The following morning, Greer woke me with the sunrise, a steaming pot of coffee, cream, sugar, lemon curd, and scones, piping hot and fresh.
“I hope you slept well, Sir. Busy day and I'm to get you properly dressed and on your way within the hour.”
“Yes, Greer. Thank you. I'll dress myself. Bring my high lunch wear, that should be suitable.”
“Yes, Sir. That should be quite fine. I'll fetch you when the Queen is ready.” And he left.
Today was an early tea and luncheon with the Queen and her trade advisor, Count Pelisir. I had never met with either one, much less in such an intimate setting, and frankly, I was terribly nervous. I was terrified that I would say something inane or, worse, flirtatious. Understand me, the woman is beautiful beyond words, but she is also something like 500 years my senior.
I said my last silent prayer as I followed Greer to the conservatory where I assumed we'd be having our meeting, but we passed that door by. Going further down the hall, we began to ascend a staircase off to the side. It looked like it would lead to servants’ quarters, so I was trying to figure out the ruse when we came to the top of the stairs. Greer knocked on the door there, opened it, and said “Mister Tendil Liste Bascombe, Esquire, late of Wikehold, Feersland for you, Your Majesty.
And she was certainly there. This was apparently her private quarters, and I blushed like a child.
“Oh, you Humans and your things!” She laughed, “Come in, please Mister Bascombe, and have a seat!”
I bowed deeply and walked over, trying not to make eye contact.
She and Count Pelisir were seated at a small wooden table with three chairs by a window, sunlight spilling through iron bars and across the table and floor. The room was very plain, spartan almost.
“Greer, perhaps another pot of coffee and some biscuits. We're going to be a while.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said as he turned to leave.
“Is Greer behaving himself with you, Mister Bascombe?” Not giving me time to respond, she said “You know they just installed those iron bars last week. Something about the Swalesians being in town.” She smiled at that. The Swalesians’ reputation preceded them.
Queen May looked amazing in light gray robes and silver silk slippers. Her hair was elaborately braided around her head, but not perfect. She didn't seem to care. I could feel those clear gray eyes sussing me casually, sizing me up. Her skin had that light gray pallor of her subspecies. She was thin, with a long neck and long fingers. She had a knack for looking completely relaxed while her back was as straight as an iron bar.
Count Pelisir rose as I crossed the room, taking my hand and shaking it firmly. Again, those long Elven fingers. These people seem so damned frail. But I'm not all new to their species. I know what damage these seemingly delicate creatures can do.
Pelisir was in a white linen tunic with black chausses, and black leather shoes. His wide black belt had a scabbard clipped to it holding a handsome rapier with a sapphire the size of a chestnut in its golden pommel.
Like the rest of them, it was impossible to judge his age. My guess would be that he was in his 500s, contemporaneous with May. His hair was very short, lightly greased into a part. He had a military bearing that seemed more formal than required in this environment. One could almost hear his heels click together as he said “Ah, Mister Bascombe! It is indeed an honor and a privilege!”
“For me as well, Count Pelisir. For me as well. I'm thrilled to have this opportunity to meet with the two of you.”
I must say he seemed sincere, still grasping my hand and looking into my eyes. I had a sudden flash that he was getting much more from me than a handshake.
He sensed my sudden unease and released my hand. “Please, Sir, have a seat.” He indicated the empty wooden chair at the table.
Bowing to the Queen and seating myself, she addressed me directly, “So, Mister Bascombe, you have some hurdles to clear if you want the market on the Élíks, I'm sure you're aware?”
Well, straight to the point. “Yes, Your Majesty, very aware. I do think, however, we can meet or exceed any other offer on the table, there …”
“You do understand, Mister Bascombe,” she interrupted, “this is about much more than gold?”
“I do Your Majesty, and …”
“Frankly, you can't compete with the Swalesians if it comes down to gold. I would think you'd understand that. Their kingdom is twice the size of yours with three times your coffers.”
“Yes, Your Majesty, but, if I may, we want your trade more than they do. I don't believe Prince Anoresti has been given authority to place a bid as high as the one we would place. And, frankly, I don't think you want to do business with the Swalesians. Or the Gnolls for that matter.”
“You're absolutely right, Mister Bascombe. So, you think you've won? Don't forget the Wood Elves. I don't want to do business with them either. I want to do business with you.”
An unexpected turn of events, to be certain. Had I honestly come in and won their trade with no effort?
“Your Majesty, I'm speechless.”
“Oh, it's not over, Mister Bascombe. Far from it. I said I want to trade with you, and that's true, but it's not a matter of what I want.”
“I'm sorry, Your Majesty?” I didn't understand what she was trying to say. Of course she's the ultimate authority. She's had their Parliament wrapped up for 100 years. She controls them like a master puppeteer.
