The Orphans' War

By Teresa Hubley

The heirs to the throne of the elf kingdom Cuore, the twin princelings and their half-blood brother, are ready to prove themselves when war breaks out. Their tense family standoff, however, must subside for a perilous mission to the goblin country. Peace between them is the only hope for the half-blood’s mortally wounded lady-love and the future of Cuore.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Teresa Hubley
• Release date: Jun 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458009890

Teresa Hubley

Teresa Hubley was born in Minneapolis and moved every couple of years after that, winding up in a handful of small Midwestern towns, suburban California and even west Africa. As an adult, she acquired a doctoral degree in anthropology and has lived most of her life in Maine, where she works in the health field. She usually has too many books to keep track of going at any time on her reading list. Favorite authors include Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster, Agatha Christie, Elizabeth Peters, and Dave Barry. Lunch out with Teresa and her family usually includes the reading of a few pages while the meal is delivered. When she's not reading or writing, she might be drawing, going for a long walk, or sneaking a guilty pleasure moment playing games on her tablet.

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Portents of War

PROLOGUE

A single rider and horse suddenly crashed crazily along at top speed, unheeding of the crowds of elf folk that milled through the narrow streets. The jumbled town, nameless capital of the kingdom of Cuore, was wedged into a natural clearing in the forest and made a poor riding track. The hapless passersby flung themselves aside and immediately averted their eyes. They could see that the rider was in fact The princeling Romanei, one half of the duo set to inherit their throne, and well-known for her intolerance of the common folk. Rather than bow, as custom would require, the crowds turned away, allowing themselves only a buzz of whispers about this invasion of their humble space.

The princeling, exotically dark-skinned against the lighter crowd, was bent intently over the steed, her once neatly pinned hair flapping wildly down her back. Romanei was dressed in full battle gear, the chain link armor and russet cloak of the Cuorian army. She had so tired of the criticisms of her military teacher, Sphyris, that she had abruptly left the practice battlefield. Sphyris’ parting cry still stung in her ears: You will never be fit to command! She turned and turned, ever deeper into the city, now almost lost, panting as hard as her mount.

Romanei was startled by the voice of her twin brother, the princeling Romanel, close at hand, as she slowed and passed through an ancient wooden archway, draped with flowering vines, and into a courtyard. All around her were the back windows of many little houses belonging to wealthy merchants and made of ornately layered wood of various hues. In the center of the clearing stood a much-used stone fountain, in the center of which rose a curious mountain of wet clothing.

What? Romanei squeaked, pulling the reins hard to stop her weary mount. Romanel was just behind her, tucking his long matted hair back behind his ears. Romanei felt sick to her stomach when she saw this hair, even though her brother insisted it was a real warrior’s style. She herself had lately compromised with Sphyris's rule regarding keeping her hair managed had begun twisting and pinning her long hair back in a clasp. At least, she thought, it was clean and neat, unlike her brother’s hair.

Like his sister, Romanel wore chain mail and a russet cloak, but he had added a heavy helmet with a jaunty plume fallen off of his beloved falcon, Onashi. This helm now rested on the saddle before him as he scratched his head.

Romanel huffed, I said, ‘What are you running from?’ You have to learn to control your temper, my sister!

They both dismounted and led their mounts to the water of the fountain to drink.

I see no reason to endure that ignorant immigrant’s uneducated remarks any longer, Romanei rejoined. The brown-skinned and long-eyed Sphyris came from some strange and distant elf country with no trees, a world Romanei could not imagine, almost as desolate and devoid of life as the human lands.

Romanel scooped up some of the grimy looking water that sat in the bottom of the fountain and sipped at it. Romanei grimaced at this gesture. Her eye was drawn upward as Onashi lighted on the pile of clothing which rose out of the middle of the fountain. For the first time, Romanei perceived that a statue lay underneath the clothes and its features were visible in the gaps between the coverings.

He only does as he was trained, Romanel said. Our father fought beside him in the Goblin Wars and he was brave. There must be a reason he was brought to train our army. He must have been a great warrior...

Whatever else Romanel said fell away from Romanei as she took in the face of the statue in the middle of the fountain. Presently, she sprang onto the ledge surrounding the water and removed the drying clothes which hung from the statue’s arms, shoulders and head. An elf woman, dressed in the simple dress and apron of a washer, came forward and threw herself on the ground beside Romanel.

Please, Your Highness, she said. My father will beat me if the customers’ clothes are damaged. I beg your sympathy...

What is this statue? Romanei asked, her heart beating wildly.

The Queen Ruhla, the washer declared. Romanei’s eyes closed a moment as she digested the answer.

And you defile it with your garments? Romanel snapped.

We regard this statue as lucky, the washer woman replied, daring to raise her head. See how smooth the feet are? We rub them to gain some of the statue’s magic.

