Category: Tales of Vatan

Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Learning Things

Ala still went to the school every now and again, usually for a few months or weeks at a time. Normally she would go again whenever a new temple sister arrived from outside Thetwick. New sisters tended to bring new knowledge with them, which was exciting. The temple always offered a few years of schooling to the villages’ children, officially until the age of ten, but Ala’s repeated presence was always tolerated as long as she helped whoever was teaching where she could. The sisters took turns teaching the classes in the mornings. Children with aptitude for it were taught to read, write and do basic sums. Ala already knew how to write in elven from before she came to Thetwick, but she always wanted to improve her command of the human language. She knew she had a ever so slight accent that she’d never quite been able to shake.

New sisters teaching in the school seemed to be better trained in sums than the ones who had been there decades before, like Deirdre. It made it worthwhile to go back every few years. There was usually at least something new to be learned. Ala was certain she had learned all that anyone around her knew about the history of Taladaria and Thetwick. She’d experienced most of what had recently happened in Thetwick herself, which the humans seemed to collectively forget all the time. It sometimes made things awkward, when people claimed that their father or grandfather had done something which she knew to be untrue since she’d actually known the person in question.

Very occasionally, school was very interesting. Not long after the meeting hall had been erected in Thetwick, the Temple of Ceres seemed to have taken a renewed interest in its flock in Thetwick. In the summer of 924, the Temple was visited by a woman, a Canoness, whose arrival caused quite some consternation in the Thetwick Temple. The sisters almost decided to send Ala away from school, until Gera, now advanced in age herself pointed out that Alagariel only looked ever so slightly older than the customary ten years of age that most ended their schooling in Thetwick. So, thanks to Gera’s intervention Ala was attending class, keeping to herself when the Canoness, a stern looking lady named Clair Fichot attended the lesson to observe. The sister who was teaching the class was clearly unnerved by the woman’s presence. Ala had to admit she did look quite severe.

The lesson continued. It was a history lesson that Ala had heard many times. Most of the sisters did not have much of an interest in history and today’s teacher was no different. Not much changed about in that respect, even when new Sisters arrived. Ala, seeing as she had heard it all before was mainly paying attention to the way the stern woman’s scowl was rapidly turning more pronounced as the lesson progressed. Only a few minutes in, she spoke.

“Sister, if you don’t mind, I’ll take over today’s lesson. Why don’t you sit down and observe?”

The sister nodded and quickly say down in the back, not far from Ala. The Canoness made her way to the front of the classroom and cleared her throat.

“Now children, today I’m going to tell you a bit more about the history of your home. I will be asking questions later, so pay attention.”

The woman certainly had Ala’s attention. She’d always been curious about the history of the Westmarch, but the sister’s usually didn’t go back very far and only covered a time that Ala had actually experienced. Ala had long learned that it wasn’t a good idea to point out discrepancies that she knew about because she’d been alive during the events being described.

“First of all, is there anything any of you particularly wants to know about?”

Ala was excited, since she had lots of things she wanted to know about. It was only after no one else reacted that she dared to raise her hand.

“You, young lass, what is it you want to know?”

“Err… Canoness.. I… well I was hoping you could tell us something about how the Westmarch came to be?”

“Those are things that happened very long ago. But alright, why not? So, how the Westmarch came to be a march, let’s discuss that, shall we?”

Ala nodded eagerly.

“Around 601… you do know all know the current year is 924, don’t you?”

From the blank looks it was clear not everyone did.

“So that’s… three hundred and twenty three years ago, when a peace agreement was reached between Selinus and Iurrak after eighty years of war. That peace was signed at the Ford Inn, where the road to Taladaria crosses the Iceflow river. It was agreed between King Gabriel the first of Iurrak and King Selinus the seventh of Selinus.”

This was all new to Ala and she was loving it.

“Now, this peace led to the Westmarch being formed. The two Kings were tired of all the war between their countries and they were looking for a way to stop it happening again. So, they agreed that three fiefs would become a buffer between Iurrak and Selinus. In the North, bordering the sea, that was Saskill, then Oakharrow in the middle and in the south, the Westmarch, where we are now. Of course, it wasn’t called the Westmarch back then. I’m not completely sure what it was called but one name I’ve heard for it is ‘Difayakwininos’, which I’m probably pronouncing wrong. It’s said that it’s elven in origin but it doesn’t sound anything like any elven I’ve ever heard.”

It sounded familiar to Ala, though it wasn’t quite normal elven she was sure. Part of it sounded like the elven word for ‘house’. She decided not to let on that she understood elven. As Ala was thinking about the old name, Canoness Fichot looked around the room. She had the children’s attention. It was hard to know why but somehow, when she talked about history it seemed far more interesting than what Ala was used to.

“So, Saskill and Oakharrow were independent counties. The Westmarch was made into a march, probably because it also had to guard against attacks from the Orck Mountains and a Marchioness has more rights to hold troops than a Count does. You do all know that the Orck Mountains are south of the Irins that border the Westmarch in the south? The orcks come down in great hordes every few decades and the Westmarch is the first line of defence against them.”

Ala knew about the orcks of course, but the revelation of there being a Marquis was strange news to Ala. She was certain there was no current Marquis in the Westmarch. The Canoness spotted her look of puzzlement.

“Do you have a question, young lady?”

“Eh… well… what happened to the Marquis? There isn’t one is there, mistress?”

Clair Fochet smiled, the first time Ala had seen her do so. It was a very different look.

“Very astute. Actually, there is though. Does anyone know who the current Marquis of the Westmarch is?”

This drew blank stares all around, eventually Sister Penny, who was still sitting in the back, raised her hand.

