The little hours that remained of the day passed uneventfully. I only occasionally gave out new orders to the many inhabitants of the cave, and soon it came time to tell stories. We called the hour early because many of us, including me, intended to get some sleep while everyone else worked, watched, and hunted. I’d be getting an early start tomorrow.

While the people got ready below, filling the cave’s largest chamber and making us a circle to speak in, Hassina, Seriana, and I had a private meeting on the upper level, choosing our tales amidst one of Palefang’s piles of bones.

“What are you both looking at me, for?” I asked from where I sat on the vertebra of some massive beast. “I’m just going to tell everyone how my morning went.”

In reality, I’d spent the last half-hour or so going over how I was going to tell the story of myself and Palefang. There was no theme to my story: I just wanted to entertain. When it came to telling stories, I put the salience granted by novelty and spectacle above all things. Theme is wasted if one’s words don’t arrest the ears and enrapture the mind.

I looked at Hassina, who was sitting on a massive frog skull. She was the grand storyteller, often just called the gran. Her story came in the middle. She couldn’t veto our choices, but she was the only one of us who could change her mind once Seriana and I had chosen.

“I’m telling the tale of when Narana came to Ithmel Bel,” said Hassina.

Seriana’s eyes widened. She looked to me, but I was only looking past them both with a relaxed smile on my face, hiding my own surprise. It was an interesting choice, to say the least. I hadn’t thought Hassina had it in her. Our stories could be many things: politics, religion, entertainment, history... the hour of tales served many purposes.

“I may need to tell it at another time, is the thing,” Hassina explained. She was looking at me. “And when I do, I’ll have it be remembered that this is the tale I chose on our first night here.” She smiled, then looked at Seriana. “Archmage?”

“I… ah,” Seriana blanched. It was more expression than I’d wrung from here with all my earlier prying—but Hassina could be like that, sometimes. “I’m not sure how to follow you, your holiness. Let me consider.”

“Unfortunately, we’re pressed,” said Hassina, clearly enjoying herself. “You’ve only got a couple of minutes.”

Seriana blinked, then nodded. She lowered her head in thought. “Daros and the deep ones,” she said. “Varrin’s silver ship.” Then she looked up, suddenly, and it was clear she’s made her decision. “Thiluar’s discovery.”

Hassina smiled. “Good,” she said. “In that case I make no change.” She rose. “Let’s go.”

Stepping into the circle felt very much like I had earlier in the day, when they’d all arrived—elves surrounding me, waiting expectantly. This time, though, what I had to say was mostly inconsequential.

I told the story from my arrival to killing Palefang, leaving out only the chambers filled with sleeping insects that I’d found beneath the earth. The fight I left mostly the same, with the blizzard and the broken bow, the blood seeping up through the snow at our feet, my spear in his shoulder, my knife in his belly….

We didn’t have much in the way of powers to enhance our tales, though with my [Air Magick] and my [Surge of Might] I could move very suddenly, rushing from one side of the circle to another as I hissed and laughed and reenacted. I used my lightning, just a little bit, to make the sound of Palefang’s teeth shattering, happy to draw startled gasps out of my audience.

And then I was done. Space was made for me in the inner circle, and I sat to listen to Hassina, wishing that I could somehow get away with watching not her, but the faces of her audience. A few minutes of chatter passed, and Hassina entered the circle.

Fitting for the grand storyteller, Hassina was a masterful performer. She was also—unlike me—fully expected to involve herself in the politics of the matter. Tonight, she’d made it clear that on that front, she’d be diving in headfirst.

She didn’t introduce her tale. Instead she simply clapped her hands together and announced to the room: “Once, during our darkest age, when elf killed elf with no thought to the worth of the blood they were spilling, Narana came to the gates of Ithmel Bel.”

She paused. Whispers filled the room around us, small notes of discord to complete her overture.

“She came with Lirien, her protector, and many other elves besides,” said Hassina. “They came in the wake of the breaking of Lir Iriniel, and the scouring of the plains of Volir.”

Raising her voice a little more, she continued, slow and delicate. “Narana knew that a host was soon to issue forth from Ithmel Bel, a host of elves whose eyes were dark with fury. Vengeance they intended upon those who had wrought ruin—and who had called their own works at Lir Iriniel, called their breaking and their scouring, vengeance also. Narana foresaw what their vengeance meant, and so hoped to turn the heart of Hashephel, Lord of Ithmel Bel, from its course.”

Hassina’s voice darkened—not by much, but the small change somehow brought heavy emphasis. “Her hope died when she saw the gates open. For the elf who rode forth was not Hashephel.”

The soft, glowing orbs that lit the cave dimmed. Hassina’s voice became a whispered hiss that still carried to every corner.

“It was Aziriel.”

Again, I wished I could watch Hassina’s audience, not her. I could hear the murmur, mostly from the children—I heard a quick, quiet: but does she mean—and then their parent’s hushed answer: yes, now listen.

