Hunger had again driven him to desperate measures, and he was digging through a refuse pile on the fringes of a human village when two women drew near. Their approach nearly sent him fleeing back into the predawn forest, but they ignored the ragged, cowled figure squatting beside the trash. They continued on their way and never interrupted their conversation.
“They bought another one?” said one, disbelieving.
The other woman nodded vigorously. “Emalen and her husband bought another slave, an elf who was actually in Qualinost when it was destroyed! He can read and write, so they set him to keeping the tavern books. He ran away once so Brand had to hamstring him…
The two women passed out of earshot. For a long moment, he couldn’t move, frozen by the casual, callous horror embodied in those few sentences.
He forced himself to approach a dwarf peddler and ask of Qualinost. The dwarf’s laconic account of the city’s destruction took his breath away. Had he heard it from anyone else, he would not have believed it, but dwarves did not exaggerate. Qualinost was no more.
He needed to see with his own eyes the fate of his city. And so he did. From a hilltop a mile away he looked down on the place that once had been his home and saw its mutilation as the crushing mirror image of his own. Gone were the towers, the elegant homes, the vibrant greenery. Lost were the lives of countless elves, extinguished in the very instant of liberation. Qualinost had been freed, only to face its doom. What remained was submerged beneath a foul lake, with the rotting corpse of a dragon at its heart, like a poisoned blade in a sunken grave.
The light beneath the trees changed subtly as another day drew to a close, the sun descending in the west. A fat cicada droned down the empty path, weaving from side to side on unsteady wings. Exhausted, it landed near his left foot. The insect was enormous, twice the size of the elf’s thumb, with wet, gauzy wings folded awkwardly across its back. It struggled through the dry moss, heading inexorably for his foot. When the cicada was an inch away, the elf moved. He lifted his foot and held it steady as a stone, waiting for the turgid insect to crawl beneath.
“Don’t!”
To his left stood an old man leaning on a tall blackthorn staff. He wore the remnants of priestly garb-robe, sash, and stole all grimy with age and inattention. His short white hair stood out from his head in all directions. He pointed a stubby finger at the foot still poised to crush the cicada and repeated, “Don’t!”
Without turning his masked head, the elf said, “Why not?” in a voice as dry as the litter covering him. “It’s dying anyway.”
“Its life is not yours to take.”
The old human came closer, walking slowly with the aid of his staff. “That cicada has spent seventeen years asleep below the ground. It’s been awake only a few days, but in that time it found a female, fought off rivals, and mated. Having fulfilled its purpose, it can only die.”
“Then why not kill it? Further existence now is pointless.” The cicada was just entering the footprint etched into the moss. The foot still hovered above it.
“Stay! Every act has a consequence. Can you know what will happen if you kill without cause?”
He hesitated then lowered his foot behind the struggling insect.
“Another useless life spared.”
Grunting loudly with effort, the old fellow seated himself on the slate ledge. “No life is useless. Each is a gift from the gods,” he said, smiling.
“You talk like a priest.”
The old man inclined his head, acknowledging the truth. He produced a hide waterskin from his robe and offered it. Receiving no response, he refreshed himself.
“You’ve been here awhile. Are you waiting for something?”
The elf was indeed waiting for something, for the same thing that soon would find the exhausted cicada. His lack of response did not discourage the priest. The old man took another swig and asked another question.
“Where does this road go?”
“Nowhere.”
A droplet of red wine clung to the corner of the priest’s mouth. “I thought it led to Qualinost.”
For the first time the elf’s granite façade was breached. He flinched as if struck. “There is no Qualinost! Nothing remains but a fetid lake of death!”
“That must be a sight.”
The elf laughed, a painful, throat-tearing sound. Yes, it was a sight, a sight to turn the heart to stone and shrivel the stomach with despair.
He pushed away those thoughts and tried to retreat again into unfeeling immobility, but his attention was caught by the cicada at his feet. It had been found by the ants. They circled the ailing behemoth, tapping it with their antennae. It ignored them, struggling onward. Satisfied by the cicada’s lack of hostility, the ants seized the larger insect by its legs, each tugging it in a different direction. The result was stalemate; the cicada twitched in place, neither advancing nor retreating. The situation did not persist. Organizing themselves, the ants swarmed over the still-living cicada and dismembered it. They severed the wings one at a time, passing them to comrades, who discarded them in the litter beside the path, then fell to butchering their prey, snipping off its legs and peeling open its soft belly.
“So much for mercy,” he sneered.
“You take the wrong lesson. Crushed underfoot, the cicada would be wasted. This way, it will feed the ants for many days.”
The priest’s voice had changed. Gone was the genial, fatherly objectivity. So different was his tone the elf finally turned and took a good look at him. A chaplet of leaves rested on his head. Brown things clung to the front of his moss-green robe. They looked like leather pouches-until they moved.
“Consider the ants, not the solitary cicada,” the priest went on in the same instructive tone. “They are tiny but many. Birds and spiders reap them by the score, but their colony survives. Working together for a common goal, they overcome far larger enemies. Only when they lose cohesion, with each pulling for its own sake, do they fail.”
The elf shifted position, sitting more upright and folding his arms across his chest. Between gloved hands and robed arms, his wrists showed wasted, scarlet skin.
“Who are you, human?” he demanded. “Do you know me?”
“We’ve never met.”
“But you lecture me as though you have some right!”
The old man smiled disarmingly, showing stained, crooked teeth. “Perhaps I do.” His friendly expression hardened into something sterner. “But it hardly requires magic to recognize your state. You stink of self-pity and despair. You came here to brood and die, didn’t you?”
Goaded at last into action, the elf sprang to his feet. The debris of many days fell in a dusty rain at his feet. By reflex, his hand went to his hip but found only air. His sword was long gone, a melted strip of scrap metal.
“It’s no business of yours! Leave me be!” he rasped.
One of the brown things clinging to the front of the priest’s robe stirred, spreading small leathery wings—a bat. His chest was covered with live bats. The human stroked the tiny animal with the back of one finger. His manner undergoing yet another lightning shift, he inquired kindly, “How long since you ate or drank?”
The elf couldn’t say. The priest reached into his robe and withdrew a packet wrapped in waxed parchment. He parted the flaps. The packet contained a heap of pearl-colored disks, each thinner than the parchment enclosing them.
The elf breathed in sharply, astonished. The small disks were honeydew wafers, impossibly delicate sweets made from honey produced by the silver bees of Silvanesti, mixed with crystal dew and flower pollen. The confections traditionally were eaten at weddings, births, and other festive occasions. None outside Silvanost knew the secret of their creation. He had eaten them only once before in his life. Not only did the decrepit human have honeydew wafers, but they looked and smelled freshly made.