1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of ... (#6)

Marsdenfel

A/N: I noticed an accident in an earlier scene, calling Tully Berthen's great-grandmother. She's his grandmother, not great-grandmother. She had Onlé, who had him.

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The labyrinth of caverns that make up most of Marsdenfel are mapped now, or at least the ones in use are. The others are slowly being added, and Berthen's careful that those assigned to map-making are distant and distracted enough to hinder them noticing (or confirming) there's too much labyrinth for the mountains they're presumably in.

The fact that Marsdenfel usurps terrain beyond its borders is one reason they were never mapped before the realm fell to Grehafen's rule. It's magic, part of whatever the Crystal did when the Bynd was made, but it could be easily misunderstood as part of the imperialism that brought elves to these shores to begin with.

Not all elves had stolen land from the natives, but the other thieves had been fringe groups, small communes seeking to expand outside the boundaries of larger realms. The elves had barrelled in on others' territory as an empire—one that claimed lands nobody else wanted, where food wouldn't live or grow without the elven magic, but in doing so made itself oh-so-helpful and influential where it landed.

The Surrenians weren't the only ones who gave the ostensibly benign imperialism the side-eye. They were just the only group large and vicious enough to ensure elves never got a foothold in their lands to begin with.

Or such was commonly believed, at least.

Berthen traced the...troubling...part of then cave map with a finger, almost wishing he'd kept some of the non-elves in the realm, just to have someone to send out and confirm where these various caves of Marsdenfel ended up. Dakadza might've been a good choice, except he was likely to survive for centuries, and who knew if he'd keep his discretion once he better understood what he could gain, if he auctioned it?

'Always assuming the worst,' Malor would say with a chuckle, running a finger down the bridge of Berthen's nose as if he knew how well touch could anchor a survivor. Maybe he did. Berthen had never asked, and now he never would get a chance to.

He never dared chance to. He hated his predecessor too much for the recklessness that had enabled his assassination, saddling Berthen with this mess.

A bristle of sound tickles his skin. Milkweed brushes against his tongue—his great-grandmother's scent.

"What?" he snaps, even before turning around with a scowl.

Ethen's age-whisped white hair looks apt to break, but her skin is smooth, reinforced by her affinity for the creatures that live in people and keep them healthy. No one's ever told Berthen if her son shared that magic, but his mother didn't. Ethen had shared the family's knowledge about healing with that granddaughter anyway, knowing that Onlé would use it in ways that she wouldn't or couldn't.

Ethen had taken Onlé from her parents because her son and the girl he'd impregnated had been children, themselves, and Tully's father was nobody to be trusted with an opportunity to control a child.

She'd taken him because Onlé had never admitted who his father was, just that the male had been murdered like so many of Marsdenfel during their enslavement, and Onlé herself had played a fool so the king controlling them wouldn't realize what she was.

This great-grandmother, Ethen, had thus raised him, surviving even where the slavery had destroyed her children and grandchildren. After Marsdenfel gained its freedom, King Leathin had adopted him, but she'd seen him through his vulnerable years, done what she had to so he survived to today.