~
The one who called himself Kereth came back into the tavern the following Friday. He stayed in the corner, drank his own mead and kept his own counsel, but Hinfane watched him. The air was tingling with fear that night.
Seeing him, she doubted everything. If it was a disguise it was almost... impossibly convincing.
Kereth was being reclusive because the men were discussing the quality of elf-silver that they were digging up, and a partisan isn’t interested in such things. She told herself that this proved she had been wrong, really it was Kereth, he was no elf. But then the conversation ranged over other topics and she couldn’t understand why he wasn’t listening or at least pretending to be interested.
Hinfane watched him. Something was dreadfully wrong.
As the evening passed a terrible fear began to loom over her, as though she was standing in the shadow of a long-haired, long-nosed wilder-beast, a Therephath, about to trample her. The one they had called Kereth simply sat there with a fixed gaze upon a face as still as the stone of the tavern walls, talking to himself, and, watching him, Hinfane became more and more certain that, not only was this man really the elf-mage, but that a very strange, peculiar, evil mood had taken hold of him.
The men were all too drunk by now to notice or to heed her if she spoke, and she knew they wouldn’t listen anyway. She walked past the one they had called Kereth and her heart clenched in her chest as she saw what he was doing. He was muttering Afazel over and over again like a madman and his features were frozen in an uncanny trance. His staring, expressionless eyes struck horror into Hinfane’s soul. It seemed as though he couldn’t see her at all – he was looking into other ambits, other places. Dark places.
She was about to say something to the men, to tell them all to leave straight away, go home, when all conversation in the tavern ceased, and Hinfane’s heart sank. Every eye in the tavern was on the one they had called Kereth.
His eyes bulged. He listened intently and nodded eagerly and fearfully and they could all see that he was attending to a phantasmical voice that nobody else could hear. The light cast by the torches on the walls dimmed and an unclean, abhorrent cloud overshadowed the interior of the tavern. Watching in silent dread, the men were mesmerised by this strange, bizarrely lunatic performance.
No’one needed to tell them who it was speaking to the elf-mage: it was surely Afazel, their detestable god.
Then the elf-mage’s single good eye rolled in its socket and he began to froth at the mouth.
Hinfane gave herself the benediction of Ellulianaen, saying, “Ellulianaen save us.” She hastily decided to go into the store-room, to check that the back door of the tavern was open with no barrels or suchlike in the way, and she chocked the door open with a wooden wedge, for the ice-cold talon of fear had clutched at her heart, of being imprisoned in the tavern with a lunatic Chancellor, a crazed elf-mage. She had to give the men a way out.
Meanwhile, the elf-mage ran over and pushed the front door of the tavern open and vomited the contents of his stomach onto the street. He wiped his mouth and stood stock still for a moment, listening to nothing and shaking his head to and fro, as though he were a puppet being jerked on a string. Then the elf-mage made a strange keening, twittering sound and turned on his heel and went back into the tavern.
Huch’s nerve snapped and he began to blather, “See! I told you! I told you all, but you didn’t listen! You can’t oppose them – look at the elf – he is possessed of Afazel! He is a powerful elf-mage who has lost his mind – he is a lunatic with the ability to cast spells and not even one of us has the gift of magic – we are dead! We are all dead, I tell you! Oh, what would Ondfuth say if she knew. You should have listened to Hinfane!” In tense, panicked tones the others began whispering, “Huch, shut up! Shut up, Huch!”
The elf-mage intoned, “Silence!” His voice had the echo of other, darker ambits in it, and it rang through their bones.
Silent, frozen in abject horror, staring dumbstruck, holding their breath, the men knew now that Hinfane had been completely right. Without any doubt they knew that this elf-mage was the one who had tormented the real partisan, the real Kereth, in the dungeons.
The elf-mage took his talisman from its hiding place among the folds of the cloak and pronounced a word in an ancient tongue, “Shalghed!’ A sudden gust filled the room and the doors slammed shut, except for the rear door that Hinfane had wedged open. The elf-mage held his talisman aloft, and with horror the men realised that he was holding an eye, and it was alive and swivelled around looking at them, and they wondered whether it was his own left eye, or the real Kereth’s eye.