“Yes, Sister?”

“It’s the Duke of Taladaria, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. It’s not really a part of the story about how the Westmarch came to be, as it happened much later, but the title of the Westmarch passed to the Dukes of Taladaria much later by marriage. Now, it’s not customary for a Lord to hold two regnant titles, but it’s the way things are in the case of the Westmarch. It’s generally frowned upon and I imagine the King of Iurrak accepts it because the Westmarch is so sparsely populated that it needs the Duke’s soldiers if it is to be able to defend Taldaria both from the Orcks and Selinus. Mostly, Kings are quite strict about the one regnant title per person rule. Anyway, now back to the story of the Westmarch and the Peace of 601.”

Ala was sure she’d never had quite as interesting a history lesson in the Temple of Ceres ever before.

“Well anyway, it seems that the intention was that eventually Saskill, Oakharrow and the Westmarch would become a small Kingdom that would stop Iurrak and Selinus becoming angry at one another. It never happened that way though. Selinus soon annexed Saskill though I don’t really know how that happened without it leading to another war. Perhaps it was through marriage, I would have to study it more than I have so far and I simply haven’t had the time.”

Ala went home that day with a lot to think about. Unfortunately the Canoness didn’t stay for long and school went back to being more or less the same immediately after the woman left. It made her sad, she could think of many more questions she wanted to ask the woman. The subject went back to religion, which the Sisters seemed to spend a lot of the school’s time repeating. Mostly, they went on and on about their goddess, Ceres, who was a very boring goddess who was seemingly mostly interested in bovines and agriculture, two subjects that Ala always found it difficult to concentrate on. While she could kind of understand why such a goddess was important in a farming community like Thetwick, she wished the sisters wouldn’t talk about it as much. She preferred hearing about different gods, which the sisters infrequently discussed. Sometimes Guanshiyin, the lady of Compassion was mentioned or Mars, the god of War. Sancus, Belus and Wotan existed too, Ala knew, but their jobs were hard to understand. Belus seemed to be popular in the south and Wotan in the North. There were even more, but other than acknowledge that more did exist, the sisters of Ceres did not consider it fitting to discuss them in their classroom. Ala tried to convince them too, but they told her it wasn’t allowed. Pressing them further only resulted in finding out that the High Priestess in Dirstad had forbidden talk of other gods. Ala didn’t even know there was a place called Dirstad.

Still, despite her many irritations with the Sisters of Ceres, it was there that she had learned about the geography of Vatan. Across the Iceflow River which was the Westmarch’s eastern border lay the rest of Taladaria, the first fief you encountered to the south east was the Barony of Sheffield. To the north east was the County of Verdon which bordered a small stretch of the Westmarch across the river. The western bank of the river was very marshy there making it very difficult to get directly from the Westmarch to Verdon. Other than a few trappers, not many people lived in that part of Verdon as it was almost always damp and misty. Large sections flooded every year and the only settlement of note was a place called Landing, a community of wooden buildings on stilts where trappers came to trade their wares and rest. It was mostly empty during the winter months.

Oakharrow County lay to the North, though there wasn’t a clearly defined natural border there. There was a line of low hills, but it lacked clear demarcation compared to the Iceflow river in the East. For a long time, contact between Thetwick and Oakharrow had been regular and generally amicable, with people frequently visiting each other’s markets and occasional marriages between the fiefs. The ground in Oakharrow was rocky and hard, unsuitable for much more than sheep and goat herding, making it even poorer than Thetwick, especially since it had been independent for a long time. There was never an influx of gold like when the Duke had the meeting hall built in Thetwick or when he’d sent former cavalrymen to breed warhorses.

Ala had seen her share of armies march through the Westmarch as well as attacks by orcks from the South. The fortifications that the Westmarch had had in the distant past, most notably the tower where Ala liked to go and play had already been destroyed a long time before Ala arrived in Thetwick. Taladaria and Selinus seemed to violently disagree about things quite regularly. During her life the Duke’s men had come to deal with incidents with Oakharrow and Selinus, as well as the intermittent bands of orcks coming down from the southern mountains. It didn’t happen often and normally they didn’t get very far but Ala would never forget the great orck horde that came down from the mountains in 861. Everything had been topsy-turvy for almost a year and when they returned after having had to flee Thetwick, it took a long time for the town to recover.

Incursions from Selinus had been something that would happen several times a year for in some periods, then nothing might happen for a decade or more. Sometimes it was a cattle raid and sometimes Selinan nobles decided to plunder a hamlet and once even Thetwick itself had been raided. It was during that raid that Ala’s human twelve year old sister Emma had been abducted. It had been a great shock for everybody in Palady’s family. Emma had been taken by a group of mounted warriors, black knights from Selinus. Ala had only been in Thetwick for about a decade then. Such raids were a part of life in the Westmarch, but even though that was dramatic and shocking, for the most part Thetwick was peaceful during Ala’s time there. Relations with Oakharrow did noticeably deteriorate after King Justus was crowned in Selinus and interaction between Oakharrow and the Westmarch decreased after that. In later years Ala came to understand that the frequency of the raids tended to be related to the presence of young nobles in the regions closest to the Westmarch, mainly the Barony of Greythorn. Abduction, for the purpose of indentured servitude was a disgusting sport for the Selinan nobility. It was also Emma’s probable fate.

