It was late afternoon when the two companions stopped in a small forest grove. The taller, a dark-haired human in his late twenties, slid down from the horse’s back. He was dressed in plain, but well-kept, plate armor, and his eyes were deep and startlingly blue. He bowed with some amusement to the smaller figure and assisted her in dismounting. She was an elf, her age unguessable, and she was extremely beautiful. She laughed at him. “I can get down on my own, you know!”
The man shrugged and placed one hand behind his head in a helpless gesture that made him look ten years younger. He was smiling though, a soft, laughing, yet embarassed smile. “I know that, Deed. Do you mind?”
She shook her head. “Not at all.” She smiled back at him for a moment, something sweet and beautiful in her eyes. Then she turned away from him, pulling a saddlebag off of the horse. “Are we eating trail rations tonight or are you hunting?”
“I’ll hunt,” he replied simply. “But only if you cook it!”
Deedlit sniffed with amusement. “The other option is your cooking, right?”
“There is nothing the matter with my cooking!” he protested indignantly.
“Nothing at all,” she agreed, still laughing, “except that I don’t like bits of charred food floating in my stew. Really, Parn, you can burn water.”
“You don’t have to-”
“I’m not,” she said gently, as she pushed her long silver hair out of her face. “Besides, I like cooking.”
Parn stared at her in surprise, as he removed a short hunting bow that had been attached to the saddle. “I didn’t know that.”
The elf didn’t look up from excavating the objects she needed from the saddlebags. “Then why do you think I’ve been cooking for you these past ten years we’ve been travelling together?”
“I thought you didn’t like burnt bits in your stew.” He touched her head softly and bent over her from behind to look her in the face, allbeit upside down. “I’ll be back in less than an hour.”
She nodded. “Be careful, Parn . . . . Don’t try to kill a wolf with your belt-knife or anything.”
This time he was the one to sniff with amusement. “Am I really that bad?”
“Oh, yes, Sir Knight, I have absolutely no doubts that you can and would attempt to fight a dragon singlehanded, defeat any evil you choose, and -” she grinned at him again, shaking her finger, “still be hungry for dinner afterwards. Now, are you going hunting, or do you want to sit here teasing me all day? ‘Cause I can’t cook dinner until you bring something back.”
“I was under the impression that you were doing most of the teasing.” He shouldered the bow and walked off into the forest.
Deedlit smiled to herself. “A dragon singlehanded, any evil he chooses, but, oh, Parn, I wouldn’t ever want you to change!” She looked into the forest, still barely able to hear his heavy human feet. She giggled, her long ears wiggling slightly, and began sharpening some bits of wood to cook the meat on.
When Parn returned, Deedlit already had a fire going. She looked sadly at the pair of rabbits he presented her with. “Poor creatures.”
“You eat them, too,” he pointed out.
“Yes,” she agreed, touching each of the small creatures and murmuring something under her breath. “And I’m sure they don’t begrudge us our dinner, but I can’t help feeling sorry for them.”
“Next time I’ll bring back fish. Maybe you won’t get emotionally involved with them.” Parn sat down across from her. “Do you know where we are, Deedlit?”
“In the forest, less than a league from Lake Lu-” She stopped. “Oh. Lake Lunoana. Ten years.”
He nodded solemnly. “Do you want me to the do the cutting, Deed? I can’t burn anything that way. No need for you get blood all over your hands.” He reached for the rabbits and the knife, but she pulled them away.
“Oh, no! That’s nice of you, Parn, but you killed them and I ought to do my part to keep us fed.” She grimaced and continued dealing with the rabbits. “Are we going to go there then?”
“I thought we might,” he said simply.
She nodded. “It’s hard to believe that it’s been so long.” Then she repeated, “Ten years.”
Parn stretched out his legs, placing his feet nearer the fire, then changed the subject. “I’ve been thinking.”
She replied with silence, encouraging him to continue.
“About what you said earlier.”
Her eyes grew slightly wider, as she continued skinning the rabbits, but her attention was mainly on him. “Earlier when?”
“This evening,” he answered. “This evening and some other things you said a long time ago.”
“Go on.” Soft, gentle, elven voice. Melodic. He wondered why she would wish to travel with him, a course human, loud even in his breathing. She was so much more than he was.
Parn looked uneasy, then finally began, “I am sort of reckless, you know. That was why you said you were coming with me. You said if you didn’t, I’d probably get into so much trouble I wouldn’t be able to get out of it.”
She smiled. “Well, I couldn’t just let you go off and get yourself killed, after you saved my life. Besides, I like you, Parn. I enjoy travelling with you.”
“Thanks.” He watched as she placed the rabbits on the fire, and the first smell of cooking meat issued forth. “That smells good. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I think you’re right.”
“Right about what?”
“The fact that I probably do need to be watched. I’m glad you’re doing it, Deed.”
She laughed again. “You’re welcome, Parn.”
Laughter had much marked their ten years together. He was beginning to see that it was very much a part of her. Laughter and music were as much a part of elves as their pointed ears and sad, ancient eyes. There always seemed to be laughter just on the edge of her voice. Somehow it didn’t seem to contradict the sadness, verging on tears, that always sat in her eyes. Her smile never seemed to completely reach them.
“Parn?”
“Hmm?”
“What are you thinking about?”
He grinned at her, pushing away his thoughtful mood. “Just that those rabbits are taking an awfully long time to cook?”
She wasn’t fooled, he knew, but she laughed too. Another of the elven things about her: she knew always when he lied.
It was a simple grave really. One stone, grey and plain, implacable as the mountains, an axe driven through it. It stood just on the shore of the lake, and something of the gruff, kindly manner of the one it covered still seemed to surround it, even after ten years.
