‘You must be a stranger to these parts, my friend,’ said the voice. A powerful hand gripped his arm, hauling him upright. In the moonlight the hunter’s hair seemed to glint with flecks of steel, and his pale grey eyes shone like silver.
‘I am indeed,’ Duvodas told him. ‘I am a … minstrel. I would be pleased to sing you a song, or tell a story in return …’
‘You don’t need to sing,’ said the man. ‘Come, we have food and a warm cabin.’
The memory lifted his spirits and he walked on, coming to the cabin just after noon. It was as he remembered it, long and low beneath a roof of turf, though the second section built for the children had now weathered in, losing its newness and blending with the old. The door was open.
Duvodas strode through the vegetable patch and entered the cabin. It was dark inside, but he heard a groan and saw the hunter lying naked on the floor by the hearth. Moving to him, Duvodas knelt. The man’s skin was hot and dry, and black plague boils had erupted on his neck, armpits and groin; one had split, and the skin was stained with pus and blood. Leaving him, Duvodas moved to the first of the back rooms. The hunter’s wife was unconscious in the bed; her face was fleshless, and she too had the plague. Duvodas opened the door to the new section. When last he had been here the couple had only one child, a boy of nine. There were three youngsters in the room, two young girls and an infant boy all in one bed. The boy was
dead, the two girls fading fast. Duvodas pulled back the blanket covering them.
Duvodas unwrapped his harp and returned to the main room. His mouth was dry, his heart beating fast. Pulling up a chair he sat in the centre of the room, closed his eyes, and sought the inner peace from which all magic flowed. His breathing deepened. He had learned much in his time among the Eldarin but, being human, healing magic had never come easily to him. The power was born of tranquillity and harmony, twin skills that Man could never master fully.
‘Your veins are full of stimulants to violent activity,’ Ranaloth had told him, as they sat beneath the shadow of the Great Library. ‘Humans are essentially hunter-killers. They glory in physical strength and heroism. This is not in itself evil, you understand, but it prepares the soul for potential evil. The human is ejected from the mother, and its first instinct is to rage against the violation of its resting place in the womb.’
‘We can learn, though, Master Ranaloth. I have learned.’
‘You have learned,’ agreed the old man. ‘As an individual, and a fine one. I do not see great hope for your race, however.’
‘The Eldarin were once hunter-killers,’ argued Duvodas.
‘That is not strictly true, Duvo. We had – and we retain – a capacity for violence in defence of our lives. But we have no lust for it. At the dawn of our time, so our scientists tell us, we hunted in packs. We killed our prey and ate it. At no time, however, did we take part in random slaughter as the humans do.’
‘If you hold the humans in such low regard, sir, why is it that the Eldarin invest the rivers with magic, keeping the humans free of disease and plague?’
‘We do it because we love life, Duvo.’
‘And why not tell the humans about the enchantment in the water? Would they not then lose their hatred of you?’
‘No, they would not. They would disbelieve us and hate us the more. Now, once more, try to reach the purity of Air Magic.’
Duvodas dragged his mind from the warmth of his memories now and gazed down at the hunter. Without the healing waters, plague and disease had ripped across the land. Lifting the harp, his fingers touched the strings, sending out a series of light, rippling notes. The scent of roses in bloom filled the cabin, rich and heady. Duvodas continued to play, the music swelling. A golden light radiated from his harp, bathing the walls, flowing through doorways, sending dancing shadows on the low ceiling. Dust motes gleamed in the air like tiny diamonds, and the atmosphere in the cabin – moments before pungent with the smell of disease – became fresh, clean and sharp as the breeze of spring.