Romanei stood down and regarded the statue. It was done in a shiny black stone, a reference to the queen’s dark skin. Queen Ruhla was portrayed in the garb of an Arbor priestess, the same basic garb as that worn by the priests, a plain, coarse robe girdled with leather. This was her disguise for the flight to safety that had never come to be. Instead, she had been killed instantly at the approach of the enemy, some said by fright, some said by a mysterious spell which froze her solid. At the feet of the stone queen, an inscription in cumbersome Old Elvish (barely readable to the vaguely literate princelings) read, She that hath given her life for the sake of the throne that it liveth on in her blood.

Clearly moved, the lady princeling remarked, This is the only memorial to our dead mother that I have ever seen....Why is it here, so far away from where the common elves pass, so far away from her family?

They say she...the statue, I mean... brought too many memories and the king banished her, the washer explained, now sitting up on her knees.

Do you know, washer woman, Romanei said, That there is a half-human prince, whose mother was not even an elf as mine was?

I know of him.

And what does my father owe to this creature’s mother that he cares for him? Romanei went on, addressing herself more than anyone.

He says this Della and her father Timothy sheltered us after our mother died, Romanel said.

Romanei turned on her brother quickly, her eyes narrowed. Our mother was his wife. A…a…a full-blooded princess and an elf! She died defending us! Our father pressed the goblins back in her name! Do you feel nothing?

I do not know about you, but I do not remember our mother, nor do I remember Della. It has no bearing on my life.

How will a simpleton like you ever rule? What of Prince Ramordian? Our father’s love for him is dangerous to us!

Remember, Ramordian is a priest now and is cloistered, Romanel told her, his voice rising in confidence. He has not been seen since the day of his commission. Besides...humans will never rule this country. There is no danger, sister! We are too strong! He curled his fist inward and flexed his bicep in further comment.

Hear! Hear! exclaimed the washer, applauding. Both princelings stared at her coldly for a moment. By your leave, Highnesses, she said, her face aflame with embarrassment. I must bring my clothing back.

You will tell all your guild brothers and sisters never to hang clothing here, Romanei barked. On pain of death!

Yes, Your Highness.

The washer bowed deeply.

The princelings turned away from the woman without a backward glance. They mounted and rode their steeds carelessly, trampling some of the washing as they left. The washer woman tearfully gathered her work up as they passed.

We cannot let that be all that remains of our mother, Romanei said.

Romanel sighed. "What then will we do?

Put our strength to the test, brother. See how we hold back the human from his destiny.

Onashi waited until the princelings had passed down the street a ways before she took off from her perch on the statue, with a loud screech, and joined Romanel, settling on the arm he automatically provided.

How? Romanel muttered. His sister grunted in reply.

1

In looking back, every elf present on the day the human and the half-human prince first set foot in their country had some memory of it, whether truly their own or made up of rumor and legend. For the princelings, it was a momentous and calamitous event in a childhood that had already seen the loss of their mother, refugee exile during war, and the sudden rise of their father to the throne. They were engaged with royal tutors the day their strange sibling appeared, distant as usual from the person who represented their only living family up until that time. It was an ordinary day, which is to say one in which their father absorbed himself in the business of his court and elves alone were the source of his concerns.

Their country, Cuore, was a growing power but sat in an obscure corner of the vast, wild forest and rocky coast called Arborland, far from the human lands and even remote from other elvish countries. Cuorians knew humans as those bulky, blundering creatures who insisted on cutting the good forest back and taming it. Elves were the smaller, more nimble cousins of humanity and carried their reverence for the woods that sustained them to every length, insisting that the landscape lived and breathed as a goddess, Arbor. This was her land and their name for it reflected that assurance.

With their basic disagreement about the woodlands, the two peoples, elves and humans, had never come together much. It had, therefore, always been rare to see a human in Arborland, let alone Cuore. This was so even after humans fought beside the elven nations in the wrenching Goblin Wars only a few years back, so brief was the time in which their interests seemed mutual. At the time this human appeared, unheralded and unexpected, few elves of Cuore had ever even seen such a creature and some doubted their existence. They stared and gaped, keeping their distance, as he passed among them, eyes ahead, humming to himself, but grimly, as if very worried.

This one was small for a human (judging by the legends) and struck his observers as very, very old in a way not like unto elves, whose faces were smooth and youthful well into their twilight years. He wore a curl-infested yellowy-white beard, which made him look vaguely like one of the senior elven priests of the temple of Arbor, the only folk around who cultivated hair on their faces (save the king himself). His build was thick and large-limbed compared to that of an elf, and his ears were round instead of tapered. He did not ride, or that would have drawn more attention to him, his human’s mount towering over the small horses of the elves. He walked slowly, his body enveloped in heavy winter robes to ward off the brisk chill, the outer layer tattered and faded from long wear. More than anything, however, it was the sound which perked the sharp ears of the elves, the sound of an infant crying from within the folds of his clothing. The Cuorians about him strained to hear it, some shaking their heads and muttering, Poor little one.

