Golden Ruins


“What’s on your mind,” I said, sipping my beer while lying back in my chair. A warm breeze blew across the tiny strip that was Greycliffe Beach as if to accentuate a point. “You’re still horrible at self-expression.”


Mikislan casually lifted his glass and sipped the clear contents, those gorgeous eyes falling on me and making my hair stand on end.


It was those eyes. I could see him another two millennia hence and those eyes would never cease to pierce through my soul. Those cherry-wood eyes glistened with glee in his right moods and disgust bordering on cruelty in moments when you didn’t want to be around him.


His face was right against of wide beam yellow-white light pulsing down from the street lamps, illuminating that smooth black skin and lighting his eyes so you could see right through them.


They were near red in this light, a part of me holding back a smile at the recollection of how many sword and sorcery geeks I had met in my travels who talk of the dark elves with blood red eyes. In a way they are wrong and in another way their fantasies are indeed real, though I would never say that around this particular dark elf.


He reclined further back in the black metal patio chair, one slender leg crossed over on the other; the collar of his white beach shirt opening slightly to show more of that rich black skin underneath as one hand threw his gray and brown ponytail over his shoulder. His hair still concealed his pointed ears; ears that a normal human would see and only be mildly curious, yet elves tended to be more cautious of their identities as there were so few of his race around, black or otherwise.


Mikislan was in his dapper phase. Some years he preferred sweats, now he was more into the GQ look as I had seem him wear more often. Tonight he was a bit more casual, dressed appropriately for a rich tourist sucking down raw oysters on the deck of the Greycliffe Inn.


I must have stood completely out across the small, round table from him to him; my furry legs exposed under a pair of cut-off jeans and an absolutely garish Bermuda shirt I had become too fond of. He sipped a martini while I had downed a couple of Sam Adams. But then again he was the sophisticated elf and I was ever the savage vampire. He had always reminded me of that fact from the first moment I we met at a time in literally ancient history.


Tonight he was in serious mode; reflective serious, not business-like serious and certainly not five-seconds-from-killing-someone serious. All had different indicators; those little lines around those luscious lips were visible but not deep. Those cherry wood eyes were soft, not zooming in on me or everything around them as if all were threats.


I actually saw a hint of melancholy in those dark features. Mikislan always casually gloated about how he could never be read, though his ego spoke more than his reason in this one rare instance. I could read him like a book; the lack of any casual smirks, the slightly downcast expression, the lack of normal fluidity he would have when squeezing a lemon slice over the oysters in his plate.


This was not Mikislan’s usual demeanor, though a part of me could guess the reasons why and every one of them had to do with the postcard he sent me before his visit, a few short sentences written in elven script.


“Onisyr,” it read, “I hope the Greycliffe Inn is as hospitable as you have been raving about. I will require ample amounts of hospitality as well as ample amounts of your company. Mikislan.”


Such notes were normal for Mikislan, though it was the postcard itself that tipped me as to what mood I could expect to find him in; a photo of a giraffe eating from a palm tree and a postmark from Kinshasa, Zaire. He had been to his homeland which had become less and less homey in the past three hundred years of his existence.


“You’re still horrible at subtlety,” he replied, his pinkish-gray lips turning up in a smirk to break much of the tension in the air.


“You’re just making fun of me,” I replied, one of my claws snatching up an oyster I downed, the sandy water splashing into my nose and leaving a cute film over my goatee.


He actually laughed at that; one of those “oh aren’t we being cute” laughs, though he actually seemed to enjoy my attempt at mirth. His smile quickly faded as he looked down at the black metal table, his lips curling slightly as he tried to find the words for something.


At last Mikislan threw his head up, fine elven nose in the air as he gave a stiff smile.


“I have completed a journey, old friend,” he declared, another breeze taking his ponytail off his shoulder and slightly exposing the point of one ear. “Ventured into godforsaken lands to finally face myself by facing what had been a huge part of my existence I would have rather forgotten.”


I cocked an eyebrow, giving him a bemused smile though I could only guess what this grand speech was leading to. He was the one reading me like a book now, smiling and giving one of his creepy chuckles while leaning forward.


“I found the old city,” he said softly in a near hiss.


My smile dropped, my now-extended claws tapping on my bottle. The corners of his mouth turned up in a little smile at my expense, though if this revelation was all a joke I would have to hurt him.


“The old city,” I repeated, the implications of that statement digging up too many memories in the back of my brain.


“Dir’stelin,” he said grandly, holding up his martini glass. “The Green City, the black elf haven, the jewel of the jungle. The epitome of culture and beauty that was the paradise of dark elves. Grand stone spire castle, houses from massive palm trees grown by the city’s best mages, streets lined in glowing pink quartz and mosaic fieldstones. The city we both called haven for too long a time.”


My jaw slightly dropped, knowing Mikislan would never jest about something that carried this much emotional weight for both of us.


“The same city that would become abandoned seven centuries after we last looked upon its streets,” I added in a harsher tone than I had meant. “The jewel that had disintegrated amid revolution and the press of humanity. The city that has been nothing but a crumpled ruin buried under vines and swamps and patrolled by the worst sort of human warmongers.”