I felt as if their words might have been for me, in some twisted way—I thought: was it me she was talking about? It had been so long….

And then: all right, Hassina. I’ll listen.

Hassina continued, her feet taking her slowly, silently around the circle. “Narana pleaded: ‘Mightiest among us, I beg you: shed not the blood of elves. If you go forth to wage this war, the faultless will die with the wicked and no justice will be had.’”

Her voice for Narana was not loud, commanding, or vigorous, and yet it contained a steady, quiet strength—the strength of one who was accustomed to public speech, and being listened to. The real Narana had sounded more tired.

“Aziriel heard all this,” Hassina continued, pausing her well-calculated movements so that she stood centered before where the children sat with their parents. “And she then answered: ‘No.’”

The lights around us grew dimmer once more. “‘Please,’” Hassina said in Narana’s voice. “‘Aziriel. Your hands have the strength to stem this tide of bloodshed. Elf kills elf and their killing is answered with killing again; for almost a century this has been the way of our people. Another century and the last elf living will wade alone through the blood of their brothers and sisters. But you remember that it was not always so: you remember peace. I ask you: at what cost will peace come at last?”

I wasn’t watching. I had closed my eyes, ready to hear Hassina give my answer. She didn’t have my voice, but she had my inflections—and my volume. Listening to her, I could almost feel my old anger.

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I mouthed the words along with Hassina’s sneering voice, unable to see who among the audience were watching me:

“‘Cost? I speak not of costs. It is you who offers to trade in blood and virtue, so make your offer now, O bringer of peace. What price shall you pay, that I forget the sound of the bells that ring no longer across the broken stones of Lir Iriniel? Perhaps cattle and steel, furs and tomes you’ve brought—enough that I unsee its fields, smoking and unsown, and the butchered children who lie dead there! Such bargains you must offer on essence and keys, that they might kill all memory of my son Alesith and close my heart to vengeance!’”

I had never minded being the villain. To the elves, I was military might, force of arms: too much Aziriel and something had gone wrong. Peace through victory—that was my purpose.

But as I listened to Hassina, one of my hands balled into a fist, shaking a little with wounded rage. We told stories like these for good cause: I wasn’t faultless, and the magnitude of my mistakes could be unthinkable. But Hassina had never had children, hadn’t lost an entire family to the inexorable march of history: a century of war here, another there, and suddenly wretched time had taken everything.

Always there would be a quiet voice in me, asking: how dare any of them stand in the shelter of one whose power stemmed from passions and listen to a story about how passions had led her astray? They couldn’t know what I’d been through, and what I’d feared to go through again.

I could have laughed. Except they did, now: Aranar was gone. Everyone’s loss was incalculable, child or no.

And when I thought of Alesith, I wanted those thoughts to be far from this story, this dark hour: my failure was not his life’s ultimate meaning.

“Narana was quiet for a time,” said Hassina, still pacing around the edge of the inner circle. “At last she said: ‘For your grief I offer nothing; nothing would suffice.’”

And Hassina rounded quickly in place, startling some of those nearest to her. “‘No?’ hissed Aziriel. ‘Then choose your champion and be satisfied: our debate will be settled with but one elven death.’” She paused, then said, quietly: “Lirien stepped forward. Grave was his countenance. But Narana held him back. Instead she and her followers filled the passage to Ithmel Bel, barring it.”

Despite everything, I had to smile a little as Hassina paused to explain the relevant geography for the benefit of the children who had never heard this story before. “Now the passage of Ithmel Bel was small,” she said. “For the city was an underground city, made by the deep elves, and all roads that led to it were tunnels. Aziriel could have passed through Narana’s gathered followers as easily as a boulder rolls down a mountainside, but her army would have to trample them.”

Hassina stopped in front of me, facing away. “Narana said to Aziriel: ‘We will not fight. But neither will we stand aside.’”

Slowly, the high priest’s hands balled into fists at her sides. Again she spoke with my voice, now so twisted with vindictive passion that it hardly sounded elven at all.

“‘Stand aside or die, Narana.’”

“But Narana stood fast. ‘You asked what I could offer that you stay your hand,’ she said. ‘Here is what I have to trade. Destroy me and all those who stand with me. Count us, but discount our lives from those of your enemies: spare a single elf for each of us you kill. I promise no vengeance will be sought for our deaths—revenge is an echo that grows ever louder, and its silence is what I seek. If elven lives must be paid to stop ceaseless elven bloodshed, then so be it.’”

Hassina paused as outside, a distant rumble of thunder sounded. When it had finished, she spoke again with Narana’s voice—stronger, now. More firm. “‘But take heed,’ said Narana. ‘If peace cannot come, and elf kills elf forevermore, then that which I foresaw will come to pass, Aziriel. The last elf will wade alone through the blood of her brothers and sisters—and that last elf will be you.’”