“Mister Bascombe, it doesn't matter what I want; it's what's good for my people. And I don't mean Elves; I mean Gray Elves. Wood Elves be damned. As much as I love them,” she sighed.
“You've never been to Ilníst, have you?” she asked.
Ilníst, the capital of the Wood Elf Kingdom, about 50 miles southeast of Nez Ambríl. Allow me to fill in some blanks here for readers who aren't as familiar with the world beyond the Hard Coast.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
On a map, the Taliswood, or I should begin calling it Imskíli while I'm here, is an irregular circle roughly 200 miles across. It's massive. Surrounded by plains except for the southern extreme which is an enormous swampland.
The great forest is bisected west and east by a great iver, what the Elves call Embrist Celedil, or the Quiet River. Quiet it may be. A sleeping giant, 300 yards from bank to bank. Ideal for commerce but not used for that purpose until much further south. It would be ideal for logging here in the forest, but the Elves won't allow it.
The worst troubles to start between Elves and Humans were over those damned trees in the south of the Taliswood. Men from the East who wanted to send timber through the fens and to market in Swalesia. They were the Hask, a barbaric people who lived a semi-nomadic existence on the plains between the Taliswood and the Waste. They tried to come in force on the Wood Elves, wanting to take the Taliswood. They had no idea.
The Elves let them come all the way into the deep woods, some 15,000 strong or thereabouts. The trees all around the Humans came alive with Wood Elf snipers, arrows raining down by the hundreds and thousands. The Wood Elf “cavalry,” gorgeous giant red deer and riders with lances, rode down every Human trying to get away from the slaughter. There were no survivors. That was perhaps 700 years ago. That lesson is still known to all Humans.
I was terribly curious as to what the issue was with the Wood Elves for Queen May to not just deal with them and not bother going through with this bidding charade. Certainly they were the obvious choice.
“No, Your Majesty, I've never been to Ilníst, but it's on the itinerary.”
“Well, enjoy Nez Ambríl while you're here, Mister Bascombe. This is the last truly Elvish city you'll see on your journey.”
“What do you mean, Your Majesty? She just seemed sad when talking about the Wood Elves, yet they had such a reputation for being welcoming and pleasant.
“They have let that city turn into … well, it might as well be one of those Human monstrosities on the Hard Coast; their streets are full of strangers, there's crime, foreigners. It's mostly Wood Elves, yes, but they're losing their identity by letting the world in.”
She locked eyes with me, and I could see her passion. Count Pelisir finally spoke then.
“We simply value what we have, Mister Bascombe. We've been in this very spot for 9,000 years — 9,000, Sir. The oldest Human civilization first sprang up some 3,000 years ago, and it's already gone. Rubble to be dug up by other Humans unaware that a civilization was ever there to turn to rubble and be buried. Forgotten to time. That won't be us, Mister Bascombe.”
“No, I should think not, My Lord. What you've created and maintained here is beyond my limited imagination. But there's still the kinship and proximity.”
This was what was curious. The Wood Elves already had a hand in the amber trade. These woods, after all, were filthy with the stuff. But they controlled the South of the Taliswood. The amber they dug up was a little more rare and of poorer quality. They wanted to control the whole market to improve their offerings.
The Wood Elves also already had a booming amber market established with prices being set daily and speculation on supply and demand pushing those prices up and down throughout the day. That's not something I could see being established here in Nez Ambríl. Too loud and chaotic. It also attracted traders and merchants from all corners of the continent. Doubtless it came with ample profit for the Wood Elves, but they lost a bit of their soul at the same time.
“Yes, so you see the dilemma we're facing, Mister Bascombe.”
I hadn't said a word out loud. “Are you reading my thoughts, My Lord?” I was extremely irritated to only just now be realizing it.
“Please Mister Bascombe,” the Queen interjected, “it was at my command. Count Pelisir means nothing by it.”
“Your Majesty,” I replied, “I understand my place at this table, and that you are royalty, and he is who he is, but this is unacceptable ma'am, Your Majesty, I'm sorry. If you know all my strategies and hesitations and judgments, you have a horribly unfair advantage!”
“There's certainly no need to raise your voice, Sir! I've offered them once and I shall offer them again, my apologies. There is too much at stake here though, Mister Bascombe, to not use what means we have at our disposal to determine our best path forward. What say you, Pelisir?”
The Count still looked as at ease as one can look which I found rather disturbing. The mood was suddenly tense and he was as calm as a spring morning.
“Your Majesty, I wouldn't call his intentions pure, per se, not by any means. He seeks personal glory and the approval of his father. Other than that, I see nothing malicious about him. It would take a face-to-face meeting with Lord Maignard and the board of the Hard Coast Company to determine more. He really is just a negotiator. It's not clear why he was trusted with this task.”
