The Solitary Arrow Ch. 09
Harlen nodded. "Yes, we did, for we had business with the crone." He said. "We needed her advice on some matters, what of it?"
The boy stared blankly. "One should seek a cleric for advise, Harlen, not a witch, they will deceive you."
Harlen nodded. "You're wiser than you look, Trevir, and we will agree now with your council." Hyandai nodded enthusiastically.
"I am glad you two are back well." The boy said, and hugged them both again.
He paused a moment, his face clouding. "Miss Hyandai, there has been an elven man seeking for you, by name."
Her face shifted to one of immense worry. "Me? By my name?" She said, suddenly she was somewhat panicked looking. "What did he look like, or did you get his name?"
The boy shrugged. "He looked like an elven man, he had blonde hair and silver eyes, and he wore a fine mail tunic." He thought a moment. "He had a odd blade crossed with a staff on his back." He added as an afterthought.
"A blade dancer." She said. "Did you get his name?"
Trevir shook his head. "He said he would seek for you later, should you return." He said.
She looked out to the street worriedly. "I see." She said, quietly. "I fear it may be someone whom I know, and they will not be pleased with how my quest has fared."
"Not another picked suitor?" Harlen said, looking concerned himself.
She shook her head and smiled wanly. "No, if it is who I fear it may be, it is my brother." Her face took on a look of immense worry.
Harlen looked a bit worried. "I though elves tended toward small families." He said. "Yet you seem to have no shortage of siblings."
She smiled widely. "My parents were, and are, legendary among the clan for being rather...affectionate toward one another." She giggled. "I have two sisters, one elder and one younger, and three brothers, two younger and one elder." She looked down the road. "The elder is the one I fear is here. He is the eldest of us and considers himself something of an authority figure." She looked at Harlen. "His name is Ceriandel."
"Speak a name and they shall appear, sister." A voice said from the darkness near the road. A tall elf walked into the light of the lantern Trevir had set upon the porch. He was indeed clad in mail. He walked like a warrior, Harlen noted, moving gracefully, like a cat.
Hyandai sighed, and looked at him. "Well met, Ceriandel." She said, smiling, though it looked somewhat forced to Harlen.
"Am I?" He asked as he stood at the gate. "Somehow, I feel my arrival has come as less than welcome news." He said.
She looked down a moment. "I did not expect anyone from home to follow me on this." She said.
"How could I not?" He said, a small tinge of anger in his voice. "You are my sister, and I cannot let you, of all people, go into harm and not worry for you." He said in a rush of words. "When you did not come home when expected, we grew concerned." He looked at Harlen, and not favorably, near as the hunter could tell. "Where is your betrothed, Eleean?"
She kept her head down. "Dead." She said. "We were accosted by orcs east of here, and he was killed, and I was grievously injured." She said.
He began speaking in elven, words that were both beautiful and sounded very, very hostile. She looked up at him, and her eyes were filled with tears. Then she said. "Speak in Westron, Ceriandel, it is rude to speak in a language those about you cannot understand." Her voice had iron in it now, she had her back up. Enter the courtyard, my brother, stand not in the street, casting your voice at us from a distance.
Harlen told Trevir to go warm the bath, and to stay inside. The boy watched the group as he went inside, and kept a wary eye on Ceriandel as he walked into the yard and stood before the couple.
"I understand from the talk about the village, you were so injured that you needed the special services of a Sorceress." He said, a sneer in his voice. "Such injuries are grievous, I would imagine." He glared at both of them, his eyes seemed to have gained some gray, turning them the sheen of steel.
Hyandai straightened her back and set her shoulders. "You think you have the truth of it all, do you?" She said to her brother, her voice sounding set and her jaw squaring. "You know all things?"
"I do not pretend such." He said. "But I know the marks of an unwanted child, and smell the stench on you of the abattoir." He looked at her, and his eyes flashed with rage. "You perform an act that is most unholy in the eyes of the spirits, and seek to defend yourself, and the man."
"This man did not send me to that place, you unknowing fool." She said, finally snapping, tears rolled down her face as she confronted him. "If you must know my business so intimately, then I tell you, it was no human and elf child that I had torn from my womb, but the offspring of those foul orcs that accosted Eleean and I." She gave him a look of pure anger. "Or would you have me carry such abominations to term?"
The blade dancer blinked a few times, then said. "I did not know." The color had drained from his face. "Forgive me sister." The anger was gone from him.
"I can forgive you, but you need to apologize to this man, for you placed the blame on him, and he has not touched me in that way." She said, giving him an icy stare. "Yet." She added.
Harlen was very uncomfortable now, and fidgeted a bit. The predator eyes of her brother worried him, even as they were now cast downward in remorse.
"Yet your mind thinks of lying with him now?" Ceriandal said, looking at her disbelievingly. "You find your own race lacking?"
Her eyes widened in shock. "You can say such, hypocrite, I know you have lain with human women, on more than one occasion when serving in the Windy Isles." She turned her back to him. "Do not lecture me on virtues such as that, unless you have some standing in the area."
"It is not the same..." He started.
She interrupted him, spinning about and stepping forward, forcing him to step back a half step. "It is not the same?" She screamed at him. "You think it is so different because you are a male?" She was railing now, and Harlen was very uncomfortable. "It is not different, you self-righteous ass!" She yelled. "I will take whomever I like to my bower, and you will not gainsay it." She quieted down a bit. "Or did you have a friend in need, perhaps? Someone more worthy of me putting my legs around?" She grinned evilly now, and Harlen took a few steps away from the siblings. "Bring your friend about, and we shall compare his staff to my Harlen's, and if he can best him, then I shall take your friend instead."
The elf looked indignant. "Have you become a whore?" He exclaimed.
And upon that, Harlen turned. "You will keep a civil tongue on my land, elf." He said, raising a pointing finger at the blade dancer. "Or warrior or no, I shall remove you, lest you desire to draw blade on me."
"I'll not dishonor my chosen calling for you." Said the blade dancer. "Or for her." He said, pointing to Hyandai. He backed to the gate, and walked out, shutting it behind him. "I see now that my sister is no longer of us, and she has cleaved to you, so be it." He turned and walked down the road, at the edge of the light, he turned again, his silvern eyes glinting. "When he has grown old and died, my sister, maybe you will return to your own kind." He turned and was gone, into the night.
"I did not know there was a stigma attached to being with a human." Harlen said, putting his hand on Hyandai's shoulder. She was crying, frustrated and angry tears.
She looked up at him, smiling gently. "To most elves, there is not." She said. "But some are of a different sort, I just never knew my brother was one of those." She sniffed and touched his face. "Most elves know one cannot control whom they fall in love with, they are happy just to see others in bliss." She looked to where her brother had gone off into darkness. "But some think it debases our line to give ourselves to humans, though dallying with them is apparently acceptable, do not grow attached to them, else you are a whore."
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LADIES IN NUDE
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LADIES IN NUDE
Russian Brides
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