Morgan: Now, we're getting into the action. After this is where Drake
starts to grow up.
Chuchiru: I like him better as a baby.
Morgan: I like you better with your mouth shut, but it just doesn't seem to be writ large in the stars, now does it?
* * *
As Dhannathach predicted, the next morning saw a trio of elven rangers on Illidian's doorstep. Their silver chain mail glinted in the early morning sunlight that shone between the dew-touched leaves of the forest canopy, and their circlets of beaten gold sat regally on their brows, but they held onto the hilts of their swords warily.
"I am trying to feed the baby," Illidian greeted the nervous officer curtly. "Do you have any idea what it's like trying to feed a child this age without a female in the house?"
"I'm sorry, hîr nín," the elven guardsman, who was at least a century younger than Illidian, replied shamefacedly. "Our orders are to present you and the human foundling to the Council immediately, by force if you resist." He looked distinctly uncomfortable as he spoke.
"Oh, really?" Illidian shifted Draco so that he held the boy with only one arm, leaving the other to hang freely at his side in a casual pose. It was an innocuous enough movement, but the elven officer caught the subtle glint in the sorcerer's eyes and swallowed hard. "And just how long do you believe you will continue to live after you attempt to do that, if I may be so bold?"
"Aren't you overreacting a little? It's just a meeting--"
"Wasn't the Council overreacting a little? They just banished me from the city."
The guard captain backed away a step, raising his hands in a defensive gesture. "I'm sure that was for your own protection as well as that of the other citizens, hîr nín--"
The sorcerer gave him a feral snarl, baring his teeth like a tiger about to strike--or a dragon bristling at an offensive morsel. "When they cast me out, however gently they did it, they lost all right to name my own actions for me. The Council is no more than a minor inconvenience--one I can easily ignore, should I choose. I choose to do so now. If those arrogant, self-absorbed, totalitarian dictators want to get a look at the child, they may come here on their knees, yes?"
"Hîr nín," the younger elf objected pleadingly, "you live within the boundaries of the Moonwood, and are thus subject to the Council's will! To deny them is to exile yourself from here forever!"
"To deny them is to throw their own words back into their teeth! They cast me out and forbade me the city, and so am I beyond the reach of their petty mandates! If they want me--or if they want to remove me--they are free to try and make the attempt either way in person." Illidian's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Deliver me this message, as well: Tell your precious Council that any incursion into my territory will be seen as an act of aggression, and that I shall persecute any trespassers I find within my range most extensively. If the cowards still feel that they must see the human youngling, let them come clad in steel--and prayers that such will be enough to stave off my wrath!"
With that, the young elven officer and his two subordinates were suddenly facing a closed door. They could only turn grimly back to their city, to deliver Illidian's message to the Council--and to hear their response.
* * *
That response was fairly predictable. Lord Andelu burst into a string of inventive and highly impressive curses, never ceasing until he finally began to repeat himself. He slammed his fist down on the carven wood of the semicircular council table. "Blast and bebother that sorcerer!" he spat, as the three soldiers stood apprehensively at attention.
"It's not that important, Andelu," the scholarly Lord Hîdh protested. "Let him keep the child."
"You don't understand! The child is human! It cannot be trusted with the secrets of our people. What if it grows to maturity here in the Moonwood, learning our ways and the ways of the Wood, and is then captured by the black orcs of the north? What then!?" Andelu shook his head vehemently. "We have no choice but to take the foundling from the forest and leave it with some human family."
"His point is made well," another council lord spoke up. "We should discuss this before going any further."
"The time for waiting was past when the exile found the child!" Andelu barked. "Now we act!"
Hîdh's chair grated as he rose gracefully, his amber eyes sparking in the sunlight that fell through the stained glass dome of the council chamber. "I do not recall the point at which you began to decide the course of the Council alone, Andelu, but it is not your place. We will debate the issue with the utmost care and reach a consensus, as is our custom."
The other elf's eyes also grew hard. "Are you challenging my authority?"
"I am challenging your competence, you blustering fool! What do you intend to do, hmm? March in force on the sorcerer's abode and lose half our guardsmen to his anger? Think, idiot! This does not need to involve conflict, especially between the Council and Illidian Peridruin."
