, then cut over the mountains on foot to Edan-fran-te-ah.”

  He said it wrong.

  “Ah, Syrdin and I rode from Rockfall back to Ashewood, but then my funds were low so we hopped carts the rest of the way.”

  Krid nodded. “Which mercenary guild did you hire zhem from, anyway?”

  Mell blinked. “Oh, I hired zhem individually. Can’t remember which guild zhe said zhe was in. Black Opulent or some such.”

  Krid shook his head. “You should’ve checked.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not familiar with them anyway. If I was, the name would’ve stuck.”

  Gale’s head whipped back and forth between them. She had no idea what they were talking about.

  Mell erupted into a wide-mouthed yawn. “Well, goodnight again. Don’t fall for any enchantments.”

  Gale wished her goodnight, too overwhelmed with confusion to remember to be sour. “Krid, what’s a trainnovel?”

  He peered into the trees, squinting toward the source of the Watcher’s piercing gaze. “Which do you want to know first, a train or a novel?”

  “A novel like a book?”

  “Yes, and one written for sale at an engine station is a train novel, short to entertain on the ride. But they are written like to sell camel dung for fertilizer: stinky and lots of it.”

  She smiled at his ridiculous comparison, but her questions were far from answered. “An engine station?”

  “Yes, arcane engines, which Fenn helped to make.”

  Her eyes grew wide. From there, the descriptions of another world began. A world wider and stranger than even the Fae: Fenn’s world, Hethbarn.