The elves brought us deep into the Irkwood. So deep, in fact, that I suspected we drew very close to the border of one world and the precipice of another.

I knew the signs. The trees grew taller, and less quiet. More Wil-O’ Wisps and wraiths began to gather, their ethereal voices intermixing to form a ghostly ambiance. The shadows sunk into depthless pools of liquid shadow, and light clung to the woods from no apparent source, as though it grew as moss or mushrooms might, or gathered in lambent springs.

It might have been beautiful, but there was a dreadful alien quality to the hidden realm. My eyes were tormented by confusing shapes, overwhelmed by half-heard sounds or phantom scents.

I focused on the elves who’d taken us captive instead. They were unearthly in their own way, but in a manner I was at least somewhat familiar with. “My companion needs that arrow taken out,” I said. “It’s hurting her.”

Catrin was being guided along by two elven warriors, both clad in light armor of a pale metal inscribed with intricate patterns like overlaid leaves. What was visible of the bodies beneath were tightly bound in strips of cloth, as though they were mimicking the mummies of ancient human kings. Each held one of the dhampir’s arms in an ungentle grip. She shivered violently, her flesh pallid and coated with a thin sheen of sweat. Her form seemed nearly liquid, shifting from the mildly pretty young woman she usually resembled to the ghastly creature I’d glimpsed the night before, then back again. The bane-metal arrow remained embedded in her left shoulder.

The one leading the band was a tall elf clad in armor fashioned of a pale blue starmetal, beautifully made, with a horned helm revealing nothing of the face beneath. A faerie knight wrapped in moonlight. They had been the one to shoot the dhampir, and the towering warbow in the elf’s hand quietly hummed with sorcery.

The elf knight turned an eye that shone like distant starlight from the depths of their helm’s eye slits on the changeling. Though I couldn't see it beneath the helm, I could almost imagine immortal lips curling into a sneer.

“The half breed will live. The azsilver tortures the dark spirit in her, but it is bound in her tightly as any living mortal’s essence. Her fate is for the oradyn to decide.”

That word took me aback. Oradyn was an elven word for one of their military commanders. It meant something close to captain, but had a deeper meaning than mere rank. A champion. A hero of their people.

My trepidation grew teeth.

They hadn’t taken my axe. None of the elves seemed willing to touch it, but neither had they allowed me to put it away beneath my cloak.

“You are the bearer of Faen Orgis, mortal, and our lord will see as much when we bring you before him.”

“If he isn’t too distracted by the smell of you,” another had added. They’d all laughed, and that preternatural sound had been pain on my mortal ears.

I ignored their jibes, instead considering the weapon I held. Faen Orgis. The Doomsman’s Arm. It was the first time I’d heard the Axe of Hithlen’s true name since it had been given to me along with my penance.

We were brought deeper into the heart of the Irkwood until we reached a great manorhall. It was built atop a low cliff where a waterfall fed a forest stream, rising among the trees like a fragment of the moon. Light seeped from the very stone of the hall, obscuring the spaces within as much as any amount of gloom might have. It was nearly too bright to look at, but my eyes began to adjust as we drew closer — or some trick of distance made the light fade into something more subtle — until I could make out more details of the building.

It reminded me of the Gilded City. I could see similarities in the painstaking detail of the craftsmenship, in the way each pillar or overhang blended seamlessly with the whole. Every coiling arm of ivy, each fragment of glowing moss that clung to the lower walls, even the branches of trees tall as castle towers seemed a deliberate part of the structure, as though the forest had grown itself in accordance with the maker’s vision rather than the other way around. Platforms mingled with curling boughs to form a complex series of walkways encircling a central structure capped by a crystalline dome.

We were guided up a switchback formed of smooth jutting stone along the cliff until we reached the entrance to the manor, which was doorless. Living wood entwined around supporting pillars on either side of an arch more than ten feet in height. Wisps chased us like carefree children as we were pressed inside the manor, whispering nonsense syllables in voices like little bells.

And there were wraiths too. Many of them. Though the great hall that formed the central core of the structure’s interior was nearly empty, shadows filled every wall and corner as though reflecting a great congregation. They murmured, sullen, their voices just barely on the edge of hearing and beyond the edge of understanding. A sullen chorus.

If I go on so long, understand I say less than a fraction of what there was to say about that house of immortals. It’s always the way with such. And this was a single small house in an isolated domain, a shadow fragment of the great haven men call Elfhome, which itself is a faded replicate of even older, more fabled places.

