“Let's ask him to make some magic gauntlets. That shoot fire at my enemies while I cackle.”
“We're not asking him to make magic gauntlets.”
“A magic mace that returns after I throw it?”
“You already said that one and still, no.”
It was a conversation that had taken place many, many times after Alouella had read Clarke's private log of his life to them, careful to read ahead just in case there were things better left locked away from public knowledge (there hadn't been any).
The cart rattled hardly at all, which made it a very unusual cart, and the reins were of the very finest quality and specially made for the giswird. Wade had made a mental note to thank the rat when they returned, regardless of how low it made him feel to scrape to someone he generally disliked. Not because of his rat-ness, no. He was working on that. But because he knew the rat would gloat and smugly make some sort of comment.
He thought of another one.
“A shield that repels any blow effortlessly.”
“Good one!”
Gwen high-fived Wade. The road was boring in between the very exciting bits and the trip to the elven kingdom, being very far to the east, had provided them ample time to ponder what they'd learned of their friend.
“How about a sandwich that is constantly growing back?”
Gwen said. Wade put his hand up and they high fived again but Alouella just tutted.
“I know it's just a game but you really, really aren't planning to ask him to destroy his own brain, right?”
They both shrugged.
“Of course not. I'd rather have a sensible sourpuss around than a raving lunatic but we're just fooling around. Now come on, play with us. If Clarke can really create things and change the world, what do you want?”
Alouella tried to blankly stare back but her disapproving glare skills did nothing but invite expectant answer.
“Peace between races.”
Both leaned in closer waiting for a real answer. Gwen shook her head in disbelief.
“No book of all possible magic spells?”
Alouella scowled.
“What possible enjoyment would there be in having everything given to you? I want to do my own research, not just have it handed to me.”
Gwen couldn't argue with that and Wade leaned over with his hand up for a high five, which Alouella gave, albeit clumsily.
It was silent again and trees had been growing up all around them, bigger and bigger as they left fields behind until they soared up into the sky and blotted out sunshine save for a ray here and there. White tree trunks stretched out before them, thickly planted and bright and dark green leaves mixing over their heads, occasionally drifting down past them.
“Do you think he'll make it before we get there or are we meeting up with Clarke there?”
Gwen asked. A carriage passed them by on the road, a few elves looking awe struck at the giant bird.
“If he makes it at all I'd say we'll meet in town.”
Wade said. The other two glared at him and he quickly back pedaled.
“When he makes it I imagine we'll meet in town. I doubt he'll be hard to track down if the amount of humans and dwarves wandering around is anything like that lizard city. We could just ask someone.”
“Racial make-up not withstanding, it's not a small city. There are a quarter million elves living here.”
Gwen whistled.
“G'damn, you guys are like rabbits.”
Wade shook his head.
“Hey, c'mon, you can't say stuff like that out loud.”
Alouella laughed.
“No, it's fine. Elves do tend to breed as quickly as possible. Marry young, conceive young, it's how we make up for the short life spans.”
Wade silently grumbled to himself, mulling the intricacies of what one could and could not point out and how arbitrary it seemed to him.
They were starting to pass by elven homes now. Small homes for the more rural elves were no less elegant, carved wood that was expertly fitted around tree trunks like arbor jewelry. The homes went up and up, slack rope bridges leading from one tree to the next and criss-crossing the sky in aerial pathways.
“And I can ask my father about this Roots group. See what he knows.”
“Let's hope it's not another long chase across the country. I'm getting tired of clue after clue leading somewhere else. Hell, Clarke isn't even here! It's like we're doing his work for him...”
Wade trailed off as his favorite subject came up, two elf girls walking by. He leaned out as they passed, watching the tall, leggy blondes chat happily and the cart began to drift off the road. Gwen thumped him in the side and he startled back to the road, face a bit pink.
With Alouella's direction they came to the main city, the trees rising higher and higher until it seemed they pierced the sky and blotted out the direct sun. What light came through was filtered to a gentle blue so everything was tinted in aqua.
The trees here were ringed with larger buildings built around the trees in rings, rope bridges of wood and light metal crossing the sky in a spiderweb of pathways. Gwen gawped at it all, turning this way and that to take it in.
“Nice isn't it?”
Alouella asked.
“It's something else. I'm glad I wear pants though.”
Wade's head snapped up, eyes darting around for any elves unfortunate enough to be wearing a dress or skirt.
“Most elf fashion is about pants and robes so we don't really have that problem.”
Wade sighed heavily and slapped the reins a little, spurring Bartholomew on.
Her home was in the heart of the city where the buildings amidst the trees cast shadow on the ground below so only mushrooms grew around the roots of the trees. Crystals hung from the branches here, softly glowing to light the darkness in the same aqua blue.
