An Intro to a new novel, a spin off from the my current novel project ...

comments please

With the last of her failing strength she crawled into the snow cave that they had built and where they had spent their last fortnight together. He was gone now more than a day’s journey below the summit. She had accompanied him almost to the summit but her elfin physiology wouldn’t allow her to cross the divide. Or so she had told him.

It was a lie.

Once she had left the tree line a day’s march down hill her life force had began to ebb, fading away into nothingness. When he was near she could renew herself with the extra energy of his human body. It did not cover all the deficit just slowed the drain so that he would not notice it. Now that he was gone the drain was accelerated. She was spiraling down to total fade out

It did not matter. He was gone, forever. His destiny, and true love, lay before him beyond the divide. On this side of the divide there was naught for her a clan less elf.

She would welcome the darkness.

The cave was as they left it. She took the time to replace the scrap of canvas and branches that served as a door and to strip down to her shift before she crawled into the thick bed roll. She spread her two cloaks over the pile. THEN she reached for her pack.

The sack contained three bottles. The smallest contained Orthnoy Spirits, a powerful liquor distilled from the flowers of the elfbane. Another was a full bottle of cheap wine; the third contained a few swallows of elixir. The Elixir would prolong her life by a few weeks; the liquor would kill her in the course of a single watch.

“What will it be, Life or Death?” she said out loud

She closed the sack. She would neither hasten nor hinder her demise. Not even to ease her heart and thirst by drinking the wine. She closed her eyes an felt the world spin away from her then the blackness rook her.

His name was Wulfstan, or that had been his name on the other side of the mountains, that other side of thee Blue Mountains., Wulfstan would be his name, again beyond the blue desert. For now he was both homeless and nameless.

His journey had already cost her her life. He’d never known her name, Tousle Head he had called her. She had accompanied him from the Sea to the tree line and beyond on the far side of the mountains. She had lied:
She said that she could go beyond the tree line. But every day beyond the trees she had failed. When she had turned back she was dead on her feet. The best he could hope was that she had made it back to their snow cave to die.

All this he had realized after she left him to trudge back down the far side of the mountain to her fate. He should have seen it but he did not: Partly because he did not want to see; partly because she had cast a glamour over his eyes so that he could not see.

It took him three days to walk down the mountain. In the dark nights between he wept himself to sleep calling on all the gods that he knew on her behalf. On the third morning he stepped off path and on a rise a dozen lengths from the road he raised a stone to her memory. From the last of his wine he took a drink and then poured the rest of it in libation.

Then he moved on…