"Do as you will, then, Hîdh, but I shall act in the interests of Moonwood as I see them, regardless." Andelu turned and swept regally from the room, to the muttering of the other lords.
"Brash fool," Hîdh growled. He snapped his fingers in the direction of the nervous guards. "Make yourselves useful, my friends, and ready the rest of the guard. There is no telling what may happen if Andelu attacks the exile; he could strike back with a flight of dragons, for all we know." He clapped his hands sharply. "Quickly!"
Chewing on his lip dismayedly, Tarvys Edgebark bowed and led his two undercommanders from the hall.
* * *
"They're here," Dhannathach informed Illidian, hopping onto the worktable above Draco's current drawer. The baby giggled and reached for the cat, who dodged him absently.
"I feel them," the sorcerer answered, not looking up from his work. He was busily shaving tracts of wood off of a curved piece of wood with a carpenter's plane, fashioning runners for the cradle he was preparing. A plain headboard and footboard stood against the wall of his workshop, one of the off-rooms of his home in the great tree. They had yet to be carved, but the elf planned an intricate pattern of runes and natural designs for the furnishing.
"If you make them stand out there, they'll just get angry," the familiar warned.
"Let them." He continued the smooth sliding of his plane, grading the runner down until he was satisfied it matched the other he had already prepared. Only when he had tested both of them on the floor next to each other did he make his way down the steps, fashioned from the living wood of the branch, and into the main building, where he opened the door to reveal a red-faced and spluttering Lord Andelu.
"Oh," he said blandly, "it's you. What do you want?"
Andelu managed to compose himself to some degree, attempting to keep a civil edge on his tone. "I have come for the child. You would not bring him before the Council for a review as we requested, and so I am acting on behalf of the Council to remove him to a human habitation outside of our borders." He held forth one hand in a demanding gesture.
Illidian's gaze never left his eyes. "I don't give a flaming phoenix pinion whether you're acting on behalf of Corellon Larethian himself," the sorcerer replied. "The child stays with me. You lost all claim on my loyalty when you threw me into banishment at the rear end of the Wood."
"Then you leave me no choice," Andelu said, a look of near-relish coming into his eyes. He raised his hand, and the archers who had been positioned behind him stood and nocked their yard-long arrows. "Tangado a chadad!"
Illidian smiled.
"Hado i philinn!" Andelu brought his arm down with a sharp motion.
Illidian smiled.
"What's the matter!?" the lord snapped, whirling on his archers. "Togo hon dad! Dago hon!" He stopped, his jaw dropping.
Illidian smiled.
All ten of the marksmen Andelu had brought with him were suspended in the air, relieved of their weapons, struggling vainly against the unseen force that held them from the surface of their arboreal highway.
"Put them down!" the council lord commanded, turning to face Illidian once more. "What have you done!?"
"Less than you would have done, yes?" the sorcerer sneered. "Now, you will listen to me, 'Lord' Andelu, and you will do as I say, or both you and your guardsmen shall die here. I want you to turn around, return to your city, and send no further force into my land." He grinned, but there was no humor in it. "I knew that it would be only a matter of time before someone like you tried to get rid of me; I'm too much of a liability out here where only your spells and pet fairies can keep an eye on me, yes? The child was just the perfect excuse, wasn't he?"
"You have no power over me," Andelu snarled. "Release my men!"
Illidian's glare became, if possible, colder, and more than a little mad. There was the gruesome sound of rending tendons and shattering bones, and with a fleshy crunch, a young female archer dropped from the air to land on the wide branch below, her neck twisted at an impossible angle. Illidian smiled again at Andelu's look of pure horror. "You just--don't get it, do you? You don't. You have no idea what I am going to do to you if you don't turn around and leave right now, lordling. Save your sorry hindparts now and leave me and the boy to live in peace."
In response, the other elf spat a short arcane phrase and hurled a bolt of sizzling lightning at the grimly beaming sorcerer. His spell encountered some sort of barrier two feet away from its target, however, slamming into an invisible wall and rebounding with a shower of sparks. Andelu took his own thunderbolt square in the abdomen, flying backward five yards before he skidded to a stop, only barely managing to regain his balance in time to save himself from sliding off the giant branch.