Another matter which made him strange in the eyes of the elves was that this human knew his way, for no human knew the paths of Cuore. The old human’s path led him deliberately to the focus of the nameless little city, the solemn palace of the ruling family, built by the followers of their first king, Mindrilon. The palace sat on a loosely mortared platform of stones and was made of the same odd stones jammed together into a frame made of tree trunks complete with their original layers of bark and a hardened coating of resin. The roof was made of heavy, well polished beams that slanted up and met at the peak. Between the beams lay translucent wedges of stone and amber that let in murky shafts of light.

At the intricately scrolled gates of the royal palace, the human paused and raised his knobby hand to the bell. A portal opened in answer to the bell, revealing a palace guard in a polished suit of mail. The guard peered through one shaded eye at the human before him, and asked him in the common elven tongue what he sought. All around the old human, the ears of the elves in the street were bent towards the sound of the words he would speak.

In a deep voice speaking an Elven heavily accented but fluent, the elderly human said, I require an audience with the king.

The guard straightened up in surprise and said, There is no protocol for an audience with a human. You will have to wait.

You may send his majesty the message that Timothy waits to see him, the old human replied. The name meant nothing to those who strained to overhear the old human’s words. The guard had no reaction either, other than a faint scowl of indignation at the creature’s assured tone.

The guard retreated, closing the portal. Timothy hopped from one foot to another to warm himself as he waited and to calm the tiny one still crying within his wraps. The old human shushed the child and stole glances at the muddy streets around him and the curious throng. Despite the adequate fare of the market, there was a hunger Timothy spied in their eyes, a look he knew well from the times of war which had swept both their lands in recent history. Just as the old human’s nose was beginning to feel very numb, the guard returned and said softly, You may pass.

Timothy passed the guard and hurried across a barren courtyard and into the storied maze of the palace. Humans spoke little of the place, so mysterious to those outside Arborland, but Timothy remembered the legend from the hushed fireside talks of wartime in his house in the humanlands. His mind’s eye could still bring forth the weary, homesick faces of fugitive elves as they spoke with reverence of ancient Cuore, cradle of civilization in the forest world.

He recalled from those weary tales that the halls of the immense palace of Cuore had been built generations ago by the founder of this elven country, the great hero Mindrilon, to honor his wife, Umbriel, who ruled after his death. Every hall, it was said, led to the audience chamber of the king. Every corner echoed the deep woods in colors and materials. True to the legend, Timothy emerged without a lost moment from the orderly network of passageways at the door which led to the audience chamber. The door was massive, even on a human scale, and came from a tree with blood-red shaded wood.

Timothy knocked lightly and was admitted to the warmer audience chamber by two young elf women holding long, curving trumpets made of an animal’s horn, which they blew in one short blast after a nod and a bow to the human. They were dressed in formless robes of green and wore circlets of fresh violet wood rose on their heads. The pages’ expressions were neutral, accepting of the strange one.

Timothy’s eye was drawn, after a whispered show of polite gratitude to these maidens, up the center of the large, vaulted audience room to behold the king, seated on a dazzlingly ornate dais. Though goblins had once occupied and defiled this palace, Olyth had clearly built it back with as much grandeur as he could manage. The stone floor was laid with the green and blue carpets made by the priestly order of the kingdom and the great hall gleamed with polish. Oyth sat on a throne of carved and painted wood that displayed scenes from the early days of the kingdom featuring Queen Umbriel.

Olyth rose with the words, Let the human pass forward. Remember what his kind has done to deserve our gratitude.

The elves who crowded the audience chamber were the regular courtiers, the descendants of officers, merchants and close advisors to the first king, Mindrilon. Although commoners were welcome during regular audience periods, they often shivered to the glares and whispers of the noble-born and the king’s kind but condescending manner. Any stranger was usually treated in the same manner as the humble-born of Cuore. With Olyth’s command to welcome the stranger, however, the courtiers heeded the words of their king, dropping their harsh stares and moving politely aside for the elderly human as he worked his way forward to the foot of the dais.

The elven king Olyth was small, compared to the human Timothy, and had a long, ovaline face. As with many elves, his age was hard for the human to judge. The eyes of the King were golden brown, his wavy hair a golden red, his nose soft and flat. His chin was ringed by a sparse beard. He wore a heavy crown made of the tusk of an ocean animal but otherwise was dressed as a soldier of the realm, in the uniform of the soldier, a tunic crested with the form of the prowling wolf. The sword and hammer symbolic of high military rank hung from his belt.