Wade tied his mount up, securing the wagon near it. There weren't many people down here but having lived in Deraforda a lot of his life he didn't really want to abandon the cart completely.
“Oh come on, I can't imagine anyone wanting to steal a cart with a giant bird attached.”
Bartholomew cooed and Alouella petted him.
“Nah, it's not just that...maybe Clarke will show up. I should wait.”
“You're not still afraid of my father?”
Wade scoffed, put his hands on his hips, crossed them over his chest uncertainly, switched back to his hips.
“N-no.”
Gwen had to ask.
“Why would he be?”
“Because after Wade called my father something...unfortunate, once, he trapped Wade in a dirt box and left him there until he dug his way out. It didn't exactly endear him to the town so my father mostly lives here while mother runs the school.”
Wade leaned against the cart.
“All the same, I'm going to stay here away from that...guy.”
“Okay, we'll be back soon.”
She tucked the book under her arm and she and Gwen took the stairs that looped around the trunk into the tree tops. Bartholomew turned his head, watching something move along the tree, an invisible shape that slid up the stairs after the girls. He cooed at it but Wade was too busy staring up into the trees and envisioning elves in short robes.
A vertical ascent and a few bridges later, with Gwen holding tight to the bridge ropes for fear of falling to her death, and they were in front of a small but magnificent home. Heavily stylized wood with manicured branches creating a crown around the shaped living wood that made the home.
Alouella knocked and let herself in. The insides were a bit sparse, no excess decoration but what was there was comfortable, sturdy wood and chairs. Books lined a few shelves, all neatly arranged.
“Father? I've come to visit. Are you here?”
“Alouella?”
A voice called from somewhere and he appeared, a bowl of grapes in hand. He barely smiled but it was there and he set the bowl down to embrace her. Gwen came in behind her and he looked at her blankly.
“Is she with you or should I call some guards?”
“No, no, she's with me! She's one of my adventuring partners, Gwendolyn Koffee. Gwen, this is my father, Telowe Lawfer.”
“Nice to meetcha.”
Gwen held out her hand and Telowe took it lightly while Gwen crushed his hand in hers out of habit. He winced until it was over and held his hand in the other, rubbing the ache out of it.
“Wade is down by the trunk in fact with our cart. We're on an adventure and needed to consult with you.”
He pursed his lips distastefully at the mention of the boy.
“Honestly Alouella, there are plenty of fine elves in town you could work with, I don't know why you insist on picking up random adventurers you don't know.”
“Father I know both Wade and Gwen-”
She started to defend her choice when her father staggered back, his eyes flickering open and closed until he fell backwards and landed full body on the wooden floor, his head caught just before it hit the ground and slowly lowering the rest of the way.
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“Sorry about that.”
Alouella leaped back, Gwen throwing her fists up at the disembodied voice.
“HEY, hey, it's just me.”
A nearby stack of papers fluttered up and circled around in the air for a moment before Clarke's face began floating in front of them.
“CLARKE! Why did you just knock out my father!?”
She rushed to him, checking his pulse and slapping his face lightly. Clarke set a small bottle on a nearby end table.
“It's just a little knock out gas. He'll be out for an hour or so.”
“But WHY!?”
Alouella yelled. Gwen wiped a finger on where Clarke's body should have been and the tip of her finger disappeared.
“Are you naked?”
“Yeah. I didn't want to spread this stuff on my clothes, it's a pain to get on and out especially with all the little crevices.”
Gwen started to open her mouth but he answered before she asked.
“Of the jacket. Plus I'd have had to use a whole lot more Karmeleon scale and the stuff is extremely expensive.”
“Clarke!”
Alouella tapped her foot waiting for her explanation. Clarke sighed but he knew he'd have to tell her.
“Your father is the head of The Roots. He may not be the one who had my mother kidnapped but he was at least aware. I'm here to go through his things and find the location.”
She looked shocked, confused and she finally settled on laughing.
“Clarke, come on, my father is a researcher for the root care and compost guild for the holy tree! He's never done anything remotely athletic in his life! He's certainly not some...kidnapping relic hunter!”
Clarke started to list off some things.
“One-”
Gwen pointed at him.
“You know we can't see your fingers, right?”
He wiped his hand on the wall and held up his floating fingers again.
“One, Whaler's Wharf was a colony for the elves, a research site. Two, your father showed up around the same time in my village that my mother was kidnapped. Three, Twinty told me your dad was the leader of The Roots.”
Alouella crossed her arms.
“And what kind of evidence is that? That's all hearsay and assumption!”
Clarked pointed at the book under her arm.
“Is that mine?”
She nodded.
“Open it up. Take the pen and write this.”
“What's that going to-”
“Just do it. Please.”
She was still mad but opened it, found a clean page and the pen Clarke kept in the spine. Clarke dictated.