There was another snapping and grating, and a tall male elf dropped through a clump of leaves to the ground two hundred feet below. "Wrong answer, Andelu," Illidian chided. "You're starting to run out of chances. Once I've finished up with your flunkies, here, I'll have no one left to play with but you, yes?"
"You'll pay for this, Peridruin!" the lord hissed from between clenched teeth.
"No," the sorcerer corrected, "I already have. I've been paying for almost three hundred years. Now take your men and go." He released his spell, and the remaining eight archers dropped lightly to the branch below. Without bothering to gather up their scattered armaments, they turned tail and fled in the direction of the city, leaving their superior to face Illidian alone.
"I'll be back," Andelu threatened, "with more men, and mages!"
"Technically, since this arm of the forest lies in the foothills of the mountains nearby, I believe that my home is actually on dwarven land. Their tunnels run all beneath and about this section of the Wood, you know." He grinned. "I don't think that they'd take too kindly to an elven assault on any of their citizens."
"You're just spinning moonbeams to try and protect yourself!"
"Oh, no, no, no; goodness no. It's all careful research. According to the pact signed by the local dwarves and your own Council, this land is dwarvish. Now run along before I tell them you're here."
The council lord clenched his fists impotently. "I won't forgive this, Illidian, once of Peridruin."
"You started it, Andelu of A House Not Deserving of Your Dishonor. Now go."
Andelu swirled his cape dramatically as he turned, treading back toward the city even as Illidian went back inside. Dhannathach watched his master as he leaned back against the closed door and shut his eyes with a sigh.
"It's a draw, for now," the familiar said. "He'll make good on his threat, though. Sooner or later, he'll be back, even if it costs him his seat on the Council. You've dishonored him, so now he'll hold even more of a grudge."
"That's his problem, Dhan."
"So you're just going to ignore him?"
Illidian was silent for a moment. Then he said heavily, "Don't worry about him, yes?"
Dhannathach snorted doubtfully, muttering, "Not likely," but Illidian sighed again, interrupting his remark.
"I'll deal with my brother when the time comes."
Chuchiru: I like him better as a baby.
Morgan: I like you better with your mouth shut, but it just doesn't seem to be writ large in the stars, now does it?
* * *
As Dhannathach predicted, the next morning saw a trio of elven rangers on Illidian's doorstep. Their silver chain mail glinted in the early morning sunlight that shone between the dew-touched leaves of the forest canopy, and their circlets of beaten gold sat regally on their brows, but they held onto the hilts of their swords warily.
"I am trying to feed the baby," Illidian greeted the nervous officer curtly. "Do you have any idea what it's like trying to feed a child this age without a female in the house?"
"I'm sorry, hîr nín," the elven guardsman, who was at least a century younger than Illidian, replied shamefacedly. "Our orders are to present you and the human foundling to the Council immediately, by force if you resist." He looked distinctly uncomfortable as he spoke.
"Oh, really?" Illidian shifted Draco so that he held the boy with only one arm, leaving the other to hang freely at his side in a casual pose. It was an innocuous enough movement, but the elven officer caught the subtle glint in the sorcerer's eyes and swallowed hard. "And just how long do you believe you will continue to live after you attempt to do that, if I may be so bold?"
"Aren't you overreacting a little? It's just a meeting--"
"Wasn't the Council overreacting a little? They just banished me from the city."
The guard captain backed away a step, raising his hands in a defensive gesture. "I'm sure that was for your own protection as well as that of the other citizens, hîr nín--"
The sorcerer gave him a feral snarl, baring his teeth like a tiger about to strike--or a dragon bristling at an offensive morsel. "When they cast me out, however gently they did it, they lost all right to name my own actions for me. The Council is no more than a minor inconvenience--one I can easily ignore, should I choose. I choose to do so now. If those arrogant, self-absorbed, totalitarian dictators want to get a look at the child, they may come here on their knees, yes?"
"Hîr nín," the younger elf objected pleadingly, "you live within the boundaries of the Moonwood, and are thus subject to the Council's will! To deny them is to exile yourself from here forever!"