For the most part, the people of Thetwick had little to do with the outside world. News from other lands was scarce as travelers from far away were rare. Any news from lands beyond Taladaria or Selinus seldom made it to Thetick. Ala heard the news of a Duke’s passing in the year 920 when she’d been in Thetwick about eighty years. She didn’t really understand its significance at the time. To her, the fact that the old Duke had died and a new Duke, Ivan the Second, had inherited, didn’t change anything for her daily life. As far as she could tell it didn’t really change anything in Thetwick either. She didn’t understand why it was the talk of the town for several weeks. It wasn’t until much later that she realised that the building of the new town hall and the assigning of a permanent Constable a few years after the inheritance was an example of the new Duke setting his house in order and bolstering his Western defences.

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Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Palady’s Passing

Ala had been in Thetwick for almost seventy years, as close as she could reckon it, when Palady passed away. It was early in the spring of the year 916, with snow still on the ground in many places, following a winter that had been unusually cold. There was only the slightest inkling of spring in the air and the lack of new life felt like an approprate backdrop for her funeral.

Ala was very sad, Palady had been her one constant during all her time in Thetwick, which almost felt like it was all she had ever known. Palady had lived a very long life for a human, outliving both her human daughter, Olivia and her granddaughter Amelia. No one had ever found out what had become of her other daughter Emma after her abduction by Selinan raiders. Amelia had died in childbirth, giving birth to Aubree, Palady’s youngest great grandchild. Palady’s long life was something Ala knew she should feel grateful for but she still felt very alone without the old lady. Aubree had been raised by Palady and Ala after Amelia and Olivia’s deaths. By then Palady had already been quite old, so Ala had played an important role in Aubree’s upbringing. It was Aubree who came to Ala’s rescue when Ala couldn’t stay in Palady’s house any longer.

The house Palady had lived in had been rented from one of the richer families in Thetwick, relatives of Palady’s deceased husband Jack. It was generations later though and no vestiges of a family relationship would allow Ala to live there for free. Ala had no income and she looked like a slight human girl not quite in her early teens, aside from the pointed ears that she always kept hidden under her long hair, a headscarf or a hooded cloak. In addition, women weren’t officially allowed to enter into contracts in the Westmarch or even anywhere in Iurrak, unless they were widowed. That wasn’t to say that Ala hadn’t seen it happen over the years, but the age humans perceived her to be and the fact that she was a half elf meant that such an arrangement wasn’t a possibility for Ala. Aubree’s offer to take her in was a great relief. Ala hadn’t really known what else to do and she had even seriously been considering leaving to live in the forest somewhere.

Aubree’s husband, Alexander, had died very shortly after she had married, even before they’d had any children. Aubree had always been close to Ala, even more so after her husband died. Having been mostly raised by Ala, there weren’t many secrets between the two of them. At Palady’s funeral, Aubree suggested that Ala should live with her. It was a little awkward at first of course. The two knew each other well, but Aubree was twenty three and used to running her own little household. Ala had hardly changed in twenty three years, being much like a young teen-aged human child that whole time. She was also used to taking care of everything for Palady. She and Aubree took a while to adjust, to balance their house together but they did find a way to comfortably complement each other after a time. Every so often, the fact that Ala wasn’t human would come up.

“You know Ala, it’s so hard to imagine that you’re probably even older than Palady was,” Aubree said thoughtfully once, when the were sitting together by the fire on a rainy night.

“I’m not completely sure that I am. But… you’re right… it has to be something like that.”

“Such a strange thing. I… well… humans I guess… we all think highly of a long life. But when it’s as long as yours. I see how hard it is for you to fit in among the rest of us.”

“It… well, sometimes it’s a bit unpleasant. Though it has its upsides, too.”

“I suppose. Well at this rate, I’ll be an old woman before you’re even marriageable. I think I would have liked to see that.”

“Marriage? No thanks.”

“Trust you to say that. Well, we’ll see. You’re so… timeless, I can’t really imagine it either. Sometimes it makes me feel weird.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not you fault. Probably because we Thets don’t get around much. I mean, you’re hardly the only half-elf in Taladaria, I’d think. Just, we’re not used to it out here in the Westmarch.”

Every few years they had a comparable conversation. It was really the only time Ala’s different nature ever came up. When they were out, Ala was treated like Aubree’s child sister and Ala played along, but the relationship was somewhere between equal and the other way round. Ala had picked the minds of anyone who was willing to talk to her for decades, after all and she knew an awful lot compared to almost everyone in Thetwick. She also knew the school’s whole curriculum better than the Sisters of Ceres themselves. Ala’s comparatively endless knowledge and skills were something Aubree had grown up with, so it didn’t unnerve her like it tended to do with the other villagers.

In fact, Aubree looked up to Ala. Ala loved Aubree and accepted the strange way her human relationships changed during her slow life. It wasn’t as if she had any real choice. Ala continually watched the lives of all the villagers passing her by. As she grew older and her body developed boys started to show an interest in her. She noticed them, of course. She didn’t find the attention unpleasant, but none of the boys in the village interested her. She had been around long enough to know exactly what boys of that age were driven by. Not that she didn’t have similar urges, she just wasn’t quite ruled by them. The boys were all so… small-minded. Even the human girls thought the boys were immature, so it made sense to her that she wasn’t interested in them, since she had been around so much longer than everyone else.

Young boys, especially younger brothers without any inheritance, were still regularly sent to join the Duke’s regiment. As Thetwick’s population grew, so did the number of children and also the number of boys who were sent to serve the Duke. Eldest sons inherited, girls grew up and had husbands and children. There were tragedies, small and big and sometimes violence. There was even a murder every decade or so. A man was caught and hanged in front of the whole town, once, for banditry along the road to the Ford Inn. It had been quite gruesome, making Ala feel queasy. Once, they even had to flee Thetwick, going north towards Oakharrow when a horde of Orcks came out of the southern mountains. The orcks were eventually driven back by the Duke’s regiment and the Levy, but several buildings in Thetwick were damaged or burned. Many men who had been in the levy had been killed. When they were able to return, signs of battle were still fresh, with defensive berms and stakes still visible all the way around the town.

