Titch pressed his lips together to hold on to the last of his air. He stuck his hand in the front pocket of his jerkin. The cold water numbed his fingers and he struggled to pull out the contents. The bony hands clawing at him didn’t help, either.

He took out a fist of fruit pits and seeds and threw them, the water slowing his movements so they spread out in front of him and floated away.

He had spent the afternoon trying to emulate Davidor’s success at baiting one of those monster fish. Cherries, plums, apricots—he had eaten more fruit in one afternoon than he normally would in a week, but nothing had worked. He hoped this time he’d fare better. More bony hands closed around his feet and ankles.

The pig-snouted fish came barrelling in to claim their prize, smashing the Undead out of the way. The fish fought amongst themselves, churning up the water and preventing the Undead from keeping their grip on Titch.

***

Igail leaned over the side of the bridge, desperately searching for signs of her brother. He was a good swimmer, why hadn’t he come up? She was on the verge of jumping in after him when she saw a figure rapidly surfacing. She turned around and grabbed Tas’s cloak.

“Sorry, Gramps,” she said as she pulled it off him. “Need to borrow this.”

She dropped the cloak over the side, keeping hold of one end. It just about reached the water. Titch broke the surface, splashing about and gasping for air. His flailing hand caught hold of the cloak.

“Hang on,” Igail called down. She pulled on the cloak with all her might, slowly lifting her brother, but the cloak began to slip from her fingers. Tas’ hand grabbed the cloak and with one sharp yank, Titch was hauled up. He landed on the bridge in a coughing, spluttering heap.

She knelt down and grabbed him by the shoulders, turning him one way then the other. Once she had confirmed he wasn’t injured, she started hitting him. “You idiot! What did you do that for?”

“Ah,” said Tas. “Maybe now’s not the best time to—”

“Hey, cut it out.” Titch rolled away from her and sat up. “Look what I got.” He held up the ring. The green gem at its centre flickered with malevolent energy.

Tas plucked the ring from Titch’s hand and examined it, his face lit up by both the green glow and his own fascination. He looked to the far end of the meadow where another green glow flickered in perfect synchronicity. “Hm, I see. This controls the gate, allowing the Undead to travel here.”

“How do we destroy it?” asked Igail. “A powerful ring like that must require a great—”

Tas dropped the ring and stamped on it. The green gem cracked and the glow disappeared with a pop.

“Or not,” said Igail.

The matching glow from across the meadow disappeared at the same time, accompanied by a sound more like thunder.

Titch got to his feet and walked along the bridge.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Igail called after him.

Titch stopped and bent down to pick up the long, slender finger lying on the ground.

***

Gart and Fen fought alongside their mother, chopping down the Undead as they appeared through the portal. The boom when the portal closed would have been deafening, if they hadn’t already been deafened by the giant bat.

The last Undead was caught half in half out as the portal vanished, slicing it down the middle. One leg, one arm and the front of his torso flopped around on the ground.

Roona turned to survey the battlefield. The bat had flown off leaving the blinded Undead as easy marks for the 1st Legion. It was only a matter of time until the last of the enemy were hacked to pieces. She turned her attention to the bridge and her highly tuned mother’s intuition told her something had happened. She leapt on her horse and rode away at full tilt.

“WHERE’S SHE GOING?” yelled Gart.

“I THINK MY HEARING’S COMING BACK,” shouted Fen. “DID YOU SAY SOMETHING?”

“WHAT?” said Gart.

Roona raced through the last of the Undead, past the Elven soldiers and onto the bridge. Ahead she could see Tas Tel Muir Ley and Igail, and Titch sat on the ground, soaked to the skin. She leapt off the horse before it had even come to a stop and ran to her son.

“He’s fi—” was as far as Igail got before Roona threw a glance so fierce Igail recoiled from its intensity, stumbling backwards.

“Hey, guess what—” was as far as Titch got before Roona swept him up, half-carrying, half-dragging him through the archway.

