The Solitary Arrow Ch. 15

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"You'll have to do better than that, elf." Harlen growled as he grabbed the slender man about the waist and lifted him from the floor. Accelerating across the room, Harlen aimed for a solid section of wall to smash this little man against.

Fists battered Harlen's head and shoulders, and boxed his ears so that they rang.

However, the hail of blows stopped when his momentum was cancelled by the solid stone and mortar wall. There was a huge whoosh of air by his ear as the elf was pinned against the wall and slammed into it with a human smashing him. There was a dull cracking sound in the elf's chest, and Harlen knew he had broken some of the smaller man's ribs.

Stepping back, Harlen let the elf go. The elf seemed to be toppling forward into a fall, but at the last second, changed course and lunged up at Harlen's throat, another blade gleaming in his fist. This one shorter than the sword, belatedly, Harlen realized it was his own knife.

The blade gouged deeply into Harlen's arm, and then across his chest in a shallow cut. Harlen dove back across the bed and landed nearly off the foot of the large four-poster. His upper half hung over the side precariously, but he saw above him the elf's sword. Gripping it in one hand Harlen lifted himself with it, then yanked it free of the wood with one quick pull.

The elf was leaping over the bed toward him as he brought the sword around in an intercepting motion.

Unable to still his forward momentum, the elf impaled his own leg upon the sword, running it through his upper thigh and out the back. He growled something in elven at Harlen and swung the knife again.

Pain seared through Harlen's chest again as the dagger bit deeply into his flesh. "You will wish you had killed me first, you arrogant elven shit!" Harlen screamed, pulling the sword to the side, severing many tendons of the elf's inner thigh and ripping the large vessel and vein that fed blood to that leg.

Harlen could see the elf's eyes widen in realization that he was going to die in seconds. Blood sprayed from the wound in a huge fan. Dousing the bed and Harlen in a crimson mist.

The knife came back around, but Harlen caught the elf's wrist with his left hand, clamping down with every ounce of strength in his muscles. Harlen heard bones grinding together in the elf's wrist.

"And now, you self-righteous prick, you die." Harlen said and brought the sword's blade around and nearly cut through the elf's neck. There was a soft whimper from the elf as he collapsed onto the bed and ceased moving.

Harlen did not watch him for more than three heartbeats though, and bolted out the bedroom door.

---

Hyandai felt the flesh of her back pierced and cut by many shards of broken glass as she smashed bodily through it. Stunned, she was unable to control her fall, and landed upon her back on the sloped roof of the bathing room, still sliding.

The sound of tinkling glass and wooden thuds followed her as she slid inexorably downward. Her mind cringed realizing what was next, and in slow motion, she felt herself falling to the ground behind the house. The thud knocked what little air she still had in her free.

Attempting to lift her head, Hyandai found herself now lying upon her stomach, her left leg bent at an improbable angle. One eye was unable to see, something thick and opaque was flowing freely over it. Blood.

She gasped in air in a great gulp and felt around for the Ehladrel. As her fingers closed on the leather pouch that contained the weapon, a booted foot kicked it away from her.

"Let us help you join your short-lived human lover, shall we?" The female elf said in elven. Her voice was hard and cold, and just the sound of it sent a chill through Hyandai.

The same boot kicked Hyandai in the ribs, causing her to roll over to get away from the pain of another blow. She looked up with the one eye not covered in blood. The elven woman had tossed back her hood, and, much to Hyandai's relief, she was not known to her.

Interesting, Hyandai thought to herself, would knowing that her murderer was someone she knew and loved have made it so much worse? Yes, another part of her mind answered.

Hyandai locked her emerald eyes onto the silver orbs of her attacker. Nothing happened.

"Don't bother, human-breeder." The elf said, again in their native tongue. "I know of your mental abilities, it is why I was chosen to come after you."

With dreadful slowness, the elf drew out a long, triangular-bladed stiletto.

Hyandai cried out. "You would not!" Eyeing the ritual dagger.

"Oh, indeed I would." Said the elf with a malicious gleam in her silvern eyes. "The sacrificial dagger is used only to slay animals, and I say you have lowered yourself to such." She stooped nearer to Hyandai, hovering with her face mere inches from hers. "Your horrid golden eyes were bad, but to know a human made them green is by far worse. But, truly, I do not blame you so much as your fey, it made you weak."

