Chapter 37

  The lodge was not far from Dava’s home, but by the time Dalex and his host were in sight of the building carved into the canyon wall, Dalex was wishing he had asked to postpone this discussion until the morning. He was wiped out from a day of flying back and forth across Batulan-bar. To add to that, several of the naughty humans he had dealt with had tried to kill him. They hadn’t come close—none of them had even taken a tenth of a point off his armor durability—but it had required some cognitive load and exertion to subdue them without killing them.

  As usual, Yesui was staffing the reception area of the lodge when Dalex and Dava walked between the pillars into the main hall. Dalex wondered if she ever took a day off. As soon Yesui recognized him, the fox-eared hunter gave Dalex a death glare that could wilt fresh lettuce. He spotted Metsa and her son sitting together in one of three couches in a shallow pit at the edge of the hall. He walked quickly over to them before Yesui got it in her head to come dress him down for stirring up the city.

  To his shock, as Dalex got closer to the couch, he noticed Hitasa was with them on a second couch. The last time he had checked her position on the map, she had been elsewhere in the city. The full stack of paper he had given her that morning rested somewhat askew on a table between the couches. A few leaflets looked dirty and maybe even wet.

  The three elves were sipping tea. Again, Dalex felt guilty for keeping tabs on Hitasa. It was probably safe to stop tracking her location, though he didn’t think there was any harm in letting the {charm of protection} hang around her for the time being.

  Dava raised a hand in greeting to his fellow hunters, “Ho, Metsa. Ho, Staja. It is well to see you again, too, Hitasa.”

  Metsa smiled at Dava, but when her eyes fell on Dalex they took on an air of suspicion. “I had not expected to see either of you until tomorrow.”

  “I know that is what we agreed to,” Dava said, “but, given our new friend’s activities today, I thought it best not to delay any further. I figured you would still be awake.”

  Metsa’s gaze slowly slipped from Dalex and back to her party’s leader. “I had considered going to see you tonight myself.” She gestured to the empty third couch. “Please, join us.”

  Dalex and Dava sat down on opposite ends of the couch. Dava and Metsa exchanged a quick whispered conversation. While he waited for them to finish, Dalex leaned toward Hitasa and asked, “How are you feeling?”

  She gave him a slight smile. “I am well. It has been good to talk to Metsa and Sitoa.”

  Dalex deliberately did not check her status to see her mental health condition. He indicated the stack of pamphlets. “Have you given any away yet?”

  She nodded. “One.” Her eyes flicked to Metsa. Somehow, Hitasa’s expression appeared satisfied. A moment later, Metsa gestured for Dava to take one of the pamphlets himself. He reached over and grabbed one off the top of the stack. Hitasa’s smiled deepened. “Two.”

  Dava read quietly and Metsa’s eyes fell back on Dalex. “I was just telling Hitasa a little more about myself. I asked her not to pass this information on to you, and she agreed. However, Dava, who I trust with my life, has suggested that I hold nothing back from you. He sees something in you. I may see it as well, but it is a hard thing to trust a human. Almost impossible. If I had not spent a day with you or heard about your deeds in Batulan-bar today, I would not dare risk telling you a thing.”

  She crossed her legs and leaned back into the couch. “But Hitasa trusts you, and Dava seems to want to do the same.”

  Dalex felt a little proud hearing from someone else that Hitasa trusted him. The elf herself turned red hearing Metsa talk on her behalf, her cheeks flushing in what Dalex assumed was mostly irritation.

  “Before I say any more,” Metsa continued, “what do you already know, Dalex of the Expedition Seven?”

  Dalex blew out his breath in thought. “Nothing really. Only guesses. It seems to me Dava doesn’t like the way things are going on Gaia Eta. He’s frightened by the things I did today, but he doesn’t want me to stop. He shows you a lot of sympathy and deference, so I assume you and he get along and that he likes elves.”

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  He paused and then said, “And you two clearly have a secret. At this point, I assume you were plotting some kind of rebellion against humans and dragons before I came along, and, now that I’m here, you want my help.”

  “Rebellion is a strong word,” Metsa said. “As is resistance, but that is what we call our movement. There are so few of us, and there is little to be done in the face of the overwhelming power of the dragons. The control they exert through humans is nearly absolute. Two days ago, I would not have dreamed of having this conversation, even in the relative safety of our lodge. I would have assumed it would lead to rapid discovery and capture. Before you arrived, we thought of progress in terms of hundreds of years. We planned for our children’s children’s children to take up a true mantle of rebellion.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “But now you are here, and you have cleared Batulan-bar of the Wolf Brigade and laid our human rulers low. There are still watchers who would report a meeting such as this to the Office of Elven Compliance, but, thanks to you, there is no one to do anything about it.”