Thetwick had good times and bad times during the years that Ala lived there. At times it had swelled to the size of a modest town while after the orck attacks in 861 and 926 it had taken years to recover, though the former attack, known as ‘The Great Horde’ had been the worst by far. Most of the town was built out of wood, which easily disappeared, or so it seemed to Ala who had been in Thetwick longer than many of the houses. A lot of houses had been destroyed during the orck attacks too.

Ever so slowly more stone buildings and even some fortifications were raised. They were built out of stone quarried a few miles upstream of the town. There was no wall around the town, but some of the richer families started building stronger houses as the years passed. Some more affluent inhabitants rebuilt parts of their house in stone as Thetwick became wealthier, for protection and durability. In the year 927 a grand building was erected by men sent by the Duke. Ala thought it was both a reaction to the Orck Incursion the year before and an effort to help Thetwick recover from the damage.

The meeting hall was was the largest and strongest building Thetwick had seen in living memory. It had strong walls, arrow slits and even a modest square tower, with crenellations around a pointed roof on top. Its building had been supervised by several the Duke’s men who had come all the way from Peyrepertuse to oversee the construction. One of them had been a master mason and he directed the building of the hall. It was a place for meetings, courts, festivals and a base for the levy. Outside the hall, a large area was marked out for the Duke’s use. It was the drilling field, where the levy was to meet and practice their skills. It was a square of a hundred by a hundred royal yards, surrounded by a row of solid oak trees that were planted around its perimeter. Even they seemed to grow faster than Ala did. From then on, the town had a Constable too, who customarily was elected by the council of elders to take care of the Duke’s and the towns’ affairs. The Constable also was the Lieutenant of the Levy and was in charge of drilling and leading the militia when it was needed. Ala almost never saw a Lieutenant actually practising with the militia, it was a part of the job that no one seemed to take very seriously.
\bigskip

Life was frustrating for Ala at times. Even when Palady had been alive everyone in the family had understood that emphasising Ala’s longevity among the people of Thetwick would make life harder. There was a lot of superstition and it was better not to give people cause to think about Ala as if she were something other than human. When Ala had moved in with Aubree they had also agreed that it was best if most townspeople didn’t think about Ala at all. The majority of the people of Thetwick knew of her presence, but they seemed to be prepared to ignore it as long as she stayed on the periphery of society. Partly because of that, Ala had always spent a lot of time out and about, ranging around the countryside. She was particularly good at finding edible mushrooms, far more than they could eat. She usually traded most of them for other foods. Mostly she was alone because it was so hard to find companions who didn’t eventually grow uncomfortable with her. Humans expected her to be friends with children who looked like they were in the same age bracket. As Ala was vastly older than those human children that didn’t work very well. On the other hand, older humans tended to treat her like a child, which Ala didn’t like either. Every so often Ala found someone she was friendly with for a while, but it never seemed to take long for the differences in the rates that they aged to come between them, or, as also happened frequently, for the friend in question to be forbidden to speak to her because she was a half elf.

She did make the acquaintance of some of the hunters, offering to help them in exchange for things like an occasional hide or some meat. This was a partnership that worked well as it required little talking and was always focused on the task at hand. Most of the professional hunters tended to be a kind of loners too. Hunting was a profession for those who preferred to be out in nature, left to their own devices. She learned many things from them, things like how to set snares, skinning rabbits, boars and deer, cooking over a fire and how to hunt with a bow and fend for herself. The hunters were used to working alone and it was easier to talk with them individually than when she was in the town. That seemed to apply at least as long as the subject was related to hunting. She learned a little fletching from them too, enough to make herself a serviceable hunting bow.

She did grow, ever so slowly, slowly developing into a beautiful young girl, seemingly in her teens. She had continued to dye her hair a mousy brown colour just as Palady had always insisted she do. It had actually taken decades before Ala really knew what her real hair colour was.

“Ala, your roots are showing again,” said Aubree one afternoon.

“Already?” Ala sighed.

“You could just… you know… not dye it? Your natural colour is so wonderful.”

“No, I promised Palady.”

“I know. Well, I think we still have everything we need to make more dye from the last batch. I’ll mix some up for you. You might need to bring back some nettles with you from the forest, we’re probably going to need more of those.”

“I will.”

Palady had made her promise to keep it brown after she died, which she dutifully did as often as she remembered to.

Ala’s favourite job was helping the many horse breeders of Thetwick. Not many of them would tolerate her around their farms at first, but there had been a few since she’d started looking like she was in her teens that hadn’t turned away her help with grooming and walking the horses. At one of the farms, the owner saw her whisper a huge unruly breeding stallion that no one else dared approach to calmness and that was all that was needed for her to be given more substantial jobs. Eventually, word got around that she had a knack for horses. Ala knew that the Duke had given a number of his Regiment’s former cavalrymen a grant of land in Thetwick, as well as a contract to supply warhorses. It had developed into Thetwick’s most important source of income from outside the county. Thetwick had become famous for its horses in the decades that Ala lived there. Even the Duke of Taladaria himself was said to ride Thetwick bred destriers, a fact the villagers were all very proud of.

