Lar loses his fourth and last

The elf Dre had not announced his presence, but had only slipped in unnoticed and sat himself on the throne. None knew how long he had waited before someone had noticed him and run to inform Lar. However, he did not appear to have been annoyed if the wait had been long.

“How kind of you all to come to welcome me back,” he smiled. “I am pleased to find you all in good health.”

“Mutually,” Lar said coldly.

“Ah! I see,” Dre chuckled. He rose without making use of his hands, as graceful as a lord. “Never fear. I shan’t stay long. I am only come to accept a certain gift you had promised me.”

“Is it your birthday?” Imin squealed. “How dreadful of me to have forgotten!”

Dre clucked his tongue. “You shouldn’t have admitted it, my friend. I never would have known. This gift was supposed to come from the four of you.”

Lar clenched his teeth. It was like Imin to make a joke when he knew perfectly well that they were about to anger the dark elf. But Imin was standing behind him, and he could not risk even turning his head to glare.

“Where are you hiding it?” Dre smiled. “Surely not on your persons. Imin might have stashed it away beneath his hair, but it appears he was unaware of the occasion.”

Lar spoke before Imin could make another joke. “We have nothing for you, Dre.”

“No?” Dre gasped, feigning shock. “Have you hidden it so well that even you can’t find it?”

“We have nothing for you,” Lar repeated.

“Have you hidden it so well that you can’t get it back again?”

Lar hesitated. He tried to lie to Dre as little as possible, for Dre had an uncanny way of knowing things that he could not possibly have known.

Dre leaned closer to him, still smiling slightly, confidingly. “Have you hidden it with the men?” he whispered.

So he knew.

“You shall not have it,” Lar said coolly. “There will be no more of these half-​​breed children.”

It was not a challenge. It was not an act of defiance. He had merely made up his mind. His words were law: they did not merely state the truth, but also made it true.

Dre sighed regretfully and leaned still closer to him. He leaned so close that Lar felt his breath on his face, oddly cold. Dre’s pale eyes were half-​​closed, staring off at nothing as the dark elf thought over the matter.

Lar could not look away from them. That chill breath seemed to be slowing his blood, his body, and his mind.

“It is a shame,” Dre said at last. “When you failed to capture the Scot woman, you had promised me you would deliver to me the child of the Scot man. And I, for my part, had promised that if you failed in this, I could not allow you to continue to lead these elves.”

He leaned his head still closer to Lar’s, into that narrow realm only ever occupied by the heads of ladies intent on kissing him. Lar did not doubt he only meant to unnerve him, but it was one method that was bound to work. He did not want to cringe away from the elf, but he craned his head back as far as his neck would allow.

“You realize that I cannot change my mind now,” Dre murmured. “It would be absurd if I broke my promise to punish you for breaking your promise. It would be a poor example of leadership, would it not?”

“You are not the leader of these elves.”

“No? No longer are you. How do you wish to die?”

“No!” Dartesas howled. “It isn’t his fault!”

Dre pulled away and laughed in astonishment. “The golem speaks! What will it say?”

“Shut up, Dasi,” Lar growled.

“I did it! I took him to the temple of the men. Lar was asleep. Everyone was asleep. It isn’t his fault.”

“He’s lying,” Lar said. “He’s only trying to protect me.”

“I am not! You shut up, Larl! I did it. Lar has to sleep sometimes. It’s not his fault what I do then.”

“What a charming race you are,” Dre murmured. “Each trying to protect the other, at peril of death.”

“I’m not trying to protect anyone,” Lar said. “I’m responsible for these elves. If they disobey me when I’m sleeping, then I have failed as a leader.”

“You’re a good leader!” Dartesas said. “I’m a bad follower, that’s all. He’s the best leader we could ever have.”

Lar did not like the rapt attention Dre was paying his friend. He laid a hand on Dre’s shoulder, and as he had anticipated, the dark elf spun around to face him.

Lar ducked the blow he was expecting, but instead of swinging at him, Dre took advantage of his crouch to grasp the hilt of his sword and pull it free of its scabbard. He whirled around again, graceful as a lord, and with the edge of Lar’s own blade he sketched a long arc that precisely intersected Dartesas’s throat.

His friend’s mild eyes went wide, and he opened his mouth, but instead of a cry there issued forth only a slow dribble of blood. Then he fell.

Lar had never seen one he loved slain. He had only come upon their bodies after the fact, or in the case of his wife, only found a few shreds of flesh on the bloodied ground. He had always tortured himself trying to imagine what their last moments had been, but now he saw that knowing was worse. He would never get the image of those startled blue eyes out his brain.

Dre yanked him to his feet and slammed the bloody sword back into the scabbard with such force that Lar would later find the belt had left a bruise on the opposite hip.

“He says it’s not your fault, most excellent leader!” Dre beamed.

Dre then swung him around and flung him away, down onto the body of his friend, though that was where Lar had been heading anyway.

There was no hope for him. Like Risha’s, his neck had been nearly severed; his head lay at an impossible angle. But his heart was still working to drain his arteries of blood – perhaps he could still hear.

Lar would not waste the seconds pleading with him to live. He was already losing so many to sobs he could not control.

“I’ll take care of your boys, Dasi. I’ll take care of Khara. I’ll tell them about you. Dasi!”

He could hear Dre sigh behind him. “You should have warned him that love can make one do foolish things, just as hate can.”

Later he would wonder how Dre could have known to say such a thing, and he would find it had left another bruise.

At that moment he was not thinking of anything that was happening around him – not of Dre’s disdain, nor of Imin’s sobbing, nor of Llen’s bellowing – but his mind was wide open and gathering up all these impressions. Later he would torture himself reliving it all, from every angle. Now there was only Dartesas.

No one now lived who remembered how he used to mispronounce his name as a child; no one would ever call him Larl again. And it had always been Dartesas who had picked him up and wiped the blood from his face – the blood of his mother, the blood of his wife, the blood of his sister – and taken him home, and given him a drink of water, and let him lay his head on his shoulder when he cried.

No one would pick him up tonight. They all loved him, but not in that way. They would let him lie there until he rolled off of his own accord and stumbled home alone. No one would wash the blood from his face, and no one would fetch him a drink of water.

But no one would prevent him from laying his head on his friend’s shoulder one last time to cry.