  Dalex glanced at Yesui and then went back to Metsa. “Don’t tell me.”

  “No, Yesui is not likely to be an informant for the Wolf Brigade, but there are others who will have noticed the five of us gathered here tonight.”

  Dalex sighed in relief. Even if Yesui didn’t like him, he found her charming. He didn’t want her to be an agent of the wicked dragons. But knowing the city was filled with eyes and ears working for the dragons added to his exhaustion. The humans could be spotted and dealt with without too much trouble. Beastkin and elven collaborators would not be so easy.

  Metsa went on, “Your presence, Dalex of the Expedition Seven, changes everything. Your dislike for your own kind and your willingness to confront them is abnormal. I have met quite a few humans in my years, and none have been like you.”

  “And,” Dava interjected, “you have power to rival a dragon’s. With you on our side, we could move our timetable forward into this generation. Under your protection, our movement could grow quickly.”

  “What exactly are your goals?” Dalex asked. “Overthrowing draconic rule sounds like a lengthy and dangerous endeavor, even with my help.”

  “That is what we eventually hope to accomplish,” Metsa said, “but to begin with, we want to control the Waterfall Portal in Ulenbeter.”

  Dalex sat up. Hitasa had mentioned Waterfall Portals before, saying they were the only way to travel between the many worlds of Gaia. “I am interested in the portal as well.”

  “Then we are aligned,” Dava said, but Metsa’s lips creased in an ever so slight frown. If she took some issue with his interest, she did not say so.

  “If we control the Waterfall Portal,” Metsa said, “we can prevent Wolf Brigade reinforcements and even dragons from coming to Gaia Eta.”

  “Are there not currently any dragons on this world?”

  Metsa shook her head. “They find Gaia Eta uncomfortable. We do not know why. I have always thought it is because this is the home world of the elves. In ancient times, before our great defeat, no other race was allowed to set foot on Gaia Eta.”

  Dalex kept a good poker face, but this little bit of history set off a small alarm in his head. He had guessed the history of this realm was complicated and wondered if maybe there was very old and very bad blood between the races of Gaia. Maybe a world solely for elves hadn’t been a controversial living arrangement in the past, but it also might have been indicative of something shady.

  Still, that didn’t matter in the here and now. Given the dragon’s restrictions on elven ages, no elf alive had been involved in any past conflict, and the current elves were in dire need of help.

  “Capturing the portal seems like a viable strategy,” Dalex said. “Are there no other methods of travel between worlds?”

  “Not that we know of,” Dava said. “There are rumors, but none worth pursuing.”

  “I am relatively certain the dragon gods can travel between worlds without the portal,” Metsa added, “but they are slow, and it will take quite a disturbance to make them leave their hoards. Even cutting them off from Gaia Eta probably would not be enough to move them.”

  Dalex settled back into the couch. “One way in and one way out, then. Does the portal only go to Gaia Zeta or does it connect to all of the Seven World of Gaia?”

  “Only to Gaia Zeta,” Dava said. “The Waterfall Portals are a chain between worlds. On Gaia Eta, there is one portal to Gaia Zeta. On Gaia Zeta there are two portals, one to Gaia Eta and another connected to Gaia Epsilon. The chain continues to Gaia Alpha and the world of the dragons.”

  “And do you want to control Gaia Eta’s portal, or would it make more sense to destroy it?” Dalex asked. “I imagine it will take a lot of work to keep control of the portal, but I could probably pop over to the city tomorrow and blow it up.”

  Dava gave a small laugh. “The Waterfall Portals are indestructible. Not even the dragon gods together have that kind of power.”

  Dalex tilted his head from side to side as if considering a counter argument, but he decided to keep it to himself. If the portals were made of the same matter as the rest of the realm, he was pretty sure his Benefactors had access to a weapon that could destroy it. But it might be the kind of weapon that would explode all of Gaia Eta at the same time.

  “Even if the Waterfall Portal could be destroyed,” Metsa said, “I would not want that. There are many elves in captivity on the other worlds. Our movement is for all elven kind, not just the people of Gaia Eta.”

  “I can get behind that,” Dalex said. “Then what about the city around the portal, Ulenbeter? What kind of defenses does it have?”

  Metsa opened her mouth to respond, but then she paused and sniffed the air. Her eyes darkened and her mouth twisted into a grimace. “I smell a demon.”

  At which point Balgoth the Boiler walked between the columns into the main hall holding her notebook, and all hell broke loose.

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