we cannot expect help from Garrak, or the Empire, or Filand. Isilia, as always, will remain neutral and sit things out without interfering. Miranueh will merely rub its hands in glee. We shall have to manage with our own forces.”
“And it is not only the Nameless One who has become active recently,” said the magician. “The orcs are raising their heads in the Forests of Zagraba, in the mountains trolls have starting attacking the dwarves’ settlements, a dragon has been seen on the southern borders. A dragon! It is more than two hundred years since the last one approached the borders of our kingdom. The world is teetering on the threshold of war. A terrible war.”
“I have begun gathering an army,” the king said with a frown. “By the end of the year I hope to put at least fifty thousand men in the field against the Nameless One. Some will have to be left on the borders with Zagraba and Miranueh. And there is also the militia, but that is merely a gesture of despair. We need to announce a levy, but I am afraid that there will be a panic, the prices of goods will shoot sky-high, and we shall have refugees. Thank the gods we have the dark elves on our side, as well as the gnomes and their cannon.”
“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, I . . . I have no doubts concerning the gnomes—dump a sackful of gold pieces in front of them, and they’ll make war on their own grandmother—but the elves . . . Are you sure about them?”
“We have no need to lie,” said the woman, throwing back her veil. “I myself have seen the army of the Nameless One preparing for war beyond the Needles of Ice.”
My jaw dropped. The person gazing at me was an elfess. A genuine dark elfess.
The bewitching charm of the elves. It was invented by the same storyteller who thought up the goblins’ thirst for blood. It is only in fairy tales that elves are beautiful, only in fairy tales that they are immortal, only in fairy tales do they have golden hair, green eyes, melodic voices, and a light, floating step. And only in fairy tales are elves wise, truthful, just, and chivalrous. In real life . . .
In real life anyone who knew no better could take an elf from the forests of Zagraba and I’alyala for an orc. Because the fairy-tale beauty of the elves lauded to the heavens by drunken storytellers in the taverns simply doesn’t exist.
Well of course, there are some attractive faces even among this race, but they’re certainly no paragon of beauty. Elves look like people, except for their swarthy skin, yellow eyes, black lips, and ash-gray hair. And those protruding fangs put a real scare into the unsophisticated philistine and the lover of old wives’ tales.
Don’t believe in the kindheartedness of the elves. One day, if you are unlucky, you may be present at an elfin torture session, when they apply the Green Leaf to their closest relatives, the orcs.
That’s right. Orcs and elves appeared in Siala in the very same year. But the orcs arrived here just a little before the elves, for which the ashen-haired ones can never forgive them. And, apart from the ogres, the elves and the orcs were the first to be brought to Siala by the gods. The race of orcs was granted pride and fury, and the elves cunning and guile. But both of them received yet another gift—hatred. To this day they still make war, slaying each other in large numbers in the thousands upon thousands of bloody battles that take place in the boundless Forests of Zagraba.
The gnomes and the dwarves, Doralissians and men, centaurs and giants, and the multitude of other races that inhabit Siala only appeared later. But the first arrivals were the unsuccessful children—the orcs and elves. Afterward the elves divided into dark and light, although the only difference between them is that the dark elves employ shamanism, and the light elves use wizardry.
The dark and light elves are not hostile to each other; they simply regard each other with a considerable degree of contempt. Even now the dark elves cannot understand why their relatives use an alien magic, not original to their race. About two thousand years ago they found themselves unable to live together, and so they separated. The dark elves remained in the Forests of Zagraba, while the light elves moved away to