Hyandai cringed as the elven woman rose up again, lifting the dagger over her bare chest chest.

With a last desperate surge of energy, Hyandai tried to stop the descending hands that aimed the blade for her heart. She managed only to deflect the blade slightly; she felt the point pierce into her, the pain shooting to every corner of her body as it buried itself into her chest.

The elf laughed a vicious, cruel note. "You just made it worse for yourself. I offered you a quick death, you stupid cur." She began to rise. "Now you will die sl . . .."

The elf woman's eyes widened as an arrow appeared in her chest, still quivering from the impact, she stumbled back, looking up from Hyandai out into the yard. She saw the elven altar standing there and her eyes widened when a shape moved from the shadows beside it. It appeared to be an elven man, he drew another arrow from his quiver and shot her again as she stood reeling, this arrow striking her shoulder and causing her to fall onto her rump.

"Mercy Ehladrim!" She cried out in desperation, holding up an imploring hand, coated in Hyandai's blood. "I work only to . . .." The third arrow buried itself into her heart and silenced her voice forever.

Hyandai turned her head and looked toward the altar and saw an elf running toward her for a brief moment, in her blurring vision. Then the shape focused into the form of Trevir, a bow clutched in his hand. He leaned over her.

"Miss Hyandai!" He exclaimed, seeing her wounds clearly now. Trevir dropped the bow and knelt at her head, lifting it into his lap. He stroked her hair from her eye, taking the clotting blood with it.

She gazed up with both emerald eyes now, and smiled up at the lad, with his head backlit by the full moon behind him. "Trevir." She said quietly. Her hand reached up toward him, and she felt tears fall from his face onto hers.

"You can't die, Miss Hyandai." He said quietly, weeping freely now. "You just can't, you're supposed to live a long time."

Hyandai felt her life draining slowly, and her fingertips briefly touched Trevir's smooth cheek before her strength left her arm and it fell to her side.

---

Harlen ran down the stairs so fast that, in the darkness of the common room, he stumbled over one of the rocking chairs. Regaining his footing he slammed into the door to the bathing room and then the back door of the house.

As he pushed the back door open, something stopped its swing, something soft and yielding. Harlen looked down and saw the dead eyes of an elven woman there, but not Hyandai. Three arrows had pierced her. They were Trevir's arrows, Harlen recognized the colors that Trevir had chosen in the fletching.

He almost had a smile on his face when he spied Hyandai's broken body laying just a few paces from the other elven woman's. He ran to her and fell to his knees beside her. Harlen looked down and saw that her eyes were closed, and she did not breathe.

Blood covered her bare chest and had run from small wounds over her whole body. Harlen heard the sound of weeping nearby and looked toward the altar, where Trevir was kneeling, his head hanging low. Harlen could actually see the tears as they fell from the tip of the lad's nose.

Harlen's own vision was blurring from the tears welling in his eyes. He looked down again, taking one of Hyandai's delicate hands into his own. It was still warm and soft, but it did not respond to his touch and when he let it loose, it simply dropped onto her stomach with a dull slap.

Trevir looked up at that moment, turning his head so fast that the tears at the tip of his nose flew away from him.

"Harlen!" He screamed. "I thought you were dead!" He stood and ran towards the huntsman. Harlen tried in vain to work up a brave smile for the lad's benefit, but was unable to muster more than a pained grimace.

Harlen stood too, letting the lad run into his arms and embrace him. He needed the comfort as much as the boy did, if not more.

The tears that Trevir shed soaked Harlen's arm. He realized he was naked, but now was not the time for such concerns. He brushed the wet, flowing tears from his upper arm and looked at his hand as he prepared to wipe it on his own leg. The fingers were black. It was not tears covering his arm, but blood, from Trevir.

Grabbing Trevir by his shoulders, Harlen pushed him away and held him at arm's length and looked into his young face.

A smile of surpassing eeriness crossed Trevir's face. And his eyes softened as he regarded Harlen. "You must work quickly, beloved." Trevir said, his voice oddly soprano. "Get the preist from your church. I cannot tarry long in Trevir's mind."

Harlen looked at Hyandai's body for a brief moment. "How? What?" He said, his mind reeling.

Trevir stepped forward again. "Go get the priest now, he is a healer, Trevir told me." Trevir said, though now Harlen began to recognize Hyandai's speech pattern and tone.

