The Paladins of Naretia

Chapter 24

"Olórin, look," Bernard said, jabbing him in the ribs with a thick finger.

Olórin lifted his head and felt his breath leave him. The forest had come alive as its vines slithered through the trees. Each one wrapped itself around the waist of an elf and gracefully carried them across the gorge. They stopped a few feet away and hung precariously over the violent waters. The vines danced over the gorge as though a breeze swayed them, but the air was quiet now.

Ten elves, each one with long flowing silver hair, azure lips, and silver eyes, raised their bows and took aim at Aramus. 'How much they look like the Goddess,' Olórin thought. 'A truly handsome race.' They were not adorned in armour, but rather in simple clothes. Foraging for ore from the ground was seen as nothing short of rape to the elves. The only metal they used was for their weapons, and that was said to have fallen from the sky as a gift from Edwina herself.

While the women bore the most striking resemblance to the Goddess Edwina, the men had an androgynous beauty about them and Olórin couldn't help but stare. Each elf was different, some pale as the moon, others as tanned as Aramus, but it was the ones whose dark skin contrasted against the brightness of their silver hair, which attracted Olórin the most. As if to announce the equality between the sexes, the slightly pointed ears of both the men and the women were adorned with delicately crafted cuffs of tiny woodland flowers that most in Lothangard would regard as a female accessory.

Olórin heard Aramus take in a sharp breath. Turning toward his young companion, Aramus's face was one of lure and interest as he gazed at the elves. Struggling to his feet, he leaned heavily against Aria. To his knowledge, it was the first time that Aramus had seen an elf. 'Of course, why wouldn't he be attracted to them?' It seemed that his father's genetics predisposed him to admiring the likeness of Edwina. Olórin wasn't sure if Aria had noticed it too, but her brow furrowed at Aramus's ostensive adoration.

"Why do you come here?" one of the elves asked.

Her vine brought her closer to Olórin, but her eyes, and arrow, were fixed on Aramus.

"We come to speak to your Elders," Olórin replied. "We are not an army, and we mean you no harm."

"But you attack us," a male elf said, joining the first. "Your companion wields the power of Dantet. Were it not for your attempts to stop him from striking us, and the queen's also, our arrows would have been more accurate, and you would have been slain. You say you are not here to harm us, but yet harm has been done to the forest around us. Why should we trust you?"

"Eh, I think ye'll find that it was you lot who fired first," Bernard spat. "Whot, did ye expect that we wouldnae fire back? Just lie down and die fer ya, is it? Yev got another thing coming if ye think that's what's going tae happen."

"Do not speak to me of lying down and dying, dwarf," the female said with a deadly tone. The elf's sliver eyes, punctuated with dark pupils, flashed a warning, and Olórin placed a hand on the dwarf's shoulder to tell him to be quiet. "Your people have raped and pillaged this land with your mining. Every night I hear the creatures you enslave, and the lands, cry in pain. Just be grateful that we fired at your Etherium armour, knowing full well that you would not be hurt.

"It was a test, to see how far your aggression would take you. And you, dwarf, reacted with anger, foregoing any intelligent thoughts your head might contain. You didn't even try save the queen when we dislodged her boulder with our arrows. You would have seen her killed."

Olórin wondered how the elves knew about Etherium when it had only come to his attention upon his visit to Balbuldor. He surmised it must be because the elves were widely versed in all things natural and unnatural.