I have said much less than I could.

“Big man?”

I glanced aside and saw that Catrin had managed to open her eyes somewhat. Her guards held her up, and I suspected without them she wouldn’t be able to stand on her own.

I glanced at the elven guards, seeing if they’d stop us from talking. They didn’t meet my eyes, but didn’t make any motion to stop the changeling from speaking either.

“I’ll get us out of this,” I said to her, ignoring the wyldefae warriors. “You should save your strength.”

“Course you will.” Catrin’s smile was strained, but there was an edge of iron in her as she fixed me in her gaze. She winced, and a mercurial ripple paced over her features. For a moment she was a vampire, pallid and fanged, eyes red as freshly spilled blood. Then the fit passed and she was a freckled village lass again.

I tried not to show my discomfort with the change, but some of the same disgust in the faces of the guards must have been on mine as well. Catrin’s smile turned brittle. “Not very pretty, is it? Listen, Alken.” The sound of my name caught me off guard, made me pay closer attention to her words. “I know we barely know one another, and your kind and mine don’t tend to get along… I heard what they called you. You’re some holy knight, right? Slayer of monsters and all that. I get it, I really do, but listen…”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

We reached the entrance to the manor. There wasn’t much time left for talk, and Catrin’s words came out in a rush of haste, tinged with pain.

“Reason I helped you back in the village wasn’t because I needed an ally. Not just that, anyway. Hadn’t even sorted out what was going on before I opened my big mouth, and that’s always been the way… and I’m babbling. I just need you to remember this wasn’t all some plot. I wasn’t trying to use you, not at first. Shouldn’t have tried what I did last night.”

She fell quiet a moment, taking several labored breaths before continuing. “I don’t think these Fair Folk will let me go, not knowing what I am, and I need to tell you something because I’ve got a suspicion you’re not as royally fucked as I am.”

“We’re both going to—”

“Damn it!” Catrin hissed, cutting me off. She struggled a moment, and her guards tightened their grip with dispassionate strength, causing her to bow lower. She looked at me through a gap in her disheveled hair, revealing sharp teeth. “That thing in the castle… all the other guests think it’s a demon. I don’t know what it is, not for sure, but the Baron’s got it bound to him. I couldn’t figure out how, but it’s the reason they’re all here, the reason they’re all taking him seriously. You want to take him down, you find a way to get rid of his pet.” She shuddered, and the motion caused her to go vampire again. “It’s evil, Alken. Truly evil.”

Those words coming from her transformed face made them seem truly dire, somehow.

There was no time for me to respond. We were brought into the belly of the manor, a great hall as fine as any mortal lord’s I’d ever seen. There were many elves there, and things that weren’t elves. I saw creatures that looked like giant spiders scuttling about along the walls or pillars. I saw goblins, ugly as the elves were beautiful, staring on with shining green eyes. Wisps and wraiths were everywhere, and there might have been a mortal or two. Captives or guests, I couldn’t say.

There were stranger things, some I had no name for.

At the end of a hall was a throne woven of living roots, and sitting upon it was an elven lord. Male, with a lean and muscular frame and skin a very faint color of pale silver-green. He nearly seemed to glow in the relative gloom of the hall’s interior, very much as the Lady Eanor had, though to a lesser degree. A pale and distant star to her luminescent moon, as all elves are to the Onsolain. His hair was such a deep blue it was nearly black, grown into a wild mane that hid his pointed ears. He wore a gray toga fastened at one shoulder, a sleeveless tunic of midnight blue beneath.

He’d been handsome once, even by Sidhe standards. That fair countenance had been marred by brutal scars. Deep gouges had been carved on the right side of his face from temple to neck, narrowing the eye into a permanent squint, turning his mouth down into a macabre scowl. The wounds were angry, badly healed, still faintly red as though suffering infection. The marred eye seemed wet and bloodshot, the flesh around it swollen.

The scars on my own face, not so severe but unnervingly similar, itched.

The scarred elf leaned forward on his root throne. “So it is true. A paladin of the Golden Aldertree is among us, come out of the shadows once more to tread these tired lands.”

“My lord,” I began, deciding it was worth indulging the wood elf a touch if it got me and Catrin out of this. “I’m here to—”

“I know why you are here,” the elf lord interrupted. His voice had a mild rasp to it, as though his throat were damaged, but its tenor filled the space with supernatural volume. His left eye was slitted lazily, like a cat’s, but his scarred eye fixed on me with lidless intensity.