Even inside The Vale, Roona didn’t slow down. She hurried past crowds of gathered Elven who had become aware of the danger on their doorstep. She barked orders at the soldiers trying to maintain order, sending them off to deliver messages and summon help.

Her destination was the Banquet Hall, a giant room filled with long tables where feasts were held. More importantly, it contained a large fire that was permanently ablaze.

Roona finally released her grip on Titch and put him down uncomfortably close to the dancing flames. She started to strip off his clothes.

“I can do that! No, don’t! Mother, please!”

Titch’s protests were ignored. Clothes were peeled off and handed to the waiting Elven attendants who had come as instructed bearing blankets and salves. She turned him around and lifted his arms and legs to better inspect them, and applied ointments to scratches left by skeletal hands.

His underwear was whipped off, much to his obvious embarrassment, and his private areas were also thoroughly examined. Red-faced and on the verge of tears he gave up resisting and allowed his mother to do as she wished in front of these strangers.

Having made certain there were no serious injuries or signs of infection, Roona wrapped a blanket around Titch, finally returning a little of his dignity. Then she put her arms around him, pulled his face into her bosom, and held him in an unbreakable embrace.

She stayed like that, holding her youngest in front of the enormous fireplace, until her heart decided to stop trying to smash its way through her ribcage. She leaned back and looked down at her son and realised he had fallen asleep. The sensation of his soft breathing on her chest brought a rush of nostalgia and tears fell from her eyes as she placed her cheek on top of his head.

***

After Gart and Fen helped with clearing the last of the Undead, the Legion finally returned to The Vale, their reception even more jubilant than the one planned.

Gart and Fen were informed of their mother’s location. Exhausted, covered in mud and much more unpleasant substances, the two boys made their way to the Banquet Hall. Even though they had both spent the first few years of their lives in The Vale, neither had eaten in that place nor partaken in any of the feasts regularly held there. They had never been invited.

They found their mother sitting at one end of a long table with Titch beside her, wearing a blanket like a skirt pulled up to his armpits. A wide range of dishes were spread out in front of them. Roona attempted to feed various items to Titch while he ducked and weaved, doing his best to let them nowhere near his mouth.

Gart and Fen stood looking at the food, both their stomachs rumbling with hunger, neither making a move to eat anything.

“Sit down and eat,” said Roona.

They sat on the opposite side of the table to Roona and Titch, and poked the food like it might rise from the dead and attack them. Not entirely impossible considering their night so far. It all looked very appetising. Neither Gart or Fen were fooled. They expected it to taste horrible, and they weren’t disappointed.

“Yeech,” said Gart through a mouthful of chicken. “How can you make chicken taste this bad? It’s chicken!”

Fen winced as he bit into a potato. “They still haven’t figured out salt is meant to be a seasoning, not a main dish.”

Elven cooking had a propensity to be very salty and burnt to a crisp. The boys were too hungry to turn it down, but each swallow was followed by a shudder. Their hearing had more or less returned, other than an annoying high-pitched ringing. Their tastebuds, unfortunately, had been unaffected.

Davidor came rushing in and headed for Roona. The furious look she gave him sent him scurrying over to the boys’ side of the table.

“That was brilliant,” he said, sliding onto the bench next to Fen. “Brilliant. The plan, the execution, the pantrite… I don’t know where you got the idea, Gart, but well done, my boy, well done.”

“Wasn’t my idea,” said Gart. “Fen came up with it.”

“Did I?” said Fen. “When?”

Gart shrugged. “You must have been five or six. Dad used to tell us those bedtime stories.”

“Oh yes?” said Davidor. “Got the idea from one of my stories, did you?”

“Dad’s approach usually involved running at them, shouting, ‘Have some of this, ya buggers!’ or something equally dumb. We’d stay up all night coming up with better ways to kill the Undead. That’s when you came up with the pantrite idea.” Gart put down a chicken leg and picked up an apple. He took a bite and spat it out. “An apple? How do you screw up an apple?”