“The lost report page found in Ondervale began to float towards the other pages it had been written with.”
She wrote it quickly.
“Does that sound fair? I didn't say where they were or create anything new. They'll just find their other pages.”
Both girls eyes widened and Alouella worried after what they'd seen in Deraforda.
“Clarke, no, you can't-”
“It's fine if it's just this little. I'm not changing anything. It...should be fine.”
He took his book back from Alouella and found the page detailing their time in Ondervale and found the page just where he'd stashed it and handed it to Alouella. Gwen lifted the unconscious elf to lay on a sofa in the living room to get him out of the way.
Clarke had the girls watch as he wrote the exact words he'd had Alouella write, his handwriting flowing out across the page in black ink. They began to swirl and glow in Clarke's eyes, mandalas lighting on the page and forming under the words. Alouella saw the same brightness, a glow of brilliant formula emerging underneath the words near illegible to her, the ink twisting itself around and around on the paper until mandalas had formed and written out what Clarke had made in a new language.
The page in Alouella's hand began to float up as though a sudden breeze took it, sent it floating down to the ground and then blowing up into the air and down the hall.
Clarke's heart seized and he gulped. Things peeked at him from the edges of his vision, the hint of whisper in his mind like a finger tickling his grey matter. He shook his head and the whisper disappeared but his peripheral vision still picked up tendrils, wisps that always escaped direct sight.
They followed the page down the hall until it slipped under a door and Clarke tried the knob.
Locked.
“That's my father's study.”
Clarke looked to Gwen.
“Break it open.”
“DON'T break it open!”
She looked from one to the other, overloaded with everything that was happening.
“Then I'LL break it open!”
Clarke moved to grab the knob again but Alouella swatted his hand away.
“Stop trying to break things, Wubwé's sake!”
She covered her face and stretched it one side to the other before disappearing for a moment and coming back flipping through a set of keys.
“My father always keeps these on him.”
Inside was a single window and shelves lining every wall, each filled top to bottom with books. A large desk sat in the middle of the room, papers neatly organized on top. Against the window was a desk with several plants on it soaking in the sunshine, pots of dirt labeled with the names of towns.
“I've only been in here a few times. Father does plant research in here.”
The books attested to that, names talking of plant nurturing, dirt and soil nutrition, floral encyclopedias.
The paper flapped uselessly against the set of shelves on the left, rustling against it again and again. Clarke observed it closely and saw a separation between the shelves. He pushed it one way, felt no give and found the small metal decorations at the top and bottom. Each come undone from it's hidden latch and the left side slid into the wall, revealing a track underneath and a small room beyond. This contained more books and boxes, one open with papers laid across the table. The paper flew into the new room and slid between the sheets of the others on the table where it belonged. He picked up the first one.
“...delivery of the giant scaled monster from Ondervale was successful and the return of Aggatha was mostly without problem. She did bite one of the men...”
He pulled a folder from the box on the table.
“...research atelier destroyed in the mountains. All research would have been lost if we hadn't had Aggatha restore it. It was unfortunate but we decided against bringing the wizards back. Would have drained too much of her mental state...”
Each of these from recent months detailed some cover up or mission undertaken. He moved on to the other boxes, taking them off the shelves and rifling through them faster and faster, looking for one specific incident.
Alouella looked at the box, a whole new side of a man who never talked much about his work or his life.
Clarke, a box at his feet and papers dropped around his feet, began to read to them from a frayed, yellow page.
“Greater Rens is a hick town (as I had already guessed) and the locals seem incredibly unpleasant. I can't fathom what my wife sees in it but it makes for a very good cover story to look around. All I have to go on is a rough sketch but it's a close match even if it's a few years out of date. She hasn't done anything I can directly relate to being the powerful being they claim but I have observed her bouts of muttering madness in a local library and that's another thing I was told to watch for.”
“My superior said there would likely be a promotion in it for me if I could bring in something so valuable...I don't care about that so much as the fact that there could be so many practical applications to use her for like the ancient texts said. Clean up, research advancement, things she was already doing before the disaster. I can't just let something so useful to the elves go free when it could help so many.”
“On the plus side there is some very healthy dirt out here.
Clarke scowled and threw the page on the table.
“See? No tricks, no creating anything from thin air. This is what your father did to me. To my mother. Just for the elves. For research. It's monstrous.”
He took one of the pages that had been left out on the table. Nothing special about it, just some supplies, vegetables, glassware. The delivery had been for a place called The Royal Society of Herbalism and Root Health.
“Fitting name.”
Clarke muttered.
“Do you know where this is?”
He showed it to Alouella.
“That's where my father works. It's at the base of the holy tree below the palace. They monitor the holy tree there.”
Clarke sighed.