That’s a cheap trick, I thought. Makes it easier for him to talk over you.

I hardened my own voice. “Then you know I am also carrying out the order of the Choir Concilium. Lady Eanor—”

“Does not speak for us,” the elf drawled. “The Onsolain are our elders and teachers, not our gods. It is only you humans who insist on treating them as such.” He paused and regarded me a moment. His eyes were very dark, little of the fey light shining through them. It was around him instead, a tangible aura which made the Sidhe lord seem much larger than his mere physical body.

Elven spirits grew larger as they aged, until their shells of flesh and bone could no longer contain their own aura. I guessed this elf was very old. Not the oldest I’d met, but no youth either.

He’d be powerful, and maybe a touch mad. Most of the older Sidhe were.

“I am Oradyn Irn Bale,” the elf said. “Lord of this haven, one of few left from your order’s failure. It is my judgment which will pass here, not that of the Lady Eanor.”

I wanted to show him my empty hands, but I was still holding the damned axe. I settled for keeping it at my side, my grip loose, as nonthreatening as I could be. “I am bound to the service of the Choir, not just to Eanor alone.”

Irn Bale snorted, his marred lips twisting with contempt. “I know who you are, Alken Hewer, Headsman of Seydis, and why you are here. Do you even know the lineage you pretend to? The thought of a mortal man holding that title twists my gut, and you dare to enter these woods uninvited, trample grass which has grown undisturbed since before your brutish kin first benighted these lands, claiming such ancient names?”

I swallowed my frustration and took a step forward. Guards moved to stop me, but their lord made a cutting gesture with one hand and they remained at bay.

“I am honorbound to this duty,” I said. “It wasn’t one I chose, wasn’t one I sought — it’s a penance. I’m trying to atone for my failures. Lord Irn Bale, the man known as Orson Falconer is—”

“Your treacherous order lost any claim it had to honor ten years ago, when they let Tiir Ilyasven burn.” Irn Bale’s voice was cold as glaciers. He used the Sidhe word for the city humans called Elfhome — The Haven of the Falls. “There are even rumors that some among the Table assisted in the murder of the archon. It is difficult to pick apart the truths from the babblings of those scorched wraiths who managed to escape the city’s destruction…”

“I would be willing to give you my own account,” I said, cautious of my tone but wanting to say the words through gritted teeth. “But I am here for a purpose, and every moment I am away puts more people at risk, and raises the chances our enemy might learn my purpose and take precautions.”

Irn Bale shrugged. “That is no moment to me. You mortals spread like flies, and you’re always in a rush. Another can take up this burden.”

“And if Orson Falconer strikes at you?” I challenged him. “His allies already murdered the Troll of Caelfall.”

Irn Bale’s marred face hardened. His scars exaggerated the small show of anger, making it seem a devil’s snarl.

Another figure at the elf lord’s side stirred before he could say more. In a moment of shock, I realized I’d missed their presence entirely — they’d been sitting within the tangle of roots that made up one section of the throne, so still and unassuming they’d blended with it.

They — he or she I couldn’t tell — was a tall, rake thin elf dressed as a minstrel might, in brightly dyed garments of forest green and sunburst yellow, a lumpy hat shadowing lean features. Their long hair was blue-black, like the Oradyn’s. They leaned toward the elf lord and murmured something, then caught my gaze. They had mismatched eyes. One was shadow blue, the other molten gold.

Irn Bale calmed, though with obvious reluctance. “I am aware of this misdeed. The old sentinel was my friend… The baron will answer for his death. His crimes, however, are not why you stand before me now.”

He pointed a finger at the weapon in my hand. “That arm does not belong to you. You will surrender it.”

I closed my eyes, swallowing the sigh that wanted to escape my lips. This was what all this theater had been leading to — the old captain wanted the weapon of power I carried. Everything else was minor in his eyes, a fleeting problem for a passing season.

I watched him in silence a moment before lifting the axe. The weapon softly hummed with magic as potent as any that clung to the elder wood and ensorceled stone all around me. It had been forged long ago, far in the west, wrought of strange alloys for a grim purpose.

I held the axe out, letting it rest on my upraised palms. The elf’s eyes narrowed, the fey light in them subtly changing hue with the motion. Sea blue to venom green.

“I never wanted this,” I told him, meaning it. “It’s been nothing but a burden.”

Irn Bale nodded sharply. “Then I shall free you from it.”