"To deny them is to throw their own words back into their teeth! They cast me out and forbade me the city, and so am I beyond the reach of their petty mandates! If they want me--or if they want to remove me--they are free to try and make the attempt either way in person." Illidian's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Deliver me this message, as well: Tell your precious Council that any incursion into my territory will be seen as an act of aggression, and that I shall persecute any trespassers I find within my range most extensively. If the cowards still feel that they must see the human youngling, let them come clad in steel--and prayers that such will be enough to stave off my wrath!"
With that, the young elven officer and his two subordinates were suddenly facing a closed door. They could only turn grimly back to their city, to deliver Illidian's message to the Council--and to hear their response.
* * *
That response was fairly predictable. Lord Andelu burst into a string of inventive and highly impressive curses, never ceasing until he finally began to repeat himself. He slammed his fist down on the carven wood of the semicircular council table. "Blast and bebother that sorcerer!" he spat, as the three soldiers stood apprehensively at attention.
"It's not that important, Andelu," the scholarly Lord Hîdh protested. "Let him keep the child."
"You don't understand! The child is human! It cannot be trusted with the secrets of our people. What if it grows to maturity here in the Moonwood, learning our ways and the ways of the Wood, and is then captured by the black orcs of the north? What then!?" Andelu shook his head vehemently. "We have no choice but to take the foundling from the forest and leave it with some human family."
"His point is made well," another council lord spoke up. "We should discuss this before going any further."
"The time for waiting was past when the exile found the child!" Andelu barked. "Now we act!"
Hîdh's chair grated as he rose gracefully, his amber eyes sparking in the sunlight that fell through the stained glass dome of the council chamber. "I do not recall the point at which you began to decide the course of the Council alone, Andelu, but it is not your place. We will debate the issue with the utmost care and reach a consensus, as is our custom."
The other elf's eyes also grew hard. "Are you challenging my authority?"
"I am challenging your competence, you blustering fool! What do you intend to do, hmm? March in force on the sorcerer's abode and lose half our guardsmen to his anger? Think, idiot! This does not need to involve conflict, especially between the Council and Illidian Peridruin."
"Do as you will, then, Hîdh, but I shall act in the interests of Moonwood as I see them, regardless." Andelu turned and swept regally from the room, to the muttering of the other lords.
"Brash fool," Hîdh growled. He snapped his fingers in the direction of the nervous guards. "Make yourselves useful, my friends, and ready the rest of the guard. There is no telling what may happen if Andelu attacks the exile; he could strike back with a flight of dragons, for all we know." He clapped his hands sharply. "Quickly!"
Chewing on his lip dismayedly, Tarvys Edgebark bowed and led his two undercommanders from the hall.
* * *
"They're here," Dhannathach informed Illidian, hopping onto the worktable above Draco's current drawer. The baby giggled and reached for the cat, who dodged him absently.
"I feel them," the sorcerer answered, not looking up from his work. He was busily shaving tracts of wood off of a curved piece of wood with a carpenter's plane, fashioning runners for the cradle he was preparing. A plain headboard and footboard stood against the wall of his workshop, one of the off-rooms of his home in the great tree. They had yet to be carved, but the elf planned an intricate pattern of runes and natural designs for the furnishing.
"If you make them stand out there, they'll just get angry," the familiar warned.
"Let them." He continued the smooth sliding of his plane, grading the runner down until he was satisfied it matched the other he had already prepared. Only when he had tested both of them on the floor next to each other did he make his way down the steps, fashioned from the living wood of the branch, and into the main building, where he opened the door to reveal a red-faced and spluttering Lord Andelu.
"Oh," he said blandly, "it's you. What do you want?"
Andelu managed to compose himself to some degree, attempting to keep a civil edge on his tone. "I have come for the child. You would not bring him before the Council for a review as we requested, and so I am acting on behalf of the Council to remove him to a human habitation outside of our borders." He held forth one hand in a demanding gesture.
Illidian's gaze never left his eyes. "I don't give a flaming phoenix pinion whether you're acting on behalf of Corellon Larethian himself," the sorcerer replied. "The child stays with me. You lost all claim on my loyalty when you threw me into banishment at the rear end of the Wood."