Ala just liked the fact that the horses didn’t judge her. The majestic creatures always seemed to really like her, especially when she spoke to them in elven. The only thing that fascinated her more than horses was swords and swordplay, though there was no way for a young girl in Thetwick to do more than watch the levy on those rare occasions when it was called out to practice. When they did, something in the back of her mind told her that they didn’t really know what they were doing, though she never said anything. Sometimes some young men would start a group for weapons practice, but that usually didn’t last for long either. She had tried to join in when boys were playing with wooden swords many times but she had always been turned away, sometimes violently. In the rural culture of Thetwick, a sword wielding girl was unimaginable.

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Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Keeping Count

She had been in Thetwick for more than forty years since the day she had decided it would be a good idea to start keeping count. It was then that she had started keeping track of dates too and she made it a point to remember that that year had been 855 by the way the humans of Iurrak customarily counted them. She’d since learned that in Selinus they sometimes used the years of a monarch’s reign, or the elven calendar that she’d heard went back far further. She didn’t really know how either of those worked though. She wasn’t certain how long she had been in Thetwick before 855, but it couldn’t have been more than a decade or two, she thought. She remembered that the village had been little more than a hamlet when she first came to it, it had grown a lot since. She also still didn’t know how old she was, but it was much, much older than the ten human years or so that she now looked. Too many people lived in Thetwick now, but she didn’t think there were more than a handful who were older than her and they were the most ancient people in the town.

She still only had vague memories of the time before her adoptive mother, Palady, had taken her in. They were partial and dreamlike, all of beautiful, tall and slender people, musical voices and white stone cities among enormous trees. The city or cities she remembered had been filled with enormous, airy buildings and magnificent towers reaching into the sky, with the wind making nice strange noises as it found its way around the tall structures. There were figures in her memories who she thought might be her mother and father, but she hardly had more than shards of images. She remembered that there had been plants, coaxed to grow around white stone and the sound of many birds. She also remembered strange and beautiful creatures in a magnificent forest somewhere. There might have been less buildings there, but she wasn’t sure. It had smelt of spring and life. The only other thing she was really certain of was that she must have come to Thetwick after she learned to talk, since she could speak and even read, elvish, a skill which no else in Thetwick seemed to possess.

A fair number of people in Thetwick could read, which they usually learned at school. Her command of elvish puzzled her a little though. She assumed that learning to read elven must have been with her elven parent, though she didn’t even know if it was her mother or father who had been an elf. The way she learned wasn’t exactly like human children. She realised it was very uncommon for a human child who was the same size as she had been when she’d arrived in Thetwick to have already learned to read. She guessed she must have been the size of a four or five year old human child, then but she thought she might have already even been decades old, even then.

She thought that simply having more time was what made the difference, rather than learning to read being too difficult for a four or five year old human child. It was just that humans were a few years older when they mastered it, just because it took a few years to master. Even if Ala had learned when she was even smaller and it had taken her five years, she would still have looked like a four or a five year old human child by the team she’d spent far more hours learning than a human child had by the time they were eight. It seemed logical to her that she could have learned to read elvish even though she still would have looked quite a lot younger than even the youngest of literate human children.

She didn’t know how old she had been when she arrived and even Palady had never really dared to make a proper guess. Palady described it as if she had been about the size of a human four or five year old as well, anyway. What that meant in half-elf years she simply didn’t know, but she decided it must have been decades. Of course she wasn’t actually sure her rate of ageing was constant. It was quite difficult to make any guesses without anyone knowledgeable to ask.

When Palady was already very old, she had sat Ala down and explained to her in more detail about the group of the Duke’s soldiers that had left Alagariel in Thetwick. They had rescued Ala somewhere, Palady didn’t know exactly where, but she thought it might have been near a small fief to the West, named Seraphim. She told her again about the senior guardsman with the patrol, William the Bull. Mostly, Ala knew the story and even thought she remembered shards of those days which were filled with terror. Palady also told her how she had chosen the name ‘Alagariel’ for her. As a little girl she had only referred to herself as ‘Ala’. It was one of the few things she had ever said during the first few years in Thetwick. Palady thought it was probably part of a longer name, shortened to make it easier for a child to say. Trying to imagine a longer form of Ala, the name Alagariel, who was an elf queen in a popular faery tale, had seemed fitting. Her name was usually followed by her saying things in elven that Palady obviously couldn’t understand. There had been improvement though and eventually, Ala had started speaking the common tongue too.

The name Palady had chosen, was very well known name among the people of the Westmarch owing to the popular tale. It wasn’t customary to name girls ‘Alagariel’, but everyone knew it well nonetheless. Children all across Taldyr learned the nursery rhyme. It had been Palady’s favourite story when she was a girl herself. It was about an elven queen and her dragon friends who had driven the demons from the world together at the beginning of time. Palady had learned the story from her grandmother. Alagariel knew it was a common story that was always told to awe young children. The Alagariel in the story was strong and smart, a warrior, a fire sorceress and a stern though fair Queen. She was presented as someone who would come to save you if you were good. Ala loved stories, though if she was honest her favourite was a different tale, one about a Northern shieldmaiden named Kára. Still, she understood that Palady had chosen the name for her because she was a half-elf and she had found it fitting for a child who called herself ‘Ala’.

Ala was sure she had had a different name before she came to Thetwick… she was sure it hadn’t been Alagariel but she just couldn’t remember it. Once she realised that her new name was different she had spent a lot of time trying to remember what the old one was. Sometimes she thought she had it but eventually she realised she just couldn’t be sure. It was a lot longer than ‘Ala’, that was the only thing she was certain about.

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Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Palady Explains

Once, when she had been in Thetwick for some time, Palady had sat her down and explained things to her.

“Now Ala, I think you’re old enough that we should have a little talk about you and where you come from.”

“Old enough?”

“Well, I admit that I don’t know how old you are, but you certainly look like you’re around six years old or so.”

“We have to talk about me because I look like I’m six…?”