He smiled slightly at Timothy as the old human bowed in a stiff and abbreviated gesture. Sira Timothy. It has been all too long since I shared your amiable company. What brings you here?

The crowd of courtiers drew back, dumbstruck and breathless that this tall, fearsomely bearded creature could be an acquaintance of their king.

Your Majesty, Olyth said, My country has changed much since you traveled through it. There are bandits in the countryside and our government cannot contain its army. I am here to demand you refuge, for I am growing old and no one will remain to care for my family.

I understand, and I am grateful for the refuge your kind gave my children during the war, but you will find this is a charmed place, small and fiercely traditional. We are a very insular people and this has been our strength. I must think about this.

There is more. I bring you my grandson, Ramordian, son of my only daughter, Della, whom you will remember from your stay at my estate.

With great care, Timothy unwrapped the child, cradled snugly in a sling against his breast. The infant human wore a crocheted cap of home-dyed threads, spun from goat’s hairs, and only this cap and his tiny round face were visible. The elven courtiers pressed close to view the tiny one, having never seen a human baby. They regarded it from a safe, invisibly drawn uniform distance, leaning toward the pair in fascination but with eyes round in fear, as if Timothy had brought a live goblin to court.

Olyth said, And where is your daughter, Sira?

I do not know. She is a wanderer and she has left us again. I can wait no longer. This child needs protection and a stable home. The humanlands have grown too dangerous for us.

What do you ask for?

Only protection. Only a home. It need not be close. I am asking the hand of the crown to provide us with support, with food and clothing...with a home. I ask no more.

There was an explosion of gasps, hisses and whispers, but they fell away suddenly at the cry of a gentle courtier, who braved a touch upon the infant and withdrew in shock. Her probing fingers had pulled the little cap aside, and revealed the delicate ears of the little one. The ladies and gentlemen of the court drew closer than ever, brushing Timothy’s body and submerging him in a sea of poking elbows and hands. They all stared intently at the baby, as if to see its mystery.

Your Majesty… one courtier began.

Yes, the King sighed in a resigned tone, stepping forward for a closer look. He is part elf.

It was the ears of the infant, pointed as elves’ ears are which had drawn so much attention. The infant’s long eyes were golden.

He is my son, I am certain, Olyth declared. Or this human would not have brought him to us and laid so bold a request at our feet.

Timothy gave a curt nod in reply. The majority of the courtiers were rapt in the wonder over the appearance of a new prince, smiling and pink cheeked, giving little cries of pleasure, but some regarded the king with a wrinkled brow.

And how did this come to pass? a courtier muttered, overheard by the king. Somewhere else the name of the departed Queen Ruhla was whispered.

Olyth brushed his courtiers aside to take the child in his arms. Many kings would not admit the existence of such a child but he is my responsibility. I will not give you my reasons. I will tell you only that the mother of this child was of the people who protected my own children after Cuore fell to the goblins and my wife and father were killed. We owe her kind a debt for preserving our royal line.

The response to this admission was not of one accord. Many courtiers smiled and seemed almost proud of their king’s statement. Others took up once again the hissing that had greeted Timothy’s original request.

He is HUMAN! They are both humans! gasped a portly and strident courtier, shoving her more passive peers aside to eye the king directly. This is a matter of the humans. Let them manage their own affairs and leave us to rebuild our kingdom. This will bring us nothing but trouble.

He is elven too, your grace, ventured a wizened old one, ambiguous in gender, leaning heavily on a bronze staff, and addressing the woman who had just spoken. He is as much our child as he is of humans.

He is half human, the first courtier replied. And if he is recognized as prince, he may someday rule! We cannot have an alien king. Our culture and our society are at stake! Cuore for elves! This is our country. We have bled for it!

His life may be at stake, Timothy said. I plead with you to be a more tolerant people than we humans.

But he is no ordinary child! protested the strident courtier, her voice lustily booming through the great vaulted hall. He was born of the filthy human world that does not keep the Goddess nor any of her kin. This human world spurns our nurturing Arbor in its greed to exploit us all. It is strange and evil magic that birthed him and brought him to your doorstep. I urge you to deny him.

He is no stranger to you, Cuore, Olyth boomed in his most kingly tone. He holds the blood of Mindrilon and Umbriel, even as my two elf children do! He is my son even as much as the princeling Romanel. From this day forward, Prince Ramordian, you will live a protected life in the kingdom of Cuore at palace expense and you will want for nothing.

Ramordian, for his part, yawned and went to sleep.

2

Timothy’s little house was quietly given without the usual ceremony found in the court of Cuore. Olyth explained to his children, the twin Princelings Romanei and Romanel, that he did not wish any further disruptions at court and felt that Timothy deserved at least this one gesture towards his need for privacy. To the princelings, who were thus deprived of