Kashur

Kashur jolted awake, gasping in a breath as though escaping a bad dream. He was cold and damp, and something was scampering away from him. It was nimble and graceful, with the pointed ears of an elf, but only as large as a cat. Its skin was greenish-yellow, its eyes large and round and luminous. Was it a Pooka, like in the books his mother had read to him as a child? Kashur blinked, thinking he must be seeing things, but when he tried to get a better look, the creature was gone.

“Awww, blight on it!” he complained, realizing he was lying on the ground. Lifting a muddied arm, he tried to wipe the decomposing plant matter onto a nearby tree trunk. The wilted yellow flower that had drugged him lay nearby, practically mocking him. The Elf Queen had incapacitated him again, only this time, she’d known his protection spell wouldn’t let her use physical or magical attacks against him. So she’d let him do it to himself.

That coquettish smile, though. It was almost worth it.

He staggered to his feet, cast a quick wind spell to get the worst of the muck off him, then balanced above the muddy ground on the network of tree roots. How long had he been out? Minutes? Hours? Days? An odd sound caught his attention—a sort of high-pitched purring. Whirling, he caught sight of the little greenish-yellow Pooka again. It tiptoed slowly away from him, watching him pointedly over its shoulder, as if inviting him to follow.

Rescuing his oatmeal bowl and spoon, he pushed aside curtains of thick, cascading vines and hopped along the jungle floor, trying to avoid the wettest spots. The Pooka always managed to stay just within sight. Kashur wondered briefly if he was being lured to his doom, but he still had the protection spell on. And he was a powerful Summoner. Let the Pooka just try something.

Before long, Kashur heard the soothing rush of a waterfall. The Pooka disappeared, but he followed the sound of the falls to a glowing, green and blue pool sparkling with flecks of sunlight penetrating the leaf canopy. The waterfall was like a white lace curtain against the backdrop of shiny black rock. Kashur marveled at this piece of Elven paradise before the sound of Yelora’s voice startled him. He retreated, peeking around a husky tree trunk.

The moment he saw her kneeling in the shallows, he knew he didn’t belong here—truly, deeply didn’t. In this magical place, Yelora looked more like a queen than ever: Her hair full and lustrous, her features crisper—sharp nose, sharper ears—and all of her bathed in a white aura as if the light itself wanted to worship her. Across the skin of her arms and face, golden Elvish symbols blinked in and out, bioluminesce activated by magic. Kashur gaped, in awe of her beauty, until he noticed the tremble of her chin, and the shine of tears down her cheeks.

Something was wrong.

He caught the glow of purple from the crystal clutched in her hand, noted that the prongs of her crown, once replete with purple crystals, were mostly vacant. And there was no Elven baby.

Kashur’s guts settled like stones. The crystals weren’t working.

Yelora implored the heavens and the waters. The whispery foreign syllables were heavier than they should have been; Elvish was a light, airy language, yet Kashur felt each word pressing down on his chest, drowning him. He ducked back into the foliage. His eye caught on something floating in the river a few yards away. The bloated, white belly of a dead fish.

Oh no.

Kashur was pretty sure dead fish didn’t typically float down these pristine, perfect waters. Yelora was adding the crystals’ magic to the waters, trying to force an Elven birth, but instead of helping, the magic was making things worse. Just like the grass that had died when they’d used the crystals’ magic to heal the sick Disciples, the river was being poisoned. But this was so much worse. That was just a patch of grass. These were sacred Elven waters!

He crept closer, peeking through a thick, pink and green plant with leaves as large as his head. Yelora held the crystal high above her head, reciting the rest of her heart-wrenching prayer. He shouldn’t interrupt. It was not his place. But as her arm came down with the crystal, Kashur burst through the foliage.

“M’lady, stop!”

Her lip curled in a way that made Kashur want to check the integrity of his protection spell, just in case. “You!” she snarled. “You can’t be here. Your very pres—”

“Yes, my very presence is an insult, I know! But what you’re doing, Yelora. It’s not helping. Look!” He took three steps toward the water, waving a hand to where the dead fish had washed up, its body lapping against the shore.

Her face fell, two more tears spilling over the flickering Elven symbols on her cheeks, and Kashur felt that crushing weight on his chest again. She stood up from where she knelt in the waters, turned and leaned, dripping wet, against the stone basin, one hand pressed to her mouth, the other one still clutching the crystal. Her shoulders curled in. No one but the waterfall spoke.

Kashur approached her with caution. He heard her breathing change when he neared, but she didn’t whirl on him. Water splashed over the toes of his boots.

“How many did you use?” he asked gently.

“This would have been the fourth,” she whispered, staring at the crystal in her hand.

He leaned beside her, like the two of them were standing at a town well, waiting for a bucket. “How is it supposed to work?” he asked.

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She seemed to have given up on the whole you’ll-defile-this-sacred-place position, because she didn’t even hesitate to reply. “I say the sacred prayer and I reach into this basin and pull up a baby.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the rippling water inside the basin. The idea creeped him out a little bit, he had to admit.

“You’re supposed to still be asleep.” She sighed as she installed the crystal back into her crown. “Nothing is going as planned today.”

“A Pooka woke me up,” Kashur explained.

Her brow furrowed. “A Pooka?”