“Like a six year old human, yes. You get older very slowly, I’ve explained before that that’s because you’re a half-elf, right?”

“I know, Palady. You’ve told me many times. You tell me… most days.”

“Good. What I haven’t told you about is how you came to be in Thetwick. At least not in any detail.”

“I think… I was brought… by soldiers?” Ala said, feeling a stirring of memories.

“That’s right. About twenty years ago now, when my Jack was still alive and Emma was still with us.”

Ala grew quiet. It always made her sad when she thought of Emma. Emma was… or had been one of her two human sisters, the younger of the two. The girl had been abducted by raiders from Selinus, she knew. She’d really loved Emma. She didn’t know where Selinus was, but she knew Emma hadn’t been the only one taken that day. Other villages had also been dragged away by the Selinan men. Palady had explained that it was something terrible that sometimes happened in the Westmarch. It was very rare that they ever dared to ride all the way to Thetwick itself. The last time, before the day Emma had been taken, had been years before Ala arrived in the village. Some of the hamlets further north had to contend with raids more often, Palady had told her. The Selinans came to steal cattle, horses and sometimes, like on that day, even people.

“I still miss Emma too,” Palady comforted her, stroking her hair. “As well as Jack. It’s quite normal to think of her. Let’s hope she’s safe, at least, shall we?”

Ala could see older woman’s eyes reddening at the thought. Palady quickly pulled herself together and continued.

“But today we need to talk about something else, alright? We can’t think of the people we’ve lost and loved all the time, even though we sometimes want to, can we?”

“I guess not,” she said, though she was wondering if they did it too little.

“So now I’m going to talk to you about how you came to Thetwick.”

“OK.”

“The soldiers that brought you were led by a warrior, William the Bull. A proud and honourable man, he was. A hero. William was Jack’s half brother.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it’s true. He was a good man, it’s said that the Duke even commended him personally many times. He was one of the Duke’s best soldiers. Anyway, William and his soldiers happened upon some enemy soldiers, humans and even some other creatures. William thought they were probably returning from an ambush…”

“An ambush?”

“Yes, that’s a place where travellers had been attacked and hurt by orcks and nasty creatures. He and his soldiers stumbled upon them by accident, William said.”

“What happened then?”

“They managed to chase off the bad creatures and men. They didn’t have time to look where exactly the ambush had happened, even though they could tell from the things that the bad creatures were carrying that it couldn’t have been far away. They looked around, but couldn’t find any other survivors.”

“I was really the only one?” She asked, hoping, though she really knew the answer.

“I’m sorry Ala. I don’t know if your real mother and father were among the casualties, but I’m afraid… I think they might have been. It’s more than likely, I’m sorry.”

“I know, Palady,” said Ala seriously. Thinking about it made her feel empty inside.

“Of course you do. Yo know so many things for such a little girl. Now let me continue the story. The soldiers found you, tied up, slung over a horse. You were a prisoner, so the soldiers freed you and took you with them. Apparently you tried to run away several times. William didn’t really know what to do with you, so I said it was alright if you stayed with me. I promised to look after you.”

“You look after me very well, Palady.”

That caused the woman to smile. “Why thank you, Ala. That’s kind of you to say. But, I think we both know you mostly look after yourself, don’t you? Sometimes you are even the one looking after the rest of us.”

It was partially true. She often took home what she found in the forest often bringing home many mushrooms, berries, wild plants and roots that they could eat. She liked to cook and often did help with the many things that were needed to keep the household running. She really did feel that Palady looked after her very well though.

Ala’s other, older, human sister, Olivia, was already married by then. She had a daughter of her own, named Amelia. Ala often looked after Amelia. Ala was so much older than she looked so that everyone in Palady’s family knew looking after Olivia’s daughter could easily be left to her. It was strange to some of the neighbours to see Ala and Amelia alone together when they were roughly the same size. Thirty years later, Amelia died in childbirth, greatly saddening Ala. After that, she also looked after Amelia’s two older children, Garrett and Aubree, very often.

Ala didn’t know any other half-elves and neither did anyone else in the town. She hadn’t been able to find anyone else who knew any, at least. A half-elf would live a lot longer than other people, Palady had told her, that’s why it made sense that she grew slower. She ached to know how much longer it would take and no one in Thetwick that she’d dared ask had been able to tell her anything useful. No one seemed to know how much longer it took a half-elf to grow up and the answers she’d had had been so different from one another that they were of no use at all.

Palady, her adoptive mother, whom she loved dearly had gotten very old before Alagariel had even developed breasts. That certainly wasn’t the way things worked for humans, she knew. She sometimes cursed her heritage because it put her so far outside the human world. She didn’t fit in with the other children of the village and she didn’t fit in with the adults, so she spent a lot of time on her own. Palady had always tried to hide the fact that Ala was a half elf. She kept Ala’s hair dyed brown and made her wear a headscarf or a hood and sometimes even both to hide her pointed ears. She made Ala arrange her hair so that even if the hood came off, her ears wouldn’t be clearly visible. It wasn’t that her being a half-elf was really a secret. Palady had tried to explain that it would just be safer for Ala if the villagers weren’t constantly reminded that Ala was different.

She often said, “not all folks are as open-minded as me, Ala, best be careful.”

Ala made sure to pay heed to her advice, Palady’s point had been made painfully clear so many times that it was impossible for her to forget about it. She had made a few friends over the years, but many of the villagers kept their children away from her. Those few friends she had made tended to drift away as the discrepancy in ageing made things strange for them. She seemed to lose the connection with them, somehow, when they grew up. The people around Thetwick were used to how she looked, with most knowing about her pointed ears, very pale blue eyes and her skin, which had a slight reddish-gold tinge. Ala didn’t think anyone knew that her hair wasn’t really mousy brown. Even so the villagers still mostly ignored her as they would most children even though she was usually far older than both the children and their parents. She was often even older than their grandparents, which she sometimes even forgot herself.

Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Thetwick

The village she lived in was called Thetwick. It was the only settlement of note in the Westmarch, a thinly populated area mostly covered in trees and bushes, at least to the north of the village. The trees were thickest in the southern part of the March, with large stretches of proper forest and hills that grew bigger the closer you got to the Irin Mountains that made the natural Southern border of the March. In the North, the hills were a little lower and the vegetation wasn’t as thick.

Thetwick was more or less in the middle of the March, next to a river, the Clearflow, that was navigable up to Thetwick for small boats a few months most years. It was a logical place to put goods ashore and she had heard that it had used to be a busier route once, long before Ala came to Thetwick. The river was fordable at the upstream end of Thetwick and the road had once forked to the North to Oaktown and West to Seraphim from there. There was still a weathered stone marker near the town square which indicated the distance to both places. Both roads were barely dirt tracks anymore and had mostly been reclaimed by nature.

When Ala arrived, Thetwick housed no more than thirty families but it steadily grew during the years she lived there. Her mother had told her that Thetwick had grown and shrunk many times in the past and that it was growing again because the Duke was giving free land to those willing to move there. From the point of view of a trader or traveller, the Westmarch was a dead end on the western border of Iurrak. Even if you wanted to travel on the West or North from Thetwick, the journey was hard and often impossible with any kind of cart or wagon.

For Ala, there wasn’t much else she could do except go to school. As she got older she mostly helped her mother’s with chores and anything she could do to contribute to the welfare of the household.. Sometimes there was work she could do, like out in the fields during the harvest. Everyone was needed then, even people as small as half elf children. She liked being out, in the wilderness, particularly in the forests to the south. She never felt quite at ease in town. Most of the humans treated her much the way they treated young human children, which meant that she was largely ignored. Ala sort of understood why. She was the only half-elf in the village and she was probably also the only half- elf that most of them had ever seen. She didn’t like it though. She was decades older than the other children… older than most of the adults too. She had learned that most humans didn’t like it when she pointed that out. She’d had time to learn all the basic things humans were taught as they grew up several times over but no one other than her mother and siblings ever really acknowledged that her long life might make any difference. Even they mostly acted like she was a human child.

When she wanted to be alone, she snuck away to the ruined tower near the town. In the beginning it had been quite a long walk and she could only go when the grown ups were very busy with other things. When she was a little older she would run all the way. It was her favourite spot. She would tell herself all the elvish stories that she knew in her head. Sometimes she would sit down an recite her tales to the animals. Many of them seemed to like that and she could just sit there feeding animals out of her hand. She also spent a lot of time wandering around the nearby forest whenever she could slip away. Sometimes she would look for edible things, like berries and nuts, mushrooms or roots. She didn’t know why she liked the forest so much, it just felt a little bit like home. She wondered if it was just that all forests smelled alike. Would she feel this way in every forest? She was quite good at foraging food and useful materials from the forest and she always made sure to take things home with her that made life a little easier and food a little more abundant.

She wasn’t exactly sure when or where she had learned so many elvish stories or how she knew which plants tasted good and which ones were safe to eat. She could recite many stories from memory and often did, when she was at the ruins alone. She never got sick from the things she ate and sometimes she thought she vaguely remembered a beautiful woman with coppery skin who had taught her which plants to choose and how to tell apart those that were very similar but poisonous. It always left her wondering if she was making it all up? Was it because she wished she knew her mother, or did that coppery skinned woman actually exist?

Sometimes she’d make a little fire. One of the first times she did so, she realised for the first time that the flames did as she asked, easily appearing or disappearing, growing hotter or colder, or bigger or smaller. The effect was mesmerising and she couldn’t stop herself from coaxing the flames to follow her will for hours. Eventually she managed to put the fire out, realising that she would only make it home after dark. Even then, she was hesitant. She knew that wasn’t completely normal to be able to make fire do your bidding and it worried her. She had heard about witches, about how they were bad and what people did to them. She immediately decided it would be safest hide her new found ability completely and never use it again. It was hard though, because using it, feeling the energy flowing through her felt good and exciting. She was too fascinated to stop trying things with her new discovery and tried more and more things whenever she felt she’d been able to check that she was truly alone.

Before long, she didn’t even need kindling. She settled on not telling another living soul about it, not ever. As long as she kept it just to herself and only practised where she was sure she wouldn’t be seen, people wouldn’t do the horrible things to her that were done to magicians, she reasoned. Even in Thetwick, women had been burned at the stake for being witches, the last one, a midwife, had been burned a short while before Ala had arrived in the village. She didn’t think that she could really be counted as a magician, but she wasn’t sure the villagers would believe her if she conjured fire out of thin air. It did feel good though, calling her ’little trick’, as she thought of it. She used it whenever she made her fires, but only when she’d made completely sure she was alone. Every now and again, she’d forget the time, scaring her mother when she came back after dark. She did always try to be on time, because she could see how much it worried the sweet woman if she was out at night.

Because the other children grew quicker than she did, she had been forced to learn to defend herself. In each generation of chil dren, there were always a few bullies. She was very small and she watched other children grow right past her every year. A boy named Edgar Marchmain relished tormenting whoever and what- ever he could. She once found him tormenting a cat, tying things to its tail. She pulled a useful looking hazel branch off a bush and brandished it.

