Anduron’s hands shook as he inserted coins into the payphone. It was his first stop since leaving the funeral home, and his body was demanding rest. He compromised by leaning his shoulder against the booth interior.

“Yes?” said Faeler upon picking up his office phone.

“How would you like to get even for tonight’s mess, without any cost to yourself?” Anduron asked.

“Ah, it’s the elf who drags trouble behind him like a limp tail.”

“It was a sending, Faeler. Not a reasonable thing for a man to expect in these times.”

“Aha,” the dwarf replied without any air of concession. “Keep talking, and don’t bore me. And don’t annoy me either. I mean it.”

“Frank Becker caused tonight’s troubles. I know it for certain. What can you tell me about the man?”

“Pretty small time, though I suppose he’s getting more ambitious in the face of the vacuum you helped trigger in this city.”

“I d-”

“You don’t discuss cases,” Faeler chanted in a mocking rendition of an elf’s voice. “What did I say about annoying me, beanpole?”

“I’ve confirmed he hired the trio we spoke of,” Anduron said to switch the conversation back on track. “But what else does he have on hand?”

“A few local toughs,” Faeler told him, though his irritation still carried through the phone. “Nothing disciplined and stratified. Not yet, anyway.”

“Not ever,” Anduron said. “Let’s see to that.”

“What do you want, Anduron?”

“Here’s what I’m thinking: You get some men, known hard types, and send them as a group into Becker’s territory. Have them haunt whatever low down watering holes they have over there. Not to cause trouble, not to flash their irons, but just to be seen. Enough to stir the local hard men and draw their attention. So that they won’t be hovering around Becker.”

“And you just slip right up to him. Hmm. You know, you are asking me to prod. To provoke. And those have unpredictable results. Little things can kick off a chain reaction. It gets out who works for who, Anduron. And you damn well know it.”

“You want payback, Faeler, and I damn well know that. Someone made you look bad tonight. Someone breached that illusion of untouchability you project.”

“Illusion, you say?” Faeler replied. “And what am I supposed to take from that?”

“Reality. Everyone is touchable, Faeler. Folks like you just work hard to make it seem otherwise. So when something breaches that, you need retaliation.”

The dwarf was silent for a little while, and Anduron started worrying he might have pushed his buttons too hard.

“And you’ll solve my problem, hm?” Faeler asked challengingly.

“I will.”

“You sound tired, Anduron,” the dwarf pointed out with mock concern. “Like you’ve had a rough night. Are you up for finishing it?”

“This is not my first dance with danger, Faeler,” Anduron replied, and marshalled his energies to put strength in his voice. “I can cope with rough nights.”

“I hope you can. Because I’ll give you your shot at Becker. What time frame are you thinking of?”

Anduron had already given thought to that, taking into account the distances he had yet to travel, and the one stop he had to make.

“I think about two hours might do it.”

“Two hours, to round up boys I can spare, to get them going, and get a reaction from the dock dregs? Let’s make it three hours.”

“Fine,” Anduron replied, for the sake of keeping the dwarf on board.

“I’ll get to work on your little distraction. And Anduron?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t disappoint me on this one.”

CLICK.

Anduron hung up, and finally allowed himself to sit down.

# # #

The Old Park was, Anduron felt, rather misnamed. No one had planted it, or planned it, and there was little in the way of curation. It wasn’t where humans came on the weekends with baby strollers to look at rows of exotic flowers in neatly arranged beds. It was where the wild had held out against the growing city.

It wasn’t a park, but it certainly was old. Anduron felt it, as he left concrete behind and once again walked on soft, living earth. Perhaps it was the spirit of the forest itself, closing itself around him, welcoming him as its child, as the more romantic of his people insisted. Perhaps it was his own romance at work, buried though it was.

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His senses came alive, as he left the city further behind. Its noise, already reduced by the night-time, was gradually swallowed up by the trees and little knolls. And the smell. The ever-present foulness of modern living faded away as well, replaced by seeds and sap and bark and leaves and grass and the dirt itself and all the little creatures that were part of this great organism.

This was how things had been. How they still were, away from the cities. And yet here he was.

Anduron didn’t seek out a path. There weren’t many, and he preferred having to weave through the wildness anyway. He stopped by a great old oak and put his palm against it. He felt the rough texture of the bark, and the life beneath it. The trees in the city’s formal parks were almost all younger than him. This one wasn’t. This was a true relic of the old days. It had seen ages.

What he did his best to send out, as he closed his eyes and breathed deeply of the living air, wasn’t a prayer, or a direct communication of the sort used between people. It was respect; an appreciation. And, he had to admit, no small amount of sadness.

He allowed himself this little moment, for a time he did not measure. But his enemies would not stop. They were merely delayed. So he could not afford to linger like a solipsistic elder.

He bid the oak farewell, and continued on.

The songs that he picked up as he travelled further into this little slice of the wild were old. Perhaps as old as the wild itself, or at least the elven people. It was a soft, wordless, ghostly thing, echoing about the darkness and the trees, set to such high notes that non-elves tended to only hear it from very close by. Or only unconsciously, so that it moved or frightened them in ways they could not easily explain.