Deedlit’s eyes were downcast, as she placed the handful of flowers on it. They were plain flowers, too, the strong hardy briar-flowers that grew along the lake’s shore, more thorns than petals. They were appropriate flowers to place on the dwarf’s grave. “You dear, stubborn, stupid dwarf,” she whispered to the stone. “You just had to get yourself killed, didn’t you?”
Parn watched her from the trees’ edge, but did not interrupt her conversation with the dead dwarf.
“You succeeded though.” There was friendship in the words, unheard of from an elf to a dwarf. There was a deep hatred between the two oldest races, sometimes. Their very characters were opposed, she had told him once. “Leylia is alive and free of Karla. She-she’s married to Slayn. I know you’d be happy for them. They both remember you. We all do.”
There was no reply from the stone, but she patted it fondly. “While you walk the paths of night, remember us,” she said, then rose. “I’m ready now, Parn.”
Parn walked towards her. “Do you really think the dead can hear us, Deed?”
“I know so,” she replied.
Parn glanced over his shoulder at the stone. “Goodbye, old friend.”
East of Valis there is a place where the forest rises up to meet the farmland. The trees are tall and old, perhaps the oldest in all of Lodoss. There is a path through it. No plants grow along this path, and it is flat with wear and well-shaded by the trees. Where the wear comes from, no one can say. It is not the wear of human feet, this at least is known, for few mortals enter the forest. There are reasons for this, among them its name: the Forest of No Return.
Its edge is crowded with shadows, dark and ominous. A person standing at the edge of the path can look down it into complete darkness, and feel eyes staring, watching. There is a gloom that surrounds it and a threat.
Deeper within the forest, it is a lively and beautiful place. Sunlight shines golden and green through the leaves by day. At night, the moonlight and starlight are joined by the luminous dancing of willow-wisps. The wood is eternally filled with a slight breeze of song, Sylph and Zephyr. Undines wait in the clear streams. Gnomes live there, scarcely visible amid the green and brown of the forest. There are even one or two salamanders in the forest depths. Others too, older and stranger, dwell there. And in the very heart of the forest, the high elves make their homes.
It has been called the Forest of Light. And now it is dying.
Another evening, another clearing. Again the young fighter and his companion. Again he dismounts and offers her a hand down. Again she laughs. It has become a tradition for them.
“Always the gentleman, Parn?”
He bows to her formally. “I am a knight, my lady.”
She says nothing and turns her head away to watch a bird perched in a nearby tree and to hide the hint of something that might be a blush.
“Should I get fish?” he asks.
She looks up at him. “It’s early yet. I’ll come too.”
He grins. “I’ll find you a pole then.”
She shakes her head, with something of mischief. “I won’t need one.”
“But-”
“I’ll show you!”
Parn stood on the bank, staring at Deedlit. She stood hip-deep in the water, dressed only in a green tunic. “What are you going to do? Call them to you with shamanism?”
Deed’s eyes were focused on the water. “That would be wrong, Parn. I am not averse to eating fish, but to call them to their own deaths with a magic they cannot refuse? Better to give them a chance.”
“Then how?”
“Watch,” she said softly.
Parn watched now, completely silent.
A slow smile came upon Deedlit’s face, and she suddenly lifted a medium-sized trout from the stream. “They like to be tickled.”
He stared at the fish. “Tickled?”
“Take this fish, Parn! I need both hands to catch another, and this one won’t feed both of us.”
Parn took the fish from her hands and began to gut it, as she lowered her hands back into the water. He quickly glanced up again as he heard her cry out with pain. He was at her side in a moment, in time to catch her before she toppled into the stream. He could find no sign of what had caused her pain.
Deed woke beside the fire to find Parn looking at her with worry. “Are you alright, Deed?”
She took stock, knowing what she would find. There was a deep pain in her chest, within her heart, and she felt weak. She knew why, as well. She was dying. She hadn’t expected it to come so soon. She was the youngest of her clan, a few decades short of two centuries, younger to her people than Parn was to his.
“Are you alright?” he asked again.
She nodded feebly and smiled. “Parn, I need to go home.”
“Home?”
“To the Forest of No Return,” she reminded him. “I need you to get me there, because soon I’ll be too weak.”
“Why are you sick?” he demanded. “How long will it take you to recover?”
She shrugged lightly. “Something’s wrong with the forest,” she explained, being careful not to lie. She couldn’t lie to him of all people. “I feel it, and it is making me ill. I have to go home and help set things to rights there. Then, I’ll be well.” She didn’t tell him how dangerously ill she was.
“We’ll set out tomorrow then. The fastest route takes us through Valis. I’m sure Etoh can do something to slow whatever is happening to you.” Parn smiled, reassured that everything would be alright. “Do you want some dinner? I cooked the fish . . . it’s not burned.”
“Thank you,” she said, trying to smile back at him.
The next day they set out in silence. Deedlit said nothing for two reasons: one, that she was weak; and two, that she did not want to accidentally let slip how ill she was. Parn’s silence came from a different source. It was something in which he had little experience. It was called fear.
He had fought kobolds and goblins, slain dragons, defeated evil, fought in battles, walked in haunted forests, risked his life again and again, but he hadn’t really been afraid. He had always believed in his own ability to cope with things, even things that he probablty couldn’t cope with. The term “reckless” had often been applied.
Yet, Parn could not fight a disease, and he feared that Deedlit was more ill than she was telling him. He didn’t want her to die.
Part Two:The Holy City: Can you help her, Etoh?
