Then he laughed and added that the trick to using Misdirection magic was to place it somewhere where the target would never even consider they were being misled.
Simple power aside, I still didn’t feel like I was even close to matching up with Gus in terms of crafty use of Words like this. I didn’t have the experience or the personality.
“You’re too honest, that’s your problem,” Gus said, grinning as if he’d read my mind.
I laughed and gave a resigned shrug.
“Now then. It seems that wine was once made here at this temple. Blood and
Mary turned the part above ground into a shed, but this was originally a wine cave. Accordingly,” he said, opening the door with psychokinesis, “it goes underground.”
We followed Gus’s magical light down a set of stairs paved with flat stones and entered into a wide-open space. To our left and right, there were racks where wine barrels must have once been stacked, and—
“Whoa…”
“Ooh, wow!”
Menel and Al exclaimed in turn, and Reystov and Ghelreis stared in amazement. The place was full with weapons and armor. I could tell that each and every one of them was a work of equally fine craftsmanship.
“Take whatever you want,” Gus said, smiling. “I’m sure their owners would allow it.”
Everyone gave him a little bow and went around investigating the weapons.
Even Reystov and Ghelreis’s eyes were shining. It really was true that no matter what age a man reached, he would always love things like weapons, steel, and leather.
And now that I knew they’d been maintaining a place like this, I had to wonder—
“Gus, was this Blood’s…”
“Mm. He was the one taking care of the armory. These are the weapons of the warriors who once joined us in taking on the High King. There are also some good-quality weapons here that were just left in this city by unknown owners. In any case, Blood said he couldn’t bear to leave them to rust up and get covered in dust, so he brought them in here and gave them regular maintenance.”
Now it made sense. All the various types of weapons Blood had brought out from somewhere for my training when I was young probably came from here.
As I looked around at all the weapons in this new light, many of them did look kind of familiar. Hmm, except—
“When I fought Stagnate at the bottom of the temple hill, the skeletons that rose up had rusted weapons and stuff.”
“Yes. Most of those were nothing special, just ordinary weapons picked from the city to bury alongside them. It was Blood’s idea. He said a warrior always needs some kind of weapon, even on the way back to the eternal cycle. Did you notice that hardly any of them were wearing armor? That’s why.”
Gus added that the mithril mail I was wearing, which I’d gotten from one of the skeletons, was something that particular person had requested be buried with him.
“Oh! Then… I should—”
“It’s fine, it’s fine, keep it. It’s not worth worrying about at this point. Just think of it as a compensation fee for the trouble his corpse caused.”
“You just do things any old way, don’t you?!”
But I couldn’t relinquish it at this point. I faced the graveyard at the bottom of the hill and prayed. I have to take this mail. I’m sorry…
Gus laughed loudly. “Well, I’m sure he’ll forgive you. It’s for Blood’s son, after all.”
“What kind of person was he?”
“His name was Telperion. Silver-string Telperion.” If I remembered correctly, that elegant-sounding name was Elvish. “He was born in the Forest of Erin.”
“When the glittering silver bowstring sings, there is no enemy who does not fall.” A voice drifted like a cool breeze. It was Menel. I looked over, and saw that he was gazing upon a glittering silver bow and smiling. “I’m from the same place.”
“Ohh, so you’re from the Great Forest of Erin.”
“Pretty much,” Menel replied curtly.
Gus had the eyes of someone looking at something long lost. “Your silver hair — do you have a blood connection to Telperion?”
“Distantly related, but both part of… Ithil… Silvermoon Branch… uh…”
“Is it what in human society we would call a lineage?”
“That’s the one. Huh. Surprised you knew that.”
In elven society, a clan with shared mythology was called a Trunk, and a lineage that could be traced back to the family relations was called a Branch.
Each of those was prefixed by a name in some way associated with the beauty of nature. I’d learned this from Gus.
“Telperion once stumbled over the translation for the same word.”
“Huh.”
“So what kind of person was this Telperion?” I said while peering at the pieces of gear Menel was looking at: leather gloves, a bow with a silver string, and several strangely shaped mithril arrowheads.
While I was looking at these, Gus thought for a moment, then said, “He was incredibly conservative and proud. A very elvish elf. He used to fight a lot with Blood back when they’d only just met.”
“Ahh…”
Despite how he looked, Blood was a man with quite a lot of common sense.
However, he could definitely be quick to anger, and if he ran into the typical elf that you heard about in the stories, an argument was all but certain.
“Telperion was descended directly from the head of the Ithil Branch,” Menel said. “Noble blood. Wouldn’t surprise me if he had a high opinion of himself to match. Probably annoyed the crap out of anyone who had to deal with him.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Why did someone noble like that go outside the forest?” I asked.
Menel hummed.
“Why don’t you tell him the story?” said Gus, smiling wryly. “When a warrior inherits a famous weapon, it’s an ancient custom to talk about its history.”
Telling the history of the weapon — Blood had said the same thing when he’d passed Overeater down to me. Menel’s expression turned a little bit complicated, and then he started to speak in a clear voice.
“Silver-string Telperion. He was a master of the bow; he had fellowship with the fae; he flew like the wind across the plains. His flute whistled elegant and bright. He could recite countless traditions and legends from memory, and even among the wise elves, few could match his wisdom. So they say.”
Menel recited well. He was clearly familiar with this, even if not to the same level as Bee. The sound of his voice had started to draw the others around as well. He was good enough to make money off this — in fact, he seemed to have been doing all kinds of work before, so maybe there was a time when he earned money through telling stories.
“Telperion had a friend. A kid who was born the same year as him — rare for elves, who don’t have many children. They grew up together as foster brothers.
The foster brother wasn’t as talented as Telperion, but he had passion and a dream.”
It was a dream of one day going to the outside world.
“The foster brother talked about his dream, but Telperion couldn’t understand. All things pure and beautiful are in the forest — why would he want to go to the corrupted outside world? Telperion and his foster brother got on well, but when it came to this, they always argued, apparently.”
Speaking eloquently, Menel continued. “But the foster brother died. They were hunting beasts that had trespassed into the forest. They took down one, but then Telperion was attacked by a second that they didn’t realize was there. And the foster brother shielded him, even though the day he’d leave the forest, the day he’d dreamed of for so long, was just around the corner.”
It was a sudden death, with no last words.