“But how would I even know pantrite could be used like that?” said Fen.

“That happened when we still lived here with Mother.” Gart looked across at Roona trying to force feed Titch a burnt banana.

Gart slid further along the bench, toward the far end of the table, pushing the other two ahead of him. He lowered his voice. “You had a habit of going off exploring on your own. You’d be gone for hours sometimes.”

“And nobody stopped me?” asked Fen.

“Of course not. Nobody talked to us, nobody even looked at us. We were like ghosts. We could go anywhere. Even the guards ignored us. So, one day you disappeared for even longer than usual, and when you came back you had this weird look on your face. Mother tried to get you to tell her where you’d been, but you said nothing. But later, after she’d fallen asleep, you told me.”

“Not ringing any bells.”

“Well, you were only four. Maybe this will jog your memory. You said you walked in on some big meeting of all the senior Elven. They were standing around while the Queen did a dance.”

“Granny?”

“Yes. Granny did a big, fancy dance, naked.”

“What?” said Fen.

“What?” said Davidor.

“What?” said the Queen, who had just arrived and was standing behind Fen.

“Hey this is what you told me. Granny did a naked dance, but first they lit some pantrite which temporarily blinded everyone so no one could see. Apart from you. Somehow you avoided getting blinded. That’s how you got the idea for using pantrite. It’s also when your obsession with girls started.”

Red-faced, Fen looked up at the Queen. “Honestly, I don’t remember any of this.”

“The Ceremony of Ide is a sacred Elven tradition,” said the equally red-faced Queen. “Seeing the dance of Ide is punishable by death.”

“You better eat up, then,” said Gart, pushing a plate of seemingly delicious cheeses towards Fen. “This could be your last meal.”

“We shall overlook the punishment this time,” said the Queen, “seeing as how you were a child.”

“I should be the one demanding punishment,” said Davidor. “You scarred my boy for life.”

“Don’t we have to get going?” said Fen, avoiding looking in the Queen’s direction. “The moons won’t be out for much longer.”

“Plenty of time yet,” said Tas as he sat down opposite Fen. He picked up a chicken leg and took a bite. “Ach. This is terrible. You there—” he called over one of the attendants, “—bring me some salt.”

Davidor leaned to the side to inspect the sandy-haired growth protruding from Tas’s armpit. “What are you doing?”

Tas lifted his arm to reveal Igail clinging to him. “I think she’s hiding. She appears to have drawn her mother’s ire.”

Igail sneaked a look down the table towards her mother and jerked her head back before she was spotted. “It’s not my fault,” she whispered. “I tried to stop him jumping in the lake, but he’s impossible when he gets like that.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Davidor whispered back. “The boy’s fine. She’ll let it go. One day. Probably. He is hard to control though. Force of nature, that one, although I can’t say I’m surprised, I remember the night he was conceived. We were—”

Both Gart and Fen started coughing.

“Went down the wrong way,” said Gart.

“Allergies,” said Fen. “Anyway, as I was saying, shouldn’t we be making a move?”

“I’ve summoned the heads of the clans,” said the Queen. “So we can decide how best to handle this problem.” She sat down at the head of the table.

“That’s great,” said Gart, standing up, “but nothing to do with us.”

“Please,” said Queen Lyr. “I know I have treated you and your brother poorly in the past. I don’t have any excuse other than foolish pride, which is no excuse at all. But give me a chance to make you feel this is your home.”

“No,” said Gart, “it isn’t. And I already know what kind of people you are. You don’t need another chance to show me that.”

“Sit down, Gart,” said Roona. “We should at least be aware of what they plan to do.”

Titch yawned. “Just remember who saved the day. And where are my underpants?”

Gart reluctantly sat down.

