Erick's Journey - Part Two

The trees of Stout Hart forest had the appearance of great age, and most were so tall and thick that the canopy was several hundred meters off the ground.

But the age of the trees was an illusion. Because of the orc war party, all of the trees in the area were young, and they had been forced to grow tall through the use of rhyndarhim green magic.

For a day and a half, the trees that the column rode past were uninhabited. But late in the afternoon of the second day, the rudimentary platform rings that served as the rhyndarhim buildings began to dominate the trunks at approximately one hundred meters off the ground. The platforms were connected to other trees via rope and wood bridges in multiple directions, and up to five floors were stacked on the trunks, creating village-sized communities on each tree.

The thickness of the trunks expanded when the column ventured farther toward the center of the forest, but again, the size of the trees had nothing to do with their age. Even the least skilled of the rhyndarhim could cast spells to grow a tree from a sprout to a giant within a few hours, and they could raise a thick sapling in seconds.

By early evening, the number of platforms stacked on the trunks swelled to ten levels, and the bridges connecting the trees flowed with constant traffic. Most of the traffic were rhyndarhim elves, but there were also álfr, sidhe, daoine sidhe, and trows. Scattered among these races were elves of mixed lineage, but they were harder to pick out at a distance.

Only the addler were not represented in the province, but then the addler were a society of close-minded racists. Rarely did they venture far from the continent of Perfection, and the mono-ethnically obsessed race kept to their own kind, though they were more than content to use trows and the daoine sidhe as indentured servants.

Erick forced the angry thought away as his gaze rose up the side of the tallest, thickest tree in the forest.

In his native Daoine, Forest Heart was a lyrical name, almost poetic. But in the shorter, faster language of Rhyndarhim, it came out sounding flat, with a total lack of grandeur. Then again, Erick conceded that there was nothing grand to be found in living in a tree house, no matter how big it was.

A wide section of the lowest platform sank, revealing itself to be an unsteady elevator that descended to the base of the trunk.

Erick hated a lot of things about living in a tree, but he hated the elevators most of all. Every time he rode one of the large, shaking platforms, he felt certain that the ropes would snap. All the assurances of the magical properties of rhyndarhim rope could not shake him of the morbid fantasy.

While the column of guards clopped together onto the platform, Erick had a new thought about slipping off his horse and tumbling over the side of the wooden platform.

Swallowing, he thought, A strong wind could startle him once the platform is higher, and then—

Darryl’s sigh was loud and unmistakably annoyed. “Will you please stop that?”

“It isn’t intentional,” Erick said, cringing at the whining tone of his voice. “I never have cared for these stupid contraptions. I’ve spent seven years here, and I still can’t get used to them.”

“How can you be worried about this?” Luther asked. “You’ve obviously been on a dwarf ship before, so this should be easy.”

Erick smiled. “I was kept below deck during the trip. I was only forty at the time, so I didn’t have to fight sea monsters like my father.”

“What a pity,” Luther said. “You missed out on half the fun of the trip.”

The elevator drew level with the floor, and then the planks of the elevator floor shuddered as the wooden beam locks slid into place under the platform.

The royal guards got down from their horses, leading the animals to stalls which lined the trunk side wall.

Erick and Luther were left on their horses unattended. There was no exit from the royal residence that didn’t involve a very long fall, and while certain elf races were gifted with air magics which allowed them to fly or float to the ground, the daoine sidhe were not one of those races. Even if they were, Erick hadn’t bothered to take his magic studies seriously.

Erick hefted his leg over the side of his horse and dropped to the floor, wobbling unsteadily while his sore knees threatened to give out on him.

The platform thumped under his feet when Luther dropped off of his stallion, and for a split instant, Erick thought about the platform breaking before the vibrations stopped. Then his heartbeat slowed down again, and he stepped off the platform toward the open outer wall.

The hinged middle panels were raised to let the last traces of the dying sunlight in, and beyond the rectangular port, Erick could see hundreds of platforms arrayed out across the forest.

In his mind, he could hear his father’s voice. Above you is a sea of green, and below you, a world teeming with life. What more can you ask for?

Before he could answer the voice, Darryl returned to release Erick and Luther both from their bonds. He tapped the knots binding their forearms together, and the ropes went slack, the knots slipping open on their own. The ropes dropped to the floor, making a cluster of thumping noises upon impact.