My mouth curled into a smile. And Seriana had said that I knew how to strike a blow. Strange, though, the iron voice that Hassina had spoken them with: everyone remembered her words, but nobody seemed to remember that when she’d spoken them, Narana had been shaking in terror.

“‘Am I mistaken?’ asked Aziriel. ‘Or do you you offer blood for blood, as if one elven life can pay for another?’”

“‘Elven lives have paid for elven lives enough,’ said Narana. ‘I did not open this market, but we may yet see its close.’”

My breath rattled out of my lungs. Once, I’d thought I’d gotten away with my crimes. But then I’d lived to hear them told of again and again across centuries—and while it might not have been justice, it was at least punishment.

“A darkness then came upon Aziriel. Lirien saw it, and pleaded with his lady to retreat, but she refused. At last Aziriel spoke: ‘You seek silence? Well I can oblige you—but yours will be the last life given in trade.’”

Hassina made a hissing, cracking noise like lightning, moving suddenly and causing many of the gathered elves to shrink back. “And with a flash and crack of blood-red lightning, she killed Kiriae, the youngest of the elves who had followed Narana.”

From where I sat, I saw things that no-one else in our cave could see: elves shrinking back from a pillar of drifting ash, just as they shrank back from Hassina’s sudden noise. But they hadn’t run.

“Aziriel waited. And when it became clear that Narana’s followers were unmoved, she spoke again. “‘You say the faultless will die with the wicked—but in that case the wicked still die.’” And she struck out again and killed Darallia, Narana’s childhood friend.”

I was holding my breath. I heard screams and cries, sounds that should have faded centuries ago. I looked into Narana’s eyes—so much white in them, she was so terrified—and I hated her more than I had ever hated anyone.

“Aziriel waited. And when still none of Narana’s followers had fled, she spoke again—and it was as if all the elf had left her, as if a pure, agonizing fury had filled an emptiness to completion. ‘A peace there will be between our three peoples—once their number has been culled by two-thirds!’ And she struck out again and killed Athalos, one of the few elves who still remembered our old home of Maia.”

Hassina was quiet. Gradually, as she’d spoken, the lights in the cave had dimmed to the point where we were now in almost total darkness.

"Aziriel waited. And when none of Narana’s followers had fled, she said in a voice that was all accusation: 'You die in vain. Leave this place.’”

But the elves remained.

“‘Leave!’” cried Aziriel.

And I raised my hand as if to strike another down—watched them cower away and then rise, shivering, to look around in disbelief at the fact that I had thrown no lightning. The passage of Ithmel Bel was silent.

“It was not Narana who answered her. Rather, it was an unknown elf who stepped forward and simply said: ‘We have nothing. That is why we remain. All that we once had was lost.’”

Who was it? Dark skin, straw-colored hair, short. Either a stocky woman or a slender man: their husky, pained voice gave no hint as to their gender. I never had learned who’d said that.

But they’d said it.

“To be an elf is to bear memory,” Hassina announced. “And memory bore down on Aziriel now. She saw what elves had lost, and she saw her part in it, and fury gripped her anew—gripped her stronger than it ever had. It was the worst of furies, a cowardly fury, the kind that rises from guilt and begs to be loosed on the world so that the self can be spared. She wheeled, made as if to lunge, halted. Her mouth twisted as words unspoken fought within her, but she said nothing.”

Hassina paused and made almost a full circle before she spoke again. “She did not know what to do,” she said simply. “All watched her in silence. At length she turned and fled back through the gates of Ithmel Bel. She stayed there. She took no vengeance for the slaying of her son at Lir Iriniel. At her order, the armies of Ithmel Bel were held back.”

Hassina stopped in front of the children, then smiled and spoke to them directly, her voice filled with a simple gladness. “And many of you, my blessed ones, are here because of what Narana did that day—and what Aziriel did in answer.” Without changing her happy tone, she added: “Some of you are descended from the butchers of Lir Iriniel, and some others from the elves who would have butchered those butchers in turn, and then died, in time, to the echoes of vengeance.”

She turned away from the children, took in the rest of us with a sweep of her gaze, and said: “Narana left the city in grief, but bore no ill will toward the firstborn who had murdered three of their number. Lirien was by her side still, and seeking to protect her, he warned that if she kept the path she’d set, she surely would be killed for it—and all they had worked for would come unraveled.”

I let out a sigh. Hassina had a mind like a diamond; she could probably name the lineage of every elf present, would have learned them all before we’d left for this new world. She continued, finishing her story:

“But Narana shook her head. ‘You are right that I may die, but you place too much value upon my life. I do not bear our dream alone.’” She paused in her circle to stand directly before me, swept her gaze across the gathered elves once more. “‘The unity of the elves is too great a thing to be held in just one set of hands.’”