“I’ll tell you later,” I promised, squeezing Sabia’s hand to keep her quiet.
“There’s no possible way to fix them, Yngvar?” Dumaka was asking.
“Not unless those wizards of yours can turn splinters into solid boards again,” my father growled.
He spoke sarcastically; dwarves have little tolerance for magic of any sort, considering most of it trickery, though they are hard-pressed to explain how it works. But I could tell that he was secretly hopeful the humans would come up with the solution.
The Phondran chief said nothing in response, however. A bad sign. Usually the humans are quick to claim their magic can solve any problem. Peeping from over the top of the window ledge, I saw that Dumaka’s face was troubled. My father heaved another sigh, and shifted his bulk uncomfortably in his chair. I sympathized with him. Elven chairs are made for slender elven buttocks.
“I’m sorry, my friend.” My father stroked his beard, a sure sign that he was upset. “I didn’t mean to bark at you. Those blasted beasts have got us by the side whiskers, though, and what we do now is beyond this dwarf to figure out.”
“I think you’re worried about nothing,” said Eliason, with a languid wave of his hand. “You sailed to Elmas in perfect safety. Perhaps these serpents got it into their snakey heads that the sun-chasers were some sort of threat to them, and, once they smashed them to bits, they felt better about the whole thing and departed, never to bother us again.”
“ ‘Masters of the Sea,’ they called themselves,” my father reminded them, his black eyes glistening. “And they meant it. We sailed here by their permission. I’m as certain of that as if I’d heard them give it me. And they were watching. I felt their green-red eyes upon me the whole way.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
Dumaka stood up abruptly, walked over to a low wall of coral, and stood gazing down into the shining depths of the calm and placid Goodsea. Was it my imagination, or did I see now upon its surface a trace of shimmering oil?
“I believe you should tell them our news, my dear,” said his wife, Delu. Dumaka did not immediately reply, but kept his back turned, staring gloomily out to sea. He is a tall man, considered handsome by the humans. His rapid-fire speech, swift walk, and abrupt gestures always make him appear, in the realm of the easygoing Elmas, as if he were doing and saying everything in double-quick time. Now, however, he was not pacing or roaming about in frantic activity, trying to outrun the swift mortality that must inevitably overtake him.
“What’s the matter with your father, Alake?” whispered Sabia. “Is he ill?”
“Wait and listen,” said Alake softly. Her face was sad. “Grundle’s parents aren’t the only ones who have a fearful tale to tell.” Eliason must have found this change in his friend as disturbing as I did. He rose to his feet, moving with the slow, fluid grace of the elves, and laid a comforting hand on Dumaka’s shoulder.
“Bad news, like fish, doesn’t smell sweeter for being kept longer,” Eliason said gently.
“Yes, you are right.” Dumaka kept his gaze out to sea. “I had intended to say nothing of this to either of you, because I wasn’t certain of the facts. The magi are investigating.” He cast a glance at his wife, a powerful wizardess. She inclined her head in response. “I wanted to wait for their report. But . . .” He drew a deep breath. “It seems all too clear to me now what happened.
“Two days ago, a small Phondran fishing village, located on the coast directly opposite Gargan, was attacked and completely destroyed. Boats were smashed, houses leveled. One hundred and twenty men, women, and children lived in the village.” Dumaka shook his head, his shoulders bowed. “All are now dead.”
“Ach,” said my father, tugging at his forelock in respectful sympathy.
“The One have mercy,” murmured Eliason. “Was it tribal war?” Dumaka looked around at those gathered on the terrace. The humans of Phondra are a dark-skinned race. Unlike the Elmas, whose emotions run skin-deep, so the saying goes, the Phondrans do not blush in shame or pale in fear or anger. The ebony of their skin often masks their inner feelings. It is their eyes that are most expressive, and the chief’s eyes smoldered in anger and bitter, helpless frustration.
“Not war. Murder.”
“Murder?” It took Eliason a moment to comprehend the word that had been spoken in human. The elves have no term for such a heinous crime in their vocabulary.
“One hundred and twenty people! But . . . who? What?”
“We weren’t certain at first. We found tracks that we could not explain. Could not, until now.” Dumaka’s hand moved in a quick S-shape. “Sinuous waves across the sand. And trails of slime.”
“The serpents?” said Eliason in disbelief. “But why? What did they want?”
“To murder! To kill!” The chieftain’s hand clenched. “It was butchery. Plain out-and-out butchery! The wolf carries off the lamb and we are not angry because we know that this is the nature of the wolf and that the lamb will fill the empty bellies of the wolf’s young. But these serpents or whatever they are did not kill for food. They killed for the pleasure of killing!
“Their victims, every one, even the children, had obviously died slowly, in hideous torment, their bodies left for us to find. I am told that the first few of our people who came upon the village nearly lost their reason at the terrible sights they witnessed.”
“I traveled there myself,” said Delu, her rich voice so low that we girls were forced to creep nearer the window to hear her. “I have suffered since from terrible dreams that haunt me in the night. We could not even give the bodies seemly burial in the Goodsea, for none of us could bear to look upon their tortured faces and see evidence of the agony they had suffered. We magi determined that the entire village, or what was left of it, be burned.”
“It was,” added Dumaka heavily, “as if the killers had left us a message: ‘See in this your own doom!’ ”
I thought back to the serpent’s words: This is a sample of our power. . . . Heed our warning!
We girls stared at each other in a horrified silence that was echoed on the terrace below. Dumaka turned once again and was staring out to sea. Eliason sank down in his chair.
My father struck in with his usual dwarven bluntness. Pushing himself with difficulty out of the small chair, he stamped his feet on the ground, probably in an attempt to restore their circulation. “I mean no disrespect to the dead, but these were fisher folk, unskilled in warfare, lacking weapons ...”
“It would have made no difference if they had been an army,” stated Dumaka grimly. “These people were armed; they have fought other tribes, as well as the jungle beasts. We found scores of arrows that had been fired, but they obviously did no harm. Spears had been cracked in two, as if they’d been chewed up and spit out by giant mouths.”
“And our people were skilled in magic, most of them,” Delu added quietly, “if only on the lowest levels. We found evidence that they had attempted to use their magic in their defense. Magic, too, failed them.”
“But surely the Council of Magi could do something?” suggested Eliason. “Or perhaps magical elven weapons, such as we used to manufacture in times gone by, might work where others failed—no disparagement to your wizards,” he added, politely.
Delu looked at her husband, apparently seeking his agreement in imparting further bad news. He nodded his head.
The wizardess was a tall woman, equaling her husband in height. Her graying hair, worn in a coif at the back of the neck, provided an attractive contrast to her dark complexion. Seven bands of color in her feathered cape marked her status as a wizardess of the Seventh House, the highest rank a human can attain in the use of magic. She stared down at her clasped hands, clasped fast to keep from trembling.
“One member of the Council, the village shamus, was in the village at the time of the attack. We found her body. Her death had been most cruel.” Delu shivered, drew a deep breath, steeling herself to go on. “Around her dismembered corpse lay the tools of her magic, spread about her as if in mockery.”