“Stop that! Take that off her tail!” She screamed at him. “Right now!” He glanced at her, putting on an air of disinterest. It was probably for the benefit of his audience, a small group of slightly younger boys whose job it was to assist him in his torments as well as cheer him on.
“Buzz off, stinking half-elf, or I’ll tie them to you!” He said, laughing out loud with his friends.
Ala stomped towards him, though she was a head shorter. He hadn’t expected it so he stumbled unsteadily to his feet, raising his hand to strike her. She was quicker though, whipping him across the face with all her might with the branch, causing him to fall down with a yelp of pain, clutching his temple. His friends were as surprised as Edgar was, but one of them reacted as she was about to bend down to free the cat. “Get her!” There were three of them, all bigger and heavier, but she sensed they felt uncertain. Edgar was still on the ground holding his bleeding brow and whimpering. She knew she probably wasn’t going to win against them in a fair fight, so she turned towards the first one, who had yelled and wanted to grab her. She feinted with her branch and then kicked him in the shin as hard as she could, producing a satisfying yelp. With him in the way of the other two, she kicked the other shin for good measure, which caused him to bend forward and squeal even harder. Next, with his head now in a good position to hit it, she took the opportunity to punch him in the face, feeling with satisfaction how his lip burst against his lower teeth. She then turned and started running. With two of them out of the fight, the last two only made a token effort to pursue her. She went back to find the cat as soon as she dared, but the animal had managed to extricate itself out of its predicament by the time she got to it.

Edgar had a scar over his eye for the rest of his life. Her mother really couldn’t get out of punishing her for that and she had a sore bottom and back for several days. She knew her mother didn’t really disapprove of her saving the cat and no one really believed that she’d beaten both boys to a pulp, but coming home with the offending hazel branch still in her possession meant that she wasn’t really able to deny that part of the incident when her mother questioned her.

She learned how to use her size and speed and she found she had an infinitely deep well of brutality to call on when bigger children tried to bully her. She might be smaller, but she was older, meaner when needed and had more experience. Also, because she grew so much more slowly it was like her body was less unwieldy than the rapidly growing human children. It was always like they were still trying to get their constantly changing bodies under control. Bullies usually only made a single attempt before figuring out she wasn’t an easy target. Her reactions were brutal and she wasn’t scared to really hurt someone if cornered. She usually had them running for home, crying, in seconds.

Once she even knocked a tooth out of a boy much bigger than her. The grown ups didn’t even believe him when he claimed that such a small girl had done it. Ala felt he had deserved it, he’d been tormenting insects, pulling out legs and wings. She had warned him to stop once, but it was years after the Marchmain incident, so he made the mistake of ignoring and insulting her instead. She’d pretended to leave, walking by him and then threw herself on the back of the boy’s head as he was bent over the insects he was torturing. She’d used her entire weight, little as it was, to smash his face into the stone he’d been using as a torture chamber. She got away with it that time, since no one believed the boy when he claimed she’d done what she had.

Even though she had no particular qualms about violently defending herself or others, ageing so slowly that her childhood encompassed many generations of human children meant she periodically had to reestablish her reputation as a dangerous adversary. It also didn’t always work and she got a lot more practice defending herself and running away than she would have liked. Every generation there were a few children who thought they could get the better of her and every time she had to make it clear that they weren’t going to manage. She preferred to do so in such a way that they didn’t try again and got quite good at escalating to a unreasonbly harsh reaction before her assailants realised their mistake.

Her mother thought she should visit the school as much as possible, but relented eventually when she realised there wasn’t anything left there for Alagariel to learn. It became too awkward. Alagariel was still about the size of many of the human children that started school when she’d completed the entire curriculum several times. Most of her classmates from years before had al- ready married and had children. That was strange, mostly for those class mates. By then Ala had already long gotten used to the lives of humans passing her by. She’d had a lot more time to grow used to being different than the humans around her ever got, so she could understand why it was difficult for the humans. Even so, she didn’t like losing friends just because they turned into grown ups while she stayed childlike.

Sometimes her former classmates moved away. Quite a few boys, particularly younger sons, left to join the Duke’s regiment when they were twelve or thirteen. A few of them left with a caravan almost every spring. It was a bit of an event each time, with their families seeing them off. Their siblings often cried and sometimes even their parents. Most that left, if they came back at all, only did so many years later. She’d heard that quite a few boys died while they were soldiers for the Duke too. Such events were important news in town and were always accompanied by an official scroll with the sad news being handed to the town scribe by a visiting caravan master. Very occasionally, a man came back to the Westmarch after thirty five years of service in the Regiment, with a grant of land from the Duke in his pocket. This sometimes caused problems since the best land close to Thetwick was often already occupied by farmers who had no official rights to it.

The girls often married into a different town or one of the few small hamlets that dotted the Westmarch. Some even left the Westmarch altogether, though it was rare for anyone to travel further than Sheffield, the first Barony in Taladaria to the east. The way humans customarily lived their lives emphasised how Alagariel was different. She sometimes wished she’d been born human. At the same time she knew she wouldn’t really fit in to a life like that. The woman she lived with, Palady, wasn’t really her mother, of course. She knew she had been adopted. In her memories there were several tall and beautiful women, but she didn’t even know who was who. She wasn’t even completely sure that it wasn’t just wishful thinking, that she wanted there to be family in her memories. When she’d come to Thetwick, Palady had had two daughters of her own, Emma and Olivia, as well as her husband Jack. Jack had died young, which had made them all very sad. He’d been a gentle man, indulging his wife’s passion for taking in strays, both children and animals, without complaint. He’d always been friendly to Ala too, though he’d obviously seen her as different to his own children.

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