“This time...this time I have to go alone. You guys have done a lot for me and I appreciate that but a secret evil elven society headed by the monarchy bent on keeping their secrets? If they catch us I don't think we're ever seeing sunlight again. My mother is proof of that.”
He began to leave but Alouella reached out and caught his greasy, invisible arm. Her face was calm but taut, her brows knit in anger.
“Clarke, you can't.”
He stopped, looked at her. That face that always told him he couldn't do it alone.
“I have to do this alone. Don't you understand how much trouble the rest of you would be-”
“No, Clarke. I mean this is the end for the whole trip. My father wouldn't do something evil or lock someone up without cause. If he's been a hero for a secret agency aiding the Queen then he has to be the one in the right. Everything we've seen, what I've seen you just do, I can imagine it on a much bigger scale. Maybe...maybe there was a reason your mother was locked away. Maybe it was for the greater good.”
Clarke drew up straight, his ears ringing hot from what he'd just heard as though he'd been cuffed in them. Nasty whispers licked the edge of his hearing.
“Alouella, you are my friend so I will not punch your teeth down your throat for what you just said. But I won't stop. Ever.”
Gwen pushed between them with a big smile to mask her worry, separating them.
“Whoa, hey, come on, we're friends here. Let's not fight. Alouella, your dad locked up his mother and got caught in writing. I'd be doing the exact same thing if someone had kidnapped anyone in my family.”
Alouella flashed an angry look at her too, snapping out furious words.
“That's what I've noticed about you! You've both always been a little reckless, you just do what you want without thinking of others! You're lawless! Selfish!”
Gwen pointed a finger up at her, sticking it in her face.
“Hey, we're not lawless! Some things just need doing, rules be damned!”
Gwen puffed up and Alouella placed a hand on her shoulder. She spoke icily as she tried to keep her anger in check.
“We can ask my father about all of this. Why she was taken prisoner, what she did. We can do this properly! We don't need to break in places, hurt people and make other peoples lives worse! This is a city not a ruin!”
Clarke couldn't contain himself at the defense of someone he'd anonymously hated for years.
“And what? He's just going to say, 'oh, my mistake, here's your mom back'? Your father is a rigid, unfeeling monster! He took my mother from me! He cut off her arm!”
Alouella screamed at the top of her lungs, her hair beginning to pick up and float around her.
“He's my FATHER!”
She brought her hands up, spells forming at their tips. Clarke's hands flew out and he grabbed her wrist, turning the spell away from him and raising his fist with some potion pulled from who knew where to splash on her for who knew what effect.
Gwen, in her close quarters element, grabbed Alouella's other free hand and Clarke's fist, pulling everyone in too close to do anything without hurting themselves. Her grip was steel, bruising their skin.
“Hey, whoa, whoa! Let's not do anything stupid here. Everyone-”
She looked at both of them.
“-is mad, families were insulted, some of us are going to break laws, some of us are thinking that's not a good idea. I'm the last person to stop an angry fist fight. I think it's a good problem solver but when the magic and the crazy potions start coming out that's to hurt people and I think you've both hurt each other enough. Are we going to calm down?”
Their eyes met, glares growing stronger, feelings flaring as anger spurred them to the point that tears flowed from both, Alouella feeling the swell of emotions in her chest, Clarke having the wave of prickly hot cold spread in his shoulders and both feeling the wet slide down their cheeks.
“Just go Clarke. I can't...I don't know what to say...just get out of here.”
Alouella forced the words through the lump in her throat.
He didn't say anything. He couldn't form the words, couldn't speak through the knot of shame he felt. He snatched up his book and quickly made for the door, dripping invisible spots as he went. He'd wasted most of his chameleon oil sneaking into their camp and reading the book at night. He couldn't bear the thought of not knowing even though it had cost him a valuable resource and now he was walking out into public naked as he could be. He snatched a coat from a hook by the door and left, hurrying to his own coat safely stashed.
Alouella pulled it together, sucking in a deep breath and holding it in her chest, holding her breath so that she could have control over something.
“I'm sorry Gwen...”
Gwen pulled her down, wrapped her up tight in her arms and swayed, patting her back.
“You were right. A good friend would tell us if what we were doing was wrong. I'm sorry, I'm really sorry that you have to be in the middle of this. You did good.”
Alouella held her breath, controlled herself, built up a wall around her heart to keep it together and Gwen held her until she had calmed. She pulled away and wiped her eyes, smoothed her hair as some measure of calm descended on her.
“We have to talk to my father. I won't turn Clarke in for what he is but I will turn him in for what he's doing. Plus we have Weatherworn and Wormwood to worry about and we can sort it all out when we have them all detained.”
She was still furious at Clarke but he needed her help. A jail cell might be the best help she could provide.