For as grateful as Erick was at having his arms freed, his troubled gaze returned to the “city” outside. None of the bridges connected to the royal residence, but a desperate part of his mind still gave thought to finding an escape route.

But there was no escape. Darryl led Erick and Luther to a steep set of stairs which led up to the next platform, the guard’s quarters, and the armory. Another flight brought them past the floor of the servants’ quarters, where the air was mixed with the scents of both food and animal dung. The next floor was for storage, while the next served as the kitchen and dining hall. The next floor would be the reception hall, where their trip would end, but there were still many floors before Finrod’s private floor, which was far away from the foul smelling animals below.

A childish part of Erick’s mind wondered if Finrod even knew what dirt smelled like, but the disapproving glare from Darryl caused him to push the thought away.

Luther, who obviously wasn’t telepathic, took much longer to notice how tense Erick had become. “Are you worried about the king punishing you?”

“No, not exactly,” Erick said. He wanted to explain further, but embarrassment stole his voice.

The sixth platform was wider than the rings below, but the royal reception hall was still nothing compared to a proper castle. King Finrod sat against the trunk wall in a simple chair instead of a throne, his wide eyes trained on a scroll resting in his lap.

There were no wide sweeping doors to enter, nor rows of guards to pass through. Instead, it was just a wider tree house corridor with larger view ports.

It was Erick’s father, Larin, standing beside the king’s chair, that filled Erick with shame.

Larin had once been a decorated shadow hunter with the service of Emperor Platon, a position that gave him respect and honor among the sidhe. In spite of everything he had, Larin resigned from his post and moved to the Rhyndarhim provinces.

Over the next three and a half decades, Larin drifted from one province to the next, and with each move, he rose in power.

Yet the promotions meant little, because there was no currency in any of the provinces. People gave and received goods on a bartering system, and the family quarters for a royal servant were no different from the home of a hunter or a gardener. Everyone had the same things, and even the royalty of the rhyndarhim lived in little more than glorified huts.

Erick still recalled living in Milk Springs, in the expansive white marble rooms of the imperial palace. Every night he dreamed of returning back to the service of the sidhe emperor. But it was just a dream, and it would have to be for many years. Without the proper training to become a shadow hunter, there was no way that the emperor would hire Erick to serve in any capacity, except perhaps as kitchen help.

Finrod finished reading from the scroll. He rolled it and passed it to a guard, raising his head to smirk at Erick. His pale, elongated face was drawn into a look of irritation, and his normally pink lips were drawn so tightly that they were just as white as the rest of the king’s face.

Erick quickly dropped his gaze. His thoughts were always laid bare to the king, who could see past even his best diversionary thoughts.

The king’s thin irises were rings of cobalt around wide black pupils, and Finrod’s piercing gaze remained locked on Erick even when he risked another glance up. And then, no matter how much he wanted to act brave in front of Luther, Erick began to fidget.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Finrod nodded, raising his slender white hand to rest his angular jaw against the meat of his palm. “I knew you would be, but even with your father’s position as my security advisor, this is hard to forgive. Your slip of the tongue displaced and killed a lot of animals. Among the dead are several elder members of a pack of werekin who were, up until that time, content to remain in their own territory. Some of the children are untagged, and they’ve wandered into orc territory for revenge. We can’t allow the druids to turn any orcs. That would be a disaster bad enough to start a war between all of the orc tribes and the werekin packs.”

Erick’s face paled from jet black to a dark shade of grey as the king talked. His milk white eyes shifted to glance at Larin, who dropped his head quickly. The message was loud and clear: Erick was on his own.

Finrod coughed lightly to regain Erick’s attention. “We can discuss the length of your service later, but you will be expected to remain at Forest Heart until I release you. That means that under no circumstances will you be wandering off with the next trading caravan that passes through.”

Erick nodded, quietly agreeing, “Yes, your highness.”

Finrod added, “For now, you are confined to your quarters. Do you have any questions?”

Erick’s mind yelled to just pipe down and take his lumps, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “When will a tagging team be sent out?”

Finrod laughed tiredly and shook his head. “I’m not sending a boy out to face down werekin. You refuse to take your magic studies seriously, and while you might be a capable fighter, it takes more skill than you’ve got to handle even one werekin child.”

