Chapter 7: Darrick Elf Kin

"You're right, it's time I told you why we're here. Then you can decide among you what you want to do."

"I know why I'm here," Kargh scowled, gripping the haft of his axe. "Treasure. Jewels, gold, and blood."

"We all have our reasons," Anji agreed. "A chance to be more than just another hired caravan guard."

"Better weapons, and better armor," Bartan nodded.

"Good reasons, all of them. Darrick smiled grimly. "A chance for adventure, for knowledge, and for wealth. I'll go along with all of them, and add one more. I'm looking for a very special gem. It's had many names down through the ages, but only one that matters. I learned of it almost exactly one and a half centuries ago..."

The fire had died to an orange glow. They leaned forward, intent on his words as his thoughts turned back to that time so long before any of them had even been born.

He was fifteen, and still growing. Already he towered over his father, Tanrick the Fur trader. His mother, Jenrick of the Elven Kindred, was even smaller than her husband. She often laughed in bemused wonderment at this tall stick figure of a son she had borne. He played with neighbor children in the streets of Ast'te, watching avidly the caravans whose men and women of many races linked them with Raief, mighty Pordigran, L'Relg, and even distant Tuayne.

In another year, or at most two, he would join such a caravan and see the wonders of Orris Kayn for himself. Kordis and Kayen, son and daughter of K'Birris the Jeweler, had planned it with him. They'd hardly talked of anything else for most of a year.

"Of course, I'd not spoken of it to my father yet," he chuckled. "I knew only too well what he'd say, or so I thought. Then, on my fifteenth naming day, he called me to his office. A stranger was there, smaller even than my father, but slender and elegant and richly dressed."

Darrick automatically gave him the bow proper for a youth meeting an elder of higher station.

"No, do not bow to me," the stranger laughed. "There should be no such formality between close kin."

"Not such close kin as all that," Tanrick protested, but Darrick could tell that he was well pleased by the stranger's words. "Son, be known to Arrin'le, cousin to your mother. His travels have taken him across much of Orris Kayn in past decades, and now he returns for a season to Elf Home. Would you care to travel there with him? Or would you rather explore Orris Kayn by joining a caravan, as you and your friends have been planning?"

"Elf Home!" Land of the True Elves! Where memories of ancient glories were guarded by Elven magics! Arrin'le laughed silently at his reaction, the slit pupils of the golden eyes that were his heritage as a True elf opening wide in the gloom.

"Yes, I thought that you would choose to join me," Arrin'le chuckled. His voice was soft, yet resonant, filling the corners of the cluttered room without effort. He turned to Tanrick. "He'll do. You have a fine son."

"We left the next day, a dozen or so of us mounted on good horses. We saw no brigands, dangerous animals gave us a wide berth, and so we came swiftly to Elf Home!" He fell silent for a moment, gazing into the fire.

"Elf Home! How can I describe it to you as I first saw it? A level valley, nearly round, all ringed about by sheer mountains. As though the peaks had been allowed to rise by some slow garden magic that had pruned and watered and nurtured them like a great stone hedge.

"Elf Home! Not a city, not as Humans know cities. Clusters of buildings, scattered almost at random among trees and meadows. Dwellings like jewel boxes, and great empty halls whose rooms and cellars hold the relics of Elf kingdoms that spanned a half a million years and more."

Arrin'le introduced him to his lady companion, Pellin K'Pellin, and to Elf Lords and Elf Ladies who nodded gravely and spoke politely and drifted silently about their remote affairs. The sun was bright in Elf Home, the air clear and crisp. Darrick always remembered it as though his time there had been a fragment of a dream, a play of light and shadows within a crystal cube.

Elf children are born perhaps once during any century, a rhythm impressed upon them by the stars, perchance. There were no children then in Elf Home, and he walked its paths alone. Sudden turnings revealed tiny lakes hidden between folds in the land, or a lane through trees would gradually become the central corridor of some stately building.

If the True Elves were remote, beyond the comprehension of a Half Elf stripling, their powers were real enough. Most menial tasks were performed by unseen agencies. Food and fresh clothing were simply at hand when needed. Dirty dishes and soiled rainment vanished as though they had never been. Tasks that called for hands were done by small man like creatures clad in soft blue fur.

"Borrifs," Arrin'le called them. "We make them as they are needed, replace them when they wear out. I'll assign one to you for the time that you are here. They don't talk, but they can understand Elvish well enough to obey simple commands."

"He didn't really know what to do with me," Darrick laughed, but a shadow of anger still lurked behind his smile. "It'd been a moment's whim to bring me along. He'd discharged his obligation to my mother by inviting me, and had no idea that anything more could be required of him. So, I roamed at will, until one day..."

"And what have we here?"

Darrick whirled to face an elderly Elf who regarded him with a quizzical expression. He'd been exploring a building, a construction of spaces and levels, and by now had no idea whether he was high in some tower or deep beneath the ground. He wasn't worried, his Borrif would show him the way back when he was ready to leave. The old Elf smiled patiently, waiting for him to answer.

"I... I'm Darrick. Arrin'le..."

"To be sure. You've come to visit Elf Home, to learn of the glories of the past. What would you like to see?"

"I don't know, Revered Sir. I don't know much about the past."

"You may call me G'Narith, I'm long past the time when titles mean anything to me. The past. There is so much of it, and we have only a few scraps of knowledge that have been handed down to us through the ages." He pondered, a frail wisp of an Elf whose calm eyes reflected inner depths of wisdom garnered over a score of centuries. "What do you know of our history?"

"Just that the last Elvish kingdom fell about ten thousand years ago, long before the first Human empires arose." He hesitated. "And hadn't it lasted more than ten thousand years?"