Chapter 1: Mallen's Point

Rain drenched the pair of them as they dragged themselves into the village. Despite the spells Nembariel wove about them, they were muddy, wet and cold, shivering as they finally left the boot-sucking ruts of the road behind and found firmer footing on packed and graveled streets. Like the last village, it looked half-deserted. The elven wizard put his cloak around his young apprentice's shoulders as well as he felt her shivering beside him and wove a quick warming spell within, the young elven girl's teeth chattering together as she smiled feebly in thanks.

"I give apologies my dearest Daenellis, for bring you into this horrible mess," he said softly. He spoke the Westron tongue, as they had since entering the region almost a year ago, and both were quite fluent with it, but retained enough elven formality to speak it stiffly and with what many Westerners considered a 'fancy' accent.

"You could not have known, master. And learning with no adversity is not truly learning," she said, repeating something he had told her seemingly long ago, though it was truly only a few months.

Now that they were no longer slogging in knee-deep mud, he wove again and most of the remaining, clinging mud slid off their boots and his leggings. She wore a dress and it was partially cleaned as well. She had taken to dressing as the Westron girls did, to avoid too much notice, once they realized the area they traversed was under threat of war.

The war had touched this village, and many villagers surely were gone now, pressed into the army of this nation's rulers. Still, human settlements were stuffed to brimming with people normally, and still had a rich abundance even half empty, to elven eyes.

They had left Windir in summer, and enjoyed their first few stopovers in the Western Realms, but as they moved north and west, it had grown cooler with the coming of fall, and now it was very nearly winter and the lands they traversed were torn by battle, a seeming endless progression of small, petty nations with equally petty and never ending conflicts with one another. He had tried to go around, but worse now lay south, and rumor came that the way back east as well was rife with intense battles. There seemed to be two loose coalitions of states – aligned along mountain ranges that ran northwest to southeast. A wide, jagged front that wove along two river valleys with a sort of hellish no-man's-land between them.

So far the two alliances had fought to a stalemate, more or less, but lately the more aggressive northern nations were gaining momentum, and no one was certain why. Whole companies were slain in the night, with little sign of what did the foul, messy killing. The southern alliance, mostly apparently interested in the war ending, was slowly crumbling under the onslaught of the north and soon would fall.

The village they found themselves in was in dense forest, but still along the southern of the two accursed rivers. Mercifully, it was also on the southern bank, and unlike the burnt ruins of villages on the northern bank, was still intact – mostly. A small contingent of armsmen passed, marching in shuffling imitation of formation as they went by, casting curious, suspicious looks at the wizard, though only his oilskin cloak was truly visible – hardly an especially suspicious garment in this weather. Perhaps it was the odd way it bulged, as if he were hiding something beneath it.

"We need shelter and food," he told her. The coin had run out weeks before. But they had tender that was of use most places – their magical arts. Every village sported an inn, though, and they soon found this ones. They walked up onto the boards of the porch and tried to make themselves a little more presentable before entering, straightening their clothes and themselves. The clothes looked the worse, as elves seem able to resist too much dirtying of their own bodies, by some odd trait of their race. Even soaked through, their sleek, straight hair looked much as it did when dry and it resisted mud and dirt as if the stuff could not hold it.

It was already dark, and the inn showed bright compared to the feeble candlelight from some of the house's windows. A large fire burned in a central fire-pit, and that drew the younger elf's eyes hungrily in its direction, wanting some of that warmth.

Many eyes turned to them at their entry, some suspicious, others curious, and most conversation stopped. That they were not humans was patently obvious due to the five-inch ears that protruded from their silken hair angling upward so that the tips were more or less equal with the crown of their heads. They moved freely, too, and in their current mood had drooped considerably from their high peak, down to almost horizontal, though even then they flicked toward sounds nearby.

The innkeeper was a broad-shouldered, muscular man with a deeply-lined face with a neatly trimmed beard upon it. "What's needed?" he asked curtly, resting one hand on the bar.

Nembariel suspected the other was resting on something quite heavy with a knobbed or spiked head. "I am a traveling mage and I need room and board for a time," said the elf. Hedge mages were common in the Western Realms and a well-respected profession, if not immensely renumerative. It had served them on the way for room, board, and sometimes small goods and coin.

The innkeeper looked dubiously at the mud spattered pair. Even hedge mages made efforts to put on a good show, and wore flashy, colorful outfits. Theirs had not been particularly bright even before they had been sullied, though Nembariel did own a very fine red velvet jacket. He was pretty sure it was sodden to the core at the bottom of his knapsack, that felt about twice its normal weight. "Prove it, we've had enough of charlatans and trinket peddlers in these parts and no luxury to spare for toys."

Nembariel nodded and let the young elven girl slip out from his cloak's protection. In a sodden dress, she looked quite tiny as she stood apart to give him room, shivering. The innkeeper waved an impatient finger at her that she should go nearer the fire and young Daenellis was in no mood to argue, shuffling between them to stand as close as the heat from it would allow her to. He was not a viciously cruel man at least, she thought.

