“Mother,” she said suddenly, coldly, “you have to tell them the truth.”
Delu flinched. She cast her daughter a swift, smoldering glance that commanded silence, but it was too late. Her look made it worse, for we all saw plainly that she had something to hide.
“What truth?” demanded my mother sharply.
“I am not permitted to speak of it,” Delu said thickly, keeping her eyes averted from us all. “As my daughter well knows,” she added bitterly.
“You must, Mother,” Alake persisted. “Or will you let them go blindly out to fight an enemy that cannot be defeated?”
“What does she mean, Delu?”
It was my mother again. She was the shortest person there. She is shorter even than I am. I can see her now, side whiskers quivering, chin jutted out, arms akimbo, feet planted firmly on the ground. Delu was tall and willowy; my mother came only to her waist. But, in my memory, it is my mother who stands tall to me that day, tall in her strength and courage.
Delu crumbled, a tree falling to my mother’s blade. The human sorceress sank down onto a low bench, her hands clasping and unclasping in her lap, her head bowed.
“I can’t go into detail,” she said in a low voice, “I shouldn’t be telling you this much, but. . . but . . .” She swallowed, drew a quivering breath. “I’ll try to explain. When a murder has been committed . . .”
(I pause here to note that humans do actually kill their own kind. I know you might find it difficult to believe, but it is the truth. One would think that considering their short life span they would hold life sacred. But no. They kill for the most paltry of reasons, greed, vengeance, and lust being chief among them.)
“When a murder has been committed and the murderer cannot be found,” Delu was saying, “the members of the Coven can—by use of a spell whose very existence I should not now be revealing—gather information about the person who has perpetrated the deed.”
“They can even conjure up an image of the person,” Alake added, “if they find a lock of hair or traces of the murderer’s blood or skin.”
“Hush, child. What are you saying?” her mother reprimanded, but her protest was weak, her spirit crushed.
Alake continued. “A single thread can tell the Coven what the murderer wore. If the crime is recent, the shock of the outrage lingers in the very air and we can draw from it—”
“No, Daughter!” Delu looked up. “That is enough. Suffice it to say that we can conjure an image not only of the murderer but also, for lack of a better term, the murderer’s soul.”
“And the Coven performed this spell in the village?”
“Yes, Husband. It was magic. I was forbidden to tell you.”
Dumaka did not look pleased, but he said nothing. Humans revere magic, hold it in awe and fear. Elves take a more practical view of it, but that may be because elven magic deals with more practical things. We dwarves never saw much point in either. Oh, certainly it saves time and labor, but one has to give up freedom to pay for it. After all, who ever really trusts a wizard? Apparently, not even a spouse.
“And so, Delu, you cast this spell on the beast’s droppings or whatever they left behind.” My mother single-mindedly dragged us all back to the subject at hand. “And just what did you find out about their souls?”
“That they have none,” said Delu.
My mother flung her hands in the air in exasperation, glanced at my father as much as to say they’d wasted their time for nothing. But I knew, from Alake’s expression, that more was coming.
“They have no souls,” Delu continued, fixing her stern gaze on my mother. “Can’t you understand? All mortal beings have souls. Just as all mortal beings have bodies.”
“And it’s the bodies we’re worried about,” snapped my mother.
“What Delu is trying to say,” Alake explained, “is that these serpents have no souls and are, therefore, not mortal.”
“Which means they are immortal?” Eliason stared at the girl in shock. “They can’t be killed?”