“Well, My Lord,” I was turning red in the face, “I'm sure, if you're through invading my privacy and insulting me, there is a reason why I was chosen. As you know, my father is on that board. I have been trained from my youth for what I do now. Part of my training was learning how to read people. I know, for example, that you are hiding something very important in this equation. Now, can we start over and negotiate this matter with all of our cards on the table?”
The Queen was smiling despite keeping a stern disposition, “Calm down, Mister Bascombe. You've passed the first test admirably. You just need to keep your temper tamped down. It serves no purpose here.”
I tried to relax, but it felt like my whole body was flushed and rigid, my heart beating quickly, beads of sweat on my brow.
“Apologies, Your Majesty, My Lord, perhaps I take offense too easily or don't understand the cultural differences here.”
Count Pelisir spoke, “No, you're quite right to be upset, Sir. It's never appropriate to be invasive like I've been. We're just in a position here where there is a great moral dilemma being faced, and we have to be certain we make the right move. I'll allow my Queen to do a better job of bringing you up to pace.”
“What do you mean, My Lord, has something happened?” I was clearly not aware of some part of this picture.
Queen May let out a sigh and sat back in her chair. “Mister Bascombe, I'm quite certain the Board of the Hard Coast Company knows much they haven't told you. And it's for good reason that you don't know. This lack of knowledge has allowed you to come to us like this, we reading your thoughts and seeing no ulterior motive. Had you the whole story, you would have known how great the stakes are, and it may have impaired your negotiations. All you know now is that the Hard Coast Company, with or without the King of Feersland’s approval, is willing to bid whatever is necessary. Do you know why the stakes are so high, Mister Bascombe?”
“Apparently I don't, Your Majesty. I thought it was simply that you have the most beautiful, most pure amber in all the lands. That's certainly the opinion of many.” I didn't like this position at all. The studying I had done on the market, the strategies I had. I didn't know where I stood now.
“You're right on some counts, Mister Bascombe. You certainly have a grasp of the amber market. But you're very wrong about the purity of our product.”
Well, this was unexpected. What in the world did she mean? Had they been disguising impurities in order to boost the demand for their amber? “Please explain, Your Majesty.”
“Much of our amber is of exceptional purity, clarity, void of inclusions. But we do have a fairly large percentage of amber with substantial inclusions. What this is all about is the market for those inclusions. Do you know what an inclusion is, Sir?”
“Of course, Your Majesty. I'm not a dunce.”
“Your temper again, Mister Bascombe,” she said calmly.
Deep breath, “Yes, Your Majesty. Inclusions. It's bits of debris found in some pieces of amber. Pieces of bark, or dirt, or insects. It's the difference in a piece of amber being valuable or being better suited to make varnish. Correct?”
“Yes, Mister Bascombe, you're quite the expert on the matter. The thing is, all of the drama here isn't about bits of dirt. It is, however, about the insects.”
So now we were talking about bugs rather than about a beautiful piece of ornamentation. I patiently waited to see where this was going.
“I'm certain, Mister Bascombe, that you know very little about magic?”
Well, that was out of the blue! “Not much to be certain, Your Majesty. I've tried to learn a cantrip or two, but I simply don't have the gift.”
“Well, it's enough that you know the fundamentals, that magic is possible because of the ability to extract Mana from the Weave. That it can be used for good or evil. That it can be extremely powerful and extremely dangerous.”
She leaned forward with her firearms on the table. “When this world was younger, Sir, Mana rippled through the sky like clouds. It permeated everything. It's certainly not that rare even these days, but it was much more plentiful and powerful once upon a time. We don't know why or how it's been depleted to such a degree. It's not just less though. The Mana around us today is of a weaker quality, much weaker. Perhaps for the best, yes? I mean, who wants more powerful Wizards running about?”
She laughed lightly, sadly, and continued, “Those inclusions in that amber, Mister Bascombe, they are from a time when Mana was exponentially more powerful than it is today. Those insects are infused with it. The Swalesians, and maybe others, have apparently perfected a method for extracting and distilling this Mana into a liquid form that can be used to create spells of unimaginable power. So you see where this is going, Mister Bascombe?”
There came a knock on the door at that moment and Greer stepped in, “Your Majesty, the Gnoll Queen arrives momentarily. You said you wanted to be there to greet her.”
“Dammit!” It's rare to hear a royal curse, and coming from someone so lovely, looking so fragile, I had to chuckle.
“It's not funny, Mister Bascombe. You really do need to be brought up to speed. Greer, bring Mister Bascombe back around for afternoon tea, please. And Mister Bascombe, Count Pelisir, if you'll excuse me, I need to tidy up for the Witch Queen.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/rTUTaVP.png]