A Feather on the Breath of Ellulianaen

  ~

  Hinfane’s stomach hurt. She felt she understood everything now: the scar, the strange reserve, the peculiar habits, the watchfulness.

  From then on she treated Kereth differently, more tenderly, ensuring that he always had his meal on time, and as often as not gave him a pint or two on the house. And she started to watch the other men suspiciously. Which one of them might be the elf-mage? Which one of them might be wearing a disguise? Was it handsome Zhallad, almost too perfect and charming to be real? Or Galt, with his eagle-like nose, the only thing anyone ever noticed of him? Such a feature could hide him... Could it be fat Cam, with his bald pate - seldom had there ever been a fat elf (but magic makes many disguises, or so they say) or could it be Viv - a bold foreigner, a prince among men, dark and comely - or even Huch, seemingly the least likely? But wouldn’t his ugliness, his incessant blinking, be the best disguise?

  And in the days following as Hinfane watched the men share an occasional evening mug of mead with Kereth, the subject of elves was not brought up again, and things gradually returned to normal.

  Slowly the Arctic nights deepened as the seasons turned on their rounds and the days became gradually shorter.

  Then one evening, at the fifth hour, when the sinking northern sun had already dipped below the horizon, Hinfane was sitting in her comfortable chair in front of the fireplace downstairs. As usual, she couldn’t sleep; in fact her insomnia had worsened after finding out about Kereth’s tormented heart, and the evil elf that wandered the wild wastelands.

  Watching the flames doing a fiery dance around the logs in the fireplace, she heard quiet footsteps coming down the stairs. She turned her head and saw Kereth leaving by the back door of the tavern, walking into the night, his cloak illuminated by the waning gibbous moon that was just then rising. “He wanders the wilderness at night,” she thought to herself, “He tries to forget everything that happened to him. He must have seen the elf-mage out there, one night when he was wandering alone through the darkness, and he looks for him again, to wreak his revenge upon him.”

  ~

  At midnight that night a great thunderstorm shook the mountains, splitting massive rocky cliffs in twain and causing terrific avalanches to tumble down the mountains. In the midst of the storm Hinfane fancied she heard a fell cry on the winds. “An unnatural storm. The sort of storm an elf-mage makes by magic. Poor Kereth is out in this storm,” she ruminated to herself. “Poor Kereth...”

  ~

  Leagues away, the gryphons were also looking out from their eyries and they were whispering to one another, “This is no natural storm, for it bears the stench of magic on’t.” Halomlyn squared his beak and ruminated as thunder shook their eyrie again and again, “It is certain to be the elf-mage. It is certain to be him.”