The doors to the Banquet Hall which had been left ajar—allowing more than enough room to enter—were thrown wide open. The 1st Legion entered led by Jimnar who jumped onto a table and proclaimed, “Eat and drink until you can’t move, men. You’ve earned it. Double the salt on everything!”

The Elven soldiers roared their approval and filled up the tables as giant platters of food were brought in. Jimnar left them to gorge themselves and approached the Queen. He was accompanied by a dapper-looking elf with a coiffured head of red-brown hair and matching beard, giving him a vulpine look.

“What’s this I hear about the return of the Demon God, Mother?” Jimnar asked at full volume, though the general hubbub in the room was at such a level that his indiscretion went unnoticed.

“Where did you hear of that?” asked the Queen. “I take it has something to do with you, Kemyl den Fak.”

The dapper elf bowed. “It was my son who passed the information to me. If what he says is true, I may have a solution for this barrier that only allows children to pass. In a year, I can train a hundred of my best students into a more than respectable fighting force. We can storm their secret hideaway with irresistible force.” His eyes glittered with confidence.

“I approve this,” said Jimnar. He put a foot on the bench and leaned an elbow on his knee. “So what if there’s a necromancer flapping about on a giant bat, controlling the Undead? We can leave the humans to deal with that. I think it would benefit them to suffer a few casualties at the hands of an Undead army. Might make them stop bickering among themselves for a moment and realise there are real enemies out there.”

Gart noted the look exchanged between Tas and Igail at the mention of the bat-riding necromancer. He had the distinct impression something was being withheld.

“While the humans fight the Undead,” continued Jimnar, “we prepare our army of bold, young Elven princes.” He raised his fist and shook it.

“Our only concern,” said Kemyl den Fak, “might be getting them to the site of the dragon egg on the same night as the double eclipse. This necromancer has the advantage when it comes to moving troops. We can’t move so many so fast, the way he did.”

“Actually,” said Titch, “the necromancer was a girl. And, she—”

“Could provide us with the perfect solution,” Tas cut in. He held up the broken ring he’d taken from Titch. “If I can replicate the method she used to transport the Undead here, we should be able to use the same magic to send our troops wherever they need to go.”

Jimnar slapped his hands together. “Perfect. We shall crush their little egg and lay waste to their plans.”

“Ugh,” said Gart. He rested his head on the table.

“What is it?” asked the Queen. “Do you not think it a good idea?”

“No, I don’t.” Gart sat up. “But do as you please.”

“What if you were to lead them?” said the Queen.

“Then I would order them to jump off the nearest cliff, just to teach them a lesson.”

“Both you and your brother proved yourselves fine Elven warriors tonight,” said Tas.

“We’re not Elven,” said Gart and Fen in unison.

“Technically,” said Tas, “you aren’t human either. But that’s beside the point. You led us to victory against superior numbers. I’m sure if you ordered men under your command to jump off a cliff, they would do it. If it’s a lesson worth learning, then maybe it’s a cliff worth jumping off.”

“What are you talking about?” spluttered Jimnar. “What possible lesson could that teach anyone?”

“I don’t know,” said Tas. “Perhaps the dangers of blind obedience?”

“Let me be very clear,” said Gart. “For some reason people seem convinced I will one day lead the Elven. I will not. I have no interest in ascending to the Seat of Power. For one thing, I’m only half-Elven. There’s no reason to believe I’ll live any longer than the normal human lifespan. All of the current Elders will still be alive after I’m long dead.”

“I doubt it,” said Tas. “You aren’t the first children to be born of mixed heritage.”

This caught the attention of all four children.

“We aren’t?” said Fen.

“No, no,” said Tas. “Back when the Elven roamed freely and fought side by side with the humans, romance often blossomed. It was frowned upon of course, but then frowning is hardly a deterrent when two people are overcome with desire.”

“How true,” said the Queen, looking at Davidor and frowning.

“The children of those unions were never allowed in The Vale, I’m ashamed to say, but many went on to be great men and women.”