The elf-mage stood in the doorway and they saw him clearly for the first time. He had the sharp, beastly ears and the strangely peaked eyebrows of an elf, and his skin possessed the uncanny pearline clarity common to that race. They could not understand how they had mistaken him for Kereth earlier, for they could see his features clearly, as though by some ghastly light, though in the dim illumination cast by the torches onto the tavern walls everything else in the room was indistinct.
None of them wished to provoke him by moving, so they all stood stock-still, frozen as if by an enchanment, though he had done no magic upon them, yet.
With his good eye he stared at them with a lunatic gaze, steady and disconcerting, holding aloft the other eyeball, his talisman, in his left hand. The talisman-eye was gazing around independently swivelling and revolving on its roots. He spoke, but his voice was completely different to Kereth’s voice when he had been mimicking it; his own voice had a whining, snivelling, snarkling tone to it. He said, “Afazel spoke to me from other ambits, another place, but his voice was as clear as my own. He commanded me. I am compelled to obey. Even a powerful elf-chancellor cannot resist the voice of a god! You are all goners, I tell you! You are all goners!”
Crouching behind the bar, the widow Hinfane beckoned to the men, trying to signal to them that they could escape the tavern through the back door, but none of them heeded her. They were preoccupied with the front entrance, which Hinfane could see was a doomed enterprise. Zhallad and Camhar were trying to force open the front and side doors of the tavern, but the doors were refusing to open, as though an unknown hand from the other side was holding them firmly shut.
The elf-mage cried out, “You foolish humans. You try to escape me. Do you not see I am invincible? Waedaer!”
A lightning bolt sprang forth from his talisman-eyeball and struck Zhallad in the chest. Out of all of them, Hinfane alone gave out a pathetic cry, like the wailing bleat of a goat. Zhallad’s whole body shook, black steam erupted from his ears and his eyes, he was thrown across the room and slammed onto the floor as though by a mighty, invisible talon, twitching in paroxysms of agony, right before Hinfane’s eyes. Zhallad’s eyelids were still open as he shook and shuddered on the floor. The other men suddenly began crying out in fear, babbling incoherently and casting over the tables, crawling behind them to hide.
As the elf-mage began to twitter again, Hinfane saw that Zhallad’s body had fallen not far from where she crouched, so she grasped his left foot and, with a great, strenuous effort, hauled him into the space behind the bar.
“Where is it?” cried the elf-mage insanely, “Men! Where is the clockwork of your souls? Where do you keep the shining quintessence of your life? How do I congeal the exuvious fumes of your existence? Tell me! I must know. I have not been able to discover this. Tell me!”
His magical eye swivelled towards Huch, who was crouching behind a table, wide-eyed, not even blinking. Then Huch rose and bolted towards the door and tried to open it but it would not open. He squinted and blinked back at the elf-mage, shouting, “No! Ye got the wrong man. I stuck up fer yer. I never spoke one word agin you. Not me! An leave these other men alone too! If what I sayed about the good Nomoi is true you wouldn’t hurt a hair on their heads. I’ve never sayed nothin’, I never ‘ave, not one word against the elvish Emp…” but as he was speaking a bolt of lightnin
g from the Mage’s hand slammed into him before he could even finish his last words. Huch was hurtled away from the table and into the wall by the crackling lightning. His body fell to the floor, limp and broken, and he lay there, unmoving, with unblinking eyes staring at the ceiling, and a strange mist began to seep out of his pores.
In moments Huch’s flesh sank in upon itself, his body was burning with an acrid smell, and his skin was shrivelling away into a dry grey papery substance. A strangely inhuman look of bliss filled the face of the elf-mage as he wyrded the remnants of life from Huch’s remains.
The elf-mage whispered, “I took it away – but yet I do not see it! Show me, where is your life-essence? Show me!” then he looked around at them and all of them trembled. “I know where your kidneys are, your liver, your brain, lungs, heart, but the soul? This thing I have never seen.” Racked with insane merriment the elf-mage turned his eyeball upon Gwalt, the red-bearded miner, who suddenly discovered that he was floating four inches in the air.
And the elf-mage cried out, “Tell me where you keep your quintessence, Gwalt, or you will be next to die!” But Gwalt stayed silent, though the toes of his boots were hanging in mid-air, for he feared that the moment he said or did anything the elf-mage would pronounce his answer unacceptable, and kill him anyway.