Caell’ian

  Caelli’an looked around the settlement with interest. It was fortified with a wall made of tall, sharpened logs struck into ramparts of heaped-up and compacted dirt. He could break through these fortifications alone if he wanted to.

  The housings were just as primitive as he remembered – small, round and slapped together of earth, straw and wood. There were no stone constructions, let alone something as grand as his father’s white marble villa. The village was bigger than the one his mother had let him observe when he was younger, but strangely empty. Stinky animals called sheep were roaming the streets, leaving unpleasant little pellets behind. His mother had brought such beasts to the Fae realm to harvest their wool, but they were kept on farms outside towns and would have never been allowed into a settlement.

  Most importantly, however, he could see iron tools in front of the houses. He wasn’t quite sure what one did with those strange things, but he assumed they were used for agriculture and building. No actual weapons were in sight, but maybe those absent humans had taken them with them.

  ‘Finn kept bragging about how prosperous his village is. I didn’t expect much, but what do the less fortunate ones look like if this is a rich settlement? Just dung heaps with roofs made of dry grass?’ Tormandor whispered to him.

  ‘Not now, Tor. We don’t want to insult them,’ Caell’ian replied absent-mindedly and smiled at Finn’s sister, who had turned around to stare at him fearfully.

  Aside from Taliesin, she was the prettiest human he had seen so far. Unfortunately, her mind seemed a bit muddled. Those large doe eyes just kept staring at him like those of a hunted animal. At first, he had thought she had some defect that made her unable to speak or form coherent sentences, but she seemed to communicate clearly with her brother. He could see it even though he couldn’t hear what they were talking about.

  ‘Have you ever seen hair like that? It looks like it has a life of its own. So vibrant,’ Tor commented.

  Caell’ian glanced at Rowena’s bright hair. It was like a beautiful fire, and the sun made golden highlights dance in each strand. ‘I haven’t. But I noticed that colours sometimes look richer in this world because their sun is so much brighter. Have you gotten used to it?’

  ‘It’s fine. Still makes my eyes hurt a bit, though. What is the point of these little humans? They don’t seem to be servants like the Low Fae. Finn says they are his brother and sister.’

  ‘Danghe’llan told me humans are born like animals. Tiny and helpless. I assume it takes them some time to grow to their full size.’

  ‘Didn’t you see them before?’

  ‘I don’t remember seeing such small ones. I was more interested in the animals. Humans seemed quite boring to me at the time, and it was long ago.’

  ‘Maybe they evolved. I find them amusing. They are also less hostile and uncivilised than I expected.’

  A whimper reached their ears. Caell’ian followed the sound and found two little humans huddled up behind a straw heap. They were grubby and shabbily dressed, with snot running from their noses while they cried their hearts out.

  ‘They are pitiful,’ Tormandor remarked with some sympathy, and the little ones jumped in fear.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. We are friends,’ Caell’ian said gently, but that didn’t seem to reassure the grubby little beings as they started screaming.

  Tormandor made an apologetic face and tried to pat one of them on the head like one would a nervous battlekin. The littlest one bit his hand, then grabbed the even smaller one and ran away.

  Tormandor examined the impressions on his hand. ‘They don’t even have sharp teeth like those wolves, but it hurts.’

  The two snotty little beings had run forward and were complaining to Rowena and Finn. The latter just smiled and patted their heads. They didn’t try to bite him and hid behind his massive legs when Tormandor and Caell’ian caught up with them.

  Finn’s face looked unusually serious when he said, ‘Bad news has reached us. We have to go and speak to the village chieftain about that first. If you could wait for a moment? My house is the one with the blue flowers in front of it. My wife isn’t home, but you are welcome to wait there.’

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Tormandor and Caell’ian settled in front of the house on a rough wooden bench. Their other three companions were standing in a circle, observing two strange men. Their hair was white as that of Queen Mab, but not shiny silver, more like iron grey. The faces were strangely furrowed with deep lines and marred by brown spots.

  ‘They look a bit like goblins,’ Tormandor observed.

  ‘They get like that when their life energies start to fade,’ Caell’ian explained.

  Tormandor squinted. ‘It must be the constant exposure to this bright sun that damages them. Their moon was so cold and distant last night. I felt no magic coming from it at all.’

  Caell’ian just shrugged. ‘The scouts usually spend months here, and nothing happened to them. It can’t be that bad.’