Erick was incensed by the comment, but Finrod ended the discussion then by dismissively waving Erick away, and Darryl escorted him to his room.

During the first few hours, Erick stewed over being called a boy. Certainly, he was young by the standards of most races, but it had been many years since he’d thought of himself as a child.

But once he was confined to his room, guilt began to set in. The glib comment he’d made to the orcs was a compliment, or rather, it would have been if he’d said it right. He’d felt so proud of himself for doing what he saw as a good thing, and now he was waiting for his sentence to be handed down.

Of course Finrod would not sentence Erick to anything as horrendous as trapping him inside a tree. Rhyndarhim kings weren’t usually known for torturing criminals either, and banishment was more often their method of operation.

To get trapped inside a tree one would have to...but no matter how long he thought, Erick couldn’t come up with an act of evil which he knew for certain would lead to such a cruel punishment. In all honesty, he thought of tree prisons as a myth, a bedtime story told to children to make them behave. It wasn’t like he’d ever seen a tree prison before, and he had traveled around a lot in his short life without seeing one.

Erick snorted and shook his head, thinking, I’m over thinking this. He said he’d determine the length of my service. So at worst, I’ll be doomed to kitchen duty for a few years...maybe a few hundred.

Then Erick began to think of the werekin pack animals who had died in the fire. At least, he tried to think of them as animals. But the werekin were really druids, or magically blessed humans who had given up their human nature to take on a bestial form. Even if they had gone feral, Erick reminded himself that his mistake had killed sentient creatures.

He closed his eyes, trying to imagine what it would be like to die in a forest fire. His thin black lips tightened, and he fought hard against the anguish hollowing his chest. It wasn’t his fault. It was just a simple misunderstanding. And yet, already so many people were dead over a single slip of the tongue.

He was drawn from the terrible thought when his door opened and Mari, his little sister, walked in without knocking. She was twenty-four, still in the early stages of childhood and too clumsy not to make slapping footfalls as she wandered barefoot across the room to join her brother on the bed.

She offered no comments or judgments, only closing her thin arms around him in a long embrace. She’d read his tortured expression when he looked up at her, and she offered him only the comfort of her company.

Then Erick couldn’t help but cry. His grief didn’t last long before he was able to get himself under control, and then Mari leaned away, sitting quietly beside him.

It was her way to listen instead of talking, which was perhaps why she was the more appreciated of Larin’s two children.

Sniffling and wiping at the corners of his eyes, Erick offered his sister a weak smile. “What have you been doing this week?”

“Lilaine has been practicing her scrying spell,” Mari said. “Mostly we’ve been watching the humans.”

“The humans are boring,” Erick said. “Peeking into their plane of existence might be interesting for a couple of years, but after a while, they’re all the same.”

Mari offered a half shrug, indifferent to her brother’s opinion of humans. She found them fascinating, and she loved watching them through the scrying pools.

Mari asked, “Where did you go?”

“Ash Lake. I thought I’d run far enough away, but I bumped into someone else who Finrod was also looking for, and we both got roped into coming back.”

Mari listened to Erick describing Luther before she nodded. “I’ve heard stories about him. The guards told Lilaine that he walked out of a conversation with Finrod, and then he climbed down from Forest Heart.”

Erick opened his mouth to say that it was impossible. No matter what the king’s niece had heard, it had to be impossible to climb down the gargantuan tree. But after thinking about Luther for a few seconds more, Erick decided that the half-orc probably could do it.

He heard little else of what Mari said while he imagined Luther climbing down the side of Forest Heart with his stallion draped over his shoulders. It was a ludicrous image, and yet Erick didn’t doubt it was possible for the hulking monk fighter.

***

Erick finished his dinner, a thin rabbit stew with little meat and far too many carrots for Erick’s preference. Putting the empty wooden bowl aside on a serving tray near the back of his writing hutch, he reminded himself that he was being punished, and he returned his thoughts to what he might say once he was brought before Finrod again.

Maybe asking for a harsh punishment would get him something more lenient? But no, Finrod would see through that.

Erick’s gaze drifted to his armor, hanging from the stand in the opposite corner of his quarters. In appearance, the black leather armor was similar to Larin’s shadow hunter armor. But the breastplate and gauntlets; the shoulder, hip, and thigh guards of his father’s suit were crafted magically from dragon scales. The armor that Erick wore was crafted by hand from the hide of a dire black bear.