"Now!" Trevir screamed, in his own voice. "Dammit, Harlen, she's going to die if you don't go now!"

Harlen ran, slamming through the house at breakneck speed, this time barely missing the rocking chair that he had stumbled over before. Only the barest presence of mind allowed him to grab his cloak off the peg inside the door and fling it about himself as he ran across the dewy front lawn.

The gravel of the road hurt his feet, but he flinched not at all to these little pains. The pain provided impetus, and focused his mind on the run. As he ran toward the gates that opened into the inner village, the guards started at his approach. However, when they saw it was Harlen, they simply watched him run past them, then looked at each other and shrugged.

He got to the priest's small home beside the church in mere minutes, hammering at the door. Father Tegmar opened the door and regarded Harlen.

"What is it, my son?" He asked and was answered by having the collar of his nightshirt grabbed and being dragged bodily from his doorway. He stumbled along with Harlen down the cobbled streets.

"Hyandai needs your special healing touch." Harlen said. "I know she's not of the One, but . . .."

"You need not explain yourself, Harlen." Tegmar said. "Hyandai is elvenborn and blessed for it, let us move hastily." He added, moving even faster than Harlen had been dragging him.

They arrived back at the house, and went to the rear courtyard. The pastor looked down at her corpse. "Harlen, my son, she is beyond my help." He said, tears welling in his own eyes.

"No, Father Tegmar, I am not." Trevir said, again in an imitation of Hyandai's voice. "Simply heal the mortal wound, and I can return to my body." Blood was running down the lad's face more freely now. There was a noticeable gauntness to Trevir's face and especially around his eyes.

The priest gasped, then said. "I had heard some elves could do such a thing." He said. "But never imagined it was true."

"Please, pastor." Hyandai said. "I have not much longer."

Trevir's voice changed subtly. "She's hurting, pastor, hurry."

The priest knelt beside the body and clutched forth his octoform pendant; He gripped it in his hand and tightened his fingers about it. His other hand, the left one, hovered over Hyandai's naked chest. A pulse of purest white light came from that hand, and the pendant in his right hand flashed within his grip. Blood was dripping from the fingers as he clenched the pendant tighter. Another pulse flashed from the hand and pendant. And the wounds started to close, not slowly, like a reverse of the wound themselves, as Hyandai's healing breath, but they simply ceased being wounds, and were smooth, normal skin. He gritted his teeth and screamed out words that Harlen had never heard before, ancient words, Syrisian words, perhaps. His hand flashed white again, leaving little black dots in Harlen's vision afterwards. The body gasped in air, and the golden eyes flew open.

There was no mind behind them though, and they stared blankly into the sky. The body took another shuddering breath and Trevir collapsed atop it, his green eyes over her golden ones at a mere inch of distance.

To Harlen and the priest, they seemed to simply look at one another a moment, but suddenly, Hyandai's arms came up and grabbed Trevir around the chest and kissed him. She then pulled back and looked up at Harlen, a wide smile crossing her face. Then she fainted.

Harlen panicked a moment, then realized she simply slept. Lifting her from her place upon the ground, he carried her into the house.

The priest saw the other elven corpse upon the ground. "What about this one?" He asked.

Harlen glanced back over his shoulder. "She's already getting what she deserves, in hell, I hope." He said, with a vehement voice. "There is another upstairs, a man, who is also enjoying the devil's tender ministrations."

"I must summon the Magistrate." The priest said. "You understand that?"

Harlen nodded. "I do." He said, his face cringing. Hyandai was partially awake now, and touched his face. The last time he had faced the Magistrate was after he had slain the other huntsman. The priest shuffled out the front door, wringing his hands with worry, and to soothe the one he had used to feed blood to his healing magics.

Trevir followed Harlen up the stairs, near fainting himself. "Is she okay?" He asked, distantly.

Harlen nodded as he laid her upon the guest bed, in the room across from his own bedroom. "She will be okay, now, Trevir." He said. "We owe you her life."

Trevir gave a weak smile. "I'm glad I could help." He was weaving noticeably, and his eyes seemed determined to shut.

"Lay down, Trevir." Harlen said. "I will deal with the Magistrate. If he wishes to talk to you and Hyandai, he can wait until you two are rested."

Trevir crawled onto the bed, curling up at the far edge from Hyandai and quickly dozed off. Hyandai, however, looked at Harlen with her golden eyes flashing.

"It will be okay." Hyandai whispered.