  They watched as the grey-haired men cut the animal’s belly and took out its innards and organs. Halliena turned away in disgust, and even Sandor looked sceptical about whether he still wanted to continue his culinary experiments. Only Alean’or watched with the detached interest of someone learning an interesting new procedure. Taliesin stood firmly by her side but didn’t seem all too happy.

  ‘Is it normal for human faces to take on that greenish hue?’ Tormandor asked with a grin, gesturing at the bard.

  ‘Maybe only when they are sick?’ Caell’ian guessed.

  ‘I didn’t think a human could be that handsome. If you dressed him up properly and cleaned him up a bit, he could almost pass as one of us. At least one of the Dorchadas.’

  Caell’ian had never noticed any difference between the High Fae of the Dorchadas and his own Solae kind, but didn’t reply as something distracted his attention. The two grubby little humans were lurking at a safe distance, watching them suspiciously.

  Tormandor waved at them. When he got no reaction, he unpacked the remnants of his amberfruit cake and offered it to them. ’

  ‘You don’t know if they can eat that,’ Caell’ian hissed in warning.

  ‘I gave some of it to Brin, and she is still alive. She liked it very much.’

  The small creatures moved forward cautiously. The shorter one grabbed a piece and hastily retreated a few steps. The slightly bigger one, however, remained standing in front of them and whispered, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I apologise for scaring you before,’ Tor offered.

  ‘Sorry for biting you,’ came a muffled reply and the even smaller human came closer.

  Caell’ian had thought they were male, but now he was not sure anymore because their voices sounded as high as those of females.

  ‘Will you tell me why you were crying?’ Tormandor inquired.

  The tears welled up again, but the bigger one managed to speak, ‘Someone killed our father.’

  ‘I am sorry. But that is not a reason to cry.’

  Caell’ian rolled his eyes heavenwards at his friend’s words. He knew what was coming.

  ‘But I will never see him again!’ the smaller human wailed.

  ‘That is not true. We have all been created from the Source, and we return to it when our time is up. You will be united with your father again.’

  ‘You mean when I die and go to the Otherworld as well?’

  ‘Or when he is created again.’

  ‘Again? When will that be?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it will be. I promise.’

  ‘But what if I am sent to another realm of the Otherworld and can’t find him?’

  ‘That cannot happen. Those we are connected to in this life will always find us in the Source and outside of it. It is an unbreakable bond,’ Tormandor declared with such authority that even Caell’ian felt unexpectedly comforted by the thought.

  When his mother had gone back to the Source, Queen Mab had told him the same. It had not helped at all. At least those little ones knew that their parent hadn’t left them by choice. Did that make it easier or harder?

  ‘What is this Source?’ the tiny one asked.

  ‘It is like a magic lake surrounded by tall trees and eternal fires. It stretches out so far that you cannot see the end of it, but you can feel the whispers of eternity carried from it on the breeze. Souls just rest there for a while before they are ready to return to the physical world again. However, there is no passage of time in the lake, so what may appear as many days to us is just a blink of an eye to a soul resting in the Source.’

  The little ones seemed enchanted by the tale. Caell’ian smiled as the older one wiped his snotty nose at the grubby sleeve of his tunic and concluded, ‘So the only reason why father hasn’t returned to us yet is that he doesn’t know how much time has passed here?’

  ‘How much time has passed?’

  ‘Two days.’

  ‘That is not even half a blink of an eye where he is now.’

  ‘So maybe he’ll come back when we are grown up?’

  ‘I assume that is possible.’

  ‘So they just sleep all day at the bottom of a lake? That seems boring,’ the smaller one said thoughtfully.

  Caell’ian agreed with him but said nothing. He left it to Tormandor to spin another enchanting tale about the perfection of the Source. The paladin had never been able to share his friend’s faith. He didn’t want to part from this life. When the Dorchadas had cut through the left flank of the Solae army during his very first battle, a burning spear had penetrated his armour, forcing its way through his flesh to remain stuck between his ribs. He’d been sure it was the end. To this day, he could swear that he’d heard his mother’s voice calling him, trying to guide him back to the Source through the terror and resistance he’d felt. He had never told anyone about it. It was just too embarrassing. Maybe he’d imagined the burning of the spear? No, he could remember that clearly. Yet everything after that was a blurred fever dream, until the moment when he’d opened his eyes on that dark blood-soaked field where his brother was slapping his face and shouting at him angrily.

  Was someone shouting at him again? He looked up to see Finn beckoning him to the chieftain’s house.