“That would be the one,” he said, his sarcastic smile faded.


He looked around to make sure there were no mortal ears around who would think both of us complete kooks, or maybe reveal something to the wrong people. We were the only ones on the open deck and the young couple making out on the rocks down the beach was hardly noticing.


“You found the city,” I said, my jaw still practically gaping open. “How the hell did you manage that? The old wards are nigh impenetrable and the amount of militias around that area are so thick they are a chore for even our kind.”


“I had my methods,” Mikislan responded, his face looking a bit more pained. “The result was still the same; I found the city. It was not a stroll down the beach, I assure you of that. But I walked the remains of its streets, sifted through hundreds of pounds of rubble to at least get a sense of what it was like to be there again.”


“Sentimentality from a creature who scoffs at sentimentality?” I asked, this whole revelation bringing up too many questions, though I had to give him at least some credit. For all his stoicism, Mikislan was more of an emotional creature than he cared to admit. “Last I recalled you bore little love for grand Dir’stelin when the city stood.”


Mikislan paused, taking a sip of his martini before giving a hard sigh.


“I deny nothing,” he replied with an uncomfortable smile. “The last time I laid eyes on its spires was the last time I spat at the street. I had never left Dir’stelin happy. Even after spending hundreds of years at a time there, every moment of my leaving came with curses if I was conscious at all. It was the center of the best of the dark elves and the absolute worst. The finest art, the sweetest perfume, the worst arrogance and cruelty capable by my kind.


“I came to its streets a humble mage from the forest who thought I could find some solace among my kin, and I found that. I lived the Dir’stelin dream; wealth, power, sophistication,” he continued, gazing into his martini glass as his expression became more pained. “The perfect life I thought I always wanted. I traded my tattered healers robes for the finest silks, went from a motley mystic to a respected, maybe even feared, instructor of the Arts.”


“Became the perfect bureaucrat acting as lap dog for a fickle child queen and bullying everyone else in your gilded path,” I added, a few old memories slithering back after having been supposedly long forgotten. That was the price of immortality perhaps.


Mikislan gave a rough laugh.


“The perfect lap dog trying to clean after a fickle little girl who never ceased to think herself perfect; a pampered elven princess even after a hundred year reign,” he said. “Ah sweet little Iserix, forever the harpy.”


“Last I heard she was in…


“Jamaica. Managing a boutique chain somewhere near Kingston. I stopped in for a brief chat on my way back to the States.”


I furrowed my eyebrows, knowing this couldn’t be good. He gave me a wicked smile, telling me the ensuing clash of egos probably ended satisfying for him and awkwardly for her.


“Her ego hasn’t quite recovered after that unfortunate little affair in Boston,” he said, bowing his head in deference to me, knowing I had also been caught up in that horrendous episode of shifting loyalties mixed with infernalism mixed with bullets.


“She had a bigger ego to bruise,” I said, reaching for another oyster.


The wicked smirk he gave me made my skin crawl and tickled the gossip fiend in me. There was no wholesome mirth in that smile, only pure evil to whatever degree.


“And some sores are so much fun to pick at,” he replied, reaching for another oyster and lapping the lemon juice with his pointed tongue. “Yes, I curse her now but at one point in history I cursed her while on her leash. Maybe took my power a bit too far, was a bit too mean to most students, pushed a bit too hard on those not licensed in the true Art.”


“No one you still speak with now,” I couldn’t help but add with a grin.


“Oh no, not a certain savage vampire shaman peddling his trinkets in the marketplace, offering his own spiritual views against elven reason,” he added, giving me a toast and his first wide smile of the evening. “I never spied on him nightly and gave him idle threats in passing.”


“No you didn’t indeed,” I added.


He gave a pure laugh before taking a large sip of his martini.


“Perhaps I only thought I did,” he said. “In those times when I thought I was holier than everyone, a time when I was all too willing to idly brush aside the arrogance and corruption of Iserix and every sniveling prince and princess that came after her.” His lips formed a sneer as his voice became more strained. “I still stayed around like a good little boy, despite being publicly poisoned by Iserix, despite Dealairo’s multiple attempts to cut my throat, despite leaving the city limits in anger more times than I can count, I always came back. Why? Glutton for punishment? Power hungry as hell?”


“Or maybe you saw something in your own kind worth the effort,” I said. “Or maybe there is something about the Green City that entices you back even millennia after its fall.”


He swirled his glass, one ebony finger sliding along the rim.


“I am coming to believe more that every cause is worth the effort,” Mikislan said. “Maybe even lost causes. I remember the last time I left the city. It was the fifth time European slave traders walked to the castle with payment to the king for help in capturing another ten human tribes who would roast and rot on English plantations. It was then, that exact moment I saw the fair skinned humans in their wigs and their ruffled shirts casually strolling through the marketplace at the side of several Royal Council members that I walked out for the last time.”


I casually sipped down another oyster seeing the lines of disgust grow deeper in Mikislan’s dark face. It was ever a sensitive subject with him and I knew it was better to let the wave pass rather than offer words of pithy comfort.