Harlen nodded. "I know." He replied and kissed her gently, then rose and walked out, shutting the door behind himself.

Less than half an hour later, the Magistrate arrived. Obviously upset with having been rousted out of bed at the wee hours. He grunted and harumphed as Harlen told him the tale of the deeds done this night. The small man standing beside the Magistrate nodded in agreement with each statement Harlen made.

It was the Magistrate's Truthteller. A form of magician who could tell lies from truth upon hearing them.

The Magistrate wrote down a lot of things in his journal, and looked about a bit. Guardsmen came in and collected the two bodies and their weaponry. One guard tried to take the Ehladrel, but Harlen stopped him and the Truthteller confirmed its ownership.

"What will be done with them?" Harlen asked the Magistrate.

The Magistrate regarded the corpses on the back of a wagon brought for the purpose. "They will be burned." He said. "It is the elven way, or so I hear."

The small group said their farewells, leaving Harlen with only the priest again. They watched the wagon bounce and jolt down the road toward town. "My son," Father Tegmar said, "you will need to watch Hyandai for some days."

"Why is that?" Harlen asked.

"She was dead, Harlen." The preacher said. "It is bound to affect her mind, in some way. I will pray to the One for guidance."

Harlen nodded. "Thank you father." He said, patting the man on the shoulder. "I will watch her closely." The first rays of sun were peering over the fuzzy eastern mountains, and the sky was lightening. Father Tegmar walked out of the gate and down the road, gravel crunching under his feet.

The house seemed somehow broken now. Harlen ambled through it, picking up the fallen rocking chair and setting it on its rockers. A massive sigh escaped him as he looked up the stairs. He was not ready yet to face the bedroom, with the blood and damage of the fight. He felt violated, like someone had stripped away his most secure of securities.

For a fleeting moment, he wondered if Hyandai was at fault. Quickly, that thought was banished and squelched mercilessly by his affection for her. She was doing the right thing here, not those other people. Looking out the back door, he regarded the numerous bloodstains by the waxing light of morning.

The Ehladrel gleamed near Trevir's cottage, lying bare in the tall grass. Harlen walked up to it and slipped it back into the leather sheath. "You're the cause of this misery." He murmured as he lifted the strap and began to walk back toward the house.

Harlen mounted the stairs and walked up to the master bedroom. Peering in he saw the damage was not as bad as he had, at first, thought. The mattress and bed linen would have to be replaced, of course, and perhaps the rug beneath the bed. The damaged post of the bed would be repairable by a skilled carpenter, of which Morrovale boasted several.

He then sat the Ehladrel down upon a small table in the antechamber at the top of the stairs, just under the windows that lit the stairwell. He opened the door to the guest room and saw Hyandai still sleeping, with Trevir now curled up in the large reading chair at the foot of the bed. Harlen smiled and closed the door. He looked at the cursed weapon again.

"Will you not be satisfied until she is dead?" He asked it, glowering. "Or is it me that needs to die?"

The Ehladrel remained uncommunicative. Harlen dressed and walked downstairs. He fetched out his broadsword and a dagger for his other hip. He dragged the rocking chair up the stairs and sat in it, facing down the treads of the upper flight. Drawing the sword, he sat in the chair, with the silvery blade across him, from one arm to the other. Slowly, and in fits, he fell asleep.

---

Hyandai's voice awoke him. "Harlen?" She asked.

Harlen opened his eyes. The sun was now pouring through the stairtop window and his back was moist with sweat. Hyandai was on her knees before him, with her head in his lap. "I will tend your wounds this evening, betrothed." She said quietly. Touching near the large patch of red on his chest with her fingertips.

He stroked her hair, still tacky with blood and grass and dirt from the yard. With a crooked smile, he said. "You look like you're half dead."

Hyandai grinned up at him. "I shall take that as a compliment, considering I was far more than half dead."

She sprang to her feet; she had dressed in one of his mother's old dresses. "I am hungry, Harlen." She said. "Let us eat." She grabbed his hand and pulled insistently. He reluctantly rose from the creaking chair and followed her down the stairs. She bounced as she walked, he noted, like she had energy to burn.

Entering the kitchen, she peeled and devoured three oranges and two apples, and all of the bananas. Pulp and juice ran from her chin as she demolished one fruit after another.

"Harlen, may I beg some meat?" She said, wiping her chin with a cloth.