Erick made the armor himself, and he’d hunted down the bear too. It was one of the few things in his barren quarters that he’d ever felt anything for. Then again, it was the only thing he owned.

The trunk at the foot of his bed was not really his, nor were the clothes stored within. The palomino he rode was royal property as well. Or more accurately, everything was the communal property of the locals. The possessions that Erick considered important had long ago been left behind in Milk Springs.

But it was not the possessions he’d left behind which bothered him. Erick had also left behind his sense of identity.

In Milk Springs, he had been well liked, both by his friends and by the royal tutors who worked with him. He wasn’t just the son of Larin. He was a protégé, a talented fighter, and a gifted student who was always eager to venture out for field trips.

Only, in the Rhyndarhim provinces, the tutors didn’t believe in field trips. They just handed over one dull parchment scroll after another. And then, Erick was no longer a gifted student. Then he was just “Larin’s troublesome boy.”

He didn’t impress the other kids with his fighting skills, either. Most of the rhyndarhim his age were more impressed by who could perform better green magic. And of course, being a black elf, Erick couldn’t perform any green magic spells. So he wasn’t liked, and most of his peers also considered him a troublemaker.

Again he heard his father’s voice. Above you is a sea of green, and below you, a world teeming with life. What more can you ask for?

Erick had an answer, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak it aloud. He thought, All I want is to be treated like I mean something. Here, I’m just...just another face in the crowd.

The door of his room opened. Turning away from the small hutch desk built into the trunk wall, Erick tried not to smile while he watched Luther navigate through the too small door.

The half-orc began by stepping through sideways, and then he leaned to his right and attempted a limbo act which almost succeeded. However, Luther cracked the top of his grey head on the doorframe as he rose up, and he uttered a dwarf curse while his gloved hand rose up to rub his bald pate.

“How did you manage to grow up in a dwarf home?” Erick asked.

“Father built a modified home on the outskirts of town.” Luther continued to rub his head while he glared at the too short doorframe. “He moved out of town to keep Mother from killing the neighbors.”

Erick tried hard not to laugh, but he couldn’t help it. “I’m trying to imagine what that’s like, but...how was her cooking?”

“Father made the meals,” Luther said. He glanced around before gesturing toward the bed. “May I?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

The half-orc eased himself onto the bed, and the restraining ropes on the right side of the mattress snapped away from the upper bedpost under the strain. He glanced over his shoulder at the headboard, shaking his head.

Luther said, “Larin tells me that you’ve been running away from Forest Heart for close to five years now. He says you joined some dwarf caravans to go on trade expeditions.”

“Yes, I’ve been on six expeditions so far,” Erick said.

“How far have you ventured out?” Luther asked.

“Only into troll territory. That was my last caravan...the bloodwine shipment.”

“It was a simple mistake to make, and under the circumstances, you didn’t do too badly if you negotiated a trade with—”

“Actually, almost everything I said was passed through Daggot, our translator. The only thing I said was what the troll taught me in Festering Pits.” Erick shook his head. “I probably should have kept my mouth shut. Then I could have celebrated being a big hero when we got home. Instead, I’m awaiting my sentence.”

“No, you don’t have a sentence so much as an assignment. You’re coming with me.”

Erick’s back drew into a straight line, and he tried not to smile. Despite what Finrod had said earlier, there was a chance for him to fulfill his service by leaving Forest Heart. Eager to escape, Erick asked, “Are we going out on a hunt?”

“No, not at first. The assignment I was originally called for was a hunt to tag some werekin children. I refused, because Finrod wanted to send me into the forest with a group of royal guards.”

“Why can’t he assign it to one of the hunting teams?”

“Finrod apparently can’t find any hunting teams who aren’t already working on problems of their own. So our assignment is to travel to the nearest dwarf hunting team, assist them with their assignment, and then hunt down the werekin children to tag them. However, by that point, there is also the possibility that some of the orcs might be carrying the druid curse.”

Unfazed by the idea, Erick asked, “How big can an orc werekin be?”

Luther shrugged. “I’ve never seen one, but I’d guess they might gain some height in the transformation. Standing on their back haunches, I’d guess that they might stand as high as three meters.”

Erick nodded. “And...when do we leave?”

Luther stared at Erick for several seconds before he shook his head. “I must have explained part of that wrong.”