“The why did you go back,” I asked, taking another casual look around the patio. It was past Labor Day and the weather was warm though the usual crowd of tourists had returned to wherever they came from. We were completely alone, save for one light inside the inn indicating the presence of the usual kitchen crew cleaning up before close. “That was about four hundred years ago, why go back now? Did you want to see it in ruins so you could spit on its streets a final time?”


Mikislan squeezed the last of the juice from his lemon slice onto an oyster, a small smirk appearing on his face.


“It is because I needed to,” he said. “It nagged me, sitting in the back of my mind for the past four hundred years that my business was not finished; that I had to, I don’t know; make my peace with it one last time. It was hardly an all consuming obsession, but something in me that would not rest until it was done. It went from a minor thought to a nagging idea to a peaceful goal; a promise to myself I would make my peace with Dir’stelin at last.”


Mikislan drank down his oyster, the tension hanging in the air like an ocean fog waiting for a breeze of words to blow it away.


“I actually returned to the continent to take care of some business, see how the children’s clinic was running in Nairobi, maybe do some camping like I haven’t done in too long,” he said. “Though I only needed to see the palms again before smelling the orchids blooming in the Royal Gardens and hearing the bubbling of that grand fountain in the square. I woke up one day in my hotel room and the thought planted itself there; I needed to get this done with.


“I chartered a biplane to Zaire, spent a day in Kinshasa preparing my spells or just preparing in general. I went out into the jungle alone. It’s not as if I feared the machetes and machine guns of the many rebels and warring, bloodthirsty tribes that have taken root there. I walked, hacked through brush, tamed animals with magic, floated through unnoticed. I knew where I was looking; I had traveled those woods my entire life and could find the direction of Dir’stelin if I was even sitting here chatting with you.


“I traveled for two days and stopped dead in my tracks at a copse of vines and palms. I knew what was buried in that brush. I remembered the grand houses through the trees, the sight of the patrol walking the perimeter. It was all gone, though I will never forget it; it was as if it was all still there. The old wards are indeed still there, but I was the one who constructed practically all of those wards and taught the structure to the mage guards. A few incantations later I was walking into history.”


“What did you find,” I asked, my words near a gasp as I listened to the story with rapt concentration.


“A graveyard,” he replied. “A ruin indeed. The soil and vines have reclaimed the streets. The trees used for houses are now just overgrown trees. Whatever spires are left are littered over the terrain, you have to climb over them now to get around. A fitting end I suppose; she died in peace, or rather pieces, as opposed to being murdered like I’ve seen so many other cities. There were no bodies thankfully; showing all the elves left or died out over time and left Dir’stelin alone to nature.”


“Did you find your peace with this?” I asked.


“It was closure,” he said with a sad smile. “I needed to see the final fate of the great city before truly continuing with my existence. But there was satisfaction here, and not in seeing rotting ruins.”


Mikislan’s wicked smile returned eyes full of cruel glee.


“I found the castle, just as crumbled as everything else,” he continued. “When an area is as heavily warded as this and the last ruler was forced out, there is no one left to loot the royal treasury.”


A chuckle escaped my throat at the realization of what he was getting at.


His smile became a grin as he took one cursory look around while reaching for his leather satchel. He put the bag on the table and carefully unzipped it and opened it a crack.


I peered in, practically spitting up the little bit of oyster water in my mouth as I saw the gleaming object inside. I heard him chuckle a little as my eyes widened and my jaw further dropped. Memories poured into my brain of Iserix in her many formal appearances, of too many other rulers whose names I hailed and forgot.


“Whoever possesses the crown possesses Dir’stelin,” he said, his cherry wood eyes beaming.


I stared at the circlet of ancient gold molded into small branches around the base bearing berries of diamonds and emeralds. It was the crown jewels of Dir’stelin now in the possession of one of its most besmirched citizens.


I gazed at Mikislan, seeing the vindictive pride in his face.


“There’s plenty more where that came from,” he said, zipping the bag and putting it in his lap. “Though all heavily warded and likely to go to charity when I get around to salvaging all of it. This little beauty, however, I bore too many pains in that city to let go of it.”


“And Iserix didn’t try to destroy your spirit essence when you showed this to her on your little stopover in Jamaica,” I said, fully understanding what he was getting at earlier.


“I knew she wouldn’t,” he said, his smile a bit muted though no less vindictively beaming. “I was not completely mocking when I showed this to her, just stating a fact. She hardly looked happy, though I was expecting at least some attempt at negotiating it from me. She didn’t. I believe in the past few thousand years she has actually grown up a bit, bearing a bit of the spirit of a true Dir’stelin monarch. She knew she had her time with that crown and she knew that time was over. It is but a mass of gold and jewels now and I’m not arrogant enough to see is otherwise.”


“Though you are proud enough to know what it did symbolize and what that means now as it sits in your hand,” I said.


He merely smiled the pain from his face leaving and replaced by a satisfied pride he had not allowed himself in too long. That was the ultimate reward of his journey.


I gave a chuckle and raised my bottle.


“To spoils,” I said.


He regarded me for a moment, those reddish eyes boring into my soul again before he smiled and lifted his martini glass.


“To peace,” he said.