Supposedly, in ancient days other folks had thought of elves as outright spirits. Anduron tended to smile at such things, but not now. The song cut too deep. There was too much meaning behind it.

He had been noticed, of course. He was making no attempt at actually being silent, merely keeping respectfully quiet. His goal was near the centre of this little slice of the wild, as far away from the choking city as one could get. He knew better than to penetrate the circle itself. Instead he waited on the periphery, where trees and bushes blocked his sight. and once they were ready the priestesses came to him.

They emerged like the phantoms folk had once pictured, clad in old-style ritual robes, fashioned only of the things one could find in the wild and work by hand. Their faces were painted, half-black, half-shiny white. It represented the battle. The only battle, if one were to ask them: Between good and evil.

The high priestess wore a great shawl that matched the duality theme, but he wouldn’t have needed it to tell her rank. She was a true elder, and though her face looked no different from the others, her gaze and bearing certainly did

Each one of them also had a large knife, sheathed at the hip.

“Greetings, beneath Her great ceiling,” Anduron said. “Beneath Her benevolent gaze.”

“Greetings, Anduron of the Willows,” the high priestess replied. “We were told to expect you.”

“Indeed, I-”

He had half-intended to start off with a dramatic statement about the only battle, and how he was now entwined in it, before getting to the point. But an elder had him in her gaze, and he suddenly remembered just where he was and what he was doing. He also, for a moment, thought about Malea’s insinuations that he’d lost the way.

“There is an active necromancer in this city,” he told them all. “I only just found out tonight, when he sicced a sending on me. I do not know why. I was able to handle it, due to some lucky circumstances, but I know he has had more corpses to work with. He will probably try again. I intend to stop him. Tonight.”

He hesitated.

“My reasons are selfish,” he then admitted. “But they are neither greedy nor cruel, and they align with the will of the Silver Mother. I have my flaws, but my victory over this necromancer would still be a tilt in the right direction. In humility, I come to request your aid.”

“True points, all,” the high priestess told him. “Your motives are neither greedy nor cruel, and they are selfish. And you have flaws, as all do. Tell me, what are yours?”

He took a breath. He wasn’t navigating a tricky conversation with a potential witness or source, or Faeler and his sort. Only the truth would do here, not what he figured she wanted to hear, but just the truth. Only if it pleased her might she help him.

“I…”

He ripped bandages off a wound whose ache he tended to forget about.

“I fear for myself, as an elf. I fear for our people. It is the same. I fear what we might become, in this rapidly changing world. I long for the past, but I also… recoil from it.”

He hadn’t actually quite thought of it in those terms before, but a frank discussion with an elder tended to reach deep.

He sighed.

“It is fear. Simple as that. Fear of having the past and the present both fully in my life. That is why I have not been… pious. Not in attendance. But I feel I have not lost the virtues themselves.”

The elder’s mere presence challenged him on his last point. Or rather, he challenged himself, unable to get away with falsehoods. But that part was true, he felt. At least mostly.

“You are not without virtue,” the elder said. “Your failure was cowardice,” she added, though without anger or accusation. “Not of the body, but of the spirit.”

Still mindful that only the truth would aid him here, Anduron considered his response by considering himself.

“That is a fair assessment,” he acknowledged.

She looked up, towards the moon. Were it full, and not partially obscured by the canopy, it would reflect on the white half of her face. But it did, for an instant, reflect in her eyes.

“It was the conclusion of us elders that the elven people must adapt. We must save what can be saved, and integrate with the new world just enough to understand it and have a voice within it. And as mankind, in some generations, sours on relentless consumption, and pushes back against those who spearhead it, our people will be ready, to help guide it down an intermediate path.”

“I remember, Elder,” Anduron said respectfully.

“You ask to wield the light, Anduron of the Willows. But it is no simple tool to be picked up as your own needs dictate. You must swear to honour it. You must make an oath of the Silver Light.”

“I shall do so, Elder.”

“Then do it, here, before my sisters and beneath Her gaze.”

He got down on one knee. The priestess held her hand out, and one of the attendants handed her a sheathed knife, identical to the one they all carried. He held both hands out, palms up, and began his part in this.

“I swear, by the watchful eye of the Moon Mother, she who guards the night and holds back its terrors, to honour her in rite and deed. I swear to wield her light with honour and courage, in the eternal battle between foul and fair. And should I fail, I shall pass it on to worthier hands. So I swear, by my name, and by my forebears.”

The high priestess used her free hand to draw her own knife. Her attendants immediately followed suit, and nine blades were held up to the sky. It was not a full moon this night, but for a moment, it was, as cold, beautiful light shone off the flawless metal.

“The oath is heard,” the elder announced formally, and the other women repeated it in unison. “A lightbearer is sworn. May he prove worthy.”

She lowered the sheathed knife into his waiting hands. It felt heavy, even though it wasn’t. It was in his mind, the weight of his oath.

“Thank you, High Priestess,” he said as he rose.

“Now go,” she said. “The night has not passed, and nor have its terrors. Go and strike.”

“I shall,” he promised her.