“Greenish little naked person. Purrs like a kitten.”

“A sprite? They haven’t been seen in centuries.” She was glaring at him now. “Do you dare mis-speak to me, even now? After...” she trailed off, sweeping a hand at the waters. Kashur wondered what the rest of her sentence would have been. After the day I’ve had? After I’ve poisoned my people’s sacred river? After I shared this place with you?

“We call them Pookas, and I’m telling the truth! It led me here. It wanted me to follow it.”

“It led you here?”

“Yes.”

“The sprites are meant to protect Elven lands and Elven people, not bring strangers amongst them.”

He shrugged. “Maybe it likes me.”

Her gaze went to his clasped hands, the gloves wet and glistening. “Maybe it believes you’re useful.”

“Well, I like to think I’m not useless.”

“I’m talking about your power.” Her eyes shone wild and green, like fresh grass after a rainstorm. “You must use it! Here, in the Falls!”

The stones shifted in his gut again. “Wh-what?”

“Perhaps the child isn’t developed enough. That’s why it hasn’t come! Your power could bring it to term!”

“No,” Kashur said, pushing off the basin and backing away. “That sounds like a terrible idea.”

“That’s why the sprite brought you here!” Yelora was on her feet now, too, matching each back-step of his with a forward one of her own. “Summoner, you must do this! This is what the Oracle wants! What the sprites are asking of you!”

Summon that which is to come. That was his power. But it was not meant for this. The midwives of his village had tried to use it in a similar circumstance, to age the fetus of a woman who had gone into labor too soon. That hadn’t gone well. How could it, when he was forced to age the mother, too?

“No. I-I don’t belong here,” he stuttered, stumbling over a rock at his heel. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

“Kashur, please.”

The crack in her voice shattered the stone in his chest. She’d called him by his name, Kashur, not his title. Her tear-stained face was radiant in the broken light.

Mol Morin had been right, Kashur had no business flirting with Elves. It was dangerous. Already the Elf Queen’s magnetism was tugging at him, threatening to veer him away from his true north. His loyalty was to the Wizards. His mission was to bring Yelora to Mol Morin, to solidify their alliance. So what was he doing here? He wasn’t even certain the Queen would agree to an alliance. She had her own distractions, mainly this obsession with securing the Elves’ line. And though she was asking him to do this—begging, almost—if he refused, would she try to force him? Would they battle it out here? Destroy any chance of an alliance? Would both their peoples perish, divided and conquered by the tide of an Imperial/Dwarf army if the Summoner and the Elf Queen played this wrong?

And what if he tried and failed? Then what?

He should have waited in the jungle. Actually, he never should have gone to the crash site in the first place. Mol Morin wanted to ally with Yelora, but the old man did not know what this desperate queen was capable of. Kashur did, and yet, like a moth to the blazing lantern light, he could not look away.

“Take off your gloves,” she ordered, swiping her tears away with a wrist, her face hardening.

So this was where they found themselves? Her, the monarch, giving orders. Him, the subject, following them without question. Yet, she was not his queen, had never been.

He took off the gloves anyway.

“If I do this, will you come with me?” Even as he said the words, he knew they had no teeth.

Her lips pressed together. “An alliance with the Wizards will help protect the child.” It was not a yes, but it was not a no either. “Come.”

Her touch on his elbow was light, so light, and yet he was brutally aware of it. She drew him toward the basin. Kashur stared at the swirling surface water, the waterfall shouting in his ears.

“I don’t want to do this,” he said, robotic, like a little boy not wanting to eat his vegetables. Why did he feel so strongly? If Yelora thought this could work, who was he to contradict her?

“You must,” she whispered, her breath close to his ear. She reached for his forearms.

“Careful!” He pulled away, stiffening.

“Fear not,” she murmured. Her hands were cool on his forearms as she guided them into place above the waters. Her grip was well back from the mottled skin hovering over the basin, safely distant from the line where his wrist met his cursed hands.

“What do I do?” he choked.

“I have already spoken the words,” she breathed against his cheek. “You must simply reach in.”

Kashur felt the beads of sweat like pinpricks on his forehead. His armpits had let loose a flood. He felt like a piece of the jungle itself—heavy and waterlogged and laden with deadly secrets. His hands over the black water were shriveled, ugly things that didn’t belong—pale larvae dug up and exposed to the day. They were shaking.

“Do it,” the Elf Queen said, her voice no longer gentle.

Kashur let himself react to the authority in it. He plunged his hands into the water, cold and churning with an unseen current. He braced himself for the sensation of bare skin in his hands, a sensation he was programmed to recoil from, for it meant doom to whomever he touched.

“Do you feel it?” Yelora hissed over his shoulder.

“No.” He wanted to pull his hands out of the water. This felt so wrong—forcing an Elf baby into the world. The thought of an embryo writhing on his palm, swelling into a fetus, then a baby, its lungs ballooning with its first shocked, painful breath sickened him. What if he didn’t pull it up fast enough? And worse... what if it wasn’t an Elf baby at all. What if Creation Falls birthed another squirming, twisted monster, like the last time?

“Nothing?” Yelora pressed again.

“Nothing. Can I stop now?”

“No!”

“It’s not work—” he started to say, then gasped as something wriggled against his palm.