Lanlanor looked less than pleased to see Khithran when we reached Ashton's cottage in the early hours of the morning, but Ashton nipped the threatened gelding in the bud before a brawl could start. "I'll assign his parole to you," he told the half-elf brusquely as he tossed his now-useless wraith cloak aside. "He swears he's seen the error of his ways, and I believe him."
Lanlanor looked very put-upon in the light of the single candle Temara had lit the moment she heard our voices at the door, but he wisely refrained from challenging the issue. "I'm going to be watching you closely," he told the suddenly white-faced Khithran. "You play me false, it will be the first and last time you make that mistake." He then added something in a tongue I'd never heard from the lips of any elf, dark or otherwise, and Khithran now turned faintly green as he replied in the same dialect. He then lay down across the doorway at Lanlanor's direction, wrapping himself in his cloak and going to sleep.
"What did you say to him?" I demanded, half-distracted by Temara as she fluttered around me, patting me on the cheeks in an almost motherly fashion.
"I told him his heart was very easy to carve out," Lanlanor said with a shrug. "You won't recognise the dialect; the dark elves used to rule over all elvenkind until Queen Keya Dakian broke their hold by killing Queen Cedrekh Krendad in her own hall. The dialect was used by the slave-masters; my grandfather was one of the slaves serving under Cedrekh, and he taught me the dialect in case I ever needed to use it."119Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEwPoK4O3eF
I shivered. "I'm sorry," I said, as Temara settled on my shoulder.
"You weren't to know," Lanlanor assured me. "Besides, you didn't instill the dark elves' love for rapine and slaughter in them; they did it themselves. You only created them to be your servants so they could help you amass the magic you needed to create your fortress. They're the ones who went back on their word."
"Some days I wish I'd never been born," I muttered, turning away with a sigh. "I truly am sorry."
"Oh, do stop it," Temara chided me. "Honestly. You can't help what the dark elves did, and besides, you yourself haven't done anything evil. Yes, you wanted to destroy the world, but you've seen the error of your ways now. Why can't you accept that?"
"I'm scared," I finally admitted. "What are people going to think of me?"
"People don't know you," Ailsa said dryly, coming over to where I now sat. "You've never made your true identity known, and we're the only ones who do. The rest of the world won't know you from a bar of soap, and once we've helped you dismantle that weapon of yours, the world won't even know it was at threat of annihilation in the first place."
"See? My wife speaks sense." Ashton joined us and sat on the floor at my feet. Paradox and Lanlanor came to sit with us, while Peyton poked his head in through the open window. Khithran lay oblivious in sleep, but Lanlano shook his head.
"I don't trust him as yet," he said. "I have to turn him over to my mother's justice. She alone will know what to do with him."
I nodded understanding. "Very well," I said. "I can't fight you any longer. The weapon needs to be dismantled. But I've bound a great part of me up in it; dismantling it will reduce me to a frail man, all the years I've lived heaping up on me in one instant. It would be kindness at that point to grant me death, which is why I've advocated for turning it on myself this whole time."
"My mother will have something to say about that," Lanlanor said with a dry smile. "There isn't a lot she doesn't know about magic, and she learned her tricks from her forebears, who once served under Ashton's forebears. Where did you think our lore came from? We adapted a lot of the dark elven ways, but made it kinder and gentler. My mother is the most adept sorceress this world has ever seen, on par with the greatest elven queens of all time. And she's had to grapple the darkness in order to reach the light within. She'll easily be able to do the same with you, friend."
I hesitated, before nodding. "I've learned many dark arts," I warned him. "Your mother will need to bring all her light to bear in order to rid me of the ties that yet bind me to the success or failure of my weapon."
"Well," Peyton said from the window, "there are some things only unicorns know that even the greatest elven sorceress doesn't."
We all turned to stare at him. "Say again?" Paradox demanded.
Peyton shook out his mane. "You heard me," he said matter-of-factly. "Unicorns know things elves don't. We taught the very first elves everything their modern descendants know, thank you very much."
"Peyton," Ashton said in a tone which suggested the impertinent excuse for a misbegotten donkey of a horse was moments away from getting himself turned inside out.119Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1E1vNYeZ15
"We'll set out in the morning," the unrepentant animal said, before withdrawing from the window and plodding off placidly to join the other horses in some long-overdue slumber. Dawn was still a few hours off, so Ashton suggested we do the wise thing and catch up on some shut-eye. 119Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuVGBXHE2l2
"I am going to kill that bitch-bred donkey," he muttered, as he and Ailsa went into his bedroom to finally consummate their new marriage. The rest of us rolled ourselves in our blankets to grab what sleep we could before morning came, glad to have seen the last of Zocerth and her court for the time being, but also wondering just what the hell Peyton was going on about. 119Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLuaogOSE0J
"Unicorn my ass," Paradox muttered, before letting sleep claim him, and I smothered a snort of laughter as Temara giggled against my neck.
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