Nembariel was not at the top of his reserves, nor given to huge displays in any case, so he wove a spell that would have a telling effect, but not be flashier than needed, though some flash was of course necessary. He held his hands out and a coruscating blue ball of energy formed between them, the men murmuring at the appearance of it as he fed more energies into it. Hairs stood on the back of the necks of men nearby as the unseen energies were tapped from the air about them. Daenellis knew he was low on his own powers and quietly performed her own magic, her lips barely moving to enable the incantation, sending him a thin, small feed of her own remaining energies, nothing to amount to wonderous, but still a help. He smiled as his apprentice, unbidden, aided him.

The ball started to pulse as if the surface were water, ripples spreading around the surface as music began to fill the room. It was a complex harp song, played well and the sound was as pure as the finest crafted harps could sing. It floated up there and continued to play as the innkeeper nodded. "It will continue? He asked as the customers seemed to murmur approval of the quite, soothing music.

"Until middle-night or near enough," said the wizard.

The innkeeper nodded again and eyed the girl. "One room? I'll need more of you than just music for two," he warned.

"I will render services as expected of my profession on the morrow for your benefit," said the mage formally. The innkeeper seemed less than totally pleased by that but agreed. The man was a mage and it did not do to upset them without good cause. "You can eat after you bathe," he told them, grabbing one of the serving girls and telling her to show them the bathing room.

The room was small, with only three tubs, but none were in use, which was a relief to the young girl. While Nembariel had seen her bare many times, and she him, she was still shy about human men doing so, and even more skittish of the idea of seeing a human male in a state of undress. They peeled out of the sodden clothing and clambered into the tubs as the girl brought in the first of the heated water to warm the baths to something not chilling, at least.

"Master, are we staying here long?" asked the young elf softly as the human serving girl left.

"I do not know, dearest," he told her truthfully. "If it proves a safe place to wait out the conflicts around us, we may well."

She nodded. Too many days had passed since she had bathed properly and even this was not proper bathing by elven custom. She scrubbed herself with the brush provided and made generous use of the harsh lye soap that filled the buckets by the tub. She was in the end, quite pink and clean, but not properly bathed – this meant much more to an elf than merely clean.

The warmish water and the bath itself did help restore her a bit, and she had the energy to use a spell to dry a fresh dress from her pack, and pulled it on. She was acutely aware of her master's regard as she moved around nude. Being comfortable with something did not mean it was meaningless. He always watched her when she was nude, but not with the spark of desire in his eyes, more as if appraising her.

She was tying on the dress as the serving girl entered, dumping the last of the buckets in Nembariel's tub. He thanked her and she smiled flirtatiously. Half cleaned up, he was once more revealed to be quite a handsome man – actually a beautiful man, a prime example of mature elven maleness. He was past his hundred and fiftieth year, and would be old by human measure, but he looked no older than his early thirties and was a trim, lithe figure in the tub, despite the mud browning the water. Daenellis smiled. Her master only slept alone by choice most places. She took her leave to let the pair get acquainted, slipping out with her sodden knapsack, as well as her mentor's clothes he had worn into the inn.

She asked another serving girl, this one busy carrying beer to the thirsty men in the common, where the laundry room was and was told, going there to wash the garments they wore that day. They could hang dry in their rooms tonight. It took her a long while to scrub out the clothes, working on her knees in the little tile-lined room. She looked up after a bit to see the innkeeper watching her. "Why not magic them clean, lass?" he asked her.

"I do not yet have that skill, sir," she said respectfully. "And we are very weary after walking the muddy highway."

He nodded, his expression understanding. "It's nary better further along the road. You might encourage your master to stay a spell among us, we could keep you both comfortably enough," he said.

She smiled. "I will speak to him," she said. "But I cannot promise he will listen."

That got a chuckle from the innkeeper. He was noticing, now that she did not quite look like a drowned rat, that she was actually very pretty – beautiful, in fact. She had that elfin inhuman loveliness and glow of innocence about her that drew the eyes of folk. "How old are you, lass?" he asked.

"I have seen twenty springs, sir," she said honestly. He blinked, then recalled elven folk slowed at the onset of their adolescence, and aged far more slowly than humans. "That makes you – to us?" he asked.

"Fourteen, sir," she said. "Though there is debate on the exact calculations to use for that."

He chuckled. "Still quite little for that, then," he said. "But damn site easy on the eyes."

She smiled at the compliment. "I am pleased you find favor," she said dutifully. Elven custom required at least a pleasant acknowledgment of compliments, even if delivered badly.

"I could find coin as well as favor for a gel who knows how to be friendly with a fellow," he told her cooly, watching her reaction. She blinked and looked up at him, not understanding the implications.

"I thought we were being friendly," she said softly, the confusion in her tone obvious. "Have I given offense?"

"Nay, lass, I only meant..." he was cut off by a rather curvacious and well-made serving woman coming in.

"Leave off the gel, Dennel, she don't know what you're on about and you'll spook her if you tried to explain it," she told him, flicking his chin with a fingertip. He grumbled and gave the saucy, buxom women a slight glare. She had a heavy basket propped on one ample hip and seemed coming in to work. He pushed off the wall and nodded to Daenellis before leaving.