Tarren looked disappointed. “But how can both sides lose? Didn’t good defeat evil? Didn’t the heroes win?”
Avriel shook her head. “No one won. Hundreds of thousands died, cities burned. The age of the Wars of the Gods went on for nearly one thousand years, until there was nothing left to fight for, until all had been destroyed. At the end of the wars less than a thousand elves remained. The most powerful of all elves was Kellallea. She had finally defeated the armies of her enemies. After the final battle she stood before her followers and gave her last order.”
Firelight shone upon her face as she spun her ancient tale. She seemed to Whill like a goddess among men, so beautiful was she. Not only her face, but her hair, her eyes, her smile, her words. Every mannerism was a compliment to her being, every gesture intoxicating. In a panic he did not show, he wondered if he were projecting. It did not relieve his fears when Avriel looked his way as she told her story.
“Kellallea ordered her followers to never again practice the ways of Orna Catorna, to abandon all memory of enlightenment. It was argued that only greed and evil had destroyed so many lives, that goodness and love could now thrive. But Kellallea would hear none of it. She had decided what she must do.”
She paused and listened keenly to the night air. The others, who had been so enthralled in the tale, did the same. Tarren looked around behind him, to the dark woods beyond their clearing by the road. “And then what did she do? What did she know she had to do?”
Zerafin took up the telling. “She used her great power to steal from her followers all of the energy that remained within their blades. She stripped them of all power.”
Aviel gazed into the firelight. “She made them dumb to all knowledge of Orna Catorna. They would remember what had been, but not how it was achieved. She said that we were not ready for such power, and maybe never would be.”
“So that’s it?” Tarren asked. “She got rid of magic?”
“That she did, for a time,” answered Avriel.
“She viewed it as a curse, and at the time indeed it was,” Zerafin said. “She and all the others had lost their lands, their loved ones, everything they held dear.”
Avriel continued. “She ordered the survivors to rebuild, to remember, and to find peace with the land and each other once again. She promised to watch over all, and to help the pure of heart, and then…”
“And then what? What happened to her? Is she still alive?”
“Yes, she is,” Zerafin said. “She is the oldest living elf, more than thirty thousand years old.”
Tarren’s eyes widened. “Where is she?”
There was a tear upon Avriel’s cheek. “She was within Drindellia. Those thousands of years ago she used all of the power she had taken and took the form of a great tree. By the time of my father she had grown to the height of a mountain-her branches stretched for miles. She was the most beautiful being under the heavens.”
“She became a tree!” Tarren exclaimed.
Whill smiled. “She became a tree.”
“As big as a mountain!” Roakore boomed.
“She became a tree,” Zerafin concurred. “It was under her great branches one autumn day, within the city of Kell, that Mallekell gained Orna Catorna, or enlightenment, for the first time. He said he had achieved through meditation a state of mind that allowed him to reach the mind of Kellallea within the great tree. He had done what the first of the elves had done, what Kellallea herself had done in that ancient and lost time-he had reached a state of mind in which understanding of the universe came to him in a rush of clarity.
“Kellallea had two choices: destroy him, or teach him what she knew, and revive the knowledge and power that had nearly destroyed the elves.”
“What did she do?” Tarren asked, at the edge of his rock.
Roakore threw his arms in the air. “The elves got powers, don’t they, silly boy? What are ye thinking she did? The lady just told us ’bout the age o’ enlightenment.” Avriel smiled at him, as if appreciating the fact that he took interest in her people as she did his. “Yes, she trained him, and he others, and here we are once again, fighting against that which caused the taking of powers, the fight between good and evil rages on.”
“As it will eternally, as it must,” added Zerafin.
Whill sat up. “Eternally, as it must?”
Zerafin looked at Whill. In the firelight his sharp features seemed, for the first time, alien. “Yes, as it must, eternally.”
“Then this fight-these times, me, us-none of it matters?”
“Yes, and no. We are simply forces of nature blessed-or is it cursed? — with thought. The war that wages in your heart, in my heart, upon the beaches of the world, within the clouds, the storms, the disaster, the growth-it is all the same. It is all a small part of the great being.”
Tarren scrunched up his face once again. “Huh?”
Avriel chuckled. “My brother’s spiritual beliefs are hard for many to grasp, thought they are not new to my people. What he is saying, Tarren, and Whill, is that we are but a part of a larger being, the one being.”
Tarren still looked confused. Roakore patted him on the shoulder. “I’m with ye, lad. They lost me at ‘she turned into a tree.’”
The night seemed to rush back in, the air, the sounds, the sights beyond the firelight. A quiet had fallen over the camp during the telling, as if the world hushed to hear the tale of itself.
In that moment Avriel gave Whill a look of utter serenity and profound joy.
Whill stared back at Avriel. The connection he felt that night, to his friends and to the world around him, within him, became his own enlightenment.
With the meal done and clean-up finished, everyone settled into their respective bedrolls for the night. There was still a chance of ambush, and Rhunis wanted all up before the dawn to begin a long day of hard travel. He took the first guard, disappearing into the brush without a sound. The fire now burned to coals, and the stars above shone bright. Avriel and Zerafin had laid enchantments around the camp, or so they said, for Whill knew nothing of such things. Talk had shifted to the many different factions of elves, which enthralled Tarren and Whill alike.
“So you mean there are a buncha different elves? With different powers?” Tarren asked from his bedroll. He lay on his belly, propped up on his elbows and face cradled in his hands.
“Yes, there are many different schools of study for us elves. But not all of us achieve mastery over even one.”
“Not all are like you and Avriel?” Whill asked.
“No, not at all, we have many among us who have not yet excelled in any study of Orna Catorna. Those who have never mastered Orna Catorna number five times the number who have. A course of study in one faction alone can require more than one hundred years.”
Tarren yawned. “So not all elves even have any powers.”
“They do, but not all are masters. Basic teachings are a part of any elf’s childhood education: levitation, psionics-the art of what you call telepathy and the like-healing, and many more.”
Whill was enthralled. He had read nothing about these things in the books he had read. “What are the different schools of study?”
“Hmm. Well, there are healers who”-Whill perked up-“can heal as you do. But not like these creatures. The greatest of healers can heal dozens of others at once, from great distances. To attain such abilities takes hundreds of years of intense study.”
Whill thought of Avriel and must have projected. “Yes, like my sister, who healed you from hundreds of miles away. She is most proficient in healing. As well she might be, with over three hundred years of study.
“There are also the Ralliad, or druids, I suppose you would call them. They are lovers of nature, worshippers of Keye. Once called upon by the ways of the druid, many take the form of animals. They are guardians of nature, and as such they live within it, seldom seen, some never.”
“Gosh,” Tarren said dreamily.
“Then there are the Morenka, or monks. These elves study and worship existence alone, and care not for