“And did they live long lives?” asked Gart.

“Many lived for two or three hundred years. But they were not peaceful times, and the life expectancy of the Elven is about the same as a human’s when it comes to being hacked to pieces by a demon. There were rumours that the Elders at that time secretly arranged for those of mixed parentage to be placed in the most precarious battles in order to get rid of them, but I don’t think that was true. Certainly, I don’t think you will face such treatment, Gart.”

Gart’s face had darkened as he listened to Tas.

“Did you have to tell him all that?” said the Queen. “It’s ancient history after all.”

“He has the right to know. He more than anyone.”

“Queen Lyr,” said Kemyl. “I don’t think—”

The Queen raised a hand to silence Kemyl. “I saw how you controlled the men out there tonight, Gart. With a hundred well-trained Elven under you, don’t you think you could more decisively defeat the enemy?”

“No,” said Gart. “The best way to sneak in and out of the Demon God’s territory is with a small group that attracts as little attention as possible.”

“I think you’re all forgetting one thing,” said Titch. He stood up and leaned on the table with both hands. “The reason we were able to beat the Undead was because of that ring. And the person who captured the ring was me. So whatever you decide, the one thing that’s for sure is that I have to be involved if there’s going to be any chance of winning.”

He looked down the table at the assembled figures of authority. Everyone else looked at Roona.

She sighed. “You can go with your brothers and sister to the capital. After that, we’ll see.”

“Really?” said Titch, unable to believe his luck.

“Are you sure?” said Davidor, also surprised.

“He can’t remain a baby forever, as much as I would wish it. And he won’t grow stronger in my arms, more’s the pity. What I do know is that he will be watched over by three very diligent guardians. Yes?”

Gart and Fen nodded.

Roona leaned over the table and looked into the folds of Tas’s robes. “Yes?”

Igail’s head popped out and she nodded meekly. “Yes.”

Yes!” Titch threw up his arms. The blanket fell to his ankles, exposing him to everyone in the room, but he didn’t care.

***

Preparations for their departure were made quickly. Davidor would head south with Roona. The four children would head for the capital, where their parents would later join them.

Igail waited until she was alone with Tas to make final arrangements for those parts of the plan no one but the two of them knew about.

“Why is your daughter in league with the Demon God?” said Igail.

“I do not know,” said Tas. “But I think it best we keep her identity secret for now. Can you convince the little one?”

Igail nodded. “I think so. But what about Gart? Shouldn’t I tell him?”

“If you think it necessary.” He smiled sadly. “She is from my second marriage. Not quite as harmonious as my first. She left The Vale a long time ago with a desire to explore, but I never thought she would return like this. Although I never really spent much time with her. Maybe if I had…”

“She may have helped us. There won’t be any dissenting voices against our plans, now.”

“No, probably not. But you still need to be careful. If you fail, it is your brother who will pay the price. Have you reconsidered telling him the truth?”

“I can’t. He wouldn’t understand. And he’d never go to the awakening chamber if he knew what really waited for us there.”

Tas sighed and patted her on the shoulder. “It’s a difficult path you’ve chosen to travel. I will do my best to provide you with what you need.”

***

The six of them left The Vale with only a few minutes to spare. They rode hard across the bridge and through the meadow. When they reached the main road, they split into two groups and headed in separate directions.

Back at The Vale, at the very last possible moment, another rider emerged from the archway, charging across the bridge. Retyl den Fak urged his horse on. If the bridge faded while he was still crossing, they would fall into the Undead infested water.

The bridge grew less substantial and Retyl was only halfway across. He dug his heels in and the horse jumped, but there was no way they could make it. The bridge flickered out of existence. Retyl stuck out his hand and the ring on his middle finger glowed green. A gateway opened in front of him and horse and rider disappeared into it. A moment later the gateway vanished, and the lake was quiet save for the occasional ripple.