"Then you leave me no choice," Andelu said, a look of near-relish coming into his eyes. He raised his hand, and the archers who had been positioned behind him stood and nocked their yard-long arrows. "Tangado a chadad!"
Illidian smiled.
"Hado i philinn!" Andelu brought his arm down with a sharp motion.
Illidian smiled.
"What's the matter!?" the lord snapped, whirling on his archers. "Togo hon dad! Dago hon!" He stopped, his jaw dropping.
Illidian smiled.
All ten of the marksmen Andelu had brought with him were suspended in the air, relieved of their weapons, struggling vainly against the unseen force that held them from the surface of their arboreal highway.
"Put them down!" the council lord commanded, turning to face Illidian once more. "What have you done!?"
"Less than you would have done, yes?" the sorcerer sneered. "Now, you will listen to me, 'Lord' Andelu, and you will do as I say, or both you and your guardsmen shall die here. I want you to turn around, return to your city, and send no further force into my land." He grinned, but there was no humor in it. "I knew that it would be only a matter of time before someone like you tried to get rid of me; I'm too much of a liability out here where only your spells and pet fairies can keep an eye on me, yes? The child was just the perfect excuse, wasn't he?"
"You have no power over me," Andelu snarled. "Release my men!"
Illidian's glare became, if possible, colder, and more than a little mad. There was the gruesome sound of rending tendons and shattering bones, and with a fleshy crunch, a young female archer dropped from the air to land on the wide branch below, her neck twisted at an impossible angle. Illidian smiled again at Andelu's look of pure horror. "You just--don't get it, do you? You don't. You have no idea what I am going to do to you if you don't turn around and leave right now, lordling. Save your sorry hindparts now and leave me and the boy to live in peace."
In response, the other elf spat a short arcane phrase and hurled a bolt of sizzling lightning at the grimly beaming sorcerer. His spell encountered some sort of barrier two feet away from its target, however, slamming into an invisible wall and rebounding with a shower of sparks. Andelu took his own thunderbolt square in the abdomen, flying backward five yards before he skidded to a stop, only barely managing to regain his balance in time to save himself from sliding off the giant branch.
There was another snapping and grating, and a tall male elf dropped through a clump of leaves to the ground two hundred feet below. "Wrong answer, Andelu," Illidian chided. "You're starting to run out of chances. Once I've finished up with your flunkies, here, I'll have no one left to play with but you, yes?"
"You'll pay for this, Peridruin!" the lord hissed from between clenched teeth.
"No," the sorcerer corrected, "I already have. I've been paying for almost three hundred years. Now take your men and go." He released his spell, and the remaining eight archers dropped lightly to the branch below. Without bothering to gather up their scattered armaments, they turned tail and fled in the direction of the city, leaving their superior to face Illidian alone.
"I'll be back," Andelu threatened, "with more men, and mages!"
"Technically, since this arm of the forest lies in the foothills of the mountains nearby, I believe that my home is actually on dwarven land. Their tunnels run all beneath and about this section of the Wood, you know." He grinned. "I don't think that they'd take too kindly to an elven assault on any of their citizens."
"You're just spinning moonbeams to try and protect yourself!"
"Oh, no, no, no; goodness no. It's all careful research. According to the pact signed by the local dwarves and your own Council, this land is dwarvish. Now run along before I tell them you're here."
The council lord clenched his fists impotently. "I won't forgive this, Illidian, once of Peridruin."
"You started it, Andelu of A House Not Deserving of Your Dishonor. Now go."
Andelu swirled his cape dramatically as he turned, treading back toward the city even as Illidian went back inside. Dhannathach watched his master as he leaned back against the closed door and shut his eyes with a sigh.
"It's a draw, for now," the familiar said. "He'll make good on his threat, though. Sooner or later, he'll be back, even if it costs him his seat on the Council. You've dishonored him, so now he'll hold even more of a grudge."
"That's his problem, Dhan."
"So you're just going to ignore him?"
Illidian was silent for a moment. Then he said heavily, "Don't worry about him, yes?"
Dhannathach snorted doubtfully, muttering, "Not likely," but Illidian sighed again, interrupting his remark.
"I'll deal with my brother when the time comes."